My friends and I watch movies in Bigscreen VR (simulated movie theater) and honestly, it's some of the most fun I've ever had. It's like renting out a theater with friends where you can be as loud as you want for free, several times per week.
I feel as though most people think about VR for its novelty use cases, like putting grandma on a roller coaster, or doing some exercises or whatever. Swing a lightsaber at Darth Vader!
I don't think we've even scratched the surface on the possibilities of just creating fun environments for friends to goof around in. That's going to be the future of this technology.
This sounds awesome and I've also thought about a VR headset for regular console games. Can you comment on if that is a good idea and which specs/devices I might compare for that? I have no interest in most actual VR games until there is something "killer".
Steam has a setup that allows you to play regular games in what looks/feels like a large home theater. I haven't used it short of checking it out, but it looked nice.
The first time I joined a cinema room I didn’t know I would be sitting next to people. I turned and looked on my left and a bunch of people were looking at me. I screamed out loud (didn’t know my mic was on also) and everybody laughed. That was magical somewhat.
I had a conversation with an Israeli guy about smart grids and the iron dome while watching old Bond movies. Highly recommend Big Screen. Eye contact, hand gestures and the occasional air drawing go a long way to connect people.
It's pretty dumb, think of building your Mii on the Wii, plus some basic heuristics if you turn your head towards someone past a threshold, your avatar makes eye contact. It works more than enough to trick your brain.
Not OP, but have had similar experiences with VR. I absolutely LOVE VR. It makes all forms of gaming 10x more exciting / interesting / immersive.
I still think the content isn’t nearly as mature as say, the traditional PC gaming or PS/Xbox games, but it’s slowly getting there. Hopefully as more people adopt VR, bigger and bigger publishers will see it as a profitable domain.
If you’re a Skyrim fan, check out some recent Skyrim VR (with mods) videos… It’s a truly mind blowing experience!
> It makes all forms of gaming 10x more exciting / interesting / immersive.
Wow, I couldn't disagree more with that statement. I'm very very aware I'm playing a game in VR bacause I have to be constantly aware of the space limitations, which often isn't handled well by games that expect a larger space than I have. Not to mention trying not to trip on the cables (which Quest[0] doesn't have I guess, so there's that), and the relatively uncomfortable headset...
In fact, so far I'd say I've played a total of two games that I thought did well with VR: SUPERHOT and Beat Saber.
[0] Because Facebook is involved, I will never own one.
It’s understandable and defensible to not use it because of Facebook, but I gotta say that Quest (especially Quest 2) is a qualitatively different and better experience than a lot of PCVR.
You acclimate over time. Always best to stop the moment you feel a hint of motion sickness. I purposefully took it quite slow and played only roomscale games without any artificial movement for the first few weeks. Now I can play for any length of time, until the batteries die or my legs give out.
It depends a lot on the type of game I think. For me and from what I've observed, the motion sickness tends to come from a mismatch between what you're eyes are seeing what what your body is experiencing.
So any game where you're not moving besides when you're actually walking around in meatspace generally doesn't seem to trigger that "oh god you ate the bad mushrooms abort abort" reflex.
The other area this can kind of sneak up on you is if you're trying to use a device/PC that isn't really up to par and the frame rate is dropping. You cross a threshold where it's not quite keeping up with your movements and get the same mismatch between your movement and what your eyes are seeing and it makes you sick.
So to that end, stuff like SUPERHOT VR or Beat Saber you can generally play comfortably for hours. I've thrown my 85 year old grandmother who gets horribly car sick into Job Simulator for an hour without any problems.
It's a pretty short easy leap to any games that provide "blink" movement where you just kinda point at a new spot and suddenly you're there. Literally "blink" and when you open your eyes you're in a different place. A lot of great games support this style of movement and it's usually pretty comfortable--there's no actual motion to the movement. Something like Half Life Alyx has been pretty comfortable and fun (besides being absolutely terrifying waiting for headcrabs or zombies to get me) with this movement method.
Any racing or flight simulators where there's constant motion are generally the stuff that even still get me. I've acclimatized a bit and can actually play them now for an hour or two at a time, but certainly not indefinitely.
EDIT: This is all with an old HTC Vive. I did used to own a Oculus DK2. The extra 15Hz or so refresh rate and a more powerful PC made a _huge_ difference in how sick the simple stuff made me.
I personally don't experience any motion sickness. I have a friend who does.
It seems totally individual. What I have heard is that if you do experience motion sickness, it eventually acclimates. Most games have a plethora of "comfort" settings designed to help reduce motion sickness (snap turning, vignette, teleport motin, etc.)...
It will indeed. It's frustrating that all of this is going much slower than I thought it would though. I feel like AR and this and the big ML GAN breakthroughs are still like 10-20 years away from now. (From my recollection it's felt like a year away for like 7-9 years now.) My kids are going to have such a fun time with it once its actually here but I'll be near middle age before the next wave is actually mature.
Actually you don't really need it because positional head tracking will pin the sounds to their proper points in space, quite similar to the same feature on the airpods. You can plug in better headphones of course.
I use an Occulus 2 headset, Bigscreen VR app, headphones, and that's it really. I personally prefer hooking my Occulus 2 up to a PC, but it's not required unless you're doing a room with more than 4 people in it but that's just for the person hosting the room.
Isn’t it like watching potato quality? We had the first oculus rift at our office many years ago and there was an app to play video files in a movie theatre. But the resolution was so bad it was like watching a VHS. I see the potential here but the quality/resolution is going to have to take a huge leap.
It is quite good. I have watched hours of shows and movies on the Quest 2. The resolution of your virtual cinema screen is essentially 1080p, which really is not bad. The main drawback is the quality of the lenses as they can add blur outside the sweet spot, god rays and chromatic aberration. I think these devices are only a few hardware generations away from delivering on the promise of a no compromises cinema in a bag.
Yeah, me either. They are definitely not designed to be worn over glasses comfortably. I ended up getting custom lenses that clip over the headset lenses because I play Beat Saber enough to justify it.
As a fellow glasses-wearer I can say that I've had a good experience with the Valve Index, which lets me adjust the distance between the lenses and my face enough that my glasses fit comfortably.
I've read that it's also possible, at least for some headsets and levels of correction, to purchase custom lenses such that you don't need glasses at all while wearing the headset.
I have a Quest 2, and I 3D printed some inserts from Thingiverse. They were designed to be used with the lenses from a specific set of glasses on Zenni Optical, which I ordered in my prescription (~$20).
It's not incredible now, but it's a lot better than it once was. I watched a few movies on an airplane recently and I noticed some fuzziness at first, but stopped noticing it after a while.
I don't own one so I can't say for sure, but if you mean the original oculus devkit that thing had terrible resolution compared to the quest 2 and others
I had the same experience with Google Daydream (RIP). It's a really neat immersive experience to try out a couple times, but I could never seriously watch anything in there because it was just plain unpleasant.
I like the VHS comparison, but I would argue it's worse than that because you get a weird screen door effect if you're on any kind of angle that tends to distort things weirdly. I think Netflix had a decent tradeoff where the "screen" was rather large, but it feels like sitting in the front row of an IMAX where you're moving your head to see everything.
It should just come down to the source files and the hardware. The Quest 2 is 1832x1920 per eye but with the FOV it probably can only really render 1080p video if you're watching it in something like BigScreen.
I use mine to watch 3D movies and it's pretty great. I missed out on seeing Avatar in theaters so being able to watching it in 3D without waiting for a re-release or anything is convenient.
It seems a lot of people don't know about the jump in quality between the headsets that came out. The original oculus was leapfrogged fairly quickly by the HTC Vive, and then that was eventually superseded by later headsets like the pimax, Valve Index, and Quest. If you haven't tried any of them I definitely recommend testing one out, the difference is very noticeable.
Not only watching videos but even reading text is much easier in the latest headsets. Unfortunately many people have only tried the older or commodity VR solutions and think that's the limit of the technology. This is largely due to the price and physical setup required for some of the better headsets, but already there are some great setups out there.
Maybe? We also tried the same thing with the vive and it still was like looking at a potato IMO. Maybe the very latest devices are much better - I very much look forward to trying these.
It seems the lenses on the quest 2 are a bit of a hit-or-miss and vary in quality between each unit/batch.
My headset had a sweet-spot where the image was clear on maybe 5% of the screen, making it potato-vr for video and text. Others (on reddit) had the same complaints.
If you're considering buying one, make sure you're also able to return it in case the lens-quality of the batch is sub-par.
Bigscreen VR lets you use local files. You can share them via e-mail with people who only have the headset and no PC, and they can use the occulus browser to download the file to the headset.
This essentially means the quality is up to you. I usually re-encode 1080p+ files to 720p to add volume gain and burn-in subtitles. It looks great, imo.
We have this functionality over at vrland.io as well, and it doesn't require going through FB's walled garden Oculus store.
It's like a web-based VRChat, so it will work on any device with a browser. If Apple ships WebXR when they release their headset next year, it will work by default there too. Universal, decentralized, and free of walled gardens. That's the definition of the metaverse! Our team is on a mission to build a immersive version of the web in 3D and VR.
Haha it’s a bit of a party with the hacker news crowd
Is there a way to sit? I got a hang of the controls within a minute which is pretty impressive for touchscreen on mobile, but FYI it was pretty easy to back up to a wall such that my camera was behind the wall while I was still in front of it, so I couldn’t see anything.
I wonder if it would be any easy fix to make the wall surfaces one-sided.
O, I heard you talking for a minute but I’m having some trouble.
On using Safari on an iPhone SE (v. 2020) I gave access to microphone but it wasn’t clear if it was muted by default, when I tapped to mute, all of the audio cut out, which was unexpected, I was just trying to mute myself to be polite.
And when I open the chat, and click in the text field, it highlights with blue edge and my keyboard opens, but nothing I type is reflected in the text box, and I see no way to submit.
Haha, sorry friend, but still, memories of cranking up that 56k and logging on to Active Worlds night after night. Well, everything is illuminated I guess.
This is so depressing. It is such a strong signal that the general consumer just does not give a shit when it comes to privacy or hardware products being able to be remotely disabled by bloody facebook of all people.
I don't own a VR set, so this is talking about ideas rather than any specific implementation.
Every time I've heard someone mention having a VR setup, in a social/non-work setting, someone has asked them if they've checked out porn on it. In fairness, we've all read Snow Crash etc. and wondered how close we're getting to that stuff in the real world. Now, the big question: do you want Facebook to have a record of porn you've viewed, even if it was for 5 minutes out of curiosity? Can you imagine the "interesting" ads you might start getting if you did that?
I consider this similar to "why do you care if you're being watched if you have nothing to hide?". I'm not doing anything illegal there, but I don't want a camera in my bathroom. Similarly, even if I'm not doing anything illegal online, darned if I want Facebook to have a record of everything I do.
Yep. I got rid of my headset when the account migration plans were announced but I've never heard of anybody else doing this. General consumers just don't care, even with all of the complaints about Facebook accounts being locked and bricking headsets.
What's depressing to me is that in 2021 there are still people who look down on others for not placing privacy over functionality.
That's the mentality that ensures casual use of open platforms by every day people will remain a fringe occurrence.
It's almost like people think being open/free/privacy-conscious should somehow make up for an otherwise inferior product, and that's just not the case.
-
I have a CV1, *DK2, Quest 2. I've used the Vive, I've used the Index. The Quest is just an insane value.
Features the most approachable VR controller by far, works with PCs and standalone so it scales with the user's interest. UI is very very well thought out.
It's just a really damn good piece of hardware for a seriously competitive price. That's why it sells.
I'm glad you're coming to find out there are individual preference in the world. That's like saying, "It's so depressing, people are still driving cars even though they have killed countless people. Such a strong signal that people don't care about their lives."
More like "its so depressing, people are still driving cars even though they're destroying the environment. Such a strong signal that people don't care about the planet if it means they dont have to sit next to a stranger on the bus"
Don't all the other devices tie you to an account somehow? Xbox live account. Nintendo switch account. Epic account. Playstation account. Steam account. etc. etc.
The big difference with Facebook is that it is tied your social media account. Get banned from that and you can't play games anymore. And Facebook explicitly bans accounts that don't use real names and other PI, and rumor has it they love to ban obvious VR-only accounts as well.
the quest 2 is the best piece of tech of last 10 years. even as a non-gamer, i spend hours looking at google earth photos around the world. wireless makes it just so easy to pick up and down
of course, facebook does not know what to do with it beyond "senator, we sell ads". i hope someone else copies them and realizes its potential
I wish I could rejoice at the adoption of VR but I can only feel despair that Facebook of all companies is leading the way.
I owned an Oculus CV1 for 2 years and loved it. It completely shifted my perspective on VR, changing me from a naysayer to an enthusiast. Then Facebook began strengthening its grasp on Oculus by making account migration mandatory, and I decided not to comply and got rid of my headset instead.
Facebook needs more competition in the VR space but nobody seems interested. Valve shipped a headset, sure, but they are not pumping anywhere near the kind of resources into R&D that Facebook Reality Labs is.
valve likes money, and they see money in handhelds right now and their convoluted attempts to make touch pad controls a thing. see the steam controller, link, machine and now deck.
If you're sad now, just wait until the ads start coming. I'm not joking or hypothesizing -- I have a friend at Oculus who hoped that they'd take a different path because they're selling hardware. They've made it very clear to my friend that Facebook is an advertising company, and their strategy is to sell hardware with little margins to squeeze everyone else out, and then monetize you and your eye balls with ads.
Most probably not because I expect Oculus to make a lot of money through their store the same way apple and steam do (unless they don't have that insane 30% cut in place)
Not a big enough install base for the metaverse though. They need to target WebGL, WebAssembly and WebXR to create a 3D social space where you can jump into games and virtual worlds to play with others, or just hang out. A web-based VRChat that works universally via the browser, including headsets via WebXR.
Benefits are that developers don't have to give a cut to the Oculus store and Facebook, and for users it will be nearly as performant as a native application. Cross-platform, meaning VR applications that work across any headset including Apple's upcoming HMD is a huge bonus, because they will work day one if Apple does ship support for WebXR.
> developers don't have to give a cut to the Oculus store and Facebook
That's a good way to make Facebook think it's a failed platform and to stop investing in it.
> for users it will be nearly as performant as a native application
I'll have to see that to believe it. It's never been true for desktop or mobile applications so I can't see it being true on a resource constrained headset.
I am one of them and I have been blown away by my first headset. Most of the news about Quest revolves around mistrust of FB. That's fair, but it's still going to take billions in investment to make this tech hit it's full potential, so I am glad it's at least a US company. Maybe I would pay the Apple premium if they ever release a decent competitor.
In the meantime, I think this is the most promising new consumer technology since the iPhone. There's huge potential for social, exercise, gaming, media consumption, general purpose computing, business, art, and education. I have had many magic moments where the human-computer interaction was as natural as waving to a friend or hitting a ping pong ball. AR is going to share in most of this potential, so I view this as an early iteration of a device that will have AR and VR modes and can be used both in every day life and in the VR bubble. Eventually our phones will be obsolete.
So why hasn't it happened yet? It's been on the market for _years_ and very little units have sold. Personally I think VR is way overhyped. The experience is fun but intense, much like a rollercoaster. I like rollercoasters, but don't want to go on one daily.
In terms of everyday HCI, there are very few scenarios where it truly beats a flat 2D screen with touch.
The first iPhone sold 6.1m in its first year, and it was way more expensive than a Quest 2. Last year well over a billion cell phones were sold. The Quest 2 isn't the first oculus product -- they've been at this for years. I'd say these numbers aren't great if this really is 'the future of computing' as many would have you believe.
Something like 20% of the population will feel motion sick with no known way to combat that. It’s still a screen strapped inches away from your face, with no good input outside of video games. It’s an intense proposition, and requires a level of pay off to be worth it even if you have great resolution, fix issues with distortion, looks, passthru, etc.
Where as I have a supercomputer in my pocket that’s a pleasure to use, always accessible, cheap to expensive, and directly manipulatable. Even the blackberry (aka crack berry) was far more popular than VR ever has been. I just don’t see it outside of certain games and niches, and I’ve tried.
The thing with VR is that you have to experience it to understand. There has not been anything like it before. Smartphones were just mobile phones with screen in place of buttons. Mobile phones were just stationary phones you could carry around and so on.
I own 2 units and I never use them… just sitting in boxes after having set them up and played for a bit. Even prior to smartphones I had a stationary phone that I used. I used a telephone plugged into my wall, I use cordless telephones, I used a car phone, I used a Nokia, I used a razor, and eventually smartphones. They all provided real value. I don’t see what I’m missing with VR, and I’ve fully experienced it.
I believe we're on the verge of that happening. Yeah, VR has been available for way too many years, but available !== accessible. The Oculus Quest product line alone has done more for making VR accessible to the masses than any prior form of VR technology. Sure, Valve, HTC, Sony and others were there before, but their approach was more enthusiast friendly than mass market friendly, requiring additional hardware and wiring, for starters.
Sure, there are still many issues to overcome, but even with those the Quest line has managed to make a dent in the industry in only 2 years of being available.
I think we all will take this seriously when Apple finally joins the game.
I believe there’s a parallel with the internet. Took a while for it to really boom. VR has the tech, it just needs more apps and adoption. But tbf it’s already great like this! There’s nothing that prevents you to buy a headset for you (and perhaps your friends) and to spend hours having fun in VR.
No, but you can access VRland which is sort of like a web-based VRChat. Social 3D/VR via WebGL, WebAssembly, and WebXR that works cross-platform via the browser, not just limited to headsets but can be accessed via phones and computers.
Thanks for the guide! My kids love our Quest2 and have been asking me about Roblox VR but I hadn't looked into it yet. Rec Room and Roblox are definitely the most played games in our home.
Facebook employees will ignore your calls for help, and there is no proper way to contact them regarding a disappeared account.
You have to pretend to be an active Facebook user in order to access services tailored to developers, such as Wit.ai.
Imagine having to like YouTube videos and subscribe to channels, maybe post a comment sometimes in order to not wake up with your Google Cloud instances gone without notice.
I had an account I used for work (documentation, local API keys, etc) with a fake name that was also deleted.
I replaced that account with one using my actual name and a couple of friends, a phone number, etc, and I haven't had issues so far (like two years). I log into it maybe once every three months or so.
> Since when did Apple delete your account because you didn't post enough statuses or photos of your kid on the Apple social network?
Did that ever happened on Facebook? Anecdotally I have 2 FB accounts that I haven't posted to in years, and they are still alive.
PS: I suggest reading the link GP posted.
In case you don't, here's a summary: a newly account created FB account only used to use an API was deleted. This is a far cry from "deleting your account because you didn't post enough statuses or photos of your kid".
No, my account was not initially deleted, it was disabled a couple of days after creation, and it was reinstated only after the issue has received attention on HN.
Since then I have used Wit.ai services for 8 months without issues, then two weeks ago my Facebook account has suddenly disappeared. The account no longer exists when I try to log in, it is not limited or disabled, it's gone, without notice.
Wit.ai apps have a state, they host intents and the ML models are continuously trained based on your input. All of that data is now lost, and I haven't even received an email.
Fb doesn’t delete accounts because you don’t post enough statuses or photos. One thing that people miss here is that lots of accounts are taken over due to password breaches, and if you don’t realize for months that someone is using your account to spam, and none of your friends are telling you, well you might just be a ghost account…
The account of one of my relatives was hacked in a password breach recently and I've been trying to contact any support representative at Facebook for over 2 months. We noticed this within 5 hours of the hack happening and the email being changed.
I've filed support tickets with Oculus using my own headset's serial number - no response. We've been through every Facebook "help" page you can possibly image (ID checks, hacked account support, responding to security alerts) - got automated responses of absolutely no help. I've even reached out to people I know personally who work at Facebook and, of course, no one seems to have any idea who to talk to.
Turns out there are no support reps for dealing with deleted accounts. That should tell you all you need to know.
Microsoft Live accounts get the same treatment. Those sons of britches cancelled my kid's Minecraft account and screwed up his ability to play with his friends. Because he was using my email address. He doesn't having an email address. He is 9 for crying out loud.
This is part of why I refuse to buy one of their VR headsets. I'll get a Valve Index if I can justify the expense at some point, but I won't get a Quest.
>Facebook employees will ignore your calls for help, and there is no proper way to contact them regarding a disappeared account.
That's me. I don't have an Oculus but have heard good things about it. But I can't get one because my Facebook account was shut down without explanation in 2019. Despite its age (15 years) I barely used it, let alone for anything "controversial", but did regularly log into it. I repeatedly tried to verify my identity by submitting an image of my driver's license, without any response.
If a Facebook employee is reading this ... I don't want to create a fake new Facebook account. I want my own back.
I'm an OQ2 owner and am pretty happy with it especially compared to my PSVR which broke after less than a year of intermittent use. But the thing is, I really don't use it that much, other than for exercise or as a way to virtually meet up with my young nephew (who also rarely plays it). We spent far more time on our PS4s.
Some of it is old habit — and form factor of course, as light and wireless as the OQ2 is, it's still magnitudes more "work" than just plopping on the couch and turning on the TV. But for me, the big thing is game quality. Other than dedicated rhythm games (basically, Beat Saber) or ports of successful non-VR video games (Skyrim, Superhot, Tetris Effect), very few if any VR games for the OQ2 (I do not have an Alyx-capable PC) feel more than a half-fleshed out tech demo, with the possible exception of multiplayer freemium (e.g. Rec Room).
I've basically bought every Oculus game with an average rating of 4.3 (out of 5) or more, and nothing has really hooked me. And I can understand the lack of fully polished/thought-out games given what I thought was a very small and niche audience. So I was genuinely surprised to see that 4M OQ2s have been sold...that's obviously smaller than a traditional console, but not at all bad for the first year of non mainstream tech.
I wonder what the active user/game purchaser rate is?
edit: actually since I've been very physically lazy lately, I get the most use out of my OQ2 by watching Amazon Prime video. The resolution is just barely good enough for an immersive experience, and the Prime app (unlike the very basic Netflix app), allows you to resize and reposition the screen exactly as you like.
I have had a similar experience. I have 0 regret, I really do love it, but yes it is "an effort". I feel Oculus is "just there" to be that VR defining experience that will get people hooked en mass.
I think you also make a good point that is missing the games that will "define it" and that will make you come back. I really don't understand, considering the numbers sold, why some games can't be just reworked for VR "perspective". I know it's expensive, but I would pay money right away if someone ported (I realize it's not that easy) old Lucas Arts adventure games (e.g). Perhaps I'm under the impression or The Room VR which reminded me of Broken Sword.
Also, you mention purchase rate. I can only judge based on myself and my colleague, but I would say it's high! Neither of us are "hardcore" games, but we each both 10 games so far.
Also x2, how would you (anyone) feel using it on a plane,train, bus ect. I haven't tried it, but if someone has I would appreciate the feedback.... did people think you were a weirdo?
I use it as a dedicated Beat Saber machine and I still think it's worth the money. It runs BS more than well enough and it's wireless. Like you I bought other games but nothing else has been anywhere near as enjoyable!
I guess it depends where you are coming from. In not a gamer and find most screen based games a chore but I adore a bunch of VR games. They are simpler and thus require far less time commitment to get into. And the additional exercise is great after sitting in an office chair for 8 or 10 hours.
Is there anything in the SteamVR world that does what the Quest 2 does? A completely self contained, inside-out tracking experience? I love my Quest 2, but I don't like knowing that I'm one algorithmically determined bad Facebook comment away from losing access to my device and everything I've paid for permanently.
We can hope for a Valve Index 2 to be released with wireless. It would still require a beefy gaming rig, but their first headset was impressive at the time.
I'm fairly impressed with playing SteamVR games on my Quest 2 via Air Link, but the video quality takes a hit with compression. I wonder if that's as good as it gets, or is it because it's over regular WiFi and not whatever that many-gigahertz solution there was for the original Vive?
I am surprised that number is so low. I own both versions of Quest, and one of the best toys ever. I worked in the VR field in the 1990s, and I wished for a good consumer rig. Now I have two. Quest is better than our SGI Reality Engine driven VR experiences, even though we had really nice custom built motion platforms.
I am not fan of Facebook, but I have no complaints about how they manage their VR acquisition. I upload home videos to FB now just so I can watch them in a virtual cinema. Also, the Star Wars Vader series, pingpong, racketball, etc. are all first class experiences.
I upload home videos to FB now just so I can watch them in a virtual cinema.
With no offense to you intended that feels so incredibly wasteful from a network bandwidth perspective-- both the upload and the streaming back down to watch. It also seems incredibly privacy invading. I cannot understand how people stomach the business model.
I only uploaded Arizona hiking videos, perhaps a few kayaking videos also. I did say that I am not a FB fan, but the Oculus is a very fun product.
re: wasting bandwidth or computer resources. Compared to what has been used in my work for customers, this is a drop in the ocean.
This is probably more detail than you want, but since you mentioned FB’s business model (and thanks for your comment): I had all but stopped using FB until Apple placed restrictions on apps sharing information without permission. Now I probably spend 4 or 5 minutes a day on FB. I seldom post but I like to see what my family is doing. That said, I have spent almost an hour today with family on FaceTime and the phone, and a 2 hour coffee with friends this morning. Much more satisfying than social media!
I feel like I'm missing out of a lot of cool experiences, but I just can't get behind the hardware being, effectively, a rental on Facebook's whim. Does it bother you that Facebook can deny your use of the Oculus hardware with little to no recourse available?
re: bandwidth - I have a 90s sysadmin background. Analogous to being a "child of the depression" I have a permanent paranoia re: bandwidth scarcity. Years of making a living supporting corporate WANs running across drinking straw-sized pipes with to-the-moon-and-back latency has, no doubt, scarred me. I can't help but think that the world would be better, however, if developers tried to make things that worked "local first" and kept traffic on the local network as much as possible.
Overall I'm probably destined for "hermit living in a shack" when it comes to the direction technology is going. I'm a market segment of about a baker's dozen of people, I'd guess.
I have no tolerance for products that are unable to function without the use of a third-party system for any reason other by necessity. If a product requires compute or storage resources that, by necessity, need to be off-device then so be it. If the product needs off-device resources to drive a vendor lock-in model, DRM, etc, then it's a net negative for humanity.
Living in a world where Lamport's famous distributed systems quote[0] is also really infuriating to me. I want my stuff to work when I want it to work. Nobody can take away my locally-hosted stuff.
The Quest and a few games are cheap enough that if the service were cut off, it wouldn’t be too big of a deal. It is OK to enjoy things, with a little detachment when it comes to not worrying about losing them.
But it's not a PS5 competitor. It's supposed to be a competitor to computers + smartphones (or at least that's the hype.. the 'next big thing'). These numbers are tiny for such hype.
So was the Quest 2 before the holidays. Look, the PS5 was the fastest selling games console in history. The Quest 2 being in the same ball park is really good. Anyone who thinks these sales are disappointingly low just didn't have realistic expectations.
So was Oculus Quest. It was extremely difficult to find one in stock, even when Oculus Quest 2 came out.
And getting Oculus Quest 2 was pretty much impossible for the first 3-4 months after the release last year (that I tracked). Not sure how difficult it is now, because I haven't checked. But for the first 3-4 months, it was definitely the same situation, with people stalking out restocks at local best buys and walmarts to get one.
It really bugs me when a journalist can't be troubled to check their facts and learn there's a difference between silicon and silicone. Plus it's right in the linked CPSC filing.
The VR experience is so good it’s astonishing. What’s also very clear is that there’s very little software out there for it that makes you want to keep it off the shelf collecting dust.
I have found a number of gems. Eleven Table Tennis is just awesomely accurate table tennis against real people. Pistol Whip is a great workout and beats the pants off DDR. Population One is a fun Battle Royal that keeps me coming back. Eternal Starlight has major Homeworld vibes. Walkabout Mini Golf is a mini golf course in your living room.
The platform needs way more investment, but this is a decent start.
For sure. It not fair for me to say there isn’t a lot of software out there already, but I just don’t have anything personally that I want to come back to every day yet.
I would love to experience this but I'm completely unwilling to buy-in because of the "you must have a Facebook account".
I just want a piece of hardware that I can use.
Is there any comparable (functionality) product that I buy that doesn't have the onerous third-party account requirement? I expect that I'll have to spend more not to be "monetized" but I can live that that (grudgingly).
I'm fairly certain the Valve Index doesn't actually require Steam. Unfortunately it is very expensive. I myself am using an old Rift that I've refused to update since the Facebook account fiasco.
I think it is probably not a fair comparison since the Quest has mostly been in stock. I think it is greatly benefiting from people not being able to buy next gen consoles.
The Switch is the next generation for 2 extremely popular consoles — the 3DS and the Wii (let's ignore the WiiU, since the rest of the world largely did) — which has a userbase far greater than all VR systems combined. The 3DS alone sold 76m consoles. By comparison, the PSVR took about 3 years to hit 5 millions sales in 2020.
159 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 196 ms ] threadI feel as though most people think about VR for its novelty use cases, like putting grandma on a roller coaster, or doing some exercises or whatever. Swing a lightsaber at Darth Vader!
I don't think we've even scratched the surface on the possibilities of just creating fun environments for friends to goof around in. That's going to be the future of this technology.
I still think the content isn’t nearly as mature as say, the traditional PC gaming or PS/Xbox games, but it’s slowly getting there. Hopefully as more people adopt VR, bigger and bigger publishers will see it as a profitable domain.
If you’re a Skyrim fan, check out some recent Skyrim VR (with mods) videos… It’s a truly mind blowing experience!
Wow, I couldn't disagree more with that statement. I'm very very aware I'm playing a game in VR bacause I have to be constantly aware of the space limitations, which often isn't handled well by games that expect a larger space than I have. Not to mention trying not to trip on the cables (which Quest[0] doesn't have I guess, so there's that), and the relatively uncomfortable headset...
In fact, so far I'd say I've played a total of two games that I thought did well with VR: SUPERHOT and Beat Saber.
[0] Because Facebook is involved, I will never own one.
So any game where you're not moving besides when you're actually walking around in meatspace generally doesn't seem to trigger that "oh god you ate the bad mushrooms abort abort" reflex.
The other area this can kind of sneak up on you is if you're trying to use a device/PC that isn't really up to par and the frame rate is dropping. You cross a threshold where it's not quite keeping up with your movements and get the same mismatch between your movement and what your eyes are seeing and it makes you sick.
So to that end, stuff like SUPERHOT VR or Beat Saber you can generally play comfortably for hours. I've thrown my 85 year old grandmother who gets horribly car sick into Job Simulator for an hour without any problems.
It's a pretty short easy leap to any games that provide "blink" movement where you just kinda point at a new spot and suddenly you're there. Literally "blink" and when you open your eyes you're in a different place. A lot of great games support this style of movement and it's usually pretty comfortable--there's no actual motion to the movement. Something like Half Life Alyx has been pretty comfortable and fun (besides being absolutely terrifying waiting for headcrabs or zombies to get me) with this movement method.
Any racing or flight simulators where there's constant motion are generally the stuff that even still get me. I've acclimatized a bit and can actually play them now for an hour or two at a time, but certainly not indefinitely.
EDIT: This is all with an old HTC Vive. I did used to own a Oculus DK2. The extra 15Hz or so refresh rate and a more powerful PC made a _huge_ difference in how sick the simple stuff made me.
It seems totally individual. What I have heard is that if you do experience motion sickness, it eventually acclimates. Most games have a plethora of "comfort" settings designed to help reduce motion sickness (snap turning, vignette, teleport motin, etc.)...
Participants only need the headset and app.
I've read that it's also possible, at least for some headsets and levels of correction, to purchase custom lenses such that you don't need glasses at all while wearing the headset.
Now I can use my Quest 2 without glasses :)
This was on quest 1
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_virtual_realit...
I like the VHS comparison, but I would argue it's worse than that because you get a weird screen door effect if you're on any kind of angle that tends to distort things weirdly. I think Netflix had a decent tradeoff where the "screen" was rather large, but it feels like sitting in the front row of an IMAX where you're moving your head to see everything.
I use mine to watch 3D movies and it's pretty great. I missed out on seeing Avatar in theaters so being able to watching it in 3D without waiting for a re-release or anything is convenient.
Not only watching videos but even reading text is much easier in the latest headsets. Unfortunately many people have only tried the older or commodity VR solutions and think that's the limit of the technology. This is largely due to the price and physical setup required for some of the better headsets, but already there are some great setups out there.
My headset had a sweet-spot where the image was clear on maybe 5% of the screen, making it potato-vr for video and text. Others (on reddit) had the same complaints.
If you're considering buying one, make sure you're also able to return it in case the lens-quality of the batch is sub-par.
This essentially means the quality is up to you. I usually re-encode 1080p+ files to 720p to add volume gain and burn-in subtitles. It looks great, imo.
It's like a web-based VRChat, so it will work on any device with a browser. If Apple ships WebXR when they release their headset next year, it will work by default there too. Universal, decentralized, and free of walled gardens. That's the definition of the metaverse! Our team is on a mission to build a immersive version of the web in 3D and VR.
Check it out here:
https://vrland.io/cinema
Is there a way to sit? I got a hang of the controls within a minute which is pretty impressive for touchscreen on mobile, but FYI it was pretty easy to back up to a wall such that my camera was behind the wall while I was still in front of it, so I couldn’t see anything.
I wonder if it would be any easy fix to make the wall surfaces one-sided.
Yes there is, if you're on mobile. I will join now and walk you through
On using Safari on an iPhone SE (v. 2020) I gave access to microphone but it wasn’t clear if it was muted by default, when I tapped to mute, all of the audio cut out, which was unexpected, I was just trying to mute myself to be polite.
And when I open the chat, and click in the text field, it highlights with blue edge and my keyboard opens, but nothing I type is reflected in the text box, and I see no way to submit.
Best of luck, it’s an ambitious project.
Would have thought after 25-years we would have developed the value proposition better, and not the client.
1. https://activeworlds.com/ 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Worlds
Every time I've heard someone mention having a VR setup, in a social/non-work setting, someone has asked them if they've checked out porn on it. In fairness, we've all read Snow Crash etc. and wondered how close we're getting to that stuff in the real world. Now, the big question: do you want Facebook to have a record of porn you've viewed, even if it was for 5 minutes out of curiosity? Can you imagine the "interesting" ads you might start getting if you did that?
I consider this similar to "why do you care if you're being watched if you have nothing to hide?". I'm not doing anything illegal there, but I don't want a camera in my bathroom. Similarly, even if I'm not doing anything illegal online, darned if I want Facebook to have a record of everything I do.
I'd rather they have that, for instance, than my face in photos my friends took that they incorporate into their facial recognition.
I don't share OPs depression over it, but it is pretty disappointing.
That's the mentality that ensures casual use of open platforms by every day people will remain a fringe occurrence.
It's almost like people think being open/free/privacy-conscious should somehow make up for an otherwise inferior product, and that's just not the case.
-
I have a CV1, *DK2, Quest 2. I've used the Vive, I've used the Index. The Quest is just an insane value.
Features the most approachable VR controller by far, works with PCs and standalone so it scales with the user's interest. UI is very very well thought out.
It's just a really damn good piece of hardware for a seriously competitive price. That's why it sells.
They can stop you using a piece of hardware you purchased. With no warning. With no repercussions. And essentially no way to appeal.
Would I be okay if Sony could remote disable my PlayStation? Obviously not. So why is it acceptable with VR hardware?
It's not 'good value' if you can be blocked from using it.
Break TOS => Cancel account => Gimped hardware.
And if you think I'm exaggerating, just try setting up a Playstation without a PS account and signing their TOS.
It's ironic that the Quest gets this laser focus when it's only doing exactly what every other console is doing...
I can use a PS4/5 totally offline if I want to. Occulus does not work without a facebook account signed in full stop. Not comparable.
of course, facebook does not know what to do with it beyond "senator, we sell ads". i hope someone else copies them and realizes its potential
I owned an Oculus CV1 for 2 years and loved it. It completely shifted my perspective on VR, changing me from a naysayer to an enthusiast. Then Facebook began strengthening its grasp on Oculus by making account migration mandatory, and I decided not to comply and got rid of my headset instead.
Facebook needs more competition in the VR space but nobody seems interested. Valve shipped a headset, sure, but they are not pumping anywhere near the kind of resources into R&D that Facebook Reality Labs is.
My blog post on the topic: https://cedwards.xyz/goodbye-oculus/
That's a good way to make Facebook think it's a failed platform and to stop investing in it.
> for users it will be nearly as performant as a native application
I'll have to see that to believe it. It's never been true for desktop or mobile applications so I can't see it being true on a resource constrained headset.
> WebXR
The new VRML?
In the meantime, I think this is the most promising new consumer technology since the iPhone. There's huge potential for social, exercise, gaming, media consumption, general purpose computing, business, art, and education. I have had many magic moments where the human-computer interaction was as natural as waving to a friend or hitting a ping pong ball. AR is going to share in most of this potential, so I view this as an early iteration of a device that will have AR and VR modes and can be used both in every day life and in the VR bubble. Eventually our phones will be obsolete.
In terms of everyday HCI, there are very few scenarios where it truly beats a flat 2D screen with touch.
Where as I have a supercomputer in my pocket that’s a pleasure to use, always accessible, cheap to expensive, and directly manipulatable. Even the blackberry (aka crack berry) was far more popular than VR ever has been. I just don’t see it outside of certain games and niches, and I’ve tried.
It's likely that most of those 4 million users have never had a VR headset before.
Sure, there are still many issues to overcome, but even with those the Quest line has managed to make a dent in the industry in only 2 years of being available. I think we all will take this seriously when Apple finally joins the game.
Link to try it here: https://vrland.io/
edit - here's the process, although most steps are already completed if you actively use your headset.
https://www.lifewire.com/play-roblox-on-oculus-quest-or-ocul...
https://github.com/wit-ai/wit/issues/1946#issuecomment-88337...
Facebook employees will ignore your calls for help, and there is no proper way to contact them regarding a disappeared account.
You have to pretend to be an active Facebook user in order to access services tailored to developers, such as Wit.ai.
Imagine having to like YouTube videos and subscribe to channels, maybe post a comment sometimes in order to not wake up with your Google Cloud instances gone without notice.
That's how Facebook developer services operate.
I replaced that account with one using my actual name and a couple of friends, a phone number, etc, and I haven't had issues so far (like two years). I log into it maybe once every three months or so.
I did take care to befriend a lot of random people tho, so maybe that matters.
Yeah, same for your Google and Apple accounts. So what?
Did that ever happened on Facebook? Anecdotally I have 2 FB accounts that I haven't posted to in years, and they are still alive.
PS: I suggest reading the link GP posted.
In case you don't, here's a summary: a newly account created FB account only used to use an API was deleted. This is a far cry from "deleting your account because you didn't post enough statuses or photos of your kid".
Since then I have used Wit.ai services for 8 months without issues, then two weeks ago my Facebook account has suddenly disappeared. The account no longer exists when I try to log in, it is not limited or disabled, it's gone, without notice.
Wit.ai apps have a state, they host intents and the ML models are continuously trained based on your input. All of that data is now lost, and I haven't even received an email.
I've filed support tickets with Oculus using my own headset's serial number - no response. We've been through every Facebook "help" page you can possibly image (ID checks, hacked account support, responding to security alerts) - got automated responses of absolutely no help. I've even reached out to people I know personally who work at Facebook and, of course, no one seems to have any idea who to talk to.
Turns out there are no support reps for dealing with deleted accounts. That should tell you all you need to know.
The works doesn’t revolve around the US as much as it once did ;)
That's me. I don't have an Oculus but have heard good things about it. But I can't get one because my Facebook account was shut down without explanation in 2019. Despite its age (15 years) I barely used it, let alone for anything "controversial", but did regularly log into it. I repeatedly tried to verify my identity by submitting an image of my driver's license, without any response.
If a Facebook employee is reading this ... I don't want to create a fake new Facebook account. I want my own back.
Some of it is old habit — and form factor of course, as light and wireless as the OQ2 is, it's still magnitudes more "work" than just plopping on the couch and turning on the TV. But for me, the big thing is game quality. Other than dedicated rhythm games (basically, Beat Saber) or ports of successful non-VR video games (Skyrim, Superhot, Tetris Effect), very few if any VR games for the OQ2 (I do not have an Alyx-capable PC) feel more than a half-fleshed out tech demo, with the possible exception of multiplayer freemium (e.g. Rec Room).
I've basically bought every Oculus game with an average rating of 4.3 (out of 5) or more, and nothing has really hooked me. And I can understand the lack of fully polished/thought-out games given what I thought was a very small and niche audience. So I was genuinely surprised to see that 4M OQ2s have been sold...that's obviously smaller than a traditional console, but not at all bad for the first year of non mainstream tech.
I wonder what the active user/game purchaser rate is?
edit: actually since I've been very physically lazy lately, I get the most use out of my OQ2 by watching Amazon Prime video. The resolution is just barely good enough for an immersive experience, and the Prime app (unlike the very basic Netflix app), allows you to resize and reposition the screen exactly as you like.
I am not fan of Facebook, but I have no complaints about how they manage their VR acquisition. I upload home videos to FB now just so I can watch them in a virtual cinema. Also, the Star Wars Vader series, pingpong, racketball, etc. are all first class experiences.
With no offense to you intended that feels so incredibly wasteful from a network bandwidth perspective-- both the upload and the streaming back down to watch. It also seems incredibly privacy invading. I cannot understand how people stomach the business model.
re: wasting bandwidth or computer resources. Compared to what has been used in my work for customers, this is a drop in the ocean.
This is probably more detail than you want, but since you mentioned FB’s business model (and thanks for your comment): I had all but stopped using FB until Apple placed restrictions on apps sharing information without permission. Now I probably spend 4 or 5 minutes a day on FB. I seldom post but I like to see what my family is doing. That said, I have spent almost an hour today with family on FaceTime and the phone, and a 2 hour coffee with friends this morning. Much more satisfying than social media!
re: bandwidth - I have a 90s sysadmin background. Analogous to being a "child of the depression" I have a permanent paranoia re: bandwidth scarcity. Years of making a living supporting corporate WANs running across drinking straw-sized pipes with to-the-moon-and-back latency has, no doubt, scarred me. I can't help but think that the world would be better, however, if developers tried to make things that worked "local first" and kept traffic on the local network as much as possible.
Overall I'm probably destined for "hermit living in a shack" when it comes to the direction technology is going. I'm a market segment of about a baker's dozen of people, I'd guess.
I have no tolerance for products that are unable to function without the use of a third-party system for any reason other by necessity. If a product requires compute or storage resources that, by necessity, need to be off-device then so be it. If the product needs off-device resources to drive a vendor lock-in model, DRM, etc, then it's a net negative for humanity.
Living in a world where Lamport's famous distributed systems quote[0] is also really infuriating to me. I want my stuff to work when I want it to work. Nobody can take away my locally-hosted stuff.
[0] https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/distributed-system.tx...
If so, this doesn't seem the right comparison.
And getting Oculus Quest 2 was pretty much impossible for the first 3-4 months after the release last year (that I tracked). Not sure how difficult it is now, because I haven't checked. But for the first 3-4 months, it was definitely the same situation, with people stalking out restocks at local best buys and walmarts to get one.
https://www.livescience.com/37598-silicon-or-silicone-chips-...
The platform needs way more investment, but this is a decent start.
I just want a piece of hardware that I can use.
Is there any comparable (functionality) product that I buy that doesn't have the onerous third-party account requirement? I expect that I'll have to spend more not to be "monetized" but I can live that that (grudgingly).
By comparing, the Nintendo switch sold ten times as much.
Surely 8M is good sales but isn't this a bit over hyped?