Or to have “power holidays” similar to a Power Nap, where you use an VR/AR device to relive a holiday for 5/10 mins.
Or to have “preview holidays” to experience a destination before booking a flight there.
If travel agents still existed, then they would be a perfect market for these VR devices but travel agents have long gone the way of the dinosaurs.
If a VR set can reduce travel, then that might be something positive for the environment.
By all means if you’re willing to make that sacrifice be my guest, but I can’t imagine experiencing Venice through a headset.
Taking a bike (when possible) instead of a car, for example. I think many things that we can do fail because of our collective convenience: why take public transport when I can have my private space in a car?
There might be low hanging fruits, but there is human convenience to take into account. Making potential low hanging fruit become had to implement.
> I can’t imagine experiencing Venice through a headset
Most certainly it wouldn't be the same however experiencing a Venice during the Renaissance period using a VR device? That would be better than nothing and would also equate to a "type of" holiday (if done well). Its certainly not something that I can do physically.
That's not a holiday. That's a game.
Neither of these deprive you of truly transformative experiences like travel. Air travel will never be a green endeavor. It will always be something that we’ll have to compensate for elsewhere in pursuit of being carbon neutral.
I’m not willing to tell someone that they should not fly across the country to see their friend in order to be an environmentally responsible citizen. Not while we still burn coal and gas to keep the lights on.
I guess regardless where humans start, the dependency on fossil fuels is simply too vast to rollback.
Not just all of your five senses, and your ability to interact, but the social and human side as well, and your ability to interact physically with it all.
People said the same kind of things about TV - and while, on the one hand, they perhaps underestimated the profound effects of TV on society, nobody would confuse it with telepresence.
I'm not sure what VR offers here that web panoramas, detailed photos and customer reviews don't.. there's a marginal advantage there perhaps but it feels like a $250-300 peripheral rather than a $kk investment.
DonHopkins on Nov 15, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]
The iSmell developers were hoping to make money the same way, by selling big smell combination pack cartridges that you have to entirely replace after any one of the smells ran out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISmell
>The iSmell Personal Scent Synthesizer developed by DigiScents Inc. is a small device that can be connected to a computer through a Universal serial bus (USB) port and powered using any ordinary electrical outlet. The appearance of the device is similar to that of a shark’s fin, with many holes lining the “fin” to release the various scents. Using a cartridge similar to a printer’s, it can synthesize and even create new smells from certain combinations of other scents. These newly created odors can be used to closely replicate common natural and manmade odors. The cartridges used also need to be swapped every so often once the scents inside are used up. Once partnered with websites and interactive media, the scents can be activated either automatically once a website is opened or manually. However, the product is no longer on the market and never generated substantial sales. Digiscent had plans for the iSmell to have several versions but did not progress past the prototype stage. The company did not last long and filed for bankruptcy a short time after.
This Wired Magazine article is a classic Marc Canter interview. I'm surprised they could smell the output of the iSmell USB device over the pungent bouquet from all the joints he was smoking:
You've Got Smell!
https://www.wired.com/1999/11/digiscent/
>DigiScent is here. If this technology takes off, it's gonna launch the next Web revolution. Joel Lloyd Bellenson places a little ceramic bowl in front of me and lifts its lid. "Before we begin," he says, "you need to clear your nasal palate." I peer into the bowl. "Coffee beans," explains Bellenson's partner, Dexster Smith. […]
>"You know, I don't think the transition from wood smoke to bananas worked very well." -Marc Canter
The failed quest to bring smells to the internet (thehustle.co)
https://thehustle.co/digiscents-ismell-fail
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17476460
DigiScent had a booth at the 1999 Game Developers Conference, with scantily dressed young women in skunk costumes.
I told them about a game called "The Sims" I had been working on for a long time, and was hoping to finish and release some time soon.
They unsuccessfully tried to convince me to make The Sims support the iSmell, and even gave me a copy of the SDK documentation, because they thought it would enrich the player's experience of all those sweaty unwashed sims, blue puddles of piss on the floor, stopped up toilets in the bathroom, and plates of rotting food with flies buzzing around on the dining room table.
You might also be underestimating the brains ability to conjure a completely new reality. Our imagination can transport us anywhere - hence adventure, travel and crime books. VR/AR experience augmented by our own imagination, hence to discount the affect of VR is also discounting the ability of our imagination.
Of course holidays are much more but why do so many people prefer chatting online than chatting personally with other people? Why are online dating apps and food delivery so popular? I don't know but it definitely does not have something to do with people wanting to go out and interact with random people.
Not an argument. Besides, like 10-15 years in to WWW companies like amazon, google, facebook, youtube were there. 12 years after oculus rift VR is still a small niche.
> You might also be underestimating the brains ability to conjure a completely new reality. Our imagination can transport us anywhere - hence adventure, travel and crime books. VR/AR experience augmented by our own imagination, hence to discount the affect of VR is also discounting the ability of our imagination.
No, it is not discounting the ability of our imagination. It is more correct to say that you are discounting the ability of our imagination by suggesting that adventure, travel and crime books aren't all we need to immerse ourselves. By going this path of argumentation (if we can call it an argument) you are basically saying that VR is for those, well, lacking in imagination
> Of course holidays are much more but why do so many people prefer chatting online than chatting personally with other people?
Do they? I don't think they do. Chatting with someone they don't know? Maybe. Doing a video call with a friend/partner? No.
> Why are online dating apps and food delivery so popular?
You are conflating meeting (just meeting, once people meet they don't maintain their relationship on the app) someone new and not a social activity with, well, socializing with people that you want to socialize with.
> I don't know but it definitely does not have something to do with people wanting to go out and interact with random people.
You do understand that outsides is not filled only with random people?
What argument are you trying to make for VR? What use case, that would make VR "huge", are you suggesting?
That VR can provide a certain amount of immersive escape from the day to day. Just as the internet replaced certain offline activities and moved them online, I don't understand VR hasn't done the same.
Having used the Quest 2(?) which has automatic boundary detection and cameras that show you the surroundings if you step beyond those boundaries, I no longer had the worry of bumping into things. That made the experience very immersive.
So for me personally, there has been a definite improvement in the experience.
And I agree, the equipment is currently too cumbersome for the general consumer market. In addition to that, stupid vender-lock ideas such as with the Quest where you need a facebook account to use the device, also prevent the general application of the technology. (I would have bought myself a Quest if Facebook account wasn't a requirement. Vision Pro is simply too expensive.)
That doesn't mean that the technology won't one day find general application.
Also content does exist, sites such SketchFab have much free 3D content and with WebGL being generally compatiable with VR tech, it's relative easy to generate more content.
Yeck, I even worked on some code to make programming in 3D possible![1]
> What use case, that would make VR "huge", are you suggesting?
I assume you mean general consumer use-casae, there are definitely a number of use cases that are very niche.
But if I knew that, I most certainly won't share it with a public forum! ;)
If I could chat in person with the people I talk to online, I would. And sometimes, that happens. But they're typically far away (for various values of far), while also being more interesting (ditto) than many of those more nearby.
There are plenty of VR apps in this category available for PC-connected headsets. You can find tons of them on Steam or Patreon.
The immersion is really good.
Apple would never allow it in their ecosystem, but OnlyFans + immersive VR could sell very well.
I am waiting for the 2P version which replace your partner’s image with somebody else’s.
Porn advanced the internet because it was a cheaper delivery mechanism for a cheap commodity, games expanded the internet because it was a technologically innovative platform for high end products.
That is in the range of what a pc cost back then, I think? Like middle to high end but not out of the ballpark.
In other words the internet was relatively cheap for people.
I don't remember exactly, but I do remember I used to collect videos of live performances from a handful of my favorite bands back then so think it might have been related to that hobby. As a side note, I had dozens of the 100 pack CD-R stacks full of these burned videos because HDD cost too much and I didn't need them to be available on demand.
You can't be discreet about VR porning because it leaves you oblivious to your surroundings. You gotta plan ahead and really commit to the time and place.
Aren't all of them propped up by being tethered to some FAANG? I highly doubt they are interested in hiring the best and brightest to build VR porn devices.
I also suspect that the "kick" from porn is a voyeuristic one; i.e. most consumers would rather watch it than be in it.
Exactly this, for now the minimal use cases for these kinds of high-end VR headsets leave them firmly in the "gimmick" category. I'm pretty sure some mass-market use case will be found for them, maybe even outside of gaming, but the fact that some pretty smart people haven't found this one already is a teensey-tiny bit worrying too.