[HN Gopher] John Carmack on Meta Horizon OS
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John Carmack on Meta Horizon OS
Author : tosh
Score : 73 points
Date : 2024-04-25 20:02 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| anthk wrote:
| Non JS address:
|
| https://nitter.privacydev.net/ID_AA_Carmack/status/178282646...
| chatmasta wrote:
| I've only skimmed the Horizon OS news, but my first reaction was
| that it looks like an obvious attempt to emulate the success of
| Android. Own the operating system, ship it with a flagship
| product, and push it to other OEMs. There are more iPhones than
| Google Pixels but there are more Androids than any other phone.
| flakiness wrote:
| If it opens up the Horizon OS in Android level, it'll cost them
| massively as pointed out in the tweet. Android could've been
| much-much-much simpler if it were only for Pixel.
|
| I think people at Meta are aware of that and the Horizon-
| compatible devices will be less diverse than the ones from the
| Android ecosystem.
| chatmasta wrote:
| But if Android were only for Pixel it might not have
| succeeded. I guess one notable difference is that Android
| started as software-only, and Pixel came later. Maybe Google
| would have played it differently if they had a flagship phone
| from the beginning.
|
| Still, I'm surprised to see Carmack taking a position against
| opening a platform. Although it sounds from his tweet that he
| thinks it's more of a proprietary partnership than true open
| sourcing. If that's the case, I see the argument for it being
| a distraction. But if the roadmap includes open sourcing the
| OS, then surely the "distraction" is worth it to capture the
| majority of the market.
| bagels wrote:
| Android was around for a long time before the Pixel phones
| came out. Maybe you just mean Google branded phones in
| general?
|
| 2008:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)
| 2010: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Nexus 2016:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_(1st_generation)
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| bad take from carmack
| Diederich wrote:
| Can you expand on that? Thank you.
| Alupis wrote:
| I'm not the parent - but Carmack has curated a history of
| being very wrong about VR and it's potential. Practically
| none of his predictions since joining Oculus/Meta have become
| reality - and probably never will.
|
| He's at the stage of his life/career where he doesn't have to
| actually worry about a successful product. He's probably
| content to just hack on cool tech - regardless of outcome.
|
| So, take his predictions for all things VR-related as wishful
| thinking. Maybe they'll become true, but probably not. He'll
| have a ton of fun either way.
| nomel wrote:
| Do you have some examples of this "very wrong"? I am
| finding his predictions on standalone being what gets mass
| adoption, inside out tracking taking over, and MR
| environment interactions being mostly a gimmick, correct.
| supernovae wrote:
| As fan of the amazing quest 3, i'm interested in seeing what a
| "OEM" ecosystem can do.
|
| I do think that stand alone VR is where it's at because it frees
| you while still being completely capable for PCVR so i'm hopeful
| some PCVR "first" headsets can join a program like this and
| deliver on stand alone while still keeping their bread and
| butter.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| >Meta already sells the Quest systems basically at production
| cost
|
| This is of course scary and why the VR market is now pretty much
| a monopoly. Perhaps the next versions of the vision pro will be
| lowered cost and have more games, but Zuck is just throwing money
| at each headset so how can groups like HTC compete? HTC and Valve
| never really had a chance when a headset that costs $300 to make
| is sold for $300.
|
| Zuck and Carmack running victory laps now trying to Android-ize
| VR is probably not super surprising, but all of this show what
| happens when there's no real regulations to stop this kind of
| monopolization.
|
| imho, Apple certainly saw this coming and fears a new Android-
| like competitor in a space they arguably could do well in. So the
| Vision Pro was pushed out before this got traction. Now its a
| matter of titan vs titan because smaller players are probably not
| going to enter this space anymore outside of hardware partners
| for Meta.
| supernovae wrote:
| Valve never really tried to compete. Index is old, outdated and
| never saw a price discount and their supposed Index V2 has been
| delayed so long it's a huge meme.
|
| HTC never really iterated like Quest did beyond big bulky
| headsets that required a full room set up did they?
|
| I can't say Meta spending 10s of millions to push the
| technology forward is monopolistic unless you want to say
| Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft consoles or any device with a
| walled garden (ipad/iphone) ecosystem is monopolistic.
| robandrews wrote:
| Though total losses for Reality Labs is not 10s of millions
| but $45B since the end of 2020 [1].
|
| [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/meta-stock-
| plunges-15...
| asdff wrote:
| Why would the vision pro have games? I'm still waiting for the
| damn iPhone to be the gaming platform they promised over a
| decade ago. I watched over the last few years as Mac computers
| somehow got more powerful than they ever were but also have
| lost just about all support for modern games. The truth is,
| despite what apple says out of their mouth at their pressers,
| they don't really care about gaming or have any interest in
| establishing a viable development environment for this
| platform. Valve isn't even porting their games to mac anymore
| despite how much fanfare the relationship with this company and
| apple had for years.
| dagmx wrote:
| You're conflating games with high end gaming. The iPhone is a
| gaming platform. It's one of the largest ones in fact.
|
| Mobile gaming (iOS and Android) dwarves other gaming.
|
| This is the issue that "gamers" have a hard time grappling
| with because they often disregard mobile games as an inferior
| product.
|
| But then it leads to the fact that the mobile platforms don't
| actually have to cater to their needs other than as halo
| products. They optimize for the majority of their customers
| and the majority are mobile gamers who are happy with the
| range of mobile games available.
| TillE wrote:
| > they often disregard mobile games as an inferior product
|
| Have you _seen_ the type of mobile game which accrues the
| vast, vast majority of the revenue? They are literally
| designed as addiction engines first, and games a distant
| second. They 're "games" in the same way that a baited hook
| is fish food.
|
| The relative handful of actual good mobile games have often
| struggled, partly because Apple is very happy to promote
| and take a cut of the enormous revenue generated by this
| predatory business.
| akaij wrote:
| > I'm still waiting for the damn iPhone to be the gaming
| platform they promised over a decade ago.
|
| They have a different definition of gaming than we do. The
| games they're interested in are the ones with in-app
| purchases.
|
| Except the design department, "good enough" is their motto
| for everything. "iPhone is the most popular gaming device"
| and "iPhone is the most popular camera" are two technically
| correct statements that don't sit right with me, but that's
| just me.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > The games they're interested in are the ones with in-app
| purchases.
|
| Apple literally pays developers of mobile games an up front
| premium to strip out all the Skinner Box nonsense and
| create an Apple Arcade version of their app.
| akaij wrote:
| So that they can sell a service?
| dlachausse wrote:
| HTC no, but Valve absolutely could compete. They have an
| existing popular App Store where they receive a cut of the
| profits. Even breaking even on hardware costs they could still
| reap fairly substantial profits if they were to succeed in the
| VR market.
|
| Also regarding the Vision Pro, as long as Apple doesn't give up
| on it, it absolutely should come down in price over time. The
| original Macintosh retailed for $2,495, which is approximately
| the equivalent of $7,250 in today's dollars adjusted for
| inflation.
| whacko_quacko wrote:
| I agree, but I'd add that Valve also has the technical acumen
| and the good will of a community that knows they stand behind
| their products. To build something like the steam deck, even
| though it's not VR, you have to solve a lot of the same
| issues you'd have with VR.[1] Personally, I'd rather vote
| Valve with my wallet than Meta.
|
| [1]: I'm mostly thinking about constrained space, weight and
| power delivery here. Obviously for proper VR there's a bit
| more that goes into it, but they're definitely not clueless.
| mgiampapa wrote:
| Back in march Google approached Meta to try and push XR in a very
| one-sided arrangement. https://www.roadtovr.com/meta-google-
| android-xr-quest-reject...
|
| The timing of this is probably just a manifestation of the f-you
| back to google from Zuck and Boz.
| ffhhj wrote:
| How much is the cost of making all those Quests, and how much
| does Meta make in a year? It's weird they aren't giving them away
| for free, or at least with a cheap subscription plan. Seems very
| short sighted, maybe Apple is paying them to avoid Vision's
| demise.
| adamomada wrote:
| Nothing is free, even "free" cellphones w subscription are
| paying back the cost.
|
| Ignoring that, like covid test kits, if you make something
| (useful) available for actual free, there is unlimited demand
| and all stock disappears immediately.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if you make something (useful) available for actual free,
| there is unlimited demand and all stock disappears
| immediately_
|
| This is locally bounded. My community can provide free dog-
| poo bags. I doubt one could do that in _e.g._ rural Alabama.
| ffhhj wrote:
| One man's trash is another man's treasure. And when applied
| to ad ridden platforms the metaphor sticks very well.
| supernovae wrote:
| They have been heavily subsidized. Throwing them out for free
| wouldn't do anything for anyone. People attach monetary value
| to product value intrinsically.
| ffhhj wrote:
| I say Meta is a heavy lifter that can fully subside them.
| They want us to strap an ad ridden device to our heads? Won't
| really work with the price higher than $0.
| grumbel wrote:
| It doesn't matter if it cost $0 when it just ends up
| collecting dust. Quest2 go for just $200, that's already
| plenty of cheap for pretty much everybody. It's the whole
| software and content landscape that still isn't very
| compelling. Worse yet, they even do a terrible job of
| highlighting all the good stuff you actually can do in VR.
| They also do a bad job at bringing content into VR that
| could easily take advantage of it, e.g. 3D movies, porting
| old games into VR, etc.
|
| As for ads, so far the Quest is still ad free.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| _" so don't expect this to result in cheaper VR headsets from
| other companies with Quest equivalent capabilities."_
|
| Other VR companies won't need to make their own OS, directly
| reducing the cost of producing the software for their headset.
| That's going to lead to cheaper headsets from those companies.
| Maybe not as cheap as Meta's, but still cheaper than current
| prices.
|
| _" VR is held back more by software than hardware. This
| initiative will be a drag on software development at Meta.
| Unquestionably. [It] will steal the focus of key developers that
| would be better spent improving the system."_
|
| You just said it's held back by software. Software is part of the
| system. Having a reusable VR OS frees up resources to focus on
| other parts of the software that build on top of it.
|
| Meta isn't doing it out of the goodness of their heart... they
| want 3rd parties to use this OS, so that when apps are created
| for their headset, it'll work with Meta's. And since Meta gives
| away the hardware at cost, they'll win the race.
|
| Carmack is so focused on the view of winning through depriving
| competitors of resources, he thinks there's tension when Meta
| executes a strategy that grows VR and puts them at the center,
| ensuring their long term success.
| oersted wrote:
| > Meta already sells the Quest systems basically at production
| cost, and just ignores the development costs
|
| It is a bit ambiguous, but it sounds like they sell the Quest
| at hardware cost and take the loss in all software costs and
| R&D.
|
| So it's irrelevant that other VR companies won't have the costs
| of building the OS, the headsets cannot be cheaper unless they
| optimize the production, which they are unlikely to do better
| than Meta (except perhaps for Chinese companies).
| cosmotic wrote:
| What I gathered from Carmack is the cost Mets sells their
| hardware at is BOM plus assembly. He specifically excluded
| development cost, which I presume includes OS and software.
| sxp wrote:
| When I was at Google working on VR there, I was always jealous of
| Oculus's vertical integration that let them move so much faster
| than Google's VR team. Working with partner hardware was the
| biggest time sink in terms of utility gained per hour spent for
| Google's VR plans and it's going to be a giant drag for Meta.
| Because of business contracts, there were firewalls in the source
| code which meant fixing bugs that spanned the stack took forever
| and there was a bunch of back-and-forth between companies about
| whose responsibility it is. This is very different from the
| standard culture of Google & Meta where a dev can (relatively)
| easily access the source code for any part of the stack and fix
| the bug without going through tons of red tape.
|
| On top of this, hardware partners have very different goals from
| the core OS developer (i.e, Google or Meta) who want to grow the
| ecosystem. So the hardware vendors add various features to their
| hardware and the OS devs need to add hacks to work around it. In
| theory, the OS developer writes a "compatibility" doc and
| requires hardware makers to follow it. In practice, the hardware
| maker fails to do so and the OS maker has to put in software
| hacks to work around hardware bugs. And then engineers on the OS
| team have to waste time chasing these bugs which affect a tiny
| portion of users but are high priority due to business contracts.
|
| Some of those business contracts made no sense from a VR
| ecosystem perspective, but Google went through with them for
| other reasons such as preventing a key phone maker from jumping
| ship to another OS or company. That's probably what's happening
| here. Meta doesn't want third-party vendors to build VR solutions
| on top of AVP or Google's XR OS, so they're offering crumbs to
| distract other companies.
| supernovae wrote:
| I always felt Google did what Google does best by shooting off
| its own foot by controlling who has access to the google store
| with an iron fist.
|
| Since Meta can't win over google, i guess the next best thing
| to do is make sure meta store can be on other hardware since G
| isn't allowing that.
| loulouxiv wrote:
| Since you say that you were working on VR at Google, did you
| work on Cardboard Camera or know someone that did ? Do you
| think there is any chance that the app woukd be open sourced
| some day ?
| dvt wrote:
| Carmack is 100% correct in his assessment that software is
| holding VR back way more than hardware. The software is
| cumbersome, difficult to use, non-intuitive, confusing for
| newcomers, and glitchy. This is all even though you have a device
| as powerful as a laptop strapped to your face.
|
| Other than a few games (Alyx, Beatsaber, maybe a few others), VR
| gaming is awful. "Productivity" software is even worse. I regret
| spending $1500 on my Quest Pro given that I've only used it for
| like a dozen hours.
|
| VR Operating Systems and UI/UX concepts need to be re-thought
| from the ground up.
| crooked-v wrote:
| The worst part of VR games is the ongoing obsession of
| developers with trying to replicate FPS games in the worst
| possible vomit-inducing way, while completely ignoring all the
| interesting potential in things that barely anyone has even
| touched yet, like simulation games with virtual dioramas,
| small-scale games with shared social lobbies, games that play
| with size/perspective differences, and so on.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Something like Goragoa in VR might be amazing.
|
| https://gorogoa.com/
| awfulneutral wrote:
| I dunno, Carmack's take seems weird to me...there are tons and
| tons of games and apps made by tons of different companies and
| people, what would the common thing be that is holding them
| back? The OS is not that hard to use, you can pick up the Quest
| and be playing a game in 10 seconds. It makes more sense to me
| that the burden of using the hardware is making it so the bar
| is much higher for games and apps in VR.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > what would the common thing be that is holding them back
|
| They aren't interesting enough to buy hardware to use/play
|
| They are novelties but not true game changers
| grumbel wrote:
| Most of the games are just tech demos without any depths or
| length. Many of the goods ones aren't even on Quest, but on
| PC. There is also no steady stream of new high quality
| content, every year or two something interesting comes out
| and then nothing for months. Ports of existing 2D games or
| franchises into VR are extremely rare. 3D and VR movies are
| still largely ignored by Meta as well. The promised
| "Metaverse" is nowhere to be seen.
|
| The whole thing is just a bit "meh". If you dig deep enough,
| you can find some interesting stuff, but it feels so far less
| interesting than it could be.
|
| Just look back at all the stuff that happened back when
| Oculus was still in charge, we had Oculus Medium and Quill
| for content creation, we had Oculus Story Studios, we had
| numerous good games released in short order and so on. It
| felt like VR was expanding, the last few years in contrast it
| felt like the thing was just shrinking down. And a lot of
| that was not by accident, but Meta's conscious effort to turn
| VR into "Metaverse" and move away from games. Which in turn
| was a flop, so Quest is back doing games, but it all feels
| very half-hearted.
|
| VR has been hyped up since the 90s and when you look at what
| Quest delivers today, 35 later, it just doesn't feel like
| it's actually delivering on the potential of VR.
| boogieknite wrote:
| Where are the designers? Expected some novel UX that I never
| considered to emerge but really hasn't outside the ubiquitous
| movement in games where you point an arcing arrow to move.
| Apple's gaze and pinch is sort of thing I expected more of from
| normal, non-giant-company designers.
|
| Yes, for the most part VR gaming is awful. Sometimes in a kinda
| fun way. I wonder if we'll look back with nostalgia on some of
| these weak games like we do with weird old turbografx
| platformers.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| That may be true, but most aspects of hardware exist just below
| a _very exciting threshold_ right now.
|
| * The resolution in commodity headsets is just low enough that
| text is barely legible. Productivity apps become suddenly
| practical when you can render good-looking text.
|
| * It's been years since the announcement of holographic lenses,
| which will remove the headache-inducing fixed-focal-length and
| pupil misalignment; significantly reduce headset size/weight;
| and increase the brightness and color gamut, and make the
| headset cooler, because the display backlights are replaced
| with lasers.
|
| Most of the tech stack for SteamVR just needs to be
| semantically moved from "game engine library" to "HID & UI/UX
| framework".
| Zigurd wrote:
| in Zuck's 3-minute video on insta, I initially thought he
| announced there would be Google Play Store, which would very
| likely imply Google Mobile Services, too.
|
| But I was wrong: Zuck also said "if they (Google) are up for it."
| If Zuck has to resort to spitballing that idea out loud, I'd say
| it is far from happening any time soon.
|
| That means HorizonOS is def _not_ an Android equivalent to
| VisionOS. It 's just AOSP plus the Horizon SDK.
|
| Google should do a deal with Meta. But they guard Android with a
| very risk-averse approach.
| tempodox wrote:
| There can only be one ad monopolist in the world, and Google
| sure as hell won't let the competition in.
| dark__paladin wrote:
| Can I get a reality check on the state of headsets? It seems that
| the only people interested in these things are Apple/Meta hype
| boys (if the latter even exists), and people that are interested
| in VR gaming. I have only ever considered a headset because of
| games, only to conclude that it would be a severe waste of money,
| and that approximates the opinion of most people I know (echo
| chamber acknowledged).
|
| I'll repeat the usual sentiments of Glass being a failure, the
| Vive is nearly ten years old, the Quest is a VR Chat/Beat Saber
| machine, and the Apple Vision is a Black Mirror style immersive
| nightmare machine.
|
| I want my ideas to be challenged on this, but I really believe
| that Horizon OS will be a "Did you know that Meta released a VR
| operating system?" fun fact in 10 years, probably when Apple
| releases a $5000 Vision Pro 4 Ultimate.
|
| Who on Earth is using these things? I realize where I am posting,
| but who outside the tech world is getting excited about and
| actually buying/using VR Headsets?
|
| Obviously I've been wrong before about tech trends but this one
| seems to be so blatantly companies sniffing their own farts in
| regards to "we are the future" sentiments.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| Vr is compelling in a way you can't recognize without trying
| it, and even peoples memories of it seem less compelling than
| the actual experience. However, it's inconvenient enough to use
| that many people don't use their headsets as much as they
| expected. And there's locomotion challenges that are hard to
| overcome imho. Finally, theres some privacy and lock in issues
| with the current iterations of the tech. Valve seems to be the
| closest thing to the good guys here - is that still true?
| nomel wrote:
| > And there's locomotion challenges that are hard to overcome
| imho.
|
| I think this is the biggest hurdle: getting your VR legs nice
| and strong. It took me about two weeks of reasonable use
| before smooth locomotion was possible. I know other people
| that tried it once, felt sick, and were done with it. I think
| this is one of the reasons why there's such a big youngster
| population on Quest games; they don't seem to be affected as
| much.
| dagmx wrote:
| The consumer mindset looks at entertainment which is the area
| you're focusing in.
|
| The enterprise and general industry mindset is very different.
| These are already used for product design, medical procedures,
| training, vehicle development, and more.
| gryn wrote:
| > who outside the tech world is getting excited about and
| actually buying/using VR Headsets?
|
| Parents who want to buy a toy for their children, they are not
| exited about it they just find it cheap enough.
|
| If you want proof just play any game/app that has voice chat on
| the quest. VR chat, among us, any shooter, ....
|
| I really wish there was a way to filter them out.
| imzadi wrote:
| There are a ton of headsets beyond the three you mentioned
| (Glass wasn't a VR anything). Valve, Pico, Pimax, Varjo are a
| few off the top of my head. Pico 4 would be very competitive
| against the Quest 3 if they had released it in the US.
| Presumably the decision not to has a lot of to do with the
| TikTok stuff. Pimax has several higher end headsets that are
| very good hardware wise but not the best on the software side.
| Valve Index is still very popular and there are rumors about a
| new Valve headset coming soon.
| fxj wrote:
| ok I bite. I have a Go, a Quest1, a Quest2, several adaptors
| for mobile phones, even an old kickstarter model of a VR
| headset with an intel atom cpu and stock android. I have a
| stereo/360 camera (Vuze VR) and I love all these gadgets.
|
| What do I use them for? 360/stereo movies are incredibly cool.
| It is just another way of experiencing your personal history.
| Also there is Oculus Labs where they have some indi games and
| software which does not show up in the official Oculus Store.
| There are some gems, like some really cool games and some
| scientific applications, like a protein modeller.
|
| I have also written VR programs by myself for scientific
| purposes (mainly biophysics) but also data mining and 3d CFD
| simulations. The 3rd dimension makes so much difference when
| you look at objects and you have a real feeling for the
| objects.
|
| What I miss: Easily exporting 3d Models to VR (e.g. Blender), a
| good VR web browser. No Chrome is just the 2D version on a
| virtual screen. Not very impressive. Firefox VR is aready dead.
| And a good standard fiel format is still missing. VRML was
| quite nice in the 90s but hey that was 30 years ago.
|
| just my 2 ct
| jmyeet wrote:
| > VR is held back more by software than hardware.
|
| VR isn't being "held back" at all. There's simply absolutely no
| demand for it. It solves no problem for which there is a mass
| market. It is the ultimate solution looking for a problem.
|
| > ... Meta as a company, as well as the individual engineers,
| want the shine of making industry leading high-end gear.
|
| Do they? I suspect this claim is colored by his own experiences
| at Oculus/Meta but it's not _necessarily_ true. I suspect Meta
| would be giddy if they could sell 100x as many units of a cheaper
| unit because it means they would 've found a product-market fit
| of some kind.
| Havoc wrote:
| The first paragraph of that felt like razor sharp insight, and
| the rest of post...not wrong perhaps but certainly more diffuse.
|
| Maybe twitter was right about 140 chars.
| roland35 wrote:
| He's absolutely correct about the software needing to improve. It
| is difficult to set up meetings or group games all the time. It's
| too bad, because playing with friends is the best way to keep
| people engaged in VR. There just isn't enough single-person
| experiences that are long term fun, except maybe watching movies.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I'm amazed that all of these VR players are dropping the world's
| easiest to hold ball.
|
| Just give people a damn VR headset with the same compute
| flexibility as a Windows, macOS, or Linux desktop and do away
| with these stupid walled gardens.
|
| The units would fly off the shelf because, whoa! You could
| actually do something with the damn devices.
| nomel wrote:
| For standalone, Quest 3 was the first generation that really
| had enough CPU to open the settings menu, at the same time as
| another app, and not result in a stuttery mess. Until very
| recently, it has definitely been limited by compute.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| VR needs low latency and a lot of computing power. It is hard
| to make it flexible.
|
| That's why, a few generations ago at least, game consoles are
| so much more efficient. Consoles have fixed and specialized
| hardware, and developers can tune their games to take advantage
| of every single bit. No need to accommodate for different
| specs, no costly abstraction layers, no random tasks running in
| the background,...
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