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Comment by mox111 | Hacker News Reader

I think that a lot of the cynicism about this space comes from theorisers who have not yet tried VR for themselves and experienced viscerally + emotionally for themselves, the fact that it is a total game-changer for work and play.

The thing with this space is, enough smart people are sufficiently excited by this new media and working on realising its potential, that it will inevitably end up producing value that can’t be ignored.

Large swathes of smart people who see unrealised possibilities will always win out against individuals who only see impossibilities.

Whenever I see a failure to appreciate the potential of new media, I’m reminded of this conversation between Jeremy Paxman (British journalist) and David Bowie when they were talking about the internet back in the 90s. https://youtu.be/LaHcOs7mhfU?t=297

“The internet… it’s just a tool though isn’t it” ?

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I will use VR when I can put on my headset, anywhere, and be transported to my "desk". I want to be able to take documents and move them around in VR, read them, put them on my "table", and then have apps that appear as monitors. So I can move and pull up email in front of me, "grab" an attachment, and "put" it into another email that I will compose.

And have emails look like a stack of papers that you could actually process - pick up, hold, throw in a trashcan or put in an archive folder. It'd be amazing if I could just crumple up garbage emails and throw them on the floor behind me, or light them on fire.

May still need a physical keyboard, but voice recognition could work. Or voice memos sent to people. I think we don't do that today because most people don't have a private office or headsets on. But it would be a lot more efficient in some circumstances if you could just leave a voice memo.

And "apps" become screens - so you can pull up PPT, see it, work on it, and then push it to the side. It would be virtually unlimited and scalable screen real estate purchased with just one headset. You could have different flexible workstations (e.g. one for music production with 6 screens in front of you, one for each project). Sort of like desktop environments, but actually changing the desktop so that the files you leave around and windows you have up are saved in their state until you return to it.

Writing a new book? Pull up a writing environment template that minimizes distraction. Ready to be social? News feeds? Gaming?

There is a lot of potential there...

Not to mention the separation it would give you working from home / or wherever. You could disengage from your whole work environment by taking off your headset, and have a very minimal tech setup outside that space. It would be a clean transition from work and home. You couldn't text with your phone, have TV in the background, and be in a room with someone at the same time. It would be fully engaged in tech, or not. (I admit there will likely be more opportunity for distraction in the virtual environment, because the friction to add an additional data feed or notification will be low).

And watching sports on the weekend? Throw up all the games on multiple big screens.

After seeing some of the programming environments people have posted here in the last few months I’m becoming more convinced. I’d love to test out a VR work environment where I can sit on a fairly realistic mountain top or in a quiet forest. Still waiting for the cheap and economic version but I’m sure that’s coming eventually.

Lastly! You only need 1 device. So spending $5k+ on a device that could provide a better experience than your TV, iPad, laptop, desktop, monitors, headphones, and everything else would be reasonable.

The way we interact with tech today is a semi-distracted state. There is always some sort of "real world" going on, and we're not immersed. It would take more energy to be fully immersed, but we would be more productive from it. It could make using "old" tech very boring and not worth the time when you could do a much better job, or have a better experience through VR.

And people say "well people watch TV or movies together". Sure, maybe. You're in the same room, but you could both throw on headsets, enter the same virtual room, and "watch" together, whether you are in the same room or not. And it might highlight that there are higher quality forms of recreation than sitting and watching TV together.

In the case of watching TV with another person, the being in the same room together is often the point. Sharing a virtual space makes less sense when you have this option. The form factor of an iPad makes it portable in a way today’s headsets are not, and I can access a desktop computer remotely if I am away on travel. I agree with you about immersion but it’s hard for me to see headsets as anything but another device.

Fair. I’m hoping for a “portable” headset even if it goes into a backpack and may have layers (like an astronaut helmet) where you have transparent for AR and then blackout for full immersion.

I think the techie fixation with "better desk" as the goal may turn out to be the "faster horses" of VR.

Also, while sitting at a desk with a computer describes a disproportionate amount of our work and personal lives, I'm not sure how well that translates for mass adoption.

The reason is that if you’re working in any realistic room people have in their house you’ll be standing or sitting or laying down. I doubt there Will be a better text only device than the keyboard so you have to be able to reach that. You can go minority report but your arms would get tired pretty quick

> have emails look like a stack of papers that you could actually process - pick up, hold, throw in a trashcan

For some reason this is a hilarious image in many ways. Perfect example of imagining the future being a better horse. But it also does sound cool

Or more aptly, a car with reins.

I hear you. But it is also about effectively processing information in that environment.

I enjoyed it too (I’d love to just light my files on fire when I’m not happy with a draft).

But I don’t see “email” going anywhere for a long time. At its core, it is text information and serves as a record of a transaction, usually related to the real world. If we think VR will take us past email, it means setting up a new standard for communication that is somehow better and will have enough network effects to take over from email (e.g. - everyone will need to migrate to VR before abandoning email).

So processing email more effectively is an open problem of VR. VR isn’t going to hook into our brains more than video or audio or text, so I view it as about how someone interacts with that in a VR environment.

So I think the way we process things will matter and could be massively improved. For example, you could have a “workbench” for insurance related items. Where you go and all of the things you were working on and relevant communications are neatly organized and sandboxed. You effectively wouldn’t have to put anything “away”. It would just be sitting there on a desk until you returned to it.

Training for work environments would be amazing - you could copy the environment for your employees and it would be intuitive. Right now companies often give people just a vanilla machine with basic office apps and expect them to find their optimal setup.

I would also join a startup to work on this stuff if someone is interested in B2B VR productivity software.

At least for something like this, I can't help but think a laptop is better, haha.

Now if we were talking 3d modeling or art, something that would use the spatial input of AR instead of a keyboard, that would be exciting. In fact you could almost do this today if the Hololens had some better productivity apps.

Even the 13-25 year old males who are excited about this will tire of VR quickly. VR is comparable to 3-D movies and televisions, exciting the first few times you try it but once the novelty fades you just don't care enough about it.

Sounds like you're speaking from experience here, so it's not for me to tell you you're wrong to feel that way.

But from my POV, we've started using VR for work meetings/social gatherings (we're a remote company, myself in Spain, the majority in SF), and we've been able to achieve a level of rapport with each-other that's just not possible via a webcam.

We will definitely continue to use it.

I got the impression he has not used it ( or at least not the latest iteration ).

I believe it's a game changer, it definitely holds my attention I even use it for exercise.

What tools are you using?

That’s super weird. I’d look for a new job real quick if I was required to do stand up with be goggles in. WTF is wrong with people…

Rapport is built through authenticity and vulnerability, not fucking avatars.

Avatars may provide a better way to express authenticity and vulnerability compared to text or a video call.

“You can get to know me better by the mask I put on”

…and you don’t put on a mask over text or video call?

Nobody is forcing us to use this tech. If we all happened to agree that it was annoying or "super weird" then we would just opt out.

Fact is, that for now it feels valuable enough for us to keep using it (more so for social 'hangouts' than for things like stand-ups, which we still do via Zoom and where we can be as authentic and vulnerable as we like)

How many people participate? Doesn’t seem like it would scale outside a small group. Once you get past that size, it becomes a clique and thus corrosive to team building. A small group will have a wonderful time, everyone else will resent them. The company will then crumble or become something different entirely

voice calls don't scale to beyond a few people either

> The company will then crumble

Watch out guys, VR destroys companies!

Neither authenticity nor vulnerability are all that important (or I'd argue, even welcome) in a business context.

"I'm not sure how to do this... could you please help me out?"

Even if all the novelty fades away, you'll still be left with a gigantic virtual TV that you can carry everywhere. VR gaming doesn't need to succeed for AR/VR to be able to replace every display you have.

It will still need some resolution improvements to replace a 4k display, but the latest headsets are already getting pretty close to replacing a 1080p display. And of course that isn't limited to one 1080p screen, it's all virtual, so you can have a tripple screen setup, a big cinema screen or whatever else you want.

I don't know, I own an Oculus Quest and some games are definitely amazing. Beat Sabre and I Expect You To Die for example. I love them.

But I still rarely use it. Even completely wireless it's still a hassle to get out, and not especially comfortable or easy to wear. And even shifting it slightly results in things going out of focus so you need it lines up just right.

Plus very few people have big empty dedicated VR rooms so you have to move furniture.

There's definitely potential but there's zero chance people are going to use this routinely for work even in a few tech generations. It would need to get to the weight and convenience of wearing sunglasses, with an angular resolution close to that of a real monitor.

We're probably 40 years away from that tech.

For gaming I think it will get more and more popular. For socialising and work? No chance.

I hear you. For months I had my Oculus sitting in the corner of the room gathering dust. Unlike a phone, it's not pinging notifications at you all day so it's easy to forget about.

But you know that saying "come for the tool, stay for the network"?

Right now, we are super early in the adoption phase. You can tell by looking at what fraction of your Facebook network are on Oculus (in my case it's about 2%). That's why most of us are playing solo games which feel a bit like mere novelties.

But now that all of my work colleagues have one, I'm using it heaps. The value of VR grows the more your buddies have access to it.

For socializing and work I think there’s quite a lot of chance for VR, especially if due to climate and pandemics we can’t travel as much as we used to.

It’s just a matter of finding the right balance of capability and convenience.

Remember, videoconferencing was also dead and nobody used it… until they suddenly did.

> Remember, videoconferencing was also dead and nobody used it… until they suddenly did.

People use videoconferencing now in spite of its flaws because they have to. Once the pandemic is truly over it will gradually return to near its old levels.

The fundamental issue is that a lot of people have shitty internet. VR doesn't change that. Replacing shitty videoconferencing with shitty VRconferencing is not a compelling option unless you really benefit from the VR (maybe architects?).

> Once the pandemic is truly over it will gradually return to near its old levels.

Given the extreme push to retain remote work, I’d say this is unlikely.

> The fundamental issue is that a lot of people have shitty internet. VR doesn't change that.

I’ve been in middle of nowhere rural areas and still could get 10mbps, which is plenty for video conferencing. Though admittedly this requires demand and local action.

My broader point was about the younger generation. They are quite fond of videoconferencing in my experience where teens and early 20s are on it half the time while they do other things. Most have good enough mobile phones for FaceTime or WhatsApp video. Average internet speeds (and thus Wifi) are in the 40-50 mbit range, which is plenty for a typical 750kbps video conference (1.5-3 mbps or so if you want HD). Even LTE rates are getting better.

Uneven bandwidth hasn’t stopped Netflix or YouTube from taking over our culture. More interactive video and VR makes sense as a coming wave. The demand will grow over the coming decade, and if the wireline infrastructure isn’t upgraded, people will switch to satellite or wireless. Zuckerberg is looking 20-30 years out.

> 10mbps, which is plenty for video conferencing

I think it's more about latency and packet loss than raw bandwidth. I have 100 Mb/s fibre and it's way way better than my old 200 Mb/s cable was.

> Uneven bandwidth hasn’t stopped Netflix or YouTube from taking over our culture

Well yeah but Netflix and Youtube don't care about latency or packet loss.

> Zuckerberg is looking 20-30 years out.

Definitely agree there. This screams "we're scared this will be the next big thing in 30 years and we don't want to let anyone else own it".

> enough smart people are sufficiently excited by this new media

> Large swathes of smart people who see unrealised possibilities

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Jeremy, that you?

You may be right on some level. I’ve used VR a bit. Was kind of neat and novel at first. Made me want to puke after a five minutes of use.

Then again, I don’t game for the same reason.

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