Yet another Hacker News

73 points polymorph1sm 29 minutes ago 29 comments

Computer0 23 minutes ago | parent

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 4 minutes ago | parent

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.

dmix 22 minutes ago | parent

Youtube video Meta released: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyD_bmMy5nQ

And another random youtube influencer who tried it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J8oIs1GA0o

$1300 price

karim79 5 minutes ago | parent

Spring 2027. Just like anything good, we have to hope we're not dead before it releases and gets scalped by everyone.

JKCalhoun 20 minutes ago | parent

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 18 minutes ago | parent

The younger generation uses VR a lot. It's like Nintendo in the 80s.

JKCalhoun 14 minutes ago | parent

Must be younger than my (20's) daughters then. Their crowd would rather touch grass.

bottlepalm 8 minutes ago | parent

I'm sure they touch their phones a million times more than grass.

colordrops 16 minutes ago | parent

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 12 minutes ago | parent

You could be right. But I also keep hearing that excuse (since the Jaron Lanier, power-glove VR days) so color me skeptical.

bigyabai 8 minutes ago | parent

> 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.

chaostheory 19 minutes ago | parent

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.

Topfi 19 minutes ago | parent

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 7 minutes ago | parent

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.

pj_mukh 4 minutes ago | parent

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.

rvz 16 minutes ago | parent

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.

la6479 14 minutes ago | parent

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 7 minutes ago | parent

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.

So yeah, be careful of the play area. :)

Obligatory subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/VRtoER/

monster_truck 14 minutes ago | parent

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

Dylan16807 8 minutes ago | parent

Notably the standard resolution of 96 DPI at 28 inches is 47 PPD.

jachee 6 minutes ago | parent

37PPD is triple the Index’s density.

What in the world are you using as your benchmark to call 37 “dogshit”?

djierardi 10 minutes ago | parent

And still capturing audio where (in my state) you can't record conversations without consent?

plantain 8 minutes ago | parent

Sounds like you shouldn't use them in your state then? You can't open carry in my state... so I don't.

aranelsurion 5 minutes ago | parent

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.

markus_zhang 2 minutes ago | parent

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.