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.
What is your setup? Is this for a virtual desktop or are you gaming?
The only reason I keep a Windows partition around is to boot into VR, and I would love to nuke it forever. But I just haven't been able to get happy with VR on Linux yet.
PSVR, not high enough resolution for a virtual desktop, but the headset is comfy enough to burn many hours of the day in flight sim (X-Plane) and watching movies, little escapes that keep me mostly sane.
I was only griping the other week that its a disaster that PSVR is still the best value headset for linux (you can pick them up for like $100, none of the current alternatives are worth spending more on) with no upgrade path, PSVR2 hopes were dashed, this apple headset looks like I'll be moving most VR stuff to mac, I'm already on a macbook air for mobile, not touched windows for like a decade.
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.
I still occasionally come back to Pavlov for some good old Search & Destory gameplay. It is like childhood nostalgia but relive in an unimaginable way.
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
There have been some really good experiments in room scale VR, both with actual basketball court sized play spaces and with smaller play spaces that used tricks like redirected walking. Honestly it’s mostly uncomfortable and tiring to walk around. They joystick works better once you get used to the motion.
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.
One of the interesting questions for me is whether VR will get other platforms to take this use case more seriously. I have a Switch and regularly play Fitness Boxing. It's great in that I'm much more likely to stick with the workout versus just doing calisthenics on my own. But the fitness catalog is limited. I'd love for the next generation of the Switch to include better motion control so that movement games can be richer.
Good news: nearly every VR game on the Quest (that isn’t 3rd person) is a fitness app even though it’s unintentional. There is a ton of variety. Feel like boxing one day, slashing ninjas the next, rowing a boat, riding a bike, slashing boxes with lightsabers, dodging bullets like neo; all of that is possible and the variety is nice even with the small market VR has now. (I believe that will be the same with Apple Vision)
I think the quest 2’s price point is back to being close to the Nintendo switch.
As a personal anecdote, I lost 15 lbs playing VR video games. Every time I don’t have the motivation to workout, I just tell myself that I’m just going to play some video games.
Sure! But I would enjoy most or all of those the same way I play Fitness Boxing: with a screen. I think what makes VR good for fitness is the motion controllers, not the facehugger stereoscopy.
Conversely, when I rented the Quest, the kids ended up playing Beat Saber by sitting on the couch and twitching their wrists. They liked it, but they didn't find the motion part compelling. So although I totally believe you and others get fitness value out of VR, I just think that's not an intrinsic to VR.
It is for now for at least half or more of the current apps. The exceptions tend to be the driving or flying sim games. Developers do try to cater to less active users, but from my personal observation if you don’t like being active then you probably won’t enjoy VR in its current state, which your first hand experience supports. It looks like Apple will change it though, and I’m sure their competition will copy them shortly
When I say it's not an intrinsic to VR, I mean that one can have physical motion games without having facehugger 3D, which currently defines the VR space.
I'll note that Wii Sports came out in 2006, for example. And it sold 8.9 million copies. But I also note that motion games remain a niche interest. I like them a lot, but they're a small fraction of game usage. That suggests to me that VR can't bank on that as a big enough consumer interest to keep VR economically viable.
There are a trickle of games that are not first person. This will grow as the anemic VR AR market grows.
VR’s biggest problem isn’t 1st person interaction, which btw isn’t a gimick like the Wii. It’s that most adults are intimidated by the face bucket of isolation UX. People won’t even try it let alone buy it to use it enough. Until XR can get over this hurdle, I feel that we won’t really know what people like or dislike.
It’s also hard to make good predictions and assumptions about a technology that you’re not really using yourself
> It’s also hard to make good predictions and assumptions about a technology that you’re not really using yourself
I'm not sure being a dedicated user makes forecasting any easier. E.g., the cryptocurrency skeptics were generally much more accurate than its ardent users. Having bought in often makes proponents of people. And people who use something but don't study how others use it may overgeneralize their personal experience.
Regardless, I try VR on occasion. I just don't weight my own experience very heavily, because there are plenty of successful things that aren't for me, and plenty of things I love that are terminally niche.
It’s not a great analogy because it’s easier to understand crypto without using it, mainly because you can’t use it in most instances.
XR on the other hand needs to be experienced in order to understand it. Otherwise, you’re not going to know or even understand all of the benefits and problems. I see this time and time again online. Ie you can read about scuba diving all you want, but until you actually do it regularly you’re not really going to know enough to comment like someone who actually does it. Given the low cost and availability of modern VR headsets, there’s not really an excuse for techies unless you’re a student
Ardent crypto fans will of course disagree. They say that you have to really get involved in the space to understand the true potential of smart contacts, defi, DAOs, and many of the other places where active development is happening. Otherwise you're just not competent to judge the potential of crypto.
Regardless, I'm not sure why you're arguing with me, in that I agree usage can help understand a thing. My point is that being a dedicated user may not help much with understand the broader impact on the world. Lots of people love crypto and believe it will change the world. Lots of people love VR and believe it will change the world. In both cases, I think they often let their personal ideas and personal experience blot out the recognition that they are specific individuals with very specific takes, and that their experiences, however magical, may not match the majority, and may not be enough to overcome competitive solutions or the economics of the space.
> Regardless, I'm not sure why you're arguing with me, in that I agree usage can help understand a thing. My point is that being a dedicated user may not help much with understand the broader impact on the world.
Unlike crypto, VR is an experience that is poorly captured by text, audio, and video. Why? Because it is a new medium in of itself. People cannot hope to understand it without using it beyond 30 minutes.
Conversely, you can easily explain AND experience crypto via traditional mediums like text
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.
Thanks! The fitness use case seems to be one thing that creates long-term users. It's surprising to me that's not a bigger part of VR marketing.
Although interestingly, I suspect this is less about facehugger 3D and more about motion-sensitive controllers. For example, consider this person who has been playing Fitness Boxing on the Switch for 3 years straight: https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/t3sk6j/a_lo...
> 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.
Maybe 3 hours a week or so depending on what else is going on. Fairly frequently I hop into VR for a game of contractors for 40 mins at the end of my day (instead if watching TV or whatever). I also exercise occasionally in VR, maybe once or twice a month using Thrill of the Fight boxing.
> 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.
As someone who has >1000 hours in VR (and is also a game developer), the simple answer is that there really have been only maybe a dozen games. And lots of mostly identical alternatives.
Boneworks/HL:Alyx/Pavlov: Shooter, VRChat/RecRoom/etc: Social, Beat Saber/Harmonix somethingsomething: Rythm, The Room, Jet Island... Where each of those alternatives have lots of mechanical convergence, so it "feels" like playing the same game if you overlook the button mapping of the controllers.
The tech works perfectly fine, but there are so many caveats and limitations that the possible design space is quite limited, or there has been too much inbreeding. Plus, developing for VR is much more expensive as a baseline because of the increased limitations, so you end up with generally lower quality games than a traditional medium.
All in all, I would say that in a scale from "Pong" (1972) to "Outer Wilds" (2019) we are maybe just after "Wolfenstein 3D" (1992) in relation to the VR gaming landscape: Games are fun, but most of everything is really bad and played out of a lack of better options, or a clone of something actually cool.
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My point here is I don't entirely agree with you it's a novelty, I would say it's more of a variation that can become a staple with many people, but will never* be the main/only medium. Pizza, not bread&butter.
(And yes, that's half the definition of a novelty, but that's why I say I don't entirely agree with calling it such)
* Unless we invent the actual Matrix "full-body immersion with motor suspension" tech or something functionally equivalent (and I'm not even saying that's a good idea).
What strikes me as different from 1992-era games (and more like 1990s VR) is consistency of play. Even with the earlier generation of games, like NES titles or early Mac/PC games, you saw people putting in a lot of time over consistent periods. For many, video games replaced, say, board games. From what I see here and elsewhere, there are very few consistent VR users.
Maybe that's just down to the cost factors you describe. And maybe that's down to the competition being much better between modern consoles and the vast array of mobile games.
So I can believe you're right, it might be another way of gaming, coexisting in the same way that the PS5 and the Switch and phone games all coexist happily. But given the extra cost for both users and developers, it seems to me that it's also possible that there's a vicious circle ahead: High costs mean fewer games and fewer users. That leads to lower revenue, which means even fewer games, and therefore even fewer users.
At this point we must be somewhere near $50 billion invested in VR. If that level of subsidy isn't enough to get things going, I'm sure there are lots of CFOs asking exactly what it's going to take their VR units to become cash positive.
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.)
I’m the same way, for what’s it’s worth. I’ll put it away for a month or two and then get the urge to play Beatsaber or whatever and then oddly remember “hey, this is really freaking fun.” I’ll then play it every day for a while.
It’s weird how much of a barrier just putting on a headset (and maybe moving a coffee table) is. It would help if the Quest bootup/finding the play space was faster.
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.
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.
I mean real estate and development is a whole 'nother thing. Demand is wholly outstripping supply for places you want to actually live in, so you get what you get and you get to be happy about it.
If we're talking US real estate here, it's largely because of zoning making it de facto illegal to build anything except suburban single family homes or a downtown high rise, and because our public transit was dismantled long ago in favor of colossal (now decaying) highway and stroad systems, which we now have to build around.
Definitely. As I said though, given the push online and my social circle, I'd expected at least some higher percentage of areas to get much more relaxed zoning. Where I live there are a ton of new developments and they are all the absolute worst of both worlds. Hundreds of identical townhouses with nothing within walkable distance. It's too dense to feel rural and free, but has none of the benefits like being able to walk to a cafe or store and the density isn't high enough to make a massive impact on the market either. You even still hasn't neighbors you share walls with.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's getting there iteratively. The headsets are getting lighter and more comfortable.
The nausea won't be going away though. There will always be a class of apps/games that cause nausea for many people, because it's caused by a decoupling of virtual movement from real movement, not from any technological shortcoming. Any game or app that does this will make some people want to upchuck
No, just an oculus rift S that I used for about a week. It left me more disoriented than I've ever felt. I am not prone to motion sickness, love roller coasters, etc, but VR was too much. And I was _really_ set on loving it.
> 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.
>VR was a dream - and it's failed in spectacular fashion.
My whole point is that VR is a smash hit for exactly what it was always meant for. One of the earliest integrations with the Oculus dev kits was Euro Truck Simulator 2. VR is basically essential if you enjoy sim racing. VR is an incredible experience for flight simmers. VR is awesome if you like gun games, as Hot dogs horse shoes and hand grenades has no equal in video gaming, and lots of first person shooters work great in VR.
But that's all it ever will be and all it can be for normal people. It's a peripheral, not a console in it's own right.
Maybe it can be good in enterprise setups, like architecture, or training, but that still leaves it in an incredible niche.
> VR is an incredible experience for flight simmers
It's not though... nobody enjoys 7 FPS in a flight simulator. No serious flight simulator is capable of achieving 90+ FPS on average, even with today's top tier pc hardware.
The "sims" that do work well in VR are not really sims - they're just arcade experiences. They are indeed fun, but they are not simulators.
I have no experience with sim racing, but I suspect the same from the serious ones.
Truck Simulator? I can expect that to perform well - there's not a ton of physics being calculated every tick after all. But even there, your average person can only stomach VR for maybe an hour or two.
Even when it's fun, it's a serious PITA to setup. You have to setup to use VR in some game, and that means often people get tired of it and wind up resorting back to their flight yoke or stick. It's a novelty, in other words.
If the $600 versions didn't catch on and go mainstream - then a $3500 version is never going to go mainstream.
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.
No, like completely trashing OpenGL and OpenCL to make sure nothing ever runs on their machines unless it's specifically spon fed to them through Metal (while having like an 8% market share so it's not cost effective to do so). Even Linux is better for gaming with Proton.
They announced some tools that help testing and porting windows games to macos and some tools that supposed to convert opengl and DirectX shader to metal shaders.
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.
AFAIK Steam doesn't require developers to use their DRM and there are absolutely games that you can purchase through Steam and launch independently with just the exe.
Right, you need to utilize the steamworks SDK to use DRM. And even if you use the SDK, it is actually possible to not implement the DRM. Specifically, you can just not run the drm wrapping tool, and not implement DRM directly though the Steamworks api calls. The wrapper in compatibility mode (used when wrapping with another drm scheme that supports after-compilation wrapping) literally just checks if launched through Steam, and if not, requests that steam start and launch the game, and if launched through steam, checks for a valid ticket. In non-compatibility mode, it adds some basic checks against the executable being modified, etc.
For offline games, the DRM is little more than an anti-(casual-piracy) feature, making the obvious copying of the game folder not work, with generic cracks being easy to get online. It is more like games requiring the disc to play back in the day, even when fully installed, as a measure to avoid casual piracy, especially before CD writers were a thing.
Interestingly, despite having a generic executable wrapping system, many games that choose not to use Steamworks DRM are the older ones where source code is no longer available to recompile, or there are concerns about recompilation. I’m not sure why the wrapper would be a problem, unless the games contained integrity checking code, or you want compatibility with modding tools that edit the binary. Alledgedly at least one publisher literally applied a crack they downloaded from a piracy site to their retail release, and uploaded that to Steam, and in that case, I could easily see the steam DRM wrapper not being feasible to apply, as residual checks from the old DRM could cause breakage.
Valve even went out of their way to conceptually decouple the SteamVR SDK from steamVR. Instead they made “Open VR”, an interface conceptually like OpenGL or Vulkan, which allows for more than one runtime implementation. However, SteamVR is the only runtime implementation. But in theory, if a VR game on steam did not use Steam or other DRM, and you had an alternate OpenVR runtime, you could take the game folder from Steam, and run it against said alternate runtime fully separate from Steam (if only such a runtime actually existed).
> What you buy on Steam can’t be launched outside of Steam
Not true. Steam has a lot of DRM-free games that can be bought on Steam Store and are typically started through Steam client but do not really require Steam to be running. They're simply not integrated with Steam in any way.
Not really an open market when one company has as large a share of sales as steam. Valve may have a different ethos from Apple, but both agree on principle of extracting monopoly rents.
> but both agree on principle of extracting monopoly rents.
Steam’s competitors like GoG also take 30% so maybe it’s a reasonable price for the service they provide? Only companies like MSFT or Epic can charge less since their stores are heavily subsidized.
Of course as long as games remain available on multiple storefronts it will remain a winner takes all market and Steam does have a significant moat (though not in any way comparable to Apple) due to it’s social features.
At the end the existence of Steam/(other centralized storefronts) seems to benefit both consumers and developers compared to any alternative option (less risk for consumers = higher long term revenues or developers)
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.
Unfortunately, even beyond DRM, online competitive gaming is both an extremely popular hobby AND the most direct use case for trusted computing outside of top secret work. There simply can't be a fun, popular online competitive game without strict verification of the client software to keep out cheating, so Steam offers an extremely valuable service in this alone (as do other DRM schemes).
The alternative to Steam used to be limited use CD keys. Steam's not perfect but it's better than hoping you haven't re-installed the thing you paid for one too many times.
DRM in Steam is mostly up to the developers. They provide the API for it but hardly anyone implements it. I'm fairly sure I can launch most of my library without Steam even running.
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
> Once this headset's form factor shrinks down to sunglass size it will be the next iPhone.
So true. The company that is able to do so will have such an advantage over the competitors it won't even be fair. I sure as hell will be developing apps for such device. Potential is unlimited
> 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.
No, it's not about whether it technically works, there are already businesses going for few years. Looks like there are such stereo fisheye rigs, with a pair of m4/3 cameras, a GoPro for preview? and a 3dio packaged to go on a crane. And seems they're transitioning to 8K? Interesting...
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.
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.
It's because a lot of people moved to m1 after waiting years for transition to something new because of crappy butterfly keyboards for many generations, lack of innovation or regression (no functional keys, no Magsafe, no Hdmi, no minisd, still needed usb-a)
After lot of people bought m1 there was not similar significant improvement with m2 - and considering they could buy discounted m1
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.
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.
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.
Not to mention that the screen is becoming a bigger and bigger part of the mass of the computer. I wouldn't expect to like this first product but 5-10 years down the line it isn't unreasonable to believe that your computer is your phone, you take it everywhere with you, and your monitor is your glasses (benefit if you already wear glasses). That sounds pretty cool. Keyboard is the next big thing imo, because virtual typing sucks and I need something tactile. We'll probably need to rethink the entire concept though.
My main concern is about collaboration. Specifically, a fear with Apple lockin. When you pair program you can just sit down at either computer. Will we have an open protocol to share screens (or specific apps in screens like modern screenshare does)? Will is be semi-open like the current MMS system where Apple makes you look at a potato? My concern is about how these can be used to further isolate ourselves and break our fundamental social structure. But part of that will be how we use them, along with the decisions these companies make. I just hope Apple doesn't lock everyone in, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
AFAIK it hasn’t been accurate enough until recently. I’ve heard OpenAI’s whisper is great text to speech and I think I read today iOS 17 is updating their speech-to-text as well.
Also, I’m not an office worker but I would imagine working with speech to text around everyone else using speech to text would be a hellish and annoying scenario. Work from home alleviates that.
It reads that a lot of the control of visionOS is speech based as well and Apple should be smart enough to know if it doesn’t work well the entire product will flop and Tim Apple’s entire legacy will likely be over.
I tested SwiftKey recently and works quite well with speech to text when whispering very silently when you put you lips close to microphone but worked even well with airpods. This still might be culturally weird to everyone whispering but in office with fans and aircon and other ambient sound i think would be hard to hear anyone whispering when 2m away.
Oh that sounds like hell to me if I'm being honest. It would be okay for stnadard routines "write a for loop that increments variable foobar" (LLMs help here) but be a fucking nightmare for debugging or fine grained work.
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.
That's just marketing nonsense. You get 23MP if you combine both displays in the headset. Well guess what, they show the same picture, so the actual resolution is half that. And out of that only the pixels in the center are going to be sharp enough to be usable (notice that none of the demos ever extended the picture all the way to the edge).
It has nothing to do with resolution and everything to do with your eyes looking at a screen an inch from your face while a mask is strapped over them. That's just not comfortable and no fruit logo changes that.
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.
It's not as simple as that though, with your head and eyes in constant movement and two separate screens with a high refresh rate. The G2 or Vive have 50% less density and it's already quite hard to distinguish individual pixels.
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.
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.
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.
Inability to overlay graphics over the real world. We only know how to do so additively (shine some light in the eye to make things bright), but AFAIK there is no solution to effectively and dynamically black out some part of the picture you see.
Also, at the time, people had freaked out about wearing cameras in public. (I wonder if I need to purchase some popcorn to watch how it'll go for this one, or if it's gonna be different.)
Magic Leap 2 has a segmented dimmer that works fairly well. It's a small probably-LCD panel that sits in front of your eye. It lets the headset black out part of your view, leaving a kinda blurry shadow around objects.
> Also, at the time, people had freaked out about wearing cameras in public. (I wonder if I need to purchase some popcorn to watch how it'll go for this one, or if it's gonna be different.)
My prediction is that it's going to be A Thing to wear this at all times, even if your battery is dead, similar to the way The Kids These Days have their airpods in 24/7. Pressure your mom until she finally gets you a pair ("free" with 10 year Verizon contract)
It’s possible in theory to add a transparent LCD display to a transparent OLED display, but neither is fully transparent, so you end up losing a lot of light. And then there’s the cost of having two displays.
>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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
The reason I think videophones is a bad comparison is that video conferencing systems were economically successful in the corporate space well before you started saying that about videophones. There was a demonstrated value proposition; it's just that costs had to come way down for consumers to find it worth it. (Which I suspect demonstrates that that don't care very much about it, in that they pay $0 for video calls in both up-front and per-minute terms.)
But even if you were right, some social stuff changing isn't proof that other social things will change soon. It's just as plausible to me that the cost, in terms of money and inconvenience, will have to drop just as far for VR as it did for video calls. Meaning that it would have to be included in every phone or every pair of glasses for free and with approximately no additional effort to use. Which is something that we are surely decades away from.
>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.
> It does for physical objects what the web did for paper.
I don't think that's the case. The web was a pure addition to paper, taking most of the existing design vocabulary and radically adding to it through interactivity as well as by dropping the marginal cost of publishing and delivery to zero. The informational content on every piece of paper in the world could appear on a tablet the size of a slim book.
WhateverR of current and plausible near-term hardware is hugely subtractive. VR turns existing physical objects into things you can't see but might trip over. The rest at best adds a gloss of appearance, but a loss of touch, dexterity, and much of the normal interactivity of objects. I've seen interesting ideas for, say, MR board games, where you have some carefully chosen generic objects that get a visual gloss via facehugger image overlays. But I have a hard time seeing that be anything other than a highly niche experience; it's not clear that it would delivery notably more fun than games on the standard living room 2D screen. It's much, much more limited than what the web did for paper.
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.
That can be true, but you see the same pattern with bad ideas. Look at perpetual motion machines. People keep trying to invent them, but that doesn't prove they'll eventually succeed.
We could also consider jetpacks and flying cars and food pills. People have been inventing and re-inventing them for years. I'm sure if I looked I could find new generations of people taking another swing at it who haven't really reckoned with why all the previous waves failed.
> but that doesn't prove they'll eventually succeed
Of course it doesn't prove anything. But there's certainly a difference between the "hardness" of designing sufficiently high quality 3D glasses using well known technology, and doing something that breaks a physical law.
My point with perpetual motion machines isn't that good VR violates physical laws. It's that some ideas are attractive enough that people will keep trying and failing to make them real, without bothering to look at why the other attempts failed.
My impression is that even 2D screens are still rather lacking (they're big, heavy, very bright, need a big power source, rather expensive, sometimes difficult to interact with). In many situations a book or some papers are still superior to "virtual 2D reality".
Not sure if this indicates VR is conceptually flawed or if it means we're just still early in the development of the technology.
In my opinion, the other attempts happened because people think 3D is cool. Both as a concept and as a novel experience. And the other attempts failed because they went out and built a lot of stuff based on that coolness, without testing to see whether there was lasting value.
And we certainly see that repeating here. Magic Leap burned $3.5 billion. I'm not sure how many tens of billions Meta has spent on their vision of a Metaverse. But what's pretty clear is that so far there's very little long-term usage, very little value creation.
Might it work someday? Sure. But it's perfectly plausible that it will remain a practical failure until something like the holodeck or programmable matter becomes a reality. So it could be another 170 years before VR is a success.
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.
I agree that stereoscopy isn't the only thing going on. But are you saying there are VR headsets that don't have stereoscopic 3D, and that I should therefore change my analysis?
I don't think spatial experiences are particularly new.
Quake was the first game I recall playing that was intensely spatial. So much so that after a couple of hours playing I had trouble readjusting to meatspace; the positional part of my brain was still carrying enough of the virtual world that i was easily disoriented. The same thing happened to me with Minecraft. Years later, I still have vivid spatial recall of some of the bases and mines I built.
You could certainly argue that VR controllers are an exciting step forward in spatial interaction. But things like the Wii and the Switch's (less capable) motion control mean they're only a step forward, not a leap. And that also makes clear that motion control and VR are separable concepts. I look forward to seeing the fancier controllers migrate to other platforms to see how that goes.
So I think what makes facehugger VR unique is stereoscopy. And stereoscopic 3D is a thing with a long history of faddish excitement followed by a total crash. You could argue that's not relevant here, but an awful lot of VR advocates make their cases in terms of 3D.
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.
People seriously underestimate the potential entertainment or even utility of being able to take your digital photo collection and, just, spread them all around your floor or walls or whatever. Grab them, stack them, group them with natural gestures. After that, the next time you open a PC-based photo manager, you will feel trapped, poking around a bucket full of files with a stick.
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.