Oculus VR could have changed business reality, but they let Facebook stop them

They aren’t going to go to three or more different services for these things.

You should set them up then. :slight_smile:

Against my better judgement, I have decided to come back for one more cry for level-headedness in this matter:

Apparently not everyone in the development world is panicking!

I did read all of the sources you posted and I’m not sure what the unethical problem is. There’s a lot of “well, Facebook could do this, and that would be bad, or facebook could do this, and that would not be bad” but its a whole lot of speculation because no one seems to know what FB is going to do with it (I suspect thats true of FB, as well), and FB’s record on acquisitions seems spotty (very little changes to instagram in 2 years, but they killed off a number of smaller acquisitions that weren’t panning out).

But I still don’t see where the ethical problem is. I don’t agree with the other poster that the people are FUD merchants. I think they thought they were getting more for their money when they bought in the kickstarter other than supporting someone else’s dream and getting some early access to pre-production hardware. And that sucks for them, a lot. I’ve poured hours of time and literal sweat into projects of friends when younger only to see them sell out or drive the project into the ground and it drove me nuts, especially since there was nothing I could do about it. I sense this is much the same for them and I understand why they’re upset. Even Notch’s complaint is " I dont trust them and won’t do business with them" which is perfectly fine, he can run his company any way he wants to, but other than sentiments that ultiately boil down to “I don’t like facebook” I haven’t seen any other objections.

Apparently not everyone in the development world is panicking!

I never said anyone was panicking and I certainly never said that all the responses were negative. And, please don’t foray into false equivalence when the overwhelming reaction has clearly been negative.

other than sentiments that ultiately boil down to “I don’t like facebook” I haven’t seen any other objections.

Then you’re not reading my sources very well or other sources all over the Internet. It’s over-simplistic to say it boils down to a mysterious, knee-jerk mistrust of Facebook. I mean, of course all the arguments are going to center on Facebook since it’s the entire source of contention.

Many, many of those who are against this move are bringing up exactly what Facebook has done in the past (and is doing today) that makes them a horrible, unethical choice. When you choose to make someone as unethical as Facebook as an owner of your company, you have made an unethical choice. I guess some can play dumb and pretend they don’t know what kind of company Facebook is, I guess. But, to me, that’s just that… playing dumb in the face of reality.

Also, I do find it a little incredulous that some of you just can’t seem to see the text that people are writing right before your eyes within my numerous sources above. I would spoonfeed it to you, but I would hope that would massively insult your intelligence. I mean, really… any idiot can find it and read the issues for themselves if they bother to look.

As far as some of those developers go, we’ll see how long they hold their tune as time and Facebook meddling and community fallout (and exodus) goes on.

Do you have any doubt that some of those VR developers would be completely fucked if they backed out right now? They’ve been railroaded into this situation and unless they have the resources and money to back out, of course they’re going to attempt to polish this enormous turd right now. What else are they going to do if they can’t afford to back out?

Give it time. I hope to see you back here in these forums when it turns to shit.

That kind of issue makes me hope that one day something like Persona or WebID takes off.

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Fist off, google glass isn’t Virtual Reality, it’s Augmented Reality (overlaying information/pictures on a real scene)
What the latest drive seems to be is making VR sets affordable to the mass market. In the 90s fad for VR it was a case of static units with low fidelity that people could “have a go on”. The current idea is a unit you own and use and keep and will, the manufacturers hope, create a new product in the same way that the walkman did back in the day.

The reason people are so annoyed by facebook’s sudden interest is that they have zero track record in the hardware field, let alone the highly specialised area that is PC gamin, let alone a new emerging tech that could “change the way people game”. They also have a less than stellar record when it comes to people’s privacy and end user experience takes second place to profit from sales of data. People don’t like the uncertainty.
Let me pose you a hypothetical: Would you buy a Rift headset if the only way to use it was to sign in with Facebook first? Seems unlikely to me, but not impossible.

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I think you’re reading only the parts of your sources that meet your predisposition. I really did read your sources and I’m really not seeing these many different view points that you claim to see. Thanks for the ad hominem though. I think you’re seeing what you choose to see. Not saying Oculus isn’t going to fail or FB isn’t going to fuck it up, but its far too soon to say what’s going to happen. Though feel free to gloat and tell me you told me so when it happens, I don’t have a dog in this fight.

Really? Look harder. Most of the non-emotive objections come because a new system that has been open from the start with a very low barrier of entry for devs has just been bought by the biggest walled garden on the internet. That is a big clash of ethos, and when you add Facebook’s history of changing their API without notice or backward compatibility, it’s giving a lot of smaller devs second and third thoughts.

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Wow, you amazingly found some of the issues mentioned. /s

Some of these people had me thinking I was hallucinating off of Falcor’s good shit.

Thank you adonia. That’s an answer to the question I first asked. Makes sense.

I don’t know why it was so hard for cowicide to answer the same way without personal attacks.

Next announcement, Facebook buys all the rights to Firefly from Joss Whedon.

They are trying to corner the market on angst and disappointment. Good job so far!

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Thank you adonia. That’s an answer to the question I first asked. Makes sense.

My links stated all of that and then some.

That’s why adonia said, “Look harder.” to you.

I don’t know why it was so hard for cowicide to answer the same way without personal attacks.

Bart… Bart… Bart… I may have been curt, but I didn’t personally attack you.

Try a different approach next time and see if you get a different result.

They’re approaching $41 million.

Yay! A cogent and articulate thought without any ad hominen!

Part of the problem is that “Facebook” now has many meanings. When we talk about walled gardens and APIs, “Facebook” generally refers to the eponymous website. At the same time, we are also discussing their track record regarding their acquisitions as well as their broader IP. In this case, “Facebook” refers to the company.

Of course there is overlap. And I genuinely tack towards negative emotions when I think if Facebook-the-website. But my (limited) understanding of Facebook-the-company is that they have made a lot of inovations to PHP and scripting that they are sharing with the world, but that they have a spotty track record of letting companies sail their charted course. Instagram is largely the same service, while the guys from Sofa quit the first chance they got. But those are all different types of businesses, too so it is hard to draw comparisons.

It’s just that so many of the averse reactions have been coming from people who have been arguing from their experiences with Facebook-the-website, while ignoring the larger vision of Facebook-the-company.

Of course their business is in selling ads and monetizing people’s personal lives. But now it is also their business to sell top-notch VR headsets. It kinda reminds me of when Microsoft jumped into the console wars, actually.

Or when Commodore bought Amiga.

So im going to need different headsets for whichever device and software im using. Yeah, this is going places…

[quote=“albill, post:140, topic:26787, full:true”]
So what is your suggested, high ease of use, platform that allows for group messaging, individual messaging, photo sharing, games, and a river of news stream that my 62 year old mother, my 85 year old grandmother, my aunts, uncles, etc. are all willing to use? [/quote]

Tribe.net?

falls over laughing

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Actually you’re literally saying that people should advocate for what you think can be achieved and not what they actually want.

How does any of that not end in an extreme? You seem to think you’re offering an alternative, but you’re not. You’re saying the existing system is bad and that it would be better if everyone did what you wanted. That’s the very definition of dictatorial.

Also, you hurt your argument when you display the need to bolster it with sarcasm.