
Clay Bavor, Google's VP of VR, on His Plan to Make Virtual Reality Amazing - T-A
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/google-vr-clay-bavor/
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Animats
The technology works; the Oculus Rift is reasonably good, and the dev kit has
been available since 2014. Where's the killer app?

Watching full-sphere non-interactive movies? Why? FPS games, fine, but that's
not Google's business. Social interaction with or without remote-presence
robots? Young people barely make voice calls; mostly they send texts, perhaps
with pictures attached. Virtual worlds? Second Life supports the Oculus dev
kit, but not the production product. There are some good VR roller coaster
simulators, but that gets old pretty fast. Just not seeing a mass market here.

Google being into this seems like the fear of Facebook that led Google into
"social" and stuck us with Google Plus.

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chaostheory
It's probably not here yet since most of the apps focus on gaming, but
TiltBrush hints at it: [http://www.tiltbrush.com/](http://www.tiltbrush.com/)
I would be surprised if either AutoDesk or Adobe don't already have something
in the pipeline.

Of course, most things that you can do in VR, you can most likely do in AR as
well minus some immersion.

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greggman
Media Molecule's Dreams is far far more impressive than TiltBrush in my
opinion.

The two big things are ability to make stuff fast, far faster than TiltBrush.
And, 6d input controllers (which TiltBrush also has) but Dreams has shown no
need for VR for the big change in productivity.

Of course Dream's tech in VR and with a VR interface might be even more
amazing but at the moment the current Dreams really runs rings around
TiltBrush

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brandonb
Clay is one of the best Product Managers I've ever worked with. Diligent,
kind, keen product insight, and with technical depth comparable to many of the
best software engineers--this article doesn't even mention the research on
AdaBoost he did while at Princeton. Kudos to Google for identifying a star
early and promoting him to run something big!

~~~
johansch
[http://foodnetwork.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/food/fullse...](http://foodnetwork.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/food/fullset/2011/10/25/1/CC_Alton-
Brown-Cocoa-Brownies_s4x3.jpg)

:)

Mostly joking. :) Most of us should be so lucky to have a manager like that,
and I hope that I'm at least partially like that myself. :)

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Roritharr
Having backed the DK1 and now having my consumer version sitting here for over
a week, with a high-end desktop attached I have to say Oculus made a big damn
mistake by releasing it without proper controllers and room tracking like the
Vive.

I've tried practically anything by now but the only "Killer"-Apps that I've
seen so far work better on the GearVR: Porn and other filmed experiences, but
mostly Porn.

Elite Dangerous still makes me nauseous and the other games that are available
are just not much more fun because of VR, it just gets in the way.

The contending killer apps seem to be on the Vive, f.e. Job Simulator and Tilt
Brush to name a few, but they also still are miles away from Platform Sellers.

If i had to bet, my money would be on the GearVR and Porn.

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kzhahou
TLDR: the VP is awesome and loves VR and is working on integrating it
throughout Google properties, expect some release at I/O.

Unfortunately the revolution seems slow to arrive. Since the official release
of Rift --the grand moment we were all waiting for-- VR buzz seems to be going
in the wrong direction. Yes it's early, but where's the flood of devs rushing
to exploit this new tech? It's miniscule compared to mobile, e.g. when iOS and
iPad were released.

I was hoping this article would hit on that main point, but it was only
glossed over.

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state
It's tough for me to see the substance behind the hype with VR in general.

If we're supposed to see VR as a revolution similar to mobile, can someone
make that argument for me? All I see are some cool video games.

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michaelbuckbee
VR is the first step to AR, which is generally thought of as what will mature
into what will replace mobile.

In the meantime VR is still pretty nascent - we'll see Oculus Touch launched
in a couple months, broad PSVR adoption. It is still early days.

~~~
KineticLensman
I don't think that VR is the first step to AR. AR (virtual content graphically
overlaid on the real world) is a fundamentally different concept and the
applications are different. VR puts you in a different world, AR tells you
more about (or modifies) the real world.

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nxzero
VR, as it is currently, is puzzling in terms of the reality of it compared to
the hype.

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dingaling
Not just currently...

The USAF experimented with synthetic-reality environments for piloting in the
1980s with projects such as VCASS. But eventually they settled upon augmented
reality, as did the Army.

30 years on the 'how' of synthetic / virtual reality has advanced hugely but
have we answered the 'why'?

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T-A
One success story: [http://www.techrepublic.com/article/nasa-shows-the-world-
its...](http://www.techrepublic.com/article/nasa-shows-the-world-its-20-year-
vr-experiment-to-train-astronauts/)

~~~
nxzero
Article is about mainstream commercial use of VR, not non-commercial use that
would cost way more than an average consumer would ever be able to afford.

~~~
T-A
Reply was to parent's comment about Air Force and Army VR projects.

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ungzd
On his plan to make virtual reality great again.

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jonstokes
I have a suggestion for Wired. Instead of a splash screen that says, "We get
it: Ads aren’t what you’re here for...." How about "Hi, as you can see, our
business model is old and busted, and even though we're a publication about
optimism and the future, this lame anti-blocker screen is sadly the best we
can do right now. Please help us limp along until we can figure out something
better by either enabling ads or paying for a subscription."

~~~
istorical
Do you want to see 80% of existing content creators online to die and the
other 20% to keep the lights on through paygates?

Because that's what we're going to get if advertising dies.

Do you have a better business model? People have been seeking a better
business model for content for the last two decades. It's not quite so easy as
just saying "evolve! innovate damn you!"

~~~
natrius
Advertising is an immoral business model in the age of constant connectivity
and pervasive data collection. The winners are those who do the best job of
getting you to come back over and over, and the best way to do that is to
addict you. Once you're hooked, they make money by selling changes in your
behavior to the highest bidder.

Today's advertising industry is all about addiction and coercion. Celebrate
its death.

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sickbeard
I'll accept nothing less than the holodeck on Startrek. I'm not too eager to
slap a monitor on my face at this time.

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brador
If you haven't tried VR you should. It's nothing like what you'd imagine.

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FussyZeus
Speaking as an avid gamer, every VR headset looks like pure garbage next to my
4K monitor and to add insult to injury you need to beef up your machine for
the privilege of a worse experience.

Screw it. They're expensive, you look incredibly stupid wearing one, you'll
beat the crap out of your machine to make it work all for the joy of watching
the same thing you would've been watching from a comfortable chair in 1/4 the
resolution and detail on a screen rubber banded to your face.

You guys have fun, I'm sticking to the couch.

Edit: My plan is to save all the money Oculus and company want to make me
spend on their rubber band screens and save it for the day the legit holodeck
comes out. Everything less is just a sad imitation.

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timecube
Ignoring whatever the hell Oculus is trying to do until their motion
controllers come out, roomscale VR experiences are fundamentally different
from anything that can be done on a 2D (or 3D) monitor. VR isn't at the stage
where it can replace monitors for standard computer usage, but it isn't trying
to do so.

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FussyZeus
I never said it was, it's routinely billed as the next generation of gaming
(so much so that Steam won't shut up about it) and I think it's hooey. It's
meh at it's best.

