Out of Pod Experience

Well, I am beginning to get sick of this silly device.

Oculus Rift started as a Kickstarter project, aimed to get 250,000 $. It managed to Kickstart almost 10x that money. Good for them, but, would they deliver?

Then it delivered a "developer's kit", which raised some 40,000 units @ 300 USD per unit, rough total of 12,000,000 USD. But there was no plans to deliver anything final.

Then one of the partners died in a tragic accident. That didn't changed the plans of not having plans to deliver the Rift.

The latest new is that a venture capital investor is investing 75,000,000 $ to keep researching the Rift... 300 times more money than the initial kickstarter goal.

And yet there are no plans to when or how ever deliver it.

Admittedly, I am not an expert, and not more knowledgeable than any cultivated person, on how industry works.

But I consider myself a little better knowledgeable of Brain Mk 1, and I wonder what are the chances that something ends well when it started as a few friends looking for 250,000 $ and has become a tragically dead good friend and a few remaining little niggers (*) with some 90 million dollars in their hands.

And something tells me, "few, if any chance still".

Either the Oculus Rift works, and then the question is when and where you set up the produciton line and start selling it, or it doesn't works, you can't make it work, and no amount of money will make it work.

But then, it's good to be a millionaire with somebody else's money. And if you are *sincerely* convinced that you *can* deliver, screw cognitive dissonance! Because this how Brain Mk1 works.

But reality is: if something needed 250,000 $ to work and 90 million later still isn't working... what are the chances?

And why do I post this here at the EVE forums?

Well, can you name a videogames company which has gone head over heels with the Oculus Rift, to the point of investing in a game for it while other games are being uninvested?

Umm, that sounds dangerously close to "it's already kinda' worked" to me. Then again, who knows.
Also, employing ~70 people at a reasonable California-level salary even for a few months will drain a bank account quite fast.
And, well, manufacturing plants don't yet literally grow themselves from the ground, and the hardware components needed for mass production are not free of charge either, so a fairly huge initial investment does seem reasonable.

Then why do they need 75 million dollars to keep developing it?

Well, one might assume it has to do with improving its functionality. People have attested to the fact that it works, but there are a wide number of design and capability limitations, those that cannot be overcome on their previous funding campaigns alone. They're strapping computer screens onto people's heads; development of something like that has to see unexpected issues coming up every now and again.

There's also the possibility this firm is investing in it in the hopes that it becomes another one of those over-advertised geegaws that insinuates itself unto aspects of everyday life that simply do not require it. Another Apple device, if you please.

I do agree, though; I'm tired of hearing stuff about how "amazing" this device is, from developers and investors and such. About how they cannot wait to release it, without anything beyond the vaguest hint as to when that might actually happen. The whole affair just reminds of this. Plus it is a stupid name... Occulus Rift. Yeah, thatI's called a nasion.

I'm not terribly interested in this device myself (as you can probably tell). I can appreciate the kind of capabilities it brings, but to me, personally, it isn't all that useful. I spend way too much time in front of the computer as it is. The last thing I need is to be able to wear it on my face.

Look up the word investor. The money is essentially risk capital, and they will need it to further running the company, to continue to refine the technology and I imagine a fair amount of it will go into R&D. You know, development.

But on the subject of needing money, why does Chris Roberts need more money when the kickstarter for Star Citizen was a success? To add further stretch goals and more stuff to the game, you say? My, that sounds like a development plan to me!

And that's just the R&D part. Manufacture costs for this should be pretty significant too.

The dev kit included a VR headset, for all intents and purposes, I think they've delivered what they'd advertised on KS. Though at ~USD300+ per set, that's a little too expensive for the consumer side to achieve the necessary ubiqutousness to get more players/games/apps on their side. Bringing the cost down means volume order and setting up the manufacturing contracts for these sort of thing wouldn't be cheap (arbitrary e.g USD150@25K units = 3.75mil) - then you also have to allow for the lag time in manufacturing/delivery that could take weeks or months. Also hiring a good staff/engineers aren't cheap (depending on where they're hiring from).

The timeframe imo, looks reasonable. With big names jumping onboard, it's fairly safe to assume that you'll get to see a VR goggle released sometime in 2014 for the consumer. Any later then they risk losing their momentum to possible competitors. Carpe diem, what they need to achieve is being the defacto name in VR goggles before it gets crowded.

As I understand it, that 75M is going towards deployment of the consumer version. They have said they have nailed the simulator sickness problem and the screen res has been upped significantly. They have also tremendously improved the motion detection. They are also sharing the R&D they are doing with VALVE.

We are going to be shown the latest build (which is very close to the consumer version as I understand it) at CES next month, and then they are working towards production. We are also going to be seeing Valves VR headset at CES as well.

I've been following VR related technologies since the 90's, with the original promise that VR was supposed to be, and flopped. I understand your frustration more than you might realize. We are closer to the Metaverse now though than you even begin to understand. VR is going to literally change the world, it can wait a little longer. Patience.