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"Zuckerberg explained that he felt that Oculus represented an entirely new post-PC and post-mobile platform." He's probably right. While Google and others are focusing on half-baked wearables as their key to the future, facebook just bought a huge chunk of the most likely successor.
To a not-so-knowledgeable person like myself, this seems like a bubble. Is it so hard to wire up some displays, optics and gyros? 2 billion? What could you do in-house or with a new team with, say 20 million? Maybe it is so hard.
"Zuckerberg explained that he felt that Oculus represented an entirely new post-PC and post-mobile platform." He's probably right. While Google and others are focusing on half-baked wearables as their key to the future, facebook just bought a huge chunk of the most likely successor.
I can't comprehend that John Carmack is now working for facebook.
I wonder if something (or somebody) forced this.
Greed?
You also have no idea of the terms. For all we know Oculus will still act as an independent agency only with better access to talent, much more capital access, and a huge advertising method-facebook itself!
Or they are devoured by facebook and never see the light of day. Either way, it's 2 billion dollars and all the financial freedom that comes with having that much money.
(Yes I know most of it's in stocks, but unlike everyone else I don't think people realize, facebook isn't going away in the next few years, they are a microsoft-a lumbering giant branching out through tech acquisitions).
To a not-so-knowledgeable person like myself, this seems like a bubble. Is it so hard to wire up some displays, optics and gyros? 2 billion? What could you do in-house or with a new team with, say 20 million? Maybe it is so hard.
VR has been nothing more than a pipe dream for decades. But the problem isn't just merely optics and gyros...it also needs to be lightweight and super-responsive in order to prevent headaches, motion sickness, and disorientation. And also I think there are some complicated things they have to do in order to simulate stereo vision.
These challenges are hardly trivial and there's still a lot that needs to be learned in order to refine the technology.
$2 billion is a lot of money, more than it would cost to develop from scratch. But, in the past, others have tried to perfect this technology and failed.
Facebook (or Apple or Google or Microsoft) could spend $2 billion developing their own VR hardware and easily end up with nothing more than vaporware. Occulus Rift has the benefit of being a real product that works...while only being a few iterations away from a consumer-ready product.
I wouldn't be surprised if a sense of awe of Zuck showing interest in the project helped shelve initial doubts about working with/for such a behemoth.
I wouldn't be surprised if a sense of awe of Zuck showing interest in the project helped shelve initial doubts about working with/for such a behemoth.
Here's a fact: You can't buy cool.