Meta’s AR/VR hardware roadmap for the next four years | Hacker News Reader

Meta’s AR/VR hardware roadmap for the next four years

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20 million Quest 2 headsets is no joke. That's comparable to the sales of the Xbox Series X. Meta is suddenly the 4th major game console vendor. That's significantly more sales than any other VR headset in history. Most sold less than 1 million units. PSVR is in second place at about 5 million units.

And all that with basically Playstation 2 era graphics and a trash game library with no real AAA titles.

A lot of people just use their quest to play beat saber. I only play two games on mine (FitXR and Beat Saber), but that’s enough for 40m-1h a day.

I don’t think I would ever game on my quest, however.

> I don’t think I would ever game on my quest, however.

Why is that?

Not the OP but I agree with them and basically because of the point the GP made: PS2 era graphics and very few “killer app” style games.

It’s also much more ergonomic using a keyboard + mouse / gamepad and monitors.

Don’t get me wrong, the Quest 2 is fun. But at this stage it feels more like the Wii in terms of it being entertaining but not something you’d want to play “serious” (for want a better word) games on and over long periods of time.

The biggest difference between the Quest 2 and Wii is that Q2 isn’t as well suited for social gatherings.

> PS2 era graphics and very few “killer app” style games.

If the game studios / Oculus handlers were smart - when it was first released - they would have mined all of the best PS/3 era games to remake in VR instead of everyone trying innovative VR arcade games like creative Skunkworks teams instead of transforming past classics. Silent Hill series, more resident evil titles, Metal Gear Solid 1/2 would be amazing, Half life 2, etc.

There's a gold mine of FPS style controlled games that could be merged into a VR experience. I get the feeling AAA teams are waiting for the graphics to make new ones instead of doing remakes. Which is a big shame.

I don’t totally agree with this. For sure classic AAA games with motion controls bolted on can be fun, but it doesn’t take full advantage of the platform. VR really benefits from physical engagement, get the player up and moving, sweating and having the world respond physically and realistically to their actions. This helps take attention away from weak graphics, heavy headsets and blurry lenses.

A lot of studios did this at first (albeit not for the Oculus specifically). And we learned that bolting on VR to an existing FPS doesn't usually result in a stellar VR experience.

To go back to my Wii comparison, the games that were the most fun on that platform were ones that took advantage of the motion controls in a way that centred the game around it. Rather than games that used motion as an after thought (or didn't even use them at all).

I'm not really a gamer. I might play Diablo 3 on a Switch just to smash things up, but that's very casual. Wearing a VR set just for a casual gaming session doesn't seem to be very worth it, while wearing it for a workout has a much better pay off.

I wonder if most people buying and consistently using the Quest are for non gaming (primarily fitness) reasons.

It is a fabulous exercise device. I have also found that Thrill of the Fight is an amazing stress buster. I think it’s because it hooks into the fight or flight response and closes the loop on chronic stress by letting you punch it in the face.

I don't really have the space for Thrill of the Fight, rhythm boxing and rhythm slicing are fairly stationary, so I don't have to worry about crashing into anything.

Yet more friction. It actually takes quite a bit of space to not smack into things playing the more active games.

Large sales of hardware without large sales of software is a problem though, and one Meta speak to in the leak.

These headsets, like consoles, are most certainly subsidized with some expectations of game sales. Meta say they’re not seeing long lasting engagement.

That would make each headset some form of loss.

Regarding graphics…I think comparing VR graphics to regular console graphics is a mistake. The immersiveness goes a long way to making things feel more realistic than they are. It doesn’t mean they actually look better, but the brain is better at filling in the gaps.

> These headsets, like consoles, are most certainly subsidized with some expectations of game sales. Meta say they’re not seeing long lasting engagement.

This was more true before than now. The Q2 launched at US $299. At that price they were losing potentially hundreds per unit. They were quoting multi-billion dollar quarter losses. Now at $399 and enough manufacturing time to lower costs, I bet they are close to break even. The hardware is becoming dated so the cost get get components must be not too shabby. Ultimately the Quest 2 is a Samsung Galaxy S20 under it all, seriously. The Xr2 is based on the 865 and the display is a high res ~6 inch LCD cut in half via optics.

This will feel a bit like moving the goalposts from me, but I’m guessing you’re talking about BOM costs to make the device? I’m talking about cost of the device+amortized R&D.

I still doubt they’re breaking even on parts because there’s quite a few custom components in there but even if so, that’s still not funding their development of content and future devices.

That means their Reality Labs section is basically borrowing from every other profitable part of Meta instead to keep going.

> Meta say they’re not seeing long lasting engagement.

That's gotta be a gut punch to both Meta and the consumer. The consumer spent the money for it, but then gets bored quickly. Meta spent all of this time/money to make the next great boring thing. Couldn't happen to a nicer group of folks though /s

During the time I owned a Quest 2, probably every 2 months I'd put it on and check out what the latest enhancements and releases were, say "neat", take it off, and not touch it for another 2 months. Friends would come over, try it out, and generally arrive at the same conclusion. Such a weird thing - the potential is clearly there, and it was a really _cool_ piece of hardware, but nothing it ran made me want to actually use it regularly.

I would qualify as a high engagement user and I have a similar problem. I have only found a few games that really captured my interest intensely. I’ll play them for a couple of weeks, hit the end of their meager amount of content and replayability, then drop the headset in a drawer for a month or two till I hear of another title that sounds worth trying.

And there are some great titles. I was playing Compound late last year and now I’m playing Barbaria. Compound especially really blew me away, like a VR doom. But then I beat it on the hardcore difficulty and that was that. After a couple weeks of playing Barbaria I’m ranked in the top 100 of players and about to drop it.

A friend of mine loaned me his quest 2 about a month ago. He hadn't powered it up in about a year. My gf and I have been playing beat saber and pistol whip almost every night and having a blast, but I can tell, at only about 3 weeks of play, its about to run its course. I went looking for other games and at $20-$40 they are all hard sells because of the expectation that they also may last a week or two tops.

It's super immersive and a ton of fun, but its a very specific experience. It's like if the Xbox only had shooter games. Yeah Halo was amazing when it launched, but I wouldn't want a console that just had one type of experience, and so far it seems VR is a singular style of experience. At least in my 3 weeks of playing.

There are a variety of genres that work well in VR, but I think developers are very much still figuring out the platform. A few things to check out that are not shooters:

Physics based combat: Blade and Sorcery, Gorn, Barbaria, Bonelab

Diorama: Ghost Giant, Moss, A fisherman’s tale, Demeo

Arena duels: try Blaston, which is free

Sports simulators: Eleven Table Tennis, Thrill of the Fight, Walkabout Mini Golf

Puzzle/walking simulator: Red Matter, the last clockwinder

Art: Gravity Sketch(free), Vermillion , Kingspray, Virtuoso

Maps: Wooorld

Weird: Tea for God (free) a really great example of how devs are inventing something new given the odd constraints of VR

There's not much to engage with in VR even if you actually loved your experience. It's all very short titles or titles based on repetition in short stints (fitness apps for example).

Agree with the second half as well. I think the issue for the Quest 2 is that it is a great product with no actual killer, daily app. Combine this with it being a modal experience that requires your full attention you get a lot of sitting Quest 2s. I had this issue. Great product that wowed me every time I used it...but utterly lacking most reasons TO use it. So, it sat.

I wouldn't call the game library trash even despite the lack of AAA. It doesn't seem like there's much AAA in VR period. And stuff like Half Life Alyx you can still play on a Quest 2 via usb-c to mid-teir PC or shadow.vr cloud gaming.

Otherwise I had a ton of fun replaying Resident Evil 4 and other games. The graphics are relatively primitive but the entire experience makes up for it 2 fold. When it's good it's really good. Just have to wade through a lot of arcady games to find them. Also multiplayer is 100% squeeky voiced kids and teenagers, so avoid.

The best thing I discovered was the unreleased Quest game dB where all the prerelase and indie titles are. It doubles the amount of content available. Lots of it free.

https://www.applabdb.com/

I get what you are saying, and if you are into indie titles and solo devs doing groundbreaking innovation with new game mechanics, Quest is very exciting, almost like going back in time to the first 3D graphics or the introduction of the CD rom.

But if you want polished experiences anywhere close to something like Cyberpunk or Red Dead Redemption, you will not find anything even close. It’s not just a matter of graphics, the scope and scale of the content is vastly smaller than even what was on the PS2 or GameCube libraries.

I've played both Cyberpunk and Red Dead Redemption on my Quest 2 via pc link, using Luke Ross RealVR mod [1] and they were amazing. Setting up the tech is fiddly and even when you get it running updates constantly break it, so it's not quite consumer ready, but if you hack together experiences they will blow your mind. [1] https://www.patreon.com/realvr

I agree that sounds absolutely amazing. Probably also way less than 1% of Quest owners would go through the pain to do that. I’m also assuming that VR sickness would be a major issue for all but the most hardy.

Is there any stats on how many people get motion issues? I've played for a hundred hours and never experienced anything like that. Including Luke Ross RealVR mods. Nor have any of my friends who did the same. Yet there's always someone that brings it up like it's a deal breaker for most people.

I don't like any of those innovative VR games, they are mostly toys not games, that's what I dislike the most and what I think hurt VR. Every dev trying to be clever instead of old style games (even Half Life did VR trickery too often for almost no value, but the rest of the game was good). 90% of the time you just need a gun that shoots or a sword.

My other comment expands on why I think it should be mostly legacy AAA game remade for it not new ones. Unless AAA studios will actually commit to older graphics, which they haven't.

My favourites were either the sports/fitness games like boxing or space Frisbee (Echo Arena 1), or survival horror, or reaction time shooting games (Superhot). The multiplayer Rainbow 6 style online FPS were also pretty good like Pavlov Shack Beta 2 but very beta.

Otherwise it should be modernized AAA games from the past like Resident Evil 4 showed can be top tier.

1 https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2215004568539258/

2 https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/3649611198468269?ut...

The problem is that a AAA title has a massive budget and takes hundreds of people years to ship. Most shops aren't going to want to take that kind of bet. Furthermore, if you're optimizing for your audience, the population of gamers with compatible headsets is still too small to justify the production of a AAA title that targets only VR.

That means you're no longer going to be able to take innovative risks with gameplay because you need to cater to the lowest common denominator, i.e., a single large 4K display and a controller. So we're left with VR support being a bolt-on second thought.

The latest Gran Turismo title did it correct. They designed the game from the beginning knowing that Sony was going to release a new headset. When that headset was released last week, their game was nearly 100% playable with it, and it completely changed how people experience the game.

Up until recently, I avoided buying a VR headset because of the lack of support for AAA titles, but with the PSVR2 supporting Gran Turismo out of the gate that changed. My kid is able to play games and enjoy herself. And I get to race at night with my friends. For me, it's worth the investment, even if I only find a few games a year that I'll play.

I wonder what the usage rate of the Quest 2 is, compared to the average gaming console.

I genuinely appreciate the Q2 as hardware, especially compared to the PSVR. But as you said the library is pretty dismal — Beat Saber and Rec Room are still the most fleshed out games.

Truth is even though motion sickness isn’t a factor for me, VR gaming feels like too much of a chore for what should be leisure time. If I want a workout, I can get an hour in on the treadmill playing Slay the Spire on my phone.

The leak also mentions user retention issues. These headsets are in drawers collecting dust.

Newer cohorts of users are less engaged that the early adopter cohorts, which is surprising given that there is now more high quality content than in May of 2019.

I thought that was very interesting from a Product Management standpoint. You are right, there’s way more to do in Quest than when it was released. And games are getting much better at playing to VR’s strengths.

I suspect the answer is friction. I bet that the early adopters were enthusiastic enough to actually put the damn thing on. People who bought in later maybe tried it and thought it was cool, but don’t have enough motivation to use it past the “wow” period.

I’ll give a friction example. I am playing a VR game now called Barbaria. It’s a fantastic clash of clans meets physics based combat game that really plays to VR strengths. It has a mechanic that encourages you to log in each day to collect more points that would work extremely well on mobile with a push notification. On VR, first there’s no notification, and then what could have been a 5 minute interaction on mobile turns into 5 minutes of headset setup and app loading for the 5 minutes of interaction. And you can only do it when you are home!

Basically you only bother with it if you know you are going to have at least 30 minutes of 100% dedicated distraction-free time while you put your phone away, a high bar these days!

I agree that friction is the problem. My wife was incredibly frustrated trying to set up our Quest 2 after I wiped it for her, but once set up, we hung out in Horizon Worlds and she ended up staying there an hour longer than myself because she was talking to some other woman with young children.

VR/AR is a really hard thing to sell because you don’t know what you can experience until you experience it. And you don’t see how revolutionary this will be until you really start playing around with it and trying to integrate it with your life.

> Basically you only bother with it if you know you are going to have at least 30 minutes of 100% dedicated distraction-free time while you put your phone away, a high bar these days!

This is where Apple will dominate, and I think Meta knows it. With Apples headset I’m sure you will have your phone, iMessage, etc all built in. No need to check the phone anymore.

she ended up staying there an hour longer than myself because she was talking to some other woman with young children

I wonder how long it will be before someone hooks up ChatGPT to something that creates avatars in virtual worlds. I bet someone clever person on HN is already working on that problem.

Unfortunately, it will probably only be used for a customer service chatbot in VR.

Aren't you right on the money! https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/27/mark-zuckerberg-announces-ne...

Can confirm. I'm really bullish about VR's potential but almost never use it.

4th out of four? And it can't even hack time.

My money personally is on Famicom to own this space.

Sadly (for Meta) the killer app is the Virtual Desktop app which lets you access your (much higher spec) PC and use SteamVR to access games like HL Alyx. For that, there is no other competitor. Wireless VR with access to my gaming rig's specs is pretty great.

> Meta is suddenly the 4th major game console vendor.

This is a very oligopolized market, with huge barriers to entry, and exactly 3 remaining large players.

Being #4 is not "no big deal", but it's also around the minimum expected result from spending $10 billions on that market.

No success is guaranteed, even when you burn billions of dollars. There are so many examples of that. Magic Leap anyone? Having a user base in the 10s of millions may not be world domination, but it could be much worse!

Of all the things Meta is doing, I'm glad it's pouring in funds into the space. Even if they're not successful, I bet they help move the industry forward and develop new tech that some other company can pick up later as things get more economical or as new capabilities emerge and make AR/VR really accessible

For all the hate they get, Meta is the only company that is making a real impact on moving this industry forward right now.

Same here. I work at Meta (outside Reality Labs) and don't believe the company will see any commercial success with AR/VR long term.

But I'm bullish about VR having amazing potential and I'm glad to see its evolution get accelerated by all these investments.

FWIW, this has roughly been the plan for a while. Full-on, daily-wearable AR is a major end goal. When you look at the past and present roadmaps, it's been all about progressively building hardware and software capabilities to enable this, such as smaller and more powerful headsets, mixed reality as a step to AR, controlling experiences via wrist input, glasses as a computing form factor, etc.

“We should be able to run a very good ads business,” he said. “I think it’s easy to imagine how ads would show up in space when you have AR glasses on. Our ability to track conversions, which is where there has been a lot of focus as a company, should also be close to 100 percent.”

Is the plan really to have an always-on device that records everything you say through your entire life for advertisement?

Edit: conversions not conversations! false alarm! thank god...

So far in computing history, nobody has ever gone broke by underestimating the average consumer's disregard for their own data privacy...

It's sad if Meta doesn't see a need to internally reform on this front, though. Regardless of the financial bottom line, the company culture must evolve beyond defaulting to solutions that ultimately boil down to "everything that goes through our servers is fair game for us". I thought Zuck's E2E encryption promises a couple years ago were somewhat earnest at the time, but that may be all past.

Sucking up personal data to develop an ad profile is a tried and true strategy for them, and it's hardly surprising that they'd at least look into replicating that in the metaverse.

> “We should be able to run a very good ads business,”

As someone who works in research for AR and related stuff, its really _awesome_ to see a leader thoroughly piss in the well before its even launched a practical device.

We all know that AR is a privacy issue, and if handled badly, will hamper society to huge extent. Yet, here we have this preening shit overriding all the privacy lessons the industry has learnt over the last 10 years.

Note that it says “track conversions” not “track conversations”. Tracking conversions means that they will know if they displayed an ad to you, that you bought the thing advertised. If that’s not what you misread, then carry on.

Yeah I totally misread it, couldn't believe it. Kind of unfortunate how easy it is to misread - lots of people seem to be.

How is that any different from your watch or phone?

I have yet to find a real compelling use-case for wearables outside of the health space. But after playing games in VR it is quite apparent where everything will be going. It'll be interesting to see how much Apple is able to integrate into their first pass of their AR headset.

I'm curious to see how long it'll take for us to have a daily wearable headset that is as accessible as our other devices to developers. We'll certainly see some awesome innovation, and, of course, people looking to simply mine your life so they can sell you another pair of sneakers.

It's so amazing to see this pinnacle of human achievement...for serving ads.

conversions not conversations! It was super easy to misread!

If they don't misuse it(which they always do).

For "ad" purpose only I don't see much of an issue. Targeted ads are nice(compared to untargeted one).

I have never understood the obsession with AR glasses being a replacement for a phone or them becoming some critical lifestyle product.

I wear regular glasses and I can’t fucking stand it. They can be broken, scratched, lost, their prescription outdated, and expensive. Oh and if you want to see outside in the sun you need prescription sunglasses too, and maybe some prescription goggles if you ski... The only thing I dislike more than glasses is contacts.

So I’m to expect that somehow I’ll want to dump my phone for an even more inconvenient device?

An always on eyeglass computer means advertisements can be shown to the user even if they haven't reached into their pocket and are actively staring at their phone. Think about how much more attention per day that is now available to monetized.

This is short sighted. There are companies (Apple) working on headsets that don’t make their revenue from ads but from hardware and software.

The value add of a headset is it replaces every other screen in your life and will hopefully, one day, be much more convenient than any other the other screens were.

That is short sighted, the short term will be about providing consumer surplus to build a customer base but the eventual reality will be what current always connected computing is.

Some major use cases would be real time (and discreet) language translation, maps displayed directly on the world, and holographic video calling.

Real time and discreet language translation is a killer feature IMO. It could overlay native text on foreign text (think signs, menus, etc.) and also display native language text in real time as someone speaks in a foreign language. In a perfect world it would be like cyberpunk 2077 where it also locates the speaker in space and places the text next to their head / audio source.

And without a major revolution in battery technology, it'll never be possible without it also being clunky.

A HUD with natural hand-gesture interface would be very nice and the revoluation of next level of digitilization and UI. Being able to analysis thing infront me brings so much values.

Also, replaces monitors, no more expensive setups just to get half-decent workstation.

Gosh, I sound like salesmen but I really wish this to be true.

> Eventually, he said the band will let the wearer use a virtual keyboard and type at the same words per minute as what mobile phones allow.

Why wouldn't this allow the same WPM as typing on a physical keyboard? Typing at mobile speed is not a good goal

I doubt their wristband can do a good job of tracking the exact position of each finger tip. The videos they've shown of it seem to show people using a thumb swipe motion or slightly twitching their muscles as input.

This is good to see, but it seems late and lacking by the time they'll come out. Bigscreen Beyond is the new VR benchmark. Hedging VR on AR might not be a winning formula vs choosing one. Apple may win AR and Valve/Bigscreen/etc can win VR with Meta lost in the middle.

Bigscreen is a PCVR device that requires external lighthouse tracking. That approach is basically dead in the water outside of a small community of enthusiasts as it is way too high friction.

> Mixed reality will be a huge selling point, and Rabkin said there will be a new “smart guardian” to help wearers navigate the real world while they are wearing the device.

Hopefully we see this for the Quest Pro soon. I hate being bugged about a guardian while walking through the house.

Edit: ignore, misread "conversions" as "conversations"

Is it possible you've just misread something? The quote is about tracking conversions, not about tracking conversations.

Oh wow, yeah big misread. The big focus as a company was probably referring to tracking conversions after the Apple changes.

> employees were told that Meta’s flagship Quest 3 headset coming later this year will be two times thinner

For the love of god, can we please turn back the tide of “times thinner”? It’s “1/3rd as thick” (I think?)

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