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> VR is gonna be a tough sell to the masses I think this is the major factor of why this will be a business failure for Meta. Failure in the sense that this pr

> VR is gonna be a tough sell to the masses I think this is the major factor of why this will be a business failure for Meta. Failure in the sense that this product is not for the masses like a social media "product". 3D TV's were supposed to be the next big thing and never took off. People don't like wearing this type of thing on their head for long periods of time. Then there are huge numbers of people that will get motion sickness, feel disoriented, have vision issues and other physical reasons they won't want to or can't use VR. Maybe its a generational thing? Okay, is the business plan then to wait 20 years? If this VR product and push doesn't get across the early adopter chasm [0] in the next 1-2 years its not going to happen for mainstream. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm

throwaway4aday 4y ago
I wouldn't put money on it being a failure. Meta seems to have figured out that a large potential market for VR is essentially the experience of just being in a room with other people. They are keeping their consumer gaming device around but with the Quest Pro it looks like they are putting their money into devices made specifically for business. I'd say it hinges more on their ability to deliver flawless multi-user interaction that can scale to accommodate dozens or even hundreds of simultaneous users in the same room. That is hard to do, but not impossible.
- mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
  Technically sounds like an interesting problem. Is having 100 people in a virtual room a problem businesses are willing to pay $150k for? Usually any business meeting over 20 people is just 1 person doing a monologue thru slides. I don't understand how VR would add anything that enables a better business outcome than current business meeting technology. A VR world with a business culture of "presence equals you're working" would be horrible. It would be cheaper to talk with Epic and have them create a private Fortnite match assuming proximity audio can be done (remove the gaming shooting physics part of network traffic and I bet audio would be good enough). Let employees outfit their avatars with a bunch of business related "skins" and let them create meeting spaces using the existing fortnite build system. If you remove the shooter/death/gaming aspects and put in some lightweight meeting types of things like virtual whiteboards you accomplish the same goal - 100 people in a "meeting space".
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    Yes, you identified some key problems with large gatherings in VR. If they are used improperly then they may have a net negative return. Improper use would certainly include recreating an open office floor plan where everyone was expected to spend their entire workday but at the same time feel free to wander over and interrupt their colleagues. Importantly, this is also a poor implementation of an office in physical space. A good implementation that involved 100+ people would be a conference or trade show whose purpose is just as much networking and chance encounters with other people in the same industry as it is consumption of broadcast talks or demos. Large VR events should be... events! Done properly you would focus on spatialized audio so that participants could easily speak with those near them, could move to quiet "breakout rooms" to continue conversations in depth, could share documents or contact information and also provision the conference speakers with the ability to run effective Q&A sessions and record the talks and replay them for those who couldn't attend the live presentation. Most of the time, meeting in VR is best done in smaller groups where participation in the conversation can flow naturally. This is where the ability to easily transition from offline work to full VR immersion comes in. This is far from a solved problem and as the recent Quest Pro release has shown it is being actively worked on by Meta. Their vision appears to be a headset that you can wear all day with the benefit of having virtual monitors to work on and an instant transition to meeting with others in VR. I have yet to see text rendered through a Quest Pro but from the specs my guess is that they aren't there yet, it may be passable but it probably isn't very comfortable for text heavy uses. They're pushing hard in this direction though. Other VR hardware companies should take note! Using Unreal Engine (Fortnight is built using it) is a great idea. There are a few social VR apps out there using it and it is far superior to the Unity based apps in my experience. It is a more mature engine overall.

throwaway4aday 4y ago

I wouldn't put money on it being a failure. Meta seems to have figured out that a large potential market for VR is essentially the experience of just being in a room with other people. They are keeping their consumer gaming device around but with the Quest Pro it looks like they are putting their money into devices made specifically for business. I'd say it hinges more on their ability to deliver flawless multi-user interaction that can scale to accommodate dozens or even hundreds of simultaneous users in the same room. That is hard to do, but not impossible.

mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
Technically sounds like an interesting problem. Is having 100 people in a virtual room a problem businesses are willing to pay $150k for? Usually any business meeting over 20 people is just 1 person doing a monologue thru slides. I don't understand how VR would add anything that enables a better business outcome than current business meeting technology. A VR world with a business culture of "presence equals you're working" would be horrible. It would be cheaper to talk with Epic and have them create a private Fortnite match assuming proximity audio can be done (remove the gaming shooting physics part of network traffic and I bet audio would be good enough). Let employees outfit their avatars with a bunch of business related "skins" and let them create meeting spaces using the existing fortnite build system. If you remove the shooter/death/gaming aspects and put in some lightweight meeting types of things like virtual whiteboards you accomplish the same goal - 100 people in a "meeting space".
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  Yes, you identified some key problems with large gatherings in VR. If they are used improperly then they may have a net negative return. Improper use would certainly include recreating an open office floor plan where everyone was expected to spend their entire workday but at the same time feel free to wander over and interrupt their colleagues. Importantly, this is also a poor implementation of an office in physical space. A good implementation that involved 100+ people would be a conference or trade show whose purpose is just as much networking and chance encounters with other people in the same industry as it is consumption of broadcast talks or demos. Large VR events should be... events! Done properly you would focus on spatialized audio so that participants could easily speak with those near them, could move to quiet "breakout rooms" to continue conversations in depth, could share documents or contact information and also provision the conference speakers with the ability to run effective Q&A sessions and record the talks and replay them for those who couldn't attend the live presentation. Most of the time, meeting in VR is best done in smaller groups where participation in the conversation can flow naturally. This is where the ability to easily transition from offline work to full VR immersion comes in. This is far from a solved problem and as the recent Quest Pro release has shown it is being actively worked on by Meta. Their vision appears to be a headset that you can wear all day with the benefit of having virtual monitors to work on and an instant transition to meeting with others in VR. I have yet to see text rendered through a Quest Pro but from the specs my guess is that they aren't there yet, it may be passable but it probably isn't very comfortable for text heavy uses. They're pushing hard in this direction though. Other VR hardware companies should take note! Using Unreal Engine (Fortnight is built using it) is a great idea. There are a few social VR apps out there using it and it is far superior to the Unity based apps in my experience. It is a more mature engine overall.