I think Quest 2 will be extremely influential device and this decision will shape the market for years to come. The Quest 2 is important because it's being mass-produced at very affordable retail price. It will be the first and most impactfull VR experience for huge amount of people. I only have experience with Quest 1, but it's already apparent that Q2 is improvement in every way while being noticeably cheaper. Q1 was out of stock for most of it's product lifetime. BTW I'm enjoying Q1 quite a lot. It is an open Android platform with no DRM and good support for independent developers.
The VR is merely a playground for AR. A really tiny market that's brewing technology for the post-smartphone revolution. The AR hardware might be some years from now but there are already huge investments in software platform and social features. There are only two relevant competitors: FB with cheap and excellent consumer headset you can buy today, and Apple working on next big thing in shroud of mystery. FB vision is obvious. They want to collect more of your data and also control what you constantly see in AR. Part of this is forcing you to use the FB account that was verified to belong to you, forcing you to give up on your privacy right from start. This translates to enormous amount of marketing money, but also to shaping opinions and controlling emotions. Next generation will likely have eye tracking which will make privacy invasion so much worse, as our eye movement is mostly subconscious and reveals our interests and affinities.
Many of us are sceptical of our smartphones working against us, tracking location and actions. Imagine a device mere centimetres from your brain doing the same, but having also access to eye movements and maybe EEG readings. If FB manages to convince general population that lack of privacy is in best of their interest, we'll have some dire times ahead of us.
VR has been a nice toy but the acceptance and content was underwhelming. I own a quest 1 since I impulse bought it in retail. After finding out what it was I ordered a rift s which I use more frequently. The software package is actually decent, but the lock-in is repulsive.
With facebooks decision both devices will certainly be scraped soon.
I probably need to make sure my oculus account isn't automatically migrated...
To be honest I think the current VR trend died like the last ones, maybe it was a bit more successful. The devices and the experience are nice at first, but not suitable for prolonged use.
I think AR is a complete separate technology that has some overlapping problems, but are still too different to make a prediction.
I think VR would have been more successful if we had a common base for different devices. My believe in tech dystopia is severely dampened if it relies on VR.
The Facebook Reality Lab is on brink of consumer AR hardware. Q1 has functional "passthrough" mode with 3D content superimposed. Browsing internet with just hand tracking and the camera feed in background is decent AR experience already. Meanwhile FB is actively researching efficient text entry methods based on hand pinching and gestures [1].
I agree that this generation is not comfortable for prolonged use. FB has a prototype of AR sunglasses with monochromatic screens [2]. They've teamed up with Luxxotica to produce AR sunglasses for 2021 [3].
They have team of people wearing experimental AR headsets walking around public spaces, gathering data and working around legal issues [4]. It all seems to be building towards converging point of widespread AR availability that I would say is 2 to 5 years in future.
The VR is merely a playground for AR. A really tiny market that's brewing technology for the post-smartphone revolution. The AR hardware might be some years from now but there are already huge investments in software platform and social features. There are only two relevant competitors: FB with cheap and excellent consumer headset you can buy today, and Apple working on next big thing in shroud of mystery. FB vision is obvious. They want to collect more of your data and also control what you constantly see in AR. Part of this is forcing you to use the FB account that was verified to belong to you, forcing you to give up on your privacy right from start. This translates to enormous amount of marketing money, but also to shaping opinions and controlling emotions. Next generation will likely have eye tracking which will make privacy invasion so much worse, as our eye movement is mostly subconscious and reveals our interests and affinities.
Many of us are sceptical of our smartphones working against us, tracking location and actions. Imagine a device mere centimetres from your brain doing the same, but having also access to eye movements and maybe EEG readings. If FB manages to convince general population that lack of privacy is in best of their interest, we'll have some dire times ahead of us.