Alas poor Oculus, I knew you well | Hacker News Reader

Alas poor Oculus, I knew you well

iijiij.com

13 pointsaniijbod17 comments

I have very little idea what this article is trying to say. I can't even decipher whether it is pro-Oculus or against it.

It's a weird article.

"Oculus is good, but CastAR is much better"?

I don't see them as direct competitors. People developing for one provide some benefits to people working on the other.

But now CastAR's newly announced VR mode does indeed make them direct competitors.

It contains so much speculation I'm not sure that what the author was trying to say even matters.

Would you say the same if the article turned out to act as a spur for each of the two parties concerned to respond to its claims: if they do, and they do so candidly, you might find that at least some of the speculation that I made was correct.

"I can't even decipher whether it is pro-Oculus or against it"

Should an author always be expected to take sides?

When the article's title is "Alas poor Oculus, I knew you well", insinuating that like Yorrick, Oculus is dead, then yes, the author is taking a side. The title led me one way, then the rambling prose lost all semblance of clarity and argument.

Well, showing concern (by saying 'alas') that someone, or some thing had suffered Yorrick's fate, does not, as a phrase, or even in a headline, necessarily indicate that one has 'taken sides' in terms of whether that that fate was desirable. The article 'didn't clearly take sides' but instead speculated as to why the outcome of this challenge to the Rift could be both dramatic and unpredictable.

My biggest comment is that its not fully immersive. The occulus VR and castAR are drastically different in that sense. As a gamer, I don't want to see anything but the game, thus head mounted is perfect in my mind. I don't want to look at a surface, I want feel like I am inside it.

CastAR now also comes with VR which means that in VR mode you won't see anything but the game, exactly the same as on the Rift. In which case, the relevant question is whether CastAR VR is as good as the Rift's VR.

Here's a link to the kickstarter for the CastAR:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/technicalillusions/casta...

"neither technology is likely to change me in to a player of any kind of games" - if the article writer is not himself a gamer of any sort, why should anyone listen to his opinion on forthcoming game technologies?

Is this what PG would describe as Ad Hominem?

Well, I think Valve would disagree with him.

I understand that Valve has an investment in CastAR, so I'm not so sure about that.

Former Valve employees started CastAR is what I was led to believe. From Valve point of view supporting CastAR is a good option because they want both initiatives to succeed (Oculus Rift is already supported in SDK). Why? More VR = more games, more games = Steam is more relevant. And with Micro Transactions (No other game distribution platform does it AFAIK. So if your game wants to use them Valve will take a cut.) Valve's margins and market segment is so high that investing in technologies like that (Steam Box/VR) makes sense even if they do not pay off for years. Eventually they will bring more people into gaming and Valve will be right there conveniently offering all the games that support VR right on the front page.

Yes, for Valve, this is a win whichever.

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