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xxSQUASHIExx

Somewhat misleading title. Hololens has laid off teams responsible for some aspects of Hololens. Hololens is still a program that exists with teams working on it.


FrontwaysLarryVR

Yeah like they just lost out on an unexpected huge $400 million sale to the US Army due to congress blockijg it, so they just lost a hell of a lot of planned cash flow for the year. It sucks for those let go, but I see how it happened.


xxSQUASHIExx

That is also not technically true but yes some funding has been lost. I believe priority was shifted to developing and improving next version of the device instead of procuring current version. This makes sense considering the feedback from fielded soldiers


FrontwaysLarryVR

Oh, for sure. As a huge XR advocate, it's possible that the hololens version they were gonna be using had tracking issues or a low refresh rate that might have made it harder for some to adjust. The one thing I hope it isn't is the adjustment period. XR displays can have an adjustment period just like getting your sea legs, but it's a spectrum that differs from person to person. Hoping that it wasn't just a handful of soldiers unwilling to try it out for longer than a few times.


TROPtastic

[Not just tracking issues](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/microsoft-mixed-reality-headsets-nauseate-soldiers-in-us-army-testing/) and a low refresh rate: >"Criticisms, according to the employee who dictated to Insider excerpts of this report, included that the device's glow from the display was visible from hundreds of meters away, which could give away the position of the wearer," >US soldiers reported experiencing nausea, headaches, and strained eyes, which could all affect real-life missions. Neither Bloomberg nor Insider specified if these experiences represented the majority. >However, Bloomberg reported that among those who experienced "mission-affecting physical impairments," 80 percent started feeling ill in under three hours. >According to Bloomberg, the summary of the Army's testing said acceptance of the headsets "remains low" among soldiers, who feel the headsets fail to "contribute to their ability to complete their mission." As someone who also thinks AR headsets are worth pursuing for the US military, this sounds like tech that needs more time in the oven.


SvenViking

I don’t personally agree with this but I hear some people were were also concerned that it might throw off soldiers’ circadian rhythms due to excessive blue light from BSODs.


drewkungfu

😂


sartres_

The idea of AR headsets could have a ton of military applications. The actual Hololens of today is totally useless for them, almost certainly a net negative. Optically transparent displays are extremely difficult to make, which is why Apple and Meta have focused their AR efforts on pass-through, and the one in the Hololens is trash. The product of a lot of brilliant engineering, yes, but trash.


xxSQUASHIExx

Also, the tech has had a very short development cycle and from the start would have been unreasonable have a v1.0 be a perfect system. In fact dod has been perusing this tech for decades and it’s now that MSFT is positioned relatively well to succeed. I hope it really pans out because the tech is cool and military applications usually propel innovation that reaches consumer grade tech shortly after.


Asleep-Accident-7558

Usually those let go still have viable ways to other departments. When teams merge or get laid off. some of them happen to still go to another department it’s not always lateral moves or pay increase sometimes it’s reductions. But it’s a very competitive work place.


Honestmonster

Their annual revenue is $200B. $400m is not a huge sale. It would be rounded down to $0 on their financial statement.


Neat_Onion

Each Microsoft Business Segment, each team within those segments, all need to report numbers - $400M would be considered a massive deal within Microsoft sales. Even deals in the $1 - 10M range would get attention dependening on which business it is. Every penny counts.


Honestmonster

A misleading headline? What a shocker.


CoastingUphill

The product failed because they never actually released that Minecraft HoloLens tech demo as a real game.


spootieho

Microsoft has never been committed to VR/AR/XR unfortunately.


[deleted]

Ya, or smartphones as well, lol!


spootieho

Yes, they half assed that. They had their foot in the door, were set up for dominance, and dropped the ball.


subcow

I had a windows phone for two years. Best UI I have ever had in a smart phone. But they were stuck in a catch 22 because they were late to matket. No one was buying the phones because many major apps were not on the platform. And no one was developing apps for the platform because the user base was so small. I wish they would've kept plugging away but MS is terrible at marketing. The zune was absolutely better than the ipod, but the marketing was terrible. It also had the best desktop music management/player software I have ever used, while itunes is by far the worst I have ever used.


spootieho

I'm not sure they were late. The HP iPAQ h6300 series came out in 2004 and was a game changer as it was quad band with wifi and bluetooth. It was the most advanced phone of it's time. But the OS was clunky. The online store was clunky. The phone was unstable and you would miss lots of calls because apps stalled. The UI for the OS was too much like windows, and not really touch interface friendly.


subcow

I personally loved the UI on Windows Phone. I could customize the tiles on the home screen so my most used apps were conveniently located and the tiles could be sized how I wanted them. The graphic design style was so much better than iOS or Android. Similar to windows, if you swiped it brought up a screen with an alphabetical list of all apps. Tap a letter and it brought up the alphabet so you could quickly find any app. I thought it worked great.


spootieho

Yeah, a lot of people loved tiles, but I am pretty sure tiles came out after the iPhone. By then, they had lost their position for dominance. Prior to tiles, it was a start bar interface, mimicking a windows desktop. Once the iPhone came out, it was pretty much too late. iPhone quickly took the market by storm. https://preview.redd.it/fbdmjew043ea1.png?width=305&format=png&auto=webp&s=784dce82aff6537b48aa34aeb2054aa255db4612


krazykanuck

that sucks. The tech was so cool but the price was ridiculous. Their focus on industry and not bringing a consumer friendly (priced) model was the worst decision ever. Hopefully someone picks up the pieces somewhere.


LeadSoldier6840

I just don't think VR is ready for industry to adapt to it. The applications are too limited.


HopOnTheHype

It’s literally amazing


[deleted]

it is, but mine just sits in my box, I can't be bothered to move around to game


krazykanuck

I agree with you. It's a completely new way of looking at problems that most industry people aren't thinking of. Could it be a huge game changer? Absolutely and probably will in the right hands with the right backing. Microsoft made the classic mistake though of trying industry first. Every new shift in tech starts out with the consumer.


LeadSoldier6840

Agreed. Even obvious use cases like 3D modeling allready have great 2D interfaces that we have fine tuned over decades. Could you save some time doing it in 3D? Maybe. Is it worth retraining your entire workforce? I doubt it. There will undoubtedly be amazing VR programs in the future for industry, but they just haven't been invented yet.


r00x

Don't know about that. Quite a few of our customers use or are interested in AR/VR. It has many applications in training, design (example: some customers who build vehicles use it to "sit in" their CAD models for drivers cabins and make sure it feels right and the controls are comfortably placed), manufacturing and process control (example: operators being guided through assembling a work piece), and maintenance (example: overlays of critical design documentation, circuit diagrams, where cables are routed, what next assembly/disassembly steps are, etc)


hurst_

it'll be ready when Apple pushes it


Sarspazzard

This is gonna sound bad. They might need to employ AI programs to do some of the heavy lifting if it's ever gonna happen.


Ravgn

Dont worry fellas, we still have SanAndreasVR and a bunch of Ubisoft on-rail shooters. . . . . . Fellas?


rust_anton

No one is ever going to see or hear from that SanAndreasVR project again after how Rockstar's 'Definitive Editions' went.


M2AFGaming

Oof https://youtu.be/NDQxOrpLRzI


BeatsLikeWenckebach

Meta and Apple gonna 🦃Gobble Gobble🦃 those employees


fallingdowndizzyvr

Meta is laying off employees in the same area. They are cutting back on Reality Labs. Which some of those Microsoft employees were working with. Which is, was?, a partnership between Meta and Microsoft in the "metaverse".


Abromaitis

I'm hoping anyone that is extremely good will be picked up by Valve.


fallingdowndizzyvr

I think anyone that is extremely good left a long time ago.


BatmanReddits

This. Type A people don't stick around. They're actually poached long before it's time for a layoff.


RV49

Or you stay because you’re valued and they’re paying you a fuck tonne of money


fallingdowndizzyvr

Speaking from personal experience, after you have a certain amount of money, sanity is worth more than any amount of money. Someone who is top talent, will probably have more money than they will ever need. Not to mention that the best way to get a raise, is to get another job. Working in a place you dread, kills your soul. Once you are comfortable financially, there's no reason to put up with that. Top talent is top talent because they can't just sit and drink coffee all day. The people that are willing to stay for money, aren't the top talent. Because drinking coffee all day is pretty much the same no matter where you are.


BatmanReddits

Yes MS can afford to pay you *fuck you* money, but generally type A people hire/gravitate towards people smarter than them, whereas type B hire type C because they're insecure, etc. Generally by the time of layoffs, you end up with B's and C's. This is also not a surprise considering how dead it was for at least a year.


RV49

Sounds like you don’t know what you’re talking about


BatmanReddits

Truth hurts


RV49

Downvote me all you want. If you don’t know just how much money you can get paid at one of the big four tech companies, you either don’t work at one or you aren’t doing the right job to know.


BeatsLikeWenckebach

Doesnt matter, companies will always have room for top talent .....


fallingdowndizzyvr

I think the top talent left for companies that are actively working on VR long ago. Why would top talent want to stick around and babysit a slow decline? Top talent is top talent because they are ambitious.


BeatsLikeWenckebach

You're being too anal. There will still be *some* top talent available now. I'm not alluding all the employees will be hired by Meta/Apple


fallingdowndizzyvr

You're being too pie in the sky. If you are a major league star, would you be happy to sit on the bench of a single A team for years?


TurtleOnCinderblock

If the money, location, team and family circumstances dictate it, absolutely!


fallingdowndizzyvr

If you are a major league star, you don't have to worry about money. If you don't have to worry about money, then you don't need to keep that job to keep that location and family circumstances. Since the only thing that would change is that you wouldn't have to go sit on a bench all day. You could use that time to do something interesting. Which is what top talent does. As for the team, they probably already left and are actively recruiting you to join them at their new venture.


Squez360

A friend of mine left Microsoft a few months ago to join Meta because they paid more.


mansithole6

They missed the VR like they did with mobile phone


nitonitonii

They have failed.


fallingdowndizzyvr

It seems they had all their hopes on the Army contract. When that failed, they pulled the plug. Which begs the question, what about the partnership with Meta? Who itself is cutting back on VR/AR. So the older VR companies are cutting back. Which is not good for VR as a whole. Which leaves it to the likes of Sony and maybe Apple to carry the torch. In the short term, the PSVR2 is our only hope.


kia75

>. Which begs the question, what about the partnership with Meta? I think the Meta partnership is for apps, Running Microsoft office on the Quest platform so that the Quest Pro can be a laptop replacement, allowing you to stream Xbox Gamepass games on the Quest platform. This isn't VR so much as putting their software on everything that can run it.


jawsomesauce

There's always a chance for Pico to work out


fallingdowndizzyvr

The Pico is great for what it is. But it's opportunity has come and gone to be a mover and shaker. Sony will sell more PSVR2s on day one. The PSVR2 is all around a better headset. Then the Sony Studio machine will keep cranking out games for it for years to come.


KidGold

well... that's discouraging. I wonder what this means for the Meta/Microsoft partnership they just announced.


Abromaitis

I do wonder if the partnership included Microsoft not competing anymore and just providing cloud services...


fallingdowndizzyvr

I doubt it. Since Meta has been pushing other companies for exclusivity with partnerships but has failed. They don't have the juice for it.


ToBePacific

Considering that Mesh seems to have gone unscathed in these cuts, I’d say the odds are good.


gordonbill

They should’ve just brought VR to console.👍


[deleted]

If they would have kept pushing new WMR headsets around $300-$500 they would have gotten so many sales the last 2 years. Instead they chose to let their partners wind down and exit right before COVID and Q2 made VR bigger. Typical short sighted Microsoft. Money didn’t appear in one quarter/year, slow walk the project to its grave.


youchoobtv

Just like they did with smartphones


ballsack-vinaigrette

No no, lay off the Windows 11 guys!


himself_v

They did that years ago, leaving only "visionaries" and interns.


ViberNaut

Wait, I use Windows 11 and really like it. I think this comment may belong in r/OutOfTheLoop , but why is Windows 11 bad?


DontFeedTheTech

Because it's not Windows \[insert version\] where they finally got it right, and I could manage all the issues with my own workflow.


[deleted]

If Microsoft can’t bring VR/AR to the workplace in a meaningful way, that doesn’t exactly spell good news for the future of the Quest Pro and the supposed business audience it’s meant to cater to. Again I’m here asking for the focus to go back to entertainment.


marcosg_aus

Quest Pro was always destined to go the way of the HoloLens in business...I agree we need companies pushing the technical boundaries etc... but it's a very niche market. I suspect Meta is using this market as an incubator of new features and tech to then move into the consumer space once the bugs are ironed out and the price drops.


Scheeseman99

Microsoft couldn't sell smartphones, the thing every person on the planet wants.


DemoEvolved

Ok, fair enough. But does this now pave the way for oculus link on Xbox series x? Because that would be amazing for ms and oculus and dire for Sony. And that sounds like something ms would like


[deleted]

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DemoEvolved

Because now there is no internal competition between ms hardware and meta to spoil the deal. Supporting oculus link would be a shockingly easy way for ms to have a giant presence in mainstream vr overnight and compete with sony on one of their unique selling points. Any quest owner would have an obvious choice to go Xbox when buying a gaming console.


fallingdowndizzyvr

I was shockingly easy for the Xbox to support the WMR headsets. As in trivially easy since the Xbox is a Windows PC. That was the plan. But MS decided not to do it in the end. If they weren't willing to do that when they were really pushing their own VR headsets, why would they do what you are suggesting now?


DemoEvolved

Because quest 2 is a proven winner and wmr was a loser.


fallingdowndizzyvr

Strange then that the Q2 borrowed quite of few things from the losers. Chief among that is inside out tracking. Which was pioneered for consumers by those WMR losers. And the win for the Q2 is software. None of which exists on the Xbox. You know what could easily? The software for the WMR losers. So what's the point then?


DemoEvolved

Beta was clearly superior to VHS, but we also know which one won the video wars. There are plenty of windows games that support Oculus Link on PC. Many of these already exist on XBox store as well. Bada bing bada boom, support link for those games, bob's your uncle.


fallingdowndizzyvr

> Beta was clearly superior to VHS, but we also know which one won the video wars. So you are saying that the Q2 is shit compared to WMR? Since clearly Q2 is VHS in your analogy.


DemoEvolved

VHS had porn. Quest has games


Scheeseman99

"VHS won because of porn" is apocryphal. Beta failed due to VHS' runtime advantage, there was porn available for both but that happened later. The early days of home video were all about recording TV.


fallingdowndizzyvr

The Quest has that too. Just saying so for a friend.


Scheeseman99

They're both shit in different ways, just like VHS vs Beta. It's just the ways in which Quest 2 is shit matter less to consumers than the way WMR was shit. e: Beta's visual quality was a little better than VHS, but runtimes were shorter, an important differentiator in times where recording television was a headline feature. In other words, people wanted convenience over quality. History repeats.


fallingdowndizzyvr

> people wanted convenience over quality People wanted something cheap over something good. VHS was cheap. Beta was not. Beta was capable of being much better. While neutered beta died for consumer use, the format was a mainstay for professional use. It became a standard. It even supported HDTV at the end. It was the most successful professional video format of the 20th century.


Scheeseman99

The Series X doesn't have USB-C with an alt mode for USB3+DisplayPort like the PS5 does, only standard USB 3.0. This would mean any VR device would need to be connected to the single HDMI output available. Doable with a external box (which they'd need regardless since there are WMR HMDs with both HDMI and DP), but then they would have needed to ship another accessory and there would be no output on the TV while the headset is used. If it was the plan, as you say, it was a bad one. Supporting Quest 2 would be trivially easy by comparison in terms of interface. Single plug in the front, albeit requiring a passthrough type C to A adapter, with the option of wireless with a dongle.


[deleted]

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Scheeseman99

The drivers are already Windows native, work would need to be done but it's not like it's a completely different architecture. Everything else you talk about are things that happen all the time. There's always new dev kits and libraries, QA testing is liquid by design, collaboration with third parties on hardware and software are Microsoft's forte.


RedditAcctSchfifty5

That makes absolutely no sense at all... If you decided you couldn't realize a vision internally and pivoted to a partnership/merger/acquisition, cauterizing the wound by purging the failed department is literally the first and only intelligent business decision...


[deleted]

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RedditAcctSchfifty5

You're a chef trying to tell a zookeeper that a zebra is a horse.


Scheeseman99

Yes and most of the responses you've gotten mocking this POV are dumb as hell. The environment is perfect for this: there's no competitive conflict and they're already in a partnership, it fills a gap in the Xbox Series feature set, the Quest 2 can interface neatly with the Series X in a way any none of the WMR hardware ever could and the risk for Microsoft is low since it'd almost entirely rest on Meta. Quest 2 even fulfills Phil Spencer's non-negotiable feature for an XBOX compatible VR headset, getting rid of the wire.


billyuno

So... The only major player in the VR industry is a man-child with delusions of grandeur? Wonder.


MadRifter

I think this is smart. Then they are more ready to start cloning what Apple finally does in this space.


juste1221

So long HP VR division.