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Comment by brooklynite429 | Hacker News Reader

They are spending $1 billion dollars a month on the metaverse for what? I really don't see it.

Mark doesn't have the taste to take this plane airborne. VR, moreso than other platforms, will require great design, artistry, music. I haven't seen anything in Meta's VR foray that looks interesting, well designed, nifty or just plain cool. It's a very reductive interpretation of virtual reality . You have a limitless sandbox and the most creative thing you can show is...meeting software? A complete lack of imagination.

Doesn't help that Mark himself keeps talking about the future - the next five, eight, ten years. He himself even admits the experience is not where it should be. Why would anyone buy any of this stuff then?

Can't wait to see what Apple is putting together.

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> VR, moreso than other platforms, will require great design, artistry, music.

VRChat has some amazing experiences. In a way, it's a lot closer to being a Metaverse than Meta.

There's a non-trivial chance that there is a reality distortion field around VR due to FB investment levels. What if there is no future once FB pulls the plug? I barely even hear about enthusiasts using VR.

One lad who works at a Subway near me absolutely loves VR and talks to me about it every time I go in. But he uses Valve hardware and says he wouldn’t go near Meta stuff with a barge pole.

I bought the original steam vr headset when it came out far before FB. Reality is there is only a handful of vr games that are really worth the entry price. Beat Saber is the only one I find myself going through the hassle of hooking the thing up regularly for. The Google vr movies are a great experience though to watch people play who have never used a vr headset. Watching my parents in those movies was like watching a kid play with his first toy. If you made something like a Pixar movie with the ability to freely move around the scene, I could see that being a humongous hit with children.

> If you made something like a Pixar movie with the ability to freely move around the scene, I could see that being a humongous hit with children

That's a great idea.

It's pretty crazy to me that meta can dump a billion a month into vr without even trying that, frankly

Yeah honestly this idea would potentially make me look twice. 3d movies were big for a reason. VR movies could be huge, pre-rendering could avoid many of the hardware/resolution challenges.

As time goes on more and more interesting high quality experiences come out.

And more current vr headsets like the quest 2 can play many games without 'hooking up' anything.

When VR was pretty new lack of entertaining content was a thing, but I don't think you can say that today.

I think it's the same problem as 3D TV. There's a novelty, but actually using the tech is straining. With 3D TV your eyes hurt a lot. With VR... your eyes hurt a lot, and you have this cumbersome device on your head.

A problem with VR I see for myself is that it encompasses your entire focus. With traditional viewing devices I'm not locked in to one activity, I can multitask. The headsets are claustrophobic and limiting. And all that's after they fix the problem of high prescription lenses, which I think is insurmountable.

Nicely summed up… exactly my thoughts.

He has no taste to understand what good looks like, just look at the promo videos… I remember the one with 2 ppl logging in the morning at breakfast having a quick fly around and drinking coffee through a straw while having the headset strapped on… absolute garbage… who is this for? Absolute failure in product / UX research.

To attract users… start small… create something artistic and unique to attract a niche audience first vs trying to target everyone.

Maybe it’s about finding VR tech to patent before anyone else.

If apple pull this off, Zuckerberg would die. Literally.

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