gumboot wrote:
Google is _still_ a search engine company and not much else. If search dried up or became easy they'd be in a lot of trouble.
Google are an advertising company. One of their many advertising channels just happens to be a search engine.
And I have no way of backing up this speculation but I wouldn't be surprised if youtube was now a bigger channel than search is.
I thought I'd probably find something that immediately laid out all the numbers as the first search result, but the first hit was made of words instead:
And yeah, Google make almost all their money on adverts, but the thing they offer that makes people deal with them is the platform over which those ads are delivered. It's superfluous to call them an advertising company.
gumboot wrote:There's question answered. Does OR have a camera? Evidently not.
I've been thinking for ages this would be a really good thing, although on reflection since you can't put them at the same place the users' eyes are I'm not sure if the image would actually be usable for much.
That said, even not usable for e.g. looking at your hands a 'glance into the real world' button seems a reasonable thing.
Although I did just say approximation doesn't work well, since it's a static perspective you might find more freedom to do the geometric distortion to bring things in line.
I saw a car that does that. Four cameras around its outside, and it warps it to present a top-down view of itself for parking.
Sadly it shuts off at speed, so you can't drive Spy-Hunter style on the freeway.
pogo wrote:Google's an advertising company now: that's where their value is, that's where they make their money. Everything else (search, phones, GMail, maps, Glass) is a platform for those adverts and a way of getting more information out of users (from their search history, physical location, video watching habits, e-mail contacts and contents) for targeting adverts.
That's not so much the case for Google Play, at least, which is actually selling things to people. But it's a pretty small part of Google.
Even that though. They wouldn't be smartphones without an app store, so Google had to create one. They don't seem to care whether it makes money: there are far more Android phones than iOS ones but the iOS store makes much more money (and the iOS store is only a small part of Apple - they make more money selling phones, tablets or computers, despite their higher manufacturing and R&D costs). Being open, and getting onto as many devices as possible, was far more important.
Last edited by pogo on Thu Mar 27, 2014 4:44 pm 0, edited 1 time in total.
Yes. I'm coming round pretty quick. Not that I was ever that upset.
This is the bit everyone on every Kickstarter really needs to get too (not saying I agree with KS in that respect either, but that is how it is).
The final bit of outrage that I’m calling out is the fact that Oculus was Kickstartered and that some of those folks who donated are outraged. Apparently some folks don’t understand that donating to a Kickstarter gets you whatever reward you’re told when you donate, you don’t get equity, you don’t get to participate in the fruits of a sale of a company like that. (A fact that I’ve complained about myself in the past, if I put a bunch of money into funding something up front shouldn’t I get something big on the backend?!) Oculus crowdsourced traction from enthusiasts and then found the proper partner that can fund them and assist with bringing the platform of VR to the next level. Crowdfunding can only take you so far, especially when you’re doing something this ambitious. “I donated money to add value to a company that was eventually sold!” Well, that’s kind of how business works, folks, hate to be the bearer of bad news.
And that's why thus far I've not donated to a kickstarter (though I'd have been tempted with Linux Voice if I'd realised they were doing it at the time for various reasons, and Pebble turned out well). "The Dragons" probably laugh at us for this while counting their stacks of pound notes
I definitely don't believe in it when it's a big company with plenty of capital already, as it's basically saying "oh cool, you people will give us massive investments for 0%? More for us! Throw us your money, fools!"
Cloudane wrote:And that's why thus far I've not donated to a kickstarter (though I'd have been tempted with Linux Voice if I'd realised they were doing it at the time for various reasons, and Pebble turned out well). "The Dragons" probably laugh at us for this while counting their stacks of pound notes
I definitely don't believe in it when it's a big company with plenty of capital already, as it's basically saying "oh cool, you people will give us massive investments for 0%? More for us! Throw us your money, fools!"
You just have to treat it as a pre-order shop and that the business may go 'out of business'.
I've stayed away of late, backed quite a bit in the past and it just takes too long to deliver or hasn't delivered. I'm just too weak, so best I don't look in general!
Barney wrote:I've never had a chance to play with one of these, and I have a question for those of you that have:
Is it fully immersive, or can you see the edges of the screen like you're watching a giant 3D Cinema screen?
If it's immersive and fills you FOV, I'm definitely wanting one. If not, then it's very much less of an interest to me.
It's amazing and you do get a feeling of immersion.
It's not all the way their yet though. Michael Abrash gave an awesome talk that explains where we are, where we're going to and what needs to happen to make this the most incredible thing ever
More importantly, they needed an ecosystem. IF their system is going to be (hopefully) a dedicated system instead of a (ugh) peripheral they need their version of whatever the app store would be. Your device is only as good as the store
Do you think it will likely transform into a console-type affair rather than the PC plug-in it is now?
I don't know. There's a good chance, since there isn't going to be a huge overlap between VR games and non-VR games. There is going to be one, but arguably it might be a smaller overlap than exists now between PC and console.
As a peripheral it is doomed to niche, with no high-budget custom games, and it's those that will make the best of VR.
Barney wrote:Is it fully immersive, or can you see the edges of the screen like you're watching a giant 3D Cinema screen?
If it's immersive and fills you FOV, I'm definitely wanting one. If not, then it's very much less of an interest to me.
There is no screen. You're in it.
It's this immense immersion (of Dev Kit 1 that is, the only one I can talk about from first-hand experience) that lets you soon forget its technical limitations (especially the crude resolution with its visible subpixels).
It definitely is an experience.
>take off sunglasses
Seamen and fishermen alike swear to have heard voices in the rising tide. Inhuman screams, some of them say.
.
