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

Meta Quest 3

meta.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 342 posts

Re: Meta Quest 3

#251

Post by philjohn »

MBCook wrote: post #86

So what’s the killer app? Beatsaber and some other games can be a lot of fun, but they’re not new. What new experience are ready for this? I get the quality is better, and that’s not nothing. But other than that this largely seems like more of the same. VR still doesn’t seem to have advanced much in software to me. And Meta keeps pushing virtual meetings and such but that’s not my cup of tea. I owned a Quest 2 and ha…

For me it's sim racing - for other people it's exercise apps, for educational users it's immersing students in ancient Greece.

Sim racing is amazing in VR - I got instantly faster, able to judge distances better, and the immersion is top notch.

Re: Meta Quest 3

#252

Post by Auracle »

jrm4 wrote: post #113
IKantRead wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I'm still seeing nothing to indicate anything more than "overpriced, non-essential toy." I saw a reviewer mention that VR is like "having your favorite amusement park ride at home": it's awesome, but at the same time you're not going to ride a roller coaster for 3 hours everyday. VR can be loads of fun, but I still find it exhausting, and very focus demanding. It will, for me, always remain a nice plus, but nev…

Absolutely. I LOVE "Pistol Whip," but I'm in my 40s. I literally can only do about 2 or 3 rounds of that in one day :)

For whatever reason Pistol Whip gives me crazy anxiety.

Re: Meta Quest 3

#253

Post by MuffinFlavored »

nolroz wrote: post #203
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> VR still doesn’t seem to have advanced much in software to me. Let's put our imaginations together. What use case for VR do we all wish we could see/can we think of that we don't see yet?

I want to walk into my back yard and visualize a new garden, then check on it through the year and get info on what the plants need. Same thing with my house and layout/furniture. Let me stand in a hotel room in a city I'm not familiar with and look around at the town around me, x-ray style.

> I want to walk into my back yard

Aren't the VR headsets wired?

Re: Meta Quest 3

#254

Post by jrm4 »

circuit10 wrote: post #154
jrm4 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point -- I do wonder if it's inherent or if we really are missing some "much better software?" A thing that makes me think the latter might be the is how there's no real Google Earth for the Quest, which strikes me as madness? (also, Aircar and having to jump through hoops to find Tiltbrush/Openbrush?)

The PC Oculus software was much better so there’s definitely more they can do; the Quest software is full of artificial limitations, like having window placement and sizing be unnecessarily limited. They’re also somewhat hostile to sideloading (not blocking it but making it more difficult than it needs to be) which probably hurts niche use cases

Yup, I do the sideloading.

It's kind of interesting how garbage most the sideloaded apps are? I'm not expecting amazing, but, like even your average popular Roblox game has more polish.

Re: Meta Quest 3

#255

Post by Auracle »

MBCook wrote: post #86

So what’s the killer app? Beatsaber and some other games can be a lot of fun, but they’re not new. What new experience are ready for this? I get the quality is better, and that’s not nothing. But other than that this largely seems like more of the same. VR still doesn’t seem to have advanced much in software to me. And Meta keeps pushing virtual meetings and such but that’s not my cup of tea. I owned a Quest 2 and ha…

What's the killer app of the iPhone 15?

They are releasing something like 50 new games, though they aren't making them exclusive, which follows what consoles seem to do now too.

The killer app for me has been being able to hop on to a VR game with my friends and somewhat feel like we're in the same room. It's too hard to get together frequently, and even setting up a VR 'date' is hard, but it's something.

Re: Meta Quest 3

#256

Post by jrm4 »

Auracle wrote: post #252
jrm4 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I LOVE "Pistol Whip," but I'm in my 40s. I literally can only do about 2 or 3 rounds of that in one day :)

For whatever reason Pistol Whip gives me crazy anxiety.

Definitely. A bug and a feature for sure. Superhot lets you slow everything to matrix/bullet time which is super cool, but Pistol Whip is like LETS SEE HOW YOU FARE IN REAL TIME. :)

Re: Meta Quest 3

#257

Post by johnfernow »

As someone who loves VR, I'm not sure at $500 who this headset is for.

If you want something cheap but decent, a Quest 2 is a better deal at $300. It'll give you a cordless, hassle-free, console-like experience as a standalone device if that's what you want, or, if you instead want to play graphically intense VR games, you can connect it to a gaming PC and use SteamVR (AirLink, Virtual Desktop, or a USB-C cable.)

If you want something high end with a really solid game library so far, the PSVR2 is much better than this at $550 (though requires a PS5.)

The Quest 2 had a promising start with several great games coming to it, but then Meta seemingly stopped funding new games and VR ports, and unfortunately SteamVR hasn't had a ton release recently either.

Sony, on the other hand, had an incredible starting library for the PSVR2 and plenty more AA and AAA games are releasing soon. Discoverability is also much better on PSVR2 — my friend with the headset has shown me many great games that actually are on the Quest and SteamVR, but I had never seen them before as there are so many more games on Steam and the Quest store (unfortunately most of which aren't good.) Not sure if Sony curates their store better or if it's just that not much shovelware has been made on it yet. In either case, great games exist on all 3 of those platforms, but they're easiest to discover on PSVR2.

As others have mentioned, Meta's resources would be better spent bringing games to their existing headset versus creating new ones. I do think that having a more powerful headset would allow more impressive experiences (as is the case with PSVR2), but people aren't going to keep buying their devices if only a handful of impressive games release on them.

Nintendo regularly releases underpowered hardware compared to the competition, but they make such great first-party games that they end up selling incredibly well despite their lackluster hardware. The Quest 2 sold very well, and I imagine that games like Resident Evil 4 VR probably convinced many people to buy it (I know at least one person who got it for that game.) The Quest Pro did not sell well, so I'm not sure why they think better hardware but with the same library will convince people to buy new headsets.

EDIT: I guess I should have done a bit more searching, as does seem like there are some potentially popular games coming out for the Quest still, such as Assassin's Creed Nexus VR and Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable. Strange I haven't gotten any ads for it on YouTube, I saw tons of ads for Resident Evil 4 VR for the Quest 2 (as well as some of the Star Wars VR games.)

Re: Meta Quest 3

#258

Post by CraigJPerry »

I haven’t kept up with VR/AR at all but is anyone offering the ability to attend concerts and shows via VR?

I’m thinking like some kind of high quality 360 audio/video capture rig sat in a good seat at gigs across the country and I can buy a cheap ticket to attend via VR. It’s obviously never going to beat attending in real life but my use case is more about getting to attend gigs I can’t get to in real life.

Re: Meta Quest 3

#259

Post by 1auralynn »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #253
nolroz wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to walk into my back yard and visualize a new garden, then check on it through the year and get info on what the plants need. Same thing with my house and layout/furniture. Let me stand in a hotel room in a city I'm not familiar with and look around at the town around me, x-ray style.

> I want to walk into my back yard Aren't the VR headsets wired?

No, Quests are mobile, that's why they have such low processing power

Re: Meta Quest 3

#260

Post by adfm »

baby wrote: post #197

This was the announcement I was really waiting for, but I actually got blown away more by the AI stuff

Hint: Immersive Generative AI is the killer app.

Radiance fields, Gaussian Splatter, Photogrammetry, and other computational photographic techniques are where this is headed. It's not that much overhead to render a stereoscopic view from the same dataset. That camera array on the back of your phone is more than capable of hand tracking.

Being able to capture "spatial video" is the hook Apple is using to sell their top-of-the-line iPhone 15 Pro Max handsets. You can already achieve this to a degree[^1] with tools like Lifecast[^2], but when Apple throws their billion-dollar marketing chops behind it, you get it integrated into a dominant ecosystem.

[^1]: https://holovolo.tv/

[^2]: https://www.lifecastvr.com/index.html

Post reply on HN