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

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

#71

Post by h0l0cube »

pharke wrote: post #39
dougmwne wrote: post #28

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…

Nah, Microsoft and Meta are obviously partnering up. This is likely just a symptom of that with Meta getting buy in from Microsoft to use Meta's VR platform. I agree that Horizon is the worse of the two but that doesn't mean they'll fail. Worse is better sometimes. The lynchpin will be if Meta is really married to Unity, Unreal Engine is eating Unity's lunch with adoption and features. If Meta makes the jump to UE th…

It's more that the industry is bearish on long bets in a tight financial climate. The tech for VR/AR is too clunky to seamlessly integrate into peoples' daily lives like mobile phones and smart phones did. There will need to be an iPhone-like leap in affordable and portable vision tech before VR/AR becomes a feasible marketplace.

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

#72

Post by cududa »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #38

Wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is readying itself to sell/splitoff its consumer products and focus on Enterprise and Cloud. That could also be part of the reason why they're trying to make the consumer version of Windows generate revenue streams. The only thing that might point the other direction is the acquisition of Activision. Why buy it if you're going to spinoff that division?

I'm genuinely curious here - how old are you? People bring up this theory time and time again - since judge Thomas Penfield Jackson decreed the same thing in 2000, which was overturned. Having been a former Microsoft employee working on enterprise to consumer stuff, this would be such an obscenely horrible move. There truly is a virtuous cycle between consumer and enterprise products influencing eachother. Modern Azure VM's are based off the VM segmenting of Xbox One that seperated the "app/ OS" stacks from "on the metal gaming VM". Hell, even Dave Cutler came back to work on the Xbox One VM partitioning which then folded into Azure.

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

#74

Post by javajosh »

loeg wrote: post #54
javajosh wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

W2 work feels more stable and secure than startup land. If you worked for Google for 20 years you don't expect to be let go with no notice by an automated system. But that is exactly what happened to thousands of people just now. You kind of expect this kind of thing in startup land. Recent events show this downside is not unique to startups, and can affect any worker anywhere. It's chilling, and it should take some…

I don't think this is responsive to my comment.

Your comment implicitly asserts the faulty premise that downside is purely loss of income, which I implicitly contradicted.

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

#75

Post by electrondood »

uptown wrote: post #32
baby wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is how Zuckerberg sees the metaverse: “We hope to basically get to around a billion people in the metaverse doing hundreds of dollars of commerce, each buying digital goods, digital content, different things to express themselves, so whether that’s clothing for their avatar or different digital goods for their virtual home or things to decorate their virtual conference room, utilities to be able to be more produ…

Digital clothing for my avatar sounds about as useless as an NFT for a picture of an ape that I could just right-click and save.

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

#76

Post by jemmyw »

p1mrx wrote: post #55
mjr00 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I think the next 5-10 years will see a massive wave of new companies come out of this. There's been so much talent locked up in bigtech for so long. The amount of talent in these companies that have had golden handcuffs forever due to the continual rise of their stock grants is staggering. Now suddenly bigtech stock is down 50%+, and they can't issue enough RSUs to cover the compensation gap. Moreover, there…

On the other hand, it seems most of the low-hanging fruit has been picked over the last couple decades. What is left for a random small business with software talent to do?

Plenty of things I'm sure. It seems quite cyclical in that the old products get weighed down by features and stuck, then new ones come along that are slimmer faster and that allows them to explore new ways of working. Its much harder to update the older products.

Example: When Jira was the new kid it was all snazzy and sleek and interesting. Over the last few years a lot of alternatives have appeared. Although Atlassian has made some changes, they can't just bring in what makes those products different unless they write a whole new product, and large companies can't make new products.

Currently I think we're at or just past a high point. The current lineup of Jira alternatives will probably wittle down, the best ones will get bought, made part of some enterprise lineup, that way of working becomes a standard, they'll get big and bloated and unable to innovate. The cycle will get to a low point and then we'll see another explosion of alternatives.

And that's just one niche.

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

#77

Post by propogandist »

mjr00 wrote: post #35
javajosh wrote: post #31

It's funny I keep thinking about how the same people might work on the same thing but with different terms. As a W2 employee you make great money, but your upside is capped. Your downside is never capped, of course. As a founder you make okay money, you have better upside. But the same corp that fired you will invest that money with the VC that funded you. So, either way, the capital flows through the corp to you, an…

I agree. I think the next 5-10 years will see a massive wave of new companies come out of this. There's been so much talent locked up in bigtech for so long. The amount of talent in these companies that have had golden handcuffs forever due to the continual rise of their stock grants is staggering. Now suddenly bigtech stock is down 50%+, and they can't issue enough RSUs to cover the compensation gap. Moreover, there…

Many startups that launched in the last several years did not have a proper business model, were not profitable and were reliant on VC money. It was all about growing quickly enough to get to IPO to give early investors liquidity and dump the liability on general public (like Uber).

As free/cheap money goes away it should force entrepreneurs to build real businesses rather than VC fueled money pits.

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

#78

Post by kumarvvr »

uptown wrote: post #32
baby wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is how Zuckerberg sees the metaverse: “We hope to basically get to around a billion people in the metaverse doing hundreds of dollars of commerce, each buying digital goods, digital content, different things to express themselves, so whether that’s clothing for their avatar or different digital goods for their virtual home or things to decorate their virtual conference room, utilities to be able to be more produ…

Wow. He basically exoects ua to buy virtual clothes? Whats next? A digital washing machine to wash the digital clothes?

And, whats with the amping up of avatars? It basically becomes a game like WoW.

And, why would anyone want to be in the metaverse, when a conference call suits well enough for most work?

What does having a virtual and augmented world bring to the table actually?

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

#79

Post by cududa »

verdverm wrote: post #42
rel2thr wrote: post #36

Still blows my mind that the military was going to spend 20 billion on hololens

Battlefield AR will happen, the biggest thing holding all of the AR use cases up is hardware miniaturization. Smart glasses will be a thing in time

Fun fact. The military started using AR at the start of the Iraq invasion. Product was essentially Google Glass with facial recognition against a static/ local dataset (stored on device), but in 2004 - for identifying wanted suspects at checkpoints.

Was produced by a company called Osterhout Design Group. Ralph Osterhout also had the distinction of creating the PVS-7 Night Vision goggles in 3 months - still used to this day.

Ralph was a pioneer in waveguide technology that went into ODG's AR glasses. The display tech from the Hololens? Licensed from ODG. Time is a flat circle I suppose.

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

#80

Post by andirk »

h0l0cube wrote: post #71
pharke wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, Microsoft and Meta are obviously partnering up. This is likely just a symptom of that with Meta getting buy in from Microsoft to use Meta's VR platform. I agree that Horizon is the worse of the two but that doesn't mean they'll fail. Worse is better sometimes. The lynchpin will be if Meta is really married to Unity, Unreal Engine is eating Unity's lunch with adoption and features. If Meta makes the jump to UE th…

It's more that the industry is bearish on long bets in a tight financial climate. The tech for VR/AR is too clunky to seamlessly integrate into peoples' daily lives like mobile phones and smart phones did. There will need to be an iPhone-like leap in affordable and portable vision tech before VR/AR becomes a feasible marketplace.

There was Google Glass but it got laughed out of town for being made for dorks. Seemed like perfectly good tech.
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