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Virtual reality's biggest enemy is bad virtual reality, says Oculus founder
Palmer Luckey can hardly take a step without being stopped for pictures, questions or just friendly handshakes. I'm not surprised; we're at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Expo, and Luckey just closed a speculative panel on the future of VR. Here, he's a celebrity, and with good reason -- the Expo floor is littered with Oculus headgear, almost without competition. As we make our way to a more quiet area, Luckey tells me that his hardware isn't enough. "What we have that's impressing all these hardcore gamers and technology enthusiasts isn't good enough to be a consumer product."
"People don't have experience with this technology," he explains further. "When it arrives, ithas to be good." Nothing's a sure thing, Luckey tells us, and a poor consumer launch could spoil the milk. "I think really bad VR is the only thing that can kill off VR. That's why we've been so careful to say that 'these are devkits, do not buy, do not buy!'" Luckey quickly corrects himself, saying that he doesn't think that the Oculus DK2 couldn't be a consumer product; he just wants VR to hit the consumer space with its best foot forward. It's part of the reason Oculus decided to join Facebook.
"It lets us make the first version really, really good, and use a lot of custom components that wouldn't have been possible otherwise." Without Facebook, he continued, Oculus might have been forced to release more expensive iterative headsets to fund the envisioned consumer model. "Maybe it doesn't sell and we actually hurt the VR market overall because it wasn't good enough." Luckey is relieved its a scenario he didn't have to live. "This [Facebook] lets us have as good of a shot as we're ever going to have at making consumers believe in virtual reality."
Staving off the danger of "bad VR" also makes Luckey reluctant to push for virtual realityhardware standards -- it might stifle innovation. "If you talk to people who are actually doing things that are very novel and different from what we're doing, most of them are not very pro-standard," he explains. "The standard is going to end up being defined by whoever sells the most headsets, and it would not be a good thing for them if the standard is games that don't include motion control, or games that require a very high field of view or that absolutely require position tracking." It wouldn't help Oculus much either. "If we were to lock into a standard now, what happens when we want to make big changes that vastly improve the performance of our device and requires a complete retooling of the SDK?" The hardware isn't good enough to set a standard, he says, just like it isn't good enough for consumers yet. Still, he admits that it's good time to start thinking about what those standards might be. Eventually, the industry is going to need them.
In the meantime, Luckey is thinking about the Rift's retail launch -- if consumers are going to believe in VR, they need to have good experiences. That means games. "The biggest public challenge is going to be software. We've been talking a lot about how the Facebook deal gives confidence to content makers of all kinds, but people shouldn't take that to mean there's going to be this slam dunk of AAA content that's going to be available at launch. It doesn't mean that. Content takes a long time." While Luckey says he expects a healthy pipeline of innovative software, he admits that making good games in VR is difficult. The platform's first big hit might not be there at launch.
Before SVVR ended, I caught up with Sony's Richard Marks -- the man behind Project Morpheus. He too had his concerns about bad software hurting VR adoption. "There's no AAA title yet," he said "Most of the world asks 'when will Call of Duty be on VR,' but that's not the right answer." Hopefully, the VR community will figure out what is the right answer soon.
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/20/palmer-luckey-svvr/
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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