I’m sorry, apple did not in any attempt to make VR mainstream.
this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2024
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Yeah over 3k is not “accessible“ or “mainstream”
There's one simple way to do it: stop milking it with ludicrous prices that make it inaccessible for the average consumer and stop trying to corner each implementation with your own proprietary closed market that becomes worthless when it goes down because all of your digital purchases were "digital subscription options". The problem with VR is that it now has a place in the market but one that is basically limited to a luxury market, and as such it will only include self enclosed ecosystems of novelty implementations that appeal largely to whales. It is basically an example of the hellhole the PC landscape would have been if governments back then had been as lax with bad consumer practices as they are now.
I also get the feeling the VR market started out a lot like the mobile gaming market in that mba business majors who have zero ability or to desire to make genuinely artistic and compelling experiences choked out any other kind of person being in leadership positions in the industry.
Similar to mobile gaming the rush of business majors who "think" they know how to transform vr gaming when they don't know the first thing about game development and have never bothered to pursue a creative venture in their life that wasn't just a thinly veiled scheme to scam other people out of their money has severly stunted the growth of the vr industry indefinitely as it did the mobile gaming market.
The very structure of the largest companies in VR (besides perhaps valve) precludes the possibility of any actual artists and developers with a vision getting into positions of power in these companies and even if they do, they are never actually listened to or you wouldn't get embarassingly empty visions of VR like "the metaverse".
VR, like mobile gaming cannot be understood as an out growth of the traditional gaming world, rather VR in particular must be understood as a market constructed by non-experts who didn't give a shit about learning gaming development or how to create compelling fantasy worlds because the objective was always to be a digital landlord speculating and monetizing on an ownership of large swathes of digital communities that artists showed up and made into actual spaces people desired to be (artists are an unpaid detail though, that kind of fluff is easy, an AI could do it and besides it is fun for them!).
Unfortunately for VR fans I don't think the industry will take any significant strides until those kinds of people are kicked out of the boadrooms of these companies and I don't see that happening anytime soon given how long mobile gaming has been a squandered wasteland of casinos that nothing with any vitality or soul can grow in.
(besides perhaps valve)
Definitely besides valve, they didn't lose their mojo as gamedevs. In fact valve is what happens when gamedevs have too much money: Too few fucking games.
I think the only thing that made people think about VR was Half Life Alyx.
If plenty of games would be made with that level of quality VR could actually became a thing.
But boring companies keeps trying to push VR for boring things.
Half Life Alyx, Lone Echo, and Asgard's Wrath are all incredible experiences that actually feel like "real games" that made meaningful and justifiable use of VR.
Beat Saber and Robo Recall get honorable mentions from me as well because while neither is groundbreaking, both execute their particular niche more or less perfectly.
Browsing various VR software storefronts now you find basically nothing like any of the above. Everything seems to be trying to mimic the mobile game "quick distraction" approach and shovel out as much garbage as possible rather than creating anything engaging. For anyone who believes that VR has genuine potential for exciting new experiences, as I do, it's incredibly disheartening.
It's crazy how lazy these companies are trying to be about VR. Imagine nintendo or Sega launching a console without any studios or titles. Everyone is so fucking busy with trying to hit the next "tech boom" that they feel it's everyone else's problem to come up with actual use cases that people will stick with (wearing a clunky headset for extra monitors isn't a long-term solution).
I'm tired of watching these multi-billion dollar VR companies showing ping-pong demo's, real actual fucking ping-pong is 100x fucking more fun and it's never brought up. Would love to watch an actual demo with two people playing vr and two people playing real table tennis side by side for an actual comparison. (for anyone saying how much easier it is to play in VR, you just spent $3500 for ONE headset)
I thought the apple headset was MR for productivity and stuff? VR gaming headsets like the Oculus seem to be doing fairly well.
At $3,500 I can't imagine why it didn't take off!
Also software lock so you can't have more than one virtual monitor. They even limit software zoom. This is a prison you wear on your face.
With no controllers made by Apple, it seems VR gaming wasn't an intended use either as devs aren't going to port games if most users don't have them. Which only leaves people who will pay that price for a glorified external monitor.
Definitely the colors.
Apple's headset was sold as mixed reality, I don't even know if it can actually do VR and play VR games, and mixed reality is not that interesting actually. If you think VR games aren't interesting even though they are full experiences nowadays like Asgard's Wrath and Into the radius, MR games are legit minigames.
Mixed reality will be awesome. But we need a handful of killer apps, and the headsets need to be affordable enough that your friends have it, too.
Apple half-assed their rollout. They should have been dumping money into development of must-have apps before launch.
One killer app that I still haven't found is the ability to scan a living space and then make virtual modifications. I've got an idea to expand my kitchen and want to walk around it, and you'd think a VR rig that can scan rooms could do this. But I can't find any app to do this on any VR platform.
They were a $3500 dev-kit to enable some base level of preparation when the costs come down. They were never going to be mainstream.
A dev kit with no physical controllers? You would think developers want precise controlls? Or a usb port? Or proper dev tools? Or a full API?
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Apple's (and by extension every VR platform) big mistake is the lack of a Killer App for VR.
If they didn't have a compelling use case, them researching and building any VR device is a waste of time, money and effort. Walking out on-stage and saying, "Now you can see dinosaurs in VR" just isn't a compelling use case, even if they weren't expensive.
To me, a decent intermediate step would have been, "Have and unlimited number of huge screens for less than the cost of one big, high-quality monitor." would have been compelling if it were made small and light enough. Finding a way to continue using the current keyboard and mouse would have made it much more affordable and approachable.
The only killer app for VR is porn. And they blocked it.
Porn isn't the only killer app, it's just what drives all new consumer tech. I'd like it for CAD myself.
Porn for CAD sounds weird, but if that's how your hog cranks, giver'.
People love to shit on VR because Meta pulled all that metaverse bullshit. But VR just keeps growing. Slowly, but it’s growing.
There’s no evidence it’s stopping yet.
In fact, Samsung and Google are jumping back in. And we have some of the lightest headsets ever made on the market right now.
VR is in a slow upswing.
They didn't say VR was dead, just not mainstream. Which is okay. Not everything has to be.
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Yep. The problem is that they keep trying to push it as some sort of workspace for home or office.
It’s a shitty workspace. Nobody wants that box strapped to their face and work in a cartoonish porthole view world. The controllers are limited in functionality and using a physical desktop while somewhat blind sucks.
However, for visualization and gaming, it’s great! But not for $3,500. $200-$400? Yeah, that’s doable.
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What do you mean "even"? I would say especially apple couldn't make VR mainstream.
But VR is already mainstream to a certain demographic; furries. They try to get VR headsets even when they're broke, because they want to escape reality as much as possible, and pretend like they're the actual character they like to imagine themselves as. And it's better than any fursuits can.
You want to make a successful VR headset, then you'll have to make and market it for those that want to live ~~(and do virtual sex)~~ in VR. Not as some weird, incredibly expensive office tool.
But VR is already mainstream to a certain demographic
That's not what mainstream is. That's what a niche is.
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it's also a bad vr headset. it's an augmented reality headset that does vr secondarily. and surprisingly uncomfortable.
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I mean did anyone think of the vision pro as more than a very expensive tech demo? It was always too big, too heavy to be viewed as something people were expected to wear all day long.
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It’s Google Glass all over again.
Google glass could have been something cool actually. A small, non-intrusive HUD. I guess it released too early.
People freaked out about the hidden camera, those glasses looked actually wearable
People were freaking out about a camera whereas in 2024 you can't escape a single camera when outside
I would almost wager that the police and executive branch are the only ones who don’t want cameras on glasses. Let’s make cameras on glasses ubiquitous.
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It is a stupid and expensive solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Like every other company, Apple have their fair share of flops.
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