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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

They let their certificate expire, essentially bricking all of their devices. And now the app running it won't start, so they can't push an update.

Just recently picked up a Rift. I love the hardware and their exclusives are top notch, but this confirms my suspicions that their backend is super goofy.

They sell Rifts at Best Buy and want to pretend that it's a consumer-ready product, but here's why I am recommending people stay away for now:

- Non-existant repair or service out of Warranty.

- Basic things in the platform like changing your name or photo don't exist.

- Lots of non-response over other basic features requested by the community.

- Questionable future investment in the platform or hardware. It sounds like they are moving their efforts towards "lighter" experiences.

In short, it feels like being a legacy customer for a new product.

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I see the exclusives as a negative. I don't want to support their efforts to build a closed ecosystem around what should be an open API that any headmounted display + tracking can expose.

You realize that this is the only way to fund triple AAA content for the time being though, right?

Oculus is producing these at a loss given the current size of the market hoping it will pay out in the long term by growing a healthy ecosystem...it’s the only way

Steam VR/Vive has "AAA" non-exclusive titles.

I guess that depends on your definition of AAA for VR

As a vive fanatic

"Built ground up for VR AAA titles" != "Adapted VR AAA titles"

I refuse to use revive to play any of these games because I don't want to support the exclusives, but I gotta admit that something like robo recall looks better than anything that's available on steam

It also has exclusives, Fallout VR for instance.

SteamVR (OpenVR) platform, which Fallout VR uses, supports Oculus Rift just fine, and so does OSVR. It's the other way around that needs hacky unofficial wrappers.

> I see the exclusives as a negative

Would anyone with a straight face say the same about Nintendo's exclusives?

I don't see anyone else in the market funding great things like Medium, Quil, Lone Echo, Robo Recall. Feels it's just cutting off your nose to spite your face to complain about this.

Google has funded Tiltbrush and Blocks and released it for every VR platform. We need to grow the industry. But this isn't their biggest problem - that would be their extremely walled-off app store. Oculus must still see their platform as a kind of gaming console and not the future of computing? What a shame.

No, because the Switch is a game console whose hardware is produced by Nintendo to run Nintendo approved software. It doesn't allow homebrew by default and is a closed platform, and pretty much everyone buying one knows this.

An Oculus is not a standalone product; it is a peripheral that relies on an open PC platform for its processing. If software the Oculus uses can run on any PC and the Oculus does not have a unique hardware capacity to operate the software, then the exclusivity is an arbitrary constraint.

Oculus wants all the perks of being its own platform without the responsibility or technical merit.

Very well put. Can you imagine if say Logitech funded a flight simulator that only supported their joysticks, or Samsung funded a game that would only run on their monitors?

< They let their certificate expire, essentially bricking all of their devices.

This also suggests that if the decide they stop supporting it, eventually the software will stop working due to these certificate errors for which will then there be no fix.

It may appear to suggest that, but it doesn't. These are code signing certificates not TLS. The certificate isn't for the executable but for the ability to sign an executable. If you update an executable with a new executable that was signed with a certificate that was expired at the time of signing, then you will encounter the issue.

Call me when it's a wireless & self-contained unit. Until then, I just cannot honestly see it taking off in the commercial space. Industrial & enterprise-ish use maybe, but to regular consumers hell no. It's still a mess of wires and sensor installation, not to mention you still need that high-end gaming PC (and with the prices of GPUs being what they are it's a no-go for the vast majority of people).

HTC is close to releasing a wireless module for the Vive. Combine that with their next-generation headset, with the screen-door effect mostly gone and much higher resolution, and I think we'll have something.

Still need the sensors, but those aren't that large.

You're forgetting the $1200+ PC to plug it into (that's @ MSRP, if you were to build it today it's more like $2k)

The Vive is targeted at gamers, who by and large will already have that system.

Oculus is working on their 'Santa Cruz' headset which they've already demoed to journalists. It's a standalone 6DOF headset with tracked controllers.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/12/16463844/oculus-santa-cr...

> essentially bricking

It's not bricked, bricking means it's as useful as a brick as in the actual firmware is corrupted beyond repair.

> essentially

It will be as useful as a brick if nothing can connect to the headset because it requires a signed communication DLL with a built-in obsolescence timer that must be continually refreshed by the company.

It’s virtually bricked.

I feel like kicking out the actual founder of the company may have been a bad idea. Politics or whatever, I get it, but it doesn't feel like there's a vision guiding what VR is supposed to become.

Sure.

But meanwhile my 10 year old nephew is having life shaping experiences with the Rift I set up for him.

I'd love to hear you expand on that comment.

I've been surprised how many investors / technologists view VR as a niche market for enterprise / porn / limited gaming appeal.

Not the above commenter, but Google Earth VR is like something out of a sci-fi film from 20 years ago. I was sincerely impressed and enthralled. Of course, the more street views they can capture, the better it will get.

There are other education experiences like BBC Home which is one of my favourites. Another, Mission:ISS allows you to explore the ISS and control the Canadarm to dock a module. Highly recommend them.

https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/1246744618768922/

https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/1178419975552187/

edit: I almost forgot, Go For Launch:Mercury is also very worth it. You can choose manual mode which puts you in charge of setting the launch procedures. The graphics aren't as good as I'd like, but the experience is good.

https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/752373261529153/

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As a platform I really think it's capable of more than it's really doing right now.

I wish there was a way to open it right up for the more adventurous instead of relying on sometimes-working-sometimes-not tools like VorpX.

> Not the above commenter, but Google Earth VR is like something out of a sci-fi film from 20 years ago.

google earth VR and the opportunity to show it to my friends was worth $350 on its own.

Never heard of BBC Home before - http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2017/vr-spacewal....

I trust the developers aren't using license fee money but instead are paying for using the BBC name ...?

IIRC BBC has long had some pretty great in-house developers as a rule. It sounds like it was more of a joint project. IE, BBC wanted to do the project and recruited a partner to help see it through quickly enough. That's how it appears to me, anyway.

But if you get a chance to try it, do! I will warn you though—the first time through is a bit intense. I was new to the platform and had to take the headset off for a few minutes mid-game. After trying it again I found my legs.

Also, it might seem counter-intuitive, but I've found alcohol helps desensitize oneself to the experience.

But when it comes to kids/education, etc. Just be careful. I've invited others to try out some of the more intense experiences and I've even had people get mad at me for it.

It seems inline with the BBC charter (it's a non-service activity which supports learning for people of all ages [one of the BBC's stated purposes], and helps fulfil the requirement that the BBC must promote technological innovation), so it would seem to be a reasonable use of license fee income. It could be seen in a similar vein as the BBC Micro, which was designed and built by Acorn.

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/about/h...

having an expensive toy instantly rendered useless by a software update is a life shaping experience :)

Or he, the nephew, can have the same life altering experience on a Vive without all the drawback your parent post listed.

You forgot

- Owned by Facebook, who will use it to gather as much data about you as they can.

Cool, I wonder if they can gather movement data and recognise you in camera footage even when they can't see your face. I'm sure it will come, if it's not possible yet.

> - Non-existant repair or service out of Warranty.

That.

My Rift is scratched since first use (I swear it came scratched) and I've never been able to have them acknowledge that the device can be scratched into a blurry mess. "Oh, that's only regular use wear and tear" ...

Lens cannot be replaced or repaired (and they could during rift dk1 era).

> It sounds like they are moving their efforts towards "lighter" experiences.

Can you explain what this means in practice? I'm not super familiar with Rift but I'm curious.

Probably referring to the Oculus Go, which is basically one of those phone VR headsets with the phone built in for 200USD.

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