This same author has appeared on HN no less than 3 times for different articles about why the headset that they haven't seen in person is going to have serious hypothetical issues. And none of those articles have been convincing, because they've all come across as "here are some standard problems, slathered up with technical jargon, in XR: the VP will DEFINITELY SUFFER from these, even though I've never used it"
Wait til the thing comes out, use it, tear it down - whatever - but provide real facts to back up your assertions.
> I've used VR headsets, nothing is comfortable after even an hour of use, we're just not designed for that
There seems to be something specific about VR that invites people to vastly over-extrapolate their personal experience. I find it really difficult to believe you've tried the Quest Pro or NReal Air [0].
Current hardware have lots of other flaws but what you mention (comfort) is mostly solved for most people (there are always exceptions).
> Speaking as an avid gamer, every VR headset looks like pure garbage
Have you tried any headsets? I got a free GearVR with my S7 and comparing the experience to a monitor just doesn't make any sense. With VR you get a sense of scale that a monitor just can't convey. In VR I feel that an object is right there in front of me. I can estimate its distance from me, as in 'that table is about 1 meter away'. It's a surreal feeling.
> you need to beef up your machine for the privilege of a worse experience.
Again. This doesn't make sense. The experience isn't worse. It's just different. It's so different that it's difficult to even compare monitor to HMD.
I gave my dad a demo and the sense of presence was so strong for him that he lost his balance just looking around in one of the lobbies. He's not a gamer and he had an ear to ear grin just looking around in the Oculus video lobby.
> They're expensive, you look incredibly stupid wearing one
That's true. I felt like an idiot wearing the headset.
> haven't had the opportunity to try their headset out, but I know some people who have
It's easy to say technology is decades ahead when you haven't even tried it. Rumor/second-hand retellings can be very powerful. I'm really excited to see this tech, but I'm also really skeptical.
>So, what did the non-gamer community hope for from this? What is there to feed those hopes?
There are still so many people who have never touched VR who are somehow hyped up and convinced this is somehow more magical or more special than everyone elses headset.
Basically it's just the normal reality distortion effect. Sooooooo many comments of "the original iPhone wasn't perfect either". So?
My experience following the VR scene. The unreleased product doesn't solve the weight problem, it doesn't solve the friction problem of needing to put on a headset, it doesn't solve the VAC problem which can strain people's eyes, etc. I would also speculate that it doesn't solve the content problem in motivating people to consistently use the device instead of regress to using your iphone or whatever to do those normal things.
Just doing VR, but with more resolution or VR, but with a different input scheme or VR, but with a heavier headset, or MR, but with higher resolution passthrough doesn't solve the current challenges that VR headsets are facing.
>Initial product will be weak, just like the original iPhone
This just isn’t true. People loved that thing and experience wise it did 90% of what people needed at the time better than anything in the market.
Although this headset isn’t the product. The product was going to be ar glasses in actual glasses form factor but it’s clear that’s many years past the spec’d release date and now this headset is just some way to actually profit off this tech investment and get people building apps for the future glasses, if they ever solve the issues.
> "I've noticed something else in the last 24 hours, as initial hands-on impressions have been published by various outlets (ours is here). There are, as far as I can find, no actual photos or videos of any writer or YouTuber wearing the thing they are writing or YouTubing about. (This was a precondition for getting hands-on time with the headset.)"
this is the most black mirror thing i read about the headset so far
> yes you are restricted by the laws of physics and human biology
Yeah, you didn’t cite any laws that restrict this future. You’re wrong.
Let’s also not be disingenuous. those “fantasy interfaces” are working prototypes and not just movie CGI. There are also real world products like NReal. You’re not familiar enough with the subject despite being confidently wrong
> VR is a) distinctly different from AR, b) requires bulky headsets, and c) borderline unusable for any extended periods of time
1. There is pass through AR which what Quest headsets and the new Apple headset will support
2. Bulky headsets are the past and present. That isn’t the future, or even the near future
> VR is weird in that once you cross a certain pixel density, no further improvements will matter because the eye won't be able to resolve the image better.
Can people stop saying this? I can clearly see every individual pixel of my 4K display. This headset is not even close to the limit of visual resolution. It doesn't matter if 16k is the limit of the retina if the headset is only 4k per eye anyway, that's almost 2 orders of magnitude. Much like the difference in price between this headset and a much sharper 4K display.
I get that it's technologically impressive compared to nothing, and I get that the main selling point is motion, not resolution. But until I can comfortably read text on a simulated 4K display, it won't be impressive to me.
> Why would I want to strap this phone to my face?
This is VR’s biggest problem. People aren’t even willing to put on a bucket on their face. Instead most people would rather form all kinds of weird and untrue speculation. Case in point:
“I don't need a VR library full of fake volumes of Encyclopedia Brittanica, because I already have Wikipedia”
No one has actually built a library in VR because the screen resolution is too poor for reading large amounts of text. All you’ve proved is that you still haven’t tried modern VR.
> Who knows, maybe at some point some big company comes around with a fresh look at it and manages to make this thing cool
I doubt it will eliminate the inherent problems, even if they make the headset very light. It is still something that you will want to take off your head after some time. Heck, even my headphones (that are very comfortable!) make me uneasy after on hour or so. Plus many people experience slight dizziness that is probably tolerable but not exactly a nice thing to have for entertaining.
What they can do is to make a series of continues improvements, not just to hardware but also software - Beat Saber is absolutely amazing, and they are some other nice games, but it still feels like far below expectations.
> You can make a low end VR headset out of a $100 smartphone and a $5 plastic box today
That's not low end VR, it's pain and frustration from knowing you just wasted 105 bucks.
It sounds to me like you never tried a setup like this. Because in reality you mainly spend time adjusting the lenses because focus is so bad you can't even tell which setting is better. The pixel grid is so huge that reading any form of text (like menus) is near impossible. The latency is bad and your view constantly drifts over time because the phone sensors don't cut it, so you better sit on a rotating chair.
Oh, and if you've all that covered somehow you'll realize mediocre VR video players and bad rollercoaster demos are pretty much the best phone VR can offer.
> …it will be a shame. We need lot of low-cost headsets for XR to proliferate
I agree, I’m just expecting today’s mid-market to be tomorrow’s low end (and to eventually have working old devices being basically thrown away due to over-supply like is the case for computers and phones).
BTW I don’t have the same reservations about the others with tracked controllers, just Cardboard since (for more interactive content) optimizing for head look only is limiting.
> Are you a designer or a software engineer?
For my current VR project I’m doing both the UI and the programming.
> Weird assumption to make. I’ve tried modern hardware, to me it’s mostly just higher resolution if the same thing.
It’s not a bad assumption because you never mentioned an actual problem with VR (and they are many). What you’ve done is simply parrot people who haven’t experienced VR for more than 5 minutes if at all. Like the previous parent commenter, you still haven’t mentioned which modern headset you’ve owned.
> It’s the lazy people hurting the adoption of VR?
I’ve ordered adoption hurdles according to importance and prevalence. It is a factor, but not the biggest one.
> Facebook is far from the only player in the game.
Meta is the only large publicly traded company that’s shipped something worthwhile for the masses at large. Sony and Apple will enter soon, but that won’t happen until next year.
> It pains me to hear people say that they don't even get their headset out to show off at the company because they know it's going to be a mess of charging and updating before they can make it do something cool.
He has a point. The tens of billions of dollars seem to be mostly dedicated to adding invasive crap that makes the experience worse.
After the last update I had to "sync my Meta account" before I could do anything. I had to log in on the PC (with my headset on) and enter a code shown on the headset on my PC. Yea, that's fumbly.
Oh and after the latest update may play area is apparently too small for room scale mode, it always forces me back to stationary mode. What a mess.
This was after using the device just fine for two years without such boondoggle.
> All I was doing was defending Fowler's point that the Gear VR might be a better option for people wanting to dip their toes in for now without spending big $$$.
Perhaps even then is not a good idea after all. Consider the option that some Joe Average will try out Gear VR on his Samsung mobile phone and is dissatisfied with the quality (say, because it causes nausea on him). So he will avoid trying out VR again in the expected future. If from beginning on he had tried a product of satisfactory quality he would perhaps have liked VR.
TLDR: Trying out a cheaper, but inferior product can be worse than trying no product.
> I'm not sure, my guess is that the form base form factor is an issue.
It is for me. Having to wear a headset is a huge ask, no matter how slim and light it is. I'd do it for a compelling enough reason, but nothing in the VR space is anywhere near compelling enough for me (yet).
But I won't buy one from Facebook, no matter how awesome it may be.
Wait til the thing comes out, use it, tear it down - whatever - but provide real facts to back up your assertions.
reply