> Get a better head-strap! He mentions it in passing in the article, but 90% of the strain from wearing the Quest 2 for extended periods of time can be traced to the garbage default head-strap. You want something that properly balances the headset.

I'm very curious why I seem to have heard this exact same advice for every single headset on the market. Why does it seem endemic that headsets ship uncomfortable, fixed within days by amateurs with Velcro and tape? Why haven't manufacturers noticed that they are partly responsible for one of the major blocks to wide spread adoption?

It’s all in the box! The standard strap is very foldable and cuts the total size down a lot. Extended wear straps make the kit much larger. I have a Quest 2, with a fancy strap and a standard carry case and they don’t really work together. The simple strap is also easier to adjust.

The Quest 2 was heavily optimized for reduced cost since otherwise, VR is a very expensive hobby to get into. Before the Quest, you had to buy a $600 headset AND a $1500+ gaming PC if you didn't already have one if you wanted to get into VR.

As it is, I imagine at $300, Facebook is likely losing money on the sale of each headset.

High-end headsets like the Valve Index come with a very good strap. There's no need to mod it or get an aftermarket one because the stock one is already very comfortable and balances the weight on your head very well. But the full kit is $1,000 and requires a gaming PC.

Unfortunately, Immersed doesn't appear to run on the Index. I had a lot of funds in my steam wallet and purchased one and am about to go pickup the Oculus in a bit. Will be fun to compare and contrast the 2 ecosystems

For most people the stock strap is good enough. I spend a lot of time in VR and never even considered replacing the strap.

Better headstraps are bigger, bulkier, and more expensive. In a market that competes on price, it's most efficient to have the basic version in the box and then charge for upgrades.

Plus, this also allows you to grow your market share by not excluding people that can't quite afford the better version of the headset.

They make money from selling the better head strap, the Quest 2 elite strap is $50 extra.

I think the Vive Focus 3 has learned this lesson, and ships with what looks to be a very serviceable strap.

> The Quest 2 is really cheap

But it requires a FB account right? Or is there a way to use it without one?

Yep, according to the FAQ [1]:

> Quest 2 requires everyone to use a Facebook account to log in.

> If you are an existing Oculus user and have an Oculus account, you will have the option to log in with your Oculus account and merge your Facebook and Oculus accounts.

I can't speak how enforced these are, but even if it's a soft requirement for now, it's enough for me to avoid it. Pity, since it seems pretty good tech wise.

[1] https://support.oculus.com/fb/

> I can't speak how enforced these are, but even if it's a soft requirement for now, it's enough for me to avoid it. Pity, since it seems pretty good tech wise.

Strictly enforced. I borrowed an older oculus headset from a friend to try out a while ago. It wouldn't let me use it without providing Facebook my personal details. I tried making a new anonymous facebook account, which was immediately locked out before I could provide government issued identification. I borrowed my friends' oculus account to briefly give it a go, but quickly returned the hardware because I was just too creeped out by the Facebook association.

It really is a shame that the companies with the biggest R&D budgets are also the ones which are the least aligned with the interests of the user.

This is either a lie or a heavy misconception; my Quest 2 (the first Oculus headset to "require" a Facebook account; none of the others do), didn't require a Facebook account, and works even with Oculus accounts made within the month.

I have an Oculus Go that I logged into last week that I hadn't used in months. There were a lot of dark patterns trying to get me to use a facebook login but I finally figured out how to use my original Oculus account.

Falling for shitty dark patterns doesn't earn being called a liar; take the victim blaming somewhere else.

Carmack just announced that they will unlock the bootloader of the go to allow root access and give the owners full control.

As for the Quest, you can buy a Facebook free version for about twice the price of the standard one

It's supposedly 500 dollars more and that's excluding the fact that they will bill that in euros if you live in the EU. That makes it almost three times as expensive.

I said a lie or misconception, and I was right.

Yep, that rules that out. It is a competitive space, I'll wait.

>I'll wait.

Same here. Such a shame that this toxic company is stifling VR adoption by wrapping their tentacles around such a prime product.

Deal breaker sadly. I will pay 3x for a hackable/free setup

It requires an Oculus account. There are ways to get a new one even now that don't require you to make a Facebook account. If you check the subreddit you'll probably be able to figure it out in about ten minutes. I make a habit of not mentioning exactly how to do it here because I don't trust employees of companies on HN to avoid fixing any user-beneficial problem involving their work.

Is that still the case as of today? Even the subreddit itself seems convinced its no longer possible to create an Oculus account with a Quest 2 without linking a Facebook account.

https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/k81bg2/oculus_witho...

It still is the case. I was alarmed by how many people were insisting I'm wrong, so I factory reset mine and walked through the process with a new, non-FB Oculus account. Still works.

Quest 2? Thats good to know, I'll see if I can find the method you're talking about then.

They say they will eventually force everyone to Facebook. At least, that's what they said when I got mine back in January.

Nope, that's not what they were saying. They did say that they'd eventually cut out the store for people on legacy Oculus accounts, but your headset would still be perfectly usable; you'd still be able to load .apks in like you can now, you'd still be able to use it with a computer, and it would still more or less work just fine, as long as you weren't depending on Oculus functionality beforehand.

It'd be more like a Wii without Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. It really won't be that different unless you're dependent on their online services.

However, eventually they'll be getting rid of the avenues to make a new account without a Facebook account like they've already slowly been doing. Which is a bad move, but while the avenues are available they might as well be taken.

Quest2 requires a Facebook account, only Quest1/Rift/S still work with an old Oculus account (at least until 2023 when that goes away as well and it's Facebook for everybody).

False. I literally factory reset and made a new Oculus account just to verify that the comments so harshly insisting that I was wrong were in fact wrong, and they are. You've gotta jump through a single hoop, but that hoop isn't making a Facebook account.

Oculus is owned by Facebook; an Oculus account is still a Facebook (Inc) account.

Technically FB says they won't require an FB account until 2023. However they make it a pain in the ass to use a Quest without a FB account, and presumably your device will be a paperweight in a year once the FB requirement rolls out

Quest2 requires a FB account today and for everybody, the 'until 2023' is only for old Oculus accounts used on old devices, i.e. Quest1 and Rift/RiftS.

Nope! Mine works perfectly fine with Oculus accounts made within the month; I literally just factory reset the thing and made another to verify that the comments saying otherwise were wrong, and yeah, they're wrong.

How do they store your purchases if you refuse to use facebook?

I use an Oculus account instead

Mark is ruining it for every upcoming nerd.

It's almost like he's working on being disliked?

Maybe it's his a way of get back at the world for being invisible on so many levels, until financial success?

Deep down he knows that all he did was create a cleaner version of MySpace at the perfect moment. He's used that lottery ticket to acquire companies built by people smarter than he is, and he'll keep trying to tie their genuine innovation back to FB to soothe his fragile ego.

I would have said so too before his investments in VR. Instead of Google's pie in the sky moonshot projects, he picked a tech that was just out of reach and focused an enormous percent of the company on bringing it into the present. He will be hailed as a Jobsian genius if he actually pulls off the next general computing platform, but even if not, certainly caught my attention.

Yeah and it's a shame, because Myspace was awesome and facebook sucks, it's a bloated mess with so much crap attached to it these days.

It’s almost like every device you buy these days have you create an online account to use it.

Even some hp printers recently

The "business" class Quest does not require the FB account. Same hardware, $800 IIRC.

Link?

Oof - $999, worse than I thought:

> Every Oculus Quest for business costs $999.

https://skarredghost.com/2020/05/22/oculus-business-vr-price...

So that’s how much all the tracking and other data (biometrics? 3D model of your home?) is worth to them.

No, that's now much they think businesses or other professional consumers will pay.

Worth quite a bit to get metrics like heartbeat, what type of stuff you get physically excited about. No wonder they want to connect it to a real user account. Speaking of which, I'll create a fake FB account now and start nurturing it in the case I wanna buy an Oculus later.

But, if that article is correct, (“When you buy a headset like Oculus Quest, it is meant for consumer usage, and theoretically speaking, you can’t use for commercial purposes (exhibitions, training applications, VR cinemas, etc…). Yes, I know, we all use it for commercial purposes as well and for sure Oculus won’t enforce the licensing in the short term, but if you want to play exactly by the rules, you should buy a Business Quest for every enterprise application.”), you can use it commercially! That’s a steal!

What’s next? Ballpoints for business use, at double the price of ballpoints for personal use?

On top of the high price, you don't get the Oculus Store either. I think you can theoretically sideload the consumer apps, but it won't be a straightforward process from what I understand.

why not just make a burner fb account for these things

Because they close your account for not being real and you lose your game library?

I've been using one for over a year, and I think I've pretty well silo'd it off from my personal stuff(other than using the same home internet connection).

It might work for you for now. The more people figure it out, the more likely it is that whatever vulnerability you are using will get patched out. Then you will get banned, because they hate you for doing what you are doing (not providing them with as much personal information as you can).

Oculus support did help me in that case and apparently disconnected the facebook account so i could still use my quest 2

It’s actually now pretty hard to create fake FB accounts. You will at least need a phone number, but often times they will also ask for ID scan if the detection mechanism will mark your account as fake.

None of this is true. I have bunch of fake FB accounts created for one reason or another. I haven't checked on all of them, but the one I use for Oculus works fine. It is literally two random names picked from generator and a picture of Kermit the frog.

I had a few, too. They're suspended now! I think they started looking at action history - little to no posts/likes/friend requests/logins will probably suspend your account and ask for an ID.

Now, Facebook can go fuck itself, but damn the Quest 2 looks nice. What a shame.

When were these created?

New account creation on numerous services (not just FB) has become increasingly limited. Even simple MS Windows registrations.

My cat's facebook account disliked this post.

Yeah, I never understood why people don’t treat Facebook just like email, where you can have a throwaway account unrelated to anything.

I needed a temporary Facebook account recently. I put a fake but plausible name and I did what I had to do. That account was blocked in no less than 20min, asking for my ID and my phone number.

I’m pretty sure that Facebook is unofficially « closed » for new « non verified » accounts.

And that’s not even surprising : literally everybody was on Facebook a decade ago, it’s definitely not the social network of the younger generation, and nobody who had the occasion to register 10 years ago is going to change its mind today. So the vast majority of new registrations must be spam bots.

New service: subscription identity - buy a real identity of a real person from some poor country and use it for yourself in the glorious developed world.

Official government issued ID, passport, photos, video verification available for a fee.

There are already marketing scams that involve renting out one's Facebook account so that third party entities can make posts with them:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook...

Come to think of it, that could be a way to get accounts with which to use Oculus with.

BrightID validates you as real and unique, but without revealing any actual IRL information to people consuming and using the identity via their apps.

https://www.brightid.org/

Does the uniqueness criterion prevent it from being useful to people who wanr to create multiple, independent accounts as is being discussed in this thread?

Also known as identity theft

If you don't steal someone's identity is it still identity theft? Ie they give use of their identity to you voluntarily for using these services.

If something is given with permission, it's not theft.

That's not what is happening in this scenario.

I wonder if they restrict Google Voice or other VoIP numbers.

They do. Just get a burner pay-as-you-go phone.

Every account on Facebook must be attached to a real person and every person is only allowed a single Facebook account. A throwaway account is an automatic TOS violation and can lead to an account ban. Facebook does actively enforce their TOS, so especially with new accounts it isn't uncommon for the account to get locked and Facebook will force you to verify your ID.

In the case of Quest2 that would mean you lose all the games you bought on the device along with the Facebook account.

But you are allowed to make a community or corporate account, no? Why not make an account like that and use that to link to your services. It would be within TOS, unless all these organizations and third party accounts polluting my feed are really all violating TOS.

I thought they weren't allowing that? Like, you had to appear to be a real person and can't just make and keep a blank profile?

It's a ToS violation, but you can still do it. Facebook will only ask for ID verification after they locked your account, but not while creating it. Locking of accounts is however pretty common.

Because people are ideologues, especially on HN.

Yes, they require accounts. A while ago, FB were saying the FB account must also be “in good standing” in response to people who had purchased the Quest 2, created the compulsory FB account, and were then banned immediately rendering the device totally useless.

There was a fair amount of bad press about the issue and how there was no way to get unbanned. The bad press forced their hand a bit, but I wonder if it’s an issue again now that it’s not such a hot topic.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/oculus-quest-2-users-banne...

https://screenrant.com/oculus-quest-worthless-facebook-accou...

Is it really that surprising that spending 25% of your life with 35% extra weight at the top of your head is going to affect your neck? I’m not convinced that a different strap is going to make a significant difference.

The weight matters a little, but people having been wearing helmets at work for millennia. The bigger problem is that the weight isn’t balanced - the front is heavier than the back.

How does a different strap shift the weight balance? Is there some magic?

Not sure why he got rid of the picture of it, but he actually put a computer inside his HHKB. I was waiting for him to do a write up.

https://palmerluckey.com/oculus-goblack-how-to-make-your-ocu...

You can see that on wayback machine.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190325121641/http://palmerluck...

Yeah! I double-checked that post while writing my comment and noticed the picture was gone, myself. I'm guessing it's because he was using the Facebook CDN.

What was it for? That sounds nuts (not a lot of room)

What was it for? So... he could have a computer inside of his keyboard.

For me the worst thing about the Quest 2 is the lack of adjustable eye-width options. The original Quest had an adjustable dial, but they replaced it with I think 2 or maybe 3 different widths to choose from. Because of this, my experience is way more uncomfortable than the first Quest, since none of the settings match my eyes.

It’s not well known, but the Quest 2 firmware does support intermediate IPD settings, so it’s straightforward to 3D print an adapter for the lenses:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4627924

https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/jeie0q/your_ip...

Yeah, that's actually a problem that Palmer mentioned years ago with the Go. It hasn't gotten better since these things hit mass-market.

It sounds like you’re describing the Quest 2 as a full computing device. I thought it was pretty much a replacement for just a monitor in a traditional setup.

The quest two is basically an android phone with special hardware/software for VR. It’s running android. It can be used completely standalone.

It can be hooked up to a more powerful PC and essentially just used as a monitor, but it can also run less demanding titles natively with no additional hardware. It has a web browser built in and you can connect a Bluetooth keyboard to it. So you can do some stuff without a laptop/pc. There’s a good library of native games but if you wanted to make a PowerPoint or do office/work you’d likely be using a web app (or just connecting to a pc)

You can also install (sideload) Termux for a decent standalone Linux experience - vim, git, python, ssh...

The Quest 2 has enough performance to run Citra (a recent Switch emulator) without any slowdowns; you can install just about any .apk on it, and if you want you can literally run Docker. It works pretty much okay for just about any actual computing task you can throw at it.

Small correction that I only realized a minute ago (past the edit window): Citra isn't a Switch emulator, if I recall correctly.

Recommendations for a strap? We have the Oculus Elite Strap and while better, isn't as comfortable as our Rift S "strap".

Hi! OP here - I use a GoQuestVR Halo strap. I'd originally purchased it for my Quest 1, and adapted it to fit the Quest 2. There are several makers of this form factor now, though.

I'll give that one a try since you and the article mention it, thanks!

Well... I'm the author of the article, so that still only counts as 1.

Ah, I thought "OP" as in the comment I was replying to! Good article by the way, I'll have to give it a try.

The Elite Strap has some really awful reliability issues; I'd definitely recommend returning it if you can.

If you've got a 3D printer, there's a pretty popular project that allows you to adapt the Vive Deluxe Audio Strap to a Quest 2; I've heard little but glowing praise for it.

However, since you mention the Rift S, as far as I'm aware the halo strap(s, there are a lot of different brands pushing pretty much the same thing) the author mentions in the page is pretty much just a clone of the Rift S strap, and I've also heard really good things about it. It's like $20 on AliExpress, so it's probably worth a try, at least.

Mine broke after a few months and not very heavy usage either. Very frustrating.

Your Elite Strap? Yeah, they're all pretty awful.

Quest 2 original strap + cheap strap pad significantly improves comfortability.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001657071604.html

Add a weight on the back is also good.

The Vive Deluxe Audio Strap is the way to go. You can 3d print or purchase the adapter off of Amazon. I also strapped a usb battery pack to the back of the headstrap to counterbalance the HMD. The DAS is very comfy and solves the audio problem with the quest 2 as well.

Do you have any suggestions for a better head strap for the Quest 2?

I talked a little about them in this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28678568