But the bad image that they got for this still persists among many.
---
Another thing that Oculus did (probably because of pressure from Facebook, their parent company) is inserting dubious terms into their Terms of Service:
This should be a lesson: acts like this are poisonous. Nobody I know would even consider buying an oculus at this point because it seems like the ENTIRE VR community has turned against them.
It means that when I go online to do research on what to buy, I'm not going to find anybody praising the oculus.
As a datapoint, it has kept me out of high-end VR completely. I am actually more ticked off at the exclusives. And I'm a geek who buys lots of tech toys. VR is as bad as consumer IoT if you think about it.
I'm rather surprised that amongst the speculation in the comments, no one is really considering that maybe Iribe's comments are true. Maybe he really did miss being more involved in the product and engineering part of the job.
The company has grown up very quickly, and I have to imagine at this point as CEO, he was spending most of his time in high level business talks and not doing what he loves and what he's best at.
The first job I had after graduating from school was at Scaleform, which was Brendan's first company. I certainly wouldn't say I got to know him all that well or anything, but he definitely was into the code and the product. I could see him missing being more involved in the product and engineering.
They specifically mention his focus on PC and his replacement was head of mobile before.
The obvious explanation to me is that the company has decided to focus on mobile, since that's the mass market play. That would've required Iribe to devote a large portion of his time to mobile. Maybe he just wasn't the right person for that job.
They're probably sitting on this until touch successfully shipped. This typically happens when something goes wrong though and so far Oculus seems to have sold pretty well from what we can glean. No one expected it to sell millions of units, yet. Perhaps there is a daily usage rate of devices they find troubling.
Then again, it could just be Facebook taking more control. Iribe is staying at the company and from the article,
> he's vacating the CEO seat and moving within the company to lead its PC VR group
So perhaps the statements are sincere and he's just staying focused on the PC division, which is all Oculus was initially.
From informal conversations I've had in the past with both people from Valve and PSVR it seems like PSVR and Vive numbers are closer to projections. I think Vive stole a lot of potential high end buyers from Oculus, not launching with Touch was a mistake for them. I also believe this market is a lot more price sensitive than Oculus thought it would be, The Rift has currently sold 200K units more than the DK2 with a much bigger marketing push, more high quality content and a better product, but 2x (or 3x if you include Touch) price point. I wonder if they should have made a "Super DK2". Lower quality headset hardware but Rift quality tracking and touch support at a lower price.
Anecdotally, many people believe VR is a niche market that is comparable to 3D TVs and doesn't add much, but I've also met people that would buy a highend VR headset (quality matters also) if the price was right and the setup was easy. A "cheap" ($250-$400) easy to use all-in-one unit with inside out tracking, tracked controllers and a good library of games, software and content could be the tipping point for the VR market.
I wanted to like VR. I made a few apps, shipped a game, tried the Rift, Vive, and PSVR. My initial enthusiasm spread to friends and family. Peers purchased GearVRs and ordered cardboard. Fast forward a few years and every single one of those headsets is gathering dust. Once enthusiastic friends won't take my VR hardware for free.
I guess my primary gripe is that it's just not comfortable relative to any other form of entertainment. It's worse than reading on a phone or tablet. It's worse than playing games on a phone, console, or PC. It's worse than watching movies in the theatre. Sure, those are high bars and VR is still kinda young. But all the hype is quickly being exposed as bullshit. VR isn't catching on. Catching on looks like the iPhone in 2008-2009 or the web in the late nineties.
I think this is expected, and I don't believe many people in the space thought the current round of VR would be a computing paradigm change that causes a huge growth like iPhone or the web.
The analogy I like to use is current VR is like an early PDA (Palm Pilot, PPC or Newton), which means we're 5-10 years out from a mature device that could be called a VR iPhone. Its possible that somewhere along the way everyone gives up on VR and AR, which can enable many of the same experiences anyway, but its also possible that VR is still missing a lot of what makes a compelling mass market consumer device and there will be an iPhone style product that everyone emulates in the future.
You've hit on an interesting point. I've wondered about this before, if VR would be too onerous for people who came home and just want to relax. It requires wearing a bulky headset and potentially the same movement gameplay stuff that people criticized the Wii for. Not that it isn't really interesting, but it's definitely not as comfortable/passive as other entertainment
I feel like there'll be a second wave of VR, when there's a headset with resolution high enough to not look like you're pressing your face against a 1980's TV.
I think it's disingenuous to gauge VR based on GearVR/cardboard/other low cost mobile based headsets. A good VR experience is predicated on excellent tracking to ensure a 1:1 match between movement in the real world with the virtual world, and those headsets simply cannot do that. Of course they are collecting dust, poor tracking leads to nausea.
I don't think VR will ever catch on because it kills the socialization just be using it, and there isn't the 10x factor to overcome this hurdle.
TV, phones, and the internet all caught on because they enhanced social experiences. The TV became something to talk about and experience jointly. Phones allowed communication over great distance and quick access to information. The internet was the 10x factor of the phone.
When we start having VR rooms ala star trek, then it will catch on like fire as it will become a social experience.
Just a wild guess, but it's possible that since Zuckerberg has a keen interest in VR that he's basically taking all of the fun vision / strategy parts of being the Oculus CEO and leaving Iribe with the slog.
I think you may be correct but got there the wrong way. From the lateral movement I think Iribe wanted to stay product focused instead of business focused and moved laterally within Facebook to do that. Whether it was from Zuckerberg or just the normal evolution curve of a startup CEO from productization to monetization can be debated - but the move to stay within Facebook seems to indicate it wasn't Zuckerberg's fingers (or handcuffs).
I'm a bit of a VR enthusiast, and I'm not a gamer, so I think I can answer some of these.
>- Outside of car games, space sims, or any other game where the main character is mostly sitting down, does VR work well?
Very well. The thing I hate most, as a non-gamer, is having to learn all of the confusing controls. I really like that VR games take away most of the complication and allow you to do what feels natural. Probably for the same reasons a lot of people like the Wii. I've been having a lot of fun in games like Vanishing Realms:a first person dungeon crawling RPG http://store.steampowered.com/app/322770/ , The Unspoken: where you have magic battles in a New York like setting http://www.insomniacgames.com/games/the-unspoken/ , and a bunch of the puzzle type games.
>- Apart from games what other applications are there at the moment?
Not enough in my opinion, but I've spent the last week using Oculus Medium to make 3D models, and using Quill to make VR paintings. This is actually the area I'm most interested in, and I know that some companies are working behind closed doors at the moment to make more creative tools as well as business and social type tools.
-Anyone try replacing their monitor with a VR headset? How'd that go?
I do this frequently for consuming movies, but the resolution isn't at a point where I'd recommend it for long periods of time if you're doing text editing. I still occasionally browse and listen to music with the screen set to a gigantic size, but it hasn't replaced my monitors.
- Anyone try combining a VR headset plus a kinect? Seems like a natural combination.
Several companies and individuals are. This guy has been involved in the VR scene for many years and has some interesting experiments using several kinects to do mixed reality work http://doc-ok.org/?p=965
1). Yes, Space Pirate Trainer is currently my #1 VR title by a wide margin. Out of Ammo is also pretty fun, but something like an order of magnitude less fun than SPT.
2). Few in the consumer space, most of them are tech demos with little real utility. Tilt Brush and Google Earth are among the most compelling non-game offerings.
3). I've made some half hearted attempts at REPL/console type stuff in VR. It's barely useable, the angular resolution is still prohibitively small. I use 4 physical monitors normally, and while I like the idea of replacing them with a VR headset that future is still quite far away.
4). I've also made some half hearted attempts at this, and others have tried as well, but this was in the era of the DK1 and I didn't achieve anything meaningful. I'm definitely going to give it another go with the Vive at some point.
The LEAP motion however integrates very well with VR (either headset) and I'd recommend experimenting with it. I've made some pretty compelling minority-report style tech demos that feel pretty natural to use. Granted I'm aware of the LEAP's tracking limitations and stay within the space of gestures/hand poses it recognizes without problems. When I demo the tech to other people they often have MUCH more trouble than I do. Mostly because of occlusion problems. The LEAP is basically just 2 cameras without much stereo separation so one hand occluding the other, or the back of the hand occluding the fingers etc is something you've got to be cognizant of when using it.
> Outside of car games, space sims, or any other game where the main character is mostly sitting down, does VR work well?
It works pretty well. There are some pretty compelling standing/room scale games out there. Either because of market immaturity or game design limitations, "larger" games (i.e. Mass Effect is large compared to Minesweeper) seem to be a bit in short supply. Oculus may have more as of the Touch launch, but I'm staying away from their ecosystem for the time being as I think what they're doing with exclusivity is hostile to consumers.
The illusion is convincing enough that a friend of mine who tried my Vive fell over because she tried to lean on a virtual table. Neither I nor anyone I've had try my Vive has suffered from any nausea.
> Apart from games what other applications are there at the moment?
Not totally sure. A lot of the obvious things have, I think, at least been tried (e.g. CAD walk-through for architects). There is also a lot of content that's hard to define as "game" or not, e.g. Tilt Brush (a "painting" program).
> Anyone try replacing their monitor with a VR headset? How'd that go?
So far, so far as I know, all the programs that attempt to render your regular desktop environment (or parts of it) to virtual displays suffer from low quality and massive latency that makes them borderline unusable. So I don't think it would be a good experience.
> Anyone try combining a VR headset plus a kinect? Seems like a natural combination.
Probably, and there are some other products out there that try to do similar things. But the held motion controllers are surprisingly natural, especially since often it makes sense to have a physical stand-in for a held object in-game.
> Outside of car games, space sims, or any other game where the main character is mostly sitting down, does VR work well?
Yes, you need a cockpit or something if you want to move while sitting down, otherwise most? (including me) people get sick. This has the downside of limiting the visibility though, which is a problem given the relatively low resolution. In a cockpit with limited view things further away look pretty bad.
But the Vive got 'room scale' which is where VR really shines. Basically any game you can play within your 'play area' works very good, unfortunately there are not that many. Point-and-Click teleporting can be used for moving beyond your 'play area'. It works well but breaks immersion a bit and gets awkward if you want to avoid enemies etc. I can highly recommend the Minecraft mod 'vivecraft' in that regard. My most played game with Vive so far, even though I never played Minecraft until then.
In general things work best that happen right in front and the controllers are very precise, so any interaction with them improves the immersion a lot. I'm still waiting for a RTS game where the world is scaled to the size of your play area. Skyworld looks interesting and heard good things about Out of Ammo (haven't tried either).
> Apart from games what other applications are there at the moment?
Google Earth VR was truly amazing. It's the first thing I would show anyone, it's so most closer to actually being there than anything else.
Tilt Brush is a great application as well and Kodon looks cool (haven't tried it). Both are a complete new way to create 3D objects and I believe we'll see more of these.
Unreal Engine has now support for editing in VR which looks super cool, but since I don't do game development I can't say if it's a real improvement or more a gimmick.
> Anyone try replacing their monitor with a VR headset? How'd that go?
Resolution is too bad for 'virtual screens', but I think it could be used to visualize complex data much better than any multi screen setup.
Oculus Medium is pretty sweet, it's a 3D sculpting tool for free with a Rift. Some professionals have tried it out and like it. Obviously no Zbrush, but it's their first release of it.
Honestly it's really fun. I don't sculpt or anything, but drawing a tree about the size of my arm and then zooming in, "expanding it" to be the size of a normal tree and standing in it's shade was one of the trippy-ist experiences I've had. So. Cool.
Just from an outsider's perspective: The entire Oculus acquisition has been one fumble after another, I dare call it a debacle. They traded their community trust online to participate and get the resources of a bigger company (probably due to competitive pressure). The bigger company was facebook, which doesn't evoke a large amount of community trust, so there was considerable splintering in the community rallying behind what was seen as the future champ of VR.
This was the same early adopter community that wanted to spend the money, buy the rigs, develop for the platform, and further VR in general.
Now when I see old school innovators join up, it just feels like they've sold out by association.
I don't know what's going to save its image? Maybe a killer app?
I feel this view point assumes most people are Reddit users. Reddit gave them a ton of hate for being purchased by FB, and most people on Reddit hate FB, but the statistics and how much their units are sold tells us they're not having a problem reaching customers.
Most companies gave really favorable reviews of touch, and gear vr has sold really well. I think the image problem is mostly just vocal Reddit users.
>I don't know what's going to save its image? Maybe a killer app?
For me they'd save a lot of face if they just opened up their APIs/store to other headsets. They tried to pin down the PC VR HMD market and failed due to Valve/HTC. But they're still trying to become the Steam of VR despite Steam doing the same and having the distinct advantage of already being the Steam of everything else. But there's definitely room for other storefronts out there like GOG and EA's Origin so I don't begrudge them wanting to take that 30% for themselves but let me use whatever HMD I want.
VR is a bubble. It is a gimmick and will never be popular and profitable (in the video game industry, there are other applications where VR is useful, like surgery,architecture...) . I'm never sick in cars, yet VR makes me sick, it gives me headache and makes me want to puke. If it does that to me, I can't imagine how painful VR is for others.
Oh no, an American attempted to participate in the American democratic political process by donating a modest amount to a group that "put up one insulting but fairly mild anti-Hillary Clinton billboard outside of Pittsburgh". Clearly he's anudda hitlah.
[+] [-] wolfgke|9 years ago|reply
> https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/05/23/oculus-rift-upda...
> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/05/oculus-workaround-to-p...
Though they removed it after lots of users protested:
> https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/06/24/oculus-rift-vive...
> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/06/oculus-reverses-course...
But the bad image that they got for this still persists among many.
---
Another thing that Oculus did (probably because of pressure from Facebook, their parent company) is inserting dubious terms into their Terms of Service:
> http://gizmodo.com/there-are-some-super-shady-things-in-ocul...
[+] [-] blhack|9 years ago|reply
It means that when I go online to do research on what to buy, I'm not going to find anybody praising the oculus.
[+] [-] future1979|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theschwa|9 years ago|reply
The company has grown up very quickly, and I have to imagine at this point as CEO, he was spending most of his time in high level business talks and not doing what he loves and what he's best at.
[+] [-] flashman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bratsche|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erikpukinskis|9 years ago|reply
The obvious explanation to me is that the company has decided to focus on mobile, since that's the mass market play. That would've required Iribe to devote a large portion of his time to mobile. Maybe he just wasn't the right person for that job.
[+] [-] marricks|9 years ago|reply
Then again, it could just be Facebook taking more control. Iribe is staying at the company and from the article,
> he's vacating the CEO seat and moving within the company to lead its PC VR group
So perhaps the statements are sincere and he's just staying focused on the PC division, which is all Oculus was initially.
[+] [-] Impossible|9 years ago|reply
From informal conversations I've had in the past with both people from Valve and PSVR it seems like PSVR and Vive numbers are closer to projections. I think Vive stole a lot of potential high end buyers from Oculus, not launching with Touch was a mistake for them. I also believe this market is a lot more price sensitive than Oculus thought it would be, The Rift has currently sold 200K units more than the DK2 with a much bigger marketing push, more high quality content and a better product, but 2x (or 3x if you include Touch) price point. I wonder if they should have made a "Super DK2". Lower quality headset hardware but Rift quality tracking and touch support at a lower price.
Anecdotally, many people believe VR is a niche market that is comparable to 3D TVs and doesn't add much, but I've also met people that would buy a highend VR headset (quality matters also) if the price was right and the setup was easy. A "cheap" ($250-$400) easy to use all-in-one unit with inside out tracking, tracked controllers and a good library of games, software and content could be the tipping point for the VR market.
[+] [-] FLGMwt|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MorePowerToYou|9 years ago|reply
I guess my primary gripe is that it's just not comfortable relative to any other form of entertainment. It's worse than reading on a phone or tablet. It's worse than playing games on a phone, console, or PC. It's worse than watching movies in the theatre. Sure, those are high bars and VR is still kinda young. But all the hype is quickly being exposed as bullshit. VR isn't catching on. Catching on looks like the iPhone in 2008-2009 or the web in the late nineties.
[+] [-] Impossible|9 years ago|reply
The analogy I like to use is current VR is like an early PDA (Palm Pilot, PPC or Newton), which means we're 5-10 years out from a mature device that could be called a VR iPhone. Its possible that somewhere along the way everyone gives up on VR and AR, which can enable many of the same experiences anyway, but its also possible that VR is still missing a lot of what makes a compelling mass market consumer device and there will be an iPhone style product that everyone emulates in the future.
[+] [-] brian-armstrong|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ClassyJacket|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robertfw|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] was_boring|9 years ago|reply
TV, phones, and the internet all caught on because they enhanced social experiences. The TV became something to talk about and experience jointly. Phones allowed communication over great distance and quick access to information. The internet was the 10x factor of the phone.
When we start having VR rooms ala star trek, then it will catch on like fire as it will become a social experience.
[+] [-] dharmon|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikeryan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wangchow|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] skizm|9 years ago|reply
- Outside of car games, space sims, or any other game where the main character is mostly sitting down, does VR work well?
- Apart from games what other applications are there at the moment?
-Anyone try replacing their monitor with a VR headset? How'd that go?
- Anyone try combining a VR headset plus a kinect? Seems like a natural combination.
[+] [-] theschwa|9 years ago|reply
Very well. The thing I hate most, as a non-gamer, is having to learn all of the confusing controls. I really like that VR games take away most of the complication and allow you to do what feels natural. Probably for the same reasons a lot of people like the Wii. I've been having a lot of fun in games like Vanishing Realms:a first person dungeon crawling RPG http://store.steampowered.com/app/322770/ , The Unspoken: where you have magic battles in a New York like setting http://www.insomniacgames.com/games/the-unspoken/ , and a bunch of the puzzle type games.
>- Apart from games what other applications are there at the moment?
Not enough in my opinion, but I've spent the last week using Oculus Medium to make 3D models, and using Quill to make VR paintings. This is actually the area I'm most interested in, and I know that some companies are working behind closed doors at the moment to make more creative tools as well as business and social type tools.
-Anyone try replacing their monitor with a VR headset? How'd that go?
I do this frequently for consuming movies, but the resolution isn't at a point where I'd recommend it for long periods of time if you're doing text editing. I still occasionally browse and listen to music with the screen set to a gigantic size, but it hasn't replaced my monitors.
- Anyone try combining a VR headset plus a kinect? Seems like a natural combination.
Several companies and individuals are. This guy has been involved in the VR scene for many years and has some interesting experiments using several kinects to do mixed reality work http://doc-ok.org/?p=965
[+] [-] errantspark|9 years ago|reply
2). Few in the consumer space, most of them are tech demos with little real utility. Tilt Brush and Google Earth are among the most compelling non-game offerings.
3). I've made some half hearted attempts at REPL/console type stuff in VR. It's barely useable, the angular resolution is still prohibitively small. I use 4 physical monitors normally, and while I like the idea of replacing them with a VR headset that future is still quite far away.
4). I've also made some half hearted attempts at this, and others have tried as well, but this was in the era of the DK1 and I didn't achieve anything meaningful. I'm definitely going to give it another go with the Vive at some point. The LEAP motion however integrates very well with VR (either headset) and I'd recommend experimenting with it. I've made some pretty compelling minority-report style tech demos that feel pretty natural to use. Granted I'm aware of the LEAP's tracking limitations and stay within the space of gestures/hand poses it recognizes without problems. When I demo the tech to other people they often have MUCH more trouble than I do. Mostly because of occlusion problems. The LEAP is basically just 2 cameras without much stereo separation so one hand occluding the other, or the back of the hand occluding the fingers etc is something you've got to be cognizant of when using it.
[+] [-] caconym_|9 years ago|reply
> Outside of car games, space sims, or any other game where the main character is mostly sitting down, does VR work well?
It works pretty well. There are some pretty compelling standing/room scale games out there. Either because of market immaturity or game design limitations, "larger" games (i.e. Mass Effect is large compared to Minesweeper) seem to be a bit in short supply. Oculus may have more as of the Touch launch, but I'm staying away from their ecosystem for the time being as I think what they're doing with exclusivity is hostile to consumers.
The illusion is convincing enough that a friend of mine who tried my Vive fell over because she tried to lean on a virtual table. Neither I nor anyone I've had try my Vive has suffered from any nausea.
> Apart from games what other applications are there at the moment?
Not totally sure. A lot of the obvious things have, I think, at least been tried (e.g. CAD walk-through for architects). There is also a lot of content that's hard to define as "game" or not, e.g. Tilt Brush (a "painting" program).
> Anyone try replacing their monitor with a VR headset? How'd that go?
So far, so far as I know, all the programs that attempt to render your regular desktop environment (or parts of it) to virtual displays suffer from low quality and massive latency that makes them borderline unusable. So I don't think it would be a good experience.
> Anyone try combining a VR headset plus a kinect? Seems like a natural combination.
Probably, and there are some other products out there that try to do similar things. But the held motion controllers are surprisingly natural, especially since often it makes sense to have a physical stand-in for a held object in-game.
[+] [-] discordianfish|9 years ago|reply
> Outside of car games, space sims, or any other game where the main character is mostly sitting down, does VR work well?
Yes, you need a cockpit or something if you want to move while sitting down, otherwise most? (including me) people get sick. This has the downside of limiting the visibility though, which is a problem given the relatively low resolution. In a cockpit with limited view things further away look pretty bad.
But the Vive got 'room scale' which is where VR really shines. Basically any game you can play within your 'play area' works very good, unfortunately there are not that many. Point-and-Click teleporting can be used for moving beyond your 'play area'. It works well but breaks immersion a bit and gets awkward if you want to avoid enemies etc. I can highly recommend the Minecraft mod 'vivecraft' in that regard. My most played game with Vive so far, even though I never played Minecraft until then.
In general things work best that happen right in front and the controllers are very precise, so any interaction with them improves the immersion a lot. I'm still waiting for a RTS game where the world is scaled to the size of your play area. Skyworld looks interesting and heard good things about Out of Ammo (haven't tried either).
> Apart from games what other applications are there at the moment?
Google Earth VR was truly amazing. It's the first thing I would show anyone, it's so most closer to actually being there than anything else. Tilt Brush is a great application as well and Kodon looks cool (haven't tried it). Both are a complete new way to create 3D objects and I believe we'll see more of these. Unreal Engine has now support for editing in VR which looks super cool, but since I don't do game development I can't say if it's a real improvement or more a gimmick.
> Anyone try replacing their monitor with a VR headset? How'd that go?
Resolution is too bad for 'virtual screens', but I think it could be used to visualize complex data much better than any multi screen setup.
[+] [-] marricks|9 years ago|reply
Honestly it's really fun. I don't sculpt or anything, but drawing a tree about the size of my arm and then zooming in, "expanding it" to be the size of a normal tree and standing in it's shade was one of the trippy-ist experiences I've had. So. Cool.
[+] [-] lowglow|9 years ago|reply
This was the same early adopter community that wanted to spend the money, buy the rigs, develop for the platform, and further VR in general.
Now when I see old school innovators join up, it just feels like they've sold out by association.
I don't know what's going to save its image? Maybe a killer app?
[+] [-] marricks|9 years ago|reply
Most companies gave really favorable reviews of touch, and gear vr has sold really well. I think the image problem is mostly just vocal Reddit users.
[+] [-] badlucklottery|9 years ago|reply
For me they'd save a lot of face if they just opened up their APIs/store to other headsets. They tried to pin down the PC VR HMD market and failed due to Valve/HTC. But they're still trying to become the Steam of VR despite Steam doing the same and having the distinct advantage of already being the Steam of everything else. But there's definitely room for other storefronts out there like GOG and EA's Origin so I don't begrudge them wanting to take that 30% for themselves but let me use whatever HMD I want.
[+] [-] camus2|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevebmark|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andruby|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] h4nkoslo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] debt|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] return0|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eugeniub|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amaks|9 years ago|reply