See the important article HERE regarding lawsuit and potential blocking of key Occulus code.

 

Guess I shoulda bought the HTC Vive. This sickens me. Next Zenimax will sue HTC too I imagine, as they are another patent troll. Were is the Zenimax  hardware?  You know the part that actually makes it all come together? Hint: There is none because they are scumbags that want to make their money by suing people.

I will put Or on hold, glad I am using my cell phone with Riftcat for now.

 

 

I heard about this too but I wonder what exactly this could mean to those of us already using an Oculus Rift headset in P3D with the FlyInside software.

Guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.

On 26 February 2017 at 2:22 AM, Slayer said:

Guess I shoulda bought the HTC Vive. This sickens me. Next Zenimax will sue HTC too I imagine, as they are another patent troll. Were is the Zenimax  hardware?  You know the part that actually makes it all come together? Hint: There is none because they are scumbags that want to make their money by suing people.

Whether or not ZeniMax has hardware is irrelevant. Using another company's code without permission is against the law. As the article said, "In its verdict, the court did agree that ZeniMax code was infringed upon, though it stopped short of saying that trade secrets had been stolen." Sounds as though there was definitely a case to answer against Oculus.

But the case legally probably has gone about as far as it can go. Pretty much every legal person who has chosen to chime in says that an Injunction would be much, much harder to justify and is highly likely to be rejected.

Seems to be ZeniMax essentially going the extra mile and throwing everything including the kitchen sink at the wall, just in case they get lucky and something sticks.

As far as I can tell, this whole thing seems to essentially be a shakedown to rattle some bucks out of the money tree known as Facebook. In the unlikely event they were to be granted an injunction, (which seems very unlikely) Facebook would likely be forced to settle and pony up more moola or, alternately, go through the expensive process of redesigning the relevant parts of their software, probably with a "blind team" of  programmers locked in a room somewhere and working from scratch to avoid anything claimed by ZeniMax.

The worst outcome would probably be if Zenimax won completely, since then there's the possibility they could claim infringement for this and that from the entire VR industry, which would either lead to a cushy cash-sucking future for Zenimax, a collapse of the entire VR industry, or a significant slowdown and retrenchment that would possibly delay the introduction of consumer virtual reality for years.

Take your pick.

The big winners might be foreign VR companies, who could jump in to fill the gap and end up swallowing the entire concept of VR right out of its current largely American hands.

 

2 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

But the case legally probably has gone about as far as it can go. Pretty much every legal person who has chosen to chime in says that an Injunction would be much, much harder to justify and is highly likely to be rejected.

Seems to be ZeniMax essentially going the extra mile and throwing everything including the kitchen sink at the wall, just in case they get lucky and something sticks.

 

I agree. A more reasonable approach would probably be to give ZeniMax royalties for every Oculus headset sold (which could well end up being significantly less than the $500 million that they've been awarded).

It's too easy to call a small company money-grabbing but when they see someone making big money from something which was essentially stolen from them you can understand the anger.

But do you guys think that we (current owners of Oculus hardware) could end up in a situation where our hardware will no longer work?

If there's even a slim chance that might happen leaving me with hardware I can no longer use and roughly $1000 down the drain with the Touch controllers I wouldn't be particularly happy...

Fact is I have until tomorrow to decide if I should keep my glasses or not so better try to find some answers here real quick.

I don't own a Rift, but I wouldn't be too concerned about the lawsuit. The Apple-Samsung fiasco has been going on for years and people still are buying iPhones. Facebook as deep pockets.

On the other hand, this article in the NY Times might be something else to worry about:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/26/business/sony-playstation-vr-sales.html

Sony's Playstation VR headset is selling like crazy, even surprising the Sony brass. Sony has sold 915,000 of them so far as opposed to 243,000 Oculus Rift headsets and 420,000 HTC Vive headsets sold by the end of last year. The reasons? The Sony unit is less expensive and is mated to the PS4, which is a common console. As soon as more VR games are issued for the PS4, the number of units sold will probably accelerate.  I almost bought one of these Sony VR headsets, but then I tried it out and was disappointed with the resolution. I liked it better than the Rift, which I also tested.  The article also mentions another VR shortcoming, the lack of viable controllers that match game playing skills. I suspect Sony will attack that issue also.

Anyway, the more the console VR market grows, the more it will compete with the PC market.

 

Found this thread over at Oculus own forums and like you say I don't think there's much to worry about when it comes to this ZeniMax vs Oculus lawsuit.

https://forums.oculus.com/community/discussion/50107/zenimax-could-turn-our-headsets-into-paper-weights-refund#latest

Interesting what you mention about PlayStation VR and I guess it's only natural both the console as well as the PC market need to show they are on the VR train in order to be able to carry on the battle between consoles and PC's that has also lasted for as long as I can remember.

My touch controllers are scheduled to arrive tomorrow. 

16 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

My touch controllers are scheduled to arrive tomorrow. 

Be sure to check out Google Earth VR on Steam using the fake Vive fix when you get them.

So cool :D

4 hours ago, WebMaximus said:

the battle between consoles and PC's

Not to mention the VR headsets that work with smartphones. There are only so many technology companies with the wherewithal to develop new VR hardware, as is evidenced by this summary:

http://heavy.com/tech/2015/07/best-vr-virtual-reality-headset-glasses-goggles-oculus-rift-specs-review/

The first platform that can produce a cost-effective higher resolution headset will reap the rewards.

5 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

I don't own a Rift, but I wouldn't be too concerned about the lawsuit. The Apple-Samsung fiasco has been going on for years and people still are buying iPhones. Facebook as deep pockets.

On the other hand, this article in the NY Times might be something else to worry about:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/26/business/sony-playstation-vr-sales.html

Sony's Playstation VR headset is selling like crazy, even surprising the Sony brass. Sony has sold 915,000 of them so far as opposed to 243,000 Oculus Rift headsets and 420,000 HTC Vive headsets sold by the end of last year. The reasons? The Sony unit is less expensive and is mated to the PS4, which is a common console. As soon as more VR games are issued for the PS4, the number of units sold will probably accelerate.  I almost bought one of these Sony VR headsets, but then I tried it out and was disappointed with the resolution. I liked it better than the Rift, which I also tested.  The article also mentions another VR shortcoming, the lack of viable controllers that match game playing skills. I suspect Sony will attack that issue also.

Anyway, the more the console VR market grows, the more it will compete with the PC market.

 

Uhm.. ok, so..?

 

it's not like you'll see any of the major sims we use on playstation any time soon...

So? My point is that VR  hardware and software developers will follow the money. If the PC is the platform with that breakthrough headset, it will be the winner and so will flight simmers. If a console like the PS4 monopolizes all the killer VR apps, the PC platform  will be a virtual  backwater.