I think people are really underestimating how much impact these technologies are going to have. People thought the first iPhone was only good for fart apps. I think this will be a similar story.
I just hope someone can compete with FB.
I loathe Facebook, and use their products only when absolutely necessary.
But after reading a comment on HN about value the Quest 2 delivers for exercise, I decided to give it a go. I had and used the Oculus DK1 but had done zero VR since.
> I think people are really underestimating how much impact these technologies are going to have.
Unquestionably. People are totally underestimating VR/AR.
> I just hope someone can compete with FB.
I think FB will be competing with Snap, Samsung/Microsoft and others for the Android market.
If you use the Oculus in a room with Siri enabled (via homepod / smarthome stuff like fans / lights) it becomes obvious the experience must stretch beyond the headset.
Facebook has neither the privacy track record nor smarthome footprint needed to support this. Though Oculus will have existed first, and FB may get an improved headset to market out in the meantime, Apple will create the market expectations for VR/AR
But I am excited for what's going to come, now that VR is getting some serious investment.
My wishlist:
- no motion sickness or headaches (not sure if this is going to be possible for 100% of people)And, with time, I'd like to see hardware become less expensive, giving it a chance to become more mainstream.
We can do this right now on the Index. You need:
- A computer that can output 144 fps consistently without drops.
- Well-positioned lighthouses.
- Software that only moves the virtual world in response to the player moving in the real world (except via blink teleportation).
Unseen Diplomacy, The Lab, and Half Life Alyx, when played with the right settings or hardware, should make basically no one motion sick.
Unfortunately, people don't like blink teleportation because it usually sucks. Games like Unseen Diplomacy are able to create large spaces without teleportation, but have pretty large play space requirements. IMO, there's room for more creativity in this space. Budget Cuts, for example, manages to make blink teleportation really work.
I wanted to go deeper (esp. with VRChat) so I eventually caved in to free movement. It was very motion sickness inducing at first, but doing it bit by bit you get used to it after a while.
Personal recommendation for any VR experience: I have a bar stool in my VR space where I can lie on or just sit. The difference from a chair is that it doesn't offset you vertically when you lie/sit, which tends to mess with games.
Tiny note, snap turn can cause motion sickness! (And even personally, I have friends who get motion sick from it.) It's obviously better than "smooth turning", but just changing the direction can be disorienting. There's really no replacement for 360 degree tracking.
Furthermore, Apple is really well positioned for AR, which may be more adoptable than full on VR. iPhones already have had pretty good AR capabilities built in and Apple has really just been developing the technology probably to ultimately integrate it into the rumored headset.
Fair, but I was meaning more of what's coming down the pipeline. Five to ten years of Meta money committed to the "metaverse" - the might address some of those issues ("no-one else is on it" probably being one of them)
> Furthermore, Apple is really well positioned for AR, which may be more adoptable than full on VR
Maybe? No-one's seen their rumoured device. Meta's way ahead in terms of actual adoption today (even if it's VR and not AR). I hope Apple does something awesome, but it remains to be seen. And it's hard to imagine the Oculus team at Meta couldn't do AR if they were asked to.
they won't even recommend it as safe for kids that age yet, so it isn't surprising you couldn't find any games targeted to that age range.
You should be aware there are some potentially scary things going on in any of the social apps [0]
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/apr/25/a-barra...
Which is half the problem. The other half of the problem is that Facebook is actively pushing developers to social-enable their games by integrating Facebook based social features into them (hence the mandatory Facebook account). So even games that have no reason to be using those features are seeing them added.
Upgrade the strap, it's a much better experience.
My nieces and nephews are all around that age, I usually let them play Job Simulator. They love it.
Google says Apple AirPods are responsible for $23 billion in revenue, or 23x Reality Labs. It's running laps around Meta, in reality.
But maybe Zuck knows about some forthcoming propaganda campaign to focus on getting people to use VR to distract from income inequality, putting the majority of the population into the digital world seems like the best way to distract from real world issues
Because while the adults are all busy pooh-poohing it, this tech is rapidly penetrating in that market. Which is to say, something like 80% of my kids friends have access to / use VR routinely. And it's 100% Oculus/Meta.
So far I haven't seen a compelling mass market use case outside of games (which is a relatively niche market), but if you open up development tools well I suppose the hope is that someone will come up with something.
Indeed, this is the billion dollar question. It's very clear there are compelling use cases but the really obvious ones are niche industrial uses, commercial applications etc. So the real question is compelling mass market use cases.
The two mass market ones that are apparent at the moment are fitness and virtual office spaces. Fitness is already well on the way, virtual office use is still tenuous and really needs hardware improvements to get off the ground. Those improvements look likely in the next generation of hardware so it's going to be an interesting 24 months to see whether it takes off or not.
The elephant in the room, as you point out, is that neither of these match Faceook's supposed aspiration to create a Metaverse. So I see Facebook/Meta's ultimate success here being dictated heavily by how fast they can get over that and target the real mass market use cases as their primary focus.
This is what FB did during one the Nets games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq4JMWcnUCw
Just look at the comment and you tell people are interested, If they can improve the quality on this. This will be a huge for sports fans, especially fans in different countries/states that can't go to the games.
Now expand this across music events and other events. You have a massive TAM.
> they are going to control the platform of the future and set their own rules.
This.
Lots of people are overlooking this part of Meta and they are quite far ahead with XR.
I do think Meta is completely wasting its time with it's current approach of trying to re-invent Facebook inside the Metaverse. Hopefully they get past that sooner rather than later. But I have no doubt this is going to be an extremely important platform in the future and other than Apple if they ever show up, it's very hard to see anybody catching Meta.
That