The #1 use of VR headsets is porn and porn apps are growing. Porn apps have some advantages over video apps because
* a VR porn app is 6DOF, VR video is 3DOF
* a VR porn character has more presence. Their eyes can follow you, they can turn to face you, they can reach to your face, hands.
* You can interact at a VR character. You can't with a video
In other words, either Apple is going to need to support porn apps on the the app store or they're going to need to allow 3rd party stores.
What's the source on this? I see people keep saying that but from what I've seen, the #1 use of VR is as a gaming console, with a focus on games that embrace the fitness aspect of VR. The Quest 2 has an insane mainstream potential, too, and most people won't bother rooting it.
Speaking of, I'm going back to beat saber. You might have been misled by its name if you think that's a porn app. :) Email's in my profile if anyone is up for some multi.
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PS. It's pretty obvious to see the people in the comments here who haven't used VR headsets. Eyestrain and headaches are mostly a non issue with recent models, but what they still are is clammy. They get warm. Super uncomfortable for work purposes. Apple's design could solve that I suppose.
As a non-apple-user, I'm excited to see if they can produce something as lightweight as the Quest 2 that is much higher end. I would buy that in a heartbeat, even at a 3k price tag. (Yes, mostly just for beat saber...)
I've never played Beat Saber but one of the first VR games I played was Space Pirate Trainer, basically like a space invaders kinda game but you have two guns. Or a gun and a shield. Great game IMO.
While I have no specific source for VR, it's been kind of a meme for a long time that porn has been one of the major driving forces in the tech world and for tech adoption [0]
I guess the nature of the content makes it difficult to actually surface that because only a minority of people are open/vocal about their porn consumption habits or in what ways they are consuming it.
Case in point: Most people have no issue letting their online-social circle know that games they are playing, like in the way Steam surfaces it to friends.
While at the same time there is some demand by people to hide the more "embarrasing" games from their library they don't want others to know they have in their library [1]
On a personal note: I have to agree with the parent comment that porn is actually the kind of content that makes the advantages of VR really shine on the immersive end, particularly when coupled with 3D audio like that of the Index.
Fitness games are cool too, but they suffer from usually being very fictionalized in setting and art style. So while they take you to a place, you inherently know that place is fake.
With porn VR content its usually a real setting, with real people, and you are suddenly right in the middle of it, which adds a lot to the feeling of being immersed in an actual place, and not just some virtual space made up of virtual polygons.
One can make the argument that Beat Saber is the #1 use for VR right now. It not only tops Oculus' Top-Selling list by a comfortable 3x margin (assuming # of ratings are a good proxy for sales), but also the Most Popular section, ahead of YouTube, Rec Room and VR Chat. These are social (media) apps that are free, while Beat Saber costs $29 + additional in-game purchases. It's crazy how popular this game is within its niche. It's like a paid, single-player game had more downloads than WhatsApp on the App Store.
It's no wonder that Facebook gobbled it up years ago. Any Quest competitor that comes without Beat Saber is going to be though sell, and I assume that it would be strategically missing from any future Apple VR Store...
It's also possible that they are different from you (e.g. they have an IPD that's not in the range the headsets are designed for, or they are more sensitive to the vergence-accomodation-conflict) and still experience eye strain/headaches. I do own a headset and I also love beat saber and alyx, but I can't use it for too long.
Well you're going to have to live with it because Apple will never allow porn apps on the App Store. They will certainly not allow alternative app distribution either.
Safari is the only loophole you get on iOS, unless and until an antitrust court forces Apple to change.
I mean it’s not just safari. You can find porn via the Twitter or Reddit apps to name a couple. Apple just won’t allow apps that are exclusively designed for porn.
Indeed, but it doesn't have to. It is a complementary tech. You have web apps which have no hope to match native apps with performance and yet people are using them thanks to ease of distribution etc.
This is not the best way to think about it - it’s not like mobile. WebXR offers distinct opportunities from native. It’s not a hierarchy. There are some things you can only do with one or the other.
Wasm helps. you also need state of the art decoders. And really, full GPU compute access.
streaming will be a problem for awhile to come. youll want to download in advance, something that the web is not yet set up for.
It’s doable, certainly. But the web will make most things harder. When smartphones came about h264 was already quite far along in adoption (released in 2003). VR video is not at that state.
Maybe Apple has an answer for all this. But I don’t think so. VR video is still under development.
By the time VR video is reasonable to do though, i expect things to progress on the web quickly, maybe lagging 6months-year.
This isn't about video, it's about 3D apps. The top 3D porn apps need power similar to the top AAA video games to simulate hair, physics, and to render realistic looking characters. In the same way AAA videos games don't run well in the browser., VR apps in the browser are just as bad.
Also note: even if we're just talking video Safari does not support a webpage going fullscreen which is arguably required to do VR video. But just to be clear again, this isn't about videos, it's about high end real time 3D porn
>The #1 use of VR headsets is porn and porn apps are growing
What exactly do you mean by this? Are you saying that right now, the most popular use of VR headsets is for pornography? Or are you speculating on how VR headsets will be used in the future?
> Are you saying that right now, the most popular use of VR headsets is for pornography?
Yes, that's what I'm saying. It's a "dirty little secret". Most of it is VR video at the moment but apps are growing quickly. New titles appearing on steam all the time and appearing on the top 10 selling titles.
I have all adult content on on my steam account (just checked my filters), and top selling VR section shows me Alyx, Beat Saber, Borderlands and other popular games as usual. Is there an additional setting to see that?
Why would it have too be a pornapp in App Store? Apple allows movie players which play any movies of the right data format (mp4, etc). Why not a VR player with data files obtained elsewhere? The game consoles already have VR playing capability for VR formatted data files (e.g. Wipeout on PS4). As long as a book is either pdf or epub it can be trivially read regardless of content. I don't see an issue here.
* a VR porn app is 6DOF, VR video is 3DOF * a VR porn character has more presence. Their eyes can follow you, they can turn to face you, they can reach to your face, hands. * You can interact at a VR character. You can't with a video
In other words, either Apple is going to need to support porn apps on the the app store or they're going to need to allow 3rd party stores.