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Comment by village-idiot | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, I suspect that few people actually want VR.

We see this “revolution” promise in entertainment occasionally. Sometimes it’s real (tv, video games), sometimes it’s not. Anyone here buy a 3D TV? Do they still make them?

From what I’ve seen, VR headsets are very hard on the human brain, since they confuse our multiple range sensing systems. Smoother experiences help, but until we find a better way to adjust the focal plane it’s going to be a continuous issue.

I personally think they’re overhyped. They demo great, but I have yet to see any usage that would justify spending spending as much one one as I did my TV. Every time I’ve tried one it’s been novel for a few minutes, but afterwards I have had 0 interest in ever owning one.

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> VR headsets are very hard on the human brain, since they confuse our multiple range sensing systems.

I disagree. They are hard on brains of some humans, mainly due to motion sickness. But that happens only when there is artificial movement involved - when user's movement doesn't match camera movement.

And it really depends on the person, some are more susceptible to that, some are less. I also think some resilience to that effect can be trained with practice.

Then there's the style of artificial movement provided by software. I've seen several solutions which make it more bearable - generally those involve some degree of physical activity beyond just pressing a button.

Adjustment of focal plane seems like a rare problem; it's honestly the first time I hear it mentioned as an issue which is "very hard on the human brain". Usually it's all about motion sickness.

> but I have yet to see any usage that would justify spending spending as much one one as I did my TV

For me, it's about activity it provides as much as it is about immersion. I wanted to reduce my time sitting idly, and VR lets me do just that without abandoning gaming at all.

You’re correct about motion, but that’s not my main concern.

My main concern is range finding. The human brain uses parallax and eye focus information to figure out where objects are in space. All VR toolkits right now vary parallax for range, but can only produce light that is focused on one plane. This confuses the human brain, because it now has two pieces of information that disagree badly.

This is actually why the Air Force abandoned its first attempts at HUD helmets, iirc the post I saw here said that the Air Force had to enforce a 24 ban on driving after using them, because your sense of range and speed would be wildly out of whack after using it. They were also worried about brain damage after excessive use.

I’m glad that you like VR gaming, I personally found it to be novel but ultimately uninteresting after a few minutes.

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