Prices remain obscene because every idiot thinks “it needs more pixels!” when that has literally never been a limiting factor. One-millisecond head-tracking latency on a 480p watch-TV-on-a-plane HMD would beat an 8K-per-eye Pimax gizmo in 3DOF.
And every manufacturer imagines owning the entire tiny-ass market, so compatibility is worse than 1980s CP/M machines.
And you still need a monster computer or Wii graphics to run at a do-or-die 120 Hz or whatever. Which is a problem the industry won’t even acknowledge. If your monitor relied on software to hit its refresh rate it would blink and flicker constantly. VR frame drops make the whole world lag.
$500 for an accessory that’ll only work on a dozen games for your $600 console is not a serious business model.
There’s one company doing it right, but it’s Facebook, so fuck them.
Eh, I think comfort is a big factor as well. Having something strapped to your face for hours at a time is just never going to be something most people do unless there is a really compelling reason for it. Right now, there just isn’t. You can already watch TV on an airplane just fine. The games are cool, but there’s just nothing “can’t miss” out there yet. That’s probably why porn is really the biggest hit with VR, because it does offer a new experience, and it is naturally consumed in short bursts
Definitely also a factor, but one generally addressed incidentally when slashing costs. Weight is expensive.
Smaller tech also keeps getting developed and then ignored. Nvidia had a fascinating lightfield setup ten fucking years ago that suddenly went nowhere.
The Index is overpriced by itself and relies on equally-overpriced external hardware for tracking. The controllers are nice, but again, hideously expensive. It’s an excellent choice for people already committed to doing VR on their gaming PC. That is not a lot of people.
Inside-out and standalone is the right answer. Inside-out, standalone, and cheap. And not attached to Mark Zuckerberg.
Personally, buying an index for me did not feel overpriced, and I’m barely a thousandaire. I’d tried the existing crop of standalone hardware (for accuracy’s sake, this is circa 2020). Those, relative to their performance, felt overpriced. I feel that got what I wanted, for a price I felt was fair. The build quality is up to my expectations. Fully acknowledge this is niche, but the value proposition didn’t make me gasface.
When computing power is 10-20x better, cooler, more efficient and smaller, I’ll order from that menu, and you nailed it with the exclusion of Zuckerberg. He’s done more to cringe-ify VR than any google glasshole ever could, even if we ignore the creepy idea that I’m a “product” to them while using occulus…
there’s also people like me that got absolutely burned with the failure that was the psvr 1 and I refuse to even concider getting another. I used the first one maybe twice but it’s specs were so trash that it made me sick trying to play it. I don’t have this issue with my index.
Prices remain obscene because every idiot thinks “it needs more pixels!” when that has literally never been a limiting factor. One-millisecond head-tracking latency on a 480p watch-TV-on-a-plane HMD would beat an 8K-per-eye Pimax gizmo in 3DOF.
And every manufacturer imagines owning the entire tiny-ass market, so compatibility is worse than 1980s CP/M machines.
And you still need a monster computer or Wii graphics to run at a do-or-die 120 Hz or whatever. Which is a problem the industry won’t even acknowledge. If your monitor relied on software to hit its refresh rate it would blink and flicker constantly. VR frame drops make the whole world lag.
$500 for an accessory that’ll only work on a dozen games for your $600 console is not a serious business model.
There’s one company doing it right, but it’s Facebook, so fuck them.
Eh, I think comfort is a big factor as well. Having something strapped to your face for hours at a time is just never going to be something most people do unless there is a really compelling reason for it. Right now, there just isn’t. You can already watch TV on an airplane just fine. The games are cool, but there’s just nothing “can’t miss” out there yet. That’s probably why porn is really the biggest hit with VR, because it does offer a new experience, and it is naturally consumed in short bursts
Definitely also a factor, but one generally addressed incidentally when slashing costs. Weight is expensive.
Smaller tech also keeps getting developed and then ignored. Nvidia had a fascinating lightfield setup ten fucking years ago that suddenly went nowhere.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
ten fucking years ago
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
You lost me when you mistook valve for Facebook.
The Index is overpriced by itself and relies on equally-overpriced external hardware for tracking. The controllers are nice, but again, hideously expensive. It’s an excellent choice for people already committed to doing VR on their gaming PC. That is not a lot of people.
Inside-out and standalone is the right answer. Inside-out, standalone, and cheap. And not attached to Mark Zuckerberg.
Personally, buying an index for me did not feel overpriced, and I’m barely a thousandaire. I’d tried the existing crop of standalone hardware (for accuracy’s sake, this is circa 2020). Those, relative to their performance, felt overpriced. I feel that got what I wanted, for a price I felt was fair. The build quality is up to my expectations. Fully acknowledge this is niche, but the value proposition didn’t make me gasface.
When computing power is 10-20x better, cooler, more efficient and smaller, I’ll order from that menu, and you nailed it with the exclusion of Zuckerberg. He’s done more to cringe-ify VR than any google glasshole ever could, even if we ignore the creepy idea that I’m a “product” to them while using occulus…
Relative is not what keeps this niche.
there’s also people like me that got absolutely burned with the failure that was the psvr 1 and I refuse to even concider getting another. I used the first one maybe twice but it’s specs were so trash that it made me sick trying to play it. I don’t have this issue with my index.