News Judge rules Oculus VR lawsuit may go ahead

I don't blame these people for being mad. Facebook's agenda got me to switch camps. I was going to consider the HTC Vive but since they keep making delays and since they're likely to have a very heavy price point, I decided against that too. I now have an OSVR, which is currently half the price of the Rift.

 

He was hired to make a VR headset. Once the prototype was delivered he set up oculus. The law suit isn't surprising

 

Not surprising but you'd think if they had a problem with what he was doing that they would've acted on it sooner, it just seems a bit sus to wait until the Facebook buyout before crying foul.

 

And indeed to wait until product launch. Choo-choo! All aboard the gravy train!

 

Didn't a lot of Silicon Valley companies get stung recently for having non-compete clauses in contracts so they couldn't work in a similar field?

Didn't that end badly for them?

Unless this lawsuit turns up specific cases of direct use of technologies, then isn't this the same thing as a non-compete clause?

Edit: Actually, I'm thinking of this case, which was anti-cold-calling not non-compete clauses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation - in other words, non applicable in this case!

 

Well there's no point suing if it was a flop it would cost more than it would bring in.

The company had rights to the prototype and he was prevented from aiding any other entities with VR for a year.

 

Even that seems a bit off (to me), what you're/they are saying is that taking and using someones IP doesn't matter until such a time that they start making lots of money from it.

 

Its not about permissiveness or implying what's ok or not. What I'm saying is, from a business perspective the potential return must out weigh the cost. If there is a chance that you have to pay your own legal fees as well the person you are suing, going after a company with a few hundred k from kick starter may not be worth it. A company with 2 billion of the zucksters money on the other hand...

If Luckey did something wrong then it was never OK. But you have to think of the impact taking action would have. You can't just be thick headed and try and take him down unless of course your company can shrug off the expense. Either way it's still a business decision with associated risk and return.

Suing people seems to be a normal part of business rather than exception handling. Especially in tech. What a shitty world we live in.

 

Fair enough. Sometimes my cynicism overtakes me.

 

Well it was 2 months after the Facebook acquisition so that cynacisim was not unfounded.

 

Still got it.

 

What titles do u have on OSVR?

My Oculus CV1 is pre-ordered. Using my DK2 until then.

Palmer is very passionate about VR and deserves credit for bringing the world's most advanced consumer HMD at a price far below pre-Oculus products like the Sony HMZ priced at $1500.

People jump on the bandwagon and spout crap about "facebook sellout". It's automated, formulaic, regurgitated criticism. Just something people do because they're looking for a cause to shout about.

 

In a way, it makes sense. Why pay the lawyers $1000/hour to sue a company that might go under on its own? Might have been a little hard to see which way to to play it until Oculus got bought out by Facebook, which meant the company wasn't just going to collapse.

 

Yea theshadow2001 opened my eyes and got some rep for making me see sense.

 

Yes.

 

Anyway... My CV1 is pre-ordered but I won't be getting it until end of June.

 

People can have there own feelings on Facebook. Personally think they are setting themselves up for a angry backlash with the whole spec thing.

There spec requirements list a system. But those specs are only valid to Oculus store brought games. They can go well below or well above what's listed. Elite Dangerous is above it for example. Titles like surgeon simulator and others like it will work perfectly fine on less than there specs.

It's the games that go above it that will bite them.

3 most popular titles are Assetto Corsa / Elite Dangerous / Star Citizen the last 2 is pretty much the driving force behind VR for games. Star Citizen will likely release whilst CV1 is relivent. Problem is the specs they say are fine will never run SC in VR. Frontiers specs for ED are already above as well.

The words they missed out early on where Oculus store brought games will work on these specs. To this day there's no where on the system checker that mensions this.

My big worry for VR is people buy it load ED and realise they can't play it on the specs they have brought on Oculus say so the product then gets returned and resulting rage to friend and forums will prevent VR ever taking off.

 

I play Elite Dangerous almost every day on VR. I was playing it on my GTX 680 until a few days ago. Now a 970. Horizons is more demanding than season one Elite but it still plays. It is smooth with SteamVR on latest 800 runtime now and anyone who wants extra performance can play it with 501 runtime via the runtime switcher.

Star Citizen will get VR support and DX12 and the DX12 should give it a performance boost.

Star Citizen is also in alpha state so we don't really expect it to be very playable in VR for a while.

The problem with a percentage of people is that if they can't play a game on ultra settings then they trash the game as unplayable or they say VR isn't viable because it's too demanding. I reduce the settings on Elite until it's consistently smooth. It still looks stunning of course because it's all life-size 3d.

By generation 2 VR we could have foveated rendering which will make things significantly more efficient and allow greater FOV and screen res.

Any modern large budget 3d game exceeds the performance of a mid-range PC with GTX 970 or equivalent. People should be prepared to reduce graphic detail.