Could this be a cautionary tale for another recently turned VR-maker tech giant?
As much as I hate it because it’s Meta, they’re the only ones still currently pushing mainstream VR tech forwards, and I like VR. I’d love to buy a headset from any other manufacturer, but there’s no affordable alternative. I’m in a weird position here. I don’t want them to fail out of the VR market because things would stagnate hard, but I also don’t want them to succeed in their vision of it.
they’re the only ones still currently pushing mainstream VR tech forwards
The cost of the Apple headset is insane. I’m really curious to see how well it sells, but Apple product sales are always hard to predict.
PlayStation just launched PSVR2, I’m considering buying one
I gotta say, I forgot that existed but I’m glad you pointed that out! At least there’s another out there if things go south with Meta. I don’t have a PlayStation myself, but it’s great there would still be someone out there innovating.
I’ll just come out and say it, VR is a neat trick but doesn’t solve any problems people have with computers.
Most people have zero interest in wearing screens on their head and cutting themselves off from the outside world.
Further once you’ve strapped it on and played a couple rounds of beat saber there’s not much to do with it.
Consumer VR as currently envisioned is not going going to ever get out of the niche it’s in.
Really don’t agree with you on that. I think consumer VR has a bright future but some big technical hurdles to clear first. Primarily comfort and image quality. It may take 10 years but it’ll get there.
Every single person I’ve shown VR to has thought it was fucking amazing and was surprised how good it already is and this was just a Quest 2.
As an OOOOLD geek who has listened to the promise of VR for decades, it’s AR I’m excited about. Give me lightweight glasses that provide an overlay to interact with either everything or even only specific things and I am so there.
I don’t mean something like Google Glass, I mean more like an affordable, compact Hololens. (and I hate MS, but damn Hololens is cool)
Edit: I probably used a couple too many 'O’s there. I’m OOLD, not OOOOLD yet. ;-)
For gaming, it’s one of the more immersive experiences ever. But I haven’t put on my headset in about a year because playing flatscreen is just so much more convenient
There’s also a staggering lack of good content. That, and a bunch of QoL problems have yet to be fixed.
Yeah, I got a Samsung Odyssey HMD cheap (for a VR headset, ~$300) while they were in production and I used my headset to play Half-Life: Alyx, Phasmophobia, and Boneworks. Alyx was very well polished (for a VR game) and nothing came close to that. The rest is varying levels of jank and it will take about 20 mins to set up the headset every time when I could boot up any other game in less than a minute.
And on top of that anything that wasn’t those 3 games just didn’t feel like it was worth the work to play for me. Boneworks got close to Alyx in terms of polish but if someone was prone to motion sickness at all it would be unplayable. I haven’t ever been motion sick in my life but my stomach turned the first time the game “dropped” me down a hole. And Phasmo while it was far more immersive and scary in the headset it just wasn’t worth the hassle of setting up the headset only to get a headache in 20 mins of playing because the glare was not great on my headset making dark rooms hard to see in. Better headsets might fix a lot of those issues but the price point, ease of use, and QoL features are not in favor of it ever being more than a party gimmick.
The average person isn’t going to want to pay what I did for a few good games that might make them motion sick and a lot of janky garbage. And now most headsets are more expensive than that unless you want the Meta ones that are locked down.
