So they paid 2 billion dollars.. for something that isn't even on the market, and was started a couple of years ago for 1/1000th of that.. lucky guys at Oculus

While it's true I did get a kit for my 300, the original plan wasn't even to have a DK2. The original plan was if you paid 300 dollars you got the dev kit which was proper for developing software for the consumer version. Which DK1 is not suited for developing software for the consumer version. The difference is with NVidia you're getting a complete product, you pay the money and you get the item. You don't pay the money up front, wait for them to develop the card possibly changing some of the details, and then end up requiring a second card for proper use.

So while I did get a really cool dev kit which has been fun to use and make things for, and one could argue my "transaction was complete". I still feel a little underappreciated mostly because DK2 wasn't in the picture when I payed that 300 dollars, now I need an additional 350 dollars (+ 22 shipping) to get when I originally expected. A dev kit suited for development for the commercial version. I would have appreciated a little "sorry for the bump in the roadmap" bonus.

However, more to your point, I'm not an "investor" so they don't really have an obligation to pander to my interests. It's just how I felt, regardless of whether it was justified.

Their FAQ says the DK1 is suitable for developing for the consumer version... but then that doesn't sound right, sure if you're working within something like Unity or UE then all the extra features should be taken care of, but if you're doing your own engine you'd need to get all the extra positional data and do something with it.

Whatever your feelings about FaceBook's business motivations, take a moment to congratulate the Oculus guys - they are quite literally living the dream.

Crowd fund a technology startup, successfully ship a v1 product, become the media darlings of an entire industry, and score a multi-billion dollar acquisition deal with a top-10 technology company. If there were a textbook definition of success, it looks a lot like this...

. . . and score a multi-billion dollar acquisition deal with a top-10 technology company

Maybe Facebook is looking to make social networking a VR thing....I wonder what that would turn into....

Maybe Facebook is looking to make social networking a VR thing....I wonder what that would turn into....

I don't think there is a maybe there. That's exactly what Facebook is looking to do.

So they paid 2 billion dollars.. for something that isn't even on the market, and was started a couple of years ago for 1/1000th of that.. lucky guys at Oculus

Well, they paid 2 billion dollars that don't exist, so that's fine.

They paid $400 million in cash, and $1.6 billion in stock. So the money very much exists, and the stock is potentially worth even more (although I note that FB stock went down in response to this). Plus there's another $300 mil in performance bonuses to come.

Even if they only got the $400 mill, that's enough to make each of the 70 employees a millionaire even after they pay out their VC.

hey paid $400 million in cash, and $1.6 billion in stock. So the money very much exists, and the stock is potentially worth even more (although I note that FB stock went down in response to this). Plus there's another $300 mil in performance bonuses to come.

I would take 2 billion in cold hard cash, please. No Facebook stock for me.

but, granted, I had tried developing some for the DK1, but personally wasn't really able to get over its tendency to rapidly cause motion sickness.

also, an inability to see anything external without having to take it off quickly got rather annoying. was left wishing there was some sort of convenient "pass-through" button, and better still if it were wireless, ...

What of the PrioVR. I don't know much about oculus and don't like the look of giant head case stuff but i like what i saw in PrioVR and it got more than what it needed on kickstarter in a day.
*The oculus rift will be compatible with PrioVR.

dunno, not particularly familiar with PrioVR...

I may also be alone in thinking maybe the Rift could use a camera and a pass-through mode, but alas.

something like this is potentially non-trivial though.

to be usable with AR, however, it would also be necessary to be able to pass the camera image back to the computer, for processing and sending back to the HMD. to do this with decent resolution and performance could be a little problematic though.

sadly, it could potentially require a cellphone-level processor and some firmware in the HMD to make this usable (if it were simply a webcam-like interface over USB with all processing done PC-side, it is likely that latency could be a problem, so for things like passthrough and HUD it is likely that a higher-performance camera-to-screen interface would be needed), potentially with some amount of transparent-color trickery or similar.

example:

passthrough button pressed => see out camera;

otherwise: see HDMI input;

or, AR mode: see HDMI input with transparent-color areas replaced with camera image.

camera image could also be designed to line-up with what would otherwise be seen from a given eye-location, possibly either with stereo cameras, or probably more cheaply, via translation or warping of a single input image.

but, otherwise, dunno...