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Comment by muglug | Hacker News Reader

I know that VR is compelling, and FB's VR headsets succeed in providing some level of immersion, but I don't think people will go from remote-working-with-Zoom to remote-working-with-headset, because it's a trade the most aren't willing to make.

If I'm on a Zoom call with 8 other people and the conversation shifts to something that doesn't concern me, I can bring up a code editor and continue hacking away at something without advertising that to my colleagues. But if I started in VR, I'm basically stuck there.

The whole thing still feels like "we built this great piece of technology but we're struggling to find its killer app". It feels very Segway-ish.

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This whole thing screams "What problem does this solve?"

It doesn't solve the lack of real face-to-face communication from remote work, I'd argue it's way worse because now you're face-to-face with a bad simulation of a face.

Are displays particularly bad for zoom meetings? Is having something hanging off your face, hurting your neck better? Probably not.

Tech has moved way past actually solving problems and this is the best screaming example.

> It doesn't solve the lack of real face-to-face communication from remote work, I'd argue it's way worse because now you're face-to-face with a bad simulation of a face.

For now, it's a bad simulation. But, this needs to be thought of on a 5-10 year scale. Might still be useless, but can't judge it on a 1 year scale.

> can’t judge it on a 1 year scale.

Facebook wants us to, though.

This isn’t a lab demo that they’re showing us — it’s meant to be a product you can use today.

Good point, that's where I think they are screwing up. Making this their centre of attention.

Why not? Previous attempts at VR have not kept up their momentum for that long

This is the most money & investment that has ever been put into VR by a single company by far.

VRChat seems to be holding up well.

VR was not invented in 2021. Hell, I remember trying it out in the 90s.

If one day the next-gen avatars are so realistic, would you say the same? The whole point of VR/AR/MR is to push the boundaries of immersive virtual worlds that eventually reach or even exceed the realism of the physical world. 20 years ago the 3D first-person shooter games were laughable and you can say the same "what's the point of building a 3D first-person game with this janky graphics and slowass computer? We should stick to 2D." Now look at what we have today.

> say the same "what's the point of building a 3D first-person game with this janky graphics and slowass computer? We should stick to 2D."

But it was even fun and entertaining then. Quest is not.

VR is super fun for early adopters, just like early games. A ton more people play games now than they did 20 years ago.

What Quest is pitching (meetings), is not fun. I’ve tried it.

VR games are fun, Quest is not.

Not to nitpick, but Doom was launched 29 years ago. And it was pretty good, not janky.

And by a strange twist of fate, the same John Carmack of Doom fame is working on Quest-related stuff today. I'm inclined to pooh-pooh Meta's VR efforts, but John Carmack is not a fool.

How do you exceed the realism of the physical world? Isn't it perfect realism?

Quake was an immediate huge success and lay the groundwork for almost all future 3d FPS games.

VR is not in the early days.

It's not a bad simulation, though. It gives your monkey brain the visceral feeling that you're in the same room with these other people

The problem isn't that I don't feel like I'm in the same room with the other people, it's that I can't look around the room and understand what the vibe is, or make eye contact with someone else to communicate something.

You can though? At least I've had the experience of making eye contact.

As for vibe, the tech is getting better for recognizing facial expressions, so that's just a matter of time. Spatial sound makes "local conversations" possible, where people sitting near each other can talk while other people in the room talk, and you get the effect of a buzz of conversation, which can't happen on Zoom. And ofc avatars face wherever their users would like, so you can tell when everyone is focused on the speaker vs doing their own thing.

> Are displays particularly bad for zoom meetings?

The bandwidth of the conversation is a fraction of that IRL, gestures, mannerisms and directional audio allow multiple levels of communication and meetings are literally over twice as fast as a zoom call where only one person can communicate at once and every interaction has a perceptible delay.

Will VR solve this? Remains to be seen, but Zoom calls are bottom of the barrel in terms of communication and I'd literally rather wait a day and have the conversation IRL these days if that's an option.

> This whole thing screams "What problem does this solve?"

I know! Let's put it on the Blockchain!

/me ducks

> hurting your neck better?

Modern headsets are pretty light and the weight is balanced. They aren't going to hurt your neck. This tells me you haven't actually used one.

We can complain that they are still bulky, that putting on and removing is not as seamless as it should be, that they can get hot and sweaty, that resolution is still not there, and many other things.

True. This does feel like it's caught somewhere between the future (electric cars) and a solution looking for a problem (self-driving cars).

Until an VR/AR/MR solution builds on productivity as a tool I think its market adoption will remain niche. I fear inevitably it will incorporate user addiction and behavior modification to promote data extraction. It’s at that point any usefulness it had as a tool evaporates.

You wouldn’t have to be stuck there if coding in VR was feasible.

…but actually, the fact that people can and do just check out of online meetings while pretending to still be present is kind of a drawback of online meeting Vs in-person meetings. Lack of focus is a killer for productivity.

And if people are doing that, they should be allowed to leave the meeting anyway.

Honestly, you’ve never hacked during a real life meeting ? I used to bring my laptop into the board room all the time.

Jokes on you, I check out in meetings in-person as well. Just hacking away on my laptop in a corner without a care in the world.

It very much depends on your meeting culture. I suppose in the ideal world, everyone should be intently paying attention because the meeting was relevant and focused. In my world, meetings go on for hours, everyone invites the kitchen sink, and long egotistical monologues are the norm. Trapping me in VR for all that would be unpleasant to say the least.

I agree, which is why I think we should normalize leaving meetings.

Ironically, VR might help with this, because you can leave your VR avatar listening for you :)

yeah, but if you leave your avatar, it just goes limp and is obvious you're not there. or, it just stands there doing that NPC awkward flailing of the arms/sighing/whatever when not doing something specific which is just as obvious.

it would be my preference where you could just make it super obvious the meeting is boring AF and do a magician smoke burst when you exit the meeting. make your avatar hold up a sign that says "Why Am I Here?". maybe have your avatar start throwing money at the presenter so they can buy a clue? like, if we're going to use VR and live in the metaverse, let's do things there that we can't do IRL.

Maybe Meta's monetization strategy is that for $1/minute, you can put your avatar on autopilot so it moves as if you were there, while you're in the kitchen tempering chocolate.

For $2/minute, it responds to questions addressed to it with GPL3 generated speech.

(Zuck_make_it_rain.gif)

I kind of want to do something similar but without meta. If it weren't for morals/ethics/whatever about sending company data to 3rd parties, I would love to have GPL3 respond to a subset of my emails for a few weeks just to see if anyone would notice.

You don't need an avatar for that. Just leave (phisically) your laptop while but stay connected (camera off).

Could be worth trying to change that culture, as it is a waste of time that applies whether meetings are virtual or in person.

Sure, the moment I am promoted to CEO of this Fortune 500, I will send along all staff a pamphlet on effective meetings.

Will you get fired if you share that pamphlet today?

No, but by releasing that vital information, they would lose their leverage and potentially miss out on that promotion. It's like releasing a hostage before the ransom has been paid.

I bet Language models will soon be a key feature of zoom. The Language model will serve as an auto-pilot for pointless meetings where it uses your previous history to predict when to say "nice" or "<insert rant on RAII here>", a paging system will be in place if the content of the meeting reaches a high enough perplexity that your frontal cortex is required.

While I’m unsure if this is satire, I am all in! A pre-sentient language model would do a great job attending meetings on my behalf. It could also probably do a better job chatting about sports than I can and could send me a daily summary each evening.

This reminded me of the episode of Silicon Valley where Gilfoye and Dinesh build chat bots to take their place for all the boring work chats. Then, the bots end up chatting with each other causing a feedback loop that overloads the building's power.

I find the idea of two bots having a conversation on Zoom while both people are doing actual work hilarious.

Silicon Valley, the show, is surprisingly prescient. It is too real sometimes even.

Mike Judge is an underrated genius: Beavis & Butt-head, King of the hill, Office Space, Idiocracy, Silicon Valley, etc.

There's nothing stopping me from checking out in real world meetings too. But in a remote meeting, when I check out, I can at least be productive.

Lack of necessity of a meeting is the real killer of productivity.

> Lack of focus is a killer for productivity.

Killer new feature: virtual monitors are anchored to your head. You cannot look away!

Plus eye-tracking can detect when you're not looking at the right thing, and deliver electric shocks to your temples.

Actually, the fact that people can check out of online meetings has improved productivity vs in-person meetings.

I work in a company where I'm allowed to leave meetings that aren't interesting to me.

The problem is with "status update" or "brainstorming" meetings where I'm expected to contribute but only fleetingly, or intermittently. I know I'll be needed for about 2 minutes at some point, but it's not clear when.

A problem with online meetings? Any meeting I've been to with more than about 4 participants had most attendants present but checked out.

Maybe the point is that participants should just be able to leave but that seldom happens imo for various reasons.

> Lack of focus is a killer for productivity.

You're implying that the "lack of focus" is in the people attending the meeting not paying attention. The real place focus is lacking is in the things the meeting, which is not engaging to its attendees, is taking away from. Good meetings, whether remote or in person, have everyone engaged because the content is immediately relevant and pressing to all attendees. Personally I've found that short, small, highly focused meeting are easier to have than in person.

In an online environment it's not too bad if you invite more people than really need to be at the meeting precisely because if you need to be there "just in case", you can keep the tab open while you work on other stuff.

The equivalent of this in-person is just more painful, not more productive. It's the meeting where you consciously struggle to pay attention to something that doesn't really concern you because it would be rude to just walk out.

The solution is to fix the fake culture where people pretend it’s more rude to walk out than mentally check out.

> while pretending to still be present is kind of a drawback of online meeting Vs in-person meetings. Lack of focus is a killer for productivity.

Have you been in meetings before online? People were on their phones and laptops all of the time then too.

If strapping horse blinders to your employees’ heads during all meetings is the solution to keep their attention, you have bigger cultural issues at hand.

I was on the laptop doing stuff in plenty of in person meetings as well.

On the other hand sometimes people need to be in the meeting but for the next 15 min the conversation might be about something unrelated to them; I’m happy they can multitask during that time without distrActing the rest of the team. That would not be possible in VR

> If I'm on a Zoom call with 8 other people and the conversation shifts to something that doesn't concern me, I can bring up a code editor and continue hacking away at something without advertising that to my colleagues.

Isn’t this one of the reasons face to face meetings are more effective? Your colleagues in a physical meeting can see and react to expressions of others, which makes the conversation more likely to stay on track.

If VR meetings don’t solve the “disconnected feeling” problem of talking-video-heads meetings then it’s just a worse form of talking -video-heads meetings. Just being an avatar in 3D doesn’t significantly improve anything, something else must also fundamentally improve. It has to feel like “being there” to improve the quality of meetings. I’m not saying I think VR will solve that problem, but who knows.

Meetings that need to be done are more effective face to face.

But something like 80-90% of meetings don't qualify, and in those cases zoom is a godsend.

The tech is still too young. I imagine future headsets will be able to stream a face capture and map it onto the VR avatar in real time. Eye tracking is already becoming mainstream, so face tracking is the next logical step.

Google's Project Starline is really impressive and seems to be progressing. If that could be made to fit on a headset, using perspective distortion like on the new iPhones, then you could presumably capture expressions. Or just by using an external camera, and overlaying the eye tracking feed to remove the headset. It doesn't sound so far fetched.

VR is going to be a niche product even for gaming. It's fun and definitely a novel experience, but onerous for extensive use. It's way easier to sit in a comfortable chair and play on a traditional machine--particularly for any lengthy game (it's also cheaper and has more to offer).

The myth of the "killer app" just assumes progress is inevitable regardless of practical utility. No one needs "immersion" for a zoom call. The awkward, and not completely comfortable, VR sets are acceptable when you're doing something fun but--and I can't stress this enough--completely demoralizing when you need to put it on to "immerse" yourself in the banal confines of a business meeting.

Investors pretty uniformly don't have high hopes for what seems to be a desperate Hail Mary for a company that's no longer capable of organic growth. Meta just doesn't have enough time to cultivate a Meta-verse with enough adopters to stall its decline. I'm sure there will be benefits to this research but the level of optimism we're getting from Meta is more hopeful than reasonable.

I agree, although I'm really curious about what the post-Zoomer generation does with VR.

Our media and how we interact with it has only ever trended in one direction: higher bandwidth.

The generation that grew up with oral tradition loved the written word.

The generation that grew up with the written word loved the printing press.

The generation that grew up with the printing press loved photos.

The generation that grew up with photos, loved videos.

What will the generation that grew up with video love? It certainly seems limiting if they settle for merely a higher resolution, FPS, or better sound quality.

This is simultaneously a criticism and a big selling point

Not for employees. In fact, I can't see a single reason why workers will want VR environments for remote work.

They can easily provide a feature where the employee could flip a switch and temporarily (semi?) hide herself, signaling that she is currently occupied with something else. Yes, in a Zoom setting, she doesn't have to broadcast that. But that's just cheating.

> They can easily provide a feature where the employee could flip a switch and temporarily (semi?) hide herself, signaling that she is currently occupied with something else.

That's like saying "you could just start doing something else" during an in-person meeting. We all decided that's not ok, so why would we be granted an exception in a VR setting ?

"We all decided that's not ok". And we also all decided it's ok to start doing something else in a Zoom meeting, because nobody will notice anyway?

Yes the whole point of VR is to command your entire attention the same way as if you were physically in a room. The pro-VR crowd (basically limited to anyone getting paid to work on it for Meta) thinks this will replicate the benefits of in-person work. Everyone else sees it as replicating the drawbacks of in-person work.

> I'm basically stuck there

Right. So the first extension to this platform will be avatar automation - to make it look like your are "engaged" while you in fact are doing something else.

Yes, the VR equivalent of mouse nudging that maintains a green 'active' dot in corporate collaborative environments.

You know you can set your status to stay active without mouse nudging, right?

I wish that were the case

Put it on a lazy large dog or cow, if available, as they don’t have issues with VR apparently.

This sounds very over-engineered. We should just go back to Skype conference calls.

Install Oculus Virtual Desktop - gives you access to your computer, on compatible keyboards is able to bring it virtually onto your desktop in front of you, and mute your mic.

Surprise: you can already do this in Meta’s Workrooms. Opening a private interactive window to your computer while in a VR meeting works as expected, although it’s just as obvious as when you do it in a video call…

That's a meetings problem, not FB's problem. Well tbh , work from home can be lonely and this virtual meeting does make the meeting slighty more exciting, and considering that it has very good pass-through, it would work OK in teams as well

https://twitter.com/ImmersedVR/status/1579925595441762305

So your main issue with VR meetings is you can't sit there and ignore the meeting?

You can say "Hey, it sounds like i'm no longer needed here, do you mind if I leave?".

Answer: "the meeting is mandatory, so you can't leave"

dont ask, leave and see if anyone cares, that's what I do

Just say you have to go to another meeting

Bonus points, you can schedule a bunch of long meetings on your calendar that are actually just time to work

That’s a good way to get left out of the occasional actual important meeting.

Wait but we have found a killer app for it, 3D videogames, isn't it? It's just not a market big enough for Meta since they want everyone to be using it so they are looking for bigger markets? But it seems to me there is a very clear and pocket-deep sector there.

3rd-person video games can be fun — I really enjoyed playing Lucky's tale back in the day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLantPfNRIY, but first-person games don't map half as well.

The HL 1/2 and Doom 1/2 ports severely disagree.

They haven’t really started trying. Half Life Alyx is still on the top of everyone’s list, but mac/quest2 users can’t play it.

Most quest 2 games feel like phone games. Super shallow, and not amazing.

Meta should bid for world of Warcraft. MMORPGs are the most successful form of metaverse to date.

I don't know if the smoldering wreckage of Activision-Blizzard could make the next WoW..

I highly doubt that the average mac can play half life alyx at acceptable performance levels. Aren't most of them laptops with integrated gpu?

If you’re a designer you used to get the Intel with Radeon cards.

I thought the M1 and M2 has reasonable graphics capabilities. https://www.techradar.com/news/apples-m1-chip-can-apparently....

That's the really funny thing about Meta's angle. VR is pretty exciting for games, there's a lot of potential there. A metaverse of games is actually an incredibly cool concept, with lots of possible ways to conceptualize that.

But they're not at all interested in that! They're betting big on some dubious niche productivity / social uses for VR. Even if you enjoy VR meetings, how is Meta going to make billions from that?

Segways sold a total of ~140,000 units across nearly 20 years of production[0]. The original Quest sold more than twice that in the first 6 months of it's release[1], and Quest 2 sales have well exceeded 10 million units. While I agree that VR is still a nebulous proposition from a software perspective, the hardware is apparently ready and the demand is there.

[0] https://www.fastcompany.com/90517971/exclusive-segway-the-mo...

[1] https://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/superdata-xr-update

FWIW the original Segway cost 10x more than the Quest, but the important figure (from an ecosystem perspective) in both cases is their actual usage numbers. Most Quest headsets get used a bunch in the first month, but their owners lose interest pretty quickly.

Sure. It's the same situation of a solution in search of a problem as video in phone calls before that capability existed. "In the future, we'll be able to see people instead of just talk to them on the phone!"

It turns out that that's not always/often so desirable.

Yeah that's a really great comparison! Video calls are great for transatlantic calls with family and friends I haven't seen in ages, and a good VR version of that might be even better, but I likely wouldn't use it more than a few times a month.

For me video calls add negative value even in this situation. I have a hard time accommodating the compromise in fidelity and latency and resent the miracle. I'd rather use textual mediums and wait (even a long time) to get the full experience in person. Current technology for videoconferencing reduces my relationship with people rather than grows it. Pretty sure I'm a minority here.

I think in-person meetings are compelling, but it's a trade that most aren't willing to make.

Snark aside, VR meetings have similar benefits and similar drawbacks to in-person meetings. Besides, this is covering for the uselessness of many meetings. If you are not contributing to the point that you are actually working on something else, you shouldn't have been there (or the meeting doesn't have an agenda, or invited too many people, etc).

No tech can fix dysfunctional companies.

> But if I started in VR, I'm basically stuck there.

That's not entirely true. You can still pull up screens and hack away in Workrooms. However, I don't think they let you hide your screens from others yet. I presume that feature will soon come.

One problem seems to be that either everyone on your call has VR headsets, or you can't use VR at all. A huge outlay in hardware, or nothing. Is there a way for people to join a VR meeting without hardware and still have a decent experience?

Yeah. In workrooms non-VR people can still join in. They appear as a video feed in the environment, and they see a rendering of the meeting from that perspective. It's still quite rich for everyone, eg you can tell when VR people are listening to you because they instinctively all turn their heads to look at your video.

It's not that much different of a problem compared to real life hybrid calls between conference rooms and other conference rooms / remote workers.

This is exactly why in person meetings are awful, and VR is trying to recreate those conditions.

For some if my super early morning meetings, I’m in bed with headphones on listening. Don’t want this to go away :)

Absolutely. Perhaps someone can chime in, but how does one take notes in VR.

I know it’s terrifically old school, but I routinely jot down notes and reminders for myself in meetings. Do I take the googles off? Are do I use the VR pen and VR paper? I guess I could use the keyboard?

The main problem with zoom and others is that echo cancellation prevents people from speaking simultaneously, while VR essentially forces people to all wear a headset and turn off the echo cancellation and allow people to speak simultaneously.

If jumping in and out of VR is the desired business case, apps would just let you switch to audio only mode, when you pull off the headset or alt-tab or if you disable body language sharing.

Why are we expecting these tools to be built as painful as possible when there's plenty of work arounds?

Segway! Yes! Great analogy!!!

Even blockchain has more purpose than the "Metaverse". At least Blockchain serves as a speculative asset for gambling addicts.

Unless you use gpt-3 and a text-to-voice synthesizer to automate your attendance of unimportant meetings in VR.

Does going to the office feel Segway-ish? This is the same problem as an in person meeting.

Why would being in VR make you stuck? You can still miltitask

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