[HN Gopher] Where Will Virtual Reality Take Us?
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Where Will Virtual Reality Take Us?
Author : mitchbob
Score : 28 points
Date : 2024-02-02 20:24 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| mitchbob wrote:
| https://archive.ph/2024.02.02-202235/https://www.newyorker.c...
| p1esk wrote:
| Written by none other than Jaron Lanier. That probably should be
| in the title.
| bugbuddy wrote:
| Between 2016 and 2024, an advanced alien race arrived and was
| preparing to make first contact with humanity. Their primary goal
| was to ensure that the human race would be a good steward of
| their technological heritage they were about to bestow upon
| mankind. After observing the large wasteful investments in techs
| such as during the Crypto mania, AR/VR mania, and Gen AI mania,
| the alien race decided that the human race was still too immature
| and decided to schedule another return visit in 100,000 years
| hoping that the situation would be improved by then.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Crypto mania, AR/VR mania, and Gen AI mania
|
| One of the things I will never stop finding weird, is the
| tendency to group together things that aren't really related.
|
| I wonder if I do it too? If I did, I expect I wouldn't
| notice...
| bugbuddy wrote:
| It looks like I touched some nerves.
| netsharc wrote:
| The author is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier
| spcebar wrote:
| I like this article. It expands on the big question for VR. We
| have this technology, it's here, it's mostly good enough (with
| the caveats the article lays out) for a variety of purposes. But
| what is the purpose consumers will want to use it for?
|
| Apple has been the king of telling consumers what they want for
| years. If they can't sell VR, I don't think anyone can sell VR.
| This feels like the make or break moment for VR, where we'll know
| what people want to use it for/if it's capable of living in the
| mainstream, or if it's forever going to live as a niche product,
| as it has been since the VR renaissance started when the Occulus
| Rift came onto the scene.
| XorNot wrote:
| How is anyone concluding VR is "mostly good enough"?
|
| FOV is still bad. Weight is still too high. Resolution I'd say
| is adequate for gaming (but see FOV above).
|
| Apple are selling the same problems in a very expensive package
| that they're desperately trying to pretend isn't a VR platform.
| spcebar wrote:
| The article gives a variety of industries and use cases where
| VR has been prevalent/useful for years.
| andsoitis wrote:
| How is that applicable to the consumer market, in your
| eyes?
| spcebar wrote:
| The fact that industry and special use cases like NASA
| are using it means that some consumer version will
| probably always exist, and if industry is finding uses
| for it, consumers might also find uses for it. VR could
| also fail catastrophically as a consumer product and just
| be something that's exclusively used by industry, but I
| don't see VR going away for good. I think it's carved out
| a healthy enough niche for itself at this point that some
| version of a VR/HMD industry is going to exist for a
| while.
| atrus wrote:
| I think that's why the initial version is the "Pro" and why
| it's so so expensive. Laptops/Computers have
| "text/spreadsheets" as their fundamental unit of usage, phones
| and tablets have images/videos. So right now we have all this
| awesome hardware, but we still really haven't found our
| VisiCalc/Instagram for VR just yet.
| bsimpson wrote:
| > But the truth is that living in V.R. makes no sense. Life
| within a construction is life without a frontier. It is closed,
| calculated, and pointless. Reality, real reality, the mysterious
| physical stuff, is open, unknown, and beyond us; we must not lose
| it.
|
| This is one of the throughlines of Interstate 60. It's an absurd
| existential comedy from the writer of Back to the Future with an
| insane cast for an indie film. It was one of my favorite movies
| in college; I wonder how it holds up.
|
| -----
|
| From the movie:
|
| > He said the frontier was a safety valve for civilization, a
| place for people to go to keep from goin' mad. So, whenever there
| were folks who couldn't fit in with the way things were, nuts,
| and malcontents, and extremists, they'd pack up and head for the
| frontier. That's how America got started - all the crackpots and
| troublemakers in Europe packed up and went to a frontier which
| became the thirteen colonies. When some people couldn't fit in
| with that, they moved farther west, which is why all the nuts
| eventually ended up in California. Turner died in 1932, so he
| wasn't around long enough to see what would happen to the world
| when we ran out of frontier. Some people say we have the frontier
| of the mind, and they go off and explore the wonderful world of
| alcohol and drugs, but that's no frontier. It's just another way
| for us to fool ourselves. And we've created this phony frontier
| with computers, which allows people to, you know, think they've
| escaped. A frontier with access fees?
| bee_rider wrote:
| > Life within a construction is life without a frontier. It is
| closed, calculated, and pointless. Reality, real reality, the
| mysterious physical stuff, is open, unknown, and beyond us; we
| must not lose it.
|
| Only a tiny minority of people have lived on a frontier, that's
| sort of the inherent to the definition. Most people now live in a
| very constructed environment (urban areas). In the past, most
| people lived somewhere in between; towns, suburbs, etc.
|
| Many of us find our mysteries in artificial areas: parks, little
| shops, back yards. There's plenty of beauty and complexity in
| nature of course. But in human spaces we see just as much
| complexity and mystery; somebody builds something, it decays,
| gets fixed up, added to, gets some graffiti. We've all got little
| worlds in our heads that motivate us to do things, there's plenty
| of complexity in there, especially once our actions start
| bouncing off each other.
|
| I think most of the problem with VR so far has been, well...
| first, the tech just isn't there yet, it kind of sucks still. But
| also we're mostly getting silo'd VR experiences from single
| authors or companies. Games. There's no mystery there because it
| was all intentionally placed by the designer. Eventually we'll
| get better persistent dynamic multi-user spaces I bet.
| bugbuddy wrote:
| It is disingenuous to conflate artificial physical and
| artificial virtual environments. If this is the kind of
| thinking that is accepted in contemporary discourse without
| challenge, then it won't be long before everyone becomes
| completely subjugated by mediocrity pretending to vanguard. I
| would take a mediocre physical couch over a virtual one any
| day. At least, my buttocks will have some cushion with a real
| couch.
|
| What this whole AR/VR obsession is all about is concentrated
| tech capital jealousy afraid of anyone even appearing to be
| slightly more technologically advanced. It is all ego.
| bsimpson wrote:
| > There are many reasons why V.R. and gaming don't quite work,
| and I suspect that one is that gamers like to be bigger than the
| game, not engulfed by it. You want to feel big, not small, when
| you play.
|
| I'm curious how he feels about Half Life: Alyx.
|
| What makes that game so compelling is the degree of interactivity
| it affords. You can pick up anything. If it's glass, you can
| break it. It allows you to interact with a tangible world to a
| degree that no other consumer VR software does.
|
| It's one of the most well-reputed games of all time, and it's
| only available in VR. As such, modders have figured out how to
| make it playable without a VR headset. The reviews of non-VR
| players are that it's actually a pretty boring game when you're
| not in a simulated environment. If you're not taking the time to
| open the drawers and break the bottles and duck behind the
| barrels in a gunfight, it's mostly just walking through tunnels
| waiting for the occasional ambush.
| Skinetio wrote:
| I played it, i liked it and thats it.
|
| Its not relevant in my day to day life.
|
| And as long as i'm limited to what VR can do today, it will
| never replace reality.
|
| I want to move in vr, i want to touch, move around freely
| without hitting the floor, walls or roof.
| bsimpson wrote:
| > But in the old days I'd build one-of-a-kind V.R. headsets into
| big masks from different cultures, sometimes adding lightning
| bolts and feathers. I wanted the headsets to be vibrant, exciting
| objects that enriched the real world, too.
|
| I'm disappointed there are no images in this article. I'd love to
| see this. I love how it celebrates something by giving it a more
| playful character.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > The brain has had to adapt to many body plans over the course
| of its evolution, and it's pre-adapted to work with more.
|
| I think highly of Jaron and his unique point of view, but this is
| invalid.
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