this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024
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I'm not sure why they tried this.
'We made a VR games headset, but replaced the games with office related programs, like calenders and notepads'
Did any of them ever use an Oculus Quest? Like, why did they try this? Is this Apple's Google Glass moment? Did they really think that if you pay enough youtubers to wear it in public, normal people would magically go into car-level debt to emulate them?
In fact, I'll go as far as to say this campaign and price point was a bigger mistake, and a louder failure than Google Glasses.
My guess was that they knew gaming was niche and were willing to invest less in this headset and more in spreading the widespread idea that "Spatial Computing" is the next paradigm for work.
I VR a decent amount, and I really do like it a lot for watching TV and YouTube, and am toying with using it a bit for work-from-home where the shift in environment is surprisingly helpful.
It's just limited. Streaming apps aren't very good, there's no great source for 3D movies (which are great, when Bigscreen had them anyways), they're still a bit too hot and heavy for long-term use, the game library isn't very broad and there haven't been many killer app games/products that distinct it from other modalities, and it's going to need a critical amount of adoption to get used in remote meetings.
I really do think it's huge for given a sense of remote presence, and I'd love to research how VR presence affects remote collaboration, but there are so many factors keeping it tough to buy into.
They did try, though, and I think they're on the right track. Facial capture for remote presence and hybrid meetings, extending the monitors to give more privacy and flexibility to laptops, strong AR to reduce the need to take the headset off - but they're first selling the idea, and then maybe there will be a break. I'll admit the industry is moving much slower than I'd anticipated back in 2012 when I was starting VR research.
I don't know how far things have come since the aptly named Acer AH101-D8EY, but that was the last time I tried to be "productive" in VR and it was absolutely not working.