I live abroad from many friends and family. If there was a way to casually hang out and replicating the in-person social experience better than video chat, I would jump on that. I already have regular Quest 2 sessions with close ones where we shoot the shit and also shoot zombies - it feels like having a friend over for playing video games.
I for one am looking forward to being able to hang out in the same room, or discover new places, while feeling like we are sharing the same physical space. I am happy Meta is investing to make this closer to a reality!
I should clarify - I think the value of VR is creating transportive experience.
Opening up Google Earth and watching the sunset on Mount Rainier with a friend is transcendent. Sitting around a virtual boardroom talking to an avatar is not.
Meta's value proposition should be the a) the quality of the experience they provide (video games with friends included!) and b) the seamlessness to use. But a slightly more interactive video chat is not going to sell units.
> Opening up Google Earth and watching the sunset on Mount Rainier
Lmao… I hate to gatekeep, but having actually backpacked into the high country with friends and watched truly spectacular sunsets, there are so many aspects of that experience, and especially the ones that make it a truly transcendent experience, that just can’t be captured with a VR headset. For one, the physical aspects, being tired and the sense of accomplishment for getting their with your stuff, breathing thinner air, the humidity and breeze as the air changes from the sun setting. You can literally feel the warm life-givingness of the sun leaving. The actual full spectrum light—not RGB filtered—carries amazing amounts of nuance and illuminates everything in an extremely dynamic way; I have yet to see an HDR screen that does a good sunset justice, and I’m not entirely sure they can. And the sound, you can’t make your house in the city quiet and still like the mountain, at least not by putting on a headset, and that quiet lets you hear the littlest things!
By comparison, more interactive video chat, allowing me to feel like I’m sharing a space with a far flung friend, is much much more compelling to me. Online tabletop board games would be much more compelling if it felt like I was actually with the other person.
> especially the ones that make it a truly transcendent experience, that just can’t be captured with a VR headset
Agreed. But giving you a taste of something you may not have the resources/ability to do yourself is a much better use of the technology than giving you a taste of... playing board games in person.
> I already have regular Quest 2 sessions with close ones where we shoot the shit and also shoot zombies - it feels like having a friend over for playing video games.
How is this any different from playing Xbox/PlayStation with a friend online?
> ...while feeling like we are sharing the same physical space.
In my opinion there is something different about being "embodied" in a 3D virtual environment that is all around you, seeing the gestures of people you interact with and moving around. Certain human interaction modes, such as moving closer to hear someone, looking at the person you are talking to, gesturing to highlight conversation points etc are already qualitatively different in VR than video games imo. And it looks like this will further increase in the future with face tracking etc.
Why are you interested in casually hanging out with your friends and family under surveillance from an advertising company that will subject your private and personal communications to their censorship systems?
You might be simultaneously right and also totally missing the point and rude.
I agree with the gp. The quest 2 has helped me connect with friends in different states that felt way closer to inviting them over to hang out at the house than just video chatting or whatever.
There is real value in that. Even my wife who is not techy at all enjoyed it after first laughing in my face at the idea.
For better or worse, meta seems to be the only company currently trying to push this forward. So meta it is for now.
How can wanting to chill with friends possibly make them a bad friend? You brought up a good point but then kind of ruined it with such a wild accusation.
You're skipping the part about the advertising surveillance. If you were my friend and asked me to hang out, that's cool. If you were my friend but asked me to hang out where everything we did was knowingly by you subject to likely to have some company's algo running and attempting to influence what we did while hanging out, then yes, I'd say you were an asshole for a friend.
I didn't skip that. I said "You brought up a good point". I agree it was a good point. But they ruined the argument a bit by being overly dramatic. It would have been better to skip the judgmental snide remark at the end so we could have focussed on the good point.
Why are you chewing OP out as though you know for a fact that OP is the sole reason that that group of people uses Meta products? You have absolutely no insight into the decisions of that group of people, and instead of asking questions in an effort to learn more, you have suggested that OP is a bad friend.
I live abroad from many friends and family. If there was a way to casually hang out and replicating the in-person social experience better than video chat, I would jump on that. I already have regular Quest 2 sessions with close ones where we shoot the shit and also shoot zombies - it feels like having a friend over for playing video games.
I for one am looking forward to being able to hang out in the same room, or discover new places, while feeling like we are sharing the same physical space. I am happy Meta is investing to make this closer to a reality!