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Comment by zer0zzz | Hacker News Reader

It’s all just pure facebook hate. I remember some of same people who today trash vr and anything coming out of meta-RL were literally drooling at totally absurd incomplete and awful VR demos at GDC 7 or 8 years ago at a time when I really thought VR was totally unusable and unplayable.

Now that the tech is actually nice enough that it is usable and sometimes even actually better for certain things folks are just jumping on the hate fb bandwagon.

You’re absolutely right that most people here haven’t even tried some of this stuff. Personally I never gave VR a thought myself but my brother wanted a quest so I bought one, now I have my own and am looking forward to trying what’s next.

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Most people on HN aren’t trying VR because HN’s users are aging like Slashdot’s user base years back. A lot of HN comments on VR are simply variants of “get off my lawn”. You’d think people would actually try something for a decent amount of time before panning it with a novella length comment. If I were to guess, most HN users have only tried Google Cardboard and not modern VR

On that note, I understand why people dislike meta even if they’re making really cool stuff, but people have to realize that Meta isn’t the only VR company. I have a feeling that only Apple can change the popular perception of VR

I have tried it and it is a pretty cool experience. But I understand the rants, not a matter of age btw. Facebook is for old people for that matter and developing against any META hardware would have to take that into consideration.

But the closed environments are just majorly repellant. I had an older headset (rift s) and suddenly needed to create a facebook account. Should have bought the more expensive Steam version. But I don't see how VR can really reach the masses. You need the extra funds and a decent system and 2D monitor is the more sensible investment.

I will never buy an Occulus device again of course. There were management decisions anyone who really likes technology and wants to dabble with it will very likely and understandably hate with a burning passion. A passion sourced in the love for technology and the ability to share it. And they knew that people would dislike it, just hoped they would comply in switching to their Facebook platform.

This is 100% on Facebook and to 0% on grumpy users. Not being grumpy is pretty naive in my opinion.

> But I don't see how VR can really reach the masses.

The same exact way every technology gets adopted by the masses: it gets cheaper, faster, and better. I really don’t understand why people are suddenly forgetting this tenet of technology. Oh and btw Meta isn’t the only VR company. Despite the name, meta cannot fully own the metaverse since it’s essentially VR over the internet. I still don’t understand how so many technical people can fall for the marketing

> I still don’t understand how so many technical people can fall for the marketing.

Because if you're predisposed to hating new technology or generally thinking technology causes more harm than good, then you'll look for the weakest interpretation of a new development and use that to get angry.

For all the angry ranters in this thread it's the idea that Meta will be the only company to do VR hardware and software ("I mean it's their name for god's sake!"). In reality Horizon Worlds is definitely the runner-up with stalwarts like VRChat and Second Life that actually have mindshare across multiple platforms and headsets. Immersed is the better app for productivity right now, Workrooms is pretty new. Horizon is playing catch-up. Companies like HP and Apple are making headsets. The market is just getting started. But the idea of a healthy, competitive, VR market with lots of choice doesn't fit the narrative around evil technology so nobody wants to make that point.

Cheaper faster and better is insufficient: it needs compelling use cases. And we keep tuning into Mark waiting for him to demonstrate compelling uses cases and... crickets.

And bluntly, instead of talking about compelling, awesome use cases you appear to have nothing to say about that because you assert that HN users haven't tried VR headsets. In my case (and I believe for many readers), that is untrue.

There are compelling use cases like being able to play ping pong with your sibling who lives thousands of miles away. The same applies to watching movies and playing board games. It’s next gen zoom at the very least due to the presence it provides. You’d know that if you just tried it instead of dismissing it and coming up with bad assumptions due to a lack of data. Meta isn’t the only VR company and it won’t be the last. Everyone is too fixated on not seeing the forest for the trees immediately in front of you

I would argue a lot of the HN crowd is exactly the type to be first adopters of tech, VR in particular since it really is different from anything else and the technical know-how is super helpful in getting things to run (HN users would probably not be intimidated).

But a lot of HN users are old enough to remember Meta's (Facebook) catastrophic privacy issues and know better than to let Meta into a huge portion of our life such as work infrastructure.

Meta isn’t the only company in VR. It’s like equating AOL with the internet. Im just watching history repeat itself

It is pretty amazing that Apple gets to pull the "we're the good guys" while their market is affluent people able to spend 1k+ on hardware. They call their ad-tech "user tailored experience" and label FB's as "tracking".

Meanwhile FB provides free services to two billion people and get to be the scapegoat for NYT and Apple. Yes, they sell adds--just like the entire media landscape going back hundreds of years.

FB doesn't just "sell ads". They do their best to snoop on users (and non-users) in every context they can to better target advertising. And there's no easy way to say "stop tracking me". I think it's perfectly reasonable to be a little miffed about that.

20 years ago we called software designed to do this kind of thing "spyware". How did it get normalized to the point that people defend it?

And regarding the comparison to traditional media: if the NYT had a PI following me around every day, I wouldn't trust them either.

Most companies selling ads have to do tracking in order to insure their customers are actually getting what they paid for with their marketing campaigns instead of having fake bot views. I’m not entirely sure how Apple can avoid that and still appease its ad customers

It’s easier to fight fraud when you own the entire stack from the hardware, the OS, the App Store, and the SDKs.

You’re not wrong, and I’m definitely an Apple fan at the moment. I just don’t see how they can’t start tracking us if they want their new ads division to succeed. As a customer, I’m a little worried about this new division.

I have a quest 2. It’s pretty disappointing.

Is there public demographic data on HN users? My expectation, based on comments, would be that HN is skewing younger over time. Certainly it's gotten more popular over time, so a static, aging demographic seems unlikely to me.

Given the larger trends in the demographics of every developed country, I highly doubt it. Nearly every population is now skewed towards the older generations as becoming a larger and larger demographic due to longer lifespans and much lower birthrates. I do not feel that HN is safe from this trend

For what it's worth, you're at least right about me; I truly hate fb, and their simple involvement in a product is sufficient reason not to purchase it unless it's been thoroughly broken by the modding community.

I'm right with you there. Hating and boycotting FB and all their products is the clear ethical choice. I sincerely hope the company goes out of business.

Same here, I don't get the whataboutism some folks here try to spin off, like we are some luddites shaming VR concept itself.

No, its purely FB, clearly long-term amoral company, that gets all the (well deserved) hate. I stand behind the statement that humankind is worse-off long-term with FB existing and trying to get into all aspects of our existence to sell more ads.

I wouldn't care about it at all if US had good regulators re privacy and other aspects of these sneaky corporations. But it clearly doesn't, cash flow is the king, hence one should be reasonably warry of such behavior, with company wielding so much power.

The above more or less applies also to ie Google and Apple, but based on behavior FB is in its own category.

I don't think so. I've tried it. It's definitely the next big "thing" I wanna spend on. But this isn't it. And as a gamer I strongly feel Meta isn't the company that's gonna give me "it".

I'd rather back another horse for $1500. And as a consumer base, none of us are obliged to be fangirls for Meta given their track record.

More than a decade I was a young teen dreaming of immersive experiences offered by the wii. I can even say with some specificity that I thought RED STEEL 2 was going to be the most amazing game ever: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Steel_2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO91n5phQQY

It's a pretty good title! It's a better VR game than most actual VR games. The control scheme has some interesting motion sword and gunplay. Plus you can turn and dash without getting motion sick because its on a tv. Look at the fighting gameplay. See how much better it is than Half Life Alyx and Boneworks?

But, the immersive quality of red steel 2 fades pretty quickly. As does Alyx and boneworks. Because... it sucks. VR asks you to believe you're in a world, like in ready player one. But you're not. None of the little things are there. It's just a camera on your face with better wii wands.

Having understood this, it's pretty clear that the best possible resolution headset will not fundamentally change the VR experience. Maybe text will be easily readable. That would be nice. But the experience Meta wants you to believe you'll have won't be coming any time soon.

VR 7-8 years ago wasn't gated behind a store and large EULA, and the people in charge hadn't announced their intent to not just monopolize and monetize social VR spaces, but also workspaces.

There was still reason to be excited and hopeful about the future of VR.

I'll wait to get excited if the Index is updated. And until then I'll keep using my low res low FOV first gen Vive. Exclusively to hit boxes.

> VR 7-8 years ago wasn't gated behind a store

You make it sound like it is all gated behind an app store now somehow. Which is not the case at all.

On my quest 2 headset, I can play games from oculus store, I can also play any steamvr/pcvr games on quest 2 (connected to the desktop PC by a cable or in wireless mode), as well as any user-built application .apk files dowloaded to my headset directly (either from the headset's web browser or transferred from PC). All on the official firmware, no jailbreaking or any special steps needed to make this work.

Not sure how this is even remotely representative of some app store gating.

Haven't some people been banned from the store permanently, rendering SteamVR and sideloading useless too?

I’ve read of people getting their Facebook accounts banned and losing their oculus store purchases. But now they use a meta account so that issue shouldn’t happen as often. Because the bans were happening because the attached Facebook account was inactive.

But you could always make a new account and play your steam games

I still prefer a product that works independent of needing to sign in (and share a bunch of data, some of it biometric), but I'm glad they fixed the google-like ban blast radius at least.

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