"Open" in the same way Android is, with complete control and app store by Meta. I think we have to accept that an 'open hardware platform' the way PCs were was an anomaly. We will never have anything like that again.
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Meta Horizon OS
271–280 of 813 posts
Re: Meta Horizon OS
#272I was hoping to open this and see screenshots of what the OS looked like—I have never had a sense of what the OS for Meta's headsets is, only what individual games look like. Instead, we get five (5) "Not an actual product render" illustrations.
Its Android with a VR quick action bar and app launcher grid. You can select an immersive skybox "desktop" or a use passthrough. There's not much to show seeing as the passthrough is still fairly new. There are no built in 3d widgets or anything atm so there's really not much to show besides apps.
Anyway, this seems like a licensing deal announcement, not a big software release.
Re: Meta Horizon OS
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
There exists a severe deterioration of trust with respect to Zuckerberg. I don't believe people are as eager to jump on his bandwagon today.
I think he is working on turning that trend around (see Llama).
I wonder if there is a limit to this strategy? How many LLMs would it have taken Epstein to release for HN to forgive him?
Re: Meta Horizon OS
#274"Open platform" my ass. I still have to jump through ridiculous hoops to mod BeatSaber (which is the only way to make it worth playing for more than a few minutes). Quest 3 makes modding even harder. This announcement is trying to frame App Lab as an open app distribution platform; it isn't. Those "basic technical and content requirements" apps have to meet are basically the same ones that Apple or Google or Meta the…
> I sure hope you're happy with exactly 3 2d apps (all equally sized) lined up in a row in a fixed location, because that's all you're getting.
To be fair that is all I really want. Regardless, its still a privacy nightmare which makes it a no-go for me, combined with the fact that the most powerful ("productivity") app I can expect to run on it would be something like excel which makes me not really need anymore than 1 window, at which point its no better than a regular laptop.
I'm waiting for the Simula One, or maybe XReal Air support for linux
EDIT: To be clear, the kind of apps I'd want to be running (what I run on my regular laptop) that I doubt would be available on Meta OS include things like: Godot, Blender, VSCode, terminal windows, probably a bunch of other stuff but those are the main ones
Re: Meta Horizon OS
#275"Open" in the same way Android is, with complete control and app store by Meta. I think we have to accept that an 'open hardware platform' the way PCs were was an anomaly. We will never have anything like that again.
I don't think it's in the same way. I see "we licensed some software to ASUS, Lenovo and Microsoft (and may license to others - serious inquiries only)", not "we are releasing something under a free software license".
Re: Meta Horizon OS
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - lighter/more comfortable It's this and one other point: Games that people aren't bored of in an hour. To me, very few games have come out for VR that don't feel like gimmicky experiences. Even Half Life Alyx, as advanced as it was, kinda felt like a theme park ride after a while. I'm not sure if there's technical reasons for it, but it feels like nobody is taking VR development seriously. It's hard to justify str…
>I'm not sure if there's technical reasons for it, but it feels like nobody is taking VR development seriously. The "technical" reason for it is very very very simple: Nearly no video games are actually improved by "increased immersion" to an extreme. Chess won't be more fun because you have to physically move digital chess pieces around a virtual board, people playing Call of Duty do not want to physically move thei…
Where VR shines, in my opinion, is in fitness. Where the goal is ultimately to move around in a gamified way. That's effectively how I use my Quest 2 and I'm not alone. Recently I've been trying to increase my table tennis skills.
Re: Meta Horizon OS
#277I wonder if this "opening" of the operating system is their way of putting the metaverse project out to pasture - analogous to donating it to the Apache Foundation - without admitting that the company burned $36 billion on a misadventure.
How does any company burn $36 billion on a headset they got handed a prototype for? At a reasonable $100k/yr and 50% overhead, that's 240,000 years of labor. ~5000 human lifetimes. At a .gov labor rate of 2080 hrs/yr, that's 500,000,000 hrs of work wasted? For mediocre "not a product rendering" that looks like 90's Second Life? I'm not usually the graphic resolution crowd, yet that was rather underwhelming. Could'a j…
They didn't and they didn't.
Re: Meta Horizon OS
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like other comments have pointed out, I think of this as similar to how Google controls the Android OS. While theoretically open, the real useful stuff on top of Android (Google services etc) require a license from Google along with their Play store, so Google makes revenue from there. Certainly more open (edited) than the Apple ecosystem, but still controlled by one (big) player, with a little bit of flexibility but…
You’re discounting the huge number of android devices that use it as a base OS. E.g. Amazon and Peloton use android without Google services for consumer devices.
These are devices built with a specific use case in mind that need an operating system that is easy to develop for. Non-Google versions of Android have struggled to make much headway in markets like smartphones. Even Amazon's own phone flopped pretty hard.
Re: Meta Horizon OS
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
Before the iPhone we had palm pilots, blackberries, etc. I prefer to think of it as consumer VR simply hasn't had its iPhone moment yet
It’s crazy because if you try the Quest it’s quite insane how good it is already. If I were to guess what could give it an iPhone moment: - lighter/more comfortable - faster to get started when you put the headset on - more social experiences and event organized in VR - shorter time from headset on to hanging out with your friends in VR A number of years ago I convinced a bunch of my friends to buy the Quest after be…
They actually do have cross game party chat these days, just FYI. Just make the party and then hop into the game. Support is a little inconsistent as games are not forced to support the feature, though.
Re: Meta Horizon OS
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are not complex or dazzling terms. Artificial intelligence is software that seems intelligent. Virtual reality is a simulated environment that you can immerse yourself in through small screens and head tracking. Mixed reality is virtual reality overlayed on your real environment. See also "augmented reality". The metaverse is the web, but replace websites with 3d environments and add some sort of personal avata…
People seem to think I have trouble understanding what the terms refer to. That's not my point -- you're right in that they are not complex. But why is virtual reality associated with small screens and head tracking? Why wasn't Everquest on a CRT "virtual reality"? A lot of software calculates probabilities over some distribution, why isn't all that "artificial intelligence"? Why isn't my Subaru's cruise control and…
I think asking questions like that for rhetorical effect works in other places, but people here prefer to treat all questions as actual good-faith questions. Even ones that are clearly intended as rhetorical, like yours.
So, I don’t think they are misunderstanding you. It is almost like calling your bluff.
It is an interesting convention.
I don’t dislike these kinds of questions normally. But they do typically lead to a little bit of back and forth. On this site, most interactions are typically only 2-3 posts long. So I think it is better to just state your opinions directly.