This kinda breaks online and also kneecaps some offline apps. Still, if your Quest is just your portal to Virtual Desktop, you'll find this very useful as it removes the worst parts of the Quest as a wireless PCVR headset. Good luck!
Unfortunately, that’s not what the immersed faq says… it says support for new “XR platforms” coming soon. Those platforms could very well be unreleased future oculus headsets…
Sadly, I'm just a secondary source as someone who uses Linux full-time (and thus can't use Virtual Desktop). I'll ask my friend who did this and get back to you if he has any information.
Edit: Wait... Immersed is available for Linux. For someone who doesn't know what all the requirements are for a VR desktop environment, can anyone list them? Assume I'm thinking about buying the Oculus 2 and want to use it with Linux + Immersed.
SteamVR works fine on Linux, but the only wired/lighthouse headset that works well is the Index. Most wired headsets, especially consumer ones, don't bother, so you'll have a hard time with really anything but the Index. As for Quest on Linux, the closest you'll get is with ALVR, which only has experimental builds for Linux. Sadly, it has 2-3x the latency of VD and poor NVIDIA support. I follow their development very closely, though, and it's certainly getting better.
That app is different from the Quest version of Virtual Desktop. The steam version runs on a PC and lets you use your desktop while in VR (on a headset connected to the PC). The quest version runs on the quest (with a paired "streamer" app on the PC) and lets you wirelessly connect to your PC. While connected to your PC through the quest app you can not only view your desktop, but also can play any pc vr game.
The quest app is one of the popular ways to wirelessly connect to a PC and play PCVR experiences. Other ways include Oculus's offical Airlink, and a free open source app called ALVR. Personally, I find Virtual Desktop the best experience out of those, but I think many people prefer Airlink.
if you purchase the steam version instead of the oculus store version, you would need to find another method to connect your Quest to a PC.
I've been wanting to use PCVR for a long time, especially for virtual desktop scenarios, not even just for gaming. But the reality is I will never buy anything that puts money in Facebook's pocket. End of story. I really appreciate the work the developer did on this, but philosophically I see things like this that attempt to break the walled garden as a net-benefit to a bad actor (Facebook) rather than a net-benefit to consumers and users. It's actually better for the world and better for users if they have to make a hard choice about the ethics of their purchases, rather than feeling like they have an "out". So I commend the work, but Oculus is a no-go for anyone who gives any care at all about ethics for SO MANY reasons, Facebook owning it just being the largest (read the origin story for more).
Lucky for you, FB doesn't care about PCVR either. They are clearly all-in on untethered consumer devices. PCVR will remain for the enthusiests with various smaller companies providing more impressive headsets than FB.
I mean, I very successfully did PCVR via 5Ghz wifi to the Quest 2. Alyx in full-res was gorgeous, and about 15ms of render to screen latency. I’m extremely aware of flicker and latency issues, and 95% of the experience was flawless (5% was dropped packets over wifi. It dropped to less than 1% by: hardwiring the PC, staying in the room with the router, and switching all other devices to 2.4Ghz)
HTC Vive Pro, therefore, is a wonderful solution. It's spendy because its properly priced without marketing gimmicks like Uber, Amazon, or FB do to subsidize the price to take over the world. It's the most fun "entertainment" experience of my life.
The team at facebook will be able to show bigger sales, making the next version more likely. You will count as a "oculus quest user" in steam stats etc. Developers will be more likely to support this headset. Etc etc etc. The market is still so small that network effect like these can be huge.
Facebook is selling at a loss in an attempt to destroy the competition and build another monopoly. They don't care if they don't make a profit now, as they will be able to gauge you later.
Luckily, there are laws against monopolies. I don't see what you mean by Facebook currently having a monopoly, because Facebook is not the only social network.
Given the fact one of their main competitors is Valve, I don't think you have to worry about them destroying their competition financially either. Facebook isn't even really competing with them, FB is going for the low end market.
And the judge seems to disagree according to the article you linked. I really just don't see it. Hacker News, Reddit, 4Chan, Discord, youtube and tiktok all are social network that don't belong to Facebook. I can't see how the government will ever win that one. From my point of view Apple and Google are much more monopolies.
Facebook should have never been allowed to buy them. It is really annoying because there is basically no alternative to it if you want a stand alone VR headset.
There are some good news on this front. Recently, ByteDance (owner of TikTok) acquired Pico, Chinese Occulus-style headset. I have their hardware and it's not on the same level as Quest - yet - but getting close. They also have a couple of great solution that Quest was lacking: balancer in the back, eye tracking in newer headsets. I hope now that they have bigger cash stacks, they can spearhead a competition race.
(it also makes sense, as Quest doesn't work in CN due to blocked FB)
They already did.
A lot of companies entered the game, but none of them can sell headsets with such heavy losses as facebook. None of them have successful all-in-one headset which after sometime facebook has learned is the headset type that sells (not everybody has money for 2k pc).
Facebook also sells the Oculus Quest 2 for business. You need to activate it with a workplace.com account, but the headset no longer requires a personal Facebook account to work.
Incidentally, the business version is also twice as expensive and comes with a yearly $180 support subscription. The price of privacy, I suppose.
They make possibly the best overall VR system on the market currently, and it has been the best on the market for almost 2 years now. I've used the quest also, and there is no substitute for the processing power of an actual computer, not to mention ease of future upgrades via the pc.
Don't take away the satisfaction this dev received from accomplishing a big FUCK YOU to the Zuck by releasing this. I'm sure it'll be a cat&mouse type of situation where Oculus will release an update that renders this useless, then these devs will update their end, and on it goes.
Zuck laughs all the way to the bank, the primary objectives of expanding the platform footprint and getting the consumer to pay for it are already achieved
standalone VR is pretty garbage running off a phone graphics card. The quest is only interesting where you connect to PCVR, and then its not standalone.
Have you used the Quest 2? I've owned the original rift dev kit, a vive, a vive pro, and a quest 2.... the stand alone quest 2 experience is actually pretty amazing. I was skeptical, too, but it is quite impressive.
I never compared the quest to a device released 4 years before it, so I guess the question is why you think that's a reply or why being better than a device released 4 years before is an endorsement.
The pixel 4 is better than the original pixel. This shouldn't surprise anyone. Extrapolate.
I wouldn't say the pixel 4 is better. My Pixel XL still works great and has unlimited google photos upload. All pixels afterwards have a time limited google photo upload (photos can only live there for so long before counting against your data limit). My Pixel 3 has been a PoS since I got it and only gotten worse over time. For example after a software update the usb-c port is no longer reversible, it only charges if cable is inserted in specific direction. I hear pixel 4 has similar Quality issues as pixel 3.
>My Pixel XL still works great and has unlimited google photos upload.
Mine does too, although the unlimited photos has nothing to do with the phone but just google services.
>For example after a software update the usb-c port is no longer reversible, it only charges if cable is inserted in specific direction.
I currently have both a Pixel 3 and a Pixel 3a XL in front of me and this isn't true for either phone. Have you tried cleaning out the usb-c port of dust? There might be dirt build up on one side that isn't allowing all the charging pins to engage properly or something. Another issue might be with the cable.
They are probably talking about ZeniMax v. Oculus. ZeniMax owned the company where John Carmack worked. While the original Oculus Rift was being prototyped and later crowdfunded, Carmack was interested in VR and worked on the code/headset to get Doom 3 running on it. He later left to become the Oculus CTO.
Carmack's actions in light of the pattern of Oculus acquiring tech from valve in shady ways can't be seen as anything other than just another guy betraying his former employer for oculus.
A giant stain on his reputation for anyone who can see just how oculus was built.
"valve" is a company made of people. Some people in valve pushed for valve to give away the tech to oculus, and then those same people left valve for oculus. That's not innocent. It's unethical.
Code you write under contract to an employer doesn't belong to you. Someone paid you for that.
1st-gen Rift was co-developed with Valve, and there's a sentimental narrative among gamers that Oculus backhanded Valve by fleeing to FB and becoming a platformer.
It's not that valve co-developed the rift, its that CV1 was exactly the steam sight headset with the CV tracking system and new fresnel lenses.
Valve employees convinced whoever made decisions over there to just give the tech over to oculus without a license or contract, and then those employees jumped ship to facebook/oculus in one of the most egregious unethical backstabs in recent tech memory.
Carmack couldn't convince his employer to give away the work he did, so he just took it with him and somehow was involved in a 'clean room' reimplementation of work he did for someone else. It's part of a pattern of unethical behaviour for the big names in oculus.
You say stand-alone VR is bad, but I (and a bunch of other commentators) say the Quest 2 is actually impressive… but your only replies are that the company is bad.
No one is arguing whether the company is bad, that is not relevant to whether standalone VR is bad. How is it bad when everyone is saying the experience is actually really good? You can’t just say the company is bad, that is irrelevant to the point.
This is the old PC master race thing again. Well duh, of course the Quest 2 is garbage compared to your $3k VR setup, but a $300 flat entry point to the VR space - no additional purchase or PC required - is undeniably a good thing for everyone.
You should not be down voted. I can personally attest to what you are saying and I am a big fan of VR. Quest 2 games suck. Plain and simple. If you’re used to high fidelity graphically immersive deep story games, then you will never find satisfaction on Quest 2 native games. Connect to a PC for that.
>Saying it not stand-alone because you need to connect it to a PC is just absurd.
Nobody said anything about it not being standalone because you need to connect to it PC, rather that standalone VR is a poor experience and once you connect it to a PC for a much better experience, it's no longer standalone.
> When the average person's personal computing device is barely stronger than that phone graphics card it's pretty good.
That's ok if you aren't strapping two screens on your face and trying to get the to run as high a refresh rate as you can go.
As someone who bought into the new VR revival right away and followed the development of the initial headsets as closely as someone outside the companies developing them could, and has owned and currently owns multiple headsets, I can tell you my experience with VR is performance is very key, and that standalone VR is pretty garbage.
Speaking as a guy with a full fledged gaming PC and a quest/quest2, the quest was the device that really sold VR for me.
PCVR is nice, but has it's limitations. Location is a big one. my desktop is located in an area with no space. Being able to go to a different room with my quest and just play drastically reduces the friction of the reality-VR transition.
You of course get different annoyances like fidelity/battery, but the freedom of truly wireless VR is a massive bonus.
Agreed, I put it in my backpack and bike or walk to small gym nobody is currently using and have the maximum space without worrying about running into anything.
You know what else is "garbage?" - games. Because no one plays games on their phone, since a $3k gaming tower in their home is much better. I also never eat at Burger King - because their food is not as good as a 5 star restaurant. In fact, games without top of the notch 600W GPU graphics are not played by anyone. If you play solitaire, it needs to run at 120FPS and use raytracing.
This is also why Walmart went out of business, because their stuff, while cheap, is of lower quality. Why would I want a $10 "leather outer" belt when I can get full grain hyde from Sacks. Their grocery business failed too once Whole Foods showed up.
I don't play on my phone and my computer did cost $3k if you include my vr equipment. I don't eat at burger king. I've played solitaire at 120 fps, but not with ray tracing. I also don't shop at walmart.
I do understand that people who are afraid of social contact order everything online and never leave their computer. I highly recommend going to a doctor - they have pills for extreme cases of social anxiety now which will after many years of therapy allow you to function as part of society. There's nothing to be afraid of little one. You can be normal, with a lot of time and a lot of help from qualified medical professionals.
The Vive is all but irrelevant. It's specs are wildly outdated. It also doesnt have more game support, since Quest can play everything thats native to it and all the PCVR titles the Vive can.
The vive may be outdated but it's still some of the best fun you can have on a PC.
I will upgrade eventually now that I can afford it but except for high res applications the vive still holds it own. The tracking is excellent to this day.
Setting up all those stupid sensor boxes is a massive chore that takes away the immense joy of throwing it in a backpack and bringing it to the cottage for a round of Beat Sabre.
Honestly, I hated setting up, packing up and re-setting up my Vive. As a VR dev, I had to do it so often that the benefits of the sensor-free, wire-free, and; of course, most importantly computer-free operation of the Quest - combined with its ability to mimic 90% of the experiences I’d had on the Vive without the need for that extra PC - far far outweigh anything the Vive has to offer.
And if I want what the Vive has to offer, I can just plug in to my PC.
This is speaking from years of experience as a VR dev and user. This external sensorless experience means everything.
Say what you will about the need to register with a Facebook account. I need to register with PSN to get a lot of serious leverage out of a PlayStation console. That’s been consoles for decades. It’s obvious people just pick on this because of its attachment to Facebook. I’m just glad it’s opening up the experience of VR to more people in a massively low cost and practical way that did not exist before.
Why pack up? I just leave them on the walls. The biggest pain point I've heard with respect to Lighthouse is you can't put blankets on yourself while maintaining tracking.
While I understand your point, I feel like you can't say that PSN account is equivalent to FB. I can create "fake" PSN account, but FB is tied to my real data.
I've heard many stories how Facebook is able to detect "fake" accounts and ban them. I'd be afraid to spend what is around a monthly wage in a good job where I live on a device that FB could ban :|
From what I understand Facebook making it harder to create fake accounts and enforce real names is a more recent trend and old accounts fly under the radar (for now)
All well and good, but the first time they find out (including a single person reporting you) you might have all your purchases, scores, save games, connections, and everything else taken away with no ability to get it back.
Considering the Quest knows your accurate billing and shipping info, and they have a real name policy enforced by showing ID, it’s a very big risk to use a fake account for the Quest.
1. Lighthouses are not a "sensor box". The only sensor in them is an IMU. Their primary purpose is to sweep (an approximation of) planes of light in your play area.
2. They are not a pain to setup. You just plug them in and then put them somewhere where they can see you. It's no more of a pain than charging your phone.
>This external sensorless experience means everything.
The headset and controllers have do tracking just by using sensors internal to them. Again, lighthouse do not do the tracking.
>> It's no more of a pain than charging your phone.
Come the hell on. Don't make me laugh. There aren't 3 cables to my phone that need to be specifically placed in certain areas in order to work, plus the cable to the phone itself.
Plus, my phone works if I don't have those 3 extra cables plugged in and meticulously placed around the room.
I get that you want to defend the unit, but honestly making fairly ridiculous claims such as it's as easy to set up as charging your phone won't really help convince anyone.
The Quest 2 - as long as you've established your guardian boundary - is the most seamless and flawless VR experience I've had the joy of having.
As a dev continually dragging the Vive from work to home to my gf's place was insanely annoying to re-set-up every time. Now I throw the Quest in my backpack and roll - for fun.
Half-Life: Alyx and many other games, like SO MANY... Moss, Job Simulator / Vacation Simulator, Rick and Morty, Accounting Plus, In Death, The Lab, Beat Sabre, etc... all super fun.
But Alien: Isolation in VR is the greatest entertainment experience of my life. Amazing.
The original v1 release vive specs still exceed the quest and quest 2 in all ways related to hardware except maybe comfort and peripherals. Framerate, resolution, diopter adjustment, external tracking, the ability to actually use a real PC and video card without extra latency. The vive wins. And later vives and valve headsets like the index win more.
The Quest 2 framerate goes up to 120, it has significantly higher resolution. The original vive doesnt have diopter adjustment. If you meant IPD, then it has an extra 2mm over the Quest 2, not particularly important. The Quest 2 also has FAR superior lenses. The original Vive lenses are the second worst (WMR being the worst) lenses to ever ship in a major consumer HMD. The Quest 2 also only has a minor (unnoticeable) latency jump when wired to a PC, and can function as a wireless headset. There is a reason the Quest 2 is by far the most popular headset on PC
I too was confused by the statement. I went to VP2, which I think has best specs on the market, and even w/ slight loss of vertical, it's amazing and fun.
I just saw the announcement for the new HTC Vive standalone. I'm going to wait until someone figures out a way to run games on the thing, and then I might consider dropping $600 on that setup.
It's not a great idea to buy products which require you to hack them.
Chances are they’re talking about the vive flow, which released today. General consensus is it lacks mini-oled and the resolution it would need to be “next gen’. Among other bizarre shortcomings
Personally I think the new Vive Flow looks awesome (physically). I'm doubtful it'll be a good headset because of the specs. The refresh rate is only 75Hz. Everyone is aware that 90Hz is the minimum required to remove motion sickness for most humans. Phone as a controller, I'm doubtful this will work well. HTC Focus 3 still seems like the headset to beat
Vive figured out that during chip shortage their best bet is to copy Oculus Go.
But it is too bulky and expensive to appeal to the very casual VR users. And the only two use-cases are watching YouTube or using subscription meditation / fitness apps.
They can try to sell it to enterprise clients or hospitals though
I just use Unity and create my own experiences - I don’t find the SDK limiting in any way as it is. There’s nothing I’d like to create that I can’t, beyond maybe a custom home room?
Is that true? From my understanding, Oculus has exclusive games, as well as supporting all open games, so Oculus basically supports all Vive games + a bunch of exclusives Vive doesn't. What games do Vive support that Oculus doesn't?
Yeah, I am not sure either. Unless there is some Vive Store (similar to Oculus Store), that doesn't seem right.
I know for a fact that on my Quest 2 I can play any games from Oculus Store (both for Quest and Rift), as well as any SteamVR games (played halfway through Half-Life:Alyx with Quest2). Wasn't aware of any Vive-exclusive SteamVR games though.
For all intents and purposes, Index and Vive are equivalent when it comes to the game support, so while at a hardware level Index is better (though Vive is about to announce new stuff too, and the Vive Pro is quite competitive with Index), it's besides the point here.
This reminds me of the time that Steve Ballmer did an Q&A with Microsoft interns saying basically that he's happy everyone in China pirates Windows because then Microsoft sets the standard.
Reminds me of the time when the president of Romania told Bill Gates to his face that the Romanian IT industry has grown to where it is today thanks to everyone pirating Windows.[1]
I'm still wondering what went through Bill's head hearing that.
Do you really think "old" Microsoft thought that far into the future for this back then?
This was before the days of software becoming walled-garden lock-in subscription-ware; when quarterly revenue relied solely on the number of licenses sold and pirated licenses were seen as lost revenue.
I assumed they just though that if everyone had only legit copies, then Microsoft's revenues would quintuple overnight effectively turning Bill Gates into the world's richest man. Oh wait, he already was the world's richest man at that time. Nevermind.
Then again, people mostly pirated it because they couldn't afford it, so a strong piracy-free DRM solution would have probably pushed everyone to Linux right off the bat (nobody in Eastern Europe could afford Macs at the time), causing Microsoft's market share to fall off a cliff and not be the 400 pound gorilla it is today.
Those days Linux was not a viable options for consumers.
Microsoft was not in this alone (piracy in eastern part of the world), even companies like Adobe was in same situation and Adobe perhaps was more affected as they were smaller and less diversified.
But for them piracy in China, India, Romania et al. was not a problem, as they knew it increases user base and they can monetize that in corporates. The same people who pirate at home and school will pay for the license when they are in office (bigger ones).
Piracy was a training and demand generation channel.
> even companies like Adobe was in same situation and Adobe perhaps was more affected as they were smaller and less diversified.
Adobe didn't care about piracy for a long time. Up until CS4 a simple keygen was sufficient, up until CS6 you'd need to null-route a couple Adobe hosts in your /etc/hosts.
The result was that lots of young students grew up with Adobe tooling - Photoshop, Premiere, Dreamweaver, Flash - and virtually set the standard for the media industry once they entered the work force.
> Do you really think "old" Microsoft thought that far into the future for this back then?
I always assumed so, and same for Adobe. For many years, their software was trivial to pirate. My understanding is, they let individuals pirate Windows/Photoshop to ensure widespread popularity, especially among people who wouldn't be able to pay for that software anyway - and applied pressure to any business using their software.
There's only so much money they could get from the cohort of teens and their parents trying to play games or trim their photos, but every year, a part of that population graduated to becoming employees and business owners, preferring to use the software they already know, and having money to finally pay for it.
> Do you really think "old" Microsoft thought that far into the future for this back then?
Yes.
- they killed Netscape in the 90s because they realised owning the web browser market meant locking people into Windows
- they ran the Xbox division for years at a loss knowing it would eventually pay out
- they bailed out Apple financially knowing that a long term competitor to Windows meant a reduced likelihood of monopoly violations
- they had a long term strategy attacking Linux (even going so far as to call it “communism”) before eventually caving and public ally supporting FOSS
- the whole long term “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” strategy is synonymous with old Microsoft. Eg Lotus Office comparability to sell MS Office licenses, then dropping support when MS Office became dominant.
- Windows 2000 and Me were never intended as long term strategies but instead as a gateway into merging the NT and 9x line of operating systems.
I could go on with examples from their dealings with IBM, Apple, Dr DOS, MSN and so on and so forth but I have two screaming kids I need to deal with. However you should get the idea
Honestly? In some way, maybe they've actually had a point. Beyond all the good things that FOSS gave us, what it also did was to commoditize software, forcing software companies to make money in extremely abusive ways - through advertising, surveillance, and forcing everything into being a service.
You cannot blame that in Open source though, nor even Linux specifically. It was companies like Google, Yahoo! and Geocities that really set the expectation for free software with the average user and they were companies built around advertising and walled gardens. Outside of tech circles, almost nobody ran open source. But most people had or knew someone who had free email, et al.
Commercial companies did this to themselves as they raced to the bottom with aggressive pricing and a need to dominate at a global scale.
Pirated Windows also ensures competitors are semi-permanently extinguished. 2007 is only third year for Ubuntu, and GNU/Linux is still the only more-than-semi-viable alternative for PC/AT other than Windows almost 15 years later.
I feel like a national government would be the last org to need to worry about licensing software, given lawsuits won’t do much and nobody’s going to start a war over it.
Never heard about Steve Ballmer saying this but I always believed this was (or became at some point) the plan. 100% of SOHO users pirated MS DOS, Windows and Office in Eastern Europe before broadband Internet became widely available. Then legal pressure on small business started so they began buying licenses as Windows and Office have already became the standard.
What I never understood though is why did Microsoft (or anybody else) invest in all this activation bullshit anyway. The only things working always were reasonably affordable pricing of legal copies, legal enforcement risk coming from the local police and the value of commercial support. All the software mechanisms of licensing enforcement have always been cracked and stopped no one. If I were to release commercial software I would only put a simple (no actual anti-crack protection at all) offline serial check to stop the most stupid and unmotivated people, everyone else will get a crack (which will inevitably emerge if the app actually is of any value) anyway.
> What I never understood though is why did Microsoft (or anybody else) invest in all this activation bullshit anyway.
I relate this to the adage "locks are to keep honest people honest."
Similarly, bypassing a valid license has to be just hard enough that people have time to think about what they're doing.
To push the metaphor a bit further, someone is more likely to try the credit card trick to shim a door open (type in a fake or shared serial key) than acquire lockpicking tools (download a crack).
There's probably some convenience factor there as well...
> someone is more likely to try the credit card trick to shim a door open (type in a fake or shared serial key) than acquire lockpicking tools (download a crack).
In theory this sounds reasonable but in reality - no, it's no difference. Serial, keygen, crack - it's all just a minor, negligible variation of the ritual people do when they want an app but are not going to pay for it (because from the perspective of an eastern user all the big apps genuinely look exorbitantly overpriced).
Opt out of an identity system that you don't want to associate with in any way. Make it more difficult for Facebook to track you in their identity graph.
They're everywhere and its a problem. Google taught humanity that its OK to have tracking everywhere, if that's used only to enhance user experience. However, now other identity ecosystems are using that power for purposes which people may not be ok with. It should be easy to opt out of it [0].
EDIT: Apologies, I re-read your question and it appears to be a genuine one which I did not answer i.e. if doing this hampers the usage of the oculus device. I'll leave my answer up though, if anyone else is interested in this aspect of the discussion.
[0]: Facebook does appear to have an opt out page. Try going there and opting out. Just go there, please, before responding: https://www.facebook.com/ads/settings
Did anyone have luck using EQ2 with a fake FB account? I know that my partner (who doesn't use her real name on FB) kept getting asked by FB for pictures of her ID, which I find super creepy.
I don't mind using EQ2 with telemetry off as long as my activity in it is detached from my other devices.
Can anyone comment on the Quest vs Quest 2? I've heard that it's a difficult tradeoff, as the build quality of the Quest is better while the screen quality of the Quest 2 is a huge improvement.
If the plan is to use one for a monitor replacement for extended periods, which is a better choice?
I have had both and although the Quest 2 has shitty lens adjustment that doesn't fit my IPD (pupillary distance) correctly, the clarity on the Quest 2, thanks to the higher resolution display and full-RGB pixel matrix vs pentile on the Quest 1, was just miles better than on the Quest 1 which had a better IPD adjustment system that fitted my eyesight. Couple this with the lower weight, more comfortable strap (I know), more powerful processor, higher refresh rate, the Quest 1 can't even hold a candle to the Quest 2.
Sold the Quest 1 immediately and kept the Quest 2.
Although I wouldn't use either as a monitor replacement for more than 30 minutes. The tech is just not there yet for eye-stranious work like reading small text like code. Best kept for entertainment and content consumption.
Just a heads-up from another Quest 2 user - if you're gentle, you can push the lenses in between the 3 predefined settings, and they will stay there. This helped me a lot, since my IPD is somewhere in between the middle and the wide setting.
Only 3 options is definitely a weird choice on Oculus' part (especially since the device apparently includes a potentiometer, so it actually acknowledges in-between settings!), but at least there's a workaround.
That's not a viable option for me as my IPD is not between settings but at the outer extreme of the widest setting (Quest 2 only goes as far as 68 mm while Quest 1 went to 72 mm which is close to my IPD).
It's still usable for games without any headaches, but I wouldn't use it for reading text or long gaming sessions.
I get that some users could tolerate this all day, but the problem with having a display strapped to your face with plastic lenses in between that have not been tailor to your eyesight is bound to be uncomfortable to a lot of users at prolonged use.
> If you need corrective lenses, get lens inserts: it’s superior to wearing glasses, and I find it better than wearing contacts. For horrible astigmatic myopia like mine (-7.5), it was cheaper than most pairs of glasses I’ve had, and a totally reasonable expense since I use them all day for work.
Do you know if mid points work? I’ve heard mixed things, I’m not sure if the IPD is a combination of the lens and software (since it does display on screen when switching). I’m also between notches on the IPD but I’m unsure if trying to get it stuck halfway works or is a good idea.
That's not a viable option for me as my IPD is not between settings but at the outer extreme of the widest setting (Quest 2 only goes as far as 68 mm while Quest 1 went to 72 mm which is close to my IPD).
It's still usable for games without any headaches, but I wouldn't use it for reading text or long gaming sessions.
I have a quest 2 and I don’t think it’s a great monitor replacement, especially as someone with multiple 4K screens. The resolution isn’t good enough to comfortably read for extended periods IMO.
E: out of curiosity, I pulled up immersed to browse this thread on HN and my eyes can't take it for too long.
If you do use it as a monitor replacement, here's a suggestion: make your screens small and keep them close to you. Scanning with your eyes doesn't work as well, you should be moving your head a lot more.
I have a multi monitor setup for no good reason[1] and for me the standard 90-100deg FOV of common binocular VR headsets didn't seem wide enough for my daily use cases.
1: bad reason: because good-enough displays are cheap! why not double down on it.
Just a reminder Oculus is a company founded on taking tech from other companies and getting away with it. Don't give them money, don't buy their devices. Getting acquired by facebook and turning the VR sets into spyware and facebook funnels just makes them worse.
If you want to be ethical get an HMD from someone other than Oculus/Facebook. I wouldn't give them a dime.
Sources:
alan yates (posting as vk2zay on reddit) said the CV1 architecture was identical to the valve room headset architecture with its own tracking implementation and its own fresnel lens system.
>While that is generally true in this case every core feature of both the Rift and Vive HMDs are directly derived from Valve's research program. Oculus has their own CV-based tracking implementation and frensel lens design but the CV1 is otherwise a direct copy of the architecture of the 1080p Steam Sight prototype Valve lent Oculus when we installed a copy of the "Valve Room" at their headquarters. I would call Oculus the first SteamVR licensee, but history will likely record a somewhat different term for it...
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Ben Krasnow (former valve employee who now has the youtube channel "Applied Science" https://www.youtube.com/c/AppliedScience/ which you should check out if you haven't yet) posted here on hackernews back in 2017 during the oculus lawsuit.
> It fits a pattern. I was a hardware engineer at Valve during the early VR days, working mostly on Lighthouse and the internal dev headset. There were a few employees who insisted that the Valve VR group give away both hardware and software to Oculus with the hope that they would work together with Valve on VR. The tech was literally given away -- no contract, no license. After the facebook acquisition, these folks presumably received large financial incentives to join facebook, which they did. It was the most questionable thing I've seen in my whole career, and was partially caused by Valve's flat management structure and general lack of oversight. I left shortly after.
and then further down that thread
> Overall, I think Valve is a good place to work, and I learned a lot from all of the incredibly smart people there. The main reason that I left was the difficulty in merging hardware development with the company's exceptionally successful business model. The hardware team was pressured to give away lots of IP that could have been licensed, with the explanation that hardware is just so worthless anyway compared to online software sales, there was no other choice. It's possible that this was a good faith gamble, however it still doesn't preclude the use of business contracts that would have protected our investment. It also isn't so great for morale to hear everyday that your years of work are going to be given away to another company, and then watch that company get acquired for $2B. This is especially the case since many employees strongly voiced concerns about just such a scenario.
Oculus was built on stolen tech taken by employees working at valve who convinced valve to give the tech away in the spirit of cooperation, and then jumped ship to facebook right away for the $$$.
Every time people post things praising John Carmack all I can think about is that he was doing the same thing from his former employer to oculus as well. No matter what he did back in the day to make video game engines amazing, his involvement in oculus is a stain on his reputation. Even if you think he was innocent in a vacuum, along with the rest of the shenanigans with oculus and valve tech I don't think it was so innocent. He took the source code he wrote for another company, sent it to himself, then he was involved in the "clean room" reimplementation? I don't believe it no matter what the courts ruled could be proven.
The employees who advocated 'freely giving' the technology away jumped off to the other company basically right away. It was sabotage by unethical employees.
If that's unclear to you, you're probably going to have problems on the ethics exam.
Who signed off on the decision to give the tech away? Anyone can advocate for anything, at the end of the day someone is in charge and the questionable business move is on them.
you're right someone made that decision but on the advice of a lot of experts who sabotaged the company, advocated to giving the tech away to another company, and then left to that company.
This isn't rocket surgery - it's not complicated. You're just trying to minimize unethical actions by a group of people who sabotaged their employer.
If the picture is as you paint it, seems like Valve would want to pursue legal action, as Google did when Anthony Levandowski jumped ship to Uber with Waymo secrets.
Valves flat structure creates a very different organizational response than Google. And these aren't "jumping with secrets" which is a different situation.
> with the explanation that hardware is just so worthless anyway compared to online software sales, there was no other choice.
This is especially strange since Apple makes tons of money off online software sales tied to their hardware. I believe several other companies (like all the console manufacturers in the game space that Valve is in) do to.
valve is very differently structured and has had a very tough time pivoting to hardware. We can see this obviously with steam machines where they just didn't want to get involved. Then the steam controller, steam link, and now steam deck...
they're getting there but they're not exactly there yet. I think oculus taking their research tech and turning it into a $2b acquisition and a threat to steam because of its closed garden was a big wake up call.
It takes consistent organizational effort spanning years to build hardware, maintain vendor relationships, merchandize the product (advertise, sell, ship, liquidate), inventory management, and continuously develop new hardware to bring to market.
Valve has traditionally focused on their Steam platform, which has a much tighter feedback loop and none of the aforementioned effort that comes with physical products.
Not to mention Ben Krasnow's comment about the hardware culture at Valve probably meant a lot of talented hardware people wouldn't be interested working somewhere where their accomplishments are seen as worthless. Not having good talent and good culture are not good for developing good hardware.
Hardware is, from a business perspective, completely different from software.
Iteration cycles are way longer and more expensive. Find a bug in a piece of software / firmware? Push out an update and the bug is gone. For hardware bugs you have to pray you can fix it in firmware somehow, or you have to call back hardware from the customer and send them replacements in the worst case, or deal with the fallout of class action lawsuits or regulatory punishments (e.g. if you mess up something that causes inappropriate RF emissions).
Additionally, developing for hardware is way harder than developing software. In software, you have clean, somewhat-well designed APIs to get you up and running, and there's bazillions of StackOverflow posts and open source code you can have a look at if you have problems. In hardware, you have to deal with half-assed documentation, reference designs that do not work / are buggy / cause unwanted RF emissions / produce signals that are outside of standards, tight NDAs / stuff that isn't even available under NDA but is vital in debugging issues, BSPs (board support packages) with outright fossilized and Frankenstein'd bootloaders and Linux kernels, not to mention binary blob stuff such as early stage bootloaders, WiFi/BT/GPU firmware and other completely intransparent and barely-working crap.
And once you do have a working prototype in your hand, you have to deal with more bullshit: certifications (UL/TÜV electrical safety, FCC RF emissions, CE, and whatever specific local markets require) primarily (and the findings of the certifications may well send you back to the drawing board, which means more expenses), ridiculous minimum-order quantities, supply chain establishment and upkeep (=preventing counterfeit components in your chain) in general, manufacturing QA, logistics of getting the hardware to consumers, returns/warranty claim/repair/spare parts logistics, keeping track of components getting EOL'd or outright being unavailable due to some component availability crunch, keeping track of recalls of components before your product ends up setting someone's house on fire (=the usual trouble with Lithium batteries and shoddy power supplies), dealing with insurance to cover your butt in case your product does end up setting someone's house on fire or electrocuting someone...
Hardware is ugly and it's rare to have hardware, firmware and software be matched in quality (which is also why so many hardware Kickstarter/Gofundme projects fail or under/late deliver). The only vendor where that is closest to reality is Apple, and they command a hefty premium for that.
> Oculus has their own CV-based tracking implementation and frensel lens design but the CV1 is otherwise a direct copy
Tracking and lenses are what make headset. I'm struggling to think of what non-trivial decisions are even left if you exclude those. Panel choice and illumination strategy I guess?
Won't Oculus simply add some oculess detection code to their next developer release so that any future apps and updates to existing apps stop working all together if detected?
And then inevitably somebody will find a way around that. It's a cat-and-mouse game as old as the concept of digital licensing - see the piracy space, where all sorts of uncrackable protections keep getting cracked
Stuff like this is great fun, but if we just don't buy things from known bad actors in the first place, we can save ourselves the trouble of playing whack-a-mole.
This is not quite similar because there are VR headsets from several manufacturers that don't come with a mandatory social network login attached. (in fact FB is the only one that does)
Even with Android vs iOS, they aren't quite the same because Android clearly gives you more control and freedom as a consumer. If you care about any of this at least don't buy the worse offender.
> GrapheneOS is compatible with several Google Pixel smartphones.
That doesn't bode well for things working all that well. As someone who ran linux on chromebook for two years, then on a macbook for three, i'm a bit burnt out on this sort of thing.
It's like a rite of passage or something to hack and then install your own thing fighting harder than a salmon swimming up stream. There's a lot to be learned in the doing to be sure. It's the full of piss&vinegar stage of life. Eventually, you get tired of the time required to fight it, and just need something to work. Does that mean the man won? Maybe. However, I look at it like I won on finally becoming mature enough to realize that there are things much more important in life than banging my head on that particular brick wall. Just my $0.02 of grandpa ranting. Get off my lawn!
If that's the fight you are fighting, then by all means keep up the fight. Being able to do basic computer activities privately is a definite need. Hacking what's essentially a gaming device from FB is just not that critical to me.
Every other VR device doesn't require logging on to the greatest destroyer of social cohesion the world has ever seen so I'm not sure what "the chore" here is. Just buy literally any other VR headset that isn't prefixed with the word Oculus.
It is always nice when the idealistic choice lines up with the exciting, or pragmatic choice. Sadly, in the world of hardware at least, this is seldom the case.
Couldn’t agree more. Recently hit the stage of needing things to ‘just work’ to free up time in other directions, whereas I used to constantly load new roms from xda onto a rooted pixel, or tinker with getting coreboot to run on an old thinkpad with arch..
Now it’s iOS / macOS / iCloud and a headless Ubuntu box. Never been more productive and never had more free time. Choose your battles.
...which is doomed to death whenever Google stops with the security updates for the very specific hardware it runs on. In fairness, IIRC, this is actually the fault of Qualcomm providing, and eventually ceasing to provide, Google with hardware security updates of some sort.
The point is that these fun projects to circumvent baked-in awfulness are practically destined to stop working properly due to the nature of the hardware itself. It's always better, if possible, to support the non-awful varietal. In this case, I guess that's "almost any other VR headset, lacking a login requirement". Does Steam count?
Are graphene releases/support completed tied to google releases/support? I had assumed they were able to update their version of android for a phone beyond what google does.
> It cannot do that once device support code like firmware, kernel and vendor code is no longer actively maintained. Even if the community was prepared to take over maintenance of the open source code and to replace the rest, firmware would present a major issue, and the community has never been active or interested enough in device support to consider attempting this
Check out postmarketOS, Mobian, and NixOS Mobile. They support some OnePlus phones and a few others in addition to the PinePhone and Librem 5. pmOS has the most devices supported (although amount of stuff working varies per device).
Sailfish uses a proprietary UI, so I hesitate to recommend it. There's an alternative that replaces their UI, can't recall the name right now.
Indeed, eventually a fully open mature mobile distro will replace Sailfish OS, but at the moment its the only reasonably open mobile OS fit for daily use.
all the things you mentioned are hardly production ready though. PostmarketOS compatibility has issues on tons of devices, and Mobian can't run much applications anyway.
Someone with deep pockets to counter the PR machine that is Apple. That's the only way. Of course, this means having an actual working product for that PR to promote. It also means having a way of installing it without some scary voiding warranty notice.
Agree in general but if the hardware is subsidized and you're able to excise the bad actor's trash from the device, you come out ahead and the company loses a bit.
This would be great if there was any hope to see a better actor coming in. Currently buying a Quest 2 equivalent from a "good" actor is just thought exercise.
Looking at Vive, they don't seem ready to enter the regular consumer market anytime soon. Google and Samsung threw the towel long ago. I'm not sure Microsoft could be a better actor than Facebook if they wanted to (remember it all came down on us way after the devices were sold).
Then chances are Facebook would also kill any incoming competitor in the egg.
There is a good guy in the space already it's Valve. The Index was good, and there are rumors that they are developing their own standalone VR headset (search "Deckard") which would theoretically compete directly with Quest 2.
I agree with Valve's position as an alternative...but the Index is priced 10k+ so targeted a completely different public, and Deckard is only rumored as far as I know. We have no idea if/when/how it will be released, or if they'll be able to reach a competitive price.
I wish them to succeed, but wouldn't count on it until we have actual release info.
It actually reminds me that Sony is rumored to release a Playstation VR2, which might be an interesting, though not standalone, as the PSVR 1 was decently good.
Also, I only realized while checking Valve's headset that HTC had a consumer grade headset gone public yesterday, though it doesn't have controllers and its future is a bit murky at this point.
Maybe 1k for the index and 2k for a reasonably high-end desktop, so 3k or 10x the price of a quest. Obviously that's not really a fair comparison for various reasons, though.
For the comparison part, I don’t the index as overpriced or comparable to the Quest, it was more about the market position.
I don’t know if Valve will be able to get down in price. For instance their Steam Deck which is in the 400+$ range for a handheld, when Nintendo went with lower specs but also lower price. Valve doesn’t seem that interested in that strategy.
I agree with you and I would really like to buy VR hardware from a good actor, but they are few and far between. This is great for now for rescuing hardware that might be going straight to the landfill or for those who finally understand the implication of buying the hardware in the first place.
Facebook keeps asking Congress to make laws. How about this one:
Peripherals, including mice, monitors, keyboards, VR headsets or any other device used to process input or output from a computer, may NOT be connected to any cloud service with an account. Any such cloud connections MUST be for software updates only and software updates MUST be capable of permanent opt-out without any loss of usage.
I mean I grew up with my logitech mouse, keyboard and monitor not connected to a cloud account and I expect to die that way. Why does Facebook get to do things differently.
I hate to break it to you, but Logitech now runs always-on ‘Cloud Settings’ sync and telemetry software called Logi Options. It comes with a way to use a mouse across devices seamlessly (Flow) which requires low-level networking permissions and a daemon on all participating devices.
It’s not required that you have an account or even use the software, but of course they actively push all of the above and require it to use special device features.
Razer, Steelseries, and the rest do the same, and I think Razer’s account is mandatory.
I don’t like it one bit. Thankfully most of that crap doesn’t work on Linux.
> It’s not required that you have an account or even use the software
That's the key point. The fact that some people weren't even able to use their Oculus device when FB went down for hours is insane. Imagine not being able to use your mouse or keyboard because Logitech went down.
There's a very big difference between an optional cloud system that brings convenience (settings sync) vs a required cloud system that the device cannot be used without.
From my understanding, the comment about was specifically trying to write regulation against the latter.
Logitech recently(?) released software plainly called "Onboard Memory Manager." In their own words:
OnBoard Memory Manager (OMM) is a utility for pro gamers to quickly configure the on-board memory profiles of compatible Logitech G mice by adjusting DPI, report rate, assignments, and by enabling the pairing/unpairing of devices. In an effort to meet the critical requirements for tournament use, OMM does not install itself, does not leave files on your drive(s), and does not access the internet. While OMM is used for on-board memory settings, additional device settings and customization are available through G HUB.
The current version is a little buggy with configuring the different DPI modes on my mouse (which I was disabling anyway), but I'm glad it exists. Thanks, pro gaming tournaments!
Honestly the hardware-for-gamers paradigm has done a lot for making better mice, keyboards, chairs, and headsets that stand up to all-day abuse. I'll cede that the RGB thing is wildly out of control (WHO NEEDS RBG RAM STICKS?!?) but overall I think it gives developers far better of-the-shelf choices than one would have 10 years ago.
Only Razer is pulling the mandatory online signup thing. My keyboard (a "durgod" mechanical) and mouse (Zowie brand) are geared towards gamers, high quality, and need 0 software config - there's a lone DPI adjustment button on the underside of the mouse. "Gaming" monitors and graphics cards are also quite nice.
When it comes to RGB crap and gamer audio gear or gamer chairs, yeah, it's all pure-gimmick rubbish.
I'd take a regular office chair and non gamer headset over the gamer branded ones, but Zowie mice are nice, and so are ubiquitous mechanical keyboards.
Razer is even worse than a mandatory account. When you connect a Razer device (including changing the port it's plugged into), Windows will try to execute the Razer software installer. It's really annoying.
To make it worse, the installer that's automatically downloaded and run has admin permissions and could be exploited to gain admin access on any Windows computer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28273283
Yes, Razer's software makes login mandatory, which is why I recommend against buying them at every opportunity, and will never buy anything else from them. It's not acceptable to me to gatekeep local features with spyware.
Thanks. I don't typically read reddit, so I had not seen this. Starting to contemplate getting a new inkjet for the home office. I now have something else to keep in mind during the researching. This plus all of the ink jet forensic marking, I'm leaning towards the extra cost for color laser instead, and definitely not an HP.
I have the brother 3750 I believe the model is and is great. The starter inks lasted me a long time and I finally bought all new full sized ink I expect they will last years. It was a bit costly to buy all the ink but I know it will last for years and I know if I don’t use it for a few months it will still print perfectly when I decide to. Definitely recommend a brother printer.
Brother printers are something else. After getting tired of having to do major troubleshooting for my printer at least a few times a year and deal with minor annoyances from time to time, I decided to leave my old printer to my parents (as I was doing a cross-country move at the time, so the less I brought with me the easier it would be). As soon as I settled in, I got a Brother MFCL2740DW printer. That was almost 5 years ago.
Let me tell you, the longer I have it, the longer it keeps blowing my mind. I've only set it up once, and then forgot about it forever. Since then, I added bajillion different devices, built a new desktop, switched routers multiple times and completely redid my wireless networking, etc. On every new device (including smartphones), without having to install any additional software or screwing around with settings, I can reliably expect to just click "print", and my printer will show up in the list of available printing devices, and it will just work. Toner cartridges last forever and are priced very reasonably. I can simply take the printer, put it wherever I want, and it will just work with any device from which one can print without any extra actions.
Normally, a lot of devices start like that at first, and then problems start arising, and things start becoming unreliable due to compatibility issues with newer devices and such, new firmware updates are needed, maybe certain workarounds in settings, etc. But nope, not a single hitch with this one, as it is coming close to 5 years of regular use in many different configurations.
And no, I am not getting paid to advertise for Brother printers. I just simply love when a tool is super powerful like that, but also "just works" extremely reliably without any thought needed, very seamlessly and in the background.
I currently have a B&W brother laser, and it has done everything I have asked it to do. However, I've recently started using specialty paper that this particular model has problems pulling from the paper tray, and using the single sheet manual feeder is guarnteed to pull it through at an angle. I do not judge the printer on this paper.
I've used color lasers in the past, but it was a higher end and was very pleased with its results.
I like how we've hijacked an oculus thread on printers!!
Has anyone looked into the source of the dots as in is it part of the software driver stack or the hardware on the printer. Has anyone come up with software/firmware that bypasses this? I have only read that it is a thing to be aware of, but not done any searching for more in-depth details.
Because government power is not the only power capable of suppressing individual freedoms. Corporate power is too and we need the government to keep it in check. Case in point, Facebook trying to restrict how you use hardware you own.
The example with facebook is quite different from Gov. Your interaction with facebook is 100% voluntarily, you don't like facebook then you can say bye! With the government you have no room for flexibility.
> Your interaction with facebook is 100% voluntarily
It is not. They used their money and power to hire some of the brightest minds in VR to design hardware and to create exclusivity deals with some of the best developers. I either take facebook's offering or I don't have access to those things at all.
> With the government you have no room for flexibility.
You do. You can "say bye!" as you phrased it and move to another place with a another government. I've done it several times now.
Yes. If you choose not to take Facebook’s offering, you don’t get access to the things they and others build for their product. Do we want to make exclusivity deals between businesses illegal?
But that's done voluntarily and not forced by the state?
>[...] (FRAND) terms, denote a voluntary licensing commitment that standards organizations often request from the owner of an intellectual property right (usually a patent) that is, or may become, essential to practice a technical standard.
I don't think we need to do that, but we do need to make sure corporations don't use the power they gain through those deals to make you endure the privacy abuses that come with a cloud requirement.
Its not just privacy. Corporate exclusivity power also hurts competition, which in the long run is worse for everyone. (Well, except maybe the monopolist).
For example, when AT&T owned all the telecoms equipment in the US, other companies couldn't make new products using their system (like answering machines or modems). Having anyone able to design, connect, use and sell new devices on top of their infrastructure is an incredibly important feature.
And facebook knows that. They launched facebook on the internet (which is an open platform). Facebook couldn't have been created in the first place if not for that.
Facebook owes its existence to open platforms. Lets not allow the train of innovation to stop here.
Every time this comes up, I have to point out that Facebook will collect information about you and build a "shadow profile" even if you never visit their site once. There's no foolproof way I know of to get them to stop either. Interaction with Facebook is voluntarily in the theoretical sense that you could try to avoid every website with a Facebook tracker or hope your ad-blocker is good enough to stop them. But Facebook won't respect signals (such as DNT) that would indicate that you don't want to interact with them.
You have this backwards. Facebook wants to sell in the US market. There are rules to follow if facebook doesn't want to join this market they are free to choose not to.
Facebook is following the rules that exist. The discussion in this thread is whether or not it’s a good idea to add a rule that says whether a keyboard can require a cloud service. Now I think that keyboards that require cloud service are a stupid product, but if somebody wants to make one, I don’t think it’s the government’s job to ban them from making the attempt.
This approach is naive in that it completely ignores the outsized influence a corporation like Facebook has on the market.
This isn't you making a free decision between competitors, like in an idealized econ 101 example. Facebook has already used its money to consolidate its grasp on the standalone VR market - can you think of a viable competitor to an Oculus Quest? Should people just have to put up with privacy abuses or be excluded from VR altogether?
When the market fails, it's time for the government to step in.
I've essentially written off getting VR at this point due to Facebook being the big game in town. Nothing else really looks enticing and I will not give Facebook a cent of my money.
This is just false - a number of universities and colleges use mandatory facebook groups for students notifications for example. The network effects of large internet companies have made avoiding them impractical.
Taking your argument to the extreme if you don't like coal perhaps you should avoid buying electricity. Good luck with that in the real world of today
That works in theory, but in practice when all the products from all the vendors work that way, you no longer have a choice.
Plenty of examples like that - Try buying a TV that's not a "smart" TV nowdays, you basically can't. If you want a good quality picture, then it's also coming with telemetry and in many cases advertisements, too.
Not to mention big companies buying out all the small ones and shutting them down or perverting their products. Facebook and Oculus beinjg a perfect example, with added bad taste due to Oculus being propped by a successful kickstarter campaign, only to be sold for billions soon after to Facebook.
Another less known example could be Kolor, the maker of Autopano Giga (IMHO the best panorama creation tool so far) being gobbled by GoPro, likely for the talent, then shut down without replacement.
Yet we refused to accept that Twitter/FB are public squares. "Just stop using it" or "It's a private company, they can ban anyone they like". Well, how is it not a public square when often official government agencies publish information exclusively on Twitter, which is starting to require accounts with phone numbers?
yet. That's the whole point of getting in early (to the mass-consumer-market), to make it the standard. It's not a necessity yet, but neither were smartphones (now just called "phones").
FB is banking heavily that VR will become a necessity, to one extent or another. I sincerely hope FB fails, but my suspicion is that it would fail not because FB failed, but rather because VR itself failed (e.g. Google Glass for consumers). Still to be seen.
I was being flippant in my comment above, but just to be clear: I think regulating business models for cell phones is just as bad an idea.
Electrical service has limitations around things like termination of service / fair pricing / safety, but we don’t mandate how they design their software and servers.
> I think regulating business models for cell phones is just as bad an idea.
I mean, we can mandate minimum services. Something that has a webbrowser, email client, texts and calls. If you want to say that apps don't fit into that, I suppose that works.
There are plenty of non-smart TVs. They just cost more than smart TVs. You can find them at any number of suppliers, and they’re still bought in large numbers by businesses.
Humans are dumb and they buy it, and it sets the precedent. We have to make laws sometimes. You can barely even buy a TV without smart features now and yet everyone that knows about such features that don't want them still HAVE to buy them if they want a gd tv.
Should we just make it legal for oil companies to have no consequences for oil spills because it doesn't really affect much, we can just stop eating fish in the sea. There's still plenty of food elsewhere.
Maybe they’re not dumb and they’re making their own choices differently than you make yours.
Oil spills harm the environment. We regulate them because the ocean can’t just choose to not receive the oil, not out of a desire to make sure we can keep eating fish.
EDIT: To say the thing out loud: I buy smart TVs on purpose, and I’d like to think I’m a smart person who understands the technology involved. Is the case you’re making that I am in fact dumb?
Well, I think all of them are dumb, including me. I'm not going to finger point at you specifically and call you dumb because that is rude (unfortunately yes, my subtext is). I'd say half of my choices are dumb, and yes when we find that most of the time people are making dumb choices that put humanity in a worse and worse situation, maybe it's time to drop in some laws to slow that down.
I mean go and look at the other HN thread on 100K US deaths per year on plastic. I mean I bought plastic today and highly likely will do so again tomorrow.
I might recommend taking a step back and re-examining this stance and considering the possibility that there are people who disagree with your stance because they hold different opinions and values, not just because they’re dumb.
No, they're definitely dumb just like you and I are definitely dumb in the sense that we are terrible making decisions which are holistic on a longer timescale. We evolved to be dumb at these things but not being dumb is what we need right now so we need to exert power downstream to stop us from our temptations to make our dumb decisions in the heat of the moment like oh god I'll just use Facebook so I can buy this stupid thing on Marketplace even though participation in Facebook net harms humanity.
If I spend $50,000 on a tractor that also has a cloud component that drives the tractor around for me, is it also not fair to expect that I can use that tractor just as a tractor if I don't have internet access at my farm?
It's a different story if it's eg. an Alexa device thats primary purpose is to be connected to the internet.
If a device is in a class of product that doesn't necessarily need a cloud connection/account/whatever, it shouldn't require it.
Often it's not practical to switch to a competing product. Sometimes it's not possible at all. Consumers should have rights here, and it's legislation's job to provide them, in a just society.
If when you bought the tractor, the tractor company said “this tractor requires that you have internet access and keep the tractor online”, and you bought it, then no, it’s not fair of you to expect to just disregard that.
Now, if you want to take a screwdriver and serial cable to the tractor and hack the crap out it, and you manage to bypass the requirement, have at it. You own the tractor. They can feel free to void your warranty / not give you updates, but you can do whatever you want with your property.
But to buy a device that says “internet connection required” and then be angry when it requires an internet connection doesn’t make sense to me, nor does asking the government to mandate the business model used by tractor (or VR headset) manufacturers.
Okay, now picture a world where all high end tractors have this functionality.
Companies have determined that's what they're going to offer the customer and they'll brick any attempts at modifying the hardware. They're making money refining their AI and selling off customer data, so why not?
You need the high end tractors because they're the only machines that meet the requirements of what you're doing.
This is what the legislation folks want to stave off. It's in a similar vein to the right to repair movement (which is dealing with similar restrictions right now, in the real world - see John Deere tractors).
I think I was pretty clear in my comment above in saying that I support right to repair and the ability to modify, disassemble, and interrogate the device you have in your possession.
I appreciate that folks in this thread are attempting to propose legislation to stave off behavior they believe is dangerous. My concern is that using legislation in this way has knock on effects that make free society radically worse, because at its core it requires being OK with using government to restrict what technology combinations are legal to bring to market.
Because different people have different expectations for a given product and some level of expertise is required to understand basic requirements which most people don't have.
For instance most people don't know what is an acceptable level for various pollutants in drinking water. As such if there was no government oversight most people would be happy drinking poluted water and the few that care wouldn't be serviced as the cost of cleaning water for a niche wouldn't make it profitable. But hopefully we have laws that dictate safe levels and vendors have to respect them.
For hardware it's the same, experts are pretty clear about the risks: at the most basic level if hardware stop to function when some server crash then the whole society becomes dependant on this and as such any outages starts to have catastrophic consequences by domino effect. On the spying activity linked to those accounts the risk is pretty clear as well: it opens people to leaks of intimate details about their life to Facebook employees and various hackers in case of failure.
So it seems clear that public safety would require making those two activities illegal.
Because the market is imperfect. There is a profound information asymmetry between the consumer and the purveyor of high-tech products, and this asymmetry is exploited to raise the price of the product, in secret, without customer consent.
This is, of course, fraud. Why doesn't current law apply? I think it does. But courts are funny: when fraud becomes common and accepted, and people cease to recognize it as fraud, it becomes acceptable. In those cases, a new law is reasonable.
Because freedom can be infringed upon by more than just the government. The market is not infallible, and must be curtailed in order to protect individual rights.
Oculus isn’t secretive about the cloud account requirement. When you go to buy it, you’re buying it as Facebook chose to build it. And once you have the hardware you own it. But they aren’t required to sell you a device that works the way you wish it did.
If the pitch here was that vendors were lying about cloud/connectivity requirements, and we wanted legislation to prevent them from obscuring the truth, I’d be 100% down. Thankfully, we already have those laws.
I have a Quest 1 and having a Facebook account was not a condition when I bought it, but they’re going to require my Oculus account to be converted into a Facebook account that I don’t want to have
I agree that this is undesirable, and if the pitch here were to mandate that sellers enumerate ongoing requirements of their item at time of sale, I’d back that.
Just because they aren't secretive about it doesn't mean it's an okay thing to do. Doing a bad thing out in the open might make it shameless, but it doesn't make it acceptable.
I’m saying it’s not clear to me why it’s a bad thing. It’s clear that you want them to design a different VR headset, but I wish IKEA made a different depth Kallax shelf and yet I’m not looking to make it a legal requirement.
Designing things around safety is something IKEA already has to do, and regulations about materials, heights of products, etc all play into that.
The IKEA bookshelf doesn't violate your privacy nor have an always on connection to a much more powerful entity always looking to make another buck.
The IKEA bookshelf isn't an avenue for your attention and your time - whereas things like gambling (considered addictive and regulated by almost everyone) are - and we regulate them heavily.
Why would Facebook with its billions be exempt from regulation? It's not something we "want" - its to make their product basically useful without the IKEA subscription service to make sure your shelf doesn't fall apart every month.
The law says IKEA has to use certain non-flammable materials on mattresses etc to protect the individual.
Along the same lines, the law should say Facebook can't sell hardware that forces you to give up all your privacy to protect the individual.
This is not "I want Facebook to design a headset with blue stripes", this is "I don't want to be forced to give up my private data to use a product that would work just fine without".
I think the difference between the two should be obvious.
Your freedom stops when you decide not to make your own oculus and use the common market. Using that market you are governed by all kind of rules like safety around food, lemon laws around purchases, laws that protect against predatory practices like bait and switch.
I'm no corporate shill, but corporations are groups of people, so anything you think it's ok to take away from them because they're a group and not a person, you could logically take away from, say, a union or a farmer's market. If it was wise to make that law regarding facebook, would it be wise to make it regarding an individual as well, or should individuals be allowed to do it because they're not groups? And if individuals shouldn't be allowed to do it, then it's not really about the distinction between corporations and individuals.
The connection between corps and unions/farmers markets is clear to me, but the jump between unions/farmers markets to individuals is not.
Yes, I do think groups should not have rights individuals have. It's more about the scale than the amount of people, and the line between that gets blurred when an individual can control thousands of PCs.
For example, individuals are entitled to freedom of assembly, the ability to, say, gather and push for better labor conditions. If we restrict the rights of groups, would the government suddenly say, "Well sure, each of you can ask for labor rights individually, but you can't gather together to do it, because groups shouldn't have the same rights as individuals."
I suppose, I don't think the line between groups and individuals is quite so clear. When does a group become "greater" than the individual in a way that requires the individual to give up certain rights?
So backing up out of that for a second. Are you saying there are individuals (not part of a group, or a corporation) that are dead set on making computer peripherals that require an account?
Is that relevant? I think the analysis should revolve around whether they should be allowed to, and not whether we can just ban it because nobody wants to do it anyway. I don't think that's a good way to make rules.
I'm right now watching "The Billion Dollar Code" on Netflix and due to that I have an answer readily at hand: Someone needs to stand up to the big guys exerting excessive power and force[0].
[0] This phenomenom is inherent to and a natural byproduct of a free market, which is why regulation and laws are essential to keep some sort of balance.
Because the natural behavioural pattern of dominant companies is single-minded resource extraction, including from the commons which the government is in charge of safeguarding. On top of it the relationship they have to private citizens is extremely asymmetric.
All-consuming capitalism isn't a public liberty, and if companies are in the mind of lowering costs by using cancer-inducing materials, slave work, corruption or indeed trading people's very identities, then it's in the purview of political institutions to intervene.
It is desirable for any country to have laws that limit the ways how legal or government entities collect data.
Some of the strictest privacy laws existed in Germany for a reason, because the country new what an SS or a Stasi would do with the data once it gets its hands on it.
Some of the laxest privacy laws are in the US, the country whose businesses supplied the SS[1] and nowadays the CCP[2] with surveillance technology to facilitate genocide.
My strong suspicion is that the general plan is essentially:
- let a whistleblower (who seems intent on describing Facebook employees as smart and humanistic folks, despite those employees designing and maintaining FBs content delivery systems) make a case that Facebook needs government regulation.
- agree that such a regulatory agency should be created, and offer FBs assistance in outlining the parameters involved — because who better than the problem to design the solution?
- agency is created. Perhaps the whistleblower can even be a high level figure within it, as the face of the issue.
- Suddenly FB is no longer liable for anything because they are “adhering to government regulation”.
- Regulatory capture ensues as expected.
FOR FB this is preferable to thr other options:
1. Calls for FB to be broken up
2. Regulation that FB doesn’t have a primary role in designing.
hmm. it doesn't seem all that different from sony or microsoft subsizing the cost of gaming consoles and then locking down what can run on them so they can recoup those costs by getting a slice of the game sales.
nor is it all that different from apple or google dumping millions and millions into ios and android os/base level platform development, software update/delivery infrastructure and proactive platform security and then recouping those costs on sales and in-app purchases through the app stores.
it's been going on since the original nintendo entertainment system with its approval process. prior to that was the atari 2600 debacle, where the platform languished and the ecosystem of software was such crap that people just sort of gave up on it.
that said, are they a form of monopoly? it certainly amortizes the costs of developing hardware and os platforms to the point that consumers are willing to buy in, but it also results in undue control over the resulting platforms. hard to say... i think it all comes down to how that control is wielded... (and without it, it's the atari 2600 all over again)
only alternatives i can think of are to regulate the platforms for fairness or force platform vendors to offer full price/off contract versions of their hardware.
plus, shrug it seems that locked down platforms present a nice challenge for young tinkerers to break that can ultimately kindle their interests in technology.
I mean I don't see why this couldn't apply cart-blanche to all computers. I don't need to sign into MS, Mac to use the computers (though I do for my mac because of corp. policy).
It has been getting harder, but fuck, why not use this opportunity to turn this shit around?
Why though? Why is that requirement there? Okay, it's nice for me to sync everything and have a seamlessly integrated ecosystem. But what if I have one device and just want to use Word on it and that's it?
It's a subscription, so they have to know it is you to know if you've paid your dues or not. MS is a bit sneakier though as they will allow you to open a document and make changes, but if you are not current in your subscription fees, they disable save functions. Been caught out on this a couple of times.
Not sure why this matters. Can you use an iPhone without entering an iCloud account? Can you use an Android without some G account? I honestly don't know as I've never tried skirting the system on my iDevices, an my only use with Android is in a dev environment, but I know that there were G accounts for these as well.
I agree with the spirit of the rule but that seems too restrictive to freedom to contract. I feel like there will always be a market solution for peripherals where someone is selling them unrestricted. With VR is the issue not that the business model itself is still not good so FB was kind of subsidising the Oculus? If VR were highly profitable it seems like other companies with less restrictive terms would come in.
It's purely offline software that reaches out to the cloud solely to spy on me and/or make me log in. There are no online features I need or want from it.
What authentication do I need or want on a local device that is software specific?
Great way to make Facebook drop PCVR support and allow standalone apps only. At this point, I think things are going in that direction rapidly anyway. Oculus has already shifted most of it's game development resources away from PCVR.
What makes you think theyre dropping PCVR support? They just spent 3 years getting wired and wireless Link working. They clearly want to unify their products into a single hybrid standalone/pcvr lineup.
PCVR software sales are just absolutely abysmal, there is no way to make a profit on a large scale app, so theyre only going to invest in AAA content for standalone now.
Yes, it's the lack of investment and profit potential on PCVR. It also may interest the Oculus founders who want the highest quality experience, but it does not fall in line with Zuck's vision which is a cheap and good enough social VR machine.
I'm not so sure, Facebook did just invest a bunch of effort in getting AirLink working to allow wireless PC VR support and they seem to keep improving it.
Quest is basically a game console and not a peripheral. Even "dumb" non-standalone HMDs like Index have complex software stacks for tracking, input and rendering (compositor). HN loves the narrative of a VR device being "just" a monitor but that's really not the case. If this rule is applied to VR as it exists in 2021 (not 2013 DK1 which kind of was a 2nd monitor + HID) then it has to apply to all PCs, game consoles, smartphones, IOT devices etc. I'm not saying that legislation shouldn't happen but it does have ramifications for users and for security. On Quest you could do this, but social features and store might stop working at some point, and newer games and applications would definitely stop working, especially ones that use new features implemented in software like hand tracking.
TLDR this legislation could be fine but it would have to target Windows, Android, Steam, Playstation, Mac OS, etc and has ramifications that eventually software might just stop working. It might accelerate the push to move everything to the cloud also and make all devices dumb terminals that play video.
But I would like to see such a legislation for anything that is Turing-complete and sufficiently performant (e.g. can run Doom at 800x600 32bpp 60FPS).
While it might sound moderate "..balance to achieve..." in my opinion in this is very dangerous thought... as it assumes a lot of hidden things to name a few: 1. that the balance is the same for different people, 2. that the balance is not evolving over time, 3. that people can vote for "good" politicians to suggest good balance but at the same time can't figure out themselves how and if to use Facebook. 4. That the proper balance can be found at all. 5. That the side effect elsewhere will not bring worse overall outcome. 6. That an alternative better free market solution (better optimal) would not be prevented by getting stuck in a local minima 7. That facebook will not find a way to circumvent the new balance. 8. That it's the best use of regulators involved in it to figure out the best balance rather than thinking of something else 9. That it will not increase the value of lobbying and more...
I don't think Facebook is forcing anything, any tiny bit. Maybe that's what we disagree about. I think you are 100% free not to use any facebook products.
Anyone know why fitness tracking would not work after disabling telemetry? That’s very strange they’re intertwined.
If you own a quest, what’s the appeal of disabling the fb part? To me it’s the telemetry that’s most incendiary, especially as a friend at Oculus suspected people’s video is uploaded as part of data sets for training the tracking algorithms (which means the inside of my home is in FB servers… even worse if you consider some popular VR movies and their related activities…)
>especially as a friend at Oculus suspected people’s video is uploaded as part of data sets for training the tracking algorithms
How would this even be useful as part of a dataset? The official story is that Oculus created the dataset for Oculus Insight by also using OptiTrack to also track the HMD and controllers to create a ground truth of what be the actual location should be. For robustness certain Oculus employees took this setup home to capture data in various environments. Being able to test changes to your tracking algorithm and see how close you get to what it should be is clearly useful. Recording videos from random people seems much less useful.
