10 ms·

So what’s the killer app? Beatsaber and some other games can be a lot of fun, but they’re not new. What new experience are ready for this? I get the quality i

by MBCook 3y ago

So what’s the killer app? Beatsaber and some other games can be a lot of fun, but they’re not new. What new experience are ready for this? I get the quality is better, and that’s not nothing. But other than that this largely seems like more of the same. VR still doesn’t seem to have advanced much in software to me. And Meta keeps pushing virtual meetings and such but that’s not my cup of tea. I owned a Quest 2 and had some fun with it. I’ve owned previous headsets too. But I just don’t see anything that would makes me say “ooh I need that”. This feels very “PC” to me. By which I mean they’re selling it because they can sell new hardware. The Pentium 9 is out! Which is fine. But when Sony/Nintendo/MS want to sell a new console they put new and fancier games. They give you a specific reason to upgrade besides better specs. So you can play Horizon 12: We’re On The Moon Now. Or Bob’s Crazy Adventure. Whatever. All this time and it still seems like the market is 95% games, and those aren’t advancing much beyond visuals. So I don’t feel like I’m really missing anything.

itsyaboi 3y ago
XBox cloud gaming is pretty big. Roblox is huge with kids as well.
- pzmarzly 3y ago
  +1. I don't have a TV, so if I could just stream my macOS desktop and Xbox Cloud Gaming (which I already use) to a virtual 50+' screen that follows me as I walk around, that will be enough for me to buy in.
  - rabf 3y ago
    https://www.immersed.com/ https://www.immersed.com/
- MBCook 3y ago
  That seems to reinforce my point to me. Both of those are available on other platforms. They don’t need the Quest 3. Why not just buy an Xbox? What makes me need a Quest 3?
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    You can play games on lower resolution, lower refresh monitors, so why do people market higher resolution and particularly higher refresh rate monitors succesfully to gamers? Quality if experience, not just binary “can you minimally do it”, matters, and matters particularly to the segment of the market that has lots of disposable income.
  - itsyaboi 3y ago
    You can buy an XBox, but you won't be able to do anything VR related with it, so not sure what your point is. It sounds like you've convinced yourself you don't need the quest, so just don't worry about it?
cm2012 3y ago
There's a bunch of very powerful/ successful AI girlfriend apps like Replika. I think that will be a breakthrough use case for VR.
- Panini_Jones 3y ago
  How successful are those virtual girlfriend apps?
  - robotnikman 3y ago
    Last I checked, they removed a bunch of capabilities from Replika which caused a massive uproar on their subreddit and facebook.
    - throeaaysn 3y ago
      [dead]
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      Indeed. Based on "How angry are people when something is changed?", they seem to be pretty successful. Which makes sense, what you remember LLMs are magic boxes that tell you what they think you want to hear.
- Night_Thastus 3y ago
  If all the recent LLM stuff is any indication, I can't imagine they'll be very good. I think we've got a few decades to go before that can be anything other than a novelty.
  - throeaaysn 3y ago
    [dead]
- kristianc 3y ago
  If that’s the killer app for VR, then all I can say is god help VR.
supernikio2 3y ago
>So what’s the killer app? I feel like the answer to that question will come next year, when Apple's Vision Pro is out.
- epolanski 3y ago
  Which won't release applications for the quest?
  - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
    Yes, but competition
  - MBCook 3y ago
    What if they can’t? What if whatever it is that makes the app so compelling automatically rules it out on the Quest 3 for some reason? What if it demands a better input method or higher resolution?
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      Then I'd be impressed, frankly. I've got the original Quest, and features you'd expect to be broken or missing (eg. hand tracking, multitasking, game streaming, web browsing, sideloading, et. al) all work fine. It's honestly quite sad that the core line of rhetoric here is a laconic "what if" statement around theoretical apps. The Quest exists and has sold tens of millions of units; the Vision Pro has yet to prove itself. Unless you have a specific example, this can only be interpreted as wishcasting.
      - MBCook 3y ago
        The quest sold millions at the beginning of a pandemic when people were trapped at home and needed an escape. How many people still use it? How many regret the purchase, how many would have bought it without the pandemic? I see that as Meta’s big opportunity to grab success in VR. And it didn’t happen. They’re trying to market this like the next thing everyone needs and after multiple tries I just don’t see it. I don’t even see how they get there, this is the same strategy as the Quest, Quest 2, PSVR, PSVR2, etc. Games are great but that pitch just isn’t working at really moving the needle. But that’s all they have.
circuit10 3y ago
I guess better AR support could allow some new types of things eventually but that probably won’t take off until you can walk around with in in daily life without it being awkward and uncomfortable
layer8 3y ago
> This feels very “PC” to me. By which I mean they’re selling it because they can sell new hardware. The Pentium 9 is out! Which is fine. I mean, the same is happening for smartphones and tablets. Yes, it won’t dramatically grow the market.
- MBCook 3y ago
  But those already have mass market acceptance. They’re not trying to prove they’re necessary. The iPhone (and other smartphones) literally changed the world. There’s only so much they can innovate after 15 years of record breaking success. VR doesn’t have that. People weren’t chomping at the bit for the day it was 20% better. Unless it passes some unknown threshold where it suddenly becomes good enough to suddenly be really popular, they’re still trying to prove relevance.
  - layer8 3y ago
    Yes, and I don’t expect this to change much in the foreseeable future, given current technological constraints. But why would you expect a third-generation product to suddenly change this?
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      It’s a bit shocking mostly because of the scale of investment. Meta alone has spent $36B on VR. To put this in perspective, iPhone development cost $3.6B. It’s the fastest, largest single investment into a new technology. https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-lost-30-billion-on-metaverse-rivals-spent-far-less-2022-10?amp https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-lost-30-billion-on-meta...
      - local_crmdgeon 3y ago
        For the cost of this object, we could have built 3 new subway lines in NYC WITHOUT dealing with our cost disease. For the cost of the object, you could set up a university program to figure out Anglo cost disease, then build ~10 subway lines at Japanese costs. Asking why our society funds things the way they do is a very reasonable and responsible question
dougmwne 3y ago
My personal killer app was enjoying the LiDAR imagery in Google Earth VR. Wish that it was actively developed and released for standalone.
AmericanOP 3y ago
GeForce Now.
wigster 3y ago
> So what’s the killer app? the porn app automatically locks the doors of your house to stop people "disturbing you"
nkotov 3y ago
I use my Quest 2 for mostly streaming from my PC games likes Asserto Corsa.
TheHumanist 3y ago
But... but... they made sure to put Gorilla Tag on the little games graphic... that doesn't do it for you?
smeeth 3y ago
Similar to the vision pro the killer app will eventually be AR. Its pretty obvious that virtual TV/Computer screens at arbitrary sizes/distances in arbitrary environments will simply be a better UX than physical monitors. Not sure if Quest 3 is there yet, but they're iterating towards it.
- rtkwe 3y ago
  There's an underlying issue with the whole AR screen thing. They're heavily limited by the resolution of the screen in the goggles itself. These have a bit over half a 4k display per eye so you can only really have display resolutions of some fraction of that determined by what fraction of the area of a given eye display the fake screen takes up. If you blow it up until you're only looking at a portion of the screen you can have a larger one but then you're stuck to moving your head around to see your whole monitor. It's one of the big issues with the whole AR screen idea we'll need pretty beefy hardware to work around.
- audunw 3y ago
  > It’s pretty obvious that virtual TV/Computer screens at arbitrary sizes/distances in arbitrary environments will simply be a better UX than physical monitors. Is it? I don’t feel like it’s better right now (I know some people do, but I’m not convinced they’re the majority). Fixing the issues with VR is not trivial. There’s some deep flaws in the optics that we simply don’t know how to solve yet, and the weight needs to go down by a lot. I’m not sure I’d ever be comfortable wearing them more than a couple of hours when they’re entirely closed… but that’s a hard requirement for a good experience. There’s a bunch of hard contradictions in making good VR/AR. Remember that as VR technology improves, so will monitors.
  - bionhoward 3y ago
    Couldn’t virtualized monitors be customizable in a declarative way which would enable you to do stuff which would be completely impossible on hardware, though? Imagine i3wm with dynamic virtual hardware, that’s insane, not to mention what kinds of automated monitor setup configuration transitions you could make. AR guy many years from now can instantly try a new 12-monitor setup while our dumb butts wait for 12 expensive things in the mail and then wire them all up. Oh, wouldn’t it be cool to have 16? More waiting. But nobody buys that many monitors. If it was just a number in a text file, people might try out a 16 monitor setup just for no reason. The difference in capability could be massive, to the point we’d be truly amazed to jump into the future of AR. Not to mention the freedom of hands free portability, it could be wizard levels of awesomeness!
riskable 3y ago
When Valve releases a stand-alone headset that can play regular PC VR games that will be what changes the VR market. Until then it'll be just, "more of the same." Minor improvements/evolution, etc. Biggest thing the industry could do in order to move VR/AR forwards would be to adopt SteamOS or a similar "normal" Linux OS and give end users root. That would really be a kick in the ass towards real innovation more than, "slightly better tracking; slightly lighter; now with color pass through!"
- felistoria 3y ago
  You can do this with the Quest 2 right now via AirLink. I do it all the time.
  - riskable 3y ago
    You're talking about streaming/remote control of a PC which can involve significant latency and lag spikes (unless you're tethered with a good USB cable). That is by definition not a stand-alone headset. You're just using it as a fancy VR dongle. This necessitates two things: * Your PC is powerful enough to run VR games * Your PC is in an area that's convenient to play (with plenty of room) Nearly all Quest 2 users are using it stand-alone. They're not hooking it up to a PC. There's a tiny fraction of users that do the PC VR thing with Steam but that's so small as to be negligible in the overall market. You're actually kind of making my point: Imagine if you didn't need the PC or the tether and could just play those great, easy-to-mod PC VR games directly on the headset. The market for VR would undergo a massive, positive change. I'd also like to point out that tethering limits the fun you can have! Example: https://replay.beatleader.xyz/?scoreId=7668607 https://replay.beatleader.xyz/?scoreId=7668607 You can't play Beat Saber like that if you're tethered.
    - Nullabillity 3y ago
      If you don't have a PC powerful enough for VR then you're probably not going to drop a lot of money on a combined PC+VR headset either.
    - 3y ago
eatsyourtacos 3y ago
>So what’s the killer app? There isn't one and there never will be because people like different things. Why do people like you constantly say "what's the killer app" ever time something new VR comes out? I've been doing VR since oculus dk1 and VR has been crazy enjoyable from time to time. VR is cheap as hell now. Quest2 was $300 for quite some time even before the Quest3. If you can't find enjoyment with virtual reality from a $300 stand alone device that's a you problem.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Why do people like you constantly say "what's the killer app" ever time something new VR comes out? It’s asking for the use case. If there isn’t a use case outside gaming, there is no value on the table for non-gamers.
  - Auracle 3y ago
    Gaming is a huge market, and if you go in to any free to play game it's absolutely inundated with kids/preteens. You can also roam using apps that let you do Google street view stuff in VR, create art, watch movies in a theater like experience alone or by yourself, and of course a lot of people use it for porn. Even usual non-gamers love stuff like Walkabout Mini Golf or Star Wars Pinball.
    - MBCook 3y ago
      Gaming is a huge market. What portion of that market is VR? That’s the issue I see. Gaming may be the best thing in VR, but VR hasn’t felt necessary to the average gamer at all. It’s still a small niche.
      - eatsyourtacos 3y ago
        >It’s still a small niche So what? Go play and enjoy. >VR hasn’t felt necessary to the average gamer Not even sure what that means. You come across as someone who likes to complain and never actually enjoy something. Good luck with that.
lawlessone 3y ago
For the price i would consider it as an alternative to buying a new PC screen. If it allows that.
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago
  There's no way you wouldn't have a massive headache wearing that 8-12 hours a day?
  - felistoria 3y ago
    I've watched Netflix movies with no issues. The max session time I've ever done in VR is about 4 hours but that was playing a game and had no issues except the imprint from the headset in my forehead... I definitely know people that can't play at all without feeling sick though so ymmv.
  - lawlessone 3y ago
    only 12 hours? :) Fair point.
  - dpig_ 3y ago
    I play VR shooters for 3-6 hours most days of the week.
baby 3y ago
What’s the killer app for a PC?
- umeshunni 3y ago
  Originally, it was Excel/Lotus 123. Later, it was the web browser. Nowadays, it's mostly games.
  - lawlessone 3y ago
    Seems its excel again lol, they're bringing MS office to the quest
    - baby 3y ago
      I'd say I exclusively used the Go and the Quest I've had to play games
  - justapassenger 3y ago
    Web browser and Excel are still killer apps for PC. There's way more PCs used for that, than for games.
    - umeshunni 3y ago
      Yeah - Excel and other 'productivity' apps are probably still the killer apps for PCs, especially for businesses. I assume businesses still drive the majority of PC purchases. Some other factoids: There are >1B PC gamers (source: random articles on the web). I'm guessing the number of mobile gamers is 2-3B. There aren't that many active Excel users. Even Google sheets (free) has only a few hundred million users. Most web browsing is now done on mobile. The transition happened sometime ~2015 for most of the world and something like 2017 for 'developer markets'.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    Right. It was Wordstar instead of a typewriter. VisiCalc instead of ledgers book. Photoshop. PageMaker or Quark Xpress. AutoCAD. Over and over as computers got more powerful new killer apps appeared that changed the way people worked and the world did its business. VR doesn’t appear to have anything like that. Just a small niche of the gaming market.
MuffinFlavored 3y ago
> VR still doesn’t seem to have advanced much in software to me. Let's put our imaginations together. What use case for VR do we all wish we could see/can we think of that we don't see yet?
- nolroz 3y ago
  I want to walk into my back yard and visualize a new garden, then check on it through the year and get info on what the plants need. Same thing with my house and layout/furniture. Let me stand in a hotel room in a city I'm not familiar with and look around at the town around me, x-ray style.
  - MuffinFlavored 3y ago
    > I want to walk into my back yard Aren't the VR headsets wired?
    - 1auralynn 3y ago
      No, Quests are mobile, that's why they have such low processing power
    - dns_snek 3y ago
      Some can be used standalone, like the Quest.
cheriot 3y ago
Quest 2 grew the VR market by ~10x. What was the killer app? Beat Saber is the first install, but not what kept it going for 3 years. It's the ecosystem. VR Chat for some, social game for others, immersive experiments like Bonelab, and a few studio titles. I'm glad Meta didn't hype the Quest 3 too much. It's easy for VR expectations to outrun current tech. VR seems to be in the trough of disillusionment where it's moving forward (2023 games are way more playable than 2021 games) but it's a slow burn. "Hey this isn't a step change" is probably right about the Quest 3, but I think also misses the bigger picture. It's a platform and people are still figuring out what to build on it.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Beat Saber is still hella fun. I know some people that just play that (but play it daily) on their Quest. I'm not sure Facebook is particularly happy about that, however, since those people aren't buying apps or making them much money (maybe just the occasional song pack). I'm guessing Beat Saber is the only reason the Quest is even sold in Japan and Korea.
  - zem 3y ago
    honestly, if the quest weren't tied to an account I would have considered getting one just to play beat saber too. it's fun and you feel like you're getting exercise at the same time.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      Beat Saber really is lots of fun. It really has that DDR vibe, and you don't need super expensive equipment to do it. I only connected with my facebook account a few months ago, I guess was grandfathered in under the previous system until they nagged me to do it.
  - cableshaft 3y ago
    The song packs come out really slowly too. They've released just one song pack with 11 songs on it this year, the Queen one back in May, as well as added 10 songs to existing song packs. For a total of 21 songs total this year so far. And 210 official songs since it first came out back in 2018. Meanwhile the PCVR version has a ridiculous 65,000[1] custom songs made for it at this point. Not sure why they can't get closer to the Rock Band model, where it released new songs all the time, and had 2,743 songs total (and 84 songs THIS YEAR according to Wikipedia[2]...had no idea there was even an actively supported Rock Band game out there still). Beat Saber should be making them enough money to allow them to at least do double or triple what they're doing now. [1]: https://bsaber.com/ultimate-guide-to-beat-saber-custom-songs/ https://bsaber.com/ultimate-guide-to-beat-saber-custom-songs... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_downloadable_songs_for_the_Rock_Band_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_downloadable_songs_for...
dumpsterdiver 3y ago
I had fun for about an hour using virtual turn tables to mix my music collection, but after awhile it just felt kind of dumb - awkwardly fiddling with knobs in a virtual world with no tactile feedback. It's like it got me halfway towards being productive, but the quality of inputs and feedback are so poor that I quickly reached a ceiling. When it comes to actually getting things done, in my experience VR just gets in the way. AR on the other hand is something I could easily see becoming useful. One cool use case that immediately comes to mind are instruction manuals. You get a new piece of furniture from Ikea and the AR instructions identify pieces you have laid on the ground and directs you where to put it. Or Legos, right? Real world inputs, and real world results.
elliottkember 3y ago
Eleven Table Tennis. It's so much fun. The controller is the same weight as a paddle, and it's responsive enough to "feel" right. It's really improved my game and is a surprising amount of exercise.
bottlepalm 3y ago
A lot of kids are spending most of their waking hours in VRChat right now. It's pretty addicting once you have a group of friends in there...
- crooked-v 3y ago
  Also (as lots of adult VRChat users will complain about), it's a way to get free babysitting from the internet for your kid.
  - bottlepalm 3y ago
    The internet babysits the minds of children and adults alike. Go to any restaurant and you'll see entire families all glued to their phones.
- braislan 3y ago
  Yea and everyone is getting in shape from VR too... These are bogus marketing lines that people puppet back to each other. I know 20 some kids and not a single one has even the slightest interest in VR. It is really shocking to me how these kids that can play games all the time have absolutely no interest in VR. It is not uncool or passe, it is just absolutely nothing to them. It is a niche product that enthusiast oversell because the reality is that most people just don't care.
  - bottlepalm 3y ago
    Not marketing. In reality, tens of thousands of kids are spending ridiculous amounts of time in VR. They will grow up, normalize it, and the next wave will be much much bigger. Sounds like you haven't seen or experienced what I'm talking about, so you have no idea, just your anecdotes.
vyrotek 3y ago
My kids are on Gorilla Tag and Roblox all day and I complain about it the same way my parents did about the all time I spent in chatrooms and forums back in the day. It's a slow roll, but I think the seed has been planted.
bouncyhat 3y ago
I've found BigScreen (https://www.bigscreenvr.com/software https://www.bigscreenvr.com/software) to be a fairly compelling killer app case for VR. Besides being able to trick your eyes into thinking they're in a movie theater, the social elements are great. On a weekly cadence I jump into a shared room with 6+ of my friends and we pick a bad movie to watch together as we MST3k it. There's something about positional audio when talking with someone that makes it easier to replicate the experience of hanging out in person versus a video meet. We've been doing this since the pandemic started and it's the #1 way I stay in touch with a bunch of friends now. It's also ruined real life movie theaters for me since I'm used to being able to talk with friends while watching. We'll actively wait for a movie to hit streaming before "seeing it in the theaters" with each other. All of this was already possible with the Quest 2, but I'm interested to see how the quest 3 can further make those hangouts feel even closer to the real thing. Dunno if it will be a big enough leap for everyone to jump from the 2 to the 3, but if the visuals comes through sharper, or the sound is better, or the controller is easier to hold for 2 hours - any of those things would be a win.
- bsimpson 3y ago
  I haven't got to use VR much, since my apartment is too small for it, but I have played a few rounds of VR racketball. I have no interest in VR videoconferencing, but shared presence is surprisingly interesting. When you've both got headsets and headphones on, you can't tell the difference from playing in the same room as your friend, even if you're physically hours from one another.
- mulderc 3y ago
  Big screen has the most toxic online community I have ever interacted with. I know there is worse out there but the amount of anti-LGBTQ chat I hear was disturbing for a place that is about watching movies.
  - bouncyhat 3y ago
    Yeah, I wouldn't wade into anything public there - stick to private rooms with your friends. The moment you go into any sort of "I want to meet strangers" in VR setting you're really rolling the dice. I briefly hopped into the "shared lobby" for Big Screen at one point and encountered probably 3 or 4 negative internet stereotypes immediate (14 year old yelling obscenities, someone trying to hump my face, and someone just blasting noise so loud through their mic it was painful). Very much something you would only want to experience with trusted parties.
chaostheory 3y ago
The killer app is a fun way to do fitness either alone or socially without having to go to the gym and without getting bored since the workouts are dynamic and unreal ie dodging bullets and fighting monsters If you’re not active, and don’t want to be active; you’re not going to like it beyond watching movies in a virtual movie theater
philjohn 3y ago
For me it's sim racing - for other people it's exercise apps, for educational users it's immersing students in ancient Greece. Sim racing is amazing in VR - I got instantly faster, able to judge distances better, and the immersion is top notch.
Auracle 3y ago
What's the killer app of the iPhone 15? They are releasing something like 50 new games, though they aren't making them exclusive, which follows what consoles seem to do now too. The killer app for me has been being able to hop on to a VR game with my friends and somewhat feel like we're in the same room. It's too hard to get together frequently, and even setting up a VR 'date' is hard, but it's something.
- executive 3y ago
  usb c
- MBCook 3y ago
  No one needs to be convinced to buy a smartphone. They changed the world. People already want them. VR is not in that position. It needs to prove its utility if it ever wants to escape being a niche.
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
> So what’s the killer app? What's the desktops killer app? What's mobile's killer app? Computing to me is a general purpose system, which grows holistically. This kind of search for certainty, trying to annoint some specific app as the thing that a form factor is all for, is actively harmful to understanding the role of compute & how it fits into augments & enriches so many diverse different things we do. Creating comfortable computing spaces is never going to be a fast burn. It's taken decades for the desktop to mature. This is a harder challenge, enmeshing with reality rather than being so tightly a self contained system. I have a lot of questions & uncertainty about how computing rolls out a presence beyond the screen & into the world. It's unknown to me and maybe it flat up fails & never works. But I'd like some respect & acceptance that this is an open ended thing, not going to be so conveniently compact & singular as this ask tries to reduce it to. Searching so hard for certainty is dangerous, rejects the pioneering & open endedness & intergativeness that most rich complex & capable long lasting systems endure through. Let's not be so rash in demanding all our answers ahead of time.
- MBCook 3y ago
  > What’s the desktop’s killer app? We know that. It’s happened. Wordstar, VisiCalc, Photoshop, PageMaker or Quark Xpress, AutoCAD, Netscape Navigator, AOL. They, and their descendants, moved billions of units. > What’s the mobile’s killer app? Chat. Maps. The internet. Uber. Dating. Use as a camera. Email. Shopping. Again, billions of units. No one has figured out a non-niche application for VR. Normal people don’t care. It’s not even on their radar. That’s my point. More of the same isn’t going to change that. They either need the app to make it break through or some improvement that allows that app. This is a spec bump. Nice to those already interested, unlikely to attract new people. Apple is trying something. They’re throwing hardware at it, especially in terms of a very very high resolution screen. They think that will make the difference, even given the price. We’ll find out. But at least they’re trying something different. Because I don’t see why this would jump into the mainstream.
  - jauntywundrkind 3y ago
    Hindsight is 20/20. You have listed a dozen many-billion dollar sectors that have had massive impact on the world, stemming from computing. But it took decades for mass market productization to emerge in most of these areas. Very very few were so clearly poised to take over. It's easy to point out established computing's wins. But you are demanding certainty & proof, & not granting a nascent form factor any time to find it's footing, to establish it's value. Quest 3 seems to be .massively expanding the fidelity of the Quest 2's pass-through mode. You talk about Apple trying something, and I think they are, but Meta has been driving similar capabilities, if not harnessing them to such a sensible multi-tasking OS core.
ActorNightly 3y ago
VR suffers from inherent issue that its in a weird space of half immersion - the visuals are there but the motion feedback is not. The closest you can get is a VR motion racing rig, but those are prohibitively expensive. Even without the motion rig, generally 3 screens are often preferred due to better resolution and not having to wear a bulky device. Besides some fun exercise games and social stuff like VR chat which is fun for a minority of people, once the novelty of 3d wears away, you are left with something that isn't as relaxing as sitting down and playing a regular game.
pyottdes 3y ago
I think it's interesting to think about it as a hardware evolution question. If you look at a timeline of what it took to get to the modern smartphone, you could (arguably) say: PalmPilot -> Handspring -> WindowsCE -> Blackberry -> iPhone -> Android -> Modern Smartphone Each one of those evolutionary steps brought in a larger user base and grew the feature set of the prior generations hardware. The VR/AR/XR market comes with its own set of challenges so imagining where it maps onto that timeline is hard, but I would guess we are still more in the Handspring - WinCE era of these devices. Wearable display systems have a solid and growing user base but the hardware is still a ways off from something that will have mass adoption. The roadblock is very much in the hardware, not the software IMO.
quest-throwaway 3y ago
Pass-through VR porn has gotten really big in the past 6 months, and I'll just say I know that a LOT of people are waiting for the quest-3 entirely for that.
ilaksh 3y ago
You completely missed everything about mixed reality. That is the killer selling point for Meta Quest 3. This hardware has the capacity to do almost everything that Apple's device can do for a fraction of the cost (just not with Apple integration).
JieJie 3y ago
Walkabout Mini Golf VR https://store.steampowered.com/app/1408230/Walkabout_Mini_Golf_VR/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1408230/Walkabout_Mini_Go...
aantix 3y ago
I wonder if they'll include the photo-realistic avatars, like what was demonstrated between Zuck and Lex Fridman. https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1707453830344868204 https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1707453830344868204

by MBCook 3y ago

itsyaboi 3y ago

XBox cloud gaming is pretty big. Roblox is huge with kids as well.

pzmarzly 3y ago
+1. I don't have a TV, so if I could just stream my macOS desktop and Xbox Cloud Gaming (which I already use) to a virtual 50+' screen that follows me as I walk around, that will be enough for me to buy in.
- rabf 3y ago
  https://www.immersed.com/ https://www.immersed.com/
MBCook 3y ago
That seems to reinforce my point to me. Both of those are available on other platforms. They don’t need the Quest 3. Why not just buy an Xbox? What makes me need a Quest 3?
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  You can play games on lower resolution, lower refresh monitors, so why do people market higher resolution and particularly higher refresh rate monitors succesfully to gamers? Quality if experience, not just binary “can you minimally do it”, matters, and matters particularly to the segment of the market that has lots of disposable income.
- itsyaboi 3y ago
  You can buy an XBox, but you won't be able to do anything VR related with it, so not sure what your point is. It sounds like you've convinced yourself you don't need the quest, so just don't worry about it?

cm2012 3y ago

There's a bunch of very powerful/ successful AI girlfriend apps like Replika. I think that will be a breakthrough use case for VR.

Panini_Jones 3y ago
How successful are those virtual girlfriend apps?
- robotnikman 3y ago
  Last I checked, they removed a bunch of capabilities from Replika which caused a massive uproar on their subreddit and facebook.
  - throeaaysn 3y ago
    [dead]
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    Indeed. Based on "How angry are people when something is changed?", they seem to be pretty successful. Which makes sense, what you remember LLMs are magic boxes that tell you what they think you want to hear.
Night_Thastus 3y ago
If all the recent LLM stuff is any indication, I can't imagine they'll be very good. I think we've got a few decades to go before that can be anything other than a novelty.
- throeaaysn 3y ago
  [dead]
kristianc 3y ago
If that’s the killer app for VR, then all I can say is god help VR.

supernikio2 3y ago

>So what’s the killer app? I feel like the answer to that question will come next year, when Apple's Vision Pro is out.

epolanski 3y ago
Which won't release applications for the quest?
- teaearlgraycold 3y ago
  Yes, but competition
- MBCook 3y ago
  What if they can’t? What if whatever it is that makes the app so compelling automatically rules it out on the Quest 3 for some reason? What if it demands a better input method or higher resolution?
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    Then I'd be impressed, frankly. I've got the original Quest, and features you'd expect to be broken or missing (eg. hand tracking, multitasking, game streaming, web browsing, sideloading, et. al) all work fine. It's honestly quite sad that the core line of rhetoric here is a laconic "what if" statement around theoretical apps. The Quest exists and has sold tens of millions of units; the Vision Pro has yet to prove itself. Unless you have a specific example, this can only be interpreted as wishcasting.
    - MBCook 3y ago
      The quest sold millions at the beginning of a pandemic when people were trapped at home and needed an escape. How many people still use it? How many regret the purchase, how many would have bought it without the pandemic? I see that as Meta’s big opportunity to grab success in VR. And it didn’t happen. They’re trying to market this like the next thing everyone needs and after multiple tries I just don’t see it. I don’t even see how they get there, this is the same strategy as the Quest, Quest 2, PSVR, PSVR2, etc. Games are great but that pitch just isn’t working at really moving the needle. But that’s all they have.

circuit10 3y ago

I guess better AR support could allow some new types of things eventually but that probably won’t take off until you can walk around with in in daily life without it being awkward and uncomfortable

layer8 3y ago

> This feels very “PC” to me. By which I mean they’re selling it because they can sell new hardware. The Pentium 9 is out! Which is fine. I mean, the same is happening for smartphones and tablets. Yes, it won’t dramatically grow the market.

MBCook 3y ago
But those already have mass market acceptance. They’re not trying to prove they’re necessary. The iPhone (and other smartphones) literally changed the world. There’s only so much they can innovate after 15 years of record breaking success. VR doesn’t have that. People weren’t chomping at the bit for the day it was 20% better. Unless it passes some unknown threshold where it suddenly becomes good enough to suddenly be really popular, they’re still trying to prove relevance.
- layer8 3y ago
  Yes, and I don’t expect this to change much in the foreseeable future, given current technological constraints. But why would you expect a third-generation product to suddenly change this?
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    It’s a bit shocking mostly because of the scale of investment. Meta alone has spent $36B on VR. To put this in perspective, iPhone development cost $3.6B. It’s the fastest, largest single investment into a new technology. https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-lost-30-billion-on-metaverse-rivals-spent-far-less-2022-10?amp https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-lost-30-billion-on-meta...
    - local_crmdgeon 3y ago
      For the cost of this object, we could have built 3 new subway lines in NYC WITHOUT dealing with our cost disease. For the cost of the object, you could set up a university program to figure out Anglo cost disease, then build ~10 subway lines at Japanese costs. Asking why our society funds things the way they do is a very reasonable and responsible question

dougmwne 3y ago

My personal killer app was enjoying the LiDAR imagery in Google Earth VR. Wish that it was actively developed and released for standalone.

AmericanOP 3y ago

GeForce Now.

wigster 3y ago

> So what’s the killer app? the porn app automatically locks the doors of your house to stop people "disturbing you"

nkotov 3y ago

I use my Quest 2 for mostly streaming from my PC games likes Asserto Corsa.

TheHumanist 3y ago

But... but... they made sure to put Gorilla Tag on the little games graphic... that doesn't do it for you?

smeeth 3y ago

Similar to the vision pro the killer app will eventually be AR. Its pretty obvious that virtual TV/Computer screens at arbitrary sizes/distances in arbitrary environments will simply be a better UX than physical monitors. Not sure if Quest 3 is there yet, but they're iterating towards it.

rtkwe 3y ago
There's an underlying issue with the whole AR screen thing. They're heavily limited by the resolution of the screen in the goggles itself. These have a bit over half a 4k display per eye so you can only really have display resolutions of some fraction of that determined by what fraction of the area of a given eye display the fake screen takes up. If you blow it up until you're only looking at a portion of the screen you can have a larger one but then you're stuck to moving your head around to see your whole monitor. It's one of the big issues with the whole AR screen idea we'll need pretty beefy hardware to work around.
audunw 3y ago
> It’s pretty obvious that virtual TV/Computer screens at arbitrary sizes/distances in arbitrary environments will simply be a better UX than physical monitors. Is it? I don’t feel like it’s better right now (I know some people do, but I’m not convinced they’re the majority). Fixing the issues with VR is not trivial. There’s some deep flaws in the optics that we simply don’t know how to solve yet, and the weight needs to go down by a lot. I’m not sure I’d ever be comfortable wearing them more than a couple of hours when they’re entirely closed… but that’s a hard requirement for a good experience. There’s a bunch of hard contradictions in making good VR/AR. Remember that as VR technology improves, so will monitors.
- bionhoward 3y ago
  Couldn’t virtualized monitors be customizable in a declarative way which would enable you to do stuff which would be completely impossible on hardware, though? Imagine i3wm with dynamic virtual hardware, that’s insane, not to mention what kinds of automated monitor setup configuration transitions you could make. AR guy many years from now can instantly try a new 12-monitor setup while our dumb butts wait for 12 expensive things in the mail and then wire them all up. Oh, wouldn’t it be cool to have 16? More waiting. But nobody buys that many monitors. If it was just a number in a text file, people might try out a 16 monitor setup just for no reason. The difference in capability could be massive, to the point we’d be truly amazed to jump into the future of AR. Not to mention the freedom of hands free portability, it could be wizard levels of awesomeness!

riskable 3y ago

When Valve releases a stand-alone headset that can play regular PC VR games that will be what changes the VR market. Until then it'll be just, "more of the same." Minor improvements/evolution, etc. Biggest thing the industry could do in order to move VR/AR forwards would be to adopt SteamOS or a similar "normal" Linux OS and give end users root. That would really be a kick in the ass towards real innovation more than, "slightly better tracking; slightly lighter; now with color pass through!"

felistoria 3y ago
You can do this with the Quest 2 right now via AirLink. I do it all the time.
- riskable 3y ago
  You're talking about streaming/remote control of a PC which can involve significant latency and lag spikes (unless you're tethered with a good USB cable). That is by definition not a stand-alone headset. You're just using it as a fancy VR dongle. This necessitates two things: * Your PC is powerful enough to run VR games * Your PC is in an area that's convenient to play (with plenty of room) Nearly all Quest 2 users are using it stand-alone. They're not hooking it up to a PC. There's a tiny fraction of users that do the PC VR thing with Steam but that's so small as to be negligible in the overall market. You're actually kind of making my point: Imagine if you didn't need the PC or the tether and could just play those great, easy-to-mod PC VR games directly on the headset. The market for VR would undergo a massive, positive change. I'd also like to point out that tethering limits the fun you can have! Example: https://replay.beatleader.xyz/?scoreId=7668607 https://replay.beatleader.xyz/?scoreId=7668607 You can't play Beat Saber like that if you're tethered.
  - Nullabillity 3y ago
    If you don't have a PC powerful enough for VR then you're probably not going to drop a lot of money on a combined PC+VR headset either.
  - 3y ago

eatsyourtacos 3y ago

>So what’s the killer app? There isn't one and there never will be because people like different things. Why do people like you constantly say "what's the killer app" ever time something new VR comes out? I've been doing VR since oculus dk1 and VR has been crazy enjoyable from time to time. VR is cheap as hell now. Quest2 was $300 for quite some time even before the Quest3. If you can't find enjoyment with virtual reality from a $300 stand alone device that's a you problem.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Why do people like you constantly say "what's the killer app" ever time something new VR comes out? It’s asking for the use case. If there isn’t a use case outside gaming, there is no value on the table for non-gamers.
- Auracle 3y ago
  Gaming is a huge market, and if you go in to any free to play game it's absolutely inundated with kids/preteens. You can also roam using apps that let you do Google street view stuff in VR, create art, watch movies in a theater like experience alone or by yourself, and of course a lot of people use it for porn. Even usual non-gamers love stuff like Walkabout Mini Golf or Star Wars Pinball.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    Gaming is a huge market. What portion of that market is VR? That’s the issue I see. Gaming may be the best thing in VR, but VR hasn’t felt necessary to the average gamer at all. It’s still a small niche.
    - eatsyourtacos 3y ago
      >It’s still a small niche So what? Go play and enjoy. >VR hasn’t felt necessary to the average gamer Not even sure what that means. You come across as someone who likes to complain and never actually enjoy something. Good luck with that.

lawlessone 3y ago

For the price i would consider it as an alternative to buying a new PC screen. If it allows that.

MuffinFlavored 3y ago
There's no way you wouldn't have a massive headache wearing that 8-12 hours a day?
- felistoria 3y ago
  I've watched Netflix movies with no issues. The max session time I've ever done in VR is about 4 hours but that was playing a game and had no issues except the imprint from the headset in my forehead... I definitely know people that can't play at all without feeling sick though so ymmv.
- lawlessone 3y ago
  only 12 hours? :) Fair point.
- dpig_ 3y ago
  I play VR shooters for 3-6 hours most days of the week.

baby 3y ago

What’s the killer app for a PC?

umeshunni 3y ago
Originally, it was Excel/Lotus 123. Later, it was the web browser. Nowadays, it's mostly games.
- lawlessone 3y ago
  Seems its excel again lol, they're bringing MS office to the quest
  - baby 3y ago
    I'd say I exclusively used the Go and the Quest I've had to play games
- justapassenger 3y ago
  Web browser and Excel are still killer apps for PC. There's way more PCs used for that, than for games.
  - umeshunni 3y ago
    Yeah - Excel and other 'productivity' apps are probably still the killer apps for PCs, especially for businesses. I assume businesses still drive the majority of PC purchases. Some other factoids: There are >1B PC gamers (source: random articles on the web). I'm guessing the number of mobile gamers is 2-3B. There aren't that many active Excel users. Even Google sheets (free) has only a few hundred million users. Most web browsing is now done on mobile. The transition happened sometime ~2015 for most of the world and something like 2017 for 'developer markets'.
- MBCook 3y ago
  Right. It was Wordstar instead of a typewriter. VisiCalc instead of ledgers book. Photoshop. PageMaker or Quark Xpress. AutoCAD. Over and over as computers got more powerful new killer apps appeared that changed the way people worked and the world did its business. VR doesn’t appear to have anything like that. Just a small niche of the gaming market.

MuffinFlavored 3y ago

> VR still doesn’t seem to have advanced much in software to me. Let's put our imaginations together. What use case for VR do we all wish we could see/can we think of that we don't see yet?

nolroz 3y ago
I want to walk into my back yard and visualize a new garden, then check on it through the year and get info on what the plants need. Same thing with my house and layout/furniture. Let me stand in a hotel room in a city I'm not familiar with and look around at the town around me, x-ray style.
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago
  > I want to walk into my back yard Aren't the VR headsets wired?
  - 1auralynn 3y ago
    No, Quests are mobile, that's why they have such low processing power
  - dns_snek 3y ago
    Some can be used standalone, like the Quest.

cheriot 3y ago

Quest 2 grew the VR market by ~10x. What was the killer app? Beat Saber is the first install, but not what kept it going for 3 years. It's the ecosystem. VR Chat for some, social game for others, immersive experiments like Bonelab, and a few studio titles. I'm glad Meta didn't hype the Quest 3 too much. It's easy for VR expectations to outrun current tech. VR seems to be in the trough of disillusionment where it's moving forward (2023 games are way more playable than 2021 games) but it's a slow burn. "Hey this isn't a step change" is probably right about the Quest 3, but I think also misses the bigger picture. It's a platform and people are still figuring out what to build on it.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Beat Saber is still hella fun. I know some people that just play that (but play it daily) on their Quest. I'm not sure Facebook is particularly happy about that, however, since those people aren't buying apps or making them much money (maybe just the occasional song pack). I'm guessing Beat Saber is the only reason the Quest is even sold in Japan and Korea.
- zem 3y ago
  honestly, if the quest weren't tied to an account I would have considered getting one just to play beat saber too. it's fun and you feel like you're getting exercise at the same time.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Beat Saber really is lots of fun. It really has that DDR vibe, and you don't need super expensive equipment to do it. I only connected with my facebook account a few months ago, I guess was grandfathered in under the previous system until they nagged me to do it.
- cableshaft 3y ago
  The song packs come out really slowly too. They've released just one song pack with 11 songs on it this year, the Queen one back in May, as well as added 10 songs to existing song packs. For a total of 21 songs total this year so far. And 210 official songs since it first came out back in 2018. Meanwhile the PCVR version has a ridiculous 65,000[1] custom songs made for it at this point. Not sure why they can't get closer to the Rock Band model, where it released new songs all the time, and had 2,743 songs total (and 84 songs THIS YEAR according to Wikipedia[2]...had no idea there was even an actively supported Rock Band game out there still). Beat Saber should be making them enough money to allow them to at least do double or triple what they're doing now. [1]: https://bsaber.com/ultimate-guide-to-beat-saber-custom-songs/ https://bsaber.com/ultimate-guide-to-beat-saber-custom-songs... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_downloadable_songs_for_the_Rock_Band_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_downloadable_songs_for...

dumpsterdiver 3y ago

I had fun for about an hour using virtual turn tables to mix my music collection, but after awhile it just felt kind of dumb - awkwardly fiddling with knobs in a virtual world with no tactile feedback. It's like it got me halfway towards being productive, but the quality of inputs and feedback are so poor that I quickly reached a ceiling. When it comes to actually getting things done, in my experience VR just gets in the way. AR on the other hand is something I could easily see becoming useful. One cool use case that immediately comes to mind are instruction manuals. You get a new piece of furniture from Ikea and the AR instructions identify pieces you have laid on the ground and directs you where to put it. Or Legos, right? Real world inputs, and real world results.

elliottkember 3y ago

Eleven Table Tennis. It's so much fun. The controller is the same weight as a paddle, and it's responsive enough to "feel" right. It's really improved my game and is a surprising amount of exercise.

bottlepalm 3y ago

A lot of kids are spending most of their waking hours in VRChat right now. It's pretty addicting once you have a group of friends in there...

crooked-v 3y ago
Also (as lots of adult VRChat users will complain about), it's a way to get free babysitting from the internet for your kid.
- bottlepalm 3y ago
  The internet babysits the minds of children and adults alike. Go to any restaurant and you'll see entire families all glued to their phones.
braislan 3y ago
Yea and everyone is getting in shape from VR too... These are bogus marketing lines that people puppet back to each other. I know 20 some kids and not a single one has even the slightest interest in VR. It is really shocking to me how these kids that can play games all the time have absolutely no interest in VR. It is not uncool or passe, it is just absolutely nothing to them. It is a niche product that enthusiast oversell because the reality is that most people just don't care.
- bottlepalm 3y ago
  Not marketing. In reality, tens of thousands of kids are spending ridiculous amounts of time in VR. They will grow up, normalize it, and the next wave will be much much bigger. Sounds like you haven't seen or experienced what I'm talking about, so you have no idea, just your anecdotes.

vyrotek 3y ago

My kids are on Gorilla Tag and Roblox all day and I complain about it the same way my parents did about the all time I spent in chatrooms and forums back in the day. It's a slow roll, but I think the seed has been planted.

bouncyhat 3y ago

I've found BigScreen (https://www.bigscreenvr.com/software https://www.bigscreenvr.com/software) to be a fairly compelling killer app case for VR. Besides being able to trick your eyes into thinking they're in a movie theater, the social elements are great. On a weekly cadence I jump into a shared room with 6+ of my friends and we pick a bad movie to watch together as we MST3k it. There's something about positional audio when talking with someone that makes it easier to replicate the experience of hanging out in person versus a video meet. We've been doing this since the pandemic started and it's the #1 way I stay in touch with a bunch of friends now. It's also ruined real life movie theaters for me since I'm used to being able to talk with friends while watching. We'll actively wait for a movie to hit streaming before "seeing it in the theaters" with each other. All of this was already possible with the Quest 2, but I'm interested to see how the quest 3 can further make those hangouts feel even closer to the real thing. Dunno if it will be a big enough leap for everyone to jump from the 2 to the 3, but if the visuals comes through sharper, or the sound is better, or the controller is easier to hold for 2 hours - any of those things would be a win.

bsimpson 3y ago
I haven't got to use VR much, since my apartment is too small for it, but I have played a few rounds of VR racketball. I have no interest in VR videoconferencing, but shared presence is surprisingly interesting. When you've both got headsets and headphones on, you can't tell the difference from playing in the same room as your friend, even if you're physically hours from one another.
mulderc 3y ago
Big screen has the most toxic online community I have ever interacted with. I know there is worse out there but the amount of anti-LGBTQ chat I hear was disturbing for a place that is about watching movies.
- bouncyhat 3y ago
  Yeah, I wouldn't wade into anything public there - stick to private rooms with your friends. The moment you go into any sort of "I want to meet strangers" in VR setting you're really rolling the dice. I briefly hopped into the "shared lobby" for Big Screen at one point and encountered probably 3 or 4 negative internet stereotypes immediate (14 year old yelling obscenities, someone trying to hump my face, and someone just blasting noise so loud through their mic it was painful). Very much something you would only want to experience with trusted parties.

chaostheory 3y ago

The killer app is a fun way to do fitness either alone or socially without having to go to the gym and without getting bored since the workouts are dynamic and unreal ie dodging bullets and fighting monsters If you’re not active, and don’t want to be active; you’re not going to like it beyond watching movies in a virtual movie theater

philjohn 3y ago

For me it's sim racing - for other people it's exercise apps, for educational users it's immersing students in ancient Greece. Sim racing is amazing in VR - I got instantly faster, able to judge distances better, and the immersion is top notch.

Auracle 3y ago

What's the killer app of the iPhone 15? They are releasing something like 50 new games, though they aren't making them exclusive, which follows what consoles seem to do now too. The killer app for me has been being able to hop on to a VR game with my friends and somewhat feel like we're in the same room. It's too hard to get together frequently, and even setting up a VR 'date' is hard, but it's something.

executive 3y ago
usb c
MBCook 3y ago
No one needs to be convinced to buy a smartphone. They changed the world. People already want them. VR is not in that position. It needs to prove its utility if it ever wants to escape being a niche.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

> So what’s the killer app? What's the desktops killer app? What's mobile's killer app? Computing to me is a general purpose system, which grows holistically. This kind of search for certainty, trying to annoint some specific app as the thing that a form factor is all for, is actively harmful to understanding the role of compute & how it fits into augments & enriches so many diverse different things we do. Creating comfortable computing spaces is never going to be a fast burn. It's taken decades for the desktop to mature. This is a harder challenge, enmeshing with reality rather than being so tightly a self contained system. I have a lot of questions & uncertainty about how computing rolls out a presence beyond the screen & into the world. It's unknown to me and maybe it flat up fails & never works. But I'd like some respect & acceptance that this is an open ended thing, not going to be so conveniently compact & singular as this ask tries to reduce it to. Searching so hard for certainty is dangerous, rejects the pioneering & open endedness & intergativeness that most rich complex & capable long lasting systems endure through. Let's not be so rash in demanding all our answers ahead of time.

MBCook 3y ago
> What’s the desktop’s killer app? We know that. It’s happened. Wordstar, VisiCalc, Photoshop, PageMaker or Quark Xpress, AutoCAD, Netscape Navigator, AOL. They, and their descendants, moved billions of units. > What’s the mobile’s killer app? Chat. Maps. The internet. Uber. Dating. Use as a camera. Email. Shopping. Again, billions of units. No one has figured out a non-niche application for VR. Normal people don’t care. It’s not even on their radar. That’s my point. More of the same isn’t going to change that. They either need the app to make it break through or some improvement that allows that app. This is a spec bump. Nice to those already interested, unlikely to attract new people. Apple is trying something. They’re throwing hardware at it, especially in terms of a very very high resolution screen. They think that will make the difference, even given the price. We’ll find out. But at least they’re trying something different. Because I don’t see why this would jump into the mainstream.
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  Hindsight is 20/20. You have listed a dozen many-billion dollar sectors that have had massive impact on the world, stemming from computing. But it took decades for mass market productization to emerge in most of these areas. Very very few were so clearly poised to take over. It's easy to point out established computing's wins. But you are demanding certainty & proof, & not granting a nascent form factor any time to find it's footing, to establish it's value. Quest 3 seems to be .massively expanding the fidelity of the Quest 2's pass-through mode. You talk about Apple trying something, and I think they are, but Meta has been driving similar capabilities, if not harnessing them to such a sensible multi-tasking OS core.

ActorNightly 3y ago

VR suffers from inherent issue that its in a weird space of half immersion - the visuals are there but the motion feedback is not. The closest you can get is a VR motion racing rig, but those are prohibitively expensive. Even without the motion rig, generally 3 screens are often preferred due to better resolution and not having to wear a bulky device. Besides some fun exercise games and social stuff like VR chat which is fun for a minority of people, once the novelty of 3d wears away, you are left with something that isn't as relaxing as sitting down and playing a regular game.

pyottdes 3y ago

I think it's interesting to think about it as a hardware evolution question. If you look at a timeline of what it took to get to the modern smartphone, you could (arguably) say: PalmPilot -> Handspring -> WindowsCE -> Blackberry -> iPhone -> Android -> Modern Smartphone Each one of those evolutionary steps brought in a larger user base and grew the feature set of the prior generations hardware. The VR/AR/XR market comes with its own set of challenges so imagining where it maps onto that timeline is hard, but I would guess we are still more in the Handspring - WinCE era of these devices. Wearable display systems have a solid and growing user base but the hardware is still a ways off from something that will have mass adoption. The roadblock is very much in the hardware, not the software IMO.

quest-throwaway 3y ago

Pass-through VR porn has gotten really big in the past 6 months, and I'll just say I know that a LOT of people are waiting for the quest-3 entirely for that.

ilaksh 3y ago

You completely missed everything about mixed reality. That is the killer selling point for Meta Quest 3. This hardware has the capacity to do almost everything that Apple's device can do for a fraction of the cost (just not with Apple integration).

JieJie 3y ago

Walkabout Mini Golf VR https://store.steampowered.com/app/1408230/Walkabout_Mini_Golf_VR/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1408230/Walkabout_Mini_Go...

aantix 3y ago

I wonder if they'll include the photo-realistic avatars, like what was demonstrated between Zuck and Lex Fridman. https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1707453830344868204 https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1707453830344868204