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ksec 7 hours ago [-]
I am so so glad Meta, or any company continue to invest in AR and VR. Not because I like AR / VR, to the contrary I am not a big fan of wearing a glasses to use it.
But it is the only thing that will move Low Latency Computing forward. Everything in modern computing is slow, we might have increased throughput by 1000 or 10000x over the course of 30+ years. But latency has gone backwards, from Apps to OS UI response. Decent AR/VR experience mimicking the real world would require sub 10ms results. And this should finally force developers to take latency into account.
ChrisRR 2 hours ago [-]
I think VR would be completely dead by now if Meta weren't continuing to lose billions every quarter on it. Not many companies can endless sink that much money into a product
utopiah 1 hours ago [-]
On the contrary, if Meta didn't acquire Oculus which hadn't poached Valve staff maybe the Steam Frame would have been out years ago.
It wouldn't have been touted at the "metaverse" and a revolution of having business meeting in a virtual room... looking like a boring office and maybe it would "just" be millions of gamers, but to stay we are in a better state because of Meta is questionable.
They did invest a ton and their products (if one can manage to make abstraction why they even exist in the first place) are actually well done but the line their brought on the entire industry created unrealistic expectation.
Is it good, is it bad, I'm not actually sure but I'm rather confident to say it's not obvious.
ben_w 2 hours ago [-]
Meta burned all that money because Zuckerberg had just read something related to Snow Crash, not because he had a good idea for how to develop the sector.
I think for now games are the best use of VR, and Valve actually care about games, and Zuckerberg moving on to the next shiny thing leaves room for Valve to join Sony and Microsoft for the next PlayStation/XBox alternative.
If anything, when the Oculus Quest became the Meta Quest, it started feeling like regression rather than progress, with the games going from "wow!" to "did they port a phone game?".
blensor 2 hours ago [-]
I am not so sure about that. When it felt like Meta was abandoning the space we saw some resurgence of smaller projects that tried to innovate, but if you have a big player sucking out all the oxygen you can't build smaller scale projects
ChrisRR 2 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately a couple of small start ups isn't enough to carry the industry. Even big players like Valve who have more money in the bank to take a hit couldn't bring their headset in below $1000
aghuang 3 hours ago [-]
agreed. would be nice to see the size of the meta glasses and the reviews first before considering to purchase.
guenthert 1 hours ago [-]
> Everything in modern computing is slow
Nonsense. Embedded systems, often event driven, improved as did the rest of the computing landscape (perhaps at a tad slower pace). HST has been a major driver on low latency computing in the data center. And then there are of course robotics and military applications ...
pazimzadeh 2 hours ago [-]
I'm just glad the era of having to look down all the time will soon be over.
Lucent 9 hours ago [-]
I just got swept up in this mass Threads suspension yesterday, despite not using it. I am locked out of Facebook and Messenger, and my Portal, Oculus, and Glasses are now bricked. I pay them $12 for Instagram a month, mostly to deter username thieves, and that was oddly not suspended, despite being linked, so the "safety" claims ring hollow. Be very careful about giving your money to Meta. They are quick to unperson with no recourse.
Coming from Quest 3, everything about it sounds great BUT for that FOV. Even on Quest with 103 x 96, I sometimes feel like I'm looking around through a mask or binoculars. Can't imagine how restrictive it might be on 70 x 66.
Hopefully it's not so bad.
Oh BTW they showed a new Beat Saber game, and among the logos I've seen Ace Attorney VR among a few others. Let's see if those come for Quest 3 and maybe even PCVR.
firmretention 5 minutes ago [-]
IMO, FOV is the biggest immersion killer in VR today, and doesn't get nearly enough attention. It's not so bad when you're relatively new to it as the illusion is convincing enough that you don't notice, but once the magic wears off a bit, it's hard to escape that binocular effect. I wish one of the bigger players would tackle that. I'm not willing to take a chance on Pimax.
jdprgm 8 hours ago [-]
70 is crazy! I was thinking years ago that surely by this point headsets would be standardizing on a baseline of like 140+. Progress has really stagnated and over the past few years new headsets never seem to just be universally better than whatever they are replacing. It always seems to be pull one lever to improve one aspect while regressing somewhere else.
I really wish VR had followed an iPhone like trajectory over the past decade where we got a new Quest/etc every year and it got consistently better across the board every iteration.
meric_ 5 hours ago [-]
It has progressed. The tech is just expensive and heavy and... all sorts of tradeoffs. Meta had a prototype (Boba) with a 180 horizontal and 120 vertical FoV
But it of course is large and heavy like the quest pro and expensive most likely. Things that when you market to consumers don't pan out.
So they are optimizing on the other dimension (weight) which of course trades of many other dimensions.
ilaksh 8 hours ago [-]
It's not a headset, it's glasses.
jonplackett 2 hours ago [-]
You can’t see through it. So it’s a small glasses shaped headset
rob74 1 hours ago [-]
...with stray light coming in from all sides because glasses don't cover your face completely. So the best place to use them will probably be a completely darkened room?
kshmir 6 hours ago [-]
It's a headset
chaostheory 6 hours ago [-]
> I really wish VR had followed an iPhone like trajectory over the past decade where we got a new Quest/etc every year
That didn’t happen because you would need market demand for that. Only Gen Alpha likes VR as a demographic.
bpye 11 hours ago [-]
> Can't imagine how restrictive it might be on 70 x 66.
Ouch, that's a tough sell. Maybe useful for AR type stuff, but I wouldn't want to go from a Quest/Index/Frame/etc to that for VR.
Svoka 6 hours ago [-]
From description I thought this is more 'View on a Virtual TV' rather than a full VR thing, I may be wrong. This is good, because I, honestly, find that a lot of my VR time is sitting or lying down.
dgellow 3 hours ago [-]
So, xreal competitor?
nicman23 5 hours ago [-]
quest 3 is sooo heavy though
bpye 5 hours ago [-]
I'm very interested in Valve's approach, shifting some of the weight to the back.
That video is on the page itself as well, right top
crooked-v 10 hours ago [-]
According to the influencer, the weight is 100 g. I have 25 g (+lenses) glasses I wear often, and even that is right on the upper edge of what's comfortable and needs almost-uncomfortable tight arms to stay steady when my head moves. And, that's all as somebody who's worn glasses all my waking hours since like age 10, complete with nose-indent calluses. Either those Meta glasses are clamping uncomfortably hard on the sides of your head all the time or they'll fall off the first time you lean forward.
cubefox 3 hours ago [-]
Strange complaint. 100 grams is extremely light compared to every other VR headset.
LorenDB 1 minutes ago [-]
Most other VR headsets don't put their entire weight on your nose and ears.
scun 9 hours ago [-]
Maybe users will develop a distinctive posture.
titzer 10 hours ago [-]
Is it just me or do those angles deliberately obscure how thick it is lens-wise? I have a pair of X-real airs, 2 years old now, and they're pretty thick. They're 1/4th the price and basically work as a head-mounted display. Is that what this, but way fancier and more sleek?
11 hours ago [-]
11 hours ago [-]
tiborsaas 10 hours ago [-]
If you are going to buy one, this is the platform you support:
I know you probably know that, but this is a new low, even for Meta.
flockonus 10 hours ago [-]
At the timestamp of the video, after the question she goes in length about the [mind boggling] settlement, limiting to 2h/day for under 18 years old is not too bad?
tiborsaas 10 hours ago [-]
Yes, not too bad for a question the moderator didn't really ask. She's really good at diverting the topic to a less uncomfortable field. No wonder she's in charge of a platform with 3.07 billion monthly active users. Also note the tone and condescending attitude.
bel8 10 hours ago [-]
meh all of these mega corps do whatever they can to maximise profit. Apple used slave-like labour from China (or still use depending on who you ask) and turned a blind eye until it could no more. Which to me is worse than what Meta did. But they are not Americans so most don't care around these parts.
aucisson_masque 4 hours ago [-]
When you buy an iPhone that was made in sweatshop, you contribute to it. There are alternatives but most people really don’t mind having slave labor build their iPhone.
Same for kids wasting their life on screen, most parents don’t mind as long as it keep them busy and it’s one less thing to care about.
tiborsaas 9 hours ago [-]
Correct, but that's also whataboutism. I know apathy can easily take over, but when you get laughed in the face just like that it feels really hopeless. No, it's not my first day on the internet and no, it's not the first time I see companies act like this, but something about this feels very wrong.
Grombobulous 11 hours ago [-]
It’s HoloLens reinvented I guess.
What problem does it solve? I see a bunch of potential uses but I don’t see any problems looking to be solved.
Will I like gaming better if I control the games with my hands instead of a controller?
Will I like working in my glasses better than my laptop screen? Or even a dual laptop screen like a ZenBook Duo? Or a cheap second portable display? Do these glasses fit better in a backpack than a laptop and a second portable screen? They can’t collapse flat.
Are these glasses more portable and convenient than a smartphone? What are the benefits to watching an NBA game on this compared to a phone or my TV screen at home?
I can’t believe Meta is blowing their money on this stuff still.
numpad0 9 hours ago [-]
I think this is a big stopgap until an actual transparent AR glasses and an admission that Meta and the entire AR industry have no instant next quarter solution for shortcomings of Meta Ray-Ban Display.
The geometric waveguide technology used in the Display glasses is quite complicated and costly, the birdbath optic that Xreal uses is stupid, so to speak, and various holographic solutions used by Even Realities and likes is not so spectacular in light loss(IIUC the fancy term is "quantum efficiency"), as well as multi color feasibility(needs 3 layers with separate image sources).
Prior to now we didn't know if Meta will be doing a Display 2 or Quest 4, or if they plan to do something else. This is that something else.
daemonologist 9 hours ago [-]
Rumor is they are going to do a Quest 4 (late next year).
I agree that these seem like a stopgap short of the thing everyone wants - Vision Pro specs (ahaha) in a pair of regular glasses.
Personally, as a glasses-wearer, I'm not quite convinced it's the right target though - even my 20 gram glasses are uncomfortable to wear all day and I take them off whenever they're not needed. I'd rather have a ski-goggle device (similarly light, but with the weight more evenly distributed, and still with optical see-through) with fewer performance compromises. Of course that wouldn't let the manufacturer dominate "the next form of personal computing" or whatever.
Groxx 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I've switched to ultra-light rimless glasses and I really do not want to go back. I no longer have sore nose-pad dents at the end of the day.
(I have a fairly strong prescription, so the literal glass in my glasses does weigh a fair bit more than for most people. Yay modern optional media! It's so much nicer than it used to be)
frmersdog 9 hours ago [-]
They had to get something out to undercut Snap finally formally entering the market with a consumer product. That's my read. Their entire strategy for years has been doing whatever they can to box-out potential XR space competitors.
foldshift 10 hours ago [-]
I might consider them if I can wire it to my laptop. I use the meta quest for development because of infinite virtual screens and due to my apartment being so small I can't fit a proper desk and office chair. But still is a very niche usage, if I had space I would very likely get a desk with a dual or triple monitor setup. If the resolution is good, it is actually nice to have a very portable infinite screen setup if you travel a lot.
mardef 10 hours ago [-]
You can do this already with xreal glasses for like 1/4 of the price
Thanks, i will check it out. I think I did a couple years ago but mac os support was bad at the time? I don't quite remember, but this seems great now. Do you have one? Any experience with using it for work on mac os with multiple virtual screens?
drcode 9 hours ago [-]
fwiw unlike the other person, I use it for hours with my macbook and have no complaints. you will like it if regular vr makes you feel claustrophobic/isolated, since you still see the real world while using it. I don't understand the obsession with extreme text crispness many people have.
dnpls 3 hours ago [-]
Blurry text is horribly noticeable after a while, and it also creates eye fatigue from trying to focus your vision on it. It also means you can't use smaller font sizes, which is important for some people since you can have more text on screen.
SkyPuncher 10 hours ago [-]
It’s terrible.
I’ve always wanted it to be better, but it’s just terrible. It’s like working on a projector screen where the pixels never line up.
NBJack 8 hours ago [-]
Really? Did you ever try adjusting the text sharpness?
I've a pair of Nreal Air glasses (before the rebrand) and a pair of Xreal Ones. I have found the latter remarkably comfortable and sharp enough for coding, reading text, playing games, etc. for extended periods of time.
The new widescreen modes are a real treat too. Still waiting for Real 3D to get upgraded to 60FPS though.
agar 6 hours ago [-]
You can wire it to a laptop. It supports direct DisplayPort over USB 3 input, which it will display on a large virtual monitor.
garciasn 10 hours ago [-]
From the video they have on their site: watching movies in places where you normally would stare at a tiny screen; they also show folks using virtual floating keyboards in front of a VR desktop to work.
So: no problems solved.
fg137 30 minutes ago [-]
I have watched hundreds of movies with my 27" 4k monitor, or 24" 1080p monitor a few years back. Screen size is never something that bothered me. And I know people who watched more stuff on their laptop screen with terrible color accuracy.
I have a VR headset, but other than the one time I tried Skybox just to see what it looks like, it never occurred to me to take the headset out to watch a full length movie. It's just not worth it.
Makes me wonder how often people use it for "watching content on a gigantic screen at home", or it's just mostly theoretical in VR headset marketing material.
VR desktop: that's supposedly the "killer application" of Apple Vision Pro back in 2005 (and only usable on high resolution headsets like those). Guess what, these days nobody talks about it. I haven't seen anyone bringing it up on HN for a long time.
ffsm8 6 hours ago [-]
This product line already exists for years. Meta is just entering it.
It's essentially the xr-glasses /vr glasses category. Plenty of options around on stores
JKCalhoun 9 hours ago [-]
I mentioned Jaron Lanier in another comment… I've been watching VR try to establish itself and fail for close to 30 years now.
serf 9 hours ago [-]
I want a glasses-with-puck style like this with a great fov and resolution good enough for crisp text work and nothing else. for sound I just want it to be small enough to wear with headphones. It would be fantastic if I could run a real OS on it. I just want it for productivity, I dont care about the latest 3d gimmick movie or VR apps.
The closest thing so far is a Bigscreen Beyond 2 w/ a laptop if it wasn't for the fact that you need a base station for the damn thing.
I know my request is a fantasy right now, but I put this our there in case someone that could make it less of a fantasy reads this.
mr_briggs 8 hours ago [-]
100% on the same page. I don't want a device to take me on a virtual rollercoaster of half-*ssed entertainment in exchange for my identity, I just want something that can at least substitute my monitors in a more compact way.
Same here. I've been looking for a way to bring my multi-monitor setup with me to work when I travel, VR glasses would be the most portable solution. But I won't buy it while it needs a subscription of any kind, I want it to work like my LG monitor: dumb, doesn't need software to use (drivers would be fine, 'apps' won't), haven't had any sort of mandatory update since I bought it years ago, I just plug it and it works.
divan 3 hours ago [-]
I work with Rayneo Air 4 Pro - they have HDR/120fps displays (image quality is top-notch and they're bright enought to work even with direct sunlight). They don't have battery or software, it's plug-in-play USB-C external screen essentially. It's more than enough for travel, or for sitting straight while working cafe, for privacy reasons or working outdoors. I even tried them while walking in the forest (with laptop in the backpack and using voice input).
Drawback - they don't do 3DoF tracking, so the screen just follows where you're looking, you can't change screen size, and no multimonitor setup. They have IMU sensors, though. It's possible to create your own virutal monitor software (or use someone's else like RealWarp), but IMU drift is hard to beat and experience is far from perfect. So I stick with 'just one high-quality screen' for now, and to be honest it was some quality-of-life improvement for me.
PS. Couple of weeks ago there was new release from RayNeo, which supposedly have 3DoF and same quality. Haven't tried those.
divan 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah, seems like RayNeo GT Max have proper 3DoF tracking. Shoot, now I need these :)
modeless 8 hours ago [-]
This is it then, right? You can connect a laptop to this. You don't have to watch movies on it. The FoV should be plenty for productivity.
28 minutes ago [-]
fidotron 10 hours ago [-]
Looks like superb hardware, and contrary to many others the use cases this is designed for look actually worth it. "AVP but lighter and cheaper" or "looks designed for trains or planes" . . . well, obviously.
The key problem is it's Meta. People don't even trust other people near them to use Meta hardware, and the way they dealt with Oculus users was just grimy. From basically any other company this would be a very welcome device. Zuckerberg needs to fix the company first, because there's no such thing as a killer product good enough to overcome this hurdle.
ai-x 9 hours ago [-]
People said the same thing about Meta Muse.
HN constantly under-estimate how much the mass forgives a company as long as they release a cool product (barring a few holdouts that really don't matter to 3B DAU company)
physicallyIllfr 7 hours ago [-]
I dont thibk privacy conscious people are using muse, Im not.
fantasizr 8 hours ago [-]
people don't care about privacy; every post on snowden does well here but it's a fart in the wind to the general public
eli 9 hours ago [-]
Is Muse popular?
nl 9 hours ago [-]
Extremely. It's been top of the App store charts since it came out in the US.
chownfm 59 minutes ago [-]
Almost like it is a well funded marketing campaign.
"Everyone loves Meta Muse now, it is organic growth. My social media feed told me so!"
anyone know whats going on with muse. twitter has gone crazy with fake things ppl've supposedly achieved like getting airline to refund 4k, negotiating 45k furniture to 5k, booking flights for 20 dollars. These are the same ppl that were hyping openclaw, not sure what happened to that.
and how muse topping charts. Its all befuddling to me.
gundmc 8 hours ago [-]
Well, Muse is essentially OpenClaw as a service for the general population so that tracks.
ulfw 7 hours ago [-]
What's cool about giving all your life's data to Meta Muuuuse?
FatalLogic 2 hours ago [-]
>People don't even trust other people near them to use Meta hardware,
Video, showing how random Meta employees don't like slightly creepy stranger obviously using Meta glasses to record them:
Meta allegedly took down the video when it was uploaded to their own platforms.
bellorap 9 hours ago [-]
> Zuckerberg needs to fix the company first
First he needs to fix himself
TheAtomic 9 hours ago [-]
Impossible.
godelski 8 hours ago [-]
Why? Does his model not get firmware updates anymore?
alex1138 2 hours ago [-]
I was going to say. It's not 'the company', it's him. He has majority voting rights on everything
chownfm 1 hours ago [-]
I hate Meta with a passion but I think the real problem is not embracing Web XR and an open ecosystem.
I love the Meta Quest 3 in terms of hardware but I haven't put the Quest on in 6 months because I don't play games so there is so little content.
This solves nothing in terms of what I don't like about VR. The headset weight was no issue at all for me.
Then trying to develop with the unreal engine and the Quest 3 was a complete joke.
The best thing I seen in VR was the unreal engine VR demo. Everything else looks like a cartoon after that.
What is the point of building this nice hardware and then a metaverse that isn't even up to 90s POVRAY standards.
Like focusing on building a better web browser without the web.
autuni 2 hours ago [-]
Honestly, I think at this point in order to fix Meta Zuckerberg needs to go. People will never trust a company with him in charge, without him they could start to rebuild trust with people.
TulliusCicero 5 hours ago [-]
Hardware looks good except the FoV is really bad, a huge downgrade compared to the Quest 3.
sleight42 8 hours ago [-]
Zuckerberg needs to fix Zuckerberg first. Meta is going to remain as it is, otherwise.
stahtops 4 hours ago [-]
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Manuel_D 10 hours ago [-]
I thought Meta's approach to AR was pivoting towards transparent glasses with displays in the vein of Ray Ban Display and Orion (I realize that "VR" is in the title, but almost all the images show AR use cases). Their original vision for AR was to have people walking around with quest headsets in passthrough mode. But that's just too weird for the vast majority of people. I can't imaging walking around in public and ordering coffee with my eyes totally obscured behind a device. I saw a couple co-workers walking around wearing headsets like this when I worked at Reality Labs, but it was obvious to me and all my teammates that vanishingly few people would actually do that in public.
I guess the approach here is to shrink down the VR glasses and make them look more like normal glasses from a distance. But I still don't think I'd wear one of these walking around the mall or airport. Reduction in FOV is also a big negative. I'm not really sure where one would use this device over a Quest or the Ray Ban Display. It occupies this awkward middle point where it's not a transparent glass display, but it's also makes a lot of compromises compared to the rest of the VR line.
throw03172019 11 hours ago [-]
Seeing a person at a coffee shop typing with his fingers on a table and moving his invisible mouse would be…interesting.
I can see value on a plane. But I’d rather use my MacBook then look like a crazy person pretending to work.
phyrex 11 hours ago [-]
That's what people used to say about Bluetooth headsets
walrus01 10 hours ago [-]
It's still creepy and weird to have a full conversation on a bluetooth headset in a public place where everyone can overhear your side of it.
ncphillips 10 hours ago [-]
Isn’t that the same without a headset?
spencerflem 10 hours ago [-]
No, talking into a phone feels more natural than talking to nothing in particular
Cyan488 8 hours ago [-]
Plus when you talk into a phone, your voice bouncing off the glass causes natural tendency to control vocal volume.
With buds, people just shout into the void... Or the bus...
al_borland 10 hours ago [-]
Better than the people who walk around using speakerphone… which I see at least 3 people do on every trip to the grocery store.
the_af 10 hours ago [-]
It still seems weird to me when I hear people seemingly talking to themselves as if hallucinating. It always surprises me until I realize what's happening.
cmrdporcupine 10 hours ago [-]
guess i'm old cuz i still feel like it's weird and antisocial
GaryBluto 8 hours ago [-]
Surely you mean asocial?
NBJack 8 hours ago [-]
I've been that guy, though with a portable keyboard and wireless mouse using my Xreal glasses with a Samsung device in Dex mode.
It is as close as Ive gotten to the cyberpunk dream so far.
juiceland 11 hours ago [-]
I’ve used the Vision Pro in public. I don’t care what people think of me, but I did get annoyed at people tapping me on the shoulder and asking about it.
11 hours ago [-]
Apocryphon 10 hours ago [-]
I’d mostly be concerned about getting robbed while having my vision obscured.
throw03172019 10 hours ago [-]
Luckily they can’t steal your invisible monitor, keyboard and mouse.
mrieck 10 hours ago [-]
Glad it's using the Meta XR SDK - it's a closed ecosystem but at least it IS an ecosystem.
The Ray-Ban Metas had no ecosystem. No SDK, no app store, just apps made by Meta. They finally announced an SDK in 2026 but why would I support a device that was so anti-developer for years?
aucisson_masque 4 hours ago [-]
For money. There is barely any competition yet.
slowin 11 hours ago [-]
I had an Oculus Quest and it was a really great device. After the "Meta" rebrand, the quality rapidly decreased and now it wants me to upload my ID to Meta to keep using it. Absolutely not! Zuckerberg already has way too much information on me, uploading my state issued identification to them is such an insane ask, I will never do it. While this looks like interesting hardware, the company behind it has unacceptable and user-hostile practices, so I'll pass.
wolvoleo 8 hours ago [-]
I've never needed to submit any ID?
I think the software kept getting better except for the latest UI redesign intended to mimic Apple which is indeed terrible. I hate the heavy use of double clicking on the controllers. The older UI was better (though even before this they constantly redesigned it every 6 months or so)
But they've only improved things over time. The quest 1 shipped without passthrough or hand tracking. By the end of it's support it had both. The quest 2 and 3 also continue to receive new features like higher frame rates, keyboard view etc.
matsemann 5 hours ago [-]
If you already had a long standing fb profile you were probably good. But if you had to make a new one just for Quest, you could sometimes end up having to go through all kinds of hoops to prove you weren't making a spam bot account. Or if you tried to access a long forgotten account.
wolvoleo 51 minutes ago [-]
No I didn't. During the time when it was required to couple one I just made one with a fake name. But since that passed i decoupled it again and deleted the Facebook one.
Kbelicius 3 hours ago [-]
You don't need a fb profile for quest. I'm sure that you could use one but you can create a new meta account for which you just need an email.
rpdillon 10 hours ago [-]
Exactly where I am. Was all-in on Quest 1 and Quest 2, but had to offboard due to Meta's wild policies (that ended up locking me out of my account with little recourse -- some bug with the Oculus standalone account merge with FB and then re-split).
As much as I'm a proponent of VR, I won't play by Meta's rules.
harry8 5 hours ago [-]
Could you get a refund for the device? Obviously that wasn't what you paid for.
ryandrake 8 hours ago [-]
I was so excited by Oculus’s technology, and then Facebook of all companies bought them and it was such a let down. It felt like finding out that Charles Manson likes the same TV show as you. Yuck!
aaron695 6 hours ago [-]
[dead]
ewild 11 hours ago [-]
oculus didnt ship a single product not owned by facebook.
cortesoft 10 hours ago [-]
That is certainly not true.
I had the Oculus Rift dev kit before they sold to Facebook. It was so amazing at the time
seizethecheese 10 hours ago [-]
“Dev kit”
cortesoft 8 hours ago [-]
They called it that, but I just bought it on their website like a normal product. I didn’t write anything for it.
There was a site that you could download experiences that people created, which is what I used it for.
ihuman 10 hours ago [-]
You had to pay for it (Kickstarter), so its 100% a product
joemi 9 hours ago [-]
Game console developers always had to (and still have to) pay for their dev kits. That doesn't really make them products in the typical sense of the word, though.
The stronger argument for it being a product is that it was available to the public.
cortesoft 8 hours ago [-]
I didn’t even get it from the kickstarter.
I just bought it on the website.
seizethecheese 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah, sure, my point is that obviously the original comment excluded the dev kit in their definition of product, and arguing over it is just splitting hairs.
gpm 10 hours ago [-]
Non-devs were buying them to play games.
cortesoft 8 hours ago [-]
I was one of them.
I mean, I was/am a dev, but I had no plans to develop on it, I just wanted it to play with.
slowin 10 hours ago [-]
Correct, but you didn't have to log into the Quest 1 with facebook until ~2024. They had "Oculus accounts" at first.
Benjamin_Dobell 8 hours ago [-]
They have Meta accounts now, which are also not Facebook accounts. I went straight from an Oculus account to Meta account. Might be location based, but I most certainly haven't been asked to upload any ID.
jlarocco 5 hours ago [-]
> They have Meta accounts now, which are also not Facebook accounts.
How gullible can you be?
herbst 4 hours ago [-]
I got some hate from pointing out WhatsApp is the same evil corp as Facebook recently. People don't want to hear that
Benjamin_Dobell 5 hours ago [-]
Well, I was going to point out the distinction between products. But I guess if people like you are able to turn HN into Reddit, anything is possible.
jlarocco 5 hours ago [-]
And I was pointing out that they are one and the same but the "Facebook" name was so tarnished by their terrible privacy practices they had to change it to save face.
But I guess if people like you are able to ignore that to make yourself feel better about giving your personal information to Zuckerberg's advertising company then anything is possible.
Benjamin_Dobell 5 hours ago [-]
Phwoar! Thank you. It's 2026, and had it not been for your high quality informative comments. I would have not known anything about this them there Facebook. You saved me.
I don't know what conversation you think you're having here, but it's not that.
If you'd bothered to read... and then ready for it... stop, take a breath, and process the information. You'd have noticed I was pointing out you can use a Quest headset WITHOUT providing them your personal ID OR having a Facebook account. Almost as if, you know, I was highlighting that giving the company your personal info isn't required. Woe me though for pointing that out.
I'm sorry for interrupting the indignant rants. Please continue.
guiambros 10 hours ago [-]
Owner of DK2 here, well before Facebook acquisition. It was for developers, but it was a shipped product nonetheless.
benatkin 10 hours ago [-]
Not really. Pre-release baked into the name.
croes 9 hours ago [-]
Sold for a full price, so it’s a sold product.
joemi 9 hours ago [-]
Game console dev kits are typically _more_ expensive than the consoles they're for. So "full price" isn't a good argument. (The fact that they were available to the public is a stronger argument.)
serf 9 hours ago [-]
i've never had the luxury of buying a cheaper dev kit. Ever.
benatkin 9 hours ago [-]
It wasn't though, a full price would have been more, to cover not just components and assembly but the cost of R&D.
joemi 9 hours ago [-]
Game console dev kits usually cost more than the consoles they're for, not less. They're not mass produced at the scale that the consoles are, and they're sold or leased to companies expecting to make several orders of magnitude more back off the products they create with the dev kits.
benatkin 8 hours ago [-]
There isn't a very direct comparison of Oculus products to game consoles like PlayStation, Nintendo, XBox, or those in the distant past. It is interesting, and they have a lot of the same market forces at play, but I don't think they behave by the same rules.
joemi 8 hours ago [-]
There's at least one way where there's a direct comparison: they both have dev kits.
gpm 10 hours ago [-]
Pretty sure DK1 shipped pre-acquisition.
abraxas 10 hours ago [-]
DK2 also
benatkin 10 hours ago [-]
Neither qualifies.
bigfishrunning 8 hours ago [-]
Why? They were for sale to the public, how were they not a product?
hamburglar 7 hours ago [-]
Because some people find arguing over semantics fun.
bigmadshoe 9 hours ago [-]
Regardless the acquisition took some time to bring down the quality of the products. It doesn't matter if their first few products were sufficiently far ahead that they weren't enshitified immediately when Facebook bought Oculus.
reactordev 9 hours ago [-]
they shipped 3. DK1, DK2, CV1.
chickenpesto 8 hours ago [-]
4 if you count the Latency Tester.. but yo.. Mark and Andrew.. pour these ARVR $$$ into CZI instead!!!
This is why he buys anything. I can't speak to Whatsapp but Instagram is horrific now precisely because he doesn't give a damn about making a good product. All he wants is to own the network effects, and credentials, and data
-pao 11 hours ago [-]
They recently managed to crack open the bootloader, most of meta stuff can be bypassed now.
I despise how it went from a great device to almost a paperweight with just horrible software updates (as it's the norm these days).
Tepix 8 hours ago [-]
That’s the bootloader of the original Quest
thetoon 5 hours ago [-]
The one that needed it the most. Very excited to see what's going to grow out of this hack
theshackleford 9 hours ago [-]
> After the "Meta" rebrand, the quality rapidly decreased
This has not been my experience at all and there are very few headsets I have not owned.
Everything else I can't really disagree with.
tyrabound 10 hours ago [-]
It’s rather astonishing to me how the vampire squid of world domination has apparently worked out just how to neutralize any sense of self-preservation, and manipulate and gaslight anything into place if they have enough time and are patient.
Everything from “freedom sticks” to get women to breath in smoke and ash like the foolish men, to going from “government IDs are just conspiracy theory” to “you have to show your papers to see information and communicate with other humans on the only method that is still widely possible; it’s all just been slowly salami sliced and microdosed into our societies. Worse yet, still a large chunk of society seem utterly oblivious as long as they can consume their particular customized and personalized opiate of the masses.
Mistletoe 11 hours ago [-]
How do they explain why they need your ID to use VR glasses?
slowin 11 hours ago [-]
Age verification.
Mistletoe 11 hours ago [-]
Yes but why do you need to verify your age to use computer hardware?
dmix 10 hours ago [-]
Because people are naive enough to think the huge privacy compromise will be worth the cost to society in order to protect kids.
The better question is why in 5yrs we will have to use ID to buy a product on some random ecommerce site or to play a video game or use Uber or post a comment on Reddit. It will be because people pushed for this for kids on social media and opened the door for the rest of the internet companies to demand it and therefore the government.
vlyan 10 hours ago [-]
I really hate it when some vague "people" are blamed for this bullshit. those who do -- a minority -- do it only because they've been brainwashed by the relentless public opinion campaign ran jointly by the capital and the governments.
dgellow 3 hours ago [-]
No brainwashing needed, the vast majority of people don’t care one bit about privacy
zamadatix 11 hours ago [-]
They can't stand the idea you'd use it without a social media account. It's Facebook after all.
slowin 11 hours ago [-]
You shouldn't have to do this and I won't. I'll vote with my dollars and never buy another device from them. It's too bad because I genuinely liked it as well, but it's not worth the invasion of privacy and normalizing sending this type of information to any consumer company.
10 hours ago [-]
crimsoneer 4 hours ago [-]
For the same reason you need to show ID to go into a bar/pub.
tyrabound 10 hours ago [-]
Think of the children … or are your a chomo? Now hand over your papers for access to information and communications more that all the books have been fed into the AI shredder and paper and writing instruments were done away with to save the planet.
Daz912 9 hours ago [-]
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SchemaLoad 9 hours ago [-]
Facebook/Meta has a system that decides if it thinks you are lying about your name or if it just isn't sure, if you get flagged for ID verification. These days it might also be because they think you are under 18, but the ID verification system existed long long before age checking.
If you haven't seen it, it's probably because your account is old and they have scraped enough contact lists to believe your name is real.
hamburglar 7 hours ago [-]
Odd. I’ve used a fake name with Facebook since about 2009 and now I have a meta quest and they’ve never flagged my account or asked for id verification.
wolvoleo 8 hours ago [-]
You don't need to use a real name on a meta headset. It was decoupled from Facebook years ago.
Daz912 9 hours ago [-]
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impulser_ 9 hours ago [-]
What does your state ID have that Facebook can't already get?
afavour 9 hours ago [-]
I don’t believe Facebook has my full address. Yeah, they could probably get it but that doesn’t mean I want to help them.
impulser_ 4 hours ago [-]
I think you're underestimating Facebook if you think they don't know your address.
miltonlaxer 10 hours ago [-]
The aggressive push for ID verification is a direct result of massive government lawsuits regarding online child safety. As a strict condition of this settlement, Meta is legally mandated to enforce hard age gates.
Plus they already have all that data... Your ID is not private information. It's an identifier that they don't need or want.
wren6991 9 hours ago [-]
I think the causality is a bit mixed up here given Meta have put millions of dollars into child safety lobbying
reassess_blind 9 hours ago [-]
What's their motive there?
glenpierce 9 hours ago [-]
Smaller entrants to the field cannot as easily comply with the law. It’s about raising barriers to entry. Trust in Meta might be low here, but to the general public, it’s higher than some small startup they’ve never heard of, so they won’t upload their ids there.
porkshoe 9 hours ago [-]
I linked to two articles describing Meta's fight to have age verification laws put into place (even before the settlement). The most obvious reason is to try to get some sort of law in place that they believe they can comply with _without_ having to make changes to their algorithms in a way that might hurt their business.
I don't think they particularly _want_ legal id (though maybe they do? who knows)... but it's obviously false that this was caused by the government when Meta itself was lobbying for such laws even before then.
Creates another expensive bar for prospective challengers to clear - regulation nearly always ends up favouring incumbents, especially if they have a hand in shaping it.
wren6991 9 hours ago [-]
I'm honestly not sure. Often when companies lobby for regulation it's to avoid other types of regulation they would find more troublesome. I don't buy the popular narrative that Meta is lobbying for verification laws for the purpose of getting ID data because surely they have a lot of signal there already. At the same time I think it's backwards to say "Meta are behaving this way because of regulation" when they actively lobbied for it.
simcop2387 9 hours ago [-]
Obviously, none of us have any proof, but I'm on board with the theory that they've been lobbying for it to push things subtly. Specifically because it looks like a lot of these laws are being made to absolve the person creating the gate of responsibility and liability when the gate is there, even if it fails. The idea of the theory being that if they can push that part in then it's better off for them rather than if it's done in a vacuum where they can end up responsible.
raimondious 9 hours ago [-]
It makes it impossible for anyone except huge existing players to have a legal social network if there are enough hoops to jump through to run one.
SchemaLoad 10 hours ago [-]
Facebook was doing ID checks well before this because they want to stop ban evasion.
ID checks just came to the Quest because they forced facebook accounts which already had ID checks on it. They should never have made facebook accounts mandatory for playing games.
razodactyl 10 hours ago [-]
Yeah, you beat me to this - I laughed at Meta needing any information considering shadow profiles have always existed and every company leaks data like a sieve xD
p-e-w 10 hours ago [-]
> As a strict condition of this settlement, Meta is legally mandated to enforce hard age gates.
Not for allowing you to use your own hardware, what utter nonsense.
It was their choice to forcibly link their hardware to their online account system despite it working fine without it. But it’s absolutely not true that the government requires age verification for using VR goggles.
jfoster 3 hours ago [-]
They should sell it to Apple. I wouldn't buy this from Meta, but I would buy it from Apple.
dylanger 3 hours ago [-]
I'd guess Apple are already hard at work making something similar and better than this.
cubefox 3 hours ago [-]
You would pay three times as much for the same product?
hiisukun 6 hours ago [-]
He's the only one on the couch.
The only one at the sports game.
The only one at the movie theatre.
At the office, it was nice to see him put the glasses down and shake hands with the person who rocked up. If that person had arrived 'in VR' I think I would have been completely turned off.
I guess if you want to be alone, it's a good device -- but the best times for me with modern technology have been when it brings me closer to other people. Online games were better on LAN. Couch co-op as a genre is one of the best console experiences I think. Meeting people in real life, who I spoke to on IRC -- again, a great moment.
I'm not anti-tech, and the device form factor sure looks amazing -- but I can't imagine any moment I would use something like this at home while anyone else in my house was here.
jayd16 5 hours ago [-]
The shared anchor tech exists and its honestly pretty awesome to play a shared XR game but with the cost and install base of these devices, you really can't invest in developing those types of things. Too bad because even a shared XR paint prototype is cool.
harry8 4 hours ago [-]
>Couch co-op as a genre is one of the best console experiences
This! And it isn't close either.
throw310822 3 hours ago [-]
I think it's what makes the form factor doubly important. Not just for comfort, but because if your visor is just a pair of glasses you can wear it and remove it in a second and with just one hand, without even thinking. This easiness removes a lot of the feeling of isolation.
The other fundamental thing for me is to have visors that seamlessly and by default connect to the nearby ones so that experiences are shared.
rexpop 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Topfi 11 hours ago [-]
Some of the key specs cause the page is rather thin on details:
* Display Type: Micro-OLED
* Resolution: 2412 × 2288 pixels per eye
* Angular Resolution: 37 PPD
* Field of View: 70° × 66°
* Chipset: Snapdragon Reality Elite
* Memory & Storage: 12GB RAM with 128GB internal storage (expandable up to 1TB via microSD on the puck)
* Tracking & Sensors: 6DoF positional tracking, depth sensing, autofocus, 4-camera eye tracking, face tracking, and hand tracking
* Passthrough: Color RGB passthrough cameras at 26 PPD
* Price: $ 1300,- USD plus your data
Similar PPD to an AVP at, what I as a former owner of one (alongside a Quest 2 and 3, a Magic Leap, Xreal and Viture) would call is a far more appealing implementation for actual productive work.
Really wish Apple had gone down this route, have the puck incorporate an A series chip rather than shoving a M series one into the headset itself and heck, I could see such a design being doable for them back when they first launched the AVP if they hadn't forced that utterly ridiculous eye display and stupendously heavy metal body.
There is, unless I am mistaken, nothing here that isn't established technology as found in the AVP, all the fancy display and lens experiments from Starburst, over Holocake to Mirror Lake seem to remain in the lab, this seems to be "just" pancake lenses plus Micro-OLED once more.
bottlepalm 11 hours ago [-]
70 degree FOV is such a deal breaker for gaming. That and the price. In a world where people already have tons of screens, monitors and TVs in their face - the practical use case for this is relegated to trains and planes. Very niche.
mey 10 hours ago [-]
The form factor itself is also a killer. Couldn't imagine doing anything besides using it as large private display for 2D games. You aren't going to be moving your head around quickly with just pressure on your temples to hold it in place.
Not sure where this lands functionality wise. I feel like it's most direct competition would be as a cheaper Apple Vision. You would need to pair it off with a Windows system for heavier productivity work most likely. Even though their OS is "android", it doesn't have the Google ecosystem behind it, let alone matured on that front. Media consumption on the go seems to be the other use case.
So, compare them to either XREALs plugged into a laptop/phone, or Apple Vision Pro I guess.
NBJack 8 hours ago [-]
What's worse is that, due to the motion tracking many of these devices have, you often have to enter a travel mode that disables some of the better features.
michelsedgh 11 hours ago [-]
exactly i dont see the appeal or use cases other than planes or trains and stuff.
porphyra 11 hours ago [-]
meanwhile the Bigscreen Beyond 2:
* Display: also micro-OLED
* Resolution: 2560 x 2560 per eye
* Angular resolution: 32 PPD
* Field of view: 116°D, 108°H x 96°V
* Chipset: none lol plugs into your computer
* Tracking and sensors: needs base stations
* Weight: 107 g
* Passthrough: no
* Price: $959 (+$200 for eye tracking)
* needs base stations, a PC, and has a cable, and looks kinda like dorky swim goggles (but still pretty futuristic and cool)
meanwhile the Steam Frame:
* Display: LCD
* Resolution: 2160 x 2160 per eye
* Angular resolution: 20
* Field of view: 110 degrees
* Chipset: Snapdragon 8 gen 3
* Memory and storage: 16GB of ram with 256GB UFS plus microSD
* Tracking and sensors: inside out camera based tracking
* Weight: 185 g core headset, 440 g including strap, rear battery, facial interface, and audio
* Passthrough: idk
* Price: $1059 for 256GB, $1299 for 1TB
fg137 21 minutes ago [-]
I have to point out that all of these are terrible options for the general mass who are remotely interested in VR. If you are an enthusiastic who don't mind dropping $1000 on something completely optional to your everyday life, great, but otherwise they are terrible in value considering what they provide.
tapoxi 10 hours ago [-]
Steam Frame has black and white passthrough but it's not good enough for AR. They sell a third party's passthrough camera as an add-on though which is $130 I think and clips on the front. Since the Frame runs open Linux with KDE this is really interesting to me.
TiredOfLife 7 hours ago [-]
With bigscreen you also need to have 2-3 tracking stations ($500-750) with stands (another $100) you need to setup everywhere you want to use it.
pj_mukh 11 hours ago [-]
There was mention of a DisplayPort, so is there a way to just stream your MacBook into it?
Closing the lid and working in one of these would be great, but there's always a caveat that blocks this.
bottlepalm 11 hours ago [-]
You can, but the FOV is narrow so not great for multiple screens, and the focal length is probably around 4 ft so you're not going to be able to use a screen closer without eye strain.
Topfi 11 hours ago [-]
The Quest series supports both wired and wireless streaming, so I'd be surprised if that wasn't an option.
chaostheory 6 hours ago [-]
From my experience, wired streaming never really worked well even with the expensive fiber optic cable.
dmitrygr 8 hours ago [-]
> would call is a far more appealing implementation
Said the guy who has not checked this thing for head-turn-to-pixels-changed latency. That is the one metric that nobody has approached the AVP on -- the one that keeps me (and many others) from being nauseous.
mohsen1 11 hours ago [-]
"100 grams" is the headline here
busymom0 10 hours ago [-]
How is it powered? External battery? Or what's the built in battery life like?
dmarcos 10 hours ago [-]
Battery and computer puck. There are photos on the site
busymom0 10 hours ago [-]
I somehow missed the pics where one of the arms had a cable attached to a battery
bobmarleybiceps 10 hours ago [-]
I can't help but feel like all the tech glasses are basically a way to get more ai training data where they can get like a constant stream of human POV stuff.
Ah! That's actually exactly why I don't use WhatsApp, Google, etc anymore.
When Meta bought Oculus a decade ago I though "why the heck are they buying this VR company..." which prompted me to read "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power" 2018 Shoshana Zuboff's book.
The idea is precisely that they don't need more of the same data, they have enough (even though they do need to keep them up to date) but they instead need more KINDS of data to keep on earning money from selling ads.
They don't care for the technology itself, only for ways to distinguish needs better and that's exactly what a new digital medium provides.
TL;DR: yes.
pampas 4 hours ago [-]
You should look up the story behind Pokemon Go.
Invictus0 9 hours ago [-]
The battery life on these devices is way too low for that
chaosharmonic 10 hours ago [-]
Upside: the Steam Frame's price is actually pretty competitive now.
fg137 19 minutes ago [-]
Both of which are not appealing at all to the average consumer. Most people have better use for their $1k.
jsemrau 9 hours ago [-]
Over the last years, being "online" has become so stressful and toxic that I just don't want to spend much time there anymore. 2016 me would be ecstatic about this product. 2026 me just want to be in the real world.
csallen 9 hours ago [-]
You just have to put a bit of effort into curating what your online experience looks like.
nradov 9 hours ago [-]
How?
Cyan488 8 hours ago [-]
Not the parent commenter but I've found RSS feeds have replaced most of my desire to browse reddit, and other social media. You can even paste a YouTube channel into a feed reader to get a true channel subscriptions feed.
csallen 7 hours ago [-]
For starters, don't let other people control your diet of information. So get off social media, where random algorithmic feeds serve you slop you didn't ask for.
Instead, pick out your own internet information diet. Make it a project. If you're not afraid to use AI, it can help with this tremendously.
Then you need to build habits that replace your unhealthy browsing with healthy browsing. IMO it's best to just install tools that make it difficult or even impossible to do the unhealthy browsing.
nradov 5 hours ago [-]
I love social media, it's so much fun. The algorithms are awesome.
ToJans 5 hours ago [-]
I've been in this space since Oculus DK1.
I've yet to see the first use case that makes it more than a party trick.
I tried pushing it for 3D configurators during sales, but sales people hate it with reason: you're missing out on the buyer's reaction and it breaks the sales journey.
As long as we can't see the user's eyes etc this will flop.
dverlaeckt80 3 hours ago [-]
After the "metaverse" hype of 5 years ago, VR clearly hasn’t really taken off.
I’ve personally always thought the headsets were simply too clunky, which puts off the average person from trying them, due to the hassle (and price).
This new design from Meta is the first I’ve seen that feels like something more people would actually want to try. Perhaps VR isn’t dead — maybe it’s just lurking in the shadows, waiting for the right hardware tech to bring it to the masses.
markus_zhang 11 hours ago [-]
This is very cool. We finally have something that genuinely looks like glasses.
Now someone just needs to learn how to hack into these glasses remotely…and then we will have the Ghost in the Shell moment.
fg137 17 minutes ago [-]
"we finally have something ..." maybe do a search first.
jagermo 3 hours ago [-]
Meta could have something great, but I fear they will stand in their way. I have the oakley meta glasses, and the quality of the camera and sound is fantastic. But the software is horrible. It's a walled garden where only Meta-friends are allowed to play. So, Spotify yes, Tidal, Deezer or others, No. It supports Garmin, but not Corros, Suunto or Polar.
If they had the courage to open up their plattform for external developers like Apple or Android (not even talking about open APIs), they could have an amazing ecosystem. Currently, it feels like a car with a stuck handbrake.
polyomino 3 hours ago [-]
That is what meta says they want, but their glasses are accessories on apples computer for now. Vr is more open you can sideload your own apks
borisgolovnev 2 hours ago [-]
Too bad the software is going to be dogshit. Maybe it'll work in the beginning when they need to show it off to people a lot but will degrade into an absolute dumpster fire later. Like happened with Quest3. Or their sunglasses.
I had Meta Raybans for a while and liked them. Always refusing firmware updates. Everything I needed worked fine, normal headset for listening podcasts on walks, taking occasional picture, that's all I need! In this use case battery lasted a week outside of its case. Until recently it started prompting me with voice to update the glasses urgently every half an hour. And I did (to version 128, hey, even number!) and oh boy, Meta AI this Meta AI that everything is Meta AI can't do anything without it. Battery is drained in less than a day of me not wearing them, bluetooth audio breaks up all the time, connection getting lost. I was perfectly happy with the product and they had to ruin it to shove their AI garbage down my throat.
They recently added Meta AI sidebar to WhatsApp which you can't turn off.
So, hope you like Mark's AI because you'll sure have to use it with these.
m00dy 2 hours ago [-]
Same thing happened to my Sony earbuds. A firmware update bricked both of them
syntex 1 hours ago [-]
Recently, Meta closed my account, along with access to all my Meta Quest games, because I didn't verify my age in time. Because the account is closed, I can’t even contact support. I received a few emails about age verif. but first, I don’t want to provide my ID everywhere, and second, why automatically close an account with all my purchases on it? Why can't you wait until I log in? Super frustrating / terrible company.
jesse_dot_id 10 hours ago [-]
$1300 for 70° × 66° FOV is pretty awful. Also, I wish they'd stop hyping these devices for productivity when they know the text isn't sharp enough. This will be good for watching stuff and that's about it. Is it good enough at that to justify tethering yourself to a brick? I suspect not for $1300.
I'm in VR a lot, mostly in bigscreen VR, and have had the Quest, Quest 2, and Quest 3. I don't see any reason to upgrade from the latter at all.
nullishdomain 9 hours ago [-]
I use the Apple Vision Pro as my main display, programming for 8+ hours per day. Zero issues as long as you're willing to use larger screens! The PPD on this looks very similar, possibly a bit better due to its lower FOV.
jesse_dot_id 7 hours ago [-]
But won't the low FOV make it impossible to glance at other displays, even if the text is sharp enough?
modeless 8 hours ago [-]
The text should be sharp enough on this one. It's sharper than Vision Pro and Bigscreen.
LoganDark 9 hours ago [-]
> Also, I wish they'd stop hyping these devices for productivity when they know the text isn't sharp enough.
Agreed. When I tried the Apple Vision Pro, I was a little disappointed at the PPD (which is like, 34 to Quest's 25 or so), didn't expect to still be so sensitive to it.
GaryBluto 10 hours ago [-]
These Meta “VR Glasses” seem suspiciously like AR glasses. They even used an image of a game rendered on an AR screen for their “VR” game section.
gs17 10 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I'm not sure why they're calling it that. XR glasses, maybe, but not VR if you can't actually have any immersion.
daemonologist 7 hours ago [-]
I think they're calling them "VR" because they use camera pass-through for AR, whereas all their other AR products are see-through. (I think this is a reasonable place to draw the line - pass-through AR kind of sucks in my experience. Although maybe a third category would be appropriate.)
sajithdilshan 3 hours ago [-]
I'm not a fan on Meta at all, but so glad that they did this to challenge Apple and hopefully would be able to keep on improving far better than Apple.
modeless 9 hours ago [-]
These finally have enough resolution to comfortably replace regular displays for productivity work, surrounding you with as many monitors as you want. Better PPD than Vision Pro, in a much better form factor. Apparently it supports DisplayPort over USB-C as well. I think they will sell a lot of these.
boringg 9 hours ago [-]
Still same problem all VR has -- no killer use case. Outside of the problem that it is Meta doing this, the product in and of itself isn't that great. Ask all Quest users if they still use it all the time.... most of the oculus's are just collecting dust.
Some future date we will get there, but this isn't it.
whall6 9 hours ago [-]
I’d really like to use it as an extended monitor for work. The problem with previous versions has been inability for me to see my own keyboard or even inability to easily mirror laptop screens. This looks like it could do that.
NBJack 8 hours ago [-]
Depends on how the device gets data from your computer and how it connects. My Xreal Ones present themselves as a monitor via DP Alt mode when I plug them into my work laptop, switch to ultrwide mode (32:9 is my fav), and I'm done.
To use most VR headsets that are also standalone devices, I would start by fighting with IT on getting some kind of security exception to use the necessary software on my laptop, then get started with streaming/connecting/sharing screens with it. Hopefully.
4 hours ago [-]
stevage 6 hours ago [-]
I get that there are people who are into this stuff, but honestly, I can't think of a single use for myself, unless the movie watching experience is really, really good.
I'm never going to wear a thing like this in public, and at home, I have my laptop and TV. The TV I'm usually watching with someone else, and this is worse than the laptop...so what's my use case?
niuzeta 6 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately the appeal for these glasses has dropped once someone dubbed them, "pervert glasses" and it stuck around.
zer0zzz 5 hours ago [-]
That's not even the same product line...
staticshock 5 hours ago [-]
you can't touch type without any tactile feedback. you just can't. there's no way to position your hands correctly relative to a keyboard you can't feel. that part of the "productivity" demo drives me bananas.
They really try hard to hide the tether, it almost looks like it was added back in to the video afterwards.
whatever1 3 hours ago [-]
I wonder why Apple did not do the same thing?
Shove all of the compute in the external unit, instead of having all of that weight in your face.
djierardi 11 hours ago [-]
And still capturing audio where (in my state) you can't record conversations without consent?
cheema33 11 hours ago [-]
> And still capturing audio where
This may come as a surprise, but most phones can capture audio these days. Has your state made them illegal yet?
djierardi 10 hours ago [-]
Not yet! although its not legal to do so.
plantain 11 hours ago [-]
Sounds like you shouldn't use them in your state then? You can't open carry in my state... so I don't.
brancz 10 hours ago [-]
I really hope they’ll care a little more about using this for productivity. I wish the quest 3s would work offline eg. on a plane as my external monitor for my MacBook.
modeless 8 hours ago [-]
In the keynote they said it supports DisplayPort over USB-C, so this should work great.
chaostheory 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah infinite office was vaporware, which made sense since prior meta device video res and ppd was too low for work.
7 hours ago [-]
t1234s 10 hours ago [-]
hmm.. does this mean that the next version of apple vision pro will be spectacular?
nperez 10 hours ago [-]
There's plenty of reason to still be skeptical about the future of VR, or Meta's practices, but shoving all of that aside it does look like a big step toward the level of comfort that's going to be needed for VR to succeed. Not at this price point, but it's incremental progress.
VCFundedGenYer 8 hours ago [-]
Shame that it's Meta. Radioactive to all but the most sycophantic.
Steam Frame is the one you want.
zer0zzz 5 hours ago [-]
Why? I'm under the impression that all VR products are shit. At least metas seem to be departing from the very boring gamer space.
bsimpson 10 hours ago [-]
I see Disney+ 3D videos featured pretty heavily on the landing page.
I believe that launched as an Apple exclusive. I wonder if that means the millions of Oculus Quest headsets that have been gathering dust for years will finally have some immersive content worth watching.
Den_VR 6 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of the Immersed team’s Visor vaporware.
swiftcoder 4 hours ago [-]
So these are not actually "VR", right? They are the same fixed projected display cinema glasses that you can buy from half a dozen different brands today?
terribleperson 10 hours ago [-]
After my experience with the Quest 3's software, I'm not really interested in anything Meta. That's ignoring the privacy issues and other issues with Meta as a company.
999900000999 10 hours ago [-]
This as a fully open source device or at least from a company worth trusting would be a great product.
SteamFrame it is! As far as I can tell the SteamFrame lets you install a different OS.
dansquizsoft 10 hours ago [-]
That external compute block it comes with looks pretty chonky...
cebert 8 hours ago [-]
It looks like a hardware, but I’ll never buy it because it’s associated with Meta. They have lost my privacy trust.
NietTim 3 hours ago [-]
It's so sad that Meta of all companies is leading this space.
verelo 10 hours ago [-]
a few things id want from a product like this
1) Blackout. Let me use them as a way to get complete pitch black when i want it
2) Amazing resolution. None of the existing products are good enough to replace my physical screens, but i'd love to.
3) Comfortable. Nothing has been comfortable enough to wear long term. Sure maybe an hour or two, but 8-10 hrs a day for work? Not even close.
Hope they get there someday.
modeless 8 hours ago [-]
1. It has an optional light blocker. 2. Better resolution than Vision Pro. 3. Should be the most comfortable VR device ever. Seems like it's addressing your concerns.
pylotlight 3 hours ago [-]
yet to be proven imo..
the_arun 7 hours ago [-]
$1,299 - is expensive (I am not comparing with Apple vision pro) for a general consumer.
the_arun 6 hours ago [-]
why did I get downvoted? for sharing my honest opinion?
fg137 15 minutes ago [-]
FYI when Apple Vision Pro was announced plenty of posts were downvoted for perfectly legit doubts/criticism that proved to be correct
bni 6 hours ago [-]
The are quite careful from what angle they show the headset
binlog 7 hours ago [-]
When Orion was first revealed two years ago people figured they'd be able to reduce the bulk over time and release them in a form approaching regular glasses, like Meta Ray Bans. Now they've somehow become bigger and more VR headset-like? How is this tech going backwards?
SkyPuncher 10 hours ago [-]
Anyone know the resolution?
I have Xreal airs. And, while, I like them, they’re rather useless because 1080p just isn’t enough.
daemonologist 7 hours ago [-]
2412 x 2288 per eye (and horizontal FoV is around 70 degrees). Not sure it's really enough for monitor replacement, but certainly an upgrade over Xreal's offerings.
low_tech_punk 8 hours ago [-]
> Stream hundreds of games with XBOX Cloud Gaming
This might be the killer app if latency is low enough.
mrcwinn 8 hours ago [-]
I know the AVP is flawed - way too heavier - but Apple’s the only company I trust… enough. I’d never consider a product from Meta.
JKCalhoun 11 hours ago [-]
I tried VR and, as many others have said, it's a novelty that wears thin quickly.
I'm amazed though at the amount of effort and corporate money that keeps being thrown at VR trying to make it a thing.
It feels like, to the public, it's like some tired The Beverly Hillbillies re-run that keeps popping up from time to time.
bottlepalm 11 hours ago [-]
The younger generation uses VR a lot. It's like Nintendo in the 80s.
asveikau 10 hours ago [-]
Who?
I have a teenager and a 9 year old and I've never heard this from anyone.
I think nintendo for that generation is nintendo switch. Or roblox.
bottlepalm 8 hours ago [-]
Gorilla Tag alone has millions of monthly active users.
chaostheory 6 hours ago [-]
Adults understand the Switch because it’s familiar, but they didn’t understand the NES because it wasn’t familiar (Atari was a failure)
One of the big complaints of online VR games is that it’s overrun by Gen Alpha children. The only mystery is why meta keeps targeting adults instead of Gen Alpha. It’s a marketing strategy that has already failed multiple times now. Judging from most of the comments here, it will continue to fail. IMO only Apple can breakthrough to adults and even they failed with AVP.
JKCalhoun 11 hours ago [-]
Must be younger than my (20's) daughters then. Their crowd would rather touch grass.
bottlepalm 11 hours ago [-]
I'm sure they touch their phones a million times more than grass.
JKCalhoun 9 hours ago [-]
They dumb down their phones.
deadbabe 11 hours ago [-]
Touching grass is actually not that good for you. You get itchy or could have an allergic reaction.
bottlepalm 10 hours ago [-]
Virtual reality grass is much safer, maybe that's what he meant?
deadbabe 10 hours ago [-]
Touch glass
khazhoux 11 hours ago [-]
I no longer bother watching movies or shows on my (very big) TV ever since I got an AVP. The experience (lying down on my bed, with gigantic movie screen floating above me) is unmatched.
shonenknifefan1 10 hours ago [-]
I sometimes wish that I could read a book like that. But I think the reality is that it would make me tired and fall asleep.
sublinear 11 hours ago [-]
For that use case, why would you choose wearing anything over just having a couple of projectors in the bedroom and living room? That is far more common than owning a vision pro because it's cheaper, more comfortable, more social, etc.
On the audio end of this, you can even throw in some properly righteous speakers in both rooms. All combined, this is still cheaper than or equal to the vision pro price for an objectively better movie experience. The projector image will always be bigger than your TV and speakers that expensive will rattle the walls with bass and shatter your eardrums. It doesn't matter how good earbuds get, there's no replacement for displacement (of air). Don't you like feeling the power?
khazhoux 10 hours ago [-]
> a couple of projectors… it’s cheaper
I’m not saying AVP is cheap, I’m saying visually it’s better.
> more comfortable
Nothing could be more comfortable than lying flat on bed with head propped up just a bit, and screen floating at 45 degrees in front of me, which I can easily reposition and resize to perfectly hit my FOV.
> more social
Heh, I’m not looking to socialize while enjoying a movie at home
The only way a physical setup would win is righteous speakers. I suppose I could connect physical speakers, but that breaks the awesome immersion of enjoying a movie in perfect (to the rest of my family) silence.
But really all I can say is that the visual experience and physical comfort (when lying down) of a movie on AVP is unparalleled, and this is not at all why I bought it, and it’s probably something one really has to experience to understand.
colordrops 11 hours ago [-]
It's a novelty because you had to put on a big uncomfortable headset that required wires up until recently went was really fidgety. Once you get the form factor fixed and comfortable everything will change. This looks like a big step in that direction. Too bad I don't want Meta looking through my eyes.
JKCalhoun 11 hours ago [-]
You could be right. But I also keep hearing that excuse (since the Jaron Lanier, power-glove VR days) so color me skeptical.
bigyabai 11 hours ago [-]
> Once you get the form factor fixed and comfortable everything will change
Will it? Even if you offer people AR glasses and smartphones at the same price, I'd expect most people to pick the phone. Nobody wants to tap their glasses on a Square reader to buy coffee, or ask their specs to take a picture.
The VR/AR modality struggles when OEMs rely on unique native experiences as a selling point. There's no "killer app" for VR a even decade after the original Oculus DTK. Palmer Luckey sold Oculus to go work on building cruise missiles, to give you an idea of how awful VR's prospects are.
sublinear 10 hours ago [-]
> Palmer Luckey sold Oculus to go work on building cruise missiles, to give you an idea of how awful VR's prospects are.
I too once abandoned a bowl of cereal for a steak dinner, but that says nothing about the quality of the cereal.
bigyabai 8 hours ago [-]
Luckey owned a cereal bar. He sold it to Zuck, who spent $46 billion and a business rebrand trying to make breakfast compete with dinner.
fragmede 9 hours ago [-]
> Nobody wants to tap their glasses on a Square reader to buy coffee, or ask their specs to take a picture.
Nobody used their cell phone to take pictures, that's what a camera is for! And music came from a Walkman. But then the iPhone came out, and the rest is history. A pair of glasses that takes pictures could very well be the future. We won't know until after it's happened though.
colordrops 10 hours ago [-]
You'd use it in conjunction with a phone, just like a smart watch. It wouldn't replace your phone.
bigyabai 10 hours ago [-]
Smart watches aren't particularly popular, even at the sub-smartphone price point.
colordrops 7 hours ago [-]
Not sure where you live but everyone is wearing them in LA. And they are super popular in China, especially among children who use them in place of a phone.
krapp 10 hours ago [-]
The only thing I've consistently used VR on is virtual biking/walking videos for when I'm on my exercise bike, and a Google VR app called Wander. I don't have the space for anything that can't be done sitting down and I don't have the memory to run VR Chat.
I agree it's a novelty, it's never going to be the mainstream thing that replaces all existing interfaces and transforms the very concept of reality like some people want it to be. But it is fun within its niche.
I think what's holding it back is price more than anything. I'm still hanging on to my Quest because it just isn't worth the money for me to upgrade, even though half the apps no longer even work (fuck you very much DeoVR.)
pazimzadeh 8 hours ago [-]
I was just thinking, I hope meta/apple are hooking up with companies like Peloton, etc for cycling and rowing experiences
11 hours ago [-]
sublinear 10 hours ago [-]
It really is a joke. Where are my AR contact lenses? It's 2026 for fuck's sake.
avaer 11 hours ago [-]
I hope one day a version of this becomes mainstream enough that it justifies developing for it. It's the ergonomics that prevent that from happening, and moving toward glasses is one of the most important stepping stones. (though if you saw someone wearing "glasses" like this you would probably say it's stretching the definition of glasses)
When someone gets this right I do think we're all gonna ditch the 2d screens and phones.
It doesn't even matter if it's Meta that instigates this, if money is smelled there will be more consumer friendly alternatives popping up overnight (e.g. see how quickly the industry copied the iPhone).
monster_truck 11 hours ago [-]
37 PPD is dogshit man.
I understand this is quite good, but I also have something like 20/12.5 eyesight. To me, using these things feels like looking through a coarse screen door.
E: For reference, I can comfortably count pixels on a 24.5" 1080p screen from a normal seated position.
I've been buying HMDs since the first Oculus, and I promptly sell them to somebody else. 37 PPD is a little more than halfway to "perfect" for someone with 20/20 eyesight
GuB-42 11 hours ago [-]
It is all a compromise. 37 PPD is well under the standard for normal "good" eyesight (aka. "retina" in Apple marketing), which is 60 (aka. 1 arcminute).
Doing more with a narrower field of view is easy, it is even cheaper. Doing more with the same or better field of view means you need more pixels and more computing power to drive them, so more expensive, heavier hardware that gets hotter and with less battery life.
People at Meta consitered 37 PPD to be a good compromise, and I kind of agree.
rhyperior 11 hours ago [-]
Just give yourself time and you’ll be the target customer then!
Dylan16807 11 hours ago [-]
Notably the standard resolution of 96 DPI at 28 inches is 47 PPD.
jachee 11 hours ago [-]
37PPD is triple the Index’s density.
What in the world are you using as your benchmark to call 37 “dogshit”?
zamadatix 11 hours ago [-]
Probably comparing something like a normal monitor at standard distance.
nicechianti 11 hours ago [-]
[dead]
chaostheory 11 hours ago [-]
If Apple released a product with the same form factor, it would likely be a winner. The issue with Meta is that its brand is tarnished for anyone older than Gen Alpha. I don’t have hard data, but I am guessing the majority of VR users are children under their parents’ meta accounts.
I’m still buying this for myself. I enjoy the private movie theater experience and turning every video game session into a decent cardio workout; I’ve lost 60 lbs with VR to date.
I have found VR an easy way to get moving in a fun/low friction way at the end of the day, instead of heading somewhere else. Depending on what you are doing, it isn't going to cover everything, but moving something is better than nothing.
Personally, I found Synth Riders a good way to queue up 60min continous activity that I enjoy.
chaostheory 11 hours ago [-]
The list is too long, but essentially almost every VR game will force you to move since you’re no longer controlling an avatar with buttons. You are now inside the game instead of viewing it from outside of a box, so you’re going to be moving and punching.
For me the biggest calorie burners are boxing games. Beat Saber and others like Synth Riders are great too. Then there are fitness focus apps like Body Combat and even one for rowing machines.
Hopefully, Meta can convince HR firms that this is a fitness device that is eligible for FSA like benefits.
meta-level 8 hours ago [-]
Would like to have something like this, but will be Meta locked-in and die soon after it turns out only influencers seem to have fun with it
OnionBlender 8 hours ago [-]
Anyone else notice Zuckerberg say "Super Intelligence" multiple times during the Meta Connect keynote?
daemonologist 7 hours ago [-]
They've been using that branding since last June (with the reorg into "Meta Superintelligence Labs"), for better or worse.
Invictus0 9 hours ago [-]
I do admire mark's tenacity
la6479 11 hours ago [-]
oh man playing halo and jumping off the ship and falling through the sky will feel insane with this i imagine. i just hope people have enough open space around them when enjoying the limitless expansion of VR world. DOnt want people to hurt their knees and heads and knock off their furnitures all the time.
aranelsurion 11 hours ago [-]
two weeks ago I basically punched my coffee table while trying to stab a guy on the floor in VR. My left hand still hurts.
Spring 2027 is eternity in the future from today. I love the concept they advertise but by then, there will be so many amazing products and releases.
If they could give me this today and worked somewhat like they promise, even though for $500 or so I can get glasses that do what I need them to do today, for more fidelity I would gladly pay 1k+ they are asking.
I am not sure what will happen till Spring or Summer next year.
desireco42 10 hours ago [-]
Now when I saw their video... ufff, not for me.
awesomeusername 10 hours ago [-]
I had the oculus rift, sold it when they made me get a Facebook account (they might have backtracked on that). Bought a quest 2 thinking surely they have learned their lesson by now.
Nope.
Some of the decisions they made around ux are so insane I feel like ripping it off and throwing it across the room. I bet there are some properly talented people at meta, but someone senior is committed to making it suck. Wouldn't be surprised if it's zuck himself. So even though I'm passionate about it, I have no VR in my life because I can't afford another one
rvz 11 hours ago [-]
As long as this is mixed reality and not a clunky VR-only headset like the previous Meta Quest devices, then this far exceeds what ever the Vision Pro hype was and any other XR device in the market.
This is XR for the rest of us and a worthy competitor to the Xreal.
mey 10 hours ago [-]
Not sure what you mean. The marketing video shows pancake optical stacks and specs have mentioned OLED displays. While the marketing video attempts to play up an immersive fantastical reality, the experience will function like a Quest 3 or Apple Vision Pro, where there are external cameras that then get projected onto the internal screens.
Computer0 11 hours ago [-]
It will be interesting to see how this product is differentiated from the Meta Ray Ban Display. They now have the line up:
Meta Ray Ban Audio
Meta Ray Ban Display
Meta VR Glasses
Meta Quest 3
epmaybe 11 hours ago [-]
This feels closer to the quest 3, so maybe consider it a successor in a way? Since meta is moving away from VR gaming, it may end up cannibalizing sales in a "good" way for the company.
qingcharles 10 hours ago [-]
On the bottom of the page it says they are called:
Meta Ray-Ban Display
and
Ray-Ban Meta Audio
Which really grinds my OCD.
terminal-bloom 9 hours ago [-]
We’re upgrading from Pervert Glasses to Pervert Goggles, huh?
gnarlouse 8 hours ago [-]
Smoked Metas
sharktheone 10 hours ago [-]
I think I am still going to stick with the Steam Frame lmao
Looks fun, but it'll most probably need a Meta account, won't run open firmware, and most importantly wearing it in public instead of using my MacBook will make me look like an idiot. So: meh.
the_wolo 11 hours ago [-]
Although looking like an idiot is probably better than being one of those Meta Glasses perverts
steve_taylor 10 hours ago [-]
It's essentially a cheaper and lighter AVP without the Apple ecosystem. There's nothing revolutionary about this device.
Every time a major tech company comes out with a new headset, I check one thing: Does it have a light field display? (In this case, no it doesn't.) In 5-10 years, headsets are going to be much better. Your eyes will be able to focus on objects like they do in real space and you won't have to deal with the hassle of an external battery.
mrshadowgoose 10 hours ago [-]
"lighter" is the revolutionary bit.
A huge impediment to VR uptake is having to go through the process of strapping a brick to one's face.
This isn't quite the "just putting on a pair of glasses" experience, but it's much closer to that than the former.
steve_taylor 10 hours ago [-]
Its lighter form factor is more evolutionary than revolutionary. The AVP has some unnecessary extras such as the outward-facing display. If Apple wanted, it could make an Apple Vision Air with the latest A-series chip, a much lighter form factor and a much lower price - just like Meta VR Glasses.
Groxx 7 hours ago [-]
More compact lenses are a constant improvement, but one of the main things here is just moving compute and power off of your head. Which many have done before.
Honestly I don't know why that's not more common. I've used puck-based ones, they're great - far less heat and mass on your face is a major benefit. They're also usually easier to plan upgrades for, as the two most costly pieces (which do very different things and have very different progress cycles) are separated.
But it is the only thing that will move Low Latency Computing forward. Everything in modern computing is slow, we might have increased throughput by 1000 or 10000x over the course of 30+ years. But latency has gone backwards, from Apps to OS UI response. Decent AR/VR experience mimicking the real world would require sub 10ms results. And this should finally force developers to take latency into account.
It wouldn't have been touted at the "metaverse" and a revolution of having business meeting in a virtual room... looking like a boring office and maybe it would "just" be millions of gamers, but to stay we are in a better state because of Meta is questionable.
They did invest a ton and their products (if one can manage to make abstraction why they even exist in the first place) are actually well done but the line their brought on the entire industry created unrealistic expectation.
Is it good, is it bad, I'm not actually sure but I'm rather confident to say it's not obvious.
I think for now games are the best use of VR, and Valve actually care about games, and Zuckerberg moving on to the next shiny thing leaves room for Valve to join Sony and Microsoft for the next PlayStation/XBox alternative.
If anything, when the Oculus Quest became the Meta Quest, it started feeling like regression rather than progress, with the games going from "wow!" to "did they port a phone game?".
Nonsense. Embedded systems, often event driven, improved as did the rest of the computing landscape (perhaps at a tad slower pace). HST has been a major driver on low latency computing in the data center. And then there are of course robotics and military applications ...
https://www.reddit.com/r/ThreadsApp/comments/1wnkje9/my_inst...
Hopefully it's not so bad.
Oh BTW they showed a new Beat Saber game, and among the logos I've seen Ace Attorney VR among a few others. Let's see if those come for Quest 3 and maybe even PCVR.
I really wish VR had followed an iPhone like trajectory over the past decade where we got a new Quest/etc every year and it got consistently better across the board every iteration.
But it of course is large and heavy like the quest pro and expensive most likely. Things that when you market to consumers don't pan out.
So they are optimizing on the other dimension (weight) which of course trades of many other dimensions.
That didn’t happen because you would need market demand for that. Only Gen Alpha likes VR as a demographic.
Ouch, that's a tough sell. Maybe useful for AR type stuff, but I wouldn't want to go from a Quest/Index/Frame/etc to that for VR.
And another random youtube influencer who tried it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J8oIs1GA0o
$1300 price
That video is on the page itself as well, right top
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1618&v=qp2IbgJ5Z-8
I know you probably know that, but this is a new low, even for Meta.
Same for kids wasting their life on screen, most parents don’t mind as long as it keep them busy and it’s one less thing to care about.
What problem does it solve? I see a bunch of potential uses but I don’t see any problems looking to be solved.
Will I like gaming better if I control the games with my hands instead of a controller?
Will I like working in my glasses better than my laptop screen? Or even a dual laptop screen like a ZenBook Duo? Or a cheap second portable display? Do these glasses fit better in a backpack than a laptop and a second portable screen? They can’t collapse flat.
Are these glasses more portable and convenient than a smartphone? What are the benefits to watching an NBA game on this compared to a phone or my TV screen at home?
I can’t believe Meta is blowing their money on this stuff still.
The geometric waveguide technology used in the Display glasses is quite complicated and costly, the birdbath optic that Xreal uses is stupid, so to speak, and various holographic solutions used by Even Realities and likes is not so spectacular in light loss(IIUC the fancy term is "quantum efficiency"), as well as multi color feasibility(needs 3 layers with separate image sources).
Prior to now we didn't know if Meta will be doing a Display 2 or Quest 4, or if they plan to do something else. This is that something else.
I agree that these seem like a stopgap short of the thing everyone wants - Vision Pro specs (ahaha) in a pair of regular glasses.
Personally, as a glasses-wearer, I'm not quite convinced it's the right target though - even my 20 gram glasses are uncomfortable to wear all day and I take them off whenever they're not needed. I'd rather have a ski-goggle device (similarly light, but with the weight more evenly distributed, and still with optical see-through) with fewer performance compromises. Of course that wouldn't let the manufacturer dominate "the next form of personal computing" or whatever.
(I have a fairly strong prescription, so the literal glass in my glasses does weigh a fair bit more than for most people. Yay modern optional media! It's so much nicer than it used to be)
https://us.shop.xreal.com/products/xreal-xbx-a01
I’ve always wanted it to be better, but it’s just terrible. It’s like working on a projector screen where the pixels never line up.
I've a pair of Nreal Air glasses (before the rebrand) and a pair of Xreal Ones. I have found the latter remarkably comfortable and sharp enough for coding, reading text, playing games, etc. for extended periods of time.
The new widescreen modes are a real treat too. Still waiting for Real 3D to get upgraded to 60FPS though.
So: no problems solved.
I have a VR headset, but other than the one time I tried Skybox just to see what it looks like, it never occurred to me to take the headset out to watch a full length movie. It's just not worth it.
Makes me wonder how often people use it for "watching content on a gigantic screen at home", or it's just mostly theoretical in VR headset marketing material.
VR desktop: that's supposedly the "killer application" of Apple Vision Pro back in 2005 (and only usable on high resolution headsets like those). Guess what, these days nobody talks about it. I haven't seen anyone bringing it up on HN for a long time.
It's essentially the xr-glasses /vr glasses category. Plenty of options around on stores
The closest thing so far is a Bigscreen Beyond 2 w/ a laptop if it wasn't for the fact that you need a base station for the damn thing.
I know my request is a fantasy right now, but I put this our there in case someone that could make it less of a fantasy reads this.
Drawback - they don't do 3DoF tracking, so the screen just follows where you're looking, you can't change screen size, and no multimonitor setup. They have IMU sensors, though. It's possible to create your own virutal monitor software (or use someone's else like RealWarp), but IMU drift is hard to beat and experience is far from perfect. So I stick with 'just one high-quality screen' for now, and to be honest it was some quality-of-life improvement for me.
PS. Couple of weeks ago there was new release from RayNeo, which supposedly have 3DoF and same quality. Haven't tried those.
The key problem is it's Meta. People don't even trust other people near them to use Meta hardware, and the way they dealt with Oculus users was just grimy. From basically any other company this would be a very welcome device. Zuckerberg needs to fix the company first, because there's no such thing as a killer product good enough to overcome this hurdle.
HN constantly under-estimate how much the mass forgives a company as long as they release a cool product (barring a few holdouts that really don't matter to 3B DAU company)
"Everyone loves Meta Muse now, it is organic growth. My social media feed told me so!"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49662990
> I spent $220 on Google app ads. 60% of the installs were robots
Nope.
Anything it does, you are responsible.
anyone know whats going on with muse. twitter has gone crazy with fake things ppl've supposedly achieved like getting airline to refund 4k, negotiating 45k furniture to 5k, booking flights for 20 dollars. These are the same ppl that were hyping openclaw, not sure what happened to that. and how muse topping charts. Its all befuddling to me.
Video, showing how random Meta employees don't like slightly creepy stranger obviously using Meta glasses to record them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHKhYL3is5o
Meta allegedly took down the video when it was uploaded to their own platforms.
First he needs to fix himself
I guess the approach here is to shrink down the VR glasses and make them look more like normal glasses from a distance. But I still don't think I'd wear one of these walking around the mall or airport. Reduction in FOV is also a big negative. I'm not really sure where one would use this device over a Quest or the Ray Ban Display. It occupies this awkward middle point where it's not a transparent glass display, but it's also makes a lot of compromises compared to the rest of the VR line.
I can see value on a plane. But I’d rather use my MacBook then look like a crazy person pretending to work.
With buds, people just shout into the void... Or the bus...
It is as close as Ive gotten to the cyberpunk dream so far.
The Ray-Ban Metas had no ecosystem. No SDK, no app store, just apps made by Meta. They finally announced an SDK in 2026 but why would I support a device that was so anti-developer for years?
I think the software kept getting better except for the latest UI redesign intended to mimic Apple which is indeed terrible. I hate the heavy use of double clicking on the controllers. The older UI was better (though even before this they constantly redesigned it every 6 months or so)
But they've only improved things over time. The quest 1 shipped without passthrough or hand tracking. By the end of it's support it had both. The quest 2 and 3 also continue to receive new features like higher frame rates, keyboard view etc.
As much as I'm a proponent of VR, I won't play by Meta's rules.
I had the Oculus Rift dev kit before they sold to Facebook. It was so amazing at the time
There was a site that you could download experiences that people created, which is what I used it for.
The stronger argument for it being a product is that it was available to the public.
I just bought it on the website.
I mean, I was/am a dev, but I had no plans to develop on it, I just wanted it to play with.
How gullible can you be?
But I guess if people like you are able to ignore that to make yourself feel better about giving your personal information to Zuckerberg's advertising company then anything is possible.
I don't know what conversation you think you're having here, but it's not that.
If you'd bothered to read... and then ready for it... stop, take a breath, and process the information. You'd have noticed I was pointing out you can use a Quest headset WITHOUT providing them your personal ID OR having a Facebook account. Almost as if, you know, I was highlighting that giving the company your personal info isn't required. Woe me though for pointing that out.
I'm sorry for interrupting the indignant rants. Please continue.
The post you are replying to doesn't claim they did...?
They did change the branding in late 2021/early 2022.
Prior to that the product was called the Oculus Quest, after that it was the Meta Quest.
And Meta did start heavily enshittifying the product alongside the rebrand.
edit: https://github.com/Lumince/singularity
This has not been my experience at all and there are very few headsets I have not owned.
Everything else I can't really disagree with.
Everything from “freedom sticks” to get women to breath in smoke and ash like the foolish men, to going from “government IDs are just conspiracy theory” to “you have to show your papers to see information and communicate with other humans on the only method that is still widely possible; it’s all just been slowly salami sliced and microdosed into our societies. Worse yet, still a large chunk of society seem utterly oblivious as long as they can consume their particular customized and personalized opiate of the masses.
The better question is why in 5yrs we will have to use ID to buy a product on some random ecommerce site or to play a video game or use Uber or post a comment on Reddit. It will be because people pushed for this for kids on social media and opened the door for the rest of the internet companies to demand it and therefore the government.
If you haven't seen it, it's probably because your account is old and they have scraped enough contact lists to believe your name is real.
Plus they already have all that data... Your ID is not private information. It's an identifier that they don't need or want.
I don't think they particularly _want_ legal id (though maybe they do? who knows)... but it's obviously false that this was caused by the government when Meta itself was lobbying for such laws even before then.
https://techoversight.org/2025/07/29/bloomberg-meta-google-l...
https://thedeepdive.ca/who-pushes-age-verification-bills/
ID checks just came to the Quest because they forced facebook accounts which already had ID checks on it. They should never have made facebook accounts mandatory for playing games.
Not for allowing you to use your own hardware, what utter nonsense.
It was their choice to forcibly link their hardware to their online account system despite it working fine without it. But it’s absolutely not true that the government requires age verification for using VR goggles.
At the office, it was nice to see him put the glasses down and shake hands with the person who rocked up. If that person had arrived 'in VR' I think I would have been completely turned off.
I guess if you want to be alone, it's a good device -- but the best times for me with modern technology have been when it brings me closer to other people. Online games were better on LAN. Couch co-op as a genre is one of the best console experiences I think. Meeting people in real life, who I spoke to on IRC -- again, a great moment.
I'm not anti-tech, and the device form factor sure looks amazing -- but I can't imagine any moment I would use something like this at home while anyone else in my house was here.
This! And it isn't close either.
The other fundamental thing for me is to have visors that seamlessly and by default connect to the nearby ones so that experiences are shared.
* Display Type: Micro-OLED
* Resolution: 2412 × 2288 pixels per eye
* Angular Resolution: 37 PPD
* Field of View: 70° × 66°
* Chipset: Snapdragon Reality Elite
* Memory & Storage: 12GB RAM with 128GB internal storage (expandable up to 1TB via microSD on the puck)
* Tracking & Sensors: 6DoF positional tracking, depth sensing, autofocus, 4-camera eye tracking, face tracking, and hand tracking
* Passthrough: Color RGB passthrough cameras at 26 PPD
* Price: $ 1300,- USD plus your data
Similar PPD to an AVP at, what I as a former owner of one (alongside a Quest 2 and 3, a Magic Leap, Xreal and Viture) would call is a far more appealing implementation for actual productive work.
Really wish Apple had gone down this route, have the puck incorporate an A series chip rather than shoving a M series one into the headset itself and heck, I could see such a design being doable for them back when they first launched the AVP if they hadn't forced that utterly ridiculous eye display and stupendously heavy metal body.
There is, unless I am mistaken, nothing here that isn't established technology as found in the AVP, all the fancy display and lens experiments from Starburst, over Holocake to Mirror Lake seem to remain in the lab, this seems to be "just" pancake lenses plus Micro-OLED once more.
Not sure where this lands functionality wise. I feel like it's most direct competition would be as a cheaper Apple Vision. You would need to pair it off with a Windows system for heavier productivity work most likely. Even though their OS is "android", it doesn't have the Google ecosystem behind it, let alone matured on that front. Media consumption on the go seems to be the other use case.
So, compare them to either XREALs plugged into a laptop/phone, or Apple Vision Pro I guess.
* Display: also micro-OLED
* Resolution: 2560 x 2560 per eye
* Angular resolution: 32 PPD
* Field of view: 116°D, 108°H x 96°V
* Chipset: none lol plugs into your computer
* Tracking and sensors: needs base stations
* Weight: 107 g
* Passthrough: no
* Price: $959 (+$200 for eye tracking)
* needs base stations, a PC, and has a cable, and looks kinda like dorky swim goggles (but still pretty futuristic and cool)
meanwhile the Steam Frame:
* Display: LCD
* Resolution: 2160 x 2160 per eye
* Angular resolution: 20
* Field of view: 110 degrees
* Chipset: Snapdragon 8 gen 3
* Memory and storage: 16GB of ram with 256GB UFS plus microSD
* Tracking and sensors: inside out camera based tracking
* Weight: 185 g core headset, 440 g including strap, rear battery, facial interface, and audio
* Passthrough: idk
* Price: $1059 for 256GB, $1299 for 1TB
Closing the lid and working in one of these would be great, but there's always a caveat that blocks this.
Said the guy who has not checked this thing for head-turn-to-pixels-changed latency. That is the one metric that nobody has approached the AVP on -- the one that keeps me (and many others) from being nauseous.
When Meta bought Oculus a decade ago I though "why the heck are they buying this VR company..." which prompted me to read "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power" 2018 Shoshana Zuboff's book.
The idea is precisely that they don't need more of the same data, they have enough (even though they do need to keep them up to date) but they instead need more KINDS of data to keep on earning money from selling ads.
They don't care for the technology itself, only for ways to distinguish needs better and that's exactly what a new digital medium provides.
TL;DR: yes.
Instead, pick out your own internet information diet. Make it a project. If you're not afraid to use AI, it can help with this tremendously.
Then you need to build habits that replace your unhealthy browsing with healthy browsing. IMO it's best to just install tools that make it difficult or even impossible to do the unhealthy browsing.
I've yet to see the first use case that makes it more than a party trick.
I tried pushing it for 3D configurators during sales, but sales people hate it with reason: you're missing out on the buyer's reaction and it breaks the sales journey.
As long as we can't see the user's eyes etc this will flop.
I’ve personally always thought the headsets were simply too clunky, which puts off the average person from trying them, due to the hassle (and price).
This new design from Meta is the first I’ve seen that feels like something more people would actually want to try. Perhaps VR isn’t dead — maybe it’s just lurking in the shadows, waiting for the right hardware tech to bring it to the masses.
Now someone just needs to learn how to hack into these glasses remotely…and then we will have the Ghost in the Shell moment.
If they had the courage to open up their plattform for external developers like Apple or Android (not even talking about open APIs), they could have an amazing ecosystem. Currently, it feels like a car with a stuck handbrake.
I had Meta Raybans for a while and liked them. Always refusing firmware updates. Everything I needed worked fine, normal headset for listening podcasts on walks, taking occasional picture, that's all I need! In this use case battery lasted a week outside of its case. Until recently it started prompting me with voice to update the glasses urgently every half an hour. And I did (to version 128, hey, even number!) and oh boy, Meta AI this Meta AI that everything is Meta AI can't do anything without it. Battery is drained in less than a day of me not wearing them, bluetooth audio breaks up all the time, connection getting lost. I was perfectly happy with the product and they had to ruin it to shove their AI garbage down my throat.
They recently added Meta AI sidebar to WhatsApp which you can't turn off.
So, hope you like Mark's AI because you'll sure have to use it with these.
I'm in VR a lot, mostly in bigscreen VR, and have had the Quest, Quest 2, and Quest 3. I don't see any reason to upgrade from the latter at all.
Agreed. When I tried the Apple Vision Pro, I was a little disappointed at the PPD (which is like, 34 to Quest's 25 or so), didn't expect to still be so sensitive to it.
Some future date we will get there, but this isn't it.
To use most VR headsets that are also standalone devices, I would start by fighting with IT on getting some kind of security exception to use the necessary software on my laptop, then get started with streaming/connecting/sharing screens with it. Hopefully.
I'm never going to wear a thing like this in public, and at home, I have my laptop and TV. The TV I'm usually watching with someone else, and this is worse than the laptop...so what's my use case?
Shove all of the compute in the external unit, instead of having all of that weight in your face.
This may come as a surprise, but most phones can capture audio these days. Has your state made them illegal yet?
Steam Frame is the one you want.
I believe that launched as an Apple exclusive. I wonder if that means the millions of Oculus Quest headsets that have been gathering dust for years will finally have some immersive content worth watching.
SteamFrame it is! As far as I can tell the SteamFrame lets you install a different OS.
1) Blackout. Let me use them as a way to get complete pitch black when i want it 2) Amazing resolution. None of the existing products are good enough to replace my physical screens, but i'd love to. 3) Comfortable. Nothing has been comfortable enough to wear long term. Sure maybe an hour or two, but 8-10 hrs a day for work? Not even close.
Hope they get there someday.
I have Xreal airs. And, while, I like them, they’re rather useless because 1080p just isn’t enough.
This might be the killer app if latency is low enough.
I'm amazed though at the amount of effort and corporate money that keeps being thrown at VR trying to make it a thing.
It feels like, to the public, it's like some tired The Beverly Hillbillies re-run that keeps popping up from time to time.
I have a teenager and a 9 year old and I've never heard this from anyone.
I think nintendo for that generation is nintendo switch. Or roblox.
One of the big complaints of online VR games is that it’s overrun by Gen Alpha children. The only mystery is why meta keeps targeting adults instead of Gen Alpha. It’s a marketing strategy that has already failed multiple times now. Judging from most of the comments here, it will continue to fail. IMO only Apple can breakthrough to adults and even they failed with AVP.
On the audio end of this, you can even throw in some properly righteous speakers in both rooms. All combined, this is still cheaper than or equal to the vision pro price for an objectively better movie experience. The projector image will always be bigger than your TV and speakers that expensive will rattle the walls with bass and shatter your eardrums. It doesn't matter how good earbuds get, there's no replacement for displacement (of air). Don't you like feeling the power?
I’m not saying AVP is cheap, I’m saying visually it’s better.
> more comfortable
Nothing could be more comfortable than lying flat on bed with head propped up just a bit, and screen floating at 45 degrees in front of me, which I can easily reposition and resize to perfectly hit my FOV.
> more social
Heh, I’m not looking to socialize while enjoying a movie at home
The only way a physical setup would win is righteous speakers. I suppose I could connect physical speakers, but that breaks the awesome immersion of enjoying a movie in perfect (to the rest of my family) silence.
But really all I can say is that the visual experience and physical comfort (when lying down) of a movie on AVP is unparalleled, and this is not at all why I bought it, and it’s probably something one really has to experience to understand.
Will it? Even if you offer people AR glasses and smartphones at the same price, I'd expect most people to pick the phone. Nobody wants to tap their glasses on a Square reader to buy coffee, or ask their specs to take a picture.
The VR/AR modality struggles when OEMs rely on unique native experiences as a selling point. There's no "killer app" for VR a even decade after the original Oculus DTK. Palmer Luckey sold Oculus to go work on building cruise missiles, to give you an idea of how awful VR's prospects are.
I too once abandoned a bowl of cereal for a steak dinner, but that says nothing about the quality of the cereal.
Nobody used their cell phone to take pictures, that's what a camera is for! And music came from a Walkman. But then the iPhone came out, and the rest is history. A pair of glasses that takes pictures could very well be the future. We won't know until after it's happened though.
I agree it's a novelty, it's never going to be the mainstream thing that replaces all existing interfaces and transforms the very concept of reality like some people want it to be. But it is fun within its niche.
I think what's holding it back is price more than anything. I'm still hanging on to my Quest because it just isn't worth the money for me to upgrade, even though half the apps no longer even work (fuck you very much DeoVR.)
When someone gets this right I do think we're all gonna ditch the 2d screens and phones.
It doesn't even matter if it's Meta that instigates this, if money is smelled there will be more consumer friendly alternatives popping up overnight (e.g. see how quickly the industry copied the iPhone).
I understand this is quite good, but I also have something like 20/12.5 eyesight. To me, using these things feels like looking through a coarse screen door.
E: For reference, I can comfortably count pixels on a 24.5" 1080p screen from a normal seated position.
I've been buying HMDs since the first Oculus, and I promptly sell them to somebody else. 37 PPD is a little more than halfway to "perfect" for someone with 20/20 eyesight
Doing more with a narrower field of view is easy, it is even cheaper. Doing more with the same or better field of view means you need more pixels and more computing power to drive them, so more expensive, heavier hardware that gets hotter and with less battery life.
People at Meta consitered 37 PPD to be a good compromise, and I kind of agree.
What in the world are you using as your benchmark to call 37 “dogshit”?
I’m still buying this for myself. I enjoy the private movie theater experience and turning every video game session into a decent cardio workout; I’ve lost 60 lbs with VR to date.
I have found VR an easy way to get moving in a fun/low friction way at the end of the day, instead of heading somewhere else. Depending on what you are doing, it isn't going to cover everything, but moving something is better than nothing.
Personally, I found Synth Riders a good way to queue up 60min continous activity that I enjoy.
For me the biggest calorie burners are boxing games. Beat Saber and others like Synth Riders are great too. Then there are fitness focus apps like Body Combat and even one for rowing machines.
Hopefully, Meta can convince HR firms that this is a fitness device that is eligible for FSA like benefits.
So yeah, be careful of the play area. :)
Obligatory subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/VRtoER/
If they could give me this today and worked somewhat like they promise, even though for $500 or so I can get glasses that do what I need them to do today, for more fidelity I would gladly pay 1k+ they are asking.
I am not sure what will happen till Spring or Summer next year.
Nope.
Some of the decisions they made around ux are so insane I feel like ripping it off and throwing it across the room. I bet there are some properly talented people at meta, but someone senior is committed to making it suck. Wouldn't be surprised if it's zuck himself. So even though I'm passionate about it, I have no VR in my life because I can't afford another one
This is XR for the rest of us and a worthy competitor to the Xreal.
Meta Ray Ban Audio
Meta Ray Ban Display
Meta VR Glasses
Meta Quest 3
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
Bonus: No Facebook BS.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49825519.
Every time a major tech company comes out with a new headset, I check one thing: Does it have a light field display? (In this case, no it doesn't.) In 5-10 years, headsets are going to be much better. Your eyes will be able to focus on objects like they do in real space and you won't have to deal with the hassle of an external battery.
A huge impediment to VR uptake is having to go through the process of strapping a brick to one's face.
This isn't quite the "just putting on a pair of glasses" experience, but it's much closer to that than the former.
Honestly I don't know why that's not more common. I've used puck-based ones, they're great - far less heat and mass on your face is a major benefit. They're also usually easier to plan upgrades for, as the two most costly pieces (which do very different things and have very different progress cycles) are separated.