Like most normal people, I often relive past arguments in the shower. I’m constantly envisioning myself coming out winning with clever comebacks and wit.
Many times these shower debates come from one of the most difficult things about being a marketing person working in tech, and that is, everyone thinks they’re a marketing person. I’ve had some of the most brilliant engineers, designers, founders and everyone else in between propose some of the dumbest ideas from a marketing standpoint. People think marketing is easy. Good marketers make marketing look easy and that’s what everyone sees but they don’t realize how much thought, effort, and empathy needs to be done behind the scenes for good marketing to happen.
I once shared a story with a person about something I witnessed in VRchat. A VRchat dancer was being verbally abused by a group of strangers and that person decided to block them all. The strangers kept throwing abuse at this person but after a while they got tired of being ignored and moved on. I used this story as an example of why VR can be such an empowering place. But the person whom I shared the story with thought the opposite. They thought VR was actually creating weak people, that would grow accustomed to running away from their problems. I think it’s tempting to make that assumption especially when this person does not spend time in social VR at all and did not care to see things from a marketing perspective and with genuine empathy. For people who don’t frequent social VR, its tempting to have these misconceptions and assumptions about these types of interactions inside the metaverse.
Virtual reality has many purposes but one of the most important is to provide an escape. An escape to a place where you have complete control. If you are running a social VR business it’s important that your community isn’t infested with toxic people without any way to fend them off. Ultimately no one will come to your app and you will fail or you’ll end up with something extremely niche at best.
Don’t feed the trolls
If someone taller and bigger came up to you on the street and in an unfriendly tone, the first thing they said to you was : ” Your bald head looks fucking disgusting.” or ” You’re a fat piece of shit.” What would you do? Are you going to fight that person? Would that be in the best interest of your wife and kids? Are you going to sit down with that person to change their mind, perhaps buy them coffee? Are you going to call the cops on them? Or maybe you have a clever comeback you’ve rehearsed in the shower and make fun of their shoes but do you risk a physical confrontation with someone bigger than you? I would argue that most reasonable people would try to simply ignore this asshole and remove themselves from the situation.
Let’s go a bit further than that, it’s pretty sensible to think that no reasonable human being would want to become friends with someone that is outright abusive and most people would simply try to walk away. Their attitude is their problem not yours, their agenda is not a positive one, so why spend more time with this person than you have to? You have a busy life to take care of and you have don’t have time for this kind of shit. Stepping away from abuse in this hypothetical real world situation is not weakness. Given the circumstances, stepping away is empowering. You are exercising your right to not be surrounded by assholes.
There are 7.5 billion people on this planet and your time in this plane of existence is limited so why spend your most valuable resource with people that make you feel bad? In that same vein, blocking strangers who are being abusive to you in VRchat or any social VR platform for that matter is not weakness, it’s common sense, it’s taking control over your experience. By walking away from toxicity we are simply filtering for the people that make our lives more fulfilling. By blocking or muting these people we are taking control over our lives. When people feel like they have more control of the social experience surrounding them, they’ll feel less stressed and it will keep them coming back.
Taking control is not a weakness
What’s really empowering and beautiful about the metaverse. Is that social VR spaces have many tools as well as community managers and moderation teams whose sole purpose is to weed out toxic people. I’ve done this for a living and I know the importance of making people feel safe to express themselves openly without hurting others. It’s a delicate balance because you also want to allow for plenty of free expression but free expression is always messy because we humans are a messy species and that’s okay, it’s makes the job fun.
Real world cops have crimes of violence and life or death situations to deal with, good luck reporting every crazy methhead that throws a random insult at you while you walk down Market street in San Francisco. If someone is threatening you with violence or stalking you then we have another story. So use your best judgement, but most people in SF are pretty used to mentally unstable people throwing random insults while you mind your own business and go about your daily life.
In the metaverse banning abuse is exactly what the community management team is for and this gives you the added of option of reporting abuse. Not only can you block the abusive person but you can also report them and ultimately get them banned. Sure, the troll will create another account but if enough people report or block the troll, the abuse becomes less fun because the level of effort will be too high. People should be allowed to say whatever they want, we live in a free society after all, but no one is obligated to listen to you.
No one should be subjugated to abuse just because some developer thinks blocking abuse in social VR makes weak people, that’s no way to create a positive community with mass appeal.
In the real world you might be in situations where you are surrounded by assholes but you can’t leave. Most of us know what that feels like. It doesn’t feel good and although some of us are better than others at dealing with it. Most people would not want to be surrounded by people who make them feel bad for the rest of their lives.
I want to make it clear, that abuse is not the same thing as someone respectfully disagreeing with you on a political/ philosophical/ ideological issue. You have every right to walk away from that conversation but ultimately it’s a good idea to hear other viewpoints from people with proper arguments when you can. Good conversations provide us the vehicle to teach and be educated by others.
We have more goals in common than we have differences and although it might not seem that way it’s probably because the tools that divide and conquer us have never been this powerful and this ubiquitous. Just remember, that while we squabble over bullshit, there is small group of powerful people benefiting from our division.
In real life if someone close to you abuses you, it can be difficult to walk away, maybe this person is a spouse or a family member, a co-worker or boss. Needless to say, if you find yourself trapped in this situation, I hope you are one day able to remove yourself completely but in the meantime it’s important for your mind to escape the rut. Some people use physical exercise, others find a hobby or reach out to their friends and for a lucky few, they have the metaverse. Whatever your escape, it’s okay to give your mind a break from abuse. It’s okay to block people who abuse you in social VR, because taking control does not make you a weak person.
People often ask me, “what VR headset should I get?”
To which I always reply with , “yes”.
But it’s time to go a bit more in depth than that, so I decided to write a guide for total newbies.
Here are my humble thoughts based on my experience:
If you can afford it, get a Valve Index.
If you cannot afford an Index, get an Oculus Quest.
I currently own or have owned the following headsets: Valve Index, Oculus Quest, Samsung Odyssey Plus, HP Windows Mixed Reality, PSVR, HTC Vive and few a others.
I’ve tested out and tried the following headsets: HP Reverb, Varjo, PicoVR, Oculus Rift, Oculus Rift S, Lenovo Mirage, Vive Cosmos, Oculus Go, Lenovo Explorer, Vive Pro.
As of the writing of this blog post, the Oculus Quest and Valve Index are the two best headsets in the world but for very different reasons. Honestly, the best VR headset will depend on your budget, your time and what use cases matter to you the most.
Do you want the VR equivalent of a fine dining experience or are you content with your favorite fast food joint?
Let’s explore these two options and hopefully by the end of this post you might have some idea of what is available to you.
Let’s start with the Index.
The Valve Index is the pinnacle of high end virtual reality on the PC for consumers. Sure there are other headsets with higher resolutions, wider fields of view and panels that display deeper blacks. However, these HMDs fail to deliver on a complete package that is as polished as the Index. For example, the HP reverb has a significantly better resolution than the Index but the controller tracking sucks in comparison. The Vive Pro can do wireless with an attachment and the Amoled panels can display deeper darker images (if you’re into space sims) but when you compare build quality, audio, refresh rate and future proofing I think the Valve Index comes out on top.
Let’s examine the pros and cons of the Index.
Pros
Super accurate tracking via it’s lighthouse system. You can do room scale, sitting down or standing with full 360 degree tracking.
The ability to tweak the headsets settings without having to exit VR, like the refresh rate, resolution and few other things.
The Index controllers are a great compromise in giving you finger tracking while getting tactile feedback holding a physical controller.
Extremely comfortable headset. Out of all the VR headsets I’ve tried/owned this is the one I can spend the most time in.
Amazing audio, with it’s over the ear speakers, the immersion factor and comfort cannot be understated.
Huge library of games and experiences. There are thousands of games, apps, and experiences available when you combine SteamVR, WebVR and the Oculus store via ReVive. There’s something for everyone out there! (Lots of free apps)
Built by Valve and it’s consistently being improved on with software updates.
Insane 144hz refresh rate. This is something you have to try to understand, because it makes VR feel more “real”.
Get your dance on! You can do full body tracking with the HTC tracker pucks but you might need to have lighthouse 1.0, the lighthouses that come with the Index might not be compatible. ( this might be subject to change though, so do your own research)
Minimal screen door effect compared to other headsets.
Cons
This headset requires a requires a powerful computer and that can get expensive. There’s free software on Steam that checks if your computer can run the Index it’s called “Are you ready for Valve Index”. Check it out and see if you the necessary specs to run this HMD. I’m running my Index on an RTX 2080 and this headset pushes my graphics card to its very limits.
The lenses are prone to get scratched easily. Do not wear glasses with your Index. There are plenty of horror stories on reddit.
People with VR ready gaming laptops beware, you’ll need a mini display port adapter and not all of them work. Finding one was a pain for me. I had success with the Club 3D cable on Amazon but your mileage may vary.
Takes a long time to initially set up and get started, so its not a headset you can take easily on the “go”.
It’s hard to clean the face gasket.
Now let’s examine the Quest
The Oculus Quest is a standalone VR headset with 6 degree of freedom head tracking + controllers. It also has the capability of playing PCVR games by purchasing a separate Oculus Link cable.
Pros
Take it anywhere and play almost everywhere with no wires. Perfect for physically active experiences and games.
The play space can be huge if you have enough space. (You can play outside as long as there is ample shade covering you from the sun)
Oculus recently added hand tracking, while it’s not perfect it has the potential to be the beginning of something pretty awesome.
Ability to play PCVR games on your Quest with the Link cable but don’t expect it be better than headsets designed from the ground up to work with PC.
The Oculus Quest is great to bring along to gatherings! Watch how easily you’ll make friends showing it around and casting to nearby TV.
Getting set up and running takes less than minute. That’s a big deal if you only have 15 minutes to escape to the metaverse.
For the price of one Index you can buy two Quests and hang out in the metaverse with your partner, your siblings or your best friends.
Great audio with it’s over the ear speakers.
Large library of Indie games via the SideQuest app. Check out “Tea for God” and “Crisis Vrgade”. They’re great and they’re free!
Great for media viewing not just games. (youtube, movies, porn)
Cons
This thing is really front heavy. Its not comfortable after 30 minutes so you’ll need to attach a counter weight. Google “frankenquest” for more info.
The default face gasket is not comfortable in my opinion, it’s worth investing in a pleather VR cover.
The battery life is 2 to 3 hours depending on what you’re doing with it. That might not be enough for some people so attaching a battery in the back of the headset is worth exploring.
It’s made by Facebook.
The Quest is packed with so many features, it runs the risk of being a jack of all trades, master of none. It’s good to temper your expectations.
Note: If you really care about wireless VR on the PC. Get a Vive Pro and get Index controllers to go with it. The Pro is a good headset but the Index is better in field of view, refresh rate, minimizing screen door effect and overall build quality.
“But what about the Oculus Rift S? Or other Windows Mixed reality headsets?” You might say. They’re fine, the metaverse welcomes you with open arms 🙂. Just make sure you are confident in your decision and enjoy yourself!
As of the writing of this blog post, there seems to be shortages of the Valve Index in certain regions so this might complicate things for you. Despite this, I don’t anticipate a competitor coming out with better alternatives to the Index and the Quest in 2020, but I might be wrong; a lot can happen in the course of a year in the VR industry. Still, I would encourage you to not get too caught up waiting forever! if you’ve been waiting to jump on the VR hype train, now is the time!
It’s also worth mentioning that Nvidia is releasing new graphics cards some time in the next few months, so I know of people who are waiting on that to jump into in the metaverse.
On another note, if have morals and principles and don’t feel comfortable contributing to Mark Zuckerberg’s evil data collection empire, but can’t afford a Valve Index, you can get a Samsung Odyssey that can run on older computers but your mileage may vary and I would encourage you to do your research before spending your hard earned cash. You can also get a PSVR, it has a solid line up of games and experiences but that comes at the consequence of being locked into Sony’s walled garden.
Ultimately, what VR headset is best for you depends on your use case. Are you an educator? A gamer? An artist? An entertainer? A developer? A marketer? a consumer of passive media? a social butterfly? It’s important to explore what specific things you envision yourself doing in VR and choosing a headset that best fits your needs and your budget.
If you are willing to be more compromising on specs or your budget won’t allow you to get an Index, I would recommend a Samsung Odyssey plus. Unfortunately there is no legit competitor to the Quest in the Standalone VR category but it won’t be long before competition starts flooding the market, since Facebook has proven that there is clear demand for this technology and competition is good for consumers! Keep an eye out for Samsung, Sony, Acer and other players in the game this year.
I hope this guide helped, there is so much to write on this subject and I don’t have the time to write a book about it. If you have questions hit me up on twitter @entervr or @cr1s_m1randa . Try not to get too caught up in paralysis by analysis, there’s a whole metaverse waiting for ya!
For those who don’t want to read, let’s get the links to the demos and the 360 photo album out of the way first.
The demos are simple and were made in a very short amount of time.
Deep Azteca was created entirely by James Blaha. Check out his virtual reality music visualizer made with Unity. Although James could not be at Burning Man this year, figments of his consciousness came along with me in my hard drive. James is still working on Deep Azteca so follow him on twitter for more updates. @jamesblaha
Deep Gold was created by James Blaha and me, Cris Miranda. I took the photo and did some QA. James did all the programming wizardry. Deep Gold is a simple experience. It’s a peek inside a 360 photo of the Golden Gate Bridge injected with Google’s Deep Dream and a couple of CG objects.
I’ve been meaning to write an article about what it was like to help bring virtual reality to burning man this year. Growing up in SF, I would hear about this ‘Burning Man’ thing that came and went every year just like fleet week, or Bay to Breakers there’s always something going on in the city and after a while if something doesnt resonate with you, it just becomes noise. I wouldn’t pay much mind to Burning Man until I became closely intertwined with the tech world through virtual reality in the last couple of years. To be honest, I’m not sure what propelled me to go in the first place but I’ve always been compelled to try new things so. This year’s Burning Man had the right concurrence of events that made it epic. Bugs, Sandstorms and virtual reality. For those who might not know, Burning Man is a music and arts festival clusterfuck that takes place in the middle of the desert for 7 days. It’s so much more than that but we’ll have to leave it at this.
To some people Burning Man is a place of healing and self discovery. To others, Burning Man is a giant party the likes of which humanity has never seen before. Even the Romans in their orgy filled bathhouses would get jelly by the next level debauchery burners can pull off and I felt right at home among it. To me, Burning Man was a bit of both. Through the art installations, I was able to feel the full spectrum of human emotion. in that one week I was brought to tears, filled with Joy and felt more human (whatever the fuck that means) than I’ve ever felt in my whole life. I learned to meditate better, I learned some useful Japanese bondage techniques and partied listening to Major Lazer live.
However to me, it’s the little things that made me like the experience even more. The fact that people would greet each other through hugging, I’ve never felt so welcomed wherever I went. Waking up every morning and realizing that I don’t have to stare at a fucking screen for 11 hours of my day also felt good.
The best analogy that I can come up with in describing my Burning Man experience goes like this:
I feel like Burning man swallowed me in and then it shat me out. Some how Burning man manifests itself in the form of giant beast, a beast that swallows you in with its dust, its drugs and its people. As I went through its 8 days digestive process, I ran into all sorts of folks in all sorts of circumstances.
Crepes off a random van in the dead of the night in the middle of the desert. Spontaneous orgasm competitions. Art installations that challenged my imagination (the good ones felt like virtual reality experiences). Partying with and getting to know my friends from virtual reality at a place that feels like you’re inside Second Life, like we’ve all stepped into a new reality. Reality is more malleable than I thought it was.
I went into Burning man feeling so energetic, so positive and hyped up. Overtime you begin to realize that the desert itself doesn’t give a fuck about your energies or your positive vibes. I remember fighting constantly to keep my shade structure from being blown away while a dust storm would merciless batter us with wind, sand and cold weather. The desert just, is, and just like that, Burning man can behave in the same manner at times. Don’t get me wrong Burning Man was 97% amazing and that’s pretty good for 8 days in the desert. The negative 3% I consider it as necessary and sometimes unnecessary human friction. At Burning Man I encountered some of the nicest people in the world, strangers looking out for strangers. This really has inspired something in me. The thought that, there is goodness in mankind? Who would have thought!? I found it amazing to go a place where people put down there defenses, set aside their differences and embraced each other when we say hi. Burning Man would be nothing without the people who attend it.
Imagine Burning man as a giant beast. This beast tries to eat you as you go through its 7 day digestive process. Every toll on your body is one point for the beast. Being swallowed by the beast is death and being shat out by this beast is rebirth. Your state of rebirth depends on what kind of shit the beast took. This is where you should make your own inferences. Me personally, I felt like I was shat out like explosive diarrhea. I have my own reasons for feeling that way and I’m okay with it. I’ll surely be back to see and live inside this beast once again.
The beast takes you in as you are and like clock work, it will shit you out. Sometimes the Beast is constipated and it might take a while for you to be “rebirthed” for no one is meant to live inside the beast all year long. Unless you’re a water bear, those motherfuckers can live anywhere.
Did you go to burning man? How did you feel you were you shat out by the beast?
While working with the VR Camp, some of us(me) were kind of worried at first about how VR would be received by Burners. Would they view us as tech industry invaders trying to bastardize their community with our proto mind control devices? Would people see the value in virtual reality at all?
Well, i’m happy to report that virtual reality was really well received at Burning Man. People hugged us, kissed us, a couple of people cried. It was beautiful. Every night that we demoed kept reinforcing in me the thought that this VR thing, might just work out.
As someone who is working on becoming a VR content creator I went into Burning Man looking to absorb as much as I could about real world experience crafting. I wanted to see how it is that people use art installations to craft real world experiences because I figured that there might some crossover in lessons. I learned a lot.
Drugs and virtual reality
Let’s talk about the reason why you’ve been reading this blog post in the first place. The drugs! How do drugs and virtual reality interact? We’ll, I have a lot of anecdotal evidence for ya! (take everything I say on this subject for a grain a salt. duh)
Here’s 7 takeaways about psychedelics and Virtual reality.
1) Don’t demo virtual reality to others while high or drunk.
2) Drunk people were not fun to demo for. Only one guy got kicked out from VR Camp this year and it was because he could barely stand from the alcohol he’d been drinking.
3) Mushrooms and virtual reality mix really well. I had this one guy who didn’t want to leave. It seems like to some people psylocybin mushrooms mixed with the proper VR experience can enhance the feelings of presence.
4) Don’t demo scary shit to people on Psychedelics. I demoed Celestial Song to a lady and the next morning she approached to tell me that the experience had scared her and moved her like nothing before and she wasn’t even high on anything! I apologized profusely, while she thanked me. In the planning process of the VR camp it was decided to not bring horror experiences. It was probably for the best.
5) Weed and virtual reality go hand in hand. In fact, everyone on earth should dose themselves with an MJ edible and go inside Titans of Space as soon as consumer VR rolls around.
6) Virtual reality does not seem to be a thing people want to do while on MDMA or LSD, then again, it’s Burning Man so it is the worst petridish one could use to study the complex and individualistic relations between psycho active compounds and the human mind.
7) VR porn might as well be a drug. Thank you Ela Darling and Hatsune Miku for your contributions to the progress of humanity.
Conclusion on the subject of psychedelics and virtual reality:
More science needs to be done on the matter! (Like, real science)
Final thoughts
Many people talk about how Burning Man changed their lives. I recently had a conversation with someone that told me :
“I’ve been to Burning Man, it was alright but It wasn’t the life changing event I thought it would be.” To which I replied; “that’s probably because you didn’t do enough drugs” . She agreed.
So did Burning Man changed my life? A little bit. It was mostly just a giant party where I got taste the sweet illusion of what means to be a free human in the 21st century.
My biggest takeaway from burning man as it applies to VR is that the virtual reality industry needs to foster the creation of sustainable and thriving communities for people passionate about the Metaverse to express themselves and connect with each other. Don’t just build a business, be a part of a community and if there isn’t one then that’s your calling to build one.
Thanks to everyone who took part in the VR Camp this year. These are the good ol’ days after all.
Take part in the effort to bring a next level virtual reality experience to burning man next year. Send an email to entervr01@gmail.com and let us know how you’d like to help for next year.
Here I am at Oculus Connect thinking to myself. Am I trembling?
…Yup I’m trembling. I look down at my feet and see my knees shaking so hard that they were an inch or two from making loud claps. I took deep breaths as my moment to approach the mic
came closer and closer. And then…nothing happened. The talk wrapped up right at the moment I was about to speak into the microphone.
This is the question I would have asked the panel composed of Palmer Luckey, Nate Mitchel, John Carmack, Michael Abrash and Atman Binstock.
Could VR become a victim of its own success? What can be done to insure VR is not used as a scapegoate by the political class?
It happens all the time, some inexplicable tragedy occurs involving violence and the society looks for something to point its finger at. We know the world is never so simple yet it happens over and over, and one day the finger pointing will be directed towards virtual reality. It happened with DOOM, it happened with Grand Theft Auto and it’s never really stopped.
What are the cost/benefits of being reactive on this potential issue? What are the cost/benefits of being proactive?
My proposed solution is to start a virtual reality lobby group/super pac, that can be out promoting VR in the public sector.
My guess is, once VR becomes mainstream it will not take long before a section of people start fighting a technology they don’t understand. (Education is key)
Watching this play out will be very interesting. I hope Oculus has a contingency plan to deal with VR scapegoating.
VR developer Jose Dizon has been on a marathon release of VR demos and mini experiences everyday since June 5th 2014. One of his demos involves my video tour of the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference and Expo placed on a giant screen in VR.
A quick description from his Oculus Share thread includes this excerpt: “Box room with embedded web video on large virtual screen with two rotating cubes textured with the EnterVR logo.”
Here are the download links:
https://app.box.com/s/clwd460go6rp3hunqlxu
For more information on Jose and all his cool projects check out the links below:
Palmer Luckey: “And then I started receiving death threats”
Sympathetic voice in the background: “aaaw”
Me: “hahahaha!”
*awkward second of silence.
Yes this actually happened and there is a record of it(check out the Supercast from Reverend Kyle at Road to VR!). My first time meeting Palmer Luckey was 99% positive and 1% awkward. I’m going to tell you about the awkward part.
But first, I gotta say the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference and Expo was an astounding success, thanks to Karl Krantz, Nana Usui, Cymatic Bruce and all the awesome volunteers that made this happen.
One day I will be telling my grandchildren about the time I went to the “first virtual reality expo”, at which point my grandchildren will respond condescendingly: “oh grandpa, virtual reality is so 2020’s” In my anger towards their apathy I will reply. “Bitch! That’s why your still having sex with that robot! Why, when I was your age they called me doctor love; do you know why? because I used to cure the neurological disease called love with my penicilin”
Anyways, nevermind my ungrateful and apathetic future grandchildren. My experience at SVVR will remain in my memory forever and the connections and friendships I’ve made, I intend to make them last my whole life time. My only point of criticism is that I wish it lasted longer.
I spoke to the security guard because she looked lonely and she told me “this is the first conference I’ve worked, where people actually want to be here, it was hard getting them to leave on the first day”.
Its true, Cymatic Bruce had to manually herd people out of the expo floor on the second day because people wouldn’t leave.
It’s almost a year since I started EnterVR, I honestly never thought that this industry would unravel before my eyes so quickly. To me VR will save and improve people’s lives, bring about a new breath fresh air to a stagnant gaming industry and eventually change life on earth as we know it. I’m positive of all this and its all a matter of when these things will happen.
How do I know this, you ask?
I’m from the future.
Before I continue forward with my story on Palmer. I gotta thank you to Reverend Kyle for having the huevos to go up to Palmer and ask him to join us in on a Podcast. I gotta admit, I don’t think I would have had the balls to approach him, I guess I didn’t think recording a podcast would be worth his time. Good thing I was wrong.
So here I am, sitting next to Bullardo, with Reverend Kyle across the table from me and Matt Stompz sitting next to the Rev. As we started recording, in the back of my head I was thinking” I hope I can say the word FUCK on this podcast, I like the word Fuck”.
Some 5 minutes into our conversation Palmer Luckey walks in and we began recording one of the coolest podcast I’ve ever done. To be frank, I wasn’t sure what to expect at first. What kind of guy is Palmer after all? Would he be snobbish? would he be mean? did the money get to him?
The answer is nope, nope and nope. In fact I was really surprised by how quickly I warmed up to him. This might be a no brainer to some of you reading this but I have come to the conclusion that Palmer is a human being and he’s pretty “normal”.
So, at one point during the conversation someone asked Palmer how things have changed since the Facebook deal and at some point during his answer he says ” And I’ve also received death threats”
In the background I hear a sympathetic voice saying “aww” meanwhile I let out a nice and hearty three syllable “hahaha”. There was a quick awkward second of silence in the room, to me it felt like a lifetime, I was already thinking to myself “damn it I broke the podcast…now everyone thinks I’m weird”
Thankfully all went better than expected and my laughter seemed like water off a ducks back to Palmer. (at least I hope so)
On the ride home, I thought to myself. “damn why did I do that?”
I have two theories :
1: I’m an asshole
2: Laughter is my healing mechanism when I try to get over bad memories and it has become a reflex even if the memories aren’t my own.
This isn’t the first time this has happened, I am often the only person laughing when people share their uncomfortable experiences when i’m in a group. Laughing and joking doesn’t work every time and for every circumstances but it has helped me. Death threats aren’t funny but in the right setting, with the right joke structure and the ideal circumstance in which no one was physically harmed, we can start a healing process through laughter.
To me, it feels therapeutic to laugh at your own misfortune in the presence of good people. If I ever have Palmer on my podcast I’ll make sure to tell him some of my most unfortunate experiences (like the time my monkey bit me, or the time I almost got arrested for showing my butt cheeks to the police, or the time – you get the idea…)
Don’t worry I don’t usually laugh at strangers when they share bad memories, but Palmer had become so approachable that I just started seeing him as a “bro”.
Anyways, being a part of the virtual reality community has taught me a lot about technology, entrepreneurship and ultimately myself. I’m truly grateful.
The only thing that excites me more than what I’ve already seen, is thinking of all things I have yet to witness.
Thanks again to Palmer for being a true scholar and gentleman of Virtual Reality.
Here are a couple of highlights from the conference:
The Kickstarter hit its reach goal of Oculus Rift support, so the trio’s spent a year now developing an environment-based world compatible with the latest in VR tech. I held an interview with them about what it’s like to put in days on end in a virtual world of their own design.
XING’s premise:
Your body may be gone, but your life has just begun. In death, you will find yourself on a journey across a series of mysterious lands. You will encounter perplexing puzzles, trapped souls, and the power to change the environment around you. Spiritualism, mysticism and logic come together in the land of XING, where you will traverse mountains, deserts, forests, volcanoes and more.
Obligatory: What’s your take on Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus?
Koriel: Well, we’re surprised by this turn of events, especially for what it might mean for developers — but we can see the benefits for VR tech that this new acquisition can make. Let’s just hope that Oculus doesn’t get too much of a big head and forget its loving indie devs.
John: We’ve enjoyed personal chats with Oculus employees in the past and certainly wouldn’t like to see that disappear with the new ownership. There are definitely a lot of negative responses to the acquisition within the current Oculus communities, but we hope that Oculus can use their newfound wealth towards the future of VR and the creation of fantastic products, while avoiding the negativity that surrounds Facebook in the tech community.
What demographic do you expect to have a Rift?
John: Right now, basically it’s enthusiasts and devs— anyone with an interest in VR prior to the Rift. There’s a huge lack of content for VR, because it’s really young. There’s a small and dedicated fan base for VR, but it’s not enough for any big company to step up and make a game. That’s going to be a big hurdle for the hardware guys.
One thing Oculus has mentioned is that they’re looking for a killer app to make it sell. Nobody really knows what this will be yet.
At the moment, Oculus seems to be focusing on the seated experience. For example, I’m sitting at a desk, and I can see something happening in front of me. They’re working right now with the Eve Online guys on Eve Valkyrie, where you’re seated in a cockpit and get you get to fly around. The focus is here because there’s the least probability of simulator sickness, because there’s not a discontinuity between your locomotion and what you’re perceiving in VR.
If you go onto the OR forums and look at consumers, it’s completely different. People underestimate the effects of simulator sickness; “We wanna explore immersive worlds.”
One game people are really excited about is Star Citizen. It’s a space fighting sim. People want to see the really grand scale, like a capital ship that stretches out in front of them for miles.
Koriel: When people think VR, they want to see scale.
James: Oculus as a company is very careful with the content they’re putting out there to demo. Palmer has this very robust vision of what VR could be, or should be.
Oculus wasn’t cold to us, but has kind of been careful about their relationship with devs in general, including us. That could be because of our smaller size, our lack of clout, whatever, but we understand they have to be very careful because they want VR to be awesome.
Koriel: Especially for their first launch, they want seated experiences. As things continue, there should be more games that have you just walking around. Devs who have been working for at least a year find they have their “VR legs” — this is probably how the public will be after the first couple games.
What’s been the most rewarding part of developing with OR? The most challenging?
John: On a technical level, it’s pretty simple. Oculus has given us a lot of tools and methods to implement basic head-tracking and more, especially paired with the Unreal Engine.
However, there’s a lot of hidden difficulties to working with VR. Yeah, there’s some rendering issues to be resolved, but the big bother is basically this little device itself [holds up Rift]. So you’ll be testing something, then gotta put this thing on, find your mouse and keyboard, run the tests, take this thing off, and set it down — try doing that for four hours, and your brain just starts melting from constant adjustments between VR, the computer screen, and reality.
Polished VR content is really beautiful…
…unpolished content is just frightening.
Something weird happens, and there’s a bug, and something clips into your head. Or the frame rate is off, and it makes you feel out-of-body. Sometimes after a couple hours devving with VR, I just feel kinda weird.
I’ve experienced motion sickness from boats before; you just feel bad for a little while, anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour. It’s especially weird when you’re not actually moving. I mean, on a car or a boat, your brain knows why it feels bad — with VR, you get confused.
Koriel: As far as our development goes, we are making sure that the experience we create will be comfortable with the Rift. From movement speed to the lack of head-bob in Rift-mode, we are listening to all the issues that current VR games are facing and trying to make sure that XING will be a pleasant experience. Textures must be high-res, the HUD must be barely there or non-existent, and players must be allowed to take breaks.
James: The locomotion issue is key because you don’t want the vestibular system in your ears to freak out, so being in the cockpit of a fighter jet is a good scenario. When the fighter jet changes directions, the sudden shift in movement makes sense to your ears, because it’s the ship moving and not the player.
In first-person shooters, like Portal or TF2, I can actually turn my head to look all the way around, but when I use the handheld controller to do it, my body is confused.
John: This also happened with DOOM back in 1993— people got sick playing it, even though it was just on a screen. Our generation has been raised on 3D graphics, so we don’t have a problem anymore. Put someone older in front of Call of Duty and they’re going to feel sick.
How does the Rift contribute to the kind of experience you hope to give people with XING?
Koriel: We’re interested in letting people experience XING at their own pace. With VR, pacing is important, and XING embodies that. It’s probably gonna be a lot easier for people to handle [than FPSs].
What will the difference in experience be between Rift-XING and non-Rift-XING?
John: NONCULUS. Ehem. We’re on the cusp of VR tech actually being sound. Because we’re developing on brand new tech, it behooves us to make an experience that’s good even without it. Nine times out of ten, we play XING on a monitor, even though it’s designed with VR in mind.
James: That has to do with the logistics of how we develop too, though, since that’s naturally on a desktop. If Oculus or Sony nails hardware, if they make that experience as seamless as possible, the XING experience on the Rift will simply be more immersive. You’ll get that sense of depth and presence.
John: I guess the difference is like a movie being in 3D or not. Some people really like ‘em. I don’t, personally.
James: We had someone come over to the booth whose eyes were misaligned. When we gave him the opportunity to try our Rift; he declined, saying he “simply wouldn’t enjoy it” — but would buy our game anyway.
You guys were just at GDC. What were people most excited about/impressed by?
John: This is definitely the year of VR. There are so many companies doing things with VR; when we walked on the floor, you would constantly hear people mention Oculus in passing.
James: As far as XING goes, first they were intrigued by the booth, because it was a floral haven of awesomeness. Then by the game itself; people were impressed that the fact that it was done by a team of just three people — and that it was on the Rift.
John: For a lot of people, XING was their first VR experience, with what we thought was a really awesome demo. Not to pat our own backs, but we didn’t get any negative responses. I’d say that’s a pretty good metric to show that people are at least interested in VR.
John: Sony’s done a lot of experimentation with VR, well before Oculus was a company, back when Palmer was a baby. But so far they haven’t found much consumer success.
White Lotus is interested in developing awesome VR content that is translatable to whatever VR tech is out there. We don’t care if it’s Oculus or Sony or whoever, because more players just invites more competition, more collaboration, and making more cool things.
John: As far as positional tracking and whatnot, we can’t wait to support everything Oculus puts out. Once we get our DK2, we’ll see how it changes things and make adjustments accordingly.
John: I’d be excited to see that, because there are a lot of VR experiences that lend themselves to a 5 minute chunk. For example, I can imagine our mine cart demo being in the arcades. Like if you had a nickel — ok, a dollar.
I see a very natural place for large, well-designed VR units to be in an arcade, where you don’t have to worry about space. I’m just speculating, but with modern tech you could make a VR machine that could play a lot of different content, and in that sense kind of represents the old cabinet style of the 90s.
James: That said, I think Sony and Oculus are trying really hard to make it an at-home experience.
If it were in the arcade, though, it could be really cool. Valve was demoing a walkable VR experience at Steam Dev Days — we didn’t get to try it, but it was apparently really amazing. People approached a cliff and were told to jump off, and apparently half the participants didn’t because it was so disorienting and immersive. The setup for that hardware included the room: QR codes were all over the walls, and you needed the surrounding space to walk around.
I was actually talking with my dad this morning at breakfast about VR experiences outside of gaming. In education, instead of going to Egypt to see the pyramids, you could go in VR; you could even see the pyramids as they were in any era. Or Rome, or wherever.
My dad is a nuclear engineer and has to do a lot of consulting in outside countries, as far away as China, and it’s always a big deal to show a problem in 3D space. You have to take a lot of photos and make a detailed description. If you could replicate problems in VR, you could show it more directly to someone else.
What about VR movies?
John: We talked to a company at Steam Dev Days called Condition Onethat is doing exactly that. They made a rig — I guess they’re calling it anomnidirectional camera — to capture the scene from all angles, so with the Rift you could look in 360 degrees and see what’s happening everywhere.
There’s also an app that’s very popular among VR devs right now — VR Cinema, like VLC for the Rift.
James: You can walk around the theatre and sit in any of the seats.
John: The screen feels like the IMAX. There’s been jokes like there should be someone kicking your seat and throwing popcorn.
Then there’s a Super Nintendo simulator for the Rift. It puts a crappy little TV in front of you, and you can play any Super Nintendo game in a virtual bedroom.
One interesting thing: they’ve been doing social experiments with VR. There was a big event earlier like a chat room in a VR setting, like a Second Life sort of situation, where you could look at other people’s avatars and chat with them via voiceover.
Koriel: Someone took screenshots of this and posted it to Reddit, where half the people were walking around a meeting room with the same model.
John: PvP experiences are cool. Your opponent is right there “with you,” but could actually be anywhere. In theory, you can replicate the “couch gaming” culture — “I’m here on the couch with my buddies next to me.”
With the growth of mobile culture, do you foresee any conflict with a device that necessarily confines gamers to one spot?
John: In terms of mobile VR, I had one honestly very weird experience.
Guy comes up to our GDC booth, tells us to try this headset, it’s Android based. I put it on and it’s just like — oh cool, it’s like an Unreal 3 demo of looking around in a room. There’s no wires, no computer, just a device. It was custom built, essentially the guts of a Samsung S5. It looked to my eyes like it was hitting 60 frames/sec, and he said it was a 1080p screen. So it was like, well, cool, that works! Look ma, no wires.
I gave it back, and he was like, ok, see ya. And he leaves. There were like 15 people watching me at the booth, and none of them got to try. [NOTE: This device was GameFace. There’s an optimistic Polygon article about it.]
The lines between personal computers and mobile are blurring every day. I just don’t know what’s gonna come of that, but going mobile has some distinct advantages.
James: That dolphin game! Classroom Aquatic. You actually use the Rift as a control mechanism in this game. You’re taking a test underwater, but its in dolphin language, so you have to cheat. The goal is to peek at another student’s answers while avoiding the teacher’s gaze.
John: Like we mentioned before, Star Citizen. It’s by the same guy asFreelancer! Finally, we get Freelancer 2.
Will VR broaden or narrow the generational gap? Could grandparents be able to play with their grandchildren?
Koriel: Our parents have enjoyed it. We had other older folks come over and try it out, and they wanted to play MechWarrior, because that’s what they used to play.
John: Dunno if we’ll see grandparents playing VR Call of Duty anytime soon, though.
Any expected Frankenstein syndrome? How can people feel reluctance towards an idea as awesome as VR?
John: It’s funny you mention that. When we were at Steam Dev Days, Palmer gave a very short presentation about his experiences. Near the end of his presentation, he said, “I believe VR tech is the most important breakthrough… of our lives.”
Koriel: That’s classic Palmer. Best thing ever! Gonna change the world!
John: VR has a really bad history in terms of consumers, especially theVirtual Boy. There are a lot of reasons why that was a total disaster, not only because VR wasn’t ready. It was prior to 3D graphics, prior to screen tracking — there have been so many breakthroughs recently that push VR towards an affordable consumer price point.
I think you’re always going to get naysayers, sinking ship…, history proves…,but the pieces are in place for success.
Koriel: It’ll be a battle of the voices, between people who like it and people who get sick using it and/or think it’s dumb. Who will be the loudest? Alternatively, who has the most money?
John: But seriously, at our booth, everyone walked away happy.
James: VR seems to be way less controversial than AR. If you’re gaming, it’s socially acceptable to have a big TV and consoles and whatever, it’s not nearly as uncool as, say, wearing something on your face. I don’t think society will pooh-pooh VR a la Google Glass.
Let’s let our minds fly: What will VR be like in 2025? 2050? “Meet me at the holodeck?”
John: A holodeck! That’s the ultimate in VR: fully fooling yourself into thinking you’re in a virtual environment, no treadmill, no headset. Who knows if Oculus as a company will be there, but clearly they’re a pioneer. They’re the Zenith TV of VR.
James: Have you seen Her? and Minority Report? I’m not a tech wizard in this sense, but I think the Rift is the alternative to the holodeck kind of stuff. Until 3D projection tech takes off, it’ll be this. The research that Oculus is doing right now sets up rules and guidelines for the future of VR.
I got in touch with Linda Wells of OculusRealPorn.com, a company working on bringing adult content into virtual reality. Thanks again to Linda and the guys from OculusRealPorn for answering my questions.
> How did you guys come up with the idea?
We are fans of virtual reality from watching movies like The Lawnmower Man. Last year, when the Oculus Rift arrived to market we ran to buy one to achieve true VR experiences with it. We realized that there wasn’t any porn with real people for Virtual Reality, so we contacted friends who were porn actresses of and we started the company.
> Why virtual reality?
The possibility to explore another world with VR games and to disconnect from every day work is very attractive to us. You can play whatever role you want and feel like you are a different person in another environment. That feeling is priceless.
> Why pornography?
All the possibilities with VR are more attractive and addictive if
when there is porn for everybody. No matter if you are a man or a woman, you can make all your fantasies “reality”.
> What is the biggest selling point for Vr porn?
Internet, of course. People want immediateness and discretion when they want to consume porn, and internet is perfect for all that.
> Who is your target audience?
Right now we are aiming at every VR developer or enthusiast and primarily men, but it’ll increase with the commercial release of the Oculus Rift. We are asking our users about their fantasies to create content that might achieve that.
> What are your biggest challenges at this point?
Porn for VR is relatively new and there are technical challenges with
video production. We are producing new videos in 120º FOV while simultaneously researching to increase the field of view. The big challenge is increasing the field of view with stereoscopic video. Also there are a lot of users that are helping us choose a correct video edition to create the most comfortable experience possible. We are working tirelessly and we are achieving all of that gradually.
> How does creating pornographic content for vr differ from more traditional methods?
The video editing and camera shaking is overall different to other kind of content for most users. We must let the user watch every scene eliminating all the motion sickness that we can, although we have advanced VR users that prefers the same video editing techniques of traditional porn content.
> Will there be porn for women or people of other sexual orientations in the future?
Yes, that is our intention, bringing the best VR sex experiences so all kinds of people can enjoy.
> What features should we expect in the future? What will VR pornography be able to bring us 5 years, 10 years from now?
We hope to put on the market devices to grab a total FOV for each eye, in order to get a complete immersion in the scene, and especially without cables. In porn, we expect greater interactivity experiences with HMDs properly adapted interfaces, we would like to see sensors that make you feel exactly what you see on the HMD, we think that it’ll be possible in the next few years. We’ll see a new revolution in media market.
> What is your ultimate vision for the future for your technology? Both on a macro and an individual level.
We hope that the HMD completely disappears, so that the image and feelings can be sent directly to our cerebral cortex using electrodes or similar devices. When this happens (we believe it will), it will absolutely change the way we see the world, the audiovisual industry and relationships among people. We do not think this is necessarily a bad thing, as with all technologies, it is the user who decides the way he/she uses it. It’s possible that all that comes with time and we hope to be there to continue creating the best quality content we can.
Thank you very much for your interview, kind regards.
Linda Wells
And thank you Linda!
For more information on OculusRealPorn check out the links below
The only constant in the universe is change (Heraclitus more or less said this). It seems to me that the current technological paradigm that we live under is a transitory period. We are all transitioning to new ways of interacting with computers, new methods of producitivity and new visions for our technological future.
10 months ago I was writing parking tickets on a college campus, I’ve come a long way from those days and I got a lot more to go in the pursuit of my dreams and aspirations. The other night I had my first dream about the metaverse. In my dream, I saw it. I saw the metaverse, a new layer to reality, a place that will inhabit the minds of us all.
By no means am I an expert, heck I’m really just some guy with an obsession for the future and the technology that’s bringing it to us. In speaking with the great people I get to meet on my podcast, I find myself learning constantly. The future is indeed an exciting place. From the many talks I’ve had, I have begun to form a puzzle inside my head, a foggy construct that lives inside my mind; growing and building upon itself the more I learn about this technology. I think, one could spend a life time and still be unable to learn everything there is to know about this new medium of communication.
Virtual reality along with its complimentary technologies (drones, 3d printing, quantum computing) will usher in a new stage of evolution for mankind. It’s all a matter of when it happens really. This hypothetical end goal, this transition to a new transition will not occur overnight. There is a long road ahead, but we will get there. I predict that the markers for how this transition will occur will make themselves easy to spot in plain sight.
This post is about the evolution of human computer interaction through virtual reality. I’m going to tell you where we are currently, the 3 phases of interaction and ultimately, the multiple macro outcomes that can come from this technology.
Our current paradigm:
I remember watching an interview with John Carmack where he talked about the current state of technology. He talks about how we have been able to build these amazing 3D worlds and yet we are only able to enjoy them through flat screens and keyboards in front of us. What if you could only experience reality through a 15.6 inch window? My opinion is in line with Carmack’s. He believes the current state of affairs is awfully inefficient. Interacting with the computer world should be as seamless and perhaps even more seamless than interacting with reality. Inside these worlds we can be the creators and explorers we’ve inherently been born to be.
The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of time is probably one of the greatest games ever created. The other day, I got to experience a segment of my childhood inside virtual reality. Nostalgia and emotion flooded my body, when I found myself inside a world I used to stare at through the digital window of my TV screen. I went from looking at this world from a distance to being fully inside. It’s a feeling that is hard to describe. Cymatic Bruce played the Kokiri Forest demo for the Oculus and it made him want to play every single game he’s ever played all over again but in VR. I couldn’t agree more. I can’t wait to one day play Banjo Kazooie, Zelda Majoras mask and Mario Kart 64 inside VR.
Truth is, we haven’t even began Phase 1. Like Palmer likes to say ” We are still witnessing day zero”. When the first Oculus Rift consumer model gets released I will still be proclaiming it as day zero not until we reach the Haptic era.
Phase 1: The Haptic Era
In my mind, optics and binaural audio will get mastered and get constantly perfected as the phases of virtual reality occur around us. But even before we reach the haptic era, I think these two fields of VR will be very well developed.
What optics do with vision, haptics do with touch. Haptics is a field that will go hand in hand with virtual reality. The whole point of good a virtual reality experiences is the idea of connecting as many senses as possible. I predict that during the Haptic era, virtual reality will find its input device(s). These devices will allow the user to feel the textures, have a sense of “force” whether it be gravity or centripedal or meticlorian. A proper Jedi training simulation, will be exponentially better if the user is able to “feel” impact forces, sense . In my opinion a haptic glove (thanks for the idea, Ready Player One) is the ultimate input device for Virtual Reality. What the mouse has done for the desktop, Haptic gloves will do for virtual reality. The guys at Tactical Haptics are doing some pretty ground breaking work in the realm of haptics. I’ve also seen a vest that gives you feedback through air bursts shot at your body.
Omni directional treadmills with some form of force feedback should be standard thing. If i’m playing Jurassic Park VR, and a T-Rex stomps by, I want the ground below my feet to tremble.
One thing that I am really excited for is VR haptic suits or haptic clothing. Clothing that might mimick wind blowing (i’m not sure how), temperature, and impacts. If I am playing a boxing game inside of VR it would be amazing to feel (without pain) where my opponent is tagging me.
As a side note, I will be incredibly suprised if we do not master a way to implement voice commands inside virtual reality or eye tracking during the Haptic era.
Phase 2 : The Age of Biometrics
The merge of virtual reality and Biometrics will give us an unprecedented amount of knowledge about ourselves. With biometrics we will have the ability to measure, visualize and interact with our bodily functions inside of virtual reality. Imagine playing a horror game that keeps track of your heart rate, and the machine learns to time the scary shit according to how relaxed or on edge it might perceive you to be.
For gamers; the applications of biometric feedback are obvious. Let the human body not just become an extension of the controller but a controller itself. Imagine a mission impossible type game where you have to control your breathing in order to not activate the wall of security lasers in front of you. Or a sniper game that requires you to bring your body in complete sync in order to take that fateful shot.
For the casual consumers this could be huge as well. What if we could go to the doctor’s office to get our annual check up by simply using telepresence and biometric feedback so that doctors could take care of more patients and with better quality of care. Biometric feed back could be used for fitness apps as well.
Wii fitness has proven that people seek healthy alternatives to passive entertainment media. One day I want to be able to hike the Alps or the jungles of Borneo and have a clear record of my biometric activity over a that period of time. In essence, we could unravel a new way of maintaining and thereby enhancing our terrestrial vessels of flesh, water and bacteria.
Phase 3: The rise of neural computer interaction/ Humanity 2.0
One day I want to be able to transmit my thoughts directly onto the computer world. I want to be able to share my favorite dreams with the people around me, I dream of the day when I will be able to go up to you and say, hey Johnny! Do you want to go inside the dream I had last night? To which Johny will reply ” Fuck no! I don’t want to venture inside your fucked up mind Cris Miranda!”
In this phase there’s no telling how we will access the metaverse. Will the metaverse be projected directly into our brains bypassing our eyes? Will we have nano implants attached to our pupils?
All I know is that we humans will begin moving away from what it means to be human in the minds of those who will decide to get left behind.
What good could come from this?
Here’s an idea. If humanity starts becoming this always connected, multi neural consciousness we will be able to make more rational decisions about the way we treat our planet, each other and we might have a fighting chance against the impending robot apocalypse. Our collective wisdom will uncover and defuse the robot plot to take over the planet and harvest us and our children’s chidren for biofuel for all eternity or until the expansion of the sun occurs.
Fin?
I’ll end with this. All in all, technology could give zero fucks about our morals and ethics. It really is up to us to use technology to the benefit of mankind. Having coming to grips with the reality of human nature, that human beings can be both equally inspiring and terrifying is a fact of our current condition. For every good being done out there, there is just as much evil. Virtual reality can be used to expand our minds, enhance our view of reality and liberate us from the current monetary paradigm. At the same time virtual reality can be used to torture individuals, control the minds of the weak and distract the minds of the many. This is why I have made it my personal mission to create, support and push forward positive applications of this technology. There is no way I will be able to stop the inevitable evil that will be created with this tool but sitting on the sidelines of history with my arms crossed is not an option either.
Nothing will be impossible in the 21st century. I’m so happy to be alive to be able to witness it.
Quick note:
But Cris how will we know which phase we are in? Simple. If you hear your grandma, your barber, your mailman talk about Haptics or biometrics then there you have it, when the technology becomes ubiquitos to those who are more distant from technology then it means you are part of a certain phase. For example, tablets were laughed at, by my grandparents once but now they are a part of their lives and they are as ubiquitoes as newspapers. (actually I view newspapers as more of a novelty nowadays.)
