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Comment by matai_kolila | Hacker News Reader

Honestly I'm a little disappointed by the lack of enthusiasm for what this could be; people shat on all kinds of now-ubitquitous tech with similar "nobody will ever replace the typewriter!" kinds of arguments.

It would be cool if we could solve the hardest part of interacting with others remotely, which is the lost fidelity. That's an interesting and hard problem that we haven't yet totally solved.

Meta isn't there yet, but they're trying! I feel like the corpo-hate has overshadowed the positivity that used to be more prevalent in the tech community.

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The technology is cool, but the problem is Meta is working backwards from “create a platform where we have total control so a company like Apple can’t bully us” and not “create a product that people want to use”. Plus, Zuck himself being involved in the marketing is basically instantly making their VR products seem uncool and untrustworthy.

You can see this bleed through into all of their demos and apps. They are focused on social because it has a larger TAM and enterprise customers. They’re demoing digital cosmetics because they want to create a marketplace for them and skim a huge amount off the top. They’re not focused on creating something that is better than the alternatives or that people want to use.

VR/AR are for sure the future. I can’t think of a company I’d less rather be the main player than Meta (I guess Oracle, but I mean companies which realistically could make an AR/VR product). And I think that sentiment is common enough among early adopters and developers that Meta will really struggle to hit the hockey stick growth they need.

It seems like they're putting a tremendous amount of work into Horizon Workrooms, at least, and trying to nail the experience to make it great. And they're seeing what other kinds of apps people like, and supporting them in big ways. For example, exercise apps like Supernatural were kind of an unexpected hit.

I don't think there's really an either-or situation here, where they have to choose between defending their company strategically vs making experiences that people want to use. To succeed, they have to do both, and it seems like they are.

Depends on your definition of success. Their burn rate is tremendous to match. FB engineers are not cheap.

Sure, they have apps, but no killer app that will make non-nerds want to use their product yet. Workrooms IMO is a solution in search of a problem. Would anybody really rather use that than a regular video chat?

> a solution in search of a problem

Exactly like cryptocurrencies. Technically impressive but entirely useless, even dangerous.

There used to be more positivity because it was genuinely about making great products that people will like and want to buy, instead of making something people will like just enough to let you datamine them for all they're worth.

Is this seriously anything beyond Facebook trying to get companies to mandate using these so they can get high fidelity 3D video footage of every living person's house and apartment, their gait and all other possible biometrics? I certainly wouldn't put it past them. Quest headsets are cheaper than all other headsets for a reason.

I’m so confused by this argument. Why do people think that gait and biometrics data is so valuable for running ads? Trust me, there are millions more features that are more closely predictive that top ML models are just leaving on the table before you get to “what’s your eye saccade rate”. Also, while Meta’s track record is horrendous, they actually have done an okay job at locking down how data is used internally. New use cases are very heavily scrutinized, it’s the old grandfathered ones you should focus on, not new ones from VR.

Also, Quest isn’t cheap because it will eventually collect ads data, it’s cheap because social VR, the main Meta argument, requires adoption. It’s a multibillion dollar bet that enough people will have it that it’ll be less friction.

> while Meta’s track record is horrendous, they actually have done an okay job at locking down how data is used internally

Taking you at your word any of that's even true, even broken clock and all that. We're talking about the company that managed to track people without them even having to use any of their services.

But in the end there's no reason to believe they won't just sell it to 3rd parties further down the line like they've done multiple times in the past. If they collect it and can't use it for ads that's even more of a reason to sell it and recoup at least something on the dev time invested on implementing the tracking.

> Quest isn’t cheap because it will eventually collect ads data, it’s cheap because social VR, the main Meta argument, requires adoption

It's been cheap for years, way before Meta even existed. Unless ol' Zuck has had this planned for that long.

One could argue this is exactly the corpo-hate I was referencing earlier. What do we get out of being so cynical?

We get to keep some of our privacy by being cynical I suppose.

As they say, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice - can't get fooled again.

I would trade a lot of my privacy in an instant if it meant full fidelity remote human interactions (I already trade a lot of my privacy for much less), but I guess I'm an optimist.

You give them an inch, they'd take a mile.

Agreed, I used to be excited about tech developments, now Im scared of them.

The negativity runs rampant because the goodwill tech folk gave these companies was crushed when they demonstrated that they didn't actually have good intentions. After so many transgressions why should anyone trust Meta with anything? Even if this was the solution to all my problems, should I just let them off the hook and forget about the past? Maybe I would be more optimistic if this was coming from a company without a history of disrespecting its users.

I don't know if VR is the path to bridging the fidelity gap you mentioned, but even if it was Meta's "round out any potential rough edge" approach represents a step backward from what we already have. Why use their game, which infantilizes its users to avoid alienating potential advertisers, as opposed to VRChat or something else where you might actually have a meaningful interaction?

Seriously. I'm pretty stoked to see what happens here. I was an early backer of the Rift and have been just gobsmacked by how far it's come since then! I bought myself a Quest a few years ago and was so impressed by it I bought one for my family across the country. We hung out online a couple times in Eleven Table Tennis, in RecRoom, and a couple other apps, and I totally get it: there's real presence there that's lacking in other modes. Unfortunately, everything else about it was so clunky (keeping the thing charged, updated, joining these apps, etc) that we never really got a habit of it and haven't met up like that for a while.

Still, I think it's a really cool problem and there's awesome progress being made. I don't know if Meta will pull it off, but I'm pretty glad they're throwing billions of dollars at it. I'm pretty impressed with Zuckerberg for having the fortitude to do that; we'll see what comes of his company...

Facebook owns it. If it was any other company, I'd be uninterested and indifferent, like 3D TVs. But since it's a Facebook company, I treat it with active contempt.

Such attitude is fine for the Fb company, but please don't for the technology itself.

The technology is synonymous with Facebook. The only reason it hasn't already died like 3D TVs did is because Facebook is propping it up.

> It would be cool if we could solve the hardest part of interacting with others remotely, which is the lost fidelity. That's an interesting and hard problem that we haven't yet totally solved.

Have you ever considered that’s the wrong problem to solve? It reeks of the “how do we breed a faster horse” type of “innovation” rather than “how do we replace the horse”.

Meta is focusing on replicating in-person meetings which are one of the worst facets of business. They are slow, inefficient, lossy, and require real time interaction to be effective.

It’s not a criticism of VR. It’s a criticism of bringing back one of the dumbest aspects of in-office interactions. Perhaps the next feature they can tackle is shared bathrooms where you listen to your coworkers have diarrhea or strain to pass turds that tear their hemorrhoids.

Until there are cameras and holograms this will all be a gimmick.

I'm not strapping something on my face to talk to a virtual representation of another person.

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