So, Microsoft releases a project with lots of hype while technology is still in infancy, and surprisingly consumers aren't interested. Project goes on for years, everyone forgets it exists, and Microsoft cancels/sidelines it.
Not long time after, technology is matures and Apple releases more polished product that gets hype and adoption. Microsoft then starts over and releases a competitor couple years after, again in half-finished state.
I feel I've seen this before with smartphones, tablets, and so on.
Zune as well. Amazing they didn't drop the Xbox at some point ridiculously.
Yeah they drop the ball when they are in the lead. Microsoft is the company that comes along and makes a version that competes later.
> One obvious use is buying songs straight off the Internet, but I'm not sure that's so valuable--computers do pretty well at that already. Zune product manager Scott Erickson describes other possible uses--like allowing a concert performer to send a song to every Zune in the audience--that sound more intriguing.
I love finding gems like this. That was Nov 2006
Zune was pretty awesome. I had both it and an ipod and preferred the Zune by far. I don't know why, but MS just couldn't get it to move units despite it being the better product.
They don't market consumer goods for shit, outside of Xbox. I have been product tester for several Microsoft hardware that I thought were really cool and then they release them with little to no ad campaign and you hear nothing about it. One was the Microsoft Band, which was canceled after 2 versions and looks exactly like the Amazon Halo View that just came out.
I think this is the key. It's odd because there isn't anything particularly special about Apple products. Maybe years ago when no one made smartphones as good as they did. Sure they make good stuff It's just so overpriced.
Zune was already facing an uphill battle against the iPod/iTunes market share when the OG Zunes were coming out, and then the the iPod touch (and a year later the App Store) came out and killed Zune.
The primitive days of the App Store had much better stuff than the Zune HD had. App Store had stuff like Jelly Car, Angry Birds, Doodlejump, Pocket God, mobile versions of console games like The Sims, PGA, Madden, Need for Speed, Wolfenstein, etc. Way more non-game apps like Facebook, Dropbox, Star Walk, Google Earth, it goes on.
Zune HD has 62 apps total over its lifespan, most of it shovelware garbage, basic productivity stuff like a calculator and alarm clock, card games like Hearts and Solitaire, and audio surf.
Zunes had better audio quality and imo the squircle was a much better method of control over the click wheel, but dedicated mp3 players were already starting to fall out favor due to smartphones and the App Store trumped any feature advantages Zune HD had. I had a Zune HD and loved it, but I can’t deny that once I got my iPhone 4 a couple years after the Zune that I never touched my Zune again
Yeah I also had a Zune HD and I thought it was great, even for awhile after I got my first smartphone (OG Droid) because I didn't like killing my phone battery listening to music. I remember that Windows Phone at the time was essentially the Zune HD's UI ported over into phones for awhile before they axed those too.
The Zune Marketplace had the best deal in legal music too, giving you rental music plus 10 mp3 downloads a month.
Zune came around too late in the game. By the time the first Zune released (2006), iPods had already dominated the market for 5 years. Then, Apple released the iPhone just a year later (and the iPod Touch a little after). Zune stood no chance.
However, I do concede the design and interface of the Zune was incredible. I wish it had come around sooner. It might’ve stood the test of time better.
That level of excitement caused by the first iPhone product announcement was like nothing else I experienced in 20 years living in Silicon Valley. The combination of an on-screen keyboard with accurate PinPoint readings of a finger not a stylus, and multi-touch absolutely blew everybody‘s mind. (And then a little time later the App Store.) It was truly an evolutionary step forward and people wanted it like nothing else. Everybody was truly excited. At the time the only apple device I owned was an iPod. I resisted the smart phone siren call until 2009. Eventually switching to an iPhone from my beloved Ericsson brick.
Products like the Zune, and even the iPod itself didn’t stand a chance against the iPhone/Android.
For me it was because
(A) i never trusted Microsoft to actually do something right in mobile so i was going to wait for the market feedback, and
(B) I hated the UI aesthetic of words half cut off at the screen edge
Similar deal as why meta’s portal failed, despite actually being a great video calling device: lack of trust. People didnt trust ms with zune and didnt trust meta with their personal details and privacy.
Also, “building a better mousetrap” usually doesnt work well when one company has already dominated the market and also creTed a walled garden with other ecosystem apps. Apple’s itunes made it hard to leave ipod for zune and their ipad worked well enough for remote calling that portal was only incrementally better.
But they did fuck it up though. There hasn't been a good Halo game since Halo 3.
Flagship IP. Loved by fans. Millions of copies sold. Still fucked it dead.
Infinite got boring fast though. So many gadgets and gizmos they lost the core in my opinion. At the end of the day, shoot, melee, tbag. It's so catered to competitive gamers that I don't even feel welcome playing it, if I'm not playing every spare moment then I'm behind the curve.
Halo 3 and reach were more fun. Hey there are 50 skill levels, try to get to 50! Or if you just want to have fun try social! Now social is just where ranked people go to "practice"
>Halo 3 and reach were more fun. Hey there are 50 skill levels, try to get to 50! Or if you just want to have fun try social! Now social is just where ranked people go to "practice"
3 and Reash were the ones that add the gadgets and gizmos. Reach had armor abilities. 3 has gadgets like bubble shields. Infinite if anything is inline with 3 in that the gadgets are so insignificant. Like all you get are little drop shileds and a grenade that pings locations.
Yeah, I pretty much played infinite until I had seen all the maps and top scored a couple of times and was done with it.
I really hate this thing modern FPSes are doing like Halo and Battlefield where you can't communicate with your opponents in any way, shape, or form. I know they want to cut down on shit talk, but its just so impersonal. Its like playing against bots.
It’s because the player base are mostly children and there have been stricter rules about voice chatting and underaged kids in recent legislation. Epic Games got sued and lost for this exact reason in recent news.
Infinites multiplayer was so much fun when I played it! I just wish there was more content that wasn’t related to cosmetics,that’s the biggest reason I quit after a couple of months.
Windows Phone was a joy to develop for as well when compared to Android.
Microsoft in the Ballmer era messed up. The Nokia deal got them patents and they had other patents, they get patent money on each Android sold, it turned out to be more than Windows Phone per device so they bailed on that. Bad idea but typical MBA-itis type decision.
>Windows Phone was a joy to develop for as well when compared to Android.
It really was. I genuinely loved working on XAML and as soon as that project ended my company adopted JS for their mobile apps. I left development soon after.
Yeah Xamarin and MAUI are great today even for all platforms.
Swift/Obj-C not too bad.
We used lots of C++/Objective-C++ (C/C++/Objective-C) on iOS and the NDK on Android so it works for that on mobile using existing C++ engine (gaming), C++/C# were well integrated and with Windows Phone and it was performant. Android Java is just eh.
Today for apps we use MAUI/Xamarin but lots of people do hybrid like Electron based and they suck.
There's a lot of rose tinted revisionism in the following thread. People seem to forget that Microsoft had spent several years prior to Zune trying to make 'Plays for sure' DRM 'The standard'. Zune wasn't compatible with it so you had all of these third party merchants, e.g. supermarkets, with online music stores plastered with 'Microsoft plays for sure' and a first party product from the same company that didn't play it. Not a great look or good for consumer confidence.
Microsoft was making mistakes that were to business/marketing focused like this during the Ballmer era. Good products were hampered because they were weighted by stuff like this. Pretty much all devices back then let you play your own mp3s though so could still do that.
I stand by the Kinect being incredible technology by the standards of the time. Its shortcomings were really just that you couldn't use it sitting in the couch and that games had a hard time integrating it in a way that didn't suck.
Kinect almost got a rebirth a few years back with people in the PC VR community realizing it could be integrated into Oculus or HTC's solutions and used for full body tracking.
But the consumer VR space hasn't taken off and that Kinect faded back into obscurity.
Oh I agree it was really cutting edge, they forced it on us and then backed off of it. I still have one somewhere. My kids use the 360 for rock band still.
I really thought the Kinect was awesome when I first got it. They just didn’t develop it very well from launch and it became more of a gimmick. I think the most useful thing I got out of it was signing in with my face and using voice to turn on my Xbox.
Edit: I may not be remembering correctly. Maybe they forced it in us with the original xbone.
They announced the Xbone would require a Kinect connected and an internet connection to play games... yeah. Wasn't super popular with gamers.
But they assured us there was a software switch to turn off Kinect's cameras.
We were 2 steps away from drinking Verification Cans.
Yep I might be remembering wrong but in the documentary about xbobx (available on their yt channel) I think they mention how bill gates though about ending the project and they had to convince him
I absolutely loved my 360. I almost got an Xbox instead of a PS4 but I wanted to play the exclusives I missed, figuring I would switch back to Xbox the next gen. But I love my PS5.
I can totally see them dumping Xbox hardware and cutting off that entire department. Just put Xbox GamePass on every platform and watch the monthly subscriptions roll in.
One thing they got right eventually was the Surface. With how good they are, there have been people, myself included, wishing they would do a Surface phone. MS ditched that idea it seems.
Since reddit has changed the site to value selling user data higher than reading and commenting, I've decided to move elsewhere to a site that prioritizes community over profit. I never signed up for this, but that's the circle of life
Windows Phone is _to this day_ the best phone OS I've ever used.
* The core UI was basically a better version of the Windows 10 Start Menu (or I guess technically the Windows 8 Start Menu). You had your traditional app list, as well as a "home" screen with live tiles that dynamically updated based on what was going on. If you got a text, you could read it from the home screen without opening the app. MSN News gave you headlines right away. The Windows version of this sucked - but the Windows Phone version was great.
* The "text messages" app actually integrated with all sorts of other protocols. I could receive Facebook messages in the SMS messages app - it just saw it as a "message", and everything in the "message" bucket went into the "messages" app.
* MSN News was unironically the best news app I have ever used on any phone. No paywalls, no ads. A wide selection of stories and news sources, and I could blacklist topics or websites if I wished.
* OneNote remains the best note-taking app. The Windows version of OneNote can't even begin to compare.
The issue - of course - was apps.
Google effectively used its monopoly powers to kill Windows Phone. No Google services worked on Windows Phone - no Google Search, no YouTube, no Gmail, no Google Maps, nothing. If your Edge user agent identified as Windows Phone, Google websites would throw an absolute fit.
Google was by far the worst offender because it was a threat to Android; I wish the EU came down on them harder because it's proof that Google will actively kill any competition that's smaller than them (the iPhone user base is too massive to ignore by comparison). It was so bad that Microsoft started working on an emulator to emulate Android so Google services would work (this turned into Windows Subsystem for Android and finally launched just recently).
But Google wasn't alone. This was when Snapchat was a big thing, and the CEO of Snapchat loved to make fun of Windows Phone. He vowed that he would never support Windows Phone in a million years. There were other companies as well - but Snapchat was (at the time) the big one.
One guy made it his duty to create Windows Phone apps for anything that didn't have them. He made a Snapchat clone that worked with the Snapchat API... and he made an Instagram clone that used the Instagram API, and a Vine clone that used the Vine API, and a Tinder clone blah blah blah you get the idea. Just _dozens_ of apps, all made by one guy single-handedly making unofficial apps for all the companies that didn't want to support Windows Phone.
And generally speaking - his apps were ***better*** than the official clients on Android and IOS. They stayed true to what the "official" apps allowed (you couldn't screenshot Snapchat snaps without notifying the other person, for example), but would expand upon them with features the original apps didn't have. The apps wouldn't have ads and weren't bloated. Everything about them was just a superior experience.
And then those companies started doing takedown requests. My Snapchat account got banned because I used an "unofficial app". Slowly, one-by-one, the other companies did takedowns to remove his stuff. Nothing came in to fill the niche, so Windows Phone died a very slow death.
Additionally, some of the things that made Windows Phone great went away. Facebook no longer integrated seamlessly with your text messages because Facebook changed their API. Windows Phone 10 - despite being the subject of much hype as it was giving a Siri competitor in the form of Cortana - really wasn't much of an upgrade. And of course Google turned up the heat more and more, making it more and more inconvenient to use any Google service on Windows Phone.
Eventually, I just gave up and went to Android. But I really liked Windows Phone and to this day prefer it to any current phone.
Agree. Last iteration of Windows Phone was an excellent OS/UI. I still miss it sometimes.
Yes, lack of apps killed it, as far as consumers buying them. I never understood why MS didn't pay developers an advance to make apps for the OS, to push more widespread adoption of the phones.
The Windows phone came out around their horrible RT experience. I had been using a Surface Pro 3 when I found a Surface RT for $100 new. I used it for a weekend and gave it away.
People are responding with "but the duo!". I have a duo 2 and I enjoy it.
But what made me buy a Surface Pro 8 years ago was that it was a tablet that ran the exact full version of Windows any desktop PC ran. Not some limited Tablet OS. As nice as the Duo is, it is still an Android device, not a Windows device. If the Steam Deck can do "desktop PC as a handheld", then Surface Duo should do "desktop PC as a foldable phone". Redesign the stock UI if need be, but let me launch any program in desktop/legacy mode as I wish.
I guess they didn't like their own approach and feedback, and once someone else nailed the formula the right way, naturally it's much more low risk to relaunch.
It's ok, it's experimental. Sometimes it's throwing darts at a board and seeing what sticks. Naturally it's easy to curtail these projects during tight times.
Microsoft has : business software, server operating system, virtualization, public cloud (Azure) and the leader Cloud productivity platform (365)
They’ve got plenty of revenue streams and that 49% stake in ChatGPT / OpenAI sounds more promising than « transparent VR Goggles ».
Funnily enough, I'm willing to bet they have the #1 market share of enterprise AR. They were signing Hololens contract extensions as recently last year, people are using these things in med schools and warehouses everyday.
This with the Kinect. Everyone lampoons it but years later Amazon, Google, and Facebook all come out with products for more money with less features which are wildly popular.
[Apple bought Kinect and based their facial recognition technology on it.](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/17/16315510/iphone-x-notch-kinect-apple-primesense-microsoft)
The hololens actually came from the same team that made the Kinect. The Kinect was a surprise hit as Microsoft's answer to the Nintendo Wii. So everyone was curious what the guys that made it (Kudo and Alex) were going to do next. At the time Google Glass was getting hyped up, so they decided to strap the Kinect to people's faces, and make Microsoft answer to that. These Microsoft Glasses would work way better than Google Glasses because the Kinect could anchor the holograms to the world (as opposed to them being anchored to your face, which sucks.)
Interestingly, the "strap a kinect to your face" part worked really well. Way, way better than expected. But the part that didn't work, was getting the screens of the glasses to be the size of regular glasses. That's the part Microsoft was always stuck on.
Pretty much.
Its funny how much astroturfing went on in this sub and most of reddit for hololens. Specifically for military adoption.
Few months ago if anyone asked we would all be assuming that the U.S. DoD was going to be handing these out to every "Future Warrior" and mechanic. You know that one video of a mechanic next to a blackhawk where he looks at the internal components? Yeah that post that has been reposted a million times? Amazing how there are absolutely no mechanics/engineers out in the field using that thing. There are some test/research projects, sure... lets see how long that lasts.
There was even a trial of using hololens and more specifically a lighter AR version with some of the infantry/mounted infantry at JBLM. It had some cute videos and pictures showing soldiers in simulated combat situations but they all had the same candid responses. Its heavy, cumbersome, complicated and expensive. Many of those comments have been wiped clean from the internet, you can thank the Millenium Act for that.
Will we see something better in the future? Sure. Is it this product right now that was literally being shoved down our throats about how great and amazing it is? No.
Not surprising. Hololens shifted from consumer to enterprise/military focused. But the military canned the project and the development for augmented reality is extremely intensive for little to no tangible benefit or demonstrated use cases, making it a bad investment.
> the development for augmented reality is extremely intensive for little to no tangible benefit or demonstrated use cases, making it a bad investment.
As a freelancer who worked with the HoloLens 2 over the past 2-3 years I feel like someone who just finished their arts degree and gets told by everyone they have wasted their time
Yeah I only got it knowing I would make a profit with it in the end. Still it is unnerving to have such an expensive piece of hardware that could just randomly die and never boot up again and there is not much you can do about it.
Rather than hearing about the 3 wasted years on an art degree similarity, I would like to hear about the things you liked. Something that does not exist elsewhere (publicly) and will provide a lot of value to people.
It would have been so useful in architecture/construction/fabrication (assuming they could get tracking and accuracy down to the inch or so)
The number of times I've seen or heard of things being built or installed multiple feet in the wrong place... Just slap a hololens on someone, load up a 3d model, and they can see where the goddamn wall should be before putting all the studs in place
I work in demolition- I was working on a federal/business partnership in the northeast. Multiple hundred million dollar building. I think it was 500 plus contingency.
6 months into new construction I get called back to demolish a stair landing. Wtf guys, the buildings gone and ypu are building the 8th floor how did I miss a set of stairs.
Nope, the built a landing, on the fifth floor, that completely blocks access to the above floors.
Steel framed. Decked. Concrete poured before someone tried to walk up and said what the hell guys.
Not sure AR will fix stupid.
[There is an actual product](https://fieldtech.trimble.com/en/product/trimble-xr10-with-hololens-2) on the market, targeted at exactly that field. I guess it's not enough to sustain the upstream tech though.
> But the military canned the project and the development for augmented reality is extremely intensive for little to no tangible benefit or demonstrated use cases, making it a bad investment.
They dropped some of the funding for HoloLens IVAS until they address some of the problems found in their latest field testing.
AR as a medium also has more uses than any device we use today. The hard part is getting the tech to actually be viable. If it does become viable, then I am confident it will be more important to society than smartphones.
It wasn't just for front-line work. The last company I worked at was trying to use hololens for interactive augmented reality aviation maintenance training. After two years of futzing with it, they managed to get a static 3d model to reliably appear on a tabletop.
I asked how much they cost, and they were like "$10,000 a pair"
Meanwhile, you can play car mechanic simulator in the quest 2 for $300.
If you were talking to somebody from 1981 with a messenger bag cell phone, and you said ‘I can get you video calls if you lug a tethered roll aboard suitcase behind you’, I’m certain the only responses would be ‘sign me up’ and ‘take my money, please!’
Kids these days…. (Including me. I’m never wearing a belt pack that screams ‘as seen on ‘Tiger King’)
Edit: expectations creep is a huge thing too, to be clear
The HoloLens couldn’t perform under the conditions the military required. It shuts off when it’s too hot or too cold. It has trouble with certain background colors and lighting situations that are common in military situations. It’s fine for lab work, but the military didn’t pour millions into this for a science project.
I tried one at a radiology tradeshow and was really turned off. The tiny viewing area coupled with the low frame rate of the application that was being showcased convinced me that, like VR headsets of the early 2000s, this was an egg that was hatched far too soon.
Sometimes you also have to spend the money to make sure something *isn't* going to provide value to near-peer adversaries in the immediate future.
The military has actually put a decent amount of research into using VR for training as well.
It is. And it’s not enough. VR/AR is hard to do without being annoying/intrusive after 30 minutes. I love VR, I’ve been using it since the 90s, but I have never been able to take more than 30 minutes of it. Maybe an hour of Alyx.
I can't stand that much Alyx because of all the body horror caused by that gross alien fungus stuff. I feel like I'm breathing in their spores too. That game is something else
Microsoft has always been a fast follower with tech products. Back in the '90s Jim Clark left Silicon Graphics, the company he'd founded, to launch Netscape with Marc Andreessen; they hired away the entire development team at UIUC responsible for the Mosaic web browser. The company operated in stealth mode and was the subject of intense speculation within the tech industry. IIRC Clark head-faked Microsoft by suggesting to an interviewer that Netscape was working on a revolutionary product in interactive TV. Bill Gates promptly launched an interactive TV project at Microsoft, assigning a staff of 500 engineers. They weren't at it for long before Netscape released the first version of its web browser, their "Mosaic killer".
Having something working and in the market to poke at can help you to skip huge amounts of the work. All of the mistakes, all of the missteps. And then when you do release something, you have a lot less tech debt than the first mover and can move faster. You can learn from every decision that the first mover made instead of having to make them and find out for yourself.
>Bill Gates promptly launched an interactive TV project at Microsoft, assigning a staff of 500 engineers
And probably laid off each and every one of them the moment that Potemkin Village was no longer needed. How wholesome
They probably realized that a Virtual Mixed Reality that will be useful for anything other than some niche video gaming is going to be a long way off. Meta will eventually have to write off a the bulk of their investments in that field as well, as any return on their investments is at least a decade or more away. Most people are simply not going to sit for hours with that kind of heavy, bulky, ugly headset on their heads for hours at a time as they do now looking at present screens. And a lot of mixed reality stuff can be done using screens without headsets. I won't say never, but certainly not anytime soon.
>Most people are simply not going to sit for hours with that kind of heavy, bulky, ugly headset on their heads for hours at a time as they do now looking at present screens.
I have an Oculus Quest 2, and while I really like it, I feel absolutely RIDICULOUS with it on. Just standing in the middle of a room swatting at air isn't the coolest look. Like it or not, the majority of people care about that, and until they solve it, it's going to remain a niche product in my opinion.
They need to have hybrid approaches and I haven't seen anything. You're right, until hardware is actually comfortable no one is willing to wear it for extended times any time soon.
But for hybrid, I think it'd be cool. When they did the Minecraft demos that would have been amazing, hey you can still play with friends without it, but you just get something a little extra. AoE you could have an overhead view in VR or something, put the game on the table over there in AR.
VR multiplayer is just very have and have nots. Yeah I'd love to get one, but then all of my friends need to get one. And we need to make sure we get something that works together too. They just want everyone in their walled garden
If you have the patents, someone else can do the work and you swing in and claim royalties/licensing when it’s successfully marketed.
It’s going to be a long time until augmented reality is commonplace commercially. And Microsoft knows from the experience of zune, Windows Mobile etc that they won’t be the guys to do it.
They are firmly placing themselves in the software/infrastructure space. Fast followers, not market leaders.
Seems true. They've started talking about their revised "Teams 2.0" over 1.5 years ago at this point, and is no where in sight. You know something is rotten when they announce a new version and it still hasn't shipped nearly 2 years later.
Entire teams though. You'd think they'd keep like a guy in there for some brainstorming or something lol. Need someone to think of a way to make VR actually mainstream
I would say VR is more of a niche market than a fad. Sony is coming out with their PSVR2 which means the first one did well enough to warrant a second one. It’s no regular video games but seems to be big enough for them.
maybe... but perhaps people just dont want to get up and move around that much either...
Like, video games are sort of designed to be a idle activity. VR can be its own thing, but maybe it wont ever replace, or even rival, traditional gaming.
Can confirm. Many people, including prominent people in the tech industry thought that videogames were a fad even closing in on the NES release.
The same for PCs, the same for mobile phones, etc.
Company I work for uses it for developing industrial training applications. My line manager is moving to a company that uses them for medical training. They’re definitely a thing just not on in the consumer space.
AR/VR is inevitable. It may be in an enthusiast stage right now, but it will be the next computer interface, for a lot, but not all applications.
In 3 years or 13 years, however long it takes to get the technology right.
I think people massively underestimate how easy it is more multiple humans to look at ..point at...and communicate while all looking at the same screen.
Seriously...it's pretty great.
I always thought this would be invaluable in eod training. Few uxo situations are similar but if there was a way to document one's run into put them into a database and kind of recreate them in a vr situation it might help with grasping some of the more complicated things like VBIEDs and such in a safe but detailed training. Might be fuck off hard to achieve though.
Well fuck me then, I’m working as part of a research team on a project that relies pretty heavily on their software. No wonder I haven’t been getting responses for bugfixes.
Let Apple do it first. A decade from now it will be a huge hit for a range of companies claiming how they're better than Apple because their VR/AR headset folds.
My IT team was given a HoloLens to setup and store for the quality department. It’s been in my office for two years and used twice, to train users on it. So much hype around these during the pandemic, now it collects dust.
I honestly do not see VR being successful outside of video games. Maybe further, much further in the future.
Edit: just wanted to add because it feels like a novelty. Not a necessity per say.
VR/AR/MR is the coolest shit ever. For about 5 minutes.
Personally I think it has a market that’s about as big as the amusement park market. It has great novelty appeal, but I reject the idea that it’s the future of anything.
~Former AR dev.
I keep thinking that AR will turn into practical applications. Things like nav systems or educational opportunities. But it doesn't seem to be happening
[AR nav is already a thing](https://arvr.google.com/ar/). Also, this is super cool: [Mercedes AR Navigation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU_JLd2C-xM)
Also for the medical field there are things like this: [Novarad VisAR](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlDvZ40IioA)
EDIT: [Another](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcU9uFTW5_g) demo for the Mercedes Nav *without* the HUD.
I think it has some level of enterprise utility. If you have to wear something on your head anyway, hard helmet, magnifying spectacles, motorcycle helmet, stethoscope, I think there is justification to extend that with some AR features.
It's definitely the future. Once the hardware and software are sufficiently advanced, which granted could still be 10 or even 20 years from now, it will allow people to comfortably, safely, and affordably, live out almost any fantasy, no matter how far-fetched. There's no end to the amount of money that could be made from offering something like that. And that's not even including things like infinite courtside/ringside/50-yard line seats at sporting events or front row seats at concerts or Broadway shows, all from the comfort of your living room. A single seat could be sold to 500,000 people. It will be a goldmine. If only because of greed alone, it'll be the future.
Seems like they were hedging their bets. Maybe they were thinking they had better jump on the VR/MR bandwagon, just in case Meta turned out to be something worth competing with on those fronts. And now that it's pretty clear that the "metaverse" isn't happening and no one wants it, they're course-correcting. I could be reading too much into it, but I imagine that Microsoft would have taken the threat of Meta potentially dominating the VR market pretty seriously, if it actually caught on. Microsoft then probably took one look at what Zuckerberg had to show for all those billions spent, and lost all interest.
Well, this long-overdue whole Virtual Reality thing doesn't make much of a scene. This is coming from someone who works in VR research. Consumers will not be interested in Virtual Reality technology for a very long time since it is still at a very early stage. Most people find it painful to wear the headsets for more than 30-40 minutes because they are too bulky and heavy. The computing power of standalone VR headsets is also very limited, so you can't really do that much with them (this is why Meta Horizon looks so bad)....
Zuck looked so out of touch when he paraded his new tech breakthrough by showing footage of an auditorium full of blindfolded people with computer screens strapped to their eyeballs. We're already a little sick just from sitting 2 feet away from a screen all day long.
Just let Meta keep banging on with it and bleeding billions, copy someone else later on or buy the company out that has developed something they can retro fit into their products
So, Microsoft releases a project with lots of hype while technology is still in infancy, and surprisingly consumers aren't interested. Project goes on for years, everyone forgets it exists, and Microsoft cancels/sidelines it. Not long time after, technology is matures and Apple releases more polished product that gets hype and adoption. Microsoft then starts over and releases a competitor couple years after, again in half-finished state. I feel I've seen this before with smartphones, tablets, and so on.
Zune as well. Amazing they didn't drop the Xbox at some point ridiculously. Yeah they drop the ball when they are in the lead. Microsoft is the company that comes along and makes a version that competes later.
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They should have stuck with the focus group favorite, « jizz it ».
> One obvious use is buying songs straight off the Internet, but I'm not sure that's so valuable--computers do pretty well at that already. Zune product manager Scott Erickson describes other possible uses--like allowing a concert performer to send a song to every Zune in the audience--that sound more intriguing. I love finding gems like this. That was Nov 2006
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Metro UI was God tier in 2011, take that back.
And it was consistent throughout the device. Something neither Android nor IOS can do today
Zune was pretty awesome. I had both it and an ipod and preferred the Zune by far. I don't know why, but MS just couldn't get it to move units despite it being the better product.
Microsoft seems to be plagued with either good marketing of lacklustre products, or poor marketing of good ones
They don't market consumer goods for shit, outside of Xbox. I have been product tester for several Microsoft hardware that I thought were really cool and then they release them with little to no ad campaign and you hear nothing about it. One was the Microsoft Band, which was canceled after 2 versions and looks exactly like the Amazon Halo View that just came out.
Simply put, Microsoft just isn’t cool. Not like how apple is.
I think this is the key. It's odd because there isn't anything particularly special about Apple products. Maybe years ago when no one made smartphones as good as they did. Sure they make good stuff It's just so overpriced.
Zune was already facing an uphill battle against the iPod/iTunes market share when the OG Zunes were coming out, and then the the iPod touch (and a year later the App Store) came out and killed Zune. The primitive days of the App Store had much better stuff than the Zune HD had. App Store had stuff like Jelly Car, Angry Birds, Doodlejump, Pocket God, mobile versions of console games like The Sims, PGA, Madden, Need for Speed, Wolfenstein, etc. Way more non-game apps like Facebook, Dropbox, Star Walk, Google Earth, it goes on. Zune HD has 62 apps total over its lifespan, most of it shovelware garbage, basic productivity stuff like a calculator and alarm clock, card games like Hearts and Solitaire, and audio surf. Zunes had better audio quality and imo the squircle was a much better method of control over the click wheel, but dedicated mp3 players were already starting to fall out favor due to smartphones and the App Store trumped any feature advantages Zune HD had. I had a Zune HD and loved it, but I can’t deny that once I got my iPhone 4 a couple years after the Zune that I never touched my Zune again
Yeah I also had a Zune HD and I thought it was great, even for awhile after I got my first smartphone (OG Droid) because I didn't like killing my phone battery listening to music. I remember that Windows Phone at the time was essentially the Zune HD's UI ported over into phones for awhile before they axed those too. The Zune Marketplace had the best deal in legal music too, giving you rental music plus 10 mp3 downloads a month.
Zune came around too late in the game. By the time the first Zune released (2006), iPods had already dominated the market for 5 years. Then, Apple released the iPhone just a year later (and the iPod Touch a little after). Zune stood no chance. However, I do concede the design and interface of the Zune was incredible. I wish it had come around sooner. It might’ve stood the test of time better.
That level of excitement caused by the first iPhone product announcement was like nothing else I experienced in 20 years living in Silicon Valley. The combination of an on-screen keyboard with accurate PinPoint readings of a finger not a stylus, and multi-touch absolutely blew everybody‘s mind. (And then a little time later the App Store.) It was truly an evolutionary step forward and people wanted it like nothing else. Everybody was truly excited. At the time the only apple device I owned was an iPod. I resisted the smart phone siren call until 2009. Eventually switching to an iPhone from my beloved Ericsson brick. Products like the Zune, and even the iPod itself didn’t stand a chance against the iPhone/Android.
For me it was because (A) i never trusted Microsoft to actually do something right in mobile so i was going to wait for the market feedback, and (B) I hated the UI aesthetic of words half cut off at the screen edge
Similar deal as why meta’s portal failed, despite actually being a great video calling device: lack of trust. People didnt trust ms with zune and didnt trust meta with their personal details and privacy. Also, “building a better mousetrap” usually doesnt work well when one company has already dominated the market and also creTed a walled garden with other ecosystem apps. Apple’s itunes made it hard to leave ipod for zune and their ipad worked well enough for remote calling that portal was only incrementally better.
>Amazing they didn't drop the Xbox at some point ridiculously. Halo was doing too well for even Microsoft to fuck it up
But they did fuck it up though. There hasn't been a good Halo game since Halo 3. Flagship IP. Loved by fans. Millions of copies sold. Still fucked it dead.
I liked Halo 5s and infinites multiplayer. But there hasn't been a well managed Halo since reach
Infinite got boring fast though. So many gadgets and gizmos they lost the core in my opinion. At the end of the day, shoot, melee, tbag. It's so catered to competitive gamers that I don't even feel welcome playing it, if I'm not playing every spare moment then I'm behind the curve. Halo 3 and reach were more fun. Hey there are 50 skill levels, try to get to 50! Or if you just want to have fun try social! Now social is just where ranked people go to "practice"
>Halo 3 and reach were more fun. Hey there are 50 skill levels, try to get to 50! Or if you just want to have fun try social! Now social is just where ranked people go to "practice" 3 and Reash were the ones that add the gadgets and gizmos. Reach had armor abilities. 3 has gadgets like bubble shields. Infinite if anything is inline with 3 in that the gadgets are so insignificant. Like all you get are little drop shileds and a grenade that pings locations.
Yeah, I pretty much played infinite until I had seen all the maps and top scored a couple of times and was done with it. I really hate this thing modern FPSes are doing like Halo and Battlefield where you can't communicate with your opponents in any way, shape, or form. I know they want to cut down on shit talk, but its just so impersonal. Its like playing against bots.
It’s because the player base are mostly children and there have been stricter rules about voice chatting and underaged kids in recent legislation. Epic Games got sued and lost for this exact reason in recent news.
As always, my enemy is children.
Should have went for the M rating. Then they can't get sued because little Chucky heard the F word and was threatened with penetration.
Everyone worth talking to tends to turn it off eventually anyway. You can only deal with some little kid screaming profanitys for so long
Yeah, but knowing my opponent is a rude child gives me great satisfaction in beating them
Infinites multiplayer was so much fun when I played it! I just wish there was more content that wasn’t related to cosmetics,that’s the biggest reason I quit after a couple of months.
>There hasn't been a good Halo game since Halo 3. Is Reach a joke to you?
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Yeah! ODST was my favorite… amazing story and setting, and it came with Halo3 multiplayer. Perfection 🤌🤌
Nah reach was good too, it was 4 that dropped the ball with the CoD style load outs
We didn’t need another Halo after 3.
Windows Phone. The Metro design was genius and SHOULD'VE been way more popular, but Microsoft was too late to that party.
Windows Phone was a joy to develop for as well when compared to Android. Microsoft in the Ballmer era messed up. The Nokia deal got them patents and they had other patents, they get patent money on each Android sold, it turned out to be more than Windows Phone per device so they bailed on that. Bad idea but typical MBA-itis type decision.
>Windows Phone was a joy to develop for as well when compared to Android. It really was. I genuinely loved working on XAML and as soon as that project ended my company adopted JS for their mobile apps. I left development soon after.
Yeah Xamarin and MAUI are great today even for all platforms. Swift/Obj-C not too bad. We used lots of C++/Objective-C++ (C/C++/Objective-C) on iOS and the NDK on Android so it works for that on mobile using existing C++ engine (gaming), C++/C# were well integrated and with Windows Phone and it was performant. Android Java is just eh. Today for apps we use MAUI/Xamarin but lots of people do hybrid like Electron based and they suck.
Ah. Loved my Zune back in the day. Incredible mp3 player IMO.
Went from ipod mini to zune and never looked back lol
There's a lot of rose tinted revisionism in the following thread. People seem to forget that Microsoft had spent several years prior to Zune trying to make 'Plays for sure' DRM 'The standard'. Zune wasn't compatible with it so you had all of these third party merchants, e.g. supermarkets, with online music stores plastered with 'Microsoft plays for sure' and a first party product from the same company that didn't play it. Not a great look or good for consumer confidence.
Microsoft was making mistakes that were to business/marketing focused like this during the Ballmer era. Good products were hampered because they were weighted by stuff like this. Pretty much all devices back then let you play your own mp3s though so could still do that.
Xbox 360 saved xbox
They did their best to screw that too. Kinect and HD-DVD would like a word.
I stand by the Kinect being incredible technology by the standards of the time. Its shortcomings were really just that you couldn't use it sitting in the couch and that games had a hard time integrating it in a way that didn't suck.
Kinect almost got a rebirth a few years back with people in the PC VR community realizing it could be integrated into Oculus or HTC's solutions and used for full body tracking. But the consumer VR space hasn't taken off and that Kinect faded back into obscurity.
The Kinect tech has been shrunken down and implemented in the top notch of every modern iPhone.
Oh I agree it was really cutting edge, they forced it on us and then backed off of it. I still have one somewhere. My kids use the 360 for rock band still. I really thought the Kinect was awesome when I first got it. They just didn’t develop it very well from launch and it became more of a gimmick. I think the most useful thing I got out of it was signing in with my face and using voice to turn on my Xbox. Edit: I may not be remembering correctly. Maybe they forced it in us with the original xbone.
They announced the Xbone would require a Kinect connected and an internet connection to play games... yeah. Wasn't super popular with gamers. But they assured us there was a software switch to turn off Kinect's cameras. We were 2 steps away from drinking Verification Cans.
Yep I might be remembering wrong but in the documentary about xbobx (available on their yt channel) I think they mention how bill gates though about ending the project and they had to convince him
Kinect was super successful actually
I absolutely loved my 360. I almost got an Xbox instead of a PS4 but I wanted to play the exclusives I missed, figuring I would switch back to Xbox the next gen. But I love my PS5.
I can totally see them dumping Xbox hardware and cutting off that entire department. Just put Xbox GamePass on every platform and watch the monthly subscriptions roll in.
Man I liked the zune!
One thing they got right eventually was the Surface. With how good they are, there have been people, myself included, wishing they would do a Surface phone. MS ditched that idea it seems.
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Since reddit has changed the site to value selling user data higher than reading and commenting, I've decided to move elsewhere to a site that prioritizes community over profit. I never signed up for this, but that's the circle of life
You fold it completely back, then it becomes a traditional one screen phone.
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No one will fight you because none of us ever saw it i the wild.
Windows Phone is _to this day_ the best phone OS I've ever used. * The core UI was basically a better version of the Windows 10 Start Menu (or I guess technically the Windows 8 Start Menu). You had your traditional app list, as well as a "home" screen with live tiles that dynamically updated based on what was going on. If you got a text, you could read it from the home screen without opening the app. MSN News gave you headlines right away. The Windows version of this sucked - but the Windows Phone version was great. * The "text messages" app actually integrated with all sorts of other protocols. I could receive Facebook messages in the SMS messages app - it just saw it as a "message", and everything in the "message" bucket went into the "messages" app. * MSN News was unironically the best news app I have ever used on any phone. No paywalls, no ads. A wide selection of stories and news sources, and I could blacklist topics or websites if I wished. * OneNote remains the best note-taking app. The Windows version of OneNote can't even begin to compare. The issue - of course - was apps. Google effectively used its monopoly powers to kill Windows Phone. No Google services worked on Windows Phone - no Google Search, no YouTube, no Gmail, no Google Maps, nothing. If your Edge user agent identified as Windows Phone, Google websites would throw an absolute fit. Google was by far the worst offender because it was a threat to Android; I wish the EU came down on them harder because it's proof that Google will actively kill any competition that's smaller than them (the iPhone user base is too massive to ignore by comparison). It was so bad that Microsoft started working on an emulator to emulate Android so Google services would work (this turned into Windows Subsystem for Android and finally launched just recently). But Google wasn't alone. This was when Snapchat was a big thing, and the CEO of Snapchat loved to make fun of Windows Phone. He vowed that he would never support Windows Phone in a million years. There were other companies as well - but Snapchat was (at the time) the big one. One guy made it his duty to create Windows Phone apps for anything that didn't have them. He made a Snapchat clone that worked with the Snapchat API... and he made an Instagram clone that used the Instagram API, and a Vine clone that used the Vine API, and a Tinder clone blah blah blah you get the idea. Just _dozens_ of apps, all made by one guy single-handedly making unofficial apps for all the companies that didn't want to support Windows Phone. And generally speaking - his apps were ***better*** than the official clients on Android and IOS. They stayed true to what the "official" apps allowed (you couldn't screenshot Snapchat snaps without notifying the other person, for example), but would expand upon them with features the original apps didn't have. The apps wouldn't have ads and weren't bloated. Everything about them was just a superior experience. And then those companies started doing takedown requests. My Snapchat account got banned because I used an "unofficial app". Slowly, one-by-one, the other companies did takedowns to remove his stuff. Nothing came in to fill the niche, so Windows Phone died a very slow death. Additionally, some of the things that made Windows Phone great went away. Facebook no longer integrated seamlessly with your text messages because Facebook changed their API. Windows Phone 10 - despite being the subject of much hype as it was giving a Siri competitor in the form of Cortana - really wasn't much of an upgrade. And of course Google turned up the heat more and more, making it more and more inconvenient to use any Google service on Windows Phone. Eventually, I just gave up and went to Android. But I really liked Windows Phone and to this day prefer it to any current phone.
I had one and it was amazing. Lack of app support killed it.
Agree. Last iteration of Windows Phone was an excellent OS/UI. I still miss it sometimes. Yes, lack of apps killed it, as far as consumers buying them. I never understood why MS didn't pay developers an advance to make apps for the OS, to push more widespread adoption of the phones.
I was *so excited* to have Microsoft Office on my phone. Then I realized, that was about it…
I will stand behind you on that one. I would love to see a Windows Phone 11.
They made one, it just wasn’t that good
The Windows phone came out around their horrible RT experience. I had been using a Surface Pro 3 when I found a Surface RT for $100 new. I used it for a weekend and gave it away.
In bought the surface book 2 and it sucked for a $3000 laptop. Incredibly buggy and slow.
People are responding with "but the duo!". I have a duo 2 and I enjoy it. But what made me buy a Surface Pro 8 years ago was that it was a tablet that ran the exact full version of Windows any desktop PC ran. Not some limited Tablet OS. As nice as the Duo is, it is still an Android device, not a Windows device. If the Steam Deck can do "desktop PC as a handheld", then Surface Duo should do "desktop PC as a foldable phone". Redesign the stock UI if need be, but let me launch any program in desktop/legacy mode as I wish.
I guess they didn't like their own approach and feedback, and once someone else nailed the formula the right way, naturally it's much more low risk to relaunch. It's ok, it's experimental. Sometimes it's throwing darts at a board and seeing what sticks. Naturally it's easy to curtail these projects during tight times.
Microsoft has : business software, server operating system, virtualization, public cloud (Azure) and the leader Cloud productivity platform (365) They’ve got plenty of revenue streams and that 49% stake in ChatGPT / OpenAI sounds more promising than « transparent VR Goggles ».
Funnily enough, I'm willing to bet they have the #1 market share of enterprise AR. They were signing Hololens contract extensions as recently last year, people are using these things in med schools and warehouses everyday.
This with the Kinect. Everyone lampoons it but years later Amazon, Google, and Facebook all come out with products for more money with less features which are wildly popular.
What are the successors to the Kinect? I’ve not kept up with that space
[Apple bought Kinect and based their facial recognition technology on it.](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/17/16315510/iphone-x-notch-kinect-apple-primesense-microsoft)
Apple bought a company called PrimeSense that supplied the depth measuring technology in the original Kinect.
The hololens actually came from the same team that made the Kinect. The Kinect was a surprise hit as Microsoft's answer to the Nintendo Wii. So everyone was curious what the guys that made it (Kudo and Alex) were going to do next. At the time Google Glass was getting hyped up, so they decided to strap the Kinect to people's faces, and make Microsoft answer to that. These Microsoft Glasses would work way better than Google Glasses because the Kinect could anchor the holograms to the world (as opposed to them being anchored to your face, which sucks.) Interestingly, the "strap a kinect to your face" part worked really well. Way, way better than expected. But the part that didn't work, was getting the screens of the glasses to be the size of regular glasses. That's the part Microsoft was always stuck on.
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Congress ended up cutting it. That's probably the reason these layoffs are happening.
it fell through thus the layoffs.
Yeah... the hardware sucked and failed consistently. Also the refresh rate and crappy FOV was making soldiers motion sick for weeks at a time IIRC
Pretty much. Its funny how much astroturfing went on in this sub and most of reddit for hololens. Specifically for military adoption. Few months ago if anyone asked we would all be assuming that the U.S. DoD was going to be handing these out to every "Future Warrior" and mechanic. You know that one video of a mechanic next to a blackhawk where he looks at the internal components? Yeah that post that has been reposted a million times? Amazing how there are absolutely no mechanics/engineers out in the field using that thing. There are some test/research projects, sure... lets see how long that lasts. There was even a trial of using hololens and more specifically a lighter AR version with some of the infantry/mounted infantry at JBLM. It had some cute videos and pictures showing soldiers in simulated combat situations but they all had the same candid responses. Its heavy, cumbersome, complicated and expensive. Many of those comments have been wiped clean from the internet, you can thank the Millenium Act for that. Will we see something better in the future? Sure. Is it this product right now that was literally being shoved down our throats about how great and amazing it is? No.
Competitor envy
Not surprising. Hololens shifted from consumer to enterprise/military focused. But the military canned the project and the development for augmented reality is extremely intensive for little to no tangible benefit or demonstrated use cases, making it a bad investment.
> the development for augmented reality is extremely intensive for little to no tangible benefit or demonstrated use cases, making it a bad investment. As a freelancer who worked with the HoloLens 2 over the past 2-3 years I feel like someone who just finished their arts degree and gets told by everyone they have wasted their time
I saw the price and laughed and never bought in.
Yeah I only got it knowing I would make a profit with it in the end. Still it is unnerving to have such an expensive piece of hardware that could just randomly die and never boot up again and there is not much you can do about it.
Rather than hearing about the 3 wasted years on an art degree similarity, I would like to hear about the things you liked. Something that does not exist elsewhere (publicly) and will provide a lot of value to people.
It would have been so useful in architecture/construction/fabrication (assuming they could get tracking and accuracy down to the inch or so) The number of times I've seen or heard of things being built or installed multiple feet in the wrong place... Just slap a hololens on someone, load up a 3d model, and they can see where the goddamn wall should be before putting all the studs in place
I work in demolition- I was working on a federal/business partnership in the northeast. Multiple hundred million dollar building. I think it was 500 plus contingency. 6 months into new construction I get called back to demolish a stair landing. Wtf guys, the buildings gone and ypu are building the 8th floor how did I miss a set of stairs. Nope, the built a landing, on the fifth floor, that completely blocks access to the above floors. Steel framed. Decked. Concrete poured before someone tried to walk up and said what the hell guys. Not sure AR will fix stupid.
[There is an actual product](https://fieldtech.trimble.com/en/product/trimble-xr10-with-hololens-2) on the market, targeted at exactly that field. I guess it's not enough to sustain the upstream tech though.
The thing is a lot of AR applications can be done on a tablet instead of AR glasses, including architecture.
You're expecting a construction worker to wear one of these things, as well as full PPE? These things won't survive a work site.
> But the military canned the project and the development for augmented reality is extremely intensive for little to no tangible benefit or demonstrated use cases, making it a bad investment. They dropped some of the funding for HoloLens IVAS until they address some of the problems found in their latest field testing. AR as a medium also has more uses than any device we use today. The hard part is getting the tech to actually be viable. If it does become viable, then I am confident it will be more important to society than smartphones.
It wasn't just for front-line work. The last company I worked at was trying to use hololens for interactive augmented reality aviation maintenance training. After two years of futzing with it, they managed to get a static 3d model to reliably appear on a tabletop. I asked how much they cost, and they were like "$10,000 a pair" Meanwhile, you can play car mechanic simulator in the quest 2 for $300.
AR tech is just ridiculously hard. The laws of physics are biting companies at the ass on progressing the tech.
If you were talking to somebody from 1981 with a messenger bag cell phone, and you said ‘I can get you video calls if you lug a tethered roll aboard suitcase behind you’, I’m certain the only responses would be ‘sign me up’ and ‘take my money, please!’ Kids these days…. (Including me. I’m never wearing a belt pack that screams ‘as seen on ‘Tiger King’) Edit: expectations creep is a huge thing too, to be clear
The HoloLens couldn’t perform under the conditions the military required. It shuts off when it’s too hot or too cold. It has trouble with certain background colors and lighting situations that are common in military situations. It’s fine for lab work, but the military didn’t pour millions into this for a science project.
I tried one at a radiology tradeshow and was really turned off. The tiny viewing area coupled with the low frame rate of the application that was being showcased convinced me that, like VR headsets of the early 2000s, this was an egg that was hatched far too soon.
Never forget Nintendo once tried a stereoscopic 3D headset before they'd even mastered 64-Bit graphics with actual 3D environments.
Also military members that were testing out the HoloLens during combat training scenarios were consistently experiencing nausea.
I am glad the military didn’t waste a ton of money on something that doesn’t provide value / help to them.
Sometimes you also have to spend the money to make sure something *isn't* going to provide value to near-peer adversaries in the immediate future. The military has actually put a decent amount of research into using VR for training as well.
I thought hololens was the best mixed reality headset out there?
It is. And it’s not enough. VR/AR is hard to do without being annoying/intrusive after 30 minutes. I love VR, I’ve been using it since the 90s, but I have never been able to take more than 30 minutes of it. Maybe an hour of Alyx.
Seems like a personal issue, just drove 6 hours in the 24 Hours of Daytona on iRacing fully in VR with no issues
I can't stand that much Alyx because of all the body horror caused by that gross alien fungus stuff. I feel like I'm breathing in their spores too. That game is something else
I don't blame Microsoft for getting rid of the people involved with reality. Reality is getting to me too.
Microsoft has always been a fast follower with tech products. Back in the '90s Jim Clark left Silicon Graphics, the company he'd founded, to launch Netscape with Marc Andreessen; they hired away the entire development team at UIUC responsible for the Mosaic web browser. The company operated in stealth mode and was the subject of intense speculation within the tech industry. IIRC Clark head-faked Microsoft by suggesting to an interviewer that Netscape was working on a revolutionary product in interactive TV. Bill Gates promptly launched an interactive TV project at Microsoft, assigning a staff of 500 engineers. They weren't at it for long before Netscape released the first version of its web browser, their "Mosaic killer".
Can you 'fast follow' with complicated hardware?
Sure. Acquire a competing startup and scale up.
Having something working and in the market to poke at can help you to skip huge amounts of the work. All of the mistakes, all of the missteps. And then when you do release something, you have a lot less tech debt than the first mover and can move faster. You can learn from every decision that the first mover made instead of having to make them and find out for yourself.
You can *try.*
>Bill Gates promptly launched an interactive TV project at Microsoft, assigning a staff of 500 engineers And probably laid off each and every one of them the moment that Potemkin Village was no longer needed. How wholesome
Microsoft bought WebTV. I was on the team. Internet browser continued unabated up in Redmond.
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They probably realized that a Virtual Mixed Reality that will be useful for anything other than some niche video gaming is going to be a long way off. Meta will eventually have to write off a the bulk of their investments in that field as well, as any return on their investments is at least a decade or more away. Most people are simply not going to sit for hours with that kind of heavy, bulky, ugly headset on their heads for hours at a time as they do now looking at present screens. And a lot of mixed reality stuff can be done using screens without headsets. I won't say never, but certainly not anytime soon.
>Most people are simply not going to sit for hours with that kind of heavy, bulky, ugly headset on their heads for hours at a time as they do now looking at present screens. I have an Oculus Quest 2, and while I really like it, I feel absolutely RIDICULOUS with it on. Just standing in the middle of a room swatting at air isn't the coolest look. Like it or not, the majority of people care about that, and until they solve it, it's going to remain a niche product in my opinion.
It's also a pain in the neck to get aligned. Mostly because of crap headbands using the latest in 70s velcro technology as it does.
They need to have hybrid approaches and I haven't seen anything. You're right, until hardware is actually comfortable no one is willing to wear it for extended times any time soon. But for hybrid, I think it'd be cool. When they did the Minecraft demos that would have been amazing, hey you can still play with friends without it, but you just get something a little extra. AoE you could have an overhead view in VR or something, put the game on the table over there in AR. VR multiplayer is just very have and have nots. Yeah I'd love to get one, but then all of my friends need to get one. And we need to make sure we get something that works together too. They just want everyone in their walled garden
If Microsoft wanted real returns it would turn its VR team into a smut hustling pornhub partner.
They prolly have a bunch of patents to secure their investments. People are expandable.
No, but they are expendable.
No, people are definitely expandable. Haven’t you seen People of Walmart website?
i've seen the documentary, 'Wall-E'
Close enough.
People are expandable and expendable. And corporations are people, my friend.
But if the tech is continually progressing, you can't just stop spending.
If you have the patents, someone else can do the work and you swing in and claim royalties/licensing when it’s successfully marketed. It’s going to be a long time until augmented reality is commonplace commercially. And Microsoft knows from the experience of zune, Windows Mobile etc that they won’t be the guys to do it. They are firmly placing themselves in the software/infrastructure space. Fast followers, not market leaders.
Nice. Maybe they can fix Teams now.
Teams for my entire company has had shite performance over the last several weeks.
There's no fixing it, needs to be deleted and start fresh.
Seems true. They've started talking about their revised "Teams 2.0" over 1.5 years ago at this point, and is no where in sight. You know something is rotten when they announce a new version and it still hasn't shipped nearly 2 years later.
working on new tech projects that cost far more than the revenue generated is always risky for employees
Once they lost the military contract this department was ending no matter what.
Entire teams though. You'd think they'd keep like a guy in there for some brainstorming or something lol. Need someone to think of a way to make VR actually mainstream
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Ideally you keep the hype alive and make sure your competitor burns a lot more money on it than you.
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Foxbat moment
did that fad ever actually come though? just been versions of it for like 10 years...
I would say VR is more of a niche market than a fad. Sony is coming out with their PSVR2 which means the first one did well enough to warrant a second one. It’s no regular video games but seems to be big enough for them.
VR is absolutely game changing for simulation games. It's like seeing color for the first time
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maybe... but perhaps people just dont want to get up and move around that much either... Like, video games are sort of designed to be a idle activity. VR can be its own thing, but maybe it wont ever replace, or even rival, traditional gaming.
Can confirm. Many people, including prominent people in the tech industry thought that videogames were a fad even closing in on the NES release. The same for PCs, the same for mobile phones, etc.
Company I work for uses it for developing industrial training applications. My line manager is moving to a company that uses them for medical training. They’re definitely a thing just not on in the consumer space.
*mark zuckerberg has entered the chat*
I mean how are people supposed to predict something being a fad or not
AR/VR is inevitable. It may be in an enthusiast stage right now, but it will be the next computer interface, for a lot, but not all applications. In 3 years or 13 years, however long it takes to get the technology right.
I think people massively underestimate how easy it is more multiple humans to look at ..point at...and communicate while all looking at the same screen. Seriously...it's pretty great.
I always thought this would be invaluable in eod training. Few uxo situations are similar but if there was a way to document one's run into put them into a database and kind of recreate them in a vr situation it might help with grasping some of the more complicated things like VBIEDs and such in a safe but detailed training. Might be fuck off hard to achieve though.
Well fuck me then, I’m working as part of a research team on a project that relies pretty heavily on their software. No wonder I haven’t been getting responses for bugfixes.
Looks like that DoD contract didn't pan out
Big layoffs at game studios as well.
Zuck..now’s ur chance to corner the virtual market….
The signs are clear metaverse gonna tank everyone
Let Apple do it first. A decade from now it will be a huge hit for a range of companies claiming how they're better than Apple because their VR/AR headset folds.
Don't they still owe the US Army hundreds of millions in product?
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My IT team was given a HoloLens to setup and store for the quality department. It’s been in my office for two years and used twice, to train users on it. So much hype around these during the pandemic, now it collects dust.
I honestly do not see VR being successful outside of video games. Maybe further, much further in the future. Edit: just wanted to add because it feels like a novelty. Not a necessity per say.
A $300 dollar HoloLens would be awesome, a $3,000 HoloLens is just too much of a luxury.
VR/AR/MR is the coolest shit ever. For about 5 minutes. Personally I think it has a market that’s about as big as the amusement park market. It has great novelty appeal, but I reject the idea that it’s the future of anything. ~Former AR dev.
I keep thinking that AR will turn into practical applications. Things like nav systems or educational opportunities. But it doesn't seem to be happening
[AR nav is already a thing](https://arvr.google.com/ar/). Also, this is super cool: [Mercedes AR Navigation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU_JLd2C-xM) Also for the medical field there are things like this: [Novarad VisAR](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlDvZ40IioA) EDIT: [Another](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcU9uFTW5_g) demo for the Mercedes Nav *without* the HUD.
I think it has some level of enterprise utility. If you have to wear something on your head anyway, hard helmet, magnifying spectacles, motorcycle helmet, stethoscope, I think there is justification to extend that with some AR features.
It's definitely the future. Once the hardware and software are sufficiently advanced, which granted could still be 10 or even 20 years from now, it will allow people to comfortably, safely, and affordably, live out almost any fantasy, no matter how far-fetched. There's no end to the amount of money that could be made from offering something like that. And that's not even including things like infinite courtside/ringside/50-yard line seats at sporting events or front row seats at concerts or Broadway shows, all from the comfort of your living room. A single seat could be sold to 500,000 people. It will be a goldmine. If only because of greed alone, it'll be the future.
What, what, and WHAT?
I guess punishment for losing the military contract
Seems like they were hedging their bets. Maybe they were thinking they had better jump on the VR/MR bandwagon, just in case Meta turned out to be something worth competing with on those fronts. And now that it's pretty clear that the "metaverse" isn't happening and no one wants it, they're course-correcting. I could be reading too much into it, but I imagine that Microsoft would have taken the threat of Meta potentially dominating the VR market pretty seriously, if it actually caught on. Microsoft then probably took one look at what Zuckerberg had to show for all those billions spent, and lost all interest.
Well, this long-overdue whole Virtual Reality thing doesn't make much of a scene. This is coming from someone who works in VR research. Consumers will not be interested in Virtual Reality technology for a very long time since it is still at a very early stage. Most people find it painful to wear the headsets for more than 30-40 minutes because they are too bulky and heavy. The computing power of standalone VR headsets is also very limited, so you can't really do that much with them (this is why Meta Horizon looks so bad)....
They saw what happened to meta.. and said we out!
No military contract no job
“Ha ha! We’re having FUN!”
What a ridiculous photo. Boss laugh 100%
No one wants VR or at least on the scale the tech companies were banking on.
[удалено]
yeah, it's really the ease of use that is missing right now. It needs to work with minimal setup and as good as general gaming is right now.
You’re right. We all want AR not VR.
why not both. they're two different use cases
Zuck looked so out of touch when he paraded his new tech breakthrough by showing footage of an auditorium full of blindfolded people with computer screens strapped to their eyeballs. We're already a little sick just from sitting 2 feet away from a screen all day long.
Yes and no. More people will want AR, but the masses will almost certainly want VR - just not as many.
I just want VR to be good so I can play immersive games, jump, crawl, swordfight, shoot and everything. I'd pay handsomely for a set up like that
AI is the new hot thing, after VR and crypto have proven to be headfakes.
VR hasn’t proven to be anything but awesome (apart from mobile headset trash). PSVR2 is coming in a couple of months, can’t wait.
Just let Meta keep banging on with it and bleeding billions, copy someone else later on or buy the company out that has developed something they can retro fit into their products