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Comment by tsimionescu | Hacker News Reader

Is there any kind of indication VR (or its cousin, AR) is important to any extent? Everything I know suggests it's a niche technology that has little chance of becoming anything but a niche technology. It's not made any significant headway in gaming, in entertainment of other kinds, nor in general business settings.

There are some specialist domains where 3D visualization is worth the cost and inconvenience, but it seems to me very unlikely that it will ever escape those. Meta's gigantic investment with little to show for it seems to me to support this observation.

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I've been a strong advocate for VR since 2016. Over the last 6+ years I've managed to convince family and friends to all jump in and pickup VR, mostly the Quest 2.

What I can say is, the vast majority of them don't use their headset at all anymore. It sits on a shelf collecting dust, out of batteries, only to be picked up on the extremely rare occasion where they want to try it out again, and then after about 30-45 minutes they're done and it goes back on the shelf for another 3 months.

I've lost all hope for VR being anything other than a niche technology, and I am a member of this small group that finds it a fascinating and very fun technology. I'm willing to put up with the inconvenience and discomfort because the experiences are so much more visceral. But I have to now accept that for most people the experience isn't amazing enough to overcome the discomfort and hassle.

Most people will acknowledge that it's pretty cool in theory. If they could just flip a switch and be suddenly transported into their game world of course they'd do that every time v.s. playing on a flat monitor. Physical discomfort clunky controls and unintuitive interfaces, etc. all plague VR and make it only accessible to the most dedicated of fans.

It’s still early. Within 10 years, I’d be surprised if headsets and software haven’t improved enough that it’s reached a tipping point where many more people do use it consistently.

I sure hope so. VR right NOW is amazing and fun, so if it becomes more accessible, comfortable, and standardized, I think it has a chance at breaking into the mainstream. It's going to take some serious electrical and hardware engineering though to get the form factor small and comfortable enough that people don't find it a huge pain.

Damn, hits home. I would've been one of your friends or family I think.

I was immediately excited about VR back in the mid 2010s. And over the past years I've done a bit of reading and have had various fun discussions with friends about the use-cases of VR today, and in 5 or 15 years from now, that all made sense to me.

I really held off as long as I could for both the tech and the content base to develop, to jump in with the best experience. Plus I had already moved away from gaming PCs to Mac + PlayStation, so when 1.5y ago PSVR2 was announced I had an opportunity to get some of the best hardware $550 could buy.

But I've mostly been disappointed. Despite waiting for half a decade to jump into it, and staying home looking out the window for my package to arrive, I spent just 30 min on it the first day, and another 30min over the course of the next week, and since I got it (pre-order) I've spent no more than 1.5 hours. I honestly don't think I've ever in my life, spent so much on something that got me so little value.

I'm not really blaming the hardware, it's all quite impressive, and I've been on the PSVR2 subreddit where everyone absolutely loves a ton of the games. It just didn't get the magic going for me.

I'm still considering selling the PSVR2 and buying a Quest 2. I'm personally less interested in the PS game content, and want to try out museums, concerts, safaris, as well as some indie (game) content and the various mods. I'm still somehow quite excited about the tech, even though I've got no interest in using the hardware I have sitting a meter away from me.

And I have to be honest, the nausea of the 3 experiences I had were a put off. Traumatic is waaaay too strong a word to use. But you know how someone may eat sushi and love it, and then get food poisoning due to bad hygiene at the restaurant, and spend 24 hours throwing up sushi, doesn't feel like having sushi for years? I feel the nausea may have had that effect a bit. All 3 play sessions I ended feeling sweaty, dizzy and sick, and required me to just lay down and do nothing for a few hours. I know it gets better as your brain gets used to it, but it raised the bar to jump in for a quick session to the point of 'why bother'. My gf didn't have this problem at all, although she hasn't asked to play since the first time I showed it to her (and she was really wowified by it all and enjoyed it a lot).

I've definitely come to the conclusion that my enthusiasm for VR was misguided, or just really premature. I don't see myself videoconferencing in VR in 5 years rather than using Teams, playing games, watching VR movies from the POV of one of the main actors, watching the world cup final from the POV of the referee, enjoying a concert from the VIP area, or playing a VR RPG like Fallout or Mass Effect with not just a ChatGTP but also a VR mod.

But who knows. Part of me does still think: if there's tons of good content out there, cheaper than now. If the devices have double the resolution and screen refresh rate, weigh less, cost less, and they're super seamless to put on and make you less dizzy, immerse you more, and get you into experiences that flatscreens can't do... then maybe it'll stay around like the Smartwatch / Apple Watch: a major ($100b per year) product category enjoyed by >200 million, that doesn't change the world but still makes it better. I don't really see VR fading away entirely, unless AR supplants it.

Could you speak to your top 5 or 10 (if you can) VR apps/experiences on the Quest 2, that you would recommend to try out?

You actually fit the bill - almost exactly - to a friend of mine who returned his Quest 2 just a few weeks ago. He was so excited for it to arrive that he took the day off of work just to be sure he was there to receive the package.

He spend a total of about 2 hours in it before deciding it was not for him. Frankly, I respect his decision because that's better than leaving it on the shelf for months and months like most of my other friends.

I agree with you that someday VR may reach a point where the barrier-to-entry is low enough to captivate the general public. If you ask me, comfort is the #1 issue. People's issues range from nausea, to face discomfort, to (if im being honest) straight up laziness and/or disability. Some people would rather binge netflix on a couch for 3 hours than stand up in a room physically moving around.

If Meta can't fix the comfort issues, I pretty much never see VR breaking out of it's niche following. It's got to somehow get to a level where it's as comfortable and convenient as sitting on a couch. Long, long way to go.

Anyways, my top VR experiences is an easy list to assemble. I use my VR for games so... not sure there will be an intersection with your interests since you mention museums and such, but here it is:

• Half Life Alyx

• Beat Saber

• Walk About Mini Golf

• Dirt Rally 2.0 (with physical pedals, shifter, wheel)

• Ghosts of Tabor (Early Access)

• Vertigo 1 / 2

• Into the Radius (STALKER clone in VR)

• POPULATION:ONE (Battle Royale, kinda like Fortnite)

• Edge of Nowhere (Excellent third-person game)

• Demo (Table top RPG)

• STORMLAND

• Lone Echo 1 & 2

thank you!

For a brief moment during 2020, you could see the hype actually meet reality when a wave of VR startups that promised to transport us "as if we were really there" to the office. Now, you can choose to be cynical about that but I think it genuinely did live up to the hype when I could remote in to a full infinite-screen workstation and interact much more freely with coworkers than a Zoom call.

These days, I see it much more commonly used for training purposes now that we are all being forced back to the office.

> Now, you can choose to be cynical about that but I think it genuinely did live up to the hype when I could remote in to a full infinite-screen workstation and interact much more freely with coworkers than a Zoom call.

How exactly did you interact more freely with co-workers? I fully agree that in-person meetings are more productive than Zoom calls, but true telepresence that would capture that requires far more than I've seen any VR setup come even close to provide. Especially since everyone is busy with the display, while the camera+microphone part is actually miles away.

I'm personally still excited to try it for doing actual work. I think we're nearly there in terms of technology. Oculus CV1 was too blurry to read text. The last factor will be all day comfort I think. I like the idea of infinite screen real estate and being able to play proper 3D content is very cool. But.. I still admit not everyone will want to put on a headset even if the tech is great and I don't know how Zuck can change that perception.

It will eventually become one of the most significant technologies in history, alongside AI, in my opinion.

People are confusing bulky headsets with the general concept of VR. If I showed you a working holodeck today you would think it significant.

Mark made the right choice to go balls deep on VR when he did. I don't think he should dial back. When going through hell, keep going.

> People are confusing bulky headsets with the general concept of VR.

True, and it's still entirely reasonable to criticize Facebook on this count, because they have absolutely no plans beyond VR headsets. Any technology to take VR to the next level isn't even a glimmer on the horizon; we are still decades too early.

That's not really true at all. Quest Pro is technically an AR headset with full color pass through. It's extremely limited to be sure, but it's not like meta is ignoring AR.

> If I showed you a working holodeck today you would think it significant.

Would I? How would an empty small room with cool audio-visual-only illusions help me more than a computer and phone do today?

AR has more utility than VR , and i think telepresence requires elements of both. AR could be used to visually aid a tire change, or display sales specials overlayed on visual of IRL signage

> It's not made any significant headway

What counts as significant? 20m headsets sold on par with a gaming console at least counts for something. Have you actually tried the Quest 2 or Pro, it's pretty neat. Not an iphone moment yet, it seems it'll be a slower thing, like the PC or the internet.

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