How Facebook and Oculus Could Be a Great Combination 151
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "Nate Swammer writes at Slashgear that with Facebook's purchase of Oculus for a cool $2 billion, the fervor surrounding virtual reality headwear quickly turned to disdain. Betrayal, confusion, and anger became the order of the day for contributors who gave Oculus $2.4 million through its Kickstarter campaign. But now that passions have cooled and looking at the issues dispassionately, the Facebook acquisition may turn out much better than anticipated for users. While many may have a fervent distrust for Facebook, this deal bodes well for Oculus, and by virtue, us.
First Oculus wasn't flush, and although Oculus may have had some hustle behind it, it may not have been enough. John Carmack, Oculus CTO, said via Twitter, 'I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR.' The headwear already famously suffered from a supply chain issue not long ago, which actually stopped it dead in its tracks. Next, in their official announcement of the Facebook deal, gaming was barely a blip on the radar. It wasn't until the very end that gaming was even mentioned, with the bulk of the post discussing 'culture' and driving virtual reality forward. There was little to indicate any big titles were coming for Oculus.
The fact is, Oculus needed help. Not technical assistance, but someone who could be their Sony, more or less. John Carmack says he has 'a deep respect for the technical scale that FB operates at. The cyberspace we want for VR will be at this scale.' Perhaps Facebook isn't the most popular choice, but they are the partner Oculus chose for their future says Swammer. 'Like Google purchasing Android in 2005, it all seems so strange right now [remember this story we discussed in 2009] — but we see how that turned out. If VR really is the next frontier, Facebook just staked their claim to a big slab of land in the heart of some virtual country they'll likely let us see someday — via Oculus.""
First Oculus wasn't flush, and although Oculus may have had some hustle behind it, it may not have been enough. John Carmack, Oculus CTO, said via Twitter, 'I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR.' The headwear already famously suffered from a supply chain issue not long ago, which actually stopped it dead in its tracks. Next, in their official announcement of the Facebook deal, gaming was barely a blip on the radar. It wasn't until the very end that gaming was even mentioned, with the bulk of the post discussing 'culture' and driving virtual reality forward. There was little to indicate any big titles were coming for Oculus.
The fact is, Oculus needed help. Not technical assistance, but someone who could be their Sony, more or less. John Carmack says he has 'a deep respect for the technical scale that FB operates at. The cyberspace we want for VR will be at this scale.' Perhaps Facebook isn't the most popular choice, but they are the partner Oculus chose for their future says Swammer. 'Like Google purchasing Android in 2005, it all seems so strange right now [remember this story we discussed in 2009] — but we see how that turned out. If VR really is the next frontier, Facebook just staked their claim to a big slab of land in the heart of some virtual country they'll likely let us see someday — via Oculus.""
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Oculus + FB = Snowcrash (Score:5, Interesting)
3. by moonboy asks: I once read, in Wired, an article that said you have an incredible headstart on everyone else for making "virtual worlds" on the Internet using your engine from the Quake games. Do you have any intention of doing this? Has anyone approached you about it? It would seem like a fantastic use of the technology with online gaming being so popular. Entire worlds online could be created virtually and very life-like with many different purposes.
John Carmack Answers: Making Snow Crash into a reality feels like a sort of moral imperative to a lot of programmers, but the efforts that have been made so far leave a lot to be desired. It is almost painful for me to watch some of the VRML initiatives. It just seems so obviously the wrong way to do something. All of this debating, committee forming, and spec writing, and in the end, there isn't anything to show for it. Make something really cool first, and worry about the spec after you are sure it's worth it! I do think it is finally the right time for this to start happening for real. While a lot of people could envision the possibilities after seeing DOOM or Quake, it is really only now that we have general purpose hardware acceleration that things are actually flexible enough to be used as a creative medium without constantly being conscious of the technical limitations. Two weeks ago, I pitched a proposal to develop some technology along these lines to the rest of the company. I may wind up working on some things like that in parallel with the next game project.
It's really rather simple... (Score:4, Interesting)
The backlash is because many people who are comfortable with tech think FaceBook are the biggest bunch of douches in the tech world. The primary reason they feel that way is because FaceBook treats EVERYTHING as an avenue to generate revenue off of your personal life, treats everything as if it belongs to them, and makes decisions about privacy that any rational person would recognize as highly questionable and implements them simply because they will result in a likely revenue stream.
Who wouldn't want a company like that taking a fledgling tech darling that many people really were going to make gaming soooo much better?
"Hi, little baby unicorn, meet Darth Vader - he's going to raise you..."
For myself, I can't wait to put on my partially subsidized Oculus-berg and play Elite Dangerous and dodge asteroids textured in Vistaprint ads and a constant background subliminal audio soundtrack about whatever the latest f***ing things is that Dr. Oz is hawking...
The future of VR just got it's first sponsor. (Score:5, Interesting)
" Facebook just staked their claim to a big slab of land in the heart of some virtual country they'll likely let us see someday — via Oculus.""
Uh..."let" us see it?
This is please login to Facebook to continue we're talking about here, which is exactly what you're going to see when you power on the new and improved FaceRift; a Facebook login prompt.
And our new vision of future VR just got its first major sponsor.
If you thought the internet got annoying with "Like us" popping up every damn where you click, just wait until your new branded internet VR/3D comes out...it'll make NASCAR advertising tactics look like your neighbors garage sale.
Perhaps this is insurance for FB (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No. (Score:5, Interesting)
With that said, if the drivers / SDK remain openly available, I am sure game developers will get on board. But with gaming "barely on the radar", I fear for the undoubtedly necessary collaboration between Oculus and game developers.