I'm always surprised at the lack of enthusiasm for VR and AR on HN. Is there something specific about this vertical that makes it lackluster for this crowd?
I get cynicism and all that but given how much HN users talk about on demand delivery, CRM tools etc... things that are relatively boring in comparison, and the massive growth in the VR/AR industry I don't get the lack of discussion.
a) neither are new or revolutionary, I've been following VR for literally 20+ years, and it's been around in various forms for decades longer
b) despite not being new or revolutionary, real solid use-cases for the technology hasn't really been found outside of "better stereoscopic presentation and head tracking for games"
c) lots of the mistakes that were made in the first several rushes to 3d are obviously about to be made again
d) to "do it right" (e.g. not using it as a fancy 3d-tv strapped to your head) requires lots of expensive equipment and facilities (space to move around in). People will have to make investments in completely changing not only their computing equipment, but even likely dedicating an entire empty room to the endeavor.
e) all the fancy 3d use-cases that aren't in b) above are almost all better handled through existing user I/O schemes an awful lot of the stuff we're hearing sounds like yet another version of Mall Quest (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94mwUGCkkg0)
f) it's expensive, I mean seriously. Unless you're meeting minimum system specs in some way, you're looking at $1000+ minimum buy-in on the low-side. I can buy lots of other entertainment crap for $1000 and probably get better dollar/time ratios.
g) it's still incredibly immature. There's at least 3-5 different major incompatible systems bouncing around. To fully participate in all this means costs for f) are x3-x5.
It's not that I'm down on it. When I see VR/AR things, I think "that's cool" and think it'd be interesting to play a game for a couple hours (max) in VR-land. VR has always been cool and interesting. But the obvious downsides to the tech far outstrip any conceivable upside.
I think the thing that is new is that it's becoming accessible to the masses. PCs and Smartphones were certainly only for the "rich" to begin with but it quickly moved downmarket.
This PSVR news is moving that downmarket accessibility faster for VR than happened in the PC market at a minimum.
Your other points are spot on though, which is why I (and basically everyone else) thinks that the VR market has a cap, whereas the AR market really doesn't - at least until neural interfaces come along.
a) VR isn't the new or revolutionary thing. Reasonably priced high field of view VR is. It's pretty clear to anyone paying attention. I think it was probably explained in Oculus's original Kickstarter video if you want to know more.
b) How are games not a real use-case? How many use-cases do you want?
c) Such as?
d) There is no "do it right". There are alternatives with trade-offs. Besides the Vive does allow you to move around. If you are talking about having a huge 2D treadmill, get real.
f) How much was the first PC? The first mobile phone? It will get cheaper, but expecting the first of a new category of products to be cheap is idiotic. It's still cheaper than the first iPhone was (the real cost; not the up-front cost).
g) You don't have to buy all of them, obviously. That's like saying nobody will buy a PS4 or Xbox One because it costs too much to buy them both. I mean, that's a pretty damn stupid argument.
I'm guessing you haven't tried any of the modern VR systems.
So you ranted a bit here and keep referring to this as new or a new category. In what way is this not just a normal iteration on what's been around for decades?
The question was why aren't some folks excited about the current Gen of vr, your kind of breathless reply is basically it. It's not revolutionary is just a neat advancement that fixes some problems but doesnt fix lots of the ones we already know about and were good reasons for the lack of adoption the first 20 times around.
> despite not being new or revolutionary, real solid use-cases for the technology hasn't really been found outside of "better stereoscopic presentation and head tracking for games"
That's an interestingly alternative way to say: VR presents a radically different, superior experience of immersion which no other current technology offers. Not to mention it's still in the first inning of development and is accelerating rapidly.
You might as well be in 1952, claiming there has been no other use found for the transistor, other than radios.
> VR presents a radically different, superior experience of immersion which no other current technology offers
Well VR covers and has covered for many years a huge number of different technologies. I used a CAVE system decades ago, and I'd still call that VR. If there were some technology that provided a superior experience of immersion, we'd call that VR too, so that statement is pretty close to contentless.
Whether or not a 'superior experience of immersion' is something that is worth paying significant chunks of money and the inconvenience that go with all hardware you need is the real question, and I tend towards suspecting that for the normal consumer with the hardware where it is at the moment the answer is still no.
I still enjoy breaking the VIVE and the Oculus out on occasion, particularly to show people who haven't tried VR before, but neither of them have a huge chance of becoming something that I'll use frequently.
so I'm basically filing your response under the "Vague "this'll change everything" statements don't count" clause. The Oculus, Vive etc. are merely the new kids on the block in a neighborhood that's been around for decades.
> Not to mention it's still in the first inning of development and is accelerating rapidly.
No, VR has literally been around for decades. I've used probably a dozen different systems over the years, some great, some terrible...at this point I feel like the hype machine is preying on either the young who don't remember or the uninformed who simply don't know.
VR systems builders have some very hard problems to solve beyond head tracking and game-style hand controls to become immersive. There's probably 20 years alone researching haptic feedback systems and none of the ones I've used were all that great and had very large performance cost and capability trade-offs.
Solving all of these problems means that all of the issues I highlighted in my grandparent post simply magnify.
The fact that you think the modern hardware, which is easily two orders of magnitude better at 1 to 2 orders of magnitude lower price than the hardware of the 90s to which you are referring when you make statements like "not being new or revolutionary" means you either don't know anything about VR 20 years ago or don't know anything about VR today. The fact that you're calling $1000 to $2000 "expensive" also means you know nothing about 90s era VR or modern era consumers.
The fact that you keep harping on "no compelling use cases", when games are a clearly a legitimate use case, how completely different things like racing games feel in VR versus on a TV (I can't play racing games on a TV anymore) means you know nothing about modern VR. There are already people using even Google Cardboard-class devices to do medical visualizations and planning surgeries that they are claiming would have been too difficult without it. Companies like AltspaceVR are already proving that 3D chat can now be done correctly and it's better and more personal than Skype. I know of several architecture firms that have jumped on this, are developing tools in-house to visualize new designs for clients, with stories that it has helped the client rethink bad design decisions. I know of real estate agents who are hopping on this to show off their stock of dwelling units. This is all right now. What more do you want to prove that there are at least some compelling use cases, and why do you assume that, once the devices are in hand, we wouldn't be able to figure out more?
Games like Tilt Brush and Fantastic Contraption are proving that there is a compelling CAD use case that could be developed further into more productive tasks. Have you ever done any 3D modelling? It's ridiculously hard. It's almost as hard as "individually position 1 million vertices" sounds. The sorts of things people are whipping up in these games I can't even imagine trying to build in a tool like Blender or Maya on a PC work station in any amount of time approaching under 6 months.
"Oh, but how many people really need to do 3D modelling?" I don't know, how many people really needed to do email on the go? IF you make it accessible and available, people will figure out their own use cases.
I still challenge you to prove you actually know anything about VR other than having read about it in TIME every once in a while.
I thought HN was supposed to be a board of cutting edge technology enthusiasts, startup visionaries, early adopters, etc. There is a hell of a lot of lack of imagination here.
Goodness you make me feel old. Especially when none of your use cases represent anything new or revolutionary. This current round of vr tech is nothing more than the glorious output of continuous iteration and technological progress. Literally every one of the things you mention had been true for decades.
It's making a longer sword not inventing firearms.
I still don't see how going from being completely inaccessible to the vast majority of people to basically showing up in your kid's happy meals is not a complete sea change. Quantity has a quality all its own.
I asked you which VR system is showing up in kid's happy meals, not which papercraft kit is showing up. If this is your definition of a VR system I have some bridges to sell to you.
A 19th century stereoscope is a more complete VR system than this. Bonus, they can cover the entire box with 3d scenes.
Strapping a phone and some lenses to your face isn't revolutionary.
VR has always been about strapping displays, lenses and motion sensors to your head at a minimum. Smartphones drove pixel densities, the Wii drove down sensor costs. This isn't a new idea, it's not revolutionary by any definition of the word. It's an iteration that might bring us to a tipping point of mass consumer adoption, and it might not.
Millions of people might buy these things, try them out for a few months and decide the fuss isn't worth the stereoscopic immersion. Or my Mom might find she really likes playing driving games in VR. Who knows?
But not a single thing here is conceptually new in any way. It literally is the same idea, with the same use cases done in basically the same way with better tech at a cheaper cost. That's not a revolution.
CDs were not a revolution over cassette tapes. Recording audio was a revolution over not being able to record it at all.
This is neat stuff, it's very cool, and it's nice that it's far more accessible to more people. But it's not revolutionary, and it doesn't fix the major problems that have been identified by many very smart people who've been working on this problem for decades.
> it doesn't fix the major problems that have been identified by many very smart people who've been working on this problem for decades.
You keep pulling out this non sequitur. "variation on theme, therefore core problems not resolved." You've never enumerated what those core problems are. Because as far as I'm concerned, iteration to higher resolution and higher framerate solves several core problems with the old VR systems.
Are you just disappointed that it's all headsets and you won't be able to get your dick virtually sucked yet? Oh wait, no, you can get that, too. No, I won't link to it. Use your own googlefu.
The fact that you aren't aware of the issues, and you have a picture of you with a VR headset on your homepage and are building a VR framework is a pretty impressive example of systematic personal bias and willful ignorance.
There's literally decades of research into VR that you pretend like doesn't exist: from medical and psychological to input and feedback systems that you're blissfully unaware of. Listing it would be like listing the contents of a library. You seem to want to cast yourself as some kind of VR expert or aficionado, but aren't even aware of the long history of your own field! At this point you're just a poser.
However, people who aren't ignorant internet blowhards are aware of this body of work, have been around VR for much longer than your synapses have been capable of firing on the topic, and end up having a much more measured response to the technology. We all know more about what you are doing than you do. We all know who Heilig, Furness, Sutherland, Engelbart, Lanier and Waldern, their works and the limitations of their vision. We're not the idiots in this exchange.
We were learning to fly planes, drive tanks, overcome phobias, shoot guns, find medicines, map the stars, explore cyberspace and meatspace in VR while you were still learning to drink juice from an adult cup.
You seem to take some kind of personal umbrage with people who have a long view of the topic not finding the precious toy you've hitched your wagon to to be the revolutionary second coming. Grow up and maybe learn something first so you can do something better than the mistakes of all the giants who's footsteps you are treading in.
VR is here, it's been here, it's great, but it's not everything, there is no revolution here only evolution. That screen strapped to your head? That's just this year's model of car, not the invention of the horseless wagon. We've all been driving for a long time, congratulations on getting your license.
I think VR and AR (especially AR) has largely failed to prove why anyone should care.
And keep in mind this is coming from someone who backed the original Rift DK and is looking forward to getting the final Rift.
There really hasn't been much in VR-land that isn't just a cool tech demo. "Hey you can walk through this virtual world and it's like you're actually there!" - yep, sure is cool, but then what?
Both VR and AR are at the stage where we have the technology to make whiz-bang cool tech demos that are legitimately technically impressive, but are not real products the masses actually want. Worse, we know we don't have any real killer applications of this tech, so we're branding a lot of these tech demos as products, which only generates more disappointment in the field.
At a previous job we hacked around for a bit with a Google Glass - which isn't real AR, but certainly has similarities. We never could figure out anything real to do with it. Everyone had tons of ideas for cool tech demos, but the only things they accomplished were being cool and making you feel like you're in a sci-fi movie. We could never come up with anything that was truly a lot of value.
Right now VR and AR feel like very early motion pictures - I'm talking about the period between its invention and the development of cinema. We're still at the stage where it's a novelty trotted around like a circus act, and curious people pay a penny to view a 5-second loop of something dumb. Motion pictures obviously found a real place with real substance and lasting demand - VR and AR are struggling to do the same.
Great points. It is interesting to me how little "slack" people developing wholly new technologies get. Even among tech people. It ends up being "meh, it's ok but - doesn't work yet" when I would have expected more "I know how I could improve this to get it to my expectations."
Quite frankly I think this is due in large part to how much most companies hype it.
It's tricky though, because if you don't hype things - anything really, you never catch anyone's attention - and this applies to all things unfortunately. Even wikipedia had a shitload of hype in the early days.
I take a less optimistic view on it - we're in this limbo state where the technology exists but no good application has been found or developed.
Now, it can either achieve its Eureka moment and blossom into something really useful.
Or it can continue to wallow in obscurity finding at most a few niche applications.
Not every technology that is invented is destined to become world-changing like cinema or antibiotics. There are plenty that become the Betamaxes and Segways of history. At one point the Segway was also heralded to be the Second Coming of transportation.
Part of the problem is that the groundwork has been laid but nobody has the slightest idea which direction to go in. To be clear, it's not that we have a wealth of choices ahead of us and can't choose which one, it's that we have so few choices ahead of us that look genuinely promising.
- VR workspaces/entertainment spaces (see: 50 foot theater screen in your living room!)
- Room-sized VR gaming experiences ("experiences" might be overselling a bit, all are tech demos where the room-size motion tracking feels more like a bug than a feature)
- ???
It seems pretty likely at this point that #2 (cockpit style gaming) is likely to succeed, at least moderately, but all of these other things are being tried but just aren't that interesting.
I don't think any Eureka moment is needed to find high value applications to implement. Just nobody has executed well enough yet.
Even if you think conservatively and consider only vr-ifying apps we already have: For VR, some types of games (Elite Dangerous, Until Dawn), applications directly related to design of real physical environments and objects. For AR there many obvious industrial applications even with simple overlaid indicators, eg in inspection and manufacturing. In AR games there are also many quite obvious concepts that should work (think eg party games or outdoor games) and you would be way off to say "we haven't come up with any worthwhile games" at this point.
The thing is...you get pretty good VR devices that won't make you puke every 10 minutes for 399 to 899 soon. Most game engines these days are also free to use and support VR decently well. Basically what I'm banking on is setting this setup free to any interested enthusiast will lead to things we can't even imagine now. I'm hoping the useful stuff will be built by a 16 year old with a random VR headset for their game console hacking around in Unity and not some academic.
It also helps that said 16 year old can share whatever they built with more people and get a better feedback loop. I think cool stuff is more likely to be built if at least one person in your immediate group of friends can actually use it.
[interaction and content are huge hurdles imo, the more people work on it the better]
I want to know if its possible to make an application that will make some task more efficient for people in VR rather than on a 2d screen.
I am having difficulty finding ideas that are more involved than just using the space in vr as an infinite 2d screen. Even with an infinite 2d screen though we have issues in vr because text is not very legible.
I am at GDC right now seeing if I can get ideas based off the games people are making.
Personally I'm not convinced this is a particularly promising avenue of exploration - I can be very wrong, of course.
A couple thoughts on VR-as-workspaces:
- The 2D screen has a lot going for it - I think it's tempting to regard 2D screens as something that only exists in this form because of technological limitations. On the contrary I think 2D screens have evolved into their present forms because they are extraordinarily good for what they do.
- Movement is consistently underestimated. Even ignoring the current resolution limits of VR, any workflow where the user must move a lot physically is destined to fail. Swinging your head around just to perform everyday tasks is a complete non-starter no matter how good the underlying technology is. One of the core features of computing today is that you can use almost all functionality while barely moving - this is a feature, not a bug.
There is a reason why enormous, gigantic monitors are unpopular for everyday work, and it's not just because of cost. There is also a reason why software-based multi-desktop and screen-area management is vastly more popular than multi-monitor setups, and it's not just because of cost. Physical movement in computing is a big deal.
Similarly this is also the deep hole that motion inputs fell into and never found their way out of. Minority Report's cool arm-waving UI looks cool, but is incredibly annoying (not to mention physically tiring) thing in real life that no one in their right mind would want to use for more than 45 seconds.
This is part of what I was talking about when I say the VR/AR is currently all tech demos - they are really cool, but many of these things are strictly worse than the status quo, in a way that's not even due to the limits of VR/AR tech.
A lot of the lack of excitement in this space IMO is because we have this cool tech but we keep trying to find a hole into which to shove it. A large percentage of the stuff we see coming out of VR development seems to be "hey, what if we can replace [perfectly good, functional thing] with a VR headset?", to everyone's collective groans.
How about Entertainment? Being virtually transferred to a remote location, either as tourism or to watch any kind of show (concerts, live theater, sports) should have obvious appeal for any spectator. Watching performances should be a larger market than other niche entertainments that benefit from VR like hardcore gaming.
The increased sense of presence is an instant upgrade over the limitations of TV and handheld devices, assuming the shortcomings of VR discomfort can be avoided.
VR and AR both need just one hit application. What would be a hit application?
1) It should just work, with no annoying aspects. Should be completely intuitive and engaging/fun
2) People want to use it on a regular basis. For example people play games for hours at a time on a regular basis, or use an app every day multiple times a day. Not just a "use it for 10 mins, think it's cool but never use it again" app
TiltBrush came close to this for me. Particularly the dress form scene. As soon as I found it, I picked the widest brush and started sketching an outfit around it. There's no fabric simulation, though no reason there couldn't be eventually, and it was still fun.
One hit application could be an outfit designer, especially if it can export to physical clothes. Even if it doesn't, it's a powerful artistic tool that also reminds me of The Sims.
Besides that, I can see lots of 3D modelling work done in VR. It seems like a natural boon to architectural design.
It could also be the next iPhone, time will tell. But I suspect that will require lighter goggles and better graphics. Full HD is just not good enough at that close range.
The lack of enthusiasm and vision here is amazing to me. VR will change how we online shop, how we create and visualize models, build architecture, check out far away places, hold teleconferencing, buy homes, watch movies, watch sports and learn. It's going to be big. Gaming is a small tip of the iceberg. VR is going to deliver and it's going to deliver big IMHO.
I've been attending conferences talking about the awesome applications of VR and AR for 10 years or so and even then it was a 'mature' research topic. I remember playing in a VR-CAVE as an undergrad years before that and listening to presentations about how this technology will be 'everywhere' in just a few years. I've seen (and worked for) companies invest stupid amounts of money in cutting edge setups only to have them collect dust. I'm just fatigued and disillusioned I guess, and just don't really believe any more. Wake me when it is more than a neat, yet niche, gaming peripheral.
...All that being said, I'm definitely planning on buying a VR headset, as a neat, yet niche, gaming peripheral.
Personally, I can't tell yet the extent to which this is a novelty technology. Stereoscopic 3D has a 150-year history [1] of people saying, "This will change everything!" and then being wrong. Maybe this is finally its time, but maybe not.
This will definitely sell a bunch of units just because everybody wants to check it out. But I think we still don't know the extent to which this will become useful or necessary. Will this be another Google Glass or Segway, meaning basically a flop? Is it a smartphone in 2002, meaning that it's interesting but will take another couple generations to really find a mass market? Or is this the next color television, where it will pretty quickly become the dominant content and device model?
I'm sure full-immersion experience will be something we get to eventually. But if this isn't somebody's first rodeo, they may reasonably question whether this time 3D will really live up to the hype.
[1] Truly! E.g., the Brewster Stereoscope, which sold 250,000 units in the 1850s. Or the ViewMaster. Or 1950s anaglyph 3D. Or the VR of the 90s. Or 3D television, which was the next big thing for a CES or two, and has since vanished.
I think Wii is to blame. We were tricked into believing what would be full featured motions ended up just being wiggling your wrist instead of your thumbs. I'm hopeful though.
Is there a reason to think this will be a high-revenue use case?
Most cinema is about careful, fine-grained control of the viewer's attention, so I think porn has all of the same challenges that movies do. It's just not clear those will translate to a medium where the user has POV control. But I think VR has it worse in a few ways.
One, people just don't consume that much porn. I know people who will spend 20-40 hours a week playing video games, so $500-1000 on hardware is not an unreasonable spend. But for porn?
Two, previous technologies that have benefited from porn have also increased access. VCRs, DVDs, and home computers made it easier for people to get both a larger volume of porn and access to material suited to their specific tastes. Each has also reduced cost of distribution. VR, though, has to compete with the Internet's existing cornucopia of free and low-cost porn. VR will always have a much smaller and more expensive selection.
Three, a bunch of VR distribution will be tightly controlled. You can bet that Sony's not going to be selling any porn, for example. We live in the age of app stores, so I expect a variety of entities to try to control VR distribution channels. If they succeed, it may make VR porn a very small market.
I know this is bandied about a lot, but I imagine you'd hit uncanny valley pretty damn fast in a way that's difficult to overcome. I'll believe it when I see the MVP.
Plastic instruments, motion controllers, Power Gloves™ … it could be a fad (I don't think it will be) but I think the collective excitement about a “revolutionary new gaming interface" has been burnt too many times and people aren't buying into it yet.
It's also not a hype-train you can really invest in unless you experience it for yourself, and not a whole many people have … yet.
The new interest in VR headsets has all the same predictions and the same problems. Ultimately it is about creating a new platform, getting the convergence of content, consumer demand and quality product. The people in the above video had a great product and a compelling gaming experience even if not so well demonstrated in the video. But they were unable to create a market for their product.
Despite going way beyond 640x480 none of the other problems with the original product have been addressed. Sure things may be lighter, faster, better, however these are incremental improvements on things that were not hard. VR also doesn't cut he mustard for intangible things. For instance, a lot of people like looking at real, actual people, hard that it may be to believe. So you are not going to have a 'cyber bar' or 'cyber library' where people are immersed in VR rather than the world around them. No amount of 'tech' is going to make people that like looking at people (and being looked at) want to wear VR in any social situation.
It is tempting to say that the mighty interest from 'newbies' to VR is going to result in everything magically sorted out and for everyone to get the wonders of VR. Whatever Facebook touch turns to gold, right? One can trust that they have the business model that eluded everyone else, plus the perfect timing into the market and the network effects to somehow make VR a day to day essential thing. But no, they still face the same challenges (albeit not 640x480) as were faced in 1995. Creating a wonderful VR headset is one thing, creating wonderful VR games is something else, inventing some must have VR application would be amazing. Even if these things can be done, to create a new platform/content delivery system is something much harder and none of the fundamental UX matters can be resolved.
We're in the hype peak between tech demo and consumer release. There's plenty for the gaming news sites to speculate about, but not much of substance to discuss. We know what the Oculus Consumer Edition and the HTC Vive will look like, so we won't learn anything new until they're out in the wild.
I believe the general attitude is "we're interested, but we're not going to get too excited until we've got real hardware in our hands and there's some meaningful content available".
I get cynicism and all that but given how much HN users talk about on demand delivery, CRM tools etc... things that are relatively boring in comparison, and the massive growth in the VR/AR industry I don't get the lack of discussion.