> Beyond our core community, we expected it would be positive.
> If you actually understand [Facebook’s] vision of letting us be who we’re going to be, just like they wanted to let Instagram be who they are.
The reason people don't get this -- or at least, why I don't get it -- and thus responded negatively, is because VR should have nothing to do with Facebook's vision, and Facebook -- or social gaming in general -- should have nothing to do with Oculus' vision.
Gamers cared about Oculus and Rift because they felt Oculus was innovating in the interest of gaming as a whole. But being bought out by Facebook makes it seem that Oculus is "selling out" to someone that is historically more interested in monopolizing innovation than they are in gaming, or at least the type of gaming that Oculus was originally innovating towards.
It's hard for many to see anything under the umbrella of Facebook doing a service to gaming -- look at the direction social gaming has taken us.
This is how I see it, in my admittedly limited view, anyway. And since the views of those "beyond their core community" are likely similarly limited, it makes sense that others may have a similar reaction.
So I'm baffled how Oculus is surprised by the reaction.
This is the part that stuck out for me as well. They quite plainly state that they knew this would alienate their existing audience, and that they were perfectly fine with that.
And in the end, it's their choice anyway. People respond mostly negatively because of their expectations about how Facebook will monetize this. It's now up to Facebook to prove them wrong.
I personally think it's not going to be as bad. Oculus has a clear path to monetization, while Facebook, with their other products, have always been struggling to monetize their user base, which lead them to implement controversial features like Beacon. In this case, all they have to do is back off and make sure the right people are leading Oculus -- and so far, I think they are doing fine with that.
"Monetization" is a bastardization of a term that was necessary to describe how non-profitable companies could somehow make money from giving away their product for free -- usually by abusing the userbase they're handing the free product to.
"Oculus has a clear product that they will sell for money, because that's how businesses that actually sell products to their customers survive".
This is a major reason why the Facebook buyout is so terrible for a product company. Facebook doesn't know how to make and sell a product that isn't their own users.
My initial reaction was to ask why you brought Google into this conversation. Upon further thought, while Google does have a similar business model to Facebook, they have also built actual products and sold them directly to consumers, which Facebook has not. They also build an operating system, Android, used by the majority of smart phones sold worldwide.
So no, they're not quite the same, but ignoring that, why bring up Google when no one is talking about them here?
That still has nothing to do with what I said. The poster I responded to brought up Google in a conversation that was completely unrelated to them. Not only that, his comparison wasn't even apt, because Google has built and sold hardware and develops Android, so saying their business model is exactly the same as Facebook isn't even remotely accurate.
I have no problem with companies changing their focus and direction, and my response was strictly related to the poster's out-of-left-field comment.
It isn't, they're both raping their users' privacy for money, and that is why Oculus selling to Facebook is disgusting. Facebook will only use it for more privacy-raping, since that's just what Facebook does.
> It's hard for many to see anything under the umbrella of Facebook doing a service to gaming -- look at the direction social gaming has taken us.
Yes, look at social gaming. At least inside the retrogaming communities, people who take a very long view of gaming, social gaming is not well loved. It's seen as a shackle not a new experience by and large. Even among new games, Skyrim and GTA V are hugely popular even though the experience is mostly single player.
There have been some good examples of it (Team Fortress 2, World of Warcraft, EVE), but by and large you end up with Farmville and the new SimCity more often. Both of which are horrible and/or exploitive games.
Getting dozens of spams a day from your "friends" to play this or that shallow psychological-reward hack social game on Facebook is what people are envisioning with this acquisition when what people wanted was Half-Life 3 VR edition or a Star Wars 3D game...or even non-gaming "take a virtual tour around the Pantheon" experiences.
And just as important, social games have no lifespan. I'm used to being able to pull up a 20 year old game and get it working (even on PCs with a little work). Social games in general have a short half-life. Remember the huge hit that was Farmville? Is it even still around? I dunno.
I'm definitely in the camp that thinks this acquisition will come to no good. But to be hoenst, if somebody waived $2b in my face I'd take it and skip off to a comfortable retirement in Malta without giving two shits about the community that supported it in the beginning.
> But to be honest, if somebody waived $2b in my face I'd take it and skip off to a comfortable retirement in Malta without giving two shits about the community that supported it in the beginning.
Would you? Really? It is my understanding the Oculus folks were working on that partly for fun, partly because they have a purpose (the purpose being "VR gaming would be soo cool!"). Their idea of a "comfortable retirement" may very well be to continue working on the Rift. I would also be surprised if they didn't care at all about the community.
Seriously, what would you do if you won $2b tomorrow? I know I wouldn't retire in Malta or such, because it would quickly bore me to death. I would need to do something, and I suspect, so do you.
Absolutely. I wouldn't even look back. I have plenty of other things to occupy my time that isn't work. Painting, writing, photography, music, and the list goes on forever. Freed of the daily grind I would nothing but things I expect no return on simply for the pleasure of it. I'd probably even give away the output of those activities for nothing.
It's bigger because it requires more than your own efforts. One person can draw, paint, make music all they want and never have to interact with others at all, and these were the sorts of things you were saying you'd do in retirement.
But you couldn't move to Malta and make a next-generation VR platform. You'd need funding, facilities, people to take care of managing these things. That's what I meant by bigger.
Ahh, bigger as in "involves more people" rather than bigger as in "moral crusade to change humanity".
Yeah, no thanks. Once I get the construction crew out of my retirement home, I'd like to deal with as few people as humanly possible. I don't even like the social interaction of dealing with cashiers, I love the self service lines.
If I hit on a retirement hobby that requires more people, I'm sure I'll always just be able to just form a company and hire people to do the work with my swimming pool full of money.
I'd say VR headsets are as much of a toy as Otto Lilienthal's hang gliders. As such, sure, they won't do much more than cool games. But the future is obvious: they're a first step into the Matrix, and from there to fully fledged Mind Uploading. (It may not help us develop the necessary technology —though it may help us figure out crucial neurological facts. But it will give us a glimpse of what is to come.)
Not to mention, VR will probably help us get to AR, which will surely have an even bigger impact.
At this point, we're not looking at a toy any more, but at a Prophecy.
Wow I am sorry that you enjoy your life's work so little. Maybe you should do something about that? I couldn't imagine a life where I was not stoked to do what I do every day.
Wow, I am sorry that your interests are so narrow. Maybe you should do something about that? I couldn't imagine a life where there was only one thing available that would fulfill me.
Who said my interests were narrow? I enjoy a multitude of hobbies including hiking, biking, homebrewing, reading, cooking/grilling, etc... I just said that it is a shame you do not enjoy your daily work (i.e. the grind as you call it).
So if you had a billion dollars sloshing around in your bank account...and you could do the things that interested you the most, it would be having a job to go to?
I'm not knocking that, I know lots of people who hit retirement and literally don't know what to do with themselves. So work gives their day structure and meaning. I'm not one of those people. For me, work gets in the way of what I want to do.
I personally cannot conceive of a job, working for any company (my own included) or any other person or group of people, that I'd rather do than those things.
First of all, I don't have a job. I run my own consulting business that does very well. I don't think I could ever have a job working for someone else ever again.
That is my entire point, that I keep getting downvoted on like it even matters. That what I do today is the same thing that I would do if I had a billion dollars. That is I'd be working in technology (specifically software). I might use that money to build ideas faster but it really is what I am the most passionate about.
I feel it is the same for the Occulus Rift guys at the moment.
Because if you aren't passionate about what you spend your daily life doing (and consider it a grind) what is the point?
I'm not going to make any value judgment on how much fulfillment you get out of working for your customers.
But you're getting downvoted probably because you don't understand that, as a consultant, you have a job, and you work for your customers.
Everybody who does work has a boss of some sort.
If being a consultant is what you'd be happy to do in perpetuity, even in lieu of retirement, more power to you.
The OR guys also now have a master. Facebook. Ultimately, their reporting chain is to Zuck and then to the board and then to the FB shareholders. They might feel really passionate about what they're doing, but it's not like they don't have jobs.
Weird. When I ask myself this question (as I do often), I don't usually get such a strong answer from myself. But my self just said, "I would work on VR." Fascinating.
Depends on what you mean by that -- The Halo & Call of Duty franchises have been getting by on great social multiplayer experiences. (Halo also has a great campaign, but I digress...)
The great experiment & test of your theory would be to see something like Titanfall only last a year or so, since it's ALL a social/multiplier experience.
In theory I think social gaming has strong networking effects that have to potential to cement a game, especially in crowds that aren't maybe hardcore gamers. For example, I thought one of the best things to come out of the Zynga era was the fact that middle aged mothers were the core gaming segment. Why is this awesome? Because as a life-long gamer I thought it was awesome that more than teenage boys were welcome into the community, regardless if the niche/genre was not my style.
Yes, there are a few problems that no one has quite figured out yet in regards to hyper-social, and solutions have been kind of lazy at best, but there's a big market opp here for somone who DOES figure it out.
Well remember, for every successful social game, there's a Star Wars Galaxies or Age of Conan. Or if successful, try to play Mario Kart Wii or Mario Kart DS. Suddenly tens of millions of gamers get $0 of value out of their purchase because a company has decided it's time for gamers to move on and make their next purchase.
The problem of course is that most companies don't go the way of Quake3 and let people run their own servers. Because that's hard to monetize after the initial purchase. Valve has found a way to make it work, but outside of some very rare exceptions (WoW, 2nd Life), the age of the short-lived social game is here.
It's hard to imagine, but FarmVille isn't even 5 years old.
"social gaming" (as in what Facebook fostered) really means something different from good old "multiplayer gaming". It means the application of "social" as a buzzword and business model (meaning to intentionally exploit network effects) to games, like spamming people's facebook walls against their will, giving in-game benefits for spamming the game to other people, etc.
> Getting dozens of spams a day from your "friends" to play this or that shallow psychological-reward hack social game on Facebook
So, much like the responses to '2048' here on HN, and among members of its community? And, seeing how highly voted those posts and comments were, I assumed that wasn't seen as a bad thing?
> social gaming is not well loved. [...] Even among new games, Skyrim and GTA V are hugely popular even though the experience is mostly single player.
Do you mean un-popular here? Or among new gamers not games? Not sure...
I'm glad that the 2048 craze has petered off a bit. But social gaming is the same thing essentially. It hits, involves lots of people, then the next hit comes around and everybody is off to the new thing.
Case in point: Facebook games are Mafia Wars and Farmville... games that represent raking in tons of money by offering very poor (but addicting) gameplay.
The core gamer audience is pissed off at Facebook as it is, and that is the audience Oculus Rift is aimed towards. If Oculus sold out to Valve, Sony, Microsoft... hell... maybe even EA or Activision... they wouldn't have nearly as bad of a reaction as with Facebook.
Because as bad as EA or Activision is... they have demonstrated an understanding of the core "hardcore" gamer audience that appreciates greater depth and vision in gameplay. Facebook however, does NOT.
Or you know... Sony. The maker of PlayStation Home and the Oculus competitor "Morpheus". Or Valve, the creator of Steam... one of the largest online video game social networks.
Or Second Life, who has a very agreeable model of virtual space and virtual goods.
Don't you see it? Facebook can't currently monetize face-to-face interactions, but in virtual reality they can.
The purchase makes a lot of sense for Facebook. Facebook's business model is to monetize human interactions. Today, most of human interaction happens over the Internet (with messages and images), and in the future, it will happen in virtual environments. VR will be the ultimate platform, and Facebook wants to own that platform.
Virtual reality is not about gaming. Would you describe Matrix as a game? Facebook's wants to put everyone in the Matrix, so they can monetize us.
Selling out to Microsoft or Sony would have been "monetize by making awesome games". Selling out to Facebook means virtual reality ads will penetrate everywhere you walk.
You can't compete with 'without ads' business model. Look around: Google search, Youtube, Facebook etc. They all had first mover advantage and there's no way someone can compete with these. These services (and companies) operate around the idea of giving away free candy and locking everyone in with network effects. This is what will happen to VR as well under Facebook's control.
Maybe it's harder to be #1 without being free but there are many video sites competing with YouTube that do pretty well. Vimeo, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, etc- they're not FREE but they're still very popular. There's no reason to believe that Facebook's VR network will be the only one.
Also, none of the products you listed had first mover advantage. They're all excellent examples of things that upset a formerly dominant major player.
For movie distribution, network lock in doesn't matter so much. But for video sharing they do, and for VR they really will. Competing with Netflix is a lot easier than competing with Facebook or YouTube for that reason.
> You can't compete with 'without ads' business model. Look around: Google search, Youtube, Facebook etc. They all had first mover advantage and there's no way someone can compete with these.
Nonsense, there are dozens of very expensive data providers and search companies out there who do very well for themselves thank you very much.
Other businesses that are about monetizing human interaction: telephony (pay us to talk to people), restaurants (pay us for a venue to have a conversation/date, show off your wealth), clothing (pay us to increase your apparent status/attractiveness), theater and movies (pay us to have an activity with your friends/date), beyond-low-end housing (pay us so you can entertain and impress and be in a city with lots of humans to interact with).
You say this like it's a dirty, disgusting thing to do, but is Facebook really that different from all of these industries in terms of wanting to monetize human interaction?
All your examples are charging the user for facilitating interaction rather than monetizing on information gleaned from surveilling the interaction. That's a substantial difference.
I would say that the walled garden aspect also makes it pretty substantially different from those industries. I think we all agree that if there was only one restaurant chain or one movie theatre chain it would be a pretty awful experience in comparison to our current reality. It would make financial sense to degrade the experience quite a bit for a relatively small increase in profit per customer. In telephony this experiment was already run and the answer was, yes, it was substantially worse.
So yes, Facebook really is that different from your example industries.
Yes. With the exception of telephony, each of those industries also delivers material/entertainment/comfort value. Telephony is just voice communication and benefits from a network effect and natural monopoly. Facebook has a far more sophisticated model of communication but is most similar to telephony.
The difference between Facebook and telephony is striking. You pay for a telephone connection. Other people pay for your Facebook experience to be mediated to their wishes. Telephony is p2p and we typically frown on operator intervention and worry about excessive centralization. Facebook could be p2p but is centralized and has heavy operator intervention.
Offering communications services for free and then attempting to 'monetize' the interactions that you mediate is distasteful.
There's the obvious difference that there's no platform lock-in with these, and therefore there's choice and competition. Telephony, Internet, are open technologies without locking you in as a customer for any company.
Think back when we lived in caves. We shared stories, we shared cave paintings, we shared music by singing together, we had fun together, we explored and shared our curiosity, we created new things together. Most technology today is still just tools to do these same fundamental things, but in novel ways. Facebook wants to be the middleman in this. They didn't invent 'social', they brought it into digital world, they want to own it, and they want to monetize it.
> Telephony, Internet, are open technologies without locking you in as a customer for any company.
No, they are natural local monopolies. It takes explicit effort in policy making to avoid actual monopolies. The result is mixed: while it is possible to change your provider, it is much less convenient than changing the theatre you will go to next time. Switching costs aren't negligible. And in the US, I hear you have only two provider at any given place: the DSL provider, and the cable provider.
As you suggest, there is nothing wrong with Facebook wanting to monetize human interactions. The problem is how they do it. If they charged their user for the service, and didn't bother them with ads and constant spying, that would be fine. Heck, they could even prevent most spying and cut down the server costs by selling little servers you could plug into your home, have them talk peer-to-peer, and charge for updates or something.
But no, they had to violate our most intimate conversations constantly. Okay, maybe not the most intimate (those actually go through Gmail), but you get the idea. That is what's wrong with Facebook (and Google, and Apple…). Not charging for the service, but the hidden costs, the spying, and other totalitarian artefacts.
No FB is exactly the same. They monetize interactions. So what kind of interactions will you be having with an OVR strapped to your face that they'll now be monetizing?
I upvoted you because I thought your comment didn't deserve the downvoting it was getting
But just to add, I've already owned a VR headset 20 years ago. Ok the screens were 320x240 but the resolution wasn't the downside, it was the neckache from wearing the damn things.
I've also got some NVidia 3d shutter glasses. You can play any OpenGL or DirectX game with them. They are great fun and really enhance a game. I've already played Everquest in 3D. (Although Dungeon Keeper 2 is my favourite, you can go into first person mode as a fly was wander round your dungeon - I've spent hours doing that).
3D porn is great also, I can recommend that.
I've not tried an Oculus but it looks like a neckache device to me.
I'm not sure what it is about VR that short circuits people's brains and they lose all concept about how things still have to work in the physical world.
There's lots of issues with VR, it's definitely got some cool potential, and I've seen some really nice applications of it over the years.
One of the problems I remember from the 90s was the disembodiment problem. You can't see where your hands and arms are (even if proprioception informs you where they should be). Some versions tried to map your virtual body to your real body, but it's never the same and the illusion breaks. Other cases just ignored it, but then you're left fumbling for control surfaces you can't see. It's an uncanny valley you can't overcome unless you track every part of every limb and map it to a realistic simulacrum in the virtual space.
Haptics and feedback then become the next problem and on and on and on, there's a very long stream of issues that need resolution before it comes close to what people think they are fantasizing about in their heads. 3d head tracking goggles are the simplest problem to solve in this equation.
The goggles I had were head tracking which I found worse than the shutter glasses for the reasons you allude to. In RL when I look to the left I don't just move my head, I move my body, chang emy feet, move the weight of myself around ready to act. I've now to move my control equipment to orientate myself ready for action. It just doesn't work.
It's why Wii games are not FPS shooters, they are stand and slash and they only have control to deal with.
Spot on. The problem is that it's very difficult to conceptualize a merger of the two companies' products that ISN'T really, really unpleasant. Most people are already tired of and/or annoyed with Facebook and having it strapped to your face and watching everything you do in a "virtual reality" is very offputting. Facebook is linked to publication and noise, and it creates an aura of intrusion. When you post on Facebook, you are performing for your hundreds of acquaintances and friends. People don't want to feel like they'll have to be doing that every time they use an Oculus product, let alone one so intimate that you literally strap it to your face. I know no one who sits back and thinks, "I need more Facebook in my life".
I don't know why they didn't see it coming, but almost anyone would've been less creepy than Facebook. People would have still have concerns, but I think they'd be more optimistic if it was Google or something.
> The reason people don't get this -- or at least, why I don't get it -- and thus responded negatively, is because VR should have nothing to do with Facebook's vision, and Facebook -- or social gaming in general -- should have nothing to do with Oculus' vision.
Honest question: why shouldn't VR be in Facebook's vision?
_Someone_ is going to create a Google Hangouts-style product that incorporates VR. I'm not excited that it is FB, per say, but I can see how a company built on social interactions is going to want a piece of that pie.
I get the frustration about the short-term impact on gaming, but I don't (yet?) understand why this is a bad move for VR in general...
There are IMO two angles to this that I identify with (to different degrees):
1 - People wanted Oculus to be a driving force in gaming, and based on recent post-acquisition statement it looks like the company is much more interested in the Metaverse than they are in gaming.
This is certainly a more ambitious goal and a harder problem overall to tackle than gaming, but a lot of Oculus fans don't give two hoots about the Metaverse and just want to fly airplanes, shoot monsters, explore dungeons, or what have you.
There is (IMO a justifiable) fear that the company is going to abandon, or at least scale back, their efforts in promoting Oculus for gaming, in favor of its own goals creating the Metaverse. Like you said, Google Hangouts in VR.
2 - People are excited that the Metaverse a la Snow Crash is actually going to happen, but do not believe Facebook to the be right people to bring this about. The reasoning for this varies, but mostly comes down to privacy protections, prevalence of advertising, and Facebook's seemingly infinite capacity for nickel and diming their users.
In this case people understand perfectly well why VR would be part of Facebook's vision - it just scares the bejeezus out of them.
The perceived bad move for VR in general is that Oculus is going to become a Facebook product, rather than a well-supported, well-evangelized platform on which a whole VR ecosystem can be built (i.e., the original vision). The chief fear is that eventually people are going to by the Oculus purely to access Facebook Presents the Metaverse instead of to access a wide ecosystem of VR products.
Let's say your worst fears realize, and the Rift is a locked down Virtual Facebook Experience. Well, they still need to solve presence, and that means:
- Higher resolutions panels.
- Higher frequency panels.
- Low persistence panels.
- Ultra-high bandwidth, ultra-low latency video feeds (a better HDMI or something)
- Graphics processing from Moore's Rabbit Hole
- And lots of other thing that like the above, they won't develop in-house.
Once they have that, somebody will swoop in and create a "Trif" using the better, cheaper material than what the demand driven by the Evil Rift made possible. Remember, the Rift itself is possible because of Retina phone displays.
> I get the frustration about the short-term impact on gaming, but I don't (yet?) understand why this is a bad move for VR in general...
That's just it. Fans of Oculus and the Rift were (mostly) interested in the gaming of VR. You have a point, that Facebook can certainly leverage VR to expand their product. But I think it's not in the direction previous/current fans (or even followers) of Oculus were/are interested in.
I'm not necessarily questioning whether this move is in the best interest of Facebook or Oculus. I think both companies will benefit from this long-term.
My point is that this isn't in the interest of the fans/followers of Oculus, and there's no explanation as to how Oculus would be surprised by the negative reaction of those outside the core community.
In fact, the only ones I can think of that would not react to this move negatively are fans of Facebook, and those invested in Facebook and Oculus.
> _Someone_ is going to create a Google Hangouts-style product that incorporates VR.
Are they? Why is VR inevitable?
We already went through this once in the 90s, and the same truths are still true: nobody wants to put a face-covering headset just to communicate with other people.
Who would you be conversing with? A video of your family with screens attached to their faces or some avatars representing your family members? I don't understand why so many people have trouble understanding that you can't see the faces of people who have something blocking their faces.
So if it's avatars, what are those avatars going to be? Some off the shelf selection of Mii/Second Life/WoW avatars?
But you'll say "modern technology can provide avatars that are very realistic simulacrums of actual people!"
and I say, who will build those models? Now people have to buy high-res 3d scanners for their home as well? Or spend loads of money on modeling teams to build these avatars? Or go to Facebook centers where people get their faces scanned and avatars built?
And the rift doesn't yet even support facial expression mapping.
How do you think this is going to work?
You think people lose their shit over privacy issues now? Wait until Facebook has a sub-mm accurate 3d model of every person's face!
You are experiencing a fundamental failure of imagination. VR goggles do not necessarily have to remain large, face-blocking objects forever, nor do high-resolution 3D scanners have to remain large, expensive items.
Other people are thinking about the future. You are stuck in the present.
So your premise is that something you need to put in front of your eyes to see, won't be in front of your eyes at some point imaginary point in the future, and it doesn't matter if they are blocking your face because 3d face scanners, for which people will use them approximately once, will also become so cheap that people won't mind buying them in some imaginary point in the future.
Okay. Sure. I can't argue against arbitrary hypotheticals composed of arbitrarily defined technological sophistication measured against some indefinite point in the future with an unspecified price point that will always fit the future you happen to want.
Just like when I was six, and my friend kept changing the rules of the game we were playing so he always won, you got me.
I have many possible answers to your statements, such as an observation that we already have head-mounted displays that do not block faces, or that real-time 3d face scanning is a potential advancement, but you're such a depressingly cynical person to try and converse with, I don't know why I'd bother.
Your statement about when you were six is unwittingly apt. Such a concern with "rules" rather than nuance and discourse is befitting of a six year old, not the adult I optimistically presumed you to be.
I suppose this was inexcusably optimistic, given that I'd already read your statement that you would, seemingly regardless of circumstance, take a $2 billion offer and "retire to Malta", and feel no remorse for what effect that might have on anyone else.
Your worldview is sad. Sufficiently so that you have literally ruined my day. It's hard to forget having encountered such cynicism and conscious disdain for the possibilities open to us through technological and social advancement.
Sorry I didn't realize I was talking to somebody with a completely made up and fantastical worldview, where hard problems are instantly solvable with fairy dust and dream juice.
No wonder you feel like you can invent any future you wish whole cloth and in just a couple years, reality will bend to your will and products will appear on the market that bring your future to life at a price so cheap as to basically be commodities.
If thinking about how things work in the real world, identifying the problems and doing the hard grunt work to solve them is cynicism, I want some of what you're smoking. Because nothing happens as easy or as quick as you optimistically imply.
You've probably never brought a product to market, even one with zero R&D cost. Gone from idea to box on store shelves. It's hard. A few words of pithy advice and hard wishing don't cut it.
If it did we'd have hard-AI, FTL, jetpacks, and would live full-time in the metaverse from our isolation tanks on an orbital platform around Venus or Proxima Centauri fed only by our immersion in a pool of reconfigurable nanoparticle nutrients. We'd live lives as long as we care to in a post-monetary society.
We've been doing VR for the better part of 30 years and still barely understand the interaction models. I've used state-of-the-art haptic feedback systems intended for VR that are so new that there haven't even been articles written about them. They're the result of a hundred million dollars of nation state level R&D by teams of PhD researchers and they're still impossibly crude approximations of what real-life interaction feels like. The time-to-market on just this kind of device is expected to be 30 years at best. The expected cost in 2013 dollars when that happens is $150k-200k per limb.
Things have to be possible on the technology curve we're already on and have to respect physics. You can't waive your hands and insist that in your fantasy world it should just be possible. They have to be something that can be taken from nascent R&D to market at a cost consumers can actually buy. More importantly they have to be useful, non-fatiguing interfaces that don't take up half of somebody's living room. Most importantly, they have to be socially acceptable enough that the majority of the population won't feel weird participating.
Even the smallest of practical concerns, like will the headset smudge a woman's makeup can make or break something. Sweeping social change, where everybody on the planet suddenly stops what they've been doing for a lifetime (or in a larger context for thousands of years in their culture) and suddenly adapts to whatever fantasy product you've placed out are among the hardest things to push forward. Look at the near panic about somebody walking around with a near invisible screen on their face and a single low-resolution camera -- Google glass.
> such as an observation that we already have head-mounted displays that do not block faces
Like what, Glass? It also doesn't provide the necessary optics via physics to provide VR. If what you're talking about are two Glass-like displays, positioned like Glass, no matter the resolution or latency, you are no loner talking about VR and we're in a different discussion.
Glass isn't even capable of AR, let alone stereoscopic VR. So let's shift the displays down a couple inches. Then what's the point? I may as well just be looking at a 3d monitor. This buys me nothing and doesn't buy me convenience. You won't be walking around with this gear on, there's no camera to shoot your face and nobody wants to talk around with a quad copter taking video all day. And then you're literally obscuring your face because the displays are literally in front of your eyes. Physics is a ruleset we can't wave our hands at and get around.
> or that real-time 3d face scanning is a potential advancement
There's only two possible interaction models for the kind of virtual communication, the glass one which is trivial to demonstrate isn't a good model and the fully VR model which then requires you to be modeled and your conversation partner to be modeled to you each have something to look at. Presumably people will want to use their actual faces and a static model isn't very interesting to talk to. So you either need a model that's fully rigged and a device to recognize your expressions and translate them into controls for the rig.
Which we already do have, but it kind of sucks for any kind of general use.
Let's pretend for a minute that you don't have to markup somebody's face with dots to track, and some kind of near-term kinect-like system solves this.
Is this your vision of what people will be walking around with on their head? Except with two Google glass-like displays in front of their eyes?
Here's I did another mockup of your vision. Sorry for the shitty photoshop skills.
Is this really better than just video conferencing? Do I get anything out of this at all?
You can call me a cynic, and sorry if I killed your fantasy buzz, but not a single thing I've said here or before isn't true. Today or tomorrow.
Yeah sure, I read Snow Crash and got into the notion of the Metaverse. I think it's cool. I'm on board with the idea in principle. I'm just as upset as the next guy that the closest we've gotten to that vision is Second Life, EVE or WoW. It feels really close, but there are lots of gotchas that need lots of work to get past. Fantasy speculation isn't going to cut it.
Once again, your cynical rant focuses entirely on the present state of COTS technology with no allowance for advancement.
Your assumption about me, by the way, is entirely wrong. If you've brought a product to market, I'm sorry the experience turned you into a cynical curmudgeon. It only turned me into someone who had accomplished something hard. Things being hard is not a reason not to do them, a reason to act as if others won't do them, or to fail to look around and notice the advancements occurring all around us.
My impression of you is that the letters "VR" have short circuited your brian and caused you to forget that things have to still fit within the constraints of physics. Today, or with any possible future advancement. Hand waiving and "advancement" won't ever surmount these constraints. Building towards a future that can't ever happen is not a useful thing to do.
Things being hard are not a reason not to do things, things being stupid or impossible are.
The letters "VR" aren't even relevant to a belief that two-way 3D video chat is practical today, and will become more practical in the future.
You've bound yourself by artificial limitations on your thought process. Please do not act as if people who do not share those boundaries must be idiots.
Edit: By the way, since you brought it up, I've never read Snow Crash. I really don't know anything about it other than a brief synopsis I read at some point years ago. It's unwise to assume anything about my opinions comes from pop culture, as I'm largely disconnected from it.
How I think what will work? 3D video chat? You need a diagram for two cameras, a 3D monitor, and ordinary 3D glasses?
Or did you mean something else? Perhaps something you've been assuming I'm talking about because your response to abstract notions is hostility and arrogance, rather than a search for common ground and understanding? Perhaps you've assumed all this time that I've been saying a specific product, the Rift, could be used for face-to-face interaction, because you didn't ask, but instead called me a six-year-old idiot?
And now you have changed the rules again. Don't pretend like you're looking for common ground when you keep changing the fundamentals of the discussion.
The discussion is, oculus rift, 3d chat. Diagram it.
That may be what you want the discussion to be, because then you "win" according to some "rules" you wish existed, but it's not. Or wasn't, rather. The discussion is long over. It was over the moment you decided to be a dick.
So no then. You can't. Because it doesn't make any sense and it's a bad idea. I'm sorry you had to be the person who had the idea and I'm sorry I had to be the person to call you on it.
Okay, to be honest, everybody has this idea about VR. In your mind you see a glorious 3d representation of person you are chatting with, if your imagination is powerful enough, you can even feel the frame of the headset on your face and the wash of the display glow against the contours of your nose. But everybody who ever thinks about this idea, and is in a position to try and do it, runs into the same fundamental problem. Because in their imagination and their dreams, they're never in the place of the person they're chatting with, to see what they're seeing and they never realize that what the other person must see is them with a headset on...and then they realize the person they first saw in their dreams must have one on as well and the entire illusion shatters. You can't achieve the kind of telepresence we all wish for today or anytime in the near future.
I know you're struggling with accepting this scenario, but I've watched this same scenario play out for 30 years. There's nothing new about the Rift except it's consumer cheap. I've personally used systems better than the Rift and the moment you get the headset on, you realize VR telepresence, via video, won't ever work.
Nobody wants to have that kind of chat experience, so the only other possible mode is to do it with avatars.
The experience is obviously not what you or I are talking about though, even the first link which actually uses a VR headset (the Rift). But there's a very long list of well known issues to surmount that haven't been solved yet for very good reasons. No amount of "let's suppose that..." will make some of those very hard things a reality. At least not with the goal of something the general public will accept in enough volume to make it worthwhile.
Sorry to be a dick, but there really are unworkable ideas. You're a consultant, you know that you sometimes have to break bad news to the people you work for when they simply can't do something because it's not possible. You might come across as an asshole when you do, and people's feelings might get hurt, but somebody has to break the bad news.
Sitting in front of a screen doesn't completely block your vision. I think there will be a certain level of discomfort, no matter how lightweight the goggles, at being completely blind to your surroundings. I have no idea if this will prevent mainstream acceptance of the technology, but I think it will have a serious effect.
Maybe the next generation of this tech will find a way to preserve peripheral vision, and/or provide some pass-through motion detection, while still remaining immersive.
There's no reason. The problem with the acquisition is that FB could have been just one virtual experience among thousands for OVR, now it's likely to be the only one.
If FB wanted anyone to believe they had some mighty vision in social gaming, then why didn't they buy out Zynga or other game companies like that that actually had massive userbase on their actual platform.
First off, they should've expected that reaction if they sold to anyone, because:
#1 it was too early, and they still had a lot of investment money
#2 they've implied many times that they wouldn't sell. I don't remember if they said it directly, but they certainly made it seem that way
#3 they basically decided to sell the company "overnight". That took everyone by surprise, and it made the move extremely suspicious (personally, I still think Mark Andreessen forced the decision, and Oculus was more like "ok, well I guess that could work", rather than enthusiastically try to sell the company themselves, prior to that)
#4 Facebook seems like one of the worst companies that could've bought Oculus, and no one would've even dreamed that would ever happen, from the community. A lot of people were like "WTF? Is this a joke?" when they heard it. And it's one of the worst, not just because people hated it for being so privacy-intrusive, but also because there's no connection between Oculus and Facebook, and usually when the cultures and visions are very different, the acquisition fails.
I don't believe them when they say they really din't expect the reaction to Facebook buying them. If they didn't maybe they aren't paying much attention to what's happening in the tech community lately. I think Oculus could've only done worse than Facebook if they would've been bought by Oracle.
I think that other companies announcing their plans for VR is one of the reasons Oculus sold to FB, especially so quickly. They see themselves needing the backing of a big tech company if they want to be able to compete with companies like Sony or Microsoft.
From the comments I've seen, their definition of "selling out" meant just selling the name and technology but not keeping their own dev team together or continuing to work on their plans as they were. Therefore they don't see this acquisition as selling out because they're keeping the team completely intact and continuing on the same plan as before (only expanded/expedited due to the influx of capital). They already saw themselves as beholden to their investors, so being beholden to one big investor (Facebook) doesn't seem much different to them.
"According to Mitchell, the company’s current goal is to educate people about the merge and why it is a good thing. He thinks this is working since the negativity is finally starting to cool down."
I assume this "gee, we had no idea there would be this reaction" thing is a subtle part of that education campaign.
Interesting that they think the public is becoming more alright with the acquisition because the anger is slowing. It's like they don't understand that after all bad news, the stories and comments about it will wane over time.
Probably because, like me, we've all just written off the OVR and are looking elsewhere. $2b means this is a non-reversible path that fighting against will go nowhere.
As exciting as Carmack and Abrash appear, neither of them have been at the forefront of 3D work in the last decade or so and have a monopoly on good 3d tech.
I'm just not going to buy a VR device with a Facebook connection, Facebook being involved in platform management, etc. I might consider it if it were an unlocked piece of hardware, but I suspect that's so unlikely, I don't actually need to make up my mind about that possibility.
I've also had a couple friends cancel projects they were planning for the Oculus platform, because they're no longer sure that the hardware will remain free, and are looking to avoid Facebook lock-in. So there goes the reason I was going to buy one in the first place.
> I've also had a couple friends cancel projects they were planning for the Oculus platform
This sort of reaction is such an embarrassing load of nonsense. People have cancelled some nebulous 'projects' that they might have carried out?
To be honest, the whole 'anger' thing seems like a bunch of gamers and similar people are just upset that all the 'normal' people might get to experience VR technology at the same time as them, and they won't get to be elitist 'early adopters' with the latest kit. Upset because the arcane knowledge that they possess is no longer the passport to an elite club; membership is now open to anyone who wants to use the latest tools and toys. Isn't that what we want? To democratise technology, so that anyone and everyone can have the benefits. No more requirements to understand programming languages, 3D APIs and mathematics, or to study obscure topics to get access to this hardware.
If Facebook can deliver VR hardware to the man in the street, brilliant! They managed to do it for interacting on a computer already.
There's no need for a bizarre conspiracy theory in which people are elitist assholes. It's simple: a lot of people think that the Facebook acquisition means that the product is dead, because it will either be transformed into something terrible (VR Farmville!) or the project will be mismanaged until it dies.
You don't have to agree with that assessment, but that is the fear, not some ridiculous idea that people are upset because they don't want "normal" people to have access to cool tech.
"Planning" in the sense that they had just set aside money to buy the device, and were working on the code that could be done without it in a experimental phase, testing out the libraries they'd use for non-Oculus related parts of the software.
Admitting fault or that you were expecting a different reaction can displace people's blame and make them a bit softer and more open. I still think it'd be wise to remember regardless that they are still part of Facebook.
However, I think Oculus could easily kill any doubts over that aquisition by promising to release an open source driver.
Because that would mean that even if the Rift universe they built is beeing crapped on by like buttions, there's still the option to build an alternative open source universe using the open source driver.
Personally I think that would restore my faith in the Rift.
>even if the Rift universe they built is beeing crapped on by like buttons
Why do a lot of people keep repeating this? Does Google create self-driving cars to show ads on the windshields? I just don't get it. What on the earth makes you think Facebook bought Oculus to show ads and like buttons inside your games? If, if VR becomes the Next Big Thing, will the like buttons “from the old Facebook“ matter as much, or will the social need to be re-imagined anyway?
> What on the earth makes you think Facebook bought Oculus to show ads
Zuckerberg himself [0].
Quote:
> so that this becomes a network where people can be communicating and buying things and virtual goods, and there might be advertising in the world
"might" is good enough for me in that case, because it means it's clearly an option. I'm not really fond of the idea that the Rift is becoming a VR Habbo Hotel.
He's not saying “stick it in your games”, is he? He is talking different kinds of applications. Also, I wouldn't mind ads on the streets in a game city because I'm sort of used to them in the real world. Ads actually look better in a 3D world than on web pages.
no one has a clue what google will do with that tech, least of all google. but ad financed cars would not exactly hurt their company strategy, which is getting eyeballs on ads. same with glass.
and now we're at oculus.
both facebook and google are ad financed companies. and ads ruin any cool product. they cheapen it, are a nuisance and distraction. ads in games? suck. ads in your feed? suck. ads on the radio? suck.
now imagine ads that follow you around, all day. you get up, read the news, an ad for stresspills appears. you get in the car to commute to work, the same ad is sprinkling you. you want to escape by playing halo on your oculus/glass? there is the stress pill again. at the end of the week you buy the pill cause you're so stressed out by the fucking ad.
So when you get that Google self-driving car and it drives you past McDonalds when you're hungry, are you going to wonder it McDonalds paid Google for that access?
> Does Google create self-driving cars to show ads on the windshields?
What do you think people will be doing on the boring non-interactive self-driven commute? The same thing they do on long bus or train rides. Surf the internet. That's always been Google's goal.
The intersection of people with cars and people with internet connected smartphones is huge. Get people's eyes off the road and onto a Google product is the idea.
Is it? Because I don't buy that. You're trying to apply a consumer product strategy like this was a business decision. This is clearly a pet interest from Brin or Page or both. And besides, it seems far more lucrative to monetize the tech itself. If we sold 5 million self driving cars a year (just a fraction of the total domestic market) and Google sold the whole rig to automakers at $5k, that's $25bn in sales. Worldwide the market for cars is 10x that so it's $25bn w/ room to grow.
> And besides, it seems far more lucrative to monetize the tech itself. If we sold 5 million self driving cars a year (just a fraction of the total domestic market) and Google sold the whole rig to automakers at $5k, that's $25bn in sales. Worldwide the market for cars is 10x that so it's $25bn w/ room to grow.
Either way, doesn't matter. People won't just stare off into space for their hour commute while the car does the driving. They'll want to do something. Hell people who are in the act of driving can barely keep their attention on task for more than 10 minutes.
What's better, licensing the tech to get people's faces looking at screens, or building your own cars to get people's faces looking at screens?
Because Zuckeberg is in charge. I just don't think he could thing of anything interesting. FB was just a landgrab. The product has a/ stagnated b/ gone worse depending on why you ask.
Many people view Facebook policies as creepy and unethical, that is probably driving this negative response. We don't know where mainstream VR will take us in ten years, but we do know that there have been many assaults to our privacy and we don't want to create another keyhole into our private lives.
I think it's because nobody understands what FB is going to do with it.
Instagram definitely has location and social graph data to exploit.
But Oculus? What is FB going to do with that?
I think most people still think of FB as the site and advertising sales for the site.
But if you see FB as a conglomerate like Google, Apple, and Sony then it makes more sense. FB is diversifying, buying up promising technology with the hopes of leveraging new markets out of it.
Maybe they want to make the Gameboy of wearable gaming? They have had success in working with gaming companies (Zynga and King might have peaked, but FB still made money.) And they certainly have a enough power to make things happen.
I pretty sure that they want to create something like a successful second life - i.e. a VR social network, where users have their own virtual property that they can customize and virtual spaces where they can meet. Basically something like the metaverse in Snowcrash.
And I can completely see the high ups in Occulus thinking that this is a brilliant match of visions.
This was the slashdot editor's byline when Apple released the iPod. Just because a technology exists at one point and failed, doesn't mean that sort of technology can never work. Apple released the Newton ages ago, and we didn't switch to touch screen mobile devices till the iPhone.
I'm pretty sure you weren't working in business in the United States in the late 90s. The Palm devices were the fancy gadgets to have.
The were vastly more mainstream than the Newton ever was. They lost traction when the Blackberry phone emerged in the early 2000s, but if they had been able to get in the phone game faster, Palm could have beaten Apple to the smartphone.
Let me take your imagination to a (short) trip: You can build a pretty decent psychological profile from a 30-50h game-play(even less if you design your game with this type of user-data in mind); this alone has HUGE implications(and possible use-cases) I won't go into.. If you combine the data from ALL VR EXPERIENCES through facebooks rift(and let me stress this again - we're talking about most of today's entertainment industry(+education), data the media has been dreaming of for years).. Even if eye-tracking won't be implemented, your VR interactions become a very neat addition to all the data - facebook alone - is gathering already - marketable like nothing before. As someone already mentioned here, being the first on the market means(among other things) that I as a potential VR customer won't really have options to choose from - my options are FB's rift, Sony's PS4+VR combo or just to wait for another ~5 years till enough VR parts are lying around so the smaller companies can have a go(although one may still not be able to watch the 360 F1 driver camera "facebook experience" feed from a "asus vr" kit). I'm fully aware that if most of my family/friends/colleagues/whatnot are on fb, it doesn't really matter if I'm using fb or not - data-wise(don't worry - till you are demonstrating in front of the "right" embassy, all is OK .. for now) - but this is a whole new attack vector for privacy.. and propaganda. If media are the only unregulated weapon of mass destruction on the planet, what is VR in hands of facebook then?
Why should they? Is FB a movie studio, or a game or hw development company? This was an opportunity to hijack a platform in its infancy and fb took it - so, in short - they just bought a whole new platform here(you seem to underestimate the significance, extent and potential of this technology). That is a whole different story. If the HW is a hit(and I bet it will be) - we're talking about a door to the (updated) world of entertainment; they can make a LOT of money by just being the (creepy, spying) doorman.
> I think it's because nobody understands what FB is going to do with it.
I've been thinking about this Facebook acquisition for a little while, and in my mind, the only play that makes sense for Facebook is to become the login gateway to Oculus games.
For many Windows games, there's Windows Live...a social-ish, login service that you literally have to register and sign in with in order to play the game. You cannot opt out. If Facebook became this... "Sign in with Facebook"... for all commercial Oculus games, they would have a guaranteed mindshare on the future younger generations of gamers.
And becoming just the gatekeepers would more or less let them be hands-off with the actual Oculus direction as a company, which is in line with what's been said so far.
Seriously? The only reason to own a VR problem is to stick in “sign in via some website that used to be popular in the old web“ button? What would it give them anyway? Drive up Facebook usage on the old web?
I don't understand why most people think Facebook is so dumb in this thread.
> I don't understand why most people think Facebook is so dumb in this thread.
Because Facebook is dumb. For all the talk of vision, FB is nothing more than organic growth around Zuck's desire to get lists of fellow students on his campus into a directory.
FB in 2006 is barely a different experience than FB in 2014. And none of the changes made so far can be charitably described as "smart".
For all the wealth of information they have on people, they aren't even that good at placing relevant ads or getting clicks. The main innovations FB is credited with is finding more and more ways to mine and exploit user's data.
More importantly, the things that Facebook is good at doing have little to nothing to do with building a persistent on-line world (and decades of experience have shown that in general these are not things that the bulk of people want to inhabit as a replacement for the real world. Walking around a virtual art gallery sucks in comparison to just flipping through a bunch of photos).
Facebook and innovation almost never appear positively in the same sentence.
Facebook has been taking their product to market for the last 8 years. What would you have them do? Change their product for the sake of it when it's still growing -- worldwide?
Innovation in tech is still laudable innovation. Cassandra. Scribe. Thrift. React. Tech that is widely used.
I don't think FB is as important to our industry as some other companies, but no, they're not dumb.
I'm not challenging FB to innovate. It's not in their DNA. FB is FB. It is what it is.
And that's why this acquisition is bad. There are no paths that FB will take with this tech that doesn't drive it right down the non-innovative path they're already on and committed to.
That's a little too hand-wavy for my taste. Like you used your jedi knight intellectual superiority to declare that FB doesn't get it and never will and you do and can clearly point it out.
Truth is, I don't know exactly what FB will do with this tech. But it seems silly to think it will only be within some narrow concept of their existing social network roadmap. I would bet on Facebook letting them stay separate and do their own thing, combining sales and marketing channels where opportunities exist. But only time will tell.
You seem to be underestimating how difficult organic growth is. (In terms of product design, not engineering. And yes, Facebook circa 2006 is great product design because it was what people wanted.)
Organic growth is execution and engineering, not innovation. FB in 2006 is a good design, and magically hit upon what people wanted, an easier to use private email system with a public announcement board.
Is FB 2014 fundamentally different? Is there innovation? How about FB's other acquisitions, are they innovative or just derivative? Hint: If it's in the social space, it's just derivative. FB acquires purely to secure and reinforce this one-trick pony it's on. If e-mail was run by a single company they'd buy that too.
Innovation is not in the company DNA, especially if it doesn't support the path they're on. That's why the only outcome of this is strapping an OVR to your face and getting bombarded by irrelevant ads and "join my game?" requests, but now in 3d or some other "fitting" of the acquisition into the existing and larger "social" momentum the company is on.
It's got to be connected to the core competencies of the company, otherwise it's just a conglomerate and FB has shown zero signs that this what they intend to do. All of the language of the acquisition is that they will be using this tech to reinforce what they already do.
I'm excited to announce that we've agreed to acquire Oculus VR, the leader in virtual reality technology.
Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. For the past few years, this has mostly meant building mobile apps that help you share with the people you care about. We have a lot more to do on mobile, but at this point we feel we're in a position where we can start focusing on what platforms will come next to enable even more useful, entertaining and personal experiences.
And that's why people hate this acquisition, because OVR could have been so much more than just yet another vehicle for FB to push social. FB social could have been just one aspect of what OVR could have enabled, now it's the only thing.
I don't think FB is dumb, but I do fear that they are highly amoral with respect to personal privacy... And a VR screen glued to your face is getting pretty damn personal. I feel uneasy about a guy who calls his users "dumb fucks" for trusting him to be in charge of that.
Possibly you were only looking at FB last week. If you widen your gaze you'll see the entire tech sector took a correction -- especially "momo" momentum-driven high p/e stocks. You simply can't view what happened to FB share price as a market reaction to Oculus.
I am really hoping that your right, that it is them becoming a tech conglomerate rather than trying to integrate with their other products.
But what worries me still, is I don't see a future where Facebook will keep the Oculus as a open system. If it's successful there is no doubt they will try to own the software/services with it - they won't just sell the hardware, then let PC developers (and open marketplaces, like Steam) get all the profit
I think that what you mention - a tech conglomerate - is what Facebook wants to become. Of course, it's going to be hard for them to do that, at least for some years, because people are going to hear "Facebook" and all they are going to think about is the social networking portion of their business.
Of course, Google was the same way at one time back when they were known only as a search engine.
Right on, Facebook's goal is to connect the world. That's why they've acquired companies that range from cloud hosting (Parse) to Internet-delivering drones (Ascenta/Internet.org).
Strangely, they understand why people would be angry about selling out to Microsoft or Sony (which frankly, are far more legitimate platforms than Facebook. IE: Oculus on XBox or Oculus on PS4 would be great). However, selling out to a large company is almost always going to be seen as a negative when you bill yourself as an "indie company".
Facebook on the other hand, is facing a huge amount of negativity as well. Their stock price dropped by 15% this past week, as investors don't understand the purchase at all.
> “We assumed that the reaction would be negative, especially from our core community. Beyond our core community, we expected it would be positive. I don’t think we expected it to be so negative.”
So basically *k the core community? What Oculus founders don't understand is that without this core community they wouldn't have existed in the way they are right now, probably not even approached by Facebook or anyone else.
Sure, it could be good to the future of Oculus, what do I know, but it's a big FU to the core community, specially that we've been disregarded like this.
I've been thinking about this Facebook acquisition for a little while, and in my mind, the only play that makes sense for Facebook is to become the login gateway to Oculus games.
For many Windows games, there's Windows Live...a social-ish, login service that you literally have to register and sign in with in order to play the game. You cannot opt out. If Facebook became this... "Sign in with Facebook"... for all commercial Oculus games, they would have a guaranteed mindshare on the future younger generations of gamers.
And becoming just the gatekeepers would more or less let them be hands-off with the actual Oculus direction as a company, which is in line with what's been said so far.
Imagine the new generation goes purely VR and doesn't use the “old web” for entertainment. What would be the point of “Login with Facebook“ if those kids don't use the web anyway?
You sound like you've never used a mandatory social login for a game. I never go to https://login.live.com but I have an account...one I had to create to play a game. I receive in-game messages and friend requests during game sessions.
Take a look at the Games for Windows - LIVE feature set and tell me that isn't a social network that Facebook would want a part of:
I'm not limiting the vision of Oculus...the sky is the limit. But I think the play for Facebook's immediate involvement will be similar to Games for Windows. Social gaming data is actionable to the Facebook business.
In the final analysis, deeds define you and your company, not words.
Oculus sold to Facebook. Fine. Oculus doesn't have to fundraise anymore, and has a theoretically unlimited R&D budget. Facebook has the cloud expertise to handle virtual worlds at scale. These are valid reasons to be acquired.
But more fundamentally, there are a variety of large corporations with big pockets that could have done the merger.
Facebook's interest will be in jamming the virtual world full of ads and mining the smallest action to increase ad sales. And everyone understands this and knows this. Google's interest would have been similar, but perhaps skewed towards AR and Glass integration. Microsoft would have likely skewed towards selling corporate VR solutions (these exist(ed) already, but have not gotten press or wide adoption). MSNBC or other media corp would have wanted more to sell talking heads and ads. Etc.
I don't much care about the gamer community here, but I really wouldn't want the VR world to be a 3d representation of Facebook (something I fled years ago).
I don't think Mozilla expected the backlash this week either.
Hundreds of thousands of people with very rapid ways to share opinions (Hacker News, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) equals a very different scene to that of even 10 years ago.
Kickstarter is all about directly funding unique concepts and products by independent entities. The whole point is to avoid the "traditional" investment model. Or I suppose more accurately, fund what the "traditional model" wants nothing to do with.
If I was a backer, I would probably want the Oculus to fail now, just out of spite.
There's a certain irony to this statement. Community funding and all that, but if they don't do what I say then by golly I'll be mad I can't crush them like the corporations I'm protesting against!
At least to me, the issue is more that Facebook is not who I want developing these technologies.
I think facebook is going to eventually use this to create a modern connected virtual world. Which is something I dearly want. I just don't want it controlled by facebook.
In the short term I don't think facebook will screw Oculus up, however.
One thing I don't get is why did it have to be acquisition. If FB had just acquired 10-30% of the company at 2G$ valuation and left control to the other people they would have had once again first class access to the technology but the backlash would have been smaller.
Acquiring stake validates the technology. Buy outs - they mean you try to lock the other away from it.
Facebook is right in the middle of pissing off just about everyone with a FB page, and Oculus is all excited about advancing VR by pairing with Facebook. Seriously, a simple geek campaign like "let's call it the Facebook Oculus from now on" would probably have a good chance at destroying the project. It's not that I personally have anything against either FB or Oculus, but it seems like a huge business risk to everyone involved. The one point that sticks out as a plus is the "this will advance VR no matter what" point. You can safely bet (probably) that this will contribute to the future of VR.
Maybe if you replace "Facebook" with "Walmart" the comparison will be easier. Because that's what FB is, the Walmart of the Internet. It sucks and it could be so much better, but it's packed with "content" and everyone still goes there reluctantly. When you have high hopes for a new player in the game the last thing you want is them buddying up to a company whos whole strategy can be summed up as "find the lowest common denominator".
Is this judgement a fair assessment? Of course not. Facebook is just our whipping boy.
One should ignore that speculation. I got caught up in the hyperbole. I should know what X caused change in price Y is one of the fallacies of market reporting.
A) Doesn't seem to make sense whats Facebook going to do with such a device? They don't do gaming, manufacturing, or design.
B) I for one am not happy with Facebook presently, they've morphed their great community/communication platform into a frustrating ad-pushing machine that will only let you interact with your community/friends at a an increasing price.
C) Given those two, I can only shudder at what Oculus Facebook will become.
I don't think Facebook's acquisition of Oculus has much to do with gaming. I think what it does is give Facebook access to a part of our minds that few others may have. What we look at ... whether in a real world or a virtual one ... reveals what we covet. Perhaps it's something we'd never search for in a search-engine - but it is able to be leveraged to enhance the profile of a person in order to more-perfectly market to them. I suspect that what we look at, and for how long, will convert far better than anything we ever type into a Google search box. It's why Google is building Glass ... and why Facebook bought Oculus.
You don't even have to hate facebook to not like the merger. Anyone that has been part of a big corporate merger knows that the small company will very rarely keep its old culture for very long. Being bought changes things, and it rarely makes the company more productive. In all my years in the industry, I've not been a part of one where the consumer was helped: The only winners have always been the few people that got the millions from being acquired.
Not every acquisition like this is a total failure, but so many of them are, it's very hard to see any acquisition with optimism, unless you want both sides to fail. Can IBM please buy Oracle?
I don't get why everyone is hating. The fact of the matter is Facebook is about to put a lot of funding in to Oculus. With a lot of other big companies getting in to VR right now, like Sony and apparently Microsoft, Oculus will need that to stay relevant.
When I first found out about the buyout I thought of the same thing this article points out; Facebook also purchased Instagram and it seems to be doing just fine. If Facebook truly lets Oculus "be who they are going to be", I'm sure they will do just fine.
I don't use Facebook and I don't play games, but I'm curious to see if the acquisition will have a positive effect on pure VR; meaning the kind of VR Jaron Lanier talks about.
It seems like FB could actually bridge between VR, AR, and everyone else more easily than most. I can imagine attending the next presidential inauguration (virtually) because of this deal, and that wouldn't have been the case with Valve, for example.
I'm pretty much of the same mind here. A huge part of the backlash (and a large number of the comments here) seems to revolve around gaming (hardcore or otherwise). Valve, for instance, would have been okay, but EA, Sony and even Microsoft have been mentioned as better/more suitable. And I firmly believe that, while I get the appeal of gaming VR, it rather misses the larger picture. I no more want to see this sort of tech tied to gaming, even philosophically, than I want to see it become a dongle for Autodesk software (which, by the way, would be a much more meaningful application than gaming). I want holonovels and walkthroughs and avatar space for those whose meatspace experience isn't great. Many of the dreams we dreamed when ubiquitous computing meant that you got a punchcard with your bill and a handful of people owned something like a TRS-80 or an Apple ][ are on the verge of becoming very real (and not in quite the same way that strong AI has always been "almost here"). FB has an intrinsic interest in the avatar space part of that, but they're also as good a bet as anyone to diversify into the other realms.
I think the real victim here is Kickstarter. I saw some project for a new kind of energy-saving device and all the comments basically said "So you'll just take our money and sell to Facebook?"
Guys Facebook is no Microsoft or Google who only buy to soft kill the competitor.
FB is different just look at their past acquisitions like Instagram and others, they all survived and are still in active development and rolling out new features.
If it were MS/Google acquiring Oculus, negative reactions would have been justified.
All of FB's past acquisitions before Oculus (just Instagram and WhatsApp) were social media platforms, precisely what FB specialized in and knows how to work with. They don't need to do any radical shift with them, they already serve as private data and analytics incubators.
Oculus is a completely unrelated avenue for them, and one can only wonder what their intentions are. Zuckerberg already made a PR statement that the company intends on turning Oculus into a social platform of some sort, so this does raise some eyebrows.
As much as I have ethical quandaries with Google, I'd be more content if they had acquired Oculus.
> If you actually understand [Facebook’s] vision of letting us be who we’re going to be, just like they wanted to let Instagram be who they are.
The reason people don't get this -- or at least, why I don't get it -- and thus responded negatively, is because VR should have nothing to do with Facebook's vision, and Facebook -- or social gaming in general -- should have nothing to do with Oculus' vision.
Gamers cared about Oculus and Rift because they felt Oculus was innovating in the interest of gaming as a whole. But being bought out by Facebook makes it seem that Oculus is "selling out" to someone that is historically more interested in monopolizing innovation than they are in gaming, or at least the type of gaming that Oculus was originally innovating towards.
It's hard for many to see anything under the umbrella of Facebook doing a service to gaming -- look at the direction social gaming has taken us.
This is how I see it, in my admittedly limited view, anyway. And since the views of those "beyond their core community" are likely similarly limited, it makes sense that others may have a similar reaction.
So I'm baffled how Oculus is surprised by the reaction.