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Comment by CBarkleyU | Hacker News Reader

I find myself having thoughts that I usually look very down on: What a waste X is because we could've done Y instead (think space exploration vs fixing famine type arguments). But honestly, what a huge waste of talent, including Carmack's, VR at Meta was.

It's been over a decade, with three out of five the FAANG letters trying their luck with VR/AR and honestly I still havent seen a use case that would justify pumping in billions in the tech.

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Thank god for that, VR is one of the only spaces people are having fun developing in. Once it goes full corporate it will be just like everything else in software.

quest 2 is the most interesting gadget i got the past decade. honestly space rockets are ok at current tech , but too much work just to see the blue planet from above, everything else looks pretty much the same as a clear night sky

I agree (for quest 2 being the most interesting gadget in this space), quest 2 sold 10s of millions of devices and arguably came closest to making VR mainstream although they have much more ground to cover. Would be interesting to see the sales figures for their upcoming quest 3 , if it can sell as much or more units than quest 2 , I think there is a chance all this investment would be worth it. Ofcourse a cheaper consumer apple vision headset could easily come in and eat metas lunch.

Edit: copies-> devices

I think Meta is still taking a loss on Quest device sales. So even if the sell a bunch of Q3s it might not be profitable for them (though I, hoping otherwise because I like the product and want to see it keep developing). The trick for Quest is to someday make meta money via a healthy market.

I’m not really helpful here: I buy the hardware but only use a couple of apps (FirXR and BestSaber), I use them a lot, but I haven’t found anything else that I really want to buy into yet (I’ve bought other apps but they just sit unused). Whatever loss they are taking on hardware for me they aren’t making back. (But At least FitXR is a subscription now)

I feel the same. Refocusing resources from space to earth seems like the magnanimous thing to be doing with extra billions.

Anything off earth that needs exploring can be dome remotely.

I have a Quest 2 and...I'm just glad I got it from my aunt for free who didn't think much of it. The games that let you play Matrix shooting are good and...that's literally just about it.

It feels like there should be better applications for it, and the reason there isn't is because the FAANGs are somehow sucking the fun out.

I mean, keep it real -- the fact that the biggest public push we saw on VR was for people doing labor in a fake office is literally beyond hilarious; it's something you wouldn't write for an SNL skit because it's so on the nose and not funny enough.

Very similar experience here. I have a Quest 2, handed down by my mother who bought it and never used it. I initially used it to run three screens via Immersed, but after a month or two, I only turn it on to check for updates. shrug

I even went ahead and got sidequest going. It's a weirdly stale place and I can't figure out why; I say this as somewhat of an old-timer who remembers like "freeware" and "shareware" games. There was always something interesting there, but not here?

I kinda enjoy the SideQuest version of Minecraft, but I cannot remember all the controller buttons.

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