I know it's fun to hate on Meta, but this honestly looks like it resolves most of the gripes I had with the Quest 2, aside from the whole Facebook integration piece... It looks like a solid piece of hardware.
They did make good on this. You can make Meta accounts with arbitrary emails and there's no connection to Facebook or real name stuff.
I have a Quest (1 and 2 actually, though the 1 is in storage) and I basically never use it anymore because I just can *not* be bothered to try and log in through its various apps again and install software updates in broken UIs with no progress indication etc.
The only thing I use it for anymore is if somebody's over and wants to try VR, I let them to the tutorial demo and maybe play some Superhot (which hasn't broken for lack of updates ... yet!). Unfortunately streaming that to the TV via Chromecast from the app doesn't work anymore for Zuck knows what reason.
Consumer tech is so hostile and frustrating, I really just can not deal with it anymore. Sorry for the rant.
Your knowledge and experience does not reflect current reality. Multiple logins haven't been required since the launch of the Quest 2. I didn't have a Quest 1, so I can't comment there.
> You still have to deal with a complicated web of accounts and apps
This is false. Only one account is needed. Sometimes individual apps will require a login, but that's exceedingly rare, or allows you to login with other devices, to the app, outside of the Quest ecosystem. This is not a fault of Meta, it's just the reality of third party credentials. I don't recall the last app I had to
If you buy a headset now, you would make a Meta account that would be used for everything. That's it.
If you had a Facebook account and are ok with continuing with the Facebook account, you're done.
If you had a Facebook account and you want to convert it to a Meta account, you can choose to do this, then you're done.
All three situations above use a single account for all apps, besides those that are meant to be accessible cross platform.
"It's all very simple if you're an industry expert following $company's every move!"
There is no way to use all features of a Quest without logging in _at least_ twice (once on a phone, once on the device itself, because some features are inexplicably only accessible through the app). If you've had it for a while, you've also had to deal with (potentially non-exhaustive list):
- an Oculus account (comes (came?) in linked/unlinked flavours)
- a Facebook account
- a Meta account (is that the same as the above? who knows!)
- a Horizon account (what even is Horizon?)
From the perspective of somebody who just bought the damn thing to use it, as far as I can tell none of these were avoidable if you followed the default flows. There's probably more now. That's ignoring steps on the phone, and linking steps between devices through URLs needing to be opened on a computer and all of that faff.
I'm sure there's a secret code phrase I could've garnered from some Reddit with 10k users that, if I had said it to Support, would have let me skip one of these steps - but who does that?
Yeah I am sure there is a way to turn off all that junk and opt out of installing the app or giving them your phone number but its full of anti-patterns to make you do it. What a hassle.
Kind of infuriating. But not as much as remembering to go and update my drivers... :\
There is only one account type now.
By the way, this kind of thing is in no way particular to Facebook - our entire industry has this much disrespect for its users.
In this particular case, with this particular product and company, the churn has happened, and we should see some stability now.
If you want complete stability, you're in the wrong line of work, and definitely on the wrong website. But there's no reason to be irrational about it.
I do have to say that Quest Link over WiFi works amazingly well and lets you break out of the walled garden to get to the more interesting corners of VR. It also lets you run stuff that would be way too heavy for the mobile-phone level processor on the Quest. Only downside is the WiFi eats a lot of battery power, so one of those headbands with an extra battery is almost required, but since they improve the weight distribution of the headset it's not a terrible buy.
They're a bad actor, having demonstrated this beyond a shadow of doubt.
A sensible person would need a strong signal to believe they've switched to cooperating, and no such signal is evident.
It requires an account owned by Facebook. I don't do that company the courtesy of using their pretentious, bullshit, fake rebranding, out of disrespect.
Can you also use the Meta headsets without creating any account?
Facebook has shadow profiles for people who don’t use the service.
I personally don't want any unnecessary weight on my face since I sometimes use my headsets for 8 hours at a time, for coding. For comparison, something like the nreal air [1] is only 79g!
Out of curiosity, how does that work? What's the flow, what software do you use, do you still use a keyboard to type?
For desktop streaming, you can use your desktop keyboard/mouse, or a bluetooth keyboard/mouse connected to the headset. For native apps, you use a bluetooth keyboard/mouse connected to the headset. The headset sees/tracks the (supported) keyboard with the passthrough cameras and shows a passthrough window/overlay, where it is.
I have no doubt that virtual displays are the future, but probably not until form factors are like the nreal air [3], which I think is still too limited for resolution. Next gen, I'll probably switch over. People will probably be happy enough once PPD triples.
2. https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/de7ojk/using_v...
Quest Pro has battery on the back so it looks very well balanced. Let's see how long the battery lasts.
The other thing is, I suspect the Quest 2 price point was heavily subsidised, so maybe we're just seeing the real cost of a VR headset when it's advertised to what's perceived as a less price sensitive audience (i.e. businesses).
This means that for every 3 pixels on the quest 2 you now have 4. Not exactly a huge increase IMO. What's needed to reach the equivalent of a 24" 1080p monitor at say 2-3 feet away, still needs like a 2-4x increase in pixel per degree.
If they tell the regular users (who spend $50 per game) that they can’t purchase new games without a new headset, I bet most would ditch the technology.
Could you name the other more advanced standalone options? I'm only aware of Pico, which is near parity, but tied to the CCP.
It appears neither of those have face tracking, and the Pimax doesn't have eye tracking. Besides that, both of those are PCVR (not standalone) and the Aero doesn't even come with controllers despite costing nearly $2000.
I still find it weird they haven't shown any mention of incorporating the Bobo VR solution to battery life problems, where there's a secondary battery pack on a magnetic mount and you can swap it out without taking the headset off.
Meanings it’s all Facebook on the backend.
Your account just doesn’t say Facebook erm Meta on it. You are still subject to all the bad things they do with automated bans, shifting TOS, social bla, etc.