Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

windowscentral.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 252 posts

Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

#21

Post by extheat »

bitwize wrote: post #19
fragmede wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's spend in this area is totally unknown, other than everybody expects them to. To contrast, Meta has been spending so much in this area that they've bet the company on it. It's anybody's game right now, but Meta already has launched products and iterated on them.

Apple is built different as a tech company. They will keep everything a secret more closely guarded than the nuclear codes, then come out of nowhere with a mind-blowing product that leaves everything else in the dust, just like they did with the iPhone. A Quest 2 with an Apple Silicon CPU would, alone, be a game changer. There's probably some advanced head and eye tracking and SLAM AI in there too that makes Meta's s…

How is working at Apple like?

Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

#22

Post by ripley12 »

I was considering getting into HoloLens development a few years ago. It seemed like they were still pushing developers toward UWP even when UWP was obviously nearly dead, and that killed any interest I had.

Did the developer story for HoloLens ever get better or did it just die a slow death?

Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

#23

Post by TheRealNGenius »

bitwize wrote: post #19
fragmede wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's spend in this area is totally unknown, other than everybody expects them to. To contrast, Meta has been spending so much in this area that they've bet the company on it. It's anybody's game right now, but Meta already has launched products and iterated on them.

Apple is built different as a tech company. They will keep everything a secret more closely guarded than the nuclear codes, then come out of nowhere with a mind-blowing product that leaves everything else in the dust, just like they did with the iPhone. A Quest 2 with an Apple Silicon CPU would, alone, be a game changer. There's probably some advanced head and eye tracking and SLAM AI in there too that makes Meta's s…

[dead]

Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

#24

Post by zmmmmm »

tuan wrote: post #12

In Oct last year they announced partnership with Meta in VR https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2022/10/11/microsoft-and-me...

yes it will be interesting to see if this signals a broader change in approach similar to their pivot to Android instead of their own in-house mobile OS.

Even if you criticise the logic in any individual case, you have to respect the discipline that it must take to drive decisions like this (if it does indeed turn out to be the case - remains to be seen). I have to think though that it is pretty toxic to their partner relationships ... who would deliver a new product based on WMR now?

Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

#27

Post by bitwize »

extheat wrote: post #21
bitwize wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is built different as a tech company. They will keep everything a secret more closely guarded than the nuclear codes, then come out of nowhere with a mind-blowing product that leaves everything else in the dust, just like they did with the iPhone. A Quest 2 with an Apple Silicon CPU would, alone, be a game changer. There's probably some advanced head and eye tracking and SLAM AI in there too that makes Meta's s…

How is working at Apple like?

If I worked there, I wouldn't be posting things like that to Hackernews for fear of black SUVs rolling up to my home.

Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

#28

Post by dougmwne »

Shutting down AltSpace should be a loud warning bell for Meta’s Horizon Worlds. Horizon is basically a badly executed AltSpace.

AltSpace was super niche, but some artists and marginalized people seemed to find a home there. It was like an odd cross between a digital Burning Man and a BIPOC LGTBQ+ neurodivergent support group. I had a memorable conversation during the height of the pandemic with an older gay man whose husband had recently died of cancer. VR can be a kind of ultimate safe space for people who are hurting. No one can touch you, you put on a disguise, and you can leave at any time.

It had something going on, but was a Grand Canyon away from mass market appeal.

Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

#29

Post by zmmmmm »

esskay wrote: post #18
baby wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean Meta right? Otherwise it just sounds like you haven’t been following the field.

Not op, and not to be rude but honestly sounds like you maybe haven't. Meta's bleeding right now. Their attempt at Metaverse is failing hard. Meanwhile we've got Apple coming along with thier extremely efficient in-house chip architecture thats about to release a lightweight headset with performance that blows away anything Meta has, not to mention an existing ecosystem that it will slot right into. Outside of Meta e…

Meta is investing heavily, not "bleeding". The true test of their plans will be in 12-24 months when all this investment is supposed to surface.

> Based on the leaks we pretty much know that Apples already cracked full body tracking, eye tracking ...

Based on the leaks we know that Apple has struggled to deliver a working product at all having repeatedly delayed then scaled back then canceled whole product areas. On the other hand, based on Meta's openly visible work at their labs (literally iniviting journalists to tour and try it out) we know they have cracked key areas that can potentially revolutionise the field in a few years.

I do think Apple's product is going to be enormously successful and state of the art. But the most likely outcome is what Zuckerberg is shooting for - a repeat of the iOS vs Android playbook but this time with him in control of the open OS but without being at the mercy of OEMs and without the horrific fragementation issues.

Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

#30

Post by charles_f »

I mean, these were cute and demos were a bit "wow" but the practicality seemed reduced, especially when most of the use cases they demonstrated would be covered by a phone call.

The big industrial use case I saw was to receive teleguidance to repair equipment, the ground reality is that most of the time if you don't know how to fix it... You're not allowed to try to fix it.

Post reply on HN