Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, June 16

• Good VR is great — and bad VR is abysmal: VR is a powerful medium, but difficult to work with — because the developer is put in the position of creating a sense of self and presence, more is required of them, and while successes are almost impossible to describe properly, failures are conspicuous and easily dissected. It’s easiest to illustrate with actual examples. Easily the most interesting VR experience I’ve had at E3 (of a dozen or so) was an Oculus demo called “The Climb,” by a team at Crytek. Using the Touch controllers (a new innovation; previously a gamepad was used), you manipulate a pair of disembodied hands, gripping ridges and cracks to make your way up a cliff face. Like many VR games, it sounds rather… boring. In fact, it’s genius, but only within VR — and like so many other games, the only way to find that out is to play it. Nevertheless, It’s excellent for several reasons, and these act as sort of guidelines for content that fits VR’s strengths and avoid its weaknesses. Alas, I was disappointed by “Final Fantasy XV: The VR Experience,” despite being hyped for the game itself. Here, I found, was the worst possible outcome: a game that should and could be interesting, but does almost nothing right. Unlike “The Climb,” it sounds like a blast on paper. You and the other main characters from the game are in a battle with a Behemoth, one of the game’s most well-known monsters. You’re Prompto, the one who has a gun, supporting your buddies as they fight hand to hand. What it amounts to, however, and I’m heartily sorry to say it, is a disjointed and boring five minutes that may leave you less excited for the game than when you donned the headset.

• What are leveraged loans and why does Uber want one? Uber, fresh off $3.5 billion from the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, is in talks to closeanother $1-2 billion in the form of leveraged loans. Over the last 24 hours, the term “leveraged loans” has been thrown around a lot, but few in the startup world have seen this term before.The Wall Street Journal reported that the company would like to settle on a 4-4.5 percent interest rate. This appears ambitious but let’s assume that it is accurate. While not completely applicable, Apple issued $12 billion in bonds at a 3.22 percent blended interest rate excluding floating rate debt. Yes, 4.5 percent is greater than 3.22 percent but junk bond references by the Wall Street Journal and Recode should be taken lightly. Junk bonds can generate upwards of 7 percent interest. Plenty of well-known publicly traded companies have issued bonds at rates higher than 4.5 percent and survived to fight another day. Yes, both leveraged loans and junk bonds have higher-than-normal interest rates. Unlike junk bonds, a 4-4.5 percent interest rate for Uber shouldn’t invoke images of the subprime mortgage crisis.

• SpaceX’s latest rocket landing ended in a ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’: Elon Musk's SpaceX failed to complete what would have been its fifth landing of a reusable booster rocket Wednesday, a down note on what appeared to be an otherwise successful mission to deliver two Boeing-built communication satellites to high orbit above the Earth. "Falcon 9 was lost in this attempt," the company said in its webcast. As the satellites headed on their way Wednesday, the booster rocket began its descent toward the ocean for a landing on a special floating platform. Video footage of the attempt seemed to show the booster touching down, then flames, before the picture froze.As with previous attempts, SpaceX had said landing the reusable booster rocket would be made more difficult by the fact that it would be falling from higher up. And, the company said, the rocket would have less fuel than normal to control its descent. SpaceX founder Elon Musk later tweeted that it appeared the the thrust in one of three landing engines was insufficient, causing the rocket to come in far too fast. In what he said may have been SpaceX's "hardest impact" ever, the booster ultimately suffered an RUD, or "rapid unscheduled disassembly." Upgrades to compensate for the problem could come by year's end, said Musk.