Comment by mwattsun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mwattsun | Hacker News Reader

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Your comment(s) really nails my reservations about VR with my Oculus. After the Wow! factor of a sense immersion, you're in kind of a dead zone trying to think of something interesting to do just like in real life. You went from your real living room to your virtual living room. Big deal. You could play a game in either, but the screen is going to be much better back in your real living room. You don't want to watch Netflix in VR because the screen door effect sucks.

It'd be nice at least in VR if you were sitting in your virtual living room and the door bell would ring. Oh, whose that. It's a white rabbit. I should probably go with, because I'm really bored here. He's running off! I better chase him.

Something to do in VR that you can't do in real life. Something fun, exciting or an AI adventure tailored just for you based on what the AI knows about you.

> Are you your avatar, or are you puppeteering your avatar? This is a big issue in game design. If someone annoys your avatar, are they annoying you?

I read an interesting article earlier that speaks to this. Ram Dass imagines your ego as the coachman, but he's not in charge. He's the servant of you riding in the coach. Anyway, I thought that connection was interesting. In Ram Dass' view, we are puppeteering our avatar, we are not the avatar.

https://www.ramdass.org/the-ego-dichotomy-fear-love/

The Quest 2 largely eliminated the screen door effect. I think what you’re seeing in Netflix is that the stream is only 480P because Netflix refuses to update their app.

The big issue is that VR is meant to be social. I find multiplayer VR a lot more enjoyable than single player VR or multiplayer on other video game platforms.

I'll give multiplayer VR a try. Maybe virtually doing fun activities with others is the secret sauce.

It’s surreal being able to virtually play ping pong or racket ball with a friend or family member who you’re limited to seeing either due to distance or lifestyle ie new parents. Board games are nice too.

That sounds good. I'm charging the batteries of the Oculus and will turn it on tomorrow for the first time in about a year.

Some of the most fun games are silly and not too sophisticated, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpSwwKK_Nvc

> but the screen is going to be much better back in your real living room. You don't want to watch Netflix in VR because the screen door effect sucks

Some of the stuff that’s done well today (e.g. some of the Oculus originals) I already find to be far more immersive and engaging than sitting 20’ away from a screen on the wall.

I think the tech to make AR mainstream for consumers is still years away, and in the meantime, entertainment in VR is the killer app.

I expect this is where Apple may be the main (only?) threat to Oculus. They have the AppleTV+ studios to turn out great original content, and a core skill set in performant and beautiful mobile devices will killer displays. (Not to mention a lot of brand loyalty with folks already in their ecosystem). We’ll see what the price is though…

I have high hopes for Apple. Given their reputation for "taste" and design, I would expect something more sophisticated than Meta, not so plug and play. More "Tomorrowland" vs. Meta's "It's a Small, Small World" vibe.

IMO we are just in denial that the VR headset has really solved anything.

It is not just what you can do in VR that you can't do in real life but what you can do in VR with missing most of your senses.

I suspect in 50 years people will look at this time in VR as not much different than VRML 20 years ago. Obviously, that was never going to work with the technological limitations of the time.

It is really hard to deliver when the expectation is 'virtual reality'.

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