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by KineticLensman
2816 days ago
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Watching the video I was struck by my own experience of creating a virtual art gallery (of real world photography and 3D renders) in Second Life. It felt really amazing when I was alerted by a sensor in the gallery that someone was visiting it and I could teleport back to the gallery to meet them. Their location in the virtual space (which pictures they were stood in front of) said something about the pictures that they liked. I could read something about their personas from the avatar they were using (especially in conjunction with other scanning tools). My own little gallery was just one of many and other organisations and groups created much more impressive interactive environments (admittedly a lot of them seemed to be for various forms of role-play, some very unsavoury). The promo video shows the participants in effect in a completely conventional conference room - one screen and chairs around a table. The wider space doesn't seem to contribute functionally at all - it's a pretty backdrop but doesn't display more info that contributes to the meeting. So I'm curious - could this sort of capability be used to create more dynamic interactions - or are we limited by the tech (tethered interaction by seated people) to more constrained situations? (please don't get me wrong - I'm supportive of the concept - but I'm encountering pushback from colleagues and customers who don't see the potential) |
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Dream doesn't allow for locomotion by design. Dream is meant to be a place where people meet to be productive. The environments are intentionally pretty but not distracting. The focus is on interaction with the other participants and the shared content. We feel that removing locomotion and reducing dimensionality is how we will make the interactions with Dream simpler, especially for new users. Mechanisms like teleportation are super fun and certainly add to immersion and are the right choice for all sorts of VR experiences. However, Dream has been built from the perspective that users are here to collaborate and then go back to real life. In that context, something like teleportation is fun and novel the first time you use it, but the 10th time, we feel like most users would just prefer a menu. The overall idea being, reduce dimensionality to increase precision and simplicity.
I'm happy to hear a critique of this philosophy. Ultimately we have to create software people love to use, and we certainly understand that we might be proven wrong about this.