Topic: Facebook buys Oculus: virtual farms, real motion sickness.

[Soren]

https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101319050523971?stream_ref=10

But this is just the start. After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face -- just by putting on goggles in your home.

This is something alright...

[Ceric]

Thus extending Occulus ability to keep stringing people along that they may one day sell a product.

[BranDonk Kong]

Cool, I didn't want one anyway, and now that it will never be released (mainstream) I don't have to be some dude that doesn't have one.

[tendoboy1984]

What's next, Facebook buying Twitter? They're becoming as big as Google.

[MagicCow64]

What's next, Facebook buying Twitter? They're becoming as big as Google.

They're desperately trying to transform into something that isn't at risk of becoming irrelevant in ten years. This is a weird way to go.

[broodwars]

Good. Now Oculus Rift can finally be put out of its misery and the scourge of questionably-viable Virtual Reality can die again. Hopefully Sony's Morpheus can join it soon.

[stevey]

DotHack in real life run by facebook...

What could go wrong?

[Shaymin]

Reminder to the professional enthusiasts who may be reading this: When jumping off a bandwagon, do a roll out lest you break your ankles.

[ShyGuy]

Reminder to the professional enthusiasts who may be reading this: When jumping off a bandwagon, do a roll out lest you break your ankles.

OH!  OH! OH SNAP!

[lolmonade]

It's hilarious to me how the internet is losing their minds about this.  Obviously this is nothing but bad for Oculus Rift, and will require a facebook login to use it, and will sell all your information  . 
 
Why isn't it possible for people to believe what this probably actually is - an attempt to diversify their buisness portfolio so they're not relying on one thing only (facebook website) to continue their financial securtiy.  You may question why they're going into VR, but them branching outside of their website is the only way they'll have a chance of being a long-term, sustainable business in the future.
 
In exchange for this, Oculus Rift never has to worry about funding again.

[MagicCow64]

i

[Ceric]

As long as someone makes a really good virtual multiple Monitor app  That's pretty much all I need.

[marvel_moviefan_2012]

I am torn, I think Facebook is the devil but they do have tons of money to invest in this so they could make something good out of it. I am not really that interested in VR any more, I was when I was 12 then Lawn Mower Man came out and kind of killed the whole idea for me. 3D TV is lame, 3D movies are okay but for TV it was a bad idea. VR for video games is a perfect fit, VR for anything else is just weird.

[Phil]

This news doesn't really affect me. I don't see VR as the future of gaming, no more as motion control was the future of gaming. It looks like a gimmick to me, and an uninteresting and unfashionable one at that.

[Stogi]

I don't see why they would make this move. Virtual Hangouts? With what? Avatars? What's the point? It all sounds pretty sad to me. Like 'Her' but goofier.

I like the idea of using it for education, but unless I'm swimming through veins or exploring the cosmos, don't bother. It's sad to hear Zuckerberg say "Virtual Classroom" because classrooms suck and are the worst way to learn anything.

[NWR_insanolord]

Facebook is losing the attention of younger people, who are the most profitable to them in terms of marketing. They're desperately searching for something, anything, to get them back. Oculus is just the latest example.

[Ceric]

I personally learn best from Classrooms because I can talk and get my questions answered.

[Ian Sane]

When people say they want VR, what they want is the Holodeck.  The Holodeck requires stimulation of all of our senses, 100% accurate movement tracking, photorealistic graphics displayed with 3D depth, and an AI advanced enough that it can pass off as human.  I don't think that's even feasible and if it is, it might be centuries away.

The problem is that you can't just jump from PS4 to Holodeck.  There are all sorts of steps along the way and they're going to start off pretty half baked.  Motion control was the most successful VRish concept yet.  It attracted interest with that same sort of appeal.  You move and the game moves with you.  Neato!  Though the honeymoon with the Wiimote and Kinect only lasted a few years because the concept is so immature right now that the flaws are too obvious.  The illusion is ruined the second you moved the Wiimote one way and your Mii swung his racket the other way.  No one depicts that sort of thing in sci-fi movies.

The Oculus Rift is going to be at best the same sort of fad.  The tech will be too immature and unpolished to give us what we really want and if they do a really good job with what they have maybe it will be a fun fad for a bit.  Remember though that motion controls were spearheaded by Nintendo, who tends to be a big step above most other companies in making videogames.  Most companies don't know **** and think that the technology is enough and videogame history is littered with the corpses of CD-i's, Pippens and N-Gages.  And let's not forget that Nintendo's first VR concept was a notorious failure.  The one company to find any level of success with VRish technology had decades of videogame success and a big bomb under their belt.  Oh and they've struggled since the fad ended.  How prepared is Oculus to not only follow in the footsteps of arguably the most important videogame company to ever exist but to actually exceed them - to avoid failing in the first attempt and have the concept carry on beyond a fad?

When the Wii was popular my big beef with it was that motion control was limiting but co-existing with it were games that didn't bother with any VR concepts and just were games you play on a screen with button inputs and those games were often BETTER.  It's not like Oculus can hide the early quirks simply because of a lack of competition.  It competes with decades of traditional game design.  We can always turn to a "normal" videogame where the tech is proven and mature and there are over 30 years of history for designers to work off of.

And Oculus has to be different.  If it's just the same videogames but with the screen strapped to your head, who cares?  It has to be something that's a step up.  So it has to be different and superior to the videogames we have now.  That's a tall order and that's the challenge of any company that tries to make a product that somewhat resembles VR.

The hell that Facebook knows how to do it.  Oculus' best bet is if they just get the funding but Facebook otherwise leaves them the hell alone.  This is all a concept I can only imagine the most exceptional companies pulling off and the addition of non-gaming corporate interests just makes it more of a longshot.

[NWR_insanolord]

Oculus' best bet is if they just get the funding but Facebook otherwise leaves them the hell alone.  This is all a concept I can only imagine the most exceptional companies pulling off and the addition of non-gaming corporate interests just makes it more of a longshot.

Based on everything they've said so far, this seems to be what they're doing, or at least what they intend to be doing right now. John Carmack's been around the industry for a long time, he's more than proven himself to be one of the best at what he does, and he seems to be happy about this development. They've even picked up more high level talent since the announcement.

This could very well be the best thing that could have happened to them, giving them funding and security. The question is how long Facebook will be willing or able to let them do their thing before they force their hand.

[MagicCow64]

i

[marvel_moviefan_2012]

I don't think that is the kind of VR we will get in our life times thought, this is a step closer.

What I want is to get into the game more, I can handle using a controller or even motion controls but I don't need to walk around I just want to simulate that by being in the world. Sit me in a chair and give me a Wii remote nunchuck type device or even a perfected power glove and put me into the game that would be good enough, How the HELL is everyone OK with just watching Mario run around and seeing through Master Chief's visor on a flat TV but the second you put them into a headset that lets you see the world form their characters eyes is suddenly not good enough? So what if it isn't truly imersive it is MORE imersive than just watching mario run around in the Mushroom kingdom which is the best we get right now. Even if you only get to see from the perspective of looking over Mario's shoulder how is that not better than what we have now?


The problem is some people aren't happy no matter what. Oh it's not Star Trek so it's not what I want, even though it is better than what we have now it's lame because it's not better than it is? Hey how many of you WAITED until last year to buy a fucking cell phone or did you get a piece of **** in the late 90's early 200's and wait for technology to catch up? How many of you had a shitty CRT 1080i HDTV  before getting a flat panel 1080p? How many of you drove a car that didn't have GPS? Bullshit that this isn't the future, it's just taken longer than usual to get here but hey people should be HAPPY with incremental steps that will lead to the eventuality we are hoping for, instead of knocking **** that doesn't live up to their impossible standards. We had some incremental steps in the 90's that made people sick and we realized the technology was too immature to work, the Wii and the Kinect brought us a step closer and NOW we finally have something that might be workable and from the impressions I have read it sounds like they have gotten things working or at least are getting much closer. So what if it isn't perfect now, give it a try and see if it is fun and then once they work out the bugs buy the next generation addition when it comes out. If this thing fails now then it might be another decade before someone tries again, right now people are clammoring for this and right now there are companies interested in it, but what will the future be like if people just keep putting off this sort of stuff because it's not perfect the first time around?


**** we should all be riding in automated cars by now but people are too damn scared of change so we make up all these excuses why something that will improve our lives is not worth investing in and we just keep going. Well this is different because right now the technology has caught up.


Yes right now the best they can do is a headset with a controller, how is that still not better than a TV and a controller? it is one step closer this isn't a sprint it is a marathon, I mean damn look how long it took 3D graphics in videogames to get where they are now, I am sure most of you had an N64 despite how primitive that was by todays standards, hell most of you probably had an NES, tell me how well did that thing do 3D? It takes incremental steps to make technology work, duh how can a forum dedicated to a video game company like Nintendo not understand that? **** they are the most incremental of all technology companies out there, they convinced a whole **** ton of people they didn't need online gaming when the rest of the world was online, they convinced the same people that they didn't need HD when the rest of the world had HD, and now the company that has been innovating VR for the longest is once again dragging their feet here come the naysayers to agree with papa Nintendo who tells them VR is bad. It is something the rest of the world is moving towards, even Sony is building their own VR head set and it won't be long before Microsoft has one so this isn't a fad it is the future of gaming. It might be a slow moving and bumpy ride but it is happening.

[NWR_insanolord]

VR definitely isn't a fad. For it to be a fad, some version of it would have had to be released and sold and supported. At this point I'm not totally convinced it's going to make it to "fad" stage.

[Ian Sane]

People talk about immersion a lot like this is the ultimate end goal of videogame design.  I don't give a **** about immersion.  I'm perfectly content to play a videogame that is incredibly obvious about it being a videogame.

Now I like world building.  Put in little details to make your game's world more believable.  I like that.  But I don't care that I can see Mario jumping around.  It still feels like I'm controlling him and that I effectively am him as I play.  The third person view is less immersive but it's easier to see where the hell I'm jumping with a third person view.  Focusing on a immersion would make the game harder to controller and thus less fun.

So would a headset be better than a TV?  Not for me it wouldn't be.  I have to sacrifice the comfort of laying back on the couch to strap something to my head and I also wear glasses so I don't know how that would work.  And I guess I need to set in a swivel chair to turn my head in all directions.  And does every game have to be first person now?  Bleh.  That's an unnecessary restriction on game design.  I know that a lot of the appeal of the Wiimote was the immersion of games like Wii Sports.  I didn't care.  I just noticed that games with wiggle waggle had much less responsive controls than the games with normal controls.  I was not at all turned off by using buttons to control my character and I got more enjoyment out of a game if I didn't have to fight the controls.  Swinging my controller like Link's sword is just annoying work to me that adds nothing positive to my videogame experience and due to its imprecise nature actually makes it WORSE.  The whole appeal is the immersion of doing a sword swinging motion but I've been swinging swords in Zelda from the beginning by pushing a button and I never felt any disconnection from the game by doing that.  This is just a more complicated way to swing a sword.

So VR to me is just a more complicated way to see the game, which I have been able to do since the first time I played a game because looking at a screen never took me out of the game or hurt my experience.  You can say it's more immersive and my reaction is "So?"  I also think that a FPS with a headset might be kind of cool but it's not appropriate for EVERY game.  That was a beef I had with the Wii.  Motion control as some peripheral for some games that make good use of it is cool.  It being shoehorned as some new standard was ridiculous.  VR goggles as an accessory for some games makes more sense than it being a universal standard.

[MagicCow64]

i

[marvel_moviefan_2012]

I wear glasses and I still think it is a good idea. Who said it has to be all about immersion and who said these has to be for ever video game ever? It can be an option for those who want it, why limit technology just because some aren't into it? OK you are not interested so don't buy it but I am interested and I think I would rather live in a world where I have more options than be stuck to one way of playing.


Hey Ian you said yourself your favorite game was Rogue Squadron or it was your favorite Star Wars, wouldn't that game be great in a head set? Ok so sometimes you want to sit down and relax play a game, fine just like sometimes you want to sit down and watch a flick on the TV, but don't you also want to go to the theater to get that awesome experience? It doesn't have to be every day but it should be there as an option.


Also this is NOT the same as 3D, nobody is saying this has to change the way gaming exists, just that it could be an option for those who want it, and as more want it there you go. We all already have personal media players we plug into our earbuds and tune the world out, how is it different than strapping on a head set and tuning out and on that same note isn't it more relaxing to go into a virtual world than to sit and stare at the TV and still be able to see your crappy wallpaper and tacky furniture to distract you?


And screw 3D that was lame and is not even at all the same as this, it's the same argument the pro-3D people use in reverse, everyone was against stereo and now we all have stereo, everyone was against color and now everything is in color, everyone was against HD and now we all have HD, BS that is a lame argument and has no bearing on this discussion, it is not the same, the only thing the same is there are people saying it is the future of something, they might be right they might be wrong but it is not the same because 3D was a different beast, it has some of the same issues, namely those of us who wear glasses, but that is an issue 3D has. Also 3D was a trick on your eyes, VR is more natural if done right and from the looks of it this is closer to done right than 3D ever was.