
Want to Know What Virtual Reality Might Become? Look to the Past - prismatic
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/magazine/want-to-know-what-virtual-reality-might-become-look-to-the-past.html
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stcredzero
I think some Steve Jobs-ian thinking about the experience as a whole is called
for at this point. VR/AR equipment needs to be friendly to the social
experience and to social experiences, otherwise it's going to be out-competed
through network effects by other equipment that has an advantage there.

Current VR "room-scale" equipment seems to be optimal for 1) god-like player
experiences, where you can survey a world, teleport within it, and
command/change/tinker/destroy what's within it or 2) the highly immersed
"stage." By "stage" I literally mean it's like you are standing on a stage.
It's about the same amount of space, and the immersive feeling is very much
like being on the set of a movie or show.

~~~
crooked-v
I personally think the things that have the biggest potential in VR are games
like Tabletop Simulator, where both the game itself and the context of "being
with other people playing a game" are part of the experience.

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ralfd
> I personally think the things that have the biggest potential in VR are

Porn. Let's be realistic.

~~~
stcredzero
When people can have the sensations of sex in VR porn media, without needing
to interface bodily fluids with pieces of hardware, then porn VR will, in the
words of Dennis Miller, "make crack look like Sanka." Or perhaps, when porn
media makers figure out how to work the current forms of immersion to their
advantage, there will be an uptick.

Right now, the increase in the quality of experience of VR porn over a screen
and a pair of headphones is still marginal.

------
pmoriarty

      "It is a delightful characteristic of these times, that new and
      cheap means are continuously being devised, for conveying the
      results of actual experience to those who are unable to obtain such
      experiences for themselves; and to bring them within the reach of
      the people ... New worlds open out to them, beyond their little
      worlds, and widen their range of reflection, information, sympathy
      and interest."
    

For the origin of this technology, we can look much further back in time than
the 19th or even 17th century... back to pre-historic times at the origin of
storytelling.

Storytelling was the first technology for _" conveying the results of actual
experience to those who are unable to obtain such experiences for
themselves"_.

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egypturnash
> The most surprising twist in the evolution of V.R. may turn out to be the
> pace of the new medium. Quick cuts are an almost physical act of violence in
> V.R.; jumping from one perspective to another can create a literal sense of
> nausea. But more telling, perhaps, is the fact that people don’t want to
> move on to another experience once they’ve put the headset on. They want to
> linger. “I want to just put you in a field,” Mooser told me, “and you just
> do what you want to do in that field.”

Quick cuts were seen as violent and jarring when film was new, too. We will
get used to VR cuts just as we got used to film cuts. It may take a few
generations; right now VR is still a novelty.

~~~
crooked-v
The difference here is that quick cuts in film, generally speaking, don't
literally make people physically sick.

~~~
ryandamm
They used to make people sick. But we've adapted to watching screens, mostly.
(First person shooters still make a lot of people ill, on regular TVs.) Plus,
a grammar evolved (180 degree line of action, visual weights, etc) that allow
experienced filmmakers to push the bounds of what's comfortable to watch.

Regular VR devs report (and I can corroborate) that you eventually lose your
ability to get sick in VR. This extends to motion sickness in the real world;
when I was experiencing a lot of nauseating VR, I no longer got nauseated by
reading while driving, or on boats, etc. (Unfortunately your ability to get
sick 'grows back' if you stop watching VR; the brain is rather plastic.)

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Animats
Those reports of the past describe one-off location-based entertainment
systems which didn't scale, and novelty devices which didn't last. That may be
the future of VR headsets.

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kordless
When your technology can modify someone's mind's eye view, call me. I will
give you all my money if it works for me.

~~~
pmoriarty
Would you have similarly avoided or not been impressed by photography or film
when they were invented? How about writing?

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kordless
I am not stating I would avoid this technology, so asking me if I would avoid
similar technology isn't logical. I would take no action to avoid
technologies, but I would limit them if I felt they were harmful to my well
being.

I do not visualize (Aphantasia), so I would be much more excited if I could
both see what is going on here AND have a mind's eye, even if it were
artificial.

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forthefuture
Clicking this link takes me to a login page with no ability to access the
content in any way.

I screen shotted it because I've actually never seen something like this
before: [http://i.imgur.com/1YBFuiU.png](http://i.imgur.com/1YBFuiU.png)

Also, doing the web link brings me to the same login page.

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pmoriarty
Try substituting "www." in the URL with "mobile."

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pmlnr
Nope, it does not help. I've tried with lynx ( console browser ), with
archive.org; I keep getting the login as well. If I disable cookies, I get a
redirect loop.

Edit: Hah! Workaround:

    
    
        wget -O- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/magazine/want-to-know-what-virtual-reality-might-become-look-to-the-past.html > /tmp/x.html && dillo /tmp/x.html
    

( note: dillo is a dead simple little browser )

~~~
giacomone
Cool! Terminal version, piping directly into w3m:

    
    
        wget -O- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/magazine/want-to-know-what-virtual-reality-might-become-look-to-the-past.html | w3m -T text/html

