5 ms·

Microsoft HoloLens 3 is dead as its mixed-reality vision implodes

PaulHoule 5y ago
You don’t necessarily get to pick being in a profitable location writing the software that connects it all even if you are Microsoft. HoloLens has gotten a lot of criticism for cost and image quality, but it is a much more relevant brand than ‘windows mixed reality’ which is a (1) a whole lot of nothing and (2) associated with direct-to-landfill hardware. I hate to praise Facebook but at least Facebook had the Oculus brand, the strongest in the industry, until they decided to throw it away. With competitors like that who needs allies?
- jshaqaw 5y ago
  Why do you say Facebook threw it away? Talk to most consumers and Oculus is almost a synonym for VR like a "Xerox machine." I wont weigh on on the tech merits vs competitors but the brand is strong.
  - bdonlan 5y ago
    They decided to rebrand as Meta, abandoning their strong oculus brand identity.
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    I took a good look at VR headsets in December thinking I wanted one for software development and concluded: (1) Oculus was the only one I could buy in a retail store, (2) I could pay 60% more and get a better VR headset but in terms of value for an acceptable product Oculus could not be beat -- if logging into Facebook didn't make it unacceptable.
    - SebastianKra 5y ago
      That's because they subsidize their cost [1]. It's probably not smart to praise value/cost, when the company is literally trying to take over the metaverse. [1]: https://uploadvr.com/zuckerberg-meta-headsets-cost/ https://uploadvr.com/zuckerberg-meta-headsets-cost/
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
traspler 5y ago
It would be sad to see the HoloLens project dying. I have used a HoloLens and developed something on it and as far as I can judge it's the only headset that really actually works and ist not just a huge pile of wishfull thinking of marketers. And I would say it works incredibly well. Sure, FoV and image quality are suboptimal but everythin else is just incredible. Nothing feels half-baked. The docs and tools are also stellar to work with, even for beginners.
excalibur 5y ago
> If there’s any conclusion to be reached from BI‘s reporting, it’s that Microsoft wants to design the software platforms that the metaverse will run upon, rather than committing to the device itself. Microsoft said last year that that was Microsoft Mesh, a platform we were skeptical of at the time it was announced. By November, Microsoft’s mixed-reality plans had seemingly been scaled back to Teams avatars. I always thought that Bill Gates' long-term plan/Microsoft's natural evolutionary direction was to get us all interacting with apps through a VR/AR platform called Microsoft Doors. Clearly I gave them too much credit.
- vanattab 5y ago
  Oh God, please tell me we are not actually going to be calling it the metaverse.

You don’t necessarily get to pick being in a profitable location writing the software that connects it all even if you are Microsoft. HoloLens has gotten a lot of criticism for cost and image quality, but it is a much more relevant brand than ‘windows mixed reality’ which is a (1) a whole lot of nothing and (2) associated with direct-to-landfill hardware. I hate to praise Facebook but at least Facebook had the Oculus brand, the strongest in the industry, until they decided to throw it away. With competitors like that who needs allies?

jshaqaw 5y ago
Why do you say Facebook threw it away? Talk to most consumers and Oculus is almost a synonym for VR like a "Xerox machine." I wont weigh on on the tech merits vs competitors but the brand is strong.
- bdonlan 5y ago
  They decided to rebrand as Meta, abandoning their strong oculus brand identity.
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  I took a good look at VR headsets in December thinking I wanted one for software development and concluded: (1) Oculus was the only one I could buy in a retail store, (2) I could pay 60% more and get a better VR headset but in terms of value for an acceptable product Oculus could not be beat -- if logging into Facebook didn't make it unacceptable.
  - SebastianKra 5y ago
    That's because they subsidize their cost [1]. It's probably not smart to praise value/cost, when the company is literally trying to take over the metaverse. [1]: https://uploadvr.com/zuckerberg-meta-headsets-cost/ https://uploadvr.com/zuckerberg-meta-headsets-cost/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

traspler 5y ago

It would be sad to see the HoloLens project dying. I have used a HoloLens and developed something on it and as far as I can judge it's the only headset that really actually works and ist not just a huge pile of wishfull thinking of marketers. And I would say it works incredibly well. Sure, FoV and image quality are suboptimal but everythin else is just incredible. Nothing feels half-baked. The docs and tools are also stellar to work with, even for beginners.

excalibur 5y ago

> If there’s any conclusion to be reached from BI‘s reporting, it’s that Microsoft wants to design the software platforms that the metaverse will run upon, rather than committing to the device itself. Microsoft said last year that that was Microsoft Mesh, a platform we were skeptical of at the time it was announced. By November, Microsoft’s mixed-reality plans had seemingly been scaled back to Teams avatars. I always thought that Bill Gates' long-term plan/Microsoft's natural evolutionary direction was to get us all interacting with apps through a VR/AR platform called Microsoft Doors. Clearly I gave them too much credit.

vanattab 5y ago
Oh God, please tell me we are not actually going to be calling it the metaverse.