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Comment by mherrmann | Hacker News Reader

Does anybody know if VR headsets will eventually replace monitors? Would be great for ergonomics. Much more portable, you don't have to sit but can lie on a couch, have a lot of screen estate even in tight spaces such as on a plane etc. That with a keyboard is my dream setup.

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Here's what I think would be needed to largely chunk those weird squares into the garbage bin:

- Comfort: It has to be comfortable for a lot of people to use the device for an extended time. Lets say 4 hours. Current Gen VR gets uncomfortable around 20-30 minutes. That isn't too big a bridge to cross.

- Resolution: Current Gen VR isn't suitable for looking at a lot of text for a long time due to the PPD (Pixels per degree). I've tried the Plimax 4K, and it felt very close, to the degree that I think that the Plimax 8K Pro (Which uses native 8K resolution unlike the standard 9k) could very well be there.

- Text input: This could be tricky because its not something being demanded by games at all. A very easy to imagine solution would be tracked fingers + a tracked physical keyboard. Current finger tracking is juusssst about good enough for this, but not quite. I think this is only really critical for VR coding and text processing, social and general UI use is going to lean on voice as much as possible because it fits into the VR paradigm much better.

>social and general UI use is going to lean on voice as much as possible because it fits into the VR paradigm much better.

I don't think so, how would you talk on the phone and input text? I don't think people are going to be comfortable giving up the privacy of a keyboard.

Also, why can't you just use a keyboard? what is the purpose of finger tracking?

Here's a partial solution for text input (or at least for editing text): https://youtu.be/tztmgCcZaM4?t=1m25s

This video is what convinced me to buy in to VR:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db-7J5OaSag

Reminds me of a non-VR game called Quadrilateral Cowboy [1].

[1] https://youtu.be/g0mi9J5b4Xs?t=24m46s

In the keynote, one of the developers said that they've done exactly this for some of the dev team. Specifically, they are using Visual Studio, in VR, as their primary development environment.

Could be hyperbole for marketing purposes, but even if so, I think we'll get there soon enough. They explicitly said that replacing monitors is one of their [long term] goals for VR.

Maybe if the headsets became "ultra-comfortable", but these are nowhere near that. I have some much better than average headphones, that are near top of the line for comfort. They still are too much after a few hours.

Headphones are a solvable problem. There are people who wear headphones to work, as opposed to while working. All day comfort is a bullet point because radio and media people look for it. I guarantee you can find a set of cans that agrees with you for more than 8 hours.

I wore a pair of Sony MDR-7506, the ubiquitous radio cans, for 8+ hours every day while operating and editing talk radio and didn’t even notice, despite the job calling for constantly necking them and then putting them back. And I have a large head. They’re ubiquitous in radio for a reason.

Are your headphones too heavy or do they put too much pressure around your ears? I can work through whole day with my M50x. However it took some getting use to them and stretching the overhead metal.

If you get some of the nicer pads for them off amazon, they're even better. Other than the music in my ears, I Honestly forget I have them on.

I'd be worried about eye strain with such long, continuous, and frequent periods of usage.

When using VR, do we focus on the objects or on some fixed point? If it is the objects, it could simulate being at different distances, so it should be better than staring at a stationary screen.

It's an implementation detail that varies by headset. I've read that Oculus's developer kits had it at infinity, but the CV1 is fixed at 2 meters [1].

Oculus also had a "focal surface display" tech demo of a display system that can alter the optics to vary tje focal distance across an image, letting it approximate the scene you're looking at. This isn't in any consumer hardware (yet) [2].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/56hiug/oculus_rift_...

[2] https://www.oculus.com/blog/oculus-research-to-present-focal...

For binocular vision, you can adjust the distance the object appears at virtually. Oculus gives a guideline of 0.75-3.5m for rendering objects that will have long term gaze (UI, etc). The screen itself is at a focal distance of about 1.3m, which is what your eyeballs need to focus on individually (flexing the lens itself).

https://developer.oculus.com/design/latest/concepts/bp_app_i...

yeah but i’ve heard aome studies have shown the blue light from vr headsets damage your eyes anyway

SteamVR and Vive have a night mode, so should be do-able with Oculus. I feel fine after several hours of elite dangerous with that on, although elite is a dark game and this video shows bright white color schemes. Maybe dark UI + night would be the difference.

Owning both an original Oculus and a Vive, both are way too bright for me. I wear sunglasses under the helmet to help with this, and they also help with the pixelation, making games look more real.

Don't we get that with monitors now?

is your monitor 3 inches from your eye and does it take up your entire fov where you can’t look away?

Why are you wasting company time looking away from your work product, meat cog?

Of course they will, if you're including the universe of VR/AR/XR and whatever other evolution might occur in the field.

It's like asking whether color movies will replace black and white.

Depth literally adds another dimension. It's literally 2d to 3d. In the same way you wouldn't want to go from movies back to still images, or color movies to black and white. Why would you want to look at a flat image in front of you when you could have a device that can replicate that flat image OR show you a 3d model.

Odd choice of analogy, since many people did not prefer 3D films when those were put into wide release, and 3D televisions were a huge flop.

Edit: I don't disagree that VR will be extended to a wide range of mainstream applications...just pointing out a problem with the analogy of color/B&W film.

It's pre-digital horizon, but I'd be curious if there was significant rejection of early color film technology due to its (I'm guessing) inferiority to a mature black and white process.

From memory, I believe early film with sound did have this issue. Although as caused by direction problems as technical ones.

Yes, my edit was confusing. I didn't mean color/B&W, but rather 2D/3D transition. I'm sure color was a big hit. Your point about sound is really interesting, too.

This is what I'm waiting for, basically.

When I had a DK2, using the virtual desktop application was so much fun. The issue is that the resolution isn't quite there yet, but I think that issue will be solved sooner than you would think (at least for desktop use).

The FOV and PPD isn't there yet for either though. If anything is going to replace monitors it will be AR displays, not VR.

Multitude of reasons but the biggest one would be that you can still work with others line of sight in the real world with AR, whereas everyone needs to be in VR to.

Plenty will protest with the idea that the isolation of VR would be beneficial to focus, however 1. You can get most of the way there with AR as is, or just add an opaque cover to the AR glasses and 2. It's cognitively beneficial to see your real surroundings over the course of an entire work day (even if you claim your work day is 4 hours)

> Multitude of reasons but the biggest one would be that you can still work with others line of sight in the real world with AR, whereas everyone needs to be in VR to.

Not with the right tech.

If you had a few depth-sensing cameras plopped around - cameras which could image both the actual images and depth information, in theory you could use that info to build on-the-fly 3D models of your surroundings (including people) and merge them into the world being viewed in a person's HMD.

All the tech currently exists; cheap Kinects or Sony VR cameras could work for this, for instance - but there also exist better, if much more expensive, options as well.

AR has its purposes, but there isn't anything you can do with AR that you can't do with VR - where the inverse is demonstrably false (for instance, AR glasses which use see-thru technology cannot show "black" as a color; physics doesn't allow for it). While you can/could add a shield to turn AR goggles into a VR experience, unless those AR goggles have a huge field of view, you'll have a fairly underwhelming experience (I have yet to see any AR display device outside of lab conditions that can give as wide of FOV as current low-cost VR HMDs - this has always been the case since the 90s IO-Glasses and similar offerings).

All the tech currently exists; cheap Kinects or Sony VR cameras could work for this, for instance

Unfortunately, that's not really correct - at least not at any level of quality that is viable. MSFT showed off some examples of this a year or two ago but the subject of real time scanning was in a very engineered and restricted space.

It's also unneccessary, unless the goal was telepresence, why would you scan someone in who is in the same office?

If the argument is that we're all going to work from home because we can all be scanned in virtually and work inside VR, then I won't be able to convince you that the barriers to that aren't predominantly technological.

there isn't anything you can do with AR that you can't do with VR

Ha, ok.

For me I dislike the isolation and feeling that someone can sneak up on you so my speculation is that it's not a great daily driver but could be useful in spurts. Maybe after a while it would feel normal but I am unsure.

Speaking of a daily driver, in Seattle we already have a problem with people VRing while driving. At least it has really helped the homeless cope with the bleakness of their existence.

Hey, if you were acclimated to it I bet VR headsets could make for better drivers. Put cameras around the car and give you a wider field of view, plus it's not obstructed by the frame.

It could have a look-behind mode that swaps around 180 degrees to the rear camera array while you're in reverse. Better spatial awareness than a backup camera on a screen.

Could you elaborate? That sounds crazy! ("VRing while driving") Are there any news articles about that?

No, because GP was joking...

Whoosh! I guess :) . Thanks. Sometimes it's hard distinguishing what's reality from fiction in the U.S. from South America :)

I could definitely see homeless people turning to a virtual world to avoid their dreary lives much as they turn to alcohol and drugs now...

Ready Player One

I've tried walking around with a GearVR on my face with the phone camera turned on, and the latency makes it non-trivial. There's no way I would even think about trying to drive with this thing on.

IMO, they will probably add dual cameras so you can still show the outside world while you work. Like AR, with VR goggles.

The Vive already has that. Well, only a single camera, but still.

I wonder if they could eventually add some "spider-sense" sensors to the headset and then a voice in your headset that says a person is approaching or whatever.

I would only want this if it could serve as a kind of augmented reality. Show me very large screens as if they are infront of me, but let me move my head and see everything else normally.

I think that is a long way away, though.

It's technically possible now with the Holo Lens.

It depends on your job, but this sounds horrific to me. Like a cubicle but smaller.

I fly a ton for my job and I typically use a USB monitor but obviously on a plane this isn't possible (hell, there is barely enough room for me to work on just my laptop much less two screens) - virtual screens via a VR headset would be a game-changer for me. I probably wouldn't use them daily (quad monitor setup at home, usb monitor when travelling) but would definitely spend a several hundred on a headset if it means multi-monitor on a plane

Isn't the idea of VR to be immersive so that is seems like a large real world?

Yes, but in my office I often talk to other devs, designers and QA being immersed in a different world would make collaboration a tedious task for everybody. Just being able to turn around and exchange a few words is fast, easy and human.

In my dreams the keyboard disappears. My eyes, or fingers, move the cursor, I can speak interactively with the computer, gesture, etc. Can fingers/hands be tracked sufficiently to provide an accurate soft keyboard?

https://youtu.be/0QNiZfSsPc0

Leap Motion Orion is pretty magical - there is a whole new level of presence when your hands come with you into VR. Sadly it seems as though nobody noticed, 95% of the stuff is tech demos. I only used it for a few weeks but totally felt as though it covered the cost.

Perhaps for media consumption and games but unlikely for developer or office work (at least not within the foreseeable future) due to the very hard problem of achieving the necessary optical fidelity to make VR a pragmatic option compared to even a standard 1080p LED monitor.

I already feel strain in my eyes by looking at computer screens for 6 - 8h / day, and then I still move around a bit and don't focus at exactly the same distance all the time.

Moving the screen even closer to the eyes and having to focus ~4 inches in front of you at all times doesn't sound like a great idea, in the long run.

I think the Rift has a fixed focal length of ~2 meters

Ah interesting, so even though the screen / lenses are only a couple of inches from the eyes, they focus at a distance of ~2 meters?

Big Screen on Steam is sort of getting to what you're thinking of, I know of several other startups trying this:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/457550/Bigscreen_Beta/

As long as it's not too heavy - I would guess that neck strain would become a problem after 40+ hours a week.

I am worried about this as well. Glasses definitely aren't heavy enough to cause problems, plenty of healthy people wear those 80+ hours per week. But something like the Vive gives me trouble even after 2-3 hours.

Google cardboard + my phone gives me issues too. So I would think that the weight of a smartphone is the absolute upper bound on the weight of a product you are expected to wear on your head as a part of your workflow.

Headset's are getting much lighter. The new versions being made for MS are much, much lighter than the Vive.

IMO as a heavy user of VR whilst developing the critical problems for prolonged use are eye strain and heat. Neither seem to be about to be solved in the short term at least.

For standard VR experiences you move your head standing or seating, so a heavy headset is problematic. For development work you could lean back or lay with your head supported by a headrest, so the weight could be much less of a problem.

I would probably rig up a ceiling attached counterweight to cancel the weight of the headset.

Have you ever tried typing whilst wearing a VR headset? It's very difficult to find the right spot to rest your hands, etc.

Other than that, I totally agree.

BigScreen really opened my eyes to how productive we will be in the future.

That would be basically the matrix. Do you want to live in the matrix?

If I can leave, sure. The Matrix is the perfect I/O device.

Wont replace monitors, but you can do that now if you like. The main limitations are battery life and minimum font size (really pixel density on your retina).

That sounds awful. I can't even stand wearing sunglasses for an extended period of time.

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