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Meta Quest 3

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Re: Meta Quest 3

#271

Post by bobthepanda »

local_crmdgeon wrote: post #246
bobthepanda wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a bit shocking mostly because of the scale of investment. Meta alone has spent $36B on VR. To put this in perspective, iPhone development cost $3.6B. It’s the fastest, largest single investment into a new technology. https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-lost-30-billion-on-meta...

For the cost of this object, we could have built 3 new subway lines in NYC WITHOUT dealing with our cost disease. For the cost of the object, you could set up a university program to figure out Anglo cost disease, then build ~10 subway lines at Japanese costs. Asking why our society funds things the way they do is a very reasonable and responsible question

As a slightly less wonky comparison, the entire market cap of Delta (the largest airline in the world by market cap) last year was $23B, so Facebook could've just outright purchased Delta and still had over $10B left over.

Re: Meta Quest 3

#272

Post by ActorNightly »

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…

VR suffers from inherent issue that its in a weird space of half immersion - the visuals are there but the motion feedback is not. The closest you can get is a VR motion racing rig, but those are prohibitively expensive. Even without the motion rig, generally 3 screens are often preferred due to better resolution and not having to wear a bulky device.

Besides some fun exercise games and social stuff like VR chat which is fun for a minority of people, once the novelty of 3d wears away, you are left with something that isn't as relaxing as sitting down and playing a regular game.

Re: Meta Quest 3

#273

Post by pyottdes »

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…

I think it's interesting to think about it as a hardware evolution question. If you look at a timeline of what it took to get to the modern smartphone, you could (arguably) say:

PalmPilot -> Handspring -> WindowsCE -> Blackberry -> iPhone -> Android -> Modern Smartphone

Each one of those evolutionary steps brought in a larger user base and grew the feature set of the prior generations hardware. The VR/AR/XR market comes with its own set of challenges so imagining where it maps onto that timeline is hard, but I would guess we are still more in the Handspring - WinCE era of these devices.

Wearable display systems have a solid and growing user base but the hardware is still a ways off from something that will have mass adoption. The roadblock is very much in the hardware, not the software IMO.

Re: Meta Quest 3

#274

Post by Nullabillity »

riskable wrote: post #223
felistoria wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do this with the Quest 2 right now via AirLink. I do it all the time.

You're talking about streaming/remote control of a PC which can involve significant latency and lag spikes (unless you're tethered with a good USB cable). That is by definition not a stand-alone headset . You're just using it as a fancy VR dongle. This necessitates two things: * Your PC is powerful enough to run VR games * Your PC is in an area that's convenient to play (with plenty of room) Nearly all Quest 2 users…

If you don't have a PC powerful enough for VR then you're probably not going to drop a lot of money on a combined PC+VR headset either.

Re: Meta Quest 3

#275

Post by cableshaft »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #249
cableshaft wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The song packs come out really slowly too. They've released just one song pack with 11 songs on it this year, the Queen one back in May, as well as added 10 songs to existing song packs. For a total of 21 songs total this year so far. And 210 official songs since it first came out back in 2018. Meanwhile the PCVR version has a ridiculous 65,000[1] custom songs made for it at this point. Not sure why they can't get cl…

I agree! But the modding...that is all legally dubious, it makes sense that Meta can't just release whatever song they want. I wish it could be attached to spotify or something: you get to listen to the song because you have a subscription, and just play custom beat saber levels with it. Heck, I would be happy if they just were able to do as well as Konami did with DDR. But Meta seems to be taking a slow growth appro…

I understand they need to get the rights to it, I'm just surprised they aren't more aggressively doing so. Rock Band has shown it should be doable to negotiate a lot more licenses more quickly than they have.

I understand they like to make a bit of a visual stage experience to each song pack, but not every song pack needs that necessarily, and they should also be able to have multiple teams working on song packs in parallel you'd think, as opposed to one every once in a while, even if they insisted on making new visual themes for each one.

As it is, I'd love to buy more song packs from them, but I'm not that into Queen, or Lizzo, or several others they've done the past couple of years (Electronic Mixtape released in May 2022 was the last one that excited me). And other people have their tastes too. Putting out songs more often insures that people have something new they can support and a reason to get back into it more than once every other year.

The reason I brought up the custom songs, is they could potentially use those for ideas of what players would really like to see in the game, based on custom song usage, as well as possibly once they do get rights to those songs, possibly get permission from the creator to use the beat patterns (or whatever they're called) and save some development time.

I know they hired at least one person from the custom song community before, they could potentially get permission from some others (with some compensation).

Re: Meta Quest 3

#276

Post by Guillaume86 »

cableshaft wrote: post #243
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beat Saber is still hella fun. I know some people that just play that (but play it daily) on their Quest. I'm not sure Facebook is particularly happy about that, however, since those people aren't buying apps or making them much money (maybe just the occasional song pack). I'm guessing Beat Saber is the only reason the Quest is even sold in Japan and Korea.

The song packs come out really slowly too. They've released just one song pack with 11 songs on it this year, the Queen one back in May, as well as added 10 songs to existing song packs. For a total of 21 songs total this year so far. And 210 official songs since it first came out back in 2018. Meanwhile the PCVR version has a ridiculous 65,000[1] custom songs made for it at this point. Not sure why they can't get cl…

You can get custom songs on Quest, I have probably 99% of my Beat Saber play time on them, search for BMBF on google.

Re: Meta Quest 3

#277

Post by MBCook »

ActorNightly wrote: post #262
cheriot wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quest 2 grew the VR market by ~10x. What was the killer app? Beat Saber is the first install, but not what kept it going for 3 years. It's the ecosystem. VR Chat for some, social game for others, immersive experiments like Bonelab, and a few studio titles. I'm glad Meta didn't hype the Quest 3 too much. It's easy for VR expectations to outrun current tech. VR seems to be in the trough of disillusionment where it's mo…

>Quest 2 grew the VR market by ~10x Did it really? So far I don't see any uptick in anything VR related in terms of average daily use. I read somewhere that most people get VR, try it for a week, then get bored of it.

In terms of hardware sales, yeah. But I agree I’m not sure the users stuck around.

It feels almost like a fad. It was in the right place at the right time by being available when people were in lockdown early in the pandemic. And it sold out, which of course increased demand more.

But three years later, things don’t feel that different from 1/1/2020. It feels like that wave came and went without any long term change in things.

Re: Meta Quest 3

#278

Post by cableshaft »

Guillaume86 wrote: post #276
cableshaft wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The song packs come out really slowly too. They've released just one song pack with 11 songs on it this year, the Queen one back in May, as well as added 10 songs to existing song packs. For a total of 21 songs total this year so far. And 210 official songs since it first came out back in 2018. Meanwhile the PCVR version has a ridiculous 65,000[1] custom songs made for it at this point. Not sure why they can't get cl…

You can get custom songs on Quest, I have probably 99% of my Beat Saber play time on them, search for BMBF on google.

I tried going down that rabbit hole once, and it seemed to break things (although I didn't spend a ton of time on it). I own it on Steam too, so I can play custom songs via that. It's just that's tied to my computer upstairs and I usually prefer to play untethered in my living room.

Most of my custom songs on the Quest I've done have actually been for the game Ragnarock, because it doesn't require sideloading anything, just copying files onto your Quest from your computer. That one is quite fun also.

Re: Meta Quest 3

#279

Post by seanmcdirmid »

cableshaft wrote: post #275
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree! But the modding...that is all legally dubious, it makes sense that Meta can't just release whatever song they want. I wish it could be attached to spotify or something: you get to listen to the song because you have a subscription, and just play custom beat saber levels with it. Heck, I would be happy if they just were able to do as well as Konami did with DDR. But Meta seems to be taking a slow growth appro…

I understand they need to get the rights to it, I'm just surprised they aren't more aggressively doing so. Rock Band has shown it should be doable to negotiate a lot more licenses more quickly than they have. I understand they like to make a bit of a visual stage experience to each song pack, but not every song pack needs that necessarily, and they should also be able to have multiple teams working on song packs in p…

I had a discussion with someone who had some real knowledge, and they said Meta can't really make a business with Quest just via Beat Saber. It has some backing, but not a lot of backing, most of their effort on Quest are elsewhere.

I totally get that, I just wish it wasn't so. To me, Quest is the ultimate fitness/active but casual gaming device.

Re: Meta Quest 3

#280

Post by kibibu »

dougmwne wrote: post #56
cuu508 wrote: post #25

I'm clueless -- how do these things work? Are they standalone, or do you also need a gaming PC? Do you need internet connection, or is there stuff that works offline? Do you need Facebook account? Are they hackable, e.g., are there custom firmware options?

The Quest works in both standalone and PC connected modes. A gaming PC will give you a different game library and way more rendering power, but PCVR is nearly an abandoned platform these days. Most VR money goes into standalone and PlayStation VR. You will need internet to download games, but it can operate in offline mode as well if the game supports it. You do need an account, but it can be a Meta account not conne…

> PCVR is nearly an abandoned platform these days.

Maybe, but Halflife Alyx is almost worth the cost of entry on its own

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