VR Realizes the Cyberspace Metaphor | Hacker News Reader

VR Realizes the Cyberspace Metaphor

yadin.com

17 pointsdryadin17 comments

VR will go mainstream when gaming and the internet did - when it fits in your pocket, can turn on and off instantly, and allows you to split your attention between it and something else. The last one seems like a contradiction but maybe someone will figure it out.

The Nintendo DS fit in your pocket but it didn't hearld in mainstream gaming.

Gaming went mainstream because it went mainstream. Technogy improved, it became easy to setup and play (unlike a computer at the time), competition was high between Sony and MS which resulted in quick generational leaps. And finally, all the gamers grew up inviting more gamers to be gamers.

Once it became big money, gaming attracted attention propelling it further.

Like any technology, it's a combination of things that leads to high uptake.

My opinion is that VR will go mainstream when it becomes afford, useful and easy to use. IMO we are years away from good useful VR.

As long as you don’t have some kind of physical feedback for something simple as clicking a button VR always will feel artificial and disconnected

Maybe you’re right in terms of true broad adoption, but I’m also curious about whether there’s a sustainable (and slowly growing) market in other market segments.

Maybe vr gaming is it? I hope so because I’d like to see the platform grow from there into other application areas.

Personally I’m curious if I can use it for something, maybe data visualization. Like a more powerful matplotlib. Maybe I’ll just try it if it’s affordable to try and possible to use it that way (custom code).

VR will start to go mainstream when it doesn’t make motion sick. This is probably the main reason people pivoted to AR.

The last one is AR not VR, and I agree it's much more likely to go mainstream.

I already tried GOpherVR and the like (without glasses) and there's more 'cyberspace' in Usenet, Gopher, Gemini, IRC with actual people talking about real life issues than under 3D sims.

You can have realist environments but without people it's just a boring videogame with no interaction. And for that we already have Street View and multimedia CD's with virtual cities since the mid-late 90's.

We just need a pervasive virtual computing environment where every inch isn't controlled by the manufacturer tuning the reality to their buisness.

Steam Frame ships with a closed virtual environment to create a StoreOS but launching an alternative open environment might be feasible. Then we just need good contained programs to explore safely over the net.

Should be totally feasible, I believe they have said its not locked in any way and you can put any software or OS on it that you like.

It will be a huge, huge breath of fresh air. I know I for one have not been building in VR because it has felt quite vendor locked with regards to hardware and stores. Same reason I don't do software for mobile.

Everyone likes to shit on Meta for pouring unfathomable amounts of money into VR and the metaverse, but I still think it was a wise play. Once AI crashes into VR properly it will produce the kind of disruptive changes the article touches on. The reason we're not detecting any alien species is because they gave up on exploration after they all disappeared into their personal Goonspheres and never re-emerged. Heroin has nothing on what the future is bringing.

Once we have direct neural inputs VR will explode. Or at least the ability to wire directly into the optic nerves.

VR, or at least AR, is obviously the future. But Meta, like so many companies before them, saw the future and tried to jump on board way before it was the right time. See: WebTV, the tablet PCs from the early 1990s (!!), Apple Newton, Palm Pilot, etc. (I call it the first mover disadvantage!)

I think their headsets were genuinely game changers in cost/value. It was so much easier to use than many previous headsets that cost way more. It felt like it had the makings of a watershed moment, but I think we can all see where they fell short. The ecosystem, the brand pulling it down, and the corporate washed feel of the whole thing. Blade runner cyber dystopia it was not, utopian star trek future it was not. It was the office, but in your home. No one wants that.

I hate that I understand your last point by the way ha.

Turns out nobody wants a closed-down headset controlled by Meta, no matter how slick it is. I do think we'd have seen an explosion of cool apps if it were open.

Here's hoping the Steam one fulfills the dream.

well, millions of people bought them

And it wasn't enough for VR to take off.

I was just responding to your claim that nobody wants them, when that's demonstrably not true.

VR is like Linux, it will never be used by the masses for the foreseeable future as there's just to much friction in using it. There is an audience for it in its current form though. Having millions of headsets sold, with multiple iterations maintaining the sales figures and multiple companies producing their own models is enough for me to consider it to have "taken off". In the simulator game space, especially cockpit driving and flying games, I think it's fair to say that VR has definitely taken off.

I doubt it’s because of the money but because the choose stand alone mobile graphics over PC graphics

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