Galaxy XR: The first Android XR headset | Hacker News Reader

Galaxy XR: The first Android XR headset

blog.google

184 pointsthelastgallon218 comments

Kind of sad to see here on "hacker news" that 80% of the comments are low effort cheap shots.

The interesting thing here is the core of it, being Android XR and its deep AI integration, especially the spatial awareness. Devices will come and go, but the OS will be the core that stays and grows and evolves over time. I am very curious to know how much of this is all exposed as OS foundations to build on vs a monolithic app built to look like an OS by Google. This has been a large part of Meta's mistake, where the OS is not providing many of these fundamentals and any app you see doing it is mostly re-inventing it themselves or relying on 3rd party tools like Unity to do the heavy lifting.

The really impressive part of Vision Pro is actually how well thought out the OS is underneath it, exposing fundamentals of how 3D computing can work. Especially the part to do with compositing together multiple spatial apps living together in the same shared space and even interacting with each other (eg: one app can emit a lighting effect that will shade the other's rendering).

I am very curious if Google has done this kind of foundational work. Especially if that is designed (as they claim) from the ground up to interface with AI models - eg: a 3D vision language model can reason across everything in your shared space including your pass through reality and respond to it. This would be truly amazing but there's zero technical information I can see at this point to know if Google really built these foundations or not here.

> one app can emit a lighting effect that will shade the other's rendering

I always felt this was such an outrageous burden to developers. Its cute and all but really, who cares? I don't need one desktop window to emit light on another window. Is that really worth having to remake or modify every asset?

That said, all the work they did around laundering click and gaze information for privacy was nice to see.

> I always felt this was such an outrageous burden to developers

but the point is that it's not a burden? You get it for free. Unless you mean having accommodate in your app the fact that someone else's might be "shading" it or similar.

I think it's amazing: you can have a real world light source coloring a virtual object which is then a reflective light source that bounces off to affect rendering of a second app. And you don't have to do any of it, the OS is rendering all of this. It's fully analogous to say, your OS supporting transparency on a 2d window frame such that if I'm looking at one window I can see the one behind it. But in 3d and incorporating real world pass through it is so much more complex.

You need to use their shader and lighting model and yeah, you don't have full control of the lighting at that point.

If you have existing assets its really not trivial at all to port them and get them looking right. Not impossible but not trivial.

If it makes fake things feel real to the user, it’s worth it.

> Devices will come and go, but the OS will be the core that stays and grows and evolves over time.

Say that to my Google Cardboard SDK programs, or the Google VR SDK ones, or Google Daydream ones.

You couldn't have chosen a worse topic on which to dump a generic "ranting about Google abandoning projects is low effort cheap shot", because Google does abandon VR projects (including OSes and APIs, not just devices) every 5 years, almost like clockwork. What I would call "a cheap shot" is to think that this new fancy "OS" will be any different. In fact, I pity the people who still consider jumping on this particular bus _again_.

Why on earth _did_ they abandon cardboard? It was really good for getting VR in the hands of.. well, everybody - and it worked quite well, too (for a bit of cardboard).

If they stuck to what they built originally they would be dominating this segment right now.

People tried Cardboard once and stopped using it.

Cardboard was great, and except a lack of software there were no problems about it in my opinion. I remember playing flight simulator on google earth and thinking how much potential this had. I have a meta quest 2 now and it is still not clear to me whether it is really that much better than cardboard.

I think the lack of software that really took advantage of the possibilities and cared about the limitations — that wasn't simply a normal smartphone app with a bad UX because the display was now on your face — is the main reason Cardboard disappeared.

It's like: imagine if you just run the original DOOM in DOSBox on a phone and try to play it with the on-screen keyboard — that will obviously suck. Less obviously, even something as simple as going from a NES controller to an XBox controller can radically change experiences. You have to really consider what the right way is to use a system, and instead of doing that a lot of companies clearly go for existing zeitgeist in design language. (From memory as I heard it well before GenAI, real UX experts react to such UI designs in much the same way that artists react to Stable Diffusion).

Same goes for most VR stuff: There's some good games, but selling it as that means headsets have to be priced as consoles. That excludes the Android XR, and absolutely excludes the Apple Vision Pro.

People still use it. VR "adult content" is still a thing.

I admit that that's the only use case in which it seems to have stuck around that I'm aware of.

But if that industry is good enough for OpenAI, maybe there's a there there?

Cardboard was what got me interested in the whole area so it had it's value. But I think for about 90% of people it had negative value because it presented such a poor experience to the general user. To this day I ask people if they'd like to try my VR headset and they will say "no I tried that already, I know what it's like". Most of the time they mean cardboard and it bears almost no resemblance to the modern day experience. But 10 years later the impression still sticks.

I got my wife of all people to try a demo app on the MQ3 where cracks appear in your walls and your room gets invaded by aliens and you have to shoot them with the bop gun. She liked it.

But no way am I going to get her to sit through a cat simulator or Asgard's Wrath 2. She didn't like Beat Saber at all.

I hear you, but I wouldn't put the blame on Cardboard.

The reason these people haven't tried anything else since Cardboard is because VR is still clumsy, expensive, of limited use and/or vomit inducing. I say that as my headset is still in active use after 5 years of owning it. In many respects I think nothing better than Cardboard has yet came out at this point for the ultra casual user.

Otherwise people were willing to give the Vision Pro a try because it was launched with much fanfare with a huge press focus, and I'd expect the Meta glasses to also have interest from people getting to try it.

These kind of big mainstream targeted events need to happen more often and stick in the news for people's perception of XR to move on.

The problem is not that there's not good experiences now, it's that the lingering bad aftertaste of the bad tracking and overly rough experiences (eg rollercoaster) causes. Nausea is a powerful influence and can really contaminate an experience and cause a really negative lingering association. This is also why we advise people to stop immediately when they feel it to get their VR legs. If they go too long the barrier to put the headset back on is too great.

But these days VR tracking is pretty great so it only happens to people who are seriously sensitive now. Especially when teleport motion is used.

There's VR and then there's VR, Cardboard was limited to 3DoF head tracking with a single button for input, which is not even remotely comparable to what we think of as VR today. Full 6DoF for head and hands has been table stakes for a long time, that's what you need to make something like Beat Saber or HL:Alyx work.

Cardboard and Project Tango. They had the Quest - both low-end and high-end - before even Facebook did, let alone Apple, and ceded it for no reason. In fact, they canceled Tango FOR Cardboard, meaning that, instead of the world knowing Google for having the most advanced XR platform, they were known for having the cheapest one (albeit also the most accessible).

As a VR enthusiast, cardboard was terrible for adoption.

Every time id demo real VR people would be like "oh yeah those rollercoaster videos that make you sick". Because cardboard was shitty 3DoF tracking that causes nausea, was used only for non-interactive experiences and was generally really low quality. It did more to hurt VR adoption than promote it.

Which basically means they worked on it, failed, and kept trying. Glasses too.

It's possible for sure that Google will abandon this and I absolutely recommend anybody considering buying in do so only on the value they can see and realise immediately, not on any future promise.

But none of that takes away from the intellectually interesting part of this : what is new here, what possibilities does it open up? What implications does it have?

The main reason it's less likely this gets abandoned is because the spotlight in the the AI race is quickly moving to how much contextual information you can pour in about the user's ambient environment so that AI can actually do or say something useful for the user. That pretty much means glasses, and glasses mean you need a spatial computing OS to drive the underpinnings that the whole thing can operate on. Right now the technology for true AR glasses is still 2+ years out so the temporary placeholder for all that functionality is these larger headsets. But line of sight to all the pieces falling into place is there, so all the players are effectively in a long game where they are building up their ecosystems to be ready for the main game when it does arrive.

> The main reason it's less likely this gets abandoned is because the spotlight in the AI race [...]

So we're assuming that it won't get killed in 5 years because it's nicely tied to the current bubble ?

> Kind of sad to see here on "hacker news" that 80% of the comments are low effort cheap shots

It's moreso that Google has used up all of its Goodwill a long time ago for that 80%, especially in the vr field.

The only people that will put investment into this are the 20% who don't remember every other time they've done the same thing.

If the Apple Vision Pro/Galaxy XR were viable than the MQ3 would be viable too, that is, the MQ3 does most of what the those do and it does more because it has game controllers and has decent applications and games, particularly fitness games. I don't think most people will pay a lot for "high definition" so getting people to pay almost 10x as much for something that's maybe 2x better is a hard sell.

I bought an MQ3 because I was curious about AVP and thought, "Hey I could get a six month head start on understanding XR application development" and came to enjoy the platform.

My complaint about the MQ3 as a software developer is that it has just 8 GB of RAM. With an AAA budget you can fit an AAA game into it, but it is a challenge to "share an experience with another VR user" based on photographic content and glTF models and whether you use Horizon Worlds or your own web site using

https://aframe.io/

and WebVR. It is straightforward to view that kind of content on a PCVR browser but to get it to work reliably on the Quest you have to be systematic about resource sizes.

The software innovation is real but it builds on the past. The MQ3 is basically an Android tablet you wear on your face. AVP is a Macbook Pro you wear on your face, etc. If you can use Unity Framework to make flat games you can use Unity Framework to make XR games.

In the 1990s I was a VRML enthusiast and got laughed at by all sorts of people who would say "So you're going to wheel down the aisles of the shopping center and put things in your cart?" Today we know that you can use a 2-d app store with VR controllers and it's great, it's great to use any web application which meets the WCAG AAA standard. You can just sideload phone and tablet applications into the MQ3 even system-y things like Tailscale and it frequently "just works".

I think Apple has thought through the "run 2d apps in a 3d space" a bit better than Meta did but the late rollout of controllers let MQ3 keep the lead in immersive apps. One of the titles that is packed in with the Galaxy XR is NFL PRO ERA which sent tingles up my spine on the MQ3 when I walked into a frickin' NFL stadium under the lights as the frickin' quarterback -- it was amazing.

That kind of hardware can deliver that kind of experience and Apple will have to catch up. Panographic photographic experiences can also be amazing in VR and Samsung is promising to deliver from Google and that's another selling point, but many MQ3 and AVP viewers now are watching and sharing panographic video on Youtube now.

Is this the LLM hallucinating or you? Google has a long history of abandoning things. Samsung isn’t doing themselves any favors by pricing this at $1799usd. This is a #metoo product. Nothing more. Where is the killer experience that Apple headset / Samsung headset / Meta headset provides? Being social? Watching a movie? c’mon! They have nothing. Now, if AI gets to the point where you can stream worlds, imagine movies, or paint the universe than maybe we might have something down the road but today - It’s about as useful as the Apple Vision which isn’t very useful.

PiMax and others at least know their lane. Simulation. These phone makers and social media companies aren’t vested in it other than to sell you ads to your eyeballs.

Porn. Porn is the killer app. You’ll see.

At the risk of getting way too personal for HN, my wife and I couldn’t have sex for a while recently due to medical reasons. For my own sanity, I decided to look at what VR porn was available as I hadn’t checked it out since whenever the Quest 2 was released.

Woof. I think OnlyFans has taken away all of the good looking porn actresses (performers?) away from the large producers. Those large producers are the only ones that can make VR porn - or rather, I’m sure it’s possible for OnlyFans types to but probably not worth it.

Anyways, I’m not so sure about your statement. VR is not the right environment to “enjoy” a 4/10 on a good day.

They were obviously joking

> The interesting thing here is the core of it, being Android XR and its deep AI integration

I'm not interested in the OS or "AI" at all. What I really want to know is if I can connect this to a regular PC/handheld via USB-C and use the headset as a primary/secondary display, and if so, is it good enough for gaming? The biggest issue with all these handheld gaming devices flooding the market is that the screen is tiny and most PC games aren't optimised for such a screen - but having a headset with a virtual big screen display like this could solve that problem. Unfortunately Samsung don't make this clear at all on the linked page.

>Especially the part to do with compositing together multiple spatial apps living together in the same shared space and even interacting with each other (eg: one app can emit a lighting effect that will shade the other's rendering).

This is the killer app, but where do you see that capability?

Here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=LzZ2j9CAcww

Oh, right. That eg is more of an ie, though. Almost nothing Apple or other VisionOS developers have showcased has taken advantage of this capability. Not even, "If I throw one virtual app at another virtual app, they bounce off each other." I've seen some experiments, but nothing in production. Everyone seems to be terrified of making spatial apps that take advantage of the fact that they "live" in a "space" that we can move our bodies through.

I wonder what the preferred ecosystem for VR will end up being.

Seems like there are now ~4 places to buy content (Oculus, Steam, Google Play, Apple App Store).

If you buy on Steam, your catalog is reasonably portable over time - you can buy another vendor's headset and still access your catalog. The cost is that you have to bring a separate device with you to host the catalog (unless/until the rumored Steam Frame comes out).

Oculus and Play are both based on Android. I suspect there will be e.g. guides on Reddit to sideload one vendor's catalog onto the other vendor's device.

I can imagine a world where someone prefers to buy content in one of these stores, to have everything in one place for portability to future devices. You're already seeing this in computer gaming with Steam (and Epic, Xbox, etc.).

They're really not that interchangeable. They're targeting different hardware with different performance ratings and control schemes.

Sure you can probably stream PC VR from steam to most of these but it's not the same as on device.

> but it's not the same as on device.

It mostly is if your local wifi doesn't suck. I honestly can't tell the difference in most cases.

I'm curious to see how true that is.

Will the Walkabout Mini Golf deployed to Play be meaningfully different than the one from Oculus, or will they include controller support for both ecosystems and ship a single APK to any storefront that will take it?

I believe that it comes down to whether Unity allows merging Horizon OS and Android XR support into a single Android build. Right now, you can only have exactly one VR plug-in active on a Unity build target IIRC.

I feel like Steam is the only legitimate option of the 4, the rest are walled gardens.

I would have been very excited about this Galaxy XR development a year ago but today I don't care to even scroll down the page. Google's recent Android bullshit(walled garden, killing roms) makes this a non-starter.

In fact I wonder if Android/Galaxy XR is secretly responsible for these horrible changes to stock android. No chance of a XR/real life adblocker ever becoming a thing if you can't install your own software and/or the largest advertiser in the world needs to OK it's existence.

I think we have PC gaming and mobile gaming as too relatively independent markets with only occasional overlap, and that's probably the way VR's going to go. Someone is going to win the mobile VR market (probably Meta given their significant head start and lead, unless the Occulus lineup gets sacrificed at the altar of AI), and the Steam VR ecosystem is going to continue to be a thing.

I actually think the Steam VR ecosystem is the most durable looking of the ecosystems at the moment with its few medium size players. The other 3 all have the risk that their parent companies could get bored and do something else, and I mean it's made some money, but not the amount of money that is guaranteed to keep any of them interested.

Feels like a Steam Market for Android/iOS is an inevitability.

The Meta Quest 3 has inside-out tracking and no cables so it has a lot of appeal for experiences where you walk around the room, particularly fitness games. I can view complex virtual worlds from my PC with the link cable and it is is practical to carefully move around the living room if I move the furniture but then I have to play in the living room.

Steam is the only future proof option at this point, yet it can't be the way forward except:

- A - if we get crazy low client/server latency between the headset and a remote server with the game running. Basically Google Stadia but 100x more reliable while higher bandwidth.

- B - Steam comes to VR headsets as a native store running locally on the MQ or Vision Pro for instance.

- B' - we get a competitive headset with an open source OS, or a VR Steam Deck where Steam provides local native apps.

I'm not holding my breath on any of these options. But still hope.

Perhaps XR should suck Google and Samsung's money as the next walled garden, to get smacked down by some internation court as uncompetitive and forced to open up to third party stores and apps. But that would also take around a decade ?

There's also PlayStation VR.

Isn't it a walking dead at this point ?

https://www.androidcentral.com/gaming/virtual-reality/sony-n...

I really wish they pushed for a 120 hz refresh rate instead of 90. IMO, this makes a huge difference for the immersion. I'm guessing that they didn't want to have stutters if their chip can't handle the higher FPS, but the refreshed Vision Pro will have a significant advantage there.

For 60hz video content at least I recommend AI interpolating to 180hz, you can usually only do an integer multiple if not doing pure motion vector interpolation, and then dropping or merging every other frame to bring it to 90hz. Now that youtube is doing 3d conversion they should also add this in, playing back 60hz video at 72hz or 90hz is very juddery. Also hopefully the youtube app or browser with fullscreened video will switch to 90hz when playing 30hz content, but to save battery life they may not.

Sadly the weakest part of it is the old Qualcomm chip in it. It can just manage to render the 4k displays but it's barely capable of it even at 72 hz.

Ah, that's interesting. Are there any benchmarks of the Qualcomm chip versus the Vision Pro?

I think it's typically said to be about half as powerful as the M2 was. So far far less than the M5. I'm honestly quite surprised at what they seem to be able to get out of it on the Galaxy XR. I guess the direct partnership with Qualcomm probably means it's optimised like crazy. But even still, just rendering at 4K at all is impressive for that chip.

It's interesting because this is exactly right in that this chipset can't handle these high resolutions that well. The Play For Dream VR headset team went into this a bit and they're using similar hardware.

They seem to be using 72 rather than 90:

> Refresh rates: 60Hz, 72Hz (Default), 90Hz (Up to, upon service request)

https://news.samsung.com/global/introducing-galaxy-xr-openin...

But it's unclear what "service request" is supposed to mean.

For me that makes no difference at all tbh. VR veteran here though.

Samsung's product pages for the Galaxy XR itself:

* https://www.samsung.com/us/xr/galaxy-xr/galaxy-xr/

* https://www.samsung.com/us/business/xr/galaxy-xr/galaxy-xr/

Thanks! we'll add those links to the toptext as well.

> Galaxy XR is available starting today for $1799 or $149/month. It includes:

> 12 months of Google AI Pro, YouTube Premium, and Google Play Pass.

Not a bad deal for those who pay for those services.

What does Apple bundles with their Vision Pro for $3500?

I don’t think either sound like a good deal to be honest

I thought the same. They're throwing in a ton of extras to try to sweeten the deal. Those ones you listed are probably $50/mo in total. Plus it says something about a bunch of sports subscriptions too, which are probably very pricey.

(also they want you hooked on those services so they can rebill you after 12 months)

I guess that's what, ~$600? But the odds of using all that on the same account and caring about the savings seems pretty niche.

it also wins in weight a display resolution over Vision Pro. for those who care

> What does Apple bundles with their Vision Pro for $3500?

Support for over 5 years, unlike google who'll kill this in around half that long?

3 months of Apple One I believe? (iCloud+, Apple TV, Apple Music, Arcade, Fitness+ and News+)

> What does Apple bundles with their Vision Pro for $3500?

That the device you strap to your face isn't tracking your personal data.

I think the most defining factor of it is that you have the play store right there and can just run any normal android app too.

I even installed Termux via F-Droid today, and have a bluetooth keyboard with touchpad connected to it.

Sadly the whole open ecosystem is in grave doubt moving forward since Google announced they are shutting down side loading :-(

That's something I am worrying about too

The Vision Pro has the equivalent of this as well. 20% of the apps I run in it are “flatland” to use the snow crash term.

I can absolutely see that, yes

Not everything needs to be XR/VR/AR to be useful.

I feel like this tech always misses real life usecases. I mean yes sure we do watch movies... But are you really going to sit in the headset for 2 hours straight. It's physically... Biologically(?) Uncomfortable.

Then when they say - explore Google Maps - ok. Fun. But for what? 10 minutes? How prominent is that need/activity in our life?

All usecases that Apple and now Google/Samsung showcase are "imaginary", wishful thinking usecases. They don't stick. They are more like "party-tricks" than something that can integrate into our lives and fill in a certain gap.

The only thing people really do for extended periods of time in these headsets is play gorilla tag, highly skewed towards young kids.

That or VRChat.

Exercise works well enough too. If shadow boxing in a stinky gym for 2h is grating to you, doing it in VR will have a better chance of success in the long run.

I’ve been in XR for a decade and there’s a big gap between people that make the headsets and those that use them. The actual use cases are too niche for the big companies to care long term so they have to invent narratives that don’t manifest. IMO, Valve focusing a headset in the best possible gaming experience is the only one well positioned for an honest play in the space.

The use-case is porn.

It's often frowned upon but yes. Porn is a very strong usecase where VR offers substantial improvement over existing tech. If it wasn't such a taboo these things would be flying off the shelves. It really feels like you are there especially when you get a toy that can synchronise to the video.

Flight and racing sims are another one but they are obviously a lot more niche.

! Not the first time that industry pushed the technology. And I can see how this could work.

It's quite obvious that these devices are a prototype for some eventual immersive AR glasses. Sure, they are currently bulky and heavy and have poor battery life and block your face. But these companies hope to eventually iterate all of that away.

This is the groundwork. But I don't know if they have a larger vision (pun intended) other than "oh shit, the smartphone industry has been conquered and now sees diminishing returns, we need something else to generate revenue".

That's actually true. You are absolutely right. Computers used to be a size of a bedroom. So yeah, this is not the end game at all.

I would think that the most ultimate end state would be (sci-fi mode ON) some kind of implants, retina projections... It's ridiculous to say this things, but best form factor is to get the value without any form:)

> But are you really going to sit in the headset for 2 hours straight. It's physically... Biologically(?) Uncomfortable.

TBF sitting still in a dark room fixating in the same direction for 2 hours straight is also uncomfortable. Either the movie captures your attention and you bear with it, or you take breaks.

Keeping an headset on for hours is fine if you fit it properly (get used to it), and for the movie use case in particular you don't need to be sitting, which can make it way more comfortable that the traditional experience.

Now it's clearly for people who lust for something they don't have right now. If you're 100% happy with doing everything on your phone for instance, it won't be for you. Same way you wouldn't even care for a laptop or desktop computer I guess.

Fair enough. Though standing and watching a move is also possible. But also in VR/AR you can't have a movie night with a group of people. Though I'm not sure such things even happen anymore (movie nights with friends).

I do feel a certain level of "bigger" commitment when you are in VR/AR. The content follows you. The current way of consuming content is a bit more transactional and has clear boundaries. You want to see a reel - you got to do physical activity (pick up the phone, unlock, launch an app, scroll.. Etc.).

When content "follows you", delivered to you directly as any moment in time - I just have this itchy feeling that we become more dedicated to the consumption of that content. It's an ads dream world!

Yes.

Thinking of it in levels of commitment sounds right to me, and IMHO most people will want the minimum commitment. The phone thing was something I've been thinking about a lot as we're getting better folding phones.

For instance less and less people care to look at photos on other supports, printing or checking them on a bigger screens now requires some dedication or special motivation. In that regard the Vision Pro's 3D photos feature makes for nice demos, but the number of people that will see it as something missing in their lives right now must be ridiculously low.

> It's an ads dream world!

Nah, they don't need that. My bank statements now have ads inserted between some of the lines, inside the app. Not checking my statements isn't an option and the shitty website won't save me, so I'm already cooked.

My wife and I have actually spent a good deal of time in a couple of street view type apps for the Quest, in multiplayer. It’s fun to “go back” to places we’ve vacationed and try to trace our steps. It’d be better if street view cameras captured stereoscopic 3d, though.

Hmm... You have a point! I might have judged it too hastily.

Nostalgia is a strong emotion. It sells.

1.8k$ that is roughly 10x the amount I paid for my XReal Air 2. Does watching movies. Does work as a display using Android desktop mode and the phone as an air mouse [0] (worked best for me).

Wonder what I get for the other 1.6k, that makes me want it...

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.htl.agmous...

The XReals are just screens so no tracking and lower resolution at 1080 vs 4k. They're completely different products.

It is clear to me that it is different tech. However, I am not referring to the tech, but rather those applications they promoting. IMHO, there needs to be a better case for those features. I acknowledge that people want 4k in other places, so I guess it is partially only me. But particularly for the real AR I somehow doubt that resolution is the problem.

Resolution is extremely important for VR and trying to display screens and text. The best screen you can possibly reproduce is the same resolution as the screens in the eyes and takes up the whole FOV so for anything further back than that the headset can only approximate what the screen would look like (down to the point of diminishing returns where the pixels are smaller than your eye can resolve).

The Xreal One does do tracking. 3DoF by default and 6DoF with the optional camera.

$750 and it's one RGB only camera not IR so it doesn't work great from the reviews I'm seeing with supposedly anchored screens drifting pretty badly in normal indoor lighting.

Double the resolution, integrated cpu and gpu, +3 DoF

> Double the resolution

and 4x the pixels

The xreal are great and imo do 90% of what I want to do with AR

The software ecosystem and wireless are the things lacking

This is roughly 100x better of a screen so that pricing tracks.

(I have Xreals and they're a fun toy, but AVP and this are what the average person thinks of when they think of a virtual screen, not the peephole xreals offer.

But what AR can you do with them? I mean, what AR content can you get nowadays? Labeling the stuff around you? Pedestrian or bike navigation (not full screen display but hints)? Tourist information? Any of this integrates with a sibling app for extra info on the connected phone? I'm asking all this because for games I think VR is much better, and trying to understand the current practical value of customer AR.

I saw someone painting on a real window with a digital image projected onto it with their Apple Vision Pro kinda like a stencil. There are similar use cases like that.

Xreal is rather VR (it is nice to see what is around you still). However, where are the actual AR apps that make sense? Also who runs around with a Vision Pro. Then there is the camera issue. If things have not changed, you will not be welcomed in Europe wearing a camera rig (just read Steve Mann's accounts on that).

The good thing about the Xreal One is that the camera is optional and you can remove it. So you can only use it when you have a private space and need 6DoF.

Having used XReals and Vision Pro (which I assume will be very similar), they're not even in the same ballpark for experience for movies and for desktop. XReals feel like a crappy monitor strapped to your face that bounces with your pulse, tilts, etc and not enough resolution to be good for coding. Vision Pro feels like you're in both the virtual world and real world (plus the ultra wide Mac Virtual Desktop is amazing). I tried to dev on XReal and quickly gave up. Vision Pro I've been using consistently for over a year. Is it worth it? That's personal preference, but I think so.

When do you use it? When you're on the go, like on a plane? Or even at home, or in an office? Mostly for coding? Can you use it all day long?

I don't think the tech is good enough for me personally but I'm hoping we get there in a few years.

I’m not who you were responding to, but I use it on the plane, at home, mostly for coding but also for entertainment as well. I probably average about 6 to 8 hours a day in the headset. I’ve used a variety of headsets in the past, starting way back with the DK2 for Oculus, and the AVP is the first I felt was truly capable of replacing my monitors.

Thanks for sharing. Why at home? Is it simply your main setup, so you got rid of external displays thanks to it? I'd have thought that in a situation where you can easily use regular displays, these were still preferable.

I'm surprised that you find it comfortable enough for 6+ hours, especially since you probably need to keep it plugged in. I thought the consensus was that for most users it was hard to keep them on even for just a whole movie.

I'm also using it at home and the office or coworking spaces. Having the giant ultra wide screen all the time is great, and then I usually break out a handful of apps to the side (calendar, Slack, etc) and keep my desktop to almost entirely coding and sometimes browsing (sometimes use the VisionOS Safari instead). I like the setup and it's something I struggle to get with traditional monitors. Add widgets that persist their location has been awesome too.

It's definitely comfortable enough, though I got a different strap. I'm plugged in most of the time, and at home I'll wear it when I get up to pee/grab coffee.

The workspace feature seems like the biggest differentiator between this and the Apple Vision Pro. Full multi window display, with what seems to be desktop app functionality? That's almost tempting.

This looks to be somewhere between a Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro, with a price point to match. Is that correct?

It is aiming to be much closer to the Vision Pro. Whist it is nearly half the price, it is probably still twice the price where that would make much difference. The market that _needs_ this is tiny/nonexistent; if you are happy to drop $1,800 to try a device that needs a lot more product and software work :shrug: the should be some second hand Vision Pros very close to this. (Obviously, other Apple/Android deciders not withstanding).

> It is aiming to be much closer to the Vision Pro

Its going to need some really good optics for that.

It is starting with significantly higher resolution displays, harder to know about the rest of the path till we see more reviews.

Higher resolution displays than the Apple Vision Pro at half the price, though the compute of XR2 Gen2+ is probably weaker

Higher vertical resolution but lower horizontal. It's about the same.

> between a Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro

The display, weight, fit, and openness seem better than the Apple Vision Pro. The Apple Vision Pro is still the best choice if you want a screen that shows your eyes on the outside some of the time.

It's interesting that there are essentially no pictures of the actual device anywhere on this page (except for a lone image, from the back of a user's head, where all you can see is the strap and the edge of the front).

When you click through its front and center but I also found it odd.

Aha, I see now that they're trying hard to hide the battery pack wire. Almost all the shorts are showing the right side of the device to hide the custom battery jack.

I think this is really cool, and the more competition and devices in this space the better. But absolutely no way I will spend that much money for a Google product, that they'll probably kill off in less than a year.

It's a Samsung product though

Yeah but it's built around the Android XR platform, a Google product. If Google kills XR then the hardware won't be much use.

That doesn't make it a Google product.

I wonder if Samsung has secured promises of commitment. IIRC they required Google to commit to improving Android's support for tablets before committing to devices like the Z Fold.

I'm not really seeing how re-emphasizing Google's involvement implies a reduced chance of abandonment. Google's kinda famous for that.

Yeah, fair point, although it's this Android XR thing I don't trust will live a year.

Even if it did, to me Samsung + Google is just a no go:

Samsung: Bloated with apps I don't want, can't uninstall but probably won't be killed off.

Google: Lean, not too much bloat, but can't trust it to exist more than a year.

Google loves to make impactful changes for street creds, hardware manufacturers prefer not to support unsold products. The end result is the same.

Samsung has already partnered with Microsoft in the past to make WMR headsets, and that did not prevent Windows 11 from dropping support for the device. The very same could happen to a Android-based headset.

And additionally, Samsung never released their Odyssey VR (or it's successor) worldwide, which in my opinion was the reason WMR failed as it was the best of the WMR headsets at the time of their release (of course the HP Reverb was better, but it came out much later).

Exactly my first thought. "One year of support at best". It's sad that it's become a meme. I remember when they were the Good Guys...sigh.

One thing I don't see mentioned either in the blog or in the comments here is the camera/sensor system. It's such a necessary part of the magic, for these things to work! It's such a combined effort of sensors, processing power, and software!

Reminder that Vision Pro has a dedicated R1 chip, with a blistering 256GB/s memory (with the actual cpu "only" having 153GB/s)! That's as much as the quad-channel memory LPDDR5x Strix Halo!

It'll be interesting to see how Samsung & then others fair at this, and over time to see how much Google, Qualcomm or other platform providers help versus leave device makers to fend for themselves at sensor fusion and other ultra realtime tasks here. Whether the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 here can do enough, and whether the software can make decent use of that hardware is so TBD for this new ecosystem. It's not super super clear who is leading the charge to make it all slick and smooth. My default assumption is Qualcomm likely holds a big chunk of the stack, and sole-proprietorship of the stack like that seems like a real threat to long-term viability of XR as a technology: like the Valve Steam Deck so strongly exhibited, it's only through intense cross-stack ownership and close collaboration (in the Linux kernel in this case) that we see genuinely good products emerge.

Sensors, from Samsung's specs page:

  Two High-resolution Pass-through cameras
  Six World-facing tracking cameras
  Four Eye-tracking Cameras
  Five Inertial Measurement Units(IMUs) [commentary: whoaaa, thats a lot]
  One Depth sensor
  One Flicker sensor

As an aside, this sort of makes me want a device that just does eye tracking. That there are four eye tracking cameras here seems wild! I've mostly seem some pretty chill examples of webcam based tracking; it'd be neat to see what kind of user interface we could build if we really could see where people are looking.

Also maybe worth reviewing what Android ARCore offers, as this defines so much of what we get here. I'd love to see more depth-based capture systems about in general: not just on the XR displays but on regular devices too! To build a better library of depth-having media. Apple's had LiDAR since iPhone 12 Pro (2020)! There's some ToF on Android phones but close to zero lidar. We also see tons of big fancy dual-sensor XR cameras out there, but AFAIK nothing for phones! Just adding a second stereoscoping camera on the back of phones would be so obvious, & do so much to help the XR world! It feels like XR products are being left to stand all on their own with no help from the rest of the mobile device ecosystem, and it feels so obvious & unworkable.

Technical specifications here: https://news.samsung.com/global/introducing-galaxy-xr-openin...

It seems the battery is external, like in the Apple Vision Pro, but it's not clear. The display (OLED) resolution is also the same.

The biggest part could be the controllers being first party and marketed as part of the experience from the start.

Games targeting the system won't be stuck in Apple Tv/Vision Pro conundrum of having no clear target hardware or have to ask the user to go buy a controller from another platform they might have never heard of before.

It's interesting that Samsung's launching this, even though the Vision Pro hasn't been setting any sales records. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the chasing-Apple department at Samsung... surely they'd have the business process to stop projects when the Apple target isn't successful.

Although developers may be hesitant to embrace this out of fear of Google eventually killing it off, an upshot is that if you develop an XR app with Unity (and its XR Interaction Toolkit library), it ends up being quite portable across different XR devices / operating systems (e.g. Meta Quest, Pico VR, HTC Vive).

Is this the same Unity that tried to mess everyone around a while ago with stupid licensing changes?

Damn, the older I get the more it seems that every company is untrustworthy.

Yes but unreal is just as good an option.

While on the topic, I'm looking for some AR / VR platform to help with my child (11 yo) severe flight anxiety.

Does anyone have any recommendations on the matter ? would be super helpful as we have a flight coming soon (2 months) and I can already see her anxiety levels rising.

I wonder if there will be a Pixel branded headset next year?

Half the price, lighter, and a more open eco system?

These are definitely all positives, but I'm still waiting to see the Steam Frame.

I'm not falling for that again. Google will abandon and "sunset" Android XR in 2027 and this device will be bricked.

"Apps from top streaming services like Crunchyroll, HBO Max, Peacock, and more"

Is there a fight between Google and Netflix?

Also USD 1800 per headset ... wow.

Netflix is a launch partner.

https://threads.com/@techwitheugene/post/DQGFd5jiopP

Has anyone kicked the tires on the software stack? How is the dev experience for building an AR/Passthrough app?

The promise is "it's just OpenXR on Android" but I wasn't granted access to a dev kit so I have no idea.

They've been extremely tight with access to the ecosystem thus far, I think because they were building for the release of this product.

So, you won't get any real answers unfortunately.

Anyone watched last evening's live event?

The use cases they showed are just as stupid as those shown in Apple's event over two years ago.

Microsoft dropped the Hololens and it was in this price range with a much better product. So I have a feeling this will be a google glass type item

I personally used a HoloLens, it was absolutely not a better product. Interesting for the time, but wow was the fov small, and the uses limited.

I did like the association of using it for lego/ikea/manufacturer instructions for putting things together though. I haven't seen that use case marketed much.

I'm wondering why companies are still trying to sell VR headsets. History clearly speaks: bulky head-mounted devices have all epically failed.

The investors yearn for VR

There's enough of a market for them to exist these days. The issue is that companies want to treat VR headsets as if they're in the same category as phones or even tablets, when really, they're closer to the same category as, say, racing rigs or other highly hobby-specific products.

Exactly this. You can build and ship headsets and make a profit if you're not also running a moonshot R&D division off the same balance sheet.

"Failed" for some imagined mass market use case but doing very well in lots of healthy niches.

Maybe the technology is not quite there but it’s hard not to see AR/VR occupying a central role in computing in the future.

I think it’s pretty foolish for a large company who hopes to own computing to not invest in this areas.

Oof, a little late to this bandwagon. Basically every player in this industry is dealing with weak/declining sales.

They’re not stupid. They know this won’t sell many items, they don’t expect it to. This is what you’d call a “market signal” product. It markets them as an innovative company, with their fingers in a little bit of every pie, and reminds everyone that they exist and make cool things. It’s valuable both for your company image and for your internal experimental development to do this sort of thing now and again.

It would be a market signal product if this was 2017.

2012 Google Glasses were already a market signal. (ouch, to think Apple is a decade late here).

Galaxy XR are again a signal. Also serves to keep VR people employed.

This just means that Samsung/Google and Apple both profoundly misunderstand the market.

Meta Ray-Bans are a successful product that has a clear understanding of use case and effectively delivers a normal product with appealing aesthetics. Google glass could have led to that much earlier but the product looked like headgear for braces and the product concept was abandoned prematurely.

Galaxy XR is a late response to Vision Pro which itself is a late response to Meta Quest/Steam VR devices. The HTC Vive and Valve Index were the market signals, but that market signal has already proven to be something of a false one by the time Apple and Google got around to playing in the space.

There is really no market for general purpose computing VR devices. You are either gaming (niche), watching movies alone (niche again, rich but lonely Vision Pro users), or you’re taking POV pictures/video and doing light voice assistant/AI type tasks (Meta Ray-Bans, which are broadly appealing and even function as regular glasses for basically the same price as regular glasses).

Unsurprisingly, the only true hit with growing sales out of the use cases is the Meta Ray-Bans.

Let’s not forget that even the best headsets like Vision Pro are useless for a large chunk of people who get motion sick from them.

The successful product concept is the Meta Ray-Bans, and it’s crazy to me that they have zero competition especially from Apple who is all over customizable fashion wearables with the Apple Watch. The Vision Pro and Galaxy XR should have been cancelled.

> The successful product concept is the Meta Ray-Bans, and it’s crazy to me that they have zero competition especially from Apple

This is my pure speculation, but it seems like for a product like this there is no ideal path for Apple. Two scenarios (there may be more):

* Make it an evolutionary experience, mostly regarding the apps. It's like how the iPad and iWatch related to the iPhone. Both projects were successful for many reasons, but having thousands of apps continue working and adding new value was definitely one of them. But in this case, Apple needs to invent these new values, which is not so easy. For example, a visual notification device is one of the use cases (like now you get notifications directly to your eyes from dozens of existing apps), but this use case is not big enough to be an anchor.

* Make it a revolutionary device, like the iPhone was. So mostly new use cases, apps, SDK, etc. But this requires time, resources, and Jobs's skills to make it work. And what's interesting, many of the potential "revolutionary" use cases are definitely not for everyone, which would make this project less appealing for Apple. For example, I can imagine a digital/AI assistant recording/decoding everything around you and working as your second brain/memory device. I'm sure Stephen Wolfram will be one of the first users of such a device (see his own description of his everyday life [1]), but I'm not sure there will be millions of such users.

According to some leaks and hints, probably the second path is currently underway at Apple. But it needs time for both the hardware and software parts. Maybe even more time for the software.

[1] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-prod...

We gotta stop with the Steve Jobs cult. It doesn’t require Jobs’ skills. It requires a company with good management that knows how to determine product vision.

I’m not even asking for Apple to be “revolutionary,” I really think they just need to sit down and map out a buyer persona and take the time to understand who is buying their new product and why.

They obviously didn’t do that with the Vision Pro, they chased technology for technology’s sake out of fear that a new competitor might get their own App Store.

Well now you’re just being obtuse, nothing like this existed in 2017. VR sure, not AR.

Besides, something can be a market signal without being brand new tech. It’s like you brushed aside my points with nothing but a smirk.

This makes me miss Google Cardboard and Daydream.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Daydream

Cardboard still exists. Daydream was shelved. I might boot up my Lenovo Mirage to see if it still has any functionality that works. (I bought and never finished Virtual Virtual Reality which is actually well regarded)

I miss Cardboard too. That little magnet "button" was one of the most creative ways to create an input method I've ever seen.

This is going to be sick to buy for almost nothing in like a year when it inevitably gets discontinued.

I realize this is a self-fulfilling prophecy, but how can anyone justify buying this when Google notoriously kills off projects? My money says this goes the way of the Pixel tablet.

If Apple couldn't make it work, does Google really think they can? This should be headlining an event, not relegated to a blog post.

this was an event https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITXJquX9FqM

Thank you, I stand corrected on there being an event.

Comments are disabled. Were there any utter flubs like meta's AI cooking demo?

This is really just a hacker news/inside tech meme. Look at half the comments on this submission, they're just low effort "lol Google kills off products" statements. Random people on the street would have no idea what you're talking about, because they use chrome, android, Google search, discover, Gmail, and Google maps.

I think Google just has a habit of making products that excite techies but then prove unsustainable for a wider audience (reader being the prime example). I think them trying that (and then failing) is better for everyone than them simply not even trying, which is what some other major tech players do(Apple)

If people actually want to use this product and it is selling well and there are a lot of android XR users, then it's unlikely that Google will kill it. If it doesn't sell well and there aren't many android XR users, sure, it may be killed, but I don't think you'll find many examples of companies sustaining an unprofitable line of business just for the goodwill of the few people using the product.

This isn't a reputation only "techies" have picked up on. The Pixel phone upgrade gram, Chromecast, and Stadia are all things I've seen very normal people lament disappearing. Youtube and Search constantly changing for the worse are also well-worn and the subject of memes.

For consumer hardware spaces (tablets and smartwatches) they're currently acting like they care, but they have previously checked out of those spaces and then come back years later saying "Just kidding actually we are doing tablets!"

What might save this one is that the Oculus Quest ecosystem being Android based with similar hardware, so it should be pretty easy for an ecosystem of appropriately designed software to get ported over.

Kind of like how big screen Android devices have been an afterthought for most apps (hope you like enlarged phone UIs) but what might rescue tablets this time is foldable phones showing up and making developers consider "what if the screen isn't a tall rectangle?"

I still think there's high chances they have one or two generations of hardware trying to copy the Oculus Quest / Vision Pro and then pull the plug and say "forget VR we're doing AI glasses." They were ahead of the curve with Google Glass, but have that habit of bailing on things and giving up the first mover advantage.

AR is going to be on the back burner unless miniaturization improves for the price point. The only player in that space I'm aware of is Anduril's EagleEye, which is Son of HoloLens 2 for the Army's IVAS contract. AFAIK Anduril yoinked all the staff and tech from the HoloLens team (or a lot of the staff anyway) when it fell over.

MS and Magic Leap tried to make holographic AR work, but the state of the art wasn't cheap and compact enough for them to make any money on it.

Another example would be Android Wear. They lost interest in that for years and let it languish, and only recently started caring again with the help of Samsung. But an old watch I bought never got an update, in fact it lost functionality compared to when I bought it, and I won't fall in that trap again. I also switched to Spotify when Google shut down their Play music, I'll much rather get my music from someone where that is their business model and not a hobby.

"Am I spending $1800 on a product that will be useful for one year, five years, or ten years" is a relevant question, and often past performance is indicative of future results

To their credit, they did seem to make things right for Stadia.

Meanwhile, if we look at Microsoft and Windows MR, they themselves did not, though one of their employees apparently built a SteamVR driver on his own (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45110883). Microsoft should be embarrassed that they couldn't be bothered to do that themselves.

Are random people on the street really a better approximation of the market for a $1800 XR headset than HN users would be?

Reader got so much flak because it was not just niche techie thing, but also had a big footprint among... journalists.

So you had extra backlash because the people who most felt it were also people way more vocal

The problem is that Google actively and seriously works to excite developers. Developers develop, Google abandons, and the effort made by the developer is wasted.

That's why I don't like Google abandoning projects so much. Sure everybody does this sometimes, but no one does it as much as Google. It's not because I am a "techie". It's because it has been bad for my business. I don't care what people off the street think.

This is not a meme.

People are still buying the second version of Pebble watch. It's called wasting money.

Your comment is unhelpful, uncalled for, and unrelated.

what? the Pebble is essentially very refreshing offering. I am tired of "too-smart" Apple watch and am eagerly waiting for my Pebble!

It's a dead product that was resurrected to cash out again from money wasters before it gets killed again

my original Pebble still works. Not sure what you mean by dead.

Everything in this universe is waste of resources. The true value of anything is nothing, nothing has a true value[1]. Physical substances are mere representations of causalities.

1: gasp this makes so much more sense read as English, I guess it really was written in an Indo-European language

Only buy the product for what it is, and not what it might be. Assuming they don't go out of their way to brick it post shutdown, you should still have an ok device.

Stadia owners in shambles

I'm last to defend Google usually but not a great example. My inlaws got a refund for the hardware and new games they purchased/played and got to keep the controller. Everything else they've killed? Sure. I wish most collapsed ecosystems did this.

You basically got to play Cyberpunk for free and keep one of the most ergonomic controllers ever afterwards.

Which you can reprogram to Bluetooth. It's a good controller yes though a little heavy for my liking.

Not at all considering they fully refunded all purchases. I got 4 free bluetooth controllers out of it.

... don't forget the free 4k Chromecast(s)

> My money says this goes the way of the Pixel tablet.

I need to do a Google search every time to recall their history with tablets. I remember the Nexus tablets which came out for like a 3 year streak.

Then it was the Pixel C in 2015, then a 3 year gap until the Pixel Slate, then 5 years before the Pixel Tablet. Do not ask me about any of their capabilities or their intention in the market because every release could have been anything.

I'm so beyond getting on board with anything Google puts out, it's kinda just funny to watch and laugh at this point.

I think the Pixel C was rumored to be a Chromebook that got Android instead last minute, and then the Pixel Slate did run Android, and now there are all the rumors about ChromeOS being rebased atop Android…

The Pixel Slate actually did run ChromeOS and then could run Android apps in a VM haha.

And those aren't rumors, there is a pretty big effort to get Android ready for ChromeOS and get feature parity. Which to me is really unfortunate, CrOS has such a nice linux base.

True, but I can see the argument for it. Kinda wild to maintain two different userspaces for Linux, when one is far and away the most popular for smaller-than-computer devices.

Plus, it gives Android developers a widescreen demographic to target, which might finally give them a nudge to make their UIs adapt to things that aren't portrait candybars.

I also remember Fuchsia being Google's new be-all-end-all OS within the company that was being taken very seriously and then nothing came of it

Completely directionless

Yeah, that's exactly what happened with the Pixel C. A lot of politics around who would own tablets and laptops at the time that meant the winds changed direction ~yearly, hence the horribly confusing product line ups that happened.

Meta is making it work

Meta has reasonably priced headsets, with controllers that work well for gaming, and a large library of reasonably compelling games (admittedly basically all indie games).

It looks like Google has a very expensive headset, no controllers, and thus no real games to go along with it.

controllers are an optional first party accessory as shown in the demonstration. i'd expect it to work with 3rd party controllers as well. whether Meta games will port I'm not sure but since both are android based it shouldn't be too difficult?

at $249, the headset plus controllers put it over $2000, which is a lot to spend on an unknown product that might be deprecated on arrival. The Meta Quest 3S includes controllers and is currently on sale for $249, and at least you mostly know what you’re going to get, even if they never release another VR headset.

I think everyone who has ever owned a game console and bought the "optional first party accessory" (super scope 6, kinect, etc) is painfully aware that since developers can't count on widespread adoption, they almost never waste resources implementing support for them.

Not that it matters, apple has dropped support for true VR and now that google doesn't have to compete on this obscure battlefield, it will be cancelled before the end of Q4. I honestly feel bad for the team it was probably a good product. The launch event may have only been done for tax purposes to recover R&D losses.

Fair enough, but the very fact that the main blog post here doesn't even mention controllers tells you how much Google cares about them.

Anybody who has tried to play a game in VR with their hands know that controllers are not optional

Did Apple try to get into this market? Their device is fairly ridiculous compared to where VR seems to have been going all these years: cheap nearly disposable headsets like the Oculus. Which I believe is half the price of the original HTC Vive.

More expensive than the Vive isn't the way forward. Apple had a tech demo and slumping quarterly reports and need some PR wins, so out came the headset. I don't think it was a good faith effort to get into this market. I think it was to get headlines, jazz up stocks, and get attention as an innovator outside of laptops and phones.

I have no idea what Google can do here, but Android is a long running project. The Pixel line has long-ish term support. Google can eat Oculus's lunch. I just think the question is if Oculus's walled garden is now too high to climb, both in software and patents. FB money and Carmack's talents are going to be hard to beat here.

If I had to guess, I'd say Google saw Oculus get good at games, but everything else about it is fairly uninteresting. XR/AR could be hot and those new Meta glasses are pretty much Google Glass on steroids. So who knows, but seeing Google dive back into AR/XR is promising and I think they can compete here in a way they can't with VR games.

I could see myself buying AR glasses branded Pixel or Google. I'd think they'd be a better product than Meta. I don't know where Google is going with this and this product seems underwhelming, but we may have an entirely different product in a year or two. I have a feeling both Apple and Samsung's product are PR placeholders until they can catch up to Meta on shoe-horning this into Ray-Ban-esque glasses format.

And Samsung is even worse: remember GearVR ?

I had a Note device that on launch was compatible with GearVR, but they killed support for it in one of the few the Android updates. This was back when getting 3 Android updates was "lucky". i.e. they launched and completely killed GearVR (paperweight level) all within 5 years.

Especially Samsung.

I’m still very salty about Samsung never officially releasing their Samsung Odyssey VR headset in Europe. It was the best VR headset among the Windows Mixed Reality headsets at the time of their release.

Of course, the HP Reverb was better, but it came out much later, too late for WMR to really take off.

I still believe that if Microsoft had forced Samsung to release the Odyssey VR headset worldwide, WMR could have been a success.

And I’m pretty sure Samsung won’t release this one (the Galaxy VR) worldwide either, which will be the reason it fails and Google will probably take that as an excuse to shut down the project as well.

> I still believe that if Microsoft had forced Samsung to release the Odyssey VR headset worldwide, WMR could have been a success.

I'm not sure if Microsoft actually wanted to try to make it a success. They made a lot of decisions that didn't help it succeed, with one of those decisions leading to every headset being a brick (officially, although Oasis fixes them) now. I could go on and on about it, because I love my Odyssey+ and it's frustrating to see how they screwed the ecosystem up so badly.

That’s true, tho!

But I still remember the uproar in various communities about Samsung’s decision not to release what was, at the time, the only premium-tier WMR headset, with higher resolution and refresh rate, a wider FOV, mechanical IPD adjustment, and a few other features.

Only the HP Reverb WMR headset, released about two years later, offered comparable premium features and launched in more regions. But in my opinion, by then it was already too late.

The thing is, even at a slightly higher price point, the Samsung Odyssey would have been a great entry into PC VR for many people, since it was still one of the most affordable headsets compared to its competitors at the time, like the HTC Vive or the Oculus Rift.

That alone could have helped WMR gain more traction. But many reviewers weren’t too impressed by the other WMR headsets from different manufacturers. Some even compared them to the Samsung Odyssey and suggested waiting for Samsung to release theirs worldwide, since it was clearly the better one (at that time, in 2017).

I remember GearVR and used it for years as a teenager. It was a great product and was supported long after they stopped selling it. To this day, the subreddit is active.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GearVR/

Honestly, it was a phenomenal product and is part of the reason I'm considering the Galaxy XR now.

"Long after?" They released 2nd edition of Gear VR on 2017. I bought mine on December 2018. They stopped supporting it on September 2020 (email with the wonderful news received on April 3). That's literally less than 2 years.

So either this is some type of sarcasm I'm not able to detect or your definition of "long support" is ridiculous.

The next year's Android update basically made the Android Daydream service non-installable, so the Gear VR became a paperweight (and likely the reason in the reddit you quote people scramble for old non-updated devices).

But this is typical behavior for Samsung. E.g. they were literally publicly beta-testing DeX on Linux on Note 9 devices only to announce the final version would be available _only_ on Note 10 devices, not Note 9 devices from which they were removing support immediately. An absolutely baffling decision considering the software was actually developed for Note 9 in the first place, so their cost was zero. But ranting about this was very short lived since they eventually just deprecated the entire thing within one year of release, and again made sure the next Android major update would be totally incompatible with it. And thank god we got a major Android update at all.

I'm quite sure there's people out there who bought a Note 9, THEN a Note 10 to use DeX on Linux, and within a year all they got is not one but TWO paperweights. For those people: Samsung appreciates your generous donations.

Its obvious this was greenlit in response to Apple Vision Pro, which means is about 1 year away from being killed as soon as Apple pulls back on Vision Pro in favor of some sort of AR smart glass technology

Hopefully you can bypass the builtin software and use it as a PC vr headset, otherwise it's just going to be ewaste.

Remember Tango.

Yeah, this is going nowhere, is the typical case having to do something because the neighbour is also doing it.

No thanks. Where are the XR eye contacts?

Ah Samsung, the "We have Apple at home", I was wondering when we'd see their copycat entry for XR.

The average lifetime of a Pixel is 5 years of support. Will this be discontinued by Android 18 or 19? How long will it actually be usable before its e-waste? The letters X-R in Galaxy XR do not stand for Xtended suppoRt.

So, it's been a few years, but does Samsung still have... issues with devices exploding? I would not want to live out Sword Art Online IRL.

They've been fine on the battery front for a while, the explodey Galaxy Note was a decade ago. They're understandably quite conservative about charging speeds and adopting new battery technologies now.

Edit: or maybe not, see the sibling comment about their smart ring. At least that looks like an isolated incident.

Beautiful, I may someday in the future try Android XR, for the meantime the Quest 3S is fine for my needs.

> exploding

expanding? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45423490

You just take it off, so similar danger really to keeping a phone in your pocket against your skin, which I assume you have no problems doing

For anyone actually concerned about this: the Galaxy XR uses an external battery pack with a long power cable just like the Vision Pro. The battery is not attached to the headset itself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com