I've regularly done 2+ hours of light activity (e.g. mini golf, social hangouts) with my Quest 3 without issues, though I will note this is with a third-party head strap specifically designed to be way more ergonomic and comfortable than anything first-party from Meta or Apple [1].
A lot of the physical downsides here are basically self-inflicted by companies trying really hard to hide the "nerd factor" necessary for comfort, to the detriment of the actual user experience.
Yeah industrial design and ergonomics tend not to have the same goals. Personally I was able to use a Quest 2 for ~1hr without too much issue, but it's not something I'd want to do on the regular.
The big product marketing question is what niche do headsets fit in, and thus whats the ideal single session and daily usage goal for a headset?
If it's about replacing laptops or another high usage scenario, that's a pretty high bar, definitely too high for the next 1-2yrs. I imagine some people at Apple wore dummy see-through goggle ergo tester units of varying weights around all day to get at these numbers :) Wonder what they came back with. Even still, that only gets at weight vs the perceptual ergonomics, skin-feel, etc.
The issue I see with headsets is that there may not be a lot of improvement possible without compromising durability or other factors necessary when going to market. E.g. what if they can't get it below ~400g (making AVP ~40% lighter), but to make the headset comfortable for most people for the usage scenario that makes them mass market (e.g. 2h+ sessions daily) requires ~250-300g?
its not really self inflicted when it literally determines how many sales you will have. Plenty of people are put off of VR because of the form factor. Quest looks like a nerdy toy, which does indeed influence who buys and/or uses it
[1]: https://www.bobovr.com/products/bobovr-m3-pro
A lot of the physical downsides here are basically self-inflicted by companies trying really hard to hide the "nerd factor" necessary for comfort, to the detriment of the actual user experience.