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I'm baffled by the reaction here. I agree that productive VR work is still not ready for prime time, but most of you haven't tried any of this (let alone the ne

I'm baffled by the reaction here. I agree that productive VR work is still not ready for prime time, but most of you haven't tried any of this (let alone the new hardware) and you're already dismissing even the possibility of it becoming good in the future. Reminds me of the Dropbox thread. You know which one. Also what I really don't understand is how anyone can have anything against them spending $$$ on R&D? Worst case scenario: their whole productivity angle doesn't work out, they lose billions upon billions in the coming decade and eventually scrap the whole thing. Then they've still invented a lot of super interesting tech along the way. High resolution displays, low latency rendering pipelines, novel human interface technologies, high fidelity hand tracking, lightweight and sharp lenses, the list goes on and on. There's lots of applications for each of those things and almost nobody else is willing to spend this much cash for such an uncertain roi. I, for one, am super excited about what the future iterations of this will look like.

marricks 4y ago
I think there’s a lot of hate because Facebook is an immensely hate-able company that needs its next cash cow and it sure hopes this is it. Look at the history of it’s core product to see where VR will go if it takes off: Facebook was the cool place for college students to connect with friends. No ID requirements to sign up and no ads for years. Your feed was just your friends post. Things were great. Now there’s ads in your feed and you need to definitively prove your identity. Not to mention the history of scandals and privacy violations. They’ll do whatever it takes to get those first 100 million users. Once they get them though all bets are off. Privacy will only get worse, they’ll give up on the initial power users because who cares about a couple million hard core gamers?
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  I never understood the hate for Facebook. Everytime someone points out their reasons, usually it has major flaws in 1) Inconsistency 2) Hypocrisy 3) Ideological bias 4) Bandwagoning. So if someone wants to hate Facebook, if they have principled position, I respect that. But that's hardly ever the case in my experience online and offline. I am not a fan of most social media companies, but I love the tech scene, and the progress Meta is making in this field. Should be universally applauded even by the harshest critics of Facebook.
  - jiscariot 4y ago
    The NYT writing FB hit pieces every week for the last three years, hasn't helped that perception.
  - marricks 4y ago
    I don’t think “progressing in a field” is worthy of applause if you’re just going to use that progress to hurt people. Technology doesn’t just magically make peoples lives better, sorry but the cats out of the bag on that one.
    - pcthrowaway 4y ago
      Not defending Facebook, but that is essentially what capitalism is, and virtually all "successful" companies follow the same path. I get how someone who doesn't question it or doesn't object to it could be confused by the hate for facebook.
  - cowtools 4y ago
    What field? the field of time-wasting technology?
    - blobbers 4y ago
      They’re trying to make us more connected to each other… by getting rid of reality :-/
    - yreg 4y ago
      Entertainment is not time wasting and VR is not just for entertainment.
  - echevil 4y ago
    As far as I can remember it all started since Trump got elected. Before then the tone on Facebook was much more positive than it is now
    - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
- imposter 4y ago
  Isn't everyone doing that though? With Apple stepping into the Ads business, it is almost clear that they will eventually wipe out any third party competition, especially facebook from their platform. Facebook has realised that it desperately needs a hardware channel to survive in the cut-throat competitive field the tech industry has become, and VR is that channel.
  - marricks 4y ago
    Yep, our current system sucks. I happen to think Facebook is much, much, worse than Apple but who knows in 5 or 10 years. Apple is building its own VR headset and making money off VR hardware seems like a stretch.
    - elevaet 4y ago
      That doesn't seem a huge stretch to me. Apple has always tried to be on the leading edge in novel human-computer interaction hardware: the mouse, the touch screen, the pocket computer, the wrist computer...
      - automatic6131 4y ago
        The wrist computer is useless though
        bjconlan 4y ago
        Their current version/vision perhaps is yes. But they're still the market leaders (Although Apples problem with innovation procrastination when market leaders is frustrating). I guess we have to wait for competition here before we see things move faster(particularly better human interfacing etc). All in all they shoot to the expectations of their users. (And the competition simply plays catch up) Im waiting for the "total recall" (the new one) style hand/pane/internal projections but that might skip watches and go straight to a neuralink thing.
        4y ago
- jstummbillig 4y ago
  They did absolutely monstrous shit in regards to privacy, that makes the meta of today look like a finely tuned privacy machine that serves to protect every user to the teeth. Only nobody cared because that was the time prior to the latest privacy awakening, and apparently we still have a hard time putting it in the right context. If the best thing you can say about a company is that it was not big and nobody cared about their (what are now considered) atrocities back when, then you should probably reconsider your evaluation.
  - __alexs 4y ago
    GP is kind of downplaying the real horror of Facebook which is that they (allegedly) enabled genocide.
    - leaflets2 4y ago
      And not many seem to care or remember. Was so far away, to another group of people, won't happen here, what does it matter Except that to some extent, similar things are happening here -- Putin was, from what I've read, using FB to do psyops, to prepare his 2014 takeover of parts of Ukraine: making up and spreading stories about Russians getting abducted etc, ... Which helped him with the 2014 annexations, and leading up to his invasion and war today. More people dead than in Myanmar. A bit surprising that the current US gov doesn't seem to look at FB as a psyops threat against itself?
  - codemusings 4y ago
    > They did absolutely monstrous shit in regards to privacy, that makes the meta of today look like a finely tuned privacy machine that serves to protect every user to the teeth. How in the world did you come to that conclusion? Any Meta app you have on your smartphone is doing what they can to collect heuristics in order to identify you and serve you Ads. How is that any different? It's just not as obvious. > Only nobody cared because that was the time prior to the latest privacy awakening [...] You make it sound like it's a fad or the user simply didn't care in the 2000s. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. If a private company would park a van in front of your door to observe you 24/7 in order to sell mundane details about your daily life to advertisers you'd be up in arms. Yet in the digital space it's no big deal.
- noduerme 4y ago
  After wanting a metaverse since 1992, if anyone could make me not want one it's Zuck.
- krick 4y ago
  True, and it isn't just hate for the sake of hate. I would like to have a device like that (not for meetings, god forbid, but I'd like to read without having to hold a book in by hands, or to watch a 360° 3D movie, you know), but I'm just not gonna buy it from Facebook. To clarify, I'm not gonna buy it from any company that will require me to sign-up and log-in somewhere to use the device I bought.
  - techguy24 4y ago
    "To clarify, I'm not gonna buy it from any company that will require me to sign-up and log-in somewhere to use the device I bought." Dont both Android and iOS devices do this?
- rib3ye 4y ago
  Maybe they didn’t require ID, but for the first year(s) they did require a valid college, and then business domain in your email at sign up so it was really anon as you’re making it out to be.
  - dgfitz 4y ago
    I’m glad you pointed this out, it seems to have been a lost fact. When I got my fb account it was when fb was still adding schools a chunk at a time, mine happened to be one of them. My friends who went to schools not yet “in” or didn’t go to school at all we’re quite jealous. This span of time lasted less than a year but part of the initial draw of fb was the exclusive nature of it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nfw2 4y ago
Which Dropbox thread? Not everyone on HN has been here a long time
- atorodius 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
  - svnt 4y ago
    Maybe rose-colored glasses but man I miss that HN.
    - chaostheory 4y ago
      That HN died the day pg announced that HN would be more general interest instead of being more focused on startups, tech, and programming
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      Isn’t that comment an example of the ignorant and snide HN that we don’t want?
- killingtime74 4y ago
  Indeed some us were in high school or even grade school at the time
chrisseaton 4y ago
> Also what I really don't understand is how anyone can have anything against them spending $$$ on R&D? Worst case scenario: their whole productivity angle doesn't work out, they lose billions upon billions in the coming decade and eventually scrap the whole thing. Err well people who own Meta, which is likely a lot of people here through shares, investment funds, pensions, probably don’t want that do they?
BoorishBears 4y ago
You're really leaning your entire arm on the scale here. People have a visceral reaction to the implication that donning a computer on your head and interacting via Corporate Memphis styled cartoon avatars is any sort of future that we should seek. It's that simple. That video of a woman sitting lifelessly at her table while her avatar engages in hearty expressive conversation puts a lump of discomfort in my throat. It's a repulsively dystopian outcome for social interaction, but Meta wants to sell it as a future we're missing out on. People do not like that. I've followed VR since it's infancy, owned most of the major headsets, used it in an office environment, and I will say while VR is cool, the promise of the metaverse is deeply offensive to the senses of most people, myself included.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Putting on my VR headset to get in a meeting with the rest of my team does not sound nearly as unreasonable though. It could be the same as starting zoom. Like, at this price point, and with these features that isn’t it, but I can see it in a non-dystopian way. It’s just that it’s Facebook providing the hardware that scares me.
  - zo1 4y ago
    > "It’s just that it’s Facebook providing the hardware that scares me." This is the key part. VR somehow skipped right into "walled garden" and "platfrom" territory right off the bat. It's not just hardware that is interchangeable and multi-use with pluggable things and apps. I think a lot of the people weary of Facebook's VR headset would be put at ease to a large degree if this was an 100% open ecosystem where just one of Facebook's entities is providing the hardware.
    - supermatt 4y ago
      > VR somehow skipped right into "walled garden" and "platfrom" territory right off the bat Thats not what happened. One of the biggest walled gardens spent a tiny portion of their massive wealth to move into another market by purchasing the market leader. Its this behaviour that needs to stop. Corps should be restricted to a single trade category.
extheat 4y ago
HN generally had good SNR. However when it comes to certain things remotely involving a controversial party, it can inspire lots of off topic/uninteresting/uninformative commenting. Just have to tune it out. Anywho, I totally agree that whatever happens with the metaverse doesn’t make their R&D any less valuable—-motion handling, their work into optics, neuronal signal decoding and a bunch of other multidisciplinary areas of research they’re reaching into. It’s really cool to see some of the things out of Meta AI/Reality Labs, and I hope they continue keeping things open.
- ahahahahah 4y ago
  > HN generally had good SNR This was never true and perpetuating that myth contributes to the worst characteristic of HN.
  - puzzlingcaptcha 4y ago
    It's almost as if "S" is different things to different people.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    How far back have you been lurking?
everyone 4y ago
This is made by facebook so who cares.
zer0zzz 4y ago
It’s all just pure facebook hate. I remember some of same people who today trash vr and anything coming out of meta-RL were literally drooling at totally absurd incomplete and awful VR demos at GDC 7 or 8 years ago at a time when I really thought VR was totally unusable and unplayable. Now that the tech is actually nice enough that it is usable and sometimes even actually better for certain things folks are just jumping on the hate fb bandwagon. You’re absolutely right that most people here haven’t even tried some of this stuff. Personally I never gave VR a thought myself but my brother wanted a quest so I bought one, now I have my own and am looking forward to trying what’s next.
- archontes 4y ago
  For what it's worth, you're at least right about me; I truly hate fb, and their simple involvement in a product is sufficient reason not to purchase it unless it's been thoroughly broken by the modding community.
  - Jarmsy 4y ago
    I'm right with you there. Hating and boycotting FB and all their products is the clear ethical choice. I sincerely hope the company goes out of business.
  - saiya-jin 4y ago
    Same here, I don't get the whataboutism some folks here try to spin off, like we are some luddites shaming VR concept itself. No, its purely FB, clearly long-term amoral company, that gets all the (well deserved) hate. I stand behind the statement that humankind is worse-off long-term with FB existing and trying to get into all aspects of our existence to sell more ads. I wouldn't care about it at all if US had good regulators re privacy and other aspects of these sneaky corporations. But it clearly doesn't, cash flow is the king, hence one should be reasonably warry of such behavior, with company wielding so much power. The above more or less applies also to ie Google and Apple, but based on behavior FB is in its own category.
- chaostheory 4y ago
  Most people on HN aren’t trying VR because HN’s users are aging like Slashdot’s user base years back. A lot of HN comments on VR are simply variants of “get off my lawn”. You’d think people would actually try something for a decent amount of time before panning it with a novella length comment. If I were to guess, most HN users have only tried Google Cardboard and not modern VR On that note, I understand why people dislike meta even if they’re making really cool stuff, but people have to realize that Meta isn’t the only VR company. I have a feeling that only Apple can change the popular perception of VR
daavidhauser 4y ago
thanks for saying what i couldnt put into words like that! I think the tech is super cool and people shouldn’t hate that much on Meta
- yabatopia 4y ago
  I don't hate Meta/Facebook, I like it as much as cancer. Super cool tech is not a free pass. The tech doesn't stand on it's own, the Quest Pro is an integral part of a dystopian world ruled by Meta. It's not hate, I just don't want to support or enable Meta's dystopia.
jen_h 4y ago
I’m really excited, too, but there are serious issues in Meta’s execution: They really need to get their UX, customer service, and hardware/firmware release processes solid. It’s foolhardy and expensive to test hardware in prod, especially in a down economy with logistics/resourcing issues, and it’s absolutely nuts to disregard passionate, on-the-hour-Oculus-is-so-great (Boomer) users who’ve thrown thousands into the platform, telling them to delete their Facebook accounts (Facebook accounts they now are now dependent upon) to resolve unverified firmware borkage. (Also, a more lightweight headset would help get the rest of us there. ;) Where’d ya go, Google Glass?) Looking at past historical patterns, though, I truly believe a smaller company will emerge from the recession in the next year or two that gets us closer than Meta or any other large company ever has or will.
backtoyoujim 4y ago
$1500.00 as a hardware loss leader for Perky Pat 2022 versus eat food and pay too much for freaking rent. Humans do not own VR anything.
- DonHopkins 4y ago
  You earned my upvote with the PKD 3SOPA reference. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Luckey: an evil alt-right-wing extremist pulling the wool over people’s eyes with his robotic right hand, artificial eyes, and steel teeth, who returned from an expedition to the Prox system in possession of a new alien hallucinogen Chew-Z to compete with Can-D, to perpetrate an uncanny creepy plot about adults on drugs playing together with physical miniaturized doll houses in order to escape their dystopian existence by retreating into to a mega-corporation controlled virtual reality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_Eldritch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_E... Silicon Valley Keenan Feldspar's VR (S4E8) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8MAV9jhf04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8MAV9jhf04 Silicon Valley (HBO) - HooliVR Goggles (Phone Exploding) S04E09 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUAnN-FXcdE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUAnN-FXcdE
  - revolvingocelot 4y ago
    ctrl+f "stigmata" Damn it, someone made the joke. Don't forget the promise Palmer Luc-- I mean Eldritch makes Mayerson: that Chew-Z offers incredible opportunity to allow formative experiences customized to the user, yet Lucke-- I mean Eldritch is so controlling of the shared hallucination that Mayerson surmises death is the correct course of action.
    - DonHopkins 4y ago
      At least Palmer Eldritch's sister never married a "gaslighting creep" like Matt Gaetz, and he never threw a fundraiser for Dr. Oz where the quack Doctor gave a speech in front of Adolph Hitler's car. https://www.thedailybeast.com/matt-gaetzs-future-sister-in-law-says-hes-a-gaslighting-creep https://www.thedailybeast.com/matt-gaetzs-future-sister-in-l... https://deadline.com/2022/10/dr-oz-adolf-hitler-senate-fundraiser-john-fetterman-1235138816/ https://deadline.com/2022/10/dr-oz-adolf-hitler-senate-fundr...
sbcdz 4y ago
>Reminds me of the Dropbox thread Cute. Whenever someone wants to defend their dear little niche/dead end product they always make that reference on HN. Similarly on slashdot with the ipod comment. Yet there is a subtlety that every person who makes this broken analogy are missing (apart from the fact, that, well, if someone made a book that kept a record of all instances this analogy was made on HN, it would be hard to miss the fact that.. no, X pet product defended Y times on hn didn't become the next dropbox) The criticisms against dropbox and the first ipod were nerds who thought there was already, -within the same product category- good enough things, underestimating the importance of things like UI, accessibility, portability (in the case of the ipod when people compared it to the gigantic creative jukeboxes and mp3 CD-R players). They were criticism targeted at a single product, not an entire category, because no one sane would think there's no use for tools that remotely sync documents, or gives you the ability to listen to your entire music collection on the go. Dropbox and the ipod were great, refined products, but products that stood on the shoulders of giants and markets that were already plentiful by the time they came out. Keeping backups of documents is a need a great amount of people have. People were already listening to portable music when the ipod came out. They were product that did important things better than anyone else on the market, but products that entered markets that were already quite mature. Meanwhile VR as a whole is still a niche. VR enthusiasts are more like the nerds of old who made fun of dropbox. They have very little understanding of the wants of the general public. Shut yourself in a closed uncanny valley virtual world wearing an uncomfortable headset for hours? This is more like the people who thought rolling your own was better than dropbox. Zuckerberg is not the next Steve Jobs. If anything, he's the carbon copy of the typical slashdot reader. His mindset is thoroughly alien to the human mind. https://qz.com/1331956/mark-zuckerberg-keeps-forgetting-about-humans/ https://qz.com/1331956/mark-zuckerberg-keeps-forgetting-abou... >In the Recode interview, Zuckerberg falls back on the term “use case” to describe people using Facebook Live to stream their own suicides in real time. He repeats this characterization, going on to call suicide-streaming a “use” of Facebook Live: “There were a small number of uses of this, but people were using it to…show themselves self-harm or there were even a few cases of suicide.” This is the sort of people who think the future of humanity is to enclose yourself harder in your little virtual bubble. The everyday man finds this sort repellent.
- 4y ago
geuis 4y ago
> Then they've still invented a lot of super interesting tech along the way. Google has also developed a lot of interesting tech along the way. Most of it is junk you can buy for $5 at the Salvation Army now. The problem with "Meta" is that it's pushing something without any buy-in from an audience that cares about it. The actual audience for VR is almost completely at the early adopter, 1974 Altair stage. We're at the stage where the enthusiasts are figuring out what works and what doesn't. That's mostly what social interactions will work at first, and what hardware mods are most important to expand those. As much crap as people give Ready Player One, there's an analogy in there. Facebook is the mega corp trying to take over. They're the "Innovative Online Industries (IOI)" from the novel, a "multinational corporation bent on a well-funded effort to find the Easter egg in order to take control of the OASIS and monetize it." (Direct quote from Wikipedia.) As a counter example, let me tell you about an early experience I had in Second Life circa 2005 or so. I got involved with SL for a few years back then. There was one singular critical moment I experienced that convinced me there was something very special happening back then which I really haven't experienced again yet. In SL your avatar can fly around. Here I am on my low level 2005 pc and low res 2005 monitor with 2005 headphones. I'm cruising around a bit I fly over this hill into one of the weirdest things I had ever seen at that point in my life of 25 years. I fly over the crest of this hill and run into an amphitheater with a stage. Same thing we've all seen dozens of times in real life. There are dozens of other avatars all in the crowd sitting in different areas of the amphitheater. Most of the audience was oddly wearing furry costumes. On the stage is a band of other characters, all doing different animations of playing fake instruments. So the way I'm describing this seems pretty normal these days and nothing impressive. But this was 2005. What hit me really hard is that these are all real people experiencing the same event AT THE SAME TIME. That was the aha moment. The band wasn't just npc characters. There was an actual band of 5 or so people together in the real world streaming their show into SL for a bunch of other people from all over the world to watch in real time. Sure, it's like 50 people dressed as sexy foxes and stuff, but they were all witnessing this musical performance in real time through this weird 3rd party virtual interface that very accurately replicated a real world experience in terms of spatial placement and audio (to some extent). For me, it was this super weird magical moment that gave me a glimpse of what the future actually could be. Everything was built by the people from their avatars to the band people to the person that designed and built the stage and amphitheater. And it was in a shared virtual/physical space where I was able to randomly encounter it just by flying around and crossing a certain hill. To this day I've probably had a similar AHA moment a handful of times. Today you can watch bathtub fun time on Twitch, or people begging for subs on YouTube, or people spamming TikTok to promote their SoundCloud accounts. But none of that comes close to the experience of discovery in 2005 of finding an impromptu rock show in Second Life with furry foxes watching in real-time. In modern times, I haven't bought a VR headset yet. I've played with it when available, and I've seen a taste of VRChat and some other awesomely weird modern experiences. I'm firmly convinced that whatever actually ends up becoming "the metaverse" isn't coming from an out of touch older millennial billionaire who took the wrong message from a particular book/movie or it's actual spiritual predecessor Snowcrash. There's a last sentence here that I tried to write a few times and failed. Weirdos is wrong, so is "alternate thinkers". Young people? That's wrong too because since 2005 Second Life's population of users has been mostly flat but consistent, and they tend to be older tech savvy folks that have used these platforms for decades before they got "popular". I don't have a label, and that's probably the point. There eventually may be lots of people who dive into "the metaverse", but those people are so diverse that IOI/Meta isn't going to be able to dictate whatever it becomes.
ekianjo 4y ago
vr is not taking off. the market for VR is growing but still way less than initially expected. and the whole VR for work seems antithetic to companies asking people to go back to the office.
hrbf 4y ago
I believe the visceral pushback is happening because this is a perfect example of a technology and platform that should not be. And most people instinctively sense that. We need more humanity, care for ourselves and others, more love and connection to humans and everything surrounding us, to experience what it means to be alive and being a part of the universe. This tech aims to isolate us even more than we already are, through its fundamental design. When you put human values above the maniacal quest of a boy billionaire for relevance and power, you come to the conclusion that this is the entirely wrong path. The hardware is inconsequential.
- Zee2 4y ago
  As someone working in the space (not Meta): The overall goal is the exact opposite of what you're saying here. Just about every single person I've ever talked to in this industry wants to build devices to bring human beings together across space + time. Allowing folks to see each other eye to eye and form real human connections where otherwise it would be impossible. XR is probably the least isolating technology in history if you consider what it can do in terms of breaking down boundaries of time, distance, ability, and appearance. It is the most humanistic of any technology I've ever used in my life, in the way that it's explicitly designed to bridge human, emotional connections where none could exist before. Just one of many perspectives...
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    I’m so
  - mola 4y ago
    Yeah, and Facebook was always about connecting ppl. You are working Ina capitalistic system, the only motive for your company is profit for shareholders. When you are small and inconsequential, other motives might rule. But the trajectory is clear. If you succeed, your company turn into a paper clip machine for which humans are just meat for the grinder. This is how it always plays out.
    - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
lazzlazzlazz 4y ago
> I'm baffled by the reaction here. I agree that productive VR work is still not ready for prime time, but most of you haven't tried any of this (let alone the new hardware) and you're already dismissing even the possibility of it becoming good in the future. Reminds me of the Dropbox thread. You know which one. This is Hacker News' reaction to almost every new thing that isn't already several years past the early adopter end of the curve (crypto, VR, a lot of bio). The community has become a bit stiff and conservative, for a tech community.
- automatic6131 4y ago
  >The community has become a bit stiff and conservative, for a tech community. A natural reaction to decades of "overpromise, under deliver".
  - hrbf 4y ago
    I’d argue that naive tech-positivity has run its course and more initial believers are sobering up to the reality of what kind of monsters this debonair optimism helped create.
shrimpx 4y ago
By the way, the comments in the "Dropbox thread" are overwhelmingly supporting and positive.
stereolambda 4y ago
There's some truth in that. People are uncomfortable with the thought of becoming (even more?) Mark's serfs and want to dispel that by magically willing the tech into being garbage. The fact is that in 2022 many parts of bigtech-skeptic narrative are being planted in the mainstream culture and politics: the mature thing would be to lean into that, as a responsible technologist, and not rely on nerdy rituals of thrashing 'ware on forums. As much as it is fun, it serves a different purpose. I mean, if it is dangerous for us as human beings and citizens, just say it aloud, we won't be saved by the tech being buggy. Myself, I have enough stuff to do in the big screen and audio system world and don't crave VR immersion, though it was fun when I tried. But I can see the potential and know that people are already using it in gaming and virtual workspaces. You can potentially buy one simple thing for your computer, not waste that much space and have the immersive experience. One thing I want is that it is open (software and hardware wise) and not connected to any surveillance machine, like we should be able to expect from a freaking appliance.
deleted 4y ago
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astannard 4y ago
I think the metaverse is something very cool and for it to be associated with Facebook which comes across as a toxic company causes resentment. Something cool and futuristic that I've read and dreamed about has been tainted before coming to fruition because of who is making it. I hear great things about the headsets but I just dont trust the company that makes them.
graderjs 4y ago
Zuck, has wanted to build VR social world for years. How do you see that relating to his other visions /ambitions ? What do you think people will really find meaningful in this VR product 10 years in future?
usrbinbash 4y ago
I a not dismissing the possibility of it becoming "good" (as in "works well technically"). Throw enough money and talent at almost any technical problem, and the solution can become "good". I doubt a wide adoption in the market. Just because something new has been created doesn't mean the market will adopt it. It has to have a tangible advantage. If it is meant to replace something, like existing workflows and methods it needs to have an advantage so massive, that it isn't just better than what exists already, but is worth the cost of any transitions as well. And I just don't see that. Why would I wear a device, that is still big even in its newest incarnation, on my head when I have 3 ultra-high-definition monitors? Why would I use controllers when I have a mouse, keyboard and a touch-sensitive screen? I already have video chat, speech recognition, chat, mail etc. at my disposal. I already have all these forms of communication on a device that fits in my pocket for when I'm out of office. I already have all these things, and they work, they are configured, they are integrated in my employers existing infrastructure, workflows, methods, they are compliant with whatever regulations apply, they are tried, tested and budgeted for. I mean, how would I even make the case for this to my employer? "Hey, Mr. CEO sir, my team needs devices that we have never used before in this company, to do exactly what we do now, except you would be able to watch our avatars sitting in front of virtuals screens while we do it, that is, if you wear one as well. Btw. the thing costs 1799 $ per employee."
pushback00001 4y ago
Isn’t it tech policing itself? Meta is structured in a way no one can say no to Zuckerberg. That pretty much leaves only general pushback and outright legislation to counter his judgements. All of them individually and collectively. So yes a tech forum is alight with negativity. We’re also one of the canaries in the mine that should be listened to in this. He’s eroded freedoms (misinformation, rampant gaslighting, bullying, etc), invaded peoples privacy, and there’s no remedy but defection.
samuli 4y ago
There are more important problems than low latency rendering pipelines in the world that they could be solving instead. What Meta is doing, is creating themselves a platform where they can sell ads, because they've been hurt by recent privacy changes by Apple and fear the market share of Google Chrome.
pooper 4y ago
> Reminds me of the Dropbox thread. You know which one. I didn't see the thread until later but back then I thought the Dropbox was a sucker that I was taking advantage of because I could get extra 50 MB or whatever by just walking up to someone in my dorm and referring them to use Dropbox, even if they had no intention to continue using Dropbox... I want to be less naive now. Facebook (it doesn't deserve the Meta name) will NEVER, EVER do anything for "good". I believe it simply is not capable of doing any "good". We cannot let Facebook be the gatekeepers of a pay toilet, much less the (purported) future of our communications. Back to the topic though, I thought xbox kinect was trying to solve all of these problems a long time ago with just a couple of cameras. what happened?
magic_hamster 4y ago
I am a connoisseur of VR from back when you could count the polygons on 3D models. I am definitely an enthusiast, and even got lucky enough to develop some VR applications (mostly for HTC Vive). So I'm definitely all in on VR! But I'm all out when it comes to Meta and Facebook, who have repeatedly proven they are simply a bad actor. The gross privacy negligence, the disgusting mistreatment of their users and advertisers alike, and being a major factor in today's terrible social issues, Meta is a huge net negative for humanity. They can hand those out for free, and I will still not take it. I am done feeding them data. I want no part of their ecosystem, even by proxy. It doesn't even matter what the product does - I will not take it from Meta. I realize some people here work for Meta and it's not personal. But you must encounter this opinion from time to time. I have friends who work at Meta and it's incredible to see how they brace for impact every time they tell someone where they work. I feel bad for them, but Meta earned this notorious reputation with noticeable effort.
fcanela 4y ago
I'm a user of Immersed (an VR for productivity app) and I use to code frequently. I wanted QPro to be a success. I expected at least a reasonable bump in resolution. What was released is just disappointing and I can not justify paying that price point. I would go for Pico4 before of QPro.
2pEXgD0fZ5cF 4y ago
I had access to Oculus dev kits back in the day and am now a Valve Index owner, which means that 1. I've been closely following VR for almost 10 years now 2. I've invested some money for the best VR hardware available (at the time). My take on Facebook and why I am fully on board with the skepticism here: - VR hardware, at least on the higher end, is pretty good. It has been "there" for many possible applications at least in terms of fidelity since ~2019. VR being so uninteresting is mostly a software problem in my opinion, not a hardware problem, even if the hardware development is important to make adoption more realistic without the need to invest a ton of money. - The novelty of VR wears off rather quickly. I barely use my VR hardware nowadays, and right now I can't imagine a scenario in which VR makes anything in my everyday life easier and more efficient, quite the opposite. While I don't doubt that it will happen, I very much doubt that Facebook will be involved in the next important step forward. They are just too out of touch with reality (outside of the investor/silicon valley/zuckerberg bubble) for that. - The software is just lacking, and everything Facebook is presenting when it comes to software is in many ways a step back compared to VR products from as early as 2014 (e.g. VR Chat)...Acting as if Facebook is pushing anything forward here is just naive following of buzzwords at best, dishonest parroting of marketing talk at worst. - Anything a company like Facebook might plan with VR is just uninteresting, because it will ultimately have dark patterns, manipulation and monetization baked into its very core, be it directly or indirectly. Rather than developing VR as a "next step" in personal computing, Facebook is just racing to build an ad infested dystopian walled garden as fast as they can, why would I get excited about that in the slightest? I'm still generally very interested in VR, but the only thing I'll get excited about is VR device from a manufacturer that doesn't have backstabbing me as his ultimate goal and will base all his decisions on being Facebook. And yes, I still remember "Oculus won't require a Facebook Sign-In", and while that has been reverted for now, I won't believe for a second that the people working at Facebook aren't eager to get something equivalent back as soon as enough users are on board.
willis936 4y ago
If the tech is so interesting then why is the "tech specs" tab filled with no substance? I can barely begin to speculate what would make this hardware stand out over the competition, let alone make confident conclusions. The hardware having the potential to be cool isn't a strong point to make because the people selling the hardware aren't even making it.
nelsonic 4y ago
It’s great to be excited for the future. Agreed. It’s also good to be cautious about a future where Facebook owns all the Patents to the tech. That sounds like a dystopia to me.
yokoprime 4y ago
Having tried and used current VR hardware for many hours, often long sessions, I can absolutely see the potential. But the hardware and sofware has a long long way to go. Looking just at Meta and the Meta Quest 2, the top 10-20 apps are the same today as they were a year ago. There are some cool fitness type apps, but for the time being its a novelty and I don't see doing meetings in VR as something I have any need or desire to do once the novelty wears off.
p0pcult 4y ago
Meta makes the world a worse place. It always has. The flagship product, FB, was built to creep on women. The sooner Meta dies, the better for our planet.
prng2021 4y ago
Yes I hate Meta but that’s not the reason for my opposition towards this. Even Microsoft announced an integration and I don’t hate that company. In aggregate, company's are pouring billions of dollars and who know how many person hours into VR meetings. Engineers are a limited resource. Investment is a limited resource. This could be going towards trying to solve many more useful problems. I see people talking about the immersiveness being the biggest selling point. That's so true for video games but do people really think immersion is what's missing with remote work? I've been a fully remote employee for many years. It's the real time chat, drastically improved document collaboration, and video conferencing that has made the biggest impact. I've never yearned to be taken out of the coffee shop I'm working in or my home office and transported to a virtual conference room where I have to physically move my arms and head just like the real world. Just because some tech works for one use case doesn't mean it does for another. Our touch screens are great on a phone. Terrible in a car where you need to be able to control things without focusing your eyes on it. People look at this new tech and are flying to it because it's the new shiny thing. If you're in this group, think about what a marvel a screen, keyboard, and mouse are. You only twitch your eyes and barely move your hands and fingers at all. Yet, you can rapidly type, switch between totally different applications, scroll huge canvases of interfaces, etc all while barely expending any energy at all. That's that I call efficiency.
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leshow 4y ago
I would be really surprised if they were "inventing" high-dpi displays or new lenses. The likely scenario to me seems that they would just buy what is already available or perhaps pay another shop to customize something for them, not invent a new technology. What it really seems like they are doing is having a serious case of NIH syndrome and re-writing a bunch of stuff that already exists elsewhere. People hate it because Facebook has not proven itself to be a good steward of technology, and I think people are more broadly questioning whether we should elevate these companies to stewards of our lives in the first place.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
I would be super excited for this if it was from any other company. But as things stand, the more successful this thing is, the more Facebook thrives. I really can’t cheer on anything that prolongs the life of Facebook.
31337Logic 4y ago
That's because you don't understand their business model.
charlieyu1 4y ago
The last thing people want is more monitoring of their work. VR work, compared to video calls, is more monitoring. You could have checked your phone during video calls which you couldn't do it with VR. And neither video calls nor VR is proven to be more productive than emails.

marricks 4y ago

I think there’s a lot of hate because Facebook is an immensely hate-able company that needs its next cash cow and it sure hopes this is it. Look at the history of it’s core product to see where VR will go if it takes off: Facebook was the cool place for college students to connect with friends. No ID requirements to sign up and no ads for years. Your feed was just your friends post. Things were great. Now there’s ads in your feed and you need to definitively prove your identity. Not to mention the history of scandals and privacy violations. They’ll do whatever it takes to get those first 100 million users. Once they get them though all bets are off. Privacy will only get worse, they’ll give up on the initial power users because who cares about a couple million hard core gamers?

systemvoltage 4y ago
I never understood the hate for Facebook. Everytime someone points out their reasons, usually it has major flaws in 1) Inconsistency 2) Hypocrisy 3) Ideological bias 4) Bandwagoning. So if someone wants to hate Facebook, if they have principled position, I respect that. But that's hardly ever the case in my experience online and offline. I am not a fan of most social media companies, but I love the tech scene, and the progress Meta is making in this field. Should be universally applauded even by the harshest critics of Facebook.
- jiscariot 4y ago
  The NYT writing FB hit pieces every week for the last three years, hasn't helped that perception.
- marricks 4y ago
  I don’t think “progressing in a field” is worthy of applause if you’re just going to use that progress to hurt people. Technology doesn’t just magically make peoples lives better, sorry but the cats out of the bag on that one.
  - pcthrowaway 4y ago
    Not defending Facebook, but that is essentially what capitalism is, and virtually all "successful" companies follow the same path. I get how someone who doesn't question it or doesn't object to it could be confused by the hate for facebook.
- cowtools 4y ago
  What field? the field of time-wasting technology?
  - blobbers 4y ago
    They’re trying to make us more connected to each other… by getting rid of reality :-/
  - yreg 4y ago
    Entertainment is not time wasting and VR is not just for entertainment.
- echevil 4y ago
  As far as I can remember it all started since Trump got elected. Before then the tone on Facebook was much more positive than it is now
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
imposter 4y ago
Isn't everyone doing that though? With Apple stepping into the Ads business, it is almost clear that they will eventually wipe out any third party competition, especially facebook from their platform. Facebook has realised that it desperately needs a hardware channel to survive in the cut-throat competitive field the tech industry has become, and VR is that channel.
- marricks 4y ago
  Yep, our current system sucks. I happen to think Facebook is much, much, worse than Apple but who knows in 5 or 10 years. Apple is building its own VR headset and making money off VR hardware seems like a stretch.
  - elevaet 4y ago
    That doesn't seem a huge stretch to me. Apple has always tried to be on the leading edge in novel human-computer interaction hardware: the mouse, the touch screen, the pocket computer, the wrist computer...
    - automatic6131 4y ago
      The wrist computer is useless though
      - bjconlan 4y ago
        Their current version/vision perhaps is yes. But they're still the market leaders (Although Apples problem with innovation procrastination when market leaders is frustrating). I guess we have to wait for competition here before we see things move faster(particularly better human interfacing etc). All in all they shoot to the expectations of their users. (And the competition simply plays catch up) Im waiting for the "total recall" (the new one) style hand/pane/internal projections but that might skip watches and go straight to a neuralink thing.
        4y ago
jstummbillig 4y ago
They did absolutely monstrous shit in regards to privacy, that makes the meta of today look like a finely tuned privacy machine that serves to protect every user to the teeth. Only nobody cared because that was the time prior to the latest privacy awakening, and apparently we still have a hard time putting it in the right context. If the best thing you can say about a company is that it was not big and nobody cared about their (what are now considered) atrocities back when, then you should probably reconsider your evaluation.
- __alexs 4y ago
  GP is kind of downplaying the real horror of Facebook which is that they (allegedly) enabled genocide.
  - leaflets2 4y ago
    And not many seem to care or remember. Was so far away, to another group of people, won't happen here, what does it matter Except that to some extent, similar things are happening here -- Putin was, from what I've read, using FB to do psyops, to prepare his 2014 takeover of parts of Ukraine: making up and spreading stories about Russians getting abducted etc, ... Which helped him with the 2014 annexations, and leading up to his invasion and war today. More people dead than in Myanmar. A bit surprising that the current US gov doesn't seem to look at FB as a psyops threat against itself?
- codemusings 4y ago
  > They did absolutely monstrous shit in regards to privacy, that makes the meta of today look like a finely tuned privacy machine that serves to protect every user to the teeth. How in the world did you come to that conclusion? Any Meta app you have on your smartphone is doing what they can to collect heuristics in order to identify you and serve you Ads. How is that any different? It's just not as obvious. > Only nobody cared because that was the time prior to the latest privacy awakening [...] You make it sound like it's a fad or the user simply didn't care in the 2000s. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. If a private company would park a van in front of your door to observe you 24/7 in order to sell mundane details about your daily life to advertisers you'd be up in arms. Yet in the digital space it's no big deal.
noduerme 4y ago
After wanting a metaverse since 1992, if anyone could make me not want one it's Zuck.
krick 4y ago
True, and it isn't just hate for the sake of hate. I would like to have a device like that (not for meetings, god forbid, but I'd like to read without having to hold a book in by hands, or to watch a 360° 3D movie, you know), but I'm just not gonna buy it from Facebook. To clarify, I'm not gonna buy it from any company that will require me to sign-up and log-in somewhere to use the device I bought.
- techguy24 4y ago
  "To clarify, I'm not gonna buy it from any company that will require me to sign-up and log-in somewhere to use the device I bought." Dont both Android and iOS devices do this?
rib3ye 4y ago
Maybe they didn’t require ID, but for the first year(s) they did require a valid college, and then business domain in your email at sign up so it was really anon as you’re making it out to be.
- dgfitz 4y ago
  I’m glad you pointed this out, it seems to have been a lost fact. When I got my fb account it was when fb was still adding schools a chunk at a time, mine happened to be one of them. My friends who went to schools not yet “in” or didn’t go to school at all we’re quite jealous. This span of time lasted less than a year but part of the initial draw of fb was the exclusive nature of it.

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nfw2 4y ago

Which Dropbox thread? Not everyone on HN has been here a long time

atorodius 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
- svnt 4y ago
  Maybe rose-colored glasses but man I miss that HN.
  - chaostheory 4y ago
    That HN died the day pg announced that HN would be more general interest instead of being more focused on startups, tech, and programming
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    Isn’t that comment an example of the ignorant and snide HN that we don’t want?
killingtime74 4y ago
Indeed some us were in high school or even grade school at the time

chrisseaton 4y ago

> Also what I really don't understand is how anyone can have anything against them spending $$$ on R&D? Worst case scenario: their whole productivity angle doesn't work out, they lose billions upon billions in the coming decade and eventually scrap the whole thing. Err well people who own Meta, which is likely a lot of people here through shares, investment funds, pensions, probably don’t want that do they?

BoorishBears 4y ago

You're really leaning your entire arm on the scale here. People have a visceral reaction to the implication that donning a computer on your head and interacting via Corporate Memphis styled cartoon avatars is any sort of future that we should seek. It's that simple. That video of a woman sitting lifelessly at her table while her avatar engages in hearty expressive conversation puts a lump of discomfort in my throat. It's a repulsively dystopian outcome for social interaction, but Meta wants to sell it as a future we're missing out on. People do not like that. I've followed VR since it's infancy, owned most of the major headsets, used it in an office environment, and I will say while VR is cool, the promise of the metaverse is deeply offensive to the senses of most people, myself included.

Aeolun 4y ago
Putting on my VR headset to get in a meeting with the rest of my team does not sound nearly as unreasonable though. It could be the same as starting zoom. Like, at this price point, and with these features that isn’t it, but I can see it in a non-dystopian way. It’s just that it’s Facebook providing the hardware that scares me.
- zo1 4y ago
  > "It’s just that it’s Facebook providing the hardware that scares me." This is the key part. VR somehow skipped right into "walled garden" and "platfrom" territory right off the bat. It's not just hardware that is interchangeable and multi-use with pluggable things and apps. I think a lot of the people weary of Facebook's VR headset would be put at ease to a large degree if this was an 100% open ecosystem where just one of Facebook's entities is providing the hardware.
  - supermatt 4y ago
    > VR somehow skipped right into "walled garden" and "platfrom" territory right off the bat Thats not what happened. One of the biggest walled gardens spent a tiny portion of their massive wealth to move into another market by purchasing the market leader. Its this behaviour that needs to stop. Corps should be restricted to a single trade category.

extheat 4y ago

HN generally had good SNR. However when it comes to certain things remotely involving a controversial party, it can inspire lots of off topic/uninteresting/uninformative commenting. Just have to tune it out. Anywho, I totally agree that whatever happens with the metaverse doesn’t make their R&D any less valuable—-motion handling, their work into optics, neuronal signal decoding and a bunch of other multidisciplinary areas of research they’re reaching into. It’s really cool to see some of the things out of Meta AI/Reality Labs, and I hope they continue keeping things open.

ahahahahah 4y ago
> HN generally had good SNR This was never true and perpetuating that myth contributes to the worst characteristic of HN.
- puzzlingcaptcha 4y ago
  It's almost as if "S" is different things to different people.
- concordDance 4y ago
  How far back have you been lurking?

everyone 4y ago

This is made by facebook so who cares.

zer0zzz 4y ago

It’s all just pure facebook hate. I remember some of same people who today trash vr and anything coming out of meta-RL were literally drooling at totally absurd incomplete and awful VR demos at GDC 7 or 8 years ago at a time when I really thought VR was totally unusable and unplayable. Now that the tech is actually nice enough that it is usable and sometimes even actually better for certain things folks are just jumping on the hate fb bandwagon. You’re absolutely right that most people here haven’t even tried some of this stuff. Personally I never gave VR a thought myself but my brother wanted a quest so I bought one, now I have my own and am looking forward to trying what’s next.

archontes 4y ago
For what it's worth, you're at least right about me; I truly hate fb, and their simple involvement in a product is sufficient reason not to purchase it unless it's been thoroughly broken by the modding community.
- Jarmsy 4y ago
  I'm right with you there. Hating and boycotting FB and all their products is the clear ethical choice. I sincerely hope the company goes out of business.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  Same here, I don't get the whataboutism some folks here try to spin off, like we are some luddites shaming VR concept itself. No, its purely FB, clearly long-term amoral company, that gets all the (well deserved) hate. I stand behind the statement that humankind is worse-off long-term with FB existing and trying to get into all aspects of our existence to sell more ads. I wouldn't care about it at all if US had good regulators re privacy and other aspects of these sneaky corporations. But it clearly doesn't, cash flow is the king, hence one should be reasonably warry of such behavior, with company wielding so much power. The above more or less applies also to ie Google and Apple, but based on behavior FB is in its own category.
chaostheory 4y ago
Most people on HN aren’t trying VR because HN’s users are aging like Slashdot’s user base years back. A lot of HN comments on VR are simply variants of “get off my lawn”. You’d think people would actually try something for a decent amount of time before panning it with a novella length comment. If I were to guess, most HN users have only tried Google Cardboard and not modern VR On that note, I understand why people dislike meta even if they’re making really cool stuff, but people have to realize that Meta isn’t the only VR company. I have a feeling that only Apple can change the popular perception of VR

daavidhauser 4y ago

thanks for saying what i couldnt put into words like that! I think the tech is super cool and people shouldn’t hate that much on Meta

yabatopia 4y ago
I don't hate Meta/Facebook, I like it as much as cancer. Super cool tech is not a free pass. The tech doesn't stand on it's own, the Quest Pro is an integral part of a dystopian world ruled by Meta. It's not hate, I just don't want to support or enable Meta's dystopia.

jen_h 4y ago

I’m really excited, too, but there are serious issues in Meta’s execution: They really need to get their UX, customer service, and hardware/firmware release processes solid. It’s foolhardy and expensive to test hardware in prod, especially in a down economy with logistics/resourcing issues, and it’s absolutely nuts to disregard passionate, on-the-hour-Oculus-is-so-great (Boomer) users who’ve thrown thousands into the platform, telling them to delete their Facebook accounts (Facebook accounts they now are now dependent upon) to resolve unverified firmware borkage. (Also, a more lightweight headset would help get the rest of us there. ;) Where’d ya go, Google Glass?) Looking at past historical patterns, though, I truly believe a smaller company will emerge from the recession in the next year or two that gets us closer than Meta or any other large company ever has or will.

backtoyoujim 4y ago

$1500.00 as a hardware loss leader for Perky Pat 2022 versus eat food and pay too much for freaking rent. Humans do not own VR anything.

DonHopkins 4y ago
You earned my upvote with the PKD 3SOPA reference. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Luckey: an evil alt-right-wing extremist pulling the wool over people’s eyes with his robotic right hand, artificial eyes, and steel teeth, who returned from an expedition to the Prox system in possession of a new alien hallucinogen Chew-Z to compete with Can-D, to perpetrate an uncanny creepy plot about adults on drugs playing together with physical miniaturized doll houses in order to escape their dystopian existence by retreating into to a mega-corporation controlled virtual reality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_Eldritch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_E... Silicon Valley Keenan Feldspar's VR (S4E8) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8MAV9jhf04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8MAV9jhf04 Silicon Valley (HBO) - HooliVR Goggles (Phone Exploding) S04E09 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUAnN-FXcdE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUAnN-FXcdE
- revolvingocelot 4y ago
  ctrl+f "stigmata" Damn it, someone made the joke. Don't forget the promise Palmer Luc-- I mean Eldritch makes Mayerson: that Chew-Z offers incredible opportunity to allow formative experiences customized to the user, yet Lucke-- I mean Eldritch is so controlling of the shared hallucination that Mayerson surmises death is the correct course of action.
  - DonHopkins 4y ago
    At least Palmer Eldritch's sister never married a "gaslighting creep" like Matt Gaetz, and he never threw a fundraiser for Dr. Oz where the quack Doctor gave a speech in front of Adolph Hitler's car. https://www.thedailybeast.com/matt-gaetzs-future-sister-in-law-says-hes-a-gaslighting-creep https://www.thedailybeast.com/matt-gaetzs-future-sister-in-l... https://deadline.com/2022/10/dr-oz-adolf-hitler-senate-fundraiser-john-fetterman-1235138816/ https://deadline.com/2022/10/dr-oz-adolf-hitler-senate-fundr...

sbcdz 4y ago

>Reminds me of the Dropbox thread Cute. Whenever someone wants to defend their dear little niche/dead end product they always make that reference on HN. Similarly on slashdot with the ipod comment. Yet there is a subtlety that every person who makes this broken analogy are missing (apart from the fact, that, well, if someone made a book that kept a record of all instances this analogy was made on HN, it would be hard to miss the fact that.. no, X pet product defended Y times on hn didn't become the next dropbox) The criticisms against dropbox and the first ipod were nerds who thought there was already, -within the same product category- good enough things, underestimating the importance of things like UI, accessibility, portability (in the case of the ipod when people compared it to the gigantic creative jukeboxes and mp3 CD-R players). They were criticism targeted at a single product, not an entire category, because no one sane would think there's no use for tools that remotely sync documents, or gives you the ability to listen to your entire music collection on the go. Dropbox and the ipod were great, refined products, but products that stood on the shoulders of giants and markets that were already plentiful by the time they came out. Keeping backups of documents is a need a great amount of people have. People were already listening to portable music when the ipod came out. They were product that did important things better than anyone else on the market, but products that entered markets that were already quite mature. Meanwhile VR as a whole is still a niche. VR enthusiasts are more like the nerds of old who made fun of dropbox. They have very little understanding of the wants of the general public. Shut yourself in a closed uncanny valley virtual world wearing an uncomfortable headset for hours? This is more like the people who thought rolling your own was better than dropbox. Zuckerberg is not the next Steve Jobs. If anything, he's the carbon copy of the typical slashdot reader. His mindset is thoroughly alien to the human mind. https://qz.com/1331956/mark-zuckerberg-keeps-forgetting-about-humans/ https://qz.com/1331956/mark-zuckerberg-keeps-forgetting-abou... >In the Recode interview, Zuckerberg falls back on the term “use case” to describe people using Facebook Live to stream their own suicides in real time. He repeats this characterization, going on to call suicide-streaming a “use” of Facebook Live: “There were a small number of uses of this, but people were using it to…show themselves self-harm or there were even a few cases of suicide.” This is the sort of people who think the future of humanity is to enclose yourself harder in your little virtual bubble. The everyday man finds this sort repellent.

4y ago

geuis 4y ago

> Then they've still invented a lot of super interesting tech along the way. Google has also developed a lot of interesting tech along the way. Most of it is junk you can buy for $5 at the Salvation Army now. The problem with "Meta" is that it's pushing something without any buy-in from an audience that cares about it. The actual audience for VR is almost completely at the early adopter, 1974 Altair stage. We're at the stage where the enthusiasts are figuring out what works and what doesn't. That's mostly what social interactions will work at first, and what hardware mods are most important to expand those. As much crap as people give Ready Player One, there's an analogy in there. Facebook is the mega corp trying to take over. They're the "Innovative Online Industries (IOI)" from the novel, a "multinational corporation bent on a well-funded effort to find the Easter egg in order to take control of the OASIS and monetize it." (Direct quote from Wikipedia.) As a counter example, let me tell you about an early experience I had in Second Life circa 2005 or so. I got involved with SL for a few years back then. There was one singular critical moment I experienced that convinced me there was something very special happening back then which I really haven't experienced again yet. In SL your avatar can fly around. Here I am on my low level 2005 pc and low res 2005 monitor with 2005 headphones. I'm cruising around a bit I fly over this hill into one of the weirdest things I had ever seen at that point in my life of 25 years. I fly over the crest of this hill and run into an amphitheater with a stage. Same thing we've all seen dozens of times in real life. There are dozens of other avatars all in the crowd sitting in different areas of the amphitheater. Most of the audience was oddly wearing furry costumes. On the stage is a band of other characters, all doing different animations of playing fake instruments. So the way I'm describing this seems pretty normal these days and nothing impressive. But this was 2005. What hit me really hard is that these are all real people experiencing the same event AT THE SAME TIME. That was the aha moment. The band wasn't just npc characters. There was an actual band of 5 or so people together in the real world streaming their show into SL for a bunch of other people from all over the world to watch in real time. Sure, it's like 50 people dressed as sexy foxes and stuff, but they were all witnessing this musical performance in real time through this weird 3rd party virtual interface that very accurately replicated a real world experience in terms of spatial placement and audio (to some extent). For me, it was this super weird magical moment that gave me a glimpse of what the future actually could be. Everything was built by the people from their avatars to the band people to the person that designed and built the stage and amphitheater. And it was in a shared virtual/physical space where I was able to randomly encounter it just by flying around and crossing a certain hill. To this day I've probably had a similar AHA moment a handful of times. Today you can watch bathtub fun time on Twitch, or people begging for subs on YouTube, or people spamming TikTok to promote their SoundCloud accounts. But none of that comes close to the experience of discovery in 2005 of finding an impromptu rock show in Second Life with furry foxes watching in real-time. In modern times, I haven't bought a VR headset yet. I've played with it when available, and I've seen a taste of VRChat and some other awesomely weird modern experiences. I'm firmly convinced that whatever actually ends up becoming "the metaverse" isn't coming from an out of touch older millennial billionaire who took the wrong message from a particular book/movie or it's actual spiritual predecessor Snowcrash. There's a last sentence here that I tried to write a few times and failed. Weirdos is wrong, so is "alternate thinkers". Young people? That's wrong too because since 2005 Second Life's population of users has been mostly flat but consistent, and they tend to be older tech savvy folks that have used these platforms for decades before they got "popular". I don't have a label, and that's probably the point. There eventually may be lots of people who dive into "the metaverse", but those people are so diverse that IOI/Meta isn't going to be able to dictate whatever it becomes.

ekianjo 4y ago

vr is not taking off. the market for VR is growing but still way less than initially expected. and the whole VR for work seems antithetic to companies asking people to go back to the office.

hrbf 4y ago

I believe the visceral pushback is happening because this is a perfect example of a technology and platform that should not be. And most people instinctively sense that. We need more humanity, care for ourselves and others, more love and connection to humans and everything surrounding us, to experience what it means to be alive and being a part of the universe. This tech aims to isolate us even more than we already are, through its fundamental design. When you put human values above the maniacal quest of a boy billionaire for relevance and power, you come to the conclusion that this is the entirely wrong path. The hardware is inconsequential.

Zee2 4y ago
As someone working in the space (not Meta): The overall goal is the exact opposite of what you're saying here. Just about every single person I've ever talked to in this industry wants to build devices to bring human beings together across space + time. Allowing folks to see each other eye to eye and form real human connections where otherwise it would be impossible. XR is probably the least isolating technology in history if you consider what it can do in terms of breaking down boundaries of time, distance, ability, and appearance. It is the most humanistic of any technology I've ever used in my life, in the way that it's explicitly designed to bridge human, emotional connections where none could exist before. Just one of many perspectives...
- bamboozled 4y ago
  I’m so
- mola 4y ago
  Yeah, and Facebook was always about connecting ppl. You are working Ina capitalistic system, the only motive for your company is profit for shareholders. When you are small and inconsequential, other motives might rule. But the trajectory is clear. If you succeed, your company turn into a paper clip machine for which humans are just meat for the grinder. This is how it always plays out.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago

lazzlazzlazz 4y ago

> I'm baffled by the reaction here. I agree that productive VR work is still not ready for prime time, but most of you haven't tried any of this (let alone the new hardware) and you're already dismissing even the possibility of it becoming good in the future. Reminds me of the Dropbox thread. You know which one. This is Hacker News' reaction to almost every new thing that isn't already several years past the early adopter end of the curve (crypto, VR, a lot of bio). The community has become a bit stiff and conservative, for a tech community.

automatic6131 4y ago
>The community has become a bit stiff and conservative, for a tech community. A natural reaction to decades of "overpromise, under deliver".
- hrbf 4y ago
  I’d argue that naive tech-positivity has run its course and more initial believers are sobering up to the reality of what kind of monsters this debonair optimism helped create.

shrimpx 4y ago

By the way, the comments in the "Dropbox thread" are overwhelmingly supporting and positive.

stereolambda 4y ago

There's some truth in that. People are uncomfortable with the thought of becoming (even more?) Mark's serfs and want to dispel that by magically willing the tech into being garbage. The fact is that in 2022 many parts of bigtech-skeptic narrative are being planted in the mainstream culture and politics: the mature thing would be to lean into that, as a responsible technologist, and not rely on nerdy rituals of thrashing 'ware on forums. As much as it is fun, it serves a different purpose. I mean, if it is dangerous for us as human beings and citizens, just say it aloud, we won't be saved by the tech being buggy. Myself, I have enough stuff to do in the big screen and audio system world and don't crave VR immersion, though it was fun when I tried. But I can see the potential and know that people are already using it in gaming and virtual workspaces. You can potentially buy one simple thing for your computer, not waste that much space and have the immersive experience. One thing I want is that it is open (software and hardware wise) and not connected to any surveillance machine, like we should be able to expect from a freaking appliance.

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astannard 4y ago

I think the metaverse is something very cool and for it to be associated with Facebook which comes across as a toxic company causes resentment. Something cool and futuristic that I've read and dreamed about has been tainted before coming to fruition because of who is making it. I hear great things about the headsets but I just dont trust the company that makes them.

graderjs 4y ago

Zuck, has wanted to build VR social world for years. How do you see that relating to his other visions /ambitions ? What do you think people will really find meaningful in this VR product 10 years in future?

usrbinbash 4y ago

I a not dismissing the possibility of it becoming "good" (as in "works well technically"). Throw enough money and talent at almost any technical problem, and the solution can become "good". I doubt a wide adoption in the market. Just because something new has been created doesn't mean the market will adopt it. It has to have a tangible advantage. If it is meant to replace something, like existing workflows and methods it needs to have an advantage so massive, that it isn't just better than what exists already, but is worth the cost of any transitions as well. And I just don't see that. Why would I wear a device, that is still big even in its newest incarnation, on my head when I have 3 ultra-high-definition monitors? Why would I use controllers when I have a mouse, keyboard and a touch-sensitive screen? I already have video chat, speech recognition, chat, mail etc. at my disposal. I already have all these forms of communication on a device that fits in my pocket for when I'm out of office. I already have all these things, and they work, they are configured, they are integrated in my employers existing infrastructure, workflows, methods, they are compliant with whatever regulations apply, they are tried, tested and budgeted for. I mean, how would I even make the case for this to my employer? "Hey, Mr. CEO sir, my team needs devices that we have never used before in this company, to do exactly what we do now, except you would be able to watch our avatars sitting in front of virtuals screens while we do it, that is, if you wear one as well. Btw. the thing costs 1799 $ per employee."

pushback00001 4y ago

Isn’t it tech policing itself? Meta is structured in a way no one can say no to Zuckerberg. That pretty much leaves only general pushback and outright legislation to counter his judgements. All of them individually and collectively. So yes a tech forum is alight with negativity. We’re also one of the canaries in the mine that should be listened to in this. He’s eroded freedoms (misinformation, rampant gaslighting, bullying, etc), invaded peoples privacy, and there’s no remedy but defection.

samuli 4y ago

There are more important problems than low latency rendering pipelines in the world that they could be solving instead. What Meta is doing, is creating themselves a platform where they can sell ads, because they've been hurt by recent privacy changes by Apple and fear the market share of Google Chrome.

pooper 4y ago

> Reminds me of the Dropbox thread. You know which one. I didn't see the thread until later but back then I thought the Dropbox was a sucker that I was taking advantage of because I could get extra 50 MB or whatever by just walking up to someone in my dorm and referring them to use Dropbox, even if they had no intention to continue using Dropbox... I want to be less naive now. Facebook (it doesn't deserve the Meta name) will NEVER, EVER do anything for "good". I believe it simply is not capable of doing any "good". We cannot let Facebook be the gatekeepers of a pay toilet, much less the (purported) future of our communications. Back to the topic though, I thought xbox kinect was trying to solve all of these problems a long time ago with just a couple of cameras. what happened?

magic_hamster 4y ago

I am a connoisseur of VR from back when you could count the polygons on 3D models. I am definitely an enthusiast, and even got lucky enough to develop some VR applications (mostly for HTC Vive). So I'm definitely all in on VR! But I'm all out when it comes to Meta and Facebook, who have repeatedly proven they are simply a bad actor. The gross privacy negligence, the disgusting mistreatment of their users and advertisers alike, and being a major factor in today's terrible social issues, Meta is a huge net negative for humanity. They can hand those out for free, and I will still not take it. I am done feeding them data. I want no part of their ecosystem, even by proxy. It doesn't even matter what the product does - I will not take it from Meta. I realize some people here work for Meta and it's not personal. But you must encounter this opinion from time to time. I have friends who work at Meta and it's incredible to see how they brace for impact every time they tell someone where they work. I feel bad for them, but Meta earned this notorious reputation with noticeable effort.

fcanela 4y ago

I'm a user of Immersed (an VR for productivity app) and I use to code frequently. I wanted QPro to be a success. I expected at least a reasonable bump in resolution. What was released is just disappointing and I can not justify paying that price point. I would go for Pico4 before of QPro.

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 4y ago

I had access to Oculus dev kits back in the day and am now a Valve Index owner, which means that 1. I've been closely following VR for almost 10 years now 2. I've invested some money for the best VR hardware available (at the time). My take on Facebook and why I am fully on board with the skepticism here: - VR hardware, at least on the higher end, is pretty good. It has been "there" for many possible applications at least in terms of fidelity since ~2019. VR being so uninteresting is mostly a software problem in my opinion, not a hardware problem, even if the hardware development is important to make adoption more realistic without the need to invest a ton of money. - The novelty of VR wears off rather quickly. I barely use my VR hardware nowadays, and right now I can't imagine a scenario in which VR makes anything in my everyday life easier and more efficient, quite the opposite. While I don't doubt that it will happen, I very much doubt that Facebook will be involved in the next important step forward. They are just too out of touch with reality (outside of the investor/silicon valley/zuckerberg bubble) for that. - The software is just lacking, and everything Facebook is presenting when it comes to software is in many ways a step back compared to VR products from as early as 2014 (e.g. VR Chat)...Acting as if Facebook is pushing anything forward here is just naive following of buzzwords at best, dishonest parroting of marketing talk at worst. - Anything a company like Facebook might plan with VR is just uninteresting, because it will ultimately have dark patterns, manipulation and monetization baked into its very core, be it directly or indirectly. Rather than developing VR as a "next step" in personal computing, Facebook is just racing to build an ad infested dystopian walled garden as fast as they can, why would I get excited about that in the slightest? I'm still generally very interested in VR, but the only thing I'll get excited about is VR device from a manufacturer that doesn't have backstabbing me as his ultimate goal and will base all his decisions on being Facebook. And yes, I still remember "Oculus won't require a Facebook Sign-In", and while that has been reverted for now, I won't believe for a second that the people working at Facebook aren't eager to get something equivalent back as soon as enough users are on board.

willis936 4y ago

If the tech is so interesting then why is the "tech specs" tab filled with no substance? I can barely begin to speculate what would make this hardware stand out over the competition, let alone make confident conclusions. The hardware having the potential to be cool isn't a strong point to make because the people selling the hardware aren't even making it.

nelsonic 4y ago

It’s great to be excited for the future. Agreed. It’s also good to be cautious about a future where Facebook owns all the Patents to the tech. That sounds like a dystopia to me.

yokoprime 4y ago

Having tried and used current VR hardware for many hours, often long sessions, I can absolutely see the potential. But the hardware and sofware has a long long way to go. Looking just at Meta and the Meta Quest 2, the top 10-20 apps are the same today as they were a year ago. There are some cool fitness type apps, but for the time being its a novelty and I don't see doing meetings in VR as something I have any need or desire to do once the novelty wears off.

p0pcult 4y ago

Meta makes the world a worse place. It always has. The flagship product, FB, was built to creep on women. The sooner Meta dies, the better for our planet.

prng2021 4y ago

Yes I hate Meta but that’s not the reason for my opposition towards this. Even Microsoft announced an integration and I don’t hate that company. In aggregate, company's are pouring billions of dollars and who know how many person hours into VR meetings. Engineers are a limited resource. Investment is a limited resource. This could be going towards trying to solve many more useful problems. I see people talking about the immersiveness being the biggest selling point. That's so true for video games but do people really think immersion is what's missing with remote work? I've been a fully remote employee for many years. It's the real time chat, drastically improved document collaboration, and video conferencing that has made the biggest impact. I've never yearned to be taken out of the coffee shop I'm working in or my home office and transported to a virtual conference room where I have to physically move my arms and head just like the real world. Just because some tech works for one use case doesn't mean it does for another. Our touch screens are great on a phone. Terrible in a car where you need to be able to control things without focusing your eyes on it. People look at this new tech and are flying to it because it's the new shiny thing. If you're in this group, think about what a marvel a screen, keyboard, and mouse are. You only twitch your eyes and barely move your hands and fingers at all. Yet, you can rapidly type, switch between totally different applications, scroll huge canvases of interfaces, etc all while barely expending any energy at all. That's that I call efficiency.

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leshow 4y ago

I would be really surprised if they were "inventing" high-dpi displays or new lenses. The likely scenario to me seems that they would just buy what is already available or perhaps pay another shop to customize something for them, not invent a new technology. What it really seems like they are doing is having a serious case of NIH syndrome and re-writing a bunch of stuff that already exists elsewhere. People hate it because Facebook has not proven itself to be a good steward of technology, and I think people are more broadly questioning whether we should elevate these companies to stewards of our lives in the first place.

spaceman_2020 4y ago

I would be super excited for this if it was from any other company. But as things stand, the more successful this thing is, the more Facebook thrives. I really can’t cheer on anything that prolongs the life of Facebook.

31337Logic 4y ago

That's because you don't understand their business model.

charlieyu1 4y ago

The last thing people want is more monitoring of their work. VR work, compared to video calls, is more monitoring. You could have checked your phone during video calls which you couldn't do it with VR. And neither video calls nor VR is proven to be more productive than emails.