The VR Conundrum

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there's a frog in my snake oil
Doesn't really seem odd. It seems ... inevitable. I keep wondering what sort of world my grandchildren will live in, what their definition of entertainment will be. For me it was Saturday morning cartoons, taping songs off the radio, and typewriters as a kid. My kids grew up on early Nintendo and 2D Duke Nukem and Jetpack DOS games. The upcoming generation? I can hardly believe how exponentially the technology keeps advancing.
Yeah it's just interesting trying to figure out which bits will catch on. It'll probably be stuff like this, and some new combination that'll completely blindside us

Would be kinda cute if it's all taping gigs off the metaverse and hammering away on virtual keyboards tho
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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here



there's a frog in my snake oil
Transpose: First Look

For all its indie trappings and occasional bodged geometries, this puzzle game is pretty promising.

You solve the conundrums by making multiples of yourself. Sending yourself out to be your own minion, to position a sliding platform, or hurl a vital cube to a key location. If you're happy with how you did you save that copy, then move on to the next act, and get them all to interact...

It's decent, and each level has provided some new twist to date.

Something about seeing copies of myself looking confused and scratching themselves in reverie begged to be messed about with though. So this is all I recorded




there's a frog in my snake oil
It's like Lieutenant Dan is doing tai chi (or however it's spelled).
The lack of limbs is kinda disturbing.

I'm not at the point of hooking up Kinects and hacking games just so I can see my own comedy kung fu legs though



there's a frog in my snake oil
Shorts: Son of Jaguar



This 3D cartoon from Google had a glimmer of promise about it, especially the use of verticality in the wrestling ring, with the arena and the combatants flung impressively high above you amongst the spotlights and the haze. The wrestlers dissolved a bit due to the long-range clarity of the screen, but the general environs kept their cavernous scale.

There were various technical issues throughout though, with lots of hitching even on my chunky machine. Which made it hard to judge, but I got the impression they struggled with repositioning you as 'the camera' as the scene shifted. There were some 'flash cut' positional changes that did seem to work, and the initial slow curve down from the changing room felt decently handled, even if it didn't really elevate the scenario to have you wondering which of the separated protagonists to view. Ultimately it didn't feel like they'd arrived at a unified solution or a convincing box of tricks to deal with the POV-switch issue. (There was a slightly nifty narrative technique introduced later, but even that didn't fully convince).

My biggest other issue with it though, was that I wasn't really sold on the story. Familial heart-string twanging meets cartoon wrestling violence. A shonky tag team that fell pretty flat.

(+)

EDIT: Interesting to read the director's struggles with the format here. It's pretty clear that it's not just the transition from cinematic disciplines that's the problem, it's the lack of a replacement toolset. All the received wisdom he's getting in 2017 is what he can't do (move the camera around excessively, edit heavily, dictate the precise framing of events). There's no folk knowledge about work-arounds, or focus on other techniques that get opened up.

To be fair they did subvert the movement aspect successfully with the slow move down the entrance walkway. (Slow, steady, non-rotational movement seems to be pretty unproblematic). It's just obvious a lot of energy is going to get burned up on these little victories for now.



there's a frog in my snake oil
Futurism-Isms

Ok I hit a rabbit hole. Which is tenuously linked to VR.

I was delving around trying to find the origin of this chart:



Which led me to two little interesting reads:
  • On Measuring Technolgy Diffusion Rates

    Regardless, no matter how you cut it, the more modern and the less regulated the technologies, the quicker they get to market. Here’s a couple of my recent charts illustrating that fact. The first shows how long it took before various technologies reached 50% household penetration. The second illustrates the extent of household diffusion over time.



And the ever intriguing Kevin 'Wired' Kelly waxes lyrical here on tech spread, and the 'third order effects' that you get when one 'supersaturates':
  • Increasing Ubiquity

    In his sunny-side-up view of tech, we shouldn't really worry about 'have nots' as new techs emerge, because they're really 'have laters', who will benefit from a more refined tool. But he's not above pondering the downsides:

    Don’t worry about those who don’t have a car; worry what happens when everyone has a car. Don’t worry about those families who cannot afford genetic engineering; worry what happens when everyone is engineering. Don’t worry about those who don’t own a personal teleporter; worry what happens when everyone has one. Most of the unintended consequences that so scare us in technology usually arrive in ubiquity.

    And most of the good things as well. The trend toward embedded ubiquity is most pronounced in technologies that are open-ended: Communications, computation, socialization, and digitization.

    A fun case study in there is his look at cameras going from a pro tool to the 'sousveillance' of today:

    But something strange happens with ubiquity. More is different. A few automobiles roaming along a few roads is fundamentally different than a few automobiles for every person. And not just because of the increased noise and pollution. A billion operating cars spawn an emergent system that creates its own dynamics. Ditto for most inventions. The first few cameras were a novelty. Their impact was primarily to put painters out of the job of recording the times. But as photography became easier to use, common cameras led to intense photojournalism, and eventually they hatched movies and Hollywood alternative realities. The further diffusion of cameras cheap enough that every family had one in turn fed tourism, globalism and international travel. The further diffusion of cameras into cell phones and digital devices birthed a universal sharing of images, the acceptance that something was not real until it was captured in a camera, and a sense that there is no significance outside of the camera view. The further diffusion of cameras embedded into the built environment, peeking from every city corner and peering down from every room ceiling forces a transparency upon society. Eventually every surface of the built world will be covered with a screen and every screen will double as an eye. When the camera is fully ubiquitous everything is recorded for all time. We have a communal awareness and memory. That’s a long way from simply displacing painting.

    I met a fellow many years ago who spent ten years wearing a tiny camera in front of his left eye. This head-mounted camera captured everything that happened in his life and transmitted it back to his website. When Steve Mann started his experiment of recording and broadcasting his life as a grad student, he was a lone eccentric. While he was standing there talking to you, with one eye open and the other filming, his unconventional approach to documentation seemed like performance art. One could not really object to it, because, well, he was such an outlier.

    In the course of his years of living ordinary life as a one-eyed camera, going shopping, to school, to events with his friends, Mann discovered that ironically the more surveillance cameras a particular store, plaza, or gathering place had, the more their guards objected to individuals like him recording their own view. The watchers hated to be watched. Mann calls his inverse surveillance, sousveillance, a word coined by replacing the French “sur” for above, with the French “sous” for below, as in watching from the bottom up.

    After he graduated from MIT, Mann became a professor and his grad students used the next generation of smaller circuitry to craft their own miniature sousveillance gear. Some were tiny enough to fit unobtrusively into sunglasses. The students would record each other. In the meantime, cell phones sprouted hi-res cameras and video cams connected to the net, which performed the same sousviellance actions. Suddenly, there were millions of public eyes watching each other. Sousveillance had gone from a node of one to near ubiquity. A few years ago when all this sousveillance was new, a girl on a Korean subway let her dog crap on the floor without cleaning up the mess. Her transgression was captured by several sousveillance phonecams and eventually broadcasted on national TV. She was shamed into apology by a new ubiquity.

    One thousand live cameras always-on make downtowns safe from pickpockets, nab stop-light speeders, and record police misbehavior. One billion live cameras always-on serve as a community monitor and memory; they give the job of eyewitness to amateurs; they restructure the notion of the self, and a billion cameras demote the authority of authorities.


TLDR: I still can't find where that Forbes chart comes from

But it all adds some interesting structure to pondering an 'Augmented Reality future'. A 20 year one, with tiny kit, meshing all of the above complicit elements ('communications, computation, socialization, and digitization'), and adding its own spin.

I don't know if this generation of tech will be the bootsrappers to make it. (I kinda think the stage is set, and they are the forerunners. But guess we'll see )

EDIT: Some ponderings:

Just thinking about the live gig examples in earlier posts. I can't really imagine such things being as good as the real thing. But then I wouldnt, would I. I'm attached to the sights and sounds of the nights that I've had, of dancing with my partner and friends. Hell I'm even attached to the smells. And the care and chaos that happen afterwards.

But what if you could get a lot of that from a networked VR show? The dancing in sync, seeing the band's expressions up close, hearing the sound all around. But now it's all tied into visuals that aren't tied down to screens. And you can always mosh to the front if you want, or view from wherever you fancy. Your mates can always come, no matter how far away. You can be in Tokyo by 5pm and a Manhatten after-party by 10. Yeah, why not, this stuff could work

But then what happens to fame, in such a ubiqui-gig world? When the numbers you can fit into a gig veer towards infinite. What happens to public spaces? To familiar faces? To the old limits, if not of time, then of place. And on it goes. There's a load of obvious 'second order' questions raised by the saturation of such a tech. And the third order ones are still out there too . I do wonder what they'll be...



there's a frog in my snake oil
€COSYSTEM:

Back in the real world, this is my dilemma:

I found myself thinking: "Actually £8 for a 40 minute Star Wars adventure isn't that bad"



And then I found myself thinking: "STOP IT, NO! BAD BRAIN! WHAT'S HAPPENED TO YOU? You've changed..."

All with regards to 'Episode One' of Vader Immortal, the first of three. So the sensible thing would definitely be to wait for them all to come out, and then wait for a sale. Especially as it sounds like nothing more than climbing & sabre swinging in a fairly slick setting. Which frankly is every other VR game out there

But this is what this ecosystem does to you. It pushes you into thinking: 'Sure, £10 an hour is like the movies, that's reasonable". And to be honest, your brain may have a case there. The experiences that sell in that price range normally are pretty slick.

But I'm not living that full fat life just yet. Oh no. Back to my back catalogue of sale snufflings for now...

(Unless it goes 20% off...)



there's a frog in my snake oil
Drone Hero: Quick Look

Got this in the sale for 90% off and it's a bit of a steal. Very neat controls, super fine throttling required (I'm not there yet...), and some great laser / rocket challenges that you clearly can't do in real life...

Cool to have a VR game that's all about classic close skills, but benefits from the 'being there' and the improved depth perception.




there's a frog in my snake oil
Indie Excess: Thief Simulator VR

This indie thievery game is blatantly going to overreach itself, execute poorly, and explode into a horrible pile of parts.

But I wants it





It's mainly the promise of hand controlled cars and cop chases that's doing it for me. And the general excessive hand interaction with sun visors and hotwiring and stuff. And hey the throwing stuff into swag bags and hiding under beds is all fine too.

The car dismantling? Less so... (Oh god it's so going to misfire and parp it's engine onto the road isn't it :/)

EDIT: Aha, so it's a port of an average existing game. The maps look way to small for prolonged chases, which is a shame. But the toolset and joint casing / 'open world' approach sounds solid enough.



there's a frog in my snake oil
Contrasting Approaches: Your Space or Mine?


Thought these were two fun contrasting uses of VR:

New Kit: Mobile & Accessible

EDIT: Oh damn...



Basically it was a physical site mimicked in day-glo sci-fi trappings in VR with the headset on


And it all comes full circle. Lazer Quest is back

What's cool about this though is it's an application of the new 'PC free' headsets like Quest. So it doesn't have the graphics oomph of current attractions using full gear, but there's no PC strapped to your back or any other encumbrances. Just full freedom to run into each other and fill out insurance claims

As daft as the above probably is, I reckon FB's broader strategy here is spot on. These cheaper, portable, 'snackable' headsets are going to make VR way more accessible. It's not what I'm looking for (battery limited, lower graphics quality etc), but it puts the basic wow factors into a lot more hands. And with no strings attached allows for more public experience-based uses like this.


Old School: Innovating in Inner Space



That's some more gameplay from Tea For God, a game using 'Euclydian spaces' to create an 'endless' game world from a limited physical playspace.

For all the talk of AAA exclusives (Assassin's Creed & Splinter Cell supposedly, for example - and hey Valve have said they've got 3 AAAs coming for the last 3 years )... This is the real area the 'AAA' kit is going to make gains in the next few years I reckon. Continuing novel software solutions to the 'hard problems' of physical gaming in limited playspaces. Taking adaptation to nausea as far as possible within the community, and then designing around the 'unadaptable' aspects.

The new fancy kit will doubtless come, with better quality experiences. But aspects like above are going to be mainstays. It's cool to see tricks and approaches accumulating, because they're going to be the biggest 'legacy' of this period in some ways, if VR persists.

---

Ultimately neither of the above examples are ideal. They're both interesting little steps along the road though potentially



there's a frog in my snake oil
News: Quill Gets Animated

This is promising. Quill is one of the freebie art packages out there, but this feels like a step towards making it more of a semi-pro tool with some intriguing utility.



All of the additions like keyframing, opacities etc are familiar fodder for anyone who's messed with general video packages etc, and stuff like the group animation, audio sourcing & story-style loop pausing / exempting look decent. It seems it can export to various industry mainstays like Maya etc (although I'm still confused how you'd export to to allow someone to view the resulting story / animation - I guess it's just a shareable Quill file for now...)

I haven't played with the art packages too much (despite it being cool to draw ribbons of imaginary stuff or Horrible Puffy Dragons ). Could see myself delving into this though



there's a frog in my snake oil
Social Scam Lands: There's Gold in Them Thar Hills

I wondered how a VR MMO Alpha could be offering $250m for a game jam...



Turns out the prizes are in in-game blockchain credits. Which they value at...

The Second Life meta & business model really is popping up a lot in VR-land...



The Adventure Starts Here!
Wait... someone's trying to make Second Life into VR?? Wow, honestly, that would TOTALLY sell to the SL people I know who still hang out there.



there's a frog in my snake oil
Wait... someone's trying to make Second Life into VR?? Wow, honestly, that would TOTALLY sell to the SL people I know who still hang out there.
There's been a ton it seems, but plenty seem to go quiet. Not sure the numbers are there to sustain them.

Linden labs actually have one in Beta it seems. There's that culty-crypto one above. Weird tech-collab leaning ones.

But honestly loads of the MMO a social VR offerings have some of the vibe. RecRoom's room design art tech has that UGC thing, although they're just gathering player details for their future money pit, as far as I can tell. Places like VRChat also have zone customisation it seems. And freaky furries and the like

Pretty sure there's been a ton more that folded. Basically most VR types are into the Metaverse



there's a frog in my snake oil
Quill: Amateur Hour


I cannot fathom the animation stuff for the life of me. Which is a shame as the tools & results look pretty badass.

These horrors are the best I've conjured to date








there's a frog in my snake oil
The cactus is kinda fun, but that bunny is creepy.
Haha yeah, the bunny was a rush job just before bed. (He has no eyyyyes )

I'm thinking the strength of this type of art package is probably how organic and cursive a pro can make 3D assets look. For the rest of us, they could become the next MS Paint



there's a frog in my snake oil
After much swearing, I figured out how to do basic animation




The Adventure Starts Here!
He definitely looks less creepy with eyes... but more creepy with the spaced-out teeth.

He almost looks like someone wearing a bunny costume. Or, like the rabbit in Donnie Darko.



there's a frog in my snake oil
He definitely looks less creepy with eyes... but more creepy with the spaced-out teeth.

He almost looks like someone wearing a bunny costume. Or, like the rabbit in Donnie Darko.
Yeah I've channelled something there for sure . I seem to remember the trees just came out looking creepy, so I figured they had to have a creepy bunny. That's my story anyway

Anyways, I just had a thought...

***20 Year Prediction***

VR/AR glasses will have their iPhone moment. But gesticulating freely while rammed onto a metro train will prove tricky. Back strain will become the new RSI as people make tiny little hunched up grabby movements to avoid hitting their neighbours.

(That and bruises from being smacked in the face by an errant emote / from smacking someone in the face with an errant emote )