There are a lot of unanswered questions in there, though. If I'm sat in a living room with my loved ones, what am I looking at? A live 3D video of them? What is capturing that video? Will I see them wearing a headset? Because that's going to look pretty bad.

Something I think people often forget about VR - it's going to be really weird to be totally disconnected from the environment around you. If you're plugged into a meeting and your kid runs into the room to get your attention, how will they do it? Probably by poking you, scaring the bejesus out of you.

I just don't buy the idea that VR will make our lives more "real". It'll lead to living in weird bubbles.

That's because you treat VR vs AR vs reality as three different extremes.

They're not.

Think of them as a spectrum. VR + stereoscopic image passthrough gets you an AR-like view of the real world around you. These overlays allow you to pick up coffee cups, see when your kid is poking you, etc.

Here are some of my thoughts on your questions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9938332

Valve is solving walking into walls by showing you a holodeck-like barrier inside the headset, so something like that could work with moving objects like kids or the dog over time too. Still, you are quite disconnected from the world that's actually around you.

In terms of making technology more human, I see VR as a stepping stone to Augmented Reality, which will eventually allow us to interact with our hands and instead of being in another world, you'll see things brought into your own world. That is an improvement over a screen too.

But VR can also transport you to places you've never been through 360 video, which is a powerful opportunity to create empathy through journalism and documentaries that can help us better understand how people live halfway across the world. I'm rather excited for that.

While any technology has the potential to further divide or distract us, VR has made me feel things that no other technology has even come close to feeling.

It may very well be that this iteration does not solve those challenges.

But if you look 5-10 years out, I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see drastically miniaturized components, perhaps a headband of sorts, a Glass-like eyepiece with a projector, maybe contact lenses, or something that provides a strong level of immersion without hiding the face.

In terms of recording the space, the Kinect is able to determine an astonishing amount about a physical space that I imagine would go hand in hand with this.

Isn't the solution obvious? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Googly.j...

It isn't difficult to connect the external world to an otherwise external sensory deprived VR environment, either with external cameras or smart overlays. I suspect Facebook may try something similar to how Steam functions within games.

I've tried thinking about how virtual meetings would work, but to me it seems to be flawed. Virtual reality allows us to view a 3D environment as if we are there, but how would we capture that 3D environment to begin with? Is there technology that allows us to capture not just 3D, but 3D from all angles? I expect that for "presence" to work, when you move your head, the perspective that the camera sees (on the other end) would need to change, and I can't imagine how this would be achieved.

Many technologies exist to achieve this, they're just not in the "consumer ready" stage yet.

3D scanning is best for static objects like walls in your room. They never move or change, so scan the whole space. When you turn your head in VR, you'll see accurate 3D representations of that 3D environment.

Full 6DOF tracking is another method. Given a 3D scanned static object, like a coffee cup, you can track it using various optical and IMU-based techniques. This means a static object can be dynamically tracked as it moves, giving you accurate information about the 3D world to pick up your coffee cup without spilling it.

Optical tracking can be used to replicate facial movements into 3D models (see: Faceshift), to track finger movements (see: LeapMotion/Kinect), or full body motion.

Video can fill in the gaps for dynamic content. This can be achieved in two ways: 1) depth cameras which combine RGB video like a normal camera with depth information, allow us to reconstruct dynamic objects at proper depth. 2) 360-degree stereoscopic video which gives a fixed perspective to the full 3D environment. This isn't great for "3D from all angles" as non-rotational head movements won't see an accurate view.

A combination of these technologies will enable a VR user to see a real 3D environment, and feel like they are in it.

One thing is certain: it's coming. It's just a matter of time. The technology is rapidly maturing.

Here is some very interesting tech from OTOY that is basically doing that, http://uploadvr.com/diy-wormholes-hands-on-with-otoys-light-...

"Recap: the rig takes two Canon DSLRs and spins them around in a circle, capturing a dense light field image. The resulting data, when properly processed, can be rendered with OTOY’s pipeline and delivered to a VR headset with full head tracking. It’s a static scene but OTOY have alluded to future video capture."

I think there are other hurdles to remote work. Management simply doesn't want it to happen. I'm in a small, very technology-savvy company and - even though we are currently out of office space - there is no option to work from home even part time. The traditional reasons of "need collaboration" / "we work face to face" are always given.

There's a lot of value and comfort that people get from the kind of spontaneity involved in face-to-face communication. If you have to plan a virtual meeting, you loose that. As well as the benefits of walking around to meet with people.

I agree wholehartedly! There is a lot of value. Is there so much value such that an employer cannot allow any remote work?

What's the advantage over FaceTime?

I only see disadvantages... I have to wear this giant thing that prevents me from seeing my arms and anything else physically around me, no ability to capture my actual head and eyes unless you do a bunch of fancy 3d reconstruction, etc.

Think longer term, when augmented reality advances sufficiently that it will look like the person is sitting right across from you. No loss of non-verbal communication, which is still pretty limited to a small field of view over FaceTime.

VR won't solve this in an elegant way immediately, although virtual avatars will soon have eye and facial expression tracking, so at least the avatar will mimic your actual expressions inside of a virtual space. The value add there is that you can be in a shared collaborative space with additional objects besides just other people, and interact with those together.

I'm working on this!