Virtual Reality

[MartyG]

Want an alternative to the Quest? How about a Pico. The Pico 3 was basically a Quest 2 rip-off, the Pico 4 looks like more of its own thing, with a battery at the back of the strap and so a smaller front making it better balanced.



However, if you don't want big social media companies involved in your VR, you might be disappointed as this is funded by TikiTok owner ByteDance.

Cost? £379 for 128GB version, £449 for the 256GB.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BGLTDNWR

Euros shipping October 18th.

[MartyG]

Quest Pro £1500.

LOL.

Tried to get people interested in VR for meetings at my last company, there wasn't much interest in it, even at £300 - too many issues, people not wanting to wear headsets, comfort etc - there may be some aspects of Pro addressing this, but the fundamental issues remain, people not wanting to wear them and at £1500, this or a decent laptop.

I think we know where most companies will spend their money. And it won't be on Quest Pro.

[huxley]

Quest Pro £1500.

LOL.

Yea its so not for gaming with a max two hour battery life. With the Microsoft involvement this looks like a replacement for their holodeck device.

[MartyG]

It's not even for most businesses at that price - I think this year's Connect has been the most disappointing yet.

Obsessed with the Metaverse and that Horizons Worlds app (I tried it, it's gash) - I can't claim to know what everyone wants, but I know I've no interest in it. And you can pay money for digital clothes from fashion designers in the avatar store.

Just no.

[Asura]

Honestly the headset is quite disappointing.

The tech is cool, some of it. The £1500 price is very expensive, but comparable to a top end iPad/Surface/Macbook Air, and it has a similar purpose, so that kinda makes sense. People who have used it have said that the facial tracking is excellent, and the new lens tech and so on gives it a really clear picture.

But the device apparently only has a 1-2 hour battery life, and requires just as long to recharge as run down.

Even for VR gamers, the headset doesn't come with the light blocking facial interface. You have to buy that for £50 extra!

So who is it for? I just don't get it. I'm actually kinda on-board with the idea, I think much of the stuff had merit. I love the facial tracking; the idea of having that in VRChat would massively increase the sense of human contact in communication.

I'd argue that the price is too high for a luxury, and the device is flawed for productivity purposes.

I was surprised they didn't do an "and one more thing" and unveil the Quest 3. Everyone knows about it; the CAD data got "leaked" last week (I put that in quotes because it emerged in and around the unveiling of the Pico Neo 4, a headset that basically resembles the Quest 3 but before that headset is even public knowledge, so it was transparent that Meta wanted to put a fly in the ointment there). That looks quite exciting from the tech data, but that doesn't have facial tracking which is a shame.

[Dogg Thang]

It doesn’t seem anywhere near good enough or useful enough to justify the price tag. I get the premium iPad comparison but I’m struggling to see how useful this device is in that comparison, and that’s coming from someone who totally loves VR and can see it becoming essentially the new office space - I feel games barely scratch the surface of what VR can do.

The difficulty seems to be adoption and this isn’t in any way going to help that. Reading about it, it seems very hard to see what this really offers over the normal Quest in terms of actual usable improvements and the battery life makes it almost useless. And with it being so early and this price so high, what will the adoption rate be like? If it’s not absolutely high, who will develop for this? Only those Meta pay to do so. Most devs will likely aim at the normal Quest model with possible minor enhancements for this. Because the market will be too small otherwise. I don’t even know if the normal Quest numbers justify serious development commitments but I can’t see this Pro making sense for anyone yet.

[Asura]

It doesn’t seem anywhere near good enough or useful enough to justify the price tag. I get the premium iPad comparison but I’m struggling to see how useful this device is in that comparison, and that’s coming from someone who totally loves VR and can see it becoming essentially the new office space - I feel games barely scratch the surface of what VR can do.

The difficulty seems to be adoption and this isn’t in any way going to help that. Reading about it, it seems very hard to see what this really offers over the normal Quest in terms of actual usable improvements and the battery life makes it almost useless. And with it being so early and this price so high, what will the adoption rate be like? If it’s not absolutely high, who will develop for this? Only those Meta pay to do so. Most devs will likely aim at the normal Quest model with possible minor enhancements for this. Because the market will be too small otherwise. I don’t even know if the normal Quest numbers justify serious development commitments but I can’t see this Pro making sense for anyone yet.

I still think part of the problem is how Meta got into this as they missed out on smartphones, so they want to be on the ground floor for VR - but I'm not convinced VR is ever going to be that.

Opening up their metaverse-thing to desktops, outside of development, is a bit of a joke. The whole point of good VR experiences is they offer something you can't do via other interface paradigms. This means that the biggest group using this "VR Social Space" are going to be people not in VR. They've spent all that money and just reinvented Second Life, but instead of furries and oversexed bored people it's going to be filled with <shudders> tech people.

[MartyG]

Fundamental thing here is people don't even like having meetings full stop, let alone having meetings having to wear a headset - that has been the biggest issue I've experienced with adoption - people just not wanting to wear them.

My company has a pretty generous IT budget for new starters, but I cannot see that we'd ever adopt a policy where we'd spend £1,500 on a VR headset over getting someone a decent thin-and-light laptop, and then having them spend money on tatty digital clothes from the virtual store so they look nice on screen - how is that aimed at businesses?

[Asura]

Fundamental thing here is people don't even like having meetings full stop, let alone having meetings having to wear a headset - that has been the biggest issue I've experienced with adoption - people just not wanting to wear them.

My company has a pretty generous IT budget for new starters, but I cannot see that we'd ever adopt a policy where we'd spend £1,500 on a VR headset over getting someone a decent thin-and-light laptop, and then having them spend money on tatty digital clothes from the virtual store so they look nice on screen - how is that aimed at businesses?

The VR working stuff isn't really about meetings, though. If you're the sort of person who has a work-life that's composed of work you do alone, punctuated by the occasional meeting where you interact with other people, then it's probably not for you. But many of us have jobs where we're working with others near-continuously.

It's an attempt to try and bring the positives of having ~5 people working in a shared space to people who are working far apart. As someone who has tried to run creative ideation sessions remotely, you can do them, but they're nowhere near as effective as in-person. Admittedly I'm a skeptic too because we tried VR solutions in 2020 and weren't impressed by them, but the concept felt pretty sound.

But you're right in that given the ardour of wearing the headset and the expense of the devices, you'd need really compelling reasons to do it. It do still feel that the whole thing is a solution searching for a problem, in some ways. VR definitely has uses for things like this; some areas like architectural visualisation, or various forms of training - but then, those use-cases were already identified back in the 80s. Meta really need new areas to emerge and I guess we'll see if the gamble pays off.

[MartyG]

It's the wearing of a headset that is the issue here - it doesn't matter how comfortable they are, VR is not something you want to be wearing for more than an hour, it just becomes overwhelming, especially if you're moving about inside the environments. No amount of change is going to make the vestibular system work differently, or stop a screen an inch from your eyes from heating up your face.

I think AR sets have far more practical business uses than VR, that said, the emphasis at Meta seems less about the devices and more trying to have a virtual marketplace where Meta can advertise to users and cream a percentage off of sales from vendors' virtual stores.

[Dogg Thang]

I guess that’s the deal breaker for the discussion right there. You either buy into VR or you don’t and you don’t and nothing Meta would do here will get you on board if you don’t. As it happens, I totally buy into it… but this price point at this time with this battery life simply isn’t it.

[MartyG]

I'm a VR fan, with a VR legs season ticket - I still wouldn't want to wear one to work in all day.

[Dogg Thang]

I'm a VR fan, with a VR legs season ticket - I still wouldn't want to wear one to work in all day.

Okay but framing it as 'all day' becomes a bit of a straw man because that's hard to argue against and yet I'm not sure I've seen someone proposing that. That doesn't mean that VR can't be incredibly useful in the work space.

[MartyG]

It's what Meta is proposing in the marketing material.

Full-color mixed reality, with resolution 4X higher compared to Quest 2, lets you work, create and collaborate in the virtual world while staying present in the physical world

You don't even have to take it off to be present in the real world - in the Connect event, showing you working at a virtual desk with three virtual monitors, explaining how it's more space effective than having physical screens.

A whole new way to work, create and collaborate.

[Dogg Thang]

I'm still not quite seeing all day there? But then they couldn't possibly aim for that while simultaneously giving such a terrible battery life. These uses and the features they mention can be as useful in 20 minutes.

Anyway, like I say, there is just a divide here even in concept. You don't see it in the work place. I do.

Where we agree is that this proposal from Meta isn't going to do it.