As much as I wanted to get into VR, Meta taking over the Quest has thankfully saved me countless sunken dollars and hours.
PC Tower VR is a dead end where the complexity and hardware costs will never take it the customer base size that justifies developing non-indie content.
I don’t think Valve would have even bothered building Index without the Oculus threat.
Increasing difficult as most apps are on Meta's platform now.
Stuff like Beat Saber and VRChat which are the most succesful VR games, predate the Quest, and are probaby helped that beat saber only needs the motion controls part of VR - were it not for facebook using it to sell the Quest nowadays, we would have had a switch port by now I feel.
And VRchat doesn't even require VR, it also has a regular desktop client.
(From what I read, Second Life only runs on VR as a janky 3rd party hack, not an official release. But my info may be out of date).
Only one switch controller can do 6DoF tracking and I don't think it would be that accurate either.
As long as Facebook owns it, it may as well not be a thing to me. Facebook "saving" VR is a utterly pyrrhic victory. If facebook owns it then it wasn't worth saving.
It’s funny that the collective anti-Facebook sentiment is so strong that we managed to starve Oculus of content and possibly burnt through their budget for loss leader.
A headset with multiple cameras on it, connected to the internet, scanning my surroundings, and phoning home to Meta/Facebook. Hard for me to imagine a more dystopian future for VR than the one envisioned by Zuck. I'd rather VR not be a thing than for Meta/Facebook to dominate it.
I really don't think there's much room creatively for non-indie VR games that fit on a standalone headset.
I'm sure there's something, but you can already do so much with something like beatsaber or superhot that I don't feel myself yearning for all that much more.
If we could use (say) AI techniques to create VR versions of classic movies, that would be cool and I'd pay a pretty penny for it, or even VR-specific works that actually explore the implications of the medium (I could see tomorrow's equivalent of black mirror's bandersnatch doing this), but I don't feel like my VR headset is a wasted investment at the moment.
Even just for flight sims and simracing it's genuinely fantastic. I'm probably never going to race at Le Mans at night in the rain, I want to though, so my brain makes the rest up for me when I put the headset on.
I also don't think VR is good enough to be worth investing $1k+ into a VR headset like Vive. $300 seemed like a very high return on investment for what I got. Not sure about $400 since I already have one but I'd probably still do it.
I also made a fake, empty Facebook account to use the Oculus store, so I don't feel like it's a privacy invasion.
You're kidding yourself with that. You gave Facebook literal eyes into your home through an internet connected device. If you don't think Facebook know who you are I have some coins I'd like to sell you.
"One of the things I’m really excited about for future versions is getting eye tracking and face tracking in" - Mark Zuckerberg https://uploadvr.com/zuckerberg-quest-3-4-eye-face-tracking/
Here is their tech demo for full eye and face tracking for virtual avatars:
There's enough wrong with FB/Meta to not need to go into conspiracies
[1]: https://www.ft.com/content/76d40aac-034e-4e0b-95eb-c5d34146f...
I did, and it says that they gave message access to users that authorized it to. Saying "Facebook is reckless with data" because of this makes as much sense as saying that google is "reckless" with your data because people are constantly downloading shady flashlight apps and granting them location permissions.
The information on when you are playing gives information on your job situation.
The kinds of games give insight into personality.
And so on, if you combine with data from other sources (what else happens on the IP address around the same time?) you can get quite a lot.
They definitely don’t see the VR devices as a gateway to another frontier on data collection. That’s why they paid billions for Oculus and then spent billions to sell the Quest devices at a loss.
Ignore the fact that one of basic features of the Quest is to scan your room and build a play area. Just give FB a burner account and you’re set they definitely won’t be able to tie that data together it’s not like they built their entire business around doing that.
Data, not video or pictures.
I just made a mental list of all of the items in my office room where I use Quest and the face I own a Macbook and some high end speakers/chair/desk/monitor and an iPhone is really not that interesting to anyone.
I'm way more concerned by my mobile phone or browser where I actual engage with personal information.
I use it maybe an hour or two a week now (used to be way higher) and when I'm not using it it sits in a case in a closet. I dont see any value of getting images of my office and audio of an empty room.
I'm really struggling to see how this affects my privacy. I dont even play multiplayer games where I'm ever talking.
- Star Wars Vader Immortal, is so good I can only compare it to a Disneyland ride.
- Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners
It's not all about graphics, it's about gameplay, cooperation, competition and good sportsmanship with some friendly ribbing. I've got more than 2K matches in and still play a couple times a week until the battery dies.
There is also Golf+ plus I am way more into table tennis.
• Biking/walking through interesting locations (museums, beautiful nature) together with my disabled wife is wonderful.
• Contemplating while visiting some beautiful locations such as Horseshoe bend from above is very nice.
• Biking through brightly-lit locations while actually being in the dark in my air-conditioned bedroom while my wife sleeps is nice.
• I don't play the games, but the best of them have enormous dedicated followings
• Viewing 3D pictures taken by users is often interesting.
• I find anything approaching porn very creepy, but imagine that the "virtual live sex doll" nature of it is very popular.
And I have a PC that can handle VR games (and you can use the Quest 1 or 2 as basically a PC VR headset if you want). But it’s just so much less hassle to use the native Quest.
The main use of the Quest is still to play beatsaber tho LOL.
The best ROI is bringing it to my sisters house to play with my nephew/niece. They always have a blast.
If this isn't your main account, then this is a violation of the ToS and Meta/FB can (and in many cases, have) ban you and remove access to everything you bought at the drop of a hat.
If it is your main account, then you should assume that they are linking all of your VR data in the backend with whatever shadow profiles they have generated for you from other sources.
Secondary FB accounts can be banned for not being the "real person" btw.
Can you use it as a virtual desktop, like Arcan Safespaces: https://arcan-fe.com/2018/03/29/safespaces-an-open-source-vr...
What about writing code in VR with unlimited virtual monitors/windows?
I purchased a streaming VR service and played games on Steam not available on Oculus store using my Quest 2. Greatly expanding the number of games you can play.
Around 10 years ago I gave up on VR and decided to wait for the VR game market to grow. It was a huge bummer to learn that nothing has changed after all this time.
I think it will take another decade or two for hardware power and costs to catch up to modern game engines.
For me, the only VR experience worth experiencing right now is probably a $1000 Valve Index with Half-Life Alyx running on my $4000 PC.
Golf+ -- fairly realistic Golf and also TopGolf setup.
Demeo -- like a really casual HeroQuest that you can jump into at any time (multiplayer, automatic).
Ancient Dungeon -- procedurally generated roguelike.
The Walking Dead Saints and Sinners -- really good zombie game
that said a cheap quest 2 second hand with virtual desktop makes for probably the best wireless experience / dollar you can have
The wireless streaming works great. There is no account setup whatsoever. Null, nada, nichts. You can just boot up the HMD and you're good to go.
Personally I think ByteDance (and TikTok in particular) is an even worse company than Facebook ever was. It's like they learned from Facebook and made it worse.
I'm no fan of their corporate parent either, but the value proposition on Quest 2 for general purpose PC VR gaming (especially prior to this price increase) was remarkable given size of subsidy Meta were prepared to make on price.
It's still a nice headset but it's showing it's age, the Quest 2 has higher resolution screens and the ability to stream PC VR wirelessly is a killer feature which the Index doesn't support.
I want standard joystick-based movement. I suppose too many get motion sickness, or that joysticks are ergonomically awkward to place onto motion controllers while maintaining the "pointing" and "picking up" metaphors.
VR's "aim and teleport" mechanic is the worst, though. It ruins the entire experience for me. I just want to walk in a direction - easy with a game controller. But instead you have to aim, judge distance, and click. It's so weird and feels gross.
Now, when omnidirectional treadmills become a thing so I can literally walk / run places in games, I'm onboard.
After like 3 playthroughs I've gotten the teleporting movement down and it's pretty much second nature. Outside of the game I found myself holding out my hand and flicking to try to pick things up IRL
HN is lousy with stories about people getting tagged by faulty "AI" in one Google program and getting blitzed out of all the others.
The risk is too high that Meta will follow suit one day soon.
The fact that it was made by Facebook was worrying - the fact that it required a Facebook account made it a non-starter.
For the same reason, while I do enjoy the occasional twitch stream - some of my favorite streamers have moved to FB... thus I have stopped watching them because I don't like making it easy for socials to track and broadcast my every waking moment.
"No way!"
"OK, then just let me hold everything that's in it."
Which is to say, you can definitely still throw away your time and money on this fad without supporting Facebook/Meta :)