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Its all sunshine and roses until "the meeting" in which Carmack says "I've started this awesome feature that I feel defines the future of the product and..." a hand goes up and a suit says "that really doesn't fit with 'our vision' for where we want Oculus to go". Game Over.

Why is this a big problem? If your scenario plays out after VR is really viable because of the extra millions that Facebook puts into the product, so be it.

At this point, the awesome feature issue isn't even really on the table based on my understanding. Getting the technology to be stable and solving all the issues with it is the main focus. I don't see Facebook getting in the way of that. If that does become an issue, Facebook will have earned the right after having likely spent millions in the three digit range to get it going.

"Facebook will have earned the right after having likely spent millions in the three digit range to get it going."

This is true. That's exactly why people find it sad.

Would they also be sad if Occulus never pulled it off due to financial constraints?

My fear is that Carmack will know how to make VR really viable but will be prevented from doing this by his new short-sighted managers.

If this happens even a tiny bit, it will kill the passion in the entire team and Facebook's VR will become a gimmick more like Cue-Cat than a world-changing new platform.

Or Carmack and Abrash will say "fuck it" and find an organisation (Valve perhaps :) that won't prevent them.

The technical minds should have a fair chunk of leverage here simply because of how much of the capacity to evolve the product in truly exciting ways will reside in their head.

> Or Carmack and Abrash will say "fuck it" and find an organisation (Valve perhaps :) that won't prevent them.

When Facebook owns all the IP? Don't be silly.

Abrash just left Valve.

Your comment assumes that Zuckerberg and the people at Facebook will be incompetent at nurturing an employee like John Carmack and the other talented Oculus VR folk.

If they're smart, they will allow him pretty much free reign, and then put some resources behind his projects to help them mature. (think Sergey Brin or Andy Rubin at Google)

No, it just assumes that the interests of a large corporation which is entering the phase where it needs to show revenue growth every quarter and satisfy shareholders are not aligned with those of a small company attempting to build an experimental product in a completely new field. This is an old story and the outcome is almost always the same (large corp buys small corp, promises to change nothing and stay hands off, circumstances change, large corp looks for projects to downsize or cut). Google has many examples of acquisitions, how many are running in a hands off way now?

On top of that, Facebook has shown itself to be untrustworthy many times from a dev and user perspective (beacon, FB credits etc), so if Carmack wants to avoid that and produce something without intrusive advertising for example, they may well clash.

None of this means it was a bad idea to sell for oculus, just that selling is ceding control completely to the vision of the larger company in the long term.

Facebook does not need to satisfy any shareholder except one.

I mean, hacker news likes to freak out about fiduciary duty and "omg, corporations are obligated to make maximum profit." But realistically, almost no big corps run that way (almost all engage in some charity, many have foundations, etc.), and there is near-zero legal possibility of minority investors forcing them to. This is because investors have almost no say unless it is obvious you are trying to screw them -- normally a subset of them -- or unless there is no plausible way a course of action could make money.

I've always thought the fiduciary duty argument was silly (and I'm not HN :), so I agree with you there, but that doesn't change the broader point - when you sell a company, it is no longer yours, and the interests and politics of a large corp with public shareholders and revenue targets are not those of a smaller acquisition.

I wasn't trying to challenge the broader point. I was trying to challenge the specific claim that some folks are making that Facebook Must ruin Oculus because balance sheet, which is nonsense. Although on re reading your comment I can see I replied too soon and you are not one of those.

> But realistically, almost no big corps run that way (almost all engage in some charity, many have foundations, etc.)

Engaging in charity and supporting foundations is not related to the "generosity" of the a corporation (who runs it); charity and foundations can be PR and tax-saving strategies.

Drug cartels engage in charitable donations; that doesn't make them generous.

HSBC (just picked a random one) supports charities. It also launders money for the drug cartels and is generally involved in illegal money transactions.

I can pick virtually any big corporation involved in corruption/crime scandals and I'm pretty sure they routinely make charitable acts and/or have their foundations and as well.

I certainly don't say that any corporation is corrupt, but the link with foundation/charities and morality of a corporation just doesn't exist.

Tax write offs do not work like you seem to imply. There is no net financial gain to any charitable donation . Consider a dollar of profit. If kept on the ledger as profit, a corporation pays around fifty cents of that dollar in tax. If donated that dollar of profit is not taxed, but the corporation now had lost a dollar instead of 50 cents.

See through the cracks: The charity may be owned by a friend of the stockholders or managers. If the donation is reported by some media outlet it may as well recover the money; sometimes is mostly help their own agenda such as...

- A real state company that helps an organization that seeks to prevent the construction of new buildings (because it destroys the forest/parks) but in reality they just want to keep the price of their own stock as high as possible.

- A clothes company that support anti-fur organisations, only because the rival brand is the target of such protesters.

- An alternate reality where Shell supports anti-Exxon campaigns done by Greenpeace.

...a larger advertising company of the most cynical variety.

You kind of forget who you're talking about. One doesn't just say that to John Carmack :)

For a team of new-comers, without both real engineering experience and real business experience, maybe the consequences of the Facebook acquisition could have went the way you imagine, but lots of the Oculus guys are heavyweights and when someone says something that goes against their vision they need to have solid arguments, and even if their arguments will be right, they need to consider that even throwing those arguments at them comes with a huge real risk (of having a team fracture and a bunch of very smart guys leaving the company) and huge real cost (the real productivity decrease that comes from pushing a team in a direction they don't want to go to, and of wasting the big-brains' time in meetings and arguments instead of product development - these kinds of "productivity penalties" ca very well allow a competitor to come up with a better idea before them!).

I find that very difficult to imagine. JC isn't some mid level manager with a pet project in mind. He's one of the founding technical leads in the company FB just acquired. He has high political capital as well as personal financial independence. A close minded brush off like that would be likely to get that suit fired.

It'd be easy to believe that, because it is reassuring in a way that calms anxieties about the future of Oculus.

But you only have to look back to Doom 3 to see the cracks in that idea. Many design decisions of that game were unpopular when it was released, and over the following years it came out that those decisions were driven by technical aspects of the engine. Where rather than the engine sacrificing for the design, design sacrificed for the engine.

So it'd be easy to make the less immediately appealing argument that they should push back on Carmack's vision when they think it's gone off the rails.

links? As I remember it, most of the issues were around the fixed frame rates that were an attempt to unify PC development with console development. Perhaps I am confusing Doom 3 for another game though.

The poster child is the flashlight, sounds stupid now but I remember how much shit it stirred back then. The rest I don't remember off the top of my head, and don't feel like scrubbing through days and days of Bombcast to find.

"Carmack has also admitted that the flashlight was not attached to the weapons in the original version of Doom 3 due to performance issues" ... http://www.dsogaming.com/news/john-carmack-speaks-30fps-on-c...

I can't agree more that developing and delivering competitive VR will be resource intensive over many years, but Oculus had already raised on the order of $100 million, and i'm certain they could have either raised capital for manufacturing or negotiated directly with an existing contract manufacturer for production (many of whom must surely have been beating a path to their door). Is a large tech company really that much better of a bank/VC than a bank or VC? ("don't answer that question")

You mention that Facebook brings "scaling infrastructure experience to the table". While FB's datacenter and network expertise might be very helpful for rolling out any hosted or networked VR applications, I would argue that shipping a hardware product requires a radically different culture compared to shipping web applications. Oculus will be, at best, be Facebook's first big risky learning experience in meeting contemporary expectations for consumer electronics logistics. Even Apple is still learning how to do this, and they have the benefit of shipping dozens of products with similar scale and expectations. I think if Oculus had done things on their own, or with a less brand name partner (Flextronics?) customers would have been willing to cut them much more slack regarding schedule and minor roll out woes as long as the core technology/experience delivered.

Another major downside from such tight ties to Facebook will be convincing other large institutions/platforms (Amazon, Microsoft, Nintendo, Google/Android, Apple, hardware vendors) to cooperate or collaborate in building new services. Oculus might be promised autonomy, but would Palmer still be allowed to unilaterally negotiate with Linden Labs, or IBM, or Apple? Seems unlikely.

EDIT TO ADD: The whole acquisition would make a lot more sense if Oculus had suddenly come under direct legal/patent/IP pressure, which could burn through that $100M a lot faster than, eg, the most significant advances in VR in a generation.

On the point about scaling, the knowledge of how to do that lives with people. I seriously doubt that Oculus would have a problem hiring the right people (or raising enough money to do so).

With all due respect to John Carmack and Michael Abrash, this reminds me of a song by Tom Lehrer:

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, says Wernher von Braun."

I'm sure Facebook will give Carmack, and now Abrash, all the tools they need to build their rockets. Where they will aim them is another story, and will be decided by others.

I would agree that this deal is great in terms of making VR happen in the short term - but making it happen by selling it to a giant services company, who can afford to be a loss leader until the competing hardware companies go out of business, seems bad for the overall ecosystem.

Facebook coming to the table gives Oculus a high valuation. They could have easily found other investors with such a high valuation. It's a bit unsettling how quickly this deal went through.

How much autonomy does Oculus have? Can we trust Oculus with privacy? Will Oculus be an open platform?

I think, also, somebody has to be first to bring this technology to the market before it even occurs to others they'd want to compete.

Oculus under Facebook might not bring the finished product most of us were looking for, but having a device that's solved the technological challenges of consumer VR is the heavy lifting. And it puts Facebook in the position of being The Name in consumer VR.

Are they going to alienate that right off the bat by building a walled garden, putting heavy content locks on it, watching everything you do? Or will they do the soft touch of making their helmet the easiest (and perhaps only) way to tie your VR into the Facebook network when you wish, get special savings on new software, offer perks to developers that find Facebook-friendly features for their VR software?

I think if they squeeze too hard people will upgrade right out of them into the competition. Which is sure to follow shortly if the hardware is a massive success and the implementation is driving people away. So, cautiously optimistic.

I bought an Oculus Rift.

I'm not going to be buying a Facebook device.

Facebook is creepy.

It doesn't matter how cool the technology is or what it can do, more and more people are becoming disturbed at the now common concept of consumer-as-product for Facebook, Google, et al. Even if they seemed open and friendly at first, I personally wouldn't trust that kind of technology in the hands of Google, Microsoft, or Facebook; end of story.

"Facebook is creepy."

Definition of creepy: "causing an unpleasant feeling of fear or unease."

What is creepy about finding out what people are into and showing them ads relevant to those things? So many people are claiming that Facebook is creepy, but I just can't see it.

A company keeping a permanent database of my interests, which sites I like to visit and any other information that it can access definitively causes a feeling of unease. What happens to this data if (or when) Facebook goes the way of MySpace? Will they sell it? Are they already selling it? Who could use it against me in the future?

Well, my first thought is that if they go the way of MySpace, it will probably play out a lot like MySpace did.

I've yet to hear of anyone being extorted or having their data sold post-MySpace.

People don't "claim" Facebook is creepy to them, it is. It's like when someone calls another person sexy, and you "just don't see it" -- so? You can ask them more in-depth to understand why it is that way for them, but they don't have to prove anything to you for it to be real, just for you to understand it.

That's true. I should have asked what makes it creepy for him/her.

At least Carmack should really to be able to do better than dismissing it as "emotional and tribalistic", and asking for proof for the concerns being valid; that's not now how it works, and this is not a flaw. We can't really prove that having VR is better than not having it either, or that people being clothed and fed is better than naked people starving... doesn't stop us from feeling strongly about such things, nor should it. Communication can help, it is necessary, but proof? Not gonna happen. Let's say someone fears that data silos like Facebook might be really bad in the case of political tyranny -- let them be able to prove that it will be as they fear, then what? We can't prove that fascism is bad, so it gains us nothing.

FWIW, personally I don't find it creepy, I find it lame. My reasons have to do with human dignity, my stance on advertising (described in two words: Bill Hicks), and a certain little quote going something like "they 'trust me'. dumb fucks". I don't like the other big players either, who all want to be everything to everybody -- that is not a business model, that is creepyness made manifest.

Also, I think everybody should have their own homepage and that RSS is fine kthx, but that is neither here nor there.. though anyone who works on things that do not promote that, but offer people virtual "homes" they never fully own, cannot expect me to get excited about their work. Surely you can see how Facebook fits in there for me, when it comes to the web how I love it, they're with the lamers.

And in general I despise this age of coders and businesspeople considered as philosopher kings, and being against things as the default stance has proven to be useful time and time again, sadly. It's not like I have to convince Carmack or anyone that I have valid reasons to dislike VR, especially VR with which Facebook is in any shape associated -- it's the other way around, if they want to sell to me. But I don't see the point anyway, outside of remote surgery; I generally think alienation is the problem, and this is just another way to experience it more deeply, to get even more lost in the confusion of symbols and things.

Sorry for rambling, I would sum my feelings up with this Bill Hicks quote "it's a piece of shit, walk away". Which is not very helpful as an explanation, but for me it hits the nail on the head: I think the problem is not that some of us don't have all the facts; we are looking at the same thing, just coming to vastly different conclusions. Everybody knows what Facebook, advertising and computer games are, and VR is new in practice but very old coffee in terms of science fiction, so even that is not really new. And you know what, to the degree that those things are benign, their makers gladly would accept if some, even large, segments of the population would not ever accept them, right? Carmack asked for testable claims about Facebook being bad, well, here's at least a testable way to see if things are good, from which we can deduce badness to a degree. And Facebook for one fails it hard, failing it is kind of their mission statement.

It is creepy to have a company know:

Your sexual habits. Haw many partners you have , how, where, when you have sex with them. Facebook and google log your mobile phone GPS coords.

Your political views.

What your friends thing about you better than you do(They control and store all of their private communications, including phone calls with Skype or Whasapp).

All your family and friends experiences and meetings.

Then they store this info and give it to the powerful companies and governments on demand, like we know via Snowden . For me it is creepy as hell.

I don't disagree at all.

If Facebook puts itself to be in this position without possibility of opting out, that is what I hope would trigger people to seek an ethical competitor. And, similarly, that is what I hope would occur to them would be for consumers in aggregate to be an intolerable consequence of forcing on their customers Facebook's ability (and anybody's who could subpoena Facebook) to be privy to this sort of personal information.

I won't buy one of these if it can't be operated without a phone home. I don't mind sacrificing a bit of resolution or refresh rate with a competitor if the alternative is what you say. My hope is that Facebook recognizes that there is a significant market share they'd miss out on if they pushed that point... and, more importantly, that there would actually be a significant market share that they'd miss out on if they pushed that point.

Lets start with the facts that facebook knows someone is gay way before the person comes out. Or that they can predict which people and when will enter relationships ...

Facebook tracks everything about you. They track what you like. They track what you don't like. They track what you click. They track what you don't click. They track what you erase in private messages, which means they're monitoring your private messages.

And now we've given facebook new sensors to track. Facebook would love to get the data on peoples head movements. They'll be able to track to the millisecond how much time you spend looking at an in-game ad. They'll be able to track your overall attention span. And those are the least egregious violations of your privacy you can expect from the company; If the company, that looks way too deep into your life already, begins putting something like Facebook Home on your head, I'd say that qualifies as uncanny-valley-scale creepy.

Gosh, you make it sound exactly like Google....

Am I the only one frightened by that truth?

Well, it scares me....

"At the end of the day, it takes more than vision and hard work to drive a dream into existence... it takes investment. It takes capital. This is what the deal brings to the table."

If you think capital is scarce--either in general terms or for a project of this calibre-- I think you are making a false assumption. The world has never seen more capital chasing so few ideas so freely as in the past 10 years. Just something to consider, objectively.

Facebook spent 2 billion on this company. Of course they will exert control over them. I'm not sure what Carmack is getting at. Their shareholders will demand it. Facebook is not a charity, it's a business and sooner or later they will have to show a return on this acquisition. It costs money to Dev hardware, If they don't see a return they will pivot this division.

That's not so much of a problem - in the long run Oculus was going to have to become profitable in some way or another, most likely by selling consumer hardware at a profit. The narratives people get afraid of are of Facebook trying to get profit through the methods of a free website: selling advertising and user data.

Given that this is a hardware product, and especially since it's one that will not yet be commoditized when Oculus releases it, I don't see this being a real problem; Apple doesn't need to sell ads or snoop your data to make enormous profits on the iPhone, for example.

To extend the smartphone analogy - I think it's more likely that when there's a popular competitor trying to undercut Oculus on price, someone is going to start trying to sell advertising or user data to pad their margins, but I think that's a pressure that exists independently of Facebook ownership.

$2bn is about 2% of market cap, just slightly more more than Microsoft owns in FB shares. There's some synergy between a VR product and DirectX with FB footing the bill.

"Whatever goes up, that’s what we do" vs "Whatever’s best for the people, that’s what we do"

Carmack and Abrash are extremely smart, and certainly aware of the privacy implications of Facebook acquiring Oculus.

They know they'll be helping Facebook rape the world's privacy in currently unimaginable ways, but they've got a world-class team doing some serious fucking software engineering, so they don't really care.

Much like for a "quant" on Wall Street, ethical concerns take a back-seat to getting to grapple with lovely, sciency challenges.

Let's take a look:

> I think it is going to be positive, but clearly many disagree.

Positive for you, or positive for the world's sheeple?

> Much of the ranting has been emotional or tribal

Ah, those silly emotional people, group-thinking and being all irrational (unlike Carmack about his technical work). What's there to be emotional about? It's not like there's anything wrong with a police state (like the US or UK) knowing everything about you!

> but I am interested in reading coherent viewpoints about objective outcomes.

He wants us to make a compelling case for how the state knowing absolutely everything about you could possibly be a bad thing. But it has to be objective - you know, exactly like his own view on the matter.

> What are the hazards?

How could Carmack possibly have a clue about the hazards, what with Snowden's revelations and all? It's like, impossible.

> What should be done to guard against them?

How about making sure governments all around the world don't abuse the information they gather on everyone? -Oh wait, you can't.

> What are the tests for failure?

Oh I don't know. Find yourself in a gulag for thinking/saying/doing things the government finds vaguely uncomfortable? --> "Ohhhhhhhh, right. This is a bit of a problem."