Meta's VR Headsets Have a Sweat-Sharing Problem (bloomberg.com) 52
It's the busiest shopping season of the year, but one item that doesn't appear to be flying off store shelves is Meta Platforms's Quest brand of virtual-reality headsets. Part of the reason is that many shoppers aren't comfortable trying one on in a store. From a report: The headsets are prone to collect dirt and grime and smear your makeup. During the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, people were especially resistant to put them on in stores, even though Meta paid to have cleaners on hand to sanitize the headsets between each use, said a former Meta employee who wasn't authorized to speak publicly and asked not to be identified.
The health emergency is over, but many people are still weirded out by the idea of putting on a VR headset in public. Meta sells the Quest in the US through the stores of mobile carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon. The thinking was, people are already trying out and buying other gadgets there. But picking up a phone that other people have touched feels different than strapping something to your face that other people have strapped to theirs. In-store sales of Quest headsets at mobile carriers' locations are very low, according to former employees of Reality Labs, the division that builds Meta's VR products.
The health emergency is over, but many people are still weirded out by the idea of putting on a VR headset in public. Meta sells the Quest in the US through the stores of mobile carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon. The thinking was, people are already trying out and buying other gadgets there. But picking up a phone that other people have touched feels different than strapping something to your face that other people have strapped to theirs. In-store sales of Quest headsets at mobile carriers' locations are very low, according to former employees of Reality Labs, the division that builds Meta's VR products.
Disposable masks (Score:5, Interesting)
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This.
Public restrooms have had paper ass gaskets for years.
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This.
Public restrooms have had paper ass gaskets for years.
Has any doctor actually made the claim that ass gaskets actually prevent anything?
No, I'm not referring to studies sponsored by ass gasket peddlers.
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ass gaskets actually prevent anything?
Hovering. And the resulting deposits that miss the bowl and are left on the seat.
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Honestly, I'm *constantly* baffled by this.
COVID - along with influenza, RSV, colds, etc - spreads overwhelmingly through the air. Not surfaces. But most people do absolutely nothing to stop spread through the air while freaking out about surfaces.
Stand more than a meter away from the people you're talking to? Haha, lol, why?
BUT YOU BETTER USE THE HAND SANITIZER BEFORE YOU TOUCH FOOD!
Use at least MERV 13 filters in your building, with a good airflow rate and no unfiltered recirculation? Haha, lol, why?
DI
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COVID - along with influenza, RSV, colds, etc - spreads overwhelmingly through the air. Not surfaces. But most people do absolutely nothing to stop spread through the air while freaking out about surfaces.
Droplets land on surfaces, people touch surfaces, people touch their face, mouth, eyes etc ... Maybe transmission is less common than directly by air, but people touch their about 23 times an hour and it can cause problems. From Slowing the spread of COVID-19: Tips from an IU behavioral scientist [iu.edu] -- and other sources [google.com]:
Research shows that we touch our faces about 23 times per hour, and this creates a major path for the spread of infection.
Also Frequency of hand-to-head, -mouth, -eyes, and -nose contacts for adults and children during eating and non-eating macro-activities [nature.com]:
Hand-to-face contacts are important behaviors that can result in dermal and non-dietary exposures. Hand-to-mouth contacts are especially of concern when considering exposures to chemicals (e.g., lead and pesticides) and microbial pathogens with fecal-oral transmission. Hand-to-eye and -nose contacts are of concern especially for respiratory pathogens, such as rhinovirus, influenza viruses, and coronaviruses. [emphasis mine]
Note that last bit I highlighted ...
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Forgot to include that this is why people are told to Wash Their Hands.
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First off, "tips from a behavioral scientist" is not the medical reference you were looking for.
The CDC took down or relocated a lot of their COVID content earlier this year, but this [archive.org] was their primary reference page on surface transmission. Quote:
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First off, "tips from a behavioral scientist" is not the medical reference you were looking for.
Did you see the second article noted from the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology on Nature? Also, there are many, many other articles listed in the Google search I noted that talk about how often people touch their faces, etc... As I also noted, this sort of thing is why people are told to wash their hands, especially before touching their face, eyes, nose or mouth. Also, people cough and sneeze in/onto their hands, then touch stuff, like door handles, which other people then t
They are called Face Condoms (Score:1)
No really, that's what they are called - for VR devices this is indeed a solved problem [google.com], you have thin sheets you put over the padding and throw away after.
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I thought this was standard - when the Microsoft Store held an VR open house (this was way before the pandemic - think the GTX1080 was THE video card everyone wanted), they had disposable paper overlays on the HTC Vive headset they were demonstrating because no one wants anyone else's ick on this.
And this was pre-pandemic. They even sprayed and wiped down all the headset after eve
Re: A better facemask is a must anyway (Score:1)
When friends try my headset i switch the facemask, takes 2 seconds with the magnetic clip, and i really dont want others' sweat on my soft geekvr, so they will simply get to use the uncomfortable original :)
Playing vr games often causes sweating more than normally, while perfume, smoke or deodorant smells can stick, and you anyway need to buy a better facemask if you play for more than an hour at a time
Apart from any small risk, the eye area does feel like a private space, and would use alcohol on the contr
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VR (Score:5, Interesting)
My second purchase after a Vive Pro was a bunch of the removable velcro face-shield bumpers.
Running a games night? Give each player one, it takes seconds to rip off the previous guy's and put your own on. They cost a pittance. And given that the switchover time between players is often a minute or even more as they adjust everything, it really doesn't hinder anything.
If Meta can't work out how to do this, I question their competence in basic life skills, let alone VR headset design.
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The trend seems to be towards individual swappable pads. Some manufacturers offer to make a custom one for your face. You can get ones with corrective lenses built in too.
That seems to be the way VR headsets are going, i.e. personal devices. They are already well into the mid-range phone price bracket.
A good fit is important not only for comfort, but for blocking out ambient light. The less light leakage, the less brightness the screen needs, i.e. the more battery life it has and the better the contrast.
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If Meta can't work out how to do this
You've got this wrong. Meta can work out how to do this, but they tried to capitalise on it. All previous Meta HMDs had design models available prior to release. Aftermarket plastic / pleather facial interfaces launched the same day as the headset. The headsets in VR labs and demonstrations often had these no problem. But not for this release. For the Quest 3 they specifically did *NOT* release the models. Why?
Well look no further than their "accessories page". With silicon facial interfaces for $70. Or rep
Goes to show how uneducated people are (Score:3)
The dirtiest objects on your body are your hands. That is where all the germs are and where they all spread from. Your forehead and face do not touch anything, all day. There are hardly any germs there, relatively.
Yet, people have no qualms at all touching electronic things other people touched in any store.
But putting something on your face that was on someone else's face? NO WAY!
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Your forehead and face do not touch anything, all day, except your hands :)
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The dirtiest objects on your body are your hands. That is where all the germs are and where they all spread from. Your forehead and face do not touch anything, all day. There are hardly any germs there, relatively.
Yet, people have no qualms at all touching electronic things other people touched in any store.
But putting something on your face that was on someone else's face? NO WAY!
Ok then, go and rub faces with a stranger.
Don't confuse normal (and more rational than you realize) squeamishness with a lack of education.
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The reason you don't rub faces with a stranger is cultural not hygiene, There are cultures that rub noses when greeting people. If you are concerned about hygiene don't get close to the person at all, wave at the from a distance. Also if you are relating this to COVID then you are breathing on a person when you touch faces, not so if your face touches a surface that another persons face previously touched.
I don't quite get this sanitizing everything, I would not be at all surprised if the chemicals used to
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The reason you don't rub faces with a stranger is cultural not hygiene, There are cultures that rub noses when greeting people. If you are concerned about hygiene don't get close to the person at all, wave at the from a distance. Also if you are relating this to COVID then you are breathing on a person when you touch faces, not so if your face touches a surface that another persons face previously touched.
Consider the following. Most people in N.A. aren't from cultures that normalize touching faces/nose rubbing. So we need to consider the following:
1) Is it really the case those other cultures do that with strangers? Or is that just a misconception and it's only with a small handful of people.
2) Are special tricks they use to protect themselves from infection that I don't know about?
3) Did COVID change the rules about this in a way I don't realize?
4) Are there other risks I'm not considering, like lice?
etc,
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First I am not from north America either, I am from New Zealand where they most certainly do it with strangers. They did stop doing during COVID though.
Common cleaning products also things like chlorine, which is quite toxic, while I am not saying don't clean, everything in moderation. Trying to get everything germ free is a pointless task, that cleaning product companies encourage you to do, fear is a great motivator which can easily go to irrational extents.
I would also not agree with you are probably be
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Heck, I moved to Lima, Peru from the state of Washington when I was 16. The biggest cultural shock of all was the fact that I was now expected to greet every woman in every social situation with a kiss. There was a lot of craziness in moving to Peru as a gringo at the height of Sendero Luminoso. I was threatened with guns, I saw buildings that were demolished with explosives, and I even saw people who had been slaughtered and nailed to posts for the crime of voting. Nothing was quite as disconcerting a
Re: Goes to show how uneducated people are (Score:2)
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Let me introduce you to face mites [npr.org]!
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So? Nobody said your face didn't have anything on it, just less than your hands. You can get freaked out by all the life that happens around you, or you can just accept we live on a planet with microorganisms all around us. Our bodies are quite capable of handling them and some of them are even essential to our lives. Since I, and probably you don't know many or even any people with faces mite problems, and almost every adult has them its highly unlikely they pose a risk to the vast majority of people.
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I wont touch a controller in a store much less put something on my head. I see a lot of people shit and not wash their hands.
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That is why I pick my nose before I shake hands with someone.
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It's way easier to clean your hands after touching things in a store than it is to clean your whole face. Never mind that there are parts on your face like mouth and eyes where you exactly don't want any germs.
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The dirtiest objects on your body are your hands.
That is objectively false. Most faces are rarely washed, have food wiped on them, are in constant contact with person's hands, are an outlet for not only germs but bacteria that the body is actively trying to expel, pores on the face produce an incredibly amount of oil, more-so than most of the rest of the body, and that's before we talk about multiple layers of different *coloured* products people wipe in their face.
Most of the truly nasty things you get on your hands come from interactions with your face
Feeling exposed (Score:2)
"The health emergency is over, but many people are still weirded out by the idea of putting on a VR headset in public."
I have a friend who is somewhat of a public figure. He is used to being in contact and touching other people he doesn't quite know. Yet, he is very resistant to using a VR headset in public, because he can't read the people's reactions around him. He says he feels like being blindfolded naked in a room with strangers, with people seeing everything you do, while you are exposed there, half i
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Bingo!
I'm not convinced, at all, the problem is people being afraid to try on a VR headset because of germs. *Some* people will be like that, but they're the same crowd that won't touch the demo "over the ear headphones" most electronics shops have out, along a shelf, where they sell them.
It's far more of a problem realizing that you're standing in the middle of an aisle or in some narrow designated space to use the headsets, putting the thing on and losing all awareness of what's around you until you take
Just a Zuck excuse for low sales (Score:3, Insightful)
People aren't flocking to these VR headset because they don't do anything they care about. They serve no real role, provide no value.
And oh yeah, trying out a used one is gross, too. lol
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I own the last model. It provided no value.
They don't sell because exactly as we just agreed, "most people don't need one" and this is a general use home device for entertainment. There are specialty higher end options available for specialty fields. For example, no doctor is performing remote surgery with a Zuck VR headset.
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I own the last model. It provided no value.
You bought it for the wrong reason.
"most people don't need one"
Entertainment is not a "need". You bought it for the wrong reason.
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Gosh your response was informative and added a lot to this conversation. Roughly the same as "neener neener you're wrong, you poopy head!"
Do better. That was a waste of bits.
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Do better. That was a waste of bits.
That's simply because you're not smarter than anyone here. If you want me to help you understand why your life is going so wrong let us help you, but first you'll need to get your head out of your arse.
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Lmao, now you go even lower and resort to pure trolling when you get called out.
Headphones (Score:2)
Back in the day here in the UK big record stores like Virgin, HMV and Tower Records would have booths where you could sample some CDs using headphones they supplied. I only did it a couple of times because frankly the phones were greasy and disgusting. I can't imagine how bad something that covers half your head would end up like after a few dozen people have tried it so I can fully understand why few people want to do it.
The health emergency is not over... (Score:1)
"The health emergency is over"
No, it's not. According to Statistics Canada, more people died of COVID-19 in Canada in 2022 than in 2021 or 2020. The emergency isn't over, we're just ignoring it.
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Maybe Canada is still in the middle of a crisis, but the US is not. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-da... [cdc.gov]
Deaths, infections, and hospitalizations are all way down compared to previous years.
COVID will *always* be with us, it will never go away entirely, just like the "Spanish Flu" is still with us 100 years later.
This is a lame excuse. (Score:2)
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No. They are assuming people who want to buy it will want to try it first which is incredibly obvious for a toy in that price range. I would not recommend anyone EVER buy a VR headset without trying one first, and I'm probably one of the industry's biggest proponents. (and I've had several people go out and buy one right after trying mine, because ignorance can only get you to the point of experience.)
Fitting Rooms (Score:2)
Anyone who is "reluctant" to slap the device onto their face "in public" should just be escorted to a back room for their Conversion. All fear will be eliminated. It is the next level of mankind. We are human-point-2. Every Tuesday, every citizen will receive a free upgrade. You will become like us.
No, this is just a Meta-generated excuse (Score:2)
The article doesn't give any supporting evidence for this claim - it smacks of PR desperation. Zuck contacts his PR team - "the headsets aren't selling! We need some spin!"
It seems far more likely that people just aren't that interested in the headset.
Maybe the market is saturated (Score:2)
Everybody who wants a VR headset probably already has one.
LOL, OK. Meta's headsets have a VOC problem. (Score:2)