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Oculus Co-founder is Leaving Facebook After Cancellation of 'Rift 2' Headset (techcrunch.com)

Posted by msmash on from the end-of-road dept.

Brendan Iribe, the co-founder and former CEO of Oculus, announced today that he is leaving Facebook. From a report: Iribe is leaving Facebook following some internal shake-ups in the company's virtual reality arm last week that saw the cancellation of the company's next generation "Rift 2" PC-powered virtual reality headset, which he had been leading development of, a source close to the matter told TechCrunch. Iribe and the Facebook executive team had "fundamentally different views on the future of Oculus that grew deeper over time," and Iribe wasn't interested in a "race to the bottom" in terms of performance, we are told.

48 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. What's that word by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sounds like there's some kind of large separation between him and Facebook, a, what's that word... nope lost it.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:What's that word by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      A rift?

    2. Re:What's that word by Luckyo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, it means that high performance VR loses as a whole. Oculus, for all its problems, funded a lot of software development for high performance VR. With them refocusing on crippled low power VR instead, that's even less resources in the niche of high performance VR, and it's a niche that is already suffering severely from lack of software.

    3. Re: What's that word by tysonedwards · · Score: 2

      Isnâ(TM)t Microsoftâ(TM)s WMR a viable competitor in the high end VR space, even including a number of benefits that ease adoption as compared to the incumbent Occulus and HTC offerings, like inside out tracking and high resolution screens?

      --
      Thirty four characters live here.
    4. Re:What's that word by HornWumpus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It means they got a good look at a 2080 GPU and cold harsh reality sank in.

      A single 2080 can't drive a 4K HDR at 90Hz, so if they built the obvious upgrade for a Rift, it was going to render at lower resolution anyhow, for _years_.

      Asking users to install two 1k$ graphics cards takes the whole deal out of mass market. Makes money only for Nvidia. Will still likely only render relatively simple scenes.

      Someone will succeed on small scale. Price will be kilobucks.

      Porn is key, as with any new media. Cheap VR is good enough for VR video.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    5. Re:What's that word by rtb61 · · Score: 2

      Play typical PC game, lean back in recliner, computer on table over chair, TV streaming ,music in background, pretty view in windows, snacks and hot cocoa in reach, really comfortable. Virtual reality best played standing up, no chair, closed off from music and can't see pleasant view, scattered snacks and hot cocoa spilled everywhere, not very fucking comfortable at all. Now exactly who are you selling virtual reality, surely it could not be computer gamers like me. Sure fun some of the time for a short while but seriously, maybe, just maybe represent 10% of your gaming time.

      So go for a nice stroll, listening to tunes for that 10%, really enjoy that healthy pleasantness or play VR, even though I've already had my fill of gaming. The problem with VR gaming, is that it is not very comfortable, sure if you want to train soldiers and police et at, if they can run with a remote headset in an obstruction matched to vision environment so they do not run into things by accident but for you typical chubby gamer, yeah, nahhh.

      VR glasses, need to be compact enough to be able to hook into a phone and give phone users a 125" screen in their pocket, with zero motion feedback because it makes most people nauseous and some extremely so, beyond that more fantasy than reality. Virtual gladiator sports, with all the physical effort, lots and lots of physical effort but no carnage ie VR gyms but that makes it a very limited market.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    6. Re:What's that word by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      'Standing up' is your mistake.

      Sit down, but you need real tactile controls. So a setup for driving, a setup for flight sim. Who has room? VR is _much_smaller_ than some of the geeked out setups though.

      The advantage 'standing up' has is it constrains what the idiot developers can do to your POV. Lots of standard 3d gaming camera tricks, cutscene turning flyins etc, that make VR users puke. In stand up they also make users fall over.

      Keeping up, up is 90% of the battle. Why some categories just VR better than others. Limit POV turn rate (e.g no short switchback heavy tracks in racing sims). Heli works in VR better than fixed wing. Up, by necessity, mostly staying up.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    7. Re:What's that word by Immerman · · Score: 1

      Why not compare it to typical play, rather than just video games? That's generally done standing, walking, and/or running, but is becoming increasingly uncommon in part due to the increasingly compelling digital experiences available, and in part to diminishing easy access to opportunities for it.

      So, why not get the best of both worlds? The convenient, compelling digital experience, and the health-and-endorphin simulating physical activity? We aren't designed to sit around all day after all, it does horrible things to our bodies.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    8. Re: What's that word by mobby_6kl · · Score: 2

      Absolutely. Samsung just launched an updated Odyssey+ which isn't a huge upgrade in terms of specs but could be significantly better in practice thanks to better comfort and especially the anti-SDE screen if it actually works. Oculus/Vive fanboys will try to claim that the limited volume of hand tracking is a dealbreaker but outside of a few specific games it's a good tradeoff and doesn't cause any issues.

      If a proper gen 2 adds two more cameras, wider FOV and eye tracking, they'd have a serious chance of overtaking all the mainstream competitors. In the end, MS is the only company that actually cares about desktop PC as a platform for all of this, Oculus can keep pushing mobile with their walled gardens and Valve can just keep valving off their steam cash.

    9. Re: What's that word by Luckyo · · Score: 2

      The deal breaker is the fact that the visual quality is awful, because of phone grade hardware. When you have powerful PC grade hardware sucking up hundreds of watts of power still being barely sufficient for fairly low quality 3d imaging, low power version is just terrible.

      Which is why all those "make your phone into VR device" addons sold really well, got played with for a few days and are now overwhelmingly collecting dust or are in the trash bin. Hardware sells because it's really cheap and makes promises it cannot meet due to utter lack of power.

    10. Re:What's that word by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      AFAIK, a significant portion if not outright majority of active VR gamers are simulator players. Eurotruck, DCS, etc. Those people are in fact sitting down.

    11. Re: What's that word by mobby_6kl · · Score: 1

      The Odyssey is a PC headset so you're free to throw a kilowatt of CPU and GPU power at feeding it. You might be confusing it with Gear VR which Samsung also makes and is just a holder for the Galaxy phones.

    12. Re:What's that word by Immerman · · Score: 1

      Nope, but they have decided not to do it because jogging is boring, high exertion, bad for the knees, and/or the weather's lousy or there's nowhere nice to run nearby.

      There's a reason standing/walking desks are a thing, no reason playing video games should be constrained to sitting on your ass either. Heck, the incredibly popularity of the Wii showed that a lot of people are quite interested in playing more physically immersive video games. Personally I'm eager to play some decent tennis, shoot pool in nice locations, curling, skiing, etc. Not to mention what VR could do for an exercise bike, especially if the game could change the resistance on the fly. Biking through cool locales of course, but also pedal-boats, -copters, etc. And that's just the transportation aspect, you could layer quite sophisticated games into the experience as well.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    13. Re: What's that word by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      Odyssey has nothing to do with VR. It's AR. The only VR Samsung makes is mobile phone one based off oculus' mobile VR tech.

    14. Re: What's that word by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      Ah, nm. They actually made it into a proper VR headset. Had to doublecheck, since I last I saw the dev efforts, it was literally a seethrough AR set, not a fully closed one that can function as VR.

      I'll take a look at it. Thanks for the tip.

    15. Re: What's that word by mobby_6kl · · Score: 1

      Are you in Canada, because I'd love some of what you're smoking :)

      https://www.samsung.com/us/com...

      "Mixed Reality" is just MS branding for the whole thing, this is just a VR headset.

    16. Re: What's that word by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      Like I noted in my other reply, I didn't realise they went for full VR with this one. Last I saw it, it was like many other AR headsets. A seethrough setup with some kind of a projector, designed to add elements to environment, not create an entire virtual environment. At this point, I usually stop paying attention to the efforts, because I'm not interested in AR.

    17. Re: What's that word by sg_oneill · · Score: 1

      Defriended!

      --
      Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
  2. How come I always see this coming ahead of time? by Narcocide · · Score: 1

    I called it. Told you so... blah, blah, blah. Not that vindication here is much comfort.

  3. Re:How come I always see this coming ahead of time by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

    Because you are a genius?

  4. Re:Should have thought of that before selling to F by HarrySquatter · · Score: 1

    Yep, like WhatsApp.

  5. Re: Should have thought of that before selling to by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The Zuck only wanted the technology platform as a means to program zombies and NPCs with more propaganda beyond the FB app txt app. Enhanced gaming?? Yeah, no, that's someone else's chicken to fuck. Not having it at FB

  6. Re:How come I always see this coming ahead of time by Narcocide · · Score: 1

    No, not because I'm a genius. I mean, I am, but that's beside the point. It doesn't take genius-level intelligence to predict Facebook is gonna strangle every throat they can grasp.

  7. Re:See correction from Oculus by Luckyo · · Score: 1

    New upcoming Rift is phone grade low performance VR. This has nothing to do with high performance VR like Rift. You're confusing same brand being used for a completely different product for the same product.

  8. I hope... by JustNiz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'l bet right now that Iribe will imminently announce his own VR company, with Karmack at the technical reins, with every intention to release producs that will blow the fuck out of Facebook and their crappy VR strategy.

    I've never been a fan of Oculus.. I personally think they/their products are underservedly overrated by a bunch of fanbois, as the Rift is actually very mediocre compared to even the Vive, especially its roomscale tracking solution. That said I hated seeing one of the largest VR companies end up just making more anemic GearVR clones such as the Oculus Go and whetever else Zuckerberg seems to want.

    More competition and more innovation in the VR sector is better for everyone. I'm very much looking forward to attending a Pimax backer meeting in LA tomorrow and trying the 5K+ and 8K. How is it that a small Chinese company can be coming out with groundbreaking stuff, when HTC and Oculus are both at best doing low-risk little iterative improvements?

    1. Re:I hope... by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      What is going to render for it?

      Current GPUs aren't up to the task in a straightforward way. Rendering 4K VR, at a high frame rate, today means thousands in GPUs.

      Unless someone can make eyeball tracking and smart rendering work.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    2. Re:I hope... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      as the Rift is actually very mediocre compared to even the Vive, especially its roomscale tracking solution.

      But the Quest is completely wireless and is only limited by your place space. No tethers, no external trackers, just the headset and controllers. Yes, there is a performance compromise but as Superhot has shown, there are compelling things to do with VR that don't require a crazy beefy computer.

    3. Re:I hope... by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      'Compelling'

      Porn.

      Porn is always the killer app.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    4. Re:I hope... by JustNiz · · Score: 2

      I'm a Pimax 8K backer, input res is 2560x1440 per eye. (it get upscaled to native 4k per eye by the headset hardware)

      Tests have shown that a last gen GPU (gtx1070) is bare minimum. 1080ti is more realistic. Current gen 2080ti (cost is about $1200) is more than fine.

      Yeah you need to be able to pay to play, but that's how it is with most hobbies. Actually, $1200 is pocket money compared to maximum possible expenditure in most of my other hobbies.

    5. Re:I hope... by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      Quest is limited by phone grade hardware, in niche where modern powerful PCs eating hundreds of watts are barely sufficient.

    6. Re:I hope... by mobby_6kl · · Score: 1

      Eye tracking and foveated rendering already work perfectly fine, they just aren't included in any of the mainstream production headsets yet. I think fixed foveated rendering is also supposed to be supported in Oculus Go and Quest, which only renders full resolution in the sharp central area, and lower res in the periphery where the optics cause a lot of distortion anyway. No reason this can't work on other desktop headsets too, and I think it's supposed to be included in the new Unreal engine.

      The good news is that the higher the resolution and FOV gets, the bigger the relative benefit from foveated rendering is. If you have a 4k image and 140 degree FOV, you can still only see about 6 degrees sharply at a time, so everything else can be rendered at potato quality.

    7. Re:I hope... by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      All that depends on the scene complexity and graphics resolution.

      A 1080ti is barely good enough for a Rift. A 2080ti _isn't_ twice as powerful.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    8. Re:I hope... by MrL0G1C · · Score: 1

      From what I've heard, upscaling is the best thing to do, you get the visual benefit of the smaller pixels without the problem of being underpowered for the resolution.

      --
      Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
    9. Re:I hope... by GuB-42 · · Score: 1

      - Carmack seems very happy with mobile VR. His skills at pushing the hardware to the limit really shine on mobile. Abrash maybe?
      - The Rift and the Vive are roughly on the same level, though I prefer the Rift. The Vive Pro is a little bit better, but much more expensive. They all can do room scale tracking just fine now, though the Vive is a bit easier to set up.
      - The Pimax has many issues. Optical distortion in particular. And it is extremely demanding GPU wise, I am not even sure a 2080ti can run everything at 90 FPS, full resolution. It is not revolutionary at all, it is just current gen VR scaled up beyond reasonable. We need foveated rendering to progress.
      - As much as I want new high end VR, I think that mobile VR, cheap, without wires and complex setup is what we need now. Beyond headsets, we need content, and for that we need to get studios interested, and for that we need VR to become mainstream, and $600 systems wired to $1200 gaming PCs won't get us that.

    10. Re:I hope... by DMJC · · Score: 1

      First thing is abandon the 120hz bullshit. Just aim for 60FPS at maximum resolution and use a hardware framerate doubler like the PSVR does. Trying to render high framerate high resolution scenes was always doomed to failure. You just need to trick the eye. Get the High Resolution working first then worry about frame/scene performance. I own PSVR and I understand where it fails hardest. It's the resolution, not the head tracking and framerate that are most annoying.

    11. Re:I hope... by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      > The Pimax has many issues. Optical distortion in particular.

      Utter crap. I just spent about 4 hours today with the 5K+, the new 5K business edition, and the 8K, and a large range of different games. None showed any sign of optical distortion.

      > It is not revolutionary at all,
      Baloney. The FOV alone blows the fuck out of anything Oculus or HTC have made so far, and the resolution is better too. Its also lighter and far more comfortable. t definately feels like the next gen, unlike the Vive Pro.

      > we need VR to become mainstream, and $600 systems wired to $1200 gaming PCs won't get us that.

      Crap headsets based on Android tablets llike the Oculus go certainly won't. If there was a real market for that, Samsung GearVR would have already been a much bigger hit.

    12. Re:I hope... by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      ...If you're a mouth-breather.

    13. Re:I hope... by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      I tried both the 5K+ and the 8K pimax today ( both have 1440p X 2 input , the 5K+ has native res panels, 8K does upscaling to 4k panels). I was not alone in concluding the 5K+ looked better. There were maybe 15 people at the demo, and not one said they thought the 8K looked better.

    14. Re:I hope... by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      no-one is even aiming at 120hz. The generally accepted standard is 90hz.
      60hz gives very visible judder.

    15. Re:I hope... by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      > Current GPUs aren't up to the task in a straightforward way.

      At the Pimax demo I went to today, 8k was working just fine with a 2080ti. 1.5 supersampling and no judder at all evem im Elite dangerou. I believe the 5k+ system was using a 1080ti and it was fine running SkyrimVR too.

    16. Re:I hope... by MrL0G1C · · Score: 1

      So, the pimax is doing the upscaling, I think the newest generation Nvidia would likely do a much better job of it.

      It'll be a long time before a lot of games can play at 8k native with a good frame-rate especially because they'll be aiming at getting a good frame rate at 1080p and increasing visual quality at that resolution. Which is why I think it'll be up to video card manufacturers to use fancy interpolating techniques to fill the gap. Downside with Nvidia's new DLSS is it needs to be supported by each game to work and currently that = zero games. The card makers need a back-up good upscaling technique which is quick and doesn't need to have the game support it.

      --
      Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
    17. Re:I hope... by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      well I sort of agree, after trying the 8K and the 5K+, I suspect the 8K would look better with more intelligent upscaling, however I suspect putting smart upscaling on the GPU would probably drag it to its knees, just like superscaling can. No-one is really writing games from scratch any more, so I think making DLSS widely supported is really up to the game engine makers to incorporate it in a way that game developers don't need to worry about explicitly implementing, or even see, they just effectively get it already bundled for free.

  9. TFA updated by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

    While Facebook did not deny our report that the “Rift 2” being developed under Iribe’s PC VR team had been canceled, the company reiterated to us in a comment that they are continuing to invest in PC.

    So, Rift 2 still cancelled, next PC product kicked back to "future plans" stage, but they're not closing down the PC store just yet.

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  10. Look for Remote PC Beaming by fastboxster · · Score: 1

    They are just cancelling the headset. But they will now implement remote control for PC wireless applications that require highend raytracing. That was the main conundrum with offering so many products. Now there is no conflict. Get the Quest and a good wireless setup to go with your high end gaming PC.

  11. Well Shit by mentil · · Score: 1

    Facebook obviously thinks standalone VR and walled gardens are the future. With no competition at the high end (aside from maybe Pimax), the next Vive is going to be quite a bit more expensive.

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    1. Re:Well Shit by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      the next Vive is going to be quite a bit more expensive.

      Even though it's not as good, other vr is still a competitor. It's a matter of owning the space. Now isnt when you profit on vr. it's once you win the wars.

      --
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  12. Re:See correction from Oculus by Luckyo · · Score: 1

    Problem being you already had that for two years. It's called "your phone with that thing you slot phone in and put on your head".

    And it's awful, which is why majority will play with it for a few days and then never use it again, other than maybe watching a movie.

  13. Re:Seen it coming by Wescotte · · Score: 1

    All that is closer than you might expect...

    Omnidirectional treadmills are already here. Getting them https://youtu.be/fvu5FxKuqdQ?t...">small enough for the home use getting close. The major hiccup (other than cost) is prediction algorithms that keep forces on the user low with a reduced area.

    They have some pretty amazing VR gloves prototypes that are capable of simulating temperature changes and let you feel and grip virtual objects. Obviously a ways away for the consumer as costs and size are an issue but expect cheaper, less bulking/feature rich solutions soon. Even soon still are hybrid controller Knuckles from Valve that are quite impressive.

    There are full body haptics and motion rigs both affordable and portable also coming very soon.

    VR is getting interesting.