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Facebook Acquires VR Audio Company, Launches 'Facebook 360 Spatial Workstation' (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Verge: Facebook is looking to improve its virtual-reality audio experience with the acquisition of Two Big Ears. Facebook is rereleasing Two Big Ears' "Spatial Workstation" software as the Facebook 360 Spatial Workstation, reports VentureBeat. The software is designed to "make VR audio succeed across all devices and platforms," and Two Big Ears developers will be merged with Facebook's Oculus team of employees. The acquisition of Two Big Ears is being made by Facebook and not Oculus -- the program is branded as a Facebook product, focused on 360-degree video and VR. The Spatial Workstation was first released last fall and was a platform for mixing audio that sounded realistically three-dimensional. Two Big Ears will provide "support in accordance with your current agreement" for the next 12 months to those who purchased a paid license to the old workstation. The company says it "will continue to be platform and device agnostic," not being locked into the Rift or Gear VR. Facebook did not disclose the sum of the acquisition. Two Big Ears was previously partnered with YouTube to help bring 360-degree live streaming and spatial audio to the site.
so what's new here other than facebook bought a company?
what exactly is the new technology here that makes sound "realistically three-dimensional"? i don't see anything new or innovative. just another implementation.
it is just facebook hype to sell more ads.
Oculus has exclusives in their store, and recently added DRM to try to defeat software called ReVive that makes the Oculus store and games work for any OpenVR headset (Currently the HTC Vive). The ReVive developer quickly released a patch to bypass the DRM for some games, and promises to free the rest. He had to bypass the license check with the headset check, so he asks us to not pirate the games. Any game bought in the Oculus store should be considered to be locked to an Oculus headset unless Oculus drops out of this DRM war quickly. This is more of a problem for Oculus' customers, who are currently locked in, but also a problem for ReVive users who bought games from the Oculus store, and can be .locked out of games they paid for.
Games for the Rift and Vive are available through Steam with no headset lock-in, so if you avoid the Oculus store, you can avoid the lock-in, but they have some good games in there, and are building more for the touch controller release.
There are currently Vive only games too, but that's just because the Rift doesn't do touch or room-scale yet. They'll be playable on the Rift when Oculus ships Touch and multi-camera tracking, and they'll be playable on any future OpenVR headset.