[HN Gopher] Meta Horizon OS
___________________________________________________________________
Meta Horizon OS
Author : ahiknsr
Score : 769 points
Date : 2024-04-22 15:54 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.meta.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.meta.com)
| blensor wrote:
| It's going to be interesting if Google/Samsung will win out or
| Meta/etc.
| notRobot wrote:
| What category has Google really succeeded in since the initial
| era of gmail/Android/chrome? I can't think of any recent
| successes off the top of my head.
| EVyesnoyesnoyes wrote:
| 'really succeeded' sounds super crazy dismissive.
|
| Besides android being gigantic huge, you still have google
| maps, chrome, gmail, pixel phones, passkey, yubikeypush/2fa,
| the new cookie aproach, YouTube!!1 etc.
|
| Why would Google need a 'recent' success to be able to win ar
| snail?
| gryn wrote:
| the point is probably about whether google still has the
| ability to go from 0 to 1. instead of 1 to n. from the
| outside they look like they are not so slowing becoming the
| bean counting accountant / MBA type of company.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| What a weird framing? You say this as if gmail, android and
| chrome are all dead now. They're still being used and
| improved. Even if they didn't enter new "categories" they're
| still in a lot of existing ones and very popular -like
| hundreds of million of users- even if alternatives exist.
|
| First of all, Google Search has maintained dominance and
| relevance for decades. That's no easy feat. They have news,
| patents, books, LLMs all added into it.
|
| Google has a hugely popular cloud service. Especially if you
| include Google Workspace.
|
| Obviously YouTube is huge and regularly gets new features.
| There is a YouTube app for almost every piece of hardware
| with a screen.
|
| They have a pretty impressive mapping product suite.
| Everything from Google maps to Google earth and all their GIS
| products and tools (eg solar panels location SaaS).
|
| The play store is huge. AND They have a huge variety of
| extremely popular consumer apps like Photos, Music, Home,
| etc.
| notRobot wrote:
| I meant that it felt like they haven't had any massive
| successes with any recent launches.
| kernal wrote:
| The most recent success:
|
| >YouTube TV has piloted past a new milestone: The internet
| pay-TV service now has more than 8 million subscribers,
| according to the video giant. That means YouTube TV,
| available only in the U.S. starting at $72.99 per month, is
| far and away the biggest internet-streaming subscription TV
| service in the country.
|
| -Feb 6, 2024
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Zero chance Google actually supplies Samsung with a real
| operating system they can use. Samsung will for sure release a
| headset with Meta's Horizon OS before anything from Google.
| kernal wrote:
| LOL. Watch I/O on May 14 for the debut of AndroidXR on the
| Samsung VR headset with a faster Qualcomm SoC than the one in
| the Quest 3.
| baby wrote:
| Isn't Samsung going bankrupt at this point?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I wonder if every category has a "winner". When compatibility
| was a determinant, you had winners (Microsoft, obv.). I'm not
| sure winner-takes-all applies any longer.
| mckn1ght wrote:
| > Not an actual product render.
| OJFord wrote:
| It's a silly caption isn't it, why would it be third-person
| view, nobody's going to see those sketches and assume it's an
| actual product render, surely.
| NBJack wrote:
| Some folks stream VR games with a second camera on a green
| screen, which provides a 3rd person perspective for the
| audience. It's pretty incredible.
|
| I can easily see less tech savvy consumers being confused.
| zenlikethat wrote:
| Likely a change requested from legal.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| This is awesome, I'm waiting for a VR manufacturer to add an HDMI
| input. Then I could use it as a monitor without jumping through a
| bunch of hoops.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| > Then I could use it as a monitor without jumping through a
| bunch of hoops.
|
| bold of you to assume your hdmi cable won't naturally form some
| hoops.
| jsheard wrote:
| The XREAL glasses are trying to fill the niche of a headset
| that just mirrors a HDMI input on a big virtual screen.
|
| I don't think anyone is currently making an all-purpose VR
| headset which can _also_ do HDMI mirroring though.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I understand, but it seems trivial to add HDMI input here.
|
| Technically you can just remote desktop into a computer from
| your VR headset, but that won't work in every scenario.
| jsheard wrote:
| It's fairly trivial to add a HDMI/DP input which directly
| drives the panels in the headset through a mux (e.g. the
| Pico Neo3 Link could run standalone or from DP input), but
| that's probably not what you want, because in that case the
| HDMI source has to perform all of the 3D rendering and lens
| correction, using software that probably only supports
| Windows. If you want to be able to plug in any random HDMI
| source and have that rendered on a virtual screen then the
| headset needs a SoC with a low-latency HDMI receiver built
| in, so it can ingest the video and process it onboard
| before displaying it, and HDMI input isn't very common on
| these mobile SoCs.
|
| Maybe you could convert the HDMI input into MIPI and feed
| that into the SoCs camera interface, but I think headsets
| like the Quest are already pretty much maxing out the SoCs
| camera capabilities just to read in all the actual cameras
| used for inside-out tracking. There's no bandwidth left to
| shove an extra HD video feed in as well.
|
| tl;dr HDMI input that turns the device into a dumb PCVR
| headset: easy. HDMI input that mirrors arbitrary video:
| hard.
| numpad0 wrote:
| You don't want it. It's disorienting and uncomfortable.
|
| XREAL as well as some drone FPV goggles support
| non-/partially-head-tracked HDMI input, albeit with much
| smaller FOV for comfort reasons.
| int_19h wrote:
| There are quite a few options for non-head-tracked
| wearable display type headsets. Those generally get
| pitched as "portable cinema" though, e.g.:
|
| https://goovis.net/products/g3max
|
| (This particular one uses USB-C for video input, but they
| also sell an HDMI adapter for it.)
|
| Of course, in practice it's just a display and can be
| used for any purpose. I do appreciate the fact that you
| don't have to mess around with all the usual VR setup
| chores with these - it's really very plug and play.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| I would be worried about forking over $1000 to a fly by
| night company for a product which could easily break.
|
| (xreal is also in this category imo but at least its a
| bit cheaper)
| int_19h wrote:
| FWIW despite the weird name that invokes cheap Amazon
| noname brand vibes, these guys have been around for a few
| years now. They do have other headsets that are in the
| same ballpark price-wise as XREAL, too - e.g. GOOVIS
| Young, which is pretty decent for on-the-go use with a
| smartphone etc. I've owned that one for three years and
| used it many times with no issues before splurging on G3
| Max.
|
| And yeah, $1K is quite a lot, but the 65 degree FOV and
| 2560x1440 (per eye) OLED that you get for it really does
| look amazing - I haven't regretted that purchase in the
| slightest. It's rather bulky, though, although still
| nowhere near as heavy as VR headsets. Still, not
| something I'd want to carry on the go.
|
| I hope we'll get 4K per eye some day with this tech.
| Whichever brand does it first for reasonable $$$, it'll
| completely replace my primary display.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| Thank you! that detail helps a lot. I wish these
| companies were better at giving off a professional vibe
| when they make genuinely good products
| int_19h wrote:
| For Quest 3 specifically, "remote desktop into a computer"
| actually works surprisingly well if you 1) avoid the stock
| Meta software and use Steam Link instead, and 2) use wired
| connection to maximize bandwidth and minimize latency.
|
| The second part needs some explaining. One undocumented
| feature of Quest 3 is that it supports (some) USB-C
| Ethernet adapters. There isn't really any UI for it that I
| know of; things just work so long as DHCP is there. This
| then gives you a direct wired 1GBps link to the PC, which
| Steam Link will happily utilize.
| StrauXX wrote:
| Imo a good WAP connected directly to your computer works
| just as well as with a high end cable. I have both and
| didn't notice a quality difference either way.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Even the stock one is pretty good these days.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| I have xreal glasses and a Quest 3. There's so much
| friction in using Steam Link/Quest Link/Virtual Desktop
| that it's barely worth using over the xreal airs. You
| need to use controllers to turn them on, and if you lose
| tracking or exit your guardian, the display turns off and
| you have to grab your controllers again to make any
| adjustments.
| int_19h wrote:
| I agree; I use Goovis G3 Max myself when I need this kind
| of thing (which is bulkier and not AR, but has better FOV
| and higher resolution). But for people who already have a
| Quest 3, it can still be a useful trick sometimes.
| m463 wrote:
| I thought about getting some xreal glasses, but I think you
| have to activate them to use them, which annoys me.
| TrueDuality wrote:
| You're not going to get HDMI (or at least not directly), but
| you can now get DisplayPort with many of the XR headsets.
| They're primarily using the alt-mode of USB-C as the cable is
| re-used for power as well.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Which headsets support this?
| superkuh wrote:
| The original Vive has HDMI input.
| m463 wrote:
| Hmmm... I wonder if FPV goggles (from drones) could do what you
| want? lots of them have HDMI inputs...
|
| https://oscarliang.com/fpv-goggles/
| banish-m4 wrote:
| LOL. The problem is the shitty software. SteamVR and Oculus
| apps are worthless and flaky, but when they work, there's zero
| need for any damn cables.
|
| PS: I have a barely used Meta Quest Pro for sale. ;)
| modeless wrote:
| Official blog post:
| https://about.fb.com/news/2024/04/introducing-our-open-mixed...
|
| Short video from Zuckerberg:
| https://twitter.com/NathieVR/status/1782436898654273981
|
| This is an interesting move and feels like a response to
| complaints that Meta is hypocritical when complaining about
| closed platforms while running one themselves. But this isn't
| open source. I don't know why any OEMs would want to compete with
| Meta's hardware subsidized by app store revenue when they
| continue to own the store. Maybe there's an app revenue share
| involved?
|
| Wait, at the end of the video he says "We're also as part of this
| going to be opening up our store to give you even more options to
| use whatever experiences you want. So whether they're on Steam,
| Xbox Cloud Gaming, our own App Lab, or even Google Play, if
| they're up for it." The blog post doesn't mention Steam or Google
| Play. It's not really clear what that means. Will they allow
| Steam to sell native Quest apps?
|
| Edit: There's a better blog post that has more detail.
| https://www.meta.com/blog/quest/meta-horizon-os-open-hardwar...
| This one seems to suggest that being "open" to Steam just means
| allowing game streaming which they already do, while being "open"
| to Google Play means that they would allow Google to install the
| actual Play Store app on the headset, for 2D apps only. But
| Google doesn't want to. In any case it seems like they would
| specifically _not_ be open to alternative app stores selling
| native 3D apps directly on the headset itself.
| ejj28 wrote:
| I think this is at least better than nothing for companies who
| want to build standalone headsets and not just headsets that
| are dependent on PCs. Up until now everyone's had to make their
| own OS and store and hope that people care enough to port over
| apps and games.
|
| At the very least, this could lead to more high-end standalone
| headsets being available. Not every 3rd party headset has to be
| competing with the Quest line of headsets, so the lack of
| revenue from the store might not matter to some companies.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| It seems to suggest they're limited to Qualcomm chipsets, and
| Qualcomm don't make a higher end VR chipset so it's hard to
| see where a high end headset would come from.
| throwthrowuknow wrote:
| Displays and optics are a big one, lots of competing
| technologies there like OLED vs LED, pancake vs fresnel,
| movable optics, laser based displays, video pass through vs
| semitransparent or even HUD style for lower res overlays.
| They can also compete on audio quality for microphones and
| headphones, different battery solutions like hot swappable
| packs, corded or built in. Maybe different form factors
| that can distribute weight or higher quality head straps
| for comfort. Tracking options like more cameras for inside
| out or a different system for pairing with controllers or
| full body trackers. Even external dedicated compute that
| works with Air Link. If they're making the hardware they
| can add whatever extra chips or sensors they want.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| That's not even considering the possibilities of using
| eye tracking for foveated rendering to combine high
| resolution and long battery life
| zmmmmm wrote:
| > Qualcomm don't make a higher end VR chipset
|
| I don't think that's a given long term. Even already the
| chip in the Quest 3 is rated at the same GPU grunt as an
| nVidia 1060, the minimum supported chipset originally for
| PCVR. The next gen is already announced and is
| significantly more powerful again, able to power 4k
| displays. I would project in 3 years from now we have
| something that can actually be considered at least
| moderately high end in stand alone form factor from
| Qualcomm.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Yeah, if it was "we acknowledge that is bad for hardware to
| have one installation path" and they were allowing itch.io to
| have an indie VR store that might be cool but they are very
| much not.
| pteraspidomorph wrote:
| Far enough down the line, it will all end up in EU
| regulation. Doesn't everything?
|
| Or if Meta doesn't become strong enough to be considered a
| monopoly, you always have the choice to go with their
| competitors (as is currently the case). I can still install
| anything I want on my Pico 4.
| mrmetanoia wrote:
| This seems kind of interesting to me, it's a shame it's from
| Meta so I'll likely never touch it because of the toxicity of
| their core products, but I'm glad to see this, as it seems like
| it could stimulate some competition.
| philo23 wrote:
| I think the mention of Steam will be to do with the Steam Link
| app they released for Meta quest devices fairly recently that
| lets you stream your VR games from your desktop computer to the
| quest wirelessly
| https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/0E2C-406B-9135-38...
| waynesonfire wrote:
| > Short video from Zuckerberg
|
| The use-cases for AR are so awful. The last thing I want is to
| consume already a passive medium with my family wearing
| goggles. Such an anti-social platform.
| jerlam wrote:
| Feels like Microsoft just tried this with their own VR ecosystem
| not too long ago and it fell flat on its face.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| MS did the entire VR headset partnership thing, got some very
| good headsets out (for the time), and then just dropped the
| project and put it into maintenance mode. If they had kept
| working on it, it would've done well, as it wasn't falling flat
| on its face, it was just getting going when they dropped it.
|
| They made the weird business decision to drop the products they
| had third party cooperation and an enthusiastic userbase for,
| in favor of an experimental product (Hololens) that ended up
| only being affordable to businesses and which afaik has never
| really taken off in the same way as WMR had been.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Microsoft's efforts were pretty half hearted, for example, none
| of their headsets worked with Xbox.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| IMO the issues Microsoft had weren't unexpected. If you look at
| the disaster that was their US military Hololens project it
| turns out a fairly significant portion of the population
| experiences motion sickness and other fundamental issues[0].
|
| This is a hard problem to solve and from what I understand it
| is similar to issues that are screened for in specialties. For
| example - fighter pilots and astronauts are screened for all
| kinds of fundamental things:
|
| - Vision
|
| - Tolerance to motion sickness
|
| - Tolerance to Gs
|
| - Tolerance to claustrophobia (for flight suits, tight
| cockpits, etc)
|
| If you don't have 20/20 vision (or better), puke all the time
| in sims, and freak out when put in a flight suit you're just
| not a fighter pilot, astronaut, etc. Once you make that cut
| then you train on improving what you fundamentally have and
| even then wash-out rates are high.
|
| With the Hololens project the goal was to strap a Hololens on
| pretty much any random soldier. If some fairly large portion of
| the population just can't make it work the utility and value of
| the project drops to zero. Imagine standardizing on a gun sight
| or other key technology that just won't work for even 1/10 of
| your (already limited recruits), potentially even for otherwise
| elite soldiers.
|
| I think they realized they will have similar fundamental issues
| in the enterprise - the utility of a Teams meeting with
| everyone in Hololens drops pretty significantly when a non-zero
| portion of employees get sick after a few minutes.
|
| I'm not sure how these issues with the technology can be
| overcome. Sure, if some gamers can make it work that's cool but
| that doesn't provide the overall value to the technology MS was
| hoping for.
|
| [0] - https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-hololens-fails-us-
| army-te...
| zmmmmm wrote:
| Nobody's tried anything like the broad scale pitch Meta is
| making here. Everyone else has tackled the high end or
| specialized use cases. Meta's really the only company that's
| tried to make a true OS play that is meant to be accessible to
| everyone. Based on that alone I just don't think you can
| extrapolate from "X failed so this has already been tried".
| Nobody has tried what Meta is doing.
| wvenable wrote:
| Microsoft also tried this with phones...
| technotony wrote:
| "we encourage the Google Play 2D app store to come to Meta
| Horizon OS, where it can operate with the same economic model it
| does on other platforms." - I feel like this might be the rub of
| this. Google is way behind in building the android of spatial
| computing, and maybe this can play into the trust busting cases
| where meta can show Google not playing fair?
| meragrin_ wrote:
| It sounds to me Meta is terrified of Apple and they needs apps
| sooner rather than later.
| gryn wrote:
| from what I've read on the internet they've been asking for
| this for a long time but google is blocking it, even before
| there were rumors of the apple headset.
|
| As a user you can already sideload android APKs, I've tried
| it works great, but you also need to install apps that manage
| android permissions since you can't grant them through the
| quest settings.
|
| having the android store there + integrations where android
| app devs can make the app VR ready would be a big plus. But,
| the blocker is that google still has ambitions of making some
| sort of big comeback on the android VR space and therefore
| are in direct competition with meta.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Maybe. So far, Apple's headset isn't particularly impressive
| or compelling, but I suppose it's possible they'll fix its
| issues in a future version.
| aranelsurion wrote:
| > they needs apps
|
| Meta likely has the most apps and most users of any one VR
| platform. Sure everyone needs apps, but they needs apps the
| least, especially from Play Store.
|
| Unless you see using phone apps as 90" virtual screens as a
| killer feature at least.
| rvba wrote:
| Before iphone came out there were smartphones too. But they
| became quite irrelevant when iphone came out.
|
| (Android was like a year later)
|
| Same fate can happen to metaverse - someone can make a
| better VR platform.
|
| Doesnt help them that what they have is shit.
| ketchupdebugger wrote:
| Meta is desperate to get devs to develop apps on their
| platform. It is the only way to get more interest in VR. Devs
| dont want to be on it because there are no customers, consumers
| don't want it because there's no apps. They've been trying to
| market it hard but nothing has worked. They tried to brand it
| as a fitness device, a work device, and a game device, but the
| consumers are not biting.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| They are selling plenty of games. The issue though is that
| the Meta Quest consumer is cheap and would rather buy an MQ2
| at a discount than an MQ3.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| They hit $1b in revenue on their store last quarter. I'm not
| sure how you evaluate that but it's something more than "not
| biting" I think.
| sidcool wrote:
| This sounds like a good idea. Love him or hate him, Zuck knows
| how to ship.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Oh yes, like he shipped the Metaverse.
| baby wrote:
| Have you tried vR chat?
| sidcool wrote:
| It was a failure, but he hasn't given up yet.
| EVyesnoyesnoyes wrote:
| I would really love to see proper educational content from Meta
| but i bet this is not were the 'next money thing' is.
|
| Imagine a catalog of proper real life skills you can actually
| train reasonable good:
|
| - cooking - soldering - welding - Tons of woodworking things -
| ...
|
| You could also go to a lot of makers of tools and offer them to
| digitalize their products for them so someone can actually
| exercise with a cheap to super high end machine like specific
| CNCs or table saws etc.
| OJFord wrote:
| Where would that fit in between watching others do it on
| YouTube for entertainment, and doing it for real where you can
| hold (or eat) the result at the end?
| graypegg wrote:
| More hassle than a YouTube video, which is already more
| hassle than an article, but considering we're talking about
| mixed reality, the ability to do the soldering, next to a
| detailed 3D model of exactly what you should be doing, in
| your line of sight, is a big selling point to me.
| slyn wrote:
| It seems one of the primary tradeoffs in edutainment is
| between actually learnable teaching and "content porn" where
| you sub content with food, cars, tech, etc.
|
| When I think of truly learnable cooking videos the first
| thing that comes to mind is Kenji's POV cooking videos /
| streams. Seems like something that could be relatively
| adaptable to a AR / MR format in a way that would
| differentiate it from other (still valid) content like the
| relatively educational food porn from Alex /
| @FrenchGuyCooking.
| crmd wrote:
| I'm actually making a version of Kenji's macaroni and
| cheese (except with shredded baby back rib meat added) for
| lunch as we speak! His channel is great.
|
| I would also be interested in a Chef Jean Pierre simulator,
| where you learn classic French recipes in a subtly deranged
| metaverse with a butter-based economy.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| As cheap to perform in as YouTube video, almost as vivid as
| the real thing, but again with most of the bullshit ("reality
| has a lot of detail") removed, just like with a YouTube
| video. Ideally, it would be suitable for experimenting with
| something you might want to then try out for real, but which
| would be too risky (time, money, embarrassment) to _start
| with_ for real.
| inopinatus wrote:
| That would be Ender's Game. Please don't eat the egg, though.
| lvspiff wrote:
| This the gap that the porn websites will need to figure out
| how to fill for it to be a success.
| EVyesnoyesnoyes wrote:
| Training critical steps before actually doing it.
|
| If its good enough, you can train cutting a 1000 onions
| without cutting 1000 onions.
|
| With complex machines, you can learn how to control them and
| than focus on actually using them instead of first learning
| were all the buttons are.
| graypegg wrote:
| I really want some good VR train sims. It's vaguely
| educational! A standalone quest train sim would be an instant
| buy for me. Probably not for many other people.
| stetrain wrote:
| Derail Valley is a good one on Steam. Obviously that isn't
| standalone but it works pretty well with SteamVR streamed to
| a headset.
| sph wrote:
| I used to play Derail Valley on Steam, which has optional VR
| support.
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/588030/Derail_Valley/
|
| But I agree with the sentiment. Sim games are the killer app
| of VR and I just want more sims. Where's my Das Boot
| simulator?
| graypegg wrote:
| Oh damn! I'll take a look! Thanks!!
| haiku2077 wrote:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/552080/IronWolf_VR/
| sph wrote:
| Time to hook up my Quest 3 to my PC. Cheers
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| Virtual welding training is already a thing:
|
| https://www.lincolnelectric.com/en/education/training-progra...
|
| https://www.fronius.com/en/welding-technology/our-expertise/...
| EVyesnoyesnoyes wrote:
| yeah but not mainstream and it needs accessories and is
| probably more for teaching schools.
|
| I would love to see all of this in a free/paid marketplace
| and with a basic learning progress framework behind it.
| danavar wrote:
| A previous company I worked at was using mixed reality years
| ago (>4) to train manufacturing operators on manufacturing
| processes.
|
| It ended up looking like a simulated workbench with low-detail
| models of CAD parts that needed to be assembled - it was pretty
| cool. Engineering companies are very ready for this technology.
| lagniappe wrote:
| A local school here trains nurses in a VR environment that is
| situated inside a fully built out wing of a hospital. The
| headsets come down from the ceiling, all the equipment is
| real, but there are dummies in the beds, and some observation
| screens for others who supervise.
| abraxas wrote:
| Yeah, we could call that the... Job Simulator ;)
| paxys wrote:
| Why would you want to see it "from Meta"? There's no way a
| single company, that isn't even in the education business, can
| product that kind of content and keep it up to date. Meta's
| play is the right one - make an OS and software platform and
| let people build whatever they want on it.
| yunohn wrote:
| Coincidentally, I saw Meta ads plastered all over London today
| - showcasing a welder who claims she practiced/learned welding
| with a Meta Oculus sitting at home.
| kypro wrote:
| Meta playing 3d chess here. Opening up the OS to other hardware
| providers is a great strategic move imo. Excited to see what
| innovations other hardware manufactures add.
| drdaeman wrote:
| Not to devalue their engineering departments, but I really
| don't remember any innovations in the _software_ space from
| ASUS, Lenovo or alike hardware vendors. To me they 're all
| essentially the same stuff, with different kind of junkware
| (or, in case of Lenovo, malware) bundled.
|
| What I read is "we reached out to a bunch of vendors who
| dabbled in VR/AR/XR/whateveryounameit but failed to produce
| anything outstanding, so we made a deal of licensing them some
| software so maybe they'll fare better". Meta did the right
| thing in a sense that they made some sales, but I wouldn't hold
| my breath as a end-consumer.
| kypro wrote:
| I kinda agree. I don't think any of them are likely to be
| major players in the space, but I think they might be able to
| build niche products that serve specific markets better than
| Meta's generalist VR headset. They might try a lightweight,
| battery free, sitting headset for gamers or media
| applications, for example.
|
| And I think just generally they're more likely to try random
| things than Meta are to get hype around some unique feature.
| Take the Asus Zenbook Duo as an example, it's not necessarily
| a great product but it's interesting and some people will buy
| it for that. Plus industry learns something from experiments
| like this.
|
| Either way, it's a good move for Meta and it's good for the
| industry that there is a fully-featured OS available for
| hardware manufacturers.
| mvkel wrote:
| > OS by Horizon by Meta Horizon OS by Meta.
|
| Why not just call it Horizon OS?
| mebazaa wrote:
| Meta has a lot of work to do on DevEx for non-gaming experiences.
| Say what you want with the Vision Pro, but it comes with a lot of
| niceities like SwiftUI. When you develop with the Quest, you're
| stuck with Unity or Unreal Engine -- it's almost too much freedom
| to develop simple productivity apps.
| pavlov wrote:
| OpenXR Mobile SDK is the native development option for the
| Quest devices:
|
| https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/native/android/mo...
| bartvk wrote:
| I skimmed through it, but can't find the programming language
| without downloading the whole SDK. Is it Java, or Kotlin? Or
| something else?
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Don't they also have a web view wrapper for 2D tools?
| gryn wrote:
| for 2D you can also plain old android apps, they work here.
| the point though is that there's not that much room for 3D
| stuff without going through either unity or unreal or writing
| everything yourself from scratch.
|
| if your goal is to make some sort of `spatial computing`
| tool, well there nothing here you can use. each app is it's
| own little silo that has little room for interaction. I'd
| love to be able to write my own custom apps that can exist in
| the home screen/environment and that can interact with each
| other in non trivial ways. it would make it feel more like a
| personal space rather than a 3D slideshow that I can use to
| launch games.
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| It's all going to end up in JavaScript anyway.
|
| I say this as a joke, yet: https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-
| unity-webgl Simply rendering your Unity
| Application within your React Application is just the
| beginning! The Unity Context exposes a lot more fun functions
| and properties to play around with such as two way
| communication or requesting fullscreen or a pointerlock. The
| possibilities are endless, what's next is up to you!
|
| Love it or hate it. Everything ends up in JavaScript!
| zmmmmm wrote:
| A video about their upcoming spatial SDK ("augments") already
| leaked [0] and you are correct, it's based on JavaScript,
| using their Spark toolkit [1] which is hardly surprising -
| when the company already ships a production AR dev kit, why
| would they not use it?
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svlL_ndNdj0
|
| [1] https://spark.meta.com/
| tstrimple wrote:
| I don't hate it. JS has its worts, but so does every
| language. I don't think there is a single language even close
| to JS for lowering the bar of entry to software development.
| All of the bad things about it that "real computer science"
| folks complain about are the exact same features which give
| it a far more broad reach than Rust or Golang. Software
| development experiences the exact same problem that the
| internet at large has suffered. The lower and lower bar of
| entry invites less and less competent folks to create things
| they never before would have been able to create. Some of
| these things are genuinely useful and we benefit greatly by
| lowering the bar, and most of these things end up being shit
| because the people who made them really had no clue what they
| were doing.
|
| Lowering the bar of participation greatly increases the
| amount of shit that is created, but also increases the amount
| of exceptional examples which can come from a domain. If 80%
| of everything created is almost complete garbage, then
| lowering the bar of entry for participating will
| exponentially increase the amount of shit out there. But it
| will also enable a few really great apps which wouldn't have
| existed otherwise. I think we need better filtering than to
| raise the bar so only true experts can participate.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Or it just happened to monopolise the browser at a time
| when the web was being invented, and has nothing to do with
| the features of the language.
|
| As a language for new developers is terrible: 100 different
| ways to do anything, most of them a muddle of paradigms
| that's inexplicable to anyone without 2 decades of
| experience, and so on.
|
| Imagine a new developer using ChatGPT to generate: python,
| C, go, etc. vs. generating javascript. Most of the
| generated js is incomphrensible to newbies, but for the
| others generally obvious.
| tempoponet wrote:
| > Or it just happened to monopolise the browser at a time
| when the web was being invented, and has nothing to do
| with the features of the language
|
| But applets were doing a lot more in the 90's and Flash
| dominated into the 2010s. However you feel about JS
| today, it's difficult to say it was all "first-mover
| advantage".
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Was Flash ever really good for anything close to normal
| programming?
|
| And Java applets with their loading times and dependence
| on the visitor having Java installed ... nah, not really
| a competitor.
| ccheney wrote:
| Atwood's law
| gorbypark wrote:
| At one point in time the React/React Native teams put out a
| blog post devoid of any actual details about "multi platform"
| support and mentioned VR in it. I'm surprised I haven't hear
| anything else about it since.
| gr__or wrote:
| Yeah it's kind of mind-boggling to me that the creators of
| React (which SwiftUI is ofc heavily inspired by) and the most
| successful cross-platform quasi-native library (React
| Native), have not managed to bring those powers to their
| biggest investment.
|
| I truly don't get it.
| btown wrote:
| Reposting a comment I wrote on a comparison with Vision Pro
| here, which is very relevant here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39830713
|
| > The biggest innovation with Vision Pro is visionOS. visionOS
| provides native app frameworks, so developers can build apps
| for it. That sounds ridiculously obvious, and yet its something
| Meta have failed to offer for years. Every app on Quest has to
| reinvent how buttons work, how a scroll view works, how far
| away from the user the content should be etc.. and every app
| works differently. On visionOS, all of this is handled by
| Apple, and every app looks and feels the same.
|
| Meta does have standardized utilities for translating movement
| to touch/drag/etc. interactions on arbitrary virtual surfaces:
|
| https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2022/11/22/buildin...
|
| https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/unity/unity-isdk-...
|
| But it doesn't seem (AFAIK) to answer the other side of this,
| which is the UI design system so apps have a consistent look
| and feel. Which is perhaps more common coming from a game
| development perspective, but ever since the Mac OS shareware
| days, Apple's understood that it's empowering to a certain kind
| of developer if you make it easy/the default path for them to
| build experiences that match a standardized look and feel. I'm
| honestly surprised that Meta didn't at least make an optional
| SDK for this.
| atrus wrote:
| You can also use Godot (although def has the too much freedom
| issue) and a-frame as well. The latter might be more attractive
| to webdevs
| nailer wrote:
| Is this 'open' as in 'we have partners' or actual open source?
| OJFord wrote:
| It says 'to more device makers', not all, and anyway it
| wouldn't even have to be open source but just public releases?
| I expect it's a case of applying and meeting whatever standards
| though.
| LatticeAnimal wrote:
| The fact that you still have to apply as a developer is a bit
| discouraging. (though that might change...). I can't seem to
| find anything on github.
|
| Hoping that this is an oversight and that they will open-source
| the core platform in the next few months/years. It would be so
| awesome to hack/build on this platform
| not_your_vase wrote:
| Is it based on some prior art (BSD, Linux...), or a new
| proprietary OS written from scratch? The post is not too rich in
| actual information, beside that now other tech-giants can use it
| too...
| seydor wrote:
| Isn't it based on android?
| reactordev wrote:
| A flavor of android
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Ooof that's a bummer, I hope that doesn't translate to the
| typical "Android developer experience".
| kernal wrote:
| Would you rather have the typical "iOS developer
| experience" and XCode? Or are you under the impression that
| Android development hasn't progressed? Additionally, there
| is also Flutter which is starting to account for a good
| percentage of new apps.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Yes I would indeed take the iOS developer experience and
| Xcode anytime over the mess that is the Android SDK,
| Android NDK, Gradle (or whatever the current build system
| flavour of the month is), Android Studio, Java, Kotlin,
| ... and I bet for VR/AR one _needs_ to fall back to
| native code to get any sort of performance, and the
| Android NDK is by far the most user hostile SDK I have
| seen across all platforms since I started with computing
| in the mid-80s (followed closely by the Android SDK and
| Android Studio) and all of that only improves at a
| glacial pace, if at all.
| kingforaday wrote:
| "This long-term investment that began on the mobile-first
| foundations of the Android Open Source Project has produced a
| full mixed reality operating system used by millions of
| people."
|
| Hopefully they stick to a proper license model with AOSP as a
| cornerstone.
| not_your_vase wrote:
| Ahh, indeed, thanks all. Apparently I managed to glance over
| it.
| asveikau wrote:
| I can't recall when I first heard the name "OS" used to mean
| just another linux distro, whereas my increasingly old-man
| brain expects the term OS to mean a unique kernel, not a
| repackaging of a different one. Certainly by the 2010s that
| usage was common.
|
| I feel like these days some would even call something an "OS"
| if it's running in a docker container, without providing any
| kernel at all. Which is to say the meaning of the term is
| expanding.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| I do like the fact that you just accepted the evolution of
| the term rather than having a rant about how it changed and
| eventually being accused in the replies of gatekeeping the
| term os
| dmayle wrote:
| From personal experience as far back as the 80's (and from my
| understanding going back before that as well), OS has never
| meant kernel.
|
| An Operating System is the collection of software that allows
| you to operate a computer, so that means kernel, program
| loader, simple text editor, simple disk management, etc.
|
| As computer users became more savvy, and hardware became more
| powerful, more and more functionality was included in the OS
| (graphical interfaces, utility apps, etc.).
|
| I don't think many people would have trouble calling Android
| an operating system, and that's just the Linux kernel with
| utility apps, loader, and app libraries, yet very different
| from something like Redhat.
|
| I don't think it's a stretch in the least to call Horizon an
| OS.
| asveikau wrote:
| > From personal experience as far back as the 80's (and
| from my understanding going back before that as well), OS
| has never meant kernel.
|
| I definitely heard it used to literally mean only the
| kernel. Circa 20 years ago and earlier.
|
| For example, if we look at "Operating system" on Wikipedia
| from 2006:
|
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Operating_syst
| em&...
|
| > Most current usage of the term "operating system" today,
| by both popular and professional sources, refers to all the
| software that is required in order for the user to manage
| the system and to run third-party application software for
| that system.
|
| Note it says "most current usage". That is because the
| usage was changing at that time, or had only recently
| changed. (I picked 2006 because I remember it changing
| around then.) If we go back another 2 years:
|
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Operating_syst
| em&...
|
| > In computing, an operating system (OS) is the system
| software responsible for the direct control and management
| of hardware and basic system operations ...
|
| Sure sounds like that doesn't include userland. Definitions
| which include userland are marked as "colloquial".
|
| Famously in the 1990s, Microsoft tried to argue in court
| that an OS included a web browser, and that discussion is
| cited in these old articles... Many reasonable people at
| the time thought that position was bullshit.
| bradjohnson wrote:
| > I definitely heard it used to literally mean only the
| kernel. Circa 20 years ago and earlier.
|
| You're correct that people have been conflating the
| kernel and the operating system as the same thing for a
| long time, but it's not technically correct to call
| "Linux", for example, an operating system. Stallman would
| appreciate that people stop doing that ;)
| wzdd wrote:
| > I definitely heard it used to literally mean only the
| kernel. Circa 20 years ago and earlier.
|
| You may have, but it was a nonstandard usage. Even your
| 2004 Wikipedia article distinguishes between OS and
| kernel. Userland is certainly part of it.
|
| AmigaDOS, 1991, manual p22: "Each AmigaDOS process
| represents a particular process of the operating system--
| for example, the filing system [...] AmigaDOS provides a
| process that you can use, called a Command Line Interface
| or Shell. (https://archive.org/details/1991-baker-jesup-
| et-al-the-amiga...)
|
| MS-DOS 6.22 (1994) concise user's guide consistently
| refers to the entire thing including command.com as the
| operating system (the kernel here is named msdos.sys.) (h
| ttps://ia801204.us.archive.org/33/items/msdos_manual_622/
| ms...)
|
| Hell, the whole Linux vs GNU/Linux thing, which has been
| around since 1992 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linu
| x_naming_controversy), was explicitly about the fact that
| "Linux" is just the name of the kernel.
| steventhedev wrote:
| > This long-term investment that began on the mobile-first
| foundations of the Android Open Source Project has produced a
| full mixed reality operating system used by millions of people.
|
| Which gives some context to the calls for Google to bring the
| play store content library to Horizon.
| crmd wrote:
| I wonder if this "opening" of the operating system is their way
| of putting the metaverse project out to pasture - analogous to
| donating it to the Apache Foundation - without admitting that the
| company burned $36 billion on a misadventure.
| soared wrote:
| Seems more aligned with trying to achieve what android is to
| mobile phones but with mixed reality.
| persolb wrote:
| Exactly this. Facebook makes money by network effects. They
| are incentivized to grow network engagement, more than they
| are to make direct money off new network members.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Which, I guess, makes sense. I think it is absolutely nuts
| that people would buy an OS developed by an ad company that
| relies on user profiling for their whole business. But then
| again it works for Google.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It actually _is_ Android, just customized for XR.
| romanhn wrote:
| I'm guessing it's the opposite. Meta is trying to establish the
| same OS-level foothold/control that Microsoft, Apple and Google
| have.
| nicce wrote:
| Is there better place to place ads than Metaverse ;)
| exe34 wrote:
| It's great isn't it! All ads should go there. In fact ads
| should be banned everywhere else!
| bevekspldnw wrote:
| Exactly, at the root a lot of this about ATT.
| AzzyHN wrote:
| Having a personal computer at home was a game-changer,
| though. "The Metaverse" has been around for a couple years
| now, and yet consumer VR (which has been around for eight
| years now) is still just a "gimmick", rather than a must-
| have.
|
| The IBM Personal Computer released in 1981. By 1989... yeah.
|
| iPhone came out in 2007. By 2015, smartphones ruled the
| world.
| throw310822 wrote:
| > iPhone came out in 2007. By 2015, smartphones ruled the
| world.
|
| Advanced phones with proper os, apps, camera had been
| around for years, and personal digital assistants before
| that. Tablets, too. iPhone got the form factor and ui
| exactly right and triggered an explosion, but it was far
| from the first. We might still be in the "smartphone, pre-
| iPhone" years.
| crowcroft wrote:
| I don't know what exactly is the right analogy for this,
| but two other points of context which make me discredit
| this line of thinking.
|
| 1. Feature/smart 'Phones' were around before the iPhone
| *and* were already pretty much ubiquitous. VR headsets
| don't do much but sit on shelfs (either in people's
| houses or in distribution centres not being sold).
|
| 2. VR has arguably existed in some ways before the Quest,
| Nintendo Virtual Boy was from the mid-90s.
|
| Maybe the iPhone comparison isn't right, but if we're
| decades into developing this technology and still very
| early in development I think we should assume we're a
| LONG way off these things becoming mainstream consumer
| devices and we should be wary of any company that brings
| them to the consumer market.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| > VR headsets don't do much but sit on shelfs (sic)
|
| Quest has 6+ million monthly active users. Steam 2-3
| million. Sony doesn't publish numbers but a good guess is
| 3-4 million active players.
|
| If you allow for some overlap, that's roughly ten million
| monthly users, and in sales VR is already more successful
| than a lot of computer platforms of the past.
| herculity275 wrote:
| > Sony doesn't publish numbers but a good guess is 3-4
| million active players.
|
| I find it really hard to believe that 3 million people
| put on PSVR2 every month. That thing gets basically no
| content.
| crowcroft wrote:
| Yea it's not nothing, but that's a rounding error on the
| number of smartphone users.
| Seb-C wrote:
| > Quest has 6+ million monthly active users. Steam 2-3
| million.
|
| There is no way that those numbers are right.
|
| EDIT: Yeah, Steam has 120 million active users per month.
| And the 6+ million users for Quest is from 2022, during
| the pandemic and metaverse bubble. Would be curious to
| know the trends for 2023 and 2024 thought.
| mnahkies wrote:
| Before the iPhone we had palm pilots, blackberries, etc. I
| prefer to think of it as consumer VR simply hasn't had its
| iPhone moment yet
| baby wrote:
| It's crazy because if you try the Quest it's quite insane
| how good it is already. If I were to guess what could
| give it an iPhone moment:
|
| - lighter/more comfortable
|
| - faster to get started when you put the headset on
|
| - more social experiences and event organized in VR
|
| - shorter time from headset on to hanging out with your
| friends in VR
|
| A number of years ago I convinced a bunch of my friends
| to buy the Quest after being blown away by board games in
| VR, but turns out Catan only worked for the Go and it was
| a lot of work to do something together in VR.
|
| IMO there needs to be some sort of lobby that does not
| take you away from hanging out with your friends when
| you're in between games. I should be able to easily join
| a lobby or pause a game to go to a lobby and wave at my
| friend who's playing to pause and join me in the lobby
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| There is a nee version of Catan for Quest 2/3
| imzadi wrote:
| There is, but it is kind of crappy. It's crossplay, but
| not in a meaningful way. You can't create a room and
| share a room code. The best you can do is invite a
| friend, but only if they are on the same platform.
| They've never done anything to improve it or make it more
| player friendly. They released it and forgot about it.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| > - lighter/more comfortable
|
| It's this and one other point: Games that people aren't
| bored of in an hour.
|
| To me, very few games have come out for VR that don't
| feel like gimmicky experiences. Even Half Life Alyx, as
| advanced as it was, kinda felt like a theme park ride
| after a while. I'm not sure if there's technical reasons
| for it, but it feels like nobody is taking VR development
| seriously.
|
| It's hard to justify strapping a TV to my face and
| feeling uncomfortable for one-off experiences. Even if
| there was a game with some depth and replayability, I
| would be even more annoyed to play it on such an
| uncomfortable headset.
|
| Almost everyone I know is not using their VR headset
| anymore. I'm not sure it will ever move past that phase,
| because people want it to be smaller and, simultaneously,
| more technically immersive. So we're in some weird in
| between zone where it's neither.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >I'm not sure if there's technical reasons for it, but it
| feels like nobody is taking VR development seriously.
|
| The "technical" reason for it is very very very simple:
| Nearly no video games are actually improved by "increased
| immersion" to an extreme. Chess won't be more fun because
| you have to physically move digital chess pieces around a
| virtual board, people playing Call of Duty do not want to
| physically move their arms around to aim, and don't want
| to jump around to move, and if you aren't doing those
| things you don't want the downsides that are inherent to
| a VR system, like extreme seclusion of wearing a headset,
| physical ability being an inherent filter, clunky UI,
| nausea etc.
|
| The TWO areas where VR is useful, flight simulators and
| driving simulators, haven't even fully adopted VR simply
| because it's too much hassle.
|
| VR is only a gimmick unless you can benefit from that
| extra immersion, and most things cannot.
|
| The Wii sold gangbusters because everyone and their
| grandma could understand "swing remote to swing tennis
| racket", but you couldn't actually build a hyperaccurate
| tennis sim off of that because a Wiimote is NOT a tennis
| racket and you cannot get beyond that. VR is the same
| way. Everyone can experience the "Oh VR is soooo coool"
| gimmick but very few genres inherently benefit from what
| VR provides.
| wvenable wrote:
| Where VR shines, in my opinion, is in fitness. Where the
| goal is ultimately to move around in a gamified way.
| That's effectively how I use my Quest 2 and I'm not
| alone. Recently I've been trying to increase my table
| tennis skills.
| LordShredda wrote:
| But why does it need a heavy screen attached to your
| head? Just get some shorts and go outside, and if you can
| afford a quest 2 then surely you can afford a tennis
| table
| wvenable wrote:
| It's not that heavy. I don't have the room for a tennis
| table nor am I close enough to my friends to play it for
| 30 minutes every night like I do in VR.
| int_19h wrote:
| I think part of the problem is this weird insistence that
| VR means having to physically move arms around etc. For
| most games, the _visual_ experience of VR can vastly
| improve immersion, but control schemes nearly universally
| suck. Simulators work so much better largely because they
| don 't fall into the same trap - if you're playing a
| flight sim, say, you're still probably using the same
| stick/throttle/pedals as you would without the headset.
| For space sims, I find that headset + mouse combo works
| amazingly well (End Space is a good showcase of what can
| be done there). And so on.
|
| But for some reason there's practically no uptake on any
| of this outside of sims. I would love to see a first-
| person shooter that is fully VR enabled while still
| allowing me to use WASD + mouse. In fact, I already kinda
| sorta do that by using 2D theater mode with games like
| Insurgency: Sandstorm, but that doesn't give you the
| actually useful VR stuff like the ability to turn your
| head to look around etc. If somebody were to make an FPS
| that did all that, they'd have my money in a heartbeat.
| numpad0 wrote:
| That some reason is motion sickness. There has to be
| consistency with your perception, else it develops into
| compounding vection feelings. It tend not to apply for
| vehicular controls hence sim usage.
| int_19h wrote:
| That varies from person to person. I _have_ played games
| with keyboard and mouse in VR (e.g. Polynomial 2, or the
| unofficial GTA 5 VR mod), and it works great for me.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| >The TWO areas where VR is useful, flight simulators and
| driving simulators, haven't even fully adopted VR simply
| because it's too much hassle.
|
| I see this come up, over and over again. It's so
| obviously wrong based on even a basic reading of the
| market. The Quest is unambiguously the most popular VR
| headset and it's store has barely any cockpit simulators
| at all.
|
| As for tennis, one of the perks of Quest is that you can
| take it anywhere, including a real tennis court:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atuIRf59hzc
|
| At a smaller scale, Eleven Table Tennis is an extremely
| accurate VR Table Tennis game that supports paddle
| attachments. It is extremely close to the real thing,
| professionals use it for practice.
| baby wrote:
| > Nearly no video games are actually improved by
| "increased immersion" to an extreme. Chess won't be more
| fun because you have to physically move digital chess
| pieces around a virtual board
|
| Couldn't disagree more. Experiences in VR are insanely
| immersive and this is why there's so much love for VR.
|
| Also, I played Catan (a board game) in VR and it was the
| most social experience I've ever had in a video game.
| zooq_ai wrote:
| Skills based games -- baseball, cricket, golf, tennis
| almost have infinite game play
| unleaded wrote:
| what do you miss by playing them on the wii or IRL?
| zooq_ai wrote:
| It's a completely different level compared to Wii.
|
| The amount of sensors we have on controllers now means,
| it can pick your slight wrist movements for top spin,
| side spin and more accurately measure bat speed. The
| physics engine on these games are so close to being
| realistic.
|
| Now, let's compare it to IRL and since I played college
| level cricket, I'll tell you the difference. When I
| practiced as an amateur, I was able to face at the most
| 25-30 pitches per day. Of them, only 1 or 2 were what I
| can remotely call "quality" pitches and I'd have to spend
| 3 hours per day.
|
| In the Metaverse, in 3 hours, I'd have faced 750 quality
| pitches including 95mph pitches (The highest I ever faced
| in IRL was 70mph) including extremely difficult curve
| balls, deception etc.
|
| All this for a marginal cost of $0 and the physics and
| simulation will only get better
| vundercind wrote:
| I game quite a bit and had access to multiple headsets at
| home because of the work my wife did, for a couple years.
| Official permission to use the hardware for whatever.
|
| I tried beat saber for like 10 minutes and never bothered
| with anything else. The headset's just too big a hassle,
| and blocking out the world sucks _a lot_.
|
| Plus I can't help but think of the VR headset guy from
| the Pearl Jam video "Do the Evolution" when I look at the
| damn things.
|
| Kinda like how I think of the dad from Serial Experiments
| Lain any time one of my kids walks in and I'm in front of
| a glowing screen.
|
| Gross.
| christianqchung wrote:
| Speaking of Serial Experiments Lain, there is also the
| guy walking around the street in the AR headset which
| everyone thought was weird. Funny that it's still weird
| 27 years later.
|
| I have access to a Vive headset for school project right
| now and do not find it very fun to use, Beat saber
| remains the only VR game that is at least on the same
| tier of replayability as osu.
| jayd16 wrote:
| They actually do have cross game party chat these days,
| just FYI. Just make the party and then hop into the game.
| Support is a little inconsistent as games are not forced
| to support the feature, though.
| maxsilver wrote:
| The Quest is insanely good, _for a single person in
| isolation, once it 's up and running_. But there's a
| _ton_ of friction that shouldn 't exist before that
| happens, and Meta hasn't nailed most of the UX here yet.
| For example:
|
| - App sharing / libraries doesn't work properly yet. (The
| owner has to secretly log in to each individual app
| themselves, before anyone else can use it on the device.
| There is no documentation informing anyone of this
| requirement)
|
| - Add/ons or DLC also don't work properly yet. (You have
| to 're-unlock' each individual DLC, for it to share to
| anyone else on device in something like Beat Saber, for
| example)
|
| - Child permissions don't work properly yet. (The
| notification does work, but a parent is not allowed to
| approve an app from that notification, the child has to
| _entirely shut down and restart the whole device_ ,
| before an approval takes effect)
|
| - Screen sharing doesn't work, at all. (If you have a
| child, you just can't ever mirror their view onto a TV or
| Tablet -- full stop, no exceptions. Which also means,
| there's no way to help a child who is wearing a headset
| -- ever). Note that "taking the headset off" triggers a
| state reset, so a child can't hand the headset over to
| their parent for help, since the face sensor will kill
| state the second a face is removed.
|
| - Windowing UI doesn't really work yet. (You can have
| windows, but only three, and only side-by-side, and only
| for a select few apps) -- it's more usability-restricted
| than even stage manager on an iPad. You can tell the
| Quest is designed around the expectation that you will be
| in one-and-only-one full-screen game, pretty much the
| entire time your wearing the headset.
|
| - Online sharing is app-dependent, a bunch don't work.
| Many more don't work at _first_ , you have to spend 30 to
| 60 minutes "unlocking" the right to match-make. (making
| the online/networking more seemless is critical because
| of the nature of the device -- you can't both look at it
| the way you might with a TV or PC or Laptop or Tablet,
| since it's a worn device)
|
| None of this is dealbreaking stuff, none if it needs any
| kind of "new invention" or anything to fix. But _as a
| product_ , friction is still really high here, and I can
| see why it's not necessarily super popular outside of
| techie/gaming scenes yet.
| romanhn wrote:
| > Screen sharing doesn't work, at all
|
| This is definitely not true. The Meta Quest app can
| connect to a headset and show what the player is seeing,
| both video and audio. Been watching my kid play various
| games for years.
|
| Also not sure what state reset you're talking about. I've
| definitely grabbed the headset from another person and
| continued with the game.
| maxsilver wrote:
| > The Meta Quest app can connect to a headset and show
| what the player is seeing, both video and audio. Been
| watching my kid play various games for years.
|
| You don't have your kid on a child account, you have your
| kid using an adult account. Child accounts can't screen
| share --- it's acknowledged in the Quest FAQ -
| https://www.meta.com/help/quest/articles/in-vr-
| experiences/o... _"only the primary account can cast"_
|
| > Not sure what state reset you're talking about.
|
| Setup a child account. Let your kid login. Have the kid
| take the headset off. Congrats, everything just got
| killed, and it's now PIN-locked to the adult account.
| When the adult types in a PIN, it trashes the child's
| session, and starts an Adult session.
|
| (We work around this by gently holding the face sensor
| with a finger while moving the headset around between
| people, to trick the headset into thinking it's still
| being worn --- but this is ridiculously broken, no one
| should have to do that just to get it to work)
| romanhn wrote:
| Oof, that sounds rough. You're right, I'm just sharing my
| own account and haven't seen these issues.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Even as a kid before the iPhone came out, it wasn't hard
| to see the appeal of a smartphone. People loved their
| Blackberries and Palm Treos. Having internet access
| wherever you go was incredibly appealing even before the
| hardware, software, and infrastructure were ready to make
| that mass marketable.
|
| VR makes a ton of sense for video games, but I just don't
| see how it could enhance the rest of my day-to-day life.
| I don't see it becoming a good general purpose computing
| platform that most people use all day. I see it being
| useful for specific niche tasks like CAD, but I'll never
| put on a headset just to send an email, file my taxes, or
| browse the internet.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| I see tons of appeal for headsets in day-to-day life.
| Maybe Im unique but I spend a solid hour a day lying in
| bed reading or on my tablet, I think this experience of
| using a computing device while lying down could be vastly
| improved with the right headset and thats an hour every
| day straight away.
| scrame wrote:
| I'm still a little nonplussed. i don't like apple stuff,
| but did a couple demos at work with the vision elite or
| whatever its called.
|
| Came away very impressed with the technology, but really
| didn't like having the damn thing strapped to my head for
| 15-20 minutes.
|
| it reminds me of getting the original 3ds that could do
| some cool AR stuff, and could do 3d without glasses, but
| ultimately was an impressive tech demo that I mostly
| didnt use.
|
| I already spend too much of my day in front of phones and
| monitors, I'm not sure if the answer is moving the
| screens closer to our eyes and shutting out more of the
| world.
|
| industrial applications for sure can have a niche with
| this, but as a mass market device I think there's a long
| way to go, even if the experience looks good.
| skhameneh wrote:
| Consumer VR hasn't had it's Blackberry moment yet!
|
| Coincidentally, someone I interacted with mentioned "I
| never thought I'd get rid of my Blackberry" in passing,
| which reminded me of the term once popular term
| "Crackberry".
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| VR headsets can be fun for some games, but the hardware and
| software still have a lot of maturing to do, it's not like
| smartphones where it feels very developed and there's not
| much more room for obvious growth/improvement.
| MyFirstSass wrote:
| Yesterday i was close to buying a Pico 4 (Cheaper non
| meta Quest 3 equivalent), then i realised there has been
| zero fully triple a games since my friend blew me away
| with a Half Life Alyx demo 4 years ago.
|
| I find it incredible there's still only 1 actual
| "serious" VR game - lots of people then recommended
| Skyrim VR, a game from 2011.
|
| Is VR gaming in an absolute standstill?
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| It's not at all, no. There's plenty of compelling games,
| there just aren't any AAA games (not ones built for VR
| only anyway) because the market simply isn't big enough
| to justify the incredible production costs.
|
| If you're dead set on only AAA games then yeah, it's not
| a useful purchase, but that doesn't mean it's "standing
| still".
| jamilton wrote:
| I think there are few to zero new AAA games, but I don't
| think that means VR gaming is at a standstill, or that
| there are no great, fun games.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Yes. Meanwhile:[0]
|
| 0: https://medium.com/@nemchan_nel/vrchat-breaks-records-
| with-9...
| rvba wrote:
| IMHO when you talk about PCs "becoming the big thing" - it
| is more Windows 95 time.
|
| In 1989 market was still fragmented and PCs were weak (286,
| amiga, mac + old 8bits like atari and commodore).
| babypuncher wrote:
| The difference here though is I don't think AR/VR will ever
| become as ubiquitous for general purpose computing as laptops
| and smartphones.
| r00fus wrote:
| It's both. Meta can be "giving it away" and "hoping to
| establish an OS foothold" but if there is no major interest
| in playing in this space, it's going to be a very empty
| metaverse.
| graypegg wrote:
| Using the name << horizon >> without showing Horizon Worlds at
| all definitely hints at Horizon Worlds being a side social
| feature of the Horizon OS, versus this being an OS specifically
| FOR the horizon worlds metaverse.
|
| Meta/Facebook really has trouble with focus, I hope they can
| pick 1 vision for VR.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I think they have the most focus out of any big tech company.
| They have like 4 products.
|
| They're trying to build a platform to build VR experiences
| on. That's clearly their goal. Horizon Worlds is "just an
| app" to show that off. It's a "hero use case".
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I looked at it seriously for content authoring but gave it
| up.
|
| The big problem is you cannot import images, textures, 3-d
| models and such from ordinary tools. You have something
| like constructive solid geometry to work with but only so
| much and there is a slider you can use to set the number of
| players and the more players the less geometry you can use.
|
| I want to make worlds based on photographs (particularly
| pano and stereo) and art. McDonalds needs to put a Coca-
| Cola logo on the side of the cup. Either way it is a non-
| starter.
|
| HW supports collaboration (more than one person shares the
| world) but https://aframe.io/ lets me make the content I
| want. If I have to choose one or the other I am going to
| pick the second.
|
| My take on Meta Quest is that it seems highly successful as
| a gaming environment based on an app store but is skews
| towards single-player experiences. Like a lot of AAA games,
| the excellent _Asgard's Wrath 2_ has some multiplayer
| tacked on but it is all meaningless like leaderboards and
| the occasional ghost that shows up in a procedurally
| generated dungeon.
|
| Of course, Meta wants to make multiplayer experiences but
| somehow they just can't do it.
| pnw wrote:
| The most popular gaming experiences on Quest are all
| social - Gorilla Tag, Rec Room, VR Chat, Population One,
| Contractors etc.
|
| It makes sense that expensive AAA experiences like
| Asgard's Wrath are single player since that's a fairly
| dominant model in gaming. The Quest doesn't have the
| player base to support a AAA multiplayer model at this
| point.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Not really. There is no money in VR/AR headsets. All the money
| is in the services that back them. Even further, the less money
| is in making headsets, the more money is in the services.
|
| To say nothing about your data, which is Facebook's primary
| revenue driver.
| swatcoder wrote:
| It reads more like they're smartly stepping away from the
| hardware game they're not really optimized for and focusing on
| the software and connectivity features that they are.
|
| I'm not keen on more headsets having a Meta data vacuum built-
| in, but this isn't the opposite of putting the metaverse stuff
| to pasture.
|
| They're just shifting from an Apple strategy of full-control
| vertical integration to a Android/Windows strategy of platform
| ubiquity.
| sgift wrote:
| > It reads more like they're smartly stepping away from the
| hardware game they're not really optimized for and focusing
| on the software and connectivity features that they are.
|
| Which would be weird cause the hardware (Quest 3/Quest Pro)
| is top notch, while Metas software for it is garbage.
| Everything good is provided by 3rd party companies.
| swatcoder wrote:
| Pixel phones are great too, but Google would be a radically
| different company if they tried to saturate the demand for
| Android hardware on their own.
|
| Making flagship/reference hardware on the Oculus legacy is
| a much better strategy for Meta and lets them focus on
| platform vision and data collection, which is _exactly_ the
| company they spent the last 15+ years building.
| baby wrote:
| I really hope Meta keeps making hardware. I want a Quest 4
| sgift wrote:
| Yeah, me too. It would be really sad if Meta stopped
| hardware development and left it to other companies.
| andybak wrote:
| "Garbage" is harsh. It's flawed but they are streets ahead
| of Pico or Vive.
|
| Ironically Google Daydream was also very polished and now
| Google is starting again but with a gigantic dent in their
| credibility.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| 1. Zuck always wanted to own a platform. He was a developer at
| heart and wants a product that developers can build on. He's
| personally invested in this.
|
| 2. I'm pretty sure a lot of the cost quoted for their
| "Metaverse" stuff included their CapEx for a ton of GPUs which
| probably have a lot of other uses within the company.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I wonder how 1. works. Won't any developer tell you that
| _platforms are traps_ , to be avoided unless necessary (or
| unless you're prepared in advance to jump off it at any
| time)? I feel platforms are only interesting to business
| folks, particularly those selling access to them.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Platforms are a trap, except Windows launched a revolution.
| Platforms are a trap, but iOS made companies (like
| Facebook) billions.
| abraae wrote:
| Animals usually realise there is something off about a
| trap. They interact with it extremely cautiously,
| sometimes leaving it for a few nights and then coming
| back.
|
| Eventually their desire for whats in the trap overcomes
| their caution and they put their head in.
| zem wrote:
| as a developer at heart he should have thought back to how
| interested he would have been in sharecropping on someone
| else's locked down platform!
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Meta reality does a TON of research.
| burnte wrote:
| This is them doing that but also trying to do what Android did,
| capture the bulk of the market and leave the ultra-
| ridiculously-high-end to Apple.
| criddell wrote:
| So create a big market where nobody makes much money to
| compete with Apple's smaller market that captures absurd
| margins?
| bbarnett wrote:
| Do _devs_ really capture absurd margins? Or does Apple,
| leaving the dev with a pittance?
| criddell wrote:
| I thought _ultra-ridiculously-high-end_ was referring
| mostly to Apple hardware and bundled software.
| burnte wrote:
| I mostly meant when Apple goes crazy like Vision Pro
| being $3500, Mac Studio and Mac Pro prices, etc. Those
| are low-volume items and I think Vision Pro will be
| relegated to that niche too. If they cut a lot of useless
| fluff like the eyeball cams/screens, and focus on
| fit/price they can have a good V2. But the "spatial
| computing" thing was dead on arrival, it'll never take
| off as it hasn't taken off in 40 years. People don't want
| to wave their arms in the air all day.
| awad wrote:
| While we can debate plenty on what the right amount of
| App Store fees might be, it is objectively true that
| developers absolutely care about the market of available
| consumers on the high end platform.
| Culonavirus wrote:
| > the company burned $36 billion on a misadventure
|
| Watch out, the VR mafia is gonna get ya!
|
| Seriously though, any well informed and level headed person
| could see this coming a mile away. Apparently, such people are
| in short supply at Meta.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| The number of employees who can see failure coming does not
| matter when they are organized by hierarchy and coerced to
| work toward failure under threat of losing their wage.
| bsimpson wrote:
| Plenty of people inside Google also thought that
| splitting(/replacing) Hangouts into Allo and Duo was
| monumentally stupid.
| smm11 wrote:
| That was the thing that turned me off Google permanently.
| I deleted my G account and have never looked back.
| nradov wrote:
| Meta kind of doesn't have a choice. The major platforms are
| now owned by Apple, Google, and Microsoft (and also to a
| lesser extent IBM and Amazon). The strategic risks of being
| dependent on other companies' platforms are _huge_. Meta is
| desperately hunting for a disruptive innovation that will
| allow them to control the next major platform. A lot of
| people are betting that will be AR /VR but it could be
| something completely different.
| imzadi wrote:
| Speaking from the perspective of a person who is very into
| VR. There are a lot of things that have gone wrong. First,
| Facebook/Meta pushing hard with low-end hardware that caused
| the existing VR gaming to take leaps backward. PCVR was
| progressing fine before Zuckerberg intervened. Now the VR
| space is just cluttered with so many low effort, low res
| games. None of the big players want to get involved, because
| everyone is so convinced it is too "niche." Meanwhile, you
| have people who really want to spend money on VR and there's
| nothing worth spending the money on.
| baby wrote:
| Why would they shut down the Metaverse? It's clearly the future
| and Zuck brought it up again in the last podcast that people
| are linking to. Apple just release a bad headset that just
| confirmed the bet that Meta took
| araes wrote:
| How does any company burn $36 billion on a headset they got
| handed a prototype for?
|
| At a reasonable $100k/yr and 50% overhead, that's 240,000 years
| of labor. ~5000 human lifetimes. At a .gov labor rate of 2080
| hrs/yr, that's 500,000,000 hrs of work wasted? For mediocre
| "not a product rendering" that looks like 90's Second Life? I'm
| not usually the graphic resolution crowd, yet that was rather
| underwhelming. Could'a just taken a picture of the inside of
| the Quest view and it would have been better.
|
| Trying to avoid humble bragging, yet last year I put in four
| government proposals (one 20-pager, rest were 5-10), wrote a
| web app, converted a NIST matrix package to a different
| language, and wrote a mixed Android / Windows app for cross-
| communication. I may have observer bias, and not be
| representative. However, that was one year, not 5000
| lifetimes... You'd think they would have more than a single
| game as their killer app. Not even Pokemon Go or similar? It's
| such an obvious previous idea.
| azinman2 wrote:
| 100k/yr is not reasonable for Bay Area, let alone top talent.
| There are people working on it making $1M/yr+. Junior
| developers straight out of college are making more at Meta.
| You're also assuming everything went to just engineering
| payroll, which is obviously not true.
| araes wrote:
| Then FB/Meta's throwing money out the door on people who
| demonstrably do not deserve $1M+/yr.
|
| And on that topic, same with Wikipedia, why "must" you have
| your development base in the most expensive place on the
| West Coast?
|
| Per https://www.gamedevmap.com/ there are Many other, less
| expensive, locations. America has a bunch, even Africa has
| gamedevs. They're an International megacorp, with 3 billion
| monthly active user (probably still a lot of dupes). India
| has the largest FB audience (366 million, 2024), not
| America (100 million). Will an Indian developer make you a
| launch app for less than $1M+/yr? New Dehli has 17 game
| studios (including Riot Games) and Mumbai has 33 (Ubisoft
| Mumbai and Pune).
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| How is it demonstrable that they aren't worth $1m per
| year?
|
| While in many cases folks are overpaid in big tech, some
| of them are insanely talented people who can do things
| others simply cannot.
| bobsomers wrote:
| > How is it demonstrable that they aren't worth $1m per
| year?
|
| Probably because of this:
|
| > How does any company burn $36 billion on a headset they
| got handed a prototype for?
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| That's confusing the decision to work on something with
| the quality of the folks working on it. Brilliant
| engineers often work on things which are risky from a
| market perspective. It doesn't make them less brilliant
| at engineering when it turns out there isn't a market for
| the thing.
|
| John Carmack appears to be brilliant. I'd guess he would
| admit the VR market didn't turn out as hoped.
| lostmsu wrote:
| > he would admit the VR market didn't turn out as hoped
|
| That's not what he said though. What he said is that Meta
| is basically incompetent.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| And from a leadership perspective it might well be /
| might have been. I don't think he ever criticized the
| quality of engineers there.
| throwup238 wrote:
| The numbers aren't all that much more palatable at 24,000
| man-years, assuming $1M average TC.
|
| That's equivalent to the amount of labor it took to build
| some of the minor Egyptian pyramids.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I want to make a snarky comment about how any reasonable
| person would want 10x that to work for Facebook but 500 human
| lifetimes is still a wild amount of time for what they've
| gotten.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| They didn't and they didn't.
| boloust wrote:
| In terms of difficulty/complexity, nothing you've listed
| there comes anywhere close to the r&d required to go from the
| original oculus prototype to volume shipping the meta quest
| 3.
| drdaeman wrote:
| "Opening" what? I can't think of anything here that even
| remotely resembles opening something to a public or donating a
| project to any foundation.
|
| They realized they have an asset, and they made some money by
| licensing it. Sales department did their job, story at 11. But
| it would've been a boring non-story, so a copywriter used the
| corporate brandbook - and "open" is the buzzword of the last
| few years when it comes to the technology.
|
| Someone need to make an LLM SaaS to de-bulshittify the news.
| mvkel wrote:
| Agreed. Zuck on Dwarkesh's podcast definitely seemed to be
| doing some aggressive retconning, making it seem like AI was
| always the plan, and the metaverse never was. Of course the
| opposite was true.
| seydor wrote:
| I hope at some point they expand to devices beyond goggles, like
| i dont know a holodeck or something
| smeej wrote:
| Am I the only weirdo who does not want, under any circumstance,
| to move to a world where head-mounted computer systems are
| normal? It's bad enough we have the things in our pockets. I
| don't want mine mounted in front of my eyes.
|
| I can hear the replies already, "If you don't want one, don't use
| one," but if something becomes normal _enough,_ the outside world
| does change around it. Why invest in street signs, for example?
| Who prints maps or encyclopedias now? Or why make anything
| _actually_ aesthetically pleasing if 98% of the people who are
| going to interact with it will see it through a digital lens,
| where you can change your designs on the fly and for so much less
| cost?
|
| It's not just that _I_ don 't want to use it. I don't want it to
| become normal among other people either.
| parl_match wrote:
| For what it's worth, we are many decades away from this being
| the new normal in daily life. It'll more likely start to chip
| away at iPad and computer sales though.
|
| As for your examples, such as maps/encyclopedias, they still do
| even in the smartphone age.
|
| >Or why make anything actually aesthetically pleasing if 98% of
| the people who are going to interact with it will see it
| through a digital lens, where you can change your designs on
| the fly and for so much less cost?
|
| There's a great movie called Virtual Nightmare that is
| basically about this. But I don't think it's such a bad thing,
| to be honest. We'll have a world where art can be more easily
| exchanged and public spaces become more collaborative. And the
| flip side is that hopefully, "offline" will have less ads and
| there will be a renewed focus on more indie and subversive
| decoration.
|
| Change isn't always bad, and it isn't always good.
| Sol- wrote:
| I fondly remember the times where Glassholes were rightfully
| mocked. Now it's cool to drive around in your Tesla wearing an
| Apple Vision. It really seems to have become very normalized.
| wnevets wrote:
| > Now it's cool to drive around in your Tesla wearing an
| Apple Vision.
|
| This may have more to do with your particular social circle
| (or mine) than a general trend in pop culture. I don't know
| anyone who thinks any of those are cool.
| tantalic wrote:
| Being cool and getting a lot of views/clicks should not be
| confused.
| talldayo wrote:
| It's funny to me because pretty much every single issue that
| the Google Glass had still persists:
|
| - it's too damn expensive (you look like a rich klutz wearing
| one)
|
| - the content is mostly just normal games and videos that you
| watch in stereo
|
| - the FOV and camera resolution are too poorly miniaturized
| to do anything serious with
|
| Why doesn't it surprise me that public perception did a 180
| when they saw the brushed-aluminum model with an Apple logo
| on it? At this rate Apple should sponsor a second Hindenberg
| just to check if their luck's run dry.
| svachalek wrote:
| Are you thinking of the Quest or something? Google Glass
| didn't have content or a FOV.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Part of the difference is that Glass was uploading images
| (and audio?) to Google for them to use however they like.
| That was the asshole invasion of privacy. People trust Apple
| more, right or wrong.
| adastra22 wrote:
| No, you're not the only one, or even in the minority (outside
| of the terminally online tech bubble). I feel the same way.
|
| But I also see the value of AR/VR to a number of industries
| that need more visual interaction metaphors. CAD/CAM,
| architecture, and real estate come to mind. I could totally see
| buying a house across the country "sight unseen" based on a 3D
| scan (if regulatory guards are in place to prevent modifying
| the scan).
|
| Having an open OS architecture for AR/VR apps is key to making
| this happen. Current offerings all fall short in various ways,
| so I'm curious to try this out.
| me551ah wrote:
| It's only a natural extension of the things that we have in our
| pocket. I would rather be immersed in the whole virtual world
| rather than stare at a 7 inch screen for a large part of my
| day.
|
| Lets face it, we spend considerable amounts of time in front of
| a screen. A bigger and more immersive screen will be a better
| experience for everyone.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| > I would rather be immersed in the whole virtual world
| rather than stare at a 7 inch screen for a large part of my
| day
|
| I would rather do neither of these things.
| taway789aaa6 wrote:
| Well said.
|
| I would rather _not_ be immersed in the whole virtual world
| AND _not_ stare at a 7 inch screen for a large part of my
| day.
|
| (written from a 16 inch laptop that I stare at for work)
|
| I've been trying to exist more (in terms of "time-spent")
| without my phone in my pocket as it seems to be primarily a
| driver of distraction.
| yayr wrote:
| if it takes a similar course as the form factors of mobiles
| from the 1990s to today it may become quite convenient to
| use... Also many including me prefer Wikipedia over printed
| encyclopedias. Getting that context while navigating the world
| may even become a necessity to collaborate or compete with AIs
| efficiently in the future.
|
| On the other hand I do appreciate beauty in nature and design.
|
| But why not have both?
| jeffbee wrote:
| I am fairly sure that 90% of people are on your side and only
| emotionally stunted weirdos like Zuck think this is a good
| idea.
| flkiwi wrote:
| It feels like a competition to own a comparatively narrow
| market (if we're talking about VR). And, within that context,
| it may indeed be a good idea. But I just cannot see VR
| headsets being anything approaching common, primarily because
| people do not like tech accessories they cannot put away
| unless they have a high fashion value or effectively look
| like something else. VR headsets, today, check none of these
| boxes. AR might end up being a different story.
| loudmax wrote:
| The Vernor Vinge novel Rainbows End famously presents a future
| in which people's interaction with the world is mediated by
| augmented reality via contact lenses. It's not presented as a
| necessarily bad thing, but who actually controls access to
| information is a very important consideration.
| candlemas wrote:
| VR makes me sick. Don't know about mixed reality but I've read
| that also causes nausea.
| ciwolsey wrote:
| You have no choice, so no point worrying about it.
| jjcm wrote:
| Just giving an anecdotal response that I am very much the
| opposite. I'm absolutely thrilled for that future. There's
| something magical about that blend of real + digital that to me
| feels more human than sitting behind a desk and staring at a
| screen.
|
| It will definitely be a cultural change though, and I totally
| get how that can be almost repulsive from a different
| perspective. I just want you to be aware though that there are
| people who at least are interested in that future.
| wredue wrote:
| If we had lightweight reality augmenting glasses (as in not
| much more than a pair of reading glasses), I'd have that in a
| heartbeat depending on use.
|
| But yeah, I'd personally not want much beyond that.
|
| Of course, to each their own.
| swozey wrote:
| This is interesting, hopefully it gets more HMD options out
| there, but even better get more developers making ar/vr games.
|
| Was the OS a limiting factor in any of this, though? I've only
| used a Vive and my Oculus 2 and 3 so I'm not sure what other HMDs
| use, I assumed some Android distro that just connects to
| steamvr/openxr/whatever.
|
| Are Asus, Lenovo and Xbox really trying to get into the vr/ar
| ecosystem? Are they going to be Oculus clones? Their own r&d? Is
| this all a pipedream?
| aprilnya wrote:
| the advantage of using meta's OS is that you get the whole Meta
| Quest Store library (or, i guess, Meta Horizon Store) meanwhile
| before, you'd have to convince devs to manually publish for
| your platform
| api wrote:
| With this and Llama I'm starting to wonder if Meta is making a
| pivot toward openness similar to what Microsoft did under
| Nadella.
|
| It's not altruism of course. It's a strategy. But it's a
| different strategy from the closed pure walled garden strategy
| they have executed previously.
| joshmarinacci wrote:
| Smells like competition.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| Given React and PyTorch I'd say they've always been doing that.
| Also they've been releasing open source models for years and
| pretty much from the beginning.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| "Open platform" my ass. I still have to jump through ridiculous
| hoops to mod BeatSaber (which is the only way to make it worth
| playing for more than a few minutes). Quest 3 makes modding even
| harder. This announcement is trying to frame App Lab as an open
| app distribution platform; it isn't. Those "basic technical and
| content requirements" apps have to meet are basically the same
| ones that Apple or Google or Meta themselves enforce for their
| app stores. Entire classes of applications, particularly those
| that undermine platform-owners' business models are not allowed.
|
| Additionally, Horizon is generally a terrible operating system.
| Useless and intrusive "social" features out the wazoo, laden with
| tracking/spyware, and it isn't even good for anything beyond
| launching apps that take over the whole environment. Want to use
| your fancy headset to open up apps in 3d space and do some
| multitaking work? Well I sure hope you're happy with exactly 3 2d
| apps (all equally sized) lined up in a row in a fixed location,
| because that's all you're getting. If you want to do anything
| real you need to install an app that launches its own environment
| for multitasking, but of course then you can only pull in windows
| from a remote PC, so if you want to run any local applications
| it's back to basics for you. Oh, and of course you can't mix
| those remote PC windows with local apps. As poor as Apple's
| Vision OS is in the multitasking department Horizon falls far
| behind even it.
| hackcasual wrote:
| Modded beat saber is the only reason I still have kept my
| original quest
| zem wrote:
| I was half tempted to get a quest after playing beat saber on
| a friend's device. it's kind of amazing how much better it is
| than the next best thing you could do on one, some team just
| knocked it out of the park designing and implementing that
| game
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Pistol whip is pretty good too. Those two get your light
| saber sword fight fantasy, and the Matrix Gun-Fu fantasy :)
|
| And though I haven't an athletic bone in my body, the
| fitness / boxing apps are actually a great way to get some
| exercise in.
|
| Generally, quest 2 was one of the things I haven't had any
| interest whatsoever until after a year's campaign, my
| friend basically forced me to try it during a visit :-). I
| have one now, largely for those 3 apps.
| NBJack wrote:
| This is ultimately what they want: their owned walled garden,
| where they get to be the decider, hold the power, track the
| user's as first party data, etc. It makes perfect sense. They
| want this to be the next Android OS (with Play Store equivalent
| of course).
|
| This is really the only move that gets them back in (perhaps
| only somewhat) with the dwindling ads market.
|
| Much as I don't like it, it is a legitimate tactic. I just
| don't see it being effective in the current market, even with
| Apple as a player.
| znpy wrote:
| > They want this to be the next Android OS (with Play Store
| equivalent of course).
|
| Or the next Apple with the next iOS ?
| johnmaguire wrote:
| iOS can only run on Apple hardware.
|
| Google famously made Android "open source" and allows third
| party manufacturers to run it.
| zooq_ai wrote:
| Dwindling Ads market? Which planet do you live?
| freedomben wrote:
| If what they ultimately want is their own walled garden, then
| wouldn't opening things up be the opposite of what they
| should do? I mean, it's a lot harder to re-take control that
| you previously released than it is to hold onto it from the
| start. Look at Apple's difficulties tighteninng up control on
| the mac for example. It has to be a very long game. Compare
| that to the iPhone, iPad, vision OS that have been tightly
| controlled from the start and they have no difficulties
| (other than regulatory) holding the reins tightly.
| jonplackett wrote:
| What control are they actually giving up here though? Seems
| like they're just adding reach.
| cies wrote:
| > If what they ultimately want is their own walled garden,
| then wouldn't opening things up be the opposite of what
| they should do?
|
| The are only opening things up in their marketing speak.
| There is not actual opening up happening. "Open" sounds
| cool, inclusive, and like you are creating a stable
| platform for others to build on top of (IBM opened up x86,
| Linus opened up Linux, etc).
|
| Judge by what they do not what they say -- most valid
| advice in this age of lies.
| bagels wrote:
| Why can't you play BeatSaber without mods?
| yuck39 wrote:
| The out of the box track selection is quite weak. The game
| depends on community made tracks to make it playable in the
| long term.
| munk-a wrote:
| You can - it's just far less fun than BeatSaber with mods.
| The biggest improvement is from being able to select from the
| community list of songs that are available that may better
| suit your taste than the songs that come built in. It's a
| rhythm game so using a rhythm you like makes it much more
| fun.
| jsheard wrote:
| Besides song choice, the community also produces higher
| quality charts than the official ones, and offers
| difficulty that scales much higher.
|
| Lunatics like these can't be sated by the official songs:
| https://youtu.be/CKwX349aV98 https://youtu.be/sJQSy3KG-
| oQ?t=33
|
| That first chart averages _12 notes per second for 5
| straight minutes_ and the player only missed a single note.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Scaling even higher?? Lol I can't even play on medium
| difficulty on the built-in ones. I don't know how people
| keep up with the high tracks.
| munk-a wrote:
| I assume there are sort of natural skill ceilings but if
| you practice with more difficult scenarios and really
| push yourself you'd be amazed at what you can do. I've
| got an essential tremor[1] and I usually play on Expert+
| for the vanilla tracks which is usually do-able for me.
|
| 1. On that note - my tremor does hurt me here too but
| unlike twitch shooters (which I loved before my tremor
| got bad) and things like guitar hero (which require
| comparatively precise movement) beat saber is usually
| pretty forgiving about precision of placement and angles
| - so long as your rhythm is correct you can go pretty far
| with it.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Lack of any songs I actually care about, and the actual note
| mapping from the devs has been pretty bad up until recently.
| The modding community has had them beat for ages. Without
| mods the game would be a breif curiosity before I got bored
| with the provided songs, most of which don't suit my taste.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Mind that "mods" includes "custom tracks".
|
| OG BeatSaber comes with a small-ish selection of tracks, most
| of them obscure and not generally known. Good or bad, they
| get boring quickly. Modding lets you expand to arbitrary
| number of tracks, including pretty much all the ones you
| like. It's what makes it fun and worth returning to. Not
| being able to add your own music, makes BeatSaber not worth
| the sticker price (much less if you're getting Oculus just to
| play it).
|
| Also note that people were used to this capability, because
| before BeatSaber became a poster child for Oculus, it was
| streamed to other headsets from PC, where adding custom
| tracks was tacitly allowed.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| because they want to use songs they didn't pay for
| bowsamic wrote:
| How do you know that??
| idle_zealot wrote:
| No, that's basically correct. Mods are primarily for
| downloading community-made tracks/maps for songs not
| included with the game. There are also officially
| licensed DLC song packs, but they're quite pricy and
| still only provide access to a limited selection of
| tracks.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| That's literally what the mods do :).
|
| There's moral discussions to be had I'm sure, but the
| _purpose_ of the beat sabre mods is pretty factual :).
| prophesi wrote:
| Not quite; piracy of the paid DLC is one thing, but
| modding is to add songs (which should be read as, entire
| Beatsaber custom-made tracks) that otherwise are not
| available through any other avenues.
| tarxvf wrote:
| More likely because they want to use songs that aren't
| _offered_ except by modding.
| waffleiron wrote:
| If I paid for the song (even somewhere else, even on a
| subscription like spotify/apple music), I should be able to
| dance/move to it. I don't think one should have to re-buy
| every song in a videogame. Especially when the work is done
| for free to put in the dance moves by modders.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| You don't pay for the song when you pay for streaming
| services, you pay to stream it. You have no rights beyond
| streaming the song.
| stale2002 wrote:
| There are lots songs for which it is fully legal to listen
| to without paying for. Many people release songs for people
| to listen to for free!
|
| This is especially true within the rhythm game community,
| for which many fans simply like to make rhythm songs and
| for people to play them.
|
| That is absolutely a valid usecase that should be allowed.
| ambichook wrote:
| if i want to play a map of alkatraz, which is a song i own,
| i cannot do so without modding because beatsaber will
| _never_ release demondice tracks
| kotaKat wrote:
| And I'm still forced to have some form or variant of a
| Facebook-touched account, even if they want to change the front
| company behind it.
|
| I don't want to sign in to use a headset, period.
| prab97 wrote:
| But you do sign in to use an Android phone, or iPhone.
| Although, I agree with the point that someone would never
| want to sign in with their Facebook account there, with FB
| account holding so much personal information about them! For
| gaming, somebody would rather prefer to use an alias like
| dungeonmaster669 instead of their verified actual identity.
| rrdharan wrote:
| You don't _have_ to sign in to use an iPhone or Android
| phone, though you to have to sign in to use their app
| stores. Presumably with the advent of DMA though you can
| avoid creating an Apple ID or Google account if using a 3rd
| party store (though probably you'll need some other account
| for that store, that's how it always goes...).
|
| Fe: gaming - yes, this is why Apple had separate IDs for
| gaming center.. and I think Microsoft does this too for
| Xbox vs Microsoft account?
| wredue wrote:
| I also basically have to have a smartphone, and smartphones
| are entirely self contained devices.
|
| On a scale of trust for how companies are handling my data,
| Apple, and to a much lesser extent, Google, are still more
| trustworthy than Facebook, I feel.
| freedomben wrote:
| On Android at least, you don't _have_ to sign in. You
| obviously "miss out" on some "features" that way, but it
| is usable.
| fijiaarone wrote:
| Plus, it doesn't have the Apple logo.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| Hey, at least it supports webXR and there's no way to control
| that content.
| cma wrote:
| They mention Steam Link but don't mention it isn't allowed to
| sell in-app purchases (maybe a decision on Steam's side to be
| fair; they dont want games on Steam themselves having a "remote
| desktop" overlay workaround where you buy DLC without paying
| the 30% revenue tax).
| bodge5000 wrote:
| > I sure hope you're happy with exactly 3 2d apps (all equally
| sized) lined up in a row in a fixed location, because that's
| all you're getting.
|
| To be fair that is all I really want. Regardless, its still a
| privacy nightmare which makes it a no-go for me, combined with
| the fact that the most powerful ("productivity") app I can
| expect to run on it would be something like excel which makes
| me not really need anymore than 1 window, at which point its no
| better than a regular laptop.
|
| I'm waiting for the Simula One, or maybe XReal Air support for
| linux
|
| EDIT: To be clear, the kind of apps I'd want to be running
| (what I run on my regular laptop) that I doubt would be
| available on Meta OS include things like: Godot, Blender,
| VSCode, terminal windows, probably a bunch of other stuff but
| those are the main ones
| ru552 wrote:
| With this and Llama, looks like Zuck is trying to be the Linux of
| whatever the next big wave is
| brevitea wrote:
| There exists a severe deterioration of trust with respect to
| Zuckerberg. I don't believe people are as eager to jump on his
| bandwagon today.
| mousetree wrote:
| I think he is working on turning that trend around (see
| Llama).
| waynesonfire wrote:
| Yeah right, he's donating all those GPUs to rebuild his
| reputation. It has nothing to do with trying to be relevant
| as a non-market leader.
| talldayo wrote:
| Whatever the purpose is behind it, I'm just glad that
| their work benefits me for once. I could not tell you the
| last time Tim Cook or Bill Gates sponsored something that
| genuinely improved my day-to-day life.
| jayzalowitz wrote:
| I see the day to day for you, but bill gates is probably
| gonna get statues made of him for some of the things he
| is doing, especially in africa.
| renewiltord wrote:
| On the podcast with Dwarkesh Patel, he was quite explicit
| that he believes that open-sourcing has worked out for
| them in the past and they're interested in it in the
| future but they'll only do it so long as it helps them.
| If they make something awesome that it would be worse for
| them to release he won't release it. And the license is
| anti-competitor (if you have 700 million users or more,
| you can't use Llama) so he's quite clear that this is a
| business decision.
| bogwog wrote:
| I wonder if there is a limit to this strategy? How many
| LLMs would it have taken Epstein to release for HN to
| forgive him?
| etrautmann wrote:
| Is that still true?
| cairhart wrote:
| > We're also developing a new spatial app framework that helps
| mobile developers create mixed reality experiences. Developers
| will be able to use the tools they're already familiar with to
| bring their mobile apps to Meta Horizon OS or to create entirely
| new mixed reality apps.
|
| Like porting my whole android app + spatial features or...?
| tasoeur wrote:
| My guess is that they saw how nicely Apple made basic app
| development (read 2.5D planes with list views and spatial UX)
| and they are gonna try their best to shape their "app
| framework" in a similar fashion.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "Meta Horizon OS devices will also use the same mobile
| companion app that Meta Quest owners use today--we'll rename this
| as the Meta Horizon app."_
|
| Churning through so many VR brands. The app that used to be
| called Oculus and is now called Meta Quest will soon be called
| Meta Horizon.
|
| If Meta really believes in the Metaverse, why do they need the
| Horizon brand? Why not just the Meta OS?
| what_ever wrote:
| Because their whole company is called Meta?
| sangnoir wrote:
| > If Meta really believes in the Metaverse, why do they need
| the Horizon brand? Why not just the Meta OS?
|
| Perhaps for the same reason why Apple OS, Google OS or
| Microsoft OS don't exist as customer OSes - each OS is scoped
| to a specific function/device-class, and maybe superceded in
| the future.
| blululu wrote:
| This is actually a really cool move. Not sure about the business
| case, but building an os for AR/VR is challenging. A naive port
| of Android or Linux will not really work (without inducing
| massive motion sickness). Having a framework that allows a
| hardware oem to quickly create a decent AR/VR headset could
| really open up the market.
| lucideer wrote:
| pivoting some underlying metaverse tech? scant on detail
| unfortunately
| spintin wrote:
| I think linux would be the obvious choice.
|
| VR is being gatekept by Valve and Meta.
|
| How likely is Valve to use Android?
| jsheard wrote:
| > How likely is Valve to use Android?
|
| Not likely, unless they make a headset which doesn't do much of
| anything by itself and is just meant for streaming from a PC.
| To make a standalone headset which can draw on the Steam
| catalog they would almost certainly want to use a variant of
| their SteamOS Linux distro.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Valve already has its own OS for a mobile device: Steam OS
| (based on Arch) on the Steam Deck. My bet is that they'd just
| modify that for a standalone headset.
| amluto wrote:
| I wonder if this will allow full use of Meta's hardware without
| an account.
| pavlov wrote:
| It's the other way around: you can get the Quest's software on
| hardware not made by Meta.
| ein0p wrote:
| Doesn't seem very "open" actually. Open to ASUS and Lenovo !=
| Open.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It is open in the sense of POSIX Open Group.
| boomlinde wrote:
| So it's publishing standards I can implement to make my own
| compatible OS?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Actually some of the Open Group standards, are pay to play,
| they are open in the sense they are available, in some
| form.
| boomlinde wrote:
| So are Meta publishing standards, gratis or not, which I
| can implement to create a compatible operating system?
|
| I'm asking because it seems to me from this press release
| that they're just letting a handful of hardware partners
| use their software, which is not open in the sense of
| POSIX Open Group.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Open like this? https://www.opengroup.org/membership
| boomlinde wrote:
| Yes, open like that. I thought we'd already established
| the sense in which Open Group is open, but you still
| haven't addressed the question how Meta is open in the
| same sense.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Just like a Open Group membership, it is open to the set
| of self selected partners.
| neural_thing wrote:
| Very strange how many people are here to dunk on Zuck. He's
| opening up an OS. THAT'S AWESOME! We should celebrate that in
| principle, no matter how we feel about him or VR in general.
| Oras wrote:
| Oculus still requires a Facebook login; don't you see the
| conflict?
| purge wrote:
| it requires a meta sign-in, which isn't a facebook account.
| Oras wrote:
| potato <=> potato (sounds on)
| aprilnya wrote:
| no, those are completely different... a facebook account
| is an account on a social network that requires you to
| use your real name or else you get banned. a facebook
| account links you to your real life identity and your
| real life social circles
|
| a meta account is an account that you can optionally link
| to their social medias, but it isn't required
|
| meta accounts are basically just oculus accounts
| aeonik wrote:
| I don't need an account to use my monitor or my TV. Why
| do I need one for a VR Headset?
| aprilnya wrote:
| Because these aren't dumb headsets that just plug into
| your PC. These are standalone headsets that handle the
| whole thing -- they aren't just a display and
| controllers, they take the role of the PC too.
|
| So, needing an account for these is more comparable to
| needing an account to use Steam
| aeonik wrote:
| I don't need Steam to run my games or to pipe data into
| my Valve Index either.
|
| It's still unclear to me why an account is needed. I
| mean, I get the profit and control motive, I just don't
| understand the technical reasons.
| aprilnya wrote:
| Yeah, I guess I do agree that you should be able to just
| run it without an account and load apps from elsewhere
|
| I doubt there is any actual technical reason, just
| profit/control. I mean, it's Meta, would you really put
| it past them?
| aeonik wrote:
| I don't know Zuckerberg, so I don't know his motivation,
| nor the executives of Meta. I haven't really read any of
| their work.
|
| Profit and control fit the data points, but I suppose I
| could "put it past them" if a better model explained
| everything.
| baby wrote:
| Because you need to buy apps to make use of your VR
| headset. Lets put it this way, do you need an account to
| use your Iphone?
| kotaKat wrote:
| No, in fact, I don't.
|
| My device is not signed into any Apple services right now
| or any Apple IDs. Anything my company needs to deploy
| gets pushed by MDM or via enterprise-signed applications.
| baby wrote:
| You just told me that you are part of the 0.0000001% of
| users and so your point is moot
| zmmmmm wrote:
| you really should be factually correct when dunking on
| something
|
| It hasn't been called Oculus for ages and it doesn't require
| a Facebook login. Meta accounts are stand alone and
| completely different, you can create as many as you want
| without giving your identity, just an email address, you
| don't need to link it to anything.
| croes wrote:
| to third-party hardware makers.
|
| And it's still based on Android.
|
| The reason will be the same as for Android by Google: Control
| the market.
| alt227 wrote:
| Dont be fooled by the marketing language.
|
| All they are doing is allowing some companies to pay them
| billions of dollars to put meta onto their own headsets.
| Similar to how Valve allowed a few companies to put SteamOS
| onto their own hardware to create 'Steam Machines'.
|
| I cant think of a single time in history when this tactic has
| worked. and made a product or brand more successful. Please
| correct me if I am wrong.
| woopsn wrote:
| I know I'm fighting the overwhelming tide here, but what the hell
| is "mixed reality"? What is "the metaverse"? For that matter what
| is "artificial intelligence"? Stop trying to dazzle and just use
| words, if the technology is revolutionary then it will be. An
| automobile is not the magic carpet, a cell phone is not a
| soulmate, etc. Otherwise fuck it -- TV is virtual reality,
| getting high augmented reality, TI-84 calculators are artificial
| intelligence, libraries are the metaverse, ...
| neverokay wrote:
| We are like gamers that no longer perceive the improvement in
| graphics across generations.
|
| Talk to Siri and then talk to ChatGPT if you are feeling that
| clueless.
| woopsn wrote:
| I do. I've said it before too -- I like that they called it a
| "generative pretrained transformer" aka GPT.
| neverokay wrote:
| You can make gpt be an imaginary friend for children if you
| want to.
|
| The technology is the technology, the application of it is
| the magic.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| Meta are trying to dazzle you with words because there is
| nothing fundamental behind any of this metaverse stuff
| idle_zealot wrote:
| These are not complex or dazzling terms. Artificial
| intelligence is software that seems intelligent. Virtual
| reality is a simulated environment that you can immerse
| yourself in through small screens and head tracking. Mixed
| reality is virtual reality overlayed on your real environment.
| See also "augmented reality". The metaverse is the web, but
| replace websites with 3d environments and add some sort of
| personal avatar, perhaps with some persistent identity.
| woopsn wrote:
| People seem to think I have trouble understanding what the
| terms refer to. That's not my point -- you're right in that
| they are not complex.
|
| But why is virtual reality associated with small screens and
| head tracking? Why wasn't Everquest on a CRT "virtual
| reality"? A lot of software calculates probabilities over
| some distribution, why isn't all that "artificial
| intelligence"? Why isn't my Subaru's cruise control and lane
| keeping technology "autopilot" or "self driving"? Why isn't
| the elevator controller an "agent"? Why aren't my own servers
| "clouds"?
|
| I don't need the terminology explained, I'm just tired of it.
| And I do think in many cases it's meant to be dazzling and
| marketable rather than mean anything.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| These terms have a way of burning people out. I hesitate to
| use blockchain and A.I. in the same sentence because that's
| a sure sign the person doesn't have anything to say.
| andygeorge wrote:
| > why is virtual reality associated with small screens and
| head tracking?
|
| ...because that's what it is? surely you understand that
| the difference between 3D, near-eye displays and
| traditional 2D screens warrants a different label
| johnfn wrote:
| > But why is virtual reality associated with small screens
| and head tracking?
|
| Because this improves the quality of VR.
|
| > Why wasn't Everquest on a CRT "virtual reality"?
|
| It is an extremely limited form of VR.
|
| > why isn't all that "artificial intelligence"?
|
| It is an extremely limited form of AI.
|
| > Why isn't my Subaru's cruise control and lane keeping
| technology "autopilot" or "self driving"?
|
| It is an extremely limited form of "self driving". (To be
| more precise, it's Level 1 self autonomy.)
|
| > Why isn't the elevator controller an "agent"
|
| It is an extremely limited form of an agent.
|
| > Why aren't my own servers "clouds"?
|
| They are extremely limited forms of a cloud. (Though I
| would argue that a cloud needs to be provided by a third
| party.)
|
| > I don't need the terminology explained, I'm just tired of
| it.
|
| It sounds like you are refusing to understand how
| experiences fall somewhere on a spectrum. Is me and my
| friend tossing a ball around in my backyard "baseball"?
| What if we get 7 more friends and stand on a diamond and
| run around the bases? If I come back afterwards and say "we
| played baseball", even though it wasn't an MLB-regulated
| official game adjudicated by umpires, are you going to get
| really upset at me and say that I'm lying and I didn't
| really play "baseball"? The same principle applies to
| everything else you've listed here.
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| Limited says you. I'll pick on your example of VR. Tell a
| blind person that Everquest is a limited form of VR.
| You've just bought into "progress". These other
| experiences likely still haven't been beaten when
| strictly speaking about real depth as opposed to the
| superficial.
| johnfn wrote:
| A blind person can still hear the spatial audio in
| Everquest. I think they would get the point.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think asking questions like that for rhetorical effect
| works in other places, but people here prefer to treat all
| questions as actual good-faith questions. Even ones that
| are clearly intended as rhetorical, like yours.
|
| So, I don't think they are misunderstanding you. It is
| almost like calling your bluff.
|
| It is an interesting convention.
|
| I don't dislike these kinds of questions normally. But they
| do typically lead to a little bit of back and forth. On
| this site, most interactions are typically only 2-3 posts
| long. So I think it is better to just state your opinions
| directly.
| wvenable wrote:
| > But why is virtual reality associated with small screens
| and head tracking?
|
| Because it's supposed to simulate reality -- and it does a
| great job of it. Everquest on a CRT doesn't simulate
| reality; it's nothing like reality. As the capability of
| something increases it becomes something else. Cruise
| control on a car that is sufficiently able to drive a car
| eventually becomes autopilot. Your own server isn't a cloud
| but put a large enough of them acting together in a way
| where each individual machine is entirely redundant and
| replaceable is a cloud. These words describe actual things.
| You are a person but why isn't any random clump of cells a
| person?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Why is a laptop not desktop? Aren't GNU/Linux desktop OS?
| Why is Android a phone OS? I thought it was supposed to be
| a camera firmware GUI toolkit?
| woopsn wrote:
| I'm not concerned about trademarks. I'm concerned about
| what isn't trademarked -- language which instead we are
| all supposed to adopt and throw around as much as
| possible. As I said: * reality, AI, cloud, etc.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I get that loosely thrown around buzzwords are annoying,
| that sentiment I sympathize with, but your examples seem
| to contain multiple category errors e.g. HUD is a type of
| AR device, using cloud(noun) is outsourcing(verb) but
| outsourcing is definitely not appropriate term for cloud
| tech stacks, and so on.
|
| Digital computer technologies aren't continuously
| differentiable so made up terms for grouping each
| distinct tech stacks is unavoidable. AI is linear algebra
| but grouping up all AI/ML/RL/perceptron into "electronic
| linear algebra technology" is not helpful.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| I hated the terms "blog" and "podcast" when they were new.
| I thought they were so dumb and unnecessary. But they are
| useful to describe actual things happening in the real
| word. This is just how the intersection of words and
| technology works.
| r0m4n0 wrote:
| Everything is an evolution and everyone wants to be the
| next form of that evolution, even if it's not. Marketing is
| always going to be one step ahead and once we actually do
| achieve what the last generation is selling, someone new
| will be selling you on the next step. Today's "VR" will
| look extremely different from 2050 VR. That doesn't mean
| today we don't have some form of VR though. I don't mind
| it, it's a conceptual bucket for today's expectations. And
| those of us who keep up with things (like all of us on HN
| for example) understand one another. What would you
| recommend we call all these things?
| woopsn wrote:
| In many cases practitioners already have appropriately
| non-magical language, for clarity in communication.
|
| *-reality interfaces are "immersive", they don't alter or
| recreate reality.
|
| What artificial intelligence is is (statistical)
| "inference".
|
| The cloud are various *-providers, "hosting providers",
| "storage services", etc. In aggregate, "external" or "3rd
| party" or "outsourced" (computing) infrastructure.
|
| I said it elsewhere -- what frustrates me is that the
| rest is marketing, but some engineers are willing to
| accept and even reproduce it for some reason. When
| Facebook says they're releasing a new reality development
| platform for the metaverse though, we should roll our
| eyes, even if the technology is exciting.
| LZ_Khan wrote:
| I think "mixed reality" is the marketing term for augmented
| reality. Easier to understand for some people.
| creativenolo wrote:
| Typically "mixed reality" is used to mean mixing your vision
| with virtual content. Whereas, "augmented reality" has
| typically meant displaying a live video feed on a single
| screen.
|
| They are two quite different experiences and use cases. Once
| both are common it would make sense to call both augmented
| reality but I haven't heard any better terms for describing
| the difference to people yet.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| I think usage is exactly the opposite of what you
| described.
| creativenolo wrote:
| I haven't yet seen a phone Augmented Reality app
| described as Mixed Reality. I have seen HoloLens, Meta
| Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro described as Mixed Reality
| and Augmented Reality.
| woopsn wrote:
| "Mixed" versus "augmented" reality have no real meaning,
| which is why there is confusion about which of the two
| modalities you're referring to.
|
| My question is why avoid the terms overlay, superposition,
| display and even vision? Why instead purport to have
| altered reality?
|
| Traditionally in aviation and the military they said "heads
| up display", because they can't afford to be obtuse. The
| display allows the pilot literally to keep their head up,
| instead of pointed down at their instruments. And I'm sure
| there was no truck for anyone who would have called it
| mixed or augmented reality.
| BlueFalconHD wrote:
| x mixed with y = join any combination of x and y based on
| some condition within x and y x augmented by y = change
| part of x by adding y
|
| x = real world y = virtual world
| Aloisius wrote:
| The term "augmented reality" was coined to refer to see-
| through heads-up displays. Pilot synthetic vision system
| HUDs have been referred to as augmented reality for
| decades.
|
| Best I can tell, mixed reality is augmented reality, but
| with mixed interaction. You hit the fake ball with a real
| bat in mixed reality and it bounces off the real wall.
| Maybe you even feel it hit.
| baby wrote:
| The Metaverse is what the Internet is if you add VR. It's not
| hard to understand.
| creativenolo wrote:
| It can also mean just plain olde 2D 3D (according to
| companies selling metaverse services)
| woopsn wrote:
| I understand. I read Snow Crash. Besides the Metaverse there
| was also a nuclear powered dog.
|
| My point is this -- by _allusion_ to some concept with which
| an inventor wishes to form an association in the consumer 's
| mind, their products are to be thought of as something
| different than they are, something too grand for plain
| language. This doesn't serve anyone but the inventor.
|
| The "Internet with head-mounted display" is actually pretty
| cool technology, I'm not against it. My concern is that it
| shouldn't be sold or even referred to as an alternate form of
| reality. For the benefit of product sales, or else the egos
| of certain technologists, language becomes muddied and the
| very idea about what makes someone "a person" is bastardized.
| I think this is wrong and very short sighted.
| wvenable wrote:
| If you use a term like "Virtual Reality" to describe things
| it eventually just becomes what people describe. Everybody
| knows what a VR headset is now. Everyone knows what VR is
| now. That is VR. The _allusion_ is completely gone.
|
| It's like describing snow to someone who has never seen it.
| No matter what they allusions they have about snow before
| they see it, once they've seen it, they know that is snow.
| And everyone they talk to will have the same meaning.
|
| Same with Augmented reality, mixed reality, whatever. Once
| it becomes mainstream one of these terms will stick and
| that's just what it will be. Or it'll be so ingrained in
| the experience that we no longer even use a separate term
| to describe it.
| baby wrote:
| What is your experience with VR? Have you been to the
| movies in VR? Or played board games with other players?
| Have you done social chat applications?
| woopsn wrote:
| Mostly games on Oculus. I haven't played online socially,
| just with friends IRL - one has a really sweet room all
| set up for VR. Also back in the 90s-00s, on the more
| primitive arcade systems. I haven't looked at the
| "metaverse" yet.
|
| It's not like I'm against fun, and if there is more
| emphasis in the "metaverse" on meaningful social
| connection, that's good. Games and activities that get
| you moving around are also a very positive development.
| Wii was one of my favorite consoles (but was hardly
| immersive).
|
| My brother is a former pilot and sprung for a full setup
| so he could play aviation sims. I haven't done a movie
| yet.
|
| As I said I have nothing against headsets or immersive
| digital experiences. I do think in this day and age it's
| worth being more protective of the word "reality",
| compared to the 90s. Not just in a political sense. The
| core business of Facebook is advertising and data
| brokering. I know I might sound like a quack but they
| really do want to control perception of reality and for
| us to stare at their screen for as long as possible.
| Partly because there are ads there, and partly because as
| we do they stare back at us and take measurements. So
| that's why I don't accept their "Reality Lab", "The
| Metaverse", etc. marketing language, and to the extent
| they control VR it is not VR. They don't want to build
| the metaverse a la Snow Crash, it will be more like the
| social -> news feed -> analytica history, plus raking app
| developers.
| hwbunny wrote:
| Why the forced push by big companies into this VR thing?
| wvenable wrote:
| What the hell is "cloud computing"? What is "big data"? What is
| the "Internet of Things" or "SaaS" or "SEO"? For that matter
| what is "agile development"?
|
| Just use words to describe technology? Every time I want to say
| "cloud computing" do I have to say "a service where you use the
| internet to access software, storage, and processing power
| that's run on a bunch of server located far away in data center
| that are owned and managed by a company that specializes in
| providing these services" instead?
| woopsn wrote:
| In business you would traditionally call that sort of
| arrangement "outsourcing". The Internet of Things is okay --
| it could have been worse, The Omninet or something.
| wvenable wrote:
| "outsourcing" is a broad term. Building your widgets in
| China is also outsourcing.
| woopsn wrote:
| That's the point though. Manufacturing, logistics,
| payroll, research, advertising, legal services, ... --
| outsourcing certain functions to specialist, often (but
| not always) cheaper or more efficient companies is a
| _typical_ business practice. The term is broadly
| applicable and used where ever this is the case. Since
| there are well-known business and organizational risks
| associated with outsourcing, it is conspicuous that we
| "migrate to the cloud" instead.
| wvenable wrote:
| Migrate to the cloud has specific meanings. How would you
| even adequately define it using "outsourcing"? That's
| just one part of it.
| woopsn wrote:
| We outsourced our CRM system last year to a certain
| company. Or you could say we migrated it to the cloud.
| Either way we had to audit data policies, establish
| contracts with them, transfer data to them, ensure the
| same functionality and workflows were replicated, look at
| the quality and reliability of their system, assign
| points of contact, make redundant some roles within our
| company, etc... Many of the things you allude to are
| implied by either term.
|
| Time-sharing and remote job entry were also reasonable
| back in the day. You bought time on a computer to run
| workloads. I don't think they fit so well with the "cloud
| computing" model in a modern sense technically, but I do
| envy them for being descriptive, logical terms that
| describe what is going on. We got the cloud from Google
| CEO Eric Schmidt who said to a conference in 2006
|
| > What's interesting is that there is an emergent new
| model. I don't think people have really understood how
| big this opportunity really is. It starts with the
| premise that the data services and architecture should be
| on servers. We call it cloud computing -- they should be
| in a "cloud" somewhere. . . . And so what's interesting
| is that the two - "cloud computing and advertising - go
| hand-in-hand. There is a new business model that's
| funding all of the software innovation to allow people to
| have platform choice, client choice, data architectures
| that are interesting, solutions that are new - and that's
| being driven by advertising.
|
| - https://www.google.com/press/podium/ses2006.html
|
| It's strange to me that as engineers we accept and even
| promote marketing language such as this.
| wvenable wrote:
| It's funny that you have trouble with term "cloud" but
| you're okay with an equally made up marketing term called
| "outsourcing".
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| A new OS will be interesting ONLY if Meta commits to certain
| policies that Microsoft and Apple have violated. Users should be
| able to use their devices without any telemetry or phoning home.
| They should be able to install any software they want from any
| source. They should not be forced to make payments only through
| Meta's services. Etc.
| willi59549879 wrote:
| wouldn't trust meta with anything for sure not running a whole
| os.
| Closi wrote:
| Did they consider the UK market when naming this?
|
| Horizon is synonymous with a computing scandal involving buggy IT
| code.
| pavlov wrote:
| Shades of Apple licensing the Mac OS to clone hardware vendors in
| 1995 - 1997. It seems like Meta will be controlling the software
| experience quite closely, just like Apple did back in the day.
|
| There's an important difference though: Apple made all their
| money on Mac hardware margins which the nimble clone vendors
| could undercut. Whereas for Meta, the Quest hardware has always
| been sold at breakeven or even as a loss leader (a few years ago
| they actually raised the price of the Quest 2 to cut further
| losses).
|
| So there's no kind of existential danger to Quest here, but it
| remains to be seen if the hardware licensees can bring anything
| relevant to the table either.
| samspenc wrote:
| Like other comments have pointed out, I think of this as
| similar to how Google controls the Android OS. While
| theoretically open, the real useful stuff on top of Android
| (Google services etc) require a license from Google along with
| their Play store, so Google makes revenue from there.
|
| Certainly more open (edited) than the Apple ecosystem, but
| still controlled by one (big) player, with a little bit of
| flexibility but not a whole lot.
| ec109685 wrote:
| You're discounting the huge number of android devices that
| use it as a base OS. E.g. Amazon and Peloton use android
| without Google services for consumer devices.
| babypuncher wrote:
| These are devices built with a specific use case in mind
| that need an operating system that is easy to develop for.
| Non-Google versions of Android have struggled to make much
| headway in markets like smartphones. Even Amazon's own
| phone flopped pretty hard.
| indymike wrote:
| Kindle tablets on the other hand have done well.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Non-Google versions of Android have struggled to make
| much headway in markets like smartphones
|
| You may have forgotten about China: Huawei smartphones
| are doing very well on an AOSP-based OS.
|
| Edit: Google was concerned about a Chinese fork of
| Android flourishing, they wrote to congress at the time
| the tech-transfer ban was being condidered
| rchaud wrote:
| The thing about Android is that a device doesn't have to
| make headway by selling 100 million units plus to
| continue being adapted to many different types of
| devices.
|
| In any case, the Play store can be sideloaded on every
| Android device even if it isn't officially supported.
| kernal wrote:
| >Non-Google versions of Android have struggled to make
| much headway in markets like smartphones. Even Amazon's
| own phone flopped pretty hard.
|
| Not much headway? Pretty much all Android phones used in
| China do not come with GMS.
| bsharper wrote:
| Amazon used AOSP to create tons of their products. Even if
| most Android devices have the Play Store, there are
| successful variants that don't. And I'd even include Meta's
| Quest line here: every headset since the Go has the ability
| to sideload apks using standard Android tools.
| hadlock wrote:
| My quest (1) I bought on launch day got an OS update and
| now I have to find my old credentials to log in (and thus
| accept some (probably) draconian EULA, just to enable
| developer mode to side load apps on there. You can't just
| plug a USB stick in the side and copy paste them to
| "side_loaded_apps" dir it's still a ridiculous task of
| doing backflips through flaming hoops to use it as an open
| device. And it may yet again reset my login.
| talldayo wrote:
| > A bit more open than the Apple ecosystem
|
| It is not "a bit more open" than iOS, it is a completely
| different approach to OS development that enables wildly
| different results.
|
| > While theoretically open, the real useful stuff on top of
| Android
|
| That stuff is by no means necessary; I've run Android without
| Google services for years and it just feels like a normal
| tablet OS. Again, it is not "theoretically open" but in fact
| practically usable without any first-party services, unlike
| iOS.
| samspenc wrote:
| :D Fair, I didn't want to be yelled at by the Apple fanbase
| that comes out in defense to comments like this, have
| edited my original post with a note.
| bonton89 wrote:
| > So there's no kind of existential danger to Quest here, but
| it remains to be seen if the hardware licensees can bring
| anything relevant to the table either.
|
| Why would I, as a potential hardware maker, wish to compete in
| a market where the existing main producer is a mega wealthy
| entity that is already dumping product below cost and is
| capable of doing so indefinitely?
| distortedsignal wrote:
| The low end of the market is taken - but (from an outsider
| perspective) the high end appears free.
|
| The people who want to buy a Honda aren't the same people who
| want to buy an Acura, even though it's (essentially) the same
| parts.
|
| Let's say that, tomorrow, Gucci or Dolce and Gabanna (or
| however you spell that) want to make a VR headset (why? who
| knows?). They don't have the tech acumen to compete with
| Facebook on experience, but they have the brand to compete on
| "people who want to be seen in Gucci."
|
| Is there a market for that? I don't know. But this opens
| Facebook up to the possibility of making that deal.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Or more like those Lamborghini and Porsche branded phones.
| distortedsignal wrote:
| Someone teach this man how to spell "Gabbana".
| theptip wrote:
| Don't agree with this take. I'm sure Meta would be fine
| with other vendors taking over the low-end, if that meant
| there was a vibrant platform they controlled (ie the OS).
| They will lead with flagship models to push the boundaries
| of what the OS/tech can do.
|
| Why would they want to sell at/below cost forever? The
| reason they do this now is to make the platform viable.
|
| The only reason they are focusing on cheaper devices now is
| to build the platform and try to get more users, to in turn
| get more data on what the killer usecases will be.
|
| Think of this as a play like Android. Google doesn't care
| what goes on in the commodified end of the spectrum, as
| long as there is one. Google does ship flagship phones (in
| competition with eg Samsung) and that is fine.
| distortedsignal wrote:
| My point is that there is more to "VR Headset Market"
| than just "low end" - low end is one part of the market,
| but (right now) Facebook has that part locked up.
|
| It may be that there are more places to compete in the VR
| Headset Market that people on HN don't know about.
|
| Like you said, this is probably something like an Android
| play. Everyone was talking about the Apple Vision Pro as
| the VR Market's "iPhone moment" when it came out - maybe
| Meta Vision OS (or whatever they're calling it) is
| Facebook's Android moment.
|
| And yeah, Facebook would probably be ok with others
| taking the low end of the market if they do it well.
| Right now, Facebook is the only company willing to take a
| loss on their own platform. So they do.
| asrael_io wrote:
| Not really sure if the Vision Pro could be called the
| iPhone of VR. It's not nearly as popular and its demand
| has ground to a halt.
| Nevermark wrote:
| It is a wonderful indispensable device for a very special
| market.
|
| Particular Mac users who happen to particularly like the
| physical and mental ergonomics, and locational and
| furniture freedom, of arrangeable virtual screens and a
| beautiful visual isolation chamber on demand.
|
| (And in my case, who have dramatically customized the
| light shield and straps to be super comfortable for long
| periods.
|
| I would buy the next version at twice the price if it
| came out tomorrow. And give up a lot to do it.
|
| But that is a VERY niche market. There are only three of
| us happy campers, after the return wave. It is definitely
| not an iPhone - yet.
|
| Personally, I think they should lean into it as a MacBook
| Pro killer. Make it a first class pro computing device.
| That is a good rationale for keeping around a high end
| spec, high priced version.
|
| Then have Air versions when it becomes possible to ship a
| cheap enough iOS-computing level version for the masses.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| And that's why Meta will fail. The company doesn't have
| the branding or the technical imagination to create
| either a mass-appeal or a high-end prestige product.
| Apple has both, and its best VR effort appeals to a few
| thousand people.
|
| As long as VR is limited to facehuggers the market will
| remain niche. VR glasses are a good few years (decades?)
| off.
|
| In the meantime Apple will eat the high end and probably
| some of the low end.
|
| So where does that leave Meta?
|
| It doesn't help that Meta is more of an annoyance than
| brand. I'm not sure anyone actually _likes_ Meta or Meta
| 's products. While they're tolerated to some extent,
| they're perceived as fundamentally boring or irritating
| in a way that is deadly for brands.
| veidr wrote:
| I agree. I'm reading this (and now typing this reply)
| from the Vision Pro, while doing a 2-hour low-and-medium-
| intensity cardio workout on my elliptical trainer. Hard
| to overstate how much better this is than the old
| MBP/iPad plus big-screen TV setup I had.
|
| I would also buy another AVP immediately, if I broke
| this, or if a better one came out,
|
| But that is... extremely niche. The OS is as bad as iOS
| 1.0 was -- but without the obvious utility to a huge
| number of people. I'm not sure Apple can pull this off.
|
| But, I have all the Meta headsets, too, and have used
| them for this purpose. That gives me the perspective to
| understand that, while on one hand it is indeed "just
| another VR headset", there has never been one actually
| usable for this before. Apple has the lead along a dew
| different axes. The question is, do they have the stomach
| to lose money on it for 10 years like Meta has>
|
| (Even if they don't literally sell it below cost, like
| Meta, it won't work out if they don't keep iterating as
| hard as they can on the software side. Like the first
| iPhone, it is simultaneously amazing, unprecedented, and
| objectively awful in many ways.)
|
| P.S. I do easy work in here on the gym machines, too. Not
| just HN-reading. ;-)
| veidr wrote:
| BTW the key to getting work done in AVP while running on
| a machine (or any other active scenario, like housework
| or walking to the grocery store) is to enable some of the
| Accessibility features.
|
| The normal dictation feature is so bad it is unusable for
| more than a sentence fragment. The one enabled via
| Accessibility is incredibly good, aside from a bit more
| latency than I'd like (but easy to get used to that), and
| enables mixed voice dictation and keyboard-typing,
| without switching modes.
| williamcotton wrote:
| _Don't agree with this take._
|
| Is this a command or an opinion that left out the subject
| of the sentence?
| imagineerschool wrote:
| 'take' as in 'hot take' intended meaning : 'I disagree
| with your assessment and conclusions'
| vel0city wrote:
| While the pedantry is whatever to me, they're not
| misunderstanding the usage of "take" they're pointing out
| the missing subject of "I". Leaving out the "I" like this
| turns the sentence from describing a personal opinion to
| commanding someone else to have that opinion.
|
| I put the pan on the stove.
|
| Put the pan on the stove.
|
| I talk to your brother.
|
| Talk to your brother.
|
| Leaving out the "I" changes the meaning of the sentence
| here. "I disagree with x" means something else entirely
| than "Disagree with x."
| boomlinde wrote:
| The inference engine between your ears should be able to
| answer that.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| I think it really depends on if you think Meta wants to
| be a hardware company or if they want to continue being a
| data/advertising company.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| "Our overall vision for the space is that we will be
| completely ubiquitous in killer apps, have very strong
| coverage in platform services (like Google has with
| Android) and will be strong enough in hardware and
| systems to at a minimum support our platform services
| goals, and at best be a business itself" - Zuckerberg's
| 2015 VR letter
|
| * https://www.scribd.com/document/399594551/2015-06-22-MA
| RK-S-...
| Someone wrote:
| That's almost nine years ago. He may or may not have
| changed his mind.
|
| It would help if Meta said something about that. Ideally
| for potential third party hardware manufacturers, they'd
| promise to leave the hardware market once a vibrant
| ecosystem exists.
|
| Defining "vibrant" then would be hard to impossible,
| though. The edge cases are easy, but uninteresting. If
| none of the others are making money on hardware there is
| no vibrant system. If multiple other parties are making
| money, they probably wouldn't care much whether Meta
| makes some money, too.
|
| For in-between cases, where third parties make some
| money, Meta will have to choose between staying in the
| market because others don't sell enough and Meta leaving
| the market so that others get more room to sell and thus
| become profitable.
| rob74 wrote:
| So Meta is aiming to be for VR what Microsoft is for PCs
| and Google is for smartphones (Apple being Apple for PCs,
| smartphones and VR)?
| Eisenstein wrote:
| They want their own platform so they can do whatever they
| want on their apps. They are playing the long game. Read
| zuck's VR vision letter. He lays it all out:
|
| * https://www.scribd.com/document/399594551/2015-06-22-MA
| RK-S-...
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Meta is the last company in the world that I would allow
| to have direct access to my gaze tracking data.
|
| The only thing that I can imagine that would be more
| privacy invasive would be a device that directly reads
| your brain waves while you are exposed to different
| stimuli.
| einsteinx2 wrote:
| I feel exactly the same, but I think we're very much in
| the minority with that perspective compared to most
| consumers, so they could still sell like gangbusters.
|
| And on that note I can't wait to see Meta's answer to
| Neuralink!
| potatolicious wrote:
| It feels less like low vs. high-end and more like
| specialized vs. general hardware.
|
| For example, if you're selling VR headsets for the purposes
| of industrial training, you may not want the consumer-grade
| hardware Meta is selling. You may need weather-sealing to
| allow outdoor operation. You may need vastly higher-
| resolution screens for industrial applications. The list of
| specializations goes on.
|
| The specialized businesses tend to have wider moats and
| bigger margins. The TAM is smaller - too small for a mega-
| cap company like Meta to care about, but nonetheless can
| contribute to the health of the ecosystem.
|
| This play gives influence over these niche, specialized
| uses of AR/VR without having to commit the entire company
| to it.
|
| For example think of a medical instruments company that
| trains on VR headsets. Their choices right now are to use
| consumer-grade hardware which may not hit all of their
| needs, or become a full-on AR/VR company with all the
| requisite R&D that involves.
|
| This allows these companies to exist in the middle ground -
| having the core R&D being done by another party, but having
| sufficient control to ship specialized hardware.
| mdasen wrote:
| I feel like this is a bit off. There have been things like
| Porsche phones, but those are so niche that I don't think
| they're really worth considering. They happened, but they
| haven't been a long-standing product. They were a cash grab
| where they licensed a brand.
|
| Now, Hondas and Acuras are different products. You can say
| "oh, they're essentially the same" and if you truly believe
| that, I'll sell you a Core i3 processor for the price of a
| Core i7. Yea, they're essentially the same, but it's the
| differences that make one better than the other. The point
| is that the high end isn't about branding. The high end is
| about capability. Apple has shown that their iPhone will
| outsell any luxury-branded Android phone to rich people
| because some things are about capability, not a logo.
| Samsung's flagships will way outsell some luxury logo
| smartphone too. The high end here is really about devices
| with better capabilities and it allows companies with good
| hardware businesses (like ASUS and Lenovo) to build
| something in the Meta VR ecosystem.
|
| It's also possibly a way for Meta to stop dumping Quest
| devices. They'd rather just own the ecosystem rather than
| doing the hardware. If they can get ASUS, Lenovo, and
| others to do the low-margin hardware work and pick up the
| tab for a lot of the marketing, that's a win for Meta.
| Maybe Meta simply backs out of hardware over the next 5
| years if a nice third party hardware ecosystem arises.
|
| But I think this is going to be tough with VR. When you're
| trying to make an immersive experience, you need a baseline
| of hardware. It's also easier when you know the hardware
| you're trying to target. Android development can be
| frustrating because there's so much variance in speed and
| capabilities. One of the reason gaming consoles exist is
| that targeting a small set of hardware/capabilities makes
| things easier. That's not to say that PC gaming doesn't
| exist, but it can be hard because gamers need to spend a
| lot of money on hardware and there's a variance in
| capabilities that you need to account for - and who you
| might simply exclude. With a phone, it's less of an
| immersive experience for most apps which are just
| displaying something. They might display it slower, the UX
| might be laggier, etc. but it works. VR can't be laggy.
|
| In some ways, it feels like Meta is trying to become a game
| console company without having to subsidize the console.
| That would be big if they can pull it off. I guess in many
| ways this is what Steam pulled off on the PC - taking a 30%
| cut without having to subsidize any hardware. We'll see if
| Meta can do the same for VR.
| zztop44 wrote:
| I don't disagree with your core point, but branding is
| about a lot more than a logo. I think iPhones do sell to
| rich people because of branding, because iPhone's brand
| basically is "the best possible phone you can get, plus
| it integrates seamlessly with your other Apple devices".
| And Samsung flagships' brand is "the best Android phone".
|
| Porsche, or whatever, have a great and meaningful brand
| when it comes to cars, but that doesn't translate to
| smartphones. So when you see a phone with the Porsche
| logo the brand isn't really gonna do much for you.
| schneehertz wrote:
| The previous company that gave up hardware and only
| focused on software is called SEGA.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Apple has shown that their iPhone will outsell any
| luxury-branded Android phone to rich people because some
| things are about capability, not a logo
|
| How have they shown this?
| s0rce wrote:
| Reminds me of the Vertu cell phone, which the iPhone
| basically killed.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > The people who want to buy a Honda aren't the same people
| who want to buy an Acura, even though it's (essentially)
| the same parts.
|
| Nit, but as an Acura driver (chooser), I can tell you that
| they are definitely not essentially the same parts. The
| irrelevant parts are the same, but everything that matters
| to the driver (suspension/drivetrain, interior materials,
| technology, etc.) all all different and better in the
| Acura. I get what you're trying to say, but that was not a
| good metaphor.
| joking wrote:
| when you say something it's better, you should add better
| in what angle, because Acura suspension can be better for
| high speed cornering in a circuit, but suck if you leave
| in a place with bad road surface, and the honda
| suspension can be both softer and cheaper to replace.
|
| Anyway, I also get what you're trying to say.
| haiku2077 wrote:
| This depends on the model. I have an Acura project car
| and most of my performance relevant parts are Honda part
| numbers. Interior is the main exception.
|
| Heck, I've got a Civic intake manifold in the room with
| me to replace the Acura one, haha. (The generation of K
| series after mine has better airflow and it's an easy
| enough swap.)
|
| The Acura brand doesn't even exist outside of the US- if
| a car is sold in Europe or Japan the parts are Honda.
| rokkitmensch wrote:
| I strongly disagree that the low end of the market is
| taken. XReal's Air/2 are awesome and Moore suggests we'll
| see awesome displays in that form factor, not even
| necessarily from XReal.
| 0x457 wrote:
| Yes, but also there are currently so few components to pick
| from. SoC is definitely some kind of variation of
| Snapdragon XR2 unless you're Apple.
|
| Can't go into high-end because for a device to make sense
| either an existing ecosystem around it or high confidence
| in one appearing. If you tell me that I can buy a 3k dollar
| vr headset that can run current quest library, I would
| pretend you're joking.
|
| Mid-end is where we're at right now has/had very small
| margins because despite it being mid-end - you still have
| to use high-end components due to lack of options.
|
| I can see someone like Porsche Design making a "high-end"
| headset (in terms of price, components would be the same).
| The only option for low-end is to use components previously
| used in mid-end that would need to compete with used
| previous gens since they would be nearly identical on the
| hardware level.
| v01d4lph4 wrote:
| I think their RayBay Meta Glasses is a great example of a
| product like that!
| barfingclouds wrote:
| Wouldn't we call the Apple Vision Pro the high end?
| __s wrote:
| Because you want to use it as a basis for military VR or
| something
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Are they capable of selling hardware loss leaders
| indefinitely? If so, can they do it at a scale that matches
| the company's digital presence? The Google Daydream headset
| sitting on my shelf is skeptical.
|
| Regardless of whether they _can_ sell the hardware at a loss
| forever, they probably won 't _need_ to.
|
| Third-party hardware is engineering labor that Meta doesn't
| have to pay for. In fact, it's engineering labor that will
| pay Meta through royalties. Cost-cutting measures developed
| by those third parties can easily be copied by Meta's own
| product, reducing the cost of future versions of the
| hardware. Cheaper options in the marketplace also help Meta
| gain market penetration without their own hardware developing
| a reputation for poor quality.
|
| After a couple generations, vendor lock-in will start to set
| in, and they'll be able to charge more without losing
| customers. The aforementioned cost-cutting techniques start
| to pile up, too.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| Google did this early on with android - originally the Google
| devices (Nexus) were lower end, and high end devices were
| left to other manufacturers. They've flipped around recently,
| but I think the Nexus line was a decent enough idea at the
| time.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| The Nexus devices were initially badly designed high end
| devices, starting with the Nexus One, which was among the
| first smartphones with an OLED screen but had too little
| internal storage to be useful. There was no intentional
| strategy there to build a bad product, just bad product
| designers making bad design choices.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Nexus was supposed to be reference platform with a harmless
| quirk or two, not necessarily low or high end. The idea was
| everyone builds for Nexus and apps run everywhere.
| richardw wrote:
| its partly in the article. Companies like Xbox and Lenovo
| want different experiences for their clients. This allows
| them to share the basic platform but specialise for their
| customer segments, eg professional or Xbox owners or
| whatever. Architects and civil engineers and doctors might
| not want normal game controllers and the default resolution.
| Cheap devices used in developing countries can have a lower
| resolution and no hand tracking. Meta wins because they can't
| build 100 versions themselves, all they care about is growth
| of the market. Nothing is locked up yet, think of a market
| 100x bigger.
| wvenable wrote:
| Seems like without some kind of software revenue sharing
| model it doesn't make sense. These things are consoles --
| sold a cost or below cost in order to make it back on
| software sales.
| lttlrck wrote:
| PCVR maybe. There are latency optimizations to be made
| (preferably, for me, by adding DisplayLink)
| threeseed wrote:
| Because Meta will be focused on the consumer market.
|
| Which leaves a huge opportunity for professionals and
| businesses.
| talldayo wrote:
| The professional/business market, _famed_ for being so
| receptive of headsets when Microsoft first introduced the
| technology and then when Meta made them affordable. Now
| that Apple has done neither, their headset is sure to find
| a market fit where prior efforts failed.
| mkozlows wrote:
| Because you want to compete in a different market segment.
|
| To put this very concretely, look at Pimax. Their Crystal
| headset allegedly has standalone capability. All the hardware
| is there for it, they make this thing, they sell it -- but
| they don't have a standalone platform, and have no hope
| whatsoever of being able to develop one.
|
| For PCVR, they just use regular standard SteamVR and OpenXR,
| but for standalone usage, they suddenly have to be an amazing
| software company and they definitely are not. Using Horizon
| makes a ton of sense, and makes their product more attractive
| and better than it is without it.
| Closi wrote:
| > Why would I, as a potential hardware maker, wish to compete
| in a market where the existing main producer is a mega
| wealthy entity that is already dumping product below cost and
| is capable of doing so indefinitely?
|
| Because you want to expand your market.
|
| Let's say you are Pimax or Bigscreen Beyond and want to
| target users who don't have large gaming PC's - this is an
| obvious option for them.
| _giorgio_ wrote:
| Why should it be different than Google and Android?
|
| Google makes medium and high cost devices, but actually doesn't
| compete too much on margins.
|
| If the OS catches up, meta will do the same move, allowing
| other vendors to proliferate.
| giuseppe_petri wrote:
| > So there's no kind of existential danger to Quest here, but
| it remains to be seen if the hardware licensees can bring
| anything relevant to the table either.
|
| How does Meta make its money? Advertising. Licensees bring
| actual eyeballs to the table and eat the hardware costs
| fighting amongst themselves selling commodity hardware and Meta
| re-position Quest as a 'premium' product that they might
| actually make a little money on.
| nvy wrote:
| >Whereas for Meta, the Quest hardware has always been sold at
| breakeven or even as a loss leader (a few years ago they
| actually raised the price of the Quest 2 to cut further
| losses).
|
| Indeed, and that means they'll seek a return on their
| investment from continued invasive surveillance, emotional
| manipulation, and cramming ads everywhere.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| The other important difference between Apple then and Meta now
| is that Apple wasn't in a position that subjected it to
| possible (government) regulation. Meta has to try to play nice.
| Perhaps few vendors bite? But when the regulation noise
| increases - and it will - Meta can say it tried.
| hankchinaski wrote:
| They are not looking to make margins on the OS or the hardware.
| They want adoption and distribution. The money will be made
| later on extracting value from the ecosystem they are trying to
| build. Whether that is with a higher end product later on,
| monetising the OS/ecosystem later on with ads or app fees is
| not relevant at Thai stage. What they are trying to do is to
| build a new ecosystem that they are entrenched and that they
| control firmly. They are trying to build the android of VR to
| put it simply
| brink wrote:
| This all looks incredibly lonely.
| tfandango wrote:
| I think it all depends on context. It is lonely if you are the
| type of person who wants to interact physically. I work at
| home, and it can get kind of lonely here physically but there
| are some guys on Horizon I chat with from time to time as a
| break from work, in that sense it's the opposite of lonely.
| gausswho wrote:
| I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the upside-down
| language that Meta is trying to execute here with the repeated
| use of 'open' to describe any of this. This is an invitation for
| other corporations to drink from their social spigot and join
| their walled-off app store. The word 'open' really is under
| multiple fronts of diffusionary attack lately.
|
| Is the Overton Window now a mobius strip?
| b_d98 wrote:
| While good, Meta is likely to attempt to form a walled-garden in
| the vein of IOS and even Android to an extent. What I'd really
| hope for is a general-purpose computing platform with root access
| for the user, As I believe that mixed reality headsets have the
| potential to overtake both the smartphone and the PC as the
| default compute device of choice.
| squigz wrote:
| Is there any such solution in the VR space, even if not state-
| of-the-art?
| b_d98 wrote:
| There's SimulaVR. https://simulavr.com/
| xyst wrote:
| likely this. I fell for Apple once. I definitely won't fall for
| a Apple clone with one of the most untrustworthy companies
| since the turn of the century.
| modeless wrote:
| > And we encourage the Google Play 2D app store to come to Meta
| Horizon OS, where it can operate with the same economic model it
| does on other platforms.
|
| It sounds like they are specifically _not_ open to third party
| app stores selling native AR /VR ("3D") apps. I can see why
| Google might not want to participate if they're not allowed to
| compete.
|
| This feels like a response to complaints that Meta is
| hypocritical when complaining about closed platforms while
| running one themselves. But they aren't open sourcing the OS. I
| don't know why any OEMs would want to compete with Meta's
| hardware subsidized by app store revenue when they continue to
| own the exclusive store for native AR/VR apps. Maybe there's an
| app revenue share to sweeten the deal for hardware partners?
| bsimpson wrote:
| I think you're overindexing on "2D."
|
| The Play store is full of flat apps, designed for phones and
| tablets. There are a gajillion of them, and FB wants them in
| their headsets.
|
| It's not about not wanting competition - it's about wanting
| people to have more than 100 apps available when they use a
| Meta headset.
| int_19h wrote:
| But why would I as a user want to use those flat apps in VR,
| when I already have a phone and a tablet?
| modeless wrote:
| On current headsets, just because it's annoying to have to
| take the headset off to do things, and also to be able to
| use those apps in conjunction with other services like
| meetings in Horizon Workrooms.
|
| On future headsets with higher resolution and better
| comfort, because it would be a legitimately better
| experience in many cases.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Have you seen the Apple Vision demo(s)? Now imagine being
| able to have wall sized versions of Android apps like
| Netflix or even word processing apps like Google Docs.
| wvenable wrote:
| Is that what the majority of Vision Pro users are doing in
| VR? Projecting flat monitors around.
| int_19h wrote:
| I can see the point of projecting a _huge_ flat monitor
| in VR to, say, write code on it.
|
| A mobile app, not so much.
| 0x457 wrote:
| Well, kinda required for proper usage IMO. Let's forget
| display limitations and pretend I can project a giant
| code editor straight onto my eyeballs. I don't care about
| it if I have to take it off, to do any of the following:
|
| - Watch YouTube as I do something else
|
| - Listen to music and have control over the player
|
| I can see myself wearing a headset playing TFT, watching
| YouTube and have a build guide open in a browser. I can
| currently do it on an iPad and Vision Pro - https://www.r
| eddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1akjfpj/le...
| (different game, but you get the idea).
| modeless wrote:
| That's what it's about for Meta, sure. But for Google it
| would be about selling apps on a headset, and being
| prohibited from selling the native type of app for the
| platform would be pretty bad!
|
| Meta wants to have their cake and eat it too. If it's their
| intention to allow third party stores to sell native Quest
| AR/VR apps on the headset in competition with their own
| store, they should state that explicitly because what's
| written here pretty carefully doesn't imply that. I don't
| think we can just assume what isn't stated here.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| This seems like trying to come up with an answer to Apple
| Vision's ability to run iOS apps. If you can install apps from
| Google Play then you could, if you wanted to, check your email
| from inside your headset.
|
| I'm not sure many people would want to do that, but if Apple
| thinks it's a good idea, blah blah blah.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Its not a killer feature, but having to take off the headset
| to read mail or slack or whatever is a real drag.
|
| It will quickly become table stakes.
| modeless wrote:
| Sorry for the double post. One of my comments was moved here
| from a different submission so now there are two top level
| comments from me, and I can't edit or delete them because the
| edit window has closed.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| https://sidequestvr.com/ exists. Also Google is pushing their
| new AndroidXR os behind the scenes (after they killed
| Daydreams).
| mattlondon wrote:
| Notable by it's absence: ML/AI
| wearhere wrote:
| I was hoping to open this and see screenshots of what the OS
| looked like--I have never had a sense of what the OS for Meta's
| headsets is, only what individual games look like.
|
| Instead, we get five (5) "Not an actual product render"
| illustrations.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Its Android with a VR quick action bar and app launcher grid.
| You can select an immersive skybox "desktop" or a use
| passthrough. There's not much to show seeing as the passthrough
| is still fairly new. There are no built in 3d widgets or
| anything atm so there's really not much to show besides apps.
|
| Anyway, this seems like a licensing deal announcement, not a
| big software release.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I don't care what these people do, I'll never use one of their
| products unless it is to literally save someone's life.
| zooq_ai wrote:
| what a sad hill to die on
| t1c wrote:
| I don't think it's a particularly sad hill to die on - Meta
| has proven themselves to be exploitative, invasive, and
| downright malicious time and time again.
| zooq_ai wrote:
| I feel very sorry for people who feel that way and have
| their identity tied to hating Facebook/Meta
| t1c wrote:
| I don't get your point -- you're allowed to not like an
| invasive company and you're allowed to refuse to use
| their products if you don't like what they're doing. I
| don't think anyone in this conversation is making it
| their personality.
| gretch wrote:
| You came into this comment thread without any insight to
| add or anything interesting to say. You came in just to
| cast judgement "I feel sorry for people who don't use
| Facebook".
|
| In fact it is you who has tied their identity to feeling
| superior to others. Other guy doesn't sound like it's his
| identity at all.
| gretch wrote:
| No one is dead on a hill.
|
| If anything, not using VR makes you much more "alive".
|
| A real misapplication of this metaphor.
| zooq_ai wrote:
| once again, I feel very sorry for people who haven't
| enriched their lives with VR experiences and skills
| building. No different than people who poo-pooed computers
| and internet
| t1c wrote:
| I've used the Valve Index before, it's a great experience
| but not something that I found to be groundbreaking or
| life-changing.
| zooq_ai wrote:
| You just haven't found your App yet.
| t1c wrote:
| I don't think it's that... I've tried many VR apps and
| games (as far back as 7 years ago!) and it's just not for
| me. Don't get me wrong, it can be fun and engaging, but
| not a game-changer. And that's fine, people are allowed
| to enjoy what they want to enjoy, and vice versa. There's
| a reason people have personal preferences.
| vonwoodson wrote:
| I remember when Facebook released an "OS" for the phone (it was
| really just a skin for Android). While I'm really happy to see
| that FB is making another stab into the field with the Quest, and
| I'm very happy that we're finally getting some real development
| in VR, I'm even _more_ skeptical of them now as I was then: I
| just don 't trust FB with my data.
|
| Part of what makes me so skeptical is how "cheap" the Quest 3 is.
| There's no way they're not loosing [literally
| billions](https://fortune.com/2023/10/27/mark-zuckerberg-net-
| worth-met...) of dollars developing VR tech and, given their
| track record, only have one way they know to make that money
| back.
| joshmarinacci wrote:
| "Open" in the same way Android is, with complete control and app
| store by Meta. I think we have to accept that an 'open hardware
| platform' the way PCs were was an anomaly. We will never have
| anything like that again.
| andygeorge wrote:
| i think that ship sailed when smartphones became ubiquitous.
| given how heavily subsidized mobile devices are (especially
| compared to PCs), there's no incentive to produce an actually-
| open hardware or software platform. Google and Apple want you
| re-upping every 2 years and to stay locked into their
| ecosystems. i agree this is sad, but definitely not new
| drdaeman wrote:
| I don't think it's in the same way. I see "we licensed some
| software to ASUS, Lenovo and Microsoft (and may license to
| others - serious inquiries only)", not "we are releasing
| something under a free software license".
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| I won't touch VR/AR until the technology progresses to the point
| where its nealry indistinguishable from regular sunglasses/eye-
| glasses.
|
| I have yet to use any VR device that made me want to purchase it,
| its all felt insanely gimmicky, so far the only time a headset
| seems nice is on a plane ride.
|
| I can see the potential, still seems a long way off imo.
| zooq_ai wrote:
| Feel sorry that you feel that way. There are many experiences
| (especially ball games that require hand/eye co-ordination)
| that has made my game / fitness / skill improve at least 80%
| with very minimal amount of time I spent (compared to real
| world training). If you are into Fitness, nothing like training
| in VR for literally no money (compared to Gym / personal
| trainer)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| If "cool" people insist on only wearing Ray Bans that will
| keep VR fun. It will keep VRChat safe for furries, kemonomini
| and animekin.
| trendoid wrote:
| Any recommendations of games or apps that helped you most?
| zooq_ai wrote:
| personally Cricket and Table Tennis. But, you could also
| pick Baseball, Golf, and Boxing.
|
| Cricket, TT and Golf have none of the subscription
| bullshit.
| drdaeman wrote:
| Typically frames are made very light, so they won't make too
| much pressure on one's ears and nose. Unless someone runs a
| fiber to a frame, then keep the rest in a backpack or belt bag
| or something, I doubt it's physically possible to pack all the
| necessary additional hardware keeping it nearly
| indistinguishable from a frame without it.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| That CPU or battery puck for Apple Vision Pro, Magic Leap,
| and some others is a real killjoy. It makes it certain you
| won't be using fitness apps.
| drdaeman wrote:
| I'm skeptical about working out with a headset, at all.
| There are probably some good use cases, but I'm just
| mentally going through the stuff I'm doing at a gym, and I
| think that typically a headset would be either a hazard or
| a gimmick of questionable usefulness.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| I've found some great cardio apps on the Quest and
| they're one of the top things I go back for.
| echoangle wrote:
| Can you share the apps? I'm very happy with Thrill of the
| fight and pistol whip but I'm always looking for more.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Try Supernatural. It's like a dance, boxing, or martial
| arts workout. My VR lab is a little small and has slanted
| ceilings so I have to be careful not to hit the tips of
| my fingertips but it is a real workout that is reasonably
| safe.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Battery tech is likely to prevent that within our lifetimes,
| even if the displays and electronics can be miniaturised to
| that level.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| So you are ready to go then:
|
| https://www.rayneo.com/products/rayneo-air-2-xr-glasses
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| >And we encourage the Google Play 2D app store to come to Meta
| Horizon OS, where it can operate with the same economic model it
| does on other platforms.
|
| Did they get told to shove it by Google when they asked through
| back channels? To even come out and essentially say publicly
| "they can still get their 30% cut" is just wild to me.
|
| Also of note, they don't mention any license. Is the hope they
| can avoid the Google antitrust concerns Google is running into
| that Apple is somehow avoiding?
| potatolicious wrote:
| I'd speculate the two things have a lot to do with each other.
| It's easier to avoid accusations of monopolizing software
| distribution on a platform when you've openly invited other
| parties to participate.
| traek wrote:
| Google asked Meta to switch to AndroidXR for their Quest
| devices. Meta said no and suggested Google offer Play Store on
| Quest, which Google rejected.
|
| Google then went on a PR offensive accusing Meta of fragmenting
| the VR/AR ecosystem.
|
| Meta is including this in the announcement to head off
| criticism by Google aimed at creating pressure on Meta to
| consolidate on AndroidXR.
|
| https://www.roadtovr.com/meta-google-android-xr-quest-reject...
| sheepscreek wrote:
| Isn't it built on Android?
| lyu07282 wrote:
| Almost exciting, if the software wasn't just this shitty hacked
| together proprietary android fork. It's just an app store and
| game launcher, there is nothing there that I would imagine a
| metaverse operating system to be, like interoperability between
| vr apps. This would have to be built from the ground up around
| the VR paradigm on open standards and hackable.
|
| If the Internet started on today's proprietary app stores and
| nailed-shut operating systems it would've never innovated this
| quickly. This is what AOL/MSN desperately attempted, but it all
| failed (thank god).
|
| Meta's dream of the metaverse is nothing but laughable, hold back
| by nothing but terrible software.
| haytamoptika wrote:
| i love rivals on tech, hope like ios vs android
| ambichook wrote:
| i mean, its an android fork and some ios derivative so thats
| exactly what it is :D
| xandrius wrote:
| Never wished something would quickly fail already at its
| announcement as much as this.
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| Long plane rides and TV before bed - 2 things it would be
| better at than what we have now. Imagine watching a 27" screen
| from across the room in the dark vs a screen that moves with
| your vision... No more awkward pillow adjusting to make a
| makeshift couch etc. your neck can finally just relax and you
| can stare at the screen however you're laying. In these cases
| you're not doing anything else anyway.
|
| But yeah, the Tesla Airpod people who talk to themselves all
| loud outside will no doubt have a full UI of the world 24/7,
| gesturing like maniacs in the middle of stores, in crosswalks -
| just a news and stock ticker streaming across the top of their
| field of vision at all times. And there will of course be
| junkies in the streets, with - instead of smartphones - goggles
| on their faces, crumbled up in a brick corner just like the
| dystopian art showed us.
|
| For Pareto's 20%, it's an Apple Watch, or Airpods++.
| xandrius wrote:
| For your own health, try to avoid TV before bed, it's not
| good for your sleep.
|
| I still think that watching movies/TV should be a social
| experience and not akin to scrolling on social media. My neck
| can be a bit less comfortable for that :D
| DotaFan wrote:
| Quite dislike Quest 2 dependency on Meta, would probably never
| buy their hardware again.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Yeah my CV1 doesn't work anymore, I think Meta added some
| account requirement. I feel like Facebook stole some money from
| me, in the sense that it wasn't obvious when I bought the thing
| that I'd need to buy into their ecosystem. But it is basically
| first gen hardware, so I guess it isn't worth anything.
|
| I was pretty excited about VR (enough to drop a couple hundred
| on what was then a top of the line headset) but overall this
| experience killed all interest for me.
|
| Maybe good open source options will come out in a couple years.
| RainaRelanah wrote:
| A friend of mine has been working this year on getting the
| CV1/Rift S running without the Oculus app/Meta account, which
| also means continued support for these two discontinued
| headsets. I don't think she has publicly released it yet, but
| good progress is being made.
|
| https://github.com/BnuuySolutions/ReLinked
|
| https://twitter.com/BunniKaitlyn/status/1756580547768279466
| a13o wrote:
| The bridge to nowhere doesn't need more features, it needs a
| somewhere
| DragonMaus wrote:
| Would this be the logical extrapolation of the "it's not the
| destination, but the journey to get there" mindset?
| spxneo wrote:
| feels like US tech companies are running on fumes
|
| just as the AI bubble starts to fizzle its one last push at AR
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I disagree to an extent. I think AI is the real deal, VR though
| is indeed an evolutionary dead-end that we've been down and
| retreated from before.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| That's a bad name collision, "Horizon" is the name of the OS on
| the Nintendo 3ds and switch.
| _joel wrote:
| And also for people following the UK news, the name of the
| Fujitsu/Post Office software that led to a not insignificant
| number of sub-postmasters being falsely convited in the largest
| miscarriages of British justice ever (maybe anywhere).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
| darkhorse13 wrote:
| Literally nobody knows this though. Even searching for "Horizon
| OS" only returns Meta stuff already.
| xcdzvyn wrote:
| Yeah - while I've never dived too deeply, I have modded my
| 3DS a fair bit and didn't know what the OS was codenamed.
| I've always just seen it called 3DS OS, native firm, etc.
| sb8244 wrote:
| Eh, I don't think this is a bad name collision. Nintendo
| doesn't really talk about stuff like this publicly, and
| searching for it is pretty much reddit + hacker news threads.
|
| I'm sure there's a lot of internal code name collisions.
| lsllc wrote:
| There's precedent, when Apple named iOS, Cisco had (and still
| has) IOS. They just came to some licensing settlement for
| Apple's use of the name [0].
|
| Actually, it looks like Apple also licensed the iPhone
| trademark from Cisco too!
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS#:~:text=In%20June%202010%
| 2....
| superkuh wrote:
| This entire thing is newspeak. Every headline means the opposite.
| For example, "A More Open App Ecosystem" means a more closed
| application ecosystem. By switching to a proprietary OS and
| setting up a walled garden where they have to approve all
| software you can run. This is part of the coming war on general
| computation.
| tempodox wrote:
| > This is part of the coming war on general computation.
|
| Coming? I'd say it's already full on. Apple's malicious
| compliance with the DMA is one part of it, for instance. Of
| course others try to imitate.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| Does this page even load for y'all in Firefox? For me CORS
| protection blocks the whole site from loading.
| asabla wrote:
| Nah, the same issue here as well
| coryfklein wrote:
| Wow that spam bot is quite creative! Looks like they've figured
| out how to create a green account, and perhaps bypassing the spam
| detection by having each new account only post one spam message.
|
| I'm sure dang is really busy right now.
| macintux wrote:
| Yeah, the flood of spam is killing the server's performance.
| librasteve wrote:
| not sure Horizon is a great name for a software project
| riffic wrote:
| great, another Android.
| taylorbuley wrote:
| While the web trends away from open, Facebook is zigging where
| others are zagging and supporting the resistance technology-wise.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| What are you even talking about?
|
| Facebook is THE biggest actor who works non-stop against the
| open web and is the biggest closed-off silo of data on the web.
| taylorbuley wrote:
| What makes you say that?
| slim wrote:
| This will (thankfully) fail because meta will not be able to
| harness the chinese industrial firehose because 1. US
| protectionism 2. chinese people are not stupid, they won't let a
| company whose business model revolves around selling attention,
| acquire a monoply on attention of human beings
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Imagine being banned from Facebook due to not complying with the
| community guidelines and being unable to use your computer.
|
| Community guidelines that can change at any moment at any time
| and are enforced by random people who can make mistakes.
|
| A Facebook OS as a daily driver is an idea that is vomitive in
| every way.
|
| Imagine ads that track you eyes and that you cannot look away
| from. Ads that track your face muscles so they know exactly how
| you react to them. Like being connected to a lie detector 24/7.
|
| This is pure evil, everyone should reject this.
| askafriend wrote:
| What you wrote makes doesn't sense because Horizon OS doesn't
| require a Facebook account or any account on social media.
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| Meta is smartly capturing the MR developer market like they
| captured the web developer market with React.
|
| In terms of Vision vs Quest - I wonder if there will be a "React
| Native" parallel that allows developers to write React for both
| Vision and Quest apps. A lot of the developer market comes down
| to languages: Python for AI/ML, Obj-C (Swift) for iOS, Java
| (Kotlin) for Android - but JavaScript always seems to weasle its
| way into these native platforms and a lot of companies end up
| just writing React for anything front-end.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| Making any multiplatform real-time 3D for Apple is such a pain.
| Even simply using Xcode is a nightmare.
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| Agree with you there! I don't particularly love Facebook and
| haven't even used it since 2009, but I can't deny how world-
| changing React has been for not only front-end (in terms of
| state management etc.) but also for building cross-platform
| native UIs on various platforms like TVs and mobile devices -
| and being able to do it with a (mostly) common codebase.
|
| I probably would have never built for iOS if I had to use
| Xcode and their entire ecosystem, luckily in RN you usually
| just need to install their command line tools and never open
| the software.
| forgotmypwlol wrote:
| If you use Expo, you don't even have to do that.
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| Expo was amazing for my first foray into React Native
| (https://github.com/bennyschmidt/daily-tarot)
|
| I eventually ran into some limitations (accessing Camera
| Roll back then, also in-app purchases back then) that
| forced me to have to use more native stuff. I bet it's
| come a long way though since then.
| gorbypark wrote:
| There is react native for VisionOS already and the react team
| has hinted at react native for Quests/VR in the past..
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| I didn't know, thanks for letting me know! Just found this:
| https://www.npmjs.com/package/@callstack/react-native-
| vision...
|
| > This is a full fork of [React Native] with changes needed
| to support visionOS.
|
| Awesome.
| guiomie wrote:
| At least I can build VR apps for free on Meta Quest with Unity,
| as opposed to 200$ a month with Apple Vision Pro.
| paulspl wrote:
| I don't think anyone cares.
| w0mbat wrote:
| Otherwise known as Linux.
| gnuser wrote:
| fyi I'm working on a GPLv3 competitor and intend to outshine
| whatever this is
| nar001 wrote:
| I'd be curious to see but no idea how you intend to get enough
| people to develop for your platform
| zmmmmm wrote:
| I've got to hand it to Zuckerberg : when he spouted the "open" vs
| "closed" rhetoric earlier in the year, I said it was nice words
| but meaningless unless he put his money where his mouth was and
| makes Quest OS available to others as well as put firm guarantees
| around side loading etc. But in the same breath I said I doubted
| he would do that. And now he has done exactly that. However much
| antipathy people have towards him and his past, he keeps putting
| meat behind his words and actually doing the things he says.
|
| At the same time, important to recognise here that this is still
| to some extent "open washing" what is a totally controlled OS.
| This is not like AOSP where you can go download the source code
| and compile it yourself. So far it is not even like Windows where
| you can download an installer and run it on a computer yourself.
| A manufacturer will have to form a business partnership with Meta
| to even get access to this "open" OS - I assume. But since I keep
| under estimating Zuckerberg maybe he will exceed my expectations
| on that front too.
|
| Nonetheless, this is a huge step forward and a genuine challenge
| now for Google/Samsung. The bar is now very very high for them to
| deliver something compelling enough that manufacturers will jump
| on board instead of building on Horizon OS with an existing
| install base of 25M+ users and thousands of apps.
|
| All up, this is pretty exciting news in the XR space and really
| sets the stage for an epic battle in the next couple of years as
| these platforms go head to head.
| weinberg wrote:
| Somewhat surprised to not see Valve in there, especially after
| Steam Link showed up a handful months ago.
| dev1ycan wrote:
| Dude they already have a new grift, AI, why are they still
| pouring money in this failed project? Zuckerberg is trying so
| hard to not be Elon 2.0
| webninja wrote:
| It's funny that Horizon is named after Horizon in the Amazon
| Prime TV series "Upload". Good TV series btw.
| Grimeton wrote:
| Funny what they call an OS nowadays. I'd say it's another Linux
| distribution.
| fragmede wrote:
| Depends on if you consider Android, ChromeOS, and Ubuntu to be
| the same OS or not.
| kernal wrote:
| If Android was Linux then I should be able to run any GNU/Linux
| app, without modification or installation of additional
| software, on Android, right?
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| As usual I get quite hopeful when I hear about a new operating
| system. We so absolutely need paths to move away from what we
| have today.
|
| I didn't even know what "mixed reality operating system" was so
| that made me hopeful. May include some nifty quantum processing.
|
| Alas, it is just stuff built on top of Android, which is built on
| top of the Linux kernel.
|
| Perhaps "Meta Horizon SDK for Android" would be a better label?`
| meiraleal wrote:
| > Perhaps "Meta Horizon SDK for Android" would be a better
| label?`
|
| Yes, the same as Android SDK for Linux. But it became just
| Android.
| BlueFalconHD wrote:
| What about "Meta Horizon SDK for Android SDK for Linux?"
| kernal wrote:
| Let's just cut to the chase and call it the HDK.
| snvzz wrote:
| >Alas, it is just stuff built on top of Android, which is built
| on top of the Linux kernel.
|
| Look into HarmonyOS, Fuchsia, LionsOS, Managarm, Haiku and
| Genode.
| fsflover wrote:
| And Qubes OS.
| rainsil wrote:
| What unexplored space do you think is ripe for a totally new
| operating system?
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| A space where operating systems exist to service the operator
| and not the OS vendor.
|
| One that isn't just a vehicle to push ads and subscriptions
| to <blank>-as-a-service or otherwise act as a siphon to send
| telemetry up to the mothership.
|
| Yes, I know *nix exists but it's so fractured and every
| little variant has its own quirks making it difficult to be a
| general purpose OS that the masses could adopt, IMO.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > Yes, I know *nix exists but it's so fractured and every
| little variant has its own quirks making it difficult to be
| a general purpose OS that the masses could adopt, IMO.
|
| Yes, but to be clear: the main hurdle for adoption is
| fragmentation across GUIs/installs/package management
| across distros, which is out of scope (for better or worse)
| from the POV of Linux. Linux is a technological marvel, and
| if "they" could sort out these issues it would be the
| shortest path to mainstream appeal, by far. I'm certain
| this is technically feasible but also extremely challenging
| to pull off from a leadership perspective. Unfortunately, I
| don't think there is a solution the majority would embrace.
| There is a ton of flame wars to overcome, hills people will
| die on.
| rainsil wrote:
| It seems like if you created a new operating system to
| solve these problems and it gained some traction, you'd
| fracture the landscape even more.
|
| Unless your operating system happened to be superior to all
| the existing solutions in all aspects with no tradeoffs.
|
| Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/
| klabb3 wrote:
| Ironically, general purpose computing. Like servers,
| smartphones, etc. The premise of Fuchsia, as a prominent
| example, is to build an OS that operates more like a
| sandboxed/capabilities-based microservices platform, with
| structured IPC across processes. All major platforms both
| cloud and clients (even browsers) have gone to great lengths
| to deliver precisely that on top of existing OSs, with many
| expensive layers and hacks. It would be a lot nicer to have
| it built into the OS.
|
| Does that mean it's truly ripe? I don't know.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Dumb, probably overly broad Q: I'm looking to build a
| hardware project off a flutter app. Linux on Raspberry Pi
| is the straightforward option. But I want an excuse to
| build on Fuchsia.
|
| Let's pretend Fuchsia is just as easy to deploy on (I'm 99%
| sure it won't be).
|
| Does Fuchsia buy me any cool stuff long-term that isn't
| possible on Linux?
|
| Like, what's my excuse for going with Fuchsia other than
| "(handwaves) it'll be more secure"? (to be clear, im
| teasing myself and my understanding of Fuchsia, not your
| explanation)
| klabb3 wrote:
| > Let's pretend Fuchsia is just as easy to deploy on (I'm
| 99% sure it won't be).
|
| To stress this beyond a doubt: don't do this unless
| you're willing to become an early-masochistic-martyr
| adopter. My knowledge is outdated by years though. I
| don't know how far you'd get today.
|
| > Does Fuchsia buy me any cool stuff long-term that isn't
| possible on Linux?
|
| I don't think so. Fuchsia shines with capability-based
| multitenancy, and basically anywhere you would have
| different processes from different vendors communicating
| together (like a mobile OS with multiple partially
| trusted apps that may need to talk to one another). If
| you own/audit all code on your device, especially in a
| single app, you don't gain anything from that.
|
| Some auxiliary stuff like content addressable file system
| and OTA deployments may be attractive, but I have no idea
| if those things are actually supported or even around
| these days.
|
| Oh, one thing that may be worth tracking in your domain
| is how fuchsia is progressing in terms of power
| management. If you're on arm and battery power, and they
| prioritize it, it may beat Linux & android in terms of
| low power devices. But that's pure speculation.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Unikernels. Throw away the OS completely, and just run the
| server application on the hardware/hypervisor. That would
| be my answer for servers. You kinda don't need an OS for
| them.
| rsync wrote:
| For what it's worth, I am doing this with FreeBSD right now
| ... with jail.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Dreaming of a world where normal PCs could have an OS on the
| quality level of MacOS with the software ecosystem but Linux
| is just too fragmented that you can't build anything coherent
| or reliable on an interface level in the way MacOS is.
|
| This isn't saying Linux is bad, its great at what it does and
| being modular but how can something like MacOS spell check
| where it works on any text field coherently across any app
| work in a modular world like that.
|
| Windows just feels like bad decisions made decades ago hold
| it back, it can't even open a folder of 20 thumbnails without
| choking, MacOS can handle 10,000 like a knife through butter.
| Can't even find a file opened yesterday when you search for
| it in the start menu by exact name, MacOS manages in a
| fraction of a second. Maybe the right team could rewrite all
| the things causing this jank but you'd essentially have to
| replace so much of the company that caused it anyway that it
| doesn't seem feasible.
|
| Still use all 3 for different tasks but MacOS is the only one
| that feels like an operating system should feel in 2024.
| llm_trw wrote:
| > May include some nifty quantum processing.
|
| While we're at it they might do a bit of dabbling in reversing
| entropy and solving the halting problem - it's only impossible
| in flat space-time after all.
| jessriedel wrote:
| "Operating system" is being used to refer to the UI for running
| and managing apps (not the original under-the-hood sense of the
| word for how app share resources, manage security, etc.). For
| better or worse, that is how consumers understand it.
| BizarreByte wrote:
| > We so absolutely need paths to move away from what we have
| today.
|
| Why though? What necessitates our move away from what we have?
| hanniabu wrote:
| Diversity = freedom
| aporetics wrote:
| Nope
| Panini_Jones wrote:
| "Nope" doesn't really contribute to the discussion. Why
| does diversity not equal freedom?
| sircastor wrote:
| I was amused and interested when I found out that HaikuOS is
| not Linux, nor even the Linux Kernel, but a reimplementation of
| BeOS (concepts mostly) on the NewOS kernel.
|
| I've been dwelling in some nostalgia recently and miss some of
| the earlier days when everything wasn't so homogenous. This is
| all rose-colored glasses though, as I don't miss when
| everything was also extremely incompatible. And slow. And
| expensive.
| dfex wrote:
| > I've been dwelling in some nostalgia recently and miss some
| of the earlier days when everything wasn't so homogenous.
|
| You are not alone in this. I see announcements like this one
| from Meta and others like Oxide - companies out there having
| a swing in a different direction and it makes me glad that
| there are people out there thinking outside the monoculture
| that computing feels like it's become sometimes.
|
| Sure, standardisation has been good in some respects, but I
| feel like the incentive to really innovate (as opposed to
| incrementally improve) in the operating system and compute
| space has really dried up.
| classified wrote:
| And you seriously expect an ad company to improve anything?
| What's Google missing?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Android is already quite cool compared with what traditional
| OSes happen to be.
|
| For starters it is what Microsoft has failed to do with
| Longhorn, because contrary to having internal sabotage from the
| kernel team, the Android team doubled down on their efforts to
| make a managed userspace actually work in a mainstream product.
|
| Dalvik sucked balls against Sony and Nokia J2ME
| implementations, with its DEX interpreter, yet they managed to
| create ART with quite cool mix of JIT/AOT/PGO, and a very
| modern GC.
|
| Then it follows up, that for all the praise Plan 9 gets on
| hacker circles, Android's approach to user space closely
| follows on Inferno with Limbo, Plan 9's successor that many of
| its praisers tend to forget.
|
| Followed by being able to encapsulate Linux kernel into a
| micro-kernel like stack, where most drivers are process based
| using Android IPC to talk to the kernel, and can be written in
| a mix of Java, C++, and now Rust.
|
| If only they handn't screw Sun, and stepped away when the ship
| went down, maybe they could have saved themselves some
| headaches, however Google isn't really a language designer
| company, so maybe that was for the greater good nontheless.
|
| Ah, and using AIDL is so much better developer experience than
| dealing with the primitive COM tooling on Windows.
| anthk wrote:
| Limbo and Inferno are partially alive in Go and plan9/9front.
| On J2ME, it worked well in legay devices; but for modern
| usage, Android's Java-like API was a godsend for the
| _developers_ , as they could seamlessly transition from one
| Java-like lang to another one. Heck, J2ME interpreters for
| Android do exist, and I think lots of them just use shims...
| hatthew wrote:
| Joel Spolsky's "Commoditize your Complements" [0] seems relevant
| here. From that perspective, it seems like Meta is trying to
| commoditize the hardware and monopolize the OS (and likely the
| app store and payment system), similar to Android.
|
| [0] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
| w10-1 wrote:
| If hardware manufacturers actually wanted this, Meta would be
| announcing a licensing deal.
|
| This is a threat to Apple: if Apple doesn't relent on
| advertising/privacy in VisionOS, then Meta will do to VR what
| Google did for smartphone's: sell the market to maintain
| advertising access.
|
| Meta doesn't care about money or mindshare on VR. They just want
| ad access.
| EchoReflection wrote:
| they want ad access because they care about money and mindshare
| (a term I hadn't heard of until reading your comment, so thank
| you for that!)
| hooloovoo_zoo wrote:
| Apple and to a lesser extent Google have high trust. Nobody
| trusts Meta at all. So who would adopt their OS?
| threeseed wrote:
| Not sure why you wouldn't put Google and Meta in the same
| basket.
|
| Both are advertising companies with a history of working to
| undermine pro-privacy initiatives.
| hooloovoo_zoo wrote:
| It's an inherently subjective assessment obviously, but I
| can justify it with e.g. survey results
| https://theharrispoll.com/partners/media/axios-
| harrispoll-10....
| ceroxylon wrote:
| As a Quest user: mostly younger devs. I see 18-22yo
| developers who do not care about the history of Meta making
| very impressive games that attract large amounts of their
| peers, adding micro-transactions along the way to fund their
| development, and it works, they make a large amount of money
| and have very active communities on Discord.
| Panini_Jones wrote:
| What are the names of the games?
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Apple and Google have high trust?
|
| In what world?
|
| In terms of privacy, Apple has more trust, yes, but the daily
| stream of zero days on iPhones hurt it by a good margin. I
| won't even start talking about Google's privacy issues...
| genidoi wrote:
| I fully trust apple photos / g photos, on an iphone.
|
| Idk/idc about the "daily 0 days" that you referenced, I do
| care about being able to know with absolute certainty that
| my photos will be there 20 years from now.
| m463 wrote:
| I think apple has high trust only because they repeat their
| message all the time.
|
| However, just buy an apple device and try to use it. You
| cannot use it without apple allowing it. You must connect to
| apple and activate your device. And as part of activation,
| you get a chance to read apple's privacy policy. Literally
| thousands of pages of privacy policy without the ability to
| DO anything, like say "No". And everything in the os phones
| home, continuously.
|
| If you are a european and disable location services, and use
| a european vpn, apple still won't let you use the european
| app store because the phone knows your location. sigh.
| genidoi wrote:
| > apple still won't let you use the european app store
| because the phone knows your location.
|
| The national app store you get to use (the region of your
| iphone) is based on your billing address + card details
| (which obviously are validated when you enter them), not
| your phone location.
| m463 wrote:
| Here is the comment that said different?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40069509
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| And that is weird. Apple gives Chinese government direct
| access to user data. Apple obeys every demand from China and
| Russia. Meanwhile Meta communications director Andy Stone
| just got 6 years in russian prison for allowing people to say
| mean things about russia.
| dustypotato wrote:
| "Got" as in got convicted in absentia. He's not in prison!
| zmmmmm wrote:
| Meta isn't even trying to get anything on Vision OS at all, I'm
| sure they have no interest or care about that until and unless
| it becomes a mass market product.
|
| They don't want to be locked out of freedom to do what they
| want, and that's a primary motivation here it's true. But the
| obsessive focus on ad revenue that people assume they have is
| pretty far from their thoughts in the VR/AR space at this
| point. They have complete faith that being the dominant owner
| of the dominant platform that they think the future of
| computing will revolve around (I'm not arguing this, but I'm
| satisfied it's what Zuckerberg believes) will yield sufficient
| value to be worthwhile and they aren't worried about how it
| happens at this point.
| varispeed wrote:
| That's a poor name for an operating system, especially in the UK.
|
| Google Horizon Post master drama or watch the TV series.
| rock_artist wrote:
| This seems like a great move. Similar to existing Android
| ecosystem, If this ends up making standardization of AR/VR, meta
| benefits from being the tone setter just as Google for Android. I
| wonder if the Qualcomm lock-in would stay or Mediatek and others
| would also onboard.
|
| The biggest test is how much current partners (Asus, Lenovo, etc)
| will sell. This will verdict the future of this idea.
| vcryan wrote:
| More "awesome tech" from Meta that few people will ever use. If
| you do, just be careful they don't share your location with any
| genocidal occupiers!
| edfletcher_t137 wrote:
| Subtitled "Not an actual product render."
| mey wrote:
| There is a Meta earnings call in 2 days, and the annual
| shareholder meeting at the end of may.
|
| The details here seem a little thin. Partner agreements to
| produce _something_ rather than a concrete thing.
|
| Hopefully we will see prototypes, but right now the skeptic in
| me sees this as a trial balloon for investors more than
| anything.
| kernal wrote:
| >And we encourage the Google Play 2D
|
| They just had to stick that 2D in there. Yes, poke the bear.
| bitwize wrote:
| It's gonna be a live service OS, like Windows, with
| subscriptions, fees, and developer restrictions.
|
| What VR needs is a VR OpenBSD.
| xyst wrote:
| Unless I have the ability to inspect source code of "Meta Horizon
| OS". No way in hell am I touching anything from this company.
|
| I wonder what types of telemetry garbage is embedded into the OS.
| juliendorra wrote:
| 'Pivot to software' has been done several times in computing
| history: Go Corporation, SGI, Sun, Blackberry, Palm, Sega, and
| oh, NeXT. These are _interesting_ precedents. I don 't know of a
| 'pivot to software' that actually worked (NeXT ended up going
| back to hardware, thanks to the reverse acquisition!)
|
| There's also the question of the licensees: so they choose Meta's
| OS as the base for their hardware, maybe because they don't have
| anything else? Quest OS is neither a best in class user
| experience (it's still full of bugs, frictions and is a very
| inconsistent UI), and it's clearly not a good dev experience at
| all.
|
| So your hardware now inherit all of Meta's tech and UX debts, and
| you don't even have a guarantee of daily recurring usage or of a
| killer application user will flock to. Is that the great win for
| their hardware that they think it is?
|
| Of course, as several of us predicted when the number of Vision
| Pro apps quickly surpassed Quest Store Apps, Meta is now forced
| to react and change their weird two-tier approach: they are
| opening a (small) marketing presence for App Lab apps and are
| creating a "brand new" spatial app framework, to start and get
| out of the Unity/Unreal game engine third-party pipeline trap.
|
| That they only now see that giving developers a native app UI kit
| is a basic of any OS is... not promising from a supposedly now
| long term OS owner.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| The 'pivot to software' is more like a pivot back to software
| because Meta already disbanded a previous OS team at Reality
| Labs and indeed platform software was exactly what motivated
| the thinking behind buying Oculus as expressed in Zucks
| internal deal memo on the subject [1] where he ranks Apps and
| Platform OS (eg Android/PlayStore) both above hardware. They
| also recently passed on an offer from Google who are working on
| a new XR android build. 6DOF 3D is a unique surface area and so
| far all we have seen are OS ports from 2D pancake land so these
| efforts can't come soon enough.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33538742
| bemmu wrote:
| Promoting App Lab apps was the most exciting part of this
| announcement.
|
| I had been put off porting anything to Quest since I'd need to
| get official Meta blessing to actually get store presence to
| have enough users to pay for such an effort, but now if you can
| publish in App Lab and actually get some in-store promotion, it
| starts to sound way more compelling.
|
| I do agree with their initial approach to keep the perceived
| quality of the first apps high. But reality is that people want
| to play what they find fun/funny, even if less polished, and
| this change might open up some store promotion for such apps
| that solo devs like me are more likely to be able to make.
| dkrich wrote:
| The most interesting thing about this is that everyone just
| forgot all the anger about the spying from a few years ago during
| the Cambridge analytica thing. Did that just go away?
| random_kris wrote:
| Maybe because it was woke propaganda and now we realized
| everyone is doing that shit
| nsonha wrote:
| How does this compare to Microsoft's and Apple's? Is there any
| other player in AR/VR/MR OS?
| langsoul-com wrote:
| Not too surprising given how Google has been closing down their
| Android platform to Meta for a while now
| luma wrote:
| Sounds like MS ditching Windows MR has left an opportunity in the
| market for Meta. The OEMs listed all previously made MR headsets
| and presumably needed a new solution.
| purpleidea wrote:
| It's nonsense. They're claiming to be "open" but it's all still
| vendor controlled proprietary nonsense.
|
| If they really want to be the dominant VR winner, then release it
| all under GPLv3+ and let us all get to innovate together.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| Are there really "millions of people" using it?
| tempodox wrote:
| Just as this detergent washes whiter than white!
| classified wrote:
| For all those who feel insufficiently tracked by Google. If it
| has a browser, you might be able to run the JavaScript
| implementation of Android on top of it, thus being double-
| tracked.
| deliriumchn wrote:
| I have a bad feeling that this will break modded beat saber on
| quest once again :/
| banish-m4 wrote:
| Android tried it and the results were closed-source fiefdoms and
| crappy hardware.
|
| There's not a big enough market for this to sustain itself
| because VR is a flying car category that no one needs.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Has anyone actually tried the Metaverse yet?
|
| As I understood it, this was basically a massively expensive
| failed experiment so far. No-one is using it for reals (yet?).
|
| Who's the market for developing apps for it?
| esskay wrote:
| Tried it, was very unimpressed, it feels very much like a tech
| demo even as recent as this year. Certainly wouldn't waste my
| money on it.
| tfandango wrote:
| It is really hard to find a "world" that has people in it,
| that you actually want to talk to. I have had some great
| experiences there though, some regular people that hang out
| in worlds and talk about stuff. It's kind of cool when it
| happens but it is hit and miss. And there is something
| missing with the kinds of things you can do, Super Rumble
| feels like a real game, but most worlds are aesthetic in
| nature, a place to sit and look at stuff. It feels like it
| needs to mature.
| lionkor wrote:
| Not personally interested in an OS from Meta - the only thing I
| use from Meta is WhatsApp, and that's just because it is
| difficult to replace here in central Europe.
|
| I don't get excited about new OSs unless they're FOSS. It sounds
| like an ideological take, but it's not: When an OS is not FOSS,
| they either succumb to the wrong incentives and lack of care
| (Windows) or just become a walled garden (MacOS). From what I've
| seen from, say, Visual Studio Code (FOSS version), or Chromium,
| or other such projects, is that a large company open-sourcing the
| core of their product can only yield positives over the
| alternative (fully closed) solution.
|
| Fully FOSS would be sick, partially would be useful. Closed and
| ad-ridden, driven by wrong incentives and run by a company with
| zero sense for privacy (see their Facebook product) and a love
| for hype (see their AI and Metaverse products that just about
| nobody wanted?), I don't see this becoming very popular.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| I know this is totally tangential to what you're saying and
| irrelevant to your point but I'm curious. I'm pretty up on
| MacOS and Linux, not so much on Windows. Is Windows less of a
| walled garden than MacOS?
| Longlius wrote:
| It's functionally the same - code signing is mandated unless
| you want your users to get a scary pop-up.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| "sick" - slang for "fantastic, amazing"
|
| (for the sake of non-native English speakers)
| fsflover wrote:
| > It sounds like an ideological take, but it's not: When an OS
| is not FOSS, they either succumb to the wrong incentives
|
| AFAIK, the whole point of the free software movement and the
| key idea in all Stallman's essays is that free software brings
| actual, practical benefits to users, long-term. It's not a
| religion.
| tga_d wrote:
| No, Stallman has always insisted from its inception that free
| software is firstly a _moral_ principle, a sort of human
| right like free speech in the traditional liberal worldview,
| and only secondarily a pragmatic one.[0][1] I suspect if you
| asked most people involved with the FSF, they 'd say
| something similar. This is probably the largest difference
| between the free software movement and the open source
| movement.
|
| [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/the-moral-and-the-
| legal.html [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pragmatic.html
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