Virtual Reality

[wakka]

[Brad]

I added a poll. Anyone voting for the losing side has to change their AV to a shame cone for a week :-)

[MartyG]

You can bung a massive powerbank on the Quest 2 and run it for hours. External batteries aren't really groundbreaking, there's still going to be a dangling wire somewhere - I can't see Apple liking that aesthetic tbh.

And yes, Apple's headset is not going to be cheap.

[wakka]

You can bung a massive powerbank on the Quest 2 and run it for hours. External batteries aren't really groundbreaking, there's still going to be a dangling wire somewhere - I can't see Apple liking that aesthetic tbh.

And yes, Apple's headset is not going to be cheap.

sounds like we got another recruit for Team Internal*


*team internal would like to inform you that they advise against googling the team name on a work computer

[Brad]

I'm expecting a late surge for team external

[wakka]

Yeah it’ll be the postal votes that carry it.

[MartyG]

Presumably, Apple will try and use a variant on their M1/M2 chips, which sip power whilst providing fairly reasonable performance. How long do the batteries last in those laptops? Then just do the maths, will probably show they've zero need for external batteries.

[Brad]

Presumably, Apple will try and use a variant on their M1/M2 chips, which sip power whilst providing fairly reasonable performance. How long do the batteries last in those laptops? Then just do the maths, will probably show they've zero need for external batteries.

You and your logic.

I have one of those M2s for work. Lasts 2 work days on one charge. I'll go fetch my cone.

[wakka]

[dataDave]

Do I vote for what I want, or what I expect Apple to go with?

[Asura]

There is zero chance of Apple going with a device that only has an external battery. I can see them making a modular device where that's an option (you can do this with the Quest 2, or the new Vive headset has various options) but there's absolutely no way they'd go for this.

VR is already a difficult proposition, honestly, because it has to do something which many people just can't get on board with - you have to put a weird device on your head. Now imagine asking people to do that, and you need to have it running to your pocket with cables?

If they end up with the only battery being external (like that being the device's primary function), I will eat a USB cable live on this forum*

->Open Spoiler<-

*I won't do this.

As a compromise, I will stop posting for 1 solid week.

[wakka]

We’re going to have to take your first answer on that one bub. We will allow ketchup however.
[MENTION=1482]dataDave[/MENTION] what you think apple will go with

If there is an optional external battery this contest will go to a grand jury of mods.

[dataDave]

->Open Spoiler<-

*I won't do this.

As a compromise, I will stop posting for 1 solid week.

Why don’t you post something really obscene like a grotesque scat pic instead, or something? That way you’ll get a proper ban so that you can’t post even if you wanted to.

[Asura]

stolen shamelessly from Reddit.

However just wanted to come back to what I said before, as people everywhere online have misunderstood (including myself initially until I looked into it) - Meta are not killing online games for the Quest 1, or even releases.

From a user perspective, they're doing a few things.

They're dropping Quest 1 support for Horizon, their own Metaverse software. As the "party system" in the Quest was provided by Horizon (when you invite people to a party, they appear in your homespace making that technically part of Horizon) that means that party support is going to go. Admittedly though, as I said before, that was kinda like Sony saying they were dropping Playstation Home on PS3; shame for the people who liked it but that was only ever a tiny number of people.

This means most multiplayer games on the Quest 1 will continue to work as-is. However, there's a slight wrinkle.

They're dropping the requirement that developers support the Quest 1. That's a bit more of a clanger, because that means newer games probably won't, and existing games might drop support in updates; mainly because the Quest 2 was a fair bit more powerful and, comparably, the Quest 1 has a much smaller userbase (no-one knows figures apart from Meta - though even if you did know, what matters more is how many people still use them rather than the number who bought them).

So use of the Quest 1 is going to be supported in the way most people use it for quite a while longer. That means it's not so much about the practical side; it's more the principle of them dropping support within ~5 years. That's bad no matter how you slice it. Just if anyone's concerned their Q1's going to become useless, then hopefully this will assuage those concerns.

[Dogg Thang]

The point about not knowing the figures is crucial. I have a suspicion that sales of any Quest model are pretty low by game system standards. So devs might be looking to wring out every possible sale they can and that means supporting the Quest 1.

I still have doubts about its viability as a platform generally at the moment in terms of full game development that isn’t hugely subsidised by Meta themselves. Have any devs released revenue or sales figures?

All this talk about the hardware doesn’t matter a damn if nobody makes stuff for it.