Will walled gardens rule VR? | Hacker News Reader

Will walled gardens rule VR?

worldish.substack.com

23 pointsdavidburt30 comments

Yes, they will. The computer industry doesn’t want to repeat IBM’s loss of platform control. Mobile phones are walled gardens with very restrictive app models and one should expect VR and AR devices to be even more so.

As an example, camera access is available on smart phones (cameras on phones being an established killer feature even before iOS and Android) but are completely off limits on all standalone VR headsets (Meta, Pico, HTC) for “privacy reasons”.

Expect other big players to lean into this.

My Valve Index exposes the cameras seemingly as standard Windows USB webcams. It will accidentally show up in video calls sometimes.

Not a standalone headset and not really trying to be a platform :)

Even so, I do think we can expect a strong open web to emerge in VR. Some publishers & businesses will want to control the content & data they publish, which will push them to the open web. It's the same reason publishers don't publish all their content on Facebook.

That said, it will certainly take a while for an open web to emerge. And in any case, it seems likely that walled gardens will always have a powerful place in the ecosystem.

The EU will break this wide open with the Digital Markets Act. Even Apple is preparing to open their walled garden.

Big players would do as you predicted if not for regulatory measures, that have thankfully been taken.

Color me skeptical. What will they open up? Even side-loading of apps doesn’t necessarily remove the platform vendor’s advantage in being able to control the system experience. For example, consider the way the app model itself has been designed: apps are standalone experiences (this is a simplification because there are some integration hooks into other parts of the system UX). I can think of several use cases where I might like a background “camera app” that monitors the system camera feed for certain objects/scene features and suggests an action when detected.

It’s hard to argue that Apple should have to permit such functionality but then if the debate shifts towards what first party OS level features Apple is and is not allowed to provide, we get into undesirable regulatory overreach.

Ideally the OS would be open source and replaceable but that’s a pipe dream. The reality remains that platforms are intentionally crafted to heavily favor the vendor’s services and there’s little that regulation will do to change that.

> but are completely off limits on all standalone VR headsets (Meta, Pico, HTC) for “privacy reasons”.

I think a headset that has the capability of exposing live video feed to apps is a headset that will be incompatible with business environments, and definitely incompatible with my home. The consideration of "private reasons" are extremely real. I don't see why this has to be "walled" though, since a standard could be used to expose object/hand/passthrough textures/whatever tracking, via an API.

I think Meta's approach is what the majority will end up using: some AR API, with passthrough regions direct to the user, but the video feed of those outlines inaccessible to the app.

The alternative is a NYT article about how "There are over a dozen cameras, in your bedroom, and hackers are watching!" articles. For reference, Quest pro has 16 cameras: 6 for the controllers, four for HMD tracking, one for color passthrough, 3 for the eyes, and 2 for the mouth. Considering giving apps access seems ludicrous, to someone who sometimes plays "Puzzling Place", in their underwear.

I at least personally refuse to use any walled garden VR system. Importantly no one should be using any Facebook VR system.

I'm glad that Meta is making the Metaverse look bad, it should give us a few more years of fun before VR gets ruined.

Absolutely. Tech companies already learned their lesson with the transition from the personal PC to the phone. VR will be even worse.

Reciprocally, how much likelier a chance of success, how much greater would the building be & how much larger the audience, if this industry had open standards & joint efforts? "Create more value than you capture" talks to knowing that you have to give over significant control; "if you love it set it free."

Chance of success? VR is here now and it's successful. The Quest alone has sold something like 15 million units. What more do you want?

That's about $600 million dollars in sales that Zuck spent $30 billion for. That is not a success.

Aside from that, there's still no killer app in VR. It's all amusing toys that lose their luster. Superhot VR was fun, sure. Beatsaber is cool. VR Chat has its ups and downs.

But nothing I think I could live in.

It's not a success for Meta, but it is for Superhot and Beat Games and some other studios. It's a success for consumers who have been using VR headsets for the past 30 years and benefit from Meta's investment.

VR will continue to get incrementally better and cheaper year-after-year. I think VR has established itself as the fourth big wave in gaming (after mobile games, console games, and PC games). I'm not sure why that isn't enough to be considered a great success.

Agreed that we're still waiting for the killer app. The barriers to buying a headset is so large that social virality can't really take hold, even if people like a game.

The first true VR hit might be something that integrates really well with mobile. Then VR power users can tell their friends, and they'll have an easy way to try it out.

Im happy to hear this kind of celebratiom, but I personally know very few people for whom VR is a once-a-month on average thing they do. I do think sales are a good indicator and this is good news, but it doesnt really tell me what enduring engagement looks like, and I have a lot of doubts.

Having 4 mildly successful but isolated & proprietary platforms that never manage to build enduring engagement seems like a terrible waste of promising hardware.

Of course it will. Mark Zuckerberg is pouring billions into VR in order to put up walls before anyone else. He has outlined plans to do so numerous times. They even changed the company name to signal their commitment! Meta faces a constant existential threat from MS and Apple since they don’t own any desktop OS market share, a threat from Google and Apple since they don’t own any browser market share, and a threat from Google and Apple since they don’t own any mobile OS market share. That’s why they’re all in on VR/AR. It’s the supposed next platform and they must win it.

The only question is if it will actually become the next platform. I have no interest in VR or AR. I prefer the real world, thanks. There are already too many physical billboards.

If you're interested in a "turn on your headset, and launch straight into your open-source Linux VR Desktop" workflow (rather than straight into a gaming marketplace/social network), you might check out https://simulavr.com.[1] This is the sort of headset that we're building this year.[2]

[1] In full disclosure, I'm affiliated with this project. :]

[2] https://simulavr.com/blog/2023-timeline/

Eventually, but if it explodes in popularity I'll abandon it in a flash. I don't want ads directly beamed into my eyes. If the internet is any example, it will be muddled and sullied by business types.

I may explore it, but it will never be a part of my life until it is an open platform and I can run what I want.

It takes vastly more effort to build an open world that can inter operate with many others.

Not only do you have to align on compatibility, you have less freedom to build features that aren’t available elsewhere. And if you did and it is very compelling the other worlds will have fewer users to the point where you’re the last one standing anyway.

And this is just on the cost side. There are many advantages on the value side.

It seems more rational to juts build something that you think is good and not care to be compatible.

It depends on whether the EU etc force side loading to be an option

With the possible exception of Apple's forthcoming headset there aren't any VR headsets where sideloading isn't an option.

Walled gardens rule all other gaming. It's not like I can take my rocket launcher from DOOM Eternal to Fortnite.

That's not what a walled garden is.

You can't take the background from The Starry Night into the Mona Lisa either.

Yes you can[1].

[1] https://i.etsystatic.com/25738870/r/il/992d57/2742618280/il_...

A better example is Epic creating exclusivity contracts preventing you from playing a game with your friends because they don't want to use a launcher outside of steam and won't be able to play it for another 12 months (BORDERLANDS WHY?)

Yes. For as long as they can pull it off. It's the best and most direct way to turn a profit.

For a while; after some time probably an alternative store will appear that is full of crap.

Yes VR will be all walled gardens. Juts look at Smart Phones for how this will go.

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