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Facebook acquires Oculus VR

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641–650 of 871 posts

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#641
I think a lot of people who are filled with negativity just don't understand how hard it is to make VR happen. I was part of a USC/ISI spinoff (www.alelo.com) that built educational mixed reality systems, and the reality is that to make it happen you need a ton of money, way more than we could ever acquire.

Seems like they've passed that hurdle, I wish them the best of luck!

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#642
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They see you're up when most people are asleep, assume you work night shifts, and then advertise sleep aids and the local 24 hour gym.

There's very little personal info that's not valuable to someone, somewhere.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#643
post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd note that Facebook was one of the only companies NOT conspiring to deflate the wages of half of the people that visit this site If you're referring to the fact that it was reported yesterday that Facebook refused to participate in the "no poaching" agreement between Apple, Google, and other companies, it is worth noting that Facebook's CEO is involved in a totally different, and probably much more permanent and…

Doesn't that potentially raise the salaries of all non-American engineers who might get jobs?

Yes, at the expense of American engineering salaries. Not a bad thing for innovation/technology as a whole but does lower American salaries.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#644
post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. He is getting demolished there.

No joke. I hope he's thick-skinned, this kind of verbal abuse from hundreds of disappointed techies would at least leave me feeling very exposed.

hell, you think us neck-beards are taking it hard? The tweens on /v/ are threatening suicide and asking each other "where were you when video gaming died?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgmyw0yqPPE

This is it /v/. I'm killing myself. No, I'm not an attention whore, I will be killing myself now. Facebook fucking ruined everything. Everything I was looking forward to in life is now gone because of corporate greed. We will never have real VR gaming and waifu games. We will never, NEVER FUCKING HAVE IT. Our fucking DREAMS were taken away from us. There is no point in living.

This will get 404 because of mods but I'm sure one of you will see this. I hope this will make some people actually fight against Facebook. I won't be around to see if it will.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#645
post #412
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the only way they acquire Tesla is over Elon's dead body.

I imagine Facebook can arrange that.

Facebook is starting to act like a Corporation. When you have $171b market capitalisation you can expect some diversification in its corporate holdings.

Their big problem is that they perceived as the cashed up bogans of the corporate world. Buying companies with tangible products or services is the only way they will shake that perception.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#647
I'm surprised people even think Oculus Rift will catch on beyond the early adopters.

It's just another 3D TV technology - sounds cool, is cool, but not in a long term way. Nobody cares much about 3D TV anymore because in practice it wasn't all it cracked up to be. It was hype.

When you strap a display to your head and replace your mouse with your own neck muscles, suddenly you are more limited than before. You can't rapidly spin 90 degrees to face an opponent in a fast-paced action game for example, without hurting your neck.

When you're sitting at a normal computer screen, you can look away for a second, out the window, to think or pause. Can't do that when the monitor is strapped to your head.

When you're typing on a keyboard, sometimes it's helpful to quickly glance down to target a specific key. That too, is gone with a monitor strapped to your head. There's a bunch of other limitations that will render any VR tech, no matter how advanced from what we played with back in the 90s, as just a cool gimmick... like the steering wheel controller with pedals. After awhile you sell it on ebay because it's not a long term thing.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#648

Here is John Carmack's response from twitter: > For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week.I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR. > I can't follow the volume of tweets today, so if you want a real answer to something, try in a couple days after things die down. > I have a deep respect for the technical scale that FB operates at. The cyberspace we want for VR…

I just saw his twitter account as well- the HN/reddit reaction is awesome.

Re: Facebook acquires Oculus VR

#650

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…

"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"

Anyone whose a soccer/football fan will recognise this speech from anyone who transferred clubs for a bigger salary. All that's missing was "As a child is was my dream to one day work for Facebook"

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