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Comment by whywhywhywhy | Hacker News Reader

Think I laughed out loud when they showed the table top NBA in the launch video because the exact same concept was in the launch videos for at least oculus and magic leap, maybe more headsets but it’s always been a fake concept that feels a bit like a solution in search of a problem.

Fair play to them finally making the eternal vaporware demo real.

Fascinating seeing how an Apple launch plays out when the 3rd party dev support just isn’t there and nor are the users.

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I am struggling to come up with some mainstream uses for this. Sports, concerts, plays, etc are something that could theoretically be used on a recurring basis to entice the public.

My only nerd imaginations are something like a WH40k game. Watch a MOBA in 3D. Fortnite.

Maybe a few historical events? This was the moon landing configuration. The view from the grassy knoll to Kennedy.

I would love this when playing DnD. You could even have the app recognize dice and compute modifiers for attack rolls and what not.

DnD with the option to switch between 3rd and 1st person views would be amazing.

Personally, I'd like an NFL game where you drop your players on the line, draw the routes on the field, and then switch to 1st person QB view for the snap.

https://www.meta.com/experiences/nfl-pro-era/419397521067812...

NFL Pro Era for MQ3 sent chills up my spine when I first walked out into the arena.

Demeo (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1484280/Demeo/) is the pure board game implementation of that concept, with a lot of effort put into actually taking advantage of the VR aspect without siloing players off from each other.

>My only nerd imaginations are something like a WH40k game

Okay, actually, wargaming in VR would be sick if executed well...

Try Demeo Battles!

My wife would absolutely pay money to go to an auditorium with 100 other people to watch a live taylor swift concert. Even though its technically feasible to do it in your home, or even to watch it the next day, I know she would pay to be part of a "live" experience.

They have that now in movie theaters that simulcast stage performances.

Sure, but there's a huge visceral difference between looking at a screen versus "being there" in what your brain interprets as, for example, a small black-box theater with a stage in the middle.

Yeah but a movie costs $10-20 retail and costs much less to deliver technologically speaking.

All that fancy “you’re really there” technology costs a lot more with diminishing returns on the running costs.

Theres places like https://www.cosm.com/the-experience that have a spherical view and seating right up close that do live sports and concerts that are more engaging than a normal flat screen.

Yes there is a big difference.

But if you look at all the options --

1) paying hundred of dollars or more, potentially having to travel to a different city to watch the actual event, where you enjoy it with friends/family and the rest of the crowd

2) watch a filmed version in the theater or Blu-ray for $10, with your family/friends and other fans

3) purchase a $3500 headset that is heavy and uncomfortable, watch a filmed version for $10-20, with yourself

The movie theater experience seems like a pretty good deal. If I am not watch the real thing, I might as well just spend $10 and get a great experience.

> I am struggling to come up with some mainstream uses for this.

Grilling with Mark Zuckerberg? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibm3WhfLk08

DoD is soon getting its Enemy of the State wish fulfilled with pervasive targeted imaging from VLEO. Projecting that realtime imagery in 3D would be icing on the cake.

DoD won't do it with any of these consumer headsets, though, because you can't get anything wireless approved for use in a SCIF. And no, they won't even consider doing anything outside of the SCIF.

VR/AR for DoD is a dead end, unless you have a deep personal relationship with some random Air Force Colonel who is willing to personally walk all your work through all the paperwork on the promise of a board seat when he retires.

-signed, former DoD-targeted VR consultant

What about Microsoft's AR goggles for soldiers? DoD has been investing in that for years and through multiple iterations; iirc it's been fielded for tests and is moving steadily toward production. I saw a headline that someone else was buying it from Microsoft for billions of dollars, so it seems to be worth something.

Excellent example of neo-IBM syndrome. Soldiers have complained about IVAS being too heavy and making them sick. But nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft. It's been going for years and, honestly, anyone honest with experience with Hololens predicted its demise on day one.

Anduril is the company buying IVAS. Founded by Palmer Luckey, who also founded Oculus. Unfortunately, he was never really the technical brains behind Oculus, more "the kid with hubris who got caught up in the ride." Anduril itself seems to be doing well, and I'm even considering applying, but I'm still on the fence about whether them buying IVAS is a good signal.

> Soldiers have complained about IVAS being too heavy and making them sick.

That was feedback on an earlier test and iirc those bugs were/are addressed with later versions. Of course there are going to be bugs as the product is developed.

Improbable tried baseball.[1] They have some kind of deal with the Major League Baseball company. Improbable's metaverse is so expensive to operate that they can't run it 24/7, so they only rent servers for pay per view special events.

American football would make more sense as something to view in VR. The action is complicated to follow.

[1] https://www.improbable.io/news/improbable-builds-major-leagu...

The MLB VR app[1] is pretty neat. You can sit behind home plate with a virtual strike zone, track balls, launch trajectory, height, a bunch of stats as you watch the game play out in real time. Including live games.

A lot of the negative reviews are people confused it's not a game, it's to watch baseball games.

I can't say I'd watch a ton of games on it but I watched some playoff games on it.

Only complaint is that the players are just little cards running around the field. MLB has very good 3D tracking[2] of players on the field, if you could see a somewhat realistic model of players on the field that would be pretty amazing.

If they iterated on the concept I could see more people adopting it.

[1]https://www.meta.com/experiences/mlb/2873640696088444/

[2]https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-gameday-3d-guide

I'd be interested in using it for auto racing. Usually the tracks are too large to see all at once, the cars are going by too fast to track, and in most cases both apply. Especially if you could zoom in on areas of interest as they happen.

Lapz is basically that for F1 races on the Vision Pro https://youtu.be/Z9OlYcfLmTY?si=k0bFAeMFl0bHEVx3

According to the article, was.

A strategy games like baldurs gate would be amazingly immersive if selected characters were fixed to the table and the full world was rendered to the horizon

Architecture, and any other physical design work?

But if it really is good for watching sports, that's a big market already.

TV OEMs tried to make 3D home entertainment a thing over a decade ago, and it was a failure. Has the environment changed enough to make a difference? I have my doubts, even though the average Internet bandwidth has gone up, at least 3D TV was nominally a shared social activity.

It's more Tha the tech improved. It's a way better feeling than any 3d projection and it's able to be interacted with.

The main issue is adoption. They aren't cheap enough that you'll simply gather a family around to play locally. At best you communicate online and experience it through peers from afar.

One of the biggest reasons 3D tv failed is the lack of socializing while using it. You were required to have glasses for each person watching which limited the ability to use in group settings.

This makes that problem even worse.

It didn't let you socialize because you needed to keep an exact angle. There's no restriction with VR since you can portray an avatar or person. So thars mitigated.

It's more a matter that VR is expensive and still not small enough to he accessible.

I’m so happy to see the side effects of Apple pissing on developers for so long that large caps pull out and small business and individual developers don’t want to touch the stuff.

There was an old Oculus app where you could watch NBA games in VR, except it was from the perspective of 3D camera rigs that were set up above the backboards. The company behind this app, NextVR, was acquired by Apple in 2020. (Meta has subsequently made different arrangements for broadcasting NBA games in VR.)

It feels to me like it's one step closer to having an arbitrarily positioned "courtside seat" view.

I get court side view if it’s 3d footage it would be immersive. It’s the tiny players running around the coffee table that’s technically impressive but conceptually baffling why you’d want that.

I think the missing context from the post (as it calls out) is that the intended experience is that you have the diorama view at the same time as the actual footage, so it's showing you where everyone is offscreen.

Yeah, it seems awesome to be able to track the entire game at once instead of just focusing on what’s in camera frame. The combination of both could be very engaging.

When you're not "inside the action" of the live TV broadcast, you're not going to turn to a low-poly video game map because the live broadcast will give you HD wide shots better than this tabletop garbage. No one wants to swivel their head back and forth with 1.5 pounds of dork box cantilevered off their face for an experience less immersive than the live broadcast and offering zero value add.

Anyone able to explain the technical reason this doesn't exist yet? Maybe technically feasible but NBA thinks it would cannibalize tickets sales?

If it did (does?) exist it would be nice if it could be "all" courtside views (pick the one you want or switch between them as you're watching). And when I say all it doesn't have to be literally every seat, but there could be one at each baseline and then maybe one each side of the scorer's table and then 2 opposite those so 6 in total.

Yes, because no one is going to spend the money to add another 30-60 cameras to the NBA broadcast platform to cater to fewer than 100K Vision Pro users. Even Quest's 10M actives doesn't come close to warranting that kind of financial outlay.

Ok, it's totally technically feasible today, but the return is not there given the lack of viewership. If you can expand a little on the 30-60 cameras so I can understand better, is that to stitch together the various views when a AVP user moves their head? Or were you using that number to represent the number of viewpoints on the floor? Like if it was only one view at the scorer's table, do I understand you would need multiple cameras for one view?

The NBA uses 30-60 cameras to give you a truly immersive view with all of the angles in high definition. This "VR" app uses one view and a bunch of shitty animation. If the NBA was going to truly embrace the Vision Pro, they'd need to replace most of all of their stadium rigs with new gear that could feed both the live TV broadcast and the server farm crunching it for VR. Not doing so means fewer high quality angles and more "fake" bits, less dynamism, and more low-poly, laggy garbage like this demoware that, despite claiming to be immersive, simply cannot compete on immersive-ness with boring old 2D broadcasts.

You mention the 2D broadcast. Maybe my expectations are too low, but as a step in the direction of a more immersive experience, I'd love to be able to watch an NBA game, even in 2D, where the perspective is courtside and the players are "life size" based on where I'm "seated" (so obviously adjusting size based on the perspective of the camera as players come closer and move farther away just like if you were there in person). And in case I'm not being clear I mean just a stream of the game itself, not using some derivative of the game as I understand this tabletop view (which seems really dumb actually, but not sure I get it).

You sound like you know a lot about the NBA in particular so you probably know this, but the NBA has been giving that courtside perspective periodically during games on the broadcast. Being able to watch a full game that way or at least toggle between that and the broadcast at will would be great. The very few times I've sat up close at an NBA game have been mind-bogglingly better, particularly when you can feel the size and speed of the players. Maybe this VR-light 2D view I'm talking about wouldn't simulate that very well, but I think it would do a pretty good job and could be done with one extra view (still hear you that even one view courtside would require multiple cameras and is not worth the investment, but I feel like it would be sensible to offer that as a step to something even more immersive).

You can currently remote viewing sporting events

https://tech.cosm.com/markets/sports-and-entertainment

One of the actual compelling experiences for me on the Oculus Go back in the day was court side NBA games.

I think they did eventually offer VR live games with a few different viewing options.

It's a really nice way to watch a game. Tabletop? Meh, but the ability to control the "camera" with your head, 3d audio of the live stadium etc, that was dope.

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