Why I like this forum better than Reddit for VR news

[john770gtx]

Reddit to me is the bastard child of 4chan and Reddit has completely de-legitimized the anonymous board. It has transformed into a 'savvy' hype machine which enables corporations to plaster their marketing campaigns online basically at next to no cost. On 4chan you don't have to be anonymous, but then again, you don't have the option to give other users money or promote your own comments with money. Basically 4chan was the same type of popularity contest that Reddit is but posts on boards were only popular if you know, they had something worth saying in them.

I'm an oldf#g. I haven't been on 4chan since about 2003-2004 since the release of Half Life 2 and I haven't taken anything posted on there seriously as I used to back then.

Apparently there were either bots, users making separate accounts or "corporate shills" making the rounds on Reddit yesterday trying to engender bias towards the Facebook acquisition of Oculus. I don't have the totality of the incidents that occurred or the complete facts because to be honest, there are so many comments to wade through it is becoming almost impossibly hard to figure out what relevant information is coming out of the threads on Reddit because of the general posts from users that are just presenting the false dichotomy of the VR world as it has become since Zuckerberg bought out Oculus.

It's either yay Palmer or nay Palmer, and I just want to present an alternative theory for the VR enthusiasts, early adopters and Kickstarter backers who were here before the hype train was even rolling full steam ahead with the Oculus Rift.

http://www.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/c ... confidence

An interesting statistic that I learned was that even the government is colluding through social media to create a bias around their own agenda.

"US State Department spent $690,000 to 'buy' Facebook 'likes'

http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1 ... _facebook/ "

I just wanted to provide a different perspective since the information in this thread totally opened my eyes on the Facebook phenomena all together especially on Facebook's capabilities on creating algorithms that can create new users on different social media networks and websites to create biased consumers..

EDIT:
There are conflicting reports of moderators banning users and deleting posts..

Something else I wanted to say was if Facebook was spending money to convince consumers to buy into their newest acquisition, why are they wasting their time and money? I think this money would be better suited towards going to Oculus. I mean if you look hard enough there is a lot of direct evidence of corporate influence in the Reddit forums from corporations that are smaller and bigger than Facebook. It's just un-nerving. I initially thought Reddit was devoid of this nonsense because to be honest, I never went it on it at all before 2 days ago. I had a few casual glances in college when my dorm room-mate would show me funny stuff or to check hyperlinked news articles and the like. This is crazy.


EDIT #2:
A site where you can "sell your reddit account"
http://ultratonfist.com/sell-us-your-reddit-accounts/

[petersmc]

yep. i was taken aback by the negativity. it is not so bad here, but there is still a fair bit of Facebook hate, and very emotional responses.

I must admit, it has taken a couple of sleeps to put all the pieces together. It never occured to me that Facebook would consider supporting hardware development, but after some thinking on it, it becomes increasingly clear why Facebook are getting onboard. My reasoning is ultimately this:

Although (as a gamer) the Rift was initially supported in the large part by gamers, I now think that gaming per se will be a relatively small part of VR. This is what Facebook also seem to believe. They seem to believe that if the technology can be refined for compelling mass market appeal, then they will have accelerated the creation of the demand for VR services. They intend to profit from providing/involvement in these services. This makes a lot of sence to me given Facebook itself has reached maturity as a product (no more easy gains).

I am still trying to see the full potential, but so far the obvious things are:
Virtual retail
Sporting/cultural/theatrical performances
Tourism
Telepresence
Education
Virtual creation (painting, movies/performances, prototyping, architecture)

I guess, that almost every human activity could have a VR aspect to it, in the end.

Now, a common complaint from the gaming community has been that Facebook's involvement will result in a lower quality experience. There is the assumption that gaming is the highwater mark in terms of requirements for the hardware, and that seeing the above points as the "future of VR" will mean less sophisticated hardware. I think it will infact be the opposite. It is going to be representation of meaningful avatars in VR social spaces that is going to drive the tech forward.

For gaming you need a good HMD and whatever controller solution suits the game in question. Anything social requires representing your avatar such that communication is effective and natural. So, now we need a great HMD (as the puke factor MUST be reduced as far as possible for mass appeal), plus methods to interact naturally in the VR space (gesture recognition, eye tracking, facial recognition, haptics). Without these, then VR will not take-off, and Facebook will not recoup their investment.

My prediction:
CV1 gets released for xmas 2014 - it will be similar to DK2, with a slightly better screen. Cost will be less than $250, and the demand will outstrip supply at first. They will sell literally millions of units.
Shortly after, an adapter for consoles and mobile devices will be available. Sony will be on the backfoot.
Each year, a new HMD will be released incrementally improving the FOV and resolution. With each new HMD, the social aspect requirements will be integrated further (eye tracking, hand tracking, etc)
Peripherals will pop up all over the place - many will flop, but the pace will be staggering.
Nvidia/ATI will release their first "designed for VR" architecture within 3 years. Probabaly a poly/raytracer hybrid chipset. MS and Sony will announce VR consoles coming SOONtm.
Within 5 years, the widespread adoption of HMDs will start killing the TV, PC screen market. The resolution and hardware will allow "reading" a virtual paper document. Telepresence working/meeting become a significant method of office working.
Airlines notice a steady drop in business travel.
Virtual universities/training will recieve massive govt investment and be freely available. Physical tertiary places will become "supplimentary" to education and focus on post-grad and research.
Cinemas become non-viable on the whole. Movies get released directly to the net.
and so on . . .

In my view, the above is inevitable. Facebook's investment probably just accelerated the process by an order of magnitude. Welcome to the Quickening folks. The questions is: are you ready?

[john770gtx]

Each year, a new HMD will be released incrementally improving the FOV and resolution. With each new HMD, the social aspect requirements will be integrated further (eye tracking, hand tracking, etc)

We already see Sony doing this and other major competitors following suite. Sony has a TON of money to produce what they need to produce to make super wide FoV immersive headsets but are choosing to just copy Oculus. They have the first party studios to make VR games for crying out loud! This is definitely going to be a major trend

Peripherals will pop up all over the place - many will flop, but the pace will be staggering.

It's already hard enough to track the current amount of kickstarters that support the Oculus Rift or are SBS3D VR oriented that exist because of the Oculus' original following.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TWNkWCtIDU

This is Shark Tank, it's a pretty famous tv show. Go to 14:01 to see how the mass media is already popularizing the kickstarter movement and making venture capital a cool thing on TV. The investors purposefully try to make it as hard as possible to use the Omni to move around when in fact, nobody would slip and slide on that treadmill if they were actually trying to run. They would just run! We're going to see alot more of the open sourced market bought out and patents locked up by huge companies like they're already trying to do

Nvidia/ATI will release their first "designed for VR" architecture within 3 years. Probabaly a poly/raytracer hybrid chipset. MS and Sony will announce VR consoles coming SOONtm.

With the attempt to push 4K resolutions onto consumers in TV sets I wouldn't disagree with this at all. Some of the major hold up problems are the interface by which the digital signals have to go through, namely being HDMI 1.4, Displayport etc, and the raw GPU proccessing power to push those resolutions at super high framerates and refresh rates. They're definitely going to push an alternative processing based solution like they tried to do with those dedicated PhysX PPU cards.

Within 5 years, the widespread adoption of HMDs will start killing the TV, PC screen market. The resolution and hardware will allow "reading" a virtual paper document. Telepresence working/meeting become a significant method of office working.

I don't know so much about the 5 year time frame. I think I'm more willing to lean to that theory now because of the amount of funding that Oculus has received. The founder of the X-Prize, Peter Diamandis has stated on the acquisition that he considers the entry of large capital investment into these open sourced projects is going to really accelerate things but let's be honest here.. how many Palmer Luckey's are there? I think we're kind of stuck between a planned obsolescence mind set and a revolutionary accelerating market. The consumer electronics industry still has to rely on vast brick and mortar production to move these products and it's not like the TV and PC screen markets aren't big money makers either. Something is going to have to give here and who knows. It's going to be a competition between open sourced solutions and the willingness for companies to budge on their business models. I think the latter is not going to die soon..

Airlines notice a steady drop in business travel.
This is already happening. Even in the holiday season despite reports on consumer spending, people aren't really moving to and fro that much anymore. I think the enormous cost in baggage fees and lack of modernization in the airline industry has a huge deal to play here too.

"For instance, the B-2 Stealth Bomber is able to cut down it’s drag coefficient by a whopping 60% through some “classified” process by which the aircraft’s skin is ionized, creating a frictionless pocket which the aircraft literally rides in If it were to be properly capitalized on they could afford to sell plane tickets for significantly less than they are today. Imagine spending just 50 dollars for a round trip, coast to coast flight." That quote was cited from Michael Schratt, an aerospace historian from this video here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbeHuP8DF_M

Virtual universities/training will recieve massive govt investment and be freely available. Physical tertiary places will become "supplimentary" to education and focus on post-grad and research.

I don't know about the government investment but I think there would be sensible government subsidies for choosing to take a VR class instead of a physical one. I don't know if these things are applied to online classes today but this is a possibility.

Cinemas become non-viable on the whole. Movies get released directly to the net.
and so on . . .

This already happens. P2P and Bitorrent have pretty much killed the movie market except for the people who still enjoy the physical experience.
I watched a movie on my Oculus Rift. It was a little primitive because of the hardware limitations and FoV, but it was cool nonetheless. I think with 1440p + resolution screens we're going to see alot of this happening where people just steal movies and instead of watching them in windowed formats they watch them in full 3D on their headsets.

In my view, the above is inevitable. Facebook's investment probably just accelerated the process by an order of magnitude. Welcome to the Quickening folks. The questions is: are you ready?

You make a lot of great points that I otherwise, without the Facebook acquisition, would have thought had been far down the road. I'm not an economist or a scientist by any measure but hey, it does seem like the PR machine is accelerating beyond what Oculus was capable of doing before they had the extra capital.
I think the acquisition is great for competition and great for Oculus as a company. Let's see what proprietary software and hardware they can come up with before they gobble up every patent known to man and force the planned obsolescence on us.

[petersmc]

It is really tricky to see where exactly investment will come from. I am a bit German/European centric, and that is a reason I think govt investment in education is a real possibility. The reason is, that under german law, you have a basic legal right to education. This manifests itself in law suits from people without a gpa to gain a uni place, forcing the unis to give then a placement in their local area. Now, if VR is really mainstream, then it could be argued that the (german) govt MUST legally provide VR tuition for free (and hopefully quality tuition). This would become a very cost effective way to meet its obligations. Assuming it is done right, and scaling is thought about from the start, then this could very quickly become the norm with the first to market being able to capture a pay for service segment for those who are outside of the legal obligation. My point really is, when it gets done once, then it targets an international market. The first service to collect the best-of-breed educators to provide mass virtual tuition is gonna make a mint, while stil providing it at minimal cost to students, thus meeting an altruistic imperative. Having said that, a philanthropic NGO might do this as well, with the alterior motive of providing a more skilled workforce. Interesting times ahead.

[squibbfire]

Reddit sucks...its seems like a step backwards...

Lots of noise no substance.

[Leahy]

Well this thread is a pretty good example of why I don't even bother with reddit, very interesting and thought provoking. If I want to waste my time and scroll through lots of garbage posts I go to 4chan. At least there I can get some laughs from the rare subtle troll/sarcasm.

[Frito]

Agreed 9000%