A miserable work week spent toiling inside 'the metaverse'
- Reference: 1655913607
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/06/22/working_in_the_metaverse_will/
- Source link:
An international team of researchers conducted [1]a study [PDF] to just such an end, putting participants in VR headsets and taking an inventory of their self-reported physical and mental states throughout a five day, eight-hour-a-day period spent in headsets and a virtual "office".
Unlike a real job, participants were allowed to set their own work agendas and didn't perform standardized tasks yet even still had trouble undertaking these.
[2]
Usability, frustration, anxiety, visual fatigue, motion sickness and additional criteria were measured, and the results didn't surprise anyone: "The study reveals that, as expected, VR results in significantly worse ratings across most measures," the study concludes.
[3]
[4]
To be fair, the Meta Quest 2 headsets are far from ideal metaverse workwear. Instead of delivering the best possible experience, the team said they wanted to create a virtual environment that mimicked a physical keyboard/monitor setup.
"We are well aware that with the current state of VR technology, working in VR will be demanding on the user … Still, we see it as a worthwhile endeavor to quantify the effects of working in VR," the researchers said.
[5]
In particular, the study found increased frustration and anxiety, lower perceived productivity and a decrease in feelings of wellbeing. As for physical symptoms, two participants of the admittedly small study group (16 people) had to quit the study after the first day due to nausea, migraines and anxiety. Nearly half of participants that stuck with the study reported eye strain as a result of wearing a VR headset for eight hours.
[6]Meta now involved in making metalevel standards for the metaverse
[7]Metaverse progress update: Some VR headset prototypes nowhere near shipping
[8]US lawsuit alleges tool used by hospitals shares patient data with Meta
[9]Consultant plays Metaverse MythBuster. Here's why they're wrong
Participants also reported lower usability scores and decreased typing speed while in VR. That's a particularly interesting bit of data because of how the study was conducted: The same keyboard/trackpad combo was used in VR and during a week when participants worked without the headsets. Likewise, the virtual monitor displayed in the experimental workspace was the same size as the physical one located in the test subject's real-world desks.
"It is clear that there is still a long way to go for the development of more comfortable hardware," the researchers wrote.
If Meta's [10]experimental headsets are anything to go on, comfort and VR have considerable distance to travel before finding common ground. The test models CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off this week had improvements in brightness and resolution, but had to sacrifice wearability and greatly reduce field of vision to achieve those ends. ®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.03189.pdf
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YrORBj4e5j41-k@gPj@eyQAAAMk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YrORBj4e5j41-k@gPj@eyQAAAMk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YrORBj4e5j41-k@gPj@eyQAAAMk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YrORBj4e5j41-k@gPj@eyQAAAMk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/22/metaverse_standards_forum/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/20/meta_prototype_vr/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/20/us_lawsuit_alleges_meta_tool/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/16/metaverse_mythbuster/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/20/meta_prototype_vr/
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: But... but... but...
That was my thought. Unless there is a fundamental shift in how we input data it's not going to work. Tapping a keyboard in AI is pointless. Maybe machine learning and upping it to words? Even so it's not going to work or will be many many years off and even then we would all have to be the same.
Disembodied business casual
Some of the participants' unease might have been from seeing their colleagues as legless floating torsos.
Re: Disembodied business casual
I frequently visualise some colleagues as disembodied floating torsos
And me with a chainsaw
Eye strain and nausea
I already heard about that when Quake came out.
Doesn't happen to me, but that doesn't mean I'm a fan of VR. I'm not.
What bothers me with VR is having a headset when I have two gorgeous 26"+ screens sitting on my desktop.
What bothers me is that I am already perfectly immersed in today's games (7 Days to Die is unbelievable).
I don't need to shackle myself with a kilogram of poor performance to watch Nintendo-style graphics , thank you very much.
Anyone posting anti-VR stories needs to declare if they themselves have any conflict of interest (Monitor manufacturers have previously paid to put out all sorts of "VR will kill your cat" type nonsense.
Oh, so the positive-VR posts don't ?
Eye strain
Having to wear monitors a few inches from your eye will always cause eyestrain after a while.
Your eyes need to unfocus regularly.
One of the biggest helps combating eyestrain when working from home the last few years was putting a little gap between 2 of the monitors so I can gaze out through the window behind into the distance without even having to turn my head.
Doesn't matter that the view is just the street.
Re: Eye strain
As a Biologist I have spent an inordinate amount of time looking down microscopes of various sorts in windowless rooms. One should not peer down a scope, you should relax your eyes, look into the distance and hold that relaxation then look down the scope.
After a while you can learn to relax your lenses at will. As a wearer of spectacles I would leave them on and set the diopter adjustment on the eyepieces to zero. They all have rubber edges now so no risk of scratching your glasses.
A potentially useful skill to develop if you are ever unfortunate enough to have to spend your work day in the metaverse.
Labs do not work if you are at home and I wouldn’t trust a robot with glassware in mine. They are useful, if constrained. I used one which read barcodes, the head moved x,y,z it removed samples from 1.5ml tubes then gridded them onto multiwell plates. It could then add reactant if you wanted. Had a macro programming interface for building your own routines.
Zuckerberg first
Let see him being experimental subject #1 - undergoing long term immersive tests. If he does not become a gibbering idiot with a lot of medical issues, then, open up the testing to a wider/paid subjects.
Re: Zuckerberg first
The problem is that people belonging to WEF sect believe that everyone else is untermensch and disposable.
If you watch some of the videos they produce, you can see their ideology has quite an overlap with Nazism. Experiments on people, serfdom, depopulation and so on.
Wage hacking
So they really want to keep paying low wages and make workers not see the crappy environments they live in.
They think this may be the solution to "you will own nothing and be happy" part.
Because the VR headset of course won't be yours.
So in conclusion
Immersive 3D environments not good at simulating a 2d screen and keyboard ?
Next week we will discover that a monitor, keyboard and mouse are not the optimal way to control a bicycle
Usability, frustration, anxiety, visual fatigue, motion sickness
I wonder what the developers working on this project are experiencing right now. It wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that they are already well past the "OK, you can code and design using the monitors, you only need to wear the headset for testing" stage. There are probably also non-disclosure clauses in the contracts so they can't run off to the media and be the source of the inevitable "Metaverse turned me into a gibbering wreck" stories. But they'll start to emerge anyway. Probably even before the big product launch, if they ever get that far.
Makes you feel sick, drives you mad and isn't very enjoyable will be the user reaction too.
Re: Usability, frustration, anxiety, visual fatigue, motion sickness
" frustration, anxiety, visual fatigue" and then they tried doing their jobs in VR and it was even worse. :)
With this individual, how would one know the difference between "before" and "after"?
"Fruit and Nutcase
Silver badge
Zuckerberg first
Let see him being experimental subject #1 - undergoing long term immersive tests. If he does not become a gibbering idiot..."
But... but... but...
... I've seen Minority Report - surely all you have to do is stand in front of a VR screen, swipe your arm in a dramatic gesture from right to left and your day's work is done?
[Icon: warning sticker to stop you walking into a screen you can't see!]