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For me the big turning point at Meta was the acquisition of Oculus. At the time, it was great, forward-thinking and gave everyone a lot of hope for the future o

For me the big turning point at Meta was the acquisition of Oculus. At the time, it was great, forward-thinking and gave everyone a lot of hope for the future of Meta and even society if you believed the hype. This peaked at about 2020 when the opportunity for VR and remote work became real and necessary due to an unprecedented pandemic. However, we all know the rest; hyperfocus on VR to the detriment of the rest of the company (most notably Instagram missing out on short-form video content) leading to the gradual slide off the cliff. VR is still important but Zuck needs to radically reshift and refocus to save the farm and stave off OpenAI. Interesting few years ahead.

jstummbillig 3y ago
> However, we all know the rest; That does make everything a lot simpler, doesn't it.
tsimionescu 3y ago
Is there any kind of indication VR (or its cousin, AR) is important to any extent? Everything I know suggests it's a niche technology that has little chance of becoming anything but a niche technology. It's not made any significant headway in gaming, in entertainment of other kinds, nor in general business settings. There are some specialist domains where 3D visualization is worth the cost and inconvenience, but it seems to me very unlikely that it will ever escape those. Meta's gigantic investment with little to show for it seems to me to support this observation.
- rolph 3y ago
  AR has more utility than VR , and i think telepresence requires elements of both. AR could be used to visually aid a tire change, or display sales specials overlayed on visual of IRL signage
- quantumwoke 3y ago
  For a brief moment during 2020, you could see the hype actually meet reality when a wave of VR startups that promised to transport us "as if we were really there" to the office. Now, you can choose to be cynical about that but I think it genuinely did live up to the hype when I could remote in to a full infinite-screen workstation and interact much more freely with coworkers than a Zoom call. These days, I see it much more commonly used for training purposes now that we are all being forced back to the office.
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    > Now, you can choose to be cynical about that but I think it genuinely did live up to the hype when I could remote in to a full infinite-screen workstation and interact much more freely with coworkers than a Zoom call. How exactly did you interact more freely with co-workers? I fully agree that in-person meetings are more productive than Zoom calls, but true telepresence that would capture that requires far more than I've seen any VR setup come even close to provide. Especially since everyone is busy with the display, while the camera+microphone part is actually miles away.
- kingcharles 3y ago
  It will eventually become one of the most significant technologies in history, alongside AI, in my opinion. People are confusing bulky headsets with the general concept of VR. If I showed you a working holodeck today you would think it significant. Mark made the right choice to go balls deep on VR when he did. I don't think he should dial back. When going through hell, keep going.
  - kibwen 3y ago
    > People are confusing bulky headsets with the general concept of VR. True, and it's still entirely reasonable to criticize Facebook on this count, because they have absolutely no plans beyond VR headsets. Any technology to take VR to the next level isn't even a glimmer on the horizon; we are still decades too early.
    - rubicon33 3y ago
      That's not really true at all. Quest Pro is technically an AR headset with full color pass through. It's extremely limited to be sure, but it's not like meta is ignoring AR.
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    > If I showed you a working holodeck today you would think it significant. Would I? How would an empty small room with cool audio-visual-only illusions help me more than a computer and phone do today?
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
  I'm personally still excited to try it for doing actual work. I think we're nearly there in terms of technology. Oculus CV1 was too blurry to read text. The last factor will be all day comfort I think. I like the idea of infinite screen real estate and being able to play proper 3D content is very cool. But.. I still admit not everyone will want to put on a headset even if the tech is great and I don't know how Zuck can change that perception.
- rubicon33 3y ago
  I've been a strong advocate for VR since 2016. Over the last 6+ years I've managed to convince family and friends to all jump in and pickup VR, mostly the Quest 2. What I can say is, the vast majority of them don't use their headset at all anymore. It sits on a shelf collecting dust, out of batteries, only to be picked up on the extremely rare occasion where they want to try it out again, and then after about 30-45 minutes they're done and it goes back on the shelf for another 3 months. I've lost all hope for VR being anything other than a niche technology, and I am a member of this small group that finds it a fascinating and very fun technology. I'm willing to put up with the inconvenience and discomfort because the experiences are so much more visceral. But I have to now accept that for most people the experience isn't amazing enough to overcome the discomfort and hassle. Most people will acknowledge that it's pretty cool in theory. If they could just flip a switch and be suddenly transported into their game world of course they'd do that every time v.s. playing on a flat monitor. Physical discomfort clunky controls and unintuitive interfaces, etc. all plague VR and make it only accessible to the most dedicated of fans.
  - berberous 3y ago
    It’s still early. Within 10 years, I’d be surprised if headsets and software haven’t improved enough that it’s reached a tipping point where many more people do use it consistently.
    - rubicon33 3y ago
      I sure hope so. VR right NOW is amazing and fun, so if it becomes more accessible, comfortable, and standardized, I think it has a chance at breaking into the mainstream. It's going to take some serious electrical and hardware engineering though to get the form factor small and comfortable enough that people don't find it a huge pain.
  - NoLinkToMe 3y ago
    Damn, hits home. I would've been one of your friends or family I think. I was immediately excited about VR back in the mid 2010s. And over the past years I've done a bit of reading and have had various fun discussions with friends about the use-cases of VR today, and in 5 or 15 years from now, that all made sense to me. I really held off as long as I could for both the tech and the content base to develop, to jump in with the best experience. Plus I had already moved away from gaming PCs to Mac + PlayStation, so when 1.5y ago PSVR2 was announced I had an opportunity to get some of the best hardware $550 could buy. But I've mostly been disappointed. Despite waiting for half a decade to jump into it, and staying home looking out the window for my package to arrive, I spent just 30 min on it the first day, and another 30min over the course of the next week, and since I got it (pre-order) I've spent no more than 1.5 hours. I honestly don't think I've ever in my life, spent so much on something that got me so little value. I'm not really blaming the hardware, it's all quite impressive, and I've been on the PSVR2 subreddit where everyone absolutely loves a ton of the games. It just didn't get the magic going for me. I'm still considering selling the PSVR2 and buying a Quest 2. I'm personally less interested in the PS game content, and want to try out museums, concerts, safaris, as well as some indie (game) content and the various mods. I'm still somehow quite excited about the tech, even though I've got no interest in using the hardware I have sitting a meter away from me. And I have to be honest, the nausea of the 3 experiences I had were a put off. Traumatic is waaaay too strong a word to use. But you know how someone may eat sushi and love it, and then get food poisoning due to bad hygiene at the restaurant, and spend 24 hours throwing up sushi, doesn't feel like having sushi for years? I feel the nausea may have had that effect a bit. All 3 play sessions I ended feeling sweaty, dizzy and sick, and required me to just lay down and do nothing for a few hours. I know it gets better as your brain gets used to it, but it raised the bar to jump in for a quick session to the point of 'why bother'. My gf didn't have this problem at all, although she hasn't asked to play since the first time I showed it to her (and she was really wowified by it all and enjoyed it a lot). I've definitely come to the conclusion that my enthusiasm for VR was misguided, or just really premature. I don't see myself videoconferencing in VR in 5 years rather than using Teams, playing games, watching VR movies from the POV of one of the main actors, watching the world cup final from the POV of the referee, enjoying a concert from the VIP area, or playing a VR RPG like Fallout or Mass Effect with not just a ChatGTP but also a VR mod. But who knows. Part of me does still think: if there's tons of good content out there, cheaper than now. If the devices have double the resolution and screen refresh rate, weigh less, cost less, and they're super seamless to put on and make you less dizzy, immerse you more, and get you into experiences that flatscreens can't do... then maybe it'll stay around like the Smartwatch / Apple Watch: a major ($100b per year) product category enjoyed by >200 million, that doesn't change the world but still makes it better. I don't really see VR fading away entirely, unless AR supplants it. Could you speak to your top 5 or 10 (if you can) VR apps/experiences on the Quest 2, that you would recommend to try out?
- martindbp 3y ago
  > It's not made any significant headway What counts as significant? 20m headsets sold on par with a gaming console at least counts for something. Have you actually tried the Quest 2 or Pro, it's pretty neat. Not an iphone moment yet, it seems it'll be a slower thing, like the PC or the internet.
treeman79 3y ago
[flagged]
- nixgeek 3y ago
  Many of the alternate treatments were widely decried by medical professionals as being unsafe. Much of the discourse which Facebook and others ended up deciding they didn’t want on their platforms was tied to (or related to, or resulted in) the criminal conduct at the U.S. Capitol which has resulted in 10’s of people being imprisoned, and with many more criminal investigations and prosecutions still underway. I don’t see why these platforms shouldn’t be allowed and indeed expected to moderate extreme behavior, or the advocacy of and incitement to criminal activities, or the promotion of medically unsafe treatments during a pandemic.
  - zaroth 3y ago
    If by “ended up deciding they didn’t want on their platform” you mean being told by the USG to remove it, and when they didn’t remove enough of it, the President called them mass-murderers and threatened to do something about it? The arrests of Jan 6 protestors, you mean like the “QAnon Shaman” who was guided through the Capital by police and had that evidence illegally withheld by the prosecution, and then when the truth came out was released?
- zaroth 3y ago
  This is a Washington Post article. Instead they claimed it was “allowing disinformation in 2016” that contributed to problems - what a joke they are still trying to push that narrative.
julianeon 3y ago
Every time I see these numbers about how much Meta is losing per year on VR - 6 billion, 10 billion, etc. - I look up the valuation of Roblox. Answer: about 20 billion. They should’ve just acquired Roblox - for the price of WhatsApp! - and gotten unquestioned ownership of the leading young gamer audience, and a fully functioning “Metaverse” (if you want call it that), in one fell swoop. It sounds like they’ve already spent more than this for nothing tangible in return. Such a missed opportunity.
- grumbel 3y ago
  The issue with that is that Meta doesn't really want a younger audience. Quest2 is already extremely popular with kids, but Meta's "age 13" requirement for accounts doesn't allow many of them on their platform. Their Horizon Worlds "Metaverse" even had an age 18 limit for the last few years (seems to have been lifted in the US just days ago, still present in most other countries). Killing the Oculus name was another bad choice here. They were on their way to become the new "Nintendo". People started to refer to everything VR gaming related as "Oculus", but Facebook wanted VR to be about Metaverse, not gaming, so Oculus got killed.

jstummbillig 3y ago

> However, we all know the rest; That does make everything a lot simpler, doesn't it.

tsimionescu 3y ago

Is there any kind of indication VR (or its cousin, AR) is important to any extent? Everything I know suggests it's a niche technology that has little chance of becoming anything but a niche technology. It's not made any significant headway in gaming, in entertainment of other kinds, nor in general business settings. There are some specialist domains where 3D visualization is worth the cost and inconvenience, but it seems to me very unlikely that it will ever escape those. Meta's gigantic investment with little to show for it seems to me to support this observation.

rolph 3y ago
AR has more utility than VR , and i think telepresence requires elements of both. AR could be used to visually aid a tire change, or display sales specials overlayed on visual of IRL signage
quantumwoke 3y ago
For a brief moment during 2020, you could see the hype actually meet reality when a wave of VR startups that promised to transport us "as if we were really there" to the office. Now, you can choose to be cynical about that but I think it genuinely did live up to the hype when I could remote in to a full infinite-screen workstation and interact much more freely with coworkers than a Zoom call. These days, I see it much more commonly used for training purposes now that we are all being forced back to the office.
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  > Now, you can choose to be cynical about that but I think it genuinely did live up to the hype when I could remote in to a full infinite-screen workstation and interact much more freely with coworkers than a Zoom call. How exactly did you interact more freely with co-workers? I fully agree that in-person meetings are more productive than Zoom calls, but true telepresence that would capture that requires far more than I've seen any VR setup come even close to provide. Especially since everyone is busy with the display, while the camera+microphone part is actually miles away.
kingcharles 3y ago
It will eventually become one of the most significant technologies in history, alongside AI, in my opinion. People are confusing bulky headsets with the general concept of VR. If I showed you a working holodeck today you would think it significant. Mark made the right choice to go balls deep on VR when he did. I don't think he should dial back. When going through hell, keep going.
- kibwen 3y ago
  > People are confusing bulky headsets with the general concept of VR. True, and it's still entirely reasonable to criticize Facebook on this count, because they have absolutely no plans beyond VR headsets. Any technology to take VR to the next level isn't even a glimmer on the horizon; we are still decades too early.
  - rubicon33 3y ago
    That's not really true at all. Quest Pro is technically an AR headset with full color pass through. It's extremely limited to be sure, but it's not like meta is ignoring AR.
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  > If I showed you a working holodeck today you would think it significant. Would I? How would an empty small room with cool audio-visual-only illusions help me more than a computer and phone do today?
8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
I'm personally still excited to try it for doing actual work. I think we're nearly there in terms of technology. Oculus CV1 was too blurry to read text. The last factor will be all day comfort I think. I like the idea of infinite screen real estate and being able to play proper 3D content is very cool. But.. I still admit not everyone will want to put on a headset even if the tech is great and I don't know how Zuck can change that perception.
rubicon33 3y ago
I've been a strong advocate for VR since 2016. Over the last 6+ years I've managed to convince family and friends to all jump in and pickup VR, mostly the Quest 2. What I can say is, the vast majority of them don't use their headset at all anymore. It sits on a shelf collecting dust, out of batteries, only to be picked up on the extremely rare occasion where they want to try it out again, and then after about 30-45 minutes they're done and it goes back on the shelf for another 3 months. I've lost all hope for VR being anything other than a niche technology, and I am a member of this small group that finds it a fascinating and very fun technology. I'm willing to put up with the inconvenience and discomfort because the experiences are so much more visceral. But I have to now accept that for most people the experience isn't amazing enough to overcome the discomfort and hassle. Most people will acknowledge that it's pretty cool in theory. If they could just flip a switch and be suddenly transported into their game world of course they'd do that every time v.s. playing on a flat monitor. Physical discomfort clunky controls and unintuitive interfaces, etc. all plague VR and make it only accessible to the most dedicated of fans.
- berberous 3y ago
  It’s still early. Within 10 years, I’d be surprised if headsets and software haven’t improved enough that it’s reached a tipping point where many more people do use it consistently.
  - rubicon33 3y ago
    I sure hope so. VR right NOW is amazing and fun, so if it becomes more accessible, comfortable, and standardized, I think it has a chance at breaking into the mainstream. It's going to take some serious electrical and hardware engineering though to get the form factor small and comfortable enough that people don't find it a huge pain.
- NoLinkToMe 3y ago
  Damn, hits home. I would've been one of your friends or family I think. I was immediately excited about VR back in the mid 2010s. And over the past years I've done a bit of reading and have had various fun discussions with friends about the use-cases of VR today, and in 5 or 15 years from now, that all made sense to me. I really held off as long as I could for both the tech and the content base to develop, to jump in with the best experience. Plus I had already moved away from gaming PCs to Mac + PlayStation, so when 1.5y ago PSVR2 was announced I had an opportunity to get some of the best hardware $550 could buy. But I've mostly been disappointed. Despite waiting for half a decade to jump into it, and staying home looking out the window for my package to arrive, I spent just 30 min on it the first day, and another 30min over the course of the next week, and since I got it (pre-order) I've spent no more than 1.5 hours. I honestly don't think I've ever in my life, spent so much on something that got me so little value. I'm not really blaming the hardware, it's all quite impressive, and I've been on the PSVR2 subreddit where everyone absolutely loves a ton of the games. It just didn't get the magic going for me. I'm still considering selling the PSVR2 and buying a Quest 2. I'm personally less interested in the PS game content, and want to try out museums, concerts, safaris, as well as some indie (game) content and the various mods. I'm still somehow quite excited about the tech, even though I've got no interest in using the hardware I have sitting a meter away from me. And I have to be honest, the nausea of the 3 experiences I had were a put off. Traumatic is waaaay too strong a word to use. But you know how someone may eat sushi and love it, and then get food poisoning due to bad hygiene at the restaurant, and spend 24 hours throwing up sushi, doesn't feel like having sushi for years? I feel the nausea may have had that effect a bit. All 3 play sessions I ended feeling sweaty, dizzy and sick, and required me to just lay down and do nothing for a few hours. I know it gets better as your brain gets used to it, but it raised the bar to jump in for a quick session to the point of 'why bother'. My gf didn't have this problem at all, although she hasn't asked to play since the first time I showed it to her (and she was really wowified by it all and enjoyed it a lot). I've definitely come to the conclusion that my enthusiasm for VR was misguided, or just really premature. I don't see myself videoconferencing in VR in 5 years rather than using Teams, playing games, watching VR movies from the POV of one of the main actors, watching the world cup final from the POV of the referee, enjoying a concert from the VIP area, or playing a VR RPG like Fallout or Mass Effect with not just a ChatGTP but also a VR mod. But who knows. Part of me does still think: if there's tons of good content out there, cheaper than now. If the devices have double the resolution and screen refresh rate, weigh less, cost less, and they're super seamless to put on and make you less dizzy, immerse you more, and get you into experiences that flatscreens can't do... then maybe it'll stay around like the Smartwatch / Apple Watch: a major ($100b per year) product category enjoyed by >200 million, that doesn't change the world but still makes it better. I don't really see VR fading away entirely, unless AR supplants it. Could you speak to your top 5 or 10 (if you can) VR apps/experiences on the Quest 2, that you would recommend to try out?
martindbp 3y ago
> It's not made any significant headway What counts as significant? 20m headsets sold on par with a gaming console at least counts for something. Have you actually tried the Quest 2 or Pro, it's pretty neat. Not an iphone moment yet, it seems it'll be a slower thing, like the PC or the internet.

treeman79 3y ago

[flagged]

nixgeek 3y ago
Many of the alternate treatments were widely decried by medical professionals as being unsafe. Much of the discourse which Facebook and others ended up deciding they didn’t want on their platforms was tied to (or related to, or resulted in) the criminal conduct at the U.S. Capitol which has resulted in 10’s of people being imprisoned, and with many more criminal investigations and prosecutions still underway. I don’t see why these platforms shouldn’t be allowed and indeed expected to moderate extreme behavior, or the advocacy of and incitement to criminal activities, or the promotion of medically unsafe treatments during a pandemic.
- zaroth 3y ago
  If by “ended up deciding they didn’t want on their platform” you mean being told by the USG to remove it, and when they didn’t remove enough of it, the President called them mass-murderers and threatened to do something about it? The arrests of Jan 6 protestors, you mean like the “QAnon Shaman” who was guided through the Capital by police and had that evidence illegally withheld by the prosecution, and then when the truth came out was released?
zaroth 3y ago
This is a Washington Post article. Instead they claimed it was “allowing disinformation in 2016” that contributed to problems - what a joke they are still trying to push that narrative.

julianeon 3y ago

Every time I see these numbers about how much Meta is losing per year on VR - 6 billion, 10 billion, etc. - I look up the valuation of Roblox. Answer: about 20 billion. They should’ve just acquired Roblox - for the price of WhatsApp! - and gotten unquestioned ownership of the leading young gamer audience, and a fully functioning “Metaverse” (if you want call it that), in one fell swoop. It sounds like they’ve already spent more than this for nothing tangible in return. Such a missed opportunity.

grumbel 3y ago
The issue with that is that Meta doesn't really want a younger audience. Quest2 is already extremely popular with kids, but Meta's "age 13" requirement for accounts doesn't allow many of them on their platform. Their Horizon Worlds "Metaverse" even had an age 18 limit for the last few years (seems to have been lifted in the US just days ago, still present in most other countries). Killing the Oculus name was another bad choice here. They were on their way to become the new "Nintendo". People started to refer to everything VR gaming related as "Oculus", but Facebook wanted VR to be about Metaverse, not gaming, so Oculus got killed.