Why VR Will Remain Niche: We Want Flatness (Comment of the Week)

"I've figured out why VR isn't going anywhere other than as a niche peripheral," Dartagan Shepherd announces with confidence, and he may have figured right:

Because the world is flat. And it gets flatter every year. Do we use textures on web pages any longer? No we do not. Do we use image based designs that try to mimic 3D elements? No we don't. We design very flat responsive sites. Often without any hint of depth. Just icons and colors. We've already done depth. We've decided that unless we're playing, we like flat. We revel in our newfound flatulence in design and devices. Our information is flat. It doesn't fit on a curve, unless you like warped data. Our lives are not spheres, they are sheets and sheets of flatness. Flat is healthy. Flat is bite-sized and manageable, and fits into time better. Flat is efficient. Even Star Trek knew the future was flat. They were using hand-held devices with flat screens and massive flat consoles while the best we had was a scientific calculator. Sure, there was a holodeck, but what was it good for? Re-living bad period episodes and historical recreations and things that no one admits they do in a holodeck. [LOL - editor] I'm beginning to embrace my own flatness. Goggles and glasses just get in the way of simplistic and elegant flatness.

This sounds right to me. I could add: Even if you own a VR headset, I bet you're not reading this blog post about VR while actually logged into VR. You're reading it on something FLAT.

Comments

[Pulsar]

That's true for user interfaces. 2D computer games are less popular instead. Even grand strategy games, a genre where you look at a map most of the time, are commonly 3D now. Yet 3D didn't fit so well elsewhere. There were attempts to replace the traditional desktop and icons interface with a 3D one. At first glance it had a wow factor, but using it...
Indeed the key point is efficiency and ease of use. VR is useful in some niches, it has a wow factor, but it adds extra complexities and makes things less immediate: you need an headgear to wear, witch is also an extra device you need to access to the content (moreover the current prices and hardware requirements don't help); it covers your eyes, if you play an action game and you move instinctively, you risk to hit something, you don't know what people around you are doing, someone feels silly, not to mention motion sickness. Even if nothing of the above would be a definitive barrier for me, more of those you add, less people would use it often or use it at all.

[Former NWN Reader]

Congrats Dartagan Shepherd, some comments get a trophy while others with serious questions regarding a sponsor get deleted.

Hamlets way or the highway..so I better start walking!

[Mac]

A curved TV is definitely not flat. But it is something only a bachelor could love. ;-)

[Michael]

Paper I read yesterday proved that Flat UI designs were costing people productivity.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/05/flat_uis_designs_are_22_per_cent_slower_official/

So based on this I think there is a flaw in your basic premise.

[anameisputinthisbox]

No. VR isn't growing for 2 reasons.

1. Cost. To much for those who want it, those who would be comfortable and want to get comfortable with VR.

2. Comfort. Not physical only, but also in other ways. This is where flatness is at, it is faster (less pain in the buttocks) to just bring up a familiar flat old 2D website. Soem cultures do the strangest thing, it has become their comfort zone. Maybe it's text vs. talk, old timers may like talking more is a suspected thing.

So, sure flatness is a way of describing some thing that is really a part of Comfort.

Henry Ford got roads built, dropped the price of his cars after they seemed to make sense. Think, seriously (I mean it, really I am not rhetorical and negative I want people to come up with great uses for VR,) about what VR ofers and can do best and be part of everyday life. Similar to a car, train or entertainment. Yes, entertainment has utility as a common cultural item that aids comfortable and enjoyable exchange of thoughts we call conversation. You can show your personality, show your thoughts and how deep you think. Basically you express something of the self, your knowledge or otherwise simply entertain people (jokes are a great example) using a common knowledge mass known thingy. How does VR help this, or more accurately what app for VR aids the masses in some way? What is the TV series format, blockbuster movie format, or online MMORPG format that VR offers that no other can offer?

I will thnk now, as an example. I would say physical movement is differentiator that enables VR to come into it's own. PHysical movement, like workouts, can get addictive (yeah, scientifically proven I believe. Gym workouts ARE addictive, chemical brain stuff etc. if I remember correctly.) is a good starting point. A healthy addiction. Can't get any better and more salable than that? Gyms all over are still open. Golds gym died, did they? See what I mean. Success just around the corner?

So, put VR into Gyms NOW. Us augmented reality with cross fit, let them man the fortress, put up the armor because the servo's are down and hold off the alians by hand loading torpedoes etc.? Free thought, idea or thingy to ponder. Problem is. Pain in the butt. Cost. Prove the market, gain good enough ROI (does it simply make your gym relevent OR does it even bring in a new market of non-gyrats? see, this is the issue. Cost, risk (pain from the worry of losses) that are trouble.

Costs, risk issues. These plague business decisions. Same issue, how did other new market solve these issues.