Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 13:09:17 -0500 From: "Chad Wingrave" Subject: Re: Is VR dead? In-reply-to: <000701c1b912$e3c51b20$c829ef82@BINKY> Sender: To: "3-D User Interaction Mailing List" <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu> Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Importance: Normal X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 X-Authentication-warning: torch.hitl.washington.edu: majordom set sender toowner-3dui@hitl.washington.edu using -f X-Priority: 3 (Normal) First response, no but how else do you expect someone to answer on this list? Let us consider... I think it would be irresponsible to consider a field dead because much of the hype and glitz has moved on to other fields. Personally, I think this a better forum for science now that we are not rushed to produce the next obvious piece of work. Now, we are able to survey the literature, identify the weaknesses and apply serious thought and technique to serious issues. Too long now has the field been hurried by the "coolness" factor. If you look at the current work in VR it is no longer just in building systems; it is collaboration with others and their research methods such as architecture, psychology, medicine, engineering, visualization, etc. This takes first time to understand the philosophy of a new area and time to design acceptable experiments for the new areas. Those works do not always reappear in the VR community which adds to the illusion that VR is dying. Additionally, we are hampered by the inability to reproduce each others experiments, a cornerstone of the older sciences. This may be due to a lack of good openly available tools or the lack of time to test and refute each other's findings. To conclude, I have a strong connection to academia and am honestly rather relieved in the turn of events, whatever they may be, that have cooled the field of VR. This period of time is a breather where we can focus and spend time to do things correctly. We have a knowledge base of ideas and previous research well documented in the literature and, due to the newness of the field, almost all of it is easily accessible via the web. Big displays and costly projections and environments make waves but useful APIs, well designed experiments and flashes of insight are what is pulling VR together into a solid and respected field. -Chad (cwingrav@cc.gatech.edu) http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~cwingrav On Tue, 19 Feb 2002, Anders Backman wrote: > Hi all. > > After working a couple of years in the VR community it seems that things > have changed, a lot. > > Someone said: - The failure of gloves and goggles. > Refering to that using an HMD and goggles (with trackers) was supposed > to change the way > Of life. But it has failed. Due to sloppy hardware, latency (sloppy > hardware?) > Cables, high costs etc... > > I can see some areas where VR is still alive: > > * Visualizations using Powerwall (car industry, research, oil) > Usually in the car industry no trackersystems are used, they just don't > work. > > * Driving simulators www.oryx.se is a good example of that. > > Ok, there are some applications using HMD:s too, but are they really > making a profit? > How many are they? > > > I can see some trends: > > * A lot of VR companies are struggling to survive. (some are already > gone) > They still try to charge a lot of money for products not delivering what > they should. > People blaim interaction methods, bad hardware, bad software. > > * In the latest Medicine meets VR conference a lot of researchers were > using game engines such as Unreal, Quake etc.. > They are for free (but beware of the monster warning. Some research > results show that test subjects are afraid that monsters will jump to > them behind the next turn, just because the "feeling" of the > environment.) > > * Try to find a decent HMD nowdays, its impossible. None is doing any > development in this area. Nothing really new. (VRT will change the way > of life, anyone heard thatone before?) > It seems that company research in the VR-hardware area has stalled? > > * Vrsource website, not much new there compared to gamasutra and all the > other game sites. > > * A lot of research institutes have VR websites dated 00 and older. > > * More and more research seems to directly be aimed at gaming and > animation (more money?) > > So Im looking forward to a discussion here. > (I will probably also publish this onto the Vrsource webforum!) > > I really look forward to the VR2002 conference. > I really don't want VR to be dead. So prove me wrong. > > Is VR dead? > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Anders Backman Email: andersb@cs.umu.se