Alex Honnold: The Soloist VR

'Future' is an odd term, console game exclusivity has been a fact of life for 40+ years.

To me, the VR headset market seems to be mirroring the early console market. Initially there are many options to choose from, but eventually they are reduced to two or three realistic competitors. Right now it seems to be Valve and Meta.

I think VR is already there unfortunately, and that it's one of the things holding back wider scale adoption. On PC there's Revive which lets you play Oculus games on other headsets which is great, but it requires a little setup so most consumers aren't going to do it, and if Meta/FB decided tomorrow to remove accounts using it there'd be no recourse. So there are effectively arbitrary silos between hardware/stores on PC already, and any console headsets are unlikely to support OpenVR which further restricts the potential market for the devices and games. Arbitrary software and hardware exclusivity at this stage only seems to be serving the goal of some companies trying to dominate the market

Sad but true. Still, there have been hacks to get Oculus SW to work on Vive and even Windows Mixed Reality hardware. I hope that is the case with this title as well.

Information wants to be free. Content wants to be controlled.

You already in this future with the iPhone

I've never had such sweaty palms in my life as when watching that part.

There is a 4+ minute Youtube clip that includes the central climbing scenes from "Free Solo" [0].

Amazing guy. The National Geographic documentary had Hollywood-esque layers that slightly annoyed me (ominous music etc), though. A documentary by Werner Herzog about Alex Honnold would be fascinating; something in the vein of his 1974 "The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner" [1,2]. I would have loved to see more of the philosophical, introspective side of Alex Honnold in the NG movie. In case of Herzog's ski jumper Walter Steiner, it was very much there.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnRoda7Ke2w

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Ecstasy_of_Woodcarve...

2: Full movie here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTdQ2fGlrq8

> There was this part where the doctors claim (paraphrasing) his brain is unique in that he is much less afraid of danger than us.

I'm very skeptical of that claim. It seems just as reasonable that he has a perfectly normal brain that is exactly as afraid of things as the rest of ours, but he's spent a lot of time doing terrifying things and has learned to suppress how his body reacts to it.

Try watching "The Alpinist". Just as good, just as insane.

I find rock climbing or other sort of "adventurist" movies like that really enjoyable and interesting. If you haven't seen it The Dawn Wall was also pretty good and features Honnold at one point. It's not free soloing but it's interesting in other ways.

Less fear would normally be associated with greater casual risk taking.

Given his incredibly rigorous training and laborious and meticulous preparation (years!) for the ascent beforehand, what looks like risk to us is probably as much experience to him. The connections to his amygdala don't seem to have had impact on rational thinking.

I agree, there is so much interesting “You are there” type Oculus content.

I decided to love the Oculus ecosystem, while maintaining my dislike for Facebook social media, etc.

He climbs all these routes with a rope dozens to hundreds of times before free soloing them.

The routes that he free soloes are also considered relatively easy to intermediate in skill level, well within his skill level.

The really incredible part of his free soloes is just how long his body can last. It's Olympic levels of endurance.

If you'd like something that makes you _weirder_ I recommend this: https://www.netflix.com/title/81500204

This film opens with a testimonial from Alex Honnold for Marc-André Leclerc - whom the film is about.

"how do you build that confidence without falling off?"

The answer is that you do fall. Actually, you fall on the exact route you're going to free solo usually! The normal way of climbing (as opposed to "free soloing"), is with ropes. You have places on the rock where you can anchor ropes, you have someone belaying you, and at any point, if you fall, it's really not a big deal. Climbing ropes are dynamic (have a lot of stretch), so falling on them is really safe feeling. It doesn't hurt at all, it's fine to fall over and over again, and the equipment used is relatively safe. It makes it so you're able to get a really good feel for your own limits on routes, which obviously helps in figuring out if you can free solo it.

So, how do you build up enough confidence to free solo? You climb the route with ropes for months. You make sure you can go up the route without ever needing the ropes reliably. You steel yourself. And then you do it.

When is it safe to try for real? Depends on your risk tolerance and confidence. For most people, it's never safe enough to be worth the adrenaline.

> One wrong move and you die.

Not to be glib and dismissive, but one wrong move driving 70 on a highway and you die too.

There's a ton of ways to die, and we accept some as very normalized, and others as not. They mostly align with danger (free soloing is really dangerous, driving somewhat dangerous), but there's some things we do so much we forget they're actually dangerous. Driving doesn't seem dangerous to most people that drive. Climbing with ropes starts to not feel dangerous really quickly. Free soloing? If you do it enough, it starts to feel not that dangerous, especially on a route that feels "easy" for your current climbing level.

Practice with a rope. Part of learning to lead climb is learning to fall and trust your rope and anchors so you can really push yourself in climbs. Presumably once you have enough experience and skill at climbing as Alex then you'll start to know what climbs are trivially low risk for you. Alex makes it very clear that when he's free solo climbing he is not pushing his climbing limits or feeling scared--if he has fear then something is wrong and free soloing isn't the right thing in that moment.

The craziest part is the talk where he says “I didn't want to be a lucky climber. I wanted to be a great climber.”

He literally went back and did it all again after that one part when he felt like he was in danger. Almost anyone else would say "It happened once, it might be bad next time" but he wanted a run where he did everything perfect and didn't feel like luck saved him.

He is not like other people.

It's unfortunate that most people are first exposed to rock climbing by watching videos of free soloing. It really distorts your perception of the sport.

It's no surprise, of course. Free soloing is pretty much the most riveting thing you could watch on a screen, whereas every other form of climbing is frankly quite boring to watch if you don't know the sport intimately. Mostly, it's people pushing their own personal limits, without any risk whatsoever, on things they've aren't visually all that spectacular.

Here's an example of what most of us do:

https://youtu.be/dp8b45CdUAc

I defy a non-climber to make it through 3 minutes of watching me fall off the same 15 foot tall rock. Climbers, however, will notice that there are harder moves on that stone than anything you'll find in Alex's big free solo videos. They'll also know, of course, that Alex would likely be able to send this thing on his first try, because this is well within his limit.

Those two facts, reconciled together with him having practiced the easy route in the solo video every bit as much as I did this little boulder problem, give you an idea of how unlikely it is that he would fall off it.

Sadly, that's all lost on non-climbers, who just see a spectacular thing happening way up in the sky, stripped of all context.

It's a cool sport, by the way, go give it a try some time and I bet you'll get hooked.

Have you ever climbed up a really tall ladder, like a 3-story extension ladder? It's... kind of terrifying. You're a long ways up, you can see the ground, the ladder is flexing under your weight. But other than the fear, it's actually pretty easy; all you have to do is keep climbing and not do something stupid.

To a phenomenally accomplished climber like Honnold, a 5.11 route is like climbing a ladder. That's hard to imagine as a normal flightless human who hasn't spent his/her life training the relevant muscles. But if you think of a ladder as a 5.1 route, you're already on the path.

That said, "3rd classing it" is definitely not for me.

Survivor bias.

Maybe it was in the Free Solo movie or other interviews, but I thought he said that his route during Free Solo was a difficulty level of about 7/10 for him. So he was comfortable enough that it was not the hardest climb for him; after a ton of practice on that route, with ropes, of course.

So to be statistical about it, the difficulty level for him was at the edge of 1 standard deviation of the mean of his capability. Maybe that's enough margin that he could detect when he's really in trouble.

Alex apparently doesn't feel fear/anxiety in the way people with normal brains do, e.g.

"In 2016, he was subjected to functional magnetic resonance imaging scans that revealed that, unlike other high sensation seekers, his amygdala barely activates when watching disturbing images. He however confesses feeling fear occasionally. Through imagination and practice, he has desensitized himself to most fearful situations."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Honnold

https://nautil.us/the-strange-brain-of-the-worlds-greatest-s...

Do you drive a car? Ride a bike in traffic? One false move and you are dead. You, like most people, are probably competent at these things that would be very risky but for your skill.

I think that's an issues with this medium in general. The utility decreases as the barrier to entry increases. With this title in particular, I'd just as soon spend my resources (time, energy, money) to GTFO the couch and climb something in Reality™.

As a side thought, can you imagine how boring skydiving in VR would be?

I watched the first half. Having watched many (too many?) climbing vids it was actually incredible by comparison. The scenes are a series of statically-positioned full-sphere 3D shots where you can watch him climb through a sequence or turn and look out at the mountains. Scale is conveyed in a sense not possible with your standard 2D video, especially of both height and the actual geometry of the rock he has to move through. Very similar experience to watching someone climb as a belayer or when hanging next to them on a rope. Greatly enjoyed.

Anyone who has tried to take a photo of a climb they've just completed will know how difficult it is to really capture the climb and what was interesting or difficult about it. So much so that people will often resort to visual tricks to make the photo of the route look steeper, to match their non-photographic perception (you can pick this out by looking at the angle of trees in the background). It's also notoriously difficult to match a real-life climbing route to a photo, as anyone who has stumbled around a crag squinting at a guidebook will attest. I think this form really does capture what it's like to be looking at the route in real life.

Watched it and it's nothing like a movie, the effect is absolutely incredible. Some of the transitions were a bit jarring and device/bandwidth limits mean graphics aren't amazing, but overall really good.

I disagree with this. Some VR content is definitely bad, and not worth using the headset for, no doubt about that, but when the content is done well, it is significantly better than watching a movie imo.

The 3d effect is significantly better, and with actual volumetric content that you can move around in, the experience is totally different. I think there is definitely room for quality VR content along with "regular" movies, since they are both just different experiences.

I’m guessing you never tried a Quest

You mean meta

It honestly would not matter how much I loved this. Facebook is not getting my money. Most harmful institution in America. I'm sad to see Alex attach his name to this.

Tighten your belt and tie a rope between it and a solid anchor in your room so you can have the reassuring feeling of safety while you watch.

How they filmed "Free Solo"[0] was also pretty incredible. They had to assemble world class videographers who were also world class climbers. As you can imagine, it's a very small group of people!

0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtnjRoDa71Y

> Is the former even possible to produce somehow?

Google has done some research into it though it's not very practical https://augmentedperception.github.io/deepviewvideo/

There is only 3 degrees of freedom, not 6. So yes it's a sphere and you sit in the center. You only get depth perception from your eye parallax, but it's enough to see the rock geometry.

Which game is it, Climb 2? If so I'm really interested in it, would you care to say more about it?

360 (along both axes) and 3D.

I am holding off for Occulus Quest Pro, hopefully due to release in Fall 2022 according to rumors.