I’m sorry, apple did not in any attempt to make VR mainstream.
They were a $3500 dev-kit to enable some base level of preparation when the costs come down. They were never going to be mainstream.
A dev kit with no physical controllers? You would think developers want precise controlls? Or a usb port? Or proper dev tools? Or a full API?
Why would they provide physical controllers on the early version when the mass market won’t have physical controllers?
Apple’s dev tools are fine. It’s not dumb luck that’s the reason iPhone’s software ecosystem takes a giant shit all over android’s.
as a cross platform app developer myself… what the fuck are you talking about?
Laps seems like a cool concept (although I don’t follow F1 myself), but it got put on hold because legal https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/20/24301420/apple-vision-pro-viral-lapz-app-f1-complaint
Why would you dedicate yourself to maintaining an app if there is no market and the current hardware is experimental?
Nothing you build will be compatible with v2 but the experience you have with v1 gives you a huge leg up in the learning curve. Wether thats worth it depends on the person.
I got my pico vr for this reason, i want to get a feel for how things are evolving so i dont start a path of turning tech illiterate like my peers.
Pico is also much cheaper then apple and support custom apk
At $3,500 I can’t imagine why it didn’t take off!
There’s one simple way to do it: stop milking it with ludicrous prices that make it inaccessible for the average consumer and stop trying to corner each implementation with your own proprietary closed market that becomes worthless when it goes down because all of your digital purchases were “digital subscription options”. The problem with VR is that it now has a place in the market but one that is basically limited to a luxury market, and as such it will only include self enclosed ecosystems of novelty implementations that appeal largely to whales. It is basically an example of the hellhole the PC landscape would have been if governments back then had been as lax with bad consumer practices as they are now.
I also get the feeling the VR market started out a lot like the mobile gaming market in that mba business majors who have zero ability or to desire to make genuinely artistic and compelling experiences choked out any other kind of person being in leadership positions in the industry.
Similar to mobile gaming the rush of business majors who “think” they know how to transform vr gaming when they don’t know the first thing about game development and have never bothered to pursue a creative venture in their life that wasn’t just a thinly veiled scheme to scam other people out of their money has severly stunted the growth of the vr industry indefinitely as it did the mobile gaming market.
The very structure of the largest companies in VR (besides perhaps valve) precludes the possibility of any actual artists and developers with a vision getting into positions of power in these companies and even if they do, they are never actually listened to or you wouldn’t get embarassingly empty visions of VR like “the metaverse”.
VR, like mobile gaming cannot be understood as an out growth of the traditional gaming world, rather VR in particular must be understood as a market constructed by non-experts who didn’t give a shit about learning gaming development or how to create compelling fantasy worlds because the objective was always to be a digital landlord speculating and monetizing on an ownership of large swathes of digital communities that artists showed up and made into actual spaces people desired to be (artists are an unpaid detail though, that kind of fluff is easy, an AI could do it and besides it is fun for them!).
Unfortunately for VR fans I don’t think the industry will take any significant strides until those kinds of people are kicked out of the boadrooms of these companies and I don’t see that happening anytime soon given how long mobile gaming has been a squandered wasteland of casinos that nothing with any vitality or soul can grow in.
I think the only thing that made people think about VR was Half Life Alyx.
If plenty of games would be made with that level of quality VR could actually became a thing.
But boring companies keeps trying to push VR for boring things.
I’ve bought my Oculus Rift in like 2017 and haven’t used it at all for the last 3 years… And I missed nothing. I played the heck out of Beat Saber and HL: Alyx, Lone Echo and some few other games but nothing noteworthy has been released for a long time so I’m just patiently waiting.
Oh, I did play quite a bit of VRChat as well back then.
To be fair, a device in a new technology that is now nearly 8 years old is quite out of date. I use my Quest 2 all the time, and it’s a few years old now. Beat saber is a great quick workout, Walkabout Minigolf is great alone or with friends. It’s fun to watch a 3d movie or other content on a big screen virtually with a few friends who don’t live close. The Lego game is super cool. Your VR chats and poker games. There’s tons of other games I have picked up over the years. I’m excited to try the new Batman once I upgrade. Oh and I can still plug it into my PC and use it as a headset for that too.
Half Life Alyx, Lone Echo, and Asgard’s Wrath are all incredible experiences that actually feel like “real games” that made meaningful and justifiable use of VR.
Beat Saber and Robo Recall get honorable mentions from me as well because while neither is groundbreaking, both execute their particular niche more or less perfectly.
Browsing various VR software storefronts now you find basically nothing like any of the above. Everything seems to be trying to mimic the mobile game “quick distraction” approach and shovel out as much garbage as possible rather than creating anything engaging. For anyone who believes that VR has genuine potential for exciting new experiences, as I do, it’s incredibly disheartening.
It’s crazy how lazy these companies are trying to be about VR. Imagine nintendo or Sega launching a console without any studios or titles. Everyone is so fucking busy with trying to hit the next “tech boom” that they feel it’s everyone else’s problem to come up with actual use cases that people will stick with (wearing a clunky headset for extra monitors isn’t a long-term solution).
I’m tired of watching these multi-billion dollar VR companies showing ping-pong demo’s, real actual fucking ping-pong is 100x fucking more fun and it’s never brought up. Would love to watch an actual demo with two people playing vr and two people playing real table tennis side by side for an actual comparison. (for anyone saying how much easier it is to play in VR, you just spent $3500 for ONE headset)
