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I think VR is missing its killer app generally so useful that it makes the experience worth it. I think the tech is so new that we’re all collectively barely sc

I think VR is missing its killer app generally so useful that it makes the experience worth it. I think the tech is so new that we’re all collectively barely scratching the surface on what the medium could be. I’ve had thoughts drawing from my experience playing RTS and organizing information and action under an “inspired by RTS” paradigm. A warehouse with robots could lend itself to management software that could benefit from occasionally putting on a headset and commanding a tiny fleet of drones. I’ve had thoughts and some experiments using a web based Unity VR but haven’t had as much time to pursue more. I wonder if there’s real opportunity in this space I should be doing more in, especially because it doesn’t seem like very many XR developers exist right now, and there is a new community of Apple users hungry for more useful XR apps. Early days still. Thus far I’ve trained myself on Unity and have enjoy delivering multiplayer games (thus far built using AWS as platform). I’ve gone through Unity’s VR training (~170 had completed at time of taking) and my personal project was a helms deep style tower defense game, which I loaded up on my valve index through a web browser (pre webGPU support). I think a dedicated app for the target OS is probably best for a VR application but I have tickled myself thinking about hypothetical boring enterprise VR apps served over a web browser. Any advice from the community? If I wanted to explore XR/VR apps as a developer with more of my daily time, how might I capitalize enough to support myself and one or more families worth of people who can work as collaborators? I’m a moonlighter and there’s only so much time in a day. Nothing is holding me back from spending personal coin hiring freelancers but there is also a local entrepreneurial tech sales pitch event I could present at if I wanted to work with local investors/talent. Should I apply at Meta/Apple or any other big company to see what their XR ops are? Try to bootstrap more by selling online education content and/or create a community and thus unlock more opportunities? I’m open to advice; thanks in advance to anyone who writes back.

jbluepolarbear 2y ago
In my experience, VR is hindered by a new “boys club”: a group of people that aren’t game developers, but invested early in VR tech. Issue being that this group of developers can build decent VR controls and mechanics, but don’t know much, if anything, about how games should be made. Too many VR games are plagued with clunky controls, poor gameplay mechanics, and uninteresting progression. And to top it off these VR companies refuse to hire veteran game devs because they don’t have VR experience.
bdcravens 2y ago
Something B2B, like inventory-related. Maybe enhanced car buying: imagine a buyer walking a dealership and each car has pricing info along with features specific to that piece of inventory. Home inspection: inspector walks through the house, CV picks up flaws to review, and it presents a visual checklist associated with different items in house, etc
flohofwoe 2y ago
> I think the tech is so new that we’re all collectively barely scratching the surface on what the medium could be. "Consumer VR" has been around first in the mid-90's and then after a first "VR winter" in the second hype-cycle since 2013 (yes it's been over a decade already since the Oculus DK1). Lack of time or opportunities can hardly be blamed for the missing killer application ;) There is a killer application actually, and that's flight simulations. Hardly a mass-market of course. Rather as niche as it gets. One problem of the Apple headset might be that the second VR winter had already started quite a while ago, and everybody is currently distracted by that "new" shiny thing called "AI". Maybe if we could get the next two or three AI and VR hype cycles to perfectly overlap with each other...

jbluepolarbear 2y ago

In my experience, VR is hindered by a new “boys club”: a group of people that aren’t game developers, but invested early in VR tech. Issue being that this group of developers can build decent VR controls and mechanics, but don’t know much, if anything, about how games should be made. Too many VR games are plagued with clunky controls, poor gameplay mechanics, and uninteresting progression. And to top it off these VR companies refuse to hire veteran game devs because they don’t have VR experience.

bdcravens 2y ago

Something B2B, like inventory-related. Maybe enhanced car buying: imagine a buyer walking a dealership and each car has pricing info along with features specific to that piece of inventory. Home inspection: inspector walks through the house, CV picks up flaws to review, and it presents a visual checklist associated with different items in house, etc

flohofwoe 2y ago

> I think the tech is so new that we’re all collectively barely scratching the surface on what the medium could be. "Consumer VR" has been around first in the mid-90's and then after a first "VR winter" in the second hype-cycle since 2013 (yes it's been over a decade already since the Oculus DK1). Lack of time or opportunities can hardly be blamed for the missing killer application ;) There is a killer application actually, and that's flight simulations. Hardly a mass-market of course. Rather as niche as it gets. One problem of the Apple headset might be that the second VR winter had already started quite a while ago, and everybody is currently distracted by that "new" shiny thing called "AI". Maybe if we could get the next two or three AI and VR hype cycles to perfectly overlap with each other...