Comment by cwkoss | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cwkoss | Hacker News Reader

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AVOID OCULUS!

I have a Quest 1. The game selection is alright but expensive for what it is, but never found an unmodded game that kept my attention for more than ~5 hours - they are mostly VR demos without staying power. Modding is a huge pain in the ass, and every update breaks it again.

I used to use it regularly for BeatSaber + Custom Songs (though its underpowered so can't play all custom songs). For a while I was able to limp along by avoiding updates, but it eventually was broken by one of them, so I could no longer change custom songs. Finally I tried to fix it, failed, and tried to uninstall and just get unmodded BeatSaber working again. Quest decided to update, and now it doesn't even load the home screen - just a loading icon and then infinite black. I guess I'll try a factory reset, but I'm so frustrated with it I'm not sure it's worth trying to salvage.

It feels like Facebook is deliberately hostile to modding because they want to fortify their walled garden.

I will never buy oculus again. Steam's VR is higher quality, has much better game selection, and is much easier to mod as you want. My friend has an Index and I prefer it in every respect - the only downside is that it's wired and more expensive.

I've used Vive and rift. I now own the Quest 2 ($299). You can play any steamVR content on it without a cable using the free Air Link or the $20 Virtual Desktop. Better deal than anything else out there.

Do you need a FB account to use it with steamVR?

You will still need a FB account for the initial setup. Although FB does sell a corporate FB accountless version for $699. I dont know much about that one.

I'm curious about the economics of this. Does that mean Facebook thinks it can get $400 worth of personal data for each regular VR headset it sells? I think I read that they make roughly $50 per user a year from their regular website, so that seems like it's too high for my explanation to be plausible.

I'm speculating, but it might be a number designed to discourage purchase rather than reflect actual value. IE, we don't want personal users to buy these so we will price it higher than their data is worth but low enough that we won't completely alienate potential corporate clients. They don't want regular users getting the idea that they can opt out by paying extra because it messes with their whole business model. FB is just dark patterns all the way down.

My guess would be that it's the other way around: corporate buyers aren't very sensitive to the price, so they can jack the price up by $400.

por que no los dos!

Is it possible to buy that one as a consumer?

Even if you need one, can't you just create a dummy account?

Facebook will delete/suspend accounts that they don't believe are connected to a real identity, so you could lose your purchases if you don't use your real name.

How wonderful! It is so inspiring to see all the incredible uses of technology coming out from the Mecca of human creativity and accomplishment.

Ok, yeah, there I see a clear dilemma.

Add me to the list of people who will never buy an Oculus.

I think you have to log in and post once every 6 months (or something like that) to keep it active. It can be a silly post. I had one when I was job searching, though they had a surprising amount of data on me anyway. I used an obviously Vietnamese name (I'm white) and they suggested college classmates as my friends.... though my wife does have an account and uses the same IP =/

Does Air Link offer acceptable performance for low latency games (e.g. Beat Saber)?

The best way to use airlink is to have a hardwired connection to the PC and a wifi 6 router close to your Oculus. I use a 5g router in the basement though and my gaming is fine.

Quest2 will also use ASW for helping overcome lag as well. https://www.oculus.com/blog/introducing-asw-2-point-0-better...

But Virtual Desktop just released a new version that uses SSW, and it might even be better. https://uploadvr.com/virtual-desktop-synchronous-spacewarp/

Is there like a dumbed down tutorial on how to set this up?

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