Asklemmy

I think that most companies have been doing it absolutely wrong. Likely because they're more interested in sucking more data from people to sell for profit than designing products that would appreciably improve people's lives. Most of the handful of genuinely useful products are kept priced far too high for consumers. Apple, as insanely expensive as their product is, actually does seem to have identified some of the major issues that others have been completely ignoring but their implementation is a bit ridiculous.

The two companies that I know of that are actually making useful products are Xreal and Viture (haven't tried the latter but they're much my FOSS-friendly). For the price of a quality monitor/TV, they provide HMDs in a sunglasses form-factor that are actually usable for productivity despite only having 1080p displays. And don't have creepy cameras. Yes, the lower FOV makes them less immersive but that's actually beneficial - you can talk to and see other people in the "real" world. This and low weight makes them comfortable to wear all day and I've barely used my laptop or Steam Deck monitor since getting them setup.

I didn't think about it much tbh.

Awful. Depressed. Hopeless.

I'm hype for the Valve Deckard.

I've got a quest and meta feels like an overly attached ex girlfriend. The setup experience was terrible, simply because of the meta crap they hacked into the oculus experience.

(Copying my comment from YT):

I fear AR will change society for the worse while making Facebook a lot of money. The reason why the internet currently has a bad effect on society is because it lets you block out the bad parts of reality while locking yourself a cozy bubble of content that suits you personally. Applying the same filter to people's vision will only exasperate these effects. And a shift to AR will benefit Facebook massively: now, instead of just being able to influence what ads/posts you see, they will have the power to choose what parts of reality you percieve. Nobody will percieve the same reality anymore. Can you still see society being able to reach consensus then? Problems that are currently public will become private problems of those who cannot afford the AR to block them out. And all for Facebooks profit.

A truly responsible attempt at AR would focus on technologies that create the same experience for multiple – ideally an unlimited amount – of people. Think 3D tabletop diaplays, smart objects (think reMarkable tablet), holograms. This is accessible to anyone in the room (= inclusive), and guarantees that everybody will still be locked into the same, shared experience of reality.

I mean it's basically inevitable that major hardware was going to be fairly dominated by big companies, just like how you're not going to find many small businesses producing regular ass non-vr monitors and the like, especially at the high end of things.

But overall, it's still a fairly diverse market. Beyond what you've mentioned, there's the valve index as easily the most major competitor. I've heard good things about pimax headsets, and they seem to be as close to a small business as the industry really can manage. Rumors say Sony is bringing psvr2 compatability to PC, which would be a huge advantage given the insanely cheap price tag for the quality. The apple vision exists, I guess, though it's locked in apples walled garden. The htc vive still seems to be around.

I don't give a shit. I can't imagine ever using VR for anything other than a curious novelty. It'll go the way of 3D TVs and keep going around and around every 20 years or so.

I wouldn't be on lemmy if I wasn't worried by the weight of foreign bilionaire on technology that should be accessible for everyone.

But I doubt that VR will got that mainstream considering all the practical diffictulties to use-it

Like a lot of hyped things, people still can't actually functionally figure out good VR/AR applications that people would willingly strap a hot, heavy headset to their face for long periods. Nobody has time for that, most people are social and want to actually be around other people and not behind headsets. The terminally online and introverted are in the minority in humanity.

People who drive around wearing them in their Cybertrucks are a special subset of stupid. They obviously have not figured out anything helpful to do with them, either. This is why they are doing dangerous stunts instead of anything useful.

Also Valve is still a pretty big name in VR and I wouldn't ignore the work they have done and seem to be continuing to do based on the Valve Index and rumors swirling about an Index 2 in the works. Valve is probably one of the few major players who take some amount of openness to their approach.

Personally, I actually expect VR to disappear from the market once more, or at least for there to be a long gap before the next stuff comes out.
In fact, I think, the Apple headset was the last notable hardware release of the current hype wave.

So, yeah, the big privacy-invasive companies would definitely be a dealbreaker for me, but I don't think this cycle really matters yet.

I think it's pretty great that Zuckerberg went all-in on the thankfully-wrong bet that his Second Life knockoff would somehow be popular and that people would actually want to strap a computer on their face to use it. 🤡

Which is to say, VR isn't particularly high on the list of things I'm concerned about giant tech companies' control of.

I recommend reading The Verge's review of the Apple Vision Pro which concludes:

Apple may have inadvertently revealed that some of these core ideas are actually dead ends — that they can’t ever be executed well enough to become mainstream. This is the best video passthrough headset ever made, and that might mean camera-based mixed reality passthrough could just be a road to nowhere. This is the best hand- and eye-tracking ever, and it feels like the mouse, keyboard, and touchscreen are going to remain undefeated for years to come.

As someone who doesn't want to live in a world where head-mounted cameras in public spaces become ubiquitous or even socially acceptable, I found that review to be good news.

The big companies can invest the money. That least to "better" products. Small manufacturers will struggle to compete for now.

My hope is, as the tech matures, more good options will become available. I'm also hoping Valve maintain that business model. They seem to have clicked that not screwing over your customers in the short term pays huge dividends in the long term. They also don't seem adverse to supporting open source, which offers a way through this period.

Have you used any VR tech? It's not something to be worried about

It's certainly not ideal but is probably necessary to develop the technology. In a handful of years I'm hoping there will be less toxic options.

Meta bought valve?

I don't.

I don't think about VR produxts from those kinds of companies at all any more than their evil apps and websites.