Did Facebook Buy Virtual Reality Too Soon?

Did Facebook Buy Virtual Reality Too Soon?

By NICK BILTON

I wasn’t in the room when Mark Zuckerberg tried on the Oculus Rift virtual reality goggles for the first time, but if it was anythinglike my experience, I’m pretty sure I can guess how he reacted.

Some months ago, I was sitting in a stuffy hotel conference room in Los Angeles when I slipped the goggles over my face. My jaw dropped, and my heart began to pound. I let out a gasp as I said, “Wow! This is amazing!”

Everyone I’ve spoken with who has tried Oculus went through the same experience. The jaw drop. The heart flutter. The “Wow!”

But even with that level of excitement, some of the people I know who have tried these goggles — including me — still had no desire to go and buy a pair. (I’ll get to why in a minute.)

This all raises the question: Did Facebook buy this technology too soon?

Facebook has mostly been a company that knows when technologies are about to become mainstream. For example, the company waited seven years to introduce hashtags, holding out until the symbol was so widely used that even grandmothers were using them.

Mr. Zuckerberg clearly has an impeccable business sense for not only what’s next, but also what’s next right now. He acquired Instagram at the exact right time, when the cameras in smartphones were just good enough, and photo filters were making people feel more confident about sharing images. He bought WhatsApp when people wanted to text message and chat with friends and family without the fear of added charges from a phone provider. He’s also picked up dozens of smaller start-ups that were created at just the right time.

But I’m not convinced that virtual reality is ready for right now. I’m not even convinced that it’s ready for five years from now.

I’m a gamer (though not a very good one). I play Threes and Dots on my phone. I play Badland and Angry Birds on my iPad. And I play Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty on my Xbox.

But after 10 minutes with the Oculus Rift, I didn’t thirst for more game play, I actually felt a little disoriented. Some people even feel nauseated after using the device.

With virtual reality, this problem is called “simulation sickness,” and it can occur because your brain and your body are confused by what you’re seeing — which is movement — while you’re not really moving.

Brendan Iribe, the chief executive of Oculus VR, explained at the time what this was. “On a boat, your inner ear is feeling movement, but your visual is not moving, which is sea sickness,” he said. “Simulator sickness is the opposite. You put on the goggles and you’re sitting down, still, but your visual cues are getting a different set of signals than your inner ear.”

Oculus VR technicians say they believe they have solved this problem by creating a virtual experience that is indistinguishable from reality. But it’s a huge leap from prototypes in a game-makers lab to a mainstream product my sister wants to wear to go on Facebook.

Even when these technological problems are solved, it’s still unclear if gamers want that level of reality. As I wrote in a column about Oculus VR last year, do we really want to see someone ripped limb from limb in a gaming experience that is indistinguishable from real life? Can our feeble, squeamish brains even handle that much reality?

On Facebook, the same question applies to the mundane. Just because we can plod through a cousin’s vacation photos, or sit through a video of your parents’ family album from that trip to Turks and Caicos, doesn’t mean we want to do that. (That experience might make you wish you were being ripped limb from limb.)

Facebook was willing to put $2 billion on a bet that we do.

Mr. Zuckerberg did acknowledge that the acquisition of Oculus VR was a moonshot into the future, and that he was “getting ready for the platform of tomorrow.” But the reality of tomorrow might be a lot further away than he thinks. And when it arrives, we may not want it to be virtual.