Meta Cancels High-End Mixed Reality Headset After Apple Vision Pro Struggles

[lilkwarrior]

VR never gonna make a Big! To be honest, even a screen projector is much better!

…A screen protector is not better: A Vision Pro with VisionOS 2.0 enables a portable 5K2K monitor with Dolby Viaion+HLG HDR, 5000 peak nits, has a laptop APU for its own apps and iPad ones; and seamlessly connects to prosumer devices wirelessly.

VR is the necessary next step for immersive interactive experiences; a VR game with the same depth and polish of a non-VR equivalent experience will be better circumventing limitations of controllers and cameras controlled by the controller.


The next logical step for popular experiences as FPS/TPS games and even adult entertainment IS VR.

 

[votdfak]

It’s absolutely not great for movies. It doesn’t even have HDR, let alone Dolby Vision nor HLg HDR that premium content enthusiasts demand and expect.

You can’t create meaningful premium content either accordingly

You want all of that for $500? I am fine with media consumption on Q3. I can install Stremio + Real Debrid and watch any/every movie/series on big screen, HDR and Dolby Vision is not that important in my case. Q3 is by no means enthusiasts device.

 

[lilkwarrior]

You want all of that for $500? I am fine with media consumption on Q3. I can install Stremio + Real Debrid and watch any/every movie/series on big screen, HDR and Dolby Vision is not that important in my case. Q3 is by no means enthusiasts device.

You cannot watch premium home video well without HDR; you cannot watch any video content as intended or ideally wanted by its creators without dynamic HDR (Dolby Vision HDR and HDR10+).

It’s convenient to watch movies with a quest, but not great at all.

Quest also has abysmal picture quality not close to 4K in overall picture quality making it furthermore not great to watch movies with.

Watching movies on a Quest and Quest Pro are convenient, passable, and perhaps novel. Not great.

 

[votdfak]

I'll just repeat, for $500 it meets my expectations and in my opinion it's great "movie going" experience.

 

[Bungobungo]

I still enjoy my AVP every day no matter what others’ opinions are. The features that are coming with visionOS 2 are awesome.

On the business side, AVP brought in more than $2B in sales (rough estimate). With a very high margin. Tell me of another AR/VR business that brings in this much cash from hardware sales. Meta is at $1B with… wait for it… $16B in LOSSES for the year.

Sure. They stopped working on it because nobody’s buying AVP OR they stopped working on it to lower their operating loss in the hardware division.

Where are you pulling those sales numbers from? It’s closer to a tenth of what you’re suggesting.

 

[lilkwarrior]

I'll just repeat, for $500 it meets my expectations and in my opinion it's great "movie going" experience.

There’s plenty of alternative around $500 that are better media consumption devices that don’t cheap out on providing HDR—especially HDR support aligned with content from hollywood and streaming home video formats (Dolby Vision HDR)

“Movies going” being a different bar, that part is fine.

 

[dba415]

Where are you pulling those sales numbers from? It’s closer to a tenth of what you’re suggesting.

Plus he's not counting all the R&D that went into developing it. AVP cost apple billions

 

[Chazz12]

I want a Vision Pro, I just can't afford it right now. The last 8 years were a roller caster for me, and I'm in debt payoff mode. If they are still selling when I have money, I'll buy one.

 

[votdfak]

There’s plenty of alternative around $500 that are better media consumption devices that don’t cheap out on providing HDR—especially HDR support aligned with content from hollywood and streaming home video formats (Dolby Vision HDR)

“Movies going” being a different bar, that part is fine.

You can play VR games on those devices?

 

[JCCL]

more accurate headline: Meta couldn't out engineer Apple

Yeah considering the huge success the Vision Pro has been, I’m sure it makes a lot of sense to invest resources in competing with it.

 

[Rychiar]

The quest 4, needs eye tracking and a faster chip... Then just maybe, I will think about upgrading my quest two... Zuck missed the mark when he didn't include OLED panels and eye tracking on the three.

Then it would cost just as much as Vision Pro and be in the same boat as this quest pro 2 being canceled in this article🙄

 

[Rychiar]

VR never gonna make a Big! To be honest, even a screen projector is much better!

That’s such nonsense. No one wants a projector and a projector isn’t gonna put an imax screen in your tiny apartment. So shortsighted

 

[serryjeinfeld]

Except they now also don’t get developers who are largely treated like serfs and share croppers mooching off the land.

lmao mooching? developers are demanding to mooch off of Apple essentially.

 

[GrayFlannel]

Ferraris suck! Because I've never driven one.

Ferraris indeed do suck if one is looking for a luxury performance car. One needn’t drive one to know that.

To me the biggest head scratcher was the absolutely zero 3rd party/premium software ready for the launch. There's only a limited appeal of stock apps and the cool theatre mode. If there were a few productivity apps that would dramatically improve how you work, then this could be a winner, because even small companies could justify the cost. And this happens despite their huge experience with the iPhone. A shocker, really.

My guess is Apple tried to bribe companies to invest in development but couldn’t find any takers.

 

[lilkwarrior]

Ferraris indeed do suck if one is looking for a luxury performance car. One needn’t need to drive one to know that.



My guess is Apple tried to bribe companies to invest in development but couldn’t find any takers.

It’s not trivial to make quality XR experiences, especially one that is for prosumers with appropriate dev kits or distributed retail editions not trivial to distribute without leaks.

SDKs and dev cable for the device weren’t easily available or not available to develop apps readily before launch

 

[lilkwarrior]

You can play VR games on those devices?

No, I’m talking about good media consumption.

Like it’s medicore capabilities for AAA gaming, Quest headsets are a “take it or leave it” option for media consumption in a XR manner being unrealistically priced for profit (Meta have lost billions pricing Quest headsets at $500) and compromising baseline premium features for media consumption to save costs losing money (focusing on the metaverse and low-end mobile-class gaming).

Meta have been hoping to be like the Switch being the only mainstream portable option prior to the Steam Deck.

They don’t have the software and content to do so and they compromised too much on core complimentary media use cases to be appealing as a good option for such media instead of mainstream non-VR hardware.

 

[Chungry]

Where are you pulling those sales numbers from? It’s closer to a tenth of what you’re suggesting.

It’s called copium. It’s a sad state of affairs that anyone feels the need to justify and prop up their purchase. If you like it great but let’s not pretend it’s anything other than a flop this generation. Maybe the next gen will hit on something. Maybe not. Apple better push a new one out before they give it a reputation like Siri.

I want a Vision Pro, I just can't afford it right now. The last 8 years were a roller caster for me, and I'm in debt payoff mode. If they are still selling when I have money, I'll buy one.

Don’t bother. My firm is likely selling half a dozen we don’t have any use for, wait until they can be had cheaply. Better yet, wait and see if Apple produces a second gen that resolves many of the pain points of the current gen (heat/fans, wasteful and utterly useless eyesight feature, poor surround sound). Our lot will be on eBay soon enough and I already see some half price. Granted it’s worth about 800-1k but you do you.

 

[lilkwarrior]

It’s called copium. It’s a sad state of affairs that anyone feels the need to justify and prop up their purchase. If you like it great but let’s not pretend it’s anything other than a flop this generation. Maybe the next gen will hit on something. Maybe not. Apple better push a new one out before they give it a reputation like Siri.

You're making make-believe and thinly veiled subjective claims on what is considered a success to Apple for a prosumer entry of a device category with no mainstream option yet provided; the Vision Pro was never intended to be a mainstream product just like the Pro Display XDR, Mac Pro, and so on.

One of the common purposes or latent goals of such products is establish and set-up the supply chain infrastructure for actual mainstream products later like the Pro Display XDR's panel tech now being common across all of Apple's prosumer products.

 

[geauxmac]

Just used my AVP on two 8 hour flights and it made the experience 100x better than any other entertainment device you can travel with. Movie theater sized screen on the plane. 😃

 

[unchecked]

I mean it says a lot if Apple can upsell people the AW Ultra but couldn’t with the AVP.

 

[TurboDrooler]

VR sucks. It doesn't really matter who builds it.

As an owner of almost every VR headset from the Oculus Rift DK1 through to the Quest 2…yeah, pretty much. I’m tired of sweaty headsets, sore cheekbones and messed up hair. Not putting any more money into it until it’s light as air and not just a gaming platform.

 

[QquegChristian]

It’s absolutely not great for movies. It doesn’t even have HDR, let alone Dolby Vision nor HLg HDR that premium content enthusiasts demand and expect.

You can’t create meaningful premium content either accordingly

In VR, I find the lack of HDR a better approximation of the theatrical experience. The majority of movie theaters are not HDR. Even Dolby Vision theaters can get essentially 1 exposure stop brighter than ordinary projectors. Whereas Dolby Vision TVs can get 7 stops brighter.

HDR is much more of an at-home TV gimmick than what you’d see in a theater. Pixar’s first theatrical HDR movie was Elemental last year.

Most HDR movies you watch at home were converted to high-nit TV HDR after the fact with no input from the director.

You’d be surprised how many theaters are still projecting in 2K resolution even.

I’m a director and cinematographer who shot my last movie in 8k raw. I only got to see it projected in 4K once at Fantastic Fest in Austin as all other theaters were limited to 2K. And I gotta be honest, I was shocked by how little of a difference I noticed in the middle of the theater. There’s just something magical and organic about any projector that TVs can’t replicate and blinding HDR certainly ain’t it.

 

[nutritious]

For the life of me, I don't understand why a company with the market cap the size of Apple is focusing so much on something that is so clearly going to have such little appeal.

To me, the holy grail of AR is sizing up tactic, holographic plasma displays that we saw from Japanese researchers in 2015: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/07/a-floating-holographic-plasma-display-that-you-can-touch/

If Apple could create a solution where they could project tactile, holographic images into our every day living environment without having to wear bulky visors??? What an amazing, world-changing development that would be!

innovation for the sake of innovation is lame

 

[fivetoedbear]

One of the reasons AirPods are so popular is because they deliver rich sound, but at the same time they feel so light that you forget you’re even wearing them. And transparently mode allows you to feel present in the outside world while you’re listening to content.

VR is really isolating and secluding. And believe me, I’m an introvert. But I don’t want to be completely cutoff from the outside world. And the price, yikes.

I use my AVP every day, and I've forgotten that I'm wearing it, as evidenced by the time I went to rub my eye and smacked my hand into the faceplate.

I think what Meta proved is that the AVP is not overpriced. Bleeding edge tech costs money. It'll get cheaper.

Excuse me, my faster-than-a-CRAY-1-supercomputer wrist watch says it's time to go eat dinner.

 

[unchecked]

Is it really the next step though?

…A screen protector is not better: A Vision Pro with VisionOS 2.0 enables a portable 5K2K monitor with Dolby Viaion+HLG HDR, 5000 peak nits, has a laptop APU for its own apps and iPad ones; and seamlessly connects to prosumer devices wirelessly.

VR is the necessary next step for immersive interactive experiences; a VR game with the same depth and polish of a non-VR equivalent experience will be better circumventing limitations of controllers and cameras controlled by the controller.


The next logical step for popular experiences as FPS/TPS games and even adult entertainment IS VR.

The problem with the headset is that it’s a headset. You’re taking away the modularity of the different components of experience like the monitors, headphones, microphones, controllers, into one do-it-all machine. And unfortunately, different people are different and have differently tuned senses. Even gaming is split into keyboard vs controllers. And the FGC is also further fragmented.