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I'm bearish on VR generally, but admire a lot of the hardcore tech R&D Meta have been doing, and that Zuckerberg embraced being a total nerd and went for it. B

I'm bearish on VR generally, but admire a lot of the hardcore tech R&D Meta have been doing, and that Zuckerberg embraced being a total nerd and went for it. But . . . their whole product direction in the last few years has been baffling, specifically "Meta Horizon" which is at best creepy, and at worst some nightmarish fusion of Microsoft Teams and the Wii Mii channel. They need to get this crap out of the way and focus on delivering experiences people might actually want.

jack_riminton 2y ago
What do people want?
- manbitesdog 2y ago
  As a 400h+ VR gamer, more fun games. No AAA stuff, not crazy graphics, just more incentives for developers to build unique experiences that might not be possible if not for VR. I don't think I've met a single VR user that bought the headset for a different reason.
  - foobarian 2y ago
    More like Blades and Sorcery! :-) It's impressive that they still managed to brute-force a non-trivial size market for VR games. Having a headset used to be rare but nowadays at least in our neck of the woods everyone knows at least a few other people who "have a VR". Even if it's collecting dust it's still market penetration.
    - fidotron 2y ago
      > Even if it's collecting dust it's still market penetration. The big question is why so many of these things are collecting dust. In my case a huge part of it is resistance to putting it on again to discover what new account/privacy requirements it has today, along with how they've rearranged the UI, when all I want to do is fishing and table tennis.
      - zemvpferreira 2y ago
        That’s easy to answer: there have been no great new games since Beat Saber and that was 6 years ago. People go through a lot of trouble and expense to have fun, but there’s no fun to be had in VR for most.
        foobarian 2y ago
        As I mentioned above, Blades and Sorcery is my anecdotal counterexample. I will throw money at any new games like it.
        smoothgrammer 2y ago
        Wait for Into the Radius 2. The first was a masterpiece as well.
        cableshaft 2y ago
        Puzzling Places and Walkabout Minigolf would like to have a word with you. They're the two games I keep coming back to the most, and both have a ton of varied and interesting content. Making 3D puzzles in 3D space where you can twist and turn everything in 3D to see where things might line up and leave the pieces floating wherever you drop them is very compelling. And the puzzles themselves are sometimes animated and/or have dynamic atmospheric audio for some puzzles depending on what pieces you're grabbing. It's great. That being said, they're both getting kind of old now themselves, at 4 and 5 years old.
        zemvpferreira 2y ago
        I don't mean to say that there are no fun games, but they're just not good enough to drive $400 expenses. They're not Pong and they're not Mario. They're not even Fruit Ninja or Mafia Wars. And yeah, your counterpoints being 4 years old isn't helping the case either. New platforms need killer apps like people need oxygen. VR just doesn't have one so far. Gorn got close-ish, Beat Saber got close-ish. That's that. For my money, it'll be something like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes that makes VR go huge or it won't be anything at all.
  - arnaudsm 2y ago
    400h+ VR gamer too, I disagree on "no crazy graphics". The Standalone strategy of leaving PCVR made VR accessible, but killed game innovation entirely. The entire industry was downgraded graphically of 2 entire generations. Sure, there are wizards like StressLevelZero that can ship beautiful games on Quest, but most studios cannot. I wish they hadn't abandonned PCVR, and kept pushing the boundaries of the medium like Valve did with Alyx.
    - atrus 2y ago
      No, the crazy graphics has ballooned the cost of games so much that it's hurt the industry. Making a 3d game is hard enough, throwing the additional complexity and intricacies on top of that would make it too expensive to be profitable. Minecraft and pokemon have famously behind the times graphics and they've done well. Beat Sabre and Gorilla Tag have done well on VR, and those are hardly crazy graphics. Instead of Meta buying game companies and never releasing games, they should have bought those companies, seen how their pipelines looked for a successful release, and then developed software that streamlined those releases, making it easier for outside companies to release more and better games.
      - arnaudsm 2y ago
        Production budget != Compute budget. Minecraft, a 15 year old game, runs at 30fps on the Quest2, which will make anyone instantly sick. Although I've had a blast on Minecraft in PCVR (but you need strong VR legs)
        atrus 2y ago
        I wasn't using minecraft and pokemon as vr examples, but as examples of good graphics not being a good indicator of a game selling well.
      - BobaFloutist 2y ago
        It's interesting, because 3d graphics are already something that games do very well in 2d. Is it because the platform is more resource limited, so you have to find a way to squeeze high-quality graphics out of less compute? And I guess I don't know that much about the technology, but I assume they're sending slightly different images to each eye, which probably means they need to generate two pictures instead of one, so that might be a multiplier on the compute to get a given perspective? I mean Nintendo is pretty well known for squeezing appealing and attractive visuals out of limited hardware, so I can totally see an argument for going for more BOTW/TOTK-style graphics than your CODs or your Gods of War?
- Beijinger 2y ago
  Porn?
  - spacebanana7 2y ago
    The best thing for VR adoption would be for Meta to send out a few thousand VR cameras to onlyfans creators, and pay onlyfans a $1B to add VR video support. This might sound expensive and wasteful, but it’s actually probably cheaper than the effort to improve gaming or hand tracking by a substantial amounts. Also more likely to drive unit sales.
    - elcritch 2y ago
      Porn is already destructive enough to society. Making it more immersive would be even worse.
      - spacebanana7 2y ago
        Just wait until Meta puts targeted adverts in there too.
  - chasd00 2y ago
    there use to be a saying that went like "no internet technology can be considered a success until it's adopted by the porn industry".
- spicyusername 2y ago
  Walkabout Mini Golf is the only VR experience I regularly dust my headset off to return to with friends. Most everything else is either too gimmicky or is just not fun enough to make it worth the cumbersome headset. VR is still really in its infancy, but with Walkabout I really feel like I can see the vision, can feel what is coming. I don't know what it is about that game, but something about the graphics and the gameplay really come together to make you feel like you're inhabiting the space with other people.
  - ashoeafoot 2y ago
    Having meetings while walking? Not to be in office , but appear to be there.
- mrweasel 2y ago
  A very small VR setup, with a multi-directional treadmill, which can easily fold in under the sofa. Drop anything but first person gaming, just make that work. Oh and make it PS5 and Xbox compatible. Gamers want to walk Skyrim, or the Fallout wasteland, but if it's just a set of goggles on your face then what's the point? You could just get a bigger TV. I doubt that you can actually do it, with current tech, but $60B and we're no closer? It's still just a set of goggles.
  - polotics 2y ago
    the only thing that would justify VR for me would indeed be the physical activity angle: a good omnidirectional treadmill to do my 20000 steps while gaming.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  The only, actual objective way for VR to work is for it to be properly world-scale. We need spaces/buildings dedicated for this, and we need setups and headsets from manufacturers which acknowledge this situation. We specifically need users to understand that VR really means VR + giant GPU in your backpack (or I guess laptop in this case). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DvB07X84HM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DvB07X84HM Seriously, this video came out 5 years ago, and nothing has improved what-so-ever with VR.
- h2zizzle 2y ago
  >Go to open field/park (irl or virtually). >Look at your hand. >There is a virtual Pokéball/Yu-Gi-Oh card in it. Something like that. OR I put on my headset, look at my computer/call for my NAS. I ask to see my photos folder. They appear around me as I'd configured previously: as a mass of images that I can manipulate as if they were real, but also if I were psychic. I wave one over, pluck it out of the air, gaze at it. This is way better than scrolling on a tiny phone screen. OR People don't know what they want yet. All they know is that the offerings so far don't appeal to them, being some combination of geek-niche and corporate blandness. One or two or three megacorporations cannot build and control the successor to the PC and smarptphone ecosystems in the heavy-handed manner that they've tried to. Make the tech cheap enough for everyone to get their hands on and easy to develop for (even if you don't get a cut of every single red cent that passes over the platform). Watch the public weave miracles for you.
- markus_zhang 2y ago
  I'd like to have arguments reality. For example AR could be helpful for defensive driving. It could also be very useful for, say, reverse engineering a piece of hardware - so instead of taking a picture and get into a software, I can do it in AR glasses. I think it's going to be useful for many scenarios but it needs to be small and comfortable.
- Gigachad 2y ago
  The only thing I ever hear people do in VR is VR chat. And that mostly seems to consist of virtual sex.
  - nolist_policy 2y ago
    > And that mostly seems to consist of virtual sex. That's not true at all.
bentt 2y ago
He has no vision other than “MINE”. He’s playing defense but nobody’s playing offense.
lvl155 2y ago
What did he actually create? Did you see any of his “protypes” he desperately showcased before Apple released the Vision Pro?
sylens 2y ago
Meta (and Zuckerberg) are nomads in the current tech space. They have no platform to call their own, so when a platform holder decides to turn the screws on them (like Apple with the App Tracking Transparency), they have little recourse. This is what the future would have looked like for Google if Android did not become a success. Zuckerberg knows this and saw VR as a potential platform that they could own moving forward. It's why they have invested so much in it, renamed the company, and played for keeps making deals with game developers to publish their games on their store. The problem is that VR is a niche that will never crossover to the mainstream until major problems are solved with the form factor and battery life. Nobody wants a headset strapped to their face for a prolonged period of time. Even the most hardcore of gamers see their headsets collecting dust after a few months.
- fidotron 2y ago
  > played for keeps making deals with game developers to publish their games on their store I know rooms full of games industry business people that would die laughing at this suggestion. It's in the same league as talking about third party support on the Wii U.
  - sylens 2y ago
    It's not great but when compared to the effort Sony put into the PS VR2, Meta's effort to support their Quest devices seems herculean.
    - bentt 2y ago
      Sony has never lied to itself that VR is a gateway to the metaverse. It tapped the TAM of VR gaming and saw it was small, not worth their attention. Rational actor compared to Zuck whose only goal is to dominate a future he is attempting to will into existence (which nobody wants).
- apwell23 2y ago
  > like Apple with the App Tracking Transparency I remember this was a big news a few years ago and stock was battered for a while. How come it didn't seem to effect their bottomlines and stock prices now ?

jack_riminton 2y ago

What do people want?

manbitesdog 2y ago
As a 400h+ VR gamer, more fun games. No AAA stuff, not crazy graphics, just more incentives for developers to build unique experiences that might not be possible if not for VR. I don't think I've met a single VR user that bought the headset for a different reason.
- foobarian 2y ago
  More like Blades and Sorcery! :-) It's impressive that they still managed to brute-force a non-trivial size market for VR games. Having a headset used to be rare but nowadays at least in our neck of the woods everyone knows at least a few other people who "have a VR". Even if it's collecting dust it's still market penetration.
  - fidotron 2y ago
    > Even if it's collecting dust it's still market penetration. The big question is why so many of these things are collecting dust. In my case a huge part of it is resistance to putting it on again to discover what new account/privacy requirements it has today, along with how they've rearranged the UI, when all I want to do is fishing and table tennis.
    - zemvpferreira 2y ago
      That’s easy to answer: there have been no great new games since Beat Saber and that was 6 years ago. People go through a lot of trouble and expense to have fun, but there’s no fun to be had in VR for most.
      - foobarian 2y ago
        As I mentioned above, Blades and Sorcery is my anecdotal counterexample. I will throw money at any new games like it.
        smoothgrammer 2y ago
        Wait for Into the Radius 2. The first was a masterpiece as well.
      - cableshaft 2y ago
        Puzzling Places and Walkabout Minigolf would like to have a word with you. They're the two games I keep coming back to the most, and both have a ton of varied and interesting content. Making 3D puzzles in 3D space where you can twist and turn everything in 3D to see where things might line up and leave the pieces floating wherever you drop them is very compelling. And the puzzles themselves are sometimes animated and/or have dynamic atmospheric audio for some puzzles depending on what pieces you're grabbing. It's great. That being said, they're both getting kind of old now themselves, at 4 and 5 years old.
        zemvpferreira 2y ago
        I don't mean to say that there are no fun games, but they're just not good enough to drive $400 expenses. They're not Pong and they're not Mario. They're not even Fruit Ninja or Mafia Wars. And yeah, your counterpoints being 4 years old isn't helping the case either. New platforms need killer apps like people need oxygen. VR just doesn't have one so far. Gorn got close-ish, Beat Saber got close-ish. That's that. For my money, it'll be something like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes that makes VR go huge or it won't be anything at all.
- arnaudsm 2y ago
  400h+ VR gamer too, I disagree on "no crazy graphics". The Standalone strategy of leaving PCVR made VR accessible, but killed game innovation entirely. The entire industry was downgraded graphically of 2 entire generations. Sure, there are wizards like StressLevelZero that can ship beautiful games on Quest, but most studios cannot. I wish they hadn't abandonned PCVR, and kept pushing the boundaries of the medium like Valve did with Alyx.
  - atrus 2y ago
    No, the crazy graphics has ballooned the cost of games so much that it's hurt the industry. Making a 3d game is hard enough, throwing the additional complexity and intricacies on top of that would make it too expensive to be profitable. Minecraft and pokemon have famously behind the times graphics and they've done well. Beat Sabre and Gorilla Tag have done well on VR, and those are hardly crazy graphics. Instead of Meta buying game companies and never releasing games, they should have bought those companies, seen how their pipelines looked for a successful release, and then developed software that streamlined those releases, making it easier for outside companies to release more and better games.
    - arnaudsm 2y ago
      Production budget != Compute budget. Minecraft, a 15 year old game, runs at 30fps on the Quest2, which will make anyone instantly sick. Although I've had a blast on Minecraft in PCVR (but you need strong VR legs)
      - atrus 2y ago
        I wasn't using minecraft and pokemon as vr examples, but as examples of good graphics not being a good indicator of a game selling well.
    - BobaFloutist 2y ago
      It's interesting, because 3d graphics are already something that games do very well in 2d. Is it because the platform is more resource limited, so you have to find a way to squeeze high-quality graphics out of less compute? And I guess I don't know that much about the technology, but I assume they're sending slightly different images to each eye, which probably means they need to generate two pictures instead of one, so that might be a multiplier on the compute to get a given perspective? I mean Nintendo is pretty well known for squeezing appealing and attractive visuals out of limited hardware, so I can totally see an argument for going for more BOTW/TOTK-style graphics than your CODs or your Gods of War?
Beijinger 2y ago
Porn?
- spacebanana7 2y ago
  The best thing for VR adoption would be for Meta to send out a few thousand VR cameras to onlyfans creators, and pay onlyfans a $1B to add VR video support. This might sound expensive and wasteful, but it’s actually probably cheaper than the effort to improve gaming or hand tracking by a substantial amounts. Also more likely to drive unit sales.
  - elcritch 2y ago
    Porn is already destructive enough to society. Making it more immersive would be even worse.
    - spacebanana7 2y ago
      Just wait until Meta puts targeted adverts in there too.
- chasd00 2y ago
  there use to be a saying that went like "no internet technology can be considered a success until it's adopted by the porn industry".
spicyusername 2y ago
Walkabout Mini Golf is the only VR experience I regularly dust my headset off to return to with friends. Most everything else is either too gimmicky or is just not fun enough to make it worth the cumbersome headset. VR is still really in its infancy, but with Walkabout I really feel like I can see the vision, can feel what is coming. I don't know what it is about that game, but something about the graphics and the gameplay really come together to make you feel like you're inhabiting the space with other people.
- ashoeafoot 2y ago
  Having meetings while walking? Not to be in office , but appear to be there.
mrweasel 2y ago
A very small VR setup, with a multi-directional treadmill, which can easily fold in under the sofa. Drop anything but first person gaming, just make that work. Oh and make it PS5 and Xbox compatible. Gamers want to walk Skyrim, or the Fallout wasteland, but if it's just a set of goggles on your face then what's the point? You could just get a bigger TV. I doubt that you can actually do it, with current tech, but $60B and we're no closer? It's still just a set of goggles.
- polotics 2y ago
  the only thing that would justify VR for me would indeed be the physical activity angle: a good omnidirectional treadmill to do my 20000 steps while gaming.
Der_Einzige 2y ago
The only, actual objective way for VR to work is for it to be properly world-scale. We need spaces/buildings dedicated for this, and we need setups and headsets from manufacturers which acknowledge this situation. We specifically need users to understand that VR really means VR + giant GPU in your backpack (or I guess laptop in this case). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DvB07X84HM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DvB07X84HM Seriously, this video came out 5 years ago, and nothing has improved what-so-ever with VR.
h2zizzle 2y ago
>Go to open field/park (irl or virtually). >Look at your hand. >There is a virtual Pokéball/Yu-Gi-Oh card in it. Something like that. OR I put on my headset, look at my computer/call for my NAS. I ask to see my photos folder. They appear around me as I'd configured previously: as a mass of images that I can manipulate as if they were real, but also if I were psychic. I wave one over, pluck it out of the air, gaze at it. This is way better than scrolling on a tiny phone screen. OR People don't know what they want yet. All they know is that the offerings so far don't appeal to them, being some combination of geek-niche and corporate blandness. One or two or three megacorporations cannot build and control the successor to the PC and smarptphone ecosystems in the heavy-handed manner that they've tried to. Make the tech cheap enough for everyone to get their hands on and easy to develop for (even if you don't get a cut of every single red cent that passes over the platform). Watch the public weave miracles for you.
markus_zhang 2y ago
I'd like to have arguments reality. For example AR could be helpful for defensive driving. It could also be very useful for, say, reverse engineering a piece of hardware - so instead of taking a picture and get into a software, I can do it in AR glasses. I think it's going to be useful for many scenarios but it needs to be small and comfortable.
Gigachad 2y ago
The only thing I ever hear people do in VR is VR chat. And that mostly seems to consist of virtual sex.
- nolist_policy 2y ago
  > And that mostly seems to consist of virtual sex. That's not true at all.

bentt 2y ago

He has no vision other than “MINE”. He’s playing defense but nobody’s playing offense.

lvl155 2y ago

What did he actually create? Did you see any of his “protypes” he desperately showcased before Apple released the Vision Pro?

sylens 2y ago

Meta (and Zuckerberg) are nomads in the current tech space. They have no platform to call their own, so when a platform holder decides to turn the screws on them (like Apple with the App Tracking Transparency), they have little recourse. This is what the future would have looked like for Google if Android did not become a success. Zuckerberg knows this and saw VR as a potential platform that they could own moving forward. It's why they have invested so much in it, renamed the company, and played for keeps making deals with game developers to publish their games on their store. The problem is that VR is a niche that will never crossover to the mainstream until major problems are solved with the form factor and battery life. Nobody wants a headset strapped to their face for a prolonged period of time. Even the most hardcore of gamers see their headsets collecting dust after a few months.

fidotron 2y ago
> played for keeps making deals with game developers to publish their games on their store I know rooms full of games industry business people that would die laughing at this suggestion. It's in the same league as talking about third party support on the Wii U.
- sylens 2y ago
  It's not great but when compared to the effort Sony put into the PS VR2, Meta's effort to support their Quest devices seems herculean.
  - bentt 2y ago
    Sony has never lied to itself that VR is a gateway to the metaverse. It tapped the TAM of VR gaming and saw it was small, not worth their attention. Rational actor compared to Zuck whose only goal is to dominate a future he is attempting to will into existence (which nobody wants).
apwell23 2y ago
> like Apple with the App Tracking Transparency I remember this was a big news a few years ago and stock was battered for a while. How come it didn't seem to effect their bottomlines and stock prices now ?