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Comment by chaostheory | Hacker News Reader

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

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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

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 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.

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

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