I’ve been an Apple user since before the Mac. I got a first generation iPhone, iPad and Watch. I tell people if you cut me, my blood would contain Apple logo shaped corpuscles.
But I’ve also been a VR enthusiast for about the same length of time. I’m done waiting for Apple to get their VR/AR act together, and managed to snag an Oculus Quest which arrived today.
And, apparently it’s an Android device at heart. Sigh.
So far, I am really enjoying it. I’d love to hear Apple ecosystem tips from any other Oculus Quest users.
If this causes an early announcement of Apple Glasses or whatever at WWDC, I’ll be happy to have taken one for the team 
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didn’t think I’d run into clickbait on the MPU forums lol
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Aaaahhhh guilty as charged!
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All the Nintendo Switch owners are in a similar situation! (Sort of.)
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Haven’t been bitten by that one yet
I’d be curious to see if you’re still using it in six months. From what I saw and tested, the only « real » apps (games) worth investing into VR are only coming now (Half Life Alyx, The Walking Dead, Resident Evil) on PC and the rest is impressive demos that have no lasting use. I’m happy for Apple to take their time in doing AR right.
(On a side note, as far as I’m concerned, the day I buy an Oculus device is when Facebook has died a bloody death.)
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In 2008 I was told there’s a ten year boom / bust cycle in virtual technologies. I’ve been involved since 2006, don’t see that stopping. But I got started with Sentinel on BBC Micro - fantastic little virtual world lumpy chessboard, populated by the evil Sentinel and his minions, sucking the life out of you to turn into trees - primitive but full of promise for the future that is now.
Apple is one of the few holdouts in global economy that harvests/exploits data on every last move we make with our devices. Google is the inventor of this practice and Android is the industry leader in this regard. Buyers beware.
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They have just taken too long over this.
I’d be surprised if Apple ever enters VR gaming hardware themselves. I could see an MFI VR program. I realize that Apple has a director of VR, not just AR, and teams and patents working on it, but I’d still be surprised.
I am really excited about their AR initiatives, though, mostly having to do with AirPods, but I could be won over by an excellent approach to glasses.
Anything else besides Pokemon Go out there? 
Some gaming enthusiasts are into it, some industrial applications… VR/AR is essentially dead in the water.
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I feel like VR is the sort of technology that’s going to have an unexpected application for something else bizarre in the future. All that work with image processing and display tech and that sort of thing feel like it has to be useful somewhere - but I agree that it probably isn’t the “giant ski goggles” thing.
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I had an Oculus Rift for a few years and it was spectacular. What I was surprised by was that it was a social app that I used the most. AltspaceVR was really heavily used up front and was fun. You could go to comedy shows, lectures, make art together, and even just play games like Cards Against Humanity which I spent too many nights doing!. They lost funding briefly and closed down and everybody fled but when it was saved and brought back it didn’t seem like many people came back.
I loved a few games: The Climb and RoboRecall were my favorites and really exciting. I had a few more but those two were the real standouts. These games worked because of the Oculus Touch controllers where you could actually move your fingers and grab/shoot/interact. I had used other technology where you just pushed sticks around and it wasn’t the same.
Ultimately I sold everything. First of all I was sure Facebook was stealing my brainwaves. But more practically it required a whole PC, all of the wires, and an entire space to have walled off to play and I hate having too many things. Now knowing the tech has potential I was more than willing to sell it all and wait for Apple to bring AR to the masses. That was awhile ago and I’m willing to wait longer. The Quest and other wireless headsets fix all of my practical concerns with the gear, but then you still have the issue with Facebook.
Looking forward to the Glasses to come out and I think the wait will be worth it once it matures. Thanks for sharing your experience, Diane! Definitely check out The Climb if you’re not afraid of heights!
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I’ve used VR at a sort of VR arcade place, and I feel like that’s the market where it really makes sense for gaming, due to the large amount of expensive equipment required, the large amount of dedicated space required, and the limited amount of time you typically want to spend per session.
Apple have effectively locked themselves out of the VR space (not AR) by not shipping Macs with powerful graphics hardware. I doubt they’re losing sleep over it though, for the reasons above.
Sony has sold around 5 million PSVR units as of January. The several PSVR groups I’m a part of are active as hell, so I couldn’t disagree with your take more. It’s awesome, especially for a first gen console product, and I am still impressed with it having had it since launch to the point that I rarely play flat games anymore. Most people writing it off like you have seemingly never used it.
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Right now it’s not VR gaming on the Mac that is absent, it’s almost gaming in a “non Apple Arcade style” to be an endangered species on the Mac.
Catalina killed almost two thirds of older games on the Mac, steam shifted focus from Mac vr to give more resources to win and Linux (which if I’m not mistaken powers steam os) and try to keep alive vr gaming (as of today I agree with @Wolfie opinion, tomorrow we’ll see), only few AAA (and a decreasing number of indie devs) develop for or port to the Mac.
I don’t know if Apple will or will not enter the vr market, but if they do, they will do in a Apple way, which is not in the same direction of others, and it will be mainly biased towards iOS (IMO, of course).
I agree, but the intel transition caused an uprising trend, that became a decreasing one with Catalina. In pc/console style gaming, I mean.
Was Apple all in in supporting this trend? Of course not. I’d say they worked against it (metal, OpenGL sort of support etc.).
I’m not saying this is good or bad, right or wrong (as a Mac user and gamer I’d prefer gaming on the Mac to be way easier).
They had their reasons, the main being investing in iOS gaming. On the Mac side the question is about how much of the iOS gaming platform can find it’s way on macOS. Maybe something. Maybe not.
I do find it encouraging that Metal is supported in major game engines and Molten generally helps with porting modern graphics. But yes, I think the best the Mac can hope for, officially, is to benefit from Apple’s unified development and distribution work with iOS/iPadOS developers.
Very strongly disagree. A great Walking Dead game just came out and it’s really well done. The demo for Iron Man which is coming soon also looks amazing. Star Wars: Squadron comes out this fall and looks incredible. These are about as AAA as you get with VR titles. Resident Evil 7 was definitely a AAA title and rumors are RE8 will have VR support as well.
It’s not “dead in the water” by any means.
That’s still a handful of titles compared to the sheer mass that comes out every year. It is gaining traction, but it is very, very slow.