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Comment by gpapilion | Hacker News Reader

Headsets break any bit of social components from a shared screen. There is something to be said for 2-5 people sitting around and consuming the same content and (almost) the same view simultaneously. Maybe overtime we'll get used to it, and it will seem normal. For example, when the iphone was released, and the folks with iphones would stare at them in public and not talk to anyone. We would give friends a hard time about it, but now were all that person.

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> Headsets break any bit of social components from a shared screen. There is something to be said for 2-5 people sitting around and consuming the same content and (almost) the same view simultaneously.

Correct. This is also why 3D TVs (also requiring goggles) crashed and burned.

3D TV hasn't caught on because it's an expensive gimmick that people don't generally want to pay for. Many sets also compromised on ordinary 2D quality to get 3D working, a particularly poor bargain.

I've been to 3D films with family/friends/dates and there's nothing antisocial about wearing polarized glasses. But for the most part it wasn't a real improvement on just watching a movie. Sometimes the gimmick worked better than others, but always a gimmick. I wouldn't pay for it at home, but the glasses involved have nothing to do with why.

Video games as a single screen per person experience are already a successful market. This does not explain why headsets are different.

I mean most videogames have dropped spit screen multiplayer from their featureset for years. Still a few holdouts I think.. mariocart/marioparty/smashbros I imagine .. though haven't tested all of those on the switch, i know kart at least still has ssmp and of course party.

So that couch co-op/battle situation is already rarer than it used to be, and the games that support it skew younger or are indy (lovers in a dangerous spacetime, etc)

Online multiplayer with each player having their own screen is much more popular these days it seems.

I certainly spent a lot of time playing couch co-op when I was a much younger man (nintendo64/playstation/saturn/xbox era and before .. let's here it for MULE on the c64) but that kind of gameplay seems to be fading with a few exceptions.

I have played some AR boardgame prototypes using the quest 3 and during the pandemic experimented with playing boardgames with friends in tabletop simulator, experimenting a few times with using my vr headset. They are still compelling situations.

In the case of the AR prototype, that was a shared space. Four of us in a room with our own quests but all observing a shared table that contained essentially a boardgame.

In the case of my pandemic online boardgaming, the presence of others is basically experienced the same as any multiplayer game where you might be on voice chat with the other players. VR or not.

I think the AR focus of the vision pro and the quest 3 might change this view you have a bit around many people in a room all with their 'own screen' but able to see 'through it' and put eyes on their opponents physical forms.

> but able to see 'through it' and put eyes on their opponents physical forms.

Perhaps, but that's still putting a huge social distance between everyone, whether they're in the same room or not. It would be little different than a room full of people using their smartphones. You may be physically in the same place, but there's still a wall between everyone nonetheless.

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