Simply put, I have spent too many hours in virtual reality.
From exploring virtual worlds and experiences, to creating my own I have always been incredibly enthusiastic about extended reality as a whole. Perhaps one of the most pressing issues currently found in VR specifically is the barrier of entry for those who are not familiar with the technology. Feel free to read my more detailed explanation about my thoughts on the future of Extended Reality here.
With that being said, over the countless hours in and out of VR I have noticed a stark difference between almost every environment and interface on the market, and what feels natural to interact with. The user interfaces of the main few ecosystems, steamvr and meta horizon os, both have interactions that feel incredibly dated and behind current technology. While the new steamvr UI feels more polished and visually appealing, there are countless shortcomings and missing features that make the overall experience very disconnected from natural tendencies. For instance, the lack of integrated copy/paste functionality into the keyboard and the inability to type with two hands. Additionally, menus are always layered behind button presses on controllers and interact with raycasts from the controllers themselves.
I am truly not opposed to this style of interaction solely because I am used to it. I learned how to navigate the menus countless years ago and it just became second nature. Virtual Reality has reached a stagnation point where the hype that was unnecessarily built off of the "metaverse" craze has died down, and now most of the people investing their money in these forehead toasters are typically using them to play video games. This is still growth, but it is definitely not the growth that the industry is looking for and has been relying on for years.
"Once the consumers catch on it's going to boom!!!"
I believe that Virtual Reality as a medium has stagnated in interest because of the discrepancy between actual functionality and current advertising. Virtual Reality is relentlessly marketed as a desktop monitor replacement to work from anywhere with as much screen real estate as you can dream of! Virtual Reality can most definitely replace your main displays and make working more efficient and productive, however, if the user experience hinders productivity then there is no reason to use the tool. This is most certainly the case with VR. The real-world useability and use cases of virtual reality do not deliver on the promises made during promotion. It truly feels the same as all of those stock videos portraying VR users with their hands mindlessly pointed into the air clearly not doing anything functional, but it led you to believe that the 3dof gearVR was going to give you the most insane experience ever.
So the issue stands: the virtual reality experience is not close to as fluid as advertisements make it seem.
As a result of this, I am planning to do some research into the most effective interaction methods and attempt to create a basis of control methods and standards to make virtual navigation smooth and seamless. RIT is at the forefront of accessibility and inclusivity, so I would like to use this to my advantage to get the most optimal results and feedback! This is a project that I have formulated and planned over the summer of 2024 and plan on pursuing and furthering in the fall of 2024 with proper results and a basis to create a functional home environment to replace the default steamvr and meta os environments using openxr.
