5 ms·

Before the iPhone we had palm pilots, blackberries, etc. I prefer to think of it as consumer VR simply hasn't had its iPhone moment yet

baby 2y ago
It’s crazy because if you try the Quest it’s quite insane how good it is already. If I were to guess what could give it an iPhone moment: - lighter/more comfortable - faster to get started when you put the headset on - more social experiences and event organized in VR - shorter time from headset on to hanging out with your friends in VR A number of years ago I convinced a bunch of my friends to buy the Quest after being blown away by board games in VR, but turns out Catan only worked for the Go and it was a lot of work to do something together in VR. IMO there needs to be some sort of lobby that does not take you away from hanging out with your friends when you’re in between games. I should be able to easily join a lobby or pause a game to go to a lobby and wave at my friend who’s playing to pause and join me in the lobby
- jimmySixDOF 2y ago
  There is a nee version of Catan for Quest 2/3
  - imzadi 2y ago
    There is, but it is kind of crappy. It's crossplay, but not in a meaningful way. You can't create a room and share a room code. The best you can do is invite a friend, but only if they are on the same platform. They've never done anything to improve it or make it more player friendly. They released it and forgot about it.
- Capricorn2481 2y ago
  > - lighter/more comfortable It's this and one other point: Games that people aren't bored of in an hour. To me, very few games have come out for VR that don't feel like gimmicky experiences. Even Half Life Alyx, as advanced as it was, kinda felt like a theme park ride after a while. I'm not sure if there's technical reasons for it, but it feels like nobody is taking VR development seriously. It's hard to justify strapping a TV to my face and feeling uncomfortable for one-off experiences. Even if there was a game with some depth and replayability, I would be even more annoyed to play it on such an uncomfortable headset. Almost everyone I know is not using their VR headset anymore. I'm not sure it will ever move past that phase, because people want it to be smaller and, simultaneously, more technically immersive. So we're in some weird in between zone where it's neither.
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    >I'm not sure if there's technical reasons for it, but it feels like nobody is taking VR development seriously. The "technical" reason for it is very very very simple: Nearly no video games are actually improved by "increased immersion" to an extreme. Chess won't be more fun because you have to physically move digital chess pieces around a virtual board, people playing Call of Duty do not want to physically move their arms around to aim, and don't want to jump around to move, and if you aren't doing those things you don't want the downsides that are inherent to a VR system, like extreme seclusion of wearing a headset, physical ability being an inherent filter, clunky UI, nausea etc. The TWO areas where VR is useful, flight simulators and driving simulators, haven't even fully adopted VR simply because it's too much hassle. VR is only a gimmick unless you can benefit from that extra immersion, and most things cannot. The Wii sold gangbusters because everyone and their grandma could understand "swing remote to swing tennis racket", but you couldn't actually build a hyperaccurate tennis sim off of that because a Wiimote is NOT a tennis racket and you cannot get beyond that. VR is the same way. Everyone can experience the "Oh VR is soooo coool" gimmick but very few genres inherently benefit from what VR provides.
    - wvenable 2y ago
      Where VR shines, in my opinion, is in fitness. Where the goal is ultimately to move around in a gamified way. That's effectively how I use my Quest 2 and I'm not alone. Recently I've been trying to increase my table tennis skills.
      - LordShredda 2y ago
        But why does it need a heavy screen attached to your head? Just get some shorts and go outside, and if you can afford a quest 2 then surely you can afford a tennis table
        wvenable 2y ago
        It's not that heavy. I don't have the room for a tennis table nor am I close enough to my friends to play it for 30 minutes every night like I do in VR.
- jayd16 2y ago
  They actually do have cross game party chat these days, just FYI. Just make the party and then hop into the game. Support is a little inconsistent as games are not forced to support the feature, though.
- maxsilver 2y ago
  The Quest is insanely good, for a single person in isolation, once it's up and running. But there's a ton of friction that shouldn't exist before that happens, and Meta hasn't nailed most of the UX here yet. For example: - App sharing / libraries doesn't work properly yet. (The owner has to secretly log in to each individual app themselves, before anyone else can use it on the device. There is no documentation informing anyone of this requirement) - Add/ons or DLC also don't work properly yet. (You have to 're-unlock' each individual DLC, for it to share to anyone else on device in something like Beat Saber, for example) - Child permissions don't work properly yet. (The notification does work, but a parent is not allowed to approve an app from that notification, the child has to entirely shut down and restart the whole device, before an approval takes effect) - Screen sharing doesn't work, at all. (If you have a child, you just can't ever mirror their view onto a TV or Tablet -- full stop, no exceptions. Which also means, there's no way to help a child who is wearing a headset -- ever). Note that "taking the headset off" triggers a state reset, so a child can't hand the headset over to their parent for help, since the face sensor will kill state the second a face is removed. - Windowing UI doesn't really work yet. (You can have windows, but only three, and only side-by-side, and only for a select few apps) -- it's more usability-restricted than even stage manager on an iPad. You can tell the Quest is designed around the expectation that you will be in one-and-only-one full-screen game, pretty much the entire time your wearing the headset. - Online sharing is app-dependent, a bunch don't work. Many more don't work at first, you have to spend 30 to 60 minutes "unlocking" the right to match-make. (making the online/networking more seemless is critical because of the nature of the device -- you can't both look at it the way you might with a TV or PC or Laptop or Tablet, since it's a worn device) None of this is dealbreaking stuff, none if it needs any kind of "new invention" or anything to fix. But as a product, friction is still really high here, and I can see why it's not necessarily super popular outside of techie/gaming scenes yet.
  - romanhn 2y ago
    > Screen sharing doesn't work, at all This is definitely not true. The Meta Quest app can connect to a headset and show what the player is seeing, both video and audio. Been watching my kid play various games for years. Also not sure what state reset you're talking about. I've definitely grabbed the headset from another person and continued with the game.
babypuncher 2y ago
Even as a kid before the iPhone came out, it wasn't hard to see the appeal of a smartphone. People loved their Blackberries and Palm Treos. Having internet access wherever you go was incredibly appealing even before the hardware, software, and infrastructure were ready to make that mass marketable. VR makes a ton of sense for video games, but I just don't see how it could enhance the rest of my day-to-day life. I don't see it becoming a good general purpose computing platform that most people use all day. I see it being useful for specific niche tasks like CAD, but I'll never put on a headset just to send an email, file my taxes, or browse the internet.
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  I see tons of appeal for headsets in day-to-day life. Maybe Im unique but I spend a solid hour a day lying in bed reading or on my tablet, I think this experience of using a computing device while lying down could be vastly improved with the right headset and thats an hour every day straight away.
scrame 2y ago
I'm still a little nonplussed. i don't like apple stuff, but did a couple demos at work with the vision elite or whatever its called. Came away very impressed with the technology, but really didn't like having the damn thing strapped to my head for 15-20 minutes. it reminds me of getting the original 3ds that could do some cool AR stuff, and could do 3d without glasses, but ultimately was an impressive tech demo that I mostly didnt use. I already spend too much of my day in front of phones and monitors, I'm not sure if the answer is moving the screens closer to our eyes and shutting out more of the world. industrial applications for sure can have a niche with this, but as a mass market device I think there's a long way to go, even if the experience looks good.
skhameneh 2y ago
Consumer VR hasn't had it's Blackberry moment yet! Coincidentally, someone I interacted with mentioned "I never thought I'd get rid of my Blackberry" in passing, which reminded me of the term once popular term "Crackberry".

baby 2y ago

It’s crazy because if you try the Quest it’s quite insane how good it is already. If I were to guess what could give it an iPhone moment: - lighter/more comfortable - faster to get started when you put the headset on - more social experiences and event organized in VR - shorter time from headset on to hanging out with your friends in VR A number of years ago I convinced a bunch of my friends to buy the Quest after being blown away by board games in VR, but turns out Catan only worked for the Go and it was a lot of work to do something together in VR. IMO there needs to be some sort of lobby that does not take you away from hanging out with your friends when you’re in between games. I should be able to easily join a lobby or pause a game to go to a lobby and wave at my friend who’s playing to pause and join me in the lobby

jimmySixDOF 2y ago
There is a nee version of Catan for Quest 2/3
- imzadi 2y ago
  There is, but it is kind of crappy. It's crossplay, but not in a meaningful way. You can't create a room and share a room code. The best you can do is invite a friend, but only if they are on the same platform. They've never done anything to improve it or make it more player friendly. They released it and forgot about it.
Capricorn2481 2y ago
> - lighter/more comfortable It's this and one other point: Games that people aren't bored of in an hour. To me, very few games have come out for VR that don't feel like gimmicky experiences. Even Half Life Alyx, as advanced as it was, kinda felt like a theme park ride after a while. I'm not sure if there's technical reasons for it, but it feels like nobody is taking VR development seriously. It's hard to justify strapping a TV to my face and feeling uncomfortable for one-off experiences. Even if there was a game with some depth and replayability, I would be even more annoyed to play it on such an uncomfortable headset. Almost everyone I know is not using their VR headset anymore. I'm not sure it will ever move past that phase, because people want it to be smaller and, simultaneously, more technically immersive. So we're in some weird in between zone where it's neither.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  >I'm not sure if there's technical reasons for it, but it feels like nobody is taking VR development seriously. The "technical" reason for it is very very very simple: Nearly no video games are actually improved by "increased immersion" to an extreme. Chess won't be more fun because you have to physically move digital chess pieces around a virtual board, people playing Call of Duty do not want to physically move their arms around to aim, and don't want to jump around to move, and if you aren't doing those things you don't want the downsides that are inherent to a VR system, like extreme seclusion of wearing a headset, physical ability being an inherent filter, clunky UI, nausea etc. The TWO areas where VR is useful, flight simulators and driving simulators, haven't even fully adopted VR simply because it's too much hassle. VR is only a gimmick unless you can benefit from that extra immersion, and most things cannot. The Wii sold gangbusters because everyone and their grandma could understand "swing remote to swing tennis racket", but you couldn't actually build a hyperaccurate tennis sim off of that because a Wiimote is NOT a tennis racket and you cannot get beyond that. VR is the same way. Everyone can experience the "Oh VR is soooo coool" gimmick but very few genres inherently benefit from what VR provides.
  - wvenable 2y ago
    Where VR shines, in my opinion, is in fitness. Where the goal is ultimately to move around in a gamified way. That's effectively how I use my Quest 2 and I'm not alone. Recently I've been trying to increase my table tennis skills.
    - LordShredda 2y ago
      But why does it need a heavy screen attached to your head? Just get some shorts and go outside, and if you can afford a quest 2 then surely you can afford a tennis table
      - wvenable 2y ago
        It's not that heavy. I don't have the room for a tennis table nor am I close enough to my friends to play it for 30 minutes every night like I do in VR.
jayd16 2y ago
They actually do have cross game party chat these days, just FYI. Just make the party and then hop into the game. Support is a little inconsistent as games are not forced to support the feature, though.
maxsilver 2y ago
The Quest is insanely good, for a single person in isolation, once it's up and running. But there's a ton of friction that shouldn't exist before that happens, and Meta hasn't nailed most of the UX here yet. For example: - App sharing / libraries doesn't work properly yet. (The owner has to secretly log in to each individual app themselves, before anyone else can use it on the device. There is no documentation informing anyone of this requirement) - Add/ons or DLC also don't work properly yet. (You have to 're-unlock' each individual DLC, for it to share to anyone else on device in something like Beat Saber, for example) - Child permissions don't work properly yet. (The notification does work, but a parent is not allowed to approve an app from that notification, the child has to entirely shut down and restart the whole device, before an approval takes effect) - Screen sharing doesn't work, at all. (If you have a child, you just can't ever mirror their view onto a TV or Tablet -- full stop, no exceptions. Which also means, there's no way to help a child who is wearing a headset -- ever). Note that "taking the headset off" triggers a state reset, so a child can't hand the headset over to their parent for help, since the face sensor will kill state the second a face is removed. - Windowing UI doesn't really work yet. (You can have windows, but only three, and only side-by-side, and only for a select few apps) -- it's more usability-restricted than even stage manager on an iPad. You can tell the Quest is designed around the expectation that you will be in one-and-only-one full-screen game, pretty much the entire time your wearing the headset. - Online sharing is app-dependent, a bunch don't work. Many more don't work at first, you have to spend 30 to 60 minutes "unlocking" the right to match-make. (making the online/networking more seemless is critical because of the nature of the device -- you can't both look at it the way you might with a TV or PC or Laptop or Tablet, since it's a worn device) None of this is dealbreaking stuff, none if it needs any kind of "new invention" or anything to fix. But as a product, friction is still really high here, and I can see why it's not necessarily super popular outside of techie/gaming scenes yet.
- romanhn 2y ago
  > Screen sharing doesn't work, at all This is definitely not true. The Meta Quest app can connect to a headset and show what the player is seeing, both video and audio. Been watching my kid play various games for years. Also not sure what state reset you're talking about. I've definitely grabbed the headset from another person and continued with the game.

babypuncher 2y ago

Even as a kid before the iPhone came out, it wasn't hard to see the appeal of a smartphone. People loved their Blackberries and Palm Treos. Having internet access wherever you go was incredibly appealing even before the hardware, software, and infrastructure were ready to make that mass marketable. VR makes a ton of sense for video games, but I just don't see how it could enhance the rest of my day-to-day life. I don't see it becoming a good general purpose computing platform that most people use all day. I see it being useful for specific niche tasks like CAD, but I'll never put on a headset just to send an email, file my taxes, or browse the internet.

HDThoreaun 2y ago
I see tons of appeal for headsets in day-to-day life. Maybe Im unique but I spend a solid hour a day lying in bed reading or on my tablet, I think this experience of using a computing device while lying down could be vastly improved with the right headset and thats an hour every day straight away.

scrame 2y ago

I'm still a little nonplussed. i don't like apple stuff, but did a couple demos at work with the vision elite or whatever its called. Came away very impressed with the technology, but really didn't like having the damn thing strapped to my head for 15-20 minutes. it reminds me of getting the original 3ds that could do some cool AR stuff, and could do 3d without glasses, but ultimately was an impressive tech demo that I mostly didnt use. I already spend too much of my day in front of phones and monitors, I'm not sure if the answer is moving the screens closer to our eyes and shutting out more of the world. industrial applications for sure can have a niche with this, but as a mass market device I think there's a long way to go, even if the experience looks good.

skhameneh 2y ago

Consumer VR hasn't had it's Blackberry moment yet! Coincidentally, someone I interacted with mentioned "I never thought I'd get rid of my Blackberry" in passing, which reminded me of the term once popular term "Crackberry".