[FatalLogic]

>"they pretty much killed off our project.” That project was CastAR — augmented reality glasses which Jeri Ellsworth is now working on as a separate project, having been handed the legal rights to do so by Valve.

But how many billion-dollar companies would do that? Just give the rights to the ex-employees? I think most other companies would have not. So, in that sense, Valve is unusual, even if it's not the oranizational utopia that was promised.

After she left Valve, she and partners did get at least $15 million funding from outside investors to develop the AR technology, but after several years of trying, it didn't work out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CastAR

[TheAmazingRace]

I'll be honest. Jeri did a ton of whining when she didn't get her way when Valve decided to part ways with her. It was ultimately a business decision for them to abandon AR, and she took it too personally. She is very good at hardware and a wicked smart engineer, but she should be thankful she was able to keep the rights to everything when she left Valve.

[justin66]

That's a pretty incomplete telling of the story. Tilt Five is in business and selling the product after the founders bought the tech back from CastAR (after the VC people ran it into the ground).

[FatalLogic]

I can't edit my comment now, but here's a good review of the Tilt Five

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbjjCn1zJq8

[moomin]

Unfortunately, no-one’s investment in AR or VR has worked out. Even the “winner” (Oculus/Meta) has found the market to be disappointingly small.

[const_cast]

Well that's because AR and VR are strictly worse for most use cases as compared to traditional human computer interfaces.

The mouse, keyboard, and monitor is pretty much just right. Highly productive, you can go super fast, with extreme information density.

VR and AR are obviously much slower to navigate because physical worlds are slow to navigate and that's what they're mimicing. We might assume a 3D world has more information density than a 2D screen... But 90% of the time it doesn't. I don't have eyes on the back of my head. And, usually, I'm going to be staring at a 2D thing.

[ghaff]

As I've written before, I can imagine an essentially science-fictional version of AR being potentially interesting. Wear normal looking classes or contacts, look at something, and immediately get information through some subtle communications mechanism to be determined.

VR has basically been for niche high-end gamers. I can imagine a jet flighter simulation might be good for VR but I'm not even sure that's such a thing these days. One can imagine other uses like virtual exploration but it hasn't been that interesting and a big monitor works pretty well as an alternative.

[fknorangesite]

> I can imagine a jet flighter simulation might be good for VR but I'm not even sure that's such a thing these days.

Oh people absolutely use it for this and it is an excellent use case - mainly because you stay seated.

But yeah. Pretty niche.

[doublerabbit]

I only have 2mb ADSL, each world on VR Chat is something about 300mb+ in size not including VR Avatars. I'll join a world with folk, and they'll jump worlds before anythings loaded.

I wear glasses so I have to use special lenses to enable me to see in-game. These costed an addition 150 euros.

The XREAL Air 2 look appealing but I am unable to buy inserts for. This make's them useless to me.

> "While we plan to offer lenses for the Air 2, its updated frame design makes self-assembly of the lenses too difficult"

If where we lived in a fantasy world where everyone had a 10Gbit connections, perfect eyeballs. Yeah, it'd be great tech, practical too. But those without are left out like left-handed folk.

My Valve Index is sitting untouched behind me. I bought this in 2021, Why can't companies offer a version for those with a prescription? One size fit's all doesn't work here.

[nolist_policy]

Maybe try VRchat standalone on the Quest. World's are limited at 100mb there.

[ralphc]

There's a "Mega Replay" store near where I live, it has second-hand electronics, games and DVDs. The biggest section in electronics is the VR goggles, a lot of people have given up on them.

[cubefox]

I tried VR once, with a bunch of short 360° documentaries and video games like Beat Saber and Half Life Alyx. It was incredible, far beyond any immersion one could ever create on a conventional screen, even with the best ray tracing in the world.

I don't really understand why VR helmets they aren't more successful. My first guess is that any console needs exclusive high-profile games to be successful, and producing many exclusive high-profile Meta Quest games is probably too expensive for current market adoption. A chicken-egg problem.

Or maybe the hardware price isn't low enough currently. The original Game Boy was successful with its low price despite its terrible screen. The Game Boy Color chipset was very underpowered compared to the competition but again more affordable.

[likpok]

VR is immersive, but it’s hard to fit in to life and there’s a limited array of content available. You can easily use a computer, watch TV or play video games while still being somewhat present with the people around you in reality. VR makes that impossible: you cannot see them, and they cannot see what you see (so even the experience of watching someone play is gone). Furthermore, this makes the experience hard to share — sharing it requires doing that as a whole activity, an activity which only one person can participate in.

Compare with setting up a home theater and having people over to watch a movie, or split screen gaming.

After all that you run into the limited content availability and, as you noted, the high price.

I do wonder why Meta hasn’t done something like license Skyrim or GTA for the quest. It shouldn’t be too expensive compared with the other investments, and would bring over some solidly popular (and big!) content.

[cubefox]

Regarding the last point, unfortunately most games can't really be ported to VR, they need to be specifically developed for it.

[matthewfcarlson]

As some with a gaming PC, a few VR headsets, and a steam deck, I find myself reaching for the steam deck most often. It’s a good enough experience and easy to just turn on and play. The friction to getting the VR headset out is surprisingly high so it really only happens when I’m playing with a friend, which only three friends have headsets. So it just ends up not happening.

[cubefox]

I don't quite understand this. The friction on ordinary desktop PC gaming is also fairly high. I can't imagine playing on Quest 2 or 3 is significantly more complicated. Also, if you are playing a large RPG (like Asgards Wrath 2), a few minutes of setup won't make much of a difference in playing time. I agree it's a different issue for more casual games.

I think the more relevant difference is that there are vastly more (and therefore: better) PC games than VR games.

[gjsman-1000]

I think there’s a very simple explaination actually.

Most people psychologically don’t like wearing or carrying technology unless there’s a really good reason. Most people also don’t like psychologically feeling isolated.

VR doesn’t have a good reason, and makes you feel isolated. No further rationale is necessary.

[ikr678]

The only people I know who purchased VR & regularly used it were weathly, childless and had enough spare space in their house to dedicate to it. Yes, you can blow $$$ on a pc but the footprint of a pc is much smaller (a desk+ chair against a wall) vs how much clear floor space they had set aside for VR.

I personally believe that VR of the arm swinging/interactive variety will never be widely adopted due to the cost of real estate in the tech savvy, trend-setting consumer population centers.

[vintermann]

The terrible screen of the Gameboy didn't make you physically sick.

[brainzap]

it lives on as Tilt Five