

Not Google Cardboard - moron4hire
http://moron4hire.tumblr.com/post/91360230105/who-needs-google-cardboard-a-couple-of-weeks

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dang
"Show HN" is for something you've made that people can play with. A blog post
doesn't count as a Show HN, so we've taken that out of the title here. For
more information, see the Show HN guidelines at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html).

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moron4hire
I've been going through the demos that Google provides on the Cardboard site
and it's pretty incredible. There were some fleeting moments of forgetting
what I was doing. If you can get the side light blocked out, get it
comfortable on your face, let go with your hands, and just relax, it feels
like you're standing in a completely different room.

Input is nigh impossible. They have a magnetic clicker in their design. I
reach under the bottom of mine and tap the screen. It's kind of weird to see a
super large finger come in and poke at an invisible glass wall between me and
the thing I'm trying to touch. Regardless, I don't think I'd like the clicker.
Touching the contraption cements it into reality. The best effect for me came
from letting go. Voice commands coupled with radial heads-up menus are
probably the best bet. Perhaps nod-to-confirm, shake-to-cancel could be
implemented.

The demos that had flat wall surfaces seemed the most convincing. There was a
tour of Versailles that at first seemed really bad, while it was still
outdoors. Once it got indoors, the photo quality didn't actually improve at
all, but the notion of the walls really helped sell it. I stood in front of a
painting of Marie Antoinette and surprised myself when I tried to step closer,
only to bump into a table in meatspace.

There was a demo of YouTube where it simulated a large screen TV in front of
you, and you peered around the TV to select the video, like they were on
shelves 360 degrees around you. That one also worked really well, other than
being stuck with someone else's selection of videos, it really felt like
sitting in front of a big TV in a very dark room.

A video from a helicopter flying over the Great Barrier Reef further supported
my experience that constrained rooms are better.

There were some other things, but not a lot to write home about. I'm surprised
there aren't any telepresence demos yet.

