Oculus co-founder is leaving Facebook after cancellation of ‘Rift 2’ headset | Hacker News Reader

Oculus co-founder is leaving Facebook after cancellation of ‘Rift 2’ headset

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225 pointssharkweek173 comments

This is worrying, HTC aren't exactly doing brilliantly and I'd like to see some more proper headsets, not these gimped smartphones glued to your face.

Yeah, it looks like aside from HTC, VR is a race to the bottom. I guess there's just more money in crappy low-rent headsets vs high quality expensive ones.

I suppose the ultimate crappy low-rent VR headset will be the smartphone.

Because for the general populace adoption of VR hinges on affordability.

Yes, but if they are just affordable, but crappy, VR will die again.

Price is the least of VR's problems. The biggest issue is there's no way to produce an immersive experience without ridiculous space requirements or requiring the user to sit down. I'm extremely skeptical VR will become more than a novelty accessory for gamers and that overall it won't make much of a dent.

Personally I feel like gaming is the least interesting application for VR/AR/MR. There are plenty of use cases I can imagine where the user does not have to suspend their disbelief to forget they're not actually running, walking, jumping, shooting, ducking, etc. And most of those use cases are in industries where buying a $4000 specialized tool would be considered cheap and easy to get a return on investment.

I'm still waiting for "virtual monitors" in AR/VR so my entire office wall becomes a giant screen.

> I'm still waiting for "virtual monitors" in AR/VR so my entire office wall becomes a giant screen.

VR displays need to be far higher resolution for that to work. Your monitor is likely only 2,000-4,000 pixels wide and doesn't completely fill your vision. Even Vive Pro is only 1,440 pixels wide and is expected to fill your vision. We need a minimum of double the resolution, and would probably need triple or more to make it work well.

I too am waiting on VR to be good enough for monitor replacements and tv replacement I.e. a personal theatre I can put on while laying in bed.

On the other hand, VR/AR/MR application windows wouldn't necessarily need Retina resolution. I'm imagining a world (as a first step into virtual monitors) where I have a real monitor, but beside it I can have a graph of my server's response time. The application might only be rendering at 480p, but that's good enough. If I need to interact with it, I can move it back to my monitor.

In this situation, I read text on my 4k monitor while I put charts and graphs and notifications and iTunes and my time tracker on my wall. That frees up my real screen for the stuff I need a high resolution for, while the low-res stuff is off to the side. If I need to look at it, it will flash to catch my attention anyway, and then I can turn my head.

VR is clearly not ready for general adoption. It's promising, but it's not there yet.

The obvious path for a company with resources would be to focus on catering to enthusiasts while R&D gradually develops better, cheaper headsets.

I've read an opinion piece that theorized that HTC is catering to businesses (mainly VR-gaming cafes), so not quite enthusiasts, but the same idea of higher price lower volume. The evidence being that stuff like the Vive Pro and wireless headset are really expensive, but the purchase makes sense if you're making money off them. I can't recall the source.

Another piece of evidence would be that "Enterprise" is featured prominently on the Vive website.

As a standalone device (no gaming PC required) will be a major step forward towards mainstream adoption. Coming next year on Oculus.

I haven't tried Magic Leap yet, but Oculus, Vive and Playstation VR all deliver a weak experience. The headsets are uncomfortable, they make a lot of people sick, and they are anti-social (ie you look goofy using it and they are isolating). The headset could be $50 with an included game and I still wouldn't buy it.

I don't think VR will really take off until it gets to the sunglasses form-factor phase.

When I read comments like this I just don't believe it, I haven't seen anyone get sick since the CV1/Vive came out.

The DK2 totally had those issues and the PSVR is a sub standard experience but hey each to his own I guess.

I had a Vive. In a game running well, where the only movement was my own (i.e. walking around my room), I did not get motion sick.

However, when anything glitched (frame drops, tracking errors, etc.), I'd get sick. Even worse, any game with artificial motion (such as walking with the trackpad), would make me SUPER sick very fast. Teleporting was generally OK, but still not great.

I say this as someone that thinks VR will be a huge success, but it's definitely still early.

Unlike OP, I think gen 2 alone is going to make huge strides in making VR closer to mainstream.

I think VR will be a huge success, but not as long as it's something that you have to strap to your face. I think the glasses form factor is key.

A great application could accelerate that.

I think some people are just so susceptible to motion sickness that they will never be able to enjoy it. Contrary to your experience, minutes after setting up my Vive for the first time I was comfortable floating around with true 6 DOF for my simulated character, with near zero quease.

I don't think there is any sort of "advances" that can prevent some people from being uncomfortable with "virtual" motion. It is unnatural and that's not going to change.

> they are isolating

That's kind of the whole point isn't it?

I want to be immersed an isolated while I'm experiencing VR.

Isolated in local space yes, but thanks to games like VR Chat, not isolated in "virtual" space. I have spent entire nights hanging out with a virtual crowd who all shared each other's living rooms

That's a specific type of experience though. Not all VR applications are going to be social experiences.

Yeah but sunglasses form factor won't just appear, without lesser implementations first.

My favorit way to think about this is DooM from -93. It had tons of tech limitations but dint stop me and other geeks from enjoying it. Today FPS games are several magnitudes more advanced, and accessible for the average joe in his couch.

I don't care about the adoption of VR for the general populace. I only care about it for suiting my, and other power users', needs. The concern is that, like many other engineering-first projects, we'll be left in the dark on the very tech we helped to propel to success.

They are MUCH cheaper -- especially when graphics card is factored in -- and don't require being tethered to a computer. Most consumers just aren't going to put up with that.

It really speaks to the disgustingly privileged and cloistered attitude of many tech geeks that they would consider a $400 consumer electronics device like the Oculus Quest cheap. And that they would rather see mainstream VR crash and burn, or dwindle to a tiny, dying niche, than make even the slightest concession to people who can't or won't spent $2k+ to indulge in the latest fad. What a joke.

It’s not cheap. It’s not anywhere near high quality enough for it to be anything but a fad for the masses either.

It needs to be good before it can be cheap.

So many things here.

$400 too expensive? PS4 cost $350-$500 and has sold over 80 million units.

What VR fans want is VR so good it knocks your socks off and is therefore as or more compelling than a video game console. What the cheap VR sets get you is a basically a mostly useless viewmaster that's interesting for 30 minutes and then put in a drawer somewhere. I'd argue the cheap VR sets damage VR more than help as the experiences are so poor people try them and are unimpressed and write off VR as not interesting where as that's far less true with the top devices with full 6DOF input controllers and room scale VR.

There's a minimum spec for great VR. We aren't there yet. Features needed. Higher res, wider field of view, mouth and eye tracking for facial features, full hand tracking (gloves), lighter headsets, and I'd add in feet tracking as well having played some feet tracking games and seeing how useful they are.

Have you tried Oculus Go? The experience is far from poor. I myself was a diehard htc vive fanboy and I love the Oculus Go. Can't wait for the Quest.

> $400 too expensive? PS4 cost $350-$500 and has sold over 80 million units.

The PlayStation brand has roughly two decades of solid hits and great sales, and cultural credit. People know what they're getting into. VR has no such claim to fame (outside of fantasy scifi) and nowhere near the same volume to push costs down.

Not to mention, the volume of units sold has actually nothing to do with the point the OP was making, which was that it's still expensive. And I hate to break it to you, but: the PS4 -- or any $400 gadget -- is still expensive for many people, even in places like America. But it's not expensive for privileged tech users like you and I.

> $400 too expensive? PS4 cost $350-$500 and has sold over 80 million units.

But the PS4 actually does stuff by itself - the VR headsets (at $400) do -nothing- without extra hardware to drive then, no?

Going off https://kotaku.com/a-useful-tool-checks-if-your-pc-is-ready-..., you'd be looking at another $400+ just to drive it at the minimum specs.

I think it's actually the opposite. The way most people use VR globally is at arcades. And then the cost of the equipment is secondary to employees and real estate.

If we had acceptable quality for $10k / set, I imagine we would see a lot more competition and growth.

Also in today's news:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-hmd-odyssey-vr-hea...

Their version of the microsoft MR was a tad nicer due to higher pixel count. Now they double the count and the new version is same price, old version is 150 bux cheaper. This sounds sweet. I was waiting for the 4/8k models to come out before buying a vr headset, but I might get this upgraded version at this price.

Played warthunder with a rift and it was a blast, but wanted better resolution before I bought one. Watching movies was ok, but the screen door effect needed fixed. This has anti-screendoor, might be worth it...

Note it has the same number of pixels. They might be nicer pixels but the new "PPI" number is still plain wrong.

Aw man, I've got the odyssey and its nice but less screen door effect would be cool...but thats IT...seemingly no other improvement for the odyssey+?

I have a Vive and I don't think HTC or others realize how close they are to making VR compelling enough for home users. It really just needs a bit more resolution, better FOV, and wireless ability and I would be using mine all the time..

Vive has a wireless adapter now, and Vive Pro bumped the resolution from 1st gen, so two of your points are in progress.

Still not all that friendly to setup and use. I think only consoles will be able to raise market penetration short to mid term.

I have a PSVR, and I hardly use it. Reason? The cabling arrangement is a mess, there's no built-in audio (so unless you have wireless headphones that's another annoying cable), the PS Camera has to be in exactly the right position vertically to track you properly and you also can't be more than a few feet away from it. To be honest, PSVR is only really usable on a regular basis if you had a dedicated PS4 that's set up in a room just for VR.

All of those things and taking away the requirement to own a $1k gaming rig would make it a much better experience than what it is now. I currently own the original Vive with the TPCAST (SFFPC doesn't allow for the extra PCI slot) and it's a pain to set up and there aren't many good games with the depth of a standard "flat" game.

I actually think PSVR is the most likely to hit it off since the PS4+PSVR combo is much cheaper consumer friendly option.

increasing the pixel count is going to mean needing a $2k gaming rig : /

Honestly, I liked my time with the Vive, but what finally sold me was Windows MR.

For only 300€ I bought an Acer WMR headset with better res than the Vive, no funky sensor setup required, and no fiddle adjustments needed to get it to focus with my eyesight. I put it on and it just works.

If the Samsung WMR ultra set were available here I’d happily have bought that instead, but they stupidly refuse to sell it in Europe.

I really think MS might be on to something here, I only hope the fixed specs don’t make it too unappealing for manufacturers to support.

I bought an Occulus Rift and returned it because I kept loosing tracking. Occulus support told me that that my setup wasn't supported (TB3 Laptop with an eGPU). I am looking forward to the Quest, which supossedly is going to be higher res than the Rift and use tracking on the headset.

The janky hardware and wires hanging off all over the place is one problem, the second is the quality of the games. Judging by what I played, there just isn't a lot of depth. A less expensive headset means more users and a larger market for VR games. This will lead to more in-depth gaming experiences.

I would guess, based on the article, that PC headset sales aren't anywhere near what the division needs to stay alive. The cheaper mobile headsets are more affordable and easier to use, even if the technology isn't as advanced as what the PC headset would offer.

If Carmack leaves, then you know Occulus is fucked.

As of an hour ago he says he’s staying:

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1054451469674598400

He's staying "past the launch of Oculus Quest" ... that speaks volumes.

He said it because that was the exact question asked.

The funny thing is Carmack only works on the mobile headsets and has been for awhile. He knows that's the future.

Not really actually. Originally he started doing all that mobile stuff mostly because of Zenimax's lawsuit.

Do you have a source on that? It seems like a much better fit for his talents than the PC stuff. He's doing low level super critical performance optimization, and technical product direction.

Performance doesn't matter nearly as much on the PC side, because there's so much more headroom in the hardware, and the technical product direction can just flow out of what game companies need.

The mobile side is a true technical challenge where a person like Carmack can literally make the difference between go and no-go.

Really? Where did you read that? I always thought that he worked on the mobile-first headsets because they are a more interesting technical challenge for him.

I wonder how much of the partnered sales of "VR Ready PCs" Oculus captures? Could they not just drive that up?

id is doing fine without Carmack. Though time will tell I suppose what happens when they need new engine tech. Agree with the sentiment though, I only support Oculus because of him.

> id is doing fine without Carmack

Oh yep, I didn't mean that Oculus would be fucked without him; I can see how my comment could be interpreted that way. I meant that Carmack would probably only leave if Oculus was likely to be shutting their doors soon or was seriously going down the tubes and had a huge shift in direction.

Between this, the 2080's performance being 'eh', the vive pro having a very mixed reaction (mostly price), and the pimax sets running face-first into gpu limitiations, PC VR is in a bit of a slump. The best thing to buy today is almost exactly what it was a year and a half ago.

So GPUs are the bottleneck? Are there any roadblocks in GPU development we'll hit soon?

> So GPUs are the bottleneck?

Not really, no. It's pixel density and refresh rate as always, and that is driven from the display.

> Are there any roadblocks in GPU development we'll hit soon?

We already have. The 2080 is a negligible improvement to the 1080ti platform with regards to compute power.

2080 Ti has a lot more power than the 1080ti, it just spends most of it on ray tracing.

Consider the 2080 Ti has 18.6 transistors the 1080 Ti has 12 billion. The issue nVidia saw is games are less limited by polygon counts and 4k is still not mainstream so they needed something else to keep the treadmill going.

4K is a bit of a catch 22 situation - hardcore gamers don't want 4K as the GPUs don't have enough performance for it. Monitors don't support higher refresh rates as there is no demand from gamers for a 144Hz display. Intel iGPUs have supported it comfortably for the last couple of generations, but Windows is still a POS when dealing with 4K, so businesses aren't going to bother upgrading their trusty Dell 24" 1080p monitors anytime soon.

A little bit but foveated rendering is really the tech we need.

I don't think hardware is to blame. There are no killer apps that make people justify strapping a box to their face.

The facebox isn't really the problem, it's the price and the equipment. You need a highish-end PC in addition to the VR rig itself, towers for sensors/ir lights, etc. I think the Quest will probably be a game changer here, being a stand alone self-contained unit at a reasonable price point.

I guess you could include it in 'price and equipment' but for me I simply don't have space in my apartment to do any of the interesting things with VR (eg I really enjoyed SuperHot VR), and it doesn't seem much of an improvement if I'm just sitting in my chair with it. Floor space is extremely expensive in almost every big Western city at the moment.

agreed. it has nothing to do with hardware. all the games i've played on my oculus lose their allure in less than 20 hours.

Honestly, I suspect that few people actually want VR.

We see this “revolution” promise in entertainment occasionally. Sometimes it’s real (tv, video games), sometimes it’s not. Anyone here buy a 3D TV? Do they still make them?

From what I’ve seen, VR headsets are very hard on the human brain, since they confuse our multiple range sensing systems. Smoother experiences help, but until we find a better way to adjust the focal plane it’s going to be a continuous issue.

I personally think they’re overhyped. They demo great, but I have yet to see any usage that would justify spending spending as much one one as I did my TV. Every time I’ve tried one it’s been novel for a few minutes, but afterwards I have had 0 interest in ever owning one.

> VR headsets are very hard on the human brain, since they confuse our multiple range sensing systems.

I disagree. They are hard on brains of some humans, mainly due to motion sickness. But that happens only when there is artificial movement involved - when user's movement doesn't match camera movement.

And it really depends on the person, some are more susceptible to that, some are less. I also think some resilience to that effect can be trained with practice.

Then there's the style of artificial movement provided by software. I've seen several solutions which make it more bearable - generally those involve some degree of physical activity beyond just pressing a button.

Adjustment of focal plane seems like a rare problem; it's honestly the first time I hear it mentioned as an issue which is "very hard on the human brain". Usually it's all about motion sickness.

> but I have yet to see any usage that would justify spending spending as much one one as I did my TV

For me, it's about activity it provides as much as it is about immersion. I wanted to reduce my time sitting idly, and VR lets me do just that without abandoning gaming at all.

You’re correct about motion, but that’s not my main concern.

My main concern is range finding. The human brain uses parallax and eye focus information to figure out where objects are in space. All VR toolkits right now vary parallax for range, but can only produce light that is focused on one plane. This confuses the human brain, because it now has two pieces of information that disagree badly.

This is actually why the Air Force abandoned its first attempts at HUD helmets, iirc the post I saw here said that the Air Force had to enforce a 24 ban on driving after using them, because your sense of range and speed would be wildly out of whack after using it. They were also worried about brain damage after excessive use.

I’m glad that you like VR gaming, I personally found it to be novel but ultimately uninteresting after a few minutes.

I guess the lesson to learn here is "never sell your company if you want to have any controlling influence over it". So we have WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus quickly in a row. Hundreds of killed-off companies acquired by FAANG, visions lost, money made.

I know it's a useful acronym, but not quite accurate. Netflix doesn't do many [0] acquisitions [1] and isn't on the same scale as the other companies other than as a desirable tech company to work at.

[0] https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/07/netflix-inc-just-m...

[1] https://www.thestreet.com/investing/netflix-acquisition-abq-...

A list like Facebook, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Yahoo! is probably more accurate, even if the last has itself been acquired.

Term pedantry aside, your point is sound. Tech's incredible journey marches on.

I’d describe the acronym as ‘catchy’ more than I’d describe it as ‘useful’.

Yeah, if you lose the N, it becomes inappropriate. And GAF doesn't sound great.

Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft are all West Coast tech companies that are in the top 10 largest public companies in the world by market cap. Media should really replace Netflix with Microsoft and come up with a new acronym.

IMO Netflix got on that list because of its reputation for giving good cash-based compensation in ranges that, though they probably also exist at Microsoft, does not come as easily to the rank and file SWE at Microsoft.

Netflix is in there instead of Microsoft because at the point in time Jim Cramer started shouting "FANG" Nextflix stock was a hot buy and Microsoft stock was still firmly in the Ballmer doldrums.

I remember hearing the term on Bloomberg when FAANG stocks were experiencing fantastic gains. Especially Netflix.

How about MAAAF.

Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Intel, and Amazon = MAFIA ?

GAFAM is pretty common in french. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAFAM

It's a good acronym if you consider companies like the ones mentioned to be included. So because Google is there, Microsoft belongs there. Twitter goes with Facebook, and Spotify goes with Netflix. Yahoo! is missing but it should be IMO. It's neither huge like Google nor socially innovative like Netflix. The five mentioned companies encompass a wide range of powerful tech companies.

It's a concept that works if you don't take it too literally.

Yahoo! is gone, but until recently it used to be a tech empire of its own, acquiring startups (Flickr, Tumblr, etc.) and inventing technologies (Hadoop, Pipes, YQL). I figured they would belong on a list of big buyer tech companies.

Yahoo invented Hadoop?

A Yahoo! contractor invented Hadoop, and the company adopted it for internal use and greatly promoted it:

https://www.wired.com/2011/10/how-yahoo-spawned-hadoop/

>A list like Facebook, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Yahoo! is probably more accurate

G for Google makes better acronyms, and you can throw in Netflix too: MAY FANG!

You are missing Google, lots of Google acquisitions in the past.

Netflix isn't a tech company. They are a media company that happens to use tech to deliver their content.

They're issuing a $2 billion bond offering in order to pay for content [1], and Moody's rates them Ba3 [2], junk grade. We should drop the inclusion of them with large tech firms.

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/netflix-plans-2-billion-bo...

[2] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/moodys-rates-netflixs-new-...

"Google isn't a tech company. They are an advertising company that happens to use tech to deliver their ads."

I don't know that this is an incorrect statement when looking at how they act. They are only a tech company in that they have decided that tech is their competitive advantage for the ads business.

If google found out tomorrow that focusing on underwater basket weaving gave them a 10% bump in ad revenue over focusing on tech, does anyone here really think they would stay focused on tech?

I guess that was my (badly made) point. It's not that the comment about Netflix isn't _true_, but that in the context of this discussion it's not particularly useful.

Accurate

If you replace alphabet with Google, here's a very catchy acronym: MAGAF.

What's the lesson here?

Notice how they all vested and then left. Once they are vested then they essentially are working for peanuts compared to what they already have (nobody in the right mind is going to re-grant stock compared to acquisition amount).

I don't see any surprises here.

I would agree with your assessment for IG founders but perhaps less so with Oculus. For IG founders, after you've vested, you are just working on another photo sharing platform, albeit the largest one in the world. The Oculus founders are in a new product category, bring VR to the world. It's perhaps more glamorous, for lack of a better word.

There are plenty of people who made a bunch of money on an acquisition or an IPO and they are still working because they enjoy it.

The story is that people like that are leaving Facebook because they don't like working there. It doesn't seem like other large tech companies have a similar problem retaining such people.

Yep.

Most founders of major acquisitions leave after a year or two. The founders of Instagram and WhatsApp were at Facebook for more than 5+ years. That's very rare.

No one is talking about not working, he was talking about working for a tiny amount compared to what they have already made.

And with nine houses in California(1) alone, including one of the best oceanfront properties in Laguna Beach(2) bought for $30.8m thanks to Oculus, he is more than okay.

(1) http://www.yolandaslittleblackbook.com/blog/2017/05/08/brend...

(2)http://www.yolandaslittleblackbook.com/blog/2016/06/23/brend...

If you have > 1 billion dollars anything that you were going to do with the company is likely trivial. Whatsapp was making 1 million in revenue when it was bought by Facebook. The founders became billionaires. If they want they can redo their company (without the users) and still have a billion left. No risk.

Or rather be careful with who you sell it to. Companies like Omnicom generally let companies they acquire do whatever they want within a wider pool of resources. Though, it seems as if 'tech companies' are a bit more controlling...

They always tighten the noose, year by year.

Maybe a little less than some other companies, depending on how the acquisition contracts are written.

Especially if you're more interested in making an exciting toy for rich people instead of a mass market product, Facebook might not be the company you want to sell to.

People with a computer that want true instead of toy VR are hardly ‘rich people’.

Maybe I exaggerated, but $1200 (figure $800 for a computer and $400 for the Rift) is a much bigger ask than $400. So they’re basically targeting a subset of the existing high-end PC gamer market and would have a very hard time growing it beyond people who already own a computer with the required specs. It’s a much more expensive toy and much harder to sell. You also need to set up a bunch of cameras for tracking, and to get the most out of it requires a 10x10 open space near your computer, which is something I’ve never managed to have.

Plus the high requirements are pegging the whole product’s market viability on “I hope blockchain people don’t fuck up the whole GPU market for several years again!” Price of a GTX 1070 is basically the same as it was at launch more than two years ago ($400ish), and it went up and back down in the meantime. Oculus owning the complete unit sidesteps this concern.

I think it’s a bit of a bummer, especially since OC5’s presentation touched on neat PC focused stuff like their VR Substance Painter demo. But it’s unsurprising from a Facebook perspective.

I was hoping that the Quest’s USB-C charging port secretly implements VirtualLink and would effectively become a new higher-res Rift with inside-out tracking in addition to its standalone capabilities, but with Iribe’s departure that seems less likely.

> So we have WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus quickly in a row.

> FAANG

Well, all those you mentioned are all in Facebook.

I think far more pragmatically is the moral of story is 'fancy demos do not a company make'.

Facebook really put a lot behind this - far far more than any little company could have.

Also - Facebook has so much power, that when they say 'we're doing this' - a lot will follow suit. Little companies can't do it.

Given the string of failures, what's more likely is that the cost/benefit/value ratios are simply not there yet for consumers.

Yes, it might have been possible for Ocular to just 'keep on truckin' with smaller amounts of VC ... but I significantly doubt it: the market facts are inexorable ...

Facebook gave it a good shot. It is what it is.

He'd LOVE Hewlett Packard /S

That's always a good lesson, but you have to consider the alternate path. When I look at the list of top shipping VR headsets, every one is from a major company, and all except the Oculus are from hardware companies:

https://www.pcmag.com/article/342537/the-best-virtual-realit...

If Oculus hadn't sold, where would they be? Would they have been able to raise enough money to get even this far? Would they be able to afford to continue? The founders not only got fat paychecks, they got 4 years of backing from one of the richest and best-known companies on the planet.

I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who turned down or didn't pursue acquisitions, got crushed by better-funded competitors, and now wish they had sold out early on.

Oculus lost its way by been too serious. Nintendo has shown that fun simple can win. JavaScript has shown that simple to use is a win. Oculus should have focused on great and tooling that made it easy to build VR. They should have provided asset library, JavaScript, so easy that middle and high school kids can do it. At first it will be shitty and a toy but it will find its way. I bought the dev kit because it had Linux support, they dropped support and I tossed the kit

Many have their first clash when investors push for some direction. However many of those "startups" never are profitable. A new owner not only wants to change that, but also integrate with their remaining company to improve synergies ...

Cancellation of the "Rift 2" seems like a pretty big deal, is this confirmed anywhere else?

Clarification from the author on twitter[0]: this edition of Rift 2 may have been cancelled but that does not mean Facebook is no longer making PC VR headsets.

[0]https://twitter.com/lucasmtny/status/1054436110661754880?s=1...

Facebook denies techcrunch report regarding Rift 2:

https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/oculus-co-founder-bren...

Statement from Nate Mitchell (head of Rift at Oculus): https://twitter.com/natemitchell/status/1054460295697944578

“Yes, we are planning a future version of Rift.”

That's not really a denial that Rift 2 was cancelled.

It sounds like this trend is exactly what Facebook wants. They buy some software (and its people) and mold it to their specifications whether or not it costs that team its most senior management/visionaries.

The more interesting thing will be to see what happens when all of these ex-CEOs have left and how Facebook has managed to maintain all of these acquisitions without the key leaders of each division.

In fairness, this is also what the founders want. They got their pay day and after sometime of golden handcuffs, they get their freedom.

It's more of Thiel influence of 'build a cult' on Zuckerberg and also his inability to listen from other respectable figures for their opinions. I got that vibe from the article of the Whatsapp founders. Seems that Zuckerberg has his mind set on an idea and will shut down any other opinion. Troubling for investors, it's never good to have a monoculture or one-sided opinions and it doesn't look good to have smart people (and proven successful) jump ship at this rate.

Sounds like the upper management circle in Facebook is running off aquired executives, not nesseaarily zuck. Kind of hints at a toxic culture.

My feeling was that FB’s desire to monetize acquired properties has put off a lot of acquired execs.

It's really Zuck. He hires management between the co-founders as a diversion.

who says its not good? worked for apple for many years.

Cults work until they don't.

I can name a few that are a couple of thousand years old and still kicking

Apple and Steve Jobs for that matter basically invented cross-competition inside the same company. He pushed for different teams to work on the same problem and then compared solutions. Even from the Mac vs Lisa days to the iPhone initial designs (iPod based vs what we have now as iPhone) and even on minuscule things (iOS keyboard was assigned to at least 5 different teams and then one engineer got a big breakthrough). Contrary to shutting down any other idea from the get-go and pushing away talented people.

Obviously he’s not going to buy WhatsApp for billions of dollars and then keep not earning money on it. You can’t eat having a lot of users.

I find this report funny because the quest is the real rift 2.

I don't buy this rumor one bit, if we saw carmack, mitchell or abrash leave then maybe I'd be worried but what does Iribe really have to his name? When I think back I see a botched launch of the original rift... that no doubt had a part in his "stepping down" as CEO towards the end of 2016...

In other words nothing to see...

I would say the something to see here is that Facebook is betting on stand-alone VR and not PC based VR going forward.

I think this is a good bet as the main reason most of my friends have not gotten into VR is the necessity for a high-end gaming PC and the associated costs of VR in general.

The Quest, while not cheap, is priced around the new norm for gaming machine which is much more palatable than the current VR cost/PC approach.

I'd say is pretty bad bet as stationary beasts are often not powerful enough for decent experience so stand-alone device is just a 100 steps back.

I wouldn't be surprised if stand-alone VR user retain is in single digits. Some people watch movies but that's pretty much where real use case ends.

>the quest is the real rift 2.

They might consolidate the Rift and Quest into one device in gen2. The Quest with an PC interface or some kind of 5g dongle.

Why are people saying "it makes more sense to make it affordable first"? When has an advanced new tech ever proliferated from the bottom-up? New tech is always unaffordable, and becomes affordable as it matures. Advancements trickle down. I fear that this move towards cheap low-barrier VR will make it unattractive for users.

Smartphones?

Not really. The iPhone really drove the modern smartphone and, even if the price has tended to increase (but that's partly because of the phasing out of carrier subsidies), it wasn't a low-end device. And Blackberries and Treos weren't cheap either.

IMHO, there's not much of a market for a tethered VR headset. Some of the big components of a compelling and immersive VR environment include some ability to move around and interact with the virtual environment and (again in my opinion) a tethered headset really gets in the way of that.

I don't think that means this needs to be a race to the bottom, but when you move to a portable device it looks like everyone starts looking really hard at smartphone-like hardware. That's a big jump from a custom desktop workstation and, for a lot of people, smells like a race to the bottom.

But the untethered 6-DOF platforms are just barely coming out. Vive Focus (not sure you can buy this yet?), Magic Leap, and Hololens.

I wouldn't lump in Magic Leap and Hololens, I think they are targeting a very different market.

True, but that's literally all there is.

...because some people think that 6DOF HMD + Touch is the first real generation of VR, and now it's time to make THAT affordable. The other improvements to VR, at the high end, are less interesting to them. Sure, they're nice, but they essentially think 6DOF HMD + Touch is the Minimum Viable Product for VR. At least for the 80% Gaming / 20% Video market, as they said at Oculus Connect. That's what Oculus Quest is.

If Oculus Quest feels "almost as good" as an Oculus Rift in many games, I don't know why you think that'll be "unattractive for users".

Hell, I think Beat Saber alone is worth the price of admission on an Oculus Quest.

I remember when 6DOF HMD + Touch + GTX 970 was the bare minimum... and then all these new headsets stated coming out with far weaker GPUs. I wonder if anything has changed or if they have just decided to sacrifice quality for adoption.

GPU requirements were dropped because the software has gotten a lot better. Here's a presentation from OC5 that highlights some of the more recent improvements (ASW 2.0 is particularly impressive): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbLe7b2pUq0

Two of these things are fundamentals of VR presence (being able to move your head, being able to interact with your hands ) and one is a specific piece of high-performance silicon. Sacrificing some mesh and texture resolution is a completely different thing from sacrificing spatial movement.

> ...because some people think that 6DOF HMD + Touch is the first real generation of VR, and now it's time to make THAT affordable.

Of course it should be made affordable. But (for example) advanced mobile phone development was not stopped by manufacturers so they could focus on making iPhones affordable. There were continual cutting edge developments which eventually trickled down to budget models as manufacturing processes improved and market demands increased. This same cycle happens in all industries and for all products.

It would be ludicrous for people to say "Ok, the iPhone 1 is good enough, let's stop all development of the iPhone 2 - they're too expensive anyway guys - and start working on iPhone Budget Edition", yet that's what people are suggesting for VR.

I think you’re focusing too much on the price aspect.

What about the elephant in the room? Having to be tethered to a computer? That’s the real innovation IMO.

Moreover, one of the other popular usages for VR is social (and def on facebook’s radar). You can’t have much of a social experience without enough users. Easiest way to get users? Lower barrier to entry.

It’s not about making it affordable so much as it is investing in things that make VR more compelling.

Making VR more realistic was clearly not the area with the most growth potential.

> Why are people saying "it makes more sense to make it affordable first"?

Because there is a chicken and egg problem with content. If you don't get enough users then no one will make content, if you don't have enough content you won't get users.

I wouldn't be surprised if the content creators are being burned already.

This seems like a smart move from Facebook. They clearly stand to make more money from standalone VR headsets with good-enough graphics and low prices (i.e. the Quest) than from super high end wired headsets that require a $2k PC.

Sure, but if that was their strategy, they could have just developed something good enough internally or acquired someone going after that market. It's disappointing that they bought a company (arguably the most prominent) with the opposite strategy, and then didn't commit to it.

This would make more sense if they were acquiring competitors to consolidate their position, but they didn't have a position, this is how they entered the market.

It may suggest that they have gathered enough evidence to be pretty certain that the high-end VR market just isn't workable. But it doesn't seem to me like they have given it enough time or energy to know this yet.

I don't think Oculus had the opposite strategy though. Standalone 6 DoF tracking with on board processing simply wasn't an option for them in the past.

As sad as this makes me being a person that has a powerful gaming PC and would want the best VR experience, maybe for now it's more important to make VR more mainstream, and profitable so it does not die out all together.

Are we back in VR winter? It feels like it hasn't caught on aside from a segment of gamers.

Well, if the Oculus Quest is good, it's more to the Rift like the smartphone was to the desktop computer.

Nope, porn (and you would expect TV/movies to follow in their footsteps) will ensure it doesn't disappear and continues to grow, although it's possible it grows slowly.

Porn, sure. That's a place where being immersed in the scene is unique and possible desirable. Movies, though... I'm not convinced. 3D movies already suffer from having to force the viewer's attention to the appropriate part of the scene by changing the focus so undesirable locations are blurred out. How do you represent an action scene where the viewer could potentially be looking 180 degrees from where the action is taking place?

> How do you represent an action scene where the viewer could potentially be looking 180 degrees from where the action is taking place?

You put the viewer in the middle of the action.

Half Life managed to do it. I imagine if you played a VR version of Half Life the story/"cut scene" parts would work even better than with a mouse and keyboard.

If the idea there is just immersive field of view, seems like Google Cardboard is probably sufficient. I don't really see people wanting to navigate the space.

Seems to me that the VR hype died down almost immediately after the Rift and the Vive hit the market for the big $$$

Our company and others are seeing plenty of interest and adoption in the enterprise / training space. We haven't seen it really catch on yet as a gaming platform in part because of price and in part because we have yet to see a platform selling game equivalent to a Mario / Halo type of exclusive. Where there are real use cases in enterprise price isn't such a barrier however.

Is John Carmack still there?

As of now, yes.

He's been really clear for multiple years now that he signed up to put a billion people in VR. I don't think high-end PC-powered, room-scale rigs have any real part in that mission. Are you suggesting he would leave?

As a VR skeptic, I think his expertise is being wasted in that space.

He's clearly doing what he loves there; I watched his key note on the Quest and while he's not the greatest speaker it's pretty riveting and in the end I disappointed they had to cut him off for time.

Perhaps, but Carmack works on things he likes and is best driven by seemingly-impossible technical tasks. It's pretty unlikely he'd be anywhere near as productive in any other space if he truly loves VR.

I’m a skeptic too, but if there’s one person who can make this sort of moonshot project happen, it’s him. His expertise is right where it needs to be.

Not at all, and my personal opinion is he is just using Facebooks computing power to achieve his goals.

Yup https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1054451469674598400

He is and it seems he's far more interested in the potential of mobile VR over PC-tethered VR.

Not sure how important this is. Is there a doubt in anyone's mind that FB got Oculus for John Carmack ?

I don't believe that at all.

If Facebook wants a rockstar dev, they can offer that one person a lot less money than it would cost to buy a company.

Facebook bought Oculus because they wanted to expand into the VR space. I imagine it had nothing to do with games, but rather the possibility of a future application platform.

In my mind, VR is not the future, but rather AR will be. In that case, Facebook wants to be the provider of ads and metadata that is laid over other people's faces and brick-and-mortar storefronts while people walk around wearing thin AR glasses.

Feels more like Oracle than FAANG with some of these moves.

I think the biggest hindrance to VR is that Apple doesn't have the equivalent to Cardboard/Daydream. I don't know how many of you have introduced people to VR but every person I have shown VR to has enjoyed it. There is a lot of variance in the enjoyment but 1/5 really enjoys it. I think once smartphone VR gets bigger, especially when Apple does something it will funnel many more people to more expensive VR headsets.

Couldn't they have compromised by having an external input on one of the models, like the 27" pre-retina iMac used to b come a monitor? I suppose that's could still be perceived as a problem of fracturing the target platform. But really that's unavoidable in any leading edge technology.

Having used both types of headsets I can say that there is probably no entertainment market for tethered headsets.

Can't believe there is a rift among Facebook upper management.

I 'm glad people are finally quitting the VR hype. The amount of money thrown in the hopes that people would strap a horrible vomit-inducer in their skull is astonishing. What's worse, it has distracted people from incremental progress in what is "classical" metaverse and kept it behind by a few years. Example in point is Second life's pivot to VR called Sansar and its open-source twin called HighFidelity. Both are going nowhere, and the only thing that kept people from seeing their obvious flaws was the mountain of money they got thrown. Highfidelity now pays its users with cryptocurrency in order to be able to stress-test their servers. The project has received 75M to burn, and is unable to retain any users after 4-5 years of trying. Its users are complaining about the lack of a decent desktop experience, yet they are stubbornly refusing to listen. On the other end, opensimulator, a poor secondlife-clone is struggling to fix its bugs with $0 funding, yet it still keeps thousands of users interested. Someone should just knock some sense into all this hype.

I guess the guys leaving oculus are smart enough to know that the party is over ... for now.

Ya know there are other people making content in VR beyond total rip offs...

No one is "quitting" VR, people sure as hell are doubting it though.

"in the hopes that people would strap a horrible vomit-inducer in their skull is astonishing."

This shit reminds me of the pc days... "why would I want to play this game, it doesn't even look real"

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