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Comment by dougmwne | Hacker News Reader

I was extremely bullish on Meta’s VR effort. The Quest 2 is extremely impressive and you really feel like peering into the future of computing.

I’m starting to realize that it may be the far future. The $1500 Quest Pro was just released to scathing reviews. The AR color passthrough feature sounds like a low quality joke. The headset is heavier and the battery lasts a hour or 2. The screen fidelity is still too low for productivity computing. The eye and face tracking result in extremely underwhelming animation that I can’t imagine adds any value to the social proposition. The primary Meta dream of all your social interactions in VR with friends, family and coworkers around the world is starting to seem more than a decade away.

And on top of all that, Apple looks like it may have a serious entrant into this market and might easily beat Meta to the finish line to the next computing platform.

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Outside of gaming ... I don't understand who the current efforts in VR are FOR?

There was an arstechnica article about Carmack giving a speech about the state of VR.

Apparently he was dismissive of some controversy regarding avatar details. And was disappointed that they weren't yet at the stage where they could hold "arena-scale support with thousands of avatars milling around".

Who wants that? I don't want to put on a headset to sit in the nose bleeds of some virtual world with Zuck or Carmack ... that only seems to appeal to: 1. Developers making the cool thing work. 2. The person on stage talking who gets to just put on a headset to appear before thousands of people.

That's it.... who are these efforts all for?

I actually think tons of people want virtual experiences. Concerts seem to be a great use case for VR. Exercise is a great use case. Meetings probably are too, certainly better than zoom.

My greatest concern is that all these virtual experiences are behind a paywall, first hardware and then pay-per-experience. Going for a walk should be free.

"I want to go for a walk, but not actually walk, and pay for it, while being bombarded by ads" said no one ever.

"Hello Neighbor. I'm not actually a woman but this is the default avatar and I don't want to pay money to change it."

"Hello Neighbor. I'd like you to join my professional network on LinkedIn."

"Hello neighbor, you won't believe what happened to this dog, come with me to learn more."

It could quite honestly depend on exactly where you live, maybe it is already a good idea. Maybe your neighborhood is plagued by cars and pedestrian hostile design, and you don't have time to travel. Maybe it is the middle of a blizzard. Unfortunately I think technology will encourage this, as our society is primarily optimizing for GDP (ad spend) and jobs (lack of free time and neighborhoods focused on life outside work).

I think it says something that a VR use case requires a dystopian future.

Dystopian is such a harsh word. I mean, for billionaire tech bros, it's paradise.

It wouldn't be the time humans have willingly created massive problems in order for an emerging technology that is necessary for economic growth to become successful.

How is this in any way necessary for economic growth?

Sorry, I said that backwards. Economic growth is necessary (at least in the capitalist system we are in). We need things to succeed to deliver economic growth. At a certain point large sacrifices will be made to ensure the success of a new industry that promises economic growth. I don't think VR is at this point yet, but it might be soon.

Cars in the US and the destruction of passenger trains is a good past example. Cars gave consumers more freedom but at a much greater price and thus role in economic growth. We made great investments into highway systems to subsidize the automobile industry. This came at the expense of passenger trains (among other things) which was a direct competitor to the personal car, but operated more efficiently.

Tying back to the original comment, if there is a way to monetize walking that can only be done in VR, incentives will flow towards promoting that VR system to succeed. Those incentives will necessarily undermine the free alternative of actually walking. This is all done in the name of economic growth.

I think the logic here is backwards.

Cars didn't become more popular (measured by usage per person) than trains because of the vast infrastructure that was built. Cars became more popular because they were more appealing and useful than trains (for the reason you mentioned - sense of freedom). Cars CREATED the industries you mentioned (highways, gas stations, dealerships, car insurance, etc) because consumers wanted Cars. The demand for Cars increased, new industries were created from the demand, and the combination of all of the above moved the auto industry forward, displacing trains. This isn't a sacrifice, it's the better product winning.

VR will succeed when VR is 'better' than the current non-VR options. People will use VR more, demand will increase, and current or new businesses will start building for VR. Lowering (or raising) the price of a VR headset, releasing new versions of low adoption headsets, or asserting that VR is the future, isn't going to increase demand. Usefulness increases demand.

I'm curious about what your other examples of that happening are. I'm trying to think of one where VR is at least sorta parallel.

I'm having trouble understanding how concerts are a "great use case for VR"... at a concert you sit/stand and look at the stage and listen to the music. Seems like that could be replicated with just a regular display and sound system, but that kind of remote viewing of concerts has never become mainstream. What about VR would change this?

Watching a concert on a display isn't immersive imo. You are still acutely aware that you're in your living room.

I guess I struggle to understand how being surrounded by hundreds of cartoonish avatars would improve the experience. It would be immersive in a sense, but also pretty clear that I was still not really at a concert.

I think the lack of avatars is part of what makes it compelling. Sure some people will do the "communal" experience, but others will have a set up that makes it feel like the band is performing for only them and their friends. Real concerts are sweaty and smelly and hot and other people can be distracting.

You can see it from any angle, with an infinite number of added effects possible.

It depends what you think the important differences between a broadcast concert and an in-person concert are.

Is it the limitless resolution, and great venue acoustics and sound system?

Is it about the fact you're meeting up with your friends?

Is it about the atmosphere and energy of the crowd? The dancing, the fighting, the mingling?

Is it about the fact that if the performer tells you to make some noise, doing that at home to a video stream would be absurd?

Is it about the fact you might meet an attractive stranger, and go home with them?

Is it the fact you can buy drinks?

Is it about the intrinsic authenticity of a performance by a human, not a recording played by a machine or a copy of a copy of a copy?

Is it about being a singular moment, having experiences that can't be paused or replayed and are all the more real for it?

Is it about getting out of the house, and not being a shut-in?

Is it the cultural cachet and the fact you can post pictures on social media so other people will know you're cool?

Some of these a metaverse concert might be able to provide - you could produce a very high quality video stream with good sound, and an ability to talk with your friends.

Others the metaverse will never provide.

I think legitimately there could be a product that you put on your face and get a virtual on-site with photorealistic avatars. Or a pair of glasses that give you multiple 24 inch 4k screens that you could work on all day. And a replacement for Facetime sounds compelling as well, essentially a holographic call where there mom shows up in your living room from the other side of the country.

And yeah the gaming case is already pretty compelling when you look at things like Alyx, so just imagine more of that plus AR games that don't take you out of the real world.

At the end of the day you are talking about a display technology that can produce anything from an animated chess set on your kitchen table to the closest thing I will ever see to a Holodeck in my lifetime. In my mind computing will absolutely make the move from little pieces of glass in our pocket to AR, I just think it's going to take 10 to 20 years for moore law and miniaturization to do their thing.

> Or a pair of glasses that give you multiple 24 inch 4k screens that you could work on all day.

This is my current experience and I have no desire to simulate it.

I've only every toyed with VR and the demos were pretty cool and gaming seems promising, but to my mind, we're already a bit too far into this latest wave of VR (I'd say the first one was the late 80's into the 90's) to call it early, and it seems pretty niche still.

The killer app for VR is unfortunately going to be porn, although it seems many stakeholders are unaware of that. E.g. Neither Zuck nor John Carmack seem to have realized this yet.

But it makes sense when you realize that VR is inherently isolating and is hard to use collaboratively/socially. This is a bug for many applications and a feature for porn.

Like always, leave it to porn to push the tech forward

I think it's live sports and entertainment. Yeah, image quality will have to rise first. But being able to charge $10 for a seat at the 50 yard line at the Superbowl is too good to pass up. Add in some features that only VR can give, not just the live experience, and I think that's the ticket.

No need to stay in your seat even, imagine seeing the game from the QBs pov

Create surfaces for ads. Zuck said as much.

You nailed one of the biggest problems with current efforts out of Faceb...Meta. They are trying to recreate physical experiences in VR including the exclusionary limitations of physical environments.

A concert in VR has none of the natural limitations of a concert in the real world. Every member of the VR audience should be able to watch the concert from any location. Everywhere from on stage with the band to it just in a window in SIMD other virtual space so it can just play in the background while doing something else.

Even "stage" is a silly concept in VR, the concert could take place in a Star filled nebula or the halls of Moria. A concert in VR could look like a music video of a band playing in some crazy location in impossible costumes.

VR clients should also be able to control what they see. Watching that VR concert they should be able to enable or disable whatever elements that they want. They should be able to change a parameter and shift the concert venue to some other motif or disable the rest of the crowd to have a private show.

Instead of any of that Meta is just building nosebleeds thinking people are interested in having those physical limitations. If VR doesn't enable experiences that would be impossible in the real world then it's just a shitty lower fidelity version of the real world. Zuckerberg can go surf on his private beach in Hawai'i whenever he wants. Everyone in VR should have the same luxury of a private beach, dwarves forge, or a space station orbiting Jupiter. Meta is building VR where users are just as excluded from private beaches as they are from Zuckerberg's private beach. No one wants to be as poor in VR as they are in the real world.

I mean, if you had the chance to experience being in the front row of the Super Bowl virtually vs watching a flat 2d perspective, some people would want the 3d immersive 'feel like you're there / presence' experience. Same goes for concerts, burning man type stuff, music festivals, an intimate jazz performance, a Broadway musical, going to a zoo virtually, tourism like being in the bottom of the grand canyon, etc.

They are not substitutes for the real thing they are substitutes for a 2D version that is usually pretty non-compelling.

The real limitation is that the lack of tactile feedback means that you are at most a spectator/voyeur in these experiences.

I'd be curious how exactly that would look. Front row super bowl, am I just watching a video of the the super bowl ... like I was in a seat? Does the stadium then just have VR cameras everywhere?

One interesting repeated promise in TV land was that one day you could pick your view, specifically for sporting events ... but that is very rare and content owners / producers seem uninterested in providing it. I'm not sure they change their mind about that ...

>One interesting repeated promise in TV land was that one day you could pick your view, specifically for sporting events ... but that is very rare and content owners / producers seem uninterested in providing it. I'm not sure they change their mind about that ...

The reason i guess is advertising.All those logos on the field are optimised for the specific camera angles

Apple bought and shutdown NextVR, which was doing most of the sports broadcasting in VR. So sadly for the moment, we don't really know what the state of the art is in that area.

That aside, any kind of large event is extremely problematic in VR, as the resolution just isn't there. Everything a couple of meters away just turns into a blur. So looking at a far away event just feels like looking at a 240p video. It's really not a good experience.

To further complicate the effort, you can't just move the camera closer either, such events are made to be looked at from far away. If you go up close, any kind of choreography in a concert will look weird and a sports event without a good view of the playfield wouldn't be great either.

There might be ways to work around that, by leaving camera choice to the user, use of multiple screens, virtual binoculars or whatever. But it's far from a straight forward process. Meta themselves still hasn't even managed to properly broadcast their own conferences in a VR format, it's all still just flat 2D videos.

When the action happens closer to the camera things get much easier, something like a boxing match with VR180-3D cameras in the corners might work well enough. Can't point to any real examples, but here is a fictional one[1] of how a fight might look in VR.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2RqR6MtwG8

Yeah that's kinda what I assumed. TY for the comment.

I got to a lot of sporting events, I'm moving my head / eyes, refocusing constantly, specifically closer to the action.

I don't know how VR could capture all that visual data effectively and allow me to just look around.

Have you experienced VR film? Stereographic 180 degree SBS video? You'd just need something like ZCam k1 pro camera (although most videographers are using better stuff by now) that can do livestreaming and the big issue is dealing with heat + battery limitations at this point.

"just watching a video" makes me think maybe you haven't really experienced actual stereo video (3d movies don't count).

360 monoscopic videos like you see on youtube are not stereo video in case people are confused.

Another cool application would be home movies. Imagine being able to film your child’s first party from a headset and be able to relive it down the line. Would be pretty dope.

I cant imagine a world where 2B users are using VR, but if that world happens, it seems like it will be long after FB gives up and runs out of steam trying to build the MV.

Investors will not tolerate years of huge losses, Zuck will probably lose his job

Nobody but tech bros cares a whit about VR, sorry. VR is a toy, and a poor one at that.

I think it could be ok for conferences; if you're too lazy to go to DefCon for instance.

Yeah, and technologists don’t give a shit about what regular people think. When have they ever advanced the state of how we use technology? In 20 years they’ll be happily be using VR glasses, completely having forgotten their initial skepticism.

Metaverse is a virtual 3D world, like a MMORPG game, right? Do you necessarily need VR to participate in such worlds? I had a VR headset, it's very tiring to wear it for a long time.

I think VR is fair bet with how batteries need to improve (elecrtic cars). They can work on system/algos and battery breakthrough will make it all viable some day

Hasn't Meta always said their VR project will take the better part of a decade to reach the mass market goal? Maybe I misunderstood them.

I think you've understood them correctly, but should you _believe_ them?

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