SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc • Hacker News Board

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#451

Post by tipsytoad » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #438

tipsytoad wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the idea of future vr is mixed reality, so you could be "present" while experiencing an AR like experience

But what does that mean for movies and games, the type of media most people are likely to consume while in VR? You wouldn't really want your reality mixed with a game you're playing, with exceptions being AR games which vastly limits the possible experiences. It might help for movies, but it also kind of defeats the benefits of VR if you're just watching a flat screen in an AR version of your room.

Well I don't think it's just limited to playing games, the Quest Pro night introduce something like this for example: https://uploadvr.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Quest-Pro-im...

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#452

Post by haneefmubarak » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

sumedh wrote: post #446

lexpar wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The (relevant part of the) 5th amendment does not say "you never have to cooperate with the courts" it says you can not be compelled to incriminate yourself. People and companies are compelled to cooperate with courts all the time - that's literally what a subpoena is.

> it says you can not be compelled to incriminate yourself. and who decides if you can or cannot incriminate yourself?

Btoh you and the justice system. You could plead the fifth on personal incrimination, but that may result in an investigation into your personal matters now that you've indirectly hinted that the facts you were asked to present could indicate wrongdoing.

The system could also consider your testimony to be so important as to proclaim that you shall not be prosecutable for anything that you say as part of your testimony.

Of course, all of this applies only to things within your mind. You cannot use the 5th to get out of presenting any and all existing materials that may even be perceived to be relevant to the court order. That's likely to be as initially broad as emails, business plans and documents, road maps, etc. Obviously, impeding these efforts would be contempt of court or (in the case that you destroy anything) possibly worse.

In practice though, your attorney works with the court and other parties' attorneys to identify what exactly would be relevant to the case and if any special secrecy regarding those materials and testimony is warranted. Case gets worked out, life moves on.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#453

Post by danielmarkbruce » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 3:15 PM UTC

ece wrote: post #445

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do try to build better hardware and software. At this point they are throwing everything they have at it. The FTC are treating them as though it's a big, profitable, won market where Meta isn't playing fair. In reality it's a small, money losing, no winner market where Meta is trying to create something.

This is growth at all costs. Big companies buying up established independent developers to add to their services while consumers have less choice. AB/MS, Figma/Adobe, it needs to stop.

The VR market isn't in that phase. Adobe is in a big market with a strong position, makes a lot of money. That market has been around for decades. VR is default dead right now.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#454

Post by CrazyPyroLinux » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 3:20 PM UTC

bobse wrote: post #278

dsign wrote: post #27

This is not Meta demanding to see some privilege information that exists in Simula's drawers, but rather commandeering the entire competing organization to do market research for Meta. It is clever and evil, and nothing anybody says after this will make me think that Meta is not anti-competitive nor that they have an once of ethics. As a consumer, I doubt I will ever again consider their VR products; I rather give my…

It's easy. Never give money to Americans.

Americans? What did we do to you? (Besides the regime-change and proxy wars, and blowing up that pipeline - Sorry about all that.)

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#455

Post by exodust » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 3:31 PM UTC

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #394

Eisenstein wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love VR, but it is terrible for things like watching movies. Imagine sitting on your couch and putting on a movie. How often do you do that? If it is more often than 'once in a while', are you actually sitting and watching it intently the entire timee? Are you eating, or drinking anything, or petting your cat or dog, or snuggling on the couch with your SO or kids? You can't do that with a VR headset on because you…

> Exceptions of course would be to do it with someone remotely, like a friend or a family member -- it is a good way to potentially 'hang out' with people who aren't physically there. But the same caveats apply. An increasing number of relationships are happening purely remotely. My company went fully remote due to the pandemic and I've started building working relationships, and yes a friendship even, with new emplo…

> younger folks won't see this distinction as pronounced

But they will see it as pronounced because it is pronounced, for all the reasons mentioned.

People love real spaces, real objects, real venues, smells, and atmosphere. The physical characteristics of friends and strangers, from subtle facial cues to outrageous clowning around. In VR, all that is stifled or non-existent; substituted with digitally representation, crafted by unknown processes. Cold origins. Black boxes.

> enter VR experiences en masse

Really? I wouldn't bet on it. The warmth of remote communication you mentioned, is coming from that which we already have. Phones, screens, coffee next to the laptop, simple face to face chats on the screen of your choice. Show me your new house! Cool, walk around carrying phone. Not a VR headset!

Strapping on a headset and embracing rendered distractions while you communicate? I don't see that happening en masse. You'd need to literally get real before VR takes off. Each headset commanding a tiny 360 drone camera, flying wherever you like without incident. See you at Burning Man! From your couch. In this impossible "RR" (remote reality?) future, a typical music festival or live event would have both real people and a bunch of VR drones - somehow inter-mingling, silent without collision, without any issues. Until then, VR is a device strapped to your head, dishing out pre-renders. Your real cat limits the VR experience, and into the bottom drawer goes your headset, right next to the DJI drone you got for Xmas.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#456

Post by pid_0 » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

madamelic wrote: post #12

Sounds like ~~Meta~~ Facebook is planning on moving into SimulaVR's turf and wants to know all the details for free and is abusing a legal process to get it. Doesn't seem like a coincidence they are the only tiny headset subpeonaed while others are big (public) corporations.

No post body was provided.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#457

Post by onepointsixC » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 6:14 PM UTC

ece wrote: post #405

onepointsixC wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a bold faced lie to me. To quote the article: >Meta sells reasonably good gaming headsets to customers who want to be entertained in VR; we're selling general-purpose productivity devices which are aimed at replacing PCs and laptops. So our real competition is laptops & PCs, not other gaming headsets. Everything Meta has been releasing publicly about their VR Headset plans make it blatantly clear tha…

How about a look at Meta's app sales to prove that? I think this list of who the subpoena was served to is pretty hilarious, and it's even more hilarious that Apple's not on this list: Alphabet Inc. ByteDance Inc. HTC America, Inc. Huawei Technologies USA, Inc. Nintendo of America Inc. Panasonic Corporation of North America Samsung Electronics America, Inc. Simula VR, LLC I think the malicious intent is all on Meta's…

In what way is the subpoena hilarious? All of those companies to my knowledge are players in the VR space with hardware.

Google has Daydream, and working on more

Bytedance has the Pico's

HTC has the Vive

Huawei has one as well, don't remember it right now

Nintendo has something similar to daydream but for the Switch

Panasonic has the MeganeX

Samsung has the Gear

Simula have their headset

They all sell some form of headset hardware.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#458

Post by onepointsixC » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 6:21 PM UTC

statop wrote: post #429

onepointsixC wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's hard to focus on multiple things at once, and we're skeptical that the bureaucratic forces in play at a large company like Meta will allow them to do a good job at making their gaming platform also one that people actually want to work in. The problem with your assertion is that you over count how many multiple things Meta has to do. What will make for a very good gaming VR Headset will also be a very good prof…

Yea… nothing I’ve seen from them is compelling. My bet is Mark is going to burn a LOT of money, fail to get mass adoption, cancel the project, and lay the design team off. But who knows! Maybe we’ll all be taking work meetings in MetaLife this time next year! Just make sure you login to your meeting 5 minutes early to preview the new season of BigBrother and score an extra 60 seconds of microphone mute time!

>Yea… nothing I’ve seen from them is compelling.

From Meta or from SimulaVR?

Because Meta has been selling one of the best VR Headsets for the money thus far. I'd really recommend checking out their VR Headsets announcement [1]. Maybe VR will never actually go anywhere software-wise, but it's clear that the team at Meta has a good understand of the problems of current headsets and what would be necessary to make a generational leap in immersiveness.

I'm certain there will be markets for it.

>My bet is Mark is going to burn a LOT of money, fail to get mass adoption, cancel the project, and lay the design team off.

I don't think they're going to cancel it. It's very much a hail marry here. The Facebook phone was a massive flop and the cumulative result of failing to have their own hardware platform was Apple killing their mobile ads business. I think Meta will do everything in it's power to own it's own hardware so that whatever their business model is, no competitor could just kill it with a flip of a switch.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMpWH6vDZ8E

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#459

Post by onepointsixC » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 6:36 PM UTC

random314 wrote: post #346

vineyardmike wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a lot less important than Ben but just wanted to +1 that it’s pretty compelling use case once experiencing it. It’s not there yet, mostly due to resolution issues and long term comfort issues, but it’s close enough to show it’s absolutely viable. I bought the quest2 since it was cheap as a pandemic entertainment device and while I never play it, I regularly wish for a VR monitor (eg a high res nreal air)

What about loss of facial expressivity? I guess whispering to your neighbor works a lot better. And how is the whiteboarding experience?

I think that Meta actually has facial tracking in one of their VR Headsets. They published a bunch of preliminary demos of stuff in video form a few months back, it's worth checking out.

Re: SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc

#460

Post by Karrot_Kream » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 7:03 PM UTC

exodust wrote: post #455

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Exceptions of course would be to do it with someone remotely, like a friend or a family member -- it is a good way to potentially 'hang out' with people who aren't physically there. But the same caveats apply. An increasing number of relationships are happening purely remotely. My company went fully remote due to the pandemic and I've started building working relationships, and yes a friendship even, with new emplo…

> younger folks won't see this distinction as pronounced But they will see it as pronounced because it is pronounced, for all the reasons mentioned. People love real spaces, real objects, real venues, smells, and atmosphere. The physical characteristics of friends and strangers, from subtle facial cues to outrageous clowning around. In VR, all that is stifled or non-existent; substituted with digitally representation…

I realize you disagree with my take, but if you want to understand it at least, I would suggest trying to steelman my position. The examples you bring up are probably the absolute worst cases for VR and if you judge a technology by its worst cases then nobody would use a technology. Judge an argument by its strongest interpretation, not its weakest.

> People love real spaces, real objects, real venues, smells, and atmosphere. The physical characteristics of friends and strangers, from subtle facial cues to outrageous clowning around. In VR, all that is stifled or non-existent; substituted with digitally representation, crafted by unknown processes. Cold origins. Black boxes.

This same argument could have been used to argue against the Internet, against using the Web to replace real services (how can you replace the minutiae of human voice interaction with a screen??), against the mobile revolution even. Yet mobile phones are here to stay and even developing countries with bad public infrastructure rely heavily on mobile phones to stay connected. Overly broad philosophical arguments never have explanatory power. I think you can make the argument that the experience of VR would make it too cumbersome to use no matter the streamlining, but to attribute some mystical quality to physical connections neglects the sheer growth of the internet, web, and mobile that are extant.

> See you at Burning Man! From your couch. In this impossible "RR" (remote reality?) future, a typical music festival or live event would have both real people and a bunch of VR drones - somehow inter-mingling, silent without collision, without any issues. Until then, VR is a device strapped to your head, dishing out pre-renders. Your real cat limits the VR experience, and into the bottom drawer goes your headset, right next to the DJI drone you got for Xmas.

It's not like mobile phones took over every aspect of our society. My relatives that kept in touch with their young school friends throughout their lives over mobile phones also as adults meet up with their friends IRL. Friends that met partners while playing WoW live with their partners and have started families with them. This isn't an all-or-nothing proposition and suggesting so seems absurd given the prior art we have of digital technologies.

If VR becomes a default way to communicate and collaborate, that's all it will take to "win".