cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

REC ROOM Vs. HORIZON

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

Now with the new investment of $100m in REC ROOM, we are about to see a major development in the platform that started the Customer-Created platform.


The question has to be how many will use HORIZON and how many will favor REC ROOM?

Note - As this latest version of the forum software is still a bit janky I have yet to be able to work the polls, so will just run this as a conversation.

https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959
36 REPLIES 36

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

I've actually never used Rec Room, but hearing all these complaints on Reddit about illmannered Quest kids in VR online games, I wonder how Facebook will get thousands of 8 to 10 year old kids to behave in Horizon, without having to ban them all. And similar considerations for a large scale Rec Room. I think I need a lot of popcorn when Horizon arrives to watch how such a giant scale social experiment turns out 😉

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

Yes had heard the same. I never continued using Rec Room after I first evaluated it in 2016 - remember this was the first of its kind after CyberLip, and had a normal and VR variant at that point. 

I have been watching the "Soft Roll Out" on Horizon - occasional Beta invites, and have been interested by what was promised, then surprised on what was actually achieved. The need for such a level of curation seems monstrous, and unsustainable. Rumors it may take a longer route to roll out, but if they had not expected this they were badly directed.

Lets hope that at Oculus/Facebook Connect they reveal a roadmap?
 

https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

I don't think it is very realistic to portray a choice between Rec Room vs Horizon. People can enjoy both. It's not as if players will be forced to choose between one or another. Each one will have their pro's and con's, as everything else does in the history of computing and software. 

 

I am surprised though to see Rec Room being touted as somehow better than Horizon considering how terrible Rec Room is in terms of its reputation for attracting some very "noisy children." 

 

I've spent a lot of time in Rec Room, and it's easy to avoid the noise by creating private rooms with your friends. And this privacy extends to all the features Rec Room has to offer. Facebook's Horizon will be no different. It's not very difficult to implement at all. I see no reason to take this good news for Rec Room as an opportunity to put a negative spin on Horizon, Facebook, or Oculus.

 

This is good news for everyone involved.


@RuneSR2 wrote:

I've actually never used Rec Room, but hearing all these complaints on Reddit about illmannered Quest kids in VR online games, I wonder how Facebook will get thousands of 8 to 10 year old kids to behave in Horizon, without having to ban them all. And similar considerations for a large scale Rec Room. I think I need a lot of popcorn when Horizon arrives to watch how such a giant scale social experiment turns out 


 

This is a good example of how reading things on reddit doesn't really equate to a real world experience. As you said, you've never actually played Rec Room so you can't actually see how all those Rec Room complaints are easily avoided with the simple Private Room features that the app offers. Nobody has to get banned, since the software helps remedy these features.

 

Also, there's an age requirement to use Facebook, which is 13 and above. Not that people will follow the rule, but your comment about 8/10 year olds contradicts Facebook's age of use requirement.

 

Overall, I think the news of Rec Room is being a bit wasted in this thread, since the otherwise good news is being used as fuel to talk negative about Facebook/Oculus and their software. There's a lot of good/constructive conversation to be had from this news. None of which is being offered as of yet. And at a bear minimum, users should at least try the software before condemning it.

Nekto2
Superstar

Great news to VR! 🙂

That means world see VR as a promise and worth of investing into!

 

So why you brought the HORIZON as an example to compare? It is great but still in development. So we will see where it will head to and which cool ideas would be implemented.

 

You could compare Rec to VRchat (or other social places).

VRchat has lots of social games inside. You could see many people there. And you could create private instance if rooms/games there also.

 

As for Rec popularity it will depends on lots of small issues. You could see a post recently on Rec inducing motion sickness. It will stop part of people using it (and their friends?). If Rec will add more anti-sickness features it will help a lot. There should be "artificial nose feature!!!" 😄 It helps to get a "fixed" object in VR. And it could ask "why are you stopping playing? is it because of motion sickness?".

But not only that. One can't connect to Rec at all some time! And they have no automatic error collection so they will know that for some people their game is useless because of their protocol architecture. Hope they will find that out 🙂

 

I will agree that finding nice people to play with is a mast have feature.

They could even set $1 ticket to join to special rooms so there will not be lot's of kids. There you could meet with nice people and add them to friends to play in private free rooms then.

Or they could brain storm other ways of finding right people with a community.

One way is instead of blocking some user to set +3,+2,+1...-1,-2,-3 on a user so matching algorithm will less likely put you into the same room with a person (or in opposite if "+"). But that will not be "friend" or "block" or rating. That is just how you like him and not characteristic of a person. If you set -3 to some kid that is not meant that some other kid will not put +3 and they will play together. So... kids are growing, so you may wish to autoclean that "-3" after 5 years 🙂

 

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

I think the HORIVON vs. REC ROOM was a good competitive example - both receiving vast new investment, both now looking to create a dedicated supporting environment with unique immersive elements playing to the strengths of the platform. Using other "social places" would miss the point that Horizon and Rec Room have received investment, while the others are more or less self-funded.

I understand that point to Horizon at the moment may be uncomfortable as we have yet to really see it in its full colors with only a few of us invited to partake in the Beta testing.

https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959

 


@kevinw729 wrote:

I understand that point to Horizon at the moment may be uncomfortable as we have yet to really see it in its full colors with only a few of us invited to partake in the Beta testing.


 

Nah, while it does feel nice to be in a Beta, there are more than just a few partaking in the Horizon's Beta. There is a Horizon's Group on Facebook that I read regularly. Plenty of Horizon's Beta Testers are sharing their experiences and works. From imagery to videos. So far a vast majority of individuals are reporting great things about Horizons. I imagine that those Beta Testers sharing their good views on Horizons would be uncomfortable for others who are hoping Horizons turns out less successful.

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

For anyone who is legitimately interested in Horizon's ongoing progress, there's a great community on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/horizoncommunity

 

Lots of positive experiences from actual hands-on Horzon's users and creators. Some examples below.

 

 

image.pngimage.png

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

Of course we need to see Horizon in action before passing any judgement - this is just a loose discussion about some pros and cons. 

Facebook seems very aware of protecting users from insults and/or personal attacks, and may be swift to punish ill-mannered behaviors - and maybe threats about banning accounts will work. 

 

One Reddit user wrote this about Horizon - and I do hope we're not going to see such things in Horizon:

 

"Horizon will be a children's playground if Venues is any indication. Just kids everywhere.

I installed it to check it out the other day, met a guy who was 82 telling me he used to gig with Nat King Cole and Sinatra, and then he got surrounded by kids saying they were 11. One kid asked if he knows any Tekashi 69 on piano. Another kid asked him to stroke his pole. I tried again later in the night around 1130pm, still children everywhere.

This will be Horizons, too, if Facebook just leaves it unmoderated and doesn't care about age of their users."

 

 - but again, I'm sure Facebook will not leave Horizon unmoderated, and just how the moderation works when thousands of users get access will be interesting. 2c. 

 

Btw, I have no idea what "Tekashi 69" is about - but Google says it's this - viewer discretion may be advised - and it's surely NSFW (and probably not easy to play on a piano 😉  )

 

Spoiler

 

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"