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VR's Tough Demand: Your Undivided Attention (axios.com) 115

Posted by msmash from the one-perspective dept.
Ina Fried, writing for Axios: If you want to know why virtual reality hasn't taken off, you might want to blame our addiction to smartphones. Why? While the power of VR is to be transported into an immersive experience, consumers will demand a lot out of something that makes them give up Twitter and Facebook, even for a few minutes. One perspective: "It has to be a really compelling reason to get you to give up all that," Shauna Heller, a former Oculus worker who now consults on VR projects, said Thursday at the Mobile Future Forward conference near Seattle. "There aren't just a ton of those reasons just yet."
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VR's Tough Demand: Your Undivided Attention More

VR's Tough Demand: Your Undivided Attention

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  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday September 08, 2017 @01:05PM (#55160225)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The explanation is bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by klingens ( 147173 ) on Friday September 08, 2017 @01:08PM (#55160249)

    Apologies for the real reason: the games suck. No one wants to buy them, so no one buys a headset for this one awesome game one can't live without.
    People play games all the time, in fullscreen, no twitter.
    Even if there were a twitter addiction: one could easily integrate it, it's simply a monitor like any other, it doesn't matter if I display twitter on it or a game. Even the input could be managed: every Windows Version has speech recognition for years. A microphone isn't really new tech when you have a VR headset.

    • Re:The explanation is bullshit. (Score:5, Informative)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Friday September 08, 2017 @02:31PM (#55160723)

      I would argue there's a different and fundamental reason VR hasn't taken off - for most people, it's interesting for a grand total of maybe 10-15 minutes. After that, the novelty factor is gone and they don't see a reason to try it again.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bahwi ( 43111 )

      "People play games all the time, in fullscreen, no twitter."

      So, smart phones exist now. I'm typing this in a full-screen web browser window, and I can check twitter, facebook, email, without even having to alt-tab!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by K10W ( 1705114 )

      Apologies for the real reason: the games suck. No one wants to buy them, so no one buys a headset for this one awesome game one can't live without. People play games all the time, in fullscreen, no twitter. Even if there were a twitter addiction: one could easily integrate it, it's simply a monitor like any other, it doesn't matter if I display twitter on it or a game. Even the input could be managed: every Windows Version has speech recognition for years. A microphone isn't really new tech when you have a VR headset.

      I'd argue many of the games are excellent but problem is the games where it really shines are niche compared to the casual market. Sure the stuff pushed by the VR stores frontpage to try and capture the casuals market are junk but everyone I know including myself bought for specific games (mostly flight simulators, although Onward was a consideration for some as it is more like Arma for vr than an fps). For hardcore study simulators it is actually the opposite and VR coupled with them is probably as good as

  • Oh, please (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JohnFen ( 1641097 ) on Friday September 08, 2017 @01:09PM (#55160253)

    Smartphones have nothing to do with it. I see three things impeding the mass acceptance of VR:

    1) It's expensive
    2) You have to wear it
    3) There's no use case compelling enough to overcome 1 and 2 (unless, perhaps, you're a hardcore gamer)

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I expect VR will become ubiquitous when it is competitive with multiple monitors in quality and price. Why buy 3 monitors when you can just buy a headset and turn your head? and you can take it with you. Also will need to have an AR overlay (or underlay) so you're not blind when you have it on, but some headsets already have that.

      • I think it has to be much cheaper than that, or there has to be a use case substantially better than "monitor replacement".

        If I had the choice between a VR headset and three monitors, I'd take the three monitors. They are more generally useful and don't require me to wear any gear.

    • Exactly.

      This sounds to me like someone in the '80s saying that computers are being held back because people are addicted to their walkmans

      Gee... could it be that the technology is in its infancy and you have to strap bulky equipment to your face? Nah... must be the smart phones...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tomhath ( 637240 )
      "Porn" is the answer to all three of your points
    • Really agree with JohnFen's post. Add to that, any technology that equates to 'putting a bag over your head' to operate must have an especially compelling use case for it to be widely adopted. Racercar driving, Scuba diving, spacewalking/high altitude cockpits, firefighting, welding for example really have no helmetless options that are sane for the most part. Lastly, in the quest to view even larger televisions, VR goggles take the approach of moving the pixels closer to the face. And indeed there seem

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Smartphones have nothing to do with it. I see three things impeding the mass acceptance of VR:

      1) It's expensive
      2) You have to wear it
      3) There's no use case compelling enough to overcome 1 and 2 (unless, perhaps, you're a hardcore gamer)

      No, it's not expensive - your smartphone can do it with a cheap addon. VR purists may scoff, but it is an economical way to get into VR.

      There are other reasons for VR's non-popularity.

      First - the goggles. People hate 3D because they have to wear glasses. Now you want to strap

  • I don't think so (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The reason VR hasn't taken off is that it has some major flaws:
    1. Lack of focus perception (focus point appears to be somewhere around 3m from your face)
    2. Inability to have smooth movement without causing motion sickness, which limits gaming to "interact" and "teleport".
    3. It's expensive. People won't justify spending $500 on a VR set, on top of the price of the console/pc needed to run the games, if they don't see great things to do in it. Specially if they don't have a large room to play on, and gamers t

    • I've had some very compelling experiences playing with a friend's Vive, in a relatively small room. I think the hardware is "good enough" for a wide range of compelling experiences, but developers haven't yet worked out how to make compelling use of it outside a narrow range of experiences.

      Focal distance is certainly a bit of an issue, but honestly I doubt it's a dealbreaker for most gamers - we're all already acclimated to staring at a flat screen a fixed distance from our face. I only even really notice

  • VR is undeniably the future. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SensitiveMale ( 155605 ) on Friday September 08, 2017 @01:09PM (#55160257)

    After playing my oculus rift for 5 minutes, VR is here and it is going to be everything and everywhere. Don't worry about social feeds, games will figure out a way to shoehorn feeds in. Was it the Populous game that would have one of the little people run up to you with a sign when you got an email? Games will figure out a way for people to get their social drugs mainlined while in the rift.

    VR is the future and nothing will stop that. Eventually, and I'm guessing within 8 years, VR will not only be with the huge isolation googles, but will be also be possible with the Oakley style glasses as well.

    • I could see VR becoming a solid high-end gaming accessory, but if it's to achieve anything like mass acceptance, it needs to be useful for something other than games (or become really, really inexpensive).

      • It will be. Imagine going to a business meeting, picking up a pair a VR glasses that look like oakleys, and everything on the meeting table and walls is VR/Augmented reality. That's the future.

        Or working on equipment and having the documents projected above your arm because you're wearing VR/AR glasses.

        Or looking out over a factory and seeing info bubbles of significant information over each piece of equipment and you can zoom in to any specific piece to see production or maintenance data.

        VR is undeniably

        • Maybe.

          Of your examples, though, the only one that really seems like it adds value is the equipment maintenance one -- and that's pretty niche (and would not be that useful to engineers who are already familiar with the equipment).

          In any case, I'm not going to say it can't happen! Tech advances in unpredictable ways, and it's possible that something will happen that will overcome the problems with VR as it exists right now. I doubt that will happen in my lifetime, but you never know.

          One thing that I do know

        • It will be. Imagine going to a business meeting, picking up a pair a VR glasses that look like oakleys, and everything on the meeting table and walls is VR/Augmented reality. That's the future.

          Every single one of your examples is AR, not VR.

          VR is "going" to a business meeting by putting on your VR goggles while in your pajamas and seeing a fancy board room with you and all the other attendees in suits, even though they're probably in their PJs too, and considering it as good as actually going to a meeting. Which won't happen without a Juanita Marquez doing her thing as depicted in Snow Crash, namely creating an avatar system with virtual facial expressions with high enough fidelity to real faces

        • Your first scenario is not going to happen. What will happen is once every year or so, someone will make them fire up the VR stuff during a meeting, and half the meeting will involve waiting for tech ops to set it back up.

          VR is fine for annotating factory equipment orother 3D things. But most movies barely use 2D imagery.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by PCM2 ( 4486 )

            Your first scenario is not going to happen. What will happen is once every year or so, someone will make them fire up the VR stuff during a meeting, and half the meeting will involve waiting for tech ops to set it back up.

            Real talk. Let's just think about the amount of meeting-time that is wasted getting the person who's causing the echo or feedback to mute their microphone.

    • Yep. It's still pretty rough around the edges, but it's absolutely here. There are VR ports for DOOM based games (Doom, Doom2, Hexen, etc), Quake based games, and Duke Nukem3D, and some new and fairly serious VR titles are starting to show up. Those old games were *hoping* for VR to take off 20 years ago, and they are awesome now that it's available. Games *actually* designed for current VR are starting to gel. Orbus VR (a VRMMO) is amazing. VR with head tracking is awesome, but once you get touch in

  • Limited content, hard to use, single user, price (Score:3)

    by enjar ( 249223 ) on Friday September 08, 2017 @01:24PM (#55160349) Homepage
    Nothing I regularly watch/consume has a compelling VR port or option. There are multiple vendors, I don't know what's compatible with what, or what's exclusive to what. Reminds me of VHS/Beta and HD-DVD/Blu Ray. There are wires and cables and drivers and bits and parts. Some days it's a hassle to find the remote control when the kids hid it somewhere, let alone digging up all the bits of a VR rig. Also, I'm the only one who can enjoy it. Will we need to have family movie night sharing the VR goggles? Lastly, price -- looks like a VR rig is something like $500. I can buy a fairly decent television we can all watch TV/movies on, or play games on. If we wanted to have a family VR night I'd have to spend $2K on VR stuff, plus whatever they might need to plug into (console? PC?). I'm not interested in buying four playstations, xboxes or PCs.

    • Nothing I regularly watch/consume has a compelling VR port or option.

      That's because it has to target VR in the first place to be truly compelling. There are games/videos where this is the case but you haven't heard of them because you haven't looked.

      There are multiple vendors, I don't know what's compatible with what, or what's exclusive to what.

      It's actually pretty easy. Steam tells you which games are compatible with which platforms (usually it's both) and it's very easy to run Steam's VR software with a rift or vive.

      Also, I'm the only one who can enjoy it. Will we need to have family movie night sharing the VR goggles?

      What you see/hear is displayed on the TV as well for the benefit of others. It's like playing a game where only one person can use the controller at a tim

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by enjar ( 249223 )

        Partially devil's advocate below. I'm playing the role of "dude who likes TVs and console games with limited time because of family" ... or maybe "mass market guy". I'm not even going into the "retired people" or "people who can barely operate their smartphone" segments of the mass market. I'm doing this since the OP was specifically about "VR taking off". In my mind, that means it's a mainstream technology like a smartphone, TV, app, game or other thing you could reasonably expect the person next to you on

  • VR will never be useful due to human physiology. Motion sickness is what normal people experience after using VR for a period of time. Of course, not the special snowflakes here, they are immune. But normal people.

    • Put your grandma in front a big screen, 3d shooter. Bet she gets motion sick.

      You build tolerance, but the content has to be carefully written to not make you motion sick.

      • Sorry. You cannot code the fix between what the eyes see and the inner ear senses.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AK9oh7 ( 1867008 )
          I disagree, you can to some extent. Robo Recall being a great example of what's possible.

        • That doesn't matter if the simulated world matches your real world movement. I got sick as hell after five minutes in the fake walking of the Resident Evil game, but can easily stay for an hour of uninterrupted stand-up movement with the Vive really walking around the room.

        • You can leave up up and control rates on the other axis. Like most driving and helicopter sims.

          Assetto Corsa is pretty much 'puke free', except for the hill climb course.

          Who says they'll never have a safe way to fuck with your inner ears? Not today, but never is a long time.

        • Sorry. You cannot code the fix between what the eyes see and the inner ear senses.

          There is nothing to "fix" if you simply avoid:

          1. Change in speed
          2. Change in direction
          3. Change in camera orientation not coupled to real world HMD movement

          By far biggest vomit inducing mistake I see in VR software are non-teleport movement systems where direction of movement is continuously coupled with camera orientation.

          If you really need to violate any of the three rules above apply the change abruptly and offer options to reduce FOV or blank out the display for the duration of the violation so n00bs do

          • No.

            You can change speed and direction, so long as you moderate the rates and maintain a fixed cockpit or other reference within which the camera movement is the headset.

            Car sims are one of the better genres for VR. But even there, content is key, short ovals and rapid switchback courses are pukey.

            Same is true for flight sims. Fixed frame of ref, within which the only movement is the headset, then limited rates plus flying style.

            Space sims blow the whole coordinated turn illusion, for me they are ty

  • No it is not our short attention spans.

    VR has failed for _numerous_ reasons

    * It is hard to demo
    * induce vomiting nausea is NOT a selling point
    * Bulky glasses are Bulky
    * Niche market
    * Still an over-priced fad
    * Quality is all over the place

  • "While the power of VR is to be transported into an immersive experience, consumers will demand a lot out of something that makes them give up Twitter and Facebook, even for a few minutes."

    Then program a VR phone in my hand. Then I can run apps in my VR world and check on real-world twitter and facebook if I want.

    This might not be ideal for those watching VR porn. There will usually be other things in your VR hands during that experience.

  • I tried some cheap VR headset attached to my phone and it was a crap experience - I returned the headset to the store. I want something really immersive, like take me to a remote beach and make me feel like I'm there. Or something I can mind-trip to while I fall asleep. I don't know if it was the cheapness of the VR headset I bought or just that the technology lacks right now.

    • You can't judge a technology by trying out the worst instantiation of that technology.

  • I thought it was the low-rez pixelated lcd screens, and motion sickness due to low refresh.

    Valve's demo for VR is amazing, the portal repair is a great teaser. HD 360 full immersive movies is awesome to watch.

    But those pixels...

  • Huh, I never thought about this idea of smartphones competing with VR, but I guess it's one more to the list.

    - They are too expensive. We're talking about a market that's less than 1% of the world. VR cannot be and will not be popular or mainstream ever until it gets cheap enough for everyone to at least give it a go. Why do you think gaming became mainstream? Because of piracy, basically;

    - Bad initial marketing strategy. VR should've gone the way of multiplayer games first and foremost. How did multiplayer

  • As many have already mentioned, the problem with VR as currently delivered is that it has been ridiculously overhyped, and that it sucks to high heaven in too many aspects. Another one to add: wearing those visors and moving your hands in the air make you look like a complete dork. You'd better wear it in the privacy of your home, where no one can see what a dork you are. Let's wait twenty years or so, and we'll see.

    • As many have already mentioned, the problem with VR as currently delivered is that it has been ridiculously overhyped

      VR actually delivers something new and amazing which isn't something I can say for any of the pointless fads I've seen paraded around over the last few years.

      I feel sorry for people who haven't tried Google earth VR or piloted their own spaceship... many still seem to think VR is low res TV screens glued into a pair of glasses or that it's about seeing in "3D".

      that it sucks to high heaven in too many aspects.

      I don't give a fuck. It's still amazing. Do you think the first generation of peepz growing up with television were like... what the hell low resol

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by 0123456 ( 636235 )

        "Even if you just wear it at home and lock the door behind you (highly recommended) still leaves "dork marks" on your face for hours after using it."

        If it does, you're wearing it wrong.

  • It has nothing to do with the inability to get folks off their smartphones and has everything to do with the following:

    1) Hardware is expensive, bulky and requires fairly high end PC and / or specialized hardware just to run it
    2) Resolution within the headset is sub-par at best. Picture doesn't even come close to what a mediocre monitor can do.
    3) Developers are hesitant to go all in on VR because it's a niche platform with a limited audience atm and game development is damned expensive.
    4) Exclusivity b

  • Ahhh yes, lets do the tried and true approach of blaming something else. Can't possibly be the price of the tech, the limited resolution, the limited games/apps, the problems with headaches, eye strain or nausea. Must be because you are addicted to twitter or facebook.

  • Well, maybe now Oculus can have a Facebook icon that can nag you without the option to log out of Messenger.

    That did it for me and removed the FB app. The constant nagging that I had to install their messenger, one you cannot log-out from.

    On a more serious note: I am hesitant to get a HTC/Oculus because I had (have) a HMZ-T1 and it is very uncomfortable and never in focus.Also a Gear VR that is a bit more comfortable but always out of focus.

    One eye just always gets this rainbow pixel sprinkled out-of focus

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