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from the predicted-sales-of-6-or-7-mainframes-by-IBM dept.
Facebook will never break through with Oculus, says one of the VR company's co-founders
Five years after its $2 billion purchase of Oculus, Facebook is still pushing forward in its efforts to bring virtual reality to a mainstream audience. But one of the company's six co-founders now doubts Oculus will ever break through.
Jack McCauley told CNBC he doesn't think there's a real market for VR gaming. With Facebook positioning its Oculus devices primarily as gaming machines, McCauley doesn't believe there's much of a market for the device. "If we were gonna sell, we would've sold," McCauley said in a phone interview on Wednesday.
[...] The $199 Oculus Go has sold a little more than 2 million units since its release in May 2018, according to estimates provided by market research firm SuperData, a Nielsen company. The Oculus Quest, which was released this May, has sold nearly 1.1 million units while the Oculus Rift has sold 547,000 units since the start of 2018, according to SuperData.
[...] Since leaving in November 2015, McCauley has enjoyed a semi-retired life. He's an innovator in residence at Berkeley's Jacobs Institute of Design Innovation and he continues to build all sorts of devices, such as a gun capable of shooting down drones, at his own research and development facility.
The cheaper, standalone headsets are selling more units. Add foveated rendering and other enhancements at the lower price points (rather than $1,599 like the Vive Pro Eye), and the experience could become much better.
Related: Oculus Rift: Dead in the Water?
HTC: Death of VR Greatly Exaggerated
As Sales Slide, Virtual Reality Fans Look to a Bright, Untethered Future
Virtual Reality Feels Like a Dream Gathering Dust
VR Gets Reality Check with Significant Decline in Investment
Creepy Messages Will be Found in Facebook's Oculus Touch VR Controllers
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @06:48PM (3 children)
3d movies keep coming in-and-out of vogue. Remember the old blue-and-red paper glasses? Much like smell-o-vision, it's a gimmick the industry keeps trying when sales are down and they are trying to get more people-in-chairs. However, the fact it never caught-on suggests that people think it is clever, but not a great idea (unlike, say, audio-in-movies, or color).
3d games have a lesser history, but I imagine it's the same thing. Remember the VirtualBoy? It's a gimmick, but for most games it just doesn't add that much value. Sure seeing Mario stereographic out a bit looks cool, but does it really add much to the gameplay? Moreover, it costs more to make the hardware and the game itself, and there is a non-trivial proportion of the population which gets headaches when using the technology.
To be clear there is a very valuable use for 3d. However, I'd suggest it is niche, and probably industrial/commercial/military in nature.
If we had genuine 3d games (not sterographic illusions) which doesn't give a substantial portion of the population headaches to use, it *may* catch on. Until then, though, it's a gimmick.
(On a related note, I really want motion-controlled games to pair-down, too. 90% are distracting, hard to use, prone to input errors, and make me feel silly to do.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @07:05PM
There is a market for VR games. There is no market for 3d Games in VR for the sake of VR, the same way there is no market for snake-and-ladders in a 3d game.
For example, I had a pretty budget graphics card and my full pc was 500-600 dollars. Then I bought Skyrim and I just knew I had to upgrade, and I spent 300 USD on a graphics card and it was money worth spent. Was I ever going to do it for 3d Mario or the newest version of Doom? No way! The medium has to be also part of the gameplay if you want to sell it.
Avatar made a lot of money. Avatar lent itself to 3d.
VR games need a similar approach.
If TES6 is anywhere close to TES5 (and not in the direction of FO4) then I might buy VR for it.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 15 2019, @09:18PM
3D is a subset of VR. A VR headset can display a different image to each of your eyes so it should be able to display any 3D content, possibly with less eye/brain issues if increasing FPS helps.
VR could be a subset of mixed/hybrid headsets, i.e. a headset or glasses that could do VR and augmented reality (AR). New technologies could eventually shrink it so that no bulky headset is needed, just glasses shooting content into your retina. That could be the final form of the technology with the most use cases available.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Monday July 15 2019, @10:11PM
The "3D" movies with the glasses to let you see "3D" give me a headache. The only "3D" movies I ever liked, were in the Omni-Theater, because the movies were short and hurt my head less.
VR doesn't do the same thing to my head. It can be a little disorienting at first, especially, dependent on the type of locomotion. The games that allow you to move around freely in a confined space and / or use that with the "teleporting" mechanic are much easier to get used to. I played the entirety of Fallout 4 VR with the teleport mechanic. It's a little clunky, but they definitely made it work.
Modern VR isn't the old "VirtualBoy" gimmick for a new generation. Perhaps, the people who created the "VirtualBoy" had the same vision, but they were much more hampered by the technology of the day. Give Epic RollerCoaster a chance, it might change your mind on VR. It's not the greatest VR game/experience, but you don't have to move around to experience it. TheBlu is a fun undersea experience as well, also very newb friendly. There's lots of stuff that you can do with it, and it's a ton of fun. Straight-up there's a couple of fun short Star Wars VR games. One is the VR Droid Repair bay, where you play the part of a droid, that fixes those little roller ball droids. The other is a light-saber wielding, short VR game, Tatooine something, I believe. Then there's the quite fun Star Trek Bridge Crew game, quite a bit of fun.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"