Why aren't we all Programming in VR?

and i died again oh shoot my code's failing also let me check i'm using the wrong function let me change that [Music] let me save the file let me restart the application this is actually kind of sweet i don't know why i don't do all my coding in here i am one with the code this actually all sucked well mostly and i'll get to why it doesn't fully suck in the end i'm kevin i do computers and i'm gonna be talking about programming in vr today and i was inspired by this reddit comment that basically once the resolution of vr gets better it'll be the de facto way to code they gave the caveat that this is a ways off but they said five years that's not very far away also this comments from like a year ago so four years from now is vr the way we are going to code you see this all over vr internet watering holes forms subreddits that vr is this untapped magical resource that we're just waiting for the little bits of technical specs to get better and then everything's going to be converted overnight to vr they think that vr is somehow intrinsically better than the current experience that's just held back by the current technology and i think there's something else to this i think vr is cool don't get me wrong but i think vr is a different experience that has inherent drawbacks that aren't just solved by specs and let's ignore all that let's let's talk about programming let's talk about specifically can you write code in a vr headset yes you can it's pretty straightforward actually open a vr big screen app which there's a lot of i will give you and they're not always pretty simple to find which ones do what i mean just reading the reviews they all tend to have let's call it a theme i personally tried a few different ones and i'm on the oculus rift s so i just use the native oculus app it worked no extra tools or plugins and also on a personal note for slower paced vr games i was actually using this to pin videos right outside my field of view they actually overlay while you're still playing the game so for example i could watch a youtube video as i'm getting wrecked by preteens and poker and i and i tried vr programming for a bit actually working on a future project that's going to be showing up on this channel i'll just ask you subscribe if you want to know what sir bark slot is and it didn't take long of trying to code in this environment that a few things became very clear first our reddit friend from earlier was pretty right about one thing the resolution utterly sucks and i know i'm using the rift s which is middle of the road but i've also played some other games in like the valve index and reading text is definitely not a strong suit for any vr headset but although reading text is bad in vr it's not even the worst issue the worst issue is moving your head around because the field of view is so bad you can have as many screens as you want in some of these applications but it doesn't matter if you only can see one single app at a given time you don't realize what you take for granted being able to casually move your eyes around the different monitors in front of you if you have multiple no in fairness in fairness to the vr people these are things that are getting better with each iteration and maybe who knows the next five years these are all perfect right we have 8k 16k in each eye and field of view is wider than our own personal field of view there's still some other issues let's talk about ergonomics and i don't just mean that it's hot and it's straining on the eyes and it makes people sick and it might fog up all of those are true but who knows they might get better like the other issues i mean what's it like being productive with a bulbous hunk of plastic on your face let's talk text input in the beginning of this video i was using touch controllers to change my code in an intro video and this this utterly utterly sucks i mean i don't think i need to explain why the best analogy i have is putting in like a wi-fi password using the arrows on a tv remote if you've ever had to do that it's it's not fun it works for a few characters but anything beyond that you need something more robust and i hear what you might be saying you might be saying that's an easy one don't you have a keyboard in front of you don't you know the touch type and to that i answer i thought i did now when you put the vr headset on i got the home row down right i can type words i can do some basic logic but it's all those keys that you hit while programming you don't realize that you don't normally hit when you're touch typing and i found myself looking through the little nose hole in the vr headset like i hit f5 shift f5 multiple times a day never got that right first try and for those of you that are laughing at me like try those weird key combinations that you hit all the time for me like when i'm working on a mac that's ctrl shift 4 hitting shift f5 um using insert and any of the whatever characters are above the arrow keys see i just had to look down right now as i was talking about that i i can't not look at my keyboard when i'm talking about my keyboard besides just the basic letters everything else is a little bit more complicated than that this really isn't a full negative because with time i'm sure i'll just pick it up but i just want to call this out because it's not as simple as you would think now the next part of ergonomics is specifically getting work done in this setting now this is where i think movies kind of do a disservice think of like the hacker that sits down in a closet for eight hour and just pecks away at their code staring at one program and we all have jobs like we all sit at a desk and know what reality is there reality is there is constant distraction throughout the day you're never just working on one thing during a whole session of insert productivity i personally was constantly getting distracted and having to take the headset off if it was for my phone if it was for my partner asking me a question if it was for my dog if it was to get some water or use the restroom these are all super trivial things when you're not taking the headset on and off like during your normal life like you look at your phone go back to work look at your phone take a sip of water like doing that in vr you have to fully take the headset off and like then once you put it back on you have to refocus and get all set again this this is annoying it's really annoying and this is another thing that might get better with technology might get better than i'm getting more used to it but it's just not as simple as like clock in put the headset on clock out like there's this magical reality people feel it is and on the point of taking the headset on and off the whole other side of this is human interaction now i purposely titled this programming in vr not just coding in vr because like writing code in vr like i said you can do it but programming requires this different level of interaction you have meetings you have paired programming you were interviewing other engineers and so on and this is just another concept that just utterly breaks down in vr people want to see each other face to face or at least simulated face to face covet and the elephant in the room here is those vr evangelists are gonna say vr is the future of social interaction don't you see what they do with vr over here and maybe i don't know all i can tell you is definitely not the way people interact with each other today and most of the people i work with or hang out with don't want to be using vr to replace the traditional meeting ways that we have now so let's take a step back just writing code in vr it's not really great i don't think specs are gonna change that some people might actually enjoy it and i've found a few people online that seem to do just that but same for any other basic productivity in vr like many of the advantages come with drawbacks that aren't necessarily solved by just upping the vr specs okay there's all the suck beginning of this video i said there's hope jokingly but i did i did say there's hope hope doesn't come from just coding in vr hope comes from redefining different elements of programming you see this in vr gaming also many of the best experiences didn't come from a one-to-one conversion from a normal game to a vr game they come from the creation of new format or redefining the rules completely or augmenting what you think that original experience was and the same is looking to be true for productivity and in our case programming the question should not be how does vr replace programming in a desk in monitors but how does programming be enhanced by vr now in my process of exploring this world of programming vr i did find a few different people that were doing this in an interesting way that wasn't just you know throwing code up in a vr headset just like most things in vr this is super early days but here's a few examples of some interesting things i found the first is this pretty cool 3d user interface people are building where they're coding in real time and experiencing it in the space around them in vr so changing your code is reflecting the reality in which you're living in vr the experience here isn't the writing of the code but the experience the code has on your surroundings now you see this also with this tool that i found that is completely replacing coding with these logic blocks where you're no longer typing code into a screen that happens to be a vr but you're manipulating objects in 3d space around you that happens to build an application or build some logic that you want to use another way this works is a tool i found called primitive this is a code visualization tool that allows you to see all the connections the dependencies of a given project in this node style 3d graph this one was the coolest to me because although the app has some clunk it's presenting what could be i didn't really find much value in it today but i think there's something here in the long run imagine hopping in here with a colleague and working through some complicated dependencies overall these are still pretty far away i don't see them augmenting my day-to-day activities or workflows as an engineer but it's still pretty fun to see what is the future and i personally find it curious to see what could be so yeah that's my attempt to figure out if i can program in vr i don't really see myself using it anytime soon even these tools that i talked about in the end but i don't know tell me what you think have any of you coded in vr have you done any other productivity in vr let me know in the comments subscribe if you want to see more junk like this um yeah have a good day

Channel: Kevan

Views: 42,234

Keywords: programming in vr, code vr game, software development, vr development, programming in vr enviorment, programming in vr environment, programming in vr headset, oculus rift, vr, programming, code, coding, coding in vr, coding in virtual reality, primative, priamtive.io, logix, vive, valve index, touch controller coding, new ways to code, the future of programming, software engineering, software developer, virtual reality, software development process, vs code in vr

Id: 6dHBC-tOnh4

Length: 10min 44sec (644 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/DynaBeast]

If they managed to make a VR headset that...

• Has the volume and weight of a pair of glasses
• Has a resolution density comparable to a modern 1080p display
• Uses motion sensors to track your hands instead of tracked controllers

Then we could finally make a decent case for coding in VR. Until then, it's just not feasible.

The motion sensor tech exists right now; it's just not integrated into any headsets as a primary control method.

[u/Ike11000]

Firstly, great video, I really liked the design and production! Plus the topics were pretty cool.

How come you never addressed something similar to the Quest passthrough in the video ?

It would essentially be whenever you look down at yourself there is an HD video of the keyboard and mouse you’re using to currently code. Logically seems like the best step to go, no ?

[u/indi01]

I agree. Resolution is still too low, the headset is still too heavy and uncomfortable. Also the inputs are not appropriate, they might good for games, but for typing, no.

I suspect this use case is best suited to AR than VR, because in this case you don't really need to be detached from the real world...I also agree that the potential is in apps that make full use of the new features of the medium and not just take the existing content and put it in a VR space.

[u/MowTin]

I don't know who would want to code in VR. There's no advantage to it other than possibly having tons of simultaneous screens. But you can do that with work workspaces.

It might make sense in AR if the glasses are light like MS Hololens