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Comment by spicyusername | Hacker News Reader

TVs, computer monitors, actual conversation, and books are just too "good enough" for VR to compete.

After owning a Quest 3 for a while, it's just too isolating and cumbersome an experience. It can't compete with the freedom of my laptop when I want to be in the digital world and it can't compete with legitimate social interaction when I want to be with people.

The biggest place it can compete is games, but outside of a few really solid, and really compelling experiences, most games in VR aren't enough to warrant strapping it to your face.

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VR is still missing the killer app/experience to take off. Video games aren't it for most people.

I can't see VR ever being a thing beyond video games and maybe some forms of other media. People are social creatures. The idea is that people want to sit around staring into goggles rather than interacting with other human beings is the kind of weird stuff that gets baked up by socially underdeveloped Big Tech nerds.

Unless the form factor can be significantly minimized this is not going to be the next iPhone.

Looking forward to this comment ending up in some HN retrospective on the success of Vision Pro 20 years from now like some of those old iPhone takes from the mid 2000s lol.

I think that’s why Apple is pushing AR and not promoting VR experiences that much.

But we don’t have that amazing thing for AR yet either.

I remain firmly convinced that Apple is planning for 10 or 15 years down the line, when there is no special "thing", just face screens that are light and compact enough to start piecemeal replacing phones as a product category.

In principle it should be possible to do away with screens altogether and generate an image by shining low power lasers from eyeglass frames into the wearer's eyes. This will require some major technology breakthroughs, but I think that's what will really make AR cross the chasm into the mainstream market.

I fully intend to be that old out-of-touch guy who is too square to wear his phone on his face.

Wearing a phone on your face sounds like the squarest thing imaginable.

It’s been used by surgeons in the operating room already, so that’s promising.

Of course, Apple once made another product that, despite its popularity among medical professionals was ultimately not commercially successful enough to survive: the Newton.

The first Oculus Quest was used in operating rooms 5 years ago.

The killer app might be live sports. Did you see the guys setup watching the Masters? Having one of the best seats in the house to your favorite team from the comfort of home would be amazing. But that experience is not available.

Sports maybe... still not really sure why we don't have body cam's for a lot of sports so I can experience it from the players perspective. Would work better for some sports than others. Maybe that's a WIP.

I'm an avid golfer and watcher of Golf on TV. I'm not entirely sure I want to watch The Masters in VR. I really enjoy The Masters but it's still a social event for me on Sat/Sun at a bar and Thurs/Fri it's up on a screen near my work computer.

Every so often they try something clever with video to try to give you player POV or to make you feel "part of the action" and it drives me absolutely bonkers because it takes you out of the game and you lose all sense of the flow.

Admittedly this is because they just do ham-fisted cuts - a full POV throughout a game would be different, but for a lot of the sports I watch it just seems like it's going to make watching the game as a spectator more frustrating.

Not stereo video (yet?) but I’ve heard the Vision Pro is great for F1 because you can throw up a bunch of streams in floating windows

https://vimeo.com/917626158/3399a64c01

Many years ago, I bought an Oculus Rift and one of the apps was for broadcasting NBA games. I watched one, and it was great! And then I went back to watching NBA games on my television. It was definitely better in some sense but not enough to change my normal viewing habits.

The company that broadcast NBA games in VR was acquired by Apple.

I just don't agree at all.

For most sports, the best seat is at home on your couch watching on your giant tv.

For most sports, the reason to not sit at home watching on your giant TV is to have social interactions with other people at the event.

Ultimately, useful products don't need all this philosophizing that VR always seems to entail. The whole premise of VR goggles is kind of stupid.

For most sports, the reason to not sit at home watching on your giant TV is to have social interactions with other people at the event.

Yes and that’s only a subset of the social interactions. Many people prefer to have friends over and enjoy home cooked food and liquor store priced (cf. stadium prices) beverages. Watching the big game on a giant TV with friends is not going to be beaten by clunky headsets any day of the week.

Too many people like watching sports with someone else to isolate inside of a strap on face smashing computer.

Yeah, agree, other media. The killer app for VR is obviously porn. But that's not gonna fly with Apple.

It really is too isolating. You can have the coolest immersive experiences but at the end of the day no one can see you do it. You get done with an "adventure," to take off your headset in an empty room. That comedown is worse than the actual experience in the headset.

Until they figure out Star Wars hologram style communication VR will forever be in the niche category.

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