9 ms·

It’s painful how hellbent Mark Zuckerberg is on convincing us that VR is a thing

82 points by shaburn 4y ago

russellbeattie 4y ago
In addition to issues like motion sickness and discomfort of strapping a headset to your face for extended periods, I feel there's a bigger issue with VR: It can only be used somewhere where you have complete trust in your environment. Somewhere where you wouldn't mind going to sleep. When you're "in" VR, you're vulnerable to anyone and anything around you. This means most public places are just not going to work. Even in your own home, you might be unwilling to disengage so completely if you have a mischievous sibling, an animal who might get underfoot or delicate/dangerous items near you that could be hit by a wayward swing of the arm. In general, you are completely reliant on others around you to warn you of danger - from wandering too close to walls or furniture, to watching out for others who might want to take advantage of your vulnerability. Offices might work, but not open plan. Classrooms are a non-starter. Airplane seats would be good (if not great), but not public transport like a subway or a city bus, even if you disregard the nausea issue. Even sitting in a high-end cafe or a public library, you'd need to have someone actively looking out for you. Again, would you be comfortable laying down for a nap in the middle of a park? If not, then using VR there isn't going to work. This is an unavoidable issue that can only be slightly mitigated with automated detection systems. There are inherent limits to a technical solution like that: Someone staring at you intently from a short distance away to gauge how they could best run up and grab your bag isn't something a proximity warning system would be able to counter. Already just concentrating on portable video games in public (phone, Switch, etc.) is such a distraction that you have to be wary of your surroundings - the idea of adding in complete sensory deprivation to it as well is farcical. VR simply isn't the next smartphone in terms of technology. It will forever be a niche used at home, alone. That isn't to say this is a small market - the entire video game industry has a similar use case - but Zuckerberg has his hopes set on a revolution akin to the iPhone and it just isn't going to happen. AR is a much more realistic opportunity. If Zuck was as smart as he thinks he is, he'd pivot and focus there. But I don't think it will happen until Apple launches their solution (whatever it may be), and by then it may be way too late.
- johnnymorgan 4y ago
  Always been my thinking on the logistical side of the equation. You need everyone to have VR gear at a ubiquitous level similar to monitors and I just don't see that happening. AR is a much easier sell with a much lower cost to entry
- GianFabien 4y ago
  What we need is a purpose built padded room in the house in which to partake in VR experiences. Perhaps the evolution of media rooms.
- rngname22 4y ago
  It's already true that someone could sneak up behind you in a movie theater, at a restaurant, on a park bench and punch you in the back of the head (or worse). It's also true that while driving on a highway you are putting your life in the hands of other drivers, some of which may be drunk or tired. When you fly, you are at risk of the plane crashing and you have absolutely no recourse. I can absolutely assure you there are some people who would use VR in public today and some who will refuse to ever do so, but let's not pretend that closing your eyes and ears off presents some fundamental transformation that is 10000x more dangerous than any experience humans have ever voluntarily subjected themselves to. I'm sure you could find someone in the 1600s who would make the same claim about wearing noise canceling headphones if someone from the future were to explain the idea to them.
  - uup 4y ago
    It’s pretty hard to just sneak up on someone in public. It’s not like your eyes or ears stop working when sitting on a park bench.
alexyz12 4y ago
Maybe to us but to the next generation no. And that's who's gonna use it.
- lampshades 4y ago
  A bunch of old people deriding VR while kids love it? Probably safe to ignore the old people at this point (yes, you, 30 year olds). I ask every kid that comes over to baby sit for me the same thing: 1. What do kinda think of VR and do you want to try this headset? 2. What do kids think of cryptocurrencies and NFTs? I don’t have a lot of data points, but VR excites kids, they know what NFTs are, and they are ambivalent about cryptocurrency.
  - the-printer 4y ago
    Not sure why this is downvoted. The kids of today were implicitly groomed for virtual reality by way of 1.5+ years of Zoom-based educations, where they were already communicating as talking torsos displayed on a screen. This is the same generation who is also being subconsciously prepared for greater state-sanctioned surveillance by way of their parents affixing AirTags to themselves and their belongings. It’s not about what you catch in the wash…but what you catch in the rinse.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    VR has excited kids for the last, what, 60 years? The reason adults are jaded by it is not because adults are lame but because VR continues to be lame despite all the decades-long optimism around it.
    - rapind 4y ago
      Can confirm. VR has already been exciting twice in my lifetime and it ended up sucking both times. I’m still hopeful though (but not for meta).
      - notafraudster 4y ago
        For me it's less about "sucking" or not, and more about understanding the limitations of what could be delivered even if it didn't suck. You could take every drawback of current VR and solve it and it'd still be additive, not revolutionary, because of essentially inherent limitations. Unless someone is proposing a holodeck, and even then I'm not convinced it replaces much of what we already have because there'll always be a basic efficiency to existing pre-VR control paradigms.
vlark 4y ago
Remember when Second Life was the next big thing? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
- lampshades 4y ago
  Pepperidge Farms might want to have their memory checked if they’re comparing this to Second Life. A company just pivoted their entire multi-hundred billion dollar business to do this and improve on this. Sure, you can joke around that early stages look like Second Life, but it’s a really lazy way to look at it with absolutely no consideration for what the future holds.
  - metadat 4y ago
    Second Life is actually better in every way (more engaging and fun) than anything we've seen come out of the Metapharce to date. FB was never a games company. Games are challenging in a distinctly different way compared to the $FB specialty- Platform Scale engineering. Even with Carmack helping them they're still not doing a convincing job of pulling it off to transform themselves into .. whatever they're trying to become. I couldn't even say, perhaps they want to become like MS Xbox or Slony PS5?
    - paulryanrogers 4y ago
      Carmack never made interesting worlds, settings or themes. That was done by others. His brilliance came from making tech and tools that could bring those worlds to life in an era when the tech seemed impossible. Yet VR is just so much harder, no one person alone can really polish to the level needed for mass market adoption. Heck even Doom (1993) era tech still makes a significant part of the population sick.
  - johnnymorgan 4y ago
    That doesn't mean the product/market fit can still fall short. I've just never been convinced that VR, at the hardware distribution level, will hit a high enough saturation point to become ubiquitous. AR I still feel will have a better chance at wide scale adoption, however its just my own assesment of the market now and that could change quickly if something hits that is sticky enough to get the user adoption to snowball.
michaelcampbell 4y ago
Zuck is hellbent on convincing us that whatever he believes, is correct. And mostly what he believes is whatever can make him money.
- Bellend 4y ago
  Reminds me of Elon Musk. I think it's a new category where a handful of people announce vapourware and billions flood in to back it with money but none of it exists in reality.
  - 0x445442 4y ago
    I don't know, reducing Trans-Atlantic network latency and bringing high speed internet to millions in currently un-served areas around the world while at the same time giving me an alternative to Cox seems worth while. Oh and being able to tweet that I think the benefit/cost ratio of mRNA vaccines is less than one for most people will be kind of cool as well.
    - vba616 4y ago
      >bringing high speed internet to millions in currently un-served areas around the world Not that that's bad in itself, but in today's news: "Elon Musk personally rejected a Ukrainian request to extend his satellite internet service to Crimea" Doing things that nobody else can gives you power nobody else has.
      - noncoml 4y ago
        Alternative to Cox? I don’t think you have actually tried Starlink, otherwise you wouldn’t say that. For me, bandwidth is between 60Mbps and 100Mbps. Latency 50-100ms. But the worst is how unreliable it is. Muktisecond blackouts many times during the day and subsecond time-outs many times per hour. SSH over Starlink is pretty painful. In best case it’s an alternative to wireless service providers, but otherwise I would get a stable reliable 25Mbps DSL over Starlink any day.
atoav 4y ago
VR could simultaneously be the freshest thing since sliced bread and Meta could do the most masterful job at baking, slicing and packaging it – I would still not use it. Why not? Simple: I don't trust Meta. And what I mean by that is, that I do actively distrust them in the sense of: if they made it, it must be bad for me and I should not use it. It is a little bit like if Malboro tried to sell you vitamin pills all of the sudden. Maybe they are good genuine vitamin pills, who knows, but I would not be the person to try that out. And even if there was conclusive proof they were good genuine vitamin pills, I would like to give my money to someone else. Facebook would be a decent product in the hands of people who knew how to wield it and how to earn (and keep) a users trust. Similar any VR they develop could be technologically really a masterpiece, it would howver still be a masterpiece managed by Meta.
- bergenty 4y ago
  Just use a fake username. What’s so hard about that?
  - kwyjibo_hunter 4y ago
    That still contributes to the bad thing existing.
  - atoav 4y ago
    You really think a username obsfuscates your behaviour at 60 frames per second?
  - parker_mountain 4y ago
    Do you really think you could use a tool that is, by its own admission, expressly designed for collaborative experiences without giving up your implicit identity? The answer, by the way, is no. Facebook has had highly-accurate "shadow profiles" for people who do not use their service for over a decade. Having a basic interaction graph, geo-location data, and being in the income band able to afford a $1500 headset begins to narrow down people a lot faster than you think. Not to mention the headset is technically capable of gathering skin tone (easily mapped by the hand recognition), IP address, height, and even performing facial recognition. Using a fake username achieves nothing. Unless you use it for sideloaded, offline, single player games and nothing else - at which point, the pro headset doesn't really make sense.
ralusek 4y ago
I'm honestly sick of these posts. VR is a thing. It's a really cool thing, and it is totally underappreciated for what it is. A single company controlling the metaverse is what's stupid.
- abhpro 4y ago
  Yeah I'm honestly amazed at some of the comments here about VR. It's going to be absolutely huge in the relatively near future, it's just not completely there yet.
- jfengel 4y ago
  Can you say what you think is really cool about it? It's fine if it's hard to explain. There are lots of things I can't explain the appeal of to me, and lots of things I didn't get until I tried. But I'll admit I don't get the appeal of VR, so if you've got a good take on it I'd love to hear it. It would be great to be excited about something new. (It's been a while.)
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Certain gaming experiences are really good in it. First person shooters are great. Horror games are so effective they are basically unplayable. I can imagine VR gaming becomes the new racing wheel. Something that never dies and never becomes ubiquitous. Just another way to enjoy entertainment.
    - Elhana 4y ago
      FPS are immersive, fun for an hour or so, but I'd rather play with keyboard/mouse/monitor anyway - I'm often tired after work and just want to chill for a bit. Actively moving in VR gear is more of an excersize. Otherwise you can go play paintball/softball etc and it would be 100% better than any current VR tech.
      - Gigachad 4y ago
        I can play VR shooters at home. I don't even know how I would play paintball as they are far out in rural areas without public transport access. That's an anecdote but its not unique. VR brings accessibility to a lot of people.
pyuser583 4y ago
I really wonder if FB has discovered some weird metric that can only be detected by VR which tells them if you’re going to buy stuff. Eye tracking?
- jamesfinlayson 4y ago
  Probably, though I don't think they're alone - I remember reading an article a few years ago above Valve Software experimenting with VR, eye-tracking and skin conductivity (i.e. sweating) to control the horde in Left 4 Dead.
- lithos 4y ago
  Facebook has problems with browsers. Sandboxed away, no file system access, and user having full control of their browser (ad blocking, noscript, and similar). With VR you're in full control of writing a driver (and if you go full Sony style rootkit most people won't even read the news story), you have full control of what launcher/store users must use (no troubling addons like ad blocking), you have full access to video of the room that VR is happening in (if you choose to), eye tracking as you mentioned, mouth tracking is getting popular, and have full access to anything you can fit on a fitness watch (heart rate, blood pressure, alone is enough to guess a person health especially since you have their movement logs. maybe someday in the future sweat analysis).
lalos 4y ago
It’s interesting how Zuck is focused on living out his life in actual reality because he has the means to. Bought mansion in Hawaii, surfs, runs, etc. Maybe he knows there’s a huge market of people that prefer to hide from their reality and escape to a digital world. That is kinda of what is happening when someone is glued all day to social media but instead of a phone in your hand it is glued to your head. It’s a bet that as time passes more and more people will have no other choice than to see pretty colors in a screen since they have nothing else to enjoy. I’ve met people that come from heavily polluted areas and they are shocked when they see a blue river or a blue ocean, maybe VR for them would be amazing.
- htrp 4y ago
  ready player one much?
popilewiz 4y ago
qualudeheart 4y ago
I’m bullish on VR in the long term. Many will prefer virtual worlds to the dreary real world.
tchock23 4y ago
I was really upset when FB bought Oculus, but have to admit that they did a decent job with the acquisition (other than the FB login fiasco) and I respect taking the risk on what could be the next thing. I don’t think they’ll ‘win’ in the end because of their reputation and business model, but I think we’ll look back and say that VR likely would have died without their investment in Oculus and various studios in the ecosystem.
- jasfi 4y ago
  VR may have been slowed, but it wouldn't have died. It's difficult to achieve the level of immersion VR is aiming at, that is, complete immersion. A lot of people are happy with the immersion that desktop computers offer and don't want or need any more than that. That's because VR is seen as not been fully there yet.
noncoml 4y ago
More cringy than painful
petre 4y ago
What's worse than Zuck? CG animated Zuck.
t-3 4y ago
VR is cool to think about, but as is it's dangerous and ultimately just a gimmick without a lot of expensive peripherals. AR is safe and has real-world uses other than games/porn and simulation training.
fallingfrog 4y ago
The metaverse is a flying car. What I mean by that is: every once in a while we are promised that soon, we will all go to work in flying cars. But they never arrive. Powered flight has been a reality for more than a century- what gives? Well, of course, the problem is that when you put wings on a car what you get is not a flying car, but an airplane. If you run out of gas in your car, you stop. If you run out of gas in your airplane, you die. So that means triple checking fuel levels and filing flight plans. Cars drive on a road, in a predictable way, so they can be packed close together. Airplanes are just traveling every which way in the sky, so you have to have air traffic controllers. There are a myriad of ways in which the concept of a "flying car" is just a misunderstanding of the constraints involved. Same with the metaverse. The concept is reality, but virtual. And the thing is: when you take reality and put it in a computer what you get is not the same real world, just virtual. What you get is a totally different thing that has different uses. Segway made this same mistake. That's why the metaverse will fail. It's a concept based on applying the usage patterns of one system to a different system where they don't work anymore. Sometimes the opposite thing happens: everyone else is trying to make a flying car, and someone comes along and figures out that those are really airplanes. This happened with the iphone. Everyone else was manufacturing regular cell phones, but computerized. Steve Jobs realized that when you put a touch screen and a powerful computer in a phone, what you have is a new and different thing that has new and different uses. It goes both ways.

82 points by shaburn 4y ago

In addition to issues like motion sickness and discomfort of strapping a headset to your face for extended periods, I feel there's a bigger issue with VR: It can only be used somewhere where you have complete trust in your environment. Somewhere where you wouldn't mind going to sleep. When you're "in" VR, you're vulnerable to anyone and anything around you. This means most public places are just not going to work. Even in your own home, you might be unwilling to disengage so completely if you have a mischievous sibling, an animal who might get underfoot or delicate/dangerous items near you that could be hit by a wayward swing of the arm. In general, you are completely reliant on others around you to warn you of danger - from wandering too close to walls or furniture, to watching out for others who might want to take advantage of your vulnerability. Offices might work, but not open plan. Classrooms are a non-starter. Airplane seats would be good (if not great), but not public transport like a subway or a city bus, even if you disregard the nausea issue. Even sitting in a high-end cafe or a public library, you'd need to have someone actively looking out for you. Again, would you be comfortable laying down for a nap in the middle of a park? If not, then using VR there isn't going to work. This is an unavoidable issue that can only be slightly mitigated with automated detection systems. There are inherent limits to a technical solution like that: Someone staring at you intently from a short distance away to gauge how they could best run up and grab your bag isn't something a proximity warning system would be able to counter. Already just concentrating on portable video games in public (phone, Switch, etc.) is such a distraction that you have to be wary of your surroundings - the idea of adding in complete sensory deprivation to it as well is farcical. VR simply isn't the next smartphone in terms of technology. It will forever be a niche used at home, alone. That isn't to say this is a small market - the entire video game industry has a similar use case - but Zuckerberg has his hopes set on a revolution akin to the iPhone and it just isn't going to happen. AR is a much more realistic opportunity. If Zuck was as smart as he thinks he is, he'd pivot and focus there. But I don't think it will happen until Apple launches their solution (whatever it may be), and by then it may be way too late.

johnnymorgan 4y ago
Always been my thinking on the logistical side of the equation. You need everyone to have VR gear at a ubiquitous level similar to monitors and I just don't see that happening. AR is a much easier sell with a much lower cost to entry
GianFabien 4y ago
What we need is a purpose built padded room in the house in which to partake in VR experiences. Perhaps the evolution of media rooms.
rngname22 4y ago
It's already true that someone could sneak up behind you in a movie theater, at a restaurant, on a park bench and punch you in the back of the head (or worse). It's also true that while driving on a highway you are putting your life in the hands of other drivers, some of which may be drunk or tired. When you fly, you are at risk of the plane crashing and you have absolutely no recourse. I can absolutely assure you there are some people who would use VR in public today and some who will refuse to ever do so, but let's not pretend that closing your eyes and ears off presents some fundamental transformation that is 10000x more dangerous than any experience humans have ever voluntarily subjected themselves to. I'm sure you could find someone in the 1600s who would make the same claim about wearing noise canceling headphones if someone from the future were to explain the idea to them.
- uup 4y ago
  It’s pretty hard to just sneak up on someone in public. It’s not like your eyes or ears stop working when sitting on a park bench.

alexyz12 4y ago

Maybe to us but to the next generation no. And that's who's gonna use it.

lampshades 4y ago
A bunch of old people deriding VR while kids love it? Probably safe to ignore the old people at this point (yes, you, 30 year olds). I ask every kid that comes over to baby sit for me the same thing: 1. What do kinda think of VR and do you want to try this headset? 2. What do kids think of cryptocurrencies and NFTs? I don’t have a lot of data points, but VR excites kids, they know what NFTs are, and they are ambivalent about cryptocurrency.
- the-printer 4y ago
  Not sure why this is downvoted. The kids of today were implicitly groomed for virtual reality by way of 1.5+ years of Zoom-based educations, where they were already communicating as talking torsos displayed on a screen. This is the same generation who is also being subconsciously prepared for greater state-sanctioned surveillance by way of their parents affixing AirTags to themselves and their belongings. It’s not about what you catch in the wash…but what you catch in the rinse.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  VR has excited kids for the last, what, 60 years? The reason adults are jaded by it is not because adults are lame but because VR continues to be lame despite all the decades-long optimism around it.
  - rapind 4y ago
    Can confirm. VR has already been exciting twice in my lifetime and it ended up sucking both times. I’m still hopeful though (but not for meta).
    - notafraudster 4y ago
      For me it's less about "sucking" or not, and more about understanding the limitations of what could be delivered even if it didn't suck. You could take every drawback of current VR and solve it and it'd still be additive, not revolutionary, because of essentially inherent limitations. Unless someone is proposing a holodeck, and even then I'm not convinced it replaces much of what we already have because there'll always be a basic efficiency to existing pre-VR control paradigms.

vlark 4y ago

Remember when Second Life was the next big thing? Pepperidge Farms remembers.

lampshades 4y ago
Pepperidge Farms might want to have their memory checked if they’re comparing this to Second Life. A company just pivoted their entire multi-hundred billion dollar business to do this and improve on this. Sure, you can joke around that early stages look like Second Life, but it’s a really lazy way to look at it with absolutely no consideration for what the future holds.
- metadat 4y ago
  Second Life is actually better in every way (more engaging and fun) than anything we've seen come out of the Metapharce to date. FB was never a games company. Games are challenging in a distinctly different way compared to the $FB specialty- Platform Scale engineering. Even with Carmack helping them they're still not doing a convincing job of pulling it off to transform themselves into .. whatever they're trying to become. I couldn't even say, perhaps they want to become like MS Xbox or Slony PS5?
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    Carmack never made interesting worlds, settings or themes. That was done by others. His brilliance came from making tech and tools that could bring those worlds to life in an era when the tech seemed impossible. Yet VR is just so much harder, no one person alone can really polish to the level needed for mass market adoption. Heck even Doom (1993) era tech still makes a significant part of the population sick.
- johnnymorgan 4y ago
  That doesn't mean the product/market fit can still fall short. I've just never been convinced that VR, at the hardware distribution level, will hit a high enough saturation point to become ubiquitous. AR I still feel will have a better chance at wide scale adoption, however its just my own assesment of the market now and that could change quickly if something hits that is sticky enough to get the user adoption to snowball.

michaelcampbell 4y ago

Zuck is hellbent on convincing us that whatever he believes, is correct. And mostly what he believes is whatever can make him money.

Bellend 4y ago
Reminds me of Elon Musk. I think it's a new category where a handful of people announce vapourware and billions flood in to back it with money but none of it exists in reality.
- 0x445442 4y ago
  I don't know, reducing Trans-Atlantic network latency and bringing high speed internet to millions in currently un-served areas around the world while at the same time giving me an alternative to Cox seems worth while. Oh and being able to tweet that I think the benefit/cost ratio of mRNA vaccines is less than one for most people will be kind of cool as well.
  - vba616 4y ago
    >bringing high speed internet to millions in currently un-served areas around the world Not that that's bad in itself, but in today's news: "Elon Musk personally rejected a Ukrainian request to extend his satellite internet service to Crimea" Doing things that nobody else can gives you power nobody else has.
    - noncoml 4y ago
      Alternative to Cox? I don’t think you have actually tried Starlink, otherwise you wouldn’t say that. For me, bandwidth is between 60Mbps and 100Mbps. Latency 50-100ms. But the worst is how unreliable it is. Muktisecond blackouts many times during the day and subsecond time-outs many times per hour. SSH over Starlink is pretty painful. In best case it’s an alternative to wireless service providers, but otherwise I would get a stable reliable 25Mbps DSL over Starlink any day.

atoav 4y ago

VR could simultaneously be the freshest thing since sliced bread and Meta could do the most masterful job at baking, slicing and packaging it – I would still not use it. Why not? Simple: I don't trust Meta. And what I mean by that is, that I do actively distrust them in the sense of: if they made it, it must be bad for me and I should not use it. It is a little bit like if Malboro tried to sell you vitamin pills all of the sudden. Maybe they are good genuine vitamin pills, who knows, but I would not be the person to try that out. And even if there was conclusive proof they were good genuine vitamin pills, I would like to give my money to someone else. Facebook would be a decent product in the hands of people who knew how to wield it and how to earn (and keep) a users trust. Similar any VR they develop could be technologically really a masterpiece, it would howver still be a masterpiece managed by Meta.

bergenty 4y ago
Just use a fake username. What’s so hard about that?
- kwyjibo_hunter 4y ago
  That still contributes to the bad thing existing.
- atoav 4y ago
  You really think a username obsfuscates your behaviour at 60 frames per second?
- parker_mountain 4y ago
  Do you really think you could use a tool that is, by its own admission, expressly designed for collaborative experiences without giving up your implicit identity? The answer, by the way, is no. Facebook has had highly-accurate "shadow profiles" for people who do not use their service for over a decade. Having a basic interaction graph, geo-location data, and being in the income band able to afford a $1500 headset begins to narrow down people a lot faster than you think. Not to mention the headset is technically capable of gathering skin tone (easily mapped by the hand recognition), IP address, height, and even performing facial recognition. Using a fake username achieves nothing. Unless you use it for sideloaded, offline, single player games and nothing else - at which point, the pro headset doesn't really make sense.

ralusek 4y ago

I'm honestly sick of these posts. VR is a thing. It's a really cool thing, and it is totally underappreciated for what it is. A single company controlling the metaverse is what's stupid.

abhpro 4y ago
Yeah I'm honestly amazed at some of the comments here about VR. It's going to be absolutely huge in the relatively near future, it's just not completely there yet.
jfengel 4y ago
Can you say what you think is really cool about it? It's fine if it's hard to explain. There are lots of things I can't explain the appeal of to me, and lots of things I didn't get until I tried. But I'll admit I don't get the appeal of VR, so if you've got a good take on it I'd love to hear it. It would be great to be excited about something new. (It's been a while.)
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Certain gaming experiences are really good in it. First person shooters are great. Horror games are so effective they are basically unplayable. I can imagine VR gaming becomes the new racing wheel. Something that never dies and never becomes ubiquitous. Just another way to enjoy entertainment.
  - Elhana 4y ago
    FPS are immersive, fun for an hour or so, but I'd rather play with keyboard/mouse/monitor anyway - I'm often tired after work and just want to chill for a bit. Actively moving in VR gear is more of an excersize. Otherwise you can go play paintball/softball etc and it would be 100% better than any current VR tech.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      I can play VR shooters at home. I don't even know how I would play paintball as they are far out in rural areas without public transport access. That's an anecdote but its not unique. VR brings accessibility to a lot of people.

pyuser583 4y ago

I really wonder if FB has discovered some weird metric that can only be detected by VR which tells them if you’re going to buy stuff. Eye tracking?

jamesfinlayson 4y ago
Probably, though I don't think they're alone - I remember reading an article a few years ago above Valve Software experimenting with VR, eye-tracking and skin conductivity (i.e. sweating) to control the horde in Left 4 Dead.
lithos 4y ago
Facebook has problems with browsers. Sandboxed away, no file system access, and user having full control of their browser (ad blocking, noscript, and similar). With VR you're in full control of writing a driver (and if you go full Sony style rootkit most people won't even read the news story), you have full control of what launcher/store users must use (no troubling addons like ad blocking), you have full access to video of the room that VR is happening in (if you choose to), eye tracking as you mentioned, mouth tracking is getting popular, and have full access to anything you can fit on a fitness watch (heart rate, blood pressure, alone is enough to guess a person health especially since you have their movement logs. maybe someday in the future sweat analysis).

lalos 4y ago

It’s interesting how Zuck is focused on living out his life in actual reality because he has the means to. Bought mansion in Hawaii, surfs, runs, etc. Maybe he knows there’s a huge market of people that prefer to hide from their reality and escape to a digital world. That is kinda of what is happening when someone is glued all day to social media but instead of a phone in your hand it is glued to your head. It’s a bet that as time passes more and more people will have no other choice than to see pretty colors in a screen since they have nothing else to enjoy. I’ve met people that come from heavily polluted areas and they are shocked when they see a blue river or a blue ocean, maybe VR for them would be amazing.

htrp 4y ago
ready player one much?

popilewiz 4y ago

qualudeheart 4y ago

I’m bullish on VR in the long term. Many will prefer virtual worlds to the dreary real world.

tchock23 4y ago

I was really upset when FB bought Oculus, but have to admit that they did a decent job with the acquisition (other than the FB login fiasco) and I respect taking the risk on what could be the next thing. I don’t think they’ll ‘win’ in the end because of their reputation and business model, but I think we’ll look back and say that VR likely would have died without their investment in Oculus and various studios in the ecosystem.

jasfi 4y ago
VR may have been slowed, but it wouldn't have died. It's difficult to achieve the level of immersion VR is aiming at, that is, complete immersion. A lot of people are happy with the immersion that desktop computers offer and don't want or need any more than that. That's because VR is seen as not been fully there yet.

noncoml 4y ago

More cringy than painful

petre 4y ago

What's worse than Zuck? CG animated Zuck.

t-3 4y ago

VR is cool to think about, but as is it's dangerous and ultimately just a gimmick without a lot of expensive peripherals. AR is safe and has real-world uses other than games/porn and simulation training.

fallingfrog 4y ago

The metaverse is a flying car. What I mean by that is: every once in a while we are promised that soon, we will all go to work in flying cars. But they never arrive. Powered flight has been a reality for more than a century- what gives? Well, of course, the problem is that when you put wings on a car what you get is not a flying car, but an airplane. If you run out of gas in your car, you stop. If you run out of gas in your airplane, you die. So that means triple checking fuel levels and filing flight plans. Cars drive on a road, in a predictable way, so they can be packed close together. Airplanes are just traveling every which way in the sky, so you have to have air traffic controllers. There are a myriad of ways in which the concept of a "flying car" is just a misunderstanding of the constraints involved. Same with the metaverse. The concept is reality, but virtual. And the thing is: when you take reality and put it in a computer what you get is not the same real world, just virtual. What you get is a totally different thing that has different uses. Segway made this same mistake. That's why the metaverse will fail. It's a concept based on applying the usage patterns of one system to a different system where they don't work anymore. Sometimes the opposite thing happens: everyone else is trying to make a flying car, and someone comes along and figures out that those are really airplanes. This happened with the iphone. Everyone else was manufacturing regular cell phones, but computerized. Steve Jobs realized that when you put a touch screen and a powerful computer in a phone, what you have is a new and different thing that has new and different uses. It goes both ways.