Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Also: many techs in the article have a much longer time-horizon than indicated.

TCP/IP / packet-switched networks date from the early 1960s. Apple's first smart-tablet, the Newton, famously flopped. I remember seeing one at work in the early 1990s and saying "why would anyone want anything like that?" Given its capabilities, or more accurately, limitations, that was accurate.

IoT two decades ago was powering the first generation of pop-up ads as X10 home-automation systems. Blockchain is rebranded Merkel trees, dating to 1979.

Drones, as with most other aircraft-based technology, is a matter of lightweighting systems sufficiently, at a reasonable cost, to enable them to remain aloft. Even now, the popular copter-drones have only a few minutes of operating time. Further lightweighting, fixed-wing, fuel-based, or other changes are likely still required.

Self-driving cars are a problem of complex nature in which further enhancements to basic automation provide ever-increasing domains of application.

AR/VR suffers from human-machine interfaces. Simulator sickness (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulator_sickness) affects professional pilots -- a device that makes a substantial portion of the population physically (and projectilely) ill will have limited uptake.

Neil Postman's Seven Questions remain highly relevant:

1. What is the problem that this new technology solves?

2. Whose problem is it?

3. What new problems do we create by solving this problem?

4. Which people and institutions will be most impacted by a technological solution?

5. What changes in language occur as the result of technological change?

6. Which shifts in economic and political power might result when this technology is adopted?

7. What alternative (and unintended) uses might be made of this technology?

I strongly disagree that simulator sickness is the major adoption barrier for VR. It's a problem, sure but most games and applications do not have the same motion disconnect as a flight simulator would and developers have got pretty good at making high to moderate comfort games, even with heavy locomotion.

The biggest adoption problem is quality VR games (Beat saber is really the only true stand out hit), followed by comfort and form factor of the hardware, followed by marketing a perception of VR. I don't think VR will ever be a smartphone or PC sized market but assuming current growth is maintained it will be a small game console sized market (10-20 million units) in a few years. This could be seen as a failure or a future that never arrived because VR won't be truly mainstream, but for all major players except Facebook (Sony, Valve) I think it will be viewed as a success.

AR hardware should be separated out as well because I think the challenges there are also applications but also technical difficulty. The mythical always on high resolution glasses or contact form factor display that could be a smartphone replacement is a lot longer away than advertised I think. If and onc technical and design challenges are reasonably solved AR hardware could take off.

I am surprised by the amount of Hackernews users who keep bringing up simulator sickness as something that is still relevant to VR. Anyone who’s tried any headset since the first consumer Oculus and Vive should realise that it’s essentially a solved problem: the headsets have low enough latency and good enough tracking, and you simply have to avoid smooth locomotion (moving the player’s viewpoint without him moving his head).

Many HN users are "stuck" in ~2014 era VR (cardboard, DK2, maybe Vive) and haven't really paid attention to VR because it became a small game industry market, as opposed to another market capable of capturing value from existing industries with low effort. To be fair many years in the future I do think VR has the potential to disrupt some of the travel market and take over most of the video conferencing market.

I really don't care for FPS games. Back in the days of Doom on 800x600 monitors, I would walk away distinctly queasy after 5-10 minutes. I'm fine in actual autos, ships, and aircraft.

The other problem with VR is that it's entirely isolating from the immediate environment (AR slightly less so). Even headphones allow visual monitoring, and for the record, I don't much care for headphones or earbuds either -- having sound in your ears is very different from it being in the space (e.g., room speakers).

The best selling VR game isn't FPS it's a rhythm game. Sure there are plenty of FPS games, but there are also RPGs, adventure games, strategy, etc. Your response highlights my point, games and perception are two of the biggest issues. I agree that VR won't be for everyone (like gaming or anything else) but there is a lack of consumer understanding about what is available that needs to be addressed.

The point being that FPS, as opposed to strategy (board, map, etc.) games, where the movement of the player is reflected in the display, make me sick.

The game variant doesn't matter. It's the portrayal of motion which does.

Older-school (1980s vintage) video games, with more linear movement, weren't noticeable in this regard, though I didn't play those much.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com