5 ms·

I think Oculus is pretty cool, but I don't really see the synergy with facebook here.

by kmonsen 6y ago

oliyoung 6y ago
the end goal involves wearing a device that enables Facebook content in your field-of-view 12-15 hours a day
shafyy 6y ago
VR and AR are the next computing platform and Facebook wants to own the hardware.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  surely they are just the VDU, not the platform?
  - moron4hire 6y ago
    That's what most of us independent developers in the industry had hoped would happen, but unfortunately it's not happening. Facebook locks the Oculus app store down harder than Apple theirs. They spend a lot of development effort on Oculus-exclusive social integration features, like avatars, lipsyncing of avatars to user speech, and a bunch of other stuff that nobody ever asked for and nobody is using, yet they still keep pushing it. And they're spending a lot of investment dollars to buy up independent studios and lock them into platform exclusives. Facebook definitely takes a platform approach with Oculus. The Oculus Quest is a great device at a great price. It has done the most to make VR a mainstream accessible thing. And yet because of Facebook's behavior and what we know about Facebook as a company in general, we really, really must not let it become the dominant system. Hopefully, other companies will improve their user experiences to match (because Oculus certainly doesn't have a hardware advantage, everyone is pretty much running the exact, same hardware profile with only minor differences).
    - shafyy 6y ago
      So true.
    - Chris2048 6y ago
      I don't know much about Oculus - Is in not possible to use alt-app-stores? TBH, this thing happens. look at gog vs steam vs <shall not be named>; this strategy doesn't always pay off though, consider the Nintendo console lineup (curated, small but higher quality) compared to Sony PlayStation - in the end Sony won that one, and my own belief is the reason that less curation led to some indie (not developed by Sony) gems.
      - moron4hire 6y ago
        There is one project called SideQuest that--if you enable developer options on your Go or Quest, which requires a developer account with Oculus--uses Android side-loading from a PC to get apps onto the Quest. When you side-load an app on the Go, you also have to have a key file embedded in it that was generated from the device's own serial number, so SideQuest has to have you generate an OSIG for your device, upload it to your profile, then hack your OSIG into any APKs you download from their store. Quest doesn't have the OSIG requirement, but you still need the developer account to enable developer options. And you're still stuck using Oculus' APIs. There are no open source APIs for accessing the device sensor data or rendering. Regular Android apps (minus Google Play Services) can run on the devices as tiny windows, and then you can get some super-hacky input as touch events on the app view, but it's really not usable. I think it even forces software rendering, because I've seen some really bad performance out of it (I found out about it after not having an app configured incorrectly before uploading it on my own for my own development). It's basically there as a fallback for Android's default Settings view, which you use to configure the developer settings like enabling USB debugging.

I think Oculus is pretty cool, but I don't really see the synergy with facebook here.

oliyoung 6y ago

the end goal involves wearing a device that enables Facebook content in your field-of-view 12-15 hours a day

shafyy 6y ago

VR and AR are the next computing platform and Facebook wants to own the hardware.

Chris2048 6y ago
surely they are just the VDU, not the platform?
- moron4hire 6y ago
  That's what most of us independent developers in the industry had hoped would happen, but unfortunately it's not happening. Facebook locks the Oculus app store down harder than Apple theirs. They spend a lot of development effort on Oculus-exclusive social integration features, like avatars, lipsyncing of avatars to user speech, and a bunch of other stuff that nobody ever asked for and nobody is using, yet they still keep pushing it. And they're spending a lot of investment dollars to buy up independent studios and lock them into platform exclusives. Facebook definitely takes a platform approach with Oculus. The Oculus Quest is a great device at a great price. It has done the most to make VR a mainstream accessible thing. And yet because of Facebook's behavior and what we know about Facebook as a company in general, we really, really must not let it become the dominant system. Hopefully, other companies will improve their user experiences to match (because Oculus certainly doesn't have a hardware advantage, everyone is pretty much running the exact, same hardware profile with only minor differences).
  - shafyy 6y ago
    So true.
  - Chris2048 6y ago
    I don't know much about Oculus - Is in not possible to use alt-app-stores? TBH, this thing happens. look at gog vs steam vs <shall not be named>; this strategy doesn't always pay off though, consider the Nintendo console lineup (curated, small but higher quality) compared to Sony PlayStation - in the end Sony won that one, and my own belief is the reason that less curation led to some indie (not developed by Sony) gems.
    - moron4hire 6y ago
      There is one project called SideQuest that--if you enable developer options on your Go or Quest, which requires a developer account with Oculus--uses Android side-loading from a PC to get apps onto the Quest. When you side-load an app on the Go, you also have to have a key file embedded in it that was generated from the device's own serial number, so SideQuest has to have you generate an OSIG for your device, upload it to your profile, then hack your OSIG into any APKs you download from their store. Quest doesn't have the OSIG requirement, but you still need the developer account to enable developer options. And you're still stuck using Oculus' APIs. There are no open source APIs for accessing the device sensor data or rendering. Regular Android apps (minus Google Play Services) can run on the devices as tiny windows, and then you can get some super-hacky input as touch events on the app view, but it's really not usable. I think it even forces software rendering, because I've seen some really bad performance out of it (I found out about it after not having an app configured incorrectly before uploading it on my own for my own development). It's basically there as a fallback for Android's default Settings view, which you use to configure the developer settings like enabling USB debugging.