
What I mean when I say "I think VR is bad news" - jonbaer
https://gist.github.com/rygorous/251b945aef2046ac7cee
======
m0nastic
I think there's a good discussion to be had about what the future of VR means
to advertising-based social networks, even if I don't share the authors
cynicism.

I think their argument about the technology is batty though. It's the same
argument that gets made every time a new creative medium is created. People
making early motion pictures were basically filming plays, it took a while
before the specific affordances of the medium become realized.

I fully expect that there will initially be a lot of shitty VR games. First
there'll be existing games "re-skinned" to have VR support, and they'll mostly
be terrible. Then there will start to be games that are designed specifically
for VR. And most of those will be terrible too. But eventually game designers
will discover what makes VR attractive as a platform, and generations of game
developers will be born into a world where VR is actual practical tech; and
they will make wonderful things.

The first generations of "tablet-optimized" games are awful too. Developers
spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to superimpose a control pad on a
touch screen that doesn't have any feedback (and obscures the screen when you
use it). There will eventually be games for tablets that make use of the
benefits of tablets (I think there's actually already a few of those).

I don't know what is so special about VR tech that would preclude that same
thing from happening.

~~~
bagosm
Well as far as mmorpgs go, the point isn't to sell ads. The point is to get
customers hooked up and then gradually make them more frustrated so that they
have to pay real money to alleviate the frustration.

~~~
tnyswutnw
I see someone has played SW:TOR recently (or something like it). It's shocking
seeing my brother go through the exact same motions. Much like myself several
years ago, beat for beat. Also surprising that it's so much worse. Much more
aggressive with punishment of non-payers. To the point of the game design
being egregiously jeopardised to make the game simply unbearable. Being quite
committed at this point, you cave into this user-hating community of managers
abusing design. All for the sake of selling subs.

If the future truly was anything like this, I would want out, too. Just awful.

------
gfodor
So let me get this straight, you have some cynicism towards the future of VR,
which is a new platform. But you are an engineer at Valve, in on the ground
floor of the platform, putting you in the top 0.001% of people who could
possibly have an impact on the long term way it plays out. And you quit? Seems
like you have given up before the battle has even started.

~~~
psykotic
Fabian isn't a Valve engineer. He's an engineer at RAD who was contracted out
to Valve. His beliefs are utterly sincere. He once threatened to quit RAD on
the spot when he found out the main sales guy had gone to a predominantly
military-oriented simulation conference. If you accept his sincerity as a
premise, your suggestion is akin to saying that someone should continue
working on an engineering project with inevitable and uniquely terrible
military applications because they are in on the ground floor and should be
able to influence future directions. Has that ever worked?

I share some of his concerns but not all his conclusions. Where I agree with
him unanimously is in being extremely concerned about amoral engineers who are
blithely pro-technology. The only thing scarier to me than an amoral engineer
is an evangelical engineer for whom technological progress is not morally
neutral but morally good.

------
yzzxy
I dispute the author's point that the end goal of VR for most developers is
the "optimal MMORPG" or whatever you want to call it. I think most VR
developers and users are actually more focused on immersive experiences that
weren't possible without a headset.

AR (including wearables that are not connected directly to vision) is almost
surely a better medium for non-entertainment experiences, with the possible
exception of teleprescence, such as computer applications or operating
systems. And as the author implied, AR doesn't necessitate a complete
withdrawal from the outside world for use. So I think games are the main
context that people will use VR in.

I also think the race condition between AI good enough to make VR more
compelling than the real world in any case and VR good enough to become
mainstream is heavily weighted towards VR: we will be seeing commercial VR
headsets in the homes of non-early adopters within 3 years. My guess is any
kind of life-replacing game would have to involve incredibly advanced
conversational AI and/or human interaction at a fidelity orders of magnitude
better than we have available right now in the context of games. And even
genuine human social interaction would have to somehow be way more interesting
normal, real life conversations.

I think by the time VR content compelling enough to replace a user's real life
rolls around, we will have developed social structures to deal with the
implications of VR. That's why I'm optimistic about things like the Oculus,
from the perspective of a potential user and developer of VR games that are
more focused on personal narratives than an expansive, life-encompassing
MMORPG.

~~~
fryguy
As someone who stayed at home as a kid playing text-only MUD games and
chatting on IRC, I think your minimum requirements for interactions in VR is
way too high.

~~~
DonHopkins
Sure, but requiring $500,000 worth of computer equipment for two people to
play creates more jobs and is good for the economy! Especially when you keep
pulling it off the table with the cables attached to your head that's blind to
the real world.

------
politician
tldr: I think VR is bad news because it will become the ad-infested oppressive
MMORPG version of the cyberpunk future written about in books like Snowcrash,
and not the idealized romanticized version that you remember reading about in
books like Snowcrash.

~~~
onewaystreet
The VRs of Snowcrash and Neuromancer _were_ ad infested. It would be silly to
believe that any system that gets used by millions or billions of people wont
have ads. But no one's going to use VR if the ads are ultra annoying. The
author doesn't mention what exactly he thinks VR ads would look like.

~~~
JabavuAdams
What is annoying? The level of intrusive advertising that the median North
American is subjected to now is annoying to me, as someone born about 40 years
ago.

So, no, the ads won't be annoying to people who have been slowly conditioned
to think the ads aren't annoying. It's valid to ask whether we, now, want that
or not.

Also this:

> It would be silly to believe that any system that gets used by millions or
> billions of people wont have ads.

Why? Given our current assumptions, perhaps, but why can't we try to innovate
socially, as well as technologically?

------
guelo
This doesn't make sense because the current successful business model for
MMORPGs is subscription fees, not advertisement.

~~~
_quasimodo
If VR really gets traction it's probably just a matter of time until Facebook
releases a Second-Life-like MMO VR platform tied in with their social network.
There will always be good MMORPGs that are subscription fee based, but the
majority of VR experiences will be ad-supported with paid premium options.

------
cma
Here's some real problems I've had with it after using the Rift for over a
year. Many of these things can ultimately be addressed in software (e.g. no
use of your phone? mirror it or just use something like google voice):

It is more immersive than the movies. This is awesome, but also terrifying.
When you sit down on your couch to play a game, do you want to be as
restricted as you are when you go to the movies? Well, you are more
restricted. You can't look at your phone and keep up with friends. Fine in a
two hour movie you've been looking forward to, but in the game you are going
to log 200 hours in this year?

You can't take a sip of your drink without learning what it means to be blind.

The movies are a bit more unforgiving in other areas--you have to block out
time and get in your car and travel. But with Oculus what you end up doing is
things like taking off the googles to give your long neglected and probably
creeped-out-at-no-eye-contact dog some attention. Then when you put them back
on, they fog up. You take them off and breath on them to get them up to the
ambient temperature near your face so there won't be more condensation and
wipe them off. Put them back on and opps, grease from your forehead just got
on the lenses; back off again. Wipe them down, and finally back on. Sort of
it's own car trip.

If you have a young kid or baby you will be seriously alienating to them and
probably scar them by neglecting an internal drive for eye contact and
attention. You might be pretty neglectful due to normal TV and web browsing,
but this is going to bring it to a whole new level. So, many people will have
to choose between making limited use of the tech or being seriously abusive
towards and retarding development of their young children.

CastAR seems to solve almost all of the problems. Something like it, or
pseudo-holographic displays (just a normal 3d display, with headtracking,
perspective correct 3d, etc. It is a far superior experience to 3DTV viewing
or gaming, which is usually viewed at the wrong field of view for the content,
and goes wonky and immediately breaks the illusion with any head movement,
especially tilting).

Something like a 60" 4K curved LCD with lightboost allowing shutter glasses to
be "open" more than 90% of the time, and thus not darken your vision or
obscure eye contact is where I think the sweet spot will be for a while for
having a serious workspace/playspace, when combined with accurate low latency
headtracking. Panels fast enough for lightboost currently have bad viewing
angles, but if you are tracking the users head you can just correct a lot of
it with a simple shader. If systems like CastAR can get the resolution up they
are even better, because two people can use the same surface at once and get
the correct view. If the above setup sounds underwhelming, remember that
Oculus is initially targeting a seated experience.

Full-VR approaches will start to overcome a lot of the issues once they can
track your eyes facial expressions, give you an optional overlaid view of the
real world from high field-of-view cameras on the headset. At that point you
still can't make extended use of it if you have a baby or toddler or pet (or
staunch non-participant) that you care about, but plenty of people could make
it work and have very social lives. I completely disagree with the author's
cynicism about something like a shared virtual world being a terrible thing.

If for one reason or another some business strategy involving heavy network-
effect lock-in does arise and all development efforts, content, and friends
are drawn into one fascist dystopian system, yeah we're fucked. But I don't
see the path there (even assuming Facebook currently has John Carmack
unknowningly working towards some kind of bizarro-world metaverse), and this
guy didn't really lay it out for me.

(one extra thought after having left a job a few months back... the downsides
of VR I outlined sound suspiciously like the downsides of a typical desk
job...)

~~~
politician
I don't understand why you're being down-voted for giving other examples of
why VR might be bad in response to an article about why someone else thinks VR
is bad.

~~~
sliverstorm
Because VR good! Microsoft bad! Ruby good! Oracle bad!

No, but seriously, VR is still in the hype stage, which means a lot of people
made up their minds whether it will be good or bad years ago based mostly on
emotion. They won't be swayed at this point.

------
ilaksh
There is no reason we need to be stuck in a giant interactive advertisement
controlled by a large company. We will have multiple competing open platforms
taking advantage of VR in many ways.

But good warning. We do need to start focusing on those open VR platforms
rather than waiting around for Facebook to launch the Adverse.

Another big part of that is making sure that we have open standards rather
than being locked in to Oculus or Control VR etc. or being stuck with whatever
platform comes with a particular device.

I am hoping to see Oculus clones and modified versions of Linux Mint or CoreOS
or whatever that boot to a type of holodeck with nice APIs for taking
advantage of VR in open application programming environments.

So copy Oculus and fuck patents. Also copy Janus VR and anything else cool and
start evolving it while at the same time standardizing on certain things.

There is no giant company that can ruin VR unless we decide to let them.

------
meowface
Funny, I'm of the complete opposite view. I cannot wait for the day when that
ultimate VR MMORPG comes. Sure, some of them may be owned by unscrupulous
companies, and some may be intrusive or filled with ads, but eventually there
will be a good VR MMO game by a good company, and it will be enormously
successful and entertaining.

------
DonHopkins
Here are three goals for "good VR" from David Levitt, with whom I work at
Pantomime Corporation, and who used to work on VR at VPL:

[http://pantomimecorp.com/pantomime-technology/virtual-
realit...](http://pantomimecorp.com/pantomime-technology/virtual-reality/)

When Pantomime co-founder Levitt was a research scientist and product manager
with VPL Research, the inventors of virtual reality, they had three
prerequisites for a VR system:

1) a way to reach in, in 3D

2) shared reality — support for multiple users and viewpoints

3) graphically and physically realistic worlds

VPL offered a DataGlove to provide 3D input, while its flagship Reality Built
for Two VR product offered networked multi-person worlds. Expensive graphics
computers and custom hardware brought the full 1992 price to $500,000, which
only a few huge corporations could afford.

When Dr. Levitt joined VPL, thanks to an amazing infrastructure by lead VPL
engineer Chuck Blanchard, he added realistic gravity, collisions, and throwing
a ball into the VR system for physical realism.

But two decades later, the public and technologists have become so impatient
that the new systems calling themselves VR have punted even on the core
original criteria.

Head-mounted systems like the Oculus Rift offer no way to reach in. In demos,
visitors twiddle a 1980s style game joystick. And users don’t natively network
— in an Oculus demonstration you don’t see the other users in the VR world —
not even the other players sitting alongside you in the demo.

David asked Facebook’s VP of Infrastructure Engineering Jay Parikh this
revealing question about Facebook's acquisition of Oculus VR:

[http://pantomimecorp.com/2014/06/10/facebook-vp-to-
pantomime...](http://pantomimecorp.com/2014/06/10/facebook-vp-to-pantomime-
ceo-we-need-interactive-virtual-reality/)

David Levitt: "I work in Virtual Reality, and everyone’s wondering what you
can say about your acquisition of Oculus VR. In particular, I’ve had demos of
it: I could look around but I couldn’t reach in. Do you have solutions for
that that you can talk about?"

Jay Parikh: “You can’t interact with anything. These are big, hard problems …
what you do with your hands, because you can’t do anything with your hands —
or it’s hard to be using a controller when you can’t see your hands and you
have the goggles on — these are problems we have to solve in a good and
seamless way.”

More on the VPL DataGlove:

[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/630181/virtual-
rea...](http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/630181/virtual-reality-
VR/253105/Entertainment#ref884340)

Zimmerman’s glove would have the greatest impact. He had been thinking for
years about constructing an interface device for musicians based on the common
practice of playing “air guitar”—in particular, a glove capable of tracking
hand and finger movements could be used to control instruments such as
electronic synthesizers. He patented an optical flex-sensing device (which
used light-conducting fibres) in 1982, one year after Grimes patented his
glove-based computer interface device. By then, Zimmerman was working at the
Atari Research Center in Sunnyvale, California, along with Scott Fisher,
Brenda Laurel, and other VR researchers who would be active during the 1980s
and beyond. Jaron Lanier, another researcher at Atari, shared Zimmerman’s
interest in electronic music. Beginning in 1983, they worked together on
improving the design of the data glove, and in 1985 they left Atari to start
up VPL Research; its first commercial product was the VPL DataGlove.

By 1985, Fisher had also left Atari to join NASA’s Ames Research Center at
Moffett Field, California, as founding director of the Virtual Environment
Workstation (VIEW) project. The VIEW project put together a package of
objectives that summarized previous work on artificial environments, ranging
from creation of multisensory and immersive “virtual environment workstations”
to telepresence and teleoperation applications. Influenced by a range of prior
projects that included Sensorama, flight simulators, and arcade rides, and
surprised by the expense of the air force’s Darth Vader helmets, Fisher’s
group focused on building low-cost, personal simulation environments. While
the objective of NASA was to develop telerobotics for automated space stations
in future planetary exploration, the group also considered the workstation’s
use for entertainment, scientific, and educational purposes. The VIEW
workstation, called the Virtual Visual Environment Display when completed in
1985, established a standard suite of VR technology that included a
stereoscopic head-coupled display, head tracker, speech recognition, computer-
generated imagery, data glove, and 3-D audio technology.

The VPL DataGlove was brought to market in 1987, and in October of that year
it appeared on the cover of Scientific American (see photograph). VPL also
spawned a full-body, motion-tracking system called the DataSuit, a head-
mounted display called the EyePhone, and a shared VR system for two people
called RB2 (“Reality Built for Two”). VPL declared June 7, 1989, “Virtual
Reality Day.” On that day, both VPL and Autodesk publicly demonstrated the
first commercial VR systems. The Autodesk VR CAD (computer-aided design)
system was based on VPL’s RB2 technology but was scaled down for operation on
personal computers. The marketing splash introduced Lanier’s new term virtual
reality as a realization of “cyberspace,” a concept introduced in science
fiction writer William Gibson’s Neuromancer in 1984. Lanier, the dreadlocked
chief executive officer of VPL, became the public celebrity of the new VR
industry, while announcements by Autodesk and VPL let loose a torrent of
enthusiasm, speculation, and marketing hype. Soon it seemed that VR was
everywhere, from the Mattel/Nintendo PowerGlove (1989) to the HMD in the movie
The Lawnmower Man (1992), the Nintendo VirtualBoy game system (1995), and the
television series VR5 (1995).

------
olegbl
That's a little silly. This makes the assumption that everyone will be playing
this "ultimate" MMORPG, and our society will turn into a dystopian future.
People who play MMORPGs now, will play it. People who don't play them now,
will probably not play it then either. Doesn't really change the overall
landscape though...

------
tux1968
Today's VR is likely just a stepping stone to augmented-reality systems which
should remove the shortcomings and concerns presented. But even in this early
development stage, bringing people together digitally, has the potential to
increase human interaction rather than decrease it.

------
keeran
Author takes a long time to get to the point - (s)he doesn't like advertisers,
or advertisement-based business models.

------
knodi
Cool, thats your opinion. I still want VR.

