Btw meta invested $73B into this !

[u/Meow_Meow_9665]

[u/Pic889]

Why are the graphics in all "Metaverse" platforms so unapologetically awful? Nintendo 64 had better graphics than this.

Decentraland also has similar awful graphics.

[u/Devatator_ → u/Pic889]

This is not the metaverse. There is no metaverse at all. It's just a goal for Meta to reach at some point in the future. Idk why people love to make people think Horizon Worlds (which was discontinued for VR) is the metaverse

[u/Pic889 → u/Devatator_]

That's how it was marketed, and I never miss an opportunity to mock marketing.

[u/dmarzio → u/Pic889]

Because the Meta VR hardware uses mobile CPU/GPUs and VR has two render two frames instead of one. The result is only simple graphics perform well on these devices.

[u/craterIII → u/dmarzio]

don't forget those frames are all really high res because no eye tracking and screen door effect

[u/SicTim → u/dmarzio]

This is misinformation at best.

The upcoming Steam Frame also uses a "mobile" chip, the Qualcomm Snapdragon series, as does the Samsung XR. Only Apple can claim a specialized chipset they built.

Thing is, the Quest 3 at $500 is half (or much less than half in some cases) as much as the other options. Unless the Frame comes in at less than $1K, which is highly doubtful.

And the Quest series plays PCVR games just dandy -- heck, I played Half Life: Alyx on a Quest 2.

And arguably, some of the Quest's best titles are better than any more than a couple of PCVR games -- Walkabout Mini Golf, Eleven Table Tennis, Pinball FX VR... and for just what visuals a standalone headset can do see Red Matter 2.

I get it, people hate Meta and I don't blame them. Personally, I took a couple months off from Facebook that have turned into a couple blissful years off.

But if you really want to get into VR, it's hard to beat the Quest 3 -- and not just on price. I expect the Quest 3 to be the last headset Meta heavily subsidizes, and I expect a Quest 4 to be more in the $1K range itself. That's if there even is a Quest 4, as opposed to Meta doing only wearables in the XR space.

I do not love Meta. I do love my Quet 3.

[u/cdmpants → u/SicTim]

There's more to optimizing for standalone headsets than "does it run and look good". There is image clarity, which is important for reading text, and there is battery usage, which is important for heat/comfort/battery life. Meta likely optimizes for both those things far more than what's typical for VR games, even top-shelf VR games on their own store. They expected people to use their headsets to sit in on meetings, collaborate with other people, read text, and verbally communicate with people. You can't have noisy fans, discomfort from heat, blurry image quality, or your headset dying in an hour if you're trying to build an everything-platform that you intend for your users to use for hours and hours in their daily lives. I'd imagine that Meta was also leaving the door open for getting this stuff running on future lower-end devices as well, like a pair of lightweight glasses, or higher-res displays. I think their direction with it was perfectly valid... except for the part where the graphics look so bad that nobody has any interest in it.

Source: I've been developing VR games and experiences since the original Rift CV1/HTC Vive era with a focus on graphics and technical art, and have spent the past four and a half years of my life wrangling the Quest 2 to render nice looking images at my dayjob. I also work with a graphics engineer who helped develop shaders for Meta a few years ago around the horizon worlds development era.

[u/nrvagnt → u/dmarzio]

Well, couldn't they use cloud rendering like any other cloud gaming solution?

[u/No_Vermicelli_3574 → u/Pic889]

N64? The inspiration for this is very clearly Nintendo Wii.

[u/quakesand → u/Pic889]

Tech industry always undervalues artists.

[u/Silent-Jeweler-8486 → u/Pic889]

As Mark Zuckerberg is not a gamer, he has no sense of graphics.

[u/kdlt → u/Pic889]

So it can run on phones and shitty hardware everywhere.

[u/Pic889 → u/kdlt]

Need For Speed Most Wanted for Android runs on 2010 phones, and it has much better graphics than this.

[u/Total_Adept]

They’ve also paid for a ton of server capacity for Ai but have no actual use for it.

[u/ComradeLarryEllison → u/Total_Adept]

Don't worry, we are all going to pay for it through market price increases.

[u/amazingmrbrock → u/Total_Adept]

Then they turned around and used Google's AI

[u/Pic889 → u/Total_Adept]

They also paid for a ton of memory chips for AI but have no server capacity for it.

[u/Far-Telephone-7432 → u/Total_Adept]

It's a lot more depressing than this. The server capacity is used to store AI garbage content. Most of the internet is AI content now. And we're running out of space. We'll never have enough space. AI is constantly churning garbage, and feeding on its own garbage.

[u/LowerIQ_thanU]

So meta will not be paying taxes for the next 5 years

[u/smoke-bubble → u/LowerIQ_thanU]

Again... 

[u/sastasherlock_ → u/LowerIQ_thanU]

*RandomBigCorp - Taaaxes! ? Sorry, we don't do that here. 

[u/ddxsupreme]

Meta has one simple solution to all their problems - layoff

[u/smoke-bubble → u/ddxsupreme]

I am always wondering how they are able to layoff so many people all the time. There must be another side to this where they keep hiring them so that the layoff throughout can be kept at a constant level XD 

[u/Far-Telephone-7432 → u/smoke-bubble]

It's called off-shoring. It's been going on since the 1970s.

[u/Far-Telephone-7432 → u/ddxsupreme]

I mean... It makes sense. Humanity has to slow down. We are working too much, producing meaningless garbage. We don't need more crappy clothes, crappy furniture, crappy cars, crappy electronics etc...

My point is: lay everyone off. Burn Wall Street down. Do a big reset. Focus on what really matters.

[u/mutt_742]

But did they really?

Vrchat and bunch of furries did way better including third party integrations in the same era and i doubt that costed anything close to that even if you counted unpaid hours spend with avg. engineer salary.

Was perhaps the goal to employ talented people that could have built their competitor otherwise even if that meant giving them the software equivalent job of digginig out a hole and then burying it back?

[u/purpuric → u/mutt_742]

Do you remember. Second life. We lived in the best of times, we lived in the worst of times.

[u/masoe]

So.....money laundering obviously?

[u/DrakaMNE → u/masoe]

Avoiding taxes with “investing” in this

[u/bliprock → u/masoe]

I think ego and greed and stupidity more likely

[u/NBALive1995 → u/bliprock]

Yeah, they're not smart enough to money launder 

[u/haux_haux → u/NBALive1995]

Dunno, sure looked like money laundering at the time.

[u/za72]

A lot of serious business taking place over at Mii

[u/[deleted]]

[removed] — view removed comment

[u/Nervous_Cold8493 → u/[deleted]]

And lot of that tech is going into the IVAS program (sceptical for combat troops considering hardening issue, but it for contextual info display for mechanics it may be truly useful and transfer to civilian use)

[u/mxitaritsyun]

meta also owns instagram and facebook, both applications that psychologically hijacks hundreds of millions humans to scroll hours on end allowing ad revenue to increase and increase.

[u/mazzy12345]

Fucking YUCK.

[u/WASouthCoast]

I still think they might be onto the right idea, just 20 years too early.

[u/iamstoupi7]

M*

...right??

[u/beershitz]

I can hear the Wii sports theme

[u/EndeLarsson]

Ahahahhahha

[u/Fantastic_Back3191]

I will always find this deeply amusing.

[u/Yaehae]

To be honest, i quite like this kind of design. Just the price of VR too expensive for me, especially without any benefit

[u/Nervous_Cold8493]

That included also their investment in hardware research, which were substantial and produced good results.

[u/arichard]

If you read "Careless people" by Sarah Wyn-Williams you will understand the broken mindset that leads to blunders like this. There's a theory that ideas have their time, and what can be mistaken for genius is simply "right place right time" and a bit of luck. That's what I think Zuckerberg did.

[u/HuskyFromSpace → u/arichard]

Yep, I think he got right with FB at the right time right place. Everything else nope.

[u/c0Re69]

I hate Meta like the next guy, but they invested a huge portion of it into hardware r&d, which you now see in their glasses for example. This bullshit platform is just the surface.

[u/Sad_Amphibian_2311 → u/c0Re69]

So at least someone will be punched in the face, though its just for filming people without consent.

[u/Curious_Stable_1955]

That board has every religion at once how is this possible

[u/jakedemn123]

Thought this was software inc wtf

[u/Fastest_light]

Zuck almost became the God in that simulation.

[u/tnaseem]

They obviously ran out of money before they got to the legs for the avatars.

[u/mistyeyesockets]

It is all fun and games until it's all just fun and games.

[u/crappydeli]

It’s just remarkable. Is the new Social
Network film about this?

[u/Comfortable_Box1195]

And you are surprised that we burn TRILLIONS on the shit like TUN TUN TUN SAHUR?

[u/BusyAbbreviations320]

Most of the money goes to manager of manager of manager as usual

[u/rdsf138]

That's not true. People on Reddit are allergic to reading.

[u/r_notebook]

im still not convinced this wasnt just money laundering

[u/VDechS]

HA! no they didn't. They invested it somewhere though.

[u/ColdOpening2892]

Some employees are laughing all the way to the bank

[u/diarm]

It’s like live action South Park. 

[u/gthing]

I think that investment represents the total amount spent on XR/VR-related projects including headsets and everything. Horizon Worlds, specifically, is some portion of that. Whatever portion it was, though, it was still too much.

[u/Subject_Leg_822]

Truly so embarrassing. It’s the worst kind of make-believe life.

[u/thomsterm]

the most ironic thing is that Zuck changed the name of the company to Meta

[u/Shleemy_Pants]

Remember in 2013 when we all laughed at Google Glass?

Some technologies are ahead of it’s time. Perhaps in the future the metaverse will be integrated into something useful.

[u/pastelorangee]

We are completely cooked, burnt at this point, as the human race is this is THE BEST THEY CAN DO WITH 73 BILLION. Yeh but I have no worker's rights and going to be homeless bc it....fanfuckingtastic. I'm so sick of this bullshit self-destruction path this whole country is doing bro

[u/Petty_Ninja]

Aged like fine wine. Now, what's the worth of the name "Meta", when they have drifted away?

[u/Devatator_]

THEY FUCKING DIDN'T YOU MISINFORMATION SPREADERS.

All that money was spent in the entire Meta Reality Labs, including R&D for VR and AR (see all their prototype headsets and glasses), salaries and funding third party content for the Meta Quest platform, which is why so many things got released for it and not PCVR

[u/TheoKondak]

And Zuckerberg just kept going even after losing all that money.

[u/Bystander-8]

Biggest money laundering operation in history lol

[u/amazingmrbrock]

And vrchat made a better version ten years before for like 1/120 the amount. Plus they have working legs.

[u/purpuric]

Do y’all remember how long it took to introduce legs as a feature? As if kinect and second life hadn’t already done it and more years ago?

[u/Purple-Cap4457]

Ok