VR wouldn’t even be a thing anymore without their efforts.
PC Tower VR is a dead end where the complexity and hardware costs will never take it the customer base size that justifies developing non-indie content.
I don’t think Valve would have even bothered building Index without the Oculus threat.
You're missing out, Quest 2 was one of the best purchases I've made in the last year.
I also don't think VR is good enough to be worth investing $1k+ into a VR headset like Vive. $300 seemed like a very high return on investment for what I got. Not sure about $400 since I already have one but I'd probably still do it.
I also made a fake, empty Facebook account to use the Oculus store, so I don't feel like it's a privacy invasion.
I bought two recently for my parents and they don’t use them. I tried to use them but there are no real VR games to play. All of the games are arcade-style mini games with 20 year-old graphics. They get boring after a couple minutes. Huge disappointment!
Around 10 years ago I gave up on VR and decided to wait for the VR game market to grow. It was a huge bummer to learn that nothing has changed after all this time.
I think it will take another decade or two for hardware power and costs to catch up to modern game engines.
For me, the only VR experience worth experiencing right now is probably a $1000 Valve Index with Half-Life Alyx running on my $4000 PC.
Lol exactly. Really wanted to play Half Life / Alex but not about to give Meta any money … absolutely not going to use a facebook account to use a VR device.
Facebook/Meta has some really great advertising and branding, but there are now good alternatives out there too even if they aren't as well known. I have the HP Reverb 2 which is a pretty interesting device in its own right.
Which is to say, you can definitely still throw away your time and money on this fad without supporting Facebook/Meta :)
I'm shocked that there aren't more multiplayer VR experiences. Yes, sure, there's Pavlov and VR Chat. But unless you have a friend who's into VR Chat, it's remarkably difficult to find a game that can immerse two different people at the same time.
It felt a bit ironic that mini golf was one of the most fun multiplayer party games.
My wife was like "You should bring over your quest 2!" to our new house -- she already has an Index and some other high end headset. I asked "But why?" and we couldn't think of a good reason.
Maybe the epitome of VR is always going to be a bunch of friends sitting around watching one person play it, but it felt like there could be something more. Something like a Star Trek bridge experience or... something.
I play Walkabout Mini Golf weekly with a group of far-flung friends. The courses are interesting, the physics feel right, and the audio is good enough it feels like we're standing around a course having drinks and goofing off. It saved my pandemic, and has been a great way to keep in touch with folks on a regular basis.
I have a Vive and have played a decent number of hours in VR, and overall like it quite a lot. It's really amazing how readily our brain will "adopt" two floating hands as your own body. I'm bullish on the future of VR gaming.
But I do think there's a big hurdle, and that's our inner ear. Teleport-based controls are jank but it seems really difficult to prevent motion sickness when using any kind of movement that translates the camera in 3d space.
I tried to play Subnautica in VR, and literally only made it about 10 seconds before I had to pull the headset off and sit on the cool tile floor for a bit.
I figured - well, maybe I shouldn't be surprised a sea game gives me motion sickness. And it's not even built for VR anyway.
So I tried - I can't remember the name, but it's a game where you fly around building a base in space. Sounded like an awesome idea.
I forced myself to play for about 5-10 minutes despite feeling ill almost immediately, and regretted it immensely when I did finally bail out.
It seems like this happens to a decent number of people? And why teleport movement is so common?
FWIW I don't get particularly bad motion sickness in other, traditional settings. Being a passenger in a car on a windy road will definitely mess me up, but I don't get seasickness, for instance, and also don't mind roller coasters at all.
Spending hours in Echo VR[1] playing Zero-G Frisbee was partly what got me through the pandemic. My friends and sister would hang out in the lobby and just talk while throwing the frisbee around, or play competitive games together, and it felt like really radical and transformational gaming experience. I can't recommend it enough. It's even free-to-play.
> I'm shocked that there aren't more multiplayer VR experiences.
Interesting, I had the opposite experience. While browsing the Quest's store I kept feeling railroaded into multiplayer experiences. Huh.
One huge issue, however, is with local "multiplayer". If you've ever tried to observe someone playing Beat Saber on the Quest 2 you'll know what kind of letdown it is: the video stream is delayed, which completely destroys the ability to enjoy watching someone else play. It's impossible to get "pumped up" when someone is doing well. They reaaaally need to release some sort of dongle set to get low-latency observer streaming to the TV.
Additionally, watching someone else's VR POV on a standard flat TV can be pretty nauseating. It would be great if there was also a way to add motion stability to the TV feed.
That one "Keep talking and nobody explodes" game was pretty fun just as a regular planar projection game. I can see it being more fun in VR (and I think they have a VR edition)
Tangentially, there's Acron [1], which is an interesting mixed-mode multiplayer game, where the one VR player is the defender, and iOS/Android players are the attackers trying to steal from the defender.
It's a pretty fun party game, (though beginners get confused easily). I hope the concept gets expanded.
If you have any interest in flight simulators, VTOL VR is a fantastic multiplayer VR flight sim with large multiplayer lobbies. It strikes a good balance between arcade and realism too and is incredibly immersive. Unfortunately (maybe not?) its on steam VR so you will need a PC to handle the rendering but can stream it to a quest using link
May I humbly recommend Phasmophobia - I haven't played it in VR (I don't have the gear) but it's primarily built for that setup, and even played without it is extremely compelling.
Gorilla tag is a great game, has over a million players. Movement is entirely by moving your arms and is really intuitive + immersive. Lots of games and many concurrent users
there’s a decent amount if you’re into sim-type games. vtol vr looks awesome, elite dangerous can get you that star trek-like experience, plus various racing games.
I assume that Meta is done subsidizing the sales of the Quest. They have likely sold about 10 million units at a loss. I wonder if they have decided that the Quest is not yet the feature complete product that will run whatever they want the metaverse to be. Quest was basically an experiment and it seems they have learned what they need to.
Their next headset, the Quest Pro, will have eye and face tracking cameras with the specific purpose to drive social avatars and make VR social more natural. Meta’s interest was always social and while the Quest might be great for gaming, that is not the addressable market they are going for.
And yeah, I realize that most people here are going to be a hard no on Meta owning their face data, but strategically this is what they are going for.
Alternatively, they are projecting reduction in advertising revenue due to recession and feel they cant take the hit the same way anymore but would have continued if everything else remained the same.
We bought one in the pandemic frenzy and played with it a ton. Family of four and we all found something fun. We fought over turns playing it for a few months, but now it spends most of its time on the cradle. It's still mostly a gimmick with barely a handful of interesting experiences. The Quest 2 is inexpensive, self-contained, has decent power and battery life with good hand tracking. There's not a lot of major technical barriers left to overcome. There just aren't enough clever ideas to make it worth strapping to my head.
It's a strange move given Facebook changed their name to promote VR and the Quest is their flagship device. Also surprised that after mass producing this device for almost 2 years their manufacturing and supply chain costs aren't dialed in enough to maintain the current price. The message here is that VR is 'failing'. I hope it's not, but that's the message with this backwards move.
Am I the only one who struggles to take the name 'Meta' seriously, and still calls Zuckerberg's empire Facebook? Its a name that straddles pretentiousness and inanity ('That is sooo meta.') too acutely, and I resent them adopting a name of a broader movement of engineering for themselves. Or rather stealing it from https://meta.is/ .
"VR will have become mainstream when someone posts a VR-related link to HN and the resultant discussion is about the article itself rather than VR in general"
I feel like an old grumpy man saying this, but I hate the idea of wearing a device on my face to literally hijack one of the precious senses one has. I'm sure over time I'll look back and laugh at myself for thinking that way.
Lots of commenters here saying they're surprised by this move, but isn't the Quest 2 a loss leader for Meta? If I had to guess this move is probably to reduce the loss they're taking on each unit sold. The reason they're doing it now is probably because of the digital ad slow down and investor fears around Meta's metaverse cashburn.
Is VR broken out on the Meta balance sheets in a way that we can track profit/loss/expenditures that are associated to VR specifically? Anyone at Meta with a vague idea of how much of the company is working on VR specifically?
It seems odd, like the "vision" is "VR Everything", but the reality is more "We bought Quest and don't know what else to do". Does anyone have any insight on how it feels inside the org?
That's a significant increase. Can any game historians here tell us if a price hike this large has ever happened before? It's not a good look for something that seemed to be gaining a lot of traction.
Well that's one way to kill platform adoption momentum.
My biggest problem with VR is I've never been able to use it. I've been to One Microsoft store about 3 years ago that had some VR setup, but they refused to let me try it out.
I don't understand why Meta doesn't have these to try out in stores. I'm not gonna buy something I can't see, touch, and try first.
Worth noting that this really only equates to a $50 increase on the base model compared to release since it was originally released as a 64GB set and now only 128GB is sold.
Not surprising unfortunately. When it first came out with its lower price I was pretty sure they were taking some losses in order to lower the barrier of entry to VR. VR has become way more established in the last few years, to the point that having a headset is no longer a conversation piece, so they can raise the entry barrier a little bit now that a lot of people already got through.
As someone who owns a Quest 2 yet never actually bought a Quest 2 game (I use it for PCVR with AirLink) I think this makes sense. While I don't have numbers, a Quest 2 is roughly equivalent to a very expensive phone (beefy CPU + lots of RAM + high-res screen) that comes with two controllers. Even at 400USD they are probably still far from breaking even.
I use it daily for fitness. I really love it, it's changed my life, and the exercise I get from it really makes me feel good, particularly someone that spends most of my weeks inside and working at a computer.
I've not enjoyed any other form of exercise but I really love this when combined with some of the fitness options such as FitXR.
It's a real shame this has gone up so much, wow it's a large increase, not even a small one, however this was the price of the Quest 1, the Quest 2 featured a price drop due to some cutbacks they made with the hardware, but it's still disappointing to see them do this, particularly with it being such a large raise in price.
I'm hoping my headset holds out until the Q3 or perhaps other options start coming on the market, perhaps from Apple. I don't care about VR gaming without a fitness element at the moment, as the games are a bit boring / not so fun for me, but for fitness it has been great.
I view the Oculus Quest in the same category as 3D TV right now. Yes, it's REALLY COOL. But 3D TV was also really cool, especially watching Pixar movies which I did all the time when I had one. It has potential, but it's just not there beyond some initial great stuff.
[+] [-] yonaguska|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whywhywhywhy|3 years ago|reply
PC Tower VR is a dead end where the complexity and hardware costs will never take it the customer base size that justifies developing non-indie content.
I don’t think Valve would have even bothered building Index without the Oculus threat.
[+] [-] dmix|3 years ago|reply
I also don't think VR is good enough to be worth investing $1k+ into a VR headset like Vive. $300 seemed like a very high return on investment for what I got. Not sure about $400 since I already have one but I'd probably still do it.
I also made a fake, empty Facebook account to use the Oculus store, so I don't feel like it's a privacy invasion.
[+] [-] FractalHQ|3 years ago|reply
Around 10 years ago I gave up on VR and decided to wait for the VR game market to grow. It was a huge bummer to learn that nothing has changed after all this time.
I think it will take another decade or two for hardware power and costs to catch up to modern game engines.
For me, the only VR experience worth experiencing right now is probably a $1000 Valve Index with Half-Life Alyx running on my $4000 PC.
[+] [-] roody15|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JeremyNT|3 years ago|reply
Which is to say, you can definitely still throw away your time and money on this fad without supporting Facebook/Meta :)
[+] [-] SCUSKU|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sillysaurusx|3 years ago|reply
It felt a bit ironic that mini golf was one of the most fun multiplayer party games.
My wife was like "You should bring over your quest 2!" to our new house -- she already has an Index and some other high end headset. I asked "But why?" and we couldn't think of a good reason.
Maybe the epitome of VR is always going to be a bunch of friends sitting around watching one person play it, but it felt like there could be something more. Something like a Star Trek bridge experience or... something.
[+] [-] tezzer|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.mightycoconut.com/minigolf
[+] [-] atomicnumber3|3 years ago|reply
But I do think there's a big hurdle, and that's our inner ear. Teleport-based controls are jank but it seems really difficult to prevent motion sickness when using any kind of movement that translates the camera in 3d space.
I tried to play Subnautica in VR, and literally only made it about 10 seconds before I had to pull the headset off and sit on the cool tile floor for a bit.
I figured - well, maybe I shouldn't be surprised a sea game gives me motion sickness. And it's not even built for VR anyway.
So I tried - I can't remember the name, but it's a game where you fly around building a base in space. Sounded like an awesome idea.
I forced myself to play for about 5-10 minutes despite feeling ill almost immediately, and regretted it immensely when I did finally bail out.
It seems like this happens to a decent number of people? And why teleport movement is so common?
FWIW I don't get particularly bad motion sickness in other, traditional settings. Being a passenger in a car on a windy road will definitely mess me up, but I don't get seasickness, for instance, and also don't mind roller coasters at all.
[+] [-] daviding|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Bridge_Crew
It's not great, but it exists and is a multi-player VR game. Fun with three other friends and I think it's cross platform (although do check).
[+] [-] xd1936|3 years ago|reply
1. https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2215004568539258
[+] [-] MetaWhirledPeas|3 years ago|reply
Interesting, I had the opposite experience. While browsing the Quest's store I kept feeling railroaded into multiplayer experiences. Huh.
One huge issue, however, is with local "multiplayer". If you've ever tried to observe someone playing Beat Saber on the Quest 2 you'll know what kind of letdown it is: the video stream is delayed, which completely destroys the ability to enjoy watching someone else play. It's impossible to get "pumped up" when someone is doing well. They reaaaally need to release some sort of dongle set to get low-latency observer streaming to the TV.
Additionally, watching someone else's VR POV on a standard flat TV can be pretty nauseating. It would be great if there was also a way to add motion stability to the TV feed.
[+] [-] wyldfire|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://keeptalkinggame.com/
[+] [-] AceJohnny2|3 years ago|reply
It's a pretty fun party game, (though beginners get confused easily). I hope the concept gets expanded.
[1] https://www.resolutiongames.com/acron
[+] [-] Ancalagon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] f0e4c2f7|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skazazes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abledon|3 years ago|reply
Blade and Sorcery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_ZDQnOCTVI
If they open it up a bit as a base platform for creators to make their own mods/rpgs, wow.
[+] [-] psyc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vlunkr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danparsonson|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tjs8rj|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corytheboyd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andybak|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phkahler|3 years ago|reply
Echo VR.
[+] [-] intrasight|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kart23|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilaksh|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dougmwne|3 years ago|reply
Their next headset, the Quest Pro, will have eye and face tracking cameras with the specific purpose to drive social avatars and make VR social more natural. Meta’s interest was always social and while the Quest might be great for gaming, that is not the addressable market they are going for.
And yeah, I realize that most people here are going to be a hard no on Meta owning their face data, but strategically this is what they are going for.
[+] [-] namelessoracle|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tootie|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] trixie_|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nanna|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andybak|3 years ago|reply
"VR will have become mainstream when someone posts a VR-related link to HN and the resultant discussion is about the article itself rather than VR in general"
[+] [-] emadabdulrahim|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kypro|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digdugdirk|3 years ago|reply
It seems odd, like the "vision" is "VR Everything", but the reality is more "We bought Quest and don't know what else to do". Does anyone have any insight on how it feels inside the org?
[+] [-] vlunkr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] archildress|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asciimov|3 years ago|reply
My biggest problem with VR is I've never been able to use it. I've been to One Microsoft store about 3 years ago that had some VR setup, but they refused to let me try it out.
I don't understand why Meta doesn't have these to try out in stores. I'm not gonna buy something I can't see, touch, and try first.
[+] [-] desireco42|3 years ago|reply
I am early adopter, had Oculus for a long time... Very few things to do with it unfortunatelly.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jjcon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanmcbride|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] belval|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChildOfChaos|3 years ago|reply
I use it daily for fitness. I really love it, it's changed my life, and the exercise I get from it really makes me feel good, particularly someone that spends most of my weeks inside and working at a computer.
I've not enjoyed any other form of exercise but I really love this when combined with some of the fitness options such as FitXR.
It's a real shame this has gone up so much, wow it's a large increase, not even a small one, however this was the price of the Quest 1, the Quest 2 featured a price drop due to some cutbacks they made with the hardware, but it's still disappointing to see them do this, particularly with it being such a large raise in price.
I'm hoping my headset holds out until the Q3 or perhaps other options start coming on the market, perhaps from Apple. I don't care about VR gaming without a fitness element at the moment, as the games are a bit boring / not so fun for me, but for fitness it has been great.
[+] [-] jdlyga|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|3 years ago|reply
I do love my Quest 2.