[HN Gopher] 90s VR Sainsbury's [video]
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90s VR Sainsbury's [video]
Author : wildpeaks
Score : 52 points
Date : 2022-12-22 10:46 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| icepat wrote:
| Not sure why, but there's something deeply depressing about this.
| Likely a combination of the VR graphics style and the bleakness
| of the inside of the store. But it gives me _backrooms_ vibes.
| zanderz wrote:
| slogging across that giant parking lot doesn't help...
| [deleted]
| carl_dr wrote:
| I distinctly remember waking past a Sainsbury's (and in the north
| west of England) in probably 1992 or so with a few friends -
| Peter Allan, Paul Lea, if you read this say hi - and we were
| speculating that in the not to distance future that this is how
| shopping would be.
|
| Weird how this video is just a couple of years after that, and
| also that 30 years later, it's not!
| kingsloi wrote:
| wow, fun/interesting concept especially for the time, and at
| Sainsbury's of all places. Watching videos that old kinda reminds
| of me when I found this video from someone who mapped our small
| college in CounterStrike
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wckshGR7uU, cool to see places
| you know in a game!
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Hm. I actually would like a VR library or VR bookstore.
| kxrm wrote:
| I've always been highly skeptical of VR and as someone who was a
| teen in the 90's these demonstrations of what could be were a big
| reason why. I am sure there are really good applications for VR
| but this just isn't it. It's just not complicated to solve
| shopping convenience from the home. I think we have nailed it
| very well. The only thing that still needs work is AR. Virtually
| placing an item I am interested in somewhere in the home to try
| it out before I buy. (I realize that there are apps that do this
| now, but I feel like we have more work to do to really get the
| full benefit of it)
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Man, this really makes the '90s look like a relic. Everything
| about it. The office space, short-sleeve point-collar shirts,
| wide floral ties... kinda miss it.
| afandian wrote:
| That opening sentence in the news report:
|
| > With the cabling of our streets...
|
| In the 90s there was a sudden push to lay cable (TV and
| Internet). Suddenly large chunks of the UK could get copper
| broadband at home. It felt very exciting.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telewest
|
| Parts of the UK are still waiting...
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| What's funny is that the UK could have been covered in fibre by
| the early 2000s. https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-
| tech/how-the-uk-lost...
|
| BT knew in the 70s that fibre would be the best way forward,
| spun up factories to manufacture it, made it cheaper to lay
| than copper at the time. By the start of the 90s they were
| ready to start rolling it out locally, presumably in a FTTP
| configuration since it was cheaper than copper.
|
| Thatcher didn't like that BT had a monopoly on the UK network,
| a monopoly she created by privatising them. So it was deemed
| anti-competitive for BT to roll out fibre nationwide, since she
| wanted to encourage private American companies to start
| building networks.
|
| Makes you wonder what our internet would be like today, perhaps
| as good as South Korea.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Ha I didn't expect to see a clip from BBC Northwest Tonight on
| here! Any others from the Northwest of England?
| jonplackett wrote:
| I would genuinely love to shop like this.
|
| I really like walking around a supermarket seeing what I might
| like to buy - shopping online is so boring, just relying on their
| useless algos to show me things I might not have thought of yet.
|
| Same with most online shops. I want to browse damn it!
| VanillaCafe wrote:
| Love the demo jitters as he picks up the frosted flakes, "Well
| that's working. That's good."
| vyrotek wrote:
| And, how Walmart envisions shopping in the metaverse. (Jan '22)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6UYGwPaLf8
| helloplanets wrote:
| That's not a satire? The vibe of that is just so eerie,
| especially the transitions between departments. And the player
| literally having to aim and throw the jug of milk back to its
| place?
|
| What on earth.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| its like the shopper is totally powerless, worse than a
| robot, but a kind of trapped slave in the machine. You can
| almost see them looking at their hands like "what am i doing,
| what's going on?"
| phatfish wrote:
| Made as much sense in 1995 as it does in 2022.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| Thats a little dated and you should really point to the kmart
| in vrchat to see how the kids are doing it but fwiw Shopify are
| doing a few interesting lab things with AR this is just one
| example there are several....
|
| https://twitter.com/DavidMarakXR/status/1586997483049287680?...
| jgalt212 wrote:
| Did Walmart actually think this was worth their time, or did
| they fear FB would raise their ad rates if they did not at
| least make an effort on the metaverse?
| bitmover wrote:
| It's telling that they turned the comments off.
| danjc wrote:
| This really showcases the ridiculousness of the metaverse.
| Mimicking the world in VR is good for games but inefficient for
| productive tasks.
|
| We already solved efficient online shopping, without needing to
| implement constraints like physics.
| dale_glass wrote:
| I think it more showcases that everything needs adapting to a
| new medium.
|
| Amazon doesn't draw a 2D plan of a virtual shop and make you
| browse the shelves. Spotify doesn't pretend to be a tape
| deck. I'm not sure what a VR shop should look like, but it's
| almost certainly not a VR version of a real one, because a
| real shop is built around real world constraints and
| conveniences.
|
| I think there are cases where VR shopping could make a lot of
| sense. Shopping for clothes, for instance. You can take your
| own measurements, put them into your profile, then test what
| it would look like. Shopping for furniture could also make
| sense if you could generate a quick map of your house. You
| can then see how the sofa will look like, and whether you'll
| get it through the door.
|
| But a plain virtual Walmart, yeah, that's silly.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Right. From Microsoft Bob to VR supermarket, skeuomorphism
| is mostly a bad idea.
|
| Another example like your clothes shopping: AR furniture
| shopping on the other hand, where you can visualize how a
| new couch would fit in your living room, is already quite
| useful.
| pkage wrote:
| All the worst parts of shopping with the added benefit of a
| headache afterwards.
|
| Also I'm very uncomfortable with Walmart knowing what's in my
| fridge and recommending putting the gallon of milk back.
| LordNibbler wrote:
| reminds me of (a precursor to) Hyper-Reality by Keiichi Matsuda
| [1] (from about minute 2). This was done in AR and more like
| Black Mirror :)
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
| meindnoch wrote:
| 28 years in, VR shopping is still as ridiculous a proposition as
| ever.
| rwmj wrote:
| At least the University of Salford didn't spend $10s of
| billions on this.
| beefman wrote:
| Press release was October 1995:
| https://sainsburyarchive.org.uk/catalogue/search/sapr213063-...
|
| Details:
| https://techmonitor.ai/technology/sainsburys_looks_to_make_v...
|
| Ran on an SGI Onyx: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_Onyx
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