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Comment by mark_l_watson | Hacker News Reader

I think Tim Cook and Apple made the correct decision.

I own an Oculus Quest, which is fairly light weight and totally self contained while my Brother owns a more capable Oculus device that is tethered to his gaming PC.

I use my Quest many times a day, often for just a few minutes at a time. It is so easy to get up from my desk, and jump into a ping pong game, enjoy a favorite part of Vader Immortal, randomly try a VR art piece, etc., etc.

I don’t want to spend huge amounts of time on the quest, rather to just use it the way I would take a walk or a hike.

I love the Oculus Quest, and if Apple sells something better with good content, then I am all in.

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I have the exact opposite opinion. The Quest is massively underpowered for the games I want to play. I want GTA VR (which is amazing except for the fact that it's not designed for VR). I want beautiful worlds to visit. I want more Half Life Alyx like experiences. I won't get those on a Quest with a mobile GPU anytime soon.

This is the major problem will all the mobile tech based VR. The content is not and will never be compelling to the audience that actually wants this tech.

This is classic Apple, they try to widen the audience that wants a tech by simplifying as much as possible, then finding a key value.

Prime example is the Apple Watch... who "wears" it now? Sports people...

Apple Watch sales are increasing year over year.

"Apple now sells more watches than the entire Swiss watch industry"[0]

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/5/21125565/apple-watch-sales...

> Prime example is the Apple Watch... who "wears" it now? Sports people...

Two years ago I was on vacation in Hawaii and took a whale watching / snorkel tour. I was the only person on the boat not wearing an Apple Watch. They are pretty much ubiquitous, like the iPhone, among an upper middle class demographic.

People on a snorkel tour are sports people.

You are being snarky and not adding to the conversation. From the time the Apple Watch appeared, it's been denigrated, but I see them everywhere. I see regular complainers here on HN about the iPhone too, but it misses the total saturation in certain demographics. Apple is successful. Yes, we should continue to hold them to a high standard of ethics, but the haters need to realize that consumers like their gear.

The glass frame business is ~25B, eyewear market is ~125B.

What is the minimum key value to take a chunk from Luxotica?

For higher end stuff, you can play Alyx through Virtual Desktop on Quest. I haven't tried it myself yet, but I've watched the videos and apparently it is quite good assuming you get everything setup correctly.

I did this exact thing for the first time the other day after a friend's recommendation. It worked FLAWLESSLY. I was as amazed by it working so well as I was the first time I used the inside-out tracking of the Quest.

Alternatively you can now use a (properly spec'ed) USB-C cable to turn your Quest into a native desktop-powered headset (search for Oculus Link). I've used it recently to play Alyx and I realized I had clearly forgotten how awesome a proper graphics card can be (paired with high quality content), it's really quite incredible.

Actually actually, now you can use any old USB cable, even the charging cable that comes with the Quest works for Link. The quality is a bit reduced on USB2.0 but honestly still totally fine.

The thing that most amazes me about how well this works is that I can actually get a great experience rendering remotely on a cloud pc (Shadow, 350 miles away) using VirtualDesktop or one of the other streaming solutions.

So there's a bit to be said for both approaches. But as far as the hardware goes, a decently powerful standalone device is still necessary for a lot of local operations such as view reprojection or frame interpolation that is necessary to make the remote experience usable.

> The content is not and will never be compelling to the audience that actually wants this tech.

You are not the arbiter of that.

One of the Google cardboard demos has you flying along with a bunch of seagulls. The first time I saw that I was extremely annoyed they didn’t just make it an endless loop of flying. It felt magical, if I could have put on some psybient music with it it would have been 10/10 relaxing. I also showed the demo to my 60yr+ mom and she felt similar.

That is where the big money for VR would be, once polished, in the same way that mobile games went absolutely stratospheric and are worth more than 50% (in value) of the gaming market. You want to tap the mainstream.

I don't agree. I believe most people will look at that 3 times and then never touch it again.

Phones enabled casual gaming but don't believe VR is for casual users (except maybe VR porn). Sealing yourself off from the world in a 3x3 meter space (or even on the sofa) is just not a "casual user" use case so chasing the casual VR users with low-powered VR devices is doomed to fail IMO.

I think both of you have valid points. While I have a Vive Pro, I'm rooting for Quest and PSVR to gain for traction. While nothing beats PC VR in performance, quality, and tracking; the price of entry alone is bad enough for PC VR. Then you have to add the complexity of base station setup. With procrastination, it took me weeks before I had the right PC VR setup vs instant plug and play with the Quest. That said, you can't beat the refresh rate, resolution, and tracking on the PC (especially when you count emerging full body tracking support).

I'll probably jump into Quest if wireless to PC gets an official solution and if they fix the low refresh rate. VR sickness is not fun.

Check out Shadow http://shadow.tech/

It's not perfect, but I got HL Alyx running via the cloud with no local hardware.

My brother is the use case you describe.

If you have a chance, try playing one of the three parts to the Vader Immortal trilogy. It is like being inside a Star Wars movie. At first Darth Vader is not too bad but the more you work with him to try to bring Padme back to life, the scarier he gets. Really unlike a regular game because of the motion of your body. When you are fighting with a light saber in one hand and levitating rocks to hurl at opponents with your other hand, the whole experience is very compelling.

About 25 years ago I did VR projects for SAIC and Disney, and I have written little games for fun since the 1970s, and being where I am now in my life, I am thrilled at the Oculus Quest experience and I can’t wait to see Apple’s system and what 3rd parties write for it.

A lot of people seemed to miss the part that the hub would connect wirelessly.

You could still do that. Just plugging in something in the same room is not that much more difficult. I personally would’ve preferred higher graphics. I love my quest but there needs to be a premium offering that is wireless and it seems like that’s what they were going to do. Ive’s response about not taking people out of the world is stupid. That’s the point of VR.

It's not only that. It's also the portability and price.

The word from those with known accurate sources in Apple's supply chain say that the versions of Apple's AR glasses currently being tested will pair wirelessly with an iPhone, which will do the heavy lifting.

I certainly trust Kuo's track record for accuracy more than I trust Gurman's.

Swapping out the SOC from an Oculus quest to an a13 or higher would be extremely compelling for me to buy.

Other than ease of use Oculus Quest the price point (sub 500) might be another factor but OTOH I don't think that's a big factor if its an apple product.

> Swapping out the SOC from an Oculus quest to an a13 or higher would be extremely compelling for me to buy.

I agree, but I believe the battery will need upgrade as well

It might help the balance of the system to put the battery at the back of the headband, like this: https://uploadvr.com/vr-power-battery-quest/

That's interesting, I think a lot of people may use their Quest a lot often because of that hurdle to put on the headset (or charge batteries, etc).

This is sort of a self-plug, but we're experimenting with the idea of an app that has a comic reader, book reader, Reddit client, art viewer, video player syncing/streaming from a desktop, if you are interested in trying builds. We sort of looked to build the same thing, something you use a little bit everyday because it's better than tiny screens.

And I think as usual, Apple may be what will make VR mainstream, and that'll take quite some time given their AR/Glass focus.

> we're experimenting with the idea of an app that has a comic reader, book reader, Reddit client, art viewer, video player

Why? I have all of those on my computer without strapping anything to my head.

You could potentially always have with you as many displays you want to whatever size you prefer and use them wherever you like: desk, couch, laying in bed... VR / AR Headsets can be a more convenient and comfortable replacement for traditional displays and desk setups.

[edit] typo

Yeah, but all the things mentioned are things that require my full attention for longer spans of time. I don't need separate displays for them, I need one single good display.

A VR headset can also give you a single good display on demand. What about reading a 100” mural scale comic book while laying down in bed?

It definitely will not have the relative resolution of a physical monitor.

Current headsets resolution is already surprisingly good with some dev tricks. We use something called Compositor Layers at https://supermedium.com/ to render comic books in VR that look sharp and vivid. Not “retina” resolution yet but improving very quickly. Give it a couple of headset generations. We already have much much higher resolution and density panels but need to work within other constraints like small form factor, mobile SOCs limited compute power, weight, thermals and battery life.

It's still unclear to me what the benefit is, though. The drawbacks are obvious - I have to wear a headset, I lost the physical interfacing, both in terms of input interfaces and in terms of being able to, say, just a put an e-reader down to stop reading it. What do I gain, after giving up all that?

Best is to try. If you have an Oculus Quest handy you can give supermedium demo a try. Your feedback would be super appreciated. With a headset you get better ergonomics: resize and position a display at will and don’t have to hold anything. For comic books in particular, mural scale pages give you an appreciation of the art not possible on a traditional display. Notice that physical input is still available via controllers: similar to a TV remote or gamepad and also tracked in space enabling more subtle interactions than “traditional” input. Tracked physical keyboards will be eventually available too. I agree wearing / removing a headset is additional friction. We consider it a feature, not a bug. Hard to focus these days with so many distractions. Once you put a headset on you’re committed to the task and it removes all the noise. We see VR as a tool for focus, like shutting the door of a super fancy and private office.

I personally would love VR/AR glasses that I could keep attached and do everything on. Phone, CLI, PowerPoint, web browser, unlimited monitor space, Netflix, Xbox, etc.

I know the pixel density isn’t there yet but I don’t want different screens. The AR/VR would be the “single good display” you’re looking for. I want glasses I can use for literally everything I need a screen for.

For the reality-clingers, this is also the perfect set-up. No more closing your laptop and having your TV staring back at you. Your screen is your screen is your screen, and you can turn it off and not have to deal with any of them.

Of course I would like to try it. Your email is not in your profile, so contact me if you want my feedback.

> I use my Quest many times a day, often for just a few minutes at a time. It is so easy to get up from my desk, and jump into a ping pong game, enjoy a favorite part of Vader Immortal, randomly try a VR art piece, etc., etc.

It was great in that until recently. I leave my quest powered on between gaming sessions. Sometimes I even leave game (beat saber or boxvr) open. It worked great for some time, but for about a couple of months I am experiencing a lot of bugs when it's impossible to recenter headset (using hardware button) and image weirdly freezes for a couple of seconds.

Reboot fixes everything until next time.

It really ruins using headset for frequent short sessions.

And support was really unhelpful.

Try going to oculus home, recenter, going back to game (no need to close the game). I use this when I have the issue on BeatSaber.

Have the same problem.

Fingers crossed it's a temporary regression. Exactly like you, it's been a boon working from home because I will get up for 10 minutes after a long stint of video call and do some SynthRiders etc., which has been amazing for fitness, concentration, etc. Adding 3 minutes to reboot the thing definitely tips it past a critical threshold for that kind of use.

Agreed, since picking up a Quest my use of tethered VR has dropped significantly.

Self contained VR is the way forward IMO. I would only use tethered VR for seated simulations such as flight or racing, which would typically use more peripherals anyway.

Doesn't even need to be self-contained if you use simple streaming over Wifi.

If the machine doing the streaming is on the local network maybe.

VR is not a forgiving environment for latency. If your target 72fps (Quest), about 862 miles is an upper bound for distance. That's just to get data round-trip at fiber speed, additional latency sources (wifi, rendering, encoding, wifi again) are going to make things worse. Prediction and "timewarp" only get you so far.

I'm all for wireless headsets to eliminate the tether when using a PC, but to me the Quest is compelling primarily because it's standalone. I can bring it almost anywhere (empty warehouse, a large field outside, hotel rooms) and not need to worry about lugging a bunch of extra gear.

It's also really compelling for quick product demos if that's your thing. We can keep builds of software installed on a headset that can go from packed in a small hard-case to ready to show off in about the time it takes to boot.

Conceptually this breaks along really similar lines to PC Gaming vs Console/Set-Top Boxes (Roku, or similar).

I've similarly seen much more usage of the Quest from non-technical people as it's much less intimidating to get going.

I co-setup the SAIC VR Lab about 25 years ago, and I literally spent months buying gear, setting it up, and integrating the good stuff into our lab. We engineered full on motion platforms, haptics feedback, and used SGI Reality Engines.

But yes, I do like the easy experience of using the Quest. I expect Apple’s gear to be similarly easy to enjoy.

I love my Quest too. I use it all the time and really can’t see myself using something tethered.

They made a mistake because they didn’t ship anything. It would be much better to ship something and iterate then to wait and miss the boat. Look at HomePod, market share and mind share is minuscule.

Hmm but the article does say it could operate in a stand alone mode. It sounds pretty similar to the Quest but it could only tether to some special unit and not a Mac?

Well, an Internet connection is required for the Quest since you do everything in the environment like buying content (but there is a ton of good free content in many genres). Once content is on the device, you don’t need an Internet connection (I sent an Oculus Go to my grandson, he can load it up and then use it at sea on the Coast Guard cutter he is assigned to).

Apple’s device(s) should be the same.

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