It’s an understatement to say that there is a load of crap on YouTube that passes for content. So much so, that even my 12 year old daughters cheered the passing of Sora. However, there is still some absolute gems, this one from Patrick Boyle worth viewing by everyone who detests Meta or doubted Zuck’s vision. Fortunately, Meta no longer tries to force the verse on you every time you boot your headset.
If you think how much of the world’s problems could have been fixed with half that amount of money…
We don’t hate billionaires enough.
Some random thoughts on VR, but I only x2’d the video just to be honest.
For sims here’s what I think:
Agree with all. IMHO, what the video does a pretty good job presenting, is that the platform wasn’t compelling enough due to lack of development, the hardware cost, and inconvenience of wearing the headset. It sure is an amazing tech for simulations and I hope that you are right about the Q3 and boutique manufacturer 's longevity.
There’ll likely be a Quest 4 late this year maybe and it’ll be light and AR focused I would guess, so Meta will keep chugging on. It’s like a big ship, in that you can turn off the engine but it’ll keep moving forward for years. Zuck is spending money on being 4th place in AI, so he’s busy on something else now.
The boutiques like Pimax (or things like Wingwing/WinCTRL for sim specialized peripherals etc) exist because you can turn up with CNC/injection design files, underwrite a 100 units and the generic Chinese production places go whirrr. It’s a bit like VR really only existed in the beginning due to phone screen pixel density making it possible as an unintended side effect, that sim VR can continue due to the commoditization of small run manufacturing in China. Plus they can still charge $1000+ and there’s a market of enthusiasts now. We’re the ant on the side of the elephant just going alone for the ride. 
Am I correct in thinking shooters will determine whether VR takes off or not? FPS just seem to dominate the market. And I guess Madden and FIFA type games.
Unknown. I suppose it might be one of either:
a. Something you can only do in AR/VR with physical actions, e.g. like Beat Saber, in that it’s a physical arm wavy game thing that only works if you are on that platform with those controllers. So maybe something that melds a real physical interaction and AR to create a new type of game? A murder-mystery that happens in your apartment, a cowboy gunfight in your kitchen etc. Hard to predict what would resonate but something might come along and capture the zeitgeist.
b. A game that just works so well in 3D in the headset that it just feels better on the platform. So less of anything revolutionary but more the Apple Vision or Steam Frame type deal where you get an enormous 3D screen in-front of you to enjoy existing 2D games. This means you don’t need a unicorn title to come along in (a), and it’s just a better console platform. So you get your FIFA/Madden/CoD/Fortnight on a device where it’s just more fun to play that existing title like that. It has to be light, cheap, non isolating and non creepy.
Like when Casey Neistat’s wife told him of his Apple Vision Pro headset, “Can you take those off? You’re scaring the kids.”
It’s tough as AR needs exterior cameras and then the Google/Meta social side sort of poisoned the well with ‘glasshole’ and the whole ‘filming people without permission’ vibe. They’re about to spend so much of trying to make it happen with Raybans etc and it’s creepy and won’t. Just set the dollars alight or something
To be fair, Facebook itself was probably just as unlikely a concept at the time as the Metaverse is now. Zuck’ had the stones to commit to a vision and stick to his guns, and if he wins in the end, documentaries of the future will probably write about it all with the same slightly condescending 20-20 vision we have of those who doubted the Wright brothers.
Zuck didn’t even come up with the concept of Facebook, they made a movie out of it and it won 3 Oscars. Like a lot in the field he just succeeded by being ‘Best Sociopath’ prepared to do whatever it took to be rich, at the right time and right place. I am not sure a Wright Brothers comparison is worthy. People shouldn’t hero worship billionaires, it’s like a hangover from serfs and kings - a lot got born on 3rd base or just lucked out. They can take some slight condescension just fine.
I am surprised that porn hasn’t been the thing that made VR take off.
Maybe ‘dolls’ have cornered the market? Perhaps it is just missing the right haptic 'peripherals?
Now I am reminded of the Red Dwarf episode Better than Life, where Kryten tells Lister - ‘Sir, that is the third groinal attachment that you have worn out this week’
Hmmm, maybe there is a marketing opportunity there?
The movie is considered to be, as one person actually involved said, “A Hollywood fantasy” and not necessarily very accurate, so I’m not sure about basing my views on that.
As far as “best sociopath” most billionaires I have taken a close look at are kind of…. Eccentric, and not generally examples of very nice people, but apparently that’s an advantage in business so, it kind of “Is what it is”, until we modify or come up with something better than capitalism.
I can admire the single minded drive, determinization and will to succeed without hero worshipping it. People have always admired success.
I kinda’ doubt Zuck is worried about condescension by anyone on earth worth less than a couple of billion dollars. My take is that after a few years, most of these guys start thinking of themselves as Gods, and the rest of humanity as their playthings.
Considering that they control our actual rulers like puppets at this point, they might just be right.
Meanwhile, they do sometimes use their wealth and power to do some actually cool things, though their motivations are not often altruistic.
I thought that it was a closed case that 99% of billionaires and successful Fortune 500 CEO’s shared the same traits as sociopaths - can present as charming and charismatic but narcissistic, complete lack of empathy, manipulative, etc.
Babiak and Hare estimate that among corporate executives, the overall rate of psychopaths is 3.9%. In general, the higher you go in an organization, the more prevalent psychopaths become. The rate is much higher among CEOs: in fact, the consensus among researchers is that CEOs are almost as likely as prisoners to be psychopathic. (Among prisoners, parolees, and those on probation, the rate is vastly higher, with one study estimating that 25% are psychopaths.) One estimate found that 21% of [American CEOs have] clinically elevated levels of psychopathy.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gautammukunda/2024/09/26/the-psychopaths-who-lead-us/
So no quite 99% but still a lot.
Although, having worked nearly 2 years for the elite as a waiter for a fancy catering business, they’re hands down the worst people I’ve ever met.
Yep, and the general consumer electronics manufactures want to sell you a 1" larger screen every year anyway.
Don’t forget you also need a pretty beefy computer to run good VR, which currently is a massive expenditure.
Probably not honestly. The big money FPS titles really don’t have gameplay mechanics that match up with VR shooting. Second you need a lot of space to move around (going prone in any direction for example) to have anything close to a realistic FPS in VR. Something like Splatoon which is a very light FPS you could probably adopt to VR reasonably well. Are there FPS games for VR, yes, but they are a very distinct type of FPS that’s not terribly similar to modern big budget FPS’s.
It was never gonna take off. The group most likely to adopt it, want the Matrix or the 'Net, or whatever your favorite hacker/decker/cyber cowboy version is. Not bobble heads in inflatable furniture settings. Your average every day non tech-enthusist doesn’t get the point of it, when they can literally just go hang out with people at coffee shop or go to lunch. When Covid hit and suddenly video meetings and chat became something everyone was using, the metaverse was pretty much dead. The idea of using it for business was laughable. Getting an executive to put on a VR headset was never going to happen, if they really needed everyone in the same room, you just make people show up. VR for meetings was a tool looking for a problem at best.
Just like with general movie watching, gaming etc, VR headsets don’t offer an experience worth the hassle and price. There are a lot of non-connected peripherals already available on the market, but they have a relatively small segment of consumers buying them, particularly the expensive ones. What the folks willing to spend a lot of money in that area are looking for is an android, not a VR headset.
I worked with lots of sociopaths in the tech sector over the years. You don’t really work with them, you just kind of work under and around them. They continuously lie, can be charismatic when they want something, have no morality and are often quite broken and unhappy people.
They are driven to keep spinning the roulette wheel on an idea when it doesn’t make any real sense to do so. It’s not smart, or insight or skill, it’s just persistence because they don’t think they can ever be really wrong.
The successful ones we know about today could keep making the bad bets until they made it or were just plain lucky. Success is directly linked to how many times you can try, and for that you need money and backing. It’s plain survivorship bias coupled with how a lottery works.
Examples: If your mother is on the board of IBM you stand a better chance of getting a deal for a new PC operating system. If you went to Harvard and got given a job to write a new social site called HarvardConnection then you stand a better chance. If your parents can give you a cool quarter million to get started on a book retail business online then that’ll help.
These people all took risks and got rewarded, I’m not saying they didn’t. But lots of other people (far far more) took similar risks and failed. The ones that failed are just plain non billionaire sociopaths and the rest are seem by others as something to emulate, and it doesn’t really work like that.
This is a fantastic post.
Reminds me of the guy who made Wordfeud and sold it. He made a lot of money with comparable little effort. He bought himself a workshop and started making furniture…
If I ever should be so clever that I would make a lot of money, I’d probably expand and commercialize my flightsim peripheral and cockpit production. I wonder how many billions I would make on that..? 
I admire nothing about Zuck. He’s a detestable human knotted in good company with dozens of other loathe-worthy tech bros. But as creepy as it was, Metaverse practically made the inexpensive Q3 possible. And it made it accessible. I don’t mod or tweak or worry or fiddle. I just put the headset on, launch link and launch the game. I simply works simply. And it asks nothing of me for the pleasure I get out of it but for me to have FB account which gets otherwise unused. Twice I visited the Horizons “metaverse” and twice I got very creeped out. The last time was when I was trying my hand at fishing. A little boy whose avatar was dressed in a rainbow jester’s suit came over to ask if I was catching any of the rarer fish. I told him that I was just trying to learn the mechanics. He promised to teach me how to do it like a pro. All was fairly normal up to this point. He then told me his age, his name and his home state. He took me to a cave and a secret pond where a particularly desirable fish was found. He asked about me. Lots of stuff about me. Finally I was like “Hey kid I think my wife is calling. I gotta go.” Yes, if you make me 10 years old and the kid 40 and substitute “mommy” for “wife”, that’s exactly how it must have appeared. That place, that CONCEPT, cannot die soon enough.