That's how all products should be
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
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Steam Deck
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Isn't that generally how Valve operates on the whole anyway? They don't set out to make products; they just do what they want and if they actually finish it, they sell it.
I am impressed with how many games are now playable on Linux with Proton and how well they look and play, to think this game meanwhile has graphics glitches on the PS5. I might get one myself.
and that's the secret to a good product
And it's why I hate capitalism as a consumer.
"People need an incentive to invent things!"
Well, if that incentive is making money instead of making a great thing, it's probably not going to be a great thing. Great things make money.
Oh hey, that’s why I hate capitalism as an engineer. The endless pursuit of profit first rather than making good things that people want is disheartening as someone who just wants to make things that make life better
3D printing is such a boon for this. You can make things for yourself put it online for free, and other people can also make it. There's no need for a profit incentive. I hope in the future everyone owns a 3D printer.
Listen. We need you to shave another $0.13 off the cost of the unit. Just like, reduce the quality a bit. No end user will ever notice.
Exactly, if you want a good product, have the developers make what "they" want. Usually works out.
That’s how you end up with Arch Linux.
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There’s another product that probably was this and ended up… somewhat badly. Valve index
It wasn’t bad in itself but the whole vr thing kinda missed the chance for whatever reason and now Zuckerberg took over it mercilessly. Maybe it was naive to think it will ever take hold outside of simming
Still the beginnings were real fun and that valve demo was so real I had panic attack from past me agoraphobia while in tutorial
Warning: the following opinion has not been approved by Lemmy.
Meta has done a lot for VR and the tech is just getting started.
A big part of the reason was that Facebook offered game studios a big upfront sum if they made their games work on whatever headset they were selling at the time in standalone mode with no major caveats. The headset only had an anemic mobile GPU, so was only capable of as much as mobile games were doing at the time. A bunch of studios took them up on this offer, and cut back their projects' scope to be viable under the hardware constraints, so nearly everything that got made was gimmicky mobile-style minigames, and obviously that's not what makes people want to drop hundreds of dollars on hardware, as they can get their fill by borrowing someone else's headset for an hour.
Mobile GPUs have improved, so standalone headsets aren't as terrible now, but we missed the expensive toy for enthusiasts and arcades phase and soured most people's opinions by making their first VR experience shovelware.
Valve isn't done in VR. it doesn't feel the need to put out a headset every year.
Same with the Vive. It wasn't the end. Index isn't the end. When they find something they can innovate they will.
Yeah, it's really sad. VR is great for some experiences. There's just two issues with it. The largest is the price. It's pretty expensive for something that doesn't have much content. The second smaller issue is that it's too hard to swap into and out of. I can just sit down at my computer and instantly get into something, but switching to VR takes effort.
The price can probably be solved over time, assuming we keep making VR hardware. The convenience is harder. I don't think there's a solution to that, at least not in the near future.
The convenience is harder. I don’t think there’s a solution to that, at least not in the near future.
lighter headsets that work well in MR, so you don't need to take it off to reply to a msg or find your login. you'd leave it on in mixed/augmented reality mode, then swap it back to VR to play your game.
Slowly, we're moving towards that. I'll be very interested to see what comes after the quest 3s / index etc.
Something I wanted to do when I had my Vive working, and I'm unsure if this is actually possible, is integrate the android watch OS into it. It'd be so nice to always have quick access to your device that is integrated into the VR space. I'm not sure why someone hasn't done this yet (assuming they haven't).
I know a startup tried to do phone reflection in VR, that is, to mirror a phone's display into a render layer, and try to use the phone's touchscreen as an input for that 'display'.
they went out of business. I wonder if they ever got their patents figured out. seemed like promising tech.
You can now get refurbished for around $200. Mostly the meta quest 2. I'd be happier with something that isn't meta affiliated, but it's a solid headset. Considering how expensive most of the rest are, getting it down this far is pretty good. Maybe in a decade, there will be more entry headsets at this price point or lower.
Convenience: meta has hand tracking as controllers and can play games by itself so you only need to put the headset on, and theirs is much lighter than the old vives I cut my VR teeth on. The head strap isn't great still for convenience, but there are third party straps that are much easier to put on and take off. The framework for convenient VR is there, but support is dwindling as there's not much money in the VR market compared to the cost vs anything else in games.
I hate that most of this is about meta, but I haven't seen anyone else really making great strides in VR. There's a Chinese company I need to find again which apparently made super light headsets I was going to keep an eye on and forgot.
Unfortunately, my understanding is that Meta's offerings are so cheap because they're making a loss on the hardware to undercut competitors that don't have the resources or desire to do the same.
I don't see them turning a profit on the market after killing their competitors. I don't get their angle. Unless they can offer something truly transformative, they're going to put themselves out of business doing that.
But yeah, they have this all in on VR/AR mentality which I don't see working out. Killing the competition does guarantee no one else makes a good product either.
Eh, I think they also really have an infinite money pump with all of their worldwide products. I don't think they would be able to hold out if VR were more widespread and actually became a market that big players were entering instead of dipping into and then exiting, but with the market the way it is, for people that don't have powerful enough standalone computers to back them up... They're the only product that truly could become the standard as of now. Even if you have a PC capable of running desktop VR, the Quest 2 is incredibly attractive with a reasonably good wifi router and steam link. "And if you have a Quest anyways, you definitely gotta re-buy beat saber because what if I go out to a hotel and wanna play, and hey look this game that I wanted on PC was on sale" and so on.
I say this as the owner of an index and a quest.
Yeah, but I don't think they'll keep it unless it turns a profit. Meta as a whole will always have ads which literally print money for free, but they'll Google the VR line as soon as their lizard overlord gets bored of the metaverse idea. Maybe they'll sell it instead of close it like Google always does, actually... That would be nice.
I am being somewhat exaggerative with word choices.
capitalism <3
Yeah, I had a Vive. The lighthouses have failed now so it's not currently usable, and I didn't use it frequently and am now on Linux and haven't looked into if VR will work for me now, so I haven't gotten a replacement. I've thought about it though. It sucks that even I, who has used VR and enjoyed it, doesn't currently feel the need to have a working headset.
Im going to look into a used headset and support on my device though. I might get back into it.
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It's also what got me to finally go linux full-time.
I had tried to a couple times before, but always ran into one too many snags.
When the deck was announced I thought to myself "that can't work with every game, can it?" as I'd attempted that myself.
But I had to see for myself, and the improvements in proton were staggering. And it's gotten even better since! Who would have though Apex Legends, Hunt Showdown, and a bunch of other holdouts and anti-cheat games would be running on linux within a year of the deck releasing?
In the early days I thought it would be some niche gimmick that would never take off. Turns out it wasn't and it's the best handheld gaming machine ever made.
It feels good to be wrong!
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I love this so much. It reminds me of how AMD Threadripper came to be.
Apparently Threadripper was a skunkworks project by some of the engineers at AMD that they worked on in their spare time. They wanted to see if they could basically slap together a bunch of normal CPU dyes into on mega chip with a high speed/bandwidth interposer connecting them together.
It was almost abandoned and they had to fight to get it taken seriously. But it proved to be a viable product, and singlehandedly was responsible for decimating what was left of Intel's place in the HEDT market so badly, that after several years of failed attempts to keep up, Intel officially announced that they wouldn't be competing in that space anymore.
It's such a cool thing when talented and passionate people come together without having to be subject to strict marketability and just try to create something awesome and revolutionary.
The Steam Deck kicked off an entire new market for handheld gaming devices that had real power to play modern PC games. And despite a bunch of competing and copycat products, the Steam Deck is still king.
I love mine, have close to 200 hours on it, which for me is a ton. I've barely gamed on my main PC in the last year, it's just so much more comfortable to play on the couch or in my bed.
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