The VR thread

[YellerDog]

That looks like the platonic ideal of sixteen bit FPS games. Neat!

[Frogacuda]

That was the really cool thing about the Hololens. You just walk around the house seeing shit everywhere and interacting with it. There was this detective game that puts things you have to find around the house.

Yeah, that tech is going to get there, but it's further out than VR. I think we're probably a good 5 years from a compelling mainstream AR product. VR is more or less just waiting on the price point to drop (and more people to have VR-capable hardware).

[Error]

Occulus loses a lawsuit, and $500 Million

http://kotaku.com/jury-awards-zenima...-la-1791885215

[James]

Remember when id sold itself to Zenimax and was no longer its own independent company, leaving behind the days it could write its own rules about what its founders could work on and when? Good times.

The article also says Zenimax is going for an injunction against Rift sales. The line "We will consider what further steps we need to take to ensure there will be no ongoing use of our misappropriated technology." is particularly good. Zenimax is assholes, but assholes with legal standing. They didn't want the tech, had no interest in using the tech, and didn't want their employees working on the tech. But Carmack worked for them while also working on this, so it's Zenimax technology.

[Diff-chan]

Yea Carmack fucked up.

[kedawa]

The actual judgement is $300M against Oculus, $50M against Palmer Luckey, and $150M against Brendan Iribe.
That's fucking crazy.

[Frogacuda]

The actual judgement is $300M against Oculus, $50M against Palmer Luckey, and $150M against Brendan Iribe.
That's fucking crazy.

The $200M between Luckey and Iribe was for violation of NDAs signed while collaborating with Carmack. Only $50M of the total judgement was for copyright infringement (which seems like a weak case to me, given that Zenimax doesn't even have the code in question). The rest was for "false designation," related to using of Zenimax trademarks, or claiming affiliation with said products without license. I'd imagine this is due to their promotion of Doom 3: BFG compatibility.

They got off the hook without any putitive damages, misappropriation of trade secrets, most copyright claims, future damages, or stake in Oculus IP, so it could have been a lot worse, to be honest. The false designation and copyright claims are probably worth appealing, though, the former because the award is disproportionate to the value and damages, and the latter because I don't think it was adequately proven.

[Frogacuda]

So apparently the "copyright" part of this claim isn't related to using any copyrighted code, it's literally that under contract everything on Carmack's computer belonged to Zenimax and Carmack copied files off his computer before he left, which was unauthorized.

Also Iribe never signed an NDA but he's apparently being hit because the company Oculus was formed after Palmer's NDA and thus inherited his NDA. Why that belongs to Iribe personally and not Oculus I couldn't say.

[Tain]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMpQWSqQFK0

Great interview with Valve's VR team. Really happy to hear that Valve's three upcoming VR games are "full games" they plan on selling. Apparently using both Unity and Source 2.

[Frogacuda]

I'm skeptical of anything Valve's working on until it has a trailer out. They cancel so many in-development projects.