Having been in VR environments multiple times I decided to attack this assignment from an observational standpoint at watching my fellow classmate’s reaction to their first VR experiences.  I love VR, and knowing that this is going to be the future of content consumption it is interesting to see how first time users experience VR.

Many people in the class have used VR once or twice but still many have never experienced it.  I sat eagerly watching fellow students trying on the GearVR for the first time.  As you would expect everyone’s first reaction is “OMG this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen…this is crazy…woah!! Etc.”  The same as my first reaction but I still love seeing people try VR for the first time.  Something interesting to note is that the first app people gravitated to on the GearVR was the Netflix app.  I think this has to do with familiarity.  People are scared to try new things and they like to gravitate towards something they know to help them.  Almost everyone who tried on the GearVR gravitated towards the Netflix app first.  Everyone’s reaction was the same, they were all fascinated that the Netflix app brought them in a room fully immersive with white walls and a couch they can sit o.  They then said they saw different vides they can watch, but they were more fascinated by the room itself.  Many of them said they felt like they were actually in the room experiencing the shows in front of them.

I also want to talk about the different experiences people had with the different VR devices.  With the Samsung GearVR a reoccurring problem was that whenever someone new tried it on it asked for a user login to the Oculus App.  This problem kept reoccurring and users were annoyed by it.  When this kept happening everyone around kept laughing and offered to try to help out.  The problem kept happening and then we switched to the cardboards.

With the cardboards everyone thought it was still just as cool, especially the people who never tried VR before.  It was interesting to see how everyone else, not the person in the VR experience was looking. Everyone was smiling and laughing watching the person in VR.  The person in VR would try and explain what they were seeing and then everyone was smiling, it really brought the room together.

After people tried the cardboards we looked at the Oculus and the HTC Vive, to my predictions the more complex the device the better the user reactions were.  I purposely stayed with the group that started at the cardboards and finished by using the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift.  Their reactions were the same, some of them saying they never wanted to leave the virtual world.

I asked users to compare the different experiences.  They said the HTC vive was their favorite experience as they were able to walk around and actually feel apart of the experience.  Walking around makes users think they are actually there.  I personally have stayed in the Vive for hours in Tilt brush, you can completely forget as time flies by.  Users wearing the Oculus Rift or other VR devices just watched their video took their headset off and said it was cool.  But with the HTC Vive no one wanted to leave, they said they felt connected to the devices.

I want to address the still devices such as the GearVR, cardboard and oculus vs the HTC vive.  Having been in VR multiple times I still got a little nauseous when I was looking through the Oculus Dev kit 2.  While looking at Carla’s video of the post war bombing (which btw amazing project!) I got a little nausea having to more around with the arrow keys.  Unlike the vive, with the oculus you are staying stationary, this can cause nausea if you are in the environment for a while.  Of the 3 people I was with who tried the Oculus Dev kit we all experienced a little nausea after being in the environment for more than 5 minutes.  I still loved the project and thought it was unbelievable but it is important to note

I think VR is the future of content consumption and it is up to us to be at the front of this change.