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> Facebook (sorry, Meta) is the only one continuing to advance the VR industry. I respect them for that I would argue Valve is the main driver of VR in terms o
by maxsilver 4y ago
> Facebook (sorry, Meta) is the only one continuing to advance the VR industry. I respect them for that
I would argue Valve is the main driver of VR in terms of actual software + hardware + platform building. Facebook is just the biggest spender on VR right now.
> Who would actually use this?
Which is funny to me, because I can instantly think of over a dozen use cases for this stuff -- if Facebook was never involved. Use it for training, especially on-site training, use it for conferencing, use it for 3D visualization (basically half of the Hololens demos cross over)
But with Facebook owning it, the value prop of Oculus Quest is zero. It's no longer a hardware or software platform, it's a console, effectively no different than a Nintendo Switch or a PlayStation. Doesn't matter if the Quest was the best thing ever invented, no one reading Hacker News could deliver any products or solutions on it without Facebook owning/controlling it, so there's no reason for anyone to try.
- peter303 4y agoA "killer app" may be new employee training. I heard in a Stanford computer seminar that VR accelerates training with stronger learning.
- pavlov 4y agoThe iPhone and iPad are also consoles in this sense, and they’ve been quite successful as software platforms.
- pornel 4y agoThis is why Facebook is so obsessed with VR. They're jealous of Apple's anti-competitive walled garden in mobile, and the're hoping VR will be the next thing to grab.
- throwoutway 4y agoI love that you called it a console, because I got the weird flashback sense that I was watching a Nintendo Wii demo (of the teacher & student demo on the webpage)
- dylan604 4y ago>Use it for training, especially on-site training, wouldn't this be off-site training? if you were on-site, why would you need the VR unit?
- oliwary 4y agoI am glad that Meta is involved - I doubt anyone else would invest as heavily in VR as they are doing right now. Whether they end up being the main player or not in the future, I think this level of investment is actively inspiring the entire industry, and showing what is possible. (Compare similar views by Palmer Luckey [0]) Similarly, while essentially all smartphones before the iPhone were stylus or keyboard driven, within years of the iPhone being released there was a viable competitive platform in android. In the VR space, I highly doubt the vive or the pico headset would exist if it was not for the investments of Meta. [0] https://venturebeat.com/business/palmer-luckey-i-left-facebook-enraged-but-zuckerberg-is-vrs-top-backer/ https://venturebeat.com/business/palmer-luckey-i-left-facebo...