No magic engineering from Meta are going to fix these issues.
Nausea only occurs (as far as I can tell) when the motion you see in the headset doesn't match your motion in real life. That's not a problem for a simulated desktop experience.
Sweaty forehead typically only occurs if you're getting a work out in VR, which wouldn't be a problem for office work. But for those who have that issue even when not exercising it seems easily solvable with better ventilation. Hardly an impossible engineering challenge.
Neck cramps are solvable by balancing the weight on your head better. Quest Pro has this.
Disconnection from the world is solved by high resolution video passthrough. Quest Pro has this.
Visual accessibility is solved by prescription lens inserts. That's been a thing since the Rift 1.
Just putting on a VR headset, makes my head sweaty within a minute or two, even when I’m just sitting down and doing nothing strenuous. Just different biology I guess I generally don’t like wearing hats for the same reason, it makes my head and hair, sweaty.
Speaking of hats, I generally don’t like wearing construction hard hats either, because it makes my neck sore at the end of the day. And that’s just having a little bit of balanced weight on the top of my head. Balancing isn’t the issue, it’s a higher center of gravity, especially when you rotate the head as you are prone to do in VR.
Nausea I get consistently, no matter what I am doing. Even if stationary, any bit of lag can cause nausea. I can’t imagine doing development work and not causing the machine to lag a little bit here and there, when I run a test, suite or something. Thankfully for me, it’s only mild, but if I were to do this, all day would be a large impact on quality of life. I don’t wanna spend half my day mildly nauseous.
And all of this only so that I don’t have to have a couple of high resolution monitors on my desk? I just really don’t get it. It’s a solution in search of a problem.
For instance, I use the old busted Quest 2 headset every single day, and I don't get any nausea, or neck soreness. (I do definitely get the sweaty head, though. Largely because I use a boxing exercise app with it, which gets really sweaty, but in non-exertion use cases, too. (I also tend to sweat in hats and over-ear headphones.)
The sweat problem will gradually get better over time, as headsets get lighter and more breathable.
Unlike a lot of VR enthusiasts, though, my own interest is almost exlcusively in replicated an expansive, multi-monitor setup for sofware engineering.
Why? I have an XXL desk from GeekDesk with 3 large high-res monitors. It's fantastically productive. So much so that it makes working on a laptop, or even a desktop with only 1 monitor, super annoying.
But I want to be able to take that workspace with me.
(Even to work; I work at home mainly and when I do go into the office and get stuck with a single busted-ass low-res 4K display, it sucks. But I want to take my workspace other places, too.)
I'll put up with some minor annoyances, like sweat, to be able to do that. In your case, it sounds like they will need to solve more problems to make it usable — or you might just decide to stick with a real desk and monitors, and that portability isn't worth the tradeoffs.
This one will go into my treasure trove of HN quotes.
If we're talking about disconnection from the world in a more abstract sense then I agree passthrough doesn't solve that. But that's not really a problem unique to VR either.
I think there are transformative / killer applications of AR to certain industries like traditional engineering, aviation, construction, logistics, etc. Microsoft Hololens could be a killer product if they could get it under $1k and open up the software stack a bit.
But as a consumer device, outside of gaming? Or a productivity tool? I don't see it. Keep in mind just how difficult a sell 3D movies were, and that just required putting on some plastic sunglasses.
I guess we’ll have to see how it goes!
The weight issue is lesser with the Quest Pro (since the weight is balanced at the back) and will get better with time with newer devices.
> visual inaccessibility (I need to wear computer glasses)
Quest 2 provides spacers for glasses. I assume Quest Pro will as well.
The disconnect from the world is the only one that doesn't have a solution yet AFAIK.
Any VR absolutely does cause sweaty forehead symptom for me. It’s just my different biology I guess.
> The disconnect from the world is the only one that doesn't have a solution yet AFAIK.
The solution is AR. I would use a Microsoft hololens, if it was available at a reasonable price point.
Do you have a source for that? The lag issue seems entirely solved now, on a device like the Quest 2, it was an issue only in earlier days with slower hardware.
There were lots of different theories early on, but now the cause of nausea seems to be entirely based on motion over a large field of view, which causes a disconnect between your inner ear telling you you're not moving, and your eyes telling you you are. Hence why VR games generally default to teleporting rather than walking/running.
(There can be separate issues such as eyestrain if your IPD doesn't match or relating to wearing glasses, but those are device-specific.)
Interesting, the Quest Pro is I believe aimed at the same audience as the HoloLens, but at a lower price point. Though, not fully AR - more like MR I believe.
And speaking personally, I just don't want to be disconnected from the environment in which I am presently existing. Projected overlays on glasses could be useful, I'll grant, but not a vision-restricting, self-isolating VR headset.
That's what they are aiming for long-term. Zuckerberg said in the Connect talk that glasses would be the ideal form factor.