Gemini in the Most Impractical Way Possible

The other week, inspired by a post on Station about someone sideloading Lagrange onto their TV, I decided to try sideloading Lagrange onto my Quest VR headset.

The result [jpg]

The Quest is Android-based so installation was pretty easy. Just download the Lagrange Android apk onto the PC, plug in the Quest, and install with an adb command.

Now I'll admit, on paper strapping what is essentially a high-tech toaster to your face just to read glorified text files sounds pretty stupid. But in practice... no it's still pretty stupid.

There are a few cool bits. Lagrange itself works really well, at least after a few settings tweaks. The Quest's hand tracking also works in Lagrange so there's no need for controllers. Instead you can point at the screen and pinch the air to interact with it. That's pretty neat but admittedly far from ergonomic. It gets tiring after just a few minutes with how much scrolling is needed.

One plus is being able to resize the screen to however big you want it and move it anywhere in your workspace. Did you know that if you have a big enough screen, Lagrange will intelligently switch from the mobile UI to the desktop UI?

I managed to even get my Station client certificate imported, though that was quite the exercise. Apparently adb doesn't have a good way of sending a piece of text to a connected device's clipboard, otherwise I could send my certificate that way. The Quest also doesn't have a built-in file browser, so copy pasting it from a file wasn't an option either. I ended up starting a simple, local http server on my laptop that served my certificate as a text file. From there I could connect to it from the Quest and copy paste the certificate into Lagrange. Phew!

Is this how we're all doomed to work in the future?

I don't think the idea of working in VR/AR is all that bad. In fact I love the idea of being able to carry a single device that's both your computer and as many screens as you could ever want. The execution though just isn't there, at least yet. These headsets are still going to have to get smaller and more comfortable before I'd ever consider wearing one for any significant portion of the workday -- and I say that as someone who's been rather enthusiastically using one for over a year. I also don't think the trusty ol' keyboard and mouse are going anywhere, as much as I would love to look like a magician waving my hands around.

Of course you can't bring this topic up without addressing Meta and its vision of building some grand multiverse (I can't stand that marketing buzzword). I don't think there's a future in it. A true metaverse is a set of protocols. What Meta wants to build is a platform, a walled garden. I seriously doubt that approach, at least as it relates to their goal of becoming the sole authority in VR/AR.

Maybe I'm wrong though. People were saying the same things about the internet 30 years ago.

- moddedBear / 2022-03-17

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