
I Tried VR and It Was Just OK - cremno
http://blog.codinghorror.com/i-tried-vr-and-it-was-just-ok/
======
timr
LOL. I lived through the first VR hype bubble, and it's pretty remarkable how
similar this is to my recollection of VR back then -- the only difference is
that at the time, the goofy, uncomfortable headset was tethered to a
refrigerator-sized SGI machine at the science museum, and there was no hope of
getting it at home. Instead, we got the Lawnmower Man on VHS.

It sounds like technology has advanced enough that we have finally
miniaturized the underwhelming user experience for the home viewer, but we
still haven't addressed the bigger problem of coming up with something
_compelling_ to do with it. Plus ça change...maybe soon we'll get to see
investors salivating over "multimedia experiences" delivered via some
futuristic version of CD-ROM!

~~~
golergka
> we still haven't addressed the bigger problem of coming up with something
> compelling to do with it

For the most of the games that are developed today with first-person view in
mind, adding support for VR isn't something that is very hard to add. And
these games are already pretty compelling.

The only question is convenience. The post mentioned 3d in televisions — but
3d did win in cinemas. I recently wanted to watch Inside Out in 2d (I get
dizzy from 3d), and I couldn't it, although it was just released into the
theaters. Only in 3d.

~~~
acous
First person games as they exist today don't transfer well to VR. The issue is
the locomotion problem: Moving the player in the virtual world but not the
real world causes motion sickness, since they're not getting a matching input
to their vestibular system. Oculus' system today is suited more for cockpit
games or 3rd person games with gentle camera movement. Valve are also
targetting room sized first person experiences, where the user has enough
physical space that the play area can be mapped 1:1.

~~~
j_s
Cockpit simulators have a leg up in this department - not much movement
expected in driving / flying / spaceships.

~~~
intrasight
Not really. In the real world, you still moving and thus feeling acceleration.
Problem therefore still exists.

------
austenallred
It says something that we're writing blog posts about, "This early version of
tech didn't absolutely blow my mind"

I mean, this is still early-iPod-days of this tech. You could look at it,
especially after hearing hype about the iPod, and say something like, "No
wireless, less space than a Nomad, lame."
[http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-
ip...](http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod)

Anecdotally, I've found that looking at anything from a perspective of,
"People are raving about this, does it live up to the hype?" always makes me
respect the thing less.

That doesn't make it less transformative. It just means you didn't like it as
much in the beginning. The criticisms are warranted, but that doesn't sway
what the future of VR looks like for me.

~~~
aetherson
One person was wrong once about the iPod, that means that all criticism of new
tech products is invalid forever!

~~~
austenallred
That's not what I was saying at all. I'm saying it's easy to misjudge the
_potential_ of very early technologies by looking at the wrong criteria.

~~~
aetherson
Fundamentally, I'm just sick of that quote about the iPod. It gets trotted out
all the time, and I don't see any sign that it encodes any profound wisdom. Is
it easy to misjudge the potential of early technologies? How do we know?
Because one guy misjudged the popularity of the iPod once? Was the iPod an
early technology? Was its popularity due to at-that-time unrealized potential?

But perhaps more relevantly to the VR thing, I don't think that the original
article had anything to do with "potential." Everyone understands the
potential of VR, but there are people saying that it is really awesome RIGHT
NOW. And the author was saying that it is not really awesome RIGHT NOW.

------
coldpie
I agree with this article. We bought a Oculus DK2 for work[1]. It functions.
It's cool for an hour or two. But no one's touched the DK2 since I wrote that
article. There's simply nothing to do with it, and what you can do is better
done with a monitor screen. The DK2 is incredibly low resolution. You can
easily see the pixels. I was able to get a sense of presence once or twice,
when driving down a straight in iRacing, otherwise it was always just a cool
3D effect strapped to my face.

[1]
[https://www.codeweavers.com/about/blogs/aeikum/2015/5/29/cod...](https://www.codeweavers.com/about/blogs/aeikum/2015/5/29/codeweavers-
experiments-with-oculus-support-for-mac-and-linux)

~~~
dwild
> There's simply nothing to do with it, and what you can do is better done
> with a monitor screen.

What content? It's an development kit... except if you intends to develop
content for it, for sure you won't find stuff to do with it. It's like saying
I hate the android development kit because there's nothing to do with it.

We need content for VR, personally I believe this is why the rift is still not
released. That's also why they invest that much in game development.

> I was able to get a sense of presence once or twice

You are unlucky then, the immersion I feel is crazy. Each time I remove my
headset, I get the same weird feeling of not being at the right place.

> it was always just a cool 3D effect

I'm pretty sure some good old gamer said the same when they transitioned from
text to graphic, and then again when they moved from 2D to 3D.

For sure it's not for everyone, the same way game console aren't for everyone.
This is not the revolution that some are saying it is, it won't be the next
iPhone, at least it doesn't have to be. It's a new way to play game, a new
environment, that's all.

~~~
coldpie
> You are unlucky then, the immersion I feel is crazy. Each time I remove my
> headset, I get the same weird feeling of not being at the right place.

What games/demos do you play with it? I'd love to experience more compelling
software.

------
mkeblx
Jeff is speaking from a position of not having tried the good stuff that
delivers a sense of 'presence' in the virtual world. That is the game changer,
the thing that is making people believe something special is on the way. When
he says "I have experienced modern VR. A lot. I've tried both the Oculus DK1,
the Oculus DK2." he's just flatly wrong, he hasn't. Those headsets at not
modern VR and using them as the reference for where VR is at is pretty crazy.

But you'll get a chance to try to presence-inducing stuff in the next ~6
months with the consumer release of the Vive and Oculus CV1.

~~~
richmarr
> ... delivers a sense of 'presence' in the virtual world

I keep re-reading your comment and it keeps getting stuck in my marketing
filter.

What do you mean by a sense of presence?

~~~
mkeblx
Michael Abrash of Valve now at Oculus giving a basic description:
[https://youtu.be/G-2dQoeqVVo?t=3m14s](https://youtu.be/G-2dQoeqVVo?t=3m14s)

It's parts of your lower brain aligning to convince you you're in a virtual
world, and while it is a spectrum you really need a high end headset to
experience it. Abrash himself mainly dismissed VR's potential prior to
experiencing it.

~~~
coldpie
Slides (PDF) from that talk, for those who prefer text to video:

[http://media.steampowered.com/apps/abrashblog/MAbrash%20GDC2...](http://media.steampowered.com/apps/abrashblog/MAbrash%20GDC2013.pdf)

I didn't know he'd move on to work at Oculus. Interesting.

------
sireat
Counterpoint:

My friend's architecture office has Occulus, and everyone, clients and
architects love it.

I asked her if anyone experienced any headaches or seasickness but since there
is no action happening just a visual walk through buildings it seems side
effects are minimized.

So for architecture Occulus fills a nice niche.

~~~
wpietri
The real question for me is if architects end up working in the OR rig or
whether it's just a novelty for client demos. As I mention upthread, 3D has a
long history as a compelling novelty technology; a real test for me would be
whether architects use it every day and the ones who don't have it are
demanding it instead of demanding, say, bigger 2D monitors.

~~~
sayangel
we've definitely seen architects get real value from VR beyond the novelty.
That's definitely one of the harder parts of being a VR company at this stage.
Getting people to adopt because its actually valuable and not because it's
cool or because they want to be the first.

Some of our customers are using it to analyze the impact of re-arranging work
spaces or to communicate why design A while more expensive is better than
design B. We've been working on and are really excited about using VR to A/B
test physical spaces. We do it for websites, why not for the spaces we live in
every day?

a cool case study:

www.interiorarchitects.com/blog/the-future-of-architectural-renderings-at-ia-
is-in-virtual-reality/

------
mdemare
Jeff compares the DK2 to Quake resolution (640x480), but I think that's quite
misleading. Quake looks terrible, to modern eyes, but that has little to do
with the resolution, and much more with the low polygon count, low quality
textures and the lack of lighting effects.

Run Far Cry 4 at 640x480, and it'll look much better.

~~~
codinghorror
I do not think Far Cry 4 would look very good at 640x480. Imagine it full
screen on even a modest 20" monitor at that resolution.

There are tricks, yes, but big pixels are a fundamental problem until you
reach a "good enough" size. Sort of like when the iPhone 4 and retina was
released. We are very, very far from retina resolution in VR.

~~~
lfowles
[http://images.cdn.stuff.tv/sites/stuff.tv/files/styles/flexs...](http://images.cdn.stuff.tv/sites/stuff.tv/files/styles/flexslider_desktop/public/news/FC4_resized.jpg?itok=2ZSfqq8p)

Looks significantly better than Quake, even when maximized to fullscreen
(except for the JPEG artifacts)!

edit:

far cry 4 640x480 filetype:png

[http://www.picmygame.com/wp-
content/uploads/ktz/yQq6DDQq-m2a...](http://www.picmygame.com/wp-
content/uploads/ktz/yQq6DDQq-m2a5wamnac6ztznkryv70k98058ede2pzps4a4stz4.png)

[http://www.picmygame.com/wp-
content/uploads/ktz/Z7ptQrAC-m1n...](http://www.picmygame.com/wp-
content/uploads/ktz/Z7ptQrAC-m1ns3ad8vr1t7auu05yj2dug80xr7hbsmgln4qqtog.png)

The text isn't great and the last image is hard to look at, but that's
probably post processing.

------
hedgehog
The Vive's approach for the controllers works really well and it sounds like
it'll be shipping this year. It's strange that he doesn't mention it. I've
tried a bunch of the other attempts going back to primitive university lab
stuff in the 90s that took up two SGI Octanes, the Vive is the first thing
I've seen that seems good enough to build apps on. I think the biggest problem
initially is going to be figuring out what the killer app is. In terms of
comparisons with the growth curve of mobile VR might look the same but we're
much closer to the AMPS brick phone stage not the iPhone.

------
howeyc
I think this is where the adult industry can act as the "bridge" and can make
use of VR as it is today until it is mature enough for gaming. The lack of
input/feedback isn't that big of a deal since for adult entertainment your
hands need to be free for a more fulfilling experience.

------
rm_-rf_slash
My only disagreement is with the "gloves" idea. I thought we learned from the
Wii that motion controls without force feedback is anti-immersion. Imagine
"firing" a 12 gauge shotgun and seeing considerable recoil in VR while your
hands stay still. Without haptic feedback I'll have to rely on imagination for
the full experience, which I thought video games were supposed to skip.

~~~
saint_fiasco
Maybe they could make it so you have to mimic the recoil motion yourself, with
your own hands, to fire your shotgun.

You would have to make sure to always turn the safety of your shotgun before
putting it away, otherwise if try to quick-draw you will shoot yourself in the
foot.

edit: grammar

~~~
mcdougle
That's anti-immersive, too. When you fire a shotgun in real life, you don't
have to do the recoil motion yourself -- you just pull the trigger, and the
recoil occurs on its own.

------
rrss1122
Seems contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian. Even the cheap google
cardboard, which ticks all his requirements except 4K (and probably will have
that in the next year), is mindblowing, both to me and friends and family I've
shown it to. I didn't even show them games running on cardboard, just videos
shot using Google's special 360 cameras.

The technical challenges around VR are not _that_ deep, hard, and fascinating.
At this point, it's only a matter of prices coming down.

~~~
coldtea
> _Seems contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian._

Seems he gave about 2000 words of the concrete reasons he doesn't like it.

Heck, he event gave CONCRETE suggestions of things that need improvement.

So, no, this is the very opposite of "contrarian just for the sake of being
contrarian".

> _is mindblowing, both to me and friends and family I 've shown it to_

Gimmicks can be mindblowing too. Have you used it for extented periods of
time? Would you? And, since there are always outliers, would others bother?

Some people were also totally in love with their Google Glass BS, and we know
how that turned out in the market.

~~~
kamaal
For some one who is not into gaming, the experience(no matter how horrible to
the expert gamer) will seem like the first time some one would have seen
Television, used a telephone or used a desktop computer. Its a new thing which
the ordinary person hasn't used before, and they will be super thrilled to
even get a chance to use it.

Heck even the tech crowd was excited about this around 2 years back, how do
you expect the ordinary public to not be excited about it?

Yeah, there are problems to solve. And once the overall trend moves towards
VR, there will be a good enough incentive to bring down prices and have more
focussed engineering towards these problems.

Beyond all that, Gaming looks like a very small area of application for this
kind of a technology.

------
kefka
That's your opinion.

I do demos with a Alienware R18 laptop with a DK2 with demos different depts
have made. I bring this oversized desktop in a laptop format to demos, and
show them off.

I perhaps have 1 or 2 people out of 50+ each time that aren't wowed. And given
that I've went through a 1000 people at semi-random, that I think its fair to
say that this guy is in the ~3% minority who isn't impressed.

All I can say is to give it a shot. Try a roller coaster demo, or play
different games in the Rift. It really is crazy awesome. The only bad thing is
keyboard input is __hard __, and still an unsolved problem. I figure when
haptic gloves get good, this will be the final answer.

Edit: Seriously? -1's over a valid comments from someone who has 4 DK2's and 2
DK1's ? So bashing VR on HN is in vogue now. Got it.

~~~
CosmicShadow
If you aren't a gamer or technology person, it's way more impressive then if
you already live in that world. Spending hours on the thing vs a demo is a
very different experience as well.

~~~
kefka
Admittedly true.

I do spend a great deal of time on our rifts. I've done some dev work for it,
along with using it as my virtual desktop. I didn't think that people would be
interested in my personal use case, because I am rather an outlier.

Airflow is one concern. I am hot, and stay hot. Along with that, it tends to
fog up the lenses and get somewhat sweaty. Demos aren't a concern because
condensation doesn't have a chance to form.

I also have issues of depth perfection after about 4 hours, which is around
lunchtime. This goes away in perhaps 5 minutes, but is still a problem.

There is also the screen door effect still in DK2. I've heard the CV1 doesn't
have this, but that shall be seen.

There is also the mention of input issue. Using keyboard is still hard. I
still resort to looking down the nose-hole to see the keyboard (others with
Rift will know what I mean). I've been playing around using a wiimote and
nunchuck for input along with a sensor bar, and it works well.

Sound is also another problem area, but CV1 has builtin speakers. It's to be
seen if they're good or not.

~~~
gspetr
> I also have issues of depth perfection after about 4 hours, which is around
> lunchtime. This goes away in perhaps 5 minutes, but is still a problem.

Don't think depth perception is going to go away without modifying human eyes
and/or the brain, which is a much harder task than VR itself.

I have short-term depth perception issues when I take off glasses.

~~~
kefka
I'm not so sure about that.

A small infrared camera and led mounted near the eye can track the eye. Along
with tracking, you can also calculate the depth field by determining the
circumference of the retina. This in turn allows for software-defined focus to
be built in on applications.

I also see an interesting future for light-depth-field cameras and displays
that capture all depths and allow user controlled focus. The question is: can
we replay this data format in a single display?

------
bane
I'm really interested in good VR, but then I start to _really_ think about it:

How long do I really want to play a game with a headset strapped to my face?

I'm going to need better input devices soon. That's more $$$

I have a pretty high-end system right now, capable of playing pretty much any
top-end game at full settings at 60FPS, and it doesn't meet the specs
facebook/oculus wants, so to use it my purchase-price goes up by 4 figures.

I buy it, and a year later an even betterer headset comes out.

I'm going to need to have a dedicated space for it, I have too many beer
bottles and other things on my desk to be blindly moving around with motion
controls.

I'm really concerned also about the marketing and messaging coming from
facebook/oculus. I _really_ don't want to be part of a facebook branded and
owned cyberspace. And the marketing story (we're shipping with an Xbox One
controller!) is not what I want to hear from a supposedly 2 billion dollar
company.

They've already so much as said they're going to nickle and dime buyers with
new controllers later anyway.

------
silverlight
I'm most excited for VR headsets to replace my desktop monitors. Infinitely
sized displays in 360 degrees around me...I think that's where the real future
is for these things. And doing that won't require nearly the hardware power
that a 3D game does. The main thing holding it back is that the displays in
the Oculus are still a little too low-resolution to make text 100% crisp and
clear. I fully expect that a couple of years from now, though, I'll be
ditching my monitors for a VR headset.

~~~
XorNot
This is the dream for me too. We're a couple k more lines of resolution on
cell phone screens to making it happen though.

------
DDLawson
So refreshing to see an article about VR that's sole purpose isn't to build
hype for VR!

My only experience with VR was trying the Samsung Gear headset in Schipol
airport. It was a new, exciting experience for the five minutes I got to try
it out. I imagine that Oculus Rift will be a much better experience, seeing as
it's not based off a mobile phone but built solely for a VR immersion.

Despite how relatively amazing my first VR experience was, I can quite clearly
see what the author means about it not 'revolutionising' this and that
industry upon release. But I feel the most important aspect is that the
technology is in its early infancy and, just like the television/consoles that
came before it, will take a lot of time, innovation and behavioural changes to
truly break into the general public and make a difference across different
industries.

------
saturdaysaint
A lot of his complaints seem to be imposed by constraints on current consumer
spending - basically, _surely_ people won't be bothered to buy a VR rig if
they have a current gen console or spend more than they would on a tablet.

I disagree. So much of consumer electronics (TVs/phones/tablets) has become
cheap enough that I think the usual demographics with disposable income won't
mind making a splash if Oculus is truly offering a new experience. I've almost
been disappointed by going to Best Buy in recent years and not even seeing
anything especially cool/desirable there.

This generation also doesn't place a lot of value on traditional aspirational
purchases (eg you'll see a lot of well to do yuppies in Priuses or Subarus
rather than the BMW that was a rite of passage in previous generations) - if
anything, I think this may lead people to massively underestimate how much
millennials will spend on novel/innovative big ticket items.

------
rwmj
As a counterpoint, I used a DK1 and I thought it was brilliant. Can't wait to
use a production model.

I also showed it to an architect friend of mine and he loved it and wants to
use it to walk his clients around unrealized house designs.

~~~
sayangel
hey rwmj! Would love to talk to your architect friend about how we wants to
utilize VR for client presentations. email: angel[at]insitevr.com

My company, InsiteVR, makes it easy for architects to take their 3D models and
deploy a VR walkthrough that they can use for design reviews or client
presentations. No coding experience required, just a 3D model.

here's a cool example of one of our customers using our software: a cool case
study: www.interiorarchitects.com/blog/the-future-of-architectural-renderings-
at-ia-is-in-virtual-reality/

------
iblaine
How is this article news? Everyone knows that VR is still a work in progress.
Another article pointing out the current flaws is not bring anything to the
table.

------
norea-armozel
I feel that VR hardware may be good enough to sell to early adopters, but my
fear is that the software and products like 'SL 2.0 (Project Sansar)' won't be
good enough to give early adopters a reason to buy the hardware. It's all a
chicken/egg situation. If there's no good product out there to justify the
price tag, no matter how small, then why buy the thing? With products like the
iPod and the early smart phones there were compelling reasons to buy them
(convenience is a common factor for both). But what's the compelling reason
for VR other than novelty? Will it make it easier for game designers and story
makers (think Pixar or anyone in the film industry tbh) to convey previously
impossible stories? I'm not so sure VR gives creators a new tool in that
regards, so I'm going to wait out this cycle of VR to see what happens. Buying
the Rift to play Elite Dangerous in VR mode doesn't really excite me and I'm a
long time user of virtual worlds like Second Life (going on 11 years on
January 2016).

------
prbuckley
This article makes some fair points but the authors opinion is tainted by
recency bias. A new technology doesn't need to be as good or better then
recent technology it just needs to be different and unique in some way. Gamers
and gaming has a really high bar of expectations. I agree that generation 1 of
consumer VR won't meet existing AAA game title experiance but it doesnt have
to garner mass market appeal. This is like expecting the first mobile phones
to be as polished as the iPhone, or early versions of online video to be as
good as highdef tvs for mass market appeal. Clearly that wasnt the case,
people found value in these early versions of technology even though they were
not as good as alternative options because they added some additional element
that was unique. For mobile phones if was mobility, for online video it was
easy sharing and watch on demand. What will be the key value consumers derive
from VR? That remains to be answered but there is something unique and
different enough about VR that makes it promising.

------
pkroll
I find the Oculus Rift DK2 with Vorpx (one of several competing pieces of
software to play older or not-designed-for-VR games using the Rift) actually
kind of spectacular. Elder Scrolls Online works well with it, and the game is
an entirely different kind of experience when you're "actually" there. Atwood
might be entirely correct about it being far from mainstream, but did anyone
think the first consumer VR headsets from Oculus and Valve were going to hit
the big time? I assume they'll do well enough to get to the next generation,
and that content will improve over time. If you look at videos of people
trying the available demos, they're already feeling it... but everything
custom made is short, as no major game works directly with VR.

FWIW, the DK2 screen looks a lot better to my eyes with a screen protector on
it: it just barely blurs the pixels so there's much less screen door effect
than there is out of the box. I've not had the chance to try the newer,
higher-res and framerate headsets.

------
intrasight
People fall into two camps:

Camp 1: "Anyone that doesn't understand what a seminal change this is needs to
take a history lesson"

Camp 2: "Anyone that doesn't understand that this is mostly hype needs to take
a history lesson"

I'm gonna stake an opinion here and put myself solidly in Camp 1. I think this
is going to be as impactful as the transition from radio/audio to tv/screen.
Radio didn't go away, but it is a much diminished medium. Compare your own
daily radio time vs. screen time. The same shift will now occur, and we'll see
similar ratio with daily screen time vs VR/AR time.

Go backward in time to 1945 and ask a teenager if they'd rather watch TV or
listen to the radio. Ask the same question of today's teens with regard to VR.
The human brain craves high-fidelity stimulation. A flat screen is just no
match.

TV was "just OK" when first introduced to consumers. The picture was lousy,
the tech was complex, the cost was high. No doubt that is all true of VR
today. It won't be true for long.

~~~
Nadya
Playing DA here, but a lot of what you said could be said about 3D movies,
which were a total flop for 15-20 years and even today face a lot of backlash
and hatred.

While I have high hopes/beliefs in VR, I do fall under the "3D movies suck, I
wish they'd stop making them. It's a failed technology and gives me
headaches." camp.

So I can see where Camp 2 is coming from when they hate on AR/VR technologies.

~~~
intrasight
But follow my logic. Put a 13 year old in front of a TV with a collection of
2D and 3D movies - and see which ones she chooses to watch. My whole point is
that the 13 year old's get to decide in the long run. Your "3D movies suck"
sentiment is perhaps an adults opinion (one that I share), and perhaps also an
opinion expressed about movie theaters - which is not the same as personal
tech choices.

~~~
Nadya
I feel that will vary more from household-to-household based on the parents
experienced with 3D movies. I've met teenagers who have never seen a 3D movie
but claim to hate them!

There has also been some talk (not sure about actual studies) that many adults
who claim to hate 3D haven't even _seen_ a 3D movie in the past 5-8~ years; in
which 3D technology (and using it properly) has improved. A bad experience
years ago "tainted" the technology and they want nothing to do with it. This
is discussed by a number of movie critics.

My biggest fear for AR/VR is that the first experiences might be like how 3D
movies were... and it'll take over a decade to dig out of the hole that
creates. Lack of R&D, slow improvements, niche media, etc.

Which is also why I feel the big players on the field currently are taking
their time, working out the kinks, and trying to make the "first generation"
[0] as good as possible for as many people as possible.

[0] I know AR/VR is years old and some products have been marketed as
consumer-end. None entered mainstream was well as Oculus has AFAIK, so the
hype for the product is a lot higher than it used to be. Kind of like how
Windows had tablets long before the iPad but it took the iPad to make tablets
"a thing".

~~~
intrasight
I believe the tech has great "mid-term" promise, and that it will avoid the
issues which made 3D get rejected. However, I don't think that any of the
specific VR products that we've been exposed to are going to go consumer
commercial. They are way too weak and way too expensive. But we know the magic
that Moore's Law can do in just a couple of years.

Oculus admits that their current tech can't/won't support natural Depth of
Field, and is therefore unnatural to the point of making most users nauseated.
They can't give a date for this problem to be solved - blame the bean counters
not the engineers. But I've got no skin in the game so I'm going to stake
another opinion. That is that it will take probably 5 years for the tech to
support Depth of Field at a price point ($1000 in today's dollars) that
consumers will accept.

------
scld
DK1 and DK2 are light years behind the newest revision of VR tech. Try both of
them back to back and see for yourself. Night and day.

~~~
kefka
They are both pretty far back. They are also only $350.

I have access to IUPUI's CAVE, as well as other VR equipment. The expensive
equipment is really good, but on part with ~$20k and up. And it's not
portable. And it requires applications developed for the CAVE system.

I can haul the laptop in a bag and the rift in its box. Fast, good, or cheap.

Rift picked Fast and cheap. Can't say I blame them. It does well for me and my
groups.

------
realcoolguy
Today's VR still isn't there. Yesterday's VR didn't go anywhere.

However as someone who has only used the Devkit1 of the Rift I can really see
this is the future of SOME entertainment. It is going to be amazing,
eventually.

Games in 5-8 years made for VR are going to be mindblowingly immersive. Then
again we're still going to have non-VR games. I think it's important to
understand that this tech is really only useful in certain contexts.

Horror games (for VR) are going to be painful, adrenaline pumping, sweat
inducing, monstrosities.

Huge possibilities exist for experiencing other perspectives in VR, too
numerous to even count. Even basic things like experiencing what it's like to
be taller/shorter will have an unexpectedly large impact on immersion.

VR is basically the DDR dancepad of the future. It's just an unusual interface
device to increase immersion, but it's going to (eventually) be incredible.
I'm very excited for the future of VR and non-VR alike.

------
legohead
I went to E3 for the sole purpose of trying out VR (Oculus). First time I
tried out DK1, I was incredibly disappointed. The resolution made the
experience worthless. I went to E3 another time, again for Oculus, and they
had a whole booth set up this time with DK2. It was also disappointing. Better
resolution, but still not good enough, and like Atwood says, the controls are
terrible. I was trying it out on a AAA game, too.

When I started seeing articles spouting how unbelievable VR was, I just
assumed they were using some new model that fixed all these problems.. but I
wouldn't be surprised if it's just hype, too. It could also be that these
journalists simply aren't gamers, and seeing snazzy 3d graphics up in their
face for the first time is enough to blow them away.

------
gexla
I was swayed by his points enough that my level of excitement for buying one
of these things has taken a big hit.

On the other hand, the industry hasn't had much of a chance to get running
yet. Maybe the hardware issues will prevent this from happening anytime soon.
But I'm not surprised that you would get bored working with device which only
has demo content available for it.

I took a look at a list of some of the highest gaming budgets. I would think
an effort of the scale of a game on this list could create something which
would provide a good counter argument.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_g...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop)

------
fsloth
A description I read about galaxy vr is the only application that made sense
in the current VR space from consumer point of view - the optics can create a
friggin huge _2D_ screen to view in 3D space. I haven't tested it though.

I'm not so sure gaming is the numero uno application. There are a shiteload of
places I would like to experience but really cannot access. Oceanic trenches,
top of Everest, experiencing a volcanic erruption from near by. Sports fans
would probably appreciate a POV right above the playing field (images from
drone cams). Games sound really boring to me - compared to the real world
vistas I could experience. Yeah, middle aged geezer, blah blah blah.

------
sayangel
i'd be interested to hear what Jeff thinks about the GearVR. Most people brush
it off as just another phone holder with lenses, but I'd say it's the most
compelling VR headset available on the market.

It has a lot of what he requests from a VR headset: wireless, better display
than DK2, and doesnt require a gaming rig. It's virtually plug and play and I
think that's why people love it.

MobileVR is what will and should be people's first taste. I've spoken with a
lot of architects who love cardboard because it sets such low expectations but
blows people away when they put it on. The DK2 is a bit underwhelming as
you're strapped into some gaming rig so you're expecting some cutting edge
graphics and end up with what something that looks like N64 VR.

One thing that was neglected in this post is the emotional response that VR,
even in it's current state, can evoke. I was sold on the Rift after trying
some of the early horror titles. They were graphically very basic, but every
corner had me sweating and the jump scares had me looking away. You could
argue a 2D monitor has the same effect but when you're in VR and try to look
away only to find you don't see your living room or anything familiar
everything changes. And the social experiences like Convrge or Altspace are
also something to be excited about. I was at first quite skeptical of things
like this, but the subtle head movements that are incorporated into the
avatars are enough to give one a sense of "meatspace" social cues. I once
found myself talking to someone in Convrge and was awkwardly nodding and
avoiding eye contact when I realized this was just an avatar. It's simple but
powerful.

------
jonstokes
This article is pure distillation of everything that's wrong with VR -- not
the tech, but the people who are thinking about it and trying to build it.
Specifically youngish white male gamer nerds.

I want to write about this more at length -- maybe I'll put something on my
blog or on Medium or something -- but I also tried VR, and the most
interesting aspect of the experience was just how clueless all of the gamer
types at the gaming company office I went to were about what other people out
there in the world would want from the experience. Here is what I mean.

The most impressive and important part of the otherwise crappy VR demo I sat
through was a crudely rendered virtual media room with a big screen TV, where
I was placed on a virtual couch to watch some movie clips. Why did this rock
my world?

It rocked my world because I happen to know that it would cost me $40K at
least to add a media room on to my house, and if I could buy $5K worth of VR
gear for my wife and I and get pretty much the same effect, then that would be
a major win for us (and a loss for Austin's contractors and architects).

In other words, gaming is the /least/ interesting thing about VR. VR has the
potential to disrupt the architecture and building trades. In the real world,
people like to have access to spaces that they can do various non-gaming
things in, and they have historically been willing to pay quite a bit of money
to have those spaces built. VR will drive the cost of adding those spaces to
one's home/office/trailer/pad/etc. down towards zero.

I tried explaining this to the crowd of young white male gamer nerds gathered
around the pizza station after the demo, and they sort of chuckled at this
boring old guy rambling about building contractors (I'm pretty sure none of
them owned a house) and went back to wracking their brains about what, to
them, is the single most important thing in the world: how are we going to
make a frigging GAME with this?

I know these guys, because prior to my wife + 3 kids + house I was one of
them: a young white male gamer nerd. But at this point I've been around the
block enough to recognize that the number of people interested in blasting
virtual aliens or orcs is a few orders of magnitude lower than the number of
people who want to just hang out on the deck of a mega-yacht at sundown, or
have coffee once again in an exact replica of a Parisian cafe that they used
to frequent in the 60's, or retreat from their kids and life into a virtual
media room and watch Game of Thrones on a virtual big-screen TV.

Note that I'm not slamming Jeff Atwood, who for all I know owns a house and
who thinks about many things other than leveling up and collecting loot. I'm
just saying that he has thoroughly missed the point of VR, and in a super
common and troubling way.

I'm not an SJW by any stretch, but VR needs women, and black people, and old
people, and in fact it will get them because the market will demand it. That's
because VR isn't the next Atari 2600 or Kinect -- it's the next TV, and the
next Internet. Are today's Internet addicts hooked on MUDs or MOOs? No, they
aren't. And tomorrow's VR junkies won't give a rip about games.

~~~
codinghorror
I have three kids for the record. And trust me, if VR isn't doing a good job
of making a believable aliens-are-destroying-your-house game, it isn't going
to be any more believable when it is just rendering your house with bigger
rooms.

That's the problem.

~~~
jonstokes
I totally disagree. I would have taken that crappy media room demo home and
(along with another headset for my wife) right then and there, for the simple
reason that as crude as it was it totally scratched the itch of "watch TV in a
dedicated room in the house with no kid stuff anywhere."

FWIW I agree with you about the technical stuff -- the resolution has to go
way up. But it will.

Again, the tradeoff is not "do I buy this megabuck Windows PC for VR gaming,
or do I just stick with a console?" The tradeoff is, "do I pay a bunch of
money to knock a wall out and/or redecorate, or do I buy this VR rig and some
DLC from virtualcelebritycribs.com and call it a day."

~~~
kefka
It also does something else.

It makes smaller apartments even easier to live in. Suddenly my 400 sq. ft.
studio is not small, but now very spacious. In fact it's as big as I want it.
Virtual, of course, but that makes tight living spaces livable. Perhaps, it
can even be applied to tiny houses movement. 150 sq.ft. is now reasonable, as
long as I stay in the VR area.

Given that many of the younger generation rent, I would surmise that
reasonably priced VR will make rents go up even further, because small spaces
will be in demand. And I'd also think the hikkomori trend from Japan will be
exported to the rest of the world, as well.

------
pixie_
DK2 isn't that good - ghosting, no positional tracking, screen door effect,
etc..

CV1 really is amazing though. I've tried it. I wonder what the author would
think.

------
hyperion2010
This article is very much spot on. I think the true value of VR is the ability
to provide new ways of playing in virtual spaces, but those ways of playing
need to be compelling, they need to have good gameplay, like anything else.
The 'gameplay' for watching a movie in VR is going to be absolute shit,
because the viewer inherently has zero agency. The experience must be
interactive and it must give the player a sense of agency (re: why hands are
critical), otherwise the cost of putting on the headset will be too high for
most people. Similarly, VR won't replace other experiences that have good
gameplay and give players a sense of agency. Alien Isolation is an absolutely
amazing game because the level of quality for the writing, pacing, level
design, sound design, voice acting, control scheme, gameplay mechanics etc.
are all in the 99th percentile for games and more importantly all of those
parts complement eachother. Producing something like that is HARD regardless
of the medium. For every Alien Isolation there are going to be a pile of shit
games that you really don't want to play.

I think most of the VR guys admit that bad games in VR are going to be
exceptionally bad, but I haven't heard anyone articulate quite so clearly
Jeff's concerns that the experiences will just be boring. Watching Conway's
game of life run: boring. Setting up and _playing_ with a fully interactive
Conway's game of life: wait is it already 2am?!

------
nazgulnarsil
the hype is about the trendline, not the current experiences. The DK1 was a
quantum leap over previous efforts. DK2 was so far beyond DK1 it was a
completely different experience. Vive is apparently as far beyond DK2 as DK2
was beyond DK1, though I haven't tried it.

Ignoring this in favor of "lol DK2 isn't that great" is shortsighted.

------
moron4hire
So his problem is that pre-release, AAA game software for pre-release hardware
is nothing more than tech demos. And bloggers. But let's not get too far off
topic discussing his own contributions to the "I need to get my voice
included, too!" problems with blogging-as-a-career-move. Let's just stick to
the tech.

It's disappointing to see someone who has such a prominent position in the
developer community not just completely misunderstand a new piece of tech, but
then go on to use his platform to stand up one part of that burgeoning sector
as a straw man against all of it.

I agree, the games and other software available right now are underwhelming in
a lot of aspects. That's because they are either made by indies who don't have
the technical prowess to figure out best workflow for the nascent technology,
or by AAA game studios that don't have the creativity necessary to make
anything other than adaptations of their current FPS franchises, what all the
serious pundents agree is the worst possible UX for VR. That's not too say
there aren't great experiences, but they are few and far between right now.

Though frankly, so are monodisplay games, after you've burnt out on Call of
Duty and World of Warcraft five (or more!) years ago.

But if all you see VR as good for is games, man, I just don't know if I can
even reach you with words.

People keep comparing VR to when smartphones were new. I think that is wrong,
because it implies a platform rather than peripheral approach, but even if we
accept it, are smartphones just about games? IDK, maybe for some cynical,
short sighted view of them they are. I don't think we are anywhere near fully
taking the potential of smartphones. But even more, they represent a fairly
different (though I wouldn't say fundamentally different) means if computing
for users.

If you look at the original iPhone like Atwood has for VR, then you're going
to come to similar conclusions, "this hardware sucks, the resolution sucks,
who would want this? I want Siri _now_." I mean, the iPhone didn't even have
the App Store when it was first released. Everyone was expected to make HTML5
web apps.

But VR isn't smartphones. It's upgrading from monochromatic CRTs to full color
LCDs and adding a mouse to your computer, before any GUI operating system has
been invented. Thinking this is only for games, that it won't evolve (thaaank
you, Jeff Atwood, we weren't aware resolution should be improved or that the
headsets are heavy), that I don't think I've ever seen anyone come unstuck
from such stubbornly old ways of thinking.

VR is going to be the thing that keeps the first manned mission to Mars from
dying of boredom-induced insanity on the longest single-leg voyage man has
ever undertaken. The Mars colonists will use VR to exercise their body _and_
minds. It will allow them to participate in vastly more cultural exchange with
Earth than would be feasible without.

VR is going to be the thing to save the Rainforest and push people to cleanup
any future ecological disasters. We are going to be able to put people in the
space, to give then a hook on which to empathize that isn't possible through
just TV.

Even for mundane things, VR is going to revolutionize content authoring,
especially in the 3D space. Editing 3D models with 2D tools is an exercise in
learned zen suppression of frustration. I'm working on an IDE in VR, where
text isn't just an adaptation of the old dog chow of your Visual Studios or
Eclipses or Emacsen of the world.

So yeah, it's young. Is it "not ready?" I don't agree. When the first color
CRTs were released, we knew they would be better at a higher resolution, but
that didn't stop us from using them. I think VR is ready. It's not ideal, but
we won't be able to build the ideal unless we get it out, start exercising it.

EDIT: okay, to quell the "hype" a bit, things you can do in VR _right now_
that are better than without VR.

\- Simulator games, i.e. racing and flying, on the DK2. Project Cars and
Elite: Dangerous are flipping amazing. I actually don't care for games for VR
that much, but I love these games and I can't play them without the headset
anymore. Yes, even the "low" resolution of the DK2 is better than playing
these games at a "high" resolution on a flat screen.

\- Architectural visualization with Google Cardboard. Several architecture
firms are now using VR to visualize future buildings as well as additions to
current buildings. I've heard several anecdotes of plans being fundamentally
changed after seeing them in VR vs. just architectural drawings.

\- Watch films made for VR in Vrse ([http://vrse.com/](http://vrse.com/)).
There aren't very many yet, and some of them are very short, but they are very
good and not at all like 3D TV.

Things you'll be able to do, very soon

\- Event space visualization with Google Cardboard. Sites like Social Tables
are developing visualizers for their existing event space planning software.

\- Interactively author GPU shaders in the DK2
[https://share.oculus.com/app/shadertoy-
vr](https://share.oculus.com/app/shadertoy-vr)

\- Play "I Expect You To Die" which has not only been one of the few VR games
I've enjoyed, it's one of the only "locked room" games I've enjoyed
[https://share.oculus.com/app/i-expect-you-to-
die](https://share.oculus.com/app/i-expect-you-to-die)

So is VR "not ready yet"? I don't think so. I think it's as ready as any new
tech on release day, perhaps even more so, because the developer ecosystem is
just so much more open.

~~~
pjc50
_VR is going to be the thing to save the Rainforest_

This is proving the article's point about excessive hype.

~~~
moron4hire
You pick that quote and not the Mars one? Because that particular reference is
already happening. Excessive hype is when Magic Leap spends two years lighting
up the tech press without showing any hard tech to people not locked up under
an NDA. You _can_ experience, right now, being physically in a certain place,
seeing it on TV, and being in it virtually. VR really is closer to being
there, even in simple forms like Google Cardboard, than it is to watching TV.
As time progresses, the hardware improvements will push it even closer. No, it
won't be perfectly like being there, but not everyone can (or in some cases
should) be there. VR is already showing people things they probably wouldn't
have seen without it.

~~~
pjc50
How is it "saving the rainforest"? Doing so is a matter of policing in Brazil,
funding anti-deforestation projects globally, and limiting the international
market in hardwood.

Seeing trees in VR is absolutely not going to make more than a tiny difference
to people's political beliefs on the importance of rainforests and their
willingness to spend money on them.

~~~
moron4hire
> Seeing trees in VR is absolutely not going to make more than a tiny
> difference to people's political beliefs on the importance of rainforests
> and their willingness to spend money on them.

If you think that, then I think you have to also think that seeing it in
person is not going to have much of a difference, either. I fundamentally
disagree.

------
curiousjorge
I'd say for VR it's definitely an improvement. Resolutions will get better.
More power will get cheaper.

I think we realize that to have immersion we absolutely need accessories.
Haptic bodysuits and gloves. Simulate tacticle sensations and feedbacks
digitally. Firing a shotgun resulting in your arms moving back as if you just
fired a shotgun.

Next we can have some sort of stationary hamster ball where you could move
about in complete freedom suspended in air. It would rotate to give you an
illusion of gravity. The haptic bodysuit would give you the feeling that you
are standing on the ground or in a race car or a spaceship.

Why stop there? Nanomachine solution you would drink and allow you to eat food
in your VR and taste it.

The possibilities are endless but so are the unique challenges each of these
necessary component of VR.

OR there was a way to fire some sort of lucid dream world but controlled by a
software. You would know you are dreaming but you would be completely caught
up in that VR world generated with the help of your own brain. Everything
feels real, but what if people neglect their own bodies, wanting to be in the
world as long as possible.

------
fippydarkpaw
"I've always been the first kid on my block to recommend an awesome,
transformative gaming experience, from the Atari 2600 to the Kinect"

Kinect was an awesome transformative gaming experience? Really?

