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Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

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Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#311

Post by vetrom »

anigbrowl wrote: post #210
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Oculus's plan all along was to create a giant MMO powered by Rift headsets, then this is the first I've heard of it. Interesting. I think a bunch of smaller apps created by developers has a better chance of being successful. EDIT: By "giant MMO" I mean "metaverse from Snowcrash," not "video game."

Well Second Life is instructive here, I felt they ran into scaling problems. You could also consider Eve's non-sharded world - OK Eve is a game, but a sufficiently complex and elaborate one as to be a good proxy for an immersive virtual environment. I don't know exactly what Oculus's plan was but it'd be foolish to ignore this obvious application, and that certainly seems to be where Mark Zuckerberg sees the value in…

Eve is also a sharded world, the system there just tries to implement transitions are transparent. The abstraction leaks sometimes, though. (Each system in Eve is a shard, and when events in that game happen 'at scale', scaling issues abound.)

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#312

Post by bitJericho »

jsheard wrote: post #279
dclowd9901 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he does one other thing to completion, I'll buy that.

Even calling Minecraft finished is dubious, the official mod/plugin API has been in the works since 2010 and still isn't available. A game that's so dependent on mods for long term appeal and server management shouldn't have to rely on decompiling the .jar and patching classes by hand.

Didn't realize continually updating a game these days is considered "never finished". Minecraft is more of a game than anything on Facebook.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#313

Post by gknoy »

chris_mahan wrote: post #62
waterlesscloud wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, did I miss the part where Luckey and Carmack left Oculus?

Oh, they're cashing in right now. Look for them to exit in 6-12 months with millions.

Carmack does not seem like the type to be "cashing in" unless he felt that the engineering work were no longer compelling and interesting. It sounds like he still feels it's interesting work, so I don't think he's being driven by money.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#314

Post by jsheard »

bitJericho wrote: post #312
jsheard wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even calling Minecraft finished is dubious, the official mod/plugin API has been in the works since 2010 and still isn't available. A game that's so dependent on mods for long term appeal and server management shouldn't have to rely on decompiling the .jar and patching classes by hand.

Didn't realize continually updating a game these days is considered "never finished". Minecraft is more of a game than anything on Facebook.

It's been a few years since I played Minecraft seriously, but when I did they were mostly chasing low hanging fruit rather than working on hard or boring problems like modding, anti-cheat, RAM consumption, renderer efficiency or server administration.

Full disclosure: A year of dealing with a small-population server regularly getting OOM-killed on a 512MB VPS might have made me slightly bitter.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#315

Post by roc »

fchollet wrote: post #169
ekianjo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> scaling crisis for VR. That's supposing Facebook knows how to scale production of electronic items... apart from the cash, they have no relevant experience about that. If it had been Google or Microsoft there would already be people who know how to make it scale to mass production.

The "scale" JC is referring to is not hardware production. It's the virtual reality. Millions of people interacting in real time in a virtual universe in which they are actually present . Think of it as similar to the scaling challenges of MMORPGs. Only much worse.

Actually, I think the "scaling" is the money to hire the staff they'll need to improve their technology, in this time before they have a chance at a sufficient revenue stream to bootstrap.

Facebook-type users are a decade or more away from VR. They don't "do" fiddly interfaces and rough edges. Even if the hardware was there, the usability isn't.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#316

Post by joesb »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #224
joesb wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather pay $70 and signin with Facebook than paying $1000.

That just shifts $930 to hidden costs. Someone pays either way.

Doesn't matter, it's not my money that is paid.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#317

Post by VLM »

gress wrote: post #287
jpwright wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're leaving out Glass, Fiber, Nest, Chromebook, and the 8 robotics companies they just acquired, among other things.

Of those, only Nest designs and builds consumer electronics at scale.

"builds consumer electronics at scale."

Made in China, as far as I can find out. They don't make hardware any more than Apple does.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#318

Post by ThomPete »

roc wrote: post #315
fchollet wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "scale" JC is referring to is not hardware production. It's the virtual reality. Millions of people interacting in real time in a virtual universe in which they are actually present . Think of it as similar to the scaling challenges of MMORPGs. Only much worse.

Actually, I think the "scaling" is the money to hire the staff they'll need to improve their technology, in this time before they have a chance at a sufficient revenue stream to bootstrap. Facebook-type users are a decade or more away from VR. They don't "do" fiddly interfaces and rough edges. Even if the hardware was there, the usability isn't.

Exactly, not unlike the reason why Nest found it ok to get bought by Google.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#319

Post by benched »

cdelsolar wrote: post #217
benched wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. It has noticeably, negatively impacted all of my real world friendships.

how/why? Facebook is how I connect with my friends and make plans to hang out with them in person later. Without it I wouldn't talk to a lot of people, online or offline.

In exactly the same way that heroin substitutes for many healthier goal-seeking behaviors in the junkie, Facebook seems to give many of my former friends a social fix, such that they seek other forms of interaction much less now. That includes telephone calls, nights out at the pub / dinner / billiards, and especially one-on-one conversations.

Re: Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

#320

Post by samstave »

jpwright wrote: post #227
samstave wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is both; FB makes a shit-ton of HW with their open-cmpute platform.... They have a lot of XP in building real physical shit these days. Scaling traffic is a non-issue for them.

A consumer product like the Rift is an entirely different proposition with an entirely different set of challenges. The Open Compute project was essentially Facebook giving away some of their data center designs and specifications (mostly things like server racks and power management), with a few other companies joining the initiative but with none of the designs actually being used on a significant scale. Also worth…

There are some other items that FB makes, which are not in the OCP though... such as the super dense fiber switch...

My point is that they are not strangers to manufacturing tech...

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