I had an Oculus Quest and it was a really great device. After the "Meta" rebrand, the quality rapidly decreased and now it wants me to upload my ID to Meta to keep using it. Absolutely not! Zuckerberg already has way too much information on me, uploading my state issued identification to them is such an insane ask, I will never do it. While this looks like interesting hardware, the company behind it has unacceptable and user-hostile practices, so I'll pass.
They recently managed to crack open the bootloader, most of meta stuff can be bypassed now.
I despise how it went from a great device to almost a paperweight with just horrible software updates (as it's the norm these days).
Because people are naive enough to think the huge privacy compromise will be worth the cost to society in order to protect kids.
The better question is why in 5yrs we will have to use ID to buy a product on some random ecommerce site or to play a video game or use Uber or post a comment on Reddit. It will be because people pushed for this for kids on social media and opened the door for the rest of the internet companies to demand it and therefore the government.
You shouldn't have to do this and I won't. I'll vote with my dollars and never buy another device from them. It's too bad because I genuinely liked it as well, but it's not worth the invasion of privacy and normalizing sending this type of information to any consumer company.
It's essentially a cheaper and lighter AVP without the Apple ecosystem. There's nothing revolutionary about this device.
Every time a major tech company comes out with a new headset, I check one thing: Does it have a light field display? (In this case, no it doesn't.) In 5-10 years, headsets are going to be much better. Your eyes will be able to focus on objects like they do in real space and you won't have to deal with the hassle of an external battery.
I can't help but feel like all the tech glasses are basically a way to get more ai training data where they can get like a constant stream of human POV stuff.
Coming from Quest 3, everything about it sounds great BUT for that FOV. Even on Quest with 103 x 96, I sometimes feel like I'm looking around through a mask or binoculars. Can't imagine how restrictive it might be on 70 x 66.
Hopefully it's not so bad.
Oh BTW they showed a new Beat Saber game, and among the logos I've seen Ace Attorney VR among a few others. Let's see if those come for Quest 3 and maybe even PCVR.
What problem does it solve? I see a bunch of potential uses but I don’t see any problems looking to be solved.
Will I like gaming better if I control the games with my hands instead of a controller?
Will I like working in my glasses better than my laptop screen? Or even a dual laptop screen like a ZenBook Duo? Or a cheap second portable display? Do these glasses fit better in a backpack than a laptop and a second portable screen? They can’t collapse flat.
Are these glasses more portable and convenient than a smartphone? What are the benefits to watching an NBA game on this compared to a phone or my TV screen at home?
I can’t believe Meta is blowing their money on this stuff still.
From the video they have on their site: watching movies in places where you normally would stare at a tiny screen; they also show folks using virtual floating keyboards in front of a VR desktop to work.
I might consider them if I can wire it to my laptop. I use the meta quest for development because of infinite virtual screens and due to my apartment being so small I can't fit a proper desk and office chair. But still is a very niche usage, if I had space I would very likely get a desk with a dual or triple monitor setup. If the resolution is good, it is actually nice to have a very portable infinite screen setup if you travel a lot.
I had the oculus rift, sold it when they made me get a Facebook account (they might have backtracked on that). Bought a quest 2 thinking surely they have learned their lesson by now.
Nope.
Some of the decisions they made around ux are so insane I feel like ripping it off and throwing it across the room. I bet there are some properly talented people at meta, but someone senior is committed to making it suck. Wouldn't be surprised if it's zuck himself. So even though I'm passionate about it, I have no VR in my life because I can't afford another one
I’ve used the Vision Pro in public. I don’t care what people think of me, but I did get annoyed at people tapping me on the shoulder and asking about it.
Some of the key specs cause the page is rather thin on details:
* Display Type: Micro-OLED
* Resolution: 2412 × 2288 pixels per eye
* Angular Resolution: 37 PPD
* Field of View: 70° × 66°
* Chipset: Snapdragon Reality Elite
* Memory & Storage: 12GB RAM with 128GB internal storage (expandable up to 1TB via microSD on the puck)
* Tracking & Sensors: 6DoF positional tracking, depth sensing, autofocus, 4-camera eye tracking, face tracking, and hand tracking
* Passthrough: Color RGB passthrough cameras at 26 PPD
* Price: $ 1300,- USD plus your data
Similar PPD to an AVP at, what I as a former owner of one (alongside a Quest 2 and 3, a Magic Leap, Xreal and Viture) would call is a far more appealing implementation for actual productive work.
Really wish Apple had gone down this route, have the puck incorporate an A series chip rather than shoving a M series one into the headset itself and heck, I could see such a design being doable for them back when they first launched the AVP if they hadn't forced that utterly ridiculous eye display and stupendously heavy metal body.
There is, unless I am mistaken, nothing here that isn't established technology as found in the AVP, all the fancy display and lens experiments from Starburst, over Holocake to Mirror Lake seem to remain in the lab, this seems to be "just" pancake lenses plus Micro-OLED once more.
70 degree FOV is such a deal breaker for gaming. That and the price. In a world where people already have tons of screens, monitors and TVs in their face - the practical use case for this is relegated to trains and planes. Very niche.
The form factor itself is also a killer. Couldn't imagine doing anything besides using it as large private display for 2D games. You aren't going to be moving your head around quickly with just pressure on your temples to hold it in place.
Not sure where this lands functionality wise. I feel like it's most direct competition would be as a cheaper Apple Vision. You would need to pair it off with a Windows system for heavier productivity work most likely. Even though their OS is "android", it doesn't have the Google ecosystem behind it, let alone matured on that front. Media consumption on the go seems to be the other use case.
So, compare them to either XREALs plugged into a laptop/phone, or Apple Vision Pro I guess.
Steam Frame has black and white passthrough but it's not good enough for AR. They sell a third party's passthrough camera as an add-on though which is $130 I think and clips on the front. Since the Frame runs open Linux with KDE this is really interesting to me.
You can, but the FOV is narrow so not great for multiple screens, and the focal length is probably around 4 ft so you're not going to be able to use a screen closer without eye strain.
I hope one day a version of this becomes mainstream enough that it justifies developing for it. It's the ergonomics that prevent that from happening, and moving toward glasses is one of the most important stepping stones. (though if you saw someone wearing "glasses" like this you would probably say it's stretching the definition of glasses)
When someone gets this right I do think we're all gonna ditch the 2d screens and phones.
It doesn't even matter if it's Meta that instigates this, if money is smelled there will be more consumer friendly alternatives popping up overnight (e.g. see how quickly the industry copied the iPhone).
I understand this is quite good, but I also have something like 20/12.5 eyesight. To me, using these things feels like looking through a coarse screen door.
E: For reference, I can comfortably count pixels on a 24.5" 1080p screen from a normal seated position.
I've been buying HMDs since the first Oculus, and I promptly sell them to somebody else. 37 PPD is a little more than halfway to "perfect" for someone with 20/20 eyesight
It is all a compromise. 37 PPD is well under the standard for normal "good" eyesight (aka. "retina" in Apple marketing), which is 60 (aka. 1 arcminute).
Doing more with a narrower field of view is easy, it is even cheaper. Doing more with the same or better field of view means you need more pixels and more computing power to drive them, so more expensive, heavier hardware that gets hotter and with less battery life.
People at Meta consitered 37 PPD to be a good compromise, and I kind of agree.
If Apple released a product with the same form factor, it would likely be a winner. The issue with Meta is that its brand is tarnished for anyone older than Gen Alpha. I don’t have hard data, but I am guessing the majority of VR users are children under their parents’ meta accounts.
I’m still buying this for myself. I enjoy the private movie theater experience and turning every video game session into a decent cardio workout; I’ve lost 60 lbs with VR to date.
The list is too long, but essentially almost every VR game will force you to move since you’re no longer controlling an avatar with buttons. You are now inside the game instead of viewing it from outside of a box, so you’re going to be moving and punching.
For me the biggest calorie burners are boxing games. Beat Saber and others like Synth Riders are great too. Then there are fitness focus apps like Body Combat and even one for rowing machines.
Hopefully, Meta can convince HR firms that this is a fitness device that is eligible for FSA like benefits.
oh man playing halo and jumping off the ship and falling through the sky will feel insane with this i imagine. i just hope people have enough open space around them when enjoying the limitless expansion of VR world. DOnt want people to hurt their knees and heads and knock off their furnitures all the time.
This feels closer to the quest 3, so maybe consider it a successor in a way? Since meta is moving away from VR gaming, it may end up cannibalizing sales in a "good" way for the company.
As long as this is mixed reality and not a clunky VR-only headset like the previous Meta Quest devices, then this far exceeds what ever the Vision Pro hype was and any other XR device in the market.
This is XR for the rest of us and a worthy competitor to the Xreal.
Not sure what you mean. The marketing video shows pancake optical stacks and specs have mentioned OLED displays. While the marketing video attempts to play up an immersive fantastical reality, the experience will function like a Quest 3 or Apple Vision Pro, where there are external cameras that then get projected onto the internal screens.
Looks fun, but it'll most probably need a Meta account, won't run open firmware, and most importantly wearing it in public instead of using my MacBook will make me look like an idiot. So: meh.
I no longer bother watching movies or shows on my (very big) TV ever since I got an AVP. The experience (lying down on my bed, with gigantic movie screen floating above me) is unmatched.
For that use case, why would you choose wearing anything over just having a couple of projectors in the bedroom and living room? That is far more common than owning a vision pro because it's cheaper, more comfortable, more social, etc.
On the audio end of this, you can even throw in some properly righteous speakers in both rooms. All combined, this is still cheaper than or equal to the vision pro price for an objectively better movie experience. The projector image will always be bigger than your TV and speakers that expensive will rattle the walls with bass and shatter your eardrums. It doesn't matter how good earbuds get, there's no replacement for displacement (of air). Don't you like feeling the power?
It's a novelty because you had to put on a big uncomfortable headset that required wires up until recently went was really fidgety. Once you get the form factor fixed and comfortable everything will change. This looks like a big step in that direction. Too bad I don't want Meta looking through my eyes.
> Once you get the form factor fixed and comfortable everything will change
Will it? Even if you offer people AR glasses and smartphones at the same price, I'd expect most people to pick the phone. Nobody wants to tap their glasses on a Square reader to buy coffee, or ask their specs to take a picture.
The VR/AR modality struggles when OEMs rely on unique native experiences as a selling point. There's no "killer app" for VR a even decade after the original Oculus DTK. Palmer Luckey sold Oculus to go work on building cruise missiles, to give you an idea of how awful VR's prospects are.
I had the Oculus Rift dev kit before they sold to Facebook. It was so amazing at the time
The better question is why in 5yrs we will have to use ID to buy a product on some random ecommerce site or to play a video game or use Uber or post a comment on Reddit. It will be because people pushed for this for kids on social media and opened the door for the rest of the internet companies to demand it and therefore the government.
Every time a major tech company comes out with a new headset, I check one thing: Does it have a light field display? (In this case, no it doesn't.) In 5-10 years, headsets are going to be much better. Your eyes will be able to focus on objects like they do in real space and you won't have to deal with the hassle of an external battery.
Hopefully it's not so bad.
Oh BTW they showed a new Beat Saber game, and among the logos I've seen Ace Attorney VR among a few others. Let's see if those come for Quest 3 and maybe even PCVR.
Ouch, that's a tough sell. Maybe useful for AR type stuff, but I wouldn't want to go from a Quest/Index/Frame/etc to that for VR.
What problem does it solve? I see a bunch of potential uses but I don’t see any problems looking to be solved.
Will I like gaming better if I control the games with my hands instead of a controller?
Will I like working in my glasses better than my laptop screen? Or even a dual laptop screen like a ZenBook Duo? Or a cheap second portable display? Do these glasses fit better in a backpack than a laptop and a second portable screen? They can’t collapse flat.
Are these glasses more portable and convenient than a smartphone? What are the benefits to watching an NBA game on this compared to a phone or my TV screen at home?
I can’t believe Meta is blowing their money on this stuff still.
So: no problems solved.
And another random youtube influencer who tried it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J8oIs1GA0o
$1300 price
Nope.
Some of the decisions they made around ux are so insane I feel like ripping it off and throwing it across the room. I bet there are some properly talented people at meta, but someone senior is committed to making it suck. Wouldn't be surprised if it's zuck himself. So even though I'm passionate about it, I have no VR in my life because I can't afford another one
I can see value on a plane. But I’d rather use my MacBook then look like a crazy person pretending to work.
* Display Type: Micro-OLED
* Resolution: 2412 × 2288 pixels per eye
* Angular Resolution: 37 PPD
* Field of View: 70° × 66°
* Chipset: Snapdragon Reality Elite
* Memory & Storage: 12GB RAM with 128GB internal storage (expandable up to 1TB via microSD on the puck)
* Tracking & Sensors: 6DoF positional tracking, depth sensing, autofocus, 4-camera eye tracking, face tracking, and hand tracking
* Passthrough: Color RGB passthrough cameras at 26 PPD
* Price: $ 1300,- USD plus your data
Similar PPD to an AVP at, what I as a former owner of one (alongside a Quest 2 and 3, a Magic Leap, Xreal and Viture) would call is a far more appealing implementation for actual productive work.
Really wish Apple had gone down this route, have the puck incorporate an A series chip rather than shoving a M series one into the headset itself and heck, I could see such a design being doable for them back when they first launched the AVP if they hadn't forced that utterly ridiculous eye display and stupendously heavy metal body.
There is, unless I am mistaken, nothing here that isn't established technology as found in the AVP, all the fancy display and lens experiments from Starburst, over Holocake to Mirror Lake seem to remain in the lab, this seems to be "just" pancake lenses plus Micro-OLED once more.
Not sure where this lands functionality wise. I feel like it's most direct competition would be as a cheaper Apple Vision. You would need to pair it off with a Windows system for heavier productivity work most likely. Even though their OS is "android", it doesn't have the Google ecosystem behind it, let alone matured on that front. Media consumption on the go seems to be the other use case.
So, compare them to either XREALs plugged into a laptop/phone, or Apple Vision Pro I guess.
* Display: also micro-OLED
* Resolution: 2560 x 2560 per eye
* Angular resolution: 32 PPD
* Field of view: 116°D, 108°H x 96°V
* Chipset: none lol plugs into your computer
* Tracking and sensors: needs base stations
* Weight: 107 g
* Passthrough: no
* Price: $959 (+$200 for eye tracking)
* needs base stations, a PC, and has a cable, and looks kinda like dorky swim goggles (but still pretty futuristic and cool)
meanwhile the Steam Frame:
* Display: LCD
* Resolution: 2160 x 2160 per eye
* Angular resolution: 20
* Field of view: 110 degrees
* Chipset: Snapdragon 8 gen 3
* Memory and storage: 16GB of ram with 256GB UFS plus microSD
* Tracking and sensors: inside out camera based tracking
* Weight: 185 g core headset, 440 g including strap, rear battery, facial interface, and audio
* Passthrough: idk
* Price: $1059 for 256GB, $1299 for 1TB
Closing the lid and working in one of these would be great, but there's always a caveat that blocks this.
This may come as a surprise, but most phones can capture audio these days. Has your state made them illegal yet?
Now someone just needs to learn how to hack into these glasses remotely…and then we will have the Ghost in the Shell moment.
When someone gets this right I do think we're all gonna ditch the 2d screens and phones.
It doesn't even matter if it's Meta that instigates this, if money is smelled there will be more consumer friendly alternatives popping up overnight (e.g. see how quickly the industry copied the iPhone).
I understand this is quite good, but I also have something like 20/12.5 eyesight. To me, using these things feels like looking through a coarse screen door.
E: For reference, I can comfortably count pixels on a 24.5" 1080p screen from a normal seated position.
I've been buying HMDs since the first Oculus, and I promptly sell them to somebody else. 37 PPD is a little more than halfway to "perfect" for someone with 20/20 eyesight
Doing more with a narrower field of view is easy, it is even cheaper. Doing more with the same or better field of view means you need more pixels and more computing power to drive them, so more expensive, heavier hardware that gets hotter and with less battery life.
People at Meta consitered 37 PPD to be a good compromise, and I kind of agree.
What in the world are you using as your benchmark to call 37 “dogshit”?
I’m still buying this for myself. I enjoy the private movie theater experience and turning every video game session into a decent cardio workout; I’ve lost 60 lbs with VR to date.
For me the biggest calorie burners are boxing games. Beat Saber and others like Synth Riders are great too. Then there are fitness focus apps like Body Combat and even one for rowing machines.
Hopefully, Meta can convince HR firms that this is a fitness device that is eligible for FSA like benefits.
So yeah, be careful of the play area. :)
Obligatory subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/VRtoER/
Meta Ray Ban Audio
Meta Ray Ban Display
Meta VR Glasses
Meta Quest 3
This is XR for the rest of us and a worthy competitor to the Xreal.
I'm amazed though at the amount of effort and corporate money that keeps being thrown at VR trying to make it a thing.
It feels like, to the public, it's like some tired The Beverly Hillbillies re-run that keeps popping up from time to time.
On the audio end of this, you can even throw in some properly righteous speakers in both rooms. All combined, this is still cheaper than or equal to the vision pro price for an objectively better movie experience. The projector image will always be bigger than your TV and speakers that expensive will rattle the walls with bass and shatter your eardrums. It doesn't matter how good earbuds get, there's no replacement for displacement (of air). Don't you like feeling the power?
Will it? Even if you offer people AR glasses and smartphones at the same price, I'd expect most people to pick the phone. Nobody wants to tap their glasses on a Square reader to buy coffee, or ask their specs to take a picture.
The VR/AR modality struggles when OEMs rely on unique native experiences as a selling point. There's no "killer app" for VR a even decade after the original Oculus DTK. Palmer Luckey sold Oculus to go work on building cruise missiles, to give you an idea of how awful VR's prospects are.
I too once abandoned a bowl of cereal for a steak dinner, but that says nothing about the quality of the cereal.