Joe Rogan had a major VR gaming request for Mark Zuckerberg, but the Meta CEO shut down his idea for one big reason.
Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg made a surprise appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast on January 10 to discuss Meta’s new free speech policies and other topics.
During the conversation, the topic of VR gaming came up, with Rogan explaining that he had become addicted to the zombie game Deadwood Mansion.
“How long before you guys develop some sort of a haptic feedback suit where it covers the whole body?” Rogan inquired. “Is that possible?”
While Zuckerberg said the idea was doable, he ultimately moved away from the idea, explaining that there were more important things to deliver and why such a concept has some major flaws.
Mark Zuckerberg uses fighting to shoot down Joe Rogan’s VR idea
According to Zuckerberg, the current goal of VR is to give users a “realistic sense of presence,” but no technology today can give players the feeling that they’re actually physically there with another person.
Mark noted that in regards to a full-body haptic suit, there are some areas it could work well in, using boxing and kickboxing games where players get hit in the stomach.
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“You can probably simulate something like that a little. It’s not going to be able to deliver that much force, so I mean I guess that’s maybe a good thing because no one wants to get punched in the stomach that hard. But it’s not going to be able to deliver enough force,” he said.
“There’s not going to be anything that you can do as a single person playing VR with a haptic suit that like makes it so that you’re going to be able to kick someone who’s not there physically and actually be able to do that,” he added.
Zuckerberg, who has been pushing Meta Quest 3 hard, also noted that something like Jiu-Jitsu would be the last thing that we’re able to do in VR, because of the momentum needed to move someone.
That said, there are some other concepts where a haptic suit could work, with Zuck pointing to getting shot or sword fighting as examples.
“You can like just feel it on your body, but I don’t know. I think what’s basically going to end up happening is you’re going to have like a home set up for these things and then you’re going to have these location-based services where it’s almost like a theme park where you can go into and it can and you can have a really immersive VR experience.”
However, this wouldn’t just mean a user gets a vest that simulates haptics, but rather, the environment itself would have to involve smoke and sprays.
“I think that it it still is going to be a while before you can just like create all those Sensations so I think a lot of those really rich experiences are going to be in these very constructed environments,” Zuckerberg noted.
While it may not have been the response Rogan wanted to hear, it’s clear that the JRE host is excited about the possibility of zombie apocalypse games reaching a realistic new level in the years ahead.