We're accelerating the Android XR platform with a new agreement with HTC

The outside view of VR workouts is usually the "play a game, workout by accident" appeal.

Although I believe it's usually the other way around. People play games where they are moving quite a lot and afterwards realize that they are actual getting exhausted. And then they realize that they didn't really notice that exhaustion while doing the actual movement ( focus on the game, outside world mostly blocked off ) so the thinking is "wow I can do workouts without having to dread them and without being pulled away by other distractions, and all that from my living room"

There are already studies that show people feel less exhaustion while doing a VR Workout compared to a classic workout when done at the same intensity

Again?

Seeing HTC do this makes me sad. They will get burnt by Google again.

HTC was an amazing technological frontrunner for Android phones.

The team got absorbed by Google.

They had people working on VR/XR.

That team got absorbed by Google too.

Now, the VR team is getting absorbed again.

Google tried this already - and failed. And as someone who held multiple workshops educating people to use Google's AR/VR tech, I see nothing but a barely-useful Android fork coming out of this that will be used for cheap VR/AR headsets.

So to recap:

- There was the AR (https://developers.google.com/ar)

- There was the VR (https://developers.google.com/vr)

- There was Google cardboard

- There was Google Glass.

All of these projects were:

- Early to the market

- Had a huge advantage over competition

- Were (relatively) simple to build on/use

All of these projects ended up abandoned as the responsible person probably got promoted and moved on, leaving them to die. Now, when the competition stepped up their game and is gaining some serious ground in the field (META) it's someone else's turn to get their big promotion by releasing a half-assed product that they will forget about in a year.

In the end, all that this signals to me is to be bullish on Meta, as their VR play seems to be sticky enough to draw out the competitors.

Yes I game in it all the time. Also it's great for VR porn. And for reading books in bed. Not having to hold up a device. And I like doing teams meetings in VR even though Microsoft Mesh is still very lacking compared to competing products like Arthur.

HTC's standalone VR headsets already run Android as their OS. They could've gone with Windows, had Microsoft not shut down their mixed reality ambitions last year.

It's not like Apple is going to open their VR iOS software (whatever it's called) and Facebook won't just give them their Quest OS either. At the moment, their choices are "build a custom OS" or "continue using the existing Android OS". And to be honest, I doubt HTC will be able to pull off a new OS/Linux distro to run VR on either.

There are several open XR projects, here is one: https://gatlee21.github.io/TritonProject-Guide/