A VR Developer's Thoughts On The Current Mess Of APIs & Hardware

[starshipeleven]

And as far as following up on your conversation with coder after the point, I think plenty of situations have been shown to be ideal for VR already.

I'd just like to point out that in there I was mostly discussing his ideas, not ruling out any other innovative use for VR than the simple stuff I mentioned. For example the focus on RTS games came from his posts. I'm aware that there are indeed many legit uses for VR.

Interactive education is a big one. While they may seem the same in theory there's a big mental difference between seeing a model that you can click on to interact with on a computer screen, and a model in VR that you can interact with with your hands. Likewise, while it might not offer the same experience as a real practice unit, using hand tracking for interactive training allows you to train many people at scale without practice dummies. This is a big area of focus for the Vivedu program in China right now.

And as Coder mentioned and you kind of disregarded CAD *is* a big application for it. While yeah, you can rotate your model on a 2D plane and get an idea of depth and features, your brain can still miss depth cues and make mistakes with what it's seeing, so it can be hard to catch small issues or defects. While I don't know anyone who actually designs from inside VR, I know a number of people who have headsets just to spot check models and do a final inspection before committing them for prototyping.

Thanks for sharing your experience and info on this.

Can I just ask what is the field of these people that use VR headsets to do a final inspection?
Are they engineers (designing mechanical components I guess) or artists doing 3D models for a game or movie?

You don't have to value it for it to have already shown a great deal of market development surrounding it.

Oh I never doubted this, I'm sure VR is here to stay, unlike 3D TVs. Just that overall I see it more as something that opens whole new genres, markets and processes than something that massively revolutionizes the current ones.

Like touch screen interfaces and mobile devices, PCs didn't all shrink and become stylus-controlled touchscreens (much to the dismay of Microsoft), but a completely different class of products with its own pros and cons that lives a life of its own with its own ecosystem of applications, and overlaps only partially with what a PC can do. And both coexist and will keep coexisting for a long while still as neither can really replace the other on all tasks.

[coder]

Maybe don't get upset if people honestly judge your ideas based on their experience.

Well, let's see. I made a simple comment about what seemed worthwhile to me, to which you replied with an incorrect claim that I confused two things I hadn't and contradicting an objective statement of fact with your own views and opinions. When I tried to clarify my original statement and point out your overly reductive assertions, you seemed to mistake that for an invitation to tear my ideas to shreds. Now, be honest: how did you expect that would be received? This is not the way to win friends, or keep the ones you have.

I pointed out technical flaws

Certainly not.

with logical arguments AND direct hand-on experience in the types of games and interfaces you're discussing.

So, this makes you a foremost expert in usability, interaction, and UI design for AR/VR? Didn't think so. One user's experience is just that.

The technical flaw is "if you have a single point-of-view/user there isn't that much difference between a 2D screen and a 3D/holographic screen or even VR unless you actually are interacting with a complex (simulated or real) environment".

You can call it what you like, but most people that I know would regard that as a subjective value judgement. What I meant by "technical flaws" were fundamental issues precluding a proposal from being implemented as specified.

Here's some vocabulary, for you: subjective opinion

you're just reacting poorly to feedback and honest discussion of your ideas.

And one more:

From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) :
unsolicited
adj 1: not asked for; "unasked advice"; "unsolicited junk mail"
[syn: unasked, unsolicited]

[coder]

I'm not trying to continue this exchange, but I'll explain a couple of points.

So far I only figured out that you are saying "look, military can use holographic displays for some specific applications, THEREFORE creating holograms with VR on all fields will be totally great and worthwile".

The error is yours for connecting these unrelated points. I pointed out the military use of holographic tables for mission planning, then imagined RTS games as tabletop games in VR. If you've never played tabletop war games with real miniatures, buildings, and landscape features, it's your loss.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_wargaming

That said, I'm not reopening the topic for discussion.

My original point about other applications of VR was related only by way of response to the previous poster's comment.

I would really like you to at least try to discuss that and tell me why you think it would be better instead of just repeating that military had some toy projects some time ago and then when I post my own opinion doing these petty personal attacks saying that I'm an evil dictator banning VR.

Perhaps it's because I view your blithe dismissal of vast swaths of fields in which people are and have employed VR as being somewhat akin to a person pronouncing that the earth is flat, or maybe only 5000 years old, and demanding that I convince them otherwise.

I'm not about to defend the various ways in which people are using VR, outside your narrow list of approved applications. All I can hope to do is reflect how ridiculous I think you sound, and hope you either moderate your earlier statements or at least can see what an absolutist and reductive position you've taken. And if you don't moderate your position, then I can ascertain that much more quickly the futility in continuing that line of the discourse.

For the record, I don't think you're evil.

[Sniperfox47]

I'd just like to point out that in there I was mostly discussing his ideas, not ruling out any other innovative use for VR than the simple stuff I mentioned. For example the focus on RTS games came from his posts. I'm aware that there are indeed many legit uses for VR.

Okay my apologies then. The way I had interpreted your wording came off as rather closed to the subject.

Thanks for sharing your experience and info on this.

Can I just ask what is the field of these people that use VR headsets to do a final inspection?
Are they engineers (designing mechanical components I guess) or artists doing 3D models for a game or movie?

My experience has mostly been on the engineering side. In terms of designing out small and detailed mechanical parts for printing, particularly in cases where they're designing in the supports themselves to avoid the slicer messing things up or introducing defects if it's own.

I'd hazard a guess that there are probably some individuals who use it on the entertainment/design side too but I don't have any experience on that end of the scale.

Oh I never doubted this, I'm sure VR is here to stay, unlike 3D TVs. Just that overall I see it more as something that opens whole new genres, markets and processes than something that massively revolutionizes the current ones.

Like touch screen interfaces and mobile devices, PCs didn't all shrink and become stylus-controlled touchscreens (much to the dismay of Microsoft), but a completely different class of products with its own pros and cons that lives a life of its own with its own ecosystem of applications, and overlaps only partially with what a PC can do. And both coexist and will keep coexisting for a long while still as neither can really replace the other on all tasks.

Ah okay. You'll get no disagreement from me on that front. I don't see VR subsuming other product catagories, because at it's best it could be those other catagories with the added discomfort of a weight strapped to your head.

I totally agree that VR's benefits are in new and emerging fields where it can particularly shine. Even an FPS game in VR loses a lot of the "ease of entry" that makes the genre so compelling for a mass audience, and that was a big target for VR early on.