[jsheard]

Oof, another $4 billion in the hole for Reality Labs. I really want VR to succeed but seeing the biggest player by far still struggling to find any path to profitability (or even breaking even) after iterating on it for a decade makes it hard to be optimistic.

[ApolloFortyNine]

The fact that they spend more than everyone else does in the space combined just blows my mind. Their Horizon worlds is literally just a worst VR chat which was developed for <$100 million. Their os frontent for the quest is great, but how many devs can you even realistically have having an impact.

And that $4 billion is just per quarter. I honestly would love to see a full breakdown. Nintendo's entire revenue is 12 billion, which is less than Meta VR spends alone, and that includes everything Nintendo does, including developing games. How has Meta spent so much and has so little to show for it?

[goles]

Surprised to see so many people negative on meta in this thread. I've used VR at conventions and buddies houses but I've been holding off on picking up a headset for a couple of revisions until they are in their sweet spot of development. Where most of the kinks are worked out, there's a good library of Apps and games, and doesn't require enthusist level commitment which I don't have the time or patience for anymore.

Recently picked up a Quest 3 and it's honestly astonishing. I (half) joking had the thought when they get to the Quest 5 or 6 and can get the cost down humanity is gonna be in serious trouble. I brought it to a family gathering and one person went out and bought one the next day. Another is going to pick one up as soon as they can find a good deal used.

Horizon worlds is admittedly a little goofy but this is one of the first revision of it. And it works well as drop in for some Apps like escape rooms which probably saves some dev work. I only breezed through the report but it looks like their numbers are up massively YOY.

Only complaints is passthrough is still a little distorted but an enormous improvement. Battery life could still be better but a battery pack helps balance the heatset anyway. Also you can't directly connect to steamVR without going through Quest link which I can't see any reason for other than being anti-competitive and user hostile.

The matrix is coming and I got a feeling metas gonna own it.

[swatcoder]

Anecdotally, the pattern many of us have seen keep happening over the last 5+ years is that enthusiasm and novelty is very very high when first discovering these modern lightweight headsets but then usage just falls off a cliff after a while.

You're in the first phase. Maybe the second phase won't arrive for you.

They're extremely exciting, but seem to get a little same-y or something. Only insiders really know, but there might be a bit of an invisible ceiling that somebody still needs to figure out how to break through in order to keep engagement up. It might be a killer app, it might be a further advances in mixed reality, it might be continued reduction in weight or increases in display quality, but it also might just be that there's an inherent limitation that prevents them from taking over the world. Not every cool gadget does.

[uejfiweun]

I think VR will gradually and massively extend the capabilities of humanity but not revolutionize them. Regular screens, phones, etc will still exist, they will always have a place in our society. But VR will more and more become an accepted and common tool, for use cases that are different from regular devices. Until suddenly you realize that indeed they are everywhere and you use them all the time. It's not going to be an immediate "revolution" the way ChatGPT was (I think you could probably say the same about any hardware innovation).

I think the closest comparison is that VR right now is like PDAs in the 90s. Yeah, everyone knew they were the future, but the hardware absolutely blew, And it took another 10-20 years to arrive at the perfect form factor of a smartphone. Lots of hardware innovations need to happen for VR - hell, not a single consumer headset has shipped with a vergence-accommodation conflict solution. But give it another 10-20 years and I am certain we'll be seeing that smartphone type moment.

[goles]

It's nice to know you're in the good old days before you've left them. :-)

I can definitely see the novelty wearing off given enough time, same as anything. Plus to your point you can clearly see apps follow one of a few formulas.

[koshergweilo]

> Also you can't directly connect to steamVR without going through Quest link

Is this true? I have a quest 2 and just downloaded the steam link app and it seems to just work. Are you talking about wired?

[goles]

Yes. The app will work over wireless. Not wired.

[ethbr1]

> The matrix is coming and I got a feeling metas gonna own it.

This is the least cyberpunk sentence I've ever read.

[asadotzler]

10 years and tens of billions of dollars to get to that experience. Not astonishing in my book.

[chaostheory]

Im not surprised about the negative comments. I’d be more surprised if the negative commenters have even tried VR. VR and AR are just such a huge paradigm shift that according to the data, only tweens and children “just get it” as a demographic group without a lot of coaxing and explaining. I would say that it’s their generation’s NES. Being an adult VR enthusiast feels like being part of something like the homebrew computer club, well until Quest came along.

[nostrademons]

I've tried VR, have a bunch of friends with headsets (and a team headset for work, since I work adjacent to AR/VR) and find it mildly interesting when I do try it but not interesting enough to buy a headset with my own money. My kids have both been offered turns but declined.

I honestly don't see the trend that you've been describing among my kids or their older peers. Honestly, NES is this generation's NES; I was shocked that "Marios & Bowsers" is now a playground game (it's basically sharks & minnows), and my kid will spend hours playing MarioKart if given a chance. My kid is an avid gamer but his favorites are all the Tower-defense games you get on Google Play, as well as classics like Tetris or Candy Crush and racing games like MarioKart.

I think there's also a trend - particularly among affluent families - of going back to basics and going outside for face-to-face entertainment more. IMHO the 2010s were the high water mark for gaming, and that if anything the trend today has been to detach from devices and have more actual experiences.

[chaostheory]

> I think there's also a trend - particularly among affluent families - of going back to basics

You’re right, but tbf you’re filtering for upper class families

[JKCalhoun]

Yeah, and the friends whose houses I've been over to so I could try their VR setups — stopped using their headsets soon after getting them.

[eigenvekt]

This is just not my experience at all.

I have 12-14 year old gamer nieces and nephews. They simply don't care about VR.

Even at a family gathering with the host having a Quest, no one cares to even try it out.

It was just absolutely nothing to do them.

Personally, I have been waiting for VR since the early 90s and the Lawnmower Man.

With having no interest in games, my experience is exactly the same as my nieces and nephews. Just a whole lot of nothing. I almost wonder if people who post things like this are not some kind of viral marketing because this is just not reality.

[chaostheory]

According to the data, it’s children and tweens that dominate the MAUs. Also just read Reddit about complaints of most online VR games being dominated by children as a counter to your anecdote of one family.

[nostrademons]

"Most VR users are children" is a very different statement from "Most children are VR users." The former can be very true without the latter being true at all; it just implies that "most people are not VR users", which is also true.

[nkingsy]

Tweens and children are the only ones with supple inner ear linings.

As a 40-yo VR enthusiast, I can't play anything that requires elective X/Y movement (first person shooter) without getting sick. The "teleport" mechanic is really clunky.

My kids can play anything and never get sick.

My parents can't even do a driving sim without getting dizzy in a couple of minutes.

[Hikikomori]

Not 40 yet but neither me and friends have experienced that.

[wkat4242]

I'm in my late 40s and I can run around with smooth movements without any issues.

Of course, N=1...

[seesaw]

Same for me too. I tried different VR headsets, but could not use them for more than 15 minutes without getting dizzy.

[jsheard]

I'm guessing a big chunk of those losses are from selling the hardware at a loss, which is a fine strategy if you're Sony or Microsoft and can easily make that money back from game licensing and subscriptions, but the Quest has (a) a reputation for people buying one and then barely using it, and (b) a subset of active users who only use it to play SteamVR games without ever giving Meta a cent after the initial purchase.

I don't know exactly how much they're losing on each Quest they sell, but the fact that it's significantly cheaper than any "dumb" headset that requires a PC or PS5 to do all of the heavy lifting, despite having what's effectively an entire smartphone built-in says it all really.

[Zetaphor]

I think it's reasonable to assume that a pretty large portion of this is going into R&D. They've shown multiple prototypes that are addressing different technologies/techniques for improving the clarity and quality of VR experiences.

I could be mistaken, but I believe they were the ones to pioneer varifocal displays, a technology which has still yet to ship in an HMD. The earliest prototypes relied on physically moving the lens, where the latest prototypes are using some form of electrically charged lens that changes its focal distance based on voltage.

Once you start going down the rabbit hole of projects they've either announced or have been leaked it's easy to see how you could spend that kind of money, and that's only the stuff we know about.

[uejfiweun]

I admit that I didn't like Zuck before. But I have to say, I am becoming a big fan of him, primarily due to his strategy in ML/AI for Meta, and his willingness to burn cash to solve the problems of VR. Zuck is many things good and bad, but certainly one of those things is that he's a nerd who loves technology and wants to move it forward, and I can't help but respect that massively especially given his results.

[intrasight]

I respect the same about Musk. It's the only thing that I respect about either of them. But, boy, it's hard for me not to respect individual who are inventing the future.

[uejfiweun]

Yes, Musk is in the same category. You can hate his opinions, sure, but to not respect him in some form or fashion just betrays an ignorant worldview IMO.

[curiousllama]

Reality Labs includes a bunch of AI stuff. I assume a bunch of this is training compute for Llama 3/4

[uejfiweun]

It's the hardware, man. The software practically doesn't matter until they figure out the hardware. If they went all in on adding all the necessary features to Worlds right now, they'd end up having to change things later on to accommodate whatever form the hardware ends up taking.

There are some crucial avenues of research Meta is working on. Varifocal, form factor, face / body tracking, resolution - once these things are nailed, and I'm pretty sure it'll be in the next 10 years, then suddenly we're gonna WANT to be in Horizon Worlds. But it can't happen without massive R&D on the hardware side.

[threeseed]

> The fact that they spend more than everyone else does in the space

We don't know how much Apple spent on Vision Pro.

The project has been going on for at least a decade.

[pie420]

it's very obviously "creative" accounting. Facebook is throwing lots of other expenses into the VR bucket to make other departments look better.

[StressedDev]

That is a very serious charge. Do you have any proof or are you just making things up?

[threeseed]

In June 2022, several artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives that were previously a part of Meta AI were transitioned to Reality Labs. This also includes Meta's fundamental AI Research laboratory FAIR which is now part of the Reality Labs - Research (RLR) division.

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

[joshspankit]

This is wild.

Their accounting could massively hurt the VR industry (to the point, the comment above about how it’s too bad VR can’t be profitable).

IMO it’s not AI or VR that will take over, but a combination of the two.

[HDThoreaun]

All the ai research is under reality labs through FAIR. Theyre spending billions on GPU buy alone. You can claim gen ai is a necessity for the metaverse but I do think its a bit misleading to say VR lost 4 billion this quarter when a huge amount of that went to an open source LLM

[wkat4242]

Yeah horizon worlds is really bad. In their push to make it child friendly the whole thing has become a bland playground for kids with nothing to offer adults.

After all, when I go to the movies I don't go for a Disney cartoon but an action movie.

The user-generated content in VRChat is so much more compelling. It also looks better. And it's actually harder to do it.

[ionwake]

Why don’t they just hire devs who have clearly spent years building their own 3d projects alone, bootstrapping themselves? Tbf they tried to interview me during my peak where I had already made my own networking engine and a custom 3d env but I was too scared to interview after hearing they prefer fresh code monkeys out of college .

Just offering some advice I think they reap what they sow with their unfortunately overfitting in their main? choice of applicant.maybe I’m wrong

To be fair to Facebook - they actually did offer me an interview

TLDR; im a self made millionaire now I’m just saying the people you want are the ones that don’t apply, too busy coding instead of applying to FAANGS

[harles]

I’m not sure it’s a good business strategy, but I am glad to see ad money fueling more interesting tech than more profitable ads.

[mostlysimilar]

Don’t worry. The ads come once they establish themselves as the dominant player.

[harles]

Maybe. It is nice to see cash transactions and subscription models in the space. There’s a chance (maybe it’s slim) that new computing paradigms will bring new business models without ads. Maybe I’m just an optimist.

[jrussino]

> new computing paradigms will bring new business models without ads

My fear about LLMs emerging as a commonplace computing tool is that they seem like such an obvious target for a whole new type of advertising & propaganda. Whatever you think about the potential for something like "superhuman AGI", it seems clear to me that LLMs have the potential to become better and better at generating text that can convince and persuade.

My nightmare dystopia is that we end up in a society where we're constantly interacting with LLM agents all the time, and they're so undeniably useful that we don't want to abandon them, but buried deep in each of their prompts is something along the lines of "prioritize being really good at your main task, cultivate trust and dependence in the user, but in the background always be looking for ways to subtly influence them to be more likely to support our sponsors; here's the current list of sponsors with weights based on how much they're paying us ..."

[robertlagrant]

> There’s a chance (maybe it’s slim) that new computing paradigms will bring new business models without ads

They are:

- pay a monthly subscription

- rent out your brain for computational power in a SAAS startup

- ads

[ianstormtaylor]

Sounds much closer to an apologist than an optimist if you ask me.

Although more charitably, a future apologist—who maybe has good intentions, but hasn’t stepped back to gain context and realized that their projection is at odds with the systemic incentives in play.

[mostlysimilar]

I wouldn't bet on it. Meta is leading the pack right now and they're an advertising company. I wouldn't expect an advertising company to choose a model without advertising.

[wongarsu]

But they are the dominant player, and have been for many years.

Their only real competitor in terms of market share right now are Sony's Playstation VR headsets, and Meta is easily outcompeting them. The HTC Vive is far behind in sales, and Apple hopes to sell as many headsets in an entire year as the Playstation VR2 sold in the first 6 weeks (which is still impressive considering the order of magnitude price difference). Everyone else seems to be in enterprise-sales mode, which drives profit but not market share. Well, except for ByteDance's Pico, but they don't seem to be doing great outside of China.

[melenaboija]

I guess something interesting will come up from this but I see it more like investing in technology to create new type of ads.

[renegade-otter]

The days of interesting tech have been gone for a couple of decades now. Every technology is now being quickly enshitified. It's ALL about selling you crap.

The nerd Internet was the best, but it's never coming back.

The bandwidth gave us streaming - okay, I'll give you that, but we had that before. It's more of an infrastructure thing than "interesting" tech.

[scottm01]

There's literally an ad on the front page right now for a YC startup hiring engineers to protect patient privacy. Follow the link? The company exists to better sell ads based on patient data (but in a "compliant" manner).

[whiplash451]

Link?

[scottm01]

Gone now -- I don't remember the name (unless this was the fastest pivot ever recorded, it was not Glass Health, which currently has a now hiring ad up[1])

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40149581

[scottm01]

Hah, happened to see this mentioned in another comment today. It was FreshPaint, whose website includes this gem:

"You need to install ad trackers on your website to get the most out of ad platforms like Facebook and Google Ads. Ad trackers can create issues for healthcare marketers by sending visitor identifiers and health information to platforms that aren't HIPAA-compliant."

I'm sure they are good folks, but what an absurd premise. Something about the best minds of our generation selling ads....

Source: https://www.freshpaint.io/hipaa-compliant-advertising

[agumonkey]

I think "interesting" becomes a psychological term. Things were interesting because they made our brains react in strange ways. All relative to what we knew or dreamed about. I find the ultrafast paced technology ear incompatible with human life. You don't get to wish, dream and go deep into something on your own, with a proper crowd size. Now it's 7b of people all locked in this dopamine ride of neverending updates, all that on top of drama, social rules..

[binary132]

It can come back (in a new form obviously), we just have to build it and secure it, and not relinquish it.

[autokad]

I been hearing this term 'enshitified' a lot lately. I am curious to its source and why it seems so much more prevalent recently. Do you have any insight into that?

[renegade-otter]

It's when monetizing your users is more important than maintaining and growing your product.

With AI, it's going to get even worse. I mention that in this new post I just wrote: https://renegadeotter.com/2024/04/22/artificial-intelligence...

[jsheard]

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

[brigadier132]

The nerd / weirdo internet still exists, it's just not in your safe space.

[zeroonetwothree]

I hate the recent "enshittification" trend. It seems to come from some place of entitlement in which people think they deserve to get everything for free. Surprise: you only get what you pay for.

[anjel]

Sounds like you might have been too young to enjoy the 90s Internet

[lovecg]

My new high end washer and drier come with an iphone app that notifies you when it’s done. It comes with non-optional spam notifications for their other products and subscriptions. It seems that the market of “pay more to get a product without ads” is increasingly disappearing.

[tinyhouse]

Well, there's still no killer app. The productivity use case is a gimmick. Apple vision pro is also not selling well. The big promise is entertainment but it's not there yet.

[jstummbillig]

I wonder if there simply is no killer app using the current approach. Maybe we will have to hook into the brain.

[SV_BubbleTime]

Half Life Alyx was an amazing VR game. It was the only amazing VR game.

Everything else has been OK.

[philjohn]

I don't know - the Star Wars game on Quest was amazing from an immersion point of view.

And beat saber is a surprisingly fun way to do some cardio.

[SV_BubbleTime]

I do like beat saber. And I liked Star Wars and Superhot.

They’re good. They aren’t killer.

[jsheard]

It would be an anti-climax for the history books if it turns out we invented a device right out of sci-fi, but it's actually kind of meh.

[jncfhnb]

We really didn’t though. We’re nowhere close to the dream of VR.

[xyst]

I don’t see VR becoming mainstream. At least today anyways. It’s very niche. Hardware is clunky. The software is locked to Apple or Meta APIs. It’s difficult to explore when the manufacturers put up so many walls within their walled up ecosystems.

[RicoElectrico]

Today's VR is good, but not $100B market good. The SV managerial class has read too much into all the NYT bestsellers about "disruptive innovation" and now every goddamn product category must be "disruptive". Nothing can "just exist" anymore...

[philjohn]

That's why the actual end goal for everyone working in this space is Mixed Reality (AR/MR/XR) in a glasses form factor that replaces your phone. It's obvious that's what Apple is targetting, and Meta have also demo'd similar tech they're working on at the Quest events they've held the last couple of years.

[999900000999]

Within a decade, full VR will be available in a standard pair of glasses.

Eventually we’ll probably move to a single OS that runs everything, your phone , computer , vr, will all be a single device( or course us old folks will probably still prefer monitor so).

[Quekid5]

Just like fusion is juuuuust 20 years away... for the last 30 years.

Not saying they're the same level of difficulty/tech, necessarily, but there's a reason we have the term Hype Cycle. We had one for VR about 25-30 years ago. Recently, we've had Second Hype Cycle... maybe next it'll be for realsies or it'll be Third Hype Cycle for VR?

Apologies for the jadedness, but... you see enough of the meta at some point :)

EDIT: What's the actual killer app for VR for the general population ? We're already over-saturated with a plethora of entertainment.

[999900000999]

Imagine being able to put on glasses, and instantly have your computer. Your hands are tracked so you can type without a keyboard.

This replaces the computer for most people. With Windows on ARM you could probably build something like this today, but it's still too billy.

If I had a billion dollars I'd be working on a single device that replaces everything. Your phone, your TV( or at least sync to it so content is seamless). Then I'd sell it below cost with a subscription of some sort.

With an open source model at a reasonable markup.

That's the endgame for Meta. You'll never leave their new ecosystem.

[Quekid5]

> Imagine being able to put on glasses, and instantly have your computer. Your hands are tracked so you can type without a keyboard.

How, exactly, would that work? You'd stare intently at the virtual keyboard? Or just think about "thing" and it'd magically appear? Voice recognition is actually pretty decent as a non-magical thing that sort-of-works-well-enough.

> If I had a billion dollars I'd be working on a single device that replaces everything. Your phone, your TV( or at least sync to it so content is seamless). Then I'd sell it below cost with a subscription of some sort. With an open source model at a reasonable markup.

I love the gusto! I hope that -- once you have a billion dollars -- you'll stick to your principles. I think getting to a billion dollars is -- in itself -- a selection effect/bias, so...

> That's the endgame for Meta. You'll never leave their new ecosystem.

If they're good enough... even their employees won't want to.

It's money IRL that Meta wants. That's the end game.

EDIT: Just to add: Absent truly Matrix-level VR, people will still be able to tell and unless you're a FULLY committed to solipsism or almost-as-absurd levels of apathy... well, it's going to cause tensions :)

[999900000999]

We already have laser keyboards, the visible laser is only for convenience.

If you don't like that you can always use a Bluetooth keyboard instead.

This already exists.

https://shop.simulavr.com/

Assuming it ships that's already half way there. Another way to accomplish what I'm thinking of would be to basically cloud sync your user sessions between your phone, computer and headset.

[dialogbox]

I'm very skeptical about that. We don't even have the technology for such display can be implemented on transparent glass. Also we don't have that good battery tech which can drive such gear and smaller enough to be hidden in a glasses.

Even if we have all of those tech today, it will take long time to make it a mass production. IMH it will take at least decades to get that level.

[999900000999]

You could wirelessly transmit from your phone, but this is a decade from now. No one knows how far tech will advance.

Rokid connected to a device in your pocket is already pretty close to the same experience.

[dialogbox]

But we still don't have such a display tech or do we? I've never heard something like that. Probably someone can invent such tech within a decade. But seeing it in a consumer product takes time. So it's safe to assume that it won't happened within a decade if we don't even have such tech today. Especially in this context of investment.

[999900000999]

https://global.rokid.com/products/rokid-max

We have the display now. It's not too far of a leap to see a full built in computer. As is, I can just plug it into my phone and that's pretty close.

[JKCalhoun]

Maybe when they hit a $Trillion and VR still fails we can finally put a nail in this coffin.

[blackeyeblitzar]

It is possible that now is the right time to keep investing in it. They already have huge sunk costs, but a lot has changed since they began. LLMs became a thing. Display tech has continued to evolve quickly. There is more information on the market after seeing how products from Sony, Apple, and others have done. Meta also recently announced their new OS and their more-open platform strategy. Mobile processors are also evolving quickly. All of these things can open up possibilities - and even if it isn’t a sure thing, maybe it is worth placing a bet?

[rurp]

Placing a bet is one thing, but Facebook is spending enough money to fund a moderately sized country. I don't mind that they are doing it though, even though I think it's a terrible business decision. Facebook spends plenty of money on things that are worse for the world and maybe we'll eventually get some interesting tech out of it.

[nextworddev]

Met some business dev people at Reality Labs and they themselves don’t exactly what they are selling. Which is very worrying.

[wkat4242]

They just do it wrong.

If you see how poor Horizons is compared to something like VRChat that operates on a shoestring budget compare to meta's. Or something like viverse.

Their hardware is OK, but not groundbreaking. Their metaverse platform is really poor compared to the competition, although what they do have over the others is the ability to create in-world instead of in Unity. But really that doesn't stop creators. The environments in VRChat are much more compelling. I think part of this is Meta's way too strict moderation and content policy. Because really for adults a rubber-tile child playground is really just no fun. We need a bit of gritty.

So yeah really they're doing it wrong. I don't know how they do it exactly but clearly all that money goes to the wrong places.

I don't think this means VR is a bad idea. It can work, just not the way Meta thinks it can.

[rvz]

> "But seeing the biggest player by far still struggling to find any path to profitability"

I would have agreed if Reality Labs was its own startup but they are supported by Meta. With that said, $12BN profit in one quarter for Meta is somehow "struggling"?

Wait until you see the wave of unprofitable AI startups and companies raising capital forever without a path to profitability in sight.

Meta can afford to spend billions into Reality Labs, until that unit itself becomes profitable. They are totally fine and it is still business as usual and they will be sitting comfortably for another decade.

The rest of the so-called AI startups taking in VC capital on the other hand...

[blackoil]

I think OPs concern is not for Meta, but ability of startups to raise funds. If Meta can't make profit or product even after spending 10s of billions, the chance of a startup is near 0.

[willmadden]

"The hardware isn't ready yet."