8 ms·

I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR

230 points by zx76 5y ago

moron4hire 5y ago
Stock photo shows person wearing a Google Daydream headset, making a pinching gesture like they expect hand tracking to be a thing on a 5 year old smartphone in a glorified "cardboard" viewer.
musesum 5y ago
This reads like a prequel to E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops#:~:text=%22The%20Machine%20Stops%22%20is%20a,Forster.&text=The%20story%2C%20set%20in%20a,instant%20messaging%20and%20the%20Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops#:~:text=%22T....
cesarvarela 5y ago
Whenever I read dismissive comments about new tech I think that this same people would have dismissed the internet in the early days.. who needs all this complicated stuff when you can just go to the library ???
- draw_down 5y ago
- bena 5y ago
  Whenever I read dismissive comments about dismissive comments comparing the dissenters to people who dismissed the internet, I think it's the same people would have defended Google Glass from criticism. "Who cares there's no real application for it yet, that'll be figured out later".
  - blazespin 5y ago
    I am a big naysayer, but compare the cost of a fully separated home office to this. To a lot of folks it makes sense
- superfrank 5y ago
  I'm kind of a perpetual skeptic and I probably would have been one of those that dismissed the internet as a toy in its early days had I been old enough to have an opinion. 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.
  - T-A 5y ago
    > the downsides of a false negative and less than the downsides of a false positive As a consumer, yes. As a founder, there is an opportunity cost to not founding the next Googlebook.
    - superfrank 5y ago
      There's also an opportunity cost to building a business around a technology that doesn't catch on. Looking only at companies that created "the next big thing" is survivorship bias. For every Elon Musk/Tesla story, you've got multiple people who bet big and lost on something like hydrogen cars. 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.
- telxosser 5y ago
  Yea that was said by no one ever. 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.
  - sircastor 5y ago
    I can point you to David Rackhoff saying just that. I admit the number of people who understood on some level what the internet was and rejected it is small, but remember what people thought after the dotcom bubble burst - they thought the fad was over.
myspy 5y ago
Hey VR designers, anyone ever thought about people that wear glasses? Most headsets don't really take it into account.
- kalado 5y ago
  Valve Index allows you to set the distance of the lenses towards your face so there is room for glasses. A lot of glass wearers did tell me that they can see perfectly well without glasses, probably far-sighted.
civilized 5y ago
The writing for this article is strikingly bad. Presumably it was produced with the VR headset. Does that tell us anything?
nopenopenopeno 5y ago
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fstory%2Fhours-working-vr-tips%2F https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fstory%...
ahelwer 5y ago
Interesting. I’ve been idly speccing out a Linux workstation from System76 to replace my 8-year-old PC but maybe I should look into the Simula One. An evolution of form as well as function. Thought oculus would be too low-resolution for this sort of thing. I’m pretty finicky about my keyboard height/monitor height/monitor distance ergonomics and this would take care of a lot of problems that are quite difficult to solve in meatspace, especially if you want to lie down. At this point it’s a race for who builds the first sensory deprivation tank VR workstation I guess.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  I think Oculus is too low res, but Simula One seems to be doing what is necessary. I’m on the wait list but it sounds like it could be a while.
siva7 5y ago
Sounds awesome. This could be the key to more productivity in college and at work by eliminating distractions from the outside.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  I love HN comments. I feel like you and I read different articles.
- wayeq 5y ago
  sounds pretty f-ing awful to me.
  - mlajtos 5y ago
    Do you by any chance use noise-canceling headphones?
BaconPackets 5y ago
This is such a strange article. It doesn't present anything or explain how a VR workstation can actually work. 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.
- georgewsinger 5y ago
  > Has anyone actually worked this way? Yes =] ptom describes what this is like here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28678041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28678041
  - BaconPackets 5y ago
    Nice! Thank you, much better than the Wired piece.
  - BLKNSLVR 5y ago
    Interesting that both choose to work from an 'orbital' view.
- psyc 5y ago
  Yes, I worked with a Quest 2 and Virtual Desktop for 1 month while my monitor was being repaired. I personally had no issue with the resolution. 1080p looks good to me and I worked with that or worse for 35 years anyway. The major issue was not being able to see the keyboard. I can touch type the alphabet only. Vague feelings of discomfort arose after a few hours. All in all it was effective but I was very happy to have my (1440p) monitor back.
  - 5y ago
JKCalhoun 5y ago
> A VR headset is just like a stereoscope from the 1800s, except the image is on screens fixed just past your nose, and you're in space. Your eyes are free to change angle as the images on the screen move, but your lenses are accommodating screens that are at a fixed distance. 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.
- kanetw 5y ago
  This is actually tractable, if difficult. There's a handful of different approaches, for example having varifocal lenses and you adjust the focus depending on where you gaze.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    That's clever. We can already track the eyes.
- jayd16 5y ago
  Maybe its just me but I don't find it nearly as immersion breaking as the other things listed. You're not experiencing it when you focus on an object, after all.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    Not immersion breaking, maybe mentally fatiguing? The point seems to be that your brain is expecting to have to change focus, and is "surprised" when it does not.
- magicjosh 5y ago
  My understanding is this is the key innovation that Magic Leap promised a solution for.
  - 5y ago
brightstep 5y ago
This sounds awful. I already feel disconnected from the world around me, my community, nature, fresh air. Why would anyone want this for themselves? To be productive? If this is the next step in productivity, we need to start looking at how to be less productive.
- dylan604 5y ago
  I think that's that panacea type thinking that a metaverse will help solve. If you're unhappy with your meatspace version of you, create the you that makes you happy in metaverse. I've consumed too much sci-fi to actually think that'll be what actually happens.
  - abledon 5y ago
    tristran harris spoke about this on a podcast recently.... the meatspace is what holds up the metaverse. With the declining mental health of our youth nowadays, with social media etc... how will the 'metaverse' be this utopia in the 2030s,2040s?
    - BLKNSLVR 5y ago
      A more concentrated version of the distillation the internet enabled: idea-driven anxieties rather than physical ones. 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'.
- tluyben2 5y ago
  I see it more as the wfh version of going to the office; when the headset comes off, I went home.
- magicjosh 5y ago
  Some of us don't work in such a privileged place as you with a community and nature. Some of us work in cramped apartments, with roommates and partners clicking and typing nearby. With noise and light pollution to add to the distraction. It's overwhelming and we can't focus but we can't afford to go anywhere else. Sitting in the Oculus opening lobby is like a dream.
ffhhj 5y ago
It's funny that if you wanted to simulate an ultra-realistic VR work environment, you just need to put on clear airsoft goggles and sit in your desk, it would include real feedback to your body and all. But having to work with those goggles is very uncomfortable, now imagine doing it with actual VR.
- jayd16 5y ago
  How do I simulate the part where I can adjust my workspace in any conceivable way?
- svnt 5y ago
  Nah it’s not accurate enough like that. You also have to have it occasionally remove your monitors from view for no reason and drop you back into an alpine dome with an app store.
idontwantthis 5y ago
I work in Immersed every day as a developer. It's a fantastic experience. 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.
- tluyben2 5y ago
  Same here. Surpassed 100 hours months ago. It is very good for focus and I don’t need a massive setup, in whatever room I am in.
- disambiguation 5y ago
  what headset do you use? 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.
  - arvinsim 5y ago
    I am pretty sure some VR headsets have a "passthrough" functionality to see the real world. Although judging by my Quest 2, it's not that good.
  - regularfry 5y ago
    > what headset do you use? 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.
  - idontwantthis 5y ago
    I think neck strain was a bit of an issue at the beginning, but not any more. Aftermarket prescription lense adapters are critical if you wear glasses. With those, there isn't much eye strain. Not more than staring at a computer all day would cause anyway. Also an upgraded strap. I use the Oculus Elite strap, but I think there are plenty of cheaper and probably better third party options. 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.
atonalfreerider 5y ago
Self promote: primitive.io is an IDE designed for VR https://primitive.io https://primitive.io
- RobKohr 5y ago
  Watching the trailer reminded me of "It's a Unix System... I know this" :)
- reayn 5y ago
  Just curious, what’s the reasoning behind naming it “primitive”? It’s not exactly reminiscent of the tech at play lol.
  - bowmessage 5y ago
    Probably a reference to primitive types, which are highlighted / represented differently in many IDEs.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    VR for apes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yD4KQGZUs4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yD4KQGZUs4
  - atonalfreerider 5y ago
    The aspiration is to represent structure in the most elemental form. Some definitions of the word "primitive" refer to a time before words existed. Shapes, motion, and relative positioning are the modes of communicating ideas and knowledge. Also as mentioned in another comment, primitive types in programming languages lend themselves nicely to visual representation. Hope you have a chance to try!
deleted 5y ago
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sxp 5y ago
This article is bullshit. It's strange that the article faked the header image using Google's Daydream View but shows the user using hand tracking. The article doesn't go into any technical specifics about the headset or setup. If you're really interested in coding in VR, I suggest looking at https://www.reddit.com/r/hmdprogramming 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_quest_termux_selfcontained_hmd_cyberdeck/fj8pxm1/ 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.
- IAmEveryone 5y ago
  Maybe this article isn't supposed to be a review of a specific product with a sidebar giving you tech specs. Go crush it!
  - rainonmoon 5y ago
    Not sure where people are getting tripped up about this. Seems perfectly reasonable that an article the headline of which begins with "I" would be an account of the author's personal experience.
- exdsq 5y ago
  I use immersed on the Oculus Quest 2 and it's pretty fun to code but not super productive!
  - svnt 5y ago
    It is somewhat functional if I don’t change the settings more than once. 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.
cblconfederate 5y ago
i like vr, but if one wants isolation to work, just move in a cottage
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  I assume someone may want isolation to work, but not in all aspects of their life.
randomhodler84 5y ago
I wanted to love VR. I dreamed of having a headset when I was younger and kickedstarted the oculus rift. I imagined a million worlds that would be within virtual reach. It would be the coolest! 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.
- mojzu 5y ago
  I've got the Index, there was definitely some acclimatisation required to dampen the motion sickness (especially for free movement) but for the most part I've had a great experience with it. Half-Life Alyx is an incredible game, although I would like to see more narrative/story driven games for VR. There are a lot of arcade games that are fun to pick up now and again (Beat Saber, Robo Recall), and shooters like Pavlov are great fun to play online
  - jcun4128 5y ago
    Yeah I had the same problem too at first. I could only play about an hour max before I had to stop. Got better over a few weeks then was able to play like 4-6 hrs straight one time.
    - mojzu 5y ago
      I had a similar experience, could only go 30 minutes at first until motion sickness set in or the headset became uncomfortable. After some time and headset strap adjustments though I'm comfortable for a couple of hours or so at least. Although I still struggle with some games like Boneworks which for whatever reason still makes me a bit motion sick
- blazespin 5y ago
Animats 5y ago
VR just to get a bigger desktop screen. This seems disappointing.
- baq 5y ago
  just natural evolution. a small step towards the tech being useful.
chaostheory 5y ago
VR is still early due to the cost and complexity of PCVR. While Facebook Meta has a great compelling product that I use daily, their brand is just toxic to most people in developed countries. 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.
- krapp 5y ago
  I think virtual tourism is another likely use case. I've got the original Quest and I'm currently addicted to the Wander app, which is basically just Google Street View in VR. It's not even that immersive but I can still "stroll" around places off the beaten path as it were for hours.
politician 5y ago
PSA: You can no longer buy a business-class Oculus Quest 2 from Facebook/Meta. 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.
- fastball 5y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by this.
  - darrenf 5y ago
    It used to be possible to buy a Quest 2 without the requirement of a Facebook account, but that freedom came at a premium cost.
    - pharke 5y ago
      They announced that they're dropping that requirement.
      - spaceisballer 5y ago
        And the alternative is that you sign up for a Meta account so your info will just be shared anyway. It was a while ago they made that announcement and it hasn’t happened. I was going to get the Quest 2 but I came to the realization I don’t want to support that company so went with the Valve Index. Sure it doesn’t have wireless but I’m not going to take it anywhere anyway.
throwaway834343 5y ago
Forget VR. Even without VR 3d games gives me motion sickness. I wanted to play the much praised "The Witness" games by Jonathan Blow. Too sad i could not because of motion sickness. Has any one found a solution that worked to get rid of motion sickness?.
- yboris 5y ago
  This might depend on personal physiology - some people seem to have less of a negative effect. 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. https://iexpectyoutodie.schellgames.com/ https://iexpectyoutodie.schellgames.com/
4monthsaway 5y ago
It's such an exciting new wave of technology, I just wish it wasn't being spearheaded by Facebook. On the other hand, I can't wait to see how they further corrupt humanity with yet another tool in their pocket
- noduerme 5y ago
  I second this. Huge Neal Stephenson fan. I remember trying VR with a huge bulky headset in the Air and Space Museum in DC when I was 8 year old, back in the 80s. I bought an Oculus Rift when it first came out and really fell in love with it. But I am vehemently, violently anti-Facebook and social media in general, and refuse to have an account. To be locked out of the Rift for awhile just because of that... what a terrible play on their part. They're basically a trash/spam organization focused on spreading fear and conspiracy garbage among demented old people like my 80-year-old father, who should just be left alone, not manipulated into a state of rage and hysteria every day by his news feed. Zuckerberg is the world's biggest POS, and I say this as a similarly aged son of a Jewish lawyer, as opposed to a POS dentist. Zuck's not even a fucking dentist. And he has less than no right to try to claim the Metaverse. 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.
Duralias 5y ago
> I have Facebook's Oculus strapped to my face 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.
- fomine3 5y ago
  It's weird because it's Wired.
sdevonoes 5y ago
What would it take (in terms of tech and number of years) to come up with something similar to VR (or AR) but without the burden of wearing a headset or glasses? Like the way Tony Stark interacts with JARVIS. I hope it won't take 50 years!
Havoc 5y ago
My earlier attempts at this failed miserably. Mostly due to distance between eyes issues and res being too low for good text reading. ...both surmountable issues given time so I do expect this to take over eventually.
throwaway834343 5y ago
How is the experience with porn and VR Headset. From the past track record porn decides the direction of every new technology.
- yboris 5y ago
  It's an interesting experience. Sometimes it's amazing. Videos usually include different angles, so you might feel like changing your body's position (though not necessary). It's very different than watching porn on a monitor -- the performers can be 'in your face' (very close) which may be unpleasant to some people. It's certainly something worth trying with at least a couple of videos (some videos are 3rd person view which is nice). Pro-tip, consider VR porn with mind-altering substances (e.g. weed, MDMA, LSD, mushrooms).
fuzzybear3965 5y ago
SimulaVR [1] is introducing a new class of products (virtual reality computer or VRC) that aims to develop a full linux desktop in a headset. I'm excited about using this with Stardust XR [2] and my NixOS configuration. 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/ https://simulavr.com/ [2]: https://stardustxr.org/ https://stardustxr.org/
- justin66 5y ago
  > full linux desktop in a headset Is the intersection of people who like VR and people who like the Linux desktop big enough to support a commercial product?
  - regularfry 5y ago
    Given the way people wax lyrical about Immersed.com on the Quest, you might find that anyone who does a lot of terminal work gravitates towards it. That's not a small market. I can see the attraction: if both the computer and the screen are head-mounted, that's a lot of boxes and wires that can just go away. It does depend on the environment implementation, mind you.
jhoelzel 5y ago
My main problem with VR is that whatever you do you still need to move. Im just going to say it but i think the measuring bar for VR will be the first brain chip for it. THAT will be the beginning of the metaverse.
api 5y ago
People don't seem to understand that VR was always an element of dystopian fiction. It's one of the things we do when we are confined to Earth. The others are gambling (with apes?), drugs, mindless hedonism (there's an app for that), following cults and crazy ideologies (Qanon? flat Earth?), pointless political intrigue, and war both physical and cultural. There will be a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. 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.
- mwcampbell 5y ago
  The best argument I know against expanding into yet another frontier is expressed in the Eagles song "The Last Resort". The basic message of that song, as I understand it, is that we ruin every new frontier we conquer. Or as the closing words of the song put it, "you call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye." So maybe the universe is better off if our damage is limited to our own little planet. Then again, that song also said, "there is no more new frontier," seemingly ignoring space, so maybe Don Henley was just being overly pessimistic.
saos 5y ago
AR for me is way more exciting
mwattsun 5y ago
I bought an Oculus a couple of years ago out of curiosity and because I wanted to support the technology. My disappointment is that it essentially a gaming platform. I've never been attracted to games, not IRL, not in early PC's and now not in VR. There are 360 degree videos on YouTube, but accessing them is awkward and they aren't that good. The screen door effect and view not extending to the periphery detracts from the experience. But once in awhile, when "immersion" hits you like a drug, it's amazing. I think it's still too early unless you are a gamer. ymmv of course.
- zo1 5y ago
  The biggest problem with most of the 360 videos on YT is their resolution. They have to be a certain minimum otherwise it looks horrible, like not just bad, but horrible and not watchable on a VR headset. I've only found one great video so far, and it is unbelievable. I would pay money for great 360 content like that.
lvl100 5y ago
So they think people will put on a headset in order to shop. 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.
- Iv 5y ago
  You know, I always found it stupid that people thought I would ever use my phone to type messages or worse to write blog posts. 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.
  - 0xffff2 5y ago
    I take it you no longer find those things to be stupid? One of the biggest benefits of Signal over iMessage/SMS for me is that I can use a desktop client for messaging 99% of the time. Is it really remotely common for people to write blog posts on a phone?
    - Iv 5y ago
      Well, I will certainly not find the premise absurd if a business plan assumes people will do that. 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.
- AlwaysRock 5y ago
  Why would I need to shop on my phone when I can call and order something? (when sales reps were common enough at retails stores you didnt have to be on hold) 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.
Tamazy 5y ago
The future will be a lightweight headset integrating VR and AR, so that we can switch from one to the other easily, and even switch everything off. 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.
- spaceisballer 5y ago
  I definitely agree with your sentiment. Being in VR all the time seems exhausting, but being able to switch between the two seems pretty awesome.
spaceisballer 5y ago
I bought an Index recently and love it. Lots of fun games and to be honest a lot of hours logged are in the free valve demos and the Steam VR environments (quests which award items for your avatar). That being said I have zero desire to do work in VR. I don’t experience motion sickness (except momentarily in Pistol Whip), but I can’t imagine VR doing anything but hindering my ability to focus. I personally have moved to just one screen and although there is a lot of cool customization that exists in the VR space I don’t need a bunch of other screens bringing distractions.
germinalphrase 5y ago
I’ve only engaged with VR in passing, but am curious to think more carefully about it. If anyone is moving in the other direction and wants to pass along a headset, email is in profile.
TrueDuality 5y ago
I think when people have this big game changing ideas around VR, what they're generally imagining is actually is still not there. Low friction experiences that still allow freedom of movement. It is possible that VR tech evolves to the point that it can be a low friction experience (this is a bit debatable, but from my experiences I'd still call it a pretty big hassle). 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.
AlwaysRock 5y ago
It's incredible the amount of, "VR was bad for me when I tried it" comments that show up on every VR post. It's an emerging technology. Desktops now vs desktops 40 years ago ate ass. I'm not ready to spend all day in a vr headset but I'm glad some people are.
alpineidyll3 5y ago
...to write this article, and then you read it. For my next act I will be working for my bathtub for an entire week.

230 points by zx76 5y ago

Stock photo shows person wearing a Google Daydream headset, making a pinching gesture like they expect hand tracking to be a thing on a 5 year old smartphone in a glorified "cardboard" viewer.

musesum 5y ago

This reads like a prequel to E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops#:~:text=%22The%20Machine%20Stops%22%20is%20a,Forster.&text=The%20story%2C%20set%20in%20a,instant%20messaging%20and%20the%20Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops#:~:text=%22T....

cesarvarela 5y ago

Whenever I read dismissive comments about new tech I think that this same people would have dismissed the internet in the early days.. who needs all this complicated stuff when you can just go to the library ???

draw_down 5y ago
bena 5y ago
Whenever I read dismissive comments about dismissive comments comparing the dissenters to people who dismissed the internet, I think it's the same people would have defended Google Glass from criticism. "Who cares there's no real application for it yet, that'll be figured out later".
- blazespin 5y ago
  I am a big naysayer, but compare the cost of a fully separated home office to this. To a lot of folks it makes sense
superfrank 5y ago
I'm kind of a perpetual skeptic and I probably would have been one of those that dismissed the internet as a toy in its early days had I been old enough to have an opinion. 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.
- T-A 5y ago
  > the downsides of a false negative and less than the downsides of a false positive As a consumer, yes. As a founder, there is an opportunity cost to not founding the next Googlebook.
  - superfrank 5y ago
    There's also an opportunity cost to building a business around a technology that doesn't catch on. Looking only at companies that created "the next big thing" is survivorship bias. For every Elon Musk/Tesla story, you've got multiple people who bet big and lost on something like hydrogen cars. 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.
telxosser 5y ago
Yea that was said by no one ever. 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.
- sircastor 5y ago
  I can point you to David Rackhoff saying just that. I admit the number of people who understood on some level what the internet was and rejected it is small, but remember what people thought after the dotcom bubble burst - they thought the fad was over.

myspy 5y ago

Hey VR designers, anyone ever thought about people that wear glasses? Most headsets don't really take it into account.

kalado 5y ago
Valve Index allows you to set the distance of the lenses towards your face so there is room for glasses. A lot of glass wearers did tell me that they can see perfectly well without glasses, probably far-sighted.

civilized 5y ago

The writing for this article is strikingly bad. Presumably it was produced with the VR headset. Does that tell us anything?

nopenopenopeno 5y ago

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fstory%2Fhours-working-vr-tips%2F https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fstory%...

ahelwer 5y ago

Interesting. I’ve been idly speccing out a Linux workstation from System76 to replace my 8-year-old PC but maybe I should look into the Simula One. An evolution of form as well as function. Thought oculus would be too low-resolution for this sort of thing. I’m pretty finicky about my keyboard height/monitor height/monitor distance ergonomics and this would take care of a lot of problems that are quite difficult to solve in meatspace, especially if you want to lie down. At this point it’s a race for who builds the first sensory deprivation tank VR workstation I guess.

nopenopenopeno 5y ago
I think Oculus is too low res, but Simula One seems to be doing what is necessary. I’m on the wait list but it sounds like it could be a while.

siva7 5y ago

Sounds awesome. This could be the key to more productivity in college and at work by eliminating distractions from the outside.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
I love HN comments. I feel like you and I read different articles.
wayeq 5y ago
sounds pretty f-ing awful to me.
- mlajtos 5y ago
  Do you by any chance use noise-canceling headphones?

BaconPackets 5y ago

This is such a strange article. It doesn't present anything or explain how a VR workstation can actually work. 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.

georgewsinger 5y ago
> Has anyone actually worked this way? Yes =] ptom describes what this is like here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28678041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28678041
- BaconPackets 5y ago
  Nice! Thank you, much better than the Wired piece.
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  Interesting that both choose to work from an 'orbital' view.
psyc 5y ago
Yes, I worked with a Quest 2 and Virtual Desktop for 1 month while my monitor was being repaired. I personally had no issue with the resolution. 1080p looks good to me and I worked with that or worse for 35 years anyway. The major issue was not being able to see the keyboard. I can touch type the alphabet only. Vague feelings of discomfort arose after a few hours. All in all it was effective but I was very happy to have my (1440p) monitor back.
- 5y ago

JKCalhoun 5y ago

> A VR headset is just like a stereoscope from the 1800s, except the image is on screens fixed just past your nose, and you're in space. Your eyes are free to change angle as the images on the screen move, but your lenses are accommodating screens that are at a fixed distance. 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.

kanetw 5y ago
This is actually tractable, if difficult. There's a handful of different approaches, for example having varifocal lenses and you adjust the focus depending on where you gaze.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  That's clever. We can already track the eyes.
jayd16 5y ago
Maybe its just me but I don't find it nearly as immersion breaking as the other things listed. You're not experiencing it when you focus on an object, after all.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Not immersion breaking, maybe mentally fatiguing? The point seems to be that your brain is expecting to have to change focus, and is "surprised" when it does not.
magicjosh 5y ago
My understanding is this is the key innovation that Magic Leap promised a solution for.
- 5y ago

brightstep 5y ago

This sounds awful. I already feel disconnected from the world around me, my community, nature, fresh air. Why would anyone want this for themselves? To be productive? If this is the next step in productivity, we need to start looking at how to be less productive.

dylan604 5y ago
I think that's that panacea type thinking that a metaverse will help solve. If you're unhappy with your meatspace version of you, create the you that makes you happy in metaverse. I've consumed too much sci-fi to actually think that'll be what actually happens.
- abledon 5y ago
  tristran harris spoke about this on a podcast recently.... the meatspace is what holds up the metaverse. With the declining mental health of our youth nowadays, with social media etc... how will the 'metaverse' be this utopia in the 2030s,2040s?
  - BLKNSLVR 5y ago
    A more concentrated version of the distillation the internet enabled: idea-driven anxieties rather than physical ones. 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'.
tluyben2 5y ago
I see it more as the wfh version of going to the office; when the headset comes off, I went home.
magicjosh 5y ago
Some of us don't work in such a privileged place as you with a community and nature. Some of us work in cramped apartments, with roommates and partners clicking and typing nearby. With noise and light pollution to add to the distraction. It's overwhelming and we can't focus but we can't afford to go anywhere else. Sitting in the Oculus opening lobby is like a dream.

ffhhj 5y ago

It's funny that if you wanted to simulate an ultra-realistic VR work environment, you just need to put on clear airsoft goggles and sit in your desk, it would include real feedback to your body and all. But having to work with those goggles is very uncomfortable, now imagine doing it with actual VR.

jayd16 5y ago
How do I simulate the part where I can adjust my workspace in any conceivable way?
svnt 5y ago
Nah it’s not accurate enough like that. You also have to have it occasionally remove your monitors from view for no reason and drop you back into an alpine dome with an app store.

idontwantthis 5y ago

I work in Immersed every day as a developer. It's a fantastic experience. 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.

tluyben2 5y ago
Same here. Surpassed 100 hours months ago. It is very good for focus and I don’t need a massive setup, in whatever room I am in.
disambiguation 5y ago
what headset do you use? 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.
- arvinsim 5y ago
  I am pretty sure some VR headsets have a "passthrough" functionality to see the real world. Although judging by my Quest 2, it's not that good.
- regularfry 5y ago
  > what headset do you use? 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.
- idontwantthis 5y ago
  I think neck strain was a bit of an issue at the beginning, but not any more. Aftermarket prescription lense adapters are critical if you wear glasses. With those, there isn't much eye strain. Not more than staring at a computer all day would cause anyway. Also an upgraded strap. I use the Oculus Elite strap, but I think there are plenty of cheaper and probably better third party options. 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.

atonalfreerider 5y ago

Self promote: primitive.io is an IDE designed for VR https://primitive.io https://primitive.io

RobKohr 5y ago
Watching the trailer reminded me of "It's a Unix System... I know this" :)
reayn 5y ago
Just curious, what’s the reasoning behind naming it “primitive”? It’s not exactly reminiscent of the tech at play lol.
- bowmessage 5y ago
  Probably a reference to primitive types, which are highlighted / represented differently in many IDEs.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  VR for apes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yD4KQGZUs4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yD4KQGZUs4
- atonalfreerider 5y ago
  The aspiration is to represent structure in the most elemental form. Some definitions of the word "primitive" refer to a time before words existed. Shapes, motion, and relative positioning are the modes of communicating ideas and knowledge. Also as mentioned in another comment, primitive types in programming languages lend themselves nicely to visual representation. Hope you have a chance to try!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sxp 5y ago

This article is bullshit. It's strange that the article faked the header image using Google's Daydream View but shows the user using hand tracking. The article doesn't go into any technical specifics about the headset or setup. If you're really interested in coding in VR, I suggest looking at https://www.reddit.com/r/hmdprogramming 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_quest_termux_selfcontained_hmd_cyberdeck/fj8pxm1/ 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.

IAmEveryone 5y ago
Maybe this article isn't supposed to be a review of a specific product with a sidebar giving you tech specs. Go crush it!
- rainonmoon 5y ago
  Not sure where people are getting tripped up about this. Seems perfectly reasonable that an article the headline of which begins with "I" would be an account of the author's personal experience.
exdsq 5y ago
I use immersed on the Oculus Quest 2 and it's pretty fun to code but not super productive!
- svnt 5y ago
  It is somewhat functional if I don’t change the settings more than once. 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.

cblconfederate 5y ago

i like vr, but if one wants isolation to work, just move in a cottage

micromacrofoot 5y ago
I assume someone may want isolation to work, but not in all aspects of their life.

randomhodler84 5y ago

I wanted to love VR. I dreamed of having a headset when I was younger and kickedstarted the oculus rift. I imagined a million worlds that would be within virtual reach. It would be the coolest! 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.

mojzu 5y ago
I've got the Index, there was definitely some acclimatisation required to dampen the motion sickness (especially for free movement) but for the most part I've had a great experience with it. Half-Life Alyx is an incredible game, although I would like to see more narrative/story driven games for VR. There are a lot of arcade games that are fun to pick up now and again (Beat Saber, Robo Recall), and shooters like Pavlov are great fun to play online
- jcun4128 5y ago
  Yeah I had the same problem too at first. I could only play about an hour max before I had to stop. Got better over a few weeks then was able to play like 4-6 hrs straight one time.
  - mojzu 5y ago
    I had a similar experience, could only go 30 minutes at first until motion sickness set in or the headset became uncomfortable. After some time and headset strap adjustments though I'm comfortable for a couple of hours or so at least. Although I still struggle with some games like Boneworks which for whatever reason still makes me a bit motion sick
blazespin 5y ago

Animats 5y ago

VR just to get a bigger desktop screen. This seems disappointing.

baq 5y ago
just natural evolution. a small step towards the tech being useful.

chaostheory 5y ago

VR is still early due to the cost and complexity of PCVR. While Facebook Meta has a great compelling product that I use daily, their brand is just toxic to most people in developed countries. 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.

krapp 5y ago
I think virtual tourism is another likely use case. I've got the original Quest and I'm currently addicted to the Wander app, which is basically just Google Street View in VR. It's not even that immersive but I can still "stroll" around places off the beaten path as it were for hours.

politician 5y ago

PSA: You can no longer buy a business-class Oculus Quest 2 from Facebook/Meta. 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.

fastball 5y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
- darrenf 5y ago
  It used to be possible to buy a Quest 2 without the requirement of a Facebook account, but that freedom came at a premium cost.
  - pharke 5y ago
    They announced that they're dropping that requirement.
    - spaceisballer 5y ago
      And the alternative is that you sign up for a Meta account so your info will just be shared anyway. It was a while ago they made that announcement and it hasn’t happened. I was going to get the Quest 2 but I came to the realization I don’t want to support that company so went with the Valve Index. Sure it doesn’t have wireless but I’m not going to take it anywhere anyway.

throwaway834343 5y ago

Forget VR. Even without VR 3d games gives me motion sickness. I wanted to play the much praised "The Witness" games by Jonathan Blow. Too sad i could not because of motion sickness. Has any one found a solution that worked to get rid of motion sickness?.

yboris 5y ago
This might depend on personal physiology - some people seem to have less of a negative effect. 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. https://iexpectyoutodie.schellgames.com/ https://iexpectyoutodie.schellgames.com/

4monthsaway 5y ago

It's such an exciting new wave of technology, I just wish it wasn't being spearheaded by Facebook. On the other hand, I can't wait to see how they further corrupt humanity with yet another tool in their pocket

noduerme 5y ago
I second this. Huge Neal Stephenson fan. I remember trying VR with a huge bulky headset in the Air and Space Museum in DC when I was 8 year old, back in the 80s. I bought an Oculus Rift when it first came out and really fell in love with it. But I am vehemently, violently anti-Facebook and social media in general, and refuse to have an account. To be locked out of the Rift for awhile just because of that... what a terrible play on their part. They're basically a trash/spam organization focused on spreading fear and conspiracy garbage among demented old people like my 80-year-old father, who should just be left alone, not manipulated into a state of rage and hysteria every day by his news feed. Zuckerberg is the world's biggest POS, and I say this as a similarly aged son of a Jewish lawyer, as opposed to a POS dentist. Zuck's not even a fucking dentist. And he has less than no right to try to claim the Metaverse. 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.

Duralias 5y ago

> I have Facebook's Oculus strapped to my face 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.

fomine3 5y ago
It's weird because it's Wired.

sdevonoes 5y ago

What would it take (in terms of tech and number of years) to come up with something similar to VR (or AR) but without the burden of wearing a headset or glasses? Like the way Tony Stark interacts with JARVIS. I hope it won't take 50 years!

Havoc 5y ago

My earlier attempts at this failed miserably. Mostly due to distance between eyes issues and res being too low for good text reading. ...both surmountable issues given time so I do expect this to take over eventually.

throwaway834343 5y ago

How is the experience with porn and VR Headset. From the past track record porn decides the direction of every new technology.

yboris 5y ago
It's an interesting experience. Sometimes it's amazing. Videos usually include different angles, so you might feel like changing your body's position (though not necessary). It's very different than watching porn on a monitor -- the performers can be 'in your face' (very close) which may be unpleasant to some people. It's certainly something worth trying with at least a couple of videos (some videos are 3rd person view which is nice). Pro-tip, consider VR porn with mind-altering substances (e.g. weed, MDMA, LSD, mushrooms).

fuzzybear3965 5y ago

SimulaVR [1] is introducing a new class of products (virtual reality computer or VRC) that aims to develop a full linux desktop in a headset. I'm excited about using this with Stardust XR [2] and my NixOS configuration. 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/ https://simulavr.com/ [2]: https://stardustxr.org/ https://stardustxr.org/

justin66 5y ago
> full linux desktop in a headset Is the intersection of people who like VR and people who like the Linux desktop big enough to support a commercial product?
- regularfry 5y ago
  Given the way people wax lyrical about Immersed.com on the Quest, you might find that anyone who does a lot of terminal work gravitates towards it. That's not a small market. I can see the attraction: if both the computer and the screen are head-mounted, that's a lot of boxes and wires that can just go away. It does depend on the environment implementation, mind you.

jhoelzel 5y ago

My main problem with VR is that whatever you do you still need to move. Im just going to say it but i think the measuring bar for VR will be the first brain chip for it. THAT will be the beginning of the metaverse.

api 5y ago

People don't seem to understand that VR was always an element of dystopian fiction. It's one of the things we do when we are confined to Earth. The others are gambling (with apes?), drugs, mindless hedonism (there's an app for that), following cults and crazy ideologies (Qanon? flat Earth?), pointless political intrigue, and war both physical and cultural. There will be a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. 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.

mwcampbell 5y ago
The best argument I know against expanding into yet another frontier is expressed in the Eagles song "The Last Resort". The basic message of that song, as I understand it, is that we ruin every new frontier we conquer. Or as the closing words of the song put it, "you call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye." So maybe the universe is better off if our damage is limited to our own little planet. Then again, that song also said, "there is no more new frontier," seemingly ignoring space, so maybe Don Henley was just being overly pessimistic.

saos 5y ago

AR for me is way more exciting

mwattsun 5y ago

I bought an Oculus a couple of years ago out of curiosity and because I wanted to support the technology. My disappointment is that it essentially a gaming platform. I've never been attracted to games, not IRL, not in early PC's and now not in VR. There are 360 degree videos on YouTube, but accessing them is awkward and they aren't that good. The screen door effect and view not extending to the periphery detracts from the experience. But once in awhile, when "immersion" hits you like a drug, it's amazing. I think it's still too early unless you are a gamer. ymmv of course.

zo1 5y ago
The biggest problem with most of the 360 videos on YT is their resolution. They have to be a certain minimum otherwise it looks horrible, like not just bad, but horrible and not watchable on a VR headset. I've only found one great video so far, and it is unbelievable. I would pay money for great 360 content like that.

lvl100 5y ago

So they think people will put on a headset in order to shop. 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.

Iv 5y ago
You know, I always found it stupid that people thought I would ever use my phone to type messages or worse to write blog posts. 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.
- 0xffff2 5y ago
  I take it you no longer find those things to be stupid? One of the biggest benefits of Signal over iMessage/SMS for me is that I can use a desktop client for messaging 99% of the time. Is it really remotely common for people to write blog posts on a phone?
  - Iv 5y ago
    Well, I will certainly not find the premise absurd if a business plan assumes people will do that. 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.
AlwaysRock 5y ago
Why would I need to shop on my phone when I can call and order something? (when sales reps were common enough at retails stores you didnt have to be on hold) 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.

Tamazy 5y ago

The future will be a lightweight headset integrating VR and AR, so that we can switch from one to the other easily, and even switch everything off. 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.

spaceisballer 5y ago
I definitely agree with your sentiment. Being in VR all the time seems exhausting, but being able to switch between the two seems pretty awesome.

spaceisballer 5y ago

I bought an Index recently and love it. Lots of fun games and to be honest a lot of hours logged are in the free valve demos and the Steam VR environments (quests which award items for your avatar). That being said I have zero desire to do work in VR. I don’t experience motion sickness (except momentarily in Pistol Whip), but I can’t imagine VR doing anything but hindering my ability to focus. I personally have moved to just one screen and although there is a lot of cool customization that exists in the VR space I don’t need a bunch of other screens bringing distractions.

germinalphrase 5y ago

I’ve only engaged with VR in passing, but am curious to think more carefully about it. If anyone is moving in the other direction and wants to pass along a headset, email is in profile.

TrueDuality 5y ago

I think when people have this big game changing ideas around VR, what they're generally imagining is actually is still not there. Low friction experiences that still allow freedom of movement. It is possible that VR tech evolves to the point that it can be a low friction experience (this is a bit debatable, but from my experiences I'd still call it a pretty big hassle). 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.

AlwaysRock 5y ago

It's incredible the amount of, "VR was bad for me when I tried it" comments that show up on every VR post. It's an emerging technology. Desktops now vs desktops 40 years ago ate ass. I'm not ready to spend all day in a vr headset but I'm glad some people are.

alpineidyll3 5y ago

...to write this article, and then you read it. For my next act I will be working for my bathtub for an entire week.