Google acquires Owlchemy Labs | Hacker News Reader

Google acquires Owlchemy Labs

theverge.com

167 pointsptrptr33 comments

Having known Alex in college, it's crazy to me to see how far he's come. I just remember him as the chill guy who smoked me in Halo worse than I ever had been ever. All I have to say is what a great guy he is and that if anyone is deserving of this, he is. He is a hard worker and has a vision - they are very important attributes to have to achieve at that level.

Just last month, Google also (acqui)hired the Soundstage VR developer: https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/7/15216720/soundstage-vr-dev...

Just wondering what kind of programming/designing skills you need for this kind of project?

Unity3D. There are tons of amazing resources on the web and on YouTube.

Anything specific other than Unity3D?

Having met Alex (founder/CEO @ Owlchemy) a year ago, this strikes me as a no-brainer. Owlchemy has put in the time and work to start to develop a new language for the new medium that is VR. They are not just porting over old tropes to a new platform. When I met Alex, he explained his vision as wanting to continue to create this new language, and to sell devtools that would help other folks build VR-first experiences. Congrats, folks!

The Owlchemy Labs blog post about the acquisition is pretty informative about the history of Owlchemy. The parts referencing the acquisition are pretty standard.

http://owlchemylabs.com/owlchemy-labs-and-google-join-forces...

The company knows how to make great VR experiences but this is a bizarre move by Google. Historically, they've not been great in the game space (look at Ingress, or does anybody remember Lively.com)? I suppose you could argue this is their response to that but its not clear what their end goal is here (more exclusive content)?

Pokemon Go ?

I loved Ingress! Of course after spinning off Niantic (the team behind Ingress), that spinoff went on to develop the highly successful Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go contains many of the gameplay elements of Ingress, but the packaging is a lot better. It seems like Google spun off Niantic because under Google they did not have the opportunity to make licensing deals with companies like Nintendo. Some of the motivation behind selling Niantic can be found here: https://www.recode.net/2016/7/12/12153722/google-niantic-pok...

The thing is, Niantic learnt one bad thing from Google: The habit of near-zero community interaction and support.

The player base for Pokemon Go felt very frustrated at multiple times (especially anyone who had a rooted phone, completely disallowed to play, but that didn't stop cheaters!)

They only very recently added PR members to the probably largest PokemonGo forum around, https://redd.it/68nxzx

Until last month they had Noah Falstein as a Game Design Lead, not sure what he did there but it seems like Google is trying to dabble in it, especially with VR.

http://fortune.com/2017/04/07/google-games-guy-exits/

Their end goal is to give more resources to a VR developer so that they can increase the adoption of VR games and devices. When they do that their VR ads ( which currently show up on YouTube I have seen one or two) will get more click through and engagement . A good VR ad can give you minutes of engagement and people signing up with their email (went to a VR meet up where this occurred).

Ingress is great, what are you talking about?

Ingress was a social phenomenon in Japan and a smashing success.

Hopeful about having more Daydream content, as well as content for other VR setups.

(Though what I'd really like is a Tilt-Brush, even a "lite" version, on a next gen Pixel or PSVR,

Hrm....the Daydream remote is great for pointing at stuff and clicking, but it's probably not going to be good enough at careful 3D positioning for a 3D drawing app. I wonder if someone's manufacturing a third party Oculus Touch type thingy that could work with phones.

Agree--that's why I'm hoping for something 'next gen" for smartphones.

It's a huge technological problem to solve, and I doubt it will be solved by a third party, rather than Oculus/Google. Positional tracking relies on external devices at the moment - Infrared Constellation Tracking with the Rift, and Lighthouse tracking with the Vive (and other SteamVR based devices).

Without an external tracking device to rectify motion against, using gyros/accelerometers is only enough to reliably get 3DOF. A potential halfway solution would be to use some impressive CV techniques on the phone camera to track hands, but only where you're looking - mix that with the tilt data of the controllers - and some inverse kinematics. The more signals, the better the tracking.

Half the problem is discovery. There is no "Daydream VR enabled" filter in the Play Store. So instead I have to search for that.

Most times it brings up Daydream apps, but I lack a good way to find out about new ones, and other VR apps that do not support Daydream headset also show up.

On that note, I'd love any suggestions anyone has for finding out about new Daydream apps and games to try.

> Half the problem is discovery

That's the Play store in a nutshell since its inception.

I usually just load into Daydream and browse the store in VR. That way it only shows you Daydream-capable apps, plus you get a quick preview of the app's virtual environment whenever you open the page for that app.

So they clearly have a view of the store for just Daydream-capable apps. I'd really love a simple link to that in the main app store when not using VR.

Interesting to see this as Oculus is dumping their content generators (defunding Oculus Story Studio)

I dunno. Historically, the console makers all went it themselves. Tried to get others to do AAA titles, etc.

I expect they found they never could get the results they wanted because they all later went and acquired content generators.

Consolidation vs dispersion on platforms is one of those cyclical things, like thin vs fat clients.

I don't think Nintendo ever stopped creating content for their consoles.

Nintendo is (and Sega was) a software company that makes hardware. I mean, Nintendo is a toy/games company at heart. Their hardware only exists to support it and pay for it.

Sony and Microsoft are hardware companies that invest in software to help sell their hardware. Sony was trying to help Nintendo with software and after getting stabbed in the back decided to go out on their own. Microsoft saw how big the segment was and wanted to get in on it.

I would definitely not characterize Microsoft as a Hardware company that makes software.

It's a software company that sometimes makes hardware, which is also evident with xbox in their attempts to consolidate their os.

On the upside, this is great news for them - congratulations!

On the downside, I fear it means that their Mixed Reality plugin for Unity (which looks awesome, and I've been waiting impatiently for) will be a long time coming now :(

As someone who's also chomping at the bit for their plugin, I hope this accelerates getting it into our hands. Being so focused on their releases up til now, they probably just didn't have the resources needed to get it polished up and out the door.

I really hope so.

We changed the URL from https://blog.google/products/google-vr/welcoming-owlchemy-la... to one with a little more information.

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