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Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

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Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason people don't get this -- or at least, why I don't get it -- and thus responded negatively, is because VR should have nothing to do with Facebook's vision, and Facebook -- or social gaming in general -- should have nothing to do with Oculus' vision. Honest question: why shouldn't VR be in Facebook's vision? _Someone_ is going to create a Google Hangouts-style product that incorporates VR. I'm not excited…

There are IMO two angles to this that I identify with (to different degrees): 1 - People wanted Oculus to be a driving force in gaming, and based on recent post-acquisition statement it looks like the company is much more interested in the Metaverse than they are in gaming. This is certainly a more ambitious goal and a harder problem overall to tackle than gaming, but a lot of Oculus fans don't give two hoots about t…

Nevertheless, there will be competition.

Let's say your worst fears realize, and the Rift is a locked down Virtual Facebook Experience. Well, they still need to solve presence, and that means:

- Higher resolutions panels.

- Higher frequency panels.

- Low persistence panels.

- Ultra-high bandwidth, ultra-low latency video feeds (a better HDMI or something)

- Graphics processing from Moore's Rabbit Hole

- And lots of other thing that like the above, they won't develop in-house.

Once they have that, somebody will swoop in and create a "Trif" using the better, cheaper material than what the demand driven by the Evil Rift made possible. Remember, the Rift itself is possible because of Retina phone displays.

Or someone will jailbreak their Rift.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#152
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand why most people think Facebook is so dumb in this thread. Because Facebook is dumb. For all the talk of vision, FB is nothing more than organic growth around Zuck's desire to get lists of fellow students on his campus into a directory. FB in 2006 is barely a different experience than FB in 2014. And none of the changes made so far can be charitably described as "smart". For all the wealth of info…

Facebook has been taking their product to market for the last 8 years. What would you have them do? Change their product for the sake of it when it's still growing -- worldwide? Innovation in tech is still laudable innovation. Cassandra. Scribe. Thrift. React. Tech that is widely used. I don't think FB is as important to our industry as some other companies, but no, they're not dumb.

They are actually having growth problems, particularly with the younger demographic.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#153
post #69
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anger slowed in a matter of hours though, it was pretty fast.

Probably because, like me, we've all just written off the OVR and are looking elsewhere. $2b means this is a non-reversible path that fighting against will go nowhere. As exciting as Carmack and Abrash appear, neither of them have been at the forefront of 3D work in the last decade or so and have a monopoly on good 3d tech.

I'm not even angry.

I'm just not going to buy a VR device with a Facebook connection, Facebook being involved in platform management, etc. I might consider it if it were an unlocked piece of hardware, but I suspect that's so unlikely, I don't actually need to make up my mind about that possibility.

I've also had a couple friends cancel projects they were planning for the Oculus platform, because they're no longer sure that the hardware will remain free, and are looking to avoid Facebook lock-in. So there goes the reason I was going to buy one in the first place.

Oh well.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#154
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But to be honest, if somebody waived $2b in my face I'd take it and skip off to a comfortable retirement in Malta without giving two shits about the community that supported it in the beginning. Would you? Really? It is my understanding the Oculus folks were working on that partly for fun, partly because they have a purpose (the purpose being "VR gaming would be soo cool!"). Their idea of a "comfortable retirement"…

Absolutely. I wouldn't even look back. I have plenty of other things to occupy my time that isn't work. Painting, writing, photography, music, and the list goes on forever. Freed of the daily grind I would nothing but things I expect no return on simply for the pleasure of it. I'd probably even give away the output of those activities for nothing.

Ah, so you would do something. Okay.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook doesn't know how to make and sell a product that isn't their own users And how is this any different to Google ? They have exactly the same business model as Facebook.

My initial reaction was to ask why you brought Google into this conversation. Upon further thought, while Google does have a similar business model to Facebook, they have also built actual products and sold them directly to consumers, which Facebook has not. They also build an operating system, Android, used by the majority of smart phones sold worldwide. So no, they're not quite the same, but ignoring that, why brin…

Because we need to scrutinize Google just as much as Facebook.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#156
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But to be honest, if somebody waived $2b in my face I'd take it and skip off to a comfortable retirement in Malta without giving two shits about the community that supported it in the beginning. Would you? Really? It is my understanding the Oculus folks were working on that partly for fun, partly because they have a purpose (the purpose being "VR gaming would be soo cool!"). Their idea of a "comfortable retirement"…

Absolutely. I wouldn't even look back. I have plenty of other things to occupy my time that isn't work. Painting, writing, photography, music, and the list goes on forever. Freed of the daily grind I would nothing but things I expect no return on simply for the pleasure of it. I'd probably even give away the output of those activities for nothing.

What if you wanted to do something bigger? Like, say, design a next-generation VR platform?

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#157
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't compete with 'without ads' business model. Look around: Google search, Youtube, Facebook etc. They all had first mover advantage and there's no way someone can compete with these. Nonsense, there are dozens of very expensive data providers and search companies out there who do very well for themselves thank you very much.

Could you name three? (I fully expect that you can, but it'll make your argument that much more convincing). Of the top of my head, I think of DuckDuckGo, which does not spy, but it still have ads.

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Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#158

I think it's because nobody understands what FB is going to do with it. Instagram definitely has location and social graph data to exploit. But Oculus? What is FB going to do with that? I think most people still think of FB as the site and advertising sales for the site. But if you see FB as a conglomerate like Google, Apple, and Sony then it makes more sense. FB is diversifying, buying up promising technology with t…

Let me take your imagination to a (short) trip: You can build a pretty decent psychological profile from a 30-50h game-play(even less if you design your game with this type of user-data in mind); this alone has HUGE implications(and possible use-cases) I won't go into.. If you combine the data from ALL VR EXPERIENCES through facebooks rift(and let me stress this again - we're talking about most of today's entertainment industry(+education), data the media has been dreaming of for years).. Even if eye-tracking won't be implemented, your VR interactions become a very neat addition to all the data - facebook alone - is gathering already - marketable like nothing before. As someone already mentioned here, being the first on the market means(among other things) that I as a potential VR customer won't really have options to choose from - my options are FB's rift, Sony's PS4+VR combo or just to wait for another ~5 years till enough VR parts are lying around so the smaller companies can have a go(although one may still not be able to watch the 360 F1 driver camera "facebook experience" feed from a "asus vr" kit). I'm fully aware that if most of my family/friends/colleagues/whatnot are on fb, it doesn't really matter if I'm using fb or not - data-wise(don't worry - till you are demonstrating in front of the "right" embassy, all is OK .. for now) - but this is a whole new attack vector for privacy.. and propaganda. If media are the only unregulated weapon of mass destruction on the planet, what is VR in hands of facebook then?

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Pretty much everyone who was angry is still angry. They just stopped posting about it constantly, because what's the point?

You don't know that, they might as well changed their opinion and are now too embarrassed to speak about it. I think a lot of people were acting with pure emotion. Once the surprise subsides the logical reasoning kicks in and you get the bigger picture.

they might as well changed their opinion and are now too embarrassed to speak about it.

Do people do this? It seems like people who change their opinion are also vocal about it.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know that, they might as well changed their opinion and are now too embarrassed to speak about it. I think a lot of people were acting with pure emotion. Once the surprise subsides the logical reasoning kicks in and you get the bigger picture.

they might as well changed their opinion and are now too embarrassed to speak about it. Do people do this? It seems like people who change their opinion are also vocal about it.

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