Don't get me wrong... VR is and can be a lot of fun, but I just don't see it being this next big thing that people seem to hope it will be. On the other hand, I think when someone solves AR, I suspect that may very well produce a seismic change across society with widespread adoption.

I think a big factor in lackluster adoption of VR is... space. VR games require space, which is expensive, and people seem to have less of it in recent years. On top of that, usable space disappears very quickly once you start a family, which cuts out a good chunk of the target audience.

This only applies to american football, where you have on average 12 minutes of actual gameplay over 3.5 hour match.

Soccer or basketball are much more dynamic, and therefore can be entertaining on their own, no social context required.

Cricket is like baseball, where it tends to be on in the background and you pay attention at each delivery/pitch. Cricket can last 5 days though...

As an outsider in the US I was struck by the crazy high percentage of time dedicated to advertisements - even to the extent of intentional breaks for that purpose.

As a former american football player I find that watching the game is not as exciting as playing it. From the outside, and if you don't know about all the micromanagement and stuff going on, american football looks rather "static".

Other sports are much more "obviously dynamic" and are therefore probably better suited to be watched through TV or VR.

[0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/there-were-just-1206-minut...

A lot of the time throughout the game is wasted intentionally by game procedure, e.g. refs are setting up for the next play.

Of course there are varied reasons individuals have to watch, but the overwhelming majority of it's market success can be ascribed to tribal desire to see your team win.

Caveats: I don't watch American football on TV, but I watched it some when I was a teenager. I mostly remember how to play, and while I don't think it'd be safe to do it at my age, I do like to play catch with an American football whenever I get the chance. I wouldn't mind watching a game now, but only live and very close to the field.

The thing is there's a lot of strategy, and each play is a meticulously, often spontaneously, planned action by the Offense (team with the ball) which the Defense does its best to disrupt.

That disruption is almost always at least partially successful, forcing improvisation on both sides. In particular the quarterback (guy who throws the ball) often has to rethink the plan in real time as people chase after him -- he really really doesn't want to be tackled, for his own protection as well as for the game -- and somehow make this work with people who are running around at some distance from him. When it works it can be awe-inspiring and utterly unexpected.

These things -- the strategy, the plan on the field, the disruption, the improvisation, the danger -- are all directly and intimately connected to the physical and mental abilities of the players, which are routinely pushed to their limits, sometimes to the point of causing permanent damage.

This is all the stuff of human drama, and as in most human dramas the decisive physical events don't take up that much of the time.

Another thing I'd add is that compared to a lot of other sports American Football offers an interesting combination of extreme chaos (the tackle, etc) and extreme precision (the long-distance pass to the wide receiver).

Soccer by contrast never has that much precision and is much more about mastering the ever-present chaos, most of it very slow paced; basketball can go long stretches without getting very chaotic at all despite things constantly happening. (I know some people will take umbrage here, but I'm ready to defend these points!)

I can't think of another sport that so closely tracks an idealized version of warfare and group combat. Though I'd love to see other examples.

All that said, familiarity has a lot to do with how much you can enjoy watching a lot of sports. If you grew up surrounded by the culture of Sport X there's probably stuff in it you will like to watch.

I like to watch squash, because I played it enough to understand what's going on. I have a friend who watches hours of snooker online. Even golf draws an audience. Even cricket!

I've heard the term "it's chess but played with fridges" before and I think that fits.

Besides that: great explanation.

I think this is a bit of a fringe opinion. I can certainly see how people appreciate the social aspect of sports events with necessarily appreciating the sports. But I don’t think I wake up in the middle of the night to watch F1 alone for the social benefit.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology...

Like I can play Mario on my TV while sharing that experience with my kids or chatting with my wife about things, while still being around my family in a shared living space. VR just isn't cut out for that. I do use it for sim-racing (which is pretty much a perfect fit for VR headsets) which is anyway a situation where you need to be distraction free and kinda isolated from everyone else so it works well in those types of scenarios.

There are an awfully large number of people who are currently literally isolated and unable to share any experiences with anyone.

I haven’t gotten any of them to join me on the VR train, but as it grows I think that’s a big use case for it. You can hang out together with someone in a VR space in a way that video chat doesn’t capture.

This is more a comment on the state of VR software than the technology itself.

With the Apple product described, it's pretty easy to imagine software that allows you to have a "virtual box seat" where you can get online to watch the game with your family/friends, even if you aren't all in the same place, and use the tech to both watch the game and talk to each other when nothing's going on with plays.

Alternatively, you can use the cameras in the app to merge your immediate surroundings with the game feed, so you see the people beside you in a part of the picture, or in the aforementioned "virtual" box seats. You can watch the game as if you're on the side lines (or on the ball) and see people around you react to plays, too. With eye tracking tech, the headset knows when you're looking at the game vs. your surroundings and can react accordingly.

I think Apple producing a VR headset would be a very good thing for the market. Like or hate Apple as a company, they tend to set the standard for industrial design and UI technology, and their products drive other products' features and uses.

Yes, humans evolved to live in groups. However, we did not evolve to live in huge cities, surrounded by millions of people and tall concrete boxes. That would scare the soul out of our ancestors. My point is that we can't always judge the technology by what's "natural" to us. Brain is extremely flexible, and children who grew up with VR might just want to live in it, instead of the "real" world.

Glancing around it seems quite apparent that we’ve done exactly that.

Well, it gets us to stress, depression, suicides, the loneliness epidemic, and other such day-to-day suffering today too (plus obesity, poor physique, etc).

Living in a better environment, without the "huge cities, surrounded by millions of people and tall concrete boxes" but keeping the modern advancements in medicine, sanitation, and so on, we would probably live 20+ years more...

I find it to be disorienting, relaxing, and exhilarating, like a drug. To me, gives me the feelings of nitrous oxide without the strange nitrous oxide sensation.

> unless you live by yourself

Is a very important point, I think the social (especially with covid) aspect of VR for people that are not together might be the angle that Apple is looking at.

But Onward VR feels really social.

https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/14/apple-nextr-ar-headset/

>rigging a google-maps-like camera ball

This is also not really how it works at all. Volumetric capture is a lot more complicated than 3D TV which is considered a dud.

I agree if they put the camera somewhere cool, like right above the pitch kind of like god-view, that would be awesome.

Not sure I'd pay 3,500 for it though....

Human stereo vision doesn't work at long distances, because of the geometry - the exact distance depends on how good your eyesight is, but somewhere around 18 feet [1] the brain starts using other cues because the difference between what your left and right eyes see is so minuscule.

This all happens unconsciously so you don't notice - but when you estimate the speed of a car 100 meters away, you actually start comparing its motion to the road markings, using your knowledge of about how big a car is, and so on.

So a bird's eye view doesn't really benefit from stereo vision. I suspect they like to put in those weird close-up shots to make the people paying $$$$ for 3D notice the 3D effect and feel they've got their money's worth.

[1] http://scecinfo.usc.edu/geowall/stereohow.html

Also I’ve tried some experiments with VR looking down over a race track with virtual race going on and it’s totally awesome- but that was in full 3D so more exciting I guess.

I think such a virtual camera technically almost is possible. Getting a smoothly moving camera image that doesn’t get distracted by ball-like objects (e.g. a bald referee, as happened in soccer recently) and tunes zoom levels to show just enough action probably is the hardest part.

Would probably also need some kind of remote GPU too like Google Stadia if you’re going to get any kind of real-life picture quality.

https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/sports/technology/...

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/14/21211254/apple-confirms-n...

360 video is also quite nauseating for people as it has no positional component (e.g. moving your head forward brings the scene with it). What we really want are streaming light fields.

I think the display hardware is good enough, but I've only been able to get that quality by manually copying over 8k video files and playing them on the device itself. Not sure why they can't match this quality when streaming...

How would streaming work with a custom point/angle of view? Can the participant walk, move head - etc. Unless all the possible cameras are streamed AND processed locally the latency would destroy the experience.

You can’t look around unless the camera is mounted on motors to allow for that, and even then you’d need to be the only viewer otherwise who’s head does it track?