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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

#141

Post by transcriptase »

echelon wrote: post #108
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…

VRChat is winning VR. Despite there being a few alternatives (Neos, Chillout, etc.), nothing reaches the scale of VRChat's community, platform, and developer ecosystem. Whoever buys VRChat wins VR.

Whoever buys VRChat will impose publicly-traded-tech-giant-“can’t upset the investors, Washington, or the media” guidelines/DMCA to it, and ruin it in the span of two years.

It’s popular because you can do whatever you want, which is the antithesis of companies like Alphabet/Microsoft/Meta.

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

#142

Post by rcme »

koof wrote: post #111
vkou wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your downside is never capped, of course. What? Unless your work literally drives you to suicide, the cap on the downside is 'You go out and interview until you find another job.' You aren't risking your own money - you're an employee. You get paid for your work.

Isn’t it the same for the people “risking” their money? The only “risk” is that they lose their bet, meaning they have to go find a job like the rest of us.

No, it's not the same. An uncapped downside would be something like shorting stock. The price of the stock can be unbounded, and you owe the difference between the current stock and the price you opened your short position. So you can literally lose an unlimited amount of money.

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

#143

Post by [deleted] »

boppo1 wrote: post #92
charles_f wrote: post #30

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.

The coolest use-case I saw was controlling a humanoid robot to repair a pipeline in a hostile environment. Now we just have to wait till humanoid robot tech catches up.

[deleted]

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

#144

Post by charles_f »

somerandomqaguy wrote: post #102
charles_f wrote: post #30

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.

Eh, I always viewed it more as having a guided reference manual on hand more then letting someone untrained perform a repair. A mechanic might know exactly how a car engine works, but they probably don't know the exact part numbers, torque specs, and disassembly / reassembly order to gain access to an specific area on repair for that specific model and year of car.

I don't know. The few technicians I know are already hardcore on having paper manuals, an iPad is already way too much into the BS. They'd never put that on.

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

#145

Post by kaashif »

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…

> Your downside is never capped, of course.

Of course your downside is capped. You're never going to wake up one day and owe Microsoft a billion dollars.

A real example of uncapped downside is when you sell call options on a stock, or short a stock. You actually can wake up one day to your broker telling you you need to find millions of dollars right now because the market moved against you. And it can get worse and worse, the downside is truly uncapped.

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

#146

Post by waynecochran »

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.

We (https://www.quintar.ai/home) are learning we can do a lot with a phone. But I hope someone figures out AR glasses.

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

#147

Post by soup10 »

chii wrote: post #114
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.

> Meta already has launched products and iterated on them. and the reception is lackluster. the tech is still not quite mature enough for the average consumer, and the fear of meta's tracking/coercive social networking component in the hardware is all but the most of die hard fans to even participate. Surely, meta knows this. So what's their end game?

It's been proven again and again that privacy rights are not that important to mainstream consumers. VR's actual problem is there are no killer apps and the novelty wears off

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

#148

Post by atomicnumber3 »

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…

Startups will be out of reach of many in the US until we have a much more robust baseline of public services. First and foremost being health insurance of course.

I would love to start the kind of lifestyle (or "non-scaling" as you put it) business, but right now it's a complete non-starter for me because getting a health insurance policy for my entire family would be comically expensive.

It's even been harder for me interviewing with smaller startups because compared to single people, my insurance premiums are bonkers.

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

#149

Post by atomicnumber3 »

kaashif wrote: post #145
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…

> Your downside is never capped, of course. Of course your downside is capped. You're never going to wake up one day and owe Microsoft a billion dollars. A real example of uncapped downside is when you sell call options on a stock, or short a stock. You actually can wake up one day to your broker telling you you need to find millions of dollars right now because the market moved against you. And it can get worse and…

>You're never going to wake up one day and owe Microsoft a billion dollars.

Unless you use Azure, of course. Then you don't even need to wake up to owe them that much.

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

#150

Post by metalspot »

ch4s3 wrote: post #50
phi11ip wrote: post #25

I wonder who is supporting the 10s of millions of dollars worth of military hololenses that were sold

Does the military actually use them?

no. it was only a test program, and the test was a complete failure.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/microsoft-mixed-real...

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