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Meta VR prototypes aim to make VR 'indistinguishable from reality'

• Havoc 4y ago
  Wish they'd go into a bit more detail given that they have actual prototypes... Slightly confused as to why they stuck the zuck into what looks like a plywood shed though?
• idiotsecant 4y ago
• llllllllllll9 4y ago
• poisonarena 4y ago
  as long as someone is doing it
• spywaregorilla 4y ago
  Kind of cool. But none of these seem to address the real problems VR has. There's no VR content that is held back by the graphical fidelity atm. Aside from maybe porn.
  • bravogamma 4y ago
    Why do you expect the content to precede the platform?
    • spywaregorilla 4y ago
      Well I don't consider better graphics to be a new platform.
  • s0rce 4y ago
    if you build it they will come
    • spywaregorilla 4y ago
      They haven't come for the past several years of VR tech
      • marginalia_nu 4y ago
        Years is a generous way of putting it. This tech has been doing the rounds for quite a while: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_(product) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_(product)
  • marginalia_nu 4y ago
    Dunno, I think VR content will always just be shallow novelty experiences until it gets smoother to use, and being able to for example read text goes along way toward fixing that. Better hand controls would also help, I don't think VR without haptic feedback is really viable. Solve that set of problems, and you might get to a point where you could build actually useful things in VR. Like a work environment for CAD or 3D modelling or whatever that has actual benefits over traditional interfaces.
  • sergiotapia 4y ago
    I absolutely don't use my valve index as much because of the mess of cables and now my desk is in a weird spot colliding with my tracking stations. I also don't use my quest 2 because the fidelity just isn't good enough.
    • spywaregorilla 4y ago
      So what would you do if you had an index quality quest 2?
      • sergiotapia 4y ago
        I had a blast playing pokerstars vr, it's just fun to hangout in that VR space. I would probably play a lot more rec room. again fun to just hang out in that space. I think whoever solves the casualness of VR will become the next big tech giant. It is looking like Facebook will come back HARD.
  • krasin 4y ago
    >There's no VR content that is held back by the graphical fidelity atm. As mentioned by the other comment, the ability to read text clearly is important and missing. That holds back a lot of productivity use cases.
    • spywaregorilla 4y ago
      Maybe. I don't see many people working in VR though.
      • dmix 4y ago
        You'd think so but I keep hearing more and more people trying to do this. Never made sense to me but it apparently works for some people.
        • spywaregorilla 4y ago
          What kind of work?
          • MacsHeadroom 4y ago
            I develop financial software and sysadmin in VR (/AR pass through for keyboard) on a Meta Quest 2, streaming a cloud "gaming" PC wirelessly. Unlimited weightless 60 inch monitors which fit in a single laptop bag is real nice. 10 hour battery life with a pocket sized battery pack. Unlimited with a 12ft USB-C cable. The only thing I can see making it better for what I do is higher text fidelity. Anything else would be a luxury, and unnecessary for repeated full days in VR.
            • westoncb 4y ago
              More lightweight/comfortable headset would be my other requirement.
      • cultofmetatron 4y ago
        I bought a copy of immerssed and an occulus quest beause I loved the idea. sadly, we are still a ways off. the text was too blurry and I got a headache in minutes. beat saber was a good pivot. its my gym when I travel now
  • Barrin92 4y ago
    >graphical fidelity it also seems like a wrong goal in general because to me the entire point of VR is that it's not bound to physical reality, investing billions of dollars so you can sit on a photorealistic sofa I think defeats the purpose. I think the popularity of Minecraft, Fortnite or VRChat shows that people aren't looking for realism but interesting experiences you can't have offline, with community being the most important thing.
    • spywaregorilla 4y ago
      Photorealism isn't a good descriptor for just being able to look at things and have your eyes work properly.
    • epgui 4y ago
      I would argue that VR aims to be more than just photorealism, but that photorealism is still very important for a range of use cases within VR.
  • lattalayta 4y ago
    A lot of those prototypes seem to cater to common complaints from first-time or casual VR users - eye strain, focus, fatigue, and weight. I think iterating on these aspects of comfort is important for VR adoption. Personally, I don't really want or look forward to a future where people spend a lot of time in a headset, but if there were a lightweight, comfortable option it would be fun to explore experiences every once in awhile.
    • towaway15463 4y ago
      Those improvements are important for enthusiasts as well since they all take their toll during long sessions. I look forward to having more amazing experiences at my finger tips during the long, dark winter months. There’s not much else to do here except drink and go snowmobiling.
  • bitcurious 4y ago
    > There's no VR content that is held back by the graphical fidelity atm. Sort of. Discomfort/nausea issues hold back VR and will be addressed by this work.
  • sio8ohPi 4y ago
    Agreed. I play combat flight sims in VR almost daily, and even with that genre's high FOV and resolution demands, I think most of us are bottlenecked more by GPU performance and software tools than HMD resolution or dynamic range. (Reduced edge distortion would be fantastic, though.) It's weird to me that these multi-billion dollar companies are investing so much R&D money into supporting my niche hobby, but I suppose I shouldn't complain.
• planetsprite 4y ago
  I find it charming Zuckerberg actually seems to care about this stuff. He of course wants every human interaction to be monetizable by Facebook, total control of our dopamine channels, etc. but I think beyond that, deep down, he's just a nerd who wants to live in a VR dreamland to shut out the millions of people who call him a weird lizard.
  • rl3 4y ago
    >... but I think beyond that, deep down, he's just a nerd who wants to live in a VR dreamland to shut out the millions of people who call him a weird lizard. I mean, in his defense he might be pretty normal by lizard standards, I don't know. Calling him weird just seems unnecessary in that context. >He of course wants every human interaction to be monetizable by Facebook, total control of our dopamine channels, ... I agree. It'd be a much better future for everyone if he'd just throw his advertising biz in the garbage. Apple is going to kick Meta's ass in the long run just by virtue of their privacy stance—which isn't all that great to begin with, but it sure does beat "our intent is to sell every iota of information we collect on you."
    • ntoskrnl 4y ago
      I've never heard of any other lizard that eats Sweet Baby Rays. By lizard standards that's pretty weird.
    • ethbr0 4y ago
      > Apple is going to kick Meta's ass in the long run just by virtue of their privacy stance I think you're discounting (ha) the allure of free/cheap to people who don't have disposable income. Which is to say, most people.
      • rl3 4y ago
        You're probably right, though I don't think it all comes down to disposable income. Laziness, apathy and network effects are perhaps equally powerful forces. After all, I continue to use Google and Instagram despite my knowing how the sausage is made there.
• nrclark 4y ago
  Every time I see something like this, I'm struck with the idea that Zuckerberg read Ready Player One and said "yes, that's make THAT future."
  • voz_ 4y ago
    That book was garbage, so probably not.
  • camdat 4y ago
    [flagged]
  • rightbyte 4y ago
    This short film comes to mind: (Uncanny Valley) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AvyUWUKCw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AvyUWUKCw8
    • spyder 4y ago
      And this will be the result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
  • ydnaclementine 4y ago
    I think you mean the book Snow Crash, which John Carmack is a fan of https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/1454230235847688200?lang=en https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/1454230235847688200...
  • nocarrier 4y ago
    It was actually Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge that really got Zuck excited about the possibilities of VR—he read it a few years before he bought Oculus and talked about it a lot at the time.
    • rsynnott 4y ago
      I suppose we should just be thankful he didn't pick up Vinge's "Deepness in the Sky" instead; it would be quite disconcerting if Facebook was trying to develop talking spiders.
• system16 4y ago
  Mildly interesting but confusing. Who is the audience for this little clip? Meta shareholders who need reassurance that the metaverse is on track?
  • ntoskrnl 4y ago
    Probably enthusiasts. Same people that might watch a video about Intel's newest CPU.
  • jayd16 4y ago
    Recruiting video, maybe?
  • DethNinja 4y ago
    It is intended for investors that got suckered into Meta, there is very high chance that most of their VR investments will fail.
• ahelwer 4y ago
  Meta's VR tech is undeniably amazing. I picked up a quest 2 off craigslist and was blown away - wirelessly streaming VR games to the headset over wifi is the first time I felt the technology had actually arrived. The resolution is also good enough to use it for actual work with text on virtual screens. It's conceivable that the standard workstation + monitors setup will be a thing of the past by the end of the decade. It is sad that we are unavoidably headed to a world where a company like Meta monopolizes control of two of our five traditional senses (sight and sound). Their business model is based on behavior modification and I fully expect their highly-compensated employees to be endlessly creative in the application of headsets to that end. The sheer scale of R&D expenditure required to get realistic/usable VR is daunting and seems beyond FOSS capabilities. Not just hardware, but software like SLAM/VIO or image processing. I backed the Simula One headset but the disparity in development resources between them and meta is pretty astounding.
  • Helitico 4y ago
    I'm really really curiuos who will win this bet. I also have a htc vive pro + wireless transmitter + highend pc and i don't think at all that this will replace a normal monitor setup on a table. Why? Because wearing a headset on your head is just cumbersome. I don't think anyone would ever sit in any outdoor setup with a VR headset on their heads because it looks idiotic, it ruins your hair and its too expensive to let it lay around. And at home? At home people stoped wearing pants why would they give up a good display for a headset?
    • lostmsu 4y ago
      > because it looks idiotic This is exactly what people thought of 5+ inch phone screens, and now nobody cares.
      • dylan604 4y ago
        Except with a 5in phone screen, you still have some sort of situational awareness of people walking up on you whether you choose to ignore that or not is totally different than being in a headset where you have none. I keep seeing ads/promos for VR with people on a train/subway in a VR headset. I hope you don't mind having the rest of your stuff taken from you while you crush it in what ever game you're playing on the subway
• schaefer 4y ago
  Can I please just have a 3d window manager? No, not mapping my 2d desktop onto a single surface in 3d. A true 3d native window manager. where I can arrange each individual window anywhere in the 360 degree space? Until that is solid, VR is not the productivity tool I was hoping it can be. Just like Mobile(ios, android), Microsoft could not possibly drop the ball any harder here.
  • whateveracct 4y ago
    SimulaVR is working on it!
  • lewispollard 4y ago
    Yes. https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula
    • schaefer 4y ago
      I'm aware of the Simula project. But it isn't compatible with my varjo aero headset - which is limited to Windows only. If I had truly understood that windows doesn't have a native 3d window manager for VR, there's no way I would have bought the Aero.
  • AlexandrB 4y ago
    As someone who still uses pen and paper for sketching out ideas and books for reference, I do not understand the appeal of VR for productivity. Going from 2 to 3 monitors was only a slight productivity improvement for me - one monitor is now dedicated to Slack. Being able to have a huge viewable space to work in seems like it's not going to be that much better. Meanwhile there is fatigue from the headset, having to charge (or tether) a thing you're always wearing, and a disconnect from the physical world which makes some things less convenient (e.g. writing things down). Finally, there's an issue of who owns and controls the space you work in. With WFH, it's nice to be in a space that I fully control and can customize to my needs. If history is any guide, a VR space will become heavily monetized, if not by Meta then by someone else. And the possibilities for surveillance - either by your employer or the "owner" of the space - are now limitless. I'm not naïve enough to think that history won't repeat itself.
• SilverBirch 4y ago
  This is quite interesting actually, because this sort of directly lays out "Here are 3 difficult technical problems we need to solve for a VR headset" - Resoution, Focal depth, high dynamic range. I'm not an expert in the area, but resolution and HDR seem like basically solved problems - in that they're just logical progressions of where we are today. The focal depth one I didn't understand. He says normal monitors are a fixed distance, whereas in VR and AR you need to focus on different distances. But these VR headsets are just a fixed distance away, so how is that really a problem? Fundamentally these problems are clearly necessary buticie not sufficient for VR.
  • evan_ 4y ago
    The screen being a fixed distance is the issue. The holy grail would be a system that fools your eyes and makes you think that it isn't at a fixed distance- something like eyeball tracking that detects, instantly, what you're focusing on, and adjusts the perceived focal distance based on how far away the cluster of pixels you're looking at is meant to be. This would improve immersion. HDR is trickier than you think because devices like cell phones can improve their dynamic range by just making the screens brighter- increasing the range by raising the top end- but there's a certain cutoff on how bright a VR screen can be and still be comfortable.
  • ntoskrnl 4y ago
    > The focal depth one I didn't understand. I think the idea is simulating depth of field by blurring different parts of the image based on where the user's eye is looking.
  • PaulHoule 4y ago
    Your brain puts together multiple 3-d cues. If you are looking directly at something the angle of your two eyeballs is a little different dependening on the distance and this is vergence. Your eyes also focus like the autofocus of a camera and the cue from that is called accommodation. The two should match to provide perfect perception on reality. Certainly a VR headset works with a fixed focus for everything, but to get the ultimate perception of reality without eye strain a VR headset should be able to simulate focusing distance. (Who knows, however? Meta’s Super Bowl ad might be revealing their real intentions. In that ad a discarded animatronic Android gets to relive its past with VR. VR is good for the elderly because you can enjoy it without learning anything new. I think one of the worst things about getting old that I experience is presbyopia where you can’t focus over the whole range so you have to wear two pairs of glasses. Maybe I’d find it easier just to have it all in focus all the time.)
• Slix 4y ago
  I'm excited by improvements in VR technology. Varifocal lenses would solve one of the weirder problems in VR: that you can't change your focal point.
• dmix 4y ago
  For the price point Quest 2 really is an amazing product. We're really getting to the point where it's mainstreaming.
  • oofbey 4y ago
    They're taking a loss on every unit sold. They can afford to this because they have a firehose of cash from FB, and they believe this is the "next big thing" so they want to establish dominance. Sadly, it's almost certainly gonna work. The content ecosystem will follow the user base, and a $300 headset will outsell a >$1k setup by a huge factor.
    • colinmhayes 4y ago
      The money is in the app store. Video game console sell at cost as far as I know, but they make a killing over their lifetime because they make $15 on every game sold.
      • shafyy 4y ago
        Exactly. It's like saying Gilette or Nespresso lose money per unit sold. Sure, but they make it up with replacement razors and espresso capsules.
    • bitshiftfaced 4y ago
      Nah, there's enough big players out there, and the tech will continue to get better and cheaper. I think Meta might be surprised by how many potential customers will run to their competitors if it means they don't need to have a Facebook account to use VR.
    • welcitop 4y ago
      I'm already worried for boys. When I think about who would have the time and motivation to sit in a VR world all day long I can not imagine girls or a lot of adults of some type. I really struggle seeing anyone outside of a private space wearing it in public, in an office or public transport. It looks weird. It removes you from reality and your surroundings. So who is left? Boys? Already single man motivation for playing the same games all day long like egoshooters etc. Porn will be a motivation for sure.
• gabea 4y ago
  AR/VR is inevitable. I find it astonishing that there are so many naysayers on HN, a community that in its early days embraced technology innovation. Today's VR (and even AR via Mobile Phones) is primitive, sure, but the same could be said about desktop computers before the transition to mobile ever was an idea? I expect more comments on how to influence this technology versus dismissing it as not applicable for the human race.
  • JacobThreeThree 4y ago
    Sure it's inevitable. That doesn't change the fact that the input problem for AR/VR is not solved. Some VR is trying to solve this by integrating back in the mouse/keyboard. Others, like Elon, are trying to leapfrog to human-brain interface. Neither of those efforts change the fact that for current AR/VR your input is lower bandwidth than a smartphone which is already lower bandwidth than mouse/keyboard. This input bandwidth limit means that the applications for the tech are currently very minimal and means that any product being sold today is unlikely to do well.
    • WJW 4y ago
      I honestly don't see VR ever really taking off before we manage to solve the "output" problems either. Every sense except vision and hearing gets ignored. Walking is a complete mess, because real life furniture tends to get in the way. Smell and taste are usually completely ignored. Touch tends to fail completely as soon as you "push through" the haptic feedback. VR is just not very "real", and I don't think we can ever make it real enough with the tech path it is on. Human brain interfaces seem like the best bet, but they are so far away that I don't think they'll be commercially available in my lifetime.
      • alexalx666 4y ago
        Killer app for VR is new interface to computer imho
    • Groxx 4y ago
      Yeah. AR/VR being future heavyweights seems obvious. Currently though? They're all kinda shit. And there doesn't seem to be a clear incremental step from "current" to "good enough" for a GIGANTIC range of scenarios, so it seems reasonable to claim "it's not coming any time soon". And I say all this as an enthusiast. When resolution and compute power increases a bit, I'll probably make a real effort to use VR (AR seems further away) to replace my desk/monitor(s)/etc for work. But without a ton of effort and severe tradeoffs, it's not really currently feasible.
• theschwa 4y ago
  The interview with Norm from Adam Savage's Tested gives a lot of good extra details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6AOwDttBsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6AOwDttBsc
• dmix 4y ago
  The new design of the last one has a headset that you turn to mount on your head looks nice. That's so much better than the straps that comes with Quest 2, I hope they make that the standard. The after-market Quest head kits for ~$20 make it much more comfortable.
• PheonixPharts 4y ago
  10 years ago I thought we would all be driving in autonomous cars by now, I was seriously concerned about the impact this would have on the trucking industry. For context I have a background in ML/Stats so I was reasonably familiar with the research going on in this area and had many friends working on it. In that time I have relearned an old adage that people before my generation would know well "the last mile is the longest mile". In R&D this feels far more extreme than in running. VR seems very similar to autonomous driving. Quest 1/2 are light years ahead of what we had a decade or so ago. At the same time it's nowhere near to the point where it's going to be a major part of my day. The Quest was mind blowing when I first used it, but I got bored remarkably fast. Most importantly, none of my problems with quest are the problems that are being solved here. The biggest one, in my opinion, is still space. I want a 10'x10' area to run around in to even start having fun, and even in a house I still don't have an open space that supports that without moving furniture around. The mobile phone took over our lives because it's so small and convenient. Large TVs work because we've been building homes around them for decades, and TV spaces are also communal, family/friend spaces. This brings up another issue, VR is fundamentally isolating. I get annoyed enough when friends don't look up from their phones. The remaining obstacles for VR to conquer seem to be arguably bigger problems than the ones that self driving cars need to tackle to take over the roads.
  • onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    > This brings up another issue, VR is fundamentally isolation. Wait. Why? Online games exist. They're social. I'm not really a gamer. But it's interesting why social interaction in online video games is some secondary tier to social interaction playing basketball, for example, or just talking in coffee shop - or on the phone...
    • WJW 4y ago
      It's not that you can't have social interactions in a (VR) game, but someone with VR goggles on is extremely unapproachable for other people in the same room.
    • AlexandrB 4y ago
• nathias 4y ago
  I'm waiting for contact lenses with a good enough resolution to serve as a screen replacement and cyberdecks replace laptops ...
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• mihaifm 4y ago
  I think one of the greatest barriers to VR adoption is not resolution etc. but motion sickness. It is caused by the conflicting signals the brain receives from the body and from the eyes. Currently the only way to get rid of it is through training, but I'm not sure how many people are willing to go through the process. It took me about a month to fully get rid of it, but I assume it vastly differs from person to person.
  • Karupan 4y ago
    As someone who has sever motion sickness in general, I'm curious to understand how you got rid of it. Is there some specific training routine?
    • mihaifm 4y ago
      There's no easy way around it. I enabled continuous motion in a few games and practiced for a few minutes until I could no longer tolerate it. Try feeling the ground with your feet, that helps a lot. The interesting part is that when you lose motion sickness you also lose some of the VR immersion, it's like telling the brain "this is not real, it's the body you need to trust not the eyes".
  • krasin 4y ago
    Anecdotal evidence: I used to get motion sick in cars, but after playing hundreds of hours in Beat Saber on my Quest, no more. I can bear road trips just fine. So, VR is the training.
  • dataangel 4y ago
    A lot of people have found motion sickness in VR is actually usually driven by refresh rate. They get sick because the screen doesn't update as fast as reality. If you have the chance to try a Valve Index, they have the ability (not default setting though) to go to 144hz, and you may experience way less sickness. The Quest and Quest2 can't go that high.
    • cshenton 4y ago
• 0xakhil 4y ago
  It might be difficult for us to imagine a shift to VR version of social media. But think about the next generation of kids growing up with these kind of techs. They will mass adopt them and we will follow. For Facebook, it was millennials who adopted first and for Snapchat/tiktok, GenZ. And Facebook will get the opportunity to own the platform completely for the first time. So the soon they reach their goal, the better. Actually, it is a smart move.
  • heavyset_go 4y ago
    If you look at a lot of Facebook's VR advertising campaigns, they're spending a lot of money on advertising to kids, making VR seem like a place they and their friends can get together and experience cool things.
  • ilaksh 4y ago
    Its strange to me that people aren't talking about glasses or goggles rather than bulky uncomfortable headsets. There is a big difference between a bulky headset where you can't see or do anything else and a normal pair of hands-free glasses. When it gets to the point of comfortable, unobtrusive and affordable AR/VR/MR glasses with good hand and head tracking built in, that will be a really different experience than the current standard. Maybe throw in a couple of small convient cameras that can just plug in and adhesive to the wall for external tracking. And with the high speed Wifi available now, or the possibility of connecting to a smart phone (maybe in a pocket or some type of necklace-like carrier), I don't think you need a lot of compute in those devices. So imagine you just put these glasses on and get 6 virtual wide screen monitors, turn to the right and its your favorite virtual coffee shop, with people inside with fairly realistic recreations from the capture and expression and eye tracking being done by the external cameras. There is 3d positional audio as well. Imagine with a small camera on the desk, or built into the glasses, doing finger tracking on virtual keyboards. Suppose someone makes a little 'clicky' membrane that provides a bit of tactile feedback regardless of where you press on it. Now I only need my smart phone and a pair of glasses. I don't need a monitor or a keyboard. Once people realize that every virtual keyboard can easily be 100% customized for any application, physical keyboards may become passé. When you have good eye and expression tracking, realistic avatars enabled by high-performance AI models, 3d positional audio, realistic environments.. then there really isn't that much difference from being there in person. And there are a huge number of advantages such as convenience and time saving, being able to instantly "travel" to a popular hangout spot even if you are 400 miles away from your friends, etc. Pretty much everything you can do now in VR, but make it more comfortable and remove some of the friction points, better integration between applications and with the real world, somewhat more realistic, etc. Suppose automation and robotics continue to improve. Maybe artificial muscles like https://www.artimusrobotics.com/ https://www.artimusrobotics.com/ are widely deployed, enabling high strength-to-weight ratio mobility and much more dexterous, faster, and more general-purpose robots. In 20 years people may look back and be amazed at how much time and energy we wasted driving around to do everything in person, and how everyone restricted the majority of their "in-person" interactions to small localities.
• kache_ 4y ago
• rob74 4y ago
  So, "Project Cambria" is really a "Cambrian Explosion" of prototypes?
• kache_ 4y ago
  Reality approximating VR will a huge boon for our fight against global warming & our capacity to use gas/fuel on things more important than transportation to conferences & offices.
• thinkingemote 4y ago
  VR as a future is tied into "identity" and certain group identities, some of which we see clearly now in social media. Identities which someone can invent for themselves which can be independent generally from geography, genetics, looks, temperament, age etc. Freedom to be whoever and whatever you want to be. Today's social VR users are often playing with their own identity right now. It's all about image, a spectacle, a way to make personalities and reality flexible and it's a way for identity to be expressed as a kind of collection of things that can be commodified and packaged up for sale. That's the future which is looked at. However I think we might see a genuine sub culture emerging, as a reaction against this. We can possibly see some of this in some of the language used in a few strange semi-underground youth music events today. It's not anti tech, and not anti identity at all! More like a demand to be in control of their own methods and ways of consumption. A certain ironic detachment from corporations.
• Geee 4y ago
  Cool, but I'm never buying anything from Zuckerberg.
  • sfblah 4y ago
    They must be losing money on the Quest 2, so there's that...
• Animats 4y ago
  That's nice, but it's just the display part. Now you need something to generate a high-quality display. Right now, the minimum hardware for that is probably a Playstation 5, which can run the Unreal Engine 5 Matrix demo. So you could do this now, tethered, with somewhat bulky headgear. Like the Star Wars Experience location-based entertainment system, which cost US$10K and required a backpack. Carmack says all that has to be squeezed down to swim goggle size to go mainstream. Eyeglass size to become ubiquitous, like smartphones. Eventually, but it's some years out. Meanwhile, we should see low-end standalone systems (Google Glass 3.0?) and high-end tethered systems with a base station doing the graphics.
  • cshenton 4y ago
    Oculus is leading the pack in wireless by offering Airplay out of the box. I’d wager that’s part of their vision too. Also the UE5 demo running on a PS5 doesn’t mean that it could push pixels on two screens at the frame rate needed for VR.
• pyb 4y ago
  I don't know if this stuff is genuinely indispensable and novel, or if they're preparing to create a patent thicket around VR ? What would industry insiders think ?
• sys_64738 4y ago
  Wow, this is scary. These VR goggles remind me of the visitor's sunglasses in V. You don't think...? https://www.scifipulse.net/richard-herd-passes-to-the-final-frontier/ https://www.scifipulse.net/richard-herd-passes-to-the-final-...
• phkahler 4y ago
  That's nice, but one thing that will be needed more is a wider field of view and the ability to look around by moving your eyes instead of your head. All of these goals can be achieved with real holographic displays. We need the equivalent of a GPU optimised for computational holography, and a display with high enough resolution to render phase coherent interference patterns (rgb omg). No lenses will be required. This is the endgame for wearable displays.
• dukeofdoom 4y ago
  VR elections next. Can't wait to chose between Jack Johnson and John Jackson.
• colordrops 4y ago
  They are missing some items from their "VR Turing Test: * Full field of view. * Not having the feel of a clunky headset on your face. * Not having to regularly align and adjust the headset so that the visual looks right.
  • cshenton 4y ago
    That last one is a good point. The size of the “sweet spot” in an HMD isn’t discussed enough.
  • alphanumeric0 4y ago
    Came here to say 'field of view'. I have a Vive and my girlfriend mentioned the "field of view" limitation, which I didn't even notice at first but now I can't unsee it. I'd love to switch to Pimax but I'm unsure if most computers can even handle it.
• notyourwork 4y ago
  It’s been this way from the very start of virtual reality. It is called reality after all. What’s so special about Meta?
• causality0 4y ago
  Realism is not and has never been VR's problem. VR being a pain in the ass is VR's problem. The hardware is annoying to break out and get comfortable if you wear glasses. The software is an absolute nightmare. Backwards compatibility is pathetic compared to a PC and you're never quite sure if a game you heard about is going to be available for whatever platform you invested in. There's also no faith in durable VR products. The people who bought a headset and phone to use Samsung VR got fucked. The people who bought a headset and a Google Daydream-certified phone got fucked. The people who bought an Oculus Go got fucked. Maybe when I can get a headset that offers onboard focus-adjustment and some kind of omnidirectional treadmill I'll sink another thousand dollars into VR but until then I am done.
  • cshenton 4y ago
    Even as an enthusiast (5 headsets and counting) I have to agree. There have been several month periods where I didn’t use VR due to driver instability. That being said, body tracking is what made the platform click for me. Hanging out with friends from all over the world in an immersive space feels like the future.
    • cokeandpepsi 4y ago
      It's really popular with kids and at least one of my uncles, I couldn't be so fast to dismiss it the quest2 clicks with a lot of people
  • sien 4y ago
    Steam has somewhat sorted the backwards compatibility. Hooking up a Quest 2 to Steam works well and it means that you have a platform that will support numerous headsets. Where that leaves Meta though is an interesting question.
  • Kiro 4y ago
    I still use my Quest 1 every day. Honestly no idea what you're even referring to here.
    • 4y ago
• civilized 4y ago
  I don't understand how you can be a human with a real physical human body and seriously expect VR to ever be just like reality.
  • bobsmooth 4y ago
    Really good screens, full body motion tracking, haptic feedback, omni-directional treadmill. There are still ways to go.
  • 10x-dev 4y ago
    Isn't the human body essentially advanced hardware through which we perceive reality? If our computer hardware had the same specs and could provide the same visual fidelity, you might not be able to tell the difference.
• xor99 4y ago
  Open source the designs and drop the aggressive ad business / develop privacy preserving technologies
• freemint 4y ago
  ... by replicating all the oppression and destroying democracy in the mean time probably.
• lxe 4y ago
  I like to bring up the Newton/Palm/iPhone example when we talk about emergent tech. If you grew up in the 90s, you probably remember hand held PCs, and Apple Newton. Those were pretty cool. I wouldn't really HAVE to have one, but those were pretty neat. Then the "PDA" appeared -- I knew many who had those and used them for business. "Regular folks" didn't really need one but they could find these devices to be pretty useful. Then Blackberry came about, and then BOOM -- the capacitive touchscreen, and the iPhone with a few killer features that drastically changed mobile computing for the last 15 years. Everyone has one. Sometimes it takes decades for someone to "get it right" as tech matures. VR is in the pre-newton stage... if we are to compare the "final form" of VR to be what we think of smart phones now, VR is probably in the "60's or 70's era" stage of development. We probably won't see an explosion or a revolution of VR-tech for a few decades.
  • goodoldneon 4y ago
    I think VR/AR will see huge adoption a lot sooner. I see a few prerequisites: - Hi-res screens (no more screen door effect). - No external hardware needed: no desktop, no base stations, and no controllers. - Capable of 100% VR, 100% pass-through, and everything in between. In other words, VR and AR no longer refer to different hardware but rather different modes. - Under $500. Some units have some of those qualities but none have all of them. I can see units having all of those qualities within the next 10 years.
    • cwalv 4y ago
      I think having all those in the next 5 years is very likely .. assuming $500 is adjusted for inflation
• raguilera 4y ago
  Pretty cool, bummer Facebook is the one building it.
• togaen 4y ago
• talkingtab 4y ago
  A very long time ago I was quite stupid. I got an email about this weird thing and I tried it. It was slow, did nothing new and I dismissed it. This was the first web browser (NCSA Mosaic?). I dismissed it out of hand. The thing I missed was that despite the problems it had, in a fundamental way it changed how people saw and interacted with the internet. No one now has a clue as to what VR will eventually look like. Meta is clueless, VR critics are clueless. But the fact is that VR changes how we interact with the internet in a fundamental way. IMHO. :-)
• chrstphrknwtn 4y ago
  I feel like VR has been the next big thing almost my entire life. I remember watching TV shows in the late 90s talking about the VR revolution that was just around the corner. It seems that Virtual Reality™ is still just screens on faces. The whole article is about displays and lenses. Regarding the 'indistinguishable from reality', a virtual reality would need to include things like smells, environmental conditions like wind and rain and thinner air, and physical sensations like pain. In many ways we're not really sure what 'reality' is, so suggesting that one could make a virtual reality that is indistinguishable from actual reality doesn't even really make sense. Virtual Reality is just ersatz senses.
• rubicon33 4y ago
  People can hate on Meta, and hate on VR all they want, but I for one am really excited to see that there's a massive company going ALL IN on this technology. It's easy to be a skeptic right now. The headsets are heavy, the experiences aren't perfect, etc. But what you see now is just the beginning. The VR skeptics and naysayers are the same people who dismissed personal computing. VR is absolutely game changing and it is just a matter of time until the technology is there to truly win over even the most die hard skeptics.
  • danielmarkbruce 4y ago
    VR skeptics include a lot of people who believed, worked in VR, and then saw real user data. So far it's been the ultimate shelfware. It might well work out, but it's silly to just bucket VR skeptics as generally skeptical, or "the same people who X".
    • rubicon33 4y ago
      Fair enough. I acknowledge, nothing is certain in any market. But with that said I simply struggle to understand who isn't convinced that VR is the future of computing. It's currently in it's infancy from a technology standpoint, and even then is loads of fun. There's a huge upside, tons of potential, and a giant company going ALL IN to make it happen.
      • danielmarkbruce 4y ago
        I'm not convinced. I worked in VR. The reason I'm not convinced (anymore): humans are incredibly good at abstracting things. We don't need extremely high fidelity or realism to understand concepts, or interact with an environment. I am transmitting ideas from my brain to yours, right now, via text. Text. That's how good we are. As such, once the wow factor wears off, VR's downsides start to overwhelm the upsides. VR sickness is still a thing. Discomfort and heat. Isolation from the world. If I'm right, you'd expect a lot of crazy good demos, and then usage to fall off over time. This is the exact thing you see in user data. If you had to describe the value proposition of VR - what is it? "It's just really cool" isn't as compelling as I once thought.
• xdrosenheim 4y ago
  VR has come a long way, and I will always be happy to see improvements in the tech. But "indistinguishable" from reality? That is not gonna happen in our lifetime. I am rocking a Valve Index with 4 base stations, and I will say that the experience is a great one, absolutely, but Meta's goal is very far away...
• mjfl 4y ago
  I have no desire to do anything in VR, no matter how good it gets. I want to use my keyboard, to have a screen in front of me, to not have my person completely captured inside of a virtual world. And I don't understand anyone who would want that.
  • lambdasquirrel 4y ago
    It's kind of amusing that in the Bay Area, you have one huge company that's decided to stake a fair chunk of their future into this augmented / virtual reality, and then meanwhile, there's been all these old hippies and meditation teachers trying to get people to be more present in the (actual) real world.
  • xmprt 4y ago
    There are a lot of online activities that people can do that don't require a keyboard and mouse. Playing games, video calls, watching videos/movies, etc. I don't think VR is particularly good at any of these things right now and I don't trust Meta to do this in a way that's cheaper and better than what we currently have, but I welcome a future where it's easy to do these activities without having to sit in traffic or worry about space constraints.
  • thorncorona 4y ago
    And I would like to be able to put on a set of VR goggles and have a computer with an arbitrary number of windows, connected to a powerful computer. I don't understand why anyone would willingly let the monetary constraints of the physical world dictate how they interact with the world-at-large.
  • jjcon 4y ago
    My family is geographically spread out - we all meet up in vr once every couple weeks and hit a few rounds of mini golf/bowling or just chat for a while. It’s the closest thing we have to being in person for most of the year. It doesn’t replace that but it is way better than awkward group video calls where everyone has to take turns speaking… instead we break off naturally in real environments - have times when only one person is speaking or have side conversations with just a few of us… it’s great!
• unnouinceput 4y ago
  Let's say tomorrow it will solve all 4 problems mentioned in article. Let's say it will use quantum communication so no delay whatsoever. Let's say it will be cheaper than cheapest Android device and let's say it will be easier to use than put on / take off a pair of glasses. But if it will be locked to an FB account then fuck that shit.
• seydor 4y ago
  I m really glad they are trying. The Quest2 is the most innovative product in tech in a looong time and FB isn't even a hardware company. Beating Apple to it is a big feat. But VR is not going to be a wide success, it will be a really nice 360 image viewer for when those cameras become popular and cheap. It has its place , but it is obstructive. And it cannot become a status symbol, which imho is a big driver behind iphone sales
  • towaway15463 4y ago
    Hence NFTs in the metaverse. You get to show off your custom avatar and worlds instead of flexing your iPhone.
• wruza 4y ago
  The low popularity and adoption level of VR, and consequently the very miserable shape its industry is in, is in my opinion because VR doesn’t really address its most plausible and largest consumer even at the slightest: a gamer. As a moderate adult gamer who is able to cut through the technological bs and buy a decent headset, I have no idea why would I wave my hands, turn my head/body and jump around after a day of work. I just want to relax in my chair and have a jetpack-like experience of hover flying on a keypad/mouse/controller and maybe glancing +-15 degrees around when my own instincts scream to do so. VR/AR >itself< isn’t as amazing as companies try in their marketing. I just want a full-fov 3D display and a controller that could AR-pass-through a part of my table as some “deck” or a dashboard so I don’t spill my drink and can see my vape device and phone while having a 3D experience in popular 3D games. I want to point and click/tap/etc as usual, and only sometimes to point with my hand in the scenes which do not require a quick action, just as a more elaborate way of control, or to perform a real gesture. Mostly I want to hold a controller with both hands in a way that it points to something like a two-handed laser tag with buttons and sticks. I’m speaking not only of shooter/action games, but also quests, rpg, fixed-altitude (non first person) sims, third person character control in general. Basically the same games like on PC, but with a depth component and a little changes in controlling, if any. Instead we have: jump-around and slash games; games that require to walk, move hands and point/look around, cinematic panoramic “games”, meditation “games”, and other try-and-forget lo-fi bullshit which almost no one would buy if it wasn’t VR novelty. Which fades away in just a week. Basically, today’s VR is a tiny niche like any other flat-sales Steam niche. And it will stay so. Because most people like to sit and relax. When a job requires them to walk, jump and move their hands, they start to think about to maybe land into some office. When they want to talk to someone, they sit down. When they work with visuals, the last thing they want is to stay up and stress their hands. Hands at the belly is the most comfortable position for extended time. How VR companies are unable to understand these basic, stupidest and already explored principles is frustrating.
  • Adrig 4y ago
    That's quite bold of you to assume that you're the representation of the entirety of a 500+ billion market. Not everyone looks for lazy relaxing experiences. You mention shooters, but if you tried Pavlov you'd see how transformative this tech can be for the gaming industry. And don't get me started on horror games. The quest 2 is also currently selling more units than xbox series X and S, and the growth rate would make every investor salivate. There are plenty of projects and startups exploring this space. Gaming is the most flashy, pr friendly application but right now the big bucks are made in the enterprise applications and here again the potential is immense.
• celestialcheese 4y ago
  If they can deliver on presence, where I can look into someone's eyes in VR and have a conversation and feel like I'm with them in the room, I'll buy everyone in my family on day one. I get giddy thinking about being able to have weekly dinners or watch movies with my family across the country and have it feel like we're actually there. This feels far off, but it seems like zuck is getting the pieces together, like the Codec photorealistic avatars [1], to make this happen. Facetime, Zoom, etc, it's just draining not being able to hold eye contact because of camera placement. And people get distracted. And the current products, BigscreenVR and the weird cartoon avatars and VRChat, just don't do it for me. FB will probably fuck this up, but I see the vision. 1 - https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/28/22751177/facebook-meta-codec-avatar-real-time-environment-rendering-neural-interface https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/28/22751177/facebook-meta-c...
  • was_a_dev 4y ago
    Video calls already are deemed acceptable for a lot of people. But don't offer anywhere near the realism you describe. I reckon VR will win before being truly realistic
  • travbrack 4y ago
    Maybe a GAN could be used to bridge the gap. A little creepy but it's definitely good enough to trick my brain. https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2020/10/05/gan-video-conferencing-maxine/ https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2020/10/05/gan-video-conferenc...
  • KVFinn 4y ago
    >I get giddy thinking about being able to have weekly dinners or watch movies with my family across the country and have it feel like we're actually there. It's ridiculous how technology hasn't been able to replicate the 'hanging out on a couch watching Netflix or playing a videogame together' experience. All I need is the audio and video synching to work, with no feedback, and low latency conversation. I feel like you could stick a TV on your couch with a cellphone on top and accomplish this. Facebook could start by letting you do the most basic stuff like watch Netflix together. (Also it would help if Netflix wasn't 480P...)
• eszaq 4y ago
  The thing that turns me off of VR the most is rumors I've heard (sometimes here on HN) of eye health issues from excessive VR use. Is anyone working on that?
  • towaway15463 4y ago
    Probably not much worse than staring at a monitor for 9+ hours a day.
• puranjay 4y ago
  I can already tell I'm going to hate the next 30 years of technology.
• Netcob 4y ago
  I have an original Vive and I hardly use it, mostly because of how it takes a while to set up and put on, but also because of the depth-of-focus issue that gives me headaches. I still haven't heard about any viable solutions to this. And of course I'm not going to get a product that needs to be tied to a mandatory Facebook account.
• langsoul-com 4y ago
  VR tends to be uncomfortable after a few hours, I think that's a bigger issue for mass adoption.
• AltruisticGapHN 4y ago
  Imho right now the immersion is "good enough"... but what I notice the most is the lack of light. So HDR or some evolution of that is what's most lacking in my opinion. Even with the crappy compression on YouTube, you can watch a scene where you are on the beach in VR. After all, isn't that the dream? Of course you can't feel the waves splashing on your feet, but you can definitely enjoy the feeling of being in that space. However, the lack of the bright deep blue sky is really noticeable. Likewise in games. I definitely preferred Skyrim VR on Quest via a cable over the RIFT because the blacks are much deeper (oled), but on the other end of the spectrum, the sky is always lacking in brightness. My hunch is this is going to be hard to solve... I mean most homes today don't even have any kind of lighting that remotely reproduces the outdoor lighting.. I doubt that the small screen inside the headset will be able to simulate a bright blue sky... I mean I don't think it's just a matter of "intensity". But who knows I am clueless, it could be that the pixel density is what prevents the screen from giving the "bright blue sky" depth of light.
• AndrianV 4y ago
  Our culture, government, environment, and interpersonal relationships are all in shambles. Why don't we spend billions on solving real-world problems and having real-world interactions instead of using virtual reality technology to look around the artificial environment, move around in it, and interact with virtual features or items?
  • bckr 4y ago
    it's easier to make a lot of money this way also, race to the bottom. think about the 10 lowest-quality-of-life individuals you know. what do they talk about? I think it's a kind of tragedy of the commons. That said, things continue to be mostly OK, most of the time, for most people.
• intrasight 4y ago
  Holographic lenses - something I'd not heard of before. I am glad there's big R&D efforts in lenses as I think that's both the hardest and most important problem to solve. Moore's Law and software will solve all the other problems fairly quickly. But fixing the lens challenge requires hard-code physics. My bet is still on the arrival of visible-light meta-materials that have a negative index of refraction and therefore make flat lenses possible. That'll be a step function transition for XR, and open the path to mainstream adoption.
• jshaqaw 4y ago
  Interesting to me that here on Hacker News there are so many "VR will never happen" based on a static view of where tech is today. I don't think that staring into a lit rectangle with a keyboard based on 1800s technology is the be all end all of human-computer interfaces. I suspect mass AR/VR adoption will happen faster than most people imagine.
• maximus-decimus 4y ago
  I think it's gonna die the same as 3D tvs did. If it wants to have any chance of being popular, it needs to be comfortable with glasses. But even then, old people will have problems if they need to focus to see stuff up close. What are they gonna do, uses a VR lens to make small text in the meta verse bigger? VR is more immersive, but it's a lot less convenient than just a 2d screen and I don't see that changing.
  • msmenardi 4y ago
    Maybe with eye-tracking we can help with those concerns. Altering the visual representation of text, for example, if the eye-tracker notices you're having issues focusing on it.
• horns4lyfe 4y ago
  IMO the real killer app here is porn. So much internet tech has been heavily influenced by porn (video streaming, payment systems, etc.) and VR is the holy grail of porn.