Oculus Quest, PlayStation VR, SteamVR…
…VR is mainstream.
That’s like saying 3D TVs are mainstream. We all saw how that turned out.
Meta thought it would be the next big thing, so much that they renamed themselves “meta”. A lot of companies have been courting VR as a future big market, but we definitely haven’t seen it blow up like companies hoped it would. I wouldn’t say it’s a dead market, but I would definitely put it as more of a novelty than a mainstream success.
“Not meeting companies hopes” and “not being mainstream” are two different things…
…and at the end you shift goal posts further to “mainstream success”.
It’s mainstream, just not as widely used as the people who write these articles want.
I doubt any corporate product is as popular as the corporation wants. That’s the point of corporations, they always want more, 100% usage wouldn’t be enough, that’s why things like planned obsolescence, and premium versions exist, so that users can own multiple versions of the same product.
“Not meeting companies hopes” and “not being mainstream” are two different things…
I fully agree with that, I just don’t think it’s reached enough popularity with the public to be considered mainstream.
Just the fact that there are VR businesses that you can go and pay to play VR games with standard VR headsets is a strong suggestion that they’re still a rare novelty to most people.
Turns out people want their instruments up to the task, not mimicking dubious sci-fi.
There will be no blowing up. I mean, there may be blowing up of optimization, modularity, quality, all those things. But they’ll fight that to the last, looking for some revolution. Even though the previous revolution was not found this way. It was designed by completely different people and companies in the 80s and 90s, and was powerful enough to go on almost until now.
Their goal is to create phones with floating screens. At the point where quest 3 is, ignoring the weight and slightly janky hand controls I can see the vision and future technology could make that real, but I don’t think its good for society. VR games also will never be mainstream since they require movement. I love VR gaming a lot, but 99% of people will try it once and never again. Its inherently niche. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on vr gear though so I don’t really mind if all VR games are niche since I like the janky indie games.
A lot (if not most) of vr games can be played seated though.
Sure you might technically still be moving around but it’s easy enough on you that most people - even grandma, could play.
So I don’t see that as a barrier to mainstream.
I wouldn’t say it’s mainstream just because there are a few affordable options. It’s still a niche subset of gaming in general.
And guess what? A fancy piece of hardware isn’t going to make it happen. It needs software! Part of the reason VR is stagnating is because it doesn’t have any good fucking games. You’ve got a ton of shit that is no more than a 5-10 minute experience you’d check out once and then never again. You’ve got one, maybe two, actually good games that take full advantage of what VR can do. And that’s it. What good is a VR headset if there is nothing to fucking do in it? Which is exactly what sucks about the Vision Pro. Thing is $3500 and has next to nothing to run on it (like even less than a Quest or PSVR) lol
As relevant as ever: https://palmerluckey.com/free-isnt-cheap-enough/
People love to shit on VR because Meta pulled all that metaverse bullshit. But VR just keeps growing. Slowly, but it’s growing.
There’s no evidence it’s stopping yet.
In fact, Samsung and Google are jumping back in. And we have some of the lightest headsets ever made on the market right now.
VR is in a slow upswing.
This is just the early versions we’ll look back on and laugh at even when the successful versions have taken over EVERYTHING.
so VR equipment is getting lightweight and powerful enough for high realism. AI is just about generating compelling reality on the fly. Augmented realty is just about working smoothly thanks to modern hardware.
Now give everything another 10 years development.
We’ll be tapping up compelling 3d ‘personal shoppers’ and ‘personal customer service agents’ that feel more like butlers and servants because they ARE. And they’ll be 100% generated and pretty easy to talk to, especially compared to waiting on the phone or trying to type chat.
Perhaps Zucks metaverse dream will be located in there somewhere. What if in that time we nail 3d video chat - perhaps a dose of AI and VR ‘learning you’ so it gives you realistic micro gestures without having to scan your face aggressively.
I can see it all becoming a lot more believable. And chatting to company AI services like you would a person becoming the norm.
And someone will be like “ha, remember the ‘metaverse’ back in 2023/4?” and someone else will point out all the technology they’re using right then and there is owned by meta. In fact I bet there’ll be a TIL post about it in 2035…
Yup, I like to sum it up as “we are in the palm pilot era of smart phones still.”
It’s a huge cliche to compare it to the iPhone. And it appears we won’t have an iPhone moment, it seems like we will have a more gradual shift.
But yeah. We love our palm pilots right now. But it’s gonna get so much better.
I can’t wait for social VR to be filled with more “normal” people.
They didn’t say VR was dead, just not mainstream. Which is okay. Not everything has to be.
Yeah, I’m mostly responding to the people I perceive to always shit on VR by mocking the idea of a metaverse or Meta’s version of a metaverse.
People dismiss the whole medium because of Zuck going wild with metaverse hype, and causing the whole industry to make all these nonsense metaverse claims.
Even Microsoft Teams was boasting about metaverse aspects at one point.
I just love the people who refuse to get a Quest device (formerly Oculus) because it’s meta. And meta bad. But then they have their entire life connected in a web of google and/or Microsoft. For my money it’s the best VR option out there. No computer required, relatively cheap, and a relatively large catalog and user base.
Yep. The problem is that they keep trying to push it as some sort of workspace for home or office.
It’s a shitty workspace. Nobody wants that box strapped to their face and work in a cartoonish porthole view world. The controllers are limited in functionality and using a physical desktop while somewhat blind sucks.
However, for visualization and gaming, it’s great! But not for $3,500. $200-$400? Yeah, that’s doable.
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?
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
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
What do you mean “even”? I would say especially apple couldn’t make VR mainstream.
But VR is already mainstream to a certain demographic; furries. They try to get VR headsets even when they’re broke, because they want to escape reality as much as possible, and pretend like they’re the actual character they like to imagine themselves as. And it’s better than any fursuits can.
You want to make a successful VR headset, then you’ll have to make and market it for those that want to live (and do virtual sex) in VR. Not as some weird, incredibly expensive office tool.
I didn’t realize that VR was big in the furry community, but it makes sense.
Do they have a specific app/community? Things like VRchat I can’t imagine being very well suited to furries, since you’d have random people coming in yelling slurs/bigoted shit.
I’ve always been tangentially fascinated with the furry community, while not one myself. Always seemed like an interesting, weird group, which as someone a part of other weird groups…you go furries.
Im not a furry but I see a lot of furries on VRChat. Most non bigots on vrchat play in friends+ worlds because there aren’t trolls if they have to know someone to get in.
VRChat is the most popular thing that furries use. If you have random people popping in, you’re in an open, public world. But in VRC you also have the ability to open private worlds or extended friend worlds.
But VR is already mainstream to a certain demographic
That’s not what mainstream is. That’s what a niche is.
Furries have long since stopped being a small, niche, minority corner of the Internet. You can literally measure the success of a platform these days by how many furries are actively using it.
Even if your echo chamber has like a million people, they’re still just a tiny portion of worldwide population.
Who has the money? The closest has been Sony with the PSVR
