VR, especially home VR via HMD’s has had a resurgance in the past 5-10 years, from being used for gaming with popular games like Beat Saber and Half Life: Alyx to being able to actually do normal computer work in immersive VR rooms placed anywhere you can imagine to using AR where virtual things are overlaid on reality via a display.
I tend to work with education, so my guesses on where this is going will focus a lot on that, but I absolutely see my workplace getting VR in the next 5 years, and in the next 25 I entirely expect them to actually perform full lessons and classes within them, perhaps even remotely (instead of using Zoom or so) as an optional thing. My work is a fairly small place but they tend to like the newer tech so we do like to experiment with such things.
How is VR for anyone who has an HMD at home or work? What do you use it for? Which do you have and how is it? What HMD do you suggest and why?
My wife tried out VR with a friend’s set recently and she is now absolutely dead set on getting a set, she’s thinking the Valve Index as we both have room for full roomscale and it’s high enough quality to help minimize nausea issues for her. She tried the Oculus Quest but the screendoor effect on it was making her very nauseous in a few games she tried, plus it kept losing tracking of the controllers when they went out of view of the HMD. Plus we use linux at home on all our computers and the Valve Index seems to have great support there (excepting some bluetooth firmware update issues that are easy enough to work around until its properly fixed), unlike the Oculus’s.
Honestly I’ve been wanting a set for a long time, not necessarily to play games in it (most kinds of games I play wouldn’t really translate well to VR), but I’d love to just kind of work in it. This is even more enticing for me nowadays since working from home more often and it would be very nice to split my work into one world from the home world to make it easier to get in the working mindset.
And of course, I’m very curious to programming for it, especially more standard programs that can work in it in interesting ways, full 3D desktops, like via xrdesktop. Is anyone else programming for VR? Not necessarily just for games but doing anything else that is more work or general-use related?
Perhaps we need a ‘hardware’ programming category, lol. ^.^
I really like the idea of VR beyond gaming, though I think, for now at least, it will be restricted to specialist areas - why? Because the headsets are so heavy/impractical. But…
The future is very much VR - probably via some retina or brain implant that essentially turns your own eyes in the viewfinder. It’s both very scary and exciting! Imagine what will be possible 100, 1000 years from now (so long as we don’t annihilate ourselves before then!!)
I don’t really find them heavy, worn them for multiple hours without issue and could have easily gone longer. What’s impractical as well? Do you have a better idea for a technology that works (short of medical procedures, lol ^.^ ).
Eh, no need by that point, we should be able to scan brains in enough accuracy by then and have at least the start of a Matrioshka Brain built by then to simulate them on, then we could just Live in VR as simulations, no body needed, could run much faster than real-time as well. ^.^
Big and heavy headsets – I tried one once (don’t remember the brand) and half my head got sweaty and the set started feeling heavy on it and that was for like 15 minutes of gaming. >_<
Still needs a cable and can’t function on its own – although that might not be a problem if a good enough running treadmill + a VR set is invented (akin to the ones in “Ready Player One” movie).
Graphics quality is usually abysmal. I recognize this is being [very slowly] improved with time but IMO the technology is stuck; until NVIDIA or AMD put out their 5nm-based GPUs I don’t see VR being able to do more in the current small[-ish] form factor.
The interface is really bad, most of the time. Just seeing two [occasionally] disappearing hands floating in front of you is… unnatural. I pray people don’t adapt to that because gods help them when they unplug the set!
I do absolutely agree that VR has more value as a work / education platform compared to games though!
To this day, 18 years later, I still get reminded of this scene from “Matrix: Reloaded” when I hear “VR is for work and education”:
How long ago? That’s generally not much of an issue nowadays I hear.
Huh?! There are multiple standalone VR sets, the most popular is the Oculus Quest, has a couple hours of battery life, basically running android. It’s pretty good though not terribly high quality screen; fantastic beginners VR though, plus fairly cheap.
Look up the most popular VR game currently, Half-Life: Alyx, lol. ^.^
The quality is all up to the game, it’s not a VR thing.
Actually I don’t think it is, not this Matrix scene at least. They were all jacked in and physically lying down in comfy chair/sofa things and this white room is a virtual workplace.
As for the rest, I believe I tried a casual random VR game in the local mall about 2.5y ago (think shortly after 2018’s beginning) and wasn’t impressed. I am aware technology moves ahead – I just don’t find the offering particularly appeasing currently. Even if things are improving the whole thing is too uncomfortable and downright creepy for me. If I can’t just look out the window and see some greenery and hear some water moving (river or sea) then I’ll absolutely get mega-depressed in a week…
(I see VR mostly as a medical app right now – f.ex. some people demonstrated that with a few VR sessions patients with agoraphobia can be cured.)
