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Comment by fredliu | Hacker News Reader

Sigh, kinda disappointed given all the hype and secrecy around this, and makes me doubt the near future of VR (I have a Vive, and was a believer until this point). For VR to really take off, we do need a "good enough" experience for the mass while letting the Vives driving the leading edge. Cardboard was clearly not good enough (otherwise it would have taken off by itself already), Daydream (with Pixel phone) just seems like a polished version of cardboard, but still not good enough: actually, is it in anyway better than cardboard towards the direction of Vive? Slightly higher resolution? A little bit more comfortable, maybe easier to setup, and that's it? How about 6 degree of freedom, more precise controller tracking? at least 1K per eye resolution? Just wish Daydream won't kill VR by over-marketing it and fails to deliver. If that happens, it may take another decade for VR to come back.

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>For VR to really take off, we do need a "good enough" experience for the mass

Says who? VR has the Vive, the Oculus, and soon the PSVR. Later it will have an Xbox headset. So you have the PC and consoles all supporting games. Exactly what else do you need? As a vive owner I don't understand why people think there's this natural market demand to have these in every pocket and every home. They are specialist devices. Most people aren't drawn to VR, even if it was made super simple and super cheap. This is like saying the Fallout series is a failure because its not on mobile. We need to stop this mobile-centric thinking. Mobile has its own use cases. Its not a universal thing.

> Most people aren't drawn to VR. That's an interesting observation, especially from a Vive owner. From my limited experiences, everyone I showed Vive to was blown away by it (demo ranges from teenagers to non-techie adults), and definitely wanted to use it more, the only problems for them to have one of their own immediately are 1) price point, 2) setup complexity. On the contrary, Cardboard users responses were lukewarm in general.

Regarding VR for the mass, I see it as a new content consumption platform, the fact that it's mostly for games right now doesn't mean it'll stay in that way. Isn't introducing/promoting VR for the mass exactly what Daydream is intended for? Otherwise I'm not sure why Google is interested in pushing a platform just for a niche market.

To drive adoption, you need an app that people want to use over over, not just marvel at, or play for a couple of hours. It seems personal big screen video content has the chance to be that breakthrough app, and daydream seems a lot cozier than cardboard for long term interaction. Good for plane trips, commuter rail, ect.

Besides, it seems likely that Playstation VR will have the marketing spend which will drive awareness of consumer VR in the coming months.

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