Comment by faeriechangling | Hacker News Reader

Comment by faeriechangling | Hacker News Reader

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faeriechangling

When I look at the commonality between all the successful consumer electronics, it's really about how easily they fit into people's lives. The AirPods and Apple Watch were two of the most recent smash hits because they are an improvement on what existed before

For me to watch a video on a phone, tablet, laptop, or TV is easy. Turn on screen. Play video. With wedding photos, you can make them your phone screen background, you can printout photos and put them on your wall, they fit into your life.

With VR, I have to blind myself to my surroundings, I have to either not move around sitting perfectly still or clear out a bunch of space. What has become more popular in recent years is Podcasting and a huge reason why is because how nonintrusive it is, you can listen to a podcast doing the dishes or on your way to work. VR is the opposite of nonintrusive.

I feel the immersion of VR is what's holding it back, not why it will be successful. It's only when mixed reality takes off that I think we're going to see a big change.

Have you tried the quest 3? A lot of your concerns, I feel, go away with pass thru. Like you say, mixed or augmented reality is going to be society altering.

I was walking through my house, navigating doorways, stairs, and changes in lighting, with my son's headset while I had the equivalent of a 30in monitor playing Netflix following me around. I sat on the couch and pinned the "tv" to the wall, enlarged it to be a 80in tv.

What truly is missing is a shared environment between multiple headsets in the same location. Movie night where the whole wall is a shared experience, and it can be synced with grandma who is three states over; even better, we can look over and see grandma in AR and she sees us. Distributed family night! Some ergonomics to work out. That, and seeing faces.

I have tried the quest 3 and it’s like looking through a distorted version of the world through a low resolution camera with Vaseline slopped on top.

It’s impressive technology but it’s far from seamless. There’s less colours, less resolution, worse depth perception, more latency, and worse nightvision than your actual eyes. The quest makes your head quite a bit larger and you’re more likely to hang your head into something. It is very far from seamless.

They have a long way to go. Audio pass through still isn’t good enough for me to trust it never mind video pass through.

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