My oculus sits unused because it’s bulky and heavy, the resolution needs to be much better, the games on it are mediocre, the chat is full of early adopters I want nothing to do with, and worst of all the headset is a headache inducing vestibular system disruptor that makes the entire experience an unpleasant chore.
How long should we be patient? A decade? The experience needs to be much better in so many different areas. This thing might as well just be paired with sex toys - it’s not good enough for widespread adoption and frequent use for anything else.
This. It’s normal for companies to make big bets and lose.
However, we should definitely learn to not care. The toy was $300 and it did not meet expectations. Doesn’t every child learn this at the age of 6? It happens.
Personally, I think they are fully aware of this, but they had a monopoly on their hands, and they needed/wanted to deflate it. Refocusing to a long term gamble is a good way to use the money to at least execute a project and pay a bunch of good people to give it a try.
I get regular use out of my Quest 2, but it’s almost exclusively for Beat Saber and done through my PC with a link cable (the onboard locked down platform isn’t very interesting).
What I’d really like is a proper successor to the old Rift that doesn’t make the compromises that come with the Rift S, because my interest in VR lies entirely in PC games. The Rift Pro technically could fit that but at $500 more expensive than a Valve Index (which is a lot more open), it’s a hard sell. I’m probably going to wait for the next gen Index before making a purchase decision.
>the headset is a headache inducing vestibular system disruptor
What causes this? Is it related to low resolution? Lag between moving your head and moving the image? It is always going to be bad, or is there hope that it can get better in the future?
The ELI5 version is that if the motion your eyes see doesn't match what the movement/balance sensors in your inner ear feel, your brain thinks the mismatch is because you ate something you shouldn't and begins inducing vomiting. Motion sickness.
The result is that games where your real world movement matches the game world movement, such as games like Beat Saber, MOST people feel fine. But in a game where the movements don't match, such as any racing or flying game, and any game where you move by holding a button or stick, motion sickness sets in VERY quickly for most people.
Lag between moving your head and moving the image creates motion sickness because it creates the mismatch. Getting head tracking latency down to zero frames was a real innovation on the Oculus Rift and is an absolute requirement for any VR headset. Secondly, the frame rate needs to be high. The original Rift was 90 fps. Valve Index is up to 144 fps. Quest 2 I THINK is designed for 80 fps IIRC.
In some games, like MS Flight Simulator, it's not really possible to achieve the 144 fps my Index supports without turning the graphics wayyyy down. In this case, the software performs dynamic reprojection when I move my head. Essentially, it just moves the last frame rendered frame around the display to mimic what its movement should be. Of course, it has the side effect that the edges of vision are just black if there's no rendered data, but it's enough to prevent motion sickness when looking around the cockpit at only 40 fps.
Naturally, that's moot when I actually start flying the plane. As soon as the plane starts moving, I feel queasy.
But with enough practice, it can be overcome. The human brain is quite adaptive and can eventually learn to not care about the visual/physical mismatch.
Briefly - and I’m doing a bit of spit balling here. VR creates an alternate sensorium without adequately blocking the competing natural sensorium.
For example - walking in VR without moving your feet causes competing proprioceptive sensations. Our feet give us important information regarding where we are in a 3D space. How should the brain interpret walking but not really walking?
And flying/roller coaster should cause changes in the information provided by our otoliths of our inner ear. Instead we go down a roller coaster and expect a real physical change but otoliths are unmoved and there’s no actual sensation. It’s just confusing.
Now as far as lag between head movement in reality and in virtual realm? That is another good example you bring up. It needs to be very close to perfect with as little lag as possible
> Is it related to low resolution? Lag between moving your head and moving the image?
All of the above. Often games will have "reduced motion sickness" settings that sacrifice some realism.
Different people are affected to varying degrees by VR-motion-sickness. Personally, I'm not at all: I can spend hours in VR and not mind at all. Others are sick in moments.
The "heavy headset" thing I don't really feel either - I have a Valve Index for chrissakes - but again other people will have a different experience.
> Personally, I'm not at all: I can spend hours in VR and not mind at all. Others are sick in moments.
For me, it depends on the game.
I can play Beat Saber or PokerStars VR for hours and not care.
Assetto Corsa or MS Flight Simulator? As soon as the car/plane starts moving, I get queasy. I can only handle a single lap around the Nurburgring before I have to take a 30 minute break to let my stomach recover. In MS Flight Simulator, I gotta stick to large aircraft that maneuver very slowly and have massive cockpits.
I'm fairly sure my experience is pretty common, which is why I always feel people are doing a MASSIVE disservice to VR adoption when they let someone try VR for the first time and it's a racing game or a roller coaster simulator.
> The "heavy headset" thing I don't really feel either - I have a Valve Index for chrissakes - but again other people will have a different experience.
When I had an HTC Vive, it felt heavy on my face. When I updated to an Index, it was a world of difference. The strap design on the Index does a much better job of putting the weight of the headset on the top of your head, spread over the strap.
The strap the Quest 2 comes with is just a basic piece of elastic and isn’t great. Upgrading to a third party strap with a battery in the back (for weight distribution) does a lot, comfort wise.
Agree 100%, the headset is too heavy, prolonged use (a few hours) gives me a rash and makes me all sweaty, and my neck hurts and it gives me a headache.
The success path of any disruption look very similar to the failure path, the 'firs they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win'
It seems now we are at the 'they laugh at you' stage. In the same time I never would've thought 5 years ago that literally nobody will be watching the news anymore. The current work from home experience is completely broken, maybe they can improve it, who knows maybe there are even regulations or government incentives due to climate change to move to WFH, and then Meta will be very well positioned.
Its a huge bet, but I am kind of happy that they are trying something instead of doubling down on "fundamentals" which is basically digital heroin sold to kids in exchange for their attention. (Of course, the metaverse will probably evolve into digital fentanyl..)
The bet itself is reasonable and laudable even. The execution is total garbage and the snickering and memes over Horizon are justified. It looks ridiculous. If you want to make big bets about creating the future, then you better make sure your vision is convincing.
People are laughing because it's a joke to the people who constitute its core market, not because it's misunderstood.
I like my Oculus Quest 2, but I sure as hell wish someone other than Meta/Zuckerberg were in charge of its future.
> 'firs they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win'
Sure, and there is 90% attrition at each stage. Most ideas are stupid. Some stupid ideas get enough attention that people laugh at them. When incumbents resist a new idea, they usually with.
Unless you have a very compelling strategy on how to survive this filtering. In all likelihood, people are laughing at your idea because it is really bad.
My sense is that meta currently reflects the value in the market it should have. Generally markets expect during a down turn, slimming of staff, focusing on the core fundamentals, and improving net operations. Mark is doing the exact opposite. Continues to move away for core add business, no big firing drives, no efficiency improvements (or even announcements of said action), but retaining of staff(mostly), lots of the cash on hand going to new (unproven) profits. The announcements on firing people have been weak and don’t show up on the balance sheet because meta keep hiring for the new project.
Definitely Mark defies markets and people are pulling out. Estimate forecast revenues are used to determine future value in the short term. That 100 value are the people believing in the long potential and existing value.
If Mark is right and the browser is the past, and googles are the future (what does a future like that smell like? - unbox therapy) he could become even more wealthier, if he is wrong (most certainly he is, 3D tv didn’t make it) fb will continue to decline. Until the value is the core business minus ceo risk minus fun projects.
> Generally markets expect during a down turn, slimming of staff, focusing on the core fundamentals, and improving net operations.
Why?
In particular when the general market of the sector is in a downturn, quite some great people are typically laid off. So, this is a, say, once-in-a-decade opportunity to hire lots of great people.
Also, if the sector is in a general bad shape, hardly anybody expects the profits to be great. So, use this opportunity to invest the available cash into speculative projects of high potential.
If the economy is in a bad shape, less people will buy your products; thus it is of lesser priority to have a product available. But since, by the previous paragraph, you invested your money into more long-term projects of high potential, you will have quite some potentially lucrative products available as soon as the economy recovers.
>
Only if the company is able to execute on something useful with those people.
First: finding useful projects to do with the employees is what managers are for.
Second: if you read into HN threads for the past few years, you know that quite a lot of companies are looking for great programmers to hire and claim that their inability to find such people hinders their growth. So, with the coming recession, these companies might get their desired opportunity.
I think Zuck has taken all the bad news about social media and stuff and wants to change course and be remembered as the "guy that made AR/VR mainstream" and not the negative social media connotations... What other reason is there? Just to make more money? He already made enough.
Nah VR solves his browser problems. Sony Rootkit style access to the user's system, with VR drivers/launcher, Access to biometric data like eye/mouth tracking (users making their own), whatever you can fit on a fitness watch (advertising with heart rate and blood pressure biometrics), and of course camera access to the user's room.
Likewise I imagine it's soul draining to Zuck being told no by Apple. So they're probably obsessed with making their own walled garden.
Is your comment meant to imply that Zuckerberg continuing to try to create or advance a new technology, even though it has a high likelihood of causing him to lose (a lot) of money, is a bad thing?
Everyone focuses on meta VR as cause of the drop when They should focus on the privacy invading tech self destructing.
And the lack of platform they have. Web was an open platform. And it worked well for them. Phones are not.
Meta is an attempt to define a platform. And they are all in with a startup spirit. Except they are not a startup and they don't behave like a startup.
Yeah, I can't help but notice Facebook serving up a ton of content that I hate, too. At a certain point, I imagine a lot of people get sick of this constant grind of content designed to increase stress and despair.
If a company spends $5B on a new factory, there will be some investors that only see that their profits dropped $5B that quarter and will sell, completely ignoring that in a year when that factory goes online, they'll be able to match a much bigger demand.
I'm not citing any specific event here, just describing the mentality.
I like dumping some money into companies that are taking a beating, because most of the time I think the market is overreacting. But then I asked myself - what is more likely to 3x/5x/10x in the next 10 years. Meta or ETH? I feel like the answer is ETH.
I'm with you about the long-term potential of ETH vs. Meta (in terms of utility), but Meta is seeing prices it hasn't seen in over 5 years, ETH isn't trending down right now (I was buying in the 900-1300 price range), and is currently sitting at about 4X its price from 2 years ago.
I hope you're right, and the market starts to value ETH more favourably in the near future, but I suspect crypto markets in general still have a way to fall before the next big run up.
Why do you deserve patients? The same profit motive that made you billion selling the personal information of everyone's Grandma to slime for the purpose of manipulating elections has finally caught up.
No increase in earnings = death. Everyone knows that becomes gospel the instant you go public.
My oculus sits unused because it’s bulky and heavy, the resolution needs to be much better, the games on it are mediocre, the chat is full of early adopters I want nothing to do with, and worst of all the headset is a headache inducing vestibular system disruptor that makes the entire experience an unpleasant chore.
How long should we be patient? A decade? The experience needs to be much better in so many different areas. This thing might as well just be paired with sex toys - it’s not good enough for widespread adoption and frequent use for anything else.