Hugo Barra is joining Facebook to lead virtual reality

There was some executive shifting a few months back in VR at Facebook and they seem to be distinguishing already implying that "Desktop VR = Oculus" and that this is only a piece of Facebook's VR work.

Will he?

I followed Palmer for a couple of years (on MTSB3D forums) before the kickstarter; it was his passion and dedication for hacking old/vintage HMDs that got me interested, and ultimately led me to supporting the KS.

He showed the kind of interest and dedication in DIY VR that I hadn't seen since the mid-1990s (and I only knew of one other individual at that time with the same kind of interest - DIY VR, heck VR in general outside of a few niche areas - was really dead).

DIY VR -was- his "engineering itch".

Sure - he got rich beyond his wildest dreams, but I don't think (or maybe I don't want to believe?) that was his endgame. From what I could see then, the endgame was to make VR something again - to make it "take off", to get it back to where it was (the hype?) in the 1990s. I'm not even sure if he wanted it commercialized - just more popular, and more people hacking on it. I think - or want to believe, maybe - that had the only thing that came out of the KS had been the DK1, that Palmer would be happy to have done only that. I don't think he ever intended it to become what it has, but I don't know him - maybe he did. From my perspective, which is skewed for a number of reasons (most of all because I don't know him personally), he never intended for it to explode like it has.

Personally, it surprised me greatly that it did. What I couldn't understand then (nor even now) is why there was an apparent pent-up demand for an HMD for the PC and gaming, yet virtually no one (outside of Palmer and one or two others) was hacking on HMDs? In the 1990s, there was a fairly vibrant DIY VR culture - a few well known books, an unfortunately short-lived magazine (PCVR) - but there were more than a handful of people hacking their own systems together, sharing stuff on the nascent internet and BBS's.

...then, it died off. But apparently there was still demand for it, but it seemed like nobody wanted to DIY their own systems, until after the Rift was announced. It isn't like there wasn't any information on the internet to get people started, plus the whole "maker movement" was strong. The software was all available to play with (game engines, 3d tools, etc). Yet - there wasn't any DIY movement. Until the Rift.

Strangely, though, the DIY VR movement is still fairly small; bigger than it was in 2012 and before, certainly - but it still seems like a lot of people don't want to DIY their own VR rig - most seems to only want to be consumers of the devices, not hackers/innovators - which is a bit strange to me.

Total tangent there - my apologies. As far as Palmer is concerned - well, I hope he continues with hacking VR - but I worry that the FB acquisition and the Oculus brand may dash that. I worry that he may have inadvertently killed the one thing he cared most about - hacking VR as his personal hobby - by making it big. I hope not, but I do wonder.

I'm not Palmer, but I know if I had the stark choice of choosing between being super-wealthy vs being able to freely work on and happily pursue my hobbies, I think I would ultimately kick myself if I chose the former.

No, just that VR isn't bad or mainstream yet so you have more opportunity to shape and steer it. Tough to do if you are chained to a goliath and it's needs.

Now days, it doesn't sound quite so interesting. Back then it was impressive. There's so much extra tech available to everyone now, it's not nearly as tough as it was then.

I'm not much of a walmart fan for various reasons, but that sounded like pretty darn interesting work.