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I'm wondering why people in general think this is some kind of facebook integration stretch goal. Everyone is photoshoping friend requests into 3D Farmville sc

I'm wondering why people in general think this is some kind of facebook integration stretch goal. Everyone is photoshoping friend requests into 3D Farmville screenshots and it's humorous and I get from a gamer perspective, but from other professionals in this industry I find it pretty shocking. Notch is vocal in his opposition, but it really just doesn't make sense to me. It's hardware and an SDK at the end of the day, and now it's in the hands of a leading tech company this is vanguarding OTHER difficult problems of their existing industry (and open sourcing large parts of it!). I have the DK1, and I ordered the DK2 not even a week ago, I've been active in tinkering with Oculus for a while now and even did some Twitch.tv casts of BF3, DayZ, etc. and other games running through TriDef or VorpX. I'm about to start working on a project allowing MS Kinect usage to be broadcast in an Oculus compatible format for web consumption by Oculus users. So I'm pretty "in touch" with the tech at this point. I see this move as FB ensuring a healthy portfolio and healthy future stock price for their investors by getting the jump on patents and technology of a sure fire success emerging market. I don't think you'll have 3D oculus web cam video calls or friend requests popping up in your flight sim, that's just rampant and misguided speculation. If I had a choice about WHO bought Oculus the top of the list would be Valve. They already have Carmack, having Newell in the mix would be amazing and ensure the tech was in good hands. Facebook or Google would be next in line, and waaaaay down at the bottom of the list would be Sony, Microsoft, or EA (I would burn the hardware and pretend it never existed if EA bought it). tl;dr The entire community is acting like a bunch of idiots, stop it, you're embarrassing yourselves and showing your business management ignorance. If I was a company that made it big in the social boom and IPO'd but was facing a shrinking userbase on my life blood product, you better bet your ass I'd utilize my resources to diversify my business. Keeping your all your eggs in a single basket is a historically bad idea. edit: also based on these comments people think Oculus offers software... they don't, you don't play an Oculus VR MMORPG... they provide hardware and an SDK, everything else is up to content producers, the scaling crisis would be purely one of hardware manufacturing and distribution and maintaining a very widely used SDK. Which I would consider FB pretty okay at... I won't say good... but okay will suffice, especially considering backwards compatibility for hardware/software of this type isn't a big concern.

Autobots 13y ago
>I would burn the hardware and pretend it never existed if EA bought it I can't help but feel that is the same over-dramatization that people are having with Facebook buying Oculus. People like to think that EA is the devil, but in reality they are a game company and has plenty of resources including very smart people that could assist in bringing Oculus to market at least as well as Facebook.
- chadillac 13y ago
  They also have a terrible track record in utilizing those resources in their given industry, I don't hate EA, I hate how EA does things in regards to their customers and products. - Origin requirements - Online requirements - SimCity debacle - buggy release after buggy release - customer support is... turrible I could go on and on, I don't even buy their stuff anymore, BF3 is and was the last of their games I plan on owning.
SkynetSystems 13y ago
>I see this move as FB ensuring a healthy portfolio and healthy future stock price for their investors by getting the jump on patents and technology of a sure fire success emerging market. That statement is precisely why this is such a big problem. Facebook getting their greedy paws on VR patents will all but limit innovation in VR and squeeze small players out of the market. There is nothing to like about this deal.
sillysaurus3 13y ago
tl;dr The entire community is acting like a bunch of idiots, stop it, you're embarrassing yourselves and showing your business management ignorance. Calling anyone who disagrees with you an idiot and an embarrassment isn't good. The central issue is that when Facebook begins to lose relevance, Zuck is going to yank the reins on Oculus as hard as possible to ensure Facebook stays relevant. You can see how Google did this with G+/YouTube integration. VR is in its nascent stages, and Oculus has been synonymous with VR. Now instead of VR having a strong an independent company with Carmack near the helm, "VR" is a subservient division of Facebook. Whether that turns out to be a good thing, well, time will tell. But to call people "ignorant idiots" for being worried is a little extreme, to say the least. EDIT: You're also mistaken about this part (as I was): also based on these comments people think Oculus offers software... they don't, you don't play an Oculus VR MMORPG... they provide hardware and an SDK, everything else is up to content producers, the scaling crisis would be purely one of hardware manufacturing and distribution and maintaining a very widely used SDK The scaling crisis is software, not hardware. They appear to be planning some kind of Oculus VR MMO based on Carmack's tweets. See here for details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7471231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7471231

Autobots 13y ago

>I would burn the hardware and pretend it never existed if EA bought it I can't help but feel that is the same over-dramatization that people are having with Facebook buying Oculus. People like to think that EA is the devil, but in reality they are a game company and has plenty of resources including very smart people that could assist in bringing Oculus to market at least as well as Facebook.

chadillac 13y ago
They also have a terrible track record in utilizing those resources in their given industry, I don't hate EA, I hate how EA does things in regards to their customers and products. - Origin requirements - Online requirements - SimCity debacle - buggy release after buggy release - customer support is... turrible I could go on and on, I don't even buy their stuff anymore, BF3 is and was the last of their games I plan on owning.

SkynetSystems 13y ago

>I see this move as FB ensuring a healthy portfolio and healthy future stock price for their investors by getting the jump on patents and technology of a sure fire success emerging market. That statement is precisely why this is such a big problem. Facebook getting their greedy paws on VR patents will all but limit innovation in VR and squeeze small players out of the market. There is nothing to like about this deal.

sillysaurus3 13y ago

tl;dr The entire community is acting like a bunch of idiots, stop it, you're embarrassing yourselves and showing your business management ignorance. Calling anyone who disagrees with you an idiot and an embarrassment isn't good. The central issue is that when Facebook begins to lose relevance, Zuck is going to yank the reins on Oculus as hard as possible to ensure Facebook stays relevant. You can see how Google did this with G+/YouTube integration. VR is in its nascent stages, and Oculus has been synonymous with VR. Now instead of VR having a strong an independent company with Carmack near the helm, "VR" is a subservient division of Facebook. Whether that turns out to be a good thing, well, time will tell. But to call people "ignorant idiots" for being worried is a little extreme, to say the least. EDIT: You're also mistaken about this part (as I was): also based on these comments people think Oculus offers software... they don't, you don't play an Oculus VR MMORPG... they provide hardware and an SDK, everything else is up to content producers, the scaling crisis would be purely one of hardware manufacturing and distribution and maintaining a very widely used SDK The scaling crisis is software, not hardware. They appear to be planning some kind of Oculus VR MMO based on Carmack's tweets. See here for details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7471231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7471231