Some people call VR dystopian, but it’s got great potential too.

During COVID while I was living alone and we were under lockdown…

I used a Quest to watch movies in a virtual theater with a bunch of people from around the world. I remember being in a theater watching an absolutely ridiculous Nicolas Cage movie laughing my ass off with a bunch of dudes from Australia. Another time I watched a cricket game with some people who explained the rules to me and kinda gave me some play by play on what was happening.

I’ve also attended a few support group meetings in VR for coping with loss that had quite a lot of attendants. The meeting was run by a licensed group therapist and we took turns sharing and then reflecting on each others stories. It was frankly amazing.

I also played mini golf with friends of mine as well as had a couple meetings over a round of mini golf with the other guy on my design team during lockdown. Honestly the best virtual meetings I ever had.

All of the above were very social and very positive experience. I didn’t feel far away from people, I felt connected to them.

Same way a smartphone can be a useful tool that enhances your life or a screen you stare at for hours consuming bullshit TikTok videos. You’re in control of what you make of it. You can also stick to a dumb phone and not participate at all.

I’m not american and i can’t imagine a world where someone with these weird ass ski goggles don’t get laughed at.

because it probably can’t get less bulky and look less dorky,

Airpods are probably one of the ugliest pieces of tech ove seen in the last decade and yet somehow it doesn’t seem to matter. Never overestimate apple’s customer base.

It’s really easy to avoid if you don’t use them.

I love spaceship games (think Elite: Dangerous and the like), and motorsport games. Anything where you’re set in a cockpit is a perfect candidate for VR. All I wanted was a headset that would act analagous to a dumb monitor - simply provide vision and audio and head tracking (with “simply” being a relative term - the challenges overcome and technology produced to date is, admittedly, amazing).

But no. What we have are a bunch of privacy-invading face huggers. I shouldn’t need to sign in to anything to use a piece of hardware that should require zero internet access (which is why anything Razer is also on my do not buy list).

So am I concerned about the Apple Vision Pro? Couldn’t give a shit to be honest. I’m not their customer.

At the risk of facts getting in the way:

1. You can install ad blockers
2. Apps are not able to do that

I’m hoping to get an open source headset in the future with the opposite feature; augmented reality ad blocking for real life ads.

I could go around the streets of any city and not see a single ad. Pair that with smart adaptive noise cancelling that would allow me to hear the outside world, but remove annoying ads or other unpleasant noises like construction tools or leafblowers.

someone should make a de-facebooked custom rom for the meta quest

I mean, you can just take it off?

Also, regarding the adoption of the headset, I think it’s absolutely crazy to say that it probably won’t get less bulky. Tech is constantly getting smaller and that will be the number one priority with the headset.

If they can make the price and comfort level right, then I do think it becomes a mainstream product. Not saying people wear it 24/7, but that most households would have one, and it would become somewhat important for WFH and remote meetings.

I’m not a fanboy for Apple, but personally I just think it is the tech of the (relatively) near future.

Is anyone else worried about the apple vision pro?

Nope.

it’s a toy for hype-susceptible tech-impaired rich snobs. what’s to be worried about?

imagine you are watching youtube on this thing and when an ad shows up, you can’t look away, even if you try to they can track your eye movement and just move the window, you can’t mute it, you certainly cannot install adblock on it, you are forced to watch the ad until it satisfies apple

WUT? Apple is very focused on privacy and the idea that a user can’t mute or install Adblock is… weird. Safari has good ad-blocking options as well as built-in anti-tracking features to protect users, applications can’t usually prevent the system from muting content and Apple doesn’t really sell ads outside of the App Store.

If you want to worry about that stuff I’d suggest focusing on the Meta VR goggles or god forbid Google starts making goggles, both of those companies survive on ad revenue and have an incentive to enshitify their experience in ways that the Apple we know today would never do. Of course companies can change over time, but the ethic at Apple is to only make products they feel comfortable with their families using.

For what it’s worth, Apple has had an attention API ( for checking if the user is interacting / viewing ) since the debut of their facial tracking sensors on the iPhone X. Although, Apple makes its very clear it’s not to be used for ads and the such. If it helps I don’t know of any developers / Apple abusing that API.

I will continue not using it. I was interested in Oculus until they sold to FB and then I nope’d right out of that. I really did think VR was neat, but various things kept me from pulling the trigger. If it becomes the only way to use chunks of the internet, I just won’t use them; I grew up still in the analog world (though we did have BBS and very early dial-up in the '80s), and I could go back to it. I’d honestly miss educational content more than anything else, but I can get books. In my lifetime, that strategy would probably still work fine.

This is anecdotal, but I see all of these VR rooms or stores at malls or on outlet areas where you can play with VR heat and have fun. They are almost always empty. I VERY rarely ever see people in them.

There another entertainment venue near me that has bowing and games and stuff. They also have a VR area that I have never seen open. Don’t know if it’s just constantly broken or if nobody is actually interested in it.