Meta’s Reality Labs prototype hardware
meta.com
meta.com
And then, Meta has no real interesting in delivering anything other than a product they can ship to millions of people on day 1 at a low price point, while Apple is actively cultivating exclusivity of access as a marketing tactic.
Apple has never really done that (at least in the post Jobs return era). They demonstrate what their intention is… then release the device. Zip, except maybe some WWDC stuff in-between.
Which makes sense: Apple is Product Vision & UX focused, Meta (and most other companies) are Product Delivery & User Consumption focused.
Neither is wrong, they’re just aiming at different goals.
The trashcan Mac Pro desktop was heavily promoted to tech journalists before release to try and keep pro users from abandoning Apple. IPads and iPhones were going gangbusters then, and Apple had gone a long time without refreshing the Mac Pro. The common sentiment was Apple no longer cared about professionals that required workstation-level performance. IIRC, this was in the aftermath of the release of a neutered Final Cut Pro which seemed to cater more to prosumers than pros, since it removed key features.
The intention was to signal pros to hang in there, and then the trashcan got released and had perf issues with throttling due to thermal challenges. Good times.
They had one meeting where they told journalists they were not going to abandon the pro market space. This was when the trashcan had been out for a long time. Too long in fact.
> The intention was to signal pros to hang in there, and then the trashcan got released
No, the trashcan was released way before that meeting. One of the things discussed in the meeting was limitations of the trash can form factor.
I'm afraid you're referring to yet another Mac Pro marketing push that came later (for the 2019 "Lattice" / cheese grater redux version).
I just looked up the dates & it lines up with my recollection and initial comment: the previous refresh (pre-trashcan) was in 2010. The Final Cut "Pro" X release that frustrated video professionals came out in 2011 and the trashcan itself was finally released in 2013. A lot of loyal video pros abandoned Apple for the Adobe/PC ecosystem in that era.
Definitely a stronger push around it for sure tho.
(I still say it was a great design, they just best on the wrong direction of chip/etc tech with it so it rapidly got useless)
Great insight
They ship hardware & software, but their core product feature for each is the design of it. Both individually and as a whole ecosystem.
It’s actually kind of incredible they’ve done so well at this after Jobs & Ive left. Speaks to their culture.
”Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like,” says Steve Jobs, Apple’s C.E.O. ”People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
The Guts of a New Machine: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/magazine/the-guts-of-a-ne...
Even exquisitely-designed things aren't right for everybody, which is fine. I also personally like old-fashioned clicky 2-button mice like my Logitech M720.
(The one item on your list that isn't a "different strokes for different folks" thing isn't something I've ever experienced with my Mac minis, FWIW.)
I would say a “taste” company.
They are not competing goals.
All companies have to show progress.
Apple can afford to show finished products because it has multiple product lines. At any given time, at least one product line is shipping a finished version.
Meta, on the other hand, won't be shipping a finished product for their pitch ("Meta"-verse) anytime soon. So they have to be content with work-in-progress.
They are competing focuses however. Obviously they can all be satisfied, but you can’t focus on all of it. Otherwise it becomes “everything is a priority, so nothing is”.
I’ve worked at places that tried that. It’s foolhardy & doomed.
And it’s a pretty rare thing to have that mode of failure for them.
That sticks out as one of the worst delays between announcement and shipping I can recall in Apple's history (~10 months and multiple delays).
> https://venturebeat.com/mobile/apple-explains-white-iphone-d...
Very fascinating from a material science standpoint
The home button and the bezel were made by different manufacturers IIRC, and the two plastics aged/coloured at different rates.
It took them ages to get it such that the button and bezel will colour match perfectly.
Easy to do with black, very difficult with white.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2010/06/apple-delays-white-i...
Apple Maps.
I still remember the hilarity.
https://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/607-ios-maps-fail....
They didn’t. So not a counter example.
I think that fairly counts as a "marketing ploy"? Apple is so good at it that folks that folks don't even realize what is happening.
Compare with Meta: pretty sure this is the 3rd “sneak peak” cycle on this hardware in the last couple of months.
The product is complete and it's just about ramping up production and sending stock to retail stores.
Tldr when your goal is to exploit peoples time you are reactive more than innovative, less secrets other than understanding human nature. When the goal like apple is to create the sleekest highest status product, it must be original and based on more objective standards (like aesthetics)
Meta cannot. Basically nobody can. Meta must drum up interest and hype to get people continuing to care about vr.
I remember reading that Mark Rober was at Apple (nobody knew about that!) and I just feel like that must have sucked massively for someone who loves making youtube videos to work in a place like that.
I could understand now talking about current work but if you have an open source project that's unrelated you can't publicly do anything?
It's hard to argue that that the one that ships is taking the wrong approach.
And no one other than yourself thinks that the Mac Pro is going to be a wild success. It's a highly niche product with the Mac Studio being the mainstream version.
It’s a good sign for them but far from convincing
The Series S is the same price, and estimates put it at around half of units sold.
The Mac Pro accounts for 11% of all Mac computers sold and 40-50% (~$20bln) of Mac revenues in 2022 (including laptops); the Mac Studio is only 1% of units shipped. What's your definition of wild success?
Because the Mac Pro outselling the Mac mini by 10x doesn't seem believable to me.
And especially in 2022 when the Intel Mac Pro was being outperformed by the Mac Studio.
Thankfully VFX Reference Platform also accounts for Windows and Linux, https://vfxplatform.com/
And when the GPUs no longer can keep up, one doesn't need to throw away the whole computer.
Through that lens, I don't see Meta has having slacked and failed to capture the market when they're definitely the leader and pushed it a decent amount forward.
The comparison point could be HTC, who's also continuing pushing the envellope but can't touch Meta in terms of scale and price point.
Ahm, are we forgetting the QuestPro? Meta tried to build their "Apple headset", 5x the price of a Quest2 and loaded with all the R&D features they could find. And it was a colossal flop. The whole thing is getting shutdown little over six months after release.
They forgot to include critical features like a depth sensor, they couldn't figure out what to do with the eye tracking in their software, face tracking wasn't a feature anybody wanted and reduced the battery dramatically when actually used, passthough cameras are a blurry mess, resolution is too low to work as actual desktop replacement, etc.
The whole thing, despite 5x the price, was firmly stuck at just being a slightly better Quest2. Meta spend the last seven years building a portable Oculus Rift, and they succeeded at that, but despite billions in R&D they haven't really managed to advanced VR beyond that point.
They delivered a product, but it's clear they simply don't have the commitment required to actually see it through. Quest Pro is actually great for what it is, but they seem completely clueless about how to actually market something to business or professional users. The software on it is 100% identical to the Quest 2, designed entirely for gaming. Just the fact they couldn't be bothered even slightly differentiating the software shows they just don't even understand the distinctions b/w the spaces.
But above that layer there are pretty big distinctions. Meta is fully on the record that they are all in on making Quest completely use OpenXR as the primary API to the point of deprecating the old Oculus proprietary APIs. They also actively pushing forward the latest WebXR spec into the browser on the Quest, and sideloading of apps in general is straightforward (although you do need a developer account to do it which is unfortunate).
Apple doesn't seem interested at all in open standards at the OS layer, so if you need to be happy with the fully walled garden and proprietary APIs to buy into that ecosystem. It's unclear if VisionPro will support WebXR in the browser it ships.
So in terms of freedom, you will get a lot more from Quest, but its definitely sad that this whole area of computing could end up being the first that has literally no true open platform available.
I guess this means "sideloading" is a privilege they can revoke at their whim, is that right? I hope I'm over-interpreting this (and not blaming you as the messenger).
But in terms of how they are are "more" open, you can side load any app you want, and the headset supports open standards at both the app level (OpenXR) and browser level (WebXR).
Apples approach is that they wont release until its ready for use by the average joe. The expectation that you get it and it works out of the box without needing to be too technical is where they thrive.
This isn't to say one approach is better or worse, just different.
Wow, how naive can you be?
Because Meta's forte is ads. The hardware is just the gateway to their ecosystem where they don't have to pay Apple/Google for access to users.
Companies' engineering blogs are just carefully curated marketing pieces with highly distilled technical info. It's still marketing and some people eat it up.
Judging by the current relative market caps of facepalm and MySpace, seems like it worked out ok.
Apple literally ships millions of devices on day one (that is, on the exact day they announce they will ship it).
Edit: with very few notable exceptions like the wireless charger
And you believe that they are doing this out of the goodness of their heart?
At the same time, they are keeping the door open for mass-market over the long-term.
Meta needs as many people using their products to show ads and earn money, that's all there is to it.
Apple’s Vision Pro release has been all about the software: the interaction models, how to use SwiftUI to make immersive and windowed apps, the windowing model, accessibility, type readability, and every little detail related to UI
I’d argue Apple is equally software and hardware
A startup begins a project often by announcing that it has almost succeed. Some open source projects and crowdfunded projects with a lot of pomp also take this approach. It is great(?) for fundraising. It is interesting that Meta chooses this since they are not looking for funding, but maybe they are looking to cultivate the same panache/ethos. A way to market to prospective employees, more than end customers.
Apple denies that its even doing something until after it has succeeded. And even then it will announce it on its own terms. The Putin regime also follows this model (eg 2014 annexation of Crimea). It is great for denying competition time to catch up.
apple can get away with being less polite. what it delivers is enough to motivate a certain level of tolerance.
apple is ecosystem. it is the front runner at the moment, and will be hard to beat.
ffs this is facebook and mark zuckerberg. how does the joke go? their faces are next to the word unlikable in the dictionary?
both meta and zuck are cultivating a rather incredible comeback story. for all the historical hateables, even with layoffs and rto, there are a lot of recent moves that are brilliant.
second place in a martial arts tournament. threads. llama. this.
both meta and zuck are starting to look downright likeable.
this is no accident, and no small feat.
tl;dr you seemed to have missed meta’s marketing tactic, possibly due to anti-apple bias.
if that answer has flipped over the past few years, that isn’t just due to musk.
it takes time to rehabilitate an image so tarnished.
he can’t delete the congressional hearing recordings from reality.
They have videos of actual people using the actual built devices at the conference. They are letting conference attendees at SIGGRAPH put these on and try them out.
I get the need to downplay anything good that Meta does, but stick to "reality" - this is very different from half finished vapor ware. Or to put it another way, if this is vaporware, so is Apple Vision Pro at this point.
We have no idea when, or if, this will end up in a shipping product. If they were to imply it’s a real product (didn’t read that clearly) it’s vaporware.
The Vision Pro was announced. Has a release date (within a quarter), a full public SDK & simulator. They have started the hands on labs for developers around the world this week.
That’s not vaporware. If it is every movie that’s been announced + shot but not released is.
The modern Apple (post Jobs return) had what, one product that was announced but didn’t come out? The AirPower. And that was a real product they were in the final stages of (best I understand) but hit insurmountable safety issues. Not “hey we’re thinking this will be a thing one day”, but a failed product launch that didn’t make it to market after multiple attempts to fix it in the final stages.
Apple doesn’t announce vaporware.
And in regards to modern Apple, the settings panel and SwiftUI are more of a work in progress kind of thing, than actually done.
Have people called SwiftUI and the new settings panels vaporware? I’ve never heard that. I’m neutral on the new settings design, but they do have a lot to fix there.
SwiftUI is pretty great when you can do what you want. Every release that encompasses more. I’m not sure you can reasonably make a fully featured UI toolkit in secret, I think you need external devs to help find issues and gaps. Letting it out early may have been a good idea for that reason, though it was quite rough at the start.
Let this sink in; Facebook alone has more MAUs than YouTube in it's entirety. That's frankly bonkers. After YouTube, the 2 next most popular are, yep, Instagram and WhatsApp.
If you went up to the average person on the street and asked them how they felt about the Cambridge Analytica situation, they would probably ignore you and think it was some sports thing. "the public" clearly doesn't care and journalists are probably pretty happy with Facebook's performance given what they have to put up with on Twitter.
I'm not saying anyone is particularly right or wrong here. I just think that this site's obsession with "Facebook bad" doesn't really extend beyond the constituent of hackers with a healthy distrust of organized power.
I'm not a republican btw, I just know a lot about the nuts and bolts of the digital industry. Anybody who actually knows how political ad targeting works guffaws every time CA comes up.
Meta has never showed off demo-able advanced R&D hardware publicly, even when they’ve had it, until now.
This is simply a second degree demo to Wall Street investors. Their analysts will either attend, or read reports from reputable experts.
They’ve sunk $40 Billion into this project with nothing to show. Apple has reportedly spent $20 Billion while underpinning it with healthy growth and profits.
Facebook shipped Quest 2 dev kits to partners that were physically disguised as clothing irons. The narrative you’re spinning is nonsense.
EDIT: You’re either Boz or a lieutenant judging by your comment history.
You only comment on topics related to Facebook competition and say things close to “interesting feedback” and occasionally expose yourself with specific phrases like “Thanks for sharing, it's always interesting to hear these kind of anecdotes!” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36351422
What are you talking about? They've done this continually:
2018: https://www.meta.com/blog/quest/introducing-the-team-behind-...
2019: https://www.meta.com/blog/quest/half-dome-updates-frl-explor...
2020: https://tech.facebook.com/reality-labs/2020/9/announcing-pro...
2021: https://tech.facebook.com/reality-labs/2021/3/inside-faceboo...
???
Meta already shipped 20M headsets. Apple won't get more than 400k of these in the field until 2025, and even then they will be so expensive barely anybody can afford it. Quite literally, whatever mass market there is, Meta owns it now and for the foreseeable future.
Apple is targeting the wider compute market which is capped at Billions. They won't sell billions in 2025, or at the $3500 price point, but this is the market they are building towards capturing.
Think of Palm Pilot vs iPhone. It's a decade-scale play.
* edit: Let me just add that Apple TV hardware which is largely abandoned and afterthought product line considered unsuccessful, for example is a 13M/year item for Apple. 20M lifetime is not mass market.
Source? https://www.businessofapps.com/data/apple-statistics/#AppleT... says there 31M active Apple TVs in the US. https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/02/apple-tv-market-share-report/ says Apple TV has 2% share of 1.14B global TV platforms. These don't look like 13M/year of sales.
Besides it seems like comparing apples to oranges. Apple TV works with existing TVs which are already billions in numbers. VR devices are completely new devices. Meta has sold 20M headsets SO FAR, not in its lifetime.
Weird semantics on so far vs lifetime.. it's the same thing.
Meta and Apple are targeting different markets and you can tell by Apple's product videos.
To me, Meta is entrenched in the currently gamer centric VR market. I call it this because 100% of the people I know who have been excited by VR over the last 10 years have been young, single, male gamers. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but the marketing & people excited about the product, to me, seem to align there.
Apple doesn't even call it VR because they are trying to target a much wider market.
I agree with this (though trying is the operative word). It seems a strange moment in time to choose to call the game for Apple though, at a grand total of 0 units shipped and a price point of $3500+tax. It is literally not knowable now in 2023 if they will be able to manage to do what Tesla did, in transitioning from “toy for rich jerks” to “reasonable mass market choice, and we can manufacture them in mass quantities too.” I mean, it’s not even clear yet if the rich jerk set will adopt it.
Are you just saying that Meta has the wrong focus or do you think Apple has a moat?
Now that the chip shortage and supply chain issues have calmed down a bit, we're seeing big improvements. But these constraints also apply to Apple which is why their first run of Vision Pro headsets is set to be around 100,000 units. Hardware is the constraint.
That said, the focus for Oculus has always been much larger than gaming. The whole "Metaverse" pitch isn't a pitch for a product. The "Metaverse" is just another jangly marketing term just like "Information Superhighway" was for the Internet back in 90s. It just means using VR/AR for everyday situations like work, entertainment, etc.
I agree, that's why I said "what mass market there is". Because the whole thing is completely speculative that there can be mass market here ever, and that applies as much to Apple as Meta. None of the so far demonstrated devices are really appropriate for that.
I don't know why you think Meta is "capping" themselves to gaming market or why you think that market tops out at 10M units. That is where they started, but clearly that's not their whole vision (or why did they bother making the Quest Pro?).
Meta's focus on games right now is not by choice or by vision, but simply because that's the only VR product they have that actually sells. Kids love Quest and VR. Nobody bought the QuestPro for social VR or for work-in-VR. Horizon World doesn't seem to gain traction either, everybody is still doing VRChat. Gaming was also not their idea, the gaming focus came from the original Oculus company they bought, they just have been unable to move past that.
The difference between Apple and Meta is that Apple has a clear vision, they are building a device that works as full desktop replacement. They completely skipped any of the classic VR topics at their presentation. VisionPro is "just" a better monitor, everything else is optional and come later.
Meta on the other side doesn't really know what they want, they have this vague vision of VR being big in the future and they want to secure their place in that future by throwing money at it. But they don't know how to get there. So they have a lot of gaming here, a bit social there and a bit of VR-as-desktop, but none of it is polished, lots of it isn't even functional and nothing is ever used to its full potential. Worse yet, they handicap themselves, their VR must be mobile, since they want to own the VR platform, so their PC support ends up lackluster, despite all the best VR content still being on PC. They want to have ads and collect data, so kids under 13 aren't allowed on their platform, despite being very popular in that age group. It's all a mess.
You only comment on topics related to Facebook competition and say things close to “interesting feedback” and occasionally expose yourself with specific phrases like “Thanks for sharing, it's always interesting to hear these kind of anecdotes!”
Focus on their argument, not "outing" someone, whatever that means.
What they tend to shy away from are ultra-low margin sectors with little opportunity for differentiation and flooded with amoral competition. Sure, the cheapest iPhone is nowhere near the cost of the cheapest Android phones. But that's because most cheap Android phones are also abandonware, and/or manufactured e-waste, and/or using all of the conflict minerals/abusive labour practices/environmental hazards which Apple has to remain unambiguously distanced from.
I agree with everything you wrote but this. Just because Apple products are within reach of a lot of people, it doesn’t mean that they’re not a luxury brand.
While not cheap, Apple products are obtainable and utterly mainstream. In fact in the rare instances where Apple has experimented with luxury it has been a dismal failure — Apple Watch Edition being a noteworthy example.
I don't think we're going to stumble into good immersive AR/VR by cobbling together OEM parts bin specials to hit a $400 price point day 1.
It seems obvious that the displays & optics need to be as good or better than top of the line phone/computer displays, not worse. So I don't see how a remotely immersive experience can happen even at the $1k price point.
I strongly feel that you need to actually try modern VR for more than a few minutes. Is it perfect? Far from it. There are many problems, specifically that VR’s main form factors are too intimidating for most adults to even try. Is it immersive? Yes, a lot of apps and games are
I’m just glad Tim forced Apple to finally join the market. Otherwise, there would be VR winter for about a decade due to the mass public perception of VR and the fact that the most engaged VR users can’t even drive yet.
This was definitely the case with the iPhone, iPad and the Watch. It's arguably also true with the first generation MacBook Air.
(This definitely doesn't apply to the M1 transition as this wasn't a new product family. It was a fork of an extremely mature product, combined into another extremely mature product, resulting in a product revision which was very cool but did absolutely nothing new.)
Yep, I'm a skeptic. I tried it, and it was fine! Pretty fun, not that fun. Like going to Disney, I'm perfectly comfortable knowing that it's there, other people love it, and I'll go once every 20 years or so and have a decent time.
Maybe I just haven't had the right experience yet (I went to Epcot, not Star Wars World), but you could argue that about literally anything.
To each their own. I was someone that was excited to try VR for years and then said "that's it?" when I finally got a chance.
I think the current market targeting the $200-500 price point is a large part of the problem. If you think about what's needed to make this well vs say, the phone in your pocket, how is a good VR implementation going to come out cheaper than the phone?
Apple is basically throwing the kitchen sink at the space in terms of compute, optics, sensors, and software.. with a price tag to match. If it's going to work, it's probably going to work at that price point first.
I see the opposite phenomena after Apple Vision Pro announcement. Many seem to love VR / AR but never tried it. Retention numbers with current tech indicate that cost of wearing a headset exceeds the value proposition for most people and use cases. Maybe Apple Vision Pro will change that. Excited to see.
edit: typos
By the way, do people still ride the subway with those large earphones I remember to be fashionable before covid? I moved and I'm not using subways anymore so I'm missing observations.
those that tried VR some time ago, enjoyed the gimmicky novelty back then, lost interest, increasingly don't bother with further gimmicky PR presenting tech demo videos so underwhelming and cliché ("VR bionic hand twiddling fingers" trope) they skip through them, and get reassured that VR providers still haven't managed to bring any sustainable use-case to the market despite this current VR cycle stretching for almost ten years by now.
Sorry Meta, you educated whole generations to have the attention span of a gold fish, why should anyone care for your latest world-changing prototype if the previous four or so haven't fulfilled their announced revolution either?
> those that tried VR some time ago, enjoyed the gimmicky novelty back then, lost interest, increasingly don't bother with further gimmicky
Additionally there also exists a fourth kind of people: those who planned and would love to do cool experiments (hacks) with the VR devices, but became deeply disappointed by the fact that in particular Meta (but now also Apple) rather decided to turn their devices into golden cages (in the case of Meta with the intention of including surveillance functionality).
I think VR will always be niche.
I’m curious if AR is really the thing. The need for bulky stuff like the Vision Pro is a hinderance, but it will get smaller.
The VR/AR difference is kind of a problem as I see so many people arguing past each other on this and the Vision Pro by comparing one company’s position in VR against another’s play in AR as if they weren’t two totally different things.
Meta’s biggest problem, however, is getting people interested in VR beyond Beat Saber and the fitness apps. Like actual hardcore gamers.
I don't trust any argument that doesn't recognize my personhood.
VR was interesting, but the Meta Quest felt uncomfortable on my head, I felt every so vaguely nauseous, they didn't add anything to any of the games I was playing, they weren't comfortable to wear after a long day of work, they made me feel weirdly disconnected from the outside world.
"Technology can overcome any obstacles" is just what you tell the investors. Most of the time, obstacles stop emerging technologies from going anywhere.
And I suppose VR may become viable some day, but I just don't feel it's that day yet.
Mostly because it's the worst argument a person can make. You know you exist, so therefore they don't know what they're talking about.
In this case, it's basically saying "You have experienced all VR has to offer after you've tried it a few times. If you weren't impressed, I'm here to inform you that you won't ever be."
Damn, I feel like they stole that quote from me. I used to (and still do) say that all the time!
I'll still argue that people here who don't believe in VR have either never tried it, or tried an old prototype. Owning a VR headset and being able to use it in your living room is future-like. Definitely an experience that people should try to have, that is if you want to live in the future.
I get sick very easily, even with traditional screens in some FPS games. VR people seem to live in a bubble and plug their ears every time somebody says VR sucks. sorry, it mainly sucks. headsets are heavy, wires tangle, graphics cards are expensive, cameras or projectors are tedious, resolution isn't good enough, rooms are never big enough or clean enough, a guest broke our window by accident, god I could go on with all the drawbacks.
I wonder if for consumer VR, we are really missing similar environmental manipulation. Like, maybe a lazy boy seat or something that can move?
Add to that closed platforms and no diopter adjustable non-fresnel lenses, and it's over.
Valve demonstrated why VR will fail, only a monopolistic company can succeed with it in a zero interest rate environement.
I was hoping Roblox on Quest 2 would be 120 Hz and smooth 3rd person but they failed.
RIP VR!
A bit surprising that these seem so far away from production. I think Apple is playing it properly here: Announce a product people really want, even if its very far into the future and may possibly not actually come onto the market for years. Use the feedback from the public to fine tune the product as it's developed.
Facebook seems now to be something like the company whose former HQ it inhabits: Xerox PARC. Potentially vital R/D happening in such a way as to have almost zero chance of actually becoming a product.
I can't be excited for Butterscotch or Flamera, because they're not products I can buy, and they explicitly never will be. If I managed to get a demo, I'm sure I'd be NDAed to hell and back. I am excited for Vision Pro because it's something I will actually be allowed to purchase in the future.
Do note that doing it like that is not what Apple commonly does. Usually work happens in silence and secrecy, then the product is available within like 6 months to purchase (in the US, not necessarily all over the world)
Otherwise I agree it’s very likely they wouldn’t have said anything yet.
My assumption, of this early work, is to scoop up important patents.
Related to important patents, varifocal is almost certainly the future of HMDs.
Having fixed focus, as all HMDs do now, is fatiguing and strange. A really interesting example of this is, in VR, hold something close to your eyes. You'll see that it gets blurry. Now close one eye. You'll see that it's clear. It's not that it's actually blurry, it's that your eyes are refusing to put up with the physical nonsense of a fixed focus 3d world.
Or perhaps to refine that, to scoop important patents
Apple is aggressively out there patenting obvious things that have been basic public knowledge / in use for years to try and lock up the field (eg: [0]). You can try and get your own patents but if you aren't strategically dependent on the IP for your own needs it is much easier and quicker to just nuke the field by putting as many things in public as possible so it's much harder for Apple (or others) to retro-patent broad classes of obvious features.
[0] https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa...
Like this quest app for visualizing wifi strength in mixed reality.
Blurring can be applied, but that doesn't change the physics that your eyes expects, which causes the disconnect and discomfort, which varifocal displays solve.
Apple has actually issued developer guidelines for AVP that Apps should only render UI / static content at a fixed position from the headset in space corresponding to the fixed focal distance for this reason.
Those prototypes, of course, aren't going to themselves be shipping. But they are for R&D and to provide example of a nascent technology that one day should end up in a consumer product.
You absolutely can disagree with the approach of showing this too early or not trying hard enough to incorporate this into an (albeit expensive) consumer product today/soon.
But my read is Meta wants this stuff to one day be in consumer headsets. Just not there yet.
It's not like Facebook, as a product, was some hidden away R/D project. It was iterated on in public.
Anyways, I didn't mean to poopoo the awesome work done here. I just want to actually use some of this stuff.
Let’s say it takes five years for Apple or Meta to be able to release this kind of hardware at $500.
Would you rather bet on the company with 5 years experience selling that class of hardware and software and finding real use cases? Or the one who is leaving the lab with it for the first time?
Ignoring Apple is a supply chain MONSTER that can get things cheaper and better than Meta can thanks to their volumes so the products might not be comparable at $500.
Apple picks a price point and sticks to it (first generation iPhone was a one-off). People with too much money pay for early development on exclusive feature poor devices. As the technology becomes more functional inflation drops prices into affordable ranges.
Given the tolerances needed for head mounted quality and comfort Apple will never have a comparable cheap model. Meta has the edge here and will have Android levels of market share while Apple has Apple shares of profit.
When the more consumer oriented model comes (assuming things are successful) it will slot in at a lower price point, say $1000. But the Pro will still be up there.
I trust they’ll get to $500 or less (again, assuming success), but it’s going to take a long time. However Apple is the company that with their suppliers can design/make ultra high precision stuff and ship it in mass at prices that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.
Meta in market share: that I question. I don’t think these products compete (AR vs VR, not just price). Even if Apple becomes extremely successful I’m not sure VR demand will take off. And if someone tries to make a much cheaper AR I’d be concerned the experience is below the acceptable threshold. $3500 will never be mass market, but I’m not sure $500 can be good enough at current tech levels.
It’ll be a while before we start to see this play out. Could be totally wrong.
Apple, sure. Sony, Microsoft, could be.
But Meta, Google, Amazon.. lol. No.
Anyway I don't think that's what Apple is doing. The are just being expensive, exclusive ass clowns, like usual.
I guess you missed the last 20 years of crowdsourcing fueling half the tech economy.
Also Meta has something Xerox PARC never had, copious amounts of revenue.
did you mean sun microsystems?
But I am surprised and very impressed with how the researchers choose to use it, and that bug eye shaped lens array is pure scifi fun!
The demo in the video, timestamped below, showing why they used such a design to create a single opening behind the array is amazing in its own right.
As someone who was hooked to VR the moment I put on an helmet, I seriously doubt VR will substantially change the world. The point of VR is to immerse people in a virtual world, but there is nothing beyond that
Instead it’s more “don’t forget us!” after years of nothing to show for the Metaverse after throwing away insane amounts of money and then having all the air sucked out of the room by Apple‘s announcement.
No, you haven't.
A good diagram of the evolution of eyes
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/eye-evolution/
Also of interest is this article on using metasurfaces to achieve the same.
I'm sure that optical frequency meta-materials will play important roles in AR/VR.
Went as far as researching developing my own but it such a different field. I hope they didn't throw away that work/knowledge
It’s still going! CTRL labs has received a ton of internal resources, and scaled up significantly the 3.5 years I was there. Almost all of that effort is going towards stamping out edge failure cases on the path to making a reliable consumer product.
Consider: What works well for an onstage demo or a store demo you store needs a lot of “last mile” work so that a naive consumer can take it out of a box at home and have it work flawlessly. This is especially true for a new product category. I doubt it will be in the wild until it’s rock solid. There was incredible improvements while I was there, but keep in mind it’s an entire new product category, and so it’s not worth the risk of shipping early and imperfect.
Of my VR and AR device experiences, ive found I just dont have the bodily endurance for long sessions over multiple days like I do with computer screens. I thought screens + an "anywhere, any position" keyboard would be more suited to what I wanted[1]. The TapStrap got me partially there.
[1] WIP blog post about it, still have a lot of blanks to fill in, https://cobertos.com/blog/post/portable-computing-setup
https://mashable.com/article/meta-connect-wrist-controller-h...
As far as I know Quest 2 is STILL the best (and most affordable) option* for untethered VR hardware by far (and IMO it's legitimately very good). Quest 3 is coming out soon and I am super excited to see how it compares.
* except maybe Pico 4, but that's hard to get in the US
Make me walk on Pandora with VR, maybe I’ll like it. Anything else too close from reality, what’s the point?
- Being able to "walk inside" theatrical musical performances (musicals, concerts) is incredibly amazing. Like blows-you-away amazing
- Being able to "walk inside" traditional movie/TV doesn't work at all. You can't do framing/cuts/editing so it feels like you're awkwardly sitting next to actors who don't acknowledge you and you never know what to look at and you miss an important facial reaction because you were too busy noticing what a beautiful oriental rug you're standing on
You don't realize how important framing/cuts/editing is to the TV/movie experience until they disappear, so it doesn't work at all -- they turn into weird theater plays in a way, which they're not meant to be.
Whereas theatrical plays/musicals/shows are meant for you to observe action all over the stage, so it translates extremely well to VR -- and because you can be on stage, it's immersive like dinner theater and just amazing.
On the other hand, if you're watching a movie on a virtual IMAX-sized screen that still has edges, then it's totally fine. I'm just saying that full VR immersion does not work for movies/TV.
Concerts in VR are a real and big thing already.
Examples:
Fatboy Slim: https://youtu.be/u1ulTKJNj7Y?t=145 (watch for at least 30 seconds)
Notorious BIG: https://themusicuniverse.com/meta-announces-exclusive-notori...
Megan Thee Stallion: https://www.livedesignonline.com/news/bring-thee-hottieverse...
John Gruber and Ben Thompson were both amazed at the basketball footage and one or both of them said they would happily buy a season pass for it.
> While there are few things as magical as your first VR “a-ha”moment
That first moment for me was Cardboard. I have since used Vive and Oculus and they are cool, but I’m not left wanting to come back for more. Maybe the Cardboard experience conveyed the wrong thing to me, that this is a fun one-off type experience and not something that fits into my life in a bigger way. I’m sure some of the tools have, or could have, real world practical applications, and I would use them if needed, but I just don’t want to strap on a headset and be forced to tune out the rest of the world for longer than necessary.
A gimmick of a sort that backfired on real products.
The thing that shouldn't have existed was Google Daydream. It brought no real advantage over Cardboard, yet was a whole new completely incompatible VR platform from Google, incompatible in both direction no less. Why they couldn't just implement the additional features on top of Cardboard I'll never understand.
Ironically, Cardboard is still alive and you can find some apps that still support it (e.g. Youtube). While Daydream is dead and can't even be used on modern phones.
That aside, content was a huge problem for Cardboard and other 3DOF headsets. VR video still looks great on them, but it took years before there ever were any real consumer VR cameras. And a whole lot of time was wasted with VR360-2D content, which looks utterly mediocre in VR, while good looking VR180-3D got very little attention for some reason.
The commercial web is dead.