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Meta Horizon OS

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Re: Meta Horizon OS

#341

Post by araes »

azinman2 wrote: post #235
araes wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

100k/yr is not reasonable for Bay Area, let alone top talent. There are people working on it making $1M/yr+. Junior developers straight out of college are making more at Meta. You're also assuming everything went to just engineering payroll, which is obviously not true.

Then FB/Meta's throwing money out the door on people who demonstrably do not deserve $1M+/yr.

And on that topic, same with Wikipedia, why "must" you have your development base in the most expensive place on the West Coast?

Per https://www.gamedevmap.com/ there are Many other, less expensive, locations. America has a bunch, even Africa has gamedevs. They're an International megacorp, with 3 billion monthly active user (probably still a lot of dupes). India has the largest FB audience (366 million, 2024), not America (100 million). Will an Indian developer make you a launch app for less than $1M+/yr? New Dehli has 17 game studios (including Riot Games) and Mumbai has 33 (Ubisoft Mumbai and Pune).

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#342

Post by distortedsignal »

bonton89 wrote: post #334
pavlov wrote: post #145

Shades of Apple licensing the Mac OS to clone hardware vendors in 1995 - 1997. It seems like Meta will be controlling the software experience quite closely, just like Apple did back in the day. There’s an important difference though: Apple made all their money on Mac hardware margins which the nimble clone vendors could undercut. Whereas for Meta, the Quest hardware has always been sold at breakeven or even as a loss…

> So there’s no kind of existential danger to Quest here, but it remains to be seen if the hardware licensees can bring anything relevant to the table either. Why would I, as a potential hardware maker, wish to compete in a market where the existing main producer is a mega wealthy entity that is already dumping product below cost and is capable of doing so indefinitely?

The low end of the market is taken - but (from an outsider perspective) the high end appears free.

The people who want to buy a Honda aren't the same people who want to buy an Acura, even though it's (essentially) the same parts.

Let's say that, tomorrow, Gucci or Dolce and Gabanna (or however you spell that) want to make a VR headset (why? who knows?). They don't have the tech acumen to compete with Facebook on experience, but they have the brand to compete on "people who want to be seen in Gucci."

Is there a market for that? I don't know. But this opens Facebook up to the possibility of making that deal.

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#343

Post by __s »

bonton89 wrote: post #334
pavlov wrote: post #145

Shades of Apple licensing the Mac OS to clone hardware vendors in 1995 - 1997. It seems like Meta will be controlling the software experience quite closely, just like Apple did back in the day. There’s an important difference though: Apple made all their money on Mac hardware margins which the nimble clone vendors could undercut. Whereas for Meta, the Quest hardware has always been sold at breakeven or even as a loss…

> So there’s no kind of existential danger to Quest here, but it remains to be seen if the hardware licensees can bring anything relevant to the table either. Why would I, as a potential hardware maker, wish to compete in a market where the existing main producer is a mega wealthy entity that is already dumping product below cost and is capable of doing so indefinitely?

Because you want to use it as a basis for military VR or something

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#344

Post by imzadi »

Culonavirus wrote: post #128
crmd wrote: post #28

I 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.

> the company burned $36 billion on a misadventure Watch out, the VR mafia is gonna get ya! Seriously though, any well informed and level headed person could see this coming a mile away. Apparently, such people are in short supply at Meta.

Speaking from the perspective of a person who is very into VR. There are a lot of things that have gone wrong. First, Facebook/Meta pushing hard with low-end hardware that caused the existing VR gaming to take leaps backward. PCVR was progressing fine before Zuckerberg intervened. Now the VR space is just cluttered with so many low effort, low res games. None of the big players want to get involved, because everyone is so convinced it is too "niche." Meanwhile, you have people who really want to spend money on VR and there's nothing worth spending the money on.

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#345

Post by christianqchung »

vundercind wrote: post #282
Capricorn2481 wrote: post #225

Earlier 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 game quite a bit and had access to multiple headsets at home because of the work my wife did, for a couple years. Official permission to use the hardware for whatever. I tried beat saber for like 10 minutes and never bothered with anything else. The headset’s just too big a hassle, and blocking out the world sucks a lot . Plus I can’t help but think of the VR headset guy from the Pearl Jam video “Do the Evolution”…

Speaking of Serial Experiments Lain, there is also the guy walking around the street in the AR headset which everyone thought was weird. Funny that it's still weird 27 years later.

I have access to a Vive headset for school project right now and do not find it very fun to use, Beat saber remains the only VR game that is at least on the same tier of replayability as osu.

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#346

Post by MichaelZuo »

distortedsignal wrote: post #342
bonton89 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So there’s no kind of existential danger to Quest here, but it remains to be seen if the hardware licensees can bring anything relevant to the table either. Why would I, as a potential hardware maker, wish to compete in a market where the existing main producer is a mega wealthy entity that is already dumping product below cost and is capable of doing so indefinitely?

The low end of the market is taken - but (from an outsider perspective) the high end appears free. The people who want to buy a Honda aren't the same people who want to buy an Acura, even though it's (essentially) the same parts. Let's say that, tomorrow, Gucci or Dolce and Gabanna (or however you spell that) want to make a VR headset (why? who knows?). They don't have the tech acumen to compete with Facebook on expe…

Or more like those Lamborghini and Porsche branded phones.

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#347

Post by distortedsignal »

distortedsignal wrote: post #342
bonton89 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So there’s no kind of existential danger to Quest here, but it remains to be seen if the hardware licensees can bring anything relevant to the table either. Why would I, as a potential hardware maker, wish to compete in a market where the existing main producer is a mega wealthy entity that is already dumping product below cost and is capable of doing so indefinitely?

The low end of the market is taken - but (from an outsider perspective) the high end appears free. The people who want to buy a Honda aren't the same people who want to buy an Acura, even though it's (essentially) the same parts. Let's say that, tomorrow, Gucci or Dolce and Gabanna (or however you spell that) want to make a VR headset (why? who knows?). They don't have the tech acumen to compete with Facebook on expe…

Someone teach this man how to spell "Gabbana".

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#348

Post by r00fus »

romanhn wrote: post #43
crmd wrote: post #28

I 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.

I'm guessing it's the opposite. Meta is trying to establish the same OS-level foothold/control that Microsoft, Apple and Google have.

It's both. Meta can be "giving it away" and "hoping to establish an OS foothold" but if there is no major interest in playing in this space, it's going to be a very empty metaverse.

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#349

Post by slfnflctd »

drdaeman wrote: post #292
PaulHoule wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That CPU or battery puck for Apple Vision Pro, Magic Leap, and some others is a real killjoy. It makes it certain you won't be using fitness apps.

I'm skeptical about working out with a headset, at all. There are probably some good use cases, but I'm just mentally going through the stuff I'm doing at a gym, and I think that typically a headset would be either a hazard or a gimmick of questionable usefulness.

I've found some great cardio apps on the Quest and they're one of the top things I go back for.

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#350

Post by JKCalhoun »

spxneo wrote: post #315

feels like US tech companies are running on fumes just as the AI bubble starts to fizzle its one last push at AR

I disagree to an extent. I think AI is the real deal, VR though is indeed an evolutionary dead-end that we've been down and retreated from before.
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