Meta Quest Pro

https://www.meta.com/quest/quest-pro/

by mfiguiere • 4 years ago

639 1059 4 years ago

meta.com

marcooliv4• 4 years ago

I'm starting to believe on this VR stuff. $499 seems reasonable for this amazing headeset.

MikusR16• 4 years ago

It's 1500

batmansmom14• 4 years ago

where do you see $499 I see $1499

marcooliv4• 4 years ago

Ahh, miss understood the price. hahahaha

ugh123• 4 years ago

are you still a believer? ;)

MikusR16• 4 years ago

Half the price of Hololens 2 and MagicLeap 2.

cwkoss3• 4 years ago

Did magicleap actually get released?

frenchie4111• 4 years ago

Can someone give us a breakdown of the difference between this and Quest 2? I don't see a direct comparison on the website

celestialcheese3• 4 years ago

Quest 2 128gb - $399

Quest 2 256gb - $499

Quest Pro 256gb - $1499

MikusR16• 4 years ago

Faster, more comfortable, self tracking controllers (each essentially a Snapdragon 662 phone), better optics, higher resolution.

caslon7• 4 years ago

Double the RAM, higher resolution, color passthrough, controllers that aren't tracked by the headset (which basically means you get a wider area of motion), pancake lenses (a nice feature that puts your face closer to the screen and allows for slimmer headsets), reduction in weight.

batmansmom14• 4 years ago

Guys why can't we just call it Quest 3 I'm gonna go crazy learning all these names. Can't wait for the Meta Quest Pro 2 Max XL Mini

batmansmom14• 4 years ago

Brought to you by Carl's Jr

MikusR16• 4 years ago

Because it is not Quest 3.

martpie• 4 years ago

Because the Quest 3 is another product, this is the pro version. The consumer version will get released later I guess, and probably with a price closer to the current Quest 2.

rjh293• 4 years ago

If there even is another consumer version. It sounds like Pro is Facebook's ultimate objective for monetizing this, and Quest 1/2 was just a beta test for them to perfect their tech.

tootie• 4 years ago

This isn't a Quest 3 because it's aimed at a different audience. This isn't for gaming and entertainment, it's for productivity. Look at the list of software they are highlighting. It's design and business stuff. When they say "Pro" that's actually an accurate modified. Unlike the "iPad Pro" which is just a more expensive iPad.

fomine37• 4 years ago

To be fair, iPad Pro is great for some Pro like illustrator. I criticize AirPods "Pro" that is just a great consuming device.

danso3• 4 years ago

$1,500 for this:

Meta Quest Pro comes with all the goods and then some so you can start working, creating and collaborating — Meta Quest Touch Pro Controllers, charging dock with rapid USB-C power adapter, 10 advanced VR/MR sensors, 256GB storage, 12GB RAM, and a Snapdragon XR2+ Qualcomm processor.

Is there even any software that can take advantage of this? Nothing in Meta’s Horizons, afaict.

pclmulqdq3• 4 years ago

The Quest was running into hardware problems running things like VRChat and some games. I think this headset is supposed to be able to run those.

toxicFork• 4 years ago

Do you mean the specs are too low? Or too high?

danso3• 4 years ago

I don’t really know if the specs are good for bang for your buck. All I know is that the Quest 2 specs run the existing library pretty well. Paying 5x the price, I would expect a jump from WiiU to PS5, but is there any software that comes close?

The 4x resolution sounds great, but the Quest 2 resolution was already pretty solid. It’s still a great movie watching experience. I’m sure it’s even better with the Pro, but not $1500-for-a-niche-device better

smoldesu11• 4 years ago

The pricing is a bit of a sticker shock, but if anyone can make the $1,500 price point work, it's the company that also sells a $400 headset.

What's really interesting to me is that this headset seems to echo Apple's (purported) interests in a "premium" hardware generation targeted at enthusiasts and developers. The Quest is ultimately a leftover from the Oculus acquisition, so it should be really interesting to see how this hardware evolves under Meta's leadership.

MikusR16• 4 years ago

Quest was purely Facebook. Even their last PC only headset Rift S was essentially a rebadged Lenovo headset.

smoldesu11• 4 years ago

Really? The Quest 2 is definitely a Facebook-made device, but I believe the original Quest was inherited from Oculus's design labs (even though Facebook ultimately took over).

Edit: I did some digging, and the situation is actually pretty complicated. Facebook bought Oculus in 2014, but they continued operating as an "autonomous subsidiary" for a few years before being absorbed into Meta and rebranded as Reality Labs. I guess it really depends on your frame of thought, but I seem to be wrong here.

fra• 4 years ago

I worked on the Rift S, it was very much not a rebadged Lenovo headset.

MuffinFlavored5• 4 years ago

As somebody who isn't super in the loop about VR headsets, is this $1500 headset 3.75x better than the $400 one? Why or why not?

smoldesu11• 4 years ago

Not really. In fact, if you put aside the standalone features, this is arguably a worse piece of hardware than Valve's Index. If you do consider the standalone functionality, the internals are hardly an upgrade over the Quest 2.

Meta doesn't seem to be betting on a future where people overly care about specs or prices though. I think they want this to be the Macbook Pro of VR headsets, the sort of thing that Metaverse-enabled companies buy up without a second thought and distribute to their employees because it's "enterprise ready". It's definitely not the sort of strategy that will succeed in the B2C model, but they've already got a victory there. Now they need to scale the technology up for businesses, and that's the interesting part (for me).

jayd166• 4 years ago

Depends on how you value pass through MR features, face/expression tracking, and removing controller dead zones.

erikpukinskis3• 4 years ago

It has eye tracking which IMO is a game changer for business use. Eye contact is the killer app for VR workplaces.

fomine37• 4 years ago

Quest 2 is a steal deal, so it's really not a good comparison target.

the_duke• 4 years ago

Meta will need cheap headsets to get adoption of their platform.

I reckon the Pro has a healthy margin and will targets companies. They will use Accenture and peddle the Microsoft suite VR to sell tens of thousands of these to companies for remote work, and most of them will barely be used .

Meta can stem the losses of the VR division, and a Quest 3 will come in a while.

losvedir• 4 years ago

Is this the "Project Cambria" that had been previewed earlier?

MikusR16• 4 years ago

Yes

laweijfmvo• 4 years ago

Yes

mataug2• 4 years ago

Based on the marketing material it seems that the Quest Pro is targeted at enterprises where a $1500 device which helps improve employee productivity isn't that big a deal.

paxys2• 4 years ago

Spending $1500 per employee for a fancy gadget might not be a big deal for Facebook and Microsoft, but they are in for a shock if they expect the rest of the corporate world to cough up the cash.

mataug2• 4 years ago

Not every employee at a company gets the most powerful computer, nor does everyone get the expensive software. This is targeted at companies and employees who can benefit from the tech such as architects.

Even Facebook / Microsoft don't give out VR headsets to all employees.

This is also a first gen product, so this is not the version most companies may be adopting.

bagels4• 4 years ago

Facebook doesn't even buy Quest 2 for employees, hah.

minimaxir• 4 years ago

The livestream just invited Satya Nadella as the "one more thing" to intoduce Microsoft Teams and Office 365 for VR, showing how Meta hopes this will be used.

Enterprise companies are too cheap to justify $1500 per head for a gimmick, though.

shmatt• 4 years ago

That would explain the 12GB RAM

nolok• 4 years ago

And the 1h battery life

rjh293• 4 years ago

Doing your desk job in VR seems like a gimmick. Meetings in VR are a gimmick. Collaborative real-time design and creative work in 3D - that sounds like it's worth $1500.

jackbrookes• 4 years ago

Meetings in VR are a gimmick

I expect you're wrong - spatial audio, body language, face tracking, eye contact are all super valuable and possibly in VR

nsilvestri• 4 years ago

I believe I'll be able to replace my monitors to do my desk job with a VR headset within 10 years. Rather than having 2 monitors of different sizes and resolutions on a desk, why not just have as many virtual monitors with exactly the size, position, and distance I want? In fact, why have monitors at all? Just position the windows in arbitrary space in front of me.

Desktop computing with a VR headset is somewhat possible right now, but I am not quite able to stomach the resolution limitations of the Quest 2. I'm looking forward to devices like SimulaVR [0], which intend to fully replace desktop computing with a self-contained VR headset (plus a mouse and keyboard).

In my mind, there are two and a half problems to solve to make it possible. One is pixel density. It has to at least be equivalent (or very close) to our own eyes. Two is comfort, both physical (ventilation, weight) and health-wise (eye strain). Two and a half is being able to navigate without a mouse and keyboard, and preferably no peripherals, but I think I'm able to wait for that.

[0] https://simulavr.com/

joisig• 4 years ago

Collaborative architectural design is what Arkio does, one of the launch partners.

moolcool13• 4 years ago

You're looking at it from the perspective of a higher-end knowledge worker. $1500 to strap a 1984-esque telescreen on your call center employee and have them work from home instead of a cubicle would save a bundle.

philjohn4• 4 years ago

Meetings in VR are genuinely far less draining than Zoom/Teams calls.

bitwize• 4 years ago

Even then I'd rather it be an Iron Man style floating holodesk than something you have to strap onto your face.

Expectation: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d1/a2/65/d1a265d2093c0b952112...

Reality: https://assets1.ignimgs.com/2016/10/06/maxresdefaultjpg-f9a9...

Come to think of it, they're both pretty dorky.

Gelob• 4 years ago

i disagree. enterprise companies love wasting money on gimmicks vs things they really need.

AlexandrB5• 4 years ago

What's the input story for Office 365 in VR? Bluetooth keyboard + mouse?

bitL4• 4 years ago

You can input financial formulas to Excel more collaboratively.

nomel30• 4 years ago

This is already possible with Quest 2. Supported keyboards are tracked and show up through a "passthrough" window, where you can see the camera feed of them and your hands.

RealityVoid• 4 years ago

Considering how horrendous Teams is, I do not view it as a plus.

satysin• 4 years ago

This kinda of crap makes me laugh. We have companies desperate to get people back in the office because they say working from home ruins morale or creativity, etc. and at the same time we got companies saying the future is that people should commute into the office to put on a fucking VR headset to have meetings in a virtual office. Jesus wept.

vorpalhex2• 4 years ago

Think of the cost savings. Instead of cubicles now we just pack everyone into a warehouse with VR goggles?

jedberg2• 4 years ago

How much does it cost to give someone three monitors? With the headset and something like Immersed* you can use this instead of giving your remote employee a bunch of monitors, which is also nice for the employee who might live in a studio apartment and doesn't have a lot of space, or an employee who wants to travel.

* Disclaimer: I'm an investor in Immersed.

codemac• 4 years ago

I used immersed with quest 2, but the resolution still bothered me a lot more than something like beat saber.

Now that the quest pro is available, I've already pre-ordered it for this use case. I'd love every project I work on to have different "screens" in different environments to put my mind into each project.

ianbutler2• 4 years ago

Once resolution is high enough it will be compelling but imo Immersed is held back by current headset resolutions.

I used Immersed at length for two months and I had to stop from the frequency of eye fatigue and tiredness at shorter intervals than I currently experience with regular monitor work.

Until that happens I don’t see companies sending this out, not to mention things like motion sickness some people get even with low motion VR like immersed.

pavlov3• 4 years ago

In a way this is exactly what they said about GUI in 1983. People looked at the early products like Apple Lisa and Xerox Star, and said: “Serious businesses aren’t going to be spending thousands of dollars per user on gimmicks like the mouse and high-resolution graphics. Office tasks don’t need that.” — And they were right, but only within the narrow field of what office work on computers was like in 1983. WordPerfect and 1-2-3 didn’t need the GUI. Excel and the web browser did.

I’m not saying VR/AR is going to turn out the same way, but it seems at least possible that new affordances will create new kinds of applications again.

throw03172019• 4 years ago

Does anyone really want to wear this while meeting virtually with colleagues?

goodoldneon• 4 years ago

If it solves the “only one conversation at a time” problem with online meetings then yes. I’d rather be in a virtual room with proximal volume than a Zoom meeting with people yelling over each other

ImprobableTruth• 4 years ago

Yeah, this would be a game changer to me.

lbhdc• 4 years ago

Would using a headset solve that? Wouldn't it be just as effective to have a space that allows you to use a traditional monitor?

drstewart• 4 years ago

Side note: it's funny how quickly the entire retail world has coalesced around "Pro" for naming of its premium lines and "+" for its subscriptions.

I wonder how long this paradigm will continue for (probably until Apple leads a change away)

scyzoryk_xyz• 4 years ago

They have already started - „ultra” is the new „pro”

mdorazio• 4 years ago

I didn't see it in this page, but previous announcements put the battery life at 1-2 hours (unverified).

I know it's fun to hate on Meta, but this honestly looks like it resolves most of the gripes I had with the Quest 2, aside from the whole Facebook integration piece... It looks like a solid piece of hardware.

rblatz2• 4 years ago

Completely different price points though. The Quest 2 was priced for the general public, this is a specialty device for hobbyists and it looks like they are targeting corporations. Hobbyists already have had more advanced options available at this price point, so I'm not totally sure I understand the market for this.

KMnO4• 4 years ago

It’s not in Meta’s best interest to obsolete the Quest 2. VR is already a tough sell, and like other “consoles”, significant revenue comes from selling apps.

If they tell the regular users (who spend $50 per game) that they can’t purchase new games without a new headset, I bet most would ditch the technology.

nomel30• 4 years ago

Hobbyists already have had more advanced options available at this price point

Could you name the other more advanced standalone options? I'm only aware of Pico, which is near parity, but tied to the CCP.

irq-1• 4 years ago

There's a USB-C cable that can power it.

MikusR16• 4 years ago

There is no Facebook integration. That was removed 2 months ago.

SV_BubbleTime• 4 years ago

No Facebook like Instagram is no Facebook.

Meanings it’s all Facebook on the backend.

Your account just doesn’t say Facebook erm Meta on it. You are still subject to all the bad things they do with automated bans, shifting TOS, social bla, etc.

jayd166• 4 years ago

Facebook integration

They did make good on this. You can make Meta accounts with arbitrary emails and there's no connection to Facebook or real name stuff.

ridgered42• 4 years ago

For now. Facebook didn't demand my phone number and a scan of my drivers license when I first signed up either.

tazjin5• 4 years ago

You still have to deal with a complicated web of accounts and apps, converting your "Oculus" account to a "Horizon" account to unlink your Facebook from your Meta or whatever (who knows!).

I have a Quest (1 and 2 actually, though the 1 is in storage) and I basically never use it anymore because I just can *not* be bothered to try and log in through its various apps again and install software updates in broken UIs with no progress indication etc.

The only thing I use it for anymore is if somebody's over and wants to try VR, I let them to the tutorial demo and maybe play some Superhot (which hasn't broken for lack of updates ... yet!). Unfortunately streaming that to the TV via Chromecast from the app doesn't work anymore for Zuck knows what reason.

Consumer tech is so hostile and frustrating, I really just can not deal with it anymore. Sorry for the rant.

q-big2• 4 years ago

They did make good on this. You can make Meta accounts with arbitrary emails and there's no connection to Facebook or real name stuff.

Can you also use the Meta headsets without creating any account?

jandrese5• 4 years ago

I did this and they recently did something with the accounts (forcing you to get a metaverse account I think?) that turned into a massive headache. In the end I was only able to get it working again by creating a new account (or subaccount?) and redoing all of the Quest Link stuff. Even now it complains that my account isn't set up properly if I use the built-in store, although for now it is working. The whole thing is hugely confusing and the only point seemed to be to try to shove Metaverse down my throat.

I do have to say that Quest Link over WiFi works amazingly well and lets you break out of the walled garden to get to the more interesting corners of VR. It also lets you run stuff that would be way too heavy for the mobile-phone level processor on the Quest. Only downside is the WiFi eats a lot of battery power, so one of those headbands with an extra battery is almost required, but since they improve the weight distribution of the headset it's not a terrible buy.

zem• 4 years ago

honestly, if you need an account at all it's still in internet-of-shit territory and could be unilaterally degraded at any time.

samatman2• 4 years ago

A Facebook account is a Facebook account.

They're a bad actor, having demonstrated this beyond a shadow of doubt.

A sensible person would need a strong signal to believe they've switched to cooperating, and no such signal is evident.

sfvegandude• 4 years ago

Do you trust that Facebook has neither the capability nor the incentive to develop the capability to track you and combine all that data into a profile? I do not.

Facebook has shadow profiles for people who don’t use the service.

nomel30• 4 years ago

I would say it's a delicate balance, with heavy batteries being the most annoying for heavy users (the target audience, from what I can tell), who will have pocket battery packs, or low moment-of-inertia placements, anyways.

I personally don't want any unnecessary weight on my face since I sometimes use my headsets for 8 hours at a time, for coding. For comparison, something like the nreal air [1] is only 79g!

1. https://www.nreal.ai/specs/

sofixa• 4 years ago

I personally don't want any unnecessary weight on my face since I sometimes use my headsets for 8 hours at a time, for coding

Out of curiosity, how does that work? What's the flow, what software do you use, do you still use a keyboard to type?

fomine37• 4 years ago

Additional weight isn't matter or even better if it's balanced well. I put weight on my back like this that is more comfortable than nothing. https://assets.st-note.com/production/uploads/images/3712775...

Quest Pro has battery on the back so it looks very well balanced. Let's see how long the battery lasts.

legohead• 4 years ago

I have and enjoy the Quest2. I'm not seeing much that would make me want a Quest Pro for an extra $1100. The pro looks more comfortable, the color passthrough is cool, and I respect the new lens and resolution upgrade, but again, $1100? Not worth it to me.

spoonjim• 4 years ago

This isn't really being sold to the same people as the Quest2, so it's not surprising that existing Quest2 users aren't having much interest.

Youden3• 4 years ago

For me it'll depend on the magnitude of the improvement, especially in resolution. If it's a serious improvement, I could see it as viable for productive work and not just games, in which case it might be worth the money.

maest4• 4 years ago

The price tag does feel too rich (but then again it's not aimed at retail). Thing is, the leap from Quest 2 to Quest Pro feels comparable to the leap between consecutive console generations (e.g. PS4-PS5) - it's iterative improvement, but not ground breaking. In the case of consoles, you don't expect the price tag to change that much, though, so it makes the Quest's big price hike a bit hard to swallow.

The other thing is, I suspect the Quest 2 price point was heavily subsidised, so maybe we're just seeing the real cost of a VR headset when it's advertised to what's perceived as a less price sensitive audience (i.e. businesses).

fomine37• 4 years ago

Now people underestimates what "Pro" means (I'm watching you, AirPods Pro), but Quest Pro seems to real "Pro" oriented product like HoloLens.

peter3032• 4 years ago

Better than Google Glass which was 20 minutes in video mode.

crooked-v5• 4 years ago

I didn't see it in this page, but previous announcements put the battery life at 1-2 hours (unverified).

I still find it weird they haven't shown any mention of incorporating the Bobo VR solution to battery life problems, where there's a secondary battery pack on a magnetic mount and you can swap it out without taking the headset off.

objclxt• 4 years ago

From The Verge's article:

I was told the headset would last between one and two hours on a single charge, then take around two hours to recharge

That's...not great for a device targeted at enterprise? Especially without any sort of fast recharge or swappable battery pack.

marcooliv4• 4 years ago

Probably will support being used connected to the power, no? In general, if you will use more than two hours straight probably you will sit at your chair. If not, yeah, it will be a problem.

amluto• 4 years ago

You could swap the entire headset. $3k/seat for professional gear for enterprise use is cheap.

batmansmom14• 4 years ago

no way the actual expected use case is to have two headsets per person that get switched out every two hours.

skavi3• 4 years ago

Personally, I would just keep a power bank in my pocket and wire it up.

Rebelgecko2• 4 years ago

If you're sitting down (which I imagine is the enterprise-y use case?) you can just leave it plugged in

patrickserrano• 4 years ago

how does that work for controllers through?

bhouston2• 4 years ago

Trying to order it from Canada and it tells me my postal code is an invalid zip code. I tried 2 separate addresses.

paxys2• 4 years ago

Well a postal code is an invalid zip code, so not sure what you are expecting. If you select Canada in the "ship to" field it will work.

bhouston2• 4 years ago

I had selected Canada but I will reselect it. Tried it a few more times and when I enter in my postal code into the field labelled “postal code” it tells me it is an invalid zip code.

Once I switched from Safari on iOS to Chrome on MacOS it worked.

bitL4• 4 years ago

"I want to see its resolution!". Click on tech specs. "...with resolution 4X higher compared to Quest 2". Thanks Meta, that is super helpful!

mmastrac• 4 years ago

2160x2160 per-eye according to https://vr-compare.com/headset/metaquestpro

1440x1600 per-eye is valve index, and 1832x1920 per-eye for the Quest 2

No idea where the 4x comes from, but I'm guessing that the mixed reality cameras are just better and it's a semi-misleading statement.

MikusR16• 4 years ago

4x comes from higher resolution pass-through cameras

skavi3• 4 years ago

From The Verge:

Its screens offer a respectable 1800 x 1920 pixels per eye with a maximum 90Hz refresh rate, plus new display tech that Meta says offers 75 percent more contrast than the Quest 2’s.

localhost• 4 years ago

They mentioned that they have higher resolution in the central part of the display, so perhaps this is a variable pixel density display?

athorax• 4 years ago

It is really annoying their "tech specs" is all just marketing buzz words. Even worse the first "spec" listed is:

  PREMIUM COMFORT
  World class counter balanced ergonomics meets sleek design to create a more comfortable headset.

GekkePrutser6• 4 years ago

"world class ergonomics".

Yeah... Not much of a spec sheet. I don't think there is a registration for a "world class" specification anywhere.

The tech spec sheet should be for actual specs, not sales drivel.

nomel30• 4 years ago

“Counterbalanced” is a spec that is extremely important with extended use of VR. That one needs to stay.

lyu07282• 4 years ago

I was wondering if they mean 4x the screen resolution or the camera resolution since its in the mixed reality section. Also without even knowing the resolution/refresh rate/vertical/horizontal fov it would be hard to justify a pre order.

GekkePrutser6• 4 years ago

It's the passthrough camera res yes, they mentioned this in the presentation. 4X is easy to believe because the Q2's passthrough resolution is really low. Of course those cams were initially specced only for tracking so that makes sense.

It's strange that the display resolution is not mentioned anywhere on meta's site though. Overall this spec sheet is pretty useless.

During the presentation they mentioned "37% more pixels" than quest 2, and more density in the center due to the new lenses. I assume the 2160x2160 ventured on some sites is pretty much correct and the Quest 2-like 1830x1920 is not. Would be great to get actual confirmation though.

oofbey• 4 years ago

How about fps?

nomel30• 4 years ago

That’s content dependent of course. The screen refresh rate is 72 or 90Hz. No 120Hz mode like Quest 2, apparently. I wonder if it’s limited by the backlight computation.

vadansky• 4 years ago

Sad to see it's still LCD so you don't get actual blacks. Any word on if it still feels like having a scuba mask on or if you can see in the periphery?

petercooper• 4 years ago

Mini LCD so fingers crossed it might be better(?)

I feel what you're saying though. I loved the first Quest and was heavy into VR for a bit but after an hour of the Quest 2 it ended up in the drawer. It's useless for horror games or movies because black simply does not exist - it's generous to call it grey.

skavi3• 4 years ago

They mention better contrast for this panel.

AlexandrB5• 4 years ago

Impressive how much processing power you can fit into such a svelte headset in 2022.

The price, while steep, is not outrageous compared to something like an iPhone. But I still haven't seen a "killer app" for VR so it's not a "daily driver" like a phone would be. The association with Meta is also a huge downside for me personally.

danpalmer2• 4 years ago

The association with Meta is also a huge downside for me personally.

Agreed. Whether you agree with how Meta does things or not (I don't), they have made it very clear that they see the Quest as a locked down, Meta-controlled ecosystem.

I happen to use an iPhone, which arguably pioneered this sort of thing, but I feel like Meta are taking it to the next level. They have much higher rev-shares, (I think it's 40-60%), they have tighter control, require a Facebook account to use it (quite different to an Apple account to access cloud features), and while an iPhone is quite functional without the AppStore and iCloud with the web and built-in functionality, I think the Quest is basically useless without a Facebook account setup.

All that lock-in worries me.

camdat6• 4 years ago

So much misinfo in one post.

They have much higher rev-shares

The current revshare for App Lab is 70/30 in favor of the developer. Much* lower than Apple.

they have tighter control

Than the iPhone? The Quest can be used in SteamVR like any other headset. Third-party apps can be sideloaded, and the bootloader is (semi) unlocked. Not sure how they're even comparable.

require a Facebook account to use it

A Meta account now, disconnected from the social network. How is this different than an Apple account?

I think the Quest is basically useless without a Facebook account setup

Do you have a Quest? I've used mine entirely as a PCVR setup, I don't think I've used a FB service in years besides the store.

* EDIT: Discussed below, "much" is maybe a bit too far. Seems like the final split is roughly the same, though AppLab doesn't take a cut of IAP.

MertsA• 4 years ago

You can sideload apps for free on the Quest and Apple requires a dev account for $99 a year to sideload anything more than a trivial app or two. The Quest definitely feels objectively less locked down than iOS IMHO.

aantix• 4 years ago

I'm most interested in the readability of code and the long term comfort of wearing it.

Would love to try a pair programming session with it.

Eisenstein6• 4 years ago

How do you plan to type?

barnabee3• 4 years ago

With a normal keyboard? You've been able to bring a keyboard into VR for a while (from a fairly short list of supported models, at the moment) on the Quest 2 even.

edit: info here — https://www.meta.com/en-gb/help/quest/articles/headsets-and-...

moolcool13• 4 years ago

$2300 and their top-billed "experiences" are Adobe Acrobat, Dropbox, and LastPass.

jfoster4• 4 years ago

Feels almost like parody.

MuffinFlavored5• 4 years ago

$2300? Where do you see that? I thought it says $1499?

moolcool13• 4 years ago

$2300 CAD*

MikusR16• 4 years ago

Their competitor Hololens 2 is CAD $4,749

dimator• 4 years ago

good god, what in the hell does dropbox need a VR client for?

this entire VR push reminds me of the days when IE and Netscape were competing with "push" browsers, which were equally pointless.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/netscape-releases-beta-of-push...

elliottkember• 4 years ago

viewing dropbox files in VR, I imagine? easily syncing 3D video files so you can view it in VR? seems reasonable to me

jandrese5• 4 years ago

Maybe we will finally see that file system browser from Jurassic Park.

baby5• 4 years ago

how do you do work from VR without that?

georgeecollins2• 4 years ago

Does anyone know if you can get corrective lenses for these pancake style lenses? They seem to be closer to the face. One of the things I actually enjoy about the Quest 2 is that I have lenses for them so I take off my glasses to use it, which is very nice.

zmmmmm9• 4 years ago

one of the interesting accommodations in the Quest Pro is that you can easily slot it over glasses. It has a dial to adjust the eye distance to the lens so you can just can just dial it to the right spot.

ajaymehta• 4 years ago

The apps section says: "enjoy your favorite games, entertainment apps and more" and then highlights Adobe Acrobat, Dropbox, and LastPass.

Think it's clear who Meta wants to buy this! It will be great if companies buy their employees a $1500 headset that they use to play Beat Saber.

moolcool13• 4 years ago

No beatsaber allowed on company hardware until you finish taking 10 hours of calls in your virtual cubicle

itslennysfault4• 4 years ago

virtual cubicle

I want to get off this ride.

caskstrength• 4 years ago

10 hours of calls in your virtual cubicle

Cubicles (even the virtual ones) are not conductive to facilitating collaboration and inducing spontaneous exchange of ideas in an enterprise setting. We will all be taking 10 hours of calls in noisy virtual openspace!

baby5• 4 years ago

If I could expense that I would :(

jl6• 4 years ago

I would actually enjoy an Adobe Acrobat VR that could render a PDF as a 3D book with quick page riffle.

ZeroCool2u• 4 years ago

Wow, no built-in speakers/headphones? Ignoring the sticker shock for a moment, for $1500 that seems like a big oversight. The ones on my Index are incredible quality and can't be heard by anyone near me even when the volume is pumped up, but they're selling these $50 Meta Quest Pro VR Earphones separately? Feels kind of like they're adding insult to injury.

Separately, I still have a hard time with my friends Quest controllers compared to the Valve knuckles. Something about how the Valve controls grip your hands, instead of you actively gripping them, it's just so much more natural. I'm really surprised these new controllers don't have the same style of straps built-in.

camdat6• 4 years ago

Not sure where you saw this, the Quest Pro has built in speakers.

Straps are detachable, comes in-box.

jfoster4• 4 years ago

The "What's Included" section doesn't mention them.

https://www.meta.com/quest/quest-pro/tech-specs/#tech-specs

Images & videos on other parts of the website show bare or covered ears.

danpalmer2• 4 years ago

£1500 and it still costs another £90 to connect it to your PC?

Unless I'm missing something, charging that much for a proprietary cable just sounds like an attempt to lock in to their ecosystem and app store, and prevent this being used as a dumb VR interface to another system.

I can understand it on the budget consumer device, but here it's a little cheap.

Rebelgecko2• 4 years ago

If it's like previous Oculi, you can just use a $20 USB-C cable from Amazon. But those tend to be shorter length

AlexandrB5• 4 years ago

I think the cable is just a fibre-optic USB-C (thunderbolt?) cable. This is probably necessary to get the 5m range. I know for Thunderbolt 3 cables > 2m you had to go fibre optic and they were surprisingly expensive ($100+). It would surprise me if you couldn't plug in another USB-C cable with the correct protocol support here.

MikusR16• 4 years ago

You can connect using wifi or using any usb cable. The one they sell is an active optical cable. Look up how much they cost elsewhere.

Eisenstein6• 4 years ago

It is not a proprietary cable. It is a 5 meter long USB-C cable capable of 3A (it doesn't say the wattage, but Quest 2 uses QC 3.0 which is 18W) which does 5gbps data as well. It is an active fiber optic cable which is necessary because the USB 3.1 gen 1 (5gbps) spec doesn't allow for passive cables over 2 meters.

* https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/USB%20Type-C%20Spec%...

mciancia• 4 years ago

Hmm, snapdragon XR2 is 3 year old SoC. Anyone knows if XR2+ is somehow better?

MikusR16• 4 years ago

In the presentation they said 50% faster and better thermals.

caslon7• 4 years ago

The XR2 is severely downclocked on the Quest 2 and not hitting its potential at all because of thermals. Carmack has complained about how underused it is on occasion. If the XR2+ allows for a higher default clock because of better thermals, it'll perform significantly better.

neogodless3• 4 years ago

Off topic:

Uh, does anyone else just see a blank white page? (Firefox, uBlock Origin, Javascript enabled)

kretaceous• 4 years ago

I have the same setup and I can see it fine.

neogodless3• 4 years ago

Thanks. Even in private mode, no extensions, it doesn't load for me. Not sure what's going on there (though lots of errors in the console.)

pr0zac• 4 years ago

Looks like its a failing because of a blocked cross-origin request. Firefox must be interpreting the CORS settings for the site differently than Chrome. Configuring CORS correctly across multiple browsers is hard!

Edit: looks like the cause for me was because of Facebook Container blocking the cross-origin request to a Facebook domain.

j0hnyl3• 4 years ago

By the time Meta figures out that headsets are not the way, they will be bankrupt. No one wants these things. People buy them, use them once or twice and then forget about them.

bitL4• 4 years ago

...or they get hooked on VR p*rn and can't stop using them. Maybe Meta wants whales like these but more enterprisey.

ridgered42• 4 years ago

That's why the enterprise shift is so key. Those users don't get a choice!

j0hnyl3• 4 years ago

Makes you wonder if there are enough psychopaths in enterprise leadership to prop this up.

squidsoup• 4 years ago

Has that been your experience with gaming? I was considering taking my first dip into VR with the PSVR2, but worried that as you say, it will end up collecting dust.

cheriot• 4 years ago

Once upon a time I had a Wii collecting dust a month after I bought it, but I still use my Quest 2 a few times a month.

j0hnyl3• 4 years ago

Yes, I'm speaking from experience.

jandrese5• 4 years ago

FWIW my kids still play on the Quest pretty much every day. Gorilla Tag is apparently the bees knees.

I only get on like once every couple of weeks however. Mostly just playing through stuff I bought off of Humble Bundles or trying not to suck at Beat Saber.

nomel30• 4 years ago

Meta figures out that headsets are not the way

What is "the way"? Headsets are a necessary R&D bridge into glasses.

baggy_trough• 4 years ago

My experience with the regular Quest was so bad that you'd have to pay me $1500 to try this.

tmpz22• 4 years ago

Whenever I find myself even mildly excited about VR hardware I ask myself what it looks like if Facebook truly succeeds in this? Like what if they got massive adoption and are able to tie in all their revenue engines within a walled-garden VR setup? What if they succeed and get tons of enterprise customers?

It would be absolutely awful right? Like the worst parts of dystopian fiction with microtransactions and popups and all kinds of other cruft in a 360 field of vision some how mandated for gaming and work. World-wide, probably tying into education and basic information access.

justapassenger4• 4 years ago

It’d look the same as Apple’s iPhone ecosystem most likely.

fortylove• 4 years ago

I highly doubt that.

The extent of your usage of an iPhone is rarely mandated, and most people I know use the iPhone primarily for photos, iMessage, a browser (usually Chrome? At least in my circle) and an email account.

For those functions, Apple is hardly slamming you with recommended content and ads. Instead, you pay an initial premium for a solid bit of hardware. And if you want more, say if you want to store a lot of photos on their servers ($), you pay for it with more money.

cowtools2• 4 years ago

If that's the case, then what can we do to preemptively frustrate facebook's control?

D13Fd• 4 years ago

Except the iPhone is not (yet) designed to vacuum up and monetize all the data of Apple's customers.

I can't say the same with any confidence about any Meta/Facebook product.

moolcool13• 4 years ago

This is what I've been worried about too. Meta isn't betting the farm on a shitty Second Life ripoff because they think consumers will want it. I think they're doing it because the end users are going to be low-level work from home employees who have no choice in the matter.

pclmulqdq3• 4 years ago

I'm increasingly convinced that Meta isn't betting the farm at all. They just wanted to rebrand away from something that reminds people of election manipulation and teen suicides and toward something that reminds people of the future.

All this VR stuff seems to be an experimental group combined with a marketing budget to cure FB's brand.

JohnBooty5• 4 years ago

    the end users are going to be low-level work from home 
    employees who have no choice in the matter.

What is the incentive for businesses to buy and mandate the use of proprietary VR headsets for their employees, low-level or otherwise?

There would have to be killer apps for those headsets. Things that can't be done as well (or done at all) with traditional interfaces.

I haven't heard many ideas being thrown around for things that would actually benefit from VR.

There are certain niche applications that are easy to imagine. Maybe some CAD/CAM stuff, maybe remote surgery or some shit.

But the vast majority of things people do would have no benefit. You're not going to crunch through help desk tickets faster in VR. I realize people probably said the same things about traditional computers 50 years ago, but there were also a lot of folks that were bullish on them. I just don't see it with VR.

2OEH8eoCRo02• 4 years ago

Same. My inner nerd yearns for this tech but I'm very cynical about what the public at large adopts and what we end up with in practice.

seydor3• 4 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs

jayd166• 4 years ago

Couldn't you do this thought experiment for any product? It would be bad for any company to have a massive monopoly.

hdjjhhvvhga• 4 years ago

I work in Northern Europe. Someone at my company decided it would be great to introduce the so-called "Facebook for work". It's literally the worst of all worlds: you get the distraction you don't need while working, no fun, artificial corporate virtue-signaling and just plain department-flexing. After a few months everybody stopped using it but I'm sure we're still paying for it.

falcolas3• 4 years ago

"We estimate we can sell up to 80% of a user's vision without inducing seizures." - Ernest Cline, "Ready Player One"

ch4s34• 4 years ago

I found that book to be nauseatingly ham-fisted and this quote is a great example. It really beats you over the head with the theme, but also begs the question would people actually put up with that?

conductr3• 4 years ago

My grandfather retired at 50 because he refused to us a PC when it became required (~1985 or so). He was lucky that he worked for a company that had pensions and bought people out into early retirement often so he had that option. If the adoption of VR is anything like that, I'll be looking for my out too.

moolcool13• 4 years ago

Why is it that all news, including tech news, just fills me with endless dread nowadays? I surely can't be the only one who feels like this. Like what do we have to look forward to in the event that we don't have to face a depression, get drafted, see another pandemic, realize more of the effects of climate change, or get nuked? Wearing stupid goggles for 8 hours a day and paying Zuckerberg $50 for a virtual "I Hate Mondays" t-shirt? Oof.

bitL4• 4 years ago

Early retirement won't be an option for anyone under 40 and retirement for anyone under 30 with the way things are going.

aaroninsf2• 4 years ago

The Meta "stack" or core competencies they wish to align in this product domain, set up a profoundly dystopian world.

Their interest in being the platform is to own next-level surveillance of you for as much of your waking life as possible. They intend to track every gesture, your gaze, and (soon) your biometrics,

so as to feed their other big build out area, ML and similar tools for making superhuman insights about you and your interests,

which they they marry to their bread and butter, selling you to any and all comers regardless of any ethical concerns or concerns about societal consequence whatsoever. (That's not even hyperbole, it's a simple statement of fact.)

I don't believe they're ahead on this, but we can also expect to be ever more successfully manipulated by AI-powered chat bots increasingly well-tuned to provoke "engagement" and emotional response, through which to steer our beliefs behaviors and limbic system. C.f. Blade Runner 2049 and Ex Machina.

A friend made me try his rig against VR porn once, and picked a scenario which leveraged gaze and similar monkey-mind cues like whispering in one ear up close, to trigger all the "intimacy" responses.

Or: made me try the "walk the plank off the top of a skyscraper" demo. I knew perfectly well I was 1" off the floor on a 2x4. I could not step off.

We are utterly defenseless against what is coming,

and if there is one company in the public consumer sphere which has demonstrated that it utterly untrustworthy as a steward of our individual and collective wellbeing, it's Meta.

I dearly hope they crash and burn before they can foist this hellacious future on those of us unable to get out from under it.

hiidrew• 4 years ago

There's a short story called the Lifecycle of Software Objects. It introduces the idea of platform wars, e.g. competition between various metaverse worlds. I see this playing out with Horizon, maybe Roblox, Epic, etc. Things are mostly interoperable across platforms but some have limitations.

Having the choice for digital worlds would make it a little less dystopian. But I think the bigger thing is having competition with hardware, for the 'next-level surveillance' reason you highlight.

manu_te• 4 years ago

Amen

aaroninsf2• 4 years ago

Re: tracking your gaze and biometrics, oh look

https://www.wired.com/story/metas-vr-headset-quest-pro-perso...

czhu12• 4 years ago

I would think it would turn Facebooks business to resemble Apple's, which I think we should all root for if we want to get away from the ad centric product they push on everyone today.

RussianCow• 4 years ago

In what way? I see it as exactly the opposite of Apple's business. Where Apple makes services in order to sell more hardware, Meta (like Google) is in the ad business, so their hardware is ultimately just a way to attract more eyeballs.

hbosch• 4 years ago

I wonder about what happens when people pass the tipping point of prioritizing the virtual world over the physical world. That is even bleaker than trying to surmise who, in the end, might "own it" because once it's to that point we've already lost it all.

tkk23• 4 years ago

Global warming shows that we have already passed that point. People care more about status and lifestyle than life.

But is it bleak? When we go all in on virtuality, and the resolution is high enough and all senses are covered, what would be missed from the physical world?

KajMagnus• 4 years ago

Something similar:

Wouldn't these devices cause anxiety and depression related mental problems?

Humans need humans to feel okay and happy, and if these things remove lots of that (a digital avatar isn't the same thing) ... that could be dangerous?

Whilst if they automatically shut down for the rest of the day, after 3h usage, then maybe more ok.

* * *

For deep focus mode software development though, having no distractions, a 360' wide virtual screen (or 180' would be enough) could be lovely. I could fit ... 9 editors side by side. And different project tree views, and a 30'' web design window and Dev Tools. In just a pair of glasses

gruez2• 4 years ago

It would be absolutely awful right? Like the worst parts of dystopian fiction with microtransactions and popups and all kinds of other cruft in a 360 field of vision some how mandated for gaming and work. World-wide, probably tying into education and basic information access.

I don't get what exactly is awful about this. Having to use it? Can't you take it off when you don't want it? How is it any different than glowing rectangles being "mandated for gaming and work ... probably tying into education and basic information access"?

sneak5• 4 years ago

Constant advertising company spyware is what would be horrible about it.

Not being able to use it freely; being constantly monitored for US-centric moral policing for all your personal and private communications.

A lack of privacy for even 1-on-1 communications with friends, family, and colleagues.

Not being able to make a new account when yours gets banned for something stupid.

No API access to your own data without abusive contracts you can’t negotiate.

Having to use the name on your ID at all times, even if you have stalkers or other life safety threats.

Ads. Tons and tons of ads.

moolcool13• 4 years ago

Not to be snarky, but this response feels like a very privileged perspective on the notion of consumer choice. Yes, you can "take it off whenever you want", but if you are in dire financial straits, and your employer makes you wear it for your entire shift, what are you going to do? Think of it from the perspective of technology today. I'm a software engineer, and given that we're on HN, you're likely something similar. Most people can't negotiate the terms of their employment as much as we can. We are lucky, in that if we see a job that requires invasive corporate spyware on personal devices, or worse yet, proctoring software, we can simply not apply.

theropost• 4 years ago

This 100% - especially a social media company that is shedding revenue left and right. What do you do when you are losing revenue? Find new revenue streams. What do you sell to get additional revenue? More personal data. When a giant corporation becomes desperate, they will sell anything they have in any way they can to make up revenue - I can only imagine what they will end up having to do to make up these lost revenue streams... probably not so good.

robotresearcher• 4 years ago

I have never gotten over Microsoft putting ads on the Windows desktop. It felt like the Rubicon was crossed at that moment: no longer would my personal computer be mine. And that was from a software company doing it to software that I paid for.

What should we expect from an advertising company?

lostgame• 4 years ago

I'll certainly never use Windows again; for any reason. The idea of built-in advertising within an OS is absolutely a line too far crossed.

Doesn't matter that you can disable it; it's the existence of the advertising alone that tells me enough about the garbage philosophy of the company producing the software that I want nothing to do with it, and I could never rightfully recommend it to anyone.

christophilus• 4 years ago

My journey is Windows -> Mac -> Linux. I hope to stick with Linux (or at least OSS operating systems) for the remainder of my career. My computer is mine, and it's never felt more like mine than it does now.

It's not without its bumps and warts, but I highly recommend it.

Also, gaming isn't perfect, but it's really quite good for the kinds of games I play (mostly indie games on Steam).

kart234• 4 years ago

Even Apple has ads in iOS now, and nobody complains about it.

seer-zig• 4 years ago

I agree with you. But do you think most people are going to afford purchasing even remotely anywhere near that price point?

stephc_int13• 4 years ago

Voting with your wallet might be effective and appropriate in this case.

rcarr2• 4 years ago

If I’m working somewhere and they make VR mandatory I will be handing in my notice immediately. I may even refuse to work a notice period if they insist on me working in VR throughout it. If it becomes the industry norm then I will find another industry to work in, even if that means a significant pay cut.

AR glasses that are identical to normal glasses but with some useful information overlayed, that I can live with. VR, absolutely not.

doctorhandshake• 4 years ago

This specific issue is my personal hobby horse and how to avoid the worst of it is the subject of my essay writing and personal research: https://noahnorman.substack.com

dpweb• 4 years ago

I believe AR/VR is the next great step, but that the personal benefits are generally underestimated and the work value, especially for knowledge workers, overestimated.

An AR headset you can wear while fixing a car has massive value. For writing code or project managing less so. People don’t really want to be more present in remote work meetings not to mention there’s no added business value. But enterprise is a huge market so you have to try to market to it.

Arathorn• 4 years ago

This is why we're frantically building out http://thirdroom.io/preview on Matrix as a free & open alternative to the Facebook walled garden. It feels a little crazy that on one hand we're trying to outrun WhatsApp with Element, while also at the same time we're trying to outrun Horizons with Third Room, but someone's got to try...

novok2• 4 years ago

Current FB is forced by reality to be an ads company. If they can find an alternative that lets them not be an ads company, then VR might be their path to redemption?

MSFT is putting ads in windows because charging for windows is not working as a business model anymore for them, so now it's a freemium product. You barely if at all see ads in office and related products, and thats because it's a product you can only pay for. Many enterprises will flat out refuse to use "Meta Enterprise VR" if it comes with a ton of ad tech crap, and are totally willing and wanting to pay the difference for it anyway. Too many juicy contracts will be missed to FB's competitors.

Apple is expanding their ads business a lot too.

So it really can go multiple ways, and I don't think FB is going to be the only real competitor in the VR space once it starts ramping up, especially with all the hints that apple is working on the space. You also have things like sony's playstation VR as a strong third competitor, not to mention the background PC VR stuff that exists already.

LegitShady2• 4 years ago

why do you think theyd leave the ad money on the table?

planetsprite2• 4 years ago

Amazing a website/company/man whose claim to fame is a service that lets people watch videos and pictures in a virtual rolodex that happened to do a better job at letting people upload videos and pictures in a virtual rolodex assumes it can tackle 100x technical challenges better than any other company. All they have is capital, though I guess that's really all you need.

rblatz2• 4 years ago

Sad to see the "Hand guard" rings disappear on this controller. They saved my hands so many times when I ended up punching a wall/table/chair etc.

jayd166• 4 years ago

Sure you could 3d print some bumpers to snap on, haha.

moolcool13• 4 years ago

Imagine getting a job at a call center, but it's work from home. Unfortunately though, your work requires you to be present in the "metaverse", meaning you have to wear stupid goggles that allow your employer and Meta to control everything you see and hear for 8 hours a day. The advantage for the employer is clear: no need to pay for an office, but you also don't have to trust your employees to do their work at home. The advantage for Meta is clear as well: realize a virtually infinite profit margin on virtual clothing and environments in our nightmare late-stage capitalist version of a company store, and bombard you with hyper-targeted advertising. I can't really emphasize enough how much the future imagined by this product sucks. I don't know how somebody can see this and, in good conscience, continue to work there.

artificial2• 4 years ago

The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed. Meanwhile 5 years ago in China they're using cameras to monitor pupils in the classroom to see who is paying attention [0] and more recently intrusive desktop monitoring [1] also something used by some of the gig workers like Upwork [2]? The demand is there, people like their shipping updates with packages. It's pretty bleak tbh.

[0] https://www.engadget.com/general-motors-ultium-battery-more-... [1] https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/China-s-tech... to-limits-by-surveillance-software [2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/upwork...

tibbon• 4 years ago

I was quite impressed by the price / capability ratio of the Quest 2 and bought one immediately. Truth be told, it has mostly sat on the shelf with only occasional usage. But for $1500, this doesn't seem like a huge upgrade and I can't afford for that to sit on a shelf.

lwneal• 4 years ago

I wonder how the Meta Quest Pro will stack up against Simula One? [1]

On the one hand, the Simula One is even more expensive. On the other hand, it can be used as a standalone computer, not tethered to an online Metaverse.

[1] https://simulavr.com/blog/vr-comparison/

MikusR16• 4 years ago

According to people that make Simula One you can't compare them because Simula One is the next coming of Jesus and the quest pro is for kids to play games. Quest Pro is not tethered to an online Metaverse.

crashingintoyou• 4 years ago

Best news for me is that based on https://uploadvr.com/quest-touch-pro-controllers-quest-2/ it looks like the controllers are Quest-2 compatible and will be sold separately.

I'd consider the Quest Pro too expensive but as someone who plays a lot of rhythm games where those controllers seem to be the weak point I'm strongly considering upgrading my Quest 2 controllers.

bsimpson3• 4 years ago

The occlusion problem was real, but the LED rings also nicely doubled as a hand protector. I definitely wouldn't want to have my fist be the first thing that makes contact with a hard object I can't see in VR.

joshstrange3• 4 years ago

Whoever let the marketing department write the tech specs.... I can't even. It's a mockery of "Tech Specs" and has the audacity to to say at the top "It's all in the details" while providing next to zero details.

ppjim• 4 years ago

Multi-tasking, it's the new superpower.

I mean, What? Why? I thought the whole point of VR headsets is to be able to focus on a single task and do it in the best possible way.

joshstrange3• 4 years ago

Depending on the reviews I might pick one up later but really I'm just waiting on Apple's AR/VR headset. I have a Quest 2 and it's quite nice for casual gaming but the resolution/processor is too low/weak to handle text-heavy games (it's blurry and gives me a bit of a headache). The resolution listed by other people here (because god forbid we actually put tech specs in the tech specs section) seems like not a big jump but maybe with the dynamic foveated rendering it will be enough to have clear text.

interestica• 4 years ago

tech specs

Tech Specs:

"World class counter balanced ergonomics meets sleek design to create a more comfortable headset."

favourable• 4 years ago

Yay! More motion sickness with prolonged use. This needs to be ironed out.

caslon7• 4 years ago

It... pretty much has been since the 120hz update for the Quest 2? As long as they're not using a poorly-written application that drops below 90hz, I've barely heard stories of anyone getting sick these days.

toinewx2• 4 years ago

I have Quest 2 and I get extremely sick after only 15-30 minutes, like a sickness that lasts for a few hours and makes me feel like I'm extremely tired. No wonder it sat in shelf since then. And no, it was not 1 application that was doing that.

bagels4• 4 years ago

It hasn't been. Any experience where my character moves around causes instant nasuea and discomfort. I doubt I am alone in this.

whazor2• 4 years ago

No OLED and no eye tracking, which are needed for the perfect VR experience.

modeless9• 4 years ago

It does have eye tracking

whazor2• 4 years ago

So close. Still, no OLED is still a dealbreaker as you want real darkness. The backlight from the LCD makes darkness look more gray. In VR this is uncomfortable as you want the least amount of light to enter your eyes.

Eye tracking is nice though, it makes it possible to only render high detail what you are looking at. This makes the higher resolutions much more interesting.

jalino23• 4 years ago

this looks like it has AR I can't wait to try developing for AR boxing I really liked the thrill of the fight but I believe AR boxing is where its at

abraxas• 4 years ago

What does AR open up for boxing that VR doesn't? Genuinely asking as I'm a fellow ToTF fan. I just can't conceive what kind of enticing features would you introduce to the game in an AR headset?

KVFinn2• 4 years ago

Tested hands on impressions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6AOwDttBsc

Funny thing about the $1500 price point.

If the Quest Pro could replace my triple monitors, $1500 is a bargain. It's basically a laptop with 3 monitors that appear out of thin air whenever you want. Amazing.

To do this it needs to be comfortable enough to wear all day and it needs to be high enough resolution to stare at text all day. It's at least plausible the Pro is comfortable enough for some based on early impressions. But the displays are not cutting it.

I don't think it needs to equal the DPI of a monitor at human viewing distance, but 2160x2160 is still way to low. Maybe 3k would do it with super sampling. Oh and the Quest Pro would need to run any Android app, or else it would only be useful tethered to my computer and lose a lot of the appeal.

So if the Quest Pro can't handle this use case, $1500 seems crazy expensive. A luxury. They have to hope they have a killer game or app that somehow gets people in.

During the height of the pandemic I would have almost paid $1500 if this had a really good 'virtual couch' experience where you can hang out and watch Netflix with friends, passively socializing in a way that felt comparable to the real thing. People love doing this in but it's always so janky.

umanwizard2• 4 years ago

If the Quest Pro could replace my triple monitors, $1500 is a bargain.

If it could drive me to work, it’d replace the subway. $1500 is a steal.

moolcool13• 4 years ago

"By the end of this decade we're going to replace our workstations on our desks with a VR setup"

Thanks, I hate it.

crazygringo2• 4 years ago

Why? We'll only replace it if it's actually better. In which case you'll probably love it.

For real, monitors are ugly and take up space and become super expensive quick.

If we actually manage to come up with something better then monitors, then amazing. If we don't, they won't be replaced.

colonwqbang2• 4 years ago

Agree, I honestly don't understand the level of optimism shown here. To me this sounds like exactly the opposite of how I would like to work in the future. The fact that Facebook fully controls the software and hardware platform is just a huge additional turnoff.

mattbuilds• 4 years ago

Don’t worry, it won’t happen. This is just a desperate attempt by Facebook to not be the website where your insane Aunt posts QAnon stuff. It’s not appealing enough to last. It’s just like crypto, a solution searching for a problem to solve. Eventually it will spike and then fade when people realize they get no real benefit from it.

veidr9• 4 years ago

It's interesting, I love it, really want to do it, and am waiting impatiently for it.

I have a desk with 3 big monitors on it and the idea of being able to take that workspace with me in my backpack is incredibly appealing. Working on my laptop alone (a 16" MBP) is awful in comparison.

We are far away from actually being able to effectively simulate my full-desk workspace in VR.

But even the Quest 2 was enough to make it easy to imagine how it will be when we get there, and obvious that this is how I want to work in the future. And for me, the future can't come soon enough; I'm ready!

That's why I skipped upgrading my phone this year and ordered the Meta Quest Pro instead. I know it also won't be able to replicate my desk setup (and I really hate giving money to facebook too) but I want to experience for myself how much closer we are.

To me, a VR work environment (with mixed-reality option) is the holy grail, and while its clear we aren't technologically there yet, it is equally clear that we will be within a decade or so (maybe less).

andy_ppp• 4 years ago

This level of access leads me to worry that the reviewer won't be entirely honest. Is he really going to pan the product when he is interviewing Zuckerberg in the video and getting behind the scenes content? Pretty much renders the video useless to me to understand if the product is good or not.

randoglando4• 4 years ago

Well, Carmack is employed by Zuckerberg and he just pooh-poohed Horizon Worlds as well as the Quest Pro (from a strategy perspective). Both seem to be loved by Zuckerberg.

JCharante2• 4 years ago

$1500 isn’t bad at all. An apple watch can cost $800 and a base spec MBP is like $1400. If it was the price of hololens ($3k?) then it’d be a concern

KVFinn2• 4 years ago

I think it needs higher resolution to be able to be directly comparable to a MBP. Can I stare at VSCode all day in this thing or not?

sytelus6• 4 years ago

It's not the same thing. Each of these products have tiered versions targeted at different income levels. If there was only one iPhone version being sold at $1500 then it would probably be dead by now.

charcircuit• 4 years ago

That video doesn't include the quest pro

spywaregorilla3• 4 years ago

An unstated benefit of real monitors is that you can stop looking at the monitors.

jemmyw• 4 years ago

For me I don't see how any vr device will be comfortable. I don't even like wearing my glasses for too long.

Duralias4• 4 years ago

But because of its 1-2 hour battery life you would have to keep it wired and hope it doesn't suffer from the same issue that Quest 2 suffers from where even wired it slowly looses battery life.

However, the Quest 2 could still last a whole work day while wired, the Quest Pro might not.

tmvnty• 4 years ago

That video was for the prototype. Same channel just uploaded a video of the real hands-on for Quest Pro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNYpD212HQA

maest4• 4 years ago

If the Quest Pro could replace my triple monitors, $1500 is a bargain. It's basically a laptop with 3 monitors that appear out of thin air whenever you want. Amazing.

It won't. The form factor is still too clunky and you will most likely get eye strain.

Btw, another commenter posted a link to these Nreal Air glasses (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj8hMtWeTUg ). I'd never heard of them before, but they look like a much better approach to a monitor replacement device. They're lighter and more comfortable because they try to do fewer things (no controllers, no battery, no VR).

fomine37• 4 years ago

I tried Nreal Air, its resolution is great even for reading text, but FOV isn't good as a primary monitor. Maybe it's tradeoff.

planetsprite2• 4 years ago

No human will ever enjoy the feeling of a giant block on their face. Even if the quest was 100x higher res it will never be "default" since it limits peripheral awareness, motion, causes eye strain.

I get Zuck's philosphy on upping the human-computer paradigm to the natural next step but imo horizontal screens at a comfortable 1-10 feet from your eyes will remain unchallenged until seamless brain controlled holograms become a thing.

thehappypm• 4 years ago

People thought similar things about reading stuff on mobile phones too.

sytelus6• 4 years ago

HoloLens had same price point and this price point is where consumer products go to die. I think they are currently looking for early adopters and may be built up volume in 2-3 years (a la iPhone). HoloLens hade strategy which didn't work because utility of AR was far less than utility of mobile computer in your pocket. It looks to me the whole bet here is that VR's killer app would be virtual meetings and it will fix this critical issue. Unfortunately, doing meetings requires two people to have this device and that would be tremendous barrier for adoption. Is no one at Meta thinking of these stuff and learn from history?

password1• 4 years ago

If it's meetings they are targeting, then it's not a consumer product. They probably want to sell it to enterprise clients and that changes completely the approach for them. You don't have to sell it to a picky consumer with many opinions and few money, but to a corporate buyer with a huge budget, many incentives for innovating a the ability to purchase them in multiples.

fbdab103• 4 years ago

Is there any research (not wild conjecture) on staring at a screen strapped to your face for extended durations? I am already near sighted from having spent a lifetime focusing on a screen an arm's reach away. What happens if there is no chance of errantly focusing on other objects and forcing my eyes even a modicum of daily activity?

nomel30• 4 years ago

The optics put the virtual image (if you remember physics class) of the screen about 1.2 meters in front of your eyes, not inches. Your eyes lens/focus muscles will be set just as if you were focused on something actually 1.2 meters.

Moldoteck• 4 years ago

are you sure near-sighting is because of monitors and not because of genetics?

RajT882• 4 years ago

Replacing 3 monitors is a start.

The real dream of VR work IMO is app windows floating all around, more windowing system than virtual displays.

Or - a re-imagining of how productivity looks like in 3 dimensions. Imagine a spreadsheet app with more than 2 dimensions worth of cells! Or a code editor which diagrams our your functions in 3d space to see the dependencies.

(/me Makes "Minority Report" style swoosh hand gestures)

ozten• 4 years ago

I'm a VR enthusiast, but will never buy from Meta! (I had the Oculus Quest previously.)

I'm waiting for my next gen headset.

Apple might release next spring. Pico hardware for sale in Europe is interesting. Looking forward to seeing if they ship the the US. Several indie hardware plays out there (lynx-r.com, simulavr.com, etc)

wollsmoth• 4 years ago

Yeah I have to see what Apple comes out with. I'd be really interested if they had a good VR monitor setup. Could really change how I wfh.

notacoward2• 4 years ago

Anybody know (or can make an educated guess) about how the expression tracking is supposed to work? How can it read your facial expression from on your face? Seems like a very difficult angle to work from. Or are they leaving out the part where you have to use a separate camera to get that? Even then, some of the specific things they mention, such as eyebrow raises, are covered by the headset itself. I'm really skeptical about that feature, unless "tracking" is complete false advertising and expressions are triggered some other way.

caslon7• 4 years ago

Face tracking has been done in other headsets from (roughly) the same angle for like five years now. HP released a relatively cheap headset a year or two ago that did facial expression tracking from a similar angle.

It's a less-complicated problem than you might think.

notacoward2• 4 years ago

So how well (or indeed just how) did that HP headset handle features that are covered by the headset? "It has been done" is PR, not an answer.

zinckiwi• 4 years ago

Still waiting (to my knowledge) for even a single manufacturer to offer a unit with independently adjustable sides. Until then, people with strabismus are out of luck. (Which is ironic, since technological assists are the only way we could possibly see depth.)

chimineycricket• 4 years ago

CNET video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u5PIqnXWHw

adpirz• 4 years ago

Has anyone successfully incorporated VR into their regular workstreams? If so, what's it like?

bagels4• 4 years ago

Really interested in responses to this. I think some may have tried it once and gave up immediately, I doubt there are many using it on a regular basis for working.

jcampbell1• 4 years ago

It seems this can detect facial expressions from cameras. This is significant from an information theory perspective. Being able to estimate emotional state in real time is game changing.

How long until AI makes the year’s best animated film by optimizing via emotional response?

ThalesX• 4 years ago

It seems this can detect facial expressions from cameras

This is doable for some years now. AWS, Azure & GCP + other smaller companies offer APIs for just such a thing and there are also Python models that do this detection. This is by no means anything extraordinary if I understand what you are suggesting.

dabedee• 4 years ago

This shows a blank page on Firefox mobile with uBlock.

neogodless3• 4 years ago

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33166634

But yes I'm on Windows 10, Firefox 105.0.3, and even in private mode, no extensions enabled, the page does not load for me.

woojoo666• 4 years ago

Same here

skilled• 4 years ago

I wonder who is the audience for this nonsense. People with disabilities? I can totally see that, but then if that is the case, perhaps these companies would do much better if they actually embraced the fact.

vorpalhex2• 4 years ago

I can't imagine boring business apps are any more usable with two VR controllers or with blurry text.

Nor has anyone ever wanted to spend $1,500 to be able to use.. Adobe Acrobat.

arberx• 4 years ago

Only has 2 hours of battery life...

toinewx2• 4 years ago

Mark is trying hard to create his new walled garden and force-feed us with the ads once he controls the market. Let's hope it does not happen.

instagraham2• 4 years ago

Seems like an expensive way for HR to waste money, especially since they're treating it like an enterprise product. For an employee, this would just be a two-hour battery-lifed irritance. For a gamer, it could be probably as cool as owning a PS5, but with less multiplayer joy to be had rfom.

Cheap and capable AR glasses would've been the game changer they should be looking for, in my view.

Not saying some corporates won't lap it up. but this won't drive adoption necessarily. somebody else will end up doing that

ianferrel• 4 years ago

Oooh. Would this let me access the VR software that facebook has to threaten their employees to use?

CarbonCycles2• 4 years ago

I honestly don't get it; however, I have two solid data points that lead me a very befuddled conclusion.

One of my buddies is an orthodontist who hates his current life but loves video games...he spends most of his free time plugged into the VR headsets playing first player shooter games. Okay..I kind of get that.

My other buddy who has a post graduate degree in genetics who is also an introvert mentioned how he loves Meta's universe. He loves the fact that he can hang out in a virtual theater with his other buddy who lives half way across the CONUS watching 3D movies together. That I don't get.

After typing all that out...I guess I really don't get it. Move along...nothing to see here :D

baby5• 4 years ago

Did you try any of the modern VR headsets? Because it is mind blowing

CarbonCycles2• 4 years ago

I have no doubt the new headsets are phenomenal, but it's not in my character to spend that much time with a VR headset. Not to mention, have they solved the motion sickness that came w/ the earlier headsets?

blensor• 4 years ago

At least in the short term I think they are being more worried about getting shut down by the FCC. They have to fight even for the Supernatural acquisition where they subpoenad SimulaVR to appear as a witness for making their point that they don't have a monopoly (that's like Google pointing at the Librem 5 to show that there are alternatives to their Android phones) So I don't expect that happening anytime soon and a lot of alternatives will pop up, which should boost any non platform locked "Metaverses" over the alternative

nitiniyer• 4 years ago

VR will always be a wondrous tragedy - at this price point it's a little bit more of a tragedy - https://www.climaticthoughts.com/vr-wondrous-tragedy/

pitched• 4 years ago

I’ve been a very early adopter of this tech (Kickstarter backer of Oculus), get zero motion sickness and have a great time working in VR through a virtual desktop. This looks like a few floating screens in front of my face, in a space station and I’m typing on a real Bluetooth keyboard. I think this is the only way companies will be able to keep remote-friendly polices and stay competitive with product. YMMV because I am biased to be for this, but, the way they’ve tuned this Pro model looks like it’s exactly for my use-case.

modeless9• 4 years ago

There are a lot of people pooh-poohing this who haven't tried a meeting in Workrooms. I was skeptical going in, even as a VR early adopter, and it exceeded my expectations by a long way. It feels a whole lot more like a real meeting than a Zoom call does.

I don't know if it's enough better for me to choose it over Zoom in everyday use, but this was on Quest 2. A meeting where everyone is wearing Quest Pro will be significantly better. I expect that the combination of the better screen/lenses, better comfort, much better AR passthrough, and of course the new eye/face tracking will make for a very compelling experience.

sneak5• 4 years ago

Is agreeing to the third party abusive Meta/Facebook TOS going to be a requirement of employment with third parties then?

Will users be permitted to create accounts only for work?

If not, when your personal account gets banned or disabled, will you be unable to work?

hiq• 4 years ago

It feels a whole lot more like a real meeting than a Zoom call does.

I haven't had the chance to try it myself, so can you explain how it's better?

I feel like the main problem with remote meetings is the audio latency. You cannot speak as you would naturally, you'd speak in turn instead. I'm guessing VR allows you to give and receive visual cues about this so it might be better, is this what you had in mind?

mbreese4• 4 years ago

enough better for me to choose it over Zoom in everyday use

It doesn’t have to be better than Zoom. It has to be $1500 better than Zoom. Per employee.

I’m in agreement with you — I like Immersed and I like the idea of VR meetings. But will people/employers opt for this over a hybrid on-site/remote system? How do VR meetings work when half the team is onsite in a conference zoom? I don’t want to put on a VR a headset to talk to the coworker sitting physically next to me in a conference room.

Sadly, I see this as useful only for remote-only teams. As one of a handful of remote people on my team, it doesn’t seem like a workable option, even if I already like/use VR.

kypro• 4 years ago

I tried out Horizon Worlds recently and I was honestly amazed by how immersive it was. I genuinely felt like I was out socialising with people while sat at home.

I can definitely see the use cases, especially as the technology improves. If there were live VR music events that me and my friends in different cities and countries could all attend to feel together I imagine I'd use it quite often.

beams_of_light• 4 years ago

I've been reluctant to try getting my coworkers into VR because they'd probably just laugh at me, but a couple of friends and I met up in VR (we're all fully-grown professionals) and it was great. Meetings in VR would be a lot more productive, IMO.

bsimpson3• 4 years ago

The idea of being painted as a literal second class citizen if you have lower end hardware is gross, but it's also the natural destination of progressive enhancement if e.g. facial expressions only work with the expensive thing.

magic_hamster4• 4 years ago

The main reason I don't see it working for meetings is because it's relatively a hassle to put it on and going into meetings I want everything to happen fast and painless. Every delay or extra step is to be avoided. Sometimes you have a series of back to back meetings where things really need to work fast.

Besides, haven't tried the Pro but everything else I did try isn't there in terms of comfort. A lot of people wear glasses and it's just a bad experience for them.

The last point that seems to be unaccounted for is the flexibility of current voice meetings. You can connect from almost any device anywhere. You can join a meeting from your car. I somehow sense that's going to be a tad problematic with a VR headset.

ohgodplsno4• 4 years ago

$1800 to ram the concept of physical meetings remotely instead of adapting to the benefits of remote work is a comically steep price that only SV tech bros will consider.

Even the NYC finance people blowing that weekly on cocaïne will laugh their asses off at the idea.

seiferteric• 4 years ago

The hardware looks pretty good. I bought a HP reverb G2 because it had the highest resolution. While not bad, i learned that resolution isn't everything as the picture is pretty blurry anywhere except dead ahead due to the Fresnel lenses, so the new pancake lenses sound promising. I also don't get motion sickness and might be interested in working in VR if the readability is good. My only other hold up is that even at 36 years old and using computers since I was 5, I still don't type properly and do occasionally look down at the keyboard lol. Would be great if the forward facing cameras will allow this.

williamcotton• 4 years ago

Meta Workrooms has passthrough mode for just the keyboard so you can still look down at your fingers when you're typing.

GekkePrutser6• 4 years ago

The Quest 1 and 2 also have fresnel lenses but they're not all that blurry. Sharpest dead ahead sure but it's not terrible.

And I wonder if the pancake lenses are really better there. I think god rays will be significantly reduced but edge sharpness is really hard to do with such close focus. The light path at the edges of the LCD to the eye could be twice as long than in the middle.

temp_praneshp• 4 years ago

I’ve been a very early adopter of this tech (Kickstarter backer of Oculus), get zero motion sickness

Me too!

Have you written about your setup anywhere? Are you willing to dump some notes and share?

dkjaudyeqooe3• 4 years ago

get zero motion sickness

Whatever the opposite of a killer app is called (maybe "app killer"?) this is it.

Even if it afflicts a relatively small number of users, it's a serious problem. Besides terrible PR (people less likely to try it because of the risk of a bad experience) it's the fact that any technology that arbitrarily excludes some non-tiny portion of the population is problematic for broad acceptance.

Firmwarrior2• 4 years ago

The worst part is that if you try and fight through the sickness, you'll actually condition yourself to get sicker. If you power through sim sickness enough, you'll get to a point where you feel like tossing your cookies when you just look at or think about a VR headset.

I think it's become a major problem in the VR game market. Everyone except the super hard core has been burned away by sim sickness, so now all the remaining fans demand intense but nausea-inducing experiences with no comfort options (or too-easily disabled comfort options)

Ajedi325• 4 years ago

Does anybody actually get motion sickness in apps where there's no motion?

I've never seen an instance of that. If it does happen to some people I'd be very curious about what causes it since there's no obvious reason why it should occur.

chaostheory24• 4 years ago

This gets better and better as the hardware improves. Most VR nausea is caused by poor hardware performance

spaceman_20202• 4 years ago

Apparently its also a problem that affects older people more than younger ones.

Good luck getting your VR meetings product off the ground when your 50 year old boss can’t use it without getting sick.

itslennysfault4• 4 years ago

get zero motion sickness and have a great time working in VR through a virtual desktop

Do you not wind up sweaty? Every time I wear a VR headset for more than a few minutes it's .....moist.

GekkePrutser6• 4 years ago

I don't, as long as ambient temperature is below 25 or so degrees C.

I'm in Spain so this kinda rules out using it in summer for long. But most of the year it's fine.

I have to say the new silicone 'skin' they provided to Quest 2 owners makes the sweatiness a bit worse, but it is easier to clean. And the original Quest 2 material was prone to causing skin irritation so I didn't want to risk it for too long.

outworlder2• 4 years ago

The inserts that come with the headset are not very breathable. You could change those.

There are small fans that attach to the headset. I've found that they help quite a bit.

2OEH8eoCRo02• 4 years ago

What headset are you using? This is the setup I'd like to try rather than buying new monitors.

barbariangrunge• 4 years ago

The main sticking point for me is that my real desktop/workspace has much better privacy than these new virtual ones

nomel30• 4 years ago

What do you mean by that? How does a physical display on your desk provide better privacy than a physical display a few inches from you eyes? It’s not some shared/cloud display.

onion2k• 4 years ago

I think this is the only way companies will be able to keep remote-friendly polices and stay competitive with product.

People have built billion dollar companies entirely remotely without VR (eg Gitlab), so why will it become a requirement in the future? What change will happen to make it a necessity?

eljimmy• 4 years ago

When visiting this link does anyone else just get a blank white page in Firefox?

rowanG077• 4 years ago

It's sad really. No matter how good this tech is I will never buy it. Because, just like iPhones, they lead humanity down a dark path.

cwkoss3• 4 years ago

The previous quests are shoddily built - both in software and hardware. Very frustrating to try to do anything with it outside of using the default apps, which are frankly beta quality at best, and the ~3 fully fleshed out games. If you're going to invest over $1k, might as well get a valve index. I can't imagine this working out well for running custom enterprise software, which seems to be who they are targeting.

mark_l_watson• 4 years ago

Wow, $1500 was more than I expected. Still, I use my Quest 2 about 20 minutes a day so assuming the heavy use of the Quest Pro, it is probably worth it.

I usually only use my Quest 2 for about a maximum of 7 or 8 minutes at a time to avoid physical discomfort. I would hope that the Quest Pro can be worn much longer, in comfort.

I used to work on VR about 24+ years ago (SAIC, Angel Studios, Disney). I am thrilled to now see commodity VR hardware and experiences.

legitster6• 4 years ago

Facebook (sorry, Meta) is the only one continuing to advance the VR industry. I respect them for that.

They also have the absolute worst business and product strategy in the world. Any unique product that they did not steal or acquire (and some that they did!) have been colossal failures or run into the ground. The irony of a company that has all their customer's data is that they still have yet to understand their customers.

I have yet to meet a single person, anyone at all, who has expressed any interest in "The Metaverse". Even among my circle of friends who are heavily bought into VR. I struggle to find the appeal in a product vision focusing on letting anti-social people socialize.

This is a similar case where I feel a large disconnect between how innovative the technology itself is, and how myopic the use case is. Who would actually use this? Whose job would this improve? This is a solution in desperate search of a problem. At least Hololens put together some convincing value propositions.

Scaevolus• 4 years ago

Plenty of people enjoy VRChat, because you can interact with friends, but Facebook's attempt to get people excited to interact with brands and ads and work in a heavily locked down Metaverse is ridiculous.

smoldesu11• 4 years ago

You can also use VRChat on a Meta Quest. It's not one of those platforms that locks it's users out of choices.

erikpukinskis3• 4 years ago

I’m interested. I would love to be able to throw on a headset and sit on the couch and watch a movie with my sister, where I felt like she was watching in the room with me.

I also would like to have a meeting with my other WFH colleagues where I could tell whether people were making eye contact with me, because the conversation would flow smoother.

s3p• 4 years ago

Just like how over-ear headphones make my hair sweaty and itchy after a few hours, I can't imagine (personally) enjoying the feel of a clunky VR headset adding extra pounds onto my face.

AndrewOMartin2• 4 years ago

There's a thing called Big Screen VR. I'm wondering if your comment is saying that it's not viable for you (don't have the time, equipment, not a good enough experience), or that you've not heard of it. I'm not trying to be snarky "I think you'll find" just wondering if you've considered and rejected Big Scree.

thunky• 4 years ago

I also would like to have a meeting with my other WFH colleagues

My WFH space is my private space, and I'd rather not invite my colleagues into it. Voice + screen sharing is more than enough, so no thanks. And if my employer required it I'd let myself out.

krono• 4 years ago

Facebook (sorry, Meta) is the only one continuing to advance the VR industry

Valve recently posted a job opening[1] that hints at ongoing efforts in the field.

[1] https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/jobs?job_id=52

otikik2• 4 years ago

They understand their customers. Who are advertisers. Meta’s users are its product.

legitster6• 4 years ago

Not necessarily the same for their hardware division. Their VR division is still primarily funded by device and software sales.

oliwary3• 4 years ago

I am interested, nice to meet you!

I live abroad from many friends and family. If there was a way to casually hang out and replicating the in-person social experience better than video chat, I would jump on that. I already have regular Quest 2 sessions with close ones where we shoot the shit and also shoot zombies - it feels like having a friend over for playing video games.

I for one am looking forward to being able to hang out in the same room, or discover new places, while feeling like we are sharing the same physical space. I am happy Meta is investing to make this closer to a reality!

sneak5• 4 years ago

Why are you interested in casually hanging out with your friends and family under surveillance from an advertising company that will subject your private and personal communications to their censorship systems?

Doesn’t that make you somewhat of a bad friend?

legitster6• 4 years ago

I should clarify - I think the value of VR is creating transportive experience.

Opening up Google Earth and watching the sunset on Mount Rainier with a friend is transcendent. Sitting around a virtual boardroom talking to an avatar is not.

Meta's value proposition should be the a) the quality of the experience they provide (video games with friends included!) and b) the seamlessness to use. But a slightly more interactive video chat is not going to sell units.

itslennysfault4• 4 years ago

I already have regular Quest 2 sessions with close ones where we shoot the shit and also shoot zombies - it feels like having a friend over for playing video games.

How is this any different from playing Xbox/PlayStation with a friend online?

...while feeling like we are sharing the same physical space.

Not gonna happen. Sorry to break it to you.

Guess we can file you under "not interested" now

baby5• 4 years ago

Any unique product that they did not steal or acquire (and some that they did!) have been colossal failures or run into the ground

Workplace, portal, and the glasses? They're still developing as I understand it and they haven't given up on anything. The only failure I can think of is libra, which was killed by regulators

ezconnect• 4 years ago

There's still something missing on that concept, Metaverse is just a higher resolution version of Second Life. It was exciting in the first few hours but there's nothing in it.

kilroy123• 4 years ago

Yes, I strongly think in the end VR will be huge. Massive online multiplayer games will be huge (think Ready Player One type of stuff). I think lots of people will use VR for work and hanging out with friends and maybe even dating.

However, in the end I doubt this will be on a ~Facebook~ _Meta_ platform, hardware, and or game. It will be funny because Zuck and crew will be the ones who accelerated this. I predict they'll lose in the end.

legitster6• 4 years ago

I think VR is already amazing for games. And maybe there will be some amount of social networking that occurs. But I have my doubts that there are enough people who would prefer hanging out virtually to significantly move the physical hardware in enough numbers sustainably.

dzhiurgis• 4 years ago

I don’t get “hanging around with friends” at all. How is it suppose to work when you have this dorky goggles blocking their face?

blake929• 4 years ago

I dont disagree that Meta is probably pouring the most money into VR right now, but there are other companies looking into it. Notably Apple might launch a similarly priced headset to the Quest pro soon. Bytedance has the Pico series which are basically Quest clones at this point, but they are looking to push the tech and outcompete Meta. They're not currently launched in the US, but that may change. Valve will probably launch an Index 2 eventually.

Some lesser known headsets brands like the Pimax and Varjo target prosumer-grade and enterprise headsets in the US too.

jotm2• 4 years ago

I have just bought an American Quest 2 and found out the Pico 4 (with new pancake lenses) launches next week for the same price.

Am so kicking myself. I'll sell the Q2 at a loss and buy the Pico.

maxsilver• 4 years ago

Facebook (sorry, Meta) is the only one continuing to advance the VR industry. I respect them for that

I would argue Valve is the main driver of VR in terms of actual software + hardware + platform building. Facebook is just the biggest spender on VR right now.

Who would actually use this?

Which is funny to me, because I can instantly think of over a dozen use cases for this stuff -- if Facebook was never involved. Use it for training, especially on-site training, use it for conferencing, use it for 3D visualization (basically half of the Hololens demos cross over)

But with Facebook owning it, the value prop of Oculus Quest is zero. It's no longer a hardware or software platform, it's a console, effectively no different than a Nintendo Switch or a PlayStation. Doesn't matter if the Quest was the best thing ever invented, no one reading Hacker News could deliver any products or solutions on it without Facebook owning/controlling it, so there's no reason for anyone to try.

pavlov3• 4 years ago

The iPhone and iPad are also consoles in this sense, and they’ve been quite successful as software platforms.

peter3032• 4 years ago

A "killer app" may be new employee training. I heard in a Stanford computer seminar that VR accelerates training with stronger learning.

throwoutway• 4 years ago

I love that you called it a console, because I got the weird flashback sense that I was watching a Nintendo Wii demo (of the teacher & student demo on the webpage)

dylan6042• 4 years ago

Use it for training, especially on-site training,

wouldn't this be off-site training? if you were on-site, why would you need the VR unit?

oliwary3• 4 years ago

I am glad that Meta is involved - I doubt anyone else would invest as heavily in VR as they are doing right now. Whether they end up being the main player or not in the future, I think this level of investment is actively inspiring the entire industry, and showing what is possible. (Compare similar views by Palmer Luckey [0])

Similarly, while essentially all smartphones before the iPhone were stylus or keyboard driven, within years of the iPhone being released there was a viable competitive platform in android. In the VR space, I highly doubt the vive or the pico headset would exist if it was not for the investments of Meta.

[0] https://venturebeat.com/business/palmer-luckey-i-left-facebo...

rvz• 4 years ago

Any unique product that they did not steal or acquire (and some that they did!) have been colossal failures or run into the ground. The irony of a company that has all their customer's data is that they still have yet to understand their customers.

The Marketplace (competing with Craigslist) has more than 800 million customers using it which they have built that themselves?

At least Hololens put together some convincing value propositions.

Yet Hololens isn't aimed at consumers, Meta Quest Pro is aimed at both and the latter has the same use-cases as the HoloLens for half the price.

Facebook (sorry, Meta) is the only one continuing to advance the VR industry. I respect them for that.

And also the AR industry, which they have the technology (Oculus) and the research to do both.

The death of Meta Platforms Inc. has been greatly exaggerated.

Jeff_Brown• 4 years ago

I wonder whether this, unlike my Quest 2,.will let you set the separation between the two screens wide enough to accommodate my not-even-really-that-big head.

I put up with it but it makes me crosseyed. (I use the buffer thingie to keep it farther from my head, which helps somewhat.)

crakhamster012• 4 years ago

Love all the new tech they're trying out here, but I think they really shot themselves in the foot with the "Quest Pro" branding.

The product still has some rough edges (e.g. that 1-2hr battery life), and consumers will undoubtedly confused this for an evolution of the Quest 2 (which it is not). This feels like a highly polished developer kit that they tried to pivot into an enterprise device in the last few months.

Perhaps they did so out of fear of the public market's response? Releasing an expensive research project in this economic environment might have been a bad look.

synthos2• 4 years ago

Are the pancake optics the ones that support switching 2^n focus? The greatly rumored varifocal support...

ifyoubuildit2• 4 years ago

I was so optimistic about VR technology when the oculus cv1 (edit: dev kit actually, cv1 was already fb as pointed out below) came out. Now that facebook owns it, I can't find that same optimism.

This looks like a sweet piece of tech, but it feels like these big tech companies have too many priorities that come before the end user: investors, the companies own ambitions, governments/politics. If the product decisions they make happen to benefit us, it's only because those other considerations were met first.

I think the best thing to happen would be for FB to solve all the really hard and expensive tech problems, and then go tits up. Then a smaller company that can actually put the user first can step in and reproduce the tech for cheap.

ynx• 4 years ago

Just FYI, that's a misremembering that accidentally looks like a bad faith argument. The Oculus CV1 was released two years after the acquisition.

The price point and subsequent price drops were only made possible by Facebook making some important hires for the production engineering and being able to scale the processes to lower component and manufacturing costs.

For better and worse, the CV1 on day one had a meaningful amount of Facebook software and hardware engineering in it.

ifyoubuildit2• 4 years ago

Good point, I did remember that wrong. I should have said the dev kit. I remember now that I begrudgingly bought cv1 from facebook because I wanted the tech badly enough to hold my nose.

I don't mean to disparage any of the folks at fb that contributed or their work. I just don't think that companies like fb are capable of putting the user's needs first, as much as many individuals inside the company probably would like to.

synthos2• 4 years ago

No varifocal?

cityzen• 4 years ago

Something about this page just feels dated. I can't put my finger on it, but if you compare the meta quest pro page: https://www.meta.com/quest/quest-pro/

To the iphone14 page (similar price point): https://www.apple.com/iphone-14-pro/

You can instantly see what showcasing a pro level product should look like given that Meta is all in on this. There is so much white space and weird scrolling resizing and what not.

It looks like I'm viewing a product page on a Dell website.

jdprgm• 4 years ago

This is an extraordinarily disappointing release. Even if this was priced at $400 I would be disappointed. We have waited years and they included zero next gen VR tech.

I feel like VR should be in the stages similar to the early gen iPhones where every new release should have legitimate significant new tech that is unambiguously better and exciting. This instead feels like current iphones when they barely improve only here VR can't get even close to a yearly cadence of upgrades and there are loads of features for next gen upgrades still on the table.

pavlov3• 4 years ago

The Quest Pro adds eye tracking and inward-facing cameras, high-quality color AR passthrough, foveated rendering, and new controllers that are fully independent of the headset. These things are unambiguously better and exciting.

Eisenstein6• 4 years ago

The problem with VR tech is that it is fixing problems, not adding new features. People don't understand how insanely complicate it is to have controllers that track independently of the headset (think about it, what is their reference point and how do they know where they are in relation to each other and everything else?), but it is a giant leap in the technology. It allows you to do things like put your hand behind your back, or use it in bright (or dark) rooms where it doesn't need the controller lights to be seen to track. It just 'works better' so people don't care. It isn't a shiny new app or some new ability it didn't do before, it just does what it does... better...

seydor3• 4 years ago

The killer app they are looking for is going to be simpler than they think, it's 360 images (and maybe video). It's hard to make 360 pics today, i would think phones would have made it a standard feature by now but they haven't, and 360 cams are expensive. 360 snapshots should become a standard and easy to use feature in ios and android phones. And even in games 360 screenshots dont really exist. I ve seen that secondlife supports those now, in a buggy and lowres way but i dont know many others.

My standard use of OQ2 revolves around that, i find myself browsing google earth with the Wander app as well as real estate listings in some websites that support it, as i find that none of the gaming experiences really stick.

Eisenstein6• 4 years ago

I honestly don't see a mainstream use for 360' pictures. What is your pitch to the average consumer for getting a VR headset to use for 360 images and videos?

seydor3• 4 years ago

- Games fade, VR has a user interface problem: it's just so hard to find the VR replacement of the simple old computer keyboard in terms of communication bandwidth speed and latency.

- Movement in VR causes nausea, the entire visual field is just never meant to move like that. So static-position videos and photos will be the most comfortable , pleasant experience

I think everything else in VR including complicated controllers are gimmicks, in the same way that most people don't use the most advanced apps in their phones , but instead use instagram

aeturnum2• 4 years ago

I find this page very confusing. I suppose it's a stand-alone experience, based on other Meta VR products, but it doesn't really say that anywhere. How does its processing power and display pipeline compare to the Quest, or to other VR headsets? I see lots of buzzwords but not a lot of grounded descriptions. Is this an AR device? How does the AR work? The marketing video look like simulations. I get the sense that this is aimed at creative professionals as an accessory to expand their work modalities - but there's no mention of professional support or API access or any of the traditional markers in that realm.

Generally this seems interesting but this landing page actively detracts from my interest in the product.

tchock23• 4 years ago

My sentiments exactly. I was one of the first people to fund the Rift Kickstarter way back in the day and I have no idea what this thing is or why it exists after reading that page. It's just a series of Apple-style pithy marketing statements that appear as you scroll.

xvector• 4 years ago

Did you read the tech specs?

Full-color mixed reality, with resolution 4X higher compared to Quest 2
Real-time expression tracking
slimmed down the optical stack by over 40% compared to Quest 2
37% greater pixels-per-inch. And 1.3x larger color gamut
XR2+ processor that delivers 50% more power

LightG• 4 years ago

There's nothing about this that will come close to competing with my own imagination.

In that respect, telnetting into a EW-too talker back in the 90's will be a superior product offering.

Sorry.

maxpert• 4 years ago

Novelty that wears of super quick. I know people who bought Oculus out of hype and then just after a week it’s sitting on table collecting dust.

shepherdjerred• 4 years ago

Wow, the form factor is simply amazing. I thought this would be a tethered headset (e.g. you'd need to connect it to a PC), but it seems that it's all-in-one, which explains the price.

Just compare how small these goggles are to some other VR headsets. It's amazing. I'm sure they made some tradeoffs to get there, but this is a giant leap forward.

maest4• 4 years ago

Page doesn't seem to load for me on Firefox - seeing a bunch of CORS errors in the console.

clnq• 4 years ago

I don't want to dismiss the effort and innovation that went into Quest Pro. I respect the team for innovating on so many aspects of the headset at once.

Although for the $1400+ price range, I would love to see some "next-gen" headsets with much higher FOV and pixel densities (even if we'd have to use foveated rendering), as well as 120Hz+ refresh rates. Perhaps the tech specs section on the product page is as spartan as it is because many people have been waiting for the next generation headset for a while?

Do we know if the Quest Pro has done anything to address the screen-door effect of the display seen in Quest 2? I understand that PPI is slightly higher, but has anything else been done?

whywhywhywhy• 4 years ago

Now this is announced, selling Oculus Medium to Adobe seems like a completely idiotic move.

That would have been a killer app right there.

qwertyuiop_• 4 years ago

VR is a solution looking for a problem just like blockchain. It has genuine use cases in very limited industries - industrial design, mass entertainment (movie theater where everyone has goggles). I don’t need to see my coworkers wearing blinders over their eyes.

hartator• 4 years ago

I would not buy it as it forces me to merge my old Oculus account with my Facebook account.

And I don't want to sign in on Facebook on my gaming PC. Meaning my $100-$200 VR game library is gone now.

gcanyon• 4 years ago

Chiming in as a Quest 2 user, and one who uses Immersed for work a couple hours per day, I can't imagine spending $1,500 for a VR headset. If work provided I'd happily use it, and it might increase the amount of time I'd spend in VR.

suyash• 4 years ago

Still too bulky and ugly!

guiambros2• 4 years ago

I'm puzzled by this announcement. The device seems fantastic, but the app lineup on the site is incredibly lame. Adobe Acrobat? Dropbox? Smartsheet?

I get it, they're focusing on corporate / professional users, but gosh, I'm not spending $1,650 bucks on such an innovative device to run Adobe Acrobat and freaking spreadsheet-based project management tool!

Where's the "wow" first-party apps for the Pro? Where's the new version of Supernatural? Beat Saber? Minecraft in AR/VR? Or whatever fancy B2B apps they spent this last year working on (they do exist, right? Right?). In my mind you need to appeal to both end users and the professional audience at the same time, in order to move the industry forward. Otherwise you'll end up with a HoloLens-like marketshare.

I'm saying this as an early adopter since Oculus Kickstarter days, and really want to see the whole vr/ar/metaverse succeed. But Meta could take a page from Apple playbook on how to put together keynotes and product launches.

ps: on the positive side, the Carmack Unscripted livestream was great. John continues to be in his best shape, and too bad the conversation was 'cut short' (by his standards).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33169482

guiambros2• 4 years ago

(responding to a now deleted comment, that argued that this wasn't an announcement for people who play Beat saber, and the whole segmentation of pro users vs. end-users made sense)

I agree the segmentation of devices makes sense, but it requires an app ecosystem that sits on top and needs to work for everyone together, and you need developers creating those experiences. Like when Apple launched iOS 2 and supported apps for the first time; you need a strong line up of developers and creators in order to move the industry forward.

Adobe Acrobat is not the thing to get corporate users excited. Nor Smartsheet. Where's Zoom and meetings with 3D spatial audio? Autodesk? Maya? Matlab? Training experiences? And yes, bring in games, fitness apps, movies together. We talk so much about "making remote work fun", that this can be a fantastic team experience to blend experiences.

But ok, it seems I'm overreacting to a lousy product landing page put together at the last minute. I'm now watching the keynote[1][2] (which, weirdly, it's not linked anywhere), and it's waay better.

As I expected, lots of mentions of new games, fitness apps, Marvel movies, and all intermixed with Zoom and Microsoft Teams (ha!), virtual monitors, collaboration tools, etc. And if you pay close attention, you'll notice that Beat Saber came right after Accenture and Satya Nadella (!), and discussions on the future of work. So it seems they are indeed blurring the lines between these segments, no matter what device you're using.

I'm still a believer, both as a professional and end user [3], so looking forward to testing the new hardware.

[1] On YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvfV-iGwYX8

[2] On FB: https://www.facebook.com/RealityLabs/videos/1425118524564060

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31819718

obahareth• 4 years ago

I wonder if they managed to solve the text blurriness issues. On my Quest 2 I tried using Immersed, Virtual Desktop, and other software to create virtual monitors in VR.

Text was always very blurry no matter how much I played with resolution, monitor sizes, or distances. Images and video always looked great but for reading text it was completely unusable.

For $1500 coupled with them marketing it for work, I would hope they've solved this issue.

azinman2• 4 years ago

5 hours in and 326 points to 520 comments. This isn't a good sign from the HN community (ratio going wrong way, not too many points for a brand new flagship product), which I would assume would be the most inclined audience to drop $1500 on a VR headset.

cyounkins• 4 years ago

If you are using Firefox and this page doesn't load, you may need to allow the site in the Facebook container by clicking on the jail icon and then "Allow site in Facebook container"

can16358p• 4 years ago

The product page is very vague. It's not immediately clear what I can use Quest for in practice.

Also I've checked everywhere for the "screen" resolution though couldn't find a mention of it.

Having said those, I believe there will be killer apps for these headsets and metaverse, but we're just not there yet and won't reach for about 4-5 more years.

ropable• 4 years ago

Clicked through. First thing that I read was "Starting at A$2,449.99". Closed the tab.

First/only impression: expensive toy for rich people.

fomine37• 4 years ago

Is Snapdragon XR2+ just a well cooled/clocked XR2?

metta2uall• 4 years ago

This Metaverse/VR stuff would seem to require a lot of electricity.. and given our climate change problems I think it's mostly quite harmful.

martindbp• 4 years ago

No... More Metaverse/VR would be very good for the environment. The more we live digitally, the less stuff we need in the real world, the less we need to travel.

mbrochh• 4 years ago

There's just no way I'd ever voluntarily give money to Mark Zuckerberg.

nvr219• 4 years ago

Just posting to humblebrag that this page gets blocked by default on firefox.

pyinstallwoes• 4 years ago

Why isn’t the resolution mentioned in the tech specs? Maybe I’m blind.

Also, the niche vr porn market will probably buy a lot of units.

prng20215• 4 years ago

I really can’t understand why there’s so much time and resources being put into re-inventing virtual meetings.

This is supposed to capture subtle facial expressions. I’m sure every generation will capture more subtleties and have increasingly realistic avatars. So why not just see real faces then?

I always see mentions of virtual sticky notes on a whiteboard. That sounds awful. Do you need to squint to view them from your virtual seat at the table? Do you need to walk your avatar to the board and avoid bumping into others who might be posting their own? We don’t have those issues today with sites like Miro. If the metaverse will somehow avoid these annoyances then how would it be any different from the non-metaverse experience?

cush2• 4 years ago

All those annoyances and complaints will be forgotten if it's possible to give people the feeling like they're actually together

humanistbot• 4 years ago

Which it won't.

magic_hamster4• 4 years ago

I really can’t understand why there’s so much time and resources being put into re-inventing virtual meetings.

Because Meta needs to find new revenue streams.

jjtheblunt2• 4 years ago

Why?

ulfw2• 4 years ago

Why not find one that's closer to their core competence?

throwaway2902• 4 years ago

Is it a sign of neuroatypicality if I find faces just generally distracting and useless in meetings? IMO there are more than enough non-verbal cues in voice and real-time conversation flow like response speed.

(Plus people have way too much control over body language and facial expression for it to be useful in work setting)

prng20215• 4 years ago

If you find faces to be useless, you can hide them on your computer monitor while in a meeting and no one would know. In the metaverse the avatars will not be faceless and you won’t be able to hide them from view

zwkrt• 4 years ago

I don’t personally think that meetings would be the same without any smiles.

rjzzleep• 4 years ago

You're not the only one. It's just that there is a massive industry teaching people that effective communication and active listening involves staring into peoples eyes and giving constant affirmation with noise that they are being listened to. Something that in other cultures can be considered highly offensive and rude by the way.

So no, you're not the only one, but unfortunately, you, just like me, are a silent minority. Although in some of my previous engagements building efficient highly distributed teams have spent a lot of time teaching people to work asynchronously. Which made the few time limited calls extremely effective.

elmomle• 4 years ago

You raise some interesting points; I just want to point out that it's extremely difficult to maintain complete, continuous control over body language and facial expression--consider how significant the concept of a "tell" is even at the highest levels of poker play.

chrismarlow9• 4 years ago

When I'm in video meetings I become hyper aware that I'm on camera and it immediately diverts a bit of my focus to little social things:

- oh I'm not smiling!

- what's that on my face?

- my hair is sticking up

- did I just pick my nose?

Even if I turn off my cam view of myself I can't seem to get rid of it. Of course I have some of this awareness in real world meetings but in a virtual meetings it's like 10x. It makes trying to do any coding over a screen share almost impossible for me, my brain feels like it's being split in half doing too much at once. Luckily most peer coding is just the screen and voice, no cam. Except interviews, lol.

lexandstuff• 4 years ago

I'm the opposite. I find it very difficult to communicate with someone who doesn't turn on video. It's tough to gauge whether the other person understands what I'm saying or if we're still connected as I talk. I can never get in the flow.

I never liked phone calls and always preferred face-to-face communication, maybe that's related.

wombat-man2• 4 years ago

They're trying to get in on some of that sweet, sweet, B2B enterprise contract money.

saddist02• 4 years ago

It's funny that HN is pro-remote work but anti-innovations for making the remote more efficient.

While I agree virtual meeting may not be the answer, BUT it is important step in figuring out the balance. I think it's good that Meta is burning $$$ and advancing in figuring out the optimal solution on our behalf (consider it as RnD cost).

Irrespective of it, in case the headsets can become as easy as wearing glasses, I doubt why anyone wouldn't use it.

jakelazaroff• 4 years ago

Because people don't think this is an innovation that will make remote work more efficient.

phillipcarter2• 4 years ago

but anti-innovations for making the remote more efficient.

I don't personally want to wear a giant computer on my head all day.

a2572• 4 years ago

Theres also the fact that the headsets doesn't nearly present digital content with enough quality to rival traditional 2D interfaces. There does not seem to be a simple way to fix this problem, the laws of physics is a cruel mistress.

EDIT: I had the image of a "glasses" like VR form from the parent comment when making this comment. It is not talking about Meta's product.

kortilla5• 4 years ago

It's funny that HN is pro-remote work but anti-innovations for making the remote more efficient

This isn’t more than efficient. Emulating real life is worse here.

I want to see innovations that take advantage of not being bounded by fucking office spaces.

It’s like writing an email client that forces you to hand write all of the emails and fill out the to field on a little envelope.

JohnBooty5• 4 years ago

    for making the remote more efficient

It's because nobody sees the VR nonsense as actually making anything more efficient - quite the opposite really

Literally the worst of all worlds. Looks like you get the inefficiency of in person meetings... along with all of the tech headaches plus nausea... count me out

CobrastanJorji• 4 years ago

Show me some evidence, or even some compelling reasoning, for how something can make remote work more efficient, and I'll be all over it. If Meta's got some sort of doodad that will make it so that I can get all the benefits of in-person meetings from home, great, let's go, I'll pay to upgrade my team at work out of pocket.

But I don't see any sign of that here. You're saying that, if the headsets were easy to wear, everyone would use them, but I can't imagine why. How's this better than a laptop with a camera? I can read text more easily on the laptop. I can share documents more easily on the camera. I can see people's faces and emotions more clearly with the camera. This gets me nothing, and it does so at significant cost.

This appears to be a solution desperately searching for a problem, and remote meetings certainly have problems, but this doesn't seem to be able to solve any of them.

Sure, I'll be excited about this if I really need to collaboratively design the frame of a car with a team that's all working remotely. It'll work great for that. But you know how often my meetings would be greatly eased with a collaborative 3D space? Not often.

jimbob45• 4 years ago

It's funny that HN is pro-remote work but anti-innovations for making the remote more efficient.

Whoa there - you’re speaking only for yourself! There’s a minority of us that abhor Teams and wish daily for another company to come up with something better. Of course, that doesn’t mean (badly) reinventing the wheel like this. Really, I’m just hoping for a snappier and more ergonomic Teams but I welcome any and all innovation in the space.

_fizz_buzz_• 4 years ago

People like remote work because they don’t have to be in an office. Meta’s vision is to make an immersive office video game. Sorry, I hate it, that sounds like the worst of both worlds.

xwolfi• 4 years ago

Come on, a multi screen setup at home is better than some half asses 3D VR attempt: at BEST we ll have multi screens inside the 3D world because we need flat surfaces with tons of written stuff on them...

subpixel2• 4 years ago

I have never seen anything more efficient at making group decisions than a pull request.

If your team is getting on a call to present things or to talk things through, you’re very likely on a train to nowhere.

In a remote setting, every ounce of effort spent toward emulating “meat space” distracts from the artifact, the work product, and the result.

I am on a team now who records meetings so they can re-watch them. Let that productivity drain set in.

usrbinbash7• 4 years ago

What exactly about this makes remote work more efficient?

Can I type faster while wearing a headset and holding controllers? Can I navigate source code better than on my three 4k screens and ergonomic keyboard? Does it somehow improve my deployment workflow?

parkingrift• 4 years ago

Irrespective of it, in case the headsets can become as easy as wearing glasses, I doubt why anyone wouldn't use it.

There is nothing in the world that could convince me to bring a Meta VR headset into my home. May as well just install surveillance cameras and pipe the feed directly to Meta.

fastball• 4 years ago

You seriously don't have any issues with virtual meetings that you generally don't have with real meetings?

VikingCoder• 4 years ago

It's so that I can play a game with you, and you can look like an orc - with your facial expressions, and I can look like an elf - with my facial expressions.

Except, they want it to be like a giant MMO.

...where I am happy to pay real money to buy virtual clothing for my elf. Which is a thing people do, when they really care about the game.

MartinMcGirk• 4 years ago

I'll take the other, more optimistic side of this.

The reason they're spending so much time on reinventing meetings is because they see that the killer use case for VR/AR headsets is to replace your laptop with a device that shows you a screen, or multiple screens, wherever you go, whenever you want it there.

If you start from the premise that eventually people won't huddle over their 16" laptop screens to make calls, but will instead be wearing a headset that shows them as many giant monitors as they like, then everything else flows from that. How do you handle calls in a world where every user is essentially wearing a visor? How do you collaborate? These aren't solved problems yet, but I'm a firm believer that the headset will replace the laptop, and if that happens I'll be glad somebody has put the effort in to make everything else around that as seamless as it can be.

nomel30• 4 years ago

This all reminds me of the tech communities reaction to the first iPod and iPhone.

ohgodplsno4• 4 years ago

Of course. Pop your VR headset on at a café, I'm sure it'll work out great. Bash people with your wide arm movements at Starbucks and look like a clown.

Those meetings that could have been an email? Now they're the worst of both worlds, remote but still forced to have this meeting in VR.

Instead of having a screen (or multiple screens), force people in a shitty virtual reality where you have to walk around still, but this time it's either by teleporting with joysticks or making you puke with smooth movement.

Hadriel• 4 years ago

You'll appreciate this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzRjtvMQds4

theshrike793• 4 years ago

If there, at some point, is a wireless capable VR/AR headset that can replace a ~32" 1440p monitor I'll be the first in line to buy one if it's priced under 1k. Maybe even under 2k.

I've got so much more I want to use my desk space for than a monitor =)

croak3r2• 4 years ago

I really cant understand why people want to spend 8 hours a day with a VR headset on. I have a Rift S and after a couple of hours I cant wait to take it off, I'm sure as hell not going to wear one all day just for my job no matter how good the software is.

emadabdulrahim• 4 years ago

Because Meta wants to find that hardware product that people would give a shit about. This way they own the software & the hardware.

Meta wants to be Apple.

anm892• 4 years ago

Facebook needs to create a new con to justify their valuation now that the charade is being exposed. That's literally it.

erickhill• 4 years ago

My god, I find simply scrolling down on that site incredibly janky.

Enginerrrd• 4 years ago

I can't even get the page to load.

__turbobrew__• 4 years ago

$1T company and cant even make a smooth website

pcurve• 4 years ago

1/3rd of a trillion now. There were months in 2016 where their stock price is higher than now.

Gigachad• 4 years ago

These pages only really look nice on continuous scrolling inputs. Trackpads, touchscreens, the apple mouse, etc. Anything with traditional mouse scrolling ends up sending scroll events too infrequently to enable smooth scrolling.

Considering this is a very consumer focused product, I imagine most users have smooth scrolling inputs.

nickdothutton• 4 years ago

I like to keep an open mind, but really… I don’t get it. Or at least I don’t get it yet, and I’m old enough to remember the first demos on SGI hardware a few decades ago.

vishnugupta2• 4 years ago

I really wish these things had prebuilt near/far sight corrections. As someone who wears far sight glasses nearly entry minute of my waking hours I feel left out of these VR experiences

alexambarch2• 4 years ago

For the record, you can purchase corrective lenses that fit over the ones on the headset. I have a pair and they’re great, the only downside being that any new prescription you get needs to be updated on your VR headset too…

vishnugupta2• 4 years ago

This is helpful, thanks! Could you please share a link from where to buy these?

chatterhead2• 4 years ago

Facebook had their chance. They failed. Call yourselves whatever you want. Buy other people work and improve it as much as you want.

"We will never sell ads." Then sold ads.

Nope. We already had a generational curb stomping by Microsoft. No more Zuckerberg.

CamelCaseName• 4 years ago

When did Facebook ever say they wouldn't sell ads? You mean user data? FB launched their ad marketplace in 2007, and it's the reason they nearly hit a $1T market cap nearly 15 years later.

jboy55• 4 years ago

I think they mean when Jesse Eisenberg told Andrew Garfield Facebook would never sell ads, which is what Justin Timberlake told him, setting up the essential personal conflict between Jesse and Andrew in the movie The Social Network.

Lt_Riza_Hawkeye• 4 years ago

Also, FB doesn't sell user data either, so I'm not sure what OP was talking about

dundermuffl1n• 4 years ago

*nearly, just $650B away at this point.

NSMutableSet• 4 years ago

Looks cool, but...how would anyone working with proprietary info be allowed to use this?

kart234• 4 years ago

why is microsoft even working with them on this? dont they have their own ecosystem going, i wouldve expected them to keep office exclusive to their headsets.

radicalriddler• 4 years ago

Maybe it's because the VR space is still young, so they're working with Meta to make it more popular. My guess is they're betting on once the ecosystem is more mature, they can crush Meta with a better model and integrations.

Something Something Embrace, extend, and extinguish

1letterunixname• 4 years ago

Step 0. Ditch Luxottica and their chunky, plastic-y Ray Bans

Step 1. Buy MagicLeap

Step 2. Make it smaller

Step 3. Combine it with Quest and make it not look like it's from 1993

AR + VR + smartphone (camera, etc) + gaming console in 1 device

jfoster4• 4 years ago

My fear about Meta's headsets taking place of my monitor is that one day I will put on the headset to do some work and see a message saying my Meta account has been suspended. If I can just use a different headset that's not the end of the world, but what if all my work was stored in "the Metaverse"?

mradek• 4 years ago

Guess you’re free now.

_flushed into grim reality_

saddist02• 4 years ago

I think it is because Meta is early and the only-one in the game right now.

In case it is able to demonstrate that virtual is "the thing" a lot of new players and "unlocked"-device competitors will jump the ship.

zmmmmm9• 4 years ago

I guess this will just run into (probably justified) scepticism as a response but at least it can be said that Zuckerberg is strongly pitching that whatever Meta builds will be an open system. If you watch the last 5 mins of the keynote it is interesting because it ends with him almost begging developers to stick with Meta as the "android" of VR rather than opt into (what he is obviously referring to as) a closed Apple alternative.

SilverBirch• 4 years ago

Building an open system is what you do when you're small and you need 3rd parties to help you grow. If it's successful they'll do exactly what they did with Facebook. Do you know how I know this? It's pretty pointless for them to even say they're going to be open, because it's very well established how this goes at this point -the platform captures the value.

luhn• 4 years ago

Authentic avatar expressions mimic your natural facial expressions, so you can be fully present in meetings and gatherings with friends and bring more of your true personality to life in VR.

Carmack's avatar during his talk today was mostly expressionless, with weird jittery movements and a mouth that didn't line up with the dialogue. Nothing like what the promo video shows. It seems Facebook has a ways to go before they can live up to their marketing.

https://www.facebook.com/events/reality-labs-facebook-page/c...

nomel30• 4 years ago

As he stated within the first few minutes, it wasn’t enabled for his talk. He also wasn’t using the new avatars.

diimdeep• 4 years ago

In my opinion, unstoppable money printer and infinite national debt is keeping this ridiculous bubble from popping, one more useless and overpriced future electronic waste.

monkpit• 4 years ago

VR has been “5 years away” for decades. They even made kids shows about it in the 90s, and there was the Virtual Boy console from Nintendo.

And here we are, 25 years later, and it’s still just a gimmick looking for a use case.

Version467• 4 years ago

I'm baffled by the reaction here. I agree that productive VR work is still not ready for prime time, but most of you haven't tried any of this (let alone the new hardware) and you're already dismissing even the possibility of it becoming good in the future. Reminds me of the Dropbox thread. You know which one.

Also what I really don't understand is how anyone can have anything against them spending $$$ on R&D? Worst case scenario: their whole productivity angle doesn't work out, they lose billions upon billions in the coming decade and eventually scrap the whole thing. Then they've still invented a lot of super interesting tech along the way. High resolution displays, low latency rendering pipelines, novel human interface technologies, high fidelity hand tracking, lightweight and sharp lenses, the list goes on and on. There's lots of applications for each of those things and almost nobody else is willing to spend this much cash for such an uncertain roi. I, for one, am super excited about what the future iterations of this will look like.

marricks4• 4 years ago

I think there’s a lot of hate because Facebook is an immensely hate-able company that needs its next cash cow and it sure hopes this is it.

Look at the history of it’s core product to see where VR will go if it takes off:

Facebook was the cool place for college students to connect with friends. No ID requirements to sign up and no ads for years. Your feed was just your friends post. Things were great. Now there’s ads in your feed and you need to definitively prove your identity. Not to mention the history of scandals and privacy violations.

They’ll do whatever it takes to get those first 100 million users. Once they get them though all bets are off. Privacy will only get worse, they’ll give up on the initial power users because who cares about a couple million hard core gamers?

systemvoltage• 4 years ago

I never understood the hate for Facebook. Everytime someone points out their reasons, usually it has major flaws in 1) Inconsistency 2) Hypocrisy 3) Ideological bias 4) Bandwagoning.

So if someone wants to hate Facebook, if they have principled position, I respect that. But that's hardly ever the case in my experience online and offline.

I am not a fan of most social media companies, but I love the tech scene, and the progress Meta is making in this field. Should be universally applauded even by the harshest critics of Facebook.

imposter• 4 years ago

Isn't everyone doing that though? With Apple stepping into the Ads business, it is almost clear that they will eventually wipe out any third party competition, especially facebook from their platform. Facebook has realised that it desperately needs a hardware channel to survive in the cut-throat competitive field the tech industry has become, and VR is that channel.

jstummbillig2• 4 years ago

They did absolutely monstrous shit in regards to privacy, that makes the meta of today look like a finely tuned privacy machine that serves to protect every user to the teeth.

Only nobody cared because that was the time prior to the latest privacy awakening, and apparently we still have a hard time putting it in the right context. If the best thing you can say about a company is that it was not big and nobody cared about their (what are now considered) atrocities back when, then you should probably reconsider your evaluation.

noduerme• 4 years ago

After wanting a metaverse since 1992, if anyone could make me not want one it's Zuck.

krick• 4 years ago

True, and it isn't just hate for the sake of hate. I would like to have a device like that (not for meetings, god forbid, but I'd like to read without having to hold a book in by hands, or to watch a 360° 3D movie, you know), but I'm just not gonna buy it from Facebook. To clarify, I'm not gonna buy it from any company that will require me to sign-up and log-in somewhere to use the device I bought.

rib3ye• 4 years ago

Maybe they didn’t require ID, but for the first year(s) they did require a valid college, and then business domain in your email at sign up so it was really anon as you’re making it out to be.

nfw2• 4 years ago

Which Dropbox thread? Not everyone on HN has been here a long time

atorodius• 4 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

killingtime74• 4 years ago

Indeed some us were in high school or even grade school at the time

chrisseaton2• 4 years ago

Also what I really don't understand is how anyone can have anything against them spending $$$ on R&D? Worst case scenario: their whole productivity angle doesn't work out, they lose billions upon billions in the coming decade and eventually scrap the whole thing.

Err well people who own Meta, which is likely a lot of people here through shares, investment funds, pensions, probably don’t want that do they?

BoorishBears2• 4 years ago

You're really leaning your entire arm on the scale here.

People have a visceral reaction to the implication that donning a computer on your head and interacting via Corporate Memphis styled cartoon avatars is any sort of future that we should seek. It's that simple.

That video of a woman sitting lifelessly at her table while her avatar engages in hearty expressive conversation puts a lump of discomfort in my throat. It's a repulsively dystopian outcome for social interaction, but Meta wants to sell it as a future we're missing out on.

People do not like that. I've followed VR since it's infancy, owned most of the major headsets, used it in an office environment, and I will say while VR is cool, the promise of the metaverse is deeply offensive to the senses of most people, myself included.

Aeolun3• 4 years ago

Putting on my VR headset to get in a meeting with the rest of my team does not sound nearly as unreasonable though. It could be the same as starting zoom.

Like, at this price point, and with these features that isn’t it, but I can see it in a non-dystopian way.

It’s just that it’s Facebook providing the hardware that scares me.

binarysneaker• 4 years ago

Absolutely. It's about time we raised our heads and looked at where humanity is heading. I feel bad for my kids if this is it.

foxes• 4 years ago

That sanitized corporate dystopia wants to have the same restrictions, scarcity and limitations as real life.

The theory: you could let you explore limitless worlds only bound by your imagination and current compute power.

Current meta vision: Horrible outdated corporate cartoon graphics so you can go to a bland sanitized online store to buy an NFT picture of some shoes, and look at a horrible cartoon representation of the Eiffel tower.

Meta should be classed as an enemy of humanity.

svnt4• 4 years ago

The worst moment for me was after working by myself in VR logging in to a shared workspace and having a dude, muted, sat on the couch next to me. It loaded me in unmuted by default and I was talking to myself about what was happening.

It wasn’t at all clear that he was muted and I was unmuted and his hands were moving disconcertingly near where his body should have been. I started describing him to someone irl and his weird avatar head turns slowly toward me, hands still pulsating.

I said something like “uh shit I think he can hear me…?” and his floating weird head glitchily nodded, fingers creeping across his torso the whole time.

I logged out. That was it. So many things wrong I’m not sure I could find any reason why I’d try that again.

badpun2• 4 years ago

Re: usage for work. I wonder how using VR googles can actually work in any sort of public space (like an office). Since your vision is absolutely obscured, it basically requires absolute trust of the people around you. Other people can not only steal your wallet from your bag (that could still happen in a regular office, people leave private stuff unattended), but can for example come close to you and touch your hair or do other kinds of pervy things. I can't imagine women not being worried about this.

A solution would be to give each employee a tiny office with a door and a lock, which wouldn't be a bad outcome of VR to be honest...

extheat• 4 years ago

HN generally had good SNR. However when it comes to certain things remotely involving a controversial party, it can inspire lots of off topic/uninteresting/uninformative commenting. Just have to tune it out. Anywho, I totally agree that whatever happens with the metaverse doesn’t make their R&D any less valuable—-motion handling, their work into optics, neuronal signal decoding and a bunch of other multidisciplinary areas of research they’re reaching into. It’s really cool to see some of the things out of Meta AI/Reality Labs, and I hope they continue keeping things open.

ahahahahah• 4 years ago

HN generally had good SNR

This was never true and perpetuating that myth contributes to the worst characteristic of HN.

everyone• 4 years ago

This is made by facebook so who cares.

zer0zzz• 4 years ago

It’s all just pure facebook hate. I remember some of same people who today trash vr and anything coming out of meta-RL were literally drooling at totally absurd incomplete and awful VR demos at GDC 7 or 8 years ago at a time when I really thought VR was totally unusable and unplayable.

Now that the tech is actually nice enough that it is usable and sometimes even actually better for certain things folks are just jumping on the hate fb bandwagon.

You’re absolutely right that most people here haven’t even tried some of this stuff. Personally I never gave VR a thought myself but my brother wanted a quest so I bought one, now I have my own and am looking forward to trying what’s next.

archontes• 4 years ago

For what it's worth, you're at least right about me; I truly hate fb, and their simple involvement in a product is sufficient reason not to purchase it unless it's been thoroughly broken by the modding community.

chaostheory24• 4 years ago

Most people on HN aren’t trying VR because HN’s users are aging like Slashdot’s user base years back. A lot of HN comments on VR are simply variants of “get off my lawn”. You’d think people would actually try something for a decent amount of time before panning it with a novella length comment. If I were to guess, most HN users have only tried Google Cardboard and not modern VR

On that note, I understand why people dislike meta even if they’re making really cool stuff, but people have to realize that Meta isn’t the only VR company. I have a feeling that only Apple can change the popular perception of VR

instagraham2• 4 years ago

I don't think so. I've tried it. It's definitely the next big "thing" I wanna spend on. But this isn't it. And as a gamer I strongly feel Meta isn't the company that's gonna give me "it".

I'd rather back another horse for $1500. And as a consumer base, none of us are obliged to be fangirls for Meta given their track record.

sascha_sl3• 4 years ago

VR 7-8 years ago wasn't gated behind a store and large EULA, and the people in charge hadn't announced their intent to not just monopolize and monetize social VR spaces, but also workspaces.

There was still reason to be excited and hopeful about the future of VR.

I'll wait to get excited if the Index is updated. And until then I'll keep using my low res low FOV first gen Vive. Exclusively to hit boxes.

spywaregorilla3• 4 years ago

More than a decade I was a young teen dreaming of immersive experiences offered by the wii. I can even say with some specificity that I thought RED STEEL 2 was going to be the most amazing game ever: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Steel_2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO91n5phQQY

It's a pretty good title! It's a better VR game than most actual VR games. The control scheme has some interesting motion sword and gunplay. Plus you can turn and dash without getting motion sick because its on a tv. Look at the fighting gameplay. See how much better it is than Half Life Alyx and Boneworks?

But, the immersive quality of red steel 2 fades pretty quickly. As does Alyx and boneworks. Because... it sucks. VR asks you to believe you're in a world, like in ready player one. But you're not. None of the little things are there. It's just a camera on your face with better wii wands.

Having understood this, it's pretty clear that the best possible resolution headset will not fundamentally change the VR experience. Maybe text will be easily readable. That would be nice. But the experience Meta wants you to believe you'll have won't be coming any time soon.

daavidhauser• 4 years ago

thanks for saying what i couldnt put into words like that! I think the tech is super cool and people shouldn’t hate that much on Meta

yabatopia• 4 years ago

I don't hate Meta/Facebook, I like it as much as cancer.

Super cool tech is not a free pass. The tech doesn't stand on it's own, the Quest Pro is an integral part of a dystopian world ruled by Meta.

It's not hate, I just don't want to support or enable Meta's dystopia.

jen_h• 4 years ago

I’m really excited, too, but there are serious issues in Meta’s execution: They really need to get their UX, customer service, and hardware/firmware release processes solid.

It’s foolhardy and expensive to test hardware in prod, especially in a down economy with logistics/resourcing issues, and it’s absolutely nuts to disregard passionate, on-the-hour-Oculus-is-so-great (Boomer) users who’ve thrown thousands into the platform, telling them to delete their Facebook accounts (Facebook accounts they now are now dependent upon) to resolve unverified firmware borkage.

(Also, a more lightweight headset would help get the rest of us there. ;) Where’d ya go, Google Glass?)

Looking at past historical patterns, though, I truly believe a smaller company will emerge from the recession in the next year or two that gets us closer than Meta or any other large company ever has or will.

backtoyoujim• 4 years ago

$1500.00 as a hardware loss leader for Perky Pat 2022 versus eat food and pay too much for freaking rent.

Humans do not own VR anything.

DonHopkins2• 4 years ago

You earned my upvote with the PKD 3SOPA reference.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Luckey: an evil alt-right-wing extremist pulling the wool over people’s eyes with his robotic right hand, artificial eyes, and steel teeth, who returned from an expedition to the Prox system in possession of a new alien hallucinogen Chew-Z to compete with Can-D, to perpetrate an uncanny creepy plot about adults on drugs playing together with physical miniaturized doll houses in order to escape their dystopian existence by retreating into to a mega-corporation controlled virtual reality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_E...

Silicon Valley Keenan Feldspar's VR (S4E8)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8MAV9jhf04

Silicon Valley (HBO) - HooliVR Goggles (Phone Exploding) S04E09

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUAnN-FXcdE

sbcdz• 4 years ago

Reminds me of the Dropbox thread

Cute. Whenever someone wants to defend their dear little niche/dead end product they always make that reference on HN. Similarly on slashdot with the ipod comment. Yet there is a subtlety that every person who makes this broken analogy are missing (apart from the fact, that, well, if someone made a book that kept a record of all instances this analogy was made on HN, it would be hard to miss the fact that.. no, X pet product defended Y times on hn didn't become the next dropbox)

The criticisms against dropbox and the first ipod were nerds who thought there was already, -within the same product category- good enough things, underestimating the importance of things like UI, accessibility, portability (in the case of the ipod when people compared it to the gigantic creative jukeboxes and mp3 CD-R players).

They were criticism targeted at a single product, not an entire category, because no one sane would think there's no use for tools that remotely sync documents, or gives you the ability to listen to your entire music collection on the go. Dropbox and the ipod were great, refined products, but products that stood on the shoulders of giants and markets that were already plentiful by the time they came out. Keeping backups of documents is a need a great amount of people have. People were already listening to portable music when the ipod came out. They were product that did important things better than anyone else on the market, but products that entered markets that were already quite mature. Meanwhile VR as a whole is still a niche.

VR enthusiasts are more like the nerds of old who made fun of dropbox. They have very little understanding of the wants of the general public. Shut yourself in a closed uncanny valley virtual world wearing an uncomfortable headset for hours? This is more like the people who thought rolling your own was better than dropbox.

Zuckerberg is not the next Steve Jobs. If anything, he's the carbon copy of the typical slashdot reader. His mindset is thoroughly alien to the human mind.

https://qz.com/1331956/mark-zuckerberg-keeps-forgetting-abou...

In the Recode interview, Zuckerberg falls back on the term “use case” to describe people using Facebook Live to stream their own suicides in real time. He repeats this characterization, going on to call suicide-streaming a “use” of Facebook Live: “There were a small number of uses of this, but people were using it to…show themselves self-harm or there were even a few cases of suicide.”

This is the sort of people who think the future of humanity is to enclose yourself harder in your little virtual bubble. The everyday man finds this sort repellent.

r_hoods_ghost• 4 years ago

I love it when people call VR niche. The quest 2 is estimates to have sold a similar number of units to the Xbox X and S combined, and about 3/4 the number of units as the PS5 [1]. It is now a mainstream console.

[1]https://uploadvr.com/quest-2-sold-almost-15-million-idc/

geuis• 4 years ago

Then they've still invented a lot of super interesting tech along the way.

Google has also developed a lot of interesting tech along the way. Most of it is junk you can buy for $5 at the Salvation Army now.

The problem with "Meta" is that it's pushing something without any buy-in from an audience that cares about it.

The actual audience for VR is almost completely at the early adopter, 1974 Altair stage. We're at the stage where the enthusiasts are figuring out what works and what doesn't. That's mostly what social interactions will work at first, and what hardware mods are most important to expand those.

As much crap as people give Ready Player One, there's an analogy in there. Facebook is the mega corp trying to take over. They're the "Innovative Online Industries (IOI)" from the novel, a "multinational corporation bent on a well-funded effort to find the Easter egg in order to take control of the OASIS and monetize it." (Direct quote from Wikipedia.)

As a counter example, let me tell you about an early experience I had in Second Life circa 2005 or so.

I got involved with SL for a few years back then. There was one singular critical moment I experienced that convinced me there was something very special happening back then which I really haven't experienced again yet.

In SL your avatar can fly around. Here I am on my low level 2005 pc and low res 2005 monitor with 2005 headphones. I'm cruising around a bit I fly over this hill into one of the weirdest things I had ever seen at that point in my life of 25 years.

I fly over the crest of this hill and run into an amphitheater with a stage. Same thing we've all seen dozens of times in real life. There are dozens of other avatars all in the crowd sitting in different areas of the amphitheater. Most of the audience was oddly wearing furry costumes.

On the stage is a band of other characters, all doing different animations of playing fake instruments.

So the way I'm describing this seems pretty normal these days and nothing impressive. But this was 2005.

What hit me really hard is that these are all real people experiencing the same event AT THE SAME TIME. That was the aha moment.

The band wasn't just npc characters. There was an actual band of 5 or so people together in the real world streaming their show into SL for a bunch of other people from all over the world to watch in real time. Sure, it's like 50 people dressed as sexy foxes and stuff, but they were all witnessing this musical performance in real time through this weird 3rd party virtual interface that very accurately replicated a real world experience in terms of spatial placement and audio (to some extent).

For me, it was this super weird magical moment that gave me a glimpse of what the future actually could be. Everything was built by the people from their avatars to the band people to the person that designed and built the stage and amphitheater. And it was in a shared virtual/physical space where I was able to randomly encounter it just by flying around and crossing a certain hill.

To this day I've probably had a similar AHA moment a handful of times.

Today you can watch bathtub fun time on Twitch, or people begging for subs on YouTube, or people spamming TikTok to promote their SoundCloud accounts.

But none of that comes close to the experience of discovery in 2005 of finding an impromptu rock show in Second Life with furry foxes watching in real-time.

In modern times, I haven't bought a VR headset yet. I've played with it when available, and I've seen a taste of VRChat and some other awesomely weird modern experiences.

I'm firmly convinced that whatever actually ends up becoming "the metaverse" isn't coming from an out of touch older millennial billionaire who took the wrong message from a particular book/movie or it's actual spiritual predecessor Snowcrash.

There's a last sentence here that I tried to write a few times and failed. Weirdos is wrong, so is "alternate thinkers". Young people? That's wrong too because since 2005 Second Life's population of users has been mostly flat but consistent, and they tend to be older tech savvy folks that have used these platforms for decades before they got "popular".

I don't have a label, and that's probably the point. There eventually may be lots of people who dive into "the metaverse", but those people are so diverse that IOI/Meta isn't going to be able to dictate whatever it becomes.

ekianjo2• 4 years ago

vr is not taking off. the market for VR is growing but still way less than initially expected. and the whole VR for work seems antithetic to companies asking people to go back to the office.

hrbf3• 4 years ago

I believe the visceral pushback is happening because this is a perfect example of a technology and platform that should not be. And most people instinctively sense that.

We need more humanity, care for ourselves and others, more love and connection to humans and everything surrounding us, to experience what it means to be alive and being a part of the universe. This tech aims to isolate us even more than we already are, through its fundamental design. When you put human values above the maniacal quest of a boy billionaire for relevance and power, you come to the conclusion that this is the entirely wrong path.

The hardware is inconsequential.

Zee2• 4 years ago

As someone working in the space (not Meta):

The overall goal is the exact opposite of what you're saying here. Just about every single person I've ever talked to in this industry wants to build devices to bring human beings together across space + time. Allowing folks to see each other eye to eye and form real human connections where otherwise it would be impossible. XR is probably the least isolating technology in history if you consider what it can do in terms of breaking down boundaries of time, distance, ability, and appearance. It is the most humanistic of any technology I've ever used in my life, in the way that it's explicitly designed to bridge human, emotional connections where none could exist before. Just one of many perspectives...

lazzlazzlazz• 4 years ago

I'm baffled by the reaction here. I agree that productive VR work is still not ready for prime time, but most of you haven't tried any of this (let alone the new hardware) and you're already dismissing even the possibility of it becoming good in the future. Reminds me of the Dropbox thread. You know which one.

This is Hacker News' reaction to almost every new thing that isn't already several years past the early adopter end of the curve (crypto, VR, a lot of bio). The community has become a bit stiff and conservative, for a tech community.

automatic61312• 4 years ago

The community has become a bit stiff and conservative, for a tech community.

A natural reaction to decades of "overpromise, under deliver".

stereolambda• 4 years ago

There's some truth in that. People are uncomfortable with the thought of becoming (even more?) Mark's serfs and want to dispel that by magically willing the tech into being garbage.

The fact is that in 2022 many parts of bigtech-skeptic narrative are being planted in the mainstream culture and politics: the mature thing would be to lean into that, as a responsible technologist, and not rely on nerdy rituals of thrashing 'ware on forums. As much as it is fun, it serves a different purpose. I mean, if it is dangerous for us as human beings and citizens, just say it aloud, we won't be saved by the tech being buggy.

Myself, I have enough stuff to do in the big screen and audio system world and don't crave VR immersion, though it was fun when I tried. But I can see the potential and know that people are already using it in gaming and virtual workspaces. You can potentially buy one simple thing for your computer, not waste that much space and have the immersive experience. One thing I want is that it is open (software and hardware wise) and not connected to any surveillance machine, like we should be able to expect from a freaking appliance.

astannard• 4 years ago

I think the metaverse is something very cool and for it to be associated with Facebook which comes across as a toxic company causes resentment. Something cool and futuristic that I've read and dreamed about has been tainted before coming to fruition because of who is making it. I hear great things about the headsets but I just dont trust the company that makes them.

shrimpx• 4 years ago

By the way, the comments in the "Dropbox thread" are overwhelmingly supporting and positive.

graderjs• 4 years ago

Zuck, has wanted to build VR social world for years. How do you see that relating to his other visions /ambitions ? What do you think people will really find meaningful in this VR product 10 years in future?

usrbinbash7• 4 years ago

I a not dismissing the possibility of it becoming "good" (as in "works well technically"). Throw enough money and talent at almost any technical problem, and the solution can become "good".

I doubt a wide adoption in the market. Just because something new has been created doesn't mean the market will adopt it. It has to have a tangible advantage. If it is meant to replace something, like existing workflows and methods it needs to have an advantage so massive, that it isn't just better than what exists already, but is worth the cost of any transitions as well.

And I just don't see that.

Why would I wear a device, that is still big even in its newest incarnation, on my head when I have 3 ultra-high-definition monitors? Why would I use controllers when I have a mouse, keyboard and a touch-sensitive screen? I already have video chat, speech recognition, chat, mail etc. at my disposal. I already have all these forms of communication on a device that fits in my pocket for when I'm out of office. I already have all these things, and they work, they are configured, they are integrated in my employers existing infrastructure, workflows, methods, they are compliant with whatever regulations apply, they are tried, tested and budgeted for.

I mean, how would I even make the case for this to my employer? "Hey, Mr. CEO sir, my team needs devices that we have never used before in this company, to do exactly what we do now, except you would be able to watch our avatars sitting in front of virtuals screens while we do it, that is, if you wear one as well. Btw. the thing costs 1799 $ per employee."

pushback00001• 4 years ago

Isn’t it tech policing itself? Meta is structured in a way no one can say no to Zuckerberg. That pretty much leaves only general pushback and outright legislation to counter his judgements. All of them individually and collectively.

So yes a tech forum is alight with negativity. We’re also one of the canaries in the mine that should be listened to in this.

He’s eroded freedoms (misinformation, rampant gaslighting, bullying, etc), invaded peoples privacy, and there’s no remedy but defection.

samuli• 4 years ago

There are more important problems than low latency rendering pipelines in the world that they could be solving instead.

What Meta is doing, is creating themselves a platform where they can sell ads, because they've been hurt by recent privacy changes by Apple and fear the market share of Google Chrome.

pooper• 4 years ago

Reminds me of the Dropbox thread. You know which one.

I didn't see the thread until later but back then I thought the Dropbox was a sucker that I was taking advantage of because I could get extra 50 MB or whatever by just walking up to someone in my dorm and referring them to use Dropbox, even if they had no intention to continue using Dropbox...

I want to be less naive now. Facebook (it doesn't deserve the Meta name) will NEVER, EVER do anything for "good". I believe it simply is not capable of doing any "good". We cannot let Facebook be the gatekeepers of a pay toilet, much less the (purported) future of our communications.

Back to the topic though, I thought xbox kinect was trying to solve all of these problems a long time ago with just a couple of cameras. what happened?

magic_hamster4• 4 years ago

I am a connoisseur of VR from back when you could count the polygons on 3D models. I am definitely an enthusiast, and even got lucky enough to develop some VR applications (mostly for HTC Vive). So I'm definitely all in on VR!

But I'm all out when it comes to Meta and Facebook, who have repeatedly proven they are simply a bad actor. The gross privacy negligence, the disgusting mistreatment of their users and advertisers alike, and being a major factor in today's terrible social issues, Meta is a huge net negative for humanity.

They can hand those out for free, and I will still not take it. I am done feeding them data. I want no part of their ecosystem, even by proxy. It doesn't even matter what the product does - I will not take it from Meta.

I realize some people here work for Meta and it's not personal. But you must encounter this opinion from time to time. I have friends who work at Meta and it's incredible to see how they brace for impact every time they tell someone where they work. I feel bad for them, but Meta earned this notorious reputation with noticeable effort.

fcanela• 4 years ago

I'm a user of Immersed (an VR for productivity app) and I use to code frequently.

I wanted QPro to be a success. I expected at least a reasonable bump in resolution. What was released is just disappointing and I can not justify paying that price point. I would go for Pico4 before of QPro.

2pEXgD0fZ5cF• 4 years ago

I had access to Oculus dev kits back in the day and am now a Valve Index owner, which means that

1. I've been closely following VR for almost 10 years now

2. I've invested some money for the best VR hardware available (at the time).

My take on Facebook and why I am fully on board with the skepticism here:

- VR hardware, at least on the higher end, is pretty good. It has been "there" for many possible applications at least in terms of fidelity since ~2019. VR being so uninteresting is mostly a software problem in my opinion, not a hardware problem, even if the hardware development is important to make adoption more realistic without the need to invest a ton of money.

- The novelty of VR wears off rather quickly. I barely use my VR hardware nowadays, and right now I can't imagine a scenario in which VR makes anything in my everyday life easier and more efficient, quite the opposite. While I don't doubt that it will happen, I very much doubt that Facebook will be involved in the next important step forward. They are just too out of touch with reality (outside of the investor/silicon valley/zuckerberg bubble) for that.

- The software is just lacking, and everything Facebook is presenting when it comes to software is in many ways a step back compared to VR products from as early as 2014 (e.g. VR Chat)...Acting as if Facebook is pushing anything forward here is just naive following of buzzwords at best, dishonest parroting of marketing talk at worst.

- Anything a company like Facebook might plan with VR is just uninteresting, because it will ultimately have dark patterns, manipulation and monetization baked into its very core, be it directly or indirectly.

Rather than developing VR as a "next step" in personal computing, Facebook is just racing to build an ad infested dystopian walled garden as fast as they can, why would I get excited about that in the slightest?

I'm still generally very interested in VR, but the only thing I'll get excited about is VR device from a manufacturer that doesn't have backstabbing me as his ultimate goal and will base all his decisions on being Facebook.

And yes, I still remember "Oculus won't require a Facebook Sign-In", and while that has been reverted for now, I won't believe for a second that the people working at Facebook aren't eager to get something equivalent back as soon as enough users are on board.

willis936• 4 years ago

If the tech is so interesting then why is the "tech specs" tab filled with no substance? I can barely begin to speculate what would make this hardware stand out over the competition, let alone make confident conclusions. The hardware having the potential to be cool isn't a strong point to make because the people selling the hardware aren't even making it.

nelsonic• 4 years ago

It’s great to be excited for the future. Agreed. It’s also good to be cautious about a future where Facebook owns all the Patents to the tech. That sounds like a dystopia to me.

yokoprime• 4 years ago

Having tried and used current VR hardware for many hours, often long sessions, I can absolutely see the potential. But the hardware and sofware has a long long way to go. Looking just at Meta and the Meta Quest 2, the top 10-20 apps are the same today as they were a year ago. There are some cool fitness type apps, but for the time being its a novelty and I don't see doing meetings in VR as something I have any need or desire to do once the novelty wears off.

p0pcult• 4 years ago

Meta makes the world a worse place. It always has. The flagship product, FB, was built to creep on women. The sooner Meta dies, the better for our planet.

prng20215• 4 years ago

Yes I hate Meta but that’s not the reason for my opposition towards this. Even Microsoft announced an integration and I don’t hate that company.

In aggregate, company's are pouring billions of dollars and who know how many person hours into VR meetings. Engineers are a limited resource. Investment is a limited resource. This could be going towards trying to solve many more useful problems.

I see people talking about the immersiveness being the biggest selling point. That's so true for video games but do people really think immersion is what's missing with remote work? I've been a fully remote employee for many years. It's the real time chat, drastically improved document collaboration, and video conferencing that has made the biggest impact. I've never yearned to be taken out of the coffee shop I'm working in or my home office and transported to a virtual conference room where I have to physically move my arms and head just like the real world.

Just because some tech works for one use case doesn't mean it does for another. Our touch screens are great on a phone. Terrible in a car where you need to be able to control things without focusing your eyes on it.

People look at this new tech and are flying to it because it's the new shiny thing. If you're in this group, think about what a marvel a screen, keyboard, and mouse are. You only twitch your eyes and barely move your hands and fingers at all. Yet, you can rapidly type, switch between totally different applications, scroll huge canvases of interfaces, etc all while barely expending any energy at all. That's that I call efficiency.

leshow• 4 years ago

I would be really surprised if they were "inventing" high-dpi displays or new lenses. The likely scenario to me seems that they would just buy what is already available or perhaps pay another shop to customize something for them, not invent a new technology.

What it really seems like they are doing is having a serious case of NIH syndrome and re-writing a bunch of stuff that already exists elsewhere.

People hate it because Facebook has not proven itself to be a good steward of technology, and I think people are more broadly questioning whether we should elevate these companies to stewards of our lives in the first place.

spaceman_20202• 4 years ago

I would be super excited for this if it was from any other company.

But as things stand, the more successful this thing is, the more Facebook thrives.

I really can’t cheer on anything that prolongs the life of Facebook.

31337Logic• 4 years ago

That's because you don't understand their business model.

charlieyu1• 4 years ago

The last thing people want is more monitoring of their work. VR work, compared to video calls, is more monitoring. You could have checked your phone during video calls which you couldn't do it with VR.

And neither video calls nor VR is proven to be more productive than emails.

sytelus6• 4 years ago

They should have open sourced the platform. This would generate more hardware makers to jump in and improve hardware part, bring to market cheaper as well as more high end devices and so on. It would also accelerate building apps for the platform. A big issue in tech is that everyone wants to copy Apple, keep things secret and build walled garden. What worked for Apple worked for a reason (and bit of a luck) but may not work for others. The big issue is that everyone wants to be next Steve Jobs.

Another overlooked thing is their future EM based wrist sensor which can sense hand movement accurately even if humans don't see it moving. This can be a killer device on its own. The realistic avatar that one can generate by scanning themselves by phone is also very doable with today's tech (SIGGRAPH is full of these papers now). If they can make that happen as fluidly as enabling FaceID, that would be killer app in itself. That can start whole industry of try-before-you buy clothing stores in VR world on your avatar, for example.

mrwh• 4 years ago

What I want to make remote work better is a laptop with the camera positioned behind the screen, maybe two thirds the way up. I don't care if this makes for a small dead zone in the screen. I want to be able to look directly at the person I'm video conferencing with, and for it to look to them like I'm looking at them too. Moving the camera down a bit would get me 90% of the way there, 90% of the time. I don't want to wear a stuffy hot VR headset. I just want a modicum more of a connection with the people I talk to every day.

yummybear• 4 years ago

I love "Adobe Acrobat" is the first app listed. I've always wanted to immerse myself in PDF forms.

andreyk• 4 years ago

Meta's whole vision of the 'metaverse' may be silly, but come on, this is super exciting! The specific use case of using this for meetings aside, it just looks like a pretty huge leap forward in terms of hardware for AR/VR. It remains to be seen whether AR/VR is actually useful for things beyond playing video games, but my bet is that it will definitely be the case. Maybe this sort of hardware won't be quite as impactful/omnipresent as personal computers or smartphones, but it seems like it could be on the same order of magnitude as those things long term.

anm892• 4 years ago

There is nothing that facebook could do to convince me to pay big money for one of their pre brickable devices

mgh2• 4 years ago

This is great news, Meta is targeting and testing demand from the enterprise (instead of consumer) market. As they get some steam, Apple will come in, learn from their mistakes, and innovate to capture and dominate later.

It has done this with Fitbit > Apple watch, now they will repeat with VR/AR, EVs, and hopefully cloud gaming (once it matures technically) - they are master strategists and innovators.

elchief• 4 years ago

I'm not spending another dime on VR until Thrill of the Fight 2 comes out

malwrar• 4 years ago

Personally, I’m planning to wait on an option from a different company. If I could just buy the hardware device and have the option to run my own software at some point I’d go for it, but we all know this thing is zuck’s big bet to keep his surveillance advertising company afloat. This device genuinely good but I doubt we’ll ever get full access to the space if he’s the arbiter. I don’t want to deal with them, I really hope others feel the same and I’m not forced to buy into this platform at some point.

btbuildem• 4 years ago

I am sure people will hack and jailbreak this thing in no time.

langsoul-com• 4 years ago

I remember hearing someone used a vr set to replace their monitors for programming.

I wonder if this pro can do it well? It that's the case, I'd just need a laptop and then the quest to have unlimited sized monitors everywhere I go.

The price makes it hard to justify a test though. Even with refunds, it's sorta annoying to go ship things back.

sytelus6• 4 years ago

How does Pico 4 compares to this?

blobbers3• 4 years ago

“ Presenting the car designed for the average man... the Homer! Questions? What does this monstrosity cost? Jerry, what's the sticker price? $82,000! This monstrosity costs $82,000? What have I done? I mean, the zoo was fun... but I'm ruined!”

Zuck about to have his own moment. $1499??? They’re going to sell… 3 of these?

sitkack• 4 years ago

I learned about the launch from my phone, because they updated the privacy policy about the eye tracking data. Perhaps an opportune method of sending marketing data over legal updates.

nailer• 4 years ago

God this website is hard to scroll on an iPhone.

badpun2• 4 years ago

This UI of this web page is so confusing and frustrating. In particular, they hijacked mouse scrolling in a way that it almost makes me nauseous (and maybe it would if I didn't quickly close the page).

CrociDB• 4 years ago

Ah, so that's the reason why SimulaVR got subpoena'd?

gljiva• 4 years ago

How do such devices affect eyesight? Is the leneses not "zooming in" to see "far objects" harmful? How does it compare to using flat screens?

I suppose it's findable on the Internet and I am planning to search that info later, but here seem to be knowledgeable folk, so I'd also like to hear your thoughts

sytelus6• 4 years ago

They should have purchased Varjo XR3 and just commoditize it.

https://youtu.be/NOk_M1Ib5F0

dncornholio• 4 years ago

Too bad they still use the USB cable. Any enhancements of the display won't be as nice because you get a 500Mbit compressed video stream while playing through USB.

One of the reasons I switched from Oculus to a G2 Reverb was the visible artefacts of compressing the video for USB.

Headset looks great, designed well. Will probably make some very rich casuals happy.

hintymad• 4 years ago

Can I not wear my glasses to use Quest Pro? Glasses are a huge PITA for wearing a VR set.

tgsovlerkhgsel• 4 years ago

Notably not available in Germany again. That should make you think why. IIRC one of the previous headsets' unavailability was because Germany wouldn't put up with some of the consumer-hostile things Facebook was doing.

hakube• 4 years ago

That's a lot of buzz words in one page

amai• 4 years ago

Is this similar to Lenovo Glasses T1?

https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/glasses-t1-...

micromacrofoot• 4 years ago

I see they’ve joined to club of snake oil renderings for VR… they’re trying to sell some hardware to a company that will pay them to build software they don’t need - classic enterprise grift

edmcnulty101• 4 years ago

Imagine spending 1500 on a device that can be permanently disabled just by saying something Facebook censors don't agree with.

1500 bucks down the drain.

Robotbeat2• 4 years ago

They mentioned using it for mixed reality and augmented reality but if they don’t open up the passthrough API to allow apps to use fiducial tracking or something, the value will be highly limited. Fiducial tracking is common with smart phone augmented reality apps.

When obvious & actually useful use case would be the ability to scan barcodes (including 2D matrix types like QR codes) hands-free. But again this isn’t possible if they keep the pass-through API closed.

This would also allow reliable, seamless integration of digital and real things. QR codes as fiducials can allow precision measurements, useful for all kinds of trades.

Another is scanning documents or pieces of paper. There’s no reason you couldn’t just draw on an ordinary piece of paper using ordinary pencil or pen or marker or crayon or whathaveyou instead of having to use whatever weird input device is in vogue. The headset could continuously scan the document, filling in places your hand is blocking over time, and updating a shared or presented document in real-time. Collaborator edits could be overlayed on top of your physical copy in real-time as well.

Lots of these things are pretty obvious but don’t work if pass-through API is blocked off like it currently is for Quest 2.

Nathanael_M• 4 years ago

I think as human working/living conditions get bleaker and cost of living in population centres gets higher, having an option work from a beautiful environment of your own choosing and present an identity of your own design will become more appealing. It costs a lot of money, yeah, but escapism for a month's rent seems like it could be worth it.

I don't think the experience is immersive enough or high enough resolution yet, but it will progress. When we reach the point where the limitations on legibility are the same as those limitations outside of VR then I'm sold. A perfect work environment with all the screen real estate I need, perfectly adaptable, hideable, summonable, etc? All while in whichever environment I can create/purchase? How is that not appealing?

I have friends that live on the other side of the world. Being able to each throw on a headset and work in the same environment with our ideal setups whenever we want to is tremendously exciting to me.

The biggest issue I have and the #1 reason that people aren't getting excited about this is Meta. It's the dystopian, regulated, centralized nightmare of a curated and supervised gateway to the workplace. It's the lack of freedom to own your own space, work, and visage. If I can't host my own place in the "metaverse" or craft my own representation or secure my own data, then I can't see myself entrusting a good percentage of my life to it.

Rambling thoughts, probably reading too much Neal Stephenson.

nerdix• 4 years ago

I look at this as a halo product. It's like a VR version of a concept car. It is meant to show people what cars will be like in 5-10 years. This is meant to show people what Meta Quest 3 or 4 will be like in 2-4 years. Meta is well aware of that fact that a $1500 VR headset is not a mass consumer product. Thats likely why they have positioned it as a productivity tool for businesses. There is probably 0 market for a headset like this with consumers. The consumer VR market is almost entirely game centric right now and its not clear to me that games can even really benefit from the advances here yet. Almost no one buys a VR headset just for the "metaverse" (whatever that is). This is tech that is meant to give people a glimpse of what is possible. To sell people on the idea that a VR/AR metaverse is inevitable. It'll be judged by how well it does that.

Meta Quest Pro

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