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Comment by taeric | Hacker News Reader

Show me you've never used non tactile responses for interfaces, without telling me you've never used them.

I love the VR experience of Gran Turismo for driving. It is truly immersive in ways that is hard to communicate and makes me glad I have the VR. Even with that, the game is not nearly as fun without a force feedback steering wheel. Not even close. To the point that a moderate screen with the steering wheel is a better experience than the VR without.

To the point that the idea that I will do any elaborate hand/arm gestures to interact with something I can't feel, just doesn't seem like something that will fly.

Do I like that it has the ability to work without a controller? I mean, sure? But I also have no problem using controllers for gaming, and I don't see that going away anytime soon for a lot of games.

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In their demos they clearly show the pairing up of controllers to play games.

Right, I didn't mean this to mean that it won't work. I meant it more that the gestures are almost certainly going to get very limited use. Much like gestures for your phone. Neat, and can be rehearsed for good demos.

So, the idea that you will have a mobile workspace that can go with you where ever you want it is unlikely to actually work. Is it easier than taking a monitor? I mean, sure. Probably not as easy as taking a laptop, though. Especially with how long the battery lasts. (And the laptop almost certainly fits more easily in a bag.)

I think Apple is making a statement regarding control of Vision in that _there is no one great solution_ for fine control using a peripheral device, and any attempt to do so could go outdated or obsolete with a different peripheral device. So why try to build one at all?

Many VR companies/devices have come up with their own takes on controllers, only to have them updated/replaced within subsequent models.

Apple is making the right choice by focusing heavily on non-peripheral control.

But that also cuts to the "gestures", they will not work well and will get outdated. Rapidly.

Not with VR controllers. They didn't even show a single VR game. It seems unlikely that a company would make a VR game for the headset if you can't even play it without VR controllers. For smartphones and tablets games also default to the imprecise touch controls, which are a poor solution.

Apple is wise to leave controllers up to the accessory market to develop and evolve. Let those companies create the ecosystem for this singular device that might have limited opportunity to create accessories outside of head straps and battery packs.

Third party controllers for the headset likely wouldn't sell for the same reason smartphone game controllers don't sell.

Thankfully it does pair with a Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad for the scenarios where you want to use it to do “work”.

This makes me realize that the gestures it is being demonstrated with are going to be hilarious if they are misidentified. I'm /assuming/ that the thing will not pick up gestures between you and someone else. Such that if I pick up a paper with a similar hand shape as their "pinch and move things" gesture, it will realize it wasn't the same.

Or will this be akin to how siri does a shit job understanding anything that is not mechanical in speech? Will be absolutely hilarious if it has a hard time recognizing non-light skinned hands for the gestures. Really hope they don't make that mistake.

Hopefully the troubles with Siri are understood enough in Apple that they won’t make that mistake, because Siri is truly awful on my HomePods for thinking I’m talking to Siri when I’m not.

Thankfully many of the people in the demo videos were people of colour, so I’m fairly confident Apple has gotten that bit right and hopefully their gesture detecting cameras have IR or dot-pattern emitters to work in the dark as well.

I would cite the growing unease in Siri as evidence that they almost certainly don't have this done well.

IR dot-patterns will be its own problem. And I hope you never want to curl up on that couch to watch a movie with a blanket. :D

That said, I am certainly not trying to say they definitely got it wrong. I share high hopes that this will work. Not enough that I will be an early adopter, though.

> IR dot-patterns will be its own problem. And I hope you never want to curl up on that couch to watch a movie with a blanket. :D

Speaking of which, notice how nobody who was relying on finger gestures (rather than a keyboard) was using menus, or doing anything mouse-like. Just scrolling and clicking.

You point to things by looking at it, which is very precise according to people who have tried it, like MKBHD. Clicking and dragging is done by finger pinching. So it works quite similar to a touchscreen or a mouse.

That mechanic is available in some games on the PS5. Works decently well, but nowhere near as well as the controller pointing does.

Yes apparently it is surprisingly precise. There might be an uncanny valley when the system is perhaps a little too good at predicting what your next move is. Are the goggles monitoring your facial expressions, looking not just for eye movement but also wrinkled noses, scrunched-up foreheads, etc. ? Will it be able to function as (for example) a lie detector ?

I refer of course to https://twitter.com/sterlingcrispin/status/16657924229144535...

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