The "scale" JC is referring to is not hardware production. It's the virtual reality. Millions of people interacting in real time in a virtual universe in which they are actually present.

Think of it as similar to the scaling challenges of MMORPGs. Only much worse.

I don't think that's true. There is no scaling involved with virtual reality except the hardware, because the hardware enables the platform. "Virtual reality" isn't a single application, it's a bunch of applications created by developers.

No, it is factually true. JC on Twitter: "I have a deep respect for the technical scale that FB operates at. The cyberspace we want for VR will be at this scale."

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448631430533246976

If Oculus's plan all along was to create a giant MMO powered by Rift headsets, then this is the first I've heard of it. Interesting. I think a bunch of smaller apps created by developers has a better chance of being successful.

EDIT: By "giant MMO" I mean "metaverse from Snowcrash," not "video game."

Well, Carmack has always wanted to create the metaverse. And the Oculus founder has wanted that too. It seems this acquisition might be the best for their plans, if Zuck is on board with it.

Well Second Life is instructive here, I felt they ran into scaling problems. You could also consider Eve's non-sharded world - OK Eve is a game, but a sufficiently complex and elaborate one as to be a good proxy for an immersive virtual environment.

I don't know exactly what Oculus's plan was but it'd be foolish to ignore this obvious application, and that certainly seems to be where Mark Zuckerberg sees the value in it, if we are to take his speech on the conference call at face value.

After thinking about this some more, I think it's going to come down to: "Can they make their Metaverse cool?"

Zuck probably has some tricks up his sleeve to accomplish this goal. And he's been able to learn from G+ about how not to go about it.

Whether the Metaverse is cool will make or break its popularity. It's what made Facebook's.

The coming years are going to be pretty interesting.

Eve is also a sharded world, the system there just tries to implement transitions are transparent. The abstraction leaks sometimes, though. (Each system in Eve is a shard, and when events in that game happen 'at scale', scaling issues abound.)

Don't forget that facebook has an app platform. Even if personally I find all the apps loathsome the experience is relevant.

Floating avatar heads doesn't seem to be the future of VR. Personally, I hope the metaverse has users strapped into a cockpit.

That's what I understood as well. But I thought OculusVR was making a VR headset, not VR content.

Since when was OculusVR supposed to build the metaverse? I thought they only wanted to build the tools to access it.

Actually, I think the "scaling" is the money to hire the staff they'll need to improve their technology, in this time before they have a chance at a sufficient revenue stream to bootstrap.

Facebook-type users are a decade or more away from VR. They don't "do" fiddly interfaces and rough edges. Even if the hardware was there, the usability isn't.

Exactly, not unlike the reason why Nest found it ok to get bought by Google.

And not unlike Facebook/Oculus, Google/Nest makes perfect sense from the Nest side and very little from the Google side.

In both cases there are potentially large payoffs in the long term. But they're extremely high price tags for decade-plus plays in which the acquired company has little to no particular proprietary technological edge.

Nest makes perfect sense for Google. It's all about automation.

Ok. But how much realtime stuff has Facebook done? (IM doesn't count.) Do they have any credible experience with anything more specifically relevant than just running large data centers?

What kind of credentials do you need other than "large data centers" the scale of Facebook? IM doesn't count - so what does?

And PHP... infinite cred for scaling PHP.

What do you think is hard about that? PHP does everything you want for scalability, up until people force in second-system PHP frameworks that load and configure themselves on every new request.

Now, that old LAMP Apache+mpm_worker setup, that one was bad.

If they can get MySQL to scale in those data centers, I am sure they can attach a tv helmet to a large population. I still think Sony will come out on top though, they know this business better and have the battle scars with Microsoft.

Why does it matter, scaling realtime is just like any other programming related challenge. It doesn't take doctorate degrees, just a team of programmers who are willing to learn about the problem area.

It is both; FB makes a shit-ton of HW with their open-cmpute platform....

They have a lot of XP in building real physical shit these days.

Scaling traffic is a non-issue for them.

A consumer product like the Rift is an entirely different proposition with an entirely different set of challenges. The Open Compute project was essentially Facebook giving away some of their data center designs and specifications (mostly things like server racks and power management), with a few other companies joining the initiative but with none of the designs actually being used on a significant scale.

Also worth noting, the head of OCP left Facebook today. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2111680/open-compute-project-...

There are some other items that FB makes, which are not in the OCP though... such as the super dense fiber switch...

My point is that they are not strangers to manufacturing tech...

How much experience do they have marketing that tech? I've never heard of someone selling a Facebook-brand router. The few times I've heard of FB involved in an actual product, it tanked or disappeared, never to be spoken of again.

Facebook phone, anyone?

There's a world of difference between a potential item, like the FB phone and an actual, demonstrated item, like the Oculus Rift, so they might get some points there.

But their record ATM is non-existent, AFAIK.

And why would this be so much harder to scale than just normal MMORPG physics, which it is? The headset just lets you look at the rendering in a new way.

Second Life?

Facebook has the buying power to put together a solid hardware production team. I don't think Google has much internal hardware production knowledge right now, aside from the knowledge they bought when they acquired Motorola. Before that, they mostly made things through hardware partners like HTC, Samsung, and LG. I think they produce the Chromecast internally, but it's not much fancier than a USB stick. I'm sure they are quickly learning, but Facebook is also already buying up hardware companies and they have been building their own custom servers for internal use for years.

> Facebook has the buying power to put together a solid hardware production team.

Well I have worked in companies making physical goods (shipping millions every year), and you just don't buy a team from one day to another. It's not just about production, it's about supply chain, it's about quality management and quality assurance, regulations for sale in different countries/states, market research, product qualification to improve the design, actual customer support, vendors, distribution, etc...

It's a whole new area of skills/functions you don't have, and that does not mix very well with a software-only company mentality. I think it's going to be very tough for them to make something solid with Facebook.

EDIT: They would have been better prepared for scaling with a company like Apple (whose main business is already making hardware), Microsoft or Google for that matter. Many people say Valve could have been a good choice, but Valve has said several times they don't want to go into the hardware business (and won't make Steam boxes themselves).

I think the idea is that Oculus VR is already in this position, they just don't have the monetary resources that Facebook does.

Facebook doesn't build their own servers. They outsource to Quanta and Sanmina. Quanta is the hardware OEM and Sanmina handles the racking, configuration and testing. Facebook provides rack specs and the Linux image. Facebook tried to design their own servers via the Open Compute Project but they ran into heat dissipation problems. Sanmina's Newisys division (which makes dense storage arrays using by places like Amazon & Shutterfly) helped solve their problems.

The point is that, while Facebook may be able to do hardware, servers is not a good example.

Disclosure: my team at Sanmina has been responsible for delivering the test automation & integration software for the rack assembly & test operation for Facebook.

For that matter, Google itself doesn't build anything at scale, either. Why would they? They outsource all their high-vol manufacturing to the same EMS companies everyone else uses (Quanta, Compal, Foxconn, Flextronics, Sanmina, Celestica, Jabil, Pegatron, Benchmark, Plexus and a handful of others).

Google builds their own servers, since at least 2005 - http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/google-uncloaks-once-secret-serv... and builds it's own switches, owns an ARM chip design company and "may be" building custom server chips - http://gigaom.com/2013/12/12/google-may-be-making-its-own-cu...

You're leaving out Glass, Fiber, Nest, Chromebook, and the 8 robotics companies they just acquired, among other things.

Of those, only Nest designs and builds consumer electronics at scale.

"builds consumer electronics at scale."

Made in China, as far as I can find out. They don't make hardware any more than Apple does.