Facebook acquires Oculus VR

Do you feel that distance learning is limited by the fact that it is in 2d instead of 3d? is the ability to see the teacher in stereocopic presentation hampering?

I wonder does this have anything to do with Sony announcing her own VR project Morpheus. Technology wise Sony's alternative didn't show much advantage, but industry support wise it showed that it's a very very prominent opponent Oculus VR has to beat.

Selling it to Facebook seems to me an indication that the leadership no longer believe that Oculus can be as successful in the gaming industry as they hoped.

I can also see them creating a commerce platform. Companies create some sort of VR marketplace where customers can log in and view products. For example, you're shopping for a car. Instead of going to a dealer you put on the goggles and see models and options. Nvidia would love to get in on that; offload 3D model generation to one of their GPU compute clusters. Facebook gets either a bulk payment up front or some percentage of sales; basically like advertising space.

Just a thought.

>I am shattered right now.

Oh come on -- this is just ridiculous. They (Oculus) now have many many more times the resources at their disposal than before to make countless imaginative projects.

I know i'll get down votes for saying this, but if Google was the buyer, there would be much more positive comments here. Use some rational analysis here, folks.

Palmer Luckey (founder of Oculus VR) just wrote a statement[0] on the Oculus subreddit:

"I’ve always loved games. They’re windows into worlds that let us travel somewhere fantastic. My foray into virtual reality was driven by a desire to enhance my gaming experience; to make my rig more than just a window to these worlds, to actually let me step inside them. As time went on, I realized that VR technology wasn’t just possible, it was almost ready to move into the mainstream. All it needed was the right push. We started Oculus VR with the vision of making virtual reality affordable and accessible, to allow everyone to experience the impossible. With the help of an incredible community, we’ve received orders for over 75,000 development kits from game developers, content creators, and artists around the world. When Facebook first approached us about partnering, I was skeptical. As I learned more about the company and its vision and spoke with Mark, the partnership not only made sense, but became the clear and obvious path to delivering virtual reality to everyone. Facebook was founded with the vision of making the world a more connected place. Virtual reality is a medium that allows us to share experiences with others in ways that were never before possible. Facebook is run in an open way that’s aligned with Oculus’ culture. Over the last decade, Mark and Facebook have been champions of open software and hardware, pushing the envelope of innovation for the entire tech industry. As Facebook has grown, they’ve continued to invest in efforts like with the Open Compute Project, their initiative that aims to drive innovation and reduce the cost of computing infrastructure across the industry. This is a team that’s used to making bold bets on the future. In the end, I kept coming back to a question we always ask ourselves every day at Oculus: what’s best for the future of virtual reality? Partnering with Mark and the Facebook team is a unique and powerful opportunity. The partnership accelerates our vision, allows us to execute on some of our most creative ideas and take risks that were otherwise impossible. Most importantly, it means a better Oculus Rift with fewer compromises even faster than we anticipated. Very little changes day-to-day at Oculus, although we’ll have substantially more resources to build the right team. If you want to come work on these hard problems in computer vision, graphics, input, and audio, please apply! This is a special moment for the gaming industry — Oculus’ somewhat unpredictable future just became crystal clear: virtual reality is coming, and it’s going to change the way we play games forever. I’m obsessed with VR. I spend every day pushing further, and every night dreaming of where we are going. Even in my wildest dreams, I never imagined we’d come so far so fast. I’m proud to be a member of this community — thank you all for carrying virtual reality and gaming forward and trusting in us to deliver. We won’t let you down."

[0]: http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/21cy9n/the_future_of...