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SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

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Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#471
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what does that mean for movies and games, the type of media most people are likely to consume while in VR? You wouldn't really want your reality mixed with a game you're playing, with exceptions being AR games which vastly limits the possible experiences. It might help for movies, but it also kind of defeats the benefits of VR if you're just watching a flat screen in an AR version of your room.

Well I don't think it's just limited to playing games, the Quest Pro night introduce something like this for example: https://uploadvr.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Quest-Pro-im...

I can actually see something like that taking off if VR eyewear becomes quite fashionable, and not just in the sense that it looks good, but it becomes trendy to use it.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#472
post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I don't think it's just limited to playing games, the Quest Pro night introduce something like this for example: https://uploadvr.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Quest-Pro-im...

I can actually see something like that taking off if VR eyewear becomes quite fashionable, and not just in the sense that it looks good, but it becomes trendy to use it.

I think it's more to be used in the home with other vr users online, the pro is supposed to introduce features such as eye, mouth and emotion tracking to make avatars more "real"

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#473
post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like an argument against TV or movies or the internet. Those things are also substitutes for real life experiences and yet people still spend huge amounts of time with them. VR doesn’t have to preclude the rest of the world. It’s an addition to it. When you don’t have the money or the time or the energy to go out it’s nice to be able to jump into something like VR and have fun with others from the comfort…

What I was trying to communicate in my original post was that VR is not like those mediums on this specific point. It completely removes you from the environment, it provides a lot more immersion but then also takes a lot more commitment to dive into. It only takes me 30 seconds to get the headset on and be in a game, so that's not the issue, it's just an entirely different level of engagement. I almost feel a little…

That’s odd because I have the opposite feeling. I almost never play regular computer games anymore because I see it as a time sink. I also avoid watching things by myself for the same reason. Playing a VR game or spending time with others in VR feels much more rewarding because I’m using my body instead of sitting in a chair and I feel more engaged with the people I talk to when they are embodied in an avatar and we are present in a space together vs just hearing their voice through headphones.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am failing to see a separate niche here. There are only so many ways you can break down office productivity focus and still have a market to support you. Your team should accept the facts and stop trying to wiggle out of competing with your--frankly--main rival in this space. It doesn't do any justice to avoid this truth. Honestly, I'd be shocked if you weren't already closely monitoring their work and its reaction…

I totally disagree with this. Early gaming consoles (~70s) took off roughly a decade before early PCs (~80s). Yet many of the people who bought the latter had little interest in the former. They were two completely distinct markets (with some, but clearly not extensive overlap). We've had many people tell us (often on Hacker News actually) that they're not super interested in VR gaming, but are very interested in VR…

Little interest or had they just grown up?

My point is that interest in sci-fi technologies and having some interest (prior or current) in gaming are highly overlapping demographics. Many games explore interactions with future technologies.

Additionally, from a technical perspective of an executive who is looking into VR, "if a headset can provide the fidelity to play games then that would mean it can likely do X and Y complex things my business does"

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn’t their whole Metaverse thing a gamble to get away from that? Many of us think Meta is trying to gain as much market as they can early, so they can leverage eye tracking and mm wave tech for very invasive biometric collection and ad targeting in the future. Reasonable minds can disagree on that.

Pretty sure Zuck has said outright that the goal is to own the economy of the metaverse… selling digital stuff and digital places with digital ads and (digital?) media. It could be a gambit to track your eyes but that seems even harder with worse reward than taking a 30% cut as the next App Store.

> It could be a gambit to track your eyes but that seems even harder with worse reward than taking a 30% cut as the next App Store.

No these are the same thing. Tracking pupil response to stimuli tells advertisers how a human is reacting to what they see. It lets Meta sell a platform to advertisers where they can target humans in particular emotional states, or at certain times when that individual is more likely to make a purchase.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#476
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is - and on the topic of "competition".. Meta is not a competitor to Simula and honestly never will be because they will never give you Freedom to run Linux and hack to your heart's content. But Simula is a competitor to Meta in that their existence gives people like me a serious (non-toy) VR headset they'd actually buy. So the reason Meta has competition from Simula is because they're terrible from a consu…

Quest runs Android and Android run on Linux.

So? Android is Linux only in the most technical sense, but not in the sense most people care about.

- you’re not free to switch distros like you can with conventional Linux hardware

- you cannot run a conventional Linux userland except for sad parodies of it that work out of a “chroot”

- X11 and Wayland support is limited

Android is diet Linux, not the real thing.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize you disagree with my take, but if you want to understand it at least, I would suggest trying to steelman my position. The examples you bring up are probably the absolute worst cases for VR and if you judge a technology by its worst cases then nobody would use a technology. Judge an argument by its strongest interpretation, not its weakest. > People love real spaces, real objects, real venues, smells, and at…

> This same argument could have been used to argue against the Internet No because we didn't have anything else before the internet other than landline phones, one per household. In my comment where I said "we already have it", that's the key point. VR is not an incredible shift like mobiles and internet were, and yet your last line flirts with the word "default". Of course it will be popular and clever, and will do…

> The internet isn't trying to be "reality"

> Obviously comparisons will be made to actual reality for technologies that use the same word in the name.

You are getting distracted by a naming convention. If we called VR something else, without the word "reality" those points don't even make any sense.

VR is not a reality replacement. Like all technology it augments reality.

(I hope my intentionally interesting word choice of "augments reality" doesn't distract you from what the sentence means. As with VR, the meanings of words interpreted as a phrase, vs. interpreted individually, often mean related but different things.)

Virtual reality will be judged based on its own use cases. Given the ergonomics of VR hardware and software are rapidly advancing, seemingly compelling new use cases are being identified with interesting beta's and preliminary-shipping demos, and we haven't even seen a platform that delivers seamless navigation or co-navigation across apps (as the web provides for sites), I would say the potential has hardly been tapped.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#478
post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was at work when the murder occurred, two or three discussions between police and my boss and coworkers would prevent a murder trial in the first place. Prosecutors don't like defendants with solid alibis. Probably FTC has already done equivalent investigation, which calls the subpoena described in TFA further into question.

My understanding is that these kinds of enforcement actions have a much lower success rate than criminal cases, because large firms with legal departments are rarely squarely in the wrong. They are usually treading a grey line, and evidence like this can push the case one way or another.

A lawsuit between corporate firms is not really an "enforcement action".
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