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It's Becoming Increasingly Unlikely that We'll See a Major Shift To Virtual Reality Any Time Soon (theoutline.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: VR was supposed to be a revolution, with companies like Oculus pioneering a whole new way for gamers and non-gamers alike to be immersed in digital environments -- but that excitement has markedly cooled. The media has gone through several cycles of fawning, optimistic prognostication, and... wishful thinking? -- but for all the hype we have very little consumer interest to show for it. Oculus sold off to Facebook and has become little more than a parlor trick Mark Zuckerberg shows off at every F8 event. As Ben Thompson recently noted, the bet on the company is an awkward fit for Facebook that strays from Zuckerberg's strengths in several ways.
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is now tooling around on right wing defense projects, while co-founder Brendan Iribe has just left the company amid rumors of future headsets being shelved. Several prominent studios have shut down or ceased VR efforts, including Viacom and AltspaceVR, and Microsoft is a steadfast "no" when it comes to dipping its toes in the water via the Xbox. Sony has boasted about sales of the PSVR hitting 3 million in two years, but there are 82 million PS4 units in the hands of consumers (and keep in mind that Microsoft sold 35 million Kinects but still discontinued the product). With cumbersome hardware (which, let's be honest, looks really stupid to most people), absurd PC requirements, and nearly no AAA titles to lure the curious into the world of VR, it's becoming increasingly unlikely that we'll see a major shift to virtual reality any time soon.
Also worth noting: if you're looking to Magic Leap for a kind of bridge to the future with its AR efforts, don't get too wound up. Brian Merchant's excellent and detailed feature story for Gizmodo on the company's struggles to get around the same hardware, software, and consumer adoption issues that plague VR make it clear there is no easy answer in this space. In my opinion -- as someone who watched this new generation of virtual reality emerge from the earliest days, and was one of its biggest fans -- VR adoption will only happen when the barrier to entry is akin to slipping on a pair of sunglasses (and even then it's no sure thing). Most people don't want to wear a bulky headset, even in private, there's no must have "killer app" for VR, and no one has made a simple plug-and-play option that lets a novice user engage casually. Everyone I know who's tried a VR headset is blown away by the experience, but no one really wants to go deep on it except for what amounts to a rounding-error percentage of enthusiasts. Further reading: 'We Expected VR To Be Two To Three Times as Big', Says CCP Games CEO.
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is now tooling around on right wing defense projects, while co-founder Brendan Iribe has just left the company amid rumors of future headsets being shelved. Several prominent studios have shut down or ceased VR efforts, including Viacom and AltspaceVR, and Microsoft is a steadfast "no" when it comes to dipping its toes in the water via the Xbox. Sony has boasted about sales of the PSVR hitting 3 million in two years, but there are 82 million PS4 units in the hands of consumers (and keep in mind that Microsoft sold 35 million Kinects but still discontinued the product). With cumbersome hardware (which, let's be honest, looks really stupid to most people), absurd PC requirements, and nearly no AAA titles to lure the curious into the world of VR, it's becoming increasingly unlikely that we'll see a major shift to virtual reality any time soon.
Also worth noting: if you're looking to Magic Leap for a kind of bridge to the future with its AR efforts, don't get too wound up. Brian Merchant's excellent and detailed feature story for Gizmodo on the company's struggles to get around the same hardware, software, and consumer adoption issues that plague VR make it clear there is no easy answer in this space. In my opinion -- as someone who watched this new generation of virtual reality emerge from the earliest days, and was one of its biggest fans -- VR adoption will only happen when the barrier to entry is akin to slipping on a pair of sunglasses (and even then it's no sure thing). Most people don't want to wear a bulky headset, even in private, there's no must have "killer app" for VR, and no one has made a simple plug-and-play option that lets a novice user engage casually. Everyone I know who's tried a VR headset is blown away by the experience, but no one really wants to go deep on it except for what amounts to a rounding-error percentage of enthusiasts. Further reading: 'We Expected VR To Be Two To Three Times as Big', Says CCP Games CEO.
I bought into the hype, having wanted to try VR since 1992 when I first saw it on TV as a small child, never having even tried it at any convention or anything like that since, and in 2016 (right?), when the HTC Vive came out, I went crazy and wasted a ton of money on it and a whole new crap consumer PC with a beefy graphics card... and it was all garbage. It's really too many things to even bother listing them, but it also didn't exactly help that all the *software* for it was worthless bullshit. Even the VR porn couldn't have been more obnoxiously shot/directed, and I watched a whole lot of that before finally giving up on it. Very disappointed.
That the underlying problems with VR can't be solved by turning up the resolution?
Sorry, folks this is hardly unexpected. The problem with VR the first time around wasn't the frame rate and what not, it's that the goggle cut you off from the real world. That's something that people, unsurprisingly, still aren't ready for.
Give it another 20 years and try again.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
Here is what we want with VR/ Full sensory VR - most importantly touch. That is what we truly want to feel like we are in a reality, not watching a movie.
But all we get are head gear that makes us look stupid and gives us 5% more than an Imax movie does. Yeah, the 360 video is cool, but the sound is not any better and we don't get touch or even smell, let alone the minor senses (like heat).
The stuff we truly want for a good VD would require something more like a neural implant rather than a headphones + cell phone right next to your eyes.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I think the reality is that if we'd wanted 3D everything, including games, we'd have implemented that a hundred years ago. The technology has existed since the 19th Century. To date, only the ViewMaster has been successful, and then because it was aimed at children.
VR as "3D games" is a dead end. Because it isn't VR. I think we'd all like to be able to immerse ourselves in a computer generated reality, but a 3D headset isn't going ever cut it. It'll always be bulky, and always require just as much imagination to fill in the gaps as watching something on a 1080P 25" LCD screen three feet away from you.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Was always a scam.
A $600 piece of hardware that plays a handful of games is something you put in an arcade. People would start going back to arcades if they offered something they couldn't afford at home. I'd do this myself if I had the money for it, it's so obvious.
We need 8k per eye, and graphics cards need to be at least 4-8x if not 16x as fast for that to be viable, and given the end of moore's law this seems unlikely. Not to mention we also need a wireless solution that can transmit 8k+ per eye in real time, plus enough processing power for head tracking, etc. etc. Unless computers get several orders of magnitude better it seems unlikely that VR will take off any time soon.
That's kind of the idea of Mixed Reality.
https://www.recode.net/2015/7/...
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
There are a couple. The obvious key problem with Oculus is Facebook and Zuck. Most people I know who own VR rigs go with Vive.
On the hardware side, it didn't help that cryptocurrency miners sucked the air out of the high-end graphic card market (and ballooned the prices) just around the same time that HTC, Oculus, etc were introducing their gear. If you bought VR gear, good luck finding a card to run it on at less than some multiple of what you paid for the headset. (That has changed in recent months, thankfully.)
Some of the problems others have mentioned above are there too, but are already being worked on or have solutions.
-- Alastair
Brainstorm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I volunteer at my local library and they have a Vive that anyone over 10 years old can just walk up and put on. They have a smallish selection of games and demos.
I often spend afternoons helping people put on the headset and try out the experience. They all agree that it is awesome. They all agree that they love it. Only the kids feel like it is sufficient reason to go to the library all by itself.
Usually it gets less than three hours a day usage. Sometimes less than one.
I agree that the lack of a killer app or AAA titles is hurting.
For buying then burying Occulus in visionless obscurity. (And to a slightly lesser degree Carmack for letting it happen.)
There's two things we want. The artificial reality we can live in (escapism), and the modified life we can live with (augmented). Both will be handy in their own way, just like fast food and fine restaurants co-exist.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
... VR's killer app has not been realized by these big companies, they are obsessed with creating AAA experiences instead of focusing on making cheap low fidelity augmented reality type glasses which are MUCH CHEAPER to produce and have a wider range of applications. If I was involved at occulus or valve I would slap the management (gabe at valve) upside the head to get them to see - the killer app for VR is to get people outside and moving instead of sitting down in front of a screen, aka use the headset to actually aid people to do things while on the move.
Things like:
-Being able to play slow turn based games via onboard flash and/or streamed wifi (low fi version of civ either on semi-streamed onto local flash memory streamed via wireless, should be doable).
-Experiments with sports like Virtual paintball, I would go develop vr helmets specifically for paintball. Do any does anyone remember captain power and the soldiers of the future?
https://www.retrotvmemories.co...
-Experiments in extremely lightweight and low fi augmented reality tech for navigating stuff like super markets, etc, connected via your phone aka "where is , or where is " but filled in via google like complete in real time.
-Experiments in augmented reality overlay games played outside on real terrain, aka imagine having a virtual mariokarts painted on the roads around you when you are out walking/jogging/biking driving, aka I'd get these companies to go to test tracks to work out the details and what "real games" are viable/not dangerous and when and where to engage in this of course, where you are a participant in said race/game.
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is now tooling around on right wing defense projects
The project referenced in theoutline.com link uses cameras, infrared sensors, and LiDAR to monitor the border. So that's right wing? Give me a break.
The main problem with VR (apart from the ridiculous hardware requirements - which explains why Microsoft aren't interested in X-Box adoption) is the problem of nausea. There really aren't many AAA game ideas that involve sitting in your chair and looking around. Most use FPS control schemes, which are utterly sickening for a large population of users. Space sims work, but in space most of the pixels are black (try docking in Elite Dangerous and you'll see what I mean).
There is a killer app - it's porn. But the current experience is like two virgins fumbling in the back of a cramped car and nobody can figure out how to get the bra off and you can't really see anything well. It looks meh, controls suck, and for filmed stuff camera problems make it look like people are about to rip their skins off and expose their lizard forms near the edges of the screen. Just not worth it in the current form.
It's nearly a decade since I frequented Slashdot. I'm glad the tech cynicism is still hovering around the same IPod/Nomad level as before.
Reading the above comments from some of the naysayers, I get the distinct impression that they have never used it for more than a couple of minutes, or have only played with Google Cardboard.
Games? A small part of the use cases, but there are some great ones out there. Mostly I get this secondhand from my coworkers who are gamers (I'm not) and have VR setups, but I have played with the Spiderman demo. Pretty cool.
But it's fantastic for modeling. Face it, most 3D modeling tools suck, because a mouse is not a 3D interface. When you can shape your model like it was clay, or build it around you with broad sweeps (like with Tilt Brush), it's freakin' awesome.
HTC (and some 3rd parties) already have wireless headsets and adapters, so the tripping over the cable issue is gone.
With the next gen cards from NVidia, expect to see higher-rez goggles soon.
I would love to see better hand interfaces. The controllers are pretty good, but the finger motions are very limited. How about a glove interface, and show me my virtual hands?
-- Alastair
I spent yesterday at a Halloween Show performing a VR segment. I spent the weekend a few weeks back demoing various arts pieces. I've probably done nearly a couple of hundred VR demos in total. No technology in my lifetime (I'm late 40s) has elicited such a strong positive reaction across a broad demographic. People still find VR magical and wondrous. I don't care about sales numbers or hype cycles - I think VR is so obviously compelling that it will find it's place given time. It might not be mass market and it might not be for mainstream gaming. But it's not going away.
It doesn't solve a problem and it's too burdensome as it stands....no one thought it was viable...companies like Facebook just wanted own the landscape first
I've never felt that gaming is the right app for this, probably because I don't game but have wanted AR since first experiencing crude forms of it in the 90s when it was used to tremendously cut costs in aircraft wiring bundle production. I much prefer apps that offer real-life advantages.
But AR devices are still short on FOV, resolution, and brightness.
If AR could give me a full FOV with as many virtual displays as I want wherever I place them around the room and in whatever shapes I choose with no apparent pixelation and good brightness, I'd pay up to $1K for it. That would be less than what I paid for large displays in the early 90s (much less accounting for inflation). AR has the advantage that it doesn't have to render everything in full fidelity all of the time even within your FOV if it knows where your eye is pointed, so it should be achievable from a GPU POV. We just need much higher resolution full FOV AR displays that optimize rendering per where the eye is looking.
The killer launch application from my POV would be to give me banks of monitors at my desk in my living room without having to have banks of monitors. I'd love it for watching movies with virtual screens as large as I want too. But the images need to be solid with HDR and apparent resolution in the center of my vision similar to my 4K TV.
That's the minimum launch point. It can then evolve to being something portable that could eliminate the need for any product that just exists to be looked at or allow anyone in my home to see it as "decorated" in any way they like and changed with their mood.
Duh. Anyone sane person was saying this for years. Only the extreme fangirls couldn't see the writing on the wall from the poor sales figures. No one wants VR because all the headsets suck, the content for them suck and the only ones that suck less are way too fucking expensive.
I do think that the technology has a bit more growing to do, but I, personally, don't think that it's that far off. As for the expense, it's like a high end TV, yes it's out of reach today, but give it a 5 to 10 years and the cost will come down.
There are four things that need to happen: 1. Headsets need to become lighter and wireless, while maintaining high resolution video. 2. Touch gloves need to be included. Other senses such as smell and hot/cold can come later. They likely will require a specially designed room. 3. A large 360 degree treadmill needs to be designed for those who want to be much more immersive in the game. This would include body sensors or scanning to represent movements in the game. Using your living room without boundaries is and accident waiting to happen and 4. A killer app. My thought is that if a VR version of The Elder Scrolls would get a lot of people interested.
At least, that's my vision of a VR system that would appeal to a large enough audience to get it off the ground.
VR games don't really work because game developers won't (and rightfully so) create games that require a lot of neck-jerking to fully utilize the environment. As a result, they continue funneling everything into the centre of the view with the periphery handling, at best, non essential artifacts, which is what a reasonably sized monitor does for you anyway. Remove the convenience of keyboard and mouse I/O, and you pretty much have a platform that has few advantages, if any.
Except that the iPod was selling 10s of millions a quarter at this point in its lifecycle. VR headsets sell combined a couple million a year. Hardly comparable.
VR was driven by companies imagining what consumers want which is always bound to fail at some level. The next wave will be driven by true consumer needs, now that companies have a somewhat better understanding of them. If people want to use VR to chat with people thousands of miles away, or play shooters or a few holes of golf or just as a novelty item which gets occasional use, companies will support these uses.
Oh, a snarky remark about one of the editors! Thanks, we need you.
the problem is the fov (field of view).
you can't see the pixels of 4k monitor *several feets away*.
but you could definitely see them if the monitor is a few inches away from your nose and wrap around your whole head (well at least spread around everywhere your eyes can look at), which is what the current generation of vr is attempting to do (as opposed to older gen that only simulated a somewhat largish screen in front of view and nothing around)
but all this extra screen/fov estate cones at a cost (either resolution if you stretch a 2k/3k display, or performance if you try actually 8k)
hence all the buzz generated in the media by "foveated rendering" (i.e.: eye tracking and variable resolution) as the contender for the vr gen after the current.
(i.e: only render the 3k that the eyes are currently looking at/pointing at, and render a low res blurry approximation for the peripheral vision where it is good enough)
the current buzzword du jour - ray tracing - happens to excel at such varying resolution.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The VR ecosystem required too many accessories. You had multiple companies selling omnidirectional walking pads/treadmills so that people would walk around in VR. Were these compatible with each other or any games/software? Did software need to be programmed specifically for each one? I have no clue and it must be terribly confusing for developers.
AR seemed the better bet since you don't need all those accessories. The problem is different in that the environment needs to analyzed before projecting objects on it, but there are fewer objects so less processing power is required. Physical objects can be used instead of control rings/gloves/etc.
If you ever want to understand the potential of VR, go play Skyrim or Fallout 4. The first ten hours are a bit clunky but that's true of those games on a monitor. After that... I've found it difficult to go back to gaming on a monitor. But I've had to do that because those are the only two truly VR immersive games outside of sit-in-a-cockpit flight/space sims. If anyone is to blame for the failure of VR it is Valve.
In the two years that I've owned a Vive, apart from the titles mentioned above, the only things available on Steam have been tech demos, wave shoot em ups and crap indy stuff trying to cash in. Valve has done the same shitty thing that it always does: fail to meet any kind of sane deadline to deliver promised software.
The upside is that Skyrim and Fallout 4 made the price of the Vive worthwhile -- almost 200 hours spent in each of them -- and X-Plane is so good that it may well have tempted me to take up flying for real.
Who wants a system where you have to hook up a load of bulky peripherals AND sit in isolation? Maybe Nintendo could make something of it but Sony and all the others have no clue
Yes, and I remember when computers were going to usher in the "Age of The Paperless Office"....the result was that paper usage went up about 500% because suddenly anyone and everyone could print whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted...and boy, did they ever.
Canon, Xerox, and Boise Cascade pretty much defoliated the Amazon rainforest to keep up with demand for that sweet, sweet paper.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Such a system would be cool, but impractical. It would be huge - only the obscenely rich would be able to afford a whole room devoted to VR and a treadmill system. That gives it a very niche appeal. You might see them in some future version of the arcade or laser tag arena, but it's no good for the home games.
The place I think I'd use VR is in the office. I currently have three largish monitors, a desktop environment with virtual desktops and layered windows... and I still don't have enough screen real estate. A VR headset with sufficiently-good movement tracking and resolution opens up the possibility of sitting in the center of most of a virtual sphere of high-resolution monitors -- ideally with some AR so that the monitors appear to be floating in my office, so I can see my office walls, my desk, keyboard, the cup of tea on the desk, etc., and interact with all of the physical stuff naturally while being able to see my virtual displays. The headset would also have to be light and comfortable enough for all-day wear. Bonus points if I can replace my office walls with a beach scene, etc., while still being able to see and use my desk.
I have done no investigation to see how far we are from making that possible. I suspect we're not there yet, even without the AR requirements.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I've tried the Oculus Rift, and had fun, but it's still rather novel.
The reality is that the tech is still way too expensive for any decent market penetration. The software makers need more time to get a handle on how to make the new capabilities fun and desirable rather than just ringing the "new thing" bell, and for the most part, they aren't going to do a lot of development until there's a larger installed base.
It's fine for people with lots of spare cash, but for the majority of the market, it's still years away mainstream, if not a lot longer.
I say the technology is here and it's great and I haven't even tried VR for more than a few minutes at some public location. For me, anyway, the problem is money. I think that's probably the problem for many people. It's like how 2D scrolling games still exist and still sell. The old technology is widely available, everyone has it, and it still works.
Getting a VR setup, a good one, is not even close to the price of buying a new console. It's a SERIOUS investment. Even if you already had a computer good enough to do VR, you are still dropping more than the price of a new console just to get the gear, alone. To start from zero and get a HTC VIVE, you still need to buy a computer and graphics card. So, maybe, a 1,500 dollar expenditure minimum? Probably, more like, 2000 dollars. That is a HUGE commitment. If you are living pay check to paycheck or making minimum wage, you just can't afford that. You might be able to splurge on a console, or upgrade your graphics card; but, to invest another 600 to 800 dollars, is just... a bit much.
The bulkiness and the nerdiness can be fixed. Look at e-sports. They are doing okay. Lack of games and titles isn't even really much of an issue cause there are already plenty of games that just need some tweaking to go VR...
but the technology is here, and it's in it's infancy. We've got EEG headsets that let you control aspects of a program/game with your fucking brainwaves. We've got full visual/audio immersion with VR. And then you've got motion tracking, etc, etc... A lot of the puzzle peices are here. If not all of them. I would say the only next steps would be actual neural connections and if you think this technology is still far off... Nobody is going to be dropping 20,000 anytime soon to be able to interface their brain with a computer. THAT is a long way off, and even that is starting off in it's infancy for years now.
I think part of the problem is just an issue of economics. There is no modding community. A lot of the technology is proprietary. And if the problem is only not having enough AAA titles; well, that's a fucking problem in itself. It takes millions to drop a AAA title. If you could open things up a bit so that a garage band team of gamer/developers could tinker and produce works for this shit, then maybe, maybe, we could see some interesting and unique stuff.
but all in all, it's economics. Plus you have to consider the big money expenditures are going to the phones/tablets/etc... VR is a hardcore gamer experience. It's not the same thing as candy crush on a 800 dollar phone being paid for monthly on contract...
Spill your ashtray / coffee enough times while fumbling to find the keyboard and you'll see what I mean.
pretty sure that battlefield VR and related wil alsol be used by left-wing administrations and Congress's in the future
The Ipod/Nomad sold millions in a very short time period. VR has repeatedly failed to sell over 30 years. There is a small group of fanboys that claim it will dominate gaming and everything within a few years, most probably the same ones that claimed 3D TV's would also dominate. The reality is the tech is still quite a ways off in performance and price for any wide scale adoption and it still has too many fundamental problems with no real solutions. I am sure one day it will get there, but it won't be with current gen tech and probably not next gen either.
Ace Combat 7, Battlefront VR Demo, Astrobot Rescue and Battlezone. Now why are these the best games? None of them require you to get off your ass to play them. The entire idea of VR as this magical land thing where gamers are going to be elite athletes is total bullshit. Most of the VR games being developed are either shovel-ware (99% of the crap out there) or unrealistic attempts at VR FPS. The killer genres for VR were always Space Flight and Flight sims. Helicopter sims in particular are a massively underserved market. There should be a push for Wing Commander 1/2/3/4 remakes in VR, as well as getting Freespace 2 to have VR support. PSVR nailed the ease of use factor. Just get your game running at 60FPS and a hardware doubler gets it to 120fps which is fine for presence and head turning. The killer application is looking around cockpits simulating real aircraft experiences that most people couldn't afford to have in reality.
Current VR headset may as well be prototypes for what's to come.
Mainstream folks assume the Vive and Oculus are essentially the same as much cheaper GearVR/Google Cardboard.
Lack of standards for VR, exclusives to one headset kills VR.
Hardware hasn't been keeping up, barely any increase in performances for CPUs and GPUs per new generations.
Resolution needs to be higher to get rid of the screendoor effect, which in turns require much more powerful machines to run the headsets but the hardware is unable to keep up with the higher fps demand at higher resolution (4k or higher at 90+fps)
I have no doubt that VR has a place, but it's simply not quite there yet and considering there hasn't been much news for an actual "next gen" VR headset, I'm not holding my breath.
that need a bunch of other things in place to become available before they really are successful.
The iPHone wasn't the first smartphone; as a developer I used a number of early attempts at "converged" phones. The first was probably the IBM Simon A massive 18 ounce brick of a phone with a monochrome display and a one hour battery life. These early converged phones were tour-de-forces of the day's technology, but they were still too big, too slow, too crude, and too battery-hungry to be anything more than curiosities.
What Steven Jobs did with the iPhone was catch the wave at exactly the right moment, when screens and processors and batteries and networks and UIs all got good good enough, cheap enough to make a blockbuster product possible. Other people were close -- Palm's Treo devices were pretty good, but ever-so-slightly clunky due to their legacy tech. Jobs had the advantage of a clean sheet.
It's not vision that's lacking in most failed attempts to get a new concept off the ground, it's timing.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This same thing seems to be coming for self driving cars...
VR stuff we have today is crap... It's pretty weird to have a phone strapped 1-inch away from your face. If someway we can get something approximating a holodeck we can talk, until then it has some limited applications, but in its current form it's yesterday's 3d TV.
I do think that the technology has a bit more growing to do, but I, personally, don't think that it's that far off. As for the expense, it's like a high end TV, yes it's out of reach today, but give it a 5 to 10 years and the cost will come down.
Yeah, sure. I've been hearing that for the past 30 years.
Until we have Star Trek-like holodeck technology, nobody is going to care about VR.
I hwo a Vive and an Oculus. I prefer the Vive, but each one has its pros and cons.
I read comments here, and I have this huge feeling that very few of them own a headset.
I am NOT an avid gamer -- in fact, I don't play games at all. However, I do love VR and play with it as much as I can.
If you don't know what RecRoom is (and you probably don't), then of course you are going to say that there is no killer app.
if you haven't played the laser games, or the quests, or one of the many custom rooms, of course you will say it's boring.
Honestly, if you spend more than 20 minutes in RecRoom, play a laser game, a quest, or maybe Royale, you will realise that all of this bullshit about small screens, etc. just melts away -- you are too busy playing and enjoying yourself.
My ideal headset is super light, has a total field of vision, it doesn't need sensors (inside-out tracking) and has glove-like controllers. This will happen in time -- in fact, all of this is already happening. In the meantime, it's still FUN.
If you actually tried, you'd know what I am talking about.
Recall that the founders of this industry are mostly scam-artist assholes of the highest caliber. Palmer Luckey in particular is famous for his "shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real" mission-accomplished moment after secretly funding Trump's internet disinformation campaign. Small wonder he's now trolling around US military circles; they're renowned for being enormous slush-funds with no accountability and often actively damaging to public interests. Caveat emptor.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/23/oculus-rift-vr-palmer-luckey-trump-shitposts
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I have an Oculus I got as part of a startup that owed me money folding. It mostly sat there for the better part of a year. Then Beat Saber came out, and now I use it to take two-to-five-minutese exercise breaks while I work. It lost me some weight, so I'm happy with it.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Rick and Morty VR is awesome (if you're into Rick and Morty).
Also, Project Cars in VR using the steering wheel and pedals is excellent. I usually get terrible motion sickness on games with a moving frame of reference, but for some reason I don't with Project Cars (as long as it's configured properly with the position set properly behind the steering wheel).
Such a system would be cool, but impractical. It would be huge - only the obscenely rich would be able to afford a whole room devoted to VR and a treadmill system. That gives it a very niche appeal. You might see them in some future version of the arcade or laser tag arena, but it's no good for the home games.
You're thinking much larger than I was. I was thinking something that is more like 9ft by 9ft, something that would fit in a room where most people put their exercise equipment. Plus, the treadmill shouldn't cost any more than exercise equipment does today.
And basically in the same way as it does now, with a several-year hype by the clueless, and then failing when no reasonable hardware and software has materialized. Same thing this time, and possible next time in 15-20 years.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
No big deal, there's room to grow. Back in the 90s, when the first 3D games were appearing, people also dreamed up a bunch of stuff quite prematurely. But I'm quite sure that by now we've surpassed those expectations by far, it just took a bit longer than some expected.
So I've got a CV1. Here are the issues so far:
The resolution is too low. It works for gaming, but barely so. You won't really want to even browse the web on this if you can avoid it. So that currently puts a limit on using it for any kind of non-gaming use. This is a technologically solvable problem, but it will take time.
Dual 4K displays at 90fps would be cool, if there was hardware to support such a thing. USB C + Thunderbolt 3 does two 4K displays, at 60 FPS. Almost there, but not quite yet.
Cables are limiting. While the resolution is not huge, it's big enough to be challenging even over wires. Doing it over some kind of wireless is even more of a challenge.
Control is limited. The controllers are nice, but they're nowhere near as good as my hands.
Current tech just happens to exist at the edge of reasonably available technical capacity -- while they could do dual 4K displays right now if they wanted, only really, really hardcore adherents would pay what it takes to provide that. So it'll have to wait until today's bleeding edge becomes the next normal.
Fortunately, it's nothing tech and money can't fix. The basics are already there, now all that's left is to refine existing tech and make it better. Doing last year's hardware 20% better is what's the industry has been doing all along.
The Oculus Quest seems like a promising development -- no wires, which should make it a lot easier to use in some kinds of setups, though it will have to sacrifice 3D processing power to do so. I think at the very least it'll be a good test of how big of a deal a wire is.
I do think that the technology has a bit more growing to do, but I, personally, don't think that it's that far off.
So says VR fangirls for years on end. It's always been just "a few years off."
I'll never go back to flat gaming. The feeling of presence in a good VR game is a rush I never felt in flat gaming. The tracking of my gun hand can't be achieved on a flat game, where you shoot out of your eyeballs... seems so dumb now. The feeling evoked by an angry dog growling behind you on flat gaming is a pathetic joke compared to in VR. The ability to fire up Google Earth VR and superman-fly to any location for sightseeing is amazing; streetview pictures are also in 360.
The world will plunge into chaos.
That would be awesome.
My wife and I tried that game in a temporary arcade in a mall in Tampa in the mid 90s. I loved the immersion but the movement confused me so I didn't get as much out of it as I should have. I saw a lot of potential, but I wasn't surprised when it died.
I have been using the HTC Vive recently. I am amazed by the immersion. I am flying in Ultrawings, mostly. Sometimes in Lucid Trips. I also play Longbow in The Lab by Valve.
I am disappointed to see the field fading. I do believe it will come back again when the hardware is even better. Maybe it will come to stay next time.
There is a VERY big disconnect between what is VR, and what is 3D or some abomination of it. _Real_ VR is incredibly difficult to produce outside a computer (I don't know of any way that doesn't involve scanning). VR is full movement while 3D and even "360 degree video", are NOT. And for god sake do not compare VR to 3D TV, they aren't even remotely the same.
It doesn't help either that the industries around VR (including Google), have managed to completely confuse even basic formats. You look at a video, is it SBS? Panorammic? Stereoscopic? Does your player even know how to play those? LIkely not.
Simple example of an awsome video, but _3D_ and NOT VR - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPyAQQklc1s
Bet you didn't even see the directional control in the top left. Click and drag or move with your keyboard.
Now watch the same video but in a player that DOESN'T support 3D, you'll either see SBS (side by side), top/bottom or some form of the two. This is where even porn gets it wrong.
VR is more like a first person shooter game but with true 360 degree _movement_. 3D is 360 (or less in many cases due to production), _viewing_.
It's very hard to explain this to people who have never used VR, barely know what 3D is and likely think of holograms they saw as kids in a book. And no, phones CANNOT represent VR. They only control what you see whereas something like the VIVE or RIFT have trackers on your hands and more. You can put a tracker on just about anything.
I was sold on VR/AR with Face Raiders by Nintendo on the 3DS. What a hell of a game. It wasn't tremendously long, but it was amazingly fun, and that game could have scaled quite a bit. It suffered greatly from the limited hardware of the time.
Basically it worked like this: take a crappy (and I mean just barely recognizable) photo of something with the camera on the 3DS. We liked to use our dog for that. It would overlay eyes and a mouth on what you were taking a photo of, and would only allow you to take a photo if it could detect eyes/mouth/etc on whatever you were taking a photo of. For instances, it was terribly hard to take a picture of Benjamin Franklin on a $100 bill (from a picture on a computer screen, of course ;), and it was very difficult to take a picture of the dog, but it was easy to take a picture of say Mommy.
You get to keep so many pictures in the game, and then you run the game, and it would randomly select 2-3 of the pictures to generate from. You would move the screen around the room 360 degrees, up and down, to try and find the little Face Raiders as they floated into the room through dimensional tears or something. They would bounce around and shoot things at you. You'd get a Boss one which was bigger and meaner if you got through enough of them. My memory's kind of fuzzy now. But, towards the end, the Boss would pop in and have a giant afro. The Face Raiders were basically helmets floating around with whatever face on them, making faces at you. With the dog, the things you were looking at were hilarious.
What a heck of a game, and that was on the old Nintendo 3DS. Like comparing Fortnite on an iPhone X to something on a Palm Pilot. My kid was playing that Face Raiders when he was 2 and loved it. He still picks the thing up and finds that every once in a while at 8 years old. He has Zelda BotW, Splatoon, Roblox, Pokemon Go, and he still goes back to that because it's just so much fun to play for a little while.
I don't need VR that owns my life. I need VR that gives me 15-45 minutes of super fun so I can decompress and get back to the things I need to get done IRL.
Considering the RecRoom thing you're talking about, we're probably already there, I just held off spending on it over the last year mostly over the expense, and that will turn around soon probably over Christmas. Can't wait - thanks for the non-hater post!
As Carmack said :
"Stick yaw control is such VR poison that removing it may be the right move -- swivel chair/stand or don't play."
Shame he couldn't convince his employer to ship with a ceiling mount HDMI+USB slip ring so you could actually fucking do that.
The swivel chair should have been part of the default control scheme for VR ... so it wasn't just a couple of genetic mutant who could enjoy free motion inside the 3D world. Sure that would have been a lot more niche and unappealing to the couch users Facebook wanted to woo, but at least it wouldn't have been complete garbage.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
What I think is the most exciting part of VR, is the VERY high specs needed for lifelike immersion. I have a VIVE PRO and a 1080ti video card, which (barely) meets this requirement- which VR people call "Presence" with a capital P. It's the point where your brain truly "Believes" you are in another world. If you haven't tried VR at that level, you haven't tried VR. With most "Pancake" (flat) PC games not needing the sort of CPU/GPU firepower, there's nothing pushing the limit. VR requires this limit, which is GREAT for CPU and GPU manufacturers, and the future of IT in general. We need this sort of thing to push CPU/GPU crunching (well, something that's not *COIN) Reminds me of a story that Color TV's were hard to sell initially, as you can't see what it's like on Black and White TV ads! .. VR can't be experienced until it's tried. (At least Color TV's were marketable in stores with people walking by, VR needs electronics smooshed into your face)
VR hasn't taken off yet because of cost, complexity, and quality. End of story. All three are being worked on, aggressively.
The processing power required for VR is the largest driver of cost. You can get a headset with tracked controllers for $200, but it required a $1000 computer.
I would happily program on the couch in a VR headset if the resolution could match a desktop. It will, eventually, with the help of better headsets, better GPUs, and foveated rendering.
My mom wants a VR headset, after using my Vive to visit SteamVR Environments. She wants one for herself, one to let her elderly residents use for recreation. She's nearly 70, and they're even older. What she doesn't want is to spend $2000 on a gaming rig, or to have to learn anything new about computing. Mobile devices are on the way to simplify things for her.
Also, Altspace isn't dead, it was bought by Microsoft.
VR is progressing. It isn't done yet, as smartphones appear to be. It's improving instead of stagnating. This article is like saying computing is dead in the 70s, used by a few companies who have good uses for it, but unlikely to catch on with consumers.
Computers got cheaper, simpler, and better, and now my 90 year old grandmother has an iPad.
haven't since Carter. Clinton moved the Overton window hard right so he could soak up enough campaign cash to run and the country's left never really recovered. TV didn't help either. You had guys like Dukakis with good policy who were absolute goof balls in the flesh. TV showed the goofiness of the left and folks vote on their 'gut'.
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1) The graphics cards need to come back in price / get a new generation.
2) $400 at most for a complete kit.
3) Games.
It's probably a good thing that it sucks. We're bad enough with our phone addictions. Imagine how the world will be when VR is as good as Hollywood has portrayed it numerous times. We'd never wanna leave.
I dare state that things have progressed as far as they can--by using off of the self cellphone displays.
We need custom screens which are no larger than 25mm.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
My biggest issue with getting into VR was that they ran it like a console market with platform specific exclusive software. A VR headset should work like any other display. Practically any of my friends who though about or were interested in VR would say the exact same thing "It looks awesome and I want to try it, I am just waiting to see which one has the most compatibility for games"
People, this is all a part of the hype cycle, look it up. New tech just does this. VR is actually making its way up the slope of enlightenment, and everything seems dark because we're not seeing version 2 of the leading headsets right now.
I received two VR headsets for mobile as gifts.
The mobile apps for each were ridiculously privacy intrusive. Why does an entertainment app need access to my photos or my contacts?
Screw you, disrespectful app developers. I threw away the mobile VR headsets and never used them.
Indeed. When VR sets allow you to place calls then we'll talk.
Ultimately at the end of the day VR is still just a games thing at present. A phone isn't. What a person is willing to spend on pure-entertainment is rarely the same or even close to what they'll pay for things they consider actually important.
But hey, if perhaps the game devs themselves weren't trying to suck 150-200 dollars per game out of every gamer then gamers would have more money lying around to buy into it.
The end of moore's law is the problem. ... We need 8k per eye, and graphics cards need to be at least 4-8x if not 16x as fast for that to be viable, and given the end of moore's law this seems unlikely.
Like the multi-decade running gag "Imminent death of the Internet" predicted, film at 11:00", the end of Moore's Law has been long predicted and slow in coming.
Lately we're starting to hit a wall on the "just make the features smaller and being closer together makes things run faster" approach: As features near the scale of the size of the electron wave function keeping the signals separate becomes an issue.
But Moore's law is really about the number of transistors you can build into a chip, and we've literally "just scratched the surface" there. Until recently the transistors have been essentially a two-dimensional layer on the surface of a chip. Now we're starting to use the third dimension - up to eight layers of it, last time I looked.
The limit to that is what I called "Preposterous Scale Integration" back in the mid-sixites (when the buzzwords were "small ...", "medium ..." and "large scale integration", rather than, say, the "deep sub-micron" of the millennium or the current "xx nanometer process"). When the chip has layers of logic elements spaced along the z axis as closely as the feature size in the x y plane, and acceptable yields are obtained for "chips" the size of the old IBM mainframe cabinets - just small enough to fit through a standard elevator door - THEN you're approaching the end of Moore's Law. That's still many decades out.
Now for a single thread you're currently starting to fall off the speed-doubles-every-1.5 or so-years interpretation of Moore's law. Having lots of transistors doesn't get you faster once you're simultaneously running into limits of feature size AND switching speed AND propagation time. But for computations that are massively parallelizable, you can continue to throw more and more elements at them. Graphics rendering, combined with speculatively pre-computing multiple viewpoints for head rotation and translation options (i.e. the core of VR and AR), is such a problem.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
As long as we see (and treat) VR as some sort of extension to what computers are doing now, this is probably going to remain true. Why bother with VR when you can get almost the same experience from a computer setup that's much cheaper and requires a lot less room?
The problem is not technology. The technology is more or less there. The problem is application.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You need power to run it and cooling to cool it, too. Supercomputers are great, but they aren't portable.
It's not perfect, but neither were CGA games of the 80s. The point is that it provides something new, like credible moments of being lost in an alternative universe rather than just solving puzzles or exercising twitch reflexes. Facebook or anyone else would be as unwise to not invest in the sector as Microsoft was unwise to underestimate Internet or mobile. This doesn't guarantee continued relevance, but it does at least earn a seat at the table.
I use a 43" 4K TV which cost all of $300 because it can be run by any half decent graphics card and doesn't require multiple outs on the graphics card. It's equivalent to 4 1080p monitors.
When it comes to screens, it's more about pixels than size. An 8K monitor that's less than 30" is wasting a lot of pixels unless you have insanely go eyesight and like squinting.
VR will have you moving your head all over the place which is going to kill your neck in no time.
Work Safe Porn
What is that even supposed to mean?
it ain't VR. This is why it's failing. Wearing a headpiece will never, ever feel like 'reality'. Peripheral vision is being badly dismissed as a necessity.
I've had the HTC Vive for a little over two years. I now have three of them; one is the Pro. A few points that may be of interest:
- They're great for kids. My daughter got into Job Simulator when she was four. She could happily spend an hour experimenting with different recipes in the kitchen. My son recently had his first serious play--he's two. He loves it.
- Multiplayer is amazing. SculptVR was a phenomenal sandbox experience. Battle Dome was everything VR multiplayer should be.
- Beat Saber looks like a great time--see YouTube--but is actually far more fun than it looks. For me it's convincing proof that VR can do single player games, too.
- It's not that expensive any more. Okay, it's not cheap yet, but my most recent Vive setup uses a mid end gaming laptop.
- The software is a problem. SculptVR _was_ an amazing experience until updates broke multiplayer. Battle Dome _was_ an amazing experience until the player base left. I haven't found anything to replace them. (Minecraft is a serious contender, but it's annoying to set up.) For multiplayer, Rec Room and Raw Data are about as good as it gets right now. Most games are barely worth a look.
Where does this leave it overall? If you always dreamed of VR, you can stop dreaming: it's here, it works, it's fantastic. You can have fun for hundreds of hours. But there isn't really the content yet for thousands of hours--unless you get into multiplayer, in which case you're probably going to have to arrange to meet up with friends so you have people to play with.
Is it worth a look? If you're serious about gaming, absolutely. Here's hoping the naysayers are wrong.
Learn some more about thermal dissipation, and then ask yourself why your brilliant idea hasn't been implemented already...
Good thing too. It gives me a headache.
Chunter chunter onion chunter chunter Shelbyville.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I own an Oculus Go, and I have to say, resolution is most of the problem -- both display resolution and content resolution. The feeling of 'being there' is something that's impossible to get without VR, but when 'there' is rather blurry it hurts the effect quite a bit.
Forget VR games. They have a way to go. But having a personal screen to watch content, either in 2D or in 3D, is quite powerful. Watching NBA or Tennis on NextVR, that's an experience I can't get on a TV. If only it wasn't that blurry. Watching Netflix on a big screen while in bed or while walking the elliptical is useful. If only it felt HD.
Really, just up the resolution, and I will likely stay with that thing over my head for quite a bit longer. In a hectic household, having a place of my own in VR is great. I can sit or stand anywhere without taking control of a screen (the TV, the family laptop, etc.) that someone else might want, and it's clear that I'm not available when the headset is on my head (something that doesn't seem to be clear if I just sit in front of the laptop).
Any comment saying that VR is actually awesome are buried -- like mine, and others. and most comments from haters are _clearly_ from people who have NO IDEA what VR is TODAY.
Tech is ready, games are awesome, numbers are high -- and whiners are plentiful.
Skyrim VR is already a thing that exists:.
https://store.playstation.com/...
https://store.steampowered.com...
it hasn't helped the adoption rate of VR that much.
VR is only slightly less of a failure than 3DTV. At least VR does have some useful niche applications. But VR will not be the next iPhone anytime soon.
You're still talking about niche appeal.
Think about the market size here, the number of people who have 9ft x 9ft (3m x 3m) of room to spare or a willingness to fold/tear down equipment on a regular basis so that they only need 9ft x 9ft on-demand, then think of the development and manufacturing cost for that type of equipment. It's simple math, with so few potential buyers, and there will only be a few given current trends and norms, that equipment is going to be expensive (it would have to be for there to be any potential for profit), thus only very wealthy people (and a very small number of non-wealthy devotees) will be able to afford and have the space for something like this. Thus, it's niche appeal, essentially only for the rich.
I think the reasons why VR is not more successful is simply because the expectations are too high for what is basically a specialized niche peripheral for geeks, not a popular and sweeping social movement. That kind of thinking is just silly. I'm one of those "rounding error" enthusiasts, but even I only pull out the VR gear for very specific reasons. I do most of my gaming on the ordinary platforms, but pull out the VR when I want something different. There are no equivalents to titles like Beat Saber, Space Pirate Trainer, Apollo 11, or Tilt Brush in flat land. For me its worth every penny, but then I also spent thousands on an arcade machine that I think was worth every penny too, but don't think for a second that everyone who vistis my house and finds the arcade machine to be really cool will want to get one themselves. Personally, I'd like VR to stay niche since my favorite reason to pull it out is to show it to people who have never experienced roomscale VR and watch them have a blast. Can't do that if everyone is already pre-jaded.
even for the cheapest solution, which is a ps4 + vr kit, it's still very expensive.
let alone for pc, where the price for a decent setup is already what my budget allows.
ofcourse you have those smartphone kits, which are rubbish.
give it a few years still, while processing power continues to increase. maybe an occulus go v5 will be cheap & capable.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
AI and VR have become synonymous of hype.
I don't think anyone outside of the bubble ever thought it would. Get outdoors now and again, kids, the world is not a post-pubescent fantasy.
This is exactly what I do.
I pay $15/hr but only once a week at max because it's so expensive. Most venues are design for group parties because these groups seem to be OK with one person play and the rest watching in the culture here in Asia.
My killer app is the exercise. In VR Boxing I can work harder and more time efficient than any other exercise I know. I love it. It's just too expensive to buy for home (around $1500). Also I'd need a large space to set it up in so I might have to buy a fold down bed or something.
I've also played 1st person shooters which are pretty crazy. The social aspect is really nice with that. Beat Saber is also really cool. It's the physical aspect again which is what I love. I stopped gaming and now I've found an excuse to start again if it's physical.
Now, what I really want is an exercise app for Google Daydream (cardboard). That would be something I'd use every day.
An annoyance is that there are no low poly games - not much on Google Daydream, not much on Steam for older setups. This raises the price from $0 to $1600. There's an assumption that high detail is a requirement for there to be any point but there are some unique selling points to it.
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It's too expensive and not convenient.
The Vive Pro bundle that includes the sensors and controllers is currently £1,169.99 on Overclockers and it is still not wireless. If you want the Wireless adaptor that's another £300. I can build a high performance gaming PC for less than that.
Without full wireless support and a significant decrease in cost I just don't it taking off.
I would love to be excited for VR, I would love to play Elite Dangerous in VR on my home PC but the wired headset and huge cost just isn't exciting.
Are you sure you know what VR is?
There is no way you can get the same experience from a computer screen. Even sitting so close to cover all vision. Well, unless you are a pirate. But given the lack of "arrhs" and "mateys" in your sentence, I'm going to assume you aren't. It is a radically different effect for stereo/peripheral vision etc... computer games rarely make me jump. VR games (excluding the dumb jump scares) commonly do. It is really different.
VR is just like 3D: a technology niche used by a few. And it will remain like that.
People don't seem to like to wear things in order to experience technology.
Something I have not seen mentioned is the use of VR in combination with fitness equipment.
Currently, a typical fitness room has a bunch bikes, some treadmills for running, some rowing apparatus a few stepping machines and the like. Doing exercise on those is pretty much a solitary and boring activity.
How nice would it not be to have VR-enabled fitness equipment where you could bike/run in a nice virtual environment with the speed you're pedaling/running having an effect on the speed you move through the virtual world, where you could row on a virtual river and hear the oars hit the water, see birds, butterflies and fish all around your in a beautifull nature setting, where the stepping machines would let you climb crumbling medieval towers so that you get a nice outside view every x steps and so on.
All the while you would be able to optionally see your speed, calories burnt etc floating in front above you
You could even add some more adrenaline-pumping experiences where every now and then you get chased by a bear or a wolfpack or whatever to do your minute of cardio workout...
Just like the mentioned arcades, this would move the high cost of the VR equipment to a centralised place shared by a lot of people and would give people an incentive to work out (well, it woud give me an incentive to work out.)
I'd go train there....
The future of VR? I don't know. As for the current crop of VR-equipment, they're generation 1 after all. I'm not sure if VR will survive the coming years.
My first contact with VR was on Google's Cardboard (on a plastic&metal headset, not a cardboard one) Experience there did no go beyond a novelty as in "Hey, this is pretty cool!" Lanterns for Google Cardboard was pretty relaxing.
I did go out and got me a Gear VR (the black and white one) when I got my company issued Galaxy S6 Later, I upgraded to a new Gear for my USB-C equipped S8. While on S6, I could play for 10-15 minutes before overheating, this issue has gone completely on my S8.
I must say, from the beginning I was pretty impressed with the Gear VR and played with it for a good 2 years. Now it only gets some occasional use. It is still a great piece of equipment for demoing however. (having no need for cables or PC certainly helps) People who see VR for the first time just love it. They don't run out however to buy a Vive or a Rift.(or PSVR, or Windows MR or Google Daydream or even Oculus Go)
Some years ago, during the DK1 and DK2 period, I was going to buy one the moment it came out so when my PC died I bought a i7 equipped with a GForce GTX 980. The price of the Rift at launch however put those plans to rest. The price of the Vive killed them. Now that they have come down in price (€450 for a Rift with Touch controllers) I'm kinda interested again but am torn between a good set of Windows MR goggles and a Rift, mainly because the resolution.
So, we're now end 2018. What does the future hold? The Rift and the Vive are getting long in the tooth and never really got any real traction. The success of the PS4 console and the wealth of AAA outfits familiar with programming for it seems to have pushed the PSVR in the winner slot although spec wise, it comes up somewhat short. Gear VR quality can now be had for cheap in form of the Oculus Go. Google's Daydream never seems to have taken off and neither did the Google-inspired Focus. Oculus Quest, which will not come out for several months has some advantages over Rift/Vive but also some serious disadvantages (it is quite a bit less powerful than the 'real' VR headsets.). Unless some breakthroughs are realized in the next 2 years it is quite possible that no major manufacturer will be willing to jump in and VR will (again) disappear from view. That would be sad....
Back in 1998 Janet Murray already hinted at what the issue would be.
It's not just technology that decides if VR is mass adopted.
It's that just as with film it takes 20 years..
- for a medium's language to (a) be developed. Film has the jump-cut, the Shot-reverse-shot, etc. To go from Vertov's experiments (Man with a movie camera, for example), to the Hollywood style a few decades later.
- to educate a wider audience to read and enjoy that language.
The issue with this round of VR mania was that venture capitalists all wanted to invest in the hardware. But the storytelling? I've been at VR conferences where hyped up VR proponents pointed to government subsidies to make that part happen..
As long as Silicon Valley remains deaf to the lessons from the humanities these exaggerated boom-bust cycles will continue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books...
Have you played current VR titles? 9 out of 10 of them are basically copies of games that existed before, only now taken to "virtual reality". Hell, I recently saw a Zuma-Clone the distinct VR feature of which was just that the ball tube ran all around you. The best VR game I know is Raw Data, which is, essentially, not really new either because Zombie shooters have done the "be swarmed by ever growing hordes of mobs" routine before, too.
Is it a different experience? Definitely yes. But different enough to warrant the expense and the far more complex controls? Well, not really.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We've got more than enough problems in REAL reality that we should, as a species, be working to fix, and should be spending less time on 'virtual reality', which is just running away and being in denial of 'real reality'. Put the goggles down and pull up a chair to what needs to be worked on out here.
It's just not impressive, and before you start with your fucking numb-brained "oh then you must not have tried it because everyone who has tried it loves it, objective fact!!!!" I've tried it on many occasions and each time the novelty wore off after ten minutes. After that it was just a helmet strapped to my head for no real benefit.
That's what VR is. It's a shit gimmick. It'll make your guests go "ooh ahhh" for ten minutes, and then they never think about it again. It's one of the biggest failures in entertainment technology in recent times.
I was more or less convinced VR was a fad and a novelty after trying Daydream and PSVR, then I snagged the Oculus Go and suddenly VR is a common thing in the house. Here's what VR needs to succeed: It needs something which can target kids (kids love VR, and right now most VR is for "13 and up"), it needs to be easily worn and portable, with no mess, no cords, and no irritating compatibility issues (so Oculus Go, for example), and it needs to have the best resolution possible because right now most VR experiences feel like a near-sightedness simulators.
Get that right, and you've got the golden mark of success: my kid is obsessed with Ready Player One. He wants that future. VR is so close to being there, that I think right now, as others have said, its merely a technical issue of moving the cutting edge to everyday ordinary (as it always has been). Oculus Go is a step in the right direction, now they need one with all the bells and whistles, no cords, and self contained with even better resolution (the Oculus Go has pretty good resolution, fyi).
Intel's Broadwell Xeons with 24 cores have 7.2 billion transistors and a thermal design power of 300 watts. On a die 456 square millimeters. I'm having trouble finding a physical spec, so let's just say the chip is 4mm thick with package. 1824 cubic millimeters. Let's pack the entire cabinet with just compute silicon and nothing else, as an upper bound. 600mm x 2000mm x 1000mm interior dimensions is 1200000000 cubic millimeters. 657894 chips @ 300 watts is 197368421 watts.
Your standard size rack of silicon will require 197 megawatts to run. Of course it will melt before it finishes startup...
You're going to have to wait until somebody creates computronium before the density you're describing is physically possible. It will require reversible computing and on-board non-volatile memory.
Personally I'd be satisfied with a 100mm cube of the stuff, once it exists. It'd take 164 kilowatts to run if it were silicon. And it'd be capable of several teraFLOPS.
Learn some more about thermal dissipation, and then ask yourself why your brilliant idea hasn't been implemented already...
I knew about that and took it into account even at the time (before making part of my career designing things like network processor chips - a field in which I have several patents.)
The original Preposterous Scale Integration pipe dream included: ...) In the Amdahl rectangular hack dimensionality these would be the two broadest and closest faces.
- A six-foot cube of semiconductor. (That was before I knew about Amdahl's elevator hack. Cutting it down to 3'x7'x5' only cuts the volume about in half.)
- Diamond for the semiconductor. (It has EXTREME thermal conductivity, and charge carrier mobility, while the 5.47 eV bandgap allows it to run VERY hot before thermal noise is an issue- though it increases dissipation due to the high switching energy.
- Power and cooling provided across two of the six faces via water-cooled silver bus bars. (There are better alternative now, but wait for it
- Interconnections with the rest of the world
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
- interconnections to the rest of the world via paving the remaining four faces with fiber optic interconnections. (The bandgap puts the natural frequency of a diamond LED/laser in the near ultraviolet, and the carrier mobility allows extreme bit rates.)
- Enclosed in a container filled with a vacuum or oxygen-free gas (so it can be run at temperatures of, say, an orange glow without catching fire.) High temperature gradients can push a lot of heat across the coolling paths, while the strength of the diamond would allow it to survive the stresses.
The joy of the scenario, of course, is that this would look like the sort of ship's brain you might find in a golden-age-of-SF novel - say the Skylark series by E. E. Smith. (Six foot cube of diamond in a vacuum or gas tube enclosure, glowing orange, supported by water cooled silver bus bars, etc. B-) )
Why don't we have it already? Because of the difficulty of fabricating a collection of transistors that size with the necessary perfection (or even "good enough" to function with error correcting codes and redundant logic). I had, and still have, a possible solution to that, as well, applicable to technologies other than diamond semiconductors as well. But the technology is JUST NOW bringing it within reach - half a century later. So I'll withhold that secret-sauce recipe, just in case I get a chance to develop and patent it. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way