Oculus to Acquire Carbon Design Team

http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/oculus-agrees-to-acquire-carbon-design-team/

by GraffitiTim • 12 years ago

112 49 12 years ago

oculusvr.com

paperwork• 12 years ago

So why would Oculus acquire Carbon Design, rather than contracting them to design/build their products?

VikingCoder• 12 years ago

They're considering a whole family of products to allow you to interact with the virtual world?

Guns, gloves, vests that make you feel like you've been hit, chairs that make you feel like you're accelerating, rotating seats like NASA uses at Space Camp, etc.

EDIT: Walking platforms like the Virtuix Omni, force-feedback devices, scents, and on and on...

chollida1• 12 years ago

Why would a company hire an employee rather than contracting them out to do the same work?

Bingo. User Bane understands why:)

bane• 12 years ago

Because you think you'll continue needing the service the employee provides in relative perpetuity.

sp332• 12 years ago

Did you just contract out your answer to bane?

forrestthewoods• 12 years ago

Because they've already been using them as a contractor* and decided it would make sense to bring them in-house full-time.

* "We’ve been working with Carbon for nearly a year on multiple unannounced projects."

ISL• 12 years ago

Perhaps because they'd like exclusive use of their services?

acgourley• 12 years ago

It's possible that in working with Carbon they were bleeding trade secrets and knowhow, and they might have noticed competitors starting to engage Carbon.

endergen• 12 years ago

You are basically paying to grow a competitor if you outsource high skilled work. Strategically it's better to control all knowledge/resources that your company is dependent on.

jfoster2• 12 years ago

Apparently ASUS started selling computers after Dell outsourced a bit too much to them.

http://www.asymco.com/2012/12/07/the-real-threat-that-samsun...

th0ma5• 12 years ago

I keep thinking the long term goal here is not an Oculus Rift product, but devices that tie in augmented reality and marketing / sales, with hooks to your Facebook account. I honestly see them ditching anything to do with a game display device.

magicalist• 12 years ago

How does that follow at all from the blog post? I'm no fan of Oculus being purchased (at all), but what in a product design team joining Oculus suggests any "long term goal here" about devices for marketing, sales, or hooks to your Facebook account, let alone ditching a game display device?

I think the far more likely reading is that they know the device sitting on your face is make or break for a VR device hitting the mainstream, and they have the chance here to basically define what a VR display is for the next 10 or 20 years if they do it right (the evolution of game controllers is actually a great analog of this).

rhizome3• 12 years ago

We can speculate about a Google Glass competitor, and certainly the market would react to a prediction of that, but step 1 is getting people to put something on their face.

rhizome3• 12 years ago

Knowledge gained working with a renderer and two screens can be used with camera(s) and one screen, such as what a cellphone/tablet/computer has.

serf2• 12 years ago

I don't know exactly how you meant 'two screens' (two experienced screens, or two hardware screens?), but in case you meant the latter, there is only one screen.

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Oculus+Rift+Teardown/13682

ckaygusu• 12 years ago

Can you provide some insights on what made you think like that? I, too, had this bad feeling when Zuck made the announcement but other than Facebook and Oculus VR doing business on practically unrelated areas there is nothing to be pessimistic about it, especially Facebook's track record of buyout aftermaths, which mostly they let people do their own things.

omarhegazy• 12 years ago

Oh my God I thought these bullshit cries of doom stopped. It's such a simple matter of business. If Oculus did that, no one would by a Rift. That would be bad for Oculus, Facebook, and consumers. The much more likely thing to result from the Facebook buyout is they use their $2B to build a better product and market it better to compete against new behemoths butting in the VR marketplace like Sony and others that are surely about to jump on the bandwagon. That would be good for the consumers, and thusly good for Oculus and Facebook. There are literally zero good reasons Facebook would ram down tacky social media bullshit onto the Rift. That's bad design, bad business, and no one would like it.

Isn't rabid Facebook hating getting old now?

Karunamon• 12 years ago

Not on this site, unfortunately. I expect HN to be as even-handed on Facebook as Republicans are on Democrats.

joeevans2• 12 years ago

I think characterizing discussion of the effects of facebook on oculus as 'Facebook hating' is a pretty cheap dodge of a significant event. A lot of the strategy changes people are making around the facebook purchase are legitimate ones based on reasonable observations of facebook. It's a terrible thing for those of us who were really excited about oculus for so long, but things changed and a reasonable discussion is going to happen.

I think that the argument that facebook adding "tacky social media" components to oculus would be bad for business is incorrect. Facebook has done quite well with the model, as their company shows.

For many of us, we realize that facebook will likely succeed with oculus in some way. It will just be a different kind of party than we want to go to, is all.

joeevans2• 12 years ago

That must suck so bad for these designers... one day you're a hot industrial designer, and the next you're working for facebook.

You can make the best designs ever, but if there is just suck inside, your design sucks in a way too.

balls187• 12 years ago

So Carbon Design is now the Occulus Bellevue office, or did Occulus already have an office there?

mdturnerphys2• 12 years ago

Carbon is in North Seattle next to UW. Oculus was already building up an R&D team in Redmond.

whence• 12 years ago

Why is it said that Oculus acquired them, instead of Facebook? Doesn't Oculus not really exist anymore (as a company)?

devindotcom• 12 years ago

Since they operate independently and likely have their own cash pile for stuff like this, the legal entity making the purchase is actually Oculus. Same with like Nest/Google AFAIK.

serf2• 12 years ago

I wondered the same thing about Nest/Google the other day.

It could also be an abstraction on the part of Google/Facebook to hide their associations with the brand, to avoid brand reputation damage of some sort.

ooorrr• 12 years ago

Great for Carbon. The situation for hardware design firms (right now, and often) is brutal - the degree of difficulty to consistently book enough new work to keep your talented team members employed is incredibly high, and more companies are moving this work in-house.

There are a number of these firms in the Seattle area, and all of them are struggling. Acquisition is often preferable to closing your doors, which could well be what happens to others.

mdturnerphys2• 12 years ago

Can I ask what your connection to the industry is?

modeless3• 12 years ago

An Oculus controller to go with the headset is looking more and more likely. I'm guessing that it will be similar to the PlayStation Move controller but with infrared instead of visible light tracking. They're already doing infrared tracking for the headset, so it would be easy to track a couple of controllers as well.

wlesieutre• 12 years ago

Not necessarily. Most people are going have the headset hooked up at a desk because that's where the computer lives, so you'd need a really big field of view to see hands while seated up close to the desk. My webcam sees my face reliably, but it definitely doesn't see my hands.

Additionally, controllers that you wave around don't do well with blindness to your surroundings. If they make a controller I'd expect it to be more similar to Razer's Hydra, though hopefully cheaper.

modeless3• 12 years ago

If they were going to do a magnetically tracked controller like the Razer Hydra they would have bought Sixense by now, or at least partnered with them. I'm pretty sure they're not going to do that. They want sub-millimeter absolute tracking accuracy and magnetic tracking can't deliver that.

msie4• 12 years ago

I hope not, everybody's doing that. They should make affordable VR gloves.

modeless3• 12 years ago

Gloves are a possibility, but pure gesture input just doesn't work (as repeatedly demonstrated with Wii, Kinect, and Leap Motion). Whatever they release, it needs to have at least a few buttons and probably an analog stick or two.

thenomad• 12 years ago

Someone's already on it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/controlvr/control-vr-mo...

shahar2k• 12 years ago

since the oculus already tracks its own position in space, a controller would really only need to know position relative to the headset, something like a front / down facing Leap motion (with minimal lag?) could do wonders for VR presence

msie4• 12 years ago

I hope they make affordable VR gloves.

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

How does Oculus acquire anything at this point. Don't they mean Facebook acquires Carbon?

jfoster2• 12 years ago

Yeah, although the scope of the acquisition is currently limited to the scope of Oculus ("operating independently") within Facebook. I've also seen announcements regarding PayPal acquiring companies even though PayPal is a subsidiary of eBay Inc.

citrik• 12 years ago

If Oculus is into acquisitions, it'd be cool to see them acquire Oblong, to add some UI & interaction technology.

notastartup• 12 years ago

I wonder if tactile VR gloves will be reality soon. I'd imagine that there will be some tiny nano linings inside the glove that could be controlled digitally, which would create a tactile sensation, such as holding a gun or a steering wheel.

Moving on from just hand gloves, we could even produce g-force enducing hydraulic chair, for example, when a car accelerates inside the game, the chair would lean you back, causing you to feel gravity pulling you back to the ground, when inside the game, it would feel like you were being thrust backwards to your seats.

DigitalSea• 12 years ago

I think it is pretty safe to assume they're working on hardware to compliment the Oculus headset; gloves, a controller and or other accessories perhaps a full body suit comprised of sensors to map body movement.

I am well and truly excited for the future of virtual reality, Oculus are definitely at the forefront of greatness here.

Oculus to Acquire Carbon Design Team

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