How to head into VR without wearing a headset
kyushu-u.ac.jpEvery five years or so, VR gets to be the next hot thing. My first VR ride was on SGI Indigo, so it's been a while. Believers say we're almost there; I beg to be skeptical at this point.
It is already here? I've played a bunch of games in VR and they were great, and great in a way that does not translate outside VR. That's as "here" as I need.
It’s not truly here yet.
When we can use AI to generate entire environments out of our favorite shows and then we can walk around in them and do stuff, then it will be here.
That’s a a very specific end user experience that has nothing to do with VR.
The tech to do that exists in its infancy at the moment but the compute required to execute it makes it unfeasable.
The hardware is here and the games are here, just because there isn’t something that YOU want doesn’t mean it’s not a mature technology.
People do this in VRChat already, it's not a killer feature.
Mine was on the Virtuality. 1 minute or so play time standing up in that ring on a trade show. Not enough to really enjoy it.
I also played a military SIM a few years later on a SGI O2 but it was really stupid, no immersive controls etc.
This is not a head-mounted display, it's a chair-mounted display and as such totally unsuited for VR. The mirror system they are using for the display is autostereoscopic (the eyes receive different pictures), but this is not sufficient for VR, which also requires head tracking.
How the autostereoscopic effect is achieved isn't explained either, and it sounds as if this part isn't even new.
Their main innovation seems to be: they mounted the display to a rotating chair and attached an iPad to the chair in order to track the chair rotation.
Didn't they do this with arcade machines 20 years ago?
And the SGI CAVE 35 years ago
It wasn't SGI. It came out of the University of Illinois, Chicago Electronic Visualization Laboratory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environ...
The original design used two projector screens, one for each wall, alternating with left- and right- eye views, with the user wearing shutter glasses keeping the vision in sync, while wearing a head tracker. They did use 7 SGIs (6 VGX workstations and a Personal Iris) for the system.
Full details at https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/129888.129892 .
Later designs included displays on 4 walls plus floor for near immersive VR.
Looking around for info about there, I'm seeing very few mentions of it.
This seems to be one of the few: https://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=11400
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environ...
Over 9,000 matches for ""Cave automatic virtual environment" on Google Scholar, with over 400 from this year.
Thanks. I was looking for it in combination with "Silicon Graphics" as I didn't know it's its own thing. ;)
Well, not with a micromirror array which directs a different image to each eye.
Would love to have it at home and watch a concert! I tried watching a VR concert at YouTube with goggles but the experience is not very relaxed
I watched some VR videos of DJ sets that I found very immersive. I think the trick was that the camera was at audience level and I could turn around and see people dancing around me on all sides.
I watched another VR concert that was just the performer and no audience, and that was kind of dull.
And also the resolution is too low for immersion. The resolution on yt covers all 180 or 360 degrees you are looking at. It is pixallated.
Well.. it sounds like they want to "avoid bulky VR headsets"
But their alternative is even bulkier. A chair with a big screen, more like a personal holodeck box to sit in.
I totally believe this can be used to place better optics and avoid motion sickness, for better immersion.
The product vision is not clear for me - maybe as a better version of the single person privacy phone booths that can be found in shared office environments? At home? Rather not
I actually laughed out loud when I reached the end of the article decrying "bulky" headsets and finally saw their alternative. Reminds me of the giant egg thing that Darth Vader lives in.
The selling point is flipping it up when someone comes to talk to you and saying "you have failed me for the last time, commander".
That “giant egg thing” is Lord Vader’s meditation chamber and coincidentally is also used to alleviate the discomfort of wearing his head mounted kit.
Ok. Still reminds me of it.
They want to avoid wearing a bulky a headset, sitting in a bulky VR system achieves that. I guess you have less neck strain
We’re looking at prototypes. If the final product is a bit smaller it would be the size of a large CRT TV.
Like those stereoscopic "3D" TV?
And all you'd need is 3d movie glasses, different polarized light, and you get rid of everything else. You just need a projector
or back project for a CAVE system. sounds like a lot of work to get a gov grant to me - at least it wasn't US $
It did make me laugh. I read the whole article envisaging some sort of mini holodeck only to get to the final reveal image at the end.
>Some days he’s in VR more than he’s out of it. He’d even try to sleep there, but the headset made it hard to get comfortable.
Why?
Phia, who hosts The Virtual Reality Show, tried sleeping in VRChat.[1] People who are alone can have the feeling of sleeping in a room with others. Not sex, just sleep. She was OK with it, but reported that, in the middle of the night, she lost her network connection, and the virtual room was set to not allow new entrants at night, so she couldn't get back in.
Phia's comments on cybersickness are worth reading. She has a good video on how to get past it.[2] She's a VR native. She started using VR as a teen, and has tried almost all the available hardware, including motion trackers and treadmills. She claims VR is not low-effort to get used to but is worth it. Like a sport.
Her thing as a Youtuber is that her outfits in real life match her outfits in virtual reality.
If you're sleeping you aren't going to be aware of your surroundings. You're just going to have a hard time getting to sleep with goggles strapped on your face. Probably wake up a lot too. I'll watch the video when I get home, out at a park enjoying nature and Hacker News haha yes I see the parallels and I should put the phone away.
It's hard to sleep with a headset mounted to your head.
I understand the complaint about the bulk of the device shown, however they are mostly missing out the fact that the reason of the architecture is in the classical VR, bulk is carried on the head, pressing weight on the neck. Here body is free of any extra weight. Device’s bulk is of no concern.
Not exactly the same, but the Nintendo 3DS accomplishing 3D without any special glasses (using a lenticular screen) sounds similar.
I remember being blown away when I first saw it.
It was very nice, but very tiring after the first 5 minutes. So everybody I'm aware of switched it off in practice.
Really? I didn’t seem to have too many issues with it, especially compared to my experience with the Oculus Quest (where I can get headaches after 10 or so minutes).
After longer sessions with it, sure, but I don’t remember 5 (or even 20-30) minutes giving me issues.
I have some eye convergence issues, so maybe that's why. But my kids don't and they switched it off as well. Nice demo for the shop, though!
Yeah, everyone’s different, and it’s not uncommon for people to have very different experiences with VR, and I can imagine the same for the 3DS.
This isn't the first swivel chair setup. Someone had something like it a few months back. Large curved screen fixed to swivel chair, joystick turns chair.
Are you sure you aren't thinking of this project?
The second paragraph starts "In a paper published July 19, 2026", which was almost 3 months ago.
Ah. The description was different, but it's probably the same project.
Not clear what they mean by "aerial imaging optics"? Are they using an optical setup to get the focus at infinity, like flight simulators?
> “Some days he’s in VR more than he’s out of it. He’d even try to sleep there, but the headset made it hard to get comfortable.”
ah, truly a problem that needs to be fixed.
wth does it even mean to "sleep in VR"?
Don't ask me why/how, but some people do in fact sleep with a VR headset on. I've managed to get my hands on the Steam Frame, so naturally I started developing native software for it, and also joined a bunch of communities, and learning about a lot of new stuff I wasn't aware of since before.
Apparently a bunch of people hang out in a VR application called "VRChat" which is essentially the "Metaverse" Zuckerberg wanted to and failed to build. It's basically "video conference call for friends group on steroids", with custom avatars, full body tracking and a bunch of stuff. Apparently, some of these people who use this a lot, also sometimes "sleep together" in the game, wearing the headset, sometimes in public places, or wherever. Other people also seemingly put some calm background + music/tones and sleep to that, while wearing the headset.
Again, I've never done this myself, have no idea about the long-term effects (psychological or physically [the eyes?!]), but at least I hope this explains what "sleep in VR" would mean for many of the ones that do that.
but they sleep with their eyes closed right? I mean I can maybe understand the body tracking in the VR world but why in the world would I keep the headset on if my eyes are closed?
I assume most people sleep with their eyes closed, yes. Just like "having your eyes closed in a sleeping bag on the ground" counts as "sleeping under the stars" even if you don't actively look at the stars while sleeping, I guess the same goes for "VR sleeping".
I guess it matters too what the first/last thing you see when waking up/falling asleep. But again, never done this, can't say for sure.
They VR to be woken up. The headset has become their reality. Who are you to say otherwise?
Look I'm not perfect, I doom scroll quite a bit, play video games but compared to what you are saying apparently I'm only smoking cigarettes when others are on an IV of heroin.
Just that, sleeping while in some VR world. There are plenty of "sleep with me" VRChat worlds (without the eroticism)
Contact lens displays are going to be the way this actually ends up working at scale.
VR headset manufacturers are already finding it barely physically possible to fit over 2500x2500 pixels into a smartwatch sized display, good luck on getting anywhere close at several millimetres of total area, and without it overheating immediately.
I don't suppose these guys see the irony of replacing a goggle sized device with something that requires a forklift to move around either.
> good luck on getting anywhere close at several millimetres of total area, and without it overheating immediately.
FWIW, 30 years ago most engineers in the field would say the same about a lot of our existing technology. Not to mention other fields, "seemingly impossible" things are possible today, for better or worse.
i feel they are working towards good research but, unless they do multiple iteration to minimize the hardware and make the chair affordable.
Its not just about price but it's also about comfort, some might feel packed in that chair.
They should have this in every airline passenger seat.
wasd and 1080 is about as far as gaming will ever go until we have sub 50g vr
Only Gen Alpha and younger accepts VR headsets. The problem with non-wearable solutions is both space required and price
I'm a millennial, and I've been using VR for the better part of seven years, ever since the Oculus Rift S. If you look at niche communities like sim racing, flight sims, or space sims, you'll find plenty of millennials and Gen Xers who use VR extensively because it offers a level of immersion that a screen (or three) simply can't match.
I suspect your perception of VR users is somewhat skewed by 12-year-olds playing Gorilla Tag on standalone Meta Quests. There's a substantial enthusiast community outside that demographic.
Sure, you and I exist, but We are a very small niche within our own demographic. Kind of like the home brew computer club in the 1970s or MIRI over a decade ago. The vast majority of our demographic and really anyone older than Gen Z founds VR distasteful. No one else understands except for Gen Alpha and younger
I'm a late 80-s production and I love my PSVR2 for sim racing and casual gaming.
> The problem with non-wearable solutions is both space required and price
This is such a 2016/2017 problem. No offense but, a limited read of who you might be is someone who got into VR back then, found a number of legitimate reasons it sucked, and never tried it again?
I mean take the space argument. Most modern VR games can be played seated. If you have arms length space around you, you can play some truly excellent VR games. I can't even remember the last time I booted up a VR game and played it standing. Well, it was probably back around 2017.
No, I actually love VR and I strongly feel that it is still the future of UI. I also plan to buy both the Steam Frame and the upcoming meta VR glasses
> a limited read of who you might be is someone who got into VR back then
Unfortunately, this description matches most of the other people in our demographics. I would go even further. Even if other people in our demographic experience modern VR, it’s still not enough motivation for them to wear a socially stigmatized face bucket for them. Anecdotally, I've bought several of my adult relatives VR headsets for xmas. Today, only one of them still uses it: one of their gen Alpha children
A lot of people in our circle are still delusional judging from the comments. Most adults do not accept VR. Meta failed even with their extremely generous subsidy, and more importantly even Apple failed convince adults with their world class industrial and UX team. Even their reputation as the most fashionable tech company wasn’t enough to overcome VR stigma even when they called it “spatial computing”
Funny, I genuinely presumed your downvotes were because they don't really accept them either.