[derefr]

> its intended purpose

Which is what, exactly? I always thought the "killer app" of true VR would be socialization and collaboration: a "virtual world" in the sense of Second Life, OpenCobalt, or Neal Stephenson's metaverse.

Facebook itself is the "casual" version of a socialization system. Facebook's biggest uncaptured market right now is people who prefer to socialize in a more "hardcore" fashion: in virtual worlds (e.g. MMO game-worlds) rather than on websites.

Facebook could probably capture some of this market by putting out the world's first massively-multiuser VR world. It wouldn't necessarily have to be a game, per se, although games could be built on top of it. Just a place, like Facebook itself is a place.

[Houshalter]

What on Earth would be the advantage of virtual reality over existing multiplayer games or skype?

[derefr]

World-of-Warcraft-like MMO games allow for "character customization", but on a moment-to-moment basis, character models are mostly static. You can read an explicit display of emotion if they choose to "emote" one, but there are no continuous subtle cues about how a person is continuing to feel about something.

Now, one of the interesting things about VR is that, provided your perspective is attached to an avatar, the only sensible place to put the "camera" is staring right out of the eyes of that avatar. This means that, whenever you're among other players in a shared VR environment, you're going to be constantly staring at up-close views of other people's avatars' faces, who are in turn staring back at you. So, if your VR equipment could read your facial cues, and replicate them on your avatar's face...

Basically: what are the advantages, over using Skype, of having meetings in a physical office? A VR office should be able to replicate those advantages.

[Houshalter]

Except you're face is going to be covered with virtual reality junk, and all it does is display something a normal monitor or TV can. Reading your facial expressions requires nothing more than a webcam. And the whole thing I think is just a gimmick that doesn't add much value (both VR and facial expressions.) Additionally video game characters look really creepy when they try to do facial expressions.

[derefr]

1. The face-reading parts would be inside and part of the virtual-reality junk. (And, helpfully, would also enhance eye-tracking.)

2. Modern graphics technology has all it needs to generate realistic expressions on characters. Modern video-game characters instead look creepy because they're replaying a small pre-made library of expressions that don't usually fit the situation very well. If the character's face just mimicked the tension in the muscles of your own face moment-to-moment, this problem would disappear.

3. The argument that facial expressions (or body-language in general) doesn't add value is refuted explicitly by the fact that people prefer meeting in person, to meeting over video-chat, to speaking over the phone, to having a text conversation. The only thing each rung of that ladder adds to the previous is body-language-based interaction.

But these are all beside the greater point: the feeling of being in the same room with someone is necessary for the emotional regulation of your relationship with them. Skype doesn't give you that. VR, eventually, can.

[Houshalter]

And none of that requires virtual reality to do. You could have a video game with the characters matching your facial expressions. It would be just as pointless, but it could be done.

[derefr]

It doesn't explicitly require VR... but it does require having both "central vision" and "peripheral vision." Basically, to have the level of detail required to be able to read people's expressions off their avatars in a non-VR setup, you have to have their faces filling a large-enough degree of your vision that, in most setups, they're fullscreen on your monitor (you know, like Skype.)

To be able to interact with the world while talking to someone (because that's the reason you're in a virtual world rather than on Skype), you need to be able to see things going on around the person while focusing on them. So, you either need a grid of nine monitors, or this thing[1].

And you still can't have a natural conversation with more than one person (or especially express any status-regulation emotions involving looking at one person in preference to another) because tilting your head means you can't see the "central vision" part of your screen-wall any more.

If only there was some way for tilting or moving your head to just show you more of the virtual people and world around you, in a naturally-mapped way, you know?

[1] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/illumiroom/