The lack of any outside visibility is a huge problem for families. It is anti-social. Small kids can't be near you while you are using VR. Pets can't really be near you.
It's very difficult to share your experience with other people. VR streamers aren't very popular on Twitch. They probably have issues interacting with their audience since they can't easily see Twitch chat I would think.
I also question the accessibility of VR. At what severity of physical impairment does VR become unusable?
There are just so many problems with VR as a mass-consumer product that don't have anything to do with technology.
AR doesn't have many of these problems, because you can still see other people.
Google's direction makes sense.
that's why location based experiences (LBE) is the solution. Different monetization route, it's basically a theme park model (invest in cutting edge tech/high value content) and maximize throughput like a VR "ride."
Having gone through a number of the experiences I'd highly recommend them. Better than anything you can get at home, it's a fun outing with your friends, and the content is pretty awesome.
No we're not.
I never had the slightest interest in 3D TV. VR was compelling enough that it made me change my main focus towards learning interactive 3D.
There were a lot of super gimmicky apps (remember the virtual beer app?), games whose sole reason for existence was that they could use the accelerometer (as a crappy steering wheel, etc.). Remember the shake gesture?
Granted this is far from a perfect comparison, but my point is that the content and usage patterns of smartphones have evolved, often in a different direction than people imagined 10 years ago.
Another example, early YouTube content was also very different from today's YouTube content, etc.
If VR is still around 10 years from now, I expect the use cases, UI patterns, etc. will be quite different from the vision that most people have today.
> The lack of any outside visibility is a huge problem for families. It is anti-social.
Come on. This way you could say most of gaming is antisocial, because a lot of interesting games (most of them, to me) are single-player experience. There are many people, people with families, for whom playing games (or watching movies for that matter) is about games (and movies), and not about an excuse to be with other people.
Also, you can always stream the game to another device for other family member(s) to watch.
> Small kids can't be near you while you are using VR.
I guess it depends on how old they are, but my wife and I divide forces: one of us watches the kid, the other plays, then we switch.
> Pets can't really be near you.
My pet doesn't mind. It understands that the person standing there in the middle of the room (which is weird behavior) with a box on their head is ignoring it, and making sudden moves.
> It's very difficult to share your experience with other people.
Experience? Not really. You just stream the game. Interacting with other people while playing, Twitch-like? That's more difficult, so the showbusiness part of the gaming market has a problem, but this doesn't affect people who want to actually play a game.
> I also question the accessibility of VR. At what severity of physical impairment does VR become unusable?
VR requires sight, and some control over hands; depending on the game, this may expand into total motor control. The requirements for most games is fundamentally the same as for "regular" games you play with mouse+keyboard / gamepad.
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Working AR will obviously have more total utility than VR, so it's good to pursue it. But VR exists here and now, while AR is still science-fiction (HoloLens beginning to scratch the surface, and no, overlaying stuff over image of the world captured by a camera doesn't count as proper AR). However, VR can be used to simulate, experiment with and prototype future AR applications, so it's weird to just abandon it.
From a technology standpoint, the Holy Grail device will be able to do both VR or AR selectably and seamlessly. The reason I think so many extant AR apps are just crappy VR apps is because the devices we have aren't able to blend VR and AR, the developers wanted (or were mandated) to use a specific system, and then shoehorned a specific design to the system they had.
> no, overlaying stuff over image of the world captured by a camera doesn't count as proper AR
News to me. If that is the case, then how is the HoloLens AR? Without utilization of the spatial surface recognition system, conceptually the HoloLens is nothing more than "overlaying stuff on an image of the world". That the world is viewed through plastic rather than routed through silicon doesn't make a difference.
Add surface capture to a VR headset with a pass-through camera (which can be done today with off-the-shelf parts, it's just not in a commercial product yet) and I see no difference.
It doesn't capture the world through the camera and re-render it on the screen.
I've been visiting my friends who have VR, and organised VR mini-parties at my place. The setup goes like this: you show what's in VR on a tv screen, one person plays, and others watch, taking turns. Works extremely well with Beat Saber, FNAF, and some shooters.
I also did social painting in VR, where people took turns drawing in Tilt Brush, and others went in to look at it, adding to it their own stuff.
Another case I saw is adding VR setup to a bigger party, which works very well with Beat Saber.
VR can be just as social as couch-multiplayer on consoles, or Karaoke. If not more.
As for pets, it depends on a pet, but with 2-3 dogs I saw there were no issues whatsoever.
The first is like the one GP made - absolutely sure of themselves and staying with certainty that there are intractable problems with something. On closer inspection you find that they have no personal experience but they’re really smart and can imagine the worst consequences of everything well.
The second is the one I’m replying to. They have first hand experience and give a more balanced take on the situation.
I’m happy that we get to read both kinds of comments.
I know several parents and dog owners who have bought Oculus Quest after trying it out and they don't seem to have a problem with this. I guess they just close the door or play after bedtime.
> They probably have issues interacting with their audience since they can't easily see Twitch chat I would think.
All VR Twitch streamers use some kind of plugin that shows the chat either as a floating panel (in Beat Saber) or as a palette you can bring up Tilt Brush style (in VRChat).
I agree. It reminds me of the 3D TV hype. Yes, they exist, and yes, some people use them, but it's still marginal.
On an unrelated node, I still can't believe MS killed Kinect. It is fun, it is social, it's safe if you're careful, and you can be very free with your movements if you have enough space. You can both play games and get healthier. I bought most Kinect titles ever released and it kills me there will be no more.
Unity's default stuff is so bad for VR and I've replaced so much of it in the last three years that I'm pretty close to having my own game engine. In another year, I could be completely off of Unity and running on just Xamarin.
Let me start by saying that I was a big VR skeptic until the Oculus Quest. I too thought that the outside visibility thing would be a base advantage that AR would just have over VR forever-but- surprisingly- the passthrough camera view [0] is more than good enough for several of the interactions/views you'd want to see outside of the device. You can see others, their reactions, and interact, all while having the device on your head. Soon the passthrough will also be triggerable at a moments notice too.
As for motion sickness; with modern headsets that's generally only a problem for games which move the "camera" in ways which don't match your movement in the real world. (Such as racing games.) There's plenty of content available these days which doesn't have that problem.
Space restrictions I agree are an issue. There are a lot of games which only really need standing room to work well, but even then it can be hard to find enough space close to your PC (since the area you're standing in needs to be completely free of obstacles you could hit with your hands). I think standalone VR partially solves this problem though by increasing the number of areas you can set up in. With Quest, for example, the area you're playing in doesn't have to be near your PC; that makes it way easier to find a space that's big enough.
Who does this work for? It doesn't for people with spouses and children. I can't be removed from the real world when my child wants my attention. How many hours of game play do you think the average family person might have available to them where they can just remove themselves from the real world?
Given all of VR's problems, the people who will play VR games seriously enough to spend money on AAA VR games will always be a smaller subset of the overall gaming population. It's never going to be bigger than what exists already. All these billions dumped into VR as the next big thing seem to miss that the VR market is limited by the problems the parent comment mentioned.
Couldn't you make the same argument against headphones in general? Those seem popular enough. I've even known people who used sleep masks and ear plugs when going to bed. Realistically, VR doesn't actually take you anywhere. You're still standing right there, and if a child or spouse needs your attention they can still raise their voice or even just grab you to get it. I don't think the immersiveness itself is much of a problem for most people, although there are certainly times and situations where you wouldn't want that because you need to be more aware of your surroundings.
You could also ascribe the same issues for a parent who wanted to leave the house. In fact more so, since if I left the house with a small child, I can't instantly return if I become aware of some urgent situation. Yet, bars, pool halls, bowling alleys, movie theatres, restaurants, etc., etc., still seem to have survived this seemingly momenumental issue you are harping on about.
It works perfectly well, to the extent that any single-player activity works with spouses and children. Source: I have a spouse, a child, and a VR headset.
I mentioned it in another comment, but this is what LBE (location based experiences) is all about. You're not just looking at a "game" you play, but a confined piece of content that you experience, like a game, like a film, like a TV episode, but none of the above all the same. It's a completely different medium for telling a story, creating
There's a lot of really cool, niche things out there right now - creators are exploring new ways to create art that maximizes XR's ability to remove a person from their environment (wholly or in part) and uses that combined with audio and video technology to create an interactive, immersive experience as a piece of art and/or storytelling.
But the issue to me is this: if you look at the history of technology and art or multimedia, tech has almost always chased the artists' vision. And this is the problem I see with all of Google's plays into XR. They're not saying to artists: "imagine you had a medium that allowed to remove a person from their environment, construct a new one around them, immerse them in it, and interact with your vision. What would you make? What do you need?"
If you want examples of this: Walt Disney's animation studio pioneered many animation techniques and technologies. That didn't come from engineers experimenting; it came from animators wanting to create something they couldn't, and engineers figured out what to build to realize their vision. Game engines have never added features for the sake of features, they are demanded by game designers to add something new to present a new experience to the player. Same goes for paint brushes, instruments, etc etc.
And that's why I feel a lot of VR plays struggle. They're engineers putting the cart before the horse. Throw money at creators, and figure out what they need to create.
It's also why some of the best VR I've experienced has come from LBE. It's content first, figure out the platform second. Monetization third (which is interesting, since it's a theme park ride model).
If there are two things that are absolutely certain in media: if the content is compelling, the technical side is secondary. And if the content is compelling, it can be monetized. All these VR plays are screwing up by focusing on tech and money over content, which is what actually drives people to spend their money and use the tech.
Oculus Quest has managed to solve both of them, even though they do their best not to exploit it. Because it's an untenthered headset, you have to designate a "play area" for safety - and to do that, you get to see the world through headset's cameras[0], and paint it with your controllers! Even though the view is monochrome and grainy, you can see enough to walk around and do tasks. I've frequently interrupted my play to do something, without taking the headset off - as soon as you walk out of the designated play area, you get the camera feed back.
Currently, Oculus is using this view only as a safety feature, and AFAIK you can't access it as an app developer. Moreover, using the headset outside is discouraged (perhaps because direct sun focused on the optics could burn holes in the screen). But Quest is essentially a working proof of concept, showing that the possibilities are there.
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[0] - Apparently they're used for controller tracking.
It should be noted that the Quest runs the Snapdragon 835 SoC, the same SoC in the Go and every other standalone headset you can actually acquire right now (specifically, Lenovo Mirage Solo and Vive Focus). It's the same SoC as the Google Pixel 2. In other words, it's old. It's why Oculus had to drop the framerate from 75Hz on the Go to 72Hz on the Quest: the added overhead of the camera tracking and higher resolution display left too little frame budget for applications.
I will immediately buy the first headset with an 855 in it. Not only will the raw performance be substantially better, but it has custom silicon in it specifically for doing image-based tracking, as well as processing higher resolution video feeds. Quest is just a preview of what is to come. I'm pretty sure we're going to get the first, decent pass-through camera modes in the next gen of mobile VR headsets.
There's also the thrill of rhythm and sports games, though those aren't much different than their non-VR counterparts.
The external cameras turn on in the quest when I need them because I’ve gone out of bounds
The guardian helps me stay inbounds in my small space
The latency and amazing head tracking have removed all motion sickness
But it’s still just a beat saber machine. There haven’t been any major titles released in months, and it’s unclear if there will be.
We need Nintendo-style first party titles and some killer apps.
AR may be a different beast. I don't usually hear people describe it as uncomfortable, mostly just lacking power and content. I also think the market for AR would be much bigger than VR. I think that is why Apple, MSFT, and Google are focusing on it.
Wheeeeere did you read that?! I've been in the VR industry for the last 6 years and everyone I know vehemently recommends against doing that.
Examples: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/PSVR/comments/...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/oculus/comment...
Very, very few actual developers in those boards.
"Getting your VR legs" is definitely a real thing.
More concretely, there are a number of different artifacts of current VR systems that will cause different side effects, depending on how long you expose yourself to them. Unfortunately, the common vernacular lumps all of those issues under the title of "simulator sickness". While simulator sickness is a well-known problem, it is by far not the only one, and if you're experiencing nausea or discomfort during a VR experience, you should not just assume it's "simulator sickness" and try to "power through".
IPD mismatch is your eye telling you things are at a different distance from where they feel when grabbing or traveling to them. In AR, this can make 3D objects look like they are swimming, yet also remaining stationary, which is disconcerting but ultimately not a big deal. In VR, it can make you feel kind of dizzy, a bit like you're swimming, because the effect is very similar to viewing things through water, or a glass of high refractive index. If you've ever had to switch between contacts and thick glasses, then yes, it is trainable.
Some people find bad depth cues to be nausea inducing. There is evidence that the brain weights different depth cues more or less strongly depending on one's overall hormonal balance. People with higher testosterone levels judge depth through motion. People with higher estrogen levels judge depth through relative object size and shadowing. This isn't just "men vs. women" as there are any number of reasons your endocrine system could be off the normal distribution, but it is why a lot of women feel very uneasy immediately upon putting on a headset and why men tend to not like monoscopic 360 content. The effect is so strong for some women that I've never seen anyone even attempt to power through it. The best solution is to stop using that particular app and start using one with better graphics.
But most importantly, low framerate can cause a violent, persistent nausea and headaches, within seconds. "simulator sickness" on the other hand, takes extended exposure to develop. Higher framerates are always better, but 75Hz seems to cover about ~85% of people, 90Hz seems to cover ~95% of people A VR experience, and 120Hz covers ~99%, which at that point is actually better numbers than people going to the movies watching action movies. This is one of the reasons I found it so disappointing that the Oculus Quest was set to 72Hz; we should be going up, not down. If the application you are using is not running a very high framerate, you're in for an extremely bad time, with it only getting worse the more you expose yourself to it. You absolutely must not try to power through low framerate.
So this is why I say "don't try to power through sim sickness". It might not be sim sickness. Take breaks whenever you feel bad. Whatever "VR legs" are, if it's just the proprioception or IPD mismatch, you'll eventually get there even if you don't "power through". But there are plenty of other issues that you should definitely not try to "power through".
Actually I've found the experience somewhat magical, in that I get the same stress relief from being couped up all day by leaving the house to go do something outside as just playing a game for an hour or two. It feels like I'm actually going to another place, nowadays.
This really only started when I got the high end, Valve Index, which has a 90hz+ refresh rate, so maybe that has something to do with it.
That said, being on a boat for hours is hardly something we were evolutionarily designed for either, yet no one writes scare mongering articles and posts about that. So you might be doing a disservice with all this worry you're stirring up.
And again, motion sickness is by far the least of your worries. My point was "don't just assume nausea is motion sickness". There are other defects that can cause nausea that are not adaptable.
I think you're wrong about that. Any proof?