[vosper]

I bought a Quest 2 out of curiosity, and am amazed by it. Zuckerberg apparently says they're still 5-10 years away from where they want to be with the technology, so I'm guessing what's coming down the pipeline is going to be pretty impressive.

I think people are really underestimating how much impact these technologies are going to have. People thought the first iPhone was only good for fart apps. I think this will be a similar story.

I just hope someone can compete with FB.

[bredren]

I also got a Quest 2 and am amazed by it.

I loathe Facebook, and use their products only when absolutely necessary.

But after reading a comment on HN about value the Quest 2 delivers for exercise, I decided to give it a go. I had and used the Oculus DK1 but had done zero VR since.

> I think people are really underestimating how much impact these technologies are going to have.

Unquestionably. People are totally underestimating VR/AR.

> I just hope someone can compete with FB.

I think FB will be competing with Snap, Samsung/Microsoft and others for the Android market.

If you use the Oculus in a room with Siri enabled (via homepod / smarthome stuff like fans / lights) it becomes obvious the experience must stretch beyond the headset.

Facebook has neither the privacy track record nor smarthome footprint needed to support this. Though Oculus will have existed first, and FB may get an improved headset to market out in the meantime, Apple will create the market expectations for VR/AR

[GordonS]

Current generation VR just doesn't excite or interest me.

But I am excited for what's going to come, now that VR is getting some serious investment.

My wishlist:

  - no motion sickness or headaches (not sure if this is going to be possible for 100% of people)

- lighter, less bulky, less ridiculous looking, more comfortable headsets; the dream would be something like a pair of regular glasses, or goggles - higher resolution

And, with time, I'd like to see hardware become less expensive, giving it a chance to become more mainstream.

[Wowfunhappy]

> - no motion sickness or headaches

We can do this right now on the Index. You need:

- A computer that can output 144 fps consistently without drops.

- Well-positioned lighthouses.

- Software that only moves the virtual world in response to the player moving in the real world (except via blink teleportation).

Unseen Diplomacy, The Lab, and Half Life Alyx, when played with the right settings or hardware, should make basically no one motion sick.

Unfortunately, people don't like blink teleportation because it usually sucks. Games like Unseen Diplomacy are able to create large spaces without teleportation, but have pretty large play space requirements. IMO, there's room for more creativity in this space. Budget Cuts, for example, manages to make blink teleportation really work.

[Hamcha]

Plenty of low end titles also have good comfort options without requiring top tier GPUs to achieve stable framerates, my personal picks are Rec Room for a social experience and "Garden of the Sea" for a chill single player experience. Both have snap-turn and teleportation as first-class movement option.

I wanted to go deeper (esp. with VRChat) so I eventually caved in to free movement. It was very motion sickness inducing at first, but doing it bit by bit you get used to it after a while.

Personal recommendation for any VR experience: I have a bar stool in my VR space where I can lie on or just sit. The difference from a chair is that it doesn't offset you vertically when you lie/sit, which tends to mess with games.

[Wowfunhappy]

> Both have snap-turn and teleportation as first-class movement option.

Tiny note, snap turn can cause motion sickness! (And even personally, I have friends who get motion sick from it.) It's obviously better than "smooth turning", but just changing the direction can be disorienting. There's really no replacement for 360 degree tracking.

[mattbrewsbytes]

All of those reasons are why VR will be a niche, as in not mass market like smart phones, for a long while.

[oblio]

VR? Maybe. AR? Likely 5 years away.

[Tiktaalik]

There was never any moment where the iPhone was a fart app novelty. It was immediately and obviously wildly better and more useful than every phone than came before it.

[vosper]

You may have had more vision than others, because I definitely remember the fart app and the tip-to-pour-a-beer-app and people just kind of laughing at them. I'm not saying that stage lasted a long time, but that was what I saw of it in the very early days.

[chrischen]

I have multiple Quests, and got Vive a while back too. VR is always amazing at first but it hasn’t had a lasting use case for most people I own that own it.

Furthermore, Apple is really well positioned for AR, which may be more adoptable than full on VR. iPhones already have had pretty good AR capabilities built in and Apple has really just been developing the technology probably to ultimately integrate it into the rumored headset.

[vosper]

> VR is always amazing at first but it hasn’t had a lasting use case for most people I own that own it.

Fair, but I was meaning more of what's coming down the pipeline. Five to ten years of Meta money committed to the "metaverse" - the might address some of those issues ("no-one else is on it" probably being one of them)

> Furthermore, Apple is really well positioned for AR, which may be more adoptable than full on VR

Maybe? No-one's seen their rumoured device. Meta's way ahead in terms of actual adoption today (even if it's VR and not AR). I hope Apple does something awesome, but it remains to be seen. And it's hard to imagine the Oculus team at Meta couldn't do AR if they were asked to.

[dumbfounder]

I bought one and I can’t stand it. Too heavy and uncomfortable. The UI is annoying and confusing. I tried to find some games for my kids (ages 7-9) but they either couldn’t figure them out or they were boring. What’s up with that start area, why can’t I explore it? It’s collecting dust for me. I see the potential but it seems a ways off.

[zmmmmm]

> I tried to find some games for my kids (ages 7-9)

they won't even recommend it as safe for kids that age yet, so it isn't surprising you couldn't find any games targeted to that age range.

You should be aware there are some potentially scary things going on in any of the social apps [0]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/apr/25/a-barra...

[randoglando]

While many apps (social ones) are not safe for kids yet (funny enough it's usually unsafe because of other kids - teenagers), there are still many apps that work really well for kids. The Guardian article is quite sensationalized (primarily about VRChat and maybe RecRoom, but the Oculus has more).

[dntrkv]

Nobody should be letting their kids play any multi-player games. Not only for their sake (people say some fucked up shit on there), but for the sake of all the other adults playing those games.

[zmmmmm]

Unfortunately, many people are letting their kids (young teens, pre-teens) do that. (Where "letting them" simply means, not actively stopping them, being unaware etc).

Which is half the problem. The other half of the problem is that Facebook is actively pushing developers to social-enable their games by integrating Facebook based social features into them (hence the mandatory Facebook account). So even games that have no reason to be using those features are seeing them added.

[dntrkv]

> Too heavy and uncomfortable

Upgrade the strap, it's a much better experience.

My nieces and nephews are all around that age, I usually let them play Job Simulator. They love it.