The Oculus Rift has some sketchy stuff in its Terms of Service. Right now, a member of the Congress is asking the company to explain some of the items in that list. Senator Al-Franken (D-Minnesota) who sits on the Senate Privacy and Technology Subcommittee wrote a letter to the Facebook-owned company and further asked them to provide more information on the Oculus Rift and how it is addressing issues of privacy and safety.
The entire letter can be read on Franken’s website. There you will see how he highlights the automatic collection of location data, physical movements and dimensions, the manner in which data is stored and also the relationship between Oculus and its partner companies.
He also wanted to know about the protection in place in order to safeguard customer information. He further asked for a response by the middle of May and it will be quite interesting to see what the company has to offer in return.
With PlayStation VR, HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, it is certainly impossible to avoid any console wars. The Oculus and Vive have already been released but when they will make their way into homes that ordered them, is another story entirely. Sadly, there’s no point discussing the potential ordering and shipping issues.
You can pre-order these devices and that’s that. However, in spite of the fact that these systems have been released for only a week now, there are fanboy communities forming around each of these devices. They formed quite some time ago in reality but people are now gearing up for war in various places like subreddits, forums and comments on numerous VR articles scattered all around the internet.
It seems like Oculus Rift vs. HTC Vive will be as disturbing and pointless as Xbox vs. PlayStation, Android vs. IOS, Windows vs. Apple, and much more. Almost forgot to mention Batman vs. Superman and the upcoming Team Captain America vs. Team Iron Man.
This is definitely the year of rivalries. Meanwhile, the VR war has somehow disappointed many journalists who are covering the Virtual Reality topic. It has also disturbed the companies themselves, who never expressed any hostility towards their rivals, so far.
Everyone is gunning for the common goal of getting VR mass-adopted and the present state is that of love, peace and harmony. If one platform makes progress, they all end up making progress. VR is quite new and has massive challenges ahead of it. Therefore, an approach like this is entirely satisfactory.
There is no purpose in fighting which will do nothing else but handicap the long-term goals. However, fighting, fanboys, brutal comparison are things mankind will never tend to avoid. If people were really that mature, we would have seen Atari, Nintendo and Sega fans, all being polite and understanding, decades back. The simple fact remains that VR is so expensive that if a single person does manage to purchase it, they will only buy one set.
The Rift is available at $600, the Vive is $800 and PSVR could be around $400. Keep in mind that these are quite expensive and normally, it will not be possible for a single person to buy two of them or all three.
Therefore, after buying such an expensive device, the user will definitely start rooting for it. If you spend pots of money on the Oculus Rift, you will start valuing Facebook in the hopes that Rift emerges the winner in VR Wars. At the same time, if you spent a lot of money Vive-proofing your room, you will probably start judging lesser VR experiences, offered by PlayStation VR or the Rift.