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Comment by tristor | Hacker News Reader

I've been wanting to use PCVR for a long time, especially for virtual desktop scenarios, not even just for gaming. But the reality is I will never buy anything that puts money in Facebook's pocket. End of story. I really appreciate the work the developer did on this, but philosophically I see things like this that attempt to break the walled garden as a net-benefit to a bad actor (Facebook) rather than a net-benefit to consumers and users. It's actually better for the world and better for users if they have to make a hard choice about the ethics of their purchases, rather than feeling like they have an "out". So I commend the work, but Oculus is a no-go for anyone who gives any care at all about ethics for SO MANY reasons, Facebook owning it just being the largest (read the origin story for more).

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Lucky for you, FB doesn't care about PCVR either. They are clearly all-in on untethered consumer devices. PCVR will remain for the enthusiests with various smaller companies providing more impressive headsets than FB.

I mean, I very successfully did PCVR via 5Ghz wifi to the Quest 2. Alyx in full-res was gorgeous, and about 15ms of render to screen latency. I’m extremely aware of flicker and latency issues, and 95% of the experience was flawless (5% was dropped packets over wifi. It dropped to less than 1% by: hardwiring the PC, staying in the room with the router, and switching all other devices to 2.4Ghz)

HTC Vive Pro, therefore, is a wonderful solution. It's spendy because its properly priced without marketing gimmicks like Uber, Amazon, or FB do to subsidize the price to take over the world. It's the most fun "entertainment" experience of my life.

Is that wired? The Quest has spoiled me, unfortunately, and any VR headset I buy will have to be wire-optional at least.

I don't mind it needing a PC, but I don't want to have a wire to tangle up in.

There is an additional add-on that maked it wireless, but by default it's wired.

Why do you think it's a net benefit for facebook? They probably make a loss if you buy a headset, don't buy anything on the store and un-facebook it.

The team at facebook will be able to show bigger sales, making the next version more likely. You will count as a "oculus quest user" in steam stats etc. Developers will be more likely to support this headset. Etc etc etc. The market is still so small that network effect like these can be huge.

Facebook is selling at a loss in an attempt to destroy the competition and build another monopoly. They don't care if they don't make a profit now, as they will be able to gauge you later.

Don't buy facebook stuff.

Luckily, there are laws against monopolies. I don't see what you mean by Facebook currently having a monopoly, because Facebook is not the only social network.

Given the fact one of their main competitors is Valve, I don't think you have to worry about them destroying their competition financially either. Facebook isn't even really competing with them, FB is going for the low end market.

Facebook is a de facto monopoly. The US government seems to agree, and is pursuing an anti-trust investigation against them at the moment.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/04/tech/facebook-ftc-antitrust-d...

And the judge seems to disagree according to the article you linked. I really just don't see it. Hacker News, Reddit, 4Chan, Discord, youtube and tiktok all are social network that don't belong to Facebook. I can't see how the government will ever win that one. From my point of view Apple and Google are much more monopolies.

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