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Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

engadget.com

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Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

#181

Post by jfoster »

planckscnst wrote: post #177
babypuncher wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR will probably always be pretty niche for gaming. Even with affordable headsets, there is still a lot of friction to their daily usage that limits their appeal - VR sickness - Lack of physical space in people's homes - Don't really work as a shared experience without multiple headsets On top of that, this company in particular is Facebook. Nobody likes Facebook.

I am one of those people who love VR gaming done well. There is a game called Super Rumble built by what I think is a subsidiary of Meta. It's a very well executed arena FPS concept. There are just a couple dozen people in the world who are really skilled and play enough for me to recognize them and be glad they're playing when I'm also online. It's magical when there are good people on this thing playing together. I…

I think VR gaming can easily grow 10x - 100x by having cheaper, better fidelity, less bulky hardware and a better games library.

I bet plenty of gamers haven't bought their first headset yet despite being interested.

Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

#182

Post by Macha »

nerptastic wrote: post #155
paxys wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I still see people refer to “FAANG” regularly. Though, there have been times I’ve read “MAANG”… doesn’t quite feel the same.

I’ve heard MANGA suggested as the acronym with Facebook’s new name. Though maybe it should be MAAAN, said in a tone of exasperation at tech company activities

Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

#183

Post by KaiserPro »

arppacket wrote: post #151
NickC25 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Zuck can't product for shit He never could. That's why he just buys everything.

I wonder why he didnt just buy his way into this too. I guess Valve wasn't up for sale haha. But he could have tried the VRChat folks, and Bigscreen. I guess he bought the Beat Saber folks, but he probably needed to buy a big game studio and maybe one with experience shipping successful MMORPGs.

I'm pretty sure they will have at least tried to buy roblox.

Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

#184

Post by jfoster »

TranquilMarmot wrote: post #32
jfoster wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta essentially made a sequel to Second Life. I've always been blown away by the fact that they didn't more fully pursue VR gaming. I think they could have found a more enthusiastic audience.

It seems like there really isn't much of a market for VR gaming, though. It would have failed just as miserably. Not only because of hardware costs, but not everybody can play them for extended periods of time and 'the youth' are increasingly preferring to look at social media over playing games.

I don't think it's anywhere near peaking yet.

It's probably already far more popular than the 3DTV of the 2010s.

Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

#185

Post by Macha »

spcebar wrote: post #112
jdashg wrote: post #87

As a VRChat regular, Meta's VR world efforts have been hilarious every step of the way. So long and thanks for all the headsets! :) Maybe not everything has to be the next big thing for everyone. Maybe it's valuable for smaller companies or sovereign divisions to find niche markets, and simply build products and services for modest profits for strong customer bases that will never hit hypergrowth. (And are therefore…

What do you feel, as someone who likes VR, were Meta's big pitfalls, and what do you like about VRChat that you feel like Meta missed?

VRChat was designed for people to hang out, Horizon Worlds was built as a platform for people to purchase meta services and desired corporate use which came with a lot of sterility (you don’t want half the people in your corporate all hands to be some form of anime girl, see the reactions that even just Anubis’ logo gets here).

This came in both world design and novel design where vrchat lets people import basically arbitrary 3d models with a wide range of expressiveness. VR went for corporate Memphis upper torsos which immediately makes the world feel more bland. Letting people import whatever would also eliminate the opportunity for meta to sell that, and have the risk that there might be too much breast for a corporate audience.

Add to that and the fundamentals just worked so much better in VRChat when horizon worlds tried to make its big splash and the fate was sealed.

Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

#186

Post by Macha »

edmundsauto wrote: post #163
Tiktaalik wrote: post #150

The 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 play…

Otoh, someone with a massive checkbook had to fund the hardware and optical research to enable the devices. Small gaming studios weren’t going to be able to do that. A lot of the smaller VR device companies weren’t able to build on top of core research or hire people that learned on Zuck’s dime.

Or Valve’s time. Like HTC were basically given the core of their Vive product by valve before valve built their own

Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

#187

Post by Macha »

bentt wrote: post #173
topherPedersen wrote: post #90

I bought my son a Meta Quest headset and a second one for me to use while playing with him. Honestly, it kind of makes me sick when I use it. Will have to see if it gets any better the next time we play. I'm kind of lazy and just want to lie down when using it, but the last time I tried using it I had to stand up to be able to do whatever it was we were doing.

I was a VR developer from about 2014 to 2020 after many years in traditional video games. The really sad thing about how VR evolved is that sim sickness was not taken seriously as a barrier for mass adoption. Too many devs and players cast it aside as a "them" problem. "They" couldn't handle it. "They" didn't have VR legs. The bottom line is that most things that became popular in VR were violating the rules which pr…

The problem is that freer movement is more immersive and it’s that free movement that really increases the immersion, and immersion is the product that VR is selling over monitors. I do agree it’s a market limiting problem, but there’s only so many beat sabers and shooting galleries that can lock you in place and still deliver that.

Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

#188

Post by panick21_ »

edmundsauto wrote: post #162
panick21_ wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zuck just goes 'all in' on every hype and blows billions, because he doesnt want to miss out on anything. What is a few 10s of billions here and there for a company with a money printer.

Seems like maybe that mindset is where he won the hands of cards that turned into the money printer… so he just understands portfolio theory?

I'm pretty sure Facebook didn't need 10 billion $ before it became successful. It became successful, then they invested more and more as it grew.

Re: Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15

#189

Post by grandpoobah »

deltoidmaximus wrote: post #62
fullshark wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cause he doesn't actually want to spend time in a VR world, and has no idea what a good or bad one would be. He just was hoping it was the next smartphone and he'd own the platform.

We've all forgotten the facebook phone failure but I doubt Mark has. He wants control further up the stack. Breaking into OSes is very hard but if you squinted just right VR kind of sort of looked like a green field that was ripe for the taking.

You almost have to feel sorry for Zucc.
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