
Facebook's really big plans for virtual reality - spking
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-facebook-virtual-reality/
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sergiotapia
The Facebook Rift is DOA. It's lost the respect and admiration of early VR
adopters and that market segment is key for tech.

It lost not only on the technical front (by a lot, the HTC Vive destroys it),
but on the ethical front as well by introducing console paradigms in a PC
ecosystem.

Good riddance! PC must remain an open platform.

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BatFastard
As Mark Twain said "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

This battle has JUST begun.

Vive barely won first round because of the controllers.

But the battle will be on again when the controllers come out for the Rift.
Oculus has deep pockets which are not to be underestimated in this business.

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tmikaeld
Oculus is still a seated experience, NOT room scale!

Even with Touch controllers, there's only a limited space to use it.

Plus you can't magically manufacture something you didn't plan to release -
Especially not in a short time period.

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flukus
> Oculus is still a seated experience, NOT room scale!

I don't see what the problem with this is. I want to sit down and play games.
I don't want (or have room for) a room scale experience.

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tmikaeld
I've demoed both my Oculus and Rift to at least 20 people, everyone found the
Rift to be boring and less engaging. The feeling of presence is completely
different.

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drewstiff
So did they prefer the Vive to the HTC?

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tmikaeld
Ops, i of course meant Rift and Vive.

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SolarNet
A giant fluff piece really. The HTC Vive / Valve is beating them, and they
want some decent PR before the launch of their consumer motion controls. Also
justifying the purchase alongside their earnings report.

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vthallam
In a nutshell, yes. The fact that it came in Bloomberg(all major
investors/traders heavily read) also kind of supports your observation.

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vthallam
The 360° video embedded on the top is amazing and Bloomberg is one of the few
media companies who uses some serious visualizations.

I guess it's very difficult for FB to own VR since Vive is giving big time
competition. Even as a platform, its tough to survive once Sony releases the
PS VR platform. On the other hand, Google/Apple can extend their
playstore/appstore to support VR content and release headsets which support
the phones and get a great market share easily.

~~~
ngokevin
Just a nit. That's not a video, it's a real-time rendered WebGL scene (using
three.js).

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callesgg
Wow "really big plans" that most be the reason to why they bought one of the
the biggest VR companies on the market.

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unicornporn
On a sidenote... Bloomberg is using Google's new display typeface Space Mono,
not only for headings!

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Keverw
That's pretty cool how they coded up a interactive demo just for a article.

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nannal
Who wrote this absolute waffle and was proud of it. fewer paragraphs on zucks
eyes, "signature look" and admiration of rome would not have gone amiss

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kin
Wow, that monospace is so difficult to read.

