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> If Oculus had stayed independent, I can guarantee we'd have better (probably more gaming) oriented content. I agree with this. We would also have more compet

> If Oculus had stayed independent, I can guarantee we'd have better (probably more gaming) oriented content. I agree with this. We would also have more competition because other players in the space wouldn't be as intimidated to go up against a business like Meta/Facebook. I think a crucial miscalculation was trying to EEE the space. Zuck clearly states that he wanted Meta to "own the space" on every platform. Basically, he wanted to carve out a niche like Adobe managed to do with PDF, but on a scale that rivals full blown platforms like the Android ecosystem. Such an ambitious plan sounds great on paper, until you realize that you're trying to EEE the exact people who wrote the textbooks on EEE. When you sound a horn that loud, on a megaphone as big as the one Meta was using, you're only painting a target on your own back. Another drawback to the path that Meta selected is they basically internalized the entire hardware industry that was just starting up. If Oculus had stayed independent I believe they would have had to partner with other hardware vendors to establish some sort of regulatory body for writing industry standard specifications. With one serious player in the field developing and harboring all the tech for themselves, this space could be barren for a long time if Meta folds. All the work by third parties that went into this proprietary technology and platform will basically be for nothing.

Qub3d 4y ago
What does “EEE” mean in this context? End to end?
- zdragnar 4y ago
  Embrace, Extend, Extinguish - the Microsoft strategy (per their internal documents) towards anything it didn't control: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_and_extin... Adopt an open standard, add proprietary bits so that content worked best (or exclusively) on their own version, and force other players and competitors out.
  - hoseja 4y ago
    - neilv 4y ago
      IMHO, the saddest part is that people keep falling for it, and/or knowingly selling out others to it.
      - conductr 4y ago
        And then expecting the guillotine as “justice”, it’s a downward spiral. But this is just business. Leaders make miscalculations all the time. In this case, Zuck’s business problem is replacing the growth story of a maturing product that is the Facebook app and really making social media an entire industry. Meta and VR is a potential new industry. The only thing that will replace the SM growth is creating/owning an industry again. He liked the VR world because he could own it for a while. It would be more difficult to disrupt than what keeps happening with SM. TikTok is the latest rival but there have been many. And there’s now as ad revenue pressures. It’s a recipe for a massive layoff. Since it’s a business, that is the most appropriate action. I don’t think anyone expected how difficult and expensive it would be. I assume the layoffs will slow this down further and it’s effectively a loss or a solution without a problem.
        zdragnar 4y ago
        > I don’t think anyone expected how difficult and expensive it would be I agree with the rest of your post, but this might be more of an "anyone inside of Meta" scenario. There's plenty of skeptics around short-term VR (myself included). Getting a non-technical audience into it is going to require a set of massive technological innovations, imho, both in software and hardware. Even then, having your vision be completely blocked to the outside world is not something casual users are going to enjoy for any extended amount of time or frequency. If I'm writing a post and my kid or dog or friend needs my attention, I can set the phone down for a second. If I'm in VR, the best I can hope for is a button that makes the screen transparent so that my eyes can see (and be seen!) again short of reaching up to my face, taking my head gear off, then putting it back on. Even then, the immersion is completely broken.
  - 4gotunameagain 4y ago
    coughGITHUBcough I'm terribly sorry, I could not resist.
    - aliswe 4y ago
      eg Inter-repo forks existed prior to the acquisition though.
  - sirsinsalot 4y ago
    See: WSL
    - 4ggr0 4y ago
      What's the EEE-strategy behind WSL?
      - incomplete 4y ago
        yeah, i'm curious about this too. i've spoken to many high level folks in MSR (microsoft research) and they're all massive proponents of open-source software and unix and are as excited as i am about being able to open a 'native-ish' *nix terminal and do work. in fact, i've got my win10 box set up for dev, and it's nearly identical to my mac! it wasn't 100% straightforward, and to get windowed emacs working from the cli took a little twiddling, but overall in less than a few hours i had everything running flawlessly. :)
        zdragnar 4y ago
        The challenge Microsoft faces now is that "embrace" is actually a great thing, but now some people will always assume an ulterior motive.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
> We would also have more competition because other players in the space wouldn't be as intimidated to go up against a business like Meta/Facebook I completely disagree with this. Competition is what drives innovation, not the absence of it. Other players did go against Meta/Oculus and their VR products were abysmal in comparison. They just didn't get what makes a desirable VR headset for the average gamers/consumers. And it's not all an issue of money. Sony, Google, Microsoft, LG, Apple, Samsung and other tech giants had equally deep pockets and hardware expertise to compete with Meta/Oculus in this field if they wanted to and if they knew the market. But they didn't. If Meta wouldn't exist in the VR space, it doesn't mean their competitors would magically have better tech now. Their products would still be crap or not even exist today. Same how other smartphone makers with equally deep pockets to Apple like Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola went against the iPhone and failed. If the iPhone wouldn't have existed it doesn't mean all their competitors would now be making better phones. Quite the contrary, the competition the iPhone bought helped move the technology forward, same how Meta's Quest moved the VR tech forward. Just look at Sony's recent VR headset for the PS5, needing physical cables tethered to a separate console you need to buy, is just a no-go in 2022 VR technology. Meta/Oculus moved the goalposts so much with their cordless, self contained Quest 2 headset, especially at the ~400$ price point, that going back to expensive headsets tethered with cables to separate PC/consoles is just not gonna be a VR sales success going forward. Up until the recent Quest Pro failure, it seemed Meta/Oculus really nailed the base recipe for what makes a desirable VR gaming headset with the Quest 2. All they had to do was improve on that, instead of pivoting to "professionals".
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  >needing physical cables tethered to a separate console you need to buy That's an opinion, yet you present it as a fact.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    It is a fact that Sony's VR headset needs a cable tether. Where's the opinion here?
ynx 4y ago
As a VR dev, the field would be barren in that future, but for entirely different reasons. The "common" API to access VR does exist: OpenXR, and is not great and has remained that way for years. Oculus's APIs Just Work (tm) and SteamVR's are fairly usable and more open to accessories, if a bit jank at times. On top of that - a great deal of Meta's XR research has been/is released to the public. We could do better...but we could do worse too. Low-hanging fruit such as controller offsets have been incorrectly specified and remained incorrectly specified for years. Input latency and prediction are unacceptably high and/or incorrectly implemented by at least one game engine, in a way that screws up certain motion vectors unless you take some very much unspecified guesses about implementation and filter them appropriately. I pray for the Khronos groups and members who are party to OpenXR to improve their support going forward, but it's going to require some risky bets on the part of game developers to adopt the APIs, and a lot of legwork from all stakeholders to tune and improve their platforms to something converging on acceptable. And where is Apple in this? Absolutely nowhere - so the platform convergence is guaranteed huge future divergence anyways. So that explains that although there exists a standard platform that multiple hardware manufacturers can target - and have targeted - it has not yet achieved mainstream acceptance. It's just not good enough (yet), it's a pain in the ass to work with, it requires engine updates, and there's a high risk it will be majorly disrupted. Additionally, it must be emphasized that there would be no VR market if not for the Quest 2; no other hardware platform has paved a way to a sustainable consumer ecosystem, from end to end: low priced hardware, high baseline quality of developer experience for something this early in its lifecycle (it bootstrapped developer experience based on very polished developer workflows), consistent install base to target and optimize for.
- grumbel 4y ago
  > no other hardware platform has paved a way to a sustainable consumer ecosystem, from end to end: low priced hardware Without Facebook we might have gotten a consumer version of the DK2 for $350, instead of the $600 CV1, and we might have spend two or three years doing VR with Xbox gamepad instead of having to spend an additional $200 on Touch controller. Hard to say if that would have succeeded, as early not-quite-6DOF VR certainly had issues, but low cost and accessible VR is what the whole VR hype from 2012 onward was build on. The two year delay and the $600 announcement destroyed that hype and reduced VR to a few hardcore fans. Going all exclusive with their store and not allowing other headsets in also fractured the already tiny market completely without need. Quest2 momentarily got the price back down (since then increased by $100), but it still struggles quite a lot in getting the excitement back, as there isn't anything interesting happening on the content side. We don't have movies in VR, games are still all low budget indie stuff and there isn't much in terms of events in VR either, even Meta themselves still struggles broadcasting their own conferences as a proper VR event.

Qub3d 4y ago

What does “EEE” mean in this context? End to end?

zdragnar 4y ago
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish - the Microsoft strategy (per their internal documents) towards anything it didn't control: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_and_extin... Adopt an open standard, add proprietary bits so that content worked best (or exclusively) on their own version, and force other players and competitors out.
- hoseja 4y ago
  - neilv 4y ago
    IMHO, the saddest part is that people keep falling for it, and/or knowingly selling out others to it.
    - conductr 4y ago
      And then expecting the guillotine as “justice”, it’s a downward spiral. But this is just business. Leaders make miscalculations all the time. In this case, Zuck’s business problem is replacing the growth story of a maturing product that is the Facebook app and really making social media an entire industry. Meta and VR is a potential new industry. The only thing that will replace the SM growth is creating/owning an industry again. He liked the VR world because he could own it for a while. It would be more difficult to disrupt than what keeps happening with SM. TikTok is the latest rival but there have been many. And there’s now as ad revenue pressures. It’s a recipe for a massive layoff. Since it’s a business, that is the most appropriate action. I don’t think anyone expected how difficult and expensive it would be. I assume the layoffs will slow this down further and it’s effectively a loss or a solution without a problem.
      - zdragnar 4y ago
        > I don’t think anyone expected how difficult and expensive it would be I agree with the rest of your post, but this might be more of an "anyone inside of Meta" scenario. There's plenty of skeptics around short-term VR (myself included). Getting a non-technical audience into it is going to require a set of massive technological innovations, imho, both in software and hardware. Even then, having your vision be completely blocked to the outside world is not something casual users are going to enjoy for any extended amount of time or frequency. If I'm writing a post and my kid or dog or friend needs my attention, I can set the phone down for a second. If I'm in VR, the best I can hope for is a button that makes the screen transparent so that my eyes can see (and be seen!) again short of reaching up to my face, taking my head gear off, then putting it back on. Even then, the immersion is completely broken.
- 4gotunameagain 4y ago
  coughGITHUBcough I'm terribly sorry, I could not resist.
  - aliswe 4y ago
    eg Inter-repo forks existed prior to the acquisition though.
- sirsinsalot 4y ago
  See: WSL
  - 4ggr0 4y ago
    What's the EEE-strategy behind WSL?
    - incomplete 4y ago
      yeah, i'm curious about this too. i've spoken to many high level folks in MSR (microsoft research) and they're all massive proponents of open-source software and unix and are as excited as i am about being able to open a 'native-ish' *nix terminal and do work. in fact, i've got my win10 box set up for dev, and it's nearly identical to my mac! it wasn't 100% straightforward, and to get windowed emacs working from the cli took a little twiddling, but overall in less than a few hours i had everything running flawlessly. :)
      - zdragnar 4y ago
        The challenge Microsoft faces now is that "embrace" is actually a great thing, but now some people will always assume an ulterior motive.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

> We would also have more competition because other players in the space wouldn't be as intimidated to go up against a business like Meta/Facebook I completely disagree with this. Competition is what drives innovation, not the absence of it. Other players did go against Meta/Oculus and their VR products were abysmal in comparison. They just didn't get what makes a desirable VR headset for the average gamers/consumers. And it's not all an issue of money. Sony, Google, Microsoft, LG, Apple, Samsung and other tech giants had equally deep pockets and hardware expertise to compete with Meta/Oculus in this field if they wanted to and if they knew the market. But they didn't. If Meta wouldn't exist in the VR space, it doesn't mean their competitors would magically have better tech now. Their products would still be crap or not even exist today. Same how other smartphone makers with equally deep pockets to Apple like Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola went against the iPhone and failed. If the iPhone wouldn't have existed it doesn't mean all their competitors would now be making better phones. Quite the contrary, the competition the iPhone bought helped move the technology forward, same how Meta's Quest moved the VR tech forward. Just look at Sony's recent VR headset for the PS5, needing physical cables tethered to a separate console you need to buy, is just a no-go in 2022 VR technology. Meta/Oculus moved the goalposts so much with their cordless, self contained Quest 2 headset, especially at the ~400$ price point, that going back to expensive headsets tethered with cables to separate PC/consoles is just not gonna be a VR sales success going forward. Up until the recent Quest Pro failure, it seemed Meta/Oculus really nailed the base recipe for what makes a desirable VR gaming headset with the Quest 2. All they had to do was improve on that, instead of pivoting to "professionals".

KptMarchewa 4y ago
>needing physical cables tethered to a separate console you need to buy That's an opinion, yet you present it as a fact.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  It is a fact that Sony's VR headset needs a cable tether. Where's the opinion here?

ynx 4y ago

As a VR dev, the field would be barren in that future, but for entirely different reasons. The "common" API to access VR does exist: OpenXR, and is not great and has remained that way for years. Oculus's APIs Just Work (tm) and SteamVR's are fairly usable and more open to accessories, if a bit jank at times. On top of that - a great deal of Meta's XR research has been/is released to the public. We could do better...but we could do worse too. Low-hanging fruit such as controller offsets have been incorrectly specified and remained incorrectly specified for years. Input latency and prediction are unacceptably high and/or incorrectly implemented by at least one game engine, in a way that screws up certain motion vectors unless you take some very much unspecified guesses about implementation and filter them appropriately. I pray for the Khronos groups and members who are party to OpenXR to improve their support going forward, but it's going to require some risky bets on the part of game developers to adopt the APIs, and a lot of legwork from all stakeholders to tune and improve their platforms to something converging on acceptable. And where is Apple in this? Absolutely nowhere - so the platform convergence is guaranteed huge future divergence anyways. So that explains that although there exists a standard platform that multiple hardware manufacturers can target - and have targeted - it has not yet achieved mainstream acceptance. It's just not good enough (yet), it's a pain in the ass to work with, it requires engine updates, and there's a high risk it will be majorly disrupted. Additionally, it must be emphasized that there would be no VR market if not for the Quest 2; no other hardware platform has paved a way to a sustainable consumer ecosystem, from end to end: low priced hardware, high baseline quality of developer experience for something this early in its lifecycle (it bootstrapped developer experience based on very polished developer workflows), consistent install base to target and optimize for.

grumbel 4y ago
> no other hardware platform has paved a way to a sustainable consumer ecosystem, from end to end: low priced hardware Without Facebook we might have gotten a consumer version of the DK2 for $350, instead of the $600 CV1, and we might have spend two or three years doing VR with Xbox gamepad instead of having to spend an additional $200 on Touch controller. Hard to say if that would have succeeded, as early not-quite-6DOF VR certainly had issues, but low cost and accessible VR is what the whole VR hype from 2012 onward was build on. The two year delay and the $600 announcement destroyed that hype and reduced VR to a few hardcore fans. Going all exclusive with their store and not allowing other headsets in also fractured the already tiny market completely without need. Quest2 momentarily got the price back down (since then increased by $100), but it still struggles quite a lot in getting the excitement back, as there isn't anything interesting happening on the content side. We don't have movies in VR, games are still all low budget indie stuff and there isn't much in terms of events in VR either, even Meta themselves still struggles broadcasting their own conferences as a proper VR event.