
VR Is STILL a Stupid Idea - douche
http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2016/10/15/vr-still-stupid-idea/
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Deregibus
I think that there is overoptimism in VR right now where the technology is
going to progress slower than people think, there will be more difficult
roadblocks than people think, and the best practices around VR software will
take a while to develop. It will happen, it's just not going to be easy.

This article strikes me as saying something akin to "Cellular phones are a
stupid idea and will never take off. They're heavy, the size of a brick, and
you can only use them in the few areas where there are towers nearby." Well
yeah, if we were perpetually stuck in 1985 sure, but fortunately we're not.

I'd argue that the current generation of VR (Rift/Vive/Gear/PS4/etc) is
already multiple orders of magnitude more successful than past attempts, and,
to continue the cell phone analogy, we're essentially in 1985 right now.

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blinkenlichten
Did you not read the article? The points he makes are not due to technological
or environmental constraints. It's about what people actually are interested
in and capable of doing.

Pretty much everybody wants to be able to use a phone on the go. However, if
cellphones made 90% of people nauseous after a short time just from walking
around with them, they wouldn't be that popular.

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Deregibus
I did read the article, and yes, his points are largely due to technological
and environmental constraints. He presents a combination of current and past
VR tech (with a healthy dose of strawman mixed in) and uses that to make the
claim that VR will never work. It's not going to live up to the current hype,
but you can say that about almost everything.

Nausea from VR is not some sort of intrinsic property, it's due to a number of
physical factors, many of which can be solved technically by better hardware
or by the design of VR experiences. It's not going to be easy, but it's not an
intractable problem.

The difference between the VR we have now and the VR we had in the past is
that now there is momentum towards moving the technology forward. You have
multiple companies competing to develop hardware. You have many developers
working on VR experiences and learning what does and does not work. You
actually have people buying these things and using that software.

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ilaksh
That is an informative perspective that many people who haven't been following
VR for as long could benefit from.

However, I think I have some even more beneficial context. One of the biggest
problems with society is the fact that people just cannot distinguish between
merit and popularity. They don't know that they are two separate things.

Also, I will go further and say that relates to the capital-oriented nature of
society, so people often cannot distinguish between something that just
currently fails to make lots of money and something that doesn't have merit.

Nearly every major innovation goes through years where it doesn't quite live
up to the hype, isn't particularly affordable, and/or just isn't fashionable
or popular. That doesn't mean they weren't great ideas.

Actually the best ideas are often the ones that face the most technical,
economic, and social challenges. But eventually we look back and recognize how
advantageous the transformation was. And the armies of non-historically-
informed detractors look silly in hindsight.

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corysama
VR is fast approaching the hype-cycle "Trough of Disillusionment" as well as
the chasm of "Crossing the Chasm". Expect to see a whole lot more doom-saying
over the next couple of years.

What will happen is the same story that plays out with every breakthrough
technology. Now that we have the early implementations in consumer's hands,
everyone will expect everything and a pony immediately if not sooner. But, the
reality will be that there are still a lot of very difficult problems to
overcome that will still take years to sort out. So, the general consensus
will overestimate in the short term and underestimate in the long term by
large margins. In the end, VR will make a very large difference in a whole lot
of people's lives. But, it won't deliver <insert-magical-fantasy-situation-
here> on any predictable timeline. So, people will say it turned out "OK, I
guess".

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Timshel
> Way back in 1995 ... New head tracking technology and high resolution LCD
> displays had made it possible to make light weight VR glasses affordable to
> the masses

I found this line really funny when two of the critics that I often see with
the current generation is the price and that the resolution is still not
enough.

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rubidium
"If you can’t simulate inertia, you’re not delivering VR, you’re delivering
nausea!"

This seems to be the main thing. There's a basic user need that's effectively
impossible to deliver short of a SEGA AS-1 type machine... which is too
big/spendy for home entertainment.

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e1ven
Don't room scale VR systems, like the Vive, avoid this problem? They (usually)
avoid having any artificial movement at all, mapping you walking around in
your room 1:1 to walking in the virtual environment.

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blinkenlichten
...which is one reason why VR won't live up to the hype.

You won't be _piloting_ the Millennium Falcon, you will be sitting in the back
room, playing Holo-Chess against Chewbacca.

That may be interesting enough to some people, but it's not going to "change
the world".

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strict9
>but the truth is that VR has been tried and failed repeatedly over the last
two decades.

Maybe it's not VR as most think of it, but the problem has existed for even
longer when considering 3D movies in the 1950s.

Since then the same cycle of new technology, hype, sizzle, and obsolescence
seems to play out whenever there is a new invention. VR is not like other
technologies once written off that became ubiquitous, instead it replays
itself with each generation before they discover that it's terrible and not
enjoyable.

This article is one of the best explanations out there why it will never
succeed with permanence.

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xbmcuser
To me the real growth in the next few years will be in augmented reality more
than in VR. At the same time I think pro vr and anti vr are both taking
extreme positions on where VR is heading.

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DSVC
I can't say if these points are all right or all wrong, but it certainly made
me think. The idea of inertia and nausea really resonated with me.

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mattnumbe
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."

Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

Just needs more time...

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andars
You could use this same quote for anything.

"This revolutionary new toaster that prints memes/tweets on your toast in the
morning will soon be found in every household"

"That's stupid, no it won't"

"Well, Ken Olsen said 'There is no reason anyone would want a computer in
their home' so this toaster is gonna really take off'"

Many (most?) ideas fail. I'm not convinced that the fact that Ken Olsen failed
to anticipate the PC revolution has any bearing on VR's success. Yes,
sometimes people fail to predict success, but just as often people succeed in
predicting failure.

