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.
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(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"