Earlier quoted context omitted.
Decoy division to hide AI buildout, but I doubt it fooled anyone in the know.
Is this speculation?
Common sense.
Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15
141–150 of 198 posts
Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
They needed to rename the company anyway to get away from bad press. It worked. I think they're quite happy with their current name.
Yup. The Facebook brand was long dead, and Meta is a good tech name even outside of AR/VR or metaverse. The fact that no one calls the company Facebook anymore shows that the rebrand was successful.
>> The fact that no one calls the company Facebook anymore shows that the rebrand was successful.
Don't they? I have to remind myself that it's actually called Meta, I always call it facebook.
Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Oculus is actually pretty decent for the price and as a standalone device. The issue is the OS feels so... like it was built by a big company with a dysfunctional org chart? It's still an unfocused mess. The bigger issue is, VR will ALWAYS be a niche thing. Always on AR glasses are the real future bet, not a niche industry. VR will never be as big as Facebook / Instagram / WhatsApp. It just doesn't make sense to…
> Always on AR glasses are the real future bet Glassholes are the future? VR headsets are at least fun. These glasses though, seem really dumb. I doubt they will ever be ubiquitous. I certainly wouldn't be caught dead wearing a surveillance device made by Facebook of all companies.
>> These glasses though, seem really dumb. I doubt they will ever be ubiquitous.
Apparently they sold 7 million of these things according to the latest report, so at least some people like them(or the idea of them).
Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15
#144It is really amazing how bloated the reality labs division is. Triple layers of directors and VPs. They have been running this grift for years. When interacting with them I was left wondering whether they were delusional. But the explanation is simpler: they were just lying through their teeth to empire build. Can you believe they even built their own game engine to replace Unity? So may layers of principal engineers…
[dead]
Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15
#145Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Zuck and Co just completely failed to read the room. Horizons didn't fail because the technology wasn't ready - it failed because nobody actually wanted the product. It didn't solve any problem and added a ton of friction (headsets, eye goggles, no legs, etc). The headsets were uncomfortable and isolating. The vibes were creepy and weird. The rolled it out like a cheesy corporate team-building mandatory exercise, not…
[flagged]
It's not really netiquette to accuse people of AI generated comments unless it's clear
Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15
#147As an engineer I love that Zuck likes to throw his money around. He has been one of the big reasons for SWE salary inflation over the past 15 years. We should be thankful that not every company is relentlessly cost cutting
Hilarious thing to say a couple days after the news of 20% layoffs at Meta dropped. This is after a 10% "performance based" layoff last year and successive rounds of 10%+ layoffs post-covid in 2022-23. The company may have been a wonderland for devs a decade ago, but at this point it is right up there with Amazon in terms of terrible work environments, internal politics, PIPs and layoffs.
Meta employee count has been increasing for the last 3 years, same as other tech companies: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platform...
PIPs and layoffs have always been a thing in tech. That's kinda one of the defining traits of the industry.
Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
They needed to rename the company anyway to get away from bad press. It worked. I think they're quite happy with their current name.
> It worked. Debatable.
Is it really? Instagram, arguably the most popular (or maybe just behind TikTok, I'm not sure) social network currently, has successfully disengaged from the tainted Facebook name entirely. It may seem like a small thing but I do think that has a deep impact on the average person's perception of the service. Especially in the younger generation, the Facebook name has a definite "ick" to it (is that what the kids say these days?), even if it's just because it's the "boomer social network" and not because of the myriad privacy concerns associated with it.
Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15
#149[dead]
Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15
#150The problem is that this cool technology got taken over and advanced by companies, Meta and Apple, that are not games companies and do not understand nor are interested in games.
So what occurred was an exercise in trying to force a square peg into a round hole, while the actual obviously interesting use of the technology (games!) was sidelined and ignored.
It's a real shame I picked up a PSVR and really enjoyed playing around with it. Seems like this particular niche however is not enough to fund the mega expenditure required to move the technology to the next level where it would genuinely get more mass adoption.
As it is feels like VR is going to die out at the Wii U point, just before it gets technically good enough (read lightweight) to be the successful Switch.