[HN Gopher] Meta Quest Pro
___________________________________________________________________
Meta Quest Pro
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 327 points
Date : 2022-10-11 17:38 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.meta.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.meta.com)
| arberx wrote:
| Only has 2 hours of battery life...
| mciancia wrote:
| Hmm, snapdragon XR2 is 3 year old SoC. Anyone knows if XR2+ is
| somehow better?
| caslon wrote:
| The XR2 is severely downclocked on the Quest 2 and not hitting
| its potential at all because of thermals. Carmack has
| complained about how underused it is on occasion. If the XR2+
| allows for a higher default clock because of better thermals,
| it'll perform significantly better.
| MikusR wrote:
| In the presentation they said 50% faster and better thermals.
| MikusR wrote:
| Half the price of Hololens 2 and MagicLeap 2.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Did magicleap actually get released?
| ppjim wrote:
| > Multi-tasking, it's the new superpower.
|
| I mean, What? Why? I thought the whole point of VR headsets is to
| be able to focus on a single task and do it in the best possible
| way.
| pitched wrote:
| I've been a very early adopter of this tech (Kickstarter backer
| of Oculus), get zero motion sickness and have a great time
| working in VR through a virtual desktop. This looks like a few
| floating screens in front of my face, in a space station and I'm
| typing on a real Bluetooth keyboard. I think this is the only way
| companies will be able to keep remote-friendly polices and stay
| competitive with product. YMMV because I am biased to be for
| this, but, the way they've tuned this Pro model looks like it's
| exactly for my use-case.
| modeless wrote:
| There are a lot of people pooh-poohing this who haven't tried a
| meeting in Workrooms. I was skeptical going in, even as a VR
| early adopter, and it exceeded my expectations by a long way.
| It feels a whole lot more like a real meeting than a Zoom call
| does.
|
| I don't know if it's enough better for me to choose it over
| Zoom in everyday use, but this was on Quest 2. A meeting where
| everyone is wearing Quest Pro will be significantly better. I
| expect that the combination of the better screen/lenses, better
| comfort, much better AR passthrough, and of course the new
| eye/face tracking will make for a very compelling experience.
| beams_of_light wrote:
| I've been reluctant to try getting my coworkers into VR
| because they'd probably just laugh at me, but a couple of
| friends and I met up in VR (we're all fully-grown
| professionals) and it was great. Meetings in VR would be a
| lot more productive, IMO.
| hiq wrote:
| > It feels a whole lot more like a real meeting than a Zoom
| call does.
|
| I haven't had the chance to try it myself, so can you explain
| how it's better?
|
| I feel like the main problem with remote meetings is the
| audio latency. You cannot speak as you would naturally, you'd
| speak in turn instead. I'm guessing VR allows you to give and
| receive visual cues about this so it might be better, is this
| what you had in mind?
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| The audio latency problem is solved with spatial audio. In
| VRChat you can easily follow a conversation with 10 people
| talking over each other, because the audio comes from the
| direction of their avatars and you can tune it in and out
| naturally like you do in real life.
| modeless wrote:
| The audio latency is better. You're not sending or
| receiving HD video so your connection is less loaded and
| the audio doesn't ever have to be delayed to synchronize
| with video. And VR devices are better optimized for low
| latency than your average system. Visual cues for turn
| taking while speaking work better, as you mentioned.
| Spatial audio is awesome for locating speakers and
| differentiating multiple speakers at once. Hand gestures
| work better; you can actually point at things in a shared
| 3D space.
| nwienert wrote:
| People just won't put on world-occluding headsets to talk
| to cartoons, end of the day. Only in bubble-land does
| this pass the smell test imo.
| mooreds wrote:
| I remember swearing up and down that I didn't need a
| phone I could carry everywhere with me. This was in the
| late 1990s/early 2000s.
|
| What communication was so important that it couldn't wait
| until I was home, next to my land line and answering
| machine?
| nwienert wrote:
| Phones work because they are so simple, unobtrusive and
| easy to position and use contextually. They are the
| argument against VR.
| mooreds wrote:
| Have you seen the cellphones of the late 1980s?
| https://techcentral.co.za/the-cellphones-of-
| the-1980s/191544...
|
| While phones now are "simple, unobtrusive and easy to
| position and use contextually", they certainly weren't
| then.
| mbreese wrote:
| _> enough better for me to choose it over Zoom in everyday
| use_
|
| It doesn't have to be better than Zoom. It has to be $1500
| better than Zoom. Per employee.
|
| I'm in agreement with you -- I like Immersed and I like the
| idea of VR meetings. But will people/employers opt for this
| over a hybrid on-site/remote system? How do VR meetings work
| when half the team is onsite in a conference zoom? I don't
| want to put on a VR a headset to talk to the coworker sitting
| physically next to me in a conference room.
|
| Sadly, I see this as useful only for remote-only teams. As
| one of a handful of remote people on my team, it doesn't seem
| like a workable option, even if I already like/use VR.
| [deleted]
| zachthewf wrote:
| $1500 is nothing if it makes remote collaboration
| competitive with IRL collaboration.
| mbreese wrote:
| But how often do you have _exclusively_ remote
| collaboration?
|
| I'm sure for many people that is common. It's not for me.
| Normally I'm talking with a few people remote in zoom and
| the rest of the team on site in a conference room.
|
| For remote exclusive groups, this makes sense.
|
| But does it make sense for businesses to buy this for all
| of their employees -- if they have a hybrid workforce? I
| would expect most employers will or are shifting towards
| a hybrid setup.
|
| How many remote-only employers are there? Is it enough of
| a market to make this more than a gimmick?
|
| I get VR for personal use. I get it for one-to-one
| communication. But I'm skeptical for business
| communication.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Do you know how much money businesses waste on redundant
| teleconferencing hardware? If VR is going to be the
| future of online collaboration (big "if" there),
| businesses will be the first to adopt it. They simply
| have the greatest motivation and means to purchase them.
|
| And of course, the Quest 2 is still $400. This pro
| headset is presumably more for people who want AR
| experiences or intend to work in them full-time.
| bsimpson wrote:
| The idea of being painted as a literal second class citizen
| if you have lower end hardware is gross, but it's also the
| natural destination of progressive enhancement if e.g. facial
| expressions only work with the expensive thing.
| sneak wrote:
| Is agreeing to the third party abusive Meta/Facebook TOS
| going to be a requirement of employment with third parties
| then?
|
| Will users be permitted to create accounts only for work?
|
| If not, when your personal account gets banned or disabled,
| will you be unable to work?
| modeless wrote:
| The Facebook login requirement is gone. If you are banned
| from Facebook you can use Quest, no problem. Yes, you can
| create a separate work account. In fact, Workplace accounts
| are separate already.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I've heard they still maintain real name basis for the
| Meta login requirement though...
| Youden wrote:
| My Meta account doesn't have my real name and I don't
| recall anything requesting I add it.
| sneak wrote:
| Do something to get it in trouble and see if you can get
| back in without showing ID.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| This is what kept me from trying Quest despite being a VR
| superfan. Once they finally announced the account change
| I took the plunge and picked one up
|
| I just didn't want to risk losing hundreds of dollars'
| worth of games because Facebook's retarded algorithms
| decided they don't like some meme I posted years ago.
|
| (Actually, Facebook's moderation has kept me from using
| it for anything other than posting family photos and
| clicking the "like" button on others' photos.. it's just
| too risky that I'll cross a line and get deleted)
| kypro wrote:
| I tried out Horizon Worlds recently and I was honestly amazed
| by how immersive it was. I genuinely felt like I was out
| socialising with people while sat at home.
|
| I can definitely see the use cases, especially as the
| technology improves. If there were live VR music events that
| me and my friends in different cities and countries could all
| attend to feel together I imagine I'd use it quite often.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What headset are you using? This is the setup I'd like to try
| rather than buying new monitors.
| seiferteric wrote:
| The hardware looks pretty good. I bought a HP reverb G2 because
| it had the highest resolution. While not bad, i learned that
| resolution isn't everything as the picture is pretty blurry
| anywhere except dead ahead due to the Fresnel lenses, so the
| new pancake lenses sound promising. I also don't get motion
| sickness and might be interested in working in VR if the
| readability is good. My only other hold up is that even at 36
| years old and using computers since I was 5, I still don't type
| properly and do occasionally look down at the keyboard lol.
| Would be great if the forward facing cameras will allow this.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| The Quest 1 and 2 also have fresnel lenses but they're not
| all that blurry. Sharpest dead ahead sure but it's not
| terrible.
|
| And I wonder if the pancake lenses are really better there. I
| think god rays will be significantly reduced but edge
| sharpness is really hard to do with such close focus. The
| light path at the edges of the LCD to the eye could be twice
| as long than in the middle.
| williamcotton wrote:
| Meta Workrooms has passthrough mode for just the keyboard so
| you can still look down at your fingers when you're typing.
| temp_praneshp wrote:
| >I've been a very early adopter of this tech (Kickstarter
| backer of Oculus), get zero motion sickness
|
| Me too!
|
| Have you written about your setup anywhere? Are you willing to
| dump some notes and share?
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| > get zero motion sickness
|
| Whatever the opposite of a killer app is called (maybe "app
| killer"?) this is it.
|
| Even if it afflicts a relatively small number of users, it's a
| serious problem. Besides terrible PR (people less likely to try
| it because of the risk of a bad experience) it's the fact that
| any technology that arbitrarily excludes some non-tiny portion
| of the population is problematic for broad acceptance.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| The worst part is that if you try and fight through the
| sickness, you'll actually condition yourself to get sicker.
| If you power through sim sickness enough, you'll get to a
| point where you feel like tossing your cookies when you just
| look at or think about a VR headset.
|
| I think it's become a major problem in the VR game market.
| Everyone except the super hard core has been burned away by
| sim sickness, so now all the remaining fans demand intense
| but nausea-inducing experiences with no comfort options (or
| too-easily disabled comfort options)
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| > The worst part is that if you try and fight through the
| sickness, you'll actually condition yourself to get sicker.
|
| Yes. This is absolutely true. Whatever you do: DON'T try to
| 'fight through it'. As soon as you don't feel well, STOP.
| Then pick it up later. Soon you will be able to go for a
| longer time and it'll disappear completely. Make sure your
| IDP is set _correctly_. Get an optometrist to check it for
| you to make sure. Looking crosseyed (unknowingly) really
| does not help things.
|
| If you tried doing it that way you were really doing it
| wrong. You could indeed develop a negative association to
| the headset. I had this with the DK1 (Development Kit 1) of
| the Rift, but this was because it simply had horribly
| inaccurate 3DOF tracking (not 6DOF as required in the real
| world), and also a high persistance display.
|
| > I think it's become a major problem in the VR game
| market. Everyone except the super hard core has been burned
| away by sim sickness, so now all the remaining fans demand
| intense but nausea-inducing experiences with no comfort
| options (or too-easily disabled comfort options)
|
| It's not. First of all, you have to take it easy like I
| described. You will accomodate to it much better. Yes some
| people will never manage it but it's a really small
| percentage. If you can ride in the back of a car without
| getting sick, you can do this as long as you take it easy.
|
| Also, the experiences Meta is aiming for here don't involve
| rollercoasters and the like. VR is totally fine if you're
| moving normally within your free tracked space. The problem
| starts happening when you move with the stick without
| actually moving, because the disassociation between the
| visual and inertial senses. The teleportation option helps
| a lot.
|
| But in a business meeting really you don't have to move
| around a lot. As long as your motions within that small
| space are tracked accurately, there will be no motion
| sickness.
| [deleted]
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Does anybody actually get motion sickness in apps where
| there's no motion?
|
| I've never seen an instance of that. If it does happen to
| some people I'd be very curious about what causes it since
| there's no obvious reason why it should occur.
| Aeolun wrote:
| You should try the original Oculus Rift dev kit.
|
| It didn't do any head (other than rotation) tracking, and
| it's extremely disorienting to move your head and have the
| view be static.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| I've gotten motion sickness just looking at static images
| from Google Earth. I used to work at Facebook and saw some
| talks on this. As I understand it, the problem is basically
| one of latency; the time between when your head moves and
| when the image updates should be < 7 ms or something like
| that.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| > get zero motion sickness and have a great time working in VR
| through a virtual desktop
|
| Do you not wind up sweaty? Every time I wear a VR headset for
| more than a few minutes it's .....moist.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| kgwxd wrote:
| The ellipses indicates you took the time to think about your
| words, and yet, you still chose "moist". Thanks, I hate VR.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I don't, as long as ambient temperature is below 25 or so
| degrees C.
|
| I'm in Spain so this kinda rules out using it in summer for
| long.
| jdprgm wrote:
| This is an extraordinarily disappointing release. Even if this
| was priced at $400 I would be disappointed. We have waited years
| and they included zero next gen VR tech.
|
| I feel like VR should be in the stages similar to the early gen
| iPhones where every new release should have legitimate
| significant new tech that is unambiguously better and exciting.
| This instead feels like current iphones when they barely improve
| only here VR can't get even close to a yearly cadence of upgrades
| and there are loads of features for next gen upgrades still on
| the table.
| pavlov wrote:
| The Quest Pro adds eye tracking and inward-facing cameras,
| high-quality color AR passthrough, foveated rendering, and new
| controllers that are fully independent of the headset. These
| things are unambiguously better and exciting.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| The problem with VR tech is that it is fixing problems, not
| adding new features. People don't understand how insanely
| complicate it is to have controllers that track independently
| of the headset (think about it, what is their reference point
| and how do they know where they are in relation to each other
| and everything else?), but it is a giant leap in the
| technology. It allows you to do things like put your hand
| behind your back, or use it in bright (or dark) rooms where
| it doesn't need the controller lights to be seen to track. It
| just 'works better' so people don't care. It isn't a shiny
| new app or some new ability it didn't do before, it just does
| what it does... _better_...
| dabedee wrote:
| This shows a blank page on Firefox mobile with uBlock.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| Same here
| neogodless wrote:
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33166634
|
| But yes I'm on Windows 10, Firefox 105.0.3, and even in private
| mode, no extensions enabled, the page does not load for me.
| obahareth wrote:
| I wonder if they managed to solve the text blurriness issues. On
| my Quest 2 I tried using Immersed, Virtual Desktop, and other
| software to create virtual monitors in VR.
|
| Text was always very blurry no matter how much I played with
| resolution, monitor sizes, or distances. Images and video always
| looked great but for reading text it was completely unusable.
|
| For $1500 coupled with them marketing it for work, I would hope
| they've solved this issue.
| frenchie4111 wrote:
| Can someone give us a breakdown of the difference between this
| and Quest 2? I don't see a direct comparison on the website
| celestialcheese wrote:
| Quest 2 128gb - $399
|
| Quest 2 256gb - $499
|
| Quest Pro 256gb - $1499
| MikusR wrote:
| Faster, more comfortable, self tracking controllers (each
| essentially a Snapdragon 662 phone), better optics, higher
| resolution.
| caslon wrote:
| Double the RAM, higher resolution, color passthrough,
| controllers that aren't tracked by the headset (which basically
| means you get a wider area of motion), pancake lenses (a nice
| feature that puts your face closer to the screen and allows for
| slimmer headsets), reduction in weight.
| maest wrote:
| Page doesn't seem to load for me on Firefox - seeing a bunch of
| CORS errors in the console.
| clnq wrote:
| I don't want to dismiss the effort and innovation that went into
| Quest Pro. I respect the team for innovating on so many aspects
| of the headset at once.
|
| Although for the $1400+ price range, I would love to see some
| "next-gen" headsets with much higher FOV and pixel densities
| (even if we'd have to use foveated rendering), as well as 120Hz+
| refresh rates. Perhaps the tech specs section on the product page
| is as spartan as it is because many people have been waiting for
| the next generation headset for a while?
|
| Do we know if the Quest Pro has done anything to address the
| screen-door effect of the display seen in Quest 2? I understand
| that PPI is slightly higher, but has anything else been done?
| batmansmom1 wrote:
| Guys why can't we just call it Quest 3 I'm gonna go crazy
| learning all these names. Can't wait for the Meta Quest Pro 2 Max
| XL Mini
| batmansmom1 wrote:
| Brought to you by Carl's Jr
| MikusR wrote:
| Because it is not Quest 3.
| [deleted]
| martpie wrote:
| Because the Quest 3 is another product, this is the pro
| version. The consumer version will get released later I guess,
| and probably with a price closer to the current Quest 2.
| rjh29 wrote:
| If there even is another consumer version. It sounds like Pro
| is Facebook's ultimate objective for monetizing this, and
| Quest 1/2 was just a beta test for them to perfect their
| tech.
| crakhamster01 wrote:
| It's the other way around - Quest Pro is the one testing
| new tech (mixed reality, face tracking, foveated rendering,
| self-tracking controllers). I imagine they're going to hone
| these features over the next couple of years and include
| them in the consumer models once there is better
| economics/proven product market fit.
| MikusR wrote:
| The CAD of Quest 3 already leaked.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The beta testing is not complete. They need way more buy in
| before they ditch the consumer model.
| tootie wrote:
| This isn't a Quest 3 because it's aimed at a different
| audience. This isn't for gaming and entertainment, it's for
| productivity. Look at the list of software they are
| highlighting. It's design and business stuff. When they say
| "Pro" that's actually an accurate modified. Unlike the "iPad
| Pro" which is just a more expensive iPad.
| zinckiwi wrote:
| Still waiting (to my knowledge) for even a single manufacturer to
| offer a unit with independently adjustable sides. Until then,
| people with strabismus are out of luck. (Which is ironic, since
| technological assists are the only way we could possibly see
| depth.)
| eljimmy wrote:
| When visiting this link does anyone else just get a blank white
| page in Firefox?
| danso wrote:
| $1,500 for this:
|
| > _Meta Quest Pro comes with all the goods and then some so you
| can start working, creating and collaborating -- Meta Quest Touch
| Pro Controllers, charging dock with rapid USB-C power adapter, 10
| advanced VR /MR sensors, 256GB storage, 12GB RAM, and a
| Snapdragon XR2+ Qualcomm processor._
|
| Is there even any software that can take advantage of this?
| Nothing in Meta's Horizons, afaict.
| toxicFork wrote:
| Do you mean the specs are too low? Or too high?
| danso wrote:
| I don't really know if the specs are good for bang for your
| buck. All I know is that the Quest 2 specs run the existing
| library pretty well. Paying 5x the price, I would expect a
| jump from WiiU to PS5, but is there any software that comes
| close?
|
| The 4x resolution sounds great, but the Quest 2 resolution
| was already pretty solid. It's still a great movie watching
| experience. I'm sure it's even better with the Pro, but not
| $1500-for-a-niche-device better
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The Quest was running into hardware problems running things
| like VRChat and some games. I think this headset is supposed to
| be able to run those.
| neogodless wrote:
| Off topic:
|
| Uh, does anyone else just see a blank white page? (Firefox,
| uBlock Origin, Javascript _enabled_ )
| pr0zac wrote:
| Looks like its a failing because of a blocked cross-origin
| request. Firefox must be interpreting the CORS settings for the
| site differently than Chrome. Configuring CORS correctly across
| multiple browsers is hard!
|
| Edit: looks like the cause for me was because of Facebook
| Container blocking the cross-origin request to a Facebook
| domain.
| kretaceous wrote:
| I have the same setup and I can see it fine.
| neogodless wrote:
| Thanks. Even in private mode, no extensions, it doesn't load
| for me. Not sure what's going on there (though lots of errors
| in the console.)
| toinewx wrote:
| Mark is trying hard to create his new walled garden and force-
| feed us with the ads once he controls the market. Let's hope it
| does not happen.
| smoldesu wrote:
| The pricing is a bit of a sticker shock, but if _anyone_ can make
| the $1,500 price point work, it 's the company that also sells a
| $400 headset.
|
| What's _really_ interesting to me is that this headset seems to
| echo Apple 's (purported) interests in a "premium" hardware
| generation targeted at enthusiasts and developers. The Quest is
| ultimately a leftover from the Oculus acquisition, so it should
| be really interesting to see how this hardware evolves under
| Meta's leadership.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| As somebody who isn't super in the loop about VR headsets, is
| this $1500 headset 3.75x better than the $400 one? Why or why
| not?
| jayd16 wrote:
| Depends on how you value pass through MR features,
| face/expression tracking, and removing controller dead zones.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Not really. In fact, if you put aside the standalone
| features, this is arguably a worse piece of hardware than
| Valve's Index. If you _do_ consider the standalone
| functionality, the internals are hardly an upgrade over the
| Quest 2.
|
| Meta doesn't seem to be betting on a future where people
| overly care about specs or prices though. I think they want
| this to be the Macbook Pro of VR headsets, the sort of thing
| that Metaverse-enabled companies buy up without a second
| thought and distribute to their employees because it's
| "enterprise ready". It's definitely not the sort of strategy
| that will succeed in the B2C model, but they've already got a
| victory there. Now they need to scale the technology up for
| businesses, and _that 's_ the interesting part (for me).
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| For anybody super out of the loop:
|
| > The Oculus Quest 2 VR headset is the second version of
| the Quest headset range. It's similar to the original
| Oculus Quest in that it's a battery-powered, standalone
| headset that allows you to freely roam around your physical
| and digital play spaces without fear of tripping over a
| wire.
|
| The Quest 2 and the Quest Pro are both "standalones".
| smoldesu wrote:
| Sorry I didn't exactly come in at the base-level here :p
|
| The "killer feature" of the Quest/Quest 2 was that it
| cost $400 and came with _everything_ you needed to get
| into VR. No PC required, no cables, no nothing. This is
| what really propelled Meta into the spotlight, and it 's
| probably why they're even being given another shot with
| the Quest Pro. Other headsets, like the Windows Mixed
| Reality line and Valve's Index are decidedly better
| units, but they require pricy Windows computers and often
| force you to stay tethered to the machine. The Quest
| being battery-powered lets you use it wirelessly and
| anywhere you want. Having tried a few other models, the
| Quest has always been most comfortable to me _purely_
| because there aren 't any cables sticking out of your
| head.
|
| TL:DR - Meta makes seriously badass VR hardware that's
| held back by Facebook software. Hopefully John Carmack
| (or suitable legislation) will give us the best of both
| worlds.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > No PC required, no cables, no nothing.
|
| Slight nitpick/question:
|
| if the battery life is 2 hours max, do most people still
| play with a cable to avoid having to worry about "is it
| going to die/do I need to charge it soon" while playing?
| smoldesu wrote:
| You can, personally I never felt the need to tether
| myself for better battery life. 1-2 hours is about the
| perfect length for a game session, and I don't think I've
| been able to run down my Quest 1 past 40% battery before
| getting sick. It seems like a good tradeoff in
| retrospect.
| jandrese wrote:
| IMHO the wireless is a killer feature. Having cables
| attached seriously limits your design space for games.
| Room scale is a lot less practical because you can get
| tangled up in the cables. VR is best when you're not
| sitting in a chair and can move freely, even if you're
| stuck in a small area.
|
| Also, you can have your cake and eat it with the Quest 2,
| since you can Quest Link over WiFi and play your Steam
| catalog or indie games if you do happen to have one of
| those "pricy Windows computers".
| creativemonkeys wrote:
| In Lex Fridman's podcast, Carmack says he's officially
| only working 1 day at Meta in advisory capacity, though
| sometimes chimes in on other days as well. He also says
| he wants to completely focus on AGI, so I wouldn't rely
| on Carmack to push the VR field forward in the near
| future.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| What's AGI in this context?
| zh3 wrote:
| Artificial General intelligence
| govg wrote:
| I believe Artificial General Intelligence [0].
|
| [0] - https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/19/john-carmack-agi-
| keen-rais...
| MikusR wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intell
| ige...
| nomel wrote:
| > this is arguably a worse piece of hardware than Valve's
| Index
|
| Could you expand on this?
|
| Even the Quest 2 has considerably lower screen door effect
| [1]. The quest pro has _double_ the valve index PPD (~14 vs
| ~32). The selling point of the Index is FOV. 90 degrees is
| plenty for work.
|
| 1. Through the lens: https://youtu.be/ny_OPsxHQmU?t=199
| smoldesu wrote:
| It depends on how you want to argue. For me, refresh rate
| and FOV matter _most_. Low refresh headsets make me
| nauseated, and the Quest 1 can easily start to verge on
| that sickness after 30 minutes to an hour of playtime.
| The Index did a good job at mitigating that sickness
| feeling, and the FOV seems very desirable if people want
| to use these headsets as monitor replacements.
| nomel wrote:
| Quest 1 hasn't been sold in over two years, so I'm not
| sure it's a good benchmark.
|
| The quest 2 has had official 120Hz support for a while
| now [1], and I don't imagine they'll regress for Quest
| Pro. I don't think FOV, beyond 90, is all that important
| for productivity. Peripheral vision is extremely useful
| for immersion, but probably not really for reading code
| on an adjacent monitor. I personally agree with the
| comfort of usual ergonomic guidelines, keeping eye
| movement within 30 degrees or so [2]. As a quick litmus
| test, observe someone working with multiple monitors.
| You'll see they move their head, not just their eyes.
|
| 1. https://www.pcgamer.com/oculus-quest-2-120hz-on-by-
| default/
|
| 2. https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/ergonomics/office/moni
| tor_po...
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| It has eye tracking which IMO is a game changer for business
| use. Eye contact is the killer app for VR workplaces.
| the_duke wrote:
| Meta will need cheap headsets to get adoption of their
| platform.
|
| I reckon the Pro has a healthy margin and will targets
| companies. They will use Accenture and peddle the Microsoft
| suite VR to sell tens of thousands of these to companies for
| remote work, and most of them will barely be used .
|
| Meta can stem the losses of the VR division, and a Quest 3 will
| come in a while.
| MikusR wrote:
| Quest was purely Facebook. Even their last PC only headset Rift
| S was essentially a rebadged Lenovo headset.
| fra wrote:
| I worked on the Rift S, it was very much not a rebadged
| Lenovo headset.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Really? The Quest 2 is definitely a Facebook-made device, but
| I believe the original Quest was inherited from Oculus's
| design labs (even though Facebook ultimately took over).
|
| Edit: I did some digging, and the situation is actually
| pretty complicated. Facebook bought Oculus in 2014, but they
| continued operating as an "autonomous subsidiary" for a few
| years before being absorbed into Meta and rebranded as
| Reality Labs. I guess it really depends on your frame of
| thought, but I seem to be wrong here.
| j0hnyl wrote:
| By the time Meta figures out that headsets are not the way, they
| will be bankrupt. No one wants these things. People buy them, use
| them once or twice and then forget about them.
| bitL wrote:
| ...or they get hooked on VR p*rn and can't stop using them.
| Maybe Meta wants whales like these but more enterprisey.
| jandrese wrote:
| FWIW my kids still play on the Quest pretty much every day.
| Gorilla Tag is apparently the bees knees.
|
| I only get on like once every couple of weeks however. Mostly
| just playing through stuff I bought off of Humble Bundles or
| trying not to suck at Beat Saber.
| nomel wrote:
| > Meta figures out that headsets are not the way
|
| What is "the way"? Headsets are a necessary R&D bridge into
| glasses.
| ridgered4 wrote:
| That's why the enterprise shift is so key. Those users don't
| get a choice!
| j0hnyl wrote:
| Makes you wonder if there are enough psychopaths in
| enterprise leadership to prop this up.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| > enough psychopaths in enterprise leadership
|
| Until I read this sentence I thought that Meta was chasing
| something impossible. Now that you put it that way... this
| will probably succeed. tbh.
| squidsoup wrote:
| Has that been your experience with gaming? I was considering
| taking my first dip into VR with the PSVR2, but worried that as
| you say, it will end up collecting dust.
| cheriot wrote:
| Once upon a time I had a Wii collecting dust a month after I
| bought it, but I still use my Quest 2 a few times a month.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Depending on the reviews I might pick one up later but really I'm
| just waiting on Apple's AR/VR headset. I have a Quest 2 and it's
| quite nice for casual gaming but the resolution/processor is too
| low/weak to handle text-heavy games (it's blurry and gives me a
| bit of a headache). The resolution listed by other people here
| (because god forbid we actually put tech specs in the tech specs
| section) seems like not a big jump but maybe with the dynamic
| foveated rendering it will be enough to have clear text.
| interestica wrote:
| > tech specs
|
| Tech Specs:
|
| "World class counter balanced ergonomics meets sleek design to
| create a more comfortable headset."
|
| :/
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| I wonder whether this, unlike my Quest 2,.will let you set the
| separation between the two screens wide enough to accommodate my
| not-even-really-that-big head.
|
| I put up with it but it makes me crosseyed. (I use the buffer
| thingie to keep it farther from my head, which helps somewhat.)
| rowanG077 wrote:
| It's sad really. No matter how good this tech is I will never buy
| it. Because, just like iPhones, they lead humanity down a dark
| path.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Now this is announced, selling Oculus Medium to Adobe seems like
| a completely idiotic move.
|
| That would have been a killer app right there.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| My experience with the regular Quest was so bad that you'd have
| to pay me $1500 to try this.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Whenever I find myself even mildly excited about VR hardware I
| ask myself what it looks like if Facebook truly succeeds in this?
| Like what if they got massive adoption and are able to tie in all
| their revenue engines within a walled-garden VR setup? What if
| they succeed and get tons of enterprise customers?
|
| It would be absolutely awful right? Like the worst parts of
| dystopian fiction with microtransactions and popups and all kinds
| of other cruft in a 360 field of vision some how mandated for
| gaming and work. World-wide, probably tying into education and
| basic information access.
| dpweb wrote:
| I believe AR/VR is the next great step, but that the personal
| benefits are generally underestimated and the work value,
| especially for knowledge workers, overestimated.
|
| An AR headset you can wear while fixing a car has massive
| value. For writing code or project managing less so. People
| don't really want to be more present in remote work meetings
| not to mention there's no added business value. But enterprise
| is a huge market so you have to try to market to it.
| falcolas wrote:
| "We estimate we can sell up to 80% of a user's vision without
| inducing seizures." - Ernest Cline, "Ready Player One"
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I found that book to be nauseatingly ham-fisted and this
| quote is a great example. It really beats you over the head
| with the theme, but also begs the question would people
| actually put up with that?
| falcolas wrote:
| Based off a casual perusal of almost any news site without
| an ad blocker, yes. Yes they will.
|
| Based off some scroll positions on Facebook, 80% might be a
| bit low.
|
| As a side note, it's a quote from a fictional character
| that's (sadly only slightly) exaggerating a real problem
| for effect. It's not intended to be taken as a gospel
| truth.
| bo1024 wrote:
| What percent of a Google search screen is now ads?
| germinalphrase wrote:
| The book is fundamentally nostalgic. There's very little
| depth or "future" in it (which is not a slight; I don't
| think Cline was going for anything different).
| hbosch wrote:
| I wonder about what happens when people pass the tipping point
| of prioritizing the virtual world over the physical world. That
| is even bleaker than trying to surmise who, in the end, might
| "own it" because once it's to that point we've already lost it
| all.
| tkk23 wrote:
| Global warming shows that we have already passed that point.
| People care more about status and lifestyle than life.
|
| But is it bleak? When we go all in on virtuality, and the
| resolution is high enough and all senses are covered, what
| would be missed from the physical world?
| KajMagnus wrote:
| Something similar:
|
| Wouldn't these devices cause anxiety and depression related
| mental problems?
|
| Humans need humans to feel okay and happy, and if these
| things remove lots of that (a digital avatar isn't the same
| thing) ... that could be dangerous?
|
| Whilst if they automatically shut down for the rest of the
| day, after 3h usage, then maybe more ok.
|
| * * *
|
| For deep focus mode software development though, having no
| distractions, a 360' wide virtual screen (or 180' would be
| enough) could be lovely. I could fit ... 9 editors side by
| side. And different project tree views, and a 30'' web design
| window and Dev Tools. In just a pair of glasses
| moolcool wrote:
| This is what I've been worried about too. Meta isn't betting
| the farm on a shitty Second Life ripoff because they think
| consumers will want it. I think they're doing it because the
| end users are going to be low-level work from home employees
| who have no choice in the matter.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I'm increasingly convinced that Meta isn't betting the farm
| at all. They just wanted to rebrand away from something that
| reminds people of election manipulation and teen suicides and
| toward something that reminds people of the future.
|
| All this VR stuff seems to be an experimental group combined
| with a marketing budget to cure FB's brand.
| bckr wrote:
| It's more dire than that from their business perspective.
|
| TikTok is killing them in the social media space.
|
| They lost billions because of their reliance on Apple, who
| rug pulled them with the iOS privacy changes.
|
| This is what they're choosing to pursue in response to
| existential threats to their business.
| threeseed wrote:
| You think Meta is spending billions on a PR exercise ? Be
| serious.
|
| There are many companies including Apple and Microsoft who
| do think that VR has the potential to offer ground-breaking
| new experiences and as such worth investing in.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Yes - I do think Meta is spending single digit billions
| on a PR exercise. That is not an unreasonable marketing
| budget for a several-hundred-billion-dollar company that
| is currently experiencing huge losses in brand value, and
| they are certainly looking at how to get a piece of the
| VR pie in order to get a discount on it.
| zdyn5 wrote:
| There are over 20K full time employees in Meta's Reality
| Labs working on metaverse tech... this is not a marketing
| exercise.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This would be true if they weren't releasing good
| hardware as well.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| the end users are going to be low-level work from home
| employees who have no choice in the matter.
|
| What is the incentive for businesses to buy and mandate the
| use of proprietary VR headsets for their employees, low-level
| or otherwise?
|
| There would have to be killer apps for those headsets. Things
| that can't be done as well (or done at all) with traditional
| interfaces.
|
| I haven't heard many ideas being thrown around for things
| that would actually benefit from VR.
|
| There are certain niche applications that are easy to
| imagine. Maybe some CAD/CAM stuff, maybe remote surgery or
| some shit.
|
| But the vast majority of things people do would have no
| benefit. You're not going to crunch through help desk tickets
| faster in VR. I realize people probably said the same things
| about traditional computers 50 years ago, but there were also
| a lot of folks that were bullish on them. I just don't see it
| with VR.
| moolcool wrote:
| Surveillance is the big one, I think. Speak to anyone who
| has worked at a call center. They track you like crazy, and
| keep every metric imaginable. Imagine how much worse it
| would be if they were enabled to literally track your eye
| movements.
| threeseed wrote:
| > Things that can't be done as well (or done at all) with
| traditional interfaces
|
| I work from home and do daily standups, design reviews,
| architecture etc.
|
| All of those _could_ be significantly better with VR.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| architecture
|
| Specifically, what about it?
|
| It's easy for me to imagine architects spinning models
| around Minority Report style with their hands, going on
| virtual walkthroughs, etc with VR apps.
|
| It's less clear to me that these would actually improve
| the process. I realize that a 2D projection of a 3D
| object is always going to be a bit of a compromise, but
| are today's 2D interfaces and displays actually holding
| things back?
|
| I'm thinking of the wave of "Minority Report" style
| interfaces that were proposed after that movie came out.
| They seemed to "obviously" be the future. But after a
| while everybody realized that moving a few cm on a
| mouse/trackpad was actually orders of magnitude more
| efficient than waving your arms around like a maniac for
| ten hours a day.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Same. My inner nerd yearns for this tech but I'm very cynical
| about what the public at large adopts and what we end up with
| in practice.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| I have never gotten over Microsoft putting ads on the Windows
| desktop. It felt like the Rubicon was crossed at that moment:
| no longer would my personal computer be mine. And that was from
| a software company doing it to software that I paid for.
|
| What should we expect from an advertising company?
| lostgame wrote:
| I'll certainly never use Windows again; for any reason. The
| idea of built-in advertising within an OS is absolutely a
| line too far crossed.
|
| Doesn't matter that you can disable it; it's the existence of
| the advertising alone that tells me enough about the garbage
| philosophy of the company producing the software that I want
| nothing to do with it, and I could never rightfully recommend
| it to anyone.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| So you don't use either iOS or Android? Those both have ads
| in the OS.
| kart23 wrote:
| Even Apple has ads in iOS now, and nobody complains about it.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| No one?
|
| Let me be the first. I would like to note my formal
| complaint at apple put ads on my expensive iPhone.
|
| Maybe I'm a nobody, but I'm _somebody_.
| prange wrote:
| They have ads in the _store_. Not on iOS in general.
| nkskalyan wrote:
| Not if you count the ads to activate Apple products like
| AppleTv/AppleMusic
| prange wrote:
| Then we agree, they have ads in the store. Not on iOS in
| general.
| kart23 wrote:
| the store is part of the OS, you cannot delete the app
| store, you cannot use an alternative app store, and you
| cannot turn the ads off. Ads are part of the OS.
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/control-how-apple-
| del...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Apple Maps is an Ad when I click on an address and only
| have google maps installed
| prange wrote:
| You're having to work hard. A link to renable a standard
| feature that was included with the OS is not an ad.
| atomicUpdate wrote:
| This is wrong. There are plenty of ads outside of the App
| Store, like:
|
| - There are adds for iCloud in the Settings app.
|
| - There are ads for Apple News in the Stocks app.
| prange wrote:
| There are no adds for iCloud in the settings app. There
| is a page where you can pay for the service.
|
| But.. I'll grant the second - there are ads for Apple
| News in the stocks app.
|
| So no. There are not "plenty of ads" outside the App
| Store.
| christophilus wrote:
| My journey is Windows -> Mac -> Linux. I hope to stick with
| Linux (or at least OSS operating systems) for the remainder
| of my career. My computer is mine, and it's never felt _more_
| like mine than it does now.
|
| It's not without its bumps and warts, but I highly recommend
| it.
|
| Also, gaming isn't perfect, but it's really quite good for
| the kinds of games I play (mostly indie games on Steam).
| jcfrei wrote:
| I went from Windows -> Linux -> Windows with a Linux VM.
| Honestly Linux is just too much of a hassle to get it
| working right directly on the hardware - I always had
| issues with either drivers, sound, multiple monitors, etc.
| And while I'm sure these could be resolved one way or
| another I just don't have the time (anymore) to
| troubleshoot my own system every other month. Windows is
| perfectly fine for web browsing, text editing, gaming etc.
| - while I can program in a familiar Linux environment.
| Added bonus: whenever I change computers I can just copy
| the VM image to the new one and continue instantly.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I went Windows 10 to Linux. Gaming is more than ok, thanks
| Steam, and for those games that don't run under Linux I
| have double boot. My whole Windows career I insisted in Pro
| liscences, the peivate always felt wierd. And aince Windows
| 11 simply unusable, Win 10 Pro is still accwptable, every
| time I see a Home version I feel like crying... The last
| Windows were I really felt like my computer was as mine as
| it does with Linux was NT and Windows 2000. With the same
| shenenigans for installong software from third parties like
| under modern Ubuntu, maybe that plays a role too.
| seer-zig wrote:
| I agree with you. But do you think most people are going to
| afford purchasing even remotely anywhere near that price point?
| aaroninsf wrote:
| The Meta "stack" or core competencies they wish to align in
| this product domain, set up a profoundly dystopian world.
|
| Their interest in being the platform is to own next-level
| surveillance of you for as much of your waking life as
| possible. They intend to track every gesture, your gaze, and
| (soon) your biometrics,
|
| so as to feed their other big build out area, ML and similar
| tools for making superhuman insights about you and your
| interests,
|
| which they they marry to their bread and butter, selling you to
| any and all comers regardless of any ethical concerns or
| concerns about societal consequence whatsoever. (That's not
| even hyperbole, it's a simple statement of fact.)
|
| I don't believe they're ahead on this, but we can also expect
| to be ever more successfully manipulated by AI-powered chat
| bots increasingly well-tuned to provoke "engagement" and
| emotional response, through which to steer our beliefs
| behaviors and limbic system. C.f. Blade Runner 2049 and Ex
| Machina.
|
| A friend made me try his rig against VR porn once, and picked a
| scenario which leveraged gaze and similar monkey-mind cues like
| whispering in one ear up close, to trigger all the "intimacy"
| responses.
|
| Or: made me try the "walk the plank off the top of a
| skyscraper" demo. I knew perfectly well I was 1" off the floor
| on a 2x4. I could not step off.
|
| We are _utterly defenseless_ against what is coming,
|
| and if there is one company in the public consumer sphere which
| has demonstrated that it utterly untrustworthy as a steward of
| our individual and collective wellbeing, it's Meta.
|
| I dearly hope they crash and burn before they can foist this
| hellacious future on those of us unable to get out from under
| it.
| hiidrew wrote:
| There's a short story called the Lifecycle of Software
| Objects. It introduces the idea of platform wars, e.g.
| competition between various metaverse worlds. I see this
| playing out with Horizon, maybe Roblox, Epic, etc. Things are
| mostly interoperable across platforms but some have
| limitations.
|
| Having the choice for digital worlds would make it a little
| less dystopian. But I think the bigger thing is having
| competition with hardware, for the 'next-level surveillance'
| reason you highlight.
| manu_te wrote:
| Amen
| justapassenger wrote:
| It'd look the same as Apple's iPhone ecosystem most likely.
| fortylove wrote:
| I highly doubt that.
|
| The extent of your usage of an iPhone is rarely mandated, and
| most people I know use the iPhone primarily for photos,
| iMessage, a browser (usually Chrome? At least in my circle)
| and an email account.
|
| For those functions, Apple is hardly slamming you with
| recommended content and ads. Instead, you pay an initial
| premium for a solid bit of hardware. And if you want more,
| say if you want to store a lot of photos on their servers
| ($), you pay for it with more money.
| dntrkv wrote:
| Meta is going for the same exact play as Apple did with
| smartphones, but with VR.
|
| They understand the downsides of being tied to ad revenue
| more than anyone else. They want to make money from Oculus
| Store and headset sales, just like Apple does with App
| Store and iPhone.
| twoodfin wrote:
| The question to me is why we should expect Meta to
| compete effectively in the high-end/high-margin space
| with Apple, which it sounds like they will be by sometime
| next year.
|
| I'm struggling to think of any aspect of this product--
| save social--where Apple hasn't demonstrated marked
| superiority to Meta over a decade. Software. Hardware.
| Logistics. Supply Chain. Marketing.
|
| Is the "Social Network" enough to overcome all that? I
| doubt it.
| creativemonkeys wrote:
| Because Meta bought Oculus. It's not the news feed guys
| designing the next gen VR hardware.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Meta is going for the same exact play as Apple did with
| smartphones, but with VR.
|
| Kinda? Revenue-wise, yeah.
|
| Appeal-wise... yeesh. Mobile phones and the internet were
| already very mainstream-popular before Apple launched the
| iPhone.
|
| VR, not so much. The appeal is extremely niche, and
| there's really just no demand for it.
|
| Geeks were _excited_ about having computers in their
| pockets. Literally nobody I know is excited to strap a
| dorky piece of puke-inducing hardware onto their head
| outside of limited gaming uses.
| camdat wrote:
| > Geeks were excited about having computers in their
| pockets. Literally nobody I know is excited to strap a
| dorky piece of puke-inducing hardware onto their head
| outside of limited gaming uses.
|
| I'm getting flashbacks to everyone complaining about the
| lack of buttons on the original iPhone, and how
| bulky/heavy it was in comparison to the micro-phones of
| the era. And how it was less powerful than comparable
| PDAs of the era.
|
| I guess we'll see how well this comment ages in the same
| time period.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Every successful technology has had legions of naysayers.
| Cars. Video games. Graphical operating systems. iPhones.
| Solid state drives. Electric cars.
|
| But that's not what I'm talking about here.
|
| I'm talking about the lack of folks _enthusiastic_ about
| VR. All of the technologies I just named also had a
| groundswell of excitement around them; people who saw the
| promise. I guess we'll see how well
| this comment ages in the same time period.
|
| Sure, write it down.
|
| I'm reminded of the "hype" around 3D movies and TVs about
| a decade ago. Remember how that was going to be the next
| big thing? 3D Blu-rays and stuff?
|
| But you literally never heard people excited about that
| tech at ground level. From geeks to normies the reaction
| was a giant yawn. That's what this whole VR thing feels
| like.
| blueblisters wrote:
| More importantly they want to _own_ a platform which
| won't make arbitrary rules that upends their entire
| business model.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Have you ever used an Oculus Quest before? Between the
| full-screen Apple Music pop-ups and "suggested apps" when
| you search on the App Store, I think my Quest actually has
| _less_ advertisements than modern iOS...
|
| Regardless of platform, the problem is still the same, and
| the solution is equally plain. Apple and Meta should both
| be allowed to sell hardware - they're both really good at
| it! Their software needs an opportunity to compete with the
| community though, otherwise they'll never have their best
| interests at heart. The good news is that both companies
| already hire thousands of software engineers to work on
| their software. It's economically impossible for them to
| make inferior software even if we do force them to do the
| right thing. Win/win!
| mbesto wrote:
| > Have you ever used an Oculus Quest before? Between the
| full-screen Apple Music pop-ups and "suggested apps" when
| you search on the App Store, I think my Quest actually
| has less advertisements than modern iOS...
|
| The GP was saying what would happen in the future. iOS v1
| and v2 had the same amount of advertisements as Quest.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I agree, all of this further emphasizes the importance of
| allowing third-parties to develop their own OSes on
| hardware they own.
| cowtools wrote:
| If that's the case, then what can we do to preemptively
| frustrate facebook's control?
| [deleted]
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Enforce antitrust legislation and caselaw, and force
| manufacturers to stop artificially limiting competition and
| consumer choice.
| philjohn wrote:
| But crucially, you can sideload, you're not tied to an
| app store.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Can you load your own OS? Can you use your own VR client
| to connect to VR spaces? As mentioned in another comment,
| sideloading is against the ToS and clearly not at any
| kind of parity with Facebook-blessed app distribution
| channels.
| philjohn wrote:
| You can link it to your desktop using Link or Air Link
| and use whatever VR apps you want there. I use it for
| iRacing amongst other things.
| Spoom wrote:
| They've made moves that telegraph limiting this. There
| are now warnings every time you run a sideloaded app that
| doing so for reasons other than active development is
| against the terms of service.
| D13Fd wrote:
| Except the iPhone is not (yet) designed to vacuum up and
| monetize all the data of Apple's customers.
|
| I can't say the same with any confidence about any
| Meta/Facebook product.
| Arathorn wrote:
| This is why we're frantically building out
| http://thirdroom.io/preview on Matrix as a free & open
| alternative to the Facebook walled garden. It feels a little
| crazy that on one hand we're trying to outrun WhatsApp with
| Element, while also at the same time we're trying to outrun
| Horizons with Third Room, but someone's got to try...
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Voting with your wallet might be effective and appropriate in
| this case.
| [deleted]
| seydor wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
| jayd16 wrote:
| Couldn't you do this thought experiment for any product? It
| would be bad for any company to have a massive monopoly.
| [deleted]
| gruez wrote:
| >It would be absolutely awful right? Like the worst parts of
| dystopian fiction with microtransactions and popups and all
| kinds of other cruft in a 360 field of vision some how mandated
| for gaming and work. World-wide, probably tying into education
| and basic information access.
|
| I don't get what exactly is awful about this. Having to use it?
| Can't you take it off when you don't want it? How is it any
| different than glowing rectangles being "mandated for gaming
| and work ... probably tying into education and basic
| information access"?
| moolcool wrote:
| Not to be snarky, but this response feels like a very
| privileged perspective on the notion of consumer choice. Yes,
| you can "take it off whenever you want", but if you are in
| dire financial straits, and your employer makes you wear it
| for your entire shift, what are you going to do? Think of it
| from the perspective of technology today. I'm a software
| engineer, and given that we're on HN, you're likely something
| similar. Most people can't negotiate the terms of their
| employment as much as we can. We are lucky, in that if we see
| a job that requires invasive corporate spyware on personal
| devices, or worse yet, proctoring software, we can simply not
| apply.
| gruez wrote:
| "take it off when you don't want it" obviously refers to
| after you're stopped working. I thought the comparison to
| glowing rectangles immediately after would hint at this,
| considering that you're basically required to stare at
| glowing rectangles to do most white collar jobs. Yet,
| nobody is upset or calls this a dystopia, aside from the
| standard anti-work rhetoric of having to work in the first
| place.
| sneak wrote:
| Constant advertising company spyware is what would be
| horrible about it.
|
| Not being able to use it freely; being constantly monitored
| for US-centric moral policing for all your personal and
| private communications.
|
| A lack of privacy for even 1-on-1 communications with
| friends, family, and colleagues.
|
| Not being able to make a new account when yours gets banned
| for something stupid.
|
| No API access to your own data without abusive contracts you
| can't negotiate.
|
| Having to use the name on your ID at all times, even if you
| have stalkers or other life safety threats.
|
| Ads. Tons and tons of ads.
| rcarr wrote:
| If I'm working somewhere and they make VR mandatory I will be
| handing in my notice immediately. I may even refuse to work a
| notice period if they insist on me working in VR throughout it.
| If it becomes the industry norm then I will find another
| industry to work in, even if that means a significant pay cut.
|
| AR glasses that are identical to normal glasses but with some
| useful information overlayed, that I can live with. VR,
| absolutely not.
| czhu12 wrote:
| I would think it would turn Facebooks business to resemble
| Apple's, which I think we should all root for if we want to get
| away from the ad centric product they push on everyone today.
| RussianCow wrote:
| In what way? I see it as exactly the opposite of Apple's
| business. Where Apple makes services in order to sell more
| hardware, Meta (like Google) is in the ad business, so their
| hardware is ultimately just a way to attract more eyeballs.
| conductr wrote:
| My grandfather retired at 50 because he refused to us a PC when
| it became required (~1985 or so). He was lucky that he worked
| for a company that had pensions and bought people out into
| early retirement often so he had that option. If the adoption
| of VR is anything like that, I'll be looking for my out too.
| moolcool wrote:
| Why is it that all news, including tech news, just fills me
| with endless dread nowadays? I surely can't be the only one
| who feels like this. Like what do we have to look forward to
| in the event that we don't have to face a depression, get
| drafted, see another pandemic, realize more of the effects of
| climate change, or get nuked? Wearing stupid goggles for 8
| hours a day and paying Zuckerberg $50 for a virtual "I Hate
| Mondays" t-shirt? Oof.
| rngname22 wrote:
| You're typing this on a piece of technology that presumably
| you appreciate having access to, have you considered that
| there were likely many people in the generation before you
| who assumed something like HN was impossible and that all
| web tech or personal computing would be purely negative /
| dystopian? Turns out it's a mixed bag of good and bad. As
| is the world. There are beautiful things happening right
| now all over the world and there are horrible things. The
| happiest people seem to be either really excellent at
| accepting the horrible things or looking the other way, but
| in both cases they make sure their eyes are focused on the
| good as well and not just the bad.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Then remove yourself from that live and start reconnecting
| to higher values.
|
| Seems like you are stuck in the consumerism / professional
| world.
|
| Reconnect to the people around you, nature, the things you
| love etc and just start to dial down those things that are
| filling you with dread. It's not going to get any better,
| but the things that matter are still there underneath all
| that nonsense that you are being sold.
| dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote:
| > just fills me with endless dread nowadays
|
| News inherently captures attention through fear.
| "Everything is fine today" doesn't sell papers.
|
| But if that's the story you're choosing to tell yourself I
| would dread that future too.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > Why is it that all news, including tech news, just fills
| me with endless dread nowadays?
|
| Because you have a lot of knowledge about world events but
| you don't have very much wisdom about them.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Commodifying software was a mistake that resulted in all
| sorts of perverse incentives. We first saw Microsoft
| succumb to it, then Amazon, and are now watching Facebook,
| Apple and Google all create a mustard-gas-miasma of dark
| patterns and rent-collection. Really, it's our fault for
| not recognizing these threats during the dotcom boom.
| conductr wrote:
| As I like to say, "software eating the world" is just the
| first step of digestion
| bckr wrote:
| You would probably enjoy listening to Hal Sparks on Twitch
| or YouTube. He's a comedian-cum-political commentator who
| is extremely well read and has made it his job to explain
| why the world ain't ending. He's in a beef with The Young
| Turks whose business plan is the exact opposite, even
| though they're supposedly on the same side politically.
|
| He faces the worst of what's going on, watches some of the
| most toxic... er, "media clips", and tells you why they're
| wrong and dumb and why you should actually be optimistic,
| based on confirmable facts and, as another comment
| mentioned, wisdom.
| bitL wrote:
| Early retirement won't be an option for anyone under 40 and
| retirement for anyone under 30 with the way things are going.
| conductr wrote:
| Agree. If USA was a stock ticker, he timed it perfectly
| cercatrova wrote:
| Speak for yourself, plenty of people have retired early
| already before 40. See /r/financialindependence if you
| want.
| rcarr wrote:
| Depends on what your circumstances are and how little
| you're willing to live with. If you've got very few desires
| then you don't need much. If I don't end up married with
| kids I think I may just buy a good motorbike, a good tent
| and a good stove and travel indefinitely.
| novok wrote:
| Current FB is forced by reality to be an ads company. If they
| can find an alternative that lets them not be an ads company,
| then VR might be their path to redemption?
|
| MSFT is putting ads in windows because charging for windows is
| not working as a business model anymore for them, so now it's a
| freemium product. You barely if at all see ads in office and
| related products, and thats because it's a product you can only
| pay for. Many enterprises will flat out refuse to use "Meta
| Enterprise VR" if it comes with a ton of ad tech crap, and are
| totally willing and wanting to pay the difference for it
| anyway. Too many juicy contracts will be missed to FB's
| competitors.
|
| Apple is expanding their ads business a lot too.
|
| So it really can go multiple ways, and I don't think FB is
| going to be the only real competitor in the VR space once it
| starts ramping up, especially with all the hints that apple is
| working on the space. You also have things like sony's
| playstation VR as a strong third competitor, not to mention the
| background PC VR stuff that exists already.
| LegitShady wrote:
| why do you think theyd leave the ad money on the table?
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| This specific issue is my personal hobby horse and how to avoid
| the worst of it is the subject of my essay writing and personal
| research: https://noahnorman.substack.com
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| I work in Northern Europe. Someone at my company decided it
| would be great to introduce the so-called "Facebook for work".
| It's literally the worst of all worlds: you get the distraction
| you don't need while working, no fun, artificial corporate
| virtue-signaling and just plain department-flexing. After a few
| months everybody stopped using it but I'm sure we're still
| paying for it.
| theropost wrote:
| This 100% - especially a social media company that is shedding
| revenue left and right. What do you do when you are losing
| revenue? Find new revenue streams. What do you sell to get
| additional revenue? More personal data. When a giant
| corporation becomes desperate, they will sell anything they
| have in any way they can to make up revenue - I can only
| imagine what they will end up having to do to make up these
| lost revenue streams... probably not so good.
| rblatz wrote:
| Sad to see the "Hand guard" rings disappear on this controller.
| They saved my hands so many times when I ended up punching a
| wall/table/chair etc.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Sure you could 3d print some bumpers to snap on, haha.
| losvedir wrote:
| Is this the "Project Cambria" that had been previewed earlier?
| MikusR wrote:
| Yes
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| Yes
| seydor wrote:
| The killer app they are looking for is going to be simpler than
| they think, it's 360 images (and maybe video). It's hard to make
| 360 pics today, i would think phones would have made it a
| standard feature by now but they haven't, and 360 cams are
| expensive. 360 snapshots should become a standard and easy to use
| feature in ios and android phones. And even in games 360
| screenshots dont really exist. I ve seen that secondlife supports
| those now, in a buggy and lowres way but i dont know many others.
|
| My standard use of OQ2 revolves around that, i find myself
| browsing google earth with the Wander app as well as real estate
| listings in some websites that support it, as i find that none of
| the gaming experiences really stick.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| I honestly don't see a mainstream use for 360' pictures. What
| is your pitch to the average consumer for getting a VR headset
| to use for 360 images and videos?
| seydor wrote:
| - Games fade, VR has a user interface problem: it's just so
| hard to find the VR replacement of the simple old computer
| keyboard in terms of communication bandwidth speed and
| latency.
|
| - Movement in VR causes nausea, the entire visual field is
| just never meant to move like that. So static-position videos
| and photos will be the most comfortable , pleasant experience
|
| I think everything else in VR including complicated
| controllers are gimmicks, in the same way that most people
| don't use the most advanced apps in their phones , but
| instead use instagram
| CarbonCycles wrote:
| I honestly don't get it; however, I have two solid data points
| that lead me a very befuddled conclusion.
|
| One of my buddies is an orthodontist who hates his current life
| but loves video games...he spends most of his free time plugged
| into the VR headsets playing first player shooter games. Okay..I
| kind of get that.
|
| My other buddy who has a post graduate degree in genetics who is
| also an introvert mentioned how he loves Meta's universe. He
| loves the fact that he can hang out in a virtual theater with his
| other buddy who lives half way across the CONUS watching 3D
| movies together. That I don't get.
|
| After typing all that out...I guess I really don't get it. Move
| along...nothing to see here :D
| baby wrote:
| Did you try any of the modern VR headsets? Because it is mind
| blowing
| CarbonCycles wrote:
| I have no doubt the new headsets are phenomenal, but it's not
| in my character to spend that much time with a VR headset.
| Not to mention, have they solved the motion sickness that
| came w/ the earlier headsets?
| eatsyourtacos wrote:
| >have they solved the motion sickness that came w/ the
| earlier headsets
|
| I've been using VR since DK1 and I've basically never
| gotten motion sickness. As long as you are "in control" of
| your movements then it shouldn't happen (sure for a small
| minority of people it can, but that is no where near the
| norm).
|
| The only time I've felt weird is something like a roller
| coaster experience where I'm stationary but everything is
| moving around me at a fast pace. But basically nothing is
| like that excpet for a few random gimmicks.
|
| >but it's not in my character to spend that much time with
| a VR headset
|
| Not really sure what that even means..
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| Motion sickness depends on the individual
|
| I've played a lot of VR with the HTC Vive and Quest 2 and
| never had any motion sickness (I also don't get motion
| sickness in cars/boats fwiw)
| blensor wrote:
| At least in the short term I think they are being more worried
| about getting shut down by the FCC. They have to fight even for
| the Supernatural acquisition where they subpoenad SimulaVR to
| appear as a witness for making their point that they don't have a
| monopoly (that's like Google pointing at the Librem 5 to show
| that there are alternatives to their Android phones) So I don't
| expect that happening anytime soon and a lot of alternatives will
| pop up, which should boost any non platform locked "Metaverses"
| over the alternative
| mataug wrote:
| Based on the marketing material it seems that the Quest Pro is
| targeted at enterprises where a $1500 device which helps improve
| employee productivity isn't that big a deal.
| paxys wrote:
| Spending $1500 per employee for a fancy gadget might not be a
| big deal for Facebook and Microsoft, but they are in for a
| shock if they expect the rest of the corporate world to cough
| up the cash.
| mataug wrote:
| Not every employee at a company gets the most powerful
| computer, nor does everyone get the expensive software. This
| is targeted at companies and employees who can benefit from
| the tech such as architects.
|
| Even Facebook / Microsoft don't give out VR headsets to all
| employees.
|
| This is also a first gen product, so this is not the version
| most companies may be adopting.
| bagels wrote:
| Facebook doesn't even buy Quest 2 for employees, hah.
| minimaxir wrote:
| The livestream just invited Satya Nadella as the "one more thing"
| to intoduce Microsoft Teams and Office 365 for VR, showing how
| Meta hopes this will be used.
|
| Enterprise companies are too cheap to justify $1500 per head for
| a gimmick, though.
| jedberg wrote:
| How much does it cost to give someone three monitors? With the
| headset and something like Immersed* you can use this instead
| of giving your remote employee a bunch of monitors, which is
| also nice for the employee who might live in a studio apartment
| and doesn't have a lot of space, or an employee who wants to
| travel.
|
| * Disclaimer: I'm an investor in Immersed.
| ianbutler wrote:
| Once resolution is high enough it will be compelling but imo
| Immersed is held back by current headset resolutions.
|
| I used Immersed at length for two months and I had to stop
| from the frequency of eye fatigue and tiredness at shorter
| intervals than I currently experience with regular monitor
| work.
|
| Until that happens I don't see companies sending this out,
| not to mention things like motion sickness some people get
| even with low motion VR like immersed.
| jedberg wrote:
| To be fair I had the same problem with Immersed (the
| fatigue) but luckily that's a hardware problem and not a
| software problem. In time I think the headsets will get
| good enough that it's not a problem for most people.
| codemac wrote:
| I used immersed with quest 2, but the resolution still
| bothered me a lot more than something like beat saber.
|
| Now that the quest pro is available, I've already pre-ordered
| it for this use case. I'd love every project I work on to
| have different "screens" in different environments to put my
| mind into each project.
| shmatt wrote:
| That would explain the 12GB RAM
| nolok wrote:
| And the 1h battery life
| rjh29 wrote:
| Doing your desk job in VR seems like a gimmick. Meetings in VR
| are a gimmick. Collaborative real-time design and creative work
| in 3D - that sounds like it's worth $1500.
| philjohn wrote:
| Meetings in VR are genuinely far less draining than
| Zoom/Teams calls.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| Are they? Considered I get motion sickness after 20 min or
| so, and i'm not alone.
| modeless wrote:
| If you get motion sickness after 20 minutes of a seated
| experience that is running at full frame rate, with no
| artificial locomotion, you are decidedly in the minority.
| It is not impossible, but it is far from common.
| jackbrookes wrote:
| > Meetings in VR are a gimmick
|
| I expect you're wrong - spatial audio, body language, face
| tracking, eye contact are all super valuable and possibly in
| VR
| jayd16 wrote:
| Yeah, I think people underestimate the compelling nature of
| diverse expression. Its more fun to hang out in a game with
| emotes than it is to hang out in a voice call.
|
| Will headsets replace zoom? I can't say. There are other
| convenience factors there. But hanging out in a virtual
| place is empirically compelling.
| q-big wrote:
| > Yeah, I think people underestimate the compelling
| nature of diverse expression.
|
| In my experience whether they find this compelling
| depends a lot on the respective person. "Manager types"
| might like it, but quite some programmers would rather
| detest it.
| [deleted]
| rjh29 wrote:
| Beyond Zoom you mean? It might do. Being autistic I tend to
| see meetings as an organised exchange to information rather
| than a body language thing, but I can see what you mean.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Communication is much more about body language than words
| for most people.
| joisig wrote:
| Collaborative architectural design is what Arkio does, one of
| the launch partners.
| moolcool wrote:
| You're looking at it from the perspective of a higher-end
| knowledge worker. $1500 to strap a 1984-esque telescreen on
| your call center employee and have them work from home
| instead of a cubicle would save a bundle.
| madamelic wrote:
| > $1500 to strap a 1984-esque telescreen on your call
| center employee and have them work from home instead of a
| cubicle would save a bundle.
|
| Alternatively, think of how small you can make the cubicles
| if you can integrate the entire computer and telephone into
| a headset.
|
| You could like double or triple capacity if cubicles were
| the size of those WeWork phone booths.
| bitwize wrote:
| Even then I'd rather it be an Iron Man style floating
| holodesk than something you have to strap onto your face.
|
| Expectation: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d1/a2/65/d1a265d2
| 093c0b952112...
|
| Reality: https://assets1.ignimgs.com/2016/10/06/maxresdefault
| jpg-f9a9...
|
| Come to think of it, they're both pretty dorky.
| nsilvestri wrote:
| I believe I'll be able to replace my monitors to do my desk
| job with a VR headset within 10 years. Rather than having 2
| monitors of different sizes and resolutions on a desk, why
| not just have as many virtual monitors with exactly the size,
| position, and distance I want? In fact, why have monitors at
| all? Just position the windows in arbitrary space in front of
| me.
|
| Desktop computing with a VR headset is somewhat possible
| right now, but I am not quite able to stomach the resolution
| limitations of the Quest 2. I'm looking forward to devices
| like SimulaVR [0], which intend to fully replace desktop
| computing with a self-contained VR headset (plus a mouse and
| keyboard).
|
| In my mind, there are two and a half problems to solve to
| make it possible. One is pixel density. It has to at least be
| equivalent (or very close) to our own eyes. Two is comfort,
| both physical (ventilation, weight) and health-wise (eye
| strain). Two and a half is being able to navigate without a
| mouse and keyboard, and preferably no peripherals, but I
| think I'm able to wait for that.
|
| [0] https://simulavr.com/
| donmcronald wrote:
| This is pretty much exactly what I was going to say. I
| think it's a gimmick _for now_ , but as soon as the pixel
| density gets high enough it becomes more interesting.
|
| > Two and a half is being able to navigate without a mouse
| and keyboard, and preferably no peripherals, but I think
| I'm able to wait for that.
|
| I can't imagine that. I think it'll end up being a normal
| desk, mouse, keyboard painted into the VR world by using
| the passthrough cameras.
|
| Something else I've noticed when I put on my Quest 2 is the
| lighting. I don't like the way the lights in my office feel
| like they glare in my eyes. Putting on the Quest 2 and
| hitting a virtual environment gives the feel of indirect
| lighting and I find it much more comfortable. It's like
| being outside.
|
| That comfort doesn't last very long, but if I could get
| away with it for 2h at a time, and have high DPI virtual
| screens, I think I'd at least _try_ a virtual office.
|
| They also need to make it so I can drink a cup of coffee
| with the headset on or the whole thing is DOA. Lol.
| als0 wrote:
| > That comfort doesn't last very long
|
| Low resolutions aside, headsets are still way too heavy
| and bulky, at least in my experience. Some even get quite
| hot. I can imagine that the weight and heat could be
| solved over time, but the bulkiness seems like a very big
| hurdle. When using lenses you need the distance, so it's
| hard to see how we can miniaturize headsets without a
| brand new technological innovation.
| nomel wrote:
| > but the bulkiness seems like a very big hurdle
|
| The nreal air is 79g [1]. It has a 1080p resolution (45
| degree, so reasonably PPD), but I imagine this will
| multiply over the years.
|
| 1. https://www.nreal.ai/specs/
| als0 wrote:
| Wow, this looks awesome. Thanks.
| umanwizard wrote:
| There is no a priori reason to believe that the pixel
| resolution will ever be that high. Not all technology we
| can imagine is actually possible.
| silentwanderer wrote:
| Pixel density high enough for acceptable text is already
| possible, just prohibitively expensive. See Varjo's
| headsets, for example - at the center of the display they
| have 70 pixels-per-degree (for comparison the Quest 2 has
| about 20).
| nomel wrote:
| > high enough for acceptable text is already possible
|
| I don't understand this. I code and read in VR almost
| every day. With proper aliasing, it's extremely
| acceptable as is. Font characters per degree has to be
| increased, of course, but Quest 2 is about the same as a
| 720p virtual monitor.
|
| Have you tried reading in VR?
| int0x2e wrote:
| I actually think pixel density is one of the easier
| battle to win. Getting a cheap, lightweight, strain-free
| device to users is the real requirement.
|
| For now, I can't handle more than ~30 mins with any
| VR/MR/AR device, but if I can actually wear one for
| several hours and be productive using one - I will be
| convinced we've turned the corner on this tech.
| kanetw wrote:
| This is our (SimulaVR's) vision, basically. Our target is
| to have pixel density/optical quality and comfort good
| enough to work comfortably.
|
| The pixel density is there (and better than quest pro), and
| we just need to finish the comfort features -- passthrough,
| mechanical comfort, integrated host.
| pavlov wrote:
| In a way this is exactly what they said about GUI in 1983.
| People looked at the early products like Apple Lisa and Xerox
| Star, and said: "Serious businesses aren't going to be spending
| thousands of dollars per user on gimmicks like the mouse and
| high-resolution graphics. Office tasks don't need that." -- And
| they were right, but only within the narrow field of what
| office work on computers was like in 1983. WordPerfect and
| 1-2-3 didn't need the GUI. Excel and the web browser did.
|
| I'm not saying VR/AR is going to turn out the same way, but it
| seems at least possible that new affordances will create new
| kinds of applications again.
| Gelob wrote:
| i disagree. enterprise companies love wasting money on gimmicks
| vs things they really need.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| What's the input story for Office 365 in VR? Bluetooth keyboard
| + mouse?
| bitL wrote:
| You can input financial formulas to Excel more
| collaboratively.
| nomel wrote:
| This is already possible with Quest 2. Supported keyboards
| are tracked and show up through a "passthrough" window, where
| you can see the camera feed of them and your hands.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Considering how horrendous Teams is, I do not view it as a
| plus.
| satysin wrote:
| This kinda of crap makes me laugh. We have companies desperate
| to get people back in the office because they say working from
| home ruins morale or creativity, etc. and at the same time we
| got companies saying the future is that people should commute
| into the office to put on a fucking VR headset to have meetings
| in a virtual office. Jesus wept.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Think of the cost savings. Instead of cubicles now we just
| pack everyone into a warehouse with VR goggles?
| aeturnum wrote:
| I find this page very confusing. I suppose it's a stand-alone
| experience, based on other Meta VR products, but it doesn't
| really say that anywhere. How does its processing power and
| display pipeline compare to the Quest, or to other VR headsets? I
| see lots of buzzwords but not a lot of grounded descriptions. Is
| this an AR device? How does the AR work? The marketing video look
| like simulations. I get the sense that this is aimed at creative
| professionals as an accessory to expand their work modalities -
| but there's no mention of professional support or API access or
| any of the traditional markers in that realm.
|
| Generally this seems interesting but this landing page _actively
| detracts_ from my interest in the product.
| [deleted]
| tchock23 wrote:
| My sentiments exactly. I was one of the first people to fund
| the Rift Kickstarter way back in the day and I have no idea
| what this thing is or why it exists after reading that page.
| It's just a series of Apple-style pithy marketing statements
| that appear as you scroll.
| xvector wrote:
| Did you read the tech specs?
|
| > Full-color mixed reality, with resolution 4X higher
| compared to Quest 2
|
| > Real-time expression tracking
|
| > slimmed down the optical stack by over 40% compared to
| Quest 2
|
| > 37% greater pixels-per-inch. And 1.3x larger color gamut
|
| > XR2+ processor that delivers 50% more power
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| I have no idea what a quest 2 is outside of a VR headset so
| comparing it instead of the actual stats this is useless.
| aeturnum wrote:
| So, here's an example of what is confusing me:
|
| > 37% greater pixels-per-inch. And 1.3x larger color gamut
|
| > Full-color mixed reality, with resolution 4X higher
| compared to Quest 2
|
| How can the resolution be both 4x higher and have only
| 1.37x the pixels per inch? Those number seem out of sync.
|
| > slimmed down the optical stack by over 40% compared to
| Quest 2
|
| What does this mean for me? Is it literally slimmer? Are
| the screens closer, or are there fewer (but thicker) lenses
| between me and the screens? I have no idea.
|
| > Real-time expression tracking
|
| Is this...running all of the time? Is it an option that
| developers can use? Is this running on the main processor?
| On a co-processor?
|
| > XR2+ processor that delivers 50% more power
|
| I did miss this line!
|
| This processor was announced today, in concert with the
| Quest. One can make informed guesses about how this differs
| from the existing XR2[1], but it strikes me as odd to
| announce a new model with additional capabilities that also
| is using a new SOC without being specific.
|
| [1] https://www.qualcomm.com/products/application/xr-vr-
| ar/snapd...
| throw03172019 wrote:
| Does anyone really want to wear this while meeting virtually with
| colleagues?
| goodoldneon wrote:
| If it solves the "only one conversation at a time" problem with
| online meetings then yes. I'd rather be in a virtual room with
| proximal volume than a Zoom meeting with people yelling over
| each other
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| Yeah, this would be a game changer to me.
| caslon wrote:
| Both of you should know that there are multiple
| applications that already solve this problem in VR! Most of
| the "social" chat applications and most of the
| "professional" chat applications have proximity-based chat
| volume. Even most _games_ have it. It 's a super handy
| feature and a natural one for VR.
| dnissley wrote:
| Do they? I think what folks are talking about here is
| having someone sound louder to someone who is closer to
| them in a 3d environment vs softer to someone farther
| away. This doesn't seem possible in, say, Zoom.
| caslon wrote:
| Yes, I'm aware of what they're saying. It is indeed the
| default for most VR applications. I can't think of a VR
| application that uses a global volume for voices; it's
| all local and diminishes based on distance from source. A
| universal volume for anyone on a map is weird and
| awkward, and most game engines have sound differ in
| volume based on distance and location by default. Most VR
| applications, even the "professional" ones, are built on
| top of game engines, because it's a lot easier than
| writing everything from scratch.
| lbhdc wrote:
| Would using a headset solve that? Wouldn't it be just as
| effective to have a space that allows you to use a
| traditional monitor?
| bagels wrote:
| Presumably you can pick up on nonverbal cues better, but
| there are some pretty big assumptions like dramatically
| better lag.
| favourable wrote:
| Yay! More motion sickness with prolonged use. This needs to be
| ironed out.
| caslon wrote:
| It... pretty much has been since the 120hz update for the Quest
| 2? As long as they're not using a poorly-written application
| that drops below 90hz, I've barely heard stories of anyone
| getting sick these days.
| toinewx wrote:
| I have Quest 2 and I get extremely sick after only 15-30
| minutes, like a sickness that lasts for a few hours and makes
| me feel like I'm extremely tired. No wonder it sat in shelf
| since then. And no, it was not 1 application that was doing
| that.
| caslon wrote:
| Since you've left the timeline ambiguous, and didn't say if
| you'd enabled the 120hz mode or even been on a late-enough
| update to the system software to use it, your comment isn't
| that useful.
| bagels wrote:
| It hasn't been. Any experience where my character moves
| around causes instant nasuea and discomfort. I doubt I am
| alone in this.
| drstewart wrote:
| Side note: it's funny how quickly the entire retail world has
| coalesced around "Pro" for naming of its premium lines and "+"
| for its subscriptions.
|
| I wonder how long this paradigm will continue for (probably until
| Apple leads a change away)
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| They have already started - ,,ultra" is the new ,,pro"
| [deleted]
| azinman2 wrote:
| 5 hours in and 326 points to 520 comments. This isn't a good sign
| from the HN community (ratio going wrong way, not too many points
| for a brand new flagship product), which I would assume would be
| the most inclined audience to drop $1500 on a VR headset.
| LightG wrote:
| There's nothing about this that will come close to competing with
| my own imagination.
|
| In that respect, telnetting into a EW-too talker back in the 90's
| will be a superior product offering.
|
| Sorry.
| [deleted]
| mdorazio wrote:
| I didn't see it in this page, but previous announcements put the
| battery life at 1-2 hours (unverified).
|
| I know it's fun to hate on Meta, but this honestly looks like it
| resolves most of the gripes I had with the Quest 2, aside from
| the whole Facebook integration piece... It looks like a solid
| piece of hardware.
| rblatz wrote:
| Completely different price points though. The Quest 2 was
| priced for the general public, this is a specialty device for
| hobbyists and it looks like they are targeting corporations.
| Hobbyists already have had more advanced options available at
| this price point, so I'm not totally sure I understand the
| market for this.
| nomel wrote:
| > Hobbyists already have had more advanced options available
| at this price point
|
| Could you name the other more advanced standalone options?
| I'm only aware of Pico, which is near parity, but tied to the
| CCP.
| derac wrote:
| The Varjo Aero and Pimax 8k/12k are ones I'm familiar with.
| zlsa wrote:
| I don't think these are very comparable to the Quest Pro.
|
| It appears neither of those have face tracking, and the
| Pimax doesn't have eye tracking. Besides that, both of
| those are PCVR (not standalone) and the Aero doesn't even
| come with controllers despite costing nearly $2000.
| [deleted]
| KMnO4 wrote:
| It's not in Meta's best interest to obsolete the Quest 2. VR
| is already a tough sell, and like other "consoles",
| significant revenue comes from selling apps.
|
| If they tell the regular users (who spend $50 per game) that
| they can't purchase new games without a new headset, I bet
| most would ditch the technology.
| danso wrote:
| The original Quest was released May 2019, and the Quest 2
| was released Oct. 2020. Maybe a lot of the early adopters
| felt burned, but the Quest1's short life obviously didn't
| put much of a damper in the Quest 2's sales.
| chroma wrote:
| Are there many apps or games that only work on the Quest
| 2? I have the original Quest and I still use it several
| times a week. It's basically the Beat Saber machine an
| this point, but it's still pretty fun.
| goosedragons wrote:
| There is some and they are some of the bigger titles,
| Resident Evil 4 VR and Bonelab for example.
| irq-1 wrote:
| There's a USB-C cable that can power it.
| MikusR wrote:
| There is no Facebook integration. That was removed 2 months
| ago.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| No Facebook like Instagram is no Facebook.
|
| Meanings it's all Facebook on the backend.
|
| Your account just doesn't say Facebook erm _Meta_ on it. You
| are still subject to all the bad things they do with
| automated bans, shifting TOS, social bla, etc.
| nickv wrote:
| Citation?
| jayd16 wrote:
| > Facebook integration
|
| They did make good on this. You can make Meta accounts with
| arbitrary emails and there's no connection to Facebook or real
| name stuff.
| tazjin wrote:
| You still have to deal with a complicated web of accounts and
| apps, converting your "Oculus" account to a "Horizon" account
| to unlink your Facebook from your Meta or whatever (who
| knows!).
|
| I have a Quest (1 and 2 actually, though the 1 is in storage)
| and I basically never use it anymore because I just can *not*
| be bothered to try and log in through its various apps again
| and install software updates in broken UIs with no progress
| indication etc.
|
| The only thing I use it for anymore is if somebody's over and
| wants to try VR, I let them to the tutorial demo and maybe
| play some Superhot (which hasn't broken for lack of updates
| ... yet!). Unfortunately streaming that to the TV via
| Chromecast from the app doesn't work anymore for Zuck knows
| what reason.
|
| Consumer tech is so hostile and frustrating, I really just
| can not deal with it anymore. Sorry for the rant.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| It was pretty simple for me to convert my Facebook account
| to a Meta only account. The first time I put on my headset
| after that change it asked if I wanted to unlink my
| facebook account and create a new account. I had to pick a
| new username and password, and re-enter my pairing code.
| But that was it. I was actually surprised it asked me.
| nomel wrote:
| > I have a Quest (1 and 2 actually, though the 1 is in
| storage) and I basically never use it anymore because I
| just can _not_ be bothered to try and log in through its
| various apps again
|
| Your knowledge and experience does not reflect current
| reality. Multiple logins haven't been required since the
| launch of the Quest 2. I didn't have a Quest 1, so I can't
| comment there.
|
| > You still have to deal with a complicated web of accounts
| and apps
|
| This is false. Only one account is needed. Sometimes
| individual apps will require a login, but that's
| exceedingly rare, or allows you to login with _other_
| devices, to the app, outside of the Quest ecosystem. This
| is not a fault of Meta, it 's just the reality of third
| party credentials. I don't recall the last app I had to
|
| If you buy a headset now, you would make a Meta account
| that would be used for everything. That's it.
|
| If you had a Facebook account and are ok with continuing
| with the Facebook account, you're done.
|
| If you had a Facebook account and you want to convert it to
| a Meta account, you can _choose_ to do this, then you 're
| done.
|
| All three situations above use a single account for all
| apps, besides those that are meant to be accessible cross
| platform.
| tazjin wrote:
| I hate this kind of apologism.
|
| "It's all very simple if you're an industry expert
| following $company's every move!"
|
| There is no way to use all features of a Quest without
| logging in _at least_ twice (once on a phone, once on the
| device itself, because some features are inexplicably
| only accessible through the app). If you've had it for a
| while, you've also had to deal with (potentially non-
| exhaustive list):
|
| - an Oculus account (comes (came?) in linked/unlinked
| flavours)
|
| - a Facebook account
|
| - a Meta account (is that the same as the above? who
| knows!)
|
| - a Horizon account (what even _is_ Horizon?)
|
| From the perspective of somebody who just bought the damn
| thing to use it, as far as I can tell none of these were
| avoidable if you followed the default flows. There's
| probably more now. That's ignoring steps on the phone,
| and linking steps between devices through URLs needing to
| be opened on a computer and all of that faff.
|
| I'm sure there's a secret code phrase I could've garnered
| from some Reddit with 10k users that, if I had said it to
| Support, would have let me skip one of these steps - but
| who does that?
| andybak wrote:
| I had to install three headsets from scratch today and
| you definitely only log in once.
|
| There is only one account type now.
| tazjin wrote:
| That's great, if your account type is already completely
| linked up, migrated, synced, logged in on your phone etc.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| Ironically this is exactly what they were trying to avoid
| by just requiring a Facebook account for everything
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Maybe that is what they were trying to avoid but in
| practice they made it much worse. Oculus had accounts
| before they were bought by FB, it was pretty much like a
| Steam account for better or for worse. Then by the Quest
| 2 you had to use your Facebook account, which meant you
| had to verify your facebook account on your phone (maybe
| there was a work around, I didn't find it) and it asked
| for your phone number and then FB is texting you saying
| some robot with a woman's name just friended you, and you
| have this duummy account that is always posting what you
| are doing on the quest etc. etc.
|
| Yeah I am sure there is a way to turn off all that junk
| and opt out of installing the app or giving them your
| phone number but its full of anti-patterns to make you do
| it. What a hassle.
| ineptech wrote:
| You can't give them credit for solving a problem they
| created. If Nvidia made me log in to Facebook to use my
| graphics card, I wouldn't cheer when they gave me the
| option to make an Nvidia account instead.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Or, here's an idea. They could just not require an
| 'anything' account at all. That's how my PC works, and
| it's fine.
| zht wrote:
| just the fact that a cascading number of if statements is
| needed is a sign that it's too complex lol
| nomel wrote:
| I disagree, since a single user would only experience a
| single if statement.
| tazjin wrote:
| This is false. They evolve over time and you get pushed
| into various mandatory migration and linking/unlinking
| steps.
|
| By the way, this kind of thing is in no way particular to
| Facebook - our entire industry has this much disrespect
| for its users.
| nomel wrote:
| With the current state, which appears to be stable (no
| more company acquisitions/name changes), they would
| experience one.
| tazjin wrote:
| 100% stable, all the way until the next company
| acquisition / name change / "An Update on Quest" / reorg.
| and so on.
| nomel wrote:
| This isn't some unique Meta or VR. These are growing
| pains of new tech. This is what happens with all new
| tech. We'll see dozens of companies grow, die, and be
| acquired, and dozens of products change hands and
| disappear. This is the MO for all new tech that all of us
| are _intimately_ familiar with.
|
| In this particular case, with this particular product and
| company, the churn has happened, and we should see some
| stability now.
|
| If you want complete stability, you're in the wrong line
| of work, and _definitely_ on the wrong website. But there
| 's no reason to be irrational about it.
| sfvegandude wrote:
| Do you trust that Facebook has neither the capability nor the
| incentive to develop the capability to track you and combine
| all that data into a profile? I do not.
|
| Facebook has shadow profiles for people who don't use the
| service.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Facebook, and every advertiser, credit agency, etc.
| q-big wrote:
| > They did make good on this. You can make Meta accounts with
| arbitrary emails and there's no connection to Facebook or
| real name stuff.
|
| Can you also use the Meta headsets without creating _any_
| account?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jandrese wrote:
| I did this and they recently did something with the accounts
| (forcing you to get a metaverse account I think?) that turned
| into a massive headache. In the end I was only able to get it
| working again by creating a new account (or subaccount?) and
| redoing all of the Quest Link stuff. Even now it complains
| that my account isn't set up properly if I use the built-in
| store, although for now it is working. The whole thing is
| hugely confusing and the only point seemed to be to try to
| shove Metaverse down my throat.
|
| I do have to say that Quest Link over WiFi works amazingly
| well and lets you break out of the walled garden to get to
| the more interesting corners of VR. It also lets you run
| stuff that would be way too heavy for the mobile-phone level
| processor on the Quest. Only downside is the WiFi eats a lot
| of battery power, so one of those headbands with an extra
| battery is almost required, but since they improve the weight
| distribution of the headset it's not a terrible buy.
| ridgered4 wrote:
| For now. Facebook didn't demand my phone number and a scan of
| my drivers license when I first signed up either.
| zem wrote:
| honestly, if you need an account at all it's still in
| internet-of-shit territory and could be unilaterally degraded
| at any time.
| samatman wrote:
| A Facebook account is a Facebook account.
|
| They're a bad actor, having demonstrated this beyond a shadow
| of doubt.
|
| A sensible person would need a strong signal to believe
| they've switched to cooperating, and no such signal is
| evident.
| legohead wrote:
| I have and enjoy the Quest2. I'm not seeing much that would
| make me want a Quest Pro for an extra $1100. The pro looks more
| comfortable, the color passthrough is cool, and I respect the
| new lens and resolution upgrade, but again, $1100? Not worth it
| to me.
| Youden wrote:
| For me it'll depend on the magnitude of the improvement,
| especially in resolution. If it's a serious improvement, I
| could see it as viable for productive work and not just
| games, in which case it might be worth the money.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| It's not. The meta site is low on specs, but they mentioned
| in the video that it's got 37% more pixels (and a bit
| higher density in the middle)
|
| This means that for every 3 pixels on the quest 2 you now
| have 4. Not exactly a huge increase IMO. What's needed for
| desktop work is like a 2-4x increase right now.
| spoonjim wrote:
| This isn't really being sold to the same people as the
| Quest2, so it's not surprising that existing Quest2 users
| aren't having much interest.
| peter303 wrote:
| Better than Google Glass which was 20 minutes in video mode.
| nomel wrote:
| I would say it's a delicate balance, with heavy batteries being
| the most annoying for heavy users (the target audience, from
| what I can tell), who will have pocket battery packs, or low
| moment-of-inertia placements, anyways.
|
| I personally don't want any unnecessary weight on my face since
| I sometimes use my headsets for 8 hours at a time, for coding.
| For comparison, something like the nreal air [1] is only 79g!
|
| 1. https://www.nreal.ai/specs/
| sofixa wrote:
| > I personally don't want any unnecessary weight on my face
| since I sometimes use my headsets for 8 hours at a time, for
| coding
|
| Out of curiosity, how does that work? What's the flow, what
| software do you use, do you still use a keyboard to type?
| nomel wrote:
| I stream my desktop, with a few virtual screens, using
| ImmersedVR [1], but other options are available, like
| VirtualDesktop [2] (over local/remote network), which can
| be used with something like ShadowPC for full cloud. Others
| I know code completely in the native browser with the
| multi-screen interface you see in Meta commercials. Native
| is still a work in progress, but you can sideload android
| apps to put them into their own windows.
|
| For desktop streaming, you can use your desktop
| keyboard/mouse, or a bluetooth keyboard/mouse connected to
| the headset. For native apps, you use a bluetooth
| keyboard/mouse connected to the headset. The headset
| sees/tracks the (supported) keyboard with the passthrough
| cameras and shows a passthrough window/overlay, where it
| is.
|
| I have no doubt that virtual displays are the future, but
| probably not until form factors are like the nreal air [3],
| which I think is still too limited for resolution. Next
| gen, I'll probably switch over. People will probably be
| happy enough once PPD triples.
|
| 1. https://www.immersed.com/
|
| 2. https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/de7ojk/usi
| ng_v...
|
| 3. https://www.nreal.ai/air/
| chimineycricket wrote:
| CNET video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u5PIqnXWHw
| cyounkins wrote:
| If you are using Firefox and this page doesn't load, you may need
| to allow the site in the Facebook container by clicking on the
| jail icon and then "Allow site in Facebook container"
| objclxt wrote:
| From The Verge's article:
|
| > I was told the headset would last between one and two hours on
| a single charge, then take around two hours to recharge
|
| That's...not great for a device targeted at enterprise?
| Especially without any sort of fast recharge or swappable battery
| pack.
| amluto wrote:
| You could swap the entire headset. $3k/seat for professional
| gear for enterprise use is cheap.
| batmansmom1 wrote:
| no way the actual expected use case is to have two headsets
| per person that get switched out every two hours.
| skavi wrote:
| Personally, I would just keep a power bank in my pocket and
| wire it up.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| If you're sitting down (which I imagine is the enterprise-y use
| case?) you can just leave it plugged in
| patrickserrano wrote:
| how does that work for controllers through?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| controller battery life shouldn't be an issue. never was on
| quest2.
| Duralias wrote:
| Controllers do full on inside out tracking, each
| controller being equipped with a snapdragon 662.
|
| They also do not list the battery life anywhere, which is
| the biggest red flag.
| quux wrote:
| Good question, the new controllers have multiple cameras
| and are doing inside out tracking now, I'd guess that they
| use a lot more power than the Quest 2 controllers do.
| Duralias wrote:
| You have to stop using them and let them charge.
|
| Unless they release a proprietary charging cable that is.
|
| They also do not list the battery life anywhere, which is a
| red flag to me.
| baby wrote:
| It's not a red flag. No console list the battery life of
| their controllers as they usually last a long time.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Internal, rechargeable battery with up to 40 hours of
| battery life per charge. Battery life varies with usage
| and other factors.
|
| https://www.xbox.com/en-US/accessories/controllers/elite-
| wir...
| wincy wrote:
| The controllers last a really long time on a single
| battery. My Quest 2's batteries are finally getting low and
| I bought it six months ago.
| Duralias wrote:
| These use integrated batteries and does full on inside
| out tracking on each controller, each controller having
| its own snapdragon 662.
|
| They also do not list how long the controllers last, not
| found any source mentioning that yet, which is a huge red
| flag.
| jandrese wrote:
| Plus, they are just a single AA in each controller.
| Swapping takes like 30 seconds. I use NiMH rechargeables
| and just swap between a couple of pairs of them whenever
| necessary.
| marcooliv wrote:
| Probably will support being used connected to the power, no? In
| general, if you will use more than two hours straight probably
| you will sit at your chair. If not, yeah, it will be a problem.
| whazor wrote:
| No OLED and no eye tracking, which are needed for the perfect VR
| experience.
| modeless wrote:
| It does have eye tracking
| whazor wrote:
| So close. Still, no OLED is still a dealbreaker as you want
| real darkness. The backlight from the LCD makes darkness look
| more gray. In VR this is uncomfortable as you want the least
| amount of light to enter your eyes.
|
| Eye tracking is nice though, it makes it possible to only
| render high detail what you are looking at. This makes the
| higher resolutions much more interesting.
| maxpert wrote:
| Novelty that wears of super quick. I know people who bought
| Oculus out of hype and then just after a week it's sitting on
| table collecting dust.
| bhouston wrote:
| Trying to order it from Canada and it tells me my postal code is
| an invalid zip code. I tried 2 separate addresses.
| zulln wrote:
| Back when I ordered a Quest 2 I had to use a space somewhere in
| my zip code for it to work. Like "123 45" or "12 345". Do not
| remember the variant that worked!
| paxys wrote:
| Well a postal code _is_ an invalid zip code, so not sure what
| you are expecting. If you select Canada in the "ship to" field
| it will work.
| bhouston wrote:
| I had selected Canada but I will reselect it. Tried it a few
| more times and when I enter in my postal code into the field
| labelled "postal code" it tells me it is an invalid zip code.
|
| Once I switched from Safari on iOS to Chrome on MacOS it
| worked.
| moolcool wrote:
| Imagine getting a job at a call center, but it's work from home.
| Unfortunately though, your work requires you to be present in the
| "metaverse", meaning you have to wear stupid goggles that allow
| your employer and Meta to control everything you see and hear for
| 8 hours a day. The advantage for the employer is clear: no need
| to pay for an office, but you also don't have to trust your
| employees to do their work at home. The advantage for Meta is
| clear as well: realize a virtually infinite profit margin on
| virtual clothing and environments in our nightmare late-stage
| capitalist version of a company store, and bombard you with
| hyper-targeted advertising. I can't really emphasize enough how
| much the future imagined by this product sucks. I don't know how
| somebody can see this and, in good conscience, continue to work
| there.
| artificial wrote:
| The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.
| Meanwhile 5 years ago in China they're using cameras to monitor
| pupils in the classroom to see who is paying attention [0] and
| more recently intrusive desktop monitoring [1] also something
| used by some of the gig workers like Upwork [2]? The demand is
| there, people like their shipping updates with packages. It's
| pretty bleak tbh.
|
| [0] https://www.engadget.com/general-motors-ultium-battery-
| more-... [1] https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-
| Story/China-s-tech... to-limits-by-surveillance-software [2]
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/upwork...
| crakhamster01 wrote:
| Love all the new tech they're trying out here, but I think they
| really shot themselves in the foot with the "Quest Pro" branding.
|
| The product still has some rough edges (e.g. that 1-2hr battery
| life), and consumers will undoubtedly confused this for an
| evolution of the Quest 2 (which it is not). This feels like a
| highly polished developer kit that they tried to pivot into an
| enterprise device in the last few months.
|
| Perhaps they did so out of fear of the public market's response?
| Releasing an expensive research project in this economic
| environment might have been a bad look.
| tibbon wrote:
| I was quite impressed by the price / capability ratio of the
| Quest 2 and bought one immediately. Truth be told, it has mostly
| sat on the shelf with only occasional usage. But for $1500, this
| doesn't seem like a huge upgrade and I can't afford for that to
| sit on a shelf.
| nitiniyer wrote:
| VR will always be a wondrous tragedy - at this price point it's a
| little bit more of a tragedy -
| https://www.climaticthoughts.com/vr-wondrous-tragedy/
| bitL wrote:
| "I want to see its resolution!". Click on tech specs. "...with
| resolution 4X higher compared to Quest 2". Thanks Meta, that is
| super helpful!
| lyu07282 wrote:
| I was wondering if they mean 4x the screen resolution or the
| camera resolution since its in the mixed reality section. Also
| without even knowing the resolution/refresh
| rate/vertical/horizontal fov it would be hard to justify a pre
| order.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| It's the passthrough camera res yes, they mentioned this in
| the presentation. 4X is easy to believe because the Q2's
| passthrough resolution is really low. Of course those cams
| were initially specced only for tracking so that makes sense.
|
| It's strange that the display resolution is not mentioned
| anywhere on meta's site though. Overall this spec sheet is
| pretty useless.
|
| During the presentation they mentioned "37% more pixels" than
| quest 2, and more density in the center due to the new
| lenses. I assume the 2160x2160 ventured on some sites is
| pretty much correct and the Quest 2-like 1830x1920 is not.
| Would be great to get actual confirmation though.
| oofbey wrote:
| How about fps?
| mmastrac wrote:
| 2160x2160 per-eye according to https://vr-
| compare.com/headset/metaquestpro
|
| 1440x1600 per-eye is valve index, and 1832x1920 per-eye for the
| Quest 2
|
| No idea where the 4x comes from, but I'm guessing that the
| mixed reality cameras are just better and it's a semi-
| misleading statement.
| skavi wrote:
| From The Verge:
|
| > Its screens offer a respectable 1800 x 1920 pixels per eye
| with a maximum 90Hz refresh rate, plus new display tech that
| Meta says offers 75 percent more contrast than the Quest 2's.
| localhost wrote:
| They mentioned that they have higher resolution in the
| central part of the display, so perhaps this is a variable
| pixel density display?
| [deleted]
| jayd16 wrote:
| VR lenses mean that uniform display pixels result in non-
| uniform pixels per degree to the eye. Not sure if the
| effective resolution has changed but almost certain the
| display panel is uniform pixel density.
| MikusR wrote:
| 4x comes from higher resolution pass-through cameras
| [deleted]
| athorax wrote:
| It is really annoying their "tech specs" is all just marketing
| buzz words. Even worse the first "spec" listed is:
| PREMIUM COMFORT World class counter balanced ergonomics
| meets sleek design to create a more comfortable headset.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| "world class ergonomics".
|
| Yeah... Not much of a spec sheet. I don't think there is a
| registration for a "world class" specification anywhere.
|
| The tech spec sheet should be for actual specs, not sales
| drivel.
| vadansky wrote:
| Sad to see it's still LCD so you don't get actual blacks. Any
| word on if it still feels like having a scuba mask on or if you
| can see in the periphery?
| petercooper wrote:
| Mini LCD so fingers crossed it might be better(?)
|
| I feel what you're saying though. I loved the first Quest and
| was heavy into VR for a bit but after an hour of the Quest 2 it
| ended up in the drawer. It's useless for horror games or movies
| because black simply does not exist - it's generous to call it
| grey.
| skavi wrote:
| They mention better contrast for this panel.
| xnx wrote:
| I've read that that is often achieved by increasing the
| brightness.
| modeless wrote:
| That would be good too. There's a ton of room to increase
| brightness in these headsets. Like a factor of 10 would
| be welcome and still wouldn't be nearly as bright as a
| real outdoor scene.
| [deleted]
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Impressive how much processing power you can fit into such a
| svelte headset in 2022.
|
| The price, while steep, is not outrageous compared to something
| like an iPhone. But I still haven't seen a "killer app" for VR so
| it's not a "daily driver" like a phone would be. The association
| with Meta is also a huge downside for me personally.
| danpalmer wrote:
| > The association with Meta is also a huge downside for me
| personally.
|
| Agreed. Whether you agree with how Meta does things or not (I
| don't), they have made it very clear that they see the Quest as
| a locked down, Meta-controlled ecosystem.
|
| I happen to use an iPhone, which arguably pioneered this sort
| of thing, but I feel like Meta are taking it to the next level.
| They have much higher rev-shares, (I think it's 40-60%), they
| have tighter control, require a Facebook account to use it
| (quite different to an Apple account to access cloud features),
| and while an iPhone is quite functional without the AppStore
| and iCloud with the web and built-in functionality, I think the
| Quest is basically useless without a Facebook account setup.
|
| All that lock-in worries me.
| MertsA wrote:
| You can sideload apps for free on the Quest and Apple
| requires a dev account for $99 a year to sideload anything
| more than a trivial app or two. The Quest definitely feels
| objectively less locked down than iOS IMHO.
| jhatemyjob wrote:
| Yep, plus Zuck himself has publicly criticized Apple and
| said they aren't gonna go down that route. Look at all of
| the mainstream consoles, PS5, Nintendo Switch, etc: none of
| them allow you to sideload anything. And Meta even went a
| step further than that with the semi-unlocked bootloader.
| That is unprecedented, most Android phones don't even have
| that.
|
| People tend to conflate FAANGs with each other. One bad
| Apple ruins the bunch.
| wincy wrote:
| It also gives you a nice warning saying your Facebook
| account might get banned for using a pirate copy of Beat
| Saber.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Maybe this is a way to rid the world of Facebook? Android
| virus that puts pirated software on Quest devices...
| cwkoss wrote:
| > sideload apps for free on the Quest
|
| only if you value your time at $0. the amount of time to
| keep sidequest working and fight official updates breaking
| it is not trivial.
| camdat wrote:
| So much misinfo in one post.
|
| > They have much higher rev-shares
|
| The current revshare for App Lab is 70/30 in favor of the
| developer. Much* lower than Apple.
|
| > they have tighter control
|
| Than the iPhone? The Quest can be used in SteamVR like any
| other headset. Third-party apps can be sideloaded, and the
| bootloader is (semi) unlocked. Not sure how they're even
| comparable.
|
| > require a Facebook account to use it
|
| A Meta account now, disconnected from the social network. How
| is this different than an Apple account?
|
| > I think the Quest is basically useless without a Facebook
| account setup
|
| Do you have a Quest? I've used mine entirely as a PCVR setup,
| I don't think I've used a FB service in years besides the
| store.
|
| * EDIT: Discussed below, "much" is maybe a bit too far. Seems
| like the final split is roughly the same, though AppLab
| doesn't take a cut of IAP.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > The current revshare for App Lab is 70/30 in favor of the
| developer. Much lower than Apple.
|
| How is that much lower than Apple? If you do under a
| million a year on the App Store or in the second year of an
| iOS subscription it's 85/15, else it's 70/30 (unless you
| have a better backroom deal).
| camdat wrote:
| This is a recent change no? Previously it was 70/30
| across the board and this also includes in-app
| subscriptions/payments.
|
| I say much because (afaik) the majority of developer
| income comes from recurring payments, which AppLab
| doesn't take any of.
| artificial wrote:
| Looks like implemented as of 2016.
| https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/8/11880730/apple-app-
| store-s...
| camdat wrote:
| Err, maybe I'm mistaken, but this seems different than
| the above discussion.
|
| From what I know, Apple takes 30% of paid app sales in
| the app store. In-app purchases, though, drop to a 15%
| take after the first year (or that's my read from the
| article).
|
| Contrast this with AppLab, which takes 30% of paid app
| sales, but doesn't take a cut of in-app purchases.
|
| I'll retract the "much" lower point since I assume this
| results in roughly the same final take. Games on non-
| mobile have a higher initial cost, which probably
| balances the lack of post-sale revenue.
|
| Regardless, I don't think this makes the Oculus more
| locked down than an iPhone, since you can always bypass
| their store and sideload or run apps directly from your
| PC, which Apple isn't offering.
| skilled wrote:
| I wonder who is the audience for this nonsense. People with
| disabilities? I can totally see that, but then if that is the
| case, perhaps these companies would do much better if they
| actually embraced the fact.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I can't imagine boring business apps are any more usable with
| two VR controllers or with blurry text.
|
| Nor has anyone ever wanted to spend $1,500 to be able to use..
| Adobe Acrobat.
| lwneal wrote:
| I wonder how the Meta Quest Pro will stack up against Simula One?
| [1]
|
| On the one hand, the Simula One is even more expensive. On the
| other hand, it can be used as a standalone computer, not tethered
| to an online Metaverse.
|
| [1] https://simulavr.com/blog/vr-comparison/
| MikusR wrote:
| According to people that make Simula One you can't compare them
| because Simula One is the next coming of Jesus and the quest
| pro is for kids to play games. Quest Pro is not tethered to an
| online Metaverse.
| cwkoss wrote:
| The previous quests are shoddily built - both in software and
| hardware. Very frustrating to try to do anything with it outside
| of using the default apps, which are frankly beta quality at
| best, and the ~3 fully fleshed out games. If you're going to
| invest over $1k, might as well get a valve index. I can't imagine
| this working out well for running custom enterprise software,
| which seems to be who they are targeting.
| aantix wrote:
| I'm most interested in the readability of code and the long term
| comfort of wearing it.
|
| Would love to try a pair programming session with it.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Wow, $1500 was more than I expected. Still, I use my Quest 2
| about 20 minutes a day so assuming the heavy use of the Quest
| Pro, it is probably worth it.
|
| I usually only use my Quest 2 for about a maximum of 7 or 8
| minutes at a time to avoid physical discomfort. I would hope that
| the Quest Pro can be worn much longer, in comfort.
|
| I used to work on VR about 24+ years ago (SAIC, Angel Studios,
| Disney). I am thrilled to now see commodity VR hardware and
| experiences.
| adpirz wrote:
| Has anyone successfully incorporated VR into their regular
| workstreams? If so, what's it like?
| bagels wrote:
| Really interested in responses to this. I think some may have
| tried it once and gave up immediately, I doubt there are many
| using it on a regular basis for working.
| qwertyuiop_ wrote:
| VR is a solution looking for a problem just like blockchain. It
| has genuine use cases in very limited industries - industrial
| design, mass entertainment (movie theater where everyone has
| goggles). I don't need to see my coworkers wearing blinders over
| their eyes.
| moolcool wrote:
| $2300 and their top-billed "experiences" are Adobe Acrobat,
| Dropbox, and LastPass.
| dimator wrote:
| good god, what in the hell does dropbox need a VR client for?
|
| this entire VR push reminds me of the days when IE and Netscape
| were competing with "push" browsers, which were equally
| pointless.
|
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/netscape-releases-beta-of-push...
| elliottkember wrote:
| viewing dropbox files in VR, I imagine? easily syncing 3D
| video files so you can view it in VR? seems reasonable to me
| baby wrote:
| how do you do work from VR without that?
| jandrese wrote:
| Maybe we will finally see that file system browser from
| Jurassic Park.
| kfarr wrote:
| Already there! Code could use a refresh but had fun with it
| many years ago https://github.com/kfarr/jurassic-file-
| navigator
| MikusR wrote:
| Their competitor Hololens 2 is CAD $4,749
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| $2300? Where do you see that? I thought it says $1499?
| moolcool wrote:
| $2300 CAD*
| jfoster wrote:
| Feels almost like parody.
| hartator wrote:
| I would not buy it as it forces me to merge my old Oculus account
| with my Facebook account.
|
| And I don't want to sign in on Facebook on my gaming PC. Meaning
| my $100-$200 VR game library is gone now.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Does anyone know if you can get corrective lenses for these
| pancake style lenses? They seem to be closer to the face. One of
| the things I actually enjoy about the Quest 2 is that I have
| lenses for them so I take off my glasses to use it, which is very
| nice.
| jalino23 wrote:
| this looks like it has AR I can't wait to try developing for AR
| boxing I really liked the thrill of the fight but I believe AR
| boxing is where its at
| crashingintoyou wrote:
| Best news for me is that based on https://uploadvr.com/quest-
| touch-pro-controllers-quest-2/ it looks like the controllers are
| Quest-2 compatible and will be sold separately.
|
| I'd consider the Quest Pro too expensive but as someone who plays
| a lot of rhythm games where those controllers seem to be the weak
| point I'm strongly considering upgrading my Quest 2 controllers.
| bsimpson wrote:
| The occlusion problem was real, but the LED rings also nicely
| doubled as a hand protector. I definitely wouldn't want to have
| my fist be the first thing that makes contact with a hard
| object I can't see in VR.
| ajaymehta wrote:
| The apps section says: "enjoy your favorite games, entertainment
| apps and more" and then highlights Adobe Acrobat, Dropbox, and
| LastPass.
|
| Think it's clear who Meta wants to buy this! It will be great if
| companies buy their employees a $1500 headset that they use to
| play Beat Saber.
| jl6 wrote:
| I would actually enjoy an Adobe Acrobat VR that could render a
| PDF as a 3D book with quick page riffle.
| moolcool wrote:
| No beatsaber allowed on company hardware until you finish
| taking 10 hours of calls in your virtual cubicle
| itslennysfault wrote:
| > virtual cubicle
|
| I want to get off this ride.
| caskstrength wrote:
| > 10 hours of calls in your virtual cubicle
|
| Cubicles (even the virtual ones) are not conductive to
| facilitating collaboration and inducing spontaneous exchange
| of ideas in an enterprise setting. We will all be taking 10
| hours of calls in noisy virtual openspace!
| baby wrote:
| If I could expense that I would :(
| KVFinn wrote:
| Tested hands on impressions:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6AOwDttBsc
|
| Funny thing about the $1500 price point.
|
| If the Quest Pro could replace my triple monitors, $1500 is a
| bargain. It's basically a laptop with 3 monitors that appear out
| of thin air whenever you want. Amazing.
|
| To do this it needs to be comfortable enough to wear all day and
| it needs to be high enough resolution to stare at text all day.
| It's at least plausible the Pro is comfortable enough for some
| based on early impressions. But the displays are not cutting it.
|
| I don't think it needs to equal the DPI of a monitor at human
| viewing distance, but 2160x2160 is still way to low. Maybe 3k
| would do it with super sampling. Oh and the Quest Pro would need
| to run any Android app, or else it would only be useful tethered
| to my computer and lose a lot of the appeal.
|
| So if the Quest Pro can't handle this use case, $1500 seems crazy
| expensive. A luxury. They have to hope they have a killer game or
| app that somehow gets people in.
|
| During the height of the pandemic I would have almost paid $1500
| if this had a really good 'virtual couch' experience where you
| can hang out and watch Netflix with friends, passively
| socializing in a way that felt comparable to the real thing.
| People love doing this in but it's always so janky.
| moolcool wrote:
| "By the end of this decade we're going to replace our
| workstations on our desks with a VR setup"
|
| Thanks, I hate it.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Why? We'll only replace it if it's actually better. In which
| case you'll probably love it.
|
| For real, monitors are ugly and take up space and become
| super expensive quick.
|
| If we actually manage to come up with something better then
| monitors, then amazing. If we don't, they won't be replaced.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Why? We'll only replace it if it's actually better. In
| which case you'll probably love it.
|
| If it's better _for businesses mandating what their WFH
| users use_.
|
| And then, even, it's more like "if salespeople convince
| some managers it's better", which isn't the same thing as
| is-in-fact-better.
| moolcool wrote:
| Why? Because your virtual monitors will exist in Meta's
| dogshit virtual survaillence world.
| nomel wrote:
| Why do you think Meta will be the only one making
| hardware?
|
| There are plenty of head mounted displays that don't have
| any smarts built in.
| moolcool wrote:
| You can buy a phone that isn't powered by iOS or Android
| too, but you probably won't.
| nomel wrote:
| If you just want virtual monitors, I think there will be
| many "dumb" headsets available. If you want a full
| standalone experience, then sure, maybe not. But, I think
| those are, potentially, different markets.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Nausea, sweaty forehead, weight on my head giving cramps in
| my neck, disconnect from the world around me (I work at
| home with kids), visual inaccessibility (I need to wear
| computer glasses).
|
| No magic engineering from Meta are going to fix these
| issues.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Those are all already fixed, or easily fixable.
|
| Nausea only occurs (as far as I can tell) when the motion
| you see in the headset doesn't match your motion in real
| life. That's not a problem for a simulated desktop
| experience.
|
| Sweaty forehead typically only occurs if you're getting a
| work out in VR, which wouldn't be a problem for office
| work. But for those who have that issue even when not
| exercising it seems easily solvable with better
| ventilation. Hardly an impossible engineering challenge.
|
| Neck cramps are solvable by balancing the weight on your
| head better. Quest Pro has this.
|
| Disconnection from the world is solved by high resolution
| video passthrough. Quest Pro has this.
|
| Visual accessibility is solved by prescription lens
| inserts. That's been a thing since the Rift 1.
| patrec wrote:
| > Disconnection from the world is solved by high
| resolution video passthrough.
|
| This one will go into my treasure trove of HN quotes.
| adastra22 wrote:
| That doesn't match my experience. I know that's not very
| objective, but that's the best I can give you here.
|
| Just putting on a VR headset, makes my head sweaty within
| a minute or two, even when I'm just sitting down and
| doing nothing strenuous. Just different biology I guess I
| generally don't like wearing hats for the same reason, it
| makes my head and hair, sweaty.
|
| Speaking of hats, I generally don't like wearing
| construction hard hats either, because it makes my neck
| sore at the end of the day. And that's just having a
| little bit of balanced weight on the top of my head.
| Balancing isn't the issue, it's a higher center of
| gravity, especially when you rotate the head as you are
| prone to do in VR.
|
| Nausea I get consistently, no matter what I am doing.
| Even if stationary, any bit of lag can cause nausea. I
| can't imagine doing development work and not causing the
| machine to lag a little bit here and there, when I run a
| test, suite or something. Thankfully for me, it's only
| mild, but if I were to do this, all day would be a large
| impact on quality of life. I don't wanna spend half my
| day mildly nauseous.
|
| And all of this only so that I don't have to have a
| couple of high resolution monitors on my desk? I just
| really don't get it. It's a solution in search of a
| problem.
| randoglando wrote:
| You don't get nausea from experience where you don't move
| around in VR. Virtual monitors should not cause any
| nausea. Same for the sweaty forehead.
|
| The weight issue is lesser with the Quest Pro (since the
| weight is balanced at the back) and will get better with
| time with newer devices.
|
| > visual inaccessibility (I need to wear computer
| glasses)
|
| Quest 2 provides spacers for glasses. I assume Quest Pro
| will as well.
|
| The disconnect from the world is the only one that
| doesn't have a solution yet AFAIK.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Merely the minutest lag when rotating your head can cause
| nausea in a statistically significant number of people.
|
| Any VR absolutely does cause sweaty forehead symptom for
| me. It's just my different biology I guess.
|
| > The disconnect from the world is the only one that
| doesn't have a solution yet AFAIK.
|
| The solution is AR. I would use a Microsoft hololens, if
| it was available at a reasonable price point.
| tigeba wrote:
| My experience is that spacers or not, using these with
| glasses is uncomfortable. Adding prescription inserts are
| more comfortable and provide a better visual experience.
| I bought some very cheap glasses and 3d printed the
| inserts. They have magnetic mounts and you can remove
| them easily.
| colonwqbang wrote:
| Agree, I honestly don't understand the level of optimism
| shown here. To me this sounds like exactly the opposite of
| how I would like to work in the future. The fact that
| Facebook fully controls the software and hardware platform is
| just a huge additional turnoff.
| Youden wrote:
| I don't like Facebook any more than you but to be fair,
| they're not as bad as they could be. For on-device software
| sideloading is available and SideQuest makes it pretty
| functional. Additionally, the device supports OpenVR and
| can be used with any software you'd like to run on your
| desktop PC.
|
| It's more the Google approach to the ecosystem than it is
| the Apple approach, though I don't believe the OS is open-
| source.
| harph wrote:
| Does that mean I don't need to create an account if I
| want to use the headset only with OpenVR stuff?
| moolcool wrote:
| Embrace, extend, extinguish
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if open hardware is gone for good.
| There is too much money to be made with SAAS.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| This level of access leads me to worry that the reviewer won't
| be entirely honest. Is he really going to pan the product when
| he is interviewing Zuckerberg in the video and getting behind
| the scenes content? Pretty much renders the video useless to me
| to understand if the product is good or not.
| randoglando wrote:
| Well, Carmack is employed by Zuckerberg and he just pooh-
| poohed Horizon Worlds as well as the Quest Pro (from a
| strategy perspective). Both seem to be loved by Zuckerberg.
| jemmyw wrote:
| For me I don't see how any vr device will be comfortable. I
| don't even like wearing my glasses for too long.
| Duralias wrote:
| But because of its 1-2 hour battery life you would have to keep
| it wired and hope it doesn't suffer from the same issue that
| Quest 2 suffers from where even wired it slowly looses battery
| life.
|
| However, the Quest 2 could still last a whole work day while
| wired, the Quest Pro might not.
| charcircuit wrote:
| That video doesn't include the quest pro
| JCharante wrote:
| $1500 isn't bad at all. An apple watch can cost $800 and a base
| spec MBP is like $1400. If it was the price of hololens ($3k?)
| then it'd be a concern
| KVFinn wrote:
| I think it needs higher resolution to be able to be directly
| comparable to a MBP. Can I stare at VSCode all day in this
| thing or not?
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| An unstated benefit of real monitors is that you can stop
| looking at the monitors.
| tmvnty wrote:
| That video was for the prototype. Same channel just uploaded a
| video of the real hands-on for Quest Pro:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNYpD212HQA
| umanwizard wrote:
| > If the Quest Pro could replace my triple monitors, $1500 is a
| bargain.
|
| If it could drive me to work, it'd replace the subway. $1500 is
| a steal.
| synthos wrote:
| Are the pancake optics the ones that support switching 2^n focus?
| The greatly rumored varifocal support...
| can16358p wrote:
| The product page is very vague. It's not immediately clear what I
| can use Quest for in practice.
|
| Also I've checked everywhere for the "screen" resolution though
| couldn't find a mention of it.
|
| Having said those, I believe there will be killer apps for these
| headsets and metaverse, but we're just not there yet and won't
| reach for about 4-5 more years.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| I was so optimistic about VR technology when the oculus cv1
| (edit: dev kit actually, cv1 was already fb as pointed out below)
| came out. Now that facebook owns it, I can't find that same
| optimism.
|
| This looks like a sweet piece of tech, but it feels like these
| big tech companies have too many priorities that come before the
| end user: investors, the companies own ambitions,
| governments/politics. If the product decisions they make happen
| to benefit us, it's only because those other considerations were
| met first.
|
| I think the best thing to happen would be for FB to solve all the
| really hard and expensive tech problems, and then go tits up.
| Then a smaller company that can actually put the user first can
| step in and reproduce the tech for cheap.
| ynx wrote:
| Just FYI, that's a misremembering that accidentally looks like
| a bad faith argument. The Oculus CV1 was released two years
| after the acquisition.
|
| The price point and subsequent price drops were only made
| possible by Facebook making some important hires for the
| production engineering and being able to scale the processes to
| lower component and manufacturing costs.
|
| For better and worse, the CV1 on day one had a meaningful
| amount of Facebook software and hardware engineering in it.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| Good point, I did remember that wrong. I should have said the
| dev kit. I remember now that I begrudgingly bought cv1 from
| facebook because I wanted the tech badly enough to hold my
| nose.
|
| I don't mean to disparage any of the folks at fb that
| contributed or their work. I just don't think that companies
| like fb are capable of putting the user's needs first, as
| much as many individuals inside the company probably would
| like to.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Chiming in as a Quest 2 user, and one who uses Immersed for work
| a couple hours per day, I can't imagine spending $1,500 for a VR
| headset. If work provided I'd happily use it, and it might
| increase the amount of time I'd spend in VR.
| synthos wrote:
| No varifocal?
| ozten wrote:
| I'm a VR enthusiast, but will never buy from Meta! (I had the
| Oculus Quest previously.)
|
| I'm waiting for my next gen headset.
|
| Apple might release next spring. Pico hardware for sale in Europe
| is interesting. Looking forward to seeing if they ship the the
| US. Several indie hardware plays out there (lynx-r.com,
| simulavr.com, etc)
| baby wrote:
| It's funny how people consider Apple to be more ethical lol
| macNchz wrote:
| Apple may not be perfect, but the bar to be more ethical than
| Facebook is incredibly low.
|
| Facebook has consistently demonstrated a level of contempt
| for their users' privacy for many years. I took note of this
| personally for the first time in ~2007 when the news feed
| launched and their privacy settings around it very obviously
| employed dark patterns, but it's clear from reading about the
| history of the company that it's something that has existed
| from their very beginnings.
| squidsoup wrote:
| How so? Apple don't sell your data to third parties.
| nsenifty wrote:
| Neither does Facebook. Using user data to target ads is
| different than selling data to third parties.
| sfvegandude wrote:
| Yes, it's worse. Facebook doesn't sell your data, they
| sell your attention and futures on your behavior. Apple
| doesn't.
| hartator wrote:
| It is exactly that. They use data your put on Facebook to
| make allow audience targeting down to even an individual
| level.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Yeah I have to see what Apple comes out with. I'd be really
| interested if they had a good VR monitor setup. Could really
| change how I wfh.
| instagraham wrote:
| Seems like an expensive way for HR to waste money, especially
| since they're treating it like an enterprise product. For an
| employee, this would just be a two-hour battery-lifed irritance.
| For a gamer, it could be probably as cool as owning a PS5, but
| with less multiplayer joy to be had rfom.
|
| Cheap and capable AR glasses would've been the game changer they
| should be looking for, in my view.
|
| Not saying some corporates won't lap it up. but this won't drive
| adoption necessarily. somebody else will end up doing that
| notacoward wrote:
| Anybody know (or can make an educated guess) about how the
| expression tracking is supposed to work? How can it read your
| facial expression from _on_ your face? Seems like a very
| difficult angle to work from. Or are they leaving out the part
| where you have to use a separate camera to get that? Even then,
| some of the specific things they mention, such as eyebrow raises,
| are covered by the headset itself. I 'm really skeptical about
| that feature, unless "tracking" is complete false advertising and
| expressions are triggered some other way.
| caslon wrote:
| Face tracking has been done in other headsets from (roughly)
| the same angle for like five years now. HP released a
| relatively cheap headset a year or two ago that did facial
| expression tracking from a similar angle.
|
| It's a less-complicated problem than you might think.
| notacoward wrote:
| So how well (or indeed just how) did that HP headset handle
| features that are covered by the headset? "It has been done"
| is PR, not an answer.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| legitster wrote:
| Facebook (sorry, _Meta_ ) is the only one continuing to advance
| the VR industry. I respect them for that.
|
| They also have _the absolute worst_ business and product strategy
| in the world. Any unique product that they did not steal or
| acquire (and some that they did!) have been colossal failures or
| run into the ground. The irony of a company that has all their
| customer 's data is that they still have yet to understand their
| customers.
|
| I have yet to meet a single person, anyone at all, who has
| expressed any interest in "The Metaverse". _Even among my circle
| of friends who are heavily bought into VR._ I struggle to find
| the appeal in a product vision focusing on letting anti-social
| people socialize.
|
| This is a similar case where I feel a large disconnect between
| how innovative the technology itself is, and how myopic the use
| case is. Who would actually use this? Whose job would this
| improve? This is a solution in desperate search of a problem. At
| least Hololens put together some convincing value propositions.
| Scaevolus wrote:
| Plenty of people enjoy VRChat, because you can interact with
| _friends_ , but Facebook's attempt to get people excited to
| interact with _brands_ and _ads_ and _work_ in a heavily locked
| down Metaverse is ridiculous.
| smoldesu wrote:
| You can also use VRChat on a Meta Quest. It's not one of
| those platforms that locks it's users out of choices.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| I'm interested. I would love to be able to throw on a headset
| and sit on the couch and watch a movie with my sister, where I
| felt like she was watching in the room with me.
|
| I also would like to have a meeting with my other WFH
| colleagues where I could tell whether people were making eye
| contact with me, because the conversation would flow smoother.
| thunky wrote:
| > I also would like to have a meeting with my other WFH
| colleagues
|
| My WFH space is my private space, and I'd rather not invite
| my colleagues into it. Voice + screen sharing is more than
| enough, so no thanks. And if my employer required it I'd let
| myself out.
| s3p wrote:
| Just like how over-ear headphones make my hair sweaty and
| itchy after a few hours, I can't imagine (personally)
| enjoying the feel of a clunky VR headset adding extra pounds
| onto my face.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Yeah, VR tends to have a hard-cutoff on the human body
| after ~2 hours. Most people will become physically
| exhausted before they reach that point, but if you _do_
| manage to make it a couple hours in, you 'll almost
| certainly feel a little woozy.
|
| Honestly though, the feeling of the headset on the face is
| the least-salient part of that discomfort (to me). It
| really is like a heavier pair of over-ear headphones in
| terms of physical profile.
| tomcam wrote:
| Plus the camera adds 10 pounds as it is...
|
| I'll see myself out now
| AndrewOMartin wrote:
| There's a thing called Big Screen VR. I'm wondering if your
| comment is saying that it's not viable for you (don't have
| the time, equipment, not a good enough experience), or that
| you've not heard of it. I'm not trying to be snarky "I think
| you'll find" just wondering if you've considered and rejected
| Big Scree.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| I don't have a VR headset. OP was suggesting that no one
| wants it, I was just raising my hand and indicating what
| use cases appeal to me.
| krono wrote:
| > Facebook (sorry, Meta) is the only one continuing to advance
| the VR industry
|
| Valve recently posted a job opening[1] that hints at ongoing
| efforts in the field.
|
| [1]: https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/jobs?job_id=52
| blake929 wrote:
| I dont disagree that Meta is probably pouring the most money
| into VR right now, but there are other companies looking into
| it. Notably Apple might launch a similarly priced headset to
| the Quest pro soon. Bytedance has the Pico series which are
| basically Quest clones at this point, but they are looking to
| push the tech and outcompete Meta. They're not currently
| launched in the US, but that may change. Valve will probably
| launch an Index 2 eventually.
|
| Some lesser known headsets brands like the Pimax and Varjo
| target prosumer-grade and enterprise headsets in the US too.
| jotm wrote:
| I have just bought an American Quest 2 and found out the Pico
| 4 (with new pancake lenses) launches next week for the same
| price.
|
| Am so kicking myself. I'll sell the Q2 at a loss and buy the
| Pico.
| zlsa wrote:
| I'm not sure where you're located, but the Pico 4 isn't
| being sold in the US which automatically excludes a huge
| number of people who might otherwise consider it.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| otikik wrote:
| They understand their customers. Who are advertisers. Meta's
| users are its product.
| legitster wrote:
| Not necessarily the same for their hardware division. Their
| VR division is still primarily funded by device and software
| sales.
| otikik wrote:
| Every device is sold at a loss though, as far as I know.
|
| Meta got here in the first place because Apple filtered
| them out. So they want to be in control of the new device.
| Tried Facebook mobile, didn't pan out, too strong
| competition, so trying VR. Bought Oculus and here we are.
|
| What is the alternative? That they honestly want to become
| a VR-end-user-centric company? Have you seen their track
| record?
| oliwary wrote:
| I am interested, nice to meet you!
|
| I live abroad from many friends and family. If there was a way
| to casually hang out and replicating the in-person social
| experience better than video chat, I would jump on that. I
| already have regular Quest 2 sessions with close ones where we
| shoot the shit and also shoot zombies - it feels like having a
| friend over for playing video games.
|
| I for one am looking forward to being able to hang out in the
| same room, or discover new places, while feeling like we are
| sharing the same physical space. I am happy Meta is investing
| to make this closer to a reality!
| sneak wrote:
| Why are you interested in casually hanging out with your
| friends and family under surveillance from an advertising
| company that will subject your private and personal
| communications to their censorship systems?
|
| Doesn't that make you somewhat of a bad friend?
| robbomacrae wrote:
| How can wanting to chill with friends possibly make them a
| bad friend? You brought up a good point but then kind of
| ruined it with such a wild accusation.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You're skipping the part about the advertising
| surveillance. If you were my friend and asked me to hang
| out, that's cool. If you were my friend but asked me to
| hang out where everything we did was knowingly by you
| subject to likely to have some company's algo running and
| attempting to influence what we did while hanging out,
| then yes, I'd say you were an asshole for a friend.
| adamgamble wrote:
| You might be simultaneously right and also totally missing
| the point and rude.
|
| I agree with the gp. The quest 2 has helped me connect with
| friends in different states that felt way closer to
| inviting them over to hang out at the house than just video
| chatting or whatever.
|
| There is real value in that. Even my wife who is not techy
| at all enjoyed it after first laughing in my face at the
| idea.
|
| For better or worse, meta seems to be the only company
| currently trying to push this forward. So meta it is for
| now.
| librish wrote:
| Doesn't asking such a loaded question make you a bad
| community member?
| jjulius wrote:
| >Doesn't that make you somewhat of a bad friend?
|
| Why are you chewing OP out as though you know for a fact
| that OP is the sole reason that that group of people uses
| Meta products? You have absolutely no insight into the
| decisions of that group of people, and instead of asking
| questions in an effort to learn more, you have suggested
| that OP is a bad friend.
| sneak wrote:
| I'm not chewing anyone out; I didn't assert that it makes
| them a bad friend.
|
| It was a sincere question, not rhetoric.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| > I already have regular Quest 2 sessions with close ones
| where we shoot the shit and also shoot zombies - it feels
| like having a friend over for playing video games.
|
| How is this any different from playing Xbox/PlayStation with
| a friend online?
|
| > ...while feeling like we are sharing the same physical
| space.
|
| Not gonna happen. Sorry to break it to you.
|
| Guess we can file you under "not interested" now
| oliwary wrote:
| > Not gonna happen. Sorry to break it to you.
|
| I already feel that way in my Oculus Quest 2!
|
| In my opinion there is something different about being
| "embodied" in a 3D virtual environment that is all around
| you, seeing the gestures of people you interact with and
| moving around. Certain human interaction modes, such as
| moving closer to hear someone, looking at the person you
| are talking to, gesturing to highlight conversation points
| etc are already qualitatively different in VR than video
| games imo. And it looks like this will further increase in
| the future with face tracking etc.
| legitster wrote:
| I should clarify - I think the value of VR is creating
| transportive experience.
|
| Opening up Google Earth and watching the sunset on Mount
| Rainier with a friend is _transcendent_. Sitting around a
| virtual boardroom talking to an avatar is _not_.
|
| Meta's value proposition should be the a) the quality of the
| experience they provide (video games with friends included!)
| and b) the seamlessness to use. But a slightly more
| interactive video chat is not going to sell units.
| tomcam wrote:
| > Opening up Google Earth and watching the sunset on Mount
| Rainier with a friend is transcendent.
|
| Wait what? How does one do that?
| legitster wrote:
| If you hook up your Quest with your PC you can run
| SteamVR apps like Google Earth.
| riversflow wrote:
| > Opening up Google Earth and watching the sunset on Mount
| Rainier
|
| Lmao... I hate to gatekeep, but having actually backpacked
| into the high country with friends and watched truly
| spectacular sunsets, there are so many aspects of that
| experience, and _especially_ the ones that make it a truly
| transcendent experience, that just can't be captured with a
| VR headset. For one, the physical aspects, being tired and
| the sense of accomplishment for getting their with your
| stuff, breathing thinner air, the humidity and breeze as
| the air changes from the sun setting. You can literally
| _feel_ the warm life-givingness of the sun leaving. The
| actual full spectrum light--not RGB filtered--carries
| amazing amounts of nuance and illuminates everything in an
| extremely dynamic way; I have yet to see an HDR screen that
| does a good sunset justice, and I'm not entirely sure they
| can. And the sound, you can't make your house in the city
| quiet and still like the mountain, at least not by putting
| on a headset, and that quiet lets you hear the littlest
| things!
|
| By comparison, more interactive video chat, allowing me to
| feel like I'm sharing a space with a far flung friend, is
| much much more compelling to me. Online tabletop board
| games would be much more compelling if it felt like I was
| actually with the other person.
| legitster wrote:
| > especially the ones that make it a truly transcendent
| experience, that just can't be captured with a VR headset
|
| Agreed. But giving you a taste of something you may not
| have the resources/ability to do yourself is a much
| better use of the technology than giving you a taste
| of... playing board games in person.
| maxsilver wrote:
| > Facebook (sorry, Meta) is the only one continuing to advance
| the VR industry. I respect them for that
|
| I would argue Valve is the main driver of VR in terms of actual
| software + hardware + platform building. Facebook is just the
| biggest _spender_ on VR right now.
|
| > Who would actually use this?
|
| Which is funny to me, because I can instantly think of over a
| dozen use cases for this stuff -- _if Facebook was never
| involved_. Use it for training, especially on-site training,
| use it for conferencing, use it for 3D visualization (basically
| half of the Hololens demos cross over)
|
| But _with Facebook owning it_ , the value prop of Oculus Quest
| is zero. It's no longer a hardware or software platform, it's a
| _console_ , effectively no different than a Nintendo Switch or
| a PlayStation. Doesn't matter if the Quest was the best thing
| ever invented, no one reading Hacker News could deliver any
| products or solutions on it without Facebook owning/controlling
| it, so there's no reason for anyone to try.
| pavlov wrote:
| The iPhone and iPad are also consoles in this sense, and
| they've been quite successful as software platforms.
| pornel wrote:
| This is why Facebook is so obsessed with VR. They're
| jealous of Apple's anti-competitive walled garden in
| mobile, and the're hoping VR will be the next thing to
| grab.
| oliwary wrote:
| I am glad that Meta is involved - I doubt anyone else would
| invest as heavily in VR as they are doing right now. Whether
| they end up being the main player or not in the future, I
| think this level of investment is actively inspiring the
| entire industry, and showing what is possible. (Compare
| similar views by Palmer Luckey [0])
|
| Similarly, while essentially all smartphones before the
| iPhone were stylus or keyboard driven, within years of the
| iPhone being released there was a viable competitive platform
| in android. In the VR space, I highly doubt the vive or the
| pico headset would exist if it was not for the investments of
| Meta.
|
| [0] https://venturebeat.com/business/palmer-luckey-i-left-
| facebo...
| peter303 wrote:
| A "killer app" may be new employee training. I heard in a
| Stanford computer seminar that VR accelerates training with
| stronger learning.
| throwoutway wrote:
| I love that you called it a console, because I got the weird
| flashback sense that I was watching a Nintendo Wii demo (of
| the teacher & student demo on the webpage)
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Use it for training, especially on-site training,
|
| wouldn't this be off-site training? if you were on-site, why
| would you need the VR unit?
| baby wrote:
| > Any unique product that they did not steal or acquire (and
| some that they did!) have been colossal failures or run into
| the ground
|
| Workplace, portal, and the glasses? They're still developing as
| I understand it and they haven't given up on anything. The only
| failure I can think of is libra, which was killed by regulators
| ezconnect wrote:
| There's still something missing on that concept, Metaverse is
| just a higher resolution version of Second Life. It was
| exciting in the first few hours but there's nothing in it.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Yes, I strongly think in the end VR will be huge. Massive
| online multiplayer games will be huge (think Ready Player One
| type of stuff). I think lots of people will use VR for work and
| hanging out with friends and maybe even dating.
|
| However, in the end I doubt this will be on a ~Facebook~ _Meta_
| platform, hardware, and or game. It will be funny because Zuck
| and crew will be the ones who accelerated this. I predict
| they'll lose in the end.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I don't get "hanging around with friends" at all. How is it
| suppose to work when you have this dorky goggles blocking
| their face?
| legitster wrote:
| I think VR is already amazing for games. And maybe there will
| be some amount of social networking that occurs. But I have
| my doubts that there are enough people who would prefer
| hanging out virtually to significantly move the physical
| hardware in enough numbers sustainably.
| rvz wrote:
| > Any unique product that they did not steal or acquire (and
| some that they did!) have been colossal failures or run into
| the ground. The irony of a company that has all their
| customer's data is that they still have yet to understand their
| customers.
|
| The Marketplace (competing with Craigslist) has more than 800
| million customers using it which they have built that
| themselves?
|
| > At least Hololens put together some convincing value
| propositions.
|
| Yet Hololens isn't aimed at consumers, Meta Quest Pro is aimed
| at both and the latter has the same use-cases as the HoloLens
| for half the price.
|
| > Facebook (sorry, Meta) is the only one continuing to advance
| the VR industry. I respect them for that.
|
| And also the AR industry, which they have the technology
| (Oculus) and the research to do both.
|
| The death of Meta Platforms Inc. has been greatly exaggerated.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Wow, the form factor is simply amazing. I thought this would be a
| tethered headset (e.g. you'd need to connect it to a PC), but it
| seems that it's all-in-one, which explains the price.
|
| Just compare how small these goggles are to some other VR
| headsets. It's amazing. I'm sure they made some tradeoffs to get
| there, but this is a giant leap forward.
| suyash wrote:
| Still too bulky and ugly!
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| It seems this can detect facial expressions from cameras. This is
| significant from an information theory perspective. Being able to
| estimate emotional state in real time is game changing.
|
| How long until AI makes the year's best animated film by
| optimizing via emotional response?
| ThalesX wrote:
| > It seems this can detect facial expressions from cameras
|
| This is doable for some years now. AWS, Azure & GCP + other
| smaller companies offer APIs for just such a thing and there
| are also Python models that do this detection. This is by no
| means anything extraordinary if I understand what you are
| suggesting.
| ZeroCool2u wrote:
| Wow, no built-in speakers/headphones? Ignoring the sticker shock
| for a moment, for $1500 that seems like a big oversight. The ones
| on my Index are incredible quality and can't be heard by anyone
| near me even when the volume is pumped up, but they're selling
| these $50 Meta Quest Pro VR Earphones separately? Feels kind of
| like they're adding insult to injury.
|
| Separately, I still have a hard time with my friends Quest
| controllers compared to the Valve knuckles. Something about how
| the Valve controls grip your hands, instead of you actively
| gripping them, it's just so much more natural. I'm really
| surprised these new controllers don't have the same style of
| straps built-in.
| camdat wrote:
| Not sure where you saw this, the Quest Pro has built in
| speakers.
|
| Straps are detachable, comes in-box.
| jfoster wrote:
| The "What's Included" section doesn't mention them.
|
| https://www.meta.com/quest/quest-pro/tech-specs/#tech-specs
|
| Images & videos on other parts of the website show bare or
| covered ears.
| camdat wrote:
| The speakers are built into the headset itself, one on each
| side near the temple. The product shots on the Meta page
| don't show them off well, but the grills are occasionally
| visible in some of the videos.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Whoever let the marketing department write the tech specs.... I
| can't even. It's a mockery of "Tech Specs" and has the audacity
| to to say at the top "It's all in the details" while providing
| next to zero details.
| cityzen wrote:
| Something about this page just feels dated. I can't put my finger
| on it, but if you compare the meta quest pro page:
| https://www.meta.com/quest/quest-pro/
|
| To the iphone14 page (similar price point):
| https://www.apple.com/iphone-14-pro/
|
| You can instantly see what showcasing a pro level product should
| look like given that Meta is all in on this. There is so much
| white space and weird scrolling resizing and what not.
|
| It looks like I'm viewing a product page on a Dell website.
| ianferrel wrote:
| Oooh. Would this let me access the VR software that facebook has
| to threaten their employees to use?
| guiambros wrote:
| I'm puzzled by this announcement. The device seems fantastic, but
| the app lineup on the site is incredibly lame. Adobe Acrobat?
| Dropbox? Smartsheet?
|
| I get it, they're focusing on corporate / professional users, but
| gosh, I'm not spending $1,650 bucks on such an innovative device
| to run Adobe Acrobat and freaking spreadsheet-based project
| management tool!
|
| Where's the "wow" first-party apps for the Pro? Where's the new
| version of Supernatural? Beat Saber? Minecraft in AR/VR? Or
| whatever fancy B2B apps they spent this last year working on
| (they do exist, right? Right?). In my mind you need to appeal to
| both end users _and_ the professional audience at the same time,
| in order to move the industry forward. Otherwise you 'll end up
| with a HoloLens-like marketshare.
|
| I'm saying this as an early adopter since Oculus Kickstarter
| days, and really want to see the whole vr/ar/metaverse succeed.
| But Meta could take a page from Apple playbook on how to put
| together keynotes and product launches.
|
| ps: on the positive side, the Carmack Unscripted livestream was
| great. John continues to be in his best shape, and too bad the
| conversation was 'cut short' (by his standards).
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33169482
| smoldesu wrote:
| This wasn't an announcement for people who play Beat Saber and
| Minecraft. The headset announced today seems to be poised
| against the likes of Hololens and WMR.
|
| > but gosh, I'm not spending $1,650 bucks on such an innovative
| device to run Adobe Acrobat and freaking spreadsheet-based
| project management tool!
|
| Right, you aren't. Your employer will, and you'll buy the $400
| "lite" model to use for gaming, streaming, and whatnot.
|
| The product categories seem pretty clear-cut to me. If Meta
| tried to blur the lines between these segments, we'd wind up
| with another stupid "iPad Air" vs "iPad Pro" situation, which
| doesn't help _anyone_ decide what they want. Quest vs Quest Pro
| does a pretty good job of establishing a base model and a
| considerably upgraded model, and if they 're _still_ indecisive
| then the price tag should help them decide.
|
| Undercutting your own product certainly isn't out of the pages
| of the Apple playbook, but it did move a few million units.
| marcooliv wrote:
| I'm starting to believe on this VR stuff. $499 seems reasonable
| for this amazing headeset.
| MikusR wrote:
| It's 1500
| batmansmom1 wrote:
| where do you see $499 I see $1499
| marcooliv wrote:
| Ahh, miss understood the price. hahahaha
| ugh123 wrote:
| are you still a believer? ;)
| marcooliv wrote:
| As a Brazilian it's a bit expensive for us, but for someone
| that has the income in dollar seems more attractive.
|
| And probably I will buy it in the first opportunity. haha
| yrgulation wrote:
| What is your use case? And is vr popular in brazil? If so
| why? Sorry, genuine questions. I love the idea of vr and
| made some rather nice looking experiences in them,
| unpublished, and was amazed. PC linked tho, and soace
| related. I built a bunch of ships interiors that made me
| want to literally live in them.
| danpalmer wrote:
| PS1500 and it still costs another PS90 to connect it to your PC?
|
| Unless I'm missing something, charging that much for a
| proprietary cable just sounds like an attempt to lock in to their
| ecosystem and app store, and prevent this being used as a dumb VR
| interface to another system.
|
| I can understand it on the budget consumer device, but here it's
| a little cheap.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| It is not a proprietary cable. It is a 5 meter long USB-C cable
| capable of 3A (it doesn't say the wattage, but Quest 2 uses QC
| 3.0 which is 18W) which does 5gbps data as well. It is an
| active fiber optic cable which is necessary because the USB 3.1
| gen 1 (5gbps) spec doesn't allow for passive cables over 2
| meters.
|
| *
| https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/USB%20Type-C%20Spec%...
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| If it's like previous Oculi, you can just use a $20 USB-C cable
| from Amazon. But those tend to be shorter length
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think the cable is just a fibre-optic USB-C (thunderbolt?)
| cable. This is probably necessary to get the 5m range. I know
| for Thunderbolt 3 cables > 2m you had to go fibre optic and
| they were surprisingly expensive ($100+). It would surprise me
| if you couldn't plug in another USB-C cable with the correct
| protocol support here.
| MikusR wrote:
| You can connect using wifi or using any usb cable. The one they
| sell is an active optical cable. Look up how much they cost
| elsewhere.
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