Captive Reality

@curiosityonx What three words, faulty

What are the words?

@cixliv @zach_wendt @James_Abev It’s been wonderfully stable for a few years now….. literally because they stopped developing it !!

@zach_wendt @James_Abev Their Oculus store on the PC is basically abandoned. The runtime still works. Talking about the store itself.

I want to speak about the "Open" nature of the Quest. I would call this framing dishonest at best and doublespeak at worst. Zuck, Boz, and Yann are factually incorrect. Let me break down the reality: 1) Connectivity: No other VR controller is allowed on the Quest, in fact the demo I recently did with the glove connected to the Vision Pro is not possible with the Quest due to the locked down nature of the bluetooth stack. 2) Store: Their App Store is ran like North Korea. The entire premise of getting into the Quest Store is completely obscure and not based on any tangible metrics. Unlike the Apple/Google App Store which as a clear developer guidelines. App developers will meet the requirements of App Lab (their version of TestFlight), just to sit there for 5+ years and be ghosted. Even after providing them significant information on their company and business model. App Lab still charges 30% to developers even though it gives people who download the App a big warning and no search-ability in the store. 3) Cameras: The camera access on the Quest is blocked, I wouldn't say this is a rare occurrence because almost all other headsets do this except the Lynx R-1. Still it's not "open" by any measure, doesn't even have a proper API. 4) Networking: One of the ideas I worked on in the past was a AR sports game that could be played outside. The issue with this is that the Quest doesn't allow WiFi direct (all Android phones allow this, so they specifically blocked it). In addition the headset freaks out if you aren't connected to the internet. So that means you can never use the headset without being routed to the internet. The headset also doesn't share it's positioning maps so it can't easily communicate location to other devices. 5) Copying/Killing: The entire premise of their App Store is to watch and kill/buy the best ideas. They essentially have a kill switch on you on all times as a developer. This is something I have experienced personally where they copied our app, tried to poach all my engineers, and de-platformed us by breaking us with firmware. They have a black list that also controls what developers get featured placement on their banners. This featured placement can mean the difference between a developer succeeding or not. 6) Media/Propaganda: A significant amount of the ad dollars for VR, grants for developers, or capital toward "Meta Ambassadors" is funded by Meta. The Meta Ambassadors have a line in their contracts that specifically says the have to "keep Meta in a positive light" as per terms of their contract. This means that the majority of the success VR developers or content creators will never speak poorly about Meta. 7) "Alternative App Stores": The only thing "Open" about their ecosystem is supposedly this idea of alternative App Stores. This is categorically false. The ability to use PC was simply because they had a PCVR app, which they killed off. SideQuest requires you to create a developer account, turn on developer mode, sync it with your phone number and dev account, then find the apps in some obscure part of the UI "Unknown sources". SideQuest also doesn't have paid apps. Calling this "open" is absolutely dishonest. If Meta wants to run the show like North Korea fine. But this extremely manipulative doublespeak they are doing in the media right now is blatantly dishonest, and I had to say something.

Love #VRchat but how do you put up with it crashing so much on Quest2 ?

#oculus friends.. what was the name of the original DK2 demo where spiders would walk on your hands and scare the lifting daylights out of you? It’s name escapes me. #dk2 #oculusrift

@mabdinur85 @tipatat @TheVRFund Vision Pro… It’s likely there will be a whole family of products.. Vision SE maybe?

@tipatat @TheVRFund The only obstacle is I've never seen an Apple product come down in price in successive generations. If the starting baseline is $3500USD I'm sure it will remain a prosumer oriented product.

As one of the leading investors in #spatialcomputing #vr #ar #xr with the @TheVRFund I have so many thoughts on the #AppleVisionPro, here are some of them:

@FusedVR Well it does have the word pro in the name which means they’re leaving the door wide open for consumer grade options. I’d guess a range of products from ‘Vision Pro’ through to ‘Vision SE’ at some point maybe?

This might be a dumb question, but who is the target audience / consumer for the Vision Pro?

@Thrilluwu What’s the FoV though?

Apple's Vision Pro isn't a quest or index or quest pro competitor. It's a Varjo XR3 competitor at half the price.

@roboryantron It was the inspiration for Unity Atoms adamramberg.github.io/unity-atoms/ which I really love so thank you :-)

As of today, my Unite 2017 talk is the most watched session of all talks from all Unite conferences. I did not expect people to be interested in such a seemingly boring topic. I'm so happy to hear so many people were able to take something away from it. youtu.be/raQ3iHhE_Kk

Oculus confirm they are working on AR glasses #oculusconnect6

Oculus Link coming to quest - play all your rift content on the quest!! Awesome #oc6 #OculusQuest #oculusconnect6

Wow.. hand tracking coming to quest!! #OC6 #oculusconnect6

@shen Congrats :-)

So today I officially start my new position as Head of Product Marketing at HTC. Just 4 years ago I joined as the guy who was fixing tech issues and doing demos. To all the devs and fans who have supported us, you are all amazing and I wouldn't be here without you, so thank you!

Calling it now. This is the start of VR heating up again in the VC space. Welcome back to 2016.

There once was a company with vision Seeking to rescue VR from derision But then founders were fired The devs who grew them grew tired And now? Oblivious to the point of precision!

Early start this morning en route to Newcastle for a client meeting for the start of another collaboration with the awesome @Spearhead_Int

Nailed it... @oculus @Oculus_Dev you really need to read this. Give feedback to the developers you reject and at least afford some respect for their time and effort they’ve put in. The platform will be better for it in the long run - we need more developers in VR not less

Been in VR since 2016 and in all that time my partner has only reluctantly used VR.. that is until @BeatSaber on the @oculus Quest this weekend. “I *Really* like this game it’s sooo much fun”. Whole family and friends repeatedly ran the battery down over the weekend. Wow😮

@adamrsc Wow.. fast work

Very interesting MeetUP on new #DigitalCreative #AugmentingReality and emerging technologies. A brief comic outline attached. @VR3AR Now back to M25 reality soon!!

Absolutely lovely to bump into @TengioLtd at #AugmentingReality