@jayfella said: Adverts and personal data to direct appropriate adverts. That's all its about. Nothing new here. They're just investing ahead of time.
Yep. Facebook missed the tablet boat and now they are hoping VR is the ‘next tablet’. They are wrong, of course… but at least Occulus will get some money.
Google glass is much closer to a “tablet on your head” than VR ever will be as far as general content delivery goes.
Hm. I can now see what the business proposition for Facebook is, and actually it isn’t looking THAT glum.
Basic idea: Facebook creates VR chat rooms. If that “presence” thing Valve is fawning about is so convincing, then people might actually like to meet in such Facechats.
That would be the idea of Second Life, but now with a really working immersion.
Plus Facebook would be selling the ad space in the VR -> big $$$ for Facebook.
There’s a problem with that scheme: A Rift is more expensive than what Facebook can make per person in ad revenue (which is something around 5 dollars last time I heard about this). So they won’t simply give a Rift to everybody for the asking, they need FB users to buy them. Which means they need FB users to want buy them.
So… I guess that’s where game developers come in: FB needs to convince them to write software for the Rift. FB might be giving away or at least subsidizing SDKs, they might be writing better SDKs, they might help with marketing, they might add easy access to games from FB, whatever makes the game devs happy. Maybe not just game devs but VR devs in general.
That wouldn’t look so bad for us game devs. FB wouldn’t be really interested in locking in devs or even users.
Not from the beginning anyway - and given that we have a developing market for VR hardware, they might never get into a position where a lock-in would work.
It might really be the same as with MS mice: MS sold these so that people who wanted to run Windows could have a good mouse, something that would help selling Windows. So they placed quality and fair pricing ahead of any moneymaking schemes - MS’ cash cow was elsewhere.
I have no specific insights into internals of Oculus or Facebook, that’s all just speculation.
However, I’ve been thinking about how on earth they plan to make that investment pay off, and this is to date the only one I have been able to come up with, plus it doesn’t look too outlandish.
Awaiting mentions of flaws in this theories, and countertheories 
I think that’s about as good a guess as any other. They want to grow a platform they happen to own so that they can mine it later. They can’t mine it in the near term or it won’t succeed. So, yes, I agree that the original goals are still intact. After all, Occulus is quoted as saying they’d give them away for free if they could find a model that worked… so ‘good and affordable’ meets everyone’s goals.
I’ll keep my eye on Carmack. If he changes his tune and jumps ship then we’ll know something might be up. Until then, he’s still speaking positively about the deal so I’m going to remain skeptically optimistic. A little more optimism than skepticism now that they’ve been bought.
i sense oculus is realizing that theyre about to go the same way as that android console. Its a really neat idea. and developers are really in to it, but its not really catching on with the general public… (perhaps part of the reason- theres no occulus rift games coming out, just a dozen or so indie games that are opting to retrofit their game for it). partnering with FB seems like a last ditch effort to try and turn a profit.
I suspect fb saw some strategic gains from acquiring the OR in it’s battle against google, while confident they wouldn’t loose money from that acquisition… maybe make some, maybe make plenty (it is an untapped market with potentially huge value).
And it could open doors for more advertisement and data acquiring (as already said). Maybe they could try and become the youtube of 3D (lol).
Maybe they diversifying because they got too much cash or they not sure they will win against google circles.
But yah, it is pretty far from FB’s core business.
Not the best company to make it prosper, but it does have deep pockets.
@icamefromspace Without consumer-priced, consumer-designed hardware, the test whether the Rift would catch on for the masses hasn’t yet happened, so I doubt that that’s been the real concern of Oculus. In fact the thing was good enough that Valve and Sony started their own efforts - so it’s even unlikely that that was a concern.
In the case of hardware, and especially hardware that is combining things like optics, electronics, display, and wearability, it is often that case that it is cheaper to make 1 million of something than it is to make 100,000 of something. Not just cheaper per unit but sometimes cheaper overall… but you need the capital to build the facilities to make that happen.
Optics will be key… and commodity optics that are light-weight, small, and good… kind of an unsolved problem, really.
Anyway, not a “last ditch effort to turn a profit” but I think a “calculated decision to actually produce a consumer-grade device”.
I like reddit investigators 
Regarding ‘bad scenarios’ - some people think that FB might file million patents around Rift and then use them to control/monetize/squish/etc entire VR industry. Thats probably the first scare and somewhat realistic scenario I have heard so far (because I somehow cannot get too much excited about this “they will build in Facebook adverts in hardware” ideas).
@pspeed said: Optics will be key... and commodity optics that are light-weight, small, and good... kind of an unsolved problem, really.
Heh. Actually that’s a solved problem.
“Holographic glasses”.
The construction is a pair of glasses with a projector in each arm of the frame, injecting light into the glasses from the side; the glasses have a holographic pattern applied that will reflect light towards the eye.
The unsolved part is the price: something around 600-700 dollars.
This is going to drop though. There are applications in trade for that, see e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wv9k_ssLcI.
@abies said: I like reddit investigators ;)
Regarding ‘bad scenarios’ - some people think that FB might file million patents around Rift and then use them to control/monetize/squish/etc entire VR industry. Thats probably the first scare and somewhat realistic scenario I have heard so far (because I somehow cannot get too much excited about this “they will build in Facebook adverts in hardware” ideas).
I think those fears are probably unfounded. Facebook has been pretty big into open source for a long time. Regardless of privacy-maven-loathing (well founded) they have been pretty good to the software community and reaped the rewards.
Here is another take that also mentions this.
@toolforger said: Heh. Actually that's a solved problem. "Holographic glasses". The construction is a pair of glasses with a projector in each arm of the frame, injecting light into the glasses from the side; the glasses have a holographic pattern applied that will reflect light towards the eye.The unsolved part is the price: something around 600-700 dollars.
This is going to drop though. There are applications in trade for that, see e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wv9k_ssLcI.
Much of that video is total fiction and always will be. I’ve done VR and AR work before and there is an inherent problem with calibration on semi-opaque displays. The slightest movement of the glasses will cause things to not line up with the real world anymore from your eye’s perspective. Unless they are doing on the fly calibration through pupil detection or something.
Anyway, that hardware is entirely unsuitable for immersive VR games. It’s a different problem. You need an opaque display with as wide a field of view as possible without also distorting… and you need to do this in a stack of lenses that isn’t 8 inches long. It’s not at all solved.
One of the docs Valve or one of those guys put out (it might have been Abrash’s notes, I can’t remember) went long into the optics problem. I may have also seen Carmack tweet about it some time back.
It was sort of reassuring in a smug sort of way that people are still struggling with this problem. It means that those of us back 10 years ago weren’t just missing something stupid. 
Markus Persson @notch We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out. 10:25 PM - 25 Mar 2014
I like this one
@pspeed said: Much of that video is total fiction and always will be. I've done VR and AR work before and there is an inherent problem with calibration on semi-opaque displays. The slightest movement of the glasses will cause things to not line up with the real world anymore from your eye's perspective. Unless they are doing on the fly calibration through pupil detection or something.
Probably “or something”
I have no idea.
The salient point of that video, however, is that you don’t need bulky displays in front of your eyes, the mere glass substrate is enough. So you avoid all that copper and silicone in 5 cm distance from your eyes, so it’s less bulky. (The copper and silicone is in the frame arms, and not less than before, but it’s nearer to the rotation axis of the head and hence less cumbersome.)
@pspeed said: Anyway, that hardware is entirely unsuitable for immersive VR games. It's a different problem. You need an opaque display with as wide a field of view as possible without also distorting... and you need to do this in a stack of lenses that isn't 8 inches long. It's not at all solved.
That’s easy - just a layer of black paint on the outward-facing side of the glass.
Voilà - the same production processes for VR and AR glasses, modulo that paint job.
@pspeed said: One of the docs Valve or one of those guys put out (it might have been Abrash's notes, I can't remember) went long into the optics problem. I may have also seen Carmack tweet about it some time back.
The recent tech talk by Valve doesn’t show any real problems there anymore.
You need 3 ms reaction time but that’s already available.
You need to interlace with black frames to eliminate the smear effect due to pixel afterglow - that’s already being done, you can compensate by increasing brightness.
You need miniaturized 4K displays - that’s already shipping as Apple’s Retina displays.
I think the visual technology is already there, just not yet fully integrated and probably needs some kinks worked out.
It’s relatively recent though. Display resolution has been more-or-less stagnating until very recently, and display weight has been a limiting factor, too. So no surprise it was unthinkable ten years ago, and wishful thinking five years ago - fast, light, hi-res, cheap displays have become available just a year ago (or maybe two years).
@monkeychops said: I like this one :)
I think he’s being a loon. Prediction: Minecraft will end up on the Rift anyway.
@toolforger said: [snipped a bunch of stuff about displays and not optics]
…but there was a whole page or page and a half on optics. Not displays. Optics.
…I don’t feel like finding it because it’s clear it won’t matter. If you believe that projecting video on a mirror in front of your eye will be the same then there is little common ground for us to discuss this.
Sorry for the off-topic, just posting so I can stop receiving emails about this topic.
Hahaha 2 billion dollars for an empty shell… here FB, buy this bottle of water for 10k dollars.
Seriously, idiots!
@pspeed said: ..but there was a whole page or page and a half on optics. Not displays. Optics.
Define optics, please.
@toolforger said: Define optics, please.
This kind of optics.
Basically problem is that to achieve proper FOV and being able to see the screen from so close, you need some lenses. But then you start hitting issues with different wavelengths behaving differently on given lens etc, so you need more lenses to correct it… and then correct other problems coming out of it… Article PSpeed mentioned was referring to ‘ideal’ lens setup, but it was requiring like 18 of them with biggest one being 1 foot in diameter, which is the issue for HMD 
Oh, that one.
Yeah it’s an issue with classical optics.
For holographic stuff - no idea. Might be, might not be. If you use holography, you may be able to move the focussing lenses to the beam source in the frame’s arm where the beam is narrow and you can work with very small lenses, reducing error, overall price and possibly even on number of lenses required.
I think the mentioned article said it’s still an issue but you can achieve something reasonable, and optimize later.