Is VR dead?

[RCHeliguy]

First I was thinking, this is just a great year for VR headsets, but now I'm thinking that I doubt these manufacturers expected quite as many others releasing a product in the same window.

Remember that profit isn't immediate. Each company needs to sell X amount of product to break even on the overhead, engineering, tooling costs, etc.. Or in the case of some pay back their loan, or satisfy sales projections to invested parties.

 

[mechsicko]

Interesting

 

[blekenbleu]

Analyst firm IDC: (AR/VR) headset shipments down 44.6% 2Q22 - 2Q23
"aging hardware from multiple vendors to further hobble growth"

 

[RCHeliguy]

There are a bunch of people bouncing off the walls working themselves up to a feverish frenzy waiting for the "imminent" Valve announcement. For some itching to buy soon, the looming Valve announcement is making them question a purchase before seeing what is coming even if it isn't available for 3 to 6 months or longer.

The number of light houses and Index Controllers being sold right now is crazy. When the Index Controllers were out of stock for 3 weeks, I saw scalpers selling them for almost $1000 a pair. People were panicking that they wouldn't be back in stock in time. They are back in stock now.

With the Bigscreen Beyond likely selling in the high 10's of thousands, along with the Aero sale and the upcoming Somnium VR1 that also uses lighthouses, it seems that both lighthouses and Index controllers will be in high demand for a while. The biggest jump to lighthouses seems to be among the Quest crowd. I still hear complaints about it's tracking even though Meta has the best inside/out tracking non-lighthouse tracking available.

I think a large percentage of the first day preorders were from Valve customers, but that demographic is sliding over time.

It's interesting that the new Valve headset will likely operate without needing lighthouses, but is still expected to support them.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Analyst firm IDC: (AR/VR) headset shipments down 44.6% 2Q22 - 2Q23
"aging hardware from multiple vendors to further hobble growth"

View attachment 696588

Quite befuddling (suddenly pineapples style) out of the blue prediction in that article.

While 2023 will be another year of decline for AR/VR headset shipments, IDC forecasts the market to rebound in 2024, growing 46.8% year over year thanks to new hardware from Meta and ByteDance, the introduction of Apple's Vision Pro, and the growing presence of smaller companies. By 2027, the market is expected to reach 30.3 million units globally.

 

[RCHeliguy]

To be fair long term projections for VR/AR are always HIGHLY optimistic.

Sadly we know how long it feels like for substantial improvements to come.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Huh.

 

[blekenbleu]

out of the blue prediction in that article

In THEORY, if some new headsets are good enough
to allow folks to see e.g. the equivalent of
a pair of 30 inch monitors anywhere they have a laptop and geeky goggles,
then plenty of road warriors may get them for work.

I felt that buying a pair of 30 inch monitors to use in my office at work
was a worthwhile productivity improvement,
not that it was rewarded by a promotion,
but perhaps in part because other employees complained,
supposing that the company had paid for them...

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Huh.

Looks like a Quest click bait. LOL, not a single fact. Ooh, some leaked secret documents. Right.

 

[RCHeliguy]

In THEORY, if some new headsets are good enough
to allow folks to see e.g. the equivalent of
a pair of 30 inch monitors anywhere they have a laptop and geeky goggles,
then plenty of road warriors may get them for work.

I felt that buying a pair of 30 inch monitors to use in my office at work
was a worthwhile productivity improvement,
not that it was rewarded by a promotion,
but perhaps in part because other employees complained,
supposing that the company had paid for them...

Been running triple 24" monitors for ages on my desktop and I've got a pop up monitor in my Laptop bag.

I like to concept of spatial computing, but a lot will need to be developed before I can replace my existing workflow. But I'm not saying that won't happen.

 

[metalnwood]

I guess it depends what you are doing, there are some tasks that you really need a lot of real estate and need to keep on eye on a number of things. I do mostly development on mine and I am just as efficient on an 14" laptop as i am on my 16:18 lg dualup screen.

It takes a little effort to get used to efficient ways of working but I no longer need lots of screens to feel like I have all I need at the tips of my fingers.

Spacial computing, which I assume is the term we are using for interacting with the computer through the headset may again not be the most efficient way to just treat it as a large area to put monitors and keep the standard windows paradigm.

I don't know as I have not really thought about it too much but I will keep to the most efficient ways which may not be the most glamorous ways, which also may not win best looking battlestation awards. Having said that I have had dual monitors for as long as i can remember but since I worked on optimising how i do things I only use half of my main monitor most of the time and really only use the side one to stream something if I am doing something boring that can let me watch something else at the same time.

I am keen on seeing how we can do things in vr when the resolution is better and what it can bring to the game but I am still reluctant to think that some of the examples/demos I have seen in videos will be the best way to actually do things, it's bad enough for me to look side to side if I constantly have to let alone cover half my room in large screens. I am pretty sure there will be a really nice way to make it work though.

 

[RCHeliguy]

More people get on the Brad train.

Valve preps SteamVR overhaul as excitement grows for rumoured headset

You never know with Valve. But it looks like it's getting ready for something.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[RCHeliguy]

@metalnwood I know people who have adapted to running on a single screen. In my experience, I can make due with 2 screens but it slows me down.

I typically have a Visual Studio screen taking up a full window on my center display, a communication window with email, MS Teams etc.. and a reference screen for looking things up. When debugging web applications, it's handy to have VS debug screen, a browser and a developer tools screen up. I used to have SQL server up or have multiple Virtual machines up. These days I'll be remoted into servers in the cloud, but same difference.

Everyone has a different workflow, so I can't say what works best for anyone but myself. I've tried many different things out.

 

[metalnwood]

In the end, I couldn't deal with a fixed keyboard and screens left and right. My neck and its old injury would no longer let me deal with working on things that were not in front of me for an extended period of time.

However finding out about tiling window managers, keyboard driven workflows I can put what I want in front of me faster than I could turn my head and focus something on a different screen. There are a couple tech things I am glad I got my kids in to early, one is touch typing with both of them blazing past 100wpm around 12 years old and the other was not using the mouse unless you need to use the mouse. It sounds a bit archaic and you can't always not use a mouse but you are a lot closer from the thought of doing something to actually doing it.

If I didn't have those health issues I wouldn't have changed how I do things an would probably not like the idea of it, but it was a great move.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

I have used dual, triple and single curved UWD 38" 21:9 monitor for my workstation.
Like UWD setup the most. It's one continuous uninterrupted wide workspace where you can arrange windows in different way, instead of hard boundaries detached secondary monitors.

 

[RCHeliguy]

In terms of the VR being dead thing, Valve is now putting VR releases "front and center" in the store. So it looks like they are going to start actively pushing VR vs. just including VR titles.

Steam :: SteamVR :: SteamVR Beta Updated - 2.0.1

Greetings! Today we are shipping SteamVR 2.0 in beta. We see this is as the first major step toward our goal of bringing all of what's new on the Steam platform into VR. In order to use all the features in this beta, you must also opt into the Steam Client Beta (see instructions below). Users...

steamcommunity.com

 

[RCHeliguy]

Very cool!

 

[blekenbleu]

How SteamOS is contributing to the Linux ecosystem.
If/when Linux usefully supports sim VR,
it will in no small part be thanks to Valve's Proton contributions:

• Wine
• DXVK
• VKD3D-Proton

.. reportedly already running ACC in VR with e.g. G29

19 VR supported Steam games for SteamOS and Linux (English)
Steam for Linux Community

 

[RCHeliguy]

The SteamDeck is a linux device and it "appears" that they are taking that Linux support to a new level going forward.

 

[RCHeliguy]

The people waiting for the Deckard announcement are beating up the Meta Event. I'm not sure who is benefiting more from this. Is Meta getting a lot more people watching them because of this, or is Valve getting a bunch of free advertising now whether they announce anything or not....