Meta Meets Microsoft | Hacker News Reader

Meta Meets Microsoft

stratechery.com

205 pointsingve377 comments

I know that VR is compelling, and FB's VR headsets succeed in providing some level of immersion, but I don't think people will go from remote-working-with-Zoom to remote-working-with-headset, because it's a trade the most aren't willing to make.

If I'm on a Zoom call with 8 other people and the conversation shifts to something that doesn't concern me, I can bring up a code editor and continue hacking away at something without advertising that to my colleagues. But if I started in VR, I'm basically stuck there.

The whole thing still feels like "we built this great piece of technology but we're struggling to find its killer app". It feels very Segway-ish.

You wouldn’t have to be stuck there if coding in VR was feasible.

…but actually, the fact that people can and do just check out of online meetings while pretending to still be present is kind of a drawback of online meeting Vs in-person meetings. Lack of focus is a killer for productivity.

And if people are doing that, they should be allowed to leave the meeting anyway.

Honestly, you’ve never hacked during a real life meeting ? I used to bring my laptop into the board room all the time.

Jokes on you, I check out in meetings in-person as well. Just hacking away on my laptop in a corner without a care in the world.

It very much depends on your meeting culture. I suppose in the ideal world, everyone should be intently paying attention because the meeting was relevant and focused. In my world, meetings go on for hours, everyone invites the kitchen sink, and long egotistical monologues are the norm. Trapping me in VR for all that would be unpleasant to say the least.

I agree, which is why I think we should normalize leaving meetings.

Ironically, VR might help with this, because you can leave your VR avatar listening for you :)

yeah, but if you leave your avatar, it just goes limp and is obvious you're not there. or, it just stands there doing that NPC awkward flailing of the arms/sighing/whatever when not doing something specific which is just as obvious.

it would be my preference where you could just make it super obvious the meeting is boring AF and do a magician smoke burst when you exit the meeting. make your avatar hold up a sign that says "Why Am I Here?". maybe have your avatar start throwing money at the presenter so they can buy a clue? like, if we're going to use VR and live in the metaverse, let's do things there that we can't do IRL.

Maybe Meta's monetization strategy is that for $1/minute, you can put your avatar on autopilot so it moves as if you were there, while you're in the kitchen tempering chocolate.

For $2/minute, it responds to questions addressed to it with GPL3 generated speech.

(Zuck_make_it_rain.gif)

I kind of want to do something similar but without meta. If it weren't for morals/ethics/whatever about sending company data to 3rd parties, I would love to have GPL3 respond to a subset of my emails for a few weeks just to see if anyone would notice.

You don't need an avatar for that. Just leave (phisically) your laptop while but stay connected (camera off).

Could be worth trying to change that culture, as it is a waste of time that applies whether meetings are virtual or in person.

Sure, the moment I am promoted to CEO of this Fortune 500, I will send along all staff a pamphlet on effective meetings.

Will you get fired if you share that pamphlet today?

No, but by releasing that vital information, they would lose their leverage and potentially miss out on that promotion. It's like releasing a hostage before the ransom has been paid.

I bet Language models will soon be a key feature of zoom. The Language model will serve as an auto-pilot for pointless meetings where it uses your previous history to predict when to say "nice" or "<insert rant on RAII here>", a paging system will be in place if the content of the meeting reaches a high enough perplexity that your frontal cortex is required.

While I’m unsure if this is satire, I am all in! A pre-sentient language model would do a great job attending meetings on my behalf. It could also probably do a better job chatting about sports than I can and could send me a daily summary each evening.

This reminded me of the episode of Silicon Valley where Gilfoye and Dinesh build chat bots to take their place for all the boring work chats. Then, the bots end up chatting with each other causing a feedback loop that overloads the building's power.

I find the idea of two bots having a conversation on Zoom while both people are doing actual work hilarious.

Silicon Valley, the show, is surprisingly prescient. It is too real sometimes even.

Mike Judge is an underrated genius: Beavis & Butt-head, King of the hill, Office Space, Idiocracy, Silicon Valley, etc.

There's nothing stopping me from checking out in real world meetings too. But in a remote meeting, when I check out, I can at least be productive.

Lack of necessity of a meeting is the real killer of productivity.

> Lack of focus is a killer for productivity.

Killer new feature: virtual monitors are anchored to your head. You cannot look away!

Plus eye-tracking can detect when you're not looking at the right thing, and deliver electric shocks to your temples.

Actually, the fact that people can check out of online meetings has improved productivity vs in-person meetings.

I work in a company where I'm allowed to leave meetings that aren't interesting to me.

The problem is with "status update" or "brainstorming" meetings where I'm expected to contribute but only fleetingly, or intermittently. I know I'll be needed for about 2 minutes at some point, but it's not clear when.

A problem with online meetings? Any meeting I've been to with more than about 4 participants had most attendants present but checked out.

Maybe the point is that participants should just be able to leave but that seldom happens imo for various reasons.

> Lack of focus is a killer for productivity.

You're implying that the "lack of focus" is in the people attending the meeting not paying attention. The real place focus is lacking is in the things the meeting, which is not engaging to its attendees, is taking away from. Good meetings, whether remote or in person, have everyone engaged because the content is immediately relevant and pressing to all attendees. Personally I've found that short, small, highly focused meeting are easier to have than in person.

In an online environment it's not too bad if you invite more people than really need to be at the meeting precisely because if you need to be there "just in case", you can keep the tab open while you work on other stuff.

The equivalent of this in-person is just more painful, not more productive. It's the meeting where you consciously struggle to pay attention to something that doesn't really concern you because it would be rude to just walk out.

The solution is to fix the fake culture where people pretend it’s more rude to walk out than mentally check out.

> while pretending to still be present is kind of a drawback of online meeting Vs in-person meetings. Lack of focus is a killer for productivity.

Have you been in meetings before online? People were on their phones and laptops all of the time then too.

If strapping horse blinders to your employees’ heads during all meetings is the solution to keep their attention, you have bigger cultural issues at hand.

I was on the laptop doing stuff in plenty of in person meetings as well.

On the other hand sometimes people need to be in the meeting but for the next 15 min the conversation might be about something unrelated to them; I’m happy they can multitask during that time without distrActing the rest of the team. That would not be possible in VR

For some if my super early morning meetings, I’m in bed with headphones on listening. Don’t want this to go away :)

> I'm basically stuck there

Right. So the first extension to this platform will be avatar automation - to make it look like your are "engaged" while you in fact are doing something else.

Yes, the VR equivalent of mouse nudging that maintains a green 'active' dot in corporate collaborative environments.

You know you can set your status to stay active without mouse nudging, right?

I wish that were the case

Put it on a lazy large dog or cow, if available, as they don’t have issues with VR apparently.

This sounds very over-engineered. We should just go back to Skype conference calls.

Sure. It's the same situation of a solution in search of a problem as video in phone calls before that capability existed. "In the future, we'll be able to see people instead of just talk to them on the phone!"

It turns out that that's not always/often so desirable.

Yeah that's a really great comparison! Video calls are great for transatlantic calls with family and friends I haven't seen in ages, and a good VR version of that might be even better, but I likely wouldn't use it more than a few times a month.

For me video calls add negative value even in this situation. I have a hard time accommodating the compromise in fidelity and latency and resent the miracle. I'd rather use textual mediums and wait (even a long time) to get the full experience in person. Current technology for videoconferencing reduces my relationship with people rather than grows it. Pretty sure I'm a minority here.

> If I'm on a Zoom call with 8 other people and the conversation shifts to something that doesn't concern me, I can bring up a code editor and continue hacking away at something without advertising that to my colleagues. But if I started in VR, I'm basically stuck there.

This is simultaneously a criticism and a big selling point

Not for employees. In fact, I can't see a single reason why workers will want VR environments for remote work.

They can easily provide a feature where the employee could flip a switch and temporarily (semi?) hide herself, signaling that she is currently occupied with something else. Yes, in a Zoom setting, she doesn't have to broadcast that. But that's just cheating.

> They can easily provide a feature where the employee could flip a switch and temporarily (semi?) hide herself, signaling that she is currently occupied with something else.

That's like saying "you could just start doing something else" during an in-person meeting. We all decided that's not ok, so why would we be granted an exception in a VR setting ?

"We all decided that's not ok". And we also all decided it's ok to start doing something else in a Zoom meeting, because nobody will notice anyway?

Yes the whole point of VR is to command your entire attention the same way as if you were physically in a room. The pro-VR crowd (basically limited to anyone getting paid to work on it for Meta) thinks this will replicate the benefits of in-person work. Everyone else sees it as replicating the drawbacks of in-person work.

So your main issue with VR meetings is you can't sit there and ignore the meeting?

You can say "Hey, it sounds like i'm no longer needed here, do you mind if I leave?".

Answer: "the meeting is mandatory, so you can't leave"

dont ask, leave and see if anyone cares, that's what I do

Just say you have to go to another meeting

Bonus points, you can schedule a bunch of long meetings on your calendar that are actually just time to work

That’s a good way to get left out of the occasional actual important meeting.

That's a meetings problem, not FB's problem. Well tbh , work from home can be lonely and this virtual meeting does make the meeting slighty more exciting, and considering that it has very good pass-through, it would work OK in teams as well

https://twitter.com/ImmersedVR/status/1579925595441762305

Wait but we have found a killer app for it, 3D videogames, isn't it? It's just not a market big enough for Meta since they want everyone to be using it so they are looking for bigger markets? But it seems to me there is a very clear and pocket-deep sector there.

3rd-person video games can be fun — I really enjoyed playing Lucky's tale back in the day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLantPfNRIY, but first-person games don't map half as well.

The HL 1/2 and Doom 1/2 ports severely disagree.

They haven’t really started trying. Half Life Alyx is still on the top of everyone’s list, but mac/quest2 users can’t play it.

Most quest 2 games feel like phone games. Super shallow, and not amazing.

Meta should bid for world of Warcraft. MMORPGs are the most successful form of metaverse to date.

I don't know if the smoldering wreckage of Activision-Blizzard could make the next WoW..

I highly doubt that the average mac can play half life alyx at acceptable performance levels. Aren't most of them laptops with integrated gpu?

If you’re a designer you used to get the Intel with Radeon cards.

I thought the M1 and M2 has reasonable graphics capabilities. https://www.techradar.com/news/apples-m1-chip-can-apparently....

That's the really funny thing about Meta's angle. VR is pretty exciting for games, there's a lot of potential there. A metaverse of games is actually an incredibly cool concept, with lots of possible ways to conceptualize that.

But they're not at all interested in that! They're betting big on some dubious niche productivity / social uses for VR. Even if you enjoy VR meetings, how is Meta going to make billions from that?

Install Oculus Virtual Desktop - gives you access to your computer, on compatible keyboards is able to bring it virtually onto your desktop in front of you, and mute your mic.

Segway! Yes! Great analogy!!!

This whole thing screams "What problem does this solve?"

It doesn't solve the lack of real face-to-face communication from remote work, I'd argue it's way worse because now you're face-to-face with a bad simulation of a face.

Are displays particularly bad for zoom meetings? Is having something hanging off your face, hurting your neck better? Probably not.

Tech has moved way past actually solving problems and this is the best screaming example.

> It doesn't solve the lack of real face-to-face communication from remote work, I'd argue it's way worse because now you're face-to-face with a bad simulation of a face.

For now, it's a bad simulation. But, this needs to be thought of on a 5-10 year scale. Might still be useless, but can't judge it on a 1 year scale.

> can’t judge it on a 1 year scale.

Facebook wants us to, though.

This isn’t a lab demo that they’re showing us — it’s meant to be a product you can use today.

Good point, that's where I think they are screwing up. Making this their centre of attention.

Why not? Previous attempts at VR have not kept up their momentum for that long

This is the most money & investment that has ever been put into VR by a single company by far.

VRChat seems to be holding up well.

VR was not invented in 2021. Hell, I remember trying it out in the 90s.

If one day the next-gen avatars are so realistic, would you say the same? The whole point of VR/AR/MR is to push the boundaries of immersive virtual worlds that eventually reach or even exceed the realism of the physical world. 20 years ago the 3D first-person shooter games were laughable and you can say the same "what's the point of building a 3D first-person game with this janky graphics and slowass computer? We should stick to 2D." Now look at what we have today.

> say the same "what's the point of building a 3D first-person game with this janky graphics and slowass computer? We should stick to 2D."

But it was even fun and entertaining then. Quest is not.

VR is super fun for early adopters, just like early games. A ton more people play games now than they did 20 years ago.

What Quest is pitching (meetings), is not fun. I’ve tried it.

VR games are fun, Quest is not.

Not to nitpick, but Doom was launched 29 years ago. And it was pretty good, not janky.

And by a strange twist of fate, the same John Carmack of Doom fame is working on Quest-related stuff today. I'm inclined to pooh-pooh Meta's VR efforts, but John Carmack is not a fool.

How do you exceed the realism of the physical world? Isn't it perfect realism?

Quake was an immediate huge success and lay the groundwork for almost all future 3d FPS games.

VR is not in the early days.

It's not a bad simulation, though. It gives your monkey brain the visceral feeling that you're in the same room with these other people

The problem isn't that I don't feel like I'm in the same room with the other people, it's that I can't look around the room and understand what the vibe is, or make eye contact with someone else to communicate something.

You can though? At least I've had the experience of making eye contact.

As for vibe, the tech is getting better for recognizing facial expressions, so that's just a matter of time. Spatial sound makes "local conversations" possible, where people sitting near each other can talk while other people in the room talk, and you get the effect of a buzz of conversation, which can't happen on Zoom. And ofc avatars face wherever their users would like, so you can tell when everyone is focused on the speaker vs doing their own thing.

> Are displays particularly bad for zoom meetings?

The bandwidth of the conversation is a fraction of that IRL, gestures, mannerisms and directional audio allow multiple levels of communication and meetings are literally over twice as fast as a zoom call where only one person can communicate at once and every interaction has a perceptible delay.

Will VR solve this? Remains to be seen, but Zoom calls are bottom of the barrel in terms of communication and I'd literally rather wait a day and have the conversation IRL these days if that's an option.

> This whole thing screams "What problem does this solve?"

I know! Let's put it on the Blockchain!

/me ducks

> hurting your neck better?

Modern headsets are pretty light and the weight is balanced. They aren't going to hurt your neck. This tells me you haven't actually used one.

We can complain that they are still bulky, that putting on and removing is not as seamless as it should be, that they can get hot and sweaty, that resolution is still not there, and many other things.

True. This does feel like it's caught somewhere between the future (electric cars) and a solution looking for a problem (self-driving cars).

Until an VR/AR/MR solution builds on productivity as a tool I think its market adoption will remain niche. I fear inevitably it will incorporate user addiction and behavior modification to promote data extraction. It’s at that point any usefulness it had as a tool evaporates.

Unless you use gpt-3 and a text-to-voice synthesizer to automate your attendance of unimportant meetings in VR.

Surprise: you can already do this in Meta’s Workrooms. Opening a private interactive window to your computer while in a VR meeting works as expected, although it’s just as obvious as when you do it in a video call…

Why would being in VR make you stuck? You can still miltitask

One problem seems to be that either everyone on your call has VR headsets, or you can't use VR at all. A huge outlay in hardware, or nothing. Is there a way for people to join a VR meeting without hardware and still have a decent experience?

Yeah. In workrooms non-VR people can still join in. They appear as a video feed in the environment, and they see a rendering of the meeting from that perspective. It's still quite rich for everyone, eg you can tell when VR people are listening to you because they instinctively all turn their heads to look at your video.

It's not that much different of a problem compared to real life hybrid calls between conference rooms and other conference rooms / remote workers.

> But if I started in VR, I'm basically stuck there.

That's not entirely true. You can still pull up screens and hack away in Workrooms. However, I don't think they let you hide your screens from others yet. I presume that feature will soon come.

This is exactly why in person meetings are awful, and VR is trying to recreate those conditions.

Isn’t this one of the reasons face to face meetings are more effective? Your colleagues in a physical meeting can see and react to expressions of others, which makes the conversation more likely to stay on track.

If VR meetings don’t solve the “disconnected feeling” problem of talking-video-heads meetings then it’s just a worse form of talking -video-heads meetings. Just being an avatar in 3D doesn’t significantly improve anything, something else must also fundamentally improve. It has to feel like “being there” to improve the quality of meetings. I’m not saying I think VR will solve that problem, but who knows.

Meetings that need to be done are more effective face to face.

But something like 80-90% of meetings don't qualify, and in those cases zoom is a godsend.

The tech is still too young. I imagine future headsets will be able to stream a face capture and map it onto the VR avatar in real time. Eye tracking is already becoming mainstream, so face tracking is the next logical step.

Google's Project Starline is really impressive and seems to be progressing. If that could be made to fit on a headset, using perspective distortion like on the new iPhones, then you could presumably capture expressions. Or just by using an external camera, and overlaying the eye tracking feed to remove the headset. It doesn't sound so far fetched.

If jumping in and out of VR is the desired business case, apps would just let you switch to audio only mode, when you pull off the headset or alt-tab or if you disable body language sharing.

Why are we expecting these tools to be built as painful as possible when there's plenty of work arounds?

VR is going to be a niche product even for gaming. It's fun and definitely a novel experience, but onerous for extensive use. It's way easier to sit in a comfortable chair and play on a traditional machine--particularly for any lengthy game (it's also cheaper and has more to offer).

The myth of the "killer app" just assumes progress is inevitable regardless of practical utility. No one needs "immersion" for a zoom call. The awkward, and not completely comfortable, VR sets are acceptable when you're doing something fun but--and I can't stress this enough--completely demoralizing when you need to put it on to "immerse" yourself in the banal confines of a business meeting.

Investors pretty uniformly don't have high hopes for what seems to be a desperate Hail Mary for a company that's no longer capable of organic growth. Meta just doesn't have enough time to cultivate a Meta-verse with enough adopters to stall its decline. I'm sure there will be benefits to this research but the level of optimism we're getting from Meta is more hopeful than reasonable.

I agree, although I'm really curious about what the post-Zoomer generation does with VR.

Our media and how we interact with it has only ever trended in one direction: higher bandwidth.

The generation that grew up with oral tradition loved the written word.

The generation that grew up with the written word loved the printing press.

The generation that grew up with the printing press loved photos.

The generation that grew up with photos, loved videos.

What will the generation that grew up with video love? It certainly seems limiting if they settle for merely a higher resolution, FPS, or better sound quality.

Even blockchain has more purpose than the "Metaverse". At least Blockchain serves as a speculative asset for gambling addicts.

Does going to the office feel Segway-ish? This is the same problem as an in person meeting.

I think in-person meetings are compelling, but it's a trade that most aren't willing to make.

Snark aside, VR meetings have similar benefits and similar drawbacks to in-person meetings. Besides, this is covering for the uselessness of many meetings. If you are not contributing to the point that you are actually working on something else, you shouldn't have been there (or the meeting doesn't have an agenda, or invited too many people, etc).

No tech can fix dysfunctional companies.

Segways sold a total of ~140,000 units across nearly 20 years of production[0]. The original Quest sold more than twice that in the first 6 months of it's release[1], and Quest 2 sales have well exceeded 10 million units. While I agree that VR is still a nebulous proposition from a software perspective, the hardware is apparently ready and the demand is there.

[0] https://www.fastcompany.com/90517971/exclusive-segway-the-mo...

[1] https://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/superdata-xr-update

FWIW the original Segway cost 10x more than the Quest, but the important figure (from an ecosystem perspective) in both cases is their actual usage numbers. Most Quest headsets get used a bunch in the first month, but their owners lose interest pretty quickly.

Absolutely. Perhaps someone can chime in, but how does one take notes in VR.

I know it’s terrifically old school, but I routinely jot down notes and reminders for myself in meetings. Do I take the googles off? Are do I use the VR pen and VR paper? I guess I could use the keyboard?

The main problem with zoom and others is that echo cancellation prevents people from speaking simultaneously, while VR essentially forces people to all wear a headset and turn off the echo cancellation and allow people to speak simultaneously.

Ok, so a VR version of MS Teams might be “compelling”, but does anybody really think that companies are going to supply their employees with $1k VR goggles just so that they can do a virtual meetup instead of just a normal phone or video call?

I think VR has merit and could be very useful in some spaces like gaming, exploring new worlds (with good graphics) or maybe even prototyping architectural designs etc, but these are too niche for whatever Zuck is trying here… for his billion dollar bet to succeed nearly everyone would have to be using his VR product.

If at some point goggles replaces monitors, I can see this taking off... but i don't see that happening anytime soon. VR goggles are way too bulky and uncomfortable now.

You’d really want to be disconnected entirely from your surroundings while you’re working ? Sounds nauseating to me.

I enjoy looking at friends and loved ones, looking out the window occasionally, taking notes, drinking coffee without a headset in the way, not having a sweaty face or being nauseated.

AR maybe, VR for hours ? No thanks

I know this may come across as saying "who would want to carry a telephone in their pocket?", but the idea that we would all be required to sit with googles on all day, in a virtual 'office' environment, in order to do our work, is beyond all dystopian imagining, in my view.

Today I'm coding by my window, with the sun shining outside - some birdsong audible from the trees in the yard. One of my kids just came home from school, and we chatted for a couple minutes. I had a few (too many) meetings today, but they were all video-calls and for some of the time I could carry on with a current task.

I think the receptiveness of the HN crowd overestimates the utility of this technology. It would probably be used to enslave underlings into being 'present' at the virtual office without pee-breaks for 10-hours every day.

PS: I see everyone else in this thread questioning the idea that we should sit in a virtual-reality world with goggles strapped to our faces all day is getting downvoted. I think people outside the tech-nerd bubble would probably disagree.

> Today I'm coding by my window, with the sun shining outside - some birdsong audible from the trees in the yard.

I’m coding by the windows with the blinds down, sometimes birds, or worse, church bells (actually, mostly the damn bells) annoy me. I guess it’s nice when my wife pops in, but I could still interrupt my VR session for that.

Not saying I’m in any way into VR, I don’t really see the point yet, but I wanted to give a different POV ;)

I guess it’s nice when my wife pops in, but I could still interrupt my VR session for that.

This still sounds so bad.

These goggles have pass through color video, some may enjoy to work in an immersive environment.

Also, some may enjoy to work from beach in Bali or Swiss mountains.

> You’d really want to be disconnected entirely from your surroundings while you’re working?

People take drugs to achieve this level of focus

you’d still need to take drugs, a VR headset doesn’t stop you from being distracted .

Obviously it depends entirely on the person and situation...

Ok, so a PC version of The Office might be “compelling”, but does anybody really think that companies are going to supply their employees with $1k PC just so that they can do a digital meetup instead of just a normal phone call and a letter?

I think PCs has merit and could be very useful in some spaces like development, exploring new productivity (with good keyboards) or maybe even prototyping architectural designs etc, but these are too niche for whatever Gates is trying here… for his billion dollar bet to succeed nearly everyone would have to be using his PC product.

Yes, of course your argument is valid. But i still think the functionality gained by VR is more of a smaller incremental one, rather than the revolutionary one that the PC was back then.

I think it depend on two things:

- It needs to be light enough to wear 8 hours a day and not disconnect too much from reality, like with XR/AR.

- Input devices matter a great deal and writing on a keyboard - while in the field - will pose a problem, same goes with mouse input devices. The current controllers are too large and slow for productive input.

Mostly agree. But on "input devices" I don't think the keyboard will as we know it will make the transition. Anyway, it's a very unnatural input device which only a small percentage of humanity has mastered. Steve Jobs famously told his designers in the 80s that he didn't want the Mac to have a physical keyboard. They said, rightly at the time, that a computer needs one. But in the end Jobs was correct - 99% of computers now have no keyboard.

I have not followed research in this area, but I'm sure that some very smart people are trying to figure out the ideal virtual keyboard for VR.

Voice interpretation using AI is very nearly there, it's the only input that isn't finicky.

'forward two space, no back 1. down 3 and replace inner words with... no; undo. cancel. cancel. UNDO'.

"Nearly" there, the problem with people mumbling or having a bad voice for recognition of microphones will always be an issue though, no matter how good the AI is..

> 99% of computers now have no keyboard.

And I miss them, every time I use those computers. The Keyboard (and mouse, even if the Vi people will probably want to lynch me for that) is still the most efficient input device. That might eventually change through some UI revolution, but all we have so far are UIs with fewer features in exchange for making touch usage slightly easier.

>is still the most efficient input device

And has only existed for last 70 years of human history. I doubt it'll stick with us.

The first commercial typewriters became available in the late 1800s.

Nit: Even if assume that all global population (7B) have smartphone and tablet (so 14B), 1% is 14M. It's too low count for how much PC used. Also popular better input system for long text hasn't used now. I don't think keyboard is the endgame device, but keyboard era is very long than we expected.

It's not, though. The company laptop does a lot more than do Zoom calls.

Yeah, today's "unrealistically expensive" is tomorrow's basic toolkit. I don't know if a Meta headset will be tomorrow's basic toolkit, but I also don't know that I would have predicted smartphones being ubiquitous in 2000 or the PC in 1970.

Moreover, surely many companies dropped $1k per employee for better equipping their workforce to work remotely during the pandemic. Yearly IT costs per seat surely exceed $1k in many if not most companies, so this is not really expensive.

Can you articulate the benefits of VR meetings that are comparable to those of personal computers and that motivate equating the two?

Sure:

- You're able to visibly instruct and teach physical objects without being physically on-site.

Now apply that to professions like cooking, teaching, repairs, art, entertainment, music, industrial etc.

So: you need to learn how to be a chef. Off you go to VR chef school for... a few weeks. Congrats, you qre a chef now. Was it worth the hardware yout wont use qgain?

I don’t get the sense that horizon workrooms targets any of that. It appears to have a goal of recreating normal conference rooms with virtual tables, whiteboards, TVs.

I can imagine that VR in general has some applications that are valuable, but this particular article is about the potential of replacing normal voice and video calls with avatars in a virtual conference room.

I’ve observed simulations in VR that were compelling–I still remember parts of them well even now. However, these simulations were pre-recorded or preset and my range of inputs were limited to a set of menus from which I could select different options to simulate.

When I played various games with a wider range of input options, there was a noticeable latency, and the virtual environment did not fully capture my real or intended motions very well.

I think there are possibilities for VR in certain fields, but when it comes to arts and sciences like cooking and music, there are some aspects of the physical world that, to be captured in a compelling and useful way, will require significant progress or significant modification to extant VR hardware and software.

In cooking, there is a tangible, tactile difference in using a cleaver versus a pairing knife, and there is a tangible, tactile difference between cutting a head of kale, versus a large tuna. Likewise, there is a tangible, tactile component to interacting with instruments, and a large part of learning an instrument is developing not just the muscle memory of interacting with it, but developing the fine muscles involved as well.

In both cases, the learning requires the use of the specific instrument, and there is a genuine limitation in practical learning when the medium of instruction and the instrument of instruction is generalized to a set of what are essentially game controllers.

It seems to me the virtualization of physical interactions, without proper and necessary modifications to hardware and software, will leave VR bereft of the instructive capability it is relying on in order to be useful in this business/enterprise context in which it would like to be considered.

You're right of course, for VR specifically, it's insufficient, but for XR/AR, there are many more applications where it fits. I guess that when we also get physical scans of real objects, streamed live to others, it will make quite a difference.

Is that a serious argument? PCs offered tremendous utility over phones and letters. What utility does VR provide over a regular PC? Oh that’s right, virtually none.

The PC of 1981 offered so little immediate utility that the microcomputer press was desperately pushing "maybe housewives can archive their recipes" as a use case for personal computers.

Remember, it wasn't networked, and the I/O was limited to a crappy matrix printer at best. There was practically no software, and most professionals and managers didn't know how to type since that was a secretary's task.

Yet VR has none of those limitations and it still hasn't taken off like personal computers. Weird, it's almost like VR is just an interface and anything you can view in it you can just view on a regular screen, which most people prefer.

Also the comparison to early computers a little weird. VR isn't a platform that can scale out to to handle billions of e-commerce transactions or solve computational biology problems. Apples to oranges.

Also

> these are too niche for whatever Gates is trying here… for his billion dollar bet to succeed nearly everyone would have to be using his PC product.

I don’t think Microsoft / Gates had a “billion dollar bet” that’s comparable to what Zuckerberg is doing with VR and the metaverse.

Meta sells ads on a social network and is using money from that business to subsidize the development of VR applications on the theory that someday meta might make lots of money from VR.

Microsoft sold software for personal computers, made a lot of money doing it, and used that money to fund the development of more software for personal computers. At no point in this early history was there a billion dollar bet.

> Microsoft sold software for personal computers, made a lot of money doing it, and used that money to fund the development of more software for personal computers. At no point in this early history was there a billion dollar bet.

Xbox?

I don't know, I think as a user this would be pretty awesome. The main thing that fills me with dread is not everybody having the headset, or having trouble getting it to work. (Remember the days with each meeting starting with 10 minutes of futzing around with external display settings and resolutions and VGA connectors?)

If you spend most of your time working in it? I think so. My company provided me a 3.5k laptop, in fact every company I've worked for I've used very nice and expensive macs.

Most workers receiving laptops are getting low-tier Dells loaded with so much corporate crapware that they barely work at all. Including lots of developers—just not the ones at fancy tech companies or startups.

Between 25 and 55 percent of enterprise use Macs.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3562374/mac-adoption-i...

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3604601/macs-reach-23-...

And apparently all of the fortune 500

https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/11/12/100-of-fortune-50...

Your model of "just fancy tech companies and startups" is maybe a bit outdated.

> Your model of "just fancy tech companies and startups" is maybe a bit outdated.

It's really not. More permit them now or have some departments or (perhaps acquired) sub-units that use them. Your average office drone and old-corp IT person or developer is still issued a Windows machine, and probably a low-end one.

[EDIT] Broader point remains either way: issuing $3.5k laptops/desktops is very very far from the norm.

Okay, I’ve provided 3 articles to the contrary and you just restated your opinion.

Not sure what you want to happen here but I guess we agree to disagree and move on.

Your articles are 1) marketing pieces, so very untrustworthy, and 2) don't support the notion that Macs are the typical devices issued by enterprises.

I did read them, they're just not very relevant.

[EDIT]

Incidentally, I never even claimed this:

> Your model of "just fancy tech companies and startups" is maybe a bit outdated.

I claimed that those are the only sorts of companies where one can be pretty sure most workers aren't seeing and using lots of mostly-cheap Windows machines. Which is a very different claim from those being the only places that use Macs at all, or are even the only ones that mostly use Macs.

I wrote:

> Including lots of developers—just not the ones at fancy tech companies or startups.

I.e. I'm saying that almost no fancy tech companies or startups are likely to push cheap Windows laptops on their developers, which explains how some people might come to think that organizations in general are generous with equipment dollars for their workers and are sensitive to the costs in lost productivity of issuing shitty devices. This is not the case, even for software developers, in much of the economy outside that bubble.

Those sources just say that those companies have some Apple products somewhere in the company. Not that they supply mainly Macs.

I work at a very large company that's probably counted here (because the number of Apple devices in the company is not 0), and almost everyone is only supplied with a mid-range Windows laptop, and a cheap Android phone.

Companies regularly drop $100K+ on Cisco video conferencing gear.

There's a big difference between providing the gear to make the video conference work well and providing VR gear to make the video conference... slightly different?

In my experience Cisco gear provides marginal benefit over a good Zoom setup, and according to the article a VR meeting using the Quest Pro provides a substantive benefit.

It's literally the same thing. The market for hardware in corporate telephony and video conferencing is massive. Think headsets, massive screens, Teams/Zoom rooms, special phones, etc etc.

does anybody really think that companies are going to supply their employees with $1k VR goggles just so that they can do a virtual meetup instead of just a normal phone or video call?

Yes. Spending $1k (probably a lot less if you're buying a thousand devices at once) is almost insignificant when it comes to kitting out staff to do their job as well as possible. If you can make someone you're paying $100,000/year just 1% more productive then it's already paid for itself. Plus it's a perk "top of the line VR headset for every employee" keeps people onside (I'm reluctant to say 'happy'; that would be too much).

If the company I work for decided to get all the staff VR headsets for meetings I'd be really cool with that. If we switched to Teams though, that might undo the happy vibes..

Imagine how dumb you're going to feel if you're the only person in VR in a teams meeting.

Hah yes. 7 people on low-res webcams and one with a 4k Master Chief avatar.

Or the alternative even. I work in consulting. What would it be like if my team was geared up in VR and the client was not? What would it be like if the client was geared up and we were not?

I would imagine... really distracting.

Isn’t that just the definition of network effect? Meta is clearly betting that at a certain critical mass not owning a VR headset in a professional environment will be like not owning a webcam.

How do I bet that they're wrong?

short $META?

I think it will come across as unprofessional to join a meeting in vr personally. And triply so if not everyone, or everyone of a certain class is doing it.

VR is goofy, and it'll continue to be goofy. Like... ok so you have an avatar. Are a cartoon? That's a bad start. Are they maybe an unreal meta human that looks like you? Different than you? Like you, but poorly done? Ok whatever let's assume the rendering is fine.

What are you doing in this virtual meeting? Are you standing? Because that would be very weird for a business meeting. Presumably you're sitting irl because this is work, so maybe your avatar is sitting... Do they have a table in the virtual room? Because a meeting with no table is a bit odd for a business setting. But if you're in VR, you probably don't have a table in front of you irl. Or at least not the same table that's virtually in front of you. What does your body language track? What if Carol starts lagging and her avatar starts jerking around? What if your facial tracking gets something wrong and you just have a weird look on your face? Or more realistically your facial tracking is just a pretty simplistic thing that vacillates between neutral and smiling and you need to convey negative emotions?

In snow crash, the thing that made the metaverse work was very strong facial expression mimicry. It's not a terrible argument, but we don't have that. We have fake expressive facial mimicry that looks emotive but isn't actually that nuanced to your own face.

VR Chat for business just seems like a preposterous idea. Especially for older folks.

Remote work in general seems like a preposterous idea many folks .. even after being forced to do it, they can't really wrap their head around how it works, or why some people like it

VR Chat for business just seems like a preposterous idea. Especially for older folks.

What this usually means is that startups and 'cool' companies adopt it, and then companies run by older people adopt it because they cargo cult anything successful. That could be enough to drive it to the mainstream. It's worked for lots of other tech and ideas (websites, mobile apps, nosql, agile, etc).

That’s a pretty weak bet given that owning a webcam isn’t even expected for meetings between businesses.

A few years ago when video chat was, if you asked tech workers, already the norm for remote meetings, I know for a fact that at least one of the big three management consulting firms still strongly preferred call-an-actual-phone-number voice conferencing.

It struck me as goofy at first but I think they had it right, actually. You can join a call like that from almost anywhere. Don't need to dig out a laptop, let alone VR garbage. Airport, walking down the street on the way to another meeting, in the car on speakerphone (like, probably don't do this, but of course tons of people do), whatever, it all works. No "do I have the service they want installed? Is it updated?" No other crap popping up and making noise or distracting you. And phone number plus code had fewer problems than meeting invites for all the hip services.

Maybe not having VR will end up being one of those things that signals either low or high status. I can't imagine C-suite types fucking around with VR except for big all-hands announcements or whatever.

You mean like in real life where people can wear casual or dress clothes? Won't it just be that business cultural norms develop?

I didn't mean geared up in goofy avatars. I meant rendering themselves in VR at all

More like real life where you're on screen share but your client is literally phoning it in (because they can't run webex/zoom or they're on the road).

Lowest common denominator applies for critical attendees.

I imagine the meeting would take place at a level of communication determined by the lowest common denominator. If the client can't do video, then everyone else does audio-only. If they can't do VR, then you all are stuck with a Zoom call.

Wait. Now I want this.

7 people on low-res webcams and one with a 4k avatar he was using with his wife the night before who's been out of town a lot..

With Zuck watching.

Is the productivity gain so big? Mind that it's not only cost to acquire the devices, but also all maintenance around them etc

And then you have people with different degree of reluctance, which you have to encourage and train (see the recent post about Facebook/Meta pushing their managers to enforce VR meetings ...

Does this actually make someone 1% more productive? I'm skeptical, but willing to be shown to be wrong.

> ... just 1% more productive

I see this repeated again and again but where are the studies? I totally fail to see how putting a VR headset would make the corporate world more productive.

I'm not a luddite: for example I can clearly see why AR, when I drive my car, can be convenient (say with navigational aids) or can provide safety features. I see the use cases that'd benefit many people.

But a VR headset making people in the corporate world more productive? I mean: it may be the case but it remains to be seen.

Heck, I don't even know: are people supposed to do VR meetings seeing 3D avatars kinda looking like the other persons in the meeting? For I don't see how you could see the real person correctly, knowing that it'll have a VR headset on its head (so it cannot filmed by any camera correctly).

How are facial expressions going to be represented in the VR meetings?

Someone will smile and you'll instead see a 3D model smiling? I'd say if that's the case the chance that there's a productivity gain has to be weighted with the chance that it could also be the biggest flop in the history of flops...

It is weird because VR is the subject of this giant bet by Facebook. Really VR is still nascent. I bet you couldn't find a really bulletproof study in the 90's that giving employees laptops would boost productivity by a measurable percentage, but it still seemed like a reasonable thing to try out at least.

I believe there's work on getting cameras inside the headsets for expressions and gaze-tracking.

The problem with that comparison is that only a small percentage of people are going to be even 1% more productive using VR, and a noticeable percentage will be noticeably less productive (e.g. nausea issues)... and with the state of current technology you're not going to find out which person is in which group until after you've spent the money.

Most companies don't even buy webcams to improve meetings, they're not going to spend 100 times more on VR headsets

All companies I've worked for so far outfitted their employees with the cheapest screens that where somewhat typical in the respective years (e.g. 24" 1080p screens 5 years ago, 27" 1440p now). 4k screens have been available for much longer for reasonable prices (more like 500$ can 1000$), are much more ergonomic - and they still didn't invest in those.

I think that's due to a mixture of productivity and employee pain hardly being measurable, and whoever decides the budget for those things is not an actual computer poweruser. I wouldn't see it being much different for VR devices. Unless maybe the head of IT in a company is hyped about that stuff.

MS Teams is already a chore, I'm not adding an extra layer of mental overhead on top of it.

I agree that the additional value add over a video call might not be there, though the author did seem to speak of Workroom being somewhat compelling.

But remember that a single Telepresence room can cost $60k - $600k, plus an ongoing subscription for networking + management, without the capacity or flexibility of a virtual room. Every meeting room in my office has one.

This is touched on in the article, but remember theres a difference between how individuals and corporations spend money, especially if it can lead to [percieved?] gains in productivity/team cohesion.

https://www.nojitter.com/telepresence-beautiful-and-expensiv...

Agreed. With screen sharing, video, and audio, there's nothing more that is really needed for distributed people meeting together. Meeting in a 3d world seems like it would only benefit if you're discussing something that is 3d (some architecture design, car design, 3-d assets, etc.). Plus, it seems almost less personal in some ways since you're using an avatar instead of your actual face.

Agreed. I bought a VR headset a few years ago with the idea of using iRacing to practice for actual track days. It was a plausible use case with a lot of significant practical advantages.

But in reality, it was just unpleasant to use. I just didn't like having something strapped to my face. Ultimately, 3 monitors provided an adequately immersive experience for learning without the hassle/discomfort of having a headset on. Honestly, it was kind of better anyway.

I suspect that what people will quickly find is that although a VR meeting might in certain respects have theoretical advantages, its just not better enough (or maybe even better at all) to overcome the hassle. I don't want to go into a meeting room and strap on a headset, especially not the headset everyone else has been strapping on for the last month. Comparing zoom to a headset, I'd take zoom.

I think the key here is the passthrough, making it an XR/AR experience, thus not disconnecting from reality in the same way as full VR is doing.

This has already been deployed in industrial complexes like Volvo/SAAB for teaching engineers in car manufacturing.

As someone who has personally experienced the difference presence makes in VR, yeah I think it's worth it. You'll have far more productive meetings (and frankly, smaller meetings.... one of the downside of zoom meetings I've noticed is because it's so easy to invite everyone.... people invite everyone. You end up with meetings with 10 people on and only 3 people partcipating).

But I'll concede that you'll looking at an uphill battle. It's not intuitive to a lot of people what the benefits are until you've experienced it.

90% of of professional/work 'VR' usage will be through a standard interface I think until terminals/IDEs get proper usable/silo'd support. We had one work VR event and i spent half of it launching rockets at coworkers before my kid walked in and i went AFK.

90% of professional work is done in an IDE...?

There are many other professions besides programming.

Ask companies how they feel about those expensive conference room setups that are rarely used, and when they are used the experience is buggy as hell.

VR has applications, but mainstream consumer use is not one of them.

I suspect and predict the killer app is simply greater bandwidth and bigger screens for ordinary video calls. Some marketer will find the right angle and moment to proclaim "telepresence is here!" and the mainstream ambitions of VR will evaporate. All interest will go to "half rooms" where the "other half" of the room is someone else's telepresence half room. On demand, of course.

Gaming will always have some type of VR hardware - that's too compelling not to try. However, beyond gaming the ordinary person does not really need 360 degree immersion for anything unless they are learning something complex and VR is used in the profession they are learning about.

What tech and/or societal changes would be needed to reach a world where a fair amount of user generated content is spatial (as opposed to 2D)?

What's the purpose, and does the purpose make money? Unless the ordinary user can make money using VR somehow, I don't see it having the essential reason for the tech to go mainstream. VR gaming and porn is not that compelling.

> for whatever Zuck is trying here…

Zuck read too much cyberpunk as a kid. The Metaverse is lifted straight out of Snow Crash, they didn't even change the name [0]

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash

He's far from alone. Companies have famously dropped Snow Crash on a table and said "make this.". He's just the one with the most money and people.

Neal Stephenson sure makes a compelling case, even if the world he describes is in many aspects a dystopia.

Most of these designs are an inevitability. Every Sci fi universe has some kind of Metaverse experience - all pointing generally in the same direction as they try to answer, "what would people do in a world with no limits?"

They never consider the cost though. They just use it as a mechanism to tell story.

Don't underestimate the story telling value of characters in a virtual space. Consider how much better The Matrix is while they're actually in it.

Cost goes down and ROI only goes up, exponentially over time. VR is currently as expensive today as it ever will be.

I was actually considering non-monetary cost. e.g. space to store the headset, time to place it over your face, time to charge it, etc.

Either way, all of those costs are as cheap today as they ever will be.

Exactly! That's why I think VR will never be mainstream, like smartphones.

90% of human communication is via body language. Unless I've missed something and Meta have managed to capture the nuances of body language and translate it to the avatars, then this tech is useless for "real" meetings.

Anything that could be an email, or a presentation, sure. But if you have to trust what other people in the room are saying, then this won't work.

In recent interviews with Zuck he talks about important body language is. From their research, they found you can get really far with only face, posture, and hand reproduction (hence why Meta avatars have no legs)

It's early days, but having very accurate face and hand tracking will be the next big step

They already provide $1,000+ laptops.

I'd love if the company sent me just a headset that I put on and I'm "at work".

$1k goggles is pennies on the dollar compared to office real estate

Yes, happily, if that can substitute for the $20k international business trip.

just to have a boring meeting about spreadsheets? no.

Performing select activities around design, prototyping etc? Yes, but it's a small market. IMHO FB is betting too much on a pipe dream, considering nobody thinks "hey let's get my enterprise productivity apps from Facebook". Hard, hard sell.

it's like the tesla thing

they built sports cars for rich people too before the cheap ones

meta is building toys for people with money, until they get to streamline their manufacturing for the cheap ones

Well, I almost stopped reading when the article mentioned MS Teams. The article cannot mention Teams without throwing away. If I were the marketing guy or program manager at Microsoft I would mention a new name for a future product just to avoid MS Teams terrible product (is it a product? Like Movie Maker [1].

Probably Xbox Work 360^3 would help.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/boingboing.net/2018/05/23/epic-...

Upon reading news like that, I’m convinced I have made the right choice following my gut feeling and intuition to move away from the tech world. It’s absurd. This is adding yet another layer of needless complexity, just for the sake of earning yet more money. It does not solve any real issue, it benefits very few people at the expense of most. In this regard, it’s like the cryptocurrency of business applications. Late-stage capitalism in fully swing indeed.

What did you move towards?

I’m currently looking into working with disadvantaged children at a local school, teaching computer skills. I may also move towards psychology and coaching (the kind that takes proper training). There’s more on the table: professional gardening, writing books, starting a (small) plain fare vegan restaurant.

I'm getting there, myself. All tech is converging on the single goal of making the rich richer by serving ads and influencing elections. I'm tired of it.

I hear the local public transit company is hiring bus maintainers, training included.

Tech is the only sector that is actually even borderline competent these days.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/blame-lockdowns-on-silicon-vall...

"Without technology to keep the economy from imploding, they(lockdowns) wouldn’t have lasted."

I say a prayer to Bezos every time Amazon delivers something perfectly, come rain, shine, war or pestilence.

This guy looks like a crank: https://www.wsj.com/news/author/andy-kessler

Appreciating the American Psycho vibes in his bio:

"He is the author of several books including Wall Street Meat and Eat People."

http://35.185.30.157/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Grahams_Hier...

If they're writing an opinion for the Journal or the Time you can be pretty confident they're a crank.

???

Plenty of other sectors managed to be competent before, during, and after the lockdowns.

And your example of tech doing things right is...logistics. Not tech. Logistics has been doing its thing for over a century, long before computers were a thing.

Agreed. People really don’t appreciate Bezos or Amazon enough

Training STE fields could use this.

I'm of the same mind, but I worry that the total failure of the VR Meta-whatever is wishful thinking on my part -- because even if it succeeds, I want no part of it. If that means I end up living in a hut in the woods while everyone goggles into the Zuckerverse, then so be it.

At least with cryptocurrency, I could kind of admire the anarchist techno-optimism of it (who doesn't hate banks?), so I felt like I wasn't emotionally invested in it failing when I realized it wasn't going to work.

The VR stuff has me thinking I really need to start a business before I'm subjected to this dystopian horse-shit as a condition of employment.

Everyone fake-emoting at the wall-o-faces in video chat apps is already pretty bad. Blocking out the world with a spying-on-you headset so you can work in a bad knock-off of Second Life is too far.

It's funny how the "I see the value in crypto" and "I see the value in a metaverse" have turned into exactly the same group. There seems to be this bisection of groups, 1 group of people who seem just fine with technology as it is today. And another group that wants to launch into the next phase of digitalization.

Although both seem okay with using AI.

I mean I want to launch into the next phase of digitalization, I just don't want it to be this stupid.

I see the value in crypto, but as a chronological consensus, not as a currency.

I see the value in the metaverse, but as a cheaper lower fidelity alternative for the real world, not a more productive version of it. The metaverse as a replacement for the real world, IMO, will always be a cheap copy, and only suitable for things which in the real world are uneconomical, impractical or impossible.

Neuralink-style HMIs on the other hand I see as a potential alternative to working with computers. Who needs goggles when you're part of the machine?

> Neuralink-style HMIs

Cyperpunk is interesting as an aesthetic and all that but I’d never in a million years would want to actually live in that dystopian nightmare.

I work in medical simulation and there is incredible potential for remote training with this sort of tech.

In manufacturing training too. Basically any training that involves physical handling.

Both fantastic applications that make sense, but not mainstream. It almost makes sense the strategy is to create any type of consumer VR industry to reduce the extremely high expense VR would have if only training and simulation were it's main applications.

I see high dollar but limited market as well - I’ve seen the course plans for below and RN level and it’s a lot. Adding tech at that level seems rife for issues, but at the high tier (re: same places that buy multi million dollar MRI machines) where the money is there, sure!

Mainstream is mmorpg, it’s inevitable

Perhaps to train robots?

I really don't know anymore whether I was snarky or half-serious.

>just for the sake of earning yet more money.

>It does not solve any real issue,

Contradiction detected. Who will buy this tech then?

That's a hard one. One part of this deal with Microsoft is making the Microsoft Game Pass available to the new Quest headset purchasers. But due to the price point, they're marketing the new headset at businesses, not end consumers.

It's like none of the departments within the Quest group are talking to each other.

> Late-stage capitalism in fully swing indeed.

Businesses making poor products has little to do with late-stage capitalism. That’s been a theme of both capitalism and socialism for as long as people have had different ideas on what’s important.

"Teams is the most obvious manifestation of virtual reality’s potential from a software perspective."

No one I know likes using Teams, they're forced to. I also temporarily used teams for a previous startup and we switched back to Slack. Basic things were broken, like search, which is a no go from me.

I like VR, am an enthusiast even, but if that's their representation of "potential", I think we're headed down the wrong path. I understand the spirit of Teams having everything integrated and available, but in practice they will have to do far better in user experience and functionality, it's not enough to say you have a feature, that feature has to at the very least not suck in the software world, in the VR world? It better blow people away. Most people are still highly skeptical of VR and they will need to be amazing.

The search in teams is so unbelievably terrible.

> they're forced to

Key point in the enterprise world.

MS - archetype enterprise longing for consumer love. Meta - archetype startup trying to sell its toys to enterprise.

This is just too bad for VR. Making VR corporate friendly will leave a bad taste for the young generation. Meaning this generation will never fall in love with the possibilities and potential of VR.

> Meaning this generation will never fall in love with the possibilities and potential of VR.

I see that as a good thing.

The tragedy here is that Meta employees internally use Workplace, an IMO superior product for big companies than both MS Teams and Slack.

The fact that they failed at marketing it properly and was pulled from the market is one of the many signs that things aren't working right in that company.

Honestly I'm a little disappointed by the lack of enthusiasm for what this could be; people shat on all kinds of now-ubitquitous tech with similar "nobody will ever replace the typewriter!" kinds of arguments.

It would be cool if we could solve the hardest part of interacting with others remotely, which is the lost fidelity. That's an interesting and hard problem that we haven't yet totally solved.

Meta isn't there yet, but they're trying! I feel like the corpo-hate has overshadowed the positivity that used to be more prevalent in the tech community.

There used to be more positivity because it was genuinely about making great products that people will like and want to buy, instead of making something people will like just enough to let you datamine them for all they're worth.

Is this seriously anything beyond Facebook trying to get companies to mandate using these so they can get high fidelity 3D video footage of every living person's house and apartment, their gait and all other possible biometrics? I certainly wouldn't put it past them. Quest headsets are cheaper than all other headsets for a reason.

One could argue this is exactly the corpo-hate I was referencing earlier. What do we get out of being so cynical?

We get to keep some of our privacy by being cynical I suppose.

As they say, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice - can't get fooled again.

I would trade a lot of my privacy in an instant if it meant full fidelity remote human interactions (I already trade a lot of my privacy for much less), but I guess I'm an optimist.

You give them an inch, they'd take a mile.

I’m so confused by this argument. Why do people think that gait and biometrics data is so valuable for running ads? Trust me, there are millions more features that are more closely predictive that top ML models are just leaving on the table before you get to “what’s your eye saccade rate”. Also, while Meta’s track record is horrendous, they actually have done an okay job at locking down how data is used internally. New use cases are very heavily scrutinized, it’s the old grandfathered ones you should focus on, not new ones from VR.

Also, Quest isn’t cheap because it will eventually collect ads data, it’s cheap because social VR, the main Meta argument, requires adoption. It’s a multibillion dollar bet that enough people will have it that it’ll be less friction.

> while Meta’s track record is horrendous, they actually have done an okay job at locking down how data is used internally

Taking you at your word any of that's even true, even broken clock and all that. We're talking about the company that managed to track people without them even having to use any of their services.

But in the end there's no reason to believe they won't just sell it to 3rd parties further down the line like they've done multiple times in the past. If they collect it and can't use it for ads that's even more of a reason to sell it and recoup at least something on the dev time invested on implementing the tracking.

> Quest isn’t cheap because it will eventually collect ads data, it’s cheap because social VR, the main Meta argument, requires adoption

It's been cheap for years, way before Meta even existed. Unless ol' Zuck has had this planned for that long.

Agreed, I used to be excited about tech developments, now Im scared of them.

The negativity runs rampant because the goodwill tech folk gave these companies was crushed when they demonstrated that they didn't actually have good intentions. After so many transgressions why should anyone trust Meta with anything? Even if this was the solution to all my problems, should I just let them off the hook and forget about the past? Maybe I would be more optimistic if this was coming from a company without a history of disrespecting its users.

I don't know if VR is the path to bridging the fidelity gap you mentioned, but even if it was Meta's "round out any potential rough edge" approach represents a step backward from what we already have. Why use their game, which infantilizes its users to avoid alienating potential advertisers, as opposed to VRChat or something else where you might actually have a meaningful interaction?

Seriously. I'm pretty stoked to see what happens here. I was an early backer of the Rift and have been just gobsmacked by how far it's come since then! I bought myself a Quest a few years ago and was so impressed by it I bought one for my family across the country. We hung out online a couple times in Eleven Table Tennis, in RecRoom, and a couple other apps, and I totally get it: there's real presence there that's lacking in other modes. Unfortunately, everything else about it was so clunky (keeping the thing charged, updated, joining these apps, etc) that we never really got a habit of it and haven't met up like that for a while.

Still, I think it's a really cool problem and there's awesome progress being made. I don't know if Meta will pull it off, but I'm pretty glad they're throwing billions of dollars at it. I'm pretty impressed with Zuckerberg for having the fortitude to do that; we'll see what comes of his company...

Facebook owns it. If it was any other company, I'd be uninterested and indifferent, like 3D TVs. But since it's a Facebook company, I treat it with active contempt.

Such attitude is fine for the Fb company, but please don't for the technology itself.

The technology is synonymous with Facebook. The only reason it hasn't already died like 3D TVs did is because Facebook is propping it up.

The technology is cool, but the problem is Meta is working backwards from “create a platform where we have total control so a company like Apple can’t bully us” and not “create a product that people want to use”. Plus, Zuck himself being involved in the marketing is basically instantly making their VR products seem uncool and untrustworthy.

You can see this bleed through into all of their demos and apps. They are focused on social because it has a larger TAM and enterprise customers. They’re demoing digital cosmetics because they want to create a marketplace for them and skim a huge amount off the top. They’re not focused on creating something that is better than the alternatives or that people want to use.

VR/AR are for sure the future. I can’t think of a company I’d less rather be the main player than Meta (I guess Oracle, but I mean companies which realistically could make an AR/VR product). And I think that sentiment is common enough among early adopters and developers that Meta will really struggle to hit the hockey stick growth they need.

It seems like they're putting a tremendous amount of work into Horizon Workrooms, at least, and trying to nail the experience to make it great. And they're seeing what other kinds of apps people like, and supporting them in big ways. For example, exercise apps like Supernatural were kind of an unexpected hit.

I don't think there's really an either-or situation here, where they have to choose between defending their company strategically vs making experiences that people want to use. To succeed, they have to do both, and it seems like they are.

Depends on your definition of success. Their burn rate is tremendous to match. FB engineers are not cheap.

Sure, they have apps, but no killer app that will make non-nerds want to use their product yet. Workrooms IMO is a solution in search of a problem. Would anybody really rather use that than a regular video chat?

> a solution in search of a problem

Exactly like cryptocurrencies. Technically impressive but entirely useless, even dangerous.

> It would be cool if we could solve the hardest part of interacting with others remotely, which is the lost fidelity. That's an interesting and hard problem that we haven't yet totally solved.

Have you ever considered that’s the wrong problem to solve? It reeks of the “how do we breed a faster horse” type of “innovation” rather than “how do we replace the horse”.

Meta is focusing on replicating in-person meetings which are one of the worst facets of business. They are slow, inefficient, lossy, and require real time interaction to be effective.

It’s not a criticism of VR. It’s a criticism of bringing back one of the dumbest aspects of in-office interactions. Perhaps the next feature they can tackle is shared bathrooms where you listen to your coworkers have diarrhea or strain to pass turds that tear their hemorrhoids.

Until there are cameras and holograms this will all be a gimmick.

I'm not strapping something on my face to talk to a virtual representation of another person.

It's an admittedly squishy heuristic, but my gut feeling about whether a technology will stick or not is usually driven by how people outside the tech world talk about it. Most of my community is outside of the tech world at this point.

For the iPhone and Apple watch, just about every I knew wanted one as soon as it was announced. Google glass? People were joking about how they'd rip one off of someone's face if they caught them filming. Uber/Lyft? Everyone who was pumped to ride at 10 bucks shrugged and found something else at 50.

I'm sure Meta has made huge strides in leveling up immersive VR technology overall. But apart from people with a vested interest, I only hear about the metaverse as the butt a joke. There are lots of cool applications for VR. I'm just not betting on this particular one.

VR headsets look dorky and isolate you from other people in the real world. I'm inclined to agree with you that's probably enough to mean it will fail to ever go mainstream.

Ironically, AR/some better Google Glass might be a hit, if it didn't look so stupid and the people pushing it were less hated. Wait until TikTok makes an AR headset and gets K-pop groups to promote it.

You might be underestimating normalization of deviance in society. Meta’s already demonstrated that the younger generation will adopt VR headsets for gaming. “Dorkiness” is very unlikely to be a sufficient barrier here.

Heelys[0] are popular with the younger generation but will never go mainstream, despite having more practical utility than any metaverse offering from 'Meta'.

[0] https://heelys.com/

I have no interest in the metaverse, or socializing at all in VR. I just want to play games and use fitness apps, which I find value in.

That said, there is nothing wrong with trying to expand into the consumer/enterprises.

One of the main challenges of these VR headsets is the time-to-start for any activity. It's just atrocious.

If someone invites me to an impromptu Zoom call today, I can join it quickly and easily, because it's likely I was already on my computer. I see the link on my computer, usually in my calendar or in Slack. It takes me a second to click it. And boom, I'm in. Ezpz.

Compare that to a VR meeting. If someone invites me, I'm likely on my computer. I have to leave my computer, go find my headset because it's bulky and inconvenient to keep on my desk, hope that it's charged which 50% of the time it's not, boot it up which takes 10 seconds, clear a safe space for me to stand in my apartment, put on the headset and draw a safety boundary, open the appropriate app and hope it doesn't need an update, and then try to figure out where the hell the invite link is that was chatted/Slacked/texted/calendar'd to me.

The difference between jumping into something in 5 seconds vs 5 minutes seems trivial, but it's massive. It ends up being the difference between me doing this 5x a week vs 5x a year.

What VR seems to need are more killer apps that are habitual, so I use the headset more often, so it's close by + it's charged + I keep an open space + occasionally I'm already using it when I get an invite to use it in some other way. There are all sorts of things that I regularly do on my computer, that I could potentially do better in VR if an app existed, but none does.

This is my main problem with Quest 2 as well. I’d like to use it more, but each time it’s such a chore to set up, navigate, open the app, wait it to load etc.

I wish the Quest could just preload with an app, and you wouldn’t need to redraw the boundary if you use it in the same room.

Another issue is that quest doesn’t work in dark/dimly lit room, you need like bright lights shining to each corner and the floor if you like to use it in the night.

That doesn’t sound right. If you use VR for all your meetings, it would be sitting on your desk (it doesn’t take much more space than over the ear headphones), would be wired and takes about 2 seconds to slip on.

It's hard to get to a point where VR is ubiquitous enough to use it for all of your meetings, because you must first get to a point where VR is useful for a few of your meetings before it starts to spread and become popular. And that isn't happening for me at least, because it's too much work to start.

If you’re sitting anyway, what’s even the point of a VR meeting?

I wonder why does the Quest Pro have a charging stand with pogo pins?

> Microsoft’s shift to Teams as its de facto OS

Ugh, I think we all want less MS Teams in our life, not more :-/

I've been using a Windows laptop as my work computer for about a year now and I'd love to have less MS in my life.

6 months for me also for work. Just naturally started using my personal 2012 macbook for everything non work.

Oh yes. I never even take that hateful computer out of the backpack if it’s not for work. I much prefer my Mac and my Linux laptops to it, even though it’s allegedly faster.

Honestly I really don't mind parts of the Microsoft experience. Visual Studio is a pretty good IDE, and VS Code a lighter, more extensible alternative for some specific cases (I use it to fiddle with our Angular frontend apps). The .NET ecosystem is pretty good, and the Windows UI on its own would be pretty good even if I prefer a tiling window manager like xmonad. I can use cygwin and get a decent enough set of Unix-y tools that feel more "right" to me than Powershell (which I don't think I'll ever enjoy).

So that sort of stuff allows a decent enough, but not perfect, developer experience. But there's enough other fucking irritating bullshit that drives me up the wall - like Outlook is cluttered and annoying, and yeah Teams can fuck right off.

I can’t possibly see myself wanting to share or discuss company secrets or details on a Facebook/Meta owned platform. They have such a horrible track record when it comes to privacy, and basic honesty and integrity, that there’s no way it makes sense to use as a corporate platform.

How is it any different than using Office 365 or teams?

Office and Teams are not produced by Facebook/Meta.

If their approach is Enterprise and work environments, how does a VR headset deal with ADA (American Disabilities Act) and accessibility? Employers cannot discriminate against those with hearing/vision or other impairments and I don't know how a technology like VR can compensate for that.

Assuming the headset doesn't help at all in those areas then it can't be something an employer mandates people to use. This type of device might uncover even more physical impairments people are unaware of, like those warnings in video games about flashing lights - photosensitive seizures and epilepsy.

Are the benefits of a meeting technology going to far out-weigh potential employment lawsuits?

It would be a real shame if this held technology back in a substantial way. VR offers a ton of opportunity for a more productive work environment. Infinite space to work in, an active working day instead of sitting in a chair, etc etc etc.

Imagine working at a customer service desk where instead of tickets in a tab you can have 3d stacks of them all across the room you're in. Or a control environment with knobs and bobs surrounding you like an old 1970s control panel, with none of the cost.

Imagine designing a web page, except your screen doesn't have an edge.

I think a big part of the skepticism here is that we have coded for 2d screens for so long that we don't even begin to realize the possibilities yet. I'm convinced that the future of most office is while wearing some sort of headset.

Not meetings though. Those will remain 2d. Corny half done avatars and badly recreated 3d rooms don't cut it.

The screen is still limited by your eyepiece field of view. You have to scroll and zoom if the page is too big. We can already do that in browsers.

I just don't see any actual daily professional worker problems being solved. I see solutions in search of problems. People with PC's have a control environment in front of them everyday with a keyboard and mouse, 100's of controls and combinations. Keyboards are really cheap.

I see VR enabled work environments like touch-screens in cars. They suck. You have little to no sensory input on your fingers and can't feel your way around to do things without looking.

Is having 3d stacks in a virtual room going to allow a customer service person to better do their job? As in having measurable financial impact? If I'm running a call center with 100 people, is spending $150k on VR headsets going to help materially?

The beauty of it is, you use pass through cameras and you can see your keyboard and you can see your mouse directly, while still having access to the full virtual experience.

I expect people to be using a mouse with this stuff, and a keyboard.

What a depressing outlook on future work. Is it really impossible for you to see the dehumanizing aspects of this?

Uh why is a 3d stack better than a list? It might be more fun for the first few minutes but it’s less efficient. When something is your job and you need to get things done, you’ll eventually choose the efficient route instead of the fancy option.

If 3D UI is superior than 2D then 3D video games shouldn’t need 2D UI at all and yet they all do.

3D UI doesn't work when you are playing a video game because you are ultimately using a 2D interface.

Navigation through 3D worlds is clumsy and terrible in video games, but with VR it's just like your everyday life.

I don't expect people to be doing much in terms of fine detail work in VR without some sort of tool like a mouse or keyboard accessible to them, but things like the ability to design web pages that are bigger than a screen, have depth, be able to integrate a full room into the experience, is going to be pretty incredible.

Your baseline experience, what's going to start is having basically virtual monitors so that you can have windows all over the place, from there It will probably evolve into something more native to VR.

You’ll be happy to learn that people are actively thinking about and working on accessibility for AR/VR. And if it’s something you feel strongly about, there’s companies and teams that are hiring specifically for this role.

This take is surprising to me, because it actually seems to me that it would be easy-ish to auto-generate accessibility aids, for example in the form of automatic caption generation for hearing impairments.

Facebook and Teams teaming up together is literally my nightmare.

Don't forget that LinkedIn and Instagram will tag along for that ride.

Faceteam

Metasoft.

I’d like to note that a lot of people posted yesterday complaining about a Meta walled garden - the MS partnership (and Zuck’s previous comments) to me points to the opposite strategy.

One other thought - since hardware is the limiting factor right now, it’s clear that Apple will have a massive advantage with their vertically integrated hardware capabilities. But _they_ are much more likely to go with a walled garden approach, which could hold things back.

I think in the short term, the enterprise market is a good way to build the installed base and bring down the cost of headsets. And especially with a lot of people recently moving to remote work due to Covid, I think there is a newfound appetite to try novel things to foster interpersonal connection while working remotely. (Not to mention that many companies now have a huge reduction in OpEx from ditching their office lease.)

So the obvious conclusion from this is that Meta continue sinking billions into hardware, Microsoft build the actual application and get it sold into enterprise. Meta share price continues to tank, and then Microsoft acquires Meta and spins off Facebook keeping the VR stuff that they actually want. (I realise the dual class shares prevent this, but it would be very funny)

Is there some Facebook:IBM, Microsoft:Microsoft analogy here?

"Then one of the developers moved house, temporarily misplaced his headset, and we haven’t used it since."

That is basically every real-world (pun intended) story about VR I have ever heard. "It's great! We used it once or twice."

Meta's metaverse honestly may be gearing up to be one of the biggest financial tech failures in decades. Still after all these billions poured into the metaverse... still no compelling reason to use. Already they are pitching it as a "marketplace" of digital sorts before they even have an audience.

VR done wrong. Requiring a Facebook account. Utilizing a marketplace run by Facebook. It honestly is astounding how much money is being spent here... and to say underwhelming at best is an understatement.

> Already they are pitching it as a "marketplace" of digital sorts before they even have an audience.

Good point, that's Carmack's _exact_ criticism!

> Requiring a Facebook account.

No longer true as of a few months ago.

I recently played Bone Labs on the Occulus Quest 2, and it totally redefines where I thought we were with VR (and with no PC to have to play it). Seriously, just check it out if you haven’t and you have a headset.

I am a huge VR skeptic for many of the reasons that people state here. I have also thought that VR’s killer app was any dangerous professional training situation that you wanted to present as accurately as possible without injuries to your staff (firefighting, EMS response, etc.). If the road to adoption begins with experiences that are decidedly more interactive and immersive than screens and monitors, I am starting to see the (long) path that leads towards that future.

All they need is their Steve Ballmer "developers developers developers" moment. Nobody wants this garbage. Nobody wants to "work in the metaverse". They don't even want to visit.

People do not even like turning on their webcams for meetings with people they talk to every single day. Do you think they are going to want to don a goofy headset to do the same?

The moment my employer tells me I need to wear a VR headset for some meeting is they day I put in my notice.

Possibility of Microsoft buying Facebook is not unthinkable. Microsoft is already an investor in Facebook. Both HoloLens and Oculus are already moving in the same direction with enterprise play.

Didn't also a lot of Microsofties leave for FB a decade back or so? Could be an easy culture meld.

If love Microsoft to acquire FB for other reasons as well:

1. MS doesn't need to sell my data to make their services profitable.

2. MS could merge Facebook and LinkedIn so I could have a person and professional identity in a single app and switch between my networks! I don't have a FB account at all right now).

3. What's App could tie into the existing messaging infrastructure and work for Xbox or Personal Teams messaging.

4. MS could replace the Mixed Reality platform with Oculus. I use Mr for VR and the software kind of sucks and many games don't have MR controller bindings by default, though that's less frequent nowadays.

1 - nobody, except the data brokers, sell data.

Microsoft though, collects a huge amount (telemetry in Windows) and is leaning more heavily into ads in the core product.

This will not happen, simply because Zuckerberg owns FB. Also, this deal makes no sense for FB. They still make a large amount of money (10s of billions every quarter) and the only advantage they get from this is Microsoft's brand (compared to FB's brand, which is currently doggshit).

> Microsoft’s shift to Teams as its de facto OS

Just one example, but I think this guy has lost the thread and is not worth reading.

That line also stood out to me and I had the exact opposite reaction.

Depends on which world you live in. If you did anything corpate during lockdown, yeah, "defacto" OS strikes a chord. Man, so much time in teams, and they only keep throwing things in it.

I just don't know what about it says OS to anyone.

To me its just the latest iteration of crappy corporate communication software we only use because the people who sign our checks bought it.

"Yet Another Lotus Notes" from my perspective.

They keep loading it up with more and more applets.

I think in the near future we'll have deep neural nets that create and puppet an VR avatar for us, while we're sitting normally in front of our PCs. Kind of like a recursive version of a v-tuber: you pretend you're wearing a VR headset and listen to the pointless rambling during meetings, while your boss pretends that everyone is being so much more productive.

This is already happening. NVidia's Maxine thing takes a still photo and animates it according to your video feed. The leap to a VR version feels rather incremental.

This feels like tablets all over again. Microsoft had them for years but couldn't make something convincing.

The core of Facebook is the idea of reinventing Myspace as a business app with a formal design. From that point of view, it makes sense to let Microsoft reinvent the 3d user experience.

I doubt that it will create the package that will establish 3d headsets. For a workplace, it's a feature that the colleagues in a meeting are at a distance. On the other hand, we would already know if a virtual desktop with a huge spreadsheet would be more efficient than a monitor.

Without a Steve Jobs, users have to figure out the purpose of 3d headsets by themselves. Meta should follow the model of the PC and let every producer of electronics build a compatible product. Let everybody use the patents as long as they build a headset that fulfills the spec.

They should also avoid any lock-in and choose a free operating system. Only then can it be used by enthusiasts to experiment until the purpose of 3d headsets is found.

This can still be beneficial for Meta because they can establish themselves as the leading market place for 3d apps. Furthermore, like ads on the web, there is a need for an ad network because all the free apps need to be financed. Meta can ride the network effect of being the first mover.

Meta has the chance to create the next platform. I doubt that they will take the risk. By locking it down, they can be sure that they will never lose whatever they create. Unfortunately, they are only on a way to create the precursor to the 3d ipad.

Apple is definitely going to swoop in with their own version of the VR/AR headset once the field is basically worked and just waiting for a correct implementation.

The question is really whether it is more like personal computers, where somebody outshines them, smartphones where there's enough room to share the market, or tablets where only Apple can seem to make it work really.

A major factor when meeting virtually is there is a threshold of "good enough" and I think we are there. Engineers tend to not turn on video as it is and they still get our work done. Technology is not going to solve people problems (teams disagreeing, internal politics, etc.) What is the expected outcome/benefit?

If you thought Microsoft couldn’t find a way to make Teams even more diabolical they just surprise you with the meta verse.

Just as an aside, I was very skeptical of tech even like zoom rooms. It's simply a camera mounted on the display that has AI that focuses on people in the room and splits the display so you see everyone in the room individually. Why would you need this? Isn't it creepy?

The reality is that our remote meetings without zoom rooms are definitely less engaging, so we try to find the rooms in our office where those are enabled/installed.

However, the difference between that and what Meta and Microsoft are attempting is that the zoomrooms are an incremental improvement to an existing collaboration mode. Can you imagine mixed-mode meetings with VR?

Unless you have tons of people who WANT to VR meet then it's going be a flop.

The simple truth of yesterday is the same as today.

The wrong people are defining what progress means and leading us towards it for profit not because they have a real vision.

Meta is lame. Facebook wasn't special; the approach Zuckerberg took to create a network effect was. That's it.

Microsoft wasn't special. The tactics Gates used to destroy his competition and adopt their technology was. That's it.

What I'm excited about is the day people who have the ability realize that gives them the power and all they need to do is unite to create an actual digital future for humanity. Not these absurd assholes with dreams of a virtual Oompa Loompa army.

Microsoft gets it cloud gaming/gamepass on another platform. That was the big takeaway for me. Very early Netflix, get your streaming service on every platform possible before they see you as a threat or opportunity.

Even in that older article he wrote about the Metaverse, it seemed like somebody just gave Ben Thompson a really good demo, and that made him bullish on the product. He's a very smart analyst, typically, but I don't think his prediction about the usefulness (or more accurately the adoption) of VR for business meetings is going to pan out. Nobody wants this stuff, and the cheaper, better solution for an increasingly remote workforce is just to have fewer synchronous meetings, not to spend thousands of dollars buying every team member a VR headset.

I remember as a kid at the dentist office they had these headsets you could watch a movie on while you received treatment. In my opinion it made the experience worse because wearing a headset for that long always ends up being either annoying or slightly painful. I’ve used an oculus and I will say, it’s not that bad to wear, but I can’t imagine wearing one of these things for any meeting going longer than 30 minutes, whatever the perceived benefits might be.

… so why can’t I watch NBA games in VR?

What’s the limitation there? They don’t want to put cameras every 5ft in the front row in a bunch of stadiums?

The compelling use cases (not horizon worlds) to the general public are possible but not even being attempted.

Can I watch a single sporting event in VR? Olympics? College?

It seems like they’ve tried to do concerts but to be honest I’ve been to concerts in reality and the sweaty heat and blinding lights are different. I haven’t sat courtside.

You can: https://www.oculus.com/blog/go-courtside-in-vr-with-nba-leag...

Innovation isn't very likely to be found in a sterile corporate environment.

The attempts by Meta to control so tightly what content ends up on the Quest will only end up with results that are a reflection of their creators.

I felt like i wanted to throw up with the whole bay area, corporate environment vibe this presentation gave off.

I was most excited by the prospect of having Xbox game pass on this thing until i found out all it is is a big screen in VR (What's the fucking point, guys?). If they have the engineering resources to convert even a portion of fan favorites into native VR experiences, that's going to kill.

This feels a lot like IBM labs where the technology is "there", but these clowns are not the ones who're going to find the killer application and yet are hell bent on controlling the whole thing.

Someones going to come around eventually and hook this up with porn, native video games, psychedelic experiences in legal states etc and push the boundaries of exciting yet controversial content that would never get past the committee of corpo minded rats at Meta and that will be when it takes off.

For their sake, i hope Meta realize this.

A VR system that gives me 3-4 monitors already pays for itself by leaps and bounds in a work from home environment.

Exactly. The cost of my WFH monitor setup alone was more than what Meta’s asking for the Pro.

Next step of evolution: This VR-meeting should have been an email

Invest billions. Get traction. Establish a moat.

Obviously Meta may not succeed. Probably won't succeed. This Microsoft thing will be one of many "throw it on the wall and see what sticks". I do applaud their gumption. And I believe that AR and VR will have a very important role for humanity in the near future.

I remember the moment when I used iPhone4. It was the first phone with retina display, the touch and crip rendering was very responsive. It was the moment my perception of smartphone quality changed.

VR is great. I don't think the hardware is there for mass adoption. VR hasn't had its iPhone4 retina moment yet. When it does, it will take off.

We need ~100 pixes per degree of vision to fool the eye. Assuming 120d horizontal and vertical display per eye, we are looking at 12,000x12,000 pixel display for each eye. Current meta headsets have 1800 × 1920 px per eye. We need 10x that.

There's more: accurate head and hands tracking, 90hz high fidelity rendering, affordable pricing, entertaining worlds, e.t.c.

It will take a while, but we'll get there. I hope Meta doesn't give up so easily.

Video and phone calls don't give me motion sickness, so I'll stick with those. I also happen to enjoy being able to see the room I'm sitting in while I work. If anything, AR might have some promise over VR, but I'm definitely not convinced yet.

Good thing both are non-issues if you’re sitting in an office chair and using AR video passthrough mode.

At that point I’d just rather not have a screen strapped to my face and be able to feel the breeze from my window.

> Then one of the developers moved house, temporarily misplaced his headset, and we haven’t used it since.

> I’m not sure I can justify buying it for my Passport team, even if we were still going through the hassle of pulling on a headset for one meeting a week.

It sounds like he's in the target audience for this VR-for-business stuff he predicts, but he doesn't really want it. If it had been truly a game-changer rather than a gimmick, they wouldn't have abandoned the meetings the moment they had an excuse to, and he wouldn't describe the meetings as "going through the hassle"

I'm surprised he just glossed over one of the biggest issues:

> Then one of the developers moved house, temporarily misplaced his headset, and we haven’t used it since.

Meta's vision is all-or-nothing. Either everyone has it and they can Do The Thing, or someone is missing it and nobody can. Meta seems to be making no effort to create an on-ramp into the metaverse, and is demanding that everyone jump in whole-hog. It can't work, except in niche cases where the job is in VR. And nobody's going to work all day in VR if they can't glance at their phone. Full-color passthrough is close, but not good enough.

> the presentation, though, was cringe

Using "cringe" as an adjective immediately makes my mind imagine the author as a typical Fortnite-playing, Youtube-watching, Discord-using, skinny 12 year old boy with glasses.

Welcome to old age, grampa :) Here's your rocking chair, there's the lawn, time to start yelling.

Personally I don't think VR has applications other than games.

AR on the other hand will eventually be ubiquitous and important. HUDS in real life with context assistance is absolutely a killer app.

There is so much skepticism in the community about this tech. Is it because there is genuinely no compelling use cases or is it because of the current implementation?

IMO people are thinking on a time scale that is too short. VR is different from crypto, and though it may not succeed, it can solve real problems.

One example: Reducing inequality. With the purchase of a headset (~400$), everyone can have a 60" TV, and learn how to play the piano, and have access to 100s of board games (the last one hasn't been implemented yet, but possibly soon).

Crypto OTOH provides no real value, and has been out as long, if not longer.

Tilt Five is promising an amazing solution to the board game problem - IMHO, it's better than what Oculus provides. https://www.tiltfive.com/

How do you learn to play the piano without real physical feedback when pressing the keys? The "experiences" you can have through sight and sound alone are quite limited. A glove to emulate something as simple as piano keypresses would be a very complicated device.

Learning how to play the piano is a joke on VR. 75% of piano playing is the muscle memory that requires real keys.

A $50 keyboard from the thrift-shop + youtube will be bounds better for learning piano than VR.

+1 to board games though assuming it’s precise enough that you don’t constant bump all of the pieces.

The “community” is not a good gauge as to which tech will succeed or fail. Go back to the early HN days and read the comments on the iPhone release posts.

I've always had this dream of taking doom and building a map like the workplace.. but still with the occasional zombie. We all see each other, and meet up in the conference room to join a 'group zoom call' or something like that. There would also be a 'minecraft' room that puts us all on the same server to build prototypes and brainstorm together.

I wouldn't bet the farm on VR.

That raises a good point. We've had virtual worlds for ages now, but how often do companies do Minecraft meetings? Or Gary's Mod meetings? Or hell, even VR chat, that doesn't require VR. Is there really that much gained by adding a heavy headset and some hand tracking?

There are too many boring comments that says new technology is a garbage. Let's talk about Fb and MS partnership.

It seems that MS HoloLens targeted customer is going to migrate to Quest Pro. Will HoloLens sunsetting, or just a new target platform (like MacIE)? I heard that Fb hired many engineers worked on HoloLens, so MS no longer able to develop HoloLens 3?

Kids, stop doing drugs or else you risk growing up and thinking teams is a great idea, or worse, thinking teams and meta are good for you.

VR is not compelling. I have tried it and it is tedious. This is the reaction of by far most people I know who have tried VR.

VR is one of those things where the concept and possibilities are way more exciting than the reality of the thing. Like flying cars. The difference is Mark Zuckerberg made way too big of a bet on VR so they won't let it go.

Maybe theZuck should be more googly and willing to just end of life things that are not immediately profitable.

Can't wait to have hybrid meetings in these. It's sitll a hustle getting a mic and cam working

This is the first time I see someone mention Teams in positive way.

If the future of VR is like Teams, I guess I’ll pass

VR meetings want to take the asynchronicity of remote work and replace it with the synchronicity of office work, but virtually. You lose most of the advantages of remote work (the only one retained is lack of commute).

Why does this guy quote himself so much? Each article is like 60% new content.

So is the Mixed Reality suite getting folded into the former Oculus platform or vice versa? Or is it neither, and just that some tools are being ported to the Facebook side?

A bit off-topic, but is there any good "open" VR headset available? (open in sense of FOSS, or at least OSS firmware and software)

Slack just released video chat and they've had screen sharing for some time. Teams should start feeling a bit nervous.

Slack created the category and had a 2 year head start, the fact that they are being rapidly replaced by teams in many office environments has little to do with specific features in teams vs slack. It’s entirely because you get teams “free” with the e5 office license that you need to buy anyways for outlook, excel, etc.

Slack should invest in Libreoffice and offer a better office suite.

An offline locally running office suite has very little value in a post-google docs world to corporations.

Doesn't Google use the Libreoffice code on the server side?

You still need at least a locally running spreadsheet application for the Excel wizards. If I were Google or Slack, I would push Libreoffice Calc to be better than Excel. Only then will big companies be able to use an MS Office alternative.

I might be wrong but I assumed the popularity of running Excel locally wasn't because it was local but because that's where Excel ran and Excel is what they're in love with.

I also might be wrong but I assumed that a local app still has an edge over a website.

This [1] is an old video about how Excel is used professionally. If that's not possible then the website is not good enough.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12450070

Which is odd because Slack was the leader in this space just a few years ago.

The Teams moat is bulletproof. This is proven by the fact that their product is objectively worse yet will never lose market share because it is “free”

I guess it's a no-brainer to imagine why Meta did not choose FaceTime for VR integration instead of Teams :-)

All this metaverse and Oculus garbage and I still see literally no reason to use any of it nor make a Facebook account

They’re screwed if they don’t make something viable before most people get pushed back into the office.

https://metacriticcapital.substack.com/p/meta-wants-to-disru... I wrote on it. Meta is trying to disrupt the PC market and Microsoft is taking notice and hedging their bets. It's a slightly different opinion to Ben

What Zack imaging VR will do for us is completely the opposite of what I would use it for.

So what's the best way to use Windows on Quest Pro according to their own marketing?

So far I have been rooting for Facebook. With MSFT in the mix, I am out. Good luck Zuck

A myriad of issues with FB is worthy of support but the moment they partner with MSFT it's a bridge too far, eh?

Yeah

That's wild, I don't think I've ever heard of someone having such a specific moral affectation.

It was, "like", "cringe".

Seriously?

the author is a self-important dilettante

Reply on news.ycombinator.com