I disagree with pretty much everything you’ve said here.
First, zoom meetings (or google meet) are not necessarily worse than in-person. They’re great! I’ve been working from home since the pandemic started, and I actually have more meetings and interactions with colleagues than I did before. Before the pandemic, having a meeting not only meant setting a time, but finding a spare conference room, which were in short supply at my office. With WFH, any time I want to talk to someone, I just send them a brief chat, and boom, instant videoconference. I love it. It’s great.
Second, what problem, exactly, is VR supposed to solve? Facial expressions are much more accurate over videoconference than VR. Looking at poorly rendered and animated avatars is not going to fix anything. Gestures and hand signals are more accurate over VC. Slide presentations are easy over VC. Shared documents are easy over VC. I really can’t think of anything that would actually be better in VR.
Third, I’m early adopter and VR enthusiast, and owner of a high-end ($4k) VR gaming rig, and I can tell you that the tech is really only suitable for niche applications. VR headsets are heavy, sweaty and uncomfortable. They’re a pain to use with glasses. Screen resolution is low, unless you spend lots of $$$. You don’t have good peripheral vision. There are lensing artifacts. Lots of people still get nauseous. It’s hard to use a keyboard, or to move without bumping into things. I’ve got a strong stomach, but an hour or two is pretty much my max before I want to rip the damn thing off. No way in hell am I going to wear a VR headset for meetings; I’d quit my job first.
VR is really great for certain things, like flight simulators, where the head tracking and immersion makes it vastly superior to any other option. But if Meta thinks that ordinary people are going to want to use VR headsets for daily work, then they’re smoking some pretty strong stuff.
I agree wholeheartedly. Dissemination of a technology doesn’t seem to primarily be limited by the capacity of the hardware, but rather by willingness of people to adopt it. Saying the tech is getting better doesn’t prove the tech is solving a salient problem. And I don’t see managers and employees being thrilled about strapping on a headset for every meeting. As a simple heuristic, I (somebody who’s logged many hours on my oculus) do not want to meet in the metaverse, for the reasons you state here.
I’ll go even further though; videoconferencing is overrated compared with phone calls. For socializing, sure it’s nice to see peoples’ faces. But when you’re just trying to exchange information, a phone call suffices. As a teacher I never see the faces of people who I’m working with on fundraising… sometimes never even hear their voice if we just exchange emails. If you ran a double-blind experiment with a thousand participants to compare how much information was being conveyed with a video call vs a phone call, sure you might find a smidgen of difference. But I’d wager the effect would be an order of magnitude smaller than if you just gave everyone a cup of coffee before the meeting.
Eyestrain is much stronger in VR than with traditional computers—and it’s easy to just look away from a computer or phone when you want to versus having to remove a headset altogether.
I very strongly believe that VR as opaque goggles with screens will never be a transformative product*; AR will be. AR is real world first, virtual world second.
*Barring full Matrix/Ready Player One types of experiences where it’s effectively a full substitute for reality.
There isn’t any mainstream AR product to judge against because it’s a much more challenging technology. Proper AR keeps the real world unobstructed and overlays virtual objects; Hololens and Magic Leap would be the closest to that which are available so far. I do not consider piped-in cameras like will be on the Quest Pro to be the same. Eyestrain will likely in better AR for two reasons. One, it would simply be the real world in regular vision for most experiences, so no adjustment is required. Secondly, unlike VR which is effectively two close-up screens to focus on, current AR innovation involves clear, layered reflective lenses that actually orient the individual light rays to match the path it would take to your eye if the object was actually in that 3d space. So instead of a close image that your brain can be convinced is distant, the light itself hits the retina at the proper angle to be registered as actually at that distance. Presumably, this would be less strenuous on the eyes and image processing, but it’s still experimental.
Depends on the tech. A lot of AR involves putting a camera on VR goggles, and piping the digital image onto VR screens. So while you may be looking at the real world, you’re looking at a low-res, pixelated, fixed-focal-distance, no-peripheral-vision, sweaty, god-rays version of it.
There are versions of AR that function more like a heads up display. I cannot speak from personal experience, but my understanding is that they still have issues:
I disagree with pretty much everything you’ve said here.
First, zoom meetings (or google meet) are not necessarily worse than in-person. They’re great! I’ve been working from home since the pandemic started, and I actually have more meetings and interactions with colleagues than I did before. Before the pandemic, having a meeting not only meant setting a time, but finding a spare conference room, which were in short supply at my office. With WFH, any time I want to talk to someone, I just send them a brief chat, and boom, instant videoconference. I love it. It’s great.
Second, what problem, exactly, is VR supposed to solve? Facial expressions are much more accurate over videoconference than VR. Looking at poorly rendered and animated avatars is not going to fix anything. Gestures and hand signals are more accurate over VC. Slide presentations are easy over VC. Shared documents are easy over VC. I really can’t think of anything that would actually be better in VR.
Third, I’m early adopter and VR enthusiast, and owner of a high-end ($4k) VR gaming rig, and I can tell you that the tech is really only suitable for niche applications. VR headsets are heavy, sweaty and uncomfortable. They’re a pain to use with glasses. Screen resolution is low, unless you spend lots of $$$. You don’t have good peripheral vision. There are lensing artifacts. Lots of people still get nauseous. It’s hard to use a keyboard, or to move without bumping into things. I’ve got a strong stomach, but an hour or two is pretty much my max before I want to rip the damn thing off. No way in hell am I going to wear a VR headset for meetings; I’d quit my job first.
VR is really great for certain things, like flight simulators, where the head tracking and immersion makes it vastly superior to any other option. But if Meta thinks that ordinary people are going to want to use VR headsets for daily work, then they’re smoking some pretty strong stuff.
I agree wholeheartedly. Dissemination of a technology doesn’t seem to primarily be limited by the capacity of the hardware, but rather by willingness of people to adopt it. Saying the tech is getting better doesn’t prove the tech is solving a salient problem. And I don’t see managers and employees being thrilled about strapping on a headset for every meeting. As a simple heuristic, I (somebody who’s logged many hours on my oculus) do not want to meet in the metaverse, for the reasons you state here.
I’ll go even further though; videoconferencing is overrated compared with phone calls. For socializing, sure it’s nice to see peoples’ faces. But when you’re just trying to exchange information, a phone call suffices. As a teacher I never see the faces of people who I’m working with on fundraising… sometimes never even hear their voice if we just exchange emails. If you ran a double-blind experiment with a thousand participants to compare how much information was being conveyed with a video call vs a phone call, sure you might find a smidgen of difference. But I’d wager the effect would be an order of magnitude smaller than if you just gave everyone a cup of coffee before the meeting.
What about eyestrain?
Eyestrain is much stronger in VR than with traditional computers—and it’s easy to just look away from a computer or phone when you want to versus having to remove a headset altogether.
I very strongly believe that VR as opaque goggles with screens will never be a transformative product*; AR will be. AR is real world first, virtual world second.
*Barring full Matrix/Ready Player One types of experiences where it’s effectively a full substitute for reality.
How’s eyestrain with AR?
There isn’t any mainstream AR product to judge against because it’s a much more challenging technology. Proper AR keeps the real world unobstructed and overlays virtual objects; Hololens and Magic Leap would be the closest to that which are available so far. I do not consider piped-in cameras like will be on the Quest Pro to be the same. Eyestrain will likely in better AR for two reasons. One, it would simply be the real world in regular vision for most experiences, so no adjustment is required. Secondly, unlike VR which is effectively two close-up screens to focus on, current AR innovation involves clear, layered reflective lenses that actually orient the individual light rays to match the path it would take to your eye if the object was actually in that 3d space. So instead of a close image that your brain can be convinced is distant, the light itself hits the retina at the proper angle to be registered as actually at that distance. Presumably, this would be less strenuous on the eyes and image processing, but it’s still experimental.
Depends on the tech. A lot of AR involves putting a camera on VR goggles, and piping the digital image onto VR screens. So while you may be looking at the real world, you’re looking at a low-res, pixelated, fixed-focal-distance, no-peripheral-vision, sweaty, god-rays version of it.
There are versions of AR that function more like a heads up display. I cannot speak from personal experience, but my understanding is that they still have issues:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/microsoft-mixed-reality-headsets-nauseate-soldiers-in-us-army-testing/