In my office there are several sets from Oculus, ML, etc. Every time one shows up, it goes like this: everyone stands around and has a go at it, then it is never touched again.
That's basically the state of VR and AR as it exists today.
I organized a vr party recently with my old beat up vive and people played keep talking and nobody explodes for 6 hours in a row
That’s the state of VR today.
Whenever I do VR as a social activity there’s never anyone leaving unsatisfied. And I’ve “sold” plenty of headsets that I hear reports about still getting regular use several years later
And now with oculus quest it’s an even easier sell
Every time there’s any vr related post on HN, the most upvoted comment is about VR being dead tech, all the while oculus and valve have their headsets on constant back-order
Maybe consider that you’re not the target audience
I'll bet people were responding to the party, not the Vive. It's exactly the effect I reported: it's cool once when everyone is doing it.
> I hear reports about still getting regular use several years later
Yes, a percentage of the population is no doubt into it. My point is that it's honestly surprising at this point, given how good the tech truly is, how uncompelling the overall experience is. The vast majority of people just don't feel the need to come back.
> VR being dead tech
The tech is great and getting better all the time. But that's not enough for it to be transformative the way smartphones were.
And yes, I know, there's no requirement for AR or VR to be the next smartphone. But we do at some point need another paradigm shift in hardware to enable another wave of software innovation. This I think is why there is such animosity between VR proponents and skeptics: one wants to play some sweet games and the other wants a massive world-changing wave to ride.
Because who sits around at work on a vr headset? Vr is inherently anti (local) social. Vr is fantastic for certain things right now, sim racing being the one I’m familiar with, that it completely blows away any alternative.
The big issue I’ve found is the UX and software is atrocious. Things are not intuitive, there’s walled gardens (f you oculus). I’ve had so many moments of knowing what I want to do, but being totally unable to figure out how to do it.
I’ll be excited once Apple enters space to figure out a bunch of this stuff and the rest of the field can just copy them.
Isn't Apple just going to do a walled garden as well? I'm skipping this platform as well until there are open standards and we don't have to develop one version of each app for each platform.
I doubt it. A lot of people could afford it but either think using Apple fuels an anticonsumer empire or think that it offers little advantage over the competition.
Comments like these make me feel like VR proponents are just people who don't know TrackIR exists.
I'm not sure VR can really compete with a device that for ~200$ allows you proper view directed freelook in loads of games without having to seal your eyes off under a visor. With a modestly sized panel I didn't notice any less immersion using head tracking versus a (for me, highly annoying) head-encasing visor.
It also leaves room for having sim-appropriate peripherals that you can actually use because they aren't obscured by the screen.
Just my experience having tried both and being a big simulation enthusiast (flight sim, driving, arma milsim, all that stuff).
> Comments like these make me feel like VR proponents are just people who don't know TrackIR exists.
Comments like this make me feel like TrackIR proponents are just people who don't know depth perception exists or that things can happen in places that aren't in front of you. TrackIR is an _input_ device. VR HMD is a _display_ device. The two are not interchangeable. TrackIR doesn't magically make you able to look over your shoulder.
TrackIR accomplishes the task that many people seem to think only a vr headset can give them: Headtracking freelook immersion; they are extremely comparable.
And binocular depth perception is only one method of depth perception..
edit:
> or that things can happen in places that aren't in front of you
> TrackIR doesn't magically make you able to look over your shoulder.
No idea how to decipher this: I have no issue looking around in any of the games I use trackIR with. It gives you the exact same freedom of input it just doesn't seal me off from being able to see what's going on irl around me.
> I have no issue looking around in any of the games I use trackIR with
So you have screens behind you? And above you? And to either side of you? And at other odd angles? Suddenly your $200 is looking a lot more expensive, otherwise you're comparing apples to plastic oranges. Screen coverage for _actual_ free look would cost many times more than an HMD, take up many times more space, and it will _still_ be feeding the same image to both eyes unless you use 3D goggles which is yet another expense (a very significant one if you don't want your framerate to crater because you've just cut your display Hz in half).
> It gives you the exact same freedom of input
This is blatantly false. Freedom offered by motion tracking is restricted to screen space. A VR HMD integrates a full sphere of stereoptic screen space, something that you're deliberately ignoring.
It is blatantly true unless you have never used it. If I look left or right I can.. look left and right. That includes looking behind myself if I turn far enough, and no your view doesn’t leave the screen that’s the point, what.
You don’t track 1:1 that’s the entire point. You’ve no clue what you’re on about. An array of monitors would make tracking moot if I had such a setup.
This is simply not true. TrackIR doesn't give you freelook immersion. It allows you to slightly tilt or move your head. To call that freelook is disingenuous.
Personally I have TrackIR and a large ultrawide screen, but I still prefer my VR headset for sim racing. I don't find them annoying and haven't really had any issues using peripherals, although I'm one of the (seemingly) odd ones who doesn't care about buying a button box to start my car.
The VR sim racing experience is so unbelievably compelling. I think anyone who shits on VR needs to first be setup with a nice sim racing rig in VR. It is unbelievably immersive in a way that TrackIR or triple monitors or whatever else just cannot deliver.
Some next-gen VR HMDs have started to integrate TrackIR technology.
The only major point where TrackIR shines is price. Other than that it doesn't compare well to VR. A flat screen, no matter how interactive, can't compare to a VR HMD for all encompassing immersion. TrackIR on its own is also limited entertainment wise. Its most common use case is for sims, while VR is more versatile.
For some. For others, it bring them lots of joy. I'm a huge flight nerd and VR has made my experience flying simulators waaaay better. Beat Saber also got me to move a lot more, while listening to my favorite music and it's fun.
But in general I think you're right, most VR stuff is gimmicky. But for us niche nerds, it's a cool addition to our stuff.
>That's basically the state of VR and AR as it exists today
Eh, that's the state of it at your work. The VR headset I have and others have is a temporary ticket to a visual entertainment experience.
For me, the only experience I found absolutely amazing was Half Life: Alyx, though I'll play Hotdogs, Horseshoes, and Hand grenades a couple hours a week. I would never do it at the office, though.
That is a very misleading impression of VR, especially for developers who are assessing whether or not it's all hype. It's not just hype. VR will explode in popularity in the future as the headsets become lighter, cheaper, and better with high resolution, full peripheral vision FOV, built-in wireless, micro LED, foveated rendering (for better than 2D graphics, ya seriously), innovative tracking technology, and a much bigger developer community.
It's telling that with all the limitations of first gen VR, I still sank tens of hours into Pavlov (a low res VR counterstrike) and had an absolute blast. I was also blown away by Half Life: Alyx. I would have abandoned VR if it weren't for the Vive deluxe audio kit and the wireless conversion kit, which shows that comfort alone can make all the difference.
There is a game variant in Pavlov that would not have worked very well on 2D screens. Basically most people are soldiers/police and a couple people picked at random are traitors. You have to guess who the traitors are. Since everyone has some degree of head and hand tracking, and microphones are on my default, it's a very social experience. You learn to use social cues to identify and kill the terrorists before they kill you. It's a thoroughly immersive social experience, and for a few hours the cartoon world becomes your real world, because you're playing with real people that kind of sort of look like real people. Everything else is literally out of sight and out of mind. VR's ability to teleport you anywhere with anyone will prove to be highly appealing to a great many people in the future. It will not just be a niche.
Quite the contrary. 3D displays have been around for a while and people consider them gimmicky. They are not nearly as immersive as VR. Looking Glass might be nice for conference calls and advertising displays, but I think VR will have more consumer adoption.
Can confirm. I have fallen in love with VR when I tried this game on my friend's Oculus Quest. Now during lockdown Beat Saber and BoxVR (another great title, with issues though) on my own headset account for, I guess, 90-95% of my physical activity.
That's really not giving credit at all to the current state of a lot of this tech, but especially VR. VR has absolutely gone mainstream with tons of people producing different headsets and making more and more investment into it. The new Half-Life game is now VR only, and in certain circles, like simulation experiences like racing or flight simulation, VR is constantly growing more and more market share.
The bit that really stands out to me is where he says "We even convinced Google to invest. Google! Those guys are smart!"
This flavor of trope really needs to die. Some people at Google may be smart, but it's pretty clear time and again that many at Google are not, and that Google as a whole is not. "Google is smart and I should trust them to make smart choices" is the kind of cancer that gave ML almost 3 billion dollars.
I don't want to downvote you because I assume you didn't write that, but this kind of vitriol is childish. We shouldn't point and laugh at people losing their jobs in this environment.
I would contrast Jerri Ellsworth of Tilt 5 as the exact opposite of Rony Abovitz. She is low-key, tech smart and made a product quickly with a relatively low budget while having that magic feel to it in the AR world although in a limited, clever and practical way for table top gaming.
What was ML showing investors and reporters before their first product release? Was it all smoke-and-mirrors, or do they have something interesting that they haven't been able to make into a product?
Do NDAs (like the one Kevin Kelly had to sign) ever expire? I'd love to hear the story one day of what was going on in that company that allowed them to raise so much money.
Back when I was working in a small VR company (about 4 years ago?) ML was granted a bajillion of very abstract vr related patents (in the vein of apple's famous "square device with rounded corners" one). I remember one about mapping physical objects to virtual ones in position, with an example of selecting a random object on a table and being able to use it as a mouse, and another about interacting with virtual creatures through AR that was obviously inspired by the (then) popular pokemon go.
Given the suspicious lack of demos except for closed doors events and silly CGI trailers, our guess back then was that the whole thing was somehow going to be a scheme to become some sort of patent troll of the emerging field - which would make giants like google want to be in - coupled with using the hype of getting investment by the big guys to increase it's value.
Nowadays, I still have no idea what happened in there.
Those patents are going to haunt us for the next two decades. They'll be auctioned off after ML goes under, and patent trolls are keen to jump on them.
I was lucky enough to in contact with one of the founders of OpenCV right before Magic Leap publicly announced. Between Rony Abovitz, Adrian Kaehler, and Gary Bradski - the executive team had some of the top vision experts in the world. Each with their own multiple million (and billion for Rony) dollar exits. They likely raised money on this alone.
If the "virtual" space is a zero-sum game, then Oculus is beginning to expand on an already formidable burgeoning empire ;)
The strategic points that have paid off are the laser commitment to consumer electronics and gaming. Ceaseless technical product innovation and release cycles. And the stellar relations with the indie game dev community.
I think looking at something like Echo VR, which is basically the Battle Arena from Ender's Game. I always loved the zero-G levels in Unreal Tournament and Quake Arena. But this an environment where "which way is up" is truly relative. It represents a new "VR-native" style of game play.
Alyx is remarkable. You are in the Black Mesa universe. And it's appropriately horrifying.
But in a perverse way, and this is probably a generational thing, I found the original PC-era Half-Life more immersive. Just could not stop playing until I reached the end. And was always rewarded with a narrative that got weirder by degrees. I think it was the novelty of getting stuck and seeking out trustworthy walkthroughs from some anonymous dial-up era phpBB forums ;)
Alyx I would agree, but for Index the reaction I usually saw was more of "yeah, okay, nice, but far too expensive. Let's wait a few years for an affordable solution" while Quest is praised all the time.
An interesting persona, you can check web archive for articles he deleted from his weblog.
You can only guess why he decided to delete them one decade after he stopped blogging. I believe, he didn't want to be seen as too much "new age hippie" type.
It's really easy to make a comment and have it come off as dismissive or unsympathetic, I recognize that thousands of people put in tons of hard work on a product and tech stack that they believed in.
I keep reading my friends' goodbye messages to ML after being laid off and being amazed at how different they perceive their work than I do as a consumer. It's like the culture is closer to Jonestown than Cupertino.
I say that because I don't know how much koolaid you have to drink before the ML product that was released to consumers becomes impressive. The experiences available on their platform are not compelling. The headset is inferior and expensive.
Much of what I've seen exclaimed by ML employees as examples of their product and company's quality are things that I consider organizational bugs. Their tech stack is as deep as the Marianas Trench and they're too proud of it.
I don't think ML will be in business in 5 years unless they slim down, sell off IP, and relocate. They do have some really impressive tech and smart people, but I don't think the company as it exists today is viable.
I only want one AR app and no ones made it yet as far as I know.
I just want to be able to walk around the Acropolis in Greece (or any site) and see it in AR as it would have been throughout history. Have little digital scenes play out with people from 2000 years ago, show me buildings as they were before they were destroyed.
Funnily enough, the Carnegie Natural History Museum funded a project exactly like this at Carnegie Mellon University. An AR tour of their Architecture exhibit that placed exhibit objects back into their full construction. I wonder if that project went anywhere...
The tech culture of investing gigantic sums of money in a handful of hyped up projects is sick IMO. Especially when these investors already know perfectly well that only 1 out of 10 startup makes it and that it's almost impossible to predict which ones will succeed. Even Y Combinator, which is top of the top, doesn't have that high success rate in terms of number of companies.
Instead of giving this one company $2.6 billion, the investors could have invested $100k in 26k different startups. They could have literally scrolled through the list of the top 26k open source projects on GitHub and invested 100K in each of their teams to come up with any kind of business related to their expertise.
Their success rate is bound to have been better. This money was just wasted. Investors are just too lazy to interact with so many companies. Too fat and lazy to make an impact.
> Instead of giving this one company $2.6 billion, the investors could have invested $100k in 26k different startups.
This already happens, its called angel or accelerator funding. YC gives $150K to 200+ company every year. Some of these companies then raise more, then some more.
For founder with successful exits or other outstanding achievement, they can effectively start with series C and raise 50 million as the first round.
Thereafter everyone wants to bet on the winning horse.
It doesn't happen enough. Nowhere near enough. The number of companies which apply to YC versus the number which are actually accepted is a very bad ratio. YC and all other incubators combined do not represent a free market by any stretch of the imagination. They're picking winners based on some selection criteria which worked at one point in history... This funnel has been so thoroughly gamed and hacked that at this stage, they might as well invest in random companies. Does anyone realize just how hard it is to get even $20k in funding for a hard working honest founder who is not a psychopathic manipulator. IMO, anybody who can't setup a functional profitable business with $20k funding is unfit to run any company. You've got to give a first chance to more people and fewer second, third and fourth chances to charming psychos.
> Does anyone realize just how hard it is to get even $20k in funding for a hard working honest founder who is not a psychopathic manipulator
It isn't that hard to get $20k in funding if your idea is halfway decent - that's not the value that YC provides. The value that YC provides is in the networking and connections, which I think a lot of people would argue is worth far more than the money.
> anybody who can't setup a functional profitable business with $20k funding is unfit to run any company
Not quite. Good luck setting up a profitable hardware business with $20k of funding, tooling costs alone are going to dwarf your seed capital.
>> It isn't that hard to get $20k in funding if your idea is halfway decent - that's not the value that YC provides. The value that YC provides is in the networking and connections
It's very hard in most countries - Coming from someone who has been applying constantly for 10 years. At one point I even managed to get invited to some events and conferences where a specific seed stage investor was going and I approached him enough times at different events that I was eventually able to secure coffee with the guy; took 2 years from when I started trying to get investment. Then this investor encouraged me to apply to their incubator... Then they just rejected me. My open source project was one of the most popular in Australia at the time. I had worked on it for several years and I had a solid business strategy and I could really have benefited from $20K and any kind of support network (I was never asking for YC level business connections, just some help me get 1 foot in the door with 1 B2B customer would have been great).
BTW my project was more than 'halfway decent'. As proof, today my project powers multiple mainstream tech projects and several major blockchain projects and I'm collecting forging rewards on one of them. Did it with $0 funding and most people I met actively working against me instead of helping me. Got screwed over so many times.
I don't think my case is unusual. What happened to me is just average.
The thing is that in spite of it being so difficult to secure a mere $20K, this whole experience did not make me believe that fiat money is valuable. It did the exact opposite. So now I'm dedicating my career to the fight against fiat money.
Venture Capital isn't a small business loan, it's a moonshot.
> IMO, anybody who can't setup a functional profitable business with $20k funding is unfit to run any company.
Your business is either unproven, then it has a high risk of failure no matter how good you are at running companies, or it's proven, then everybody is already doing it and it's not going to be very profitable.
There is a non-trivial cost to investing money into a venture. Investing into 26k projects means you're going to lose a large percentage of money in overhead, legal fees, communication, etc. Then there's the continuing overhead of monitoring the investment which will cost even more.
It sounds like he will still work there, just not as CEO. This article is a bit light on details. There's no reason given for this.
I'm surprised this didn't leak during the last couple rounds of headlines about laying off staff and more recently raising money. Is Magic Leap really good at keeping secrets or was this a last minute change to funding outline?
That's basically the state of VR and AR as it exists today.