It’s so funny that so many people replied to me that “VR isn’t meant to be a monitor replacement” when the companies making VR are marketing it like this
90s: As Lawnmower Man demonstrates, in the future we will all be addicted to VR as a form of neuropornography that is better than any chemical mindbending process.
@thomasfuchs folks who do forex trading have a minimum of 6 monitors in front of them. Window Media App for VR lets you place dozens of monitors in front of you. It's a win on so many levels, especially on power consumption.
@thomasfuchs the mixed realty portal is still working and hasn't gone away. It comes with a desktop feature which allows you to open up as many screens as your heart desires.
@rotopenguin@thomasfuchs Like, no, I want to use a physical keyboard and feel the afternoon sun on my face from outside my window. If I have to write a fucking email, at least give me that
@paninid@jalcine@rotopenguin@thomasfuchs I personally find the latter to be inexplicable. Maybe this works out in retrospect, i.e. Apple Vision Pro ends up being a hulking Apple Lisa of a commercial prototype, but it’ll take a few years, possibly even a decade to become something other than a doofy “helmet computer”
@paninid@jalcine@rotopenguin@thomasfuchs Yes and no: I agree with you that it explains a lot. It also shows how the people funding and promoting the concept are doing so in spite of itself
@jalcine@rotopenguin@thomasfuchs Seriously. Look, VR’s cool, but it’s going to be a tablet-like also-ran interface paradigm at best, not a paradigm shift like personal desktop computers or smartphones. Also, the fact that you can’t gather ’round a screen or hold up a phone to someone else isn’t lost on me here; the form factor itself is directly antisocial and isolating
@jkohlmann@paninid@jalcine@rotopenguin those can’t make dark things (afaik), that’s why all current VR things have the eyes fully enclosed, I don’t think there’s even theoretical ideas how VR could work with anything approaching normal glasses
@thomasfuchs@paninid@jalcine@rotopenguin Yup. If there’s ever a version of this technology that is compelling, it will require an entirely different form factor, like standard-size eyeglasses (not fucking Oakleys) or a Focus (a small temple-mounted holoprojector)
@thomasfuchs I recently saw some billboard ads from Universities and ISPs depicting people wearing VR headsets and I cannot believe that so many people can ignore that having something covering part of your face especially your sight is something that most humans are afraid of. I mean, it's like having your head inside plastic bucket, it looks so unnatural and scary, not innovative.
There’s a really great presentation from Alan Kay from ~5 years ago where he makes a great point that VR/AR allows GUIs that we can barely dream of in the age of monitors.
And in the same way we needed to have screens and electronics powerful, efficient and compact enough to get first PCs and then smartphones, VR/AR needed progress in display and GPU tech to match retina resolution and zero out the rendering lag.
If Apple is going for it, we might be just close enough.