<story><title>John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]</title><url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXmY26pOE-Y</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mikepurvis</author><text>But it&amp;#x27;s clearly not a mass market thing either— mass market is mobile games raking in millions, Switches selling out during quarantine, the upcoming PS5 launch, and Epic having splashy platform wars with Apple and Valve. Those are billion dollar gaming events which all have nothing to do with VR.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no non-nerd out there who thinks &amp;quot;maybe I&amp;#x27;ll try VR&amp;quot;, and goes into a store to buy... whatever it is, goes home to have a great time with it, and immediately tells their friends. No, it&amp;#x27;s Linus Tech Tips upgrading his water-cooled living room PC with a special USB3 card just to get enough bandwidth to all the peripherals: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=HFuLvGf0g0c&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=HFuLvGf0g0c&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>koiz</author><text>&amp;gt;Right now this is a very expensive, multi-billion dollar toy with toy demonstrator apps and proof of concept games.&lt;p&gt;We are far past tech demos and concept games.</text></item><item><author>dougmwne</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d say that is the same as a dead end. Right now this is a very expensive, multi-billion dollar toy with toy demonstrator apps and proof of concept games. It needs to be a game changer and the future of something or the research funding and developer ecosystem are going to dry up. And given the amount that Facebook must be losing on the Quest 2 and the all-in nature of this launch, if this doesn&amp;#x27;t take off now, the runway for Oculus at FB may be over.</text></item><item><author>criddell</author><text>&amp;gt; Time to see for myself if this is the computing future or an evolutionary dead end.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a third possibility - VR is finally here and consumer market is what it is. It&amp;#x27;s not going to take over the world but it isn&amp;#x27;t going away either.</text></item><item><author>dougmwne</author><text>This talk was such a treat. After all the carefuly crafted hype from Zuck and the gang, Carmack threw huge bucket of cold water on everything. I think it&amp;#x27;s just wonderful that he&amp;#x27;s allowed to speak so openly, about the things he&amp;#x27;s proud of, the things he thinks are failures, internal politics, the possibilities for improvement, the real hard physical limits VR is running into, and his growing pessimism for the future of VR. I could really hear it in his talk why he moved on to spend more time on his next passion.&lt;p&gt;Since it sounded to me like the low hanging mobile VR fruit has been picked, I went ahead and pre-ordered my very first HMD afterwards. Time to see for myself if this is the computing future or an evolutionary dead end.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>agar</author><text>Others have said this, but I&amp;#x27;ll reiterate: your description of mass market is precisely what&amp;#x27;s happening with Quest. Your view of VR seems rooted in pre-Quest (i.e., exclusively PC-tethered) VR and not the stand-alone world.&lt;p&gt;In fact, so many people literally went to Best Buy or Walmart to purchase a Quest that it has been sold out since the beginning of the year, online and off, with eBay pricing at 50%+ premiums.&lt;p&gt;You literally open the box, run an app on your phone (for configuration), put the HMD on your face and you&amp;#x27;re in VR. People not only tell their friends, but buy multiple versions to give to friends and family.&lt;p&gt;With Quest 2 at a $299 price point, the non-nerds saying &amp;quot;maybe I&amp;#x27;ll try VR&amp;quot; will happen even more often. The OculusQuest subreddit has a constant stream of questions about this very behavior. It is currently the ~2,000th most popular subreddit, with an impressive growth curve[1]. Some are literally buying the Quest 2 instead of the PS5 (though clearly a small number).&lt;p&gt;So far, 35 games have made over $1m on Quest alone, with one clearing that figure in 4 days and another in 8 days. Top games have made over $10m, not even including revenue from Steam, PSVR, or the Oculus PC VR platform. These aren&amp;#x27;t Epic &amp;#x2F; Apple level mega-wins, but many mobile developers would be happy with $5-10m revenue figures.&lt;p&gt;Upcoming VR games are coming from top tier publishers like Respawn (Medal of Honor), Ubisoft (Assassin&amp;#x27;s Creed, Splinter Cell), and Rockstar (unnamed AAA open world game)[2], Crytek (The Climb 2), and EA (Star Wars: Squadrons).&lt;p&gt;Additional games include Sniper Elite, Warhammer 40,000, Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy&amp;#x27;s Edge, Jurassic World Aftermath, and Myst. And this is just the tip of the iceberg from brands&amp;#x2F;publishers you may know.&lt;p&gt;Point being, stand-alone VR has really addressed many of your (and the market&amp;#x27;s) concerns.&lt;p&gt;And, to be fair, in your linked video Linus was trying to use optional, expensive peripherals for full-body tracking while streaming - not exactly a mass-market use case.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;subredditstats.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;oculusquest&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;subredditstats.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;oculusquest&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;uploadvr.com&amp;#x2F;rockstars-new-vr-game-guesses&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;uploadvr.com&amp;#x2F;rockstars-new-vr-game-guesses&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>John Carmack’s presentation at Facebook Connect [video]</title><url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXmY26pOE-Y</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mikepurvis</author><text>But it&amp;#x27;s clearly not a mass market thing either— mass market is mobile games raking in millions, Switches selling out during quarantine, the upcoming PS5 launch, and Epic having splashy platform wars with Apple and Valve. Those are billion dollar gaming events which all have nothing to do with VR.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s no non-nerd out there who thinks &amp;quot;maybe I&amp;#x27;ll try VR&amp;quot;, and goes into a store to buy... whatever it is, goes home to have a great time with it, and immediately tells their friends. No, it&amp;#x27;s Linus Tech Tips upgrading his water-cooled living room PC with a special USB3 card just to get enough bandwidth to all the peripherals: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=HFuLvGf0g0c&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=HFuLvGf0g0c&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>koiz</author><text>&amp;gt;Right now this is a very expensive, multi-billion dollar toy with toy demonstrator apps and proof of concept games.&lt;p&gt;We are far past tech demos and concept games.</text></item><item><author>dougmwne</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d say that is the same as a dead end. Right now this is a very expensive, multi-billion dollar toy with toy demonstrator apps and proof of concept games. It needs to be a game changer and the future of something or the research funding and developer ecosystem are going to dry up. And given the amount that Facebook must be losing on the Quest 2 and the all-in nature of this launch, if this doesn&amp;#x27;t take off now, the runway for Oculus at FB may be over.</text></item><item><author>criddell</author><text>&amp;gt; Time to see for myself if this is the computing future or an evolutionary dead end.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a third possibility - VR is finally here and consumer market is what it is. It&amp;#x27;s not going to take over the world but it isn&amp;#x27;t going away either.</text></item><item><author>dougmwne</author><text>This talk was such a treat. After all the carefuly crafted hype from Zuck and the gang, Carmack threw huge bucket of cold water on everything. I think it&amp;#x27;s just wonderful that he&amp;#x27;s allowed to speak so openly, about the things he&amp;#x27;s proud of, the things he thinks are failures, internal politics, the possibilities for improvement, the real hard physical limits VR is running into, and his growing pessimism for the future of VR. I could really hear it in his talk why he moved on to spend more time on his next passion.&lt;p&gt;Since it sounded to me like the low hanging mobile VR fruit has been picked, I went ahead and pre-ordered my very first HMD afterwards. Time to see for myself if this is the computing future or an evolutionary dead end.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pavlov</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;...&amp;quot;maybe I&amp;#x27;ll try VR&amp;quot;, and goes into a store to buy... whatever it is, goes home to have a great time with it, and immediately tells their friends.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is definitely a thing that happens with the Oculus Quest already. The hardware is easy to use and the software library is pretty much in place now. A major marketing campaign could make it really take off.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have any insight into FB VR&amp;#x27;s decision to require the login on Oculus devices now, but my guess is that they consider the device to be ready for a mass market, and believe that the gains from the social graph will be worth the short-term pain of leaving early-adopter money on the table from here on.</text></comment>