Is the Oculus Rift doomed?

[WizardStan]

So much naivety here...

What do you think is being said that is so naive?

 

[Majin Wamu]

What I'm afraid about the OculusVR - Facebook deal, is that Facebook will use it to track you even more. And unfortunately they do not need you to login to FB to track you, the same way they do not need you to login to FB to track your movements on the Internet (thanks to ubiquous FB plugins in most if not all big web pages). Why would they want to buy OculusVR if they are not planning to use it to track you? They spent 19 billions on WhatsApp just to track you even more. Also I'd like to add there is a huge pile of good reasons to sell your soul to the devil, but that doesn't mean that is the only option you have.

Exactly! I'm with you too.

 

[Klumpen]

So much naivety here...

What do you think is being said that is so naive?

Every part that said, that the deal may not alter the device.

Spying on people and selling them is all that Facebook does, it's their business model.

Believing that they invest 2 billion without using the bought power for spying on you even more is naive to a point that may reach to insanity.

 

[Yoyobuae]

Even if they refrain from interfering now, what's to stop them from messing with the device (or it's sequel) later on?

 

[Klumpen]

Even if they refrain from interfering now, what's to stop them from messing with the device later on?

It's not like they never waited until enough new users are caught before altering the (privacy) terms...

 

[WizardStan]

Believing that they invest 2 billion without using the bought power for spying on you even more is naive to a point that may reach to insanity.

And who said otherwise? It's not fair for me to argue against one extreme without balancing the other.

 

[Askarus]

So all we have to do is to hack that device and somehow remove the facebook logo.

 

[levi]

People here tend to forget how Facebook got those giant loads of money in the first place:

Mass espionage and selling out whoever they can, even if he has no FB account.


Seriously: What do you guys expect them to do?!


So much naivety here...

No, Facebook got giant loads of money by floating on the stock exchange. Not saying that you shouldn't be worried about the masses of information they have about most people in the developed world, but so far they haven't monetised that AFAIK.

 

[Klumpen]

People here tend to forget how Facebook got those giant loads of money in the first place:

Mass espionage and selling out whoever they can, even if he has no FB account.


Seriously: What do you guys expect them to do?!


So much naivety here...

No, Facebook got giant loads of money by floating on the stock exchange. Not saying that you shouldn't be worried about the masses of information they have about most people in the developed world, but so far they haven't monetised that AFAIK.

Of course they have, selling user data for targeted ads is an old business model, companys like "doubleclick" earn money with that since at least the early 2000s, maybe already since the 90s, Facebook just mastered this immoral art. How do you think they got all the money for becoming a bigger player in the stock exchange?

In Germany we had a very big "social" platform called "studiVZ" for college students (and later on other people as well).

In the peak of it's time it was sold for a lot of cash with all the user data to other owners, Mark Zuckerberg decided to drain the cow himself rather than selling it as it seems.

The fact that you can sell the personal data others trusted you with is creepy enough but it is happening in scales nowadays.... oh dear.

 

[levi]

Doubleclick having now been bought out by Google of course. Hmm, I don't know how much targetted adverts have been a monetary success - I don't know anyone who's ever clicked them, except for a few clicks on hilarously wrong ones to see what they are. Perhaps that stuff has increased their share price, but personally I think that's got much more to do with the sheer number of hits they're handling, and the associated advertising revenue, either targetted or dumb.


But perhaps this is beside the point. Facebook are building a big database of people which is sinister, and a valid reason not to like them whether that has made them a success or whether it's just a side effect of their success.

 

[God Ginrai]

@Levi: I've clicked targetted ads before, but those from Facebook or Doubleclick were never anywhere near the mark, so I never clicked those. :\ (Instead, I normally blocked them)

-God Ginrai

 

[ssokolow]

I wouldn't mind buying a Facebook Rift as long as there are open drivers.


That's the big difference between the Rift and the Pyra. If sold to a Facebook-like company, the Pyra could have a locked bootloader. On the other hand, the worst they could do for the Rift is give driver reverse-engineers something to practice on as they did with the Kinect.

(I seriously doubt they could do what was done with the Leap Motion Controller and push so much of the device's intelligence into a binary driver blob that they effectively stall reverse-engineering.)

You never know. If they create customized hardware, they have an LCD where no one knows how to talk to it.

But, at some point, it still has to rely on the computer to run the game if they don't want it to include its own prohibitively expensive CPU and GPU and there's an excellent history of reverse-engineering drivers for peripherals... especially when they have this much potential.

 

[DFP]

On the bright side, I was semi-panicking that my DK2 order would leave me cash-strapped for the Pyra, but now that I've canceled that, I'm extremely relaxed about the development of the situation. Also, I'm a bit determined to undermine Facebook's attempts to monetize the metaverse at the expense of an open standard (you know... they withdrew from a VR collective standards group before announcing the buyout...) by seeing if we can maybe develop a competing community project for a World Seed.

 

[milkshake]

Donky kong2 for nes (CIB)?

 

[Klumpen]

I wonder all the time, what should be so special about a copy of Dungeon Keeper 2.

 

[WizardStan]

the expense of an open standard

That remains to be seen.

 

[klapse]

What patents does Occulus have that make it worth 2000 million dollars?

I mean, all I have seen are promises of a large FoV and a few clunky prototypes.

 

[SNESFAN]

What it has going for it is I believe the best minds in vr are rallied around it. Could they took that 2 billion (400mil in real money) and bought a competent team of engineers and designed and created their own prototypes and got them to market? Maybe. But I've been following vr for some time and this isn't Sony's first jump into vr, they've had a team working on designs and prototypes for years. They never brought anything to market, but the point is with their project it was countless hours of engineering and R&D probably cost several million. With facebooks acquisition they purchased thousands of man hours of previous R&D and a working design that's light years beyond previous attempts from companies that also spent thousands of man hours producing. Combine that with it being the most popular in the industry right now and the best of the best are rallying around it. If Facebook was wanting to get into this field in the future anyway it doesn't actually seem like a stupid move for Facebook to spend that much and own the best and let them continue faster twoard a goal they were already closer than anyone else at accomplishing rather than throwing money at starting from scratch trying to play catch up and supersede in the time it would take oculus to get to market. I believe that what they are saying might be true, this might be the closest and best chance to get vr into the hands of the average consumer and they might only be a year or two away from that. So yeah, fighting the clock and buying the big guy before they are too big to buy kinda makes sense. Did it make sense for oculus to sell out? Thats the questionable thing, part of me says yes. Does it makes sense for Facebook to buy them? I guess that depends on facebooks goals in that area. Is the partnership ideal? You're out of your mind to think so, but if Facebook was offering them the most money... I can see it.

 

[Asmo]

this isn't Sony's first jump into vr, they've had a team working on designs and prototypes for years.

After these last few days I had to go dig out one of my old headsets - I found my PLM-50, the original Sony 'HMD', and plugged it into my Pandora with the TV cable. You know what, it worked really well! I was surprised, given this was mid-90s LCD tech.

MAME was great - even vector games looked fine, which surprised me. Pole Position actually looked very CRT-ish, there's some kind of softening effect going on that gives it that look with the right games.

The weird thing was, even though the entire play area is visible, when I wanted to focus on the action taing place in one corner, I couldn't resist the urge to turn my head - it's a real chore trying to remember to only 'look' around with your eyes!

 

[SNESFAN]

I reread my post and maybe my idea wasn't clear, fb buying o/r as a means to beat out the powerhouse Sony who has maybe more time and money invested into the tech than oculus, but oculus has made better progress and more focus in their shorter existence and less money invested. If Sony used their more resources they may be able counter and beat oculus to market with a better product. Fb funding would even the financial playing field in investment and leave only technical limitations and amount of effort in research which looks to be slightly in favor of oculus at the moment and if the trend holds will only get better.