Ask HN: Why exactly do you dislike Oculus? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why exactly do you dislike Oculus?

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I have read alot of articles that are making me lose interest in purchasing one.

I want to know what I am buying by knowing exactly why people are complaining about them.

1. Hackers, what were your expectations for Oculus? What alternatives to Oculus satisfied these exoectations?

2. What else (anything) makes you dislike Oculus?

First of all, the DK1 and DK2 were huge andvances in consumer VR. They also let developers play with VR for the first time, and start learning the rules of the new medium.

But we are here critize, not to praise.

My ongoing gripe with the DK2 was the Occulus Drivers and API constantly breaking. Every couple of months they would release a new driver that was incompatible with previous drivers, and games programmed to work with previous drivers. This meant that you often were faced with having to upgrade to play a new game and forever losing access to your favorite old games. I finally just quit upgrading -and thus quit buying new VR games.

It also used to sometimes require an hour of work to get a game to run correctly.

Occulus has fixed both of those with the Cv1 release. So why am I waiting for a Vive, rather than buying a CV1?

Occulus really, really wants to own VR. You can't launch a game without an Internet connection. The TOS allows Occulus to record what you look at and do in VR. I find both really creepy.

The Vive is room scale, gives you hands, and has better optics. So I'm just waiting.

Thanx for the heads up! I was not aware of these issues. what make them make such poor decisions.

Why I dislike Oculus specifically:

- Owned by Facebook, I don't want to lose even more personal data than I already have to them

- They made several promises that they did not hold (Stock availability for preordern, price range, controllers)

- The controllers aren't even available yet and kinda make the oculus useless (Vive has great controllers)

- Vive has better room-scale tracking of movement

- Requires at least a 970 (same as for the Vive) and I'm not really wanting to buy a new one since my 780 still holds damn well otherwise

- Already mentioned: Windows only

However my biggest issue with the Oculus is that they want to "VR-lock" games specifically for the Oculus and I think that's the shittiest move they could've pulled. This alone is a no-go for me.

The main reason I haven't bought an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive is that both currently require Microsoft Windows. I have been Windows-free for several years now and I don't want to relapse for VR.

If both would support Linux, I'd go for the HTC Vive because it includes proper VR controllers and roomscale and I prefer Valves approach to exclusive titles.

My current "VR plan" is to get the PS4 VR when it is available and to bridge the time with the Google Daydream VR SDK..

I was considering buying one until I realized that it requires a powerful, external Windows computer to run. I had kind of assumed it was a standalone device. They're also getting bad press about DRM / incompatability with other VR hardware. Personally I'll probably wait and see if the technology improves and gets cheaper.

It has no OSX & Linux support?

My understanding [1] is that the software side of OSX graphics architecture presents a set of challenges that are deemed to impede the potential pace of development by the Occulus team. My recent experience with Linux graphics suggests a world of hurt there due to the many moving parts that can be swapped out: e.g. trying to run GIMP while using Xmonad.

[1]: Based on this interview with Andreia Gaita http://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2016/05/05/virtual-reali...

Facebook/Oculus is sort of like having someone walk up to you an offer you a free suite at the hotel of your choice to do whatever you want to do. Invite your friends, have a party, whatever you want. The one condition is that the suite will be laced with hidden cameras and listening devices and whatever is recorded belongs to a corporation and that content is managed by a bunch of people you have never met. Does that seem like a good deal? For me Oculus is not even an option. Look at Vive. The room scale is a big deal for me although that might not matter to you. Initially there will be differences in what releases on each platform but over time it will be less of an issue. Eve Valkyrie already has cross-play

When did you stop beating your wife?

you question does not make alot of sense.

It does - both this question and the original question imply something that's not necessarily true.

No, the wife beating question is completely different. It implies that you were beating your wife and at some time stopped, causing any answer given to make it sound like you're in agreement that you did beat your wife.

A negative answer to the question posed here would simply mean that you don't dislike Oculus.

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