> wait just a little bit longer for the vestibular fix I have been talking about.
If this is what I think it is, it is going to be huge. The buzz is that someone has discovered a cure for motion sickness, and it's incredibly simple: just wear a small vibrating device on the back of your head, sending a continuous vibration signal to your inner ear. For reasons unknown this seems to deactivate whatever part of the vestibular system is responsible for motion sickness. It is supposedly effective in >99% of people and does not disrupt balance.
Motion sickness is a problem for _all_ VR headsets.
Even if the headset tracks in 6-DoF most games still need some form of artificial locomotion. Rarely is it acceptable for the entire game to take place in the same 5ft x 5ft space, and introducing artificial movement causes motion sickness for some people. Just letting users teleport doesn't always cut it.
That only works for games with a very limited player space, or games with a teleporting mechanic. Other games, like Onward allow you to both walk within your room with your location tracked, as well as free-walk using the joystick like a normal first person game, that's what I was talking about.
As I understand it, if motion sickness were not a thing then it would enable a lot more compromises on the performance of VR headsets and the games that play on them. Dropping framerate and stuttering in these games is 100% unacceptable at the moment because it instantly induces intense motion sickness (unlike when the same thing happens on a conventional screen and it's merely irksome).
Yes! Ménière's disease [0] and other vestibular diseases are (thankfully) rare, but truly horrible. Diseases like Ménière's are sometimes clustered into the list of 'suicide' diseases, due to their severity. Vestibular science, in general, is very poorly funded and therefore poorly understood.
Hopefully, things like VR and the need for a better understanding of vestibular disorders will drive funding and understanding[1].
My grandfather had Ménière's disease, and I have had vertigo on a couple of occasions myself. It is debilitating. Unfortunately this device wouldn't restore balance, but at least it could relieve nausea.
I think context is important for understanding the response. From what I recall at the time, the article that first broke this news and defined the narrative was this article from the Daily Beast: https://www.thedailybeast.com/palmer-luckey-the-facebook-nea...
Describing it as a $10K donation for a single anti-Hillary billboard misses the parts of the story that caused controversy at the time. The controversial aspects included his connection to Milo Yiannopoulos and moderators of r/The_Donald, and their connections to abusive online behavior and white supremacist rhetoric.
@wronghorse, If I'm reading that FEC page you linked to correctly, the only donations listed before his firing were to Ted Cruz and Dana Rohrabacher, neither of whom is even vaguely alt-right.
Palmer's big donating spree happened after his firing, and those later donations still didn't go to alt-right causes/candidates, just Republican ones.
[edit: The post I was side replying to has been deleted. Sorry if this post now makes less sense.]
The virtual desktop thing looks cool. Has anyone been able to use it as an external monitor for coding ? I have neck problems and this seems like a great replacement
Have you tried VR headsets for extended periods of time? My experience with both the Rift and Vive have been that they aren't easy on the neck and upper back muscles because the headsets are front-heavy. You could try to use it lying down though.
The other poster is also right about resolution issues. To get any decent amount of text on the screen, you'll cause a lot of eye strain.
I do it sometimes with my samsung odyssey. I usually use VR Toolgox: 360 Desktop although I also have Virtual Desktop and Multiscreens. You have to blow the screens way up to keep things readable but if you're having a bit of writers block it can be a nice change of pace to get your creativity flowing on a whatever problems you're hacking away at.
Waiting for my Piimax 8K-X to see what the greater and field of view and nominally better pixel density does for it.
Haven't tried them but an idea that just popped in my mind would be to add some counterweight at the back of the head. Increased weight but decreases the torque you have to fight. It is what the military uses when wearing NVGs IIRC
I remember this came up in an Oculus keynote that John Carmack gave. I believe the reason given was because a significant portion of users use the headset while lying down and so nothing can really be on the back of the head?
Another is that the force exerted on you head is roughly weight times the distance that weight is from the centerline of your neck. This multiplier makes stuff hanging out in front of your face much heavier than it would be if were just sitting on top of your head.
I was trying to think about why your comment irritated me. It's because it sounds like you commented about balance without actually trying to find the center of gravity on either headset. (It's near where your nose would be.)
I researched it for a VR application primarily for older people, so the ergonomics mattered, and the ergonomics were a real issue.
You raise a great point that I overlooked. There are many reasons why someone would have impaired neck movement or strength, making it hard to use. I apologize.
Tasks that require reading text from screen can't be done using VR yet, because of the resolution and chromatic aberration. You'll end up with eye related problems. It's good for pictures, videos.
Having tested Visual Studio and IntelliJ IDEA in 1080p (HD), 1440p (QHD) and 2160p (4K) desktops with a Vive Pro, I would it say it really depends on your monitor and HMD resolution. With the new Vive Pro, 1080p is totally acceptable, albeit strenuous (for my eyes/brain), then again I am easily fatigued by anything in VR lasting more than 30 minutes. It also assumes you don't mind coding in HD, which I do, so I have only tried a couple times before giving up.
Is the 4K resolution less strenuous for you than HD? I tried looking at text in VR a while ago on an older Vive and the text was too blurry for me to easily read.
Yes and no. I just tested again... 4K is considerably crisper than HD, even when resizing down ~25% and up to ~60% of original size. The main problem is actually the size... 4K is just too large of a screen area to be viewed without having to pick up the controllers to move the virtual screen around. Anything past the bottom or right half is more or less off-limits, meaning you have to move those windows (e.g. builds)... or just resize the editor to the upper-left corner.
The best setup I could manage was to put the bottom of the virtual screen a bit in the floor, then you are looking straight on so that you can see the upper-left corner and still get to the menus and see at least the first ~25 lines of code (Consolas size 10).
I should note I'm using the built-in Desktop which you can insert via Steam VR Home. I just dropped it into the default home and moved it around/resized until I found it workable. There may be better tools for running virtual desktops in VR, I haven't explored this space at all since reading anything in any VR app for more than a few minutes makes me dizzy... speaking of which, no more VR for today! ;)
This submission contains useful and relevant information about VR. It fully complies with the submission guidelines on HN. If we choose to blacklist certain authors simply because of their political affiliations, then we are no better than any number of dreadful totalitarians.
I do not agree with Luckey's political views - indeed, I am vehemently opposed to them - but they are in no way relevant to his opinions on VR technology. To argue otherwise is tantamount to Lysenkoism.
One of the great strengths of the hacker movement has been our exceptional commitment to diversity and inclusiveness. We don't care what you do in your private life as long as you make a useful contribution to our community. It would be a tragedy if that vital strength was sacrificed in the name of ideological purity. You might believe that Luckey's views make him dangerous, you might even be right, but he would only become more dangerous if he is marginalised by the hacker community and is forced to find other allies.
Evangelical Christians at least maintain the pretence of "loving the sinner while hating the sin". We should show a degree of civility to those who hold political opinions that we find unpalatable; we may one day rely upon that civility ourselves.
I struggle with this a lot. I think I would agree with you if he was some random schmo, but he’s a millionaire with heaps of power and influence. As such, I don’t want to give him even an iota of extra renown. He’s had many chances to use his gifts wisely, and he wasted them on trolling, white supremacy, and reactionary politics.
And for the record, he’s already found plenty of “other” allies as linked elsewhere in this subthread. I can’t stop Luckey because I am some random schmo, but I can at least help drain his power in some infinitesimal way.
Which was adopted by trolls as a "white power" sign, very much to muddy the waters as to what is or is not an intentionally racist gesture, and to have fun with the idea of offence and racism at the expense of anyone that might possibly be offended.
So when you see people, who are well aware of this meaning, using it in a photo like that, what they're saying is "ha ha look how funny the idea of us being racist is". Which of course is actually just normalising white supremacy, and enabling it to go unchallenged by shifting the line between overt racism and coded racism, and preventing any good faith discourse.
So this is either intentionally racist joking-but-not-really on his part or incredibly crass idiocy that provides cover for other racists.
I think that is the least charitable interpretation of him performing that gesture.
Another one interpretation is "Look how silly SJWs are to believe the 4Chan prank about this being a white power symbol. Let's continue to troll them."
He's posing with two right-wing journalists or ex-journalists.
I realise "White Supremacist" is the insult-du-jour, but when you apply it to people who aren't actually racist, you just undermine your own credibility. It's like calling everyone in the Democratic party a communist.
Explain to me how a guy surrounded by Jewish people at Goldman Sachs could rise up in the organization and leave as a vice president of the company, if he was truly anti- Semitic.
He would have to be a better actor than Ben Kingsley and Laurence Olivier combined. After Goldman he worked in Hollywood btw.
Perhaps he pivoted after he left Goldman Sachs? Plus there's many examples of people who have managed to keep their beliefs and/or outside lives well away from the people they work with. Many serial/spree killers have had someone quoted afterwards saying they were the nicest person and you'd never think it, etc. It really doesn't require great acting.
What did Hillary do that this administration (which Luckey supports) hasn’t done ten times over, literally? They’re all hypocrites grasping for power, nothing more.
My point is that Hillary isn't guilty, really, by any reasonable definition of the word. She was investigated thoroughly and nothing terrible was ever found. Meanwhile, Trump and his cadre has done everything they accused Hillary of doing and then some, down to conducting government business on private e-mail servers. Their supporters don't care in the slightest.
I've never heard anybody complain that he didn't support Hillary, though I'm sure those complaints exist somewhere. In fact, I rarely hear anybody upset that somebody didn't support her - most people seem to either dislike her, politically, or, if they don't, to at least understand why others might. I think the issue is with his Trump support, and more specifically, the childish, antagonistic, damaging way he expressed it. Framing that simply as "non-Clinton-support" sounds a lot more harmless, and just seems like purposeful naivete for the purpose of shit-stirring.
Isn't Carmack a Libertarian? That's quite far from mainstream conservative, and _very_ far from Trump. Also, I'm not aware of Carmack funding any covert propaganda campaigns...
He funded a pro trump campaign, but not sure why it would count as covert propaganda.
“In mid-September 2016, Palmer Luckey donated just shy of $10,000 to a recently formed pro-Trump non-profit organization called Nimble America. At the time of his donation, the entire body of Nimble America’s work consisted of putting up a single billboard in the Pittsburgh area [that read “too big to jail. paid for by Nimble America” with a photo of Hillary Clinton]. Going forward, Nimble America planned to put up more billboards in battleground states (hence the organization seeking donations).”
He did the funding in kind of a weird way- posting on reddit "I am a rich anonymous Trump supporter, I will match your donations". He also used multiple shell companies to donate to Trump's inaugural committee, which is being investigated for sketchy finances and potential self-dealing
You have to give him the benefit of doubt. He's largely a kid who never has to worry about his financial future. A lot of people got carried way with the "banter" in 2016. Many changed their views over time.
If he retains the same views in 5 years, then you can rightly castigate him
He's a grown man, and it's entirely appropriate to criticize him for having used his wealth and privilege to contribute to the bigoted, intellectually vacant cesspool of "banter" that consumed the previous election cycle. His being a silver-spoonfed rich kid is no excuse.
"They're a kid" used to excuse bad behaviour kind of starts looking less credible in the late teens. He's 26; long past the point where it's a reasonable excuse.
If this is what I think it is, it is going to be huge. The buzz is that someone has discovered a cure for motion sickness, and it's incredibly simple: just wear a small vibrating device on the back of your head, sending a continuous vibration signal to your inner ear. For reasons unknown this seems to deactivate whatever part of the vestibular system is responsible for motion sickness. It is supposedly effective in >99% of people and does not disrupt balance.
Read the inventor's description here: https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/9ywify/inventor_may... Of course a cure for motion sickness will be great for VR but the applications in everyday life will be much, much bigger.