> VR wouldn’t even be a thing anymore without their efforts.

As long as Facebook owns it, it may as well not be a thing to me. Facebook "saving" VR is a utterly pyrrhic victory. If facebook owns it then it wasn't worth saving.

I’ll happily let them spend the billions in R&D to develop the hardware, sdks, and advertising to the mainstream though. Hopefully they do all the hard work so when a decent company comes in, there’s a lot less to do for a much more developed ecosystem.

Same. I don't trust Zuck with the ecosystem so I'll just sit it out. I might get an Index one day.

I’m at least happy right now that “vote with wallet” thing worked this time. I’m sure they got the message, and I’m sure that VR industry will resume regular programme.

It’s funny that the collective anti-Facebook sentiment is so strong that we managed to starve Oculus of content and possibly burnt through their budget for loss leader.

I mean, so far the three titles I would call "non-Indie", those being Fallout VR, Skyrim VR and HL: Alyx, are PC VR exclusives.

Stuff like Beat Saber and VRChat which are the most succesful VR games, predate the Quest, and are probaby helped that beat saber only needs the motion controls part of VR - were it not for facebook using it to sell the Quest nowadays, we would have had a switch port by now I feel.

And VRchat doesn't even require VR, it also has a regular desktop client.

You can play any PCVR games on Quest by either using a cable or through airlink connecting to your PC. Both are native features. I've played through Half-Life: Alyx this way with zero issues whatsoever.

Right but this is just using the Quest as a peripheral for PC VR, and therefore has the same issues that parent was complaining about with PC VR in terms of hardware requirements, because it is just PC VR

While VRChat supports regular desktops, if it was only on desktops then I suspect it would be seen as a Second Life clone.

(From what I read, Second Life only runs on VR as a janky 3rd party hack, not an official release. But my info may be out of date).

>we would have had a switch port by now I feel.

Only one switch controller can do 6DoF tracking and I don't think it would be that accurate either.

>VR wouldn’t even be a thing anymore without their efforts.

A headset with multiple cameras on it, connected to the internet, scanning my surroundings, and phoning home to Meta/Facebook. Hard for me to imagine a more dystopian future for VR than the one envisioned by Zuck. I'd rather VR not be a thing than for Meta/Facebook to dominate it.

I agree. Games are selling 10-20x more on the Quest compared to the PC. It's making VR accessible and cheap for everyone. And the market is open for someone else to release a cheap headset if they like rather than requiring people to spend thousands of dollars and have complicated setups.

> And the market is open for someone else to release a cheap headset

Increasing difficult as most apps are on Meta's platform now.

Apple is big enough to make it happen and there are plenty of iOS game devs out there to make it a success.

This is revisionist history. Facebook didn't contribute to the early days of modern VR, they just came in and bought it once someone else had done the hard work. The first VR headset that let you get up and move around with motion controls was the Vive, not even anything from Oculus.

I don't particularly care about that if I'm being honest.

I really don't think there's much room creatively for non-indie VR games that fit on a standalone headset.

I'm sure there's something, but you can already do so much with something like beatsaber or superhot that I don't feel myself yearning for all that much more.

If we could use (say) AI techniques to create VR versions of classic movies, that would be cool and I'd pay a pretty penny for it, or even VR-specific works that actually explore the implications of the medium (I could see tomorrow's equivalent of black mirror's bandersnatch doing this), but I don't feel like my VR headset is a wasted investment at the moment.

Even just for flight sims and simracing it's genuinely fantastic. I'm probably never going to race at Le Mans at night in the rain, I want to though, so my brain makes the rest up for me when I put the headset on.

5 millions PSVR sold beg to differ.

That's an estimated 1/3 of what Quest 2 sold [1]. And Sony already has a huge install base of subsidized consoles to sell into, whereas high end PCs required to run VR are a rarity.

[1] https://uploadvr.com/quest-2-sold-almost-15-million-idc

I was disproving his point about VR being dead without Oculus. Prior to Quest 2 launch they weren't even the leader, 1.5 years after that launch they are basically only game in town(not for long, PSVR2, next gen Valve headset and Apple are coming soon). And VR-capable PCs aren't that rare, you basically need performance of 1060 and half of Steam userbase have that.

Valve partnered with HTC on the Vive. While HTC has now decided to pivot away from consumer/enthusiast VR headsets, Valve never gave up.

What complexity and hardware costs are you referring to? You need to have a decent graphics card, which most PC gamers do, and connecting the headset is just plugging in the cables into the PC (HDMI and USB for ours)

There are a lot of us tech enthusiasts who just have one laptop for business/research, zero or one not-current-gen games consoles and maybe a sorry looking ancient desktop. This makes the Quest an attractive and unique new treat to drop a couple hundred GBP on, obviously less so now.

Tracking stations are a real struggle with Index. Headsets that don't track position of the head are uncomfortable.

What?! You give Meta way too much credit