I think you're wrong in saying there's a limit when it comes to AR.

Our smartphones are AR devices, a poorly interfaced cybernetic extension. It's a cumbersome device yet unimaginably successful.

This poor AR device has constraints that will always hamper it. It must be of a certain size to display anything useful/readable and to be a useful touch-operated device.

If people put up with this poor device and it's slow information delivery, due to the poor human-computer interface, then they sure as hell will put up with AR devices of the future.

This new wave of AR need not have near as hampering constraints.

AR has the potential to be more successful than the modern smartphone when products are as uncumbersome, lightweight and comfortable to wear as regular glasses/sunglasses, while having the technical specs to augment reality with razor sharp and useful 2D and 3D overlays, and sound.

I see no reason people will be more reluctant to put on a pair of sunglasses than carry an iPhone in their pocket or purse.

Then there are other AR product forms, like contact lenses.

AR has a wide host of useful applications, both civilian, social (recreational), military, engineering, medicine, etc. That's not the future, for most of these branches it is already in great use. There's a ton of R&D going on in this space.

This seems far-fetched to me.

Mojo (https://spectrum.ieee.org/ar-in-a-contact-lens-its-the-real-...) claims to be on track for this, but:

- their "working demo" is apparently not actually wearable

- it has no built-in battery -- if I have to wear an inductive charger around my eye, I may as well wear smart glasses, right?

- the whole thing has a bit of a Theranos feel about it

I'm skeptical.

Surely the fact that this is exactly what happened with earlier product releases must count as a reason... And come on, AR contact lenses? In what century exactly? If you think that's what's going to rescue Meta, I've got some FB I'd like to (short) sell you.

I agree. I disagree however that VR is already here. It isn’t, not even close. And it will keep getting further away as we push for higher resolution and higher frame rate displays.

I think there needs to be some way to power this thing all day long. Maybe Apple was onto something with its Apple Watch strategy. Create a minimally viable product and only introduce new features very slowly so you can still claim all day battery life in a happy path. Tl;dr I don’t think the limiting factor is VR itself but rather how do we power it. I don’t want something on my head that I have to charge every fifteen minutes.

It's an interesting thing to say because, one of the pending killer apps for VR is liberating us from our clunky rectangular meatworld screens that can't travel with us. It's still too low resolution now in affordable hardware, but it's at a tipping point and it is going to be quite exciting to see it cross that. I wouldn't rule out that in 5 years from now, a sizeable percentage of the professional computing workforce is using VR just for this reason alone.

I am never wearing a VR headset all day to save space. The day this rolls out I am asking for an exception for real monitors.

I honestly don't think this is ever going to happen though. Everyone is just caught up in this hype cycle.

The VR office is probably going to be open concept, like a bunch or chairs in a room.

VR shuts you off from the world, and only permits you to interact with people digitally. My view is this is only ever going to be a niche play for gaming and some commerce (e.g architecture, game design).

AR on the other hand at its most minimal is a set of specs, and you only seeing reality. Nothing has to be always on, as someone who wears glasses this is my current world. Now introduce the ability to insert virtual objects (e.g a virtual computer screen) and my world is a little bit better. Wire it together so people can share the augment, and possibilities become limitless.

Alastair Reynolds wrote a good series of books (Blue Remembered Earth) where AR was envisioned rather extensively and it was compelling. As such I view AR as the future of all computing and the market correspondingly huge.

If they are betting the company on VR and a "metaverse" then maybe they have reached a cap on unique users already and the growth of FB is done.

Not everything has to be a household name to be considered a success. Second life is very niche and very successful.

No. I remember TV companies pushing it since it was cheap for them to include and they hoped people would think of it as the "Next Big Thing", but consumers and especially reviewers during the aughts saw right through it.

Even in the 90's I remember it being seen as a short-lived novelty more than anything: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1997-05-02-970502...

Regardless what you think of VR I think there are clearly far more bulls than 3D TV ever had.

My Quest 2 doesn't give me motion sickness at all but I am susceptible to motion sickness when someone is driving/flying or on a boat. Still, two very distinct things that make a very different statistic.

It seems probable that motion sickness in VR will be less of a problem in the future as technology and techniques improve. Most people seem to be able to cope with it at the current level.

I’d say getting around has more utility than being in the metaverse.

While the image quality and frame rate have improved, there are still fundamental limitations on the technology. One common pushback is that some people will get headaches due to scanning the scene, trying to focus on objects at their false depths.

3D film is a pain, way more than double the work. So most 3D content actually was made 3D in post rather than filming with multiple cameras.

Still, the way you would frame a scene to be 'interesting' in 3D is different from how you would do so in 2D. This usually results in being able to 'tell' whether a movie you are watching was primarily made for one market or another.

VR adds something other than image quality - it adds the ability to be immersed in the content. However you still have the same issues:

- So far, we don't have consumer headsets that enable you to actually focus on the objects in the scene. For example, you can't hold a piece of paper up to your face to read the fine print. - Trying to capture certain kinds of media is infeasibly expensive in VR, both from a post-production cost perspective and a data size expectation. Live action basically is too difficult.

The latest incarnation of 3D movies were in a sense a clever business maneuver - it created a premium tier of movie experience and got many theaters to start upgrading their older projection equipment and screens to newer digital alternatives.

For home use, 3D movies were weird because they didn't follow the traditional hype curve. A lot of early adoption was by families, where unfortunately the shutter glasses still tended to be too expensive for young hands. But that market has the same thing - manufacturers will eventually take technology and reduce it down to cost, so how can you compel people to buy the newest fancy screen where you still have a good margin?

Note several television manufacturers are now trying to proceed advertising and sales revenue, which is why smart TVs have now taken over - a 15-30% cut on a HBO Max subscription adds up to real money quickly over their typically poor margins on the sale of the set.

If the Metaverse means I can watch hatespeech + antivaxx posts, pictures of peoples lunch on a 3D canvas or cat videos, I pass.

I can confirm that it was.

So has VR a couple of times in the history of computer based entertainment, so the analogy hold IMO.

> VR adds something other than image quality - it adds the ability to be immersed in the content

Exactly. And it needs content that is noticeably improved by VR without obvious disadvantages, and there have been few examples of where the benefit has been enough to counter the faf. I've played a bit of Elite with an expensive VR setup and it was great but that doesn't hit the movement issue as being sat in a fixed place matches the immersion requirement of the largest part of the game (being sat in a cockpit), and I'm told Half-Life: Alyx is good enough that the constraints imposed by VR don't impact the immersion enough to break it. But those are the only two examples I can cite: you need people like me (a techie who doesn't game much at all these days despite doing so a lot a decade or two ago) and the less techie public to be able to identify more than two or three great examples for the product to have any hope of being more than niche. This isn't just a technology gap (between what we can do now and what people see on TV with things like the holodeck) but also an issue of making suitable content good enough is more difficult to get right.

Having said that, I’m also skeptical of the whole metaverse thing, as we had that stuff a long time ago already (Second Life) and it was a flop. VR needs to become extremely ubiquitous and hassle-free for such a thing to work.

A flop? I remember watching a documentary a while back saying some people were totally addicted to it. I'm not sure if they're still afloat these days, though. Might go the way of Playstation Home (which I genuinely liked!).

not necessarily a good thing

Metaverse is not a utopia but a dystopia!

edit: typo

Blockchain is IMO in a much much much more questionable state of relevancy and usefulness than VR.

Why?

I workout in VR (supplemental workouts by playing Eleven Table Tennis to the max).

I boardgame in VR (Demeo).

My GF picks up my headset and plays Beatsaber.

You can have multiple screens in VR. While I'm not the biggest fan of them, I will be if I'd travel to another country, not being able to bring my monitors.

Oh, and I've convinced quite a few of my friends to do the same (workout, gaming, productivity).

VR is already here mate. People game, people exercise, people get new experiences by watching VR videos (I got better at skiing because of it), people are using its productivity apps to design stuff (think about designing game in Unreal Engine using VR). There are certain use-cases in which VR outperforms anything else (and in most use-cases it doesn't).

VR has tons of uses!

It's not perfect by any means, but we're slowly getting there. 4000x4000 per eye is the hallmark I will be patiently waiting for. Better omni-directional threadmills are something I will hope for. We already are beginning to have haptic feedback suits from owo. I'm not a fan of haptic feedback suits, but others are.

VR is here to stay. It won't replace anything, it will augment how we are going about our daily stuff.

Whereas with blockchain, well, it's mostly used for speculation and I still haven't seen people use it as a legitimate currency. And this includes myself! Like, I used bitcoin to buy a bitcoin wallet, but does that count? I don't think so. The current use of blockchain in terms of cryptocurrencies is speculation (at the moment) and I am hoping it will change, but I wonder if it ever will. And I am a fan of the whole thing, but let's not kid ourselves. I hope the unbanked will use it. I hope people in super high inflationary countries will use it (because as volatile is bitcoin is, it beats any currency with hyper inflation). Unfortunately, I don't have any insights on the unbanked.

This is the problem with VR. It started the adoption process the wrong way - instead of positioning itself as a work enabling tool that you buy for a killer feature - it's just a gimmicky toy that has reasonable stigma around it among normal people (non-techies).

If your phone was just a 1000$ gaming handheld it would be a niche product, at best something like a 3DS. But gaming is the biggest market on phones.

Likewise if VR ever wanted to get mainstream adoption it needed to have a killer feature like enabling ultra portable/productive workspaces. Imagine everyone working from home buying a 500$ VR headset for remote work - totally reasonable - in the price range of a monitor. And then you have a huge market for games when the people are used to it. Now it's just a nerdy gimmick.

The way I see VR right now is a niche version of a gaming console with high barriers to entry and bad image. Gaming consoles took decades to get widespread adoption.

I'd claim that VR will be niche until it becomes AR. When I can see my keyboard and get multiple floaty screens,that will be productivity. Pokemon Go in AR? Skyrim AR? AR shooters in converted warehouses? Horror games in my house? That'll be games.

Practicing without the weight of impact of a club/racket is good.

Its niche but definitely a new dawn for gaming. FB might be too early but they're in the right space.

The Quest 2 supports the magic keyboard and has multiple screens in the home screen.

Have you played Eleven Table Tennis? Have you played Thrill of the Fight? That's exercise right there!

Sadly I also suspect that blockchain will go down with the whole cryptocurrency ship due to guilt-by-association, much like the AI winter that followed the overhyped 1980s era took with it a number of viable limited-domain solutions that had to wander the desert for 20-30 years before being revivified for the current AI/ML efforts.

Well I challenge you to find a single real-life use of blockchain that is not tied to cryptocurrencies then.

Find a single problem that is best solved using blockchain, but doesn't involve crypto.

What the startup did NOT want to be is the single source of authority or federation for permissions, group membership, user management, etc (they would not only become the single point of attack but the devices themselves would be dependent upon the existence of the company continuing to provide federation services, so going-out-of-business would render the devices useless).

The most obvious solution to those issues was a blockchain-based system. As long as devices existed they could continue to interop, the entries in the blockchain provided audit trails, the entries could be replayed for sync purposes, etc.

Basically, limited to niche games and simulation training. Where as AR has more usefulness than VR does. But it doesn't matter since Meta is working in both of those industries.

> Whereas with blockchain, well, it's mostly used for speculation and I still haven't seen people use it as a legitimate currency.

What is wrong with using stablecoins? Everyone knows Bitcoin has failed in being useful for payments or how very volatile it is for a business to use.

Who is exactly printing tons of these stablecoins, USDP? or any other regulated stablecoin?

> and you have the no chargebacks part of crypto.

And using cryptocurrencies eliminates chargeback fraud which that is abused by the users. The merchants can get their accounts shutdown and their money withheld for months due to the payment processors locking the money and they always side with the bank, which of whom have no context if the chargeback is fraudulent or not.

I don't see how one can use stablecoins for speculation purposes, which one can do with Bitcoin, which that is completely unsuitable for payments.

Pre-covid we had a bar that accepted BTC using Lightning Network :(

And that assumes they aren't using one of those services that accepts BTC and automatically converts it to USD at the time of the sale.

Well. That's the key point. Lots of people did social networks. Several had a lot if success with them. Remember circa 2007? FB was one of many. Zuck made a social network that (a) got and stayed popular (b) made no way and (c) successfully changed user behaviour. Before FB, social media was mostly anonymous and targeted at young, fringe or techno-elite online culture. FB are mass market.

I agree that VR is yet to be seen, and that fb's ability to execute is dubious. But, Zuck is more capable than most/all CEOs of social media seen this far.

Twitter us more if a lucky shot.

It remains true though that social media, generally, is not technically demanding. That said, the demands of scale complicate that. Look at Amazon and aws.

There aren't many fb-scale tech companies out there. It's not competition in an infinite field. It's competition in a field of one.. or perhaps three. JPMorgan or Berkshire Hathaway aren't going to beat them at this game. If it's a matter of beating other mega scale tech shops, it may be just a matter of executing better than not executing.

Competition at the ground floor (say series A) is brutal. Even if you're brilliant, you probably need a great strategy and greater luck. Competition at the mid range is meaningful. A Zara, Boots or OnePlus or whatnot still need to beat other players. At the FB/google level... there just aren't enough players. They don't necessarily compete at all, against other players. Products can succeed or fail, but it's not about head to head abilities. Where competition actually exists, like azure/aws, at best it's usually a field of 2 or 6 possible competitors with a chance of outside disruption. They're not in a "beat restaurant in town" game.

I loved Myspace. I met so many cool people in my 20s in that 2-3 year window they had that I never would have otherwise. My mom though was never joining Myspace. Myspace was almost closer to a dating site to find new friends as much as connecting with people you already knew.

Games are not really a good example of why you would want to have that. Not at least yet.

See for example

https://sitevision.trimble.com/

VR as a new way of human existence as the current metaverse hype claims - for that, I've not seen any concrete proofs of yet.

Also VR as some kind of social networking replacement seems unlikely to me because huge par of the time people spend on social networks is not while sitting at home dedicating time to this activity. Most people are not going to lug around VR headset everywhere they go.

I would recommend VR videos though, there are a few from Oculus TV which are amazing, they are an entirely new experience.

I wouldn't even go that far: it was merely executed well enough that it didn't squander being in the right place at the right time by being terrible.

This is one of the reasons why getting a minimal viable product out quickly (where the definition of “minimal viable” includes that not-being-terrible caveat) can be so important when working on a new idea.

Facebook figured out that using your real full name in an electronic social network had huge advantages in terms of connecting your real world social network.

They killed Myspace because of the network effect the above had when people started finding their friends from high school easily online. Early on I think you even had to join a network specifically for your high school so everyone had their first and last names along with their labeling for their high school.

It sounds stupid and obvious now but before Facebook the average person didn't broadcast their first and last name on the internet.

Right thing¹, right place, right time, executed well enough.

[1] whether this thing was an act of genius or just the right thing if several thrown at the wall, we could possibly debate.