However, capitalism doesn't leave consumers with no options - vote with your wallet!
I did not write what I wrote as a parody. Shareholder primacy is the foremost blight on this modern existence and is responsible for an innumerably large portion of the negative externalities that cause so such much suffering today.
I would vote with my wallet, but that will accomplish exactly jack shit. There are few who will stand with me if it means threatening their pathetically precious creature comforts which our modern capitalism so dutifully provides.
Also, it is worth noting that the entire goal of capitalism is to eliminate those options, using "free-market economics" as cover for its seemingly insatiable lust for competitors to gobble up or otherwise drive out of business. Some of the very first things they teach you in b-school, about moat building and competitive advantages and all that other crap, is an outright attack on the marketplace model
That really works with monopolies! /sarcasm /are-you-serious
Yes, this would cause price increase. But a lot of people would gladly pay for it. The ones who don't want to, could accept a "discount" in exchange for becoming a glass citizens.
Actually, it wouldn't. Facebook makes obscene profits. Rather than be uncompetitive, they'd keep the same price.
If we gave Facebook the choice of stopping stealing from people like this, or getting shut down, they'd do this in a second.
In a sane society, Facebook would have been shut down years ago, after the 2016 election.
I used to think everyone should learn a programming language just so they can experience its expressive power but more and more I wish they would so they wouldn't get duped by really dumb marketing.
I wonder what the world would look like with a independent, trustworthy, non-advertising-based company/organization which provided a similar anti-spam service for free, with the option to publicly tie to verified identities as well. (For all the flack that real-name policies get, they do reduce spam and hate speech by a big margin, so any service which doesn’t verify identity isn’t really a drop-in replacement for FB as far as that news org is concerned)
Did we not see the same studies?
As I recall Google+/YouTube's real name policy came under fire because a large minority of people received substantially more hate speech.
https://adecentralizedworld.com/2020/06/a-trust-and-moderati... - With this, a site or users of the site can choose many trusted moderators from the network and as the system grows it gets better over time.
For headsets, there are several properties that segment the market:
1. Tracking: outside cameras/emitters vs inside-out tracking
2. Tethered vs wireless (including PC powered, but using wireless transmission)
3. PC powered vs standalone device
For each of these, there are multiple vendors to choose from, except for standalone devices. In this case, the Oculus Quest is unique. There's no other competition.
Moreover, the Quest is the only device that can be run without a corresponding high end PC. If you don't have a PC like that, then the cost is prohibitive. There's also the space factor. VR needs space, which is already an issue. With the PC powered headsets, you also need that PC to be close enough to your open VR space. Otherwise, you need to rearrange your living space or invest in a VR dedicated PC.
In summary, the Vive Index is fantastic and arguably the best headset in the market right now, but the Oculus Quest fills a different niche of that market.
(And as to the topic of the article: I'm done with Oculus based on Facebook's policies).
The only VR headsets I've seen so far in stores around here (a major metropolitan city) are headsets with only the lenses, in which you slot your own smartphone as the screen and CPU. Wouldn't these also count as standalone devices in your classification?
[I've had the Google cardboard, DayDream and the Samsung Gear headsets.]
Its like comparing a pre-model-T car with a car from 1950. You might argue that for some purposes both are equivalent but that doesn't capture the qualitative improvement that has happened almost everywhere. Everything is improved and some areas feel perfected in comparison.
Do you mean the Valve Index or the HTC Vive?
Until recently, the Oculus Rift S would be a great pick for that.
I don't yet have an HP Reverb G2, but I expect good things out of that headset. The HTC Cosmos would also be a good choice.
The Valve Index (yes, I mistyped before) is an awesome headset, but the lighthouse emitter based tracking system isn't great for seated. Not only is it a hassle to setup, but it's easier for your chair or monitor or whatever to block the laser grid from the lighthouse units. And if you're seated, you aren't taking advantage of the highly accurate room-scale tracking the lighthouses provide. I'd stick with the convenience of an inside-out headset if you're primarily doing seated VR.
For example, I tended to prefer my Rift S for sim games (sim racing, sim flight) for all the reasons listed above.
They're not even comparable. The Quest is a headset and two controllers you put it on and pick the controllers up, draw a room boundary and you're in. Works in any room in your house, completely stand alone.
Index requires you to install multiple sensors in a specific room in your house, and requires a connection to a desktop PC tower and fiddling around with Steam to play.
I think the FB account requirement is incredibly dumb from Oculus (Don't understand why it couldn't just be a shadow account like Insta/Whatsapp which everyone seems fine with weirdly) but really the product their offering is entirely in a class of it's own for a fraction of the price a normal VR setup costs and a fraction of the hassle.
I think if the market was different and what they were offering wasn't unique I think far fewer people would care and we'd all just buy different headsets.
I honestly have no idea though. I don't get why they're in this space as it doesn't appear from the outside that they're trying very hard.
Also a PC only game is niche enough, no PCVR game will ever make VR mainstream. Really, the mainstream VR game is Beat Saber - that alone has probably sold more VR headsets than any other app or game combined.
The only way to make VR mainstream imo is to offer it at console prices or less and make it standalone, which is exactly what the Quest is doing. It's really unfortunate it requires an FB account. I guess they justify it because Xbox and PS5 both require online accounts too.
Ironically, Facebook also acquired Beat Games (who makes Beat Saber) last year and effectively ruined it by intentionally breaking all the mods and custom songs, leaving it a shell of its former glory.
According to steamcharts [1], player counts peaked around July 2019 and have only dwindled since the acquisition (with the exception of two small bumps when the acquisition happened in November). Average player counts are have been cut in half since then, in less than a year.
I have almost 200 hours in Beat Saber, but I haven't played it for almost a year now, now that it's just the same two-dozen songs over and over.
I paid attention to the dev discord servers for a few months after the acquisition when they were churning through new mods when the old ones broke and people gave up on trying to maintain them, but haven't checked it recently. I would expect there's probably working mods still, but it's also probably a lot harder to keep them working over time.
FB's official stance on modding is that they will support mods that don't engage in "piracy or illicit modding, including mods that infringe on third-party IP rights". [1]
[1] https://www.oculus.com/blog/welcoming-beat-games-to-facebook...
(Are custom songs really broken? Haven't tried in a month or so)
Joking aside. What headset have you got that takes more than a few minutes to connect?
Then have to dive behind the computer to connect a HDMI and 3 USB cables (not enough ports on front).
If you don't think they're trying very hard though, I'm not sure if you've been following VR particularly much.
The valve index is a very nice upgrade over the original htc vive and the original oculus. The 'screen door' effect is all but gone the new controllers are very comfortable and the tracking is stellar. The index is heavier than the original oculus but the way the weight is distributed and the way the strapping works makes it a non issue. My only complaint is also a problem in the 'gen 1' headsets. Reflection off the fresnel lenses can cause some banded 'flare', especially noticeable when most of the screen is very dark but there is some portion of very bright light.
Sadly I have no experience with the 'upstart' headsets from Microsoft, HP, etc.
Pros
- Knuckles controllers, still nothing like them
- External base station tracking, the only option that opens up full body tracking and makes it easy to do feet based movement
- High Refresh rate
- Good FOV
Cons
- Knuckles still isn't universally supported
- LCD screen and no OLED
- Reverb G2 has a much better screen
- Wires
I would recommend the G2 but its tracking and controllers just aren't as good as the Index, unless you're just going to use it for driving and flying games.
But it's also $999, requires a beefy gaming PC, and the setup is slightly more involved. But if you already have a beefy gaming PC (I'm a PC gamer, so I already did), don't mind spending 10 minutes attaching the lighthouses to the corners of your room, and of course have the $999 to buy the full kit, it's worth it.
I was thinking of maybe upgrading to the new Oculus' but after announcing it will require a Facebook account I started to rethink that. This submission really hit the nail in the coffin and will absolutely not get another Oculus now.
> All the extra angles of FOV are very distorted, and there is a red static constantly fuzzing away in the display.
> Plus, you have to deal with the Pimax company, which has to be one of the most incompetent companies I've ever met when it comes to taking money and delivering product without stepping into the realm of actual fraud. When I bought mine, it was 3 false "it's shipped" announcements, 2 months, and a threat to reverse my credit card charge before I finally received it.
The only thing I really did to improve it was to 3d print a stand for the hand controllers. More an aesthetic choice than anything.
Downsides to consider:
• You need a solid gaming PC (with a 2070 or better).
• Expensive ($1000 for the kit)
• Connected to the computer by a wire, awkward for "room-scale" VR
• Base stations provide great tracking but require setup (mounting high up in your room) and mean that the setup isn't very portable.
• Limited/janky access to exclusive titles. (You can hack around to get Oculus-only titles to work, but it seems rough and I haven't tried it myself.)
If you're not budget-constrained, I believe the Index will give you the best overall experience.
As a counterpoint, I am using Index together with 1070 Ti and the performance is flawless.
The Index is higher resolution/refresh rate and will require more hardware, but if you just want to get into some VR and dick around, the Vive is more than enough to get started, can be found for <$200 used, and a ton of the popular games (e.g., Beat Saber, SuperHot VR, etc) just really aren't that graphically demanding.
The Vive is also compatible with the knuckles controllers and those can be purchased separately, so you're not totally locked out from some of the more game changing stuff either.
I'm not a fan of the Index. First problem, it has horrible black levels. Everything looks like you're in a layer of fog compared to the Rift. Maybe if you've never used a Rift before you won't notice but it was shockingly bad for me.
The headphones are utter crap. I don't get whoever thought headphones that hover 1/2 inch away from your ears would work. Take whatever headphones you have now that you're listening to music on and pull them 1/2 inch away for each ear. The sound goes down, it sounds tinny, less full, bases are missing, etc. The Index sounded exactly like that. Some friends said you have to get them perfectly lined up but if that's true the moment you move your head suddenly in some game they're no longer going to be aligned.
This also means the sound leaks into the room far more than it would with on ear headphones. It's not going to be loud but it is going to be annoying for anyone within a room if they aren't making some louder noise.
Next up, Steam VR is just not as good as Oculus Connect (or whatever Oculus's home screen system is called). In part because Oculus has built in "pull up your desktop and/or multiple windows" at anytime in anytime game and pin them to say up. Apparently there's a 3rd party app that will provide this for Index/Vive but I use that feature all the time. Inside a game want to look up a walkthru just pin in there in my view.
Now for some things that no one will admit to but I will...
The Index Controllers didn't feel as good to me as Rift Controllers. I get they have fanciers sensors. I get they grip your hands. But, probably the #1 use for VR is porn. Controllers that require 2 hands to put on are not good for things that require one had to be free.
I have lots of friends in the industry, I see none of them using an Index and plenty of complaints.
As for Quest/Quest 2, even if there wasn't the FB issue it's like choosing an iPhone instead of a PS5. iPhone has tons of great games but it doesn't have PS5 level games. Similarly Quest has tons of great games, but it doesn't have PC level VR games and it will never have any porn games being locked up by Facebook. (and even if it did, do you really want FB knowing which porn games you're playing?)
I'm praying the HP Reverb G2 gets good reviews and solves most of those issues. It's apparently a month or 2 from shipping so I'm crossing my fingers I can get rid of this Rift.
Apple’s investment in Privacy is going to pay off so big.
I wonder if Facebook can spin off a company that includes Oculus and competes with Apple on Privacy.
I’d guess no.
This. Unless you have built up sufficiently high profile Facebook fame known inside and out of it, beyond just having a moderately active account, I wouldn’t consider it safe to spend a penny on this.
Really unfortunate that virtually no competitor exists in mobile VR segment.
I agree with the high total cost though. Most people pushing PC VR, will forget about how much a real VR ready PC will cost. It's easy to spend close to $3000 even when people loathed to admit it.
It turns out I can't use the advertised features of the Apple devices I bought because Side Car requires 2FA with a phone number and my phone service is data only.
Given that I connect the iPad to the Mac via a USB-C cable, it's not clear why iCloud is required at all. They're just intentionally crippling their expensive devices.
> Given that I connect the iPad to the Mac via a USB-C cable, it's not clear why iCloud is required at all. They're just intentionally crippling their expensive devices.
I believe they just want to make you get used to that so one day you would't even think about using any of your devices/apps without iCloud. Their vision probably is to make all the devices merely interfaces to iCloud and to make "offline usage" sound as ridiculous as using a toaster without electricity.
Note that once you have at least one phone number added, you can switch it to be device-based instead, where it will send 2FA codes directly to any Apple device you're logged into (there's a little system popup) and the phone number becomes strictly a backup for if all devices are unavailable. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204915
> Given that I connect the iPad to the Mac via a USB-C cable, it's not clear why iCloud is required at all.
Sidecar is primarily designed for wireless usage, and there's something behind-the-scenes where it's using the iCloud account to sync identity info so that that user doesn't have to manually set up any cross-device authentication stuff.
Now that it does appear, I get a pop-up when clicking on the iPad income, saying I can't use it because the account doesn't have 2FA set up. Nowhere in the advertising for the device was there a disclaimer that a legacy phone number was required to use the features.
Apple Wireless Direct Link - https://owlink.org/wiki/
"No need for chargebacks, I purchased it from John Lewis in the UK so they wont have any issues refunding me. All my previous Oculus purchases on their store are now unplayable on my CV1 though so I might have to pursue a small claims court claim to get any money back on those."
I honestly don't know, but if I had to guess it would be no.
The laws in the US governing privacy and data use have never been updated for the computer age, because the people who have been in power for the whole computer age generally don't understand computers.
I did receive a notice that in 2023 the Oculus Account would be deprecated however.
Honestly though, the real answer is who knows - it's entirely proprietary information and all we can do on the outside is observe the fact that is does seem to be a pretty flawed detection system and guess at why that is. Does facebook use sentiment analysis of posts or post frequency to ban users they think are fake? Do they look for similar content of posts from different users to try and detect troll farms? I don't know and FB really doesn't want to talk about it.
The content on the Quest may not be "desktop fidelity", but my time with the Quest 1 was VERY much enjoyable (especially compared to the Oculus Go), and often preferred over my desktop VR HMD simply for the convenience. And the content was quite good.
By this same metric, the Switch is also plagued with "mobile titles" given it's Android base and Tegra X1 mobile GPU. But most folks DON'T think of it like that, and for good reason: the Switch can keep up just fine in it's own market.
And if the Quest 2 has improved specs in every area over the Quest 1, then it's completely FINE for what it is.
It's just the company behind it fucked up a good thing.
The Quest 2 is amazing and an important leap for VR. If you care about the state of VR, it must sell well.
Frankly, this is not the hill to die on. If you plan to own a smartphone or really use any kind of service or internet browsing in the modern world going forward you’re going to be faced with these kind of privacy dilemmas. Better to just accept it and move on with your life than to basically live like a Luddite for the rest of your life. Facebook will not be the first or last corporation to ask you to relax your absolute anonymity.
This is absolutely the hill to die on. Oculus has competitors. The answer to save VR isn't to buy Oculus, it's to buy other headsets and hope Oculus dies unless they reverse their decision to require a Facebook account.
I wish that was true. If that was the case, I would've bought a headset from a competitor in a heartbeat.
Unfortunately, while there are many competitive VR headsets out there, I cannot recall a single other VR headset that works standalone without a PC.
Not even mentioning the price point of Quest and the fact that it can be used for both PCVR and standalone, thus bringing a superset of features of other headsets. No need to set up lightboxes and being able to just buy the headset and play without anything extra is a value proposition that I don't see any other VR headset can provide.
Hopefully, the success of Quest will provide a kick in the ass to other manufacturers to make their own versions. Imo, the standalone+PCVR combo with no lightboxes is the future, with lightbox PCVR-only headsets being reserved for highly niche uses.
If only there were other companies with competing products which would assuage one’s concerns regarding privacy and/or anonymity and guard against Luddite lifestyles.
“Must sell well...hill to die on” feel a bit extreme, particularly given everything that has transpired in 2020.
Well, at least you know yourself, but I don't appreciate this attempt to normalize your moral bankruptcy and ridicule others who haven't sold and don't want to sell their soul.
Maybe one day you'll be forced to confront the consequences of this lack of ethics. Until then, kindly fuck right off.
Isn't the opposite true? If I care about the state of VR as a product free of social media lock-in, I want Oculus to fail hard.
??????
I will put my money somewhere else.