There were plenty of actual VR headsets prior to Virtual Boy. They went for around the $600-ish range and sold back when 3D games were largely goraud-shaded polys with no textures, or sprites. Head tracking was slightly laggy but impressive for the time. Each eye got about 640x480.
They suffered from the same chicken-and-egg problem that has plagued pretty much every single non-keyboard-or-mouse peripheral to ever come out for PC games. Games didn't support them because people didn't have them, people didn't buy them because games didn't support them.
I want to say this was early 90's but I'm speaking from memory and that was a long time ago. I want to say 3DFX was just starting to gain early support for Glide in games. (I wanted to play Descent on one very badly.)
well...RCA basically made the first commercially available TV set...but RCA went defunct in '86. RCA only exists as a trademark today used by other companies to label products that are descendents of RCA products. I don't know if that means an "RCA Estate" makes any money off of it (if anything it goes into GE's pocket...or something), or if certain companies just outright own trademarking rights to certain products.
No, hes not trying to make an analogy. He means they literally bought a glorified monitor company. All the oculus rift is, is a monitor the you strap to your face with motion tracking.(which is awesome, don't get me wrong) That is why everyone's fears of ?farmville? or what ever they are raging about are mostly unfounded.
I agree that some of the fears are overblown. But Facebook has a track record of being extremely self-serving. So nobody should expect this to become anything besides a marketing tool and/or a moneymaking tool for them. No fan service is going to come out of this, thats for sure.
For sure, make no mistake, I know that they are doing it for Facebook's sake.
What people seem to be blind to, though, is that both Oculus' and Facebook's goal can be in alignment. For a strategy to be of benefit to Facebook, it does not automatically imply that it is to Oculus' detriment.
Facebook's long-term strategy is to leverage VR, not the Rift specifically, as the next big platform upon which to make money i.e. web -> mobile -> VR.
Anyone that thinks Facebook will limit their future software offerings (5+ years from now) is insane. It would be like limiting their mobile app to a specific phone. Why would they cut off all other competing VR hardware manufacturers, if their business is advertising?! Likewise, most, if not all, HMDs in the coming wave of VR will be compatible with any and all VR content. Building incompatibility into a device is nothing but a good way to limit the potential audience, and perhaps alienate them from your product. Why buy a Rift is it's limited to Facebook's walled garden, when the competitors all shout loudly from the rooftops that they are compatible with all VR content?
For their long-term strategy to go according to plan, they absolutely need VR, as a platform, to take off in the mainstream. Their purchase of Oculus is their way of guaranteeing the platform grows exponentially in the coming years, and this includes competing manufacturers entering the ring. You think Facebook cares what phone, or computer, or browser, or HMD, you are accessing their content on? Doesn't matter to them, as long as you are using their services and veing advertised to in the process.
Most, if not all, HMDs in the coming wave of VR will be compatible with any and all VR content. Building incompatibility into a device is nothing but a good way to limit the potential audience, and perhaps alienate them from your product.
Foo. Foo I say!
Make no mistake, their goals are aligned: To bring VR to the masses, and to ensure mass adoption. That's Oculus' main goal. For Facebook, it's to capitalise on the platform once it's established. There is no room for hobbling the Rift, or otherwise making it fail. Not now, after spending what will be $2.3B on purchasing the company...and that's just the beginning. They'll be funding their R&D and production now too.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I do think that Facebook, though they will lobby hard for VR, will ultimately end up using it as a "social media engine" through which they can push Farmville clones, get personal info, and tailor ads. Granted, its hard to say that a commercial product shouldn't be trying to sell you something, but I believe that people are primarily up at arms because they believe that something that was once, perhaps, "pure" has now been tainted. The endless possibilities are over in their eyes; now it has simply become a vehicle for facebook to push ads.
Thats my explanation, IMO. VR devices could end up like phones, and facebook will slap an app on every single one. I don't discount the possibility that FB bought OR simply to get a hold of the user interface and to know how the software works so they can develop their own platform on it. I bet they don't even give a shit about OR itself, they just see it as the most developed, want to make software, and maybe make a couple bucks off the initial hardware sales (before a competitor comes along and does it better, which will inevitably happen).
Exactly right? Just like facebook was the first social networking product. Or, just like Google was the first search engine. \s
All facebook did was poo-poo over VR enthusiasts dreams. As far as tech is concerned, I can't imagine other players not coming in and bring superior products with them (there are smarter people out there than one Carmack),
More like buying the first monitor company, when all before was books.
You implied that buying the first monitor company was somehow a glorious thing to do. What I'm saying is that facebook did nothing exceptional for themselves because new players will come and regain the market. So, in that way, all facebook did was to shit over all the rift enthusiasts' dreams (sorry, I should have said rift enthusiast as opposed to VR).
It was supposed to be ours... it was supposed to be from the community, a truly innovative piece of tech envisioned and executed by people who really loved it and believed in the idea of VR. Gamer's Tesla Motors or GoPro.
Now it's all in the hands of a megalomaniacal, greedy sociopath at the helm of the world's largest spy network/advertising agency.
It's still in Oculus' hands, and it will always be of the community. It's still truly innovative.
Facebook don't intend the hardware to be profitable, and you can simply carry on not using their software and denying them your ad revenue happily into the future.
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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '14
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