5 ms·

This has been my main complaint with Oculus all the way since the Rift days. At that point I assumed it was forthcoming within a few years yet here we are 8 yea

by jdprgm 3y ago

This has been my main complaint with Oculus all the way since the Rift days. At that point I assumed it was forthcoming within a few years yet here we are 8 years later and somehow it's not all that different. I don't understand how Oculus/Meta isn't drastically ahead at this point on software.

IshKebab 3y ago
They are drastically ahead. They have VR games, which are the only real reason to own a VR headset at the moment (and for at least 5 years).
- averageRoyalty 3y ago
  They are drastically ahead in the VR gaming space. But the potential VR/AR market is hundreds fold bigger than that.
  - IshKebab 3y ago
    The potential market in 10 years. Apple has jumped the gun here. This is their Apple Newton moment for AR.
    - phatskat 3y ago
      I hope that seeing where the Newton could’ve gone gives them the confidence to continue with the AVP. A few iterations could really show a great product both in terms of quality and practicality. I had a Newton and loved it, and eventually tried a few Palm devices but nothing ever quite hit like the Newton for me, a real shame they dropped it imo.
    - averageRoyalty 3y ago
      That's probably a fair argument at the pace of innovation pre-AVP. Depending on how quickly they iterate in this (and as the article says, push developers), they may be a self-fulfilling prophecy to significantly reduce the time until this market exists.
- crooked-v 3y ago
  There's a real chicken-and-egg recursion there: VR headsets are only good for VR games because the only thing made for VR headsets is VR games because VR headsets are only good for VR games because...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - numpad0 3y ago
    But VR only needed DK1 to take off.
  - zarzavat 3y ago
    It’s not chicken and egg, it’s simply the reality about the hardware. Even Apple, with all their resources and a $3500 price tag, could only make a mediocre passthrough on a very heavy headset. The hardware isn’t ready for AR yet. Games are where it’s at for the foreseeable future. Games don’t need passthrough and they don’t need especially high resolution. Look at how much of the vision pro is about giving people a connection to the real world while they are using the device. Games don’t need that, people want to be immersed while they are playing a game.
    - GeekyBear 3y ago
      > Even Apple, with all their resources and a $3500 price tag, could only make a mediocre passthrough on a very heavy headset. The hardware isn’t ready for AR yet. Hugo disagrees: > thanks to a high-fidelity passthrough (“mixed reality”) experience with very low latency, excellent distortion correction (much better than Quest 3), and sufficiently high resolution that allows you to even see your phone/computer screen through the passthrough cameras (i.e. without taking your headset off). Even though there are major gaps left to be filled in future versions of the Vision Pro hardware (which I’ll get into later), this level of connection with the real world — or “presence” as VR folks like to call it — is something that no other VR headset has ever come even close to delivering and so far was only remotely possible with AR headsets (ex: HoloLens and Magic Leap) which feature physically transparent displays but have their own significant limitations in many other areas.
- zmmmmm 3y ago
  effectively though, they've created their own mini-innovator's dilemma. They can't do anything to alienate those users but they might have to if they want to stay competitive in the long run. Innovator's dilemma is a great problem to have if you are dominating a profitable industry already. But it's a terrible problem to have if you are barely hitting break even or even losing money. Then you really can't afford to go backwards first to go forwards later.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  > VR games, which are the only real reason to own a VR headset Because the rest of the experience is so unpolished. I have a Meta Quest 3 and overall it doesn't exactly feel like they invested tens of billions into that ecosystem. The headset's UI is basically a 2D desktop with taskbar and app launcher covering a small fraction of the field of view, including some buttons that are so small it's tricky to aim at them with the controllers. The Oculus desktop client fails to recognize it via USB and the official remote desktop app is still in Beta while Steam lets me play games or use the desktop remotely with two button presses. To this day I have not managed to just copy files directly onto the device, no USB connection (other than to Steam) works. Only some semi-reliable wifi transfer from a third-party application worked but that required enabling developer mode. On top of that they decided to ship it with a head strap that never fits well and gets painful within 30 minutes, and then made it unnecessarily complicated to swap. Yes, of course people aren't going to do more on that thing than play a few rounds of Beat Saber, because many simply don't want to jump through hoops like that. I think it's a great device overall but some things are just so...unnecessary. Apple not focusing on games might be a good thing because it means they can't just rely on games for free sales numbers.
  - Jcowell 3y ago
    > To this day I have not managed to just copy files directly onto the device, no USB connection (other than to Steam) works. Only some semi-reliable wifi transfer from a third-party application worked but that required enabling developer mode. To echo this today I wanted to watch something on my vision pro so I was on the tv app on my phone, saw a movie I wanted to watch, and then after a good amount of time moved over to my vision pro. Being the scatter brain that I am I forgot what the movie was, unlocked my phone and the movie listing view was there. In my head I was like “damn wish I could share this page over to my vision pro like I do for my ipad” And that’s exactly what I did with Airdrop. The already existing way to share anything between apple devices. I would not be surprised if universal clipboard works as well.
  - jajko 3y ago
    You fail to realize that having such headset 8h a day is not the holy grail for most people, I'd never work in such way. Horrible for your eyes and overall health in many ways we already know and many that will be discovered after this betatesting runs for decade+. Entertainment maybe, but definitely no work- like it or not, outside few tech bubbles this is how world sees VR and its not changing anytime soon. Still, to sporty outdoorsy people this is kids toy (that shouldn't ever be on kid head), reality is and will be always better and healthier.
- chmod775 3y ago
  Are we gonna ignore the fact that VR pornography exists? Also I'm pretty sure those VR games that are ran on a computer connected to a headset could display on any headset, Apple or Oculus. Cursory search reveals people have already been getting SteamVR to work on the VisionPro. Running stuff directly on the headsets is neat, but there's no headset on the market with enough power to match what you can have when plugging them into a computer.
  - jonny_eh 3y ago
    > Are we gonna ignore the fact that VR pornography exists? On the Apple Vision Pro?
    - chmod775 3y ago
      The point is that VR games are not "the only real reason".
      - Takennickname 3y ago
        [flagged]
        Daddy_cat 3y ago
        [dead]
    - parasubvert 3y ago
      Through Safari, or forthcoming VR video player apps (Apple doesn't censor generic utilities).
      - brookst 3y ago
        The players are already there. Those who want VR porn have been able to view it on AVP since days after release.
      - freedomben 3y ago
chaostheory 3y ago
What’s more insulting after the announcement of the vaporware known as “infinite office” is meta’s total lack of attention on their PC software. The work related features of Quest are near non-existent if it weren’t for 3rd parties
- parentheses 3y ago
  I totally agree. While Apple has a north star with this device (or looks like it does), Meta's endeavors always seemed like diversification. Meta seems to be looking for the north star. Apple just pointed it out, so now everyone is going to head that way.
brutus1213 3y ago
Actually, MSFT made the same blunder when it came to HoloLens. Well .. they did start to build some of the core spatial context (and had a fabulous headstart). But somewhere along the way, they yielded to Unity/Unreal. This was mind boggling to me as giving away the keys to the platform to another party was literally the founding story of Microsoft (with IBM having made the blunder). I wonder if engineering leadership recalls history when making such strategic goofs.
- yterdy 3y ago
  Layman's take: All of them are afraid of making the system that fulfills the promise nominally, but that lacks some key component or is on hardware that doesn't get adopted, only to have a competitor swoop in, clone that system with the necessary fixes, and essentially do what Apple did with MP3 players and smartphones. They're all trying to establish market dominance BEFORE giving us a reason to use the devices (bass ackwards) - and are even happy to see the market collapse, if it meant that, simply, no one cracked that particular nut. Apple, Meta, Microsoft like how things are right now. These pushes are much-hyped, but they're made less out of real passion for the promise and more desperation to avoid being left behind.
jayd16 3y ago
Well it's easy to understand why. How could they build an MR ecosystem when their latest device is just barely MR? They can only just now move towards MR with the Quest 3 and really it'll need another generation to be MR native. They have a good relationship with developers and focused on what their current hardware is capable of, which is running one VR app. They spent the last 8 years on that use case and I think that was the right choice given the hardware realities at the time.

by jdprgm 3y ago

IshKebab 3y ago

They are drastically ahead. They have VR games, which are the only real reason to own a VR headset at the moment (and for at least 5 years).

averageRoyalty 3y ago
They are drastically ahead in the VR gaming space. But the potential VR/AR market is hundreds fold bigger than that.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  The potential market in 10 years. Apple has jumped the gun here. This is their Apple Newton moment for AR.
  - phatskat 3y ago
    I hope that seeing where the Newton could’ve gone gives them the confidence to continue with the AVP. A few iterations could really show a great product both in terms of quality and practicality. I had a Newton and loved it, and eventually tried a few Palm devices but nothing ever quite hit like the Newton for me, a real shame they dropped it imo.
  - averageRoyalty 3y ago
    That's probably a fair argument at the pace of innovation pre-AVP. Depending on how quickly they iterate in this (and as the article says, push developers), they may be a self-fulfilling prophecy to significantly reduce the time until this market exists.
crooked-v 3y ago
There's a real chicken-and-egg recursion there: VR headsets are only good for VR games because the only thing made for VR headsets is VR games because VR headsets are only good for VR games because...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- numpad0 3y ago
  But VR only needed DK1 to take off.
- zarzavat 3y ago
  It’s not chicken and egg, it’s simply the reality about the hardware. Even Apple, with all their resources and a $3500 price tag, could only make a mediocre passthrough on a very heavy headset. The hardware isn’t ready for AR yet. Games are where it’s at for the foreseeable future. Games don’t need passthrough and they don’t need especially high resolution. Look at how much of the vision pro is about giving people a connection to the real world while they are using the device. Games don’t need that, people want to be immersed while they are playing a game.
  - GeekyBear 3y ago
    > Even Apple, with all their resources and a $3500 price tag, could only make a mediocre passthrough on a very heavy headset. The hardware isn’t ready for AR yet. Hugo disagrees: > thanks to a high-fidelity passthrough (“mixed reality”) experience with very low latency, excellent distortion correction (much better than Quest 3), and sufficiently high resolution that allows you to even see your phone/computer screen through the passthrough cameras (i.e. without taking your headset off). Even though there are major gaps left to be filled in future versions of the Vision Pro hardware (which I’ll get into later), this level of connection with the real world — or “presence” as VR folks like to call it — is something that no other VR headset has ever come even close to delivering and so far was only remotely possible with AR headsets (ex: HoloLens and Magic Leap) which feature physically transparent displays but have their own significant limitations in many other areas.
zmmmmm 3y ago
effectively though, they've created their own mini-innovator's dilemma. They can't do anything to alienate those users but they might have to if they want to stay competitive in the long run. Innovator's dilemma is a great problem to have if you are dominating a profitable industry already. But it's a terrible problem to have if you are barely hitting break even or even losing money. Then you really can't afford to go backwards first to go forwards later.
alpaca128 3y ago
> VR games, which are the only real reason to own a VR headset Because the rest of the experience is so unpolished. I have a Meta Quest 3 and overall it doesn't exactly feel like they invested tens of billions into that ecosystem. The headset's UI is basically a 2D desktop with taskbar and app launcher covering a small fraction of the field of view, including some buttons that are so small it's tricky to aim at them with the controllers. The Oculus desktop client fails to recognize it via USB and the official remote desktop app is still in Beta while Steam lets me play games or use the desktop remotely with two button presses. To this day I have not managed to just copy files directly onto the device, no USB connection (other than to Steam) works. Only some semi-reliable wifi transfer from a third-party application worked but that required enabling developer mode. On top of that they decided to ship it with a head strap that never fits well and gets painful within 30 minutes, and then made it unnecessarily complicated to swap. Yes, of course people aren't going to do more on that thing than play a few rounds of Beat Saber, because many simply don't want to jump through hoops like that. I think it's a great device overall but some things are just so...unnecessary. Apple not focusing on games might be a good thing because it means they can't just rely on games for free sales numbers.
- Jcowell 3y ago
  > To this day I have not managed to just copy files directly onto the device, no USB connection (other than to Steam) works. Only some semi-reliable wifi transfer from a third-party application worked but that required enabling developer mode. To echo this today I wanted to watch something on my vision pro so I was on the tv app on my phone, saw a movie I wanted to watch, and then after a good amount of time moved over to my vision pro. Being the scatter brain that I am I forgot what the movie was, unlocked my phone and the movie listing view was there. In my head I was like “damn wish I could share this page over to my vision pro like I do for my ipad” And that’s exactly what I did with Airdrop. The already existing way to share anything between apple devices. I would not be surprised if universal clipboard works as well.
- jajko 3y ago
  You fail to realize that having such headset 8h a day is not the holy grail for most people, I'd never work in such way. Horrible for your eyes and overall health in many ways we already know and many that will be discovered after this betatesting runs for decade+. Entertainment maybe, but definitely no work- like it or not, outside few tech bubbles this is how world sees VR and its not changing anytime soon. Still, to sporty outdoorsy people this is kids toy (that shouldn't ever be on kid head), reality is and will be always better and healthier.
chmod775 3y ago
Are we gonna ignore the fact that VR pornography exists? Also I'm pretty sure those VR games that are ran on a computer connected to a headset could display on any headset, Apple or Oculus. Cursory search reveals people have already been getting SteamVR to work on the VisionPro. Running stuff directly on the headsets is neat, but there's no headset on the market with enough power to match what you can have when plugging them into a computer.
- jonny_eh 3y ago
  > Are we gonna ignore the fact that VR pornography exists? On the Apple Vision Pro?
  - chmod775 3y ago
    The point is that VR games are not "the only real reason".
    - Takennickname 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - Daddy_cat 3y ago
        [dead]
  - parasubvert 3y ago
    Through Safari, or forthcoming VR video player apps (Apple doesn't censor generic utilities).
    - brookst 3y ago
      The players are already there. Those who want VR porn have been able to view it on AVP since days after release.
    - freedomben 3y ago

chaostheory 3y ago

What’s more insulting after the announcement of the vaporware known as “infinite office” is meta’s total lack of attention on their PC software. The work related features of Quest are near non-existent if it weren’t for 3rd parties

parentheses 3y ago
I totally agree. While Apple has a north star with this device (or looks like it does), Meta's endeavors always seemed like diversification. Meta seems to be looking for the north star. Apple just pointed it out, so now everyone is going to head that way.

brutus1213 3y ago

Actually, MSFT made the same blunder when it came to HoloLens. Well .. they did start to build some of the core spatial context (and had a fabulous headstart). But somewhere along the way, they yielded to Unity/Unreal. This was mind boggling to me as giving away the keys to the platform to another party was literally the founding story of Microsoft (with IBM having made the blunder). I wonder if engineering leadership recalls history when making such strategic goofs.

yterdy 3y ago
Layman's take: All of them are afraid of making the system that fulfills the promise nominally, but that lacks some key component or is on hardware that doesn't get adopted, only to have a competitor swoop in, clone that system with the necessary fixes, and essentially do what Apple did with MP3 players and smartphones. They're all trying to establish market dominance BEFORE giving us a reason to use the devices (bass ackwards) - and are even happy to see the market collapse, if it meant that, simply, no one cracked that particular nut. Apple, Meta, Microsoft like how things are right now. These pushes are much-hyped, but they're made less out of real passion for the promise and more desperation to avoid being left behind.

jayd16 3y ago

Well it's easy to understand why. How could they build an MR ecosystem when their latest device is just barely MR? They can only just now move towards MR with the Quest 3 and really it'll need another generation to be MR native. They have a good relationship with developers and focused on what their current hardware is capable of, which is running one VR app. They spent the last 8 years on that use case and I think that was the right choice given the hardware realities at the time.