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Comment by edent | Hacker News Reader

Not until they overcome the need for the viewer to do something.

Moving from mono sound to stereo doesn't require anything of the listener. Going from black and white to colour doesn't require you wear special equipment.

But 3D? You have to put on special glasses which you also have to remember to charge. Oh, and you can't look at other things while you're using them.

There were some passive 3D displays (the Nintendo 3DS and a few early Android phones) but they required the user to stay in exactly the right position, or the illusion was destroyed. So you couldn't easily share the experience with a friend.

Until we have TVs which can shoot lasers directly into our eyeballs, I think the barrier to entry is too high.

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Note there are several active participants in the equipment-free 3D display space: usually by building head tracking (so the display is "single player" - can only accommodate one viewer at a time) and clever separated left eye / right eye projection.

EDIT: Apparently ASUS has a laptop that does this too! https://www.asus.com/content/asus-spatial-vision-technology/

The New 3DS has eye tracking and doesn't require you to stay in one spot. It's still single-user, but it is significantly more stable than the original 3DS.

The other thing about mono->stereo and monochrome->color is that they were backwards compatible. And even when creators adopted the new style, they didn't fundamentally change what they were doing.

With VR, the majority of popular games can't be ported 1:1 to VR. It either adds nothing so it's not worth it, or motion sickness requires removing or reinventing movement. It's almost like starting game design over from scratch.

Racing games are an obvious exception: you get the benefit of increased immersion without needing new control schemes or gameplay.

yeah on the VR side apparently im supposed to undertake a training regimen to be able to tolerate it without feeling sick. this is on top of the already massive commitment of wearing a giant helmet on my head. of course none of this is mentioned on the product page. (to be fair sony has a very generous return policy on these, probably for that reason)

it's unfortunate because VR GT7 was really cool until i started feeling horrible, but the sickness was very strong like from riding on a spinning carnival ride. i had to lie down the rest of the evening each time it happened.

They should include a package of strong ginger candies in the box.

For anyone else reading this: Be careful, you have to stop before you start feeling a little sick, or you'll induce a semi-permanent adversion to VR

If you try to fight through the nausea at all, it'll get worse every time until you feel sick just thinking about VR

(That's the obnoxious training regimen he's talking about, and it sucks for sure)

> But 3D? You have to put on special glasses which you also have to remember to charge. Oh, and you can't look at other things while you're using them.

Passive 3-D glasses exist, and you can very much look at whatever you want while wearing them.

> There were some passive 3D displays (the Nintendo 3DS and a few early Android phones) but they required the user to stay in exactly the right position, or the illusion was destroyed. So you couldn't easily share the experience with a friend.

I had an HTC EVO 3D, and would kill to get that technology back. If friends and I can only look at stuff in 2-D at the same time, fine, nothing lost over the current status quo. But looking back at your pictures and videos in actual 3-D immerses you in the moment again in a way that's hard to describe.

These kinds of VR headsets don't need to be charged (they are wired) and you can press a button to see the real world through the cameras.

So now I need to be physically tethered to my seat?

Do I press the button on the left or the right? Is it one tap to see the real world or two?

The cable is long enough that your room will run out before you run out of cable, so no need to be tethered to your seat.

Generally to pass through the real world you'd do something like simulatenously press two easily accessible buttons on your tracked controller. It is really very easy and I use it often.

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