Comment by nordsieck | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nordsieck | Hacker News Reader

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> But the reality is that VR is not the future, people just don't want it. Nobody wants to live their entire waking / working life in a VR headset.

I think you're wrong.

From this[1] great essay about mainframes:

> Ultimately, there are only two natural kinds of computers: embedded systems and mainframes.

And this is so true. People have moved from personal computers to laptops and are in the process of moving to phones[2]. Smart watches seem to be a promising device; we'll see if people can put enough functionality into them to obviate the need for a phone.

Of course, not all tasks are suitable to be done on a phone or a watch. But one way to think of VR is a desk setup with huge monitors that happens to be extremely portable. Of course the promise of VR is much greater than that, but that is a pretty important use case - a use case that would obviate the need for laptops and desktops for many if not most tasks.

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1. http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Eternal_Mainframe.h...

2. This isn't to say that the shift has been complete at all. Many people, including me, continue to use a desktop setup. And laptop use is still quite strong. But the derivative is ultimately what matters.

It's been 20 years and NOBODY is doing business in VR even though the tech is amazing right now. What's missing? At what point do you think normal people will prefer VR over just using video conferencing for work meetings? I don't see it and I'm willing to bet money that we won't have amazing Meta VR with 100 million users in the next 5 years.

> even though the tech is amazing right now

Have you ever tried to work in VR? It's not amazing at all, my Quest 2 (which has reasonably high resolution per modern headset standard) just can't render clearly enough for me to use VSCode. I tried it and it was just not there yet. Double the pixel density and you would have something I would consider using.

I'm not necessarily convinced that we'll do all of our meetings in VR ever, but it's reasonable to say that tech still has a way to go before I'd call it as "VR is the issue".

I think Meta would disagree would disagree with the assertion "the tech is amazing right now." The two easiest problems to point to are a) resolution on most consumer headsets is far too low to read text effectively, and b) the ergonomics just aren't there in terms of weight and size.

Pretty big problems - I don't really have any argument either way on how solvable they are in 5-10 years, but I really think the implication that people dislike the concept of working in VR itself is misguided.

Size and weight has been going up over time: https://i.imgur.com/2fOAFqI.png There's no evidence we will reach the mythical lightweight glasses any time soon. I believe that is needed for VR to be accepted on a scale similar to cellphones.

The tech is amazing for us VR enthusiasts, but I don't think it's really at the point where it can impress the average person beyond a short whale demo or beatsaber game. You're either tethered to a wire, or a 3 hour battery life (Which degrades pretty quickly). Resolution still isn't good enough for reading text at a reasonable scale. Narrow field of view. Hot to wear. The fact that they are fixed-focus creates some weird depth perception issues in many people for up to 48 hours after use until you get your "vr legs".

The tech is super early stage, having worked in VR for 6 hours a day for a month I can tell you it's very barebones. This tech is nascent, hell the oculus quest only came out in 2019.

With reference to the 90s VR boom, the grandparent was calling out this very comment as demonstrably false, well before you had even posted it. What magic is that?!

For sale to consumer VR headsets have been available commercially for about 35 years. Is it really reasonable to call a consumer tech product category that's been around for 35 years "early" or "nascent"? Look at something like the EyePhone (yes, that was its name). How is that not the very same product category as a modern VR HMD? Of course a modern HMD is better, but not fundamentally a new category of device. This shit is ancient by tech standards. It's had almost 4 decades to evolve since its consumer debut.

I mean we had smartphones in the late 90's and early 2000's and they didn't take off until 2010 so yes. That's where I'd put this, now we're waiting for VR's iPhone moment.

What is your definition of “a user”? Is it a daily/weekly/monthly active account, or based on activated device?

>And this is so true. People have moved from personal computers to laptops and are in the process of moving to phones[2]. Smart watches seem to be a promising device; we'll see if people can put enough functionality into them to obviate the need for a phone.

One of these shifts is not like the other. The laptop can, in principle, do everything the desktop can. The speakers and mousepad are kind of limited, but peripherals erase this barrier too. A phone simply doesn't have the text input rate of a keyboard, which I'm feeling intimately right now as I tap out this comment with my right thumb. Strap a keyboard to the phone, now the screen is too far away. It might as well be a laptop.

You can run a business on laptops. Currently, businesses still use desktops mostly because they're still significantly cheaper at equivalent performance (and maybe harder to steal). But on phones? That's nowhere near practical. The keyboard has yet to be disrupted; voice input is antisocial unless you have your own office.

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