It's gonna be so massive and so addictive, I predict within ten years there'll be news stories about people dying in VR from malnutrition or heart failure and clinics specialising in VR addicition.
http://www.quora.com/Oculus-Rift/Virtual-Reality-Oculus-Rift...
Here's a news story from more than 6 years ago talking about South Korea:
> Last year alone, at least seven people died from deep vein thrombosis, heart failure, or exhaustion while playing online games....
> The Information & Communication Ministry began carrying out an annual survey of game addiction in 2002, and has set up counseling centers in eight cities to help addicts. Game companies such as Seoul-based NCsoft Corp. also spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year each to help finance some 40 private counseling centers.
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-09-10/online-gaming...
Why would I want to have to reach over and open a virtual filing cabinet? I can click a 2D folder easier and faster, and view the content faster in a line list. Reproducing archaic physical storage and work systems into a 3D space is going backwards, that includes a fake wooden desk and wastebin under it.
It's not so much the headgear presentation I view as an issue, but rather the theory of the '3D' desktop. My prediction is that over the next 20 years, companies will attempt over and over again to push consumers into it, and it'll fail every time because there is no real value gain. What will happen instead is 2D desktop interfaces will become multiplied and easier to use several of in a faux 3D space that is easy to use for your average person (by strictly limiting 3D spatial skill requirements or motion). Something much more akin to flipping the multi-home pages on Android.
* dashboards (Windows 8 start screen and Mac OS dashboard)
* lists (browser tabs, Windows taskbar jump lists)
* search
Sherlock makes use of this as well :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
It actually seems quite legit. I'm tempted to attempt it. I wonder if I could imagine my code/project in this way. To visualize each file, each function, each block as physical objects in a mind palace.
I don't use it very often, but when I do I picture the same house I lived in at the time. I wouldn't necessarily say I can remember lots of data with it, but maybe the order of 20-50 items doesn't take too long.
Except that you have lovingly recreated those limits by replicating an archaic paper-based office. The desktop metaphor was a horrible, crippling kludge to avoid explaining to people how their computer manages data. We can do so much better.
ibex VR desktop - https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=4...
VR Launchpad - https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=4...
The thing to consider is the field of view and just how huge what you are looking at is while wearing the Oculus. The best example is the Minecraft block. Imagine each one as a giant box which you would lift up using both arms.
The second thing we miss everywhere else is depth perception. Certain tasks, like building objects is greatly helped by having depth perception.
In those terms, your perception in the Oculus mirrors the real world more so than a flat, 2D screen or book.
I think we will see people who put this thing on when they wake up, and take it off when they go to sleep. At some point perhaps not even then.
For example the OS desktop metaphors could finally be taken to the next level. Files, recycle bins, folders these were mapped concepts in the 80s to try to transfer the office to a 2D computer screen.
But now we can simulate a true desktop. Imagine you enter a room, a nice wooden desk in front of you. On the desk are documents that could be web pages videos word docs anything. You touch it and a floating screen appears to display contents. To your right is an infinite capacity filing cabinet. A trash bin under the desk. Its like the real world but without the limits of the real world.
Another interesting effect is memory. I remember reading somewhere that in ancient times they would memorize lots of data by imagining walking through a house. As you walk you would place relate objects like a closet to the item you want to remember. In this way you memorize the data and its order. This is where the phrase "in the first place...and the second place..." came from.
And its something I've noticed in real life. My desk looks like a mess except to me. There's a order to it I understand and I can find things. A similar thing happens with the mess of icons on my desktop. I can often find something because I know I put it in some folder on some place on the desktop. But in both the real desktop and my windows desktop I sometimes need help finding things and use the search tool.
The VR desktop can be the best of both worlds. It allows that natural chaotic organization I do with my real world desktop. But a floating search box can appear anytime to help me.