A Call for Shepherds in the Virtual Reality Community

[AtariHistorian]

Article here:
A Call for Shepherds in the Virtual Reality Community

[kevinw729]

Congratulations @Atari_Historian - a well presented, thought-out and apposite article.

The appropriateness of this article is not lost on me following our previous interchange; and I thank you for your sage advice on that occasion, and come to understand from the grasp of your points in the article the need for a new approach towards addressing personal trolls and a impartial approach - again thank you.

Towards the questions raised to all of us - speaking personally:

What topics you are interested in.

-You know this before I even type the answer - I want to see Digital Out-of-Home Entertainment (DOE) given coverage together or even in its own area, where we can separate the discussion from the complaints of those with a vested "consumer" interest to deflect the discussion.

How you might be able to help someone else’s project.

As you know I am undertaking a number of conferences presentations - and have also co-authored a book on the subject and the wider landscape. I am a fan to see this sector grow, so I am willing to Shepard a flock, but also pass on experience and information to help others grow.

If you have a public project which needs resources. (Sell it!)

As you may know the DNA Association has been formed to offer a platform for promotion and support of those in the DOE sector - we hope linked go the new Virtual Entertainment scene we can offer a support resource to start-ups as we have done recently with some newcomers to the VR scene.

Suggestions for projects that someone else might want to run with.

I think it would be great - after we get whatever the final confirmation on specs and release dates after E3 that we have a serious discussion on DOE opportunities and the best way for developers and manufacturers to participate in the Out-of-Home approach. As you will have seen with the recent AET announcement we have now the first three 'real' attraction games created for VR Out-of-Home application - this is a serious opportunity for others to follow suit.

Well-done @Atari_Historian - I respect you for starting this subject and look-forward to watching the discussion grow.

[Note - I will duplicate my response on the Reddit forum for those that are not members of this ODF]

[saviornt]

I agree with the sentiments of shepherding the sheep, and the general attitude that most of us have in regards to consumers purchasing the developer kit. I believe most of the hate stems from when they come to the forums/reddit and complain about the HMD or, for a general term, lag. Not too mention the lack of software that is suitable for VR. I, myself, am guilty of ragging on people.

I suppose most of it is perhaps a generational thing? I feel that, given today's circumstances, most of the hate would be gone if instead of complaining, asking for advice, such as "I bought this expecting no lag with my 9800 GT video card, what do I need to make this good?" but instead we get, "This is crap, my 9800 GT graphics card can play any game out there, even if it's on low settings, so this VR is complete crap!". Yea, this is an exaggeration, but you get my point, yes?

What kind of help you get is totally dependent on how you ask it.

As far as community support goes, I do feel that we need to have more information out there in one location, but again, perhaps a generational thing. I have no problem with asking google a question to have it answered, but it seems that some people do. Which makes me wonder how they even heard of VR in the first place :roll:

Once the consumer versions of various headsets are released, or have been announced at least, we will have a better understanding of specifications; this will help tremendously with the sage advice for people looking to get into the VR space as a consumer. I also feel that Oculus should move this forum into a "developer-only" forum registered to owners of the DK1 / DK2 or as a "registered developer", and then create another forum (more polished) for consumers. This would help, I think, with the advice given, since as it is now, it is expected that you are either a developer, or at the least, a VR enthusiast + very PC knowledgeable. As it is now, people are getting a DK2 that want to use it for games, but lack the knowledge about it's limitations.

So anyways, I think that once the consumer dates are released, we will see a surge in YT videos with people giving FAQ's, we will see wiki's start appearing, etc.. Right now, we're sort of in a limbo, and at this stage, we are not very friendly to people that deem it necessary to complain when all of the information out there is searchable.

edit: There are so many things coming down the pipe at the end of this year / beginning of next year that it makes it hard to give solid advice. DX12, Windows 10, Vive Specifications, Oculus specifications, new hardware releases, engines still being optimized, etc.. One everything is finalized, we can finally have a good overview of requirements.

[kevinw729]

"saviornt" wrote:
I suppose most of it is perhaps a generational thing? I feel that, given today's circumstances, most of the hate would be gone if instead of complaining, asking for advice, such as "I bought this expecting no lag with my 9800 GT video card, what do I need to make this good?" but instead we get, "This is crap, my 9800 GT graphics card can play any game out there, even if it's on low settings, so this VR is complete crap!". Yea, this is an exaggeration, but you get my point, yes?

I have to agree - I do not want to be age-ist in outlining the discussion skills of some on this and other forums - but there are some major hindrance towards how opinions are vented. This point harps back to a point I raised in one of the discussions on the Podcast with RevKyle - the "anonymity" and the lack of a focus on compiling a database and a knowledge bank of DK2 users will come round to haunt the VR community at this stage. I always felt that with DK2 OVR should have compiled a database of developers and recipients and been more focused. We would have been able to have had a database of platforms being used, instances of sim-sickness, and general operations. As I stated, when developing on the PS3 DK we all had to be noted and sign agreements (and Sony launched a lot more than 750,000 DK units!)

Lets face the facts, the DK2 launch was slightly less well focused (though successful in numbers) as this was in the middle ground of the acquisition and a number of lost opportunities were seen (not to mention the whole SDK issues). With so many consumers not heeding the executives warning "not to buy", we have been left with a bun fight, and openness has been the victim. Posters able to throw stones and run away (in anonymity with no comeuppance) is just the illustration of poor governance - but it hurts the VR community as well!

"saviornt" wrote:
I also feel that Oculus should move this forum into a "developer-only" forum registered to owners of the DK1 / DK2 or as a "registered developer", and then create another forum (more polished) for consumers.

Again - completely agree. When the ODF was first minted back in 2013 it had been hoped that it would have been vetted and that support and information interchange would see us avoiding having shouting matches with 13-year-olds who wanted to troll just to get some recognition. Sadly the investment into this forum was never able to match the anticipation, and a lack of policing saw an exodus to Reddit (as can be seen by the latest spam attack on ODF). That said CyberReality has done an excellent job under trying conditions, a fact why we all try still to offer some support here.

"saviornt" wrote:
Right now, we're sort of in a limbo, and at this stage, we are not very friendly to people that deem it necessary to complain when all of the information out there is searchable.

I see your point - it does feel like a limbo from one manufacturer, and the vacuum is being filled up by other possible providers. I think we were all shocked at how adamant Valve has been to be seen to embrace the original path of an Open Source approach and a community spirit - much of this loss from the original OVR approach after the acquisition, and more recently with the "RoadMap" change. The confirmation of a rift between Valve and OVR after acquisition (contested up until the ViVE appearance) also hit some of the VR community hard feeling they have to now pick sides!

"saviornt" wrote:
edit: There are so many things coming down the pipe at the end of this year / beginning of next year that it makes it hard to give solid advice. DX12, Windows 10, Vive Specifications, Oculus specifications, new hardware releases, engines still being optimized, etc.. One everything is finalized, we can finally have a good overview of requirements.

I think you have hit the nail on the most important head - information saturation!
Going from the current attitude of tight lipped secrecy, hints and tweets and private briefings - the manufacturers will have to go to full disclosure and active information interchange. This forum will not be able to supply this in its current shape, so I agree that in the wings I bet there is a total update planned. A change of the forum would also allow for OVR to look at a clean sweep that has always been wanted to remove some of the less helpful discussions and regain control.

But think on this - once we hit mainstream / consumer release - then everyone has to totally up their game, and this is where the value of all those new acquisition will come to play. No room for secrecy, and no room for arrogance - the first one to a million sales wins!

[VizionVR]

Agree 100% with this thread.
I'd just like to add that, right now, helping on these forums is as simple as offering 99% fact correction, 1% opinion, and 0% speculation handed out as fact.

[AtariHistorian]

It is probably a little too early for a post-mortem, but I already started making a list of things that could have been done much better.

1] On reddit, a lot of readers ended up being lost between the first click that took them from /r/oculus to /r/virtualreality and then an unexpected second link where they had to click again on the title of the article. The final clicks were way lower than they should have been, and that extra step (which was designed to make everyone organize their comments in the same place) ended up costing a lot of readers.

2] So far, it looks like any an expectation for the community to quickly self-organize was way too optimistic -- motivation was not that high. But I think we've planted a seed. With luck, others such as podcasters/bloggers/etc could pick it up and further promote the idea. Someone could think it over and be spurred to start a project at a later time.

3] People are more likely to contribute their efforts to an existing project that is going the right direction, even if it is small.

4] People are far less likely to put themselves out there as a volunteer for undefined projects on a general theme ("VR").

5] Few people probably even considered the idea of leading a VR community project up until that point.

6] The overall message was very diffuse, and the theme (sheep) hurt. There should have been less expository and more call to action. (The call to action should have been highly specific.)

If I do make another pass at organizing something like this, I think it'll be better to get the ball rolling in private, show the community what a project or a tool is capable of, and get people on-board both as users and contributors.

EDIT: Come to think of it, motivated people might be a little harder to come by on 4/20 day.

[kevinw729]

I think your internal goal was admirable but hard to achieve this early on.

I agree since the 2012 start of this latest phase in VR I am incredibly surprised that now by 2015 and we still have yet to have a CV1 let along a CV2 delivered of any stripe - this means we are still working in the dark on mass adoption issues. But to be frank you will not get all strata's to agree to what you state as the problem - a better approach is an organization or association of liked minded specialists and those working at the coalface initially. Later on you can throw it open to the public. Possibly you should chat with Neil at the ITA and see if your idea could work as a steering committee with them?

I for one feel we need an agreed "kitemark" and standards of content and hardware in this sector or we are going to get washed away!

[RirtualVeality]

"AtariHistorian" wrote:
It is probably a little too early for a post-mortem, but I already started making a list of things that could have been done much better.

1] On reddit, a lot of readers ended up being lost between the first click that took them from /r/oculus to /r/virtualreality and then an unexpected second link where they had to click again on the title of the article. The final clicks were way lower than they should have been, and that extra step (which was designed to make everyone organize their comments in the same place) ended up costing a lot of readers.

2] So far, it looks like any an expectation for the community to quickly self-organize was way too optimistic -- motivation was not that high. But I think we've planted a seed. With luck, others such as podcasters/bloggers/etc could pick it up and further promote the idea. Someone could think it over and be spurred to start a project at a later time.

3] People are more likely to contribute their efforts to an existing project that is going the right direction, even if it is small.

4] People are far less likely to put themselves out there as a volunteer for undefined projects on a general theme ("VR").

5] Few people probably even considered the idea of leading a VR community project up until that point.

6] The overall message was very diffuse, and the theme (sheep) hurt. There should have been less expository and more call to action. (The call to action should have been highly specific.)

If I do make another pass at organizing something like this, I think it'll be better to get the ball rolling in private, show the community what a project or a tool is capable of, and get people on-board both as users and contributors.

Your article was offensive and poorly constructed. It's immediately off putting to anyone that bought the DK1/2 for their personal use as evidenced by your straw man argument indicating that we gave Oculus the impression we're developers. Um....what? What we agreed to is the UNDERSTANDING that this is a development kit. Your reading comprehension skills seem to be lacking. Follow this up with the extremely offensive suggestion that we somehow LIED:

You can be honest this time. What is the PRIMARY USE of your VR equipment?

Are you calling me a liar? You claim to want to "shepherd" the "sheep" (which you clearly didn't define at the beginning of the article. Have you ever written a paper before? Perhaps this is why you couldn't help the individual with the college curriculum question?) yet within the first paragraph you offend nearly HALF of your "community".

Allow me to "shepherd" you for a moment on building a community: try to treat the people you're speaking to with a modicum of respect.

[kevinw729]

"RirtualVeality" wrote:
Your article was offensive and poorly constructed. It's immediately off putting to anyone that bought the DK1/2 for their personal ..........

[RirtualVeality]

"kevinw729" wrote:

"RirtualVeality" wrote:
Your article was offensive and poorly constructed. It's immediately off putting to anyone that bought the DK1/2 for their personal ..........

Care to explain to me how it wasn't? I seem to have offered ample proof that it was.