Until we can see each other's faces in VR, this won't work for social presence. Shrinking everything down to contact lenses (even sunglasses get in the way of social contact) is likely to be beyond us for quite some while if ever. I'd rather not put something in my eye anyway.
Further, VR does not work well for switching - you can't be in VR and scribble notes at the same time. AR might be an improvement, but not by much.
Video conferencing does not suffer from any of these problems, and works pretty well for collaboration. 'Zoom fatigue' is definitely a thing though - it's unclear whether VR fatigue would be better or worse.
VR/AR will see limited adoption for certain specialised use cases only.
What you’re posting here is “common knowledge”, but it is actually in conflict with social presence research. VR beats video conferencing even without any facial tracking, and the abject failure of video conferencing in the pandemic to replace most of the feeling of face to face communication should be enough to convince people there is merit to the studies that have been done showing it scores poorly.
In VR you multitask by bringing the computing environment into the virtual environment. So there is no deficit there. I think you haven’t tried these things before so you are just speculating.
The ting is the "felling together" part is less dependent on the medium (real workd, audio, video, VR) but on the way the meeting is held.
Video conferencing didn't fail because video conferencing is fundamentally bad but because:
- meetings are often done in a fundamental bad way, where people don't have any "felling together" even is they sit physically in the same room.
- people having bad microphones, the video part in a video conference is the least important the audio part is what makes it work or fail (because meetings are all about speaking, except if you are mute/deaf, in which case VR might help).
- technical difficulties all over the place, there is no reason for this to get better with VR
- peoples homes being fundamental unsuited for conferences (i.e. a lot of background noise), again nothing which will change with VR
- also VR headsets and mimic don't work well together, proper gestic is possible but often requires full body tracking which put more requirements to the environment you use it in.
- VR headsets are much more straining to use then audio-only conferences, and somewhat more straining then video conferences. Which can be a major no-go for anyone doing many conferences, like the management deciding weather or not to buy into it.
- Companies want virtual meeting rooms not a meta-verse, something which already exists, and looks better then the honestly crappy looking thinks Facebook presented.
If people use microphones with noise cancellation, it can remove most of the background noise. When I was still in the office I used a Jabra headset with a noise suppressing microphone, I could speak on a call with people talking nearby and their conversation was not noticeable on the call. I would hope that a VR/AR headset for this purpose would have a similar microphone setup.
I'd be curious to know how VR beats video conferencing - by what metrics etc.
Video conferencing has certainly been wildly successful in actually getting (collaborative) work done - though in fact it is screen sharing that is the secret ingredient here. Would screen sharing in VR be any different? I guess 3D models or images could be shared usefully.
It is notable the difference between tele conferencing and video conferencing - and that difference is faces (and screensharing). Until VR can show faces, it is basically a tele conference with a puppet show.
My point about switching is that in VR you are completely immersed, so are limited to what the VR provides, whereas with a vid conference I can e.g. go make some coffee while still participating. I'm limited mainly by social convention, not the technology itself. The nature of modern work is we are at the centre of various tools and technologies (half of which are a bit broken) that we choreograph together to get useful stuff done. No VR system could hope to replicate it all.
Actually I'm currently working on a VR project (amongst other things), so these concerns are real and pertinent to me.
(As ever with engineering there is a tendency to focus on the what and the how, instead of the who and the why. Furthermore, people will use technology as they see fit, which might be quite different from how it's inventors intended or envisioned. To develop on this point, even the most 'non-technical' human is an accomplished tool user, and they won't be reading the manual anymore than they absolutely have to.)
> VR beats video conferencing even without any facial tracking
In what terms does it "beat it"? I still have Zoom meetings where people just dial-in, have crappy video, etc. In other words, video conferencing is still being adopted decades after it was introduced.
> In VR you multitask by bringing the computing environment into the virtual environment.
Multi-tasking isn't a real thing. The overhead from context switching is real and no amount of technology will improve this human deficiency.
> Further, VR does not work well for switching - you can't be in VR and scribble notes at the same time.
In VRChat, you could write something in the air by hands, or even play the piano. The problem might be the user experience is not as good as real world hand writing/typing, and there is no physical feedback when writing/typing. That might make people feel weird.
All of these points could start with the word, "Currently, ". Don't you think having one of the world largest companies throwing massive amounts of time and money into these issues could solve a few of these?
Given that several of the largest and wealthiest companies (google and Microsoft) in the world can’t make decent chat apps and meta seems unable to make a product that doesn’t incite ethnic tensions around the world. I’m skeptical of such organizations to solve many of these issues.
The progression from DK1 to Quest 2 proves that effective technological miracles are in the reach of Facebook’s VR group. It’s pretty insane what has been done so far.
You need to separate technical progression of VR headsets from the whole meta-verse idea.
It's out of question that Facebook (and other companies) did a good job in progressing VR headsets technology (through I wouldn't call it a miracle).
But the meta-verse idea as presented by Facebook doesn't look too promising IMHO. It looks out of touch with reality and it's from Facebook. A company well known to try to force their world view onto all other people around the world, ignoring any ethical questions arising. Sure by renaming themself they will manage to somewhat run away from their responsibilities, but as they don't really change their ways it's just a mater of time until we will have the next batch of scandals, now attached to the "meta"-name instead of Facebook.
We have very different definitions of insane apparently. I enjoy my quest 2 but it still very much feels like a smartphone strapped to my face. Basic aspects of the software like the guardian have issues all the time. Each software update seems to fix some bugs and introduce new ones.
I am deeply skeptical meta is going to make the kinds of fundamental breakthroughs that will make VR mainstream and useful to people. Right now they are basically brute forcing the issue with tons of money and even then I am a bit underwhelmed and I use my quest almost daily.
These trends are converging but the most valuable contribution of HMDs imo is remote social presence. It’s not their only contribution, and the economic revolution of web3 would have happened without HMDs imo.
Further, VR does not work well for switching - you can't be in VR and scribble notes at the same time. AR might be an improvement, but not by much.
Video conferencing does not suffer from any of these problems, and works pretty well for collaboration. 'Zoom fatigue' is definitely a thing though - it's unclear whether VR fatigue would be better or worse.
VR/AR will see limited adoption for certain specialised use cases only.