Fool me, this is real good shit ! [the VR thread]

[Gorecki]

Must be a relief for OR shifting their customer base from man children with entitlement issues to normal people

Facebook users are 'normal'? Have you ever seen a Facebook News Feed?

[Dvorak]

Must be a relief for OR shifting their customer base from man children with entitlement issues to normal people

Ach, gravy.

Folks that help kickstart a project, give their money, time, and support to something that's really working - these folks may feel entitled. And very rightly so IMHO.
And they may feel disappointed when all they get instead is nothing but a Big Money Big Data Facebook Rift.

[fog]

The irony being that Facebook OR and those "man children with entitlement issues" probably need each other for this to work. Facebook have the clout to make the best affordable tech possible, while those "man children" are still likely to be the OR's main audience and not Facebook's "normal people".

[Dio]

I'm very unsure that's the case.

It sounds to me (from what Forsyth said at GDC) like VR doesn't work well enough on most existing game types to sell as a peripheral. That implies that they need to sell a platform, not a peripheral, in order to get games custom-made for it. That's not viable on 200k units. They need to shift millions, and for that you've got to get into the general public.

Sure, the hardcore will be important to it. But the mass market is going to matter too.

[Ratsoap]

Will normos be into it though? What kind of hardware can you connect them to? Do you need a nerd-grade GPU?

[Dio]

A?

[Darkflame]

I highly dought any non-gamers will get a Rift.
For that matter, aside from gaming, I dought there's many truly compelling reasons to get any non-transparent HMD solution.

[gumboot]

Must be a relief for OR shifting their customer base from man children with entitlement issues to normal people

Are normal people where the money's at?

[Jamesac]

Must be a relief for OR shifting their customer base from man children with entitlement issues to normal people

Damn trolls. Can't keep 'em out of anything.

James

[gravy]

Must be a relief for OR shifting their customer base from man children with entitlement issues to normal people

Are normal people where the money's at?

Yup.

Dio's theory is pretty much confirmed. Palmer Lucky on a AMA reddit yesterday said they needed to build a platform which included bespoke hardware and a massive investment in content as well.

We have not gotten into all the details yet, but a lot of the news is coming. The key points:
1) We can make custom hardware, not rely on the scraps of the mobile phone industry. That is insanely expensive, think hundreds of millions of dollars. More news soon.
2) We can afford to hire everyone we need, the best people that fit into our culture of excellence in all aspects.
3) We can make huge investments in content. More news soon.

And they can't do that without being hitched to someone with extremely deep pockets. Oculus CEO Brendan yesterday:

We said, “Uh, I guess we could make a Facebook app.” [Zuckerberg] said, “I don’t think that’s really going to work. It works on a 2D monitor or a mobile phone, and you don’t really have enough users yet. I don’t know if that’s the best thing. Is there any other way I can help you?”

We described our roadmap. Then [Zuckerberg] said, “What if we partner with you? You stay the same. Stay who you are. You expand that vision and focus on other things also. Gaming is core. But how can we help and invest significantly into the platform, the hardware, and bring down the cost of it. We could make it more optimized, do custom silicon, make this even better. What if we also invest in the parts so you can sell the virtual reality platform at cost?” It would use the best components and build a superior technology platform. Then let’s sell it at cost.

I said, “Sure.” [Zuckerberg] said, “I’m pretty sure I can help you do that.” It made so much sense. Stay the same. Stay who you are. And build the next computing platform.

Yeah. They want to supplant MS and Sony, not be part of their journey.

I think they have a chance. And if the don't succeed this FB investment generally means VR has a chance now, there will be massive investment from loads of different corporations now and that's needed to make this difficult thing to do a reality.

If you're genuinely interested in VR as a future technology it's just got the biggest shot in the arm it has ever received.

If you can't see beyond a knee jerk FUCK FACEBOOK emotional reaction? Well that's up to you really. It's kind of childish though

[Dio]

I'm wondering if Zuckerberg has just caught the VR bug the way that so much of the game industry has.

I mean, everyone in the industry who sees this thing raves about it. Goes seriously bonkers for it. But the realisation that you've got to build an entire platform is a proper bath of cold water. What if Zuckerberg got that feeling and simply wants it to be a success so much on a geek-tech level that he's prepared to throw that much money at it?

It's genuinely the most logical explanation I can see for what's in it for Facebook, and given Facebook's corporate structure it's still his baby to do what he wants with too. It almost becomes Oculus, Sponsored By Facebook rather than a conventional buyout. The gaming equivalent of Larry's yachts.

[Jamesac]

The problem is the Rift isn't a platform. It's a monitor you strap to your face. I could play Elite on PC viewing it on my monitor, or I can play Elite on PC viewing it through the Rift via a different video-out. I'm sure there will be more than a few exclusive VR games in the works, and no reason to leash them to a specific piece of hardware if it just takes a change in video mode to enable it to work on whatever else may exist, but the Rift as a specific content platform doesn't make a lot of sense. Even if the uptake in hardware is as good as I was thinking it was going to be before Facebook got involved (and I had very high expectations) I can't see why a developer would limit their potential market, outside of a few specific games like Eve VR.

James

[lazerwalker]

Felix Salmon thinks Zuckerberg might be trying to assemble a conglomerate, so there's still something there if/when Facebook (the social network, not the company) falls out of favour.

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2 ... echnology/

While I was certainly 'WTF' when this was first announced, and certainly there are things about Facebook that leave a bad taste in the mouth, Gravy and Dio's way of thinking about this is very convincing to me.

[Dio]

The problem is the Rift isn't a platform. It's a monitor you strap to your face. I could play Elite on PC viewing it on my monitor, or I can play Elite on PC viewing it through the Rift via a different video-out. I'm sure there will be more than a few exclusive VR games in the works, and no reason to leash them to a specific piece of hardware if it just takes a change in video mode to enable it to work on whatever else may exist, but the Rift as a specific content platform doesn't make a lot of sense. Even if the uptake in hardware is as good as I was thinking it was going to be before Facebook got involved (and I had very high expectations) I can't see why a developer would limit their potential market, outside of a few specific games like Eve VR.

Elite is one of a limited number of games that will probalby work OK on both monitor and VR. Forsyth's comment on Team Fortress 2 summed it up for me: five to ten minutes it's wonderful, another ten minutes it's tolerable with the settings dialed back a bit, after that time to go for a long lie down in a dark room. The majority of game types and games available now aren't enjoyable experiences on VR.

Cockpit-based games are probably an exception, chatting with one of the Eutechnyx guys he said their latest racer works great on it in the cockpit view; you feel ill in about ten seconds if you switch to the external view though.

That disconnect in viable content inherently makes it more of a platform than a display device.

[gravy]

The problem is the Rift isn't a platform. It's a monitor you strap to your face. I could play Elite on PC viewing it on my monitor, or I can play Elite on PC viewing it through the Rift via a different video-out. I'm sure there will be more than a few exclusive VR games in the works, and no reason to leash them to a specific piece of hardware if it just takes a change in video mode to enable it to work on whatever else may exist, but the Rift as a specific content platform doesn't make a lot of sense. Even if the uptake in hardware is as good as I was thinking it was going to be before Facebook got involved (and I had very high expectations) I can't see why a developer would limit their potential market, outside of a few specific games like Eve VR.

Nintendo sold 80m Wii's on the basis of it being a new gaming experience. And that's -just- gaming.

This will work for movies, sports and a shit load of other mass market applications.

There's definitely a huge market out there for new experiences that are easily marketable as innovative.

It's a bigger than the "here's a faster PC / more powerful console" one.

If they can make a platform it'll shift a fuckload.

The question is whether that can translate into a platform with longtivity (see TV, iPad) or a flash in the pan (Wii, 3d cinema, Kinect).

That's the $2bn gamble FB are making I reckon.

If you're an advertising company wouldn't you want to own what could possibly be TV's replacement?