Galaxy XR: The first Android XR headset

(blog.google)

126 points | by thelastgallon 5 hours ago ago

129 comments

  • zmmmmm 40 minutes ago

    Kind of sad to see here on "hacker news" that 80% of the comments are low effort cheap shots.

    The interesting thing here is the core of it, being Android XR and its deep AI integration, especially the spatial awareness. Devices will come and go, but the OS will be the core that stays and grows and evolves over time. I am very curious to know how much of this is all exposed as OS foundations to build on vs a monolithic app built to look like an OS by Google. This has been a large part of Meta's mistake, where the OS is not providing many of these fundamentals and any app you see doing it is mostly re-inventing it themselves or relying on 3rd party tools like Unity to do the heavy lifting.

    The really impressive part of Vision Pro is actually how well thought out the OS is underneath it, exposing fundamentals of how 3D computing can work. Especially the part to do with compositing together multiple spatial apps living together in the same shared space and even interacting with each other (eg: one app can emit a lighting effect that will shade the other's rendering).

    I am very curious if Google has done this kind of foundational work. Especially if that is designed (as they claim) from the ground up to interface with AI models - eg: a 3D vision language model can reason across everything in your shared space including your pass through reality and respond to it. This would be truly amazing but there's zero technical information I can see at this point to know if Google really built these foundations or not here.

    • AshamedCaptain 10 minutes ago

      > Devices will come and go, but the OS will be the core that stays and grows and evolves over time.

      Say that to my Google Cardboard SDK programs, or the Google VR SDK ones, or Google Daydream ones.

      You couldn't have chosen a worse topic on which to dump a generic "ranting about Google abandoning projects is low effort cheap shot", because Google does abandon VR projects (including OSes and APIs, not just devices) every 5 years, almost like clockwork. What I would call "a cheap shot" is to think that this new fancy "OS" will be any different. In fact, I pity the people who still consider jumping on this particular bus _again_.

      • jamesbelchamber 3 minutes ago

        Why on earth _did_ they abandon cardboard? It was really good for getting VR in the hands of.. well, everybody - and it worked quite well, too (for a bit of cardboard).

        If they stuck to what they built originally they would be dominating this segment right now.

    • jayd16 17 minutes ago

      > one app can emit a lighting effect that will shade the other's rendering

      I always felt this was such an outrageous burden to developers. Its cute and all but really, who cares? I don't need one desktop window to emit light on another window. Is that really worth having to remake or modify every asset?

      That said, all the work they did around laundering click and gaze information for privacy was nice to see.

  • bsimpson 3 hours ago

    I wonder what the preferred ecosystem for VR will end up being.

    Seems like there are now ~4 places to buy content (Oculus, Steam, Google Play, Apple App Store).

    If you buy on Steam, your catalog is reasonably portable over time - you can buy another vendor's headset and still access your catalog. The cost is that you have to bring a separate device with you to host the catalog (unless/until the rumored Steam Frame comes out).

    Oculus and Play are both based on Android. I suspect there will be e.g. guides on Reddit to sideload one vendor's catalog onto the other vendor's device.

    I can imagine a world where someone prefers to buy content in one of these stores, to have everything in one place for portability to future devices. You're already seeing this in computer gaming with Steam (and Epic, Xbox, etc.).

    • Spunkie 2 hours ago

      I feel like Steam is the only legitimate option of the 4, the rest are walled gardens.

      I would have been very excited about this Galaxy XR development a year ago but today I don't care to even scroll down the page. Google's recent Android bullshit(walled garden, killing roms) makes this a non-starter.

      In fact I wonder if Android/Galaxy XR is secretly responsible for these horrible changes to stock android. No chance of a XR/real life adblocker ever becoming a thing if you can't install your own software and/or the largest advertiser in the world needs to OK it's existence.

      • Macha an hour ago

        I think we have PC gaming and mobile gaming as too relatively independent markets with only occasional overlap, and that's probably the way VR's going to go. Someone is going to win the mobile VR market (probably Meta given their significant head start and lead, unless the Occulus lineup gets sacrificed at the altar of AI), and the Steam VR ecosystem is going to continue to be a thing.

        I actually think the Steam VR ecosystem is the most durable looking of the ecosystems at the moment with its few medium size players. The other 3 all have the risk that their parent companies could get bored and do something else, and I mean it's made some money, but not the amount of money that is guaranteed to keep any of them interested.

    • jayd16 2 hours ago

      They're really not that interchangeable. They're targeting different hardware with different performance ratings and control schemes.

      Sure you can probably stream PC VR from steam to most of these but it's not the same as on device.

      • gmueckl 30 minutes ago

        I believe that it comes down to whether Unity allows merging Horizon OS and Android XR support into a single Android build. Right now, you can only have exactly one VR plug-in active on a Unity build target IIRC.

      • bsimpson 2 hours ago

        I'm curious to see how true that is.

        Will the Walkabout Mini Golf deployed to Play be meaningfully different than the one from Oculus, or will they include controller support for both ecosystems and ship a single APK to any storefront that will take it?

      • andybak 2 hours ago

        > but it's not the same as on device.

        It mostly is if your local wifi doesn't suck. I honestly can't tell the difference in most cases.

  • Reubend 3 hours ago

    I really wish they pushed for a 120 hz refresh rate instead of 90. IMO, this makes a huge difference for the immersion. I'm guessing that they didn't want to have stutters if their chip can't handle the higher FPS, but the refreshed Vision Pro will have a significant advantage there.

    • cma an hour ago

      For 60hz video content at least I recommend AI interpolating to 180hz, you can usually only do an integer multiple if not doing pure motion vector interpolation, and then dropping or merging every other frame to bring it to 90hz. Now that youtube is doing 3d conversion they should also add this in, playing back 60hz video at 72hz or 90hz is very juddery. Also hopefully the youtube app or browser with fullscreened video will switch to 90hz when playing 30hz content, but to save battery life they may not.

  • hu3 4 hours ago

    > Galaxy XR is available starting today for $1799 or $149/month. It includes:

    > 12 months of Google AI Pro, YouTube Premium, and Google Play Pass.

    Not a bad deal for those who pay for those services.

    What does Apple bundles with their Vision Pro for $3500?

    • jama211 3 hours ago

      I don’t think either sound like a good deal to be honest

    • qingcharles 3 hours ago

      I thought the same. They're throwing in a ton of extras to try to sweeten the deal. Those ones you listed are probably $50/mo in total. Plus it says something about a bunch of sports subscriptions too, which are probably very pricey.

      (also they want you hooked on those services so they can rebill you after 12 months)

    • jayd16 3 hours ago

      I guess that's what, ~$600? But the odds of using all that on the same account and caring about the savings seems pretty niche.

    • dmitrygr an hour ago

      > What does Apple bundles with their Vision Pro for $3500?

      Support for over 5 years, unlike google who'll kill this in around half that long?

  • neuronexmachina 4 hours ago
    • dang 35 minutes ago

      Thanks! we'll add those links to the toptext as well.

  • riedel 4 hours ago

    1.8k$ that is roughly 10x the amount I paid for my XReal Air 2. Does watching movies. Does work as a display using Android desktop mode and the phone as an air mouse [0] (worked best for me).

    Wonder what I get for the other 1.6k, that makes me want it...

    [0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.htl.agmous...

    • servercobra 4 hours ago

      Having used XReals and Vision Pro (which I assume will be very similar), they're not even in the same ballpark for experience for movies and for desktop. XReals feel like a crappy monitor strapped to your face that bounces with your pulse, tilts, etc and not enough resolution to be good for coding. Vision Pro feels like you're in both the virtual world and real world (plus the ultra wide Mac Virtual Desktop is amazing). I tried to dev on XReal and quickly gave up. Vision Pro I've been using consistently for over a year. Is it worth it? That's personal preference, but I think so.

      • hiq 3 hours ago

        When do you use it? When you're on the go, like on a plane? Or even at home, or in an office? Mostly for coding? Can you use it all day long?

        I don't think the tech is good enough for me personally but I'm hoping we get there in a few years.

        • nullishdomain 2 hours ago

          I’m not who you were responding to, but I use it on the plane, at home, mostly for coding but also for entertainment as well. I probably average about 6 to 8 hours a day in the headset. I’ve used a variety of headsets in the past, starting way back with the DK2 for Oculus, and the AVP is the first I felt was truly capable of replacing my monitors.

    • rtkwe 4 hours ago

      The XReals are just screens so no tracking and lower resolution at 1080 vs 4k. They're completely different products.

      • riedel 4 hours ago

        It is clear to me that it is different tech. However, I am not referring to the tech, but rather those applications they promoting. IMHO, there needs to be a better case for those features. I acknowledge that people want 4k in other places, so I guess it is partially only me. But particularly for the real AR I somehow doubt that resolution is the problem.

        • rtkwe 2 hours ago

          Resolution is extremely important for VR and trying to display screens and text. The best screen you can possibly reproduce is the same resolution as the screens in the eyes and takes up the whole FOV so for anything further back than that the headset can only approximate what the screen would look like (down to the point of diminishing returns where the pixels are smaller than your eye can resolve).

    • __m 4 hours ago

      Double the resolution, integrated cpu and gpu, +3 DoF

      • xnx 3 hours ago

        > Double the resolution

        and 4x the pixels

    • soco 4 hours ago

      But what AR can you do with them? I mean, what AR content can you get nowadays? Labeling the stuff around you? Pedestrian or bike navigation (not full screen display but hints)? Tourist information? Any of this integrates with a sibling app for extra info on the connected phone? I'm asking all this because for games I think VR is much better, and trying to understand the current practical value of customer AR.

      • riedel 3 hours ago

        Xreal is rather VR (it is nice to see what is around you still). However, where are the actual AR apps that make sense? Also who runs around with a Vision Pro. Then there is the camera issue. If things have not changed, you will not be welcomed in Europe wearing a camera rig (just read Steve Mann's accounts on that).

      • jama211 3 hours ago

        I saw someone painting on a real window with a digital image projected onto it with their Apple Vision Pro kinda like a stencil. There are similar use cases like that.

    • BoorishBears 4 hours ago

      This is roughly 100x better of a screen so that pricing tracks.

      (I have Xreals and they're a fun toy, but AVP and this are what the average person thinks of when they think of a virtual screen, not the peephole xreals offer.

    • AndrewKemendo 4 hours ago

      The xreal are great and imo do 90% of what I want to do with AR

      The software ecosystem and wireless are the things lacking

  • blensor 3 hours ago

    I think the most defining factor of it is that you have the play store right there and can just run any normal android app too.

    I even installed Termux via F-Droid today, and have a bluetooth keyboard with touchpad connected to it.

  • carpdiem 3 hours ago

    It's interesting that there are essentially no pictures of the actual device anywhere on this page (except for a lone image, from the back of a user's head, where all you can see is the strap and the edge of the front).

    • jayd16 3 hours ago

      When you click through its front and center but I also found it odd.

      • jayd16 9 minutes ago

        Aha, I see now that they're trying hard to hide the battery pack wire. Almost all the shorts are showing the right side of the device to hide the custom battery jack.

  • zoklet-enjoyer 4 hours ago

    This looks to be somewhere between a Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro, with a price point to match. Is that correct?

    • ZiiS 4 hours ago

      It is aiming to be much closer to the Vision Pro. Whist it is nearly half the price, it is probably still twice the price where that would make much difference. The market that _needs_ this is tiny/nonexistent; if you are happy to drop $1,800 to try a device that needs a lot more product and software work :shrug: the should be some second hand Vision Pros very close to this. (Obviously, other Apple/Android deciders not withstanding).

      • KaiserPro an hour ago

        > It is aiming to be much closer to the Vision Pro

        Its going to need some really good optics for that.

    • xnx 3 hours ago

      > between a Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro

      The display, weight, fit, and openness seem better than the Apple Vision Pro. The Apple Vision Pro is still the best choice if you want a screen that shows your eyes on the outside some of the time.

    • TGower 3 hours ago

      Higher resolution displays than the Apple Vision Pro at half the price, though the compute of XR2 Gen2+ is probably weaker

  • drunx 4 hours ago

    I feel like this tech always misses real life usecases. I mean yes sure we do watch movies... But are you really going to sit in the headset for 2 hours straight. It's physically... Biologically(?) Uncomfortable.

    Then when they say - explore Google Maps - ok. Fun. But for what? 10 minutes? How prominent is that need/activity in our life?

    All usecases that Apple and now Google/Samsung showcase are "imaginary", wishful thinking usecases. They don't stick. They are more like "party-tricks" than something that can integrate into our lives and fill in a certain gap.

    • dmarcos 4 hours ago

      I’ve been in XR for a decade and there’s a big gap between people that make the headsets and those that use them. The actual use cases are too niche for the big companies to care long term so they have to invent narratives that don’t manifest. IMO, Valve focusing a headset in the best possible gaming experience is the only one well positioned for an honest play in the space.

    • polyomino 4 hours ago

      The only thing people really do for extended periods of time in these headsets is play gorilla tag, highly skewed towards young kids.

  • ZeroCool2u 4 hours ago

    The workspace feature seems like the biggest differentiator between this and the Apple Vision Pro. Full multi window display, with what seems to be desktop app functionality? That's almost tempting.

  • turblety 4 hours ago

    I think this is really cool, and the more competition and devices in this space the better. But absolutely no way I will spend that much money for a Google product, that they'll probably kill off in less than a year.

    • gundmc 4 hours ago

      It's a Samsung product though

      • Jepacor 4 hours ago

        Samsung has already partnered with Microsoft in the past to make WMR headsets, and that did not prevent Windows 11 from dropping support for the device. The very same could happen to a Android-based headset.

        • SunlitCat 2 hours ago

          And additionally, Samsung never released their Odyssey VR (or it's successor) worldwide, which in my opinion was the reason WMR failed as it was the best of the WMR headsets at the time of their release (of course the HP Reverb was better, but it came out much later).

      • turblety 4 hours ago

        Yeah, fair point, although it's this Android XR thing I don't trust will live a year.

        Even if it did, to me Samsung + Google is just a no go:

        Samsung: Bloated with apps I don't want, can't uninstall but probably won't be killed off.

        Google: Lean, not too much bloat, but can't trust it to exist more than a year.

      • numpad0 4 hours ago

        Google loves to make impactful changes for street creds, hardware manufacturers prefer not to support unsold products. The end result is the same.

      • jsheard 4 hours ago

        Yeah but it's built around the Android XR platform, a Google product. If Google kills XR then the hardware won't be much use.

        • Groxx 3 hours ago

          I'm not really seeing how re-emphasizing Google's involvement implies a reduced chance of abandonment. Google's kinda famous for that.

        • dotnet00 3 hours ago

          I wonder if Samsung has secured promises of commitment. IIRC they required Google to commit to improving Android's support for tablets before committing to devices like the Z Fold.

        • throwaway314155 4 hours ago

          That doesn't make it a Google product.

    • baggachipz 4 hours ago

      Exactly my first thought. "One year of support at best". It's sad that it's become a meme. I remember when they were the Good Guys...sigh.

  • binarynate 3 hours ago

    Although developers may be hesitant to embrace this out of fear of Google eventually killing it off, an upshot is that if you develop an XR app with Unity (and its XR Interaction Toolkit library), it ends up being quite portable across different XR devices / operating systems (e.g. Meta Quest, Pico VR, HTC Vive).

  • 1970-01-01 3 hours ago

    The average lifetime of a Pixel is 5 years of support. Will this be discontinued by Android 18 or 19? How long will it actually be usable before its e-waste? The letters X-R in Galaxy XR do not stand for Xtended suppoRt.

  • jauntywundrkind 27 minutes ago

    One thing I don't see mentioned either in the blog or in the comments here is the camera/sensor system. It's such a necessary part of the magic, for these things to work! It's such a combined effort of sensors, processing power, and software!

    Reminder that Vision Pro has a dedicated R1 chip, with a blistering 256GB/s memory (with the actual cpu "only" having 153GB/s)! That's as much as the quad-channel memory LPDDR5x Strix Halo!

    It'll be interesting to see how Samsung & then others fair at this, and over time to see how much Google, Qualcomm or other platform providers help versus leave device makers to fend for themselves at sensor fusion and other ultra realtime tasks here. Whether the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 here can do enough, and whether the software can make decent use of that hardware is so TBD for this new ecosystem. It's not super super clear who is leading the charge to make it all slick and smooth. My default assumption is Qualcomm likely holds a big chunk of the stack, and sole-proprietorship of the stack like that seems like a real threat to long-term viability of XR as a technology: like the Valve Steam Deck so strongly exhibited, it's only through intense cross-stack ownership and close collaboration (in the Linux kernel in this case) that we see genuinely good products emerge.

    Sensors, from Samsung's specs page:

      Two High-resolution Pass-through cameras
      Six World-facing tracking cameras
      Four Eye-tracking Cameras
      Five Inertial Measurement Units(IMUs) [commentary: whoaaa, thats a lot]
      One Depth sensor
      One Flicker sensor
    
    As an aside, this sort of makes me want a device that just does eye tracking. That there are four eye tracking cameras here seems wild! I've mostly seem some pretty chill examples of webcam based tracking; it'd be neat to see what kind of user interface we could build if we really could see where people are looking.

    Also maybe worth reviewing what Android ARCore offers, as this defines so much of what we get here. I'd love to see more depth-based capture systems about in general: not just on the XR displays but on regular devices too! To build a better library of depth-having media. Apple's had LiDAR since iPhone 12 Pro (2020)! There's some ToF on Android phones but close to zero lidar. We also see tons of big fancy dual-sensor XR cameras out there, but AFAIK nothing for phones! Just adding a second stereoscoping camera on the back of phones would be so obvious, & do so much to help the XR world! It feels like XR products are being left to stand all on their own with no help from the rest of the mobile device ecosystem, and it feels so obvious & unworkable.

  • jayd16 3 hours ago

    Has anyone kicked the tires on the software stack? How is the dev experience for building an AR/Passthrough app?

    • andybak 2 hours ago

      The promise is "it's just OpenXR on Android" but I wasn't granted access to a dev kit so I have no idea.

    • dijit an hour ago

      They've been extremely tight with access to the ecosystem thus far, I think because they were building for the release of this product.

      So, you won't get any real answers unfortunately.

  • sfortis 4 hours ago

    I'm wondering why companies are still trying to sell VR headsets. History clearly speaks: bulky head-mounted devices have all epically failed.

    • dotnet00 3 hours ago

      There's enough of a market for them to exist these days. The issue is that companies want to treat VR headsets as if they're in the same category as phones or even tablets, when really, they're closer to the same category as, say, racing rigs or other highly hobby-specific products.

      • andybak 2 hours ago

        Exactly this. You can build and ship headsets and make a profit if you're not also running a moonshot R&D division off the same balance sheet.

    • andybak 2 hours ago

      "Failed" for some imagined mass market use case but doing very well in lots of healthy niches.

    • ares623 3 hours ago

      The investors yearn for VR

  • sirjaz 4 hours ago

    Microsoft dropped the Hololens and it was in this price range with a much better product. So I have a feeling this will be a google glass type item

    • jama211 3 hours ago

      I personally used a HoloLens, it was absolutely not a better product. Interesting for the time, but wow was the fov small, and the uses limited.

  • andrewinardeer 3 hours ago

    I wonder if there will be a Pixel branded headset next year?

  • rs186 4 hours ago

    Anyone watched last evening's live event?

    The use cases they showed are just as stupid as those shown in Apple's event over two years ago.

  • prophesi 3 hours ago

    This makes me miss Google Cardboard and Daydream.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Daydream

    • andybak 2 hours ago

      Cardboard still exists. Daydream was shelved. I might boot up my Lenovo Mirage to see if it still has any functionality that works. (I bought and never finished Virtual Virtual Reality which is actually well regarded)

    • gs17 an hour ago

      I miss Cardboard too. That little magnet "button" was one of the most creative ways to create an input method I've ever seen.

  • spwa4 4 hours ago

    "Apps from top streaming services like Crunchyroll, HBO Max, Peacock, and more"

    Is there a fight between Google and Netflix?

    Also USD 1800 per headset ... wow.

  • yahoozoo 3 hours ago

    No thanks. Where are the XR eye contacts?

  • dangus 4 hours ago

    Oof, a little late to this bandwagon. Basically every player in this industry is dealing with weak/declining sales.

    • jama211 3 hours ago

      They’re not stupid. They know this won’t sell many items, they don’t expect it to. This is what you’d call a “market signal” product. It markets them as an innovative company, with their fingers in a little bit of every pie, and reminds everyone that they exist and make cool things. It’s valuable both for your company image and for your internal experimental development to do this sort of thing now and again.

      • dangus an hour ago

        It would be a market signal product if this was 2017.

  • ageitgey 4 hours ago

    This is going to be sick to buy for almost nothing in like a year when it inevitably gets discontinued.

  • malnourish 4 hours ago

    I realize this is a self-fulfilling prophecy, but how can anyone justify buying this when Google notoriously kills off projects? My money says this goes the way of the Pixel tablet.

    If Apple couldn't make it work, does Google really think they can? This should be headlining an event, not relegated to a blog post.

    • hbn 3 hours ago

      > My money says this goes the way of the Pixel tablet.

      I need to do a Google search every time to recall their history with tablets. I remember the Nexus tablets which came out for like a 3 year streak.

      Then it was the Pixel C in 2015, then a 3 year gap until the Pixel Slate, then 5 years before the Pixel Tablet. Do not ask me about any of their capabilities or their intention in the market because every release could have been anything.

      I'm so beyond getting on board with anything Google puts out, it's kinda just funny to watch and laugh at this point.

      • bsimpson 3 hours ago

        I think the Pixel C was rumored to be a Chromebook that got Android instead last minute, and then the Pixel Slate did run Android, and now there are all the rumors about ChromeOS being rebased atop Android…

        • mdwrigh2 an hour ago

          Yeah, that's exactly what happened with the Pixel C. A lot of politics around who would own tablets and laptops at the time that meant the winds changed direction ~yearly, hence the horribly confusing product line ups that happened.

        • skiman10 an hour ago

          The Pixel Slate actually did run ChromeOS and then could run Android apps in a VM haha.

          And those aren't rumors, there is a pretty big effort to get Android ready for ChromeOS and get feature parity. Which to me is really unfortunate, CrOS has such a nice linux base.

    • AshamedCaptain 3 hours ago

      And Samsung is even worse: remember GearVR ?

      I had a Note device that on launch was compatible with GearVR, but they killed support for it in one of the few the Android updates. This was back when getting 3 Android updates was "lucky". i.e. they launched and completely killed GearVR (paperweight level) all within 5 years.

      • SunlitCat 2 hours ago

        Especially Samsung.

        I’m still very salty about Samsung never officially releasing their Samsung Odyssey VR headset in Europe. It was the best VR headset among the Windows Mixed Reality headsets at the time of their release.

        Of course, the HP Reverb was better, but it came out much later, too late for WMR to really take off.

        I still believe that if Microsoft had forced Samsung to release the Odyssey VR headset worldwide, WMR could have been a success.

        And I’m pretty sure Samsung won’t release this one (the Galaxy VR) worldwide either, which will be the reason it fails and Google will probably take that as an excuse to shut down the project as well.

        • gs17 an hour ago

          > I still believe that if Microsoft had forced Samsung to release the Odyssey VR headset worldwide, WMR could have been a success.

          I'm not sure if Microsoft actually wanted to try to make it a success. They made a lot of decisions that didn't help it succeed, with one of those decisions leading to every headset being a brick (officially, although Oasis fixes them) now. I could go on and on about it, because I love my Odyssey+ and it's frustrating to see how they screwed the ecosystem up so badly.

    • LarsDu88 2 hours ago

      Its obvious this was greenlit in response to Apple Vision Pro, which means is about 1 year away from being killed as soon as Apple pulls back on Vision Pro in favor of some sort of AR smart glass technology

    • nba456_ 4 hours ago
      • malnourish 4 hours ago

        Thank you, I stand corrected on there being an event.

      • hnuser123456 4 hours ago

        Comments are disabled. Were there any utter flubs like meta's AI cooking demo?

    • pjmlp an hour ago

      Remember Tango.

      Yeah, this is going nowhere, is the typical case having to do something because the neighbour is also doing it.

    • p1necone 2 hours ago

      Hopefully you can bypass the builtin software and use it as a PC vr headset, otherwise it's just going to be ewaste.

    • jayd16 3 hours ago

      Only buy the product for what it is, and not what it might be. Assuming they don't go out of their way to brick it post shutdown, you should still have an ok device.

      • ares623 3 hours ago

        Stadia owners in shambles

        • zeagle 3 hours ago

          I'm last to defend Google usually but not a great example. My inlaws got a refund for the hardware and new games they purchased/played and got to keep the controller. Everything else they've killed? Sure. I wish most collapsed ecosystems did this.

          • bsimpson 3 hours ago

            You basically got to play Cyberpunk for free and keep one of the most ergonomic controllers ever afterwards.

        • rockostrich an hour ago

          Not at all considering they fully refunded all purchases. I got 4 free bluetooth controllers out of it.

          • overfeed an hour ago

            ... don't forget the free 4k Chromecast(s)

    • baby 3 hours ago

      Meta is making it work

      • TulliusCicero 3 hours ago

        Meta has reasonably priced headsets, with controllers that work well for gaming, and a large library of reasonably compelling games (admittedly basically all indie games).

        It looks like Google has a very expensive headset, no controllers, and thus no real games to go along with it.

        • spogbiper 2 hours ago

          controllers are an optional first party accessory as shown in the demonstration. i'd expect it to work with 3rd party controllers as well. whether Meta games will port I'm not sure but since both are android based it shouldn't be too difficult?

          • hadlock an hour ago

            I think everyone who has ever owned a game console and bought the "optional first party accessory" (super scope 6, kinect, etc) is painfully aware that since developers can't count on widespread adoption, they almost never waste resources implementing support for them.

            Not that it matters, apple has dropped support for true VR and now that google doesn't have to compete on this obscure battlefield, it will be cancelled before the end of Q4. I honestly feel bad for the team it was probably a good product. The launch event may have only been done for tax purposes to recover R&D losses.

          • laweijfmvo 2 hours ago

            at $249, the headset plus controllers put it over $2000, which is a lot to spend on an unknown product that might be deprecated on arrival. The Meta Quest 3S includes controllers and is currently on sale for $249, and at least you mostly know what you’re going to get, even if they never release another VR headset.

    • zoeysmithe 3 hours ago

      Did Apple try to get into this market? Their device is fairly ridiculous compared to where VR seems to have been going all these years: cheap nearly disposable headsets like the Oculus. Which I believe is half the price of the original HTC Vive.

      More expensive than the Vive isn't the way forward. Apple had a tech demo and slumping quarterly reports and need some PR wins, so out came the headset. I don't think it was a good faith effort to get into this market. I think it was to get headlines, jazz up stocks, and get attention as an innovator outside of laptops and phones.

      I have no idea what Google can do here, but Android is a long running project. The Pixel line has long-ish term support. Google can eat Oculus's lunch. I just think the question is if Oculus's walled garden is now too high to climb, both in software and patents. FB money and Carmack's talents are going to be hard to beat here.

      If I had to guess, I'd say Google saw Oculus get good at games, but everything else about it is fairly uninteresting. XR/AR could be hot and those new Meta glasses are pretty much Google Glass on steroids. So who knows, but seeing Google dive back into AR/XR is promising and I think they can compete here in a way they can't with VR games.

      I could see myself buying AR glasses branded Pixel or Google. I'd think they'd be a better product than Meta. I don't know where Google is going with this and this product seems underwhelming, but we may have an entirely different product in a year or two. I have a feeling both Apple and Samsung's product are PR placeholders until they can catch up to Meta on shoe-horning this into Ray-Ban-esque glasses format.

    • IncreasePosts 4 hours ago

      This is really just a hacker news/inside tech meme. Look at half the comments on this submission, they're just low effort "lol Google kills off products" statements. Random people on the street would have no idea what you're talking about, because they use chrome, android, Google search, discover, Gmail, and Google maps.

      I think Google just has a habit of making products that excite techies but then prove unsustainable for a wider audience (reader being the prime example). I think them trying that (and then failing) is better for everyone than them simply not even trying, which is what some other major tech players do(Apple)

      If people actually want to use this product and it is selling well and there are a lot of android XR users, then it's unlikely that Google will kill it. If it doesn't sell well and there aren't many android XR users, sure, it may be killed, but I don't think you'll find many examples of companies sustaining an unprofitable line of business just for the goodwill of the few people using the product.

      • sorenjan 3 hours ago

        Another example would be Android Wear. They lost interest in that for years and let it languish, and only recently started caring again with the help of Samsung. But an old watch I bought never got an update, in fact it lost functionality compared to when I bought it, and I won't fall in that trap again. I also switched to Spotify when Google shut down their Play music, I'll much rather get my music from someone where that is their business model and not a hobby.

      • georgeecollins an hour ago

        The problem is that Google actively and seriously works to excite developers. Developers develop, Google abandons, and the effort made by the developer is wasted.

        That's why I don't like Google abandoning projects so much. Sure everybody does this sometimes, but no one does it as much as Google. It's not because I am a "techie". It's because it has been bad for my business. I don't care what people off the street think.

        This is not a meme.

      • anonymars 3 hours ago

        "Am I spending $1800 on a product that will be useful for one year, five years, or ten years" is a relevant question, and often past performance is indicative of future results

        To their credit, they did seem to make things right for Stadia.

        Meanwhile, if we look at Microsoft and Windows MR, they themselves did not, though one of their employees apparently built a SteamVR driver on his own (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45110883). Microsoft should be embarrassed that they couldn't be bothered to do that themselves.

      • brookst 3 hours ago

        Are random people on the street really a better approximation of the market for a $1800 XR headset than HN users would be?

      • wlesieutre 3 hours ago

        For consumer hardware spaces (tablets and smartwatches) they're currently acting like they care, but they have previously checked out of those spaces and then come back years later saying "Just kidding actually we are doing tablets!"

        What might save this one is that the Oculus Quest ecosystem being Android based with similar hardware, so it should be pretty easy for an ecosystem of appropriately designed software to get ported over.

        Kind of like how big screen Android devices have been an afterthought for most apps (hope you like enlarged phone UIs) but what might rescue tablets this time is foldable phones showing up and making developers consider "what if the screen isn't a tall rectangle?"

        I still think there's high chances they have one or two generations of hardware trying to copy the Oculus Quest / Vision Pro and then pull the plug and say "forget VR we're doing AI glasses." They were ahead of the curve with Google Glass, but have that habit of bailing on things and giving up the first mover advantage.

        • psunavy03 an hour ago

          AR is going to be on the back burner unless miniaturization improves for the price point. The only player in that space I'm aware of is Anduril's EagleEye, which is Son of HoloLens 2 for the Army's IVAS contract. AFAIK Anduril yoinked all the staff and tech from the HoloLens team (or a lot of the staff anyway) when it fell over.

          MS and Magic Leap tried to make holographic AR work, but the state of the art wasn't cheap and compact enough for them to make any money on it.

      • lynndotpy 4 hours ago

        This isn't a reputation only "techies" have picked up on. The Pixel phone upgrade gram, Chromecast, and Stadia are all things I've seen very normal people lament disappearing. Youtube and Search constantly changing for the worse are also well-worn and the subject of memes.

      • p_l 2 hours ago

        Reader got so much flak because it was not just niche techie thing, but also had a big footprint among... journalists.

        So you had extra backlash because the people who most felt it were also people way more vocal

    • ls-a 4 hours ago

      People are still buying the second version of Pebble watch. It's called wasting money.

      • jama211 4 hours ago

        Your comment is unhelpful, uncalled for, and unrelated.

      • asadm 4 hours ago

        what? the Pebble is essentially very refreshing offering. I am tired of "too-smart" Apple watch and am eagerly waiting for my Pebble!

        • ls-a 3 hours ago

          It's a dead product that was resurrected to cash out again from money wasters before it gets killed again

          • asadm 3 hours ago

            my original Pebble still works. Not sure what you mean by dead.

  • Razengan 2 hours ago

    Ah Samsung, the "We have Apple at home", I was wondering when we'd see their copycat entry for XR.

  • giancarlostoro 4 hours ago

    So, it's been a few years, but does Samsung still have... issues with devices exploding? I would not want to live out Sword Art Online IRL.

    • jsheard 4 hours ago

      They've been fine on the battery front for a while, the explodey Galaxy Note was a decade ago. They're understandably quite conservative about charging speeds and adopting new battery technologies now.

      Edit: or maybe not, see the sibling comment about their smart ring. At least that looks like an isolated incident.

      • giancarlostoro 4 hours ago

        Beautiful, I may someday in the future try Android XR, for the meantime the Quest 3S is fine for my needs.

    • jama211 3 hours ago

      You just take it off, so similar danger really to keeping a phone in your pocket against your skin, which I assume you have no problems doing

    • walterbell 4 hours ago