Meta - what are you doing?

[dburne]

I found this to be a pretty good watch with some great points made.

 

 

[simfan2015]

IMHO Meta nor Marc are to blame.

Maybe not everyone wants to live with a fishbowl around their head ? 

An iPhone was cool because you can put it in Your pocket. Dedicated digital cameras almost went the way of dodo because iPhones that now also included a camera were more convenient. 

Look at the quest pro being just as big as headsets were many years ago. 

One day we will be able to keep our AR/VR glasses into our pockets and that will change everything. 

Marc is right that AR!/VR is the future but it may again be up to Apple to properly 'invent' both the headsets as well as the ECO systems.

High end VR, pcvr, Oculus or not  are also not going to save or boost AR/VR. 

You need to reboot and reinvent VR. 

2023 will be interesting with both the quest 3 and the Apple HMD. 

Edited November 12, 2022 by simfan2015

[ZachariasX]

Zuck doesn‘t own the end point device, hence Apple, Google and MS can (and do) axe Metas tracking at their own discretion. If you want to rule the world through user tracking, then that is not a good start. Making their VR device the new mainstream endpoint device changes that. At least in Zucks uncanny and censored (how is that gonna work?) Secondlife V.2, he looks more human than he does in real life. But how well AR goggles are accepted socially, Google found out the hard way.

 

Good riddance.

[1Sascha]

Without having watched the video... let's see...

 

- total cost of Hardware (not just the headset)

- awkwardness of HW (put a huge dorky looking thing on my head any time I want to use VR)

- amount of preparation required to start each and every VR-session

- level of dedication/familiarity with PC-HW/willingness to research and tweak your setup to make the thing perform

 

... is what I would list off the top of my head as points why VR still isn't a mass-market compatible technology. For a truly unique experience like flying in IL-2 or DCS, some folks (myself included) are more than willing to invest all that time and money and frustration. Let's face it: Despite all the drawbacks and even on a lower res set like my Rift-S, it's kinda hard to go back to non-VR flying once you've tasted that sweet, sweet VR-blood.

 

BUT ....

 

... all that to move through some mid 2000s looking virtual chat-rooms to stare at Nintendo Wii looking avatars of other folks and to chat with them? How the hell are you going to persuade "normies" that they should spend all that money and effort for something they can experience in a simple browser-tab or on their phones any time they feel like checking up on their contacts/friends? How are you supposed to get these people on the go? How are you supposed to hold them in your VR-chatrooms when most sets become a bit uncomfortable after a while and not everyone can afford to completely isolate themselves from their real-world surroundings for hours on end?

 

I'm not an expert and I'm not too deep into this whole story with FB/Meta, but from what little I can see through reporting in the media and my own experience with these sorts of management-/owner-induced disasters, I'm fairly certain that this is yet another case of a supposed "genius" businessman coming up with a pretty stupid idea and all the folks around him not daring to tell him that his idea is shit. I'm not saying this will be the end of FB, but I wouldn't be surprised if it resulted in additional layoffs and the quiet death of the whole "Metaverse" in the not too distant future.  Plus it'll probably result in relaxed moderation and a further opening of the floodgates to all sorts of crazy fake-news, hate-speech and conspiracy lunacy. Cause those are more lucrative it seems than genuine news-reporting and kitten-pics.

 

The way I see it, current VR is a dead-end for this sort of social media application... unless someone comes up with some sort of lightweight and non-clumsy device that would give you the same sensation as a decent current VR set but that would be easy to set up and ready to use within seconds. Basically, one that passes the mom-test (your mom can use it with minimal or no help from an experienced user). Otherwise, all you're ever going to get are enthusiasts (such as ourselves) and you won't "conquer the world" with that demographic alone.

 

 

S.

[dburne]

IMHO Meta (when it was just Oculus) screwed up going with this all in one VR approach.

They should have kept going forward with Rift, especially as we now know CV2 was ready for production when it was axed. And continued with Quest development separately from Rift. They could have placated the PC-VR game enthusiasts as well as the mobile game enthusiasts with devices dedicated solely to each.

 

Now they are just losing all this money, have just laid off several thousand employees, and keep throwing money at this Meta Verse nonsense.

[chiliwili69]

On 11/13/2022 at 8:56 AM, ZachariasX said:

Making their VR device the new mainstream endpoint device changes that.

 

I really don´t see that. It would be hard to displace current smartphones+tablets+laptops+desktops.

Current Teams meetings are quite ok right now, with camera or without camera. I doubt QuestPro will change that.

 

On the other hand, VR is a perfect device to certain PC games like sims or other inmersive games with detailed graphics. 

Surely PSVR2 and Deckard will probe that.

 

Apart from that there is also some point use cases of VR in non game business, like professional training, product design visualization, healtcare, etc

[ZachariasX]

2 hours ago, chiliwili69 said:

I really don´t see that. It would be hard to displace current smartphones+tablets+laptops+desktops.

Absolutely. That is why I think Meta stock price is still way too high.

 

2 hours ago, chiliwili69 said:

Apart from that there is also some point use cases of VR in non game business, like professional training, product design visualization, healtcare, etc

Yes, I personally know of some who are abolutely fond of having clients instructed via VR to repair industrial machinery instead of having technitians travel the globe.

 

But there is no money in that regardless of the VR device ask price compared to tracking them all and monetising them all.