When I was at Google working on VR there, I was always jealous of Oculus's vertical integration that let them move so much faster than Google's VR team. Working with partner hardware was the biggest time sink in terms of utility gained per hour spent for Google's VR plans and it's going to be a giant drag for Meta. Because of business contracts, there were firewalls in the source code which meant fixing bugs that spanned the stack took forever and there was a bunch of back-and-forth between companies about whose responsibility it is. This is very different from the standard culture of Google & Meta where a dev can (relatively) easily access the source code for any part of the stack and fix the bug without going through tons of red tape.
On top of this, hardware partners have very different goals from the core OS developer (i.e, Google or Meta) who want to grow the ecosystem. So the hardware vendors add various features to their hardware and the OS devs need to add hacks to work around it. In theory, the OS developer writes a "compatibility" doc and requires hardware makers to follow it. In practice, the hardware maker fails to do so and the OS maker has to put in software hacks to work around hardware bugs. And then engineers on the OS team have to waste time chasing these bugs which affect a tiny portion of users but are high priority due to business contracts.
Some of those business contracts made no sense from a VR ecosystem perspective, but Google went through with them for other reasons such as preventing a key phone maker from jumping ship to another OS or company. That's probably what's happening here. Meta doesn't want third-party vendors to build VR solutions on top of AVP or Google's XR OS, so they're offering crumbs to distract other companies.
Since you say that you were working on VR at Google, did you work on Cardboard Camera or know someone that did ? Do you think there is any chance that the app woukd be open sourced some day ?
I think this VR generation ends with "nobody gets the cookie". It is an experience to try it and you could do some fun things with it.
But none of the VR vendors was focused on user demands. Valve probably had the most user orientation, but their devices had still a huge cost barrier.
I had a Rift S (or still have) and I looked at how I could interface it for dabbling. Wasn't all bad, but I still lost interest immediately because of artificial vendor lock-in.
Carmack is 100% correct in his assessment that software is holding VR back way more than hardware. The software is cumbersome, difficult to use, non-intuitive, confusing for newcomers, and glitchy. This is all even though you have a device as powerful as a laptop strapped to your face.
Other than a few games (Alyx, Beatsaber, maybe a few others), VR gaming is awful. "Productivity" software is even worse. I regret spending $1500 on my Quest Pro given that I've only used it for like a dozen hours.
VR Operating Systems and UI/UX concepts need to be re-thought from the ground up.
The worst part of VR games is the ongoing obsession of developers with trying to replicate FPS games in the worst possible vomit-inducing way, while completely ignoring all the interesting potential in things that barely anyone has even touched yet, like simulation games with virtual dioramas, small-scale games with shared social lobbies, games that play with size/perspective differences, and so on.
That may be true, but most aspects of hardware exist just below a very exciting threshold right now.
* The resolution in commodity headsets is just low enough that text is barely legible. Productivity apps become suddenly practical when you can render good-looking text.
* It's been years since the announcement of holographic lenses, which will remove the headache-inducing fixed-focal-length and pupil misalignment; significantly reduce headset size/weight; and increase the brightness and color gamut, and make the headset cooler, because the display backlights are replaced with lasers.
Most of the tech stack for SteamVR just needs to be semantically moved from "game engine library" to "HID & UI/UX framework".
Where are the designers? Expected some novel UX that I never considered to emerge but really hasn't outside the ubiquitous movement in games where you point an arcing arrow to move. Apple's gaze and pinch is sort of thing I expected more of from normal, non-giant-company designers.
Yes, for the most part VR gaming is awful. Sometimes in a kinda fun way. I wonder if we'll look back with nostalgia on some of these weak games like we do with weird old turbografx platformers.
I believe that VR/AR will become popular after the popularization of general use BCI's.
To me, it's just a gaming console with mediocre games in the form of an awkward hat, and I don't like hats. The UI is definitely a place I could be won over. Maybe someone will do something undeniably revolutionary without drilling diodes into my head. Who knows? Until then, my wallet will certainly override any peaked interest, so it better be cheap enough to not have buyer's remorse like described.
I dunno, Carmack's take seems weird to me...there are tons and tons of games and apps made by tons of different companies and people, what would the common thing be that is holding them back? The OS is not that hard to use, you can pick up the Quest and be playing a game in 10 seconds. It makes more sense to me that the burden of using the hardware is making it so the bar is much higher for games and apps in VR.
I've only skimmed the Horizon OS news, but my first reaction was that it looks like an obvious attempt to emulate the success of Android. Own the operating system, ship it with a flagship product, and push it to other OEMs. There are more iPhones than Google Pixels but there are more Androids than any other phone.
If it opens up the Horizon OS in Android level, it'll cost them massively as pointed out in the tweet. Android could've been much-much-much simpler if it were only for Pixel.
I think people at Meta are aware of that and the Horizon-compatible devices will be less diverse than the ones from the Android ecosystem.
He's absolutely correct about the software needing to improve. It is difficult to set up meetings or group games all the time. It's too bad, because playing with friends is the best way to keep people engaged in VR. There just isn't enough single-person experiences that are long term fun, except maybe watching movies.
He’s right that “open” isn’t necessarily good. “Sharing” sounds nice but also leads to fragmentation and distraction.
Android chose an “open” model and ended up failing on its primary goal as a mobile OS experience, even if some components of android went on to be popular for other applications. It led to chaotic device fragmentation, nearly every major Android vendor going bankrupt , and Google running effectively a charity unit (Pixel) to keep it alive. It only carries on with search engine subsidies.
Apple chose “closed” to the chagrin of hacker news “experts”. But the truth that “closed” iOS is a very lucrative, high-margin business.
“Open source” sounds nice, but as we’ve seen, many dedicated open source developers end up burned out and under-compensated.
“Open” can be a good thing, but is not a guarantee of producing positive outcomes.
As fan of the amazing quest 3, i'm interested in seeing what a "OEM" ecosystem can do.
I do think that stand alone VR is where it's at because it frees you while still being completely capable for PCVR so i'm hopeful some PCVR "first" headsets can join a program like this and deliver on stand alone while still keeping their bread and butter.
>Meta already sells the Quest systems basically at production cost
This is of course scary and why the VR market is now pretty much a monopoly. Perhaps the next versions of the vision pro will be lowered cost and have more games, but Zuck is just throwing money at each headset so how can groups like HTC compete? HTC and Valve never really had a chance when a headset that costs $300 to make is sold for $300.
Zuck and Carmack running victory laps now trying to Android-ize VR is probably not super surprising, but all of this show what happens when there's no real regulations to stop this kind of monopolization.
imho, Apple certainly saw this coming and fears a new Android-like competitor in a space they arguably could do well in. So the Vision Pro was pushed out before this got traction. Now its a matter of titan vs titan because smaller players are probably not going to enter this space anymore outside of hardware partners for Meta.
Why would the vision pro have games? I'm still waiting for the damn iPhone to be the gaming platform they promised over a decade ago. I watched over the last few years as Mac computers somehow got more powerful than they ever were but also have lost just about all support for modern games. The truth is, despite what apple says out of their mouth at their pressers, they don't really care about gaming or have any interest in establishing a viable development environment for this platform. Valve isn't even porting their games to mac anymore despite how much fanfare the relationship with this company and apple had for years.
HTC no, but Valve absolutely could compete. They have an existing popular App Store where they receive a cut of the profits. Even breaking even on hardware costs they could still reap fairly substantial profits if they were to succeed in the VR market.
Also regarding the Vision Pro, as long as Apple doesn't give up on it, it absolutely should come down in price over time. The original Macintosh retailed for $2,495, which is approximately the equivalent of $7,250 in today's dollars adjusted for inflation.
Valve never really tried to compete. Index is old, outdated and never saw a price discount and their supposed Index V2 has been delayed so long it's a huge meme.
HTC never really iterated like Quest did beyond big bulky headsets that required a full room set up did they?
I can't say Meta spending 10s of millions to push the technology forward is monopolistic unless you want to say Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft consoles or any device with a walled garden (ipad/iphone) ecosystem is monopolistic.
in Zuck's 3-minute video on insta, I initially thought he announced there would be Google Play Store, which would very likely imply Google Mobile Services, too.
But I was wrong: Zuck also said "if they (Google) are up for it." If Zuck has to resort to spitballing that idea out loud, I'd say it is far from happening any time soon.
That means HorizonOS is def not an Android equivalent to VisionOS. It's just AOSP plus the Horizon SDK.
Google should do a deal with Meta. But they guard Android with a very risk-averse approach.
VR isn't being "held back" at all. There's simply absolutely no demand for it. It solves no problem for which there is a mass market. It is the ultimate solution looking for a problem.
> ... Meta as a company, as well as the individual engineers, want the shine of making industry leading high-end gear.
Do they? I suspect this claim is colored by his own experiences at Oculus/Meta but it's not necessarily true. I suspect Meta would be giddy if they could sell 100x as many units of a cheaper unit because it means they would've found a product-market fit of some kind.
I'm amazed that all of these VR players are dropping the world's easiest to hold ball.
Just give people a damn VR headset with the same compute flexibility as a Windows, macOS, or Linux desktop and do away with these stupid walled gardens.
The units would fly off the shelf because, whoa! You could actually do something with the damn devices.
VR needs low latency and a lot of computing power. It is hard to make it flexible.
That's why, a few generations ago at least, game consoles are so much more efficient. Consoles have fixed and specialized hardware, and developers can tune their games to take advantage of every single bit. No need to accommodate for different specs, no costly abstraction layers, no random tasks running in the background,...
For standalone, Quest 3 was the first generation that really had enough CPU to open the settings menu, at the same time as another app, and not result in a stuttery mess. Until very recently, it has definitely been limited by compute.
Can I get a reality check on the state of headsets? It seems that the only people interested in these things are Apple/Meta hype boys (if the latter even exists), and people that are interested in VR gaming. I have only ever considered a headset because of games, only to conclude that it would be a severe waste of money, and that approximates the opinion of most people I know (echo chamber acknowledged).
I'll repeat the usual sentiments of Glass being a failure, the Vive is nearly ten years old, the Quest is a VR Chat/Beat Saber machine, and the Apple Vision is a Black Mirror style immersive nightmare machine.
I want my ideas to be challenged on this, but I really believe that Horizon OS will be a "Did you know that Meta released a VR operating system?" fun fact in 10 years, probably when Apple releases a $5000 Vision Pro 4 Ultimate.
Who on Earth is using these things? I realize where I am posting, but who outside the tech world is getting excited about and actually buying/using VR Headsets?
Obviously I've been wrong before about tech trends but this one seems to be so blatantly companies sniffing their own farts in regards to "we are the future" sentiments.
Vr is compelling in a way you can’t recognize without trying it, and even peoples memories of it seem less compelling than the actual experience. However, it’s inconvenient enough to use that many people don’t use their headsets as much as they expected. And there’s locomotion challenges that are hard to overcome imho. Finally, theres some privacy and lock in issues with the current iterations of the tech. Valve seems to be the closest thing to the good guys here - is that still true?
There are a ton of headsets beyond the three you mentioned (Glass wasn't a VR anything). Valve, Pico, Pimax, Varjo are a few off the top of my head. Pico 4 would be very competitive against the Quest 3 if they had released it in the US. Presumably the decision not to has a lot of to do with the TikTok stuff. Pimax has several higher end headsets that are very good hardware wise but not the best on the software side. Valve Index is still very popular and there are rumors about a new Valve headset coming soon.
The consumer mindset looks at entertainment which is the area you’re focusing in.
The enterprise and general industry mindset is very different. These are already used for product design, medical procedures, training, vehicle development, and more.
ok I bite. I have a Go, a Quest1, a Quest2, several adaptors for mobile phones, even an old kickstarter model of a VR headset with an intel atom cpu and stock android. I have a stereo/360 camera (Vuze VR) and I love all these gadgets.
What do I use them for? 360/stereo movies are incredibly cool. It is just another way of experiencing your personal history. Also there is Oculus Labs where they have some indi games and software which does not show up in the official Oculus Store. There are some gems, like some really cool games and some scientific applications, like a protein modeller.
I have also written VR programs by myself for scientific purposes (mainly biophysics) but also data mining and 3d CFD simulations. The 3rd dimension makes so much difference when you look at objects and you have a real feeling for the objects.
What I miss: Easily exporting 3d Models to VR (e.g. Blender), a good VR web browser. No Chrome is just the 2D version on a virtual screen. Not very impressive. Firefox VR is aready dead. And a good standard fiel format is still missing. VRML was quite nice in the 90s but hey that was 30 years ago.
How much is the cost of making all those Quests, and how much does Meta make in a year? It's weird they aren't giving them away for free, or at least with a cheap subscription plan. Seems very short sighted, maybe Apple is paying them to avoid Vision's demise.
Nothing is free, even “free” cellphones w subscription are paying back the cost.
Ignoring that, like covid test kits, if you make something (useful) available for actual free, there is unlimited demand and all stock disappears immediately.
They have been heavily subsidized. Throwing them out for free wouldn't do anything for anyone. People attach monetary value to product value intrinsically.
[+] [-] anthk|1 year ago|reply
https://nitter.privacydev.net/ID_AA_Carmack/status/178282646...
[+] [-] sxp|1 year ago|reply
On top of this, hardware partners have very different goals from the core OS developer (i.e, Google or Meta) who want to grow the ecosystem. So the hardware vendors add various features to their hardware and the OS devs need to add hacks to work around it. In theory, the OS developer writes a "compatibility" doc and requires hardware makers to follow it. In practice, the hardware maker fails to do so and the OS maker has to put in software hacks to work around hardware bugs. And then engineers on the OS team have to waste time chasing these bugs which affect a tiny portion of users but are high priority due to business contracts.
Some of those business contracts made no sense from a VR ecosystem perspective, but Google went through with them for other reasons such as preventing a key phone maker from jumping ship to another OS or company. That's probably what's happening here. Meta doesn't want third-party vendors to build VR solutions on top of AVP or Google's XR OS, so they're offering crumbs to distract other companies.
[+] [-] supernovae|1 year ago|reply
Since Meta can't win over google, i guess the next best thing to do is make sure meta store can be on other hardware since G isn't allowing that.
[+] [-] loulouxiv|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] raxxorraxor|1 year ago|reply
But none of the VR vendors was focused on user demands. Valve probably had the most user orientation, but their devices had still a huge cost barrier.
I had a Rift S (or still have) and I looked at how I could interface it for dabbling. Wasn't all bad, but I still lost interest immediately because of artificial vendor lock-in.
[+] [-] dvt|1 year ago|reply
Other than a few games (Alyx, Beatsaber, maybe a few others), VR gaming is awful. "Productivity" software is even worse. I regret spending $1500 on my Quest Pro given that I've only used it for like a dozen hours.
VR Operating Systems and UI/UX concepts need to be re-thought from the ground up.
[+] [-] crooked-v|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] thomastjeffery|1 year ago|reply
* The resolution in commodity headsets is just low enough that text is barely legible. Productivity apps become suddenly practical when you can render good-looking text.
* It's been years since the announcement of holographic lenses, which will remove the headache-inducing fixed-focal-length and pupil misalignment; significantly reduce headset size/weight; and increase the brightness and color gamut, and make the headset cooler, because the display backlights are replaced with lasers.
Most of the tech stack for SteamVR just needs to be semantically moved from "game engine library" to "HID & UI/UX framework".
[+] [-] boogieknite|1 year ago|reply
Yes, for the most part VR gaming is awful. Sometimes in a kinda fun way. I wonder if we'll look back with nostalgia on some of these weak games like we do with weird old turbografx platformers.
[+] [-] jfyi|1 year ago|reply
To me, it's just a gaming console with mediocre games in the form of an awkward hat, and I don't like hats. The UI is definitely a place I could be won over. Maybe someone will do something undeniably revolutionary without drilling diodes into my head. Who knows? Until then, my wallet will certainly override any peaked interest, so it better be cheap enough to not have buyer's remorse like described.
[+] [-] awfulneutral|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] chatmasta|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] flakiness|1 year ago|reply
I think people at Meta are aware of that and the Horizon-compatible devices will be less diverse than the ones from the Android ecosystem.
[+] [-] mgiampapa|1 year ago|reply
The timing of this is probably just a manifestation of the f-you back to google from Zuck and Boz.
[+] [-] roland35|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tonymet|1 year ago|reply
Android chose an “open” model and ended up failing on its primary goal as a mobile OS experience, even if some components of android went on to be popular for other applications. It led to chaotic device fragmentation, nearly every major Android vendor going bankrupt , and Google running effectively a charity unit (Pixel) to keep it alive. It only carries on with search engine subsidies.
Apple chose “closed” to the chagrin of hacker news “experts”. But the truth that “closed” iOS is a very lucrative, high-margin business.
“Open source” sounds nice, but as we’ve seen, many dedicated open source developers end up burned out and under-compensated.
“Open” can be a good thing, but is not a guarantee of producing positive outcomes.
[+] [-] supernovae|1 year ago|reply
I do think that stand alone VR is where it's at because it frees you while still being completely capable for PCVR so i'm hopeful some PCVR "first" headsets can join a program like this and deliver on stand alone while still keeping their bread and butter.
[+] [-] zoeysmithe|1 year ago|reply
This is of course scary and why the VR market is now pretty much a monopoly. Perhaps the next versions of the vision pro will be lowered cost and have more games, but Zuck is just throwing money at each headset so how can groups like HTC compete? HTC and Valve never really had a chance when a headset that costs $300 to make is sold for $300.
Zuck and Carmack running victory laps now trying to Android-ize VR is probably not super surprising, but all of this show what happens when there's no real regulations to stop this kind of monopolization.
imho, Apple certainly saw this coming and fears a new Android-like competitor in a space they arguably could do well in. So the Vision Pro was pushed out before this got traction. Now its a matter of titan vs titan because smaller players are probably not going to enter this space anymore outside of hardware partners for Meta.
[+] [-] asdff|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] _mlbt|1 year ago|reply
Also regarding the Vision Pro, as long as Apple doesn't give up on it, it absolutely should come down in price over time. The original Macintosh retailed for $2,495, which is approximately the equivalent of $7,250 in today's dollars adjusted for inflation.
[+] [-] supernovae|1 year ago|reply
HTC never really iterated like Quest did beyond big bulky headsets that required a full room set up did they?
I can't say Meta spending 10s of millions to push the technology forward is monopolistic unless you want to say Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft consoles or any device with a walled garden (ipad/iphone) ecosystem is monopolistic.
[+] [-] brcmthrowaway|1 year ago|reply
Invest incthat, not VR headsets
[+] [-] alisonatwork|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Zigurd|1 year ago|reply
But I was wrong: Zuck also said "if they (Google) are up for it." If Zuck has to resort to spitballing that idea out loud, I'd say it is far from happening any time soon.
That means HorizonOS is def not an Android equivalent to VisionOS. It's just AOSP plus the Horizon SDK.
Google should do a deal with Meta. But they guard Android with a very risk-averse approach.
[+] [-] TiredOfLife|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tempodox|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jmyeet|1 year ago|reply
VR isn't being "held back" at all. There's simply absolutely no demand for it. It solves no problem for which there is a mass market. It is the ultimate solution looking for a problem.
> ... Meta as a company, as well as the individual engineers, want the shine of making industry leading high-end gear.
Do they? I suspect this claim is colored by his own experiences at Oculus/Meta but it's not necessarily true. I suspect Meta would be giddy if they could sell 100x as many units of a cheaper unit because it means they would've found a product-market fit of some kind.
[+] [-] Havoc|1 year ago|reply
Maybe twitter was right about 140 chars.
[+] [-] andrewmcwatters|1 year ago|reply
Just give people a damn VR headset with the same compute flexibility as a Windows, macOS, or Linux desktop and do away with these stupid walled gardens.
The units would fly off the shelf because, whoa! You could actually do something with the damn devices.
[+] [-] GuB-42|1 year ago|reply
That's why, a few generations ago at least, game consoles are so much more efficient. Consoles have fixed and specialized hardware, and developers can tune their games to take advantage of every single bit. No need to accommodate for different specs, no costly abstraction layers, no random tasks running in the background,...
[+] [-] nomel|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gradschoolfail|1 year ago|reply
http://web.archive.org/web/20240425211438/https://nitter.pri...
[+] [-] dark__paladin|1 year ago|reply
I'll repeat the usual sentiments of Glass being a failure, the Vive is nearly ten years old, the Quest is a VR Chat/Beat Saber machine, and the Apple Vision is a Black Mirror style immersive nightmare machine.
I want my ideas to be challenged on this, but I really believe that Horizon OS will be a "Did you know that Meta released a VR operating system?" fun fact in 10 years, probably when Apple releases a $5000 Vision Pro 4 Ultimate.
Who on Earth is using these things? I realize where I am posting, but who outside the tech world is getting excited about and actually buying/using VR Headsets?
Obviously I've been wrong before about tech trends but this one seems to be so blatantly companies sniffing their own farts in regards to "we are the future" sentiments.
[+] [-] barbariangrunge|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] imzadi|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gryn|1 year ago|reply
Parents who want to buy a toy for their children, they are not exited about it they just find it cheap enough.
If you want proof just play any game/app that has voice chat on the quest. VR chat, among us, any shooter, ....
I really wish there was a way to filter them out.
[+] [-] dagmx|1 year ago|reply
The enterprise and general industry mindset is very different. These are already used for product design, medical procedures, training, vehicle development, and more.
[+] [-] fxj|1 year ago|reply
What do I use them for? 360/stereo movies are incredibly cool. It is just another way of experiencing your personal history. Also there is Oculus Labs where they have some indi games and software which does not show up in the official Oculus Store. There are some gems, like some really cool games and some scientific applications, like a protein modeller.
I have also written VR programs by myself for scientific purposes (mainly biophysics) but also data mining and 3d CFD simulations. The 3rd dimension makes so much difference when you look at objects and you have a real feeling for the objects.
What I miss: Easily exporting 3d Models to VR (e.g. Blender), a good VR web browser. No Chrome is just the 2D version on a virtual screen. Not very impressive. Firefox VR is aready dead. And a good standard fiel format is still missing. VRML was quite nice in the 90s but hey that was 30 years ago.
just my 2 ct
[+] [-] rationalfaith|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] jejeyyy77|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Diederich|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ffhhj|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] adamomada|1 year ago|reply
Ignoring that, like covid test kits, if you make something (useful) available for actual free, there is unlimited demand and all stock disappears immediately.
[+] [-] supernovae|1 year ago|reply