This VR cycle is dead
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However, I'm still as excited for VR as I was in the beginning in regards to the technology. Give me a lighter headset, 100% wireless and great handtracking and finally some long, immersive games (can be ports, that's fine for me) and I'm ready to shell out money again.
As it stands today though, my VR hype is on hibernation until the next gen rolls around.
I really do enjoy VR when I get around to playing it, but all I have is presence, but in a world that not particularly beautiful.
My favorite VR title is Elite: Dangerous, but while it's absolutely beautiful outside of VR, in VR it's rather....blurry. When in-VR had the detail of out-of-VR, the presence may be more meaningful. (But that'll be a while).
I wonder where the issue lies; is 1080×1200 per eye just not high enough (considering the wide FOV)? Or is it the optics? I used to play E:D on somewhat of a potato machine, and it was pretty sharp on a standard monitor, with relatively low resolution.
But that's more pixels than your retina has photoreceptors when you consider full colour (6M but it takes several of them working together to form a "pixel" equivalent)
My favorite games have been Climbey, Lone Echo and Vivecraft.
If we can figure out how to make game worlds bigger, perhaps even with AR, then we will probably have a lot more interesting things to do.
Granted, people who live in cities won't have that option, so the market is still somewhat limited.
They're not as advanced as a Oculus/Vive, but they can function without needing to setup an entire room.
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/141215-windows-mixed-reality...
I do understand that's a surprising answer and not the answer you want or think should be correct, but these are best thought of as VR headsets with MR branding.
It might seem that I'm saying that if they had a more centralised style they might have made more progress but I don't think that's the case since when we look around at other more driven companies we aren't seeing too many breakthroughs either.
There are two fields where I know for a fact VR has made significant inroads in the last few years they being Gaming and Design Visualisation. The latter being where a VR rig is a worthwhile business expense. The former being my PS 4 where there seems to be plenty of content available, but the €600 price-tag is just a little out of my reach...
I'm a well-paid (some would say over-paid) professional and I'm quibbling about the cost of the rig and I just wonder are we at a point where the economics stack up for widespread adoption of the technology? Not just in terms of the gear but the R&D costs for game developers, such as Valve, with a questionable rate of return ..
HL3 and Portal 3 would be incredibly difficult to implement well in the VR space, and I feel this is something that Valve understands much better than many others.
Sure, you could invent a teleportation-specific genre, but I think it'd be quite the niche.
Have Valve/etc gone after the hardcore F1/racing market? I have various friends who follow F1 closely and generally have money to spend. Surely VR works well for seated-racing games.
This is a real issue, and was my exact experience with VR. I know VR devs are aware, and have addressed it in some ways. But, idk. I was ready to plop down the cash for a Vive, but decided against it after a test run.
Put me in a foreign world with several varied environments. Let me explore it without artificial restrictions. The combat could be minimized with most potential enemies being non-aggressive by default (a change to Morrowind's mud crabs or cliff racers). For this style of game I would even expect to still have to use a controller both for combat but also for inventory management, etc.
- Haptic touch feedback through gloves
These are the final two pieces, in my opinion. Well those and making the hardware smaller.
There's nothing to restructure.
People taking this VR/AR stance don't understand at all what goes into such tech. Like somebody spitting on the explosion engine because "that's only a halfway technology" and refusing to drive anything but flying cars.
Also, what do you mean AR is rumoured to see the light? AR already exists; see Hololens, META, and others. Magic Leap has developed interesting prototypes but has failed to develop any unique practical consumer implementation.
Magic Leap is certainly capable of releasing a dev kit, but it will not feature most of the technologies present in their prototypes.
Yes, AR and VR can be combined into a single device, and that will most likely be the way to mainstream commercial success in the future, but at present, current headsets offer an incomparable experience in terms of immersion and pure enjoyment. Have you tried the Vive or Oculus with touch controllers? Being tethered to a gaming PC allows for much higher graphical performance than a mobile device.
I see no reason for such animosity towards VR. Saying that current VR devices are pointless because VR will be later combined with AR devices is like saying the Palm Pilot was pointless because its functionality would be later included with smartphones.
(I would argue that the end-goal of VR is actually quite divergent from AR; the future of VR would be the Matrix, where your mind itself is in a completely simulated environment. In the mean time, we make do with the Vive.)
The truth is, you don't know what they tried, and failed. You don't know what resources they got at their disposal. Especially considering all the stuff they are doing right now and how hard the competition is.
And worst, given the exceptional track record of Valve, you choose to believe in a theory ignoring it.
Your comment read like you are just disappointed to not have your pony yet and want to blame one of the best pony breeder for your frustration.
As I see it, there are some technical (even physiological?) hurdles, that they need to overcome.
1) "Teleport to move" is horrible, and sucks the feeling of immersion right out of the VR experience. Sadly, true "walking" with horizontal movement without accompanying angular momentum causes nausea in most people - hence teleporting as a solution. This as I understand it is a physiological system that is at odds with the VR world and while not everyone experiences it most do.
2) The resolution. It's hard to feel immersed in the world when it's so blurry. This is especially true for VR. VRs selling point IS immersion which IMO is an all-or-nothing experience. A blurry view detracts from feeling immersed in the world.
While true, it is also true that of these most people who will (at first!) experience simulator sickness, the vast majority can adapt fairly quickly and "get their VR legs".
Sadly this is never mentioned in articles.
You get over it eventually.
No, it is NOT the same thing as sea-sickness. I do not get sea sick, never have. I also don't get car sick if I'm a passenger reading a book or something. Never have. But turning, specifically TURNING, in VR, induces nausea.
When Oculus was first released (dev) games allowed for "free walking" FPS games which invoke a specific kind of nausea that is different from roller coaster style movement. It's the reason why almost all games are teleportation based now... Because this problem as I understand it affects the majority of people, even those who don't experience the other VR nausea which IS similar to sea sickness. This turning / angular momentum nausea does not attenuate with time. It's a huge problem with VR, and one which there is no solution for currently other than the poor "teleportion" movement mechanism.
Also depends on where you draw the line. I've never gotten sick from VR personally but the movement can still sometimes feel weird to me.
But consider the old 8-bit game Sentinel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sentinel_(video_game)
The game Fantastic Contraption was illuminating for me. I had played many tens of hours of the original. In VR I was amazed at how it looked and felt. Solving the first couple challenges was a lot of fun - just watching the machines run was great.
I started to realize a flaw though. A machine I could build in seconds by stretching my fingers a few inches across a keyboard and mouse took ten or twenty times as long in VR, and involved squatting, walking, grabbing, holding, etc.
There's a Perry Bible Fellowship comic of a child in a VR suit, clutching his simulated wounds while saying "Cool!" That comic is similar to my experience. Do we really want to experience things like this? (Tedium or pain)
You made me find this website (thanks for the implicit recommendation) and go through every single comic (they're not that many), and there is no such comic on this site as of now.
I also tried to find the comic to link to it, but I couldn't do it. I have a strong memory that it was that comic though, and no better guesses.
With some of that porting/emulation software I was able to play some SteamVR and other games. As a control I just used an Xbox 360 USB controller and the results surprised me.
Now working with a G Cardboard set isn't fun for very long, but the way that a few games translated was surprisingly good, as long as you're happy to not have the full experience. I found the headset was a lot of fun as a change of perspective.
The games I recall in particular being pretty good were GTA V and Skyrim (though I think Skyrim had a little bit of a perspective offset issue, but I didn't really tweak it). For native VR apps I tried ADR1FT (http://store.steampowered.com/app/300060/ADR1FT/) which was pretty good as well.
I imagine trying this with a proper headset work work far better and be more comfortable than my experience, but like I said I haven't worked with one.
A conclusion I made though was that I really didn't mind using the controller as I would on a console.
I don't think this will be the case.
A few decades ago, you could experience VR of a similar nature as you can today ... if you happened to have an in with a nearby university research lab, with a setup space with carefully calibrated sensors, hundreds of thousands of dollars of computers, projectors, and other equipment.
Now-a-days, you can experience that VR with about $2,000 worth of computer + headset, and about as much setup difficulty as a home theater system. This is _massively_ more accessible than it was.
It's certainly not perfect. $2,000 is still a lot of money, and 550 grams is a lot of weight to put on your face.
But, even if it's not a smashing consumer success at the moment, the number of developers, artists, and other creatives who have access to the tools of VR development, and the size of the potential audience, are several orders of magnitude larger than they were just a decade ago.
And, really, if the biggest complaints about VR headsets are that they're too heavy, too expensive, and they look dorky, then I'd say VR's already won, one way or another. Technology has had this weird habit of getting smaller and cheaper.
The hype may cool off, but I don't think there's going to be much slowing of developer behavior or consumer behavior in the near future, and new headset models coming out will just slowly ramp up enthusiasm.
(1) but seriously, this author is really really concerned about how un-cool the headset makes you look, as if people staring intently at a movie screen, or play, or classical music concert are that much more photogenic.
That being said, this article and most of the comments here are taking a singular worldview: consumer-focused VR for a western market. VR is a tool, not an industry. Context on use is required to assess traction.
VR for B2B or enterprises can make money today and doesn't require mass-consumer adoption. If you make someone 10x more effective at their job (tools for sales people: OssoVR) or onboard employees faster (training: STRIVR), you can overcome the cost and rough edges on the hardware and have an ROI to justify the cost of the system.
Walmart, for example, recently announced they are using VR to power their training centers. https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/31/walmart-is-bringing-vr-ins...
We're actively investing in VR for training companies and I recently did an overview of what separates out the best companies in this space: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/08/24/ti...
In Asia (and increasingly in the west), VR-arcades are going to be how most consumers first experience high-end PC VR. Culturally, people there are already used to going to internet cafe's to use computers by the hour and seek out 3rd spaces. VR-by-the-hour rooms fit this mold. Additionally, the short length of most VR experiences makes it easy to have a 15-20 minute session and not be disappointed by the lack of content. IMAX is starting to open multiple VR centers and the word within the industry is that the VR Zones opened by Namco in Tokyo are currently profitable.
More info on this here: https://medium.com/@amitt/vr-will-be-huge-in-china-41de0c758....
(disclosure: we're investors in STRIVR and OssoVR)
I would have thought AR google glass type devices would have been more versatile and popular than full VR for enterprise. No?
I think I've seen google glass style things in pictures of car manufacture workers. AR glass type option sounds like pretty awesome tech for manufacture or work that is outdoors.
> but I don't think Amitt's VC firm invested in Google recently.
I doubt they are the only ones in this space.
Several AR companies are working on just-in-time knowledge to allow people to do tasks without prior knowledge. We've invested in that area and I wrote on the topic here:
http://www.businessinsider.com/augmented-reality-could-slow-...
Even narrower than that: game VR; on HMDs without (usable) cameras; using particular software stacks.
The usual way I use my Vive, is on an old laptop with integrated graphics, doing ducktaped-on camera-passthrough AR, at 30 fps, in coffeehouses and conference rooms... Let's just say that many people are so focused on the gaming market, that they're unable to see anything else.
I've been through the mass adoption of PC's, the internet and web, cell phones, tablets and touch phones, and now here's consumer VR/AR. I've kind of given up hope of seeing intelligent analysis in the popular press during transitions.
Still, I was surprised by just how bad this article was. Isn't TC based in SV? I'd have thought the author could find people to do a sanity check. Misconceptions like drawing a hard VR vs AR distinction suggests that didn't happen. One can certainly make an argument for a slow takeoff. Even for a very slow and multi-phase one. But this article wasn't that. Perhaps I've just been unlucky to see this post before HN buries it.
This really annoys me. Actually I just want a good HMD that can replace any standard monitor. A lot of people complain about working in a plane or on a bus because other people can see their screen. People complain about working in open offices where they constantly have other peoples' faces moving in their field of view, distracting them from their screens. People try to build screen walls and wear isolating headphones to shield them from these distractions. People complain that they can't work outside in nice weather because of the glare..
I complain about my laptop because the screen is too small and it's impossible to have an ergonomic posture -- if it's at the right level for typing, the screen is too low and I get neck pain. If the screen is at a comfortable level, it's very difficult to type on. Even when the screen is at a comfortable level, it's annoyingly small for some things. I complain about big screens because they're heavy, take up a lot of desk space, are expensive, and aren't very portable.
There's so many issues that could potentially be solved with a HMD.. but everyone's just completely fixated on immersion in gaming and movies. sigh
A HMD could be a small, lightweight monitor I can keep in my backpack and use to get a desktop-like experience (plus some exclusive benefits) with a few minor disadvantages.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/19/15820336/nokia-varjo-virt... [2] http://www.ubergizmo.com/2017/06/varjo-20-20-vr-headset/ [3] http://www.kguttag.com/2017/06/26/varjo-foveated-display-par... [4] http://www.kguttag.com/2017/07/10/varjo-foveated-display-reg... [5] https://www.fastcompany.com/40432203/this-finnish-startup-sa... [6] https://www.wired.com/story/varjo-vr-microdisplay/
I think something like the Avegant Glyph is a lot more promising for my needs. But that thing works at 720p; I'd say bump it up to 1080p and I might buy it. It's also got a fatal design flaw that allows dust to get behind the lens and it's basically impossible to remove.. without sending the device back to the manufacturer. And the Glyph too is focused a little too much on multimedia; the inclusion of headphones is an obvious giveaway, as are all the comparisons to a big TV.. ten feet away.
Notice that the Glyph isn't fixated on immersing you; it doesn't try to fill your entire field of view. It's just a screen in a head-mount (plus headphones, which I don't want). There's some space around the eyepiece so you can see and find the coffee cup by your laptop. This means it doesn't run in to the same resolution issue that immersion-focused VR has to deal with. Thus piece in front of your eyes is also smaller than the usual VR box that tries to cover all the space around your face balls.
However, the field of view is incredibly small and you look like an idiot wearing one. Maybe 10 years from now we'll get there.
I think it was McLuhan who said that each new medium begins by imitating the old. e.g - The first television programs were basically radio broadcasts with an image of a talking head. It took a while for tv to break out and capitalize on the features of the new medium.
VR was always going to be measured by gaming. But its well-documented problem was that a very large subsection of games (1st person) have a considerable barf factor for a considerable section of the customer base.
So VR may have had great future potential for new avenues in gaming, but it was hamstrung by its weakenesses for existing games.
People got too caught up with possibilites to objectively look at how sucky it was right now.
VR thus far has been a bit of a step back. Devs have for a long time been under the impression that tech > gameplay (which is dumb when you think about it), and now a lot of devs are under the impression that doing something in VR excuses games not getting the basics right. The fun part is the studios who are used throwing 100 artists at a job pumping out the highest detail models, but that doesn't work so well, so they're either gonna go back to the basics or keep floundering.
The best games I've played in VR have been ports, and they're just as enjoyable without VR and you aren't hot and sweaty after 5 minutes.
It was also one of the worst tower defense games I've ever played. Enemies coming from all sides, rngs that made certain levels unbeatable if you got unlucky with the tower drops, and wide open areas that meant you couldn't really create bottlenecks.
For all the potential it had, they really needed someone better at game design.
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My biggest issue though is that we haven't seen any long form VR games. Everything decent is more or less like an arcade. One room where you do everything, and you run out of unique stuff to do pretty quickly.
This will take some time, but once we get there, I will feel we will find some exciting things .. working on one such experience myself :)
So far, I've found that there is a lot of content being created and it seems like a lot of newer stuff is being shot in a way that is either natively VR or can be converted (I assume using a fisheye lens of some kind). Some of the big players in the industry have obviously put some effort behind it, but I'm not really sure what the adoption rate has actually been like.
I wonder if PornHub has released any metrics on viewership of their VR category. It seems like a bad idea to check at work, but I'll go check their blog tonight if I think about it.
- Wanting to slouch on the couch without it affecting your gameplay
- Wanting to pick up your cup of tea or soda in slow moments in the game
- Wanting to hear & see if other members of the family have got home
- Not wanting to look like an idiot with a thing on your head making strange in-game movements
- Feeling antisocial because as you only have one head-set others in the room can't see what you're doing (making it feel antisocial to go into that world)
We're pretty good at getting "immersed" in things without VR, so I wonder if the immersion gains just aren't worth the social & convenience costs (as well as the real costs) to most people. A little like even if GOT was on at the local IMAX, the vast majority of people would probably still watch it on their smaller screens at home. Maybe even on their tiny phones and iPads...
You can easily play some games sitting, but still you can't do no exercise. That's a plus: a friend I played frequently with has lost more weight playing than with any other method. (for most people exercising isn't useful for losing weight but it has many benefits for the brain)
> - Wanting to pick up your cup of tea or soda in slow moments in the game
I've done that. With a bottle or a cup with a straw. The vive camera makes it easy.
> - Wanting to hear & see if other members of the family have got home
It depends on which headset are you using and how much noise people makes coming home. I usually do hear them.
> - Not wanting to look like an idiot with a thing on your head making strange in-game movements
> - Feeling antisocial because as you only have one head-set others in the room can't see what you're doing (making it feel antisocial to go into that world)
People _can_ see what are you doing with a correctly positioned screen. In any case those problems are temporary and sounds easy to solve. I'm not very social myself but I want to make a SteamVR "intercommunicator" to talk with people IRL without losing immersion (or maybe even making it more immersive).
- I already do a lot of sitting VR when tired/feet hurt. You're not gonna play the same game but a lot of the best experiences (cockpit based) are better sitting anyway.
- I do that aswell but arguably it's more precarious. I advise investing in a tumbler/thermos :)
- I exclusively use open headphones, the ones on the oculus are too and I can hear if someone is even standing in the corridor looking at me from the accoustic change. Closed headphones make me feel very uncomfortable and antisocial anyway.
- Heh, I'm playing, don't care about my appearance.
- On this point especially I must strongly disagree. Nothing has brought people around my gaming setup more than a VR HMD. And every game I played properly showed the player's view in a separate window and handled audio mirroring perfectly. Some games even allow for different spectator cameras, or smoothed up motions.
We lack the deep games we're accustomed to in traditional gaming. For myself and many, one of the best experience has been Doom 3 BFG VR. Tells you how desperately we need a proper "full" game with good mc support. Once those start coming out I expect the whole experience to be vastly different.
Pokemon GO is a cited example of the success of AR, but literally all the AR does is render your Pokemon over the camera feed, using the gyro to keep it mostly in the same orientation. It does nothing to make it feel like it's actually in the world. It moves as your perspective moves, and its perceived scale changes wildly. That doesn't even deserve to be called AR.
Most players also seem to turn the AR off, too, so it seems weird to attribute success to the concept. It's a gimmick that makes for cool concept videos like the one pictured in the article, but it's not nearly as interesting in reality.
The recent Sword Art Online movie spends quite a bit of time imagining what a world with ubiquitous, sophisticated AR could be like. While obviously unrealistic, that movie felt inspiring.
1. The experience itself is there and "real" in a way it hasn't been before. The issues seem to be those of the hardware being too big, expensive and wired. All things that are rapidly being improved on in general computing and crucially not just niche VR (for example the awesome display advances driven by mobile phones are pulled into VR headsets).
2. We're definitely still in the "figuring things out" on the software side. An absolutely fascinating video is this walkthrough of all the UX attempts that a developer tried for getting guns to work and feel good in VR.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYrkXK3V2ik&feature=youtu.be
And everything with VR is this way - there's a half dozen different movement methods with different quirks that people are trying, there's tons of optimization and framerate and interactions attempts. Heck even the controllers are seeing a rapid evolution (stick like the HTC Vive -> Oculus Touch -> Knuckle Controllers).
I've tried most of the VR headsets from Jaron Lanier's original rig to the HTC Vibe. Over that range, the tracking is far better, the resolution is somewhat better, the headset clunkyness is slightly better, and there's still no killer app. It's great for FPS games. Rollercoaster sims are fun once or twice. There are virtual worlds; Second Life and High Fidelity support VR headsets. But virtual worlds never caught on, even though today they could run in a browser. Then what?
Augmented reality has potential, but the alignment with the real world has to be very good, it has to work in the real world, not rooms prepped for it, and it has to cost a lot less. Those are technical problems that can be solved. Then you could play Pokemon Go, so there's a killer app ready to roll. Whether the borghead thing will fly socially remains to be seen. Remember the glasshole problem.
> But virtual worlds never caught on
Maybe in its odd-ball Second Life version, but WoW and Minecraft would like a word with that statement.
Isn't adoption by consumers a measure of value? Maybe it's not actually that valuable for most people.
Up to 5, down to 3, up to 4, down to 1, up to 2, up to 3...
We are in the early days of real consumer VR technology. There is a lot of low hanging fruit to improve VR, not just in hardware, but in software too.
The technology will continue to iterate and improve. There's no stopping it.
Back when mobile phones were new, people made disparaging comments when eg a businessman would take a call in public. And there was a trope in comedy where people would pretend to take a call just to show off the fact they had a phone.
The technology will become normalized.
Sure, your 3DVR games suck at the moment and the hardware of the high end devices is much too expensive.
But many people are rather okay with watching VR videos with Google Cardboard like constructs.
My personal criteria for a device one could consider a referendum on VR if it fails in the market:
- It needs to be at a price point akin to a tablet computer
- It needs to be able to run for more than an hour without overheating
- It needs full 6dof head tracking and ideally 6dof controller tracking with motion to photon latency comparable to vive/rift
- It needs to be comfortable to wear for an hour for most people
- It needs to deliver a graphical experience on par with something like a PS2 or PS3
- It needs to be portable and wireless so it can be passed around and shown off to others easily
- Most importantly, it needs to be simple to set up and use. Ie, no external computer, no wires, no mounting of sensors on walls, no need to plug or unplug devices before/after use, etc.
I would love to play around with VR, but I'm not going to shell out $600+ for such a device when I don't know how much software it'll have in the future.
At the time of writing this comment, I found out that the Oculus is $400, which is quite a bit better (I thought it was $600-$900 still). But I still don't know what future game/app support looks like for it. My gut says it is in a downward trend, so I won't be buying into it until I see them being more popular among e.g. Youtubers etc.
There's nothing to imply a downward trend, but everything to imply an upward one.
At previous price points I could see cost being more of a factor, but at 400$ I'd say anyone not interested is probably not going to be (in PC headsets at least). They can't really get much cheaper than that (one of the Windows ones is 300$). And the next generation is 2 years out so it's not like there's a fear of getting outdated hardware. And to top that the sale at 400$ has driven the number of users up significantly so there's currently a fresh influx of new users to setttle in with.
The only thing I see changing is the cost of a VR-ready PC going down, but only if resolutions don't increase at a pace that nullifies cheaper performance
The implication being they will increase, but the cost of computing power to drive higher resolutions may lower faster than resolution increases
Although I can see why once you do begin to invest and contribute you can begin to really solidify the addiction and start to integrate it into your personality and sense of self.
But I think snapchat has face-altering features as in 3D modifications while photo booth only changed the image itself or maybe identified "head is at x,y" at most.
Snapchat can modify your head, make interactive animations and all that jazz. Do note that I never really used snapchat, but these are my impressions from the few times someone pointed it at me.
One more generation of hardware might get us there, if we can somehow keep Moore's law going.
The next step ideally would be a keyboard that comes with special gloves, or a pair of finger tip RFIDs or blutooths, one for each hand, that can be detected by some sensor on the keyboard, which can be used to calculate finger position in relation to the keyboard and display a virtual version of that on the bottom of the screen. These couple of peripherals shouldn't be too expensive to implement and bring to market I imagine.
Touch typing is great and all, and I don't really look at the keyboard while typing directly, but for some odd reason, just seeing my hands barely in the bottom of my vision box makes all the difference in my ability to type accurately. I turn the lights off and I can't type for shit. Maybe it has to do with re-orienting my hands to the keyboard. As I type this I notice every once in a while after pausing that I briefly look down at the keyboard and then back up.
Anyways, that was a small tangent, but VR should really focus on certain accessibility aspects going forward.
Similarly, when I'm wearing a headset and I need to grab something off my desk quickly, and don't want to take off the headset, it can result in a lot of fumbling around. Interestingly enough, I find it helps to close my eyes, and I actually find things more quickly and accurately.
So, even just a bit of video passthrough of the keyboard, or an in-VR visual excuse for why the keyboard & your hands are occluded from view, might be enough to solve touch-typing in VR.
I use camera-passthrough AR on a Vive, with a ducktaped-on camera. The Vive's own camera is too low resolution (it's both fisheye, and bandwidth limited to 6?? x 4?? pixels). Other people have mounted a camera above the keyboard, and inserted only the keyboard image into their otherwise VR environment.
Another option is to get an AR HMD. There's Hololens. And a "like Google Cardboard, but for AR" kickstarter? I've not been following the area.
I've heard, but not tried, that one can make some use of seeing down past your nose on the Rift.
So I've not found keyboard use a problem. But the low angular resolution has been.
I get something like 40 lines of readable text without having to move my head. The Rift/Vive panels are low-resolution per eye, and are PenTile (so it's really even less), and you're only able to use the center third or half. That's not much realestate. But, if you're ok with that, you can do RDP... there are youtube videos. I've heard people who commonly work in small terminal windows can be happy.
The new Windows VR HMDs (available now as developer versions) are said to be higher resolution, with perhaps poorer optics, but I've not tried them yet.
AR HMD's have narrower fields of view, and thus higher angular resolution. So Hololens et al might be an alternative, but I've not tried that.
Depending on your constraints, another option might a projector - projecting on a ceiling, wall, or suspended screen.
You also have a LOT of haunts popping up that are VR escape rooms. Universal Orlando used it in one of their upcharge experiences during Halloween Horror Nights last year.
There are also some fitness programs starting out that use vr as a way to help motivate people who would normally not want to work out.
So yes, at home vr never really took off. I don't think anyone honestly believed it would at the current price point/computer requirements.
That's a tiny market that doesn't come close to justifying the current levels of investment though. When billions of dollars are being injected then you need mass market adoption, either home or business.
> United States: Nearly 30,000 attractions (theme and amusement parks, attractions, water parks, family entertainment centers, zoos, aquariums, science centers, museums, and resorts) produced a total nationwide economic impact of $219 billion in 2011.
(The figures there are a couple years outdated. Last few years have seen record numbers.)
http://www.iaapa.org/resources/by-park-type/amusement-parks-...
The video game industry is barely half that: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/15/digital-games-market-to-see-...
If investors want to keep blowing money trying to force tech into the home, so be it.
Ninja edit: Not trying to say you're wrong by any means though. The amount of money being thrown at putting VR into the home is insane and in my opinion just outright stupid. Way better to spend that same money in an industry that's already accepting of the same tech.
Try to play a vr game at home with two other people and one device.
More recently, I saw a group of friends set up, with couches outside the tracking area, and watch each other taking turns at Job Simulator, Accounting VR, or Space Pirate trainer. They just had fun watching, socializing, and taking their turn. Panopticon and Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes also offer interesting, asymmetric gameplay.
I think asymmetric VR games are going to be a big niche within the space. If you like these types of games, there's a big list of them here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/67f9sv/list_of_asymme...
No mention of Hololens, which is unfortunate - and shows how poorly researched this verbal diarrhea actually is.
The key seems to be the lack of wires and freedom of movement. I have a SteelSeries bluetooth controller, and I sat in a swivel chair to play.
I agree with the article on the whole - there is no compelling use case for VR as it exists today, or as it will exist in the near future. Higher resolution will make some uses better (e.g. porn), but it's still going to be very limited-use.
I can't wait to get my hands on a HoloLens. I think AR is going to be a killer tech, though I don't think it will really hit "mainstream" until direct retinal projection or a similar technology is widely available. It's still not socially acceptable to wear an HMD in public.
The whole headset too big and uncomfortable point is true, but it comes next at failing to sell the technology to the mess with a legit reason. Yes it is cooler and more immersive, but does this advantage outweigh that much that I should ditch my smartphone and embrace the hype? I am afraid this would come to AI as well, while the media is fear-mongering over human being taken over by terminators-like robots, people out there might just not feel there is a need of democratization of AI at all.
Oh my.
I'm sure you know the old saying: when you read a news report about something you happen to be an expert in, you'll likely find that they got it very wrong. And then you'll wonder what else they get wrong.
I'm an eclipse veteran, and I certainly hope millions of people did not wear protective goggles to witness the total eclipse. Because they wouldn't have seen a thing.
You need eye protection for any partial eclipse, including the partial phases before and after totality. But not during totality. The solar corona is only about as bright as a full moon, and "eclipse glasses" would block it out completely.
Water under the bridge now, at least until the next total eclipse! But when a writer leads off a news piece with something so far from the mark, why should I believe anything they write?
Maybe I'm being overly judgmental. After all, the eclipse comment was supposed to be just a clever lead-in for the article. But it was so wrong I just didn't have the patience to read the rest of the piece.
I'm not an "eclipse veteran", I don't know anything about it, but my feed was nothing but eclipse glasses for three whole days. I would say people wore glasses.
Yes, I did dismiss the article after that first paragraph, and as I mentioned probably unfairly on my part.
Sorry, it was just a real peeve of mine in the weeks leading up to this eclipse to see so much misinformation spread by the news media. It was the same thing that happened in the 1979 eclipse that I got to see in all its glory.
It was really sad to see so many people denied that experience because of unjustified fear, when it's possible to view a total eclipse in complete safety as I did. And the same thing happened again this year.
This astronomer's experience in 1979 was all too typical:
http://www.wrcbtv.com/story/35055369/i-was-robbed-of-my-ecli...
OK, enough of my eclipse gripes. Just explaining why this put me off from the rest of the article.
By way of contrast, if that opening paragraph had mentioned that all the people who used eclipse glasses during totality missed the whole thing because of misinformation and fear, now that would have caught my attention and led me to believe that the author might have some good insights in other areas too.
Y'all can get back to VR now... :-)
I viewed the 1979 total eclipse with unfiltered binoculars, and it was an awesome sight - truly an experience of a lifetime.
Alas, I didn't get to travel to the path of totality for this year's eclipse, but I viewed the partial eclipse from home with binoculars - of course this time with professional quality solar filters covering the front! Several of the neighbors stopped by to take a look.
Back to your comment about the protective glasses, I can only speak for myself: I didn't use them at all in the 1979 eclipse. I'd seen partial eclipses before - they happen fairly often and you can see them from a wide area. What I traveled to Oregon for was totality.
So I and the other people on the hillside with me simply ignored the partial eclipse. During the first partial phase we put on our sunglasses and looked away from the sun, waiting for the interesting effects that would happen on the ground as the moon's shadow approached.
Then when it became total, we turned around, took off our sunglasses, picked up our binoculars if we had them, and viewed the solar corona directly.
Is there any party that would benefit if people believed they should wait five years for VR?
EDIT: In case it's not clear, I'm talking about [1]
If it is a submarine piece, well, the author does seem particularly sold on the idea of AR vs. VR. Brings up several emotional negatives of VR that AR would be the savior for. The author specifically mentions Pokemon Go, and Snapchat.
- Space/Driving/Flying Sims
- Emulating a room
The first is fairly obvious - you're sitting in a chair, looking outwards. You have the visual context of your cockpit to keep you from getting nauseous, and the immersion is out of this world.
The last is where things get pretty exciting to me: It's the next evolution of the home theater. You can emulate any theater, any screen size, and include proper sound processing to give a spatial sense to the audio. The possibilities here are pretty damned close to endless.
There are other great uses for emulating rooms - such as for architects giving virtual home tours, or giving 3d artists a more natural medium to work with.
Yeah, it might be a long hard slog to global adoption, but it can only go up from here.
Does he get motion sickness watching F1 on TV?!
I'm inclined to take this article with a big pinch of salt, as regardless of how many truths it touches, there's an undercurrent of hatred. Also seems to pretty much disregard the vive.
I've been bearish about VR since the beginning. Even when it's approaching perfection, it's too socially isolating. Lots of things are as socially isolating, but few FEEL so overtly isolating. Moreover, we're accustomed to viewing things from a narrative distance -- a sort of 3rd person impersonal viewpoint. VR is intransigently stuck in 1st person. That's great for certain kinds of video games, and can be great for video once software allows for truly interactive video experiences. But it's still a deeply limited perspective. Think of all the forms of entertainment you've ever used. Now eliminate all those that aren't 1st person. That's what's left for VR.
AR will end up covering everything. We love computers, information, virtual socialization, but we also want to feel like we're engaging in those things as an extension of the world we live in on a day to day basis. AR allows an increasingly rich interpenetration of the virtual and the real. It's going to take over completely.
But I'm confident that VR will always have a place. It's like a motorcycle to AR's car. For example, VR is unquestionably the future of the home search. Being able to tour through many homes, walk neighborhoods, check out the local bars and restaurants, all without having to travel. That's invaluable. AR just won't cut it for these purposes. And VR will eventually be used extensively for 1st person gaming, a relatively small range of focused media, some art, training, and probably for home-movies (think of going back, 20 years later, to be in the room during your kid's 5th birthday!).
So I remove all the magical talk. Then look at the functionality, and I think you'll see that VR's value is tremendous, within a limited domain.
Thirdhand, but my friends have told me it is really worth it. Odaiba is known as a popular dating spot - so it isn't hard to believe that they regularly get fully booked out for something new like that.
VR is not going to immediately obsolete your smartphone, computer monitor, TV and car. But, it is a wonderful new option for a great many things. It's not ready for daily use by hundreds of millions of people today. But, it is getting better pretty fast. Give it time (and a lot more investment). When it is ready, I expect to see a lot of people immersed in new worlds with new interfaces and new opportunities reporting back "Well, yeah I use a VR interface at work. It's OK, I guess. I wish they'd fix this one feature..."
http://techblog.steelseries.com/images/ikeahaxx/6.jpg
This person seems to have it mostly correct except the wires still touch their back. It would make sense to me to have nothing touching you so you don't feel encumbered.
After the novelty wears off, you're left with this thing strapped to your head, and it's not comfortable. It's not ergonomic, it's awkward, and a blindfold to actual reality.
No doubt the headsets are improved from DK2, but they would need to be a LOT better before I bother trying again. 5 years is wishful thinking. Try 10 to 20 or more for the kind of VR that is like wearing regular sunglasses.
Smartphone Maker HTC Explores Strategic Options:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-24/smartphon...
Hmm, I've got Resident Evil on my bog standard PS4 and PSVR; it plays its fine.
It's a AAA game and seems to contradict the above assertion.
It could be better but that's true for all games on all systems.
And for AR, mentioning Pokemon GO and Google Glass multiple times without mentioning HoloLens is plain bizzare.
First of all, the author mainly writes about mobile and social games, so she obviously has no interest in VR and has probably never even tried it. Unfortunately for those on the fence about VR, she's painted an unfair and bleak picture. That's unfortunate for them because they may miss out on something quite fun and interesting.
I was a VR skeptic right up until two weeks ago when I tried a friend's DK3 and have since purchased a CV1 during the summer sale event. I was not a gamer beforehand, but the immersion of VR has sucked me in. That fact that you have to move to play is what makes it fun.