There are of course many jobs that are much more taxing on the body overall than waving one's hands at a Minority Report style computer interface. (I used to work at a restaurant! I've done actual work, I swear!)
However, waving your hands in the air for 8-10 hours a day feels a bit unnatural relative to "actual" physical work. I don't have a real scientific basis for this statement.
But there are some physics at play IMO. In boxing it's generally accepted that a missed punch consumes about twice as much energy as one that connects -- your body must do the work to accelerate your arm, and then it must do a roughly equal amount of work to decelerate it. I think there are some parallels to waving one's hands in the air for 40-50 hours per week relative to "actual" physical labor.
More to the point: MR-style interfaces (at least as typically implemented/depicted) don't really offer tangible advantages to using a good touch pad. They trade tiny finger movements on a trackpad for huge sweeping arm movements that accomplish the same things.
I think if MR-style interfaces had somehow been invented before mice and trackpads, we'd be celebrating mice and trackpads as absolute miracles of efficiency.
I actually prefer keyboard alone due to the concise control, I find mice pretty clumsy. But there are things that it can do that I can't achieve on a keyboard and same for VR, perhaps we'll end up with blended work stations.
On the note of tiring out, I have been strength training for 12ish years now and I still get tired quickly when holding my arms above my head to work on my car. I think because they are a smaller muscle group, they can be saturated easily. I don't have the same issue with repetitive motions, it's just holding the arm in a similar position that does it.
Maybe if AR gestures take into account full motions rather than holding the arm in a similar position for too long, it might not tire so easily.
I have VR already and I will say it's an exhausting experience in general, I can flat screen game for hours, but in VR I want out in less than an hour. I think it's the full focus it forces on you, and the split world spatial reasoning going on.
However, waving your hands in the air for 8-10 hours a day feels a bit unnatural relative to "actual" physical work. I don't have a real scientific basis for this statement.
But there are some physics at play IMO. In boxing it's generally accepted that a missed punch consumes about twice as much energy as one that connects -- your body must do the work to accelerate your arm, and then it must do a roughly equal amount of work to decelerate it. I think there are some parallels to waving one's hands in the air for 40-50 hours per week relative to "actual" physical labor.
More to the point: MR-style interfaces (at least as typically implemented/depicted) don't really offer tangible advantages to using a good touch pad. They trade tiny finger movements on a trackpad for huge sweeping arm movements that accomplish the same things.
I think if MR-style interfaces had somehow been invented before mice and trackpads, we'd be celebrating mice and trackpads as absolute miracles of efficiency.