Facebook Officially Owns Oculus Now

CreepyUncleGoogle said:
RIght now it's nothing more than another yawn-festival with a limited market appeal. Outside of the niche techie media, there's been little to no attention from the broader world that VR exists. It's like that exercise mat thingey made for the NES. Aside from a few really, really excited people (of which there aren't enough of to make a viable market that can reach a tipping point of sustainable, profitable sales) few know it exists and even fewer care. Even among the small target audience of device- and electronics-worshippers there's apathy and polarity. As a gee wiz exercise, it's sorta interesting but as a product with market potential, it just isn't going to make the cut to buy an accessory to a computer that costs half again as much as the computer its connected to. The broader consumer market where sales would actually offer sustainment treats computing as a disposable commodity and they're not going to spend $100 - $200 on a limited use accessory after spending $300 on a laptop.
Click to expand...

The landscape was different back then. You didnt have major powerhouses like iD, Valve, Epic, Sony, Microsoft, Facebook, etc interested in VR. Nor did you have a community modding it themselves, or the ability to cheaply buy it and play it for hours at home. 90's VR required a trip to the arcade or some other venue where you got to stand in line and then pay $10 to play 1 game for 5 minutes. VR today means going to the Oculus website and mass downloading 100 demo's and possibly some A-list titles and playing with it for hours and hours all month long. 90's VR was simply too ambitious and as a result premature for its time. It would be like trying to sell people tickets to the moon right now, you're gonna have a bad time.
 
McFry said:
The landscape was different back then. You didnt have major powerhouses like iD, Valve, Epic, Sony, Microsoft, Facebook, etc interested in VR. Nor did you have a community modding it themselves, or the ability to cheaply buy it and play it for hours at home. 90's VR required a trip to the arcade or some other venue where you got to stand in line and then pay $10 to play 1 game for 5 minutes. VR today means going to the Oculus website and mass downloading 100 demo's and possibly some A-list titles and playing with it for hours and hours all month long. 90's VR was simply too ambitious and as a result premature for its time. It would be like trying to sell people tickets to the moon right now, you're gonna have a bad time.
Click to expand...

ID has totally been drooling over VR for decades. They had built in support for that crappy Duke Nukem game to work on the VFX-1 and VFX-3D because John Cornmike was like all gooey for VR helmets forever. Nvidia was trying to make 3D stuff work in the late 1990s with shutter glasses on CRT screenies. Sony has been quietly selling VR stuff for a while to corporate and military organizations and there were home programmers then too. In fact in the 1990s anyone could easily buy a VFX helmet for home if they wanted and, just to give you an idea of age, the interface card thing-y inside the PC was an ISA board.

History repeats...seriously and it's just another redo on a bad idea that won't become mainstream no matter how much VR-interested people would like to deny the economic realities. Honestly, 3D TV and movies got a huge amount of publicity and support from very money-rich companies and now owning a 3D TV just makes people laugh and shake their head. VR is even further down the 3D product stack and has a lot less attention from the mainstream.
 
jimmyb said:
You guys sure hate facebook.
Click to expand...
Hate is too strong a word. I don't really spend a lot of time actively HATING diarrhea, its just unpleasant and something I avoid when I can. Facebook is the internet equivelent of diarrhea, that's all.
 
Get some nice adult titles on the the rift, I may look into it then.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
ID has totally been drooling over VR for decades. They had built in support for that crappy Duke Nukem game to work on the VFX-1 and VFX-3D because John Cornmike was like all gooey for VR helmets forever. Nvidia was trying to make 3D stuff work in the late 1990s with shutter glasses on CRT screenies. Sony has been quietly selling VR stuff for a while to corporate and military organizations and there were home programmers then too. In fact in the 1990s anyone could easily buy a VFX helmet for home if they wanted and, just to give you an idea of age, the interface card thing-y inside the PC was an ISA board.
Click to expand...
I dont see what any of this has to do with the Rift. Your argument is tantamount to saying mobile phones will never work because they were the size of a cinderblock and had a 100 foot range. I'll say it again, mankind lacked the technology to properly implement VR back then, that is why it failed, because it simply did not work with a damn. Thanks to the miniaturization and mass production of high-end sensitive parts we can finally have VR today.

History repeats...seriously and it's just another redo on a bad idea that won't become mainstream no matter how much VR-interested people would like to deny the economic realities. Honestly, 3D TV and movies got a huge amount of publicity and support from very money-rich companies and now owning a 3D TV just makes people laugh and shake their head. VR is even further down the 3D product stack and has a lot less attention from the mainstream.
Click to expand...
I dont think VR is going to become the next big thing honestly, however I do think it will achieve enough interest to be up there with the likes of the Kinect. A device some people like to use for some games that warrants overall developer support, but nothing that is going to become "the way to play" going forward. And again you cite money-rich publicity whereas I am citing grassroots publicity, two very different things. One is fake, and one is real. The whole point of paid publicity is to get the people to try it. Well the people have already tried it and pretty much every who does loves it. I even brought mine to work and hosted a LAN party at home just to show it off. Even the people who had difficulty using it and had to take frequent breaks loved it. Hell, the people who hated it simultaneously loved it because they saw the fun factor therein.

3D TV's are also an example citing the complete opposite of genuine success. The only one's supporting 3d TV were 3D tv manufacturers. The public immediately rejected it as soon as it got in their hands. The rift is the exact opposite, it is the people themselves who are praising it.
 
McFry said:
I dont see what any of this has to do with the Rift. Your argument is tantamount to saying mobile phones will never work because they were the size of a cinderblock and had a 100 foot range. I'll say it again, mankind lacked the technology to properly implement VR back then, that is why it failed, because it simply did not work with a damn. Thanks to the miniaturization and mass production of high-end sensitive parts we can finally have VR today.


I dont think VR is going to become the next big thing honestly, however I do think it will achieve enough interest to be up there with the likes of the Kinect. A device some people like to use for some games that warrants overall developer support, but nothing that is going to become "the way to play" going forward. And again you cite money-rich publicity whereas I am citing grassroots publicity, two very different things. One is fake, and one is real. The whole point of paid publicity is to get the people to try it. Well the people have already tried it and pretty much every who does loves it. I even brought mine to work and hosted a LAN party at home just to show it off. Even the people who had difficulty using it and had to take frequent breaks loved it. Hell, the people who hated it simultaneously loved it because they saw the fun factor therein.

3D TV's are also an example citing the complete opposite of genuine success. The only one's supporting 3d TV were 3D tv manufacturers. The public immediately rejected it as soon as it got in their hands. The rift is the exact opposite, it is the people themselves who are praising it.
Click to expand...

You're new to this business for profit thing, huh?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top