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Comment by asciimo | Hacker News Reader

I would love to trade all these monitors for a virtual workstation. Every time there's new VR tech I hope that it's possible. 1280x1440 is definitely an improvement. I'm patient.

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I think if you're looking for a monitor replacement you're going to need to wait for foveated rendering. That's when you'll start seeing mainstream headsets with ultra-high-PPD displays. Maybe another ~4 years or so.

Not actually needed. Getting high enough res to replace monitors with small fonts does require a big increase in resolution, but rendering a virtual desktop requires a lot less computation per pixel than rendering a game with lighting and shading. Current-generation consumer GPUs should be sufficient, if the panels and optics get good enough.

Yeah, but you're not going to be seeing a big push for higher PPD displays until after all the other pieces are in place to support that technology for gaming. The market for monitor replacements isn't big enough to drive that kind of change all on its own.

I think this market is hugely undervalued. As remote work gets normalized, remote workspaces will draw increasing investment to regain some of the fidelity of meatspace but with the efficiency and cost savings of remote work, and VR is poised to be central to this industry as soon as someone builds the tools.

Sounds like a dystopian nightmare where VR goggles becomes the new ass-in-seat.

Completely possible and likely, but it's also possible to build a workplace culture where VR just replaces video calls and screenshare presentations with people huddling around a virtual conference desk and being able to pair program or show each other their screens, for an hour or two at a time instead of 8 hour office workdays.

Bigscreen is pushing hard in this direction.

I also think "virtual desktop" is a short-sighted notion of how VR user interfaces would end up in reality--although you can do a hell of a lot by just rendering 2D planes in your VR environment.

There are a few things that "real" 3d is useful for, 3d modelling, cad, games, art, movies, ... Basically entertainment + modelling real world 3d things.

For most of what we do on a computer I don't think so though. Text based communication (social media, email, etc), reading books, writing documents, doing accounting, etc. These are all tasks that don't have any intrinsic third dimension, and since the information needs to be projected to a 2d surface regardless (the back of your eyeball) you can't really pack more information in by taking advantage of the third dimension.

I'm sure the third dimension will be used for "modern design" reasons, maybe you'll scroll through planes that come at you from farther away to switch "tabs" (android already basically does that on 2d displays), and we'll probably have some 3d equivalent of gifs, but I think most content really remains a 2d texture on a plane.

Even if I'm wrong, I'm sure the first iterations will be mostly plane based, just because that's what the existing software knows how to render to.

>For most of what we do on a computer I don't think so though.

arranging any number of work spaces (screens) in 3d would be awesome

To be clear I'm taking that (or even arranging individual windows) as the "virtual desktop" option that the person I replied to thought was ... unimaginative.

I agree with you.

I agree with him too! What's unimaginative is taking the current Mac or Windows desktop and projecting that on a plane.

Old Mac users miss the "spacial UI" of the original Finder. Well, the third dimension gives you lots of room for a spacial UI. It doesn't have to look like you're flying through space like in Jurassic Park or anything, but a lot of existing desktop UI is constrained by the fact that screens--even if you have four of them--don't take up very much of your visual field and are relatively fixed in position.

I probably just misread your comment then :)

I think most UX will be planar, but the planes will be arranged in 3D space.

Yes, I would like to be able to arrange displays with a 3rd dimension. Rather than have simply a 2d grid for arrangement. For example, have lesser used workspaces placed somewhere in the distance, but still visible and readily available to be brought front and center.

The weight is a big factor - even if you use the headset while lying on a couch, after an hour your face will look like raccoon's.

As someone who's used VR headsets for hours at a time weight is not a factor, resolution is. The resolution is far too low. Font sizes have to be gigantic to be readable.

Try the Varjo VR-1 which has human-eye resolution https://varjo.com/

It's quite expensive at $5999 though.

You might be interested in the HP Reverb: https://uploadvr.com/hp-reverb-vr-4k-599/

It's not quite monitor-replacement territory but it's getting close.

When will we be in monitor-replacement territory? I try to edit text in each generation's headset, and it's still not viable. Curious what the threshold spec will be when I can launch a text editor and work in a VR environment.

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