Please Stop Calling Google Cardboard's 360-Degree Video VR

This article is translated from the American magazine "Wired", written by CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK.

Next year, a batch of virtual reality devices may be launched and available to users.

If these originally high-energy-consuming, desktop-level virtual reality devices are ultimately embodied in using Google's Cardboard to watch 360-degree panoramic videos, then at best it is like an "appetizer" and is still a long way from the real virtual reality feast.

For example, standing on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, you can feel the shock of overlooking the entire canyon through a 3D magic lens.

With virtual reality technology potentially showing a polarizing trend, there is a fear that a slight move in the market could have a negative impact on consumer perception and acceptance.

Some time ago, The New York Times gave Google Cardboard to millions of subscribers, allowing them to have a less-than-rich virtual reality experience. The 360-degree video function provided by the device was defined as virtual reality, which really made people disappointed with this emerging technology.

Virtual reality is different from web browsing. Once the design rules of the latter are broken, the consequence may be just long page jumps or navigation failures. However, once the design of the former is imperfect, the experience it brings to users is nausea or even vomiting.

This isn’t just an inconvenience for users — it’s a hindrance to VR itself.

At the very least, VR also uses a series of sensors to track and monitor the user's head movements. The computer then maps the instructions (head movements) accurately captured by the sensors to the device display in the form of virtual reality images, giving the user an immersive feeling.

For example, if you turn your head to the left in real life, the computer will accurately imitate your movement in the rendered world to match the visual or other sensory experience that should appear.

When this process is executed perfectly, VR successfully deceives your brain senses, making your conscious and subconscious mind think that what you see and feel is real.

Therefore, it does not mean that users are immersed in the scene just by watching a 360-degree video. Under such an effect, the user and the visual effect are still two different worlds, and the user at this time is more like an outsider.

Will Smith is the founder of a startup currently in stealth mode that is creating content for the next generation of virtual reality and augmented reality (AR) devices.

According to him, the golden rules of VR sound simple, but it is quite difficult to execute them perfectly.

Previous tests have shown that people are highly sensitive to virtual reality or augmented reality technologies, and even slight disturbances in movement and vision can cause discomfort.

Because the human brain's consciousness and perception are highly sensitive, if a virtual reality game or application has a delay of a few milliseconds when playing animation frames, the user will already feel uncomfortable.

Fortunately, some high-end virtual reality devices have now solved the technical shortcomings that cause user discomfort due to latency issues. For example, the discomfort mentioned earlier in the article did not occur in the continuous evaluation of HTC's Vive and Oculus for several hours.

In recent weeks, when the HTC Vive was tested on 75 users, only one user reported mild discomfort.

Simply put, a VR device with high-end enough technology can track the movement of the head and the movement of its position in space, and then the computing program will accurately map these head movements to the visual display of each frame.

But smartphone-based "virtual reality" devices, including Google Cardboard, lack this frame-accurate technology, at least so far.

For example, Cardboard can only track the direction of the user's head, but cannot detect movements, and has obvious latency issues.

And the best hardware in the world won’t do anything for the user experience if it violates basic VR principles: never control the camera from a distance from the viewer, and change a person’s perspective only based on their head movement — the key to creating instant, intense motion sickness.

If the picture starts to rotate before the head turns, the result will be...

So the tragedy of the New York Times’ virtual reality app NYT VR and the 360-degree videos it offers is that they are destined to break the rules of VR.

360-degree video itself has limitations, and the restrictions of using a smartphone platform like Cardboard exacerbate the problem of motion sickness. However, even if the smartphone is replaced with a more powerful desktop platform that can provide higher frame rates and motion detection, users still cannot walk into the 360-degree video.

Because these 360-degree video cameras cannot collect enough necessary data.

Specifically, even if a director of a 360-degree video is able to avoid moving the camera, the slightest head movement produced when the user tries to look around can be enough to cause sickness.

Because although the movement is monitored by Cardboard, the camera of 360-degree video cannot collect enough data to show users more than one perspective at a time. In addition, wearing Cardboard for too long will be uncomfortable, just like motion sickness, and the discomfort will accumulate and intensify.

How long is “too long”?

Corresponding to the different sensitivity of each user to these consciousnesses, the time they feel uncomfortable is about 10 to 20 minutes. However, the New York Times has reported that users spend an average of 14 minutes and 27 seconds in NYT VR.

Without discussing the authenticity of the data, it would be ironic if the New York Times considered this usage time an achievement.

Compared with other web browsing, it is indeed rare for users to stay on the web for more than 14 minutes on average. However, if people use other tools such as TV to obtain video content, for example, in the United States, the average viewer stays on the web for about 2.5 hours a day.

In the short term, 360-degree video offers a relatively cheap way for people to engage with a new medium — and it’s fast.

Use the tool chain to turn existing content into new video products and complete production in just a few steps - that's easy.

However, existing examples show that this is not a good thing. By converting content in old formats to new technology products, it will eventually be obsoleted by native VR content .

Given the state of the art today, there's no reason for any developer or hardware manufacturer to make users sick with their VR devices.

But in the meantime, if you're happy with your VR experience with Cardboard and 360-degree video, that's great; but even if that's not the case, please stay tuned for the technology, as we're working to improve it.

We still have many challenges to overcome when it comes to virtual reality hardware manufacturing.