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'I Tried the $1,500 Quest Pro and Saw the Best of the Metaverse' (nytimes.com) 54

Posted by BeauHD from the taste-of-the-future dept.
"Good news, readers: After using nearly every virtual reality headset made in the last seven years, including the latest $1,500 goggles from Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, I've seen the best of what the metaverse could offer," writes the New York Times' Brian Chen. "Yes, the best is already here, and has been for quite some time. It's video games." An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from his report: At Meta's Burlingame office, I strapped on the Quest Pro to see what was new. Meta highlighted three features: the headset's higher-definition picture, which is receiving quadruple the number of pixels of its predecessor, the $400 Quest 2; the array of cameras embedded into the headset, which can now create a real-time rendering of your facial expressions and eye movements; and new motion controllers with improved pressure sensitivity so you can squeeze a virtual object gently or grab it aggressively.

Meta employees and app developers gave me an hourlong tour through software tailored for the headset. I created a digital avatar of my face that mimicked my grins and frowns as I raised a curious brow. I made 3-D drawings and tossed virtual darts. I found the improved graphics and controllers impressive (and my animated avatar a bit creepy), but after I removed the headset and returned to reality-reality, I could only imagine wanting to use these new features to play games. My favorite virtual-reality game, Blaston, which was released in 2020 and involves players shooting one another in a virtual arena, would probably benefit from the improved motion controllers to make trigger squeezes for the different guns more realistic.PokerStars VR, where gamers gather around a virtual card table to play Texas hold 'em, would be more fun if we could pick up tells through each player's facial expressions.

By the end of the demo, I was also doubtful that I would get any work done with this headset. In a promotional video for the product, Meta suggested that the Quest Pro could be a multitasking tool for workers juggling meetings while scrolling through emails and other tasks. But the device's battery lasts only one to two hours, according to Meta. (The headset can still be used while plugged in, but using a computer is less complicated.) This is the reality on which we should base our buying decisions. Not even Meta seems to believe many people will buy the Quest Pro. It said the device's target audience would be early adopters, designers and businesses. If you fall into any of those camps, I recommend a wait-and-see approach to gauge whether useful virtual-reality applications become available for your profession.

The company left a more obvious niche off its target list: hard-core gamers willing to spend lots of money on every piece of new gaming hardware. They are in for a treat. In addition to providing access to high-resolution virtual reality games made for the Quest Pro, the headset will work with hundreds of games already made for the Quest 2. Many of those older Quest 2 titles are quite good. Games that get your heart pumping and make you break a sweat, likeBeat Saber and FitXR, which both involve swinging your arms around to hit objects, are a boon in an era when people need to wear smartwatches to remind them to stand up. None of this -- a first impression that the Quest Pro will be great for playing games and primarily be used for entertainment -- is a bad thing. The fact that we can get visually stunning, immersive gaming in a lightweight, wireless headset means virtual reality has come a long way in less than a decade. For now, that's the only reason to buy one of these.
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'I Tried the $1,500 Quest Pro and Saw the Best of the Metaverse' More

'I Tried the $1,500 Quest Pro and Saw the Best of the Metaverse'

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  • For that $1,500 ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Thursday October 20, 2022 @05:05PM (#62984163)

    Did you get to see legs, or does that cost even more?

  • Yes, the best is already here....

    Well since we have already achieved "the best" then clearly as the hype wears thin and interest wains it will be all downhill from here. I suspected as much but I never thought I'd hear a shill for Meta admit it.

  • Hard pass.

  • Kinda pricey (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Stormwatch ( 703920 ) <rodrigogirao@noSPAM.hotmail.com> on Thursday October 20, 2022 @05:32PM (#62984209) Homepage

    You can build a whole gaming PC for $500, so a $1500 add-on with limited support is a tough sell.

    • No, you can build a pathetic turd for $500, but the days when you could build anything worth being called a gaming PC for that are over. The only way you could get even halfway decent performance at that speed is to buy used, specifically because of the GPU. A decent new GPU is that much by itself, it literally costs as much as everything else put together unless you waste money by buying intel.

    • A $500 game machine will play wonderful games from 2013 or so.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        A $500 game machine will play wonderful games from 2013 or so.

        Or just et a game console. $500 gets you an Xbox Series X, which are readily available in stores.

        If you must, you can try to get a PS5, those are more difficult, but not as impossible to get for retail price.

      • Go to YouTube and search for recent 'budget gaming PC' videos. You might be surprised.

    • For $500 you can buy a gaming processor.

  • I think VR (although not necessarily "The Metaverse") will get increased traction when you can wear a device that's no more bulky than ski goggles, and costs less than a few hundred dollars, with resolution that matches our actual vision. It needs to track motion without a bunch of external sensors, and they need to address the nausea issues if at all possible. Until then, it's going to remain a niche product.

    Oh, and it can't be a Meta-owned device, since they're not content to simply sell you hardware, i

    • The killer app for me will be a 32" monitor at 2' away in 1440p.

      • Yeah, very few people need this for work, except for some pretty specialized scenarios. Gamers are driving this market, of course, like the article summary implies..

  • "The Metaverse" Reads Like Senseless Validation (Score:3)

    by BrendaEM ( 871664 ) on Thursday October 20, 2022 @05:46PM (#62984223) Homepage
    Why draw a circle around a Facebook's VR service and try make it seem like something new? Did Facebook's PR tell you to make it seem like something different and mysterious? How much were they paid?

  • I tried the $1,500 sewer canoe adventure and saw the best human waste this city has to offer. The smell and consistency was phenomenal. Every single variant of hepatitis was there in full fidelity.

    • I tried the $1,500 sewer canoe adventure and saw the best human waste this city has to offer... Every single variant of hepatitis was there in full fidelity.

      Wow. $1500 now includes the PCR accessory? That truly is a big leap in technology.

      And it's small enough and rugged enough to operate on a sewer canoe. Not to mention completing within the timeframe of a sewer canoe adventure. I'm gobsmacked. Please don't dash my hopes and tell me you only collected human waste samples and the sewer canoe adventure company merely processed them on their own sequencer after your adventure was over and sent you the results later...

  • Killer feature (Score:5, Funny)

    by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Thursday October 20, 2022 @05:59PM (#62984259)

    with improved pressure sensitivity so you can squeeze a virtual object gently or grab it aggressively.

    Killer feature right there. Especially for business users.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

      Killer feature right there. Especially for business users.

      Yeah, or reich-wing presidential candidates.

  • Wake me up when they come up with a direct neural link, until then you don't have a case over a simple large curved screen.

    • Wake me up when they come up with a direct neural link

      Or perhaps sometime after large sample size testing of said neural link and formal verification of the software used with it...

  • I rented a $1,500 room in the classiest hotel (Score:3)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Thursday October 20, 2022 @06:11PM (#62984285)

    and saw the best of Flint, Michigan.

  • No matter how many years pass, even if they came up with the most immersive VR in the world, with smells, with haptic feedback, best resolution to near vision quality etc... ...as long as there is Facebook/meta related data mining or login requirements to ANYTHING related to Mark Zuckerberg or even remotely connected to what he does, I will never ever even try it out.

    • My understanding is they did relent and you no longer have to log in to facebook/meta to use the goggles. I am not really clear on the situation though, like whether you can use it for games that have nothing to do with Meta.

  • after I decided to spent all my life savings on an investment of a link to an ugly monkey picture the artist probably didn't spend more the 3 minutes working on.

  • ..but don't nobody want to lift them heavy ass weights!

    Nerds have been jizzing in their overly tight, elastic-stretched XXL underwear for decades about some wort of virtual reality world where we can all go and have these near-real experiences that we can't have in real life. There are countless books and movies on the subject, nerds can't get enough.

    Then, people try to take baby steps towards that and these same high-A1C level dweebs sit around and pooh pooh the whole thing. "Oh, but muh Facebook! Too exp

    • Then, people try to take baby steps towards that and these same high-A1C level dweebs sit around and pooh pooh the whole thing. "Oh, but muh Facebook! Too expensive! Can't jizz right with that thing on my head! Hots Gritss!!!!!

      So how many have you bought for the purpose of trolling Slashdotters?

  • Video games and desktop screens? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MMC Monster ( 602931 ) on Thursday October 20, 2022 @07:56PM (#62984455)

    Obviously video games is the number one use...

    But maybe a video screen replacement can be of use? Imagine putting one a VR headset that allowed you to see everything around you (so you're not blindsided) but also see a desktop video screen right in front of you. You pull out a keyboard and start working on the subway with way more screen real estate than you have in any laptop. And if someone comes up next to you, you still see them because the screen appears in front of you and not taking up all of your visual field.

    That being said, why limit it to the subway? Why not in the cubicle at work as well? Put it on and believe that your desk is located in green fields... but you can still see the people walking around you. Just not the cubicle itself.

    Frankly, the work cubicle could be a killer app for VR.

    • Absolutely. I started thinking about similar possibilities when one of Meta's competitors (SimulaVR? Can't recall off the top of my head) announced keyboard pass through, last year, I believe. My ideal work set-up will never fit nicely in my current remote workspace -- nor in the co-working spaces I sometimes use, obviously -- and I'd imagine the power requirements would be more favourable, etc.

      As others have said, I assume gamers will drive any significant progress in this space for years to come, but I'll

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zmooc ( 33175 )

      It will be eventually assuming that the nausea-problem is solved for all users.

      The "seeing a screen" use case already works just great for watching video's or even playing video games that do not have VR support. Actual desktop replacement will require some serious resolution upgrade and HID-upgrades, though.

      And the desktop metaphor will probably be an important step in such a transition but eventually it has to go; it's a useless limitation of the actual capabilities of VR.

    • The company left a more obvious niche off its target list: hard-core gamers willing to spend lots of money on every piece of new gaming hardware. They are in for a treat. In addition to providing access to high-resolution virtual reality games made for the Quest Pro, the headset will work with hundreds of games already made for the Quest 2. Many of those older Quest 2 titles are quite good. Games that get your heart pumping and make you break a sweat, likeBeat Saber and FitXR, which both involve swinging your arms around to hit objects, are a boon in an era when people need to wear smartwatches to remind them to stand up. None of this -- a first impression that the Quest Pro will be great for playing games and primarily be used for entertainment -- is a bad thing. The fact that we can get visually stunning, immersive gaming in a lightweight, wireless headset means virtual reality has come a long way in less than a decade. For now, that's the only reason to buy one of these.

      This I truly don't understand. A Kinect-style device seems like a far better option for playing "physical" games- no headset to wear. Yet there is no one building such systems anymore. Why would I want to jump around with a headset strapped to my face?

  • Yes, this was surely the finest turd of all the glistening, steaming, ripely steaming turds that are Facebook's Metaverse.

  • Would be a monitor replacement.

    I program industrial equipment and factories and distribution centers and I'm old enough that I cannot see my work on the 13 to 15 inch screen
    I would love to have the CPU in my pocket or my backpack the keyboard/mouse in my hand and the monitor on my face. At this point the monitor is limiting factor the rest can be made small enough to do everything I want.

    Say...1920x1080, about 5 ft across and about 5 feet distant. Use a tiny laser to paint the image on my retina. And l

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      crouched behind a bank of VFDs

      I too would like to stumble around rotating machinery and 480V panelboards with something covering my eyes.

      • I too would like to stumble around rotating machinery and 480V panelboards with something covering my eyes.

        Me too. They're called safety glasses.

        If they could display video occasionally, so much the better. But I don't find technology scary.

        • Oh get off it. The technology isn't inherently scary. Using something that blocks your vision near heavy equipment just happens to be a bad idea.

      • Right....
        I'd prefer to be looking straight at the thing *through* the image of the software while making adjustments than...look up...look down...look up...look down...
        Or if they're in a tight spot, instead of take glasses out of hat...peer over at laptop...put glasses in hat...squint at VFD panel...etc.
        That's kinda the point of AR.

    • Ya same. These types of AR glasses have been around for a while but the software just never caught up. AkA the Epson ones JUST now has a google play store so you can get some better AR apps.

      Right now, the biggest problem is getting GOOD AR apps. Almost all the glasses that use android fobs use unity's AR plugin that while it "works" its also "slow and shaky" so you do a screen share from your computer it always bothers me.

      Lets see got the Epson 300 that worked just the processor on it was to slow, then g

  • What a liar. (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Thursday October 20, 2022 @11:40PM (#62984807)

    I stopped reading when he said the BS line that "the headset's higher-definition picture which is receiving quadruple the number of pixels of its predecessor" .. The Quest Pro has the same resolution as the Quest 2 .. he may try to weasel out by claiming he meant pixels from the cameras? It doesn't matter what he may have meant. That line was written to mislead.

  • Try Real Universe... (Score:3)

    by LordHighExecutioner ( 4245243 ) on Friday October 21, 2022 @12:04AM (#62984849)
    ...it is free, and available everywhere, not only in Burlingame.

  • I would love to have a monitor built into my glasses so I could read sheet music without having to have an actual monitor in front of me.

    "Terminator vision", if you remember Arnie's setup.

    It would be great for reading books too.

  • Oh great, a means for Facebook to track our eyes and preserve our privacy.
  • Gosh, undoubtedly not a fully paid for ad disguised as a review. The NYT and anyone at the NYT has the credibility of a used car salesman on meth who's in a Kool-aid cult.

  • And it worked well enough to know that I don't need to pay $1,500 for a virtual reality headset!

    https://www.amazon.com/Google-... [amazon.com]

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