rygorous, german programmer at RAD and freelancer for different other projects, commented on GIT about the future of VR:
"Okay, first off, I'm not talking about VR in the abstract here, as some
scary vague futuristic concept that I decided to be scared about after
reading too much cyberpunk books. :)
I'm a programmer, and I spent January 2012 through September 2012 (9 months)
and February 2014 through April 2014 (3 months) working for Valve's VR team as
a contractor. In 2012 I designed and implemented most of the optical tracking
system used in Valve's VR rooms, this year I implemented basic head-tracked
binaural 3D audio, updated some of the scenes in their VR demo reel, as well
as adding a new scene to it. All of the aforementioned code is in active use.
I have used numerous VR headsets extensively, including the Oculus Rift (the
*original* duct-taped prototype, even, as well as the proper DK1s and DK2s),
Valve's headsets, and numerous heavy and/or nausea-inducing contraptions that
I'm happy to forget. Anyway, point being, I'm not some luddite sniping at tech
I don't understand and don't want in my life; I do know both the current state
of the art in VR and some of what's coming, and when I say that I think VR is
bad news, I'm not doing so out of a position of ignorance."
" Subject: I want out.
As the subject says, I would like to end my contract with Valve - preferably by
the end of the month, though I realize that's probably too short of a notice.
Part of this has to do with the direction of the project. With AR, there's a
variety of information display/visualization applications, all of which are at
the very least interesting and could turn out to be tremendously empowering in
various ways. The endpoint of VR, on the other hand - all engineering
practicalities of first aiming for a seemingly easier goal aside - seems to be
fundamentally anti-social, completing the sad trajectory of entertainment moving
further and further away from shared social experiences. (As I have mentioned
multiple times, I find the limited, formalized, abstracted and ultimately
alienated social interactions in most forms of online gaming to be immensely
off-putting).
So, at least as VR is concerned, while I find the tech interesting and
challenging, I am deeply ambivalent about what it leads to.
That is not the primary reason for this mail, but it certainly is a factor in
my decision."
Way more to read here: https://gist.github.com/rygorous/251b945aef2046ac7cee#file-vr_urgh-txt-L144
