
Oculus to Acquire Carbon Design Team - GraffitiTim
http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/oculus-agrees-to-acquire-carbon-design-team/
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ooorrr
Great for Carbon. The situation for hardware design firms (right now, and
often) is brutal - the degree of difficulty to consistently book enough new
work to keep your talented team members employed is incredibly high, and more
companies are moving this work in-house.

There are a number of these firms in the Seattle area, and all of them are
struggling. Acquisition is often preferable to closing your doors, which could
well be what happens to others.

~~~
mdturnerphys
Can I ask what your connection to the industry is?

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modeless
An Oculus controller to go with the headset is looking more and more likely.
I'm guessing that it will be similar to the PlayStation Move controller but
with infrared instead of visible light tracking. They're already doing
infrared tracking for the headset, so it would be easy to track a couple of
controllers as well.

~~~
msie
I hope not, everybody's doing that. They should make affordable VR gloves.

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modeless
Gloves are a possibility, but pure gesture input just doesn't work (as
repeatedly demonstrated with Wii, Kinect, and Leap Motion). Whatever they
release, it needs to have at least a few buttons and probably an analog stick
or two.

~~~
wildpeaks
A wireless version of the Peregrine glove would fit:

[http://theperegrine.com](http://theperegrine.com)

~~~
msie
But the gloves don't fully reflect the positions of each of the fingers. It
only senses when the touch points on the glove are being contacted. I couldn't
flip the bird at someone in VR, for example.

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whence
Why is it said that Oculus acquired them, instead of Facebook? Doesn't Oculus
not really exist anymore (as a company)?

~~~
devindotcom
Since they operate independently and likely have their own cash pile for stuff
like this, the legal entity making the purchase is actually Oculus. Same with
like Nest/Google AFAIK.

~~~
serf
I wondered the same thing about Nest/Google the other day.

It could also be an abstraction on the part of Google/Facebook to hide their
associations with the brand, to avoid brand reputation damage of some sort.

~~~
walterbell
Facebook is taking this holding-company approach to WhatsApp, Instagram and
Oculus. Unilever, P&G and Nestle should be wary of another holding company
controlling their customer channel, especially after the Axciom partnership
which gives Facebook access to the _offline_ purchases of Facebook customers.
The consumer goods companies should fund new social networks, to diversify
their online reach.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-and-acxioms-big-
data...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-and-acxioms-big-data-
partnership-2013-9)

"Audience Operating System .. allows advertisers to tie together your "digital
persona" even if you've changed your name due to marriage, the use of a
nickname, or because you sometimes use a middle name. It also figures out
whether someone who has moved addresses or changed phone numbers is the same
person or not."

~~~
andy_ppp
So Facebook are profiling everyone to an ever more extreme degree; soon
Facebook will tell you what you want and you'll like it or else :-)

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paperwork
So why would Oculus acquire Carbon Design, rather than contracting them to
design/build their products?

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chollida1
Why would a company hire an employee rather than contracting them out to do
the same work?

Bingo. User Bane understands why:)

~~~
sp332
Did you just contract out your answer to bane?

~~~
ryanklee
He only needed the answer once -- so a pretty smart move :)

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balls187
So Carbon Design is now the Occulus Bellevue office, or did Occulus already
have an office there?

~~~
mdturnerphys
Carbon is in North Seattle next to UW. Oculus was already building up an R&D
team in Redmond.

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DigitalSea
I think it is pretty safe to assume they're working on hardware to compliment
the Oculus headset; gloves, a controller and or other accessories perhaps a
full body suit comprised of sensors to map body movement.

I am well and truly excited for the future of virtual reality, Oculus are
definitely at the forefront of greatness here.

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higherpurpose
How does Oculus acquire anything at this point. Don't they mean Facebook
acquires Carbon?

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jfoster
Yeah, although the scope of the acquisition is currently limited to the scope
of Oculus ("operating independently") within Facebook. I've also seen
announcements regarding PayPal acquiring companies even though PayPal is a
subsidiary of eBay Inc.

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citrik
If Oculus is into acquisitions, it'd be cool to see them acquire Oblong, to
add some UI & interaction technology.

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msie
I hope they make affordable VR gloves.

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notastartup
I wonder if tactile VR gloves will be reality soon. I'd imagine that there
will be some tiny nano linings inside the glove that could be controlled
digitally, which would create a tactile sensation, such as holding a gun or a
steering wheel.

Moving on from just hand gloves, we could even produce g-force enducing
hydraulic chair, for example, when a car accelerates inside the game, the
chair would lean you back, causing you to feel gravity pulling you back to the
ground, when inside the game, it would feel like you were being thrust
backwards to your seats.

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th0ma5
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.

~~~
omarhegazy
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?

~~~
joeevans
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.

