Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook acquires Oculus VR

facebook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 871 posts

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#361

Post by jpadkins »

Ygg2 wrote: post #290
comex wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not like there were many positive comments about Nest and Google, IIRC.

I'm unsure what FB is thinking here. Do they plan to make Facebook a VR site? Do their games need more immersion to be addictive? Google acquiring Nest has obvious plan. Make Android based devices with highly usable GUI.

> Google acquiring Nest has a plan: collect data on electricity usage, presence in house and have a basis for inferring what people are doing generally all day.

OK I'll bite. What does google do with this data? I don't see anyway this helps their ad business.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#362

Post by elwell »

incision wrote: post #250
s3r3nity wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

>"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." Honest question, do you have anything to base this idea that of "many many more times the resources" on? Have any companies been acquired by FB and immediately gone about pushing the envelope in ways that don't strictly line up the existing business…

> Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#364

Post by pekk »

giarc wrote: post #131
apetresc wrote: post #36

They have some of the best engineers and VPs in their space, huge hype, mindshare, and by all accounts a kick-ass product. Forget why Facebook is interested, I don't get why Oculus would even consider selling for 10% of a WhatsApp. Their star was rising if anyone's ever was.

Star rising vs star risen. WhatsApp was already a star. It had millions of users and was the "go to" app for communication in many countries. We forget that here in NA. Oculus, as cool as it is, still doesn't have a huge customer/user database.

WhatsApp was something essentially fungible with things we already had and things which can be built relatively easily. Decent-quality consumer VR was not that.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#365

Post by sudont »

nailer wrote: post #237
sudont wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I preordered the DK2, but I'm not sure if I should try to get a refund. I'm not on Facebook, and I don't want to develop for their platform. Although, one of the ideas was to replicate DFW's "samizdat" as an art project. Something tells me Facebook wouldn't look kindly on it pulling all your friend data to entertain you to death.

Can you explain Shamzidat more? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest doesn't have much. Thanks!

"The Entertainment" was a video tape in the book that "so entertaining to its viewers that they lose all interest in anything other than viewing it and thus eventually die."

Depending on your scholarly beliefs, it's either just a metaphor for addiction, or in addition, a critique on media and media consumption. I chose to believe the latter, in that it could stand to be a critique on how our pastimes are intentionally becoming more engaging and addicting.

I'm not sure on the visual representation, but the thing would have been a Rauchenberg-ian collage of video, text and audio, layered together and becoming more "recommended" for the user, based on physical cues from the physical input devices, as well as choices. The actual recommendation algorithm would have been relatively primitive, most likely a decision tree, or if I could figure it out, an ensemble algorithm that would have created better media recommendations in real time to show to the viewer from trending topics, imgur, youtube, that type of junk.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#366

Post by cweiss »

untog wrote: post #178
[deleted] wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

The value proposition and technology growth for Oculus seems far more valuable than WhatsApp, In not so sure. I don't doubt that Oculus Rift will dominate the first wave of rich, western virtual reality headsets. But there's no guarantee they will continue to do, and its going to be a long time before virtual reality is accessible to a vast number of people around the world. WhatsApp was as valuable as it was because…

Also, WhatsApp replaced something that many people hated on several levels - Ridiculously overpriced, phone company sponsored text messaging. Rift combats no such villain.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#367

Post by balls187 »

pabb wrote: post #310

I think Notch of Minecraft fame just cemented the folly of this in a Tweet a second ago: > "We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out." The guy literally just visited Carmack (whom he admits is his idol) and the Oculus team less than a couple weeks ago, and kept mentioning how excited he was to start working on new VR games. I think this…

How much does Notch have to do with Minecraft these days? I thought it he was working on his space game.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#368

Post by waterlesscloud »

jhrrsn wrote: post #83
georgemcbay wrote: post #55

Installing Oculus VR USB drivers... Please login using your Facebook account to continue. Email: ________ Password: ________

This, absolutely this. I just can't comprehend why anyone with such a great buzz around their fledgling product would get into bed with FB, dooming their work to ad-riddled nonsense.

Yeah, like Instagram has become.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#370

Post by MrZongle2 »

debacle wrote: post #335

You guys need to relax a little bit. Have a little faith in Carmack.

Faith in Carmack isn't the issue.

As a gamer, I've always had faith in Carmack when it comes to developing solid software....because that's where his strength lies. Despite that, my skepticism in id Software grew over the years because he was only one member of a team that seemed incapable of doing anything interesting with his work.

Same here. I'm confident that John Carmack wants to build a kick-ass, immersive experience.

I have no confidence that the higher powers at Facebook will let him realize that goal without weighing him down with a dozen other corporate needs, to justify the cost of acquisition.

Post reply on HN