Control VR System Proposes Virtual Reality System With Hands -- and VR as a Female-Unfriendly Frathouse

Already financed on Kickstarter, the Control VR system addresses some of the problems of a fully-embodied VR avatar I mentioned last week. Watch:

With this system, you can see your hands in VR, so that's a bit more embodiment -- but in practical terms, as a mass market solution, most people won't ever want to use something like this for more than short bursts (try waving your hands in the air for ten minutes to see how that feels), let alone buy an additional hardware peripheral on top of VR goggles. And to satisfy the desire to see one's hands in a virtual reality space will only increase the desire to feel even more embodiment -- which will require an even more pervasive and niche system (treadmills, leg hookups, etc).

Also, if you keep watching the video, the Control VR demonstrators spend the last few minutes engaging in a virtual version of the bro-iest, douchiest behavior possible:

Tossing objects into red beer cups. Seriously. Yes, all that advanced technology, all that amazing potential, and they want to simulate being in a fricking frat house. They might as well announce "Women not encouraged to participate in VR" at the end of the video. But then, the VR industry has so far done little to reach out to women, and as you see here, some of its members seem actively engaged in making them feel unwelcome. (Unsurprisingly, attendance at SVVR last month was roughly 80-90% male.)

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Comments

[Iggy]

News flash: technology enables frat-house behavior for male geeks who never leave the house.

[Pathfinder]

Wow, those last few minutes are a complete embarrassment.

[RingDring]

"as you see here, some of its members seem actively engaged in making them feel unwelcome..."

I've been reading NWN for 7 years. I'm a fan. But it's starting to feel like someone around here is in a perpetual loop...

To the point unfortunately that it's now begging for a little more substance.
The end of this post and it's title both feel very childish. Sorry.

No one cares about what they do or don't do at the end of their clip. It just shows the tech works, and that's enough for anyone to extrapolate. It's not about what the author of this post wants to believe it's about.

Pointing to the tech was interesting though. Thanx for that.

: )

[Amanda Dallin]

Pathfinder is right.. that's embarrassing. If I was an investor I'd think twice about investing in a company that unprofessional.

[TribeGadgets]

Not for the first time, glad I could not get the sound to work. The images were enough to make me feel queasy (although perhaps the fish eye presentation was explained in the audio although I can see a reason why it presents that way).

It was amusing to see the amount of perspiration at the end - only exercise of the day?

As for the kit - when you can embed it in my corpus then give me a call.

[Adam]

Wow this blog is getting seriously anti-men. 'OMG it's a load of men having childish fun, boooooo!'

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I didn't watch the clip, but when I went to college, "quarters" was a co-ed activity (I'm not sure if beer pong was invented at that point, but if it was, it would have been too).

Tossing things into red Solo cups, consuming too much alcohol and acting like crunken college students act has not been the exclusive domain of males since... well, early in our evolution (primates and other mammals sometimes seek out fermented fruit, though they haven't worked out the cup angle).

It just underscores what I've said before: the elements that make a game fun are not gender-specific. There's no beer-pong (or Call of Duty or football or chess) gene located on the Y chromosome. You don't have to change the game to appeal to the ladies. You just have to subdue the he-men who want to barricade the clubhouse.

[Carlos Loff]

Cool, very very cool, make it affordable and broadband compatible and you have a hit

I just wonder what will happen to typing for chatting ? Will there only be voice ?

Not Me but some people prefer voice anonymity, maybe a voice off receiver that writes for chat ???