Please, anyone, desperately anyone, literally anyone, please, for the love of god, make a competing headset that doesn’t have this deep Facebook integration bullshit.
At this point it's clear that Facebook have "won" VR. At least for the current generation that's mostly focused on gaming.
The original Oculus Quest is already really good, and was constantly sold out for almost its entire lifetime, and now Facebook are selling a near-4K resolution headset with a top-of-the-line Snapdragon XR2 for $299.
I have been considering starting an open firmware project for the Oculus Quest 2 (Snapdragon XR2), and too a lesser extent, the Oculus Quest (Snapdragon 835) and Oculus Go (Snapdragon 821).
All 3 headsets are Android-based devices. Clearly, most of Facebook's innovations have been deep in the stack. The sensor fusion involved in 6DOF tracking and the approach taken for Oculus Link PC tethering are non-trivial problems that have taken entire teams of people years of work.
It would be many man-years of work to reverse engineer and re-implement Facebook's work to the quality level seen in the Quest.
But it can be done, and it would mean liberating the best value VR headset hardware on the market.
A hardware platform that is poised to dominate over at least the next decade.
> At this point it's clear that Facebook have "won" VR.
Eh, it doesn't look clear at all to me. It looks like its main advantage is slightly higher resolution than Valve Index and wirelessness. On the other hand from what I read Quest 2 only now will finally get 90Hz - this is what even old Vive provided. And Index goes beyond that - up to 120 and 144Hz. Also I wonder how Quest's screen quality compares to Index, besides resolution and refresh rate - couldn't find any information about Quest's field of view, pixel persistence or fill factor. And with Facebook behind Quest, I consider Index to be cheaper - I'll take $999 any day over $299 + my data.
> And with Facebook behind Quest, I consider Index to be cheaper - I'll take $999 any day over $299 + my data.
All that really means is you have enough disposable income that it's actually a decision worth even considering. For most people it's aimed at that's not the case.
This isn't Gmail for free vs some paid service for $5/mo, this is more than three times the cost for something that already costs multiple hundreds of dollars.
I'd say all it means is I value my data above $700, which I understand is not the case with many people. If I would not have enough disposable income, then I wouldn't buy Index nor Quest.
Your comment was about whether facebook "won" the VR segment, not whether facebook won over you specifically.
I'm sure many people in hackernews value their privacy above $700, me included, but that's clearly not the point here. We're just a blip in facebook's radar.
Well, Oculus does seem to be more popular and perhaps that is what the parent meant by Facebook "winning" VR segment. To me "winning" sounds more like total domination, where any competition is near a statistical error. This doesn't seem to be the case here (though I admit Steam statistics may be skewed towards Vive/Index).
Oculus Quest in particular is in majority a non-steam headset. If you want to use it with steam, you need to buy an additional cable (Oculus Link).
When I see people talking about Oculus dominination technology-wise, they mostly talk about the Oculus Quest. More specifically, a wireless standalone headset that doesn't require static captors to have 6 degrees of freedom.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, as I only started looking into VR recently.
Quest 2 requires to have a Facebook account linked. And to have a Facebook account you need to provide phone number and real name (as per their TOS). If I provide fake information, they may terminate my account. And if they do so, I fear it would make that $299 piece of hardware useless.
Besides, knowing Facebook's hunger for data, I certainly don't trust them enough to install any piece of their software on my PC. Nor do I trust them enough to use a device which could potentially identify some unique traits of the way I move in VR (akin to gait analysis).
Classic knee-jerk reaction. Don’t use Facebook and they literally can’t do anything with their data. I’ve stopped using FB beyond messenger and I doubt my data helps them in anyway shape or form.
Well, if you use it only for their messenger, then they can still for example track webpages you visit (either via cookies or some finer fingerprinting based on e.g. user agent).
It may also be a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, but in a world where even seemingly innocuous data is used to find unexpected correlations and identify people, I certainly prefer to keep a safe margin of error and steer away from companies which live on our data.
And comparing a 1000 dollar headset which requires a 1200 dollar computer to drive it, to a 300 dollar all in one unit.
It's akin to suggesting that Toyota haven't done well in the car market because they don't make Bugattis.
Facebook absolutely have won this generation in terms of market adoption. They've strategically withdrawn from competing at the higher end of the market. Which, at least today is a relatively tiny luxury segment.
As someone already pointed out, that's a nice problem to have! For me, I considered the Index but the cost of upgrading my PC + the Rift S still came out a couple hundred £ cheaper plus I don't have to dedicate space to it.
Honestly, I feel like you could position such a project as "Deconstructing Facebook's business models one step at a time: The corporation" and hire a lot of anarcho-hacker types while positioning the company as a social-good venture. I personally would love to get paid to gradually undercut and destroy facebook.
I worry that 2 things would happen:
1. The company would become what it set out to destroy (evil)
2. Anarchist hackers are passionate but you'd have a hard time getting funding from any of the big reputable players.
Open-firmware has had a long history, with varied degrees of success. From RockBox for the iPod to the ReactOS open re-implementation of Windows.
I think now is different. I think crowd-funding has changed the economics of such projects from a few passionate hackers working in their spare time to now being able to fund people working on such a project full-time.
There's probably tens of thousands of users willing to pledge $100 into escrow on a Kickstarter-like service, paying out when somebody to creates an open Oculus Quest firmware capable of 6 degrees of freedom using inside-out tracking.
This funding model and skillsets are suprisingly close to what's required to provide Android security updates to older phones and tablets, so there's a broader business to be built.
Many of those users are probably willing to pay a few dollars a month so such software gets continued to be developed.
Maybe, but I think the market for a Facebook-free Oculus is smaller than one might think. Your average xbox dudebro probably uses instagram quite prolifically and isn't in the "protect my privacy" camp.
Whenever you talk about startups with people outside the HN-like crowd, they always ask you about "your ideas", particularly if you assume you have all the funding lined up no problem.
My go-to response is always "put Facebook out of business".
I've been thinking about it for probably 10 years, I still have no idea what that means, but your post here got me a little stoked it could be possible
It's unclear how creating a what-sounds-like a rather expensive open source VR system could possibly put Facebook "out of business", considering probably 99 out of 100 people have no idea FB even owns Oculus.
Also, FB's core business is ads sold to businesses trying to reach users doing social networking stuff...how does this even touch that revenue?
At this point, I don't think FB will ever be put out of business given how old their core user base is, knowing that older people loath tech changes.
Why do you think the bulk of the Oculus innovation is deep in the stack? Is there much custom hardware in the Quest 2 or is it similar to a phone in a different form factor?
How much of the accuracy of the sensor fusion algorithm comes from the inherent accuracy/calibration of the underlying sensors?
Has anyone tried bringing up a stock android distribution on the Quest 2?
John Carmack does several hour-long sessions at every annual Oculus Connect event (now called Facebook Connect). [1] [2]
He has often spoken about deeply optimizing virtual reality by peeling back all the software layers. From his annoyance at the Android's process scheduling on the GearVR to writing custom microcode for the Qualcomm chip's Digital Signal Processor to try and optimize playing PC games (over Oculus Link streaming) by encoding and transmitting video per scan line (instead of per frame).
He said that up until a few months before the original Quest launched they weren't even sure whether they could get inside-out optical tracking working to sufficient quality, but that they just continued to iterate on the algorithms until it worked well.
It's clear that most of Oculus' innovation are deep in the stack, seemingly pushed forward by the legendary John Carmack. Now that Carmack is merely the "consulting CTO" rather than working on these problems full-time there's real questions about whether Oculus' deep stack innovations will continue.
Oculus Quest is effectively a smartphone in many key ways, but it has several monochrome wide-angle cameras for tracking. Also unlike smartphones it has active cooling fans for improved thermals. It seems there's a million little things than come together to make Oculus Quest standalone VR way better than any phone-holder based virtual reality platform that I've used.
As far as an open-source custom firmware for Oculus Quest goes, I am unaware of any project that has yet cracked the bootloader to run unsigned code and then booted stock Android.
If not now then when? Given the top-notch specifications, Facebook appear to be selling at least for the 64GB Quest 2 at a significant loss. The advantage of an open-source custom firmware is it will leverage all the work that the Oculus hardware engineers have done, and the subsidized price.
Or do you believe standalone VR headsets are doomed to being closed forever?
It does suprise me that Google effectively gave up investment in VR and effectively handed the entire industry to Facebook. Though Microsoft's efforts with Windows Mixed Reality headsets haven't made a splash at all (except maybe the HP Reverb G2).
> The original Oculus Quest is already really good, and was constantly sold out
I accidentally bought one until I realized the mistake and bought a rift S a day after that. Want to buy it? It is as good as new.
Thought about selling it on ebay but got a bad conscience to sell it to some kid, even for a good price.
Jokes aside I think not needing to connect a PC has to be the future, but I would expect the device to be able to run a conventional OS. Currently I think it will stay a dream however.
Otherwise VR devices have amazing capabilities already. A few more pixels would be good, but you will quickly need a lot of processing power.
I've thought a little on this as well, from time to time. Hardware-wise, I don't see how the Quest 1/Lenovo Mirage Solo/Vive Focus were anything much more than Qualcomm's reference design headset (https://developer.qualcomm.com/hardware/snapdragon-835-vr-de...). Different strap designs, minor variations on display modules, removing ancillary stuff like the cellular radio and GPS, but otherwise the same CPU, same GPU, largely the same cameras.
Qualcomm provides an SDK for VR on their hardware that touts all the things Facebook has always claimed were their own big innovations, like asynchronous time warp and lens corrections (https://developer.qualcomm.com/software/snapdragon-vr-sdk)
I can't find the link right now, but Qualcomm/Thundercomm are also providing a base Android image specifically for use in VR. Which is probably why you can build and install regular ol' Android APKs on all of these headsets and they map the controller to mouse actions.
My point is, I am starting to doubt Facebook has all that much "special sauce". I think it's mostly just marketing. I think Qualcomm has done the hard work here and is happy to let other companies take the credit because Qualcomm is about chip licenses, not consumer electronics. Other than tuning parameters for camera positions, there should be no reason why the OS image for any one of these headsets to run on any other one.
I think it's doable. I think you could probably root the firmware and get an open source OS running on any one of these headsets. And it'd also breath new life into systems whose creators basically got bored with not making a billion dollars overnight.
I would tend to agree with you, but is's John Carmack leading the software group for it and I just cannot believe that he hasn't done a bunch of optimizations and other work.
It would just negate a reputation that he has worked his ass off his entire life to build if he hasn't done valuable targeted work on the visuals of the device.
But he did most of that work on Gear VR (Snapdragon 805 when it first came out for the Galaxy Note 4) and Go (Snapdragon 821), long before Qualcomm started sinking so much stuff into the SOC (Snapdragon 835). My understanding with his involvement on Quest 1 was that he was primarily concerned with the PC streaming. His role since November is "Consulting CTO", which I basically take to mean "on call for questions as needed". Was he even invovled with Quest 2 beyond stuff ported from Quest 1?
All I'm saying is that there is a path through which everything Carmack said could be true, and also the latest hardware doesn't really use what he built.
Yes your information definitely creates a reasonable doubt that he would have had the time and job description to do serious head-down graphical-stack type developments.
But I have a return volley for you...who on the Facebook/Oculas graphics programming team, knowing that jcarmack was your boss, wouldn't go full nuts on trying to create some slick tech to impress him with? I'm sure FB has the pick of the crop when it comes to hiring talent, and at least of few of those guys would have to be his fanboys and come up with very useful optimizations and enhancements to add to the Quest graphical stack, right?
Facebook only has the pick of engineers they can convince to move to California and work for Mark Zuckerberg. I know it's hard to believe, but there are a lot of us who have turned them down on multiple occasions.
The competency of FANG engineers in general is highly overrated. They are humans. They don't have access to some kind of forbidden knowledge. The idea that these companies are uniquely competent such that competitors don't even have a chance is largely a marketing story.
I already have a decent amount of experience with Linux internals, but my next project is far less ambitious in scope: simply reverse-engineering the Android-based firmware on a Huawei router and creating a drop-in replacement.
There is a lot of foundational hacking to be done around the Oculus standalone headsets. I don't believe the headsets have yet been cracked to unlock the bootloader to launch unsigned firmware.
It's probably worth moving discussion over to a forum and Wiki dedicated to such reverse engineering efforts (such as XDA developers) [1]
I do think that now is the time for such a project, and that crowdfunding has changed the economics to make this possible in a way that it never has been before.
It’s not just logging in. This thing is covered in cameras, sensors, and microphones. I don’t trust Facebook with my name, much less with detailed information about everything in my house. Absolutely fuuuuuck that.
I’d rather miss out on VR entirely than create a FB account and give that despicable company any data.
HTC is working on a XR2 based version of their Vive Focus standalone headset (source: https://www.roadtovr.com/htc-vive-focus-xr2-geekbench/ ). It will be out in 2021. I hope it will be less than twice expensive as the (subsidized) Quest 2.
How much would you be willing to pay for a comparable headset without a required facebook account.
Clearly FB is planning to extract value from this, and is why they can price this at just $299. They're betting customers will give up some data/privacy for that low price.
Price aside, tethered is a different market. I like powering VR with a gaming PC, but a standalone headset with inside-out tracking like the Quest is where the mass market / oasis will be.
Furthermore, theres alot of moving parts in the tethered setup, easy to get bottlenecks in performance. I think right now this all in one device could compete on consistent day to day performance as well as dominating in flexibility and price.
Don’t bet on Valve. They don’t have a killer business instinct. They take their sweet time to get anything done. Plus their Steam machine “console” idea was crap, anyone could see that from day one.
It's amazing how shortsighted & wrong one smarmy glib post can be.
Valve is kicking ass, leading massive technical charged doing great & fantastic work with none of the typical Service-as-a-Software-Substitute slimeware that everyone else keeps falling to. Great novel hardware with very high bandwidth & compelling input, best if not only useful end user drivers out there as we see with projects like Monado XR that are practically unimaginable elsewhere.
You're damned right they don't have a killer business instinct. They have a nurture protect & help instinct.
They aren't on inside-out tracking, not yet, they are building far more reliable open systems for outside-in, & that makes them more costly. But you know what you are getting & you know the raw data right out of the sensor is going to be great.
That's an interesting take. I don't follow the VR market at all, but from my perspective Valve has been resting on their laurels for years. I've read that gaben just sits in his office playing DOTA 2 all day. Until I read your comment I would never have considered describing Valve as "kicking ass". From where I sit they've basically done nothing innovative since Half Life 2.
I think it's been easy to miss a lot of Valve's recent work since they haven't been cranking out games. Here are a few things since 2013 when DOTA2 was released:
* SteamOS, Steam Machine, Steam Controller, Steam Link (2015) hardware, porting Steam, Source, and tooling to Linux (and patching Linux to improve gaming performance). Cross platform and streaming features. Facilitating porting of games to Linux.
* Source2 (2015) wrote a new game engine and ported DOTA2 to it. Neither is a small undertaking.
* HTC Vive VR (2016) hardware, software, tooling, and VR content. None a small undertaking.
* Valve Index (2019)
* Half-Life: Alyx (2020)
In addition, there were a few projects and games that never made it to market and a few I probably missed. I'm really happy to see them trying things nobody else is, even when they fail.
On top of all that Dota 2 is one of the best supported games in history, comparable only to the likes of World of Warcraft and Fortnite.
It's not like they released Dota 2 and that was that. They've kept developing it to this day at a breakneck pace, including even swaping out the engine like pfranz mentioned.
>Valve has been resting on their laurels for years.
They aren't just a game development company anymore. Their primary product is Steam. If Half-Life Alyx was playable on any PC or console it would have been one of the best selling games of the year. Its only a niche product because, instead of resting on their laurels, they are trying to drive the industry forward.
Not only did they make the Index, which is by far the best VR Headset yet, they also supposedly helped HP develop the Reverb G2 that's coming out soon.
GabeN likes playing Dota but the idea that he sits around all day playing videogames when he's been building, improving, and expanding a billion dollar gaming empire is ridiculous.
There's also the massive progress towards making Linux a viable gaming platform. Really the only thing keeping me on Windows on my gaming system is the fact that most competitive multiplayer games' anti-cheat software can't run on Linux yet. If I played mostly single player games or casual multiplayer I could play almost everything I want to on Linux.
IMO they are plenty innovative. I wish they released more games, but aside from gaming they are doing a lot of great things for the gaming community.
Digital item economics/lootboxes/items is a big one[1], they even hired Yanis Varoufakis for a bit.
They also did a good deal of the foundational work for VR working with HTC and Oculus.
Then there's steam link, Steam controller/SteamOS/Steam Machines, Player created layers in Portal 2, Steak Workshop/Mod support (and paid mods) to name a few. There's a lot of not hits and a lot of not games, but they've been at least doing some stuff.
I don't know how you managed to interpret "Dota 2 is Gabe Newell's favorite game" into "he does nothing but play DOTA 2 all day, even at his office". That's downright malicious.
Valve is hilariously stagnant. The Steam windows app went ignored for nearly a decade until Epic came in and started eating their lunch. The mobile app looks like a contracted out app from 2009. Seriously, go download the mobile app. Half the products or ideas they’ve come up with abandoned, never release, or are mediocre. They lack any clear vision, strategy or direction as a company. They seem like they would just absolutely rest on their laurels and do absolutely nothing if it weren’t for pesky competitors ruining their laziness.
The only reason Valve is in business today is because DRM forbids consumers from transferring their owned games to another platform. If I could abandon Steam I immediately would.
That's a really bitter way of saying that Steam's been chugging along doing fine for some time now. Epic's store was never really a competitor until Sweeney starting getting itinerant over his royalties red herring, paying developers for exclusive launches, and giving away at least a game a week for something like a year now. It's still missing a ton of features compared to Steam (though one could argue how many of those features should stay missing), and it is slow as molasses.
Steam's only other potential competitor was GOG, and it seems those two have had a fairly friendly relationship over the years. Remember that Valve gives away Steam keys to developers and resellers at very little cost, and that there are thriving third-party markets because of that.
You could argue that they have been stagnant in terms of game development, but everyone knows that isn't exactly true since Alyx was released. I don't really know what state VR was in before its release but from this outsider's perspective it seems to have raised the bar considerably.
Save for GOG, the DRM war is effectively lost, and so I'd rather be living under Gaben's benevolent dictatorship than some of the other more corporate-minded masters.
On the subject of game development at Valve, there's a lot of things that have been worked on but never turned into an actual release. There were 5 cancelled Half-Lifes between Episode 2 and Alyx (Including Half Life 3), Left 4 Dead 3, F-Stop, "RPG". A.R.T.I, SimTrek and probably a few more.
That sometimes over-cancelling willingness I think is also part of what makes the end result great-TF2 took 9 years and several versions similarly to Alyx, but I think both were worth the wait.
I can play 60%+ of games on Linux because Valve cares way more than anyone else.
Big Picture works great for a console like experience far better than anyone elses.
Valve Controller let's practically any game under the sun be couch & controller playable.
Remote Play, then Remote Play Together, now Remote Play Tablet blow everything else out of the water.
I'm sorry the you doesn't meet your high pop culture desires? It feels much less glossy-plastic & more direct to me than Epic. That's just me I guess. The thing is, that is way way way way down my list of concerns. Steam is a technical juggernaut. No one else is even playing. Steam is super under appreciated. The lack of mainstream highly visible overwhelming successes doesn't bother me. Steam is innovating at the edge in radical ways, & they are always always always trying to spread the love, not steal the sunshine.
Anyone who says Valve is resting on their laurels clearly hasn't tried Half Life: Alyx. They've sigularly pushed VR further than all the other games and experiences out there combined.
Agreed. As far as my household is concerned there are two relevant VR experiences: BeatSaber and Alyx. (Serious Sam of all games gets an honourable mention). We would not own a Quest if not for Alyx.
>Valve Controller let's practically any game under the sun be couch & controller playable.
The Steam Controller is dead.
>I can play 60%+ of games on Linux because Valve cares way more than anyone else.
Steam OS is dead. The open source community is more responsible for Linux gaming than Valve. Valve has supported Linux in the (hilariously) limited number of titles they've released in the last decade, and has added some support to the open source community. They are not the driver behind Linux gaming.
>Remote Play, then Remote Play Together, now Remote Play Tablet blow everything else out of the water.
Steam Link is no longer in production. Legitimately, have you ever tried other remote play alternatives? There is just no way you can say this with a straight face. The Valve apps are truly crap.
>Steam is a technical juggernaut. No one else is even playing. Steam is super under appreciated
What? This isn't a difficult problem to solve. There are a dozen game libraries similar to Steam that do the same job, but significantly better. The only thing Steam has going for it is the DRM stickiness that they acquired by being the only player in the PC space for so long.
>Steam is innovating at the edge in radical ways, & they are always always always trying to spread the love, not steal the sunshine.
Legitimately, tell me how they are innovating in "radical ways."
This is comically absurd take that is utterly divorced from reality. Half of what you mentioned to love about Valve is related to canceled or abandoned stuff.
> The open source community is more responsible for Linux gaming than Valve. Valve has supported Linux in the (hilariously) limited number of titles they've released in the last decade, and has added some support to the open source community. They are not the driver behind Linux gaming.
Valve are not the only ones doing anything for Linux gaming, but they are a pretty fucking big contributor:
- Releaseing Steam for Linux, which has encouraged many games to be ported. Yes, the Steam Consoles are cancelled (or on hold), but even the promise of a new market (and the convenience of not having to have a separate distribution channel for the Linux version of your game) has changed the Linux gaming landscape from a handful of titles to more games than anyone can play (depending on your tastes ofc).
- Employing/contracting people working on different parts of the Linux graphics stack (SDL,radv,dxvk,more).
- Developing Proton. I mostly play native games, but Proton has been huge for many. Yes, it's based on Wine (that is a good thing, NIH syndrome is way too common is bad) but Valve have improved the parts needed to get a good gaming experience and packaged it up in a nice way that is dead simple to use for anyone. Just click a button to play your Windows games.
- Lots of other small things. For example Valve's Plagman has been working on https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope which is godsent for thos of us with ultrawide monitors or other uncommon resolutions and aspect ratios that gamedevs like to pretend don't exist.
And best of all, most of those improvements have been open source and available even to those who don't want to use Steam. That's surprisingly open for what is esentially a DRM company. So saying "The open source community is more responsible for Linux gaming than Valve" doesn't even make sense when Valve are part of that opensource community.
Yikes. Posting like this will get you banned on HN, and we've already had to warn you about this multiple times. I'm not going to ban you right now because you've also posted good comments, but please use HN as intended going forward. That means thoughtful, substantive comments, curious conversation, and no more flamewars.
I've seen post flagged, but to my knowledge I've never seen an explanation or communication for why.
In this case, I agree fully. I was fed up arguing with someone who insists on being a downer at every turn & who recognizes no good-side, no upside, who denied every contribution blanketly. That doesn't excuse. Perhaps that kind of outburst does merit a lifetime ban forever & ever, but in my opinion, issuing a lifetime ban for this sort of thing is grossly immoral & radically intolerant. Yes, it is a mistake, yes it should be punished. But to exercise the death penalty in this case speaks extremely ill of moderation & process on the internet, not in any way unique to Hacker News, but in a manner we see pervasively & which is extremely damaging to us all.
I think you should re-assess your policies & system. I rarely even notice that my posts have been flagged. Moderation happens invisibly. I would like to see a way to view my flagged posts, so I can understand what is happening to my content. And so I can reflect better. Because right now, you've warning me that I've been warned before, but that does not process. Simply raising the fact that moderation has occurred is important, first step to making this moderation into feedback.
Second, this is the only time I can remember having any feedback to inform me. I appreciate that I was offered a grant here, that I did get feedback. My post on Larry Wall being made into fiat dictator of social media moderation was incredibly on target & hilarious, yet flagged. Ok? I don't get it.
But most of all, this threat to be banned: I find it grossly immoral that the threat of punishment online is forever. People should get banned for months, years, but banning people forever is absurd, vindictive, & cruel. I think you & all sites should seek a system that works for justice, to correct problems, to encourage behavior. This threat of being banned causes me pause, and I knew I was breaking the rules even without having read them in decades, but it also is just so disgusting, so vile, makes me so sad to be here. Living under the threat of the guillotine, feeling like the punishment is radically out of line, that screwing up is unforgivable: this is cruelty that makes me radically aware that these rules, they are judged by fiat & there is no system or process for enforcement, that I contribute here only under the pleasure of ya'll & that ya'll offer me nothing of my own. There should be a system for justice, because this threat feels unjust & it hurts.
Obviously, though, it shouldn't take moderators to tell you that comments like "Heavens you are a little bitch" and "You don't fucking deserve it you turd" are unacceptable.
People can trivially make a new account after getting banned, and frequently do, so I think words like "cruelty", "disgusting", "vile" and "guillotine" are a tad overwrought.
My understanding is Steam machines weren't so much meant to be a console competitor or even a gaming PC competitor, they were meant to be a Windows competitor. So that Valve could basically just say "we'll start releasing exclusives for this" if Microsoft pushed the Windows Store hard and tried to kick Valve out of their dominant market position. Steam machines bought them a bit of leverage when they needed it.
They do little but do right to secure dominance. Steam Machine didn’t work but Steam and PC gaming industry survived from PS4 and Microsoft Store. They let Oculus and later HTC run with their core VR knowledges but SteamVR/Valve Index is still considered the best platform/headset hands down.
I've seen HN comments that think if Epic and their games are kicked off consoles they are going to make their own console instead. I don't think "anyone could see that from day one" is true if people still think so about a different company, whose game store has less selection.
Yes. I hope someday mobile devices(like phones and VR sets) become like laptops - you can install an OS you want.
You should own the hardware. I'm not a fan of the whole hardware-software integration.
Facebook now requests personal ID when they suspect account is fake. They can ban your account if they find it to be fake, which also cuts access to any store content you've paid for. This is done automatically and quite efficiently by algorithms.
They've now announced some kind of developer accounts for businesses that won't be tied to personal FB accounts.
I feel like if they started banning and cutting access to paid content they’d be doing something illegal or at least setting themselves up for class action.
They have also voluntarily stopped selling in Germany. Most likely they anticipated gross violation of some policy. It would be interesting to know which one. On average EU has far better citizen protection mechanisms than US.
Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Tencent, Elon Musk, Samsung, Huawei, Dell, etc. There is no shortage of companies who could compete with Facebook on a technical level. Just so far there isn't any. My hope is that Facebook creates the market and other companies come in and diversify it. Otherwise we'll be in some sad dystopia where the only way to get VR is to hand over all of your private data.
$300 is a pretty big deal for pricing on a VR headset, that feels very different from $400 for wide adoption.
Seems like this is also the end of the road for Rift, the Quest 2 is lower cost, more pixels, and they mentioned 90 hz screens for PCVR games over Link.
The Rift is a VR head mounted display for a beefy PC. The Quest is an entire computer system powered by battery and tiny in surface area. They're different products for different markets. Anything in a mobile form factor as your VR computer will necessarily be limited for either shorter time periods or significantly less graphical fidelity.
Rift S is being discontinued, if you want a dedicated PC headset now you'll want to look at an Index or an HP Reverb G2.
But you can plug the Quest into a PC and use it as a PCVR headset. Oculus sells a 16 ft fiber optic cable for $80, but it works well over any good quality USB 3 cable (and even works over USB 2 now).
The downside of this is that it's more front heavy than a PC headset without all the standalone guts, and I'm sure there's non-zero latency for running the video stream over a USB connection rather than a standard video cable. It works pretty well though, I think the trade-offs are absolutely worth the benefits of having a standalone headset.
Also check out https://www.vrdesktop.net/ for PC streaming, this option works wirelessly and performs very well as long as you have a fast and stable wifi connection.
The version on the Oculus Store doesn't do SteamVR streaming though, you have to buy it and then sideload an alternate version (which still checks for a license from the store).
There's supposed to be some sort of easier sideloading system coming (currently you need to sign up for a developer account and enable developer mode), but no new info since that was announced a few months ago.
This is interesting, though I'm ready to move past the limitations of emulating real world single-screen setups. I want a virtual window manager where I can move and organize windows just like the desktop, but in 3D around me.
Pixel density isn't as high as what you'll get on a real monitor, but having lots of them ought to help make up for it.
Carmack brought this up in his talk last night, apparently with the higher pixel count in the Quest 2 the quality is now limited by the fresnel lens optics, and they won't be able to just keep bumping the pixel count up to improve visuals. So it's not clear what the path is to higher quality VR is for them. People have made headsets with more exotic multi-element glass optical setups, but there are trade-offs for cost, weight, and likelihood of things breaking if you knock it off a table.
This was demo'd in the Facebook event today as something they are actively working on and making progress with. Seamlessly switch from VR (with browser or application window floating in a VR game/app) to passthrough camera into the real world (with the browser or application windows still floating in the exact same position in space.
There is latency and in VR latency is more noticeable to begin with than it is with normal gaming.
Also, there is a good amount of compression involved so the graphical fidelity takes a massive hit.
They claim that they are going to be improving both of these issues, but given that they still exist in largely the same state as they did with the Oculus Link Beta with the V1 Quest, people should be skeptical about how much improvement they are going to be able to accomplish. Carmack talked about some ideas on how it can be made better, but I don't know if he's still assisting them with anything at all.
I'm very happy with my v1 Quest, but its PC support has some significant drawbacks.
Replying to my comment because its too old to edit. Apparently Carmack is still somewhat involved and spoke at a recent Facebook event. He talked a bit about working on this problem. I'm hoping we see the results of Oculus' effort soon. I already like using it tethered to my PC, but if it can get significantly better that would be awesome.
He also mentioned he hopes they can eventually get an official wireless solution out to the public.
Yes, but with 30 ms additional latency on top of base latency for doing the same with a normal head mounted display. You can see confused questions about this all over the oculusvr forums.
So now you're tethered, your tether is more fragile, and you have significant extra latency.
Yes, serious PC VR gamers will probably want to look elsewhere, for me my gaming computer is mostly running flatscreen games and being able to enjoy games like HL: Alyx via Link is a bonus.
Standalone headsets are so much more convenient, and are affordable to people without a high powered gaming computer, so I see why Facebook is going in this direction.
>We’re going to focus on standalone VR headsets moving forward. We’ll no longer pursue PC-only hardware, with sales of Rift S ending in 2021. That said, the Rift Platform isn’t going anywhere. In fact, we've seen significant growth in PC VR via Oculus Link, and the Rift Platform will continue to grow while offering high-end PC VR experiences.
So, yeah. End of the road for the Rift. Oculus Link makes it redundant.
Oculus Link[1] lets you render everything on the PC. The cable also provides power so you don't have to worry about battery life. The only disadvantage is the extra weight of the battery in the headset.
Tethering just feels like an bootstrapping niche. Appealing to those who already find gaming PCs appealing, obviously dovetailing with highly engaged gamers. But, tethering is never going to "win." Tethering for power makes current battery life OK, even the quest 1 is good enough.
Mass adoption, almost certainly, means an affordable all-in-one unit. We have enough history at this point (with home gaming) to know what the price range is. Oculus have been playing within that range.
Graphics/power is already (Quest1) good enough for a lot of games. An interesting part of the history of home gaming is that both "more is never enough" and "good enough is good enough" seem to be true. Lots of the most popular gaming products (games, consoles.. eg minecraft) did not push boundaries at all. OTOH, bleeding edge has always been highly relevant, especially for blockbuster games.
On balance, I don't think graphics is a (commercially) limiting factor for VR anymore. This makes a rift/tethered device kind of questionable. If it doesn't get mass adoption, and I don't think it can), it can't support the high end games that really need these graphics. The oculus product line strategy (whether accidentally or deliberately) seems clever. The rift is what you develop new games for. They will (hopefully) be portable to the next gen Quest.
Overall, I think the current game is all about weight/comfort and content. The current devices are heavy & sweaty. This one weighs just 10% less. Every gram counts, but I don't think this is a breakthrough. Content is the other factor. IMO, exercise apps still need to breakthrough. I'm surprised ankle controllers and heart rate monitors aren't a thing yet. I really think the right game & controllers with the current gen quest could become a breakthrough workout thing. A lot of current games are pretty physical, but I suspect you can get to a point where a 6 week game addiction makes you look visibly fitter... on par with a daily gym routine.
They make it up by taking a 30% cut on any games you purchase through their store (which is the only place you can buy games for it), similar to consoles. This is much more money than user data is worth. (Not that they won't use/sell that data, too, but let's not confuse ourselves about how much it's worth.)
If you want to get down to a nit picky level like that then, sure. And to be fair, maybe it should be explicitly stated. However, Facebook sells access to the data it collects. It may not be access to the raw data that a phrase like 'selling the data' makes it sound. However, it is making money from the knowledge it has about people (can't even say its users anymore). Either way, the ad buyer (end user) gets access to that data even if it is a black box API style system.
They get the ability to target ads against people who match some characteristics. Facebook's business is literally built on advertisers inability to access that data. If they had access, advertisers would advertise elsewhere and Facebook wouldn't get a cut.
Which is in itself a huge problem in democratic societies as demonstrated e.g. by Cambridge analytica. I think the potential harm that this business model produces and the power it gives the companies who deploy them, is something our formerly nice working systems didn't really price in when the seperation of powers was invented.
So while protection of privacy is always also the right of one individual, I think it is crucial to realize that this kind of power over "the masses" isn't something any free society could afford in the long term on a systemic level. If we look at a democracy with it's separation of powers, it's institutions etc as a delicately balanced electronic circuit — which has the ability to self correct — players like Facebook are like the introduction of new feedback paths that work better for people who don't mind to sell their soul when abusing them. Of course such new connections will have an effect on the whole system, but the crucial point is, that nobody really considered what this effect might be and whether what we have and like in democracy can actually survive this.
You cannot have free elections if the people voting in it are put into their own matrix-esque simulation of reality. How could we ever find agreeable consent if our realities have no common overlap by design?
I think a lot of people in tech sphere don't really want to see this as they are profiting from this. It makes us powerful wizards who see more and understand more than others.
CA actually did get access to user data because they abused a loophole in the Facebook app API that let them grab all the details of not only people who used the app, but also every single one of their friends. They were also using data given to researchers by Facebook as part of a collaboration.
There isn't a loophole with the graph, it was designed for this and was used notably by Zygna and later the Obama campaign. When the campaign hoovered up everything in 2011/2012 and set off alarms, FB saw what they were doing and didn't hinder it. Instead they reached out them, stating that they're on the same side. Hopefully these links aren't mangled.
Here's the media championing it:
"How a dream team of engineers from Facebook, Twitter, and Google built the software that drove Barack Obama's reelection"
"Why are politicians now freaking out about a feature that has been publicly documented since its inception and that was discontinued three years ago?"
buying peoples data would be a big deal, that's why its not a nit picky detail. I also don't agree with facebook having all of my data in the first place but they don't just tar up my entire life and hand it to someone.
I agree. I am a little a shocked how many games and VR experiences that I have bought for the Quest. The only other person I know who has one is my stepson (who did a “hard insist” that I buy one, and that was great advice) and he also buys a lot of games for his.
I worked on VR over 30 years ago. I am so happy to finally see great consumer VR gear.
how much do you think FB would care about that, even if that data was actually uploaded (which it isn't because it would be extremely expensive for everyone involved).
C'mon, I get the hate but this is worst than tinfoil hat conspiracies.
You can also use things like ALVR or Virtual Desktop to stream Steam VR titles to the Quest. But yes, that still requires a VR capable PC and stable wireless connection.
Really though? Facebook makes money by displaying targeted ads to users. What data from the Quest is being used to target ads? I’m not familiar with anything related to this in Facebook’s product for ad buyers, and can’t think of anything particularly useful that they could be doing.
You could think of Oculus as an effort to increase the amount of user attention inventory Facebook has in supply to rent out to advertisers. Also, they are positioning themselves as an intermediary for transactions in the future VR economy by being platform owner (a la Apple owning the App Store). My guess is the long-term plan is to make money here by displaying ads in VR and by getting a cut of goods and services sold though VR (see: Ready Player One).
What is it with HN and trying to read between the lines so hard? There's literally an Oculus Store app store for quest games. Probably they are just making money on game sales, like every other game console has for 35 years.
I do worry that Facebook will figure they might as well double dip on sales and advertising; future headsets are probably going to have eye tracking (ostensibly for foveated rendering and better avatars), and combining in-world advertising with exact data on how long people looked at them is a pretty compelling sell for what is fundamentally an advertising company.
They spent like 15 minutes of the presentation talking about how ethical they're going to be (re: AR glasses) and how trust has to be earned, but their ethics track record isn't exactly stellar.
I’m skeptical the Facebook would bother to invest so many billions into VR just for the chance of being part of the competitive game console market. It makes sense to think about how it fits into the long-term strategy for their main cash cow, ads. If there’s a future where internet/app usage hours shift toward VR, Facebook doesn’t want to be left in the dust like Myspace when users switch to a new social network. Even if they can keep users on a Facebook-owned VR app, they don’t want to wind up paying a 30% tax to some platform owner.
> being part of the competitive game console market
You mean being part of the many billion dollar game industry by controlling the highest growth sector in that industry with vendor lock in and rent seeking for any game sold in that new market?
Sure, but that would also apply to other companies who could have bought Oculus. I think the way it fits into Facebook’s overall company strategy explains why they would bid the most.
Hmm, who would have bid more? Google has its own tech and doesn't like making content. Apple doesn't like making content and only recently got into original video content. Microsoft has its own tech.
I don't _think_ Facebook had a lot of computer vision expertise at the time and it makes sense they'd want to buy into that.
Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple all have launched gaming platforms, to varying degrees of success. I think any of them could have bought Oculus. While they all also have some degree of AR and/or VR tech, none of them have an Oculus-like product.
They could have but again, why? Each of those companies already have bigger hardware and software platforms and none of them are really behind Oculus in computer vision, so what would Oculus give those other companies?
Google (with Lenovo and the Mirage Solo) and Microsoft (with Hololens) had stand alone headsets before the Quest.
not to mention that VR is a completely new type of media, so not just games but virtual environmental presence which is gonna be a big deal in a world where carbon footprint and pandemics will make things like traveling for a festival become more expensive or impossible.
Again, why would FB want be the company that does that?
My guess: The simple answer is they want to be the VR platform of the future so they can show ads on it, however that may look. Selling ads in VR apps/games/homescreen is obvious - selling AR ads is probably on the horizon (so, if you look at your fridge in the Oculus Quest 5 AR you'll see an ad asking you to upgrade to the latest Samsung Fridge).
I kind of doubt we have anything to worry about now, but there is a terrifying future on the horizon where everything you look at, everything you do, is measured and any value is extracted and sent to ~~our new overlords~~ FB.
I think they were sad they missed the boat on mobile and wanted to get in early on VR in case it gets big. Although a massive investment, for Facebook it was not that big a deal.
Zuckerbery has talked about the strategy here for ages. It's not about VR, it's about AR. The tech to build realtime, always on AR is just a more advanced VR tech.
AR will be all about the ads as facebook can serve them everywhere you go. That's where they will make $100BN in ad revenue.
Adblockers will require you to "jailbreak" your device and their installation/use will be against numerous terms of service agreements. Maybe they won't be illegal though, who knows
There could be some kind of lawsuit or legislation mandating that AR or VR platform owners provide access to third-party software (like how Microsoft was forced to offer other browsers back in the day).
I hope that the platform as a whole don't start stuffing ads everywhere, but I'd be shocked if there weren't some monitization plan for Facebook Horizon
If it were truly just about the games, they would let you keep using Oculus login. Why else would they force you to use a Facebook login? If they only cared about store profits, logins wouldn't be required at all.
no idea if this is the reason but they are being pretty forward about banning malicious users (cheaters, creeps) and you can't do that effectively if you just ban the throwaway user.
Interesting. But don't you have to attach a credit card to buy and play the game? They can use that to identify repeat offenders and probably other things as well. Other platforms solved the issue without accessing my entire social graph.
I agree that being a game platform would be enough to be profitable, though their biggest dream must be to be the ultimate gatekeeper/taxman to what goes into your eyes. Aside from injecting thoughts right into your brain, what is more important than a screen that blocks out everything else you see? (phone, laptop, and TV are worth zero when you're wearing goggles).
Also remember that Mark Zuckerberg himself demoed the Samsung Oculus headset to everyone. That was a really big deal at the time. It's possible that this is a pet project he's adopted and really wants to see succeed. However, practically, it's a great jumping off point for AR and we know that Apple is experimenting with Augmented reality headsets that are tied to your phone.
Facebook might just be trying to get ahead of the game, betting that the next step past phones is VR/AR.
It's not just HN. I think it's pretty fair to be concerned about facebook's tracking, given the level they already go to on their site. I just spent $1000 on a Valve Index, since there is no way I am strapping 4 facebook linked cameras to my head.
First it measures your fitness level. Those devices have high quality acceleration and gyroscope sensors. They could know your visual and acoustic acuity.
They measure what games you play, for how long, at what time.
With these data and processing done by AI created by engineers they can extract and know more about yourself than you do.
We know from Snowden that places like the NSA collect and save data expecting technological changes in 5-10 years in the future for processing that data. The technology for processing does not need to be ready yet.
This is extremely useful for Advertisers and secret services. This is not what you say you are, this is what you are.
Currently VR data is not very good for anything really yet, because we have no scalable way to understand it.
"raw" VR data is about 10 megabytes a second of black and white infrared video.
plus audio and position data of either controllers or hands.
After its been processed it can give you a sparse pointcloud of your living room (which is not overly bad) but thats not something thats done by facebook, yet. With a bit more work you could get a dense pointcloud.
Unlike AR which will need a bunch more processing on device to get position and geo data, VR is mostly just slam
That's a bit of a stretch. Facebook uses data to improve ad targetting on their own platforms. They're not selling your HR or fitness data to your insurance company or anything crazy like that.
Facebook generated $29 per user in the US last year. A small bit of extra info about people's gaming habits is not going to improve ad targetting enough to make up for a $100 gap in price.
They may not be exposing the data they're collecting to ad buyers today, but it's a safe bet they're collecting it. You can extract a lot of signal on ad effectiveness based on what people look at via head pose, and once eye tracking is in - nominally for foveated rendering, of course - it will be even stronger.
You're thinking too small. By owning a Quest 2, you're signalling that you (or your parents) have disposable income they are willing to spend on electronic devices. Yes, it clearly shows you're a gamer. So if you're a gamer, you probably drink Mountain Dew and eat Doritos. Based on your FB profile, you probably like certain types of shoes. 75% of other people with matching criteria purchased something, so let's shove that in your face as well to see if we can't get it up to 80%. Oh, you play games between the hours of xxx, so you must be a teenager. Let's target ads to get your parents money.
Sure if that was the only data point. however, this is just one more thing they will use to refine the data they are sucking in about you every second. At this point, why would they not do it? It's in their DNA.
What data?
Movement range, size, speed,reaction time.
With touch controllers you can even track the stress resistance, because people tend to tighten their grip if stressed.
And there a lots of companies like Cambridge Analytica that can use that data to push their agenda even better.
Easier game for people like the Koch brothers.
Even the $400 price point of the previous generation standalone headset was probably already subsidized. They just turned up the "evil corporation kills all competition" dial.
I'm not sure why people think $400 is so expensive. You're buying two 1080p (or higher) miniaturized monitors, motion tracking, some fancy glass optics and a set of headphones. Honestly the experience is incredibly lousy if you don't spend quite a lot of money and that should be expected indefinitely.
I'd compare the Quest 2 to Nintendo's Wii and Switch. It's probably a good platform for the few exclusive titles that have been designed from the ground up to work on the gimmicky controllers and below-than-average hardware specs.
The old Quest can play Steam games. The new Quest addresses Quest 1's performance issues. When Quest 2 is linked to PC, I doubt most people would notice any large differences from Quest 2 vs say WMR or older gen Vives and Rift.
that's why Oculus is killing off Rift S. Because Quest can do the exact same thing, but also function as a completely standalone device, all for $299/$399. It is indeed a killer value proposition.
There's multi-frame latency and compression artifacts involved in this. It's really disingenuous to say that a Quest 2 is unambiguously better than an actual PC VR headset
I do disagree there - the additional latency and compression artifacts are noticeable from some of the reviews of the Quest 1. I think the experience is still going to be better for graphically intensive games with a tethered headset.
There is something odd about this Ars review. It’s not the normal high quality review I expect from them. There is a lot of subjectivity and plain wrong things stated (like less IR sensors in the controller). The only legit criticisms I picked up are the IPD adjustment and the FB requirement.
Plus the worse head strap and subjectively worse controller responsivity, though seems like some confusion on what is actually different vs. the gen 1 controllers.
If it’s a lower refresh rate and Beat Saber plays worse, that’s a big deal. As you say it’s a subjective analysis so I’ll be looking for others to corroborate or clarify that point.
I asked Norm from Tested in his post-review AMA today if he also felt the tracking was worse in the Quest 2 and he said he did not feel that way. In the AMA he also said that the refresh rate was the same but had the option to go to 90 hz if developers programmer for it and the option was on.
> Even worse, if someone "near" you in an official Facebook VR space blocks or reports a user, even if you're just minding your own business, your behavior (including motions and speech) may be tracked by these same silent, invisible Facebook moderators. That data can be stored on Facebook's servers indefinitely without you being notified.
If you are mean in the wrong way in moment of passion after missing a putt in a game of minigolf in Facebook Horizons, your Facebook small-business page may be shut down. For many people this could remove their livelihood entirely.
China's social credit system will need to keep pace or be horribly left behind.
Here I thought Google was the most ridiculous: if you post too many emojis on a YouTube livestream, you'll lose access to GMail, Google Drive, and all other services that are quite likely running your digital life and are important for your livelihood.
> There's a TON to love about this headset. And the price point is simply amazing.
Like what? Genuinely asking - I've not tried it. I read that review though and while it certainly came across as negative he brought up a LOT of huge negatives (enough that I would never consider it) - but I'm still happy to hear what you like about it!
Better cpu and more pixels per eye would be the improvements that stood out to me. (Lack of display-per-eye might net out to neutral or even negative on the display though, especially if your IPD is not in one of the sweet spots).
Also the display moved from OLED to LCD, which is going make darker scenes a bit harder. Wonder if they will move the UI to a lighter scheme to compensate?
Except the original had 2 screens and the new one has 1 screen - it seems like a questionable compromise (at least the Ars reviewer certainly hated it). But again, I've not tried it.
It's odd to the point of deliberate that the press release does not mention Facebook at all. If they truly believe it is a benefit then it would be mentioned.
Rather we can infer that Occulus understands the issues with the hardline on Facebook login, and wish to avoid more backlash.
>Quest 2 requires your Facebook account to log in, making it easy to meet up with friends in VR and discover communities around the world. You can explore as yourself or choose a new name by creating a unique VR profile.
Great review! As soon as I saw the price reduction I knew there were going to be huge compromises. Looks like I'll be sitting this one out. If FB want's to be the leader in VR, they need to get back to their roots the original Oculus team strived for - QUALITY.
We develop industrial training solutions using the rift S and quest. But the deep linking with FB, the battery downgrades on the quest, etc, all are going to push us away.
For PC-based training sims, we'll probably get the HTC Vive. And the Pico for the quest equivalent.
Couldn't someone set up a "business" that proxy-buys for a large number of people? There's obviously a decent market for non-facebook-login version of the Quest 2.
You do need a FB account - and a real one at that. If you create a fake one and you get locked out and you can't prove you are that fake person FB will lock you out of the account (and all bought software).
Some features won't work without an FB account. No one is forcing you to buy this device, but if you do and want to utilize features that require a FB account then it is forced upon you
It's fine to buy a product and expect it not to require an intrusive violation of my privacy to use it. I hope lawmakers will completely bar this practice for all devices.
It's really great to see VR coming down in price and becoming more accessible... but it's coming at the cost of quality, and it's bringing the rest of VR down with it. As an example, Onward VR recently added support for Quest in its game. The process of doing so required a significant scale down in the quality of graphics, sound, and all kinds of things that were great about the game. Over night the game took a nose dive, and that's not even mentioning the complete community change that came along with it.
While I primarily use my Vive Index with base stations, I love what the Quest is doing for the VR industry as a whole. While I really like my prosumer VR setup with base stations. It also sucks for the following reasons:
1. Sure, nothing beats it for visual quality and performance, but it is expensive. Minimum $999 AND you need a beefy PC with an equally beefy Nvidia GPU so the real minimum is really around $2499 with PC vs $299 for a Quest 2. That's a $2200 difference.
2. It is a pain to setup. You either have to deal wires and wire control on the ceiling, or if you have a Vive Pro, then you can spend another $299 to install a wireless option bringing the total cost to $2798. Let's not forget the base stations. While nothing beats them for tracking accuracy and the fact that they're the only option for full body tracking, it's yet another pain to set up. You might either drill holes in your walls, or you might buy camera tripods as a pricier alternative $25-$79 each on sale. Of course, once you set it up it's a dream, but the initial hill to climb is high.
What Oculus and PSVR are doing is expanding the market for VR and democratizing it so that it's no longer a niche hobby for a select few techies. Also, it is 'Apple'ing' VR. You just plug and play. You don't have to go through a convoluted setup that even some techies will balk at. i.e. I can buy this for my mom as a fitness machine.
Facebook and crossplay will also fix the problem of empty multiplayer games.
On a side note, I believe Onward devs are working to revert the PC VR Steam graphics. It's also good to note that it's just one game.
I have a Valve Index as well, but I don't understand how it is a pain to setup. It's basically like putting two picture frames on the wall.
It's good to see that more consumers will come onboard with this insanely good price. I don't know if it is needed to propel VR forward, but at least more people can experience it.
You're probably the same type of person who also doesn't understand why it's such a pain for anyone else to build their own PC rather than just buying it outright.
I had that pain with base station 1.0 with the Vive Pro. Why?
1. As I've already mentioned, not everyone wants to drill into their walls. Some people who live in certain types of apartments can't even if they wanted to. Now you need to figure out how to best setup camera tripods
2. The base stations need line of site to each other. You can't just focus on getting the perfect view of the play area.
3. If you can't get line of site depending on your room configuration and furniture, then you need to buy a 100 ft or longer cord to connect them, or you have to deal with your headset or controllers not being tracked. ie. not working
Base Station 2.0?
1. If two base stations isn't enough for your play area due to room configuration or furniture layout, then you may need to buy more base stations which cost $200 (each?).
Sure, set up could be as easy as you remember it, but it could easily get complicated, and it's a hassle. I don't enjoy hanging picture frames.
I screwed the base stations into a piece of wooden 2x4, and stuck the latter to the wall with two bits of Command hanging tape. Super easy. The kit ought to come with these pieces imo.
That's a lot of work for many people, and let's be honest many wouldn't even know how to do that let alone have have random pieces of wood in their house. Not to mention you've ignored all of the points I've brought up. I also really love external base stations. Nothing compares in terms of accuracy. Still I feel it's useful to not be so enamored with something that you're no longer able to look at them objectively. You've also forgotten the part about base stations being expensive and it's a hassle to go to the hardware store just for setting up VR.
Not everyone has empty high bookshelves in their play area. Difficulty depends on your current room configuration. Not everyone lives in the same house nor do they have the same exact furniture.
Beat Saber also started using sprites for the blocks instead of geometry at roughly the time they released the Quest port. It's really immersion breaking for me, I couldn't play the game for ages and even now I have to actively try to avoid thinking about it. I know it's a small thing but ugh.
(You can prove this by putting a song on lower speed and no fail, and turning your head to watch the blocks as they go past. They look like they're rotating to face you.)
My understanding is that there are balance concerns - if you're on a standalone device (i.e. Quest) that can't render complex smoke effects, you can see more easily than someone with a high-end PC that can.
This is going to sound like gatekeeping, because it is, but facebook lowering the cost of VR has flooded online games with children who ruin the experience. Games like pavlov are getting flooded with kids hardly big enough to fit the hmd on their head.
While I understand the concern, isn't the blame to be made on the company behind the implementation? (In this case, the developers of Onward?).
Most PC games nowadays offer a free "DLC" for extra-high graphics you can download, which means they maintain compatibility but for those who have beefy machines it also can provide super high fidelity. Why didn't they do it that way?
My guess is because Onward as of a few months ago or even now, only has one developer. Even if that's changed recently, they probably don't have the manpower to maintain drastically different versions of the game yet.
The Onward team definitely screwed that up by degrading the PC experience, but do you have other examples of Quest bringing down quality other than just that one?
Counterpoint: this will force developers to find new tricks that more efficiently use the lower resources. It also puts demand on UX development, since it's targeting more people, and because it's needed to balance the hardware deficiencies.
Then, developers can apply to those tricks on better hardware and get even more out of it, and this pattern could just continue as everything improves and adoption grows.
I made a throwaway Facebook account for my Quest 1. Took me all of two minutes.
EDIT: Having read more comments below, I'm concerned that Facebook may eventually flag my throwaway account as "inauthentic" and revoke my access to all purchased Oculus software. The day that happens is the day I drop Facebook VR forever. No way am I linking my real-life identity to a platform full of angry gamers, some of whom may try to doxx and SWAT an opponent after a bad in-game experience.
They very explicitly said it has to be a “real name” account. Enough to make me question the strategy of a throwaway account. I bet they’re going to match your credit card against your FB profile to see if your account is authentic. At the minimum they’re going to require you to create an account with your real name.
The whole thing is sickening to me. Congress should unwind the Oculus purchase ASAP.
Last time I tried to make a throwaway it got flagged pretty quickly and they had me submit photos of myself. I just picked some from the internet and they permanently locked the account. I wouldn’t risk it considering I’d have assets tied to the account (games), which presumably would be lost if their all-powerful neural net were to take as input my account data and output a value higher than some threshold.
I do wonder how deep Facebook's tracking goes. I deleted my old account. A couple of years later, I had to make another one to advertise a new product I'm working on. I used my real name because it was tied to my FB advertising account, but I added no friends and shared zero details except for my address (again, required for the ad account).
Facebook's friend recommendations since then have been hilariously wrong. I thought they'd just track my location or use some complex algorithm to match me to old friends. But they don't seem to have a clue about any of it.
I was surprised that it was $100 less expensive than the Quest I bought last year. I ordered a Quest 2.
I have always enjoyed writing game software more than playing games. The Quest changed that, I use it every day. (I worked on VR at SAIC, games for Nintendo, and VR for Disney.)
I think FB priced this for huge adoption. I have totally loved the Star Wars Vader Immortal trilogy so I can’t wait for the Star Wars game. Other favorites are ping pong, racket ball, and some of the 3D art people post.
I'm really curious to see an engineering presentation on the Quest 2, how it utilizes the XR2 hardware, and what it adds on top. From my understanding, the XR2 is capable of doing all the tracking on its own. The previous gen of hardware was based on the 835, which did not have SLAM on-chip, and thus Oculus' tracking algorithms were the big value-add over the competition.
And originally, Oculus was behind the curve on hadware implementations. The Lenovo Mirage Solo was the first 6-DOF headset, a year prior to the Quest, also running the 835. The Vive Focus was in the middle of the two. So, if the XR2 is doing the heavy lifting, it would suggest a big roadblock for competitor devices has been lifted.
So how much of the Quest 2 is above and beyond the Qualcomm XR2 VR headset reference design minus Facebook's services integrations?
- Reduce or re-distributed weight (neck/upper back ache remains an issue)
Instead, what we got in the Q2 is the same weight but a head-strap that's a substantial downgrade. That decision just compounds the Q1's most glaring weakness.
Then throw in the mandatory Facebook account, downgraded eye adjustments, side-grade screen, downgrade battery life, and a bunch of cost-cutting all over: You just killed Quest.
I've gone from recommending Quest to outright recommending against Quest. They should have taken some weight out of the headset and put it in a box that goes in your pocket, not kept the weight and made a bad head-strap even worse.
Even with the $50 headstrap "upgrade" it is still worse than the HTC Vive Deluxe Audio Strap which many Q1 owners including myself own (via 3D printed adapter).
I disagree with almost everything you said. Firstly it's not the same weight; it's 10% lighter. If you want a better head strap then you can get the official upgraded one and combined it's still cheaper than Quest 1. Tested's review [1] says battery life is the same, plus there's now a battery strap you can buy to double it and balance the weight distribution. Tested also says the controller tracking is not worse, audio is better, and all things considered the screen is a significant improvement. Then of course there's the extra RAM and upgraded SoC.
The only serious downgrade here IMO is the IPD adjustment, but for the vast majority of people it's not an issue. In other ways it's a clear improvement. I won't be getting one as I have an Index, but this is going to sell more than any other headset. The tech and the price are both incredible.
Edit: Ah I see about the weight, you must have been talking about the weight combined with the upgraded headstrap, which does indeed make it heavier than Quest 1, by about 7%. I'll reserve judgement on comfort until I try it. Quest 1 wasn't exactly comfortable for me but it's about more than just the weight number.
I’m fairly sure the Ars review is plain wrong on this as well. Measurements in other reviews show the Quest 2 at 503g, vs the Quest 1 at 580g. That is around a 14% weight improvement, not 10%. On top of that, the headset depth has been reduced by 1-2cm from pictures which will improve things substantially due to reduced moment.
I don’t agree that selling an improved headstrap is admitting “they messed up the headstrap”. They had to reduce costs to hit $300 to appeal to the mainstream casual market. I think it’s awesome they are finally offering a premium headstrap for those of us who want comfortable VR and are willing to pay a bit extra for it.
The reduced cost and increased portability make it clearly the right choice for the product IMO. Cost and convenience are the #1 and #2 barriers keeping people out of VR. Once people see the value they can decide to spend on the headstrap for upgraded comfort.
They didn't increase portability from the Quest 1 though.
All they've done is forced the consumer to pick between portability but a bad user experience or no-portability, $50 cost, and a basically acceptable one.
At least the Quest 1's headstrap was basically passable, this isn't.
The cloth headstrap is absolutely more portable than Quest 1. The $50 upgrade cost is more than compensated by the $100 discount on the headset itself.
I'm pretty sure comfort is one of the top priority there, so I really doubt the comfort was not improved between two Quest versions, it makes no sense to me, better check other reviews.
> Firstly it's not the same weight; it's 10% lighter.
The Quest 2 itself is the same weight as the Quest 1. The "10%" you're quoting is entirely from the headstrap changes, if you put a Q1 headstrap on the Q2 they'd weight the same.
They made no improvements, and because of the downgraded headstrap it is actually in worse shape out of the box.
> If you want a better head strap then you can get the official upgraded one
And lose the 10% weight savings, and portability in a portable VR console.
> Tested also says the controller tracking is not worse
Wasn't a claim I made.
> all things considered the screen is a significant improvement
One screen instead of two, and downgrade from OLED to LED. If by "significant improvement" you mean cheaper and worse, but higher FPS then yes, otherwise no
If LCD is a downgrade from OLED then why did Valve Index at 3x the price choose LCD? The fact is it's simply better overall. The resolution, brightness, screen door reduction, full subpixel array, and uniformity matter more than the contrast. Really contrasty scenes are problematic anyway because of the fresnel lenses and OLED black smearing. 1 vs 2 screens is only a downgrade for IPD adjustment, which I agree is the one area that got significantly worse on Quest 2.
Valve made the wrong decision. I bought an Index in August, sold it 2 days later. One reason was how washed out the LCD looked compared to the Rift (non-S). Another reason is the controllers are not porn friendly as they require 2 hands to put on. Hoping the HP coming soon will be a better upgrade.
The Valve Index only went with LCD in order to use a new LCD tech that allowed high refresh rates and low persistence, it was a downgrade in all other ways except refresh rate. The Quest 2 and Quest 1 have the same refresh rate, so it's a side-grade at-best.
This is false, Quest 2 has 20% faster refresh rate than Quest 1 (in hardware, software support is coming after launch). You don't know if persistence was improved or not (my guess is it was). As I mentioned, OLED contrast is limited in VR due to the fresnel lenses and black smear correction, and my comment lists several other areas that are upgrades over OLED that you just ignored.
Its good that Facebook is over-reaching. We are in too early for one headset to be the only player in town. This will give others a chance to move into the space, I think. Looking at you Nintendo :)
Considering the success of the Quest compared to most other headsets.... I'm wondering of Sony is going to try to make the next PlayStation VR a standalone device.
Sony is launching the PS5 in November this year, and there hasn't been any word on a new VR headset to go with it, but I imagine they're developing something new.
There is something odd about this Ars review. It’s not the normal high quality review I expect from them. There is a lot of subjectivity and plain wrong things stated (like less IR sensors in the controller). The only legit criticisms I picked up are the IPD adjustment and the FB requirement.
Agreed. Their reviews are usually to the point, objective statements with tasteful opinions. This article was unlike others and his opinions were in the way of actually hearing about how it was. I am not even in the market for one yet I do not feel informed after that review.
Talk about a misleading quote. The full text here is this.
Quest 2 requires a Facebook account to function; without one, you cannot run the system's built-in fork of Android, nor can you toggle the system's "developer" mode and sideload VR-optimized Android apps of your choosing.
That's also leaving out information. The full-full text here is this:
"But Facebook's policies make that "standalone VR" magic harder to recommend this time around. As we've previously reported, Quest 2 requires a Facebook account to function; without one, you cannot run the system's built-in fork of Android, nor can you toggle the system's "developer" mode and sideload VR-optimized Android apps of your choosing. (Speaking of: New rules coming to the Facebook VR developer portal will soon force anyone who wants to sideload apps to either supply a working phone number or a credit card. Yes, that is separate from the FB account requirement.)"
> Update, 3:30 p.m. ET: Since this article went live, we've seen infrared camera footage from Tested confirming an identical number of LED bulbs in both generations of Quest controllers
>"....which puts Facebook's original statement into question. The FB rep may have been describing a downgrade in frequency or power for those LED bulbs in Quest 2 controllers."
> I went back to compare tricky "expert" Beat Saber levels on both Quest 1 and Quest 2, and sure enough, the older controller is noticeably more accurate. It's hard to perfectly measure VR controller detection without access to verbose data logs (which I've used to diagnose issues with SteamVR in the past). But I can safely say that after an hour going back and forth between Quest 1 and 2, the number of lost swipes on the newer hardware was higher.
Regardless of whether the new controllers have fewer IR emitters or not, the tracking performance seems to be subjectively worse.
The review really seems like a takedown piece, so I don’t trust it too much on subjective measures, especially when they are mixed in with factual errors.
The biggest difference is that the Quest is a standalone VR platform (it includes hardware that can also run the games), whereas the majority of VR devices are just display devices (screens, lenses, audio, controllers).
Most headset support SteamVR, either natively or through compatibility layers, but not sure about the other way around e.g. MSFS20 on Index. Pimax is SteamVR.
I feel that wireless and better tracking are the biggest technical differences that favor the Quest 2. WMR, whether deserved or not, has a bad reputation for tracking. I don't know why Reverb didn't support a base station option since it was supposedly about "no compromises". Oculus would be superior for non-sim games and would be near equivalent in sim game performance when it's linked to a PC.
The facebook requirement is a hard sell for many people though. The lack of IPD adjustment may be a be killer for a lot of people, but I'm pretty sure that's one of the major things that brought down the price to $299
The Reverb G2 has additional tracking cameras on the side which should significantly expand the tracking envelope. I still want an external camera option though.
A benefit of the Quest is that you will have a wider range of apps. You can run all the apps that you can with Reverb G2, plus all the Oculus PC apps and the Oculus Quest apps.
Genuine question - if this was the perfect AR/VR device, would you use it even though it is a FB product? I have real concerns about privacy and the need to log in with FB credentials, but I am also very hopeful for devices that can continue to grow the market and help take it mainstream.
> that is doing so much to hurt democracy worldwide
what makes you think that facebook hurts democracy? Weren't democracy hurt way before facebook due to TV, radio, newspaper, and whatever was the communication mean of the day? I think a lot of people are over reacting here. If anything, FB helps against wannabe dictators, see how critical everybody is of Trump? Without social networks I think it'll have been much easier for Trump to make the US a dictatorship.
no? It's pointing out that there needs to be general solutions to these problems that don't just point the finger to the latest communication mean, this is lazy
No, you aren't. You're building a business-focused product that might share some similarity to the Quest 2. The hardware isn't what makes the Oculus a compelling consumer product.
Content, price, and experience. It's fun to talk about SoC's and pixel count, but at the end of the day those don't matter as much as we like to say that they do. You can have the most amazing hardware in the world, but if it's hard to get content made for said hardware, and it costs too much, and it's too difficult to use... then it will fail.
Facebook is doing the boring work that people don't like to talk about in tech forums, and that's why they're able to make a compelling consumer product.
The only other VR company that seems to get this is Sony, and they're married to a 6-8 year product cycle.
1. It can connect with your gaming pc wirelessly. Also battery driven, so completely wireless.
2. No base stations, only headset and controls
3. You can run many games directly on the device, so no gaming pc required for for example beat saber.
4. Portable, you can bring it to your friends place.
>So, when do you plan to "cut the price by a thousand dollars"?
Feels like a rude rhetorical question, but the answer is presumably at some point where their volume gets anywhere near HTC or Oculus, if that ever occurs.
Sorry to ask an annoying question, but do you have any kind of timeline for when this will ship?
It's depressing though how far apart the price point is from what Facebook can pitch it at. I am interested in use cases that would fit out an entire team with headsets but it's a non-starter at $1k+ and completely viable at $300 per headset. Made worse, sadly, by COVID where sharing equipment b/w team members is now pretty unlikely to be viable so we really need 2x the hardware.
Lynx is awesome. I pre-ordered my unit and looking forward to it. In your latest video update you mentioned the possibility of licensing and white labeling the headset. Who is the best contact to talk about options?
I know I wouldn't. I have stayed off FB -- active avoidance -- for a reason. Now that they have taken over the Oculus (I was an early Rift developer, and have the production Rift now) my journey with them is complete.
I don't trust Facebook and at this point I simply cannot imagine any possible action they could take to restore that trust.
It's a real disappointment. I admire the product and appreciate the contributions of the engineering team to advancing the state-of-the-art.
What's the privacy concern here ? Facebook knows what I do in VR ? I don't necessarily want that but TBH I don't really care about it either - I don't plan on using it for anything compromising anyway and I'm bombarded by advertisement spam everywhere to the point of immunity.
It's not just knowing what I do in VR. It's also seeing and hearing into my house, because they have provisions for scenarious in which they would keep full sensor data indefinitely.
Will they be running automatic object detection/classification on the video streams?
Is that a completely legal firearm/sword in the background? Is that a MAGA hat on the desk? Care to explain that Antifa flag on the wall? Maybe you supported that politician that lost the last election?
Could you have a Falun Gong book on your shelf, or a poster with Tiananmen Square's "tank man"? Maybe an image mocking a country's leader as a cartoon character?
What if SpyCam2 sees/hears something "islamophobic"? This is merely illegal in some countries, but a ticket to a death penalty in others. What then? Should the authorities be notified? Will Facebook turn over recordings if asked or demanded by a court or pre-emptively send them?
All reasonable questions in my mind.
Let's go just a bit further. Are you prepared to adjust your surroundings and life to be completely PC, a sterile pokerface world devoid of any Anti-whatever-that-isn't-politically-correct items which might offend? That's the world that the East Germans suffered under, while the Stazi collected every available fact, trying to ferret out "traitors" among the populace. at least they were safe in their own homes, for the most part (although some important conversations took place in the rest room, with the water running, to hide from microphones).
So should you fail to hide your unpopular thinking, at the least you'll face a 30-day ban from the hardware+software you paid for. If you're not so lucky, they might just have to call the authorities, or the religious police, you know, "for your protection."
Now add monitoring/recording/cataloging of your speech... are you comfortable knowing everything you've said is TOS-approved? Will it remain so, forever? doubtful.
Think this is absurd? It's not. Oculus just became part of Facebook's platform. Try any of the behaviours above on facebook and see what happens. (hint: enjoy your ban)
That's not entertainment. That's Dystopia: Big Brother invited into your home, re-imagined as a face-hugger with cloth straps.
If they've got eye tracking, they know basically how your visual cortex behaves – and hence how to put stuff where you look at it. That'll get infuriating very quickly.
They'll also know what gets your attention, what doesn't… unless you can control your saccades, that'll leak a lot of information about your mind-state while viewing Facebook-controlled media. They could, if they wanted to, blackbox reverse-engineer bits of you via controlled-input attacks.
VR headsets are basically the most creepy thing they could be tracking my behaviour with – perhaps second to the smartphone, since at least I can take off the VR headset.
I mean this is a toy you put on for leasure (a tool at best but at that point you'll probably invest more money and not use a FB product) if it's not a satisfactory experience I stop using it
I wouldn't use it even if it was free. I don't want the market to grow in the direction FB is trying to take it. I don't want to subsidize it with my privacy.
Well, I have a legacy Oculus account, and the Quest 2 will be obsolete before the grandfathering time has expired, so I am going to get the Quest 2. Hopefully a reasonable competitor will be available by then.
I bought the original Quest and will stop using it when the Facebook account becomes mandatory. Hopefully there is a suitable replacement from a less odious company at that time. I absolutely will not get a Quest 2 despite being very impressed by both the hardware update and price.
Not as long as Valve still wants to be a player in the VR device space. The Index has had an 8+ week wait to receive one for several months now because they keep selling out, despite the $1,000 price tag for the full kit.
If Facebook is going to be the market, and I believe it will be judging by what's out there right now, VR on the whole as a market is dead to me. Since the facebook linking account news I've removed all VR news blogs from my RSS feed. I don't need to know about what's happening in the industry anymore.
If the only way to avoid Facebook is to not play, I'm not playing. It's just that simple.
A) An algorithm flags your newly-created account as "inauthentic" and now you have to submit a copy of your driver's license to Facebook just to use a piece of consumer electronics you bought.
B) A different algorithm puts the pieces together and deduces that your burner account is the same identity as the real Facebook account you stopped using years ago or perhaps even "deleted." Nothing escapes the big-data inferences of The Graph.
I don't know... Facebook hasn't detected a single one of my 6 fake facebook accounts, and I've had them for years. I have been using one of them with my Quest ever since I got it, and they still haven't caught on.
Maybe I'm slipping through their net because my accounts are old?
The problem with this, is that all your purchases in the Oculus store become tied to that account. So then if you build up a library worth perhaps hundreds or even thousands of dollars (as I already have), you are running the risk of losing it all if at any point in time Facebook flags your account. The only narrow path to mitigating this is if you buy everything through SteamVR but that really hugely limits your options, and it's not at all clear to me it would not also run into problems as Facebook could easily associate your Steam account to your fake facebook account.
Yes, the Quest 1 was such a game-changer for me that I would sell my soul to get the next generation. Really hoping other companies will step up their game though.
They actually have a kind of strange app ecosystem at the moment. They have their own very restrictive store which is hard to get into and a thriving sideloading community [1] which allows you to run anything you want and is actually inoficially accepted by FB. It's very easy to list your game there and you can reach ~1Mio Quest users with it. I developed my own full-body fitness game [2] there which would never make it into the official store
Oh wow, that's awesome! You can add tags to a steam title but I guess VR fitness is not mainstream enough yet.
I'm currently working on a battle mode where the physical exercise is the measure to score points against your opponent and a little tactical element by having to decide between offense and defense in each exercise, but that's not ready yet.
And another feature that is coming or almost ready is the targeted HR training (set a HR target and the game will adapt to you during the session)
The HT target mode is already in the beta and ready for testing, but will get even better with a future VRHealth Institute app as they are planning to add cardio profiles with varying intensity and that will be supported by VRWorkout
I can only speak for the time when I actually thought about going in that direction which was ~10 months ago.
At that time the devs of Crisis Vrigade tried to get their already very succesful (on PC VR) game accepted to the Oculus store (I think it was the second time they tried) and they were not able to because Oculus tried to be very picky with what they accept to ensure that people only had positive experiences when trying out their VR solution.
And recently I was in contact with another developer who currently tries to get in and who has a game on Steam with very good ratings. But Oculus actually made it a condition to have an even higher amount of very good reviews before they could start the process of getting accepted into the store. (I won't name them here because they are still in the process)
With all that and the fact that my game probably breaks all common sense safety recommendations (jumping, burpess, sprinting in place) that an executive could use to decide if something is fit for their store I did not think I could make that work.
There I'd rather poor the little time I have in adding features that users will find useful than to chase some arbitrary design goals hat make it attractive to an audience that will never use it anyway (it's a workout first and a game second)
The Quest comes with a WebXR capable browser. There are a few sites with adult 360 video out there you can visit. Someone could potentially make an interactive experience. WebXR is very capable. We built https://moonrider.xyz/ if you want to see what's possible (no sex though :))
there are sex games for the Oculus Quest 1 (and a streaming pornhub style app). seems very unlikely Facebook would be stupid enough to intefere with the latter, not sure about the former.
Apps aren’t even required. Mozilla Firefox for VR implements WebVR. Many adult sites can seamlessly play VR content via this plugin. Navigate to the site as normal in Firefox VR, hit play on a VR video, and there you are.
No idea. Up until now I've been able to sideload apks without a FB account (although I did have to agree to an extra EULA). I'm doing some soul-searching to decide whether I capitulate to FB or get rid of my current quest (or try to use it with an Oculus account until it gets bricked)
the whole mandatory facebook thing has made me want to sell my quest. Its a shame, I think its truely the best device out there. I was able to play have life alyx totally wirelessly and enjoy the full experience, and I dont think there is anything close out there to emulate this.
I'm using Virtual Desktop and it works flawlessly with Alyx. It's so puzzling that you need to enable developer mode and sideload stuff to enable wireless while they allow you to connect with a cable out of the box.
I used ALVR and found it quite easy to get setup with + its FOSS which I prefer
https://github.com/JackD83/ALVR is the fork to use, its instructions arent super indepth but I got there its not too hard. And then steam views it like a regular steam vr headset. Its pretty cool.
There's an official accessory strap with battery now, if battery is a problem. Helps with balance, I've done a similar setup with a 3D printed bracket and a power bank.
I imagine they have done research on how much people care about using it without the power cable plugged in vs. the weight of a larger battery. Even for portable use, it might be better to use an external USB C power pack than have a large battery on your head.
I wonder how the FB leadership team thinks about this whole FB/Oculus integration. It is clear that they think adding a "social" component to Oculus is going to help the Quest gain traction.
But the question is, why does that "social" component have to be Facebook? With all the negative baggage a FB account carries with it, maybe the easier option would've been to let Oculus build its own social model, à la Play Station Network-style?
I have a Quest and I can tell you that for me (and at least for people like me) the real value is in social games/experiences. I have a hard time going through a solo game (although I haven't tried Half Life Alyx yet) but social stuff are amazing! Everyone should try to play settlers of Catan in VR (it was only available on the Go unfortunately) which was insane!
At this point I just want more of my friends to get a Quest so that I can hang out with them in VR. I already communicate with these friends via facebook so for me it's natural that this would work out perfectly.
Optimistically? I think they're definitely betting on VR being "reality adjacent" eventually and hence social interactions might actually be more meaningful in VR than they are on a website.
Cynically, I think they just want even more datapoints on what everyone is doing. If people start to use VR the way they use the internet even a little (accessing content provided for free with ads), then data from a person's VR headset will have valuable information about how to target ads to that person.
I'm fine with them adding optional social stuff. People have different interests.
But why does it have to be mandatory? It doesn't make sense. They paint it as something to facilitate social, well yes, let people login with their FB account if they want to, but don't make it a requirement.
If Instagram and Whatsapp don't require a FB account to work there is zero reason Oculus would.
This artificial and completely unnecessary tying is very disappointing.
I'm sure I'm deeply in the minority here, but I still wish PCVR (or a native headset/driver) worked on Mac. My MBP's graphics are beefy enough to handle the sort of games or experiences I'd want to enjoy in VR.
I had the DK2 when Mac was still supported, and even my old MacBook Air could drive it well enough to enable some pretty enjoyable experiences from third parties writing for it. The solar system tour in particular was a favorite of mine.
Granted, it's not a hardcore gamer-friendly setup, but there was still a lot to enjoy, and even develop for.
> My MBP's graphics are beefy enough to handle the sort of games or experiences I'd want to enjoy in VR.
As a fellow Mac user, I highly doubt it's the case anymore unless you're going to limit yourself to Beat Saber.
1. Most games are not optimized for the Mac to put it lightly.
2. Mobile GPUs just don't cut it when you're running VR and displaying on 2-3 screens at once
You really don't have a choice but to either go with Facebook or Steam PC for VR, for now at least. Who knows when Apple will risk it with another potential paradigm shift, but if they're still going with the 'just glasses' Jony Ive route, it will be years.
The Oculus Quest has games that directly target it on its on platform. Most Steam VR games expect a PC with a reasonably, powerful GPU. Macs don't even run Nvidia GPUs
Most of Apple leadership just doesn't care enough about games. Sure they care a lot more now, but imo still not enough at the detriment of the Mac line. imo Jony Ive placed too much of an emphasis on form instead of function for AR / VR. If Mike Rockwell won the internal politics at Apple for his separate VR hub, maybe we'd have well supported VR for Mac by now... but nope.
Completely agreed, I was happy to see steamVR beta for mac but it never progressed beyond a beta and I have to boot to bootcamp every time I want to play VR games. I have an egpu which is more than beefy enough for a good experience but it sucks that I can't actually use it in macos.
It does show that if Apple switches to arm, the value proposition will be significantly reduced since I will have to have a separate PC for gaming and testing things on windows.
> But Facebook's policies make that "standalone VR" magic harder to recommend this time around. As we've previously reported, Quest 2 requires a Facebook account to function; without one, you cannot run the system's built-in fork of Android, nor can you toggle the system's "developer" mode and sideload VR-optimized Android apps of your choosing. (Speaking of: New rules coming to the Facebook VR developer portal will soon force anyone who wants to sideload apps to either supply a working phone number or a credit card. Yes, that is separate from the FB account requirement.)
> Quite frankly, I had designs on testing Oculus Quest 2 with a burner Facebook account. I'd set one up years ago with a spam email address, and Facebook's reps asked me for my Facebook account address before they shipped me the review unit. I gave them my burner profile URL, then went to reset the password. By wrongly typing my new password one time, I was locked out. "Please send us proof of your identity," the site sternly warned me.
This is just the start of a long long section of the article on how Facebook will, at the drop of a hat, ban you, remove access to all your purchased software, & how invisible moderators haunt all your VR spaces.
All-in on evil, cruddy, awful policies. An affront to general-purpose computing as the world had known & enjoyed it.
Which means Facebook was wrong, since they claimed that.
Yet the controllers are still less accurate, as per Sam's testing, so his point still stands. It doesn't matter how many leds there are, only that they're worse controllers.
Yeah I appreciate the honest review from Ars here for sure. Really disappointed by the downgraded controller tracking. Superb tracking was one of the surprises of the first Quest.
I'm just waiting for tech that uses eye-tracking to put a tiny hi-DPI display that "moves around" so it stays right in line with your foveal vision, while having a static, head-wrapping low-DPI display behind it, to cover your peripheral vision.
I can't imagine there's any tech that'd let an actual LCD move around at the speed your eyes do. But maybe the foveal display could be from ultra-low-power short-throw laser DLP, bounced right into your eyeballs? It could even use the glass surface of the peripheral LCD display as a DSLR-alike mirror, so that it can reach your pupil from a straight-on angle.
I feel like such a hybrid device would have a number of obvious operational advantages, e.g. much lower bandwidth/render-power requirements (each frame, your GPU would only have to render a high-resolution image of a little square, along with a very low-res image of the rest of the scene.)
> I feel like such a hybrid device would have a number of obvious operational advantages, e.g. much lower bandwidth/render-power requirements (each frame, your GPU would only have to render a high-resolution image of a little square, along with a very low-res image of the rest of the scene.)
Foveated rendering provides these benefits without needing a mechanical mechanism. (Though it does still require full-field high resolution displays and apparently the eye-tracking requirements haven't been fully solved yet -- which would also preclude your suggestion of a hybrid device.)
> I'm just waiting for tech that uses eye-tracking to put a tiny hi-DPI display that "moves around" so it stays right in line with your foveal vision, while having a static, head-wrapping low-DPI display behind it, to cover your peripheral vision.
Isn't that what Varjo is doing? They do have headsets out, but they are strictly targeting enterprises at this point (cheapest headsets start at 5k + mandatory support for 800).
I wonder if that might be a useful next step for FOV in VR... Some additional screen area in the peripheral that's lower res than the main screen area?
This seems like an obvious and fairly low cost solution (in terms of both money and CPU). I wonder why this wasn't integrated into commercial headsets yet?
Psychologically, yes one does forget about the real world. But in terms of actual FOV measurements the human eye is far better.
However having that narrower FOV in VR is actually a good thing, as it makes for a smaller arc subtend for each pixel. If you were to give the wearer a 60 degree FOV in VR, they'd see very crisp and detailed things. But the more you stretch it out, the worse the effective visual quality becomes.
I have a Valve Index and love it. Yes it's immersive regardless, but VR still has such a long way to go on the quality front. FOV is fairly poor, pixel density is awful.
I'm looking forward to an actual "retina display"-like option (60+ PPD) with higher FOV in another 5-10 years, but I'd assume that'll be 8K minimum per eye, maybe more like 10-12K.
I'm not the person you're asking but I've tried it and it goes both ways for me. Sometimes it's still very immersive, and other times the reduced FOV (compared to reality) does take away from the experience.
All the extra angles of FOV are very distorted, and there is a red static constantly fuzzing away in the display.
Plus, you have to deal with the Pimax company, which has to be one of the most incompetent companies I've ever met when it comes to taking money and delivering product without stepping into the realm of actual fraud. When I bought mine, it was 3 false "it's shipped" announcements, 2 months, and a threat to reverse my credit card charge before I finally received it.
I'm thinking of pre-ordering it for my family. I'm not going to use my personal FB account for this. I'm assuming one can open a new FB account just for this, right? Also, is it worth getting the 256GB for extra $100? Never had a VR device and not sure how many games/apps you can have on 64G.
They regularly flag people and ask them for passport or other national IDs to verify. If you make any purchases on the store, you have a chance to lose either your ID or brought items.
arstechnica's review [0] isn't thrilled with this version though. The part that hits me the most is the adjustment of pupil distance, which has a significant impact on the experience if not adapted to the wearer.
Thanks everyone! I see xbox and playstation are also releasing new consoles this year. Now I'm wondering maybe a new PS be a better return on investment.
From what I read, the 64 GB should be sufficient for most - about 40 apps/games.
I preordered the 64gb and got the extended battery (going to try coding on immersedvr.com), although it looks like you may be better off with an external battery pack and just the elite strap.
Having extra power built in is more convenient but it is $80 more than the base elite headset. I could probably power it all day with my Omnicharge pack.
I worry that Quest-2 will be the death of VR as the next UX frontier.
VR tech is still a few years away from being 'seamless'. Historically, such moonshot ideas have only worked when they develop as expensive hobbies for years, until the tech catches up and they can be offered at a reasonable price.
Facebook seems to want to skip that step. Give people a half-baked product before it is ready for the market.
It is a real shame, because all the tech needed for great VR getting better at a rapid pace in consumer products. Mobile processing, Tiny/curved displays, high refresh rate accommodations, low latency throughout the stack, battery efficiency are all getting better FAST.
With a few killer games and apps for VR, we could have had a killer consumer VR headset in 2-3 years. I worry that the Quest 2's half-bakedness will forever ruin the reputation of VR in the eyes of your average person.
5 years ago you would of been right.. the entire last decade we've seen the tech maturing - Quest is at least gen 4 has been a smashing success. Quest 2 is a refinement of already mature technology.
Not sure where you're getting the impression that the Quest and especially the Quest 2 is 'half baked'
I wish Facebook published numbers about units sold, games sold per device, engagement, retention... Only shared figure is $150 million in total content sales since launch (May 2019). That's presumably before 30% store cut so all devs combined saw $100 million. Any single moderately successful AAA title makes more than $150 million on launch week. I know is not Apples to Apples but puts the number in perspective.
> Give people a half-baked product before it is ready for the market.
Sony already did that. Playstation VR has outsold Oculus by a very large margin. Its tracking is terrible, but "good enough" for basic stuff and the price point was great when it was released. The Quest is competitive now, but the PSVR grabbed a bunch of the low end market (5 million units worth) by being there first and having an established brand name attached.
VR has been a thing since the 80s if I'm not mistaken. It wouldn't surprise me if some researcher from that era jumped on here to express how they were working with similar tech back then.
"Forever" is a long time. I bet you're wrong about your claim of perpetual ruin unless there's another world war that wipes us out.
I still don't understand why Facebook management has allowed Instagram and WhatsApp to exist where they pretend your account is a separate entity to Facebook and just makes do with having it linked via shadow profile.
Yet with Oculus they're being so hard and forcing it into the FB infrastructure at the most critical point in it's lifespan. Most tech critics of it are all perfectly happy using Instagram, I just don't understand why Oculus accounts couldn't have just remained the same as that other than some executive being judged by some poorly thought out metrics and using this to meet them.
The only thing strange on the VR front is I don't understand why Facebook isn't promoting the fitness aspect of VR? I've already lost 20lbs just from playing video games. It would definitely siphon some people away from peleton like products if they did a marketing push in this direction.
It would be great if there was a central VR game hub that kept track of fitness. I know YUR exists, but adoption isn't widespread because it's not built into the platform.
In the keynote today, they did explicitly mention new fitness features like calorie tracking with what they’re calling “Oculus Move”. There’s a link to an article about it at the end of this blog post:
Yep, I think fitness is actually the hidden "killer app" for VR. As in, it's not the thing I will rave about to my friends or what blows me away with how exciting or fun it is, but it has locked in as an essential part of my life for an hour+ a day, and it easily more than pays for itself.
I've planned to buy Valve index and this announcement gave me a pause. But ultimately I'll be sticking with Index for 120hz refresh rate (vs 90hz of Quest 2)
While I agree, is this really a new thing? I had a dev kit for oculus rift and sometime after Facebook acquired when they stopped DX 9 support I couldn't use the device after update and drivers where reaching out to Facebook endpoints. I have that domain block and the device stopped working if it could not talk to fb. I think it was slightly more than that but I gave up on it and uninstalled it since I trust fb not at all. Felt bad throwing out that money but without controller it wasn't that useful.
I've probably had a dozen people with glasses use my headset. None of them seemed to have any issues with visual quality, though a couple had issues with comfort. The Quest comes with a spacer for glasses. That works fine 90% of the time, but some people's glasses are too big and can hit the lenses in the headset. This can be uncomfortable and (more importantly) it can scratch the lenses in the headset.
If you have glasses, I'd recommend getting some lens protectors for the headset. They're usually around $10 and take a minute to apply.
They work okay, but I recommend looking on Etsy and finding some magnetic lens adapters for about $25 dollars. They click into the headset and then you take the lenses out of of a specific $10 pair of Zenni Optical lenses and stay attached to the headset itself.
Really sad that they are getting out of PC based VR. That said, my rift has been sitting in a corner for a year. I was really impressed from a technical perspective and felt the tech showed great promise. Good for HTC I guess.
> That said, my rift has been sitting in a corner for a year
Same. When "Half-Life: Alyx" was released, I started the motions of setting up my Oculus with the sensor towers, remembered how tedious it was, and promptly put it back. Sounds like the Quest 2 solves all of that.
I seriously doubt the Quest 2 will be able to run Alyx. My mid-range PC can't handle it on the Oculus (I think due to some heavy lifting Steam had to do to integrate with the Oculus)
Occulus Link allows tethering to a PC via a USB cable, and Virtual Desktop can do SteamVR over WiFi. When I first heard of Virtual Desktop I was dubious, but on a good quality network it’s ridiculously good.
Indeed, I was very sceptical that it would work on my ISP provided wifi-router but it worked flawlessly. Although I've only played Alyx where you probably have some subconscious latency tolerance.
It's so strange that they don't package wifi based oculus link as an out of the box feature.
It wouldn't surprise me to see it appear as a standard feature at some point, but it'll take a while for them to tune it to properly cope with all the awful wireless access points out there. Virtual Desktop can get away with occasionally having problems connecting to your computer, or latency introduced by being on a bad network, because its 3rd party software which requires a bit of technical knowledge just to be able to get it installed with SteamVR support. That filters out the people who aren't going to understand the concept of network latency somewhat, but having it as a standard feature would mean anyone with £300 to spend on a Quest is going to expect it to work perfectly everytime.
Alyx is a PCVR game, not an Oculus Quest standalone game. You aren't expected to be able to run it standalone, you are expected to run it the same way you would run it on any other VR headset - by connecting it to your PC using a cable (or using wireless solutions).
You are correct, the parent comment is just misinformed.
Oculus is indeed "getting out of PCVR" in a sense that they won't have a device that does only PCVR in the future, yeah. But both Quest and Quest 2 support PCVR functionality that works the exact same way Rift does, natively and very smoothly. With that in mind, it just doesn't make sense for Oculus to release a PCVR-only device, if their standalone-capable devices can support PCVR just as fine.
The Quest has a resolution of 1440 × 1600 per eye. So the 50% more pixels works out to 20% more scan lines (1920) and 27% more pixels/line (1832). 90 Hz has potential perhaps via PC link.
Don't forget it's an RGB display with 3 subpixels per pixel. Quest 1 was 2 subpixels per pixel (pentile). You'll definitely see much more of an improvement than 27%.
Pentile is not bad when the pixels are so small you can't see them. Under a magnifying glass which a VR headset basically is, not so much.
I think where pentile went wrong was prioritizing green/red. I believe red has the lowest spatial resolution and should have prioritized green/blue instead. When using Night Shift I notice a definite subjective reduction in spatial resolution.
I’m happy to be locked to a store when I use it as a gadget, but when I use it as a PC VR headset, am I really stuck with Oculus store still? Why can’t any title from Steam or wherever work?
Is it possible to use a VR headset as a daily-driver desktop environment? I'm interested in programming inside a VR desktop; not programming for VR, but putting on a VR headset and writing code in a text editor inside a VR environment. This is too nuanced for a search engine to return any meaningful results. I was never that interested in VR until this idea occurred to me, so I don't know if the technology is there yet. Surely somebody must have tried this already?
I have tried but not with the oculus yet. You have two methods: either you remote VR into your desktop (Using tools such as Virtual Desktop), either you host an IDE in a browser and then just use your browser (VSCode you can host using coder.com self hosted).
My opinions are: It gets uncomfortable fairly quickly, I didn't want to use it more than an hour. The DPI is much lower than my 2K desktop monitor. It gets hot under the VR headset. In most conditions I prefer a Desktop or even a laptop. I think one place where it might be cool is the airplane since even laptops are uncomfortable.
I don't know all the tradeoffs involved, but seems like a downgrade to go from the pure black of OLED to the backlight bleedthrough of LCD for a screen so close to the eyes.
Ghosting on completely black regions in Half Life Alyx was the only complaint I had with my OLED HMD. I tried an LCD one and my brain was better at ignoring the extra brightness than it was the ghosting.
Really like the idea of not having to have a beefy PC off to the side. I'm an enthusiast, but also have a job, so the prospect of having to sort this aspect out represented a barrier to entry I wasn't willing to address.
On the negative side, the look of the device is still pretty "uncool". I think some lessons there could be learned from the PS4 VR.
I wonder about the CPU&GPU performance of Quest 2. The biggest pain point of Quest 1 was low detail in the scenes in supported games, mainly due to low spec. I know it's a compromise when you are not hooked with a cable to a PC, but I wish they could use Apple's fastest ARM CPUs :)
I am not sure if VR is really ready for prime time I have owned a cv1 and a oculus rift dev kit and after around a month I stop using it. it was fun playing games like eve railjack and fps but it doesn’t seem to grab me. VR still needs a killer app.
You sound like someone who might change their opinion if you tried the Quest. Standalone and tether-free just makes a world of difference to how you perceive it. I use it intensively for exercise and that is pretty much a killer app for me.
> We’re going to focus on standalone VR headsets moving forward. We’ll no longer pursue PC-only hardware, with sales of Rift S ending in 2021. That said, the Rift Platform isn’t going anywhere.
Not necessarily. Since the Rift S launched and Oculus Link released, Facebook changed the branding of games that require a PC to "Supports Rift Platform" to signify that they can also be played on a tethered Quest. I expect they'll change the name in the future though
Yeah, but as someone who owned the Rift S and then bought a Quest - it turns out there's a rude surprise that all the games you bought for the Rift S have to be bought again for the Quest.
The Rift S was a huge mistake, ironically I only bought it because when I asked my friend working at Oculus which one to get he said to get the Rift S (I suspected then they didn't care about it).
> all the games you bought for the Rift S have to be bought again for the Quest.
Wrong on 2 accounts.
1. A lot of games support cross-buy between Rift and Quest versions.
2. For those that don't support cross-buy (or games that only have a Rift version), and you already own them for Rift, you can play them on Quest just fine by connecting it to your desktop either wirelessly (using software like VRDesktop) or using a cable. Just like you were previously able to with Rift (minus the wireless option, iirc it wasn't a thing for Rift).
Tl;dr: Quest is a superset of Rift's functionality. You can do everything with Quest that you could do with Rift. Officially supported, without any hacks or workarounds. If you had a game you purchased for Rift, you can play it on Quest just as if you were playing it on Rift without paying anything extra.
1 is not true for the games I had (which were the most popular ones including beat saber).
Saying “just use a cable” or crappy streaming software to play games on the quest when the entire point is to have a wireless device is lame.
Most people are going to assume if you buy something in the oculus store that you can play it on oculus devices (unless it’s an issue related to device performance which I can understand).
Your original complaint was that you have to rebuy games you already bought for Rift to be able to play them on Quest, which is not true. You can play them on Quest the exact same way you were able to on Rift.
Also, wireless solution isn't "crappy". I tried Half-Life: Alyx using both cable and wireless (VRDesktop) for an hour each, and ended up finishing the game using wireless, because it felt more comfortable, and I didn't notice any difference that I could actually spot.
> "You can play them on Quest the exact same way you were able to on Rift."
Yeah, but the entire point of buying the Quest is so I don't have to play them the exact way I was able to on the Rift.
For a comparison, what you're describing feels like this:
1. I buy a videogame on steam and play it on my computer.
2. I buy a new computer and download steam.
3. Steam tells me that I have to rebuy the game to play it on new computer.
4. Someone on HN says I can just connect my new computer to the old computer in order to play the game and that this is 'the exact same way'.
Do you see how that's a shitty experience?
It's ridiculous that the quest version of the game is a separate thing you have to buy even though it's the same store. Your solution relegates me to being attached to the PC defeating the entire point of the quest. If the game couldn't be played on the quest because it needed the PC's graphics that's one thing, but this isn't that - beatsaber exists and works fine on the quest.
>It's ridiculous that the quest version of the game is a separate thing you have to buy even though it's the same store.
Again, this isn't Oculus' fault in this case, but the dev's. It is dev's choice whether to offer their product as cross-buy or not.
And, in a lot of cases, it makes sense why they didn't do it. For example, if the differences between versions are so stark that they are almost different games, paying separately makes sense. For me, personally, about half of the games I own that exist on both Rift and Quest were purchased with cross-buy, so I didn't have to pay twice. And I like to support devs who do things in the interests of the consumer with my wallet.
I'd argue that it is Oculus' fault, they own the platform and could force the devs to do it if they want to be in the store.
Do you think Apple would put up with this kind of thing?
I buy a ton of software and I'm happy to support devs, but this isn't that.
Rebuying the same product from the same store to use on an iteration of the Oculus' VR hardware sucks. My guess is they looked and figured it didn't matter since there were so few Rift S owners.
Would you be okay with having to rebuy the same games every VR hardware release?
> "And, in a lot of cases, it makes sense why they didn't do it. For example, if the differences between versions are so stark that they are almost different games, paying separately makes sense."
Love my Quest but I basically only play Pavlov Shack, a game that requires sideloading and I am somewhat sure will not come to the official Quest store.
Will probably end up selling mine and getting another brand.
I love how they show people in the pictures who are in wide empty places with just a single tree behind and no furniture and nothing on the floor. Is this some kind of alien landscape?
There is a trade off though in terms of detail. You're essentially taking a pixelated image and stretching it out more with just a FOV increase. The result for your eyes is essentially increasingly greater simulated myopia.
The specs are really good for the price and clean design is aesthetically pleasing, but I won't be able to enjoy it knowing that facebook is behind it.
Anyone who buys into the Facebook borg today has blood on their hands.
There's no way to sugarcoat it, hand-wave about business units, make puppy dog eyes about such smart well meaning people...
The culture and company behavior is fundamentally compromised, irredeemable to all appearances, and is the bedrock of the contemporary severing of a significant number of people not only from the political mainstream, but from consensus reality.
It's a shame they bought Oculus. That renders it a non-option.
Quest can't do VR titles. It will always be a niche mobile game market that can't give VR justice. If they would integrate h264 hardware decode and allowed the PC oculus software to stream to it, then we'd be in business.
Wireless VR is a big problem right now, it's expensive, doesn't work well, and for it's price you might as well get better hardware.
Oculus should ship quest with a cheap little 5Ghz USB broadcaster that you can put into your gaming PC and the oculus software can then stream through. Everyone wants to be able to have no cords and tuck their PC into a corner, not drag it with them.
Have you tried the Quest? I've owned many different VR headsets in the past, the Quest is pretty fantastic. "can't do VR titles" is such an exaggeration it doesn't make sense.
I develop avatars for the Quest in VRChat. The Quest is using very underwhelming hardware compared to PC, as it can only handle very strict standards, such as 10,000 Polygons to a character. While PC can handle significantly more.
As a quest user in vrchat you're significantly limited on your experience because your hardare cannot handle anything more than the bare minimum of avatars. We don't consider it a real VR experience.
This is of course very understandable if you know hardware benchmarks. VR is taxing on even the most expensive of PC hardware. Trying to put an Android phone in the same category as an RTX 2070 just isn't possible.
VR titles as in Skyrim VR, Half Life: Alyx, Counter Strike, basically anything that's a VR title for PC.
Agreed - VRChat is very limited in Quest. But that might be the fault of the app, not the platform. Rec Room works pretty well, basically the same experience on Quest and desktop.
Android phone hardware is nowhere close to rendering performance as modern desktop dedicated graphics cards. VR is fundamentally taxing on graphics rendering. Therefore, mobile devices do not and will not compare in performance.
> Wireless VR is a big problem right now, it's expensive, doesn't work well, and for it's price you might as well get better hardware.
There’s an app for the Quest called Virtual Desktop that allows streaming SteamVR over WiFi, which on a good network is almost indistinguishable from wired VR. Playing Half-Life: Alyx without being tethered to your computer is a pretty awesome experience.
There is, but I would assume it's having to use software decode, which is battery draining, and you have to have good wifi. This is a solved problem, the Steam Link had been doing H264 hardware decode to do streaming across networks. But you need that hardware support to make it polished and well useable. Android phones currently have chips for hardware H264, so they really could do this as an official features if they wanted to, it's just very dissapointing that they don't.
Nope. I played Half-Life: Alyx with both cable and wireless for the first few hours, alternating, and ended up playing the rest of the game in full wireless, because I haven't noticed any difference.
And I am saying that as someone who is fairly sensitive to this kind of stuff, like, I can easily see the difference between 60hz and 144hz refresh rate on monitors, for example (yes, i am aware that refresh rate and input delay are different things, this was just an example).
Same, for "flat" gaming I can barely tolerate in-home streaming, and just for slow paced games. So I didn't have high expectations for VirtualDesktop but when I tried it the experience pretty much blew my mind... only playing wireless now.
No, I mean "almost indistinguishable" on a good network. I did use it once on a network where the Quest would occasionally drop down from a 5Ghz connection to a 2.4Ghz connection, and in that case you could definitely tell by the additional latency.
I do not want to see this become the Oasis.