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Comment by dandellion | Hacker News Reader

I own an Index and I love VR, but I have the feeling that if VR was going to be huge it would be a lot bigger than it is already. In my opinion it's more likely that in the future it will remain a niche, but never become really a hit in the general population. A bit like flight sticks or wheels are mostly for people who like to play simulators and have a small but very dedicated public.

There's still some room for growth as better products come out for better prices, but I don't see everybody adopting it, it's too much of a hastle.

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The quest is really not a hassle. You put it on, trace a safe area out on the floor, and you're in another world within 30 seconds.

I think their biggest challenge for growth is that you really have to experience it to get it. People understand what "new Xbox" is all about, it's the same as the last one except improved in easily quantifiable ways, and they'll go spend $500 on it.

VR is still a new thing that people don't understand. But I think it'll get there.

I've experienced VR with a good setup as few times and I'm meh to it. There's a bias where people who love something assume everyone will love it just as much if they only experienced it the right way.

The old Quest was amazing. The new one is cheaper and it shows. Plus it requires a non-anonymous FB login just to turn the thing on. No thanks.

Most of what I hear about the new one is how incredible the pixel density is, but Facebook account I agree with you on.

Just got a Horizon beta invite today but I'd presumably need to merge my Facebook/Oculus accounts to use it. Instead, I'm thinking about nuking my Facebook account (dating back to 2005) and having to create a fresh one for Oculus useage only when they force me to for the Quest 1 to keep working.

I guess it's now or never, since once the account merge is required I'll have a bunch of real money purchases tied to my Facebook account and can't just up and delete it anymore.

I love the Quest 1. What I read about the 2 is that the headband is flimsier and harder to fit, with other purely mechanical corners being cut like the controllers being fatter and less accurate.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/09/review-we-do-not-reco...

FWIW, the controllers feel exactly as good as the Quest 1. They are bigger, but I don't think I would call that a "downgrade."

I did read that review, but it's got to be the single most negative take on the Quest 2 that exists. Most people love it.

The standard head strap is cheaper, with upgrade options available if it bugs you (obviously that kills the $300 price point, but for most people I think it's fine). The controllers feel and perform the same as before, except now there's a thumb rest that isn't "Oops I pushed the Oculus button."

For certain IPDs between the 3 positions, the new lens setup doesn't work well, but the software apparently does understand more IPD steps and will position the displays properly if you carefully balance the lens position slide in between its spots where it locks.

The worst thing about it might be losing a sliver of peripheral vision at the sides, but from what I understand this only happens if you use it at the wide IPD setting and don't use the glasses spacer. And even if you're one of the people affected by that, the screen is still a good trade-off for the higher resolution and framerate.

EDIT - I should say that's the worst thing about the hardware. The actual worst thing is the Facebook account.

I'm concerned about it as well, but I've read about people getting their accounts banned for getting flagged as fake when set up freshly and solely for the Quest. Facebook is supposedly working on that. I'd like to create a separate account for oculus, but do I want to risk losing my purchases if they flag me? Even if I can get an appeal, all of this feels like a hassle. I've got a quest 2 arriving in a week, so I gotta decide.

I think it will be big among the population of people who play video games (i.e. young people who aren't strapped for time and energy). As a relatively young adult (30s no kids), I can't imagine fitting anything like this into my day. Wake up at 6am, exercise, work for 8-10hours, eat dinner, then trace an area out on my floor and enter another world while my wife sits on the couch alone? I think the tech is cool, but can't practically fit into my life of real-world responsibilities.

Or you and your wife and her extended family across five states in three time zones all get together for a game of mini-golf, a round of bowling, a hoverbike race, or a match of zero-g ender's game quidditch.

There are cool single-player experiences, sure, but that's not all it's good for. And with standalone hardware that doesn't require an external sensor setup and powerful gaming computer, they're really quite accessible.

Dude, you’re clearly not married. The last thing most married people I know want is more time with the in-laws. I didn’t dislike my in-laws but something like that would never have been in my list of “top 50 things to do after work”.

I know you were just reaching for an example, I’m just saying it’s a pretty bad one. A better one would be “the kids can spend time with grandparents far away”, that’s an actually-desirable outcome for most people.

I guess I was thinking “wife’s siblings and nieces and nephews” more than “wife’s parents,” which in my experience have gotten along with well, but the point is it could be her activity that you're joining in with just as much as it could be your thing.

For older family members, Echo VR and Void Racer are probably not the games you’d want, but mini golf and bowling you could.

And you always have the “Oh no! My battery’s dying! Nice seeing you!” escape hatch ;)

Or VR could have been being relegated to a niche because of expensive computing requirements, difficulty to setup, lack of portability, and expensive headsets.

The direction the Oculus/Facebook have taken with the Quest line addresses many of these issues (sacrificing quality of the graphics). VR is possibly going to have its breakout moment.

Yeah especially with COVID which has caused an ideal situation for this to flourish.

Interesting to note that Carmack was talking about this untethered dream of android-powered VR back in 2013, which practically feels like the stone age for this modern generation of VR devices.

The first generation of Rift dev kits came out in 2012, and the consumer version didn't ship until 2016.

https://www.theverge.com/2013/10/18/4853108/oculus-cto-john-...

> "The way I believe it's going to play out is you will eventually have a head-mounted display that probably runs Android as a standalone system, that has a system-on-a-chip that's basically like what you have in mobile phones," Carmack said during an interview with Engadget. At least for right now, the VR device relies on its host PC to assist with its immersive functionality.

> "Maybe that means you can only do Quake 3 or something inside there," said Carmack, the man who himself helped build franchises like Doom and Quake at Id software before joining Oculus. But he also predicts a "best of all worlds" scenario where such a headset would still be able to connect to powerful PCs for higher-end games. But an untethered experience offers many benefits, he said. "It does make a big difference not having a wire dragging off your shoulder. It's significant."

> I own an Index and I love VR, but I have the feeling that if VR was going to be huge it would be a lot bigger it is already. In my opinion it's more likely that in the future it will remain a niche, but never become really a hit in the general population.

Historically (that is, from the point that VR first became a buzzword in the '90s), the importance of low latency and other ergonomic issues has been consistently underestimated. Improvements in hardware were usually eaten up by greater rendering fidelity and scene complexity, keeping latency right on the edge of acceptability, which unfortunately means that about 10% of the population experiences loss of orientation or motion sickness. A similar effect occurs on standard desktop setups, but affects a much smaller group (something about the difference between moving the scene in response to head vs. hand movements).

As long as developers (of both platforms and games) keep trying to push more polygons at faster refresh rates without addressing latency, 1-in-10 people are going to reject it outright, and rather more forcefully than in a "eh, not for me" sense.

Keep in mind that the reason disagreement between the inner ear and visual field causes nausea is to get you to vomit harmful psychoactive substances, so it's a pretty deeply rooted response that doesn't respond much to desensitization through exposure (ie. If it's a problem for you, you may not be able to "get used to it").-

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