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.
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
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?
At $3,500 I can’t imagine why it didn’t take off!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I mean did anyone think of the vision pro as more than a very expensive tech demo? It was always too big, too heavy to be viewed as something people were expected to wear all day long.
Why do people think you’re supposed to wear that all day long? I don’t think it was ever marketed as a permanent piece of headwear.
I’ve always assumed that every VR or AR system was intended to be used for a session and taken off, seems obvious.
I don’t think Apple themselves marketed it this way, but viral photos of people being spotted on subways and walking down the street wearing one probably didn’t help sell the product.
They marketed the headset as being able to replace the functions of basically everything an average person uses a laptop/pc, cellphone, and tv for.
People routinely uses computers and tvs for many hours at a time.
People routinely spend hours on their phone and basically always have them in their pocket or nearby.
They showed people wearing the things in planes, to watch 2-3 hour movies.
Sitting down in their (strangely TV-less) living rooms to watch 2-3 hour movies.
Doing … some kind of work you’d do on a laptop, but easily being able to keep the things on, kick a ball around with your kid, and then seamlessly go back to working.
Wearing the headset as you are unpacking at a hotel, and then taking a video phone call with them.
Not the thing ringing, you putting the headset on, and then taking a call.
No, you’re just already wearing the headset, having just arrived in a hotel, implying you just had them on as you took your luggage up to your motel, like a hat.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=IY4x85zqoJM
Taken as a montage, you certainly get the impression that you’re encouraged to just wear the thing all the time, anywhere, that its an ‘all-device’ that replaces a whole bunch of other devices, and is easily used/worn in many settings for long periods of time.
Namely what the features are and the functionality of it. I mean if you are expecting to use it in a closed controlled area, then for the most part the pass through side isn’t necessary, the screen showing your eyes to outsiders is completely meaningless. So I guess the point is, there isn’t really a defined ideal place to use it. It isn’t super useful in one place, it’s made to be slightly helpful, everywhere.
Which of course begs the question, where is it intended to be used. when is the ideal time to put it on, and then how long should a session be before you take it off.
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.
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)
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.
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.
