I'm partially in agreement with him in that the Oculus isn't exactly the best way to play some of the more popular genres of games these days. Part of the justification is that 3D TV tech based on wearing glasses never caught on with the masses.
That said, I'd be very, very tempted to purchase an Oculus or Oculus-like device at the right price, given the right software support. I'm a pretty big fan of flight simulators and one of my biggest pet peeves about them is having to use the mouse or joystick buttons to pan around the cockpit, look out the window, etc. Makes things much clunkier than I'd like. Several techs exist already today, like the TrackIR, to help alleviate this problem, but they're still not perfect (TrackIR tracks your head movements to pan the screen, but so that you can still see the screen you get something like 1 degree of head movement maps to 10 degrees of screen panning). I'd love to put something like Oculus on my head and just turn it to look around the cockpit, just like in real life.
At the very least, Oculus will be great for certain genres of games and simulations where total immersion would enhance the experience. Whether it becomes some crazy super new paradigm that everyone will be taking advantage of (with some crazy people saying they'll totally replace desktop monitors), that's a much less likely situation.
Obviously I'm a bit biased, but comparing VR tech with 3D TV is a really poor argument. There are fundamental differences in the experience between the two. Don't doubt the strength of presence when it comes to experiencing media.
Apart from the simulations/first person experiences, I think there are actually much better experiences that have yet to be discovered. The best game I've played so far is Luckey's Tale, which is an amazing Mario like platformer. The difference between playing that and any other platform is staggering.
Someday tech like this WILL replace desktop monitors. Probably in our lifetime.
I doubt it, at least fully. It may replace desktop monitors for certain applications, but not across the board. If you mean something like "it'll replace 90% of desktop monitors," then, well, okay, that's more reasonable. I'm not going to speculate on the percentage of desktop monitors that would be replaced by an Oculus-like device, but I'm willing to agree that at least some percentage less than 100% of them will be replaced.
Obviously I'm a bit biased, but comparing VR tech with 3D TV is a really poor argument. There are fundamental differences in the experience between the two. Don't doubt the strength of presence when it comes to experiencing media.
Apart from the simulations/first person experiences, I think there are actually much better experiences that have yet to be discovered. The best game I've played so far is Luckey's Tale, which is an amazing Mario like platformer. The difference between playing that and any other platform is staggering.
Okay, I just did a quick lookup of that game and some of the stuff it does actually is kinda neat sounding. I see your point there.
One of Romero's critiques, and one I kind of agree with him on, is that VR tech, at least in its current forms (including Oculus), is kinda isolating and de-socializing. Sure, you and your buddies could all be wearing Oculus headsets and interacting with your virtual avatars, but you're still essentially operating in different worlds that happen to look and act identical to each other. Maybe I'm getting old here, but it seems like a bunch of buddies sitting next to each other wearing VR headsets isn't quite as social as the same buddies sitting together on the couch watching the same screen, although this also depends on the nature of the game they're playing.
Of course, what we all really want are holodecks. VR headset tech is a step towards that direction, but it's not there yet.
I think it will be 100% at some point. Eventually, this tech will exist as a benign surgical eye augmentation that is trivial and safe to perform on all humans.
I'm not sure I'd want AR tech surgically implanted. I mean, I'll make the leap from meatbag to GITS body, but until GITS body is available, I'd like to be able to take off the augmentation.
I agree that 3DTV versus VR is a shit argument. In my limited use of Oculus, it greatly enhanced what I was able to do within a game (just being able to use my head as an additional input and turn around to see what was behind me added greatly to my experience). Using the 3DS as a baseline, I can use one hand to name all the games where I said "wow, 3D really made this game better!"
Replace all monitors? Not going to happen. There are two many instances where you want multiple people to have access to the same monitor at the same time AND you don't want people isolated like the Oculus does.
Not to mention managers who like to walk through a cubicle farm and see what is on the employees screen.
So, things are looking like I'm going to drop out of the Ph.D. program and take a full time position at Oculus after I get my masters this fall. Life is weird.
That will almost definitely suck with the current level of technology, and almost definitely be incredible with the eventual level some years from now.
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That said, I'd be very, very tempted to purchase an Oculus or Oculus-like device at the right price, given the right software support. I'm a pretty big fan of flight simulators and one of my biggest pet peeves about them is having to use the mouse or joystick buttons to pan around the cockpit, look out the window, etc. Makes things much clunkier than I'd like. Several techs exist already today, like the TrackIR, to help alleviate this problem, but they're still not perfect (TrackIR tracks your head movements to pan the screen, but so that you can still see the screen you get something like 1 degree of head movement maps to 10 degrees of screen panning). I'd love to put something like Oculus on my head and just turn it to look around the cockpit, just like in real life.
At the very least, Oculus will be great for certain genres of games and simulations where total immersion would enhance the experience. Whether it becomes some crazy super new paradigm that everyone will be taking advantage of (with some crazy people saying they'll totally replace desktop monitors), that's a much less likely situation.
Apart from the simulations/first person experiences, I think there are actually much better experiences that have yet to be discovered. The best game I've played so far is Luckey's Tale, which is an amazing Mario like platformer. The difference between playing that and any other platform is staggering.
One of Romero's critiques, and one I kind of agree with him on, is that VR tech, at least in its current forms (including Oculus), is kinda isolating and de-socializing. Sure, you and your buddies could all be wearing Oculus headsets and interacting with your virtual avatars, but you're still essentially operating in different worlds that happen to look and act identical to each other. Maybe I'm getting old here, but it seems like a bunch of buddies sitting next to each other wearing VR headsets isn't quite as social as the same buddies sitting together on the couch watching the same screen, although this also depends on the nature of the game they're playing.
Of course, what we all really want are holodecks. VR headset tech is a step towards that direction, but it's not there yet.
Not to mention managers who like to walk through a cubicle farm and see what is on the employees screen.
Seriously, I can't wait for the oculus to come out. It just keeps going from strength to strength.