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Virtual Reality is going to change the world

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Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#201

Post by TheCapn »

Nursie wrote: post #149
smacktoward wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition He really puts his finger on one of the reasons why this deal feels so weird here, I think. Nobody who contributed to the Oculus Kickstarter did so because they were hoping Oculus would get flipped to a mega-corp. They didn't do so because they wanted the Oculus team to have a big, splashy VC-style exit. They…

Yet another reason that kickstarter should be equity based. At the moment it's basically a charitable donation to someone else's success.

Someone who's read the terms of use and licensing and all those other jazzy legal documents could correct me if I'm wrong, but is there anything stopping a company from having one of their promises an equity stake in the company?

Say, I'm running a kickstarter and put a tier of funding as "equity". I put aside 10% ownership of my brand to those willing to pay $1,000 or more (for instance). If I set up terms that those who pay above $1k get equity relative to how much they contributed would that be wrong?

An example, 10 people paid $1k to each earn 1% equity in my new company. Or, say 20 people each paid $1k, would get 0.5% each. (20k total, 1k contribution).

Terms are loose, and this is all speculation, but at a theoretical level is there anything wrong with the founders creating such an incentive?

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#202

Post by noir_lord »

quasque wrote: post #160
anigbrowl wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Headphones were a niche product for a certain sort of music lover until the invention of the Walkman, now everyone has a pair. Obviously VR goggles are a bit different since you can't (safely) walk around wearing a pair, but imagine them in a Google Glass like package or with optical nerve transducers. Today's hardcore gamer is tomorrow's prosumer, is the day after's average consumer.

> optical nerve transducers Apart from some limited, low-resolution medical trials for people who've lost their eyesight already, this is firmly in the arena of science fiction and not going to happen any time soon.

> Apart from some limited, low-resolution medical trials for people who've lost their eyesight already, this is firmly in the arena of science fiction and not going to happen any time soon.

Define any time soon.

The year I was born the ZX80 was released, it cost about two weeks wages (revolutionary at the time for it's price point) and had a 3.25Mhz processor with 1KB of memory.

Against that backdrop imagine walking up to someone on the high street and handing them a Nexus 5 and pointing out that it's floating point performance was about 50% faster than the Cray-1 which was then the state of the art (at about $8 million then dollars) oh and it has 256 times the RAM and a two orders of magnitude more storage and costs less than a weeks wages and run for a full day off a single charge consuming less power than the Cray 1's circulation pump.

It's a hard call to say "not going to happen any time soon" when we have proven the basic principle.

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#203

Post by interpol_p »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #181
jjoonathan wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do you think it would look anything like what we currently consider social networking? Why are people so painfully short-sighted? Why do you think the fact that "next-gen" social networking will look different excuses three massive friction points of VR (buying the VR gear, buying a decent computer, and strapping on an ungainly headset)? It's not short-sighted to see problems, it's short-sighted to ignore them.…

>It's not short-sighted to see problems, it's short-sighted to ignore them. Unless you have a reason to think you can. Do you? And the history of technology has shown that these "friction points" never last. Why do you think this will be any different? Short-sightedness. >You're wandering in circles, still not addressing the friction problem. That statement was to set up the point that Facebook is so forward thinking…

The problem with VR is that the friction point occurs as soon as you have to put something on your face.

This isn't so bad if you're a gamer, or you're at home and wanting to experience some entertainment (similar to wearing headphones). But I can't see this style of VR changing the computing landscape the same way mobile computers have.

So if Facebook comes up with VR that doesn't involve covering your eyes, that's great. But that has little to nothing to do with what they acquired in Oculus.

The fact that every VR example given by Facebook so far sounds super contrived (seeing a virtual doctor, really?) doesn't give me hope that they know where VR can be really effective — a small subset of entertainment.

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#204

Post by Jetrel »

MrScruff wrote: post #134
varkson wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd probably still be an RTS and likely never become popular. There might never have been a second Halo.

When was Halo a RTS?

Remember that one of Bungie's flagship titles was an RTS series called "Myth". Bungie before that had made a proto-Halo FPS series called "Marathon".

When they made Halo, they made a pretty good architecture for showing wide landscapes/buildings/vehicles and large-enough numbers of troops onscreen at once. During the alpha experimentation with the game, apparently they seriously took a look at using this to make an RTS (albeit one really outside of the usual starcraft mold), rather than a FPS.

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#205

Post by pjc50 »

TheCapn wrote: post #201
Nursie wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet another reason that kickstarter should be equity based. At the moment it's basically a charitable donation to someone else's success.

Someone who's read the terms of use and licensing and all those other jazzy legal documents could correct me if I'm wrong, but is there anything stopping a company from having one of their promises an equity stake in the company? Say, I'm running a kickstarter and put a tier of funding as "equity". I put aside 10% ownership of my brand to those willing to pay $1,000 or more (for instance). If I set up terms that thos…

Local securities law usually prevents you selling shares to the public without a lot more accounting.

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#206

Post by danudey »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #40
interpol_p wrote: post #35

From Notch: > Don’t get me wrong, VR is not bad for social. In fact, I think social could become one of the biggest applications of VR. Being able to sit in a virtual living room and see your friend’s avatar? Business meetings? Virtual cinemas where you feel like you’re actually watching the movie with your friend who is seven time zones away? Do people really see this as the mainstream use of VR? Do people really se…

The thing about the future is that it has a funny way of proving you wrong. I think the vision outlined above is entirely possible. An integrated microphone with surround sound headphones was going to change gamedev forever. Who knows how that would bleed into other types of scenarios than gaming? I'd watch a movie with someone using an Oculus. It'd be a fun experience.

> I'd watch a movie with someone using an Oculus. It'd be a fun experience.

Really? I wonder if it would actually feel like watching a movie with someone, or if it would just feel like watching a movie alone.

VR, like social media, has the potential to connect us with people distant to ourselves, and distance us from those nearby.

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#207

Post by just2n »

moron4hire wrote: post #145
eloisant wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the problem I have with Kickstarter. * You can't see it as investing, because you're not getting any share. * You may see it as pre-ordering a product that doesn't exist (and I think that's how most backers see it), but you don't get any consumer protection if the project fails or doesn't live up to your expectation. * All is left is seeing Kickstarter as a charity. You're giving charity to a for-profit organ…

Kickstarter is patronage. It can't be considered anything else or they get into some legal trouble with one or more US bureaus. You can't see it as investing because then the SEC gets involved. You can't see it as prodding a product because then, as you said, consumer protection act gets involved. And you can't see it as a donation because then the IRS gets involved (more involved, as backers will want to take deduct…

They generally require a deliverable, though. If the product is successful, backers get some form of tangible benefit.

I don't see why this can't be some share of the company. Giving away 10% for a huge chunk of seed money ($2.4m in this case) is actually way better than you'll ever do from angel investors or any kind of incubator. So if the product is successful, throw a unit at a backer as well as a tiny percentage of the company. Just so they can not feel cheated when you sell for a multi-billion dollar exit that is not in the interest of your backers, because in that case they all get their money back.

You don't have to say "your backing guarantees you X% of the company", you just say "in addition to receiving a VR, you will also receive an X% stake in the company if we are successful."

The SEC can get involved precisely now, not when the funding happens, but rather when the options are given out.

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#208

Post by weixiyen »

voyou wrote: post #166
rimantas wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I think the guys who predicted that iPhone will flop are the same guys who think VR is world-changing. The common theme is misunderstanding of the potential users and the problems the product solves. VR solves zero problems for me.

This might well be right. VR proponents like to present people who disagree with them as conservatives, but is it not in fact the case that the VR proponents are the real conservatives? That is, the ubiquity of computing devices that you get with smartphones, which the iPhone kicked off, is something genuinely fairly new, which not a lot of people had previously imagined. VR, on the other hand, is something people ha…

Perhaps, which is why I put the caveat "Usable" VR. The problem with VR right now is that it's not very user friendly.

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#209

Post by varkson »

dagw wrote: post #138
varkson wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd probably still be an RTS and likely never become popular. There might never have been a second Halo.

I thought Bungie gave up on the RTS concept and made it a shooter before Microsoft purchased them.

I haven't heard that, but I don't remember much about Halo at that time. I do remember when Halo RTS was revealed, Bungie was talking about how they were sick of FPS games after Marathon and wanted to do an RTS.

Re: Virtual Reality is going to change the world

#210

Post by quasque »

noir_lord wrote: post #202
quasque wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> optical nerve transducers Apart from some limited, low-resolution medical trials for people who've lost their eyesight already, this is firmly in the arena of science fiction and not going to happen any time soon.

> Apart from some limited, low-resolution medical trials for people who've lost their eyesight already, this is firmly in the arena of science fiction and not going to happen any time soon. Define any time soon. The year I was born the ZX80 was released, it cost about two weeks wages (revolutionary at the time for it's price point) and had a 3.25Mhz processor with 1KB of memory. Against that backdrop imagine walking…

The basic principle proven so far is that, with an invasive surgical procedure, retinal function can be permanently replaced with technology that electrically stimulates the retinal ganglion cells (i.e. the side of the optic nerve that terminates in the eye) - and that it works in some blind people.

This predicts nothing about augmenting the optical input in people with healthy eyesight. I mean, who is going to volunteer to have their normal eyesight irreparably damaged to play a VR game?

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