In contrast, VR will definitely be used for porn. If anything, that's where most of the content outside of gaming is being created right now.
I'm 100% confident VR will be at the top of many consumer's Xmas lists next year and the following. It will start with gamers, then trickle into more consumer-y use cases like education and porn.
I apologize for the juxtaposition there. I'm one of the few who has tried Vive and other tracked-remote solutions, and these are what make VR most compelling (not the headset itself). Until you try these, I'd hold off on having a strong opinion.
Companies like Lytro have started working on solutions to let you move your head around a little bit, but that's about the extend of video for the foreseeable future.
Still, you don't always want to be moving around in a scene. People sit and watch movies all the time, so there's going to be a place for it.
The other half of that is when your motion isn't translated 1:1 to your perspective in the game (e.g., exaggerated movements in a first-person shooter), that's when you can really feel simulation sickness.
Valve's "room-scale tracking" actually solves a lot of that by keeping your perspective in sync with your real self. I'd say it's the best VR solution I've tried yet.
The reason Oculus took so long to announce a consumer version was largely tied to the fact they hadn't solved the nausea problem. Now they have.
All the hardware improvements there presumably don't help if there isn't a different image to view when you move your head.
(Oculus Rift feels like it's been right around the corner for like five years now. How long has it actually been? I guess only three years.)
That also makes me wonder how the first gen of sales will go, since Oculus is only shipping with an Xbox controller, dividing us devs on input solutions to target and limiting our options in VR quite heavily at first.
Then again, we're waiting til October for HTC/Valve to announce the final consumer Vive, and that'll be out by the end of 2015. And the Vive is quite an amazing experience.
~..death would take care of people who didn't know how to type..~ - Steve Jobs
Sometimes people build technologies that just aren't that attractive to people. I stretched a little for the Steve Jobs joke, but it turns out that sometimes you build something, it works, it's even pretty awesome, but a few years later it turns out that smartphones have 6" screens and tablets just seem less useful than they used to.
Or sometimes it's worse, and you build Google Wave to revolutionized and unify email, chat, and discussion boards and it turns out that people Just Don't Want your tech.
We also just backed the Sphericam kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1996234044/sphericam-2-...), so I look forward to a much more streamlined process and the ability to play with more theatrical ideas. Lots of film makers around here who I'm sure could do some amazing things with this tech!
>"You mean we can charge insane ticket prices and fees for virtual attendance, with no physical cap on how many people can attend?! Shutup and take my money" -Random Ticketmaster Exec
Communicating with loved ones changes too. Why catch up on the phone when you can sit in a living room with them?
Virtual reality is not a niche pursuit.
Something I think people often forget about VR - it's going to be really weird to be totally disconnected from the environment around you. If you're plugged into a meeting and your kid runs into the room to get your attention, how will they do it? Probably by poking you, scaring the bejesus out of you.
I just don't buy the idea that VR will make our lives more "real". It'll lead to living in weird bubbles.
They're not.
Think of them as a spectrum. VR + stereoscopic image passthrough gets you an AR-like view of the real world around you. These overlays allow you to pick up coffee cups, see when your kid is poking you, etc.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9938332
Valve is solving walking into walls by showing you a holodeck-like barrier inside the headset, so something like that could work with moving objects like kids or the dog over time too. Still, you are quite disconnected from the world that's actually around you.
In terms of making technology more human, I see VR as a stepping stone to Augmented Reality, which will eventually allow us to interact with our hands and instead of being in another world, you'll see things brought into your own world. That is an improvement over a screen too.
But VR can also transport you to places you've never been through 360 video, which is a powerful opportunity to create empathy through journalism and documentaries that can help us better understand how people live halfway across the world. I'm rather excited for that.
While any technology has the potential to further divide or distract us, VR has made me feel things that no other technology has even come close to feeling.
But if you look 5-10 years out, I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see drastically miniaturized components, perhaps a headband of sorts, a Glass-like eyepiece with a projector, maybe contact lenses, or something that provides a strong level of immersion without hiding the face.
In terms of recording the space, the Kinect is able to determine an astonishing amount about a physical space that I imagine would go hand in hand with this.
3D scanning is best for static objects like walls in your room. They never move or change, so scan the whole space. When you turn your head in VR, you'll see accurate 3D representations of that 3D environment.
Full 6DOF tracking is another method. Given a 3D scanned static object, like a coffee cup, you can track it using various optical and IMU-based techniques. This means a static object can be dynamically tracked as it moves, giving you accurate information about the 3D world to pick up your coffee cup without spilling it.
Optical tracking can be used to replicate facial movements into 3D models (see: Faceshift), to track finger movements (see: LeapMotion/Kinect), or full body motion.
Video can fill in the gaps for dynamic content. This can be achieved in two ways: 1) depth cameras which combine RGB video like a normal camera with depth information, allow us to reconstruct dynamic objects at proper depth. 2) 360-degree stereoscopic video which gives a fixed perspective to the full 3D environment. This isn't great for "3D from all angles" as non-rotational head movements won't see an accurate view.
A combination of these technologies will enable a VR user to see a real 3D environment, and feel like they are in it.
One thing is certain: it's coming. It's just a matter of time. The technology is rapidly maturing.
"Recap: the rig takes two Canon DSLRs and spins them around in a circle, capturing a dense light field image. The resulting data, when properly processed, can be rendered with OTOY’s pipeline and delivered to a VR headset with full head tracking. It’s a static scene but OTOY have alluded to future video capture."
I only see disadvantages... I have to wear this giant thing that prevents me from seeing my arms and anything else physically around me, no ability to capture my actual head and eyes unless you do a bunch of fancy 3d reconstruction, etc.
VR won't solve this in an elegant way immediately, although virtual avatars will soon have eye and facial expression tracking, so at least the avatar will mimic your actual expressions inside of a virtual space. The value add there is that you can be in a shared collaborative space with additional objects besides just other people, and interact with those together.
Events though I can definitely see spending real time inside of a headset just to watch video. Cinema too. Lots of studios (including Oculus's own Story Studio) are getting in on that already.
"You must struggle with your own beliefs if you are to make any progress in understanding the possibilities and limitations of computers in the intellectual area. To do this adequately you must formalize your beliefs and then criticize them severely, arguing one side against the other, until you have a fair idea of the strengths and weakness of both sides."
I do see your point though. Someone may have been thinking of this concept 10 years ago, but it certainly wasn't me.
I then had an idea using SMS and windows pocket PCs to basically make something like Uber for a software taxi dispatch system. You would SMS a number and then get updates via SMS on the status of your cab. Cabs would have the pocket PCs installed with an external GPS module. I would sell it to taxi dispatch companies as a way to make more money. I was just starting university although, and felt quite overwhelmed with the idea of actually selling it to anyone.
Long term, I think AR will overtake VR but will only go mainstream when the tech miniaturizes enough to not be visually invasive. Nobody wants a big clunky headset on while they shop.
Those are my predictions anyway (and sound a lot like a lot of people's predictions too, I'm sure).
I like my travelling unscripted but lots of people I know would dig the above.
VR can give you a sense of what a new place is going to be like, but it'll never be quite like breathing the air or climbing on things.