Why is Meta Slashing Prices on its VR Headsets? - Slashdot

Posted by EditorDavid

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  by cuda13579 ( 1060440 ) on Sunday March 05, 2023 @03:49PM (#63345131)

  Because it sucks?...and VR is overrated?

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    (Probably actually because they're about to completely obsolete them in favor of a newer model.)

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      I have just got a VR set, out of curiosity really. I think that the main problem that once you try moving in the VR it really causes motion sickness. If you do it slowly and carefully, it takes some time, but it gets me anyways, just takes longer. Everything else is sort of OK, but I really do not like this puky feeling in my stomach. So.. the only applications that kind of work is when you are stationary. This makes everything in VR very limited. And add the price to it, add lots of cables (for Valve Index

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      The summary mentions that the Pro just came out a few months ago, so that seems unlikely, especially so since it was teased a full year before it came out and nothing new has been teased to replace it yet.

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    More likely they have a newer, better model coming out soon...

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    Great work, normally people are more subtle about not reading TFS and attempt to hide their biases a bit more, but you, you just put it right out there didn't you.

  • In search of another monopoly win

    Pretty weak FP and a vacuous Subject, too.

    It's obviously a quest for market share, though I'm hoping it's a desperate last-ditch effort leading to bankruptcy rather than a nudge to get past a breakeven point. I sure haven't seen any evidence the VR technology has become valuable or sincerely meaningful. The evidence I've seen leads me to think it's a solution in search of creating more mental illness.

    Bigger problem: Too many billionaires dominate too many niches in today's economy. Especially in America.

• Everyone associates their VR product with the metaverse now, whether or not that's its best application or not. The metaverse is near universally panned, so why by a device tailored for it?

  The long term smater move is probably to sell the technology off to someone less distracted with social network spying.

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    Not at all. People associate their stupid Quest Pro devices with doomed idiocy but that's where it ends. No business is forking out that money. It's a failed product to the point where the Quest Pro 2 has been cancelled and all further business targeting has been shelved for now.

    In the other space the reality is the Quest 2 is a generation behind, the competition is releasing new things, and Facebook themselves are likely releasing the Quest 3 only a few months. It would be utterly braindead for anyone to b

• by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Sunday March 05, 2023 @03:58PM (#63345159)

  they don't realize the biggest problem with VR is that the resolution sucks. For VR to get PS5 levels of adoption, they need to get to 8K per eye. If they can make foveated rendering work, the GPU requirement will easily be handleable by a GTX 1080 level graphics card. With foveated rendering, only the part of the screen your eyeball is aimed at is rendered in high resolution. That makes the rendering requirement lower than even HD resolution (if you don't believe that only part of the screen needs to be high resolution rendered, try to read this paragraph without moving your eyeball.)

  • Re: Because

    Aside from sticking your head into an Nvidia card bank, the rendering latency for tracking, focal length and ultimately, disconnecting your balance system from your eyesight - are all going to tax the product into a long development phase. I doubt Meta is able to hit a price point that pays for the R&D, but I applaud them for trying.

    The long term effects of headset wearing are only now getting studied, and I doubt it'll be cost free.

    Funny, if Meta put this much R&D into real-world interactions

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    Eyes move fast. A 1080 isn't going to keep up well enough, especially if it's trying to render (even partially) at 8K. The thing that gets left out is that a VR game can't be designed the same way as a traditional PC title. You can adapt it to VR, but it will suck. First person games aren't close to an actual first person experience yet.

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      120 fps is enough.

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        640 fps ought to be enough for anybody!

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    It could be 1000k resolution...but until they get some decent games/applications for it, and exceed Wiimote level of control input, and figure out a decent way to use walking/running as an input (yes, I've seen what's available)...it's going to remain a novelty.

    It has to be actually be BETTER...and not just a gimmick interface. I've never seen it applied to games, or CAD, or anything...where it looks like it actually makes something sooooooo much better. I'm sure it's "impressive" for showing off to clien

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      There's a ton of non-novelty applications. Once they build the hardware, the applications will come. Virtual tourism (visit places like the pyramids of Egypt, Italy, or a volcano), Real-estate, entertainment (sports events, specially made movies etc), games (fight some epic monsters in VR-- i mean imagine a giant spider or something coming at you in VR).

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          VR travel.. yes I would do it. For one thing I am not descending down a volcano or cliff diving off angel falls venezuela in real life. Real estate, I would definitely use VR to tour places so that I can cross off ones I am sure I won't be interested in off the list. VR sports.. I can't travel to attend every game but it would be cool to experience the game like I am on the field like a ref or something. Movies.. presumably the action the director wants me to look at 99% of the time would be in front of

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    The biggest problem with VR is not resolution. It's that people don't want to strap an uncomfortable device onto their heads for hours at a time. And that the experience of playing a VR game is a novelty with little value-add over just playing a game in front of a traditional screen. And as a result of the last point; who is actually still making VR games? I watch game reviews regularly and it seems to me the frequency of games even supporting VR has plummeted in the past year.

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    They don't realise this do they? The company that is at the forefront of development of foveated rendering, who has the only widely available headset with eye tracking, and who literally has a patent explaining that the combination of eye tracking, and foveated rendering is a solution to the resolution problem doesn't realise that it's a problem?

    Now with a straight face go tell us that you're the only person in the world who has realised the sky is blue.

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      Well why have they stagnated on it? We've known since 2020 that displays as high as 10,000 ppi are possible (reference: https://www.extremetech.com/ex... [extremetech.com] ). If Facebook was serious they would have done whatever it takes to get that technology out. Instead, they've been incrementally improving display resolution by a few percent at a time. They should be leaning harder on display suppliers like Apple does when they need something for the iPhone.

• I have an older Quest of and a mobile one that I just gave away. The Quest was used for a few days and put on a shelf, something I keep meaning to go back and play with. Then I got an email from Facebook saying I needed to make a Facebook account to keep using my hardware that I (didn't actually) pay for (long story, test sample) but did own. FSCK that. There are a few things that are dealbreakers for me in the tech world and a forced Facebook/Meta spyware account is near the top of the list.

  At CES this year, VR/AR stuff was in pretty high numbers in high profile areas but the interest seemed a bit tepid. At MWC last week, there was precious little VR/AR and it was mostly ignored. I think we have reached the 3D TV phase of VR and it is all downhill from here. Discounts are telling, not much to save the sector now, it will become an admittedly useful niche device but mainstream is dead. AR is a different story but we are years away from basic usefulness there.

  Yawn. It deserves a quick flaming death but VR will drag on for a while yet. The sooner it drops out of the media hype cycle, the better for us all.

                -Charlie

• They're sitting on inventory because nobody wants to buy that crap.

  The forced facebook account requirement is a bit of a dealbreaker for quite a few techies, exactly the people you need for Interesting Stuff to happen in your fake virtual cyber world.

• When your grocery bill is through the roof, you don't have as much money to spend on Zuck's playthings. It's really that simple.

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    Even if your grocery bill wasn't through the roof would you really pay money for a previous gen Quest 2 at 25% above launch price knowing the Quest 3 will launch this year?

    It's really quite simple: There is no price drop. Even with these post drop prices the Quest 2 is 7.5% above launch RRP, 2 years later, and right before it gets replaced. It's a bad deal.

    I convinced 2 people that they want to get a VR headset this week (one like zombie games so that was easy, throw him in with After the Fall and he fell i

• They're a novelty toy outside the simulation players. Ethical concerns about Meta aside I imagine they have lots of consumer metrics and I have to imagine a lot of people are curious but $400 is probably too steep for something they may not get a lot of use out of, especially compared to a Nintendo Switch.

  Get something like the Quest into a $200 price point and more people might be willing to give it a shot.

  If Meta sets a new price bracket the other industry players may follow suit. Meta may face

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    Problem is, then they have to make that loss back somehow. I'm picturing that scene from Ready Player One where the IOI president talks about how much of the VR field of view can be turned into ad space.

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    You don't need a $200 price tag, $400 is perfectly fine price for adoption. No one is pretending this is targeted at every one.

    But your post is still right for another reason. The Quest 2 is now several years old, and had a launch price of $400 Yeah it's too expensive, because Facebook fucked up. At this point I'd have expected it to be available for $330 not $430, especially since the Quest 3 is about to launch.

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    If there is some sort of business application that can only be done with these things - maybe But I can't think of any outside of a very few.

    This situation reminds me a little bit of the old 3D movie craze. It comes up again every so often, people get excited, then goes away. As you note, it's a novelty. Then it goes away for one reason or another.

    The issue that Lizard Lord Zuck has is that Meta is thinking Facebook 2, and it's my opinion that the market is not big enough to be a new Facebook. Not even

• by Njovich ( 553857 ) on Sunday March 05, 2023 @04:23PM (#63345203)

  Sony is launching a competitor with the PSVR that has good content, and Meta is likely soon launching Quest 3 which may require clearing inventory.

• Really surprised no one mentioned it but very obviously the new PSVR2 system is part of why Facebook is having to lower prices. Even at the lower price of the Quest Pro the PSVR2 system is still cheaper!

  Well, cheaper if you already own a PS5.... Although come to think of it, at $1k for a Quest Pro you could get a PSVR2 ($549) *and* a PS5 ($399) for less!

  The second is, what is "pro"about the pro? I have a Quest 2, I looked at specs of the "pro" and I saw no reason to get the pro model at all. The extra things it added I did not really care about for VR (though I will admit from reviews that eye tracking is a great feature addition on the PSVR2, and so probably is on the Quest Pro as well.

  Meanwhile games I had thinking about playing on the Quest 2 I am holding off until I get a PSVR as that looks like it would be a better experience.

  I feel a bit bad for Meta on this one, I don't know if they can compete with the scale Sony has in production.

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    Why would -anyone- feel bad for Facebook or Zuckerberg?

    Zuckerberg bet the company on this tech? That's *great*! So Facebook will die when VR dies. Can't happen soon enough.

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    Not really. The PSVR and Quest are in wildly different markets, one a standalone headset, and the other a tethered extension to the PS5. They aren't competing.

    The real reason is Meta themselves are about to launch a Quest 3. The other reason is their brain dead price rise last year which means that even after this "cut" it's still $30 more expensive than at launch a few years ago.

    The Quest 2 is just a frigging bad investment right now, has been since the price increase, and people know it. PSVR has little t

• ... than to see Facebook/Meta lose its "all in" bet on VR and end up turning into the next Yahoo.

• The Valve Index VR kit now costs 999 bucks. Without Facebook spying on you and without constant badgering that you really, really, REALLY have to take a look at that Metaverse, pretty please.

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    The Valve Index VR is just as bad of an investment as the Quest 2. It has *always* cost 999 bucks. Great idea 3 years ago, but now, you're paying full retail price for last generation's gear.

    Do not get a Quest 2, but don't get an Index either. There are other far better options out there. Also the Index may be a good competitor to the Rift S, but even then the latter represented far better price / performance to say nothing of having inside out tracking. No one should be investing in a lighthouse based syst

• Until you can fool all your other senses, immersing a human in a 3D visual environment is only really good for examining a 3D model.

  Now, give me an AR headset instead of VR, with something close to as slender as Google Glass, and you're getting started on something good.

  • * Have it float as many virtual displays as I want in front of my head
  • * Add a dimming LCD layer to the glasses to filter out the background light if I can't see my displays
  • * Give it a basic camera so it can track my hand for moving, resizing

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    What with today's image processing the killer app for that would be a filter that removes the clothes of women you see through it. I mean, my brain is pretty good at doing that already. But I'd be curious to see how well that setup can do.

• The XR Elite has just been released in the same week - and beats the quest with everything. 4k Resolution, removeable battery etc. Similar CPU, better PC STEAM support etc.

  The one thing it's lacking? - a Facebook authentication requirement;)

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    A $1500 headset isn't remotely in the same market segment as a Quest 2. It didn't kill anything. What is killing the Quest 2 is Facebook's idiotic price rise last year and the rumours that the Quest 3 will be launched shortly. (Of note, is that even after this cut the Quest 2 is still $30 above it's RRP from 2020. Facebook doesn't need anyone's help to kill it's product, they are more than capable of doing that themselves.)

• It throws my eyes off and I'm not alone. Motion sickness and headaches are a problem for a sizable percentage of the population making it difficult if not impossible for VR to go completely mainstream. I certainly don't want this tattoo become required to do my job like Facebook wants it to be. It's hard enough staring at a screen 8 hours a day about that screen being half an inch from my eyeballs

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    No it doesn't. Which is to say that the real problem you describe has nothing to do with the failure of 3D TVs which were just f-ing stupid to begin with.

    As for VR sickness, that's a very real thing that affects most of the population... for about a day or two. It's something you get used to incredibly quickly. It's like the Matrix line "everyone falls the first time".

    But your job thing is on point. I am a huge proponent of VR, absolute fucking fanboy and I sure has heck do *NOT* want to use it for work, an

• I made the decision many years ago to avoid anything with Zuck's fingers in it. I would assume others have as well. Anything related to him just feels icky.
• If I was an investor I would hope that they were going for a hardware free software subscription model. But they aren't nobody wants to metaverse. Meta is a burning ship, get away while you still can

• I'd love to have a giant virtual screen to be my daily driver monitor if they could get to that resolution in the center of the monitor FOV. I want at least 1440P in the middle of my FOV with enough other resolution that I could turn seamlessly to a 2nd monitor.

  I need to see the real world through the headset so that I don't feel like I'm living in a science experiment or a made for SyFy movie.

  Maybe a different use case than the gaming headsets.