(Earlier this summer I was contemplating the notion of a VR startup in Calgary, partly yeah because of the winter factor :) guess I should switch the idea to Winnipeg.)
It's hard to tell where VR is overstated and where it's understated. The possibilities seem endless, but I wonder if the vast majority of them exist for tech-savvy people. It's a safe bet that there can be mainstream adoption for games, but outside of games, I'm not convinced your average consumer will desire to use VR for other things.
Yeah. You can imagine uses for VR that aren't gaming -- lots of them, actually -- but are people actually going to go for it? I don't know. It may just be a bridge too far for people, or it may be that they don't think that the advantages of VR per se are sufficient to forsake their screens, or it may be that by the time the technology is finally there and content is created for it, some other shift has come into place.
(Oculus Rift feels like it's been right around the corner for like five years now. How long has it actually been? I guess only three years.)
Indeed. Originally people predicted it would arrive by last year's holiday season, now we're waiting for Q1 next year, and Q2 for their actual motion controlled input solution.
That also makes me wonder how the first gen of sales will go, since Oculus is only shipping with an Xbox controller, dividing us devs on input solutions to target and limiting our options in VR quite heavily at first.
Then again, we're waiting til October for HTC/Valve to announce the final consumer Vive, and that'll be out by the end of 2015. And the Vive is quite an amazing experience.
~iPad sales definitely won't be in strong year-over-year declines within five years~ - probably also Steve Jobs
Sometimes people build technologies that just aren't that attractive to people. I stretched a little for the Steve Jobs joke, but it turns out that sometimes you build something, it works, it's even pretty awesome, but a few years later it turns out that smartphones have 6" screens and tablets just seem less useful than they used to.
Or sometimes it's worse, and you build Google Wave to revolutionized and unify email, chat, and discussion boards and it turns out that people Just Don't Want your tech.
Short term, I think the biggest industry use will be in training, and mainstream (outside of games) will be in 360 video for things like sports.
Long term, I think AR will overtake VR but will only go mainstream when the tech miniaturizes enough to not be visually invasive. Nobody wants a big clunky headset on while they shop.
Those are my predictions anyway (and sound a lot like a lot of people's predictions too, I'm sure).
SpaceVR is going to put a VR camera up on the space station so that you can see out into space. I think that might draw the average person. Perhaps putting VR cameras at strategic points in the world, and beyond, might be one of the best usages.
Have you watched live webcam footage from the Space Station? From the Eiffel Tower? Cool stuff, but hardly engaging for more than an hour or so. I'm not sure that adding an extra dimension is really going to sell the technology. (I have no doubt that VR will find its use cases and killer app, just doubt that this alone is it.)
I'd love to see footage from the Space Station, but you're right I wouldn't watch it for more than a few minutes outside of a particular event.
Events though I can definitely see spending real time inside of a headset just to watch video. Cinema too. Lots of studios (including Oculus's own Story Studio) are getting in on that already.
When knowledge workers head to the office, it won't be by driving to a building. It'll be by putting on a VR headset and working in a virtual world that is superior to the physical office in many ways. You can work with anyone in the world. There are infinite meeting rooms that can be accessed effortlessly. Everyone gets a private office when they want it.
Communicating with loved ones changes too. Why catch up on the phone when you can sit in a living room with them?
I've tried thinking about how virtual meetings would work, but to me it seems to be flawed. Virtual reality allows us to view a 3D environment as if we are there, but how would we capture that 3D environment to begin with? Is there technology that allows us to capture not just 3D, but 3D from all angles? I expect that for "presence" to work, when you move your head, the perspective that the camera sees (on the other end) would need to change, and I can't imagine how this would be achieved.
Many technologies exist to achieve this, they're just not in the "consumer ready" stage yet.
3D scanning is best for static objects like walls in your room. They never move or change, so scan the whole space. When you turn your head in VR, you'll see accurate 3D representations of that 3D environment.
Full 6DOF tracking is another method. Given a 3D scanned static object, like a coffee cup, you can track it using various optical and IMU-based techniques. This means a static object can be dynamically tracked as it moves, giving you accurate information about the 3D world to pick up your coffee cup without spilling it.
Optical tracking can be used to replicate facial movements into 3D models (see: Faceshift), to track finger movements (see: LeapMotion/Kinect), or full body motion.
Video can fill in the gaps for dynamic content. This can be achieved in two ways:
1) depth cameras which combine RGB video like a normal camera with depth information, allow us to reconstruct dynamic objects at proper depth.
2) 360-degree stereoscopic video which gives a fixed perspective to the full 3D environment. This isn't great for "3D from all angles" as non-rotational head movements won't see an accurate view.
A combination of these technologies will enable a VR user to see a real 3D environment, and feel like they are in it.
One thing is certain: it's coming. It's just a matter of time. The technology is rapidly maturing.
"Recap: the rig takes two Canon DSLRs and spins them around in a circle, capturing a dense light field image. The resulting data, when properly processed, can be rendered with OTOY’s pipeline and delivered to a VR headset with full head tracking. It’s a static scene but OTOY have alluded to future video capture."
There are a lot of unanswered questions in there, though. If I'm sat in a living room with my loved ones, what am I looking at? A live 3D video of them? What is capturing that video? Will I see them wearing a headset? Because that's going to look pretty bad.
Something I think people often forget about VR - it's going to be really weird to be totally disconnected from the environment around you. If you're plugged into a meeting and your kid runs into the room to get your attention, how will they do it? Probably by poking you, scaring the bejesus out of you.
I just don't buy the idea that VR will make our lives more "real". It'll lead to living in weird bubbles.
It isn't difficult to connect the external world to an otherwise external sensory deprived VR environment, either with external cameras or smart overlays. I suspect Facebook may try something similar to how Steam functions within games.
That's because you treat VR vs AR vs reality as three different extremes.
They're not.
Think of them as a spectrum. VR + stereoscopic image passthrough gets you an AR-like view of the real world around you. These overlays allow you to pick up coffee cups, see when your kid is poking you, etc.
Valve is solving walking into walls by showing you a holodeck-like barrier inside the headset, so something like that could work with moving objects like kids or the dog over time too. Still, you are quite disconnected from the world that's actually around you.
In terms of making technology more human, I see VR as a stepping stone to Augmented Reality, which will eventually allow us to interact with our hands and instead of being in another world, you'll see things brought into your own world. That is an improvement over a screen too.
But VR can also transport you to places you've never been through 360 video, which is a powerful opportunity to create empathy through journalism and documentaries that can help us better understand how people live halfway across the world. I'm rather excited for that.
While any technology has the potential to further divide or distract us, VR has made me feel things that no other technology has even come close to feeling.
It may very well be that this iteration does not solve those challenges.
But if you look 5-10 years out, I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see drastically miniaturized components, perhaps a headband of sorts, a Glass-like eyepiece with a projector, maybe contact lenses, or something that provides a strong level of immersion without hiding the face.
In terms of recording the space, the Kinect is able to determine an astonishing amount about a physical space that I imagine would go hand in hand with this.
I only see disadvantages... I have to wear this giant thing that prevents me from seeing my arms and anything else physically around me, no ability to capture my actual head and eyes unless you do a bunch of fancy 3d reconstruction, etc.
Think longer term, when augmented reality advances sufficiently that it will look like the person is sitting right across from you. No loss of non-verbal communication, which is still pretty limited to a small field of view over FaceTime.
VR won't solve this in an elegant way immediately, although virtual avatars will soon have eye and facial expression tracking, so at least the avatar will mimic your actual expressions inside of a virtual space. The value add there is that you can be in a shared collaborative space with additional objects besides just other people, and interact with those together.
I think there are other hurdles to remote work. Management simply doesn't want it to happen. I'm in a small, very technology-savvy company and - even though we are currently out of office space - there is no option to work from home even part time. The traditional reasons of "need collaboration" / "we work face to face" are always given.
There's a lot of value and comfort that people get from the kind of spontaneity involved in face-to-face communication. If you have to plan a virtual meeting, you loose that. As well as the benefits of walking around to meet with people.
I can maybe see pre-trip travel planning (for certain types of holiday) working. E.g. take a VR tour of prospective hotels/resorts, cruise ships, big airports, conference halls etc.
I like my travelling unscripted but lots of people I know would dig the above.
I'm a fan of the unscripted travel variety too (backpacking ftw!), although I'm also really into the idea of 360 video of things like short previews of festivals, some harder to get to places, just to get a sense of where I should prioritize my sight seeing.
VR can give you a sense of what a new place is going to be like, but it'll never be quite like breathing the air or climbing on things.
At Learn Immersive [1], we are bringing VR to education, specifically for language learners. It's incredible what effects VR has on learning and training.
In contrast, VR will definitely be used for porn. If anything, that's where most of the content outside of gaming is being created right now.
I'm 100% confident VR will be at the top of many consumer's Xmas lists next year and the following. It will start with gamers, then trickle into more consumer-y use cases like education and porn.
I apologize for the juxtaposition there. I'm one of the few who has tried Vive and other tracked-remote solutions, and these are what make VR most compelling (not the headset itself). Until you try these, I'd hold off on having a strong opinion.
I am really curious about video content in VR. How does it work? Obviously a 360 degree camera lets you look around the scene arbitrarily, but you're still locked to whatever position the camera was at. Moving within the scene requires 3D rendering, which isn't nearly on the level of actual film. So, what gives?
That's correct. You're stuck as a fixed point, although you can still get a stereoscopic perspective.
Companies like Lytro have started working on solutions to let you move your head around a little bit, but that's about the extend of video for the foreseeable future.
Still, you don't always want to be moving around in a scene. People sit and watch movies all the time, so there's going to be a place for it.
My understanding was that VR was intensely nauseating if you can't at least move your head and have the motion translated (at very low latency!). Is that not the case?
If you try to move around a lot in a non-positional tracking system like the Gear VR or in a 360 video, you might feel nauseous. But if you're sitting down and just looking around, generally developers are getting better at not making people sick in VR.
The other half of that is when your motion isn't translated 1:1 to your perspective in the game (e.g., exaggerated movements in a first-person shooter), that's when you can really feel simulation sickness.
Valve's "room-scale tracking" actually solves a lot of that by keeping your perspective in sync with your real self. I'd say it's the best VR solution I've tried yet.
Nausea is mostly a solved problem at this point. Oculus and Vive have both done extensive testing on nausea and few report it on the new consumer versions.
The reason Oculus took so long to announce a consumer version was largely tied to the fact they hadn't solved the nausea problem. Now they have.
Well... But isn't the way that they solved the nausea problem that they managed to get very, very, very low latency between your head movements and those movements being translated to the image you see?
All the hardware improvements there presumably don't help if there isn't a different image to view when you move your head.
I predict that VR for "live" music and sports events is going to be huge. I would (did) not spend $200 to see the Stones. But I would spend $25 for a good VR version of the live concert. I would not spend $1000 for a season ticket for the Pirates, but I'd spend $100 for a VR season ticket.
Totally agree. We just shot some 360 footage of the Winnipeg Folk Festival (http://www.winnipegfolkfestival.ca) and I'm sure people are going to love this way of experiencing concerts, sports, you name it.
We also just backed the Sphericam kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1996234044/sphericam-2-...), so I look forward to a much more streamlined process and the ability to play with more theatrical ideas. Lots of film makers around here who I'm sure could do some amazing things with this tech!
Google Jump is shaping up to be an interesting offering.
"Jump is coming to YouTube soon"
https://www.google.com/get/cardboard/jump/
YouTube is probably already Google's highest grossing platform. I assume that Google will be a dominant player in the paid VR marketplace. I've no doubt that within just a couple of years that the majority of content that I personally buy will be VR.
One can only imagine how much Ticketmaster is salivating over this.
>"You mean we can charge insane ticket prices and fees for virtual attendance, with no physical cap on how many people can attend?! Shutup and take my money"
-Random Ticketmaster Exec
Would you be able to foresee the existence of something like Uber back when you were using your Nokia phone (10+ years ago)? We can't imagine what VR technology will be used for.
I actually did want to make something similar, born out of a desire to digitize my local transit schedules. I tried emailing my local transit agency, but they were uninterested and I didn't realize the kind of hustle you needed to get such stuff started.
I then had an idea using SMS and windows pocket PCs to basically make something like Uber for a software taxi dispatch system. You would SMS a number and then get updates via SMS on the status of your cab. Cabs would have the pocket PCs installed with an external GPS module. I would sell it to taxi dispatch companies as a way to make more money. I was just starting university although, and felt quite overwhelmed with the idea of actually selling it to anyone.
In this case, I don't think the technology was as surprising as the fact that it came from outside the Taxi industry. Who would have thought that it would be easier to create a global fleet of drivers from scratch than it would be to utilize existing infrastructure.
I do see your point though. Someone may have been thinking of this concept 10 years ago, but it certainly wasn't me.
I've been reading about Richard Hamming a lot lately, and this stuck with me when he was talking about AI.
"You must struggle with your own beliefs if you are to make any progress in understanding the possibilities and limitations of computers in the intellectual area. To do this adequately you must formalize your beliefs and then criticize them severely, arguing one side against the other, until you have a fair idea of the strengths and weakness of both sides."
And if so, I can assure the consumer version is far and away better than the DK2, as is the HTC Vive. I haven't tried Oculus's motion controllers yet, but the Vive dev kit controllers are amazing already.
I think VR is going to end up being an intellectual holocaust if it keeps going the direction it is going, people designing the technologies seem to view it as a way to keep the "inferior" contained in a world that caters to their every emotional desire.
Just look at all the porn and gaming comments..
Augmented Reality is the real way to go, VR simulations have their time and place - but this technology is nothing more than an overinflated dream from 80's sci fi.
Murray and Herrnstein predicted this in The Bell Curve - "a high-tech and more lavish version of the Indian reservation for some substantial minority of the nation's population, while the rest of America tries to go about its business"
Because it's the new hotness again. What is this, 1993?
VR, AR, whatever kind of reality besides actual reality, they all have a long way to go before they can approach not being eyehurty. None of the manufacturers have addressed a major cause of eyehurt: the mismatch between perceived distance and actual distance throwing off the eye's focusing mechanism. And that's just one of many hurdles to overcome before we can jack into the Metaverse or otherwise enjoy VR as anything but a nifty five-minute demo.
Haters gonna hate, hate, hate. Have you tried it out? People use it for much longer than 5 minutes without any pain. I don't think anyone is expecting to wear a VR headset for 24 hours straight. It's not all extremes.
> I don't think anyone is expecting to wear a VR headset for 24 hours straight.
I'm pretty sure some people expect to do just that, especially in the gaming community. Although, I'm not sure it's going to be worse than spending 24h+ gaming on a regular screen while heavily imbibing energy drinks...
A lot of questions about how much interest there could be outside of video games, and that's okay! To be honest, video games could be a great proving ground for the technology. Gamers are used to being early adopters and tend not to be afraid to try new things, and after VR developers have sufficiently experimented in arena they can branch out in earnest.
Even if it winds up being a primarily gaming-related accessory, I think it can still achieve success.
I think there will be some eventual movement in remote working, virtual offices, etc. The hard part of telepresence is contact, but physical contact isn't something that is an issue in a typical office environment - it's facial expressions, screen sharing, etc. Once the resolution can handle virtual screens and facial tracking can handle some level of expressive avatars, we'll see some movement.
Bosses will be more comfortable with remote workers when they can keep track of them like other workers in what feels like a real office.
Businesses will start to reconsider leasing an expensive physical office and instead leave their workers in home offices, while having them interact in a virtual space. Virtual desktops, virtual screens, look sideways or behind you in the room to see virtual colleagues.
In a small web business, I can spend $xk on goggles, have everyone work from home, and save $x0k on rent. Then imagine game chat from consoles applied to an office. A whisper goes to your team, a shout to everyone. Employees could set their status to leave-me-alone to be left off everything but the most crucial announcement - that's an improvement on current open plan offices where you only option is headphones. A toggled HUD could show what the rest of the team is working on, etc.
Before avatars have expressions, I can imagine people working in a virtual office full of helmeted Daft Punk colleagues.
For me it's funny to see this pop up now. Just this week I've been getting heavily into VR and loving what I'm seeing. Finally corners are being turned. I feel a sense of something approaching a vital "tipping point" as I felt with blogging in the early 00s and Twitter in the late 00s.
For anyone who's not yet convinced, see if you can get a go on the Samsung Gear VR. It's actually better than the Rift 2 in many ways (I've got the Gear plus both Rift kits) in that it's quicker to get going and the headset and visuals are better. Play a game called "Dreadhalls" and be prepared to be absolutely terrified and, if you have earphones in, be 99% to believing you're in the environment getting attacked by all manner of creatures. (And I should stress, playing this game in VR has been the most extreme experience I've had in a while - it's that good and has won me over on VR.)
My employees have been enjoying all the equipment in the past week or two and I've found that people's tolerance for it still varies. One person can't experience any VR without feeling sick afterwards, whereas others have no issues at all. I think increased realism, resolution and immersion will help, as well as increased exposure. But whatever the case, we live in exciting times and VR is only going to become a bigger deal over the next few years.
As someone who went from zero to puking in < 5 minutes playing Mirror's Edge, I am super worried about VR.
I have been dreaming of true VR and AR for ages, and as current tech begins to be consumer ready (and affordable) I long for the day I can fully immerse myself. But my motion sickness makes me worry that it will be a new frontier I am entirely locked out of :(
Do you happen to know of any places in the Bay Area where one can go to try these various devices and experiences for free to get a sense of this? I simply can't justify spending the money unless I know with great confidence I won't puke after short usage.
Mirrors Edge is practically guaranteed to cause nausea unless you have an iron stomach. Doesn't have native VR support and it's a first person platformer. Not to mention the fact the CV versions of the headsets coming out are going to be a LOT less likely to cause motion sickness with the higher refresh rates, better screens and improved SDKs/tracking solutions bringing down latency and hopefully eliminating any judder.
Still, I don't think we'll really be seeing games like Mirrors Edge in VR for a long time, not until we've figured out locomotion that doesn't cause sickness. Things with 1:1 movement (ie the camera never moves unless you move your head) and/or things with static elements to give you a point of reference (like a cockpit, apparently even just having a helmet in your vision giving you a point of reference helps) basically don't make me sick. But if I try to play an FPS for even 10 minutes I come away rather queasy, whereas I can play Elite: Dangerous for hours with only minor discomfort (because I am sitting in a seat in the cockpit of the ship).
FWIW I would get [motion] sick[ness] (not actually throwing up, but nauseated) from just playing Halo 1[1] on a regular TV (~32"). Could play fine in co-op/split screen though.
And while the "house on a hill"-demo that's bundled with DK2 is pretty bad wrt motion sickness -- I've logged quite a few hours in Elite: Dangerous without problems -- and have no problems with the spartan desk scene that's used for testing/setup of the DK2.
In short, I believe Oculus/Carmack's hard focus on fighting motion sickness has paid off a lot -- today's VR is nothing like the VR of the 90s.
I've yet to try the gear/paper-kit/other things thank the DK2 -- but that kit itself gives me no issues. Poor software/scene design does -- but we already have those issues with 2d (I doubt I'd be able to play Mirror's Edge -- although I haven't tried it).
[1] Ed to add: The team behind Halo 1 did a terrific job on camera motion, overall speed/paralax and scene design in fighting motion sickness. But still, at full screen, single-play I'd get uncomfortably motion sick after ~20-30 minutes. Enough that I never really played the game much in single player.
I doubt it. Motion sickness mostly comes from a discontinuity between what you are seeing and what you are feeling. Though extreme motion even without a visual disconnect, especially wavy or circular motion, can do it to people who are sensitive.
Other people have mentioned this but Mirror's Edge is particularly bad for that. I felt similarly and basically threw it away. I do not seem to have a problem with VR as long as I'm standing up and changing direction by actually turning.. if I use a stick to rotate instead, it causes unease.
> "Imagine a phone call with a family member halfway across the country, and seeing them right there in the room with you. Not on a screen, but sitting right across from you."
I feel like an often overlooked part of VR videochat is that everyone has a giant box attached to their face so how do you do it well? I guess you could have an avatar and some clever ability to detect facial expressions of the person wearing the box, but that's hardly better than actually seeing them.
That said I have a DK2 and the presence you get is impressive. Especially the ability to lean into the environment because of head tracking.
Magic Leap stated last month that they have solved drawing black "with light" due to collaboration between their artists and engineers. It will give them a huge advantage if they can get production costs low enough.
Oculus, Sony's Morpheus, Microsoft's Hololens- these are all just the next step in the VR/AR movement. Currently it's at a stage where the tech requires a box with cell phone screens on your face (or in the case of my favorite AR--Innovega's iOptik--sunglasses and a projector). This isn't the final stage of VR though. The next big leap might be bionic eye implants that directly stimulate your optical nerves (Second Sight's Argus II could be the start of this).
The hardware will continue to get better as these companies put more time and money into them. Entirely new companies will be made just to create algorithms and applications to improve the VR experience (how do you make an avatar of a person feel like the real thing? I don't know but I bet Oculus would pay a lot of money for the rights to that algorithm).
In the meantime, you are correct about black in AR being a challenge. I'm be curious how that one will be solved
For me, there's only one question: will it make me motion sick?
Only if they can fix that issue will it become something even worth thinking about for those of us who suffer from motion sickness. I hope it can be addressed.
I don't think you can solve that 100% with current mobile VR headsets, and any game that separates your in-game movement from your actual physical movement will cause some people to feel sick.
I think developers are learning how to work with the hardware though, and things are getting much better. Plus the hardware itself is improving on that front too, for ex:
I think VR is overselled, never underestimate the effect of intrusiveness on the user. This is the same reason we have less 3D movies than a few years ago, the novelty factor fade and the gains from the medium have to be sufficient to beat the intrusiveness. VR is cumbersome, a large part of the population will probably never be able to use them and users now prefer low engagement medium due to the constant distraction life we are in now.
Maybe - though the presence you get from VR is really something new.
3D was intrusive for minimal gains (even in the best case of Avatar it wasn't that different of an experience). If you've been able to play with a DK2 and some of the better experiences it really is different.
Even with the huge improvements made recently there are still really big changes that would make things even better. (100x higher resolution on the small displays, 90hz and 90fps on mobile, graphics hardware way beyond where it is now).
VR puts a strain on modern hardware, but it really gives you something new and maybe that sense of presence will be enough that even with the intrusiveness users will want it.
cumbersome is only a temporary thing, VR is definitely going to be an enthusiast thing for the next couple of years, but once the form factor/price starts coming down and the content is actually starting to come out at a reasonable rate I can't see it doing anything but exploding.
It's not something you can really understand until you've experienced it first hand, but I think the experience can turn a decent amount of people into enthusiasts.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadJust happens to be where we're from, and it's actually a great city to live in with a very vibrant arts and indie dev community.
(Earlier this summer I was contemplating the notion of a VR startup in Calgary, partly yeah because of the winter factor :) guess I should switch the idea to Winnipeg.)
(Oculus Rift feels like it's been right around the corner for like five years now. How long has it actually been? I guess only three years.)
That also makes me wonder how the first gen of sales will go, since Oculus is only shipping with an Xbox controller, dividing us devs on input solutions to target and limiting our options in VR quite heavily at first.
Then again, we're waiting til October for HTC/Valve to announce the final consumer Vive, and that'll be out by the end of 2015. And the Vive is quite an amazing experience.
~..death would take care of people who didn't know how to type..~ - Steve Jobs
Sometimes people build technologies that just aren't that attractive to people. I stretched a little for the Steve Jobs joke, but it turns out that sometimes you build something, it works, it's even pretty awesome, but a few years later it turns out that smartphones have 6" screens and tablets just seem less useful than they used to.
Or sometimes it's worse, and you build Google Wave to revolutionized and unify email, chat, and discussion boards and it turns out that people Just Don't Want your tech.
Long term, I think AR will overtake VR but will only go mainstream when the tech miniaturizes enough to not be visually invasive. Nobody wants a big clunky headset on while they shop.
Those are my predictions anyway (and sound a lot like a lot of people's predictions too, I'm sure).
Events though I can definitely see spending real time inside of a headset just to watch video. Cinema too. Lots of studios (including Oculus's own Story Studio) are getting in on that already.
Communicating with loved ones changes too. Why catch up on the phone when you can sit in a living room with them?
Virtual reality is not a niche pursuit.
3D scanning is best for static objects like walls in your room. They never move or change, so scan the whole space. When you turn your head in VR, you'll see accurate 3D representations of that 3D environment.
Full 6DOF tracking is another method. Given a 3D scanned static object, like a coffee cup, you can track it using various optical and IMU-based techniques. This means a static object can be dynamically tracked as it moves, giving you accurate information about the 3D world to pick up your coffee cup without spilling it.
Optical tracking can be used to replicate facial movements into 3D models (see: Faceshift), to track finger movements (see: LeapMotion/Kinect), or full body motion.
Video can fill in the gaps for dynamic content. This can be achieved in two ways: 1) depth cameras which combine RGB video like a normal camera with depth information, allow us to reconstruct dynamic objects at proper depth. 2) 360-degree stereoscopic video which gives a fixed perspective to the full 3D environment. This isn't great for "3D from all angles" as non-rotational head movements won't see an accurate view.
A combination of these technologies will enable a VR user to see a real 3D environment, and feel like they are in it.
One thing is certain: it's coming. It's just a matter of time. The technology is rapidly maturing.
"Recap: the rig takes two Canon DSLRs and spins them around in a circle, capturing a dense light field image. The resulting data, when properly processed, can be rendered with OTOY’s pipeline and delivered to a VR headset with full head tracking. It’s a static scene but OTOY have alluded to future video capture."
Something I think people often forget about VR - it's going to be really weird to be totally disconnected from the environment around you. If you're plugged into a meeting and your kid runs into the room to get your attention, how will they do it? Probably by poking you, scaring the bejesus out of you.
I just don't buy the idea that VR will make our lives more "real". It'll lead to living in weird bubbles.
They're not.
Think of them as a spectrum. VR + stereoscopic image passthrough gets you an AR-like view of the real world around you. These overlays allow you to pick up coffee cups, see when your kid is poking you, etc.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9938332
Valve is solving walking into walls by showing you a holodeck-like barrier inside the headset, so something like that could work with moving objects like kids or the dog over time too. Still, you are quite disconnected from the world that's actually around you.
In terms of making technology more human, I see VR as a stepping stone to Augmented Reality, which will eventually allow us to interact with our hands and instead of being in another world, you'll see things brought into your own world. That is an improvement over a screen too.
But VR can also transport you to places you've never been through 360 video, which is a powerful opportunity to create empathy through journalism and documentaries that can help us better understand how people live halfway across the world. I'm rather excited for that.
While any technology has the potential to further divide or distract us, VR has made me feel things that no other technology has even come close to feeling.
But if you look 5-10 years out, I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see drastically miniaturized components, perhaps a headband of sorts, a Glass-like eyepiece with a projector, maybe contact lenses, or something that provides a strong level of immersion without hiding the face.
In terms of recording the space, the Kinect is able to determine an astonishing amount about a physical space that I imagine would go hand in hand with this.
I only see disadvantages... I have to wear this giant thing that prevents me from seeing my arms and anything else physically around me, no ability to capture my actual head and eyes unless you do a bunch of fancy 3d reconstruction, etc.
VR won't solve this in an elegant way immediately, although virtual avatars will soon have eye and facial expression tracking, so at least the avatar will mimic your actual expressions inside of a virtual space. The value add there is that you can be in a shared collaborative space with additional objects besides just other people, and interact with those together.
I like my travelling unscripted but lots of people I know would dig the above.
VR can give you a sense of what a new place is going to be like, but it'll never be quite like breathing the air or climbing on things.
In contrast, VR will definitely be used for porn. If anything, that's where most of the content outside of gaming is being created right now.
I'm 100% confident VR will be at the top of many consumer's Xmas lists next year and the following. It will start with gamers, then trickle into more consumer-y use cases like education and porn.
I apologize for the juxtaposition there. I'm one of the few who has tried Vive and other tracked-remote solutions, and these are what make VR most compelling (not the headset itself). Until you try these, I'd hold off on having a strong opinion.
[1] - http://learnimmersive.com
Companies like Lytro have started working on solutions to let you move your head around a little bit, but that's about the extend of video for the foreseeable future.
Still, you don't always want to be moving around in a scene. People sit and watch movies all the time, so there's going to be a place for it.
The other half of that is when your motion isn't translated 1:1 to your perspective in the game (e.g., exaggerated movements in a first-person shooter), that's when you can really feel simulation sickness.
Valve's "room-scale tracking" actually solves a lot of that by keeping your perspective in sync with your real self. I'd say it's the best VR solution I've tried yet.
The reason Oculus took so long to announce a consumer version was largely tied to the fact they hadn't solved the nausea problem. Now they have.
All the hardware improvements there presumably don't help if there isn't a different image to view when you move your head.
We also just backed the Sphericam kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1996234044/sphericam-2-...), so I look forward to a much more streamlined process and the ability to play with more theatrical ideas. Lots of film makers around here who I'm sure could do some amazing things with this tech!
>"You mean we can charge insane ticket prices and fees for virtual attendance, with no physical cap on how many people can attend?! Shutup and take my money" -Random Ticketmaster Exec
I then had an idea using SMS and windows pocket PCs to basically make something like Uber for a software taxi dispatch system. You would SMS a number and then get updates via SMS on the status of your cab. Cabs would have the pocket PCs installed with an external GPS module. I would sell it to taxi dispatch companies as a way to make more money. I was just starting university although, and felt quite overwhelmed with the idea of actually selling it to anyone.
I do see your point though. Someone may have been thinking of this concept 10 years ago, but it certainly wasn't me.
"You must struggle with your own beliefs if you are to make any progress in understanding the possibilities and limitations of computers in the intellectual area. To do this adequately you must formalize your beliefs and then criticize them severely, arguing one side against the other, until you have a fair idea of the strengths and weakness of both sides."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQEiXST_qms
Just look at all the porn and gaming comments..
Augmented Reality is the real way to go, VR simulations have their time and place - but this technology is nothing more than an overinflated dream from 80's sci fi.
VR, AR, whatever kind of reality besides actual reality, they all have a long way to go before they can approach not being eyehurty. None of the manufacturers have addressed a major cause of eyehurt: the mismatch between perceived distance and actual distance throwing off the eye's focusing mechanism. And that's just one of many hurdles to overcome before we can jack into the Metaverse or otherwise enjoy VR as anything but a nifty five-minute demo.
I'm pretty sure some people expect to do just that, especially in the gaming community. Although, I'm not sure it's going to be worse than spending 24h+ gaming on a regular screen while heavily imbibing energy drinks...
Even if it winds up being a primarily gaming-related accessory, I think it can still achieve success.
Bosses will be more comfortable with remote workers when they can keep track of them like other workers in what feels like a real office.
Businesses will start to reconsider leasing an expensive physical office and instead leave their workers in home offices, while having them interact in a virtual space. Virtual desktops, virtual screens, look sideways or behind you in the room to see virtual colleagues.
In a small web business, I can spend $xk on goggles, have everyone work from home, and save $x0k on rent. Then imagine game chat from consoles applied to an office. A whisper goes to your team, a shout to everyone. Employees could set their status to leave-me-alone to be left off everything but the most crucial announcement - that's an improvement on current open plan offices where you only option is headphones. A toggled HUD could show what the rest of the team is working on, etc.
Before avatars have expressions, I can imagine people working in a virtual office full of helmeted Daft Punk colleagues.
For anyone who's not yet convinced, see if you can get a go on the Samsung Gear VR. It's actually better than the Rift 2 in many ways (I've got the Gear plus both Rift kits) in that it's quicker to get going and the headset and visuals are better. Play a game called "Dreadhalls" and be prepared to be absolutely terrified and, if you have earphones in, be 99% to believing you're in the environment getting attacked by all manner of creatures. (And I should stress, playing this game in VR has been the most extreme experience I've had in a while - it's that good and has won me over on VR.)
My employees have been enjoying all the equipment in the past week or two and I've found that people's tolerance for it still varies. One person can't experience any VR without feeling sick afterwards, whereas others have no issues at all. I think increased realism, resolution and immersion will help, as well as increased exposure. But whatever the case, we live in exciting times and VR is only going to become a bigger deal over the next few years.
I have been dreaming of true VR and AR for ages, and as current tech begins to be consumer ready (and affordable) I long for the day I can fully immerse myself. But my motion sickness makes me worry that it will be a new frontier I am entirely locked out of :(
Do you happen to know of any places in the Bay Area where one can go to try these various devices and experiences for free to get a sense of this? I simply can't justify spending the money unless I know with great confidence I won't puke after short usage.
Still, I don't think we'll really be seeing games like Mirrors Edge in VR for a long time, not until we've figured out locomotion that doesn't cause sickness. Things with 1:1 movement (ie the camera never moves unless you move your head) and/or things with static elements to give you a point of reference (like a cockpit, apparently even just having a helmet in your vision giving you a point of reference helps) basically don't make me sick. But if I try to play an FPS for even 10 minutes I come away rather queasy, whereas I can play Elite: Dangerous for hours with only minor discomfort (because I am sitting in a seat in the cockpit of the ship).
And while the "house on a hill"-demo that's bundled with DK2 is pretty bad wrt motion sickness -- I've logged quite a few hours in Elite: Dangerous without problems -- and have no problems with the spartan desk scene that's used for testing/setup of the DK2.
In short, I believe Oculus/Carmack's hard focus on fighting motion sickness has paid off a lot -- today's VR is nothing like the VR of the 90s.
I've yet to try the gear/paper-kit/other things thank the DK2 -- but that kit itself gives me no issues. Poor software/scene design does -- but we already have those issues with 2d (I doubt I'd be able to play Mirror's Edge -- although I haven't tried it).
[1] Ed to add: The team behind Halo 1 did a terrific job on camera motion, overall speed/paralax and scene design in fighting motion sickness. But still, at full screen, single-play I'd get uncomfortably motion sick after ~20-30 minutes. Enough that I never really played the game much in single player.
I feel like an often overlooked part of VR videochat is that everyone has a giant box attached to their face so how do you do it well? I guess you could have an avatar and some clever ability to detect facial expressions of the person wearing the box, but that's hardly better than actually seeing them.
That said I have a DK2 and the presence you get is impressive. Especially the ability to lean into the environment because of head tracking.
This game really impressed me: https://share.oculus.com/app/i-expect-you-to-die
[Edit] For those looking towards AR, hard AR is pretty hard. Notably the ability to draw black. Michael Abrash has a really good blog post about this problem and others: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/why-you-wont-see-hard-...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9938332
The hardware will continue to get better as these companies put more time and money into them. Entirely new companies will be made just to create algorithms and applications to improve the VR experience (how do you make an avatar of a person feel like the real thing? I don't know but I bet Oculus would pay a lot of money for the rights to that algorithm).
In the meantime, you are correct about black in AR being a challenge. I'm be curious how that one will be solved
Only if they can fix that issue will it become something even worth thinking about for those of us who suffer from motion sickness. I hope it can be addressed.
I think developers are learning how to work with the hardware though, and things are getting much better. Plus the hardware itself is improving on that front too, for ex:
http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/5/8153101/valve-boss-gabe-new...
The Vive is quite a step up from the Oculus Rift DK2, and having played with it myself, that claim actually holds up pretty well.
3D was intrusive for minimal gains (even in the best case of Avatar it wasn't that different of an experience). If you've been able to play with a DK2 and some of the better experiences it really is different.
Even with the huge improvements made recently there are still really big changes that would make things even better. (100x higher resolution on the small displays, 90hz and 90fps on mobile, graphics hardware way beyond where it is now).
VR puts a strain on modern hardware, but it really gives you something new and maybe that sense of presence will be enough that even with the intrusiveness users will want it.
It's not something you can really understand until you've experienced it first hand, but I think the experience can turn a decent amount of people into enthusiasts.
http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/input-output/14/35...