But it is the only thing that will move Low Latency Computing forward. Everything in modern computing is slow, we might have increased throughput by 1000 or 10000x over the course of 30+ years. But latency has gone backwards, from Apps to OS UI response. Decent AR/VR experience mimicking the real world would require sub 10ms results. And this should finally force developers to take latency into account.
Apple, Meta and other VR companies just keep throwing more and more VR hardware with better lenses and form, but the issue is content. If someone is spending 1200 bucks on this headset and playing/interacting with N64 level content, the novelty wears off pretty fast.
Beat Saber is still quite basic graphics, I wouldn’t call it high fidelity.
Wonderful toy, even though I only use it about 90 minutes a month it is worthwhile for me to own.
I bought the Quest 3 as an upgrade because I had noticed my Quest 2 started having intermittent input lag issues. I never pinpointed what was causing it, but my Golf clubs would fly out of my hand and I'd have to wait a few seconds for them to eventually find their way back to me. My controllers would drift out of view when navigating menus. I uninstalled everything, reinstalled it again. When that didn't work, I upgraded.
The issues persisted in the new version as well. So for about the last 20-ish months, I've averaged under an hour a month, most months I don't even pick it up. I might do some homemade PC VR "experiments" (still have access to mouse and keyboard for the game, and not the controllers) on some random claude code experiments. I have a "cyberpunk" mobius strip space station walking sim I've been working on, that will eventually hook into a treadmill.
The native experiences are too barebones and I don’t even use it untethered
VR has been around for decades, and its always been a really niche nerdy thing, for the same type of people who will build a mock cockpit of a plane in their house for flight sims. I dont think that's gonna change no matter how much cash mega-corps pump into it, it will always be a niche nerdy hobby thing imo.
It wouldn't have been touted at the "metaverse" and a revolution of having business meeting in a virtual room... looking like a boring office and maybe it would "just" be millions of gamers, but to stay we are in a better state because of Meta is questionable.
They did invest a ton and their products (if one can manage to make abstraction why they even exist in the first place) are actually well done but the line their brought on the entire industry created unrealistic expectation.
Is it good, is it bad, I'm not actually sure but I'm rather confident to say it's not obvious.
I think for now games are the best use of VR, and Valve actually care about games, and Zuckerberg moving on to the next shiny thing leaves room for Valve to join Sony and Microsoft for the next PlayStation/XBox alternative.
If anything, when the Oculus Quest became the Meta Quest, it started feeling like regression rather than progress, with the games going from "wow!" to "did they port a phone game?".
Do I have faith in Meta to 'win' in VR or AR commercially? Well... not really, but the technological advancements are real.
Nonsense. Embedded systems, often event driven, improved as did the rest of the computing landscape (perhaps at a tad slower pace). HST has been a major driver on low latency computing in the data center. And then there are of course robotics and military applications ...
Out of these 5, only Firefox loads faster than it did on a 512MB Windows XP machine 20 years ago, the other 4 are at least a few times slower.
Embedded systems are often not flexible. They are often designed to do just one thing, like driving an engine, and may run the exact same software for their entire life, which may be decades. They are often limited in term of general computing requirements too.
I don't know HST, but it seems to be similar to embedded: single, highly constrained application, maybe more compute, and I would guess that affordability isn't even on the menu.
Meta VR is consumer software, running on consumer hardware, it runs third party apps, with all the flexibility that is asked of PCs. You can't just put your own realtime OS and claim the entire system for your own specific application.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ThreadsApp/comments/1wnkje9/my_inst...
Hopefully it's not so bad.
Oh BTW they showed a new Beat Saber game, and among the logos I've seen Ace Attorney VR among a few others. Let's see if those come for Quest 3 and maybe even PCVR.
I really wish VR had followed an iPhone like trajectory over the past decade where we got a new Quest/etc every year and it got consistently better across the board every iteration.
But it of course is large and heavy like the quest pro and expensive most likely. Things that when you market to consumers don't pan out.
So they are optimizing on the other dimension (weight) which of course trades of many other dimensions.
Edit: Since the FOV is only 70 degrees, that leaves 110 degrees outside the image, divided between the edges of the glasses and the rest of the room. So for sure in daylight outside light would destroy the theater effect.
That didn’t happen because you would need market demand for that. Only Gen Alpha likes VR as a demographic.
Ouch, that's a tough sell. Maybe useful for AR type stuff, but I wouldn't want to go from a Quest/Index/Frame/etc to that for VR.
And another random youtube influencer who tried it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J8oIs1GA0o
$1300 price
That video is on the page itself as well, right top
But yeah, the angles are to obscure thickness. It's not going to be as thin as it appear from a distance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1618&v=qp2IbgJ5Z-8
I know you probably know that, but this is a new low, even for Meta.
Same for kids wasting their life on screen, most parents don’t mind as long as it keep them busy and it’s one less thing to care about.
What problem does it solve? I see a bunch of potential uses but I don’t see any problems looking to be solved.
Will I like gaming better if I control the games with my hands instead of a controller?
Will I like working in my glasses better than my laptop screen? Or even a dual laptop screen like a ZenBook Duo? Or a cheap second portable display? Do these glasses fit better in a backpack than a laptop and a second portable screen? They can’t collapse flat.
Are these glasses more portable and convenient than a smartphone? What are the benefits to watching an NBA game on this compared to a phone or my TV screen at home?
I can’t believe Meta is blowing their money on this stuff still.
The geometric waveguide technology used in the Display glasses is quite complicated and costly, the birdbath optic that Xreal uses is stupid, so to speak, and various holographic solutions used by Even Realities and likes is not so spectacular in light loss(IIUC the fancy term is "quantum efficiency"), as well as multi color feasibility(needs 3 layers with separate image sources).
Prior to now we didn't know if Meta will be doing a Display 2 or Quest 4, or if they plan to do something else. This is that something else.
I agree that these seem like a stopgap short of the thing everyone wants - Vision Pro specs (ahaha) in a pair of regular glasses.
Personally, as a glasses-wearer, I'm not quite convinced it's the right target though - even my 20 gram glasses are uncomfortable to wear all day and I take them off whenever they're not needed. I'd rather have a ski-goggle device (similarly light, but with the weight more evenly distributed, and still with optical see-through) with fewer performance compromises. Of course that wouldn't let the manufacturer dominate "the next form of personal computing" or whatever.
(I have a fairly strong prescription, so the literal glass in my glasses does weigh a fair bit more than for most people. Yay modern optional media! It's so much nicer than it used to be)
If we really step back and think about how most people enjoy sports I think the whole idea of VR being a top tier option is a little silly.
Sports are very much community and family activities. How much fun are they to alone compared to watching with fans?
I see VR as something of a backup method like if you’re on a plane or something.
I’ve always wanted it to be better, but it’s just terrible. It’s like working on a projector screen where the pixels never line up.
I've a pair of Nreal Air glasses (before the rebrand) and a pair of Xreal Ones. I have found the latter remarkably comfortable and sharp enough for coding, reading text, playing games, etc. for extended periods of time.
The new widescreen modes are a real treat too. Still waiting for Real 3D to get upgraded to 60FPS though.
So: no problems solved.
I have a VR headset, but other than the one time I tried Skybox just to see what it looks like, it never occurred to me to take the headset out to watch a full length movie. It's just not worth it.
Makes me wonder how often people use it for "watching content on a gigantic screen at home", or it's just mostly theoretical in VR headset marketing material.
VR desktop: that's supposedly the "killer application" of Apple Vision Pro back in 2005 (and only usable on high resolution headsets like those). Guess what, these days nobody talks about it. I haven't seen anyone bringing it up on HN for a long time.
I received my Vision Pro on release day (February 24, 2004). After trying every feature and use case, today (2.5 years later) the ONLY times I use it are 1) To watch films like "Disclosure Day," "Crime 101," "Dune," etc. in 4k on a virtual 30 foot screen — at any time of day — since I can black out the screen surrounding with the control knob, and 2) Watch the short (10 minutes or so long) Immersive Videos that Apple releases more or less monthly. They're fantastic.
N.B. All use is while lying down flat with my head comfortably supported on a pillow, using Apple's Version 2 headstrap. Only the supine position enables even enough distribution of the device's weight across my forehead and under my eyes such that I can (for the most part) not be aware of the VP's weight.
Live NBA and MLB: FAIL
3D movies: meh
Working with virtual Mac screen(s): FAIL because 1) text is blurry, and 2) headset is just too heavy after 15 minutes or so.
In summary: 1) I would NEVER recommend the device to anyone, and 2) I'm glad I bought it because when in use it's like something that came from the future, the viewing experience is so detailed and enveloping and the sound so perfect.
Hololens was a transparent display with stuff drawn on top of it.
This has reality drawn on top of opaque display
It's essentially the xr-glasses /vr glasses category. Plenty of options around on stores
The closest thing so far is a Bigscreen Beyond 2 w/ a laptop if it wasn't for the fact that you need a base station for the damn thing.
I know my request is a fantasy right now, but I put this our there in case someone that could make it less of a fantasy reads this.
Drawback - they don't do 3DoF tracking, so the screen just follows where you're looking, you can't change screen size, and no multimonitor setup. They have IMU sensors, though. It's possible to create your own virutal monitor software (or use someone's else like RealWarp), but IMU drift is hard to beat and experience is far from perfect. So I stick with 'just one high-quality screen' for now, and to be honest it was some quality-of-life improvement for me.
PS. Couple of weeks ago there was new release from RayNeo, which supposedly have 3DoF and same quality. Haven't tried those.
The key problem is it's Meta. People don't even trust other people near them to use Meta hardware, and the way they dealt with Oculus users was just grimy. From basically any other company this would be a very welcome device. Zuckerberg needs to fix the company first, because there's no such thing as a killer product good enough to overcome this hurdle.
HN constantly under-estimate how much the mass forgives a company as long as they release a cool product (barring a few holdouts that really don't matter to 3B DAU company)
"Everyone loves Meta Muse now, it is organic growth. My social media feed told me so!"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49662990
> I spent $220 on Google app ads. 60% of the installs were robots
Nope.
Anything it does, you are responsible.
anyone know whats going on with muse. twitter has gone crazy with fake things ppl've supposedly achieved like getting airline to refund 4k, negotiating 45k furniture to 5k, booking flights for 20 dollars. These are the same ppl that were hyping openclaw, not sure what happened to that. and how muse topping charts. Its all befuddling to me.
First he needs to fix himself
Video, showing how random Meta employees don't like slightly creepy stranger obviously using Meta glasses to record them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHKhYL3is5o
Meta allegedly took down the video when it was uploaded to their own platforms.
I guess the approach here is to shrink down the VR glasses and make them look more like normal glasses from a distance. But I still don't think I'd wear one of these walking around the mall or airport. Reduction in FOV is also a big negative. I'm not really sure where one would use this device over a Quest or the Ray Ban Display. It occupies this awkward middle point where it's not a transparent glass display, but it's also makes a lot of compromises compared to the rest of the VR line.