Reporting on XR for a decade as Co-founder & Executive Editor of the leading independent VR news publication @RtoVR. Journalist & analyst, not evangelist.
Dec 26, 2022 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Ah the Questmas nightmare. This is classic tale of what happens every time I try to play VR with a friend, and the lesson is all about the absolutely basic stuff that needs to be fixed before VR can ever become anything approaching mainstream 🧵
Wanted to play Racket Nx with a friend. Made an invite link through the Quest smartphone app and texted it to him. I clicked the Launch button and got an ambiguous error that the app didn’t launch on my headset. Ok, I put the headset on and find the…
Dec 25, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This is happening to me almost every time I open the iOS app fresh lately. Have to force-quit then try again. @MetaQuestHelp
Jun 9, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
➡🧵 I have 6 good personal friends who have VR headsets and only one of them has completed Half-Life Alyx. Of those 5, two have a Rift CV1 that's been collecting dust for years, two fell off of VR completely before finishing Alyx, and one is playing other VR games instead. (1/8)
Studying their reasons why they haven't played/finished the game IMO tells us something about the VR populace. Two haven't bothered to set up their Rift CV1 in years. Two say "oh yeah man I should do that" at the suggestion they play Alyx (but never end up back in VR)(2/8)
Jun 8, 2022 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
Really looking forward to the next entry in our VR Insights & Artwork series where we've gotten an exclusive look into the development of some of VR's biggest games to date! Can you guess which one is next from this teaser? Open the thread to see what we've covered so far. ⬇
STORMLAND | INSOMNIAC GAMES
Pretty much everyone who owns VR /says/ they love it, but people aren't putting on headsets as much as that sentiment would predict. That tells me something very clearly: VR has a serious friction problem. VR needs to be easier and faster to use /across the board/.
Standalones like Oculus Quest address just one tiny piece of the friction problem (removing tether). Anyone thinking Quest is some kind of savior needs to reconsider; it will be an important development but it won't be VR's mainstream moment. Fix the friction and they will come.
Oct 12, 2018 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
(1/9) THREAD: I've been trying to figure out what makes great VR games "fun," which is really difficult because it's not even clear if that can be quantified. However, after years of playing and observing two key concepts stand out to me.
(2/9) None of this will be news to veteran game designers, but I hope this might be useful for new and indie developers hoping to make their mark in VR. So here are those two key concepts:
Jul 20, 2018 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Me and my bud @vrbosenet have been using VR for years now, we are veterans of this technology. Just tried joining each other in Oculus Home and found the whole UX incredibly confusing and unintuitive. I can't imagine the frustration of a new user.
I'm not saying I have all the answers, but I can at least tell that this isn't how things should be. There are way too many places to look for various social actions (like inviting people, muting people, etc). In Dash, I regularly have to click things twice before they work.
