Why VR headsets have never been the success they were intended to be?
category: offtopic [glöplog]
The marketing and investing boom about VR headsets started almost as early as 2012, immediately after the stereoscopic movie craze sparked by Avatar.
But we've seen VR headsets never seem to have achieved the same widespread acceptance as PC 3D accelerator cards did in the 90s, both for gamers and game developers. Even for the most radical computer graphics hackers in the demoscene VR headsets are still a niche topic.
As I've looked at CAVE, ImmersaDesk and stereoscope glasses, I've found that they each have their merits, and it seems that the mainstream tech industry has focused entirely on the headset and ignored these forms of VR.
Why does the mainstream tech world and capital favour VR headsets so much? What is the biggest downside to VR headsets? Or the fact that head-mounted displays are simply the wrong option for immersive display?
But we've seen VR headsets never seem to have achieved the same widespread acceptance as PC 3D accelerator cards did in the 90s, both for gamers and game developers. Even for the most radical computer graphics hackers in the demoscene VR headsets are still a niche topic.
As I've looked at CAVE, ImmersaDesk and stereoscope glasses, I've found that they each have their merits, and it seems that the mainstream tech industry has focused entirely on the headset and ignored these forms of VR.
Why does the mainstream tech world and capital favour VR headsets so much? What is the biggest downside to VR headsets? Or the fact that head-mounted displays are simply the wrong option for immersive display?
Some notes from my 2018 talk, amended with recent observations:
- STILL too expensive compared to the utility
- Not enough interesting content
- Additionally expensive because you need a good PC to use it with (mobile ones have even less content)
- Majority of populace still experiences physical discomfort when using them
- Fashion problem - you look weird / creepy when you have them on
- People don't get excited about technology anymore
- The only major push is done by the world's arguably most hated company (Facebook) who is also doing a horrible job selling it because they somehow made it look incredibly boring.
I think VR fell into that weird moment in time when it was simultaneously too early and too late, and is now forever bound to be a niche product.
- STILL too expensive compared to the utility
- Not enough interesting content
- Additionally expensive because you need a good PC to use it with (mobile ones have even less content)
- Majority of populace still experiences physical discomfort when using them
- Fashion problem - you look weird / creepy when you have them on
- People don't get excited about technology anymore
- The only major push is done by the world's arguably most hated company (Facebook) who is also doing a horrible job selling it because they somehow made it look incredibly boring.
I think VR fell into that weird moment in time when it was simultaneously too early and too late, and is now forever bound to be a niche product.
what Gargaj said... i personally see much more value in AR but for some reason (probably sci-fi movies etc) VR has been a sort of golden egg of what the future of computer graphics holds. At my previous job, we developed a VR training wysiwyg editor with 'player' apps for specific headset models and our customers were still mainly using it as a gimmicky fun extra for their more conventional trainings rather than going fully VR-only with it.
I was about to answer but Gargaj basically summed it up.
We had an Oculus Quest 2 and playing light saber was fun but I basically did not feel like reusing it after a few days, so we sold it.
I also hated the idea of having LCD screens 2 cm away from my eyes. I'm no specialist but something tells me it can't be good for the eyes in the long run. I might be wrong of course. I did not want our kids to take a chance with that.
Overall it was a nice gadget to try, that's about it, I'm glad we got rid of it.
We had an Oculus Quest 2 and playing light saber was fun but I basically did not feel like reusing it after a few days, so we sold it.
I also hated the idea of having LCD screens 2 cm away from my eyes. I'm no specialist but something tells me it can't be good for the eyes in the long run. I might be wrong of course. I did not want our kids to take a chance with that.
Overall it was a nice gadget to try, that's about it, I'm glad we got rid of it.
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I also hated the idea of having LCD screens 2 cm away from my eyes. I'm no specialist but something tells me it can't be good for the eyes in the long run. I might be wrong of course. I did not want our kids to take a chance with that.
Parent in the 80s: "Don't sit too close to the television!"
Me, 30 years later: [literally jams televisions into my eyeballs]
Meta's Metaverse marketing seems to be that the coolest thing on earth is meetings...and now we can finally do them in cyberspace!
What's really the coolest VR experience you've had? Halflife Alyx? Beatsaber? 360 movie? Sofaworld? A training course for repairing industrial robots? Excercising in VR?
What's really the coolest VR experience you've had? Halflife Alyx? Beatsaber? 360 movie? Sofaworld? A training course for repairing industrial robots? Excercising in VR?
The coolest VR experience I had was vrchat particle worlds
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What is the biggest downside to VR headsets?
In a nutshell, them being a luxury item available for only the few instead of the masses, but this would apply to just about any VR system. Had the earlier models been untethered like the Quests etc. today, they might be a bit more popular now, but still not everyone's idea of a good time.
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What's really the coolest VR experience you've had?
Alyx is very polished and IMO has one of the best feeling of "weight" in the interaction, but to be fair the best experience I think I've had is simply playing old school (Brutal) Doom just as it used to be, with full player speed. Any old games that used to be good without VR have a decent chance of being awesome if someone does VR for them. Also content-wise they're not one of those "experiences" you finish in an hour but something you can play for weeks.
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What's really the coolest VR experience you've had?
watching others try it for the first time and feel wobbly on their feet and nauseous :D
Is the Metaverse doomed?
VR is actually doing quite well, at least from a hardware point of view. But it is true that more advanced software is needed to keep the momentum going. New technological developments result in much smaller, lighter devices packed with high resolution displays and accurate motion controls and body / eye / mouth tracking sensors.
The Pico Neo 4 was just released and has the potential to become the first actual competitior to Meta's VR eco system (about time!). And best of it, it does not require a social media account at all, works offline and / or as a PCVR headset.
Microsoft is doing too little to push its own Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) platform, yet SteamVR is fully compatible with WMR headsets and I've been having plenty of fun with the Reverb G2 for over the past year, despite my PC not having been fully equipped for the task gpu-wise until more recently. Alyx, Pinball FX2, Project Cars 2, Skyrim, The Invisible Hours, Lucky's Tale, Tetris Effect, Moss, SW Squadrons, The Blu, OpenBrush, Google Earth .. just to name a few good titles. Haven't tried MS Flight Simulator yet. My CPU wouldn't like it. VR 3D modeling and painting is a thing, and it's fantastic!
We certainly don't need the 5 millionth rehash of a crappy zombie wave shooter, no poorly done vomit-inducing rollercoaster ride or a texture-less low poly run-off-the-mill sandbox game, if we want to push things further. But the recent announcements of future titles in development really make me hopeful, VR is far from dead.
Offscreen Colonies seems to be the only serious Demoscene production for VR so far, though. VR needs more demos!
The Pico Neo 4 was just released and has the potential to become the first actual competitior to Meta's VR eco system (about time!). And best of it, it does not require a social media account at all, works offline and / or as a PCVR headset.
Microsoft is doing too little to push its own Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) platform, yet SteamVR is fully compatible with WMR headsets and I've been having plenty of fun with the Reverb G2 for over the past year, despite my PC not having been fully equipped for the task gpu-wise until more recently. Alyx, Pinball FX2, Project Cars 2, Skyrim, The Invisible Hours, Lucky's Tale, Tetris Effect, Moss, SW Squadrons, The Blu, OpenBrush, Google Earth .. just to name a few good titles. Haven't tried MS Flight Simulator yet. My CPU wouldn't like it. VR 3D modeling and painting is a thing, and it's fantastic!
We certainly don't need the 5 millionth rehash of a crappy zombie wave shooter, no poorly done vomit-inducing rollercoaster ride or a texture-less low poly run-off-the-mill sandbox game, if we want to push things further. But the recent announcements of future titles in development really make me hopeful, VR is far from dead.
Offscreen Colonies seems to be the only serious Demoscene production for VR so far, though. VR needs more demos!
Whenever I've witnessed other people try VR, they often don't bother setting it up right and calibrating it properly. So even though VR can be really amazing, I think many people aren't getting the proper experience.
It's a bit like if you tell someone, "You should try spaghetti, it's really delicious!" So they say "Alright, I'll try some" and start crunching on some raw noodles right out of the box. "Uhm, you're supposed to cook it first..." -- "Nah, I think I've had enough to get the point. Spaghetti just isn't for me."
The other thing is that there's a general trend toward people wanting less immersive experiences. People want phones instead of PCs. Even moving away from phones to watches now. Remember in the 80's when everyone thought that the phones of the future would let you see the face of the person you're talking with. And now we have that... And hardly anyone uses it. We've actually gone in the opposite direction, preferring texting to talking on the phone. We want a lower fidelity, but less intrusive experience.
It's a bit like if you tell someone, "You should try spaghetti, it's really delicious!" So they say "Alright, I'll try some" and start crunching on some raw noodles right out of the box. "Uhm, you're supposed to cook it first..." -- "Nah, I think I've had enough to get the point. Spaghetti just isn't for me."
The other thing is that there's a general trend toward people wanting less immersive experiences. People want phones instead of PCs. Even moving away from phones to watches now. Remember in the 80's when everyone thought that the phones of the future would let you see the face of the person you're talking with. And now we have that... And hardly anyone uses it. We've actually gone in the opposite direction, preferring texting to talking on the phone. We want a lower fidelity, but less intrusive experience.
I guess Command line interpreter and Midnight Commander are still better for system administration tasks and file browsing
Steep price and nothing else.
VR headsets are in fact selling really well, 10+ million a year and consistently growing according to the usual adoption curve that most new techs follow. Those developing the hardware do know how much research it takes to hit the different milestones ahead of them and are plenty satisfied with the current progress and adoption I'd say. A different issue is whether that velocity matches the expectations of the tech enthusiasts (of which there are plenty in the younger age groups, I take what that reporter describes in mostly the natural consequence of her aging) and collective imagination (which is always too optimistic - I'm sure a poll to people from the 1960s we should now by 2025 be traveling in flying cars and teleporting to sports events in the moon as needed).
But I'm with keops and SunSpire that products/software are not keeping up with the expectations of neither tech enthusiasts nor the tech developers. As a non-gamer myself, there's little to do with a headset after you've watched a few (really cool) VR animated films. The audience is still small enough for most but a handful of studios to make money, and so there's little investment, and without investment there's no content to bring in more users.
So unless the mystical and by now mythological Killer App is found over then next 5 years that breaks that chicken an egg problem, VR risks going dormant indeed by 2030. I don't agree with some of Gargaj's points, but I think it's true that this wave of VR might just be happening too late and too early at the same time. And that would be okey, the Palm device concept came up too early and had to go dormant until there finally there was a killer app for it (web 2.0, Facebook / social media) so Apple could reinvent the concept and their customers have something useful (well, "addictive") to do with it.
The current thinking is that the best best for such Killer App is in the space on productivity/office work or its vicinity. But the many-screen virtual office proposition is weak in my opinion (personally, I only use one physical screen for work and unless you are a 4 dimensional chess programmer or pretend to be one, I don't see why you'd need more than one, or maybe two).
The other current proposal, the remote meetings/tele-presence use case is actually a strong one I think, at least it works really well imho and does bring value to me. But the companies that had a chance at it (mostly Meta) were unprepared when the need for remote-work opportunity window opened and then peaked, and even today they are at least 5 years worth of tech behind.
I don't know, we'll see. But one thing is clear, the headsets themselves are in fact selling pretty well. The title of the thread would be more interesting if the question was "Why are the tens of millions of headsets sold every year still not making money back"
But I'm with keops and SunSpire that products/software are not keeping up with the expectations of neither tech enthusiasts nor the tech developers. As a non-gamer myself, there's little to do with a headset after you've watched a few (really cool) VR animated films. The audience is still small enough for most but a handful of studios to make money, and so there's little investment, and without investment there's no content to bring in more users.
So unless the mystical and by now mythological Killer App is found over then next 5 years that breaks that chicken an egg problem, VR risks going dormant indeed by 2030. I don't agree with some of Gargaj's points, but I think it's true that this wave of VR might just be happening too late and too early at the same time. And that would be okey, the Palm device concept came up too early and had to go dormant until there finally there was a killer app for it (web 2.0, Facebook / social media) so Apple could reinvent the concept and their customers have something useful (well, "addictive") to do with it.
The current thinking is that the best best for such Killer App is in the space on productivity/office work or its vicinity. But the many-screen virtual office proposition is weak in my opinion (personally, I only use one physical screen for work and unless you are a 4 dimensional chess programmer or pretend to be one, I don't see why you'd need more than one, or maybe two).
The other current proposal, the remote meetings/tele-presence use case is actually a strong one I think, at least it works really well imho and does bring value to me. But the companies that had a chance at it (mostly Meta) were unprepared when the need for remote-work opportunity window opened and then peaked, and even today they are at least 5 years worth of tech behind.
I don't know, we'll see. But one thing is clear, the headsets themselves are in fact selling pretty well. The title of the thread would be more interesting if the question was "Why are the tens of millions of headsets sold every year still not making money back"
There's a reason why VR games and whatnot are marketed as "experiences".
From efficiency point of view VR doesn't (at the moment? possibly ever?) make any sense, but there's nothing else out there that *feels* the same.
Like having other people's avatars near you in vrchat, or manhacks flying at you in Alyx. Can't really be described, it just feels more... "real".
That feeling doesn't translate into efficiency by any means, and a 2d UI with mouse and keyboard will always beat it.
Okay, *maybe* 3d modelling or something might be more efficient in VR, but if that was true, we'd probably have seen applications of it.. like tilt brush.
From efficiency point of view VR doesn't (at the moment? possibly ever?) make any sense, but there's nothing else out there that *feels* the same.
Like having other people's avatars near you in vrchat, or manhacks flying at you in Alyx. Can't really be described, it just feels more... "real".
That feeling doesn't translate into efficiency by any means, and a 2d UI with mouse and keyboard will always beat it.
Okay, *maybe* 3d modelling or something might be more efficient in VR, but if that was true, we'd probably have seen applications of it.. like tilt brush.
I tried using a VR headset many years ago. Since I am short-sighted I have to wear glasses. It was however not possible to use the VR headset with the glasses. So I had to put them down and effectively this also reduced the quality of vision I had with the VR headset. I don't know if anything has been done to solve this problem, but at least back then VR was not suited for short-sighted people.
I think VR headsets can possibly make sense if your single and live in a very small appartment where large screen and speakers would be frowned up, or while traveling in an airplane, or if you're very old / disabled as a way to access places you couldn't otherwise go to.
VR is cool and fun, but...
- it's an ergonomic nightmare
- you look like a total ass wearing one
- you are a danger to your surroundings and yourself
- it requires a lot of empty space in your environment
- you are shut into your own little bubble when you put a VR set on
- even though social interaction with others is possible, it's far from the norm in VR
- besides beat saber and a few other games, there isn't really any killer app for it. (even IF manufacturers try to shoehorn all manner of stuff in there... like Netflix' cinema app.. watch a movie in VR, yeah how about no.)
my money is on AR .. that's where the interesting use cases are IMO. VR is just a funtime gimmick hat.
- it's an ergonomic nightmare
- you look like a total ass wearing one
- you are a danger to your surroundings and yourself
- it requires a lot of empty space in your environment
- you are shut into your own little bubble when you put a VR set on
- even though social interaction with others is possible, it's far from the norm in VR
- besides beat saber and a few other games, there isn't really any killer app for it. (even IF manufacturers try to shoehorn all manner of stuff in there... like Netflix' cinema app.. watch a movie in VR, yeah how about no.)
my money is on AR .. that's where the interesting use cases are IMO. VR is just a funtime gimmick hat.
I always found them impractical for all the reasons mentioned above in all the other posts. I also agree with Gargaj, "don't believe the hype, because it clouds your vision". For me VR is mostly a marketing gimmick aimed at those who are bored of classic computing and want something new and cool but at the end of the day it really isn't. Also, if it is so successful then why it has been marked as an experimental technology for 10+ years?
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VR headsets are in fact selling really well, 10+ million a year and consistently growing according to the usual adoption curve that most new techs follow.
If you consider it across the vendors (i.e. Facebook, HTC/Valve, Sony, etc.), that number suddenly doesn't sound that big anymore...
one thing though... some VR artists are making incredible stuff - like e.g. Goro Fujita
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ci6F7J_rNZA/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CiI0HXYsT02/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CeoqT9dPxt9/
.. and thanks Oni for the trial run on your Quest at TRSAC :)
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ci6F7J_rNZA/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CiI0HXYsT02/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CeoqT9dPxt9/
.. and thanks Oni for the trial run on your Quest at TRSAC :)
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What's really the coolest VR experience you've had?
VRChat, mainly. but also Superhot.
