Trying Meta software on the Quest Pro
Second part of my experience trying to use Meta’s “metaverse” software and their Quest Pro headset. The first part reviewed the hardware, this part looks at the Meta software experience, the third part will be about some third-party apps. My overall view of the hype can be read here.
Summary: horrifically bad software, like flashing back to the early days of the web. Don’t believe me? Watch this.
Setup
The first step of the process is, of course, some setup and configuration. I had expected that powering on the headset would play some inspiring deep 3D fly-through experience or at least some high-resolution images of possible uses. But no, a few dialog boxes float in front of a low-resolution silvery curtain. Yes, dialog boxes, what did you expect, flying cars? And the “ignore the man behind the curtain” vibe was very strong.
Most of the setup was about adjusting the lenses to my eyes and the headset to my head, and nothing was dedicated explaining the controllers. I wear glasses for reading, but I can’t find the sharpest settings with either the glasses on or off. It’s physically difficult to adjust the front setting while watching something that says “center the line.” This is not helped by the fact there is no line, but a kind of slider thing which may or may not move as you adjust the stiff rubber knob somewhere in behind the virtual world you can see.
Next is poking your fingers inside the headset to spread out, or close in, the lenses . This time I’m always asked to move them to 69, as there’s a number, in a completely different black-and-white style over the other dialog box, but that’s not the best focus. The process is very clunky, with a constant risk of poking yourself in the eye, or worse, putting big finger prints on those lovely pancake lenses.
Eventually I give up on perfect and try and move on, which now requires a log in. However I am asked to go through this tune up process at the start of every app. Is it just my big head or does everyone get this?
Authentication
Apparently I had created an Oculus account at some point in the past, so it asked me to login with that, wouldn’t let me, then told me I had to create a Meta account. The instructions are in the headset, but have to be carried out on a computer. So I have to somehow transfer the URL to the screen that I can’t see. This time it’s obvious, but as we’ll see later some of these interactions require you to be able to see both the virtual and real worlds simultaneously.
The Meta web page login tells me that I can’t use that email address as it contains assets that need to be transfer so please login to Oculus. Oculus says to login as meta as the assets can’t be transferred. There was no way out of this loop other than contacting Meta support who might respond in 48 hours it said. Rather than delay I just made a new account with a different email address and this allowed me to login, but if I had paid for various games in the past I would have lost them.
Keying in identities using a laser beam pointing at a virtual keyboard is slow and painful. Yes, you can attach a Bluetooth keyboard but only after you are signed in.
Avatars
Next I tried to set up an avatar that looked vaguely like me. It proved difficult. I seem to have a face type that the designers had not considered. And the choice of wardrobe was limited. At least it didn’t enforce a beard as I found in Decentraland guest mode. The avatars have legs, but that’s the last time you’ll see them. The selection was really disappointing if you want to look somewhat close to your own real face and shape. Maybe it is easier if you want to adopt a different persona in the virtual worlds, but I doubt if many colleagues would be comfortable if you turned up to an enterprise meeting as your weekend cosplay identity.
Home and App Homes
What is really not clear is where “home” is as the Meta Horizon apps — if they work — have a “home” each. At start up find yourself in something that looks a little like the house in Incredibles 2 relocated to Rivendell, not that you can actually explore the house. You can look round, but as far as I can tell you are stuck in one place. I’ve tried pressing all the buttons on the controllers, serially and severally, to see if I could move but so far nothing.
Once you are in your “home” your hands appear as disembodied grey ghosts holding the controllers. No help with what the controllers and their numerous buttons do is offered. I know I keep going on about this, but those of us who don’t use game controllers need help knowing what the buttons do — especially when you can’t actually see them. I eventually discovered that the button with the fat O on it brings up the Oculus menu as mentioned before. Surly the time between renaming everything Meta and Quest to shipping was sufficient for the designers to change the logo to the Meta infinity sort of thing?
Anyway, this menu popped up, and assuming it’s actually not occluded by a wall, you can open up a list of apps, including Settings which lets you switch to a different home. I quite like Mountain Cabin or something like that, which has a random blanket lying untidily in a corner for no apparent reason. The wood finish is quite nice, but standing what feels like face against it, as I always seem to find myself, is not comfortable. And you certainly can’t see the menus through it. Seriously. Each time I appear in the room I am facing along the wall and the menu pops up half way through the wall, or worse, entirely invisible.
Meta’s Apps
Horizons turns out to come in two types: Workrooms and Worlds. Workrooms was plain crashing the last time I tried it, but the first time it worked, at least in the sense of not crashing. The first thing I notice is that my hands have now turned a ghostly white and the controllers have vanished. Initially I found that the thumbstick let me move around, but this didn’t happen the second time.
First time in you are shown that if you turn your right hand upside down a ring appears and if you do something with it (not entirely clear if firing the “last” from your left hand of poking at it or something else) a menu pops up allowing you to take a selfie, including video and go to your safe room. Pressing any of the controller buttons returns to the disembodied grey hands and visible controllers, destroying any illusion of having real hands.
Arriving in the Workroom I have a variety of empty spaces hidden behind some huge training panels floating in front of me, much too close. It seems that everything is either too close or too far away. Once you discover how to move you always end up too close and have to take a virtual step back.
I could make a virtual desk in a large, empty space and stare out at a virtual landscape. Why does every virtual location either look like Dubai or some “office park” planted in the middle of nowhere? And why are the interiors so low resolution and boring? Anyone who has been in a top-end office knows that they can be filled with fine materials, interesting furniture and cool art. Why do we have to be in something that looks like every virtual asset was procured at the lowest price? And what do I do with a virtual desk, other than pass through it like some digital wraith. There was no demo area where I could pretend to interact with other avatars — just empty space. And now it crashes on startup.
Moving on to Worlds, similar sort of experience, except that instead of being in a clunky 1970s office it’s a clunky sort of plaza thing where you can have people teleport literally on top of you if you don’t move quickly enough. Walking around has either “slide” using the thumbstick, or jumping about by pointing at where you want to go and clicking something. Sort of as you can’t see the controllers. Even jumping to a point won’t let you go through obstacles, and each set of steps needs to be handled separately — you can’t just jump right to the top.
At least there were people in this world, one group discussing how to cook pasta including Assasin’s Spaghetti. It is very odd to see a group of disembodied heads, hands and bodies discussing the meaning of al dente. I didn’t feel inclined to join them and in any case the way they were standing precluded joining them. There are a few, bad, games in the space, and access to the “Soapstone Comedy Club” where people can make fools of themselves in front of no one. Soapstone appears in a few places. There were a couple of concerts in there too. Not quite sure what the correct way of getting into them is but it seems you can crash through the poster and you end up in a dark, grubby-looking tunnel that takes you into a the same space for all the “live” events. Given that many performance venues have some truly gorgeous, intricate designed lobbies, why did Meta opt for something that looks like stretched black cheesecloth? I’d previous found myself watching a wildly out of scale boxing match from a gantry like structure with stairs and balconies. No sitting down. This structure was the same for Billie Elish who was in reasonable resolution and Young Thug whose video was reminiscent of video on 2G phones. Interestingly the video recording does not show the video of Young Thug.
Why no back?
Given how easy it is to land up in the wrong place, a back button would be super useful. There isn’t one. The B button on some controllers works as back in games, but not here. I often found myself clicking mindlessly on the controllers to try and get back to where I had been previously, to no avail. Nor is there any visible navigation or virtual affordance on the alleged capabilities within the environments. Clicking the fat O button allows Quit or Resume, but that’s about it other than recording video and taking photos. Sometimes the Menu button will provide contextual options, but not that I could find in the Meta apps.
Which click? How many? On what?
Beginners using computers often struggle with knowing when to click or double click on items. This becomes much worse when you have 12 potential things to press or double press. My instinct was always to pull the main trigger while pointing the laser at the button I wished to activate. Sometimes I had to click multiple times or start playing with the other buttons.
Given that the controllers sometimes vanish and just leave your hands, and other apps often render the controllers as different shapes, there is no consistency of operation. This desperately needs a style and design guide as provided for most platforms, including Windows, Android and Apple. These guides ensure that users can move from app to app without having to guess how the interface elements work.
Slow!
Another general point is that the environment is slow. Moving between apps takes far longer than we’ve been used to for the last two decades, and this sense of slowness is reinforced by not being able to see or do anything while you wait for the environment to load. It wouldn’t be so bad if the worlds were massively complex, but they aren’t. The headset comes with a huge amount of memory and fast processors, why is it so slow?
Buggy!
Clearly the entire thing has been rushed out due to management hubris. There are small bugs everywhere — for example the menus being hidden behind walls — and apps often just crash, dumping you back in the lobby area. That the platform and its apps have not been tested thoroughly is horribly clear. Twenty years ago I wrote about how the web was the land that test forgot. Ten years ago I wrote about how the web has become more reliable and standardized, but that mobile was going through the low-quality phase. Now I find myself writing about how this $15bn metaverse platform has skimped on basic testing. As many people are writing, all too few people are learning from previous mistakes.
Live action struggles!
Should you have managed to wade through my report here, you might like to watch me stumble around in realtime. I promise you that I am not trying to fail deliberately.
Your really have to wonder where the $20bn or so spent already went.
