7 ms·

I think you missed the most important point - no one wants VR apart from a niche audience.

emadabdulrahim 4y ago
No one wants VR because in its current state it simply sucks and is quite expensive for general adoption. In the early days no one wanted computers either.
- mcv 4y ago
  And VR will continue to suck if it remains tied to Facebook, like the Oculus stuff.
  - rahimnathwani 4y ago
    The Oculus stuff is no longer tied to Facebook, though? I got an email recently about account changes, and was prompted to create a new account, with the option to link it to my Facebook account.
    - mcv 4y ago
      If that's the case for all Oculus devices, that would definitely be a massive improvement. I still see some people here complaining about the Facebook link, though.
- taeric 4y ago
  Bit of a false comparison, though. Computers obviously enable a lot more than VR seems to. I think there will be a market for VR. However, I'm not entirely convinced games and entertainment are it. Certainly I think there will be a market for those, as well; but I can't shake the feeling that it doesn't actually add too terribly much to them. The social aspect of entertainment is completely missed with VR. We want to do things /with people/ when we are being social. Is why people watch sports games in parties. Most of the folks at the party are marginally interested in the sport, but in the people they are there with. For games, 3d shooter is certainly a genre. But it isn't the only one. And the casual market that they hope to capture is largely not the 3d market.
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    You know what would be a killer app kind of application for AR? A real life HUD you could just wear all the time. Anything that can be done with a smartphone these days but without the hassle of carrying a giant brick around that you need to fumble with. But to get to that stage you need to at the very least integrate all that functionality into a set of glasses (more than 60% of all people already wear glasses daily anyway), and you also need direct brain interfacing control to make it practically usable at all. Way beyond anything we can currently do these days unfortunately.
    - taeric 4y ago
      AR is a very different beast compared to VR. Such that, I agree moving to a HUD can be nice for many things. That said, requiring full body interactions for anything is a laughably bad non-starter. Looks great for performance art and movies, but is far from effective. And, as I said elsewhere, also not gaming/entertainment focused. Arguably anti-social.
  - treis 4y ago
    It's hard to say until the technology gets to the point where you can start to match what a monitor does. You'd need a 8k or probably higher screen for each eye plus the graphics card to drive it at ~144hz. Then if you want it portable you need a battery to drive it. Once we're there then we can see what sort of future VR has.
    - taeric 4y ago
      I don't buy it. VR will always, by definition, be a race to feature parity with things in the real world. And escapism is often more about not replicating real life, such that all of the tactical feedback that goes into the majority of what folks thing will work in VR is as likely to be the reason to avoid it. Think about it, even the amazing open world games like Zelda will be nigh inaccessible in a VR world where you have to actually climb. Yes, you can get some sweeping visuals where you can turn your head to see the landscape, but a large TV already goes a long way to getting that, with much much better controls for the movement. So, you can get enhanced "you can turn your head to look around," but at the tremendous cost of "everything else about moving and interacting is completely broken. You will still need obviously untenable item management. Want to have many weapons? It will be hilariously off looking compared to everything else in the world. Can it help with some desktop management and such for work? I mean, maybe? It will definitely be a good aide. I'd wager the high level workers are already "retreating into their brain" for a lot of their work, such that I don't expect miracles out of AR assistance. Robotics and control do have a lot of promise, of course. But, again, I'm more questioning gaming and entertainment.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  I'm not sure that I'd call current VR tech "the early days". The VFX1 and those arcade cabinet VR systems were the "early days". The Occulus Rift came out six years ago. We are well into the phase of VR where improvements are incremental each generation.
  - creshal 4y ago
    > We are well into the phase of VR where improvements are incremental each generation. If that's the end of it, VR is doomed to remain a curious niche. It struggles to deliver compelling results for thousands of dollars (headset plus powerful enough PC), and if all we ever get from now on are tiny incremental updates, we'll never reach a steady state where perceived quality, relative to contemporary 2D offerings, can keep up.
  - stonemetal12 4y ago
    I would consider those arcade cabinets equivalent to time sharing computers in labs of yesteryear. Current VR is about like the 286, it does some neat stuff but more promise than delivery.
- twen_ty 4y ago
  VR encourages staying in as opposed to going out - the whole thrust of technology should be that - so that humans could be more... human. The timeline where VR fits seamlessly in the latter is decades, away and betting on it as a company right now is madness.
scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
Yeah, just like no one really wanted a Palm Treo or whatever flagship smartphone was dominant in 2004. This is all about where the ball is going to be tomorrow, not where it is today.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  I can email grandma and get directions to the park on my smartphone. The value proposition is clear. I can ??? by strapping an enormous headset to my face, flailing my arms around, and getting sick to my stomach and lightening my wallet by $500-$1500 with VR headsets. What do I gain by doing this?
  - blairbeckwith 4y ago
    You are arguing against the opinion "it sucks right now, but it can get better" with "it sucks right now". Is your position that things that suck can not get better?
    - qbasic_forever 4y ago
      I've heard that exact same defense for 10 years. When? When is this magic moment where it stops sucking? We've been told oh just wait for better hand tracking... oh wait for better screens... oh wait for portable/wireless headsets... oh wait... Shit or get off the pot VR. You've had 10 years.
      - blairbeckwith 4y ago
        Tons of things have taken more than 10 years to stop sucking. Digital cameras, MP3 players, "smart" phones, arguably laptops... I am not a VR believer by any stretch, but this is such myopic thinking.
        creshal 4y ago
        VR has been around for fifty years, that's a pretty long time to not produce any convincing results. And all those inventions piggy backed off a very rapid pace of hardware getting faster, smaller, more power efficient and cheaper at the same time. Moore's law meanwhile is dead, the rate at which CPUs/GPUs get faster is slowing down considerably, and VR needs a lot faster and cheaper and more power efficient hardware just to become affordable at reasonable quality. That's not a good starting point, especially when you're a publicly traded company and your future depends on reaching that inflexion point soon™. And then you still run into practicality problems: • User input is still fairly clunky. Touchscreens just removed most of the friction of computer input devices, VR puts it back in. That won't make it particularly popular. Granted, future advances in hand/finger tracking might solve this, but this adds another set of sensors and hardware to make sense of them, when VR headsets are already struggling to reduce the bill of materials to become affordable. • VR needs lots and lots of space. Digital cameras, MP3 players, smartphones, laptops, … for the most part reduced the amount of space a family needs to do things, compared to what came before, which made them a no-brainer for all demographics. No amount of technology improvement can really reduce VR's space demand without compromising on user experience. Not a problem for US tech bros, but ask an European or Asian family what they feel about doubling their rent so one family member gets enough space to use VR. Not gonna happen.
qbasic_forever 4y ago
Bingo. It's been about a decade now since the revival of VR. We've had 10 years of, "everyone is going to be computing in 3D". It never materialized. Worse, it looks like the content is shrinking and stagnant.
- conductr 4y ago
  Covid was it’s gleaming opportunity too.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  10 years or not, the tech is simply not there yet while being far too expensive for what it is. It's not exactly a recipe for growth or success. Like trying to make electric cars a thing in the NiCd battery and brushed motor era.
jrumbut 4y ago
I said that for a long time but honestly it's getting cooler. The exercise applications alone are a huge market (in theory almost everyone).
- cmsj 4y ago
  what are the exercise applications? Isn't exercise a thing where your form matters, so you need to be able to see your own body?
  - jrumbut 4y ago
    To date I've enjoyed playful activities like swatting at glowing targets, boxing, or virtual light saber fighting. Assuming you aren't serious about becoming a jedi and don't do it enough to give yourself RSI it should be OK. Maybe not as good as a personal trainer but I'd be shocked if it was worse than sitting on the couch, on balance. Also, with the cameras on the headset as well as peripherals they can give you some idea of where your body is.
moffkalast 4y ago
Noone wants shitty VR, which is what current generation VR is.
falcolas 4y ago
VR has a market of over $5 billion per year. In 2021, over 10m devices were sold, and its still growing. That's a bit more than a niche.
- juve1996 4y ago
  Citation?
  - falcolas 4y ago
    Google. vr market value vr devices sold If I can do it, so can every other person on this forum.
sergiotapia 4y ago
I call bullshit. VR has a pure ergonomics problem and Meta is chipping away at that every year, this Quest Pro is so nearly there and the second we get VR sunglasses it's done. It's over. It will become mainstream and the PC will go the way of the typewriter.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  I think “VR sunglasses” is an oxymoron. Isn’t the core selling point of VR deep immersion? AR perhaps, but that’s a whole different set of use cases. A single device cannot adequately cater to this “spectrum” of full vs, semi-immersion.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  > VR sunglasses Unless they completely surround your eyes to block outside light, VR "sunglasses" would absolutely awful. For VR to work well, you need immersion, which is not possible when the edge of your vision is filled with the scene of where you are in the real world. AR sunglasses on the other hand would be great, but I'm not convinced AR has much of a future outside of some specific niches. The biggest hurdle for any sort of portable VR or AR is compute and power. VR is incredibly compute intense, which means portable headsets only have a 1-2 hour battery life and need a heavy battery.
vel0city 4y ago
Pre-iPhone smartphones catered to a niche audience. Tablets weren't very popular in the market pre-iPad. Bluetooth headphones were around for over a decade with a lot of people ignoring them before Airpods popularized them. Personal media players weren't nearly as mainstream before the iPod. Almost all of these product markets existed and mostly catered to niche audiences before Apple jumped in. Of course, those are mostly their successes. They had stumbles too, no doubt. If there's one thing Apple excels at, its convincing the mass market to adopt technologies that currently only cater to a niche audience. I have no idea what their plans for VR are, but I do imagine if they do something in it they'll make some waves. But maybe it'll turn out like the Newton. Maybe they will never launch a VR product. Who knows.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  It’s not so much that the technology is niche, it is that the use cases are niche. What is the main killer use case of VR? How many people want it or would enjoy it or would pay for it?
  - vel0city 4y ago
    I definitely agree the mass market appeal to VR is yet to be proven. This is a big part of why I say if Apple chooses to launch a VR headset. It may never be proven to be a successful mass market technology, and if so, I imagine Apple may never release a VR headset. The main use cases I see are gaming, and of that market only certain kinds of games. Then on top of that its challenging having the space to play those games safely. Personally, I really enjoy my VR headset, I love playing games like Star Wars: Squadrons in VR.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      > The main use cases I see are gaming I think of that in terms of “escape from reality” or “entertainment”. I suppose there are also educational use cases and remote control use cases.
- time_to_smile 4y ago
neither_color 4y ago
It's getting better every year, the hardware just wasn't there before. I think the sweet spot will be in new vr-native experiences and not awkward skeuomorphic-ish implementations of the offline world in VR(which is what horizon seems to be trying to do) or gaming. Turning a 2D experience into a VR one will continue to have worse graphics and odd mechanics for the foreseeable future, and gaming in VR is just not relaxing compared to sitting on the couch with a controller. Not everyone wants to flail about and gesticulate after a long day of work. I personally like to sit back and watch random "experiences," virtual tours and stuff and when I introduce someone new to VR I show them these first rather than games. Complete immersion without having to think about what to do with your hands. Another interesting experience is Liminal https://liminalvr.com/ https://liminalvr.com/ It uses sounds/visual stimulation with the intent of affecting your "mood" and it's being developed by bona fide psychological researchers. It's truly something that can only exist in VR!

No one wants VR because in its current state it simply sucks and is quite expensive for general adoption. In the early days no one wanted computers either.

mcv 4y ago
And VR will continue to suck if it remains tied to Facebook, like the Oculus stuff.
- rahimnathwani 4y ago
  The Oculus stuff is no longer tied to Facebook, though? I got an email recently about account changes, and was prompted to create a new account, with the option to link it to my Facebook account.
  - mcv 4y ago
    If that's the case for all Oculus devices, that would definitely be a massive improvement. I still see some people here complaining about the Facebook link, though.
taeric 4y ago
Bit of a false comparison, though. Computers obviously enable a lot more than VR seems to. I think there will be a market for VR. However, I'm not entirely convinced games and entertainment are it. Certainly I think there will be a market for those, as well; but I can't shake the feeling that it doesn't actually add too terribly much to them. The social aspect of entertainment is completely missed with VR. We want to do things /with people/ when we are being social. Is why people watch sports games in parties. Most of the folks at the party are marginally interested in the sport, but in the people they are there with. For games, 3d shooter is certainly a genre. But it isn't the only one. And the casual market that they hope to capture is largely not the 3d market.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  You know what would be a killer app kind of application for AR? A real life HUD you could just wear all the time. Anything that can be done with a smartphone these days but without the hassle of carrying a giant brick around that you need to fumble with. But to get to that stage you need to at the very least integrate all that functionality into a set of glasses (more than 60% of all people already wear glasses daily anyway), and you also need direct brain interfacing control to make it practically usable at all. Way beyond anything we can currently do these days unfortunately.
  - taeric 4y ago
    AR is a very different beast compared to VR. Such that, I agree moving to a HUD can be nice for many things. That said, requiring full body interactions for anything is a laughably bad non-starter. Looks great for performance art and movies, but is far from effective. And, as I said elsewhere, also not gaming/entertainment focused. Arguably anti-social.
- treis 4y ago
  It's hard to say until the technology gets to the point where you can start to match what a monitor does. You'd need a 8k or probably higher screen for each eye plus the graphics card to drive it at ~144hz. Then if you want it portable you need a battery to drive it. Once we're there then we can see what sort of future VR has.
  - taeric 4y ago
    I don't buy it. VR will always, by definition, be a race to feature parity with things in the real world. And escapism is often more about not replicating real life, such that all of the tactical feedback that goes into the majority of what folks thing will work in VR is as likely to be the reason to avoid it. Think about it, even the amazing open world games like Zelda will be nigh inaccessible in a VR world where you have to actually climb. Yes, you can get some sweeping visuals where you can turn your head to see the landscape, but a large TV already goes a long way to getting that, with much much better controls for the movement. So, you can get enhanced "you can turn your head to look around," but at the tremendous cost of "everything else about moving and interacting is completely broken. You will still need obviously untenable item management. Want to have many weapons? It will be hilariously off looking compared to everything else in the world. Can it help with some desktop management and such for work? I mean, maybe? It will definitely be a good aide. I'd wager the high level workers are already "retreating into their brain" for a lot of their work, such that I don't expect miracles out of AR assistance. Robotics and control do have a lot of promise, of course. But, again, I'm more questioning gaming and entertainment.
mywittyname 4y ago
I'm not sure that I'd call current VR tech "the early days". The VFX1 and those arcade cabinet VR systems were the "early days". The Occulus Rift came out six years ago. We are well into the phase of VR where improvements are incremental each generation.
- creshal 4y ago
  > We are well into the phase of VR where improvements are incremental each generation. If that's the end of it, VR is doomed to remain a curious niche. It struggles to deliver compelling results for thousands of dollars (headset plus powerful enough PC), and if all we ever get from now on are tiny incremental updates, we'll never reach a steady state where perceived quality, relative to contemporary 2D offerings, can keep up.
- stonemetal12 4y ago
  I would consider those arcade cabinets equivalent to time sharing computers in labs of yesteryear. Current VR is about like the 286, it does some neat stuff but more promise than delivery.
twen_ty 4y ago
VR encourages staying in as opposed to going out - the whole thrust of technology should be that - so that humans could be more... human. The timeline where VR fits seamlessly in the latter is decades, away and betting on it as a company right now is madness.

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago

Yeah, just like no one really wanted a Palm Treo or whatever flagship smartphone was dominant in 2004. This is all about where the ball is going to be tomorrow, not where it is today.

qbasic_forever 4y ago
I can email grandma and get directions to the park on my smartphone. The value proposition is clear. I can ??? by strapping an enormous headset to my face, flailing my arms around, and getting sick to my stomach and lightening my wallet by $500-$1500 with VR headsets. What do I gain by doing this?
- blairbeckwith 4y ago
  You are arguing against the opinion "it sucks right now, but it can get better" with "it sucks right now". Is your position that things that suck can not get better?
  - qbasic_forever 4y ago
    I've heard that exact same defense for 10 years. When? When is this magic moment where it stops sucking? We've been told oh just wait for better hand tracking... oh wait for better screens... oh wait for portable/wireless headsets... oh wait... Shit or get off the pot VR. You've had 10 years.
    - blairbeckwith 4y ago
      Tons of things have taken more than 10 years to stop sucking. Digital cameras, MP3 players, "smart" phones, arguably laptops... I am not a VR believer by any stretch, but this is such myopic thinking.
      - creshal 4y ago
        VR has been around for fifty years, that's a pretty long time to not produce any convincing results. And all those inventions piggy backed off a very rapid pace of hardware getting faster, smaller, more power efficient and cheaper at the same time. Moore's law meanwhile is dead, the rate at which CPUs/GPUs get faster is slowing down considerably, and VR needs a lot faster and cheaper and more power efficient hardware just to become affordable at reasonable quality. That's not a good starting point, especially when you're a publicly traded company and your future depends on reaching that inflexion point soon™. And then you still run into practicality problems: • User input is still fairly clunky. Touchscreens just removed most of the friction of computer input devices, VR puts it back in. That won't make it particularly popular. Granted, future advances in hand/finger tracking might solve this, but this adds another set of sensors and hardware to make sense of them, when VR headsets are already struggling to reduce the bill of materials to become affordable. • VR needs lots and lots of space. Digital cameras, MP3 players, smartphones, laptops, … for the most part reduced the amount of space a family needs to do things, compared to what came before, which made them a no-brainer for all demographics. No amount of technology improvement can really reduce VR's space demand without compromising on user experience. Not a problem for US tech bros, but ask an European or Asian family what they feel about doubling their rent so one family member gets enough space to use VR. Not gonna happen.

qbasic_forever 4y ago

Bingo. It's been about a decade now since the revival of VR. We've had 10 years of, "everyone is going to be computing in 3D". It never materialized. Worse, it looks like the content is shrinking and stagnant.

conductr 4y ago
Covid was it’s gleaming opportunity too.
moffkalast 4y ago
10 years or not, the tech is simply not there yet while being far too expensive for what it is. It's not exactly a recipe for growth or success. Like trying to make electric cars a thing in the NiCd battery and brushed motor era.

jrumbut 4y ago

I said that for a long time but honestly it's getting cooler. The exercise applications alone are a huge market (in theory almost everyone).

cmsj 4y ago
what are the exercise applications? Isn't exercise a thing where your form matters, so you need to be able to see your own body?
- jrumbut 4y ago
  To date I've enjoyed playful activities like swatting at glowing targets, boxing, or virtual light saber fighting. Assuming you aren't serious about becoming a jedi and don't do it enough to give yourself RSI it should be OK. Maybe not as good as a personal trainer but I'd be shocked if it was worse than sitting on the couch, on balance. Also, with the cameras on the headset as well as peripherals they can give you some idea of where your body is.

moffkalast 4y ago

Noone wants shitty VR, which is what current generation VR is.

falcolas 4y ago

VR has a market of over $5 billion per year. In 2021, over 10m devices were sold, and its still growing. That's a bit more than a niche.

juve1996 4y ago
Citation?
- falcolas 4y ago
  Google. vr market value vr devices sold If I can do it, so can every other person on this forum.

sergiotapia 4y ago

I call bullshit. VR has a pure ergonomics problem and Meta is chipping away at that every year, this Quest Pro is so nearly there and the second we get VR sunglasses it's done. It's over. It will become mainstream and the PC will go the way of the typewriter.

andsoitis 4y ago
I think “VR sunglasses” is an oxymoron. Isn’t the core selling point of VR deep immersion? AR perhaps, but that’s a whole different set of use cases. A single device cannot adequately cater to this “spectrum” of full vs, semi-immersion.
Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
> VR sunglasses Unless they completely surround your eyes to block outside light, VR "sunglasses" would absolutely awful. For VR to work well, you need immersion, which is not possible when the edge of your vision is filled with the scene of where you are in the real world. AR sunglasses on the other hand would be great, but I'm not convinced AR has much of a future outside of some specific niches. The biggest hurdle for any sort of portable VR or AR is compute and power. VR is incredibly compute intense, which means portable headsets only have a 1-2 hour battery life and need a heavy battery.

vel0city 4y ago

Pre-iPhone smartphones catered to a niche audience. Tablets weren't very popular in the market pre-iPad. Bluetooth headphones were around for over a decade with a lot of people ignoring them before Airpods popularized them. Personal media players weren't nearly as mainstream before the iPod. Almost all of these product markets existed and mostly catered to niche audiences before Apple jumped in. Of course, those are mostly their successes. They had stumbles too, no doubt. If there's one thing Apple excels at, its convincing the mass market to adopt technologies that currently only cater to a niche audience. I have no idea what their plans for VR are, but I do imagine if they do something in it they'll make some waves. But maybe it'll turn out like the Newton. Maybe they will never launch a VR product. Who knows.

andsoitis 4y ago
It’s not so much that the technology is niche, it is that the use cases are niche. What is the main killer use case of VR? How many people want it or would enjoy it or would pay for it?
- vel0city 4y ago
  I definitely agree the mass market appeal to VR is yet to be proven. This is a big part of why I say if Apple chooses to launch a VR headset. It may never be proven to be a successful mass market technology, and if so, I imagine Apple may never release a VR headset. The main use cases I see are gaming, and of that market only certain kinds of games. Then on top of that its challenging having the space to play those games safely. Personally, I really enjoy my VR headset, I love playing games like Star Wars: Squadrons in VR.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    > The main use cases I see are gaming I think of that in terms of “escape from reality” or “entertainment”. I suppose there are also educational use cases and remote control use cases.
time_to_smile 4y ago

neither_color 4y ago

It's getting better every year, the hardware just wasn't there before. I think the sweet spot will be in new vr-native experiences and not awkward skeuomorphic-ish implementations of the offline world in VR(which is what horizon seems to be trying to do) or gaming. Turning a 2D experience into a VR one will continue to have worse graphics and odd mechanics for the foreseeable future, and gaming in VR is just not relaxing compared to sitting on the couch with a controller. Not everyone wants to flail about and gesticulate after a long day of work. I personally like to sit back and watch random "experiences," virtual tours and stuff and when I introduce someone new to VR I show them these first rather than games. Complete immersion without having to think about what to do with your hands. Another interesting experience is Liminal https://liminalvr.com/ https://liminalvr.com/ It uses sounds/visual stimulation with the intent of affecting your "mood" and it's being developed by bona fide psychological researchers. It's truly something that can only exist in VR!