VR wouldn’t even be a thing anymore without their efforts.
PC Tower VR is a dead end where the complexity and hardware costs will never take it the customer base size that justifies developing non-indie content.
I don’t think Valve would have even bothered building Index without the Oculus threat.
> VR wouldn’t even be a thing anymore without their efforts.
As long as Facebook owns it, it may as well not be a thing to me. Facebook "saving" VR is a utterly pyrrhic victory. If facebook owns it then it wasn't worth saving.
I’ll happily let them spend the billions in R&D to develop the hardware, sdks, and advertising to the mainstream though. Hopefully they do all the hard work so when a decent company comes in, there’s a lot less to do for a much more developed ecosystem.
I’m at least happy right now that “vote with wallet” thing worked this time. I’m sure they got the message, and I’m sure that VR industry will resume regular programme.
It’s funny that the collective anti-Facebook sentiment is so strong that we managed to starve Oculus of content and possibly burnt through their budget for loss leader.
I mean, so far the three titles I would call "non-Indie", those being Fallout VR, Skyrim VR and HL: Alyx, are PC VR exclusives.
Stuff like Beat Saber and VRChat which are the most succesful VR games, predate the Quest, and are probaby helped that beat saber only needs the motion controls part of VR - were it not for facebook using it to sell the Quest nowadays, we would have had a switch port by now I feel.
And VRchat doesn't even require VR, it also has a regular desktop client.
You can play any PCVR games on Quest by either using a cable or through airlink connecting to your PC. Both are native features. I've played through Half-Life: Alyx this way with zero issues whatsoever.
Right but this is just using the Quest as a peripheral for PC VR, and therefore has the same issues that parent was complaining about with PC VR in terms of hardware requirements, because it is just PC VR
>VR wouldn’t even be a thing anymore without their efforts.
A headset with multiple cameras on it, connected to the internet, scanning my surroundings, and phoning home to Meta/Facebook. Hard for me to imagine a more dystopian future for VR than the one envisioned by Zuck. I'd rather VR not be a thing than for Meta/Facebook to dominate it.
I agree. Games are selling 10-20x more on the Quest compared to the PC. It's making VR accessible and cheap for everyone. And the market is open for someone else to release a cheap headset if they like rather than requiring people to spend thousands of dollars and have complicated setups.
This is revisionist history. Facebook didn't contribute to the early days of modern VR, they just came in and bought it once someone else had done the hard work. The first VR headset that let you get up and move around with motion controls was the Vive, not even anything from Oculus.
I don't particularly care about that if I'm being honest.
I really don't think there's much room creatively for non-indie VR games that fit on a standalone headset.
I'm sure there's something, but you can already do so much with something like beatsaber or superhot that I don't feel myself yearning for all that much more.
If we could use (say) AI techniques to create VR versions of classic movies, that would be cool and I'd pay a pretty penny for it, or even VR-specific works that actually explore the implications of the medium (I could see tomorrow's equivalent of black mirror's bandersnatch doing this), but I don't feel like my VR headset is a wasted investment at the moment.
Even just for flight sims and simracing it's genuinely fantastic. I'm probably never going to race at Le Mans at night in the rain, I want to though, so my brain makes the rest up for me when I put the headset on.
That's an estimated 1/3 of what Quest 2 sold [1]. And Sony already has a huge install base of subsidized consoles to sell into, whereas high end PCs required to run VR are a rarity.
I was disproving his point about VR being dead without Oculus. Prior to Quest 2 launch they weren't even the leader, 1.5 years after that launch they are basically only game in town(not for long, PSVR2, next gen Valve headset and Apple are coming soon). And VR-capable PCs aren't that rare, you basically need performance of 1060 and half of Steam userbase have that.
What complexity and hardware costs are you referring to? You need to have a decent graphics card, which most PC gamers do, and connecting the headset is just plugging in the cables into the PC (HDMI and USB for ours)
There are a lot of us tech enthusiasts who just have one laptop for business/research, zero or one not-current-gen games consoles and maybe a sorry looking ancient desktop. This makes the Quest an attractive and unique new treat to drop a couple hundred GBP on, obviously less so now.
You're missing out, Quest 2 was one of the best purchases I've made in the last year.
I also don't think VR is good enough to be worth investing $1k+ into a VR headset like Vive. $300 seemed like a very high return on investment for what I got. Not sure about $400 since I already have one but I'd probably still do it.
I also made a fake, empty Facebook account to use the Oculus store, so I don't feel like it's a privacy invasion.
>I also made a fake, empty Facebook account to use the Oculus store, so I don't feel like it's a privacy invasion.
You're kidding yourself with that. You gave Facebook literal eyes into your home through an internet connected device. If you don't think Facebook know who you are I have some coins I'd like to sell you.
I talked to someone who used to be at Facebook's reality lab and they said they have very VERY strict controls on user data and no one just has remote access through Oculus cameras including devs but reputation is hard to shake when tied to a company like Facebook.
That developers not having access is likely. Still there certainly is different data analytics running over it to identify what works and what ads to sell where. Also there mere fact that the data exists can lead to some (ab)use sometime in future. Even if I were to trust Mark Zuckerberg (which I don't, but for arguemnt's sake) this won't give me trust in a successor.
What data are you talking about that's being released from someone who never uses Facebook besides playing Quest 2 once in a while? My location and game preferences? A video/audio of my empty room while I play a game by myself?
Oh I’m sure they do. I’m sure Facebook cares deeply about your data and they absolutely would not ever lose it or accidentally give it away.
They definitely don’t see the VR devices as a gateway to another frontier on data collection. That’s why they paid billions for Oculus and then spent billions to sell the Quest devices at a loss.
Ignore the fact that one of basic features of the Quest is to scan your room and build a play area. Just give FB a burner account and you’re set they definitely won’t be able to tie that data together it’s not like they built their entire business around doing that.
This is such a weirdly aggressive comment. I'm not saying you have to trust Facebook but there are much better ways to shake Oculus users down for money than risk getting caught watching people on the toilet through their VR cameras.
Why are you imagining petty voyeurism? I'm imagining more like "scan the room for products recently purchased at non-amazon retailers" or "identify how many worker-consumers are in the room and how engaged they are with The Product"
I bought all of those products with credit cards, usually on Amazon. I highly doubt that's useful information for FB to mine (and it would destroy their product line if it came out they were doing that).
I just made a mental list of all of the items in my office room where I use Quest and the face I own a Macbook and some high end speakers/chair/desk/monitor and an iPhone is really not that interesting to anyone.
I'm way more concerned by my mobile phone or browser where I actual engage with personal information.
Petty voyeurism will happen (we've seen enough stories about this with Amazon Alexa) but I agree that's nowhere near the main problem with this kind of technology.
You really think Zuck couldn't phone up a random SDE and ask them for a direct feed into a random users home? Sor..sorr..sorry Zuck I can't break policy, even for you the president of Hawaii.
Not to mention they can now Id you based off your retina scan. They can also profile your house and products you use in your house. Facebook is reckless with data. Just read up on the Cambridge Analytica scandal. They were even sharing facebook messenger conversations with third party data consumers.
I presume you're not aware of Facebook's research into eye tracking for VR. It goes a lot further than just identity. I believe their main interest is gauging emotional response for better targeted advertising.
If you look at the original FT article which covered the patents that caused the whole stir [1] (paywalled but I found it in the usual places) you'll see that their patents only cover using eye tracking to render media. A comment in FT's interview with Clegg discusses using eye tracking to see if an advertisement was looked at, like how JS is used to track whether an ad was viewed now. "Gauging emotional response" is really, really stretching it. Meta does enough garbage today, let's not foment conspiracy here.
The comment I responded to just happened to be the one which made me wonder how far off the dystopian future was where mega corporations are scanning people's eyes, which is why I went and searched the internet for information and found that that future is actually very close. This made me a bit worried. Therefore I mentioned that piece of information here, hoping that it might reach someone in a position to change that future.
>Facebook is reckless with data. Just read up on the Cambridge Analytica scandal. They were even sharing facebook messenger conversations with third party data consumers.
I did, and it says that they gave message access to users that authorized it to. Saying "Facebook is reckless with data" because of this makes as much sense as saying that google is "reckless" with your data because people are constantly downloading shady flashlight apps and granting them location permissions.
What is the threat model exactly? That someone will have access to Facebook's entire credit card DB to connect a random email to my real identity AND be able to hijack the cameras/microphone to spy on me? So basically a nation state or Facebook? I can't see a private hacker getting that sort of access nor bother to get me.
I use it maybe an hour or two a week now (used to be way higher) and when I'm not using it it sits in a case in a closet. I dont see any value of getting images of my office and audio of an empty room.
I'm really struggling to see how this affects my privacy. I dont even play multiplayer games where I'm ever talking.
My Quest 2 runs glorified arcade games with 20 year-old graphics. What games are you playing that you enjoy for more than 5 minutes? Beat saber and VR-Chat bore me to death.
Demeo and Echo Arena are great if you have friends that also have a Quest 2 you can play with. I'm past the age where I want want to risk the enjoyment of my limited gaming time to the random match maker gods.
Assume you mean Echo VR. Fantastic game! I agree that playing with random people can be a downer, so I've "friended" several people who are competent players and not annoying. One likes to play private matches with 10 known "adults" and it's amazing.
It's not all about graphics, it's about gameplay, cooperation, competition and good sportsmanship with some friendly ribbing. I've got more than 2K matches in and still play a couple times a week until the battery dies.
If you have the money, an index is the true experience. Quest gives me headaches and lenses have terrible godrays. You can't match eye spacing properly on quest, and it's software is junk. The UI hitches and causes nausea. Sometimes refuses to display menus or setup boundary properly and just sits there until I factory restore the headset.
Secondary FB accounts can be banned for not being the "real person" btw.
Yes you can use a Virtual desktop and connect via usb-c.
I purchased a streaming VR service and played games on Steam not available on Oculus store using my Quest 2. Greatly expanding the number of games you can play.
I bought the Quest 1 for $500, and I thought it was a good buy even then. $400 for the Quest 2 is still a steal, honestly.
And I have a PC that can handle VR games (and you can use the Quest 1 or 2 as basically a PC VR headset if you want). But it’s just so much less hassle to use the native Quest.
The main use of the Quest is still to play beatsaber tho LOL.
For me it isn't even so much about the privacy invasion or having to have a Facebook account, it's being locked into one store. PCVR doesn't have that problem.
Sure, with some hackery. I'd rather pay for something that doesn't require me to work around it like that. Why pay for this in-headset computer if I'm not using it?
> I also made a fake, empty Facebook account to use the Oculus store
If this isn't your main account, then this is a violation of the ToS and Meta/FB can (and in many cases, have) ban you and remove access to everything you bought at the drop of a hat.
If it is your main account, then you should assume that they are linking all of your VR data in the backend with whatever shadow profiles they have generated for you from other sources.
I bought a Quest 2 last winter, used it a lot for the first two weeks, and then it sat unused for nearly a month. Thanks to Amazon's lengthy return policy during Christmas I got a full refund. Like with 3D in movies, I didn't find 3D in games compelling. I really expected to like Beat Saber but the music didn't appeal to me and so many of the custom songs were just so poorly done.
I bought two recently for my parents and they don’t use them. I tried to use them but there are no real VR games to play. All of the games are arcade-style mini games with 20 year-old graphics. They get boring after a couple minutes. Huge disappointment!
Around 10 years ago I gave up on VR and decided to wait for the VR game market to grow. It was a huge bummer to learn that nothing has changed after all this time.
I think it will take another decade or two for hardware power and costs to catch up to modern game engines.
For me, the only VR experience worth experiencing right now is probably a $1000 Valve Index with Half-Life Alyx running on my $4000 PC.
I'm not surprised that a casual level gaming device didn't meet the expectations of someone with a $4,000 gaming rig. You aren't the target market for this device.
Lol exactly. Really wanted to play Half Life / Alex but not about to give Meta any money … absolutely not going to use a facebook account to use a VR device.
Alyx is probably one of the greatest gaming experiences I've had... but I was also able to borrow a Vive from a friend to play it. I'm a Half-Life nut so I would have bought a headset anyway, but I'm glad I haven't bought a Quest.
The immersiveness is fantastic, but movement feels like trying to use a 1970's pong controller while something is strapped to your head.
I want standard joystick-based movement. I suppose too many get motion sickness, or that joysticks are ergonomically awkward to place onto motion controllers while maintaining the "pointing" and "picking up" metaphors.
VR's "aim and teleport" mechanic is the worst, though. It ruins the entire experience for me. I just want to walk in a direction - easy with a game controller. But instead you have to aim, judge distance, and click. It's so weird and feels gross.
As others have said, true movement and turning is an option in a good number of games. Having tried it myself, I won't do it again. I had a headache that lasted several hours as a result. Honestly, I was surprised how much it affected me, given that I've never had any form of motion sickness before or since. My brain did not like the perception of movement disconnected from sensing that movement.
Now, when omnidirectional treadmills become a thing so I can literally walk / run places in games, I'm onboard.
I get terrible motion sickness so I opted for teleportation. I still get sick in a playthrough. The part where you free the vort in the square was the first time I started really feeling sick, but that's because you have to take an elevator.
After like 3 playthroughs I've gotten the teleporting movement down and it's pretty much second nature. Outside of the game I found myself holding out my hand and flicking to try to pick things up IRL
Alyx "smooth motion" is in settings - game settings, not Oculus or anything, and yes, you have to be careful. Sometimes I can barely maintain my footing if something happens too fast.
You can use a Oculus Account (not connected to facebook) and then use Virtual Desktop to stream the game from SteamVR over Wifi. If you have a Wifi 6 router it's the best PC VR experience you can have (wireless, no base stations, really high resolution, very low latency) and besides the Quest 2 and Virtual Desktop you are not giving any money to Meta. If you are worried about battery life, I already player with a battery bank in small backpack without any problems! Absolutely awesome.
I've ranted about this several time on hn but Alyx was a huge disappointment to me. I did it on an index. The fakeness and heavy hand holding of the combat pulled out any sense of immersion for me.
At typically more than 2x the cost. I've played Alyx on both, the Index is absolutely not a 2x better experience.
I'm no fan of their corporate parent either, but the value proposition on Quest 2 for general purpose PC VR gaming (especially prior to this price increase) was remarkable given size of subsidy Meta were prepared to make on price.
It's a bit baffling that the Index is still as expensive as it is, it's three years old and has never gone on sale even once nevermind had a permanent price cut. In a vacuum it's worth what people are willing to pay, but Valve are a software company selling hardware to promote their ecosystem, which they're ceding to the much more affordable Oculus ecosystem by keeping the premium price.
It's still a nice headset but it's showing it's age, the Quest 2 has higher resolution screens and the ability to stream PC VR wirelessly is a killer feature which the Index doesn't support.
To add to that: Even though the Pico brand is now owned by Bytedance (TikTok) I really enjoy their Pico Neo 3 (it's a hardware equivalent to the Quest 2, actually due to active cooling it has a bit more performance headroom).
The wireless streaming works great. There is no account setup whatsoever. Null, nada, nichts. You can just boot up the HMD and you're good to go.
I find it strange when people hail them as a more privacy-friendly alternative to Meta though.
Personally I think ByteDance (and TikTok in particular) is an even worse company than Facebook ever was. It's like they learned from Facebook and made it worse.
Presumably this would mean if you’re banned on Facebook, that wouldn’t lock you out of your device. That was one of the bigger sticking points at least.
Personally, I never want Meta to leverage my game usage on Facebook or any of their other platforms. I like Steam being an independent platform that has no motivation to share my information with socials - I really don't want random relatives asking me about my gaming habits.
The fact that it was made by Facebook was worrying - the fact that it required a Facebook account made it a non-starter.
For the same reason, while I do enjoy the occasional twitch stream - some of my favorite streamers have moved to FB... thus I have stopped watching them because I don't like making it easy for socials to track and broadcast my every waking moment.
My kid one time had some sort of name calling swearing match on the PS4 which was tied into my email and my credit card and all my games. I found out because all of a sudden I had a 30 day suspension on the account and could not play any of my downloaded games properly. Not a big fan of digital games and threat of being locked out temporarily or possible permanently for one wrong move.
Facebook/Meta has some really great advertising and branding, but there are now good alternatives out there too even if they aren't as well known. I have the HP Reverb 2 which is a pretty interesting device in its own right.
Which is to say, you can definitely still throw away your time and money on this fad without supporting Facebook/Meta :)
I'm shocked that there aren't more multiplayer VR experiences. Yes, sure, there's Pavlov and VR Chat. But unless you have a friend who's into VR Chat, it's remarkably difficult to find a game that can immerse two different people at the same time.
It felt a bit ironic that mini golf was one of the most fun multiplayer party games.
My wife was like "You should bring over your quest 2!" to our new house -- she already has an Index and some other high end headset. I asked "But why?" and we couldn't think of a good reason.
Maybe the epitome of VR is always going to be a bunch of friends sitting around watching one person play it, but it felt like there could be something more. Something like a Star Trek bridge experience or... something.
I play Walkabout Mini Golf weekly with a group of far-flung friends. The courses are interesting, the physics feel right, and the audio is good enough it feels like we're standing around a course having drinks and goofing off. It saved my pandemic, and has been a great way to keep in touch with folks on a regular basis.
I have a Vive and have played a decent number of hours in VR, and overall like it quite a lot. It's really amazing how readily our brain will "adopt" two floating hands as your own body. I'm bullish on the future of VR gaming.
But I do think there's a big hurdle, and that's our inner ear. Teleport-based controls are jank but it seems really difficult to prevent motion sickness when using any kind of movement that translates the camera in 3d space.
I tried to play Subnautica in VR, and literally only made it about 10 seconds before I had to pull the headset off and sit on the cool tile floor for a bit.
I figured - well, maybe I shouldn't be surprised a sea game gives me motion sickness. And it's not even built for VR anyway.
So I tried - I can't remember the name, but it's a game where you fly around building a base in space. Sounded like an awesome idea.
I forced myself to play for about 5-10 minutes despite feeling ill almost immediately, and regretted it immensely when I did finally bail out.
It seems like this happens to a decent number of people? And why teleport movement is so common?
FWIW I don't get particularly bad motion sickness in other, traditional settings. Being a passenger in a car on a windy road will definitely mess me up, but I don't get seasickness, for instance, and also don't mind roller coasters at all.
There are some techniques. Vignetting the borders of the screen when moving/turning seems to help for some people.
I've noticed newer games increasingly have free movement as an option, or no teleport at all, so I think for a lot of people it is possible to get used to it if you play enough. Some percentage will never get used to it though, which sucks.
The VR enthusiast/dev community has gotten caught in a death spiral when it comes to simulation sickness.. They encourage each other to "get your VR legs" and play/demand/make nausea-inducing games, and it just chases away all the normal human beings who don't want to spend months gently training their bodies to become immune to it
(FYI, the way it works is you play until you start to feel a hint of nausea, and stop for an hour or more. If you try to fight through it, you'll just condition yourself to feel sick when you even look at/think about a VR headset)
I wonder if becoming used to disagreement between the eye and inner ear in other situations transfers to easier adaptation to VR.
When I was little, I'd often attempt to read while in moving vehicles, which quickly and reliably brought on severe motion sickness. I can longer remember the last time that's happened. Cured by repeated exposure? Simply growing up? Maybe because of both at once, involving neuroplasticity somehow.
I've only experienced VR through brief tech demos, so I guess I'll get the datum when the time comes.
PS: A search for online anecdotes finds contradictory accounts from people reporting acquiring motion sickness in such situations as adults
For me it’s the opposite. When I was younger I had no problems reading in a moving vehicle. I can no longer do that without getting motion sick. Not sure what changed.
Anecdotally it feels potentially related to caffeine intake or something else during the day. Because I noticed it tends to be fine in the morning and a problem in the afternoon. Or maybe it’s related to spending 8 hours a day staring at a screen for work.
I got this feeling my parents were bad drivers and did not let go off the gas in cornering. Me and my brother felt ill on all trips. But we both feel fine traveling by car today. Dunno why really, though.
I fought through boneworks, which is stick based movement and heavy physics climbing and falling and, worst of all, jumping. I got sick a bunch. I did get over it. But by the time I did it was just more and more apparent that it was a screen in front of my face. You can't both feel like you're there and have no nausea while jumping on a button press.
Most VR devs are making games that they want to play themselves, or for their community. So it's not surprising that they don't want to compromise. Teleport works on some games but can utterly ruin others and there isn't a good solution to that.
Then again I've never got sick. If I got nausea when playing I doubt I would have bothered to invest time getting used to it - VR is good but not that good!
It's not like VR isn't actually awesome once you get everything to work reasonably well. I can't just "go outside" and storm the beach of Normandy, or "go outside" and throw fireball/duel with swords in medieval settings. The appeal of VR is that it's something else entirely, it's not a video game replacement, I can't play Pavlov for more than 1-2 hours but when I do play it, after a while I forget that I'm in a game. I am under MG40 fire with my squad in Normandy and I hear the bullets fly right next to me I get the rush that I only get in paintball.
And I say all of that as someone who used their Quest 2 for about 45 minutes the day they received it and spent the next 24 hours feeling dizzy.
(Don't mean to pile-on so sorry if it comes off that way, text is hard.) I use VR in very different way. I either use it to socialize when I'm too pooped to leave the house or to do things I just couldn't do outside. Nothing can replace an epic bikepacking trip or a scenic hike for me. Outside and VR are both different ways for me to enjoy my time.
FWIW once I stopped riding around in cars much I started getting a ton of nausea riding in a passenger seat of the car, but I put up with it because society has a lot of car travel. VR also took a bit, but I like what I get out of it.
From what I know, inner ear stimulation (to manipulate perception of balance) is non-invasive, relatively simple, and well understood. But I haven't seen anyone try combining it with VR yet.
Same here, I can definitely handle games in which objects move towards you like Beat Saber or Thrill of Fight.
However, if I am moving through environment, I end up becoming motion sick very quickly. In some games like The Climb, I am actually okay with it. Because anytime I fall and forget to close my eyes, I will end up becoming motion sick. It sort of make me try harder to not make a mistake.
On other hand, I am tired of games that are rated comfortable but have too much motion. Like Until You Fall, love it but cannot play for too long no matter what settings I use.
Also another issue is far too many VR videos have camera pans, zooms, and other motions that make me sick. I have stopped watching VR videos because of this. Videos should have comfort ratings too.
Really wonder if people who get motion sick is minority or people who are making VR experiences are minority but they somehow don't experience any motion sickness. Hence, they are into VR.
I'm not sure if this is what you were getting at with your last paragraph or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if people who get motion sickness from VR are less likely to want to be VR devs. And that would likely influence the type of content being made.
That's my case at least. I was so thrilled that VR was finally becoming somewhat practical now and I wanted to get into VR dev. I got an Oculus Go when they came out as a cheap test, and discovered that I get sick when my viewpoint moves in VR. That pretty much killed my desire to invest more time or money into VR development.
You can develop a bit of a tolerance to it over time.
Personally, I used to get instantly motion sick and now I can stomach games where I walk around freely, at least for half a hour or so. Actual flying or swimming wont ever be in the cards though, I fear.
So yeah, if you develop a game, you absolute need to offer teleport style controls or some people will not be able to play it. I guess this is also a hurdle with just adopting existing games/genre to VR as they often rely on fast dynamic movement which would make people puke in VR.
My experience is the same. I thought it would be no problem considering my extensive history with FPS gaming, but my early attempts at joystick navigation within VR were pretty stomach-churning. I'm hoping I can grow accustomed to it, but I doubt we could ever ask this of the more casual crowd. The masses will need to be fed simpler VR-centric games rather than the many hoped-for FPS conversions and sequels.
> So I tried - I can't remember the name, but it's a game where you fly around building a base in space. Sounded like an awesome idea.
Probably Space Engineers.
> I forced myself to play for about 5-10 minutes despite feeling ill almost immediately, and regretted it immensely when I did finally bail out.
I don't think that that is uncommon. I recently experienced a bit of that while playing Mechwarrior 5 without VR and not being too mindful of torso / walk centering while in first person and it got to me after a few missions.
The combination of a first person view without having the corresponding actual motion is what got to me.
Subnautica is beautiful and immersive... and it's also a game that (in non-VR mode) makes my SO sick in mere moments. Maneuvering in 2D space using WASD is definitely a learned skill that many millennials take to easily after growing up on GoldenEye and the like - maneuvering in 3D space is a whole different ball game and feels intensely unnatural. As another good example Space Engineers and Hardspace: Shipbreaker are quite fun games but can really quickly disorientate me - in the later the stage is small enough that I can usually use landmarking to reorient myself - in the former it's just chaos whenever you're exploring low gravity.
There's a few tricks that VR games can do to handle motion sickness with free movement. Some have already mentioned the edge of screen effects, but another would be tying movement to the "running" arm movements. That, for some odd reason, significantly reduces motion sickness.
Was the space game Adr1ft? One of my favorite VR experiences, and the only one where I was willing to take motion sickness medication to finish the game.
For the good of humanity, I plead with Meta, Valve, Neuralink and whoever it was that just beat Neualink, to join forces to defeat the scourge of mankind - motion sickness!
Spending hours in Echo VR[1] playing Zero-G Frisbee was partly what got me through the pandemic. My friends and sister would hang out in the lobby and just talk while throwing the frisbee around, or play competitive games together, and it felt like really radical and transformational gaming experience. I can't recommend it enough. It's even free-to-play.
> I'm shocked that there aren't more multiplayer VR experiences.
Interesting, I had the opposite experience. While browsing the Quest's store I kept feeling railroaded into multiplayer experiences. Huh.
One huge issue, however, is with local "multiplayer". If you've ever tried to observe someone playing Beat Saber on the Quest 2 you'll know what kind of letdown it is: the video stream is delayed, which completely destroys the ability to enjoy watching someone else play. It's impossible to get "pumped up" when someone is doing well. They reaaaally need to release some sort of dongle set to get low-latency observer streaming to the TV.
Additionally, watching someone else's VR POV on a standard flat TV can be pretty nauseating. It would be great if there was also a way to add motion stability to the TV feed.
That one "Keep talking and nobody explodes" game was pretty fun just as a regular planar projection game. I can see it being more fun in VR (and I think they have a VR edition)
Tangentially, there's Acron [1], which is an interesting mixed-mode multiplayer game, where the one VR player is the defender, and iOS/Android players are the attackers trying to steal from the defender.
It's a pretty fun party game, (though beginners get confused easily). I hope the concept gets expanded.
If you have any interest in flight simulators, VTOL VR is a fantastic multiplayer VR flight sim with large multiplayer lobbies. It strikes a good balance between arcade and realism too and is incredibly immersive. Unfortunately (maybe not?) its on steam VR so you will need a PC to handle the rendering but can stream it to a quest using link
May I humbly recommend Phasmophobia - I haven't played it in VR (I don't have the gear) but it's primarily built for that setup, and even played without it is extremely compelling.
Gorilla tag is a great game, has over a million players. Movement is entirely by moving your arms and is really intuitive + immersive. Lots of games and many concurrent users
there’s a decent amount if you’re into sim-type games. vtol vr looks awesome, elite dangerous can get you that star trek-like experience, plus various racing games.
I assume that Meta is done subsidizing the sales of the Quest. They have likely sold about 10 million units at a loss. I wonder if they have decided that the Quest is not yet the feature complete product that will run whatever they want the metaverse to be. Quest was basically an experiment and it seems they have learned what they need to.
Their next headset, the Quest Pro, will have eye and face tracking cameras with the specific purpose to drive social avatars and make VR social more natural. Meta’s interest was always social and while the Quest might be great for gaming, that is not the addressable market they are going for.
And yeah, I realize that most people here are going to be a hard no on Meta owning their face data, but strategically this is what they are going for.
Alternatively, they are projecting reduction in advertising revenue due to recession and feel they cant take the hit the same way anymore but would have continued if everything else remained the same.
We bought one in the pandemic frenzy and played with it a ton. Family of four and we all found something fun. We fought over turns playing it for a few months, but now it spends most of its time on the cradle. It's still mostly a gimmick with barely a handful of interesting experiences. The Quest 2 is inexpensive, self-contained, has decent power and battery life with good hand tracking. There's not a lot of major technical barriers left to overcome. There just aren't enough clever ideas to make it worth strapping to my head.
It's a strange move given Facebook changed their name to promote VR and the Quest is their flagship device. Also surprised that after mass producing this device for almost 2 years their manufacturing and supply chain costs aren't dialed in enough to maintain the current price. The message here is that VR is 'failing'. I hope it's not, but that's the message with this backwards move.
I suspect the quest 3 is more expensive to produce than the 2 so they’re raising prices now so that they can price the 3 the same as the 2 on launch. They may also want people to wait for the 3 because they feel it’ll do a better job of showcasing vr potential.
I think not really. Quest 2 is not feature complete because it lacks core social features like color passthrough cameras, eye tracking and facial expression tracking. I’m guessing Meta thinks those features are so critical to their Metaverse experience that they are willing to forgo sales in the short term.
I just read a thread from 2021 on reddit yesterday where an Oculus employee said that they wouldn't be adding color passthrough cameras, and that the current cameras worked on ir and likely would for a while. I'll see if I can dig it up, but it seems like color passthrough isn't going to be on the menu for the 3.
I think that color passthrough is confirmed on the Quest Pro. Your linked comment from Reddit seems to be raising the issue that the cameras will be fixed focus and will still be a second rate AR experience. I don’t know what is planned for the Quest 3 as that is still at least a year out.
"Current price" Seemed to be purely invented to move units. The hardware margins had to be very large negative numbers. They were losing $2.5B/Quarter for the last two years. To put it in context, the specs of a base Quest 2 are actually somewhat similar to Microsoft's $1000 Surface Pro X or a Galaxy S20 but adding the motion controllers and the specific ground-up custom OS.
To be fair, this isn't like Amazon's "fire OS" where they just added a launcher app and randomly broke some APIs on accident. It's a pretty substantial addition to/departure from stock Android
Sorry yeah absolutely, I intended to frame it as they have effectively thrown out pretty much all of the Android UI/UX along with building an app store from scratch.
They were taking massive losses on Quest 2. So this is a sign that the VR division is needing to tighten some belts on the losses, or that manufacturers have raised prices that this is required for them to maintain same Loss ratios and there wasn't stomach to take even further hits.
Given the stated focus of the company (to the point of renaming to highlight VR focus) I would imagine it's the supply side of the equation.
Also another callout is that I believe Quest 2's have been getting passive upgrades, with newer models having more base storage and other small enhancements.
Another callout is that its common wisdom that advertising is first to be cut during recession, so this might be pre-emptive belt tightening sense their projections show its not palatable anymore to take the same level of loss.
I can’t shake the feeling this is more the canary in the coal mine that by this time next year you’ll be paying more for PS5, Xbox, Switch iPhones etc even if the tech inside is exactly what’s on sale today.
new games are starting to retail at $70 usd compared to $60 previously... that was the canary and this is the lightheaded feeling of carbon monoxide poisoning
To be fair, games have cost that much since like 2008. Inflation in most developed countries has been much higher 16 % ofter that decade and a half. In the US the CPI has risen by 36 % over that period, so the real price of games is still lower than it was.
It doesn't mean VR is failing. It's because the entire global economy is in a massive downturn hurting profits of all companies and Meta decided they should not subsidize the headset cost anymore.
People keep saying this but i really don't see it: we have only one quarter of reduced GDP growth, unemployment is near record lows, corporate profits are strong or merely stung by supply chain issues.
Where is this giant recession?
Equity prices are not representative of economic performance, and needed to be corrected anyway...
We don’t know how much their BOM increased. They likely were either losing money or not much margin, and with the market going downward they probably couldn’t afford to offset it as much anymore.
All consoles (ok maybe not old Nintendo handhelds) are sold at a loss in order to create the platform and the console maker makes the revenue on licensing fees on software and accessories.
FB shouldn't have to raise the price if they're making money selling games for the Quest. I guess they're not selling games.
> Also surprised that after mass producing this device for almost 2 years their manufacturing and supply chain costs aren't dialed in enough to maintain the current price.
Given the across-the-board inflation and supply chain havoc why would you expect this?
Am I the only one who struggles to take the name 'Meta' seriously, and still calls Zuckerberg's empire Facebook? Its a name that straddles pretentiousness and inanity ('That is sooo meta.') too acutely, and I resent them adopting a name of a broader movement of engineering for themselves. Or rather stealing it from https://meta.is/ .
That has pretty much been the consensus opinion since the name change, so no, you are not the only one.
The only people who I see consistently calling Zuckerberg's empire "Meta" are financial types that care about name of the company granting shares and on the stock ticker, and reporters who have to do copy editing.
Slightly tangential, but I still see news headlines use "Facebook" where it technically should be "Meta". I assume this is because only techies know what Meta is; everybody knows what Facebook is.
You’re not the only one although I think it’s cool (albeit contrary to personal preferences) to see comments on this thread from people who have positive VR experiences
"VR will have become mainstream when someone posts a VR-related link to HN and the resultant discussion is about the article itself rather than VR in general"
VR will never become mainstream. I’ve been working in VR since 2015 and I don’t use it daily. I don’t know a single person who uses it daily.
Maybe if you’re mildly autistic or remarkably introspective it works for you. For most people it’s a fundamentally alienating experience, like taking LSD but with none of the joy.
VR is fundamentally an industrial technology, good for training and other purposes. For entertainment or home use it’s purposeless. Ask anyone (non techy) who has one. They don’t use it.
The focus on VR is how I know Zuckerberg has no idea what he’s doing. VR is never going to work, not in its current incarnation. It just demonstrated that he has no idea how normal people work, and that he’s decided (for some reason) to completely ignore whatever data they have, which would show him that people just don’t use it.
I know a bunch of people who use it daily. They are all using Immersed[0] for work (disclosure, I'm an investor, but I invested because of the love their early customers had for the platform). Basically, you get a bunch of virtual monitors in VR.
It's way cheaper and much more portable than dragging five massive screens around, and the isolation is the point -- you can focus better when you have the headset on and headphones in.
But you're right, that is a niche, and not the social product Meta is hoping for.
to someone who is prone to headaches with poor eyesight and long eyelashes (smudges the lenses), the idea of working in VR all day is at best delusional and at worst discriminatory
I once took our team from work to a VR center, as none had tried VR before. Circumstances were top notch: Valve, super high-end PC, large rooms, wide selection of games, all possible accessories.
We all had fun and that's it. Nobody ever talked about it again nor did anybody purchase a VR device themselves. It was more like a one-time ride in a theme park. Mind you, these are tech people with a good income. If here the hit rate was zero, that's quite telling.
I think VR will at one point have a true mass appeal, and when it does, it will change everything. Personally, I hope that moment is far away. This "let's add even more options to never leave the house" trend is backfiring.
> This "let's add even more options to never leave the house" trend is backfiring.
People who don't want to leave the house already have plenty of options.
People that love the outdoors or being sociable probably aren't going to swayed either.
I don't think VR will change much in either direction for most people. Personally I like a mix of things. I value staying indoors and experiencing media that is rewarding. I like getting out in nature when the climate permits. And I'm not a total hermit. I don't think VR change things for me or others. Digital crack already exists.
I was pretty skeptical but for a few months I use VR every day for a quick midday workout to wake me up (thrill of the fight and pistol whip). Can't believe how much it can get your heart rate up with just head and hands monitored. I definitely think if they start monitoring your feet it'll be used for a lot of exercise
I have one and use it probably a few times a week. It's become a necessity for flight sims for me, I no longer play them outside VR.
Flight sims aren't terribly mainstream, sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's enough of a crowd between flight and racing sims who are willing to spend small fortunes on peripherals to keep VR going at some scale.
For gaming generally, there's a lot of friction that'll have to be removed before mainstream success is a possibility, I think--reducing the weight of headsets, reducing the cost, solving motion sickness, improving the game selection, improving situational awareness with the real world, reducing the setup effort, etc.
A lot of current games aren't worth the effort of dealing with all that, at least not once the novelty of VR wears off.
Of course there is. My point is Meta’s investment is currently being justified by home usage, and I will make a decent sized bet there will never be mass adoption of VR for home use in its current form.
Having worked in VR since 2015, I don’t know of a single person who uses it for their entertainment, period. Some folks here in the comments saying they use it for flight or racing sims, in which case Meta is sinking billions into an expensive peripheral for sim players, similar to a flight joystick.
I think you're overstating things but I agree to some extent. It's a niche product but there's more niches than just "industrial". There's still a lot of interest from the arts and creative sectors for example.
I agree. The only true sustained usage I’ve seen it is industrial training which is why I mentioned it. But yes there are other uses for it.
It’s mind boggling to me why or how Zuckerberg decided to invest so much on it. I wonder if it’s just a screen for the stock price not to collapse as he loses DAUs, and certainly young people, to TikTok and other apps. Because otherwise it doesn’t make a lick of sense to me.
I'm torn between "thanks for investing billions in a medium I love" vs "I hope the whole field doesn't get dragged when disillusionment sets in among Meta stock holders"
Meta wouldn’t have to spend billions jump starting something if it was a commercial success. No commercial success in history needed tens of billions for commercial success. It either sells or it doesn’t.
You obviously mean "there's no field fulfilling criteria X that I haven't spelled out".
VR predates Meta's acquisition and took far less than "tens of billions" to get to commercial readiness. Several small-ish companies have got products to market. Heck, even Google's half-hearted attempts resulted in a fairly decent 6DOF headset.
I’ll clarify - there is no mass consumer field for VR that will enable adoption or a market in the size of home consoles, laptops or televisions.
VR in its currently incarnation will not make a system that will sell 100 million units, which is the regular size market of the leading home console in a generation (both switch and PS4 sold this much).
people almost certainly said this exact thing about computers and the internet. that does not necessarily mean that VR will go the way they did, but it does show that just because it seems this way now does not mean it will be this way forever.
facebook and Zuckerberg may be unethical monopolistic robber barons, but unlike some of the other big players in the industry, they're not incompetent, and they never have been
I would guess that they believe the VR industry is awaiting a critical mass of adoption where, like computers, then the internet, then social media, it will suddenly go from being a techy niche to a viable alternative platform for society. presumably they're gambling that the negative anecdata you're reporting will reduce as the UX improves, and I personally think they're probably right
Thanks for the seemingly well informed opinion. I, too, would like to see VR labeled more as a “tool” rather than “the future(!) of {education|recreation|work|etc}”
I've been big on VR since the Oculus kickstarter days, and I have to admit that I don't play it every day.. but that's just because there aren't any polished high-end multiplayer games for it yet*. All my friends are on WoW, Fortnite, and League of Legends, and old pancake games with friends are more fun than VR indie games with randos
You should check out Half Life: Alyx to get a glimpse of what VR could be someday. It's a super-polished, super-fun game, and even just standing around in it doing nothing is mindblowing compared to any non-VR game
* There are some good multiplayer action games, but so far as I know they all require you to "get your VR legs" which is a non-starter for me
I appreciate the suggestion, had never heard of Alyx before seeing this thread. I’m admittedly quite reticent to use VR in my personal time but mostly because I don’t play many video games (and have never “happened upon” any VR exposure thus far) - small amounts of time gaming is often something on the N64. The technology is immensely impressive, though, and hope the games gain polish over time!
I feel like an old grumpy man saying this, but I hate the idea of wearing a device on my face to literally hijack one of the precious senses one has. I'm sure over time I'll look back and laugh at myself for thinking that way.
I've been railing against VR for years, because I'm really picky about video games, but I was converted. It's really worth a try. It's not a replacement for current video games, nor do I see myself wearing one for hours at a time to hang out in some corporate dystopia (which seems to be what Meta wants), but there are some really cool and unique experiences. I think VR game design is still pretty immature, but in a way I find that refreshing. most of these games are simple enough that any casual player can pick them up, which hasn't really been the case since the Wii came out ages ago.
And you don't hijack your other senses? Listening to music, smelling perfumes, etc. are all kind of doing that. Obviously this is a novel and heavyweight way of messing with your vision and proprioception, but I'm sure you've watched a movie before.
Besides, it's really tiring after just a couple hours, I don't think there's any risk of getting "stuck in VR".
I'm not sure you'll laugh at yourself, so much as new information on what is possible might change your mind.
The hijacking of senses was a major concern for the Apple design group at the earliest stages of their headset design.
Reporting from The Information goes into some depth on Apple's headset external screen display (to show the current expression of the wearer) and what sounds like a uniquely high quality pass through of the environment so you can see and interact with people in the room.
It apparently also deals with occlusion problems that are unsolved in the pass-through experiences of in-market headsets.
It sounds all quite magic, and apparently the work is going in to create that sense. TI's reporting says accomplishing these goals is why the device has fallen behind.
The next version of Quest 2 will probably have color passthrough video and be much less uncomfortable and heavy.
Right now I can only tolerate it to enable playing table tennis but it is too uncomfortable for working.
Next Quest might change that.
The direction they are going in the next five years or so is truly comfortable goggles or even normal glasses that do augmented reality with high field of view.
So it will not restrict your vision of the normal world any more than you request.
There are also improvements coming in terms of eye tracking and realistic avatars as well as better room scanning and pose detection. This will mean that quite realistic virtual places start to become comfortable and easy to access.
Try to imagine that instead of going to a physical coffeeshop, workplace or friend's home, you will have the option of just putting on the glasses and get a representation that truly is close to the real thing. Eye contact and facial expression tracking and projection will be a big part of it.
You could even map this virtual coffee shop or what to a specific room in your house, or just one wall.
Or don't have a virtual place at all and just have a giant virtual monitor. Or four of them. Put it on a wall so it does not restrict your view of anything.
I'm interested to see what the lens advancements are going to look like. A good chunk of the weight/bulk comes from the current lens setup, so if the new ones reduce bulk and weight, that would make life a lot better.
Eh, I can take it off, so the idea does not bother me. But that first time I put a Quest 2 on my head (was the first VR headset I've ever even tried), I was giggling just for the demos alone. It's marvelous, even with the awful resolution. There is clearly so much potential there. More resolution, less mass, I look forward to it.
Every time I start to think, "hm, maybe I'll get one of the cheaper VR sets, even if the games suck it's probably pretty awesome for porn" I recall the guy with the VR headset in the music video for Do the Evolution (Pearl Jam) and then don't.
I'm already grossed-out enough when I happen to catch a glimpse of myself using a normal computer (faces of people immersed in a computer screen look a bit disturbing, kinda slack and dead, and it's much worse when the face is your own)
I'm with you, it's too weird for now. I'll probably give in when they've got AR/VR combo glasses that you can toggle from one to the other, which I assume is the endgame for all this. By then I'll probably need it to talk to my grandkids or whatever anyway. The march of "progress".
"So, to look left, you grab this thing, move your hand left. To look up you move it forward! It's not 3d, but don't worry, you'll get used to figuring out how far away things are eventually."
I do, but I'm not entirely deaf when I wear them. I can hear my surroundings easily if I wanted to. Is there a mode in those VR headsets where one can see what's in front of them without taking them off? I'm ignorant about the tech of VR.
> where one can see what's in front of them without taking them off
For quest, you double tap anywhere on the headset (it detects the physical tap) to enable passthrough mode. The game goes away, but you can see. Some games let you see through, but that's limited to games where having something float in front of you in your real room makes sense, rather than being somewhere else.
It's called passthrough-AR, it's a feature on some VR devices, current limitations are that its sometimes monoscopic not stereoscopic or has fucky depth perception (and some devices have black and white passthrough), but as technology advances there is no reason all VR devices won't have near full fidelity passthrough. AR and VR devices eventually merge and become one device.
Also, there's a lot of innovation happening in display tech for AR too which will be even better, since you'll just see the real world more or less directly.
Quest has black and white passthrough. Next-gen's model (Project Cambria) has full color pass-through cameras that supposedly feel realistic enough. Current passthrough is good enough that I can walk through my house headset-on.
Someone correct me if I'm misremembering, but with my nephews Quest it shows you your surroundings and has you draw a perimeter to designate a safe play space, and if you step out of it you see your surroundings.
Not just one. Typically, today's VR systems substitute inputs for both vision and hearing, which is enough to disconnect most people from what is going on around them. Headphones by themselves or looking at a screen that you can easily look away from aren't remotely the same.
Lots of commenters here saying they're surprised by this move, but isn't the Quest 2 a loss leader for Meta? If I had to guess this move is probably to reduce the loss they're taking on each unit sold. The reason they're doing it now is probably because of the digital ad slow down and investor fears around Meta's metaverse cashburn.
It has to be. When I ordered a few months ago the device arrived the next day. I couldn't believe it.
Even though the hardware is somewhat aged and the platform still has bugs the overall quality, delivery and onboarding experience was good. The accessories to flesh out the kit were also inexpensive. The whole thing feels underpriced, however average people are definitely not ready to put on a headset.
This is MUCH different from the flip-phone to smartphone transition. Pricing has to be low because there's major adoption friction to overcome.
I've said it before, but I loathe facebook and can not support Meta or its aims until it splits off a company that can not and will not use data built from Facebook / Instagram or any other entity connected to FB.
The only thing that gave me solace in adding data to my shadow profile was that I knew the purchase was costing them much more than was sustainable.
Is VR broken out on the Meta balance sheets in a way that we can track profit/loss/expenditures that are associated to VR specifically? Anyone at Meta with a vague idea of how much of the company is working on VR specifically?
It seems odd, like the "vision" is "VR Everything", but the reality is more "We bought Quest and don't know what else to do". Does anyone have any insight on how it feels inside the org?
Yes, Meta reports the AR/VR unit separately as Reality Labs. It lost $3 billion in Q1 this year, and about $10 billion in 2021.
The number of employees working in this pillar exceeds 10,000, I believe. For the past years Meta has been building the entire stack: chips, novel controllers like wrist neural interaction, a new operating system... But the ambition level has been somewhat reduced recently. The new OS project (XROS) was scrapped last winter, for example.
It's definitely a passion project on Zuckerberg's part. Were he not CEO and controlling shareholder, it's definitely the kind of thing that a new CEO would cut. (Just like Blue Origin is a Bezos-personal-investment thing, not an Amazon thing.)
That's a significant increase. Can any game historians here tell us if a price hike this large has ever happened before? It's not a good look for something that seemed to be gaining a lot of traction.
Previous console makers haven't done this. If they ever did increase prices for a console it would be wrapped up in some incremental improvement of the hardware.
I don't recall ever seeing a price increase on the same hardware.
It seems to be a very popular product that they were selling at a loss. I think I'd still get one for $400, it is much more useful and fun than most much more expensive AR/VR products right now
Yeah, it's not a super steep discount; I wound up getting $235 for it. Sales tax would've been about another $30 here so it was about $100 off sticker price with probably 10 hours of play.
I believe the main issue is content. Not only us it more difficult to create content for VR, it's at least twice as expensive. VR will IMHO have the same fate as 3D TV"s had. Fancy and interesting in the beginning, but too much of a hassle on the long run.
VR isn't a small improvement on something you already have. It's a whole new thing. I, for one, expect it to be as revolutionary as the WWW - which also lacked for content in the early days.
I agree that content creation is difficult and there is a lack of longer experiences, but OTOH people are willing to pay more per hour of content for these experiences - comparable to movies - and there are also plenty of multiplayer/roguelike games for those who want more hours per dollar.
The proof is in the pudding - the Quest has sold a lot and there are many games in the store already.
Well that's one way to kill platform adoption momentum.
My biggest problem with VR is I've never been able to use it. I've been to One Microsoft store about 3 years ago that had some VR setup, but they refused to let me try it out.
I don't understand why Meta doesn't have these to try out in stores. I'm not gonna buy something I can't see, touch, and try first.
I'm wondering how much of this is inflation vs. supply chain constraints. I can't think of the last time I saw an electronics product like this with a substantial price increase so long after it has been released. The only comparable examples all involves supply crunches.
Worth noting that this really only equates to a $50 increase on the base model compared to release since it was originally released as a 64GB set and now only 128GB is sold.
When Quest 2 came out in September 2020, 64GB was $299 and 256GB was $399.
A year ago the Quest 2 was recalled for a minor issue with the foam inserts. Oculus used the temporary discontinuation to replace the 64GB with a 128GB model for the same $299 price when sales began again in August.
Not surprising unfortunately. When it first came out with its lower price I was pretty sure they were taking some losses in order to lower the barrier of entry to VR. VR has become way more established in the last few years, to the point that having a headset is no longer a conversation piece, so they can raise the entry barrier a little bit now that a lot of people already got through.
As someone who owns a Quest 2 yet never actually bought a Quest 2 game (I use it for PCVR with AirLink) I think this makes sense. While I don't have numbers, a Quest 2 is roughly equivalent to a very expensive phone (beefy CPU + lots of RAM + high-res screen) that comes with two controllers. Even at 400USD they are probably still far from breaking even.
I use it daily for fitness. I really love it, it's changed my life, and the exercise I get from it really makes me feel good, particularly someone that spends most of my weeks inside and working at a computer.
I've not enjoyed any other form of exercise but I really love this when combined with some of the fitness options such as FitXR.
It's a real shame this has gone up so much, wow it's a large increase, not even a small one, however this was the price of the Quest 1, the Quest 2 featured a price drop due to some cutbacks they made with the hardware, but it's still disappointing to see them do this, particularly with it being such a large raise in price.
I'm hoping my headset holds out until the Q3 or perhaps other options start coming on the market, perhaps from Apple. I don't care about VR gaming without a fitness element at the moment, as the games are a bit boring / not so fun for me, but for fitness it has been great.
I view the Oculus Quest in the same category as 3D TV right now. Yes, it's REALLY COOL. But 3D TV was also really cool, especially watching Pixar movies which I did all the time when I had one. It has potential, but it's just not there beyond some initial great stuff.
I think you're making a bit of a WiiU-to-Switch comparison here. 3D TV's limitations were overtly prohibitive: not only were the units much more expensive than standard TVs, but they also required additional hardware/headsets. Then there's the problem with resolution and color accuracy, display shimmering, bad viewing angles... 3D TV was never meant to be anything besides a slick demo at your local Best Buy.
VR I'm skeptical of, but most of the sticking points I can imagine have been fixed. For $400 you can get a fully-featured plug-and-play headset. That's less than most iPads! That headset will have controllers, inside-out tracking, 6DOF, video passthrough, wireless/standalone capabilities... Meta/Facebook certainly isn't a saint, but the Quest is amazing from a hardware standpoint. Even with the new price bump, these devices still feel oddly undervalued. I bought my Quest 1 a few years ago for the same price, and don't regret it at all.
I do the Thai Chi lessons everyday. I find the ping pong game is a great way to unwind, a 5 minute game is enough. I enjoyed the Star Wars Vader Immortal series. I use my quest for about 1 hour a week, so I am not a heavy user - but I do enjoy it. BTW, I worked in the VR field about 25 years ago for SAIC and Disney.
I too enjoy the VR experience, and to me, it scratches a similar itch as going to a high-end arcade and playing Mechwarrior. Fun to do occasionally, but not how I spend a majority of my entertainment hours.
> BTW, I worked in the VR field about 25 years ago for SAIC and Disney.
Nice. I remember my first VR experience was about 30 years ago at the local kids science center.
Everyone in my family has a quest 2 - we go VR mini golfing and VR fishing together all the time. It is a great way to keep connected with friends and family that live far away.
I like Beat Saber (play daily), Walkabout Golf (feels like minigolf, can play with friends anywhere in the world) and Resident Evil 4 (a classic game excellently ported into immersive VR).
Also the price. Before the Quest I'd have needed to buy a gaming PC and expensive headset like the Vive or Index. And it's wireless and doesn't need any sensor units placed around you. The tracking works great and it tells you when you're about to leave a safe area. It can even do hand tracking so you don't need controllers.
I think it's a great port. Even if you've played the original, playing it in first person with real aiming/reloading is a very different experience. It's also one of the few full-length (20+ hour) single-player titles on the Oculus store.
Too bad, I wish more people have the opportunity to play a game changing experience like Half-life Alyx. If I have to describe it, it's like playing Mario 64 for the first time back in the day.
As someone who thought Alyx was really underwhelming, what makes you say that? The only thing I thought Alyx did well was the pick up system and the healing station. The healing had a cool physicality to it. But there was basically nothing else in the game that achieved that. Alyx would have been just as good on the wii imo.
Is "VR" and "metaverse" synonomous by your definition?
I've always been cold on the metaverse hype whilst at the same time remaining a big fan of VR.
However, I don't think VR is about to become mass market in the way some people hype it - and I don't think it needs to. It can remain a healthy niche and things would probably work out better that way.
I assume this is to cover any losses from them soon making it possible to use the Quest without a Facebook account? ie: The data they will not be able to sell.
They’re losing 3 billion a quarter on their vr business. Earnings this week, I suspect that number will be even higher. They’re doing the Uber strategy right now, pay customers to use your product hoping to lock them in.
is this a direct response to the Digital Markets Act? they're gonna be legally required to open up the devices in a year or two, so that's future potential tracking/ad revenue down by a double digit %, which was subsidising the cost of the devices in the first place
There's honestly just hardly even any games on it at all. And all of the games are really expensive. I like how on the Nintendo Switch there are big budget games but also thousands of games for like $2
"Hardly any games" seems like an exaggeration. Are you including AppLab and SideQuest or just counting the main store? Even so...
Also bear in mind that Meta have been extremely aggressive in restricting access to the main store. Unless you're a big name dev, can show strong sales on other VR platforms or you have good contacts with someone inside Meta then it's very hard to get in.
I've never heard of AppLab or SideQuest and didn't know there was any way to get games/software on the quest other than the main store, so I'll have to check it out thanks!
I don’t understand.. I thought Silicone Valley’s playbook was to give everything away for free until you people are hooked up or you drive everyone else out of the market, and then raise the prices as much as you want given you are a monopoly.
How is this going to help them capture the market?
The runtime performance is garbage with frequent hitches in frame rate. The in-game resolution is poor with many games having extremely low texture quality and "jaggies" which could be solved with some sort of anti-aliasing.
There are also barely any games worth to play in VR, the ecosystem just isn't there yet to warrant a VR purchase, especially at this price.
VR experience is greatly improved if you can render it on your PC and stream it to a VR headset so you can get consistent frame rate and 120hz.
I play beat saber which the quest 2 cannot reliably render without performance drops. You can fix this if you render it on a PC though.
Now that the market rate went up, I will probably sell it to a pay pig. My graphics card is still up 200% over what I paid for it 4 years ago.
EDIT: You need to place the headset in some faraday box, as it will still stay on even when turned off sometimes. It maps your entire house to know exactly where the safe play zones are. It's incredibly creepy, but also convenient, since you don't need to redraw the play area.
I have a Quest 2 and I've not noticed framerate hitches with Beat Saber.
But I do a fair bit of wireless streaming off of PC (but not Beat Saber), and one of the things that surprises me is that it seems like battery life is worse when streaming from PC than when the Quest 2 is doing its own rendering. In any case the battery life does leave a bit to be desired. I expect the Quest 3 to be not much faster, but to have a significantly more efficient processor so it lasts more than an hour or two.
My final note is that if you're going to stream wireless is the way to go. I was worried it would have noticeable latency or hitching but the experience has been basically perfect. You do need a fast modern 5Ghz WiFi router and the PC on Ethernet however. Dealing with cables that have fragile USB connectors on the end while you are blindly swinging your arms around is not worth it.
Eh, I still use a Rift I bought off a friend, which requires a USB3 and HDMI for itself plus 3x USB3 for the base stations. While this is a tragically more complicated setup than I'd like, and getting all three base stations to behave was painful, I can't say that the cables themselves have really given me any trouble.
