I bought an Oculus Rift devkit and later the full version and loved it, but I actually have doubts about it only being a content problem. VR has some inherent problems (lack of any outside visibility, motion sickness, space restrictions) that are hard to solve and keep many people away from it. For me it only really worked in racing games where i was not moving at all and even then it is quite exhausting.

Those are pretty large problems. As an outsider it seems that the people bullish on VR think consumers, with respect to these problems you mentioned, will just get over it because of how compelling VR is. It seems obvious to me that they will not get over it.

The lack of any outside visibility is a huge problem for families. It is anti-social. Small kids can't be near you while you are using VR. Pets can't really be near you.

It's very difficult to share your experience with other people. VR streamers aren't very popular on Twitch. They probably have issues interacting with their audience since they can't easily see Twitch chat I would think.

I also question the accessibility of VR. At what severity of physical impairment does VR become unusable?

There are just so many problems with VR as a mass-consumer product that don't have anything to do with technology.

AR doesn't have many of these problems, because you can still see other people.

Google's direction makes sense.

As for VR being anti-social - from my experience it's the exact opposite.

I've been visiting my friends who have VR, and organised VR mini-parties at my place. The setup goes like this: you show what's in VR on a tv screen, one person plays, and others watch, taking turns. Works extremely well with Beat Saber, FNAF, and some shooters.

I also did social painting in VR, where people took turns drawing in Tilt Brush, and others went in to look at it, adding to it their own stuff.

Another case I saw is adding VR setup to a bigger party, which works very well with Beat Saber.

VR can be just as social as couch-multiplayer on consoles, or Karaoke. If not more.

As for pets, it depends on a pet, but with 2-3 dogs I saw there were no issues whatsoever.

There are two kinds of HN comments.

The first is like the one GP made - absolutely sure of themselves and staying with certainty that there are intractable problems with something. On closer inspection you find that they have no personal experience but they’re really smart and can imagine the worst consequences of everything well.

The second is the one I’m replying to. They have first hand experience and give a more balanced take on the situation.

I’m happy that we get to read both kinds of comments.

I'm betting, the people in charge at Google who shut down all these projects were in the first category.

Problems from "one IO device to rule them all" standpoint? Sure. Problems for capturing a huge chunk of the market and being generally useful? Not really.

> The lack of any outside visibility is a huge problem for families. It is anti-social.

Come on. This way you could say most of gaming is antisocial, because a lot of interesting games (most of them, to me) are single-player experience. There are many people, people with families, for whom playing games (or watching movies for that matter) is about games (and movies), and not about an excuse to be with other people.

Also, you can always stream the game to another device for other family member(s) to watch.

> Small kids can't be near you while you are using VR.

I guess it depends on how old they are, but my wife and I divide forces: one of us watches the kid, the other plays, then we switch.

> Pets can't really be near you.

My pet doesn't mind. It understands that the person standing there in the middle of the room (which is weird behavior) with a box on their head is ignoring it, and making sudden moves.

> It's very difficult to share your experience with other people.

Experience? Not really. You just stream the game. Interacting with other people while playing, Twitch-like? That's more difficult, so the showbusiness part of the gaming market has a problem, but this doesn't affect people who want to actually play a game.

> I also question the accessibility of VR. At what severity of physical impairment does VR become unusable?

VR requires sight, and some control over hands; depending on the game, this may expand into total motor control. The requirements for most games is fundamentally the same as for "regular" games you play with mouse+keyboard / gamepad.

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Working AR will obviously have more total utility than VR, so it's good to pursue it. But VR exists here and now, while AR is still science-fiction (HoloLens beginning to scratch the surface, and no, overlaying stuff over image of the world captured by a camera doesn't count as proper AR). However, VR can be used to simulate, experiment with and prototype future AR applications, so it's weird to just abandon it.

I've done experiments in completely audio-based "VR" experiences. I think it's possible and could even be a useful form factor for people. It definitely blurs the line between VR and AR, and I default back to my assertion that the big difference between the two is who is providing the context for the experience: the developer (VR) or the user (AR).

From a technology standpoint, the Holy Grail device will be able to do both VR or AR selectably and seamlessly. The reason I think so many extant AR apps are just crappy VR apps is because the devices we have aren't able to blend VR and AR, the developers wanted (or were mandated) to use a specific system, and then shoehorned a specific design to the system they had.

> no, overlaying stuff over image of the world captured by a camera doesn't count as proper AR

News to me. If that is the case, then how is the HoloLens AR? Without utilization of the spatial surface recognition system, conceptually the HoloLens is nothing more than "overlaying stuff on an image of the world". That the world is viewed through plastic rather than routed through silicon doesn't make a difference.

Add surface capture to a VR headset with a pass-through camera (which can be done today with off-the-shelf parts, it's just not in a commercial product yet) and I see no difference.

> If that is the case, then how is the HoloLens AR?

It doesn't capture the world through the camera and re-render it on the screen.

That is an arbitrary distinction that I have never heard anyone in the industry make before.

>It is anti-social

that's why location based experiences (LBE) is the solution. Different monetization route, it's basically a theme park model (invest in cutting edge tech/high value content) and maximize throughput like a VR "ride."

Having gone through a number of the experiences I'd highly recommend them. Better than anything you can get at home, it's a fun outing with your friends, and the content is pretty awesome.

On other other hand, Star Wars Disney Land, with "location based experiences" baked into an app, isn't faring as well as analysts hoped. Outside of my mom, I don't know anyone who wants to pay to follow me around Disneyland just to watch me play with my phone (not that I've asked my mom in years).

Like I mentioned in another comment, there's no quality control and testing in the wild west of VR games on Steam so many of them are terrible and cause motion sickness. My hope with LBE is that the experiences will have been thoroughly researched and tested to mitigate the sickness problem at least. The other advantage to the theme park model is that the experiences last under 10 minutes.

Unfortunately, if the Star Trek experience I saw at Dave & Busters is any indication, the QC is not there. But this has more to do with the economic structure of these companies purchasing these experiences. They sub them out to the lowest bidder, with the budget being too small to do what they want, but no willingness to compromise on the vision. It may not even be the customer's fault, I've seen first hand consultoware managers pushing projects into directions that were not in the client's best interest, but did fit their MBA trained ideas on how to squeeze money out of clients.

I could see a revival of video game arcades based around VR, but again the social barriers to communication pose problems here too.

Also IRL clubs like sports and other hobbies where groups meet up in halls to play shared experiences. With headsets like the Quest this is much more attainable now.

I imagine that the social aspect of team sports or hobbies in groups are a big driver for participants and could not be replicated entirely with XR. There's a reason humans meet in person at e.g. a restaurant for talking instead of using a video call.

There is also a reason people lock themselves in their rooms to play games and watch TV shows, or schedule those activities around the time everyone else in the family is either not present or asleep. People like both social and individual activities, and I don't understand how VR serving primarily the latter is to be considered a problem.

You misunderstand I mean people meet up in real life (IRL) to take part in shared VR experiences where the other people are in the same physical space as you (and in the same VR space) exactly like getting together to play basketball or soccer. Think more of a holodeck kind of thing.

The people bullish on VR are the same crowd who were bullish on 3D tv. If people don't want to wear a bit of flimsy cardboard they sure as hell don't want to wear a plastic sarcophagus on their head.

> The people bullish on VR are the same crowd who were bullish on 3D tv

No we're not.

I never had the slightest interest in 3D TV. VR was compelling enough that it made me change my main focus towards learning interactive 3D.

“Plastic sarcophagus” is going to make me chuckle all day, thank you.

It reminds me more of the early days of touchscreen phone apps.

There were a lot of super gimmicky apps (remember the virtual beer app?), games whose sole reason for existence was that they could use the accelerometer (as a crappy steering wheel, etc.). Remember the shake gesture?

Granted this is far from a perfect comparison, but my point is that the content and usage patterns of smartphones have evolved, often in a different direction than people imagined 10 years ago.

Another example, early YouTube content was also very different from today's YouTube content, etc.

If VR is still around 10 years from now, I expect the use cases, UI patterns, etc. will be quite different from the vision that most people have today.

> Small kids can't be near you while you are using VR. Pets can't really be near you.

I know several parents and dog owners who have bought Oculus Quest after trying it out and they don't seem to have a problem with this. I guess they just close the door or play after bedtime.

> They probably have issues interacting with their audience since they can't easily see Twitch chat I would think.

All VR Twitch streamers use some kind of plugin that shows the chat either as a floating panel (in Beat Saber) or as a palette you can bring up Tilt Brush style (in VRChat).

Definitely the opinion of an outsider because all of these are non-problems. Other commenters have mentioned re: the anti-social / streaming / pets point but I wanted to touch on the outside visibility one.

Let me start by saying that I was a big VR skeptic until the Oculus Quest. I too thought that the outside visibility thing would be a base advantage that AR would just have over VR forever-but- surprisingly- the passthrough camera view [0] is more than good enough for several of the interactions/views you'd want to see outside of the device. You can see others, their reactions, and interact, all while having the device on your head. Soon the passthrough will also be triggerable at a moments notice too.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbh5vZaW_Dc

> As an outsider it seems that the people bullish on VR think consumers, with respect to these problems you mentioned, will just get over it because of how compelling VR is. It seems obvious to me that they will not get over it.

I agree. It reminds me of the 3D TV hype. Yes, they exist, and yes, some people use them, but it's still marginal.

On an unrelated node, I still can't believe MS killed Kinect. It is fun, it is social, it's safe if you're careful, and you can be very free with your movements if you have enough space. You can both play games and get healthier. I bought most Kinect titles ever released and it kills me there will be no more.

They did not kill the Kinect hardware, just the console experience.

I am probably a key demographic for them tech enthusiast, gamer with disposable income to cover these sorts of purchases, but the motion sickness aspect would need to be non-existent for me to spend any money on one of these.

One thing about the wild west of VR is that even if one single game solves the motion sickness aspect there are dozens more of first time developers who through ignorance or lack of care will create games that cause motion sickness.

Yeah, I don't know what it's like in Unreal land, but I suspect the learning curve tends to keep the amateurs and those not interested in going the extra mile to create a great experience away. With Unity, there is so little in the way of tools for creating good VR experiences, and many of the default tools and settings are actively bad for VR.

Unity's default stuff is so bad for VR and I've replaced so much of it in the last three years that I'm pretty close to having my own game engine. In another year, I could be completely off of Unity and running on just Xamarin.

For many people (me included), the motion sickness aspect IS non-existent.

I'm not so sure. Lack of outside visibility seems more like a feature to me than a problem with the medium; the whole point of VR is to remove you from the real world and place you in a virtual one.

As for motion sickness; with modern headsets that's generally only a problem for games which move the "camera" in ways which don't match your movement in the real world. (Such as racing games.) There's plenty of content available these days which doesn't have that problem.

Space restrictions I agree are an issue. There are a lot of games which only really need standing room to work well, but even then it can be hard to find enough space close to your PC (since the area you're standing in needs to be completely free of obstacles you could hit with your hands). I think standalone VR partially solves this problem though by increasing the number of areas you can set up in. With Quest, for example, the area you're playing in doesn't have to be near your PC; that makes it way easier to find a space that's big enough.

> the whole point of VR is to remove you from the real world

Who does this work for? It doesn't for people with spouses and children. I can't be removed from the real world when my child wants my attention. How many hours of game play do you think the average family person might have available to them where they can just remove themselves from the real world?

Given all of VR's problems, the people who will play VR games seriously enough to spend money on AAA VR games will always be a smaller subset of the overall gaming population. It's never going to be bigger than what exists already. All these billions dumped into VR as the next big thing seem to miss that the VR market is limited by the problems the parent comment mentioned.

> Who does this work for? It doesn't for people with spouses and children. I can't be removed from the real world when my child wants my attention. How many hours of game play do you think the average family person might have available to them where they can just remove themselves from the real world?

You could also ascribe the same issues for a parent who wanted to leave the house. In fact more so, since if I left the house with a small child, I can't instantly return if I become aware of some urgent situation. Yet, bars, pool halls, bowling alleys, movie theatres, restaurants, etc., etc., still seem to have survived this seemingly momenumental issue you are harping on about.

> Who does this work for? It doesn't for people with spouses and children. I can't be removed from the real world when my child wants my attention.

Couldn't you make the same argument against headphones in general? Those seem popular enough. I've even known people who used sleep masks and ear plugs when going to bed. Realistically, VR doesn't actually take you anywhere. You're still standing right there, and if a child or spouse needs your attention they can still raise their voice or even just grab you to get it. I don't think the immersiveness itself is much of a problem for most people, although there are certainly times and situations where you wouldn't want that because you need to be more aware of your surroundings.

> It doesn't for people with spouses and children.

It works perfectly well, to the extent that any single-player activity works with spouses and children. Source: I have a spouse, a child, and a VR headset.

I can't even take a long poop without my kids getting in the way, so this isn't a problem of VR.

re space restrictions/gaming, this is what I mean behind a "content" problem. With the restrictions we have, the limiting factor isn't the tech insofar as that creators don't know (yet) how to use the tech to create content. (incoming rant)

I mentioned it in another comment, but this is what LBE (location based experiences) is all about. You're not just looking at a "game" you play, but a confined piece of content that you experience, like a game, like a film, like a TV episode, but none of the above all the same. It's a completely different medium for telling a story, creating

There's a lot of really cool, niche things out there right now - creators are exploring new ways to create art that maximizes XR's ability to remove a person from their environment (wholly or in part) and uses that combined with audio and video technology to create an interactive, immersive experience as a piece of art and/or storytelling.

But the issue to me is this: if you look at the history of technology and art or multimedia, tech has almost always chased the artists' vision. And this is the problem I see with all of Google's plays into XR. They're not saying to artists: "imagine you had a medium that allowed to remove a person from their environment, construct a new one around them, immerse them in it, and interact with your vision. What would you make? What do you need?"

If you want examples of this: Walt Disney's animation studio pioneered many animation techniques and technologies. That didn't come from engineers experimenting; it came from animators wanting to create something they couldn't, and engineers figured out what to build to realize their vision. Game engines have never added features for the sake of features, they are demanded by game designers to add something new to present a new experience to the player. Same goes for paint brushes, instruments, etc etc.

And that's why I feel a lot of VR plays struggle. They're engineers putting the cart before the horse. Throw money at creators, and figure out what they need to create.

It's also why some of the best VR I've experienced has come from LBE. It's content first, figure out the platform second. Monetization third (which is interesting, since it's a theme park ride model).

If there are two things that are absolutely certain in media: if the content is compelling, the technical side is secondary. And if the content is compelling, it can be monetized. All these VR plays are screwing up by focusing on tech and money over content, which is what actually drives people to spend their money and use the tech.

> lack of any outside visibility, (...) space restrictions

Oculus Quest has managed to solve both of them, even though they do their best not to exploit it. Because it's an untenthered headset, you have to designate a "play area" for safety - and to do that, you get to see the world through headset's cameras[0], and paint it with your controllers! Even though the view is monochrome and grainy, you can see enough to walk around and do tasks. I've frequently interrupted my play to do something, without taking the headset off - as soon as you walk out of the designated play area, you get the camera feed back.

Currently, Oculus is using this view only as a safety feature, and AFAIK you can't access it as an app developer. Moreover, using the headset outside is discouraged (perhaps because direct sun focused on the optics could burn holes in the screen). But Quest is essentially a working proof of concept, showing that the possibilities are there.

--

[0] - Apparently they're used for controller tracking.

I second that. With the Oculus Rift S you can see the snowy grey world around you while using Oculus Dash with large screens, It would be nice if one could have a transparency knob, dial or slider like in Snow Crash, so you could shift your attention between worlds easily. It wouldn't surprise me if the Quest will get app alpha transparency with the real world or AR features in future iterations.

I've used the Quest in my backyard after the sun had gotten low enough to be behind a tree. It works quite well, and the extra space was a huge boon.

It should be noted that the Quest runs the Snapdragon 835 SoC, the same SoC in the Go and every other standalone headset you can actually acquire right now (specifically, Lenovo Mirage Solo and Vive Focus). It's the same SoC as the Google Pixel 2. In other words, it's old. It's why Oculus had to drop the framerate from 75Hz on the Go to 72Hz on the Quest: the added overhead of the camera tracking and higher resolution display left too little frame budget for applications.

I will immediately buy the first headset with an 855 in it. Not only will the raw performance be substantially better, but it has custom silicon in it specifically for doing image-based tracking, as well as processing higher resolution video feeds. Quest is just a preview of what is to come. I'm pretty sure we're going to get the first, decent pass-through camera modes in the next gen of mobile VR headsets.

The cameras are used for controller tracking as well as headset tracking. It’s a 6dof optical mouse.

Right. Forgot about the obvious. This is how the headset knows where it is in the world, and also how it remembers designated play areas. The UX around it is a bit buggy, but I've successfully worked with one "walking" area in one room, and another "sitting" area in a different room, and the headset would usually remember both, so I didn't have to redraw them every time.

I don't get why everyone jumped on this idea of VR where you're standing up and moving so much. I'd rather have games just like normal but with a VR headset and KB/M or controller controls.

And I don't get why people watch the NFL or play MOBAs, but there's no accounting for personal preference.

Haven't you played the Goblins and Gnomes or HTC Lab magic store demos? Just walking around in a room full of things to explore is awesome; it's the same experience you get at theme parks, just enhanced with FX.

There's also the thrill of rhythm and sports games, though those aren't much different than their non-VR counterparts.

Afaik that's where most folks suffer extreme motion sickness.

The Playstation VR is essentially just that.

VR, especially wireless as the Quest is, can work great for fitness. Exhausting is the point of that, though.

I agreed with 100% of these complaints before the oculus quest.

The external cameras turn on in the quest when I need them because I’ve gone out of bounds

The guardian helps me stay inbounds in my small space

The latency and amazing head tracking have removed all motion sickness

But it’s still just a beat saber machine. There haven’t been any major titles released in months, and it’s unclear if there will be.

We need Nintendo-style first party titles and some killer apps.

I tried Oculus only once, the first one that was sold world-wide, I believe. It was cool, but that was basically it for me. My main concern with it has always been the fact that it requires putting a device on my head for non-significant amount of time and I'm not sure about its health effects. Anybody know any research or studies that were done to this end?

I had a similar experience. I bought an Odyssey+ but returned it because I felt motion sick every time I tried it. I've read you're supposed to just power through and eventually you get used to it, but that seems like an easy way to guarantee your product will fail. I had friends try it and they also felt the same way.

AR may be a different beast. I don't usually hear people describe it as uncomfortable, mostly just lacking power and content. I also think the market for AR would be much bigger than VR. I think that is why Apple, MSFT, and Google are focusing on it.

> I've read you're supposed to just power through and eventually you get used to it

Wheeeeere did you read that?! I've been in the VR industry for the last 6 years and everyone I know vehemently recommends against doing that.

It's called, “getting your VR legs”, akin to sea legs. It worked for me, at least. As an extreme example, I can now play as a character in a space suit, twirling and spinning around for hours, without getting motion sickness. I also regularly play rally racing games where I'm constantly subjected to bumps and jumps, and don't notice it at all. This was after around 100 hours of VR, I think.

Actually I've found the experience somewhat magical, in that I get the same stress relief from being couped up all day by leaving the house to go do something outside as just playing a game for an hour or two. It feels like I'm actually going to another place, nowadays.

This really only started when I got the high end, Valve Index, which has a 90hz+ refresh rate, so maybe that has something to do with it.

That is only one component of what can cause nausea or headaches within a VR experience. Please see my reply further down for more detail

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21473859

IPD alignment is adjustable on most headsets nowadays. My experience is anecdotal anyway and I fully accept that some people can't handle it.

That said, being on a boat for hours is hardly something we were evolutionarily designed for either, yet no one writes scare mongering articles and posts about that. So you might be doing a disservice with all this worry you're stirring up.

IPD adjustment knobs are there, getting it correctly calibrated for your eyes is still not easy. It takes either a direct messiness with a ruler or a 5-10 minute calibration process in-headset.

And again, motion sickness is by far the least of your worries. My point was "don't just assume nausea is motion sickness". There are other defects that can cause nausea that are not adaptable.

> There are other defects that can cause nausea that are not adaptable.

I think you're wrong about that. Any proof?

There have been many threads on reddit about this. There aren't that many VR information sources out there so that's where I used to get VR info.

Examples: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/PSVR/comments/...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/oculus/comment...

Oh, /r/Vive and /r/oculus are dumpster fires. I don't know /r/PSVR, but considering what I know of reddit and what passes for "culture" amongst gamers, I expect it's much the same.

Very, very few actual developers in those boards.

Yes but a lot of users with real world experience.

"Getting your VR legs" is definitely a real thing.

See my reply to your sister post from TeMPOraL. I sincerely believe one should never attempt to "power through" feelings of nausea or discomfort from VR experiences.

The question of VR motion sickness is not something you want to ask developers, but actual users.

I'm not saying every developer is a psychologist, but getting advice from users is definitely the blind leading the blind.

More concretely, there are a number of different artifacts of current VR systems that will cause different side effects, depending on how long you expose yourself to them. Unfortunately, the common vernacular lumps all of those issues under the title of "simulator sickness". While simulator sickness is a well-known problem, it is by far not the only one, and if you're experiencing nausea or discomfort during a VR experience, you should not just assume it's "simulator sickness" and try to "power through".

IPD mismatch is your eye telling you things are at a different distance from where they feel when grabbing or traveling to them. In AR, this can make 3D objects look like they are swimming, yet also remaining stationary, which is disconcerting but ultimately not a big deal. In VR, it can make you feel kind of dizzy, a bit like you're swimming, because the effect is very similar to viewing things through water, or a glass of high refractive index. If you've ever had to switch between contacts and thick glasses, then yes, it is trainable.

Some people find bad depth cues to be nausea inducing. There is evidence that the brain weights different depth cues more or less strongly depending on one's overall hormonal balance. People with higher testosterone levels judge depth through motion. People with higher estrogen levels judge depth through relative object size and shadowing. This isn't just "men vs. women" as there are any number of reasons your endocrine system could be off the normal distribution, but it is why a lot of women feel very uneasy immediately upon putting on a headset and why men tend to not like monoscopic 360 content. The effect is so strong for some women that I've never seen anyone even attempt to power through it. The best solution is to stop using that particular app and start using one with better graphics.

But most importantly, low framerate can cause a violent, persistent nausea and headaches, within seconds. "simulator sickness" on the other hand, takes extended exposure to develop. Higher framerates are always better, but 75Hz seems to cover about ~85% of people, 90Hz seems to cover ~95% of people A VR experience, and 120Hz covers ~99%, which at that point is actually better numbers than people going to the movies watching action movies. This is one of the reasons I found it so disappointing that the Oculus Quest was set to 72Hz; we should be going up, not down. If the application you are using is not running a very high framerate, you're in for an extremely bad time, with it only getting worse the more you expose yourself to it. You absolutely must not try to power through low framerate.

So this is why I say "don't try to power through sim sickness". It might not be sim sickness. Take breaks whenever you feel bad. Whatever "VR legs" are, if it's just the proprioception or IPD mismatch, you'll eventually get there even if you don't "power through". But there are plenty of other issues that you should definitely not try to "power through".

So Valve and Occulus both basically just gave developers an SDK and said have at it. There were some pointers, easily ignored and there was no QA like you might have with Nintendo that would tighten up some of these issues across all VR apps. Then you have the endless variety of computer specs and a bunch of different VR hardware. It's so easy for a bad app, bad hardware, bad configuration, bad advice to upset the apple cart and cause a bad experience where it could be one of any of the issues you mentioned and others you didn't like bad tracking or just bad programming. With all that it's no doubt that their are a lot of people who 'tried VR' and gave up.

I agree completely. That said, I think those of us who have actively been in the industry more than at least a year have had to work through their own crappy software enough to at least intuitively know the issues. No, I won't take the advice of any ol' random developer, but I have not seen any users who were not also developers who knew what was what.

XR is very much tech a problem. Wearing headsets have induced headaches for me within 30 mins. The resolution is choppy. Field of view makes everything non-convincing. There is actually ton of content which is good for 5 minutes of demo-surprise factor but failing to have much of stickiness. I expect games to be major play for XR but they have to compete with 4K OLED which will now be ray casted. Adding 3D to limited field of view + low res pixelated scenes just doesn't compensate enough. XR today is like what neural networks used to be in 90s or like what TVs used to be 1950s.

As someone who plays a lot of Beat Saber and Elite Dangerous in VR daily, I don't agree. Sure some people get sick from VR but things like resolution and FOV are more than good enough for everyone I have ever showed something VR.

From what I understand, TVs were very usable and popular in the 1950s

I tend to agree that compelling content is a core reason this hasn't taken off, but that is in part because such content is resource intensive to develop. APIs & devs are exactly what is needed to lower the barrier and make content development easier and more accessible.

It's both. I love Vive and Rift and own one of those, and while content makes me want to use the device longer, the device itself makes me want to.. well not.

Vive is far too heavy and Rift has issues with lens fog (so I can't bloody see anything a minute after putting it on my head)

VR for Google on Android is still a tech problem. With Cardboard, the tracking fidelity and update rates never met the lowest bar required to have a good experience.

The big piece of missing tech for all add on solutions (daydream, etc) has been 6DoF. Without 6DoF, it's a child's toy.

Daydream has 6DoF support with the appropriate hardware (Mirage etc)

Mirage is a standalone VR system, not an add-on.

> should be throwing money at creatives, not devs or APIs or frameworks

I'm sorry, can someone explain what a creative is and why money should be thrown at them? If they're not developers than how are they going to create content? Also if there aren't good frameworks and APIs the barrier for creating content is much higher.

Come on mate. Think about Final Fantasy VII. Was the brilliance of the creativity entirely due to the new medium, or was it script / music / visual design first, 3D graphics engine second?