This is the first feature which makes me kind of excited for VR. I live away from my country and my parents for over 20 years and I’d love to be able to sit in my parents’ living room, or have them sit in mine and share a moment together. FaceTime is already great, but I can imagine this will feel more intimate.
Agreed. Both my parents are getting older but live in different cities quite far apart from each other and me. Being able to virtually spend time together would be good if it’s realistic enough. During Covid I got into the habit of playing VR games with my father since I wasn’t able to physically visit and he was isolated. Not quite the same as being there physically of course but it helped a lot. Something both of us looked forward to.
we are decades away. its why carmack quit to pursue other avenues. the chasm between the state of the art (gaming) and where VR currently is (essentially, mobile) is too big not seem shitty in comparison. The then-recent proliferation of Arm and SoC made the industry think it was possible, they even convinced Carmack, but the bandwidth just isnt there. The innovation required on the software side is massive - so theyll just wait for hardware to get better.
Would you care to explain what you mean by "the bandwidth just isn't there"? VR is more than just mobile devices; all currently available VR headsets can also do PC VR, whether via a wired DisplayPort link or a wired or wireless network connection.
As I see it, the only absolute upper limit for VR is the resolution and frame rate of the VR headset displays, as well as the quality of the optical stack. Rendering of the graphics can be done by anything from a single high-end GPU in a PC up to a beefy server in the cloud—although in that case, of course, network latency and video compression will impact the experience.
The tech is 100% there for a fancy video call. The major issue is, beyond that, the tech is quite expensive to run and build and despite enabling novel experiences they aren't compelling enough to reach critical mass and justify the cost.
The work to make or even use a proper VR app or game is so so much more than the flat equivalent and there are only some added utility for spatial input. Tech can certainly improve some of that...
But a VR video call is solved... You can do it mostly out of the box with an AVP but who is going to buy a $3k device for yourself and anyone you want to call and then have a couple calls and never use it because its not worth the hassle to strap it on.
+1 To add to the experience of connecting to people, I can also imagine our family members taking a photograph together while in VR of the family living room – a memento we can take away. That would work if our VR avatars are realistic representations of ourselves, which I think Meta can do (?)
This sounds like an absolute nightmare. Technology disconnected us over decades, then gave us "solutions" to stay in touch 24/7, people are lonelier than ever but we keep pushing for more of this shit. You can already call and video call your family, basically for free, what does VR bring to the table ?
"Hey John, grandpa will expire soon can you quickly jump in your headset and upload yourself to his VR cabin in the wood, the one we rent from MetaSpital for $99 a day, to take a selfie with him before he dies alone in a cold hospital room"
Curious if Meta will ever recoup its investment into VR/AR? A quick Google search indicates Meta has invested north of $100 billion into this tech. The public just doesn't seem that interested in VR/AR. A very small percentage of my family and friends even own a VR headset. Most people are busy and don't have time to strap on a headset when they get home. If gaming / "the metaverse" is the cornerstone of VR, why are almost all gamers playing on a PC or console? And on the AR front, has anyone actually seen anyone out-and-about wearing those Meta AR glasses? Anyone remember Google glass? What happened to Magic Leap?
It's unsual, if you would have asked me 15 years ago- I would have told you _absolutely_ VR/AR would be huge. It just hasn't been the case. People don't want to wear headsets and there's nothing that the AR glasses can do that my phone can't. The whole thing has become a money blackhole.
I got caught up in the hype a bit. I went to meet-ups, tried the tech and was blown away by VR.
Here’s the thing, though. To experience VR properly, you need to be able to walk arbitrarily through space. And houses are small. It sounds stupid and people have proposed solutions like rolling floors, but it’s actually not stupid. Sometimes a technology has a fundamental flaw (hello, there, hallucinating LLMs) which really does mean most of the value is unrealisable.
VR needs neural interfaces. Until then it’s going to be a minor sport.
The short term solution to this is AR. You can walk arbitrary distance subject to physical constraints you can navigate. This will drive the industry forward until neural interfaces are ready. Apple are right with Vision Pro, it’s absolutely amazing for a first product, but like the Newton they are just miles ahead of the curve, too far ahead.
* fortunately for AI companies, hallucinations simply require conceptual developments to fix - they’re not a hard constraint. They just need to stop overfocusing on scale.
For me it's been pixel density. The second I can replace my monitor with it and be able to read small text without my eyes hurting I'll buy the nicest one they make.
Unfortunately I've been waiting for 10 years now and it still hasn't happened :(
There are more issues than just the lack of physical movement while you experience visual movement being uncomfortable and disorientating.
Most people who play video games do so as a leisure activity. It works because it allows you to be put into a world that requires little physical exertion - just eye/hand coordination. You don't need to to use your legs to jump in a video game. You don't even need to have legs.
In the vision of VR you're selling, it requires getting up and doing a lot of physical movement. The bulk of most gamers just want to play their game after work or school and relax. Most of my friends feel the same way about VR as they did when I was young and wanted them to play with the NES power pad when I was younger.
There are better, more entertaining options available on the 2D screen that don't require much physical movement. In fact, I'd say that anything other than eye/hand movement distracts from game play. "Jumping" in the video game isn't fun because you actually have to jump, it's fun because you don't. And that's a feature that appeals to people who will never be appealed to VR.
if by "conceptual developments" you don't mean "a total paradigm shift to some non-probabilistic architecture that hasn't been discovered yet", then yes, they are a hard constraint of current LLM architectures
It's just that AR/VR is not interactive. Sure they try to simulate interactivity through buttons or hands tracking but its lame and fake.
Even when have indistinguishable from reality visuals the illusion falls apart the moment you try to touch it. The fidelity through buttons is rudimentary and through hand tracking is non existent. The suspension of disbelief isn't there, humans fingers are incredibly sensitive and dexterous and we are trained whole life all the time to know how things feel. AI/AR isn't going to have any success without solving that.
The VOID VR was the greatest fusion of VR + reality. CAD-mapped laser tag warehouses while wearing a VR headset and backpack computer. Near-perfect immersion. COVID sadly killed it. Was a beautiful thing - so happy I got to try it out. Even ended up buying a lot of the defunct equipment off eBay.
That tracks with how great it feels when you match the positions of the virtual and real wheels when simracing.
Peeking under the lenses you see your own arms seamlessly continue into the virtual ones and feels like you are grabbing the virtual wheel.
I still strongly believe that all day to day computing happening via AR is nigh inevitable. We have become so accustomed to computing happening via small rectangles, fixed in place, happening with computers that have no clue about the real world we occupy, or of what’s happening now, that the idea of computing sharing our world with us seems six leaps removed and itself unmoored in reality. I think someday within our lifetimes we’ll look back at the way we compute today as a primeval relic and wonder how we ever thought of it as computing at all.
I bought a PS4 VR maybe 2-3 years ago, when it arrived I was excited to try it on, and realized I needed to also buy the camera. I did not think it was worth another 5 minutes on amazon to buy the camera, so the thing just sits there collecting dust. No interest at all. Then there is the price. I pass by a store, and Oculus and friends are $300+. I have bought other things that cost more, like iPhones. Still not willing to buy a VR headset for that, especially when I do not know what I will be getting. I am sure I will be disappointed by the limited ecosystem.
I did buy a Meta Quest 3 and was impressed by its overall quality. I even tried a couple of games, and watched maybe half a movie, and some 3D videos of remote places.
But I never use it. I don't really see the point. It's heavy on the head for no real benefit.
I'm kind of happy I have it though. I open it every six months to see if there's anything new. I'm going to try this Hyperscape just in case...
It takes an evolution for humans to adopt VR. We are not hardwired to wear an headset or glasses at all times. VR does have some nice use cases, mostly in industrial/enterprise setup, but not in day-to-day life.
You nailed it. Im a tech nerd by day, rather occasional casual gamer, and besides that - I dont want to interact with more technology than needs be. The thought of having additional nonsense overlaid on my view is actually nauseating.
It could make sense selectively during construction, mining, etc, but even then its a sometimes thing and it needs to be completely unobtrusive. Meta dont seem to be aiming towards or catering to this.
Yeah thats the thing. I believe there is a mismatch between the firm and the tech being pursued. As a result, Meta will make some strange decisions that otherwise couldve been done differently to yield a viable product.
I think a lot of people are too wrapped up in nostalgia for science fiction to realize VR and AR aren't as objectively superior to the paradigm of screen and input as they assume, and that these technologies will only ever be niche. And that's fine. I have an Oculus Go collecting dust and an Oculus Quest I only use one app for and I doubt I'd ever be willing to get a third headset. The gimmick of being able to turn my head in a virtual space just isn't worth it.
VR probably hit its peak with VR Chat, and AR probably hit it with Pokemon Go. Just as we're never getting the Jetson's future with Rosie the Robot, but we do get roombas, we're never getting the cyberpunk future where everything happens in VR, but we do get furries hanging out in digital Taco Bells.
I don't see too much appeal to AR, but VR has a very fun/enjoyable immersive aspect to it.
One of the things I very much hoped for was to be able to "hang out" with friends who have grown geographically distant in a space that felt more our own.
But I don't think that makes it truly "huge" in a mass market way unless it's at a very affordable price point.
There are some pretty cool AR demos out there too, but for me they're not worth wearing the headsets I've seen.
The only killer app for me, when it comes to VR headsets, would be flight sim, and I have been too busy for the last year to even sim on my 4k monitor, so I haven't taken the headset plunge yet. Still, that's the only thing I can think of that would make sense for me. Maybe there are others.
It is a good use for VR, but I also imagine most serious flight sim users already use TrackIR which seriously hampers their adoption to VR. Im not sure if I was offered one or the other for free if I would even choose a VR headset despite being a much higher monetary value because TrackIR already works so good, doesn't restrict vision from my actual controls, and doesn't isolate me from other things that might be going on around me.
VR is in the trough of disillusionment phase right now, but I can almost guarantee you we'll see a slow but steady climb from here. The big question is if Meta will continue to invest into the space or if other smaller players will fill its place.
I'm sort of embarrassed to ask this, but what is the point of this (and I'm genuinely asking)?
I get that it can scan a physical space and then I can see a digital reproduction of that space on VR goggles...but then what? Do I just stand there looking around the space?
As someone who worked in VR a decade ago, I can tell you that the few use cases that were earning us actual money (as opposed to hype and continuous POCs) were niche apps and tools for specific industries.
A common one is VR visits for real estate companies and travel agencies, for example. Also virtual previews for investors and C-suite execs in meetings where there was a ton of money involved - think someone trying to sell the creation of a whole neighbourhood and this is a fancy version of a powerpoint slide for their pitch.
This tech could probably have saved us a good amount of work, though It's still a head scratcher why Zuck thinks this is the one thing in which to bet the company's future.
Earlier today I said a "leader" sometimes would rather an entire team quit than admit a mistake. Others would rather light a billion dollars on fire than admit a mistake.
It seems to recreate the absolute low point for Wade in Ready Player One, when he's deeply unhappy and only has the sort of nostalgia you'll get from a photo-realistic but ultimately empty representation like this.
I'm afraid to ask for this but I wish I could use something like this for work. Why are we all commuting? I'd like to put on a company issued VR headset and be transported to an office. Just literally recreate the office experience.
We know you love the office space so much, we built the technology to perfectly recreate it in VR so you can still come in, hang out and work there, remotely from home!
Meta tried to make VR into a mass-market product but currently VR technologies are only successful in very specific niches and use cases.
One of those use cases is training in industrial settings like factories, mines, or construction sites. It is a lot cheaper and safer to have workers take their first steps in a VR environment rather than on the actual location.
At the moment, a lot of this training is implemented as custom 3D applications using e.g. Unity. I imagine that something like Hyperscape would make it much easier and faster to create and share VR environments for this purpose.
Likely, you'll want this sort of thing for easy VR video production. Once you have a backdrop scanned, you could more easily film the action with a directional camera.
At that point you can have a very convincing VR performance with cheap hardware. That handles much much more viewer IPDs and head positions etc, than one of those expensive omni-directional camera rigs.
The huge application for this I think is video games. Instead of having to create every small detail by hand, you can just create the space in real-life and then have that rendered.
Ironically this is currently very ill suited to gaming. (However, I personally think there's plenty of use cases beyond gaming. Including "it's just intrinsically cool to be somewhere that no longer exists")
Somewhat ironic but for a certain type of person its actually way easier to throw together a simple set than to build convincing 3D art. Once could imagine a point and click adventure built this way but I wouldn't expect that is really a major use-case.
That said, the more general aspect of "accessible, user generatable content" is a better way to look at it.
Meta has been working on this for a while. I believe one of their primary use cases was for AI training. e.g., to train robots on real world locations before letting them loose.
Imagine if you could go back and visit all the apartments you've ever lived in. I would pay big for that. That's worth more than a lots of cameras and pictures taken
Unless it adds a rose-colored tint I think you'd quicky realize that time & nostalgia filter out a lot of things and there's a reason you no longer live in that apartment.
Online meetup for Disney fans: each week in a different scan of the park
Online consultation with interior design or architect: takes place in you existing house and saves travel for someone billing $x hundred an hour.
Online highschool reunion planning meeting with people spread over the world: takes place at the highschool or potential venues
Deployed military personel meeting remotely on his anniversary with his wife: takes place where they had their first date
I thought we would have already had this with photogrammetry back in 2016 when the Vive released with a camera, but that usually involved too much cleanup and optimizing geometry and couldn't be done automatically, along with the issues with reflections. I was also really surprised Google Earth VR didn't add in multiplayer soon after launch for similar use cases.
In 2000, I was 10 when I downloaded a web page with an applet to walk into a cell. But a VRML player was a whopping 10mb and it would have jammed up the phone line for hours and costed a fortune.
People have been talking about VR changing everything Any Day Now since the early 70s. By the 80s this was a widespread enough thing that it kinda worked its way into Star Trek TNG. Apart from AI (1950s), there is probably no longer-running "technology which will change everything" promise.
We've noticed your couch cushions are sagging! Here's 500 ads for restoration hardware couches. Also we saw the carton of diet coke in your kitchen, here's a coupon to try Diet Pepsi.
A fundamental problem with Metaverse is that their parent companies (Facebook, Insta, and as far as Whatsapp it's a clear antitrust case) don't work
People don't see posts from friends. The site spams you to death. They hijacked your email address, and replaced it with a facebook.com address. They've lied rather a lot about things generally
And that company is now the one presenting a Metaverse/VR/AR/whatever
It should be DOA just based on reputation, never mind the technical merits
* Surveys (I had the county come in once in my sort-of legal rental appartment when they were legalising them, they needed to make a floor plan and fire safety recommendations)
* Real estate, which already uses 360 degree photo's and simplified 3d floor plan models
* Video games. Very generic usage.
* Virtualised museums, but those would likely need extra work to make all the placards etc readable
I knew a guy 20 years ago who was doing a PhD trying to 3D scan caves.
Caving is one of those things where not many people get to go there and any damage is irreversible. Combined with other information, such scanning could provide invaluable information for geology.
But yeah, not in my house. I already used Valetudo to ensure my robot vacuum doesn't send info about my house anywhere. Why the hell would I do a high detail scan and upload it?
Surprisingly it is. Thought it was dead in the water especially against VRChat. But it is continuously worked on and if I did get that right it will get a new engine as well. Accidently hopped into some worlds recently as they are (annoyingly) promoting it heavily in the quest library. And there are plenty of worlds with many players, 99% of which being small kids it feels.
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As I see it, the only absolute upper limit for VR is the resolution and frame rate of the VR headset displays, as well as the quality of the optical stack. Rendering of the graphics can be done by anything from a single high-end GPU in a PC up to a beefy server in the cloud—although in that case, of course, network latency and video compression will impact the experience.
The work to make or even use a proper VR app or game is so so much more than the flat equivalent and there are only some added utility for spatial input. Tech can certainly improve some of that...
But a VR video call is solved... You can do it mostly out of the box with an AVP but who is going to buy a $3k device for yourself and anyone you want to call and then have a couple calls and never use it because its not worth the hassle to strap it on.
"Hey John, grandpa will expire soon can you quickly jump in your headset and upload yourself to his VR cabin in the wood, the one we rent from MetaSpital for $99 a day, to take a selfie with him before he dies alone in a cold hospital room"
It's unsual, if you would have asked me 15 years ago- I would have told you _absolutely_ VR/AR would be huge. It just hasn't been the case. People don't want to wear headsets and there's nothing that the AR glasses can do that my phone can't. The whole thing has become a money blackhole.
Here’s the thing, though. To experience VR properly, you need to be able to walk arbitrarily through space. And houses are small. It sounds stupid and people have proposed solutions like rolling floors, but it’s actually not stupid. Sometimes a technology has a fundamental flaw (hello, there, hallucinating LLMs) which really does mean most of the value is unrealisable.
VR needs neural interfaces. Until then it’s going to be a minor sport.
The short term solution to this is AR. You can walk arbitrary distance subject to physical constraints you can navigate. This will drive the industry forward until neural interfaces are ready. Apple are right with Vision Pro, it’s absolutely amazing for a first product, but like the Newton they are just miles ahead of the curve, too far ahead.
* fortunately for AI companies, hallucinations simply require conceptual developments to fix - they’re not a hard constraint. They just need to stop overfocusing on scale.
Unfortunately I've been waiting for 10 years now and it still hasn't happened :(
Most people who play video games do so as a leisure activity. It works because it allows you to be put into a world that requires little physical exertion - just eye/hand coordination. You don't need to to use your legs to jump in a video game. You don't even need to have legs.
In the vision of VR you're selling, it requires getting up and doing a lot of physical movement. The bulk of most gamers just want to play their game after work or school and relax. Most of my friends feel the same way about VR as they did when I was young and wanted them to play with the NES power pad when I was younger.
There are better, more entertaining options available on the 2D screen that don't require much physical movement. In fact, I'd say that anything other than eye/hand movement distracts from game play. "Jumping" in the video game isn't fun because you actually have to jump, it's fun because you don't. And that's a feature that appeals to people who will never be appealed to VR.
This is why racing games are such a good use case for the VR. Seems to me it is the only place where VR is used regularly
How would that solve the walking problem?
Even when have indistinguishable from reality visuals the illusion falls apart the moment you try to touch it. The fidelity through buttons is rudimentary and through hand tracking is non existent. The suspension of disbelief isn't there, humans fingers are incredibly sensitive and dexterous and we are trained whole life all the time to know how things feel. AI/AR isn't going to have any success without solving that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oad_t6k3w5c
Deleted Comment
But I never use it. I don't really see the point. It's heavy on the head for no real benefit.
I'm kind of happy I have it though. I open it every six months to see if there's anything new. I'm going to try this Hyperscape just in case...
It could make sense selectively during construction, mining, etc, but even then its a sometimes thing and it needs to be completely unobtrusive. Meta dont seem to be aiming towards or catering to this.
VR probably hit its peak with VR Chat, and AR probably hit it with Pokemon Go. Just as we're never getting the Jetson's future with Rosie the Robot, but we do get roombas, we're never getting the cyberpunk future where everything happens in VR, but we do get furries hanging out in digital Taco Bells.
One of the things I very much hoped for was to be able to "hang out" with friends who have grown geographically distant in a space that felt more our own.
But I don't think that makes it truly "huge" in a mass market way unless it's at a very affordable price point.
There are some pretty cool AR demos out there too, but for me they're not worth wearing the headsets I've seen.
What’s different this time?
Dead Comment
I get that it can scan a physical space and then I can see a digital reproduction of that space on VR goggles...but then what? Do I just stand there looking around the space?
A common one is VR visits for real estate companies and travel agencies, for example. Also virtual previews for investors and C-suite execs in meetings where there was a ton of money involved - think someone trying to sell the creation of a whole neighbourhood and this is a fancy version of a powerpoint slide for their pitch.
This tech could probably have saved us a good amount of work, though It's still a head scratcher why Zuck thinks this is the one thing in which to bet the company's future.
Yes. There's a mini-industry doing this for real estate.[1] Some systems let you place furniture in the 3D model.
Versions of this idea go all the way back to Apple's "Quicktime VR", which was a chain of spherical images through which you could navigate.
It's a long way from a fun metaverse. (Doing a big metaverse at all is difficult. Making it fun is even harder.)
[1] https://go.matterport.com/RealEstate3DTours.html
Lack of imagination and willingness to rely on someone else's judgement - other than the cyberpunk authors he read as a teen?
Either way, I don't see this taking off. I'm surprised they're still pursuing VR.
He seems to have an obsession of breaking free of Apples control.
I imagine if you ever want to "hang out in VR", it would be nice to do it in your own virtual living room, instead of the imaginary virtual spaces.
The technology is neat. I don't know that either of those justifies the R&D effort. So just try to enjoy that neat technology exists for its own sake.
One of those use cases is training in industrial settings like factories, mines, or construction sites. It is a lot cheaper and safer to have workers take their first steps in a VR environment rather than on the actual location.
At the moment, a lot of this training is implemented as custom 3D applications using e.g. Unity. I imagine that something like Hyperscape would make it much easier and faster to create and share VR environments for this purpose.
At that point you can have a very convincing VR performance with cheap hardware. That handles much much more viewer IPDs and head positions etc, than one of those expensive omni-directional camera rigs.
That said, the more general aspect of "accessible, user generatable content" is a better way to look at it.
Deleted Comment
Online meetup for Disney fans: each week in a different scan of the park
Online consultation with interior design or architect: takes place in you existing house and saves travel for someone billing $x hundred an hour.
Online highschool reunion planning meeting with people spread over the world: takes place at the highschool or potential venues
Deployed military personel meeting remotely on his anniversary with his wife: takes place where they had their first date
I thought we would have already had this with photogrammetry back in 2016 when the Vive released with a camera, but that usually involved too much cleanup and optimizing geometry and couldn't be done automatically, along with the issues with reflections. I was also really surprised Google Earth VR didn't add in multiplayer soon after launch for similar use cases.
People don't see posts from friends. The site spams you to death. They hijacked your email address, and replaced it with a facebook.com address. They've lied rather a lot about things generally
And that company is now the one presenting a Metaverse/VR/AR/whatever
It should be DOA just based on reputation, never mind the technical merits
What are the other direct uses?
* Surveys (I had the county come in once in my sort-of legal rental appartment when they were legalising them, they needed to make a floor plan and fire safety recommendations)
* Real estate, which already uses 360 degree photo's and simplified 3d floor plan models
* Video games. Very generic usage.
* Virtualised museums, but those would likely need extra work to make all the placards etc readable
* Street View next level, also indoor navigation.
Caving is one of those things where not many people get to go there and any damage is irreversible. Combined with other information, such scanning could provide invaluable information for geology.
But yeah, not in my house. I already used Valetudo to ensure my robot vacuum doesn't send info about my house anywhere. Why the hell would I do a high detail scan and upload it?