Ehh. I've owned a VR headset for a long time now, and I think many people underestimate how fundamentally isolating being in VR is. Humans are social creatures and unless you live by yourself and want to escape into VR, you're a lot more likely to enjoy watching the big game with friends and family so you can shoot the shit, and share the experience.
Don't get me wrong... VR is and can be a lot of fun, but I just don't see it being this next big thing that people seem to hope it will be. On the other hand, I think when someone solves AR, I suspect that may very well produce a seismic change across society with widespread adoption.
Sports are a special case as, arguably, they're mostly boring and their main value is the social context - cheering for players/teams, spectating together with family and friends. In contrast, the market for serious movies or single-player videogames suggest that there is a lot of demand for "lone time" experiences.
I think a big factor in lackluster adoption of VR is... space. VR games require space, which is expensive, and people seem to have less of it in recent years. On top of that, usable space disappears very quickly once you start a family, which cuts out a good chunk of the target audience.
Games do you are right, but productivity work is much like sitting at a desk in a cubicle -- just with so much much more you can do, even now. Sure, today there are a lot of caveats, like you need to touch type and transitioning between controllers and keyboard is sub optimal on the hardware side; while the software is still all 99.9% game oriented, there's no native multitasking, even little things like cut/copy/paste are a hassle. Today, your only option is some version of screen casting with all its multiple window resolution/scaling pain. But once you get it working it is hard not to be amazed working on a 10foot tall visio diagram and by the time Apple rolls anything out all these problems will have been solved for all practical purposes.
And rugby, rugby league, Aussie rules etc are essentially aerobic physical contact sports not anaerobic impact sports. These sports have relatively few stops, and certainly no time for advertisements outside of the half or quarter time breaks. And there are no bulky pads and helmets, and the physicality is just as dynamic, if not more, than US football.
Cricket is like baseball, where it tends to be on in the background and you pay attention at each delivery/pitch. Cricket can last 5 days though...
As an outsider in the US I was struck by the crazy high percentage of time dedicated to advertisements - even to the extent of intentional breaks for that purpose.
As a former american football player I find that watching the game is not as exciting as playing it. From the outside, and if you don't know about all the micromanagement and stuff going on, american football looks rather "static".
Other sports are much more "obviously dynamic" and are therefore probably better suited to be watched through TV or VR.
I had to do a search for that [0] and surprisingly (for me, not watching the sport except snippets in movies) it's actually real. The downvotes may come from people who took that as an unrealistic exaggeration.
I’ve also never watched American football, so forgive me. This sounds incredibly dull. Can someone ELI5? What is going on for the rest of the game? Why do people watch?
A lot of the time in the second half of the game is intentionally wasted by the team with the lead.
A lot of the time throughout the game is wasted intentionally by game procedure, e.g. refs are setting up for the next play.
Of course there are varied reasons individuals have to watch, but the overwhelming majority of it's market success can be ascribed to tribal desire to see your team win.
To anyone else confused: ELI5 means "Explain (it) Like I'm Five (years old)." Now I'll try.
Caveats: I don't watch American football on TV, but I watched it some when I was a teenager. I mostly remember how to play, and while I don't think it'd be safe to do it at my age, I do like to play catch with an American football whenever I get the chance. I wouldn't mind watching a game now, but only live and very close to the field.
The thing is there's a lot of strategy, and each play is a meticulously, often spontaneously, planned action by the Offense (team with the ball) which the Defense does its best to disrupt.
That disruption is almost always at least partially successful, forcing improvisation on both sides. In particular the quarterback (guy who throws the ball) often has to rethink the plan in real time as people chase after him -- he really really doesn't want to be tackled, for his own protection as well as for the game -- and somehow make this work with people who are running around at some distance from him. When it works it can be awe-inspiring and utterly unexpected.
These things -- the strategy, the plan on the field, the disruption, the improvisation, the danger -- are all directly and intimately connected to the physical and mental abilities of the players, which are routinely pushed to their limits, sometimes to the point of causing permanent damage.
This is all the stuff of human drama, and as in most human dramas the decisive physical events don't take up that much of the time.
Another thing I'd add is that compared to a lot of other sports American Football offers an interesting combination of extreme chaos (the tackle, etc) and extreme precision (the long-distance pass to the wide receiver).
Soccer by contrast never has that much precision and is much more about mastering the ever-present chaos, most of it very slow paced; basketball can go long stretches without getting very chaotic at all despite things constantly happening. (I know some people will take umbrage here, but I'm ready to defend these points!)
I can't think of another sport that so closely tracks an idealized version of warfare and group combat. Though I'd love to see other examples.
All that said, familiarity has a lot to do with how much you can enjoy watching a lot of sports. If you grew up surrounded by the culture of Sport X there's probably stuff in it you will like to watch.
I like to watch squash, because I played it enough to understand what's going on. I have a friend who watches hours of snooker online. Even golf draws an audience. Even cricket!
An NFL game consists of a series of designed plays, and the 12 minutes is just the execution time. In between plays, there are formation changes and setup, so fans can guess at what the offense is planning and how the defense is reacting. (That happens in other sports too, but here there's a formal beginning and end to each play.) Then there are also breaks between quarters and after changes of possession, where genuinely nothing is going on.
> Sports are a special case as, arguably, they're mostly boring and their main value is the social context
I think this is a bit of a fringe opinion. I can certainly see how people appreciate the social aspect of sports events with necessarily appreciating the sports. But I don’t think I wake up in the middle of the night to watch F1 alone for the social benefit.
Just remember. If you accidentally fall asleep, Lewis will somehow lose. I nodded off during Monza this year and then the moment I was asleep all hell broke loose.
I totally agree; VR is very isolating, while AR is all about enhancing and augmenting one's interface with the real world. There is no contest: the real world will win, simply because the real world is sophisticated to start with, while anyplace in VR is what you see only, and that's a façade.
VR is isolating because its the blank canvas precursor to AR. AR is just a datastream for VR all sexed up for the media. What matters are the graphics engines/OSes. VR Chat is not isolating. Is it VR or AR to change your camera scale and 3d zoom into a reconstructed electron microscope scene and look around? Hugs will increase in value surely..
I was never arguing that VRChat/social apps are worse than other remote social experiences (phone call / video conference, etc.). My point is that it is very isolating and impossible to share the experience in any meaningful way with folks around you, or just be present at all while doing something in VR.
Like I can play Mario on my TV while sharing that experience with my kids or chatting with my wife about things, while still being around my family in a shared living space. VR just isn't cut out for that. I do use it for sim-racing (which is pretty much a perfect fit for VR headsets) which is anyway a situation where you need to be distraction free and kinda isolated from everyone else so it works well in those types of scenarios.
Counterpoint: The same argument is true of phones, and that has largely not stopped people from being regularly severely distracted by them even in social settings.
Even sans pandemic, my family all lives several states away (drivable), and my extended family are all even further (flying distance). In person connnections are great, but it’s not like I can just pop over for dinner after work.
I haven’t gotten any of them to join me on the VR train, but as it grows I think that’s a big use case for it. You can hang out together with someone in a VR space in a way that video chat doesn’t capture.
You could be at multiple super bowl parties/other events at once in VR. I know it's not exactly the same as being physically proximate but it offers some advantages that being there irl can't offer. You and all your friends in the lower stands at halfway marker all game. Maybe you want to all "sit" wherever the ball is on the field as it moves up or down the field of play. Maybe you have a specific spot in the stadium you like to sit at and you don't have to fight with others for that spot. I don't know it sounds kind of interesting for some things. I'd still personally rather be at a concert in person, I guess.
I'm not arguing against VR for shared social experiences over the internet with remote participants. I actually do think that it can be great for that, especially once technology catches up some more. My point though is that if you already have family or friends in your home, then it is pretty much impossible to have any sort of quality social interactions in VR and you are much better off enjoying things IRL, even if it isn't as immersive as what a VR experience could produce.
>you're a lot more likely to enjoy watching the big game with friends and family
This is more a comment on the state of VR software than the technology itself.
With the Apple product described, it's pretty easy to imagine software that allows you to have a "virtual box seat" where you can get online to watch the game with your family/friends, even if you aren't all in the same place, and use the tech to both watch the game and talk to each other when nothing's going on with plays.
Alternatively, you can use the cameras in the app to merge your immediate surroundings with the game feed, so you see the people beside you in a part of the picture, or in the aforementioned "virtual" box seats. You can watch the game as if you're on the side lines (or on the ball) and see people around you react to plays, too. With eye tracking tech, the headset knows when you're looking at the game vs. your surroundings and can react accordingly.
I think Apple producing a VR headset would be a very good thing for the market. Like or hate Apple as a company, they tend to set the standard for industrial design and UI technology, and their products drive other products' features and uses.
Yes, humans evolved to live in groups. However, we did not evolve to live in huge cities, surrounded by millions of people and tall concrete boxes. That would scare the soul out of our ancestors. My point is that we can't always judge the technology by what's "natural" to us. Brain is extremely flexible, and children who grew up with VR might just want to live in it, instead of the "real" world.
We adjusted our culture, but our brains are likely the same as they were before the mega-cities came into existence. My point is that we shouldn't necessarily judge the technology by what's "natural" to us, i.e. "VR isn't going fly because we're social creatures".
"Evolved == went on" to live in big cities vs "evolved == adapted as an evolutionary process" to live in big cities, etc, are two very different things.
Evolution adapts to present conditions, not future conditions, and on a time scale of millenias. It chanced into a feature set that let us change our environment much faster than that. We're still adapted to the lifestyle we had many thousands of years ago.
>Yes, humans evolved to live in groups. However, we did not evolve to live in huge cities, surrounded by millions of people and tall concrete boxes. That would scare the soul out of our ancestors.
Well, it gets us to stress, depression, suicides, the loneliness epidemic, and other such day-to-day suffering today too (plus obesity, poor physique, etc).
Living in a better environment, without the "huge cities, surrounded by millions of people and tall concrete boxes" but keeping the modern advancements in medicine, sanitation, and so on, we would probably live 20+ years more...
I agree about it not being the next big thing. But, for some people who are extremely introverted, it can be the best thing ever. I think it has a lot of therapeutic use, although underdeveloped.
I find it to be disorienting, relaxing, and exhilarating, like a drug. To me, gives me the feelings of nitrous oxide without the strange nitrous oxide sensation.
I started and got out of VR due to the complete lack of anyone grasping how isolating and empty it is without other people, and those other people really ought to look non-generic. I'm an "original 3D graphics researcher" from the 80's, and have created 3D production pipelines as one of my career specialties. VR needs an entire "face lift" where it includes people, at a moderately personal appearance level. When girls can look like themselves and it requires less effort than their own getting dressed each day, while also presenting their real time actual facial expressions they will use VR, if for nothing else, a gossip (social media) platform. But my main point is, until a person can go into VR and be themselves, look and act like themselves, VR is alien.
I totally agree and is probably the main reason I don't use my Rift more - it takes me to another location.
> unless you live by yourself
Is a very important point, I think the social (especially with covid) aspect of VR for people that are not together might be the angle that Apple is looking at.
Presumably, this isolation would be less of a concern with mixed reality. Just place “the game” in a shared middle of the room and blend your friends into the stands.
When I’m playing in VR and no one else is at home, I feel no more vulnerable than if I had my nose buried in a book. I do keep the door locked and the blinds down, though.
It really does depend on the app, I was once playing the game Hotdogs Horseshoes and Handgrenades. It has this western level which is wide open. But I really hated it, it felt really isolated. The echos only made things worse.
For people who are really sports fans (which might be a little out of the Hacker News audience, I know) not having your friends and family talking during the game might be a pro, not a con.
Don't get me wrong... VR is and can be a lot of fun, but I just don't see it being this next big thing that people seem to hope it will be. On the other hand, I think when someone solves AR, I suspect that may very well produce a seismic change across society with widespread adoption.