I also spent an extra $100 to buy a Vive instead of a Rift. I didn't predict this exact action but I didn't trust Facebook to keep their fingers off of it

I wish there are viable alternatives for Quest.

I wish I'd done the same. Oculus Home is a truly atrocious piece of software and frankly I haven't touched my Rift in a year because of it.

Right? "Oh, you've got this full, 3D, completely spatial work space. Look at the fireplace, isn't it gorgeous? Now EAT A 2D MENU! EAT IT! RIGHT NOW IN YOUR FACE!!!"

More that it constantly asserts that things are working when they aren't and aren't when they are, freaks out if it isn't the only thing connected to an HDMI port though DP and DVI are fine, declares some titles "undownloadable" for no reason.

Nothing, though, compares to the irredeemable idiocy of forcing the user to have a monitor, mouse, and keyboard facing their play area in order to set up the guardian system, which you have to do essentially every time you use it because it will go out of alignment at a gnat's fart despite being screwed to the desk.

As an anecdote, I recently bought the Quest and have had a really seamless experience. None of these issues around display ports or configuring the play area for Guardian are a factor with this version.

$100 doesn't sound worth not having to use a facebook account to me. you can just make a bogus one with no info on it.

Can you? Don't you need a credit card attached?

Still possible but most people will not that far to hide information from facebook.

You need a CC attached to buy stuff on the Oculus store.

I've got 100+ VR games and never bought anything on the Oculus store. Steam games work just as well, and will be easier to use if you ever switch to another VR headset.

Same problem with Fitbit and Nest and Google :(

Had settled on getting a Fitbit as my fitness and sleep tracker, but was unaware of the acquisition by Google :/

Given the Oculus/FB fallout here I want to buy somewhere else.

And trusting Garmin seems a bit unlikely, sigh.

Apple Watch at iOS/apple seem to take privacy at least half serious

I have a general policy of not keeping hardware from known user-hostile companies in my house. They have way more time to worm things I don't want into their hardware than I have time to keep tabs on it, so I just don't.

> This development was trivially predictable right when Facebook acquired Oculus. Which is why I bought Vive instead.

Did you just predict it happening "eventually"?

If you predicted it would happen before your headset was obsolete, I'd say you were wrong. And that's usually the important part for making a purchase. Six to seven years is enough lifetime for an early VR kit.

A big part of the draw for Oculus is platform-exclusives. Even if the hardware is obsolete, the catalog of games you bought on their store isn't, and if that's tied to staying in their hardware ecosystem when you upgrade....

Certainly there are better headsets out now than the original Vive, but I'm not sure I'd classify it as obsolete. You can still take a modern VR title and play it and get the full experience. Calling the original Vive obsolete at this stage would be like calling 1080p monitors obsolete.

Tracking keeps improving in important ways, the resolution is not amazing, and we still have more than two years before we actually hit the point where I'm saying it will be obsolete.

Why hasn't it happened to Instagram and WhatsApp then if it was trivially predictable?

Because they have several European regulators breathing down their neck when it comes to WhatsApp at least. So it isn't as if Facebook hasn't tried to move into that direction.