I’m still mad they dropped VR for this. That’s the one industry that needs for someone to burn billions into, and I’d rather have to deal with a Metaverse bullshit again, than whatever the AI is doing to people, because that has at least some positive impact - like better VR games. I also kind of liked using my headset in bed as a movie theater/multiple monitors, if the headset got a little bit better so you can use it longer, it would be perfect.
Metaverse was annoying, but at least it had some good side-effects.
We dropped that in favor of AI bullshit.
I really hope Steam Frame will be at least somewhat affordable, but thanks to those AI fucks, I doubt it will :(
I know a lot people hate on this, but when I gave VR workstation a try (asi in, using VR for your second+ monitor) on my Quest 3, it was pretty nice.
At one point I was just taking my laptop to bed, passthrough block on my keyboard, and could comfortably work with 3 larger monitors. Or just plopping in bed with a controller, stream a large screen in front of me, and play a game.
Also, it’s great for focus. Not having the rest of the world around you distracting you works wonders.
The Quest 3 was usable (the resolution sucked too much on Q2 to be able to use virtual monitors), but I can imagine it could get pretty tiring spending more than an hour or so in it - which is what I presume they could eventually solve. I’m excited for Steam Frame, assuming it will work as a standalone Linux computer. If I could just develop anywhere with my monitor setup, needing only the headset and a keyboard, it would be great.
Another thing are meetings. It’s something you have to experience with an open mind, because it has been shoved into our throats under the Metaverse label, which made a lot of people adverse to it. I did give it a try, and it’s such a huge difference between just staring at someone on a Zoom call. Just the fact that you have some kind of gesturing, along with the virtual dashboards that are easy to draw to (using the tip of the controller as a pen on your table, or just plopping a virtual blackboard agaist your wall), and it just makes the meetings and presentations so much better.
Again, you have the issue of the headsets being unwieldy for long term, but that’s something they’d probably solve.
Of course, the whole Metaverse bullshit, and the way it was marketed and shoved down everyone’s throat was stupid, but the technology in itself was pretty nice to use - I enjoyed the experience. It had it own problems, but that’s something that could be solved.
Also, once I got into FPS in VR, it’s really hard to enjoy regular flat screen FPSs. You need to have a magnetic gun stock for it to be playable, but once you get that, it’s so much more fun. Just the fact that you have to actually change mags makes the experience so much better. It’s something that is hard to describe, but just feels a lot better. In general, some of the best experiences gaming I had were in VR, but most of it was just a promise or tech demos, because the field didn’t have time to mature, and was too unafordable for studios to take it seriously.
So, yeah, I think it had promise, and it’s a shame the world has given up before it became affordable and iterated upon, especially since we traded it for bullshit AI.
They funded some of the best VR games ever made. Sure, their motivations behind it were to get kids addicted and be recording everything they see and say forever and have it all tied to their lame ass social media shit… bit it gave me cool, fun shit to do.
My main point was that it was marginally better than what we traded it for with AI.
The AI furnace is fueled by burning children, and also makes everyone colder and more miserable, but you can make a lot of investor money promising to build more furnaces like that.
They poured a LOT of money into game development, including support for third party studios. Most of the games they helped become a reality ended up with PCVR versions as well.
That’s no longer a case though. Some time ago they pulled a plug on that, and shut down most of the studios they accquired in the meantime. Why do companies keep doing that?
I think it has a lot of potential outside of those two things, but the problem as with all modern technology is that the companies making it always do so in the most abusive, hostile way possible so everyone rejects it immediately as another Big Tech trap.
Think about how useful AR could have been for all manner of different tasks and professions, and what we have instead is pervert-glasses with built in surveillance, connected to the giant propaganda machine in the sky.
Apple’s “Apple Vision Pro” vision was actually a reasonable assortment of reasonable ideas when you watch their announcement marketing, and then what we got was an overpriced, underdeveloped toy as we’ve come to expect from them.
VR/AR is going to be a casualty of this era of tech, an era which will be remembered as taking the forward-looking, human focussed applied-science field that we love it for and turning it into a tool of extractive capitalism, an enormous vehicle for investment fraud, and an enabler of fascist authoritarianism.
Hopefully one day we will recover. In the mean-time, I still have hopes for the Steam Frame which is what it should be: a dumb, unopinionated peripheral.
companies making it always do so in the most abusive, hostile way possible so everyone rejects it immediately as another Big Tech trap
Yes, everyone rejects Big Tech, that’s why the companies are so small.
Apple’s “Apple Vision Pro” vision was actually a reasonable assortment of reasonable ideas
Disagree. It failed for the same reason every headset before it did. The entire concept is fundamentally flawed. No one wants to wear a goofy fucking facemask all day. And I think it’s pretty apparent from their advertising that that’s exactly what they expected people to do.
Meta expected companies to hold business meetings in VR. Why would anyone do that? What’s the point?
Valve certainly understood the assignment by making it a “streaming-first headset” designed primarily to be connected wirelessly to a PC. This just made it way smaller and lighter.
They were also brilliant in developing and implementing FEX so that you can running any X86 Windows game on an ARM Linux headset.
I can’t come up with a practical use for VR outside of gaming. It’s not practical, comfortable, or worth the effort to rub one out with the headset on.
I’m an electrical engineer and embedded systems developer. I’d love a lightweight headset that gave me the equivalent of a huge high resolution virtual monitor/AR setup that I could use without needing a huge physical space.
Watching Meta fumble with AI is pretty funny.
I’m still mad they dropped VR for this. That’s the one industry that needs for someone to burn billions into, and I’d rather have to deal with a Metaverse bullshit again, than whatever the AI is doing to people, because that has at least some positive impact - like better VR games. I also kind of liked using my headset in bed as a movie theater/multiple monitors, if the headset got a little bit better so you can use it longer, it would be perfect.
Metaverse was annoying, but at least it had some good side-effects.
We dropped that in favor of AI bullshit.
I really hope Steam Frame will be at least somewhat affordable, but thanks to those AI fucks, I doubt it will :(
What was the good side effects?
I know a lot people hate on this, but when I gave VR workstation a try (asi in, using VR for your second+ monitor) on my Quest 3, it was pretty nice.
At one point I was just taking my laptop to bed, passthrough block on my keyboard, and could comfortably work with 3 larger monitors. Or just plopping in bed with a controller, stream a large screen in front of me, and play a game.
Also, it’s great for focus. Not having the rest of the world around you distracting you works wonders.
The Quest 3 was usable (the resolution sucked too much on Q2 to be able to use virtual monitors), but I can imagine it could get pretty tiring spending more than an hour or so in it - which is what I presume they could eventually solve. I’m excited for Steam Frame, assuming it will work as a standalone Linux computer. If I could just develop anywhere with my monitor setup, needing only the headset and a keyboard, it would be great.
Another thing are meetings. It’s something you have to experience with an open mind, because it has been shoved into our throats under the Metaverse label, which made a lot of people adverse to it. I did give it a try, and it’s such a huge difference between just staring at someone on a Zoom call. Just the fact that you have some kind of gesturing, along with the virtual dashboards that are easy to draw to (using the tip of the controller as a pen on your table, or just plopping a virtual blackboard agaist your wall), and it just makes the meetings and presentations so much better.
Again, you have the issue of the headsets being unwieldy for long term, but that’s something they’d probably solve.
Of course, the whole Metaverse bullshit, and the way it was marketed and shoved down everyone’s throat was stupid, but the technology in itself was pretty nice to use - I enjoyed the experience. It had it own problems, but that’s something that could be solved.
Also, once I got into FPS in VR, it’s really hard to enjoy regular flat screen FPSs. You need to have a magnetic gun stock for it to be playable, but once you get that, it’s so much more fun. Just the fact that you have to actually change mags makes the experience so much better. It’s something that is hard to describe, but just feels a lot better. In general, some of the best experiences gaming I had were in VR, but most of it was just a promise or tech demos, because the field didn’t have time to mature, and was too unafordable for studios to take it seriously.
So, yeah, I think it had promise, and it’s a shame the world has given up before it became affordable and iterated upon, especially since we traded it for bullshit AI.
They funded some of the best VR games ever made. Sure, their motivations behind it were to get kids addicted and be recording everything they see and say forever and have it all tied to their lame ass social media shit… bit it gave me cool, fun shit to do.
My main point was that it was marginally better than what we traded it for with AI.
The AI furnace is fueled by burning children, and also makes everyone colder and more miserable, but you can make a lot of investor money promising to build more furnaces like that.
No company really wants anything beyond endless profit and control.
They poured a LOT of money into game development, including support for third party studios. Most of the games they helped become a reality ended up with PCVR versions as well.
That’s no longer a case though. Some time ago they pulled a plug on that, and shut down most of the studios they accquired in the meantime. Why do companies keep doing that?
VR is a dead end outside of gaming and porn. I don’t know why so many tech companies are obsessed with making it into something more.
I think it has a lot of potential outside of those two things, but the problem as with all modern technology is that the companies making it always do so in the most abusive, hostile way possible so everyone rejects it immediately as another Big Tech trap.
Think about how useful AR could have been for all manner of different tasks and professions, and what we have instead is pervert-glasses with built in surveillance, connected to the giant propaganda machine in the sky.
Apple’s “Apple Vision Pro” vision was actually a reasonable assortment of reasonable ideas when you watch their announcement marketing, and then what we got was an overpriced, underdeveloped toy as we’ve come to expect from them.
VR/AR is going to be a casualty of this era of tech, an era which will be remembered as taking the forward-looking, human focussed applied-science field that we love it for and turning it into a tool of extractive capitalism, an enormous vehicle for investment fraud, and an enabler of fascist authoritarianism.
Hopefully one day we will recover. In the mean-time, I still have hopes for the Steam Frame which is what it should be: a dumb, unopinionated peripheral.
Yes, everyone rejects Big Tech, that’s why the companies are so small.
Disagree. It failed for the same reason every headset before it did. The entire concept is fundamentally flawed. No one wants to wear a goofy fucking facemask all day. And I think it’s pretty apparent from their advertising that that’s exactly what they expected people to do.
Meta expected companies to hold business meetings in VR. Why would anyone do that? What’s the point?
Valve certainly understood the assignment by making it a “streaming-first headset” designed primarily to be connected wirelessly to a PC. This just made it way smaller and lighter.
They were also brilliant in developing and implementing FEX so that you can running any X86 Windows game on an ARM Linux headset.
I can’t come up with a practical use for VR outside of gaming. It’s not practical, comfortable, or worth the effort to rub one out with the headset on.
I’m an electrical engineer and embedded systems developer. I’d love a lightweight headset that gave me the equivalent of a huge high resolution virtual monitor/AR setup that I could use without needing a huge physical space.
Well the new Steam Frame will probably give you that, minus the high resolution. Is already being developed by KDE. Has been for a while.