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Comment by pelagicAustral | Hacker News Reader

I'm skeptical as well... all this VR/AR hype has yet to deliver something... anything... anything at all... It's been years since I trying a VR headset at a friend's place and I distinctively remember thinking "this is useless... cool, but useless". I have yet to walk into someones place and not see one of these things gathering dust in a corner...

Perhaps the only time I actually felt like getting one was when I got hooked into Elite Dangerous, but these days I don't have time for it anyway... so, yeah.

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I had an O.G. Rift and Elite Dangerous was absolutely awesome on it. But the prep work I had to do to just play a little was insane:

1. Boot to Windows (Mac bootcamp)

2. Microsoft: It's been 6 months since you ran Windows. I need to force an update for 20 minutes!

3. Steam: LOL you need to update me too!

4. Find the device, the motion sensor/cameras in my cabinet, plug them in and position them in the room.

5. Display driver: Barf! Reboot computer.

6. Unplug/replug everything.

7. Oculus: Hahah new drivers, sucker!

8. Launch Elite Dangerous. Oops, somehow it's not in VR mode. Figure out how to change it in graphics settings...

By the time I got around to playing, I was already exhausted.

My experience is very similar, even still (boot from linux into windows, have updates shoved down my throat, some random thing doesn't work because reasons, etc.)

Most of it really feels like unforced errors though. As much as I am not at all excited about a $3500 device that's completely locked into Apple's restricted ecosystem, they are the kind of company to actually pay attention to those things and smooth out all the rough edges.

I'm really just hoping it brings more attention and effort into the wider VR ecosystem and we start getting better products and software support.

Had a similar experience with the Rift and it made me buy a different VR headset. The software stack is critical to these devices not being painful or pleasant. Devices that are steamvr native have been so much nicer to use, just plug&pay. I'm assuming Apple isn't going to make their headset SteamVR compatible so I wonder how things will shake out a few years from now - is Apple going to be in their own little world or will existing software really support it?

I have/had OG Vive. It was like, double click the headset button, point and call Lighthouse spinups, put on headset, long press menu buttons on controllers, take a deep sigh for not much reason and I was in VR.

It was easy to get started, but was still on my shelf after 6 months, until Alyx came out, then back on the shelf (haven't touched it since then)

It's just, not worth it. The discomfort of the headset (in a number of ways) coupled with mostly underwhelming and/or limited experiences.

imo it’s years past the point there got to be a head tracked goggle emulator, for “experts”. there are occasional moments I’d want to go back just for few minutes, or finally try VRC(haven’t), and while I’m aware that first impression of VR has to be perfect, the full gear seems like an overkill for those occasions.

> all this VR/AR hype has yet to deliver something... anything... anything at all

…in the consumer space. There have been some really incredible tools I've seen in industrial or medical spaces, and I think that's unlikely to change in the near term.

I’ve seen cool demos and proof of concept of professional tools but don’t know of any that have traction and good retention. Do you have examples of tools with significant adoption?

I'm not sure breadth of adoption and retention are the right metrics here — the use cases I've heard about are highly specialized, so I wouldn't expect it to be massively and quickly adopted, the same way it took a long time for robotic surgery tools or CAD to become widely used.

I've heard of it used in e.g. surgeries, for visualizing data like MRI scans, or building schematics for electrical/steam/wastewater/etc but don't know of specific instances where products are used.

This looks like a good overview of efforts in the medical space: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8455774/

And this looks like an okay high-level survey of use in manufacturing and construction: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240589631...

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