Only give them a phone/computer with terminal like text input and output. If they want to use social media, they must code it themselves, including graphics.
> And unlimited feel-good content encourages a runaway desire for more, making reality boring.
Agree, and a big and non-obvious part of this is that we've invested "all" of our resources in technology and profit oriented goals, rather than in things that make mainstream day to day life in our communities pleasant and non-boring, for all people.
The physical runtime we are in supports a massive diversity of gameplay and outcomes, unfortunately we've somehow "chosen" a model of governance that constantly makes poor choices.
This could be fixed, but we've been trained to worship the very thing that is ruining life here on Earth. To me, this is quite a hilarious situation, it is like living in a sitcom.
I wonder why reality works this way but we are not able to change it. Maybe being not able to talk about it (skilfully) is part of the problem.
Years ago when the first VR headset was released I believe the wikipedia article on "list of emerging technologies" had listed one of VR's outcomes as "alternative to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_reality "
It disturbs me how achievable that is. It's cool that technology has advanced to a point that we can choose to disregard reality, but I don't think we're handling that power very well
Alternate reality: we finally have the basic technology in place such that we now have the opportunity to understand actual reality for the first time ever.
Microsoft's behavior with windows is tonal whiplash. It is an incredible mess. They do things like WSL, make enhancements to notepad, add rar support, task manager enhancements, tabs in explorer... all while doing things like cortana, removal of local accounts, tpm mandates, and more.
I can't imagine being a developer of windows. I'm sure the individuals adding those good features are dead on the inside when they see how the other teams are ruining windows at the same time.
Meanwhile, thanks KDE for making Linux the home of the best UI ever seen. And thanks Gaben and Wine for making Linux a drop-in replacement for what Windows used to be, and much more.
It makes me think that the enshittification of an OS, particularly Windows, comes down to corporations not willing to settle for a steady stream of revenue, but wanting to pump profits at the expense of the platform itself.
Microsoft both is and isnt a good steward of Windows. It's stable for programs written years ago, yet its interaction to the users are an insult to your intelligence.
I see similarities in Android. Every year it gets worse, but still not as shameless as microsoft. And mac, well I think Apple dances to its own tune and doesn't really care if the users like it or not, and they know they have loyal users who are just fine with that. God knows they'll never get real "Cut" support in Finder.
I hope it isn't dying. The basic tech is no longer out of reach, and closed ecosystems aren't make or break, but there are other issues.
1) marketing vr for games and productivity is a waste. in those roles its just a novelty, and the limitations irritate enough to make use short-lived.
the focus should be on social and media. it's a bigger market and the value proposition is more obvious. there's a few video players, but other than vrchat i can't think of anyone pushing the boundaries on social use.
2) the desired hardware isn't really here yet, and too few want to invest in that eventual payoff
Most of the headsets have the same old strap mechanism, lens limitations, and almost no integration of body tracking past your hands and head.
Tue quest pro is expensive, but its form factor and tracking integration is novel and convenient. I hope to see more such innovation.
3) tracking and movement convenience and time-to-content needs improvement
Carmack has said it all before. You can't get VR to the masses if it requires too much voodoo to operate. A quest 2 isnt hard to use, but it isn't the desired hardware either. Full body tracking is currently limited to just nerds because they're the only ones who will put up with the requirements and limitations, yet, you need that for good social interaction. Hand tracking needs to be better. You need to be able to walk around freely. And omni-directional treadmills will never get adoption if they even ever get properly made.
Not surprised but still concerned that eventually the good times will be over.
vrchat right now feels like a place not yet touched by eternal summer (or the modern equivalents of... eternal bots, ads and ai?), full of real people, diversity of experiences, and talent.
It's also a wild place to see the most obscure hardware of vr in use such as face tracking and haptic suits. And some people even have adult peripheral integration.
For me it's my motivation to learn 3d art. Don't think I'd continue if I didn't have a place to share it.
I don't want the inevitable enshitification, but there's no way it will be a free ride forever. EAC was already a blow to the community. I just hope it retains some charm when it reaches some stable state of monetization.
And I hope it inspires more VR-as-a-social-tool programs, since I think games are far more of a novelty in VR than being able to meet people at events without leaving my house. It seems like a natural evolution of meeting people over chatrooms.
I suspect only the apple laptops.
It was a pain for me to find an arm64 build of linux that'd run in normal vm software for example. Most were compiled for particular SBCs. Pretty much was left with only debian & opensuse.
So I agree with this topic: arm ecosystem has to get its act together to further adoption.
I suspect the short answer is "no", and the long answer is "if battery life is good enough who will care?"
My amd laptop from 3 years ago varies from 5-10 hours depending on workload. Compared to my mac its usually half the battery life.
But how many people need more than 5? They exist. But at that point the factors of price, performance, and compatibility are very relevant.
Reminds me of the state of phones now. Early smartphones had pathetic battery life. Now it's reached the point I don't care because the battery life of all the phones exceeds the daily use. Other factors now dominate.
ALL interfaces are learned, CLI or UI makes no difference.
What's intuitive is how much previously learned interactions are reusable.
This is a big reason why macos sucks for example - it does everything its own way. The keyboard, the dock, the app structure, the apis, the menu bar. It's all non-transferable.
I agree that "Windows without MS" is generally the desired state of a UI
BUT
which Windows? XP style? 7? 10? 11?
Windows itself isn't consistent with the Windows UI.
How's the goal of using a UI that re-uses learned behaviors going? UI changes far more than CLI. X11 to Wayland, KDE3 to 4 to 6. Gnome 2 to 3 to 40... it's a real struggle to keep your UI the way you like it. You will be forced by external pressures to adopt a new UI at some point. As much as I loved Firefox 3 and Opera 11, they're impossible to use on the modern web and so I must use the new and worse UI of modern firefox or vivaldi.
But through this entire history I just presented, has "cp" changed? "ls"?
Yes, they aren't intuitive. But none of the above is. Yet, they did not change, so they are learned once and reused until the end of time.
Yet, in the CLI world, what did change? init to systemd, alsa to pulse to pipewire, and more.
That stuff is just as annoying, and it's nice that debian does not stagnate but does not advance too quickly here either.
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