VR Headsets Are Teleporters & Should Be Judged By Travel Time
Headsets are like theme parks with rides built by artists but platforms make you pass through their gates and gift shops first.
My thesis is that good VR is discovered.
Once discovered, we should be able to teleport back near-instantaneously. In some headsets and experiences, you can leave the device sleeping and then just wake it and you’re back online in your space. This, however, is the exception rather than the rule. How often have you picked up your headset to find its battery drained of charge and turned off? How often have you stared at the saggy Meta logo in your headset before you clear the gate-check and are, only then, offered your choice of destination?
A charged headset should sit there from afar and say “the world your friend sent you is ready to visit” or, without friends, something like “Organism by Dr Morro is ready in VRChat”. Then you put on your headset and you are there. A friend’s headset could say “your friend is in VRChat world Organism right now” and then they put on the headset and are there too.
Top tier spaces like VRChat, Bigscreen, Walkabout Mini Golf, Golf+, Figmin XR, RealVR Fishing, Eleven Table Tennis, No Man’s Sky and even Microsoft Flight Simulator could all function this way. We should teleport instantaneously to these destinations instead of commuting to them. Instead, we travel through platforms like a shell game being played in front of us with our destination hidden inside one of the layers.
I enunciated some of this in my recent conversation with Kent Bye and, as I’ve talked with Jeff Basladynski of VR Villa about LAN parties and started to mess with WinlatorXR, this issue has further crystallized.
Four or eight Steam Frame headsets booting directly to a networked flatscreen version of Quake or Halo should be playable by gamepad or tracked controllers on simulated 70-inch screens. No PC towers needed, no tables, no table-mounted displays, no instruction required and no discomfort from simulated movement in 3D. This would functionally be the same as enjoying a LAN party, except wearing HMDs to arrange oneself into novel positions instead of around physical monitors. How about a Kill Cam that breaks through your virtual screen so you can see your real best friend react the moment your virtual bullet kills their character in game?
The bring-your-own computer QuakeCon each summer should have a whole section of players reclined on beach chairs in HMDs, their PCs humming underneath their seat as they compete with the player sat next to them over a local area network.
You want this. I want this. VR needs this to succeed. Platforms just need to get out of the way to make it happen. You do not need to go through a store or gift shop to enjoy good VR.
