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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

There are three problems with AVP: cost, cost and cost.

It is priced to be a pack-in with seats of Dassault 3DEXPERIENCE, but Meta's experience has been that the VR consumer is price sensitive which is why they followed up the MQ3 with the cost-reduced MQ3S.

I think Apple is looking at this the way they look at AirPods (something you stick in your ears to modify and augment your hearing) which is good and monitors, which is bad. Apple's always sold a tiny number of monitors with astronomical margins which looked like a good business because they didn't have to invest in product innovation to make them the way they do for the AVP -- and they didn't need software developers to invest in product innovation for their monitors, but the AVP absolutely requires it. And if they aren't shipping enough units, who is going to make software for it?

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On top of the three problems of any AR/VR tech: UX, UX and UX.

I'm honestly not sure if Apple Vision would fare much better if they had a device that costs $100. Like, sure, they'll sell more units that way. But how many of those units would end up collecting dust?

i’m afraid i’ll look back and regret that i didn’t capture 3d memories of parents and grandparents when it was technically feasible because of a few dollars…

Well, there are stereo cameras… The digital ones came and went with 3D TVs though so you have to go to eBay. I am enjoying the stereo cameras I have accumulated though.

This is nice if pricey

https://www.kandaovr.com/qoocam-ego

It eats batteries but you can get a charger and more batteries the way you would have a few mirrorless generations ago.

My trouble is not really having a system to show these to people, red/green anglyohs sometimes work fret but aren’t consistent, there doesn’t seem to be an ‘instagram’ for sharing stereo photos, it ought to be easy to make a WebXR application to show stereograms but I haven’t seen a fully realized one and found texture memory limits are a bitch in the MQ3 so my first attempt to make one got stuck.

I've taken to (tediously) printing stereogram cards for the better 3D photos.

I wrote this to take the .MPO files (a common file format on the earlier commercial digital stereo cameras) and convert them to print-ready stereograms: https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/Stereographer

Canon's got two 3d fish-eye lenses for their RF and RF-s mount cameras. Their software can even produce Apple spatial images. https://global.canon/en/news/2025/20250610.html

Playing Beat Saber on the MQ3 I meet people who are enthusiastic about VR, who share immersive content (pano video shot with https://www.kandaovr.com/qoocam-3) and there are plenty of games in the store... compared to other gaming platforms where I meet a lot of younger people, I find there are a lot of older and retired people using VR, which is not what Meta is looking for for a Facebook replacement.

My take is the MQ3 is pretty good for UX. I regularly use my image sorter and RSS reader in a web browser with a huge number of windows open, bringing my click targets up to the WCAG AAA standards made them very usable in this environment. The Apple Magic Keyboard pairs perfectly, as does a mouse. The controller work great for games and other immersive applications.

I'd say though that my game backlog on the MQ3 is long as is my game backlog in Steam, and there is just a huge amount of competition from flat content so I don't play as many VR games as I could.

Survivorship bias. You don't tend to meet people who played Beat Saber 2 times and put the headset on the shelf forever.

The metrics are brutal, for Quest 3 and for every other headset. Meta worked hard to bring the costs down and improve the UX, and it still isn't enough. They wanted "the next smartphone" and fell so short it's not even funny.

That's because for almost every application, VR is strictly worse than more traditional interface methods.

It's less comfortable, inputs are much less precise, inputs take longer, output is less legible, output has less information... The list goes on.

If the AVP were cheaper, I think you'd have a lot more people willing to use them together. The social features are useless if nobody owns one or wants to use one.

You'd also have more of a critical mass of people with accessories. A used market for lenses and accessories, people with spare batteries about, etc.

Not to mention an app ecosystem. For every person like me lamenting what could be, there are a dozen people with more mainstream desires, like Instagram 3D or Temple Run 3D or whatnot.

Weight too. When it's strapped to your face, heavy isn't 'premium'.

The weight would be fine if it was balanced across the head, instead of all on your face... but that would take away from the 'sleek' marketing shots.

The price would be easily justified if the hardware could also be used as a regular VR headset and hooked up to a flight sim or gaming PC.

That’s worked for awhile. ALVR.

I’ve heard the latency is still a pretty major issue. I’d love to use one for sim racing but the latency complaints make it a non-starter. If that’s changed or anyone is using it for sim racing please let me know.

I haven’t used it for sim racing but I’ve used it for flight sim and never noticed the latency being problematic.

Sim racing has been default better in VR for the last few years IMO if you have decent spec computer that can sustain good frame rates. Especially since the release of the Quest 3 with its really nice lenses (huge "sweet spot"), 110 degree FoV and 25 PPD for 500 bucks. The ability to look into a corner the way you do on an actual track, by turning your head and looking towards the apex etc, is just a complete game changer. I don't think anyone in the sim racing community really feels latency is an issue anymore on modern hardware.

The biggest issues left in VR sim racing are still arguably comfort and weight in longer races, but even that is getting solved now with really compact new headsets like the Big Screen Beyond 2 etc.

Yea, ALVR is interesting, I have yet to try it out. I suspect latency is a real issue though, wish I could try it with DCS before shelling out $3500 : )

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