Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

agreed... it can be a wonderful tool for anything in construction. Owners have a hard time visualizing space from looking at a set of plans or renderings for a building. Put a VR headset on them and let them walk thru the building during the design stage... results in wonderful feedback to the design team. Penn State actually makes great use of VR on some of their recent construction projects...

Agreed - going to the construction world yet again... we can make wonderfully accurate renderings/drawings very early on, but the software can also generate something that looks like it was drawn using a sharpie for schematics. For whatever reason, some people just respond better to something conceptual that actually looks conceptual (like it was drawn on the back of a napkin)

 

There's also the authorship factor. Your diagram is unintelligible to me but your participants know what everything is and ask for copies. This effect is seen all the time in our engineering group. People who built something always know it better than everyone else even when cleanly written SOP's are available. It's messy desk syndrome: "Don't move anything! I have a system."

 

I don't do facebook, but I occasionally look over my wife's shoulder to find out what my friends are doing (and wife only uses it every few weeks). I'd thought that there must be a lot of development, but sounds likely that, yes there is, but all on the data harvesting side rather than improving UI (?).

Good point. Being long since a non-worker, these things don't occur to me.

I eventually succeeded in becoming MS-free, a decade or so ago, and things might have changed, but doing something well is not what I associate with them: Doing something, and then putting all the efforts into marketing it and slamming the competition is the MS I (used to) know.

 

People have been saying this about VR forever though. All the way back in the 80s. "Just you wait and it will come to be the dominant form of interactive experience!"

And it never happens. Even the relatively popular VR now (Oculus etc) which is way more popular than the older stuff because of its higher rez is still extremely niche. Nobody wants to wear the gear.

This the same reason 3D movies failed and are hardly done anymore. People hate the glasses and those things are plastic and weight virtually nothing. James Cameron is pushing for 3D screens without glasses but VR requires gear and unless it's a tablet or phone, people dont want to deal with it. All those cyber punk movies and shows with people happily using gear is just fantasy. The human body is more comfortable operating with minimal interface.

The way meta is presenting itself is a VR experience and that technology is not going to become mainstream in the way it's currently constructed.

The only thing I see working is holograms, where no wearable gear is needed. Maybe Zuck should've invested in developing that instead. As usual, he's short sighted and just trying to manipulate and profit from current trends. Probably out of desperation.

EDIT: Even something like The Matrix only works because when you're in it, you're not aware of the interface. Your "virtual" body is without constraints.

 

Also, the VR stuff only does well with video games. And even that can become tiresome, as it is quite disorienting being in a virtual space for more than a couple hours. But the main attraction with that tech is video games, not social interaction. When I owned my Oculus, there were programs used for social stuff like virtual movie theater, hangout, etc.... that stuff got tiresome after the novelty wore off. Ultimately it felt extremely "weird", like something was off... I grew a strong distaste for it, because unless you can 100% perfectly recreate a human experience (and that includes tricking the mind into believing it is not wearing gear), a virtual one becomes akin to the "uncanny valley" effect... something that appears mostly real, but has a glaring flaw that makes your mind strongly reject it.

 

The only ones that care about VR are my 40 year old virgin friends who live with their mom's house, loves anime and hentai, prefer 2D girls over 3D girls, and love love love tentacle rape.

They are waiting for Japan to get on VR wagon and also for games....for hentai porn in 3D in a VR set.

I did say they are virgins with the usual stereotypes.

 

There's possible utility for VR in terms of therapy, specifically in areas adjacent to PTSD and assorted specific phobias. The logistics thereof are a pain in the bunghole of course but there's something worth looking into there.

 

Not on

Exactly, the idea that FB tanked because of how well or how bad they did VR is not very convincing to me, to say it gently. First of all the trigger was the Apple decision to let users turn off the application tracking, nothing to so with VR whatsoever.
And 1 mln active users less every day combined with 10% user base growth of what is used to be has nothing to do VR either. Privacy violation, censorship and spreading the establishment approved lies are now at the core of the Facebook business model these days. I was hoping for another 25% down today.

 

This is actually a really good idea for cognitive behavoral therapy. You can kind of already do this yourself with stuff like VR games that put you on a tall building... I can't remember the name of one that did that.

 

Right, also good for social simulation for those who have interpersonal difficulties and whatnot, or are again having assorted issues integrating into society due to prior histories and other contributory factors. Been interested in doing research on this since I was in undergrad around the early 2010s but frankly no one wants to dunk money on wasteful (psh, says them) tech and I kinda just gave up for grad school. I know that it's something people use in the USA at least so maybe there's a chance someone with more money than good sense might consider investing therein here.

 

You're onto something here, but really, Facebook started it. They're responsible for a lot of bad things that happened to the media industry - not general technological progress leaving laggards at the side of the road, specifically Facebook screwing a bunch of people over. They're the originators of the "pivot to video", the first ones to bait a bunch of hapless publishers with a bunch of at-best-sketchy (but according to a lot of people involved, more like "outright deceptive in Facebook's favor") metrics showing how much traffic you could get by simply making a bunch of videos. Most of which never materialized, and a lot of people lost jobs either to being fired in favor of video bozos, or their outlet closing down. A lot of the people subject to this turbulence landed elsewhere in the media industry, and of course these people talk among themselves. Could you possibly expect them to not have, let's say "significantly negative" feelings towards Facebook?

But it's not just that. There are -lots- of people and groups that can lay blame for something at Facebook's door. Maybe a societal trend they have a hand in. Maybe a specific event they can be blamed for, locally or nationally. Hell, there's a good chance any politically engaged person, of any political alignment, hates their guts due to the way they handled the last few years. And this is just in an American context. There are so many more axes to grind globally.

Media organizations can do a lot of nasty things to people and groups they don't like, but they can't do it without some partners.

 

There's one Virtual Reality that we have all been enthusiastically enjoying all or most of our lives: stereo!

 

You're absolutely right, this is a product design "problem", imho. it begins with the wearable portion of the experience. and one of the big reasons apple watch was such a big hurdle for a lot of people. If you're not wearing an apple watch right the second you read this sentence, VR through anything you strap on your head is a non-starter.

 

Sure. But say you're Zuck and you know you're out of ideas and the platform is going to plateau because that's the fate of social media platforms. They're awesome, suck everyone in, then they need to turn a profit and so they monetize all the things and turn to shit thus opening the door for new platforms. Staying relevant forever is a hard trick on social media.

So you're Zuck and you know all that. Do you do the moral thing? Or do you do the most profitable thing by stretching your data robbery hot streak until the posse arrives and cleans up the wild west? You'd have your billions and so you apologize and give a couple mil back and then sail off into the sunset on your mega yacht.

 

As much as I feel that way, I'm also willing to withhold judgment. You pointed out the future generation is motivated to try to unfuck things, but there's also likely a large part of that cohort that will not be. For those involuntarily celibate unfortunates without good paying jobs or a future living in coffin sized apartments, I suspect VR is going to represent something more than a gimmick.

 

3D Girls > 2D Girls