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Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

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Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#51

Post by Retric »

cma wrote: 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…

Only good thing about Facebook buying the Oculus was it's much easer to avoid buying...

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#52

Post by cwyers »

nilkn wrote: post #46
istorical wrote: post #28

The discussion around Vive vs Rift and Valve vs Oculus is getting more and more emotionally clouded and "good guys vs bad guys" with each passing week. People are letting their own frustration around Oculus' poorly managed launch and non-existent PR affect their perspective on the situation. The fact is that although Oculus is adopting somewhat of a walled garden approach, people entirely overlook that Valve maintain…

Maybe I'm not as aware of all the details as others, but it seems to me that Valve has maintained their position by creating an incredible platform and collection of products (Steam itself, Steam Link, the Steam Controller, etc.), not by engaging in anti-consumer practices. For instance, SteamVR has full support for the Rift. The Chaperone features will even work with the Rift. More than that, though, I see very few…

I think it's far more likely that they've maintained their position through first-mover advantage than anything else. Steam is a website wrapped in an application that was built before building applications out of websites was cool, and it shows -- what you get is an outdated version of WebKit and a video player that somehow manages to be worse than the one Polygon uses, and Steam doesn't even have "monetization" as an excuse there. They've largely abandoned curation, Early Access and Greenlight are a steady stream of horror stories... there's a large list of things wrong with Steam that nobody at Valve seems to even care about fixing.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#53

Post by errantspark »

Been working on VR side projects for 3 years now, I've built against the DK1, DK2, CV1 and the Vive and I have to say there's zero question in my mind that Oculus is FAR behind the curve. The Vive was love at first sight, the Oculus was quite the opposite.

The Vive is stunning, not only because room-scale VR is fantastic. (I don't share the opinion that the future rests solely with room scale, there's plenty of stuff to do in VR sitting down) but also because Valve just seems to have it together more than Oculus. The Lighthouse system is brilliant, it's a much more elegant solution than what Oculus has. The Oculus platform is gross, I don't see any advantages to using it from the consumer side, as far as I can tell it only exists to lock people into a particular ecosystem.

I understand why they did it, similarly to Origin or the Epic Games Launcher, but seriously? Steam won. I find it incredibly frustrating having to futz around with other platforms. Do they seriously think that I'm going to add all my Steam friends on the Oculus platform? That's ridiculous. I'm very doubtful that the platforms will get a userbase outside of the people who are FORCED to use them because they want a particular exclusive.

To top it all off it takes 3 USB ports to run the Oculus (4 if you want the controllers) vs the Vive's one.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#54

Post by nilkn »

cwyers wrote: post #52
nilkn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm not as aware of all the details as others, but it seems to me that Valve has maintained their position by creating an incredible platform and collection of products (Steam itself, Steam Link, the Steam Controller, etc.), not by engaging in anti-consumer practices. For instance, SteamVR has full support for the Rift. The Chaperone features will even work with the Rift. More than that, though, I see very few…

I think it's far more likely that they've maintained their position through first-mover advantage than anything else. Steam is a website wrapped in an application that was built before building applications out of websites was cool, and it shows -- what you get is an outdated version of WebKit and a video player that somehow manages to be worse than the one Polygon uses, and Steam doesn't even have "monetization" as…

I don't agree. I think the first-mover advantage gave them a big leg up, but people wouldn't have kept using the platform for 12 years if they were relying entirely on that. Competitors like Origin might have had a fighting chance if Valve hadn't constantly been creating a superior suite of products.

You mention issues with Early Access and Greenlight, but these seem like trivial problems when compared to how solid the platform is overall. Steam as a platform is just far and away superior to any other choice in the gaming space. I can play any PC game at my desk or in my living room. The interface scales great to a TV screen. The Steam Controller is innovative and incredibly customizable, and it's supported by virtually any game in Steam. SteamVR is very fully developed itself and supports both the Rift and the Vive; it even goes so far as to support Chaperone with the Rift despite the Rift not having any room-scale-tracked controllers yet. It has honestly grown into one of the best software ecosystems I've ever seen by offering functionality that competitors can't even dream of.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#55

Post by cma »

lux wrote: post #41
cma wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also got CV1 for free from being a Kickstarter. Having a Vive, the Oculus CV1 is just a paperweight right now. Even when Touch finally comes out, it has been under so much secrecy and so many NDAs that I'm thinking it might have significant issues.

Not sure how much I'm allowed to say, but I've been working with both controllers for a while and honestly really prefer Touch over Vive's controllers. They have way more expressiveness, which means we're often running into things we want to do with Touch that don't easily translate to Vive's trigger/squeeze/thumb combo. A basic example, you can do rock paper scissors with Touch. Not perfectly since you still have a…

Vive doesn't have any real exclusives. You can already play most of the stuff on Rift with an MIT licensed Razer Hydra driver adapter that Valve released for free. Valve are treating headsets more like monitors, Oculus is treating them like a gaming console.

You have to dig in a menu and click a "scare toggle" to even run third party software on Oculus. On GearVR they don't even have the toggle. It will only run Oculus store apps.

and apps that you have signed to your individual device, making them impossible to distribute broadly

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#56

Post by errantspark »

shmerl wrote: post #49

What a shame. Rift started as a crowdfunded open project and ended up as a disgusting lock-in. >Frequently secured through digital rights management (DRM ) technology, this functionality is typically standard for digital download stores. Not really. There are enough DRM-free ones. I don't care about games that are released through some exclusive DRM-infested stores, but what's more worrying is that hardware itself is…

As far as I can tell none of the vendors are pursuing that sort of aggressive vendor lock. You can distribute binaries through whatever method you wish and have them work with either the Vive or Oculus. The DRM issues stem mostly from content released on the Oculus Platform.

Your point about SteamVR and the Oculus Platform being roughly equivalent is true but I think about it in a similar context to drivers. Both platforms provide an API that you can build against, though personally I have been using SteamVR/OpenVR with both the Vive and the Oculus and I haven't touched the Oculus platform save a couple tests because building against OpenVR let's me use both the Oculus and the Vive.

OSVR is the real shining light of hope in this ecosystem but as of now it just provides a layer on top of SteamVR/OpenVR/Oculus/etc requiring you to run those services in the background.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#57

Post by vessenes »

the_rosentotter wrote: post #33
GauntletWizard wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have both. The Vive gets way more use, for one simple reason. Room scale is the future of VR. Some of the Oculus games are fantastic uses of the technology. Lucky's Tale has the camera on a rail based on where your character is, and EVE: Valkyrie has great mechanics for seated VR. But both of them feel like you're playing a game, albeit an immersive one, whereas room-scale vive games feel like I'm interacting with…

I am sceptical about this. People like to sit down for their entertainment, that is unlikely to change. Turning, swerving, swiveling, sure, but I bet most would quickly get fed up with having to get on their feet and move around in order to play their games.

So far, you're wrong. I have a Vive and four kids. The Vive sees at least two hours of play time a day, with kids often sneaking time at weird hours. They were even getting up before 6 am, dressing and doing chores in order to play before school until my wife halted the practice.

When friends come over, it's the most offered activity; it's a very compelling experience. Not a ton of long form content yet, but seriously, it's compelling.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#58

Post by cwyers »

nilkn wrote: post #54
cwyers wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's far more likely that they've maintained their position through first-mover advantage than anything else. Steam is a website wrapped in an application that was built before building applications out of websites was cool, and it shows -- what you get is an outdated version of WebKit and a video player that somehow manages to be worse than the one Polygon uses, and Steam doesn't even have "monetization" as…

I don't agree. I think the first-mover advantage gave them a big leg up, but people wouldn't have kept using the platform for 12 years if they were relying entirely on that. Competitors like Origin might have had a fighting chance if Valve hadn't constantly been creating a superior suite of products. You mention issues with Early Access and Greenlight, but these seem like trivial problems when compared to how solid t…

I think you're talking about a lot of features here that don't even amount to a percentage point of Steam users. Go look at the Steam Hardware and Software Survey results. SteamOS doesn't even show up in the top five Linux distros that Valve reports. There may be Windows users who are using the Big Picture Mode, but I'd guess not a whole lot of them. There may be Windows users who are using the Steam Controller, but I'd guess it's smaller than the ones using Big Picture Mode. Those are not the reasons Steam is beating Origin.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#59

Post by shmerl »

errantspark wrote: post #56
shmerl wrote: post #49

What a shame. Rift started as a crowdfunded open project and ended up as a disgusting lock-in. >Frequently secured through digital rights management (DRM ) technology, this functionality is typically standard for digital download stores. Not really. There are enough DRM-free ones. I don't care about games that are released through some exclusive DRM-infested stores, but what's more worrying is that hardware itself is…

As far as I can tell none of the vendors are pursuing that sort of aggressive vendor lock. You can distribute binaries through whatever method you wish and have them work with either the Vive or Oculus. The DRM issues stem mostly from content released on the Oculus Platform. Your point about SteamVR and the Oculus Platform being roughly equivalent is true but I think about it in a similar context to drivers. Both pla…

> OSVR is the real shining light of hope in this ecosystem but as of now it just provides a layer on top of SteamVR/OpenVR/Oculus/etc requiring you to run those services in the background.

Yes, unless someone will implement OpenVR and whatever Rift is using (OculusVR?) in a fashion that won't be tied to using either Steam or Oculus services, the hardware will be tied to them. And it still didn't happen yet. It's the reason I didn't buy either of them yet. I find such concept of hardware tied to a service to be completely bizarre.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#60

Post by Karunamon »

__david__ wrote: post #4
cma wrote: 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

Judging by those last few comments, he decided to stop participating in the community after he made a snarky comment, followed by the community snarking right back with a blow-by-blow and sourced list of broken promises and backtracks [1].

(And then he insults the guy who tries to defend him as an "insufferable fanboy".. ouch!)

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4gfpjk/palmer_lucke...

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