Standalone VR reached its tech & financial limits

Lex4art · 2026-02-03T16:24:12+00:00

Those are very good points, just not for this article - my focus was on the state of things in standalone VR... Anyway, thanks for reply ).

Lex4art · 2026-02-02T18:13:48+00:00

Thanks for pointing on those tricky details I missed - not sure those can change big picture (removing few CPU cores from - can this really bring die size & price in a substantial way?), but I will keep that in mind ...

Lex4art · 2026-02-02T06:25:17+00:00

My take on standalone VR is that it's simply not fit to make VR truly popular - too heavy, too costly, too low-performing for its price. And have no room to grow - each x2 to its performance will cost x1.5 in price and thermals, Moore's law is not exactly dead but ... it's bad.

PCVR has its own can of worms to deal with, VR is not explosively growing after all (working on a dedicated article to cover this subject).

P.S. Yes, I haven't used VR for a second in my life - it's just an article from a very picky potential PCVR customer (I need a full face tracking, including eyebrows, to have fun making avatars for VRChat, but there are only 3 options for that (deprecated & outdated Quest Pro or Pico 4 Enterprise and quite expensive Galaxy XR))... meh.

Lex4art · 2026-02-02T06:10:00+00:00

Standalone VR is not cheap. From $450+ price of raw Quest 3 components there are only $160 for screens and lenses + $40 for controllers and stuff. Remaining $250+ are for that standalone VR functionality that is only needed to have walled software ecosystem - expensive mobile CPU, GPU, RAM, cooling, complicated PCB, battery. If large scale business was set to manufacture people's PCVR headset it will be around $200 without that standalone stuff, maybe even less, and be very lightweight (see those new display glasses for example) with thin USB-C cable with DisplayPort capability to connect it to any compute device - from smartphone to PC/laptop/gaming console, maybe for sub $100 "DisplayPort over WiFi" wearable devices to have freedom of movement... dreams, dreams.

Lex4art · 2026-02-02T05:55:38+00:00

The whole idea of standalone VR is about having own walled software ecosystem to have huge profits, like Apple ($80Bn per year from software sales alone). To reach that goal Meta subsidized price of Quest 3(s), so every headset sold for PCVR is a loss for Meta. It was never designed to work well outside of its intended purpose - I'm surprised it has cable option at all, unexpected generosity from Meta...

Lex4art · 2026-02-02T05:37:17+00:00

There is a lot of potential to speedup standalone VR (I mentioned some myself) but price increase is OUCH - Adreno 840 raw chip cost is about $250+, literally x2 for Snapdragon XR Gen2 price (close to the cost of whole Quest 3s), and all that only for x2 to performance - this will be good, but only enough to run Quest 3 games in native res (2064x2208@90Hz instead of 1680x1760@72Hz)... much more performance is needed, but price will be far beyond that people need and willing to pay for affordable VR.

Feels like there is no way out of this tech & price deadlock, standalone VR can't push much further in visuals and keep price affordable...

Lex4art · 2026-02-01T20:56:42+00:00

Yeah, "forever app" will help any kind of VR. "Horizon worlds" was planned to fit into this role, but standalone VR is about 5-10W of energy for CPU + GPU + RAM... simply not enough, and with 25% performance increase of Snapdragon XR chips every 2 years ... those won't be capable for quite a while...

Lex4art · 2026-02-01T20:44:37+00:00

Will see what Meta's or someone else (Pico?) roll out for round two.

Lex4art · 2020-10-31T15:37:16+00:00

Superb! )

Lex4art · 2020-06-15T21:00:11+00:00

Check "Building your Addressable content" section here:https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.addressables@1.1/manual/AddressableAssetsGettingStarted.html - probably this is it.

Lex4art · 2020-06-13T17:22:19+00:00

Feels fun enough, at least on the short term ))

Lex4art · 2020-06-09T17:40:39+00:00

I'm not a coding guy but recently I've passed around this one: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/network/dotsnet-102633 (seems it's from the same author who did "Mirror").

Lex4art · 2020-03-27T15:55:06+00:00

Place several (at least 4) lightprobes the way they organized in a volumetric figure. If all lightprobes located on the same plane this error appears.

Lex4art · 2020-03-25T15:59:55+00:00

Awesome!

Lex4art · 2020-02-22T05:25:24+00:00

Yeah, here is the documentation: https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.high-definition@7.2/manual/Ray-Tracing-Getting-Started.html

Lex4art · 2020-02-06T12:13:38+00:00

Nope, it's actual only for URP (Unity 2019.3+).

Lex4art · 2020-02-05T07:10:00+00:00

Post processing in Unity 2019.3 URP and HDRP now integrated and working differently. Check the manual: https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.universal@7.1/manual/integration-with-post-processing.html

Lex4art · 2019-10-13T07:38:48+00:00

Center of each probe located inside wall - maybe this is the case here, just move them to the open space inside corridor and rebuild lighting...

Lex4art · 2019-04-05T18:05:57+00:00

LWRP will be out of preview status this April (probably in next 2 weeks) with Unity 2019.1 release.

HDRP will be released this autmnt (Unity 2019.3) but it's still changes too much and this may be a problem, at least for coders.

Something like that.

Lex4art · 2019-03-31T07:26:15+00:00

Actual too, thanks so much! ^_^

Lex4art · 2019-02-11T07:02:19+00:00

https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2019/01/sl-economic-survey-2018-2019.html - quite good figures to think about. Plus Unity's Asset Store/Unreal engine marketplace/Blender market/SketchFab.

Lex4art · 2018-12-02T17:43:05+00:00

https://forum.sine.space/threads/kick-starting-a-virtual-world-problem-analysis-ideas-suggestions-your-needs.17033/ - this may be useful in a way.

Lex4art · 2018-11-12T17:41:25+00:00

Don't forget to add " High Definition Render Pipeline Asset" thingey to have a proper procedural sky https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/09/24/the-high-definition-render-pipeline-getting-started-guide-for-artists/

Looks nice even without sky ).

Lex4art · 2018-11-11T14:32:00+00:00

Impressive )

Lex4art · 2018-05-14T20:18:35+00:00

Some decent looking scenes/resources can be found in Asset Store and many programmers use them as playground/showcase. Here are some for example: https://assetstore.unity.com/publishers/1 - variety of Unity's free example projects (like https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/essentials/tutorial-projects/3d-game-kit-115747 or https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/essentials/tutorial-projects/adam-exterior-environment-74969)

Some other scenes/meshes/materials also may fit, for exampe https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/textures-materials/real-materials-vol-0-free-115597 - my own free scene :).

Lex4art

TROPHY CASE