Ask HN: Online Gambling + Oculus Rift | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Online Gambling + Oculus Rift

4 pointsadventured4 comments

There has been a lot of motion lately by some of the large gambling players (not named Sheldon Adelson) to try to get online gambling legalized in the US, or at least push that direction. It's already legal in some other parts of the world of course.

Any opinions on the idea of marrying virtual reality, via Oculus Rift, up to online gambling, to create an immersive entertainment experience? Is anyone already attempting to do this? I'm picturing huge zones, ten times larger than Vegas' gambling areas (not the actual city), and much better looking (10 years out).

Surely if online gambling has a future, this is it, and I suspect it would be wildly lucrative.

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At it's core, gambling is gambling. The person mindlessly pulling a lever/button while sitting at a slot machine for hours on end, isn't really immersed in anything with regards to the surrounding environment.

The OR could marry VR to more normal day to day activities IMO. Imagine a dinner date in your apartment where you and your date put on headsets and voila, you're both dining anywhere in the world.

That may be true for slots (although even that mundane aspect could be made much better with some VR, eg being able to see that someone is sitting next to you and talk openly with them; or to be able to sit next to a friend, and see that they just hit a jackpot), but there is a drastic entertainment difference when it comes to visually perceiving that you're sitting at a poker or blackjack table with other people, and being able to look around. Hitting that sweet spot where your brain forgets that you're not actually there, that sense of tension at the table when the stakes are high.

It's all about atmosphere and entertainment. That's why Vegas exists. A very small fraction of the Vegas crowd are real gamblers. And I think it's why VR gambling will go far upscale from the texas hold'em on our smart phones. It'll be about charging for an experience.

Imagine Online Gambling, Oculus Rift, Bitcoin, and a Darknet marketplace w/research chems, with some sort of chat or forum feature, all combined into one giant meltingpot.

An Oculus Rift poker game using bitcoins as currency would be pretty neat.

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