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What it's like to spend 40-50 hours in VR every week

• laurieg 5y ago
  I really like seeing this detailed breakdown of VR for work. I would like to use VR more but even an hour with the Oculus Quest leaves me feeling quite tired. The physical weight of the device and the not quite perfect alignment of the lenses are the likely causes. The authors points about VR not having the limitations of real life are spot on. Tools like Workrooms are just a stepping stone to more and varied VR experiences.
• dogman144 5y ago
  Wait till psychologically -informed VR malware develops. VR is the new frontier in more ways than one.
  • hprotagonist 5y ago
    if this was a virus you’d be dead now fortunately it’s not
    • dogman144 5y ago
      Not sure what you’re implying! End of the day, it’s tech. Tech platforms will have security vulns and thread models. Interested to see what that looks like for VR. Pretending it won’t happen is sticking ones head in the sand.
      • feteru 5y ago
        Reference to the book Snowcrash! It’s a fun book
        • dogman144 5y ago
          Ahhh the next Stephenson I have on the docket
• bowmessage 5y ago
  I really want to try out this setup, so I can work outside without having the sun blind me or otherwise obscure the laptop screen. This post looks like it has everything I need to get started. Thanks OP.
  • bostonsre 5y ago
    I don't think oculus works well outdoors.
    • caslon 5y ago
      It's... complicated. It works, but there's a near-certain chance you'll eventually burn the display through the lenses if you do it wrong. It's the same reason you shouldn't leave any VR headset laying beside a window without a cover. The tracking is fine, but you'll probably end up re-buying a headset on a monthly basis if doing it.
      • bowmessage 5y ago
        Ah. So the issue is catching stray sunlight through one of the lenses and having it focus onto / burn the display? If that's avoided, are there other issues to worry about?
        • caslon 5y ago
          Some users have reported that the tracking cameras have gotten white dots in them from sun exposure, but the units that I've seen generally have a few dots in the periphery straight from the factory, so I think they're just not noticing until after. You rarely use the passthrough view, anyway, so it isn't a huge deal, generally. Other than that, I can't really think of anything off the top of my head. I know someone who uses one on a trampoline in the heat of the summer to cheat in a video game; Q2s are surprisingly durable little things. Just don't stare at the sun, I guess.
      • Ancapistani 5y ago
        FWIW, I fly FPV and am aware of this issue but haven’t had a problem with it. I probably average about 4-6 hours per week outdoors in sunlight with my Skyzone 04X. It has dual OLED screens and a very similar (if smaller) form factor to my Quest 2. I’d say it’s more a “be aware of this and be careful” problem than a “you’re going to break it once a month” problem.
• caslon 5y ago
  The most critical thing in this piece: Get a better head-strap! He mentions it in passing in the article, but 90% of the strain from wearing the Quest 2 for extended periods of time can be traced to the garbage default head-strap. You want something that properly balances the headset. If you want, you can even get one that gives you a bit of extra charge, too. There are plenty of options. Something critical that doesn't seem to be mentioned: You can manually alter the resolution of Quest apps; if an app is looking blurry it's almost always because it's set to a lower resolution than native. This is a problem with a lot of "productivity" VR apps, and the main reason why I ended up working on my own for a few months. The standard 90hz is comfortable for me for prolonged periods of time, but if you feel nauseous, you can turn it up to 120hz, though some applications will require manual adjustment. The Quest 2 is really cheap and offers a lot of different ways to do work; you can pretty much throw it in a bag with a USB-C mouse and keyboard (and splitter, so you could technically also bring along a USB-A mouse and keyboard just fine if you bought a 2A-to-C splitter) or a bluetooth keyboard and mouse combo and you've got a full computing environment anywhere, assuming you set it up beforehand. And if you bring around a laptop or other small form-factor PC while traveling, it works really well to augment those, too. Literal years ago Palmer Luckey talked about using a Go, a significantly less powerful headset, as a replacement for any monitor setups while traveling with his computer. We're finally at a point where you can do the same on any operating system, and it's honestly a really good experience.
  • leovander 5y ago
    Not sure why he got rid of the picture of it, but he actually put a computer inside his HHKB. I was waiting for him to do a write up. https://palmerluckey.com/oculus-goblack-how-to-make-your-oculus-go-better/ https://palmerluckey.com/oculus-goblack-how-to-make-your-ocu... You can see that on wayback machine. https://web.archive.org/web/20190325121641/http://palmerluckey.com/oculus-goblack-how-to-make-your-oculus-go-better/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190325121641/http://palmerluck...
    • caslon 5y ago
      Yeah! I double-checked that post while writing my comment and noticed the picture was gone, myself. I'm guessing it's because he was using the Facebook CDN.
• azinman2 5y ago
  Having a screen blast your eyes 2” away is only ok for so long. Perhaps some can handle this but I cannot possibly imagine this is good for most people at scale. There’s already concern about eye problems due to cell phones in youth, and that’s at least 6-10” away from one’s eyes and with other light coming in. The resolution isn’t there yet compared to my 4-5k monitors for text, but clearly will get there in the future. For now I don’t see what advantages it really gives me compared to a normal monitor in the real world, especially if I’m just coding. The exception would be if I were on something like an airplane — being able to look forward is a big deal here. Personally it makes me feel a bit nauseous, particularly if there’s any movement (I get motion sick easily in VR but not normally in real life). My understanding is that about 20% of the population is like this and nothing is known to prevent it. There are cool things about VR that I really enjoy (particular things like Google street view) but I think it’s way over hyped, and possibly dystopian depending on what people are leaving behind.
  • jiggawatts 5y ago
    The physical distance from the glass to your eyeball is irrelevant. What is relevant is the distance to the focal plane. For typical screens, the focal distance and the screen distance are obviously identical. For VR systems, they're very different. The last one I tried had a focal plane that was about 4 meters away. This makes it better than typical screens! However, the low resolution is an issue. I've found that I get sore eyes if I use a low-resolutions screen. This is because my eyes try to focus, fail, and keep "hunting" by changing focus back and forth looking for the point of sharp focus -- but it's never there. This is why all of my displays are 4K. For VR because of the large field of view, the required resolution is at least 8K per eye or equivalent. Ideally a "fake" 16K using foveated rendering.
    • Retric 5y ago
      Focal distance is only part of the issue another is is consistency. Using a headset for 8 hours means your eyes are constantly focusing within a very narrow range of distances for 8 hours which isn’t good. Your brain might be somewhat fooled when looking at a wall vs a VR window, but your eyes don’t change focal distance. Similarly VR has a narrow range of possible brightness, this is less of an issue but can also cause problems long term.
• yodon 5y ago
  I suspect a lot of us would be working this way (VR Quest headsets simulating a large multi-monitor workstation) by now if the pandemic hadn't forced the world to be on zoom calls 40 hours/week.
  • ptom 5y ago
    OP here - fortunately my meeting load isn't as absurd as some place, since this company figured out "remote work" long before COVID forced it upon people who don't know how to go 10 minutes without a meeting. I join most of my Hangouts and Zooms as an avatar, using a virtual webcam from within the software. If it's personal, sensitive, or requires more professionalism, I'll still "resurface" and use a regular webcam - but it's a special occasion.
• MarcelOlsz 5y ago
  As someone who has spent quite some time tuning their VR setup for iRacing, I highly recommend the Pimax headsets (Pimax 8K X has dual native 4K). Best resolution and FOV, decently priced, light software, and surprisingly great support. I 3d printed some supports to mount a vive headstrap to it, and removed the vive headphones in favor of Airpods. 200 degrees of FOV @ 75hz would be incredible for work with a far superior viewport than OP. This blog post makes me want to give this a try.
  • R0b0t1 5y ago
    What do you mean by light software? Are they not just dumb displays?
    • CobrastanJorji 5y ago
      I haven't used one of those, but I can guess what he means based on owning an Oculus Rift 2. Let's say I want to start playing a Steam game with my headset. To do so, I must install the Oculus software, sign in with my Facebook account (it's a brick with a headstrap without an account), then find the setting that enables "non-Oculus software" to operate the Rift display. Using the Rift always starts the Oculus software. There are shortcuts on the headset that throw you into Oculus's own environment for buying and launching games.
    • caslon 5y ago
      There's no real avenue for a "dumb display" to work as a 6DoF headset, and even back in the DK1, 3DoF days you'd still end up needing some software (mainly drivers) for things like the gyroscope.
      • soylentcola 5y ago
        If I remember correctly, weren't the early ones at least more akin to this? I have a DK2 sitting in a box somewhere. Ordered it to mess around with and it was cheap enough that I could risk not getting a ton of use out of it. I seem to remember that it was mostly done on the computer: IR emitters on the headset for tracking with a sensor/camera to receive the positional data to be processed by the computer. Then the generated output of the "camera" was sent to the display sitting behind the lenses. There was definitely processing going on and you did need drivers/software. I'd imagine you could still use it with not much more than some lightweight drivers/software to process the positional data and render the appropriately distorted output.
• smoldesu 5y ago
  Meh, what the hell. Immersed has a Linux build, I've got a spare headset, I decided to give it a whirl. While I'm a little disappointed by how little input the controller affords me, I'm impressed with how well it works! You've got my attention, but not my 40-50 hours a week... Yet. Edit/disclosure: corrected a typo I made while in VR
• sp332 5y ago
  Elevr had some great research and blog posts about this kind of thing, but they ran out of funding and even the website is gone now. Here are a couple of my favorites: The Office of the Future https://web.archive.org/web/20190816013625/http://elevr.com/the-office-of-the-future/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190816013625/http://elevr.com/... The Three Scales https://web.archive.org/web/20190830025347/http://elevr.com/the-three-scales/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190830025347/http://elevr.com/...
  • ptom 5y ago
    Author of the article here - these are really cool, thanks for sharing! I'd not seen these at the time, they were definitely working on good stuff - the technology is taking a while to catch up.
• alfiedotwtf 5y ago
  I've had to do a lot of reading for work and I have to say, the Quest 2 has saved me from a lot of migraines, because I can recline while reading so as not put strain on my neck. I'm not a Zuck fan, but damn the Quest 2 is a game changer for me.
  • spiderice 5y ago
    How can you stand reading on something with as low resolution as the Quest 2? That sounds painful.
    • alfiedotwtf 5y ago
      The in-built browser with large font, and also Adobe Acrobat side-loaded works really well. I'd rather have larger text than usual if it can save me from a sore neck.
  • ptom 5y ago
    OP here - I suffer from migraines as well; being able to work in a black void with minimal interface has helped me be functional in situations I'd otherwise just have to stay in bed, triptans notwithstanding. I didn't want to bring it up in the article though because I didn't want to make false promises or urge migraine sufferers to adopt it - in the early days of VR, the bad software IPD management in the DK2 would actually trigger migraines for me. As an accessibility tool I'm delighted to see it working for another migraine sufferer though.
    • alfiedotwtf 5y ago
      Hey! Yes, that's why I thought to bring it up in the comments here, just in case there were other people in the same boat. I'm glad it worked for you. I've been wanting to do more to get towards your setup i.e coding in VR, but just haven't had the time. That's why I got excited when I saw your post, because now I've got the blueprints :) If I ever move more into this, I'll blog about it and credit your post. Thanks again!
• Diggsey 5y ago
  Maybe things have improved a lot since I last tried VR, but the combination of low effective resolution and distortion from the fresnel lens (which also produces a kind of discretization effect similar to visible pixels) meant it was very unsuited to productivity tasks. (Gaming was amazing though...)
  • ptom 5y ago
    Hi! OP here - the discretization effect is also known as the "screen door" effect. That can be even worse when the VR is trying to provide a picture of a picture. It's improved a little bit, but still takes a lot of tweaking to maximize readability. I'd say it's "maybe passable" for most users without a lot of patience to do that tuning and compromise in favor of density over beauty. So it might not be there for you yet - but it's moving in the right direction.
  • erikbye 5y ago
    Not to mention the terrible lens glare.
• jjcm 5y ago
  This is a great breakdown of the early state of VR productivity. There are still a few key items that are barriers for me personally: 1. Eye and face tracking. The author mentions lip syncing and hand tracking. That goes a long way, but it doesn't recreate the video experience to me. There are a few vtubers out there that are doing some seriously impressive tracking, but it requires tons of special equipment at the moment. Once this gets resolved in a consumer model, I think things will really shine for virtual presence. 2. Lighter weight headsets. For longer sessions, a custom headstrap helps a ton, but even still lighter headsets will go a long ways to helping here. 3. Better lenses and better displays. The lower res means you're really forced to work at huge virtual screen sizes, as the author mentions. While this is the least needed item in this list for basic productivity, the screen door effect definitely creates a barrier some of the time. I highly anticipate that we'll see a sizable portion of the population change over to VR for productivity within ten years. It has huge potential, especially with the remote work environment many are in these days. I would love to be able to feel the presence of people around me again, while still not having a commute or the risks associated with being physically in the same room.
  • ekianjo 5y ago
    > change over to VR for productivity within ten years Curious, but why not AR for productivity rather than VR? Both could work, and AR is less invasive.
    • Groxx 5y ago
      AR has a lot further to go on a fundamental technology level to reach "usable without uncomfortably dim surroundings". VR already works. E.g. the very best AR stuff you can buy right now is still moderately-bright glowing pixels on top of whatever you're currently looking towards. So if you have too much contrast in the background, or actual light sources, they show right through and ruin much of the visual clarity. As much as I like AR as a concept, it's much further from "ready". It has all the complexities of VR, plus real-world tracking, plus visual overlay - it'll necessarily trail VR until those latter two are "good enough", and they certainly are not at the moment.
• drumttocs8 5y ago
  "...experience less eye strain than I ever did with a bunch of desk-bound LCDs." Is this really true? As someone who has never used VR, I assumed that an issue would be higher eye strain.
  • ptom 5y ago
    Hi! OP here. The screens are physically close, but the lenses give it an effective focal range of about 1.3m / 4'2", further than most monitors are placed. It feels a lot further, though. As other posters have shared, the bigger issue is that the focal plane is static, at least until the varifocal technology matures. Getting good eye exercise outside of VR is important, just like it is with all-day computer work. Cheers!
    • titzer 5y ago
      Exposure to UV light (not blue light) is also really important for eyes. Get good eye exercise outside...literally. Outdoors.
• foxes 5y ago
  There is a part of me that is disturbed. I like working at my big wooden table overlooking the city, nice natural light filtering in, the ability to detach from the screen and pace around to take a break. VR for work seems like a trap, you'll be consumed, ensnared by something that demands all your attention. You won't know freedom. Maybe this is the current state of headsets, clunky, like a chain with cables, bad tracking and screens. Maybe if it was seamless and I could slip it on as needed, like a pair of sunglasses. The other part of me is that having a giant whiteboard and endless space seems cool. Imagine if the entire virtual space had powerful programming environments, some more powerful version of Mathematica, I could gesture and run a some powerful. Maybe that would be worth it, but it doesn't seem there yet.
  • namlem 5y ago
    It depends on how you design the VR office. I've found myself staring aimlessly into the distance in Microsoft's WMR Cliff House a number of times.
  • keville 5y ago
    > my big wooden table overlooking the city, nice natural light filtering in, the ability to detach from the screen and pace around to take a break Nice flex, but not everyone has this kind of setup.
    • magpi3 5y ago
      A decent size table, natural lighting and room to pace is a flex?
      • jachee 5y ago
        You skipped "overlooking the city".
        • burntoutfire 5y ago
          In post-communist countries in Europe millions of people live in soviet-style tall residential buildings (typically 7-20 stories high), a nice view of the city is not a luxury there (like I guess it is in the US?).
• revicon 5y ago
  For me, the problem is I wear glasses and I have no interest in switching to contact lenses. I’ve never found a car headset that worked with glasses well
  • banana_giraffe 5y ago
    I haven't looked into it for other devices, but it is technically possible with the Quest to get custom lenses for the Quest. Not from FB, but other companies have filled this space. I've gotten rid of my unit, but back when I had it, custom lenses were the best thing I did for comfort. I can't wear glasses close to my eyes, and was just generally miserable with the glasses squished in an already small space. The custom lenses solved all of that.
  • kovek 5y ago
    > If you need corrective lenses, get lens inserts: it’s superior to wearing glasses, and I find it better than wearing contacts. For horrible astigmatic myopia like mine (-7.5), it was cheaper than most pairs of glasses I’ve had, and a totally reasonable expense since I use them all day for work.
  • caslon 5y ago
    There's actually a mod for this! $10 prescription wireframe glasses, pop the lenses out, 3D-print a facial interface for it. There's a guide for it somewhere.
  • bryceacc 5y ago
    my glasses fit in the hp reverb g2, very snug though, i can get you caliper measurements if you care
  • arc-in-space 5y ago
    No problem at all. I use these: https://vroptician.com/ https://vroptician.com/ Custom lenses, appropriate fitting for every major headset. The inserts don't seem to limit the field of view at all, and they even serve as an extra layer of protection against scratching the headset's particularly delicate lenses.
• georgewsinger 5y ago
  This is such a great post, and really covers the spiritual aspects of what it's like to work for prolonged periods in VR. Glad to see Immersed getting traction, and taking VR forward. We all benefit from this. For Linux enthusiasts (possibly the OP as as well): SimulaVR (www.simulavr.com) is working on a portable Linux VR headset with office/programmer productivity as the #1 goal. It will offer the following advantages over the OP's Immersed setup: 1. *More than double the text quality.* We are making a headset with more than double the PPD (pixels-per-degree) of the Oculus Quest 2. This is extremely important for facilitating multi-hour VR sessions without eye fatigue. 2. *Proper window management.* SimulaVR is a fully functional Linux window manager (built over Wayland/wlroots infrastructure). Unlike Immersed, it isn't just emulating screens on another host OS. This means you get an unlimited number of windows, popups can (when desired) behave as new windows, etc. No hacks are required to get this sort of functionality. It will also later on facilitate proper 3D/VR applications being able to share the same space with 2D applications. 3. *Proper portability.* Our headset is going to be fully portable (with a detachable compute pack in the back), and won't require you to tether your headset to another computer over WiFi, or take along an additional laptop just to get your VR computer working somewhere else. 4. *Proper hackability.* Simula is built over FOSS, and is not tethered to the Facebook platform. If there's something you want to change or tweak, you're free to do so. One thing Immersed has though is immediate availability and scalability (there are an unlimited supply of Oculus Quests floating around :). We're likely going to be constrained on the number of headsets we can produce, at least initially, and will have to queue first to the early users. We (and the industry at large) also have a lot of work ahead of us to improve upon a VR-centric UX (incorporating proper tiling management, and other things). Very exciting.
  • ptom 5y ago
    OP here! I've been keeping a very close eye on the SimulaVR project for a while. I agree with most of what you've got here, and would love to be able to try it out in the future. One question I've got about the window management system - I make heavy use of virtual desktops so I can swap several windows out simultaneously (all my source code on one screen, my database GUIs on another, etc.). I'd run out of room using a spatially tiled VR interface unless I had "sets" or other groups of windows (or different vantage points); how is that being approached? Is there a "virtual desktop" equivalent? Any chance of coopting other hardware as part of your development/deployment strategy? (Vive Focus 3, maybe?) I'll definitely continue to watch the project - please let me know if I can ever be of service in the endeavor. You guys are building an awesome future.
• kovek 5y ago
  Vario XR has a very good resolution. Did anyone try to code with it?
  • caslon 5y ago
    I think you mean Varjo. It's a pretty ridiculous headset, but the thing also forces you to buy a $2000/month subscription after you purchase it. It's safe to say it's not a really reasonable option. It also doesn't actually have a particularly high resolution, and sort of cheats by making your periphery have a significantly lower resolution (hardware, not software, is responsible for this, so you can't just turn foveated rendering off), which makes it good for many use cases, but worse for programming.
    • samplatt 5y ago
      Got a source for the "forces you to subscribe" bit? Everything I've seen says that part is optional. Also, even disregarding the extra focal-spot screens, you're wrong about the resolution. It's the highest of all headsets that don't have insanely wide FOV's like the Pimax8K, by a long way. 2880 x 2720 per eye (Varjo VR-3) > 1832 x 1920 per eye (Quest 2) > 1440 x 1600 per eye (Vive Pro 2) ~= 1600 x 1440 per eye (Valve Index)
      • caslon 5y ago
        https://store.varjo.com/xr-3 https://store.varjo.com/xr-3 A valid Varjo XR subscription is required to use the device Every XR-3 user must have a Varjo account and a valid XR subscription. Read more here. You could have just checked the store.
        • caslon 5y ago
          Just to eliminate any doubt, the same is also the case for the VR-3 and every other Varjo model: A valid Varjo VR subscription is required to use the device Every VR-3 user must have a Varjo account and a valid VR subscription. Read more here. https://store.varjo.com/vr-3 https://store.varjo.com/vr-3
• stuaxo 5y ago
  I wonder if you end up short sighted.
• diskzero 5y ago
  I would like to give this a try, but I don't want to support Facebook in any way. I saw a couple of headsets mentioned below. Is there a definitive list out there of competitors? As an aside, I used to use VPL eyephones, VPL datagloves and a SGI Crimson to do research back in the late 80s. I honestly thought back then we would all have fully adopted VR by now. I was so wrong!
  • ptom 5y ago
    OP here - It takes a long time for research and consumer hardware to align. The only 2 that run this particular software right now are the Quest, and the Vive Focus 3 (which cost $1000 more). There are other virtual office interface options available, though, and those run on WMR or any Steam compatible headset. None others that support Linux that I'm aware of, though.
• NoPicklez 5y ago
  I wonder how this will impact our posture given that we're already at risk of a forward head posture seated. More weight on the head or the front of the head would accelerate these problems if you're not sitting properly. Until the technology gets much much lighter of course, which it will.
  • deviation 5y ago
    I imagine similar to the posture of riding a motorcycle, seeing as a helmet on average would weigh a similar amount to a VR headset. As a rider myself, the first week or so was a bit rough and an unusual feeling- it wears off after that.
    • NoPicklez 5y ago
      That's a good point, having raced motocross myself I'd agree.
  • ptom 5y ago
    OP here. Of important note, I also have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that makes me especially prone to muscle stress and joint instability. Good ergonomics apply in VR just as they do in any occupational setup. I was suffering from cervical lordosis before ever going into VR - but because I've used it to increase my range of motion throughout the day, and eliminate my need to ever hunch or squint, I'm feeling much better than before going full-time VR. But: don't do it all at once. Work up to it, balance the weight appropriately, position screens properly, and take breaks! Yes, I do 8-10 hours a day in VR - but not all at once.
    • NoPicklez 5y ago
      Very good points
  • WalterSear 5y ago
    IME, it's mostly a step up from a monitor, because I can position the displays wherever I want. In addition to OP's sitting and standing setups, I spend a lot of time working lying down, or sitting extremely back, with my head fully supported.
• Wunderdeer 5y ago
  I like the ideas presented here. I wish more people understood that VR has purpose outside gaming, almost anything you do on the web can currently be done in VR. Perception of VR seems to be more focused on virtual worlds, or seeing it as just another gimmicky toy for computer people. My largest gripe with this piece is if you're going to write about comfort in VR, you need to mention the Valve Index. The base model is, in my experience, the most comfortable headset even without modding. If you wear glasses you can find many prescription lens vendors online for ~60-90 USD. Not to mention the top of the line specs on the Index compared to it's competitors.
  • jalino23 5y ago
    bro thank you so much, I did not know vr has prescription lens you can buy! wearing glasses is literally the only thing stopping me from using VR!
    • ptom 5y ago
      OP here. I use Reloptix lenses, $70 and worth every penny - the difference they make the VR cannot be overstated.
  • ptom 5y ago
    OP, here. I'm hoping that this article helps change that perception, get people talking and open minds to the possibility. There's definitely better hardware out there than the Q2 - it just doesn't run the software I need yet. Valve has great hardware, no question - but this also wasn't about "how to make VR comfortable", it was how I personally make it productive for me. The Immersed software has, until very recently, been Oculus only. They now support the Vive Focus 3, which I hope to try some day (when it's in the budget, or someone notices my article and starts comping me hardware <- subtle hint). ...and I do use (and mention) prescription inserts - $70 at Reloptix, and I'm delighted with the product and my interactions with the company.
  • Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
    > If you wear glasses you can find many prescription lens vendors online for ~60-90 USD. Heck, even less than that. I got lenses for my Index for $20. I could have gotten them for as little as $7, but opted for the oleophobic coating to reduce fingerprints when I'm taking them in or out when other people use my headset. Then you just need a 3D printed adapter which, if you have a printer, you can print with like 5 cents worth of filament, or likely use a 3D printing as-a-Service provider like I did and pay $4 + shipping.
• yubiox 5y ago
  Sounds great until you find out that it requires windows.
  • ptom 5y ago
    Ah, but I'm running Linux. :) (oh - and I'm the OP) They also support Mac, and yes, Windows for those unable to escape the pull of Redmond.
    • yubiox 5y ago
      Well crap. The first hit on google with "Oculus Quest version 2 mac" is recent and completely wrong apparently. Sorry.
    • rdrey 5y ago
      I had a question about your Linux setup: Does Immersed VR support multiple monitors in Linux now? Or do you have to mirror a "real" 4k monitor to have it show up in your app? Edit: Ah, I've found some `xrandr` tricks that should work. Thanks for the post!
• est 5y ago
  I wonder what's the focal length like in a decent VR set? Is it just few centimeters or can be adjusted to be like 15 meters?
  • ptom 5y ago
    It's currently fixed distance, until the varifocal tech improves. That distance is about 1.3m/4'3". You can change the effective stereographic distance though, so things look like they're pretty far away (or super close, if that's your thing), and the movement parallax, and eye convergence agree - but the resolving power is still the same for all objects in the visual field.
• nickstinemates 5y ago
  I'm inspired. I'm gonna spend a month on this.
  • ptom 5y ago
    OP here - please work up to it, don't dive in all at once. And come hang out on the Discord - would love to talk about your new-user experience, and help make it work for you.
    • nickstinemates 5y ago
      I have always been a jump off the deep end kind of person. I'll check out the discord
• stubish 5y ago
  Curious if the op now uses quick head movements to focus attention rather than rapid eye movement. I haven't used the Oculus, but with another headset found reading text to the far left or right difficult, as the resolution there is poor. Moving your head so the text is centered increases the pixel density and the text becomes readable.
  • ptom 5y ago
    OP here; some of each, actually. The resolution does drop off at the edges, especially with more aggressive foveated rendering (which I turn off, so as to get as much clarity as possible). I do end up moving my head, but it's casual rather than quick, certainly not like darting around. The end result is improved ergonomics, too - used to be, with a fixed monitor my neck would become very tight and snap/crack horribly when stretching after a long session. The frequent movement in VR has completely eliminated that issue while working.
• jstrieb 5y ago
  > Complete control over my visual environment is like using noise-canceling headphones for my eyes. Could not agree more. I tried out a much simpler setup on my friend's Oculus Go (predecessor to the Quest 2, since abandoned by Facebook), and was amazed at how well I was able to focus. For my setup, I used the a web browser on the headset itself to connect to ttyd [0] running on my computer for doing programming homework when I was in college, and it worked really well. I wrote about my experience, and drew similar conclusions. [1] When I looked into immersive coding environments at that time, I didn't find much. I guess I didn't look hard enough... [0] https://github.com/tsl0922/ttyd https://github.com/tsl0922/ttyd [1] https://jstrieb.github.io/posts/vr-programming/ https://jstrieb.github.io/posts/vr-programming/
  • hyperpallium2 5y ago
    The future of cubicles.
    • mhh__ 5y ago
      I suppose so, but in a remote world it might be your cubicle? Probably just another bifurcation between the "cattle" (provocative term that I disagree with but still) and the 5x-ers (HN readers...). One man's prison is another man's minimalist office?
    • fouric 5y ago
      Cubicles suck, but if I'm going to be stuck in one anyway, I might as well opt to block everything out of my vision except for my screen. My monitor bezels, keyboard, mouse, desk surface, phone, post-it notes, office locker, etc. are just distractions unless I actively need to interact with them.
• shannifin 5y ago
  Anybody know how reading & desktop work on the Quest 2 compares to the original Oculus? I tried programming in the original Oculus years ago, but the low resolution was just too annoying... is it improved a good deal? (I know the resolution is higher, just wondering about the actual experience.)
  • pault 5y ago
    Still not good enough, unfortunately. Anything below 18-ish point type is too difficult to read.
  • mherrmann 5y ago
    I recently consulted as a VR programmer on a Quest 2. There is a built-in way to see your PC screens in the headset (I can't remember what it was called). I used the Oculus Link cable. It worked and I could certainly program. But it was far from comfortable. The resolution is very noticeably worse than on my physical monitors. I don't know why OP's experience is so different. I suspect he's just willing to sacrifice crisp text for the coolness of the experience.
    • cschmittiey 5y ago
      I’ve also used that feature and I’ve spent >10 hours working in Immersed - Immersed (and even another app called Virtual Desktop) absolutely is leagues above the built in experience.
  • cgag 5y ago
    This post is making me wonder if I did something wrong, but I hated the low resolution in the quest 2 for programming when I tried it.
• 0x4d464d48 5y ago
  "Realism will increase (perhaps to hyperrealism) and our ability to perceive and interact with simulated objects and settings will be indistinguishable to our senses." Hard pass from me. Gaming addiction was only officially recognized within roughly the past decade. The idea of developing some sort of dependance on virtual reality fills me with absolute dread. Whats worse is that companies promoting virtual offices like this have every incentive imaginable to promote this (hi Facebook!). I don't have anything against VR and think it has a lot of potential as a medium for gaming and the arts but theres a lot of danger in assuming there is no risk or minimizing the risks. Ignore the addictive power of the things which tune out the inconveniences of life at your own peril.
• superasn 5y ago
  I don't know but for some reason this article feels like one of those things - which is what will be see in a show 20 years from now about where/how it all started. Like the guys from 1980s talking about video games in the recent Netflix documentary 'high score', where some people started spending 8+ hours a day playing games with really primitive graphics because it was just enough to be enjoyable. VR now seems like something that is almost finally ready to explode and like the atari or iphone is going to change all our lives forever.
  • titzer 5y ago
    I can tell you what, that much screen time right on your face is going to fucking ruin millions of eyes.
    • ianlevesque 5y ago
      The actual focal distance on a Quest 2 is about six feet, that's further away than I keep my desk monitors.
      • titzer 5y ago
        The issue isn't (only) the focal distance. The difference is that your desk monitors don't encapsulate your entire eye cavities and cause pupil dilation, pumping blue light directly onto your retinas, which has been suspected to accelerate macular degeneration, night-blindness, and dry eye, as well as cause poor sleep. https://www.webmd.com/eye-health/blue-light-health https://www.webmd.com/eye-health/blue-light-health
        • Loocid 5y ago
          Can't you use blue light filters in VR like you can with regular monitors (eg Flux or Windows Night light)?
          • dougmwne 5y ago
            Yes, that is a system level software option in the Oculus menu, along with brightness control.
• tcmb 5y ago
  I have only 40% acuity in one of my eyes, is a typical VR headset still a good experience?
  • modeless 5y ago
    Yes, that shouldn't present any problem for using VR.
• resonious 5y ago
  I was really excited about VR for awhile when the Oculus Rift was first getting press. The idea of programming on an infinitely large screen also seemed really cool. I couldn't afford one at the time so just held out. Since then, I've been able to try a number of headsets and they all give me a headache after about 30 minutes. Depending on how the camera moves around, I can speedrun getting a headache in less than 5 minutes. Does anyone else experience this? The OP's setup or SimulaVR sound really cool but I highly doubt I'll be able to do it for any productive amount of time.
• suyash 5y ago
  It's like being in front of a large television screen for many hours. Can't be good for your eyes, curious to hear how your eye test results will come out after 6 months to year of 40-50 hours/week of VR usage.
  • Doxin 5y ago
    The main difference there is that the lenses in a VR headset make the focus plane be infinitely far away. The main thing that's bad for your eyes with monitors and TVs is focusing your eyes up close for hours and hours. If anything a VR headset would be better for your eyes than a regular monitor.
    • rspoerri 5y ago
      Funny ppl downvote this comment while it's actually true. If you check out the "focal distance" of "focus plane" you will find out that everything you see in vr is on a fixed distance. What distance it is depends on the vr glasses (2m-infinity). I am unsure wether it's proven to be better, but it's surely not worse then watching a screen at 50cm distance all day long.
    • kgwgk 5y ago
      Infinitely far away as in 1.3m away according to other comments. How close are you to your tv?
      • rspoerri 5y ago
        not "as in" but depending on the vr glasses.
  • inDigiNeous 5y ago
    Curious about how blasting WiFi next to your head 8 hours a day affects your brain also, especially when dealing with high bandwidth streams like video all the time.
  • drath 5y ago
    There is nothing wrong with sitting in front of a large television screen, as long as your eyes are not dry and you don't look at one point all time.
• sharmin123 5y ago
  How to hack someone’s phone | 6 Ways to hack someone’s phone: https://www.hackerslist.co/how-to-hack-someones-phone-6-ways-to-hack-someones-phone/ https://www.hackerslist.co/how-to-hack-someones-phone-6-ways...
• erikbye 5y ago
  I tried working like this but the resolution is not there yet, not sure why some people are not bothered by this. For me it’s very important text is as crisp as on my 4k display.
  • dkh 5y ago
    There are plenty of people who don't seem to notice how crappy things look when their monitor is set to non-native resolution, or the differences between SD/HD/4K, or a clearly uprezzed JPG. Might be something to do with what they are used to, and/or their individual eyesight. Resolution is just as critical for me as it is for you, but my eyesight is good and my eyes/brain are pretty well-trained from years of having to do things like spot a single dead pixel in a 6.5k video frame for a living.
  • pornel 5y ago
    I'm very surprised that OP is using Quest 2 instead of a high-end headset. I don't think VR is ready yet for working with text.
    • Filligree 5y ago
      The Quest 2 works without any stationary equipment. (LIDARs, whatever.) This makes it massively more portable, and the resolution is almost good enough. It's also much cheaper. Personally I wouldn't do it, but it'd be difficult to use a setup based around e.g. the Pimax without building a room around it, and... at that point why not just install some regular monitors? You can buy quite a few at that price point.
    • Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
      Quest 2 has a higher resolution than Valve Index. IIRC, the only headset with a higher resolution than Q2 is a PiMax.
      • erikbye 5y ago
        Isn't Reverb G2 higher at 2160x2160? (than Quest 2).
• formvoltron 5y ago
  Maybe take a walk & find a girlfriend?
  • dougmwne 5y ago
    Friend, this is probably not the website for you.
• lodovic 5y ago
  I'd be very afraid to fry my eyes. I can't imagine strapping a bright display at 10cm from your eyes, for hours on end, won't lead to eye issues later on in life. I already feel strained after using a headset for an hour.
  • SimCity3000 5y ago
    I feel like people had the same worries when television, computers and video games invaded homes everywhere in decades past. I'm thinking the problems (if any) won't be as bad as you think they will be. And to your last point I think that's where common sense comes in. If something is painful, if it causes you discomfort, stop. You're body is decently good at protecting you from things that are harmful to it (except sugary sweets for me...)
    • rtpg 5y ago
      Well specifically to the brightness, how much light is going into your eyes when using a VR set relative to, say, a TV? Or a 27-inch monitor close to your face?
      • growt 5y ago
        Or the sun/daylight while being outside? I'd guess that's some orders of magnitude more.
        • empiricus 5y ago
          Ironically you need to be exposed to the strong light outside (as a child), otherwise you will need glasses.
          • kataklasm 5y ago
            Yep, I really regret spensing so much time of my youth indoors in front of a monitor... At age 19 I can experience the loss in sight quality already. It is recommended to spend AT LEAST 2 hours everyday outside in daylight to prevent myopia. I did not follow that recommendation and regret it sorely.
• rcarmo 5y ago
  Weird. I have a Quest 2 and the thought of having it constantly on my face (likely powered by cable) is… daunting.
  • ptom 5y ago
    OP here; it takes some getting used to. I've adapted well to it, but I also: replaced the facial interface, moved to a halo mount for better balance and reduced facial pressure, and keep everything clean and cool (small or medium desk fan, depending on the day).
• OneTimePetes 5y ago
  Now can i train a NN that parses the code and my actions as input and auto-rearranges the windows depending on the workflow?
• danielEM 5y ago
  How does compare Oneplus 9 pro wiith its 120hz screeen in a vr helmet to quest 2? Anyone tried both?
  • dougmwne 5y ago
    I have not tried the OnePlus, but every phone VR I have ever seen is only 3 degrees of freedom. The Quest 2 is 6-dof, which is a game changer for comfort, presence and experience.
    • danielEM 5y ago
      For games definitely, from dev perspective feels to me like just nice extra feature. Thinking of Quest only in terms of dev. I play literally no games, but I'm dev for 14h a day :-)
      • dougmwne 5y ago
        I think 3-dof would lead to motion sickness issues. You might be mostly moving your head rotationally, but if you move at all in the xyz directions your movement is no longer going to match up to the image in the headset. That mismatch between movement and vision is the primary cause of motion sickness. Phone VR was an evolutionary dead end for VR tech. The future is 6-dof, hand, eye, face and body tracked, both for work and for play.
        • danielEM 5y ago
          > Phone VR was an evolutionary dead end Wouldn't be that quick in judgement :-) I think all that 6dof is about image sensors and machine learning and both are already widely used in mobiles. To my senses it feels like nowadays smartphones could handle 6dof with even only single camera with just appropriate software.
• barrenko 5y ago
  "Memory Palaces, or the method of loci, is perhaps the most effective mnemonic device ever created. Dr. Lynne Kelly has proposed that pre-literate cultures maintained their encyclopedic knowledge by combining a similar approach with physical, ceremonial settings... We use the very environment around us to think". Yes, exactly. Great blog post.
• gman83 5y ago
  Have they solved the motion sickness yet? I used an early Oculus (I think it was Oculus Rift DK2) and mainly used it for virtual desktop stuff try to see if I could replace my multiple monitor setup, but I'd feel really unwell after about 30 minutes so I kind of gave up. If that's been resolved I'd be interested to give this another go. Is there a reason why Immersed only works with Facebook devices? I deleted my Facebook account and this would be a definite dealbreaker for me.
  • mhh__ 5y ago
    I think motion sickness in VR is a bit like taking LSD. Set and setting is all I can think about when I hear people's stories unless they are particularly bad.
  • ptom 5y ago
    OP here; motion sickness doesn't really apply to the productivity setup, since nothing's in motion (physically or visually). Good tracking and high framerates take care of most motion sickness for room-scale activities - those in which your physical and virtual motions are well aligned. But experiences which simulation motion are still likely to induce nausea unless you get your "VR legs". As for the FB devices - available audience and cost of doing business. They also support the Vive Focus 3 now though, and others are in the works.
  • grumbel 5y ago
    As long as you are sitting or moving naturally, motion sickness is pretty much solved for most people. Refresh rate and tracking are good enough these days. Where motion sickness is not solves is with artificial locomotion, e.g. using to use the joysticks to move around like in a regular FPS game, that will still make most people motion sick to varying degrees, but many will get used to it after a while.
• zmmmmm 5y ago
  My biggest issue with Immersed currently is it eats a tremendous amount of CPU on my Mac, which is admittedly aging (2016 era). Perhaps its unfair to expect it to run well on something of that vintage but it's definitely a problem. Then the next obvious one is screen resolution is just not high enough yet. It probably needs to double and I don't think even the top end of headsets are quite there yet. It's exciting because all the problems I can identify are essentially things that have high confidence of being solved over time. So I can see there is an inevitability this will be a major way of working at some point and for those of us willing to stretch to it, you can get to the future ahead of everyone else. At the same time, every time I do the experiment it is objectively less productive than just using a basic 3-screen setup outside of VR. The bar, unfortunately, is quite high.
  • jimmySixDOF 5y ago
    Try vSpatial - they have an approach where each PC window is displayed as a completely separate screen in the VR environment. Everything is seperated into layers so you work in a cockpit instead of on a desktop. I like their design a lot for most tasks although some display scaling edge cases just don't work. They have a web cam emulator that projects your workspace with you as an avatar & its very cool in zoom calls. Definitely worth checking out for any extended workflows like TFA.
• dr_faustus 5y ago
  nauseating
• nbzso 5y ago
  This is cool. As a experimental experience. I will wait fro a hologram solution to remove the Eizo's from my workflow. Reasons: I don't like to be totally disconnected from reality/physical world. I work in a room with balanced natural light. Removing this is not productive for me. In recent years I developed a technique to refresh cyclically my brain by making timely stops away from my computer. Example: In the breaks I walk away completely in a different room and may play guitar, draw, do physical exercise or just meditate. Advantages from this interruptions are immense. Your brain is never bored, and your work sessions are effective and absent from procrastination.
  • dougmwne 5y ago
    My timely steps away from my desk have been VR boxing, table tennis, and mini golf. There's no better way to destress after a meeting than 3 rounds and a knockout. I think it taps deep into the limbic system and evaporates stress through a full activation then resolution of the fight or flight response.
    • nbzso 5y ago
      This is a completely different use case (in my view).:) I have a long daily work sessions, interruptions (brakes) are part of the flow. To remove something from my head 3-4 times per hour obviously is a lot slower than simply to stand up and go. This is your way to evaporate stress, everyone has individual choices in this regard. Mine include going outside, walking, running, some exercise, shoot photography, drive to a near village, etc. I spend enough time in-front of a set of displays. And since early 2000s my choice is always towards high-quality displays as Eizo or Nec. The newer models have eco-friendly mode which adjust automatically the brightness with accordance to ambient light. Thats why my preference for the work of future is towards holographic displays or projectors. It is more natural.
• bob229 5y ago
  I’m a skeptic but this actually sounds amazing. Only mad person would ever use a Facebook product though
• wisienkas 5y ago
  Discussed this with co-workers 2 years ago, seems this could be reality. I think for offices this might be a usecase for office mainframes coming back
• dougmwne 5y ago
  I think the upcoming Quest Pro could very well take the VR office from an extreme thing that just a few people are doing to something much more comfortable for most people. Here are the leaked specs from investigations of a recent firmware: https://uploadvr.com/quest-pro-specs-controllers-leak/ https://uploadvr.com/quest-pro-specs-controllers-leak/ If we get improved lenses, fine-ipd and distance control for a really clear picture, plus eye and face tracking for expressive avatars, color HD passthrough so I can see my hands and keyboard, and a lighter, smaller headset, that would go a long way to addressing my issues with working in VR. I'm personally quite interested since I travel a lot and it would be amazing to have a multi sit-stand setup in a ski goggle case. I have already been having good results using the Quest 2 as a portable gym, so portable office would be icing on the cake. If these specs are real, I'll be a day-1 customer. One other thing that I had issues with that hope to see addressed: with both immersed and the Horizon Workrooms, the mouse latency was a killer when using their desktop client. Not sure what the deal was but was using a recent MacBook pro.
  • Tepix 5y ago
    "The display is allegedly a Dual-Cell LCD from BOE with the same resolution as Quest 2..."
• thih9 5y ago
  As someone who works with a single screen, I don’t get it. I spend most of my time in the terminal, occasionally switching to a browser. The fact that I see a single window at a time is a “feature” to me. Then again, if there was no difference in comfort, size, weight, etc, I’d happily increase the size of my screen, if only to increase the font size. I guess I’ll be a late adopter.
  • ehnto 5y ago
    I do miss two screens from time to time, but single screen using i3 is a total productivity win for me because it helps me minimize context switches and focus better.
    • grogenaut 5y ago
      I actually find that because i3 is so fast to switch and makes the os so fast I can have hacker news up and distracting me before I even realize I'm bored. Like literally any time I have to think in work I can instantly be in a distraction.
      • ehnto 5y ago
        Oh yeah that was true for me too, I block HN and friends on my laptop, which is where do all my focused work.
  • vlunkr 5y ago
    I had the same thought, most of the argument here seems to be about screen space. I think at some point we're all attracted to the idea of having a bunch of monitors so you can feel like some kind of multi-tasking movie hacker, but the reality is that if you learn to use your window manager efficiently, one monitor is almost always all you need.
    • grogenaut 5y ago
      I use i3 a lot, it's great. I still find my 5 monitor home pc setup WAY more effective for coding on my monster central monitor and side vertical documentation monitors than changing virtual desktops on a single monitor or a laptop. I feel as slow on a laptop as a vim user would if you removed their config. About all I can really do on a laptop is code in the car or an airplane, or do documents, and event that I'm starting to run out of screen real-estate.
• OOPMan 5y ago
  I can't wait for the n-gate take on this...
• globular-toast 5y ago
  > even with my higher-capacity headset and accessories, my entire outlay is easily competitive with a conventional multi-monitor configuration. I highly doubt it. My dual monitor setup cost me about £300 including a nice desk stand. No fancy GPU or anything required. If that VR setup really cost that much it would be an impulse buy for me.
  • dougmwne 5y ago
    The Oculus Quest 2 really is $299 and it's the only necessary piece of equipment. It's a standalone computing platform running a flagship mobile processor. It's a completely amazing device along several different use cases, VR office is just one of them. Gaming, art, media consumption, social, education, work and more are eventually going to get revolutionized by this tech. For any tech geek, I would recommend an immediate purchase.
    • globular-toast 5y ago
      Ah, I won't buy tech that needs a cloud subscription, though. Especially not one linked to Facebook.
      • dougmwne 5y ago
        Just a clarification, there's no subscription required, but it does require a Facebook account. There are other headsets on the market that have nearly the same specs, but are more expensive. The Quest price is essentially being subsidized by the data collection. In my opinion, the data is primarily being used for product development, so I'm more happy to be part of the VR experiment knowing that my usage data will help create the eventual successor to phones and laptops.
• MrDresden 5y ago
  Sounds interesting, and I'd love to try this. However I am never buying an Oculus device, for fear and loathing of anything made by Facebook. Having to have and use a FB account, with their track record of privacy blunders has completely alienated me from all their products. Sadly that doesn't leave very many options on the table, some of which cost an arm and a leg.
• overgard 5y ago
  Idk it sounds nice for some people but I think he handwaves away real motion sickness concerns. I can't spend more than 10 minutes in VR without being dizzy. Maybe it gets there some day but Ive yet to try a headset without getting sick
  • ptom 5y ago
    Author here; no hand waving was intended, and I do make note of it in the FAQ. There's a lot of VR content I still can't handle, even though I've built a tolerance to many others. But for a stationary experience like productivity, where I at most walk in a very small area while at the standing desk, it's not applicable - I'm running 100fps+, and the 6DoF tracking does an excellent job.
• HMH 5y ago
  > The trip from video encoding on the PC, over the WiFi, and display in the headset averages about 3ms for me, using a 5ghz access point that’s several years old. Wow that's pretty impressive, especially considering the 4K main screen + additional virtual screens used. I wonder how you get the latency this low. 3ms means no buffering at all, neither during encoding nor decoding. The best I could achieve so far is a little less than 60ms but with the additional restriction that playback has to be done via browser.
  • smilespray 5y ago
    Yeah, that's impressive. A little too impressive. Does OP have any documentation on how this latency can be achieved and measured?
    • ptom 5y ago
      Yes I do! 1. WiFi direct, or as direct as you can make it - which means the computer is either the AP itself, or wired directly to it in order to keep the hops short. 2. Measurement can be done via a companion ping that looks at frame timing, but that's kind of a secondary measure. Best way to really check it is with high-speed video capture of a hardware display and the mirrored content in the headset, of a high-(temporal-)resolution stopwatch. I can also watch a YouTube video streamed with the desktop to the headset, and listen to it on headphones wired straight to the laptop, with no discernible offset (and this is with years of audio engineering experience) - the error bars on that subjective experience are much larger, but demonstrate that it's at least usable. 3. Hardware acceleration, via Nvidia NVENC, and rather than use Immersed's own virtual screen tech, I usually rely on HDMI dummy plugs ($12 for a 3 pack) to maximize GPU throughput (and not cannibalize CPU cycles). 4. Not ALL content is going to move at this speed even in the best of circumstances - I have a low overall rate of change, which means the delta streaming of the NVENC encoder is super short: not much data to grab, not much data to send. I can absolutely get worse rates than this if I want to push a ton of video content, or if I were to use it for gaming, etc. I don't think everyone would have this level of performance for every use case, but it's what I've been able to achieve and maintain.
• sktrdie 5y ago
  Here I am instead trying to minimize my hardware by using a less-addicting single black/white display with no video playback capability. VR on the other hand seems the quintessential distraction by literally stimulating way too many senses for what seems healthy.
• PerkinWarwick 5y ago
  The Facebook angle to this sounds absolutely heinous, but just what have they done to lock the headset to Facebook? Is there some kind of secret handshake/encryption going on? If someone from the Evil Empire was here, it would be interesting to get some notion how Facebook checks identity. Is there some huge glom of software that compares online activity, public records, phone records, bank records, credit records, etc. to make sure you're an OK person?
  • soylentcola 5y ago
    As a device that's essentially a smartphone with some extra hardware/custom software, I would imagine that's like asking "what has Apple done to lock the iPhone to iOS?" or "what has Sony done to lock the Playstation to only run Playstation software?" If you think of it less like a monitor and more like a game console or a phone with a locked bootloader, then it's easy to see how you can require account auth in order to use the built-in software.
    • PerkinWarwick 5y ago
      The underlying question is 'what would it take to break the device free'.
      • volta83 5y ago
        Can't answer that question, but suppose you break it free, then what ? It would be like maintaining a separate appstore for iPhones.
        • soylentcola 5y ago
          I recall that being the case when I had an old gen2 iPad and wanted to do a few things that weren't sanctioned/supported by Apple. There were a few well-known repos for homebrew software and that's where I got the handful of useful tweaks and customizations for that (jailbroken) tablet. I guess the issue there is that the popularity of the platform and nature of its limitations made it worth someone's trouble to maintain those repos. With something like an Oculus, I don't know that there are enough users (and also a sufficient subset that want to avoid Facebook or run some unsanctioned software) to justify the effort.
• joejohns 5y ago
  Shortly, VR will help industries train their employees and experience tasks under different scenarios. This will probably help them reduce their budget and at the same time improving the training quality.
• WhereIsSweden 5y ago
  what an awful future awaits :(
• idorosen 5y ago
  This can’t be good for your eyes.
• ikurei 5y ago
  I've been wanting to test this for a long time, but every time I research this I find that the Occulus seems like the best option, but I can't stand the FB account requirement, and I wouldn't feel comfortable with that. What alternative would you guys recommend? Would the experience be significantly worse if I tried to do this with an Index, for instance?
  • jachee 5y ago
    In the FAQ on Immersed[0] they mention that they’re planning to support “other XR platforms in the future”. As a G2 owner, I’m holding out hope that it’s sooner than later. [0] - https://immersed.com/faq#tag1 https://immersed.com/faq#tag1
• brightstep 5y ago
  Anyone else not want to cut themselves off from physical reality for hours at a time for productivity purposes? I like looking away from my screen and seeing my dog and cat on the couch. I like looking out my window. I like being distracted by a car driving by. This sounds awful.
  • rubyist5eva 5y ago
    It doesn't just sounds "awful" to me...it sounds absolutely hellish. Reminds somewhat of being "jacked-in" to The Matrix and completely "blue pilled". As time goes on and technology becomes sufficiently advanced, I can't help but feel all the dystopian nightmare sci-fi created as warnings are instead being used as instruction manuals by power hungry Silicon Valley execs.
    • brightstep 5y ago
      Those novels are natural extrapolations, deductions given the way our economy and society are organized. They are warnings, but given the incentives of market capitalism, they are in many ways inevitable. Even if Facebook et al decided not to do such things on moral grounds, it wouldn't be long before someone else appeared to fill the void.
      • fouric 5y ago
        Very few things are "inevitable", and I don't think that the things you cite are an exception. Regulation exists for a reason, and we have many examples of going from worse conditions to better ones e.g. from the 12-hour workdays to 8-hour workdays and banning child labor. Don't give up - these are things that can be legislated around.
    • rhn_mk1 5y ago
      The Matrix, according to the lore, was created as the perfect world for humans to happily live in :)
      • closetohome 5y ago
• RIMR 5y ago
  I have worked a day inside of an Immersed VR environment, and it was a pleasurable, intuitive experience that let me bring a ton of monitors from my Windows, Mac, and Linux machines all into one place. It was a better experience than I expected. But for doing a day of work, I would almost complain that it is too immersive. It eliminates distractions, but it also traps your eyes in front of screens and eliminates the real world except for things like eating and using the bathroom (and with the Quest passthrough, you don't even have to remove your headset for that). I feel that, no matter how good you made this kind of tech, it's not going to work until it's full AR. VR isn't comfortable for long periods, even at its most comfortable, because your brain (or at least mine) prefers regular doses of reality. And if you're going to be trapped in a VR computer, I found that using it for entertainment is the better experience. I can play Gamecube games and watch Netflix and Twitch at the same time, while keeping track discord.
• ChicagoBoy11 5y ago
  I can't speak to the use-case for this amount of time, but as someone who has used it plenty I can attest to pretty much everything the author has stated. The experiences that have blown me away the most have ironically been the ones that are the most "boring", or like essentially being a close analogue to the real world. When I tried online poker in VR, it was mind-blowing. It wasn't like reality... it was objectively better. Whenever I have friends over, the hands take some time, the game can be slow and boring, etc. In VR, we're in an amazing scene, folks not in the hand can play all sorts of games in parallel, the game is much more dynamic since you have an expert dealer, etc. It made me realize that if I did have 5 people over in my house, I'd rather us all plug into the VR environment than playing in real life.
  • heax 5y ago
    Oh come on, im not an experienced poker player but even i know that reading the facial expression and body language of your opponent is a core element of the actual game.
    • Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
      If your goal is to optimize money, then yes. But since PokerStars VR is only with fake money, most are there just to have fun, at least in the lower stakes tables, so people make (and call) a lot of silly bets.
    • nouveaux 5y ago
      Facial expressions and body language is not a core part of modern poker. Many pros play online. Online poker among friends gained a lot of popularity during Covid. With the computer dealing, its much easier to play for 1-2 hours. Given our stage in life, we can play once a week online instead of once or twice a year in person.
• smarri 5y ago
  I had an interesting VR experience, I bought the Oculus during lockdown when I had some time off work. I played a lot of hours over a few days to complete the Walking Dead Game. What I felt was most curious, was afterwards I now have visual memories of being in the apocalyptic town fighting zombies. Almost like, a fake memory of it. I think because VR is total visual immersion, there could be some memory link unlike that which can be found from film or monitor based games.
  • ptom 5y ago
    That was my experience with the Tuscany demo from the DK1 days - my brain craved the missing sensations, such as the change in temperature from sunlight falling on my face, or the texture of the worn stone pillars, the humidity on various surfaces. But then thinking back on it later, I didn't remember the screen door effect, or many of the things that didn't work - the visual memory was as though I'd actually been in that place.
    • smarri 5y ago
      Glad to hear of your experience too. I wonder if there is any research being done in this area? Seems like an interesting opportunity to explore and understand memory in a new way.
• malloreon 5y ago
  I'd like to try this if there was an option to do so without giving Facebook money.
• archon810 5y ago
  All I could think about when reading about the coffee shop experience was that the author would be robbed blind (pun intended) in the San Francisco Bay Area. Computer snatched because of the lack of awareness, phone stolen, etc.
  • arnaudsm 5y ago
    Fortunately Quest Intrusion Passthrough is rolling out soon
• mulmen 5y ago
  Please, for the love of everything good, do not hijack the right click.
• jdlyga 5y ago
  The main problem is the poor image quality. It's much nicer to look at monitors than fuzzy text and images on the Oculus Quest or Oculus Quest 2. It also makes me feel sick after an hour even if I'm in a static space that's not moving.