Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus • Hacker News Board

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#91

Post by bane » Sat, May 28, 2016, 1:37 AM UTC

tk32 wrote: post #70

errantspark wrote: post #53

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…

It's so satisfying watching them get their just desserts after betraying their Kickstarter backers by taking the Facebook money and then going back on all their words about keeping the platform free for everybody. Meanwhile that acquisition kicked off a race among the other big players which Valve appears to be winning while having the best features. I mean, Valve isn't perfect, but they're a lot better than Facebook…

I'm reminded again about this very prescient post:

http://assayviaessay.blogspot.com/2014/03/virtual-spaces-rea...

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#92

Post by angrow » Sat, May 28, 2016, 1:50 AM UTC

vessenes wrote: post #57

the_rosentotter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 seriousl…

I remember people having nearly-identical debates about the motion controlled "party games" of the Wii.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#93

Post by ss248 » Sat, May 28, 2016, 1:57 AM UTC

bitmapbrother wrote: post #35

the_rosentotter wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a weird feature about Oculus at Facebook some months ago, where it was sort of hinted between the lines that Luckey and Zuckerberg didn't get along all that well. They even had to photoshop to get them into the same picture. Found it: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/09/oculus-rift-mark-zuck...

I read the article and never got that impression. If anything, he was grateful to facebook for not only purchasing the company, but also believing in his vision.

It's not the case. Iribe just sold everyone out.

He made 5 minute (like literally) decision all by himself. Everyone (Palmer, Carmack, Abrash) heard about Facebook acquisition after the deal was already set. It was already to late for them to do anything at that point.

It might as well be, that everything they said after was just a part of facebook damage control operation.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#94

Post by seanwilson » Sat, May 28, 2016, 1:59 AM UTC

pekk wrote: post #61

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…

It is grossly deceptive to say that Steam has a monopoly on games distribution when a vast number of the games on Steam are also distributed by other channels. I can't name any "Steam exclusives," which is more than I can say for Origin etc. Frankly it's absurd to psychoanalyze Steam, saying that it wants to do what other companies are doing, and not to recognize that if it wanted to do those things it could easily d…

> It is grossly deceptive to say that Steam has a monopoly on games distribution when a vast number of the games on Steam are also distributed by other channels.

This is just from observation without statistics, but I feel once people have a decent number of games on Steam (e.g. from lots of cheap purchases from sales) and no other store, they'd rather stick with Steam instead of installing another store app. Even if another store was a little better, the idea of having to install another app and have games split between two interfaces is a big deterrent.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#95

Post by gnarbarian » Sat, May 28, 2016, 2:10 AM UTC

ss248 wrote: post #93

bitmapbrother wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the article and never got that impression. If anything, he was grateful to facebook for not only purchasing the company, but also believing in his vision.

It's not the case. Iribe just sold everyone out. He made 5 minute (like literally) decision all by himself. Everyone (Palmer, Carmack, Abrash) heard about Facebook acquisition after the deal was already set. It was already to late for them to do anything at that point. It might as well be, that everything they said after was just a part of facebook damage control operation.

I don't think Iribe had the latitude to do that at the time. From what I understand Palmer owned most of the company still at that point.

He would have had to get signoff from at least a majority of owners before just doing it.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#96

Post by empath75 » Sat, May 28, 2016, 2:11 AM UTC

errantspark wrote: post #53

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…

I've used both and the differences between the platforms are so small compared to the huge technological breakthrough that I think which one people buy will be a toss up. I bought the oculus because I have a one bedroom apartment and have maybe a 2x2 foot space to use it in. Room scale isn't really an option for me. I like the Vive, but I really think that room scale is a liability nightmare waiting to happen. In two weeks of doing demos at work, we lost two computers from people ripping the cords out or kicking them and at least one person got clocked with a controller while I was watching people do demos for an hour. (and this was with a full time minder) Encouraging people to move around a swing controllers while wearing a blindfold is a terrible idea and someone's child or pet is going to be seriously hurt, no matter how many warnings you give people.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#97

Post by angersock » Sat, May 28, 2016, 2:27 AM UTC

jc4p wrote: post #69

phoboslab wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve's Lighthouse tracking system isn't particularly elegant from a usability standpoint. I see Oculus' and Valve's current systems as a temporary solution. The future likely is in inside out tracking (i.e. one or more cameras on the headset, looking out). Oculus is working on that. I'd be surprised if Valve isn't. I agree with your comments on the Oculus platform. It's sad to see them building higher and higher wal…

Have you seen this demo of Jack McCauley's new laser based tracking? http://www.roadtovr.com/mts-virtual-reality-vr-tracking-syst...

Interesting bit from the article:

By some definitions (including his) McCauley is a co-founder of Oculus due to his contributions and status as one of the earliest hires, though as far as Oculus itself is concerned, the company represents Palmer Luckey as the one and only “Founder” (with a capital F). As a seasoned design engineer who played an instrumental role in the creation of the Guitar Hero peripherals, McCauley brought hardware design experience to the young company, which was about to embark on designing, manufacturing, and delivering thousands of Rift DK1 headsets to eager backers of the crowdfunding campaign.

Kind of funny how kingmaking works, eh?

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#98

Post by zanny » Sat, May 28, 2016, 2:39 AM UTC

bitmapbrother wrote: post #36

shazow wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Carmack is the CTO of Oculus. I'm sure he's involved in a lot more than just a side project like the GearVR.

He was cofounder of id, and had high ranking office until he left in 2013, but still was spending a lot of the 00s building Armadillo Aerospace instead.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#99

Post by zanny » Sat, May 28, 2016, 2:43 AM UTC

NKCSS wrote: post #31

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…

But Valve does so by providing a good platform. You have Origin, which is used mostly because of exclusive titles; most people I know would love to ditch origin for Steam. Value also doesn't have the same approach as Occulus; where Occulus tries to be the iOS Appstore (others not allowed), Valve never had that approach.

Its not like you can get Half Life or DOTA2 outside Steam either (well, Half Life 2 is on the Play store. I guess everyone at some point bows to Ma Google). Every Valve game since HL2 has been Steam exclusive, and uses it for DRM. Since Valve self publishes their own games, can you really blame EA for wanting to do the same with their own DRM system?

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#100

Post by zanny » Sat, May 28, 2016, 2:47 AM UTC

ohitsdom wrote: 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.

The natural progression of all software industries has always been to use proprietary first movers to dominate and control the market with DRM and lockin, burn it down, destroy all consumer and fan engagement, and then slowly flicker out where the corporate goliath that dominated first is eventually supplanted by an open community that should have been there in the first place, but everyone drank the koolaid.

Be it web standards, OSes in general, word processing, graphics editing, CAD, 3d modeling, compilers, network protocols, graphics APIs, video game engines, and now VR. The only industry that I've seen even resist for a moment this tempting devil of profit has been 3d printing, which has been in many regards losing to "ease of use" DRM restricted proprietary tonka toys in recent years.