
The VR Winter - 1cvmask
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/5/8/the-vr-winter
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lowdose
> Smartphones are broad and universal, whereas consoles are deep and narrow,
> and deep and narrow is a smaller market. VR is even deeper and even
> narrower, and so if we can’t work out a form of content that isn’t also deep
> and narrow.

People are now playing those console games on their iPhone. The average paying
iOS user spends $9.60 per month on in app purchases. The game market is huge,
bigger than movies & tv combined. Maybe in the current form VR & AR is niche
but that says nothing about how valuable the market can become.

The lesson is you shouldn't predict potential market size of a technology from
the first particular hardware implementation.

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throwaway34241
> I think there are maybe four propositions to think about.

> Is it true that we are essentially almost there, and a bit more iteration of
> the hardware and the developer ecosystem will get us to a tipping point?

> Are we where smartphones were before the iPhone?

> Is there a fundamental contradiction between a universally accessible
> experience and a device that you put on your head that shuts out the world
> around you?

> Or, by extension, is this the point - that ‘real’ VR needs some completely
> different device and that’s what would take it to universality? VR as HMD is
> narrow but VR as, say, neural lace is not?

In addition to his four propositions to think about I would add one more.
There's technology to represent _other humans_ in VR (eye tracking, face
tracking, body tracking) that basically doesn't exist yet as part of consumer
VR systems. But with those technologies already present outside of consumer VR
(and continued massive R&D spending by Oculus etc) they seem realistically
achievable in the medium term. Will this make a significant difference in the
VR adoption rate or enable new applications?

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ksec
I dont understand how all these Smart people got sold into VR, AR, and AV (
Autonomous Vehicles).

We have long entered into the age of TDP Computing as a proxy of relative
performance. We could not even make the application Work on a 1000+ Watt PCs.
Why is it we think we could make it works in Sub 100W anytime soon. We need
Ultra Hi-Res because of how close the pixel are to our eyes, we also need
Ultra-High frame rate so we dont have motion sickness. And then we expect
Photo Realistic graphics along with Ultra Low Latency which No one have solved
yet as we are constantly trading latency for throughput. ( Good old Street
Fighter II felt more responsive than today's fighting game )

We can estimate with certain degree of accuracy how long it would take to
reach 80% of the project, but experience taught me the last 20% would somehow
take the same amount of time as the first 80%. To put this into AR, VR, AV
perspective, we are at least another 6-8 years away from seeing its
usefulness.

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saurik
I got "sold on VR" because I tried it? Like, I have been super busy recently,
and so haven't barely had time to stand up much less use VR, but for most of a
year I used VR every single day. This article isn't even arguing that it
doesn't work or anything: it is arguing that it might not be mainstream, which
is entirely different... this is like asking "I don't understand how all these
Smart people got sold into computers" back when computers were mainframes with
a very limited market, as if until something is ready for a mainstream market
no one should bother owning one or using it for anything :/.

~~~
whytaka
I'm pretty sure you can read GP's statement to mean "sold on the mainstream
applicability of VR".

No one doubts that some segment of the market has purchased VR devices.

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ChrisLTD
I don’t see VR taking off anytime soon, but I also think it’s a bit tiresome
to say that a product category isn’t successful unless it nears the ubiquity
of the smartphone. By that measure, plenty (most all?) profitable and useful
products are failures.

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istorical
It always surprises me when people completely overlook the evolution TV and
film will likely undergo to become stereo 180 (for directed attention
experiences) or stereo 360 (for passive self-directed experiences) when HMDs
become cheap enough that they become ubiquitous.

Sure you can watch video without color, sure you can watch film without sound,
but why would you?

By the same sense, for most cases watching video/film/TV with 3D depth is
going to be superior to watching without.

The argument that 3D TV never took off is less convincing when you consider
that content creation for 3D TV was way more costly than it is for stereo
180/360 VR today, and that 3D TV died before the chicken and egg problem was
ever solved. (Even if the HMD market contracts 90% it should still be
profitable for small Chinese manufacturers to produce crap-tier HMD for porn).

Today a good stereo 180 VR experience can be filmed with an Insta360 Evo or a
Vuze XR (my preferred option due to out of the box color grading) which can be
had for about $400 USD.

ZCam K1 pro and K2 pro can create incredible content (as seen in top
pornography) for $3-4k entry price.

But it's really hard to convince anyone who hasn't tried it, especially
someone who hasn't seen something filed with one of the aforementioned
cameras. Especially people who haven't tried VR or well-filmed VR but have
tried 3D movies and assumes they are the same the same experience.

~~~
renox
>By the same sense, for most cases watching video/film/TV with 3D depth is
going to be superior to watching without.

Uh? Except that to get 3D you have to wear glasses, which is a huge drawback.

As for VR, I've tried it 3 times with demos: the first time I got so seasick
that I had to stop and was feeling still quite bad 15 minutes after, the
second time I nearly fell and the third time I bounced into a wall..

~~~
jeegsy
Sounds like your immersion level was increasing with every try

~~~
renox
It wasn't the same demo: the first time, it was a roller coaster (a really
dumb demo!!), the second time walking on a roof and falling (interesting that
it created some fear of heights, but I didn't expect to nearly fall for real
during the virtual fall due to the change of POV)

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artfulhippo
The Oculus Quest still has serious flaws in screen resolution, input latency,
and controller ergonomics. It’s literally painful for me to use it. I get eye
strain, a headache, and sore thumbs.

VR is clearly useful but before it becomes mainstream it will have to have the
hardware quality that we associate with Apple or at least BlackBerry (ie a
high-quality input interface).

I hear the Valve Index is better but I haven’t tested it yet.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Two notes, of equal importance:

1\. The Index is a _lot_ better. The higher resolution and refresh rate make a
big difference. The Oculus Quest has a refresh rate of only 72hz, which we've
known for years isn't enough for lots of people.

2\. Comfort is highly dependent on the software you play. A lot of VR
enthusiasts have been pushing for _less_ comfortable modes of play over the
past few years (because it allows games to do more), which is great if that's
what they like, but I worry it's turning off more susceptible individuals.

Using a sufficiently powerful PC to play The Lab on an Index will not make
anyone feel ill.

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wildermuthn
VR hardware is good enough to go mainstream, but as pointed out, what is
missing is a mainstream utility: a killer app like the spreadsheet or word
processor.

The 10x advantage that VR hardware provides over a 2D display isn’t 3D space.
It is social presence. VR’s killer app exists within the domain of
collaboration, communication, and organization.

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bni
Games did its fair share of making the PC mainstream. Many got a PC to be able
to play Doom.

Games today is mainstream. Everyone young plays games now, might not talk
about it but everyone does.

So I def think games can be a driver to make VR mainstream. Social media meets
games in the other end. All it takes is VR to be both more immersive and more
comfortable than playing games on flat screen.

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perilunar
> here was no killer app for the first PCs either, but they looked useful

I thought VisiCalc (and Lotus 123) were the killer apps for early PCs?

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blackrock
Make a VR operating system for work.

Video games will never achieve critical mass for VR.

Although, the one video game that I thought could become the killer app for
VR, is BeatSaber [1].

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJcqhvadbkI&t=59](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJcqhvadbkI&t=59)

~~~
eddhead
There's already Windows 10 for both VR and AR, but Microsoft is playing long
with this and taking it very slow. It runs most ARM apps flawlessly (on
Hololens at least) and is quite focused on the enterprise to approach the
industry from there.

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Jemm
It is time we stopped trying to make VR for the broadest appeal. There are
people who simply cannot handle the experience either from a motion sickness
point of view or otherwise.

What will save VR is games or experiences that focus on quality and immersion
rather than trying to please everybody.

The Playstation VR is a good example. It is specifically not for children
under 12 yet many of the games seem to be targeted at people with that
maturity level.

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LordHeini
Who whatches Opera? But there are still opera houses and nobody complains
about them...

Vr in its current state is mostly a toy, it is used to play games and watch
porn.

Much like a lot of succesffull tech that came out actually.

Games drove the pc (and the smartphone) to the powerhouse it is.

And do not underestimate the porn argument. This is what all the people i know
commented on and one of the few things with an abundance of content.

So in my book the basics for some form of success are set. The enthusiast
status will slowly fade and vr system will slowly seep into the mainstrean
like game consoles did.

For certain enthusiats vr is a revelation. If you play racing or flight sims,
do yourselv a favor and get a good vr set.

This "vr will never make it to mass adoption argument" because communism sucks
is just weird by the way. Is there some form of goodwins law for marx?

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oddity
These are very good questions and I absolutely agree with last paragraph but
it's far too early to conclude we're in for a VR winter.

> There’s nothing fundamentally illogical about any of these ideas, but they
> do remind me a little of Karl Popper’s criticism of Marxists - that when
> asked why their supposedly scientific prediction hadn’t happened yet they
> would always say ‘ah, the historical circumstances aren’t right - you just
> have to wait a few more years’.

This is the necessary position when arguing for the inevitability of something
that hasn't happened yet. That the arguments are structurally similar isn't
evidence for or against. The arguments themselves are what need to be
examined.

In the past 20 years, we went from human-narrated MapQuest print-outs from a
computer at home to live directions on a tiny computer in our pocket narrated
to us via a tiny computer in our ears. For a long time, I held out from
upgrading to a smartphone. It was only when I was lost in a city in 2013 and
had no idea how to get back home without calling someone many miles away that
I finally caved. No one built the entire combination of smartphone, LTE, or
voice assistants right away because they wanted a better MapQuest, the pieces
came together organically.

> if ‘real VR’ needs something that’s ten or twenty years away, we’re in for
> another VR winter.

The modern smartphone was ten or twenty years away from the world wide web,
which was ten or twenty years away from the computer. Each of these
technologies found a niche, however small, until they took over the world.

Is it possible that enthusiasm for VR might wane and the market might die
before it has a chance to grow? Absolutely, it's possible. However, the ideal
form of the technology being a long way out doesn't make it inevitable.

Tech doesn't need a killer-app to gain a permanent foothold. It helps, but it
seems that it's the exception rather than the norm. Incrementally expanding
niches is a much more predictable way to bring a product to market.

To me, the big open question is whether or not the small niches VR has today
can be grown enough to reach sustainability before the primary hardware
vendors (Valve, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple) lose interest. That's a function
of price. Given the strong overlap with the hot tech of today (phones,
watches, headphones), price will be driven down regardless of how successful
VR is. That lowers the threshold of how successful VR needs to be today.

> Meanwhile, it’s instructive that now that we’re all locked up at home, video
> calls have become a huge consumer phenomenon, but VR has been not. This
> should have been a VR moment, and it isn’t.

This isn't a very convincing argument. Devices that can do video conferencing
are everywhere _today_. Zoom is free. Of course it's a phenomenon. Meanwhile,
I can't buy a VR headset today without paying 50% above MSRP or waiting 8
weeks. Even then, I'm one of the lucky ones who hasn't lost their job yet and
can thus entertain the idea of spending $$$ on entertainment.

I would want to see market data following more high profile releases like HL
Alyx or whatever Apple has planned, and look out for a trend in hardware
vendors pulling back from VR.

