Oculus Rift and Industrial Design

To start - have you tried a high end VR experience? If the answer is no, then I can see this making sense as a question.

3D movies were not a new experience, they were a depth addition to existing experience of sitting on your couch or a theater and watching a movie.

It’s wholesale different than being immersed in a virtual world with which you can interact, move around, and be immersed in the experience.

If you have played with VR, I’d be interested to know what games/demos you tried that you feel it is similar enough to 3D films.

I’m a huge proponent of VR because everyone I’ve stuck into a VR experience, whether it’s someones mother or my own blue collar friends the consistent result has always been shock/amazement and utter joy. My friends mom didn’t want to come out she was enjoying it so much and that was on a much cruder Oculus Dev kit.

Tilt brush and 3D VR experiences make you wonder how we spent so long building stuff in 2D. I just started working on a remodel of my basement and threw a 3D model into Unity to quickly experience it as a prototype, and it’s amazing how quickly the medium transferred information. I could immediately see I needed to make the bathroom a foot bigger just by walking in and looking around.

Which again all goes back to the experience point - VR is tough to describe on paper and easy to be cynical of. And even todays experiences are limited in scope but some of them are truly amazing and when those continue to develop and become affordable and easy to use it will take off.

No, I’ve never tried VR. High or low end. (maybe once at a trade show, can’t recall what it was).

I can for sure see applications like the 3D design/environment applications you mention.

From my un-experienced POV, I just can’t see the mass market adoption as much. At least in terms of entertainment I see the biggest challenge as the lean in vs. lean back experience. Most people want to lean back and experience watching a show, vegging on the sofa, not doing work, moving around, putting on gear for an experience. It’s the biggest reason I think 3D sucked. Gotta find the glasses, gotta find the appropriate content… not the same as browsing netflix or TV for something mindless to watch or binge on. I’m not a gamer however so maybe there’s opportunity there…

R

I don’t argue that the experience must be incredible, and the price certainly limits its adoption. However, it feels like there is something more to the lack of enthusiasm than just those elements.

I think the first adoption wave will be in video games. As much as people like to think that game platforms are dieing (vs gaming on mobile), this seems like a a great augmentation to Xbox. These types of things seem to take a long time and then explode (think Wii, and the cameras on Xbox 360) and then normalize. I think it will catch, there just hasn’t been the right mix of software/hardware and use case put into the market.

I think MMO video games is probably the right kind of lean immersive experience and that amazingly catchy MMO game with VR has not appeared yet.

Fair enough - I think that’s why I am super excited about all of it. It’s too hard to really articulate the sensation of presence that VR affords - and it’s game changing. 3D TV never afforded that.

The hurdles for device usage and content will be streamlined. Mobile all in one headsets, natural hand interaction (vs magic wands or remotes) are all on the next wave of VR hardware, and screen resolution and GPU technology are ramping up to get there quickly. The first gen hardware is clunky and never will become main stream for those same reasons.

But already the UI is fairly well done. Put on an Oculus and you end up in your virtual living room. You can look at the content/game/experience you want to play and jump right into it - that barrier to entry is rather well crafted all ready and they’ve eliminated a lot of the issues in terms of jumping in.

Think of areas where VR is a huge opportunity - such as flying. I fly with noise cancelling earphones, ear plugs, eye mask, and a tablet to avoid engaging with the world around me as much as possible. I may not be able to walk around and go rock climbing, but it’s a great area for being somewhere else. Gaming is obviously the first market, but you’ll also see a lot of other areas where this will become really useful in mainstream settings (2 hour wait in the dr’s office?)

The social aspects also haven’t been fully figured out yet. It’s one thing to experience this on your own, but will be wholly different when you can game or engage with your friends and family across the world. Imagine being able to interact with your family while stationed overseas in a way that felt far more real than a phone call or skype chat.

A large portion of the future generation is ripe to adopt this kind of stuff. You already see introverted behavior in teenagers who sit around snap chatting each other in the same room. VR fits right into that lifestyle.

Just don’t get stuck on the “these dang kids and their headsets” side of history. :smiley:

New problem to solve. Thieves rifling through Mike’s stuff on the airplane while he has nose canceling headphones and VR goggles on :stuck_out_tongue:

Love VR or hate it, Silicon Valley’s take on VR was pretty funny.

I snapped this photo recently on a trip to NYC. Samsung has a newish technology showroom in Greenwich Village where they are pushing the VR tech quite largely. I left the experience feeling a little sheepish and wiser as to just how much money is being pumped into this next future. Sheepish because my experienced brain could not buy into what they were pushing to younger less experienced brains and wiser because as I surmised, VR cannot capture the over 25 market with mere gaming and sports and amusement simulation (unfortunately for my VR experience, I have been surfing many times, ridden many roller coasters and have shot pistols and rifles). These ‘real’ experiences of mine get in the way of accepting what VR is offering currently.

The girl in the photo was amusing to watch. She was giggling and buying in as the gas shock platform tossed her to and fro. My VR experience was different however. Although I fended off a few zombies, and waved in the air at their reaches towards me during my session with the gaming goggles on, my brain soon realized during my session that these were just pixels and not blood sucking monsters. Game over.

Once you break that suspended disbelief and get over the industrial design experience of donning the gear, it is game over for the over 25-30 and up year old crowd. I walked away realizing that an enormous amount of money will be required to make the current application of the technology seem to match what is reflected in the large budget to market this stuff. Not very sustainable as it is now…

Here is a little SciFi short showing some of the implications of fully immersive AR

Shrug - belief/immersion is ultimately up to the user. I’m in my mid 30’s and have spent hours believing I’m a long haul space trucker trudging minerals across the galaxy, or a rally car driver tearing up the Swiss alps.

You could make the same argument that the Xbox is not a “mainstream” product because most 30 year olds don’t play video games - but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a market and I’d argue that VR offers experiences in the realms of education, healthcare rehabilitation and enterprise that in the long term (along with Augmented reality and other technologies) will have a much bigger impact than the video game/entertainment market.

But yes, a massive amount of money will be required and has already been pumped into the field. Investment in the space has slowed a bit, but I think that’s the nature of having to wait to let investment money actually catch up with what people are promising to make sure the whole thing isn’t a Magic Leap inspired vaporware techno-bust.

The most addicted gamer I know is 40. No age limit to great entertainment.

When I was doing research in gaming for a line of gaming headsets my team and I designed we learned that the average age of a gamer is 35-37. Most people assume it mostly kids but it is more like younger gen Xers and older millennials.

All valid arguments above.

However, it cannot be ignored the condition known as Presbyopia. This middle age condition that hardens the eye’s lens and causes near field object to appear out of focus is the reason and problem that faces the nascent field of VR and AR.

When we see Oculus, Samsung, Avegant et al buying lasic surgery centers, we will know that the market has become saturated at the emergent level and needs to develop new users and distribution channels in order to grow.

You can still wear corrective lenses with a VR headset if needed. The actual focal distance of the Oculus screen is something along the lines of ~1.5M so someone who had issues seeing the pixels would also have much worse issues using a cell phone. I’ve done HF testing with several “nearly blind” users both far sighted and near sighted and as long as they were able to get their glasses underneath they were OK. Fine for contact wearers, bad for people with broad faces and big glasses.

I don’t expect we’ll see rooms full of old folks jumping into mainstream VR when it happens, but more and more of the HF problems are being addressed as they move along. Better display technology will go a long long way.

Cyberdemon…Yes HF labs are good for studying what is possible in a controlled environment. I think there is something in the future with the combining of Lasik surgery and VR/AR. The growth of the surgery centers targeting those in their 20s here in Seoul is through the roof.

For those interested in further reading on the subject…

http://virtualrealitytimes.com/category/hardware/

@Cyberdemon:
I want to explore and pitch an idea for a VR experience at my work place. Can you recommend a reading list, software, etc if I wanted to try to create a quick and dirty VR experience? I don’t have any hardware, so it would have to be for Google Cardboard. Ideally I want to reuse Solidworks CAD data, but the fidelity doesn’t matter - SketchUp level would suffice. My aim is to tickle some nerves and get budget for “real” hardware and resources to take it further.

Is there a way for interaction with the “Cardboard” platform? I assume you can buy some bluetooth device to connect to your phone?

The easiest tool is Unity. It’s free and has plugins for every SDK including cardboard:

Unity has tons of documentation and can easily import assets from just about everything including OBJ/FBX/Sketchup files. Once you have the basic parameters setup you can push whatever 3D models into your VR environment.

In terms of interactivity, there are lots of options but that may require some level of light coding/scripting or finding some other libraries. Unity makes it drag and drop and there are lots of tutorials, so even if you’ve never written a line of code in your life don’t feel overwhelmed.

Google Daydream may be worth the upgrade if it supports your current phone. Otherwise they make cheapo bluetooth remotes and keyboards which can emulate controls. ex http://a.co/bQujIav

Fantastic! Thanks!

I think VR is interesting, but I will admit I didn’t love it when I tried it. Its uncomfortable and the disconnect between what I’m feeling and seeing is too far for me to really believe it. I have been seeing a few designers on instagram posting VR sketching videos which has been pretty cool, but looks super uncomfortable, I could see working out a more refined design through it but I can’t imaging doing thumbnail/ heavy concept sketching in it.

It’s hard to describe exactly how this podcast fits in with our discussion, but it brings up some more human points of VR. Mainly, how does narrative structure work with VR games. Also, they discuss a little bit how the not participating and zoning-out during a film or TV show might open our perspectives to new ideas. Because VR demands interaction, it might actually limit our openness to some ideas and stories.