Unlocked OS Build for the Oculus Go | Hacker News Reader

Unlocked OS Build for the Oculus Go

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Reminder : there's still a $10k bounty for rooting the Quest.

Thousands of enthusiasts are waiting for it, opening this platform could create an huge homebrew scene, and free us from Facebook. If you're into Android reverse engineering, please give it a shot.

Context:

> The day after Oculus started shipping the Quest 2 VR headset, Robert Long, a developer at Mozilla who's not a fan of Facebook's policies, put up a $5,000 bounty for a proven jailbreak for the headset. Palmer Luckey, the ousted founder of Oculus, matched that offer, bringing the prize to $10,000 for a verified root access jailbreak.

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/76208/the-bounty-for-quest-2-...

I mean, you can already create homebrew apps. Like, it's pretty much like any Android device. Just use adb to add any .apk you'd like.

This is not what rooting means, you can install .apk on every Android phone but not every can be rooted.

At the moment Quest 2 cannot be used without FB account, root access would allow installing modified firmware without that requirement as well as creating 3rd party application stores browsable on device itself.

I know what rooting means, and I'd kindly ask that you read a comment before replying to it. I was stating that you can already make homebrew apps, and you can already use third-party, on-device app stores. I didn't say it was already rootable.

Further, you can also use a Quest 2 without a Facebook account. I do, myself. It's pretty well-documented.

Can you do it without a legacy occulus account too?

Yes, you can.

I know this thread is 4 days old, but in the interest of utility if you search up "bypass oculus quest facebook ADB" you can find some handy guides to skipping the facebook login requirement to allow running sideloaded apps only.

The device has not yet been rooted though, so the bounty hasn't paid out.

If it didn’t require facebook to run I’d absolutely buy one, I don’t have a FB account and the last time I tried to sign up they wanted my govt ID to verify an account which I’m not comfortable with

>If it didn’t require facebook to run I’d absolutely buy one

I don't have an Oculus Quest 2 but have heard good things about it. But I can't get one because my Facebook account was shut down without explanation in 2019. Despite its age (15 years) I barely used it, let alone for anything "controversial", but did regularly log into it. I repeatedly tried to verify my identity by submitting an image of my driver's license, without any response.

If a Facebook employee is reading this ... I don't want to create a fake new Facebook account (which would be against the TOS, anyway). I want my own back.

This is great. I think Carmack calls out a huge issue with lots of hardware these days:

Once software servers are shut down and a company moves on, lots of hardware is essentially bricked.

I really wish this was more common.

Yeah, I hope something similar happens for the Quest, but I'm not going to hold my breath.. Zuck spent all that money buying Oculus because he wants his own iPhone platform that he can rule with an iron fist

If nothing else, they already don't stop you from flashing earlier versions of the Quest firmware, and some of them were actively exploitable. If there's any demand for something of that nature, I'm sure someone will figure it out.

Yesterday:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/we-need-software-updates-forever

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28625453

Once you've bought a device, it should not be technically possible for the manufacturer or seller to control your continued use of it in any way whatsoever. If it needs servers, the addresses and the public keys for those should be configurable by the end user. That simple. This should be a law.

I really hope that this sets a precedent in the industry. I hate that sideloading is still somewhat of a "taboo" thing for hardware that you own.

> I hate that sideloading is still somewhat of a "taboo" thing for hardware that you own.

Taboo? In what situation?

Well, it typically voids your warranty entirely for one, and the terms of service usually use scary language telling you to never modify anything.

It can't void the warranty in the US or EU.

Not exactly "Taboo" but some banking apps will refuse to load on Android if they detect your phone as rooted. Maybe there are apps doing similar stuff on iPhone as well, wouldn't surprise me.

Yes there's definitely a PR push which pretend that custom roms & rooted devices are insecure whereas security is an orthogonal concept to that in reality, there's a lot of custom roms which are more secure than the base rom.

You own the hardware, but you didn't pay to not log in with Facebook. And they surely want to enforce you not being able to pirate games, at least in standalone mode. If you don't want any of that, you can pay the 2x price premium[0].

0: https://i.judge.sh/crisp/Flutter/chrome_4DP6M2oZzB.png (from https://business.oculus.com/products/ )

If you own a Quest 1, you did pay to not log in with FB. You bought software and now you will be blocked to access your software when the FB login gets mandatory next year for all quest devices.

Glad to see Carmack fighting the good fight.

He is more of a fig leaf to deflect from FB misconduct.

Is the Go EOL? I’m curious if they’ll do the same thing for the Quest 1 or if we’ll have to wait a few years.

Hasn't been sold for over a year and runs completely different software than the Quest. I imagine the Quest will be backwards-compatible for the foreseeable future, so I wouldn't expect them to give it this treatment any time soon, if ever.

Actually, it doesn't run that different of software from the Quest. The Quest is fully backwards-compatible with the Go, and Carmack has complained on multiple occasions about how they took out compatibility intentionally for the Quest 2.

The Quest is still getting a surprisingly good amount of support for now, and can run pretty much every 'blockbuster' game on the platform reasonably if not well. I wouldn't be surprised if they stopped supporting it in three years (or, more realistically, no game supports it in three years), but the Quest and Quest 2 can both stream software from your PC to the headset, if they do.

Oh neat, I didn't realize he was no longer a full-time Oculus employee: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1441496855133790210

Can we please have a class action somehow? I have oculus gear I would not have purchased had they not promised to tie into a Facebook account that now sits on my shelf unusable (by me)

Edit - even though I could sell the rift, what about the -$1000 I spent on software I can no longer access

The Rift is still usable without a Facebook account, without any particular "tricks."

There's even a pretty well-documented "trick" to use the Quest 2 without one, but it would be silly to post it in a place with so many Facebook employees that could be baited to "fix" it.

Class actions start because someone sues a company and the lawyer realizes there are many folks with the same issue, and starts a class action. So if you want a class action, contact a lawyer and sue Facebook. A lawyer can't just sue someone in a class action, they have to have a client who has damages.

Wow that's amazing. I wonder if one day there will be something like this available for the quest 2.

John Carmack, delivering as usual.

Why and why now? Someone posted a clip of Steam Deck running SteamVR[1] - Could this be the reason, that Facebook is compelled that they need mobile SteamVR to run on Facebook hardware, as a leverage or an insurance?

1: https://twitter.com/yunayuna64/status/1441288908659048453

It's pointless for Facebook to have their hardware used if it's not tied to their accounts and ecosystem. More likely, the Oculus Go is obsoleted enough by the Quest 2, that they decided they didn't care.

That seems a little speculative to me. It could just as easily be the recent promotion of Boz from FBRL to CTO.

Facebook aside, this would set a great example for other manufacturers in this space.

Sounds good but as far as I'm concerned, Oculus is still hot with the radioactivity of Facebook. I have no interest in giving them direct access to a device I put on my head. As soon as they announced the account merging I sold my Rift CV1. Just bought an Index since it's superior hardware for PCVR anyway and Valve cares about user freedom (their Linux gaming work being one example).

Yeah, the fact it has a camera taking video of your living space outside the headset makes it even creeper.. same goes for their built in web-browser.

I've discouraged many people from buying one and the world is better for it

facebook is the business equivalent of toxic waste, the only notable thing about them is that they help make some people rich

How is it superior? Quest 2 is the only wireless headset (arguably the biggest QoL feature unless you like pulley systems on your ceiling), and spec wise it roughly matches the Index (you win some, you lose some). I despise Facebook but I got the Quest 2 cause of wirelessness, as for the account you can create a dummy Oculus Developer account (workaround will work till January 2023).

There will be others. I'll wait.

Wireless just doesn't matter much to me, even without a wire pulley system. Just letting it hang has always been fine and I suspect a lot of Index users would agree with me. The tradeoffs to go wireless aren't worth it at all either.

The workaround you mentioned might as well not exist if it's going to stop existing a little more than a year from now. It wouldn't make sense to buy a new device now if one wants to avoid Facebook sign in.

It isn't actually the only wireless headset. ByteDance has one, and I think I can recall a couple more, but I'm not sure about it.

They are, however, the only company with good inside out tracking. Their competitors are pretty bad so far.

I'd love to get root access on an Index, but it's not possible right now.

The index is just a HMD right? all the computing happens on the PC? What do you mean, root access on an Index?

The GO is still my favorite headset to this day, and I have used many of the others both professionally and for entertainment.

It's very simple, which is great for introducing people to VR for the first time; just put the headset on and they are ready to go.

It's very light and comfortable; I have no problem wearing the GO for hours, watching a full movie. PC VR is so uncomfortable that I've never made it all the way through a game like Half Life: Alyx.

Increases in image quality are great and necessary, but ultimately VR will take over the world when it's as comfortable and easy to use as a pair of spectacles. To date, the Go is the headset that has come the closest to that dream.

This is huge, and I hope something similar happens with the Oculus Quest 1 before I'm locked out of my headset for not having a Facebook account.

there's no other moral choices for devices & it's wonderful to see a big company take a moral & obvious stance on this.

this should be covered by right to repair laws, but companies should always try to be doing better for the world than what the law requires. we need some reasonable, well perspectived vanguards willing to right the crimes of self-serving-ness that plague modenity & IT. favebook gets that.

good job, congratulstions, thank you for doing right. now, everyone else, stop being shitheads. unlock your bootloaders, you fucks.

Amazing, although I wish there was more direct Linux support for the platform.

If you have anything other than an Nvidia GPU, ALVR works pretty well on Linux now. It's not direct support, no, but it works pretty well.

Having root access to your VR device is cool, but having full, open source access to your VR device is even cooler :]

www.simulavr.com

i've called the current mode of phone use ecocicdal a number of times. right to repair should mandatorily kick in on e a device stops supporting itself. facebook doing one better is amazing, great. this is a great moral turning point, one the world has seen very very very few of. good fucking job. excellent.

Is there some low level hardware documentation available given that the software is not open source?

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