I’m really hopeful for virtual reality tech. When they figure that out I reckon it will revolutionize our world. This is a good step in the right direction, though obviously we’ll all end up in pods/capsules.
Very cool! This sort of tech will only really feel right if you’re waking straight ahead at a steady pace though. As soon as you change directions or otherwise accelerate it won’t feel right because you don’t have to deal with any of the momentum that you normally do.
I like the idea of it being used on inanimate objects for other purposes though. Could this be coupled with the volume to move some props in a way to really sell paralax or movement when viewed in camera? The SFX uses are probably many.
I usually don’t love YouTube videos, but these are some incredibly cool things that he got some hands-on time with, so I gave it a quick skim-watch.
First, it’s cool as hell that we have confirmation that Disney is using modified Steamdecks to control some of the robots they’re using in their Star Wars themed theme parks. It was previously theorized this was the case based on photos, but this is the first confirmation I have seen. That means Disney is in some capacity an institutional purchaser of Steamdecks, which means Valve is moving into the big leagues with their products. Business-to-business sales is vastly more profitable than direct-to-consumer and having buyers as big as Disney is a big deal.
As for the Disney virtual reality tech? I’ve seen demos of it before, and he does a really excellent explainer of how it all works here. There’s multiple aspects to it, from using it to move around objects on a stage without moving a stage, think like a literal upgrade of circular stages of ages past, to allowing a person to fully explore a virtual reality world, feeling like they’re walking naturally forward, while always staying in place. It’s really fucking brilliant technology and it’s brutally sad that it’s owned by Disney exclusively because they’re bastards about copyrights, patents, and trademarks. It will be really hard to get around Disney’s legal muscle to get anything similar off the ground without paying Disney likely a mint for patent access.
I don’t think that the use of Steam Decks in this manner is a great thing for Valve. It is basically being used as a cheap Linux PC with built-in user input and the ability to self maintain if the manufacturer decides to sunset maintenance.
If Steam Decks get deployed in this manner, it would only be as the computer interfacing with expensive equipment, which isn’t a large market and won’t really make Valve money outside the hardware sales.
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