I hope you enjoyed this one. I spent a lot of time on this video and had a ton of fun hand animating everything. Feels so good to evolve my content to talk about VR on a deeper level. I have no clue how this video will "do", but I felt it was an important video to make and I want to make more stuff like this. We're in this together! Lemme know what you thought! Also, the STL for my Controller holsters are in my discord server: discord.gg/Thrill It's also a great place to talk deeply about VR stuff like this!
After editing many videos myself the amount of small things that I see in terms of animation and editing is insane, and you really rocked the charts with this one. Good job not only to the hand-crafted animations but to the story and outline of this video in itself. Amazing work like always thrill.
I had to dislike this video it was buetifully flawed in everyway... For exemples to the thesis... Great watch if you have no idea what XR is or what design, engeering is... Like the quest 3 is suffering from good design but bad eggeering like all new tech do... Want a Duel screen phone? They all suck to use on android because andoird is softwear limiting them even if they are good design like the Nintedo DS which had amazing engeering.
About halfway through as I'm writing this. I've been thinking along the same lines, but it has drawn me to an uncomfortable conclusion from the perspective of VR enthusiasts: Advanced AI and robotics are likely going to "eat" VR for mainstream people. This will happen in 2 ways: 1) If design of VR is going to be dominated by affordances, signifiers, and feedback derived from real world objects, then physical objects in the form of AI robots and other devices are going to have more satisfying design and will hold more interest to people for most applications. VR will still have a place, where the cost of actually constructing what is portrayed would be prohibitive in money and/or time. This will also create a new dynamic of economic disparity, where VR alternatives will be chosen by those who cannot afford the physical version. 2) Another way, in which future AI will "eat" VR, is that it's inevitable that in the future VR most displays/interfaces/design will be created by generative AI. Imagine asking a generative AI familiar with The Design of Everyday Things to create a Johnny Mnemonic style interface our of your personal data. This is inevitable, because such displays would be tremendously useful, but the only way such displays could be economically produced is to have generative AI models produce them.
More people should be saying this out loud. It has been many years and it almost feels like we haven't made any steps towards figuring out a proper method of interfacing with VR.
biggest issue is that most interfaces are build on flat dimensions just X and Y .. with VR/AR we suddenly get Z and everything in between added to it, yet our brains are trained to visualize only on these X and Y planes.
@@FredomnomThere is a massive heatsink of imagination where good ideas are currently going to die. I'm still trying to figure out why. Life does feel very flat and stagnant currently, but it may just be a calm before the storm. There's a new Wave coming.
@@Fredomnom becouse we are in a time of cold w r and looming civil w rf re, there is no time for progress when the western world stands on the brink of complete civil and race w r f re in 5 short months thats why. There is no progress there likely will not be any more in our life time. We are in the troubles now. survivel is all you will be thinking about. There is no time for advancement of peaceful or inciteful things. Only survival at any cost.
@@kuromiLayfe Read this SGI article from 2008. Using a technology they called VUE, they wanted to overcome the mechanical hurdles that would allow SGI to solve the collaboration-at-a-distance problem. "SGI has identified three problems that they feel users face with respect to managing and understanding large amounts of data. In the scientific space, computational models are larger and more complex. Second, large data consumers are often a part of global teams, both in scientific and industrial computing organizations, and in organizations that aren’t traditionally compute-intensive but are increasingly data driven Finally, SGI points to information overload as a characteristic of our society, pointing to studies like the one from IDC last year, which estimated the amount of digital data created in 2006 to be 161 exabytes. The same study estimated the amount of digital data would grow to 988 exabytes by 2010, with only 600 exabytes of storage available worldwide. If these numbers are even in the ballpark, we’ll have to do a lot of analysis on the fly, making decisions and losing the original data with tools built to support large scale streams of transient data." SGI sees a market opportunity in all of this data and, according to Pette, the company’s goal is to enable customers to “visualize anything anywhere, at any time, on any device.” This is why apple is going to release a ARM SOC with a hardware based path tracer. It will load the entire house/scene into memory and path trace the world into the HMD. This enables a UI that respects the user, by causing objects and panels or anything rendered in this system to respect the world physically while looking real. Basically, Reality simulator. Like, real "Virtual Reality". The holy grail. This is what is referred to as the commoditization of 3d photorealism for the masses, enabled by new and cheap hardware based rendering techniques.
Personally I still feel like the biggest thing holding the industry back is that 90% of the companies producing this only see it as a side venture if that, if vr is just a throwaway product these companies will randomly throw money at then I can't see it improving considerably in the next few years
I know you said 90%, so this may merely be an addendum; but I like how meta threw so much capital at this tech. Certainly not without self interest, but still an appreciated contribution in these pioneering times.
There’s also no laid out design practices, and issues with tracking accuracy complicate stuff. Companies don’t want to invest a crap ton into experimental UI when they have something that works to an acceptable degree.
Exactly. It's all just tiny dev teams with tiny budgets. Even the big games like assasins creed or horizon are just little spin off games. how is any of that supposed to compete with the game library of a ps5, Xbox or steam?!
@@levoGAMESyeah Meta definitely tried but I don't think it was enough. Like money can't fix everything. Not sure if it was the technical limitations of the quest or just not enough quality devs but the vast majority of games felt more like mobile games than full on AAA titles. Also think the hate for Meta doesn't really help. People just love to hate on Meta (and in many cases rightfully so) Maybe a more experienced and "gamer positive" company like Valve or even Nintendo (they're great with underpowered hardware) could do it.
14:11 "Never complain unless you have an alternative." - I'd strongly argue that this is not a good rule. Not every user is qualified enough to offer a genuinely better (and actually possible) solution than what the developer came up with. A developer is usually a professional and someone involved with technical and resource-bound behind-the-scenes stuff, you can not expect the same level of skill and knowledge from a regular user. Offering an alternative should be regarded as a bonus to a negative feedback, not as a requirement, otherwise you create a climate that can shut down legitimate reports of issues.
Yeah it's bad advice. Even if you don't yet know of a potential solution, never hesitate to acknowledge a problem. Was disappointed to hear such fundamentally flawed thinking in this video.
Yeah. Hearing "something is wrong" is first important information. Explaining why you think it's wrong it's second important information. Providing solution is maybe third important information, but it's not very important, because first two things most probably are valid, but there is a reason why alternative solution doesn't exist, so why random no expert should knew better than experts themselves?
@@oznerriznick2474 1) can a layman come up with a better solution than a developer who actually works on the ins-and-outs of the thing? probably not, so why make it a requirement. 2) what if a user can't come up with a solution, does it make the issue disappear? does it make the issue not worth reporting and fixing? no and no feedback is not always just "complaints" and is not always just this end user personal problem
Ironically, the biggest problem for VR interfaces is "infinite affordances". It isn't just that you CAN do anything, it's that there is no way to prevent the user from doing anything. In real life, a table is easy to use. You can rest your elbows on it, you can place objects on it, you can sit on it. It won't allow you to accidentally pick it up by pushing your hand through it, and objects won't fall through it if placed a bit too low. Same with walls, and doors, steering wheels, flight sticks, and all physical objects. VR introduces a fundamental, physical disconnect between the conceptual objects you're interacting with and any affordances the application is attempting to force on them for practical reasons and the actual physical affordances provided you, ie infinite ability to manipulate your hands around the objects. It also dramatically reduces the reliability of feedback for these operations since there is no physical response, no resistance, no click, nothing but visuals and sound, which are in fairness poor feedback for physical interactions. It's why good car design promotes buttons and knobs over touchscreens--the former is just dramatically better to use than the latter since the latter necessarily occupies more attention, lacking several forms of physical feedback (while STILL having more than VR, because at least you know if you touched the surface in the first place, or passed through it).
It's wild to me how this whole video quickly glosses over the problem of feedback and lack thereof, when I'd probably say that it's a huge contributor to VR interfaces feeling so off and awkward. The fact that SteamVR is a mess of menus isn't the thing that ruins my experience - it's that when I want to pick out an item from my virtual tactical vest, I need to look down to see where the magical zone that contains the item is located, whereas in real life I would simply be able to quickly feel out the item with my hands. That when I swing a virtual sword, the best way to do it, no matter how hard the game tries to emulate weight, is to just wildly twist my wrist as if I were holding a magic wand. That when I need to interact with menus, I'm left awkwardly pointing at things, an abysmal recreation of the touch screen, an input method that already sucks, but at least I can tell when my fingers are making contact.
@@Vickyorlo it was likely glossed over because there is no good solution besides haptic feedback. for example, how are you supposed to simulate the weight of a virtual sword? by magically attaching a 20kg weight to someone's hands? how are you supposed to recreate the coldness of gunmetal in games like boneworks? the roughness of stone?
As you said, part of the issue with vr and affordances is that when you have a movable object in VR, people expect it to behave like a moveable object, they have their conceptual model, but the object has more restrictive affordances than real life. You expect the object to be picked up, the have physics and weight, but not to have it suddenly snap into your hand because you were trying to gesture. Now think about it for the developers perspective: you have to manually add the object's functionality. Maybe there isn't a system developed to have the user and object interact perfectly as in the real world. Maybe you just can't add perfect functionality to the object because of hardware limitations. Now you are forced to compromise on the function, and often times the compromises result in unwelcome popups, annoying objects snapping to your hands, objects floating around and cluttering peoples view. It's easy to see how developers can struggle with some of these things. Basic UI on the otherhand? There absolutely should be a standard and a flow for usage.
Ease of use is why I wouldn't want a Tesla, even though I am interested in EV technology, I don't want to have to go through some touch interface to change the volume or adjust the A/C. I just want a simple button or knob with feedback... that and making users take their eyes off the road for such simple tasks is reckless. I don't know if VR will ever become mainstream, because it will to many seem overly clunky, or just more of a gimmick than an improvement to interaction.
It feels like a lot of people overlook vr ui, when in reality it’s a large portion of what makes the experience immersive or not. If an interface is intuitive, you don’t think about it, but if it gets in the way, you do think about it and that takes you out of the experience. It would be like going on a Disney world attraction only to see a staff member desperately try to reconnect a wire to one of the anamatronics.
I do agree. However. If you get good enough at a vr game (just like any other) you can easily immerse yourself and just have that game world be second nature.
Job done. We can shut down the internet now and all get back to our lives. It's been a long journey, and we've all suffered on the way, but rest easy now, brothers and sisters, it's finally over.
My favorite Thrillseeker video yet. It's hard to put into words ~why~ VR UI is so frustrating (especially for first-timers), but you successfully made a comphrensible breakdown dedicated to just that. This is a video for both developers & players a like. And a great reference I will be sending to people for a long time!
I think one of the biggest reasons VR UI is frustrating is consistency. He mentioned this in the video about Meta's settings and it really does annoy me. From the Oculus main menu you have your settings panel but if you connect to PC you can't access that same settings panel without completely disconnect your link with the computer. There is a completely *different* settings panel within the link area where even something like volume options look different. There's also no passthrough when linked which means you have to be in position before doing anything otherwise you have to take your headset off to see the real world and make sure you're not going to hit something. Or if you want to pause the game you can't see someone talking to you without, again, taking off the headset. I have Synthriders and Audio Trip. Two very similar games yet one uses controller lasers and the other requires 'physical button presses' in the VR space. I've played games where grabbing objects uses either the trigger or the lower trigger button. Really easy to drop things when you're not consciously thinking about which game you're currently in. There's also just buggy issues like games that won't recenter, or games that the play area moves if you take off the headset and you can't get it back to the right position. All of this is inconsistency. The things you expect to happen don't. There's no standard for the developers. VR is still a niche thing with everyone trying to be the 'winner' so there hasn't been much effort in all these big companies coming together and saying, here's what works for our users and we are ALL going to make stuff work this way so that it eventually becomes second nature.
I never found VR UI too frustrating in a vacuume. It is just regular 2D UI controlled with a controller pointer instead of a mouse cursor or a touch screen. It can be annoying because it doesn't integrate into the VR-experience at all and there is a disconnect between the two, since it is port over from a different medium. For me that is not really difficult to put into words. I don't think he also put it into words as far as I remember? I feel like instead of demystifying it, he himself used a very transient explanation that doesn't actually explain anything in any detail. I dunno, to me there really wasn't a lot of substance in the second half of the video.
One of the most striking events of VR done right is the locks in Half-Life: Alyx. Puzzle-solving in a 3-dimensional space where interaction doesn't inhibit movement was mind-blowing. It gave a good impression of what a holographic UI could be.
@@BradChadley why are you so mad on behalf of the company that makes more money than we'll ever see in our lives through Steam sales my point was essentially just that valve just doesn't make cool games like they used to - if you saw the leaks about their supposed upcoming hero shooter type game??? like, looks formulaic as hell.
@@illuminoeye_gaming I don't give a single fuck about valve, your comment was just stupid. Valve has a history of not doing anything for years before they release something worthwhile (took awhile for HL Alyx, for example). Give it another 5 or 10 years and then we'll know if they're done or innovating or not. Even then, if they're still afloat via Steam, they may start innovating again in future. Your comment is stupid because you spoke matter of factly about something that can't be proven one way or another till time has passed, not because I'm defending valve you dork
My biggest problem with a lot of tech is how much of it is built to serve the company rather than the customer. They often start by deciding how they want the user to interact with the product so the product does things the company wants it to do. They don't start by solving a problem for a customer in a way that understands what the customer wants the product to do.
I'm a game developer who always was obsessed with interactions and interfaces, it always was so obvious to me why a game felt good to the hand or not in an intuitive way. This video gave me the right framework to translate that "lens" to VR development, which I'm currently delving into. I followed you for a while now, this is the most helpful video you ever made to push forward VR. Thank you!!
I mean, I think it kinda speaks for itself. Different interfaces work best for different platforms. But I'm a gamer who has never restricted himself to just using a traditional controller, I've always been open to new methods to control and positive towards games that actually use them in a way that it contributes to the overal experience.
I want a game one day , (you know those artistic game that make you think more than enjoy good gameplay) that actually flip everything on its head ; something that make you feel like you are not a human, disconnect all patterns, known concepts, affordances signifiers, interface , recognizable forms etc, a "game" that forces you to be something else that is completely different to anything we know, Something that doesnt exist in this reality. I cannot totally picture how and what , but im kinda obsessed with this idea, a game or immersion that proves that our consciousness is unlimited and can take the shape of anything it is given to, bending to any rules. Our human experience is shaped by our senses, by our feedback, what we know and learn. I could play as a cat in VR, where i can jump , walk on 4 legs blablabla and i wouldnt "be human". But i will still recognize everything that i currently know from being human, I will recognize the paws, the cat , the objects it jumps on , i will recognize that i will fall down after a jump (physic) etc. When i say a game that make me feel "not human" i do not mean that. Im talking about something hypothetical that dont follow ANY known rules and concepts or recognizable features yet still allow our brain to pick up new patterns and act upon them. Something stripped to the bare minimum of what is recognizable, that is constantly pushing your mind to bend and adapt to a reality that is increasingly far from "known reality", essentially a VR "game" that proves that consciousness is just information and pattern recognition, a primordial infinite essence that lives in every living being, only stuck and limited by the shape of its container, by with the sensors, the information and the tools it was given at a particular moment, but its perception infinitely malleable and adaptable.
I am in school for design engineering and this is a great summary of the basic problem every day people have when becoming frustrated with a piece of technology they don't understand. Thank you for this great video
Ever since the Iron Man movies came out, I was quite fascinated with Tony’s AR interfaces inside his workshop. You never saw Tony struggling with the UI - it genuinely looked like it was always fully in sync with his movements, gestures and overall needs. That’s the kind of natural feeling I hope we will one day achieve with VR or AR - us not trying to figure out how it works, but it adapting to how we behave.
tony was basically a very smart average person, who uses things like a normal person, unlike developers who think differently. this helped tony make a clear and intuitive design language, in my opinion.
I believe in "Time Friction" which is that for every issue, every one thing big or small that a user bumps into outside their control, each collective minute or second of discomfort or frustration is more and more abrasive until the user is left sensitive and raw, wanting less and less to interact with the experience. It's why being able to tailor menus and layouts can help give back a little of that control and give the user more agency in a personalized interface that speaks to them. Nothing's more frustrating to me than having to see whatever Meta wants me to see from the moment the OS UI pops up, or not having shortcut options unique to the user. Boggles the mind that years upon years later they can't even entertain the notion "Hey maybe someone doesn't want some of our widgets they'll never use on the main bar!" or "Maybe letting people make custom folders or changing the UI color to a whole rainbow of choices might help them feel like this is their system." The little things and the lack thereof all accumulate. And little things add to longevity or demise of a thing.
Okay, ngl I thought i was the only one that thought in this way. thanks for putting a term to it, I like it. I actually wrote a whole video a year or so back about this exact concept. I added up how long it took me to get into VR to do various tasks from beginning to end and then multiplied that by how many times I typically use the systems. hours. days. MONTHS of time friction. It adds up.
The worst part in the world is that we *USED TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT!* In the 90s, and even still today in most Linux desktop environments, you can customize your UI into unusability (and I have, then had to dig through the menus to find how to put that critical control back). I think a lot of the issue is that Microsoft and Zuckerbook both have the mentality that their way to do things is the *only* right way, and anyone who disagrees needs their face held to the grindstone until they learn better. It's part of why I hate both companies so much.
@@ClokworkGremlin Apple has this as a core philosophy, they feel users don't know what they want, and the almighty Apple gods are sent down to tell the users what they want. Windows 11 interface is inferior to W10 IMO, because they are taking useful interface design and burying it behind several layers of menus, or just throwing them away. Simple things like checking network status or changing IP becomes a chore, when it used to be simple. They are trying to dumb down the interface to as little as possible, to the point where anyone who actually uses their computer for work is SOL. Another being that you can't move the taskbar, when for 30 years you could move it to the side or top (I never did, but have known some who do). They make some improvements (such as decent multiple desktop support... which took them ages compared to Linux), but mess up others. At least W11 isn't as big of a steaming pile as Win8 was.
Videos like these continually remind me that information and innovation depend not on the smartest person but rather on the person sharing information in the most comprehensive, widespread manner possible. Even looking back at Einstein, his theories weren't unknown in his field, but he was the first person to herd all of these different ideas together to form a cohesive, comprehensive theory. _That_ is the power of effective communication, and it's why I have equal parts fascination and apprehension with video essays like these. They brilliantly weave these different ideas together, but it is ultimately done by someone without a firm background in the subject (i.e., not having a degree in the field they talk about), and that leads to a certain danger I have no idea how to feel about.
well judging people on intelligence is a trap in itself. common sense and social intelligence of how people actually think are way more valuable than how much you can remember for making something people actually like. i always cringe when is see people say things like read a book or insult their iq cause I just know they themselves aren't very bright despite probably having many degrees or good jobs
@@petercottantail7850 High intelligence (e.g. higher IQ) has actually been correlated to more charity and donations, as it represents an ability to think beyond yourself. I don't think academic intelligence and social intelligence are these dichotomous forces you are portraying them to be. Sure, there are people who do nothing but stare at books all day and only mindlessly repeat equations and problems, but even looking at Engineering degrees, the most grueling math-focused degree (at the bachelors level) which involves nothing but advanced calculus and a dumbed down English course, yet someone with a degree in Chemical Engineering will still make more money then a Business Major...in _business_. Which, to me, shows that mathematics also cultivates a certain strength of "spirit" and a logical mindset which can be advantageously applied to problem-solving as a whole (and by logical extension, social issues). Not to say that literature-focused majors are worthless, they still have incredible value in communication, but ultimately, mathematics (your bog-standard basis for academic elitist prance about as if they are geniuses) teaches problem-solving, that doesn't make up for a lack of sociality, but it does make what communication you bring to the table all the more valuable. I do agree that social intelligence (i.e. the ability to communicate) is vastly more important then academic intelligence, but the point I was trying to make with Einstein is that: he wasn't great _just_ because of his academic genius, but also his effective social intelligence to herd ideas together to form a comprehensive theory, and academic and social intelligence are intrinsically linked on the foundation of logical thought. I'm pretty passionate about the subject, so feel free to poke holes in my argument. Logical communication can only improve both of our thoughts.
You've touched on it, but I think the key with Einstein was his ability to express the core principles of his theories as story-based thought experiments using concepts and items familiar to most "lay" people ... allowing the rest of us to visualise and "get" the basic ideas behind his theories.
Sorry, but I stopped at 16:40 because this is just bad. "Controller design" is simply there because of technical limitations. Do you *really* think somebody thought "these natural hand motions are ridiculous, let's do controllers!"? That's why they're working so hard on hand tracking - *everybody* would like to leave controllers out as they're just cumbersome. But then one also needs a certain level of precision, so that was the next best thing to do. That's the *whole story* of VR! Nobody "wanted" outside-in tracking, it was a technical neccessity. And even today - can you build a hand-tracking portable device with hi res? Sure, you just need to shell out 3.5k$. And even then, there are glaring flaws. It's a question of what we can do *until* we achieve "technical perfection", less about designing for once we're there, because by then, a competitor's 80% solution will have taken over the market.
Thanks for this comment. I'm 5 minutes in at the three mile island bit and was trying to decide it it was worth continuing. It feels like a well intentioned video, but it just doesnt feel like whatever points he's trying to make have been properly thought through.
A XR UX research PHD (who is also one of the devs worked on the original vive in HTC) once told me, the UI is designed for the investors who only watch demos on flat screens. Hence, the UI are designed to be good looking from outside, instead of good to use for the ones using it. This made so much sense.
Makes Sense! So then! Meta - really gone bad... Other else - really just investors fault - they must to test it themselves - don't be shy, and, then - they have to be shamed otherwise😁
This not only applies to the vr world. So many things in our society are shaped by the flow of money. Every product real or not has parts that are made like the bad UI you describe that is made to look good for investors. Thats why I've always been hyped for computer software in general. Because the space is not limited (other than processing power and electricity). But ofc my naive mind couldn't imagine the money generation machines that are things like subscriptions and micro transactions...
Imagine having a dream job, designing a user interface for a VR operating system (not a game, an actual OS), and then imagine that company politics gets in the way of implementing those discoveries. Then on top of that, imagine being involved in a car crash that forces you to have to quit the team for 2 years while you recover, and then when you return, the interface is no better off, and is in fact worse off, and furthermore, the company has started to slow to a halt, having missed the wave of VR. This TH-cam video gives me melancholy and PTSD and anxiety, because it’s like remembering what it was like to be in love for the first time, knowing it will end.
I've spent more time than I'd like to admit struggling with terrible VR UIs and this video perfectly summarizes my biggest complaints * Laser pointers are imprecise, and pulling a trigger makes you miss the thing you're pointing at * There's no coherent menu structure in SteamVR * The first 30 minutes of every game are dedicated to dialing in comfort and locomotion settings * Menus that stick to your face feel invasive I hope that talking about this means consumers and devs alike can start to hone in on what actually makes a good experience
"Laser pointers are imprecise, and pulling a trigger makes you miss the thing you're pointing at" one of the reasons that I miss my shots in vr shooters 🙈 It's also a realworld problem though. shooters get taught to gentle squeeze the trigger instead of going ham on the trigger.
I think the reason so many games use laser selection is because so many games use laser selection. Humans are notoriously uncreative, it's why adding design constraints is so effective at improving something. So you start your UI design task with a set of limits. The first is "No lasers allowed."
@@moortu I have no experience of pulling the trigger then miss due to change in weight of the aim when I pulled the trigger. Sounds like the complaint from a person who had only tried using the method for only 1 minute of use and never commited beyond it. I think ThrillSeeker is trying so hard to find a flaw that isn't a flaw in the first place. I can found myself missing the pointer click sometime due to shaky arms aiming at small target but it got absolutely nothing to do with trigger on my Quest 2 controllers since is pretty stable while weightless
I've always thought that Rec Room had pretty good steps for vr menus and navagation. Relating your own world to a dorm, with the lobby being accessible by a door in the same world. It feels like one connected space. Even if you want to skip that process you have a holographic watch, with pushable buttons that give feedback and pictures that give a clear signifier to where it leads or what it does. Even when you get into making custom gamemodes it uses things like paint guns for modeling and circuts for setting game rules. The entire game uses something similar to something real which makes finding out what your doing very simple to beginers and why it's a great starting point for any VR noob especially since its free.
This is an amazing take at design, and it's way more important than people realize. I want to add two things: We want to interact with VR like we do in the real world: anything can be touched, and everything reacts to being touched. Also feedback: if I touch something, I must feel something happened. It needs to be instantaneous. Force feedback would be the best, vibration is the second best, sound is the third best. Visual feedback must be there, but it can't be the only feedback.
Which is why VR is not quite here yet - there is not enough feedback. Full feedback would be complicated, big and expensive...but it also would be THE thing that will make VR next step in gaming - full immersion. No compromises (expect being inside bulky machine).
@@alexturnbackthearmy1907 Exactly. Everything needs feedback, even things you can't fully interact with. If I miss a button inside a window and touch the window instead, things still need to happen: my touch needs to vibrate and make a sound, the whole window needs to bounce back when I touch it, and circles need to appear making waves wherever I touched it. Those things might seem trivial to VR designers, but it makes the whole experience so much more interesting and satisfying.
I've been avoiding vr ever since the Meta quest 3 came about. I'm not trusting Apple or Zuckerberg with my identity AT All. Hopefully a true standalone will come at a sub $600 price cuz of I can't handle the high pitches of the lightbox trackers. Whish valve made one that didn't need to use high frequency tech 😢
I work in VR, and the UI and how the user interfaces with the sofware is one of the biggest problems with VR. (Besides the nausea and fear of walking into a wall) Our observation is that the biggest problem with UI is lack of tactile feedback, you can push through everything, and are never stopped. You never actually can touch something, and we humans are not used to it. We control everything with touch, and we crave tactile feedback, and VR we have zero, so or brain naturally dislikes it. In my professional opinion UI design is not necessary the direct problem, or a problem that can be solved by standardization or a "better" design. The problem is that for the first time in human live, we are trying to control things without the sense of touch. You are fighting against 150.000 years of human evolution. The problem is most like VR itself, and when that is solved, we can move to the next step. For now, we can only try, and design for a day were we can touch things in VR.
If not gloves, multi-element haptics in controllers with better torque will make a step forwards. Best combined with new battery tech to tackle the battery issues. Virtual sword clashes and locks with sword of enemy, strong initial impact, keep up vibration during steel onto steel time, strong push on forward elements as contact is relieved in VR. The strength I'd like to see is like direct-drive gaming wheels VS bungee-drive wheels, hefty and serious compared to what we have now. Had a PS2 wheel that made my desktop creak and squeal at its maximum, so powerful it was realistic. Overkill for VR of course.
@@Mamiya645 Something along those lines. it is a very interesting problem, and one that we may not be able to solve until we can somehow either trick the brain into feeling something, or some other external kit.
@@DimosasQuest We are wired differently, that's the big burden that really hurts. I'm immune to VR motion sickness unless framerates go bad (thankful for Sony being serious with letting only proper performing titles through). For another thing, in Skyrim VR I could smell the nature, feel the wind, and I swear to you I could taste the breath of a horse as I walked by one. Childhood summers were in the wild, very much like Skyrim (far north Sweden&Finland) so there are a lot of fond memories around to maybe aid me. Wonder how younger city-raised generations fare in comparison? I should probably be on a Discord server aiding brainstorming about this and engineering immersion (and VR UI/UX)
loving this whole VR dev arc. IMO, it is ridiculous that you can't run several 3d limited volume apps side by side on quest. or extending the GUI analogy, switching limited volume app into immersive mode is like clicking on the maximize button in flat OS. Even within a fullscreen app, there should still be a way to interact with other running limited volume apps. Microsoft recently announced volumetric apps api, which should allow streaming of limited volume apps natively from your desktop or azure into quest. this should shake some things up in quest productivity space.
I really think VR UI is about to hit a stride. The middleware just wasn't ready yet, and now it's getting finished. Once the community has the tools, trial and error will make quick work of the problem. I'm actually excited to own a Quest 3, more for the updates than actually using it. Every week it seems to be getting new features. Very exciting! My long-term goal is to build my Quest 3 into a custom 3D printed helmet. I got an e-bike that can do 40 mph, and carries a lot of batteries. I'm planning to run AI locally on the bike using a Nvidia Jetson. I plan on interfacing through the Quest. Also adding a bunch of sensors, 360 cam, etc. So the AI can give me warnings about things I can't see. I got some other features I plan to include like haptic feedback, but due to have only allows me so many words in my comments.
Microsoft isn't going to do much, they are killing their desktop market as it is They are on the way out and New companies are going to take its place in innovation soon
@@ninjameep8616 I highly doubt that Microsoft is going anywhere any time soon. I mean, it is the largest corporation in the world, even bigger than Apple. I just don’t see Microsoft falling any time soon
@@anakinlowground5515 I do see them turning a large portion of their community to other places though, kind of like how wizards of the coast screwed around a little too much and then pushed more people to pathfinder and making tons of d&dish spinoffs like critical roll's
I've been a gamer since the 80s. I'm a developer of 24 years. I run a Design and Branding agency in London. I've a small gaming TH-cam channel and am a big VR enthusiast in my spare time. I've been a fan of yours for over 4 years and I'd like to think I'm well-positioned to have an opinion on the state of VR and design, however, this is one of the most succinct, well-considered and thought-provoking videos on design within the VR space I've seen. So much so that I'm compelled to comment and congratulate you on such a great video. I know you've taken time away from YT and had a change of direction and I appreciate the time it takes to produce content of this calibre. Well done. Keep up the good work for as long as it drives you. The concept that a virtual object is simply a Skeumoprhism is a double-edged sword. It positions designers in a place where the rules of physics, space and time should be consistent if we wish the user to understand intuitively what the object is they perceive and how we expect them to interact with it. On the flip side, this means we're bound to create simulated replicas of the real world (hyper-accurate as they may be) which limits the true potential and creativity of 'Virtual Reality'. Taking your door analogy, we expect to be able to push or pull the door to open it and for it to remain a fixed size and shape, but if it was to scale if pushed, translate if pulled or morph into a pink elephant when opened this blows the concept of skeuomorphism out of the water. There is conceptual flexibility within an immersive environment, however, unifying a common UI language across providers and platforms is certainly key. Skeuomorphism is ubiquitous to the personal computing experience whether you are on a PC, Mac, Linux or a MU-TH-UR 6000. Like the floppy disk simply used to 'save' a file (yet I can't remember the last time I used a 1.44Mb floppy!). Hand vs controller. Push/pull vs corner drag to scale. The different interactions required to create the same result is confusing and frustrating. A continuity of interface is severely lacking in the current UI lexicon. What a fascinating moment in time in which we all live...
but my question then is, why would you want to create an experience difficult to relate to by abandoning skeuomorphic design? seems like an easy way to confuse a user.
this is not specific to vr, but also exists in 2d interface design: you can make the button on a website morph into a 2d pink elephant. when designing, you have to choose what you want. if you want great UX, then limit the design space. if you want amazing mind-blowing creativity, then the UX might suffer.
That physical constraints limitation I think is the second biggest hinderance to design. For example, when a USB doesn’t fit one way then we know we need to turn it around. If we translated that to VR, we would attempt to put in the USB and assume the game was glitchy if it didn’t work. Similarly with scissors, our fingers fit into the holes so you know how to interact with it after fidgeting with it for a minute. With VR there is no possibility to fidget with an object to find out how to interact with it because our hands are holding the same controllers regardless of what we interact with. As a final example, when opening a door we understand in the physical world that a lock must be holding it in place. So we turn the door until the metal is free and then push. A VR door does not have the restriction of a door jamb and can be opened by any means. So the user needs to be taught or try and use their best guess as to what the developer intended. However these are all problems that any game or piece of software faces. I think the biggest issue with design for VR is that when things are inevitably unintuitive we are stuck in the world. We can’t conveniently search online how to fix the issue so the only solution is to either un-immerse yourself by going online or flailing with the controls. Losing that immersion is untenable in the VR medium so most users just flail around trying to figure it out
IMO, one of the problems of many "innovations" is innovation for the sake of it. The first GUI didn't do "typewriters are ancient history, let's invent a modern way to write a document". It transferred to screen the experience of writing on a piece of paper. It had a desk and files and folders and documents so that people knew what to do. Of course they could have built a virtual world completely detached from reality to fully take advantage of the technology; instead, they decided to make us "cut" and "paste" things, and throw unused stuff in a trash can. Simulated real world is a good starting point. Most VR designers seem to not have learned this lesson.
C&C is one of my first games franchises that I truly loved. unfortunately I was born a little too late to experience it in its prime and had to watch the series fall. Long live Westwood.
Wow! Easily my favorite video you have ever made. You have always taken whatever topic you are discussing to a deeper level, but this felt like inception. You must have done a tremendous amount of work on this video, and it shows. As always, I adore how well you break sophisticated principles and philosophies down into amazingly digestible chunks. This video needs an audience beyond TH-cam, because your insight is powerful and primed to change the world. Thank you for sharing with us.
People wonder why TH-cam is so addicting - I read The Design of Everyday Things in my Graphic Design course and apart from the door story, I was so disinterested (probably because it didnt impact my grade and wouldnt help me get a job). 10 years later and hearing someone use affordances and apply it in the context of VR is a real kicker.
The video applies the concept of perceived affordances and false-perception of affordances also which is cool... when people try to do something not yet programmed-for leads to design potentials (like the natural paths people make walking over lawns over time not part of an architects design) and how future affordances can be accomodated for as this tech exosystem develops.
Really comprehensive and inspiring report! As an XR Designer, I’m convinced that the best UI is “no UI“, as in trying to avoid using flat canvas and buttons as much as possible. My background is Industrial Design for tangible Products, where we rigorously utilize existing conceptual models for communicating functions through 3-dimensional shape and visual appearance. If we make use of buttons, really the best ones are those of which users do already know the function before even reading label. While it’s logic for me to apply the same principles in immersive UIs, current VR Interfaces still feel like a relict from conventional phones and PCs. Maybe the truth is somewhere in between both worlds? Keep up the great work!
One of the coolest bits of VR UI I've used regularly is in ChilloutVR: you open the camera by making the "framing a scene" sort of gesture, like you'd do when looking at a landscape in real life. That is, two "finger-gun" gestures 180 degrees off from each other, forming a rectangle. Changing the position and spacing of your hands even resizes the camera UI! Also fun: you close the camera by clapping your hands together on it, as if you were trying to squash a bug, but without actually smacking your controllers together. The camera will then disappear with a poof of little cubes that disappear a moment later.
Honestly, as someone who has followed your content for quite some time. I would say this is probably one of the best videos you’ve ever made. It’s incredibly educational while still being entertaining. And especially useful for people who want to start developing in the space as it’s now something that, you can point to as a reference moving forward. Really amazing work. And I look forward to what you come up with next.
This is exceptionally well done. As a recent Quest 3 purchaser and Apple Vision Pro addict, you quantified a lot of concepts I have been struggling to find words and analogies for. Keep them coming!
This is an excellent video, thank you so much! Take it from someone who has studied design and worked professionally in computer UX design for 20 years in different industries (now also VR UX design). Outside of work, I'm a gamer at heart and have spent somewhere in the 4 digits of hours in VR on different devices. You're speaking directly to my soul.
I felt like I was back in college listening to an incredibly smart lecturer forcing my brain to make new connections. Terribly rare on TH-cam, I'm a huge fan.
The most interesting phenomenon I've noticed in VR is that textures on objects appear to be MORE DETAILED compared to when they are viewed on a screen, even when there is not actually any additional detail being displayed. I'm sure many users feel this way, that textures and lighting in VR just look so much more detailed and realistic even though the actual level of detail being displayed is often far less than what is being rendered in games you view on a flat screen. I think this phenomenon is connected to the way our brains "fill in" a lot of what we "see" with our eyes, and when we view graphics on a flat screen, our brains know we are only looking at a flat screen, and it isn't fooled into thinking what we are seeing is real, but when you put on a VR headset, your brain gets fooled into thinking you are seeing real objects with real depth, and it starts "filling in" detail that may not even be there in reality, giving you the illusion that it is far more detailed. Anyone else wonder about this phenomenon?
Reminds me of a time I looked at a Vr game on a pc and was like “wow this game looks so bad!” But when I joined the game it was a lot better being immersed in it. Maybe because you can’t directly compare things
Imo it's because your brain naturally evolved to pay more attention to the real world objects, because all of them could be a threat. You could bump into them, or their texture could signify hazardous imlications. So it naturally tries to decode more information from those objects in order to be more aware of such a threat. Doesn't really matter if it's VR, because the brain still gets a properly aligned stereo perspective, and you've spent all of your life decoding that exact type of information as that coming from the real world with real implications. So, with textures, you even get instinctive sensations of how it could feel to the touch, or even taste (did all that when we were toddlers), so yeah, it's way more immersive from the get go. Part of the reason why desktop style UI feels so awful in VR - it's out of place, it breaks immersion, and just all kinds of awkward. Unless it looks exactly like you'd expect it, as in a phone or a computer screen. We don't really have floating flat holograms in our lives yet, and I hope we'll never will because it's the same joke as floating UI in VR.
I really love the passion you have for VR. You talk about VR as a whole, rather than just the games. And you're not biased. You lay it all out, and you just give us the facts. Keep doing thing bro, love the channel.
This entire video was absolutely amazing! Please make more like this, it was so interesting and really opened my eyes to design of not only VR but in every regard. I especially loved how clearly you've managed to explain the problems with VR interfaces but also provided a solution!
Mr Jobs understood proper skeuomorphic design. And I think VR is where this kind of design would make the most sense of all for the interfaces and menus and such, yet it doesn't get used nearly as much or as well as you'd think. Sadly, it's also become used less and less with each new iPhone iOS update too. :( Also, as cheesy as it sounds, reaching the "It just works" point really is the key too imo. No matter what methods and solutions you ultimately use to make a great interface, if that's how it genuinely seems when people use it, "It just works", you've succeeded as far as I'm concerned. How you get there is the big challenge, but the completion/finish point of your particular interface implementation should be when "It just works" and no sooner ideally.
Jobs didn't really understand it, which is why MacOS X became a mess of mixed design language when he came back. The original MacOS design was wonderful. John Siracusa wrote some very extensive articles about it on Arstechnica back in the day.
@@aapje Skeuomorphic design wasn't really implemented in MacOS from what I recall, just the more standard desktop PC style UI design. I think it was more just iOS that really embraced skeuomorphism and only then in the older iOS builds. I think it actually makes more sense there anyway with the direct touch interface. I also think Jobs fully understood this, hence the differences between the two platforms and operating systems. And in VR it now makes even more sense to get back to embracing skeuomorphic UI design imo.
"It just works" is just marketing slogan that doesn't hold up under any scrutiny. I have never used any device that just worked, especially one from apple. You always have to do an hour of setup and then when I try to do something basic like downloading a file from a site, it often doesn't let you do it at all. I am always sad when people fall for mystifying marketing instead of looking what is actually infront of them. The only thing that "just works" is your most basic human behaviours that are pre programmed into you like eating, walking and shitting.
@@tinminator8905 Not even remotely true imo. For example, as far as I meant and mean it here, my SNES "just works", or more precisely "just worked". Plug it in, pop in a game, turn it on and go. Easy as pie and exactly as I would expect and indeed hope. And my SNES Classic Mini in modern times was basically the same too for all intents and purposes, despite having an additional Home menu to navigate and such. Not because of skeuomorphic UI design, but just good UI design. No complex setup, no accounts to create, no signing up to online servers, no EULAs to agree too, no day one patches, no convoluted UI that takes an age to figure everything out and even then never feels truly fluid and intuitive at any point, no unnecessarily frustrating sticking points to just getting going enjoying the games, etc. However we get there, and all things being relative, if interacting with VR can seem as simple and intuitive as that, I will be he happy to refer to that as "just working". And, yes, the actual term is complete marketing spiel from Apple as per usual, but we don't have to be too pedantic and anal with my use of "It just works" if we get what I was meaning--and I think you did, or least now should.
Dare I say making things have a leather, brushed metal or glossy texture isn’t actually how you make interfaces feel natural? More recent versions of iOS became more gesture based, more tactile and physical and spatial (layering, adjacent screens) even if they look a lot more abstract.
1:00 right up there with the bulky designs, the impracticality of having to move in a physical space over just moving a mouse, and the lack of things to do
This video has embodied all of my thoughts perfectly! I've been telling people forever that the software and UI for VR is just lacking. In a virtual world were anything could happen, why are all the big companies sticking with such janky and flat screen designs. This was an awesome video, I hope it brings more awareness to the VR community. Thanks thrill 💪
I had an idea for VR gloves that could help with providing feedback, which is having the gloves "lock up". Essentially, the gloves would have servos at each finger joint, and when picking up, say, a ball, the servos would lock when your hand realistically would no longer be able to move. If you pinched a pebble, your fingers wouldn't be able to travel further than if you were actually holding a pebble.
You're describing "force feedback" gloves, and it's actually something people are working on right now! The physical design of them is an engineering challenge, though; servos at every joint would be prohibitively bulky; no one wants to wear 10 pound weights on their arms every time they put on a headset. But there's been some really promising work with using a series of small pulleys and strings to mimic muscles, all controlled by motors mounted on the wrist.
speaking of designs, you or your video editor are/is one hell of a talented person. I originally clicked on this video to listen to while doing something else. I had to stop my task and keep watching bc I felt like I couldn't just ignore this
I see there being 3 levels of VR: 1.) Cinematic - Using VR to view 2D content on a virtual screen that can be customized to your needs/wants (I.E. watching a movie in VR.) 2.) Stereoscopic - Using VR to see content in 3D. May or may not include tracking or motion controls (Games like Moss do this) 3.) Immersive- Typically what people think of when it comes to VR. First-person with Tracking and motion Controls.
3d movie watching in VR chat is awesome and pretty comparable (from experience) with a 100 inch projector and active shutter glasses. Def is a lot more fatiguing though than the lightweight glasses.
I think this is the best/most important video on what VR is and could be I've seen in a very long time. Most are stuck in a cycle of response/review on what is being done, not commentary and guideposting about what SHOULD be done. I think this is my favorite video you've done... period.
I think that the solution to the controller problem is not hand tracking but rather some sort of glove with depth perception that isn't based on a camera, in a way that you can reach out and touch a button with physical feedback and not have to gesture.
Touch screens alone are reason to believe this will be known as the dark ages of technology. The dark age of what was between buttons and whatever comes next. As someone with large hands it feels like I am living in a twilight zone dimension where is designed for people with tiny alien fingers.
"Best part is no part"...Something that doesn't need touching at all... Guess we need to wait for a direct Brain-Computer Interface controls instead of buttons and touch screens....
11:53 This is really like a picture of a pipe- a picture of a pipe is not a pipe, it’s a picture of a pipe; and a picture of a thing is not the thing itself, it is just a picture.
the UI should always be opened via a simple, unique, and yet familiar gesture. (ie. tapping a wrist, hand, or touching your ring finger to your thumb.)
My favorite comment on the Design of Everyday Things: "Doors should never need push or pull signs. If something as simple as a door needs an instruction manual, you have failed." There was an old video game on 8-bit computers called SCRAM that simulated a nuclear plant with those same sorts of problems: you think the valve is open, but the temperature is still going up, and you had to figure out fast enough what part of the indicators were giving you wrong information. And yeah, every game still asks you if you want to invert the Y axis, so good luck on that standardization.
I found your channel through your appearances with Phia on The Virtual Reality Show and I gotta say, I LOVE THIS ESSAY!! Huge fan of how you explained the concepts of design and focused on everything from the lens of user accessibility. Big fan of all the points and suggestions you brought up. Hopefully, we can have more eyes, ears, and minds like you working on VR! There's still a lot in a lot of fields that would need to be done before VR can be made super accessible. Hopefully one day, we get there. But either way, for us in the field, let's hold onto our dreams and raise our voices =) cheers Thrill!
@@ThrillSeekerVR I'm glad you said it. Video-essay type videos are what are find myself watching the most nowadays. You making videos like this along side your news and gameplay videos would make your channel the perfect place for literally anyone interested in VR. And I'm all for it.
Bravo sir. You understand something very few people do. One of my biggest issues with VR is the way we interface with it. Everyone does it different and awesome in there own way respective way. Take all the best parts and create a standard with hand tracking. I also believe the controllers should have a standard created to always work with a universal type of VR interface. This will also simplify all VR controller designs and help push it forward faster once we have a solid base achieved. I am all about moving the technology forward and your one of the few genuine advocates of growing VR as a platform. Not what's the next best headset. I hope you remain a dominant voice in this community. You put some serious thought and effort into this video. I hope you do more of these.
The best example of VR "menu" design IMO: Superhot. No flat menu, no button (outside settings + pause menu). Just a room with disks u plug in a pc and a virtual vr headset to start the game. Very simple but extremely effective!
Ive always liked the idea of a literal virtual library with Folders reperisented as shelves and documents as books, apps and games could be small hand sized boxes with the logo on it, you could have a bag on your person that can store these items as favourties.
Rec room is a vr (and pc) game that does a great thing with its UI: it designs everything to be tactile and accessible, it is designed so children can use it as a learning tool after all. Every toggle is a thick button with a satisfying click sound that you can clearly see and ‘feel’ when you press something. The way they do decks of cards is also pretty intuitive. The sound effects, highlighted objects, and instructions make it possible, (if you can find people who will play with you) to play actual card games as if you were sitting at the table irl.
Subscribed over a year ago, best video you've done. The industry needs people like you to give effective criteria for growth. Keep up the excellent work.
I'm still holding out hope for really good gloves. Ones that aren't bulky and annoying to wear, but have haptic feedback and actually physically keep your fingers from closing any further as you wrap them around a virtual object. Would make a world of difference.
Give it some time. I wait for something that would allow a human body to spin 360 degrees in all directions...would be perfect for movement. But that would be chunky af...
The next generation of lucid gloves actually look really good. Lucas is working on cutting the size by more than half. As well as allowing splay tracking and other cool features.
I wonder if it would be possible to use specifically woven materials that go thru a layer of the gloves that could be pulled on or tightened down by a fast responsive motor system. Maybe the motor system could be located inside some thick wrist straps? They'd probably need to have their own plugged in power source. At least until we see advancements in our portable battery power abilities. I'm curious if there can be a way to improve the accuracy & efficiency of the gloves input abilities by pairing it with something else? Idk? Like a thin cloth that can be rolled up? Or something else entirely. I really haven't dove into VR tech so apologies if these were dumb ideas. Just was brain storming because I like the idea of advanced gloves. I don't like that most things have zero feedback and janky accuracy.
It’s also important to note that the author of the book also created the idea of cyberspace and cyberpunk, William Gibson more or less completely imagined all the technology we would have today all the way back in the eighties. Without him there probably would be no matrix in the first place (idk if this is mentioned in the video seeing as I’m still at the beginning of it).
18:24 - I was going to comment to complain about this issue specifically, so I’m really glad you brought it up. I had no idea it even had a name! It’s so frustrating.
1:05 i think you're skipping the biggest issue of VR, which is the fact that this is not a long term use sustainable (at user level) platform and that with time, you're essentially frakking up your eyes akin to what schools without specific conditions (there's a few articles on it online and what's done to mitigate this with results in Asia) result in a severe uptick in myopia ridden individuals.
As a User Experience Designer by trade, it warms my heart to see this video. Someone, like you, so steeped in VR domain knowledge, using that knowledge to consider a better experience for everyone. My hope is that more designers will see this video, and come to adopt the Thrillseeker Principles of VR Design. I'm going to share this around.
This was a fantastic video! I just finished watching it twice, back to back. I'm a fledgling game developer, but I would love to be able to work in VR design someday-- it's such an incredibly open and creative space! I love challenging paradigms and thinking outside the box. VR really feels like a relatively new frontier with undiscovered regions just waiting to be explored. It's still in its infancy, and I'm so glad I get to enjoy this era of discovery. Thanks for all your effort putting together such an inspirational and thought- provoking video!
You should 100% make more videos in this style, even if it's not VR related. You do well in this 'documentary' type video. This was very fun to watch, and very well made.
This isn't just a video about VR. This is a finely crafted, amazingly written, meticulously edited essay on the bizarre circumstance of our unconscious/conscious interaction with our world and its proxies. The newest interactions of VR challenge that because they can more directly contradict our instinctual interactions ingrained into our primal mental interactions from a very early age (i.e matches more of our senses while also subverting them). Edit: long-time watcher, finally subscribing
The biggest VR design flaw.... Meta selling VR headsets that require a Facebook account, even though meta allows fake advertising from hackers. You click on a Ticketmaster ad, buy tickets, and all of a sudden you are out $600 with no tickets, no Facebook account, and a VR headset that is a paperweight. True story even, besides the paperweight. We got an HTC Vive for that reason exactly. VR's biggest design flaw, is META.
Too many menus, not immersive enough. If you want me to use a menu, give me a device with a menu, don't just float it in front of me. If you want to give users an avatar, make us change the clothes ourselves, open a drawer, show the options inside (in a user friendly way). You want us to buy clothes? Have us navigate to a market. Virtual reality doesn't feel like "reality" because the devices and the "lives" the give us are too protected. There's no "leaving the house" to go shopping for more clothes, there's no passing people on a street. I know a lot of these options would be VERY difficult to pull off, especially on standalone headsets like the Quest, Pico, ETC. Though if you want to call it "Virtual Reality" you could at least try to convince us that we're in some type of other reality.
This was really interesting, and enlightening. Absolutely love to explore different perspectives and reassess things we have come to take for granted. You've done the community and the future a great service with this one! I'm hoping for more of this in the future!
The most positive experience I ever had in VR was floating in Echo Arena. Floating in Zero G, pushing and pulling off objects worked exactly how I had always imagined it as a child. But you know what every other VR experience chooses to make me to do instead? Walk. With an analog stick, or even worse. Teleport. Just to move around. Almost no other experience in VR even attempts Zero G locomotion, even though it was immediately accessible to my brain. It becomes a flat screen experience the minute I have to go back to using an analog stick. That feeling of just knowing what to do immediately with my body, vanishes the moment I have to move around a world with a hockey puck.
I agree echo is immersive and feels very realistic but walking in most games is just mandatory, nothing we can do until we eventually figure out other ways to control the game like with brain wave sensors or something
@@eternalglow6483 Why is it mandatory? Even a hybrid system where you attach to the ground but can detach and float would be better than tilting on an analog stick. A zero g model can't be that hard to implement.
Thank you. You said everything I've been thinking for the past few months as I play more games, new and old, plus some things i hadn't thought of. I hope your vision come to fruition and we can all enjoy a more natural VR experience.
He said in another video that he would be changing the way he uploads. He's not going to be posting as often, but will be posting overall better videos
As a philosopher of physics, I loved your insight into human intuition. For me I find it is an indication of the great design of the human minds (as you say the best designs are invisible and we certainly take intuition for granted!), and so it tells us something of how great our designer is
An idea: Instead of pulling up your menu, then going to social, then "in instance", scroll through the player list, to find one user, so you can add them as a friend, you just shake their hand in a deliberate manner to add someone to your friends list, or make a "shh" finger motion to mute players. I believe this is the right step towards VR UI
There used to be a Leap Motion Sword Art Online UI demo someone made in Unity. Felt fun to play with. I still like that more than any UI we've ever seen. Anything beats a flat screen with a freaking laser pointer.
"Never to complain unless you have an alternative" as the one lesson instilled by your mother... Damn, I do have the exact same "the lesson" from my mother. I criticize her for everything else she said throughout my life, but that one thing is so correct that I have no words against it.
@@Friend- I agree in general. In order to solve a problem you first need to recognize a problem, and discussing it with others is a good way to find potential solutions. The "Don't complain unless you have an alternative" rule is great for interpersonal relationships where you have to protect egos and soothe wounded prides, but in terms of whole industries or artforms complaints can lead to important advancements.
That is not a good advise tho, as a developer of enterprise software the least thing I want is people complaining and offering solutions. Their complaining is valid as they are the masters of the functional aspect, but their solutions are not, they know nothing about what it is reasonable and what is not and when they think of a "solution" they get very invested in their "solution", even if it is either not really a solution or it would take soo many resources to implement that it doesn't make economic sense as the value is lower than the cost. I rather they just complain and explain their problem without a solution so I can come up with a solution to their problems that can be done in a reasonable time. This applies to all kinds of things of life, the skill to critique something and the one to come with solutions are two very different skills almost in every part of life. You do not need to know how to cook to know that the meat is too terse or doesn't taste good, but you do need to know how to cook to come up with a solution. So it is shit advise, it is counterproductive, it either leads you to undercomplaint about things you should be complaining because you do not imagine how to fix them or it leads you to offer uninformed unrequested shitty solutions about things you don't really know about.
@@DigitalJedi If you do not have an alternative, then you will simply suffer by complaining (= hating your only option). Imagine that you have a dream and there is only one way to reach it, no alternatives, and you don't like that way. Complaining will only make things more bitter than they are, which will then either make your path forward more annoying or even cause you to give up on your dream.
This is definitely one of my major gripes about VR, and why I have never found VR particular good for everyday browsing or work over the PC. Almost every VR web browser or desktop app functions almost identically to a standard PC version, except that the affordances are much more limited. Rather than having a mouse and keyboard, your methods of interaction are essentially limited to a pair of point-and-click lasers, with no keycombos, shortcuts, or gestural controls. By sticking to structures people already know, VR OSs are effectively neutering that "infinite possibility" that draws people to the technology in the first place.
Any comments on new VIVE Focus Vision display specs? Everyone is saying it definitely NEEDS a version with current micro OLED displays with pancake lenses as nothing else comes close, as the Bigscreen Beyond (costing about the same price you're asking) has proven with its best in class image quality. The current VIVE Focus Vision display spec you list sounds like 2016 display tech, so not worth the extra cost above Meta Quest 3, regardless of extra features, for PC gamers! If you want a place in the market, go for top end (OLED & pancake) & we will happily pay more than the price you're currently asking! Please also add an option to pay extra for VR gloves that support precise finger tracking (not just imprecise visual) with 8 button emulation by touching finger tips to thumbs & some forcefeedback ideally rather than clunky game controllers that put PC users off VR. I, along with those willing to spend enough to get a top of the range PC to make use of this headset properly, would be willing to pay a lot more for these features; true top of the range for consumer setup, rather than just a more expensive alternative to the Meta Quest 3!
Outstanding video! I can tell you put so much thought into this to really tell the story and show applicable examples. Your storytelling design is superb!
I have been building a clinical tool to use in hospital and the UX design and the user journey have impacted the design of the application immensely. I have needed to make custom solutions to help with certain interaction, and I find the trick is in the signification of a affordance and the ability for people who have had no previous experience with VR to make those connections almost instantly. taking a lot of inspiration of everyday things really helped.
12:25 have you played any games? After 10-15 minutes in, everything in the peripheral vision that doesn't move just stops registering , basically when you focus on the screen it is not that different from VR
I hope you enjoyed this one. I spent a lot of time on this video and had a ton of fun hand animating everything. Feels so good to evolve my content to talk about VR on a deeper level. I have no clue how this video will "do", but I felt it was an important video to make and I want to make more stuff like this. We're in this together!
Lemme know what you thought!
Also, the STL for my Controller holsters are in my discord server: discord.gg/Thrill
It's also a great place to talk deeply about VR stuff like this!
After editing many videos myself the amount of small things that I see in terms of animation and editing is insane, and you really rocked the charts with this one. Good job not only to the hand-crafted animations but to the story and outline of this video in itself. Amazing work like always thrill.
Omg the production value on this piece is so high! Great job Thrill. Also I feel heavy "Disrupt" vibes.
Probably my favorite video you've made so far!
I had to dislike this video it was buetifully flawed in everyway... For exemples to the thesis... Great watch if you have no idea what XR is or what design, engeering is... Like the quest 3 is suffering from good design but bad eggeering like all new tech do... Want a Duel screen phone? They all suck to use on android because andoird is softwear limiting them even if they are good design like the Nintedo DS which had amazing engeering.
About halfway through as I'm writing this. I've been thinking along the same lines, but it has drawn me to an uncomfortable conclusion from the perspective of VR enthusiasts: Advanced AI and robotics are likely going to "eat" VR for mainstream people. This will happen in 2 ways:
1) If design of VR is going to be dominated by affordances, signifiers, and feedback derived from real world objects, then physical objects in the form of AI robots and other devices are going to have more satisfying design and will hold more interest to people for most applications. VR will still have a place, where the cost of actually constructing what is portrayed would be prohibitive in money and/or time. This will also create a new dynamic of economic disparity, where VR alternatives will be chosen by those who cannot afford the physical version.
2) Another way, in which future AI will "eat" VR, is that it's inevitable that in the future VR most displays/interfaces/design will be created by generative AI. Imagine asking a generative AI familiar with The Design of Everyday Things to create a Johnny Mnemonic style interface our of your personal data. This is inevitable, because such displays would be tremendously useful, but the only way such displays could be economically produced is to have generative AI models produce them.
More people should be saying this out loud. It has been many years and it almost feels like we haven't made any steps towards figuring out a proper method of interfacing with VR.
ts not just interfacing, every type of progress feels really slow at the moment, dk why 😵💫
biggest issue is that most interfaces are build on flat dimensions just X and Y .. with VR/AR we suddenly get Z and everything in between added to it, yet our brains are trained to visualize only on these X and Y planes.
@@FredomnomThere is a massive heatsink of imagination where good ideas are currently going to die. I'm still trying to figure out why.
Life does feel very flat and stagnant currently, but it may just be a calm before the storm.
There's a new Wave coming.
@@Fredomnom becouse we are in a time of cold w r and looming civil w rf re, there is no time for progress when the western world stands on the brink of complete civil and race w r f re in 5 short months thats why. There is no progress there likely will not be any more in our life time. We are in the troubles now. survivel is all you will be thinking about. There is no time for advancement of peaceful or inciteful things. Only survival at any cost.
@@kuromiLayfe Read this SGI article from 2008. Using a technology they called VUE, they wanted to overcome the mechanical hurdles that would allow SGI to solve the collaboration-at-a-distance problem.
"SGI has identified three problems that they feel users face with respect to managing and understanding large amounts of data. In the scientific space, computational models are larger and more complex.
Second, large data consumers are often a part of global teams, both in scientific and industrial computing organizations, and in organizations that aren’t traditionally compute-intensive but are increasingly data driven
Finally, SGI points to information overload as a characteristic of our society, pointing to studies like the one from IDC last year, which estimated the amount of digital data created in 2006 to be 161 exabytes. The same study estimated the amount of digital data would grow to 988 exabytes by 2010, with only 600 exabytes of storage available worldwide. If these numbers are even in the ballpark, we’ll have to do a lot of analysis on the fly, making decisions and losing the original data with tools built to support large scale streams of transient data."
SGI sees a market opportunity in all of this data and, according to Pette, the company’s goal is to enable customers to “visualize anything anywhere, at any time, on any device.”
This is why apple is going to release a ARM SOC with a hardware based path tracer. It will load the entire house/scene into memory and path trace the world into the HMD. This enables a UI that respects the user, by causing objects and panels or anything rendered in this system to respect the world physically while looking real. Basically, Reality simulator. Like, real "Virtual Reality". The holy grail. This is what is referred to as the commoditization of 3d photorealism for the masses, enabled by new and cheap hardware based rendering techniques.
Personally I still feel like the biggest thing holding the industry back is that 90% of the companies producing this only see it as a side venture if that, if vr is just a throwaway product these companies will randomly throw money at then I can't see it improving considerably in the next few years
I know you said 90%, so this may merely be an addendum; but I like how meta threw so much capital at this tech.
Certainly not without self interest, but still an appreciated contribution in these pioneering times.
a lot of game companies are throwing good vr games at it near the end of year, quest 3 is going to be the next wii
There’s also no laid out design practices, and issues with tracking accuracy complicate stuff.
Companies don’t want to invest a crap ton into experimental UI when they have something that works to an acceptable degree.
Exactly. It's all just tiny dev teams with tiny budgets. Even the big games like assasins creed or horizon are just little spin off games. how is any of that supposed to compete with the game library of a ps5, Xbox or steam?!
@@levoGAMESyeah Meta definitely tried but I don't think it was enough. Like money can't fix everything. Not sure if it was the technical limitations of the quest or just not enough quality devs but the vast majority of games felt more like mobile games than full on AAA titles.
Also think the hate for Meta doesn't really help. People just love to hate on Meta (and in many cases rightfully so)
Maybe a more experienced and "gamer positive" company like Valve or even Nintendo (they're great with underpowered hardware) could do it.
14:11 "Never complain unless you have an alternative." - I'd strongly argue that this is not a good rule. Not every user is qualified enough to offer a genuinely better (and actually possible) solution than what the developer came up with. A developer is usually a professional and someone involved with technical and resource-bound behind-the-scenes stuff, you can not expect the same level of skill and knowledge from a regular user. Offering an alternative should be regarded as a bonus to a negative feedback, not as a requirement, otherwise you create a climate that can shut down legitimate reports of issues.
Yeah it's bad advice. Even if you don't yet know of a potential solution, never hesitate to acknowledge a problem. Was disappointed to hear such fundamentally flawed thinking in this video.
I don't need to be a pilot to know a plane crash
Yeah. Hearing "something is wrong" is first important information. Explaining why you think it's wrong it's second important information. Providing solution is maybe third important information, but it's not very important, because first two things most probably are valid, but there is a reason why alternative solution doesn't exist, so why random no expert should knew better than experts themselves?
How about?….If you’re going to complained..have a proposed solution.
@@oznerriznick2474 1) can a layman come up with a better solution than a developer who actually works on the ins-and-outs of the thing? probably not, so why make it a requirement. 2) what if a user can't come up with a solution, does it make the issue disappear? does it make the issue not worth reporting and fixing? no and no
feedback is not always just "complaints" and is not always just this end user personal problem
Ironically, the biggest problem for VR interfaces is "infinite affordances". It isn't just that you CAN do anything, it's that there is no way to prevent the user from doing anything. In real life, a table is easy to use. You can rest your elbows on it, you can place objects on it, you can sit on it. It won't allow you to accidentally pick it up by pushing your hand through it, and objects won't fall through it if placed a bit too low. Same with walls, and doors, steering wheels, flight sticks, and all physical objects. VR introduces a fundamental, physical disconnect between the conceptual objects you're interacting with and any affordances the application is attempting to force on them for practical reasons and the actual physical affordances provided you, ie infinite ability to manipulate your hands around the objects. It also dramatically reduces the reliability of feedback for these operations since there is no physical response, no resistance, no click, nothing but visuals and sound, which are in fairness poor feedback for physical interactions. It's why good car design promotes buttons and knobs over touchscreens--the former is just dramatically better to use than the latter since the latter necessarily occupies more attention, lacking several forms of physical feedback (while STILL having more than VR, because at least you know if you touched the surface in the first place, or passed through it).
It's wild to me how this whole video quickly glosses over the problem of feedback and lack thereof, when I'd probably say that it's a huge contributor to VR interfaces feeling so off and awkward. The fact that SteamVR is a mess of menus isn't the thing that ruins my experience - it's that when I want to pick out an item from my virtual tactical vest, I need to look down to see where the magical zone that contains the item is located, whereas in real life I would simply be able to quickly feel out the item with my hands. That when I swing a virtual sword, the best way to do it, no matter how hard the game tries to emulate weight, is to just wildly twist my wrist as if I were holding a magic wand. That when I need to interact with menus, I'm left awkwardly pointing at things, an abysmal recreation of the touch screen, an input method that already sucks, but at least I can tell when my fingers are making contact.
Yeah, kind of related to this is the fact i can stick my head through walls. Its a complex issue and kind of breaks immersion, in a game especially.
@@Vickyorlo it was likely glossed over because there is no good solution besides haptic feedback. for example, how are you supposed to simulate the weight of a virtual sword? by magically attaching a 20kg weight to someone's hands? how are you supposed to recreate the coldness of gunmetal in games like boneworks? the roughness of stone?
As you said, part of the issue with vr and affordances is that when you have a movable object in VR, people expect it to behave like a moveable object, they have their conceptual model, but the object has more restrictive affordances than real life. You expect the object to be picked up, the have physics and weight, but not to have it suddenly snap into your hand because you were trying to gesture. Now think about it for the developers perspective: you have to manually add the object's functionality. Maybe there isn't a system developed to have the user and object interact perfectly as in the real world. Maybe you just can't add perfect functionality to the object because of hardware limitations. Now you are forced to compromise on the function, and often times the compromises result in unwelcome popups, annoying objects snapping to your hands, objects floating around and cluttering peoples view. It's easy to see how developers can struggle with some of these things. Basic UI on the otherhand? There absolutely should be a standard and a flow for usage.
Ease of use is why I wouldn't want a Tesla, even though I am interested in EV technology, I don't want to have to go through some touch interface to change the volume or adjust the A/C. I just want a simple button or knob with feedback... that and making users take their eyes off the road for such simple tasks is reckless. I don't know if VR will ever become mainstream, because it will to many seem overly clunky, or just more of a gimmick than an improvement to interaction.
It feels like a lot of people overlook vr ui, when in reality it’s a large portion of what makes the experience immersive or not.
If an interface is intuitive, you don’t think about it, but if it gets in the way, you do think about it and that takes you out of the experience.
It would be like going on a Disney world attraction only to see a staff member desperately try to reconnect a wire to one of the anamatronics.
Or like if you had to reconnect that wire to get the animatronic working. You don’t even work there you just want to enjoy the ride!
BANNANA BREAD!
@@EmergencyTemporalShift YOOOO, BRO DETECTED IN COMMENT SECTION!!
@@cheezeebutter452 this ^
I do agree. However. If you get good enough at a vr game (just like any other) you can easily immerse yourself and just have that game world be second nature.
We’ve finally found it: the first video on TH-cam that knows the difference between the words subjective and objective
Job done. We can shut down the internet now and all get back to our lives. It's been a long journey, and we've all suffered on the way, but rest easy now, brothers and sisters, it's finally over.
I literally died waiting for this comment. Lol
@@denemessina8601ha. Thanks for your comment. It made me laugh, actually chortle, out loud.
The old Atheist Experience with Matt Dlllahunty is a really watch if you like really good usage of epistemology etc
>guy is literally a biased apple fan and doesnt hide it
My favorite Thrillseeker video yet.
It's hard to put into words ~why~ VR UI is so frustrating (especially for first-timers), but you successfully made a comphrensible breakdown dedicated to just that. This is a video for both developers & players a like. And a great reference I will be sending to people for a long time!
found the motion and 3d design impressive too 👀
I think one of the biggest reasons VR UI is frustrating is consistency. He mentioned this in the video about Meta's settings and it really does annoy me. From the Oculus main menu you have your settings panel but if you connect to PC you can't access that same settings panel without completely disconnect your link with the computer. There is a completely *different* settings panel within the link area where even something like volume options look different. There's also no passthrough when linked which means you have to be in position before doing anything otherwise you have to take your headset off to see the real world and make sure you're not going to hit something. Or if you want to pause the game you can't see someone talking to you without, again, taking off the headset.
I have Synthriders and Audio Trip. Two very similar games yet one uses controller lasers and the other requires 'physical button presses' in the VR space. I've played games where grabbing objects uses either the trigger or the lower trigger button. Really easy to drop things when you're not consciously thinking about which game you're currently in. There's also just buggy issues like games that won't recenter, or games that the play area moves if you take off the headset and you can't get it back to the right position.
All of this is inconsistency. The things you expect to happen don't. There's no standard for the developers. VR is still a niche thing with everyone trying to be the 'winner' so there hasn't been much effort in all these big companies coming together and saying, here's what works for our users and we are ALL going to make stuff work this way so that it eventually becomes second nature.
I never found VR UI too frustrating in a vacuume. It is just regular 2D UI controlled with a controller pointer instead of a mouse cursor or a touch screen. It can be annoying because it doesn't integrate into the VR-experience at all and there is a disconnect between the two, since it is port over from a different medium. For me that is not really difficult to put into words. I don't think he also put it into words as far as I remember? I feel like instead of demystifying it, he himself used a very transient explanation that doesn't actually explain anything in any detail. I dunno, to me there really wasn't a lot of substance in the second half of the video.
Watch out, I get stalker vibes from this one
Huh? @@NanoNutrino
One of the most striking events of VR done right is the locks in Half-Life: Alyx. Puzzle-solving in a 3-dimensional space where interaction doesn't inhibit movement was mind-blowing. It gave a good impression of what a holographic UI could be.
HL: Alyx was the last hurrah of valve's innovation
@@illuminoeye_gamingtheir last hurrah? You have zero fucking clue of that's going to be their last hurrah or not, tf is the point of commenting that?
@@BradChadley why are you so mad on behalf of the company that makes more money than we'll ever see in our lives through Steam sales
my point was essentially just that valve just doesn't make cool games like they used to - if you saw the leaks about their supposed upcoming hero shooter type game??? like, looks formulaic as hell.
@@illuminoeye_gaming I don't give a single fuck about valve, your comment was just stupid. Valve has a history of not doing anything for years before they release something worthwhile (took awhile for HL Alyx, for example). Give it another 5 or 10 years and then we'll know if they're done or innovating or not. Even then, if they're still afloat via Steam, they may start innovating again in future.
Your comment is stupid because you spoke matter of factly about something that can't be proven one way or another till time has passed, not because I'm defending valve you dork
@@BradChadley we don't live in the Orange Box era anymore, sadly
My biggest problem with a lot of tech is how much of it is built to serve the company rather than the customer. They often start by deciding how they want the user to interact with the product so the product does things the company wants it to do. They don't start by solving a problem for a customer in a way that understands what the customer wants the product to do.
Steve Jobs was a master of this.
I'm a game developer who always was obsessed with interactions and interfaces, it always was so obvious to me why a game felt good to the hand or not in an intuitive way. This video gave me the right framework to translate that "lens" to VR development, which I'm currently delving into. I followed you for a while now, this is the most helpful video you ever made to push forward VR. Thank you!!
I mean, I think it kinda speaks for itself. Different interfaces work best for different platforms. But I'm a gamer who has never restricted himself to just using a traditional controller, I've always been open to new methods to control and positive towards games that actually use them in a way that it contributes to the overal experience.
Gud luck!
Ui for the past 20 years has seen little improvement or outright decline
I want a game one day , (you know those artistic game that make you think more than enjoy good gameplay) that actually flip everything on its head ; something that make you feel like you are not a human, disconnect all patterns, known concepts, affordances signifiers, interface , recognizable forms etc, a "game" that forces you to be something else that is completely different to anything we know, Something that doesnt exist in this reality.
I cannot totally picture how and what , but im kinda obsessed with this idea, a game or immersion that proves that our consciousness is unlimited and can take the shape of anything it is given to, bending to any rules.
Our human experience is shaped by our senses, by our feedback, what we know and learn. I could play as a cat in VR, where i can jump , walk on 4 legs blablabla and i wouldnt "be human". But i will still recognize everything that i currently know from being human, I will recognize the paws, the cat , the objects it jumps on , i will recognize that i will fall down after a jump (physic) etc. When i say a game that make me feel "not human" i do not mean that.
Im talking about something hypothetical that dont follow ANY known rules and concepts or recognizable features yet still allow our brain to pick up new patterns and act upon them. Something stripped to the bare minimum of what is recognizable, that is constantly pushing your mind to bend and adapt to a reality that is increasingly far from "known reality", essentially a VR "game" that proves that consciousness is just information and pattern recognition, a primordial infinite essence that lives in every living being, only stuck and limited by the shape of its container, by with the sensors, the information and the tools it was given at a particular moment, but its perception infinitely malleable and adaptable.
@@baronnashor158 If you want that kind of game, you'd better get to making it because no one else is gonna do that during your life time.
I am in school for design engineering and this is a great summary of the basic problem every day people have when becoming frustrated with a piece of technology they don't understand. Thank you for this great video
You shouldnt need to understand something to use it. That is the problem
@@mortonj02 No the problem is how to most effectively communicate that understanding so the user doesn't get frustrated
Ever since the Iron Man movies came out, I was quite fascinated with Tony’s AR interfaces inside his workshop. You never saw Tony struggling with the UI - it genuinely looked like it was always fully in sync with his movements, gestures and overall needs.
That’s the kind of natural feeling I hope we will one day achieve with VR or AR - us not trying to figure out how it works, but it adapting to how we behave.
tony was basically a very smart average person, who uses things like a normal person, unlike developers who think differently. this helped tony make a clear and intuitive design language, in my opinion.
@Matthew_MBGorrrrr it was a movie and none of it was real
I believe in "Time Friction" which is that for every issue, every one thing big or small that a user bumps into outside their control, each collective minute or second of discomfort or frustration is more and more abrasive until the user is left sensitive and raw, wanting less and less to interact with the experience.
It's why being able to tailor menus and layouts can help give back a little of that control and give the user more agency in a personalized interface that speaks to them. Nothing's more frustrating to me than having to see whatever Meta wants me to see from the moment the OS UI pops up, or not having shortcut options unique to the user.
Boggles the mind that years upon years later they can't even entertain the notion "Hey maybe someone doesn't want some of our widgets they'll never use on the main bar!" or "Maybe letting people make custom folders or changing the UI color to a whole rainbow of choices might help them feel like this is their system." The little things and the lack thereof all accumulate. And little things add to longevity or demise of a thing.
Okay, ngl I thought i was the only one that thought in this way. thanks for putting a term to it, I like it.
I actually wrote a whole video a year or so back about this exact concept. I added up how long it took me to get into VR to do various tasks from beginning to end and then multiplied that by how many times I typically use the systems.
hours. days. MONTHS of time friction. It adds up.
The worst part in the world is that we *USED TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT!* In the 90s, and even still today in most Linux desktop environments, you can customize your UI into unusability (and I have, then had to dig through the menus to find how to put that critical control back).
I think a lot of the issue is that Microsoft and Zuckerbook both have the mentality that their way to do things is the *only* right way, and anyone who disagrees needs their face held to the grindstone until they learn better. It's part of why I hate both companies so much.
@@ClokworkGremlin Apple has this as a core philosophy, they feel users don't know what they want, and the almighty Apple gods are sent down to tell the users what they want. Windows 11 interface is inferior to W10 IMO, because they are taking useful interface design and burying it behind several layers of menus, or just throwing them away. Simple things like checking network status or changing IP becomes a chore, when it used to be simple. They are trying to dumb down the interface to as little as possible, to the point where anyone who actually uses their computer for work is SOL. Another being that you can't move the taskbar, when for 30 years you could move it to the side or top (I never did, but have known some who do). They make some improvements (such as decent multiple desktop support... which took them ages compared to Linux), but mess up others. At least W11 isn't as big of a steaming pile as Win8 was.
For the past twenty years, every tech giant has been taking customization away from the end user. Windows, TH-cam, PCs, software in general...
@@augustday9483dude i love enshittification
Videos like these continually remind me that information and innovation depend not on the smartest person but rather on the person sharing information in the most comprehensive, widespread manner possible. Even looking back at Einstein, his theories weren't unknown in his field, but he was the first person to herd all of these different ideas together to form a cohesive, comprehensive theory. _That_ is the power of effective communication, and it's why I have equal parts fascination and apprehension with video essays like these. They brilliantly weave these different ideas together, but it is ultimately done by someone without a firm background in the subject (i.e., not having a degree in the field they talk about), and that leads to a certain danger I have no idea how to feel about.
well judging people on intelligence is a trap in itself. common sense and social intelligence of how people actually think are way more valuable than how much you can remember for making something people actually like. i always cringe when is see people say things like read a book or insult their iq cause I just know they themselves aren't very bright despite probably having many degrees or good jobs
@@petercottantail7850 High intelligence (e.g. higher IQ) has actually been correlated to more charity and donations, as it represents an ability to think beyond yourself. I don't think academic intelligence and social intelligence are these dichotomous forces you are portraying them to be.
Sure, there are people who do nothing but stare at books all day and only mindlessly repeat equations and problems, but even looking at Engineering degrees, the most grueling math-focused degree (at the bachelors level) which involves nothing but advanced calculus and a dumbed down English course, yet someone with a degree in Chemical Engineering will still make more money then a Business Major...in _business_. Which, to me, shows that mathematics also cultivates a certain strength of "spirit" and a logical mindset which can be advantageously applied to problem-solving as a whole (and by logical extension, social issues).
Not to say that literature-focused majors are worthless, they still have incredible value in communication, but ultimately, mathematics (your bog-standard basis for academic elitist prance about as if they are geniuses) teaches problem-solving, that doesn't make up for a lack of sociality, but it does make what communication you bring to the table all the more valuable.
I do agree that social intelligence (i.e. the ability to communicate) is vastly more important then academic intelligence, but the point I was trying to make with Einstein is that: he wasn't great _just_ because of his academic genius, but also his effective social intelligence to herd ideas together to form a comprehensive theory, and academic and social intelligence are intrinsically linked on the foundation of logical thought.
I'm pretty passionate about the subject, so feel free to poke holes in my argument. Logical communication can only improve both of our thoughts.
You've touched on it, but I think the key with Einstein was his ability to express the core principles of his theories as story-based thought experiments using concepts and items familiar to most "lay" people ... allowing the rest of us to visualise and "get" the basic ideas behind his theories.
If you can explain something complicated simply for someone who has little or no knowledge, and they can understand- you're a very intelligent person
@@Daynger_Fox "If you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough." - Albert Einstein
Sorry, but I stopped at 16:40 because this is just bad. "Controller design" is simply there because of technical limitations. Do you *really* think somebody thought "these natural hand motions are ridiculous, let's do controllers!"? That's why they're working so hard on hand tracking - *everybody* would like to leave controllers out as they're just cumbersome. But then one also needs a certain level of precision, so that was the next best thing to do. That's the *whole story* of VR! Nobody "wanted" outside-in tracking, it was a technical neccessity. And even today - can you build a hand-tracking portable device with hi res? Sure, you just need to shell out 3.5k$. And even then, there are glaring flaws. It's a question of what we can do *until* we achieve "technical perfection", less about designing for once we're there, because by then, a competitor's 80% solution will have taken over the market.
Thanks for this comment. I'm 5 minutes in at the three mile island bit and was trying to decide it it was worth continuing. It feels like a well intentioned video, but it just doesnt feel like whatever points he's trying to make have been properly thought through.
A XR UX research PHD (who is also one of the devs worked on the original vive in HTC) once told me, the UI is designed for the investors who only watch demos on flat screens. Hence, the UI are designed to be good looking from outside, instead of good to use for the ones using it. This made so much sense.
The biggest problem in the industry is that the people making this stuff, including most of the developers, don't care to actually use it in VR.
Makes Sense! So then! Meta - really gone bad... Other else - really just investors fault - they must to test it themselves - don't be shy, and, then - they have to be shamed otherwise😁
This not only applies to the vr world. So many things in our society are shaped by the flow of money. Every product real or not has parts that are made like the bad UI you describe that is made to look good for investors.
Thats why I've always been hyped for computer software in general. Because the space is not limited (other than processing power and electricity). But ofc my naive mind couldn't imagine the money generation machines that are things like subscriptions and micro transactions...
Always the goddamn investors...
investors: the root of all evil
You know how we invented computers so we wouldn't have to physically walk to a filing cabinet and look through it? What if we went backwards...
that isn't why we invented computers tho... they were invented to do math quickly
@@goos42
It's a Ready Player One reference
@@GUMMY_MKII oh my bad i didn't know that
@@goos42 well you're still right
@@goos42they were made to quickly decode German Comms in ww2
Imagine having a dream job, designing a user interface for a VR operating system (not a game, an actual OS), and then imagine that company politics gets in the way of implementing those discoveries. Then on top of that, imagine being involved in a car crash that forces you to have to quit the team for 2 years while you recover, and then when you return, the interface is no better off, and is in fact worse off, and furthermore, the company has started to slow to a halt, having missed the wave of VR. This TH-cam video gives me melancholy and PTSD and anxiety, because it’s like remembering what it was like to be in love for the first time, knowing it will end.
I've spent more time than I'd like to admit struggling with terrible VR UIs and this video perfectly summarizes my biggest complaints
* Laser pointers are imprecise, and pulling a trigger makes you miss the thing you're pointing at
* There's no coherent menu structure in SteamVR
* The first 30 minutes of every game are dedicated to dialing in comfort and locomotion settings
* Menus that stick to your face feel invasive
I hope that talking about this means consumers and devs alike can start to hone in on what actually makes a good experience
The laser point select thing is far better than touchscreen which has been fully mature for decades
"Laser pointers are imprecise, and pulling a trigger makes you miss the thing you're pointing at"
one of the reasons that I miss my shots in vr shooters 🙈
It's also a realworld problem though.
shooters get taught to gentle squeeze the trigger instead of going ham on the trigger.
@@moortu Yeah I wouldn't apply this to shooting mechanics. You're getting a proper simulation it sounds like lol
I think the reason so many games use laser selection is because so many games use laser selection. Humans are notoriously uncreative, it's why adding design constraints is so effective at improving something.
So you start your UI design task with a set of limits. The first is "No lasers allowed."
@@moortu I have no experience of pulling the trigger then miss due to change in weight of the aim when I pulled the trigger. Sounds like the complaint from a person who had only tried using the method for only 1 minute of use and never commited beyond it. I think ThrillSeeker is trying so hard to find a flaw that isn't a flaw in the first place. I can found myself missing the pointer click sometime due to shaky arms aiming at small target but it got absolutely nothing to do with trigger on my Quest 2 controllers since is pretty stable while weightless
I've always thought that Rec Room had pretty good steps for vr menus and navagation. Relating your own world to a dorm, with the lobby being accessible by a door in the same world. It feels like one connected space. Even if you want to skip that process you have a holographic watch, with pushable buttons that give feedback and pictures that give a clear signifier to where it leads or what it does.
Even when you get into making custom gamemodes it uses things like paint guns for modeling and circuts for setting game rules. The entire game uses something similar to something real which makes finding out what your doing very simple to beginers and why it's a great starting point for any VR noob especially since its free.
In superhot you choose a cassette instead of clicking options. You destroy objects or pull the vr glasses, to start
Hope all is well Thrill, missing the VR news.....
This is an amazing take at design, and it's way more important than people realize. I want to add two things: We want to interact with VR like we do in the real world: anything can be touched, and everything reacts to being touched. Also feedback: if I touch something, I must feel something happened. It needs to be instantaneous. Force feedback would be the best, vibration is the second best, sound is the third best. Visual feedback must be there, but it can't be the only feedback.
Which is why VR is not quite here yet - there is not enough feedback. Full feedback would be complicated, big and expensive...but it also would be THE thing that will make VR next step in gaming - full immersion. No compromises (expect being inside bulky machine).
@@alexturnbackthearmy1907 Exactly. Everything needs feedback, even things you can't fully interact with. If I miss a button inside a window and touch the window instead, things still need to happen: my touch needs to vibrate and make a sound, the whole window needs to bounce back when I touch it, and circles need to appear making waves wherever I touched it. Those things might seem trivial to VR designers, but it makes the whole experience so much more interesting and satisfying.
I've been avoiding vr ever since the Meta quest 3 came about. I'm not trusting Apple or Zuckerberg with my identity AT All. Hopefully a true standalone will come at a sub $600 price cuz of I can't handle the high pitches of the lightbox trackers. Whish valve made one that didn't need to use high frequency tech 😢
@@MaxRamos8 You can create your own separate Meta account and use Steam VR exclusively with Quest 3. No sensible information sent to the Zuck 😂
I love how much this dude loves VR. He's the real life Parzival and I'd happily hand him the keys to the Oasis!
fr, let him cook
Here's a weird thought. Parzival's canonical birth date is two months from now.
THRILLL WE NEED YOU!! i’ve been needing to watch your vids bro ive seen almost all of them. we need you back man
Any idea what happened?
I miss his videos
@@RetireandGo no i don’t honestly, really miss him though great creator
Hey! He posted a video 2 months ago :D
I work in VR, and the UI and how the user interfaces with the sofware is one of the biggest problems with VR. (Besides the nausea and fear of walking into a wall) Our observation is that the biggest problem with UI is lack of tactile feedback, you can push through everything, and are never stopped. You never actually can touch something, and we humans are not used to it. We control everything with touch, and we crave tactile feedback, and VR we have zero, so or brain naturally dislikes it. In my professional opinion UI design is not necessary the direct problem, or a problem that can be solved by standardization or a "better" design. The problem is that for the first time in human live, we are trying to control things without the sense of touch. You are fighting against 150.000 years of human evolution. The problem is most like VR itself, and when that is solved, we can move to the next step. For now, we can only try, and design for a day were we can touch things in VR.
So you think we need either haptic gloves or better yet, a neural interface capable of simulating touch.
If not gloves, multi-element haptics in controllers with better torque will make a step forwards. Best combined with new battery tech to tackle the battery issues.
Virtual sword clashes and locks with sword of enemy, strong initial impact, keep up vibration during steel onto steel time, strong push on forward elements as contact is relieved in VR.
The strength I'd like to see is like direct-drive gaming wheels VS bungee-drive wheels, hefty and serious compared to what we have now. Had a PS2 wheel that made my desktop creak and squeal at its maximum, so powerful it was realistic. Overkill for VR of course.
@@Mamiya645 Something along those lines. it is a very interesting problem, and one that we may not be able to solve until we can somehow either trick the brain into feeling something, or some other external kit.
@@DimosasQuest We are wired differently, that's the big burden that really hurts. I'm immune to VR motion sickness unless framerates go bad (thankful for Sony being serious with letting only proper performing titles through). For another thing, in Skyrim VR I could smell the nature, feel the wind, and I swear to you I could taste the breath of a horse as I walked by one.
Childhood summers were in the wild, very much like Skyrim (far north Sweden&Finland) so there are a lot of fond memories around to maybe aid me. Wonder how younger city-raised generations fare in comparison?
I should probably be on a Discord server aiding brainstorming about this and engineering immersion (and VR UI/UX)
For real, I remember sucker punching a guy while we were playing "Keep talking and nobody explodes"
loving this whole VR dev arc. IMO, it is ridiculous that you can't run several 3d limited volume apps side by side on quest. or extending the GUI analogy, switching limited volume app into immersive mode is like clicking on the maximize button in flat OS. Even within a fullscreen app, there should still be a way to interact with other running limited volume apps. Microsoft recently announced volumetric apps api, which should allow streaming of limited volume apps natively from your desktop or azure into quest. this should shake some things up in quest productivity space.
I really think VR UI is about to hit a stride.
The middleware just wasn't ready yet, and now it's getting finished.
Once the community has the tools, trial and error will make quick work of the problem.
I'm actually excited to own a Quest 3, more for the updates than actually using it. Every week it seems to be getting new features. Very exciting!
My long-term goal is to build my Quest 3 into a custom 3D printed helmet. I got an e-bike that can do 40 mph, and carries a lot of batteries. I'm planning to run AI locally on the bike using a Nvidia Jetson.
I plan on interfacing through the Quest.
Also adding a bunch of sensors, 360 cam, etc. So the AI can give me warnings about things I can't see.
I got some other features I plan to include like haptic feedback, but due to have only allows me so many words in my comments.
Microsoft isn't going to do much, they are killing their desktop market as it is
They are on the way out and New companies are going to take its place in innovation soon
It's software and also a whole new frontier that hasn't existed for too long.
Iteratively they figure out what works and what doesn't.
@@ninjameep8616 I highly doubt that Microsoft is going anywhere any time soon. I mean, it is the largest corporation in the world, even bigger than Apple. I just don’t see Microsoft falling any time soon
@@anakinlowground5515 I do see them turning a large portion of their community to other places though, kind of like how wizards of the coast screwed around a little too much and then pushed more people to pathfinder and making tons of d&dish spinoffs like critical roll's
Video starts at 8:16
You know
I've been a gamer since the 80s. I'm a developer of 24 years. I run a Design and Branding agency in London. I've a small gaming TH-cam channel and am a big VR enthusiast in my spare time. I've been a fan of yours for over 4 years and I'd like to think I'm well-positioned to have an opinion on the state of VR and design, however, this is one of the most succinct, well-considered and thought-provoking videos on design within the VR space I've seen. So much so that I'm compelled to comment and congratulate you on such a great video. I know you've taken time away from YT and had a change of direction and I appreciate the time it takes to produce content of this calibre. Well done. Keep up the good work for as long as it drives you.
The concept that a virtual object is simply a Skeumoprhism is a double-edged sword. It positions designers in a place where the rules of physics, space and time should be consistent if we wish the user to understand intuitively what the object is they perceive and how we expect them to interact with it. On the flip side, this means we're bound to create simulated replicas of the real world (hyper-accurate as they may be) which limits the true potential and creativity of 'Virtual Reality'. Taking your door analogy, we expect to be able to push or pull the door to open it and for it to remain a fixed size and shape, but if it was to scale if pushed, translate if pulled or morph into a pink elephant when opened this blows the concept of skeuomorphism out of the water.
There is conceptual flexibility within an immersive environment, however, unifying a common UI language across providers and platforms is certainly key. Skeuomorphism is ubiquitous to the personal computing experience whether you are on a PC, Mac, Linux or a MU-TH-UR 6000. Like the floppy disk simply used to 'save' a file (yet I can't remember the last time I used a 1.44Mb floppy!). Hand vs controller. Push/pull vs corner drag to scale. The different interactions required to create the same result is confusing and frustrating. A continuity of interface is severely lacking in the current UI lexicon.
What a fascinating moment in time in which we all live...
but my question then is, why would you want to create an experience difficult to relate to by abandoning skeuomorphic design? seems like an easy way to confuse a user.
this is not specific to vr, but also exists in 2d interface design: you can make the button on a website morph into a 2d pink elephant.
when designing, you have to choose what you want. if you want great UX, then limit the design space. if you want amazing mind-blowing creativity, then the UX might suffer.
That physical constraints limitation I think is the second biggest hinderance to design.
For example, when a USB doesn’t fit one way then we know we need to turn it around. If we translated that to VR, we would attempt to put in the USB and assume the game was glitchy if it didn’t work.
Similarly with scissors, our fingers fit into the holes so you know how to interact with it after fidgeting with it for a minute. With VR there is no possibility to fidget with an object to find out how to interact with it because our hands are holding the same controllers regardless of what we interact with.
As a final example, when opening a door we understand in the physical world that a lock must be holding it in place. So we turn the door until the metal is free and then push. A VR door does not have the restriction of a door jamb and can be opened by any means. So the user needs to be taught or try and use their best guess as to what the developer intended.
However these are all problems that any game or piece of software faces. I think the biggest issue with design for VR is that when things are inevitably unintuitive we are stuck in the world. We can’t conveniently search online how to fix the issue so the only solution is to either un-immerse yourself by going online or flailing with the controls. Losing that immersion is untenable in the VR medium so most users just flail around trying to figure it out
Very true.
IMO, one of the problems of many "innovations" is innovation for the sake of it. The first GUI didn't do "typewriters are ancient history, let's invent a modern way to write a document". It transferred to screen the experience of writing on a piece of paper. It had a desk and files and folders and documents so that people knew what to do. Of course they could have built a virtual world completely detached from reality to fully take advantage of the technology; instead, they decided to make us "cut" and "paste" things, and throw unused stuff in a trash can. Simulated real world is a good starting point. Most VR designers seem to not have learned this lesson.
21:33 Using Command and Conquer in your video... you are truly a man of taste.
C&C is one of my first games franchises that I truly loved.
unfortunately I was born a little too late to experience it in its prime and had to watch the series fall. Long live Westwood.
@@ThrillSeekerVR Hey man, we're always happy to welcome younger fans into our ranks. Just always remember; PEACE THROUGH POWER.
@@tgdm RED ALERT MARCH INTENSIFIES
Seeing a 2001 game's icon in VR UI is really something else
@@eneg_ why is THIS the comment that makes me feel old?
Wow! Easily my favorite video you have ever made. You have always taken whatever topic you are discussing to a deeper level, but this felt like inception. You must have done a tremendous amount of work on this video, and it shows. As always, I adore how well you break sophisticated principles and philosophies down into amazingly digestible chunks. This video needs an audience beyond TH-cam, because your insight is powerful and primed to change the world. Thank you for sharing with us.
THIS IS AWESOME THRILL!! This is one of my favorite videos that you've ever made
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!! That means so much.
People wonder why TH-cam is so addicting - I read The Design of Everyday Things in my Graphic Design course and apart from the door story, I was so disinterested (probably because it didnt impact my grade and wouldnt help me get a job).
10 years later and hearing someone use affordances and apply it in the context of VR is a real kicker.
The video applies the concept of perceived affordances and false-perception of affordances also which is cool... when people try to do something not yet programmed-for leads to design potentials (like the natural paths people make walking over lawns over time not part of an architects design) and how future affordances can be accomodated for as this tech exosystem develops.
I really enjoy these kinds of videos because they carry a lot of information about different subjects that affect ours lives without us knowing
my uncle worked on concept work for this movie. For his phd in architecture he tried constructing what 3d cyber space would look like.
that's so cool wow
WHAT!? That's actually awesome.
This may sound mean but you have anything that can prove that?
@Rockzqhow could they possibly prove that
it's not like they can post documents or something in TH-cam comments
Really comprehensive and inspiring report! As an XR Designer, I’m convinced that the best UI is “no UI“, as in trying to avoid using flat canvas and buttons as much as possible.
My background is Industrial Design for tangible Products, where we rigorously utilize existing conceptual models for communicating functions through 3-dimensional shape and visual appearance. If we make use of buttons, really the best ones are those of which users do already know the function before even reading label. While it’s logic for me to apply the same principles in immersive UIs, current VR Interfaces still feel like a relict from conventional phones and PCs. Maybe the truth is somewhere in between both worlds?
Keep up the great work!
One of the coolest bits of VR UI I've used regularly is in ChilloutVR: you open the camera by making the "framing a scene" sort of gesture, like you'd do when looking at a landscape in real life. That is, two "finger-gun" gestures 180 degrees off from each other, forming a rectangle. Changing the position and spacing of your hands even resizes the camera UI!
Also fun: you close the camera by clapping your hands together on it, as if you were trying to squash a bug, but without actually smacking your controllers together. The camera will then disappear with a poof of little cubes that disappear a moment later.
I didn't know about this and now I want it in every VR game that has a camera because it sounds amazing to use
Honestly, as someone who has followed your content for quite some time. I would say this is probably one of the best videos you’ve ever made. It’s incredibly educational while still being entertaining. And especially useful for people who want to start developing in the space as it’s now something that, you can point to as a reference moving forward. Really amazing work. And I look forward to what you come up with next.
This is exceptionally well done. As a recent Quest 3 purchaser and Apple Vision Pro addict, you quantified a lot of concepts I have been struggling to find words and analogies for. Keep them coming!
THE RETURN OF THRILLLLLLLLLLLLL
This is an excellent video, thank you so much! Take it from someone who has studied design and worked professionally in computer UX design for 20 years in different industries (now also VR UX design). Outside of work, I'm a gamer at heart and have spent somewhere in the 4 digits of hours in VR on different devices. You're speaking directly to my soul.
I felt like I was back in college listening to an incredibly smart lecturer forcing my brain to make new connections. Terribly rare on TH-cam, I'm a huge fan.
The most interesting phenomenon I've noticed in VR is that textures on objects appear to be MORE DETAILED compared to when they are viewed on a screen, even when there is not actually any additional detail being displayed.
I'm sure many users feel this way, that textures and lighting in VR just look so much more detailed and realistic even though the actual level of detail being displayed is often far less than what is being rendered in games you view on a flat screen.
I think this phenomenon is connected to the way our brains "fill in" a lot of what we "see" with our eyes, and when we view graphics on a flat screen, our brains know we are only looking at a flat screen, and it isn't fooled into thinking what we are seeing is real, but when you put on a VR headset, your brain gets fooled into thinking you are seeing real objects with real depth, and it starts "filling in" detail that may not even be there in reality, giving you the illusion that it is far more detailed.
Anyone else wonder about this phenomenon?
Reminds me of a time I looked at a Vr game on a pc and was like “wow this game looks so bad!” But when I joined the game it was a lot better being immersed in it. Maybe because you can’t directly compare things
Imo it's because your brain naturally evolved to pay more attention to the real world objects, because all of them could be a threat. You could bump into them, or their texture could signify hazardous imlications. So it naturally tries to decode more information from those objects in order to be more aware of such a threat. Doesn't really matter if it's VR, because the brain still gets a properly aligned stereo perspective, and you've spent all of your life decoding that exact type of information as that coming from the real world with real implications. So, with textures, you even get instinctive sensations of how it could feel to the touch, or even taste (did all that when we were toddlers), so yeah, it's way more immersive from the get go. Part of the reason why desktop style UI feels so awful in VR - it's out of place, it breaks immersion, and just all kinds of awkward. Unless it looks exactly like you'd expect it, as in a phone or a computer screen. We don't really have floating flat holograms in our lives yet, and I hope we'll never will because it's the same joke as floating UI in VR.
I really love the passion you have for VR. You talk about VR as a whole, rather than just the games.
And you're not biased. You lay it all out, and you just give us the facts.
Keep doing thing bro, love the channel.
Outstanding video. I was captivated start to finish. Your all over it my guy, I hope they are listening 💪💪💪
This entire video was absolutely amazing! Please make more like this, it was so interesting and really opened my eyes to design of not only VR but in every regard.
I especially loved how clearly you've managed to explain the problems with VR interfaces but also provided a solution!
Mr Jobs understood proper skeuomorphic design. And I think VR is where this kind of design would make the most sense of all for the interfaces and menus and such, yet it doesn't get used nearly as much or as well as you'd think. Sadly, it's also become used less and less with each new iPhone iOS update too. :(
Also, as cheesy as it sounds, reaching the "It just works" point really is the key too imo.
No matter what methods and solutions you ultimately use to make a great interface, if that's how it genuinely seems when people use it, "It just works", you've succeeded as far as I'm concerned. How you get there is the big challenge, but the completion/finish point of your particular interface implementation should be when "It just works" and no sooner ideally.
Jobs didn't really understand it, which is why MacOS X became a mess of mixed design language when he came back. The original MacOS design was wonderful. John Siracusa wrote some very extensive articles about it on Arstechnica back in the day.
@@aapje Skeuomorphic design wasn't really implemented in MacOS from what I recall, just the more standard desktop PC style UI design. I think it was more just iOS that really embraced skeuomorphism and only then in the older iOS builds. I think it actually makes more sense there anyway with the direct touch interface. I also think Jobs fully understood this, hence the differences between the two platforms and operating systems. And in VR it now makes even more sense to get back to embracing skeuomorphic UI design imo.
"It just works" is just marketing slogan that doesn't hold up under any scrutiny. I have never used any device that just worked, especially one from apple. You always have to do an hour of setup and then when I try to do something basic like downloading a file from a site, it often doesn't let you do it at all. I am always sad when people fall for mystifying marketing instead of looking what is actually infront of them. The only thing that "just works" is your most basic human behaviours that are pre programmed into you like eating, walking and shitting.
@@tinminator8905 Not even remotely true imo.
For example, as far as I meant and mean it here, my SNES "just works", or more precisely "just worked". Plug it in, pop in a game, turn it on and go. Easy as pie and exactly as I would expect and indeed hope. And my SNES Classic Mini in modern times was basically the same too for all intents and purposes, despite having an additional Home menu to navigate and such. Not because of skeuomorphic UI design, but just good UI design. No complex setup, no accounts to create, no signing up to online servers, no EULAs to agree too, no day one patches, no convoluted UI that takes an age to figure everything out and even then never feels truly fluid and intuitive at any point, no unnecessarily frustrating sticking points to just getting going enjoying the games, etc.
However we get there, and all things being relative, if interacting with VR can seem as simple and intuitive as that, I will be he happy to refer to that as "just working".
And, yes, the actual term is complete marketing spiel from Apple as per usual, but we don't have to be too pedantic and anal with my use of "It just works" if we get what I was meaning--and I think you did, or least now should.
Dare I say making things have a leather, brushed metal or glossy texture isn’t actually how you make interfaces feel natural? More recent versions of iOS became more gesture based, more tactile and physical and spatial (layering, adjacent screens) even if they look a lot more abstract.
1:00 right up there with the bulky designs, the impracticality of having to move in a physical space over just moving a mouse, and the lack of things to do
This video has embodied all of my thoughts perfectly! I've been telling people forever that the software and UI for VR is just lacking. In a virtual world were anything could happen, why are all the big companies sticking with such janky and flat screen designs.
This was an awesome video, I hope it brings more awareness to the VR community. Thanks thrill 💪
I had an idea for VR gloves that could help with providing feedback, which is having the gloves "lock up".
Essentially, the gloves would have servos at each finger joint, and when picking up, say, a ball, the servos would lock when your hand realistically would no longer be able to move. If you pinched a pebble, your fingers wouldn't be able to travel further than if you were actually holding a pebble.
Same idea! Touching stuff too. The gloves could do some kind of squeeze to feel the touch. Those would be 3 senses down!
Yeah I think I feedback like that in a full body suit would be the future. Where you can actually feel and touch things.
Get the p0rn industry on it and it Will develop in a heartbeat.
You're describing "force feedback" gloves, and it's actually something people are working on right now! The physical design of them is an engineering challenge, though; servos at every joint would be prohibitively bulky; no one wants to wear 10 pound weights on their arms every time they put on a headset. But there's been some really promising work with using a series of small pulleys and strings to mimic muscles, all controlled by motors mounted on the wrist.
@@FatedHandJonathon virtual handjobs will be a thing, mark my words.
speaking of designs, you or your video editor are/is one hell of a talented person. I originally clicked on this video to listen to while doing something else. I had to stop my task and keep watching bc I felt like I couldn't just ignore this
I see there being 3 levels of VR:
1.) Cinematic - Using VR to view 2D content on a virtual screen that can be customized to your needs/wants (I.E. watching a movie in VR.)
2.) Stereoscopic - Using VR to see content in 3D. May or may not include tracking or motion controls (Games like Moss do this)
3.) Immersive- Typically what people think of when it comes to VR. First-person with Tracking and motion Controls.
3d movie watching in VR chat is awesome and pretty comparable (from experience) with a 100 inch projector and active shutter glasses. Def is a lot more fatiguing though than the lightweight glasses.
I think this is the best/most important video on what VR is and could be I've seen in a very long time. Most are stuck in a cycle of response/review on what is being done, not commentary and guideposting about what SHOULD be done.
I think this is my favorite video you've done... period.
I think that the solution to the controller problem is not hand tracking but rather some sort of glove with depth perception that isn't based on a camera, in a way that you can reach out and touch a button with physical feedback and not have to gesture.
Touch screens alone are reason to believe this will be known as the dark ages of technology. The dark age of what was between buttons and whatever comes next. As someone with large hands it feels like I am living in a twilight zone dimension where is designed for people with tiny alien fingers.
"Best part is no part"...Something that doesn't need touching at all...
Guess we need to wait for a direct Brain-Computer Interface controls instead of buttons and touch screens....
The ability to zoom anywhere on a screen for more accurate touch would make so much sense.
Bro you haven't gotten your Apple Fingertip Pimples installed yet??? So are you using text-to-speech for everything?
@@_DeadEnd_ well, yes...but not for usual peeps and not in the proper way...
11:53 This is really like a picture of a pipe- a picture of a pipe is not a pipe, it’s a picture of a pipe; and a picture of a thing is not the thing itself, it is just a picture.
the UI should always be opened via a simple, unique, and yet familiar gesture. (ie. tapping a wrist, hand, or touching your ring finger to your thumb.)
My favorite comment on the Design of Everyday Things: "Doors should never need push or pull signs. If something as simple as a door needs an instruction manual, you have failed." There was an old video game on 8-bit computers called SCRAM that simulated a nuclear plant with those same sorts of problems: you think the valve is open, but the temperature is still going up, and you had to figure out fast enough what part of the indicators were giving you wrong information. And yeah, every game still asks you if you want to invert the Y axis, so good luck on that standardization.
This seems like a historical speech that will push VR forward. Brilliant thinking and so clearly laid out.
I found your channel through your appearances with Phia on The Virtual Reality Show and I gotta say, I LOVE THIS ESSAY!!
Huge fan of how you explained the concepts of design and focused on everything from the lens of user accessibility. Big fan of all the points and suggestions you brought up. Hopefully, we can have more eyes, ears, and minds like you working on VR!
There's still a lot in a lot of fields that would need to be done before VR can be made super accessible. Hopefully one day, we get there. But either way, for us in the field, let's hold onto our dreams and raise our voices =) cheers Thrill!
This kind of deep dive is fucking awesome to see from you Thrill. Please consider more!
YES! This is exactly the path I want to be taking!
@@ThrillSeekerVR I'm glad you said it. Video-essay type videos are what are find myself watching the most nowadays.
You making videos like this along side your news and gameplay videos would make your channel the perfect place for literally anyone interested in VR. And I'm all for it.
Bravo sir. You understand something very few people do. One of my biggest issues with VR is the way we interface with it. Everyone does it different and awesome in there own way respective way. Take all the best parts and create a standard with hand tracking. I also believe the controllers should have a standard created to always work with a universal type of VR interface. This will also simplify all VR controller designs and help push it forward faster once we have a solid base achieved. I am all about moving the technology forward and your one of the few genuine advocates of growing VR as a platform. Not what's the next best headset. I hope you remain a dominant voice in this community.
You put some serious thought and effort into this video. I hope you do more of these.
The best example of VR "menu" design IMO: Superhot.
No flat menu, no button (outside settings + pause menu).
Just a room with disks u plug in a pc and a virtual vr headset to start the game. Very simple but extremely effective!
Ive always liked the idea of a literal virtual library with Folders reperisented as shelves and documents as books, apps and games could be small hand sized boxes with the logo on it, you could have a bag on your person that can store these items as favourties.
The ability to move through it quickly as well
Rec room is a vr (and pc) game that does a great thing with its UI: it designs everything to be tactile and accessible, it is designed so children can use it as a learning tool after all. Every toggle is a thick button with a satisfying click sound that you can clearly see and ‘feel’ when you press something.
The way they do decks of cards is also pretty intuitive. The sound effects, highlighted objects, and instructions make it possible, (if you can find people who will play with you) to play actual card games as if you were sitting at the table irl.
It bothers me their moving away from that aspect, especially with the new Ui systems being flat and cluttered
Subscribed over a year ago, best video you've done. The industry needs people like you to give effective criteria for growth. Keep up the excellent work.
I'm still holding out hope for really good gloves. Ones that aren't bulky and annoying to wear, but have haptic feedback and actually physically keep your fingers from closing any further as you wrap them around a virtual object. Would make a world of difference.
Already exists if you build it yourself. Look up Lucas tech VR gloves
That's what I'm saying. A whole new level of immersion. The solutions we have today are still quite clunky.
Give it some time.
I wait for something that would allow a human body to spin 360 degrees in all directions...would be perfect for movement. But that would be chunky af...
The next generation of lucid gloves actually look really good. Lucas is working on cutting the size by more than half. As well as allowing splay tracking and other cool features.
I wonder if it would be possible to use specifically woven materials that go thru a layer of the gloves that could be pulled on or tightened down by a fast responsive motor system. Maybe the motor system could be located inside some thick wrist straps? They'd probably need to have their own plugged in power source. At least until we see advancements in our portable battery power abilities. I'm curious if there can be a way to improve the accuracy & efficiency of the gloves input abilities by pairing it with something else? Idk? Like a thin cloth that can be rolled up? Or something else entirely. I really haven't dove into VR tech so apologies if these were dumb ideas. Just was brain storming because I like the idea of advanced gloves. I don't like that most things have zero feedback and janky accuracy.
I saw ThrillSeeker, I tap notif
Incredible video dude! Thanks for putting this together, I hope developers and device makers take this to heart
4:21 im utterly flabbergasted at the fact he somehow included a segment about a NUCLEAR MELTDOWN into a video about VR interface
Man you made me google “flabbergasted” 😅
Coolant leak. Chernobyl melted down. Three Mile Island spilled some low level radioactive coolant and shut down.
Well played with Johnny Mnemonic… I was about to write a snappy comment about The Matrix being from ‘99 😂 good stuff my dude.
It’s also important to note that the author of the book also created the idea of cyberspace and cyberpunk, William Gibson more or less completely imagined all the technology we would have today all the way back in the eighties. Without him there probably would be no matrix in the first place (idk if this is mentioned in the video seeing as I’m still at the beginning of it).
18:24 - I was going to comment to complain about this issue specifically, so I’m really glad you brought it up. I had no idea it even had a name! It’s so frustrating.
1:05 i think you're skipping the biggest issue of VR, which is the fact that this is not a long term use sustainable (at user level) platform and that with time, you're essentially frakking up your eyes akin to what schools without specific conditions (there's a few articles on it online and what's done to mitigate this with results in Asia) result in a severe uptick in myopia ridden individuals.
Nah that's all bullcrap
As a User Experience Designer by trade, it warms my heart to see this video. Someone, like you, so steeped in VR domain knowledge, using that knowledge to consider a better experience for everyone.
My hope is that more designers will see this video, and come to adopt the Thrillseeker Principles of VR Design. I'm going to share this around.
This was a fantastic video! I just finished watching it twice, back to back. I'm a fledgling game developer, but I would love to be able to work in VR design someday-- it's such an incredibly open and creative space! I love challenging paradigms and thinking outside the box. VR really feels like a relatively new frontier with undiscovered regions just waiting to be explored. It's still in its infancy, and I'm so glad I get to enjoy this era of discovery. Thanks for all your effort putting together such an inspirational and thought- provoking video!
You should 100% make more videos in this style, even if it's not VR related. You do well in this 'documentary' type video. This was very fun to watch, and very well made.
Love this! I'm trying to build and explore the tools to help with better XR Design! So happy you made this!
This isn't just a video about VR. This is a finely crafted, amazingly written, meticulously edited essay on the bizarre circumstance of our unconscious/conscious interaction with our world and its proxies. The newest interactions of VR challenge that because they can more directly contradict our instinctual interactions ingrained into our primal mental interactions from a very early age (i.e matches more of our senses while also subverting them).
Edit: long-time watcher, finally subscribing
The biggest VR design flaw.... Meta selling VR headsets that require a Facebook account, even though meta allows fake advertising from hackers. You click on a Ticketmaster ad, buy tickets, and all of a sudden you are out $600 with no tickets, no Facebook account, and a VR headset that is a paperweight. True story even, besides the paperweight. We got an HTC Vive for that reason exactly.
VR's biggest design flaw, is META.
Imagine making a 600 dollar purchase without even looking at a url on a PC
why are you clicking on ads
Too many menus, not immersive enough. If you want me to use a menu, give me a device with a menu, don't just float it in front of me. If you want to give users an avatar, make us change the clothes ourselves, open a drawer, show the options inside (in a user friendly way). You want us to buy clothes? Have us navigate to a market. Virtual reality doesn't feel like "reality" because the devices and the "lives" the give us are too protected. There's no "leaving the house" to go shopping for more clothes, there's no passing people on a street.
I know a lot of these options would be VERY difficult to pull off, especially on standalone headsets like the Quest, Pico, ETC. Though if you want to call it "Virtual Reality" you could at least try to convince us that we're in some type of other reality.
This was really interesting, and enlightening. Absolutely love to explore different perspectives and reassess things we have come to take for granted. You've done the community and the future a great service with this one! I'm hoping for more of this in the future!
The most positive experience I ever had in VR was floating in Echo Arena. Floating in Zero G, pushing and pulling off objects worked exactly how I had always imagined it as a child. But you know what every other VR experience chooses to make me to do instead? Walk. With an analog stick, or even worse. Teleport. Just to move around. Almost no other experience in VR even attempts Zero G locomotion, even though it was immediately accessible to my brain. It becomes a flat screen experience the minute I have to go back to using an analog stick. That feeling of just knowing what to do immediately with my body, vanishes the moment I have to move around a world with a hockey puck.
Cool
I agree echo is immersive and feels very realistic but walking in most games is just mandatory, nothing we can do until we eventually figure out other ways to control the game like with brain wave sensors or something
@@eternalglow6483 Why is it mandatory? Even a hybrid system where you attach to the ground but can detach and float would be better than tilting on an analog stick. A zero g model can't be that hard to implement.
@@Krystalmyth it is, you cant put zero g movement in a game like Half life Alyx 😂 so yea, it is mandatory
Hope you are doing well bro! we miss you!
Thank you. You said everything I've been thinking for the past few months as I play more games, new and old, plus some things i hadn't thought of. I hope your vision come to fruition and we can all enjoy a more natural VR experience.
I think we should not try to "touch" things, because you cannot feel it and have it more like telepathy or magic by hand gestures.
Where did thrill go???😢
Rip
He said in another video that he would be changing the way he uploads. He's not going to be posting as often, but will be posting overall better videos
I know it is supposed to be for the better, but I miss him already
He's still seeking it
As a philosopher of physics, I loved your insight into human intuition. For me I find it is an indication of the great design of the human minds (as you say the best designs are invisible and we certainly take intuition for granted!), and so it tells us something of how great our designer is
An idea: Instead of pulling up your menu, then going to social, then "in instance", scroll through the player list, to find one user, so you can add them as a friend, you just shake their hand in a deliberate manner to add someone to your friends list, or make a "shh" finger motion to mute players.
I believe this is the right step towards VR UI
rec room has those
And voice command options.
There used to be a Leap Motion Sword Art Online UI demo someone made in Unity. Felt fun to play with.
I still like that more than any UI we've ever seen. Anything beats a flat screen with a freaking laser pointer.
the SAO UI is actually crazy cool and it's mind boggling how few imitations of it there are
I love this, as an aspiring designer this has made me excited by thw future of VR rather than bored like most of the products ive interacted with
"Never to complain unless you have an alternative" as the one lesson instilled by your mother... Damn, I do have the exact same "the lesson" from my mother. I criticize her for everything else she said throughout my life, but that one thing is so correct that I have no words against it.
I strongly disagree with that advice. Complaining is the first step in *coming up* with an alternative.
@@Friend- I agree in general. In order to solve a problem you first need to recognize a problem, and discussing it with others is a good way to find potential solutions. The "Don't complain unless you have an alternative" rule is great for interpersonal relationships where you have to protect egos and soothe wounded prides, but in terms of whole industries or artforms complaints can lead to important advancements.
That is not a good advise tho, as a developer of enterprise software the least thing I want is people complaining and offering solutions. Their complaining is valid as they are the masters of the functional aspect, but their solutions are not, they know nothing about what it is reasonable and what is not and when they think of a "solution" they get very invested in their "solution", even if it is either not really a solution or it would take soo many resources to implement that it doesn't make economic sense as the value is lower than the cost. I rather they just complain and explain their problem without a solution so I can come up with a solution to their problems that can be done in a reasonable time.
This applies to all kinds of things of life, the skill to critique something and the one to come with solutions are two very different skills almost in every part of life. You do not need to know how to cook to know that the meat is too terse or doesn't taste good, but you do need to know how to cook to come up with a solution.
So it is shit advise, it is counterproductive, it either leads you to undercomplaint about things you should be complaining because you do not imagine how to fix them or it leads you to offer uninformed unrequested shitty solutions about things you don't really know about.
That sounds like the type of thing you say to make somebody shut up and accept something they don't like or that bothers them.
@@DigitalJedi If you do not have an alternative, then you will simply suffer by complaining (= hating your only option). Imagine that you have a dream and there is only one way to reach it, no alternatives, and you don't like that way. Complaining will only make things more bitter than they are, which will then either make your path forward more annoying or even cause you to give up on your dream.
bro where you at its been 2 months :(
3 months
This is definitely one of my major gripes about VR, and why I have never found VR particular good for everyday browsing or work over the PC. Almost every VR web browser or desktop app functions almost identically to a standard PC version, except that the affordances are much more limited. Rather than having a mouse and keyboard, your methods of interaction are essentially limited to a pair of point-and-click lasers, with no keycombos, shortcuts, or gestural controls. By sticking to structures people already know, VR OSs are effectively neutering that "infinite possibility" that draws people to the technology in the first place.
Any comments on new VIVE Focus Vision display specs? Everyone is saying it definitely NEEDS a version with current micro OLED displays with pancake lenses as nothing else comes close, as the Bigscreen Beyond (costing about the same price you're asking) has proven with its best in class image quality. The current VIVE Focus Vision display spec you list sounds like 2016 display tech, so not worth the extra cost above Meta Quest 3, regardless of extra features, for PC gamers! If you want a place in the market, go for top end (OLED & pancake) & we will happily pay more than the price you're currently asking!
Please also add an option to pay extra for VR gloves that support precise finger tracking (not just imprecise visual) with 8 button emulation by touching finger tips to thumbs & some forcefeedback ideally rather than clunky game controllers that put PC users off VR. I, along with those willing to spend enough to get a top of the range PC to make use of this headset properly, would be willing to pay a lot more for these features; true top of the range for consumer setup, rather than just a more expensive alternative to the Meta Quest 3!
Most philosophical video yet.
Outstanding video! I can tell you put so much thought into this to really tell the story and show applicable examples. Your storytelling design is superb!
Welp, mr thrill your gonna die, you criticised Boeing at 4:05
Come back man, we miss ya
I have been building a clinical tool to use in hospital and the UX design and the user journey have impacted the design of the application immensely. I have needed to make custom solutions to help with certain interaction, and I find the trick is in the signification of a affordance and the ability for people who have had no previous experience with VR to make those connections almost instantly. taking a lot of inspiration of everyday things really helped.
12:25 have you played any games? After 10-15 minutes in, everything in the peripheral vision that doesn't move just stops registering , basically when you focus on the screen it is not that different from VR