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Comment by mozumder | Hacker News Reader

Probably indicates that VR really is deader than dead. The only people this appeals to are the tech-bros.

I really don't understand the Silicon Valley tech-bros that think VR has any hope. How do they not see the obvious user-experience problems, like motion sickness and limited visibility & resolution, as well as its product liability issues, like always falling down along with running into walls and breaking things? If you think VR is a solution, then we know you're a bad product designer.

The first generation of VR died out because of product-liability issues. Did those fundamental issues get solved? No.

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I don't understand people who use the demeaning and sexist term "tech bros" unironically.

Did you know that there are women who like VR? Who code for VR? Who work to create it? Who are on the boards making decisions about its future?

Does your "techbro" bigotry leave room for the women of tech?

It makes me think you're a Gawker commenter who accidentally found their way to a community where you don't belong. I just don't get how this kind of condescending sexism finds its way here.

So, this person's male-specific slurs are sexist against women because it fails to insult them as well?

Hey, we deserve to be insulted just as much as men are. Equality.

It's worth pointing out that "Tech bro" is fairly derogatory toward men too.

I think there are two distinct things you can disagree with in the parent comment. The first is whether the use of the phrase "tech bros" is defensible; the second is whether all the people who are supporting VR are those who can be called (rightly or wrongly) "tech bros". I think you're conflating those.

I've always interpreted the term as being gendered, but not gender-essentialist; there are plenty of women who are "tech bros", because it's referring to a culture and set of ideals derived from gendered spaces like fraternities, but not those spaces themselves; plenty of "tech bros" were not members of a college fraternity, for instance. It is true that the vast majority of tech bros are men, for many reasons relating to society and gender. It's certainly possible that the term could get inaccurate, in which case I at least would favor a different one, but it works for now.

Under that definition, "there exist women who do behavior X which you attribute to tech bros" does not imply "attributing behavior X to tech bros is incorrect".

That leaves the question about whether "tech bros", such as they are, are the only people rooting for VR. I think that's fairly unlikely to be true, and yes, your points seem do rebut that claim. (That said, it's probably worth mentioning somewhere here that while women exist in VR, the industry seems to be biased towards an assumption of men, from various apps placing virtual objects at heights that are difficult for most biological women to reach, to the entire concept being based on a model of 3D visual processing that is more common in biological men: https://qz.com/192874/is-the-oculus-rift-designed-to-be-sexi... Pointing out the obvious truth that VR seems to be male-dominated is not excluding women, and your question about bigotry seems to be attacking the messenger.)

But even if it's misplaced to associate the entire VR industry with "tech bros", I don't think that invalidates the concept of "tech bros" itself.

Finally, I think it's inappropriate to imply that a good-faith participant doesn't belong here.

You're bending over backwards to try to rationalize a sexist term, and digging yourself deeper by then stereotyping fraternities.

Some VR games are really fun and engaging in a way that I never experienced on a screen. As a suggested curriculum towards an informed opinion, get an HTC Vive and play Job Simulator for 1 hour, Arizona Sunshine for 4 hours, and Eagle Flight for 1 hour.

I also enjoy the bow and arrow castle defending game in the demos.

I don't think it matters what headset you get, the best titles are amazing.

Yeah, same reason knife makers went bankrupt. Too many people cutting themselves with their products.

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You might be right that it might not catch on but I wouldn't call it dead yet.

User-experience is one of the major topics VR research is working on right now (not including research into just "better headsets", which one could argue also is part of making the experience better), so it seems pretty clear everybody is aware of the fact that there are problems to solve.

I think you majorly overstate the liability issues. If that were a big thing it would have exploded by now, but all and all I feel like the original Wii got more bad press over this than VR has. The things you mention are not a big problem in general.

The bigger issue for VR is the question of "What for?". It's still expensive, requires room if you want to do more than sit on a chair, and it's mostly a fancy way of playing games (with some niche examples of other things). That might kill VR, at least when sold to customers.

> User-experience is one of the major topics VR research is working on right now (not including research into just "better headsets", which one could argue also is part of making the experience better), so it seems pretty clear everybody is aware of the fact that there are problems to solve.

But it's a fundamental design problem - the fact that you're handicapping a person's environmental awareness. You could try to recreate the environment in the headset, but then it becomes more AR and less VR. (AR being more viable than VR any day..)

> The bigger issue for VR is the question of "What for?". It's still expensive, requires room if you want to do more than sit on a chair, and it's mostly a fancy way of playing games (with some niche examples of other things). That might kill VR, at least when sold to customers.

The reverse is even more compelling. You could take any VR application and create a standard non-VR version, and it would be more usable. In the end, a non-VR computer experience is so much better than VR. VR is completely unessential.

> it's mostly a fancy way of playing games

You're saying that dismissively, but video gaming is a trillion-dollar industry.

Yes, VR is expensive right now. Every new technology is. If you think issues like motion sickness and running into walls are insurmountable, then I think you haven't been paying attention to the state of the art--there's been a lot of progress made on both of those. Also they're more or less mutually exclusive; motion sickness is mainly an issue with seated VR, not room-scale.

you clearly are not well informed about VR if you think it is dead in the water. Have you even bothered to look at the Playstation VR? It has sold more units than Occulus and Vive combined, and has been out for way way way less time.

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