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.
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 leader (a few years ago they actually raised the price of the Quest 2 to cut further losses).
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.
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.
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 devices now is to build the platform and try to get more users, to in turn get more data on what the killer usecases will be.
Think of this as a play like Android. Google doesn’t care what goes on in the commodified end of the spectrum, as long as there is one. Google does ship flagship phones (in competition with eg Samsung) and that is fine.
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.
Not really sure if the Vision Pro could be called the iPhone of VR. It's not nearly as popular and its demand has ground to a halt.
It is a wonderful indispensable device for a very special market.
Particular Mac users who happen to particularly like the physical and mental ergonomics, and locational and furniture freedom, of arrangeable virtual screens and a beautiful visual isolation chamber on demand.
(And in my case, who have dramatically customized the light shield and straps to be super comfortable for long periods.
I would buy the next version at twice the price if it came out tomorrow. And give up a lot to do it.
But that is a VERY niche market. There are only three of us happy campers, after the return wave. It is definitely not an iPhone - yet.
Personally, I think they should lean into it as a MacBook Pro killer. Make it a first class pro computing device. That is a good rationale for keeping around a high end spec, high priced version.
Then have Air versions when it becomes possible to ship a cheap enough iOS-computing level version for the masses.
I agree. I’m reading this (and now typing this reply) from the Vision Pro, while doing a 2-hour low-and-medium-intensity cardio workout on my elliptical trainer. Hard to overstate how much better this is than the old MBP/iPad plus big-screen TV setup I had.
I would also buy another AVP immediately, if I broke this, or if a better one came out,
But that is… extremely niche. The OS is as bad as iOS 1.0 was — but without the obvious utility to a huge number of people. I’m not sure Apple can pull this off.
But, I have all the Meta headsets, too, and have used them for this purpose. That gives me the perspective to understand that, while on one hand it is indeed “just another VR headset”, there has never been one actually usable for this before. Apple has the lead along a dew different axes. The question is, do they have the stomach to lose money on it for 10 years like Meta has>
(Even if they don’t literally sell it below cost, like Meta, it won’t work out if they don’t keep iterating as hard as they can on the software side. Like the first iPhone, it is simultaneously amazing, unprecedented, and objectively awful in many ways.)
P.S. I do easy work in here on the gym machines, too. Not just HN-reading. ;-)
BTW the key to getting work done in AVP while running on a machine (or any other active scenario, like housework or walking to the grocery store) is to enable some of the Accessibility features.
The normal dictation feature is so bad it is unusable for more than a sentence fragment. The one enabled via Accessibility is incredibly good, aside from a bit more latency than I’d like (but easy to get used to that), and enables mixed voice dictation and keyboard-typing, without switching modes.
And that's why Meta will fail. The company doesn't have the branding or the technical imagination to create either a mass-appeal or a high-end prestige product. Apple has both, and its best VR effort appeals to a few thousand people.
As long as VR is limited to facehuggers the market will remain niche. VR glasses are a good few years (decades?) off.
In the meantime Apple will eat the high end and probably some of the low end.
So where does that leave Meta?
It doesn't help that Meta is more of an annoyance than brand. I'm not sure anyone actually likes Meta or Meta's products. While they're tolerated to some extent, they're perceived as fundamentally boring or irritating in a way that is deadly for brands.
Don’t agree with this take.
Is this a command or an opinion that left out the subject of the sentence?
'take' as in 'hot take' intended meaning : 'I disagree with your assessment and conclusions'
While the pedantry is whatever to me, they're not misunderstanding the usage of "take" they're pointing out the missing subject of "I". Leaving out the "I" like this turns the sentence from describing a personal opinion to commanding someone else to have that opinion.
I put the pan on the stove.
Put the pan on the stove.
I talk to your brother.
Talk to your brother.
Leaving out the "I" changes the meaning of the sentence here. "I disagree with x" means something else entirely than "Disagree with x."
The inference engine between your ears should be able to answer that.
So Meta is aiming to be for VR what Microsoft is for PCs and Google is for smartphones (Apple being Apple for PCs, smartphones and VR)?
They want their own platform so they can do whatever they want on their apps. They are playing the long game. Read zuck's VR vision letter. He lays it all out:
* https://www.scribd.com/document/399594551/2015-06-22-MARK-S-...
Meta is the last company in the world that I would allow to have direct access to my gaze tracking data.
The only thing that I can imagine that would be more privacy invasive would be a device that directly reads your brain waves while you are exposed to different stimuli.
I feel exactly the same, but I think we’re very much in the minority with that perspective compared to most consumers, so they could still sell like gangbusters.
And on that note I can’t wait to see Meta’s answer to Neuralink!
I think it really depends on if you think Meta wants to be a hardware company or if they want to continue being a data/advertising company.
"Our overall vision for the space is that we will be completely ubiquitous in killer apps, have very strong coverage in platform services (like Google has with Android) and will be strong enough in hardware and systems to at a minimum support our platform services goals, and at best be a business itself" - Zuckerberg's 2015 VR letter
* https://www.scribd.com/document/399594551/2015-06-22-MARK-S-...
That’s almost nine years ago. He may or may not have changed his mind.
It would help if Meta said something about that. Ideally for potential third party hardware manufacturers, they’d promise to leave the hardware market once a vibrant ecosystem exists.
Defining “vibrant” then would be hard to impossible, though. The edge cases are easy, but uninteresting. If none of the others are making money on hardware there is no vibrant system. If multiple other parties are making money, they probably wouldn’t care much whether Meta makes some money, too.
For in-between cases, where third parties make some money, Meta will have to choose between staying in the market because others don’t sell enough and Meta leaving the market so that others get more room to sell and thus become profitable.
I feel like this is a bit off. There have been things like Porsche phones, but those are so niche that I don't think they're really worth considering. They happened, but they haven't been a long-standing product. They were a cash grab where they licensed a brand.
Now, Hondas and Acuras are different products. You can say "oh, they're essentially the same" and if you truly believe that, I'll sell you a Core i3 processor for the price of a Core i7. Yea, they're essentially the same, but it's the differences that make one better than the other. The point is that the high end isn't about branding. The high end is about capability. Apple has shown that their iPhone will outsell any luxury-branded Android phone to rich people because some things are about capability, not a logo. Samsung's flagships will way outsell some luxury logo smartphone too. The high end here is really about devices with better capabilities and it allows companies with good hardware businesses (like ASUS and Lenovo) to build something in the Meta VR ecosystem.
It's also possibly a way for Meta to stop dumping Quest devices. They'd rather just own the ecosystem rather than doing the hardware. If they can get ASUS, Lenovo, and others to do the low-margin hardware work and pick up the tab for a lot of the marketing, that's a win for Meta. Maybe Meta simply backs out of hardware over the next 5 years if a nice third party hardware ecosystem arises.
But I think this is going to be tough with VR. When you're trying to make an immersive experience, you need a baseline of hardware. It's also easier when you know the hardware you're trying to target. Android development can be frustrating because there's so much variance in speed and capabilities. One of the reason gaming consoles exist is that targeting a small set of hardware/capabilities makes things easier. That's not to say that PC gaming doesn't exist, but it can be hard because gamers need to spend a lot of money on hardware and there's a variance in capabilities that you need to account for - and who you might simply exclude. With a phone, it's less of an immersive experience for most apps which are just displaying something. They might display it slower, the UX might be laggier, etc. but it works. VR can't be laggy.
In some ways, it feels like Meta is trying to become a game console company without having to subsidize the console. That would be big if they can pull it off. I guess in many ways this is what Steam pulled off on the PC - taking a 30% cut without having to subsidize any hardware. We'll see if Meta can do the same for VR.
I don’t disagree with your core point, but branding is about a lot more than a logo. I think iPhones do sell to rich people because of branding, because iPhone’s brand basically is “the best possible phone you can get, plus it integrates seamlessly with your other Apple devices”. And Samsung flagships’ brand is “the best Android phone”.
Porsche, or whatever, have a great and meaningful brand when it comes to cars, but that doesn’t translate to smartphones. So when you see a phone with the Porsche logo the brand isn’t really gonna do much for you.
The previous company that gave up hardware and only focused on software is called SEGA.
Apple has shown that their iPhone will outsell any luxury-branded Android phone to rich people because some things are about capability, not a logo
How have they shown this?
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.
Nit, but as an Acura driver (chooser), I can tell you that they are definitely not essentially the same parts. The irrelevant parts are the same, but everything that matters to the driver (suspension/drivetrain, interior materials, technology, etc.) all all different and better in the Acura. I get what you're trying to say, but that was not a good metaphor.
when you say something it's better, you should add better in what angle, because Acura suspension can be better for high speed cornering in a circuit, but suck if you leave in a place with bad road surface, and the honda suspension can be both softer and cheaper to replace.
Anyway, I also get what you're trying to say.
This depends on the model. I have an Acura project car and most of my performance relevant parts are Honda part numbers. Interior is the main exception.
Heck, I've got a Civic intake manifold in the room with me to replace the Acura one, haha. (The generation of K series after mine has better airflow and it's an easy enough swap.)
The Acura brand doesn't even exist outside of the US- if a car is sold in Europe or Japan the parts are Honda.
I think their RayBay Meta Glasses is a great example of a product like that!
Reminds me of the Vertu cell phone, which the iPhone basically killed.
I strongly disagree that the low end of the market is taken. XReal's Air/2 are awesome and Moore suggests we'll see awesome displays in that form factor, not even necessarily from XReal.
It feels less like low vs. high-end and more like specialized vs. general hardware.
For example, if you're selling VR headsets for the purposes of industrial training, you may not want the consumer-grade hardware Meta is selling. You may need weather-sealing to allow outdoor operation. You may need vastly higher-resolution screens for industrial applications. The list of specializations goes on.
The specialized businesses tend to have wider moats and bigger margins. The TAM is smaller - too small for a mega-cap company like Meta to care about, but nonetheless can contribute to the health of the ecosystem.
This play gives influence over these niche, specialized uses of AR/VR without having to commit the entire company to it.
For example think of a medical instruments company that trains on VR headsets. Their choices right now are to use consumer-grade hardware which may not hit all of their needs, or become a full-on AR/VR company with all the requisite R&D that involves.
This allows these companies to exist in the middle ground - having the core R&D being done by another party, but having sufficient control to ship specialized hardware.
Someone teach this man how to spell "Gabbana".
Or more like those Lamborghini and Porsche branded phones.
Yes, but also there are currently so few components to pick from. SoC is definitely some kind of variation of Snapdragon XR2 unless you're Apple.
Can't go into high-end because for a device to make sense either an existing ecosystem around it or high confidence in one appearing. If you tell me that I can buy a 3k dollar vr headset that can run current quest library, I would pretend you're joking.
Mid-end is where we're at right now has/had very small margins because despite it being mid-end - you still have to use high-end components due to lack of options.
I can see someone like Porsche Design making a "high-end" headset (in terms of price, components would be the same). The only option for low-end is to use components previously used in mid-end that would need to compete with used previous gens since they would be nearly identical on the hardware level.
Google did this early on with android - originally the Google devices (Nexus) were lower end, and high end devices were left to other manufacturers. They've flipped around recently, but I think the Nexus line was a decent enough idea at the time.
Nexus was supposed to be reference platform with a harmless quirk or two, not necessarily low or high end. The idea was everyone builds for Nexus and apps run everywhere.
The Nexus devices were initially badly designed high end devices, starting with the Nexus One, which was among the first smartphones with an OLED screen but had too little internal storage to be useful. There was no intentional strategy there to build a bad product, just bad product designers making bad design choices.
Seems like without some kind of software revenue sharing model it doesn't make sense. These things are consoles -- sold a cost or below cost in order to make it back on software sales.
Because Meta will be focused on the consumer market.
Which leaves a huge opportunity for professionals and businesses.
Are they capable of selling hardware loss leaders indefinitely? If so, can they do it at a scale that matches the company's digital presence? The Google Daydream headset sitting on my shelf is skeptical.
Regardless of whether they can sell the hardware at a loss forever, they probably won't need to.
Third-party hardware is engineering labor that Meta doesn't have to pay for. In fact, it's engineering labor that will pay Meta through royalties. Cost-cutting measures developed by those third parties can easily be copied by Meta's own product, reducing the cost of future versions of the hardware. Cheaper options in the marketplace also help Meta gain market penetration without their own hardware developing a reputation for poor quality.
After a couple generations, vendor lock-in will start to set in, and they'll be able to charge more without losing customers. The aforementioned cost-cutting techniques start to pile up, too.
its partly in the article. Companies like Xbox and Lenovo want different experiences for their clients. This allows them to share the basic platform but specialise for their customer segments, eg professional or Xbox owners or whatever. Architects and civil engineers and doctors might not want normal game controllers and the default resolution. Cheap devices used in developing countries can have a lower resolution and no hand tracking. Meta wins because they can’t build 100 versions themselves, all they care about is growth of the market. Nothing is locked up yet, think of a market 100x bigger.
Because you want to compete in a different market segment.
To put this very concretely, look at Pimax. Their Crystal headset allegedly has standalone capability. All the hardware is there for it, they make this thing, they sell it -- but they don't have a standalone platform, and have no hope whatsoever of being able to develop one.
For PCVR, they just use regular standard SteamVR and OpenXR, but for standalone usage, they suddenly have to be an amazing software company and they definitely are not. Using Horizon makes a ton of sense, and makes their product more attractive and better than it is without it.
PCVR maybe. There are latency optimizations to be made (preferably, for me, by adding DisplayLink)
Because you want to use it as a basis for military VR or something
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 expand your market.
Let's say you are Pimax or Bigscreen Beyond and want to target users who don't have large gaming PC's - this is an obvious option for them.
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 not a whole lot.
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.
Non-Google versions of Android have struggled to make much headway in markets like smartphones
You may have forgotten about China: Huawei smartphones are doing very well on an AOSP-based OS.
Edit: Google was concerned about a Chinese fork of Android flourishing, they wrote to congress at the time the tech-transfer ban was being condidered
The thing about Android is that a device doesn't have to make headway by selling 100 million units plus to continue being adapted to many different types of devices.
In any case, the Play store can be sideloaded on every Android device even if it isn't officially supported.
Non-Google versions of Android have struggled to make much headway in markets like smartphones. Even Amazon's own phone flopped pretty hard.
Not much headway? Pretty much all Android phones used in China do not come with GMS.
Kindle tablets on the other hand have done well.
A bit more open than the Apple ecosystem
It is not "a bit more open" than iOS, it is a completely different approach to OS development that enables wildly different results.
While theoretically open, the real useful stuff on top of Android
That stuff is by no means necessary; I've run Android without Google services for years and it just feels like a normal tablet OS. Again, it is not "theoretically open" but in fact practically usable without any first-party services, unlike iOS.
:D Fair, I didn't want to be yelled at by the Apple fanbase that comes out in defense to comments like this, have edited my original post with a note.
Amazon used AOSP to create tons of their products. Even if most Android devices have the Play Store, there are successful variants that don't. And I'd even include Meta's Quest line here: every headset since the Go has the ability to sideload apks using standard Android tools.
My quest (1) I bought on launch day got an OS update and now I have to find my old credentials to log in (and thus accept some (probably) draconian EULA, just to enable developer mode to side load apps on there. You can't just plug a USB stick in the side and copy paste them to "side_loaded_apps" dir it's still a ridiculous task of doing backflips through flaming hoops to use it as an open device. And it may yet again reset my login.
Whereas for Meta, the Quest hardware has always been sold at breakeven or even as a loss leader (a few years ago they actually raised the price of the Quest 2 to cut further losses).
Indeed, and that means they'll seek a return on their investment from continued invasive surveillance, emotional manipulation, and cramming ads everywhere.
They are not looking to make margins on the OS or the hardware. They want adoption and distribution. The money will be made later on extracting value from the ecosystem they are trying to build. Whether that is with a higher end product later on, monetising the OS/ecosystem later on with ads or app fees is not relevant at Thai stage. What they are trying to do is to build a new ecosystem that they are entrenched and that they control firmly. They are trying to build the android of VR to put it simply
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.
How does Meta make its money? Advertising. Licensees bring actual eyeballs to the table and eat the hardware costs fighting amongst themselves selling commodity hardware and Meta re-position Quest as a 'premium' product that they might actually make a little money on.
The other important difference between Apple then and Meta now is that Apple wasn't in a position that subjected it to possible (government) regulation. Meta has to try to play nice. Perhaps few vendors bite? But when the regulation noise increases - and it will - Meta can say it tried.
Why should it be different than Google and Android?
Google makes medium and high cost devices, but actually doesn't compete too much on margins.
If the OS catches up, meta will do the same move, allowing other vendors to proliferate.
I know I'm fighting the overwhelming tide here, but what the hell is "mixed reality"? What is "the metaverse"? For that matter what is "artificial intelligence"? Stop trying to dazzle and just use words, if the technology is revolutionary then it will be. An automobile is not the magic carpet, a cell phone is not a soulmate, etc. Otherwise fuck it -- TV is virtual reality, getting high augmented reality, TI-84 calculators are artificial intelligence, libraries are the metaverse, ...
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 avatar, perhaps with some persistent identity.
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 lane keeping technology "autopilot" or "self driving"? Why isn't the elevator controller an "agent"? Why aren't my own servers "clouds"?
I don't need the terminology explained, I'm just tired of it. And I do think in many cases it's meant to be dazzling and marketable rather than mean anything.
Why is a laptop not desktop? Aren't GNU/Linux desktop OS? Why is Android a phone OS? I thought it was supposed to be a camera firmware GUI toolkit?
I'm not concerned about trademarks. I'm concerned about what isn't trademarked -- language which instead we are all supposed to adopt and throw around as much as possible. As I said: * reality, AI, cloud, etc.
I get that loosely thrown around buzzwords are annoying, that sentiment I sympathize with, but your examples seem to contain multiple category errors e.g. HUD is a type of AR device, using cloud(noun) is outsourcing(verb) but outsourcing is definitely not appropriate term for cloud tech stacks, and so on.
Digital computer technologies aren't continuously differentiable so made up terms for grouping each distinct tech stacks is unavoidable. AI is linear algebra but grouping up all AI/ML/RL/perceptron into "electronic linear algebra technology" is not helpful.
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 form of "self driving". (To be more precise, it's Level 1 self autonomy.)
Why isn't the elevator controller an "agent"
It is an extremely limited form of an agent.
Why aren't my own servers "clouds"?
They are extremely limited forms of a cloud. (Though I would argue that a cloud needs to be provided by a third party.)
I don't need the terminology explained, I'm just tired of it.
It sounds like you are refusing to understand how experiences fall somewhere on a spectrum. Is me and my friend tossing a ball around in my backyard "baseball"? What if we get 7 more friends and stand on a diamond and run around the bases? If I come back afterwards and say "we played baseball", even though it wasn't an MLB-regulated official game adjudicated by umpires, are you going to get really upset at me and say that I'm lying and I didn't really play "baseball"? The same principle applies to everything else you've listed here.
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.
A blind person can still hear the spatial audio in Everquest. I think they would get the point.
Everything is an evolution and everyone wants to be the next form of that evolution, even if it’s not. Marketing is always going to be one step ahead and once we actually do achieve what the last generation is selling, someone new will be selling you on the next step. Today’s “VR” will look extremely different from 2050 VR. That doesn’t mean today we don’t have some form of VR though. I don’t mind it, it’s a conceptual bucket for today’s expectations. And those of us who keep up with things (like all of us on HN for example) understand one another. What would you recommend we call all these things?
In many cases practitioners already have appropriately non-magical language, for clarity in communication.
*-reality interfaces are "immersive", they don't alter or recreate reality.
What artificial intelligence is is (statistical) "inference".
The cloud are various *-providers, "hosting providers", "storage services", etc. In aggregate, "external" or "3rd party" or "outsourced" (computing) infrastructure.
I said it elsewhere -- what frustrates me is that the rest is marketing, but some engineers are willing to accept and even reproduce it for some reason. When Facebook says they're releasing a new reality development platform for the metaverse though, we should roll our eyes, even if the technology is exciting.
But why is virtual reality associated with small screens and head tracking?
Because it's supposed to simulate reality -- and it does a great job of it. Everquest on a CRT doesn't simulate reality; it's nothing like reality. As the capability of something increases it becomes something else. Cruise control on a car that is sufficiently able to drive a car eventually becomes autopilot. Your own server isn't a cloud but put a large enough of them acting together in a way where each individual machine is entirely redundant and replaceable is a cloud. These words describe actual things. You are a person but why isn't any random clump of cells a person?
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.
why is virtual reality associated with small screens and head tracking?
...because that's what it is? surely you understand that the difference between 3D, near-eye displays and traditional 2D screens warrants a different label
I hated the terms "blog" and "podcast" when they were new. I thought they were so dumb and unnecessary. But they are useful to describe actual things happening in the real word. This is just how the intersection of words and technology works.
These terms have a way of burning people out. I hesitate to use blockchain and A.I. in the same sentence because that's a sure sign the person doesn't have anything to say.
What the hell is "cloud computing"? What is "big data"? What is the "Internet of Things" or "SaaS" or "SEO"? For that matter what is "agile development"?
Just use words to describe technology? Every time I want to say "cloud computing" do I have to say "a service where you use the internet to access software, storage, and processing power that's run on a bunch of server located far away in data center that are owned and managed by a company that specializes in providing these services" instead?
In business you would traditionally call that sort of arrangement "outsourcing". The Internet of Things is okay -- it could have been worse, The Omninet or something.
"outsourcing" is a broad term. Building your widgets in China is also outsourcing.
That's the point though. Manufacturing, logistics, payroll, research, advertising, legal services, ... -- outsourcing certain functions to specialist, often (but not always) cheaper or more efficient companies is a typical business practice. The term is broadly applicable and used where ever this is the case. Since there are well-known business and organizational risks associated with outsourcing, it is conspicuous that we "migrate to the cloud" instead.
Migrate to the cloud has specific meanings. How would you even adequately define it using "outsourcing"? That's just one part of it.
We outsourced our CRM system last year to a certain company. Or you could say we migrated it to the cloud. Either way we had to audit data policies, establish contracts with them, transfer data to them, ensure the same functionality and workflows were replicated, look at the quality and reliability of their system, assign points of contact, make redundant some roles within our company, etc... Many of the things you allude to are implied by either term.
Time-sharing and remote job entry were also reasonable back in the day. You bought time on a computer to run workloads. I don't think they fit so well with the "cloud computing" model in a modern sense technically, but I do envy them for being descriptive, logical terms that describe what is going on. We got the cloud from Google CEO Eric Schmidt who said to a conference in 2006
What’s interesting is that there is an emergent new model. I don’t think people have really understood how big this opportunity really is. It starts with the premise that the data services and architecture should be on servers. We call it cloud computing — they should be in a “cloud” somewhere. . . . And so what's interesting is that the two – "cloud computing and advertising – go hand-in-hand. There is a new business model that's funding all of the software innovation to allow people to have platform choice, client choice, data architectures that are interesting, solutions that are new – and that's being driven by advertising.
- https://www.google.com/press/podium/ses2006.html
It's strange to me that as engineers we accept and even promote marketing language such as this.
It's funny that you have trouble with term "cloud" but you're okay with an equally made up marketing term called "outsourcing".
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.
x mixed with y = join any combination of x and y based on some condition within x and y x augmented by y = change part of x by adding y
x = real world y = virtual world
I think usage is exactly the opposite of what you described.
I haven’t yet seen a phone Augmented Reality app described as Mixed Reality. I have seen HoloLens, Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro described as Mixed Reality and Augmented Reality.
The term "augmented reality" was coined to refer to see-through heads-up displays. Pilot synthetic vision system HUDs have been referred to as augmented reality for decades.
Best I can tell, mixed reality is augmented reality, but with mixed interaction. You hit the fake ball with a real bat in mixed reality and it bounces off the real wall. Maybe you even feel it hit.
The Metaverse is what the Internet is if you add VR. It’s not hard to understand.
I understand. I read Snow Crash. Besides the Metaverse there was also a nuclear powered dog.
My point is this -- by allusion to some concept with which an inventor wishes to form an association in the consumer's mind, their products are to be thought of as something different than they are, something too grand for plain language. This doesn't serve anyone but the inventor.
The "Internet with head-mounted display" is actually pretty cool technology, I'm not against it. My concern is that it shouldn't be sold or even referred to as an alternate form of reality. For the benefit of product sales, or else the egos of certain technologists, language becomes muddied and the very idea about what makes someone "a person" is bastardized. I think this is wrong and very short sighted.
If you use a term like "Virtual Reality" to describe things it eventually just becomes what people describe. Everybody knows what a VR headset is now. Everyone knows what VR is now. That is VR. The allusion is completely gone.
It's like describing snow to someone who has never seen it. No matter what they allusions they have about snow before they see it, once they've seen it, they know that is snow. And everyone they talk to will have the same meaning.
Same with Augmented reality, mixed reality, whatever. Once it becomes mainstream one of these terms will stick and that's just what it will be. Or it'll be so ingrained in the experience that we no longer even use a separate term to describe it.
What is your experience with VR? Have you been to the movies in VR? Or played board games with other players? Have you done social chat applications?
It can also mean just plain olde 2D 3D (according to companies selling metaverse services)
We are like gamers that no longer perceive the improvement in graphics across generations.
Talk to Siri and then talk to ChatGPT if you are feeling that clueless.
I do. I've said it before too -- I like that they called it a "generative pretrained transformer" aka GPT.
You can make gpt be an imaginary friend for children if you want to.
The technology is the technology, the application of it is the magic.
Meta are trying to dazzle you with words because there is nothing fundamental behind any of this metaverse stuff
"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 themselves enforce for their app stores. Entire classes of applications, particularly those that undermine platform-owners' business models are not allowed.
Additionally, Horizon is generally a terrible operating system. Useless and intrusive "social" features out the wazoo, laden with tracking/spyware, and it isn't even good for anything beyond launching apps that take over the whole environment. Want to use your fancy headset to open up apps in 3d space and do some multitaking work? Well 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. If you want to do anything real you need to install an app that launches its own environment for multitasking, but of course then you can only pull in windows from a remote PC, so if you want to run any local applications it's back to basics for you. Oh, and of course you can't mix those remote PC windows with local apps. As poor as Apple's Vision OS is in the multitasking department Horizon falls far behind even it.
Why can't you play BeatSaber without mods?
because they want to use songs they didn't pay for
How do you know that??
That's literally what the mods do :).
There's moral discussions to be had I'm sure, but the purpose of the beat sabre mods is pretty factual :).
Not quite; piracy of the paid DLC is one thing, but modding is to add songs (which should be read as, entire Beatsaber custom-made tracks) that otherwise are not available through any other avenues.
No, that's basically correct. Mods are primarily for downloading community-made tracks/maps for songs not included with the game. There are also officially licensed DLC song packs, but they're quite pricy and still only provide access to a limited selection of tracks.
If I paid for the song (even somewhere else, even on a subscription like spotify/apple music), I should be able to dance/move to it. I don't think one should have to re-buy every song in a videogame. Especially when the work is done for free to put in the dance moves by modders.
You don't pay for the song when you pay for streaming services, you pay to stream it. You have no rights beyond streaming the song.
More likely because they want to use songs that aren't offered except by modding.
There are lots songs for which it is fully legal to listen to without paying for. Many people release songs for people to listen to for free!
This is especially true within the rhythm game community, for which many fans simply like to make rhythm songs and for people to play them.
That is absolutely a valid usecase that should be allowed.
if i want to play a map of alkatraz, which is a song i own, i cannot do so without modding because beatsaber will never release demondice tracks
You can - it's just far less fun than BeatSaber with mods. The biggest improvement is from being able to select from the community list of songs that are available that may better suit your taste than the songs that come built in. It's a rhythm game so using a rhythm you like makes it much more fun.
Besides song choice, the community also produces higher quality charts than the official ones, and offers difficulty that scales much higher.
Lunatics like these can't be sated by the official songs: https://youtu.be/CKwX349aV98 https://youtu.be/sJQSy3KG-oQ?t=33
That first chart averages 12 notes per second for 5 straight minutes and the player only missed a single note.
Scaling even higher?? Lol I can't even play on medium difficulty on the built-in ones. I don't know how people keep up with the high tracks.
I assume there are sort of natural skill ceilings but if you practice with more difficult scenarios and really push yourself you'd be amazed at what you can do. I've got an essential tremor[1] and I usually play on Expert+ for the vanilla tracks which is usually do-able for me.
1. On that note - my tremor does hurt me here too but unlike twitch shooters (which I loved before my tremor got bad) and things like guitar hero (which require comparatively precise movement) beat saber is usually pretty forgiving about precision of placement and angles - so long as your rhythm is correct you can go pretty far with it.
The out of the box track selection is quite weak. The game depends on community made tracks to make it playable in the long term.
Lack of any songs I actually care about, and the actual note mapping from the devs has been pretty bad up until recently. The modding community has had them beat for ages. Without mods the game would be a breif curiosity before I got bored with the provided songs, most of which don't suit my taste.
Mind that "mods" includes "custom tracks".
OG BeatSaber comes with a small-ish selection of tracks, most of them obscure and not generally known. Good or bad, they get boring quickly. Modding lets you expand to arbitrary number of tracks, including pretty much all the ones you like. It's what makes it fun and worth returning to. Not being able to add your own music, makes BeatSaber not worth the sticker price (much less if you're getting Oculus just to play it).
Also note that people were used to this capability, because before BeatSaber became a poster child for Oculus, it was streamed to other headsets from PC, where adding custom tracks was tacitly allowed.
This is ultimately what they want: their owned walled garden, where they get to be the decider, hold the power, track the user's as first party data, etc. It makes perfect sense. They want this to be the next Android OS (with Play Store equivalent of course).
This is really the only move that gets them back in (perhaps only somewhat) with the dwindling ads market.
Much as I don't like it, it is a legitimate tactic. I just don't see it being effective in the current market, even with Apple as a player.
If what they ultimately want is their own walled garden, then wouldn't opening things up be the opposite of what they should do? I mean, it's a lot harder to re-take control that you previously released than it is to hold onto it from the start. Look at Apple's difficulties tighteninng up control on the mac for example. It has to be a very long game. Compare that to the iPhone, iPad, vision OS that have been tightly controlled from the start and they have no difficulties (other than regulatory) holding the reins tightly.
What control are they actually giving up here though? Seems like they’re just adding reach.
If what they ultimately want is their own walled garden, then wouldn't opening things up be the opposite of what they should do?
The are only opening things up in their marketing speak. There is not actual opening up happening. "Open" sounds cool, inclusive, and like you are creating a stable platform for others to build on top of (IBM opened up x86, Linus opened up Linux, etc).
Judge by what they do not what they say -- most valid advice in this age of lies.
They want this to be the next Android OS (with Play Store equivalent of course).
Or the next Apple with the next iOS ?
iOS can only run on Apple hardware.
Google famously made Android "open source" and allows third party manufacturers to run it.
Dwindling Ads market? Which planet do you live?
And I'm still forced to have some form or variant of a Facebook-touched account, even if they want to change the front company behind it.
I don't want to sign in to use a headset, period.
But you do sign in to use an Android phone, or iPhone. Although, I agree with the point that someone would never want to sign in with their Facebook account there, with FB account holding so much personal information about them! For gaming, somebody would rather prefer to use an alias like dungeonmaster669 instead of their verified actual identity.
I also basically have to have a smartphone, and smartphones are entirely self contained devices.
On a scale of trust for how companies are handling my data, Apple, and to a much lesser extent, Google, are still more trustworthy than Facebook, I feel.
You don’t have to sign in to use an iPhone or Android phone, though you to have to sign in to use their app stores. Presumably with the advent of DMA though you can avoid creating an Apple ID or Google account if using a 3rd party store (though probably you’ll need some other account for that store, that’s how it always goes…).
Fe: gaming - yes, this is why Apple had separate IDs for gaming center.. and I think Microsoft does this too for Xbox vs Microsoft account?
On Android at least, you don't have to sign in. You obviously "miss out" on some "features" that way, but it is usable.
Modded beat saber is the only reason I still have kept my original quest
I was half tempted to get a quest after playing beat saber on a friend's device. it's kind of amazing how much better it is than the next best thing you could do on one, some team just knocked it out of the park designing and implementing that game
Pistol whip is pretty good too. Those two get your light saber sword fight fantasy, and the Matrix Gun-Fu fantasy :)
And though I haven't an athletic bone in my body, the fitness / boxing apps are actually a great way to get some exercise in.
Generally, quest 2 was one of the things I haven't had any interest whatsoever until after a year's campaign, my friend basically forced me to try it during a visit :-). I have one now, largely for those 3 apps.
Hey, at least it supports webXR and there's no way to control that content.
Plus, it doesn’t have the Apple logo.
They mention Steam Link but don't mention it isn't allowed to sell in-app purchases (maybe a decision on Steam's side to be fair; they dont want games on Steam themselves having a "remote desktop" overlay workaround where you buy DLC without paying the 30% revenue tax).
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
As usual I get quite hopeful when I hear about a new operating system. We so absolutely need paths to move away from what we have today.
I didn't even know what "mixed reality operating system" was so that made me hopeful. May include some nifty quantum processing.
Alas, it is just stuff built on top of Android, which is built on top of the Linux kernel.
Perhaps "Meta Horizon SDK for Android" would be a better label?`
What unexplored space do you think is ripe for a totally new operating system?
Ironically, general purpose computing. Like servers, smartphones, etc. The premise of Fuchsia, as a prominent example, is to build an OS that operates more like a sandboxed/capabilities-based microservices platform, with structured IPC across processes. All major platforms both cloud and clients (even browsers) have gone to great lengths to deliver precisely that on top of existing OSs, with many expensive layers and hacks. It would be a lot nicer to have it built into the OS.
Does that mean it’s truly ripe? I don’t know.
Dumb, probably overly broad Q: I'm looking to build a hardware project off a flutter app. Linux on Raspberry Pi is the straightforward option. But I want an excuse to build on Fuchsia.
Let's pretend Fuchsia is just as easy to deploy on (I'm 99% sure it won't be).
Does Fuchsia buy me any cool stuff long-term that isn't possible on Linux?
Like, what's my excuse for going with Fuchsia other than "(handwaves) it'll be more secure"? (to be clear, im teasing myself and my understanding of Fuchsia, not your explanation)
Let's pretend Fuchsia is just as easy to deploy on (I'm 99% sure it won't be).
To stress this beyond a doubt: don’t do this unless you’re willing to become an early-masochistic-martyr adopter. My knowledge is outdated by years though. I don’t know how far you’d get today.
Does Fuchsia buy me any cool stuff long-term that isn't possible on Linux?
I don’t think so. Fuchsia shines with capability-based multitenancy, and basically anywhere you would have different processes from different vendors communicating together (like a mobile OS with multiple partially trusted apps that may need to talk to one another). If you own/audit all code on your device, especially in a single app, you don’t gain anything from that.
Some auxiliary stuff like content addressable file system and OTA deployments may be attractive, but I have no idea if those things are actually supported or even around these days.
Oh, one thing that may be worth tracking in your domain is how fuchsia is progressing in terms of power management. If you’re on arm and battery power, and they prioritize it, it may beat Linux & android in terms of low power devices. But that’s pure speculation.
Unikernels. Throw away the OS completely, and just run the server application on the hardware/hypervisor. That would be my answer for servers. You kinda don't need an OS for them.
A space where operating systems exist to service the operator and not the OS vendor.
One that isn’t just a vehicle to push ads and subscriptions to <blank>-as-a-service or otherwise act as a siphon to send telemetry up to the mothership.
Yes, I know *nix exists but it’s so fractured and every little variant has its own quirks making it difficult to be a general purpose OS that the masses could adopt, IMO.
It seems like if you created a new operating system to solve these problems and it gained some traction, you'd fracture the landscape even more.
Unless your operating system happened to be superior to all the existing solutions in all aspects with no tradeoffs.
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/
Yes, I know *nix exists but it’s so fractured and every little variant has its own quirks making it difficult to be a general purpose OS that the masses could adopt, IMO.
Yes, but to be clear: the main hurdle for adoption is fragmentation across GUIs/installs/package management across distros, which is out of scope (for better or worse) from the POV of Linux. Linux is a technological marvel, and if “they” could sort out these issues it would be the shortest path to mainstream appeal, by far. I’m certain this is technically feasible but also extremely challenging to pull off from a leadership perspective. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a solution the majority would embrace. There is a ton of flame wars to overcome, hills people will die on.
Dreaming of a world where normal PCs could have an OS on the quality level of MacOS with the software ecosystem but Linux is just too fragmented that you can't build anything coherent or reliable on an interface level in the way MacOS is.
This isn't saying Linux is bad, its great at what it does and being modular but how can something like MacOS spell check where it works on any text field coherently across any app work in a modular world like that.
Windows just feels like bad decisions made decades ago hold it back, it can't even open a folder of 20 thumbnails without choking, MacOS can handle 10,000 like a knife through butter. Can't even find a file opened yesterday when you search for it in the start menu by exact name, MacOS manages in a fraction of a second. Maybe the right team could rewrite all the things causing this jank but you'd essentially have to replace so much of the company that caused it anyway that it doesn't seem feasible.
Still use all 3 for different tasks but MacOS is the only one that feels like an operating system should feel in 2024.
We so absolutely need paths to move away from what we have today.
Why though? What necessitates our move away from what we have?
Diversity = freedom
Nope
"Nope" doesn't really contribute to the discussion. Why does diversity not equal freedom?
I was amused and interested when I found out that HaikuOS is not Linux, nor even the Linux Kernel, but a reimplementation of BeOS (concepts mostly) on the NewOS kernel.
I've been dwelling in some nostalgia recently and miss some of the earlier days when everything wasn't so homogenous. This is all rose-colored glasses though, as I don't miss when everything was also extremely incompatible. And slow. And expensive.
I've been dwelling in some nostalgia recently and miss some of the earlier days when everything wasn't so homogenous.
You are not alone in this. I see announcements like this one from Meta and others like Oxide - companies out there having a swing in a different direction and it makes me glad that there are people out there thinking outside the monoculture that computing feels like it's become sometimes.
Sure, standardisation has been good in some respects, but I feel like the incentive to really innovate (as opposed to incrementally improve) in the operating system and compute space has really dried up.
Android is already quite cool compared with what traditional OSes happen to be.
For starters it is what Microsoft has failed to do with Longhorn, because contrary to having internal sabotage from the kernel team, the Android team doubled down on their efforts to make a managed userspace actually work in a mainstream product.
Dalvik sucked balls against Sony and Nokia J2ME implementations, with its DEX interpreter, yet they managed to create ART with quite cool mix of JIT/AOT/PGO, and a very modern GC.
Then it follows up, that for all the praise Plan 9 gets on hacker circles, Android's approach to user space closely follows on Inferno with Limbo, Plan 9's successor that many of its praisers tend to forget.
Followed by being able to encapsulate Linux kernel into a micro-kernel like stack, where most drivers are process based using Android IPC to talk to the kernel, and can be written in a mix of Java, C++, and now Rust.
If only they handn't screw Sun, and stepped away when the ship went down, maybe they could have saved themselves some headaches, however Google isn't really a language designer company, so maybe that was for the greater good nontheless.
Ah, and using AIDL is so much better developer experience than dealing with the primitive COM tooling on Windows.
Limbo and Inferno are partially alive in Go and plan9/9front. On J2ME, it worked well in legay devices; but for modern usage, Android's Java-like API was a godsend for the developers, as they could seamlessly transition from one Java-like lang to another one. Heck, J2ME interpreters for Android do exist, and I think lots of them just use shims...
Perhaps "Meta Horizon SDK for Android" would be a better label?`
Yes, the same as Android SDK for Linux. But it became just Android.
What about "Meta Horizon SDK for Android SDK for Linux?"
Alas, it is just stuff built on top of Android, which is built on top of the Linux kernel.
Look into HarmonyOS, Fuchsia, LionsOS, Managarm, Haiku and Genode.
May include some nifty quantum processing.
While we're at it they might do a bit of dabbling in reversing entropy and solving the halting problem - it's only impossible in flat space-time after all.
“Operating system” is being used to refer to the UI for running and managing apps (not the original under-the-hood sense of the word for how app share resources, manage security, etc.). For better or worse, that is how consumers understand it.
And you seriously expect an ad company to improve anything? What's Google missing?
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 super high end machine like specific CNCs or table saws etc.
Where would that fit in between watching others do it on YouTube for entertainment, and doing it for real where you can hold (or eat) the result at the end?
It seems one of the primary tradeoffs in edutainment is between actually learnable teaching and “content porn” where you sub content with food, cars, tech, etc.
When I think of truly learnable cooking videos the first thing that comes to mind is Kenji’s POV cooking videos / streams. Seems like something that could be relatively adaptable to a AR / MR format in a way that would differentiate it from other (still valid) content like the relatively educational food porn from Alex / @FrenchGuyCooking.
I'm actually making a version of Kenji's macaroni and cheese (except with shredded baby back rib meat added) for lunch as we speak! His channel is great.
I would also be interested in a Chef Jean Pierre simulator, where you learn classic French recipes in a subtly deranged metaverse with a butter-based economy.
This the gap that the porn websites will need to figure out how to fill for it to be a success.
That would be Ender's Game. Please don't eat the egg, though.
More hassle than a YouTube video, which is already more hassle than an article, but considering we’re talking about mixed reality, the ability to do the soldering, next to a detailed 3D model of exactly what you should be doing, in your line of sight, is a big selling point to me.
As cheap to perform in as YouTube video, almost as vivid as the real thing, but again with most of the bullshit ("reality has a lot of detail") removed, just like with a YouTube video. Ideally, it would be suitable for experimenting with something you might want to then try out for real, but which would be too risky (time, money, embarrassment) to start with for real.
Training critical steps before actually doing it.
If its good enough, you can train cutting a 1000 onions without cutting 1000 onions.
With complex machines, you can learn how to control them and than focus on actually using them instead of first learning were all the buttons are.
I really want some good VR train sims. It’s vaguely educational! A standalone quest train sim would be an instant buy for me. Probably not for many other people.
I used to play Derail Valley on Steam, which has optional VR support.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/588030/Derail_Valley/
But I agree with the sentiment. Sim games are the killer app of VR and I just want more sims. Where's my Das Boot simulator?
Time to hook up my Quest 3 to my PC. Cheers
Oh damn! I'll take a look! Thanks!!
Derail Valley is a good one on Steam. Obviously that isn't standalone but it works pretty well with SteamVR streamed to a headset.
Virtual welding training is already a thing:
https://www.lincolnelectric.com/en/education/training-progra...
https://www.fronius.com/en/welding-technology/our-expertise/...
yeah but not mainstream and it needs accessories and is probably more for teaching schools.
I would love to see all of this in a free/paid marketplace and with a basic learning progress framework behind it.
A previous company I worked at was using mixed reality years ago (>4) to train manufacturing operators on manufacturing processes.
It ended up looking like a simulated workbench with low-detail models of CAD parts that needed to be assembled - it was pretty cool. Engineering companies are very ready for this technology.
A local school here trains nurses in a VR environment that is situated inside a fully built out wing of a hospital. The headsets come down from the ceiling, all the equipment is real, but there are dummies in the beds, and some observation screens for others who supervise.
Coincidentally, I saw Meta ads plastered all over London today - showcasing a welder who claims she practiced/learned welding with a Meta Oculus sitting at home.
Why would you want to see it "from Meta"? There's no way a single company, that isn't even in the education business, can product that kind of content and keep it up to date. Meta's play is the right one – make an OS and software platform and let people build whatever they want on it.
Yeah, we could call that the... Job Simulator ;)
This is awesome, I'm waiting for a VR manufacturer to add an HDMI input. Then I could use it as a monitor without jumping through a bunch of hoops.
The XREAL glasses are trying to fill the niche of a headset that just mirrors a HDMI input on a big virtual screen.
I don't think anyone is currently making an all-purpose VR headset which can also do HDMI mirroring though.
I understand, but it seems trivial to add HDMI input here.
Technically you can just remote desktop into a computer from your VR headset, but that won't work in every scenario.
You don't want it. It's disorienting and uncomfortable.
XREAL as well as some drone FPV goggles support non-/partially-head-tracked HDMI input, albeit with much smaller FOV for comfort reasons.
There are quite a few options for non-head-tracked wearable display type headsets. Those generally get pitched as "portable cinema" though, e.g.:
https://goovis.net/products/g3max
(This particular one uses USB-C for video input, but they also sell an HDMI adapter for it.)
Of course, in practice it's just a display and can be used for any purpose. I do appreciate the fact that you don't have to mess around with all the usual VR setup chores with these - it's really very plug and play.
I would be worried about forking over $1000 to a fly by night company for a product which could easily break.
(xreal is also in this category imo but at least its a bit cheaper)
FWIW despite the weird name that invokes cheap Amazon noname brand vibes, these guys have been around for a few years now. They do have other headsets that are in the same ballpark price-wise as XREAL, too - e.g. GOOVIS Young, which is pretty decent for on-the-go use with a smartphone etc. I've owned that one for three years and used it many times with no issues before splurging on G3 Max.
And yeah, $1K is quite a lot, but the 65 degree FOV and 2560x1440 (per eye) OLED that you get for it really does look amazing - I haven't regretted that purchase in the slightest. It's rather bulky, though, although still nowhere near as heavy as VR headsets. Still, not something I'd want to carry on the go.
I hope we'll get 4K per eye some day with this tech. Whichever brand does it first for reasonable $$$, it'll completely replace my primary display.
Thank you! that detail helps a lot. I wish these companies were better at giving off a professional vibe when they make genuinely good products
For Quest 3 specifically, "remote desktop into a computer" actually works surprisingly well if you 1) avoid the stock Meta software and use Steam Link instead, and 2) use wired connection to maximize bandwidth and minimize latency.
The second part needs some explaining. One undocumented feature of Quest 3 is that it supports (some) USB-C Ethernet adapters. There isn't really any UI for it that I know of; things just work so long as DHCP is there. This then gives you a direct wired 1GBps link to the PC, which Steam Link will happily utilize.
I have xreal glasses and a Quest 3. There's so much friction in using Steam Link/Quest Link/Virtual Desktop that it's barely worth using over the xreal airs. You need to use controllers to turn them on, and if you lose tracking or exit your guardian, the display turns off and you have to grab your controllers again to make any adjustments.
I agree; I use Goovis G3 Max myself when I need this kind of thing (which is bulkier and not AR, but has better FOV and higher resolution). But for people who already have a Quest 3, it can still be a useful trick sometimes.
Even the stock one is pretty good these days.
Imo a good WAP connected directly to your computer works just as well as with a high end cable. I have both and didn't notice a quality difference either way.
It's fairly trivial to add a HDMI/DP input which directly drives the panels in the headset through a mux (e.g. the Pico Neo3 Link could run standalone or from DP input), but that's probably not what you want, because in that case the HDMI source has to perform all of the 3D rendering and lens correction, using software that probably only supports Windows. If you want to be able to plug in any random HDMI source and have that rendered on a virtual screen then the headset needs a SoC with a low-latency HDMI receiver built in, so it can ingest the video and process it onboard before displaying it, and HDMI input isn't very common on these mobile SoCs.
Maybe you could convert the HDMI input into MIPI and feed that into the SoCs camera interface, but I think headsets like the Quest are already pretty much maxing out the SoCs camera capabilities just to read in all the actual cameras used for inside-out tracking. There's no bandwidth left to shove an extra HD video feed in as well.
tl;dr HDMI input that turns the device into a dumb PCVR headset: easy. HDMI input that mirrors arbitrary video: hard.
I thought about getting some xreal glasses, but I think you have to activate them to use them, which annoys me.
You're not going to get HDMI (or at least not directly), but you can now get DisplayPort with many of the XR headsets. They're primarily using the alt-mode of USB-C as the cable is re-used for power as well.
Which headsets support this?
The original Vive has HDMI input.
Hmmm... I wonder if FPV goggles (from drones) could do what you want? lots of them have HDMI inputs...
LOL. The problem is the shitty software. SteamVR and Oculus apps are worthless and flaky, but when they work, there's zero need for any damn cables.
PS: I have a barely used Meta Quest Pro for sale. ;)
Then I could use it as a monitor without jumping through a bunch of hoops.
bold of you to assume your hdmi cable won't naturally form some hoops.
Am I the only weirdo who does not want, under any circumstance, to move to a world where head-mounted computer systems are normal? It's bad enough we have the things in our pockets. I don't want mine mounted in front of my eyes.
I can hear the replies already, "If you don't want one, don't use one," but if something becomes normal enough, the outside world does change around it. Why invest in street signs, for example? Who prints maps or encyclopedias now? Or why make anything actually aesthetically pleasing if 98% of the people who are going to interact with it will see it through a digital lens, where you can change your designs on the fly and for so much less cost?
It's not just that I don't want to use it. I don't want it to become normal among other people either.
I fondly remember the times where Glassholes were rightfully mocked. Now it's cool to drive around in your Tesla wearing an Apple Vision. It really seems to have become very normalized.
It's funny to me because pretty much every single issue that the Google Glass had still persists:
- it's too damn expensive (you look like a rich klutz wearing one)
- the content is mostly just normal games and videos that you watch in stereo
- the FOV and camera resolution are too poorly miniaturized to do anything serious with
Why doesn't it surprise me that public perception did a 180 when they saw the brushed-aluminum model with an Apple logo on it? At this rate Apple should sponsor a second Hindenberg just to check if their luck's run dry.
Are you thinking of the Quest or something? Google Glass didn't have content or a FOV.
Now it's cool to drive around in your Tesla wearing an Apple Vision.
This may have more to do with your particular social circle (or mine) than a general trend in pop culture. I don't know anyone who thinks any of those are cool.
Being cool and getting a lot of views/clicks should not be confused.
Part of the difference is that Glass was uploading images (and audio?) to Google for them to use however they like. That was the asshole invasion of privacy. People trust Apple more, right or wrong.
It's only a natural extension of the things that we have in our pocket. I would rather be immersed in the whole virtual world rather than stare at a 7 inch screen for a large part of my day.
Lets face it, we spend considerable amounts of time in front of a screen. A bigger and more immersive screen will be a better experience for everyone.
I would rather be immersed in the whole virtual world rather than stare at a 7 inch screen for a large part of my day
I would rather do neither of these things.
Well said.
I would rather _not_ be immersed in the whole virtual world AND _not_ stare at a 7 inch screen for a large part of my day.
(written from a 16 inch laptop that I stare at for work)
I've been trying to exist more (in terms of "time-spent") without my phone in my pocket as it seems to be primarily a driver of distraction.
I am fairly sure that 90% of people are on your side and only emotionally stunted weirdos like Zuck think this is a good idea.
It feels like a competition to own a comparatively narrow market (if we're talking about VR). And, within that context, it may indeed be a good idea. But I just cannot see VR headsets being anything approaching common, primarily because people do not like tech accessories they cannot put away unless they have a high fashion value or effectively look like something else. VR headsets, today, check none of these boxes. AR might end up being a different story.
If we had lightweight reality augmenting glasses (as in not much more than a pair of reading glasses), I’d have that in a heartbeat depending on use.
But yeah, I’d personally not want much beyond that.
Of course, to each their own.
For what it's worth, we are many decades away from this being the new normal in daily life. It'll more likely start to chip away at iPad and computer sales though.
As for your examples, such as maps/encyclopedias, they still do even in the smartphone age.
Or why make anything actually aesthetically pleasing if 98% of the people who are going to interact with it will see it through a digital lens, where you can change your designs on the fly and for so much less cost?
There's a great movie called Virtual Nightmare that is basically about this. But I don't think it's such a bad thing, to be honest. We'll have a world where art can be more easily exchanged and public spaces become more collaborative. And the flip side is that hopefully, "offline" will have less ads and there will be a renewed focus on more indie and subversive decoration.
Change isn't always bad, and it isn't always good.
The Vernor Vinge novel Rainbows End famously presents a future in which people's interaction with the world is mediated by augmented reality via contact lenses. It's not presented as a necessarily bad thing, but who actually controls access to information is a very important consideration.
Just giving an anecdotal response that I am very much the opposite. I'm absolutely thrilled for that future. There's something magical about that blend of real + digital that to me feels more human than sitting behind a desk and staring at a screen.
It will definitely be a cultural change though, and I totally get how that can be almost repulsive from a different perspective. I just want you to be aware though that there are people who at least are interested in that future.
You have no choice, so no point worrying about it.
No, you’re not the only one, or even in the minority (outside of the terminally online tech bubble). I feel the same way.
But I also see the value of AR/VR to a number of industries that need more visual interaction metaphors. CAD/CAM, architecture, and real estate come to mind. I could totally see buying a house across the country “sight unseen” based on a 3D scan (if regulatory guards are in place to prevent modifying the scan).
Having an open OS architecture for AR/VR apps is key to making this happen. Current offerings all fall short in various ways, so I’m curious to try this out.
Very strange how many people are here to dunk on Zuck. He's opening up an OS. THAT'S AWESOME! We should celebrate that in principle, no matter how we feel about him or VR in general.
Oculus still requires a Facebook login; don't you see the conflict?
it requires a meta sign-in, which isn't a facebook account.
potato <=> potato (sounds on)
no, those are completely different… a facebook account is an account on a social network that requires you to use your real name or else you get banned. a facebook account links you to your real life identity and your real life social circles
a meta account is an account that you can optionally link to their social medias, but it isn’t required
meta accounts are basically just oculus accounts
I don't need an account to use my monitor or my TV. Why do I need one for a VR Headset?
Because these aren’t dumb headsets that just plug into your PC. These are standalone headsets that handle the whole thing — they aren’t just a display and controllers, they take the role of the PC too.
So, needing an account for these is more comparable to needing an account to use Steam
I don't need Steam to run my games or to pipe data into my Valve Index either.
It's still unclear to me why an account is needed. I mean, I get the profit and control motive, I just don't understand the technical reasons.
Yeah, I guess I do agree that you should be able to just run it without an account and load apps from elsewhere
I doubt there is any actual technical reason, just profit/control. I mean, it’s Meta, would you really put it past them?
I don't know Zuckerberg, so I don't know his motivation, nor the executives of Meta. I haven't really read any of their work.
Profit and control fit the data points, but I suppose I could "put it past them" if a better model explained everything.
Because you need to buy apps to make use of your VR headset. Lets put it this way, do you need an account to use your Iphone?
No, in fact, I don't.
My device is not signed into any Apple services right now or any Apple IDs. Anything my company needs to deploy gets pushed by MDM or via enterprise-signed applications.
You just told me that you are part of the 0.0000001% of users and so your point is moot
you really should be factually correct when dunking on something
It hasn't been called Oculus for ages and it doesn't require a Facebook login. Meta accounts are stand alone and completely different, you can create as many as you want without giving your identity, just an email address, you don't need to link it to anything.
to third-party hardware makers.
And it's still based on Android.
The reason will be the same as for Android by Google: Control the market.
Dont be fooled by the marketing language.
All they are doing is allowing some companies to pay them billions of dollars to put meta onto their own headsets. Similar to how Valve allowed a few companies to put SteamOS onto their own hardware to create 'Steam Machines'.
I cant think of a single time in history when this tactic has worked. and made a product or brand more successful. Please correct me if I am wrong.
If hardware manufacturers actually wanted this, Meta would be announcing a licensing deal.
This is a threat to Apple: if Apple doesn't relent on advertising/privacy in VisionOS, then Meta will do to VR what Google did for smartphone's: sell the market to maintain advertising access.
Meta doesn't care about money or mindshare on VR. They just want ad access.
Apple and to a lesser extent Google have high trust. Nobody trusts Meta at all. So who would adopt their OS?
I think apple has high trust only because they repeat their message all the time.
However, just buy an apple device and try to use it. You cannot use it without apple allowing it. You must connect to apple and activate your device. And as part of activation, you get a chance to read apple's privacy policy. Literally thousands of pages of privacy policy without the ability to DO anything, like say "No". And everything in the os phones home, continuously.
If you are a european and disable location services, and use a european vpn, apple still won't let you use the european app store because the phone knows your location. sigh.
apple still won't let you use the european app store because the phone knows your location.
The national app store you get to use (the region of your iphone) is based on your billing address + card details (which obviously are validated when you enter them), not your phone location.
Here is the comment that said different?
Not sure why you wouldn't put Google and Meta in the same basket.
Both are advertising companies with a history of working to undermine pro-privacy initiatives.
It's an inherently subjective assessment obviously, but I can justify it with e.g. survey results https://theharrispoll.com/partners/media/axios-harrispoll-10....
Apple and Google have high trust?
In what world?
In terms of privacy, Apple has more trust, yes, but the daily stream of zero days on iPhones hurt it by a good margin. I won't even start talking about Google's privacy issues...
I fully trust apple photos / g photos, on an iphone.
Idk/idc about the "daily 0 days" that you referenced, I do care about being able to know with absolute certainty that my photos will be there 20 years from now.
As a Quest user: mostly younger devs. I see 18-22yo developers who do not care about the history of Meta making very impressive games that attract large amounts of their peers, adding micro-transactions along the way to fund their development, and it works, they make a large amount of money and have very active communities on Discord.
What are the names of the games?
And that is weird. Apple gives Chinese government direct access to user data. Apple obeys every demand from China and Russia. Meanwhile Meta communications director Andy Stone just got 6 years in russian prison for allowing people to say mean things about russia.
"Got" as in got convicted in absentia. He's not in prison!
Meta isn't even trying to get anything on Vision OS at all, I'm sure they have no interest or care about that until and unless it becomes a mass market product.
They don't want to be locked out of freedom to do what they want, and that's a primary motivation here it's true. But the obsessive focus on ad revenue that people assume they have is pretty far from their thoughts in the VR/AR space at this point. They have complete faith that being the dominant owner of the dominant platform that they think the future of computing will revolve around (I'm not arguing this, but I'm satisfied it's what Zuckerberg believes) will yield sufficient value to be worthwhile and they aren't worried about how it happens at this point.
they want ad access because they care about money and mindshare (a term I hadn't heard of until reading your comment, so thank you for that!)
Meta has a lot of work to do on DevEx for non-gaming experiences. Say what you want with the Vision Pro, but it comes with a lot of niceities like SwiftUI. When you develop with the Quest, you're stuck with Unity or Unreal Engine -- it's almost too much freedom to develop simple productivity apps.
It's all going to end up in JavaScript anyway.
I say this as a joke, yet: https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-unity-webgl
Simply rendering your Unity Application within your React Application is just the beginning! The Unity Context exposes a lot more fun functions and properties to play around with such as two way communication or requesting fullscreen or a pointerlock. The possibilities are endless, what's next is up to you!
I don't hate it. JS has its worts, but so does every language. I don't think there is a single language even close to JS for lowering the bar of entry to software development. All of the bad things about it that "real computer science" folks complain about are the exact same features which give it a far more broad reach than Rust or Golang. Software development experiences the exact same problem that the internet at large has suffered. The lower and lower bar of entry invites less and less competent folks to create things they never before would have been able to create. Some of these things are genuinely useful and we benefit greatly by lowering the bar, and most of these things end up being shit because the people who made them really had no clue what they were doing.
Lowering the bar of participation greatly increases the amount of shit that is created, but also increases the amount of exceptional examples which can come from a domain. If 80% of everything created is almost complete garbage, then lowering the bar of entry for participating will exponentially increase the amount of shit out there. But it will also enable a few really great apps which wouldn't have existed otherwise. I think we need better filtering than to raise the bar so only true experts can participate.
Or it just happened to monopolise the browser at a time when the web was being invented, and has nothing to do with the features of the language.
As a language for new developers is terrible: 100 different ways to do anything, most of them a muddle of paradigms that's inexplicable to anyone without 2 decades of experience, and so on.
Imagine a new developer using ChatGPT to generate: python, C, go, etc. vs. generating javascript. Most of the generated js is incomphrensible to newbies, but for the others generally obvious.
Or it just happened to monopolise the browser at a time when the web was being invented, and has nothing to do with the features of the language
But applets were doing a lot more in the 90's and Flash dominated into the 2010s. However you feel about JS today, it's difficult to say it was all "first-mover advantage".
A video about their upcoming spatial SDK ("augments") already leaked [0] and you are correct, it's based on JavaScript, using their Spark toolkit [1] which is hardly surprising - when the company already ships a production AR dev kit, why would they not use it?
Atwood's law
Don’t they also have a web view wrapper for 2D tools?
for 2D you can also plain old android apps, they work here. the point though is that there's not that much room for 3D stuff without going through either unity or unreal or writing everything yourself from scratch.
if your goal is to make some sort of `spatial computing` tool, well there nothing here you can use. each app is it's own little silo that has little room for interaction. I'd love to be able to write my own custom apps that can exist in the home screen/environment and that can interact with each other in non trivial ways. it would make it feel more like a personal space rather than a 3D slideshow that I can use to launch games.
OpenXR Mobile SDK is the native development option for the Quest devices:
https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/native/android/mo...
I skimmed through it, but can't find the programming language without downloading the whole SDK. Is it Java, or Kotlin? Or something else?
At one point in time the React/React Native teams put out a blog post devoid of any actual details about “multi platform” support and mentioned VR in it. I’m surprised I haven’t hear anything else about it since.
Yeah it's kind of mind-boggling to me that the creators of React (which SwiftUI is ofc heavily inspired by) and the most successful cross-platform quasi-native library (React Native), have not managed to bring those powers to their biggest investment.
I truly don't get it.
Reposting a comment I wrote on a comparison with Vision Pro here, which is very relevant here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39830713
The biggest innovation with Vision Pro is visionOS. visionOS provides native app frameworks, so developers can build apps for it. That sounds ridiculously obvious, and yet its something Meta have failed to offer for years. Every app on Quest has to reinvent how buttons work, how a scroll view works, how far away from the user the content should be etc.. and every app works differently. On visionOS, all of this is handled by Apple, and every app looks and feels the same.
Meta does have standardized utilities for translating movement to touch/drag/etc. interactions on arbitrary virtual surfaces:
https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2022/11/22/buildin...
https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/unity/unity-isdk-...
But it doesn't seem (AFAIK) to answer the other side of this, which is the UI design system so apps have a consistent look and feel. Which is perhaps more common coming from a game development perspective, but ever since the Mac OS shareware days, Apple's understood that it's empowering to a certain kind of developer if you make it easy/the default path for them to build experiences that match a standardized look and feel. I'm honestly surprised that Meta didn't at least make an optional SDK for this.
You can also use Godot (although def has the too much freedom issue) and a-frame as well. The latter might be more attractive to webdevs
Is it based on some prior art (BSD, Linux...), or a new proprietary OS written from scratch? The post is not too rich in actual information, beside that now other tech-giants can use it too...
I can't recall when I first heard the name "OS" used to mean just another linux distro, whereas my increasingly old-man brain expects the term OS to mean a unique kernel, not a repackaging of a different one. Certainly by the 2010s that usage was common.
I feel like these days some would even call something an "OS" if it's running in a docker container, without providing any kernel at all. Which is to say the meaning of the term is expanding.
From personal experience as far back as the 80's (and from my understanding going back before that as well), OS has never meant kernel.
An Operating System is the collection of software that allows you to operate a computer, so that means kernel, program loader, simple text editor, simple disk management, etc.
As computer users became more savvy, and hardware became more powerful, more and more functionality was included in the OS (graphical interfaces, utility apps, etc.).
I don't think many people would have trouble calling Android an operating system, and that's just the Linux kernel with utility apps, loader, and app libraries, yet very different from something like Redhat.
I don't think it's a stretch in the least to call Horizon an OS.
From personal experience as far back as the 80's (and from my understanding going back before that as well), OS has never meant kernel.
I definitely heard it used to literally mean only the kernel. Circa 20 years ago and earlier.
For example, if we look at "Operating system" on Wikipedia from 2006:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Operating_system&...
Most current usage of the term "operating system" today, by both popular and professional sources, refers to all the software that is required in order for the user to manage the system and to run third-party application software for that system.
Note it says "most current usage". That is because the usage was changing at that time, or had only recently changed. (I picked 2006 because I remember it changing around then.) If we go back another 2 years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Operating_system&...
In computing, an operating system (OS) is the system software responsible for the direct control and management of hardware and basic system operations ...
Sure sounds like that doesn't include userland. Definitions which include userland are marked as "colloquial".
Famously in the 1990s, Microsoft tried to argue in court that an OS included a web browser, and that discussion is cited in these old articles... Many reasonable people at the time thought that position was bullshit.
I definitely heard it used to literally mean only the kernel. Circa 20 years ago and earlier.
You may have, but it was a nonstandard usage. Even your 2004 Wikipedia article distinguishes between OS and kernel. Userland is certainly part of it.
AmigaDOS, 1991, manual p22: "Each AmigaDOS process represents a particular process of the operating system— for example, the filing system [...] AmigaDOS provides a process that you can use, called a Command Line Interface or Shell. (https://archive.org/details/1991-baker-jesup-et-al-the-amiga...)
MS-DOS 6.22 (1994) concise user's guide consistently refers to the entire thing including command.com as the operating system (the kernel here is named msdos.sys.) (https://ia801204.us.archive.org/33/items/msdos_manual_622/ms...)
Hell, the whole Linux vs GNU/Linux thing, which has been around since 1992 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy), was explicitly about the fact that "Linux" is just the name of the kernel.
I definitely heard it used to literally mean only the kernel. Circa 20 years ago and earlier.
You're correct that people have been conflating the kernel and the operating system as the same thing for a long time, but it's not technically correct to call "Linux", for example, an operating system. Stallman would appreciate that people stop doing that ;)
I do like the fact that you just accepted the evolution of the term rather than having a rant about how it changed and eventually being accused in the replies of gatekeeping the term os
A flavor of android
Ooof that's a bummer, I hope that doesn't translate to the typical "Android developer experience".
Would you rather have the typical "iOS developer experience" and XCode? Or are you under the impression that Android development hasn't progressed? Additionally, there is also Flutter which is starting to account for a good percentage of new apps.
Yes I would indeed take the iOS developer experience and Xcode anytime over the mess that is the Android SDK, Android NDK, Gradle (or whatever the current build system flavour of the month is), Android Studio, Java, Kotlin, ... and I bet for VR/AR one needs to fall back to native code to get any sort of performance, and the Android NDK is by far the most user hostile SDK I have seen across all platforms since I started with computing in the mid-80s (followed closely by the Android SDK and Android Studio) and all of that only improves at a glacial pace, if at all.
This long-term investment that began on the mobile-first foundations of the Android Open Source Project has produced a full mixed reality operating system used by millions of people.
Which gives some context to the calls for Google to bring the play store content library to Horizon.
Isn't it based on android?
"This long-term investment that began on the mobile-first foundations of the Android Open Source Project has produced a full mixed reality operating system used by millions of people."
Hopefully they stick to a proper license model with AOSP as a cornerstone.
And we encourage the Google Play 2D app store to come to Meta Horizon OS, where it can operate with the same economic model it does on other platforms.
It sounds like they are specifically not open to third party app stores selling native AR/VR ("3D") apps. I can see why Google might not want to participate if they're not allowed to compete.
This feels like a response to complaints that Meta is hypocritical when complaining about closed platforms while running one themselves. But they aren't open sourcing the OS. I don't know why any OEMs would want to compete with Meta's hardware subsidized by app store revenue when they continue to own the exclusive store for native AR/VR apps. Maybe there's an app revenue share to sweeten the deal for hardware partners?
I think you're overindexing on "2D."
The Play store is full of flat apps, designed for phones and tablets. There are a gajillion of them, and FB wants them in their headsets.
It's not about not wanting competition - it's about wanting people to have more than 100 apps available when they use a Meta headset.
But why would I as a user want to use those flat apps in VR, when I already have a phone and a tablet?
Is that what the majority of Vision Pro users are doing in VR? Projecting flat monitors around.
I can see the point of projecting a huge flat monitor in VR to, say, write code on it.
A mobile app, not so much.
Well, kinda required for proper usage IMO. Let's forget display limitations and pretend I can project a giant code editor straight onto my eyeballs. I don't care about it if I have to take it off, to do any of the following:
- Watch YouTube as I do something else
- Listen to music and have control over the player
I can see myself wearing a headset playing TFT, watching YouTube and have a build guide open in a browser. I can currently do it on an iPad and Vision Pro - https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1akjfpj/le... (different game, but you get the idea).
On current headsets, just because it's annoying to have to take the headset off to do things, and also to be able to use those apps in conjunction with other services like meetings in Horizon Workrooms.
On future headsets with higher resolution and better comfort, because it would be a legitimately better experience in many cases.
Have you seen the Apple Vision demo(s)? Now imagine being able to have wall sized versions of Android apps like Netflix or even word processing apps like Google Docs.
That's what it's about for Meta, sure. But for Google it would be about selling apps on a headset, and being prohibited from selling the native type of app for the platform would be pretty bad!
Meta wants to have their cake and eat it too. If it's their intention to allow third party stores to sell native Quest AR/VR apps on the headset in competition with their own store, they should state that explicitly because what's written here pretty carefully doesn't imply that. I don't think we can just assume what isn't stated here.
This seems like trying to come up with an answer to Apple Vision's ability to run iOS apps. If you can install apps from Google Play then you could, if you wanted to, check your email from inside your headset.
I'm not sure many people would want to do that, but if Apple thinks it's a good idea, blah blah blah.
Its not a killer feature, but having to take off the headset to read mail or slack or whatever is a real drag.
It will quickly become table stakes.
Sorry for the double post. One of my comments was moved here from a different submission so now there are two top level comments from me, and I can't edit or delete them because the edit window has closed.
https://sidequestvr.com/ exists. Also Google is pushing their new AndroidXR os behind the scenes (after they killed Daydreams).
I won't touch VR/AR until the technology progresses to the point where its nealry indistinguishable from regular sunglasses/eye-glasses.
I have yet to use any VR device that made me want to purchase it, its all felt insanely gimmicky, so far the only time a headset seems nice is on a plane ride.
I can see the potential, still seems a long way off imo.
Typically frames are made very light, so they won't make too much pressure on one's ears and nose. Unless someone runs a fiber to a frame, then keep the rest in a backpack or belt bag or something, I doubt it's physically possible to pack all the necessary additional hardware keeping it nearly indistinguishable from a frame without it.
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.
Can you share the apps? I’m very happy with Thrill of the fight and pistol whip but I’m always looking for more.
Try Supernatural. It’s like a dance, boxing, or martial arts workout. My VR lab is a little small and has slanted ceilings so I have to be careful not to hit the tips of my fingertips but it is a real workout that is reasonably safe.
Feel sorry that you feel that way. There are many experiences (especially ball games that require hand/eye co-ordination) that has made my game / fitness / skill improve at least 80% with very minimal amount of time I spent (compared to real world training). If you are into Fitness, nothing like training in VR for literally no money (compared to Gym / personal trainer)
Any recommendations of games or apps that helped you most?
personally Cricket and Table Tennis. But, you could also pick Baseball, Golf, and Boxing.
Cricket, TT and Golf have none of the subscription bullshit.
If "cool" people insist on only wearing Ray Bans that will keep VR fun. It will keep VRChat safe for furries, kemonomini and animekin.
So you are ready to go then:
Battery tech is likely to prevent that within our lifetimes, even if the displays and electronics can be miniaturised to that level.
Official blog post: https://about.fb.com/news/2024/04/introducing-our-open-mixed...
Short video from Zuckerberg: https://twitter.com/NathieVR/status/1782436898654273981
This is an interesting move and feels like a response to complaints that Meta is hypocritical when complaining about closed platforms while running one themselves. But this isn't open source. I don't know why any OEMs would want to compete with Meta's hardware subsidized by app store revenue when they continue to own the store. Maybe there's an app revenue share involved?
Wait, at the end of the video he says "We're also as part of this going to be opening up our store to give you even more options to use whatever experiences you want. So whether they're on Steam, Xbox Cloud Gaming, our own App Lab, or even Google Play, if they're up for it." The blog post doesn't mention Steam or Google Play. It's not really clear what that means. Will they allow Steam to sell native Quest apps?
Edit: There's a better blog post that has more detail. https://www.meta.com/blog/quest/meta-horizon-os-open-hardwar... This one seems to suggest that being "open" to Steam just means allowing game streaming which they already do, while being "open" to Google Play means that they would allow Google to install the actual Play Store app on the headset, for 2D apps only. But Google doesn't want to. In any case it seems like they would specifically not be open to alternative app stores selling native 3D apps directly on the headset itself.
I think this is at least better than nothing for companies who want to build standalone headsets and not just headsets that are dependent on PCs. Up until now everyone's had to make their own OS and store and hope that people care enough to port over apps and games.
At the very least, this could lead to more high-end standalone headsets being available. Not every 3rd party headset has to be competing with the Quest line of headsets, so the lack of revenue from the store might not matter to some companies.
It seems to suggest they're limited to Qualcomm chipsets, and Qualcomm don't make a higher end VR chipset so it's hard to see where a high end headset would come from.
Displays and optics are a big one, lots of competing technologies there like OLED vs LED, pancake vs fresnel, movable optics, laser based displays, video pass through vs semitransparent or even HUD style for lower res overlays. They can also compete on audio quality for microphones and headphones, different battery solutions like hot swappable packs, corded or built in. Maybe different form factors that can distribute weight or higher quality head straps for comfort. Tracking options like more cameras for inside out or a different system for pairing with controllers or full body trackers. Even external dedicated compute that works with Air Link. If they’re making the hardware they can add whatever extra chips or sensors they want.
That's not even considering the possibilities of using eye tracking for foveated rendering to combine high resolution and long battery life
Qualcomm don't make a higher end VR chipset
I don't think that's a given long term. Even already the chip in the Quest 3 is rated at the same GPU grunt as an nVidia 1060, the minimum supported chipset originally for PCVR. The next gen is already announced and is significantly more powerful again, able to power 4k displays. I would project in 3 years from now we have something that can actually be considered at least moderately high end in stand alone form factor from Qualcomm.
Yeah, if it was "we acknowledge that is bad for hardware to have one installation path" and they were allowing itch.io to have an indie VR store that might be cool but they are very much not.
Far enough down the line, it will all end up in EU regulation. Doesn't everything?
Or if Meta doesn't become strong enough to be considered a monopoly, you always have the choice to go with their competitors (as is currently the case). I can still install anything I want on my Pico 4.
Short video from Zuckerberg
The use-cases for AR are so awful. The last thing I want is to consume already a passive medium with my family wearing goggles. Such an anti-social platform.
I think the mention of Steam will be to do with the Steam Link app they released for Meta quest devices fairly recently that lets you stream your VR games from your desktop computer to the quest wirelessly https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/0E2C-406B-9135-38...
This seems kind of interesting to me, it's a shame it's from Meta so I'll likely never touch it because of the toxicity of their core products, but I'm glad to see this, as it seems like it could stimulate some competition.
I don't care what these people do, I'll never use one of their products unless it is to literally save someone's life.
what a sad hill to die on
I don't think it's a particularly sad hill to die on – Meta has proven themselves to be exploitative, invasive, and downright malicious time and time again.
I feel very sorry for people who feel that way and have their identity tied to hating Facebook/Meta
I don't get your point -- you're allowed to not like an invasive company and you're allowed to refuse to use their products if you don't like what they're doing. I don't think anyone in this conversation is making it their personality.
You came into this comment thread without any insight to add or anything interesting to say. You came in just to cast judgement “I feel sorry for people who don’t use Facebook”.
In fact it is you who has tied their identity to feeling superior to others. Other guy doesn’t sound like it’s his identity at all.
No one is dead on a hill.
If anything, not using VR makes you much more "alive".
A real misapplication of this metaphor.
once again, I feel very sorry for people who haven't enriched their lives with VR experiences and skills building. No different than people who poo-pooed computers and internet
I've used the Valve Index before, it's a great experience but not something that I found to be groundbreaking or life-changing.
You just haven't found your App yet.
"we encourage the Google Play 2D app store to come to Meta Horizon OS, where it can operate with the same economic model it does on other platforms." - I feel like this might be the rub of this. Google is way behind in building the android of spatial computing, and maybe this can play into the trust busting cases where meta can show Google not playing fair?
It sounds to me Meta is terrified of Apple and they needs apps sooner rather than later.
they needs apps
Meta likely has the most apps and most users of any one VR platform. Sure everyone needs apps, but they needs apps the least, especially from Play Store.
Unless you see using phone apps as 90" virtual screens as a killer feature at least.
Before iphone came out there were smartphones too. But they became quite irrelevant when iphone came out.
(Android was like a year later)
Same fate can happen to metaverse - someone can make a better VR platform.
Doesnt help them that what they have is shit.
from what I've read on the internet they've been asking for this for a long time but google is blocking it, even before there were rumors of the apple headset.
As a user you can already sideload android APKs, I've tried it works great, but you also need to install apps that manage android permissions since you can't grant them through the quest settings.
having the android store there + integrations where android app devs can make the app VR ready would be a big plus. But, the blocker is that google still has ambitions of making some sort of big comeback on the android VR space and therefore are in direct competition with meta.
Maybe. So far, Apple's headset isn't particularly impressive or compelling, but I suppose it's possible they'll fix its issues in a future version.
Meta is desperate to get devs to develop apps on their platform. It is the only way to get more interest in VR. Devs dont want to be on it because there are no customers, consumers don't want it because there's no apps. They've been trying to market it hard but nothing has worked. They tried to brand it as a fitness device, a work device, and a game device, but the consumers are not biting.
They hit $1b in revenue on their store last quarter. I'm not sure how you evaluate that but it's something more than "not biting" I think.
They are selling plenty of games. The issue though is that the Meta Quest consumer is cheap and would rather buy an MQ2 at a discount than an MQ3.
With this and Llama, looks like Zuck is trying to be the Linux of whatever the next big wave is
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).
Yeah right, he's donating all those GPUs to rebuild his reputation. It has nothing to do with trying to be relevant as a non-market leader.
Whatever the purpose is behind it, I'm just glad that their work benefits me for once. I could not tell you the last time Tim Cook or Bill Gates sponsored something that genuinely improved my day-to-day life.
I see the day to day for you, but bill gates is probably gonna get statues made of him for some of the things he is doing, especially in africa.
On the podcast with Dwarkesh Patel, he was quite explicit that he believes that open-sourcing has worked out for them in the past and they're interested in it in the future but they'll only do it so long as it helps them. If they make something awesome that it would be worse for them to release he won't release it. And the license is anti-competitor (if you have 700 million users or more, you can't use Llama) so he's quite clear that this is a business decision.
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?
Is that still true?
It's going to be interesting if Google/Samsung will win out or Meta/etc.
What category has Google really succeeded in since the initial era of gmail/Android/chrome? I can't think of any recent successes off the top of my head.
What a weird framing? You say this as if gmail, android and chrome are all dead now. They’re still being used and improved. Even if they didn’t enter new “categories” they’re still in a lot of existing ones and very popular -like hundreds of million of users- even if alternatives exist.
First of all, Google Search has maintained dominance and relevance for decades. That’s no easy feat. They have news, patents, books, LLMs all added into it.
Google has a hugely popular cloud service. Especially if you include Google Workspace.
Obviously YouTube is huge and regularly gets new features. There is a YouTube app for almost every piece of hardware with a screen.
They have a pretty impressive mapping product suite. Everything from Google maps to Google earth and all their GIS products and tools (eg solar panels location SaaS).
The play store is huge. AND They have a huge variety of extremely popular consumer apps like Photos, Music, Home, etc.
I meant that it felt like they haven't had any massive successes with any recent launches.
'really succeeded' sounds super crazy dismissive.
Besides android being gigantic huge, you still have google maps, chrome, gmail, pixel phones, passkey, yubikeypush/2fa, the new cookie aproach, YouTube!!1 etc.
Why would Google need a 'recent' success to be able to win ar snail?
the point is probably about whether google still has the ability to go from 0 to 1. instead of 1 to n. from the outside they look like they are not so slowing becoming the bean counting accountant / MBA type of company.
Zero chance Google actually supplies Samsung with a real operating system they can use. Samsung will for sure release a headset with Meta’s Horizon OS before anything from Google.
Isn’t Samsung going bankrupt at this point?
I wonder if every category has a "winner". When compatibility was a determinant, you had winners (Microsoft, obv.). I'm not sure winner-takes-all applies any longer.
Doesn’t seem very “open” actually. Open to ASUS and Lenovo != Open.
It is open in the sense of POSIX Open Group.
So it's publishing standards I can implement to make my own compatible OS?
Actually some of the Open Group standards, are pay to play, they are open in the sense they are available, in some form.
So are Meta publishing standards, gratis or not, which I can implement to create a compatible operating system?
I'm asking because it seems to me from this press release that they're just letting a handful of hardware partners use their software, which is not open in the sense of POSIX Open Group.
Open like this? https://www.opengroup.org/membership
Yes, open like that. I thought we'd already established the sense in which Open Group is open, but you still haven't addressed the question how Meta is open in the same sense.
Just like a Open Group membership, it is open to the set of self selected partners.
Meta is smartly capturing the MR developer market like they captured the web developer market with React.
In terms of Vision vs Quest - I wonder if there will be a "React Native" parallel that allows developers to write React for both Vision and Quest apps. A lot of the developer market comes down to languages: Python for AI/ML, Obj-C (Swift) for iOS, Java (Kotlin) for Android - but JavaScript always seems to weasle its way into these native platforms and a lot of companies end up just writing React for anything front-end.
Making any multiplatform real-time 3D for Apple is such a pain. Even simply using Xcode is a nightmare.
Agree with you there! I don't particularly love Facebook and haven't even used it since 2009, but I can't deny how world-changing React has been for not only front-end (in terms of state management etc.) but also for building cross-platform native UIs on various platforms like TVs and mobile devices - and being able to do it with a (mostly) common codebase.
I probably would have never built for iOS if I had to use Xcode and their entire ecosystem, luckily in RN you usually just need to install their command line tools and never open the software.
If you use Expo, you don’t even have to do that.
Expo was amazing for my first foray into React Native (https://github.com/bennyschmidt/daily-tarot)
I eventually ran into some limitations (accessing Camera Roll back then, also in-app purchases back then) that forced me to have to use more native stuff. I bet it's come a long way though since then.
There is react native for VisionOS already and the react team has hinted at react native for Quests/VR in the past..
I didn't know, thanks for letting me know! Just found this: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@callstack/react-native-vision...
This is a full fork of [React Native] with changes needed to support visionOS.
Awesome.
That's a bad name collision, "Horizon" is the name of the OS on the Nintendo 3ds and switch.
Literally nobody knows this though. Even searching for "Horizon OS" only returns Meta stuff already.
Yeah - while I've never dived too deeply, I have modded my 3DS a fair bit and didn't know what the OS was codenamed. I've always just seen it called 3DS OS, native firm, etc.
Eh, I don't think this is a bad name collision. Nintendo doesn't really talk about stuff like this publicly, and searching for it is pretty much reddit + hacker news threads.
I'm sure there's a lot of internal code name collisions.
There's precedent, when Apple named iOS, Cisco had (and still has) IOS. They just came to some licensing settlement for Apple's use of the name [0].
Actually, it looks like Apple also licensed the iPhone trademark from Cisco too!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS#:~:text=In%20June%202010%2....
And also for people following the UK news, the name of the Fujitsu/Post Office software that led to a not insignificant number of sub-postmasters being falsely convited in the largest miscarriages of British justice ever (maybe anywhere).
Feels like Microsoft just tried this with their own VR ecosystem not too long ago and it fell flat on its face.
Nobody's tried anything like the broad scale pitch Meta is making here. Everyone else has tackled the high end or specialized use cases. Meta's really the only company that's tried to make a true OS play that is meant to be accessible to everyone. Based on that alone I just don't think you can extrapolate from "X failed so this has already been tried". Nobody has tried what Meta is doing.
Microsoft also tried this with phones...
IMO the issues Microsoft had weren't unexpected. If you look at the disaster that was their US military Hololens project it turns out a fairly significant portion of the population experiences motion sickness and other fundamental issues[0].
This is a hard problem to solve and from what I understand it is similar to issues that are screened for in specialties. For example - fighter pilots and astronauts are screened for all kinds of fundamental things:
- Vision
- Tolerance to motion sickness
- Tolerance to Gs
- Tolerance to claustrophobia (for flight suits, tight cockpits, etc)
If you don't have 20/20 vision (or better), puke all the time in sims, and freak out when put in a flight suit you're just not a fighter pilot, astronaut, etc. Once you make that cut then you train on improving what you fundamentally have and even then wash-out rates are high.
With the Hololens project the goal was to strap a Hololens on pretty much any random soldier. If some fairly large portion of the population just can't make it work the utility and value of the project drops to zero. Imagine standardizing on a gun sight or other key technology that just won't work for even 1/10 of your (already limited recruits), potentially even for otherwise elite soldiers.
I think they realized they will have similar fundamental issues in the enterprise - the utility of a Teams meeting with everyone in Hololens drops pretty significantly when a non-zero portion of employees get sick after a few minutes.
I'm not sure how these issues with the technology can be overcome. Sure, if some gamers can make it work that's cool but that doesn't provide the overall value to the technology MS was hoping for.
[0] - https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-hololens-fails-us-army-te...
MS did the entire VR headset partnership thing, got some very good headsets out (for the time), and then just dropped the project and put it into maintenance mode. If they had kept working on it, it would've done well, as it wasn't falling flat on its face, it was just getting going when they dropped it.
They made the weird business decision to drop the products they had third party cooperation and an enthusiastic userbase for, in favor of an experimental product (Hololens) that ended up only being affordable to businesses and which afaik has never really taken off in the same way as WMR had been.
This sounds like a good idea. Love him or hate him, Zuck knows how to ship.
Oh yes, like he shipped the Metaverse.
It was a failure, but he hasn't given up yet.
Have you tried vR chat?
Not an actual product render.
It's a silly caption isn't it, why would it be third-person view, nobody's going to see those sketches and assume it's an actual product render, surely.
Likely a change requested from legal.
Some folks stream VR games with a second camera on a green screen, which provides a 3rd person perspective for the audience. It's pretty incredible.
I can easily see less tech savvy consumers being confused.
Not personally interested in an OS from Meta - the only thing I use from Meta is WhatsApp, and that's just because it is difficult to replace here in central Europe.
I don't get excited about new OSs unless they're FOSS. It sounds like an ideological take, but it's not: When an OS is not FOSS, they either succumb to the wrong incentives and lack of care (Windows) or just become a walled garden (MacOS). From what I've seen from, say, Visual Studio Code (FOSS version), or Chromium, or other such projects, is that a large company open-sourcing the core of their product can only yield positives over the alternative (fully closed) solution.
Fully FOSS would be sick, partially would be useful. Closed and ad-ridden, driven by wrong incentives and run by a company with zero sense for privacy (see their Facebook product) and a love for hype (see their AI and Metaverse products that just about nobody wanted?), I don't see this becoming very popular.
I know this is totally tangential to what you're saying and irrelevant to your point but I'm curious. I'm pretty up on MacOS and Linux, not so much on Windows. Is Windows less of a walled garden than MacOS?
It's functionally the same - code signing is mandated unless you want your users to get a scary pop-up.
"sick" - slang for "fantastic, amazing"
(for the sake of non-native English speakers)
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/
likely this. I fell for Apple once. I definitely won't fall for a Apple clone with one of the most untrustworthy companies since the turn of the century.
Never wished something would quickly fail already at its announcement as much as this.
Long plane rides and TV before bed - 2 things it would be better at than what we have now. Imagine watching a 27" screen from across the room in the dark vs a screen that moves with your vision... No more awkward pillow adjusting to make a makeshift couch etc. your neck can finally just relax and you can stare at the screen however you're laying. In these cases you're not doing anything else anyway.
But yeah, the Tesla Airpod people who talk to themselves all loud outside will no doubt have a full UI of the world 24/7, gesturing like maniacs in the middle of stores, in crosswalks - just a news and stock ticker streaming across the top of their field of vision at all times. And there will of course be junkies in the streets, with - instead of smartphones - goggles on their faces, crumbled up in a brick corner just like the dystopian art showed us.
For Pareto's 20%, it's an Apple Watch, or Airpods++.
For your own health, try to avoid TV before bed, it's not good for your sleep.
I still think that watching movies/TV should be a social experience and not akin to scrolling on social media. My neck can be a bit less comfortable for that :D
While the web trends away from open, Facebook is zigging where others are zagging and supporting the resistance technology-wise.
What are you even talking about?
Facebook is THE biggest actor who works non-stop against the open web and is the biggest closed-off silo of data on the web.
What makes you say that?
I think linux would be the obvious choice.
VR is being gatekept by Valve and Meta.
How likely is Valve to use Android?
How likely is Valve to use Android?
Not likely, unless they make a headset which doesn't do much of anything by itself and is just meant for streaming from a PC. To make a standalone headset which can draw on the Steam catalog they would almost certainly want to use a variant of their SteamOS Linux distro.
Valve already has its own OS for a mobile device: Steam OS (based on Arch) on the Steam Deck. My bet is that they'd just modify that for a standalone headset.
> “Meta Horizon OS devices will also use the same mobile companion app that Meta Quest owners use today—we’ll rename this as the Meta Horizon app.”
Churning through so many VR brands. The app that used to be called Oculus and is now called Meta Quest will soon be called Meta Horizon.
If Meta really believes in the Metaverse, why do they need the Horizon brand? Why not just the Meta OS?
Because their whole company is called Meta?
If Meta really believes in the Metaverse, why do they need the Horizon brand? Why not just the Meta OS?
Perhaps for the same reason why Apple OS, Google OS or Microsoft OS don't exist as customer OSes - each OS is scoped to a specific function/device-class, and maybe superceded in the future.
Is this ‘open’ as in ‘we have partners’ or actual open source?
It says 'to more device makers', not all, and anyway it wouldn't even have to be open source but just public releases? I expect it's a case of applying and meeting whatever standards though.
The fact that you still have to apply as a developer is a bit discouraging. (though that might change...). I can't seem to find anything on github.
Hoping that this is an oversight and that they will open-source the core platform in the next few months/years. It would be so awesome to hack/build on this platform
Has anyone actually tried the Metaverse yet?
As I understood it, this was basically a massively expensive failed experiment so far. No-one is using it for reals (yet?).
Who's the market for developing apps for it?
Tried it, was very unimpressed, it feels very much like a tech demo even as recent as this year. Certainly wouldn't waste my money on it.
It is really hard to find a "world" that has people in it, that you actually want to talk to. I have had some great experiences there though, some regular people that hang out in worlds and talk about stuff. It's kind of cool when it happens but it is hit and miss. And there is something missing with the kinds of things you can do, Super Rumble feels like a real game, but most worlds are aesthetic in nature, a place to sit and look at stuff. It feels like it needs to mature.
Meta playing 3d chess here. Opening up the OS to other hardware providers is a great strategic move imo. Excited to see what innovations other hardware manufactures add.
Not to devalue their engineering departments, but I really don't remember any innovations in the software space from ASUS, Lenovo or alike hardware vendors. To me they're all essentially the same stuff, with different kind of junkware (or, in case of Lenovo, malware) bundled.
What I read is "we reached out to a bunch of vendors who dabbled in VR/AR/XR/whateveryounameit but failed to produce anything outstanding, so we made a deal of licensing them some software so maybe they'll fare better". Meta did the right thing in a sense that they made some sales, but I wouldn't hold my breath as a end-consumer.
I kinda agree. I don't think any of them are likely to be major players in the space, but I think they might be able to build niche products that serve specific markets better than Meta's generalist VR headset. They might try a lightweight, battery free, sitting headset for gamers or media applications, for example.
And I think just generally they're more likely to try random things than Meta are to get hype around some unique feature. Take the Asus Zenbook Duo as an example, it's not necessarily a great product but it's interesting and some people will buy it for that. Plus industry learns something from experiments like this.
Either way, it's a good move for Meta and it's good for the industry that there is a fully-featured OS available for hardware manufacturers.
'Pivot to software' has been done several times in computing history: Go Corporation, SGI, Sun, Blackberry, Palm, Sega, and oh, NeXT. These are interesting precedents. I don't know of a 'pivot to software' that actually worked (NeXT ended up going back to hardware, thanks to the reverse acquisition!)
There's also the question of the licensees: so they choose Meta’s OS as the base for their hardware, maybe because they don't have anything else? Quest OS is neither a best in class user experience (it's still full of bugs, frictions and is a very inconsistent UI), and it's clearly not a good dev experience at all.
So your hardware now inherit all of Meta's tech and UX debts, and you don't even have a guarantee of daily recurring usage or of a killer application user will flock to. Is that the great win for their hardware that they think it is?
Of course, as several of us predicted when the number of Vision Pro apps quickly surpassed Quest Store Apps, Meta is now forced to react and change their weird two-tier approach: they are opening a (small) marketing presence for App Lab apps and are creating a "brand new" spatial app framework, to start and get out of the Unity/Unreal game engine third-party pipeline trap.
That they only now see that giving developers a native app UI kit is a basic of any OS is… not promising from a supposedly now long term OS owner.
The 'pivot to software' is more like a pivot back to software because Meta already disbanded a previous OS team at Reality Labs and indeed platform software was exactly what motivated the thinking behind buying Oculus as expressed in Zucks internal deal memo on the subject [1] where he ranks Apps and Platform OS (eg Android/PlayStore) both above hardware. They also recently passed on an offer from Google who are working on a new XR android build. 6DOF 3D is a unique surface area and so far all we have seen are OS ports from 2D pancake land so these efforts can't come soon enough.
Promoting App Lab apps was the most exciting part of this announcement.
I had been put off porting anything to Quest since I'd need to get official Meta blessing to actually get store presence to have enough users to pay for such an effort, but now if you can publish in App Lab and actually get some in-store promotion, it starts to sound way more compelling.
I do agree with their initial approach to keep the perceived quality of the first apps high. But reality is that people want to play what they find fun/funny, even if less polished, and this change might open up some store promotion for such apps that solo devs like me are more likely to be able to make.
"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".
i think that ship sailed when smartphones became ubiquitous. given how heavily subsidized mobile devices are (especially compared to PCs), there's no incentive to produce an actually-open hardware or software platform. Google and Apple want you re-upping every 2 years and to stay locked into their ecosystems. i agree this is sad, but definitely not new
With this and Llama I'm starting to wonder if Meta is making a pivot toward openness similar to what Microsoft did under Nadella.
It's not altruism of course. It's a strategy. But it's a different strategy from the closed pure walled garden strategy they have executed previously.
Given React and PyTorch I'd say they've always been doing that. Also they've been releasing open source models for years and pretty much from the beginning.
Smells like competition.
Quite dislike Quest 2 dependency on Meta, would probably never buy their hardware again.
Yeah my CV1 doesn’t work anymore, I think Meta added some account requirement. I feel like Facebook stole some money from me, in the sense that it wasn’t obvious when I bought the thing that I’d need to buy into their ecosystem. But it is basically first gen hardware, so I guess it isn’t worth anything.
I was pretty excited about VR (enough to drop a couple hundred on what was then a top of the line headset) but overall this experience killed all interest for me.
Maybe good open source options will come out in a couple years.
A friend of mine has been working this year on getting the CV1/Rift S running without the Oculus app/Meta account, which also means continued support for these two discontinued headsets. I don't think she has publicly released it yet, but good progress is being made.
And we encourage the Google Play 2D app store to come to Meta Horizon OS, where it can operate with the same economic model it does on other platforms.
Did they get told to shove it by Google when they asked through back channels? To even come out and essentially say publicly "they can still get their 30% cut" is just wild to me.
Also of note, they don't mention any license. Is the hope they can avoid the Google antitrust concerns Google is running into that Apple is somehow avoiding?
Google asked Meta to switch to AndroidXR for their Quest devices. Meta said no and suggested Google offer Play Store on Quest, which Google rejected.
Google then went on a PR offensive accusing Meta of fragmenting the VR/AR ecosystem.
Meta is including this in the announcement to head off criticism by Google aimed at creating pressure on Meta to consolidate on AndroidXR.
https://www.roadtovr.com/meta-google-android-xr-quest-reject...
I'd speculate the two things have a lot to do with each other. It's easier to avoid accusations of monopolizing software distribution on a platform when you've openly invited other parties to participate.
I 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.
Are there really "millions of people" using it?
Just as this detergent washes whiter than white!
This is interesting, hopefully it gets more HMD options out there, but even better get more developers making ar/vr games.
Was the OS a limiting factor in any of this, though? I've only used a Vive and my Oculus 2 and 3 so I'm not sure what other HMDs use, I assumed some Android distro that just connects to steamvr/openxr/whatever.
Are Asus, Lenovo and Xbox really trying to get into the vr/ar ecosystem? Are they going to be Oculus clones? Their own r&d? Is this all a pipedream?
the advantage of using meta’s OS is that you get the whole Meta Quest Store library (or, i guess, Meta Horizon Store) meanwhile before, you’d have to convince devs to manually publish for your platform
This entire thing is newspeak. Every headline means the opposite. For example, "A More Open App Ecosystem" means a more closed application ecosystem. By switching to a proprietary OS and setting up a walled garden where they have to approve all software you can run. This is part of the coming war on general computation.
This is part of the coming war on general computation.
Coming? I'd say it's already full on. Apple's malicious compliance with the DMA is one part of it, for instance. Of course others try to imitate.
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.
Does this page even load for y'all in Firefox? For me CORS protection blocks the whole site from loading.
Nah, the same issue here as well
i love rivals on tech, hope like ios vs android
i mean, its an android fork and some ios derivative so thats exactly what it is :D
fyi I’m working on a GPLv3 competitor and intend to outshine whatever this is
I'd be curious to see but no idea how you intend to get enough people to develop for your platform
Subtitled "Not an actual product render."
There is a Meta earnings call in 2 days, and the annual shareholder meeting at the end of may.
The details here seem a little thin. Partner agreements to produce something rather than a concrete thing.
Hopefully we will see prototypes, but right now the skeptic in me sees this as a trial balloon for investors more than anything.
The most interesting thing about this is that everyone just forgot all the anger about the spying from a few years ago during the Cambridge analytica thing. Did that just go away?
Maybe because it was woke propaganda and now we realized everyone is doing that shit
Wow that spam bot is quite creative! Looks like they've figured out how to create a green account, and perhaps bypassing the spam detection by having each new account only post one spam message.
I'm sure dang is really busy right now.
Yeah, the flood of spam is killing the server’s performance.
We’re also developing a new spatial app framework that helps mobile developers create mixed reality experiences. Developers will be able to use the tools they’re already familiar with to bring their mobile apps to Meta Horizon OS or to create entirely new mixed reality apps.
Like porting my whole android app + spatial features or...?
My guess is that they saw how nicely Apple made basic app development (read 2.5D planes with list views and spatial UX) and they are gonna try their best to shape their “app framework” in a similar fashion.
This all looks incredibly lonely.
I think it all depends on context. It is lonely if you are the type of person who wants to interact physically. I work at home, and it can get kind of lonely here physically but there are some guys on Horizon I chat with from time to time as a break from work, in that sense it's the opposite of lonely.
A new OS will be interesting ONLY if Meta commits to certain policies that Microsoft and Apple have violated. Users should be able to use their devices without any telemetry or phoning home. They should be able to install any software they want from any source. They should not be forced to make payments only through Meta’s services. Etc.
wouldn't trust meta with anything for sure not running a whole os.
I wonder if this will allow full use of Meta's hardware without an account.
It’s the other way around: you can get the Quest’s software on hardware not made by Meta.
The bridge to nowhere doesn't need more features, it needs a somewhere
Would this be the logical extrapolation of the "it's not the destination, but the journey to get there" mindset?
Funny what they call an OS nowadays. I'd say it's another Linux distribution.
Depends on if you consider Android, ChromeOS, and Ubuntu to be the same OS or not.
Imagine being banned from Facebook due to not complying with the community guidelines and being unable to use your computer.
Community guidelines that can change at any moment at any time and are enforced by random people who can make mistakes.
A Facebook OS as a daily driver is an idea that is vomitive in every way.
Imagine ads that track you eyes and that you cannot look away from. Ads that track your face muscles so they know exactly how you react to them. Like being connected to a lie detector 24/7.
This is pure evil, everyone should reject this.
What you wrote makes doesn't sense because Horizon OS doesn't require a Facebook account or any account on social media.
I've got to hand it to Zuckerberg : when he spouted the "open" vs "closed" rhetoric earlier in the year, I said it was nice words but meaningless unless he put his money where his mouth was and makes Quest OS available to others as well as put firm guarantees around side loading etc. But in the same breath I said I doubted he would do that. And now he has done exactly that. However much antipathy people have towards him and his past, he keeps putting meat behind his words and actually doing the things he says.
At the same time, important to recognise here that this is still to some extent "open washing" what is a totally controlled OS. This is not like AOSP where you can go download the source code and compile it yourself. So far it is not even like Windows where you can download an installer and run it on a computer yourself. A manufacturer will have to form a business partnership with Meta to even get access to this "open" OS - I assume. But since I keep under estimating Zuckerberg maybe he will exceed my expectations on that front too.
Nonetheless, this is a huge step forward and a genuine challenge now for Google/Samsung. The bar is now very very high for them to deliver something compelling enough that manufacturers will jump on board instead of building on Horizon OS with an existing install base of 25M+ users and thousands of apps.
All up, this is pretty exciting news in the XR space and really sets the stage for an epic battle in the next couple of years as these platforms go head to head.
Unless I have the ability to inspect source code of "Meta Horizon OS". No way in hell am I touching anything from this company.
I wonder what types of telemetry garbage is embedded into the OS.
Somewhat surprised to not see Valve in there, especially after Steam Link showed up a handful months ago.
It’s funny that Horizon is named after Horizon in the Amazon Prime TV series “Upload”. Good TV series btw.
Otherwise known as Linux.
I remember when Facebook released an "OS" for the phone (it was really just a skin for Android). While I'm really happy to see that FB is making another stab into the field with the Quest, and I'm very happy that we're finally getting some real development in VR, I'm even more skeptical of them now as I was then: I just don't trust FB with my data.
Part of what makes me so skeptical is how "cheap" the Quest 3 is. There's no way they're not loosing [literally billions](https://fortune.com/2023/10/27/mark-zuckerberg-net-worth-met...) of dollars developing VR tech and, given their track record, only have one way they know to make that money back.
More "awesome tech" from Meta that few people will ever use. If you do, just be careful they don't share your location with any genocidal occupiers!
That's a poor name for an operating system, especially in the UK.
Google Horizon Post master drama or watch the TV series.
This will (thankfully) fail because meta will not be able to harness the chinese industrial firehose because 1. US protectionism 2. chinese people are not stupid, they won't let a company whose business model revolves around selling attention, acquire a monoply on attention of human beings
Isn’t it built on Android?
I hope at some point they expand to devices beyond goggles, like i dont know a holodeck or something
This seems like a great move. Similar to existing Android ecosystem, If this ends up making standardization of AR/VR, meta benefits from being the tone setter just as Google for Android. I wonder if the Qualcomm lock-in would stay or Mediatek and others would also onboard.
The biggest test is how much current partners (Asus, Lenovo, etc) will sell. This will verdict the future of this idea.
great, another Android.
It's nonsense. They're claiming to be "open" but it's all still vendor controlled proprietary nonsense.
If they really want to be the dominant VR winner, then release it all under GPLv3+ and let us all get to innovate together.
I don't think anyone cares.
How does this compare to Microsoft's and Apple's? Is there any other player in AR/VR/MR OS?
OS by Horizon by Meta Horizon OS by Meta.
Why not just call it Horizon OS?
Notable by it's absence: ML/AI
Almost exciting, if the software wasn't just this shitty hacked together proprietary android fork. It's just an app store and game launcher, there is nothing there that I would imagine a metaverse operating system to be, like interoperability between vr apps. This would have to be built from the ground up around the VR paradigm on open standards and hackable.
If the Internet started on today's proprietary app stores and nailed-shut operating systems it would've never innovated this quickly. This is what AOL/MSN desperately attempted, but it all failed (thank god).
Meta's dream of the metaverse is nothing but laughable, hold back by nothing but terrible software.
Sounds like MS ditching Windows MR has left an opportunity in the market for Meta. The OEMs listed all previously made MR headsets and presumably needed a new solution.
pivoting some underlying metaverse tech? scant on detail unfortunately
not sure Horizon is a great name for a software project
Not too surprising given how Google has been closing down their Android platform to Meta for a while now
And we encourage the Google Play 2D
They just had to stick that 2D in there. Yes, poke the bear.
Joel Spolsky's "Commoditize your Complements" [0] seems relevant here. From that perspective, it seems like Meta is trying to commoditize the hardware and monopolize the OS (and likely the app store and payment system), similar to Android.
[0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
At least I can build VR apps for free on Meta Quest with Unity, as opposed to 200$ a month with Apple Vision Pro.
I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the upside-down language that Meta is trying to execute here with the repeated use of 'open' to describe any of this. This is an invitation for other corporations to drink from their social spigot and join their walled-off app store. The word 'open' really is under multiple fronts of diffusionary attack lately.
Is the Overton Window now a mobius strip?
Dude they already have a new grift, AI, why are they still pouring money in this failed project? Zuckerberg is trying so hard to not be Elon 2.0
I have a bad feeling that this will break modded beat saber on quest once again :/
For all those who feel insufficiently tracked by Google. If it has a browser, you might be able to run the JavaScript implementation of Android on top of it, thus being double-tracked.
This is actually a really cool move. Not sure about the business case, but building an os for AR/VR is challenging. A naive port of Android or Linux will not really work (without inducing massive motion sickness). Having a framework that allows a hardware oem to quickly create a decent AR/VR headset could really open up the market.
It's gonna be a live service OS, like Windows, with subscriptions, fees, and developer restrictions.
What VR needs is a VR OpenBSD.
Android tried it and the results were closed-source fiefdoms and crappy hardware.
There's not a big enough market for this to sustain itself because VR is a flying car category that no one needs.
Did they consider the UK market when naming this?
Horizon is synonymous with a computing scandal involving buggy IT code.
I'm guessing it's the opposite. Meta is trying to establish the same OS-level foothold/control that Microsoft, Apple and Google have.
Having a personal computer at home was a game-changer, though. "The Metaverse" has been around for a couple years now, and yet consumer VR (which has been around for eight years now) is still just a "gimmick", rather than a must-have.
The IBM Personal Computer released in 1981. By 1989... yeah.
iPhone came out in 2007. By 2015, smartphones ruled the world.
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 being blown away by board games in VR, but turns out Catan only worked for the Go and it was a lot of work to do something together in VR.
IMO there needs to be some sort of lobby that does not take you away from hanging out with your friends when you’re in between games. I should be able to easily join a lobby or pause a game to go to a lobby and wave at my friend who’s playing to pause and join me in the lobby
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 strapping a TV to my face and feeling uncomfortable for one-off experiences. Even if there was a game with some depth and replayability, I would be even more annoyed to play it on such an uncomfortable headset.
Almost everyone I know is not using their VR headset anymore. I'm not sure it will ever move past that phase, because people want it to be smaller and, simultaneously, more technically immersive. So we're in some weird in between zone where it's neither.
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 their arms around to aim, and don't want to jump around to move, and if you aren't doing those things you don't want the downsides that are inherent to a VR system, like extreme seclusion of wearing a headset, physical ability being an inherent filter, clunky UI, nausea etc.
The TWO areas where VR is useful, flight simulators and driving simulators, haven't even fully adopted VR simply because it's too much hassle.
VR is only a gimmick unless you can benefit from that extra immersion, and most things cannot.
The Wii sold gangbusters because everyone and their grandma could understand "swing remote to swing tennis racket", but you couldn't actually build a hyperaccurate tennis sim off of that because a Wiimote is NOT a tennis racket and you cannot get beyond that. VR is the same way. Everyone can experience the "Oh VR is soooo coool" gimmick but very few genres inherently benefit from what VR provides.
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.
But why does it need a heavy screen attached to your head? Just get some shorts and go outside, and if you can afford a quest 2 then surely you can afford a tennis table
It's not that heavy. I don't have the room for a tennis table nor am I close enough to my friends to play it for 30 minutes every night like I do in VR.
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.
That some reason is motion sickness. There has to be consistency with your perception, else it develops into compounding vection feelings. It tend not to apply for vehicular controls hence sim usage.
That varies from person to person. I have played games with keyboard and mouse in VR (e.g. Polynomial 2, or the unofficial GTA 5 VR mod), and it works great for me.
I see this come up, over and over again. It's so obviously wrong based on even a basic reading of the market. The Quest is unambiguously the most popular VR headset and it's store has barely any cockpit simulators at all.
As for tennis, one of the perks of Quest is that you can take it anywhere, including a real tennis court: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atuIRf59hzc
At a smaller scale, Eleven Table Tennis is an extremely accurate VR Table Tennis game that supports paddle attachments. It is extremely close to the real thing, professionals use it for practice.
Couldn’t disagree more. Experiences in VR are insanely immersive and this is why there’s so much love for VR.
Also, I played Catan (a board game) in VR and it was the most social experience I’ve ever had in a video game.
Skills based games -- baseball, cricket, golf, tennis almost have infinite game play
what do you miss by playing them on the wii or IRL?
It's a completely different level compared to Wii.
The amount of sensors we have on controllers now means, it can pick your slight wrist movements for top spin, side spin and more accurately measure bat speed. The physics engine on these games are so close to being realistic.
Now, let's compare it to IRL and since I played college level cricket, I'll tell you the difference. When I practiced as an amateur, I was able to face at the most 25-30 pitches per day. Of them, only 1 or 2 were what I can remotely call "quality" pitches and I'd have to spend 3 hours per day.
In the Metaverse, in 3 hours, I'd have faced 750 quality pitches including 95mph pitches (The highest I ever faced in IRL was 70mph) including extremely difficult curve balls, deception etc.
All this for a marginal cost of $0 and the physics and simulation will only get better
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” when I look at the damn things.
Kinda like how I think of the dad from Serial Experiments Lain any time one of my kids walks in and I’m in front of a glowing screen.
Gross.
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.
The Quest is insanely good, for a single person in isolation, once it's up and running. But there's a ton of friction that shouldn't exist before that happens, and Meta hasn't nailed most of the UX here yet. For example:
- App sharing / libraries doesn't work properly yet. (The owner has to secretly log in to each individual app themselves, before anyone else can use it on the device. There is no documentation informing anyone of this requirement)
- Add/ons or DLC also don't work properly yet. (You have to 're-unlock' each individual DLC, for it to share to anyone else on device in something like Beat Saber, for example)
- Child permissions don't work properly yet. (The notification does work, but a parent is not allowed to approve an app from that notification, the child has to entirely shut down and restart the whole device, before an approval takes effect)
- Screen sharing doesn't work, at all. (If you have a child, you just can't ever mirror their view onto a TV or Tablet -- full stop, no exceptions. Which also means, there's no way to help a child who is wearing a headset -- ever). Note that "taking the headset off" triggers a state reset, so a child can't hand the headset over to their parent for help, since the face sensor will kill state the second a face is removed.
- Windowing UI doesn't really work yet. (You can have windows, but only three, and only side-by-side, and only for a select few apps) -- it's more usability-restricted than even stage manager on an iPad. You can tell the Quest is designed around the expectation that you will be in one-and-only-one full-screen game, pretty much the entire time your wearing the headset.
- Online sharing is app-dependent, a bunch don't work. Many more don't work at first, you have to spend 30 to 60 minutes "unlocking" the right to match-make. (making the online/networking more seemless is critical because of the nature of the device -- you can't both look at it the way you might with a TV or PC or Laptop or Tablet, since it's a worn device)
None of this is dealbreaking stuff, none if it needs any kind of "new invention" or anything to fix. But as a product, friction is still really high here, and I can see why it's not necessarily super popular outside of techie/gaming scenes yet.
This is definitely not true. The Meta Quest app can connect to a headset and show what the player is seeing, both video and audio. Been watching my kid play various games for years.
Also not sure what state reset you're talking about. I've definitely grabbed the headset from another person and continued with the game.
You don’t have your kid on a child account, you have your kid using an adult account. Child accounts can’t screen share —- it’s acknowledged in the Quest FAQ - https://www.meta.com/help/quest/articles/in-vr-experiences/o... “only the primary account can cast”
Setup a child account. Let your kid login. Have the kid take the headset off. Congrats, everything just got killed, and it’s now PIN-locked to the adult account. When the adult types in a PIN, it trashes the child’s session, and starts an Adult session.
(We work around this by gently holding the face sensor with a finger while moving the headset around between people, to trick the headset into thinking it’s still being worn -— but this is ridiculously broken, no one should have to do that just to get it to work)
Oof, that sounds rough. You're right, I'm just sharing my own account and haven't seen these issues.
There is a nee version of Catan for Quest 2/3
There is, but it is kind of crappy. It's crossplay, but not in a meaningful way. You can't create a room and share a room code. The best you can do is invite a friend, but only if they are on the same platform. They've never done anything to improve it or make it more player friendly. They released it and forgot about it.
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.
Even as a kid before the iPhone came out, it wasn't hard to see the appeal of a smartphone. People loved their Blackberries and Palm Treos. Having internet access wherever you go was incredibly appealing even before the hardware, software, and infrastructure were ready to make that mass marketable.
VR makes a ton of sense for video games, but I just don't see how it could enhance the rest of my day-to-day life. I don't see it becoming a good general purpose computing platform that most people use all day. I see it being useful for specific niche tasks like CAD, but I'll never put on a headset just to send an email, file my taxes, or browse the internet.
I see tons of appeal for headsets in day-to-day life. Maybe Im unique but I spend a solid hour a day lying in bed reading or on my tablet, I think this experience of using a computing device while lying down could be vastly improved with the right headset and thats an hour every day straight away.
Consumer VR hasn't had it's Blackberry moment yet!
Coincidentally, someone I interacted with mentioned "I never thought I'd get rid of my Blackberry" in passing, which reminded me of the term once popular term "Crackberry".
I'm still a little nonplussed. i don't like apple stuff, but did a couple demos at work with the vision elite or whatever its called.
Came away very impressed with the technology, but really didn't like having the damn thing strapped to my head for 15-20 minutes.
it reminds me of getting the original 3ds that could do some cool AR stuff, and could do 3d without glasses, but ultimately was an impressive tech demo that I mostly didnt use.
I already spend too much of my day in front of phones and monitors, I'm not sure if the answer is moving the screens closer to our eyes and shutting out more of the world.
industrial applications for sure can have a niche with this, but as a mass market device I think there's a long way to go, even if the experience looks good.
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 Virtual Boy was from the mid-90s.
Maybe the iPhone comparison isn't right, but if we're decades into developing this technology and still very early in development I think we should assume we're a LONG way off these things becoming mainstream consumer devices and we should be wary of any company that brings them to the consumer market.
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.
I find it really hard to believe that 3 million people put on PSVR2 every month. That thing gets basically no content.
Yea it’s not nothing, but that’s a rounding error on the number of smartphone users.
There is no way that those numbers are right.
EDIT: Yeah, Steam has 120 million active users per month. And the 6+ million users for Quest is from 2022, during the pandemic and metaverse bubble. Would be curious to know the trends for 2023 and 2024 thought.
VR headsets can be fun for some games, but the hardware and software still have a lot of maturing to do, it's not like smartphones where it feels very developed and there's not much more room for obvious growth/improvement.
Yesterday i was close to buying a Pico 4 (Cheaper non meta Quest 3 equivalent), then i realised there has been zero fully triple a games since my friend blew me away with a Half Life Alyx demo 4 years ago.
I find it incredible there's still only 1 actual "serious" VR game - lots of people then recommended Skyrim VR, a game from 2011.
Is VR gaming in an absolute standstill?
Yes. Meanwhile:[0]
0: https://medium.com/@nemchan_nel/vrchat-breaks-records-with-9...
I think there are few to zero new AAA games, but I don't think that means VR gaming is at a standstill, or that there are no great, fun games.
It's not at all, no. There's plenty of compelling games, there just aren't any AAA games (not ones built for VR only anyway) because the market simply isn't big enough to justify the incredible production costs.
If you're dead set on only AAA games then yeah, it's not a useful purchase, but that doesn't mean it's "standing still".
IMHO when you talk about PCs "becoming the big thing" - it is more Windows 95 time.
In 1989 market was still fragmented and PCs were weak (286, amiga, mac + old 8bits like atari and commodore).
Is there better place to place ads than Metaverse ;)
It's great isn't it! All ads should go there. In fact ads should be banned everywhere else!
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.
Exactly, at the root a lot of this about ATT.
The difference here though is I don't think AR/VR will ever become as ubiquitous for general purpose computing as laptops and smartphones.
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 just taken a picture of the inside of the Quest view and it would have been better.
Trying to avoid humble bragging, yet last year I put in four government proposals (one 20-pager, rest were 5-10), wrote a web app, converted a NIST matrix package to a different language, and wrote a mixed Android / Windows app for cross-communication. I may have observer bias, and not be representative. However, that was one year, not 5000 lifetimes... You'd think they would have more than a single game as their killer app. Not even Pokemon Go or similar? It's such an obvious previous idea.
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).
How is it demonstrable that they aren't worth $1m per year?
While in many cases folks are overpaid in big tech, some of them are insanely talented people who can do things others simply cannot.
Probably because of this:
That's confusing the decision to work on something with the quality of the folks working on it. Brilliant engineers often work on things which are risky from a market perspective. It doesn't make them less brilliant at engineering when it turns out there isn't a market for the thing.
John Carmack appears to be brilliant. I'd guess he would admit the VR market didn't turn out as hoped.
That's not what he said though. What he said is that Meta is basically incompetent.
And from a leadership perspective it might well be / might have been. I don't think he ever criticized the quality of engineers there.
The numbers aren't all that much more palatable at 24,000 man-years, assuming $1M average TC.
That's equivalent to the amount of labor it took to build some of the minor Egyptian pyramids.
In terms of difficulty/complexity, nothing you've listed there comes anywhere close to the r&d required to go from the original oculus prototype to volume shipping the meta quest 3.
I want to make a snarky comment about how any reasonable person would want 10x that to work for Facebook but 500 human lifetimes is still a wild amount of time for what they’ve gotten.
They didn't and they didn't.
1. Zuck always wanted to own a platform. He was a developer at heart and wants a product that developers can build on. He’s personally invested in this.
2. I’m pretty sure a lot of the cost quoted for their “Metaverse” stuff included their CapEx for a ton of GPUs which probably have a lot of other uses within the company.
I wonder how 1. works. Won't any developer tell you that platforms are traps, to be avoided unless necessary (or unless you're prepared in advance to jump off it at any time)? I feel platforms are only interesting to business folks, particularly those selling access to them.
Platforms are a trap, except Windows launched a revolution. Platforms are a trap, but iOS made companies (like Facebook) billions.
Animals usually realise there is something off about a trap. They interact with it extremely cautiously, sometimes leaving it for a few nights and then coming back.
Eventually their desire for whats in the trap overcomes their caution and they put their head in.
as a developer at heart he should have thought back to how interested he would have been in sharecropping on someone else's locked down platform!
Meta reality does a TON of research.
It reads more like they're smartly stepping away from the hardware game they're not really optimized for and focusing on the software and connectivity features that they are.
I'm not keen on more headsets having a Meta data vacuum built-in, but this isn't the opposite of putting the metaverse stuff to pasture.
They're just shifting from an Apple strategy of full-control vertical integration to a Android/Windows strategy of platform ubiquity.
Which would be weird cause the hardware (Quest 3/Quest Pro) is top notch, while Metas software for it is garbage. Everything good is provided by 3rd party companies.
I really hope Meta keeps making hardware. I want a Quest 4
Yeah, me too. It would be really sad if Meta stopped hardware development and left it to other companies.
Pixel phones are great too, but Google would be a radically different company if they tried to saturate the demand for Android hardware on their own.
Making flagship/reference hardware on the Oculus legacy is a much better strategy for Meta and lets them focus on platform vision and data collection, which is exactly the company they spent the last 15+ years building.
"Garbage" is harsh. It's flawed but they are streets ahead of Pico or Vive.
Ironically Google Daydream was also very polished and now Google is starting again but with a gigantic dent in their credibility.
This is them doing that but also trying to do what Android did, capture the bulk of the market and leave the ultra-ridiculously-high-end to Apple.
So create a big market where nobody makes much money to compete with Apple's smaller market that captures absurd margins?
Do devs really capture absurd margins? Or does Apple, leaving the dev with a pittance?
I thought ultra-ridiculously-high-end was referring mostly to Apple hardware and bundled software.
I mostly meant when Apple goes crazy like Vision Pro being $3500, Mac Studio and Mac Pro prices, etc. Those are low-volume items and I think Vision Pro will be relegated to that niche too. If they cut a lot of useless fluff like the eyeball cams/screens, and focus on fit/price they can have a good V2. But the "spatial computing" thing was dead on arrival, it'll never take off as it hasn't taken off in 40 years. People don't want to wave their arms in the air all day.
While we can debate plenty on what the right amount of App Store fees might be, it is objectively true that developers absolutely care about the market of available consumers on the high end platform.
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.
The number of employees who can see failure coming does not matter when they are organized by hierarchy and coerced to work toward failure under threat of losing their wage.
Plenty of people inside Google also thought that splitting(/replacing) Hangouts into Allo and Duo was monumentally stupid.
That was the thing that turned me off Google permanently. I deleted my G account and have never looked back.
Meta kind of doesn't have a choice. The major platforms are now owned by Apple, Google, and Microsoft (and also to a lesser extent IBM and Amazon). The strategic risks of being dependent on other companies' platforms are huge. Meta is desperately hunting for a disruptive innovation that will allow them to control the next major platform. A lot of people are betting that will be AR/VR but it could be something completely different.
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.
Seems more aligned with trying to achieve what android is to mobile phones but with mixed reality.
Exactly this. Facebook makes money by network effects. They are incentivized to grow network engagement, more than they are to make direct money off new network members.
Which, I guess, makes sense. I think it is absolutely nuts that people would buy an OS developed by an ad company that relies on user profiling for their whole business. But then again it works for Google.
It actually is Android, just customized for XR.
Using the name « horizon » without showing Horizon Worlds at all definitely hints at Horizon Worlds being a side social feature of the Horizon OS, versus this being an OS specifically FOR the horizon worlds metaverse.
Meta/Facebook really has trouble with focus, I hope they can pick 1 vision for VR.
I think they have the most focus out of any big tech company. They have like 4 products.
They’re trying to build a platform to build VR experiences on. That’s clearly their goal. Horizon Worlds is “just an app” to show that off. It’s a “hero use case”.
I looked at it seriously for content authoring but gave it up.
The big problem is you cannot import images, textures, 3-d models and such from ordinary tools. You have something like constructive solid geometry to work with but only so much and there is a slider you can use to set the number of players and the more players the less geometry you can use.
I want to make worlds based on photographs (particularly pano and stereo) and art. McDonalds needs to put a Coca-Cola logo on the side of the cup. Either way it is a non-starter.
HW supports collaboration (more than one person shares the world) but https://aframe.io/ lets me make the content I want. If I have to choose one or the other I am going to pick the second.
My take on Meta Quest is that it seems highly successful as a gaming environment based on an app store but is skews towards single-player experiences. Like a lot of AAA games, the excellent Asgard’s Wrath 2 has some multiplayer tacked on but it is all meaningless like leaderboards and the occasional ghost that shows up in a procedurally generated dungeon.
Of course, Meta wants to make multiplayer experiences but somehow they just can’t do it.
The most popular gaming experiences on Quest are all social - Gorilla Tag, Rec Room, VR Chat, Population One, Contractors etc.
It makes sense that expensive AAA experiences like Asgard's Wrath are single player since that's a fairly dominant model in gaming. The Quest doesn't have the player base to support a AAA multiplayer model at this point.
Not really. There is no money in VR/AR headsets. All the money is in the services that back them. Even further, the less money is in making headsets, the more money is in the services.
To say nothing about your data, which is Facebook's primary revenue driver.
Agreed. Zuck on Dwarkesh's podcast definitely seemed to be doing some aggressive retconning, making it seem like AI was always the plan, and the metaverse never was. Of course the opposite was true.
"Opening" what? I can't think of anything here that even remotely resembles opening something to a public or donating a project to any foundation.
They realized they have an asset, and they made some money by licensing it. Sales department did their job, story at 11. But it would've been a boring non-story, so a copywriter used the corporate brandbook - and "open" is the buzzword of the last few years when it comes to the technology.
Someone need to make an LLM SaaS to de-bulshittify the news.
Why would they shut down the Metaverse? It’s clearly the future and Zuck brought it up again in the last podcast that people are linking to. Apple just release a bad headset that just confirmed the bet that Meta took