VR Is Not Dead
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VR Is Not Dead
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Re: VR Is Not Dead
#2(1) Something that would be a wild success to any other company would be a failure for Facebook, Facebook just isn't the right company for this opportunity.
(2) I think the Horizon Worlds problem is not so much that the whole idea is cringe but rather than the authoring tools weren't good enough for users or brands to create interesting worlds. I wanted it to work but I couldn't find worlds I wanted to visit and was strongly alienated by the platform's inability to incorporate JPG images or GLB models. No way I'm going to waste my time learning an awkward interface to make worlds based on dumbed-down computational solid geometry where I can't apply those skills to other platforms.
(3) Part of that problem is that the MQ3 has enough RAM that you can use video game programming techniques to make interesting worlds but very little headroom for user-generated content in systems like Horizon Worlds and VRChat. The 16GB Apple Vision Pro is better but I find it completely comfortable to author for PC VR with a 64GB workstation as much as I love the standalone MQ3 experience.
Re: VR Is Not Dead
#3(1) Something that would be a wild success to any other company would be a failure for Facebook, Facebook just isn't the right company for this opportunity. (2) I think the Horizon Worlds problem is not so much that the whole idea is cringe but rather than the authoring tools weren't good enough for users or brands to create interesting worlds. I wanted it to work but I couldn't find worlds I wanted to visit and was…
These are good points. I don’t think the dev side was the main issue, though. If they had managed to achieve a substantial user base, developers would have adapted and found ways around the limitations, as they always do.
The main issue is that the user experience is not good enough. The headset is heavy, glitchy, you bump into things, and you look awkward using it. It didn’t have to be like this, and it may still improve in the future.
A very light standalone headset that works out of the box, along with something like a compact treadmill setup you can put in the corner, could change things. If enough users start using this, developers will make do with any limitations.
Re: VR Is Not Dead
#4(1) Something that would be a wild success to any other company would be a failure for Facebook, Facebook just isn't the right company for this opportunity. (2) I think the Horizon Worlds problem is not so much that the whole idea is cringe but rather than the authoring tools weren't good enough for users or brands to create interesting worlds. I wanted it to work but I couldn't find worlds I wanted to visit and was…
A new hurdle the VR market will be facing is that Meta bought and burned the Oculus brand, one of the most well-known VR brands in the market. Will be curious to see how the market performs if Meta completely abandons Oculus headset production.
Re: VR Is Not Dead
#5With AI, VR is even more promising. I have been working on a Gaussian splat renderer for the Quest 3, and by having Claude and ChatGPT read state-of-the-art papers, I have been able to build a training and rendering pipeline that is getting >50 fps for large indoor scenes on the Quest 3. I started with an (AI-driven) port of a desktop renderer, which got less than 1 fps, but I've integrated both training and rendering improvements from research and added a bunch of quality and performance improvements and now it's actually usable. Applying research papers to a novel product is something that used to take weeks or months of a person's time and can now be measured in minutes and hours (and tokens).
Re: VR Is Not Dead
#6(1) Something that would be a wild success to any other company would be a failure for Facebook, Facebook just isn't the right company for this opportunity. (2) I think the Horizon Worlds problem is not so much that the whole idea is cringe but rather than the authoring tools weren't good enough for users or brands to create interesting worlds. I wanted it to work but I couldn't find worlds I wanted to visit and was…
A new hurdle the VR market will be facing is that Meta bought and burned the Oculus brand, one of the most well-known VR brands in the market. Will be curious to see how the market performs if Meta completely abandons Oculus headset production.
We'll see how it plays out, but Valve is set to release a standalone PC VR headset (that can also pair to a PC for added horsepower). Apparently their software allows it to run Android and Windows VR (and classic) applications. If this space is viable then that sounds like the right feature set to prove it.
Re: VR Is Not Dead
#7With AI, VR is even more promising. I have been working on a Gaussian splat renderer for the Quest 3, and by having Claude and ChatGPT read state-of-the-art papers, I have been able to build a training and rendering pipeline that is getting >50 fps for large indoor scenes on the Quest 3. I started with an (AI-driven) port of a desktop renderer, which got less than 1 fps, but I've integrated both training and renderin…
What's your take on WorldLabs and Apple's splat models? Are there other open source alternatives?
How would editing work?
Do you think these will win over video world models like Genie?
Have you played with DiamondWM and other open source video world models?
Re: VR Is Not Dead
#8I’m on my third quest unit (my quest 1 died during the pandemic and I had to buy a new 1, and then the 2 came out). I still use it for around 3-4 hours a week and I’m thinking about upgrading to the quest 3. Just use one or two apps though (beat saber and fitxr), I never really got into actual gaming or social stuff on it. I wish a company would come around and seethe potential for fitness tech with VR, they could come up with better optimized solutions for it (and I don’t really count the mirror or stationary bike stuff). Fitness really fees like the killer app.
Re: VR Is Not Dead
#9VR's problem, in my opinion, is that I can get immersed (fully, exactly as the author describes it) in a 2D game just fine - the lack of stereo vision or head-tracking or motion controls is no more an impediment to my immersion than the limited binocular overlap or peripheral vision or lag in a VR headset. And 2D is a heck of a lot cheaper and more convenient (and less nauseating).
That's not to say VR can never be successful, but I think it needs to offer something more compelling than just "immersion." Exercise or AR might be viable routes.
Re: VR Is Not Dead
#10In my experience in the real word, VR is a lot like racing sims. No one I know owns a VR headset, no one I know talks about it, no one I know is very interested in it at all, but both exist as ticketed experience at places in and around malls.
So from where I'm sitting in my middle class suburbs, it's certainly not dead, but it's basically the modern equivalent of those actuated flight sim entertainment experiences from the 80s/90s.
VR seems to be much bigger among the perpetually online. For us normies VR is hardly a blip on the radar.
I still don't even really understand what Horizon Worlds or the Metaverse even was, or if there's a distinction between the two. I've heard of VRChat, but from the little I've seen, it seems extremely unappealing.
I still think that most people don't want to strap a computer screen to their face, for any reason. I've done it, it's not very pleasant.