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Did Facebook Buy Oculus To Counter Google Glass?
Nerval's Lobster (2598977) writes "In a statement soon after Facebook announced the acquisition of Oculus Rift, CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested that the bulky Oculus headset had the potential to transform VR into the "most social platform ever." Whatever his reasons for shelling out $2 billion for the company, it's clear that Facebook is now a player in the augmented-reality space, which Google is also exploring in its own way. Yes, Google Glass serves a different function—overlaying maps and text over the wearer's view of the real world, rather than immersing people in a virtual environment—but the potential customer base for both devices is basically the same, and now Google has some real competition if it wants to transform Glass into some sort of gaming device. And despite some blowback from Markus Persson, it's likely that developers will continue to explore Oculus as a gaming platform, Facebook or no. Zuckerberg might be talking a good game about virtual realities far into the future (does he have to pay to promote his own posts on Facebook? Joke.), but this acquisition was likely a short-term play, as well."
Virtual reality games and augmented reality tools, in spite of both using your eyes, are so far apart in functionality, that if this were the explanation, the shareholders would be justified in a lynching.
Everyone who uses Facebook seems to be in their own little self-centered world anyway. That's why they bought Oculus. It simply matches.
Unless Oculus VR have been developing a pair of glasses that no one has breathed a word about in several years... no. The idea that the Oculus Rift is portable is laughable (right now, it relies on an external head tracking camera).
The use cases for google glass (overlaying information ontop of really - i.e. augmented reality) and Oculus Rift (a VR display that supplants and replaces your view with a different view - i.e. virtual reality) are entirely different. That would be like buying a car manufacturer to help catch up with SpaceX in building heavy launch vehicles - yeah, both are things you catch a ride in - but the technology that powers them doesn't cross pollinate.
fb's user growth flattened out as fb less cool to its own target demographic. It's just randomly looking for the next cool thing it can use to be cool. And trust me, google glass is not cool. Google glass is something your douchebag fratboy older brother uses to be cool to HIS boss. It's this year's bluetooth earbud.
Next question-headline, please.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Except, they fucked up because Oculus is about immersion away from reality, and Glass is about augmented reality.
I really don't see how the Augmented Reality application and Virtual Reality gaming markets overlap, beyond the need for a head-mounted display. The Rift would have to have cameras to do AR and that would entirely warp its purpose.
Though I'm certainly open to the idea of it as an add-on, since it looks like DevKit2 (Which I want one of so badly to experiment with drone telepresence and stuff) has USB accessory ports on it...I could see attaching something like a stereoscopic Kinect to the front. But I think everything's screwed if the hardware gets redesigned to try and serve two very different purposes.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
When you don't know what to do, do something! :)
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
VR shopping malls? VR classrooms? There are lots of potential applications that FB might be interested in that don't involve gaming.
Did bigX buy littleY to ________________?
"Oculus headset had the potential to transform VR into the "most social platform ever."
Actually, when I have it on, everyone else can fuck off. That's the point of virtual reality, lol.
I'm more interested in AR than VR. Oculus is VR, and Google Glass and CastAR which seems useful for daily life. Most of the VR I see are either modeling or video games. AR I can see additional information on my current work, personal assistant providing information in my daily life, assisting in my current job and providing additional information to any task I'm doing.
Apps like Augment need to take off. I'd love an overlay when I look at a back of a switch or router that the ports light up with names. Or looking at a EMC and the cables could change colors so I can see which are plugged in. Maybe look around the room, and my remote lights up with a big arrow so I know where its hiding. Could even have AR assist you while you type, just as pop up boxes or IDE dialogs.
Oculus seems to me more for entertainment, which facebook is.
One of those oh so rare moments in this community, which most days won't agree on anything, can all come together around a unifying understanding that the author is a complete idiot.
Regardless of what their goal might be, the actual result will be that they're going to kill the Oculus Rift.
Facebook is coming after your ass with fashionable headsets to make your nerdy looking glasses look even nerdier. What's more.. they're DEPLOYING BTRFS!!! Be afraid.
This.
I said when this story first broke out, the only way I'd join Facebook was if I could virtually punch people in the face. typical obligatory slashdot catcalls of internet tough-guy apply
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Do you really want to walk around looking like this everyday?
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091121172827/dragonball/images/d/db/MercenaryTaoCellGamesSaga..png
The day Facebook glasses come, is the day I delete my Facebook account.
Google glass and Oculus Rift are in completely different spaces. One is Augment Reality and the other is Virtual Reality. One is for overlaying outside reality and the other is for replacing at least visual outer reality with other content. One is for augmented interaction with in commonly perceived visual world the other for deep immersion in a virtual world/worldview.
It is pretty sloppy thinking to consider them competitors.
Mark Zuckerberg is setting around with his friends at a bar. Everyone's drinking.
Bob: "How Mark, how much money is Facebook really worth?"
Mark: "It's worth a lot."
John: "I bet it's not. I bet you've blown through most of it."
Mark: "No. We've got money in the bank"
Bob: "Prove it."
John: "Yeah. Prove it. Buy something really expensive"
Bob: "Yeah. Buy something that costs a lot. We dare you."
John: "Something that costs millions of dollars"
Mark pulls out his phone and makes a call...
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
This argument really goes like: "Oculus Rift is targeted at gamers, most gamers like bacon too, ergo Oculus Rift is competition for bacon."
WTF, people ... Why the most clueless idiots have to be the ones getting published at Slashdot ...
No. Next :)
I'll say it one more time, and probably get modded as "-1 doesn't know when to stop" but the above comments support this:
Augmented vs virtual reality are very different, yes, and FB should NOT compete with glass imo.
Facebook would be best served in buying (or if they're actualyl smart are already considering buying) Valve. Shell out obscene amounts of money. Sign contracts. Whatever it takes. Fold the user base of PC Gaming As We Popularly Know it into the Oculus user base, let it organically grow into the Facebook ecology (I know this is idealistic, FB is much too hungry for revenue, methinks).
I don't care much for Steam's friend system, but if I coudl push a button on FB, ro get updates that all my friends are playing something on Steam right now, pop on those goggles and go? I'd pay for a service like that, or I at least interact with it if it doesn't try to plaster ads all over my eyeballs...
If I were CEO for one day, this is what I'd maneuver for. Any thoughts, slashdot?
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Does AR sickness exist in a similar way as VR sickness? Like, the overlay of information not changing precisely with head movements?
More facebook articles please. Maybe they'll buy the place from Dice.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Is Facebook integration. Could you imagine being on your Steambox, playing Modern Warfare 7 using the Oculus Rift and suddenly a message pops up "John has posted something : Having a Kebab for dinner, yum!", not only would it be distracting, it would be annoying, and I bet a Facebook account would be compulsory.
Facebook VR: where you can meet and have "the most social experience" with all the cute members of the other sex. This is facebook's move into virtual sex interactions.
Fuckerberg
It's even dumber than that. Google Glass doesn't 'overlay' anything. It's a screen above your field of view.
How do stories like this get approved?
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
The bubble has burst, and "being acquired by Facebook" is no longer sexy. In fact after a long string of acquisitions this is the first one I recall having a public backlash. I figure it's all downhill (for them) from here.
I'd still take the money, sure. But advertise on deez nuts. A billion a ball for your tattoo of choice.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Which other awesome tech. should FaceBook ruin by becoming involved with ?
The same way Facebook countered competition with the HTC First?
Smartphones and tablets are also used for AR, as you said with Glass, they too cover only a tiny part of your FOV, not nearly enough to make you sick even though the display lags from reality.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is Betteridge's Law Of Headlines finally due for retirement?
What happened to sharing an actual, physical space with someone and communicating without the use of third-party servers or, in fact, any kind of technology as the most social platform ever?
Oh, Facebook... do fuck off now, there's a dear.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Google Glass seems to be countering Google Glass all by itself, why would anyone purchase an unrelated technology to counter something that has so far proven to be somewhere between hideously unpopular and the social equivalent of a wet fart. Dumb story even for slashdot.
If Facebook bought Valve...No. No. No. The world as we know it will be over. Look what Microsoft did to Rare. If the Facebook Machine with all its drama comes to ever buy Steam, *shudder*, then I will reach out through this comment box, and slap the next person lauding the advances of "social media".
Is who gets final say on the "business" and purchase decisions that Facebook makes?
They seem so inept I feel I'm not privy to some future World view where they make sense, or it's just some 29 year old, shark eyed, douche bag giggling as he hits the buy key.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
So lets say Facebook is the king of social media, but they are a one trick pony, they have their web site and little else. I guess they will buy their way into markets. Sound familiar? It is like he copied the Microsoft business plan, buy anything their competitors would be involved in.
It did not work for Microsoft, and it is not going to work for Facebook.
I don't know. Glass used for AR games makes sense, specially if technology advances further. Occulus is VR, though...
So in one hand you got AR which is overlaying "cyberspace" into reality, and then you got VR that tries to deliver that entire "cyberspace" without accounting for your location or environment, it provides its own and that's the point. One aims to augment reality (forgive the redundancy) and the other to create one of its own.
I like both technologies, but they don't seem related at all, except in that they are used through a headmount of sorts. Very different purposes.
> it's likely that developers will continue to explore Oculus as a gaming platform, Facebook or no.
I hate personal opinions without any basis of fact being presented passed off as statements of fact we should just accept because OP says so.
Facebook bought Occulus because it has more money than it knows what to do with these days.
I just hope Oculus and Google Glass will help me take more photos of strangers in public without their knowledge or permission, as I'm a street photographer in Hungary (Chrysanthi Lykousi or ) and my livelihood depends on photographing people and selling the photos in fine art galleries and museums for as high as $30,000.
Given who is involved, this purchase was made to transfer money from Andressen-Horowitz company Facebook to another Andressen-Horowitz company, and have Wired (whose senior editor left to work at Andressen-Horowitz last year) give it a veneer of legitimacy by providing analysis. I haven't even figured out what this company FB bought does yet, but they will probably never be heard from again until FB divests it at a loss in a few years. This is strictly about cashing out.
At first your argument sounded persuasive and I might have wanted to subscribe to your newsletter, but now I can't. Looser.
I'll see your hokum and raise you a boondoggle.
The "most social platform ever" already exist. It is called real life.
This is just wild speculation, but I think Facebook is killing many birds with one stone here. Ad delivery, big data, other current cash crops of Facebook aside; if they own the hardware, they can conceivably create the delivery platform. Who doesn't want their own app store for what could conceivably be the next big thing in gaming? Two billion was chump change compared to what Facebook stands to make from an app store.