
On the Design of Valve’s ‘The Lab’ - sprafa
http://visualise.com/2016/07/the-future-of-virtual-reality-on-the-design-of-valves-the-lab
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Sidnicious
I played with ‘The Lab’ a little in an open space with a Vive. It was an
intensely magical technological experience. (So was Tilt Brush.)

Exploring an environment in VR can’t be compared to exploring one on a screen,
because the objects have scale that makes sense, and you can freely move
around them to see their shapes. Or, when you pick something up, you can
freely move it around with your hand to see different sides and angles.

The software includes detailed representations of the Vive controllers, so you
can see them while you’re in VR — including accurate battery LEDs, the state
of the buttons, and the position of the analog trigger.

Even the little toys in The Lab’s “menu room” are fun and natural — there's a
wooden bow on a table. You can reach out with a hand, touch the trigger on the
controller to pick it up (the controller disappears so you seem to just be
holding the bow), and then use your other hand to grab an arrow, pull it back
(holding the trigger), and release (by releasing the trigger).

The demo worlds are equally magical — when I played fetch with my little robot
dog, I kneeled down to pick up a stick, stood up to throw it, and then kneeled
back down to give the dog an approving scratch when it brought the stick back.

I _was_ mildly excited about VR and AR. Now I’m convinced that they’re going
to change how we interact with computers, and with each other.

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madaxe_again
Watching the evolution of new design paradigms for vr is a delight - we
haven't had a media this new and different since film was developed.

A particularly interesting area is locomotion - how to get about. The
teleportation model is very much a first gen approach, and folks are playing
with concepts like swinging your arms to walk, and designing games so you're
constantly turning around in your playspace without realising it.

I know this probably isn't appreciated, but reddit.com/r/vive is a good place
to keep an ear to the ground and to watch the technology and its use develop.

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bhickey
Ugh. Yet another website that decided to hijack scroll.

~~~
jbpetersen
The all too common sin of putting visual designers on UX design.

~~~
T0T0R0
Preferences are just that: preferences.

Manner of interaction is subjective, and pandered to, by tendencies reinforced
by operant conditioning cues.

Just like linguistic creep mutating dialects, so too with tendencies to
interact with affordances in certain ways. Someone from another country
doesn't know how thick their own accent is.

~~~
bhickey
That's exactly the point. Preferences are preferences and we don't know better
than the user. The user's computer works in a certain way. They're used to it.
Don't screw with the user.

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zaius
I do love the "place this sphere on your head to switch worlds" paradigm, but
I think it's maybe _too_ natural - every user I've demoed the lab for
inventively ends up punching a controller into the visor.

~~~
jake-low
Perhaps a substitute could be "stretch the sphere open so you're standing in
the middle of it", with your arms outstretched on either side of you. Although
this might trade smacking yourself for smacking your neighbors.

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i_are_smart
I just got to try this out yesterday. Like many others, I wasn't convinced
going in but now I'm a "true believer".

I don't think VR will directly compete with the traditional video game
interface, much like handheld consoles don't directly compete with PC gaming.
I do think it will spawn a whole new branch of the gaming industry.

As a side note, I don't think the screenshots do justice to just how _good_
'The Lab' looks once you're wearing the Vive.

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Agentlien
As a professional game developer, I've always loved how well Valve designs all
their user experiences. They highlight this very well in the developer
commentaries which are included in all their games. To me, those commentaries
are one of the best parts of any Valve game, despite often sounding like an
infomercial about how great Valve is.

Now, the portal thing isn't all that sensational. The room which is a level
selection menu has been done a ton of times. Nintendo loves it. Super Mario 64
is one of the earliest examples I can think of and Nintendo Land even presents
the different levels as attractions in a theme park which are accessed via
futuristic looking gates (portals?). Valve simply did the same thing with the
portals being more like those in Valve's own hit franchise aptly named
"Portal", but as standalone 3D objects, rather than flat ones projected onto a
flat surface.

