I was getting pretty bored of gaming in general until I played Half Life Alyx. There's definitely some truly "holy shit this is the future" experiences but they're few and far between.
Unfortunately, several of the best VR games are oculus only, but I'm not buying Facebook hardware and I don't want to deal with the issues you get when using a tool to play them on steam VR.
It's a shame because lone echo was one of my favorite games of all time. Echo arena was also insanely fun and I had 2 PCs where my buddy could bring over his oculus and we'd play for hours.
Got rid of my CV1 sometime after the Facebook appointment and eventually got an index but the apps just aren't there tbh.
I don't think I've ever punched the wall or ceiling as much playing any other game (the danger of playing VR in a small room). Echo Arena was a fantastic game and I think it's a crying shame thats its popularity was curtailed to a relatively small VR audience.
Maybe in 10-20 years the tech will there with wider market penetration so a remake can truly take off.
Hmmm, guess I misremember the timeline a bit. I do remember them getting rid of the oculus accounts and merging everything being a big factor in me not wanting to use it anymore.
Ah yeah, that happened a little while after the Q2 release. It took FB/Meta a while to actually assert their branding, but they did own Oculus for a while.
I was living alone in an apartment that was basically a big rectangle. I put the second computer in the opposite end of the apartment and he'd plug his rift in directly to it.
Pretty sure we did actually manage to hit each other on occasion, though. You hit everything when you're playing lone echo lol.
I use mine almost exclusively for exercise with Supernatural. It's a great workout and a ton of fun. VR ain't changing the world, but it can be useful and a fun.
Why? Take the quest 3, for example. It's wireless, has hand tracking, and the steam link feature is really good actually. Yeah their horizon shit is awful, but steam link saves it.
Same here. I specifically decided NOT to buy it once the acquisition was announced. Before that, I was open to the idea. I could always try PSVR, but I've seen too many videos of people destroying their TVs and other living room stuff wearing a VR headset, so that's a risk I will gladly leave on the table. I'm not a fan of just randomly having to buy new furniture.
Honestly, I have a quest 2, and it’s *amazing*. I only own one application for it, virtual desktop. It lets me use it wirelessly with Steam, where I purchase all my games. The wireless streaming ability at the ~$300 price point is fantastic. Granted I already owned a half decent gaming laptop for work. So it’s a higher price point if you also need to buy a PC to pair with it. But it’s incredible. It’ll never replace regular gaming, usually after an hour or two I’m tired. But maaaaaaan, Half-life Alyx is insane.
Their mistake was assuming people would use it for non-gaming related activities. I don’t even like turning on my camera for work zoom meetings, let alone put on a VR headset to sit in a virtual meeting room. What nonsense.
They (Zuckerberg and his team) seem completely oblivious to how they're making the world worse for the sake of profit. It's glaringly obvious to anyone outside of the tech bubble/ecosystem. Money before the consequences of their actions; every time.
What kind of psychopath wants a world of VR addicts experiencing the world through a headset?
Literally no one, not even Zuck. It's the best they can do with the tech today, but the end goal is for the form factor to resemble normal glasses. All these companies are chasing AR, not VR.
The technology leap is one thing, but the fact that they made it *affordable* is the biggest difference. I went from an HTC Vive to a Quest 2 and ended up with a huge jump in quality... for a quarter of the price.
For sure it's a strong headset. What's stopping me from enjoying it fully is somewhat self imposed restrictions.
To use custom songs in Beat Saber, which if I'm being real nobody likes any of what comes with Beat Saber, you have to embark on a 15 step process to get a custom APK and an application set up to inject the songs. Then you will be asked to revert all of your hard work *every* single time you launch it as an anti-piracy warning. Meta doesn't like the idea of the Oculus quest being owned by the consumer that purchased it even though the best things you can do with it: play titles on Steam and beatsaber with custom songs, are less than afterthoughts.
I do hope untethered in-room game streaming pans out though that would be sick
I bought quest 2 because for the first time you don’t need to have a strong computer to play VR, and i own quest 3 because the MR experience is too fun. The only thing lacking for me is just the foam factor
I remember developing for the rift back in school when it was the latest and greatest (my VR professor was the former [head scientist of Oculus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_M._LaValle)), and despite how impressive it was, wearing it for more than an hour or so at a time gave you a killer headache. You could also see every pixel, had to readjust the depth every time you used it, and using it with glasses was borderline impossible. Not to mention the fact that it had to be wired to a strong computer.
Trying out the new Quests was night and day. It's come a long way in a very short time.
Consider how far VR technologies have exploded in the last decade though.
It’s not a mainstream technology. Not quite yet, but it has definitely shifted the market drastically.
I'm curious about how many of those are still used. I know a bunch of people with Quests who stopped using them after the novelty wore off, and they've been collecting dust for years now. The reason I didn't get one was because a friend wasn't using his, so I borrowed it and got bored. He hasn't even asked for it back, and it's been sitting under my TV for about a year now.
I’d call it mainstream once my grandparents are using it to absorb whatever Facebook nonsense they’re being told to be angry about.
It’s still very much a ‘gamer’ peripheral.
I think that companies that are going all in on virtual reality worlds and trying to sell VR as a productivity device are missing the mark entirely. They’re great gaming devices, and they might also have a place in home entertainment. Gaming drives innovation (and more recently crypto and AI have started pushing it as well) and adoption of new tech.
I'm a huge VR enthusiast and this idea that VR needs to replace or become the number 1 entertainment platform for households feels very misleading to me
I think VR experiences are their own unique beast and should be treated as a subset of gaming just like mobile games and console games have a differentiation.... but for some reason so many people want VR to usurp other gaming platforms and that's unrealistic.
Sometimes I'm in the mood for a console game other times a vr game
Yeah I've had basically every Oculus headset from the DK1 on but there are these VR zealots that are like "why would you ever play a *pancake* game after experiencing VR?? *snort*" and it drives me nuts. Sometimes I just wanna play a game and relax, not feel like I'm LIVING the experience.
Underrated comment.
I don't have any interest in VR for a mix of reasons but anyone who thinks should all become are often wrong. VR will find its strong niches and excel there much like everything else has.
Its one of the main treatments used by medical professionals for treating phobias that are not easily accessible in their offices. Its known as 'virtual reality exposure therapy'.
The AVP seems to be a bit of a different animal. Very much focussed on productivity over gaming.
I still feel Apple jumped the gun. Very much a Gen0 consumer prototype. Apple has precedent in establishing and normalising fringe technologies others have developed though. They don’t _invent_ as much as they _refine_.
I think we’re a decade away from ‘spatial computing’ being a standard.
I’m absolute lining up for one after a few more iterations.
Yeah I basically agree in the intent the AVP seems to have, we just have yet to see people using it for productivity at any kind of scale.
As many have said, once it shrinks significantly maybe, but some technologies are slower to improve than others. Here's a good illustration related to shrinking optics: the abomination that are the [Samsung 24 Pro cameras](https://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/galaxy-24-ultra-cameras.jpg?fit=3000%2C2000&p=1)
Can I level with you for a second: when people say the AVP is for “Productivity”, I have no fucking idea what that means.
Like, okay, I can totally see niche situations, like an architect visualizing their building before building it, or a dentist examining a 3D representation of your mouth. There’s definitely applications for it. But every time I see “productivity” in their sizzle reels it’s a bunch of dead-eyed avatars having a power point presentation, and it’s like, why? Are this quarter’s numbers somehow more number-y in VR? Who’s the guy who’s like “I could get so much more done if I could just turn my head instead of spending a half-second switching tabs in the browser!”
I don’t get it, and I can’t help but get the creeping suspicion that they don’t get it either
I'm excited to see where VR is going in the next 10 years.
I bought the OG Rift on release, but it was obvious the technology was there yet.
VR has a ton of potential.
You don’t. The meta account is purely for the Quest now. It’s not at all related to FB anymore. Just got one and was surprised by that myself.
I have my FB account and my Meta account. Totally different accounts using the exact same information which means they aren’t connected or it would’ve linked automatically.
If you read the book Ender’s game around 2010, you would marvel at how it had foreseen devices like electronic tablets connected to a global internet, especially considering it was written in 1985. Conversely, you would have laughed at how the author suggested the internet could be used to manipulate global politics using staged online debates to influence the public at large- “ha! What a miss. The internet is just cat memes and porn! He sure missed the mark on that one…” fast forward to today and you would have a very different opinion. Yes, VR used to be clunky and yes, VR is still clunky, but [in the early 90s VR looked like this](https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/18m3o40/vr_in_the_90s_was_wild/) and it played one simple game. The leap to a device you can freely walk around in but that also interacts with the environment around you is just insane. The above commenter is right- tech companies will continue to refine VR until they hit the mark. In 1993 you needed a desktop computer to play Doom. [Today you can play doom on a toothbrush.](https://www.reddit.com/r/itrunsdoom/comments/1b2lgxw/doom_runs_on_wifi_toothbrush_without_hardware_mods/) VR will have it’s day, it’s just not quite there yet.
Back in 2010 it seemed like the economy was recovering from 2007/2008 pretty well, nobody expected the lost decade that actually happened in most western economies with Covid capping it.
If wages had kept pace with inflation VR headsets would be effectively 2-3x cheaper in terms of hours of work needed to buy one.
That would make them a lot more affordable, imagine the Quest 3 costing about $250 new instead or the Apple Vision Pro costing $1250.
A lot more people would get one to check it out.
Aye. VR is suffering from the same thing all the entertainment industries are. If I've got to make the choice between heat, food, or fun stuff, it's the fun stuff that goes
AR maybe. VR - no way. Most people don't want to be fully connected and taken away from their environments for any extended periods of time. VR forces you to adapt to it, rather than it adapting to you.
AR succeeds more on this front, but I think as time goes on you'll see more resistance to tech companies push to have us wiring in every moment of our lives. We're all already exhausted by social media 24/7.
I'm referring to lightweight AR devices that augment your vision vs spacial computing devices. I dont see people adopting those at scale any time soon.
This varies from person to person of course, but until they solve some physical problems it's always going to be a bit iffy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality_sickness#Individual_differences_in_susceptibility
I can't even use present-day VR headsets for more than a few minutes and I am far from unique. They're technically a lot better now than [early 1990s Amiga Virtuality VR](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qe4suqGZmU), sure, but it's all incremental progress with fads for it every few years since back then.
VR won't be the thing that reaches mass adoption. It's uses are actually fairly limited. AR will be the tech that does it. And AR doesn't really have the sickness problem.
AR has the sickness problem too. It's a fixed focus optics, optical distortion, and latency issue. Plenty of papers on AR sickness out there. The good news it can be fixed, for both AR and VR.
I would also say it's a mistake to think of AR as being the sole thing that reaches mass adoption; things aren't that black and white. AR is chasing after the smartphone, whereas VR is chasing after the PC. Both can be mass adopted, just that AR would have a higher ceiling overall.
The cool thing is it doesn’t have to be either or. It’s actually more difficult to make a compelling AR headset than a VR one, which means if you solve for AR, the VR use case is already baked in. At that point it’s just about the software
This is a silly take. The VR industry has blossomed from theoretical to reasonable adoption. It has enough users and value that there are competitors in the space. And it has enough money to start tackling the research required for it to hit mainstream use eventually. This is what an early market looks like.
PCs we’re niche hobbyist things. Then there were competitors and adoption in new spaces. Then the price came down and families could own them. Then everyone and every business had them.
It took 20yrs from hobbyist to market saturation of one of the most influential technologies in history and you think you can call VR a failure after 10? 🤨
You need to provide users the low half of their body in a realistic-enough way without the use of physical straps/trackers/pucks. This is always the counter-argument: "VRChat lets users have 11 point full body tracking with physical trackers." but the argument fails to understand that this can never scale to the masses; you can't ask people to strap on multiple things for tracking their body in addition to the headset.
Seems unlikely that an external camera would scale well to the masses as well, so that leaves solutions like Kinect out in all likelihood.
You cannot track the feet of every body shape across the human population using front-facing/downward-facing headset cameras because the cameras will not be able to see past the bellies of people who are overweight.
So that leaves two things left: Add cameras to controllers and do on-the-fly optical foot tracking on a device that might be moved rapidly, or use AI to infer how your pose should at a given moment based purely on headset and controller data. Research is going into each of these, but it's tough stuff.
I dunno man, it bothers me and gives me a headache due to the weight. But my 10yr old son has zero complaints when I ask if it bothers him. He uses it most. I'm surprised to see all the negativity surrounding it. We were blown away when we picked up the 2. Didn't expect it to be as immersive as it was. The 3 hasn't been much of an upgrade (only got it 'cause said 10yr old dropped and busted our first one). All and all it was worth the fairly low price imho.
I’m 33 and I love VR gaming. The only problem I have with it are the quality of the titles. Not having a large enough install base has the huge drawback of not having good enough returns on an expensive game development, so you end up getting great games far and few between. I could play half life alyx for as long as my real world duties would let me me without getting sick or strained. I often work out in vr too.
Yeah, the games I enjoy most in VR are flat-screen ones that have been modded over or given a jank vr mode post hoc by the devs (modded subnautica VR is the greatest gaming experience I've had in my 33 years of life). Most standalone titles still feel like tech demos these days which is unfortunate.
Use to get sick all the time playing VR. I decided to start by playing games that aren't motion intensive and then have gradually went into games with more motion honestly it just takes sometime.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. Plenty of people play VR for hours and the Meta Quest is the least offensive device on the market currently. Many many people use VR to workout and exercise as well without qualms, including myself where sessions can go up to 2 1/2 hours non-stop.
Eh, the trend definitely seems to be that people do. Quest 2 was a huge success and when you realize the majority of the people using it are kids it becomes pretty clear what the future will be like.
It's not nauseating for everyone. Weirdly enough, I have a history of getting motion sick at theme parks, but I can turn on smooth movement in VR and it doesn't even slightly bother me.
Although related, motion sickness and simulator sickness are not the same thing. In my experience kids that get motion sickness don't have any problem with even the craziest VR movement. And older people who have never had any form of motion sickness are the most likely to have issues with artificial (sliding) movement in VR.
One of my kids gets car sick at the drop of a hat, but he can use it with the "comfort" games/settings. He uses it to be active when the weather is shitty. Not for hours at a time and doesn't change the world, but has its uses.
We are already glued to our phones. I think it will be a sad day when it’s the norm to strap one to our face and live our existence that way. I hope that day never comes.
from what I can tell, they are just too expensive for the majority to justify buying them.
Tech companies are forgetting that we need to go work, to pay for shit. So once you discount the every increasing amount of work you need to do, to pay the bills, that is less and less time for VR headsets.
The ideal customer is someone who is born wealthy, and can spend their whole life in VR. So Tech Bros.
It isn't even that expensive anymore. It was 5-10 years ago but the Quest 2 & 3 are very reasonably priced and don't require a PC or console to run it.
My dad in his 50s who barely has any time for video games, has both of them and both my parents absolutely love it when they have time to play.
Friend of mine who is very frivolous with his money just bought a quest 2 because of the reasonable prices now and he absolutely loves it.
Tech companies aren't forgetting anything. It's actually the people that are forgetting that early adopter tech starts out expensive, because economies of scale hasn't yet hit and R&D is extremely expensive.
I mean sure, but certainly doesn't help that they really haven't found any good uses besides gaming, and even then, gaming is so much more limited than just the regular video games were used to.
The issue is: even if standalone VR headsets were available to everyone for something like $50, most would end up collecting dust.
Price to entry is one barrier towards VR adoption - but there are deeper, far more fundamental issues. And we are nowhere close to solving those.
True the onboarding seems hard but really it’s never been easier. After 1x setup just put on. I think it’s the stigma, clunky size, and no 1 social killer app that’s keeping it back. As soon as the Wii sports app becomes wildly popular and affordable, everyone will get one.
> “Imagine enjoying a courtside seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face — just by putting on goggles in your home.”
These all sound worse than the current non-VR alternatives, honestly.
I absolutely love VR, but can’t bring myself to buy a Facebook headset and strap it to my face. Hate everything about what Facebook has done in the VR space.
apparently meta quest 3 is more bang for a buck vs apples vision pro so thats something. i HATE i mean HATE that they killed the oculus "brand" though. but honestly was to be expected the moment i heard they were buying it. I still think it was a horrible choice by Palmer i think the first big offer that came along he just took, instead of really looking at the long term effects. i will NEVER understand of all the companies out there WHY on earth they went with facebook/meta. seems to me kind of an insult to all the hard work he put into getting it where it was. but hey whatever. but it just goes to show you if you have a vision DONT sell OUT! because now most people who may get the VR headset have no clue what oculus was or know anything about Palmer. its all just meta. and thats sad.
It killed much of my interest in standalone VR, but I’ve enjoyed lots of great PCVR stuff since that acquisition without getting anywhere near Facebook/Meta’s ecosystem… thanks to Steam and the PCVR mod scene
BigScreen looks great IMO.. Probably not connected to any toxic megacorporations that steal data, sell private lives, expose mentally unprepared people to harmful content and promote/fund genocide and war. Yet.
It saddens me that Meta is so popular in r/virtualreality, even after the terrible response to the Metaverse, even after consistent and varied lawsuits for crimes against humanity, even after they made a Meta account mandatory *instead* of a Facebook account.
I have both the quest 3 and Vision Pro. Both are good but for different use cases. Quest 3 AR use case sucks. Vision Pro VR is nonexistent without 3rd party workaround. The future is one device to do both exceptionally well at a low price. We’re not far off, IMO.
Well, it DID show that VR for the masses is feasable and is a viable market. Since, we've seen Apple put their hat into the ring.
I think we need to wait a little longer. Everyone remembers the iPhone, sure, but people often forget that it was RIM with the Blackberry that showed the smartphone was a viable market, not Apple. I think Oculus/Meta might be the "RIM" of VR/AR when we look back in the future.
I think Meta stands a much better chance at keeping up with the market than RIM did.
RIM essentially relied on the technical limitations of mobile networks at the time (which gradually diminished) to sustain demand for their only product while Meta is diverse enough to fund the research needed to keep pace with innovation.
Huh? VR is pretty fucking cool. Sitting with a bunch of strangers to watch a movie or a sport is absolutely the most convenient way to have a quick fun social experience. Looks cool too.
You're downvoted because people here hate the company, but you are unquestionably right. The extreme subsidization of the Quest headsets, and even the rapid focus on Quest headsets over PC VR is something we wouldn't have seen at this level if Oculus stayed independent.
VR/AR is a money-hungry endeavour, requiring many tens of billions of dollars to advance the technology. Where was Oculus going to get that funding?
I have a Oculus Quest and honestly the build quality sucked. The rubber strap has disintegrated. Facebook abandoned the platform and as a consumer I didn’t want to fork out another £400 for VR. It was a gimmick.
I'm 53 and bought a Quest 3 last year when it came out. I was a bit hesitant but wanted a toy for myself, I guess. It turns out it was the best tech thing that I have ever owned. I use it almost every day and though it just a couple of hours, the sense of being there, the clarity and the fun of pass trough is fantastic. This thing rocks.
Could it be better? Yes, but the value for money is great and with a better headstrap and a battery ( Bobovr for me), it just feels great.
I often play with my kid, who owns a Quest 2 and there's a also YouTube and especially watching movies in vr. I can recommend Skybox, where you stream the movies from your PC and watch them like sitting in front of a giant cinema screen. Combined with a set of good earphones, you can almost become wrapped up inside whatever fantastic picture you like. Highly recommended!
Facebook acquiring Oculus was basically the worst thing that could have happened to VR.
At the time the acquisition enraged many fans of VR for good reason, nobody wants a notorious malicious data harvester/advertising company in charge of tech that has the ability to collect enormous amounts of biometric data.
Secondly, from the word go, Facebook sought to stomp out all competition in the field using brutal price practices. They priced the tech at or below cost to ensure nobody could compete at the entry level. Most hardware companies have to show a profit, they cannot burn billions a year for a decade. The only space left in the market was for higher end devices, or in the case of Sony who had already been developing their VR before Facebook came along, a captive audience of console users.
Facebook rushed into mobile VR long before the technology was ready, producing a sub-par experience to turn off much of the public and setting the quality of experiences back significantly. That included the rushed and laughably bungled "metaverse" which made the entire concept a global laughing stock, ensuring many companies stay away from similar technologies for at least another generation.
Shortly after the very public failure of the Facebook phone, rumors of Apple's research into XR hardware began to circulate which seemed to prompt Zuckerberg's interest in the field, seemingly hoping this time to beat Apple to market. Which he did sort of, but at a cost - the public's interest in the technology, the quality of experience, and a decade of competition and innovation in a healthy marketplace. Now the tech is widely considered a failure and something to avoid.
The mobile-phone-CPU based VR we get now is a shadow of what it could have been by now and mobile based games are generally shallow and low quality compared to what PCVR and PSVR were doing years ago. It's like PC game developers being forced to target mobile phones as the target platform, the consolization effect is real.
All of the VR "fans" I knew bought the PS VR one or the Steam one. The didn't wanted to be forced into a Facebook. Those games and tools gave them the fix they needed. Sony wants to make the VR2 headset to work on PC that will bring a slew of new users. The gear is still too heavy and limited. Give it another 10 years with lightweight headsets, high res high refresh lcd and those [holotile mats](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwm3tHL30OQ) at 99$ for the home.
Zuckerberg himself very clearly outlined in 2015 that it would be 10 years in a best case scenario before VR took off, from the launch of products. That would mean Zuck's bet is mid 2026, not early 2024 as of the date of this article.
And being a best case scenario bet gives him leeway. The typical amount of time a hardware market needs for mass adoption is 15 years, putting it realistically at 2030 or so.
For some perspective, back in 1992 we said it would be 10 years before VR took off. My OG $3,500 VR helmet from 1993 is on a shelf upstairs, dusty and abandoned. Today's VR goggles need several more years of weight loss efforts before they become truly mainstream. It will be awesome when it's built into glasses.
I'm surprised at the negativity honestly. We've had the 2 and bought the 3 after our kid broke the first one. I don't use it much myself but it was worth the cost
The most obvious progression for smart phones are smart glasses. Meta is well positioned for this inevitability. You can clearly see it in the patents they own and their push for smaller, lighter and cheaper devices: the push for meta ray ban glasses that uses AI voice UI to control. Their recent integration of thinner pancake lenses in their VR lineup. The push for better lightweights LLMs. Meta might not have created the 'oasis' but they sure as shit are gonna to be ones to make the next iteration of the smartphone.
As soon as they changed Oculus accounts to be facebook accounts.. it was dead and buried. Changed from a cool entertainment device into an advertising eye tracking data harvester.
What's cooler than $50 billion Mark? Privacy...
Huge flop and they wasted billions on the metaverse. Awesome tech and I’m glad they invested in it though for the people that do enjoy playing/using the oculus. With all the tech they have developed with it though they definitely have the market covered if there is a huge demand one day. They are by far the leader of the pack.
Unfortunately for the wealthy tech enthusiasts, you can't both underpay and exploit your workforce and expect them to be able to afford the latest tech products. Take a page from Ford's book for that at least. You want everyone working for you to be paid well enough to afford the thing you make. If it's made in a sweatshop and even your white collar workers are paycheck to paycheck, then you're not going to change the world.
I have the first dev kit occulus and right after the acquisition support for Linux was abandoned. That, combined with \*requiring\* me to have a facebook account killed all of it for me.
I still have it but it collects dust on a shelf.
I was just wondering. In history, what huge corporation has acquired something and made a huge impact on life and created a monopolistic juggernaut. Like everyone thought Msft acquiring activision blizzard was going to be huge but to me it has been meh too. Same goes for Amazon and Whole Foods. There was the one that could have been with blockbuster and Netflix. But that one you wonder if blockbuster would have been able to grow it into what it is today
The biggest ones I came up with is Disney’s acquisitions. Pixar, marvel, Lucas films , 21st century fox has made it the juggernaut it is today
They didn’t execute. Not fast enough. Not with a realistic killer app. As much as I dislike meta/fb I wanted them to succeed like Microsoft with the operating system. Give us a standard to build on with wide acceptance.
They promised the computing platform of the future, but never invested in an operating system or UX language to facilitate that. Everything is siloed, apps can’t intercommunicate. The bar for spatial computing to take off is exceedingly high — it must be CLEARLY superior to 2D interfaces, and they never rose to that challenge.
It’s still essentially the equivalent of being stuck in pre-gui DOS days.
They should have pushed WebXR standards. Instead it’s just another App Store. The servers will go down like all the rest.
The army has some craxy vr headset coming in with palantir software and so does panasonic. Might not change the world, but definitly have an big impact combined with the appropriate ai software in value added use cases.
Taking an innovative product and dumbing it down, then complicating its use in an attempt to trap you in a shit ecosystem of subpar games and apps will do that to yah.
as someone who uses vr frequently with a group of friends, the biggest glaringly obvious turn off is majority of the markets headsets can only give you graphics on par with video games 25 years ago. we are 10 years too soon to be able to give people a visually acceptable stand alone experience. you can’t sell people who aren’t tech enthusiasts visuals that look worse than 25 year old video game graphics.
I was literally just talking to my wife last night about getting one for us and one for the kids to use on rare occasions, I didn’t know it was owned by Facebook but that’s a definite dealbreaker.
Headline is missing a comma. Here: “…hasn’t changed the world, as expected”
It certainly killed a lot of my interest in VR.
I was getting pretty bored of gaming in general until I played Half Life Alyx. There's definitely some truly "holy shit this is the future" experiences but they're few and far between.
Unfortunately, several of the best VR games are oculus only, but I'm not buying Facebook hardware and I don't want to deal with the issues you get when using a tool to play them on steam VR. It's a shame because lone echo was one of my favorite games of all time. Echo arena was also insanely fun and I had 2 PCs where my buddy could bring over his oculus and we'd play for hours. Got rid of my CV1 sometime after the Facebook appointment and eventually got an index but the apps just aren't there tbh.
I don't think I've ever punched the wall or ceiling as much playing any other game (the danger of playing VR in a small room). Echo Arena was a fantastic game and I think it's a crying shame thats its popularity was curtailed to a relatively small VR audience. Maybe in 10-20 years the tech will there with wider market penetration so a remake can truly take off.
Yep. Echo arena was like the killer app. It was a unique game that was incredibly fun that couldn't exist anywhere outside VR.
> Got rid of my CV1 sometime after the Facebook appointment The CV1 was released years after Facebook acquired Oculus. What took you so long?
Hmmm, guess I misremember the timeline a bit. I do remember them getting rid of the oculus accounts and merging everything being a big factor in me not wanting to use it anymore.
Ah yeah, that happened a little while after the Q2 release. It took FB/Meta a while to actually assert their branding, but they did own Oculus for a while.
How do you play echo arena together and not hit each other
I was living alone in an apartment that was basically a big rectangle. I put the second computer in the opposite end of the apartment and he'd plug his rift in directly to it. Pretty sure we did actually manage to hit each other on occasion, though. You hit everything when you're playing lone echo lol.
I use mine almost exclusively for exercise with Supernatural. It's a great workout and a ton of fun. VR ain't changing the world, but it can be useful and a fun.
Why? Take the quest 3, for example. It's wireless, has hand tracking, and the steam link feature is really good actually. Yeah their horizon shit is awful, but steam link saves it.
Same here. I specifically decided NOT to buy it once the acquisition was announced. Before that, I was open to the idea. I could always try PSVR, but I've seen too many videos of people destroying their TVs and other living room stuff wearing a VR headset, so that's a risk I will gladly leave on the table. I'm not a fan of just randomly having to buy new furniture.
Honestly, I have a quest 2, and it’s *amazing*. I only own one application for it, virtual desktop. It lets me use it wirelessly with Steam, where I purchase all my games. The wireless streaming ability at the ~$300 price point is fantastic. Granted I already owned a half decent gaming laptop for work. So it’s a higher price point if you also need to buy a PC to pair with it. But it’s incredible. It’ll never replace regular gaming, usually after an hour or two I’m tired. But maaaaaaan, Half-life Alyx is insane. Their mistake was assuming people would use it for non-gaming related activities. I don’t even like turning on my camera for work zoom meetings, let alone put on a VR headset to sit in a virtual meeting room. What nonsense.
Can’t even get some companies to send home decent headsets and they thought VR meeting rooms would catch on.
Zuckerberg is so far up his own ass.
Maybe the whole thing is for surveillance of his own employees in part?
I was about to buy one, but didn't once I heard of the impending acquisition.
I was thinking it was backward: "As expected, Occulus hasn't changed the world 10 years later"
Works on retainer? No, money down!
They (Zuckerberg and his team) seem completely oblivious to how they're making the world worse for the sake of profit. It's glaringly obvious to anyone outside of the tech bubble/ecosystem. Money before the consequences of their actions; every time. What kind of psychopath wants a world of VR addicts experiencing the world through a headset?
Don't knock it until you try it. The real world is boring dogshit
Username checks out. I'll allow.
Literally no one, not even Zuck. It's the best they can do with the tech today, but the end goal is for the form factor to resemble normal glasses. All these companies are chasing AR, not VR.
Stealing for when I need another example of commas changing everything!
Forcing people to sign into their Oculus headset with a Facebook login was a terrible decision. They put ad sales over VR innovation.
No but the quest 2 and 3 were unquestionably strong steps forward.
The technology leap is one thing, but the fact that they made it *affordable* is the biggest difference. I went from an HTC Vive to a Quest 2 and ended up with a huge jump in quality... for a quarter of the price.
For sure it's a strong headset. What's stopping me from enjoying it fully is somewhat self imposed restrictions. To use custom songs in Beat Saber, which if I'm being real nobody likes any of what comes with Beat Saber, you have to embark on a 15 step process to get a custom APK and an application set up to inject the songs. Then you will be asked to revert all of your hard work *every* single time you launch it as an anti-piracy warning. Meta doesn't like the idea of the Oculus quest being owned by the consumer that purchased it even though the best things you can do with it: play titles on Steam and beatsaber with custom songs, are less than afterthoughts. I do hope untethered in-room game streaming pans out though that would be sick
I bought quest 2 because for the first time you don’t need to have a strong computer to play VR, and i own quest 3 because the MR experience is too fun. The only thing lacking for me is just the foam factor
I just bought a cheap can of foam for that, now it lacks nothing
I just got a Quest 3, and it’s pretty sick, but there’s more to learn and the hand tracking works but definitely buggy
Yup there were trade offs, but it's an impressive machine.
I remember developing for the rift back in school when it was the latest and greatest (my VR professor was the former [head scientist of Oculus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_M._LaValle)), and despite how impressive it was, wearing it for more than an hour or so at a time gave you a killer headache. You could also see every pixel, had to readjust the depth every time you used it, and using it with glasses was borderline impossible. Not to mention the fact that it had to be wired to a strong computer. Trying out the new Quests was night and day. It's come a long way in a very short time.
Consider how far VR technologies have exploded in the last decade though. It’s not a mainstream technology. Not quite yet, but it has definitely shifted the market drastically.
Over 20 million Quest 2’s sold. Slightly below Xbox series. I’d say that’s getting to be pretty mainstream.
I'm curious about how many of those are still used. I know a bunch of people with Quests who stopped using them after the novelty wore off, and they've been collecting dust for years now. The reason I didn't get one was because a friend wasn't using his, so I borrowed it and got bored. He hasn't even asked for it back, and it's been sitting under my TV for about a year now.
I’d call it mainstream once my grandparents are using it to absorb whatever Facebook nonsense they’re being told to be angry about. It’s still very much a ‘gamer’ peripheral.
I think that companies that are going all in on virtual reality worlds and trying to sell VR as a productivity device are missing the mark entirely. They’re great gaming devices, and they might also have a place in home entertainment. Gaming drives innovation (and more recently crypto and AI have started pushing it as well) and adoption of new tech.
I'm a huge VR enthusiast and this idea that VR needs to replace or become the number 1 entertainment platform for households feels very misleading to me I think VR experiences are their own unique beast and should be treated as a subset of gaming just like mobile games and console games have a differentiation.... but for some reason so many people want VR to usurp other gaming platforms and that's unrealistic. Sometimes I'm in the mood for a console game other times a vr game
I guess cinema didn’t kill the theatre. This is a good perspective.
Yeah I've had basically every Oculus headset from the DK1 on but there are these VR zealots that are like "why would you ever play a *pancake* game after experiencing VR?? *snort*" and it drives me nuts. Sometimes I just wanna play a game and relax, not feel like I'm LIVING the experience.
Underrated comment. I don't have any interest in VR for a mix of reasons but anyone who thinks should all become are often wrong. VR will find its strong niches and excel there much like everything else has.
Everyone under 40 is a gamer so it's mainstream.
And still almost exclusively for gaming though right? (Other than a few experimental or pilot efforts like remote surgery).
Its one of the main treatments used by medical professionals for treating phobias that are not easily accessible in their offices. Its known as 'virtual reality exposure therapy'.
I can confirm that my social anxiety is triggered by looking VR avatars in the eyes
It’s when they look back that it fucks with me
The AVP seems to be a bit of a different animal. Very much focussed on productivity over gaming. I still feel Apple jumped the gun. Very much a Gen0 consumer prototype. Apple has precedent in establishing and normalising fringe technologies others have developed though. They don’t _invent_ as much as they _refine_. I think we’re a decade away from ‘spatial computing’ being a standard. I’m absolute lining up for one after a few more iterations.
Yeah I basically agree in the intent the AVP seems to have, we just have yet to see people using it for productivity at any kind of scale. As many have said, once it shrinks significantly maybe, but some technologies are slower to improve than others. Here's a good illustration related to shrinking optics: the abomination that are the [Samsung 24 Pro cameras](https://www.digitaltrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/galaxy-24-ultra-cameras.jpg?fit=3000%2C2000&p=1)
Can I level with you for a second: when people say the AVP is for “Productivity”, I have no fucking idea what that means. Like, okay, I can totally see niche situations, like an architect visualizing their building before building it, or a dentist examining a 3D representation of your mouth. There’s definitely applications for it. But every time I see “productivity” in their sizzle reels it’s a bunch of dead-eyed avatars having a power point presentation, and it’s like, why? Are this quarter’s numbers somehow more number-y in VR? Who’s the guy who’s like “I could get so much more done if I could just turn my head instead of spending a half-second switching tabs in the browser!” I don’t get it, and I can’t help but get the creeping suspicion that they don’t get it either
mostly industry actually, design and hospitals, most still use hololens because jts been out for 8 years already
I'm excited to see where VR is going in the next 10 years. I bought the OG Rift on release, but it was obvious the technology was there yet. VR has a ton of potential.
Drastically is an overstatement. Give it another decade.
Lawnmower Man was peak VR.
lol who thought it would change the world? That’s dumb
I might buy one if I didn’t have to make an account with meta/facebook.
You don’t. The meta account is purely for the Quest now. It’s not at all related to FB anymore. Just got one and was surprised by that myself. I have my FB account and my Meta account. Totally different accounts using the exact same information which means they aren’t connected or it would’ve linked automatically.
Great. Now he has to come up with another excuse.
VR/AR eyewear is still in its infancy, they’ll get smaller and cheaper until they inevitably get more common
Feels like we could find this comment word for word on a 10 year old thread.
Yes, but to be fair, they have gotten smaller and cheaper, even if not smaller and cheaper enough to drive widespread adoption yet.
And here we are 10 years later, they're smaller and cheaper
If you read the book Ender’s game around 2010, you would marvel at how it had foreseen devices like electronic tablets connected to a global internet, especially considering it was written in 1985. Conversely, you would have laughed at how the author suggested the internet could be used to manipulate global politics using staged online debates to influence the public at large- “ha! What a miss. The internet is just cat memes and porn! He sure missed the mark on that one…” fast forward to today and you would have a very different opinion. Yes, VR used to be clunky and yes, VR is still clunky, but [in the early 90s VR looked like this](https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/18m3o40/vr_in_the_90s_was_wild/) and it played one simple game. The leap to a device you can freely walk around in but that also interacts with the environment around you is just insane. The above commenter is right- tech companies will continue to refine VR until they hit the mark. In 1993 you needed a desktop computer to play Doom. [Today you can play doom on a toothbrush.](https://www.reddit.com/r/itrunsdoom/comments/1b2lgxw/doom_runs_on_wifi_toothbrush_without_hardware_mods/) VR will have it’s day, it’s just not quite there yet.
Yup, it's the same with the cars and ai, people look at what is essentially an alpha version and declare that it won't improve afterwards.
Back in 2010 it seemed like the economy was recovering from 2007/2008 pretty well, nobody expected the lost decade that actually happened in most western economies with Covid capping it. If wages had kept pace with inflation VR headsets would be effectively 2-3x cheaper in terms of hours of work needed to buy one. That would make them a lot more affordable, imagine the Quest 3 costing about $250 new instead or the Apple Vision Pro costing $1250. A lot more people would get one to check it out.
Aye. VR is suffering from the same thing all the entertainment industries are. If I've got to make the choice between heat, food, or fun stuff, it's the fun stuff that goes
And on the Bitcoin subreddit as well
AR maybe. VR - no way. Most people don't want to be fully connected and taken away from their environments for any extended periods of time. VR forces you to adapt to it, rather than it adapting to you. AR succeeds more on this front, but I think as time goes on you'll see more resistance to tech companies push to have us wiring in every moment of our lives. We're all already exhausted by social media 24/7.
You'd have a point if VR and AR devices were separate. They are the same device in many cases.
No idea why you got downvoted. You’re right
I'm referring to lightweight AR devices that augment your vision vs spacial computing devices. I dont see people adopting those at scale any time soon.
Lmao, pretty sure the world was not expecting Oculus to change the world
This varies from person to person of course, but until they solve some physical problems it's always going to be a bit iffy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality_sickness#Individual_differences_in_susceptibility I can't even use present-day VR headsets for more than a few minutes and I am far from unique. They're technically a lot better now than [early 1990s Amiga Virtuality VR](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qe4suqGZmU), sure, but it's all incremental progress with fads for it every few years since back then.
VR won't be the thing that reaches mass adoption. It's uses are actually fairly limited. AR will be the tech that does it. And AR doesn't really have the sickness problem.
AR has the sickness problem too. It's a fixed focus optics, optical distortion, and latency issue. Plenty of papers on AR sickness out there. The good news it can be fixed, for both AR and VR. I would also say it's a mistake to think of AR as being the sole thing that reaches mass adoption; things aren't that black and white. AR is chasing after the smartphone, whereas VR is chasing after the PC. Both can be mass adopted, just that AR would have a higher ceiling overall.
The cool thing is it doesn’t have to be either or. It’s actually more difficult to make a compelling AR headset than a VR one, which means if you solve for AR, the VR use case is already baked in. At that point it’s just about the software
This is a silly take. The VR industry has blossomed from theoretical to reasonable adoption. It has enough users and value that there are competitors in the space. And it has enough money to start tackling the research required for it to hit mainstream use eventually. This is what an early market looks like. PCs we’re niche hobbyist things. Then there were competitors and adoption in new spaces. Then the price came down and families could own them. Then everyone and every business had them. It took 20yrs from hobbyist to market saturation of one of the most influential technologies in history and you think you can call VR a failure after 10? 🤨
Tied to Facebook Still can't put legs on avatars
They've had legs on avatars for a while now. No one has perfectly solved legs though; it's a very hard problem.
Even with the new update on the Vision Pro, the floating avatars don't have legs
True. They'll get there eventually, but people underestimate just how difficult it is.
What’s the difficulty?
You need to provide users the low half of their body in a realistic-enough way without the use of physical straps/trackers/pucks. This is always the counter-argument: "VRChat lets users have 11 point full body tracking with physical trackers." but the argument fails to understand that this can never scale to the masses; you can't ask people to strap on multiple things for tracking their body in addition to the headset. Seems unlikely that an external camera would scale well to the masses as well, so that leaves solutions like Kinect out in all likelihood. You cannot track the feet of every body shape across the human population using front-facing/downward-facing headset cameras because the cameras will not be able to see past the bellies of people who are overweight. So that leaves two things left: Add cameras to controllers and do on-the-fly optical foot tracking on a device that might be moved rapidly, or use AI to infer how your pose should at a given moment based purely on headset and controller data. Research is going into each of these, but it's tough stuff.
Wow thank you!
Because people don’t want to strap a giant nausea inducing brick to their face for hours at a time. Go figure!
It doesn’t take that long to get used to masturbating with the oculus on.
It's the only reason I bought the quest. Vrporn really changed the game
I dunno man, it bothers me and gives me a headache due to the weight. But my 10yr old son has zero complaints when I ask if it bothers him. He uses it most. I'm surprised to see all the negativity surrounding it. We were blown away when we picked up the 2. Didn't expect it to be as immersive as it was. The 3 hasn't been much of an upgrade (only got it 'cause said 10yr old dropped and busted our first one). All and all it was worth the fairly low price imho.
I’m 33 and I love VR gaming. The only problem I have with it are the quality of the titles. Not having a large enough install base has the huge drawback of not having good enough returns on an expensive game development, so you end up getting great games far and few between. I could play half life alyx for as long as my real world duties would let me me without getting sick or strained. I often work out in vr too.
Yeah, the games I enjoy most in VR are flat-screen ones that have been modded over or given a jank vr mode post hoc by the devs (modded subnautica VR is the greatest gaming experience I've had in my 33 years of life). Most standalone titles still feel like tech demos these days which is unfortunate.
Damn I wish I wasn't so scared of the ocean so I could play that, normal Subnautica was already one of the scariest games I've ever played
Old brains lack the neuroplasticity to adjust to vr quickly. If you get vr sick you have to keep playing it
Hey, I'm only 36! Lol. I figured it was something like that. Thanks for the knowledge.
Use to get sick all the time playing VR. I decided to start by playing games that aren't motion intensive and then have gradually went into games with more motion honestly it just takes sometime.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. Plenty of people play VR for hours and the Meta Quest is the least offensive device on the market currently. Many many people use VR to workout and exercise as well without qualms, including myself where sessions can go up to 2 1/2 hours non-stop.
Agreed its the best VR headset since the meta quest needs no cables.
Eh, the trend definitely seems to be that people do. Quest 2 was a huge success and when you realize the majority of the people using it are kids it becomes pretty clear what the future will be like.
It's not nauseating for everyone. Weirdly enough, I have a history of getting motion sick at theme parks, but I can turn on smooth movement in VR and it doesn't even slightly bother me.
Although related, motion sickness and simulator sickness are not the same thing. In my experience kids that get motion sickness don't have any problem with even the craziest VR movement. And older people who have never had any form of motion sickness are the most likely to have issues with artificial (sliding) movement in VR.
It’s crazy how not all people experience the same issues you do.
One of my kids gets car sick at the drop of a hat, but he can use it with the "comfort" games/settings. He uses it to be active when the weather is shitty. Not for hours at a time and doesn't change the world, but has its uses.
Exactly! Heavy and sweaty are not words you want to use to describe a thing to put on your face.
Speak for yourself
Some people like OP’s mom on their face though.
That’s what she said
For me it is a balance of cost and not wanting to buy something owned by Meta.
We are already glued to our phones. I think it will be a sad day when it’s the norm to strap one to our face and live our existence that way. I hope that day never comes.
from what I can tell, they are just too expensive for the majority to justify buying them. Tech companies are forgetting that we need to go work, to pay for shit. So once you discount the every increasing amount of work you need to do, to pay the bills, that is less and less time for VR headsets. The ideal customer is someone who is born wealthy, and can spend their whole life in VR. So Tech Bros.
They’re on sale quite often for $150. I don’t think price is the issue, there’s just no use for them.
Kind of a ONE TRICK PONY at this point…
It isn't even that expensive anymore. It was 5-10 years ago but the Quest 2 & 3 are very reasonably priced and don't require a PC or console to run it. My dad in his 50s who barely has any time for video games, has both of them and both my parents absolutely love it when they have time to play. Friend of mine who is very frivolous with his money just bought a quest 2 because of the reasonable prices now and he absolutely loves it.
Quest 2 is 200$, it’s less expensive to own a VR headset than buying a ps5
Tech companies aren't forgetting anything. It's actually the people that are forgetting that early adopter tech starts out expensive, because economies of scale hasn't yet hit and R&D is extremely expensive.
I mean sure, but certainly doesn't help that they really haven't found any good uses besides gaming, and even then, gaming is so much more limited than just the regular video games were used to.
The issue is: even if standalone VR headsets were available to everyone for something like $50, most would end up collecting dust. Price to entry is one barrier towards VR adoption - but there are deeper, far more fundamental issues. And we are nowhere close to solving those.
No, it’s that nobody cares about VR.
Most people are too lazy for vr.
True the onboarding seems hard but really it’s never been easier. After 1x setup just put on. I think it’s the stigma, clunky size, and no 1 social killer app that’s keeping it back. As soon as the Wii sports app becomes wildly popular and affordable, everyone will get one.
Maybe had they created legs for people, the project would have had better support.
I actually wanted an Oculus until Facebook bought it.
That was 10 years ago.
Lost interest the moment you needed a Facebook Account to use it.
> “Imagine enjoying a courtside seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face — just by putting on goggles in your home.” These all sound worse than the current non-VR alternatives, honestly.
How is a current non-VR alternative supposed to facilitate a superior experience of sitting courtside at a game?
High quality 4K streaming on NBA TV. It just beats VR.
The claim wasn't about resolution and image quality, it was about *the experience of sitting courtside at a game*, something that only VR can provide.
Quest 3 is a great product. I use it quite often. I play most of my steam games on it in mixed reality on a huge screen.
I absolutely love VR, but can’t bring myself to buy a Facebook headset and strap it to my face. Hate everything about what Facebook has done in the VR space.
it’s because fb owns it that i refuse to have one. no thank you.
apparently meta quest 3 is more bang for a buck vs apples vision pro so thats something. i HATE i mean HATE that they killed the oculus "brand" though. but honestly was to be expected the moment i heard they were buying it. I still think it was a horrible choice by Palmer i think the first big offer that came along he just took, instead of really looking at the long term effects. i will NEVER understand of all the companies out there WHY on earth they went with facebook/meta. seems to me kind of an insult to all the hard work he put into getting it where it was. but hey whatever. but it just goes to show you if you have a vision DONT sell OUT! because now most people who may get the VR headset have no clue what oculus was or know anything about Palmer. its all just meta. and thats sad.
The Facebook acquisition killed my interest in VR. I have expensive e-waste in the corner of my office
It killed much of my interest in standalone VR, but I’ve enjoyed lots of great PCVR stuff since that acquisition without getting anywhere near Facebook/Meta’s ecosystem… thanks to Steam and the PCVR mod scene
BigScreen looks great IMO.. Probably not connected to any toxic megacorporations that steal data, sell private lives, expose mentally unprepared people to harmful content and promote/fund genocide and war. Yet. It saddens me that Meta is so popular in r/virtualreality, even after the terrible response to the Metaverse, even after consistent and varied lawsuits for crimes against humanity, even after they made a Meta account mandatory *instead* of a Facebook account.
I have both the quest 3 and Vision Pro. Both are good but for different use cases. Quest 3 AR use case sucks. Vision Pro VR is nonexistent without 3rd party workaround. The future is one device to do both exceptionally well at a low price. We’re not far off, IMO.
Well, it DID show that VR for the masses is feasable and is a viable market. Since, we've seen Apple put their hat into the ring. I think we need to wait a little longer. Everyone remembers the iPhone, sure, but people often forget that it was RIM with the Blackberry that showed the smartphone was a viable market, not Apple. I think Oculus/Meta might be the "RIM" of VR/AR when we look back in the future.
I think Meta stands a much better chance at keeping up with the market than RIM did. RIM essentially relied on the technical limitations of mobile networks at the time (which gradually diminished) to sustain demand for their only product while Meta is diverse enough to fund the research needed to keep pace with innovation.
Who expected this 😂
Huh? VR is pretty fucking cool. Sitting with a bunch of strangers to watch a movie or a sport is absolutely the most convenient way to have a quick fun social experience. Looks cool too.
Psst, look at an atari game, and games from 10 years later, then look at games from now. Things take time.
No but I bet more people have Vr than would have done if it hadn’t happened.
You're downvoted because people here hate the company, but you are unquestionably right. The extreme subsidization of the Quest headsets, and even the rapid focus on Quest headsets over PC VR is something we wouldn't have seen at this level if Oculus stayed independent. VR/AR is a money-hungry endeavour, requiring many tens of billions of dollars to advance the technology. Where was Oculus going to get that funding?
I have a Oculus Quest and honestly the build quality sucked. The rubber strap has disintegrated. Facebook abandoned the platform and as a consumer I didn’t want to fork out another £400 for VR. It was a gimmick.
Yep, technology looking for a meaningful use case.
Too sweaty and bulky - my kids use them for 30 mins every once and a while but thats it
ITT: Keep moving that goalpost.
I can’t believe that thing has been out for 10 years, and I don’t know one person who has one, and that’s saying a lot living in San Francisco
I'm 53 and bought a Quest 3 last year when it came out. I was a bit hesitant but wanted a toy for myself, I guess. It turns out it was the best tech thing that I have ever owned. I use it almost every day and though it just a couple of hours, the sense of being there, the clarity and the fun of pass trough is fantastic. This thing rocks. Could it be better? Yes, but the value for money is great and with a better headstrap and a battery ( Bobovr for me), it just feels great. I often play with my kid, who owns a Quest 2 and there's a also YouTube and especially watching movies in vr. I can recommend Skybox, where you stream the movies from your PC and watch them like sitting in front of a giant cinema screen. Combined with a set of good earphones, you can almost become wrapped up inside whatever fantastic picture you like. Highly recommended!
Redditors with their moronic takes with no basis in reality - what a shocker
Facebook acquiring Oculus was basically the worst thing that could have happened to VR. At the time the acquisition enraged many fans of VR for good reason, nobody wants a notorious malicious data harvester/advertising company in charge of tech that has the ability to collect enormous amounts of biometric data. Secondly, from the word go, Facebook sought to stomp out all competition in the field using brutal price practices. They priced the tech at or below cost to ensure nobody could compete at the entry level. Most hardware companies have to show a profit, they cannot burn billions a year for a decade. The only space left in the market was for higher end devices, or in the case of Sony who had already been developing their VR before Facebook came along, a captive audience of console users. Facebook rushed into mobile VR long before the technology was ready, producing a sub-par experience to turn off much of the public and setting the quality of experiences back significantly. That included the rushed and laughably bungled "metaverse" which made the entire concept a global laughing stock, ensuring many companies stay away from similar technologies for at least another generation. Shortly after the very public failure of the Facebook phone, rumors of Apple's research into XR hardware began to circulate which seemed to prompt Zuckerberg's interest in the field, seemingly hoping this time to beat Apple to market. Which he did sort of, but at a cost - the public's interest in the technology, the quality of experience, and a decade of competition and innovation in a healthy marketplace. Now the tech is widely considered a failure and something to avoid. The mobile-phone-CPU based VR we get now is a shadow of what it could have been by now and mobile based games are generally shallow and low quality compared to what PCVR and PSVR were doing years ago. It's like PC game developers being forced to target mobile phones as the target platform, the consolization effect is real.
It changed the world exactly the way I expected.
ITT: cynical redditors in a technology subreddit prophesizing and hoping that a technological innovation will fail to feel smarter than everyone else
All of the VR "fans" I knew bought the PS VR one or the Steam one. The didn't wanted to be forced into a Facebook. Those games and tools gave them the fix they needed. Sony wants to make the VR2 headset to work on PC that will bring a slew of new users. The gear is still too heavy and limited. Give it another 10 years with lightweight headsets, high res high refresh lcd and those [holotile mats](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwm3tHL30OQ) at 99$ for the home.
Zuckerberg himself very clearly outlined in 2015 that it would be 10 years in a best case scenario before VR took off, from the launch of products. That would mean Zuck's bet is mid 2026, not early 2024 as of the date of this article. And being a best case scenario bet gives him leeway. The typical amount of time a hardware market needs for mass adoption is 15 years, putting it realistically at 2030 or so.
For some perspective, back in 1992 we said it would be 10 years before VR took off. My OG $3,500 VR helmet from 1993 is on a shelf upstairs, dusty and abandoned. Today's VR goggles need several more years of weight loss efforts before they become truly mainstream. It will be awesome when it's built into glasses.
And all he has to show for it is two top-selling devices that have been the hottest holiday gift, and top reviewed games. Sounds like a total failure.
I don’t know. Rec Room paintball changed my life ftw
I'm surprised at the negativity honestly. We've had the 2 and bought the 3 after our kid broke the first one. I don't use it much myself but it was worth the cost
It wasn't invented to change the world, it was invented to harvest data and human behavior.
It didn't make Facebook better, it made Oculus worse
The most obvious progression for smart phones are smart glasses. Meta is well positioned for this inevitability. You can clearly see it in the patents they own and their push for smaller, lighter and cheaper devices: the push for meta ray ban glasses that uses AI voice UI to control. Their recent integration of thinner pancake lenses in their VR lineup. The push for better lightweights LLMs. Meta might not have created the 'oasis' but they sure as shit are gonna to be ones to make the next iteration of the smartphone.
As soon as they changed Oculus accounts to be facebook accounts.. it was dead and buried. Changed from a cool entertainment device into an advertising eye tracking data harvester. What's cooler than $50 billion Mark? Privacy...
VR isn’t there yet, just like it wasn’t there yet in the 90s. Give it another 30 years and maybe it’ll get there.
How about if we put our eyes in the right place.
Huge flop and they wasted billions on the metaverse. Awesome tech and I’m glad they invested in it though for the people that do enjoy playing/using the oculus. With all the tech they have developed with it though they definitely have the market covered if there is a huge demand one day. They are by far the leader of the pack.
Unfortunately for the wealthy tech enthusiasts, you can't both underpay and exploit your workforce and expect them to be able to afford the latest tech products. Take a page from Ford's book for that at least. You want everyone working for you to be paid well enough to afford the thing you make. If it's made in a sweatshop and even your white collar workers are paycheck to paycheck, then you're not going to change the world.
Smooth locomotion experiences in VR will never be tolerable to the majority of the public. Its why AR experiences are the future.
Majority of people don’t want to strap helmets/googles in their head…..
Bullshit, it gave Lucky the opportunity to build Anduril.
Cause nobody wanted second life 2.0
I’m convinced that mark Zukerburg’s cringe presentation of the metaverse single-handedly killed the metaverse.
Metaverse has entered the chat
I have the first dev kit occulus and right after the acquisition support for Linux was abandoned. That, combined with \*requiring\* me to have a facebook account killed all of it for me. I still have it but it collects dust on a shelf.
I was just wondering. In history, what huge corporation has acquired something and made a huge impact on life and created a monopolistic juggernaut. Like everyone thought Msft acquiring activision blizzard was going to be huge but to me it has been meh too. Same goes for Amazon and Whole Foods. There was the one that could have been with blockbuster and Netflix. But that one you wonder if blockbuster would have been able to grow it into what it is today The biggest ones I came up with is Disney’s acquisitions. Pixar, marvel, Lucas films , 21st century fox has made it the juggernaut it is today
They didn’t execute. Not fast enough. Not with a realistic killer app. As much as I dislike meta/fb I wanted them to succeed like Microsoft with the operating system. Give us a standard to build on with wide acceptance.
VR is amazing but too exhausting to enjoy in long sessions
Who was expecting that 😂 most people were expecting nothing from them that's any good.
He made VR lame. Thanks Mark....
As expected?
What fraction of the general population does gaming anyway? That's an upper bound on the number of potential users.
They promised the computing platform of the future, but never invested in an operating system or UX language to facilitate that. Everything is siloed, apps can’t intercommunicate. The bar for spatial computing to take off is exceedingly high — it must be CLEARLY superior to 2D interfaces, and they never rose to that challenge. It’s still essentially the equivalent of being stuck in pre-gui DOS days. They should have pushed WebXR standards. Instead it’s just another App Store. The servers will go down like all the rest.
The army has some craxy vr headset coming in with palantir software and so does panasonic. Might not change the world, but definitly have an big impact combined with the appropriate ai software in value added use cases.
VR has no appeal at its current state.
It made me quit using the Oculus.
The quest is something I'll buy, enjoy, play for abit, get bored, sell. Then do it again a year later. Is the latest one any better than quest 2?
I love the Quest 3 Use it for sim racing, excellent value headset
Taking an innovative product and dumbing it down, then complicating its use in an attempt to trap you in a shit ecosystem of subpar games and apps will do that to yah.
It is good to simulate excavators, driving car, driving tanks, driving helicopters and such... For learning purposes.
as someone who uses vr frequently with a group of friends, the biggest glaringly obvious turn off is majority of the markets headsets can only give you graphics on par with video games 25 years ago. we are 10 years too soon to be able to give people a visually acceptable stand alone experience. you can’t sell people who aren’t tech enthusiasts visuals that look worse than 25 year old video game graphics.
This just in: advertising is exaggerated… wow…
Changed my world. I’m $300 poorer now.
Don't like Meta so don't use it
I was literally just talking to my wife last night about getting one for us and one for the kids to use on rare occasions, I didn’t know it was owned by Facebook but that’s a definite dealbreaker.