John Carmack on Developing the Netflix App for Oculus

http://techblog.netflix.com/2015/09/john-carmack-on-developing-netflix-app.html

by vquemener • 11 years ago

345 142 11 years ago

techblog.netflix.com

Kapura3• 11 years ago

The depth of thought that Carmack is able to apply to every detail of a problem is astounding. Granted, he's been working on VR for years now and pioneering realtime graphics before that, but his perception about what the end user wants out of a product is second-to-none.

Strom2• 11 years ago

It's a real shame that DRM once again stifles progress and limits the video resolution to 480p in this VR app.

MichaelGG• 11 years ago

Yeah the moment I read about casting lighting based on screen contents, I was thinking "things you can't do with 'secure' output". Sad.

This partially remains why other players are better than Netflix. If I ever need to really modify playback, I'm all set, no problem.

nthitz• 11 years ago

Despite all the talk of hardcore gamers and abstract metaverses, a lot of people want to watch movies and shows in virtual reality.

Source for that claim?? strapping on a headset doesn't seem like a great way to share a movie with friends, but that's just me.

MBCook• 11 years ago

You could share it with a friend who wasn't physically there if they had a similar setup, but I"m guessing they're talking about the fact people who are by themselves like watching TV and movies in VR compared to on a standard TV screen in a real room.

TheGRS• 11 years ago

At first I balked at the idea of watching a movie in VR, but the more I think about it the more I like it. I could easily watch it while lying down on a bed for instance. It would need to be very high resolution however.

iwillreply• 11 years ago

I did this on a flight. It was much more pleasant than inflight entertainment.

* 360 film doesn't work well, with not being able to move around.

Kapura3• 11 years ago

The virtual theater (or TV screen) was one of the first things I thought about when I heard about the power of new VR technologies. People don't want to switch devices if they don't have to and projecting output to a single rectangle in a virtual space makes a lot of sense on paper.

I would be the first to say that of course seeing people in real life would be superior, but with the internet I'm finding that some of my closest friends are sometimes thousands of miles away. This is a way to keep in contact that's as good or better than something like facetime and far, far superior to buying a plane ticket just to hang out.

jkaunisv1• 11 years ago

You may be underestimating the number of people with few/no friends. Or people like me who have friends, but prefer watching movies alone.

TillE2• 11 years ago

A lot of people on HN (and general tech sites) seem to think that VR will be used primarily for something other than gaming.

If I were working on any kind of VR software in the next five years, it would be a game, absolutely no question about it. (A game that does not involve the character walking around, by the way.) As long as the hardware requirements for a good VR experience are high, anything else is a novelty.

Serious PC gamers are your audience. Period. Alternative hardware that doesn't rely on a beefy GPU will (for now) be extremely limited and uninteresting.

And even after a few years, you're still going to need a very good reason to spend at least a few hundred dollars on a VR set. I will be very surprised if home users are buying them for something other than games.

metasean5• 11 years ago

The one person I know making money with VR programming right now is not in the game, or even entertainment, business. Without giving away what he does, his clients buy VR gear and his software to experience a customer-specific simulated environment (and no, not porn).

nadams• 11 years ago

Someone made a VR theater for the oculus rift (it's on Steam) which allows you to stream a movie or video to watch with other friends. That's pretty awesome.

greggman• 11 years ago

Most people I know what watch movies at home do so with distractions. They have their phone out seeing tweets and other notifications. They might have a spouse or kids or guests. They have snacks and drinks. All of those seems like it makes movies in VR likely to be a novelty for most. I'm not saying I won't try it. In fact I have tried it. But so far it hasn't been worth it. Maybe during a plane flight.

PS: Yes I get you could integrate the notifications stuff into VR. In fact if you want to get silly show a virtual tablet on your virtual coffee table in front of your virtual TV. Replying though will be an issue, at least for a while.

corysama• 11 years ago

Here's a great conference hallway conversation with Carmack from yesterday. He covers a lot of fun topics with the random folks in the hall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKUyg6cUfcw

for those who prefer text summaries:

http://uploadvr.com/john-carmack-talks-difficulty-mobile-pos...

Arjuna• 11 years ago

In case you're interested, John's scheduled to speak at Oculus Connect 2 at 13:00 PDT / 16:00 EDT / 20:00 UTC today.

http://www.twitch.tv/oculus

stusmall• 11 years ago

Am I missing something? This lets you watch a movie in a virtual living room on a virtual TV? Why would I want that?

Strom2• 11 years ago

Maybe because you're on a cramped public transport like a plane?

tlrobinson• 11 years ago

Replace "virtual living room" with "virtual IMAX theater" and you might have your answer.

EDIT:

But the real answer is that the question isn't that different from "why would you want to play a video game on a VR headset?" The answer, of course, is immersiveness. Existing video games (and film/TV) may not be optimized for VR, but future content might be.

Imagine being able to look around 360 degrees in a film. It will be a totally different experience from a traditional film where the director precisely frames every shot, and may or may not be more enjoyable for certain types of content.

Zikes• 11 years ago

It would also require a lot more thought put into scene changes. In VR video games, suddenly moving the player from one location to the other was found to be too disorienting and broke immersion.

mtgx2• 11 years ago

A pretty low quality IMAX. I don't disagree with the concept. I love it. But I think we'll need at least a 4k helmet and even then you would probably only be able to watch videos at 1080p or so, with the rest of the pixels being dedicated to the "cinema" or other spaces outside of the "screen".

Kapura3• 11 years ago

The same could be said for a theatrical film on a 42 inch TV or Netflix on a 5 inch phone screen, yet here we are.

aianus• 11 years ago

I would use it lying on my back in bed or in the fetal position. Sometimes sitting up straight to watch a screen is just too much work ;)

gknoy• 11 years ago

You jest, but when I moved three years ago, I watched about three seasons of Burn Notice lying in bed, holding my phone in an awkward position overhead about 8 inches from my face. It was less bad than it sounds, but this product would basically mean that I could do that much more comfortably, without bleeding light over and waking up my wife (or vice-versa).

cableshaft• 11 years ago

That's how I play games on the Wii U sometimes, laying down while holding the tablet. Not too different with playing games on the iPad either.

metasean5• 11 years ago

For a while after a bad leg injury, I had to lay in bed, on my back, with my leg elevated. Either I watched tv and got a crick in my neck (from the odd angle) before a 30 minute show was done, or I tried holding a book up and in the air and reading it, but I never made it more than a few pages before my arms started to feel like very, heavy, looming weights. I ended up listening to a lot of podcasts and phoning a lot of friends. I would have loved to be able to watch tv from my back during that recovery period!

wsc981• 11 years ago

The article states that most people prefer to have some distance between themselves and the medium that plays the movie. They don't want to be enveloped by the movie. Hence a virtual theatre was created for the Netflix VR app.

I do wonder if they will also add the full-screen experience. That could be interesting ...

feld2• 11 years ago

Well, if they simulate a movie theater and you burn some extra money to simulate the price of snacks you can almost have the entire theater experience without the risk of being shot by some nutjob

scott_karana2• 11 years ago

without the risk of being shot by some nutjob

I'm sorry, why did you include that hyperbole?...

In the last five years, there have been three incidents of criminal violence in US theatres, killing 14 people and wounding up to 78.[1]

In the US/Canadian theatre market, 1.27 billion tickets were sold in 2014 alone.[2]

Movie theatres sound pretty safe to me.

1 https://www.thewrap.com/a-history-of-violence-at-the-movie-t...

2 http://www.mpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/MPAA-Theatric...

smokinn• 11 years ago

Tons of interesting scenarios. You're sitting on your couch next to your best friend who recently moved to Singapore and he/she's doing the same.

You're sitting on your couch with the MST3K avatars and you can see them laugh as they deliver their Rifftrax.

And tons of other creative possibilities that we couldn't possibly think of today once people start getting used to consuming a movie in a simulated environment.

shostack4• 11 years ago

Not everyone lives in a great movie theater environment.

I saw a demo of the GearVR which was pretty believable, and if this thing is higher resolution, more immersive, etc., I might honestly find myself questioning why I need to decorate my living room if I have VR goggles on all the time at some point in the not to far future.

When VR becomes ubiquitous, and you can have shared experiences, expect that to be a very real thing.

jimmaswell• 11 years ago

3D movies?

jerf3• 11 years ago

It's your living room, but on a computer!

http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2916

(Expect to see the Virtual World idea that prompted that post pop up again for VR, too. Expect it not to work any better this time.)

It's cute but it's just demoware. Once the novelty wears off, the usual thing to do will be the "void theater". That's our subjective perception of a good movie anyhow, that the entire rest of the room is gone.

tracker12• 11 years ago

I'm not sure how much I agree with that... I'd much rather have headphones listening to music on a plane/train/bus than trying to listen to something in the open... likewise for watching video... watching on my phone isn't too bad, but being able to get a "big screen" view with a similar experience to headphones for your eyes, I'm happy to see it.

To me, it doesn't need to be so "VR" but that could lead to some cool UI/UX for interaction. I think that this could be something that takes off first for heavy commuters, and second for gamers... It will just come down to marketing this appropriately. If they can get a version for iOS and advertise in the airline magazines, for example, I think it could sell very well.

jerf3• 11 years ago

I'm not saying movies in VR is a bad idea. There's a lot of good optical reasons for that. I'm saying simulating a living room, but on a computer!, is silly. Just watch the movie.

hiou• 11 years ago

Not to mention that this has to be one of the corniest things I've seen since the 90s. From a tech side it's interesting, but from an end user side it's something I would make fun of with my friends. I wonder how much of that is some kind of uncanny valley esque problem. I laughed out loud with I saw the screen shot.

BHSPitMonkey5• 11 years ago

Have you actually tried a VR theater application yet? Even on my DK1 over a year ago, the experience[1] was pretty compelling. Add in resolution improvements and the fact that you can render stereo 3D with perfect fidelity (no hacky glasses in the equation) and it gets even better.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhdSozujoRc (video not mine)

sigmar• 11 years ago

Re:the novelty

Is there any practical use for this? My understanding is that movie theaters are preferred to home theaters because the distance from your eyes to the screen is far enough that you can focus to infinity, which is easier on the eyes. Could a vr environment make viewing Netflix 'easier' on the eyes? Anyone have an opinion or link?

colordrops3• 11 years ago

It's more about establishing a relationship with Netflix than to create a theater experience. There are already cameras and video formats that support stereoscopic free-viewing in 360 degrees. Once Netflix starts posting these videos Oculus will already be poised to support them.

ctdonath4• 11 years ago

Contrast watching Netflix by holding a tablet in front of your face for 2 hours. Tends to get awkward, tedious, even painful, and limited to wherever you can prop it up sort of comfortably.

Having tried it, nicer to have the screen attached to your head. At least until the doorbell rings.

metasean5• 11 years ago

This is along the lines of why I'm interested in it. I actually want a mock environment (e.g. a living room) in the virtual environment that I can watch tv on OR code on.

I'm extremely nearsighted – age and my already excessive use of computers are exacerbating this. Because of the design of the VR Gear, I can almost see clearly at the highest correction level (similar to what I would see if I wore my 2-4 year old glasses).

Since the preponderance of evidence supports the hypothesis that looking at 'near' things (e.g. computer screen, books, tv across a small room) exacerbates myopia, I'm hoping that doing my normal activities on (a) a screen with infinite distance and (b) a device which allows me to change the correction of the lenses, means I might be able to reverse some of my myopia. I don't think it will cure my myopia, but if I could stagnate or reverse the loss I've had over the last few years (or dare I hope, decades), it would be a blinkin', technological miracle! ;-)

bitwize• 11 years ago

Fuck that shit, man, I want to be in the truck when the T-Rex peers in and roars.

lewisl9029• 11 years ago

Am I the only one who wants to use a VR headset for watching videos while lying on the bed?

I've always dreamed of having a ceiling mounted TV for this purpose, but VR headsets can accomplish the same goal with much less hassle and have other uses.

ctdonath4• 11 years ago

Years ago I did exactly this. Had the then-excellent (but under-supported) Virtual iGlasses; lacking other apps to apply, I ended up ditching my TV monitor and watching videos with the head-mounted display while lying down.

jkestner• 11 years ago

Seems a little too anthropomorphic. Like the Virtual Reading SNL fake ad from 20 years ago. "It's like reading a book in your living room - only better!"

Can't find a video, but: http://snltranscripts.jt.org/94/94dbooks.phtml

wpietri2• 11 years ago

I'm glad I was not the only one wondering at the value of this. It struck me as a lot of very impressive technical effort to achieve something nearly as good as I can achieve by propping a $200 Android tablet on my knee. And well under what I get with the projector on my coffee table.

And I think "novelty" is the magic word here. Stereoscopic 3D has had several waves of popular enthusiasm, including 1850s stereoscopes, the ViewMaster in the 1940s, 3D movies in the 1950s, VR in the 1990s, and 3D movies again recently. Every time it has been an amazing thing that will change the world right up until the time the bubble pops and it is recognized as a cute novelty.

It'll be very interesting to see if this wave makes it past the novelty stage. But so far I've seen nothing to make me think it will.

nulltype• 11 years ago

On one hand I want it to succeed because it seems kinda cool, on the other hand it could be another Google Glass. At least you tend not to wear these in public, so it's got that advantage.

Malician2• 11 years ago

Right now, I prefer movies on GearVR to a home-theater system with full HD on a fairly close and large TV. For 2D content, the resolution isn't great (a little over 720p effective), and there is a very apparent "screen door" effect.

In terms of 3D, I watch people's minds get blown by simple apps, when much better stuff is in development. When my Mom asks, did I bring that funny headset so that she can see Paris again? this is something different.

This will be really great with 4K displays and improved content.

pazimzadeh2• 11 years ago

This is an interesting proof of concept, and it's cool to know that you can carry a "pocket living room" around with you.

That said, shouldn't virtual reality free us to do more than replicate real life environments? It looks like VR will have its own period of skeuomorphism until better UI is invented. I'd love to be a designer at Facebook right now.

EStudley• 11 years ago

That's exactly what I was thinking when I read this. It's cool and all, but who is asking for this? No one..

davnicwil• 11 years ago

I agree with what you're saying, but I don't think there's necessarily a concept of skeuomorphism in VR.

Skeuomorphism is a mapping of real world 3D physical objects to a more constrained space, like a 2D phone screen, ostensibly to aid usability in an otherwise unfamiliar space by invoking recognition and instinct.

In theory at least no mapping like this is necessary at all for VR, things just look and act however they do, in a recreated 3D space. Of course there will be 'skeuomorphism' insofar as objects from the real world will be copied 1:1 into the VR environment, but it's kind of a redundant term at that point.

It's indeed an interesting question if we'll discover better 'UX' for virtual 3D environments than the physical ones we've built for ourselves in the real world. I'd venture yes, including but not limited to discovering tweaks that break the laws of Physics to allow greater convenience. Like wormholes that act as hyperlinks for 3D space, or something.

It'll be fascinating to see if things like this are experimented with and accepted from the get-go, or if there will be a 'skeuomorphism-like' era of VR where we play it safe and just copy our existing world for a while, until we collectively 'find our feet' in VR and learn to make tweaks that expand the possibilities. I'd hope and actually somewhat expect the former.

ctdonath4• 11 years ago

Of course there's a concept of skeuomorphism. Everyone expects their POV about 2m off the "ground". Objects are of a common range of sizes, 3D space is even & regular in each direction, etc. "Floating" is kinda nifty but likewise just an extension of our real-world 3D experience.

People in general aren't ready for scaleable space (sizes changing orders of magnitude instantly), varying measurements (say: X is normal, Y is logarithmic, Z is sinusoidal), warping space (various Einstein's Dreams scenarios here like consequences of "speed of light is 15 MPH", or Interstellar scenarios), varying or nonexistent notions of "up" (see Ender's Game arena), absence of normal gravitational phenomena, etc.

Early on in the 3D game realm, game writers explored lots of variations on non-skeuomorphic scenarios (Descent II comes to mind, a 3D flying maze game devoid of any sense of "down"). Many years later, with endless technology & imagination available, 3D games are dominated by soldiers running around battlefields little different from reality.

People will have enough trouble with entering/exiting VR. Having seen other technologies bloom, I assure you it will be years before advancing beyond paradigms based in the real world.

reilly30003• 11 years ago

I think the VR paradigm will evolve as a social signal of detachment from availability for interaction. Like being on the phone. It's like closing the door to your office.

AR may become a commonplace, useful layer on social interaction. For people with compatible hardware... AR that could aid daily life will always signal social detachment for some, but for a younger generation it may be as natural of a tool of rich expression as a whiteboard.

We have somehow managed to understand that wearing headphones and sunglasses means you don't want to talk to people, or that you don't want to be interrupted. Wearing headgear around will die off like Bluetooth headsets if it doesn't allow for clear distinction between local and digital interaction. The phone to ear gesture is well known. Talking to thin air remains dubious to those around you.

hyperion2010• 11 years ago

This gives the somewhat surprising result that subtitles cause a noticeable increase in power consumption.

These are the Carmack gems I was looking for.

ferongr• 11 years ago

It's not actually all that surprising for people that use styled subtitles with antialiased edges. In extreme cases (lots of glyphs on the screen) you can end up with a noticeable framerate reduction.

omouse2• 11 years ago

Which is why you bake the subtitles into the video! Subtitles for everyone, blurry subtitles for everyone!

BHSPitMonkey5• 11 years ago

It shouldn't need to hurt your framerate too much, considering that the font rendering only needs to happen once every few seconds. A new subtitle can be rendered, kept in memory as a texture, and then just blended by the GPU as pixels. The titles are also known ahead of time, so it's possible to set up a pipeline with no sudden increases in processing load.

TillE2• 11 years ago

For a moment I thought that said "decrease", which would have been really surprising. But yeah, more power to do more work.

Splines2• 11 years ago

"noticeable" is probably the surprising part. I'm sure it also uses more power on a normal Android phone too, but not to the degree that it does in VR.

derefr• 11 years ago

The context of that is that the Netflix GUI and the video are being composited together before 3D rendering happens. That's a surprising place to find subtitles, to me. Why are you putting them on the virtual screen? Why not let them float in space in front of your eye? They should be where the sound is, not where the picture is.

taylorfausak• 11 years ago

I think subtitles are supposed to be placed at particular places on the screen.

nix0n• 11 years ago

I agree conceptually, but our eyes can't focus on 2 things at once when they're at different distances (or appear to be). By putting the 2D screen at the same place in 3D as the subtitles, it'll be less tiring on the eyes.

chaostheory2• 11 years ago

When I think about it, I feel that this would mainly appeal to people like factory workers who live in horrible dorms (windowless closets), prisoners, parapalegics, the homeless; in other words people who are trapped in a specific environment. The problem is that most of them can't afford this setup... yet.

When I think about it, even low income individuals in the US have access to cheap enough flat screen TVs to have a nicer real life living room than a virtual one afforded by Oculus

bonesinger• 11 years ago

I always thought Halliday from Ready Player One was modeled after John Carmack. My hypothesis is getting closer to reality day by day. :)

Raphmedia• 11 years ago

I'm thinking about the guys in the NAVY stuck in small metal rooms with no windows in the middle of huge ships. VR theaters would be a boon for them!

chaostheory2• 11 years ago

Good point. I forgot about the submarines and the lily pad bases through out the world.

shostack4• 11 years ago

All I can think of... http://h.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/imageca...

36erhefg2• 11 years ago

That state is caused by addiction, that, and not VR, is the problem in the picture. The enabler can be whatever: hard drugs, nicotine, coffee, TV, VR, video games,...

zach• 11 years ago

Oculus: "Hey Netflix, how about we work together on getting your service on our platform?"

Netflix: "Gee, we're pretty busy, maybe next year..."

Oculus: "We would have John Carmack work on it..."

Netflix: "YES! Yes, yes, yes. Okay, now is good. Can we have him write a guest post on our tech blog when it launches?"

Namrog84• 11 years ago

That first gee from Netflix made me read the rest as mortys voice.

Gee rick!, were pretty busy here ya know? I mean like uhm maybe next year?

6stringmerc• 11 years ago

Reading John Carmack's thought processes to approaching, addressing, and moving on from individual challenges is so fun and refreshing to me. Granted, the matter-of-fact tone is inherently humble, but it does seem like a tone of making the complex sound simple, intrinsically for the audience's benefit. Just a line like "unfortunate waste of memory...but it gives me the timing control I need" is a succinct demonstration of trade-offs and explanation without, well, seeming to have many outside constraints - well, I mean there's the pursuit of the functioning program, sure, but I get the sense freedom in this environment is used studiously.

concernedctzn• 11 years ago

John Carmack overcame all of these technical issues and wrote up this blogpost in the past month with all of his other responsibilities at the same time. Humbling.

omouse2• 11 years ago

John Carmack is a good role model for any techies that move up to management. If you want to keep in touch with the base tech that your devs are using, you have to dive into a project like this where all your tech knowledge is brought to bear on a problem and you learn lots of new things.

None of this "well I guess I knew a bit of C++, let me find another engineer to work on this Netflix app and offer micromanaging style tips and tricks" which is what I've seen from a lot of managers who used to be technical.

He's also an amazing role model for regular programmers; figure out the requirements, take a crack at it with a prototype and then iterate. The iteration doesn't have to be an overtime week affair.

Kenji• 11 years ago

The problem is that most techies who move up to management don't have Carmack's brain. This guy is a machine! For a normal person, it is almost impossible to get a workload done that's comparable to Carmack's.

tluyben23• 11 years ago

Especially combined with management tasks; I find coding and management hard to combine. At least in my brain they feel very different and as a CTO I feel I must do both. I do not want to end up like a CTO that is out of touch or has his current tech knowledge from buzz words in management magazines like so many tech management people I know who are my age.

jlas2• 11 years ago

I wonder what Carmack's managerial responsibilities are like. I imagine if he's developing/designing for most of the week, how much time does he really devote to being a CTO/manager?

froo• 11 years ago

I imagine his managerial style is leading by example.

More of a "Hey guys, we're going in this direction, follow me!" over a "Hey, we're going this way, off you go!"

toomuchtodo• 11 years ago

I would be interested in examples of people (besides Carmack) who are able to handle day to day management responsibilities and stay technically sharp in new technologies coming out. There's only so much time in a week, and your performance drops as you exceed 40-50 hrs/week.

I'd rather hire someone with management skill who knows how to delegate to those who have the required technical skills, rather than spin constantly trying to be the master of everything and failing at it.

noblethrasher• 11 years ago

Technology has a lot of churn, but arguably we haven't seen much that is actually new since 1980: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-in...

Pyxl101• 11 years ago

Why do you say that Carmack is in management? I don't get the impression that he's a people manager. A CTO does not necessarily have people reporting to them in a people management sense. From what I've read, I would assume he does not. (I could be wrong - I don't really know.)

High judgment individual contributors often take on responsibilities that can be considered management, like deciding business and technical strategy, designing products, prioritizing roadmaps, etc., but while these are management functions, taking on these responsibilities does not mean that one is in management.

From the blog post, it sounds like Carmack is a highly productive, high judgment individual contributor with the responsibilities you'd expect of a CTO (technical strategy). I would say that someone is "in management" when their chief function is managing other people. From this post, Carmack seems to be delivering work as an individual contributor and (very senior) technical lead.

Along the same lines, I recommend we discourage phrasing like "move up to management". Management is a different job, not a better or superior one. In well-run technical companies there are managers and individual contributors at all seniority levels, such that one does not need to become a manager to "move up", even to CTO level.

ramidarigaz• 11 years ago

In some of his recent keynotes (especially the later quakecon ones) he focuses a lot on how he's changed his mind and that he now believes that software development has a lot of "social science" aspects to it. I think he's given a lot of consideration to how one manages a software team, and even though he sometimes disappears into his office to write something like this Netflix app, he still does manage people.

blazespin2• 11 years ago

Very well said, wish everyone could read this comment.

bucky• 11 years ago

I recommend we discourage phrasing like "move up to management".

Word. At Etsy, we'd occasionally call out people (in a friendly way) for saying "I got a promotion to manager!" Someone (usually a more senior manager who used to be an IC) would say "not a promotion, lateral move." Drove the point home, at least at an IC level, that management is not a move up.

forgottenpass• 11 years ago

Management is a different job, not a better or superior one.

Oh please. Until management is no longer a more profitable career track than staying in engineering, could we stop lying to the younger folks that might believe the nonsense they read on HN?

In well-run technical companies there are managers and individual contributors at all seniority levels

Non-management contributors with C-suite pay (and occasionally titles), are still rare enough to be noteworthy. Unless they're on par in compensation and control of the company, pretending traditional corporate management doesn't consider themselves their superiors is just ego-stroking the engineers too dumb to be insulted.

kbenson• 11 years ago

Does this make anyone else really crave a VR "man cave" (for lack of a better, less polarizing term)?

serkanyersen• 11 years ago

it reminds me of Aech's basement chatroom from Ready player one

ctdonath4• 11 years ago

I assume this would simply be a dark empty room.

acquihired• 11 years ago

I would really love to be able to watch a movie and look around the scene. Even if the camera was at a stationary point.

Imagine watching Batman while perched up on a ledge in Gotham... when the Joker comes flying down the street to the right and you look right to watch, while someone else viewing the movie looks left to see Batman flying down.

Awesome.

jameshart• 11 years ago

Why on earth simulate a living room with a TV on the wall? Why not simulate being in the best seat in a concert-hall sized movie theater with a massive screen? How about a little old fashioned movie theater, or a 50s drive-in?

I'm sure all these kinds of things can come later, it just seems odd to me that simulating being on a couch is the first take...

Splines2• 11 years ago

Simplicity? People are used to watching netflix on a couch with a TV in front of them.

Maybe they had a virtual living room ready to go too.

jlas2• 11 years ago

The skeuomorphic living room design immediately reminded me of the Packard Bell Navigator: http://toastytech.com/guis/pbnav35.html

joshkpeterson2• 11 years ago

Came here to say this! First thought was "Why god why return to this interface??"

qzervaas• 11 years ago

Half-baked semi-serious idea: An iOS content blocker that prevents scroll-jacking.

azinman22• 11 years ago

As others have mentioned a bit, while being a cute demo this really isn't advantageous. The constant brightness gets irritating with lights 3" in front of your face beaming directly into your eyes, and good luck trying to eat pizza and drink something while doing this. On the pro side, well, um.... not very clear what that would be over having an actual TV.

If you don't have a TV and all you have is the oculus, then why try to re-create such an environment at all? You loose the immersive qualities of the oculus to begin with.

To me the point of oculus is having content made directly for it... where it is 180-360 degrees, and you can't see it all without looking around. Repurposing standard Netflix movies doesn't give much an advantage.

kitcar• 11 years ago

I believe the use case is when you don't have the alternative of a TV, i.e. Airplane, Train, etc... not ideal for streaming content though.

bluthru• 11 years ago

Have you tried it?

azinman22• 11 years ago

I own the occulus and have tried various bits of movie playing already. While I haven't tried this netflix implementation, it is not difficult to imagine.

VR has some limited cool potential uses, but it's utility is being overblown by the community similar to the 90s.

tonydiv• 11 years ago

What I was hoping for from the Carmack speech:

http://i.imgur.com/ofChTKt.png

I wanted more from Carmack.

justifier• 11 years ago

i wonder if john watched daredevil one episode at a time or if he binged on it

i was intrigued by the virtual theatre concept, but i found watching a film was too much for comfort's sake

ignoring resolution issues, or strain, the goggles pressing against my face was the source of the most discomfort

when i took off the goggles my face was hot and sweaty and my eyes had white circles around them where the blood had been kept out

these current vr headsets are goggles with elastic and as long as that is the case i think they will fail to attract a consistent, returning, user base

your eyes are unable to breathe or receive blood

imagine watching a movie while wearing ski goggles, then have those goggles shine bright lights into your eyes

it is an uncomfortable experience

MSFT's holo lens are glasses that sit off your face, allowing circulation below the lens,this sort of design is certainly the way forward

joshkpeterson2• 11 years ago

There's a lot of focus in this thread on 'Why would you want a fake living room environment?' but he makes this statement:

"You could even go all the way to a face-locked screen with no distortion correction, which would be essentially the same power draw as the normal Netflix application, but it would be ugly and uncomfortable."

This is what his post is about - the work to accomplish a screen surface that exists in 3d space independent from your head. What goes around the screen is a secondary issue.

guelo• 11 years ago

I don't get it. Why would you want your head forced to point in one direction when you could, for example, lie down and point your head in the most comfortable position.

reilly30003• 11 years ago

You can. Just start the app in a comfortable position and the image will me from and center.

libraryatnight• 11 years ago

Next up, World of World of Warcraft

http://www.theonion.com/video/warcraft-sequel-lets-gamers-pl...

Animats• 11 years ago

720x480 on a virtual TV set, and a "virtual couch". Is that worth wearing a headset for two hours?

Coming next, in-app popcorn and pizza ordering?

fezz• 11 years ago

Bringing back skeuomorphism in full force like it's 2005...

deevus• 11 years ago

I tried this out and watched some Supernatural. My only gripe would be that I wish I could move further back from the virtual screen. At least I think that's what the problem is.

John Carmack on Developing the Netflix App for Oculus

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