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Comment by dougmwne | Hacker News Reader

I very much think that folks on HN are jaded by the long wait and the unfulfilled promises of VR. I recently picked up a Quest 2 as my first VR headset and I am blown away and convinced it is the future. The thing is, I also recognize that while it is already an incredible achievement, it's still probably 5-20 years from hitting its iPhone moment. By then, my initial excitement will have gone away and I'll have tired of waiting too.

But for all you jaded folks out there, let me tell you that this is an absolutely unstoppable evolution of computing. All entertainment since sung epic poetry has aimed to briefly take us into another world. Plays, novels, movies, theme parks, and video games have always offered immersive fantasy. This is the ultimate fufilment of that very human impulse, to consciously enter another world. If we lose sight of that, then it will be up to the next generation of technologists to create it.

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There will never be an iphone moment because its not a product useful to literally every person. Gaming consoles and PCs have not had an "iphone moment" after decades because their market is and always will be limited.

I don't see why people are so obsessed with instant and explosive growth. Almost no recreational product has seen this kind of growth and they have all continued to exist just fine.

VR is ready today if its something you want. Its fun, cheap enough and has loads of games. If you hold out for something better you will always be waiting because there will always be something much better in 5 years.

Isn’t gaming a larger industry than the movies, driven largely by consoles? Seems like gaming had its iPhone moment a generation ago.

Edit: gaming is larger than the movie and music industries combined

Yes it's true it's larger than books and movies, but games in the end just compete with other forms of media for customers' entertainment dollars.

Unless we can come up with a use case for VR beyond gaming and fulfilling escapist fantasies. It will likely just be another contender for entertainment dollars.

Smartphones on the other hand essentially made it possible to do anything a general desktop pc could do for people on the go without having to be tethered to a chair infront of a desk. Phones can be used for payment, notetaking, etc. There are people who use smartphones and don't play games at all.

And the ultimate use case of VR is that you will be able to be "on the go" without ever leaving your chair -- in a form that's good enough that it doesn't feel inferior to being in person.

It's sort of the inverse of the smartphone use case.

Is it there yet? Of course not. But if/when it does get there... that's a much more compelling use case than a smartphone.

This is true but I think this is mostly irrelevant to the topic at hand. If VR was as popular as PS4 then we'd have said "VR took off". It doesn't need to be as popular as smartphones to be called successful but it's arguably not successful yet by many definitions. It certainly hasn't "taken off"

Most gaming accessories never took off. The racing wheel has been available for decades now and never "took off" and yet it never went away either. Racing wheels have a market and will continue to forever.

I predict VR will be slightly larger than the racing wheel market but they will not become super common in the next decade because they require a large amount of space. This doesn't matter at all because even today VR games and hardware are great fun to use.

The usecase I always envisioned was an all-in-one replacement for multi-monitor setup, TV, and essentially all visual media. I also imagined the flexibility to operate a computer in bright sunlight or while laying in bed thanks to a the goggles being sealed and replacing your vision. This is surely only a matter of the technology improving a bit. I believe a redesign of periphals suited to the ergonomics of VR would be required for my particular vision to be achieved. I suppose what I'm talking about is just a HMD but it could be optionally combined with head tracking like the implementations that exist now. I recall many years ago that HMDs where available so theyre nothing new. Why didnt they take off? Too clunky? Unpleasant somehow?

Games cost a lot more than music and movies. $50, $60, $70 per game...

Gamers like to pay for collectables, DLC, limited editions, figurines, steam sales for games they don't play, etc.

Meanwhile unlimited music streaming is $9/mo. (Are concerts and merch considered in the "industry" revenues?)

Unlimited steaming on Netflix is $13.99/mo for their mid-tier plan.

If games had an "unlimited streaming" subscription equivalent, the industry's revenue would be much smaller.

I'd imagine the $ spent per unit of time for games today (especially live service games) is very low. In fact, I believe gaming is one of the most cost effective forms of entertainment. There are games that can be completed in a few hours, but on the other end of the spectrum you have people playing a single game for thousands to even tens of thousands of hours.

In addition, there are unlimited streaming services for games, one of which being Xbox Game Pass which is growing in popularity. Unfortunately it doesn't feel the same because how many games can one truly complete on a monthly basis?

It’s close between books and video games, depending on which examples you choose. If you chose a best seller from 2020, say A Promised Land, it’s $25 for approximately 15-20 hours of entertainment. I think most books are at a $/hour or less.

Single player video games are also in that range - 30-40 hours of gameplay for $60. But where it gets really crazy is endless games (Sims, Factorio, Simulators) or free to play games (League of Legends, Fortnite) where you could be entertained for thousands of hours for a couple of dollars. I personally played a free to play game for 2000 hours while spending about $40 total on it.

Even movies are pretty cheap, considering we most of us watch what’s included in our monthly subscriptions of Netflix/Amazon/Disney. Even buying/renting movies works out to about 1$/hour.

Conclusion - we’re in a golden era for entertainment where the options are nearly unlimited and dirt cheap.

> Games cost a lot more than music and movies. $50, $60, $70 per game...

That's only half the gaming market by revenue. The other half is mobile gaming and those games are typically under $5.

If you count by player, then the mobile market is larger.

> Isn’t gaming a larger industry than the movies,

nowhere near comparable in reach. Way more people watch movies than play games. Since movies are typically cheaper to consume, it appears as a smaller industry while it is actually bigger in reach.

> Way more people watch movies than play games.

I don't believe that is true, any evidence for this?

> Gaming consoles and PCs have not had an "iphone moment" after decades because their market is and always will be limited.

56% of US households have at least one gaming console.

81% of Americans use a smart phone. Likely almost every house in the country contains one and usually many smartphones.

Likely no consumer product will reach the success of the smartphone.

My bet is when someone makes a spoon that can reproduce any flavor. I think everyone will want that.

Why would that be anything more than a novelty? It completely misses the joy of sharing food and cooking.

Why can't you share while using the fancy spoon?

And while cooking is enjoyable, that doesn't mean you want to spend the time on it every single day, twice or more!

Do you think restaurants are a novelty? Takeout/delivery/fast food?

It's not just the market penetration of the smartphone but time spent engaging with it that makes it so successful as a platform. VR's biggest handicap is that it tends to be tethered/unwieldy to be useful for day to day applications.

The Quest (1/2) isn't tethered, and runs for hours off battery. It's about as wieldy as I can imagine these getting for a while...

Which is to say, it's still an unwieldy box you put on your head. But even hand-tracking works well now, so for a lot of games you don't strictly need the controllers.

The oven in all of it's forms? The light bulb? The washing machine? The refrigerator? The clock? The knife?

Once upon a time, the iPod wasn't useful to every person, because not everyone wanted to take music with them wherever they went. Nowadays, if you don't have a phone in your pocket that can play music, you're in the minority of the world population.

I think that at some point there will be an iPhone moment for VR. However, I think we're still far enough away from it to not know what it'll look like.

It is possible that AR could become a useful product to literally every person. I'll be waiting as always.

Gaming is a only small part of what VR can do.

Education (language learning, geography, biology, engineering...), real estate, porn, psychology, situational training (firemen), scientific visualization and collaboration, spatial painting and other artforms, social interaction, movie shots planning, etc.

All of the things mentioned are already being done without VR headsets. People can go through their entire lives not realizing they've been stereoblind. The world seems as real to them as to anybody else. It's not obvious to me VR is such a huge game changer.

Suppose we had 2 computer games.

One that perfectly reproduced real world "graphics" and "gameplay", looks like a real life high resolution video. Everything is life-like but you use fairly standard controls and a regular display.

Second that comes with perfect VR integration including physical resistance somehow, unlimited running space, ability to taste foods and whatnot. But the mechanics and graphics would still be off (current-gen).

It's pretty clear to me #1 would be way more immersive and the bottleneck is game/simulation tech, not VR tech.

> All of the things mentioned are already being done without VR headsets. People can go through their entire lives not realizing they've been stereoblind.

This comments sounds like what people would've been saying of smartphones: "I've gone my while life without a smartphone, why do I need one now?"

I said the same thing about smartphones, big screen TVs, good office chairs and a few other things. You either learn from your mistakes, or you don't.

Depending on your definition of "mechanics", the second sounds significantly more immersive to me. If the graphics look like Toy Story, so be it. I don't mind if the movement is slightly janky, considering how imprecise a keyboard or controller is to start with.

> All of the things mentioned are already being done without VR headsets.

Not all, no.

You can't lay paint strokes in mid-air around you if you are not in a virtual reality with different physics. That art form simply did not exist before.

You can't understand whether the dimensions and arrangement of a not-yet-built house or movie set is appropriate if you can't visit it in person. It's a threshold change from seeing a model or a 2d tour.

If you are a burn victim, you can't "escape" your thoughts unless your visual cortex is completely flooded by imagery. Similarly, researchers trick the brain of people with spinal cord injuries to reconnect or regrow neurons. Again the "headphones-for-your-eyes" aspect that floods your input channels is used to trick the brain, and this was simply not imaginable before.

It can be used for these things but is it really an improvement ?

> real estate

How often do you do that ? Once every few years ? Aren't regular 3d models / regular virtual visits enough ?

> porn

Tried it, extremely awkward at best

> psychology

> situational training (firemen)

You can train in your Vive for 5 years straight, nothing will prepare you to the real deal. Just like playing a racing video game doesn't make you a racer.

> scientific visualization and collaboration

It's neat but does it change anything fundamentally ?

> social interaction

Nothing will replace real world interactions, be it facebook or VR it's all a gimmicky at best

> movie shots planning

Sounds like a solution looking for a problem. VR isn't new at all and besides gaming it really didn't pick up speed in any other industry. If anything AR could be a "revolution", if miniaturised enough (contact lenses size).

I received a free HTC vive after participating to a conference in 2016, used it a month and it's in a drawer since then. None of what the speakers were promising happened, VR is still the thing you get out once every 6 months to show it to a friend, the wow factor lasts 30 mins.

I'm not sure why there's an expectation that the consumer VR market is going to grow by orders of magnitude. I think the market is basically what it's going to be.

It's a great demo but not something I want to spend much time in.

The headsets are pretty cool - I’ve played with all of them except for the Valve Index.

Though there’s something unpleasant about them that keeps me from going back when the novelty wears off. I think it might be because I don’t want to be standing and moving around when playing a game and if you’re not doing that, the motion is kind of unpleasant.

I’m not sure this is something it can really overcome. I think an AR overlay of our actual world is more likely to be the next real platform (assuming the hardware is possible to pull off something like this).

Being in VR is just kind of an unpleasant/isolating experience for me and I’m a pretty early adopter of most things.

In other people I’ve mostly seen a small number of games (mostly beat saber) keep people coming back, but I haven’t seen most people keep using it once the novelty wears off outside of that.

I think there are probably some narrow applications where it’s clearly better than not having it, but I’m skeptical of VR as a platform.

Maybe when the hardware is 10x better/lighter it’ll be a difference experience? We are pretty early on in the medium, movies and tv were pretty bad for the first fifty years. It might just take a while for people to figure out how to use VR well.

> I think it might be because I don’t want to be standing and moving around when playing a game and if you’re not doing that, the motion is kind of unpleasant.

Project Cars 2 and DCS make it worth the headset alone - throw in Elite Dangerous and No Man Sky and I have enough VR entertainment to keep me busy for the foreseeable.

For some reason, Elite Dangerous throws the graphics into low for me, no matter what settings I have. On the computer it looks great, whenever I put it on the Quest 2 it looks horribly pixelly.

Even so, it's incredibly immersive, and if that problem gets fixed it's going to be amazing.

This review of E:D sold me on both the game and VR

https://youtu.be/Fa0b2Kd2xhU

I'm dying for gaming PC parts to become more available to build a new rig. I hacked together my OG Pixel XL to play E:D on my current potato via the Daydream headset and Riftcat and got to enjoy a very pixelated experience for all of 10 min before my phone rebooted so it wouldn't melt. It was still night and day.

How are both those games with the Quest 2? Those two are my primary interested for VR but I worry about the resolution, frame rate, and controls with my motion sickness.

As a Quest owner, and previous Vive owner, if you can get over the Facebook thing, I would 100% buy the Quest 2 over anything else. The Index might be better, but it costs 2-3x more, and only works on PC, and needs the lighthouses.

The hassle you skip with inside-out tracking is worth it on it's own, and the Quest games are honestly pretty good, and I haven't had any issues with Link to PC. Great for PC VR, great for taking with you to family/friends for fun demos (post-covid).

I strongly dislike the forced Facebook integration, but it's hard to contest that Oculus Quest (and likely 2) is a fantastic product.

Currently use a Rift S but I have two Oculus Quests on the way one for the boy and one for me (it was originally just one for him but then amazon/hermes dropped me in the shit so I went and bought one for him so I'd have it for xmas and am still waiting for the other to turn up at some point).

In the Rift S on a 2080 it's jaw dropping, I'm hoping the 50% res boost on the Quest 2 will make it more so.

I also have a T16000M on the way because of the limitations of VR is you can't see the keyboard so I need more buttons to map everything plus it's a full HOTAS so will work great for DCS.

> I think there are probably some narrow applications where it’s clearly better than not having it, but I’m skeptical of VR as a platform.

Fitness. It is much easier to grind in a VR game for an hour than it is to grind on a treadmill for the same amount of time.

I have a Quest, the games suck, but the fitness experience is paradigm changing. Beat Saber was and still is the Quest's killer app, but there are lot of similar games that keep the experience somewhat fresh (not to mention new beat saber music packs, I also use FitXR more than Beat Saber).

I bought my Quest back in May 2019, it died around June 2020, but I was already using it a couple of hours a day by then so had to get a new one from a scalper (during the Pandemic, Quest units were hard to get). I really don't want to go back to life without it.

Be sure to mod and side load custom Beat Saber tracks if you haven’t already. Dancing (sabering?) to songs you actually know makes the whole thing way more fun.

Yeah, I used to struggle to get a work-out in most days. When I'm not feeling it, I play Thrill of the Fight on my Quest (boxing game - I'm a casual boxing fan). It's the most I sweat out of any workout, and I can go for 45 without getting bored (unlike the rower or going for a run).

I actually got the Quest 2 when it came out, but being as the Quest 1 plays that game fine, and I figure I'll ruin it by sweating into it so much, I hardly use my Quest 2 at this point.

Untethered is the future, and once they get lighter and more comfortable they'll be killer devices. I do find the complete shut-off from the real world a little unpleasant, and especially fumbling around for controllers now and again when the unit is on my face. But otherwise, I've gone from skeptic to fan for VR. (And I do think longer term AR is where it will really take off).

This exactly.

I‘ve had a Quest 1 and loved most of it, except that for me, it was extremely uncomfortable and even left marks in my face after a while. So I sold it before the Quest 2 was released.

For me a VR headset needs to be at most half the weight of a Quest 1 (~0.5kg) to consider it for now. And a bigger FOV would also be nice :-)

Fitness? The idea of puffing and sweating inside a heavy VR headset doesn't seem very alluring to me for some reason... Besides, I personally think fitness should be about reconnecting with the body and the real world, not "grinding" and distracting yourself while getting this physical thing done.

What's wrong with distraction? Plenty of people stay in shape as a side-effect of their enjoyment of sports and games. Am I not really working out when I play soccer or go rock climbing?

There's nothing wrong with it per se. To each their own. I don't see playing soccer or rock climbing as "distraction", on the contrary. I mean distraction as in distracting your mind from the present moment.

For example, I used to go running and weightlifting while listening to music and podcasts for example, because I was in the mindset of physical exercise == unpleasant & time consuming therefore I must distract myself "to get it over with". VR workouts sound a lot like an idea coming from that same mindset.

It did not sound remotely interesting or compelling to me until I tried it. It turns out it's a great way to get moving without feeling like you're putting work into it. For example, I've been using Thrill of the Fight to de-stress after work. It's incredibly effective at that because your brain gets tricked into thinking you're in an actual fight and millions of years of fight or flight stress response kicks in. Afterwards three rounds you feel the kind of release from stress that it would take hours of traditional stress management techniques to achieve. All without the head trauma!

We are developing an open source VR fitness game and after almost a year of exercising im VR I can tell you that in my case the sweat inside of your headset is not a problem but you should use the right VR cover. The stock ones of the Quest are very hard to keep clean.

The sweat on the rest of your body is a completely different issue. After about 40 minutes of VRWorkout I usually look like coming fresh out of the shower. Without VR I could never build up the willpower to "grind on" for so long.

Our game does not try to put the game aspect first but the workout. The game elements are subordinate to the movements if your body and the muscles you are using not the other way around.

That's something we have can't compromise on since the movements that are expected from the player (jumping, pushups, crunches, burpees) should not be compromised by trying to achieve some arbitrary goal like hitting an enemy.

Here is a video of this crazy idea https://youtu.be/mFYzaQzsUI4

[1] VRWorkout https://vrworkout.at

This looks awesome. I'm playing FitXR for upper-body and Pistol Whip for lower-body but I really want a tailored experience.

Any idea when it will be released natively on Quest?

We are mainly using SideQuest and Steam, we don't expect Oculus to approve this in the official store so the time is better spent on the development side.

BUT, Oculus will officialy allow third party games in some form starting early in 2021. So if you are not a SideQuest user you will still be able to use it hopefully soon. Although I'd really recommend SideQuest it adds a lot of value to your headset.

Another alternative would be to use our experimental WebXR version, but that is really only for a quick peek, it's not on par with the native version, not even close.

Thanks! I might have to install SideQuest just for this.

> The idea of puffing and sweating inside a heavy VR headset doesn't seem very alluring to me for some reason...

It is like hanging out in a sweaty gym, you get used to it. But the quest isn't exactly idea for it, which is why I think my headset konked out after a year of heavy use. I hope it gets better.

> not "grinding" and distracting yourself while getting this physical thing done.

To each their own of course. Shadow boxing has been a thing for a few decades now, this is just shadow boxing to music with visual, audio, and a bit of force feedback. I personally need to be distracted, and I like to be able to keep my heart rate at 70-80% without expending extra will power.

I got one of these for my SO: https://www.amazon.com/VR-Cover-Silicone-Oculus-Quest/dp/B08...

It works really well and mostly solves 80% of the issue.

She's really good at beatsaber (top ten in global leaderboards for many of the songs), but plays under my account (just because I already had one).

Somewhat comically this lead to a coworker seeing my username and asking me about my beatsaber ability. I'm pretty mediocre myself.

I'll give it a try, thanks!

I like Beatsaber a lot, it is less of a grind than FitXR, but I still come back to FitXR since I can get a better workout there (Beatsaber is a good warmup).

Yeah I think the beatsaber workouts start to accelerate at expert+ with faster speed turned on. I never got anywhere close to that though.

Very heavy fitness games no, but something moderate like Beat Saber is pretty great. There are ways you can deal with the sweatiness too.

I keep in good physical condition in every possible manner: running trails, playing soccer, lifting weights, hell even playing DDR.

Fitness is literally getting your body into a more physically fit form, it has nothing to do with "connecting with the real world.", whatever that means. I'm down with anything that motivates people to elevate their heart rate.

Do you suffer from disability or live under oppressive weather conditions? Because why not just go outside? I searched for Beat Saber and found that it's basically Fruit Ninja on VR.

No disrespect to you, but I can't help but feel sad about the future that that video game points to. Your last sentence, especially, is for me really lamentable, in the literal sense of that word.

I live in a nice climate (well, when it isn't raining) and walk/bike a lot, or play with my kid, etc... There is still something to be said for a focused workout that you can make into a routine that is easy to stick to.

> I think it might be because I don’t want to be standing and moving around when playing a game and if you’re not doing that, the motion is kind of unpleasant.

Could this be because of the missing resistance while moving / throwing / touching VR objects?

It's more about movement across space.

VR tries a few tricks for this, teleportation, tunnel vision, etc. but ultimately if you're doing movement like you would in a normal FPS/RPG style game where your character is walking and you are not it's unpleasant.

You can get used to it, but I still prefer just sitting and playing on a couch with a TV. The VR controls are still a little clunky though and better haptics would definitely help, but that's not most of the issue.

> I think it might be because I don’t want to be standing and moving around when playing a game and if you’re not doing that, the motion is kind of unpleasant.

I'm the exact opposite. I enjoy that a lot more. It's more immersive, and I've already lost about 15 lbs just playing VR. imo it's a fitness machine disguised as a video game peripheral

Hypothesis: The reason having to stand up (or more generally put physical effort) on games turns you off is because you're looking for a different thing in games, probably just turning off your brain.

The appeal, unarguably I believe, is in being immersed in the fantasy, which I think is a different kind of appeal from what you seek. I actively dislike "abnegation" type games, but the idea of being transported to somewhere else, exploring different realities, amazes me (I'm dying to try Myst on VR), and putting physical effort on it adds to the fantasy. So maybe VR isn't for you, simple as that.

I've seem lots of people (online, yes, but still) keep coming back for Pavlov, Population One, Half-Life Alyx, Star Wars Squadron, VR Chat... I really think there's something there.

>because I don’t want to be standing and moving around when playing a game and if you’re not doing that, the motion is kind of unpleasant.

This is what stops me from buying VR. I don’t want a new form of gaming(r)(tm), I just need 3D display and my chair, kbd & mouse to play my regular AAA games as-is, but with depth perception and appropriate fov. Instead they suggest you to stand and waive your arms in few pretty average if not crappy games. Also, finding a VR-enabled game that will actually work with your headset is not as easy as one may think.

Long time PC gamer, DK1, DK2, CV1, Index, Quest 1, and Quest 2 owner here.

I understand where you're coming from, but I disagree.

When I first got into VR back in 2013 it was cool for a minute, then the novelty wore off. I dabbled with it over the years, but it never stuck. I felt like you do.

2016 the CV1 came out and I was briefly reunited with a strong interest in VR which, eventually, faded. The next few years I didn't play much, and when I did, it wasn't for very long.

The problem was entirely CONTENT and it is FINALLY in 2020 starting to come around.

We have seen some absolutely excellent AAA games released that are loads of fun and not just glorified tech demos (though to be sure, those still exist).

- POPULATION:ONE

- Metal of Honor: Above and Beyond

- Half Life: Alyx

- Asgard's Wrath

Any many more. I'm finally finding myself using my VR headsets DAILY. In fact my Oculus CV1 which came out 4 years ago is still my all around favorite!

I think as content improves (especially multiplayer content) and the headsets get more comfortable and easy to put on / take off, we will hopefully see continued expansion of this medium. It's THE way to game, if you ask me. Nothing is more engaging then jumping off a building, spreading my arms to fly, then pulling them together to grip my gun and land a quick snipe on someone in mid air. Keyboard and mouse can suck it.

Facebook's Quest 2 is an impressive piece of tech.

One of the biggest reasons to be skeptical of VR taking off is that Facebook is one of the major players. Between the login shenanigans and their anti-competitive dealings with developers, they have an opportunity to single-handedly tank the industry.

It's the ONLY player on the "stand-alone" headset space.

There's some competition on PC headsets, Rift headsets are not even the best, feature-wise. But just like the quest, they score very high on the cost-benefit analysis (I guess we pay with a combination of cash and data).

PSVR is somewhere in the middle but Sony has all but abandoned it at this point.

Pretty underwhelming hardware too.

I think Facebook is in VR because they don't want the Metaverse to belong to anybody but them.

100%.

Zuckerberg sees that it has the potential, and he wants to have an early angle of attack in case someone else innovates first.

Zuckerberg views platforms as chess pieces. He doesn't care what they are - he just wants the most valuable and strategic ones. He's not like a Musk that just builds or a Cook that refines product into a cohesive vision. Zuckerberg is playing war and finding the reverse salients. He's destabilizing and weakening the platform and expanding his reach. He's more like Bezos or Ellison.

For sure this is his play. My early take is that the VR/AR social experience is absolutely the killer app and will beat the pants off phone, chat, social feeds and video calls. It will be so good that it will be the default way to commutate at a distance, making it a huge threat to Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Messenger. I think the fufilment of that promise is still probably more than a decade out.

>For sure this is his play. My early take is that the VR/AR social experience is absolutely the killer app and will beat the pants off phone, chat, social feeds and video calls.

And that, IMHO, is why FB wants you to use FB login for your VR experience.

It's also the definition of disallowed monopolistic behavior -- using ownership of one area to control another. This is more egregious if you consider "VR" as not "virtual reality", but "virtual relationships."

I agree. For tech to take off you really need a significant "platform" player to emerge - someone that is able to position themselves as a middleman where the value made by 3rd parties significantly outweighs the value made by the middleman. That is what causes a technology to really bloom and get broadscale uptake. Facebook just isn't interested in that. They'd rather have a smaller pie where they own it all than capture a larger piece of a giant pie but be just one part of it.

I feel the biggest thing that FB brings to the table is multiplayer and social. Because their device is both capable, inexpensive, and easy to setup; it's the most democratic. I can almost always find others to play with or against compared to Steam, where only a few games have a lot of players.

> The thing is, I also recognize that while it is already an incredible achievement, it's still probably 5-20 years from hitting its iPhone moment.

Ironically, by getting acquired by a giant company, Quest development was set back by that many years.

The real problem isn't technology or even adoption, it's that people who work at giant companies suck at making games.

Microsoft has a good track record with making games, but yes all of FAANG is terrible at this. I have a little more hope for Facebook now that they've started acquiring studios and letting them run independently, instead of the previous combination of publishing\funding and having few internal game teams (which generally doesn't work in big tech anyway). This could lead to a model that looks more like Microsoft Game Studios.

One of the best VR experiences out there was made by a single dev, Eleven Table Tennis. Most of what Facebook puts out there is mediocre tech demos and they don't seem to understand the strengths of their own platform enough to take advantage of them in their games.

> I have a little more hope for Facebook now that they've started acquiring studios and letting them run independently

The reality is, the acquisition of best VR game of any objective measure, Beat Saber, set back VR for all game developers because it will rob other VR platforms of a doorbuster title (i.e. Beat Saber 2).

Also, it enables Beat Games to keep using unlicensed music by fiat of Facebook's legal might, a completely unassailable competitive advantage that is strictly better than actually licensing the music and making a game with it.

It is illustrative of how the things giant companies are good at, which is using their huge cash piles to achieve totally anti-competitive advantages, changes nothing for the status quo of the consumer - they don't pay for the music no matter who the game's owner is - but just winds up harming other game developers.

Consider also Facebook Horizon is seeking to replace VR Chat, I believe the #1 free VR title by installs. How is that benefitting game developers and gaming culture? Just compare a screenshot of VR Chat here (1) to Facebook Horizon here (2), it tells you everything you need to know about why the kind of people who work at giant companies are awful at making games. It's so fucking sterile dude, and it's sterile on purpose.

People have said this for eons about Disney, but it's not comparable. By the way, Disney also totally blundered Disney Interactive, shutting down under the CEO Bob Iger who was known as the "tech" CEO of Disney.

(1) https://miro.medium.com/max/3840/1*I5c-QMDHVPeyC35pM1V4Ng.pn...

(2) https://cnet1.cbsistatic.com/img/9kGJANvUNFtxp5mGEgMIDI95DnA...

I worked on the Horizon team, and there's only so much I'm comfortable saying, but I can say the team burnt me out and I quit.

There isn't a 100% chance that Beat Saber 2 will be exclusive, but you're right that it's likely and if that happens it will be a shame. My hope is that Facebook moving away from PC VR as a focus means they won't see it as competition, and start releasing previously exclusive games on Steam in the same way Microsoft and Sony have started releasing previously console exclusive titles, but I won't hold my breath.

Well by no means I meant to shit on what you do, it is of course going to be a well engineered and nice product. I understand it's tough in most roles to do anything about like, sterility - it's above everyone's pay grade at giant companies. So please take it with a bit of exaggeration, it's certainly frustrating as an outsider to see that kind of money lit on fire and talented people getting burnt out. A more experienced and culturally thoughtful decision maker would do things differently.

> Also, it enables Beat Games to keep using unlicensed music

Huh? All BeatSaber music are originals or licensed.

I'm not even sure we are at the compelling apps stage yet. I think there are still very difficult hardware and software platform issues to solve first that are going to take tons of basic research. I expect the first 100 million unit headset to include extremely accurate eye-tracking that is used to drive foveated rendering, varifocal active lenses and neural network interpolated facial expressions for high fidelity social avatars. Facebook Research seems to be making good progress on all of that, but it will still take many years of additional research to perfect.

Facebook wants to be the company to invent the first mainstream VR Metaverse, but that doesn't mean they won't invent the hardware and get beaten to market on the software. They are about to release Horizons which is clearly in this vein, but I expect they are still too early.

> The real problem isn't technology or even adoption, it's that people who work at giant companies suck at making games.

Many companies besides Facebook have developed games for the Quest. I guess you could say Facebook sucks at working with game developers, but I’m not sure if that’s true either. Unreal and Unity have well-developed integrations with Oculus [0].

I think where Facebook really falls down is tying customers’ FB account to their Oculus Store purchases (and ability to use the Quest at all). They’re applying a social media platform’s aggressive algorithms to suspend or ban accounts which violate their expansive TOS, which is wrong in consumer product and digital marketplace space. For that reason, mixed with personal experience at the hands of Facebook's algorithms, I have no interest in developing for Oculus.

[0] https://developer.oculus.com/get-started/

> it's that people who work at giant companies suck at making games.

I don't understand this statement. The Oculus store is open to developers and is filled with third party games. All of the games I personally play are not Oculus/Facebook games.

The store is available but its screening is a little strict (near to game console, rather than Play Store or Steam). Alternatively it seems that FB unofficially supports SideQuest.

> Alternatively it seems that FB unofficially supports SideQuest.

They're actually opening support for off-store apps [1], but with some limitations:

> Applications will have to meet the obligations of the Oculus Content Policy, but won’t be held to the same technical standards as official Oculus Store Apps.

[1] https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-quest-distribution-non-store...

> Ironically, by getting acquired by a giant company, Quest development was set back by that many years.

What does this mean? We likely wouldnt even have a Quest (or really even a 3rd headset imo) from Oculus if not for Facebook. The Oculus founders were all almost completely about building high end enthusiast hardware, which wouldve almost surely made the market die off again.

FB mostly publishes games and what that have published include some excellent games. Lone Echo is probably the mostly complete example of a AAA quality VR title for years until HL:Alyx launched.

Wouldn’t have been possible without a large enough company to bankroll it.

I also recently got a Quest 2 and it's changed everything for me. I'm usually that jaded person but today's VR tech really has me gushing. This is the first time I've been truly excited about video games since I was a teenager 15 years ago (despite playing a lot of games in that time).

The feeling of vertigo and momentum in games like Jet Island that makes you weak in the knees, looking out your cockpit and being awestruck by planets and stations in Star Wars Squadrons or Elite Dangerous, dodging bullets in Pistol Whip and Superhot. The dream of the 90's is alive - the technology is here! It's so good and I can't wait until quarantine is over to share this with more people.

Previously I'd used a friend's Oculus DK1 (not good) and then later a friend's HTC Vive (getting there). The Quest 2 is a major improvement and I look forward to the next generation of headsets.

Given that VR requires an interface, it seems a stretch to say it's the "ultimate fulfilment" of entering another world. Before even getting to the philosophical inquiry about what would truly constitute an Us and its actual, for real entering of another world, that it's mediated by a big headset seems to put it still many iterations prior to its ultimate realisation.

The real world has plenty of interfaces too. Surely VR will eventually approach the same level of seemingly physical interfaces as the distinction between the real and the virtual starts to break down.

That is actually the magic moment I've had, tech without an interface. Or to put it another way, it has moments of seamlessly using the interface I was born into, natural kinesthetic movement and realistic physics.

I said it 10 years ago and I'll say it again, putting a screen and lenses on your face is not "virtual reality". It's just a gimmick (although fun in it's own way). The real VR revolution will not come until we have true BCIs that can hijack and isolate your vision and all attempted actions. Neuralink is on the right track but not even close to working. We'll need 50 more years maybe.

I played with a really nicely Oculus set up the other day, it was totally amazing and immersive. In particular this was a racing sim, and when I was headed toward a wall I got the feeling like in a real car when you're about to hit something. It was very cool.

Unfortunately, I lost my lunch after 5 minutes or so and had to lay in a dark room for a couple hours to get over a bout of nausea. Excited for the future though if they can solve that problem for people like me (I also get seasick easily).

I'm curious which Oculus headset you were using. All the ones that plug in to a PC are fairly underpowered even compared to the Oculus Quest 2.

Nausea is heavily tied to framerate and latency -- a really beefy machine with a Valve Index should be a lot easier on your lunch.

I'm not surprised you got nausea from a racing sim. It takes time to get your "VR legs" and anything with artificial locomotion is absolutely terrible for this. I started with about 2 weeks of games where the only movement was with my own two feet and the VR world always matched up to my real body movements. Then I was able to gradually handle more and more intense artificial movement. Jumping, heights, speed, and smooth turning are the worst of the bunch and still make me a bit uneasy if I overdo it. Jumping right into something with intense movement is going to program you brain to have a very negative association with VR and will take you backwards on VR acclimatization.

I wonder if there is any hangover of this acclimation when going back to the real world? If you get immune to that feeling of danger when driving towards obstacles, will it show up in a real car?

I know that personally I once binged GTA V hard over a week or so, and had to catch myself before I started driving on the wrong (right-hand) side of the road one day out of habit.

There are after effects, but not like you're suggesting. For me I had some weird visual things like things popping out of flat screens, objects momentarily seeming further or closer than they really were, odd dreams, and floaty feelings. Some people describe short periods of disassociation like their hands aren't real or feelings of unreality. There was quite obviously some neuronal re-wiring happening, but it passed quickly and I don't have any urges to put my hands through solid objects or anything like that. It was actually pretty similar to when I've been skiing a lot and I have some after effects of the ground seeming to move.

Interesting. I also just remembered that I've walked around corners a bit too close after marathon FPS sessions when I was younger (apparently I forgot I wasn't modeled a point, and had shoulders that bump into things).

I used to get massive nausea after playing fps games on my 10' projector screen - solved it by using a pair of acupressure wrist bands. Not sure if that would work for VR but probably worth a try. Plenty of studies behind it: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7575310/

With everything happening with major movies going direct to streaming, I actually am expecting a big development somewhat related to VR in the next year or two. It's a device much smaller than a VR headset you wear on your face that gives you a theatrical quality audio-visual viewing experience, and only allows you to purchase/rent and not sideload anything. I'm thinking it could sell for around $500 and I'm pretty sure there's a company in Cupertino taking a close look at this.

I have been watching movies on the Quest 2 with Big Screen. It's a great experience and very much reminds me of going to the theatre.

No new titles - For me, their 3D movie catalog is exactly what it was 7 months ago. Doesn't seem like a thriving business...

Hasn't Hammacher-Schlemmer been selling something like this for years? Lastest variation: https://www.hammacher.com/product/wearable-virtual-cinema

I remember not too long ago when the Wii and the Kinect were supposed to be the future of gaming (they were hugely popular at some point) before everyone got sick of standing playing games and went back to their couches.

Wondering if the same thing is not going to happen with VR as well.

i'm still on quest 1 and it's honestly amazing, it's a great workout for me, someone that is/was fairly unfit and hates exercise. Using FitXR and Beat saber (with some additional handles that add a bit of weight) really get my heart rate u p and feeling great and most of all I really enjoy it. It's amazing.

I also enjoy watching movies in it as well, I don't watch a lot and was considering buying a TV but this has really delayed me doing so.

“ All entertainment since sung epic poetry has aimed to briefly take us into another world. ”

Maybe it is just me but I can achieve perfectly satisfactory immersion with a good book.

Fair point and I can as well. It takes a great book, time, a good atmosphere, a nice state of mind and the page can disappear and I enter that other world. The last book that did this to me was The City and the Stars and it was just incredible. But with VR you are instantly, automatically and with zero effort just THERE. The immersive pull is probably thousands of times stronger if you could quantify it by number of seconds till you stop caring about the real world.

fair, maybe it's me getting old (and i'm only 32) but perspective of the slow immersion is more appealing. Taking the time to make your entire environment just perfect, with good music and some whisky is part of the enjoyment for a slow relaxing evening.

But i guess it's just me there could be a market for instant immersion. I have second dev version of oculus at home, never used it much. I also went to a VR venue in London and it was great fun. From my perspective VR would work great in venues, as a night out alongside bowling, karake and similar options. I can't imagine using it reguralrly at home.

Also, the tech may enable wonders but the implementation may suck. If you have an amazing technology but the scenario of all the movies / games using this technology turn out to be the Nth version of the same story (like basically every movie on Netflix) then it is subpar compared to a book.

I think a domain where it can exceptionally shine is the adult entertainment industry.

It looks the consensus here is pretty much that anyone who tried the latest tech understands that we have went beyond a certain point here.

Comparing to phones, I think this is the point where we have keypad-phones. Content is still limited, but using your imagination you can create good experiences.

Personally, I switched to VR/Quest gaming from PC this autumn, and I feel good about it. I feel healthier than sitting in front of PC. I also feel less isolated with the family, as we have more 'playing together' now. As a developer, I'm exited to try out to create new kind of experiences, like I did 16 years ago with phone SDK's.

If you think yourself as a creator, I think you feel a fool if you wait another ten years - seeing the times when a single person could do something meaningful, going past.

I have watched a lot of products come and go. It's been quite a while since I saw a product and realized that it would not be silly to pivot my career to take advantage of the opportunity. VR is one of those things.

While I agree with you, and am a HUGE fan of VR, the undeniable truth is these headsets collect dust after a week or two. Always. I've convinced a ton of my friends to buy one and they always end up with the same fate :(

I mean, I guess it depends. I have an Hour or 2 a week to game. For the past 4 years I've spent that exclusively in VR. I recently picked up some new pancake games, but I keep going back. The VR experience is so much more enjoyable to me.

I think you're right -- new technology is overestimated (overhyped) in the short term, and underestimated in the long term. I think of speech recognition over the years where the promise never met reality and then it quietly started answering most corporate phones.

I have tried VR many times over the years (I vividly recall there was an interesting arcade game back around 1990 that used it). I got a vive. I tried others.

But after using it for a while, I returned to a monitor and keyboard as my preferred way of interacting. There's still something sort of self-limiting/tiring about VR.

Is it just me?

For me the kinds of games I mostly play do not translate well to VR. Or at least yet. But for stuff that does translate like shooters, its unreal how much better they are in VR.

So many comments to yours are all sceptical and saying "never" a lot. Maybe in 20 years you'll be vindicated. I'm with you.

It's surprising how much imagination people lack.

It's like people who told me "humans will never fall I'm love with an artificial human". Lo and behold, that Chinese AI has 600M users. Now the discussion have moved to " they shouldn't " and then it will change to "I want one too".

The same will happen with VR and AR.

I also was blown away by my first VR experience and convinced it was the future. It was when I played Dactyl Nightmare in 1992.

Your second paragraph is compelling, except there are exceptions. Remember 3d tv?

I think once the need for a headset is eliminated (like Star Trek's holodeck) it will take off. Until then, having to strap something over your face is asking too much. It's too isolating.

^ This a thousand times over. Everyone forgets VR has been 5-10 years away since the 1960s![0]

You can't obstruct people's eyes - glasses get a pass because they're a handicap, and folks with sunglasses communicate by wearing them.

We will need to live many more rounds of evolution to give up the idea that covering your eyes to 'go somewhere else' won't be a survivally threatening move...

and what's more, we're just starting to fully appreciate how smells and air (quality, pressure, etc) play a role in 'us being there' - don't even begin to think about the small gravitational pull between all of our bodies at a concert.

Long story short, it will take a long time and a lot of generations to die off before we appreciate VR as much as a physical experience.

[0]https://virtualspeech.com/blog/history-of-vr

> let me tell you that this is an absolutely unstoppable evolution of computing.

If that's the case, the sales are hardly convincing. If this was such a revolution you'd see more people buying them. Beyond head tracking and movement tracking, the fact that you cant feel anything (no feedback) in the world you are supposed to be in makes it illusion breaking.

He is saying it's inevitable, not that it's there yet.

>I am blown away and convinced it is the future. The thing is, I also recognize that while it is already an incredible achievement, it's still probably 5-20 years from hitting its iPhone moment.

Except for the iPhone part, I bet this exact comment was made in 1991.

> If we lose sight of that, then it will be up to the next generation of technologists to create it.

It's not clear this generation of technologists will be able to get there even keeping it in sight. Which isn't to say it's not worth plugging away at.

ya it's a slow burn, but I think the September '20 - September '21 period will end up seeing roughly the unit sales mentioned in their bet. Quest 2 is making a large impact.

Flying simulators seem make a comeback and they sound great for VR. MS Flight Simulator was well received. A colleague of mine praised Star Wars Squadrons as a great VR game.

Predicting the future of technology isn't too hard, it's predicting the timing accurately that people tend to fail at. I don't have a lot of experience with all the headset variations, mostly Oculus and PS, but it's clear to me that we're still in a hype stage and the hardware has a long, long way to go. I'm guessing 10-20 years before it starts approaching what we're after.

yeah we can do one better with the holodeck. im not sure the problem is that much harder...

I don't know about plays, novels or movies, but it's worth it just for the porn itself.

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