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Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

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Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My hope is that the Vision Pro is like the Apple Watch. It launched without a clear idea of why people would buy it--originally Apple tried to sell their bland aluminum box as a fashion accessory--and it was only after multiple iterations that they found out health and fitness was the main appeal and focused on it. If they pay attention to how people do use VR headsets, maybe they can do that again.

The cost of the device is way off. Apple watch is still vaguely in line with the prices of other nice ish watches. $400 or so. Expensive but not otherworldly so. Vision pro is so expensive you rule out the middle class. Its price point was conceived by people who haven’t left northern california for some time.

For that matter, I don't think any other Apple products are so out of line with competitor's prices. Airpods, iPhones, and iPad are also about the same as Samsung/Google stuff. MacBooks are marked up, but still in range of Wintel machines. Same for their workstations. Then the Vision Pro rolls out at 600% more than the competition, and doesn't sell. Pitching it as a work machine was shooting themselves in the foot, too: a $3000 MacBook is so much more capable than a Vision Pro it's absurd. The VP is using the base processor from MacBook Airs two generations ago. I mean, come on.

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#212
post #169
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can’t even get people to routinely turn a webcam on at most companies existing meetings. Even internally at Meta and Apple, staff aren’t exactly falling over themselves to take meetings in headsets right now. The idea people will be strapping computers to their faces for meetings will “take off in a huge way” any time soon is extremely far fetched for me.

It depends on what you mean by "soon". For sure, it's not happening next year. But within 5 years I think the hardware will get to a point where it's possible, and then within 10 it will be compelling. The "strapping computers to their faces" meme is just stupid hyperbole. It's no more insightful than declaring that nobody wants to stuff a computer into their pocket - when 99% of people now carry smart phones (and mo…

The thing is the smartphone took off as soon as it hit the market because its use cases were just that compelling. Vr is nothing new. What are we 10 years into this market with barely any adoption or useful applications beyond a gaming stint until you hit your nausea limit? Says it all I think. Its biggest use case so far is using it to blow wind into the sails of your stock ticker for a few quarters.

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#213
post #53

A counter point on premium VR headsets. They are teleportation devices. I've used every popular VR device, but one Vision Pro experience stood out - 'The Haleakala environment'[1] It was literally like being transported there. I know because I had been in that exact spot a few years before. I have a rich visual memory which served as reference, and no exaggeration, it felt like was there. I was immediately in tears.…

I had such an emotional experience using the visionOS 2 beta to spatialize old photos. It was already amazing seeing it take a photo from 15 years ago and turn it 3D; but then when I "pinched" into it to make it become immersive and was suddenly in a place I hadn't been in years, with my (then young) kids looking just as they did back then, seeming to be standing there in the room with me… it was profound. I can't th…

Wait what, it has an app that will convert a picture into a 3d environment? That's amazing.

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#214
post #205
post #53

A counter point on premium VR headsets. They are teleportation devices. I've used every popular VR device, but one Vision Pro experience stood out - 'The Haleakala environment'[1] It was literally like being transported there. I know because I had been in that exact spot a few years before. I have a rich visual memory which served as reference, and no exaggeration, it felt like was there. I was immediately in tears.…

Makes sense: But do you need to BUY one? This is the thing I realized with VR sets, personally. They are a great day at the fair, but who goes to the fair EVERYDAY?

An addict, that's who. And this is exactly what this technology will eventually enable - seeing the world through an influencer's eyes while sitting on a ratty couch in a dilapidated apartment. William Gibson painted this picture beautifully in Count Zero.

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#215
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that I don’t really see the Vision Pro as Palm OS. Palm OS was out for years and years and was really successful, all things considered. Sure, it wasn’t as ubiquitous as iOS or Android now, but it obviously filled a niche for a large enough number of people that it stuck around and pioneered that market. I had a Kyocera 6035 Palm “smartphone” over half a decade before the iPhone came out, and the Handspr…

Is just too pricey and a bit cumbersome for masses, the tech is good and we could all use it even just for some experiences that can only be done in VR

Their decision to use glass for the housing is stupifying. It's on your head and swinging around, it should be absolutely as light as possible.

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#216
post #53

A counter point on premium VR headsets. They are teleportation devices. I've used every popular VR device, but one Vision Pro experience stood out - 'The Haleakala environment'[1] It was literally like being transported there. I know because I had been in that exact spot a few years before. I have a rich visual memory which served as reference, and no exaggeration, it felt like was there. I was immediately in tears.…

Apple was late to the party, jumping onto AR/VR, when the companies that were there 10 years earlier started to move into AI as the next big thing.

Additionally, the current issues with the Apple developer community, on a device that targets a very niche market, even more niche as Apple doesn't want to associate it with games, makes the appeal of the Vision Pro quite lacklustre for most app developers.

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#217

If you’re asking yourself: Why are all these giant companies going hard on AR and repeatibly in cycles it’s for one reason: Egocentric data and full control of the highest bandwidth human I/O (vision + sound) is the most important possible data pipeline to get Its the penultimate data pipe, with direct connection to the brain being the ultimate data pipe (see:Neuralink) Every company that is winning and going to win…

What you have to keep in mind is that this is already a done deal and was for decades. Rather than ai goggles people had 3 5 and 8 and Croncite was the source of truth. Before that it was the preacher. Before that the shaman. People are hardwired to outsource fact checking to the most compelling and charismatic choice to them. Probably for pragmatic reasons considering if you actually sat down and thought critically about everything going on, you wouldn’t have time for anything else. Don’t worry about it, think inwardly, chop wood, carry water. Keep your focus on what you see in front of you in life over what others want you to focus on for their own benefit.

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#218
post #65
post #53

A counter point on premium VR headsets. They are teleportation devices. I've used every popular VR device, but one Vision Pro experience stood out - 'The Haleakala environment'[1] It was literally like being transported there. I know because I had been in that exact spot a few years before. I have a rich visual memory which served as reference, and no exaggeration, it felt like was there. I was immediately in tears.…

I had the opposite experience. Have had nearly every device. Rift, Rift S, Quest 2, Quest 3, PSVR, PSVR2, Index. Was not impressed at all the the AVP when I tried it. Worse experience almost entirely. Hand gestures suck. Stare to select sucks. Experiences weren't as good as even Rift for me.

Yeah, it was quite telling that most of the new features and demos, were for the most part already available on Holo Lens.

Seeing Vision Pro at WWDC was like a deja-vu from BUILD a couple of years earlier.

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#219
post #176
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a phone. You are describing a smartphone. Does this make all phones “AR” devices?

There was an app over a decade ago called Layar that used the camera, screen, and GPS for AR.

Also for VR there's, of course, https://arvr.google.com/cardboard/

Imo whether you overlay an image on your eyes or if they just do binocular camera passthrough, they could both count for VR. It's just most phones can't do binocular passthrough due to the lack of appropriately spaced cameras.

This is relevant for stuff like the f35 where you can look "through" the jet

Re: Meta cancels high-end mixed reality headset after Apple Vision Pro struggles

#220
post #62

Isn't it simple why AVP isn't moving? They don't treat anime-loli-porn content, chiefly VRChat, as first class citizens, if they support those at all. Tons of people have bought and are buying Quest 2 and 3 as well as its competitors with sole intent of using it with VRChat. Don't you guys all remember that iPhoneOS had YouTube since version 1.0, before it even had App Store? Where would you think iOS would have been…

Also YouTube was already available on Symbian, and other OSes, before iPhone came to be.
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