Virtual Reality

That guy is using this as a soap box to promote a pretty popular view in economics that got dealt a blow by the investment portions of the new laws (I'm kind of hazy here, I haven't been keeping up completely on it--so take this with a grain of salt in terms of the legal side.) Essentially, many economists want Crowd Funding to turn into a way for people to make crowd based loans; complete with returns on investment in the face of profits--like a bank does (Or, I should say, more like an investment house does--since the dollars being competed over here are mostly retirement funds). Except, unlike a funds manager/investment bank, the person can target where their loan goesdirectly; and this has a HUGE amount of positives.

The biggest being that it's not a small handful of people in control of the capital, but a diverse and autonomous group of people who have a DIRECT connection to the capital--which means they assume personal risk and have different rationalities in terms of long and short term gains. (Some of the bigger investment houses are so warped in terms of risk it's almost comical) The next benefit being that it allows an automatic risk diffusion by keeping the loans small, and lastly, it will theoretically allow a high degree of adaptability and liquidity in capital (For the same reason why Capitalism works, with autonomous, individual decisions, adaptation is much faster---again, theoretically...It's bringing the "free market" to finance).

I'm not sure if I'm sold on all the above, there are problems with it all (One being that the due diligence, like verifying accounting statements and credit reliability, would fall on the crowd source company ect and a host of other things)....but one thing I think would be really good, is investment houses having competition for their investment dollars--and making it so there is a direct connection between people who own the "money" (Investors) and people who need it--without someone in the middle (Finance controllers) who benefit just in the short term. Usually in most markets, having smaller, more efficient and direct actor to actor connections increases efficiency; I think if that could work here.

Anyway, the problem is that this would all require regulatory framework. For the same reason banks need all kinds of legal protections--this new form of finance would need them as well. By the government walking back from that regulatory framework, it was seen as a kind of lampoon in this new kind of finance. Which not only screws the new age "investor" (By not giving him returns) but also reduces the amount of money that would flow into this from younger investors--and we're talking HUGE sums of money; the world bank estimates that if this was actually a serious investment, and even if people only diverted 1% of their portfolios "for fun", it would be a 100billiondollar industry (Right now it's over 3 billion)

That's a ton of investment competition for current institutions. And, maybe more importantly, it allows easier access to capital for a lot of people that wouldn't otherwise have it, because the risk from a centralized capital controller (Bank, Venture Capitalist) is too high but from an individual it can be low. In other words, one bank lending 50k the bank has to do a huge amount of due diligence and often the returns can't compete with more ventures that are seen as better short term gains when you have that much capital (Even if they are riskier long term). However, someone with 50$, who is promised X back if things work out? It's a different story, it's a whole new set of rationalities and it can make capital "liquid" in places where it wasn't before.

Again, I could make a ton of counter points to the above, so take it how you will--I'm not saying the points are correct (And the explanations are super short, it's a ton more complex than that). But that's why the guy is pissy, because he's probably one of the people that sees this as a market that's being squandered due to government not playing it's role. But as someone commented earlier,the regulatory set back has nothing to do with this. He's being disingenuous by associating it (The whole article is more of a "this is the tip of the iceberg!")

Michael Abrash leaves Valve to join Oculus

Abrash is another very smart guy, but this means that Valve is probably a little less likely to produce their own production VR kit. The FB hate is overblown, but it's hard to think that FB won't be completely hands off as time passes.

As a septic, I have some questions for the optimists. I am a septic about the technology and about the content, but for today let's just focus on usability. Three questions:

1) Multi-tasking: I don't know about you, but it is extremely rare these days that I play a game and do nothing else. Maybe I am alt-tabing now and then to read rerolled or a FAQ, maybe I have a laptop running with a sport feed on, maybe I am playing with a buddy a single player game and we chat as we play, etc. It seems to me all of this goes out of the window with a VR helmet. Isn't that a problem or am I the only one multi-tasking when gaming?

2) Comfort: People bitch and moan about having to wear glasses to see 3D movies, be it at the theater or at home. How long do you think you can play with a VR helmet before wanting to stop simply for comfort reasons?

3) Heart attack: I often play with headphones. When I do and someone walks up to me and makes their presence felt I am often surprised. Add a VR helmet to the situation: how can I avoid a heart attack?

Don't take my 3) so literally! I used heart attack for the hyperbole, but my question really is: how do they propose to allow the real world to contact the VR player without it being a shock? A 'dinner time' remote? Using the motion tracking camera to warn the VR player when something else than him moves or makes noise?

PS: I obviously am a rotten skeptic!

I suppose the headset could include a forward looking cam to overlay that image onto the display on command.