41–50 of 51 posts
"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.
Virtual reality will never be reality.
And certainly not multiple Cray 2 supercomputers with dozen-megabit/s multi-mile wireless networking accessing darn near the sum of human knowledge - in your pocket, costing a mere few days' pay.
Sometimes the "will never happen" is just waiting for someone credible and insightful to pull together off-the-shelf technology, commoditize some magic stuck in a lab, lead a team to weave it all together, and present the world with something everyone wants but nobody is willing to buy into until everyone else does.
A couple decades ago I had a Virtual iGlasses HMD. (Still have it. Anyone want it?) Sure it had its limitations, but the capability was phenomenal for the time ... alas, between the state of technology and nobody including support in suitable software, it went nowhere. Now we have the off-the-shelf technology to leverage (current dev kit is a mere $350), $2B to commoditize the magic needed, and Carmack to validate the implementation for universal buy-in and support.
The only thing missing is normalization of strapping opaque goggles to your face for prolonged periods while thrashing around on the couch.
"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 would be very, very surprised if there weren't a few window-less rooms in Cupertino with prototype HMDs bolted to tables in them :)
"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.
Thing is, Google is pursuing wearables as pursuant to its core competency: data mining. What does VR have to do with Facebook's core competency?
"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.
Ironically, gathered from reading the initial reactions of early adopters, I think they just destroyed the chances of Oculus succeeding.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wrong. Google knows that there's immense potential in VR. It's just too early for them to get into it yet. The pushback from privacy advocates would kill any potential project.
How do we know they're not already working on it as a covert project?
They like getting the PR value out of all of their projects even if it isn't commercially viable.
Sony announces Project Morpheus 6 days ago. Oculus sells to Facebook today and deal started 5 days ago (apparently). This is either a) Founders saw writing on the wall and decided to get paid early rather than have to compete with a company with much deeper pockets and a preexisting fanbase. b) Facebook saw that Sony's announcement validated the space and decided to buy the company with most mindshare at the moment a…
IMO it's not just the deeper pocket and preexisting fanbase, it's Sony's great relationship with the gaming industry (not to mention its high quality first party studios) that is almost impossible for Oculus to compete with. The founder then probably realized that gaming is no longer the main path Oculus should focus on. If the new strategy is to pursue a more broader application of VR then working with FB makes more…
"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.
You sound like Oculus owns some really valuable technology (they clearly don't own a 2B user base yet). But did sony spend $2B for R&D in their VR project? I doubt so.
I can't comprehend that John Carmack is now working for facebook.
He sounds pretty happy about it: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448631990560903169 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448631430533246976
If only there existed such a thing before facebook, a platform to enable others on the internet to read it,... a blog if you will.
Oh wait...
http://www.altdevblogaday.com/author/john-carmack/
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I guess If someone gives you a lot of money you have to talk nice about them.