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Comment by mattbrewsbytes | Hacker News Reader

If their approach is Enterprise and work environments, how does a VR headset deal with ADA (American Disabilities Act) and accessibility? Employers cannot discriminate against those with hearing/vision or other impairments and I don't know how a technology like VR can compensate for that.

Assuming the headset doesn't help at all in those areas then it can't be something an employer mandates people to use. This type of device might uncover even more physical impairments people are unaware of, like those warnings in video games about flashing lights - photosensitive seizures and epilepsy.

Are the benefits of a meeting technology going to far out-weigh potential employment lawsuits?

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It would be a real shame if this held technology back in a substantial way. VR offers a ton of opportunity for a more productive work environment. Infinite space to work in, an active working day instead of sitting in a chair, etc etc etc.

Imagine working at a customer service desk where instead of tickets in a tab you can have 3d stacks of them all across the room you're in. Or a control environment with knobs and bobs surrounding you like an old 1970s control panel, with none of the cost.

Imagine designing a web page, except your screen doesn't have an edge.

I think a big part of the skepticism here is that we have coded for 2d screens for so long that we don't even begin to realize the possibilities yet. I'm convinced that the future of most office is while wearing some sort of headset.

Not meetings though. Those will remain 2d. Corny half done avatars and badly recreated 3d rooms don't cut it.

I just don't see any actual daily professional worker problems being solved. I see solutions in search of problems. People with PC's have a control environment in front of them everyday with a keyboard and mouse, 100's of controls and combinations. Keyboards are really cheap.

I see VR enabled work environments like touch-screens in cars. They suck. You have little to no sensory input on your fingers and can't feel your way around to do things without looking.

Is having 3d stacks in a virtual room going to allow a customer service person to better do their job? As in having measurable financial impact? If I'm running a call center with 100 people, is spending $150k on VR headsets going to help materially?

The beauty of it is, you use pass through cameras and you can see your keyboard and you can see your mouse directly, while still having access to the full virtual experience.

I expect people to be using a mouse with this stuff, and a keyboard.

What a depressing outlook on future work. Is it really impossible for you to see the dehumanizing aspects of this?

Uh why is a 3d stack better than a list? It might be more fun for the first few minutes but it’s less efficient. When something is your job and you need to get things done, you’ll eventually choose the efficient route instead of the fancy option.

If 3D UI is superior than 2D then 3D video games shouldn’t need 2D UI at all and yet they all do.

3D UI doesn't work when you are playing a video game because you are ultimately using a 2D interface.

Navigation through 3D worlds is clumsy and terrible in video games, but with VR it's just like your everyday life.

I don't expect people to be doing much in terms of fine detail work in VR without some sort of tool like a mouse or keyboard accessible to them, but things like the ability to design web pages that are bigger than a screen, have depth, be able to integrate a full room into the experience, is going to be pretty incredible.

Your baseline experience, what's going to start is having basically virtual monitors so that you can have windows all over the place, from there It will probably evolve into something more native to VR.

The screen is still limited by your eyepiece field of view. You have to scroll and zoom if the page is too big. We can already do that in browsers.

This take is surprising to me, because it actually seems to me that it would be easy-ish to auto-generate accessibility aids, for example in the form of automatic caption generation for hearing impairments.

You’ll be happy to learn that people are actively thinking about and working on accessibility for AR/VR. And if it’s something you feel strongly about, there’s companies and teams that are hiring specifically for this role.

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