lt cap,

Personally, I'm very bullish on VR and its applications going forward. At some point, I think it becomes mainstream, kind of like to adoption of 4k which is unfolding, but eventually will become the norm, much like HDTV before it.  Still, a company knows its business best, and licensing out the tech is obviously a low-cost operation that doesn't completely abandon what investment they've put into the technology. INTC did the same thing with its set-top box foray some time ago - they realized it wasn't going to be a money-maker in a crowded field, and sold the entire unit to bag-holder Verizon. I've never heard of a Verizon-labeled set top box since that time, but then again I have no cable TV. 

I think VR will be huge.  However, NOK OZO offering is a very low unit volume product.  There are only so many film production companies that can buy a $60K camera.

VR and AR will indeed be huge, they will provide a tremendous amount of entertainment and also be used to virtualize design.  It will be a tremendous money maker for the software houses. Big margin products.

FB's upcoming Oculus Go sounds improved, and very affordable at $199. It always pays to wait for V2 of things like this.

finance.yahoo.com/ne...8.html

Gamers will love this, they will certainly be first to jump on this. I think FB has finally released a good VR headset that can lend itself to a huge variety of applications.  

I can imagine Zillow providing a VR experience where you can virtually walk around a house/condo using this headset. Car dealership Web Sites giving you a virtaul ride on cars.  Travel Web sites doing virtual tours of cities.  Possibilities are endless.

This is the kind of mass application that NOK should have produced, not a 60K camera.

lt cap/Jester,

Not that it matters much (I hold no Facebook and have no intentions) but I have to wonder that if Facebook is losing money on the Occulus Rift Model @$399/$499, what kind of money are they going to lose on the 'Go' model @$199, given that (I think) they'll need an internal processor to replace the 'usb wired' connection to and reliance upon a PC to power all software operations? Of course, even if they're losing money, the "Microsoft Model" has proved to be a big winner - they subsidized the original Xbox while it bled money until the franchise became a huge revenue gainer when fully mature. And I'd think that software/games sales garner at least a licensing fee if not a revenue sharing model. And like MSFT, FB can finance projects indefinitely.

What I find confusing is, apart from not needing to be attached to a computer for......positional tracking? I can't see how a computer wouldn't be needed to provide streaming content or whatever. Perhaps it connects directly to Wi-Fi? Anyway, not clear to me whether the Santa Vista system they say will be in developers hands next year and provide pc-connection-free 6 degrees of control freedom including above the head is the big improvement over the current Occulus Rift, or what exactly the Go brings to the table aside from an apparently wireless system and a lower price. And what the monniker 'Occulus 4' (or whatever that name was) is, exactly. Perhaps I will get a summary in the coming days from a site like Reddit.

The Rift as now sold comes with 8 games, and the Best Buy version included Eve Online - well reviewed game, $50 if unbundled. Wonder if FB plans for the early-next-year 'Go' system to have software bundled (at the price, I'd be surprised except for rudimentary starter/demo software - there are a number of applications that are already free (Such as Lone Echo online, which is free, but the single-player version, where you learn your chops before looking foolish online) costs $) if really good games came bundled, but there's no way to know how sweet they're going to make the deal.

It sounds like a pretty good deal.  Are you going to buy one?  How about you Jester?

Maybe I'm a dinosaur. Still no intention of doing VR yet. I really need to demo it somewhere to see what it's like.

I guess I must be part of the herd 'cause I agree, can't buy something sight/experience unseen.

Jester,

My local Best Buy says the Occulus demo guy sets up shop on Saturdays. Could be a place to take a look.

lt cap,

I already *almost* joined the ranks of the VR-smitten when I bought an Occulus Rift system from Best Buy a couple of months ago when the price was temporarily dropped to $399, and the Best Buy Bundle (headset, 2 touch controllers, 2 sensors plus a 9th 'Eve Online' game that the other bundles was lacking in the standard 8 game package that came with the bundle. Eve Online is otherwise a $50 piece of software. And I already owned 2 well rated games on Steam - Elite Dangerous (which I've been too fumble-fingered to master as a keyboard and mouse game to get through the tutorial) and Everspace, which I've wasted a lot of hours on so far - pretty cool game, all in all. Both games give you access to their Occulus VR versions simply for owning the 'regular' versions. 

However, I'm slightly loathe to admit publicly that I haven't had the time and focus to set up the Occulus bundle I have - both boxes are still sealed. So this announcement about the Occulus Go has me on the fence - I'd like to be able to compare what, besides glare reduction and a pc free tether the Go will bring - will it be more powerful or less? Will it come with a game bundle or no? 'Tether free' isn't making a whole lot of sense to me as I'd think you'd need the processing power of the CPU and especially GPU of your computer to render games and movies properly, but I could be missing something. 

And it may be that the details of 'Go' are not going to be available until we get closer to launch next year. If I get industrious, I'll probably just keep what I've got. If I still haven't set it up closer to launch, well, maybe I'll think about selling what I've got and get a 'Go.' But it's not of much consequence - I can lose or gain the price differential on very small movements of NOK, and that's a day to day fluctuation. I'll see. The only thing I see to be sold on is the idea of VR as an inevitable coming wave. Just hope when I actually *do* have a setup in place I'm not one of the people that become incurably nauseaus by the sensation, making it a no go for me :-)

;

lt cap,

Agreed - the future is VR in many areas. And NOK's getting out of a limited demand product makes sense - esp. if they recoup some costs by simply licensing the existing tech and letting others do the heavy lifting. 

I continue to be a dumbfounded dope on NVDA - I've watched them climb from $20/sh. to $190, pushing close to 52 week (and probably all-time) highs. They have so many irons in the fire, from consumer/professional videocards to driverless vehicles to competing with INTC and AMD for cloud products that I just don't see caps for their expansion possibilities. And they're well managed. I am still mulling a buy, even at these lofty valuations. The same with Intuitive Surgical (ISRG), which you first pointed out as a bleeding edge tech company. They recently split 3-to-1, but measuring pre-split their rise has been swift and meteoric. Likely the valuations are quite high for both companies, but growth is not a pipe dream. Likewise, still mulling a buy in ISRG.

The one company you brought to my attention where I did make a buy is Palo Alto Networks (PANW) What a ride that has been - as high as $200/sh. as low as $11X hundred-teens, now about $150/sh. I probably just ought to book a small profit and be done - all the software security firms valuations are very high, even given the growth prospects. What stays my hand are those growth prospects - Equifax, Yahoo, etc. etc. breach stories are just going to continue to multiply. As you know, the odds so greatly favor the hackers - in 1,000 attempts, they only have to succeed once. For the security 'gatekeepers' in 1,000 attempts they have to succeed every time. As companies are scared witless by the prospect of being the next Equifax, I think they're open to being marketed without looking too closely at the claims the software co. makes. I'm not real fond of PANW playing fast and loose with their earnings information. They massaged the numbers some time ago to make it look like they were profitable for 8 consecutive quarters when in fact they were losing money. Not a great way to court analysts. But some analysts have upped their recommendations, regardless, and that has been a driver of share price.

I think NVDA and ISRG may be better candidates to invest in. Why I sit with a PANW position sometimes mystifies me :-)

I make the assumption on NOK that the continual mild downdraft (over time, that is) from the $6.50's to below $6 has to do with timetables for 5g being pushed back, midling to poor immediate prospects, and general sector weakness, reflected also in INFN and CIEN, not to mention ERIC. I assume there are no known likelihood of really nasty surprises (Suri flees to become head of ERIC? :-) that is driving this stock continually backwards at the moment.

On the INTC/AMD front, some of my info was apparently mistaken. Altho AMD receives consideration for the 1700 and 1800 lines of Ryzen chips for gaming, they were pretty much already beaten by INTC's Kaby lake 7000's higher end iterations - but at a price premium. Coffee Lake, which widens that gap, and cannabalizes their own Kaby Lake models, is sold out everywhere, with no indications of when they'll again be available. The price increase over Kaby Lake is about $20/chip, for boosts of 25-50% performance. And on the lower-end/mainstream computer chips, Ryzens often get the nod as best-in-class-for-the-price over INTC's offerings. And I do smell a price war in the air. Great to be a consumer these days, the war would not serve either company well.  Besides, INTC's first job will be to re-supply the channel which is currently empty.