Comment by jdashg

4 days ago

As a VRChat regular, Meta's VR world efforts have been hilarious every step of the way. So long and thanks for all the headsets! :)

Maybe not everything has to be the next big thing for everyone. Maybe it's valuable for smaller companies or sovereign divisions to find niche markets, and simply build products and services for modest profits for strong customer bases that will never hit hypergrowth. (And are therefore resistant to the cancerous financialization that hypergrowth invites/incites)

I hope they figure out how to make a modest but steady profit making headsets still. The Quest Pro is still my favorite headset, ever since I ditched the awful controllers and went back to Index controllers.

Then again, the Steam Frame is likely to deliver us from this reliance, though it would be really nice to keep having budget headset options.

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jdashg

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spcebar  4 days ago

What do you feel, as someone who likes VR, were Meta's big pitfalls, and what do you like about VRChat that you feel like Meta missed?

  • Telaneo  4 days ago

    VRChat came out more than 5 years before Horizon Worlds did, and already had an established player base by the time Horizon Worlds even came out. It was in early access for ages, but that didn't matter to the VR audience, who's used to there being jank. Not to mention that Horizon Worlds was probably never more of a finished product than VRChat to any significant degree.

    If you've already got a VR social space, why switch to a different one?

  • Macha  4 days ago

    VRChat was designed for people to hang out, Horizon Worlds was built as a platform for people to purchase meta services and desired corporate use which came with a lot of sterility (you don’t want half the people in your corporate all hands to be some form of anime girl, see the reactions that even just Anubis’ logo gets here).

    This came in both world design and novel design where vrchat lets people import basically arbitrary 3d models with a wide range of expressiveness. VR went for corporate Memphis upper torsos which immediately makes the world feel more bland. Letting people import whatever would also eliminate the opportunity for meta to sell that, and have the risk that there might be too much breast for a corporate audience.

    Add to that and the fundamentals just worked so much better in VRChat when horizon worlds tried to make its big splash and the fate was sealed.