Comment by mikenew
3 years ago
I find it pretty hilarious that VR started off as a product for gamers, designed by gamers, and funded by gamers. And even before it made it to market, it was bought up by Facebook who said "no no no, forget games, we're going to give you experiences". And it's been a parade of uninteresting, nobody-actually-wanted-this products and ideas ever since.
By far the most compelling things you can do in VR are games. Modded Beat Saber is incredible (and a total pain in the ass now that Facebook bought the game and tries to release a mod-breaking update every few weeks), VR Chat (a moddable, nerd/furry/whatever/anything goes playground), and Half Life: Alyx, a AAA game delivered by a gaming company. EDIT: almost forgot Phasmophobia. Hearing all your friends (and yourself) scream like little girls in unison is a priceless experience.
I think Apple designed an incredible piece of hardware here, and I really would like to put on a headset and have as much virtual desktop space as I want while I'm sitting on a beach. But what I really want are games. That's what everyone has always wanted from this, and yet somehow the whole VR space has been taken over by these lame corporate execs who have never touched a game more serious than Candy Crush in their life, insisting they know better.
I am a huge fan of VR gaming: some of my best gaming experiences ever have been in VR (notably Resident Evil 7 on PSVR1 and RE8 on PSVR2).
Even still, I acknowledge putting on a VR headset comes with some notable downsides: those sacrifices are 100% worth it for some games because it enables an incredible experience you can't otherwise have. Sure, you can play a modded version of Half-Life: Alyx without VR, but you're going to have a much worse experience and a lot less fun. Same for RecRoom and plenty of other titles.
But for work? I'm 100% willing to put up with a little discomfort for an hour or two if I'm having a great time; I'm less willing to do that for 8 hours a day when my job can be completed in a far more comfortable manner.
Comfort no doubt could be improved upon, but even still, I like to see the world with my own eyes. VR is a nice brief escape, and it doesn't have to be a solo activity: playing RecRoom or Zenith with friends is a lot of fun! I even bring my Quest 2 over to my friends' house IRL and play Zenith in the same room with him. But it's not much of an escape if that's what you spend your whole day in.
There are many activities that are a ton of fun for short periods of time, but if done all day, are miserable. I enjoy gaming quite a bit, but I dread the idea of being a pro-gamer who Streams on Twitch 10-12 hours a day playing one title to get good: that'd suck all the fun out of the activity for me and I'd much rather just work a more regular job like web development. I see the same being true for VR: I enjoy it a lot for an hour or two a day at most, but being in it all day could cause me to hate it.
A question I ask of all VR gaming enthusiasts: how much time do you spend on VR games versus other games?
A while back I rented an Oculus Quest. For the first week, it was the hot property in the house. By the end of the second, the kids were back on their Switches and nobody even noticed when I returned it. Asking around, I know a bunch of people who own VR gear of one form or another, but I still haven't met anybody for whom it's a daily driver, or who spends most of their gaming time using it.
I'm pretty sure the whole VR industry is an op by Big Closet to sell more closets.
I have 9000 hours in steamVR... on linux. I can never go back to 2D tbh.
This headset looks like it finally brings the full experience and more out of the dev only space.
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It was a daily driver for me. I game in waves. Sometimes an hour or 2 a day, then I will take a break for awhile. I found a lot of really excellent titles on the Quest. I had an absolute blast, but recently gave the headset away after about 2 years of heavy use. I’ll admit that I was choosing VR specially because I wanted to get a good sense of what Apple and Meta are pouring billions into as a bet for the future of computing.
One conclusion for me is that great software is great! There’s not much of a library on Quest, but the few gems pulled me in like my first game console all over again, an addicting and polished game paired with incredible immersion.
Another conclusion for me is that VR is uncomfortable in many ways. You have to stand and move for long stretches. You perform repetitive actions that can hurt your hands, your arms, your shoulders. The current hardware is heavy and awkward. It cuts you off from the world, restricts your field of view and prevents you from eating or drinking. And maybe worst of all, it creates bizarre dissociations between movement and body, eyes and objects, reality and unreality.
I still think the tech has incredible potential. One day we will live in an immersive physical/digital environment that will respond to our slightest intentions. But I now think this tech is decades away before it becomes as easy and ubiquitous as a cell phone.
If you want a really good peek at computing in 2050, pick up this Apple headset.
I used to spend a lot of time in Pavlov. Was playing PavZ pretty much every day. Then one day I stopped, and haven’t really been back. There’s definitely a lot of activation energy that goes into “getting into VR” and once you’re out, you don’t really want to put in the effort to get back in. HL Alyx was a big motivator for me, but I haven’t felt like that for other games yet.
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The fact that you cant walk around in the games really is a dealbreaker. It would be a nobrainer for all consoles if it werent for that unfortunate detail
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I use my Quest pro to play video games that trick me into cardio workouts. Due to my body tiring out and the battery life, I play a max of two hours a day.
It probably eats up less than half of my video game time. I find that I play less video games now since VR is a different experience from pupetting an avatar with a game controller. You tend to use your whole body, which is great if you cant find the motivation to workout.
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About ~1h20m per day in a two-days-on-one-day-off interval in modded PC version of Beat Saber with custom song maps on a Quest 2 with "frankenquest" setup. It's surprisingly decent cardio. Been doing it for over a year at this point and have racked up several hundred hours of playtime.
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In my case well over 90% - for simracing. Pancake mode doesn't come close for me, it's an entirely different experience.
However more than 2 hours straight is far more tiring in VR but for me that's due to eye fatigue rather than the HMD.
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> A question I ask of all VR gaming enthusiasts: how much time do you spend on VR games versus other games?
My Oculus CV1 has been back in its box for several years now. I really enjoyed Eagle Flight, but that's about it. Turns out not that many games were designed for someone like me who wanted to play VR games with mouse and keyboard behind his desk, and those that were were mostly driving/flying sims. The experience of having a motorcycle helmet with a small and not very bright visor didn't help. If I buy another VR set, it will be the one where I'm finally allowed to use my peripheral vision.
Infinite is my answer. I sit down all day at my desk job. I like to move in my free time. VR gets me up and moving, I love that. I don't play console or PC games at all.
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> but I still haven't met anybody for whom it's a daily driver, or who spends most of their gaming time using it.
I think the last time I grabbed my VR headset was when my neck was getting tired but I still wanted to use my computer (laying down on my back). It actually worked!
I have a vive original and played about 200 hours of vr games. Haven’t taken it out of the box for years though because I don’t have the space for it anymore and just don’t really care about VR gaming that much.
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For the past 5 years or so, it has gone in spurts for me: no time in VR for months (sometimes even a year or more at a time), then nearly all my gaming time is in VR for a couple months or so.
Since the PSVR2's release, when I hang out with one of my friends, I play one of his VR games almost every time I'm there. That undoubtedly won't last forever, but it definitely has the best launch library of any headset so far IMO.
Maybe I'm just a really picky gamer, but for any given console generation, there are only a handful of games I truly love, but it's easier to enjoy a fine but not incredible game on a flat screen than it is in VR. A really good VR game makes you forget about everything else and gives you an experience unachievable outside of VR. If you're immersed in a story, a song, or intense gameplay, you forget about any discomfort coming from the headset being on your face. But if you're not enjoying it then you're going to get annoyed a lot faster than you would sitting on the couch looking at a TV.
That said, the PSVR 2 is looking to have the best library of VR games yet. Previously, you'd have incredible one-off titles such as Half-Life: Alyx release on Steam but then nothing for months or years, but Sony seems really committed to providing a large number of high-quality AAA experiences on the headset. It also has a ton of great games from smaller studios (most of which were already on Steam or the Quest, but with such big libraries on both of those platforms, they were kind of tough to find throughout all the mediocre titles: this isn't an argument in favor of stronger curation, just an observation.)
Nonetheless, I don't expect it to make up the majority of time someone would play video games anytime soon, and there are two reasons:
1. Most people don't have VR headsets yet, so even if I personally prefer Pavlov to other FPSs, only two of my friends have VR headsets, so it's not replacing those flat screen games. Maybe one day, but currently the most popular games run on nearly everything: Fortnite, Minecraft, Apex, Overwatch, CS:GO, LoL, DOTA2, Valorant, Rocket League, etc. I doubt those games' popularity stems entirely from the fact they're on tons of platforms OR have very low PC requirements (or are free to play, minus Minecraft), but it likely helps.
2. Nearly all VR gamers play flat screen games, but the majority of flat screen gamers do not have VR headsets. The Quest 2 may have sold around 20 million units, but nearly all of those owners likely have a Switch, PlayStation, Xbox or gaming PC. Medium-sized studios certainly are incentivized to create VR games due to less competition (getting a game released for PSVR2 nearly guarantees at least some sales, unlike releasing on flat screen), but large studios with huge marketing budgets looking to make a ton of money can make more by selling flat screen games. Maybe they'd get some additional sales by releasing it for VR, but it's not guaranteed (hopefully it becomes more profitable to port to VR as the number of users increases though.)
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> Resident Evil 7 on PSVR1
Yikes. Hard pass from me but congrats on getting through that in vr
"You're not the target market"
sigh.
this seems to be the way the world is going.
The market for what the tech world seems to be producing is people who can be easily swayed from their own vision to the company vision, and have little expectations of (actual) privacy, of actual utility, and just adapt to what they get.
It's hard to push back against this sort of thing.
Mindful people don't want to be limited by the scenarios the manufacturer has allowed. They don't want to ask permission, to be locked-in, to have subscriptions, to have surveillance, and advertisements.
Ugh - so much of what you say resonates with me.
This is certainly the future (VR) but I'm not really interested in it. I'm interested in just being outdoors (not indoors). I want to feel rain, and cold. I want to know I can't just escape.
Others not so much, and all you need is a little bit of money. The brain doesn't know the difference. Doesn't know you're in a dead neighborhood in suburbia in a house that looks like all your neighbors you don't talk to anyways, far from any restaurants or public spaces. We have this now. Food and other items are being delivered to our doors. So on and so forth - I'm not going to belabor my personal view of a future hellscape of rich tech countries.
It's astonishing how much you see this sentiment online, but no impact from it anywhere. Sure there is pushback on this sentiment online as well, but just from how much it's expressed online, you' expect at least like 30% of new developments to be more dense, mixed-use that encourages community, walking etc. Yet, somehow it feels closer to 1%. I wonder if that's because online is a small bubble or because the people engaged in zoning and planning are in a bubble or the venn diagram just has little overlap.
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Unfortunately, this is the reality. Most people will choose the comfort over those discomfort. Just like the 99% moving matrix, going to select the blue pills over the red pills. Even the people who choose the red pill change their mind. It's just a big lever to enlarge those points.
But who is the target market for this? I like to think I am usually pretty good at saying this isn’t for me but it is for demo Y. It isn’t clear here, but if I take the marketing video and the price point and put two and two together the target audience is people with a trust fund. Not upper class, but multi-millionaire inherited wealth types. The kind that travel a lot and so something like this makes a lot of sense when on a plane or in a hotel room.
For everyone else though? It is too much money and too little utility. I am sure it will come down in price, but I still don’t see it unless they let you plug it into a PC and use it like a normal VR headset for games, because those are the only people that will shell out over a grand for a headset.
What are the 'self assembled PC' equivalents in this space?
That's why no real programmer or hacker owns an iphone - overpriced, non customizable phone...
I am sure that plenty of "real ones" own iphones. I've met them. I've always had android phone but I haven't felt the urge to even change the background wallpaper for about a decade. Phones feel kind of underpowered, overpriced and anachronistic for my life.
The desire to customize your environment is not a pre-requisite for being _authentic_ and _true_ to making the blinky lights blink. Underneath all the artifice and baubles, all we need are to chain some magic words together, and to see if they do what we expect, over and over and over again. That's unaffected by whose logo is on your hoodie-vest.
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Google now occupies 50% of my screen with an intrusive non dismissable message telling me I need to enable autouodate of the apps in the appstore.
I am switching camp, Google is selling the illusion of choice. They want control back from options and I don't intend to be part of that journey.
My experience is exactly the opposite.
I know quite a few programmer/hacker types, many of whom are cognizant of and responsive to contemporary security and privacy issues. Almost to a one, the smartphone is where they compromise most dramatically, carrying iPhones or, more bizarrely, stock Android.
The actual concept of VR was basically done the second the Vive came out. Now you can have really good immersion for a Flight Simulator game that won't come out for a few years and nobody really knew it would happen yet, and the couple driving simulation games on PC that somehow haven't died, and a smattering of immersive FPS games.
Nothing else really benefits from the increased immersion, and everything struggles with the discomfort, nausea, cost, loneliness, and extra development effort of VR.
VR isn't the next generation of graphics, it's just the display equivalent of a really powerful direct drive racing wheel with load cell brake or that airbus branded joystick that costs $500 bucks. It's for turbo nerds.
You're missing something. Yes it's for turbo nerds, but it's also for ultra casuals.
I have shown Beat Saber to probably around 30 people at this point. The game is set up in the living room with the TV mirroring the headset and the audio coming through the living room speakers. So it feels like a party environment with everyone trading off with watching and playing. Without even a single exception, every person who has tried it has absolutely loved it. Even several people who have never touched a digital game of any kind in their life, and took all manner of convincing to even try it at all.
In any other game you play, there is always some mapping of inputs into actions. Doesn't matter if it's MKB or game controller or touch screen; you have to learn that deflecting a joystick moves the player camera, or pressing "A" causes your character to jump. But in VR, at least in games like Beat Saber, you simple move your body in exactly the way you'd expect. You don't press a button at the right time to slice a block, you just slice the block. Couple that with the immersion you get in both sound and visuals, and it adds up to something that feels absolutely magical.
Yes, many things do struggle with clunky movement, nausea, etc. There are many games that I have no desire to play in VR. But the stuff that shines bright shines really bright, and I think there's a huge amount of potential there.
I've played BeatSaber for the first time just last night, and had a similar experience: party atmosphere, everyone who joined in loved it, even people who don't game. It felt natural and fun.
And 30 minutes later, we were all bored, put the headset to rest, and forgot it even exists.
Everything I've seen from VR so far is on the ultra casual side, arcade games or slightly more. Nothing as complex as Minecraft, not to mention some AAA RPG or Action game, seems even slightly plausible at the moment. Even HL: Alyx is ultimately a visually stunning version of those old on-rails shooters more than a sequel to HL2's extraordinary gameplay.
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I’ve had similar experiences with friends and Beat Saber, but how many of those 30 friends enjoyed the experience enough to get VR themselves? If your experience is like mine? Zero.
It is a cool novelty. Cool experiences while using it but the least popular gaming device in the house. Even my kids’ low end Atom-based laptops get more gaming use for chess.com and Minecraft.
Yes, I will "ultra casually" strap this thing on my face...
I think we have different definitions of "casual" -- when we used that term to describe Farmville in the 00's, we meant that you could refresh your fb page, click a link, click on 2-5 objects in the Farmville pane and come back the next day to do the same thing.
If you're strapping on an immersive experience to do the equivalent of five mouse clicks in 90 seconds, you're doing it wrong. Wrong from the client's perspective because you've got to boot the VR headset, launch the app in order to do the equivalent of those 5-7 mouse clicks. A heavy investment of time and effort for something that could be done with your finger and your phone. And wrong from the content perspective because if your virtual environment is limited to the equivalent of 5-7 mouse clicks... it doesn't sound all that compelling.
I think you’re really understating the nausea and discomfort. Maybe this is a first step towards mass adoption, but it will not happen unless significant improvement is made to the user comfort, now matter how great some VR experiences are.
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Do you recall the Kinect? Casuals loved it!
But then, of course, very few of them went and bought an Xbox + Kinect to use it.
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> Yes it's for turbo nerds, but it's also for ultra casuals.
If the $600 version isn't a smashing success for ultra casuals - then the $3500 version certainly will not be as well.
VR was a dream - and it's failed in spectacular fashion.
I have a Vive... and have used it maybe a handful of times. Once the novelty runs out, it's just a subpar experience that requires re-arranging your space/desk/room and becomes a huge PITA for normal things.
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Have them slide one Saber down the other. It's the best haptic feedback in VR.
Being able to stream what people are doing to a TV is the killer app for Quest 2.
This. Drives. Me. NUTS.
Just make games! Its that simple. Those are the experiences, those are the killer apps, they are the metaverse! They literally just need to get out of the way with their corporate bullshit.
Yeah, actually you're on to something. I admired the hardware but you just nailed the feeling I was getting from this presentation but couldn't describe.
It's the old print magazine adverts for the Atari ST or Amiga or early PC's... and shown on the screen was a spreadsheet...(and don't get me wrong, I love a good spreadsheet, but.... )
I think any games released for that system will be crippled by the controls, like smartphone games. Gestures and eye tracking are probably just as imprecise as touchscreens.
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Apple has done everything in their power to strangle and kill gaming on MacOS, they'd probably rather scrap the whole product than bring it back.
Everything in their power like bringing Hideo Kojima's latest game to macOS as a native port?
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If the goal posts was just to make a billion dollars they could make games. But the goal post is to make 100 billion dollars. So here we are.
I agree! What they should do is launch this at a developer event and provide some information and tooling, then get out of the way so that developers can release games through a proven distribution method with free/freemium/paid/subscription options...
That's a very good point. VR Chat is the magical quirky "META" experience, which is already there. Straight from either Gibsons novels or Ghost in the Shell. Apple seems to be more in line with more gated, streamlined and polished experiences, than what's in VR Chat. Its a similar story with the Sony VR HeadSet.
Apple themselves clearly know their bad reputation in the gaming community, and their lock down model for selling software will also not be embraced by many gamers. In this respect a $399 Steamdeck is a better device than Apple’s piece with 10x the price.
... released by Steam, a company with a lock down model for selling software. The gaming world has long embraced the App Store model. In fact, I'd argue the macOS and iOS App Stores were probably inspired by Steam.
Having an app store != locked down. AFAIK, you can run any software you want on a Steam deck without any hacking needed. Can you say the same for any non macOS apple product?
Steam and Apple models are extremely different. What you buy on Steam can’t be launched outside of Steam but Steam is happy to serve as a launcher for content coming from outside of it and will allow said content to use its extra functionalities (controller support and chat notably). Valve hardware is always notoriously open. The deck runs and allows you to access Linux.
Apple is completely different and outside of MacOS strictly controls everything.
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The difference being is that Valve is competing a (mostly) open market. Clearly they are offering enough value to earn their 30%?
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Steam Games are a one-and-done deal, while App Store games are slimy with subscription mildew.
Yeah Valve/Steam seem relatively decent/ethical now (eg. Steam deck being a PC u can install what u want on and modify and repair), but it's just cus the average tech company has gotten so bad. When I 1st saw steam I was appalled, its a DRM system, a program running on my system that has no function and I dont want, + a bunch of online or social features I dont give a shit about.. and none of that has changed.
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You realize the company is called Valve right?
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The real money isn't in VR right now though. The real money is in AR. Does this fit that? Not sure, but there are hundreds of use cases for something like this in the workplace (and not just for developers/desk workers). Think the person who needs to reference a manual while working on something (machinery, car, top of a telephone pole, etc.). Just a single example, but I feel that is the kind of market that the executives are aiming at cause they know for businesses, the cost is immaterial if it solves their issue or makes it so 1 person can do the job of 2. Not endorsing it either, fwiw, just saying, that has to be part of the thinking. The gaming market just isn't big enough, especially when you figure in the cost of the equipment (even at half the cost).
That was the idea behind HoloLens, and they tried to make it work for a decade, but ultimately that flopped as well. No one wants to fix a machine or a telephone pole or whatever else with a massive headset strapped to their head. These are just pointless scenarios dreamed up by techies who have never done any of those jobs in their life.
If such a headset were to be commercially successful gaming and porn are the only areas that need targeting, but those are also ones that large corporations are least interested in.
Once this headset's form factor shrinks down to sunglass size it will be the next iPhone. Especially with innovators creating apps that enhanced current life experiences like...
- Play real life ping pong, tennis, card games, etc .. glasses keeps & displays score in your view
- Rewind ... how did this building look ten, twenty, 100 years ago
- Who am I talking to at a conference.. their name appears above them
- Lots more and better innovative ideas to come too
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> I find it pretty hilarious that VR started off as a product for gamers, designed by gamers, and funded by gamers. By far the most compelling things you can do in VR are games.
Going to have to disagree with you there. The most compelling use case for VR is porn. The most compelling cover story for buying a device for porn will be games.
AFAICT the most prolific and reliably deployed cardboard (previous gen VR) experiences ended up being porn.
However Apple has been hostile to that particular content so I wouldn't expect it to be marketed with that in mind...
Porn will never work. See the Dara Obriain skit for a hilarious explanation why.
Oh it's already working. People who aren't compatible with 3DCG stuff goes to those.
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By far the most compelling things you can do in VR are games.
What about porn?
Apple's reality distortion field could be the secret sauce that gets people to overcome many of the issues you described, and to purchase a VR product even if they don't make any sense to use.
Yeah, maybe for other non-VR. But at $3500,the Vision Pro is DOA for the most consumers. At $3500, it's going to take several iteration before they can price one that your average consumer that's normally willing to spends $500-1500 for a ipad/iphone/MBP would be willing to buy. I wonder what they'll leave out to get to that price.
The reality distortion field schtik is getting pretty old - Mac’s, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches and AirPods are clearly class leading products that people buy a lot of. HomePods are not and people do not buy a lot of them.
If this is good people will buy it if not they won’t.
It’s for bringing employees back into the office who are never coming back into the office!
In our Titanium tier, you can even eye-track how often your employees glance at their phones!
…
What happened here is that VR/AR have always been nerd dreams. But it’s always been expensive, or uncomfortable to use. Nerds funded rounds 1-3.
Now we’re at the point where it’s board meetings and people making presentations about workplace reintegration. Aka employee monitoring and nudging.
It sounds like companies are trying to bring work to a playground and at the same time can't make compelling games that can beat Beat saber...
while I share the same sentiment, it is hard if not impossible, if gamers became permanently attached to VR/AR tech and then try to bring everyone else onboard. that's why apple went in with high prices first, got to make it look sexy/cool/elusive while the tech matures, then only release to general public at affordable prices when it's 99% there; like macbook air.
If anything that sort of thing backfired with the plummeting demand for the mac line after the the ungodly expensive mac pro caster wheels and such.
I’m pretty sure that Mac sales have been doing just fine since the release of the M1.
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I really think this is a bad take, at least as far as the analysis of Meta goes.
If anything, they've focused on games too deeply and have kicked the can on building an _app_ ecosystem with the multitasking UX needed for a personal computer. This is understandable from a hardware constraint perspective...
However, Apple has done the legwork to build a framework that supports concurrent app usage in a mixed reality way from the ground up instead of deeply focusing on immersive game experiences like Meta has. On top of that, Apple seems to have put in more work to onboard app devs than game devs. That said, the reason Apple can ignore games is because they can leave that to Meta and Unity and they'll still get ports.
The input story for the Apple headset is real bad, though. You seem to think Meta doesn't care about games but at least they ship game controllers. Just wait until you try to play something with a pinch gesture and no haptics.
I think immersive experiences is the way to go. Imagine being able to experience a bunch of (idealized) historical events—celebrating Allied victory in WWII, walking through a market in Ancient Rome up to the Colosseum to watch a match, walking around your city before people settled it, etc.
The tech isn’t quite there yet, but we may not be that far off of some aspects of it with generative AI. Those experiences would certainly be boosted if you could walk up to anyone and they’d have a unique personality and would be able to have a full conversation with you.
Companies like Meta are trying to push what they want this to be about, and it's not games. Its ads, completely immersive ads and the addictive infinite feed model perfected by TikTok applied to VR and AR to push those ads. The ad market is significantly larger than the game market.
We'll see what Apple does with this. It's a chance for them to redeem themselves in the gaming market a bit if they make it good for games, which as you say is what everyone actually wants from this technology.
I'm curious what you think of https://moonrider.xyz ?
I just use it for virtual workouts, so I use the "punch" not the "saber" mode, but it works great for that.
It’s a computing device like a phone or a laptop, anyone can make any game they want available for it. in the key note they mentioned gaming specifically and had time on a partnership with unreal.
What makes you think this is not for gaming?
I don’t care about games at all. Have never put on a VR headset. But I will likely pre-order Vision for a better productivity workflow. Apple will get the OS right, whereas Meta never had a chance.
Oh good, just wait until you get regular headaches from attempting to decipher the text on your virtual screen. It works terribly. VR is an awful, desperate, not fit for purpose replacement for even a single 1080p monitor.
> VR is an awful, desperate, not fit for purpose replacement for even a single 1080p monitor.
But for how much longer? I can really see the benefit of having "more space" when working on a computer.
We're peeking through needle holes, small screens mostly covered by bars and menues. If we're lucky the context we need for our task fits on two large screens.
I believe this strains our working memory more than we understand. Making us do thing slower, worse and with more effort.
VR has the potential to unlock much more "space" that we can navigate in a way that is much more natural to us.
Not sure if the tech is up to the task today or if it will be in 10 years. But the value proposition is clear.
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20/20 vision is defined as 1MOA, or 1/60th degrees of angular resolution. Necessary resolution at typical FOV of 100 degrees is therefore 6k x 6k pixels. 4k x 4k per eye is not quite the "Retina" equivalent but actually not as off as earlier attempts at VR.
23Mp is a freaking lot, tho
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May I ask which headsets you've tried? I was stunned by the visual clarity of even a Pico 4, and I expect the vision pro to be far clearer.
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There is nothing on the market that gets close to what Apple is releasing here. The total resolution is nearly three times 4k. They don't mention FOV, but the description implies something approaching 180 degrees, and this being Apple, plus foveated rendering as a feature, you can assume smooth rendering somewhere between 120-240hz.
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You obviously haven't watched the keynote.
Consider trying any VR headset first, the interface has a few unanticipated effects for many people. Eg, nausea, headaches, dizzyness etc. A "productivity workflow" might only last half an hour before you're fatigued from its innate unnaturalness.
I think that's what the resolution, sensors and low latency are for.
Having made a serious attempt at a virtual workspace for development myself, I'll just say: it's ok, but there are a lot of challenges.
To develop, I need an actual fully-featured operating system with a terminal, a full suite of tools and libraries, and an application ecosystem.
To date, proxying all of that through a desktop/laptop to a virtual display or virtual remote desktop is clunky at best. Reading in VR is unpleasant. Typing in VR is unpleasant. Juggling controllers in VR is unpleasant. Wearing a headset for more than an hour or two is gross - you will really need to spend time and effort keeping the bits that touch your face clean. Cords are a hassle and the weird constant slight resistance starts to drive me nuts after awhile. For me there wasn't a hard deal-breaking issue, just a death by a thousand cuts.
Don't get me wrong - you can absolutely do it. For myself, it fell far short of the friction-free space for deep productivity I was after.
Also, again speaking personally, there is no way in hell I'm going to show up to work video meeting as a cartoon avatar (or turn my camera off). So meetings sort of break the whole thing.
Maybe this product will solve a lot of those friction points. I think that would be great, personally, but I'm skeptical.
Tim, if this is your alt account you're legally obligated to say so.
Better productivity workflow: a sweaty device you need to carry on your head, with a cable with a battery pack, for the spectacular 2 hours battery life, reproducing low-resolution virtual displays around you, which you are supposed to very productively operate by clumsily making finger gestures around the display (instead of on them).
Yeah, I'll keep my monitors, mouse and keyboard, and my smartphone, thanks.
Whatever happened to that Google glass tech? Didn't look as "sweaty" as those bigger VR sets.
> Yeah, I'll keep my monitors, mouse and keyboard, and my smartphone, thanks.
I don't see why we'd need to replace both input- and output devices at the same time. Improve the output first and maybe the input later.
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You need the battery pack only if you want more than the 2 hours of battery life the device itself gets.
ADDED. Since I am getting downvoted, here is a cite:
https://www.laptopmag.com/news/apple-vision-pro-is-here-and-...
>Up to 2 hours of battery life without the battery pack. (Yes, there's a battery back that can be attached to Vision Pro.)
Also: put yourself in the design team's shoes: why wouldn't you put a small battery in it? A small battery doesn't weigh that much; a small battery isn't much of a safety hazard; compared to all the other engineering effort put into the product, the engineering to put in a battery is a drop in the bucket (particularly since the organization has so much experience putting batteries in products).
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There's a reason Kojima was on stage and it isn't just to announce Death Stranding is coming to the Mac. The key part was future games for Apple platforms...
Hum, AFAIK VR started off as aimless experimental tech, was repurposed for data visualization first, and only after a reasonable amount of success there it was pushed for gamers.
And then gamers unanimously rejected it, but it found a quite cozy niche in CAD.
That's just to say that it has probably a lot of other serious uses. But yeah, as soon as it's actually good, games will probably be most popular one. Anyway, I agree, the serious uses will almost certainly not include pretending you are in a circle with your coworkers' avatars.
Facebook bought it up because they saw the opportunity for that sweet behavioral surplus and just couldn't pass it up.
I just want to experience Tribes:Ascend on a good VR headset without a tethered computer. Is that too much to ask?
Seriously - VR gaming was awesome years ago if you had the hardware and continues to be awesome.
>VR Chat (a moddable
It has never allowed mods and on PC enforces it with an anticheat.
i just have stock Beat Saber and am interested in modding. what mods do you recommend?
Don’t forget porn!
VR was invented by and for gamers? News to me.
I mean sure, if you say history started in 1995 and ignore all the VPL and CAVE stuff from the 80s, then sure... it was gamers all the way down.
Everyone read that one Vernor Vinge novel and decided to get on the gravy train before Chicago gets nuked. /s
Speaking more seriously: I think you're right in the short-term, wrong in the long-term, but getting at a fundamental truth, which is that *applications* are what will drive development and adoption. And they have to be fully-formed and wedded to the form factor, while still being accessible.
AR/VR will revolutionize general computing, but if you can't figure out how yet - clearly, they have not - the focus should be on the applications that are already well-envisioned (and, in the past few years, as you've said, well-executed) on the platform.
Further, it helps if the killer-app is emotionally engaging, allows and anticipates the failure of the user within the app's internal UX logic, and doesn't interfere with a user's crucial assets or processes (related to work, health, etc.) until the platform's kinks are worked out.
Sounds like games fit the bill quite nicely. It is truly weird that execs taking home eight figures or more can't (or refuse to) wrap their heads around that. Gaming is anathema amongst a certain portion of the population, I suppose.
> AR/VR will revolutionize general computing
People keep thinking that stereoscopic 3D will revolutionize things, but they've been consistently wrong about that for more than 170 years.
It starts with the Brewster Stereoscope [1] which was shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851. [2] It was a huge success, and in following years hundreds of thousands of viewers were sold, with lots of content following. Eventually the fad blew over, ending up as antique-shop fodder.
Next up was the ViewMaster; the US Department of Defense bought 100,000 units because it was going to revolutionize military training. Then came the 1950s wave of anaglyph 3D movies, the 1990s VR boom and bust, the Avatar-driven resurrection of 3D movies in 2009, which was quickly followed by a wave of enthusiasm for 3D TV. Then, most recently we have the resurrection of VR, this time with the Metaverse attached.
I think 3D worlds have revolutionized a chunk of gaming, from Quake to Minecraft and onward. But the available evidence suggests that stereoscopic 3D interfaces are an idea much more popular in theory than in practice. As best I can tell, the most representative 3D technology is not facehugger VR, but those Magic Eye stereograms [3] that go in and out of popularity. They are a fun novelty, but they never transform everything. There's a big hype cycle and everybody gets excited, but after a bit of use they quickly go back to 2D and most are just fine with it.
[1] https://stereosite.com/collecting/the-brewster-stereoscope-i...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Exhibition
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Eye
Yeah, I said this about videophones in 2002 or so. I was sure I was right. Videophones had been reinvented five times over. You could only use it at home, sitting on the couch, giving it your full attention. Who would want to have regular conversations that way enough to pay for a videophone with limited compatibility?
Now I go to the supermarket and people are holding their phones out at arm's length having FaceTime conversations at full volume with their adult kids.
Once 3-D works and integrates with physical objects it's going to be a big deal. We just keep failing at that.
Social stuff changes.
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>People keep thinking that stereoscopic 3D will revolutionize things
I'm not one of them. The revolutionary aspect of AR/VR/XR/MR/WhateveR (or, at least, one of them) is the ability to uncouple appearance or apparent make-up from function. It does for physical objects what the web did for paper.
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On the other hand, isn't it quite typical for good ideas to be recognized as such many times before the technology is actually mature to implement them properly?
Edit: most morbid example that comes to mind - flying machines.
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Stereoscopy isn't VR. It isn't even required to use it, put a person with one eye in a VR headset and they'll be able to use it's fundamental feature set just fine. It's the positional tracking that allows for perspective correct representations of anything desired that's the point. This has a lot of practical use beyond making things pop out for effect.
Stereoscopy is not the same as 6DOF. If I shut one eye in VR, it's still VR.
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Obligatory pedantry: True Names was a novella, not a full novel. And the better for it.
Or you were referring to Rainbow's End in which case I'm embarrassed about my comment.
More seriously: I was really excited by True Names when it was published (and a bunch of us at MIT talked about it a lot) but by the time Snow Crash came out it seemed pretty obvious that real world metaphors weren't really desirable in virtual environments. Certainly the web and its abortive competitors (like apple eWorld, and many others) made it clear for those not paying attention: nobody wanted to "walk" from Gap to Williams Sonoma in some virtual mall: they just wanted to click over and get satisfaction. Nobody likes long boring travel in an open video game; a little is OK to avoid breaking the spell, but soon something has to happen or you need a convenient elevator. The same applies to movies.
BTW you're 100% right about gaming being the killer app. Once people are used to that perhaps they'll want to do other things. But without a reason to develop the right metaphors, affordances, and experiences, there's "no there there".
>Or you were referring to Rainbow's End in which case I'm embarrassed about my comment.
Sorry, Gumby, it's the Play-Doh press for you.
I feel you. RE is probably going to end up being wrong about a lot of things, too; in particular, Vinge even kind of hinted at how the lack of haptics would cause the "mirror world" and virtual object schemas to break down, at least as far as immersion and utility go. Ultimately, I don't think we get to the world he described without the tech that was just nascent within it. That's analogous to the inapplicability of real-world translation metaphors to the pop-into-existence data stream that is the web, as you said. I realized this the moment that I reached out to touch the 3D model of a character I'd created and nothing was there.
Gaming short-circuits perception and gives leeway in a lot of ways that are conducive to a haptic-less experience, though. Good movement and animation can make up for a lack of embodiment that would kill a more serious experience (Second Life as a virtual office or retail branch...), and while animation is much less reliable of a tool for VR, I'm sure that other affordances can be found if devs are allowed to just... play around with it (pun intended).
The presentation kind of disappointed me because I didn't see an understanding of the situation that they face.
> Certainly the web and its abortive competitors (like apple eWorld, and many others) made it clear for those not paying attention: nobody wanted to "walk" from Gap to Williams Sonoma in some virtual mall: they just wanted to click over and get satisfaction. Nobody likes long boring travel in an open video game; a little is OK to avoid breaking the spell, but soon something has to happen or you need a convenient elevator. The same applies to movies.
What's funny is that I think (having not experienced it) that I would like to basically set various files and applications around a virtual space, because I'm eternally frustrated with all window managers and other 2d application management tools. I just don't want to wander through someone else's "carefully curated" hall of t-shirt JPEGs.
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