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by mrguyorama 606 days ago
Were you planning on bringing a keyboard and mouse around with you? VR "gesture" controls are godawful and nothing has supplanted mouse and keyboard because they are absolutely wonderful control methods.

If you ARE carrying around a mouse and keyboard and AVP, that seems like a lot more clunk and silliness than just using a damn laptop. What are you doing that actually benefits from gluing the screen to your face?

I want to be explicit: I love VR and have been hugely into it since the very first oculus dev kits, but other than flight/driving simulators and gun games which all hugely hugely benefit from the physical immersion VR provides, there is nothing worth doing in VR. Not that many games actually benefit from a physical presence. Almost nobody playing FIFA or CoD actually wants to do it in VR. The (really fun and quite well made) CoD ripoffs and other shooters in VR are nearly empty, because so few people are willing to stand up while playing. The Wii made this clear 18 years ago FFS.

I'm still waiting for a single use case that isn't sim driving, sim flying, or shooting, or beat saber. Billions invested into producing something, and still there is nothing.

2 comments

> Were you planning on bringing a keyboard and mouse around with you? VR "gesture" controls are godawful and nothing has supplanted mouse and keyboard because they are absolutely wonderful control methods.

Yes, either external or the ones built into my MBP

> If you ARE carrying around a mouse and keyboard and AVP, that seems like a lot more clunk and silliness than just using a damn laptop. What are you doing that actually benefits from gluing the screen to your face?

I was hoping to use it as a companion (replacement was always "maybe in the future") initially so I was going to carry the AVP+MBP if things had worked out. Not always, but if I was going to be somewhere for an extended period of time (vacation/visiting friends or family/etc) then I would take both and have the "same setup" that I have at my desk at home (AVP+MBP). This was going to be an alternative to my 3-4 monitors (I have the same desk setup in 2 locations and duplicating everything was expensive and annoying). Unfortunately the MVD was too blurry and VR is too limiting (but mosting the MVD issues) so I returned my headset but that's what I was hoping to accomplish and how I was going to use it all.

> What are you doing that actually benefits from gluing the screen to your face?

For a start you get multiple very large virtual screens that are a lot bigger than the screen in a notebook. This to me is an interesting use case.

Have you actually tried that though? People always bring this up like it's some cyberpunk fantasy but working with a one pound weight strapped to your face is awful and staring at screens situation an inch from your eyes is really really hard on them and absolutely sucks. I bet using VR for 8 hours a day would actually hurt your eyes.

Actual VR/AR desktop mirroring is a thing that exists now. It's a niche of a niche of a niche because it's not a good experience. It's interesting for the five minutes until it becomes unbearable.

Consider that many simracers, the niche that VR is the absolute best for, do not regularly use VR, because it's just too much fuss to put a damn set of goggles on, even when you are already sat in a purpose built simracing rig!