Virtual Reality Doesn’t Need a Killer App to Get Huge | Hacker News Reader

Virtual Reality Doesn’t Need a Killer App to Get Huge

wired.com

29 pointsInternetGiant45 comments

VR is a pretty high-friction way to interact with a computer. And by VR, I don't just mean head-tracked goggles like lots of people seem to think the word means.

There's an entire industry about to be formed (again) with the headset as the start-point. All manner of haptic feedback input devices, audio equipment, "walkers", and more, will start to become required to make the experience more immersive. Before long big portions of people's home offices, rec rooms, and living rooms will be taken up by all this stuff and big chunks of their bank accounts will be drained by it.

I think it remains to be seen if the experience is worth all the expense and fuss. We simply don't know at this point, but hopefully it really will all be better than the last go around.

Living an immersive, seamless virtual life where all mistakes are possible and able to be undone. Forget the hardware or the implementation, imagine the experiences possible. It will be worth it, regardless of the shape it takes.

If anything, I think it just means that there is a market for the Arcade again. People realize that their home and personal budget are going to limit the full experience. That has always been the case. But it also doesn't make it an unworthy field to pursue.

>VR is a pretty high-friction way to interact with a computer.

>I think it remains to be seen if the experience is worth all the expense and fuss.

I would turn your comment around and argue that 10 million years of evolution weren't focused on producing a homo sapiens sapiens example that could best drive a mouse and keyboard across a 2D interface.

The fact that we've acquired some facility with doing so is a testament to our generality rather than the suitableness of the interface.

Why is VR important?

Because it's a gateway to immersive interface patterns than allows our brains to more fully flex their innate resources. I'll make you a $2 bet we both chuckle that this question was even asked in 25 - 50 years. Historical reference: initial reaction to the "mouse".

I might suffer from a lack of imagination - but prior to direct reading of thoughts from our brains - I don't see how "VR" will be any faster than input mechanisms we are already very familiar with. Think about a perfect VR that simulates reality flawlessly. You've only moved the goalposts. You are still stuck with the problem of how a user indicates their intentions to another agent (computer in this case - maybe a clever one). Are we going to turn virtual steering wheels? Use virtual pencils? I can certainly see some niche cases (virtual sculpture?) and video games will of course be better - but in terms of efficiency of input I don't see something better than keyboard + mouse before we get to mind-reading. Hell, I can even type almost as fast as I can speak. But maybe I'm unusual and keyboards will become a sort of estoeric form of input.

Well, there's the superficial argument to "input mechanisms we are already very familiar with" - given that we as a community are probably drastically undervaluing removing typing as a prerequisite skill for computing.

However, if we're using a human as our black box (e.g. input via eyeballs, output via fingertips), then I'm admittedly more excited about VR from the input side.

To make a hardware metaphor, the additional sensory channels can be looked at as feeding functional units in our brains that are hitherto being underutilized. Adding or widening channels takes us into SIMD interface design. (I wrote superscalar, but that sounded like a terrible buzzphrase)

The caveat and challenge of course is whether or not these new resources can be effectively utilized. At least for anything less trivial that a richer consumptive experience (no offense intended to anyone in the multimedia industry).

Remember when the "multimedia industry" used to be called the "CDROM industry"? It's kind of silly fetishizing the storage medium or the input device and ignoring the expanded definition of "reality" that "moving the goalposts" afforded.

While wondering how the term "virtual reality" will be thought of in the future, I am reminded of this dialog from the Pirate Bay trial:

>“When did you meet [Gottfrid] for the first time IRL?” asked the Prosecutor. “We do not use the expression IRL,” said Peter, “We use AFK.” “IRL?” questioned the judge. “In Real Life,” the Prosecutor explained to the judge.

>“We do not use that expression,” Peter noted. “Everything is in real life. We use AFK – Away From Keyboard.” “Well,” said Roswall. “It seems I am a little bit out of date.”

If what he did was not in real life, then why did they lock him up in a real prison for it?

Why don't we call the real world we interact with through keyboards, mice and 2D screens "virtual reality", even though some people who are a little bit out of date would claim it's not "real life"?

Is an expression of approval any more real and less virtual if I express it by clicking a "Like" button with a mouse, instead of looking at it, nodding my head, smiling and laughing? And does whether or not I have an HMD strapped to my head when I do that effect the sincerity of my expression?

If everything is in real life, then instead of "In Real Reality", maybe we use something like "AFR - Away from Rift"?

Did the mouse have to be the perfect pointing device that simulated the desktop perfectly?

Every time the goalposts move, the playing fields gets bigger.

>I don't see how "VR" will be any faster than input mechanisms we are already very familiar with

If I had asked people what they wanted they would have said a faster horse.

This is going to be big, but it will not give your faster input. If you want that, take a course in faster typing.

The reaction to the mouse might well have been very different if users had been required to strap it to their face.

>The reaction to the mouse might well have been very different if users had been required to strap it to their face.

The same might have been said of the telephone. ;)

That's what I said about watches. The very idea that somebody would pay more than $20 for the privilege of strapping one of those things to their arm, when it can't make phone calls, take pictures, play video and run apps, is beyond me.

Since we are currently working with VR technology (Unity Engine 3D world+Rift+XBox controller) it's pretty interesting how rather trivial issues can be quite challenging.

One example: When doing usability testing it's pretty common that people get dizzy or can't use the glasses for 5 minutes+ (which in my book means...pretty unusable). Even fiddling with some of the recommended settings doesn't help all that much. So our next step there is to figure out a good prescreen ("carousel sickness" seems to correlate)

It's also interesting that after some preliminary/very quick research, VR is often either not compared to other options at all or compared to non-tech solutions (typically for training applications) whereas the comparison that I expected intuitively (Rift vs. 3D engine with just a controller) is rare.

It's fun fiddling around with this stuff and I'm looking forward to learning more about it in 2015 but my initial reaction is...sceptical. I may have access to a CAVE next year though :D

One really interesting thing I've found is that people are more forgiving of something like Google Cardboard. They are also sometimes more excited by the fact they could see themselves buying and using a cardboard set + mobile device tomorrow vs the Oculus.

One architect who I showed some VR demos to told me the Oculus looks so cool and intense that it's sort of a let down when you try it on and feel nauseated. The cardboard on the other hand looks so cheap that when you try it on it surpasses your expectations. So if you feel sick you're more forgiving since it is after all just a piece of cardboard.

"VR Is Not Like Other Tech"

Yup. Just like all other tech.

Which will never be put to the test because it already has at least two killer apps[1][2].

[1]: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/ [2]: https://www.elitedangerous.com/

The arrival of hand tracking will help make VR headsets a lot more interesting. Leap Motion has a VR attachment: https://www.leapmotion.com/product/vr

Here's a sensor based product: http://controlvr.com

Finally, the Nimble VR Kickstarter project got acquired by Oculus even before funding was finished:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nimblevr/nimble-sense-b...

We are a startup [1] working in this space (hand tracking) for some time and it's been an interesting experience. Most of the hand tracking is done either using cameras (vision/image-based) or sensors (gyros/accelerometers).

Leap Motion is already developing a product similar to Nimble VR. Control VR intrigues me but my gut feeling is it'll be a while before their products are available on the market (see Myo band for example, it took a while for them to fulfill the orders and the product still has some issues based on the last hackathon I attended)[2]. Regardless, it's an exciting area (bit niche) but hopefully there will be a solution soon.

[1]http://www.breqlabs.com

[2]http://www.betakit.com/team-raisins-wins-sportshack-2014-tor...

I get the point of the article that VR needs to be interesting enough for the early adopters to do something interesting with it. That much seems to be happening.

What has to happen is something that is good enough to drop the $200-400, plus other accessories. Realistically you're talking about a $500-1,000 purchase, which is still in the niche category.

When VR gets down to $200-300 total, it will be more interesting for the average consumer. That being said, every technology platform needs a killer app.

For PC's it's still Office, Web, and Email. Smartphones are web, email, and photo/social apps. Game consoles are usually one franchise game like Call of Duty, Halo, Mario.

I struggle to think of a significant platform without a killer app or a big hook.

Virtual reality isn't about “escaping reality.” If anything, this technology makes it possible to relive your experiences, and, much more importantly, show somebody else the inside of your own mind, both of which are reality-affirming activities.

No it is exactly about escaping reality. It's literally fooling your sense of sight and hearing with with more believable simulations than ever before, so much that we now use the term "presence" to describe the feeling you get when your reptilian brain believes you actually are in the place the headset has transported you to.

It's the culmination of thousands of years of technological escapism that began with literary fiction and has progressed to movies and video games. But this new evolution promises to be the most potent form of escapism yet due to presence.

Whether escapism can be used healthily is a different question, but it is certainly escapism. Right now the technology is still primitive, but we do need to begin to ask important questions about the priority we place on the real world vs simulations. As we work towards brain computer interfaces, we must decide the proper balance between inhabiting, playing in, and working in the real world with its unbreakable physics and rules and the virtual world where we may change the rules of the game whenever we wish and many constraints are mutable.

I disagree with this. The most successful applications that I am aware of are in realms where reality is being reproduced and not escaped. The key advantage is that variables in those worlds can be changed and/or stuff isn't as dangerous while still being realistic.

While escapist and fantasy worlds are fun and very much thinkable (and the line is pretty blurry if you think of the use of VR in therapy for example) reproducing reality is very much "a thing".

Domains that come to mind are: medical training specifically surgery and training for miners.

I agree with this article -- VR is so fundamentally compelling that even saying it needs a "killer app" seems to miss the point. Did TV or radio need a "killer app?" Certainly at the time there were major things TV or radio were applied towards that helped get them into the mainstream, but at the core TV and radio were inevitably going to spread throughout the world in some form.

Radio's killer app was rock and roll. TVs was the soap opera.

Is VR's virtual waifus? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6VN9FpOAtM

Maybe we're defining "killer app" differently, but over 80% of US households had a radio in 1940, a decade prior to the start of rock and roll.

I think of "killer app" to be something that drives the adoption of the platform or whatever. "Why should I buy a PC? Oh, because Lotus 1-2-3 is awesome." Nobody was buying radios because they wanted to listen to rock and roll music; they all already had radios.

Neither of these were "killer apps".

As has been noted for radio, 55% of American homes had TVs in 1954 (rising to 83% by 1958). This was an increase from 0.4% in 1948. During this time of rapid adoption, the most popular shows were primarily variety shows and eventually sitcoms (I Love Lucy).

Soap operas have been a staple of daytime television since the early 1950's, but have never even been close to the most popular. Therefore, it would be hard to call them a "killer app".

In the long-term, VR will be big. In the short-term, augmented reality will be the way to go imo. --Walking down the street during lunch time and the restaurants you pass each display their Yelp rating. Social media updates displayed over a person's head as a "thought-bubble"--

> In the long-term, VR will be big. In the short-term, augmented reality will be the way to go imo

augmented reality is a much harder problem to get right than vr (hmd vr that is)

I disagree. I don't think AR is ready. Unless you want to type in what restaurant you're at so that your AR headset can give you that Yelp rating, I don't think we'll see what you're describing before VR hits the mainstream. You need to be capable of really fast + accurate computer vision to be able to passively get notifications regarding the world around you. The strides made to make VR possible will help AR in the long run.

To really hit the mainstream and get huge, VR needs to address the "hype" build-up in new technologies. What I find singularly unique to VR over the last few years is the announcement of one breakthrough company leapfrogging another with just spec details, videos, and big funding. First, there was tons of excitement with Oculus with Carmack joining. But then Magic Leap seems to have developed something even better. Perhaps something new is about to be announced beyond Magic Leap (only in a video demo of course). It makes the mainstream consumer not want to purchase with the fear that something new is going to put the hundred dollars of payment to waste.

Perhaps, VR companies would find the Apple secrecy approach valid. Only releasing real products that are ready to be shipped in mass production within a few months timeframe.

>> "But then Magic Leap seems to have developed something even better."

Do you have some sort of inside information, i.e. having experienced the Magic Leap? Because I don't think any of the publicly available information can be used to make such a statement.

I think this is part of the "hype" mentioned in the original comment. All the press seems to imply Magic Leap is creating a lightweight wearable capable of allowing someone to focus on different objects in a scene and with retina-like resolution.

I think seeing articles that sensationalize the $500k investment or call it an "Oculus Killer" are what cause some of this hype. Although, I wouldn't say it's necessarily a bad thing because VR isn't consumer ready yet and all these articles are creating an early buzz around VR. So in that sense, it has gone pretty mainstream.

$500M

to those of you who have an oculus headset: how do u use it? i used it for a few demos, but cant really see myself be bothered to use it often.

Simulators seem to be in the Oculus' wheel house at the moment. It's a coveted item in the iRacing community and I would imagine flight sims are the same.

It works so well in Elite Dangerous that many, many players are buying the DK2 and don't play a minute without it

I showed my Oculus running the Tuscany demo to an architect last year and he was absolutely fascinated by the possibilities.

There are actually already a few startups exploring this space. One of them [1] sent some employees to speak in November at the New York VR Meetup [2]

[1] http://www.floored.com/

[2] http://www.meetup.com/Virtual-Reality-NYC/

I'm sorry to say this, but pr0n is the only thing a technology needs to get really big. So indeed.

Is there any technology success that can really be attributed to porn? People often cite the adult industry leading to the popularity of video recorders, the VHS format, digital cameras, the internet, online payments, etc, but really porn had a very small part to play in their successes.

The idea that VR will take off because of porn seems ridiculous. VR's primary benefit over screen technology is immersion and interactivity in a scene - yet interactive porn has been a dismal failure.

Immersion in porn is a huge deal. I could see this making dating less attractive for a lot of people and as VR progresses and becomes more and more immersive it will become harder and harder to see or feel the difference between porn and reality, but porn will always be cheaper and easier to get.

BTW don't confuse not being able to see or feel the difference with not knowing the difference.

This already exists. http://www.oculusriftporn.com (NSFW).

Usable BCI and there will be many great apps

The article mentions a certain type of naysayer, lacking in vision, that has also bothered me for some time. How could you not see the potential for VR? It seems so obvious, I have difficulty explaining it. It's like trying to explain vision to the blind. What sort of culture differences there must be to make communicating this idea so difficult.

At the same time, a lot of VR enthusiasts bug the hell out of me, too. They have their pet project and they think that's the only thing worth doing in VR. It's going on in this very thread right now: strong opinions on what is and is not VR and any dissent otherwise is foolhardy.

People who talk about "oh, augmented reality is the only way the hardware is going to make it, VR isn't enough." Or the folks who insist that "only a PC-based platform will work, thus it is doomed, because the PC is doomed" or "only a smartphone-based platform will work, thus PC-based work is doomed." Or "you should be working on virtual tourism apps, that's the only thing people are going to want to buy, hardcore games are too small of a market to worry about."

That might be even worse than the visionless naysayer problem, because the complete skeptic is most likely only so because he is ignorant, whereas these guys are quickly becoming a new form of religious zealot. I'm still waiting for the doom of the (PC|console|mobile|casual|hardcore|client|server|centralized|decentralized|what have you) market that has been predicted ever since I can remember. And regardless of what will be the most popular, why should one ever preclude the other? The market is vast and diverse! Work on what you want! Failure to find a market is not proof of the lack of a market.

I'm actively working in VR right now. We talk about "the community", but there is no community. There's very little interpersonal support. I think everyone has a fear that, unless they are the first to market with a killer app, then they are doomed to languish in obscurity and aren't going to make anything important. Maybe it's because everyone thinks it's going to be like the smartphone app market gold rush. If you don't get in early, there will be no money for you.

And it's a good point, if you forget that the bulk of the app market is junk. Of course the 200th compass app isn't going to make any money. Yes, Flappy Bird shouldn't have been such a runaway success. But it was just another Pet Rock, and that lack of predictability in the market should be a sign that the consumers aren't completely jaded yet and are looking for novel experiences. Who would have predicted the success of WhatsApp, which got started long after everyone declared the gold rush dead?

What I see is that the majority of the VR developers right now are going down much the same road of style over substance, cranking out a ton of apps versus spending time on a quality app. Part of that is timeline: we've only just now reached a point where anyone could have had enough time to develop something meaningful. But I fear that part of it is just the way we've trained developers to act, with all of the cheesehead "growth hacking" and "SEO" emphasis over solid art and engineering.

And I know, I'm engaging in criticism when complaining about criticism. But come on, you have to be able to see the difference. Let's make a real community of developers, not petulant children all trying to one-up each other. Let's try to learn from the mistakes of our past and try to be inclusive, not exclusive.

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