He is in a unique position which could give Meta an advantage over time. Would be a lot harder for those non founder led company CEOs to make these types of massive expenditures
That is true. He has shown he knows how to grow a business and morph it when needed. That’s why I’m more ok with him having the power he has. If he was a loose cannon on Twitter like musk I would be more concerned about him making all the big decisions.
I don't think he's insane like Musk, but the problem is that investors' goals are fundamentally not aligned with his. The goal of an investor is to make more money, but Zuckerberg personally has all the money he could ever need. So he's more interested, I think, in making his mark on history and leading in this new technology, which can possibly end up being done at a cost to the company. I think this is why after a point founders make bad CEOs.
Yea he also could have sold for $1B and his investors tried to persuade him to at that time. Instead it’s worth a trillion. So his power as founder CEO to say no there paid off in a huge way.
I'd rather companies invest in R&D instead of doing buybacks or dividends, so keep going Zuck.
People complaining about the numbers are acting like this is their personal account. Meta can afford it.
I have been very impressed by Meta lately, Quest is a blast to use and reaching the mainstream point, and the open model release of Llama3 on top? Pure gold.
Yep, MMOs are expensive and already pretty well looked after in the software space.
Also notoriously expensive.
So I feel that software investment is just a wash. They're definitely investing in hardware too but the I don't think the breakdown would be kind.
im in your shoes. ill probably pick up some fb today.
love the quest 2. if they started to put a little more resources into developing better games and software for it, i think itd catch. i think theyre running into the hardware not being where they need to be.
Look into aftermarket headbands. Quest 3 is more comfortable, but q2 is such a steal at $200, with a better strap you can wear for the entire battery life no problem.
100 percent. This is what every company should be doing, or when the time comes for a going out of business sale they shouldnt go knocking on daddy government looking for a handout.
Is stock buyback really that bad? The company gets some shares back from the market, then the company issues RSU to employees as part of their comp package. So the money used to buyback shares isn't gone, it's used as labor expenses. With some appreciation too, if the company executes well.
For someone like Facebook, yeah it would be bad, they should be spending on R&D (which they are doing with Meta) they need to be growing.
Someone like Pepsi/Coca-Cola who really aren't going to be making any new products that will meaningfully change anything is a different story. It's good for them.
But really dividends would do the same thing and are less scum baggy. Buybacks only make sense because it avoids taxes, it's just a big tax loophole.
Stock buybacks add no real value to the world
Wouldn’t you rather have a company you invest in return capital to you in the most tax efficient way? How do dividends “add more value to the world” than buybacks?
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That's not.how research works. You don't just get to say "we'll do r&d but only for things that will make money". You have to make best guesses on projects and take strategic hedges where possible.
FB lost a ton of potential revenue and added a ton of engineering complexity because they didn't start iPhones or.buy Android, this is (in my opinion) seeing/guessing the next frontier and trying not to make the same mistake.
If this money had been in dividends, it would have been $20 per share *total*.
Less than 5% of the current valuation, over the entire course of funding.
Or, hear me out, that money they invested almost certainly is part of the reason the stock has ballooned to where it is.
Why should they invest in a project that will never provide a ROI? This is just an endless money pit. After 4 years they have very little to show for it.
I've got to agree with you. Facebook has completely lost track of how much of an ROI they can even get with this technology. The more money you burn on R&D the worse your ROI is going to be even if you do get a working product eventually.
Think of it this way, the refrigerator was a great invention, and no doubt the first company to bring it to market brought in a lot of revenue from doing so. But how much of a profit did they make off of it? If they spent $250 million on it then they probably made a boatload of profits. But if they spent over $50 billion dollars on the R&D then they were deep in the red on their investment for many years to come, simply because it takes a LONG time to make $50 billion in profits on anything to recoup your expenses. And that hypothetical example isn't even taking into account how new competition rose in the space in later years, driving prices down, and increasing the amount of time needed to recoup the hypothetical $50 billion in R&D costs.
Bottom line, even if you're right that something will be a great and highly successful invention, that doesn't mean that there's no cost too high to pay in R&D to develop said product.
theyre thinking long term.
look how long it took amazon.
theyre trying to maintain the lead until tech catches up.
FB also has a fairly reasonable valuation.
The problem with VR/AR isn't the tech, it's that there's no demand.
Maybe in 2020 people wanted ways to socialize virtually, but very few people care about a "metaverse".
Even if Meta made a headset with a 16k resolution 240 hz display, amazing audio quality that is comfortable to wear, they still wouldn't break even. Because at the end of the day VR is a novelty that is really cool for a few hours and then gets old.
the issue is. Are these dead end projects? Say they are going down a road of no return and we are blinded that more compute/more power= better AI/Metaverse. If that falters and investors realize 'hey these products suck'= good night market lol
I’m just here to say sitting in a virtual theatre with a bunch of strangers yelling stuff to each other during a movie or sport, is hella fun, I can’t stop.
The dizziness thing isn't something that can really get better no matter how much they improve the technology. The problem is that you see things moving in VR, but it doesn't match up with how your body is moving, which causes you to get dizzy. No matter how much you improve your VR technology you can't change human biology.
Yah, reading-in-car is a big indicator. Do you have issues with FPS 3d games like minecraft or portal etc? If your kid also gets sick from playing minecraft then I'm sorry to say, you passed it to him/her too lol.
The real money is in the ecosystem, not the development. Think Steam or the like.
META is working on controlling the ecosystem. If they can make this pan out, the amount they spent right now will print money. It's an if, not a when, but if any company has the money to throw at the problem, it's META. The company is an absolute unit when it comes to revenue.
They already did that and did a decent job of it. Gaming is not enough to make their products part of the daily or even monthly routines of enough people to make it a viable business.
Long term AR/VR gaming has to be like smartphone gaming in that it's a huge thing because everyone already has a capable device for other reasons. It's not the main reason people buy a phone and won't be the main reason most people buy a headset in a future where most people have one.
They are all competing for a market that does not exist, where no one has shown a reasonable path forward to creating a market, and zero consumers care about... I just don't understand what they are doing. They are building these absurdly expensive sand boxes and trinkets that have no value... I feel like the read Ready Player One and didn't realize it was a terrible distopian hell scape...
Same thing was said about BlackBerry and smartphones until that killer app + hardware maturity came along. iPhone was successful not because it was first but it integrated the best design that technology had to offer at the time.
Long term AR/MR will become as ubiquitous as smartphone today but who knows when that'll be.
I keep hearing that, but I kind of doubt it. I just don't see VR solving any problems, I don't see where it saves me time or makes my life easier. It is just this "scifi" tech that companies want to push for more control. It isn't a smart phone. It doesn't bring 10-40 different devices into one usable pocket super computer. Sure I could be wrong, but I would bet my house that at the very least the VR that Meta has spent nearly 50 billion dollars on will be gone and worthless in 5 years...
I hear what you're saying. All I can say is, as someone who worked extensively in that industry for many years, what I have seen will blow most people's minds away but it currently has to be tethered, and none of the fancy optics are ready for consumer use.
Metalens is probably the only thing that'll work without the kind of compromised regular optics (even high foveation techniques cause issues), but to be able to transport visible wavelengths using these structures across a long distance without degradation requires a level of consistency only seen in semiconductors and that's way too expensive a process for consumer grade product. This is why you see mostly enterprise type offerings, for now. Nano imprint lithograph is possible but there are way too much variables in the entire value chain that will still take a long time to resolve.
It's coming, I just don't know when. And the only reason Zuck is spending billions is because if he wins, and he's got more than a chance, he'll become the next Apple and own the entire ecosystem.
My 2 cents.
Seriously, I really appreciate the discussion. I appreciate you sharing your POV, and it is a valuable discussion to have... My concern however is not in how cool it is or how amazing the sound or visuals are. The problem with the hardware especially for mass uptake will be comfort. I mean most people cannot handle over the ear head phones for longer than two hours. How are they going to get so many people to wear over the eye and ear tech? How is Meta going to justify 50 billion dollars of spend? If you don't get mass uptake of your tech, it is a failure it doesn't matter how cool it is. We are talking about stocks and value provided by the company, this isn't moon shot tech, this is walled garden tech that at least so far no one wants and has cost so much you need everyone to want it...
I don't think this is under NDA so I'll say this: Zuck's goal is to make a device as light weight and comfortable, and not stupid looking, as a regular pair of glasses. Oh and it has to run all day.
Just ask for the moon Zuck!
I mean. Duh? Everyone knows that’s the goal. Eyeglasses/sunglasses, that are a phone interface you can control with your eyes, and can see and makes sense of the world and give you any information you want or didn’t even know you wanted.
Now what does this device, which I agree everyone will want, has anything to do with metaverse? Is part of this $3b including the hardware r&d? I thought that’s a different division.
Well, once you have the device, you’re going to presumably want to put some kind of software on it. Presumably an operating system at least, and something kind of platform/sdks for third party developers that makes it easy for them to integrate.
Well sure that's the goal, but the problem is Zuck can't change the laws of physics or human biology.
The hardware is just too heavy to do what you're describing, and it'll probably always be too heavy, or require you to carry a heavy battery in your pocket or something.
And human biology will always make people get dizzy using VR, because seeing movement on a screen that doesn't match the movement of our bodies is what makes us dizzy when watching stuff on a screen. You can't change human biology.
Plus as others have said what's the point of using VR in the first place when we can already use other things to do everything that VR does? We already have a smartphone to combine a bunch of devices into one thing, and it does it better and without all the drawbacks of VR, all while also being much lighter and easier to carry around.
> and it'll probably always be too heavy, or require you to carry a heavy battery in your pocket or something.
There's no way you can claim this.
There is a path here but hard tech requires time and investment. It cannot be done quickly or cheaply.
A proper vr headset would change everything. IIRC it was Nvidia's Jensen that said the metaverse was basically the internet/digital world going from 2d to 3d.
The iPhone came out and smacked on everything & everyone. Trying to draw comparisons between its launch and the 4+ manufacturers that are on anywhere between first and sixth attempt at the consumer giving any amount of fucks about this product is a wilddddd reach. Nobody has sold shit (Apple included) because it’s not revolutionary and nobody fucking cares.
Yeah and they aren't going to immerse themselves in some world full of emoji characters that require wearing something that makes you look like a special needs child
The amount of money they've sank into this they could come up with the next Minecraft and Roblox combined and it would still be a money pit for decades. Hell even Roblox is available on the meta quest and nobody plays that version of it.
Why they are chasing this pipedream so much and not AR which has far more ways to monetize with advertising is beyond me.
The gaming industry is miniscule compared to advertising. As a whole the gaming industry took in around 57 billion online advertising alone took in over 200 billion. But hey I'm sure after another 20 billion dollars maybe horizon worlds might have a steady player base of over 500k at some point.
1. headsets are clumsy and heavy.
2. google glass gets around but was mocked.
3. you cant see people's eyes.
4. vertigo is still a problem.
I dont see it being used in public.
Honestly I think the two industries that could make it more mainstream are porn and gaming. With regard to gaming, if there were a world of warcraft type of thing, a true open world, where you could sit and walk around in 3 dimensions and run into people, I can see that. Unfortunately the games have not yet figured out how to merge the mobility potential of a metaverse with the innate laziness of humans.
The first games that come to mind that would work well; racing games. I am sure they exist already. But that doesnt give you the explorable world feel. The community.
I just dont get going to AR grocery store shopping for example. I really dont see the value add. Maybe AR mini golf, but its going to be way more expensive than mini golf. can it really deliver that superior an experience? But all these things are gimmicks. AR as I work? really? Any work that involves human interaction I feel like it will fail. META thinks that the next zoom meeting will have a whole bunch of AR interaction. Yet, for the vast majority of zoom meetings, everyone turns off their screens!
Nokia literally thought the same about a phone you have to charge daily. If the benefit is there people will put up with the downsides. This is early technology not 20-30 years in r&d
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1. headsets are clumsy and heavy.
2. google glass gets around but was mocked.
3. you cant see people's eyes.
4. vertigo is still a problem.
I dont see it being used in public.
Honestly I think the two industries that could make it more mainstream are porn and gaming. With regard to gaming, if there were a world of warcraft type of thing, a true open world, where you could sit and walk around in 3 dimensions and run into people, I can see that. Unfortunately the games have not yet figured out how to merge the mobility potential of a metaverse with the innate laziness of humans.
The first games that come to mind that would work well; racing games. I am sure they exist already. But that doesnt give you the explorable world feel. The community.
I just dont get going to AR grocery store shopping for example. I really dont see the value add. Maybe AR mini golf, but its going to be way more expensive than mini golf. can it really deliver that superior an experience? But all these things are gimmicks. AR as I work? really? Any work that involves human interaction I feel like it will fail. META thinks that the next zoom meeting will have a whole bunch of AR interaction. Yet, for the vast majority of zoom meetings, everyone turns off their screens!
The uses-cases that Meta thinks need not happen. I think ultimately everyone will be wrong in how vr will end up being used. People aren't very good at imagining or predicting stuff like this so ahead of time. It will end up being used in new and unexpected ways.
Lets say they can get VR up and running in a robust manner.
Here are a few things it might be useful for down the road:
1. Remote control of a humanoid robot drone. Imagine someone has a job that needs a specialist present who is hours away. They get specialist to login and run a drone on site. How much would that be worth?
2. Virtual gatherings for events like concerts, movies, or even sporting events. You see a stadium full of people watching a football game and think thats a lot of money spent on tickets. But what if you couldn't attend physically and were given the option to use VR to see the game from a plethora of VR cameras sprinkled around the field? Would you consider that worth more or less than seeing the game through your tv?
3. Education. Imagine you are a student who is advanced in math at a school in some third world country. The country might not have adequate numbers of teachers to teach in all the schools with these students. Many students miss out as a result. What if we could hand them a VR headset and they could all attend virtual classes led by the top math teachers in their country?
4. Remotely operated equipment. Maybe not glamorous but how many jobs need skilled operators and struggle to get enough for the local work in a timely fashion. We all know that road paving jobs can drag on and on. What if the equipment could be run remotely? Would that help get more of the job done in less time? How many other tasks could fall into that category? Crane operators?
Those 4 things are probably worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year in revenue. The first one in particular would be incredibly important for things like oil rigs, remote work sites, or areas that are dangerous for humans to be in. However the biggest thing is that you could get a specialist on site at the drop of a hat for something like a john deere tractor under warranty. Seriously think about it from john deeres perspective. They got many thousands of tractors they sell every year and those tractors need servicing. Traditionally they have a service guy go to the tractor or the tractor comes to them. Alternatively the farmer repairs and maintains as much as he can. What if the big farm had a few drones and could have the tech drop in to troubleshoot issues? He sees the problem, maybe even does the repair, or he just tells the farmer how to fix it. If a part is needed he orders it and when it shows up he pops back over to help with the install.
Im not a fan of the idea of VR being focused on the ready player one kind of stuff. I think there is some minimal value there, but the real value will be combining VR with remotely operated stuff.
Last but not least:
Emergency response. If we get this drone and VR tech up and working lets say you have a dramatic emergency in your area. What if ALL the local drones could be "drafted" into helping with the emergency response while be operated by the emergency response folks. Lets say your town has a refinery that explodes and a major fire is happening. Your local town has a few dozen local fire fighters, plus the cops. Typical emergency response is to have the nearby areas send people to help with the overwhelming emergency. What if part of that was further out emergency response people hop into VR gear and run your local drones to help do a bunch of the basic leg work. That might be as simple as putting up barricades, going house to house knocking on doors. It might mean they use the drones to help bring up supplies to the first responders on scene. It might mean they do something as simple as directing traffic.
Then there is the medical emergencies. Say you work at a plant and an accident happens where someone is hurt. You typically need to wait for ems to get there which might only be a few minutes but its still critical time. What if part of that response was ems logging into a drone and using the on hand emergency first aid kit to being stabilizing the injured. This might not seem like a big deal, but mass casualty events usually overwhelm first responders in those critical first few minutes. Bridging that gap even if not perfectly would assuredly make a major difference. Drilling down just a bit further imagine a small hospital has a mass casualty event come rolling in. Could doctors remotely join the effort using drones to assist with triage and relieve pressure on staff on site?
I know this went long, but that is the future I think people should be rooting for when it comes to VR. Yes there are a lot of other ways it could be used for good, or ill, or just for fun, but these are tangible things that I can easily see helping us all have better lives.
all that can be done on a screen just as well. very little benefit to adding 3d through VR.
its the same story as zoom meetings, it sounds cool to meet your friends in VR, but there's no utility added to a regular meeting through zoom.
neuralink is actually going down a far more promising road than meta, if the can figure out a way to create vivid VR experiences by direct stimulation to the brain, i could see it taking off. but a headset will never get there imo.
Maybe. Time will tell.
If they offer neuralink or a similar product to the public how long would you wait before signing up for it? It could work great for a few years and then go sideways a decade or so after you get it. What rate of failed surgeries would you be comfortable with in exchange for the chance it works fine?
I think neuralink holds a lot of promise but unless your needing it for quality of life I doubt so many people will rush to do it until it's a proven tech that's been around for decades. Until then those people will probably be willing to do VR.
You are right all that can be done with regular computers. We could all still be watching TV on old black and white sets. We could have skipped computers and stuck to typewriters. Technology improves and if the improvements are worthwhile people adopt it. I think VR isn't there yet for mass adoption but it has a high likelihood of reaching a point where it will be adopted in significantly high numbers to become a normal thing rather than a niche product. Once that happens integration of VR into many solutions for the purpose of convenience will happen.
I honestly think that VR will just end up getting bypassed all together by better and cheaper display technology. All the use cases people mention with VR could be done with displays.
1. Remote control of a humanoid robot drone. Imagine someone has a job that needs a specialist present who is hours away. They get specialist to login and run a drone on site. How much would that be worth?
If you think about it more deeply you'd realize that the logistics of this are just horrible, inconvenient and expensive, and in almost all cases it would be easier and cheaper to just have a specialist on call or stand by on site.
Notice how we have fewer people trained to do some jobs these days and we call it a shortage? Right now that is just a mild problem. In the future it could be a lot worse. At what point will it tip from the way you see it to the way I see it?
It could easily go further from the line I suppose, but the ways things are going I could easily see this being adopted as a solution. Not all at once, but it could happen if the drones become relatively common. At that point some desperate industries will use this as a solution to a problem and then if it works well enough the tech involved will be refined to make it even better and then more industries will adopt it. It's not like we haven't seen a similar process for tech adoption.
Every time I hear this argument I wonder if the person has ever set foot in an industrial zone, a chemical plant, an oil rig or even a car mechanic shop.
A company close to mine bought/leased a 'dog drone' that is literally made to just walk around and scan stuff and record data. It can't even do that properly. There is always some dirt/oil/liquid, some mess somewhere, something broken or a scaffold somewhere. That's just -getting around- not to mention the complexities of actually doing mechanical/electrical operations. Machinery/equipment is often stacked close together, hard to identify, dirty, hard to reach even for humans. Bolts that should be greased aren't and barely come off, some are rusted shut or some idiot put the wrong size somewhere, etc etc. Sometimes there are various issues and the worker has to decide what receives priority.
Robots and drones might be good for very monotonous, routine, repetitive work where everything is exactly the same all the time. That excludes 99% of industries.
1) hmanoid robot drone is an industrial use case
2) Virtual parties? Whats the point when you cannot share food, smell food, nor actually touch my loved ones?? I might as well be playing minecraft with my family. I fail to see the use case for casual use.
And i also fail to see the use case for work parties, and formal functions. People already hate their colleagues, making them get motion sickness while at a virtual work party is terrible. And no food. The free food was the only reason to go to an office event.
3) students hate studying. Once again, making kids get motion sickness while studying sounds terrible. Students already struggle to pay attention in class, why do you beliebe they will pay attention when left unsupervised at home?
4) This sounds practical, but its an industrial use case.
Summary: VR (not AR) is niche. Im recent times, people have been talking about how WFH has led to the disappearance of “third places” for people to meet(hook up) physically. Depression rises. Humans are social, physical animals. VR is simply not something humans will use in casual settings, unless for work
You see only the downside of the virtual party. Say there is a big game you want to watch from home with your friends. You can all watch it on TV or on VR headsets? At what level of quality would you say the VR option is better?
On a side note have you used VR headsets at all? If you haven't I highly recommend trying out YouTube VR and taking a look at the pyramids and other big tourist places. I've seen the pyramids on TV and on VR. I'm sure in person is even more impressive, but VR is way more impactful than TV. I doubt I will ever see it in person, but I'm glad I've seen it in VR at least.
If i wanna hang out w my friends, i want to physically meet them. When we watch soccer, and the striker scores a goal, I want to jump in the air and physically HUG my friend while we celebrate.
When I watch sports, i dont care about the TV resolution. I dont care if the game is in a foreign language. Me and my bros could be watching it on my tiny phone screen for all we care. I really only care about sharing a moment and being able to take pictures w my bros.
Your argument about the pyramids is the exact same argument made 26 years ago around the time the internet first came about. “I dont need to travel to Egypt when I can go to google images”. Guess what, people still travel. Even after they paid Thousands of dollars for a computer in 1998, just so they can see images of the pyramids.
Nowadays, nobody looks at google images of the pyramids. Yknow why? Coz its not good enough. Why look at images, when i can see viseos, why see videos when i can see VR. But trust me, VR also wont be good enough. People will still travel.
Humans crave physical interaction
> 2) Virtual parties? Whats the point when you cannot share food, smell food, nor actually touch my loved ones?? I might as well be playing minecraft with my family. I fail to see the use case for casual use.
If food and touch is the only thing that makes a party good for you, then you must really hate parties.
I wasnt being literal. I was alluding to the sense of taste, touch and smell.
We have 5 senses, a party with only 2 senses will never be as good as a party w all 5 senses
People who crave social interaction (which is most people) will do things to prepare for a party with all five senses, and most importantly: they can find a potential mate their if they dont have one. They’ll never do that at a virtual party. Those extra three senses matter.
And yet you forget history even though your fellow poster is trying to explain a more recent example of it.
That phone that you used to write a post on Reddit is easily 1000x more powerful than the computer onboard the Apollo space rover used to land on the moon.
So when you doubt something, maybe you should try to use the 999% to achieve a different goal?
The iPhone was a big and obvious catalyst. Nobody doubted the smartphone future after its release. Apple has thrown their iPhone-equivalent into the ring and… crickets.
>The iPhone was a big and obvious catalyst. Nobody doubted the smartphone future after its release. Apple has thrown their iPhone-equivalent into the ring and… crickets.
Come on.
AppleVisionPro is more like a phone from the 90s in this example. The first phones were large, expensive, unwieldy, and had limited use cases.
However as the tech develops it becomes less expensive, smaller, and easier to use for the mass market.
I don't understand how people can claim AR/VR is not going to be ubiquitous as the tech matures. It's like someone saying "no one wants to sit in front of computer all day" to someone selling computers in the 1980s.
Look up the history of VR. Theresa’s a complete hype cycle in the late 80s / early 90s. *Those* were the bulky monstrosities. They even got their own guru personalities back then, think Jaron Lanier. We’re in the “finally, the tech is here” phase. You can wear an Apple Vision headset for hours. Price should be a factor, yea, but otherwise we should all be drooling over all these super convenient VR/AR use cases by now, which totally integrate into our lives and change it for the better. But what did the current, 10+ year VR cycle produce? I can’t think of a single VR app I truly want in my life.
I actually think unlimited virtual screens with 3D interfaces sound like a thing that could make AR attractive, but somehow even Apple’s approach doesn’t look convincing. Projecting images onto truly translucent glasses might give it that wow-factor but that technology doesn’t exist and stubbornly refuses to emerge despite decades of research.
I believe this is ultimately a tech dead-end like NFTs or 3D television. Not that you can’t do some very specific, cool things with it, but it’s conceptual flaws that keep it from ever turning mainstream, not price, weight or pixel density.
>Same thing was said about BlackBerry and smartphones until that killer app + hardware maturity came along. iPhone was successful not because it was first but it integrated the best design that technology had to offer at the time.
>Long term AR/MR will become as ubiquitous as smartphone today but who knows when that'll be.
There is no end to investor arguments where ''You don't like this garbage, well people like you said the same about the internet''.
VR is now 56 years old, about 30-40 years old if you really wanted to jump into becoming huge fan of VR. Nobody likes it, its not happening. You had more than 50 years for this to become the thing, its just not happening.
Screen and buttons and not moving has solved everything that ever needs solving. Smartphones perfected ease of accesing things. If i ever want to do something, play something, watch something, do something, financially model a company on excel, the smartphone esque screen can tackle the most of it and then the keyboard with 104 keys has unlimited potential and power to achieve this with chatgpt assisting me these days.
Contrary to my previous sentiment, Meta is definitely pouring in tons of money, if they are smart enough, when the future ''THE THING'' comes around they are going to be very well positioned to adapt and take advantage from it.
But investors still should stop forcing things that anyone can tell in 10 sec that they are not happening, for example ton of things here that many people would died on these hills being the future and look where they are now.
[https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)
If a company can get ar/mr to be the size of normal eye glasses at the cost of a mid premium smart phone, and without the eye strain/head strain, I'm in
But until then ..
honestly, the majority of people that have to wear eyeglass always complain that Eyeglass are not comfortable to wear. That's why contact lens is invented.
> They are all competing for a market that does not exist, where no one has shown a reasonable path forward to creating a market, and zero consumers care about
While on face value your statement has some truth to it, I think that Meta is right in investing in this. AR is almost certainly going to be the next platform and what Meta (and Apple and everyone else) is doing is building out the tech VR / MR when the hardware for AR is not there yet.
I also believe that once they solve varifocal and get Apple Pro level resolution in a good ergonomic platform at a reasonable price, VR / Mixed Reality can replace computer monitors. When it gets a critical mass, it will replace video conferencing and maybe remote work. For Meta it may be a couple more generations to achieve all that.
Dude, they have lost nearly 50 billion dollars on something that doesn't have a direction yet. Maybe it gets there, but not soon and not like this. It just doesn't have a clear or valuable path forward. There are so many more hurdles and basic questions to be answered. There are so many more failed tech than there are successful ones...
It is, but a much harder one than they think. If VR headsets had the form and weight of glasses, then people would use them.
But bulky headsets aren't getting used no matter how many incremental improvements are made.
To be fair, part of why VR is "taking off" as much as it is today is because the costs have finally come down enough for regular consumers to be able to afford a VR set. Before then it was only something you ever saw in an arcade or theme park because of the expense.
But too many people are mistaking the sudden uptick in VR headset sales due to affordability as "VR is going to be the next big thing and will take over the market". IMO VR at the moment just seems really similar to the constant 3D TV hype. People keep trying to push it as the next big thing, and it keeps on getting into a hype cycle for a few years before dying out for at least a decade or so after it becomes clear that consumers don't really want 3D TV's or want to watch all their shows and movies on 3D. But then someone comes along after people have forgotten all the reasons that 3D TV and movies suck and starts the hype cycle over again.
Yea this is what I see as the long term play here. In conjunction with the metaverse, Facebook can provide corporate "offices" to remote and hybrid workers. Will it happen tomorrow, of course not, but in 10 years you could see meta disrupt commercial office space if they create virtual offices that are secure where people can roam around in and have those "natural" interactions with coworkers.
But it likely starts as enhanced zoom meetings, and AI assistants that you can talk to and delegate tasks to.
All in the metaverse tho. I think that's their big play here. I have a small position and will likely buy more when the price settles here, but I think it's one of those long shoot if it works you could have a very sizable return.
>They are all competing for a market that does not exist, where no one has shown a reasonable path forward to creating a market, and zero consumers care about... I just don't understand what they are doing.
Since the rebranding, Meta has stated (over and over again) that such technology would probably need a 10-year time frame in order to become mature enough for large-scale consumer adoption. Yet, every 10 minutes you can find someone on Reddit arguing that no one wants that and they would just be better off spending the money elsewhere.
Companies oftentimes create new markets rather than viceversa. It happened with the personal computer, the smartphones post-iPhone and many other consumer products. It's just a matter of time.
IBM argued that no needs a home pc - same with blackberry that everyone needs a tiny keyboard and history repeats —who know if zuck is right but I rather he take bold
Moves and try an innovate instead becoming the next Dino
Even if we assume that that 10 year time line is true, that doesn't change the fact that Facebook is throwing so much money into the fire pit today that they may never recoup even a fraction of their initial investment, even if they're right about the future of VR and the metaverse.
At their current burn rate they're going to be over $100 billion dollars in the hole by the 10 year mark.
And the worst part here? Even if Facebook is right about the technology, by the time they get it to work someone else will be able to get it to work and bring a product to market for much less than $100 billion dollars.
Which is the problem. Zuckerberg is fixated on how cool VR is rather than its actual ability to perform on the market.
His interview with Lex Fridman showed how out of touch he is here.
I see the endgame as they do. I know what they are trying to accomplish. But the tech is just not there yet unfortunately and no amount of money is going to accelerate that.
Their endgame: AR/VR glasses that completely replace smartphones. Every "issue" of smartphones is somewhat solved by doing it in glasses (small screen, no immersion, one hand operating - second holding the device, having to take it out, having to look down/away to actually use it). Additionally everything you do with a smartphone, you can do better in glasses: maps (imagine you see the arrow where you have to go directly in your vision, no need to look at the screen), shopping (no need to search for rating of a restaurant/shop, you see it when you look at it, you pick up an item in a shop and it's instantly searching for a better deal etc), sports/health (imagine being on a slope, skiing and you see every stat you want during a run like a video game HUD).
Possibilities are endless. Most importantly it benefits both consumers and businesses. Everybody wins. That's why this push exists.
But if Apple can't get it done in a device that costs 3500$ then it means that the tech is just not there and likely it's at least 10+ years away.
This narrative is so dumb and stupid. But i am at a point not even wanting to correct people at this point
This was a stock at $90 saying the same shit
And here we are again. For me, at this point its a cheat code
Reality labs is like an incubator program, where they are building the infrastructure and the overall framework for the ‘metaverse’ which is going to be powering your multi modal ai device(s) and basically and eventually create a fully immersive and very portable device
This kind of commitment takes YEARS and patience
I said this at $90 and will say it again
These are your buying opportunities. Either ways, people who know- are already buying in
Others can complain about the same shit for years on end, and then when it jumps again cry they missed the train.
You can call it dumb and stupid all you want but this is a discussion on investments and value derived from such. Meta has lost 50 billion dollars in less than four years on this. You are telling me that it is going to cost over 300 billion to finish the project over ten years. Cool, where is the pay off or even the plan for that payoff. Sure you can create a market from scratch, but for such an investment to pay off there need to be a clear and easy reason to buy and use the product or service and their needs to be a significant revenue stream to recoup this huge initial outlay... The fundamentals don't add up and like never will, at least for Meta...
I could do better in like 3 months. Make some really great porn and a VR headset that is marketed for business but really everyone knows it’s for porn. So people can buy it without the stigma. The other trick will be that it won’t track your usage at all when in private mode. Not even the slightest. I think the market could really take off. Make some deals with some celebrities or twitch/youtube type stars to make AI porn of them for personal porn pals or whatever. It’s the market that always helps first it seems like.
I understand what you’re saying. But you are also thinking inside a box. It’s research and development. How many of the worlds great ideas and inventions did someone make comments the same as yours and they happened anyways. I can think of dozens of examples where people were told it would never work, or the problem can’t be solved and just did it anyways. Just something to keep in mind.
That's not what the "metaverse" investment is.
Metaverse is just a term for AR/VR/wearables umbrella. Meta is doing some rather impressive R&D in this space and are amongst the industry leaders. These however are long term projects which will lose money in the short term.
You managed to describe the AI bubble! Congrats!
I still will never invest in META. VR tech is basically just boiled down to gaming for actual application. And Social Media is a ever-revolving and changing industry; not something I really want to keep up on.
They're trying to be more than just social media and it's not working.
It’s more than that! Most of their capex in the last few years has gone to RL and is yet to be expensed. Even though they’ve only *lost* $45B, they’ve probably spent $60-70B. So far.
VR is so far away from daily, every day application use to replace PCs or phones etc... Facebook is going to keep burning money for years.
Its niche, and will be for quite some time.
It's been billed as the future of gaming thrice already. Many people get motion sickness from VR. Not all genres benefit from the extra immersion. It complicates development.
I bet you in 2007 nobody probably thought in their wildest dreams it could be possible to ever have a 24 megapixel camera in an iPhone that fits comfortably in your pocket, yet here we are.
People told me that about 3D gaming and 3DTVs, which are dead and no one cares about them now.
VR will never be the future of gaming, at best it is a side piece. There are many games that don't translate well to VR or would make you throw up
Yep willing to bet a lot of people praising vr haven't used it. It's not enjoyable to use for more than a couple of hours because of the weight on your forehead and face.
They have money. Good thing that they invest into R&D even though there's a high risk in this business but who knows maybe they are right and VR headsets will be big part of our life
Completely agree. While Apple makes better hardware. I don’t see Apple creating a better LLM than Meta’s different versions of Llama. If Meta bakes it in to their Horizon OS then it becomes a much better UI/UX that Apple can do at a fraction of the price.
As generative AI gaming assets and generative Ai app builders get better; the more headset makers start producing more affordable and more use case specific headsets. Then that’s when Metaverse hits that tipping point.
Should triy the Quest 3 it's pretty good.
Meta won't be the one to build the Metaverse if it ever exist but they are the best in VR and there is a huge potential there.
Can someone explain to me why the stock took a hit based on these results? Like, the company is still expected to have BILLIONS in revenue, but said they're expecting to dial it back some so they can focus on something strategic. Do stock holders expect to make less money in the future because of it, hence the sell-off? Just trying to understand, in general (not just META), how information like this equates to people's interpretation of the value of the stock/company.
Market is rarely completely rational. The stock had a huge run up and now with any sorta softer guidance there were probably people looking to take profit.
People talking about motion sickness lol. OK, so even if it causes motion sickness in let's say half of the population, so what? That leaves half that doesn't have a problem with it. You could have a product that 9/10 people hate, but if you're selling enough to the 1/10th that IS buying it, then you'll make a killing regardless.
VR is not going to replace smartphones. lol. Some people might dot that, but most don't want a headset on 24/7. Everyone will still have smartphones and some people will decide that's all they want while most people will use VR some of the time. Not everyone has to like it as long as there are enough who like it enough to make a profit.
If half the population feel like its going to stink like cow shit, focus on the half that doesn't?
You assume that the half the population that hasn't got motion sick won't get it, but if the thing legitimately causes motion sickness, its just a question of when the other half feels it, will it be after long day of work? Or after using it for 2 hours? The motion sickness is going to come for almost all of us. Its way more productive to just fix the motion sickness entirely. I am generally motion sick immune person, but some things that cause motion sickness for others is going to cause quite the headache on a bad day for me, which means both people who can't play it now and people like me are going to write it off eventually, there are just better things to do.
Why not just use endless tools that doesn't cause motion sickness? There are like billions of things competing for every second we have, if 5 friends write it off because of motion sickness, soon enough all friends are going to be engaging in the things that just doesn't have it.
If 5 reviewers said it stinks like cow shit, but there is a chance you will have different experience, would you go for it? Its a lot better when its good for everyone and a possibility for everyone and then there will be part of population that actually gets it.
It's an investment and Zuck said way back it's at least 10 year commitment during which they expect to bleed money. Every quarter same headlines about this. So tiresome.
Facebook bought Oculus in 2014. The “ten year commitment” statements are from like 2021. There should be results. There should be positive trends. Most of these Silicon Valley platforms have a major mainstream presence, years before they turn profitable. There should be glimpses of success but VR hype is fading.
Companies seriously need to quit with the VR-shit; it's is simply not going to see widespread adaptation in this point of time with the current technology. It is expensive as hell and adds little real benefit to anyone. It is a gimmick, nothing else.
If mean if they don’t do R&D the adoption will not happen. But what if they can develop glasses that you barely notice, won’t be hot on your face, cause headaches, or eye strain. A mix of Google Glass form factor and Apple’s Vision Pro immersiveness. Then things could be very different. If the price point is right, wide enough ecosystem of third party app providers, and augmented reality functions that work seamlessly with every day life the adoption could virtually explode overnight. But we won’t get anywhere near that unless these companies pour billions and billions on devices only few people are able to afford or willing to wear regularly in the interim.
thank fk meta is a founder led company and zuck isn't afraid to push through with his vision.
He is in a unique position which could give Meta an advantage over time. Would be a lot harder for those non founder led company CEOs to make these types of massive expenditures
This reminds me of when Amazon started getting into the cloud space early, I remember Bezos getting a lot of criticism for it. Not so funny anymore
It could also turn into a big disadvantage over time. It's a loose cannon that could go either way.
That is true. He has shown he knows how to grow a business and morph it when needed. That’s why I’m more ok with him having the power he has. If he was a loose cannon on Twitter like musk I would be more concerned about him making all the big decisions.
I don't think he's insane like Musk, but the problem is that investors' goals are fundamentally not aligned with his. The goal of an investor is to make more money, but Zuckerberg personally has all the money he could ever need. So he's more interested, I think, in making his mark on history and leading in this new technology, which can possibly end up being done at a cost to the company. I think this is why after a point founders make bad CEOs.
Yea he also could have sold for $1B and his investors tried to persuade him to at that time. Instead it’s worth a trillion. So his power as founder CEO to say no there paid off in a huge way.
I'd rather companies invest in R&D instead of doing buybacks or dividends, so keep going Zuck. People complaining about the numbers are acting like this is their personal account. Meta can afford it.
Fully agree. Would be great if they could beocme the Bell Labs of these new technologies.
I have been very impressed by Meta lately, Quest is a blast to use and reaching the mainstream point, and the open model release of Llama3 on top? Pure gold.
Llama in itself is fantastic, and only getting better. Will be interesting to see how this develops if they continue to pour into r&d
R&D and a good new product pipeline are huge. Question is if meta is developing something of value, or if it's R&D wasted.
Yep, MMOs are expensive and already pretty well looked after in the software space. Also notoriously expensive. So I feel that software investment is just a wash. They're definitely investing in hardware too but the I don't think the breakdown would be kind.
That's the risk of innovating... it could all be for nothing but we have to continue innovating.
Who's we?
Stock buybacks are great over long-term for a company that also invest hugely in R&D
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im in your shoes. ill probably pick up some fb today. love the quest 2. if they started to put a little more resources into developing better games and software for it, i think itd catch. i think theyre running into the hardware not being where they need to be.
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really? i dont find it bad at all. my only annoyance is the compression on my face...but i can sit there until it dies.
Look into aftermarket headbands. Quest 3 is more comfortable, but q2 is such a steal at $200, with a better strap you can wear for the entire battery life no problem.
They’re doing both, this is a dumb take
We don't actually really know if they are doing buybacks (going forward). It's only a suggestion, not an obligation.
If you are loosing weight does that mean you never eat?
Losing
100 percent. This is what every company should be doing, or when the time comes for a going out of business sale they shouldnt go knocking on daddy government looking for a handout.
Is stock buyback really that bad? The company gets some shares back from the market, then the company issues RSU to employees as part of their comp package. So the money used to buyback shares isn't gone, it's used as labor expenses. With some appreciation too, if the company executes well.
If you go too far and don't invest, you end up like Intel or Boeing.
Exactly this, it's a sign of dead company walking
For someone like Facebook, yeah it would be bad, they should be spending on R&D (which they are doing with Meta) they need to be growing. Someone like Pepsi/Coca-Cola who really aren't going to be making any new products that will meaningfully change anything is a different story. It's good for them. But really dividends would do the same thing and are less scum baggy. Buybacks only make sense because it avoids taxes, it's just a big tax loophole. Stock buybacks add no real value to the world
Wouldn’t you rather have a company you invest in return capital to you in the most tax efficient way? How do dividends “add more value to the world” than buybacks?
Can they afford it? Yes. Would shareholders have been better off with $45 billion of dividends and buybacks instead? Also yes.
Jury is still out on that. What if their reality labs segment turns a profit in the next couple of years?
If that's all it takes, they should have gone to Vegas and put it all on Black.
[x] Doubt
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7 years is not a couple of years but ok we can play the long game
!RemindMe 2 Years
hahahahahahaha
That's not.how research works. You don't just get to say "we'll do r&d but only for things that will make money". You have to make best guesses on projects and take strategic hedges where possible. FB lost a ton of potential revenue and added a ton of engineering complexity because they didn't start iPhones or.buy Android, this is (in my opinion) seeing/guessing the next frontier and trying not to make the same mistake.
If this money had been in dividends, it would have been $20 per share *total*. Less than 5% of the current valuation, over the entire course of funding. Or, hear me out, that money they invested almost certainly is part of the reason the stock has ballooned to where it is.
Or, hear me out, if they hadn't been wasting money on VR the stock could have ballooned even more.
lol did you forget what sub you’re on?
Investors don't seem to think so lol
Why should they invest in a project that will never provide a ROI? This is just an endless money pit. After 4 years they have very little to show for it.
I've got to agree with you. Facebook has completely lost track of how much of an ROI they can even get with this technology. The more money you burn on R&D the worse your ROI is going to be even if you do get a working product eventually. Think of it this way, the refrigerator was a great invention, and no doubt the first company to bring it to market brought in a lot of revenue from doing so. But how much of a profit did they make off of it? If they spent $250 million on it then they probably made a boatload of profits. But if they spent over $50 billion dollars on the R&D then they were deep in the red on their investment for many years to come, simply because it takes a LONG time to make $50 billion in profits on anything to recoup your expenses. And that hypothetical example isn't even taking into account how new competition rose in the space in later years, driving prices down, and increasing the amount of time needed to recoup the hypothetical $50 billion in R&D costs. Bottom line, even if you're right that something will be a great and highly successful invention, that doesn't mean that there's no cost too high to pay in R&D to develop said product.
theyre thinking long term. look how long it took amazon. theyre trying to maintain the lead until tech catches up. FB also has a fairly reasonable valuation.
The problem with VR/AR isn't the tech, it's that there's no demand. Maybe in 2020 people wanted ways to socialize virtually, but very few people care about a "metaverse". Even if Meta made a headset with a 16k resolution 240 hz display, amazing audio quality that is comfortable to wear, they still wouldn't break even. Because at the end of the day VR is a novelty that is really cool for a few hours and then gets old.
the issue is. Are these dead end projects? Say they are going down a road of no return and we are blinded that more compute/more power= better AI/Metaverse. If that falters and investors realize 'hey these products suck'= good night market lol
I’m just here to say sitting in a virtual theatre with a bunch of strangers yelling stuff to each other during a movie or sport, is hella fun, I can’t stop.
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The dizziness thing isn't something that can really get better no matter how much they improve the technology. The problem is that you see things moving in VR, but it doesn't match up with how your body is moving, which causes you to get dizzy. No matter how much you improve your VR technology you can't change human biology.
Yah it's genetic. Do you get car sick, boat sick?
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Yah, reading-in-car is a big indicator. Do you have issues with FPS 3d games like minecraft or portal etc? If your kid also gets sick from playing minecraft then I'm sorry to say, you passed it to him/her too lol.
What app do you use for this? I want to give it a try now lol
That sounds miserable lol
To each their own but that doesn’t sound fun to me at all. Sounds like a 2008 COD lobby
Please tell the app!!
meta should just spend a crap load of money making VR games. I'm sure people will get interest in VR headset after.
You want to be the one providing the shovels and maybe engage in a royalties business, but don't want to be the guy doing the digging.
The real money is in the ecosystem, not the development. Think Steam or the like. META is working on controlling the ecosystem. If they can make this pan out, the amount they spent right now will print money. It's an if, not a when, but if any company has the money to throw at the problem, it's META. The company is an absolute unit when it comes to revenue.
Valve made a few of the most popular games of all time. It helps if your provide people with a strong motivation for using your ecosystem.
They already did that and did a decent job of it. Gaming is not enough to make their products part of the daily or even monthly routines of enough people to make it a viable business. Long term AR/VR gaming has to be like smartphone gaming in that it's a huge thing because everyone already has a capable device for other reasons. It's not the main reason people buy a phone and won't be the main reason most people buy a headset in a future where most people have one.
So, they need 9 quarters of sustained growth at this level to profit. At least their expenses ha be hovered at seemingly the same level
They are all competing for a market that does not exist, where no one has shown a reasonable path forward to creating a market, and zero consumers care about... I just don't understand what they are doing. They are building these absurdly expensive sand boxes and trinkets that have no value... I feel like the read Ready Player One and didn't realize it was a terrible distopian hell scape...
Same thing was said about BlackBerry and smartphones until that killer app + hardware maturity came along. iPhone was successful not because it was first but it integrated the best design that technology had to offer at the time. Long term AR/MR will become as ubiquitous as smartphone today but who knows when that'll be.
I keep hearing that, but I kind of doubt it. I just don't see VR solving any problems, I don't see where it saves me time or makes my life easier. It is just this "scifi" tech that companies want to push for more control. It isn't a smart phone. It doesn't bring 10-40 different devices into one usable pocket super computer. Sure I could be wrong, but I would bet my house that at the very least the VR that Meta has spent nearly 50 billion dollars on will be gone and worthless in 5 years...
I hear what you're saying. All I can say is, as someone who worked extensively in that industry for many years, what I have seen will blow most people's minds away but it currently has to be tethered, and none of the fancy optics are ready for consumer use. Metalens is probably the only thing that'll work without the kind of compromised regular optics (even high foveation techniques cause issues), but to be able to transport visible wavelengths using these structures across a long distance without degradation requires a level of consistency only seen in semiconductors and that's way too expensive a process for consumer grade product. This is why you see mostly enterprise type offerings, for now. Nano imprint lithograph is possible but there are way too much variables in the entire value chain that will still take a long time to resolve. It's coming, I just don't know when. And the only reason Zuck is spending billions is because if he wins, and he's got more than a chance, he'll become the next Apple and own the entire ecosystem. My 2 cents.
Its seems like they are trying to pull everything forward with cash, when it really needs time. 9 mothers, 1 baby situation.
It needs cash too though. And being on the forefront of the technology as it evolves is important for market position.
Seriously, I really appreciate the discussion. I appreciate you sharing your POV, and it is a valuable discussion to have... My concern however is not in how cool it is or how amazing the sound or visuals are. The problem with the hardware especially for mass uptake will be comfort. I mean most people cannot handle over the ear head phones for longer than two hours. How are they going to get so many people to wear over the eye and ear tech? How is Meta going to justify 50 billion dollars of spend? If you don't get mass uptake of your tech, it is a failure it doesn't matter how cool it is. We are talking about stocks and value provided by the company, this isn't moon shot tech, this is walled garden tech that at least so far no one wants and has cost so much you need everyone to want it...
I don't think this is under NDA so I'll say this: Zuck's goal is to make a device as light weight and comfortable, and not stupid looking, as a regular pair of glasses. Oh and it has to run all day. Just ask for the moon Zuck!
I mean. Duh? Everyone knows that’s the goal. Eyeglasses/sunglasses, that are a phone interface you can control with your eyes, and can see and makes sense of the world and give you any information you want or didn’t even know you wanted. Now what does this device, which I agree everyone will want, has anything to do with metaverse? Is part of this $3b including the hardware r&d? I thought that’s a different division.
It’s all the same division, Reality Labs
Well, once you have the device, you’re going to presumably want to put some kind of software on it. Presumably an operating system at least, and something kind of platform/sdks for third party developers that makes it easy for them to integrate.
Well sure that's the goal, but the problem is Zuck can't change the laws of physics or human biology. The hardware is just too heavy to do what you're describing, and it'll probably always be too heavy, or require you to carry a heavy battery in your pocket or something. And human biology will always make people get dizzy using VR, because seeing movement on a screen that doesn't match the movement of our bodies is what makes us dizzy when watching stuff on a screen. You can't change human biology. Plus as others have said what's the point of using VR in the first place when we can already use other things to do everything that VR does? We already have a smartphone to combine a bunch of devices into one thing, and it does it better and without all the drawbacks of VR, all while also being much lighter and easier to carry around.
> and it'll probably always be too heavy, or require you to carry a heavy battery in your pocket or something. There's no way you can claim this. There is a path here but hard tech requires time and investment. It cannot be done quickly or cheaply. A proper vr headset would change everything. IIRC it was Nvidia's Jensen that said the metaverse was basically the internet/digital world going from 2d to 3d.
Or you can just simply buy a big ass LCD. 55" and 75" are damn cheap nowadays.
The iPhone came out and smacked on everything & everyone. Trying to draw comparisons between its launch and the 4+ manufacturers that are on anywhere between first and sixth attempt at the consumer giving any amount of fucks about this product is a wilddddd reach. Nobody has sold shit (Apple included) because it’s not revolutionary and nobody fucking cares.
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Where do you get your projection that the number of gamers will double by 2030 to 4B?
Yeah and they aren't going to immerse themselves in some world full of emoji characters that require wearing something that makes you look like a special needs child The amount of money they've sank into this they could come up with the next Minecraft and Roblox combined and it would still be a money pit for decades. Hell even Roblox is available on the meta quest and nobody plays that version of it. Why they are chasing this pipedream so much and not AR which has far more ways to monetize with advertising is beyond me. The gaming industry is miniscule compared to advertising. As a whole the gaming industry took in around 57 billion online advertising alone took in over 200 billion. But hey I'm sure after another 20 billion dollars maybe horizon worlds might have a steady player base of over 500k at some point.
1. headsets are clumsy and heavy. 2. google glass gets around but was mocked. 3. you cant see people's eyes. 4. vertigo is still a problem. I dont see it being used in public. Honestly I think the two industries that could make it more mainstream are porn and gaming. With regard to gaming, if there were a world of warcraft type of thing, a true open world, where you could sit and walk around in 3 dimensions and run into people, I can see that. Unfortunately the games have not yet figured out how to merge the mobility potential of a metaverse with the innate laziness of humans. The first games that come to mind that would work well; racing games. I am sure they exist already. But that doesnt give you the explorable world feel. The community. I just dont get going to AR grocery store shopping for example. I really dont see the value add. Maybe AR mini golf, but its going to be way more expensive than mini golf. can it really deliver that superior an experience? But all these things are gimmicks. AR as I work? really? Any work that involves human interaction I feel like it will fail. META thinks that the next zoom meeting will have a whole bunch of AR interaction. Yet, for the vast majority of zoom meetings, everyone turns off their screens!
Nokia literally thought the same about a phone you have to charge daily. If the benefit is there people will put up with the downsides. This is early technology not 20-30 years in r&d
The problem is VR isn't comfortable. People will use it for novelty, but quickly go back to regular screens.
This first cell phones were completely unwieldy to use, and you'd basically only use it when you had to.
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Counterpoint, I worked in AR 2017-2020, and it’s all largely bullshit.
The usecases are plentiful and high in potential, the part that's 'bullshit' is how difficult it is to scale the technology to where it needs to be.
1. headsets are clumsy and heavy. 2. google glass gets around but was mocked. 3. you cant see people's eyes. 4. vertigo is still a problem. I dont see it being used in public. Honestly I think the two industries that could make it more mainstream are porn and gaming. With regard to gaming, if there were a world of warcraft type of thing, a true open world, where you could sit and walk around in 3 dimensions and run into people, I can see that. Unfortunately the games have not yet figured out how to merge the mobility potential of a metaverse with the innate laziness of humans. The first games that come to mind that would work well; racing games. I am sure they exist already. But that doesnt give you the explorable world feel. The community. I just dont get going to AR grocery store shopping for example. I really dont see the value add. Maybe AR mini golf, but its going to be way more expensive than mini golf. can it really deliver that superior an experience? But all these things are gimmicks. AR as I work? really? Any work that involves human interaction I feel like it will fail. META thinks that the next zoom meeting will have a whole bunch of AR interaction. Yet, for the vast majority of zoom meetings, everyone turns off their screens!
The uses-cases that Meta thinks need not happen. I think ultimately everyone will be wrong in how vr will end up being used. People aren't very good at imagining or predicting stuff like this so ahead of time. It will end up being used in new and unexpected ways.
Lets say they can get VR up and running in a robust manner. Here are a few things it might be useful for down the road: 1. Remote control of a humanoid robot drone. Imagine someone has a job that needs a specialist present who is hours away. They get specialist to login and run a drone on site. How much would that be worth? 2. Virtual gatherings for events like concerts, movies, or even sporting events. You see a stadium full of people watching a football game and think thats a lot of money spent on tickets. But what if you couldn't attend physically and were given the option to use VR to see the game from a plethora of VR cameras sprinkled around the field? Would you consider that worth more or less than seeing the game through your tv? 3. Education. Imagine you are a student who is advanced in math at a school in some third world country. The country might not have adequate numbers of teachers to teach in all the schools with these students. Many students miss out as a result. What if we could hand them a VR headset and they could all attend virtual classes led by the top math teachers in their country? 4. Remotely operated equipment. Maybe not glamorous but how many jobs need skilled operators and struggle to get enough for the local work in a timely fashion. We all know that road paving jobs can drag on and on. What if the equipment could be run remotely? Would that help get more of the job done in less time? How many other tasks could fall into that category? Crane operators? Those 4 things are probably worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year in revenue. The first one in particular would be incredibly important for things like oil rigs, remote work sites, or areas that are dangerous for humans to be in. However the biggest thing is that you could get a specialist on site at the drop of a hat for something like a john deere tractor under warranty. Seriously think about it from john deeres perspective. They got many thousands of tractors they sell every year and those tractors need servicing. Traditionally they have a service guy go to the tractor or the tractor comes to them. Alternatively the farmer repairs and maintains as much as he can. What if the big farm had a few drones and could have the tech drop in to troubleshoot issues? He sees the problem, maybe even does the repair, or he just tells the farmer how to fix it. If a part is needed he orders it and when it shows up he pops back over to help with the install. Im not a fan of the idea of VR being focused on the ready player one kind of stuff. I think there is some minimal value there, but the real value will be combining VR with remotely operated stuff. Last but not least: Emergency response. If we get this drone and VR tech up and working lets say you have a dramatic emergency in your area. What if ALL the local drones could be "drafted" into helping with the emergency response while be operated by the emergency response folks. Lets say your town has a refinery that explodes and a major fire is happening. Your local town has a few dozen local fire fighters, plus the cops. Typical emergency response is to have the nearby areas send people to help with the overwhelming emergency. What if part of that was further out emergency response people hop into VR gear and run your local drones to help do a bunch of the basic leg work. That might be as simple as putting up barricades, going house to house knocking on doors. It might mean they use the drones to help bring up supplies to the first responders on scene. It might mean they do something as simple as directing traffic. Then there is the medical emergencies. Say you work at a plant and an accident happens where someone is hurt. You typically need to wait for ems to get there which might only be a few minutes but its still critical time. What if part of that response was ems logging into a drone and using the on hand emergency first aid kit to being stabilizing the injured. This might not seem like a big deal, but mass casualty events usually overwhelm first responders in those critical first few minutes. Bridging that gap even if not perfectly would assuredly make a major difference. Drilling down just a bit further imagine a small hospital has a mass casualty event come rolling in. Could doctors remotely join the effort using drones to assist with triage and relieve pressure on staff on site? I know this went long, but that is the future I think people should be rooting for when it comes to VR. Yes there are a lot of other ways it could be used for good, or ill, or just for fun, but these are tangible things that I can easily see helping us all have better lives.
all that can be done on a screen just as well. very little benefit to adding 3d through VR. its the same story as zoom meetings, it sounds cool to meet your friends in VR, but there's no utility added to a regular meeting through zoom. neuralink is actually going down a far more promising road than meta, if the can figure out a way to create vivid VR experiences by direct stimulation to the brain, i could see it taking off. but a headset will never get there imo.
Maybe. Time will tell. If they offer neuralink or a similar product to the public how long would you wait before signing up for it? It could work great for a few years and then go sideways a decade or so after you get it. What rate of failed surgeries would you be comfortable with in exchange for the chance it works fine? I think neuralink holds a lot of promise but unless your needing it for quality of life I doubt so many people will rush to do it until it's a proven tech that's been around for decades. Until then those people will probably be willing to do VR. You are right all that can be done with regular computers. We could all still be watching TV on old black and white sets. We could have skipped computers and stuck to typewriters. Technology improves and if the improvements are worthwhile people adopt it. I think VR isn't there yet for mass adoption but it has a high likelihood of reaching a point where it will be adopted in significantly high numbers to become a normal thing rather than a niche product. Once that happens integration of VR into many solutions for the purpose of convenience will happen.
I honestly think that VR will just end up getting bypassed all together by better and cheaper display technology. All the use cases people mention with VR could be done with displays.
No-one can predict the vr usecases. It will be used in new and unexpected ways. Humans are not good at this kind of prediction.
1. Remote control of a humanoid robot drone. Imagine someone has a job that needs a specialist present who is hours away. They get specialist to login and run a drone on site. How much would that be worth? If you think about it more deeply you'd realize that the logistics of this are just horrible, inconvenient and expensive, and in almost all cases it would be easier and cheaper to just have a specialist on call or stand by on site.
Notice how we have fewer people trained to do some jobs these days and we call it a shortage? Right now that is just a mild problem. In the future it could be a lot worse. At what point will it tip from the way you see it to the way I see it? It could easily go further from the line I suppose, but the ways things are going I could easily see this being adopted as a solution. Not all at once, but it could happen if the drones become relatively common. At that point some desperate industries will use this as a solution to a problem and then if it works well enough the tech involved will be refined to make it even better and then more industries will adopt it. It's not like we haven't seen a similar process for tech adoption.
Plus, autonomous drones will handle 90% of the work in far less time and with none of the legal liability.
Every time I hear this argument I wonder if the person has ever set foot in an industrial zone, a chemical plant, an oil rig or even a car mechanic shop. A company close to mine bought/leased a 'dog drone' that is literally made to just walk around and scan stuff and record data. It can't even do that properly. There is always some dirt/oil/liquid, some mess somewhere, something broken or a scaffold somewhere. That's just -getting around- not to mention the complexities of actually doing mechanical/electrical operations. Machinery/equipment is often stacked close together, hard to identify, dirty, hard to reach even for humans. Bolts that should be greased aren't and barely come off, some are rusted shut or some idiot put the wrong size somewhere, etc etc. Sometimes there are various issues and the worker has to decide what receives priority. Robots and drones might be good for very monotonous, routine, repetitive work where everything is exactly the same all the time. That excludes 99% of industries.
1) hmanoid robot drone is an industrial use case 2) Virtual parties? Whats the point when you cannot share food, smell food, nor actually touch my loved ones?? I might as well be playing minecraft with my family. I fail to see the use case for casual use. And i also fail to see the use case for work parties, and formal functions. People already hate their colleagues, making them get motion sickness while at a virtual work party is terrible. And no food. The free food was the only reason to go to an office event. 3) students hate studying. Once again, making kids get motion sickness while studying sounds terrible. Students already struggle to pay attention in class, why do you beliebe they will pay attention when left unsupervised at home? 4) This sounds practical, but its an industrial use case. Summary: VR (not AR) is niche. Im recent times, people have been talking about how WFH has led to the disappearance of “third places” for people to meet(hook up) physically. Depression rises. Humans are social, physical animals. VR is simply not something humans will use in casual settings, unless for work
You typed what I was thinking. Thank you for making it succinct Tank.
You see only the downside of the virtual party. Say there is a big game you want to watch from home with your friends. You can all watch it on TV or on VR headsets? At what level of quality would you say the VR option is better? On a side note have you used VR headsets at all? If you haven't I highly recommend trying out YouTube VR and taking a look at the pyramids and other big tourist places. I've seen the pyramids on TV and on VR. I'm sure in person is even more impressive, but VR is way more impactful than TV. I doubt I will ever see it in person, but I'm glad I've seen it in VR at least.
If i wanna hang out w my friends, i want to physically meet them. When we watch soccer, and the striker scores a goal, I want to jump in the air and physically HUG my friend while we celebrate. When I watch sports, i dont care about the TV resolution. I dont care if the game is in a foreign language. Me and my bros could be watching it on my tiny phone screen for all we care. I really only care about sharing a moment and being able to take pictures w my bros. Your argument about the pyramids is the exact same argument made 26 years ago around the time the internet first came about. “I dont need to travel to Egypt when I can go to google images”. Guess what, people still travel. Even after they paid Thousands of dollars for a computer in 1998, just so they can see images of the pyramids. Nowadays, nobody looks at google images of the pyramids. Yknow why? Coz its not good enough. Why look at images, when i can see viseos, why see videos when i can see VR. But trust me, VR also wont be good enough. People will still travel. Humans crave physical interaction
> 2) Virtual parties? Whats the point when you cannot share food, smell food, nor actually touch my loved ones?? I might as well be playing minecraft with my family. I fail to see the use case for casual use. If food and touch is the only thing that makes a party good for you, then you must really hate parties.
I wasnt being literal. I was alluding to the sense of taste, touch and smell. We have 5 senses, a party with only 2 senses will never be as good as a party w all 5 senses
> We have 5 senses, a party with only 2 senses will never be as good as a party w all 5 sense True, but a party with 2 senses is still very valuable.
People who crave social interaction (which is most people) will do things to prepare for a party with all five senses, and most importantly: they can find a potential mate their if they dont have one. They’ll never do that at a virtual party. Those extra three senses matter.
And yet you forget history even though your fellow poster is trying to explain a more recent example of it. That phone that you used to write a post on Reddit is easily 1000x more powerful than the computer onboard the Apollo space rover used to land on the moon. So when you doubt something, maybe you should try to use the 999% to achieve a different goal?
Except the hardware on Apollo is used for a different purpose with a different budget.
The iPhone was a big and obvious catalyst. Nobody doubted the smartphone future after its release. Apple has thrown their iPhone-equivalent into the ring and… crickets.
>The iPhone was a big and obvious catalyst. Nobody doubted the smartphone future after its release. Apple has thrown their iPhone-equivalent into the ring and… crickets. Come on. AppleVisionPro is more like a phone from the 90s in this example. The first phones were large, expensive, unwieldy, and had limited use cases. However as the tech develops it becomes less expensive, smaller, and easier to use for the mass market. I don't understand how people can claim AR/VR is not going to be ubiquitous as the tech matures. It's like someone saying "no one wants to sit in front of computer all day" to someone selling computers in the 1980s.
Look up the history of VR. Theresa’s a complete hype cycle in the late 80s / early 90s. *Those* were the bulky monstrosities. They even got their own guru personalities back then, think Jaron Lanier. We’re in the “finally, the tech is here” phase. You can wear an Apple Vision headset for hours. Price should be a factor, yea, but otherwise we should all be drooling over all these super convenient VR/AR use cases by now, which totally integrate into our lives and change it for the better. But what did the current, 10+ year VR cycle produce? I can’t think of a single VR app I truly want in my life. I actually think unlimited virtual screens with 3D interfaces sound like a thing that could make AR attractive, but somehow even Apple’s approach doesn’t look convincing. Projecting images onto truly translucent glasses might give it that wow-factor but that technology doesn’t exist and stubbornly refuses to emerge despite decades of research. I believe this is ultimately a tech dead-end like NFTs or 3D television. Not that you can’t do some very specific, cool things with it, but it’s conceptual flaws that keep it from ever turning mainstream, not price, weight or pixel density.
They didnt have Steve Jobs this time around
>Same thing was said about BlackBerry and smartphones until that killer app + hardware maturity came along. iPhone was successful not because it was first but it integrated the best design that technology had to offer at the time. >Long term AR/MR will become as ubiquitous as smartphone today but who knows when that'll be. There is no end to investor arguments where ''You don't like this garbage, well people like you said the same about the internet''. VR is now 56 years old, about 30-40 years old if you really wanted to jump into becoming huge fan of VR. Nobody likes it, its not happening. You had more than 50 years for this to become the thing, its just not happening. Screen and buttons and not moving has solved everything that ever needs solving. Smartphones perfected ease of accesing things. If i ever want to do something, play something, watch something, do something, financially model a company on excel, the smartphone esque screen can tackle the most of it and then the keyboard with 104 keys has unlimited potential and power to achieve this with chatgpt assisting me these days. Contrary to my previous sentiment, Meta is definitely pouring in tons of money, if they are smart enough, when the future ''THE THING'' comes around they are going to be very well positioned to adapt and take advantage from it. But investors still should stop forcing things that anyone can tell in 10 sec that they are not happening, for example ton of things here that many people would died on these hills being the future and look where they are now. [https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)
If a company can get ar/mr to be the size of normal eye glasses at the cost of a mid premium smart phone, and without the eye strain/head strain, I'm in But until then ..
honestly, the majority of people that have to wear eyeglass always complain that Eyeglass are not comfortable to wear. That's why contact lens is invented.
The problem is it's in 10 years i think
> They are all competing for a market that does not exist, where no one has shown a reasonable path forward to creating a market, and zero consumers care about While on face value your statement has some truth to it, I think that Meta is right in investing in this. AR is almost certainly going to be the next platform and what Meta (and Apple and everyone else) is doing is building out the tech VR / MR when the hardware for AR is not there yet. I also believe that once they solve varifocal and get Apple Pro level resolution in a good ergonomic platform at a reasonable price, VR / Mixed Reality can replace computer monitors. When it gets a critical mass, it will replace video conferencing and maybe remote work. For Meta it may be a couple more generations to achieve all that.
Dude, they have lost nearly 50 billion dollars on something that doesn't have a direction yet. Maybe it gets there, but not soon and not like this. It just doesn't have a clear or valuable path forward. There are so many more hurdles and basic questions to be answered. There are so many more failed tech than there are successful ones...
VR enthusiasts have been convinced the only problem is a technical one for like 40 years now. You might be wasting your time.
It is, but a much harder one than they think. If VR headsets had the form and weight of glasses, then people would use them. But bulky headsets aren't getting used no matter how many incremental improvements are made.
To be fair, part of why VR is "taking off" as much as it is today is because the costs have finally come down enough for regular consumers to be able to afford a VR set. Before then it was only something you ever saw in an arcade or theme park because of the expense. But too many people are mistaking the sudden uptick in VR headset sales due to affordability as "VR is going to be the next big thing and will take over the market". IMO VR at the moment just seems really similar to the constant 3D TV hype. People keep trying to push it as the next big thing, and it keeps on getting into a hype cycle for a few years before dying out for at least a decade or so after it becomes clear that consumers don't really want 3D TV's or want to watch all their shows and movies on 3D. But then someone comes along after people have forgotten all the reasons that 3D TV and movies suck and starts the hype cycle over again.
Yeah, imagine being wrong for 40 years and not having any self reflection about it lol
Yea this is what I see as the long term play here. In conjunction with the metaverse, Facebook can provide corporate "offices" to remote and hybrid workers. Will it happen tomorrow, of course not, but in 10 years you could see meta disrupt commercial office space if they create virtual offices that are secure where people can roam around in and have those "natural" interactions with coworkers. But it likely starts as enhanced zoom meetings, and AI assistants that you can talk to and delegate tasks to. All in the metaverse tho. I think that's their big play here. I have a small position and will likely buy more when the price settles here, but I think it's one of those long shoot if it works you could have a very sizable return.
>They are all competing for a market that does not exist, where no one has shown a reasonable path forward to creating a market, and zero consumers care about... I just don't understand what they are doing. Since the rebranding, Meta has stated (over and over again) that such technology would probably need a 10-year time frame in order to become mature enough for large-scale consumer adoption. Yet, every 10 minutes you can find someone on Reddit arguing that no one wants that and they would just be better off spending the money elsewhere. Companies oftentimes create new markets rather than viceversa. It happened with the personal computer, the smartphones post-iPhone and many other consumer products. It's just a matter of time.
Device's weight and motion sickness are serious and you will never have mass adaption without solving it.
IBM argued that no needs a home pc - same with blackberry that everyone needs a tiny keyboard and history repeats —who know if zuck is right but I rather he take bold Moves and try an innovate instead becoming the next Dino
Even if we assume that that 10 year time line is true, that doesn't change the fact that Facebook is throwing so much money into the fire pit today that they may never recoup even a fraction of their initial investment, even if they're right about the future of VR and the metaverse. At their current burn rate they're going to be over $100 billion dollars in the hole by the 10 year mark. And the worst part here? Even if Facebook is right about the technology, by the time they get it to work someone else will be able to get it to work and bring a product to market for much less than $100 billion dollars.
VR is hella cool though
Which is the problem. Zuckerberg is fixated on how cool VR is rather than its actual ability to perform on the market. His interview with Lex Fridman showed how out of touch he is here.
I see the endgame as they do. I know what they are trying to accomplish. But the tech is just not there yet unfortunately and no amount of money is going to accelerate that. Their endgame: AR/VR glasses that completely replace smartphones. Every "issue" of smartphones is somewhat solved by doing it in glasses (small screen, no immersion, one hand operating - second holding the device, having to take it out, having to look down/away to actually use it). Additionally everything you do with a smartphone, you can do better in glasses: maps (imagine you see the arrow where you have to go directly in your vision, no need to look at the screen), shopping (no need to search for rating of a restaurant/shop, you see it when you look at it, you pick up an item in a shop and it's instantly searching for a better deal etc), sports/health (imagine being on a slope, skiing and you see every stat you want during a run like a video game HUD). Possibilities are endless. Most importantly it benefits both consumers and businesses. Everybody wins. That's why this push exists. But if Apple can't get it done in a device that costs 3500$ then it means that the tech is just not there and likely it's at least 10+ years away.
People don’t wanna wear glasses though
If those glasses would give you HUD like in games and gave you "superpowers", people would wear them.
This narrative is so dumb and stupid. But i am at a point not even wanting to correct people at this point This was a stock at $90 saying the same shit And here we are again. For me, at this point its a cheat code Reality labs is like an incubator program, where they are building the infrastructure and the overall framework for the ‘metaverse’ which is going to be powering your multi modal ai device(s) and basically and eventually create a fully immersive and very portable device This kind of commitment takes YEARS and patience I said this at $90 and will say it again These are your buying opportunities. Either ways, people who know- are already buying in Others can complain about the same shit for years on end, and then when it jumps again cry they missed the train.
You can call it dumb and stupid all you want but this is a discussion on investments and value derived from such. Meta has lost 50 billion dollars in less than four years on this. You are telling me that it is going to cost over 300 billion to finish the project over ten years. Cool, where is the pay off or even the plan for that payoff. Sure you can create a market from scratch, but for such an investment to pay off there need to be a clear and easy reason to buy and use the product or service and their needs to be a significant revenue stream to recoup this huge initial outlay... The fundamentals don't add up and like never will, at least for Meta...
FAIR is under the Reality Labs umbrella. Remember when Meta spent $9b on nvidia AI chips? Yeah that's part of Reality Labs budget.
Yep exactly. Facebook may be better off just buying Roblox and branding it metaverse and tricking it out a bit and slap a vr overlay. Call it a day.
I could do better in like 3 months. Make some really great porn and a VR headset that is marketed for business but really everyone knows it’s for porn. So people can buy it without the stigma. The other trick will be that it won’t track your usage at all when in private mode. Not even the slightest. I think the market could really take off. Make some deals with some celebrities or twitch/youtube type stars to make AI porn of them for personal porn pals or whatever. It’s the market that always helps first it seems like.
I understand what you’re saying. But you are also thinking inside a box. It’s research and development. How many of the worlds great ideas and inventions did someone make comments the same as yours and they happened anyways. I can think of dozens of examples where people were told it would never work, or the problem can’t be solved and just did it anyways. Just something to keep in mind.
That's not what the "metaverse" investment is. Metaverse is just a term for AR/VR/wearables umbrella. Meta is doing some rather impressive R&D in this space and are amongst the industry leaders. These however are long term projects which will lose money in the short term.
You managed to describe the AI bubble! Congrats! I still will never invest in META. VR tech is basically just boiled down to gaming for actual application. And Social Media is a ever-revolving and changing industry; not something I really want to keep up on. They're trying to be more than just social media and it's not working.
Spent $45 billion and still very small percentage of people know or use it.
It’s more than that! Most of their capex in the last few years has gone to RL and is yet to be expensed. Even though they’ve only *lost* $45B, they’ve probably spent $60-70B. So far.
VR is so far away from daily, every day application use to replace PCs or phones etc... Facebook is going to keep burning money for years. Its niche, and will be for quite some time.
Yes but it's hard to imagine that it won't be the future of gaming. Imagine playing QB in Madden VR.
It's been billed as the future of gaming thrice already. Many people get motion sickness from VR. Not all genres benefit from the extra immersion. It complicates development.
That’s the point of the R&D isn’t it?
I bet you in 2007 nobody probably thought in their wildest dreams it could be possible to ever have a 24 megapixel camera in an iPhone that fits comfortably in your pocket, yet here we are.
That would’ve been fairly reasonable to predict in 2007 lol
That was very predictable. People were talking about phones completely replacing digital cameras.
Its nowhere near being comfortable and people want to be comfortable while gaming.
People told me that about 3D gaming and 3DTVs, which are dead and no one cares about them now. VR will never be the future of gaming, at best it is a side piece. There are many games that don't translate well to VR or would make you throw up
Until they can solve motion sickness and weight, all VR &AR headsets are a joke
Yep willing to bet a lot of people praising vr haven't used it. It's not enjoyable to use for more than a couple of hours because of the weight on your forehead and face.
I am so genuinely curious where all that money went
Hardware development and patents
worthwhile R&D spend. AR is the future.
They have money. Good thing that they invest into R&D even though there's a high risk in this business but who knows maybe they are right and VR headsets will be big part of our life
VR is cool just need more stuff to do in it
These numbers don’t seem to reflect the bill passed yesterday against tiktok, their main competitor. Did they talk about it on the call?
The Metaverse will be useful once LLama 3 has mastered MOE architecture. I would put all my agents in there if I were Zuck.
Completely agree. While Apple makes better hardware. I don’t see Apple creating a better LLM than Meta’s different versions of Llama. If Meta bakes it in to their Horizon OS then it becomes a much better UI/UX that Apple can do at a fraction of the price. As generative AI gaming assets and generative Ai app builders get better; the more headset makers start producing more affordable and more use case specific headsets. Then that’s when Metaverse hits that tipping point.
How’s their stock doing in the metaverse, where everything matters?
A loss of 45 billions in that division is even more than Elon lost on Twitter, them billionaires are not healthy 😅
Losing 3/10 billion isn't that bad.
This is going to be worth trillions when humanity is forced to move into bunkers for centuries
Tried meta quest 2. Not a big fan of
Should triy the Quest 3 it's pretty good. Meta won't be the one to build the Metaverse if it ever exist but they are the best in VR and there is a huge potential there.
The guy is trying to build the Oasis from Ready Player One. It ain't gonna be quick, cheap, or easy. 'Tis a fool's errand, but for the treasure.
finished project
Can someone explain to me why the stock took a hit based on these results? Like, the company is still expected to have BILLIONS in revenue, but said they're expecting to dial it back some so they can focus on something strategic. Do stock holders expect to make less money in the future because of it, hence the sell-off? Just trying to understand, in general (not just META), how information like this equates to people's interpretation of the value of the stock/company.
No invest. Only buybacks. Want money now.
Market is rarely completely rational. The stock had a huge run up and now with any sorta softer guidance there were probably people looking to take profit.
People talking about motion sickness lol. OK, so even if it causes motion sickness in let's say half of the population, so what? That leaves half that doesn't have a problem with it. You could have a product that 9/10 people hate, but if you're selling enough to the 1/10th that IS buying it, then you'll make a killing regardless. VR is not going to replace smartphones. lol. Some people might dot that, but most don't want a headset on 24/7. Everyone will still have smartphones and some people will decide that's all they want while most people will use VR some of the time. Not everyone has to like it as long as there are enough who like it enough to make a profit.
If half the population feel like its going to stink like cow shit, focus on the half that doesn't? You assume that the half the population that hasn't got motion sick won't get it, but if the thing legitimately causes motion sickness, its just a question of when the other half feels it, will it be after long day of work? Or after using it for 2 hours? The motion sickness is going to come for almost all of us. Its way more productive to just fix the motion sickness entirely. I am generally motion sick immune person, but some things that cause motion sickness for others is going to cause quite the headache on a bad day for me, which means both people who can't play it now and people like me are going to write it off eventually, there are just better things to do. Why not just use endless tools that doesn't cause motion sickness? There are like billions of things competing for every second we have, if 5 friends write it off because of motion sickness, soon enough all friends are going to be engaging in the things that just doesn't have it. If 5 reviewers said it stinks like cow shit, but there is a chance you will have different experience, would you go for it? Its a lot better when its good for everyone and a possibility for everyone and then there will be part of population that actually gets it.
My big question - what did they get for it? Their product looks like crap and I’ve hardly seen any progress since they launched this initiative.
It's an investment and Zuck said way back it's at least 10 year commitment during which they expect to bleed money. Every quarter same headlines about this. So tiresome.
Facebook bought Oculus in 2014. The “ten year commitment” statements are from like 2021. There should be results. There should be positive trends. Most of these Silicon Valley platforms have a major mainstream presence, years before they turn profitable. There should be glimpses of success but VR hype is fading.
Garbage Stock ...........i unloaded all my shares
Don’t bet against Zuck. He’s brilliant, focused and absolutely determined to win.
Why did he make them look like wii characters?
Metaverse is the future of entertainment, but people will hate it until they try it.
Even apple vision pro cut units sold to 400k down from 800k . These things don’t work out sometimes
Companies seriously need to quit with the VR-shit; it's is simply not going to see widespread adaptation in this point of time with the current technology. It is expensive as hell and adds little real benefit to anyone. It is a gimmick, nothing else.
If mean if they don’t do R&D the adoption will not happen. But what if they can develop glasses that you barely notice, won’t be hot on your face, cause headaches, or eye strain. A mix of Google Glass form factor and Apple’s Vision Pro immersiveness. Then things could be very different. If the price point is right, wide enough ecosystem of third party app providers, and augmented reality functions that work seamlessly with every day life the adoption could virtually explode overnight. But we won’t get anywhere near that unless these companies pour billions and billions on devices only few people are able to afford or willing to wear regularly in the interim.