Facebook Horizon
oculus.comIs it just me or is their intro video disturbing? A world where your significant other is next to you but deep in their own virtual world? Hasn't Facebook done enough to disconnect people from the real world? Given the lengths Facebook has gone through to keep users engaged and addicted to their platform, what's stopping them from doing the same with Horizon?
Maybe it is just me getting old but when I was watching that part when she was talking about "getting out there, trying new things, making your mark", something really deep in me was screaming NOOOO!, this is not right :-/
I was always into tech but this video makes me want to throw all my devices away, move to some old house in abandoned Spanish village and grow my own tomatoes. And the disturbing part is that I am not even sure why - on its face value it seems great, you get to talk to people from all around the world and that is cool, right? But my intuition tells me that we are not wired for this and if it gains traction, something terrible will come out of this.
I don't get this type of visceral reaction personally, even though I wouldn't use this type of app, but I understand why some older people would never touch it.
I like to keep up with new tech and I was looking at the viral Houseparty [1] and Airtime [1] apps the other day. While I'd never do anything like that with my friends, when I checked the reviews it was mostly 12yr kids (some say their age in the review for some reason) and I could imagine myself at a younger age loving this stuff.
The kids could use it when they are stuck in their bedroom and want to to 'hang out' with friends after school. Watching Youtube videos or simple games combined with live video chat and texting.
I could see a similar use case here with VR.
The whole 'spectator culture' watching people playing vide games is a massive phenomenon among kids. But sitting watching a "zany" perpetually hyper guy playing a video game for hours seems foreign to most adults.
The social lives of kids are already heavily intertwined with technology. They don't mind jumping into a multi-party video chat with some friends from school. Doing the same in a VR world sounds just as fun.
There's also always naysayers for every tech launch on HN/internet so it's safe to take it with a grain of salt. Sometimes it's just not meant for you and that's totally fine.
1. https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/houseparty/id1065781769
2. https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/airtime-watch-videos-together/...
Me, an old fart, looks at Houseparty/Airtime: That's nice! I could see myself doing that with friends. I haven't really thought of how important It's to see peoples faces. The kids are alright!
Me looks at a VR world run by facebook: Screeches and sees the worst imaginable dystopian future marching towards me.
I guess this is the type of thing that FB envisioned when they bought Oculos.
But it’s true, Facebook ruins everything don't they? If it was anyone else I'd be more inclined to support this otherwise.
> And the disturbing part is that I am not even sure why - on its face value it seems great
And that is exactly the reason why it is not the right direction. Think about it. Why would one choose a virtual world over the new one? Because apparently the real world is not good enough. On the surface the virtual looks better, but if you engage in it, I think you will probably find out that it is as boring and hard as the real one.
People have lived for centuries without it. In those years there have both been plenty of fulfilled lives and unfulfilled lives. Clearly, the shiny happy virtual world is not a prerequisite for a fulfilled live. Now think about what made those lives fulfilling. Whatever the answer, it can be done in the real world. It probably is also not superficial and also not shiny. So trading the current world for the shiny virtual world is not the ultimate solution to whatever it is that you are looking for. It can be a tool, like the telephone is. But not more.
On the A16Z podcast, Marc Andreessen (IIRC) said something like "VR is not for Silicon Valley where you wake up every day thinking of all the awesome things you can do. VR is for all the people whose everyday life is terrible."
When you think about it in those terms it gets seriously dystopian. You put your AR goggles on for your 10-hour shift at the Nike factory, then you pop a protein pill and put your VR goggles on for the rest of the day, spending your meagre income on whoever bid most for your eyeballs on Google.
How is that different from any other form of entertainment (books, TV shows & movies, spectator sports)?
It’s only a matter of degree—unless it’s completely controlled by Facebook, or any other company.
I do think there are some merits to VR (a better gaming experience) but framing VR as a new worldly experience feels wrong to me. There are some arguments for Horizon being beneficial for people whose lives aren't great and they get to let off in a better, virtual environment. How is that different than opioids though - both are temporary escapes from real world problems, and that's just what it is which is an escape and not a solution.
> "VR is not for Silicon Valley where you wake up every day thinking of all the awesome things you can do. VR is for all the people whose everyday life is terrible."
An earlier Facebook VR demo infamously managed to twist up both, with the Puerto Rico tragedy demo. CNET report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8q2BQOGRGE
Seems the factory workers are in a bad spot either way, at least the vr version is presumably more “enjoyable”.
> People have lived for centuries without it. In those years there have both been plenty of fulfilled lives and unfulfilled lives. Clearly, the shiny happy virtual world is not a prerequisite for a fulfilled live.
One could say the same about anaesthetic - but I'd still prefer to have the choice! But I won't be rushing to sign up for this. I don't use FB, and think they (& Google for that matter) are a malign force in the world.
Yes, I would prefer the anesthetic too. The difference between the two that it is very clear that the anesthetic is a tool. It makes it easier to accomplish something, but that something does not change whether you use the aid or not. Whereas the virtual world is often confused with being a new something that replaces the old one. That's why I said it could be useful as a tool, but not more.
> something really deep in me was screaming NOOOO!, this is not right
I though the same. I mean there are some things that can easily exist in virtual world, and it may even be enabling for people who can't leave their houses in a literal way (for many different reasons). But as a default? You can likely try new things in person - but the ad made it seem to be a new thing rather than an alternative experience. I guess I'm opposed to that framing.
Don't pay attention to unimaginative people who pretend to be imaginative and creative (because its part of some job description and quarterly kpi) and you will be fine.
A well programmed Corporate Robot knows not to act like a visionary. Their job when they do it right, is to keep the factory lights on and set the stage up for the visionaries.
But some of these robots have bugs and end up getting up on to the stage and wasting everyones time.
You’re disturbed, I imagine, because it is the beginning of the Neuromancer/Ready Player 1 dystopia.
Frankly, we're starting to live in a very Cyberpunk world these days.
> you get to talk to people from all around the world
i would say this is a bug not a feature. it should take time and effort to talk to people all over the world.
> it should take time and effort to talk to people all over the world
No, it shouldn't, that was the whole point of the global Internet (ignoring its origins), to drill into people's thick skulls that in the end we're all very similar, that most of the "local culture" crap it's just that, CRAP, and deep inside we're all driven by the same fears and desires. That ANY kind of war means just fighting against other people that are just like you and that in the end it's not worth fighting. That we can have the global village, and keep our special tribal/nationa/race identities too, there's no contradiction there.
Hope AR, VR and later neural implants get implemented and deployed in ways that empower this vision instead of the opposite, that they manage to push further in the one-world-interconnectedness direction of the 90s internet.
I used to dislike corporations like Facebook... but now I'm pretty sure I'd rather live in a globalized world ruled by such corporations, than in a separated and restricted one ruled by governments representing "nations"! I'd swallow the AI-powered-corporate-surveillance part as a minor inconvenience if it manages to deliver the "one world" dream... I'm just afraid that most corporations aren't truly powerful and globally distributed enough, in the sense that they could at least in theory overpower the governments of most of most of their base countries if push comes to shove and they need to fight them for more freedom and connectivity. Maybe if they'd drop central control and organize themselves more into "cells" or something similar... there's got to be something in the whole Ethereum and distributed systems experiment that can become successful and power this. Heh, maybe once Libra gets traction more can be built on top. Go Facebook!
a homogenous culture is like a monocrop agriculture: complete vulnerability to pest or blight
Evolution works best in a diverse population: when the environment shifts, some varieties will be quicker to adapt than others.
One world and one culture is a nightmare not a dream.
One of the most exciting things I remember about first getting the Internet in the 90s was (especially as a socially-anxious introvert) being able to jump on an IRC server and chat mostly anonymously with just a nickname, to people I didn't know, without the awkwardness that real-life interactions could bring me at the time.
As a high-school kid, I could be on the same footing as a distinguished scientist. Or I could make friends in other countries.
Even my parents, who aren't technically-inclined, were excited by that and thought it was amazing.
I sometimes feel like the Internet went from being a place that you explored to find new people and new viewpoints, to one where many people just stay in their own bubbles.
No, this is not a bug. How did we get from there, to here? :(
you were lucky to not get scammed or groomed sexually
Certainly, but at the same time -- it wasn't a free-for-all. I was lucky that I'd been taught to be suspicious and to have boundaries long before the Internet. Of course that doesn't preclude anything from happening and luck does play a part. It just means I wouldn't have engaged in some risky behaviours - I wouldn't go giving strangers my phone number (this was before mobiles, so my phone number was my parent's phone number) or home address, for example. This was at a time when people hadn't even warmed up to the idea of using their credit cards online; my folks using their credit card to pay the monthly Internet bill was a way out-there thing at the time.
I also wasn't _that_ young - I don't think I touched IRC until I was around 15 or 16.
I remember the first in-real-life 'meetup' was a big thing; it was with members of an IRC chat group from our local area. I was real-life friends with some of the people already, so it wasn't an entire group of strangers. I don't think that even happened until I was out of high school.
You realise you are using the internet right now?
What? Why?
it should be harder for predators
Showing VR users awkwardly ignoring friends who are right next to them does run face-first into a talking point I've heard repeatedly from people who reject VR out of hand.
While, I agree with you 100% that it was a poor choice of theme for the video, I've never been impressed with the talking point. It has always been presented to me as if they were arguing that the telephone was an isolating, anti-social device.
"Imagine you were hanging out with someone, having a good time. And, out of nowhere they pull this little 'device' out of their pocket and press it against the side of their face. Then they start walking around, looking around at nothing, acting you aren't even there and having a conversation with nobody! What kind of jerk would do that? Not me! Not ever!"
You would be a jerk if you suddenly cut off a conversation to call someone else out of the blue. That's why people don't do that! With phones, stepping out to take a call is considered situationally OK. But, that's not (yet) a user story for VR. Instead, the common story is that you have some time to yourself, maybe you'll watch TV or browse the internets. But, instead you go into VR where it is very convenient and easy to hang out and do wacky stuff with random people all over to the world. Hopefully, when VR becomes more common, it will be somewhat less random people and somewhat more friends and family that you'd like to see more often but don't because of physical inconveniences (like being located in a separate cities/countries/continents).
In my opinion it's not the supposedly ignoring friends part. It's the fact that replacing then non virtual world with a virtual one means that you are giving your life entirely to a commercial entity. You basically lose all freedoms humanity achieved for the individual. Because this new space is not public, it's entirely owned. If it would be opt in and an individual choice than I wouldn't care much. But these things, if they are engaging enough will tend to attract a critical mass of people that might make the old non virtual space obselet in many ways. This will effect me weather I like it or not.
who would ever sit next to their partner on the couch in complete silence while you both mindlessly scroll through mediocre content on your phones and once you find something of above average quality you give a smile or nose exhale and then without even looking up continue back to the scroll??
Startup idea: time configurable short range signal jammer
> the telephone was an isolating, anti-social device.
But it is!
At every advance in communications and information exchange there's that "this isn't right" feeling shared by half of the people from generations that didn't grow up with it.
Not that I disagree with you. There are going to be all kinds ugly side effects when VR worlds go mainstream (maybe not Facebook's but eventually). Remember the height of MMORPGs when people were dying of dehydration, murdering each other in the real world and other craziness?
But putting the future of the human race aside for a sec... this is some of the most tone deaf advertising I've seen in a while.
It's almost as if they listed all the major issues that turn people off of VR and then tried to make them selling points.
"People will accept anything if we do low hanging Pixaresque jokes!"
A good relationship is one where you can be close to each other, each doing their own thing, and feel "close" and connected. From that perspective, playing a game (possibly in a virtual world) isn't really that different from reading a book.
Frankly, we are already in our own virtual worlds, with our own thoughts and experiences. We all perceive reality differently and many of us can feel extremely alone even in the presence of those we love. I'm not sure this technology is going to emotionally isolate people even more than we already are.
It basically looks like an intro to a Black Mirror episode...
My first thought was, "what does this cost?" Not per month, what am I giving up if I participate? What personal data of mine will be collected, and for what purpose?
Is this information even available?
ps. yes that video was creepy FB is awful at marketing.
They'll probably get us controlling with our mind, then reading it
i regularly sit next to my s.o. on the couch, both with a headset. no problem here, it's just like watching television but noe the whole room is transformed and friends can join in so ee can watch star trek together on the 'big screen' or play bridge crew
It is a little, but to me mostly because of the apparent time of the day (morning/noon).
Me and my SO often immerse in different things while in the same room. Could be as simple as both reading fiction, or I could be playing video games while she watches TV.
It's not what we do over breakfast, though! If the video showed couples doing their own thing while it's already dark outside, it would be more natural. VR to me is no more escapist than playing an intense team based FPS online.
Not that I am fan of the idea of a Facebook MMO!
Virtual worlds are socially acceptable as long as you are killing people in them.
It's disturbing to me that there are people who created, ok'd, and released this video, prob thinking, "hey, this is great!"
Yeah, this almost seems like satire from a dystopian scifi movie. The actual presented ideas were fine but the tone and jokes landed far from where FB marketers presumably intended.
That video is horrifying
Not to mention it's very cringey, as well as the somewhat implicit messaging where "the kitchen is not only for women", see we have a progressive man here who's preparing a meal for his wife.
what certainly doesn't help is the graphics of the game which looks exactly like something out of a movie 20 years ago when people where making tons of VR dystopia sci-fi flicks
Yeah, like “you can have a life here, as you don’t in the real world”.
Smartphones exist
Let's be honest, virtual world games have always appealed to people who are not doing so well in the real world. From a pure business perspective, that is the problem, and virtual worlds are the convenient solution.
I am so over goal-less MMOs with simplistic pastel graphics. We've done this so many times before. How is Horizon any different from Second Life? It's really unclear. Both are ugly.
I am a huge fan of the idea of the Matrix, and I don't even think it needs to be gamified to be fun, but the graphics are such a big part of the appeal of VR for me. I would pay a lot of money just for a photorealistic VR house with a beautiful view out the windows and in-world access to my computer - a better place to hack than my usual Starbucks. Why can't we have something like the Unreal tech demos? It's clear that beautiful worlds are possible now: https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/20/18273832/epic-unreal-engi...
If a VR world that looked like the first video in that article existed, it would be huge. But the intro video for Facebook Horizon? I am completely unsold.
They're possible now, but you also need expensive hardware to run them. This is meant to run on the oculus quest. Give it a few more years (and probably a few more) and portable ultrarealism will get here eventually.
You don't need expensive hardware to do better than glossy pastels, at least for desktop gaming. I don't know what the requirements are for VR, but even turning modern games down to low/medium settings can still look pretty stunning if you haven't gamed in a while.
This reminds me of higher-res Mii's from the Wii, which was dated tech even at the time.
That said, the most important thing people should be asking is: is it fun? Because if you aren't gonna go super realistic then you had better nail the gameplay (Nintendo or Blizzard style).
What if it's targeted at kids/teens/young people and is lightweight "casual" playing experience? Wouldn't this look be preferred?
Sometimes ultra-realism takes the fun nature out of things.
Simpsons and South Park could easily use high tech graphics but the simple nature of it all is what makes it appealing . Same with Minecraft or even Zelda.
It's also easy to build expansive worlds with breakable objects that don't require tons of physics and special effects to make something like a box exploding look realistic.
Then we're going to have a problem, as VR is clearly counter-indicated for children because it messes up with eye development...
The Nintendo Switch is by no means powerful hardware. But Breath of the Wild looks beautiful on it because of the art style.
I really don't think VR needs to wait half a decade for hardware to catch up. Existing systems can create beautiful experiences with the right artistic decisions
I 100% agree. I'd say Breath of the Wild looks incomparably better than this artstyle though. Something about this artstyle feels so... sterile? Maybe I'm just out of touch with what kids are playing these days, although as another commentator said, VR is counter-indicated for children.
A technology like Google Stadia will probably solve this. Nobody will need a expensive hardware to run it. The graphics will be generated in cloud computing and streamed to the VR. Keep creating hardwares to run better graphics is a dead end.
The speed of light says no. “The cloud” will always have too much latency to do acceptable vr. To meet your deadline for a 120hz video frame, your signal can travel at most 1500 miles in a vacuum, closer to 1000 miles in copper/fiber.
> “The cloud” will always have too much latency to do acceptable vr.
Perhaps but you haven't established that.
> To meet your deadline for a 120hz video frame, your signal can travel at most 1500 miles in a vacuum, closer to 1000 miles in copper/fiber.
Edge computing is a feature of some modern clouds, and certainly is intended to have much lower round trip distance than that to at least major markets, specifically to reduce latency.
Admittedly, public cloud offerings don't tend currently to have compute resource suitable for hosting VR in their edge offerings, but it's certainly something a major cloud player supporting their own gaming/VR offering could do, and for that matter a feature that it is easy enough for public cloud vendors to offer if there was sufficient demand.
Edge computing is a thing, but it really doesn’t help that much: That 1000 miles has to include the signal path inside your gpu to generate the frame and assumes no data loss in transit.
If it takes 4ms to generate a frame you’re down to < 500 miles from the data center. If you need to pad for packet loss you’re down even further.
> If it takes 4ms to generate a frame you’re down to < 500 miles from the data center. If you need to pad for packet loss you’re down even further.
As I understand, edge computing locations tend to be in most major cities in the regions covered, providing tens-of-miles distance to most people in major markets.
I live in the bay area, and yet my ping to google is still ~12ms.
We've done this so many times before.
Global birth rate is around 150,000 people per day. At Facebook scale that’s not one sucker born every minute but tens of thousands; millions of new Facebook users born every month.
They never played second life or minecraft.
“We” have done this, most humans haven’t.
> Global birth rate is around 150,000 people per day. At Facebook scale that’s not one sucker born every minute but tens of thousands; millions of new Facebook users born every month.
Yes, but how many of them are going to waste time playing pointless games like Horizon online? How many people that would play such a game haven't already? To say that there are a lot of Facebook users and that that naturally means a lot of players is strange given that VR headsets are still a luxury item and that Facebook Horizon doesn't essentially offer anything novel outside that.
> They never played second life or minecraft.
> "We" have done this, most humans haven't.
Similarly, most humans haven't played Horizon, and there is as far as I'm concerned no compelling reason to believe that a lot of people will. Who would waste their time in that disgusting looking world and present themselves using a bland Wii-like avatar?
> How is Horizon any different from SecondLife?
Probably less cybering, from the looks of it.
You think?
Well, if nothing else, they'll probably be a bit less... flexible in the avatars they let you use.
This probably won't actually stop people.
Cybering always finds a way
A comparison to Rec Room or VRChat would make much more sense and be way more fitting to support your argument.
That Facebook Horizon video is exactly how Linden Lab marketed Second Life.
I really enjoyed SL for a few years. At one point in some role play world that involved hunting or being hunted with bow and arrow or melee weapons. I had played plenty of other purpose build FPS but enjoyed that SL game more despite the crap graphics, laggy scripts, weapons, hacks etc. It felt more visceral.
I never spent a cent inside of an FPS but probably spent a few thousand dollars in SL.
Sure but the parent post was talking about the graphics. Second Life looked good when it launched but is so old that it looks outdated. It tried to look realistic while both Horizon and Rec Room goes with the Mii look. My point is that Rec Room is a better comparison since it uses the same graphics style, is way more popular/up-to-date and is also VR.
Going to be interesting how Facebook will handle the (legal) fringe and subvert creativity when it doesn't fit their business model.
Any such VR world should be openly developed and not be provided by a corporation who can selectively put anything in there and inhibit anything going against company policies.
This is Black Mirror waiting to happen.
Or why not compare it to SecondLife's foray into VR "Sansar"? I haven't tried in about 9 months but it's definitely an improvement from SL, albeit full of bugs.
Agree. Instantly felt like "seen it before and it wasn't fun then, so it won't be fun now".
But Dirt Rally on the other hand... That is a different story. VR is great when realism is the goal. Games in zero g environments are cool too.
We don’t even have powerful enough hardware for that, let alone software. Give it another 10 years.
I don't think this is actually true; being close to some deep learning research groups, it's really surprising how powerful GPUs have gotten. Improvements over the last few years have been very nonlinear; it's kind of astonishing. And, internet latency has also gotten very good. I bet it's totally possible to make something like this now, though most people don't realize it yet!
Do you see a lot of games that run well in 4k@120hz? VR is much more demanding. Maybe if you spend $20k on a box with 8 GPUs it will be able to run it. But it’s not just GPUs, you also need much better headsets (much higher refresh rates, 8k+ resolution, wide FOV, very good eye tracking for the foveated rendering, much higher dynamic range). Most importantly, creating all that photorealistic content is a huge effort, and you need a lot of it for VR. How much are you willing to pay for it?
Gameplay >> Graphics
Tell that to the people who get nauseous from VR. There are some people that will get nauseous from VR no matter what, and then there are people of varying sensitivity. The higher refresh rate, lower latency, improved FOV, and improved optics will all help more people be able to experience VR at all. And it will allow everybody to experience it for longer periods of time more comfortably.
I would have put that under "gameplay" (see "teleportation" vs "regular FPS" movement types), but I guess it's a bit of both...
Your parent post is true. This isn't about PC GPUs where the cooling hardware alone weighs almost as much as the entire standalone headset. These headsets are based on mobile phone hardware and need to deliver stereo rendering at 75 to 90Hz to make the user comfortable. Also, heat dissipation is a lot harder for a box strapped to a face that can't reach 50 to 60 degrees. You need to make lots of compromises for that.
Well, it certainly is technically possible.
> it's really surprising how powerful GPUs have gotten. Improvements over the last few years have been very nonlinear
These improvements did not come at fixed cost, though. Prices for top-of-the-line GPUs have been increasing (as well as die sizes, power consumption, and manufacturer margin). Together with Moore's law, that already brings nonlinear improvements, the available computation power has increased a lot.
However, those GPUs are very expensive. Most people just can't afford them. And if few people can afford them, it's hard to justify paying a whole army of developers (like AAA game studios) to bring that kind of experiences.
Run the game in the cloud, stream to the VR. The more you pay for cloud computing, the better your graphics. Why no company is doing that already?
Google is, with Stadia
Latency
I had that exact coffee break argument some years ago and have a slack reminder "play some VR" at 9:00 Sunday, December 7th, 2025. I might have to revise that.
6 years from now? Maybe. It depends on Apple - if they release a VR headset by then, it might become an iPhone moment for VR. However it seems like they are focusing on AR, rather than VR, so who knows.
There's something slightly unnerving about Horizon's avatars. While it's more or less understood that floating avatars are the best match for current modes of VR locomotion, thus the lack of legs, there's an important difference between something like Rec Room VR's floating avatars and Horizon's: The former's are far more abstract, and thus look more natural in their omissions.
Rec Room's avatars consist of floating hands, a floating head, and a floating torso, all disconnected. It doesn't seem odd that they don't have legs, because their other features are more removed from the human form. Facebook's, on the other hand, are fully-formed cartoon characters from the waist up, more on the order of XBox Live avatars. This greater detail makes the lack of detail elsewhere look out of place, and even slightly disturbing given its imposition on a human figure.
People can get used to anything. In college I got a glance at the totally normal cartoons my little sister was watching and I was horrified -- it looked like borderline body horror to me. But she thought that the cartoon characters of my childhood were equally creepy. (In retrospect she was right; Courage the Cowardly Dog was some really messed up shit.) In comparison, a floating cartoon torso is going to be nothing for an adolescent to assimilate.
Reminds me of Metaverse from Snow Crash
can i interest you in a motorcycle race?
Yours Truly.
I use oculus rooms regularly, it has similar type of avatars and suits me better then those of rec room or altspace
It would be cool if everyone was on a skateboard, little car, wheelchair, hoverboard, etc.
That's one path to monetisation.
Facebook Horizon was announced at Oculus Connect Day 1 keynote yesterday.
I highly recommend people checkout Michael Abrash's keynote discussing some jaw dropping "social teleportation" research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCB_mfGmh9w&t=1h47m12s
They are building something that doesn't even need to exist. We can have fully remote work with today's tools that's _way_ better than the average office environment, certainly way more productive per hour spent. You don't need a roomful of GPUs to have it. All that's in the way is organizational inertia and managers who can't justify their own existence without butts in the chairs, herded into an "open" office like cattle.
Source: I work remotely.
Very cool, but inherently troubling that it's done on FB's money, with all the strings attached.
Man, such hate in this thread. I, for one, am glad that someone is throwing serious money at consolidating VR experiences into a single world. I love what Rec Room has done there and I would certainly enjoy a new iteration. If it's too invasive or no fun, I'll delete it after trying. For now, I'm glad we're still moving forward in the VR space instead of it going the way of 3DTV.
Look, I'm a 3D enthusiast, and embraced all 3D tech starting from 1800's stereoscopes to the 3D TV and strap-to-your-face attempts of the day.
And I really want to like whatever FB is doing with Oculus, especially given that JC works on it.
But one look at this... "Whatever I'm into", contrary to the claim, is surely not going to be there.
It's a sterile toys-r-us vibe when even Disney gets that a bit less sugar and some grit will go a long way towards suspension of disbelief.
It's the sheer tastelessness (subjective) of this that makes me sad. Candy Crush Saga isn't what I was craving for to fill my entire visual universe.
I'm still glad that we're moving in that direction, but sad that this iteration is not for me.
Guess I'll go watch Zeppelins on my Holmes. It's static 3D, but with more megapixels, and the visuals, even being B&W, are way better.
Yeah.
This prompted me to google "SecondLife VR" and this came up https://www.sansar.com/
I just wish it wasn't the hardware vendors themselves that supply the software. I think oculus and others have solid devices to a fair price on the market. The capabilities speak for themselves.
But since most people just don't own the hardware, there are many developers that currently still ignore VR. I think the best bet would be for more 3d software to include basic VR support. I would be nice to be able to the controllers, but I would be content with just using classical input methods. That would require you to know the layout of a keyboard, which is probably a big hurdle, but it would still make VR support more common.
That said, I don't think software like this has the correct focus for many enthusiasts. I am not using a device that makes me look like I never want to speak to anybody ever again just to chat up people online. But I am not surprised Facebook went in that direction. Maybe it will have the positive effect of just pulling more people to VR who have a little money on the side to make that investment.
Yeah, but what about the second part? The part where it says, "P.S. This is a trap."?
This reminds me of the game Oasis seen in Ready Player one, but with all the awkwardness that comes with the kind of social interactions that fb has brought us, minus the game centric experience. I would really really want to be excited about this, as from a tech point of view it deserves a lot of credit, but unfortunately lately whatever comes from FB makes me think "thanks, but no thanks". Plus, for some reason when the video started and the female blonde avatar came up on the screen moving slightly up and down very rapidly, I had a sudden increase in heart rate and I felt anxiety all the sudden. That's something really unexpected which I had rarely experienced, so it really put me off.
The fact that Facebook is behind it reminds me of Nolan Sorrento's desire to increase advertising space in the Oasis [1].
I think this product targets children more than adults and wish all parents will manage to keep their kids away from these abusive profit engines.
hey kids, stop playing video games! even the ones that can strengthen social skills and relationships!
I wonder whether those legless avatars fall into the "uncanny valley":
It definitely does. A better approach would be, gradient fade down towards torso. This feels wrong as a sudden cut below waist line.
Yeah, why no legs?
Because legs aren't tracked, they would be out of sync if you move, and it is easier just to leave them out.
I'm going to guess they don't want genitalia or behinds making this a more adult experience.
Facebook aside, I understand the negativity towards "virtual" living, but I think it's the only way we can save the planet at this point. Sure, the real world is great if you work in tech and live in the richest country in the world, but we can't sustainably provide a life like that to everyone on Earth. If everyone wants a house with a garden, two cars and multiple overseas trips each year then our planet will turn into a shithole.
VR on the other hand has the possibility to provide experiences that rival the best the world has to offer, while consuming very little resources. You don't have to commute to work everyday, travel across the planet to experience other countries or buy huge houses to fit all your stuff. I think the rise of shut-ins and hikikomoris is already a sign that a low-resource (i.e. cheap) virtual life is more attractive to many people than the hyper-competitive modern life in gray dystopian metropolises.
This is all of course predicated on solving the health issues with being in VR for long periods of time, like having displays mimicking natural sunlight, unobtrusive headsets, preventing eye-strain and a means for getting exercise.
This all depends on how far you are willing to stretch the definition of "experience", I think.
Looks cool, but I distrust Facebook too much for this
Same...have been waiting for someone to develop this for years after reading Snowcrash but am disappointed that it's Facebook who did it.
So... Second Life in VR, but run by Facebook?
For me, the "but" is enough to completely outweigh any interest in the first part.
I totally get that this is irritating, however, there is also an advantage when run by someone like facebook: Users care about their existing profile and will behave better because of this (basically because they are not anonymous). IMHO, this is why FB marketplace works so nicely in the US.
Yet, most of the time, we're using usernames to hide our identity because we don't want to have our real life connected directly with internet strangers.
A sterile virtual environment ran by a company that makes money on me giving them my personal info? Not sure I'd want that.
Plus, the fact that this is going to be a VR clone of Second Life without the anonymity and most probably without all the rated M stuff makes me rather sad. A big missed opportunity.
Facebook purchasing Oculus felt like a weird move when it happened, and has gotten no less weird over time. It makes me sad, because if you showed this exact same product but called it, say, Disney Horizon or Nintendo Horizon you would feel so much more optimistic about where this could go.
What are these two companies really getting from one another? Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s working.
If it was 'Disney Horizon', I wouldn't even consider using it since I am not their target market.
With 'Facebook Horizon', I'd feel apprehensive about using another one of their products, but ultimately would go for it.
At OC1 (possibly OC2, my memory is a bit vague) they handed out copies Ernest Clines' book Ready Player One. It was pretty clear this was the direction they were going to head, even if they seem to be blissfully unaware that they're closer to the antagonists in the story (IOI) than Gregarious Simulation Systems.
Note: I have nothing specific against Facebook
I'm getting Oasis vibes from Ready Player One. Life imitating art?
Metaverse from snow crash.
Yeah Michael Abrash (and obviously tons of others) explicitly mention it as an inspiration for why they are working on this stuff:
https://www.oculus.com/blog/introducing-michael-abrash-oculu...
And now Facebook is going to take the honerable role of Halliday right?
Wonder if I am only one thinking Halliday being one of the greatest arseholes casted as semigod in fiction? I mean, it is fine to be into 80's, but using your massive wealth to impose that obsession to everyone else does not score high points for me.
Does he impose it though, or just uses it as a filter to find the next game administrator? He doesn't enforces anybody to participate. Perhaps comparable to a requirement list for a job, though it's a bit of a specific requirement.
I think it's inevitable. Just look at Second Life
Wow that promo video is real cheesy and Debbie gets it cause she's fictional.
There's been a push for VR since the 90s. The mass public still doesn't get it or want it in terms of ever being something huge.
I believe things like Echo Frames will be a mass product while any VR stuff is and will always be a niche market. Maybe FB hopes differently as they've pushed this isolating yet supposedly social experience for awhile without any type of real adoption.
This is right out of the premise of the book "Ready Player One" that has a similar virtual world called OASIS. Mark Zuckerberg is a huge fan of the book in general and It just seems Oculus is trying to create a similar world with Horizon launch.
And that would be fine if Facebook wasn't the equivalent of IOI corporation from the book.
I wouldn't be surprised if the internal codename for the project was Oasis
Though it should be IOI
I gave Facebook the benefit of the doubt for a long time, but alas I have mostly removed anything Facebook from my life and I am happier because of it.
This reminds me of Playstation Home[1] but somehow feels worse!
Home felt kind of pointless, but originally it was going to integrate with the trophy system in a pretty cool way.
You were going be able to walk through a museum of your accomplishments. Slay a dragon? Maybe your trophy is a giant dragon skeleton to hang from the roof. Win the NHL playoffs? You can put the Stanley Cup in your achievement hall. You get the idea. Of course, that all ended up on the cutting room floor.
The question with these places is always, "why would I bother visiting them?" The Home trophy hall concept was pure vanity, but I would have enjoyed browsing through and reminiscing. That question remains unanswered for Horizon, at least for me.
This makes me wonder what is going on with my Miis on the Nintendo Wii. It has only been about five years since I have seen them.
You might have grandchildren
I think this could do very well. I wonder how you communicate with each other? Does the quest has built in A/V com?
I laughed at the legless avatars. So many memes in the making.
It has a mic
Such dystopia, it gives me the shivers!
How is a company building a product that no one will use a dystopia?
Perhaps that no one in your circles will use. To hundreds of millions of people around the world, Facebook is the internet. They are the target market.
Do the same hundreds of millions of people that still use Facebook have both the tech affinity and the spare bucks to shell out money for a Oculus headset?
Soon, it will become cheap.
To hundreds of millions of people around the world, a significant amount of leisure time and 449 euros is a pipe dream.
This looks exciting and depressing at the same time. I understand all the bashing about this on HN but would love to hear about this from younger generation and kids who are growing up on these devices.
What I found most interesting is that it is launching with features where you can set how close other avatars can get to you, and you can go to your own sharded zone with no one else there and nothing else going on. I don't think I've seen a game launch with safe space features, but I think it's really interesting seeing the feature priorities that come out in a VR environment. They pointed these out on their "citizenship" page, so they have these features core to being a user.
Also discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21074010
Are the avatars legless just because the headsets don't do leg tracking?
Yeah its a clever design decision, which is hard to appreciate with the intensely bubbley (frothy?) lady talking way too loud for what seems to be 9am on a Sunday.
They seem to be throwing services at the wall and seeing what sticks, lately. I really see nothing compelling here, unless it is something that has been done better by someone else. I wonder what union of "unrelated" services will yield Facebook exactly the same degree of tracking that they lost to recent regulations.
I miss the company that built my DK2.
I don't think this is yet another experiment. This is their shot at dominating the VR social space. As VR more or less slowly grows, they want to be the big player in the social realm there. More data to be gathered than on a browser.
The company everyone will remember was the company that built the Quest. It's the real stepping stone for VR.
The vr world is perfect for someone who has no friends, does not trust people, can not physically or mentally go and meet people. A world where your avatar is modeled after everyone else’s avatar so everyone looks normal and alike is a very welcoming world. Maybe if you could imagine the worst possible situation and circumstance of the real horrible existence that is the actual life of someone else. You may see that the opportunity how ever brief to feel that warmth (love) that a vr metaverse offers would add to a life. That in turn will benefit them so when they take that head set off their life has been enriched and maybe even a smile would replace the tears that nightly put them to sleep. The mind is very powerful and vulnerable. The positive effect that this Horizon can have is amazing.
I will be waiting
I strongly recommend not looking directly at large noisy pixel scrolls.
I haven’t played with VR sets too much, but I think one practical limitation is whether it gets physically tiring over a shorter amount of time vs traditional video games or doing something on your phone? I mean, do people actually spend hours with a VR set like they might playing Fortnite etc?
This is less technical, but I think branding this as "facebook X" was the wrong call, unless they're trying to market this to parents who don't wanna take care of their kids who aren't old enough for Fornite yet.
If everything Facebook does has different branding, it's easier for President Warren to make the case for breaking up Facebook. Hence everything is made to seem as interdependent as possible.
Has that ever stopped an antitrust case?
I hope Google Earth (or similar) does a VR world that maps one to one with the real world, but makes traveling, flying, etc., trivial. Meet friends in the desert, on a cloud, on the Moon, in the oval office, but a virtualized real place. In other words, make it a map of actual reality instead of a fantasy reality. Allow sharable fantasy/historical/speculative overlays, but focus on croudsourcing real details, current conditions, the world as it is.
It could become more of a way to interact with the world than to escape it.
Go to a real world park instead.
My colleagues were excited by the prospect of Facebook's new Dating feature. I couldnt think of any 'layman' reasons not to use it.. they weren't too concerned with their privacy nor did they care if others had their data, because they "did normal stuff and had nothing to hide"..
How do you guys bring the point around to average people who don't care about privacy?
This is my goto:
First, at scale, if an engineer can think it, statistically speaking there is an engineer who will do it.
So let's pick a theoretical: Imagine you have all these photos of people with their faces - at the club, hugging at the pub etc. Then you can track who has a criminal record, due to what they post, key words, etc. And then you can track who statistically speaking, has a high chance of having a criminal record (but may not have). Then you can track these individuals moving around in various social circles. And then you look at peoples group photos, and raise a flag when there is cross-over between the circles. This is vastly interesting of course, but... who said it was cool to examine me and the people I meet to make that judgement? Even if FaceBook are not doing it now, who said it was cool to amass all this data so they CAN make this judgement, at anytime in the future.
This behaviour in a person is called being "a bit judgey". When facebook do it, it's "a bit judgey"...with parallelized computing and machine learning.
I'm not a criminal. I'm a totally chill guy. It literally wouldn't make me worried for myself if Facebook did this. But, I just find the whole role they can play...annoying.
You don't - if they are seriously pushing the "nothing to hide" argument, it's too late for them.
This is unnecessary, total bullshit and will fail. Facebook seems incapable to learn anything about VR and I don't understand why.
Their only product is the digital equivalent of crack, it sells itself. Building something that doesn't intrinsically attract people is, more hard.
Maybe they know de wae.
Sansar , High fidelity , vrchat ... they all struggle to get traction (and mostly fail) - why does facebook think they can do better
I guess one reason might be that they have a pre-existing social network to draw from, so much easier to coordinate social VR with friends.
Not saying that is sufficient, but it definitely helps compared with a startup that has to rely more on having strangers interact or, if meeting with friends, is likely to be higher friction that FB can offer.
sansar has second life, probably the biggest congregation of virtual world users
One thing that sprang to mind is that they own the hardware too and can integrate Horizons tightly with the OS.
the question is more whether they can sell oculus to facebook users rather than facebook to oculus users.
I would like to see an artwork of an Oculus headset as a facehugger from Alien: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/9d/1b/b5/9d1bb5d1c30cebd812ba87512...
This thing will not be "playable" on Oculus Go? $$-wise?
...Who on earth thought it would be a good idea not to have legs?!
They're a bit late to copy vrchat
A VR world controlled by a corporation I simply do not trust. Think I'll pass on that.
My only real objection to this is that it's another social media owned by Facebook.
Looks awfully boring and bland.
I am instantly thinking that they’ll be gathering every move people make in this world and use this for more ad targeting.
Decentraland without user-generated content? Club Penguin Island all over again?
The fact that FB can task developers to this, but not the breached servers (of a 3rd Party but who has access to highly confidential material) I’ve reported via their BB page that are online right this second is somewhat insulting to me.
If this comment gets downvoted, be suspicious. It is going to be well written, but it is does contain accusations against Facebook. My real name is in my About Section so I have no fear of libel. I hate to play this card because I am sort of immunizing myself (or trying to) against downvotes, but you can look through my comments and it’s not something I’ve ever done before.
1. The 3rd Party who led to the breach at Doordash is also a Facebook contractor. A significant amount of Facebook data has been stolen because of this.
2. Dashlane, Deliveroo (UK), Netflix, Uber, AirBnB, Quora, EventBrite, BetterDoctor, and about 10 other firms that I know of are also clients of this contractor as their data was also leaking or obtainable through extremely simple exploits.
3. Yes I did file a Bug Bounty with evidence. FB has acted...sort of...but the evidence is still online, at this moment.
4. I have already begun conversations with ISC2 asking for a significant amount of CISSP cert holders at FB to have their certifications revoked for breach of ethics violations via the “good of society” clause and negligent blindness. I absolutely made sure to have a carve out saying they probably were just ignored by management, and in such case for the names I cited to ignore my claim (and I would write a written public apology if asked).
5. I get that everyone here is tired of FB negativity here. Me too. Just a little longer if you don’t mind.
If this comment gets downvoted, it's probably because its kind of off-topic and a little hard to follow. Maybe write a blog post with some of the emails, I guess, instead of a long comment, and then submit that?
I get your comment for sure, but it is not true when you say those on Hacker News would downvote a comment for being off-topic when it is for a somewhat concerning moral issue. Many of the members here are better than that or at least more able to see the larger issues at stake I think.
Again though I still see your point and those claims, if situation was a little more mundane, are absolutely true.
Is the identity of the breached third party public knowledge? Is there a way for other startups to determine if they may be at risk as well? If it has that many high-profile clients it is likely a popular service.
There is an email in the summary of the commenter profile.
Woah. Things like this are why I don't have FB account anymore. Also why I shorted their stock. Fingers crossed for December.
Uncanny valley has a new definition: Facebook Legless Avatars (FLA)(wed)
I'm intrigued, but the marketing sends a shiver up my spine
DISCOVER YOU
DEFY PHYSICAL LIMITS
EVER-EXPANDING UNIVERSE
Cripes-on-a-bike
Is it me or is this a Facebook version of 2nd Life?
Have the headsets gotten good enough to read text?
Text looks rather pixelated. I couldn't see someone reading a book in VR, but that's not the selling point. VR's advantage is Presence.[1] Current headsets are good enough that you can feel like you are in another world. I've had friends dive onto the ground or flinch because they thought they were going to be shot while playing Superhot VR. It's a visceral sensation that videos of VR can't convey.
I think there's definitely something to VR, but content is lacking right now.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersion_(virtual_reality)#Pr...
Thanks! Tbh, I’m mostly interested in using it as a virtual productivity environment. I know it’s a ways off for that just due to resolution issues.
The oculus ones... minimally. Other companies though, yes. The HP Reverb is especially good for things like flight sims
Tried my co worker’s quest the other day, it’s not great.
Screen door effect and all.
I’m waiting for 4K per eye, then I’ll be into it
Imo Vive Pro or Valve Index are Good Enough (TM) but YMMV. It really depends what you're doing with the thing, as I can read large text in Gen 1 Rift reasonably well and that's all I need.
I would really like to use it for programming. Having more screen real estate would be awesome.
This looks like Charlie Brooker's wet dream
Well, "wet" as in "waking up screaming, drenched in cold sweat..."
anything that makes it easier for corporations to program humans like rats in a labyrinth is inherently a bad idea
It's still facebook.. so no thanks
On the Internet, you can be anything you want. Facebook thinks most people will want to be a generic floating body with a cartoon human head. They missed the point - self expression is what people want.
Facebook's realistic VR avatar research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCB_mfGmh9w&t=1h47m12s
Your theory about what people want has already been debunked by the popularity of existing social spaces in VR which have the same type of avatars.
This is actually a clone of a really popular app that’s already out, so seems to be what people want!
Do you mean "VRChat" maybe? I feel like Horizon will be more like an "Internet" where you can access other games/experiences. Not bare-bones, chat-only like VRChat, but that's just my guess.
Probably means Rec Room or Altspaces. With that said, VRChat is certainly not just bare bones chat. There are rooms for everything with all kind of games. Think Roblox.
That app being?
Sorry I should have said, it’s called Rec Room
Just look at VR Chat, the ability to have custom avatars is why a lot of people liked it. This is facebook shoving its awkward style onto the user.
The only time I played that it was just a quest to find the most interesting avatar.
And how do you explain the popularity of Rec Room then?
wonder if there are any eggs?
Nope.
Ready Player One?
ready player one
this video alone triggers vomiting on me already, not speaking about actual device and experience.
Give me OASIS, Zuckerberger-san!!
Facebook already owns your face from a 2D space perspective. Just go ahead and give them literally a high-fidelity 3D pointmap of your face. What could go wrong?
If they have multiple angles of your face they can infer the 3D features.
Here is my marketing content.
"I am already in a world where I feel great. I have a rule. Never touch another man's creation.
New things that interests me are already within me, why would I go out and learn something new to create something which I already have in my brain ?
Ever expanding universe - ? Why would I build an universe in someone else's land while I can trust myself and build in my mind? Because its not creativity. Creativity is only when you bring out your thoughts in form of a material world.
ok ok.
I think thats why I have a pen and paper.
I write.
I draw.
I scribble.
I share to people whom I see face to face.
Not by wearing a digital mask.
With my naturally, many light years developed exo-skin as my mask.
That's how I respect my ancestors and anyone before them. It all reaches till the source of the light which is sun."
With this attitude and mindset of a living organism which knows what and who it is, would you expect me to fall for your trick?
Formatted content is here https://iminui.wordpress.com/2019/09/27/facebook-horizon/
Your post reminded me of lucid dreaming.
We already have an in-built VR capability, it just takes a lot of effort to learn how to access it and use it, but once you do it's pretty crazy stuff.