7 ms·

I think we are now at a stage where VR hardware has surpassed software. Between this and the Quest 3, we have powerful, polished and consumer friendly devices,

• pavlov 3y ago
  It wouldn't be the first time that hardware gets ahead of software. In 1988-94, the CPUs available in desktop computers were substantially more advanced than the widely used operating systems. Windows 3 and Mac System 6/7 didn't support pre-emptive multitasking, memory protection, or many other features that define a modern OS. Maybe we'll look back at today's Quest and Vision Pro as similar transitional devices with one foot stuck in the old paradigm, running old-style software.
  • pvg 3y ago
    The Apple headset is maybe more akin to the expensive workstations of the time which did make fuller use of their CPU facilities but were neither priced nor aimed at consumers. The headset is not nearly as expensive (especially inflation adjusted) and is ostensibly a consumer device but it's current incarnation seems unlikely to have the kind of mass adoption for the analogy to work out.
    • pavlov 3y ago
      The fact that the Vision Pro today mostly runs legacy iPad and web software in 2D rectangles kind of makes it feel like Windows/386 which most people just used to run text mode MS-DOS programs inside GUI windows.
    • cgk 3y ago
      Visiting a certain urban area on the east coast, dm me on X if possible to meet up
  • aidenn0 3y ago
    > In 1988-94, the CPUs available in desktop computers were substantially more advanced than the widely used operating systems. Windows 3 and Mac System 6/7 didn't support pre-emptive multitasking, memory protection, or many other features that define a modern OS. That was partly because RAM was over $100/MB (Nominal; ~$230 inflation adjusted) in 1990. Additionally, in the IBM compatible world, many people didn't have a 386 at that point. Also, minor nitpick on the dates; 1993 saw OS/2 2.1 and NT 3.1, both of which had preemptive multitasking and memory protection.
• lysecret 3y ago
  Im curious what do you have in mind related to fitness?
  • TulliusCicero 3y ago
    There's a bunch of VR games/apps that are notable for fitness. Beat Saber is the most well known one that's explicitly a game, Supernatural is maybe the most famous one that's framed as more of a fitness app/service. But other notable ones include Synth Riders, FitXR, OhShape, Pistol Whip, Thrill of the Fight, and (maybe) Gorilla Tag. And this list is far from exhaustive. VR is pretty good for fitness just because it can make exercising more interesting, comparable to sports without the need to coordinate with other people (and it's easy to do inside your house, if you have at least a 2m x 2m open space). Major downsides would be having that space available and sweat inside the headset.
    • mr_toad 3y ago
      I’d be too worried about sweat damage to use it for serious exercise.
      • rpmisms 3y ago
        They're built around that.
      • jdietrich 3y ago
        Meta (and many third-party manufacturers) offer a wipe-clean silicone facial interface designed for fitness-oriented users. The hardware isn't waterproof, but it's quite well protected and I'd be perfectly confident to work up a sweat. Quest has calorie tracking, can sync with the fitness tracking features on iOS and Android and can pair with heart rate monitors. Fitness is one of the key segments in VR, because fitness apps and fitness-oriented users have vastly above-average engagement and retention rates. https://www.meta.com/us/quest/accessories/quest-3-silicone-facial-interface/ https://www.meta.com/us/quest/accessories/quest-3-silicone-f... https://www.meta.com/en-us/help/quest/articles/in-vr-experiences/oculus-apps/what-is-meta-quest-move/ https://www.meta.com/en-us/help/quest/articles/in-vr-experie...
• RajT88 3y ago
  > I think we are now at a stage where VR hardware has surpassed software. Totally agree. I'm waiting for a usable Virtual Desktop app to come out. All the ones I have tried which work on my cheap WMR headset fall short of having floating app windows in view. I guess there is one of those which works on Meta Quest, but not PC headsets. That's really what you need to be effective working in VR. Just like is mentioned the Apple headset supports.
  • crooked-v 3y ago
    I feel like the killer combination here would be a Virtual Desktop-like app for visionOS where the desktop VR passes through as an environment, but full local app layering is still available in the foreground.
• baby 3y ago
  People like to say this but my friend just sent me a recording of “drop dead home invasion” with the Quest 3 and my jaw was on the floor. He says it’s amazing too. I’ve also heard about players spending a lot of time in counter strike games like pavlov. At this point it seems like there’s a TON of things to do in VR (and I’m gonna be honest, there were a ton of experiences too on the Quest 1 when I had it). I’m just waiting for more live shows and concerts that I can attend from the Quest personally.
  • patapong 3y ago
    Oh I agree - I loved my experience with Drop Dead Home Invasion, and there are a lot of amazing experiences overall. But, I do think that most of these have more potential as a "demo", that you do a few times but would not motivate you to use a headset every day, beyond a relatively small group of people. It is like VR is currently stuck being Kinect in terms of sales and stickiness, while Meta and Apple would both like it to be at least like the Wii, or ideally the iPad. Personally I have found social experiences to have the best long-term appeal (i.e. Racket NX or Drop Dead with friends), but even there I am not these apps have sufficient mainstream appeal.
    • acdha 3y ago
      > But, I do think that most of these have more potential as a "demo", that you do a few times but would not motivate you to use a headset every day, beyond a relatively small group of people. This matches everyone I’ve heard talk about it, too. It was fun, they enjoyed a few things and then at some point they realized that their headset had multiple months of dust on it. I think the big question is when costs come down to the point where it’d be reasonable for a non-rich family to have enough headsets to use together. Most people mention technical limits (resolution, latency) but the thing which everyone mentioned as a dealbreaker was that putting the headset on was shutting out everyone around them.
      • baby 3y ago
        > at some point they realized that their headset had multiple months of dust on it I bet these people also have consoles that are collecting dust as well
• AlexandrB 3y ago
  Underlying a lot of these discussions is the assumption that there is a future where this is an actually useful, mass-market device. I'm still not convinced this is true. For example, "killer apps/content" never arrived for 3D TVs and they have largely disappeared from the market. Same with various "waggling" input technologies like the Wiimote and Kinect. There were some compelling uses, like Wii Sports, but these were pretty limited and many other uses of these in games was a case of Nintendo shoehorning the technology into the game. I think the best pessimist argument is the one offered by Folding Ideas in his metaverse video[1]: Text is really, really useful, and a virtual 3D space is not a good environment for either creating or consuming textual content. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiZhdpLXZ8Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiZhdpLXZ8Q
  • jayd16 3y ago
    >Same with various "waggling" input technologies like the Wiimote and Kinect. Hasn't VR taken over waggle? I don't think you can say its disappeared when the VR install base is in the 10s of millions.
    • dougmwne 3y ago
      Yeah, the Quest seems to be the spiritual successor to Wii sports. It’s the closest thing you can buy to that 2006 experience. The long dream of wielding a lightsaber on the Wii was finally realized on the Quest, to a quite satisfactory level. And yet, from a gaming perspective, we still have to crack force feedback and natural locomotion before we have a holodeck. Maybe in 20 more years.
  • Vegenoid 3y ago
    I see headsets like this as a way to have multiple, large, monitors that go away as soon as you aren't using them. After having a big dual-monitor setup for years, about a year and a half ago I got rid of them and work with just my laptop's display. I do this so that my desk doesn't have to have monitors on it, and is more conducive to artistic work and mechanical tinkering. I don't miss multiple monitors so much, but I do often wish for a larger screen. Not enough to put one in my space, though. That's where my interest in the Vision Pro lies - simply a way to project large, high-fidelity, 2d screens.
• quonn 3y ago
  > there is nothing to convince users to put the headsets on. So the hardware is not good enough yet. It will be good enough when I basically don‘t care, just like I don‘t care with glasses.
  • SoftTalker 3y ago
    Anything goggle-like is a non-starter for me. I'm not even interested in trying it. I don't even like glasses, and I need corrective lenses to be able to see clearly (I wear contacts almost exclusively).
• jdietrich 3y ago
  I'm not sure I've ever liked the term "killer app", because I don't think it's particularly useful in describing real user thinking and behaviour. There was a very long journey from VisiCalc and Wordstar to the modern-day ubiquity of office computing. Different user groups have complex, diverse and overlapping sets of needs and wants that can rarely be distilled into a single application. I'm more inclined to think in terms of Bezos's one-way doors - changes in user behaviour that are sufficiently compelling to be largely irreversible. I agree that progress has been slow in the consumer space and meaningful long-term adoption of VR has been confined to a few niches; that isn't necessarily an indictment of the long-term prospects for VR, because desktop computers spent much longer in that stage than most people remember. In enterprise, I think things are more advanced and some user groups have decisively gone through the one-way door for some applications. I think the best example is architecture. If you've done a couple of client presentations in VR, you just aren't going back to showing renders on a flat screen, because immersing the client in a physical space is that powerful. It's not just a sales tool, but a communications tool - clients can understand and respond to the environment intuitively and give much better feedback as a result. Industrial and clinical training is less clearly one-way, but I think we're very close in a lot of areas. AR is still less developed than VR, but I do think we're on the cusp of something significant - a sufficiently comfortable standalone AR headset with sufficiently high-quality passthrough can deliver training experiences that can't practically be replicated through other means. I think one of the most interesting areas of development is in psychiatry. It's still early days, but we're starting to see real, meaningful benefits in RCTs for VR-based therapy of disorders like phobia and PTSD. Some of the most compelling results have been in the very sickest patients - people with psychosis, who often find it impossible to engage with conventional psychotherapy. https://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/research/oxford-cognitive-approaches-to-psychosis/projects-1/gamechange https://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/research/oxford-cognitive-approache... I don't think it's remotely likely that VR will ever replace flat screens, but I do think that VR is slowly growing into a niche but durable HCI platform. Tablets are a reasonable analogy - a lot of people see them as a failure, but they still sell in serious volume and they're often a much better form-factor for specific applications than either a phone or a laptop, especially in industry. Tablets didn't change the world, but nor are they likely to go away.
  • 3y ago
• treprinum 3y ago
  I personally think MSFS 2020 and Automobilista 2 are killer VR apps. All (wannabe or pro) pilots could learn how to operate any given aircraft in MSFS and relive past glorious racing in A2 on current or historic tracks/cars. Senua and Alyx showed what is possible in gaming as well and why it's so much better than 2D. Elder Scrolls looks great in VR just the controllers make it a joke when fighting (too easy and weird). I still think 4k is too low and 8k will be needed to feel like a 1080p phone.
  • pquki4 3y ago
    they are killer apps, but how many people are going to spend $3500, no, just $1500 or $1000 for just for these things? Well, that is almost the entire market of Quest 3 which Apple does not want to be in. Which is why I feel Quest 3 is a product that makes much more sense than Vision Pro.
• stcredzero 3y ago
  I think we are now at a stage where VR hardware has surpassed software. How about enabling AIs to create layouts of information on behalf of the user? Like, what if an AI could arrange all of your information for you in a scheme derived from Archy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy_(software)
• IshKebab 3y ago
  I think you've got it backwards. There are plenty of reasons you'd want to put on a VR headset if it weighed as much as a pair of glasses, had a 180 degree field of view and like 5x the resolution of current headsets. The reason the software doesn't exist is because compelling hardware doesn't exist for it to run on, so nobody bothers to write it. Apple is imagining this device will be used for productivity but it's still painful to actually wear for long periods. We're a long way from being limited by software instead of hardware.
• makeitdouble 3y ago
  > I think we are now at a stage where VR hardware has surpassed software. It's a 600+ grams headset with a battery on a leash for $3500. I wouldn't say the hardware is mainstream ready or fulfilling it's side of the contract yet.
• antoniuschan99 3y ago
  I think if it was an iphone accessory then it would have convinced more users because it would be $1000 since it’s just the display and sensors where iphone would drive all the compute
• rpmisms 3y ago
  But at the same time, the hardware is not where it needs to be for ubiquity. We need ~60PPD, great FOV, and lighter hardware to really break the barrier. Vision Pro is at the limits, but still not quite there, and we all know the 90/10 rule.