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Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

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Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#121

Post by joe_mamba »

overfeed wrote: post #120
darth_avocado wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it’s just a jobs program to keep people busy so that they can’t build something else that can threaten your business

If this were remotely true, there wouldn't have huge layoff rounds. The opposite is true: they hire thousands upon thousands of people and teach them how to build scalable software, and then set them loose. I'm frankly surprised by the lack of competition, but I suppose that's gated at multiple levels (visas, personal risk, funding, network effects, etc)

>teach them how to build scalable software

Don't they screen to hire people who already know that?

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#122

Post by seneca »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #111
einsteinx2 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds a lot like Google as well

But Google actually knows how to do research and how to apply it to products. Meta's AI research hasn't produced anywhere near as many state of the art products /revolutionary achievements.

> But Google actually knows how to do research and how to apply it to products.

I have seen basically no evidence of this. Google knows how to do research to create technology. Google is pretty terrible at creating product though.

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#123

Post by KronisLV »

bhouston wrote: post #9
tyleo wrote: post #2

Interesting, cutting way back in the product they renamed the whole company for. They feel a bit directionless to me. They are still making money but even their AI attempt feels half hearted. I think they are really trying but I’m not sure they can build the engineering muscle to move in new areas with the brand damage they’ve sustained.

> Interesting, cutting way back in the product they renamed the whole company for. It was clearly the wrong bet. He pumped something like $100B into the endeavour (Meta Quest / VR / Horizons) and it is just slowly dying as we speak. He has to give up on it, although I am sure it will be called a "pivot" into AR glasses.

> He pumped something like $100B into the endeavour (Meta Quest / VR / Horizons) and it is just slowly dying as we speak.

Literally never met anyone who used or liked the Horizon thing, VRChat in comparison is more popular and doesn't feel like a soulless corporate husk: they also have quite the variety of worlds, from party games, to someone building a whole jet/chopper flight combat simcade world; ofc all of them are a bit jank, but lots of cool stuff and very expressive avatars.

Meta Quest, on the other hand, seems like a really good piece of tech - I still have my Quest 2 (because I'm broke as hell), but I enjoyed even that one, albeit maybe with a slightly more comfy head strap than the default one and the Virtual Desktop app cause their Link app doesn't support Intel Arc GPUs. The tracking is good, the experience of all sorts of stuff in VR is nice, games like H3VR or VTOL VR are great, as is Into The Radius VR! At the same time, I can see why it never saw super widespread adoption - tricky to develop for and also a somewhat limited audience.

Also the productivity situation just isn't there, closest I got to a good productivity setup (out of curiosity) was the Immersed app before they messed it all up by removing support for physical monitors - I could have my 4 physical monitors in VR surrounded by whatever I want and some virtual monitors and just lock in, it was kind of zen despite the technical limitations. It seems like people got promising tech in place... and then never really wrote good software to take advantage of it. Even Virtual Desktop has artificially enforced monitor limits in VR.

I hope VR tech continues to progress (especially lightweight headsets) no matter what happens to Meta.

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#124

Post by joe_mamba »

cedws wrote: post #102
tyleo wrote: post #2

Interesting, cutting way back in the product they renamed the whole company for. They feel a bit directionless to me. They are still making money but even their AI attempt feels half hearted. I think they are really trying but I’m not sure they can build the engineering muscle to move in new areas with the brand damage they’ve sustained.

I'd like to think that the top minds working on AI have a higher purpose than to get the next generation hooked to a digital morphine drip. Serving soap cutting videos and giving teen girls body dysmorphia isn't a very compelling mission. Though I'm sure many are mercenaries and will work for whoever pays the most.

>I'd like to think that the top minds working on AI have a higher purpose than to get the next generation hooked to a digital morphine drip.

That's the irony. The genius scientists are against AI used for defense, but somehow they're all-in for AI being used to getting people addicted to ads, dopamine, gambling, debt, porn, political manipulation, etc. basically everything that's guarantee to wreck society, but thank god they aren't making weapons I guess.

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#125

Post by zem »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #111
einsteinx2 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds a lot like Google as well

But Google actually knows how to do research and how to apply it to products. Meta's AI research hasn't produced anywhere near as many state of the art products /revolutionary achievements.

google knows how to do research, at any rate.

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#126

Post by overfeed »

joe_mamba wrote: post #121
overfeed wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this were remotely true, there wouldn't have huge layoff rounds. The opposite is true: they hire thousands upon thousands of people and teach them how to build scalable software, and then set them loose. I'm frankly surprised by the lack of competition, but I suppose that's gated at multiple levels (visas, personal risk, funding, network effects, etc)

>teach them how to build scalable software Don't they screen to hire people who already know that?

> Don't they screen to hire people who already know that?

There was a time when big tech widely hired dor entry-level jobs.

Also, cramming for the design portion of an interview, and doing it for real, and interacting with the architects/design documents are 2 very different things

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#127

Post by Espressosaurus »

overfeed wrote: post #120
darth_avocado wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it’s just a jobs program to keep people busy so that they can’t build something else that can threaten your business

If this were remotely true, there wouldn't have huge layoff rounds. The opposite is true: they hire thousands upon thousands of people and teach them how to build scalable software, and then set them loose. I'm frankly surprised by the lack of competition, but I suppose that's gated at multiple levels (visas, personal risk, funding, network effects, etc)

It was true. Then they needed money for other things and whole orgs get laid off.

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#128

Post by pjc50 »

mosura wrote: post #84
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but their product management clearly got in the way I'm pretty sure the buck stops with Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg wants a cyberpunk future, not some 3D immersive HR department on your face.

I think to him those are the same thing.

If he wanted an imaginative environment he'd be in VRChat.

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#129

Post by neosat »

The sign of a company in absolute decline is when the worst possible place to get info about it, is their official announcement. Whoever wrote the announcement went out of their way to obfuscate the crux of the announcement (compare the clear heading on hackernews to their own heading)

If your (well paid) job is to write and communicate clearly, and for a major announcement you come up with this...not much left to say.

Re: Meta Horizon Worlds on Meta Quest is being discontinued

#130

Post by pjc50 »

Traster wrote: post #90
tyleo wrote: post #2

Interesting, cutting way back in the product they renamed the whole company for. They feel a bit directionless to me. They are still making money but even their AI attempt feels half hearted. I think they are really trying but I’m not sure they can build the engineering muscle to move in new areas with the brand damage they’ve sustained.

I was at Intel for a while and there was one glaring problem - they have one product that spins off a huge amount of cash. This means a few things: First, that one product is really where the things that matter happen. But second, they have all this money and they don't know what to do with it, they can't spend it all on their core product because that looks terrible - they're already throwing off money, investing mo…

Man, activist shareholders should really start demanding that companies return money to them rather than setting it on fire with vanity projects.
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