Hacker News Reader

Comment by th0ma5 | Hacker News Reader

I keep thinking the long term goal here is not an Oculus Rift product, but devices that tie in augmented reality and marketing / sales, with hooks to your Facebook account. I honestly see them ditching anything to do with a game display device.

View on HN

How does that follow at all from the blog post? I'm no fan of Oculus being purchased (at all), but what in a product design team joining Oculus suggests any "long term goal here" about devices for marketing, sales, or hooks to your Facebook account, let alone ditching a game display device?

I think the far more likely reading is that they know the device sitting on your face is make or break for a VR device hitting the mainstream, and they have the chance here to basically define what a VR display is for the next 10 or 20 years if they do it right (the evolution of game controllers is actually a great analog of this).

We can speculate about a Google Glass competitor, and certainly the market would react to a prediction of that, but step 1 is getting people to put something on their face.

Oh my God I thought these bullshit cries of doom stopped. It's such a simple matter of business. If Oculus did that, no one would by a Rift. That would be bad for Oculus, Facebook, and consumers. The much more likely thing to result from the Facebook buyout is they use their $2B to build a better product and market it better to compete against new behemoths butting in the VR marketplace like Sony and others that are surely about to jump on the bandwagon. That would be good for the consumers, and thusly good for Oculus and Facebook. There are literally zero good reasons Facebook would ram down tacky social media bullshit onto the Rift. That's bad design, bad business, and no one would like it.

Isn't rabid Facebook hating getting old now?

Not on this site, unfortunately. I expect HN to be as even-handed on Facebook as Republicans are on Democrats.

I think characterizing discussion of the effects of facebook on oculus as 'Facebook hating' is a pretty cheap dodge of a significant event. A lot of the strategy changes people are making around the facebook purchase are legitimate ones based on reasonable observations of facebook. It's a terrible thing for those of us who were really excited about oculus for so long, but things changed and a reasonable discussion is going to happen.

I think that the argument that facebook adding "tacky social media" components to oculus would be bad for business is incorrect. Facebook has done quite well with the model, as their company shows.

For many of us, we realize that facebook will likely succeed with oculus in some way. It will just be a different kind of party than we want to go to, is all.

Can you provide some insights on what made you think like that? I, too, had this bad feeling when Zuck made the announcement but other than Facebook and Oculus VR doing business on practically unrelated areas there is nothing to be pessimistic about it, especially Facebook's track record of buyout aftermaths, which mostly they let people do their own things.

Knowledge gained working with a renderer and two screens can be used with camera(s) and one screen, such as what a cellphone/tablet/computer has.

I don't know exactly how you meant 'two screens' (two experienced screens, or two hardware screens?), but in case you meant the latter, there is only one screen.

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Oculus+Rift+Teardown/13682

Let's say two vantage points, then.

That must suck so bad for these designers... one day you're a hot industrial designer, and the next you're working for facebook.

You can make the best designs ever, but if there is just suck inside, your design sucks in a way too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com