Facebook Begins Ghosting the 'Oculus' Moniker In Its VR Division (arstechnica.com) 59
Sam Machkovech writes via Ars Technica: Our "Facebookening of Oculus" series continues today with the announcement of the Facebook Connect conference as a free, live-streamed event on September 16. You may remember years of "Oculus Connect" conferences, which focused on the company's efforts in virtual reality and other "mixed reality" mediums. That conference is dead. It's Facebook Connect now. In a Tuesday announcement, Facebook exec Andrew Bosworth cited the company's broader product portfolio as a reason to expand its conference's definition beyond Oculus. To back that claim up, however, he only cited two Facebook products: Spark AR, the camera-software toolset used to identify faces and add silly effects and filters, and Portal, the company's webcam-chat hardware platform. Having attended many Oculus Connect conferences, I can safely say neither of those product lines received much focus (and attending VR-interested developers didn't express interest in it either).
What's more, Facebook used the Tuesday announcement as an opportunity to rename its entire Oculus VR division: Facebook Reality Labs. That name may sound familiar, since it was given to a number of skunkworks teams working on experimental VR-like features and hardware (including years of focus on 3D spatial audio at its Seattle-area office). Facebook isn't shy about explaining why it is renaming everything: to collate and combine its disparate entities in order to "build the next computing platform to help people feel more present with each other, even when we're apart." That sure sounds like a bold admission of the so-called "Facebook operating system" that I keep hearing rumors about, with VR, mixed reality, and smartphone cameras at its core. Facebook has spent months hinting at mixed computing systems being combined in the workplace, which the company has conveniently summarized in a new Facebook Reality Labs post from today.
"Much like Facebook's recent corporate rebranding, our emphasis is on clarity -- visually identifying us as a part of Facebook while looking toward the future of the next computing platform that puts people at the center," Bosworth writes in today's announcement. But I would argue that this smushing of seemingly unrelated products -- VR headsets, webcam chat platforms, funny-face filters, and the smorgasbord of social media content that is an average Facebook feed -- only serves to obfuscate what Facebook is trying to sell to consumers. Previously, you could expect to purchase an Oculus headset, then buy, download, and install preferred VR software (or even attach it to more open sales platforms like SteamVR and Windows Mixed Reality). As we've recently learned, that kind of "whatever software you want" freedom may not be in the cards for Oculus hardware much longer, since Facebook will soon start mandating Facebook logins for all brand-new hardware -- and I've previously predicted that new hardware will be a centerpiece of the company's next major VR event (which we now know is happening on September 16).
What's more, Facebook used the Tuesday announcement as an opportunity to rename its entire Oculus VR division: Facebook Reality Labs. That name may sound familiar, since it was given to a number of skunkworks teams working on experimental VR-like features and hardware (including years of focus on 3D spatial audio at its Seattle-area office). Facebook isn't shy about explaining why it is renaming everything: to collate and combine its disparate entities in order to "build the next computing platform to help people feel more present with each other, even when we're apart." That sure sounds like a bold admission of the so-called "Facebook operating system" that I keep hearing rumors about, with VR, mixed reality, and smartphone cameras at its core. Facebook has spent months hinting at mixed computing systems being combined in the workplace, which the company has conveniently summarized in a new Facebook Reality Labs post from today.
"Much like Facebook's recent corporate rebranding, our emphasis is on clarity -- visually identifying us as a part of Facebook while looking toward the future of the next computing platform that puts people at the center," Bosworth writes in today's announcement. But I would argue that this smushing of seemingly unrelated products -- VR headsets, webcam chat platforms, funny-face filters, and the smorgasbord of social media content that is an average Facebook feed -- only serves to obfuscate what Facebook is trying to sell to consumers. Previously, you could expect to purchase an Oculus headset, then buy, download, and install preferred VR software (or even attach it to more open sales platforms like SteamVR and Windows Mixed Reality). As we've recently learned, that kind of "whatever software you want" freedom may not be in the cards for Oculus hardware much longer, since Facebook will soon start mandating Facebook logins for all brand-new hardware -- and I've previously predicted that new hardware will be a centerpiece of the company's next major VR event (which we now know is happening on September 16).
And we care about Facebook's trademarks because? (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither tech, nor news, just crap about someone's marketing department.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
it is news for nerds. i guess nobody would't blame you for not understanding that, but the ignorance and the sadness that your reaction displays is just pitiful. you seem to think a 'news for nerds' site is a place to arbitrarily insult random strangers with notorious intellectual clumsiness and spite. that's really sad, i'd suggest you work on that.
Re: (Score:2)
you surely think you are being funny, which makes this doubly sad. then again, not that this is anything new on teh internets ... what can i say, good luck and i hope your life gets better!
Re: (Score:2)
thank you for your concern, it isn't needed.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
id didn't know about it this morning, now i do. it's news.
is it important news? is it interesting news? will it be worth your time? that's up to you. you can always ask for a refund :P
Re: (Score:2)
How is changing the name of a product "VR"?
Context is king. It's not just the name change. It's the forcing of oculus users to register with a facebook account. This is facebook abusing its power.
Re: (Score:2)
I do care about the Facebook trademark logo! It's like the "hazardous material" warning label for chemicals, only for hard- and software.
Re: (Score:2)
Neither tech, nor news, just crap about someone's marketing department.
Actually you're very wrong. People in tech generally associate Oculus as pioneers in the VR space. People in tech generally associate Facebook as experts in building sewage treatment facilities.
This kind of move - integrating Oculus and Facebook more tightly along with the marketing change will not work out well for Facebook, precisely because people do give a crap.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Then the article should have been about the specific severe privacy ramifications, but it isn't.
Re: (Score:3)
We already had an article about that. Summary: Occulus owners will be required to have a Facebook account to use their hardware.
Re: (Score:2)
They should have paid attention in 2014.
Wtf does ghosting mean? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all of us are up on this weeks trendy tech terms so how about some plain english instead please.
Re: (Score:2)
It means Occulus had a good run, it will always be the pioneer of VR, and it's a little sad to see it going out this way with a whimper.
It's also a moment of great opportunity for someone else to take over the mantel.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Wtf does ghosting mean? (Score:5, Informative)
oculus created the first viable vr headset on the market, the "oculus rift", after half a decade of research and prototyping. the company was bought by facebook two years before release, which was already a clear writing on the wall for many. however, it was the only headset available at the time for a while, and was actually a very good product. alas, facebook did scrap the idea of a follow up next-gen/higher specced headset in favor of more accessible, cheaper and walled off options like the oculus quest. last week it was news that coming october oculus users will have to link the device to a facebook account and sign on to use it. now they're rebranding the whole thing and erasing even the 'oculus' name.
not really a big deal, it's just facebook being facebook, but still useful info for any customers and potential customers out there. oculus will retain its modest place in history, and better headsets are already on the market. personally, as a vr user, i already decided to dump the oculus a while ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
dunno? i preordered the cv1 even before the vive was announced, and was using it months before the vive was released. actually, dk1 and dk2 versions had been around for a few years and weren't functionally very different, so, no.
true, oculus probably hastened preorders shortly before the vive announcement, and i would have had time to cancel and go for the vive instead. i chose not to because the rift was a way more mature and polished product. and ... touch controllers. (which i don't use much anymore, tbh
Re: (Score:2)
Facebook is a service everyone uses, and a company everyone hates. There is a long tradition of that in technology. Microsoft comes to mind.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
fair enough.
Re: (Score:1)
trendy tech terms
That's your problem. You think ghosting is a tech term. Don't overthink it.
Your post: 20 words
Typing the words: "define:ghosting" into the navigation bar of your browser is far simpler.
Re: (Score:3)
What Facebook is doing does not match the common current slang meaning of "ghosting", which is to suddenly stop communicating with a person, or to leave a gathering without announcing one's departure -- in both senses, disappearing as if one has become a ghost.
Oculus very specifically said that users would start needing to log in with a Facebook account, and Facebook publicly announced that it was rebranding its development group and its VR developers conference. It would be more accurate to say that Faceb
Re: (Score:1)
"That's your problem. You think ghosting is a tech term. Don't overthink it."
Sorry, I meant teenage girl slang.
"Typing the words: "define:ghosting" into the navigation bar of your browser is far simpler."
That way the submitter doesn't get to find out about it does he you little wanker**
** British slang, look it up.
Re: (Score:3)
Ghosting isn't really a tech term. It's been popularized by teens and twenty--somethings over the famously stupid dating trend where you meet someone, have a couple dates, then just stop responding to their texts and/or emails and/or calls because you can't be bothered explaining why you find them annoying and shitty. Hearing a group of teen girls get all pumped up because one of them said, "he ghosted me" is one of those situations that lead us adults to feeling like our brain cells are dying off by the
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:it all points to one thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
let me toast to that, even if the next facebook replacement will be probably much worse.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm having a hard time imagining how it could be worse.
I mean, I can imagine the technology getting more effective. I can imagine people getting more ideas on how to monetize it. I see Facebook deploying all of it the moment it becomes available. I just don't see anyone else doing it bigger or faster.
I don't see Facebook sliding into irrelevance like Myspace did, either. "Web 2.0" was still in beta when they were jockeying for position. Network effect didn't matter so much, because there was so much fresh b
Re: (Score:2)
Well said. I would like to see time compress for this event.
Re: (Score:2)
This is all about synergy. Facebook is applying its core competence of alienating it's social media users to the Oculus division. What's better than one part of a business with dwindling subscriber count? Clearly two parts of the business with dwindling subscriber count!
Facebook dropped the ball (Score:1)
Facebook, along with HTC and Valve really dropped the ball on VR. I mean it's been 5 years since the new generation of VR came out .. and they still think low resolution is good enough. The mainstream don't want low resolution headsets, they want something they can watch movies in.
Re:Facebook dropped the ball (Score:5, Informative)
valve index nearly doubles resolution along with much better panels and bumps up refresh rate quite a bit. the problem is that you'll need to shell out over a grand on a graphics card to really hit that quality. even higher resolution headsets are available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
facebook's 'oculus quest' did actually what you think the mainstream wants, an all-in-one device with somewhat better resolution (than the rift) to ... watch movies and play simple vr games. the problem is ... there aren't barely any vr movies and simple vr games tend to be boring.
the massive mainstream spread was nothing but hype. vr for now is just for business and games, specifically high end games, and is doing quite well there.
no idea what htc is up to, though.
Re: (Score:2)
valve index nearly doubles resolution along with much better panels and bumps up refresh rate quite a bit. the problem is that you'll need to shell out over a grand on a graphics card to really hit that quality. even higher resolution headsets are available.
Indeed but there's another key difference, first it's double the price, and second it uses lighthouse tracking. The Rift / Quest series use inside out tracking which makes them orders of magnitude more user friendly and easier to setup, and above all makes them movable. I take my Rift S with when stuck in hotels during the week (or at least I did before COVID), you can't do the same with the Index.
Resolution wise however the Reverb G2 looks promising.
HTC is borderline MIA right now. Their product line is co
Re: (Score:2)
We bought a Quest because of the 8+ week Valve Index ship times early on during the stay-at-home lockdowns. We have bought one game so far: Beat Saber (of course). Worth it, IMO. Even if that was the only game... as long as the modding/maps community is available. If the facebookening kills that, then yeah, there's no point.
And then I bought Beat Saber again when my Index came. Again, no regrets. I do wish gaben would get with the wireless experience though.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Facebook dropped the ball (Score:4, Funny)
Why the hell would I want to watch a movie with that thing? I don't want a "movie experience", I want a movie!
Re: (Score:1)
Reminds me of a story a fried told me. He'd bought a Quest to allow him to watch movies while laying in bed so he wouldn't disturb his wife at night. He set up the device and decided he liked a log cabin setting where you were positioned on a couch looking at a large screen TV.
The first night he tried to use it, he got in bed and started the movie. Then he laid back on the pillow and headset tracking faithfully followed his head motion. If he didn't prop himself up, he would end up just staring at the c
Re: (Score:2)
Facebook, along with HTC and Valve really dropped the ball on VR. I mean it's been 5 years since the new generation of VR came out .. and they still think low resolution is good enough. The mainstream don't want low resolution headsets, they want something they can watch movies in.
1st gen resolution was too low. I'm happy with the resolution of Valve Index however. It could be just a wee-bit better, to increase readability of fine text, but you can discern small details at distance and while immersed in a game you don't see the screen-door effect, unless you concentrate and actively look for it.
At this point I would prefer 3 things over higher resolution:
1. Better lenses to have less distortion, less fuzzyness and glow around the edges. Index improved this considerably from VIVE, but
Re: (Score:2)
Is the image quality good enough for you to watch movies, sports, or tv shows --let alone something like virtual tourism in it regularly? Even assuming they fixed the 3 issues you mentioned. Don't lie. Also, do you have 20/20 vision?
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with watching movies in VR is less the quality of the visuals, but more the discomfort of wearing a fairly heavy device on your head/face.
It's tolerable while gaming, because while you're immersed in a game you're active and don't think about comfort levels as much.
But if you want to passively watch something, the expectation is different - you want to lay back and relax, and in this state you're constantly pretty conscious of the device on your face, so no, at the moment it's not a better exper
Dropped the ball? A rebuttal... (Score:2, Interesting)
Facebook is running with the "I now have cameras and a microphone in the livingroom" ball as fast as they can to advertisers. More beneficially, HTC and Valve are making the most immersive games possible within the limitations of the GPUs people can buy today. The current GPU climate still won't allow retinal resolution. Your assertion movies need high resolution is scoffed at by every director who shoots dark scenes. Back to VR games, resolution is only one aspect of immersion, there's also the stereoscopi
Re: (Score:2)
"Your assertion movies need high resolution is scoffed at by every director who shoots dark scenes." --- Umm, is that why VR headset sales remain pathetic? And the few sales it does get are for gaming. Literally nobody watches movies or sports in VR, let alone buys a VR headset for it.
Also, the excuse about graphics cards being incapable is bogus. High end graphics cards, which millions of people have, are fully capable of 4K @120fps .. so why don't they have 4K VR headsets? The VR headsets are not maxing
Buried lede (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's been happening for years already. The big difference now is Facebook is overtly telling it's customers that Oculus has a shit overlord.
To quote Ready Player One (Score:1)
Who cares? (Score:2)
I recently bought an Oculus Quest and have been pretty happy with it as an upgrade to my old Gear VR set.
I really don't understand all the butthurt about Facebook requiring an FB login for _their_ product. Did anyone seriously expect anything different? It is just not difficult to create a Facebook account that you don't actually use except for Oculus. Facebook 'badness' is directly proportional to the stupidity of the things you post on Facebook.
Personally, I've had a FB account for well over a decade that
Re: (Score:2)
I object to it because it's unnecessary.
Children and workplaces use these things, and Facebook are forcing them to use an account, and accounts pretty much have to be of "real people" on Facebook if they don't want to be terminated without notice at any time.
It's just not necessary for me to use a social media network to allow my virtual reality headset to work. That's a nonsense. We know that, because no other VR provider has it (sure, they may even LET you sign in via Facebook, but it's far from the onl
Re: (Score:1)
Facebocculus (Score:1)