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So, here's some heartbreaking news. Facebook has bought
Oculus VR the company behind the Oculus rift virtual
reality headset system that was kind of tearing-up
the technology world, you know, over the last year or so
ever since their Kickstarter where they raised £2m
they've really been on a tear, bringing in some of the best minds really like John Carmack from
Id Software. They've been getting some help from the guys at
Valve as well and unfortunately now Facebook has bought them for
well about two billion dollars. Cue finger towards side of mouth.
Ultimately what Facebook are trying to do here is
prevent anyone else from buying this technology. It's a
moonshot because they don't really develop their own moon shots like Google
does.
Instead what they do is they wait for someone to create something they think
will be leveraged in the future and they buy it.
Really the question here is
what is Facebook thinking long-term? Well a lot of this really is
in the short term a focus on gaming. That has to be the way forward if they want
this technology to be adopted.
They're going to have to carry on with the plan that Oculus VR
had there which was to launch this for gaming by 2015.
Long term, 3-5-10 years in
advance of ourselves, ultimately Facebook thinks here that it can grab a slice
of the technology
which will drive the next generation of the interactive web. Personally I'm sceptical
I don't actually think the next generation of the virtualised web is
going to look anything like Oculus rift or even have Oculus rift style
interface
as the way forward. It just feels a little bit too far-fetched and there's
just a bit too much work to do to actually get us to that point.
Now eventually sure we will have virtual world, we'll sleep in our goggles,
it'll be a little bit like Caprica. But
I don't think we're going to see quite a revolution in that way. This idea of
full immersion and
browsing and walking around virtual worlds we saw it with Second Life. It
didn't work, it doesn't work, it's a jarring kind of experience and
ultimately this means Facebook must be having to work on a software layer as well
a virtualised Facebook a 3D virtual world for itself.
That's a kind of scary prospect in itself.
For my mind now we need a third company to enter this race... Valve
we are all now looking at you to save us basically. Because otherwise
there's only going be two options, the Facebook route Oculus
and the Sony route which will be obviously most likely locked to PlayStation 4
and potentially some of Sony's other products.
But ultimately we now need a third way.
We need another company to really enter the market with its technology and the
only one I'm aware of
because they help the guys at Oculus is Valve. So guys
what do you think. Is this a great move for Facebook , a great move for Oculus. If
you're a backer of
the original kick-starter do you feel a little hard done by?
You know, where do you feel this is going to leave Facebook and VR technology
generally. For my mind we now need a third way.