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Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

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Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#11
post #3

The worst part is Oculus sold customers on something more open than they delivered. Now if you buy from their store your purchases are locked to their headset, and if you ever buy anything else in the future. Oculus/Palmer said they didn't care if you modded their games to work on third party headsets, just they weren't going to provide support themselves; instead they went out and broke it intentionally. >If custome…

Interestingly, he abruptly stopped posting on Reddit about a month ago [1]. I wonder if he lost some internal battle on this issue… [1] https://www.reddit.com/user/palmerluckey

or maybe they realized that having him on reddit talking about the "current circlejerk" isn't the best idea.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#12
post #5

I have an Oculus CV1, I had the DK2, and I've been making VR side-projects using their SDK for a couple years now. I'm really disillusioned about Oculus as a platform, though. I didn't even consider buying the HTC Vive because I've been riding the Oculus train for a while and had faith in them as the future of VR, but come on. I really wish I could know how Carmack feels about this. Sidenote: for what it's worth, I h…

Ditto, I was one of the DK1 backers so got the CV1 for free.

I haven't used it much past the first week - only to demo to friends and such, really. I have some disillusionment about it also - it seems like Valve VR/Vive is getting a lot more dev support.

Having tried the Vive also, I think delaying the Oculus motion controllers was a critical error. It turns out the motion controllers really open up a lot of use cases, whereas a "simple" HMD-only feels particularly limiting in comparison.

The Rift is substantially more comfortable than the Vive - the Vive I felt was extremely front-heavy to an extent it actively distracted from the experience. That said, the idea that Oculus Rift "works with glasses" is a statement that's at most 30% true. My glasses are pretty small but while the HMD is on it crams my glasses literally up against my eyeballs - my eyelashes literally brush against the lenses of my glasses while blinking. After using the Rift my glasses are covered with eyelash/eyelid/eyeball(?) smudge marks. It's tremendously annoying.

The backing off of the "switchable glasses faceplate" promise is disappointing.

And honestly, there just isn't much content. Most of the content are tech demos.

Lucky's Tale is a really interesting vindication of the idea that platformers can work in VR - but it's also just not very compelling by itself.

Ditto Eve Valkyrie - the technology is tremendous and you can't help but get that "Battlestar Galactica come to life" glee when you first launch in your fighter... But the gameplay is just not varied or deep enough to hold you for longer than a couple of hours.

Between the discomfort of the HMD and the lack of content, there just isn't much motivation to dive back in.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#13
post #6

Oculus / Vive / PSVR are all "consoles" in a way, and that as competition becomes more and more fierce, profitability on hardware will go down over time. By staying a closed platform, if Oculus can deliver on their hardware while selling software on their platform. What's different about consoles though is that, at least in Oculus and Vive's case, the software looks to be fairly compatible with one another (hack-bloc…

> They can't make large margins on their headset forever.

They don't. Oculus is selling the Rift at cost.

> Why wouldn't they want people to buy their software if it can run on other platforms as well?

Their goal is to build a user base through exclusives. Exclusives aren't exclusive if you can play them on other hardware.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#14
post #6

Oculus / Vive / PSVR are all "consoles" in a way, and that as competition becomes more and more fierce, profitability on hardware will go down over time. By staying a closed platform, if Oculus can deliver on their hardware while selling software on their platform. What's different about consoles though is that, at least in Oculus and Vive's case, the software looks to be fairly compatible with one another (hack-bloc…

> By staying a closed platform, if Oculus can deliver on their hardware while selling software on their platform.

Hopefully they will just go out of business instead. No more walled garden bullshit, this is a VR peripheral. It doesn't need an app store attached.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#15
post #3

The worst part is Oculus sold customers on something more open than they delivered. Now if you buy from their store your purchases are locked to their headset, and if you ever buy anything else in the future. Oculus/Palmer said they didn't care if you modded their games to work on third party headsets, just they weren't going to provide support themselves; instead they went out and broke it intentionally. >If custome…

Interestingly, he abruptly stopped posting on Reddit about a month ago [1]. I wonder if he lost some internal battle on this issue… [1] https://www.reddit.com/user/palmerluckey

[deleted]

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#16
post #5

I have an Oculus CV1, I had the DK2, and I've been making VR side-projects using their SDK for a couple years now. I'm really disillusioned about Oculus as a platform, though. I didn't even consider buying the HTC Vive because I've been riding the Oculus train for a while and had faith in them as the future of VR, but come on. I really wish I could know how Carmack feels about this. Sidenote: for what it's worth, I h…

> I really wish I could know how Carmack feels about this.

My impression is that Carmack is working on GearVR-related stuff in isolation from the rest of the Oculus/Facebook bureaucracy from the comfort of Dallas, TX.

Hard to tell, but I'm not convinced he's even aware (or cares) about what's going on with Oculus in general: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/733761224098242560

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#17
post #3

The worst part is Oculus sold customers on something more open than they delivered. Now if you buy from their store your purchases are locked to their headset, and if you ever buy anything else in the future. Oculus/Palmer said they didn't care if you modded their games to work on third party headsets, just they weren't going to provide support themselves; instead they went out and broke it intentionally. >If custome…

Interestingly, he abruptly stopped posting on Reddit about a month ago [1]. I wonder if he lost some internal battle on this issue… [1] https://www.reddit.com/user/palmerluckey

Probably a good idea. VR has become so politicized on Reddit that any sizeable discussion about Oculus quickly becomes a hyperbolic screaming match. Him posting would simply add fuel to the fire.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#18
post #8

Really cool tech, but kind of a depressing start to this young industry. I feel like desktop apps are making huge strides in being cross-platform, both in attention from developers and the lower development effort required thanks to a myriad of software platforms and tools. It's just sad to see games still clinging to "exclusives" as if that's a positive thing.

Well, when you get a big player like Facebook involved...

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#19
post #3

The worst part is Oculus sold customers on something more open than they delivered. Now if you buy from their store your purchases are locked to their headset, and if you ever buy anything else in the future. Oculus/Palmer said they didn't care if you modded their games to work on third party headsets, just they weren't going to provide support themselves; instead they went out and broke it intentionally. >If custome…

Interestingly, he abruptly stopped posting on Reddit about a month ago [1]. I wonder if he lost some internal battle on this issue… [1] https://www.reddit.com/user/palmerluckey

His last few comments explain pretty well why he stopped.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#20
post #6

Oculus / Vive / PSVR are all "consoles" in a way, and that as competition becomes more and more fierce, profitability on hardware will go down over time. By staying a closed platform, if Oculus can deliver on their hardware while selling software on their platform. What's different about consoles though is that, at least in Oculus and Vive's case, the software looks to be fairly compatible with one another (hack-bloc…

I have both. I greatly prefer my HTC Vive for the room-scale + wand experience. I also really like Steam VR over Oculus Home.

The HTC Vive works like a peripheral. I launch Steam, start Steam VR mode, and put the headset on. It feels like PC gaming.

The Oculus Rift feels like a console. I put the headset on, and it launches Oculus Home. It's a very polished presentation and the HW-SW integration is deep and satisfying.

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