Meta cancels Quest Pro, stops development of Quest Pro 2
Meta cancels Quest Pro, stops development of Quest Pro 2
www.zdnet.com
Meta cancels Quest Pro, stops development of Quest Pro 2
Could this be a cautionary tale for another recently turned VR-maker tech giant?
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.
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.
when they're all big screen vr size then i think it will be a lot more popular
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. ;-)
Had the opportunity to try out and develop for the hololens 2. I don't dig it at all. It's still big, has a tiny field of view, and when I compare it to VR, it's so much less immersive. Not that it's not impressive technology - it totally is. The best IMO would probably be a mix of both - high FOV, direct, no-camera passthrough that can be blacked out on demand. Meanwhile, VR is king, although a bit of a niche because of all the setup, required room etc.
Lol, but I get that. A proper affordable heads up display will add so much more value to my life. I ride motorcycles and that is where it can be really useful. A Kickstarter tried ot a while ago with a helmet,but that flopped badly. A pair of glasses that will fit in my helmet, beaming useful info to my eyeballs could be lifesaving.
I had a long rural night ride a while back and it was bloody tricky navigating with the mounted phone. Not out of choice, more of a needs must scenario. The Gaiman map app was very useful in indicating the road ahead, bit the split attention needed was insane.
Another 90s geek chirping 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.
Same. Whoever tried my Q2 wants to come by to play. They all have loved it. But it needs more polishing for sure
I want a VR rig like the gaming devices in that TNG episode where everyone got addicted to the games. Lightweight, overlaid onto the real world, and beamed directly into your eyeballs.
I tend to agree, we had some some with the Rift S, but it’s been probably a year since we’ve put it on. When I wanna game I wanna relax, and VR just requires too much movement to be something I wanna do after work. Superhot is fun tho.
You mean, with Oculus Quest 2 being a cheap headset offering great performances and satisfying many customers (10m units sold in nov. 2021), with many good and great games being ported, major video game editors publishing games with VR support, and headset appearing in museums and other cultural places?
Maybe Apple' and other « pro » headset sold at outrageous prices are not going out of the niche they are, but affordable VR is a thing many people use. Majors exhibitions now often have VR discoveries for everyone and games are of a great quality for anyone taking more than 2 minutes to find what they like (so beyond beat saber and demos). Meanwhile, AR is nowhere to be seen despite Microsoft, Google and Apple' big investments in APIs, OS support and hardware.
The move is a wise one from Meta: they focus on affordable yet great quality headset that anyone can buy instead of focusing « pro » market which, in reality, doesn't have a market. I haven't heard of any company or cultural places willing to buy any of these « pro » stuff given how expensive they are. They instead buy from the many affordable brands like HP or Samsung and, obviously, Meta.
It's like connected watch: nobody really needed them, they took time to kick off, but affordable ones are now everywhere, not only for tech-savvy people.
I can see consumer VR having a couple killer apps that could make it (maybe) worth it. The first is walking through driving trips. It's extremely helpful when going to a new city to be able to walk through your route to get a better feel for what it looks like, how the lanes are laid out, etc.
The second is doing 3D design work. Give me a simple way to scan my house and then let me see what it looks like if I knock a wall out, or move the furniture around. I haven't found a way to do this easily yet, but it should be fairly straightforward considering how the Quest's boundary cameras work.
But, yeah, beyond some beat saber or super hot are fun but ultimately not worth it. (And I got mine for free.)
I'm only interested in the gaming at the moment, so I'm not necessarily looking for it to solve issues with using a computer. Fully immersive games are pretty cool, and being able to play beat saber is exactly why I like it. Things like that and Half Life: Alyx are uniquely suited to VR, and you can get more out of them than you could on a monitor.
I mean, talking specifically of the Quest Pro, it was too expensive with a lot of half baked features at launch. It's main feature being pass through, and that's probably the most complained about thing from reviewers. So this news isn't really surprising. As for VR itself, it may be a niche, but it's still a growing market. A veeerry slowly growing market.