Even Apple wasn’t able to make VR headsets mainstream in 2024
2 years ago by Xatolos to c/technology
A dev kit with no physical controllers? You would think developers want precise controlls? Or a usb port? Or proper dev tools? Or a full API?
Why would they provide physical controllers on the early version when the mass market won't have physical controllers?
Apple's dev tools are fine. It's not dumb luck that's the reason iPhone's software ecosystem takes a giant shit all over android's.
The fact that the vast majority of quality mobile apps in existence are iOS only, because development and distribution on Android are complete and utter dogshit.
Has any significant 3rd party apps been made for it?
At the reveal they were talking about using Apollo on it.
That worked out great...
Lapz seems like a cool concept (although I don't follow F1 myself), but it got put on hold because legal https://www.theverge.com/...
Why would you dedicate yourself to maintaining an app if there is no market and the current hardware is experimental?
Nothing you build will be compatible with v2 but the experience you have with v1 gives you a huge leg up in the learning curve. Wether thats worth it depends on the person.
I got my pico vr for this reason, i want to get a feel for how things are evolving so i dont start a path of turning tech illiterate like my peers.
Pico is also much cheaper then apple and support custom apk
Why Pico over Quest?
Mandatory meta/fb account which i am very glad to have gotten rid off some time before that.
Not like i trust the Chinese for not spying but they are less likely to be interested in my data as opposed to chinese people living in the west.
Also did i mention apk support. Not sure if quest does. This thing can do piracy digital archiving , got moded beat saber working on device and officially its not even supported Hardware.
Another reason was bigger FOV but i am not about the latest quest in comparison.
At $3,500 I can't imagine why it didn't take off!
Definitely the colors.
With no controllers made by Apple, it seems VR gaming wasn't an intended use either as devs aren't going to port games if most users don't have them. Which only leaves people who will pay that price for a glorified external monitor.
Also software lock so you can't have more than one virtual monitor. They even limit software zoom. This is a prison you wear on your face.
People love to shit on VR because Meta pulled all that metaverse bullshit. But VR just keeps growing. Slowly, but it’s growing.
There’s no evidence it’s stopping yet.
In fact, Samsung and Google are jumping back in. And we have some of the lightest headsets ever made on the market right now.
VR is in a slow upswing.
Yeah, I’m mostly responding to the people I perceive to always shit on VR by mocking the idea of a metaverse or Meta’s version of a metaverse.
People dismiss the whole medium because of Zuck going wild with metaverse hype, and causing the whole industry to make all these nonsense metaverse claims.
Even Microsoft Teams was boasting about metaverse aspects at one point.
Those people are mostly just naysayers who like shitting on things, it's best to just not acknowledge them until they actually show up with a cogent thought. Otherwise you're basically just having their argument for them.
Yep. The problem is that they keep trying to push it as some sort of workspace for home or office.
It’s a shitty workspace. Nobody wants that box strapped to their face and work in a cartoonish porthole view world. The controllers are limited in functionality and using a physical desktop while somewhat blind sucks.
However, for visualization and gaming, it’s great! But not for $3,500. $200-$400? Yeah, that’s doable.
Yep. The problem is that they keep trying to push it as some sort of workspace for home or office.
It’s a shitty workspace. Nobody wants that box strapped to their face and work in a cartoonish porthole view world.
It will eventually be great for a virtual workspace, but the technology isn't there yet. The resolution on headsets has to get several orders of magnitude better, and the headsets need to get several orders of magnitude lighter/more comfortable.
It's a excellent workspace, if your work involves anything 3D.
It is not for office work though. I don't see VR spreadsheets taking off.
I just love the people who refuse to get a Quest device (formerly Oculus) because it’s meta. And meta bad. But then they have their entire life connected in a web of google and/or Microsoft. For my money it’s the best VR option out there. No computer required, relatively cheap, and a relatively large catalog and user base.
I just love the people who refuse to get a Quest device (formerly Oculus) because it’s meta. And meta bad. But then they have their entire life connected in a web of google and/or Microsoft.
Meta is a walled garden. You have to give them everything to get anything. Google and/or Microsoft you only have to give them some to get some, so you can choose if what you want is worth what you get from them. Meta is all or nothing. So for Meta, I choose nothing.
This is just the early versions we'll look back on and laugh at even when the successful versions have taken over EVERYTHING.
so VR equipment is getting lightweight and powerful enough for high realism. AI is just about generating compelling reality on the fly. Augmented realty is just about working smoothly thanks to modern hardware.
Now give everything another 10 years development.
We'll be tapping up compelling 3d 'personal shoppers' and 'personal customer service agents' that feel more like butlers and servants because they ARE. And they'll be 100% generated and pretty easy to talk to, especially compared to waiting on the phone or trying to type chat.
Perhaps Zucks metaverse dream will be located in there somewhere. What if in that time we nail 3d video chat - perhaps a dose of AI and VR 'learning you' so it gives you realistic micro gestures without having to scan your face aggressively.
I can see it all becoming a lot more believable. And chatting to company AI services like you would a person becoming the norm.
And someone will be like "ha, remember the 'metaverse' back in 2023/4?" and someone else will point out all the technology they're using right then and there is owned by meta. In fact I bet there'll be a TIL post about it in 2035...
Yup, I like to sum it up as “we are in the palm pilot era of smart phones still.”
It’s a huge cliche to compare it to the iPhone. And it appears we won’t have an iPhone moment, it seems like we will have a more gradual shift.
But yeah. We love our palm pilots right now. But it’s gonna get so much better.
I can’t wait for social VR to be filled with more “normal” people.
Why do people think you're supposed to wear that all day long? I don't think it was ever marketed as a permanent piece of headwear.
I've always assumed that every VR or AR system was intended to be used for a session and taken off, seems obvious.
I don’t think Apple themselves marketed it this way, but viral photos of people being spotted on subways and walking down the street wearing one probably didn’t help sell the product.
They marketed the headset as being able to replace the functions of basically everything an average person uses a laptop/pc, cellphone, and tv for.
People routinely use computers and tvs for many hours at a time.
People routinely spend hours on their phone and basically always have them in their pocket or nearby.
They showed people wearing the things in planes, to watch 2-3 hour movies.
Sitting down in their (strangely TV-less) living rooms to watch 2-3 hour movies.
Doing ... some kind of work you'd do on a laptop, but easily being able to keep the things on, kick a ball around with your kid, and then seamlessly go back to working.
Wearing the headset as you are unpacking at a hotel, and then taking a video phone call with them.
Not the thing ringing, you putting the headset on, and then taking a call.
No, you're just already wearing the headset, having just arrived in a hotel, implying you just had them on as you took your luggage up to your motel, like a hat.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=IY4x85zqoJM
Taken as a montage, you certainly get the impression that you're encouraged to just wear the thing all the time, anywhere, that its an 'all-device' that replaces a whole bunch of other devices, and is easily used/worn in many settings for long periods of time.
Yeah, that’s weird. Like, I get the idea, but the tech just hasn’t caught up to it yet. It needs to be as convenient as just putting on a light pair of glasses - on top of not being especially light or comfortable, VR is still a “process” which requires a degree of effort and adjustment every time you use it, which really kills the whole concept of it being a convenient tool.
I think Apple is probably more likely than most to make something like this take off eventually (Google Glass’ biggest failing was also that it made you look like a total dork, whereas Apple somehow managed to make AirPods cool), but this seems more like a software proof of concept for hardware that doesn’t exist yet.
Namely what the features are and the functionality of it. I mean if you are expecting to use it in a closed controlled area, then for the most part the pass through side isn't necessary, the screen showing your eyes to outsiders is completely meaningless. So I guess the point is, there isn't really a defined ideal place to use it. It isn't super useful in one place, it's made to be slightly helpful, everywhere.
Which of course begs the question, where is it intended to be used. when is the ideal time to put it on, and then how long should a session be before you take it off.
I think the only thing that made people think about VR was Half Life Alyx.
If plenty of games would be made with that level of quality VR could actually became a thing.
But boring companies keeps trying to push VR for boring things.
It's crazy how lazy these companies are trying to be about VR. Imagine nintendo or Sega launching a console without any studios or titles. Everyone is so fucking busy with trying to hit the next "tech boom" that they feel it's everyone else's problem to come up with actual use cases that people will stick with (wearing a clunky headset for extra monitors isn't a long-term solution).
I'm tired of watching these multi-billion dollar VR companies showing ping-pong demo's, real actual fucking ping-pong is 100x fucking more fun and it's never brought up. Would love to watch an actual demo with two people playing vr and two people playing real table tennis side by side for an actual comparison. (for anyone saying how much easier it is to play in VR, you just spent $3500 for ONE headset)
Half Life Alyx, Lone Echo, and Asgard's Wrath are all incredible experiences that actually feel like "real games" that made meaningful and justifiable use of VR.
Beat Saber and Robo Recall get honorable mentions from me as well because while neither is groundbreaking, both execute their particular niche more or less perfectly.
Browsing various VR software storefronts now you find basically nothing like any of the above. Everything seems to be trying to mimic the mobile game "quick distraction" approach and shovel out as much garbage as possible rather than creating anything engaging. For anyone who believes that VR has genuine potential for exciting new experiences, as I do, it's incredibly disheartening.
I've bought my Oculus Rift in like 2017 and haven't used it at all for the last 3 years... And I missed nothing. I played the heck out of Beat Saber and HL: Alyx, Lone Echo and some few other games but nothing noteworthy has been released for a long time so I'm just patiently waiting.
Oh, I did play quite a bit of VRChat as well back then.
To be fair, a device in a new technology that is now nearly 8 years old is quite out of date. I use my Quest 2 all the time, and it’s a few years old now. Beat saber is a great quick workout, Walkabout Minigolf is great alone or with friends. It’s fun to watch a 3d movie or other content on a big screen virtually with a few friends who don’t live close. The Lego game is super cool. Your VR chats and poker games. There’s tons of other games I have picked up over the years. I’m excited to try the new Batman once I upgrade. Oh and I can still plug it into my PC and use it as a headset for that too.
There's one simple way to do it: stop milking it with ludicrous prices that make it inaccessible for the average consumer and stop trying to corner each implementation with your own proprietary closed market that becomes worthless when it goes down because all of your digital purchases were "digital subscription options". The problem with VR is that it now has a place in the market but one that is basically limited to a luxury market, and as such it will only include self enclosed ecosystems of novelty implementations that appeal largely to whales. It is basically an example of the hellhole the PC landscape would have been if governments back then had been as lax with bad consumer practices as they are now.
I also get the feeling the VR market started out a lot like the mobile gaming market in that mba business majors who have zero ability or to desire to make genuinely artistic and compelling experiences choked out any other kind of person being in leadership positions in the industry.
Similar to mobile gaming the rush of business majors who "think" they know how to transform vr gaming when they don't know the first thing about game development and have never bothered to pursue a creative venture in their life that wasn't just a thinly veiled scheme to scam other people out of their money has severly stunted the growth of the vr industry indefinitely as it did the mobile gaming market.
The very structure of the largest companies in VR (besides perhaps valve) precludes the possibility of any actual artists and developers with a vision getting into positions of power in these companies and even if they do, they are never actually listened to or you wouldn't get embarassingly empty visions of VR like "the metaverse".
VR, like mobile gaming cannot be understood as an outgrowth of the traditional gaming world, rather VR in particular must be understood as a market constructed by non-experts who didn't give a shit about learning gaming development or how to create compelling fantasy worlds because the objective was always to be a digital landlord speculating and monetizing on an ownership of large swathes of digital communities that artists showed up and made into actual spaces people desired to be (artists are an unpaid detail though, that kind of fluff is easy, an AI could do it and besides it is fun for them!).
Unfortunately for VR fans I don't think the industry will take any significant strides until those kinds of people are kicked out of the boadrooms of these companies and I don't see that happening anytime soon given how long mobile gaming has been a squandered wasteland of casinos that nothing with any vitality or soul can grow in.
Yeah over 3k is not “accessible“ or “mainstream”
What do you mean "even"? I would say especially apple couldn't make VR mainstream.
But VR is already mainstream to a certain demographic; furries. They try to get VR headsets even when they're broke, because they want to escape reality as much as possible, and pretend like they're the actual character they like to imagine themselves as. And it's better than any fursuits can.
You want to make a successful VR headset, then you'll have to make and market it for those that want to live (and do virtual sex) in VR. Not as some weird, incredibly expensive office tool.
Furries have long since stopped being a small, niche, minority corner of the Internet. You can literally measure the success of a platform these days by how many furries are actively using it.
it's also a bad vr headset. it's an augmented reality headset that does vr secondarily. and surprisingly uncomfortable.
I didn't realize that VR was big in the furry community, but it makes sense.
Do they have a specific app/community? Things like VRchat I can't imagine being very well suited to furries, since you'd have random people coming in yelling slurs/bigoted shit.
I've always been tangentially fascinated with the furry community, while not one myself. Always seemed like an interesting, weird group, which as someone a part of other weird groups.....you go furries.
VRChat is the most popular thing that furries use. If you have random people popping in, you're in an open, public world. But in VRC you also have the ability to open private worlds or extended friend worlds.
Ah that makes sense.
I thought the apple headset was MR for productivity and stuff? VR gaming headsets like the Oculus seem to be doing fairly well.
It’s Google Glass all over again.
I’m meaning more in the sense of a wearable head device developed by a big tech company. It’s heavily marketed as the next big thing. Many talk about it - both with anticipation and concern. And when it finally releases, it’s quickly forgotten about.
Hololens did the same.
Apple's (and by extension every VR platform) big mistake is the lack of a Killer App for VR.
If they didn't have a compelling use case, them researching and building any VR device is a waste of time, money and effort. Walking out on-stage and saying, "Now you can see dinosaurs in VR" just isn't a compelling use case, even if they weren't expensive.
To me, a decent intermediate step would have been, "Have and unlimited number of huge screens for less than the cost of one big, high-quality monitor." would have been compelling if it were made small and light enough. Finding a way to continue using the current keyboard and mouse would have made it much more affordable and approachable.
Porn isn't the only killer app, it's just what drives all new consumer tech. I'd like it for CAD myself.
Apple's headset was sold as mixed reality, I don't even know if it can actually do VR and play VR games, and mixed reality is not that interesting actually. If you think VR games aren't interesting even though they are full experiences nowadays like Asgard's Wrath and Into the radius, MR games are legit minigames.
Mixed reality will be awesome. But we need a handful of killer apps, and the headsets need to be affordable enough that your friends have it, too.
Apple half-assed their rollout. They should have been dumping money into development of must-have apps before launch.
One killer app that I still haven't found is the ability to scan a living space and then make virtual modifications. I've got an idea to expand my kitchen and want to walk around it, and you'd think a VR rig that can scan rooms could do this. But I can't find any app to do this on any VR platform.
Don’t worry, Valve will be blowing up shit next year.
I'm really hoping someone other than meta will make something competitive again, I've been waiting to get back into VR. I went through 2 vive base stations presumably due to cold temperatures, and now have given up on VR until something better comes out (even though I love it and am entirely convinced it will be huge).
Patents published in 2022 showed Valve are definitely working on an untethered VR headset, new VR controllers, and a Steam Controller 2. Rumours are they went into mass production in Nov 2024 so we could be near an announcement in the next few months. Typical Valve style, however, is to announce it out of the blue.
But given the success of the Steam Deck, and the money they’ve funnelled into Arch Linux support for ARM processors, I’m pretty confident these aren’t just rumours.
I wouldn't say it's mainstream just because there are a few affordable options. It's still a niche subset of gaming in general.
And guess what? A fancy piece of hardware isn't going to make it happen. It needs software! Part of the reason VR is stagnating is because it doesn't have any good fucking games. You've got a ton of shit that is no more than a 5-10 minute experience you'd check out once and then never again. You've got one, maybe two, actually good games that take full advantage of what VR can do. And that's it. What good is a VR headset if there is nothing to fucking do in it? Which is exactly what sucks about the Vision Pro. Thing is $3500 and has next to nothing to run on it (like even less than a Quest or PSVR) lol
As relevant as ever: https://palmerluckey.com/free-isnt-cheap-enough/
Meta thought it would be the next big thing, so much that they renamed themselves "meta". A lot of companies have been courting VR as a future big market, but we definitely haven't seen it blow up like companies hoped it would. I wouldn't say it's a dead market, but I would definitely put it as more of a novelty than a mainstream success.
Turns out people want their instruments up to the task, not mimicking dubious sci-fi.
There will be no blowing up. I mean, there may be blowing up of optimization, modularity, quality, all those things. But they'll fight that to the last, looking for some revolution. Even though the previous revolution was not found this way. It was designed by completely different people and companies in the 80s and 90s, and was powerful enough to go on almost until now.
Their goal is to create phones with floating screens. At the point where quest 3 is, ignoring the weight and slightly janky hand controls I can see the vision and future technology could make that real, but I don't think its good for society. VR games also will never be mainstream since they require movement. I love VR gaming a lot, but 99% of people will try it once and never again. Its inherently niche. I've spent thousands of dollars on vr gear though so I don't really mind if all VR games are niche since I like the janky indie games.
A lot (if not most) of vr games can be played seated though.
Sure you might technically still be moving around but it's easy enough on you that most people - even grandma, could play.
So I don't see that as a barrier to mainstream.
"Not meeting companies hopes" and "not being mainstream" are two different things...
...and at the end you shift goal posts further to "mainstream success".
It's mainstream, just not as widely used as the people who write these articles want.
I doubt any corporate product is as popular as the corporation wants. That's the point of corporations, they always want more, 100% usage wouldn't be enough, that's why things like planned obsolescence, and premium versions exist, so that users can own multiple versions of the same product.
"Not meeting companies hopes" and "not being mainstream" are two different things...
I fully agree with that, I just don't think it's reached enough popularity with the public to be considered mainstream.
Just the fact that there are VR businesses that you can go and pay to play VR games with standard VR headsets is a strong suggestion that they're still a rare novelty to most people.
That's like saying 3D TVs are mainstream. We all saw how that turned out.
I've seen more VR headsets than 3D tvs.
If they want to make something mainstream, it must have sexual related usage. Easy peasy.
I’m relatively confident there is VR porn.
There has been for quite a while now.
There is but its not mainstream. I don't have a way to watch while taking a shower.
Furries come into VRChat with NSFW avatar, complete with penetrstion features, and have virtual sex with each other using full-body trackers.
Of course, nobody is actually feeling anything, but apparently there are those with "phantom touch" that can feel something as real if it's described to them well enough... Or they're in a VR environment.
They also make touch vests, integrate with vibrators, and probably have even wilder accessories these days
Teledildonics is a thing so I wouldn't be to sure if they don't fell anything.
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They were a $3500 dev-kit to enable some base level of preparation when the costs come down. They were never going to be mainstream.
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