Oculus Announces Partnership With Microsoft 105
An anonymous reader writes: At its pre-E3 press conference today, Oculus announced a partnership with Microsoft. The company plans to launch a new Rift headset early next year that will be packaged with a wireless Xbox One controller. Oculus will ship the controllers with the recently announced Xbox wireless adapter. Xbox chief Phil Spencer said. "We believe we'll be able to create state of the art virtual reality experiences with the Oculus Rift on top of Windows."
Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
It was great knowing you, Oculus.
Hopefully Valve has a little more sense. They seem to have better hardware than Oculus.
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Facebook already bought Oculus last year. Actually kind of makes sense that they'd sell units to Microsoft for Xbox use.
Remember... (Score:5, Insightful)
Recall what M$ is known for; Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
Re:Remember... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm rooting for MS here. I hope they embrace the Oculus, extend into Facebook, and extinguish it all.
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Perhaps the reason you're not sure what they've collaborated on is because they haven't collaborated on anything? You seem very eager to make a connection between MS and FB.
The connection is there, which is why we have the story in the first place. The only question remaining is how long they've had a connection.
"Working together" implies some kind of active collaboration between the two. Holding stock, however, does not always imply that sort of collaboration.
It means they have a relationship. There are plenty of companies Microsoft could have bought stock in, but didn't. There were plenty of investors who wanted to invest in Facebook, but didn't.
Here's another example [fastcompany.com]. For a while, Facebook had some kind of Bing integration, and the Bing bar had some kind of Facebook integration.
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This sums up a few cases: Embrace, extend, extinguish [wikipedia.org]
The part about Kerberos is very interesting, because it shines a light on the relevance Slashdot once had in the past.
The article only cites a few instances of MS' EEE moves; it doesn't talk about the strategy being used on Novel, OpenGL, C/C++, Delphi, IMAP, (web)DAV, Standardized document formats... Latest vicitm of that strategy was Nokia, in 2014 and not, as you claimed in 1995.
MS isn't yet done with the EEE strategy and the scenario of using it agai
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When did Microsoft "embrace" Delphi or OpenGL?
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Bascially, E3. ;)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly explains why they halted Linux and Mac OSX development
Re: Wow (Score:3)
Yep, fuck them.
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Or maybe, just maybe, FOSS works fine, and you don't bother using it.
Whining is easier than apt-get apparently.
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They paused Linux and Mac OS development to focus on Windows because that's where the MAJORITY of PC users are. Once they have that end of it all nice and tight and made some money, then they can look at finishing the Linux and Mac support. If you want to come back with "oh, they have Facebook's billions", that's not true. Facebook isn't stupid and they won't blindly pump cash into a subsidiary (remember, they weren't absorbed, they still operate as an independent entity) without a plan to profitability. Ge
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As a Mac gamer, I've heard this story from the game industry many times before, and I know how it always ends. No thanks. I'll be looking to HTC Vive.
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Marathon.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
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Valve doesn't have any hardware. The headset they want to use is made by HTC.
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kinda hard for them to promote oculus solution since it will not be out until next year anyways.
Valve and HTC (Score:2)
Considering that HTC stock recently tanked due to far-below-expectation earning number, there are rumors abound of a possible acquisition by ASUS. If this pans out, the entire venture might be dead on arrival.
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Then you're betting on the wrong horse. Microsoft is well known to make quality hardware. Partnering with Microsoft may be the best thing Oculus has done.
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Actually, outside of the XBox and a few flop projects (Kin, Zune), Microsoft usually re-branded others' hardware and sold that (e.g. re-branded Logitech keyboards and mice, etc).
I believe in this case, they'll probably leave the gruntwork to Oculus for the hardware (since it's a subsidy of Facebook).
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So you were okay with Facebook buying them, but an meaningless partnership with MS is what pushed you away?? lol
Valve Helped Oculus Make Crystal Cove Headset (Score:1)
'Engadget reports that Valve Software actually helped Oculus VR create the Crystal Cove VR headset that won so many awards at CES 2014 earlier this month ref [tomshardware.com].'
HoloLens? (Score:1)
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AR vs VR... very different use cases. The product don't really compete at all.
HoloLens is also a self-contained computer. The Rift is a display that needs to be driven by a fairly beefy computer..
The Result (Score:3, Funny)
This is going to produce a big rift.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Visible controllers (Score:4, Interesting)
I think they need cameras on the outside so you can toggle a quick view of reality without removing the gear.
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Carmack calls it the diet coke button - video passthrough so that he can find his diet coke.
http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/08/gear-vr-versus-oculus-rift/
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Well it sure isn't "see my penis so I can VR masturbate" button because your belly would still be in the way.
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It's a controller, so just put it on your lap before you put the headset on.
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I actually felt offended they kept showing the VR headset next to a fucking X-Box controller.
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That's what it's going to come with when it sells.
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if that's the worst issue, then VR is gold.
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this is why keyboards like textblade, with touch sensitive keys that actually don't send an input signal until you push down will be important for vr.
with that kind of keyboard, you can have a u.i. representation of the keyboard (e.g. like if you look down) and you can tell where your fingers are by glows that correspond to what keys you're touching... but the touch doesn't mean that you are entering any text yet. it's just to orient yourself on the keyboard. then you push down on the key as normal and send
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Oculus + HoloLense [microsoft.com]
I don't think this is as random as people seem to think it is
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I agree that if you're going to use a physical controller, you should hopefully see a virtual representation of it as well. It would make the experience of virtual reality less jarring.
The combination of the Xbox, Oculus, and the Kinect could be an interesting one though. The Kinect provides a method to control virtual reality through voice and gestures. No physical controller needed. It may be the way to work with virtual reality, and Microsoft have everything in place to take advantage of it. Done ri
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A complicated mechanism to accommodate those few who still aren't touch typists?
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The Vive controllers show up as they are in your environment...
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Good drivers (Score:2)
are enough to make me forgive a whole lotta sins here.
watch and laugh (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5kI4NuM33E
oculus rift - Xbox One Sneak Peek [HD]
"Virtual reality should put me into the game, not into a room where I play the game on a screen. I already have that in actual reality."
This is why Microsoft is dropping Windows (Score:1)
Hope this doesn't encourage a controller monopoly (Score:2)
One of the biggest problems that existed in previous-generation games on Steam was the monopoly Microsoft had on controller support. Most games that were console ports only natively supported the Xbox 360 controller, and would only display button prompts in the X360 format. I don't think it was necessarily an intended monopoly on MS's part - part of it was definitely that PS3 controllers need custom drivers to work properly on the PC and part of it was lazy developers who figured that supporting the X360 co
XBox One? *Sigh* (Score:2, Troll)
Never mind that the damn XBox One can't output the resolution and framerate necessary to keep people from barfing their brains out.
Idiots.
Way to take interesting technology and turn it into an utterly useless joke.
Why not just announce compatibility with the Phantom Console while you're at it!
WHAT?! You can't be serious (Score:2, Insightful)
So besides that, everything MS touches dies. They can't design anything that customers want anymore and they turn everything into a money-grubbing, ad-infested, piece of garbage that they shove down users throats by abusing their monopoly. Oh now I get why they're working with Facebook.
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Yup, Microsoft and Facebook -- it's like a marriage made in Hell. Or data-mining Heaven, depending on your point of view.
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So besides that, everything MS touches dies
Gaming on PC means Windows and DirectX. Windows and DirectX have been around for a long time.
If you are realistic about VR on the PC, teaming up with the guys who control your platform makes sense. Especially now that Sony and Valve are serious competitors for Occulus.
It also makes sense for Microsoft. Sony is an obvious competitor and Valve has been making strides into Linux. With Occulus MS gets a developed VR solution without having to develop their own. It's a natural partnership.
What was THAT? (Score:4, Insightful)
It was painful to watch Microsoft intermission at the Oculus event today.
Hey so ah we're bundling an ordinary xbox controller with the rift... okay whatever I don't care except for having to pay for it with cost of the rift and your main competition offering a much better input tracking solution with their product.
Rest of the MS demo was someone wearing a VR headset and playing xbox in "VR" by creating a virtual room with a virtual 2D display and playing the game on that 2D display within the virtual world.. one of the sorriest tech demos I've ever seen in my life. I kept waiting for a punch line that never came.
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So, facebook was not enough??? (Score:2)
Seriously, facebook and it's bazillions of Valley cash were still not enough to launch the Oculus? They had to get freaking M$ into the mix as well? The oculus news just keep getting worse and worse and I can only imagine how the original crowdfunding backers must be feeling right about now.
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MS has decades of experience in system software. Something like Oculus has to perform very efficiently with the OS and graphics drivers if they expect it satisfy users (eg: not cause nausea). So the partnership should result in positive changes in Oculus and Windows to achieve that goal.
rip (Score:1)
Temporary = Permanent ? (Score:1)
Uh.... (Score:1)
Could they have flipped the bird any harder at all the people who backed it?
I read somewhere someone railing against Palmer Lucky (at the time it seemed overblown) and how he's an all-business sociopathic waste of space who would sell his grandmother for a dollar given half the chance, and would probably end up screwing over the Oculus backers out there.
I am a little amazed, but not completely.
it makes some business sense, yeah, but wow. Just, wow.