Then don't make those games for VR.

This might be cliche, but VR is not just a new accessory for an existing platform. It's a completely new platform. It needs new content that fits it -- shoehorning existing content into it will generally suck. Wandering around Skyrim sounds cool but will not work. Sorry.

As an example I've tried a lot, sim games (car, plane) work really well with VR. If there clearly is a cockpit around you and a seat you are sitting in inside the virtual world, your brain is fine with you sitting in your comfy chair.

Of course, not everyone will enjoy sim games. However, I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that there are and will be more new games that fit VR well. These will probably include entirely new genres of content that are not compelling or interesting on a monitor but work well on VR. Conversely, some genres will never translate well into VR.

I think games where the player is static is a good place to start. In addition to simulators, I could see god games, rail shooters and puzzle games all working well in VR. Even a game with restrained movement like a slow-paced mech shooter or old-school first person RPG (think Ultima Underworld) could turn out great. Making the player aware of the dissonance between the virtual and physical worlds is the immersion-killing poison that VR game developers must avoid.

Finally, I'd like to make note of the many non-gaming applications of VR that could turn it into a compelling platform. The platform has tons of potential in fields such as art [1], manufacturing [2], education [3][4], health care [5] and the list goes on. VR can be used to enhance these applications but not if it's treated like a cheap gimmick.

If VR flounders it will be because developers failed to tap into the vast market of VR software waiting to be unlocked. The key is imagination.

[1] http://www.tiltbrush.com/

[2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/leoking/2014/05/03/ford-where-vi...

[3] http://www.roadtovr.com/it-time-we-started-talking-specifics...

[4] http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/17/museum-collections-enter-vr...

[5] http://ict.usc.edu/prototypes/pts

What are some really cool situations in which you can simply be present and be completely immersed? When I refocus my perspective this way, I think about being at a movie -- in a movie. Maybe I'm the gunner in the Millennium Falcon. Maybe I'm just a spectator on a nearby ship. Or maybe I'm sitting in a sports arena, as if really at the game, watching it and taking it in in a way I can't through my TV alone. Maybe I couldn't afford tickets to the Radiohead tour, but I can buy a virtual seat at any of the worldwide tour venues and see the concert with those crowds. That seems really fucking cool. I want to do that. I want to do that right now. And I don't need to run or jump around when I'm there. All I want to do is sit, and watch, and listen, and be present. And be immersed.

Whenever people think of VR, their thoughts immediately turn to gaming, and then they get disappointed when they realize that VR Skyrim or VR Grand Theft Auto (or what have you) isn't in the cards anytime soon. Instead of thinking about awesome scenarios where VR will fall short of the status quo, we should think of fun scenarios where VP will be a big step up from the status quo.

Does anyone have links to actual examples? The Rift dev kit has been available for a while now. Developers should have gotten past the 'VR makes too many people sick' phase and started looking at new ideas. What are these new ideas?

Personally I'm a little disappointed that most of the hype around VR has been explicitly focusing on the gaming aspect. The non-gaming applications of VR are much more exciting to me. I want a meditation room, where I can sit on a stormy mountain to think. I want to program in a virtual room with monitors on every surface, and pieces of code fixed in space, where I move to the code instead of the other way around. Maybe it'll work and maybe it won't - its impossible to know until the hardware gets good enough to try.

VR has been around since the 60's, and has not "unlocked" anything noteworthy.

Sure, this "round" of VR might be the best yet graphically, but it still hasn't solved any of the problems that prevented the original 1960's implementations from taking over in storm.

These being: No "AAA" support, too few games, too expensive of devices, motion sickness, and more!

It's almost like folks think this is the first time VR has come to market... "imagine all the possibilities!" - the same promises time after time after time again. What makes this iteration anything different?

Maybe some folks have high hopes due to the Facebook stewardship - I don't mean to burst anyone's bubble, but Facebook has been anything but a good steward of Oculus.

They have not used their size or bank accounts to convince "AAA" studios to embrace VR, nor have they subsidized Oculus purchases to lower cost-of-entry for consumers. About the only thing they have done is go against all of their initial promises to not "Facebook-ify" VR[1] and turn the thing into yet another extension of the Facebook Social machine.

> The platform has tons of potential in fields such as art [1], manufacturing [2], education [3][4], health care [5] and the list goes on

VR will ultimately do nothing for these fields. AR advances will ultimately be what these industries end up embracing. You lose far too much environmental awareness when both eyes are staring at a narrow-focus screen without peripheral visibility, etc. AR allows the user to work and behave like normal, only their vision is augmented with additional useful information. It's less intrusive and disruptive, and has very few of the issues that plague VR.

AR is already widely deployed and in mass use. Any HUD is a form of AR (this covers everything from airplanes to cars to robots to google glass, camera viewfinders, etc...).

[1] http://www.wired.com/2016/02/mark-zuckerberg-plays-zero-grav...

> it still hasn't solved any of the problems that prevented the original 1960's implementations from taking over in storm.

So much progress has been made with VR since then. A lot of problems have been solved.

Motion sickeness has been solved - when your motion 1:1 matches that of your virtual body there is no problem. Where there is a mismatch, there can be a problem (for about 30% of the population who are sensitive to this). So informed developers know how to create experiences that induce no sickness.

Regarding no AAA support / too few games - they are working on it. There will be over 50 games usable for the Vive at launch. There are some pretty big name games, like Elite Dangerous. Google, Valve and other big names are working on/have made stuff.

>What makes this iteration anything different?

Because it's actually at a point where it's usable now. Mobile phone popularity was one of the things that made this wave of VR possible as it drove forward the technology used.

>VR will ultimately do nothing for these fields.

There are VR applications that are currently for those fields mentioned, for example Tilt brush is generally received very well by artists and creative people.

I believe VR and AR will converge somewhat. VR has a headstart, and AR will adopt many of the technology, tools and techniques that VR uses. The Vive has a camera and can do limited AR, as can most mobile VR headsests.

I agree, that for a lot of applications - especially work-related then AR is better.

But when I game, I don't care about peripheral vision, I want to be in another world. Ultimately I want a headset that can switch between AR and VR modes.

I would nitpick this.

Regardless, I don't see anywhere near the level of give a shit for AR that there is for VR from the press and investors.

Supremely frustrating as an AR dev.

and in two years, nothing major has really changed. This makes me think that we're in for yet another VR "thrust and bust".

But AR, AR stands a chance. It is not hugely different to our existing uses of media technology - one more screen, in a different location, supplementing the existing experience. And it has good cross-over into VR for the remaining experiences that do work well in immersion mode. That might buy VR time to develop gradually for a few decades, like silent film. There are some things that are worth exploring with VR, but the tech really needs to be in mass adoption first.

There are several instances in last 150 years where a patent or some other restriction caused others to innovate around a restriction and the end result was far superior because of it.

I definitely see that happening with vr.

Remake of N64's Pokémon Snap

We're talking about big-budget "AAA" games, which drive console and pc sales alike. Excluding them, immediately destroys any notion that VR may become anything more than a niche product and go fully "mainstream".

> As an example I've tried a lot, sim games

I enjoy these games as well, but recognize their market appeal is very narrow. These games don't drive sales of consoles or PC's.

> I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that there are and will be more new games that fit VR well

Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen until VR becomes mainstream, which it probably will not for the reasons listed in the GP post. In order for a studio to take the enormous risk of developing something entirely new, they need as close to a guarantee as possible to get back at least their investment. With VR poised to be nothing more than a niche product, this becomes a huge risk.

Now, maybe Facebook and their deep pockets could subsidize development of these games (effectively pay "AAA" studios to natively support VR), but that doesn't appear to be happening... otherwise they would have done that before the flagship product launched, and "AAA" studios are not in a "release cycle" at the moment (which tends to be October-November for the really big "AAA" projects).

VR has been around a long, long time. I know, most folks say "but this time it's different", but in reality it's plagued today by the exact same issues it has been plagued with all along.

No "AAA" support, too few games, too expensive of devices, motion sickness, and more!

> AAA games are generally of a certain type now, but that is not a universal law which will remain true forever

Essentially, it is. These are the games that grab people's attention, have grabbed their attention, and will continue to grab their attention. Nobody is going to spend $600+ to play Bejeweled in VR... but they might to play CoD, Fallout, Battlefield, GTA, Skyrim, etc. All are "AAA" titles, and all could offer a new level of immersion with VR - but none support VR natively (and they had plenty of opportunity to do so before launch).

Well, they don't drive PC and console sales, perhaps in part due to the limitations of the existing platforms.

Driving and especially flying games suffer more from the limited point-of-view. I'm often switching to the 3rd-person view to get a better handle on how my car is placed on the track.

For combat flight sims, one of the UI staples for the last 20 years has been showing markers on the edge of the screen to indicate the current target. You spend a lot of the time in those games without your enemy in view, which, frankly, stinks. But that's the limitation of the current platforms based around a monitor / TV. There have been hacks to help with this, but they aren't that great IMHO.

VR could really help these types of games have a much broader appeal, because of the immersion.

I could also imagine a Window Manager where every window is placed in a large (huge) sphere that surrounds you and your chair (you are stationary in the middle). You could turn you head to see and interact with windows that are nearby or you could zoom out and rotate the whole sphere by using some shortcut or other device (maybe an ergonomic mouse with a ball on top of it [1], such that the sphere around you rotates in the same direction as the ball of the mouse). You could still map virtual desktops to a zone on the sphere (or perhaps just create virtual spheres). With some handy keyboard shortcuts I could imagine this to became quite awesome. Especially for programmers that use many windows at the same time.

1: http://www.ergodirect.com/images/Logitech/16728/large/Logite...

At present I have my own small business creating VR experiences, I've managed to do about Euro 80k in business in the last six months. I have three large clients and have probably personally ushered more that 2,000 people through the Oculus based experiences at trade shows. Perhaps 1 in 100 people "bug-out" of the experience within the first 30 seconds. One executive I work with won't put the Oculus on anymore to approve work, he instead gets colleagues to try it and gauges their opinion.

However, it's been a learning curve avoiding 100% nausea inducing experiences. Certain camera moves and experiments have made me so ill I had to sleep it off for a few hours. So in my opinion, it's not the display tech, it's up to the experience of the application developer to know what works - and what will make you seriously ill. It's a strange job actually, programming that will make you sick if you get it wrong. :-)

At present, the big problem as a developer with a business like my own is that we can't get headsets. There is no VAR program. I feel that Oculus & HTC doesn't take developers of business applications seriously, or at least, I don't have any contacts there.

I've been involved with VR since the VRML hype of the dot com boom and the technology has come so incredibly far - my sense it that it will continue to progress and become a new display technology that's pretty much on everyones desk.

Feel free to email me at [email protected] - I'm interested to talk to other people working on non games VR applications and may be able to help you with some contacts.

I downvoted you because of your snooty "ugh, I'm going to be downvoted just for posting my opinions" crap. Either post your comment and join the discussion or don't. Don't beg for upvotes.

For another point of view, I personally appreciate the heads up that the opinion being voiced is believed to be unpopular so I can be careful to ensure conclusions I draw are informed ones since there are a variety of easy to make fallacies associated with unintentional groupthink.

> Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

> Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or announce that you expect to get downvoted.

These 'rules' are not black-and-white orders handed down from on high. They are guidelines shared with us. We are free to disagree with these rules, to follow or ignore the rules, to enforce the rules or not, and to face the consequences of those decisions. We are thinking and reasoning beings associating freely.

The question shouldn't be, "Was a rule violated?" The question should be, "Does enforcing this rule in this instance help achieve our goal?" In this case, I believe I could make a compelling argument for both sides; but I am not convinced that thinking in absolutes will achieve our shared goal.

does the motion sickness of VR not wear off?

However, I get sick trying to play games with my google cardboard. Nasty, nasty feeling and it takes a good hour to feel normal again... Not a big fan of VR after a few sessions of sickness. I don't think I will play it more to "get over it" either.

But still I'll hold out, and still I'll try :)

Hopefully higher response and faster refresh rates with quicker and more accurate tracking will evidence the difference between Caraboard and near-term future VR.

fingers crossed

I haven't tried VR yet, but I was hoping my apparent immunity from motion sickness might carry over to a nice VR experience. Now I'm not so sure it will.

I find being on deck and actively engaged helps me a lot too. For this reason, I suspect that I wouldn't be particularly bothered by VR but I've never had an opportunity to check it out thoroughly. You get to just sitting and going to yourself "I will not get seasick" tends to lead to problems.

I know of many people who join a sailing club and sail all size boats in the evening/weekend races but never really go out into the sea - for some of them, the whole social scene at the sailing club afterwards is important, perhaps some of them because its actually pretty exciting to be sailing in close quarters in that way. Some might do it for nausea related reasons I don't know. I am more of a cruiser though, I like to spend some weeks on board poking around in little coves, etc.

In my experience of sea sickness, I may feel funny the first day and not want to eat or drink, then (especially if cold and bumpy) would be sick overnight or the next day - then I would be feeling strange for a day but mainly I think because I was low blood sugar and dehydrated but I would eat some, then the next day I would be ravenous but having bowel problems probably because the food I ate the day before was having difficulty digesting as my stomach had been cleansed. after that I would be fine. Also around the 4 day mark (I have done a 29 day passage) you become much more attuned to the movement of the boat, you become much more comfortable with everything swaying around, you have started to tidy away all the bits and pieces that keep falling on the floor or clanking in the lockers and the whole experience can turn very pleasant.

I think people work out their own method for dealing with sea sickness, but I think that often its just denial that its happening and trying to stave off the inevitable (lying on a bunk down below, clutching the bucket works well). If you work out a technique for vomiting (head well back, mouth well open) that doesn't leave any residue washing around in your sinuses then thats probably best. I always feel better immediately after getting something out, though I pity anybody else around as I can't silence the hideous choking sounds. In order to treat the secondary problems I have some high sugar high caffeine drink handy (flat coke) and some high sugar biscuits (gingers are great - supposedly ginger is good for nausea too) and keep getting it in. I don't care if it will come out again in 2 minutes because you absorb that stuff into your blood pretty quickly, and you can eat healthily once you get over it.

That said, it requires several weeks of repeatedly exposing yourself to awful motion sickness that may take hours to disappear.

I think you mean:

> VR First-Person-Shooters will flounder.

There are plenty of really amazing non-nausea-inducing applications of VR - and especially AR.

So what if traditional games don't map 1-to-1 with VR? It's an entirely new medium, and we've barely begun to work with it. Hell, even "traditional" non-VR games are still a very new medium.

I bought a joystick and Elite: Dangerous was the most incredible gaming experience I've ever had, if only for the sheer immersion.

Your sentiments echo detractors of revolutionary inventions such as automobiles (eg. there are no paved roads, it breaks down too often, there are no gas stations, ...) and even the iPhone (e.g. there are no apps, it's too slow, the keyboard has not tactile feedback, ...). What you have in common with them is that you treat temporary obstacles as permanent unsolvable problems while overlooking the long term potential.

As a counter argument for your omnidirectional treadmill point, this is much cheaper, takes up a lot less space, and has already been released: http://www.virtuix.com/

Virtual reality glasses are ready (and were ready several years ago, but quite heavy with two CRT monitors in the helmet), but many people are sensitive to motion sickness - so this will be less popular than 3D glasses we know from 3D TVs/cinema. Plus it is more expensive. Certain games lend themselves to VR like racing/space games, were you sit and can move your head. But many other traditional games feel strange, at least for new users and sensitive individuals.

Augmented reality (Google Glass, Hololens) is further away and not ready yet. It will take 3-5 more years until we will see the first consumer products. At the moment the graphic quality is low and the POV is far too small - the graphics overlay area is very small. Some games lend to that technique, but many others won't be that great if you always see your own walls as background.

More promising is glasses-less 3D (aka autostereoscopy), known from the Nintendo 3DS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereoscopy , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_3DS#Hardware . It's friction free, no additional equipment is required, it can be used by more than one person.

On both devices, any time more than one person is looking at the screen, the display has to be set to 2D mode or it will be blurry for at least one person.

Nintendo also puts a disclaimer in place that states 3D mode should not be used by individuals under 7 years of age. From what I've read, this is just out of an abundance of caution and there's no real evidence that the 3DS's autostereoscopy can harm developing eyes.

Similar disclaimer probably are on VR headsets and 3D shutter glasses.Such 3D technology with a fixed focus is probably a bit more problematic and sensitive persons get motion sickness.

DK1? "Oh, that's not REAL VR, real VR is DK2."

DK2? "Oh, that's not REAL VR, real VR is Crescent Bay."

Crescent Bay? "Oh, that's not REAL VR, real VR is the Rift consumer release."

Now we actually have the consumer release. And what's the message? "Oh, that's not REAL VR, real VR includes controls like Oculus Touch." And so the can gets kicked down the road another few months.

The continual response to underwhelmed users with "oh, you just wait till the next version!" made the whole thing start to feel less like a revolution-in-waiting and more like a faith-based enterprise. True Believers can help a company through the hard times, but they do not a mass market make.

The Oculus CV1 by not including hand controllers, and secondarily by having a limited tracking range, while amazing visually, is a very stunted experience when it comes to really being able to deliver good made for VR content. The Oculus Touch controllers are amazing, and can't arrive fast enough.

I'm not saying it's a great correlation, but some of the excitement regarding VR reminds me of other fancy, tech-oriented entertainment innovations that sounded interesting, but didn't quite pan out. Specifically the one where the movie audience was supposed to be able to have an effect on the story[1].

>"In another year, you'll see the pistol grip plus a seat with gyroscope motion control," Mr. Bejan said. "Two years after that, it will be virtual reality, with the goggles and gloves." (1993)

The purpose of mentioning such a whiff is as a reference point for my personal belief that people tend to like their entertainment simple and relatively easy to access. Great advancements in tech and media - successful ones/profitable/etc - seem to have been more about delivering traditional content in an 'easier' method of convenience. Netflix didn't revolutionize the business of making films, but rather the distribution. People are funny when it comes to art, no doubt.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/13/movies/when-the-film-audie...

> we still feel that color is hard on the eyes for so long a picture

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9807E2DA153EE432A257...

I love THX theater sound. SDDS. All of them. However, those tools can be very much abused by certain practitioners, and that's not the tech's fault. Basically I think that improvements are welcomed but gimmicks never last. Is VR a new gimmick in the grand context of entertainment? We're about to find out it seems.

It's both – if the film had been in black and white, the comment would not have been made, nor if the Technicolor portion of the film were shorter (e.g. in The Wizard of Oz, which the reviewer had seen some months prior).

One thing this discussion does bring up though is that if VR can only be worn comfortably for 20-40 minutes, will it have a viable mainstream future?

On a side note, this makes me think VR could possibly be used therapeutically to "cure" motion sickness. Something like the 3D gaming tutorials in early 3D games.

Also we might be closer to solving the eye vs. inner ear discrepancy completely rather sooner than later. Samsung is working on a headset that stimulates your vestibular system to make you sense motion & acceleration: http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/14/11220836/samsung-etrim-4d-...

-The virtual world needs to match the physical world, if the haptic feedback isn't there, it is extremely discomforting and the closer you get in visuals, the worse the sickness will be.

-Headsets take too much set up, anything that requires you to deal with that many cords is going to eventually collect dust. I loved playing games in 3d using nvidias shutter eye glasses, but even that was too much set up to continue using for 6 months or longer.

All this is true, but I think there is still a huge opportunity for VR in the near future. To get it right, people need carefully crafted experiences where they can match the virtual world with the physical world using haptic feedback. You could use headsets or not, you can also just use stereoscopic monitors or projectors in a carefully crafted experience. I can envision an arcade that let's you play a 5v5 robot fighting MOBA, with the monitors not right up on your eye, but surrounding your cockpit. You can have visual acuity matching the real world (retina displays). You can match every physical stimulus with real world stimulus.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JesseSchell/20150626/247113/M...

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/254432/Jesse_Schells_six_...

I don't see it as a good monitor replacement technology. In limited applications, such as for AutoCAD and 3D design, I can see it as a good option. It would be very useful for 3D visualization or model examination. But for normal, every day, web browsing / computer use, I don't see VR to be very viable. Goggles with high res screen and AR are going to happen, and are going to be very useful. I can see the day where your cellphone will also be your laptop, and you just connect goggles to it to do some work. But that's not VR, that's just evolution of cinema goggles.

I do agree though that VR does make a lot of people sick, including people who have been flying FPV drones with goggles for a while. There is something about completely filling your field of view that just makes people sick if it doesn't track just perfect, and matches to your vestibular system. There are efforts to hack the vestibular system to make you fee what you are seeing, but it's a little scary, and I think many people would be creeped out by electrodes and such connected to their heads.

I also had been following VR closely. Studying what happened to photography cinema or radio we can predict VR as the new media having a great success over time. Today VR lacks media designed for VR.

Right now, VR is opening to thousands or tens of thousands of people, probably millions, including creative, smart developers and artists. Before, patents made VR limited to a handful of people.

Artist will adapt to VR limitations like they did to cinema. Someone had to invent travelings, or cuts, and blendings. At first, cinema was just theater.

Do you know that if you record video without motion stabilization for some time people experience nausea and disconfort?

That is the reason virtually every film uses steady cams or rails or tripods with panning on each axis.

That you can't replace reality totally with VR does not mean that VR is not useful with their limitations.

We had been using VR in our company for CAD for a long time now, and for this application is extremely useful, better than anything else.

No doubt they will discover great new applications for VR even within their limitations. Artist will learn how to minimize their drawbacks just like they do in radio, cinema, or TV.

Much more of a problem is physical comfort of the headset itself. After the novelty wears off, few but the most dedicated want to stay in VR for extended periods of time, or even bother with putting the headset on anymore. Headsets are just too bulky and uncomfortable. Even regular glasses are too much of a hassle for a lot of people. VR headsets have the uncomfort of regular glasses multiplied by a hundred.

I don't think VR will fully take off until you can experience VR with something as comfortable and unobtrusive as contact lenses. Until then, it will remain a novelty or used for purposes where it really does not have much competition, like tele-surgery. There are some other niches where people will likely use a headset, like to play an occasional game or for videoconferencing, but then they'll take off the headset and go back to monitors for more mundane tasks that don't benefit from immersion, like word processing, web surfing, etc. Even for movies, current headsets are a bit too much, when you could just as easily watch a movie unencumbered by the bulk.

That's not to say VR isn't impressive. It is. I was blown away by it when I first experienced it, despite being spoiled and knowing what to expect by watching videos and reading about it. There's nothing like the real thing, though. But eventually all that wears off, and then you have to deal with the day-to-day choice of whether to put on the headset again.. and that's where I think for now headsets are too uncomfortable for regular, casual use.

I have limited, hands on, VR experience. However, last week I went to the California Academy of Sciences, and they had this show called "Impact" going on.

Due to the way their spherical projector in the planetarium is setup, it takes most of your field of view. That particular show had a camera that moved smoothly, but seldom in sudden movements. Instead, it had would accelerate to a given speed, and that gives you the impression you are moving.

I though it was a little bit disconcerting for the first couple of minutes, then I adjusted just fine. My wife was sick for half an hour afterwards. Her son was so-so during the show, perfectly fine afterwards. The feel is exactly as you described, you feel that you should be moving, but aren't.

That was an eye opener for me. I didn't think that a stationary display would ever make me feel anything (I used to be a flight sim fan, and nowadays I play a lot of Elite: Dangerous).

I haven't reached any conclusions about VR tech yet, other than it is probably not suited for my wife.

We also had a flight simulator; but with that, the movements of your body mostly matched the movement of the plane (you couldn't feel forward/backward acceleration, i.e., acceleration on an axis perpendicular to your chest, as otherwise, you'd be actually moving around in the building). This never made anyone sick. The planetarium, however, regularly made people feel ill, and occasionally I'm told, actually lost their lunch, whereas nobody ever lost their lunch in the flight sim AFAIK.

From what I've seen, players pick it up fairly naturally and it doesn't seem to impede gameplay. The major drawback would be that games need to be designed specifically with this in mind.

Why do people insist that it can only be one OR the other? The technology is all converging to the one point. In fact I'd argue it's mostly the same technology. It's irrelevant as to whether it's AR or VR applications that break the technology into the mainstream. Once it's there, both AR and VR will have broken through.

I think it's sheer pessimism to suggest that they failed before you've tried their solution.

Regarding sickness: Doesn't stop mountaineers. Doesn't stop sailors. Humans adapt remarkably.

I'm a mountaineer. Feeling ill at altitude isn't the same as motion sickness. People can die of HAPE - it's not something to brush off and say, "humans can adapt". The great majority don't at high altitude. That's why you see tourists on Everest with oxygen masks and dexamethasone in tow. It's not to be a little more comfortable, it's to be a little less likely to be dead.

I also get motion sickness for weeks on end. Trying VR isn't exactly appealing to me, but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to die from it.

I grew up on a sailboat - other than feeling weird for the first coupla hours after sailing, it wasn't a big deal.

People are complicated, I guess.

What I think will happen instead is that the content created for the Rift (and others) will be shaped by what the medium does well. Games like driving or flying simulators play perfect well within the limitations of most HMD devices, and actually shine in comparison to the current alternative (monitors). To me this is just one of many examples of things that work better in the Rift than anywhere else.

But other people realized the same. Since then, indie and amateur developers (as well as some professional ones) started properly exploring the medium, instead of just trying to re-purpose content. There's many new subgenres better fit to VR that are emerging and, I believe, will get more visibility. The vast majority of those are "seating" experiences, but still ones that can easily blow people away, and continue to amaze me to this day. Which is just as well - getting a new blockbuster FPSs every month was starting to get boring.

VR won't be for everything or everyone but it'll be great for what it does well.

I also think there are many games where room-scale tracking is entirely sufficient with no need for any artificial locomotion. Strategy/RTS games are a great example. Just walk around the map. When you need to move further than you can, just move the map itself. Easy. You could even make the map into a hologram, so that rather than walking on it you're walking in it, with it floating at waist height. Now you don't even need to bend over to interact with it.

Experiences designed around the limitations of room scale VR with tracked controllers, though, address that issue pretty effectively. I've spent hours playing Fantastic Contraption on the Vive Pre, and it's an amazing and immersive experience.

VR also makes 2D content much more cinematic in nature, despite the (for the moment noticeable) reduced resolution. And the resolution will likely be the first thing to improve in the next generation of headsets (using foveated rendering to reduce the onus on graphics cards)

I would add that while first-person shooters universally made me sick to my stomach within about 5 minutes, flight sims generally never did. My guess is that being seated in a virtual cockpit and flying around seems a lot less wrong to my vestibular system.

Unfortunately, the flight/space sim market is a rather small one within gaming as a whole. Though it does tend to be one full of people generally more willing to buy dedicated sim hardware than most.

I haven't tried any other VR devices yet (skipped the DK2), but I look forward to demoing the CV1 at some point. Since Linux support has been killed, it will probably be a while, whenever I get around to building the separate free-standing Windows machine I've been intending to get for the last year or so (with dual-boot, I find I boot up Windows once a year, or twice if MS is lucky that year; I just have too much stuff running on my primary workstation to let it go powered off for very long).

You must have never tried the HTC Vive, I never had any of these problems with it. Limited amount of space as well, as long as your game doesn't move you everywhere around.

Evolution works a bit more slowly than that.

The visual cortex in humans is capable of very significant adaptations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1-TaR5ToKw

Links obviously VERY NSFW. [1] http://naughtyamericavr.com/ [2] https://virtualrealporn.com/

Does this include watching a sports match from a perfect spot within the stadium?

Anyway, I sure hope they will increase the resolution so that I can have a virtual monitor on a virtual beach in my office.

I have a heard time seeing how that wouldn't be flat out amazing. I'm not a huge fan of the Rift, which sounds like your experience is based on. But SteamVR looks really good to me.

Other than SteamVR, I see mobile VR being where it really hits. I think roomscale + mobile VR will work out together. The Rift should and will die, I'd hope for all the reasons you mentioned.

The racing games actually drive console and pc sales, at the very least GT does. At the same time, it is a normal game with the controller, and a fantastic experience with a good wheel.

The best racing game/sim IMO, called iRacing fully supports all wheels, and it has a profitable service.

Some people like you may not know about it, not being 'mainstream', but that is not really needed for the product to be successful and to have a rabid fanbase of active subscribers.

So, if steering wheels are a product with good margins, and also, making games for them is profitable which it is, then the same will apply for VR.

Welcome to the era of the long tail.

Maybe not for home users but I think for military training, rescue training other such applications those could be viable. I don't see anything wrong with this technology being professional/luxury first then becoming more affordable to regular users.

We had a DK (or maybe DK2, don't remember) as well and yeah we played with it but I ended up not liking it. The resolution was too low, I could see individual pixels and it was like looking through a screen-door. We played with it for a while, ran some demos, everyone had fun. Then put it on a shelf and hadn't touched it since.

VR/AR as monitor replacement is actually the application I'm most excited about personally. I'd love to see a Google Glass/Hololens type device that functions as a wireless Miracast/WiGig monitor and nothing else, which could hopefully bring the product into the realms of affordability.

In terms of focus, I don't think it will be much different compared to using stationary physical monitors since those usually stay at the same focal distance as well. The Glass/Hololens form factor only occupies a tiny part of your field of vision, allowing you to freely look elsewhere as you see fit (and AFAIK the Hololens, at least, has the ability to simulate different focal distances).

I'm picturing this as more of a supplement to physical monitors as opposed to a complete replacement in a typical workspace setting. What really excites me are the possible applications of something like this in mobile (an always-on, wireless second screen/HUD for your phone that takes voice commands or some other new control mechanism, for instance).

I have never experienced ANY nausea and I'll do flying sessions several hours long (though I do take the googles off repeatedly inside that window.)

Given my experience with sea faring ships, I doubt that I am one of those who will not get nausea, so why is my use case not a problem? Is the nausea just due to an uncanny valley of which my setup falls short?

I expect that's the main reason you don't get nausea.

I didn't really get this point. So what if the treadmill is stationary relative to the Earth ? And what do you mean by "bodily acceleration" ?

I honestly do think the "omni-directional" treadmills would solve all the problems you bring up here. And it doesn't even have to be that big.

If this were the case, you wouldn't be able to exercise on a treadmill since no energy would be spent (Energy = Force * distance), where distance would be 0 in your argument.

I think the difference here is that the treadmill moves you, vs you moving yourself. Even still, there are machines that can move using the friction between your feet and the treadmill surface - and they are starting to make their way into some of the local 24-hour gyms.

I'm not arguing with your point that "VR will flounder", but I just want to keep everything honest. And honestly, your physics doesn't check out.

You absolutely do experience acceleration when you're on the treadmill, how do you think you go from 0 mph to 5 mph ?

With respect to the ground of the earth, then there is no acceleration horizontally. With respect to the surface of the treadmill (which is what you must now consider), then yes. Just think of exercise. I challenge you to run 100 miles on the treadmill and not get tired.

Your inner ear does not experience any acceleration in your example, which is what is required to avoid sickness. What's happening relative to the surface of the treadmill doesn't matter, the acceleration of your inner ear does, and that's not changing.

The treadmill is just like the ground, for all intents and purposes.

The most common VR treadmill-ish device I'm aware of is the Virtuix Omni: http://www.virtuix.com/, where your head is clearly not accelerating.

What are you picturing when you claim your head (and hence inner ear) is accelerating on a treadmill?

I know that the treadmill moves on its own, but what if I push the surface of the treadmill to make me move forward. Wouldn't I not know the difference between a sidewalk and the treadmill ?

Velocity is a change in distance, and to me it seems there must be a change in distance - since there is energy being spent (we're "traveling" as we run, while putting in the force of our feet against the treadmill - each step is an "acceleration" forward).

Yes that's what it is. But you aren't changing velocity when you start running on a treadmill. When you are on a treadmill your velocity is the same as a person standing still on the ground next to you. We may talk about you 'running at 5 mph', but this is just a casual way of talking unless you're doing a physics problem. In reality, your legs are moving in a similar way as if you were running at 5 mph, but your velocity, relative to when you started, is zero the whole time.

> it seems there must be a change in distance - since there is energy being spent

If you stand still and flap your arms you're spending energy aren't you? But you're not going anywhere. Next imagine running on the spot. Still spending energy but not going anywhere. Next imagine that on a treadmill. Still spending energy, still not going anywhere.

> we're "traveling" as we run, while putting in the force of our feet against the treadmill

Here's another way to think about it from scratch that may help.

You are running forward, going at 5 mph. The treadmill underneath you is going backward, at 5 mph. Your actual velocity is therefore 0, because the two cancel out.

When you run on the ground you are running forward at 5 mph, the ground is staying still, so the result is actually 5 mph.

People casually say that your velocity on a treadmill is 5 mph, but really they mean that you are moving your legs fast enough that you would be going 5 mph, if the treadmill was't working in the opposite direction against you. If you were doing a physics exam you would be more careful with your terminology and you would say that the velocity of someone on a treadmill is 0.

> each step is an "acceleration" forward

No, each step forward on a treadmill is compensation for the treadmill going backward. All of the progress forward that step gives you is used up balancing out that the treadmill is going backwards, and there is no acceleration.

I guess what I don't really understand is how I can tell the difference when I'm blindfolded.

If I am undergoing the same force with my feet on the treadmill than I do on the sidewalk, how do I really tell the difference ?

I know since the treadmill is moving on its own, I have to "walk" to keep up with it, but what if I could move the treadmill backwards as I walk ? (The force of my steps make the treadmill move, rather than the rotor machine?)

I understand I don't move anywhere with respect to the ground, but if I undergo the same motion that I do when I'm walking, how is it that I am able to tell the difference ?

If I can literally make the treadmill move under me just by walking, how is it different from walking on the sidewalk ?

Sorry - I'm just really baffled, even though I believe everyone. Could someone just ELI5 me ?

Do you understand that when you accelerate in a car the dice moves toward the back of the car, so that the string leans backwards?

This happens because the car moves forward, but the dice wants to stay where it is. So it kind of gets dragged. This is a fundamental property of the universe we live in, called the first law of motion, and I can't explain that further as nobody knows why the universe is like the but it is.

Do you understand that this doesn't happen if you hold a fluffy nice on a string and run on a treadmill?

This happens because the dice wants to stay where it is, and it is staying where it is, so nothing happens. Whatever you legs are doing beneath the fluffy dice is irrelevant.

Your ear effectively has a tiny fluffy dice on string inside it, and tiny hairs that feel whether or not it is leaning backwards. You don't need to see or feel anything else to sense this, and it doesn't matter what your legs are doing. That's why the treadmill and your eyes don't matter. Your legs are running on it but the little dice in your ear knows what is really happening.

That is how you know that you are really accelerating.

And, going back to the original point, is the whole problem. There is no way to poke this fluffy dice to fake the sensation of acceleration, as it is sealed inside your head.

The fluffy dice in your head thing is obviously not quite true, but it really isn't that far from the truth.

You can do an experiment to understand this better (or at least prove it to yourself). Get a glass of water and half fill it. Get in a car and get a friend to accelerate somewhere legal and safe. The water will slosh to the back of the glass. This is like the dice. Now get a treadmill and turn it up high. Put the glass of water on the skateboard. Lower the skateboard on to the treadmill while it's still running. The 'acceleration' here will be huge as the skateboard will go from 0 to whatever mph instantly (it's not really acceleration, that's the whole point). The water will not slosh (if you put the skateboard down carefully).

How does our inner ear chooses to uses the ground vs a point on the treadmill as it's starting point? I keeping wanting to think that I'm in motion with respect to a point on the treadmill.

What if your inner ear were located on your feet ? Would you then not be able to tell the difference between treadmill and sidewalk ? Your feet are actually traveling in the same motion on the treadmill as it would the sidewalk ?

In reality the earth is moving through the solar system, so your starting reference point is in motion already.

If you get into a vehicle and start moving at speed relative to the earth, then that vehicle becomes your new reference point when the speed becomes stable.

When you step onto a treadmill your speed relative to the earth, your previous reference point, doesn't change, so the reference point doesn't change. If someone were to drag the treadmill behind a vehicle with you surfing on it, then it would become your reference point.

It's confusing to talk about your inner ear being in your feet because they're in a running motion, so they're being shaken up all the time. They'll experience constant acceleration and deceleration relative to the earth as your foot goes back and forward in a running motion. If you had little dice on strings in your feet you wouldn't be able to tell what was going on with them as the dice would be flapping all over the place.

Note, I think treadmills can work for VR, I'm just here for the physics.

Also, for my third edit, upon re-reading all the comments in this chain, it really seems like we're all agreeing. Just talking about different effects.

Once you jumped off, you switched your frame of reference to the ground of the earth.

Keep your reference on the surface of the treadmill, and you'll see you've experienced negative acceleration.

This is why you always get an "extra boost" when you come off the escalator.

However, the moment you want to stop or change speed this no longer works - in the real world your body needs to accelerate, while on the treadmill the treadmill accelerates and your body does not. This is because the ground remains an inertial reference frame during the acceleration, while the treadmill surface does not.

And that's also without the sense of touch, smell, balance, temperature etc. So it's only slightly better than watching a film in 3D and way more expensive.

No treadmills necessary.

But right now it's too heavy, too low-res, and far too expensive to appeal to non-gamers.

I'm not sure that even if it cost $50 for all the hardware, fully complete, you'd get a stampede of new users - yet.

Most people need a reason to use it, and games are not the reason.

To second your arguments, from a pure business perspective, VR would be already growing its user base and showing pretty nice retention rate if it was any close to be something people really want.

Or could modify our body to disable motion sickness?

Has no sickness problems.

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