Microsoft has fired their entire AR and VR programs
(archive.ph)
Comments (48)
sorted by:
not surprising in the least. VR is a gimmick that is great for hobbyists and coomers, but was never going to see wide adoption. AR is just a meme straight out.
I think VR and AR are still good, it's just the people designing stuff for them are terrible.
It pains me that this amazing tech is in the hands of the worst people. Looking through the oculus tv app and seeing the majority of content is just propaganda about feminism and black empowerment is so disappointing.
This is a giant corporation trying to mimic a good idea that goes directly against what they do. They add on the idea based on how they think it works.
As someone who used VR quite a bit in the past and got a little annoyed with the headsets, I think you'd see a lot more adoption among casuals when we get to simple lightweight VR "glasses", instead of goggles. It's kind of a hot take among designers because most people claim you need to completely close off the periphery to achieve immersion. I don't think that's necessary for many use cases, and our eyes have an amazing ability to ignore the periphery when we're focused on something. The more hardcore users would buy full vision headsets.
Still, it will ALWAYS be a niche peripheral like HDR monitors and joysticks. That's its success state.
At the very least they should look like steampunk goggles. With the pancake designs coming out that looks possible.
What I realized is that most of the time I didn't want to be that level of immersed in my game. It's requiring too much... of my body, of my attention, and a lot of times of my space. I remember trying to get Skyrim going as a seated game and smashing the controller into my couch trying swing down off my horse, lol.
I'd play a lot more if the goggles were light and wireless, and it didn't take a full-on basically desktop gaming rig to power a normal game. But I still don't think I'd spend most of my gaming time attached.
VR will be big eventually, just not yet. Too many tech companies like Facebook over-invested in VR trying to make it "the next big thing" when the technology and costs simply are not there yet. In 10-20 years, sure. People try to push things too early, waste money, and fail.
it will never ever succeed on the scale it's proponents think. I had VR, quickly got bored of it
You could have said the same thing about the internet in the 90s. Just wait until better games and applications come out for it. Eventually it has greater growth potential than monitor + keyboard and mouse or console. But the hardware needs to get cheaper and the games/applications need to get a lot better. Right now I have no interest in it because it probably can't do anything better than a PC except maybe porn.
It's not about having a killer app. It's the fact you shut off the outside, people just don't care for it. Sure I'll still pop in occasionally - but it will never (for example) take over from my tv and controller for FIFA
FIFA?
There we go
the best RTS in the world
Until VR is as small and simple as a pair of glasses it won’t take off like how people envision.
At the end of the day people don’t want to strap a brick to their face.
This is how all tech starts out. Early adopters are always the hobbyists.
indeed, but how much of that tech makes it into the consumer level? The closest VR has gotten is being a toy for rich parents to give their kids, who can't share it easily with their friends. by and large VR does not have the adoption that other tech like personal computers and video game consoles had. barring some kind of major revolution, it's never going to.
Yeah but even the most expensive VR kits are awkward AF right now. When a VR headset costs the same as a nintendo controller and weighs not much more than an ordinary pair of glasses, if people still don't want to use it I'll say it's dead as entertainment. But I think making that determination while the technology still sucks is premature. I guess it would be kind of like saying cell phones would never take off back when they were the size of a suitcase.
that would be a revolution. I don't see it happening, but if it does I would agree that VR would probably become a lot more popular.
Oh I'm taking it for granted it will eventually. No one ever won betting against tech miniaturization/cost reduction. I couldn't give you a timeline on this.
if the technology existed today, it would be a big gamble to produce it at a scale cheap enough for what you describe. there need to be some serious pokémon GO style hits to set it off, along with a heavy marketing campaign. after all that, you are still betting that the game playing public will mass adopt this new paradigm when gaming is declining in general.
VR isn't taking off like people imagined because:
It's expensive
It's complicated
It's uncomfortable
There aren't any good games for it
People don't want to look like dorks
1,2, and 3 is just a matter of time.
4 is easily explainable as a consequence of the same primitiveness as 1-3.
5 is a longer term problem, but people who used to have computers in their watches were considered dorky not that long ago. Now, you wouldn't think much about it.
I still think smartwatches are for dweebs. Up there with people who willingly put wiretaps in their home
and almost a quarter of people that use it get motion sickness
Wasn't Microsoft trying to apply AR for the military but completely fucked it up that the military itself dropped it because it put the soldiers in more danger using it than not?
It's usually these big contracts is the reason this stuff gets developed anyway so if they fucked it up due to their own incompetence then probably why they shut it down.
I still find it disappointing no company hasn't just done Yu Gi Oh in AR or VR....
There is a big difference between the government studying a technology and them buying it to deploy. The test of AR for the military may well have been considered a success as it made clear what the problems will be. It would have been a much bigger deal if MS was contracted for an actual weapons system and failed to deliver.
It seems an almost certainty that AR will be applied to the military before any other group. It's basically night vision goggles on steroids, and look how popular those are.
It may have even been a foregone conclusion for the military that the technology was interesting but not ready yet. But you don't know how far off you are unless you try.
You got it pretty succinctly.
I'm working on something like the YuGiOh idea. Just trying to get the system to work first.
yeah, I posted that story a while back, CBF finding the link though
edit: the link is actually in OP's archive - https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/340248-army-soldier-says-using-microsofts-hololens-ar-goggles-could-get-them-killed
Sometimes my over posting helps
Speaking of Yu Gi Oh, anyone else notice YouTube giving them a lot of videos on Yu Gi Oh?
My old university did get some hololenses a few years ago and we were able to do some projects with it.
Of course this included us being allowed to play the games it came with. The scanning of a room works really fucking well and Fragments was fun to play. Probably not in a messy living room, but in our lab it was cool. The characters/objects were placed in the room and you could walk around them and observe them from all angles. The experience was honestly just "wow".
Another cool thing was Holoportation (though the capturing & transformation of data is the big problem - the replay is relatively easy).
Really sucks that it's gone.
Agreed, it looked cool. I liked the Minecraft edition they showed off.
At what point do we think the Zuck will realize he's wrong about VR?
I don’t think he’s wrong in my opinion. I have the Go and the Quest 1 and will probably get whatever comes after the Quest 2. It’s pretty mind blowing when you first put them on. The technology is really good and works well. They have some good games, Tetris is awesome in VR, and a few good YouTube videos. The problem is that’s about all there is. It’s a novelty. There’s just not enough good content to keep you using it all the time. If he can fix that I think he will start to get some traction with his headsets and VR in general. We’ll see.
Have you played Half-Life Alyx? I believe you can play it on the Q2 from a PC with Airlink or Virtual Desktop. I don't think anything meta ever puts out can compete. One of their mistakes was putting out a virtual spaces app that looks generations behind VRChat.
Alyx is cool, but the only way I've played it is tethered to a fat GPU
Haven’t played it. That’s actually why I skipped the 2. I was really hoping I could play half-life on it without having to use a PC but the stand alone headset is just not there yet. I’ve been mostly a console gamer since the first Xbox and I didn’t want to put together a PC just to play Alyx. I hear it’s awesome though and I’ve been halfway pricing parts for a build that can run it. I agree with you though there’s nothing even close from meta. The virtual chat looks like something that should be on the wii and most games on there feel half done and thrown together. I honestly think Zuck should just try to buy out the competition. Steam on the Quest is really what would make it a great experience.
no hololense? oh well that seemed promising
An assoicate points out that Microsoft has a problem with design. An amazing and passionate person creates this amazing product, and then someone who just wants a promotion is put in charge.
Microsoft has a Project Management issue.
They have NEVER been able to properly implement a methodology that doesn't shit down the mouth of the engineer teams. It irritates the fuck out of me and I could go on a fucking rant about how badly Microsoft has fucked up the PM industry.
Every time I say VR is a failure some fanboy pops up with a bunch of reasons why it's not. And still VR is dead
Not surprising. Microsoft never has a long attention span for niche things.
Zune was a surprisingly good product
They've realized what the 1980s already knew, and are now posting this like they were the first to discover it. How meta.
Woah woah woah woah woah. There's nothing wrong with cryptocurrency. Hint if you're worried about the price of cryptocurrency fluctuating, you're doing it wrong. It works fine as currency -- the thing it's supposed to be. If I buy some bitcoin and trade it away in an hour or in the same transaction, I don't care if it's long term stable vs the dollar. True, it is inconvenient for investment that currencies fluctuate at all, but you also need them to do so or there is no point in having more than one.