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Meta Horizon OS

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Re: Meta Horizon OS

#361

Post by int_19h »

mrguyorama wrote: post #257
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'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…

I think part of the problem is this weird insistence that VR means having to physically move arms around etc. For most games, the visual experience of VR can vastly improve immersion, but control schemes nearly universally suck. Simulators work so much better largely because they don't fall into the same trap - if you're playing a flight sim, say, you're still probably using the same stick/throttle/pedals as you would without the headset. For space sims, I find that headset + mouse combo works amazingly well (End Space is a good showcase of what can be done there). And so on.

But for some reason there's practically no uptake on any of this outside of sims. I would love to see a first-person shooter that is fully VR enabled while still allowing me to use WASD + mouse. In fact, I already kinda sorta do that by using 2D theater mode with games like Insurgency: Sandstorm, but that doesn't give you the actually useful VR stuff like the ability to turn your head to look around etc. If somebody were to make an FPS that did all that, they'd have my money in a heartbeat.

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#362

Post by b_d98 »

squigz wrote: post #262
b_d98 wrote: post #159

While good, Meta is likely to attempt to form a walled-garden in the vein of IOS and even Android to an extent. What I’d really hope for is a general-purpose computing platform with root access for the user, As I believe that mixed reality headsets have the potential to overtake both the smartphone and the PC as the default compute device of choice.

Is there any such solution in the VR space, even if not state-of-the-art?

There's SimulaVR. https://simulavr.com/

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#363

Post by bluSCALE4 »

johnfn wrote: post #270
woopsn wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But why is virtual reality associated with small screens and head tracking? Because this improves the quality of VR. > Why wasn't Everquest on a CRT "virtual reality"? It is an extremely limited form of VR. > why isn't all that "artificial intelligence"? It is an extremely limited form of AI. > Why isn't my Subaru's cruise control and lane keeping technology "autopilot" or "self driving"? It is an extremely limited…

Limited says you. I'll pick on your example of VR. Tell a blind person that Everquest is a limited form of VR. You've just bought into "progress". These other experiences likely still haven't been beaten when strictly speaking about real depth as opposed to the superficial.

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#364

Post by [deleted] »

EVyesnoyesnoyes wrote: post #14

I would really love to see proper educational content from Meta but i bet this is not were the 'next money thing' is. Imagine a catalog of proper real life skills you can actually train reasonable good: - cooking - soldering - welding - Tons of woodworking things - ... You could also go to a lot of makers of tools and offer them to digitalize their products for them so someone can actually exercise with a cheap to su…

[deleted]

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#365

Post by woopsn »

creativenolo wrote: post #264
LZ_Khan wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "mixed reality" is the marketing term for augmented reality. Easier to understand for some people.

Typically “mixed reality” is used to mean mixing your vision with virtual content. Whereas, “augmented reality” has typically meant displaying a live video feed on a single screen. They are two quite different experiences and use cases. Once both are common it would make sense to call both augmented reality but I haven’t heard any better terms for describing the difference to people yet.

"Mixed" versus "augmented" reality have no real meaning, which is why there is confusion about which of the two modalities you're referring to.

My question is why avoid the terms overlay, superposition, display and even vision? Why instead purport to have altered reality?

Traditionally in aviation and the military they said "heads up display", because they can't afford to be obtuse. The display allows the pilot literally to keep their head up, instead of pointed down at their instruments. And I'm sure there was no truck for anyone who would have called it mixed or augmented reality.

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#367

Post by ricardobeat »

crowcroft wrote: post #298
throw310822 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> iPhone came out in 2007. By 2015, smartphones ruled the world. Advanced phones with proper os, apps, camera had been around for years, and personal digital assistants before that. Tablets, too. iPhone got the form factor and ui exactly right and triggered an explosion, but it was far from the first. We might still be in the "smartphone, pre-iPhone" years.

I don't know what exactly is the right analogy for this, but two other points of context which make me discredit this line of thinking. 1. Feature/smart 'Phones' were around before the iPhone *and* were already pretty much ubiquitous. VR headsets don't do much but sit on shelfs (either in people's houses or in distribution centres not being sold). 2. VR has arguably existed in some ways before the Quest, Nintendo Vir…

> VR headsets don't do much but sit on shelfs (sic)

Quest has 6+ million monthly active users. Steam 2-3 million. Sony doesn't publish numbers but a good guess is 3-4 million active players.

If you allow for some overlap, that's roughly ten million monthly users, and in sales VR is already more successful than a lot of computer platforms of the past.

Re: Meta Horizon OS

#368

Post by distortedsignal »

theptip wrote: post #358
distortedsignal wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Don’t agree with this take. I’m sure Meta would be fine with other vendors taking over the low-end, if that meant there was a vibrant platform they controlled (ie the OS). They will lead with flagship models to push the boundaries of what the OS/tech can do. Why would they want to sell at/below cost forever? The reason they do this now is to make the platform viable. The only reason they are focusing on cheaper devic…

My point is that there is more to "VR Headset Market" than just "low end" - low end is one part of the market, but (right now) Facebook has that part locked up.

It may be that there are more places to compete in the VR Headset Market that people on HN don't know about.

Like you said, this is probably something like an Android play. Everyone was talking about the Apple Vision Pro as the VR Market's "iPhone moment" when it came out - maybe Meta Vision OS (or whatever they're calling it) is Facebook's Android moment.

And yeah, Facebook would probably be ok with others taking the low end of the market if they do it well. Right now, Facebook is the only company willing to take a loss on their own platform. So they do.

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