Introducing Michael Abrash, Oculus Chief Scientist

[Br0ken]

http://www.oculus.com/blog/introducing-michael-abrash-oculus-chief-scientist/

WOW! :shock:

[kevinm1278]

Awesome news. I told you haters that ya'll didn't have anything to worry about. This guy wouldn't be joining if he thought it was a bad move, and Carmack would've had his ass out of there already. It's not like these guys need the money. They're doing it for the future of VR.

[densohax]

"kevinm1278" wrote:
Awesome news. I told you haters that ya'll didn't have anything to worry about. This guy wouldn't be joining if he thought it was a bad move, and Carmack would've had his ass out of there already. It's not like these guys need the money. They're doing it for the future of VR.

I must agree with you!

[Christiaan]

I sincerely hope and tend to believe that these veterans are coming to Oculus with an impulse of idealism and excitement driving them. A sincere congratulations to Michael Abrash and Oculus, and a wish that they stay the course they began - open, adventurous, and dead set on sharing with everyone the incredible possibilities of VR by creating a great product. I can't help but feel the events of late are for the best in that regard. Kinda nostalgic about the little engine that was Oculus in the beginning, but immensely happy for those guys whose baby grew up to find such success-in-the-making.

[2EyeGuy]

They should have done this before the acquisition, they could have got a better deal.
Anyway, it's great to see Facebook has a new Chief Scientist. They will be achieving great things.

Now you just need to hire Shigeru Miyamoto or someone from Retro Studios.

[Ahzrei]

I wonder how Valve feels about Oculus poaching so many of their dudes....

[AlexiGVS]

I'm so happy Michael Abrash joined OculusVR! CV1 will be EPIC... Can't wait.

[medrift]

What a week this has been. Oculus pulled off a master stroke here after all the negative stuff earlier on. Business as usual then. Never doubt Oculus VR, as the saying goes.

[Frito]

Amazing, I wont be surprised if they try to take over the world with such brillant minds

"Ethereal" wrote:
Somewhere I still have a copy of his "Graphics Programming Black Book."

[FengShuiEngine]

"rtweed" wrote:

"FengShuiEngine" wrote:
You've made valid points, however I believe there's one factor that you've not yet accounted for; the terms of the acquisition. Not even Zuckerberg, with his majority share, is above contractual law. I have trust that Oculus are not naive to business and have put terms in place to safeguard their interests and retain creative control so that they're able release the product they want to release without compromise.

I haven't overlooked it, it's just that nobody has announced that any such contractual obligation exists. I am very hopeful that we'll get some kind of concrete reassurances to that effect from Palmer in the coming days. However, if nothing that is said definitively, you can rest assured it's because no such contract exists. I'm slightly worried that if he could have said something he would have already. If you read his Reddit posts, he does give some assurances, but they are a bit hand-wavy with nothing concrete to back up his assertions that Facebook will do the right thing in the future.

Confidentiality agreements are typically entered into by both sides of an acquisition before they proceed with the purchase agreement, especially on this scale. You can be assured that there is far more to this acquisition agreement than the exchange of ownership of Oculus for $2 billion. If we haven't heard anything concrete, it's because they are bound by law not too. That said, I believe Palmer would not be able to say anything on Reddit that would contradict the terms of the agreement so long as Facebook's PR team and lawyers are watching, so we only need to infer.

[cleverusername]

"rtweed" wrote:
Hammer of Thor this is some news!

RTWEED after reading all your thoughts in this thread, I must say in a stereomike avatar MINDBLOWN sensee, I feel like you are my soul brother.

First to the point of everyone jostling around back and forth, good bad, positive negative, so easily swayed by disturbances in the force luke! 😉 Hating oculus, now loving them cause Abrash is on board (as dexter points out, he is part of a larger machine, like I have been trying to point out with Palmer, they are not gods (as much as we wish) but subject to larger forces)

http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/21gv1c/cliff_bleszinski_oculus_investor_gears_of_war_on/cge2...

why keep worrying about the unwashed masses who are naïve, silly, uninformed, and will destroy you as quickly as a change in the direction of the wind just for fun if they feel like it?

(so guys, stop being so easily blown back and forth in the wind - who was the martial arts master that said you must stand firm like a rock in the wind, not a reed that blows around, to not be dangled around? Those who don't stand for something, will fall for anything yes confuscious?)

Next point RTweed, the HAMMER! LOL! I was just at Seattle Comic Con, and they had shirts their of the HAMMER! Nathan Fillion is the superhero the HAMMER in Dr. Horribles sing a long! (please watch on youtube so you can understand context) and even though he was like Abrash, the good guy, the superhero, he turned out to not be the saving grace everyone thought he should be at the end yes?




Funny as shit guyz!

That being said, the mighty abrash elicited some amazing thoughts from me awhile ago:

at steam dev days Kevin Williams was talking to Abrash a lot about VR out of home entertainment experiences. After Kevin was done, I talked to abrash about my fears of these large corporations data mining us, violating our privacy, spying on me or kids in our living rooms, and that is why I would choose their ecosystem over all other companies, sony, msft, Nintendo, amzn, facebook, oculus, etc (As I posted here at oculusvr somewhere, I actually dressed up in a suit and was going to try and get a microphone and ask in my best agent smith VOICE from the matrix how were they going to stop me and my fellow AGENTS 😉 from spying on their userbase)

And Abrash shook my hand and said I agree with a lot of your fears and concerns, and I can only advise that is why you should stay with the most opensource platforms you can (and steamos I guess is the most open using Linux as the underbelly foundation yes?) SO I was very impressed with Abrash saying that, and felt he was good jedi.

So maybe he can bring the lightside of the force to facebook/oculus now, or maybe they corrupt him? Who knows. Maybe thoughts from dexter and rtweed, even Yoda couldn't stop a young dark Annakin. So time will tell.

However I want to point out this post, made by one of my other identities (personalities? Am I cracked and have severe mental split personality disorders? LOL! WHo knows? I know one guy told me once, how limiting for other people to have only one personality and some people can jump around and multitask with many personalities - LOL!) Anyways to how kewl I thought Abrash was with his opensource Memes, like Ben Franklin before him, and I would highly VALUE your feedback rtweed on this post here at this forum (since I killed that account there):

http://oculusrift.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1904

http://oculusrift.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1904

I go through all the usual suspects, jadorowsky, zorro, Benjamin franklin, Abrash, my pal Jim Kennedy director of KSC NASA, etc and if Palmer was going down a dark path. So with that context, I really hope Abrash is not chewed up as a cog in the greater machine, because he seems like a really good Jedi!

I posted this about Abrash a long time ago (I was tomorrowman) and I think of all players involved, he has the most moral fiber inside, so I will keep my hopes up. I may post this on Oculusvr if people are giving abrash shit for falling in under the dark system! 😉 (My note to geekmaster, so I had to follow through)

Continuing to next meme you engaged Rtweed (I am pulling from all your posts in this thread):

be "the phone company" and make money by rent-seeking.

Here was a james Coburn film, The President's Analyst - about the phone company and how evil things had become, it is funny as shit too! You need to watch the whole thing.




I think this is first time I ever heard term "depersonalization" as Coburn talks to TPC head about resistance.

Next meme:

whether we retain freedom of speech;Then imagine you've had your Facebook account revoked because you used a bad word when referring to MZ online.

http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/facebook-continues-political-censorship/

Also what did Aaron Russo say about Nick Rockefeller and having things REVOKED concering critical voices they did not like? (by taking away their money in the chip in their hand?)




So we should always be skeptical and cautious, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

and final meme rtweed:

Facebook is not an indivudual person with a particular set of morals, so you cannot trust it, nor should you assume that anything it says or does today is representative of what it will do tomorrow, or in a year's time. Times change, shareholders change, management changes, and so on, but the fundamental motivations of business remain constant. As a corporate entity, it has one and only one purpose: to maximise shareholder value

Yes Johnny X at dragoncon over a decade and a half ago told me the WORST crime on this planet was when we allowed corporations to have personhood status back in the late 1800's (I believe) it was the first original sin that would be the downfall of our society, I have talked about this shareholder meme you raise many times here before on OCULUSVR:

viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1594&p=56520&hilit=shareholder#p56520 September 2013:

Anyways, I only came back here because they said it was your birthday at reddit yesterday, and you are 21 now, and thought this could be some good history for other people to learn from and try to decide as they become adults how 2 people viewed what happened in the past and maybe how they will take up the torch to affect VR futures, worlds, governments, etc etc and to wish you a happy birthday and hope that one day you will turn back from the sith lord path I think you are on and go back to your open source and little guy/underdog roots and give up on this mass market, dumbed down VR for the max number of sheeple scenario you seem to think you need to spearhead. (all those dumb corrupt mass market companies mostly are EVIL for this reason http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-dumbest-idea-in...) Give up on that dying behemoth.

viewtopic.php?f=26&t=7316&p=100146&hilit=shareholder#p100146

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-dumbest-idea-in...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-goal-that-changed-co...

(How it changed where I used to work at IBM - UGH!)




Why the hobbit Mithrandir?

Thanks for the mememeld spock mindmeld rtweed! It was illuminating!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4v4Ce1_azQ UH@ I forgot tomorroman, kewl because the same guy that did sledge hammer made it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R03Dtu1r6nk Funniest show EVER!