I Tried VR and It Was Just OK - <AUTHOR> http://blog.codinghorror.com/i-tried-vr-and-it-was-just-ok/ <comment><USER3> LOL. I lived through the first VR hype bubble, and it's pretty remarkable how similar this is to my recollection of VR back then -- the only difference is that at the time, the goofy, uncomfortable headset was tethered to a refrigerator-sized SGI machine at the science museum, and there was no hope of getting it at home. Instead, we got the Lawnmower Man on VHS.

It sounds like technology has advanced enough that we have finally miniaturized the underwhelming user experience for the home viewer, but we still haven't addressed the bigger problem of coming up with something _compelling_ to do with it. Plus ça change...maybe soon we'll get to see investors salivating over "multimedia experiences" delivered via some futuristic version of CD-ROM!

<comment><USER4> > we still haven't addressed the bigger problem of coming up with something > compelling to do with it

For the most of the games that are developed today with first-person view in mind, adding support for VR isn't something that is very hard to add. And these games are already pretty compelling.

The only question is convenience. The post mentioned 3d in televisions — but 3d did win in cinemas. I recently wanted to watch Inside Out in 2d (I get dizzy from 3d), and I couldn't it, although it was just released into the theaters. Only in 3d.

<comment><USER5> First person games as they exist today don't transfer well to VR. The issue is the locomotion problem: Moving the player in the virtual world but not the real world causes motion sickness, since they're not getting a matching input to their vestibular system. Oculus' system today is suited more for cockpit games or 3rd person games with gentle camera movement. Valve are also targetting room sized first person experiences, where the user has enough physical space that the play area can be mapped 1:1.

<comment><USER6> Cockpit simulators have a leg up in this department - not much movement expected in driving / flying / spaceships.

<comment><USER7> Not really. In the real world, you still moving and thus feeling acceleration. Problem therefore still exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It says something that we're writing blog posts about, "This early version of tech didn't absolutely blow my mind"

I mean, this is still early-iPod-days of this tech. You could look at it, especially after hearing hype about the iPod, and say something like, "No wireless, less space than a Nomad, lame." [http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases- ip...](http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod)

Anecdotally, I've found that looking at anything from a perspective of, "People are raving about this, does it live up to the hype?" always makes me respect the thing less.

That doesn't make it less transformative. It just means you didn't like it as much in the beginning. The criticisms are warranted, but that doesn't sway what the future of VR looks like for me.

<comment><USER9> One person was wrong once about the iPod, that means that all criticism of new tech products is invalid forever!

<comment><USER8> That's not what I was saying at all. I'm saying it's easy to misjudge the _potential_ of very early technologies by looking at the wrong criteria.

<comment><USER9> Fundamentally, I'm just sick of that quote about the iPod. It gets trotted out all the time, and I don't see any sign that it encodes any profound wisdom. Is it easy to misjudge the potential of early technologies? How do we know? Because one guy misjudged the popularity of the iPod once? Was the iPod an early technology? Was its popularity due to at-that-time unrealized potential?

But perhaps more relevantly to the VR thing, I don't think that the original article had anything to do with "potential." Everyone understands the potential of VR, but there are people saying that it is really awesome RIGHT NOW. And the author was saying that it is not really awesome RIGHT NOW.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I agree with this article. We bought a Oculus DK2 for work[1]. It functions. It's cool for an hour or two. But no one's touched the DK2 since I wrote that article. There's simply nothing to do with it, and what you can do is better done with a monitor screen. The DK2 is incredibly low resolution. You can easily see the pixels. I was able to get a sense of presence once or twice, when driving down a straight in iRacing, otherwise it was always just a cool 3D effect strapped to my face.

[1] [https://www.codeweavers.com/about/blogs/aeikum/2015/5/29/cod...](https://www.codeweavers.com/about/blogs/aeikum/2015/5/29/codeweavers- experiments-with-oculus-support-for-mac-and-linux)

<comment><USER11> > There's simply nothing to do with it, and what you can do is better done > with a monitor screen.

What content? It's an development kit... except if you intends to develop content for it, for sure you won't find stuff to do with it. It's like saying I hate the android development kit because there's nothing to do with it.

We need content for VR, personally I believe this is why the rift is still not released. That's also why they invest that much in game development.

> I was able to get a sense of presence once or twice

You are unlucky then, the immersion I feel is crazy. Each time I remove my headset, I get the same weird feeling of not being at the right place.

> it was always just a cool 3D effect

I'm pretty sure some good old gamer said the same when they transitioned from text to graphic, and then again when they moved from 2D to 3D.

For sure it's not for everyone, the same way game console aren't for everyone. This is not the revolution that some are saying it is, it won't be the next iPhone, at least it doesn't have to be. It's a new way to play game, a new environment, that's all.

<comment><USER10> > You are unlucky then, the immersion I feel is crazy. Each time I remove my > headset, I get the same weird feeling of not being at the right place.

What games/demos do you play with it? I'd love to experience more compelling software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Jeff is speaking from a position of not having tried the good stuff that delivers a sense of 'presence' in the virtual world. That is the game changer, the thing that is making people believe something special is on the way. When he says "I have experienced modern VR. A lot. I've tried both the Oculus DK1, the Oculus DK2." he's just flatly wrong, he hasn't. Those headsets at not modern VR and using them as the reference for where VR is at is pretty crazy.

But you'll get a chance to try to presence-inducing stuff in the next ~6 months with the consumer release of the Vive and Oculus CV1.

<comment><USER13> > ... delivers a sense of 'presence' in the virtual world

I keep re-reading your comment and it keeps getting stuck in my marketing filter.

What do you mean by a sense of presence?

<comment><USER12> Michael Abrash of Valve now at Oculus giving a basic description: [https://youtu.be/G-2dQoeqVVo?t=3m14s](https://youtu.be/G-2dQoeqVVo?t=3m14s)

It's parts of your lower brain aligning to convince you you're in a virtual world, and while it is a spectrum you really need a high end headset to experience it. Abrash himself mainly dismissed VR's potential prior to experiencing it.

<comment><USER10> Slides (PDF) from that talk, for those who prefer text to video:

[http://media.steampowered.com/apps/abrashblog/MAbrash%20GDC2...](http://media.steampowered.com/apps/abrashblog/MAbrash%20GDC2013.pdf)

I didn't know he'd move on to work at Oculus. Interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Counterpoint:

My friend's architecture office has Occulus, and everyone, clients and architects love it.

I asked her if anyone experienced any headaches or seasickness but since there is no action happening just a visual walk through buildings it seems side effects are minimized.

So for architecture Occulus fills a nice niche.

<comment><USER15> The real question for me is if architects end up working in the OR rig or whether it's just a novelty for client demos. As I mention upthread, 3D has a long history as a compelling novelty technology; a real test for me would be whether architects use it every day and the ones who don't have it are demanding it instead of demanding, say, bigger 2D monitors.

<comment><USER16> we've definitely seen architects get real value from VR beyond the novelty. That's definitely one of the harder parts of being a VR company at this stage. Getting people to adopt because its actually valuable and not because it's cool or because they want to be the first.

Some of our customers are using it to analyze the impact of re-arranging work spaces or to communicate why design A while more expensive is better than design B. We've been working on and are really excited about using VR to A/B test physical spaces. We do it for websites, why not for the spaces we live in every day?

a cool case study:

www.interiorarchitects.com/blog/the-future-of-architectural-renderings-at-ia- is-in-virtual-reality/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Jeff compares the DK2 to Quake resolution (640x480), but I think that's quite misleading. Quake looks terrible, to modern eyes, but that has little to do with the resolution, and much more with the low polygon count, low quality textures and the lack of lighting effects.

Run Far Cry 4 at 640x480, and it'll look much better.

<comment><USER18> I do not think Far Cry 4 would look very good at 640x480. Imagine it full screen on even a modest 20" monitor at that resolution.

There are tricks, yes, but big pixels are a fundamental problem until you reach a "good enough" size. Sort of like when the iPhone 4 and retina was released. We are very, very far from retina resolution in VR.

<comment><USER19> [http://images.cdn.stuff.tv/sites/stuff.tv/files/styles/flexs...](http://images.cdn.stuff.tv/sites/stuff.tv/files/styles/flexslider_desktop/public/news/FC4_resized.jpg?itok=2ZSfqq8p)

Looks significantly better than Quake, even when maximized to fullscreen (except for the JPEG artifacts)!

edit:

far cry 4 640x480 filetype:png

[http://www.picmygame.com/wp- content/uploads/ktz/yQq6DDQq-m2a...](http://www.picmygame.com/wp- content/uploads/ktz/yQq6DDQq-m2a5wamnac6ztznkryv70k98058ede2pzps4a4stz4.png)

[http://www.picmygame.com/wp- content/uploads/ktz/Z7ptQrAC-m1n...](http://www.picmygame.com/wp- content/uploads/ktz/Z7ptQrAC-m1ns3ad8vr1t7auu05yj2dug80xr7hbsmgln4qqtog.png)

The text isn't great and the last image is hard to look at, but that's probably post processing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The Vive's approach for the controllers works really well and it sounds like it'll be shipping this year. It's strange that he doesn't mention it. I've tried a bunch of the other attempts going back to primitive university lab stuff in the 90s that took up two SGI Octanes, the Vive is the first thing I've seen that seems good enough to build apps on. I think the biggest problem initially is going to be figuring out what the killer app is. In terms of comparisons with the growth curve of mobile VR might look the same but we're much closer to the AMPS brick phone stage not the iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think this is where the adult industry can act as the "bridge" and can make use of VR as it is today until it is mature enough for gaming. The lack of input/feedback isn't that big of a deal since for adult entertainment your hands need to be free for a more fulfilling experience.

</comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash My only disagreement is with the "gloves" idea. I thought we learned from the Wii that motion controls without force feedback is anti-immersion. Imagine "firing" a 12 gauge shotgun and seeing considerable recoil in VR while your hands stay still. Without haptic feedback I'll have to rely on imagination for the full experience, which I thought video games were supposed to skip.

<comment><USER22> Maybe they could make it so you have to mimic the recoil motion yourself, with your own hands, to fire your shotgun.

You would have to make sure to always turn the safety of your shotgun before putting it away, otherwise if try to quick-draw you will shoot yourself in the foot.

edit: grammar

<comment><USER23> That's anti-immersive, too. When you fire a shotgun in real life, you don't have to do the recoil motion yourself -- you just pull the trigger, and the recoil occurs on its own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Seems contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian. Even the cheap google cardboard, which ticks all his requirements except 4K (and probably will have that in the next year), is mindblowing, both to me and friends and family I've shown it to. I didn't even show them games running on cardboard, just videos shot using Google's special 360 cameras.

The technical challenges around VR are not _that_ deep, hard, and fascinating. At this point, it's only a matter of prices coming down.

<comment><USER25> > _Seems contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian._

Seems he gave about 2000 words of the concrete reasons he doesn't like it.

Heck, he event gave CONCRETE suggestions of things that need improvement.

So, no, this is the very opposite of "contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian".

> _is mindblowing, both to me and friends and family I 've shown it to_

Gimmicks can be mindblowing too. Have you used it for extented periods of time? Would you? And, since there are always outliers, would others bother?

Some people were also totally in love with their Google Glass BS, and we know how that turned out in the market.

<comment><USER26> For some one who is not into gaming, the experience(no matter how horrible to the expert gamer) will seem like the first time some one would have seen Television, used a telephone or used a desktop computer. Its a new thing which the ordinary person hasn't used before, and they will be super thrilled to even get a chance to use it.

Heck even the tech crowd was excited about this around 2 years back, how do you expect the ordinary public to not be excited about it?

Yeah, there are problems to solve. And once the overall trend moves towards VR, there will be a good enough incentive to bring down prices and have more focussed engineering towards these problems.

Beyond all that, Gaming looks like a very small area of application for this kind of a technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> That's your opinion.

I do demos with a Alienware R18 laptop with a DK2 with demos different depts have made. I bring this oversized desktop in a laptop format to demos, and show them off.

I perhaps have 1 or 2 people out of 50+ each time that aren't wowed. And given that I've went through a 1000 people at semi-random, that I think its fair to say that this guy is in the ~3% minority who isn't impressed.

All I can say is to give it a shot. Try a roller coaster demo, or play different games in the Rift. It really is crazy awesome. The only bad thing is keyboard input is __hard __, and still an unsolved problem. I figure when haptic gloves get good, this will be the final answer.

Edit: Seriously? -1's over a valid comments from someone who has 4 DK2's and 2 DK1's ? So bashing VR on HN is in vogue now. Got it.

<comment><USER28> If you aren't a gamer or technology person, it's way more impressive then if you already live in that world. Spending hours on the thing vs a demo is a very different experience as well.

<comment><USER27> Admittedly true.

I do spend a great deal of time on our rifts. I've done some dev work for it, along with using it as my virtual desktop. I didn't think that people would be interested in my personal use case, because I am rather an outlier.

Airflow is one concern. I am hot, and stay hot. Along with that, it tends to fog up the lenses and get somewhat sweaty. Demos aren't a concern because condensation doesn't have a chance to form.

I also have issues of depth perfection after about 4 hours, which is around lunchtime. This goes away in perhaps 5 minutes, but is still a problem.

There is also the screen door effect still in DK2. I've heard the CV1 doesn't have this, but that shall be seen.

There is also the mention of input issue. Using keyboard is still hard. I still resort to looking down the nose-hole to see the keyboard (others with Rift will know what I mean). I've been playing around using a wiimote and nunchuck for input along with a sensor bar, and it works well.

Sound is also another problem area, but CV1 has builtin speakers. It's to be seen if they're good or not.

<comment><USER29> > I also have issues of depth perfection after about 4 hours, which is around > lunchtime. This goes away in perhaps 5 minutes, but is still a problem.

Don't think depth perception is going to go away without modifying human eyes and/or the brain, which is a much harder task than VR itself.

I have short-term depth perception issues when I take off glasses.

<comment><USER27> I'm not so sure about that.

A small infrared camera and led mounted near the eye can track the eye. Along with tracking, you can also calculate the depth field by determining the circumference of the retina. This in turn allows for software-defined focus to be built in on applications.

I also see an interesting future for light-depth-field cameras and displays that capture all depths and allow user controlled focus. The question is: can we replay this data format in a single display?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm really interested in good VR, but then I start to _really_ think about it:

How long do I really want to play a game with a headset strapped to my face?

I'm going to need better input devices soon. That's more $$$

I have a pretty high-end system right now, capable of playing pretty much any top-end game at full settings at 60FPS, and it doesn't meet the specs facebook/oculus wants, so to use it my purchase-price goes up by 4 figures.

I buy it, and a year later an even betterer headset comes out.

I'm going to need to have a dedicated space for it, I have too many beer bottles and other things on my desk to be blindly moving around with motion controls.

I'm really concerned also about the marketing and messaging coming from facebook/oculus. I _really_ don't want to be part of a facebook branded and owned cyberspace. And the marketing story (we're shipping with an Xbox One controller!) is not what I want to hear from a supposedly 2 billion dollar company.

They've already so much as said they're going to nickle and dime buyers with new controllers later anyway.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm most excited for VR headsets to replace my desktop monitors. Infinitely sized displays in 360 degrees around me...I think that's where the real future is for these things. And doing that won't require nearly the hardware power that a 3D game does. The main thing holding it back is that the displays in the Oculus are still a little too low-resolution to make text 100% crisp and clear. I fully expect that a couple of years from now, though, I'll be ditching my monitors for a VR headset.

<comment><USER32> This is the dream for me too. We're a couple k more lines of resolution on cell phone screens to making it happen though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> So refreshing to see an article about VR that's sole purpose isn't to build hype for VR!

My only experience with VR was trying the Samsung Gear headset in Schipol airport. It was a new, exciting experience for the five minutes I got to try it out. I imagine that Oculus Rift will be a much better experience, seeing as it's not based off a mobile phone but built solely for a VR immersion.

Despite how relatively amazing my first VR experience was, I can quite clearly see what the author means about it not 'revolutionising' this and that industry upon release. But I feel the most important aspect is that the technology is in its early infancy and, just like the television/consoles that came before it, will take a lot of time, innovation and behavioural changes to truly break into the general public and make a difference across different industries.

</comment><comment><USER34> A lot of his complaints seem to be imposed by constraints on current consumer spending - basically, _surely_ people won't be bothered to buy a VR rig if they have a current gen console or spend more than they would on a tablet.

I disagree. So much of consumer electronics (TVs/phones/tablets) has become cheap enough that I think the usual demographics with disposable income won't mind making a splash if Oculus is truly offering a new experience. I've almost been disappointed by going to Best Buy in recent years and not even seeing anything especially cool/desirable there.

This generation also doesn't place a lot of value on traditional aspirational purchases (eg you'll see a lot of well to do yuppies in Priuses or Subarus rather than the BMW that was a rite of passage in previous generations) - <USER2> anything, I think this may lead people to massively underestimate how much millennials will spend on novel/innovative big ticket items.

</comment><comment><USER35> As a counterpoint, I used a DK1 and I thought it was brilliant. Can't wait to use a production model.

I also showed it to an architect friend of mine and he loved it and wants to use it to walk his clients around unrealized house designs.

<comment><USER16> hey rwmj! Would love to talk to your architect friend about how we wants to utilize VR for client presentations. email: angel[at]insitevr.com

My company, InsiteVR, makes it easy for architects to take their 3D models and deploy a VR walkthrough that they can use for design reviews or client presentations. No coding experience required, just a 3D model.

here's a cool example of one of our customers using our software: a cool case study: www.interiorarchitects.com/blog/the-future-of-architectural-renderings- at-ia-is-in-virtual-reality/

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> How is this article news? Everyone knows that VR is still a work in progress. Another article pointing out the current flaws is not bring anything to the table.

</comment><comment> norea-armozel I feel that VR hardware may be good enough to sell to early adopters, but my fear is that the software and products like 'SL 2.0 (Project Sansar)' won't be good enough to give early adopters a reason to buy the hardware. It's all a chicken/egg situation. If there's no good product out there to justify the price tag, no matter how small, then why buy the thing? With products like the iPod and the early smart phones there were compelling reasons to buy them (convenience is a common factor for both). But what's the compelling reason for VR other than novelty? Will it make it easier for game designers and story makers (think Pixar or anyone in the film industry tbh) to convey previously impossible stories? I'm not so sure VR gives creators a new tool in that regards, so I'm going to wait out this cycle of VR to see what happens. Buying the Rift to play Elite Dangerous in VR mode doesn't really excite me and I'm a long time user of virtual worlds like Second Life (going on 11 years on January 2016).

</comment><comment><USER37> This article makes some fair points but the authors opinion is tainted by recency bias. A new technology doesn't need to be as good or better then recent technology it just needs to be different and unique in some way. Gamers and gaming has a really high bar of expectations. I agree that generation 1 of consumer VR won't meet existing AAA game title experiance but it doesnt have to garner mass market appeal. This is like expecting the first mobile phones to be as polished as the iPhone, or early versions of online video to be as good as highdef tvs for mass market appeal. Clearly that wasnt the case, people found value in these early versions of technology even though they were not as good as alternative options because they added some additional element that was unique. For mobile phones if was mobility, for online video it was easy sharing and watch on demand. What will be the key value consumers derive from VR? That remains to be answered but there is something unique and different enough about VR that makes it promising.

</comment><comment><USER38> I find the Oculus Rift DK2 with Vorpx (one of several competing pieces of software to play older or not-designed-for-VR games using the Rift) actually kind of spectacular. Elder Scrolls Online works well with it, and the game is an entirely different kind of experience when you're "actually" there. Atwood might be entirely correct about it being far from mainstream, but did anyone think the first consumer VR headsets from Oculus and Valve were going to hit the big time? I assume they'll do well enough to get to the next generation, and that content will improve over time. If you look at videos of people trying the available demos, they're already feeling it... but everything custom made is short, as no major game works directly with VR.

FWIW, the DK2 screen looks a lot better to my eyes with a screen protector on it: it just barely blurs the pixels so there's much less screen door effect than there is out of the box. I've not had the chance to try the newer, higher-res and framerate headsets.

</comment><comment><USER7> People fall into two camps:

Camp 1: "Anyone that doesn't understand what a seminal change this is needs to take a history lesson"

Camp 2: "Anyone that doesn't understand that this is mostly hype needs to take a history lesson"

I'm gonna stake an opinion here and put myself solidly in Camp 1. I think this is going to be as impactful as the transition from radio/audio to tv/screen. Radio didn't go away, but it is a much diminished medium. Compare your own daily radio time vs. screen time. The same shift will now occur, and we'll see similar ratio with daily screen time vs VR/AR time.

Go backward in time to 1945 and ask a teenager if they'd rather watch TV or listen to the radio. Ask the same question of today's teens with regard to VR. The human brain craves high-fidelity stimulation. A flat screen is just no match.

TV was "just OK" when first introduced to consumers. The picture was lousy, the tech was complex, the cost was high. No doubt that is all true of VR today. It won't be true for long.

<comment><USER39> Playing DA here, but a lot of what you said could be said about 3D movies, which were a total flop for 15-20 years and even today face a lot of backlash and hatred.

While I have high hopes/beliefs in VR, I do fall under the "3D movies suck, I wish they'd stop making them. It's a failed technology and gives me headaches." camp.

So I can see where Camp 2 is coming from when they hate on AR/VR technologies.

<comment><USER7> But follow my logic. Put a 13 year old in front of a TV with a collection of 2D and 3D movies - and see which ones she chooses to watch. My whole point is that the 13 year old's get to decide in the long run. Your "3D movies suck" sentiment is perhaps an adults opinion (one that I share), and perhaps also an opinion expressed about movie theaters - which is not the same as personal tech choices.

<comment><USER39> I feel that will vary more from household-to-household based on the parents experienced with 3D movies. I've met teenagers who have never seen a 3D movie but claim to hate them!

There has also been some talk (not sure about actual studies) that many adults who claim to hate 3D haven't even _seen_ a 3D movie in the past 5-8~ years; in which 3D technology (and using it properly) has improved. A bad experience years ago "tainted" the technology and they want nothing to do with it. This is discussed by a number of movie critics.

My biggest fear for AR/VR is that the first experiences might be like how 3D movies were... and it'll take over a decade to dig out of the hole that creates. Lack of R&D, slow improvements, niche media, etc.

Which is also why I feel the big players on the field currently are taking their time, working out the kinks, and trying to make the "first generation" [0] as good as possible for as many people as possible.

[0] I know AR/VR is years old and some products have been marketed as consumer-end. None entered mainstream was well as Oculus has AFAIK, so the hype for the product is a lot higher than it used to be. Kind of like how Windows had tablets long before the iPad but it took the iPad to make tablets "a thing".

<comment><USER7> I believe the tech has great "mid-term" promise, and that it will avoid the issues which made 3D get rejected. However, I don't think that any of the specific VR products that we've been exposed to are going to go consumer commercial. They are way too weak and way too expensive. But we know the magic that Moore's Law can do in just a couple of years.

Oculus admits that their current tech can't/won't support natural Depth of Field, and is therefore unnatural to the point of making most users nauseated. They can't give a date for this problem to be solved - blame the bean counters not the engineers. But I've got no skin in the game so I'm going to stake another opinion. That is that it will take probably 5 years for the tech to support Depth of Field at a price point ($1000 in today's dollars) that consumers will accept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> DK1 and DK2 are light years behind the newest revision of VR tech. Try both of them back to back and see for yourself. Night and day.

<comment><USER27> They are both pretty far back. They are also only $350.

I have access to IUPUI's CAVE, as well as other VR equipment. The expensive equipment is really good, but on part with ~$20k and up. And it's not portable. And it requires applications developed for the CAVE system.

I can haul the laptop in a bag and the rift in its box. Fast, good, or cheap.

Rift picked Fast and cheap. Can't say I blame them. It does well for me and my groups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Today's VR still isn't there. Yesterday's VR didn't go anywhere.

However as someone who has only used the Devkit1 of the Rift I can really see this is the future of SOME entertainment. It is going to be amazing, eventually.

Games in 5-8 years made for VR are going to be mindblowingly immersive. Then again we're still going to have non-VR games. I think it's important to understand that this tech is really only useful in certain contexts.

Horror games (for VR) are going to be painful, adrenaline pumping, sweat inducing, monstrosities.

Huge possibilities exist for experiencing other perspectives in VR, too numerous to even count. Even basic things like experiencing what it's like to be taller/shorter will have an unexpectedly large impact on immersion.

VR is basically the DDR dancepad of the future. It's just an unusual interface device to increase immersion, but it's going to (eventually) be incredible. I'm very excited for the future of VR and non-VR alike.

</comment><comment><USER42> I went to E3 for the sole purpose of trying out VR (Oculus). First time I tried out DK1, I was incredibly disappointed. The resolution made the experience worthless. I went to E3 another time, again for Oculus, and they had a whole booth set up this time with DK2. It was also disappointing. Better resolution, but still not good enough, and like Atwood says, the controls are terrible. I was trying it out on a AAA game, too.

When I started seeing articles spouting how unbelievable VR was, I just assumed they were using some new model that fixed all these problems.. but I wouldn't be surprised if it's just hype, too. It could also be that these journalists simply aren't gamers, and seeing snazzy 3d graphics up in their face for the first time is enough to blow them away.

</comment><comment><USER43> I was swayed by his points enough that my level of excitement for buying one of these things has taken a big hit.

On the other hand, the industry hasn't had much of a chance to get running yet. Maybe the hardware issues will prevent this from happening anytime soon. But I'm not surprised that you would get bored working with device which only has demo content available for it.

I took a look at a list of some of the highest gaming budgets. I would think an effort of the scale of a game on this list could create something which would provide a good counter argument.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_g...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop)

</comment><comment><USER44> A description I read about galaxy vr is the only application that made sense in the current VR space from consumer point of view - the optics can create a friggin huge _2D_ screen to view in 3D space. I haven't tested it though.

I'm not so sure gaming is the numero uno application. There are a shiteload of places I would like to experience but really cannot access. Oceanic trenches, top of Everest, experiencing a volcanic erruption from near by. Sports fans would probably appreciate a POV right above the playing field (images from drone cams). Games sound really boring to me - compared to the real world vistas I could experience. Yeah, middle aged geezer, blah blah blah.

</comment><comment><USER16> i'd be interested to hear what Jeff thinks about the GearVR. Most people brush it off as just another phone holder with lenses, but I'd say it's the most compelling VR headset available on the market.

It has a lot of what he requests from a VR headset: wireless, better display than DK2, and doesnt require a gaming rig. It's virtually plug and play and I think that's why people love it.

MobileVR is what will and should be people's first taste. I've spoken with a lot of architects who love cardboard because it sets such low expectations but blows people away when they put it on. The DK2 is a bit underwhelming as you're strapped into some gaming rig so you're expecting some cutting edge graphics and end up with what something that looks like N64 VR.

One thing that was neglected in this post is the emotional response that VR, even in it's current state, can evoke. I was sold on the Rift after trying some of the early horror titles. They were graphically very basic, but every corner had me sweating and the jump scares had me looking away. You could argue a 2D monitor has the same effect but when you're in VR and try to look away only to find you don't see your living room or anything familiar everything changes. And the social experiences like Convrge or Altspace are also something to be excited about. I was at first quite skeptical of things like this, but the subtle head movements that are incorporated into the avatars are enough to give one a sense of "meatspace" social cues. I once found myself talking to someone in Convrge and was awkwardly nodding and avoiding eye contact when I realized this was just an avatar. It's simple but powerful.

</comment><comment><USER45> This article is pure distillation of everything that's wrong with VR -- not the tech, but the people who are thinking about it and trying to build it. Specifically youngish white male gamer nerds.

I want to write about this more at length -- maybe I'll put something on my blog or on Medium or something -- but I also tried VR, and the most interesting aspect of the experience was just how clueless all of the gamer types at the gaming company office I went to were about what other people out there in the world would want from the experience. Here is what I mean.

The most impressive and important part of the otherwise crappy VR demo I sat through was a crudely rendered virtual media room with a big screen TV, where I was placed on a virtual couch to watch some movie clips. Why did this rock my world?

It rocked my world because I happen to know that it would cost me $40K at least to add a media room on to my house, and if I could buy $5K worth of VR gear for my wife and I and get pretty much the same effect, then that would be a major win for us (and a loss for Austin's contractors and architects).

In other words, gaming is the /least/ interesting thing about VR. VR has the potential to disrupt the architecture and building trades. In the real world, people like to have access to spaces that they can do various non-gaming things in, and they have historically been willing to pay quite a bit of money to have those spaces built. VR will drive the cost of adding those spaces to one's home/office/trailer/pad/etc. down towards zero.

I tried explaining this to the crowd of young white male gamer nerds gathered around the pizza station after the demo, and they sort of chuckled at this boring old guy rambling about building contractors (I'm pretty sure none of them owned a house) and went back to wracking their brains about what, to them, is the single most important thing in the world: how are we going to make a frigging GAME with this?

I know these guys, because prior to my wife + 3 kids + house I was one of them: a young white male gamer nerd. But at this point I've been around the block enough to recognize that the number of people interested in blasting virtual aliens or orcs is a few orders of magnitude lower than the number of people who want to just hang out on the deck of a mega-yacht at sundown, or have coffee once again in an exact replica of a Parisian cafe that they used to frequent in the 60's, or retreat from their kids and life into a virtual media room and watch Game of Thrones on a virtual big-screen TV.

Note that I'm not slamming Jeff Atwood, who for all I know owns a house and who thinks about many things other than leveling up and collecting loot. I'm just saying that he has thoroughly missed the point of VR, and in a super common and troubling way.

I'm not an SJW by any stretch, but VR needs women, and black people, and old people, and in fact it will get them because the market will demand it. That's because VR isn't the next Atari 2600 or Kinect -- it's the next TV, and the next Internet. Are today's Internet addicts hooked on MUDs or MOOs? No, they aren't. And tomorrow's VR junkies won't give a rip about games.

<comment><USER18> I have three kids for the record. And trust me, if VR isn't doing a good job of making a believable aliens-are-destroying-your-house game, it isn't going to be any more believable when it is just rendering your house with bigger rooms.

That's the problem.

<comment><USER45> I totally disagree. I would have taken that crappy media room demo home and (along with another headset for my wife) right then and there, for the simple reason that as crude as it was it totally scratched the itch of "watch TV in a dedicated room in the house with no kid stuff anywhere."

FWIW I agree with you about the technical stuff -- the resolution has to go way up. But it will.

Again, the tradeoff is not "do I buy this megabuck Windows PC for VR gaming, or do I just stick with a console?" The tradeoff is, "do I pay a bunch of money to knock a wall out and/or redecorate, or do I buy this VR rig and some DLC from virtualcelebritycribs.com and call it a day."

<comment><USER27> It also does something else.

It makes smaller apartments even easier to live in. Suddenly my 400 sq. ft. studio is not small, but now very spacious. In fact it's as big as I want it. Virtual, of course, but that makes tight living spaces livable. Perhaps, it can even be applied to tiny houses movement. 150 sq.ft. is now reasonable, as long as I stay in the VR area.

Given that many of the younger generation rent, I would surmise that reasonably priced VR will make rents go up even further, because small spaces will be in demand. And I'd also think the hikkomori trend from Japan will be exported to the rest of the world, as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> DK2 isn't that good - ghosting, no positional tracking, screen door effect, etc..

CV1 really is amazing though. I've tried it. I wonder what the author would think.

</comment><comment><USER47> This article is very much spot on. I think the true value of VR is the ability to provide new ways of playing in virtual spaces, but those ways of playing need to be compelling, they need to have good gameplay, like anything else. The 'gameplay' for watching a movie in VR is going to be absolute shit, because the viewer inherently has zero agency. The experience must be interactive and it must give the player a sense of agency (re: why hands are critical), otherwise the cost of putting on the headset will be too high for most people. Similarly, VR won't replace other experiences that have good gameplay and give players a sense of agency. Alien Isolation is an absolutely amazing game because the level of quality for the writing, pacing, level design, sound design, voice acting, control scheme, gameplay mechanics etc. are all in the 99th percentile for games and more importantly all of those parts complement eachother. Producing something like that is HARD regardless of the medium. For every Alien Isolation there are going to be a pile of shit games that you really don't want to play.

I think most of the VR guys admit that bad games in VR are going to be exceptionally bad, but I haven't heard anyone articulate quite so clearly Jeff's concerns that the experiences will just be boring. Watching Conway's game of life run: boring. Setting up and _playing_ with a fully interactive Conway's game of life: wait is it already 2am?!

</comment><comment><USER48> the hype is about the trendline, not the current experiences. The DK1 was a quantum leap over previous efforts. DK2 was so far beyond DK1 it was a completely different experience. Vive is apparently as far beyond DK2 as DK2 was beyond DK1, though I haven't tried it.

Ignoring this in favor of "lol DK2 isn't that great" is shortsighted.

</comment><comment><USER49> So his problem is that pre-release, AAA game software for pre-release hardware is nothing more than tech demos. And bloggers. But let's not get too far off topic discussing his own contributions to the "I need to get my voice included, too!" problems with blogging-as-a-career-move. Let's just stick to the tech.

It's disappointing to see someone who has such a prominent position in the developer community not just completely misunderstand a new piece of tech, but then go on to use his platform to stand up one part of that burgeoning sector as a straw man against all of it.

I agree, the games and other software available right now are underwhelming in a lot of aspects. That's because they are either made by indies who don't have the technical prowess to figure out best workflow for the nascent technology, or by AAA game studios that don't have the creativity necessary to make anything other than adaptations of their current FPS franchises, what all the serious pundents agree is the worst possible UX for VR. That's not too say there aren't great experiences, but they are few and far between right now.

Though frankly, so are monodisplay games, after you've burnt out on Call of Duty and World of Warcraft five (or more!) years ago.

But if all you see VR as good for is games, man, I just don't know if I can even reach you with words.

People keep comparing VR to when smartphones were new. I think that is wrong, because it implies a platform rather than peripheral approach, but even if we accept it, are smartphones just about games? IDK, maybe for some cynical, short sighted view of them they are. I don't think we are anywhere near fully taking the potential of smartphones. But even more, they represent a fairly different (though I wouldn't say fundamentally different) means if computing for users.

If you look at the original iPhone like Atwood has for VR, then you're going to come to similar conclusions, "this hardware sucks, the resolution sucks, who would want this? I want Siri _now_." I mean, the iPhone didn't even have the App Store when it was first released. Everyone was expected to make HTML5 web apps.

But VR isn't smartphones. It's upgrading from monochromatic CRTs to full color LCDs and adding a mouse to your computer, before any GUI operating system has been invented. Thinking this is only for games, that it won't evolve (thaaank you, Jeff Atwood, we weren't aware resolution should be improved or that the headsets are heavy), that I don't think I've ever seen anyone come unstuck from such stubbornly old ways of thinking.

VR is going to be the thing that keeps the first manned mission to Mars from dying of boredom-induced insanity on the longest single-leg voyage man has ever undertaken. The Mars colonists will use VR to exercise their body _and_ minds. It will allow them to participate in vastly more cultural exchange with Earth than would be feasible without.

VR is going to be the thing to save the Rainforest and push people to cleanup any future ecological disasters. We are going to be able to put people in the space, to give then a hook on which to empathize that isn't possible through just TV.

Even for mundane things, VR is going to revolutionize content authoring, especially in the 3D space. Editing 3D models with 2D tools is an exercise in learned zen suppression of frustration. I'm working on an IDE in VR, where text isn't just an adaptation of the old dog chow of your Visual Studios or Eclipses or Emacsen of the world.

So yeah, it's young. Is it "not ready?" I don't agree. When the first color CRTs were released, we knew they would be better at a higher resolution, but that didn't stop us from using them. I think VR is ready. It's not ideal, but we won't be able to build the ideal unless we get it out, start exercising it.

EDIT: okay, to quell the "hype" a bit, things you can do in VR _right now_ that are better than without VR.

\- Simulator games, i.e. racing and flying, on the DK2. Project Cars and Elite: Dangerous are flipping amazing. I actually don't care for games for VR that much, but I love these games and I can't play them without the headset anymore. Yes, even the "low" resolution of the DK2 is better than playing these games at a "high" resolution on a flat screen.

\- Architectural visualization with Google Cardboard. Several architecture firms are now using VR to visualize future buildings as well as additions to current buildings. I've heard several anecdotes of plans being fundamentally changed after seeing them in VR vs. just architectural drawings.

\- Watch films made for VR in Vrse ([http://vrse.com/](http://vrse.com/)). There aren't very many yet, and some of them are very short, but they are very good and not at all like 3D TV.

Things you'll be able to do, very soon

\- Event space visualization with Google Cardboard. Sites like Social Tables are developing visualizers for their existing event space planning software.

\- Interactively author GPU shaders in the DK2 [https://share.oculus.com/app/shadertoy- vr](https://share.oculus.com/app/shadertoy-vr)

\- Play "I Expect You To Die" which has not only been one of the few VR games I've enjoyed, it's one of the only "locked room" games I've enjoyed [https://share.oculus.com/app/i-expect-you-to- die](https://share.oculus.com/app/i-expect-you-to-die)

So is VR "not ready yet"? I don't think so. I think it's as ready as any new tech on release day, perhaps even more so, because the developer ecosystem is just so much more open.

<comment><USER50> _VR is going to be the thing to save the Rainforest_

This is proving the article's point about excessive hype.

<comment><USER49> You pick that quote and not the Mars one? Because that particular reference is already happening. Excessive hype is when Magic Leap spends two years lighting up the tech press without showing any hard tech to people not locked up under an NDA. You _can_ experience, right now, being physically in a certain place, seeing it on TV, and being in it virtually. VR really is closer to being there, even in simple forms like Google Cardboard, than it is to watching TV. As time progresses, the hardware improvements will push it even closer. No, it won't be perfectly like being there, but not everyone can (or in some cases should) be there. VR is already showing people things they probably wouldn't have seen without it.

<comment><USER50> How is it "saving the rainforest"? Doing so is a matter of policing in Brazil, funding anti-deforestation projects globally, and limiting the international market in hardwood.

Seeing trees in VR is absolutely not going to make more than a tiny difference to people's political beliefs on the importance of rainforests and their willingness to spend money on them.

<comment><USER49> > Seeing trees in VR is absolutely not going to make more than a tiny > difference to people's political beliefs on the importance of rainforests > and their willingness to spend money on them.

If you think that, then I think you have to also think that seeing it in person is not going to have much of a difference, either. I fundamentally disagree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'd say for VR it's definitely an improvement. Resolutions will get better. More power will get cheaper.

I think we realize that to have immersion we absolutely need accessories. Haptic bodysuits and gloves. Simulate tacticle sensations and feedbacks digitally. Firing a shotgun resulting in your arms moving back as if you just fired a shotgun.

Next we can have some sort of stationary hamster ball where you could move about in complete freedom suspended in air. It would rotate to give you an illusion of gravity. The haptic bodysuit would give you the feeling that you are standing on the ground or in a race car or a spaceship.

Why stop there? Nanomachine solution you would drink and allow you to eat food in your VR and taste it.

The possibilities are endless but so are the unique challenges each of these necessary component of VR.

OR there was a way to fire some sort of lucid dream world but controlled by a software. You would know you are dreaming but you would be completely caught up in that VR world generated with the help of your own brain. Everything feels real, but what if people neglect their own bodies, wanting to be in the world as long as possible.

</comment><comment><USER52> "I've always been the first kid on my block to recommend an awesome, transformative gaming experience, from the Atari 2600 to the Kinect"

Kinect was an awesome transformative gaming experience? Really?</comment>


PostgreSQL pain points - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/591723/ <comment><USER2> I must be missing something. Why doesn't PostgreSQL use O_DIRECT when doing non-journaled writes to the data blocks? I know there are alignment restrictions on the userspace buffers used to do the reads and writes, but these don't seem insurmountable, and the payoff is huge. Is it because it's not POSIX?

<comment><USER3> Using O_DIRECT well requires taking on a surprising amount of additional resource management responsibility. Also, the implementation is not portable and, combined with the additional responsibility previously mentioned, adds a ton of conditional compilation. The alignment requirements are not an issue at all; anyone using O_DIRECT is also going to be used properly aligned I/O buffers in any case.

O_DIRECT can have a lot of benefits. However, while O_DIRECT may be simple to use by itself, the other design and implementation requirements that are indirectly dragged along are not trivial by any means. Consequently, you should not be using O_DIRECT unless you can manage the substantial indirect overhead in implementation. It turns off a lot of OS features most developers take for granted.

<comment><USER2> You've essentially just waved your hands. Conditional complication is not an issue at all; anyone working on a large portable program is going to have large swaths of conditionally compiled code. Phrases like "resource management responsibility" and "substantial indirect overhead" are pretty vague, and aren't really helping me understand why O_DIRECT can't be used.

 _It turns off a lot of OS features most developers take for granted._

Yeah, like OS buffering. What else?

<comment><USER3> I use O_DIRECT almost exclusively in the software I write; I am familiar with the overhead. You can use O_DIRECT very easily without a lot of overhead if you wish but the performance will be much worse than not using it unless you competently reimplement many other parts of the OS functionality at the same time.

To use O_DIRECT effectively in Linux, at a minimum you need to write a buffer cache that is both fast and adaptive to workloads with proper cache replacement schedulers (no LRU crap), you need to write a complete I/O scheduler replacement (e.g. using io_submit and related interfaces) which is not portable at all, and you need to stop using almost all file system APIs (it interferes with the I/O scheduling bypass).

O_DIRECT is easy to use for very narrow cases. Taking advantage of it for anything slightly complicated in terms of file I/O usage and you bite off a lot more low-level implementation or the performance will actually be worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to see an objective real world comparison of Linux kernel vs FreeBSD kernel and ZFS with postgresql. I've got a (not terribly busy) box to build for someone and I'm torn between the two.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why does the Linux kernel let the disk sit idle before the fsync? Why does fsync cause such a storm, if the kernel could write as it goes? Also, why does PostgreSQL do buffered writes instead of unbuffered? Seems like two wrongs make a wrong here...

<comment><USER6> Write-as-you-go isn't necessarily an optimal strategy for general purpose workloads with intermittent IO - batching writes lets you do more linear writes, do a better job of allocating blocks, hit the journal less often...

There is a need for an alternate API, but it's not like fsync is "broken" for the general case.

<comment><USER7> fsync has been broken since it was introduced in BSD4.x. It's never worked well, usually flushing the whole machine cache in one huge batch of i/o. I'm told current versions on Linux will restrict it to the one open file, but it's still a shotgun instead of a rifle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if running on systems with NV cache controllers experience the issues with the slow fsync.

<comment><USER7> Yes, fsync typically chews a boatload of CPU running down the pages in the cache to see what pages need to be written, then all the i/o path to enqueue the writes.</comment></comment>


Error messages in login process: Privacy and Security - <AUTHOR> http://tarunbatra.com/blog/security/Error-messages-in-login-process-Privacy-and-Security/ <comment><AUTHOR> I found effects of login failure messages on security and privacy of an app interesting and did some analysis on it.</comment>


Joe Armstrong: Crypto Tutorial [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/joearms/crypto_tutorial/blob/master/crypto_tutorial.pdf <comment><USER2> Please, please, please, do not implement any crypto after reading this. The simplistic explanation of symmetric encryption (talking about using "salts" to get distinct ciphertext each time to "make attacker's life more difficult") is superficial and you should not feel comfortable implementing crypto after studying this tutorial. Go study something properly written by a real cryptographer.

For the record, the AES algorithm itself does not encrypt arbitrarily sized data: it works on 128-bit blocks only. To make it work on arbitrary data, there's a ton of techniques that work together to make it happen that need far more care than just "adding salt". Also, read about authenticated encryption and why it is necessary.

I've heard Dan Boneh's Coursera course is a good intro to basic crypto.

Once again, please stay away of this guide.</scare>

<comment><USER3> Do you realise the author is also the creator of the Erlang programming language and not some random noob from the internet?

<comment><USER4> That's no excuse, it's still bad crypto. If anything it's worse, because as we've just seen from your reply, some people think that experience in language design somehow translates to knowledge of cryptography.

<comment><USER3> Please don't put words into my mouth.

The original top level comment was poor and my comment was responding to it, e.g. Armstrong says "AES assumes the data to be encrypted is a multiple of 16 bytes long", which is correct so I don't know why the OP felt the need to say "for the record, the AES algorithm itself does not encrypt arbitrarily sized data" as Armstrong did not claim as such.

<comment><USER4> The original comment is correct here. AES by itself is indeed just going to encrypt a single block of 128/192/256 bits. To encrypt a plaintext longer than that, you need to apply the cipher repeatedly on subsequent blocks. The exact mode in which that's done is important.

For example in this case the code uses the CBC mode (a fact not mentioned anywhere in the document). CBC has the funny property that flipping bit X in cipherblock N will flip bit X in plaintext block N+1 (while completely scrambling plaintext block N). This is a very exploitable property. Which is why the standard advice would be that you always need to authenticate, not just encrypt. (E.g. encrypt-then-mac).

But of course this document doesn't give even this most basic of crypto recommendations. Which endangers anyone who reads it and thinks they learned something.

<comment><USER2> nit: all AES variants are 128-bit block ciphers, i.e. they transform 128-bit data blocks. AES-192 and AES-256 take 192-bit and 256-bit keys but still operate on 128-bit blocks. (Rijndael itself supports varying block sizes, but the AES standard has only adopted the 128-bit version.)

<comment><USER4> You're of course correct, thanks. This is exactly why no one but an expert should say anything at all about crypto. It'll always be wrong somehow :-P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What Joe Armstrong wrote on the erlang mailinglist when announcing the document:

I have written a crypto tutorial which shows how various cryptographic algorithms can be written in Erlang.

[https://github.com/joearms/crypto_tutorial/blob/master/crypt...](https://github.com/joearms/crypto_tutorial/blob/master/crypto_tutorial.pdf)

I'm going to present this next week in Dublin.

It's a bit rough round the edges, but it's at the stage where I'd appreciate feedback.

My intention is not to present 'the best' techniques nor the fastest algorithms but to encourage understanding.

Cheers /Joe

</comment><comment><USER6> The link to the PDF in GitHub's web interface crashed my tab in iPad Safari; this raw link works though: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/joearms/crypto_tutorial/ma...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/joearms/crypto_tutorial/master/crypto_tutorial.pdf) .</comment>


Linus Torvalds on Oracle Java API Copyright Claims Against Android (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/TZsT2BP3TDh <comment><AUTHOR> What I'm more surprised about frankly is that Linus legitimately used Google+ back then. Who would have thought?</comment>


Introducing Amazon's Windowshop.com - <AUTHOR> http://windowshop.com/

<comment><USER2> Zoomii.com is a nice completely javascript version by a friend from a canadian startup. Focused completely on books. Zoomii's really impressive. Its speed makes google maps feel slow.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure how practical it is, but it's really cool anyway. I felt like I was actually browsing a bookstore.

<comment><USER4> It is _surprisingly_ practical. It's fun to browse through. They propagate a lot of the most important Amazon information through, so that you can look at more than just the covers. And I'm sure it makes the designers of book covers, who work really hard at their art, very happy to see online stores like this.

Having said that, here are some reasons why I prefer Amazon's usual interface:

* Used book prices

* links to other editions (including Kindle, audio, etc.)

* "Customers who bought this item also bought" (with ratings) -- I use this to get a quick grasp of the popular titles in any given genre.

* The customer ratings, which are of course being gamed these days, but which continue to provide additional perspective in some cases.

And, of course, what this is really missing is the ability to open up the book and page easily through it. That's the real killer app for a physical bookstore, and zoomii seems to have _less_ of it than Amazon.com, not more. Amazon offers "Look Inside" for many books, which I don't think is really a great substitute for looking inside a physical book, but it's better than nothing.

Is Amazon's interface cluttered? Yes. Is it so cluttered that I'm willing to give up these bits of it in exchange for less clutter? No.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A nice design. Looks familiar with CoolIris. But, it is much harder to view more items since there are limited spaces for large, nice poster. There is no search bar for accurate search, no auto recommendation. It is something like best sell book on nytime or top50 on billboard. I can not get any sense about its usability.

<comment><USER6> I just tried CoolIris, what a pain -- both to install (a 13mb download) and to use (the sweeping scrolling animation lasts way too long, very impractical).

I actually enjoyed windowshop... for me, it captures the experience of walking through a bookstore, finding random stuff along the way, but even better, with music and video playing automatically. I agree that auto recommendation would be a 'plus' but as for search, when I want to find something I would use their normal interface (much faster).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's nice, but I find it unintuitive that the left/right arrows take you to the top of the next column instead of to the poster immediately to the left or right.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's a _very_ nice design. It's been up for about a month now.

</comment><comment><USER9> All style no substance.

</comment><comment><USER10> This identifies a larger trend that will just continue to find more uses online. Web pages are fundamentally high latency pieces of information.

Expansive coverflows like windowshop make it easy to explore information spaces very fast. If you add that plus more aggressive caching of metadata and content on a user's computer (something that was lost with the web) -- there are some really great scenarios out there to be created.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice to have preview of music and film, but I have to admit that i prefer zoomii.com for windowshopping books. Zoomii got more books and a gives a better overview. Besides, zoomii gives you the feeling of beeing in a physical bookstore.

</comment><comment><USER12> Couldn't this be made in javascript? My fan just started (stupid first gen macbook).

<comment><USER2> yes it can! see my other comment about zoomii.com

<comment><USER5> sorry but it can not. Obviously, amazon's website involving with some kind of 3d transformation of covers/images. That is one thing existing javascript can not do. zoomii.com is impressive, but there is no 3d transformations though I think it is a minor difference.

<comment><USER13> Well to be fair, you CAN do 3D with JavaScript, it's just not as practical. ;)

See some of the posts at <http://blog.nihilogic.dk/search/label/3d>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice. This could be combined with a "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" button to learn your tastes and recommend personalized things, just like Pandora.

<comment><USER15> They're Amazon. They already know what most of us like from our purchasing history, but for some reason they aren't using it here.

<comment><USER16> They're probably working on it. They probably thought it would be a good idea to get the default version up and running and then worry about personalizing it later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's like getting a free trip to the Great Wall of China but only being allowed to explore it 2 feet away through a magnifying glass.

</comment><comment><USER18> I almost never like Flash-only sites but this is pretty awesome. I love the simplicity of the UI... just arrow keys!

</comment><comment><USER19> This is up there with ConnectNow and Buzzword as some of the best-designed and most innovative Flash apps I've seen.

</comment><comment><USER20> I like browsegoods.com better. gives a feel of being in a store.</comment>


GraalVM - <AUTHOR> https://www.graalvm.org/ <comment> java-man Please make sure it works with JavaFX out of the box. Thanks!</comment>


Blockchain meets entertainment industry - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@NickAyton/new-film-finance-and-production-operating-model-on-the-ethereum-blockchain-breaks-all-of-the-9f3bc462930e <comment><USER2> I use this guy in my book as the example of literally the worst and most incoherent Blockchain hype I have ever read. Everyone should read it:

[https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/ignori...](https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/ignoring- blockchain-is-corporate-suicide)</comment>


Exposed: Facebook's Secret iPhone Photo Sharing App (Which Looks Amazing) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/15/facebook-secret-photos-app/

<comment><USER2> I now see how it all fits together. Through inside information, Color found out about Facebooks new photo sharing app, which will render them obsolete. The board decided to transform Color into a patent troll, to leverage at least something. Peter Pham disagreed with this direction, and left Color.

</comment><comment><USER3> Curious: Was this a planned leak? If not, then how difficult is it for Facebook to identify exactly whose albums are these?

Also as a side note, for a company like Facebook with apparently not outsiders (like suppliers etc) who have info on the plans of the company, how do these leaks happen? Employees?

<comment><USER4> I think these are mock-ups, so no albums are visible that can be tied to a specific person.

<comment><USER5> A guy who works for Facebook is tagged in the center photo. <http://www.facebook.com/beau>

<comment><USER6> hah. I went to school with Beau, he was a complete douchebag. Much more than usual for a french immersion student.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> i'm surprised it's taken facebook this long to create something photo specific. photos are one of the top (if not THE top) reason why people use facebook.

</comment><comment><USER8> This has an uncanny similarity to Color, even that custom tab bar has the same exact icon placement. To me this looks more like a new version of Color with tight facebook integration... or perhaps FB got Color to to the dev for this while they are floundering right now.

I also find it odd that FB would spin out a separate app when all along they've been going for a unified experience in the iPhone app.

</comment><comment><USER9> [http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/14/troubled-startup-color- lose...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/14/troubled-startup-color-loses- cofounder-peter-pham/)

<comment><USER10> And they raised $41M!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The death of Color, Path and Instagram?

<comment><USER11> Absolutely.

Facebook's behemoth social graph will easily steamroll over any new effort in this space. Color/Path/Instagram will need some insane differentiation in order to win this battle.

<comment><USER12> What advantage would Facebook have apart from being able to cut off API access to competitors?

<comment><USER13> You can't tag people on Facebook in a photo uploaded from Instagram, or at least I never found a way. Facebook's own photo app will be a first-class citizen in that regard.

<comment><USER14> The API is there, see "tags" <http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/photo/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Please don't add filters..

<comment><USER16> But they could add 4 free filters and then charge you tier one pricing to unlock more via IAP and then get sued by Lodsys. I don't see how this could fail :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> what exactly looks amazing about this?

</comment><comment><USER18> I hope they don't spin this into a separate app. I suppose it was developed by another team (Beluga guys?) but I'd take the time to merge the code base with Facebook iOS proper.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm not surprised at all. Here's my comment on a previous HN thread a few months ago related to Color: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2367621>

If you're building any kind of social app you'd be a fool not to think about the possibilities of the big players integrating your features into their platform, and what your long-term gameplan is going to be.

</comment><comment><USER20> FB could be sitting on a goldmine with all these photos. _Could be._

As computers get faster and software more sophisticated, we might see things like automatic manipulation of photos to change the branding on peoples clothing (in a fun, opt-out sort of way preferebly). Or detecting the brands that people wear then selling aggregation of that data to market researchers (bit easier and more likely).

</comment><comment><USER21> There may be some similarities to Color and Instagram, but perhaps the most uncanny is to Cooliris LiveShare: <http://www.cooliris.com/liveshare>

</comment><comment><USER22> just another photo app for iphone, but much needed for FB as it depends on photos.

</comment><comment><USER23> To me, there's a bigger story here: techcrunch has something good to say about Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER24> html5 ftw, sorry had to mention it :-)

</comment><comment><USER25> Is it just me or do photos not look awful on facebook? They're compressed to death.

<comment><USER26> They recently added the high quality upload option, I'm guessing most people just want the faster upload and use the compressed versions.

<comment><USER27> But unless they have some clever client-side compression, upload wont be faster..

<comment><USER28> I'm pretty sure that's exactly what they do. Haven't used it in a while, but IIRC it's a java applet and is one of the clunkiest parts of the site for that reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> These days the word "amazing" is used way to easily.</comment>


The most influential games of the decade - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/video-games/influential-games-of-the-decade/ <comment><USER2> Amnesia was a great inclusion but I was surprised to not see Portal 2. Also Fortnite but not PUBG?

<comment><USER3> Portal 2 was great, but I'm not sure I see it as particularly influential. I guess the Portals left a bunch of widely known memes, but other than that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Pokémon Go is the "I'm always listening to podcasts or music because I don't > want to be alone with my own thoughts" of games.

Harsh but well said.</comment>


Show HN: 1kb JavaScript library for building front end applications - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hyperapp/hyperapp <comment> git-pull Clickables:

\- Code examples: [https://glitch.com/edit/#!/hyperapp](https://glitch.com/edit/#!/hyperapp)

\- Browser demos: [https://hyperapp.glitch.me/](https://hyperapp.glitch.me/)

\- README: [https://github.com/hyperapp/hyperapp/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/hyperapp/hyperapp/blob/master/README.md)

This is a good example of what an open source project should do. Straight forward. And also, refreshing to see a lite javascript framework.

One suggestion to authors: Include a link to the demonstration's code on pages like [https://hyperapp.glitch.me/slider](https://hyperapp.glitch.me/slider).

</comment><comment><USER2> That hyperx onclick example [1] is really clever if I understand it correctly from a quick overview [2]. It stores a reference to the event using the template literals features (reading _manually_ the interpolated arguments):

        html`<button onclick=${() => alert("Hi")}>Click</button>`

Not sure how it is attached then; from the syntax it _can_ only be a traditional _onclick= ""_ event, however in the examples [3] [4] they are attached as an addEventListener() events. I'd have to dig deeper to understand it.

I've done something slightly similar in the past:

        dom.body.html = `<button ${evt.on.click(e => console.log(e))}>Click me</button>`;

However, for that syntax above I'm using two different tiny libraries I made while the author could combine both of them into one + virtual DOM. Great work there!

Honest question as the author seems the submitter, what are the target developers for your library? It seems (to me) that virtual dom + JSX is overkill for simple websites, while the big webapps seems to want the _enterprise_ -backed React/Angular/Ember/Etc.

[1] [https://github.com/hyperapp/hyperapp/blob/master/docs/hyperx...](https://github.com/hyperapp/hyperapp/blob/master/docs/hyperx.md#about- hyperx)

[2] [https://github.com/hyperapp/hyperapp/blob/master/src/app.js#...](https://github.com/hyperapp/hyperapp/blob/master/src/app.js#L5)

[3] [https://hyperapp.glitch.me/clicks](https://hyperapp.glitch.me/clicks)

[4] [https://hyperapp.glitch.me/slider](https://hyperapp.glitch.me/slider)

<comment><AUTHOR> > What are the target developers for your library?

Anyone. Big app devs, small app devs. For the record, you can user hyperapp with any of the following technologies:

\- JSX

\- A string template literal based solution like hyperx or t7.

\- The built-in hyperscript-style `h` function ([https://goo.gl/da3U3P](https://goo.gl/da3U3P)).

<comment><USER3> Any example on jsx? Is it react jsx or something else?

Edit: already found example in project github.

Looks promising. Currently I'm looking for solution to replace jquery for one small popup for Chrome KeePassXC extension. HyperApp seems like good match. Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! You can find more examples on CodePen.

\- [https://codepen.io/hyperapp](https://codepen.io/hyperapp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found it a while ago and I like the simplicity.

The thing that got me sold on the idea is how simple actions are. You can have them work like thunk by calling an action as a callback in another action or just return a promise. No middlewares to install, all by design of a 1kb lib.

[edit] when using, be careful with the recent API changes - it's not much, just some names, but took me a while to notice I'm reading docs to a newer version than what I've installed.

Looking forward to 1.0

</comment><comment><USER5> HyperApp: [https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple- store/id1179750280?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple- store/id1179750280?mt=8)

Hyper.app: [https://hyper.is/](https://hyper.is/)

hyperapp: [https://github.com/hyperapp/hyperapp](https://github.com/hyperapp/hyperapp)

</comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone suggest a good approach to evaluate these libraries? How does this compare to Mithril etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> > How does this compare to Mithril etc?

I am the author of HyperApp and also a big fan of Mithril. I'll try to compare both as fairly as I can. This is not a full or even adequate comparison, I'm just adding to the thread.

Mithril has something called auto-redrawing, that IIRC re-renders the application after DOM events by default. This can be seen as inefficient, but Mithril throttles rerenders, which ameliorate any issues caused by it.

Mithril has no state management solution out of the box.

This may be desirable if you want to experiment with different state management architectures until you find one that you like.

HyperApp has its own built-in state management solution which is inspired and draws a lot from the Elm Architecture. In this way, it's a lot like React and Redux, but since everything is built-in, there's essentially 0 boilerplate.

The drawback is that there's no other state management available for HyperApp.

Mithril has stateful components, which is a simple and useful way to reuse code across your app and easily port to other apps.

HyperApp has custom tags, which are pure functions and stateless. They only accept props and know how to render themselves. If you are coming from React, Backbone, Angular (basically everywhere else), scaling applications will seem difficult at first, but it's not, it's just different.

We are currently working on a component abstraction which is based on the idea of a fragmented state. We'll release 1.0.0 when that's done.

Mithril is bundled with m.request, which simplifies making HTTP requests.

HyperApp has no built-in facilities to help you make HTTP requests. I am not interested in a custom xhttp solution when there is a `fetch` standard.

<comment><USER7> Disclaimer, Mithril core dev here. I'm not as familiar with Hyper.

In Mithril:

The hyperscript function supports Emmet/Zencoding syntax: `m('input.myClass#myId[type=radio]')`

There's a stream library for state management (not an out of the box solution, but a robust building block).

The Mithril router

\- supports `path`, `search` and `hash` modes

\- supports asynchronous resolution (for lazy module loading)

\- parses the current route at mount time and launches the app at that route if possible

The renderer

\- has lifecycle hooks (that fire when nodes are created, updated, and removed, before and after the DOM is mutated),

\- supports fragments (components can return arrays) and raw HTML nodes (the former with keys support).

\- optimizes keyed diff for insertion/deletion of contiguous nodes

\- AFAICT Mithril handles the attribute/property dichotomy better

Mithril also comes with a querystring parser and builder.

There are probably a lot of other small things that I didn't notice (and there may as well be errors in my assessment of hyperapp)

Edit: I take back what I said about forms. Either Chrome got their act together or hyperapp is doing something that I don't understand yet... Anyway, the naive app works well: [https://flems.io/#0=N4IgTgpgZpDOAWAhArgF1QewHYgFxQEMAbWCAGhF...](https://flems.io/#0=N4IgTgpgZpDOAWAhArgF1QewHYgFxQEMAbWCAGhFKIgGNUIATPEAOgCtYQKoBLaz3AG1QWAgFsIzFvFRiiXEDWz0sqZgB54AZgB8AHSwACQ2J6p4YPgfUB6bfqzqGPAG6GeDALx6Qp85aIfHVtnFwdNXQNjeABPAAcIMAI4uOs7SMdQ9y8fWISwIJDXBxAAXzIRcUlcVg4FJVUIVWYG2FQTDAYIIkNPExY2yHEACgByGngCLABzCBM5niNzOdMGBmpRgEoDAzEWMQxkVWG- Cz4yQ2AowxceCAB3Yc2ro2NDSFRkMCNBa7eTMaLOJoUYXF7-f7YIFoXD9e5meAAQXQYDGLmIyAgoI6XSImzIfwh6KImNhOO6T0JxnK+KpANGcWxB1xT22r2MAF1rqUDKU2QZWu1gPALsk4qVeoY8okxTtRClhuD3hgMKhYdKwATXm0CPRYcBiaTDONJjMVgslvAVh51ljytdbg9YcMdfRRXQeNhYJtejpDMNCfAxqFscByoZfuy3kHRtDUKGdqg9EmU4aILDXRAWGmtRC3lCsMC1YY5p4-QQPV6WBMprNhlnUAQwLNUNmMXM2Xm+bmITHGWDw5m2ySIJ23hz+ahaa8K6hPVhYPrCTWzc7M+6516LmmfWXLtdk4eo8YPl8jAb2zysIfUFfqbzNmUKiBRBIpDRYJwKA0VGoamUOQoIhFgAawEYQQC+eQahkVA4kXGwbCOOIQOmasMDEGxTgCAABABGFgCLwhRUHiaoQDqcpQCg5hYPg3BEOQ1D0Mw7C+HwwjCJsQYIHEbjUCGPY6goUiEmYSjnxomD0HoxjC2YpRMI1MUSLI8TOFKDlSiAA)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just used this on a Rails project where I didn't have time to integrate a complete React build pipeline. I needed it for a few small components with complex state requirements. It's been a joy to use.

My one complaint is that firing actions within actions feels imperative and could become hard to reason about. Perhaps observables could help here.

<comment><USER9> It seems interesting. Can you provide some example of code how it could look?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting. Looks like a little like a hybrid between Vue.js and JSX.

<comment><USER11> It seems to be actually using (or supporting use of, anyways) JSX.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. It supports JSX and also ES6 template literals via hyperx or t7:

\- [https://github.com/substack/hyperx](https://github.com/substack/hyperx) \- [https://github.com/trueadm/t7](https://github.com/trueadm/t7)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Or you can use ES6/ES5 by setting up a build pipeline.

> import { h, app } from "hyperapp"

I might be misunderstanding here, but isn't `import` unavailable in ES5? (I.e., just a future reserved word?)

<comment><AUTHOR> If you grab hyperapp from the CDN [https://unpkg.com/hyperapp@latest](https://unpkg.com/hyperapp@latest), you'd use it like this:

> const { h, app } = hyperapp

If you setup a simple build pipeline using npm/yarn + browserify you would instead:

> const { h, app } = require("hyperapp")

And if you compile your app with babel using babel-preset-es2015, etc., then you can use the ES6 import syntax.

===

Here are some gists to help you on your journey:

\- hyperapp + hyperx + rollup minimal boilerplate [https://gist.github.com/jbucaran/fac2c3de24e5171596fb189f9c1...](https://gist.github.com/jbucaran/fac2c3de24e5171596fb189f9c1feb8e)

\- hyperapp + hyperx + webpack minimal boilerplate [https://gist.github.com/jbucaran/c6a6bdb5383a985cec6b0ae4ebe...](https://gist.github.com/jbucaran/c6a6bdb5383a985cec6b0ae4ebe5a4b1)

\- hyperapp + jsx + rollup + buble minimal boilerplate [https://gist.github.com/jbucaran/f714dd6d64041591e5e53dbff85...](https://gist.github.com/jbucaran/f714dd6d64041591e5e53dbff8558439)

\- hyperapp + jsx + rollup minimal boilerplate [https://gist.github.com/jbucaran/0c0da8f1256a0a66090151cfda7...](https://gist.github.com/jbucaran/0c0da8f1256a0a66090151cfda777c2c)

\- hyperapp + jsx + webpack minimal boilerplate [https://gist.github.com/jbucaran/6010a83891043a6e0c37a3cec68...](https://gist.github.com/jbucaran/6010a83891043a6e0c37a3cec684c08e)

\- hyperapp + hyperx + browserify minimal boilerplate [https://gist.github.com/jbucaran/48c1edb4fb0ea1aa5415b6686cc...](https://gist.github.com/jbucaran/48c1edb4fb0ea1aa5415b6686cc7fb45)

\- hyperapp + jsx + browserify minimal boilerplate [https://gist.github.com/jbucaran/21bbf0bbb0fe973455056648831...](https://gist.github.com/jbucaran/21bbf0bbb0fe97345505664883100706)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is this picodom + a TEA-style app structure?

<comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr Yes.

Originally it was just hyperapp, but many people asked for only the virtual DOM, so picodom was born.

<comment><USER13> Thx. Hadn't looked at timelines, and assumed it was the other way. Great job w/ hyperapp. Congrats!

FWIW I like Elm, and hyperapp seems a delightful port of the TEA idea ... plus for being a js library, with immediate access to JS and DOM. I'll look for examples using 3rd party visual widgets, and animation libraries.

That said IMO TEA is only a convenience. What I find supremely empowering about Elm is its type inference/system. If we got that in JS-land I likely wouldn't look at another language for some time to come :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I love Elm too. Elm is functional programming for the masses! Recently I'm kind of more curious about ClojureScript.

That said, you can totally use Flow or TypeScript with hyperapp.

<comment><USER13> This is going off-topic, apologies.

Yes, of course, re using TypeScript or Flow. However ... I'm not a fan of TypeScript -- if I'm going to use a different "language" (albeit one that's a transpile-able thin veneer over JS) I may as well switch to a language w/ an even better type system.

Flow, from the little I know, is closer to what I want -- still JS, but an annotation or "compilation switch" makes everything typecheck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Same here. Flow is great though and you can use it without annotations too, just not as useful.

See: [http://thejameskyle.com/adopting-flow-and- typescript.html](http://thejameskyle.com/adopting-flow-and-typescript.html)

<comment><USER13> Ha, funny -- clicking that link leads to a page w/ this message: "This page is unavailable when linked to from news.ycombinator.com. Please find a less toxic place to spend your time." :-)

The link works when copy/pasted. Let me read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Another Javascript library

</comment><comment><USER15> It appears to me to boot somewhat slowly, though maybe it's because of the HN hug of death? Anyone else noticing that?

</comment><comment><USER16> Which browsers are compatible?

<comment><USER4> I'm not an author, but based on my reading of it (and I read the whole thing) it really just depends on polyfills you use with your webpack build. I'd risk saying IE10+

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not good, but still better than MobX.

</comment><comment><USER18> Another React copy&paste obsession to add more complexity !!

</comment><comment><USER19> Thank god someone invented this. We needed another front end javascript library!

<comment><USER20> It's definitely going to make Javascript Great Again!

<comment><USER21> This time it will stick, I'm pretty sure.</comment></comment></comment>


The Mental Model Fallacy - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> As someone who uses the phrase "Mental Model" in reasoning about how to go about work, I'm _really_ interested in what this might be.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did you forget the URL?</comment>


Memes got weaponized: A short history - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614572/political-war-memes-disinformation/ <comment><USER2> Memes never got 'weaponized'. They are now being used for something you personally disagree with. IE: The right is now using memes as much as the left..and now some sort of a stand needs to be taken.

This has always been the case with memes. The original person in the picture most likely has no idea that it's being used for a meme and most likely wouldn't want it to be used.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.warrensmemeteam.com/home](https://www.warrensmemeteam.com/home)

"Wagons: Run Warren Wagons, our answer to Trump Trains, to increase network strength."

wow, the stupidity of that is hard to explain... it seems like the product of a cargo cult: "Quick, think of a vehicle that starts with the letter 'W'! Yeah, wagon - the first letter of the word is all that matters, no other property is relevant. Also, lets use the Wheel of Dharma and call it a wagon wheel... our side will love the fedora tip (kek) to 4chan racial humor!"</comment>