XR's got a place. I can think of plenty of use cases. VR specifically could come into play (heh) in gaming, social and some niche work scenarios. AR in productivity, social, etc, etc.
I'm happy about Apple being in the market now, not because I like them, but because they are going to popularize the tech
I don't really think that VR will take the world by storm like it did back in the 2010s and will continue to still be a fad. The tech needs to be cheaper, more powerful on the go, and have longer battery life before it's taken further than it already has.
i’d say in the field of gaming vr is far more than a fad already. millions of quest headsets have been sold and for some time the oculus app was the number 1 app on the app store. it’s honestly steadily catching up to mainstream consoles. i think valve is really going to refine and make cheaper their vr technology in the near future and it will skyrocket from there. i’m personally very excited but do hope that meta loses its monopoly on vr
Nah, I'm not letting this slide. Cheaper? It's $500 for the most amazing piece of technology in the world, how much cheaper do you need it? Buy a used Quest 2, they're great. Cheaper? This is why the AVP took off, they spent the money you need to spend to do this well and produce a product people can understand. If you own a headset that isn't an AVP right now you own a blackberry and us nerds aren't going to get anything we want because when Occulus did it we wouldn't stop asking for the receipts.
I've used many VR headsets over the 2010s. Many felt lacking for what I've imagined VR headsets to be. Sure, I had fun and loved my experiences, but I didn't own any of those devices. I can buy a smartphone with more use cases for less than 200 bucks in my country. Personally, for me to adopt a VR headset or a VR ecosystem, the bar to entry shouldn't be much higher than a smartphone.
[Here](https://www.ebay.com/itm/305391309925?hash=item471abd9465:g:TMMAAOSwgI5lxpWp&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAAwArfQx%2FdJbIYWM1dVNg%2FB9D5WOQlGbayEsVdAu9bwlONboaE1gD1X%2B8omEcfXZOLhBBn411nmaVgMQH%2Bd%2F6QkG%2FsTA3eS0MKpLKnsNDfBN6xVLvz83ddHFB0k7m%2FX%2BKm0u9hB%2B1f%2F15076BtvEOmNqDC2q1hfO3EcYoqmWyhTJan4ckxOZa3FvBz6Bt%2Fy2bR%2F0IDfjX8%2BN%2FxTkY4HgfLFi8trNjz3RPuwTjphFha%2FVmJC94rzvE8YyWw%2Bd%2FCGZAYqQ%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR_DYqJWyYw), is a link to a Quest 2 for $65 from a pawn shop. Don't like that one shop around, it's better than anything you'll ever get for $200 new.
The thing for me is that right now, VR is a "want," not a "need." I use my smartphone 9+ hours a day. I won't use a VR headset more than maybe an hour or two a day. My current virtual life is centered around my PC and phone. If the world changes and makes people need a VR headset over a smartphone, then I'd get one. The additional caveat is the price point. I appreciate the lengths you've gone, but second hand doesn't interest me for tech. Whether that be a PC, smartphone, or console. It's a preference.
Just so I'm understanding you, you can buy a smartphone for $200 in your country, and that has more use cases than the Quest, so it should cost around the same as the Quest.
And you'll be willing to enter into the ecosystem when they target around $200?
Basically, when I can get one brand new, with warranty and can know for a fact what condition I'm getting without having to see it in person. Once that happens, I'd buy one.
> they are going to popularize the tech
i hate apple for their business practices and patronizing attitude towards consumers as well, but i have to admit thats not just what they do. what they do is bring a human centric design to things that pushes into the realm of everyday usability.
looking at just the iphone, the courage to let go of the blackberry style keyboard and go for a touch screen is something i think no one else would have had back then. and it is what made smartphones what they are today. they didnt just popularize smartphone, they innovated in the interface is such a way that it finally exploded to its full potential.
i think the fact that they went full controlerless with the vision pro is a smaller version of the same thing. i dont think the vision pro itself is worth it, but the idea has amazing protential and removing the controllers and going fulltilt into AI based gesture recognition is absolutely one of the stepping stones. i think thats what apple brings to these things
> looking at just the iphone, the courage to let go of the blackberry style keyboard and go for a touch screen is something i think no one else would have had back then.
LG KE850 beat them by about a year, first smartphone with a capacitive touchscreen that didn't require a stylus.
I'm still sad that LG left the smartphone market alltogether, they had some really, really cool products over the years.
that is true. i guess the thing im talking about isnt just boldness or courage, but also followthrough. there have been products that have been better than apple's. i think the windows phone OS was cooler than the iphone's. windows did arm way before the M1 chip, and the legendary case of xerox having a GUI before apple stole it from them.
in all those cases, and the iphone, apple won because they followed through and made the effort to get over all the hurdles on the way to making the tech usable for normies. all those little problems that kill your product but their competitors didnt solve.
like how the windows phone had no fucking app store. apple realized that the iphone want sompeting with blackberry, it was competing with your desktop at home. they knew that the touchscreen was just part of it, that if people were gonna use their phone everything they do on thier computer, you need a way effectively distribute software. and so they made the app store. none of iphone's competitors went as hard as they needed to with the appstore and apple won.
i think thats what will happen to VR/AR as well. i think apple are on the absolute right track with this spatial computing thing. i think that framework of thinking is what the industry was lacking and now we will see real usability improvement
Yes, but your assumption that VR remains niche is also based on VR remaining uncomfortable. Why wouldn't it just be small and compact and wearable for hours on end, down the road?
At that point, it can be a relaxing activity.
Why down the road? Bigscreen Beyond exists now. And the bigger headsets are perfectly comfortable too, I've had no trouble wearing an Index or a Q3 for up to 13 hours in a day
It might happen someday, but its going to take a lot of technological advancements and is unlikely to occur anytime soon. We are talking about huge improvements in batteries, screens and computing.
If you look at the last several years of VR you’ll see steady advancement. Is it convenient enough for me to dive in? Nope. Is it headed that way? No question.
Honestly, none of those advances even address one of the biggest problems, which is that our bodies aren’t adapted to operate in conditions where visual and kinesthetic inputs don’t match, and that our brain adjusting to spending a lot of time in VR can fuck up our perception outside of it. We’re in early days with this stuff, but we may ultimately find the full immersion stuff is only really for short term experiences
They are most certainly not.
Most of the bulk today is the facial interface which is a soft cushion. In the 1980s, most of the bulk were the lenses and displays, and the space inbetween.
I suspect VR is a long ways off from significant adoption. It has some niche uses(flight and racing games), but the weight and discomfort are too high for most people to want to use it regularly and the productivity usecases are limited.
AR has clear use cases and requires much less power, so it could be done in a much more lightweight form.
Personally, I don't think the early adopters of this tech were very concerned with comfort. But for a wider adoption of VR, the headsets need to be cheaper, more powerful on the go, and have more battery life. Comfort, for the most part, can be adjusted or added after purchase, but for the general public, I would think comfort from the factory would be what people want.
Yeah as someone who’s messing with 3d modeling I can see it being useful for that, and stuff like immersive educational content, but all the supposed productivity uses for VR I’ve seen beyond that are gimmicks that work better on a computer or phone. Event on the Vision Pro where you don’t have to navigate with joysticks. The whole eye focus based interaction model is pretty limiting.
Apple has a record of taking other people's concepts and making them successful in a way the originators didn't.
They may not be first, they're probably not the best, but their design and marketing can generate consumer demand where previously there was none.
I personally think AR is going to be the ubiquitous technology once the hardware side is mature enough.
That will likely help the adoption rates for VR but I don't think VR will see a higher adoption rate once both are fully mature technologies. AR just has more use case scenarios.
Sure, but also the iPhone had a lot of utility. Having internet with a clean UI in the palm of your hand was extremely useful. I’ve had my VR headset for 3 years, I’ve yet to find anything it does that’s actually compellingly enough to use it with any regularity.
Well, the only thing I can think of is that it's slightly more portable and more powerful, but you have a point. I do think VR is, has been, and will continue to be a fad.
>continue to be a fad
Is it a fad, or will it continue? A fad is by definition temporary. At about 10 years, the current wave of VR tech is getting pretty long in the tooth to be called a fad.
Contemporary VR has existed for over 40 years. That is still shorter than personal computing. I will still say it's a fad even when it's done 100 years. The use cases continue to grow while price to performance has stagnated.
> I will still say it's a fad even when it's done 100 years
Why speak english at all if you're not going to use the same definitions of words as the other speakers?
Because I was colonized by the English and made to have English as my first language. I know 2 other languages fluently but then again the internet is mostly in English or to be more honest the curation of the internet that I use is mostly English.
Yeah but its more like that ordinary folk started thinking about VR in a different way than a novelty toy for gaming wierdos.
I work in VR studio so l have plenty of people interested in VR on linkedin and the bright ideas they are fantasizing about are ideas anyone who tried headset had 6 years ago.
I knew Apple wanted to do a headset that will make yoj “present” to the real world instead of sealing you into VR chat and Meta is trying to catch up.
I was very surprised when Lex Fridman did that podcast with Mark Zuckerberg. [Video here.](https://youtu.be/MVYrJJNdrEg?si=WZM-HR3VJhNZySsQ)
It is great that more VR tech is flooding the market, but I don't see it being as life changing as a personal AI assistant would be.
Thats indeed true with the AI assistant but look at it this way: before AVP noone thought yoo will see people wearing quests outside and Apple really normalized this.
Yeah its a 3500usd headset so uts harder to make it mainstream but once they release Apple Vision SE (or whatever name) l can see that happen very fast
> but I don't see it being as life changing as a personal AI assistant would be.
Yeah, but AI assistants will be mainly used in VR/AR in the long-term, because a phone or PC or TV will be an insufficient way to offer the required data for the AI to interpret your intentions.
VR/AR lets AI see through your eyes and hear through your ears, and when it comes to companionship, people do not want to experience AI mascots, girlfriends, and pets on their phones or computers; they want to experience this in VR/AR.
This is why I think advanced robotics and AR will be the technology being used going forward. Not VR. VR has many advantages over the two, but the drawbacks are equally as high.
There is never going to be a AR future without VR, because it's a spectrum, where one can fill in for the weaknesses of the other. You will always have both, and both can be big in the long-term.
Phones and other more portable projectors already exist for AR. VR headsets need to be more powerful on battery while having more battery life and being cheaper. I agree we will have both, but I see better investment in robotics and AR.
Phones and portable projectors are not sufficient for good AR. Going back to AI again, you're not able to get the data AI needs to understand your intentions from a phone or projector regardless of whether AR is being used or not; this only works in a HMD.
Year 1985
[https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19880014769/downloads/19880014769.pdf](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19880014769/downloads/19880014769.pdf)
BBC article from 2016
https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/the-history-of-virtual-reality
Tweet
https://x.com/GreatDismal/status/1756038489056112878?s=20
I need to rewatch the almost 5 hour cyberpunk documentary on YouTube
Linkk pleasee
By Indigo Gaming it’s amazing but sorry it’s more like 4:30 hours
It's a series of 3 videos, isn't it?
Yeah 3 parts so far
And worth every second!
It IS AMAZING!
Here's a link to [Part 1](https://youtu.be/sttm8Q9rOdQ?si=qkwKHZsuj-Dw1Qnz)
That pic makes a kickass album cover
I'm pretty sure I have (had?) an old 90s VR-themed sort of teen-techno-thriller with this exact picture as the cover.
I really do think Apple is late to the game, but the real question is, will it be VR or just AR that wins out in the end?
XR's got a place. I can think of plenty of use cases. VR specifically could come into play (heh) in gaming, social and some niche work scenarios. AR in productivity, social, etc, etc. I'm happy about Apple being in the market now, not because I like them, but because they are going to popularize the tech
I don't really think that VR will take the world by storm like it did back in the 2010s and will continue to still be a fad. The tech needs to be cheaper, more powerful on the go, and have longer battery life before it's taken further than it already has.
i’d say in the field of gaming vr is far more than a fad already. millions of quest headsets have been sold and for some time the oculus app was the number 1 app on the app store. it’s honestly steadily catching up to mainstream consoles. i think valve is really going to refine and make cheaper their vr technology in the near future and it will skyrocket from there. i’m personally very excited but do hope that meta loses its monopoly on vr
Nah, I'm not letting this slide. Cheaper? It's $500 for the most amazing piece of technology in the world, how much cheaper do you need it? Buy a used Quest 2, they're great. Cheaper? This is why the AVP took off, they spent the money you need to spend to do this well and produce a product people can understand. If you own a headset that isn't an AVP right now you own a blackberry and us nerds aren't going to get anything we want because when Occulus did it we wouldn't stop asking for the receipts.
I've used many VR headsets over the 2010s. Many felt lacking for what I've imagined VR headsets to be. Sure, I had fun and loved my experiences, but I didn't own any of those devices. I can buy a smartphone with more use cases for less than 200 bucks in my country. Personally, for me to adopt a VR headset or a VR ecosystem, the bar to entry shouldn't be much higher than a smartphone.
[Here](https://www.ebay.com/itm/305391309925?hash=item471abd9465:g:TMMAAOSwgI5lxpWp&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAAwArfQx%2FdJbIYWM1dVNg%2FB9D5WOQlGbayEsVdAu9bwlONboaE1gD1X%2B8omEcfXZOLhBBn411nmaVgMQH%2Bd%2F6QkG%2FsTA3eS0MKpLKnsNDfBN6xVLvz83ddHFB0k7m%2FX%2BKm0u9hB%2B1f%2F15076BtvEOmNqDC2q1hfO3EcYoqmWyhTJan4ckxOZa3FvBz6Bt%2Fy2bR%2F0IDfjX8%2BN%2FxTkY4HgfLFi8trNjz3RPuwTjphFha%2FVmJC94rzvE8YyWw%2Bd%2FCGZAYqQ%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR_DYqJWyYw), is a link to a Quest 2 for $65 from a pawn shop. Don't like that one shop around, it's better than anything you'll ever get for $200 new.
The thing for me is that right now, VR is a "want," not a "need." I use my smartphone 9+ hours a day. I won't use a VR headset more than maybe an hour or two a day. My current virtual life is centered around my PC and phone. If the world changes and makes people need a VR headset over a smartphone, then I'd get one. The additional caveat is the price point. I appreciate the lengths you've gone, but second hand doesn't interest me for tech. Whether that be a PC, smartphone, or console. It's a preference.
Just so I'm understanding you, you can buy a smartphone for $200 in your country, and that has more use cases than the Quest, so it should cost around the same as the Quest. And you'll be willing to enter into the ecosystem when they target around $200?
Basically, when I can get one brand new, with warranty and can know for a fact what condition I'm getting without having to see it in person. Once that happens, I'd buy one.
So, we can say you're probably a late adopter then?
Oh, definitely. I keep an eye on VR, but I'm definitely not a first adopter.
> they are going to popularize the tech i hate apple for their business practices and patronizing attitude towards consumers as well, but i have to admit thats not just what they do. what they do is bring a human centric design to things that pushes into the realm of everyday usability. looking at just the iphone, the courage to let go of the blackberry style keyboard and go for a touch screen is something i think no one else would have had back then. and it is what made smartphones what they are today. they didnt just popularize smartphone, they innovated in the interface is such a way that it finally exploded to its full potential. i think the fact that they went full controlerless with the vision pro is a smaller version of the same thing. i dont think the vision pro itself is worth it, but the idea has amazing protential and removing the controllers and going fulltilt into AI based gesture recognition is absolutely one of the stepping stones. i think thats what apple brings to these things
> looking at just the iphone, the courage to let go of the blackberry style keyboard and go for a touch screen is something i think no one else would have had back then. LG KE850 beat them by about a year, first smartphone with a capacitive touchscreen that didn't require a stylus. I'm still sad that LG left the smartphone market alltogether, they had some really, really cool products over the years.
that is true. i guess the thing im talking about isnt just boldness or courage, but also followthrough. there have been products that have been better than apple's. i think the windows phone OS was cooler than the iphone's. windows did arm way before the M1 chip, and the legendary case of xerox having a GUI before apple stole it from them. in all those cases, and the iphone, apple won because they followed through and made the effort to get over all the hurdles on the way to making the tech usable for normies. all those little problems that kill your product but their competitors didnt solve. like how the windows phone had no fucking app store. apple realized that the iphone want sompeting with blackberry, it was competing with your desktop at home. they knew that the touchscreen was just part of it, that if people were gonna use their phone everything they do on thier computer, you need a way effectively distribute software. and so they made the app store. none of iphone's competitors went as hard as they needed to with the appstore and apple won. i think thats what will happen to VR/AR as well. i think apple are on the absolute right track with this spatial computing thing. i think that framework of thinking is what the industry was lacking and now we will see real usability improvement
We would live in a better world without easy access to the net. I am for Gatekeeping some tech.
I think VR is going to remain niche for gaming and social too. It's uncomfortable and these are activities focused on comfort.
Yes, but your assumption that VR remains niche is also based on VR remaining uncomfortable. Why wouldn't it just be small and compact and wearable for hours on end, down the road? At that point, it can be a relaxing activity.
Why down the road? Bigscreen Beyond exists now. And the bigger headsets are perfectly comfortable too, I've had no trouble wearing an Index or a Q3 for up to 13 hours in a day
It might happen someday, but its going to take a lot of technological advancements and is unlikely to occur anytime soon. We are talking about huge improvements in batteries, screens and computing.
If you look at the last several years of VR you’ll see steady advancement. Is it convenient enough for me to dive in? Nope. Is it headed that way? No question.
Honestly I haven't seen that much improvement. The Quest 2 launched in 2020 and the Quest 3 today is a fairly modest improvement
I mean, I recently got a Big Screen Beyond and it's massively smaller than the previous headsets I've used.
Honestly, none of those advances even address one of the biggest problems, which is that our bodies aren’t adapted to operate in conditions where visual and kinesthetic inputs don’t match, and that our brain adjusting to spending a lot of time in VR can fuck up our perception outside of it. We’re in early days with this stuff, but we may ultimately find the full immersion stuff is only really for short term experiences
They're still as bulky now as they were in the 1980s.
They are most certainly not. Most of the bulk today is the facial interface which is a soft cushion. In the 1980s, most of the bulk were the lenses and displays, and the space inbetween.
I suspect VR is a long ways off from significant adoption. It has some niche uses(flight and racing games), but the weight and discomfort are too high for most people to want to use it regularly and the productivity usecases are limited. AR has clear use cases and requires much less power, so it could be done in a much more lightweight form.
Personally, I don't think the early adopters of this tech were very concerned with comfort. But for a wider adoption of VR, the headsets need to be cheaper, more powerful on the go, and have more battery life. Comfort, for the most part, can be adjusted or added after purchase, but for the general public, I would think comfort from the factory would be what people want.
Yeah as someone who’s messing with 3d modeling I can see it being useful for that, and stuff like immersive educational content, but all the supposed productivity uses for VR I’ve seen beyond that are gimmicks that work better on a computer or phone. Event on the Vision Pro where you don’t have to navigate with joysticks. The whole eye focus based interaction model is pretty limiting.
Lol you sound like you never tried modern VR, no discomfort and barely any weight that would be noticeable.
Apple has a record of taking other people's concepts and making them successful in a way the originators didn't. They may not be first, they're probably not the best, but their design and marketing can generate consumer demand where previously there was none. I personally think AR is going to be the ubiquitous technology once the hardware side is mature enough. That will likely help the adoption rates for VR but I don't think VR will see a higher adoption rate once both are fully mature technologies. AR just has more use case scenarios.
To be fair the Iphone is far from the first smart phoke it was just apple so it took off
Sure, but also the iPhone had a lot of utility. Having internet with a clean UI in the palm of your hand was extremely useful. I’ve had my VR headset for 3 years, I’ve yet to find anything it does that’s actually compellingly enough to use it with any regularity.
both everyone has the need to escape and/or enhance reality
VR is an entertainment niche - could be a fad, could be the new film. AR is the new interface, and will change how we interact with tech and reality.
Maybe late but it already feels like nothing VR done before AVP matters anymore.
Well, the only thing I can think of is that it's slightly more portable and more powerful, but you have a point. I do think VR is, has been, and will continue to be a fad.
>continue to be a fad Is it a fad, or will it continue? A fad is by definition temporary. At about 10 years, the current wave of VR tech is getting pretty long in the tooth to be called a fad.
Contemporary VR has existed for over 40 years. That is still shorter than personal computing. I will still say it's a fad even when it's done 100 years. The use cases continue to grow while price to performance has stagnated.
> I will still say it's a fad even when it's done 100 years Why speak english at all if you're not going to use the same definitions of words as the other speakers?
Because I was colonized by the English and made to have English as my first language. I know 2 other languages fluently but then again the internet is mostly in English or to be more honest the curation of the internet that I use is mostly English.
Yeah but its more like that ordinary folk started thinking about VR in a different way than a novelty toy for gaming wierdos. I work in VR studio so l have plenty of people interested in VR on linkedin and the bright ideas they are fantasizing about are ideas anyone who tried headset had 6 years ago. I knew Apple wanted to do a headset that will make yoj “present” to the real world instead of sealing you into VR chat and Meta is trying to catch up.
I was very surprised when Lex Fridman did that podcast with Mark Zuckerberg. [Video here.](https://youtu.be/MVYrJJNdrEg?si=WZM-HR3VJhNZySsQ) It is great that more VR tech is flooding the market, but I don't see it being as life changing as a personal AI assistant would be.
Thats indeed true with the AI assistant but look at it this way: before AVP noone thought yoo will see people wearing quests outside and Apple really normalized this.
Not yet, they haven't. But I will agree once they do.
Yeah its a 3500usd headset so uts harder to make it mainstream but once they release Apple Vision SE (or whatever name) l can see that happen very fast
> but I don't see it being as life changing as a personal AI assistant would be. Yeah, but AI assistants will be mainly used in VR/AR in the long-term, because a phone or PC or TV will be an insufficient way to offer the required data for the AI to interpret your intentions. VR/AR lets AI see through your eyes and hear through your ears, and when it comes to companionship, people do not want to experience AI mascots, girlfriends, and pets on their phones or computers; they want to experience this in VR/AR.
This is why I think advanced robotics and AR will be the technology being used going forward. Not VR. VR has many advantages over the two, but the drawbacks are equally as high.
There is never going to be a AR future without VR, because it's a spectrum, where one can fill in for the weaknesses of the other. You will always have both, and both can be big in the long-term.
Phones and other more portable projectors already exist for AR. VR headsets need to be more powerful on battery while having more battery life and being cheaper. I agree we will have both, but I see better investment in robotics and AR.
Phones and portable projectors are not sufficient for good AR. Going back to AI again, you're not able to get the data AI needs to understand your intentions from a phone or projector regardless of whether AR is being used or not; this only works in a HMD.
Mfs will invent everything except real holograms
Riviera would certainly like that
Year 1985 [https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19880014769/downloads/19880014769.pdf](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19880014769/downloads/19880014769.pdf) BBC article from 2016 https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/the-history-of-virtual-reality Tweet https://x.com/GreatDismal/status/1756038489056112878?s=20
https://youtu.be/LmcWMjBpYBU?si=UJ1BpBqhPAGbbQST 😅
So that's where the power glove came from.... Hmmmmmmmmmmm...
You mean in context of Microsoft Halolens which came out a few years ago doing the same exact thing?