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>IMO the hardware simply isn't good enough for the mass market yet.

>I think there might be some other factors at play, too. Throwing on a VR headset feels a lot more antisocial than watching TV or tinkering on your phone in the living room because you're wearing a giant headset that separates you from the real world. Even if the hardware does get really good, I'm not entirely sure how easy it is for manufacturers to convince families that headsets are a good purchase.

Forgive my ignorance, this is a genuine question.

Do people, on the whole, even want the metaverse? I see this massive push from the tech industry, a lot of public disinterest, and companies are still insisting that we want this. Do we have public polls that confirm people do crave the metaverse to the extent that tech wants us to? What is making them so confident beyond just hope?

0% interest rates make companies throw money at useless products looking for returns because there wasn't any better use for the money. It's been like that for 5+ years, but this whole NFT/Bitcoin/Metaverse/AI meme series is the peak.

Here's to hoping that these higher interest rates make companies make actually useful and profitable products instead of a bunch of meme products.

> Do people, on the whole, even want the metaverse?

To answer that, we first need a good answer to the question: "What the hell is the 'Metaverse' supposed to be?"

Because as long as that isn't answered, the question reads: "Do people, on the whole, even want another corporate buzzword?", and I think we all know the answer to that one.

Good question.

I don’t have a poll but three observations.

1) People’s tastes vary. But millions of units have sold so people are open to it.

2) My non-techy 60+ year old aunt tried my Quest and kept raving about it and bought one.

3) It has potential to be more immersive. Having messed around with Quest, there are demos of things that are step functions of experience beyond what you get with a TV experience: the eye opener for me was front row seat in a small venue with your favorite band, up close and personal. When the video+3d resolution get better, it will get way more compelling.

Entertainment is all about feelings. An immersive experience provides even more ability for evoking them. People do seem to value more-immersive where possible if you look at the history of TV+movies… if the distractions can be eliminated.

But if the packaging tells you not to let people under 13 years to use it (because their eyesight is still developing?) (and I love the honesty), it’s fair to say the tech isn’t fully there and you aren’t going to capture the next generation of kids with spare time on their hands, among many other factors.

There is also not a lot of free compelling content on Quest unlike the internet; rather they are very geared towards selling you $20 apps in their store. I respect the need to monetize but there is also a fair bit of learning still needed on marketing and business model side for both the platform and apps to drive me to keep opening the wallet. I felt like I explored most of the free content and apps in under 10 hours. Value for money just wasn’t there for me.

I did feel like the tech was “good enough” that this tech would get there eventually. That is a key threshold to cross and imho has been crossed. But I am also reminded of my old (pre-iPhone-eta) WindowsCE mobile phone with stylus and web browser in my pocket. There was value there… but it was also greatly mitigated by being cumbersome in various ways.

> 1) People’s tastes vary. But millions of units have sold so people are open to it.

Is this an indication that people want the Metaverse, specifically, or are open to VR in general?

I am not much of a gamer, and probably the last person who would ever be interested in a VR headset. But I can see the appeal of VR games. I can't, for the life of me, see the appeal of "the Metaverse."

This is also a great question. Beyond that, of the millions of units sold, I'd be curious to know how many of those are upgrades from the same early adopters vs first-time buyers. Also, what has the trajectory of new user adoption looked like?

I see "the metaverse" as the liminal space between actual VR apps (games, business, whatever). If you're between rounds of a VR game you don't want to remove the helmet while waiting and chatting so you'll hang out in a VR-enabled lobby where you see each other in your in-game outfits. Eventually enough games will have VR lobbies that you'll hang out with people in other games' outfits as you all wait for your game to start.

Ditto business. If you're in VR because you're reviewing architectural renderings or whatever, you'll probably keep the helmet on for a few minutes between meetings and as such, seeing your coworkers come out of other virtual meeting rooms and hang around at a virtual water cooler gives you a bit of that hallway conversation that you're now missing, and provides a continuity of experience.

None of this is where the money is though, at least not now. You're still playing a game, or using business software, and that's what you pay for - not the lobby. That's why, I think, Meta and stuff seems so silly. They seem to expect that you're going to want to use it for its own sake, as opposed to it being equivalent to the Facebook UI - something you use to get the real value, not the value itself.

There's no eyesight risk for children; the 13 year old restriction is for compliance with childrens' online privacy and marketing legal restrictions.

I do anyway. I find the entire concept oddly compelling. To fabricate a completely immersive online world is just fascinating to me. I would love to see this work someday.

Unfortunately, today I can't even use VR for more than a few minutes before I'm ready to vomit and my eyes feel like they're being pulled out of my head.

People don't want the metaverse for themselves, but Meta's customers have never been its users.

What people (the customers) want is a dashboard that lets them dispatch memes to other people (the users). Meta already sells that. But they want those memes to affect the users' behavior, and Meta is betting that they can turn a stream of user biometrics (collected by the headset) into a way to better tune the meme-delivery-to-desired-behavior pipeline.

Or at least that's what they've convinced the decision makers. It's probably a long way off from working and instead that narrative is just being used to justify building something sci-fi.

> Do people, on the whole, even want the metaverse?

My take?

As a general question, no, they don't. And they won't.

However, they may want it for niche applications. Games would be the big one, but also perhaps certain industrial applications and other business functions. Although the business uses are probably better served with just AR instead of a whole "metaverse" (depending on your definition of "metaverse").

Which brings up the definitional problem. We have the metaverse and people love it -- we just call it the internet. So I'm assuming that when people say "metaverse", what they really mean is "VR worlds".

>Do people, on the whole, even want the metaverse?

My impression -

Do people want magical alternative worlds they can hang out in? Yeah, video gaming is huge, bigger than movies.

Do people want to interact with those with a VR thing stuck on their head? No, not on the whole - normal screens are fine.

All(almost) headsets have space for normal sized glasses. Or offer lens inserts like https://vroptician.com/

Hmm I could be wrong about this. My personal experience with the Index was that glasses were really uncomfortable, and I've heard from friends that they've had issues with other headsets. Maybe we all have large glasses? :)

I didn't know about the lens inserts. Those are cool and definitely fix the issue if people can find them.

Quest 2 comes with a spacer specifically for glasses.

Just another datapoint - I've never had issues with glasses either.

My larger reading glasses tend to come off when I remove the headset because they touch foam padding but my regular glasses fit in every headset I've tried (other than Magic Leap's stupid "goggles" form factor - the Vive Elite XR however is fine).

> The Quest is 503g on your head, and this headset in particular doesn't distribute weight very well

That’s just the default strap being okay but not great, they are designed to be swappable.

Amazon is full of straps that provide way better support for the back of your head. Oculus sells one too: https://www.meta.com/ca/quest/accessories/quest-2-elite-stra...

Also I’ve used the Oculus 2 for many hours and never had issues wearing glasses or getting motion sick. Maybe that was your VR device or a personal thing?

> Also I’ve used the Oculus 2 for many hours and never had issues wearing glasses or getting motion sick. Maybe that was your VR device or a personal thing?

Same thing with the Index. The only issues I had, despite wearing glasses, were:

- Nearly going through a glass door while trying to take cover, and ending up in the hallway.

- The cable. Too short. Easy to tangle. Easy to trip over.

- Wondering why I suddenly had arms and where my awesome gloves had gone whenever I looked at my hands in the half-hour following any long session in Alyx.

Wish it was wireless. And perhaps a bit lighter.

The motion sickness thing is a person-by-person thing, but it’s a significant percentage of folks who experience it. Enough that it would probably prevent VR from becoming anywhere near as widespread as TV or smartphones, unless it can be solved for.

Any research on how many people experience it? I’m not convinced it’s as wide spread as people say. Usually the people on HN who always say this (usually in doomer VR will never work posts) never seem to be people who have spent much time using VR, and either relay hearsay or only played around with VR once with some old device for a short period. It takes time to get used to VR and not all devices/content are the same.

I’d be surprised if it was more than 5-15% of people after long term exposure and across a wide variety of content… which would be a problem yes but hardly a market killer and the tech is always getting better.

The only world vr would work the way meta wanted is a world where everyone social distances forever. There's a slight chance if it's a hyperrealistic environment where you can actually see people in the eyes. No one will replace akwardly looking at the ground as everyone directs the attention to you with a bobbling 3D avatar as their main interaction with other people.

> * Motion sickness is still a really big problem

Depends on the game.

For MOST people, the motion sickness is caused by your real world motion not matching the motion your eyes see. As a result, games that don't make you use the controller to move around (Beat Saber, Space Pirate Trainer, Pokerstars VR, and more) don't usually make people sick.

But games where you move through the in-game world without moving in the real world (Any racing or flying game, any game where you make your character walk using the controllers) are nearly guaranteed to cause sickness. Many games that require your character to walk around get away with this by using teleportation.

This is why I've always said that putting someone into a racing game or roller coaster simulator or something like that as their first VR experience is doing a major disservice to VR adoption.

i think it won't work until it is more like a holodeck and less like a vr headset.

That's room-scale VR and is already here. You just need enough space for it.

does it require a headset? then it is not representative of the holodeck.

Ok, fair enough. I'm imagining a room with all 6 sides covered in OLED panels. The hard part is to implement binocular vision. Shutter glasses could work I suppose, maybe even allow multiple people to use it. Refresh rate 2*n*120 Hz, where n is the number of people in the holodeck.

These exist using projectors instead of OLED-Panels. You cannot do all 6 sides because of issues with heat though. They are called CAVEs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environ...

I think there is also a different issue - in a time where some people seem to be keenly aware of how much time they spend looking at screens and are making efforts to reduce that, the Metaverse (and any VR, really) wants to dial that up even more, instead consuming your full attention when using it

VR controllers aren't reading your mind yet.

It doesn't matter how good the VR output is if I can't recline in my comfy chair with a VR helmet on and then run around a fantasy world fighting monsters and throwing fireballs while lying motionless in the real world.

That's the VR future science fiction has promised.