A perspective on Oculus and the criticsm..

[EarlGrey]

There's a lot of talk about Oculus being "dethroned" and the forum is full of trash talk bees buzzing with their criticism of Oculus not giving them the VR they want.

Let's be honest, Oculus has done a great job. I have two VR headsets right now on my desk, DK1 and DK2. Before that there were no VR headsets on my desk! So, here's Oculus, having delivered DK1, DK2, and GearVR (in partnership with Samsung) into our hands, and we're whining about them not delivering VR?

Let's take a little perspective:
- Valve has shipped no VR.
- HTC has shipped no VR.
- Sony has shipped no VR.
- Google has shipped Cardboard VR, which is interesting, but it horribly sucks!
- Apple has shipped no VR.
- Microsoft has shipped no VR.
... if you know of anyone who has shipped a VR device that isn't like a cheap holster please let us know!

Oculus has:
- Shipped DK1
- Shipped DK2
- Shipped GearVR
- Demonstrated more VR prototypes than the rest of the bunch combined.


So, I just look at the facts, the score is in Oculus favor, by far, they're almost the only player on the field.

It's also worth noting, they manufactured the DK1/DK2 headsets themselves (in a Chinese factory albeit), but they pretty much did it by themselves. Now, what's so interesting about that is that Valve admitted that they couldn't do this themselves, so they got HTC to help them.
Why was Valve able to even get HTC interested in this? Because Oculus did all the hard work, they crawled through the dirt, did the hard labor, took the risk, in order to demonstrate that VR works and to kick it off. Without that there would have be nothing for Valve to use to convince HTC that VR was interesting.

But it's true, they're taking a bit long, but it's understandable, they were the first, the innovator, the leader, having to create the VR headset, create the content for it, demonstrate that VR works, sell it to the world. Valve has done none of that.

So let's keep that in mind.

[SebKaine]

I don't buy that ... Ok imagine i put myself in the skin of what is call "The masses"

I have the choice between :

A)
- a product at 200$ that is under direction of facebook
- who focus on quantity and not quality
- who want me to get a facebook subscription at startup
- who offer 1/3 of the perf of the vive
- all the press say that it is a shitty stuff compare to Vive
- all the nerds avoid it like plague

on the other hand i have

B)
- a 400$ product
- a product develop by valve software the maker of HL1/HL2
- who focus on the best possible experience possible
- who want me to get a steam subscription
- who offer fully immersive experience
- all the press say that it is the best VR you will ever have
- all the nerds / geeks / gamers / otaku buy it

Now if i am a kid between 7 - 47 years old and i need to spend all my cash ? what i am going to buy ?
-> well i think i will go with B and i guess the mass will do the same also.

I can't buy that , oculus know that you have to release a great product to win the heart of the masses !
and if they fail in doing so, they will fail miserably imo ...

[numpulse]

oculus knows the real money is in the content, i think they are a bit worried, remember history repeats, it will not come down to who has the best specs but the best content and steam have positioned them self very well.
watching some off the presentations and you can see oculus is pushing very hard to get developers on board.
time will tell maybe room for both using direct x 12.

[defog]

For the average consumer nothing matters at all until one of them releases an actual consumer product. Then we can start speculating about "who's the winner".

[Hiro_Protag0nist]

"EarlGrey" wrote:
There's a lot of talk about Oculus being "dethroned" and the forum is full of trash talk bees buzzing with their criticism of Oculus not giving them the VR they want.

Let's be honest, Oculus has done a great job. I have two VR headsets right now on my desk, DK1 and DK2. Before that there were no VR headsets on my desk! So, here's Oculus, having delivered DK1, DK2, and GearVR (in partnership with Samsung) into our hands, and we're whining about them not delivering VR?

Let's take a little perspective:
- Valve has shipped no VR.
- HTC has shipped no VR.
- Sony has shipped no VR.
- Google has shipped Cardboard VR, which is interesting, but it horribly sucks!
- Apple has shipped no VR.
- Microsoft has shipped no VR.
... if you know of anyone who has shipped a VR device that isn't like a cheap holster please let us know!

Oculus has:
- Shipped DK1
- Shipped DK2
- Shipped GearVR
- Demonstrated more VR prototypes than the rest of the bunch combined.


So, I just look at the facts, the score is in Oculus favor, by far, they're almost the only player on the field.

It's also worth noting, they manufactured the DK1/DK2 headsets themselves (in a Chinese factory albeit), but they pretty much did it by themselves. Now, what's so interesting about that is that Valve admitted that they couldn't do this themselves, so they got HTC to help them.
Why was Valve able to even get HTC interested in this? Because Oculus did all the hard work, they crawled through the dirt, did the hard labor, took the risk, in order to demonstrate that VR works and to kick it off. Without that there would have be nothing for Valve to use to convince HTC that VR was interesting.

But it's true, they're taking a bit long, but it's understandable, they were the first, the innovator, the leader, having to create the VR headset, create the content for it, demonstrate that VR works, sell it to the world. Valve has done none of that.

So let's keep that in mind.

Well said!

[Martynyuu]

You forget Valve is a heavy backer of Oculus so they helped them to "crawl through the dirt "

[Paul33993]

Eh, never been a huge fanboy myself. I don't root for logos. Don't care. It's about the end product. And my confidence in CV1 isn't very high after Oculus did nothing at GDC this year. If CV1 were truly launching this year, it would have been beneficial to have inundated developers with info at the final GDC before launch.

I'm not talking CV1 retail specs, I'm talking technical talks. And it seemed to be very light. I was expecting a major SDK update and tons of talk gearing for the final push towards launch. It was crickets on that score.

It's amazing what Oculus ha done for VR. And we're at this point because of them. But 3DFX was incredibly influential for hardware GPU. Doesn't mean I'm going to pull my GPU and roll back to a 3DFX GPU.

[nightbane30]

"SebKaine" wrote:


Well what are the factual proof that oculus has drop CV1 for GEAR VR. I mean is there any official statement ?

I don't see a guy like Carmack playing the "yes man" for Mark Zuckerberg.
MZ - "Please john can you put that button more to the left"
JC - "Ohh yess Mark no problem i'm gonna do that for you"
MZ - "Would it be possible to stop testing the helmet on FPS like Rage and use more proper application ?"
JC - "Oh yes Mark What about Candy Crush ? or Would you prefer Flappy Bird ?"
MZ -" Fantastic John that's exactly what i mean !"

OK, I laughed way harder at that than I should have.

[HiThere_]

Would like Oculus VR to focus less on how to compensate for a battery powered smartphone GPU in 2015, and focus more on solving the non mobile related challenges of VR :
- Sony has announced 120 FPS for the Playstation 4 Headset, on a screen that doesn't bleed colors, and a release date.
- Valve has announced a wider field of view (by replacing one expensive screen with two cheaper ones), their mind blowing Lighthouse, and a release date.
- Microsoft has announced their vision of the Future of Virtual Reality : Augmented Reality.
- Oculus VR has announced... Samsung Gear VR for the Galaxy S6 Series, a mobile Jam, and their passion for mobile VR.

Now try ranking those announcements from most overwhelmingly premature to most underwhelming.

And as far as CV1 goes, it seems that by avoiding the partnerships that Oculus VR committed to (Facebook and their focus on tracking the headset user instead of the headset, Samsung and their focus on selling their latest Smartphone instead of the best possible VR screens, Nimble VR and their focus on clumsily tracking fingers instead of sticking to accurate hand controllers for now), competing Headsets are avoiding the issues Oculus VR is running into, instead of delaying their release date to work around them.

But I agree the criticism Oculus VR has built up since the release of the Samsung Gear VR Innovator Edition is being very unfair : Their latest corresponding announcements for CV1 are not underwhelming, but missing.

[Anonymous]

"Cyril" wrote:
Would like Oculus VR to focus less on how to compensate for a battery powered smartphone GPU in 2015, and focus more on solving the non mobile related challenges of VR :
- Sony has announced 120 FPS for the Playstation 4 Headset, on a screen that doesn't bleed colors, and a release date.
- Valve has announced a wider field of view (by replacing one expensive screen with two cheaper ones), their mind blowing Lighthouse, and a release date.
- Microsoft has announced their vision of the Future of Virtual Reality : Augmented Reality.
- Oculus VR has announced... Samsung Gear VR for the Galaxy S6 Series, a mobile Jam, and their passion for mobile VR.

Wow! lot's of announcements there! Now let's go back to Elite Dangerous VR for at least 9 months. I'm sure within this 9 months period we get even more announcements :lol:

[saviornt]

I hate to disagree with you EarlGrey.. however.. Nintendo has shipped a VR headset.. for consumers no less.

Figured I'd put that out there. All hail Nintendo.