Oculus to Acquire Carbon Design Team • Hacker News Board

Re: Oculus to Acquire Carbon Design Team

#41

Post by Karunamon » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 3:34 AM UTC

omarhegazy wrote: post #36

th0ma5 wrote: post #8

I keep thinking the long term goal here is not an Oculus Rift product, but devices that tie in augmented reality and marketing / sales, with hooks to your Facebook account. I honestly see them ditching anything to do with a game display device.

Oh my God I thought these bullshit cries of doom stopped. It's such a simple matter of business. If Oculus did that, no one would by a Rift. That would be bad for Oculus, Facebook, and consumers. The much more likely thing to result from the Facebook buyout is they use their $2B to build a better product and market it better to compete against new behemoths butting in the VR marketplace like Sony and others that are…

Not on this site, unfortunately. I expect HN to be as even-handed on Facebook as Republicans are on Democrats.

Re: Oculus to Acquire Carbon Design Team

#42

Post by notastartup » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 4:04 AM UTC

I wonder if tactile VR gloves will be reality soon. I'd imagine that there will be some tiny nano linings inside the glove that could be controlled digitally, which would create a tactile sensation, such as holding a gun or a steering wheel.

Moving on from just hand gloves, we could even produce g-force enducing hydraulic chair, for example, when a car accelerates inside the game, the chair would lean you back, causing you to feel gravity pulling you back to the ground, when inside the game, it would feel like you were being thrust backwards to your seats.

Re: Oculus to Acquire Carbon Design Team

#43

Post by DigitalSea » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 5:29 AM UTC

I think it is pretty safe to assume they're working on hardware to compliment the Oculus headset; gloves, a controller and or other accessories perhaps a full body suit comprised of sensors to map body movement.

I am well and truly excited for the future of virtual reality, Oculus are definitely at the forefront of greatness here.

Re: Oculus to Acquire Carbon Design Team

#44

Post by andy_ppp » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 7:26 AM UTC

walterbell wrote: post #35

serf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wondered the same thing about Nest/Google the other day. It could also be an abstraction on the part of Google/Facebook to hide their associations with the brand, to avoid brand reputation damage of some sort.

Facebook is taking this holding-company approach to WhatsApp, Instagram and Oculus. Unilever, P&G and Nestle should be wary of another holding company controlling their customer channel, especially after the Axciom partnership which gives Facebook access to the _offline_ purchases of Facebook customers. The consumer goods companies should fund new social networks, to diversify their online reach. http://www.businessi…

So Facebook are profiling everyone to an ever more extreme degree; soon Facebook will tell you what you want and you'll like it or else :-)

Re: Oculus to Acquire Carbon Design Team

#45

Post by wildpeaks » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 7:49 AM UTC

modeless wrote: post #28

msie wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope not, everybody's doing that. They should make affordable VR gloves.

Gloves are a possibility, but pure gesture input just doesn't work (as repeatedly demonstrated with Wii, Kinect, and Leap Motion). Whatever they release, it needs to have at least a few buttons and probably an analog stick or two.

A wireless version of the Peregrine glove would fit:

http://theperegrine.com

Re: Oculus to Acquire Carbon Design Team

#46

Post by idlewan » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 8:00 AM UTC

modeless wrote: post #28

msie wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope not, everybody's doing that. They should make affordable VR gloves.

Gloves are a possibility, but pure gesture input just doesn't work (as repeatedly demonstrated with Wii, Kinect, and Leap Motion). Whatever they release, it needs to have at least a few buttons and probably an analog stick or two.

    pure gesture input just doesn't work (as repeatedly demonstrated with Wii, Kinect, and Leap Motion)

That's just untrue. I'm not saying that, from a gameplay-oriented perspective, gestures are better/more adapted (which is definitely wrong to say at the moment anyway). But for a data visualization and/or 3d world manipulation use, gestures are really promising.

The devices themselves and their lack of general use don't prove anything: The Wii and Kinect don't track the fingers, and the Leap Motion is a lot more spatially restricted (which might bring incomfort after prolonged use, and is unpractical for wide movements). Besides, developping new ways of interacting reliably with gestures is not something you can do in an afternoon, so it might take time for pure gesture input to prove its worth.

Re: Oculus to Acquire Carbon Design Team

#47

Post by msie » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 8:24 AM UTC

wildpeaks wrote: post #45

modeless wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gloves are a possibility, but pure gesture input just doesn't work (as repeatedly demonstrated with Wii, Kinect, and Leap Motion). Whatever they release, it needs to have at least a few buttons and probably an analog stick or two.

A wireless version of the Peregrine glove would fit: http://theperegrine.com

But the gloves don't fully reflect the positions of each of the fingers. It only senses when the touch points on the glove are being contacted. I couldn't flip the bird at someone in VR, for example.

Re: Oculus to Acquire Carbon Design Team

#48

Post by thenomad » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 8:47 AM UTC

msie wrote: post #27

modeless wrote: post #21

An Oculus controller to go with the headset is looking more and more likely. I'm guessing that it will be similar to the PlayStation Move controller but with infrared instead of visible light tracking. They're already doing infrared tracking for the headset, so it would be easy to track a couple of controllers as well.

I hope not, everybody's doing that. They should make affordable VR gloves.

Someone's already on it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/controlvr/control-vr-mo...

Re: Oculus to Acquire Carbon Design Team

#49

Post by joeevans » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 3:21 PM UTC

th0ma5 wrote: post #8

I keep thinking the long term goal here is not an Oculus Rift product, but devices that tie in augmented reality and marketing / sales, with hooks to your Facebook account. I honestly see them ditching anything to do with a game display device.

That must suck so bad for these designers... one day you're a hot industrial designer, and the next you're working for facebook.

You can make the best designs ever, but if there is just suck inside, your design sucks in a way too.

Re: Oculus to Acquire Carbon Design Team

#50

Post by joeevans » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 3:34 PM UTC

omarhegazy wrote: post #36

th0ma5 wrote: post #8

I keep thinking the long term goal here is not an Oculus Rift product, but devices that tie in augmented reality and marketing / sales, with hooks to your Facebook account. I honestly see them ditching anything to do with a game display device.

Oh my God I thought these bullshit cries of doom stopped. It's such a simple matter of business. If Oculus did that, no one would by a Rift. That would be bad for Oculus, Facebook, and consumers. The much more likely thing to result from the Facebook buyout is they use their $2B to build a better product and market it better to compete against new behemoths butting in the VR marketplace like Sony and others that are…

I think characterizing discussion of the effects of facebook on oculus as 'Facebook hating' is a pretty cheap dodge of a significant event. A lot of the strategy changes people are making around the facebook purchase are legitimate ones based on reasonable observations of facebook. It's a terrible thing for those of us who were really excited about oculus for so long, but things changed and a reasonable discussion is going to happen.

I think that the argument that facebook adding "tacky social media" components to oculus would be bad for business is incorrect. Facebook has done quite well with the model, as their company shows.

For many of us, we realize that facebook will likely succeed with oculus in some way. It will just be a different kind of party than we want to go to, is all.