Suffering, Art and VR Standards

Think about a great work of art: a classic book, a timeless painting, a symphonic masterpiece. What's common to many of these creations?

They were all the result of great suffering.

Tolstoy, Van Gogh, Mozart - they did not have easy lives. Many of the greats suffered from oppression, mental or physical illness, or hunger.


If you don't have drama in your life, how could you summon drama for your art?

People ask me "what made you want to work on VR standards?" My answer: it's the suffering.

No, not my personal suffering. I'm no Amaedus or have never considered cutting off my earlobe to express love.

But in many years of working with customers on their VR systems, I saw a lot of technical suffering:

The suffering of integrators that need to chase the latest API again and again. That don't know if the equipment they design for today will be available to buy in a year.

The suffering of device manufacturers that need just one more driver to support them.

The suffering of end-users that wonder if today's software will work on tomorrow's devices.

That's why we need efforts like OSVR or OpenXR to make it easy for everyone to work together. It wouldn't be as timeless or profound as "War and Peace", but it will help a lot of people.