VR native UIs will overcome this. You can lean in to see more detail if you need to. Or move things closer to your face. Of course this is just an annoyance if you're just putting everything on a fixed 24 inch rectangle, but why would you do that in VR? You can put things closer and farther, and move them in and out and all around. There are no limits.
I know it's hard to conceptualize because we're so used to 2D controls, but there will be new control schemes. There's nothing particularly inevitable or natural about WIMP.
I ask this in all seriousness: how is this any different from a regular computer monitor? There are a set number of pixels, and you have to decide how you take up the real estate by zooming in/out with certain applications. I don't see how this is better than having multiple smaller windows on a regular monitor and just zooming into one of them when you want to use it. What am I missing?
Right now I have my SMS window peeking out from behind this browser window. I have it so that I can just barely see if there's a new message.
In VR, I could just move my head slightly and see the whole message. As it is, I have to Alt+Tab.
The other thing that I think will be big is permanent placement of data in 3D space. Right now some people do this with virtual desktops... laying out windows and files in different workspaces so you have different places for different tasks.
A lot of people don't get that far for two reasons:
1) the virtual workspace navigation tools aren't great. This could be improved in 2D, but I believe there will be a strong incentive to solve these problems in VR
2) many digital objects don't currently have very good spatializable 2d representations. For example, I just bookmarked that article about good programmers. It's currently represented as a DIV on pinboard, but it has no generalized 2D or 3D representation. In a VR desktop, things will need to have bounded 3D representations just to exist in the UI. Once it has a representation, it's a lot easier to arrange spatially. I could put a collection of links in the same place as my code, which is currently awkward.
That all said, I do think there is a core idea you are suggesting which is fully correct: Once VR takes off, and we see how things work in VR, we will "backport" a lot of those interactions into 2D. I think interest in headsets will surge, but we'll eventually settle into a balance of 2D and 3D and the 3D will mostly be for things which are spatially intensive.
So, in that sense you're right the monitor will do everything. But VR is still interesting because it will be the source of a lot of inventions.
Also consider: dogs and cats can't use mouse and keyboard, but they can do head tracking. The first game platform that lets people play video games with their pets will be massive. In that sense, VR isn't about letting pro users do more, it's about expanding capabilities to a wider audience.
I'm not sold that it's much better than doing something similar with a mouse (admittedly I don't know any software that exists that does that, I'm guessing it's because nobody wants it). I'm happy to try it when it comes out though.
> Also consider: dogs and cats can't use mouse and keyboard, but they can do head tracking. The first game platform that lets people play video games with their pets will be massive. In that sense, VR isn't about letting pro users do more, it's about expanding capabilities to a wider audience.
Please tell me you know someone working on something like this, because I would love to learn more.
I've only tried the Playstation VR and its resolution is so low that I find it too low even for games, it just isn't a compelling experience for me because of how obviously pixelated everything is. I couldn't imagine for one moment to use it as a desktop replacement.
Perhaps that is due to a lack of GPU/CPU grunt? The HTC Vive is a compelling experience from my testing, as compared to the Oculus dev kit I tried. Just so immersive with being able to walk around, grab things, go for a hike, etc. Perhaps its having 25% pixels as compared to the Playstation VR that gets it there.
I know it's hard to conceptualize because we're so used to 2D controls, but there will be new control schemes. There's nothing particularly inevitable or natural about WIMP.