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Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

176 points by bookofjoe 8mo ago

baggachipz 8mo ago
All 20 participants are going to be severely disappointed.
xmly 8mo ago
Damn... I just planned to buy a new quest...
- g947o 8mo ago
  I mean, the device is still being sold and it's not like you are missing out on anything, unless you are one of the 3 people on the planet who actually uses the "Metaverse". Most people use it for games, and it's fine.
- sneurlax 8mo ago
  I have a Quest 3 and I think I've only opened Horizon Worlds once. It's a very small part of the overall offering. If you can find a used headset for $200, it's a no brainer buy
xnx 8mo ago
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47416940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47416940
- cmrdporcupine 8mo ago
  That was about Horizon Worlds on the hardware or platform or whatever, not the HW "place" itself, no?
  - danso 8mo ago
    Is it even possible to connect to HW without a Meta/Oculus headset?
nolist_policy 8mo ago
Somewhat related, Meta recently introduced SysPTW which is basically frame generation for the Quest: > We’re introducing System Positional TimeWarp (SysPTW) from Depth-From-Stereo to Quest headsets. PTW uses real-time scene depth to reduce visual judder and lag when apps drop frames, making movement in VR smoother and more comfortable. [...] You can expect a more stable experience, especially in demanding social and gaming apps. The "demanding social apps" they aren't naming here is almost certainly VRChat which is poorly optimized on the Quest.
pfdietz 8mo ago
Massively Overpowered reports: "Facebook/Meta’s Horizon Worlds is officially sunsetting its VR version in June in a move that will probably make all five of its players sad. The Mark Zuckerberg metaverse monstrosity has been around since 2020 and was designed as a virtual reality metaverse world back when people were trying to make metaverse things happen and pretending Second Life didn’t exist. (It was a deeply exhausting era.) However, Horizon Worlds’ game/world/metaverse was poorly received and widely mocked, owing largely to dreadful graphics, redundant content, and oh yeah, that whole thing where people didn’t have legs. The boondoggle has led to thousands of layoffs and billions in financial losses, proving it is still possible for companies to lose money trying to make VR happen."
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
stephc_int13 8mo ago
This one should be studied in management schools. I'm not sure I have ever witnessed such a comprehensive industrial failure in the software world. There were some discussions about Facebook's ability to pull it off, but not that long ago, many still saw the "metaverse" vision as inevitable; a clear trajectory for the future of the internet. And the failure isn't Zuckerberg's alone. Microsoft, Apple, and a good many others all crashed into the same wall.
- taeric 8mo ago
  It reminds me of Google Plus. I think you could make parallels to how heavily some of the tech companies were pushing ML?
  - robmccoll 8mo ago
    Yes! And now Meta is chasing that too and failing. It's not clear to me what advantage developing its own LLMs affords Meta. Google and the other platform companies, I get it, but it's not like Meta is using what's unique about their social data to train something interesting.
    - alex1138 8mo ago
      So that they can push those stupid AI questions at the bottom of Facebook posts Zuck seriously seems to have no clue how to do anything. His entire existence is stealing other people's stuff
    - vrosas 8mo ago
      Meta is just paying engineers not to work at any other faang company.
    - taeric 8mo ago
      I think the general strategy for a long time in the tech world was to have as many of the programmers as you could under your umbrella. You don't necessarily know what you are racing towards, but the general feel was you knew that programmers were going to get there.
geophph 8mo ago
Genuine question - was it the product or the implementation that led this to not pan out? Maybe both?
- floren 8mo ago
  Both and also AI became the sexy thing before they really got anywhere with metaverse shit
- asadotzler 8mo ago
  No one wants to wear a PC on their faces. The few who did wanted that for games but Zuck wanted a social VR platform, not a third-rate gaming console. Games couldn't even bring in the numbers needed to pivot anyone to social so they're giving up.
  - riskable 8mo ago
    > No one wants to wear a PC on their faces. This has yet to be determined! Because no VR headset so far has actually been a proper PC. You can't develop on them. You can't just install whatever TF you want. You have to use their app store and getting developer mode enabled doesn't even give you root on the device. A more accurate statement would be, "No one wants to wear a locked-down, extremely limited-use phone on their faces." When the Steam Frame comes out, then we'll see how much of a difference having full control over your VR hardware can make. It runs SteamOS and you can install whatever you want. It's a complete Linux distro! An actual PC on your face.
    - matwood 8mo ago
      Putting Linux on a headset will do nothing to change that the average person wants no part of one on their face. You can develop for the Vision Pro inside the Vision Pro today, and few people care. Maybe a game library as large as Steam's will make it a little more appealing, but unlikely. The Quest has a good sized library and seems to have saturated the market.
    - stefanka 8mo ago
LogicFailsMe 8mo ago
And there was much shareholder rejoicing...
asadm 8mo ago
I am fine with this but I wished they didn't also shut down hyperlapse sharing feature. That sucks!
everyone 8mo ago
I was surprised by how may VR games I played and how many hours I put into it once I got a headset. That being said I still think VR will always be a niche thing. We had VR headsets decades ago, aimed at the kind of person who builds a full cockpit setup at home for playing extremely nerdy flight sims. Now things are amazing if you're one of those people but I dont see VR ever being truly popular.
- riskable 8mo ago
  I honestly think VR hasn't taken off yet because every VR headset since forever has been a locked-down platform or not a stand-alone device (meaning: You need a powerful PC to use it, which makes the cost too high for casual players). The development barrier to entry is far too high and the market far too small. The Steam Frame is a full PC that doesn't require a tether. I think it'll change everything if it doesn't cost a fortune (which it might). The possibilities for 3rd party hardware and the open ecosystem of a complete Linux distro + Steam are endless. Day one of the Steam Frame I'm sure we're going to see all sorts of open source tools/scripts that make it better. Then 3rd party hardware will be announced and suddenly everyone's going to want one because all those things together make it sooooo nice.
  - robotburrito 8mo ago
    I thought so too about the steam frame. Then I saw the pass through was not good. Pass through for me has made these products so more livable. It was downright shocking how much less isolating it felt to have full color pass through.
    - shxismcosn 8mo ago
      [dead]
cmrdporcupine 8mo ago
I actually think there's a huge number of people who want to do online social "world"/ "reality" -- just not without the "3D VR" art. I'm talking like old school MOOs and MUDs but modernized -- or something with a 2d "Zelda overworld" or "isometric" UI even. Something that is less literal, and more "use your imagination." The immersive 3d stuff is "wizbang neat" to Zuckerberg and investors and gamers. But actually most "regular people" I know don't actually like being "in" such environments. Some people get dizzy and sick. Some people don't like dissociating from the "real" world like that, even for simple 3d games. Some people are visually disabled. Or just don't enjoy the modality. But more than anything, no matter what, it's always awkward in its immersion and people's imaginations will always be far richer than the uncanny and limited simulated "3d" world that a computer can deliver. Even if you had 99% fidelity, it'll still be a poor simulacrum that often leaves you feeling poorer. I think Zuckerberg completely misread what his own customer base / world audience wanted because of his own generational biases growing up with technical "lawnmower man" fantasies and fiction, and a misplaced philosophical bias where he believes transcendent, progressive technology leading inevitably in this direction. Because that's what the 1990s and early 2000s was pushing in gaming and other tech. Having billions of dollars at his disposal, and brought up to want and see this future, he saw it as both inevitable and something that he could be pushing the forefront of. Yes people want to connect with other people in online social spaces. And I think they're probably very excited to do so in a manner which models the thing/place/object aspect of the "real world" rather than the glorified magazine / bulletin board which is Facebook. Especially if they can create and author and extend that world from within. But I don't think they want to strap facehuggers to their face and do that in simulated three dimensions. And I don't think it's necessary to do the latter to get the former. (But I'm biased, I've been trying to rebuild the magic I found in LambdaMOO in various forms ... for the last 30 years... https://timbran.org/moor.html https://timbran.org/moor.html )
jabedude 8mo ago
At what point does this company un-do their name change to Meta?
- jmull 8mo ago
  They should’ve gone with “Matrix”. That way they could transition from vr world (the old hype) to AI controlled dystopia (the new hype) with just a cool reveal, no name change needed.
  - shxismcosn 8mo ago
    [dead]
anonymousab 8mo ago
I am still surprised that they thought they'd see success with the extremely low quality version they shipped at launch. Just awful models and missing features along with a completely lackluster and shallow vision for what any sort of VR world could be. Like, how did Zuck look at what was being demoed and think "yes, this is worth shipping" at a time when the closest analogue, 3D games and CG movies, were delivering fidelity that was ~4 hardware generations ahead, in implementation and in design. To be impressed by and willing to sell the world on his metaverse implementation in that state... it felt like the dude hadn't seen any digital 3d entertainment since 2002.
- fullshark 8mo ago
  Cause he doesn't actually want to spend time in a VR world, and has no idea what a good or bad one would be. He just was hoping it was the next smartphone and he'd own the platform.
  - deltoidmaximus 8mo ago
    We've all forgotten the facebook phone failure but I doubt Mark has. He wants control further up the stack. Breaking into OSes is very hard but if you squinted just right VR kind of sort of looked like a green field that was ripe for the taking.
    - grandpoobah 8mo ago
      You almost have to feel sorry for Zucc.
2001zhaozhao 8mo ago
Time to pick another name for the company.
- mizuki_akiyama 8mo ago
  “AI” yep, that’s the new name
  - alex1138 8mo ago
    You lost your account because our systems automatically banned you? Oops! Sorry!
smileybarry 8mo ago
It's funny that Horizon Worlds will shut down before its actual launch here. Meta Quest headsets are sold here but the Horizon Worlds part of the OS was entirely blocked off. (The mobile app shows it, but I could never get the headset to navigate anywhere, just stuck in the homeworld lobby)
- cheeze 8mo ago
  What is "here" in this context?
  - Keyframe 8mo ago
    Metaverse, of course. Same here.
drivebyhooting 8mo ago
It is really amazing how bloated the reality labs division is. Triple layers of directors and VPs. They have been running this grift for years. When interacting with them I was left wondering whether they were delusional. But the explanation is simpler: they were just lying through their teeth to empire build. Can you believe they even built their own game engine to replace Unity? So may layers of principal engineers, directors, etc. I’m sure it will be cancelled if it hasn’t been already.
- VoidWarranty 8mo ago
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mulderc 8mo ago
This was all a money laundering scheme right?
- shxismcosn 8mo ago
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hirvi74 8mo ago
I read the first four words of the title and got my hopes up.
mocmoc 8mo ago
wanted to sell adds in VR and didn't work so he kept selling adds in instagram
georgeburdell 8mo ago
As an engineer I love that Zuck likes to throw his money around. He has been one of the big reasons for SWE salary inflation over the past 15 years. We should be thankful that not every company is relentlessly cost cutting
- poisonborz 8mo ago
  You mean throw those billions, tens of thousands of man hours, shareholder attenton, industry power and mindshare to a mostly useless concept, just because he had the money? Why are those resources not better spent on 100+ startups and 100+ unique ideas that are immediately tested by the market?
  - georgeburdell 8mo ago
    Just because the end concept was useless doesn’t mean the individual pieces don’t have value. Meta’s loose wallet probably kickstarted the work of dozens of smaller companies in the hardware space whose work can be parlayed into other areas.
    - drivebyhooting 8mo ago
      It was not very efficient usage of the money. It actually ended up paying for overpriced real estate in the bay area and vanity toys such as Porsches.
      - georgeburdell 8mo ago
        Considering other mega corps would either hoard the cash or increase dividends, the fact that any money went to engineers is a win. Saying the money would be better spent funding startups does not reflect any real possibility.
    - lostmsu 8mo ago
      That would be useful if they open sourced the effort. Otherwise it will die of total irrelevance 15-30 years from now.
GHanku 8mo ago
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chirpp 8mo ago
So are they no longer making headsets then? Did I waste $500? Can I still use the one I have with steam games?
- WillPostForFood 8mo ago
  No, yes, yes.
jdashg 8mo ago
As a VRChat regular, Meta's VR world efforts have been hilarious every step of the way. So long and thanks for all the headsets! :) Maybe not everything has to be the next big thing for everyone. Maybe it's valuable for smaller companies or sovereign divisions to find niche markets, and simply build products and services for modest profits for strong customer bases that will never hit hypergrowth. (And are therefore resistant to the cancerous financialization that hypergrowth invites/incites) I hope they figure out how to make a modest but steady profit making headsets still. The Quest Pro is still my favorite headset, ever since I ditched the awful controllers and went back to Index controllers. Then again, the Steam Frame is likely to deliver us from this reliance, though it would be really nice to keep having budget headset options.
- spcebar 8mo ago
  What do you feel, as someone who likes VR, were Meta's big pitfalls, and what do you like about VRChat that you feel like Meta missed?
  - kridsdale3 8mo ago
    Porn, for one.
    - onetokeoverthe 8mo ago
      [dead]
  - Telaneo 8mo ago
    VRChat came out more than 5 years before Horizon Worlds did, and already had an established player base by the time Horizon Worlds even came out. It was in early access for ages, but that didn't matter to the VR audience, who's used to there being jank. Not to mention that Horizon Worlds was probably never more of a finished product than VRChat to any significant degree. If you've already got a VR social space, why switch to a different one?
  - Macha 8mo ago
    VRChat was designed for people to hang out, Horizon Worlds was built as a platform for people to purchase meta services and desired corporate use which came with a lot of sterility (you don’t want half the people in your corporate all hands to be some form of anime girl, see the reactions that even just Anubis’ logo gets here). This came in both world design and novel design where vrchat lets people import basically arbitrary 3d models with a wide range of expressiveness. VR went for corporate Memphis upper torsos which immediately makes the world feel more bland. Letting people import whatever would also eliminate the opportunity for meta to sell that, and have the risk that there might be too much breast for a corporate audience. Add to that and the fundamentals just worked so much better in VRChat when horizon worlds tried to make its big splash and the fate was sealed.
topherPedersen 8mo ago
I bought my son a Meta Quest headset and a second one for me to use while playing with him. Honestly, it kind of makes me sick when I use it. Will have to see if it gets any better the next time we play. I'm kind of lazy and just want to lie down when using it, but the last time I tried using it I had to stand up to be able to do whatever it was we were doing.
- ChoGGi 8mo ago
  Apparently you will get used to it over time, I'm still on the getting used to it phase after a couple months. Though I usually only play around with it on weekends. I've noticed sitting and playing a cockpit game is more uncomfortable than standing and playing an fps (with teleport movement).
  - Eufrat 8mo ago
    > Apparently you will get used to it over time, I'm still on the getting used to it phase after a couple months. I think this is one of the reasons VR is niche. You are not going to see mass adoption of a product where you need to get used to physical discomfort in order to properly use it. The use case is not compelling enough to enough people to get over that.
- paxys 8mo ago
  I tried the first Oculus dev kit in 2013 and got instant motion sickness after a short session. Tried some fancy Quest headset more than a decade later, and same thing. It's crazy that after spending like $100 billion in the space they still haven't been able to remove the most fundamental barriers to entry.
- bentt 8mo ago
  I was a VR developer from about 2014 to 2020 after many years in traditional video games. The really sad thing about how VR evolved is that sim sickness was not taken seriously as a barrier for mass adoption. Too many devs and players cast it aside as a "them" problem. "They" couldn't handle it. "They" didn't have VR legs. The bottom line is that most things that became popular in VR were violating the rules which prevented sim sickness. This was a self-fulfilling prophecy that led the VR world into a corner. I'm hopeful that Valve will be better stewards of VR in the long run, once Meta shuts down its hardware division, which you know is coming in the next couple years.
wnevets 8mo ago
> With its potential to generate up to $5 trillion in value by 2030, the metaverse is too big for companies to ignore. [1] [1] https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/value-creation-in-the-metaverse https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-s...
sharkweek 8mo ago
So... did the avatars ever get real legs, or no? I am so glad this product is failing/failed, and I find myself truly and existentially rooting for the glasses with the cameras to die a similar fate. I have so many questions about the overarching product vision of Meta and can't help but think they're going to continue to struggle with everything that isn't "serve more relevant ads on Instagram." Anecdote: my most vivid memory of their "VR vision" is virtual versions of Mark and another exec high-fiving in front of a flooded Puerto Rico. Classy.
seven0444494 8mo ago
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MIBarhamraziq45 8mo ago
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- shxismcosn 8mo ago
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Iamkkdasari74 8mo ago
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Tiktaalik 8mo ago
The problem is that this cool technology got taken over and advanced by companies, Meta and Apple, that are not games companies and do not understand nor are interested in games. So what occurred was an exercise in trying to force a square peg into a round hole, while the actual obviously interesting use of the technology (games!) was sidelined and ignored. It's a real shame I picked up a PSVR and really enjoyed playing around with it. Seems like this particular niche however is not enough to fund the mega expenditure required to move the technology to the next level where it would genuinely get more mass adoption. As it is feels like VR is going to die out at the Wii U point, just before it gets technically good enough (read lightweight) to be the successful Switch.
- edmundsauto 8mo ago
  Otoh, someone with a massive checkbook had to fund the hardware and optical research to enable the devices. Small gaming studios weren’t going to be able to do that. A lot of the smaller VR device companies weren’t able to build on top of core research or hire people that learned on Zuck’s dime.
  - bobro 8mo ago
    So surely after Meta bought oculus, they made major advancements in the field right?
  - Macha 8mo ago
    Or Valve’s time. Like HTC were basically given the core of their Vive product by valve before valve built their own
SaaSasaurus 8mo ago
I imagined logging into Horizon Worlds one last time, and being the last person left: https://www.siliconsnark.com/goodbye-horizon-worlds/ https://www.siliconsnark.com/goodbye-horizon-worlds/ This news is perfect fodder for slightly dystopian creative writing.
nickmd0153 8mo ago
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funkiee 8mo ago
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Telaneo 8mo ago
About time. I guess there are worse things Facebook could have spent their money on? I remember saying to someone one day that while Facebook kind of seems to be going places with their VR hardware, their software division were just reinventing Nintendo Miis, but worse. Anyone who actually cared about doing VR social stuff were going to use VRChat, as that was a much better product. Even then, if you just look at Facebook's VR hardware in a vacuum, sure, it got better, pretty good even, but not to the point of appealing beyond niche groups, i.e. VR gamers and people who use VRChat, and making VR appealing beyond those groups is a thing I don't think is going to happen.
Iamkkdasari74 8mo ago
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bentt 8mo ago
It would appear that the Metaverse (as envisioned by Meta) was nothing more than a way to "grow" when there was no other reasonable path. It was a solution to this problem and this problem alone. Nobody wanted it. Then AI comes along and offers real growth opportunity. But of course, Meta fumbled that one out of the gate because they are more interested in winning than in actually offering anything of value. So they figured they could sabotage the whole thing by open sourcing Llama. Then they got steamrolled by everyone actually creating value for people instead of following their tried and true parasite model. No tech company in this era has been more destructive to society than Meta. Their utter lack of principles has led them down this path. Ironically the most value they have generated is to their investors and especially their employees who are all wealthy now, funded with advertising dollars from across the economy.
- mizzao 8mo ago
  How would the sabotage-by-open-sourcing strategy have worked?
  - bentt 8mo ago
    By giving away a viable product to steal the revenue stream from OpenAI in hopes they'd die on the vine. To draw developer attention towards them and take ownership of a thriving ecosystem like a honeypot so they could bait and switch them towards some kind of perverse ad-driven nightmare once they were dependent on them. You know, the standard Zuck playbook.
hggalvan11 8mo ago
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pncnmnp 8mo ago
I am a bit late to this thread, nevertheless, I wanted to put my thoughts down as well. Horizon Worlds and the Metaverse were both pitched as a "social" platform. And this in itself is where I believe they went wrong. It fundamentally differs from my limited experience with VR and its potential. I see VR as an "anti-social" platform rather than a "social" one - and I say this in a good way. When I put on a VR headset, its as if I am shunning my current world. The experiences I find valuable in VR are the ones that elevate that feeling - imagine watching a basketball game courtside, or watching NASCAR while floating right above the track, or watching a live concert happening halfway across the world, or VR tourism (visiting different places anytime you want, from some breathtaking angles - my most memorable experience of this was a video on Angel Falls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_tqK4eqelA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_tqK4eqelA), or even the classics like playing VR games and watching movies. I believe that they should have doubled down on providing a much richer "anti-social" experience.
- puppykito 8mo ago
  You should give VRChat a try, the predecessor and more successful version of Horizon Worlds. Everything you described can arguably be done in VRChat WHILE not destroying the social aspect of it! It's really neato and VR is not even required, much less mandatory (but highly encouraged).
maracatudo81 8mo ago
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176 points by bookofjoe 8mo ago

baggachipz 8mo ago

All 20 participants are going to be severely disappointed.

xmly 8mo ago

Damn... I just planned to buy a new quest...

g947o 8mo ago
I mean, the device is still being sold and it's not like you are missing out on anything, unless you are one of the 3 people on the planet who actually uses the "Metaverse". Most people use it for games, and it's fine.
sneurlax 8mo ago
I have a Quest 3 and I think I've only opened Horizon Worlds once. It's a very small part of the overall offering. If you can find a used headset for $200, it's a no brainer buy

xnx 8mo ago

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47416940 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47416940

cmrdporcupine 8mo ago
That was about Horizon Worlds on the hardware or platform or whatever, not the HW "place" itself, no?
- danso 8mo ago
  Is it even possible to connect to HW without a Meta/Oculus headset?

nolist_policy 8mo ago

Somewhat related, Meta recently introduced SysPTW which is basically frame generation for the Quest: > We’re introducing System Positional TimeWarp (SysPTW) from Depth-From-Stereo to Quest headsets. PTW uses real-time scene depth to reduce visual judder and lag when apps drop frames, making movement in VR smoother and more comfortable. [...] You can expect a more stable experience, especially in demanding social and gaming apps. The "demanding social apps" they aren't naming here is almost certainly VRChat which is poorly optimized on the Quest.

pfdietz 8mo ago

Massively Overpowered reports: "Facebook/Meta’s Horizon Worlds is officially sunsetting its VR version in June in a move that will probably make all five of its players sad. The Mark Zuckerberg metaverse monstrosity has been around since 2020 and was designed as a virtual reality metaverse world back when people were trying to make metaverse things happen and pretending Second Life didn’t exist. (It was a deeply exhausting era.) However, Horizon Worlds’ game/world/metaverse was poorly received and widely mocked, owing largely to dreadful graphics, redundant content, and oh yeah, that whole thing where people didn’t have legs. The boondoggle has led to thousands of layoffs and billions in financial losses, proving it is still possible for companies to lose money trying to make VR happen."

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

stephc_int13 8mo ago

This one should be studied in management schools. I'm not sure I have ever witnessed such a comprehensive industrial failure in the software world. There were some discussions about Facebook's ability to pull it off, but not that long ago, many still saw the "metaverse" vision as inevitable; a clear trajectory for the future of the internet. And the failure isn't Zuckerberg's alone. Microsoft, Apple, and a good many others all crashed into the same wall.

taeric 8mo ago
It reminds me of Google Plus. I think you could make parallels to how heavily some of the tech companies were pushing ML?
- robmccoll 8mo ago
  Yes! And now Meta is chasing that too and failing. It's not clear to me what advantage developing its own LLMs affords Meta. Google and the other platform companies, I get it, but it's not like Meta is using what's unique about their social data to train something interesting.
  - alex1138 8mo ago
    So that they can push those stupid AI questions at the bottom of Facebook posts Zuck seriously seems to have no clue how to do anything. His entire existence is stealing other people's stuff
  - vrosas 8mo ago
    Meta is just paying engineers not to work at any other faang company.
  - taeric 8mo ago
    I think the general strategy for a long time in the tech world was to have as many of the programmers as you could under your umbrella. You don't necessarily know what you are racing towards, but the general feel was you knew that programmers were going to get there.

geophph 8mo ago

Genuine question - was it the product or the implementation that led this to not pan out? Maybe both?

floren 8mo ago
Both and also AI became the sexy thing before they really got anywhere with metaverse shit
asadotzler 8mo ago
No one wants to wear a PC on their faces. The few who did wanted that for games but Zuck wanted a social VR platform, not a third-rate gaming console. Games couldn't even bring in the numbers needed to pivot anyone to social so they're giving up.
- riskable 8mo ago
  > No one wants to wear a PC on their faces. This has yet to be determined! Because no VR headset so far has actually been a proper PC. You can't develop on them. You can't just install whatever TF you want. You have to use their app store and getting developer mode enabled doesn't even give you root on the device. A more accurate statement would be, "No one wants to wear a locked-down, extremely limited-use phone on their faces." When the Steam Frame comes out, then we'll see how much of a difference having full control over your VR hardware can make. It runs SteamOS and you can install whatever you want. It's a complete Linux distro! An actual PC on your face.
  - matwood 8mo ago
    Putting Linux on a headset will do nothing to change that the average person wants no part of one on their face. You can develop for the Vision Pro inside the Vision Pro today, and few people care. Maybe a game library as large as Steam's will make it a little more appealing, but unlikely. The Quest has a good sized library and seems to have saturated the market.
  - stefanka 8mo ago

LogicFailsMe 8mo ago

And there was much shareholder rejoicing...

asadm 8mo ago

I am fine with this but I wished they didn't also shut down hyperlapse sharing feature. That sucks!

everyone 8mo ago

I was surprised by how may VR games I played and how many hours I put into it once I got a headset. That being said I still think VR will always be a niche thing. We had VR headsets decades ago, aimed at the kind of person who builds a full cockpit setup at home for playing extremely nerdy flight sims. Now things are amazing if you're one of those people but I dont see VR ever being truly popular.

riskable 8mo ago
I honestly think VR hasn't taken off yet because every VR headset since forever has been a locked-down platform or not a stand-alone device (meaning: You need a powerful PC to use it, which makes the cost too high for casual players). The development barrier to entry is far too high and the market far too small. The Steam Frame is a full PC that doesn't require a tether. I think it'll change everything if it doesn't cost a fortune (which it might). The possibilities for 3rd party hardware and the open ecosystem of a complete Linux distro + Steam are endless. Day one of the Steam Frame I'm sure we're going to see all sorts of open source tools/scripts that make it better. Then 3rd party hardware will be announced and suddenly everyone's going to want one because all those things together make it sooooo nice.
- robotburrito 8mo ago
  I thought so too about the steam frame. Then I saw the pass through was not good. Pass through for me has made these products so more livable. It was downright shocking how much less isolating it felt to have full color pass through.
  - shxismcosn 8mo ago
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cmrdporcupine 8mo ago

I actually think there's a huge number of people who want to do online social "world"/ "reality" -- just not without the "3D VR" art. I'm talking like old school MOOs and MUDs but modernized -- or something with a 2d "Zelda overworld" or "isometric" UI even. Something that is less literal, and more "use your imagination." The immersive 3d stuff is "wizbang neat" to Zuckerberg and investors and gamers. But actually most "regular people" I know don't actually like being "in" such environments. Some people get dizzy and sick. Some people don't like dissociating from the "real" world like that, even for simple 3d games. Some people are visually disabled. Or just don't enjoy the modality. But more than anything, no matter what, it's always awkward in its immersion and people's imaginations will always be far richer than the uncanny and limited simulated "3d" world that a computer can deliver. Even if you had 99% fidelity, it'll still be a poor simulacrum that often leaves you feeling poorer. I think Zuckerberg completely misread what his own customer base / world audience wanted because of his own generational biases growing up with technical "lawnmower man" fantasies and fiction, and a misplaced philosophical bias where he believes transcendent, progressive technology leading inevitably in this direction. Because that's what the 1990s and early 2000s was pushing in gaming and other tech. Having billions of dollars at his disposal, and brought up to want and see this future, he saw it as both inevitable and something that he could be pushing the forefront of. Yes people want to connect with other people in online social spaces. And I think they're probably very excited to do so in a manner which models the thing/place/object aspect of the "real world" rather than the glorified magazine / bulletin board which is Facebook. Especially if they can create and author and extend that world from within. But I don't think they want to strap facehuggers to their face and do that in simulated three dimensions. And I don't think it's necessary to do the latter to get the former. (But I'm biased, I've been trying to rebuild the magic I found in LambdaMOO in various forms ... for the last 30 years... https://timbran.org/moor.html https://timbran.org/moor.html )

jabedude 8mo ago

At what point does this company un-do their name change to Meta?

jmull 8mo ago
They should’ve gone with “Matrix”. That way they could transition from vr world (the old hype) to AI controlled dystopia (the new hype) with just a cool reveal, no name change needed.
- shxismcosn 8mo ago
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anonymousab 8mo ago

I am still surprised that they thought they'd see success with the extremely low quality version they shipped at launch. Just awful models and missing features along with a completely lackluster and shallow vision for what any sort of VR world could be. Like, how did Zuck look at what was being demoed and think "yes, this is worth shipping" at a time when the closest analogue, 3D games and CG movies, were delivering fidelity that was ~4 hardware generations ahead, in implementation and in design. To be impressed by and willing to sell the world on his metaverse implementation in that state... it felt like the dude hadn't seen any digital 3d entertainment since 2002.

fullshark 8mo ago
Cause he doesn't actually want to spend time in a VR world, and has no idea what a good or bad one would be. He just was hoping it was the next smartphone and he'd own the platform.
- deltoidmaximus 8mo ago
  We've all forgotten the facebook phone failure but I doubt Mark has. He wants control further up the stack. Breaking into OSes is very hard but if you squinted just right VR kind of sort of looked like a green field that was ripe for the taking.
  - grandpoobah 8mo ago
    You almost have to feel sorry for Zucc.

2001zhaozhao 8mo ago

Time to pick another name for the company.

mizuki_akiyama 8mo ago
“AI” yep, that’s the new name
- alex1138 8mo ago
  You lost your account because our systems automatically banned you? Oops! Sorry!

smileybarry 8mo ago

It's funny that Horizon Worlds will shut down before its actual launch here. Meta Quest headsets are sold here but the Horizon Worlds part of the OS was entirely blocked off. (The mobile app shows it, but I could never get the headset to navigate anywhere, just stuck in the homeworld lobby)

cheeze 8mo ago
What is "here" in this context?
- Keyframe 8mo ago
  Metaverse, of course. Same here.

drivebyhooting 8mo ago

It is really amazing how bloated the reality labs division is. Triple layers of directors and VPs. They have been running this grift for years. When interacting with them I was left wondering whether they were delusional. But the explanation is simpler: they were just lying through their teeth to empire build. Can you believe they even built their own game engine to replace Unity? So may layers of principal engineers, directors, etc. I’m sure it will be cancelled if it hasn’t been already.

VoidWarranty 8mo ago
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mulderc 8mo ago

This was all a money laundering scheme right?

shxismcosn 8mo ago
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hirvi74 8mo ago

I read the first four words of the title and got my hopes up.

mocmoc 8mo ago

wanted to sell adds in VR and didn't work so he kept selling adds in instagram

georgeburdell 8mo ago

As an engineer I love that Zuck likes to throw his money around. He has been one of the big reasons for SWE salary inflation over the past 15 years. We should be thankful that not every company is relentlessly cost cutting

poisonborz 8mo ago
You mean throw those billions, tens of thousands of man hours, shareholder attenton, industry power and mindshare to a mostly useless concept, just because he had the money? Why are those resources not better spent on 100+ startups and 100+ unique ideas that are immediately tested by the market?
- georgeburdell 8mo ago
  Just because the end concept was useless doesn’t mean the individual pieces don’t have value. Meta’s loose wallet probably kickstarted the work of dozens of smaller companies in the hardware space whose work can be parlayed into other areas.
  - drivebyhooting 8mo ago
    It was not very efficient usage of the money. It actually ended up paying for overpriced real estate in the bay area and vanity toys such as Porsches.
    - georgeburdell 8mo ago
      Considering other mega corps would either hoard the cash or increase dividends, the fact that any money went to engineers is a win. Saying the money would be better spent funding startups does not reflect any real possibility.
  - lostmsu 8mo ago
    That would be useful if they open sourced the effort. Otherwise it will die of total irrelevance 15-30 years from now.

GHanku 8mo ago

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chirpp 8mo ago

So are they no longer making headsets then? Did I waste $500? Can I still use the one I have with steam games?

WillPostForFood 8mo ago
No, yes, yes.

jdashg 8mo ago

As a VRChat regular, Meta's VR world efforts have been hilarious every step of the way. So long and thanks for all the headsets! :) Maybe not everything has to be the next big thing for everyone. Maybe it's valuable for smaller companies or sovereign divisions to find niche markets, and simply build products and services for modest profits for strong customer bases that will never hit hypergrowth. (And are therefore resistant to the cancerous financialization that hypergrowth invites/incites) I hope they figure out how to make a modest but steady profit making headsets still. The Quest Pro is still my favorite headset, ever since I ditched the awful controllers and went back to Index controllers. Then again, the Steam Frame is likely to deliver us from this reliance, though it would be really nice to keep having budget headset options.

spcebar 8mo ago
What do you feel, as someone who likes VR, were Meta's big pitfalls, and what do you like about VRChat that you feel like Meta missed?
- kridsdale3 8mo ago
  Porn, for one.
  - onetokeoverthe 8mo ago
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- Telaneo 8mo ago
  VRChat came out more than 5 years before Horizon Worlds did, and already had an established player base by the time Horizon Worlds even came out. It was in early access for ages, but that didn't matter to the VR audience, who's used to there being jank. Not to mention that Horizon Worlds was probably never more of a finished product than VRChat to any significant degree. If you've already got a VR social space, why switch to a different one?
- Macha 8mo ago
  VRChat was designed for people to hang out, Horizon Worlds was built as a platform for people to purchase meta services and desired corporate use which came with a lot of sterility (you don’t want half the people in your corporate all hands to be some form of anime girl, see the reactions that even just Anubis’ logo gets here). This came in both world design and novel design where vrchat lets people import basically arbitrary 3d models with a wide range of expressiveness. VR went for corporate Memphis upper torsos which immediately makes the world feel more bland. Letting people import whatever would also eliminate the opportunity for meta to sell that, and have the risk that there might be too much breast for a corporate audience. Add to that and the fundamentals just worked so much better in VRChat when horizon worlds tried to make its big splash and the fate was sealed.

topherPedersen 8mo ago

I bought my son a Meta Quest headset and a second one for me to use while playing with him. Honestly, it kind of makes me sick when I use it. Will have to see if it gets any better the next time we play. I'm kind of lazy and just want to lie down when using it, but the last time I tried using it I had to stand up to be able to do whatever it was we were doing.

ChoGGi 8mo ago
Apparently you will get used to it over time, I'm still on the getting used to it phase after a couple months. Though I usually only play around with it on weekends. I've noticed sitting and playing a cockpit game is more uncomfortable than standing and playing an fps (with teleport movement).
- Eufrat 8mo ago
  > Apparently you will get used to it over time, I'm still on the getting used to it phase after a couple months. I think this is one of the reasons VR is niche. You are not going to see mass adoption of a product where you need to get used to physical discomfort in order to properly use it. The use case is not compelling enough to enough people to get over that.
paxys 8mo ago
I tried the first Oculus dev kit in 2013 and got instant motion sickness after a short session. Tried some fancy Quest headset more than a decade later, and same thing. It's crazy that after spending like $100 billion in the space they still haven't been able to remove the most fundamental barriers to entry.
bentt 8mo ago
I was a VR developer from about 2014 to 2020 after many years in traditional video games. The really sad thing about how VR evolved is that sim sickness was not taken seriously as a barrier for mass adoption. Too many devs and players cast it aside as a "them" problem. "They" couldn't handle it. "They" didn't have VR legs. The bottom line is that most things that became popular in VR were violating the rules which prevented sim sickness. This was a self-fulfilling prophecy that led the VR world into a corner. I'm hopeful that Valve will be better stewards of VR in the long run, once Meta shuts down its hardware division, which you know is coming in the next couple years.

wnevets 8mo ago

> With its potential to generate up to $5 trillion in value by 2030, the metaverse is too big for companies to ignore. [1] [1] https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/value-creation-in-the-metaverse https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-s...

sharkweek 8mo ago

So... did the avatars ever get real legs, or no? I am so glad this product is failing/failed, and I find myself truly and existentially rooting for the glasses with the cameras to die a similar fate. I have so many questions about the overarching product vision of Meta and can't help but think they're going to continue to struggle with everything that isn't "serve more relevant ads on Instagram." Anecdote: my most vivid memory of their "VR vision" is virtual versions of Mark and another exec high-fiving in front of a flooded Puerto Rico. Classy.

seven0444494 8mo ago

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MIBarhamraziq45 8mo ago

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shxismcosn 8mo ago
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Iamkkdasari74 8mo ago

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Tiktaalik 8mo ago

The problem is that this cool technology got taken over and advanced by companies, Meta and Apple, that are not games companies and do not understand nor are interested in games. So what occurred was an exercise in trying to force a square peg into a round hole, while the actual obviously interesting use of the technology (games!) was sidelined and ignored. It's a real shame I picked up a PSVR and really enjoyed playing around with it. Seems like this particular niche however is not enough to fund the mega expenditure required to move the technology to the next level where it would genuinely get more mass adoption. As it is feels like VR is going to die out at the Wii U point, just before it gets technically good enough (read lightweight) to be the successful Switch.

edmundsauto 8mo ago
Otoh, someone with a massive checkbook had to fund the hardware and optical research to enable the devices. Small gaming studios weren’t going to be able to do that. A lot of the smaller VR device companies weren’t able to build on top of core research or hire people that learned on Zuck’s dime.
- bobro 8mo ago
  So surely after Meta bought oculus, they made major advancements in the field right?
- Macha 8mo ago
  Or Valve’s time. Like HTC were basically given the core of their Vive product by valve before valve built their own

SaaSasaurus 8mo ago

I imagined logging into Horizon Worlds one last time, and being the last person left: https://www.siliconsnark.com/goodbye-horizon-worlds/ https://www.siliconsnark.com/goodbye-horizon-worlds/ This news is perfect fodder for slightly dystopian creative writing.

nickmd0153 8mo ago

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funkiee 8mo ago

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Telaneo 8mo ago

About time. I guess there are worse things Facebook could have spent their money on? I remember saying to someone one day that while Facebook kind of seems to be going places with their VR hardware, their software division were just reinventing Nintendo Miis, but worse. Anyone who actually cared about doing VR social stuff were going to use VRChat, as that was a much better product. Even then, if you just look at Facebook's VR hardware in a vacuum, sure, it got better, pretty good even, but not to the point of appealing beyond niche groups, i.e. VR gamers and people who use VRChat, and making VR appealing beyond those groups is a thing I don't think is going to happen.

Iamkkdasari74 8mo ago

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bentt 8mo ago

It would appear that the Metaverse (as envisioned by Meta) was nothing more than a way to "grow" when there was no other reasonable path. It was a solution to this problem and this problem alone. Nobody wanted it. Then AI comes along and offers real growth opportunity. But of course, Meta fumbled that one out of the gate because they are more interested in winning than in actually offering anything of value. So they figured they could sabotage the whole thing by open sourcing Llama. Then they got steamrolled by everyone actually creating value for people instead of following their tried and true parasite model. No tech company in this era has been more destructive to society than Meta. Their utter lack of principles has led them down this path. Ironically the most value they have generated is to their investors and especially their employees who are all wealthy now, funded with advertising dollars from across the economy.

mizzao 8mo ago
How would the sabotage-by-open-sourcing strategy have worked?
- bentt 8mo ago
  By giving away a viable product to steal the revenue stream from OpenAI in hopes they'd die on the vine. To draw developer attention towards them and take ownership of a thriving ecosystem like a honeypot so they could bait and switch them towards some kind of perverse ad-driven nightmare once they were dependent on them. You know, the standard Zuck playbook.

hggalvan11 8mo ago

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pncnmnp 8mo ago

I am a bit late to this thread, nevertheless, I wanted to put my thoughts down as well. Horizon Worlds and the Metaverse were both pitched as a "social" platform. And this in itself is where I believe they went wrong. It fundamentally differs from my limited experience with VR and its potential. I see VR as an "anti-social" platform rather than a "social" one - and I say this in a good way. When I put on a VR headset, its as if I am shunning my current world. The experiences I find valuable in VR are the ones that elevate that feeling - imagine watching a basketball game courtside, or watching NASCAR while floating right above the track, or watching a live concert happening halfway across the world, or VR tourism (visiting different places anytime you want, from some breathtaking angles - my most memorable experience of this was a video on Angel Falls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_tqK4eqelA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_tqK4eqelA), or even the classics like playing VR games and watching movies. I believe that they should have doubled down on providing a much richer "anti-social" experience.

puppykito 8mo ago
You should give VRChat a try, the predecessor and more successful version of Horizon Worlds. Everything you described can arguably be done in VRChat WHILE not destroying the social aspect of it! It's really neato and VR is not even required, much less mandatory (but highly encouraged).

maracatudo81 8mo ago

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