Yes and no. The AI is significantly better… but it’s still not great. Case in point: cops will chase you now, but it doesn’t take long to get a feel for how to fudge their pathing and lose them.
I am so happy for them and proud of them. This is the correct response to unnecessary layoffs or any other worker abuse. I hope more people in the industry will follow their example!
If you look at all the useless AR features that Apple has pushed into iOS over the years, you can tell that they've already been working toward this for at least a decade. They aren't giving up on it any time soon... they're playing the long game. Wearables are inevitable, and they want to be way ahead of the curve.
I think we’re still YEARS away from this tech taking off. It’s too expensive, it’s too bulky, and it’s not powerful enough.
I think the Apple Vision headset will be the first meaningful step forward since the CV1, and even that is just one step on a journey that could take another decade.
But Meta/Zuckerberg is squandering it. There is a huge disconnect between the price of thing (OVER $500) and the value proposition. It's bad at gaming. It's still less powerful than even current-gen smart phones, let alone modern consoles or gaming PCs... and what little gaming content is out there makes that abundantly clear. Asgard's Wrath 2 does it no favors given those realities. And what are the uses beyond gaming?
Exercise could be a compelling value proposition, but they aren't leveraging even that obvious marketing angle. "You can do your supernatural workouts!" How many people know what that is? I do, but ask a rando on the street. They have no idea. And what are the other options beside Supernatural workouts? Oh, nothing? Nothing for my stationary bike? Nothing for a rowing machine? Nothing for treadmills? With all those funds, they are not exploring the practical applications at all and the product is failing as a result. Instead, Zuck STILL hasn't given up on his Metaverse/Horizons MMO idea.
And that's before we even get into Meta/Facebook's inherent creepiness as a company.
I thought it was okay. It fizzled out pretty quickly for me as it felt half-baked and overly "gamey", which kept breaking the immersion illusion for me. I never did finish it. But I started over when Phantom Liberty dropped last week and it feels soooo much better. The immersion doesn't feel like it's being killed by a thousand cuts... everything feels more natural and believable now. It still has it's gamey moments, but they are a lot less obvious now.
In 1994 you were buying a physical, manufactured product which you owned.
Now you are temporarily licensing access to something that doesn’t exist, can’t be transferred or resold or backed up or modified, has unlimited reproduction potential for no cost, and sells at scales unimaginable in 1994 dwarfing all other consumer markets in total revenue.