Comment by gernb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gernb | Hacker News Reader

These are all good points ... but, it's hard for me to totally accept what I perceive to be the premise.

Let's imagine perfect VR (the Matrix). Would it be better to play Mahjong, Poker, Blackjack, Chess, pick your favorite board game, with real pieces setting at a real table or at a computer terminal moving pieces with your mouse? I get each person might have a different answer to that.

What I like about "immersion" when done right is I just do the thing I already know how to do. Pick up the ball, cards, dice. I don't have to fiddle with one 18 buttons on the 2 controllers (up, down, left, right, press, A, B, upper trigger, lower trigger) x (left hand, right hand) .... actually 20 buttons if you include the "system" buttons on each controller.

This is one thing I hated about No Man's Sky in VR. I enjoyed it over all and never played non-VR No Man's Sky, but, while flying and aiming the gun/probe is VR, all the inventory management is 18 button based and even 25hrs in I'd be pressing the wrong button on each menu option.

Now of course, VR isn't good enough yet to do this "immersion" so often, picking up the cards, ball, etc, is just to damn fiddley. Maybe I have to put my hand 10cm past where my brain believes the object is. I've had that very frustrating experience where I can't reach the thing in VR because it's below the physical floor in my room or behind the wall/sofa/desk, so there's a lot to be fixed.

And, also, of course maybe someone will figure out better interfaces without the constraints of the physical world. For example I'm a little sad when someone makes a piano in VR given that you could invent a new instrument with a sphere of controls around you.

But, every time I play a VR game that makes me memorize which of 18 buttons to press I want to scream.

> Let's imagine perfect VR (the Matrix). Would it be better to play Mahjong, Poker, Blackjack, Chess, pick your favorite board game, with real pieces setting at a real table

I think your point was more about which interface is best for these games, but it made me think of something else.

I don't even play those games very often in real life, why would I be excited about playing them in VR?

In fact, more often then not, if I ever play these, it's if I'm on the bus, or taking a shit, or something like that, which means I'll exclusively play them on my phone at this point.

I really don't feel the prospect of playing these games in VR, even in perfect matrix like VR would appeal to me. If I want to be bothered to physically play these games, which I already don't, I can just physically go play them, or more conveniently play them on my phone.

I think if VR is to draw people in, it's got to bring whole new games, experiences I can only live in VR.

> I can just physically go play them

If you think about it some more, that’s not always true. Every player needs to want and be able to play at a specific time and specific location. With VR, both limitations are gone. While living in North America, I can play VR pingpong and chess with relatives in Asia, and VR poker with my old friends on the opposite coast. The immersion makes it a lot more appealing than playing in front of a flat screen. Even an 80 in flat screen isn’t as immersive as VR

> I think if VR is to draw people in, it's got to bring whole new games, experiences I can only live in VR

I believe the person you were replying to was just using those board games as an example to illustrate the silliness of reverting to 2d or pancake style interaction while immersed in a VR experience. There are certainly many VR games that give you experiences that are only possible in VR. One of the most popular is Beat Saber although you may take issue with that because there are rhythm games outside of VR. It's still a unique experience to have to use your whole body to play the game though. A better example of VR only may be Swarm[0] which is a game about swinging around a 3d arena using a grappling hook while shooting heat seeking missiles that are trying to hit you. I'm pretty sure there is no way you could play this with a normal computer interface and if you could it wouldn't be very fun.

[0] https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2236053486488156/

Here's the real problem with VR (taking your idea and saying it another way).

We trained our brains to know that we are going to 'trick' them with sight/sound all the time. TV, music in headphones, etc.

What VR doesn't do (apart from some of the weird Facebook prototypes you'll sometimes see) is affect any of the senses that actually make us feel immersed in a space.

So great, I'm looking at a beach and when I turn my head, it's still there. But it's 68 degrees in my apartment, I still feel the carpet on my feet, I still smell my partner cooking, etc.

It's honestly why a VR metaverse just seems so far away. My current problem with media is not that I can't see it anymore when I turn my head.

Thats an interesting point. The beach is a particularly high sensory input environment though. I have been thinking about something like the Yakuza games in VR, which is essentially just a accurate simulation of walking around a Tokyo neighborhood at nighttime. In a nighttime urban environment it seems to me sound is the defining sense, you wouldn’t necessarily care what the temp or smell was.

Tokyo at night is not Tokyo at night without the still, musky humid air with a whiff of yakitori sauce and charcoal.

For me grilled yakiniku and garlic frying in oil at ramen places come to mind. Tokyo at night is definitely full of delicious scents, but now that I’m thinking about it even if they replicated it in VR I’m not sure I would want to smell something delicious I had no chance of eating.

Whether or not you realize it, your mind will definitely care that it knows you're inside but the visuals are outside.

Could be mistaken, but this comment sounds like it’s coming from someone who’s either not used VR often or who’s closest 6DOF VR experience was Google Cardboard.

The most important things for immersion are the visuals, then sound, and then your ability to interact with the environment (more on this later). Being able to affect your smell and temperature is just novel at best. If you were very familiar with VR, your picks for missing features would instead be the following:

- being able to physically feel virtual objects like a soda can. (You can kind of feel things that tap or strike you now with speaker vests.)

- being able to physically walk an infinite distance in any direction inside of a room

Even without those features, modern VR is immersive enough just like the internet was useful enough in the last 90s and early 2000s

We're getting close to 1: Feeling objects.

If you're sufficiently handy with a soldering iron and have access to a 3d printer, there's a guy doing Open Source force-feedback gloves out there.

> The most important things for immersion are the visuals, then sound, and then your ability to interact with the environment (more on this later)

I mean agree to strongly disagree I guess.

What do you mean? It's 90 degrees and humid inside the headset.

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