The premise: We've had three interface transformations - text (1970s), GUI (1984), touch (2007). The fourth is AR glasses with AI. Ten years from now, the smartphone won't be the center of your digital life. Glasses will.
I backed the Oculus Rift in 2012. Got Glass in 2014. Walked around Yarkon Park with it during morning stroller walks with my son. Awkward. Not very useful. The Oculus sits mostly unused - hard to disconnect from the surroundings, from what's going on at home, even for games.
Still believe in the trajectory. When the form factor is regular glasses, it'll work. Then contact lenses. Then direct brain interface.
I backed the Kickstarter in August 2012. $300 for an early dev kit and Doom 3 BFG. A kid in his garage, Carmack's endorsement, the promise of real VR after decades of failed attempts.
Now it's Facebook's.
The internet is furious. Notch canceled Minecraft support: "Facebook creeps me out". Kickstarter backers feel betrayed. I get it. We funded an indie hardware project, not a Facebook subsidiary.
But here's the thing: VR is hard. Really hard. The DK2 they just announced at GDC looks incredible, but getting from dev kit to consumer product requires serious capital. Facebook has serious capital. A billion for Instagram two years ago. Two billion for this.
Zuckerberg says VR is "the next major computing platform". Maybe. The form factor isn't there yet. Neither is anything else. No apps, no ecosystem, no way to actually be with someone in VR and have it feel real.
My DK1 sits mostly unused. Hard to strap a brick to your face when you have a family. But the trajectory is clear.
The question isn't whether VR will matter. It's whether Facebook is the right home.
I don't know. I do know Palmer Luckey gets to keep building. That's worth something.
[Update: December 2016]
In January, Oculus announced that all Kickstarter backers who pledged for a dev kit would get a free consumer Rift. I'd ordered a DK2 after the acquisition. Never unboxed it. But the free Rift arrived this summer.
The kids are intrigued, but we don't know enough about how it affects the developing brain, so best assume it's unsafe. I still can't justify strapping a brick to my face when there's life happening around me. But watching Barak experience it for the first time? Worth every mass-manufactured Facebook dollar.
I still haven't had a chance to really enjoy the Oculus Rift so far, simply due to lack of time. I've heard a lot of games already have support for it (can't wait to try Half-Life 2).
However, the coolest thing I've experienced with the Rift so far is a hack developed by Luca Siciliano that puts you inside a Google Street View scene (GitHub repository).
To experience it, you have to run a small piece of code that takes the Rift sensors data and streams it to a WebSocket, and then browse to oculusstreetview.eu.pn
