I'm not an IT person so maybe I'm misinformed, but does anyone understand how Zuckerberg spent 15 billion US dollars for a project that looks worse than Second Life? Where did the money go?
I'm not an IT person so maybe I'm misinformed, but does anyone understand how Zuckerberg spent 15 billion US dollars for a project that looks worse than Second Life? Where did the money go?
"15 billion for second life" is pretty reductionist, in the end. Meta had spent $10b on their reality labs division in total. First, graphics are the first thing to jump at people, but that is...
"15 billion for second life" is pretty reductionist, in the end. Meta had spent $10b on their reality labs division in total.
First, graphics are the first thing to jump at people, but that is intentional in the end. At this stage, both uncanny valley and the limitations of the hardware mean that cartoonish caricatures work better than anything more realistic. Legs get memed quite often, even referenced by the Zuck at the latest presentation, but that's a hardware thing - at the moment there's nothing strapped to your legs, and the headset's camera pretty much never has vision of a user's legs.
The Quest Pro gets around this (and general arm occlusion issues) by having each controller have its own camera, and its own SoC (a snapdragon chip that would not feel out of place in a midrange android phone).
That also gets into the second part: it's not just software, it's reality labs total costs, including hardware R&D. I am also almost certain they sold the quest 2 at a loss at its initial price, which will also add up. They also made a bunch of expensive acquisitions in the VR space, buying Supernatural among others.
Third, things not yet revealed. From someone I know that works there (well, might work there now?) there's a whole AR project, for instance, which is completely in the dark publicity wise.
I have a close family friend that is a senior Exec in Facebook/Meta at their offices here in Toronto, who happens to be working in their Canadian Reality Labs division, and he has talked with me...
I have a close family friend that is a senior Exec in Facebook/Meta at their offices here in Toronto, who happens to be working in their Canadian Reality Labs division, and he has talked with me at length about some of their AR/VR projects. As you said, there is definitely far more going on behind the scenes than people meme about... But even so, it mostly still sounds like a pretty misguided project overall, IMO. It could pay out eventually, but it will likely be a long time before it does even if all their current research efforts, software, and hardware patents bear fruit. And until it does start paying out, it's a fucking massive expense! The Canadian division alone directly employs several hundred people, and they have been handing out grants like they're candy. And worldwide the division has cost them $3.7 Bn in just the last quarter, and $9 Bn total so far this year.
I hope he doesn't get fired now too. :( I should call him.
I understand. However, if I go to a restaurant and see a cockroach, I'm not going back there regardless of the chefs assurances that the kitchen is clean. At the very least, if you're spend that...
I understand. However, if I go to a restaurant and see a cockroach, I'm not going back there regardless of the chefs assurances that the kitchen is clean. At the very least, if you're spend that much money, it feels incredibly out of touch to present it to the public as it currently is. It doesn't matter that they have a world class chef making delicious dishes in a perfectly clean kitchen, if I see a cockroach I will head out. Zuckerberg gave us a roach on a plate, what did he expect?
I mean to be frank that's very extreme. It's more like if a restaurant has some free samples of a new dish they're working on, and it's under seasoned. It is what it is, and I would also note if...
I mean to be frank that's very extreme. It's more like if a restaurant has some free samples of a new dish they're working on, and it's under seasoned. It is what it is, and I would also note if you've only heard it talked about second hand, or compilation videos, you are hearing about it from people with a particular perspective they want to convince others of having.
That being said, it is quite buggy and more of a tech demo than anything else, but it is also fine for the current market of similar VR offerings.
Taking the metaphor further, reputation counts. If I'm at a 3 Michelin stars restaurant I'm justified in expecting nothing but the best. Zuckerberg is at the very top, so it is only natural for...
Taking the metaphor further, reputation counts. If I'm at a 3 Michelin stars restaurant I'm justified in expecting nothing but the best. Zuckerberg is at the very top, so it is only natural for everyone to expect a lot more from him and his company.
To be honest I'm not really sure what we're talking about by now. How did Meta spend $15b on reality labs? Well, there's plenty of ways! Engineers are expensive, hardware is expensive. Horizon, as...
To be honest I'm not really sure what we're talking about by now.
How did Meta spend $15b on reality labs? Well, there's plenty of ways! Engineers are expensive, hardware is expensive. Horizon, as the other thread said, is a tip of the iceberg.
Now, is it a good move to focus on the "metaverse"? Who knows. There's been a quite negative investor reaction to the capex, but the ability to be a platform owner, as Apple and Google are now, is an equally salivating prospect for Zuck, and as King of Meta there's not much any investors can do about it.
Is the internet reaction to horizon "justified"? Well, I don't think that's a well defined question. Is a belief or reaction ever not "justified"? You can always think what you want to think.
My reasoning is simple: presentation matters a lot. If you're spending 15bi on a project, it's unreasonable to present it looking like shit. Furthermore: such lack of care and polish does not bode...
My reasoning is simple: presentation matters a lot. If you're spending 15bi on a project, it's unreasonable to present it looking like shit. Furthermore: such lack of care and polish does not bode well for any project. At the very least it tells me that those on top are profoundly out of touch, and unable to understand some basic demands users generally have. Such as: the demand for things that look good.
To start off, Horizons does seem quite rough, but given that the ways it is actually rough is none of the things people complain about I am doubtful it would change anything it were not rough....
it's unreasonable to present it looking like shit
To start off, Horizons does seem quite rough, but given that the ways it is actually rough is none of the things people complain about I am doubtful it would change anything it were not rough. Graphics is the most common one, and it's just not how VR works at the moment, especially something on-device.
You hit serious uncanny valley anytime another human is present with the limitations of tracking, moreso than in a "traditional" video game. Especially for something aimed ostensibly at collaboration, "better" visuals will make it worse at its intended goal. Caricatures are common for a reason.
The fact that the menus sometimes are just not responsive is an actual bug, but it's not the ones people focus on.
Secondly I'm just not sure what
it's unreasonable to present it looking like shit
actually means. Is it unreasonable on a like cosmic, universal level? Is it unreasonable to investors? To random people on the internet? For the foremost, I don't think that's how the universal laws work; investors (should have) known what they're getting themselves into, this is the risk of having all voting power held by one man; for randos, I mean to be honest I don't there's much of a contract between the two entities for which something can be reasonable or unreasonable.
Not to mention the reverse is a common thing people lambast companies for; if Meta took their $10b of R&D and reallocated it to $7b of R&D and an additional $3b for advertising, is that really the better move? VR/AR at the moment just isn't good enough. Whatever future Zuck envisions needs to be met before they have their platform ownership dreams.
What if they didn't show off Horizons at all? Maybe that would have been better, but I don't see much value in discussing it when we don't know any of the details, internal pressures, and not to mention hindsight bias. Then they would have a -$15b from reality labs and nothing else there.
Horizon Worlds is just a tiny part of their Metaverse project. Arguably one of the smallest - although they should have spent more on making it look less shit. It actually can look a lot less...
Horizon Worlds is just a tiny part of their Metaverse project. Arguably one of the smallest - although they should have spent more on making it look less shit. It actually can look a lot less terrible but they prioritise speed and frame-rate which actually isn't a bad decision imo. However, John Carmack isn't very happy with the situation, and Carmack is someone Zuck should listen to a LOT more. Personally if I was a trillon-dollar company and wanted a metaverse I'd give Carmack the company credit card and just let him go.
There's a large enterprise grade project (I know, but apparently Zuck wants us all to work in VR) which is considerably more robust and smart than Horizon Worlds. They've been doing a LOT of backend and infrastructure stuff. Don't forget Zuck wants to create a metaverse, not a VR Chat system - and the latter is basically all Horizon Worlds is right now. He wants to be the backend provider other people run their metaworlds through. There's the code it runs on, the payment systems, even server hardware and a whole raft of other stuff. Some have argued they've been doing too much infrastructure (Carmack again)
Also they spent a hell of a lot on R&D. Not just headset development - which they have done a lot of and their current headset is very good and I hear the development models are even better again - but also a huge amount of HCI research into how people interact with and understand VR environments. They've been working on AR hardware as well and that's a great way to spend money (remember Magic Leap and their billion dollars of VC?).
So yeah - Horizon Worlds is the only the tip of a rather more interesting iceberg. Unfortunately it's also the only bit most people have seen. Zuck is so bad at PR, he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the public.. I'm not at all on board with the idea that Meta should be running the metaverse, and I doubt this gamble is going to pay off for them, but hopefully you have a bit more of an idea where fifteen large ones have gone. At least a bit, it still seems like a lot!
I feel badly for the folks at Reality Labs. They've put in a lot of work to build something spectacular from the ground up. Indeed. His personal brand and Meta's brand are one and the same, but...
I feel badly for the folks at Reality Labs. They've put in a lot of work to build something spectacular from the ground up.
Zuck is so bad at PR, he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the public..
Indeed. His personal brand and Meta's brand are one and the same, but Zuck has the warmth and charm of an ice cube — at least publicly.
My observation is that Meta failed to market their VR headsets well.
Failure to create a flagship experience by themselves or with a partner. Horizon Worlds and Beat Saber are not "omg I need to getan Oculus. RIGHT. NOW." experiences.
Lack of brick-and-mortar presence. I've thought about trying out an Oculus. I think there are demos only at Best Buy, but the hours are weird (weekends only) and often the demo headsets aren't working at all. I don't know where else I can try a demo, and I'm not motivated to spend any meaningful time to do the research and plan a trip to someplace faraway.
Contrast this with Apple which uses its own retail stores and other retail partners—the Apple kiosks in Best Buy are usually immaculate and perfectly functional—to convert skeptics into buyers.
Top it off with the headset being personally championed by a man whose demeanor invites comparison to an android.
Horizon Worlds is fluff but Beat Saber is almost that good. It's almost all my PSVR gets used for any more and I still think that purchase was money relatively well spent in order to be able to...
Beat Saber are not "omg I need to getan Oculus. RIGHT. NOW." experiences.
Horizon Worlds is fluff but Beat Saber is almost that good. It's almost all my PSVR gets used for any more and I still think that purchase was money relatively well spent in order to be able to play Beat Saber. Apart from those who get bad VR sickness, I haven't shown it to anyone who didn't instantly love it and I honestly can't think of any other game I can say that about - VR, computer or tabletop. It's by far the best VR game I've played and I have a reasonable sized library at this point.
Lack of brick-and-mortar presence.
Agreed. I think everyone who is prepared to buy a headset sight unseen probably has one already. If they want to ship any amount of the new Oculus device they need vans full of headsets and Beat Saber going around shopping centres and stuff.
But I think they're trying to play the long game. I'm not sure they're trying to sell them all that hard to consumers at the minute. They are pushing the business use a bit more. But even the most enthusiastic user can't avoid the fact that the headsets aren't really ready for mainstream use quite yet. I think VR is at least one, probably two or even three generations away from being ready for muggles. They need more power, more resolution, more frames, more battery, more comfortable, more easy to use.
I've heard a few rumours to the effect that Zuckerberg is actually a pretty personable dude in person. My guess is that he's quite shy and just doesn't do well in front of crowds or cameras. That is just a guess though. 50/50 on him being a lizard in a skin suit.
Years ago my friend got an Oculus Quest and brought it with him when we had a meetup. The only game he had was Beat Saber and we took turns playing it. In the months after that, four of us (myself...
Years ago my friend got an Oculus Quest and brought it with him when we had a meetup. The only game he had was Beat Saber and we took turns playing it. In the months after that, four of us (myself included), got our own Quests so that we could play it for ourselves.
I’ve tried other VR games and liked some of them, but none of them have the same appeal or staying power. Beat Saber is the best VR ambassador we have, IMO.
Honestly, I kind of disagree with the assertion that VR isn't ready. The problem isn't that VR is too inaccessible or isn't high fidelity enough. The problem is that VR lacks utility. As things...
Honestly, I kind of disagree with the assertion that VR isn't ready. The problem isn't that VR is too inaccessible or isn't high fidelity enough. The problem is that VR lacks utility.
As things are right now, Beat Saber is basically the only game I know of that couldn't realistically be done without VR. VR games have been fairly disappointing because the only things VR games do differently from traditional games is giving you direct physical control over objects, but that has a built-in problem in that you have no haptic feedback on those objects. Nothing has weight, nothing has force, and you simply can't feel anything. And we're nowhere near solving those kinds of problems just yet.
I think that Meta was wise to focus on their version of VR chat because that's kind of the lowest denominator of what you should be able to do with VR. It's simple enough that you don't really need to have a VR headset to get into it; it basically just needs to be a glorified second life. But at the same time it also is the perfect showcase for the downside of VR as it is today: there's no full-body tracking or expression tracking (though the latter is supposed to be fixed with the new Quest Pro), so you're still missing out on a lot of body language.
I think business cases for VR (and especially AR) are much more convincing, but at the same time I haven't actually seen any real-world examples with any value. VR 3D modelling applications come close, but they have the same issue with haptic feedback that make it really difficult to work with, and as a result everything that gets made this way seem oddly proportioned and lopsided.
The other problem is that VR is competing with computer interface technologies that have had literally hundreds of years of iterative development and much of that research doesn't really apply to a VR environment. Maybe with time we'll eventually get to the point where VR makes more sense but right now we are at the point where we can't see even roughly what that will look like, which means it's going to be far off in the future - assuming it's there at all. Right now my personal biggest problem with VR headsets is that they are essentially incompatible with keyboards; you can still use them if you're a touch typist, but only after carefully feeling around for where the home row is.
A game being able to be played in flatland doesn't mean it doesn't benefit from VR. Wipeout, which is over 25 years old at this point, is insane in VR (albeit the remastered version, not the...
Beat Saber is basically the only game I know of that couldn't realistically be done without VR. VR games have been fairly disappointing
A game being able to be played in flatland doesn't mean it doesn't benefit from VR. Wipeout, which is over 25 years old at this point, is insane in VR (albeit the remastered version, not the original PS1 game!). Sure, you can play it on a flat screen but it's a very different, and far better, experience in VR. Same goes for things like Rez, Polybius, Moss, RE7, Superhot and similar. Even No Man's Sky is significantly improved and that game is pretty bad.
but at the same time I haven't actually seen any real-world examples with any value
In VR, architects are very happy about being able to walk clients through and around their designs. From what I understand it's very common there, especially as all the work is modelled in 3D anyway, so tacking VR on the end takes very little effort. It has applications in all sorts of training scenarios and there are several militaries using VR for just that but yeah, it's not all that big at the moment. It's almost like it's not quite ready for mainstream yet.. :)
AR is going surprisingly well. Remember Google Glass? It never went away, it's in use in loads of fields from logistics to manufacturing to medicine and more. Hololens is in use in manufacturing, medicine and education. Magic Leap are a bit behind but are gaining ground fast. My feeling is that AR is really where it's going to be at in the future. VR is like a big desktop PC where AR is more like a mobile phone. Big PCs are great and lots of people do lots of things with them, but there's a phone in every pocket.
VR 3D modelling applications come close, but they have the same issue with haptic feedback that make it really difficult to work with
I use Blender and FreeCAD from time to time on my flat PC and I don't get any haptic feedback from them. I just have a mouse and keyboard with no feedback other than visual. Is that an enterprise bit of hardware I haven't heard of because that's hella cool if so.
To be honest I suspect light field displays are rather more useful for that sort of application over VR.
The other problem is that VR is competing with computer interface technologies that have had literally hundreds of years of iterative development
Hundreds of years? The typewriter was invented at the end of the 19th century and let's be honest, it hasn't really been developed since. A typist from 1878 would be able to use the keyboard I'm using right now. The mouse is barely sixty years old and the sensor has changed and it's grown more buttons and lost it's tail - but it's still the same thing. HCI hardware has barely changed at all since it's invention.
One of the things VR/AR does need to develop is interface, and one of the huge advantages it could (should) have is that of an interface that humans have been using for as long as we've been humans. Eyes and hands and objects in space. There are controllerless tracking systems but they're currently a bit flaky. Like I said, it needs a few generations before it's good enough, and cheap enough, that your mum can pick it up and use it without having anything explained, but I think that VR/AR does have that potential, in a way that nothing else we've done in computing ever has.
That VR doesn't work with your keyboard isn't a problem with VR per se, it's a problem of trying to use the wrong input device for VR. You wouldn't complain that your car doesn't work with your mouse, because the right input device for a car is a steering wheel. Same same. Maybe one solution to that is less immersive headsets (Meta do that I think with the Oculus Pro) so you can see around the edges, maybe in other contexts the solution is to just not try to use a keyboard. As I might have mentioned, VR isn't really ready yet, these problems haven't been properly solved. Using VR is still something of an enthusiast's thing, although that is changing.
VR gear does also need to be lighter and higher res and wider fov and cheaper. Because no matter how much the tech gets improved, it's not going mainstream at $1500 a go for a device which only runs for 2 hours and weighs enough to give you neck strain in that time.
As I said, I think probably 2-3 generations. Although "mainstream" won't mean everyone does everything in VR any more than the invention of video killed the radio star. AR glasses just might kill the mobile phone though, if they get good enough.
The improvement you get from playing games like wipeout are completely subjective, though. I repurchased Rez just to play it in VR and I've got to tell you that I honestly think the experience is...
The improvement you get from playing games like wipeout are completely subjective, though. I repurchased Rez just to play it in VR and I've got to tell you that I honestly think the experience is just a tad bit worse than it was playing in 2D. In any case, I'm not talking about subjective improvement, I'm talking about utility.
I know that VR is being used in archetechture and I think that's actually a good use of the technology - I just wasn't thinking about it at the time. But the other uses you bring up are honestly a lot less compelling. From what I understand Glass doesn't even do real AR - it's not actually augmenting reality, just giving you a HUD. Most of the applications I have seen are not things that actually require VR/AR tech and could just as easily be done with a tablet (or even paper in some cases!)
You do get haptic feedback from a mouse, even if it's not related to what the cursor is over; You get the feelings of the stress on your wrist and the friction of the surface you have your mouse on. In the meanwhile most VR interactions have the same kind of feedback as a laser gun. When you hit the target something flashes. Don't forget that half the fun of laser tag is the difficulty of hitting a target.
Not having a way to enter text in VR is a huge stumbling block to getting it adopted, and everything other than a keyboard has serious drawbacks. Handwriting and voice recognition are still terribly unreliable, especially when it comes to characters that are not A-z or have accent marks. And if you have to literally exit your reality to reliably enter text, that's a major problem.
Honestly, if the hype behind VR was as real as the marketing suggests - or even if every VR game was more like Beat Saber and less like Job Simulator - that would be more than enough to justify a $1500 price tag to a lot of people. Or at least the $400 Quest / Quest 2 would be as ubiquitous as any major video game console. But it's simply not. That's what I mean by there not being enough utility. The problem is not the price or quality, it's that it's not even worth the time for most people.
What I don't understand is: if you're spending that much money on so many fronts, why not spend a bit more on presentation? My impression is that a game dev could do better in a few hours with...
What I don't understand is: if you're spending that much money on so many fronts, why not spend a bit more on presentation? My impression is that a game dev could do better in a few hours with Unity assets.
I don't disagree that they could probably try harder with the presentation bit but there's a bit of a gap between what people expect and what's actually possible, not to mention where Meta's...
I don't disagree that they could probably try harder with the presentation bit but there's a bit of a gap between what people expect and what's actually possible, not to mention where Meta's priorities are.
My impression is that a game dev could do better in a few hours with Unity assets.
To run at high fps - and you really want at least 90fps in VR, ideally more; in actual 3D - rendering two viewpoints rather than one; and all on Oculus hardware rather than a big gaming PC?
I'm not an IT person so maybe I'm misinformed, but does anyone understand how Zuckerberg spent 15 billion US dollars for a project that looks worse than Second Life? Where did the money go?
"15 billion for second life" is pretty reductionist, in the end. Meta had spent $10b on their reality labs division in total.
First, graphics are the first thing to jump at people, but that is intentional in the end. At this stage, both uncanny valley and the limitations of the hardware mean that cartoonish caricatures work better than anything more realistic. Legs get memed quite often, even referenced by the Zuck at the latest presentation, but that's a hardware thing - at the moment there's nothing strapped to your legs, and the headset's camera pretty much never has vision of a user's legs.
The Quest Pro gets around this (and general arm occlusion issues) by having each controller have its own camera, and its own SoC (a snapdragon chip that would not feel out of place in a midrange android phone).
That also gets into the second part: it's not just software, it's reality labs total costs, including hardware R&D. I am also almost certain they sold the quest 2 at a loss at its initial price, which will also add up. They also made a bunch of expensive acquisitions in the VR space, buying Supernatural among others.
Third, things not yet revealed. From someone I know that works there (well, might work there now?) there's a whole AR project, for instance, which is completely in the dark publicity wise.
I have a close family friend that is a senior Exec in Facebook/Meta at their offices here in Toronto, who happens to be working in their Canadian Reality Labs division, and he has talked with me at length about some of their AR/VR projects. As you said, there is definitely far more going on behind the scenes than people meme about... But even so, it mostly still sounds like a pretty misguided project overall, IMO. It could pay out eventually, but it will likely be a long time before it does even if all their current research efforts, software, and hardware patents bear fruit. And until it does start paying out, it's a fucking massive expense! The Canadian division alone directly employs several hundred people, and they have been handing out grants like they're candy. And worldwide the division has cost them $3.7 Bn in just the last quarter, and $9 Bn total so far this year.
I hope he doesn't get fired now too. :( I should call him.
I understand. However, if I go to a restaurant and see a cockroach, I'm not going back there regardless of the chefs assurances that the kitchen is clean. At the very least, if you're spend that much money, it feels incredibly out of touch to present it to the public as it currently is. It doesn't matter that they have a world class chef making delicious dishes in a perfectly clean kitchen, if I see a cockroach I will head out. Zuckerberg gave us a roach on a plate, what did he expect?
I mean to be frank that's very extreme. It's more like if a restaurant has some free samples of a new dish they're working on, and it's under seasoned. It is what it is, and I would also note if you've only heard it talked about second hand, or compilation videos, you are hearing about it from people with a particular perspective they want to convince others of having.
That being said, it is quite buggy and more of a tech demo than anything else, but it is also fine for the current market of similar VR offerings.
Taking the metaphor further, reputation counts. If I'm at a 3 Michelin stars restaurant I'm justified in expecting nothing but the best. Zuckerberg is at the very top, so it is only natural for everyone to expect a lot more from him and his company.
To be honest I'm not really sure what we're talking about by now.
How did Meta spend $15b on reality labs? Well, there's plenty of ways! Engineers are expensive, hardware is expensive. Horizon, as the other thread said, is a tip of the iceberg.
Now, is it a good move to focus on the "metaverse"? Who knows. There's been a quite negative investor reaction to the capex, but the ability to be a platform owner, as Apple and Google are now, is an equally salivating prospect for Zuck, and as King of Meta there's not much any investors can do about it.
Is the internet reaction to horizon "justified"? Well, I don't think that's a well defined question. Is a belief or reaction ever not "justified"? You can always think what you want to think.
My reasoning is simple: presentation matters a lot. If you're spending 15bi on a project, it's unreasonable to present it looking like shit. Furthermore: such lack of care and polish does not bode well for any project. At the very least it tells me that those on top are profoundly out of touch, and unable to understand some basic demands users generally have. Such as: the demand for things that look good.
To start off, Horizons does seem quite rough, but given that the ways it is actually rough is none of the things people complain about I am doubtful it would change anything it were not rough. Graphics is the most common one, and it's just not how VR works at the moment, especially something on-device.
You hit serious uncanny valley anytime another human is present with the limitations of tracking, moreso than in a "traditional" video game. Especially for something aimed ostensibly at collaboration, "better" visuals will make it worse at its intended goal. Caricatures are common for a reason.
The fact that the menus sometimes are just not responsive is an actual bug, but it's not the ones people focus on.
Secondly I'm just not sure what
actually means. Is it unreasonable on a like cosmic, universal level? Is it unreasonable to investors? To random people on the internet? For the foremost, I don't think that's how the universal laws work; investors (should have) known what they're getting themselves into, this is the risk of having all voting power held by one man; for randos, I mean to be honest I don't there's much of a contract between the two entities for which something can be reasonable or unreasonable.
Not to mention the reverse is a common thing people lambast companies for; if Meta took their $10b of R&D and reallocated it to $7b of R&D and an additional $3b for advertising, is that really the better move? VR/AR at the moment just isn't good enough. Whatever future Zuck envisions needs to be met before they have their platform ownership dreams.
What if they didn't show off Horizons at all? Maybe that would have been better, but I don't see much value in discussing it when we don't know any of the details, internal pressures, and not to mention hindsight bias. Then they would have a -$15b from reality labs and nothing else there.
Horizon Worlds is just a tiny part of their Metaverse project. Arguably one of the smallest - although they should have spent more on making it look less shit. It actually can look a lot less terrible but they prioritise speed and frame-rate which actually isn't a bad decision imo. However, John Carmack isn't very happy with the situation, and Carmack is someone Zuck should listen to a LOT more. Personally if I was a trillon-dollar company and wanted a metaverse I'd give Carmack the company credit card and just let him go.
There's a large enterprise grade project (I know, but apparently Zuck wants us all to work in VR) which is considerably more robust and smart than Horizon Worlds. They've been doing a LOT of backend and infrastructure stuff. Don't forget Zuck wants to create a metaverse, not a VR Chat system - and the latter is basically all Horizon Worlds is right now. He wants to be the backend provider other people run their metaworlds through. There's the code it runs on, the payment systems, even server hardware and a whole raft of other stuff. Some have argued they've been doing too much infrastructure (Carmack again)
Also they spent a hell of a lot on R&D. Not just headset development - which they have done a lot of and their current headset is very good and I hear the development models are even better again - but also a huge amount of HCI research into how people interact with and understand VR environments. They've been working on AR hardware as well and that's a great way to spend money (remember Magic Leap and their billion dollars of VC?).
So yeah - Horizon Worlds is the only the tip of a rather more interesting iceberg. Unfortunately it's also the only bit most people have seen. Zuck is so bad at PR, he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the public.. I'm not at all on board with the idea that Meta should be running the metaverse, and I doubt this gamble is going to pay off for them, but hopefully you have a bit more of an idea where fifteen large ones have gone. At least a bit, it still seems like a lot!
I feel badly for the folks at Reality Labs. They've put in a lot of work to build something spectacular from the ground up.
Indeed. His personal brand and Meta's brand are one and the same, but Zuck has the warmth and charm of an ice cube — at least publicly.
My observation is that Meta failed to market their VR headsets well.
Horizon Worlds is fluff but Beat Saber is almost that good. It's almost all my PSVR gets used for any more and I still think that purchase was money relatively well spent in order to be able to play Beat Saber. Apart from those who get bad VR sickness, I haven't shown it to anyone who didn't instantly love it and I honestly can't think of any other game I can say that about - VR, computer or tabletop. It's by far the best VR game I've played and I have a reasonable sized library at this point.
Agreed. I think everyone who is prepared to buy a headset sight unseen probably has one already. If they want to ship any amount of the new Oculus device they need vans full of headsets and Beat Saber going around shopping centres and stuff.
But I think they're trying to play the long game. I'm not sure they're trying to sell them all that hard to consumers at the minute. They are pushing the business use a bit more. But even the most enthusiastic user can't avoid the fact that the headsets aren't really ready for mainstream use quite yet. I think VR is at least one, probably two or even three generations away from being ready for muggles. They need more power, more resolution, more frames, more battery, more comfortable, more easy to use.
I've heard a few rumours to the effect that Zuckerberg is actually a pretty personable dude in person. My guess is that he's quite shy and just doesn't do well in front of crowds or cameras. That is just a guess though. 50/50 on him being a lizard in a skin suit.
Years ago my friend got an Oculus Quest and brought it with him when we had a meetup. The only game he had was Beat Saber and we took turns playing it. In the months after that, four of us (myself included), got our own Quests so that we could play it for ourselves.
I’ve tried other VR games and liked some of them, but none of them have the same appeal or staying power. Beat Saber is the best VR ambassador we have, IMO.
Honestly, I kind of disagree with the assertion that VR isn't ready. The problem isn't that VR is too inaccessible or isn't high fidelity enough. The problem is that VR lacks utility.
As things are right now, Beat Saber is basically the only game I know of that couldn't realistically be done without VR. VR games have been fairly disappointing because the only things VR games do differently from traditional games is giving you direct physical control over objects, but that has a built-in problem in that you have no haptic feedback on those objects. Nothing has weight, nothing has force, and you simply can't feel anything. And we're nowhere near solving those kinds of problems just yet.
I think that Meta was wise to focus on their version of VR chat because that's kind of the lowest denominator of what you should be able to do with VR. It's simple enough that you don't really need to have a VR headset to get into it; it basically just needs to be a glorified second life. But at the same time it also is the perfect showcase for the downside of VR as it is today: there's no full-body tracking or expression tracking (though the latter is supposed to be fixed with the new Quest Pro), so you're still missing out on a lot of body language.
I think business cases for VR (and especially AR) are much more convincing, but at the same time I haven't actually seen any real-world examples with any value. VR 3D modelling applications come close, but they have the same issue with haptic feedback that make it really difficult to work with, and as a result everything that gets made this way seem oddly proportioned and lopsided.
The other problem is that VR is competing with computer interface technologies that have had literally hundreds of years of iterative development and much of that research doesn't really apply to a VR environment. Maybe with time we'll eventually get to the point where VR makes more sense but right now we are at the point where we can't see even roughly what that will look like, which means it's going to be far off in the future - assuming it's there at all. Right now my personal biggest problem with VR headsets is that they are essentially incompatible with keyboards; you can still use them if you're a touch typist, but only after carefully feeling around for where the home row is.
A game being able to be played in flatland doesn't mean it doesn't benefit from VR. Wipeout, which is over 25 years old at this point, is insane in VR (albeit the remastered version, not the original PS1 game!). Sure, you can play it on a flat screen but it's a very different, and far better, experience in VR. Same goes for things like Rez, Polybius, Moss, RE7, Superhot and similar. Even No Man's Sky is significantly improved and that game is pretty bad.
In VR, architects are very happy about being able to walk clients through and around their designs. From what I understand it's very common there, especially as all the work is modelled in 3D anyway, so tacking VR on the end takes very little effort. It has applications in all sorts of training scenarios and there are several militaries using VR for just that but yeah, it's not all that big at the moment. It's almost like it's not quite ready for mainstream yet.. :)
AR is going surprisingly well. Remember Google Glass? It never went away, it's in use in loads of fields from logistics to manufacturing to medicine and more. Hololens is in use in manufacturing, medicine and education. Magic Leap are a bit behind but are gaining ground fast. My feeling is that AR is really where it's going to be at in the future. VR is like a big desktop PC where AR is more like a mobile phone. Big PCs are great and lots of people do lots of things with them, but there's a phone in every pocket.
I use Blender and FreeCAD from time to time on my flat PC and I don't get any haptic feedback from them. I just have a mouse and keyboard with no feedback other than visual. Is that an enterprise bit of hardware I haven't heard of because that's hella cool if so.
To be honest I suspect light field displays are rather more useful for that sort of application over VR.
Hundreds of years? The typewriter was invented at the end of the 19th century and let's be honest, it hasn't really been developed since. A typist from 1878 would be able to use the keyboard I'm using right now. The mouse is barely sixty years old and the sensor has changed and it's grown more buttons and lost it's tail - but it's still the same thing. HCI hardware has barely changed at all since it's invention.
One of the things VR/AR does need to develop is interface, and one of the huge advantages it could (should) have is that of an interface that humans have been using for as long as we've been humans. Eyes and hands and objects in space. There are controllerless tracking systems but they're currently a bit flaky. Like I said, it needs a few generations before it's good enough, and cheap enough, that your mum can pick it up and use it without having anything explained, but I think that VR/AR does have that potential, in a way that nothing else we've done in computing ever has.
That VR doesn't work with your keyboard isn't a problem with VR per se, it's a problem of trying to use the wrong input device for VR. You wouldn't complain that your car doesn't work with your mouse, because the right input device for a car is a steering wheel. Same same. Maybe one solution to that is less immersive headsets (Meta do that I think with the Oculus Pro) so you can see around the edges, maybe in other contexts the solution is to just not try to use a keyboard. As I might have mentioned, VR isn't really ready yet, these problems haven't been properly solved. Using VR is still something of an enthusiast's thing, although that is changing.
VR gear does also need to be lighter and higher res and wider fov and cheaper. Because no matter how much the tech gets improved, it's not going mainstream at $1500 a go for a device which only runs for 2 hours and weighs enough to give you neck strain in that time.
As I said, I think probably 2-3 generations. Although "mainstream" won't mean everyone does everything in VR any more than the invention of video killed the radio star. AR glasses just might kill the mobile phone though, if they get good enough.
The improvement you get from playing games like wipeout are completely subjective, though. I repurchased Rez just to play it in VR and I've got to tell you that I honestly think the experience is just a tad bit worse than it was playing in 2D. In any case, I'm not talking about subjective improvement, I'm talking about utility.
I know that VR is being used in archetechture and I think that's actually a good use of the technology - I just wasn't thinking about it at the time. But the other uses you bring up are honestly a lot less compelling. From what I understand Glass doesn't even do real AR - it's not actually augmenting reality, just giving you a HUD. Most of the applications I have seen are not things that actually require VR/AR tech and could just as easily be done with a tablet (or even paper in some cases!)
You do get haptic feedback from a mouse, even if it's not related to what the cursor is over; You get the feelings of the stress on your wrist and the friction of the surface you have your mouse on. In the meanwhile most VR interactions have the same kind of feedback as a laser gun. When you hit the target something flashes. Don't forget that half the fun of laser tag is the difficulty of hitting a target.
Not having a way to enter text in VR is a huge stumbling block to getting it adopted, and everything other than a keyboard has serious drawbacks. Handwriting and voice recognition are still terribly unreliable, especially when it comes to characters that are not A-z or have accent marks. And if you have to literally exit your reality to reliably enter text, that's a major problem.
Honestly, if the hype behind VR was as real as the marketing suggests - or even if every VR game was more like Beat Saber and less like Job Simulator - that would be more than enough to justify a $1500 price tag to a lot of people. Or at least the $400 Quest / Quest 2 would be as ubiquitous as any major video game console. But it's simply not. That's what I mean by there not being enough utility. The problem is not the price or quality, it's that it's not even worth the time for most people.
What I don't understand is: if you're spending that much money on so many fronts, why not spend a bit more on presentation? My impression is that a game dev could do better in a few hours with Unity assets.
I don't disagree that they could probably try harder with the presentation bit but there's a bit of a gap between what people expect and what's actually possible, not to mention where Meta's priorities are.
To run at high fps - and you really want at least 90fps in VR, ideally more; in actual 3D - rendering two viewpoints rather than one; and all on Oculus hardware rather than a big gaming PC?
Not sure about that but I doubt it.
Redundancies!!! That's the word I couldn't for the life of me seem to remember. Thanks for the tag correction, @mycketforvirrad. :P
/noise
I'm surprised how many other posts have used that tag!
Might be my fault. 🤔