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Oculus to Acquire Carbon Design Team
- paperwork 12y agoSo why would Oculus acquire Carbon Design, rather than contracting them to design/build their products?
- VikingCoder 12y agoThey're considering a whole family of products to allow you to interact with the virtual world? Guns, gloves, vests that make you feel like you've been hit, chairs that make you feel like you're accelerating, rotating seats like NASA uses at Space Camp, etc. EDIT: Walking platforms like the Virtuix Omni, force-feedback devices, scents, and on and on...
- chollida1 12y agoWhy would a company hire an employee rather than contracting them out to do the same work? Bingo. User Bane understands why:)
- forrestthewoods 12y agoBecause they've already been using them as a contractor* and decided it would make sense to bring them in-house full-time. * "We’ve been working with Carbon for nearly a year on multiple unannounced projects."
- ISL 12y agoPerhaps because they'd like exclusive use of their services?
- acgourley 12y agoIt's possible that in working with Carbon they were bleeding trade secrets and knowhow, and they might have noticed competitors starting to engage Carbon.
- endergen 12y agoYou are basically paying to grow a competitor if you outsource high skilled work. Strategically it's better to control all knowledge/resources that your company is dependent on.
- jfoster 12y agoApparently ASUS started selling computers after Dell outsourced a bit too much to them. http://www.asymco.com/2012/12/07/the-real-threat-that-samsung-poses-to-apple/ http://www.asymco.com/2012/12/07/the-real-threat-that-samsun...
- chaostheory 12y agoDidn't the same situation happen with Sony and Samsung in electronics?
- th0ma5 12y agoI keep thinking the long term goal here is not an Oculus Rift product, but devices that tie in augmented reality and marketing / sales, with hooks to your Facebook account. I honestly see them ditching anything to do with a game display device.
- magicalist 12y agoHow does that follow at all from the blog post? I'm no fan of Oculus being purchased (at all), but what in a product design team joining Oculus suggests any "long term goal here" about devices for marketing, sales, or hooks to your Facebook account, let alone ditching a game display device? I think the far more likely reading is that they know the device sitting on your face is make or break for a VR device hitting the mainstream, and they have the chance here to basically define what a VR display is for the next 10 or 20 years if they do it right (the evolution of game controllers is actually a great analog of this).
- rhizome 12y agoWe can speculate about a Google Glass competitor, and certainly the market would react to a prediction of that, but step 1 is getting people to put something on their face.
- rhizome 12y agoKnowledge gained working with a renderer and two screens can be used with camera(s) and one screen, such as what a cellphone/tablet/computer has.
- serf 12y agoI don't know exactly how you meant 'two screens' (two experienced screens, or two hardware screens?), but in case you meant the latter, there is only one screen. https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Oculus+Rift+Teardown/13682 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Oculus+Rift+Teardown/13682
- 12y ago
- balls187 12y agoSo Carbon Design is now the Occulus Bellevue office, or did Occulus already have an office there?
- mdturnerphys 12y agoCarbon is in North Seattle next to UW. Oculus was already building up an R&D team in Redmond.
- whence 12y agoWhy is it said that Oculus acquired them, instead of Facebook? Doesn't Oculus not really exist anymore (as a company)?
- devindotcom 12y agoSince they operate independently and likely have their own cash pile for stuff like this, the legal entity making the purchase is actually Oculus. Same with like Nest/Google AFAIK.
- serf 12y agoI wondered the same thing about Nest/Google the other day. It could also be an abstraction on the part of Google/Facebook to hide their associations with the brand, to avoid brand reputation damage of some sort.
- walterbell 12y agoFacebook is taking this holding-company approach to WhatsApp, Instagram and Oculus. Unilever, P&G and Nestle should be wary of another holding company controlling their customer channel, especially after the Axciom partnership which gives Facebook access to the _offline_ purchases of Facebook customers. The consumer goods companies should fund new social networks, to diversify their online reach. http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-and-acxioms-big-data-partnership-2013-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-and-acxioms-big-data... "Audience Operating System .. allows advertisers to tie together your "digital persona" even if you've changed your name due to marriage, the use of a nickname, or because you sometimes use a middle name. It also figures out whether someone who has moved addresses or changed phone numbers is the same person or not."
- andy_ppp 12y agoSo Facebook are profiling everyone to an ever more extreme degree; soon Facebook will tell you what you want and you'll like it or else :-)
- ooorrr 12y agoGreat for Carbon. The situation for hardware design firms (right now, and often) is brutal - the degree of difficulty to consistently book enough new work to keep your talented team members employed is incredibly high, and more companies are moving this work in-house. There are a number of these firms in the Seattle area, and all of them are struggling. Acquisition is often preferable to closing your doors, which could well be what happens to others.
- mdturnerphys 12y agoCan I ask what your connection to the industry is?
- modeless 12y agoAn Oculus controller to go with the headset is looking more and more likely. I'm guessing that it will be similar to the PlayStation Move controller but with infrared instead of visible light tracking. They're already doing infrared tracking for the headset, so it would be easy to track a couple of controllers as well.
- wlesieutre 12y agoNot necessarily. Most people are going have the headset hooked up at a desk because that's where the computer lives, so you'd need a really big field of view to see hands while seated up close to the desk. My webcam sees my face reliably, but it definitely doesn't see my hands. Additionally, controllers that you wave around don't do well with blindness to your surroundings. If they make a controller I'd expect it to be more similar to Razer's Hydra, though hopefully cheaper.
- modeless 12y agoIf they were going to do a magnetically tracked controller like the Razer Hydra they would have bought Sixense by now, or at least partnered with them. I'm pretty sure they're not going to do that. They want sub-millimeter absolute tracking accuracy and magnetic tracking can't deliver that.
- msie 12y agoI hope not, everybody's doing that. They should make affordable VR gloves.
- msie 12y agoI hope they make affordable VR gloves.
- higherpurpose 12y agoHow does Oculus acquire anything at this point. Don't they mean Facebook acquires Carbon?
- jfoster 12y agoYeah, although the scope of the acquisition is currently limited to the scope of Oculus ("operating independently") within Facebook. I've also seen announcements regarding PayPal acquiring companies even though PayPal is a subsidiary of eBay Inc.
- notastartup 12y agoI wonder if tactile VR gloves will be reality soon. I'd imagine that there will be some tiny nano linings inside the glove that could be controlled digitally, which would create a tactile sensation, such as holding a gun or a steering wheel. Moving on from just hand gloves, we could even produce g-force enducing hydraulic chair, for example, when a car accelerates inside the game, the chair would lean you back, causing you to feel gravity pulling you back to the ground, when inside the game, it would feel like you were being thrust backwards to your seats.
- citrik 12y agoIf Oculus is into acquisitions, it'd be cool to see them acquire Oblong, to add some UI & interaction technology.
- DigitalSea 12y agoI think it is pretty safe to assume they're working on hardware to compliment the Oculus headset; gloves, a controller and or other accessories perhaps a full body suit comprised of sensors to map body movement. I am well and truly excited for the future of virtual reality, Oculus are definitely at the forefront of greatness here.