VR, meta verse always seemed overhyped to me. Combine real time 3D model generated from MetaHuman + AR + ChatGPT + voice and you have a business that will dwarf Apple. I bet people would easily pay 100/month for AR companion based on their celeb crush or whatever other AR companion they crave.
Seriously, anyone with an interest in AR/VR and even a passing tolerance for anime ought to give Dennou Coil a chance. For those curious, it's better than just safe for work, it's a family friendly series that you could watch with your kids (or your parents).
With both series written and directed by Mitsuo Iso, who also contributed to storyboards, key animation, and digital effects. Iso had a remarkable career and notable animation style even well before Dennou Coil. It's only unfortunate that there's such massive gap between productions of his own original works.
My biggest issue has always been that users are really damn good at immersing themselves using just a screen and a controller, and that's about a hundred times more convenient than any VR system.
> users are really damn good at immersing themselves using just a screen and a controller
Not only that, but VR/AR doesn't solve any incremental immersion blockers. My brain is very good at 'not looking away from the screen,' it's awful at overriding my inner ear balance, temperature sense, smell sense, circadian rhythm, etc.
Right. When a twenty year old Gameboy advance game can make someone let out a blood-curdling scream, how are you supposed to convince them that now they need strap something to their head and hands?
VR is absolutely breathtaking at transporting you. Oculus Welcome with its cosy camper van and robot was almost a religious experience for me. But VR doesn't make video games one iota more fun to play. At least not enough to justify the expense and inconvenience. Especially since the price of admission seems to be going up.
The only game I’ve played on VR that is worth standing for two hours is Population One, and then only when you have a good squad that will talk and strategize.
I don’t know what it is exactly about that game, but it’s really the only good VR game (and it’s great!)
that limits you to things you can do while watching the screen. Wanna to actually go rollerblading with Margot Robbie or have Tony Hawk teach you to do tricks? or ...
> Wanna to actually go rollerblading with Margot Robbie or have Tony Hawk teach you to do tricks?
Is anyone expecting this as a realistic possibility? As AR glasses are today they would need to become much more powerful while also much smaller. (With the current glasses it feels one might snap their neck in a rollerblading tumble very easily just because of the added weight and lever arm on the head.)
Sure but that limits the applications. Want to have Gordon Ramsey to advise you while you are cooking? Or have r2d2 roaming your house? or play poker at your actual house with lock stock and two smoking barrels characters? and so on ...
That would be fucking wild. Gordan Ramsey standing next to you treating you like shit while you're trying to cook. Screaming at you like on the show and making jokes along the way
good then you don't use it. I personally would find talking to say Richard Feynman seating in my living room way more engaging for learning physics than some boring prof in a huge lecture hall.
Sure, and having Niccolo Paganini playing violin in your personal concert hall would be better than going to a random orchestra.
But that is not what you'd be getting. You can very well listen to Feynman's pre-recorded lectures on YouTube today, and that's the best than can be done. Listening to the same clip being played while some image of him is projected on your glasses to make it look like he's in your living room will not improve the experience.
Have you used chatGPT 4 much? I'd try it before coming to this conclusion. And yes you can train a model for Feynman's voice and movements based on video's that we have.
You seem be be claiming that having a conversation with GPT-4 would be as enlightening as having a conversation with Richard Feynman, and that the only missing piece is AR good enough to replay it in your living room instead of on a screen. I promise you, you are much more confident in GPT-4's abilities if you really think thia than it's most adoring creator.
I'm a physicist and would be beyond thrilled to talk with Richard Feynman in my living room, it feels like VR only solves the "in my living room" part of the equation. I would fully appreciate just having a video call with Prof. Feynman (that's how I speak to most living physicists I know). Is this tech actually out there?
The closest I've seen is tech that would put his face and voice over the answers that come from chat GPT. Again, with no respect to the late professor, but his appearance is again the least interesting part "talk with Rchiard Feynman" is his appearance and voice. If I could get his help on some of my research, I wouldn't care if he looked like a blob fish and had the voice of Foghorn Leghorn. On the other hand, if I'm just getting ChatGPT answers, then there's no reason not to just make it look like the Crypt Keeper.
> Want to have Gordon Ramsey to advise you while you are cooking?
We got that way back when god invented the book. Or I could prop my phone up against the back of the counter and have a little youtube in my field of view.
To do those things you're already going to have to make VR an order of magnitude more convenient than it currently is, which means it's not relevant to my comment.
The immersive VR rides that they are coming up with at the amusement parks are pretty good. The Avatar Dragon ride, Rise of the Resistance, etc...Universal Studios is going in this direction more aggressively, however it seems (just check out the new Mario ride).
I think you're confusing rides, Flight of Passage (Avatar) to the best of my knowledge is not VR (maybe traditional 3D glasses), Rise is definitely not VR (not even 3D) and Mario Kart is AR with a headset overlaying graphics over physical sets. None of them are VR in the traditional sense of the word.
The biggest test of VR at theme parks in the US came with various Six Flags around the country strapping VR goggles (Samsung IIRC) on some of their coasters and drop towers. They're pretty widely regarded as failures. I got to try two of them and they definitely were not a plus to the ride experience, especially on a drop tower where the view from the top is half the fun.
They are immersive, not using glasses, but projected environments and some kind of movement device being ridden. Why not just call it more expensive VR without headgear at that point?
The Mario kart ride is probably the most disappointing I’ve ridden in my life. It’s just a slow roller coaster with an overlay of other karts using HoloLens.
The point of useful technology is to make things more convenient. This is less convienient than typing queries on a keyboard, even if there were no HMD involved.
I'm now imagining a "Talk with your AI-powered pets" interface that is a pseudo-ChatGPT style interface that just responds to everything you say with "woof" or "miaow" :D
(I'm surprised that afaik nobody has really cracked the "Tamagotchi" pet care formula on smartphones, which seemed ideally suited to a visually and sonically enhanced version of the same basic ritual)
I think part of the problem of doing it on a smartphone is that software-only breaks the illusion in a way that makes it necessary to go further to counter it. I think people find it harder to connect to something they see as "just software" without any embodiment to the point that we connect more easily to something "dumber" if it's embodied in some way or other or we can imagine it to be.
For that reason, I suspect that to do it with a smartphone, you'd do better with a chatbot talking to users via e.g. Whatsapp or another messenger than a custom app, because people associate messengers with real people rather than a "game".
Pretty sure people had the exact reaction when online dating came out thinking you must be some social outcast. Or when some people chose to WFH way before it became remotely normal and were branded antisocial for choosing to not be in the office with the colleagues.
Why be such a hater? I don't get it.
Just because some people are into different things than you or what society deems 'normal' doesn't make them weirdoes.
i do think having a relationship with an ai is pretty weird, but i can kind of understand it - a meme that has been around a bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idoru . and it doesn't mean i hate people who want to do this.
>i do think having a relationship with an ai is pretty weird
Mate, have you seen how much money onlyfans girls are raking in from just talking to simps or other lonely and desperate men online? Can be as high as millions USD per month. And they don't even do any explicit nudity for their money, they just send ludes and texts. And the texts are usually written by some people the girl hired since she can't reply to all of them. Those guys are getting taken to the cleaners.
Seems like a niche that could be filled via an AI for cheaper. ChatGPT-3 had some awesome humor before it got lobotomized to be a mundane question answering drone. Could probably replace some standup comedians too.
Or lonely or bored. Want a cyberpunk cyborg dog that can speak in a voice of darth vader? Want Cara Delevingne to be your english lang tutor? Want to pair program with Linus Torvalds? Want Neytiri from Avatar to be your personal Yoga instructor?
No but I heard Alexa had proved useful for elderly loneliness and I imagine this tech will improve there - I agree I don’t see them sat in an Oculus at a gaming rig lol
I find it hard to believe that you can not come up with a single AR scenario that will either make learning process, work process or entertainment option more fun.
For me, I think it's that I consume text much faster than e.g. video or someone talking, and it doesn't distract me.
I just want to be left alone when I want to focus and learn things. I love using ChatGPT to explore a subject now, though, because it's pure text and I am driving it, so I can totally see people who are more visual and social learners want something similar "packaged up" in an avatar.
isn't this about vr rather than ar? i can certainly think about situations where ar would be useful, though none have been demonstrated to be viable yet - rather the reverse when you think of things like google glass.
i don't think that, lovely though she is, i wan't cara to pop up in my glasses (which, because of bad eyesight, i wear all the time) and no, i do not think we have the technology, particularly batteries.
i will admit that if i could ask my glasses "where is the nearest atm?" and it then popped up an arrow pointing at it, i might pay for that. but that means stuffing a lot of hardware into the frames - about the equivalent of a high-end smartphone.
