I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR(wired.com) |
I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR(wired.com) |
...both surmountable issues given time so I do expect this to take over eventually.
A lot of glass wearers did tell me that they can see perfectly well without glasses, probably far-sighted.
One thing to try is the game "I Expect You to Die"
If I remember right, it was designed by people who focused explicitly on making a VR a pleasant experience. It's a game where you sit down (to match your character's position: sitting) and the camera never moves (the prime cause of motion sickness for many people). I loved the game and it was a great experience.
VR has been nothing but a complete disappointment to me. Motion Sickness, headaches, sweaty headsets and detachment. Never played a VR game that wasn’t better without it, somewhat like 3D movies. I have my doubts this will ever be anything other that a use once toy for most.
Seeing Facebook further latch onto our faces fills me with dread. I don’t think we will interact with each other in VR with business or pleasure outside of some fringe groups. More fads, more ewaste…
AR on the other hand, either as a small projector or special glasses — that is exciting.
Immersed.com (second computer screen): I wish the Quest 2 had 4000x4000 per eye to make this work beautifully but I suppose that will be the future.
Eleven Table Tennis: I practice smashing in this game, the skill transferred. Now I am beating all my friends with real actual table tennis (at an amateur level).
Thrill of the Fight: awesome shadowboxing on steroids workout.
Walkabout minigolf: feels like actual minigolf, except the courses are more fun [1].
Space Pirate Trainer DX: I haven’t played it yet but seems like an enhanced laser tag [1].
What I would like to be solved:
- Excellent passthrough: I want to interior design my rooms with VR
- Excellent screens (i.e. 4000x4000 per eye), it opens up applications/games that are mediocre at the moment
- omnidirectional treadmills fully solved (super hard to do): I want to be able to strafe in place, jump, side jump, duck, crouch, make almost any movement in place IRL and for it to be translated to actual movement in VR. I sometimes muse about how to solve this but I wouldn’t know how.
[1] The biggest benefit that VR/AR has are two things: one, you can make virtual hardware, and in some cases that is about as good as real hardware (e.g. virtual screens). Two, you can make experiences that are as almost as good in real life (e.g. table tennis) but then you can enhance them since a developer has much more control to bend physics than any other engineer does in the real world. The coolest application I saw for that is this model train game, you could scale down and be inside of the train, you could construct train tracks on very small orbs, etc. If I’d be a fan of trains, I’d buy it.
This is a tangent, but i wish this was a thing now, even without VR. The last few years of iphone and ipad have lidar, which has led to pretty solid 3d scanner apps. In five minutes, i have a whole 3d model of the interior of my house. I wish there were good consumer apps to use that and design in.
Or Elite Dangerous is quite the experience in VR too. Less so than Robo Recall, but it works out extremely well if you have a HOTAS. You work as if you were sitting in a cockpit.
Or Subnautica, which in VR gets even more terrifying.
Or VR Chat and similar, where you get to interact far more personally than you would just looking at an avatar on a screen.
Now of course it's not like it solves world hunger or anything, but the tech works extremely well within the right scenarios.
I get the physical games like table tenis and beat saber, but how is this not a fad? The wii was cool at the time too. Nintendo didn’t retain the ideas in later hardware.
VR chat is about as interesting as second life, and any metaverse that follows will follow the same path.
Half Life Alyx is arguably the best Half Life experience to date. No Man's Sky is amazing in VR but zero interest outside of VR. In VR I'm actually in a spaceship or actually on another planet. Outside VR I'm just looking at someone else's travel photos. Seeing vista's in VR is like the difference between looking at a picture of the Grand Canyon and actually being at the Grand Canyon. The first is a pretty picture. The second you actually feel it's 20 miles the other side and a mile deep. Seeing a smoking volcano in Farpoint, again outside vR is just a picture, inside VR the mountain actually feels 1-2 miles high with 7-10 mile plum of smoke. So now non-VR games that don't get then sense of presence fill like something is missing.
Further, well made VR games (which is definitely not all) are often way more intuitive than non. The 19 buttons on a dualshock or a mouse and 101 buttons of a keyboard, a good VR game you should reach out and touch stuff in the game.
There are also experiences like Jet Island or Eye of the Temple you just can't have outside VR.
VR Rhythm games actually force me to dance, vr non-VR rhythm games which rarely do that.
As for AR, I used to be more excited, but I suspect reality will be tracking, constant ads, and distractions. And further, it's kind of hard to turn reality into any setting, something VR can do easily. In AR, in my living room, maybe I could have an AR pet that runs around my furniture. In VR I can escape my living room for another planet, an underwater adventure, a dragon's lair, a space station, a secret lab, a zombie infested factory, etc...
The biggest problem with VR is just lack of great content. Looking forward to Horizon Forbidden West as the next true AAA VR title.
What you're experiencing with disorientation does tend to go away for most people if they're careful about it. And for me, I literally can't remember the last time I've felt disoriented in VR. Even considering that I've had shunts that have caused me to roll 20 times or more.
I agree, there is waste involved (as with anything), but as a comparison to racing it's much more friendly for the world than burning fuel. I'm in full agreement that Facebook on our faces sounds terrible, and concerns me, but VR can be a very good thing.
It depends on what your brain is used to. If you've never felt the acceleration, you don't know what you're missing. But I've done a lot of skiing in my life, and my brain will not accept VR skiing as the real thing. I feel queasy and have to stop.
As a trivial example - when designing our new office, some people reviewed the auditorium design in VR and figured out the screen was too high for comfort, and it was lowered.
Extreme examples go into virtualized surgical training where physics and graphics engine specialized to tissue simulation is used to teach surgeons new procedures.
AR displays such as hololens can be used in construction yards to compare the as built with a digital model for quick review.
Etc etc.
I don't know how good toy VR or AR will ever become, but it already is an indispensable expert tool.
I think young surgeons would get a trauma moving from this nonsense to real surgery. Or maybe they will try to press a button in the patient's stomach.
I've bought a Vive when Half Life: Alyx came out and was completely blown away by the first impressions and immersions of that game.
Since then however and after the first "whoa!"-effects faded, every game was exactly what you've just described: Pure disappointment, and my body completely stressed out/sick after half an hour, at best. The only exception is beat-saber, which is a lot of fun for quite some time, but not the kind of game I'd want to play for hours on end.
So far, VR seems gimmicky, and quite frankly is way too much of a hassle to set up to enjoy it often (so many cables!, and I don't have the space for a permanent setup).
Valve did a good job working with the constraints they had, but my takeaway is that the constraints are just too vast to make a game that isn't clearly hand holding you because your controls and situational awareness are just kind of bad.
I played on an index and would do multiple hours at a time, with no sickness.
Calling it a fad though seems incorrect. We’ve already passed the point of Quest 2 headsets being in over 10million homes and that’s up from 5 million a few months earlier. At this rate it’s following the same trajectory as consoles and because of the headsets general availability a whole generation of kids are getting a Quest 2 instead of an Xbox or pS5.
With the Covid situation being what it is and sports halls are closed, I’ve replaced live table tennis trainings with Valve Index and Eleven Table Tennis VR game. It has stunningly realistic physics and the immersion is so good that I don’t miss the real thing much. This wouldn’t be possible in front of a flat screen.
In both cases one of the most interesting experiences was the movie theater. It somehow works. The social aspect was creepy, i'm an old guy and all i could hear was voices of young children...i felt like i shouldn't be there haha.
The problem for me is the games on it. A few are really cool, but even then I get bored. And to buy another game, sure, but then you get to spend 20 dollars again, way to pricey for just a few hours of gaming.
SuperHot and Half Life Alyx are the games that I like the most.
You can try another headset in a few years.
Lower headset weight, better audio, larger field of view, >= 120 hz refresh rates, frame interpolation, eye/face tracking - not all of these are possible right now, but I think we can expect them in 2024 - 2026.
I find that right now many games are not optimized for VR, which brings FPS drops that kill the immersion and give me a headache after a few minutes. The weight of the headset doesn't help too.
I agree that for business VR may be not as useful as the companies would like us to think. If you jump in and out of meetings, respond in chats etc. the UX should be on par or better than on traditional platforms, otherwise everyone would fallback to their laptops.
But for a casual moviegoers or gamers this may be a good product
VR was key to my son making it through the pandemic with his sanity intact. But he does seem to be a rarity - he has a couple of friends that have VR and they just play Beat Saber, if that.
If there was an updated Garry's Mod for VR - we'd never get him out of there!
Also, the headset must basically be “glued to your face”, so it does not sway when moving the head. A high-performance PC is also very important, every FPS drop will induce nausea.
I can play HL Alyx for hours on end but still get dizzy when I become dehydrated or hungry. I only have first-hand experience with an HTC Vive (1st gen) though, which uses room-scale laser tracking. I also only ever played room-scale.
Creating content for these empty rooms is actually a problem as there are no open standards, the tools are complicated, there are lots of hurdles, and a lot of gate keepers with dollar signs in their eyes trying to tap into any value you might create that are actively frustrating each other's attempts to do so. You end up with these exclusives for some proprietary hardware. And that hardware changes all the time so it is time limited as well.
The only people that bother with going through the trouble for this so far are game studios.
Even 3D movies are largely not accessible via VR because that's a different proprietary content silo with misaligned financial incentives. So, even though there is a lot of 3D content in the form of a decade plus of 3D action movies that were released by movie studios, exactly none of that can be enjoyed via VR goggles. That's how hard it is to target these things. I guess movie studios could do it but then they'd be haggling with the likes of Steam about just how large of a cut they would take. Likewise, Netflix is not a Steam VR experience. They are not producing material in 3D and you can't sign up for a 3D Amazon Prime either. If there were open standards, this would be a no-brainer thing for them but there aren't.
IMHO, any content that works in VR should be trivially accessible using a normal 2D screen as well. There is no technical need for any content to be exclusive to VR/AR goggles and if you are the owner of that content, you'd actually want to maximize your audience rather than artificially limit it. You lose a bit of immersiveness but we've been playing 3D FPS games on 2D screens for decades so that does not seem to be that big of a deal. In other words, there's nothing stopping us from building a metaverse right now. You'd buy the VR goggles to enhance the experience in the same way you might invest in a bigger TV or better sound system.
So, why don't we? Well very simply put, it doesn't solve a problem we actually have. We can already immerse ourselves in game worlds (with or without goggles) and we can already communicate with people. And more importantly, 2D UIs are actually pretty nice for a lot of things; especially when it involves text. And in so far some things might actually work, excluding most of the planet that does not own any goggles yet is not a great plan for creating a mass market.
30-40 years ago UI were quite terrible.
Its natural that we are trying to implement analogous 2D interfaces in 3D as we were train to use those hyper optimised approaches.
What is clear to me is that the VR is new medium for new content. Trying to ram 2D mediums into it and expect it being better is not a way to go.
I have to disagree, most 3D models can be used in VR. There are millions of assets out there that have been produced for the games industry. Both Unity and Unreal Engine have huge communities with lots of tutorials both official and independent on VR development. OpenXR is an open standard supported by many of the big players.
> The only people that bother with going through the trouble for this so far are game studios.
This is wrong, there are plenty of indie studios and individuals building VR experiences. It's actually the other way around, the big studios want to make games that essentially just have VR bolted on whereas the independents are the ones experimenting with the medium.
> 3D movies
I don't see how 3D movies would be compelling in VR. They are still fixed POV so you'd have to watch them on a screen like any other movie. You wouldn't want to have it replace the feed going to your headset since you'd have to keep your head still or risk disorientation and motion sickness. Netflix and Prime are on Oculus btw.
> IMHO, any content that works in VR should be trivially accessible using a normal 2D screen as well.
I'm sorry but that's not feasible unless you use VR controllers with the display set to your monitor. Even then having to control the look direction with a joystick would be terrible compared to just moving naturally and you'd be lacking the ability to dodge, duck, aim, etc. Sure you could make those actions trigger from button presses but then you've just got a bog standard FPS which is not a good VR experience. VR is a new medium, saying that all VR content should be accessible via 2D is like saying all movies should just be filmed stage productions. It doesn't work. Great VR games make use of the full 6DOF, they have you physically push buttons, throw switches, dodge bullets and swords, punch your enemies, walk across narrow ledges. Having these be real physical movements is a radical difference from tapping buttons on a keyboard or controller. It'll only get better as things like full body tracking and haptics improve and come down in price to the point that they are part of the purchase of a headset.
> there's nothing stopping us from building a metaverse right now
Also disagree, I've played Second Life and other 3D chat programs and they can't hold a candle to VR Chat (and VR Chat is put together with bailing twine and bubblegum so I'm not a big fan of it). Presence is a real thing in VR. Our brains really are that dumb (or that adaptive) where chunky polygons presented stereoscopically with a few other tricks really does make you feel like you're in a room with other people. It's weird but also fun. The VR goggles are necessary for any version of the metaverse to get off the ground.
I don't think that our current media will go away any time soon but I do think that VR is here to stay. 10 years down the road I think most households will have more than 1 VR headset. I think it will probably compliment our current UIs, you can put 2D UIs in VR after all and probably make better use of them by having them laid out in virtual space the same way you arrange things in a physical office. Speaking of offices, I'm pretty sure VR will be the default for work from home folks, at the very least for meetings if not for the whole work day. VR is just better than video calls for talking to people and as time goes on we will have a lot more social VR experiences and there will be a lot of people that exclusively socialize in VR.
In a few generations I'd say it might be worthwhile, but for now it's a pretty expensive gimmick.
I can totally see VR be the future of tv. Not the 360 vr video, but more like 100-180 degree VR video.
The best I’ve seen on there are the “Ecosphere” videos (best quality by watching through the actual app). It’s sort of otherworldly feeling like you are standing next to an actual elephant. Awesome use of the medium and totally convinced me of its viability.
Really think those are the benchmarks for me, vr isn’t about the headset or 3d it’s about rich hand tracking/interactions.
Still, the idea of working in VR is actually good, not the 3d or VR part, but the efficient use of physical space and replacement for multiple monitors.
But I highly doubt it's there yet, FOV and resolution.
Agree that Facebook being involved is a very bad thing, but don’t overestimate their ability to build something entirely new.
No doubt in my mind that VR will change everything - it’s simply a matter of “when”, but I’m willing to bet that we are now on a slow and steady path of improvement, but that path may be far longer than Zuck imagines.
Your distaste for VR is due to genetics. I’m sorry you got the short end of the stick with the motion sickness.
It may make sense for some games, but desktop will be the king of work for a long time - until we get brain-computer interface with some AR glasses, then maybe that would be an improvement.
Is it? All I have ever seen is floating stuff lagging behind or jumping around. A "proof of concept" level experience, at best.
It could provide real time info without needing to look at a watch or phone, without distraction. I hope the slab of glass phase ends soon. Too many people looking at their hands and ignoring reality.
$399 price point for a standalone unit. I didn't experience any motion sickness even though it was my first time with a real VR device.
Games like Superhot VR + Beatsabre + thrill of the fight, are awesome. and can't be made without VR.
Also, it has a passthrough mode - which I'd love to see improved - because it basically trumps AR. By adding high quality cameras in front of the headset you hit 2 birds with 1 stone.
What was the last headset you picked up? I can see this critique being valid for early headsets, but a lot of the issues you mentioned are less pronounced/eliminated in recent headsets.
Did the kickstarters get some juice when Facebook bought Oculus? Or just a big thank you?
I did feel shafted by Palmer when he took both my and zucks money, but looking back now, it was buying a devkit not equity.
Has anyone actually worked this way?
I spent about an hour with a Vive headset and it was the most obnoxious experience I ever had. The lack of feedback, the requirements of a large room free of obstacle, the awful screen door effect, the poor precision from the dual wands.
Overall, I was exhausted after just 30 minutes. That's not to mention the physical portion of using a headset + the wands.
There might a middle ground where you are sitting or lying down. But that still doesn't solve efficient input. As far as I see it, nothing really beats a keyboard.
I got into it thinking that we had passed the hype cycle, but it really felt like I was still in the tech demo hell.
Primary work goes on an IMAX sized 2880x1800 screen in front of me divided up with TMUX and Vim. Slack in a vertical 1440 x 900 to my right, and media + reference on a drawing table oriented 1440 x 900 below where my lap would be.
Instead of a boring room in my house, I'm in a nebula that's beautiful but non-distracting.
is eye strain / head strain a problem from extended wear?
how do you deal with tracking peripheries? as mentioned in the article KBM, coffee etc.
For coffee/water I use a closed tumbler with a metal straw and I just reach carefully. Double tap the side of the quest for pass through if you get lost.
The Discord is full of requests for solutions for seeing the keyboard. It has a pretty impressive virtual overlay for the keyboard, but IMO that is an unnecessary handicap. Instead of demanding a skeuomorph, it's much more pleasant to really learn to touch type. It took me about a week to get flawless. I'm even pretty good at the function keys since I started debugging in Vim.
Immersed only supports the Quest and Quest 2.
Which, from the point of view of my wallet, is a saving grace: if it ran on the Index I'd have a small hole in my savings right now.
We're obviously in a very early stage of consumer VR hardware and I agree with most people that AR (passthrough or glasses) would be preferable to VR. There are a lot of open problems in this space - a lot of these problems spoil the user experience, right now. But, engineers are solving them slowly over time and I don't predict a future (say 50 years from now) where people are still using their fingers to peck at keys and are still stuck with a 25" monitor (at least in the majority of cases).
Happy to be an early adopter - maybe I'll even discover some problems that I can solve and benefit from the inevitable deluge of capital.
[1]: https://simulavr.com/ [2]: https://stardustxr.org/
Is the intersection of people who like VR and people who like the Linux desktop big enough to support a commercial product?
It does depend on the environment implementation, mind you.
At this point it’s a race for who builds the first sensory deprivation tank VR workstation I guess.
Apple, at least, is smart enough not to try to claim the technology. But I'm sure in the next few years they'll try to wall off their own garden in VR/AR.
Neal's whole idea in Snow Crash, although it wasn't explicitly stated, was that the heavy processing was happening client-side, so different clients saw different things (a vague semi-transparent blob on a cheap headset would be delicately curling smoke rings on an expensive one) and it was easily degradable based on connection speed, and the protocol was essentially open source, and infrastructure was distributed enough that there were no vertical monopolies operating in that space unlike the rest of Snow Crash where pretty much everything from the franchise restaurant to the police force protecting it were vertically organized. So any attempt to vertically create a metaverse within a particular stack or corporate ecosystem is likely bound to fail, and VR as a popular technology will track with that until someone builds a portal-to-portals. I'd put my money on a new startup if it ever were to happen, because they could at least build something platform agnostic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops#:~:text=%22T....
If you're really interested in coding in VR, I suggest looking at https://www.reddit.com/r/hmdprogramming. I've experimented with programming in VR using Vive + Virtual Desktop, GearVR, Daydream, Quest and others, and you can find some of my notes in that subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/comments/fc5sfr/oculus_qu...
The biggest limitation of current headsets is the resolution which is ~20pixels per degree on consumer headsets and needs to get closer to ~60ppd to match real world resolutions. Furthermore, there are multiple layers of blurring due to the VR composition passes so you lose ~50% of your headset's resolution if the app doesn't implement proper text rendering.
Go crush it!
Versus me picking up my phone and ordering something within a minute. Or texting someone a simple message.
What VR and metaverse miss is that they haven’t solved the asynchronous problem.
I would not rule out radical change of use patterns.
People will not put on a headset to shop, they will shop as they play, as they watch videos, etc.
Why do my parents still avoid buying stuff online? People have preferences. Mine, and it sounds like yours, is buying quickly from my phone. But I still go to retail stores most of the time if I want to buy clothes, shoes, hats. Anything physical. I'm not saying VR would replace that need but being able to try something digitally on rather than just see a photo online would be at least one use case.
I know many people call their Quest 1 or 2's just "my Oculus", but I didn't expect a large site to do the same, really shows how dumb it was to scrap that name.
It is also a smidge funny that they used both Facebook and Oculus when "Meta" doesn't want you to use either anymore, in the context of VR.
I'm not ready to spend all day in a vr headset but I'm glad some people are.
Freedom of movement is the large one. Omni treadmills are one way of dealing with this, but anyone that has tried them knows that they are an awkward experience on their own (you can definitely get used to it, but you'll never mistake it for walking normally). They also massively increase the friction in using a VR headset.
If the virtual environment you were in was able to be dynamically projected over real world obstacles, then you'd be able to move freely... and you'd no longer be using VR but AR. The one thing I think VR is really accomplishing right now is pushing technology development that will allow AR in the future.
I do think that AR is going to be a defining breakout period for these technologies and VR is effectively dead in the water. Even a small whiff of AR in the form of Pokemon Go got people seriously jazzed and met those basic requirements I set out... Just without the immersion people are looking for out of VR.
I've only found one great video so far, and it is unbelievable.
I would pay money for great 360 content like that.
Also as mentioned in another comment, primitive types in programming languages lend themselves nicely to visual representation.
Hope you have a chance to try!
With this headset, we won't have to carry anything else: no screen, no computer, no keyboard, etc.
We will even be able to share virtual contents with one another when needed.
We won't be isolated from the outside world.
Starship is the most important project at this point in human history. Without a frontier there is nothing but meaningless conflict, repetition, and stagnation. We will sit here on Earth and basically masturbate until some black swan event destroys our civilization or even our entire biosphere. That event could be something stupid we do, an asteroid, a gamma ray burst, who knows... but it doesn't matter. If we stay here intelligent life dies.
I think Starship is even more important than fighting climate change, since winning that battle still leaves us trapped in a cyberpunk dystopia that just happens to be a little more sustainable. That means instead of global warming trashing our civilization we might get a few more centuries of pointless masturbation before something else kills us.
Edit:
Keep in mind too how frontiers work. Novelty is imported from the frontier back to the old culture. The frontier revives everything. It's like going for a hike in the woods or a trip to a new city, but at civilization scale. Even if only 0.001% of humanity ever goes to space, I predict a civilization-wide effect.
As an added bonus as far as we know there are no natives in our immediate region of space. The "new world" of Europe's great age of frontier exploration was not a pure frontier, and it came with the moral baggage of war and displacement. The new frontier is pure. It's all exploration, no conquest. It's going to be more like the settling of the Polynesian archipelago (by the original Polynesians) than the European age of colonialism.
Anyway what a crazy rant from an article about VR... but I think it's relevant. Every time I hear about the metaverse or NFTs or some other bit of wank this is the thought that runs through my head.
Presumably while sales reworks the product line for Metaverse pricing.
If you don’t want a Facebook account for your VR device, the only other option for Immersed looks like a Vive Focus 3.
Never thought about that. You can throw processing at VR to dial up the frame rate, throw in more expensive displays to increase the resolution but at the end of the day your mind still expects to change focus as it flits from "near" to "far" objects in "the meta" ... and I don't see how we'll ever be ever to accommodate that.
I believe VR is ready for work, you can invest in an HP G2 and beefy enough PC. However, I believe its main current use cases are still either fitness or virtually socializing with people you cannot physically meet with due to either lockdowns, distance, or just convenience.
Many people say that VR adult movies are fantastic, and one could find that non-VR ones are not even close.
If it isn't tethered to a computer with a 3090, is it really VR? You won't get motion sickness with a index running at 144hz
I’ve actively been encouraging friends and family to try it and my experience is that motion sickness hits about 18/20 people within 30 minutes of play, depending on the game.
However I’ve noticed that my friends who have played a lot of computer games (in particular fast paced FPS) tend to fare better, and also that the sickness goes away with practice. I used to get it too but now I can beatsaber for literal hours without discomfort.
The headset does make a difference, (my friend’s Vive was particularly bad), but it’s not as great as you suggest. Time and practice are far more important.
Input has been the main constraint, but using the Logitech K830, which was specifically integrated by Oculus as a proof of concept, with the latest passthrough hand positioning in Infinite Office mode -- there is no difference to typing at a normal keyboard anymore. Its amazing. The Oculus Web Browser is pushing what you can do with things like PWAs (Miro has one) and support for SaaS tooling like Office 360 for example - so you dont even need the PC.
The experience of working in VR is definitely rough arround the edges today but my expectation is this will improve to the point where XR (VR/AR) is just as normal as sitting at a desk today -- but with the additional benefits of a 3D space made open to imaginative enhancement.
So, yeah, it's a style people here don't like. It doesn't quite get the bit-per-sentence ratio of, say, a phone book. But there's more effort in there than meets the (strained) eye.
https://blog.immersed.team/working-from-orbit-39bf95a6d385
And when it hit HN
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28678041
For me, the Vive is too heavy for this. I have not personally used a Quest 2 more than 5 mins (not willing to use an FB account) but it is arguably slightly more comfortable than a Vive headset (not saying it's comfortable enough, only that it's less uncomfortable than a Vive)
The idea of squinting at a text editor using a fraction of a VR screen for hours at a time feels insane to me.
My current setup is multiple 4k monitors in pixel-doubled resolution. It is relatively easy on the eyes and not too expensive ($300ish/monitor + VESA). I am working remotely and when I travel I have to work from my laptop and I would love to have a headset to replicate the multiple monitor experience on the go.
I have been hoping for this since the HTC Vive.
HTC Vive - simply too low resolution. Screen door effect visible. Also software such as Immersed was not available.
Replicating this 1000+ hour setup went as follows:
1. Buy a Quest 2. Meta has its issues however I have an account so no real issues on the Meta side other than Meta itself. Resolution is clearly superior to HTC Vive, with no obvious screen door effect. As the original poster mentions - the strap that comes with the Quest is terrible, and you will have to spend at least $100 to get the Quest to the point where it can be used continuously for long periods without the device itself being a distraction.
2. Immersed - Major issues with this software. Thankfully they give you a "pro" trial so you can try this without paying. Main issue was painlessly delivering what I wanted: screen closed multiple 4k-equivalent virtual monitors. On mac (preferred), there were issues with HDMI spoofing that I probably could have fixed with dongles had I desired. On windows the situation was better, but still finicky with resolution setting and seamless disconnect/reconnection. Would like to see more focus on integrating better resolution control as I imagine most users of the program want to use it as I do - without regard to attached monitors.
Turns out I should have done my homework before hand because a little math demonstrates why I was fooling myself that I could work with this setup:
via https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/99s1yr/what...
Measure the width of the monitor with which you usually work, call it W. Then measure the distance your eyes are typically away from it while you work, and call it D. Finally, determine the horizontal pixel count of your monitor when you work (like 1920 for a full HD monitor), and call it HPC. The resolution of your monitor in the center is then R = 1 / (2 * tan-1 ((W / HPC) / (2 * D))), in pixels/°. This resolution is the one you want. (For example, my resolution is 66 pixels/°, given I have a 28" diagonal 4k monitor that I view from 24" away.) The OG Vive's resolution is 11.4 pixels/° in the center. That's the resolution you have. To reach my monitor's resolution, the Vive's pixel count would have to be six times higher, or 6480x7200 per eye, everything else being the same.
Quest 2 resolution per eye is 1832 x 1920.
There is no way I could enjoy doing my job which consists of reading all day with such poor resolution, and I think we are a ways away from a solution.
Foveated rendering is a possible solution, however I don't see an easy answer.
I came to the conclusion that this was THE issue holding VR productivity (and gaming) back, after a few weeks of using the Quest 2. The passthrough feature they have is like a v0.1 of what's that's really needed for this tech to excel. Haptic gloves look like they might nudge things along a little bit more, but ultimately being able to see your actual keyboard and mouse projected into the environment is essential if you're going to come off the controllers and start using high-productivity inputs.
What would really be needed for this is a digital twin of your input devices, and some kind of simple tracker you can physically attach to them so that the VR headset can overlay into VR like it does with the handsets.
Yes =] ptom describes what this is like here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28678041
I tried with the Samsung Odyssey+ a few times. I used the counterbalance and extra support kit (it is a bit heavy), and it's quite nice with those. Still some pressure on my nose bridge, so have a bit of adjustment to do. Touch typing takes a bit of getting used to, but it works well enough. I already am using a trackball 100% of the time (I know, I'm a monster), so I don't have to worry about knocking stuff over with my mouse.
The real problem is that since I have a WMR headset, none of the really good virtual desktop softwares people use are available. The ones that are, aren't that great, for various reasons.
Then there's the issue that my laptop is a surface book 2. Powerful enough to run VR smoothly, but while the system fan is blasting at full volume the whole time. Also it seems to slowly drain the battery. So it's really not an all day affair regardless of usability.
I don't want to use my gaming PC (which is more than up to the task), because then I have to basically let my company own it, in order to meet the security policy requirements. I'm concerned if I do that, that I'll never really get all the bits off again short of a reimage. I haven't ruled out buying a dedicated HDD to swap out (I have a hot swap bay).
I did see the promise of it though. Input was not a problem as I'm able to touch type without looking at the keyboard. Being able to position additional screens all around your main screen was amazing -- with physical monitors I only have space for two.
Using a VR-ready machine to directly run the headset and some headless monitor emulator adapters might result in a better experience right now. With this kind of setup you can use other VR desktop software, e.g. Virtual Desktop.
Think about all the space multiple monitor desk environments takes up in the real, and how little space a VR replacement takes up via the virtual.
The other cool thing is the separation between home and work. Once the headset is off, work is done. That separation is actually very important, and ironically it's actually the worst thing about playing in VR while being the best thing about working in VR.
Financially, we're possibly talking up to a $100K if you think about how much a fully separated and furnished home office can cost. That's a real value prop.
The phone was an input downgrade from keyboard+mouse and VR as an even more severe downgrade.
Anyone talking about VR, especially in the context of work, without mentioning the glaring lack of input bandwidth is engaging in marketing.
[0] https://support.oculus.com/articles/horizon/getting-started-...
Even the original Vive is pretty accurate. Are you just complaining about the fact its not a keyboard? You just won't be able to type on anything better than a keyboard. You can always just use a VR tracked keyboard and have it show up in VR if that's what you need.
That said, whats nice about VR is the spacial and non-digital input you can get from that a mouse and keyboard do not do as well.
If your job is modeling or level building for a game it can be pretty neat. Not sure I'd try to program in it just yet.
- lower screen resolution to make HN readable
- your IRL GF will react differently to you because she can’t see your facial expressions
Note: n += 1
I just don't know if it is really possible to improve on this setup enough. Monitor size is not an issue at this point. Input is not an issue.
If work gave me a VR headset only I would just bring in my own monitor and keyboard.
That being said, by being a skeptic, I think I'm right more than I'm wrong. For every "internet" that I've called wrong, there's a "3D TV" or "Segway" that's I've correctly predicted would fail to live up to the hype.
These revolutionary technologies that shift our daily life come along far less often than people like to predict. Even if the technology is superior to what most people are using there are still a ton of factors standing in the way of mass adoption (see VHS vs Betamax). You know that Tolstoy quote "All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way", I kind of feel that way about new technologies. There are a million reasons technologies can fail to catch on, but they have to walk a very narrow path to succeed.
So, as one of those type of people you're asking about, I guess my reaction would be "oh well". I'm right more than I'm wrong and the downsides of a false negative and less than the downsides of a false positive. If thought the internet was a load of crap and I hop on the band wagon a few years late, oh well, it's not like I've missed out on it for ever. On the other hand, if I bought a 3D TV when they first came out, I'd now be stuck with an overpriced TV with a feature that has almost no support.
As a consumer, yes. As a founder, there is an opportunity cost to not founding the next Googlebook.
I notice this bullshit narrative this past year for every over hyped technology.
"X is just like when everyone was dismissing the internet" even though that never happened.
In the early days of the internet, people were either excited by it or had no clue what you were talking about. No one would ever say they would just stick with the library. Just total nonsense.
Someone saying this is probably too young to have used a card catalog at the library.
But it was neat using my desktop through VR although I did it briefly. I could not see myself working in it. It took me a while to get used to motion (not get sick) but that's not as problematic when you're looking at fixed screens/sometimes moving your head.
Edit: will add I work on a 34" curved monitor so space isn't a concern for me
Anyone used a headset for 8 hours a day for multiple days in a row?
The problem is there is no reason to charge a monthly subscription for me to have virtual monitors in VR. And co-working in VR with strangers is creepy as fuck so the other premium product has no pull.
This is an article on HN specifically because it's a new application of technology, another alternative working style.
Go outside, talk to a stranger (through a mask), walk in the park. These options aren't removed by the addition of this technology to the world.
The willingness of the strangers to engage may be though.
Either way, I find talking to strangers about as engaging and meaningless as talking to people online.
I've consumed too much sci-fi to actually think that'll be what actually happens.
By all means, I see your point and agree in general. But VR is not different from sitting at a desk.
I think we already live in some, not so healthy, virtual realities: online echo chambers, search engine/filter bubbles, ideologies perceived as normality.
In more extreme cases, anti-science and anti-intellectualist movements and so on.
But this is not a tech problem.
> nature
You can still go out for a hike. VR is not different from being inside a building.
> fresh air
No snark intended: you can open a window or have a heat exchanger with filters that is better for your health, comfort and energy usage.
VR may actually be part of that solution, though in a very dystopic fashion - reducing energy consumption of individuals could maybe be more tolerable if everyone is jacked in.
Then again, that song also said, "there is no more new frontier," seemingly ignoring space, so maybe Don Henley was just being overly pessimistic.
There are open, growing, learning upward ascending futures and closed, repetitive, conflict-ridden downward spiral futures. Some kind of consciousness uploading without expansive contact with the real universe is the latter.
DonHopkins 45 days ago | parent | context | favorite | on: I bought those AR cycling glasses that were on HN ...
Why not simply do what Magic Leap does, and blatantly fake the camera images and games that don't really and couldn't possibly exist?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28838500
And then rip off other people's work without giving them any credit in your patents.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28838443
And then sexually harass the very women you employed to solve the endemic "pink/blue problem" and fix the nepotistic sexist bro culture, and rebuff and ignore her advice, and pay her off to keep their mouth shut when she sues you for sexual harassment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28838421
And then give the entire AR industry a bad name by not delivering on your outrageously hyped promises, while burning through BILLIONS of dollars and fucking over your foolishly gullible investors.
I don't know how the US is.
The feelings you had with nausea is common for people, and it's possible to get over it if you are methodical. Lots of people I knew couldn't do more than 1 minute when they started, and slowly worked up to it. Trick is to stop the moment your stomach feels unsettled, and try it every day. Don't push though it.
But I think that technology is still way far off.
I think we see that as "just fine" partly because boating, driving, and flying are seen as "normal". But maybe it's also because if none of those are normally happening that often, so taking the drug is a special event, in some sense. VR might be an everyday thing, so that starts looking pretty dicey - who wants to take a pill before every gaming session, forever I wonder if folks that are trying to gain their "sea legs" could take it as a stop-gap until their body adjusts. I certainly saw this with folks that had extreme sea sickness when they first joined the Navy.
Micro-blogging is what Twitter-like platforms are typically called: a picture, a move, a small paragraph, do that 4 or 5 times a day, you have something that looks like a blog yes.
So yes, right now I would not see me putting on a VR gear just to inflige myself the pain that is Amazon, but if you tell me that in 10 years 20% of the online shopping is actually done in-game in a VR environment, I would not be too quick to say it is impossible.
The experts traditional media typically find are frequently kind of "soft" experts that are strong in charisma more than expertise. But that's just my informal take on it.
(And I know you said "blogger", but I think it's fair to include podcasters and YT in that category given that's more likely where you'd find a former blogger these days.)
https://smile.amazon.com/Interface-Replacement-Accessories-B...
I mean... yeah, that's my point. When we talk about most of these things we're trying to predict how the world will look years or even decades into the future. Even if you know the technology inside and out, there's too many unknowns to really make an accurate prediction.
If I asked you whether it was going to rain in the desert tomorrow, you could find a bunch of information and come back to me with a fairly informed guess that would probably be right. If I asked you whether it was going to rain in the desert on Jan 1 2030 what would be your answer. You don't know and I'd argue that you can't know, so the best thing you can do is play the probabilities and say "no, it will not rain".
I got sold by that blog post some months back but it’s still just a novelty — that dude’s tolerance for suffering to put in 40-50 hours is unreal (or sponsored).
https://uploadvr.com/best-wireless-bluetooth-keyboards-for-m...
Which, pre-Internet, ideas versus physicalities could sound somewhat utopian, except we now know that crazy and outrage-inducing ideas dominate the discourse, and the metaverse does not and cannot offer anything to stem that tide and is likely to 'deepen the rut'.
I wonder, if VR ever gets good enough, is there a future like the dystopian sci-fi stories where everyone stays strapped to their Facebook-mediated realities and nobody goes outside to walk in the park anymore? How good does VR have to get?
Even before the pandemic our local playgrounds were empty (kids are all staying home playing Roblox and Minecraft).
I'm a misanthrope from way back, but I've found (over the many years grinding my way out of misanthropy) that the more I open myself up in a conversation, the more meaningful the interaction overall; the more it encourages the other person to do the same.
I don't mean this personally critically, but:
> I find talking to strangers about as engaging and meaningless as talking to people online
Says more about you than it does anything else.
Air Link solves this, but boy is it annoying in practice. Setting down the headset always pushes the floor just out of reach when you come back to it. Which is frustrating in a game that makes you pick things up, like shooters.
I've had some good fun playing it.
Also, I'd argue that most business aren't founded on some bleeding edge technology. It's a false dichotomy to think that all successful founders embrace new technology and all skeptical founders are doomed to fail. There are plenty of businesses built around doing the same thing everyone else is doing, just faster, easier, or cheaper. Sure a skeptical founder may not create the next Googlebook, but I don't think that really matters.
But I don't think that includes keyboard passthrough only. So it would be trivial to make a fully passtrhough app but not one where only the keyboard is visible. Unless you make that static and ensure that the keyboard does not move
It does for certain keyboard models[0]. You can bring them into VR without bringing anything else, and their position will be tracked in VR even if you move them.
0. https://support.oculus.com/articles/horizon/getting-started-...
But also I switched to Vim and TMux so that I would need to take my hands off of the keyboard less.
1. Yes, you have no vision of the keyboard, so learning to touch type is essential
2. Lying down position, right hand on laptop keyboard, left hand on external USB keyboard (two-handed touch typing).
They've committed wholly and solely to pursuing this solution.
I wrapped a couple portable batteries (they're dense) in a bag and tied it to the back of my basic strap, and I don't even need to tighten the strap anymore, the weight is mostly pushing down on the top of my head now. It's an incredible difference, to the point that I'm offended they don't include a counterweight by default. From memory my counterweight is around 350g.
Maybe you can try it out by loosening the strap and using a finger to tug down on the back of the strap, and see if it balances on the top of your head and feels good.
Maybe a dumb question, but how would I even make a counterweight for it? I guess I’ll try tying random things to the back of the headset..
This is the "reverse" approach to AR. With Hololens etc. you see the real world and they overlay the screen over your real world. With the Quest, it's called passthrough, and you see everything on screens but real-time video from the real world is mixed in.
Consumer VR of course involves a disconnect between what you feel and what you see, and that makes people sick when it gets bad enough, but most people can enjoy at least some VR experiences.
By my account, I've managed to spend days of real time within Subnautica exclusively in VR.
If you get sick, what I'd recommend is something like Beat Saber, where you're never moved without physically moving in reality. If that doesn't work something is definitely wrong. The next easiest experience is cockpit simulations. I'd say Subnautica comes somewhere after that, being in the intermediate range.
The worst I've personally tried is Half Life 2 in VR (as in, HL2 just rendering to VR without further changes), and that is indeed not a nice experience because the FPS mechanics just don't work in VR. The acceleration, the need to constantly rotate your view without moving in reality, the need to make very quick and frequent changes in direction are all very hard to tolerate.
> I get the physical games like table tenis and beat saber, but how is this not a fad?
Who cares? What matters if it's fun or not. I enjoy the exercise, I don't do it to fit in. And it's surprisingly good exercise. I lift weights, and Racket NX still is capable of making my arms sore. Then I suppose I have a rather violent play style.
Also I love VR and have no major issues with games like Beat Saber, Thrill of Fight, The Climb, Eleven, The Plank Experience, etc.
Whenever there is something that might cause nausea like falling, I just close my eyes.
However If you enjoy it, that’s all that matters.
I have almost 3,000 hours clocked in VR according to Steam and there are still a few games that can make me nauseous (mostly those with poor locomotion and/or bad frame drops). Weirdly enough, chewing gum seems to help a ton; in some games, I feel like I'm less nauseous next time I play, too. Not sure how scientific this is, but friends say the trick generally works for them too.
Quest 2 sales over the last few weeks would hint this might not be a fad, though.
I was just trying to say that different people have different amounts of tolerance for VR, and it could just be that your isn't that high for whatever reason. Nothing wrong with that, but that it doesn't work for you specifically doesn't really mean much for VR as a technology.
bruh, have you ever played a Nintendo Switch? It's essentially the culmination of Wii-era motion controls + the WiiU's console/handheld split.
Every fucking shooting game on the Switch is nowadays released with motion controls (for gyro aiming). The joycons are basically sleeker Wiimotes with better motion sensors. Saying that the Wii's revolution was just a passing fad for Nintendo is hella disingenuous.
It’s not the same as the wiimotes or the physical game gimmick ala wii sports. The physical movement was a big part, similar to what VR is trying to do now.
I think in generally the switch is awesome but it’s closer to a traditional console GBA or DS. Nintendo threw away what was a gimmick and what parts were making good gaming experiences.
Other games use Switch controllers in a very similar way to wiimotes.
I think what has happened is the platform has opened up to more non-Nintendo games and diluted the focus on movement that was in a lot of games for Wii/WiiU. Motion control has gone mainstream too, all controllers have tilt sensitivity, so that doesn't seem as big a thing. Maybe your right that people choose to use stick controls in preference to macro-movements of controllers.
I suffered with motion sickness too it gets better over time.
I will say I'm not a generally all-around likeable cool guy either so you do have to vibe/give something (be interesting). Ultimately as far as making friends or something... that's hard. I'll get invited to discord servers and then it dies off in a few days.
There is one thing I have to try still Fo4 VR.
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1047640/Helios/ [1] https://www.helios-vr.com/
I will give it a shot, the game seems too cheap (cost to own) just my opinion.
Hand tracking (via controllers or cameras) isn’t comparable at all to the Nintendo waggle/point/swing tech.
For me the problem is that the resolution was always lacking. With my glasses I have "better than 20/20"-vision (visus of 1.2-1.6, 120-160 visual acuity). I have not tried the newer HMDs, but with the older Oculus Rift and HTC Vive I could clearly see the individual pixels distracting me from the experience.
But you realize this is a you problem, right? Outside the handful of people who get motion sick with VR, the tech is rock solid. Everyone who tries an Index is blown away by how immersive the experience is.
> VR chat is about as interesting as second life, and any metaverse that follows will follow the same path.
You couldn't be more wrong. There's a reason Facebook rebranded to Meta, and Microsoft just purchased Activision with designs on their own metaverse. Big players are putting serious money behind this, and I like those odds.
There is a very small minority of people who put on the headset and immediately can't stand it. I've seen maybe 2 or 3 people in the last 6 years, so it's definitely less than 1%.
Depending on content, I've seen about 50% of women and 25% of men experience mild discomfort after using the headset for about 30 minutes. Studies on simulator sickness include that in "feeling sick".
My current project is not able to use every single sim-sickness mitigating strategy available, due to the sort of source data we're using (a lot of flat, 360 imagery in a multi-user tour-like scenario), but even there, we've only had 1 out of 100 people express actual feelings of nausea after using the headset. If people report any discomfort at all, it's on their first time, after they've not heeded our warning to limit their first interaction to 30 minutes, and then they only mention feeling a little light headed.
People report feelings of nausea after playing 1st-person shooter video games on large screen monitors or watching shaky action movies at movie theaters. This is not a problem unique to VR.
I don’t think we will be seeing competitive esports in VR, as we don’t see competitive Wii Bowling as an esport.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/967490/Microsoft_Maquette...
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/altsp...
There is a problem though with a lot of crap games not implemented with comfort in mind and badly optimised. Stuttering will get you feel bad fast.
OTOH, considering how many people keep having motion sickness in cars (especially when not driving and reading and whatnot), perhaps for some people the issues remain.
If this was 2016-2019 I'd agree it was very touch and go in terms of where it was going. But the investment and interest building around VR now has that here-to-stay feel to it - at least on my sometimes accurate vibe-ometer.
Now we gotta take anti nausea drugs just to play games? Is that reasonable? I don’t think so.
For what it's worth, I don't think this is unique to VR...I used to be a big FPS player back in the day (Quake 1-3 mostly), and I had a friend that got motion sick playing Quake 3, so he couldn't play in our matches. It's certainly the case that I've heard more reports of motion sickness in VR, though.
I personally find the best Beat Saber levels are 90 degree and 360 degree, where you have to spin your body around and which wouldn't be possible in such cabinets.
Also the immersion of VR is where it's at - the fact that you feel like a Jedi with your light sabers and you're cutting blocks in time with the music, while the controllers vibrate as well giving you feedback that makes your brain believe you are a Jedi.
I googled them and yeah they have an official arcade version, which are basically a HTC Vive headset with the Vive controllers. Apparently according to several reviews, the tracking is horrible, the headset can't be tightened properly, and the choice of songs is miserable, and they don't seem to support 90 or 360 degrees. And yes of course you are right, you could just render it on a screen, in fact, if you are playing PC VR, it always renders to your monitor anyways. When I have friends over, I always have the view mirrored to a projector for "party mode" - just like in the arcade - which allows spectators to enjoy the show as well.
The real question is, have you played it in VR? You don't "need" VR to play but it's absolutely a different experience than just looking at a screen, for the reasons I stated in my previous comment. It's not even comparable when your brain _believes_ (to some degree) that you are actually inside the Beat Saber world.