Meta Is Building a Smart TV in VR | Hacker News Reader

Meta Is Building a Smart TV in VR

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14 pointssigna1115 comments

There's an opportunity to break out of the LRUD-driven user interfaces and input modality.

Only issue is all the TV apps that will run on this virtual smart TV assume LRUD, so I don't have high hopes for a transcendent advancement in usability. Not even Apple, who introduced a touch remote, control the Apple TV (hardware) and the Apple TV app attempted to supersede LRUD.

LG's pointer-based input devices (you can think of it as a mouse) have been with us for many years now, but hasn't caught on with more device manufacturers.

Some people hold out hope for Voice UI, but it has a number of downsides that make it worse than LRUD.

Once you rethink the vending machine interface, maybe a different modality reveals it self.

> Once you rethink the vending machine interface, maybe a different modality reveals it self.

You haven't said why one should. The screen is 2d, the LRUD interface is 2d. It's simple and works well. What are we leaving on the table?

The article says this "represents a monetization opportunity for Meta". What does it represent for me? Other than an opportunity to have new types of screens to buy.

> “Instead of a $500 TV sitting in front of us, what’s to keep us from one day having it be a $1 app,”

I'm already at my peak being online and attached to screens. If I make any change it's going to be in the direction of being less online, not more. I don't want smart glasses keeping me online at all times. I don't want TV glasses enabling me to watch TV at all times. My $500 TV serves its purpose perfectly already and I don't need to bring it with me.

Even if I wanted a permanent TV in my glasses and the app was only $1. The app will track the shit out of me. My TV is kept off the network. Going from cable to streaming added the adtech industry's surveillance and unskippable ads. There's no way Meta won't shit out something worse than I can still cling to with my offline TV.

Surely I lack the imagination to see how cool VR TV apps could be, but it doesn't take imagination to know how this is going to be consumer-hostile.

> You haven't said why one should. The screen is 2d, the LRUD interface is 2d. It's simple and works well. What are we leaving on the table?

Gestural input with a touch interface can give you a wider range of interesting UI and interaction.

I think LRUD means “left-right-up-down” here? I had to google it.

Yes.

I still hold to how amazing the Wii's user interface was. All pointer-based, using simple IR cameras, an underpowered CPU, and a downright ancient IMU (it didn't even have a gyroscope!)

> Not even Apple, who introduced a touch remote, control the Apple TV (hardware) and the Apple TV app attempted to supersede LRUD.

I can't recall the last time I've used LRUD controls with Apple TV. The hardware and software remotes both do trackpad-style control, which in my experience works just fine in that I've never had to think about it.

This is not a breakthrough, it has been done countless times before. This is another shot at vr from facebook that noone is going to remember in a week

Unfortunately, the only generation that will notice any VR innovation is Gen Alpha or younger. The older generations as a whole are either indifferent or flat out hostile to VR.

Also I agree with Adsoitis. VR apps have an opportunity to go beyond traditional UX. This is a missed opportunity, but understandable given the backlash to VR and to a lesser degree AR

Putting on a headset for the first time reminded me of using a computer for the first time. It was that paradigm-shifting.

The frustrating thing is, back when computers were "silly" and "not ready", the type of person you'd now find on Hacker News saw it as an exciting impetus to build a new world. With virtual reality, all I see is a collective eyeroll. It's honestly tragic. This is a burgeoning medium, a new form of art. For most of human history, people didn't get to experience that even once in their entire lifetime. And the response is cynicism.

The only explanation I have is that we are so inundated with stimulus, so overwhelmed with entertainment, that we no longer feel a drive to build a new form of it. We're all drugged up on social media, and can't see the potential of a new medium even when it's literally right in front of our faces.

why VR at all, LOL.

Yeah, I think this means there is such little value remains in VR once they rule out all anime porn content. Apple is doing the same, only they reached self inflicted obsolescence much faster.

And it makes me wonder if that's where the WWW is headed or how Dead Internet actually happened; a porn purge leading to reversion of media into progressively older forms. Perhaps we'd be scrolling books on a TV by 2050s.

I find a good metric for whether a technology cannot be widely adopted is, "do you prevent furries from using it?"

VRChat: Furries OK!

Meta: Nope

My point is, we might be seeing increasingly more of these "media reversion" going forward. VR used as TVs, TVs used as photo frames, photo frames used as text boxes, and so on, rather than newer technologies superseding old media.

So VRChat follows is the same bucket as internet forums, irc, twitter, discord, telegram, and blue sky. Sounds pretty promising for them really.

While meta follows in the direction of uhh... AOL and.. Miiverse? Not so promising.

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