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I'm glad it probably will mean there are some short term dollars to propel the fundamental tech along. Whatever happens, it will be fun to play with that.

Agreed. I think the Metaverse will be a niche, but it will soon become a much higher quality niche.

> Metaverse will be a niche

One big reason for this is some strange social stigma surrounding VR. Yes, there are many other issues like cost (minimum $2000 investment for a VR ready PC and headset) and complexity if you’re not using Oculus / Meta. Then there’s also Facebook’s toxic brand, which drives away many early tech adopters; but what if we were able to take them out of the equation?

Anyways, I did an experiment last Christmas. I got several family members Oculus Meta Quest 2 headsets. At the same time Meta was offering a $60 referral credit where both you and the new Quest user would get $60 in store credit.

To summarize, I removed the barrier of monetary cost, and Meta removed the barrier of complexity from VR (ie no wires, or PC setup). None of these people had a bad opinion of Facebook either. What was the result?

They tried the free demos once and stopped using it. It wasn’t until I constantly pestered them, that they actually tried apps with free credits and games and started to understand VR and use it more regularly, namely the fitness and social apps. I even recently talked to Meta contractor who mentioned that she wasn’t interested in a free Quest 2 headset even though she held the company in high regard. I feel for VR marketing teams. Until Apple helps make this mainstream, XR will have a very big hill to climb.

You’re assuming VR is a paradigm shift and not just a gimmicky console like the Wii.

There’s nothing particularly interesting in VR, at least not yet. Most games suck. The ones that don’t are largely stationary with little rotation if at all. There’s a fundamental problem that humans, even when not constrained by space, aren’t very agile, and much less so wearing a vr headset. It still sucks.

I have an index.

Do you really have an Index? The reason I ask is because I highly disagree with your statement about games being “largely stationary with little rotation at all”. It’s the exact opposite, which is why having a wire is so annoying.

VR is a huge paradigm shift. It’s just still in its infancy. Similar to the internet in the mid 1990s.

Like what games?

Virtually every first person VR game that isn't a driving or flying sim needs turning or it kills immersion:

- Alyx

- Boneworks

- Blades & Sorcery / GORN

- Skyrim / Fallout 4 VR

- Onward, Zero Caliber, Population One, Contractors

- Racket NX

- Minecraft

- Lone Echo

- holopoint

There's really too many games to name, and I can name more. A huge pain point for me prior to getting the Quest 2 was tangled wires from too much turning.

The only games where there's no turning involved are fitness apps like Fit XR and ping pong. Even Beatsaber and SuperNatural have 360 degree levels. Your comment makes me wonder if you've ever used your Index, or if you even own a VR headset because it sounds bizarre.

Alyx is cool but it also sucks. The little interactions with items feel novel. The combat is bad.

It’s a thin layer of game design tricks to make you think you’re in something intricate but it’s actually dumb as rocks. The lightning dogs are the peak of this. Even on the hardest difficulty they telegraph their attacks for like… 10 seconds. It’s not clear if it’s possible to dodge it by physically walking 5m. The game wants you to teleport pretty much anywhere to “dodge” it. I don’t blame valve for this. What they almost certainly realized is that humans are incompetent in vr so the enemies need to be dumb as rocks. Not that the AI is bad or anything, but the principles behind their behavior are built for the fact that humans are slow, have low situational awareness, and and especially in vr don’t have a good intuition for where their body is exposed. The electric dogs are still decently challenging. But the limitations on it were incredibly immersion breaking to me, much more than having a helmet benefited.

Superhot solves this the other way by having very short high failure levels and just letting you lose due to human incompetence at your own pace. It works pretty well but it’s not a generalizable strategy for other games. I’m looking to do boneworks next. I’ve never felt wires were a real problem. Mostly because the games I play don’t involve moving around much. I have tried wireless.

I have also done one of those vr domes with a huge open warehouses and multiplayer vr shooters with mild graphics but big gun peripherals. This is the biggest freedom you could possibly have. In my experience playing and watching others, people just slowly walk from place to place, rotate in place, and stand still shooting while monsters get too close and “hit” them because melee attacks feel unintuitive still. They move like they’re an old resident evil tank control character lol.

Glad to find someone else unimpressed by Alyx. I cannot work out why people are so impressed with it. It's just a super impressive sandboxed VR demo really. The whole world is highly constrained - you can't go anywhere they don't want you to, you can only pick up and manipulate a subset of objects they have modeled properly and there all these arbitrary restrictions that just frustrate you from creatively solving any of the challenges. Ends up a totally linear storyline that's more like watching a movie than a real open world VR game (like Skyrim, for example).

It was fairly ambitious and achieved a lot of new ground. The magnet gloves did feel like a really good innovation. The physical devices like the healing station were good examples of paradigm shifts that are cooler in vr. I just didn’t feel like the actual gameplay was very good.

It was never sold as an open world game so I’m not sure why you’re referencing that.

The fitness apps are the most absurd thing. No one that is serious about fitness is working out for any length of time with a headset on.

If you could go to a real virtual gym and lift virtual weights that was no different than lifting real weights, that would be amazing. That would be revolutionary because so many problems would have to be solved.

Instead, the headset has literally solved nothing in the last 30 years. There is a video of Jaron Lanier on youtube showing a vr headset and vr glove in 1990. It could literally be a VR advertisement next year and you wouldn't know the difference.

there are bunch of things here that are just simply empirically wrong ...

The fitness apps and communities are real ... there are subscription services with virtual coaches etc. I myself workout at least 45 mins a day. It's the best workout I've ever had - Synthriders, Crazy Kung Fu, Pistol Whip ... they have you dripping with sweat and surprisingly good strength training (as in, my arms are bulking up more than they ever did with actual weights).

And nothing has been solved in 30 years? Do you understand the Quest is a wireless fully stand alone mobile device? Just that alone is a revolution. It does fully controller free hand tracking. It does 6DoF positional tracking with no base stations or external equipment.

I can't really conclude anything other than that you simply have not even looked in real life at modern VR and have no idea what you are talking about.

I feel that you need to actually try it before dismissing it. I’ve been using VR for HIIT for almost two years now. It can also integrate with your stationary bike or rower. I’ve lost 20 lbs and it helped dropped my cholesterol by 100 point playing VR games.

The only thing absent would be weight lifting. That probably will be integrated with AR and not VR due to safety issues.

Interesting experiment.

> started to understand VR and use it more regularly, namely the fitness and social apps

This is the interesting thing that I observe : beyond the hype there are some genuinely valuable quite mainstream applications. Fitness, e-sports, and virtual monitors being some of the key ones. I regularly use VR for 1-3 hours a day doing these.

The problem is that the hype actually gets in the way of people experiencing those. They all require some skill acquisition or semi-non-trivial setup. So instead of someone getting introduced to VR in the form of one of these more sustainable ways, they are shown a glitzy experience that dazzles them with 3d effects that is interesting for a few minutes but has no longer term value. It's like a sugar hit that lasts a short time but actually leaves you feeling worse afterwards.

I think Facebook et al need to work out how to bridge people between these experiences to make it get more mainstream uptake.

Meta’s Quest 2 doesn’t require either “skill acquisition or semi-non-trivial setup” which was why I found the results of my adhoc experiment interesting.

Yes most gaming doesn't require much, but I think the more sustainable valuable applications do.

For example there are table tennis apps so realistic that pros use them to train. I will never ever be able to own a table tennis / ping pong table due to lack of space in my house but I can have it with VR. Not only that I don't need to find a comparably skilled player and line up schedules every time I want to play. And just the price of a real a table alone is more than buying a Quest!

So what's the issue? Well these apps intrinsically take a bit of getting used to. There's a specific technique for serving that relies on some use of the controllers that is not hard but not obvious to someone who started using VR 5 minutes ago. So nearly 100% of people fail at using this app first time they play. Very few people can do this well until they've spent a bit of time in VR, getting used to how you can open and close your grip in the right way to pick things up and put them down etc. We may eventually get there with hand tracking etc where this is not such a problem, but its far from that point now.

So this is what I mean when I say, the "cheap" experiences that are easy for people to experience actually work against - in some ways - VR fulfilling its potential, because typically that is all they get shown and they never get a chance to learn to do the more "high value" activities.

The cost of learning these apps is minimal because the UI relies on UX that’s very well established. Putting them in 3D doesn’t drastically change them. Even people from the boomer generation have little issues with navigation. The only exception would be the G2 and other WMR headsets with terrible tracking. That’s less of an issue with people and more to do with MS’s poor WMR specification.

Imo the main friction is still mainly the social perception of VR.

One big reason for this is some strange social stigma surrounding VR.

Matthew Ball, the venture capitalist, argued last year that the social stigma ended during the pandemic.

People are walking around looking at phone screens while wearing iDweebs hanging out of their ears without being laughed at. VR is just the next step.

[1] https://www.matthewball.vc/all/userbehaviorsmetaverse

Unless I missed it, I don’t see any data that supports it. He’s writing about investments in tech for web3. I don’t see anything about consumer adoption of XR headsets.

As for “iDweebs”, they look fashionable and have been deemed socially acceptable by fashion house Apple. They’re also not some giant, novel monstrosity that covers your face and head; AirPods are new yet familiar. They’re just a hybrid of earrings and headphones.

From my personal experience, the pushback against VR is both subtle and strong and it’s not limited to cost or tech complexity (setup). I mean how do multiple people with no ties to each other in different geographical areas reject free revolutionary hardware?

In the wild, I’ve also repeatedly seen claims that VR sucks made by people who’ve never tried modern VR, to the point where they start fabricating their experience. It’s a strange phenomena. It would be nice to see a more formal study on this. I’m guess that form factor matters, and that mass adoption won’t happen until the headset transitions into a glasses form factor.

The problem is I think there is a bias created when we still call our hand held computers that can make telephone calls, "phones".

There is just not that many situations that a VR headset is a better UI than a hand held computer.

The opposite is actually true. If everyone was using VR headsets then it would be obvious that the hand held computer is the next big thing. You are finally free to not have to wear this goofy headset and still do 99% of what you would have done outside of gaming in VR.

One important thing to understand is the "metaverse" these companies are trying to build for is both VR and AR. Not solely VR.