[HN Gopher] Oculess - Removes account requirements and telemetry...
___________________________________________________________________
Oculess - Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus
Quest devices
Author : detaro
Score : 745 points
Date : 2021-10-14 20:18 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| 908087 wrote:
| This is good for people who already own them, but please don't
| buy one because of this. Increasing Facebook's sales numbers on
| these will only serve to encourage their behavior and hurt
| competitors.
| sharmin123 wrote:
| Facebook Safety Tips: Take Steps Now and Avoid Hacking:
| https://www.hackerslist.co/facebook-safety-tips-take-steps-n...
| oriel wrote:
| Is there an equivalent jailbreak for the other Oculus devices? I
| have a CV1 I would love to rehabilitate.
| dTal wrote:
| So, what can you do with a (de-Facebooked) one of these then?
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Did anyone have luck using EQ2 with a fake FB account? I know
| that my partner (who doesn't use her real name on FB) kept
| getting asked by FB for pictures of her ID, which I find super
| creepy.
|
| I don't mind using EQ2 with telemetry off as long as my
| activity in it is detached from my other devices.
| pm90 wrote:
| Opt out of an identity system that you don't want to associate
| with in any way. Make it more difficult for Facebook to track
| you in their identity graph.
|
| They're everywhere and its a problem. Google taught humanity
| that its OK to have tracking everywhere, if that's used only to
| enhance user experience. However, now other identity ecosystems
| are using that power for purposes which people may not be ok
| with. It should be easy to opt out of it [0].
|
| EDIT: Apologies, I re-read your question and it appears to be a
| genuine one which I did not answer i.e. if doing this hampers
| the usage of the oculus device. I'll leave my answer up though,
| if anyone else is interested in this aspect of the discussion.
|
| [0]: Facebook does appear to have an opt out page. Try going
| there and opting out. Just go there, please, before responding:
| https://www.facebook.com/ads/settings
| psd1 wrote:
| Half-Life 3
| wincy wrote:
| Watch an astonishing amount of extremely high quality VR
| pornography.
| tdrdt wrote:
| Looking at the source code it seems only some system flags are
| (un)set.
|
| So unless you disable all updates I assume most settings will be
| reset after an update.
|
| This app is more like an interface for some settings than a hack.
| chinathrow wrote:
| > This app is more like an interface for some settings than a
| hack.
|
| It's also a statement.
| tdrdt wrote:
| Yes absolutely!
| rapnie wrote:
| Cool work. I would like something like this to make my old
| Samsung Gear VR / Oculus Go usable again by removing the need to
| sign up to FB/Oculus.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Anyone know why fitness tracking would not work after disabling
| telemetry? That's very strange they're intertwined.
|
| If you own a quest, what's the appeal of disabling the fb part?
| To me it's the telemetry that's most incendiary, especially as a
| friend at Oculus suspected people's video is uploaded as part of
| data sets for training the tracking algorithms (which means the
| inside of my home is in FB servers... even worse if you consider
| some popular VR movies and their related activities...)
| charcircuit wrote:
| >especially as a friend at Oculus suspected people's video is
| uploaded as part of data sets for training the tracking
| algorithms
|
| How would this even be useful as part of a dataset? The
| official story is that Oculus created the dataset for Oculus
| Insight by also using OptiTrack to also track the HMD and
| controllers to create a ground truth of what be the actual
| location should be. For robustness certain Oculus employees
| took this setup home to capture data in various environments.
| Being able to test changes to your tracking algorithm and see
| how close you get to what it should be is clearly useful.
| Recording videos from random people seems much less useful.
| fomine3 wrote:
| For me, Facebook itself is far more problem than basic
| telemetry (for dev purpose) for privacy.
| tristor wrote:
| I've been wanting to use PCVR for a long time, especially for
| virtual desktop scenarios, not even just for gaming. But the
| reality is I will never buy anything that puts money in
| Facebook's pocket. End of story. I really appreciate the work the
| developer did on this, but philosophically I see things like this
| that attempt to break the walled garden as a net-benefit to a bad
| actor (Facebook) rather than a net-benefit to consumers and
| users. It's actually better for the world and better for users if
| they have to make a hard choice about the ethics of their
| purchases, rather than feeling like they have an "out". So I
| commend the work, but Oculus is a no-go for anyone who gives any
| care at all about ethics for SO MANY reasons, Facebook owning it
| just being the largest (read the origin story for more).
| Guillaume86 wrote:
| Why do you think it's a net benefit for facebook? They probably
| make a loss if you buy a headset, don't buy anything on the
| store and un-facebook it.
| Epskampie wrote:
| The team at facebook will be able to show bigger sales,
| making the next version more likely. You will count as a
| "oculus quest user" in steam stats etc. Developers will be
| more likely to support this headset. Etc etc etc. The market
| is still so small that network effect like these can be huge.
|
| Facebook is selling at a loss in an attempt to destroy the
| competition and build another monopoly. They don't care if
| they don't make a profit now, as they will be able to gauge
| you later.
|
| Don't buy facebook stuff.
| lacksconfidence wrote:
| Lucky for you, FB doesn't care about PCVR either. They are
| clearly all-in on untethered consumer devices. PCVR will remain
| for the enthusiests with various smaller companies providing
| more impressive headsets than FB.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| For a second I thought FB was doing some PR considering their
| lovely few weeks.
|
| And even in that second of confusion, I knew it would only be a
| temporary concession.
|
| Little Markie will not relent until the government breaks up his
| monopoly.
|
| I wish he started FB in China. I would love to see Xi cut him
| down to size.
| vermilingua wrote:
| Can anyone comment on the Quest vs Quest 2? I've heard that it's
| a difficult tradeoff, as the build quality of the Quest is better
| while the screen quality of the Quest 2 is a huge improvement.
|
| If the plan is to use one for a monitor replacement for extended
| periods, which is a better choice?
| bradneuberg wrote:
| I have both -- the Oculus Quest 2 is better on both fronts,
| it's lighter and the screen is better.
| coolspot wrote:
| I don't think you can comfortably use Q1 as monitor
| replacement. IMO, resolution is not enough for comfortable
| reading.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I have a multi monitor setup for no good reason[1] and for me
| the standard 90-100deg FOV of common binocular VR headsets
| didn't seem wide enough for my daily use cases.
|
| 1: bad reason: because good-enough displays are cheap! why not
| double down on it.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| I have a quest 2 and I don't think it's a _great_ monitor
| replacement, especially as someone with multiple 4K screens.
| The resolution isn't good enough to comfortably read for
| extended periods IMO.
|
| E: out of curiosity, I pulled up immersed to browse this thread
| on HN and my eyes can't take it for too long.
|
| If you do use it as a monitor replacement, here's a suggestion:
| make your screens small and keep them close to you. Scanning
| with your eyes doesn't work as well, you should be moving your
| head a lot more.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| I have had both and although the Quest 2 has shitty lens
| adjustment that doesn't fit my IPD (pupillary distance)
| correctly, the clarity on the Quest 2, thanks to the higher
| resolution display and full-RGB pixel matrix vs pentile on the
| Quest 1, was just miles better than on the Quest 1 which had a
| better IPD adjustment system that fitted my eyesight. Couple
| this with the lower weight, more comfortable strap (I know),
| more powerful processor, higher refresh rate, the Quest 1 can't
| even hold a candle to the Quest 2.
|
| Sold the Quest 1 immediately and kept the Quest 2.
|
| Although I wouldn't use either as a monitor replacement for
| more than 30 minutes. The tech is just not there yet for eye-
| stranious work like reading small text like code. Best kept for
| entertainment and content consumption.
| krajzeg wrote:
| Just a heads-up from another Quest 2 user - if you're gentle,
| you can push the lenses in between the 3 predefined settings,
| and they will stay there. This helped me a lot, since my IPD
| is somewhere in between the middle and the wide setting.
|
| Only 3 options is definitely a weird choice on Oculus' part
| (especially since the device apparently includes a
| potentiometer, so it actually acknowledges in-between
| settings!), but at least there's a workaround.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| That's not a viable option for me as my IPD is not between
| settings but at the outer extreme of the widest setting
| (Quest 2 only goes as far as 68 mm while Quest 1 went to 72
| mm which is close to my IPD).
|
| It's still usable for games without any headaches, but I
| wouldn't use it for reading text or long gaming sessions.
| fastball wrote:
| This guy[1] seems to like using the Quest 2 as a monitor
| replacement for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Previous HN
| discussion[2].
|
| [1] https://blog.immersed.team/working-from-
| orbit-39bf95a6d385
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28678041
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| I get that some users could tolerate this all day, but the
| problem with having a display strapped to your face with
| plastic lenses in between that have not been tailor to your
| eyesight is bound to be uncomfortable to _a lot_ of users
| at prolonged use.
| Koffiepoeder wrote:
| He tackles that:
|
| > If you need corrective lenses, get lens inserts: it's
| superior to wearing glasses, and I find it better than
| wearing contacts. For horrible astigmatic myopia like
| mine (-7.5), it was cheaper than most pairs of glasses
| I've had, and a totally reasonable expense since I use
| them all day for work.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| That doesn't fix the issue with the limited IPD
| adjustment on the Quest 2 where if you're out of the 3
| fixed setting then eye strain happens.
| joshschreuder wrote:
| Do you know if mid points work? I've heard mixed things,
| I'm not sure if the IPD is a combination of the lens and
| software (since it does display on screen when
| switching). I'm also between notches on the IPD but I'm
| unsure if trying to get it stuck halfway works or is a
| good idea.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| That's not a viable option for me as my IPD is not
| between settings but at the outer extreme of the widest
| setting (Quest 2 only goes as far as 68 mm while Quest 1
| went to 72 mm which is close to my IPD). It's still
| usable for games without any headaches, but I wouldn't
| use it for reading text or long gaming sessions.
| rhacker wrote:
| Facebook keeps asking Congress to make laws. How about this one:
|
| Peripherals, including mice, monitors, keyboards, VR headsets or
| any other device used to process input or output from a computer,
| may NOT be connected to any cloud service with an account. Any
| such cloud connections MUST be for software updates only and
| software updates MUST be capable of permanent opt-out without any
| loss of usage.
|
| I mean I grew up with my logitech mouse, keyboard and monitor not
| connected to a cloud account and I expect to die that way. Why
| does Facebook get to do things differently.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| akerl_ wrote:
| Why is it desirable for Congress to make laws limiting how
| electronics manufacturers can design their electronics?
|
| If Facebook wants to make a VR headset that requires that you
| upload a monthly video of you doing the chicken dance, just
| don't buy their product.
|
| Attempting to use government to make private entities build the
| kinds of technology you like is a pretty heavy hammer to drop
| on individual freedoms.
| Bayart wrote:
| Because the natural behavioural pattern of dominant companies
| is single-minded resource extraction, including from the
| commons which the government is in charge of safeguarding. On
| top of it the relationship they have to private citizens is
| extremely asymmetric.
|
| All-consuming capitalism isn't a public liberty, and if
| companies are in the mind of lowering costs by using cancer-
| inducing materials, slave work, corruption or indeed trading
| people's very identities, then it's in the purview of
| political institutions to intervene.
| honkycat wrote:
| Because this is something people purchased, and then the log-
| in requirements were added later.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| Companies are not individuals.
| ksdale wrote:
| I'm no corporate shill, but corporations are groups of
| people, so anything you think it's ok to take away from
| them because they're a group and not a person, you could
| logically take away from, say, a union or a farmer's
| market. If it was wise to make that law regarding facebook,
| would it be wise to make it regarding an individual as
| well, or should individuals be allowed to do it because
| they're not groups? And if individuals shouldn't be allowed
| to do it, then it's not really about the distinction
| between corporations and individuals.
| tpxl wrote:
| The connection between corps and unions/farmers markets
| is clear to me, but the jump between unions/farmers
| markets to individuals is not.
|
| Yes, I do think groups should not have rights individuals
| have. It's more about the scale than the amount of
| people, and the line between that gets blurred when an
| individual can control thousands of PCs.
| ksdale wrote:
| For example, individuals are entitled to freedom of
| assembly, the ability to, say, gather and push for better
| labor conditions. If we restrict the rights of groups,
| would the government suddenly say, "Well sure, each of
| you can ask for labor rights individually, but you can't
| gather together to do it, because groups shouldn't have
| the same rights as individuals."
|
| I suppose, I don't think the line between groups and
| individuals is quite so clear. When does a group become
| "greater" than the individual in a way that requires the
| individual to give up certain rights?
| rhacker wrote:
| So backing up out of that for a second. Are you saying
| there are individuals (not part of a group, or a
| corporation) that are dead set on making computer
| peripherals that require an account?
| ksdale wrote:
| Is that relevant? I think the analysis should revolve
| around whether they should be allowed to, and not whether
| we can just ban it because nobody wants to do it anyway.
| I don't think that's a good way to make rules.
| rhacker wrote:
| > Why is it desirable for Congress
|
| Humans are dumb and they buy it, and it sets the precedent.
| We have to make laws sometimes. You can barely even buy a TV
| without smart features now and yet everyone that knows about
| such features that don't want them still HAVE to buy them if
| they want a gd tv.
|
| Should we just make it legal for oil companies to have no
| consequences for oil spills because it doesn't really affect
| much, we can just stop eating fish in the sea. There's still
| plenty of food elsewhere.
| akerl_ wrote:
| Maybe they're not dumb and they're making their own choices
| differently than you make yours.
|
| Oil spills harm the environment. We regulate them because
| the ocean can't just choose to not receive the oil, not out
| of a desire to make sure we can keep eating fish.
|
| EDIT: To say the thing out loud: I buy smart TVs on
| purpose, and I'd like to think I'm a smart person who
| understands the technology involved. Is the case you're
| making that I am in fact dumb?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Ed Snowden might
|
| https://mashable.com/article/wikileaks-snowden-interview
| rhacker wrote:
| Well, I think all of them are dumb, including me. I'm not
| going to finger point at you specifically and call you
| dumb because that is rude (unfortunately yes, my subtext
| is). I'd say half of my choices are dumb, and yes when we
| find that most of the time people are making dumb choices
| that put humanity in a worse and worse situation, maybe
| it's time to drop in some laws to slow that down.
|
| I mean go and look at the other HN thread on 100K US
| deaths per year on plastic. I mean I bought plastic today
| and highly likely will do so again tomorrow.
| akerl_ wrote:
| I might recommend taking a step back and re-examining
| this stance and considering the possibility that there
| are people who disagree with your stance because they
| hold different opinions and values, not just because
| they're dumb.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| No, they're definitely dumb just like you and I are
| definitely dumb in the sense that we are terrible making
| decisions which are holistic on a longer timescale. We
| evolved to be dumb at these things but not being dumb is
| what we need right now so we need to exert power
| downstream to stop us from our temptations to make our
| dumb decisions in the heat of the moment like oh god I'll
| just use Facebook so I can buy this stupid thing on
| Marketplace even though participation in Facebook net
| harms humanity.
| spurgu wrote:
| I'm right now watching "The Billion Dollar Code" on Netflix
| and due to that I have an answer readily at hand: _Someone_
| needs to stand up to the big guys exerting excessive power
| and force[0].
|
| [0] This phenomenom is inherent to and a natural byproduct of
| a free market, which is why regulation and laws are essential
| to keep some sort of balance.
| steve76 wrote:
| Big rich guy, if you're so smart and good, why do you need a
| bailout?
| jdc wrote:
| How about the freedom to use your property, electronic or
| otherwise, as you see fit?
| akerl_ wrote:
| Oculus isn't secretive about the cloud account requirement.
| When you go to buy it, you're buying it as Facebook chose
| to build it. And once you have the hardware you own it. But
| they aren't required to sell you a device that works the
| way you wish it did.
|
| If the pitch here was that vendors were lying about
| cloud/connectivity requirements, and we wanted legislation
| to prevent them from obscuring the truth, I'd be 100% down.
| Thankfully, we already have those laws.
| malermeister wrote:
| Just because they aren't secretive about it doesn't mean
| it's an okay thing to do. Doing a bad thing out in the
| open might make it shameless, but it doesn't make it
| acceptable.
| akerl_ wrote:
| I'm saying it's not clear to me why it's a bad thing.
| It's clear that you want them to design a different VR
| headset, but I wish IKEA made a different depth Kallax
| shelf and yet I'm not looking to make it a legal
| requirement.
| malermeister wrote:
| The law says IKEA has to use certain non-flammable
| materials on mattresses etc to protect the individual.
|
| Along the same lines, the law should say Facebook can't
| sell hardware that forces you to give up all your privacy
| to protect the individual.
|
| This is not "I want Facebook to design a headset with
| blue stripes", this is "I don't want to be forced to give
| up my private data to use a product that would work just
| fine without".
|
| I think the difference between the two should be obvious.
| hobs wrote:
| Designing things around safety is something IKEA already
| has to do, and regulations about materials, heights of
| products, etc all play into that.
|
| The IKEA bookshelf doesn't violate your privacy nor have
| an always on connection to a much more powerful entity
| always looking to make another buck.
|
| The IKEA bookshelf isn't an avenue for your attention and
| your time - whereas things like gambling (considered
| addictive and regulated by almost everyone) are - and we
| regulate them heavily.
|
| Why would Facebook with its billions be exempt from
| regulation? It's not something we "want" - its to make
| their product basically useful without the IKEA
| subscription service to make sure your shelf doesn't fall
| apart every month.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| I have a Quest 1 and having a Facebook account was not a
| condition when I bought it, but they're going to require
| my Oculus account to be converted into a Facebook account
| that I don't want to have
| akerl_ wrote:
| I agree that this is undesirable, and if the pitch here
| were to mandate that sellers enumerate ongoing
| requirements of their item at time of sale, I'd back
| that.
| MereInterest wrote:
| Because freedom can be infringed upon by more than just the
| government. The market is not infallible, and must be
| curtailed in order to protect individual rights.
| akerl_ wrote:
| What individual right is being violated here?
| dmead wrote:
| Actually it's completely fine and pretty narrow.
|
| Allowing tones of resources and brains to be dumped into the
| advertising industry is a pretty terrible use of what we
| usually call a "society".
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| > just don't buy their product.
|
| That works in theory, but in practice when all the products
| from all the vendors work that way, you no longer have a
| choice.
|
| Plenty of examples like that - Try buying a TV that's not a
| "smart" TV nowdays, you basically can't. If you want a good
| quality picture, then it's also coming with telemetry and in
| many cases advertisements, too.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Yet we refused to accept that Twitter/FB are public
| squares. "Just stop using it" or "It's a private company,
| they can ban anyone they like". Well, how is it not a
| public square when often official government agencies
| publish information exclusively on Twitter, which is
| starting to require accounts with phone numbers?
|
| I see these contradictory narratives on HN.
| girvo wrote:
| > I see these contradictory narratives on HN.
|
| Of course you do. HN (or any platform) is not a monolith
| with a single opinion. I see this argument all the time,
| and it baffles me
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Just pointing out the incongruent bias, sorry for
| baffling you.
| akerl_ wrote:
| This is a VR headset. It's hardly a basic necessity
| bloqs wrote:
| This was said about phones 10 years ago, and electricity
| 100 years before that.
| akerl_ wrote:
| I was being flippant in my comment above, but just to be
| clear: I think regulating business models for cell phones
| is just as bad an idea.
|
| Electrical service has limitations around things like
| termination of service / fair pricing / safety, but we
| don't mandate how they design their software and servers.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > I think regulating business models for cell phones is
| just as bad an idea.
|
| I mean, we can mandate minimum services. Something that
| has a webbrowser, email client, texts and calls. If you
| want to say that apps don't fit into that, I suppose that
| works.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| What about their comment on the lack of non-smart TVs?
| akerl_ wrote:
| There are plenty of non-smart TVs. They just cost more
| than smart TVs. You can find them at any number of
| suppliers, and they're still bought in large numbers by
| businesses.
| unsui wrote:
| yet. That's the whole point of getting in early (to the
| mass-consumer-market), to make it the standard. It's not
| a necessity yet, but neither were smartphones (now just
| called "phones").
|
| FB is banking heavily that VR will become a necessity, to
| one extent or another. I sincerely hope FB fails, but my
| suspicion is that it would fail not because FB failed,
| but rather because VR itself failed (e.g. Google Glass
| for consumers). Still to be seen.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Not to mention big companies buying out all the small ones
| and shutting them down or perverting their products.
| Facebook and Oculus beinjg a perfect example, with added
| bad taste due to Oculus being propped by a successful
| kickstarter campaign, only to be sold for billions soon
| after to Facebook.
|
| Another less known example could be Kolor, the maker of
| Autopano Giga (IMHO the best panorama creation tool so far)
| being gobbled by GoPro, likely for the talent, then shut
| down without replacement.
| loktarogar wrote:
| If I spend $50,000 on a tractor that also has a cloud
| component that drives the tractor around for me, is it also
| not fair to expect that I can use that tractor just as a
| tractor if I don't have internet access at my farm?
|
| It's a different story if it's eg. an Alexa device thats
| primary purpose is to be connected to the internet.
|
| If a device is in a class of product that doesn't necessarily
| need a cloud connection/account/whatever, it shouldn't
| require it.
|
| Often it's not practical to switch to a competing product.
| Sometimes it's not possible at all. Consumers should have
| rights here, and it's legislation's job to provide them, in a
| just society.
| akerl_ wrote:
| If when you bought the tractor, the tractor company said
| "this tractor requires that you have internet access and
| keep the tractor online", and you bought it, then no, it's
| not fair of you to expect to just disregard that.
|
| Now, if you want to take a screwdriver and serial cable to
| the tractor and hack the crap out it, and you manage to
| bypass the requirement, have at it. You own the tractor.
| They can feel free to void your warranty / not give you
| updates, but you can do whatever you want with your
| property.
|
| But to buy a device that says "internet connection
| required" and then be angry when it requires an internet
| connection doesn't make sense to me, nor does asking the
| government to mandate the business model used by tractor
| (or VR headset) manufacturers.
| [deleted]
| loktarogar wrote:
| Okay, now picture a world where all high end tractors
| have this functionality.
|
| Companies have determined that's what they're going to
| offer the customer and they'll brick any attempts at
| modifying the hardware. They're making money refining
| their AI and selling off customer data, so why not?
|
| You need the high end tractors because they're the only
| machines that meet the requirements of what you're doing.
|
| This is what the legislation folks want to stave off.
| It's in a similar vein to the right to repair movement
| (which is dealing with similar restrictions right now, in
| the real world - see John Deere tractors).
| akerl_ wrote:
| I think I was pretty clear in my comment above in saying
| that I support right to repair and the ability to modify,
| disassemble, and interrogate the device you have in your
| possession.
|
| I appreciate that folks in this thread are attempting to
| propose legislation to stave off behavior they believe is
| dangerous. My concern is that using legislation in this
| way has knock on effects that make free society radically
| worse, because at its core it requires being OK with
| using government to restrict what technology combinations
| are legal to bring to market.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| > just don't but their product
|
| What alternatives are even available for standalone VR? Vive
| has something that's about 4x the price...
| akerl_ wrote:
| I think you just answered your own question.
| jtsuken wrote:
| It is desirable for any country to have laws that limit the
| ways how legal or government entities collect data.
|
| Some of the strictest privacy laws existed in Germany for a
| reason, because the country new what an SS or a Stasi would
| do with the data once it gets its hands on it.
|
| Some of the laxest privacy laws are in the US, the country
| whose businesses supplied the SS[1] and nowadays the CCP[2]
| with surveillance technology to facilitate genocide.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
|
| [2]https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/us-tech-
| products-080...
| javajosh wrote:
| Because the market is imperfect. There is a profound
| information asymmetry between the consumer and the purveyor
| of high-tech products, and this asymmetry is exploited to
| raise the price of the product, in secret, without customer
| consent.
|
| This is, of course, fraud. Why doesn't current law apply? I
| think it does. But courts are funny: when fraud becomes
| common and accepted, and people cease to recognize it as
| fraud, it becomes acceptable. In those cases, a new law is
| reasonable.
| malermeister wrote:
| Because government power is not the only power capable of
| suppressing individual freedoms. Corporate power is too and
| we need the government to keep it in check. Case in point,
| Facebook trying to restrict how _you_ use hardware _you_ own.
| sgregnt wrote:
| The example with facebook is quite different from Gov. Your
| interaction with facebook is 100% voluntarily, you don't
| like facebook then you can say bye! With the government you
| have no room for flexibility.
| malermeister wrote:
| > Your interaction with facebook is 100% voluntarily
|
| It is not. They used their money and power to hire some
| of the brightest minds in VR to design hardware and to
| create exclusivity deals with some of the best
| developers. I either take facebook's offering or I don't
| have access to those things at all.
|
| > With the government you have no room for flexibility.
|
| You do. You can "say bye!" as you phrased it and move to
| another place with a another government. I've done it
| several times now.
| akerl_ wrote:
| Yes. If you choose not to take Facebook's offering, you
| don't get access to the things they and others build for
| their product. Do we want to make exclusivity deals
| between businesses illegal?
| girvo wrote:
| > Do we want to make exclusivity deals between businesses
| illegal?
|
| In certain circumstances, we already do (kind of): FRAND
| licensing for technical standards are a good example.
| gruez wrote:
| But that's done voluntarily and not forced by the state?
|
| >[...] (FRAND) terms, denote _a voluntary_ licensing
| commitment that standards organizations often request
| from the owner of an intellectual property right (usually
| a patent) that is, or may become, essential to practice a
| technical standard.
| m4rtink wrote:
| AFAIK government terms often require FRAND licensing for
| technology developped with public funds.
| malermeister wrote:
| I don't think we need to do that, but we do need to make
| sure corporations don't use the power they gain through
| those deals to make you endure the privacy abuses that
| come with a cloud requirement.
| josephg wrote:
| Its not just privacy. Corporate exclusivity power also
| hurts competition, which in the long run is worse for
| everyone. (Well, except maybe the monopolist).
|
| For example, when AT&T owned all the telecoms equipment
| in the US, other companies couldn't make new products
| using their system (like answering machines or modems).
| Having anyone able to design, connect, use and sell new
| devices on top of their infrastructure is an incredibly
| important feature.
|
| And facebook knows that. They launched facebook on the
| internet (which is an open platform). Facebook couldn't
| have been created in the first place if not for that.
|
| Facebook owes its existence to open platforms. Lets not
| allow the train of innovation to stop here.
| ipaddr wrote:
| You have this backwards. Facebook wants to sell in the US
| market. There are rules to follow if facebook doesn't
| want to join this market they are free to choose not to.
|
| Same as you are not forced to use facebook.
| akerl_ wrote:
| Facebook is following the rules that exist. The
| discussion in this thread is whether or not it's a good
| idea to add a rule that says whether a keyboard can
| require a cloud service. Now I think that keyboards that
| require cloud service are a stupid product, but if
| somebody wants to make one, I don't think it's the
| government's job to ban them from making the attempt.
| malermeister wrote:
| This approach is naive in that it completely ignores the
| outsized influence a corporation like Facebook has on the
| market.
|
| This isn't you making a free decision between
| competitors, like in an idealized econ 101 example.
| Facebook has already used its money to consolidate its
| grasp on the standalone VR market - can you think of a
| viable competitor to an Oculus Quest? Should people just
| have to put up with privacy abuses or be excluded from VR
| altogether?
|
| When the market fails, it's time for the government to
| step in.
| Tostino wrote:
| I've essentially written off getting VR at this point due
| to Facebook being the big game in town. Nothing else
| really looks enticing and I will not give Facebook a cent
| of my money.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Every time this comes up, I have to point out that
| Facebook will collect information about you and build a
| "shadow profile" even if you never visit their site once.
| There's no foolproof way I know of to get them to stop
| either. Interaction with Facebook is voluntarily in the
| theoretical sense that you _could_ try to avoid every
| website with a Facebook tracker or hope your ad-blocker
| is good enough to stop them. But Facebook won 't respect
| signals (such as DNT) that would indicate that you don't
| want to interact with them.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| And tag you with facial recognition in photos other
| people upload
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| This is just false - a number of universities and
| colleges use mandatory facebook groups for students
| notifications for example. The network effects of large
| internet companies have made avoiding them impractical.
|
| Taking your argument to the extreme if you don't like
| coal perhaps you should avoid buying electricity. Good
| luck with that in the real world of today
| satellite2 wrote:
| Because different people have different expectations for a
| given product and some level of expertise is required to
| understand basic requirements which most people don't have.
|
| For instance most people don't know what is an acceptable
| level for various pollutants in drinking water. As such if
| there was no government oversight most people would be happy
| drinking poluted water and the few that care wouldn't be
| serviced as the cost of cleaning water for a niche wouldn't
| make it profitable. But hopefully we have laws that dictate
| safe levels and vendors have to respect them.
|
| For hardware it's the same, experts are pretty clear about
| the risks: at the most basic level if hardware stop to
| function when some server crash then the whole society
| becomes dependant on this and as such any outages starts to
| have catastrophic consequences by domino effect. On the
| spying activity linked to those accounts the risk is pretty
| clear as well: it opens people to leaks of intimate details
| about their life to Facebook employees and various hackers in
| case of failure.
|
| So it seems clear that public safety would require making
| those two activities illegal.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Your freedom stops when you decide not to make your own
| oculus and use the common market. Using that market you are
| governed by all kind of rules like safety around food, lemon
| laws around purchases, laws that protect against predatory
| practices like bait and switch.
| Impossible wrote:
| Quest is basically a game console and not a peripheral. Even
| "dumb" non-standalone HMDs like Index have complex software
| stacks for tracking, input and rendering (compositor). HN loves
| the narrative of a VR device being "just" a monitor but that's
| really not the case. If this rule is applied to VR as it exists
| in 2021 (not 2013 DK1 which kind of was a 2nd monitor + HID)
| then it has to apply to all PCs, game consoles, smartphones,
| IOT devices etc. I'm not saying that legislation shouldn't
| happen but it does have ramifications for users and for
| security. On Quest you could do this, but social features and
| store might stop working at some point, and newer games and
| applications would definitely stop working, especially ones
| that use new features implemented in software like hand
| tracking.
|
| TLDR this legislation could be fine but it would have to target
| Windows, Android, Steam, Playstation, Mac OS, etc and has
| ramifications that eventually software might just stop working.
| It might accelerate the push to move everything to the cloud
| also and make all devices dumb terminals that play video.
| phkahler wrote:
| Oculus Quest is not a peripheral, it's a standalone device.
| Having an app store is nice, but tying to Facebook is not
| needed or wanted.
| camkego wrote:
| Has anyone else noticed what a large add campaign Facebook has
| launched featuring Millennials asking for new and re-vamped
| Internet regulation?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kur94OyXf3U
|
| What is this all about?
| batty_alex wrote:
| Facebook wants to be the ones in the room helping write the
| new regulations to make sure it works in their favor, mostly
| voltaireodactyl wrote:
| My strong suspicion is that the general plan is essentially:
|
| - let a whistleblower (who seems intent on describing
| Facebook employees as smart and humanistic folks, despite
| those employees designing and maintaining FBs content
| delivery systems) make a case that Facebook needs government
| regulation.
|
| - agree that such a regulatory agency should be created, and
| offer FBs assistance in outlining the parameters involved --
| because who better than the problem to design the solution?
|
| - agency is created. Perhaps the whistleblower can even be a
| high level figure within it, as the face of the issue.
|
| - Suddenly FB is no longer liable for anything because they
| are "adhering to government regulation".
|
| - Regulatory capture ensues as expected.
|
| FOR FB this is preferable to thr other options:
|
| 1. Calls for FB to be broken up
|
| 2. Regulation that FB doesn't have a primary role in
| designing.
| slim wrote:
| Marketing + regulatory capture. They seem pretty confident
| any regulation won't mandate they open their social graph to
| competition
| ipsum2 wrote:
| How do you define a peripheral? An Oculus Quest is basically a
| repackaged smart phone.
| rhacker wrote:
| I mean I don't see why this couldn't apply cart-blanche to
| all computers. I don't need to sign into MS, Mac to use the
| computers (though I do for my mac because of corp. policy).
|
| It has been getting harder, but fuck, why not use this
| opportunity to turn this shit around?
| birdyrooster wrote:
| As it stands you need not sign into iCloud to use macOS or
| Microsoft Live to use Windows. Not sure what the law would
| even do.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You do need to sign into MS to use Word, Excel, Outlook,
| etc.
| rhacker wrote:
| I get that, but that's software on the main device. I
| guess yes, wording such a law will be a crap and a half.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Not sure why this matters. Can you use an iPhone without
| entering an iCloud account? Can you use an Android
| without some G account? I honestly don't know as I've
| never tried skirting the system on my iDevices, an my
| only use with Android is in a dev environment, but I know
| that there were G accounts for these as well.
| Tokelin wrote:
| Why though? Why is that requirement there? Okay, it's
| nice for me to sync everything and have a seamlessly
| integrated ecosystem. But what if I have one device and
| just want to use Word on it and that's it?
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's a subscription, so they have to know it is you to
| know if you've paid your dues or not. MS is a bit
| sneakier though as they will allow you to open a document
| and make changes, but if you are not current in your
| subscription fees, they disable save functions. Been
| caught out on this a couple of times.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > why not use this opportunity to turn this shit around?
|
| Because your proposed legislation would outlaw most IoT
| devices. This is, in fact, bad.
| Tokelin wrote:
| It would just outlaw the easiest way to insure an IoT
| device is easily controlled and authenticated.
| beervirus wrote:
| > Because your proposed legislation would outlaw most IoT
| devices.
|
| Only if it were drafted carelessly. Which, yeah, plenty
| of laws are, but it's not a _requirement_.
| nitrogen wrote:
| It's 100% possible to make electronics that do not
| require a connection to the Internet to function. That
| is, in fact, good.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Great way to make Facebook drop PCVR support and allow
| standalone apps only. At this point, I think things are going
| in that direction rapidly anyway. Oculus has already shifted
| most of it's game development resources away from PCVR.
| Kuinox wrote:
| Virtual Desktop run fines and I never needed the Oculus PCVR
| support.
| arsome wrote:
| I'm not so sure, Facebook did just invest a bunch of effort
| in getting AirLink working to allow wireless PC VR support
| and they seem to keep improving it.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Laws can always be amended.
| thebigman433 wrote:
| What makes you think theyre dropping PCVR support? They just
| spent 3 years getting wired and wireless Link working. They
| clearly want to unify their products into a single hybrid
| standalone/pcvr lineup.
|
| PCVR software sales are just absolutely abysmal, there is no
| way to make a profit on a large scale app, so theyre only
| going to invest in AAA content for standalone now.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Yes, it's the lack of investment and profit potential on
| PCVR. It also may interest the Oculus founders who want the
| highest quality experience, but it does not fall in line
| with Zuck's vision which is a cheap and good enough social
| VR machine.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| I hate to break it to you, but Logitech now runs always-on
| 'Cloud Settings' sync and telemetry software called Logi
| Options. It comes with a way to use a mouse across devices
| seamlessly (Flow) which requires low-level networking
| permissions and a daemon on all participating devices.
|
| It's not required that you have an account or even use the
| software, but of course they actively push all of the above and
| require it to use special device features.
|
| Razer, Steelseries, and the rest do the same, and I think
| Razer's account is mandatory.
|
| I don't like it one bit. Thankfully most of that crap doesn't
| work on Linux.
| ziml77 wrote:
| Razer is even worse than a mandatory account. When you
| connect a Razer device (including changing the port it's
| plugged into), Windows will try to execute the Razer software
| installer. It's really annoying.
| ladberg wrote:
| To make it worse, the installer that's automatically
| downloaded and run has admin permissions and could be
| exploited to gain admin access on any Windows computer:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28273283
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| You can turn off that in Windows Settings
| snvzz wrote:
| Could you elaborate on how?
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/automatically-ge...
| mmis1000 wrote:
| It's actually totally a scam. the setting file lies plainly
| in your
| c:/users/<username>/appdata/roaming/logishrd/logiOptions
|
| And they are just plain xml file that are not even being
| encrypted.
| drdaeman wrote:
| Razer's account is not absolutely mandatory, there is a
| button for "guest mode" (note the phrasing, ha!), but it's
| annoying to use.
| mastax wrote:
| Logitech recently(?) released software plainly called
| "Onboard Memory Manager." In their own words:
|
| OnBoard Memory Manager (OMM) is a utility for pro gamers to
| quickly configure the on-board memory profiles of compatible
| Logitech G mice by adjusting DPI, report rate, assignments,
| and by enabling the pairing/unpairing of devices. In an
| effort to meet the critical requirements for tournament use,
| OMM does not install itself, does not leave files on your
| drive(s), and does not access the internet. While OMM is used
| for on-board memory settings, additional device settings and
| customization are available through G HUB.
|
| The current version is a little buggy with configuring the
| different DPI modes on my mouse (which I was disabling
| anyway), but I'm glad it exists. Thanks, pro gaming
| tournaments!
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > pro gamers
|
| At this point, that's a keyword that indicates _not_ to buy
| a product.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| Honestly the hardware-for-gamers paradigm has done a lot
| for making better mice, keyboards, chairs, and headsets
| that stand up to all-day abuse. I'll cede that the RGB
| thing is wildly out of control (WHO NEEDS RBG RAM
| STICKS?!?) but overall I think it gives developers far
| better of-the-shelf choices than one would have 10 years
| ago.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > better mice, keyboards, chairs, and headsets
|
| Mice and keyboards that don't operate without online-
| registration-required accounts?
|
| Chairs and keyboards that look cool for streamers but are
| utterly unergonomic?
|
| And headsets with cat ears on them...
|
| No thanks.
| Ph0X wrote:
| > It's not required that you have an account or even use the
| software
|
| That's the key point. The fact that some people weren't even
| able to use their Oculus device when FB went down for hours
| is insane. Imagine not being able to use your mouse or
| keyboard because Logitech went down.
|
| There's a very big difference between an optional cloud
| system that brings convenience (settings sync) vs a required
| cloud system that the device cannot be used without.
|
| From my understanding, the comment about was specifically
| trying to write regulation against the latter.
| porknubbins wrote:
| I agree with the spirit of the rule but that seems too
| restrictive to freedom to contract. I feel like there will
| always be a market solution for peripherals where someone is
| selling them unrestricted. With VR is the issue not that the
| business model itself is still not good so FB was kind of
| subsidising the Oculus? If VR were highly profitable it seems
| like other companies with less restrictive terms would come in.
| baby wrote:
| I think you'll want to talk to Apple first.
| sgregnt wrote:
| If for some reason,now or in the future, I prefer my
| peripherals to be connected to cloud. Your law deprives me of
| this freedom. Just a thought.
| 3np wrote:
| No, it does not. It requires that they should be usable
| without. Why is that unreasonable?
| sgregnt wrote:
| Teo out of top of my head: 1. Because they will cost more
| 2. I don't want my child to connect without me knowing.
| ipaddr wrote:
| There is a balance to achieve. It might be better than
| facebook forcing a cloud account on everyone.
| sgregnt wrote:
| I don't think Facebook is forcing anything, any tiny bit.
| Maybe that's what we disagree about. I think you are 100%
| free not to use any facebook products.
| sgregnt wrote:
| While it might sound moderate "..balance to achieve..." in
| my opinion in this is very dangerous thought... as it
| assumes a lot of hidden things to name a few: 1. that the
| balance is the same for different people, 2. that the
| balance is not evolving over time, 3. that people can vote
| for "good" politicians to suggest good balance but at the
| same time can't figure out themselves how and if to use
| Facebook. 4. That the proper balance can be found at all.
| 5. That the side effect elsewhere will not bring worse
| overall outcome. 6. That an alternative better free market
| solution (better optimal) would not be prevented by getting
| stuck in a local minima 7. That facebook will not find a
| way to circumvent the new balance. 8. That it's the best
| use of regulators involved in it to figure out the best
| balance rather than thinking of something else 9. That it
| will not increase the value of lobbying and more...
| a-dub wrote:
| hmm. it doesn't seem all that different from sony or microsoft
| subsizing the cost of gaming consoles and then locking down
| what can run on them so they can recoup those costs by getting
| a slice of the game sales.
|
| nor is it all that different from apple or google dumping
| millions and millions into ios and android os/base level
| platform development, software update/delivery infrastructure
| and proactive platform security and then recouping those costs
| on sales and in-app purchases through the app stores.
|
| it's been going on since the original nintendo entertainment
| system with its approval process. prior to that was the atari
| 2600 debacle, where the platform languished and the ecosystem
| of software was such crap that people just sort of gave up on
| it.
|
| that said, are they a form of monopoly? it certainly amortizes
| the costs of developing hardware and os platforms to the point
| that consumers are willing to buy in, but it also results in
| undue control over the resulting platforms. hard to say... i
| think it all comes down to how that control is wielded... (and
| without it, it's the atari 2600 all over again)
|
| only alternatives i can think of are to regulate the platforms
| for fairness or force platform vendors to offer full price/off
| contract versions of their hardware.
| a-dub wrote:
| plus, _shrug_ it seems that locked down platforms present a
| nice challenge for young tinkerers to break that can
| ultimately kindle their interests in technology.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Docking stations and printers too. Here's a recent HP printer
| that requires an account.
|
| https://reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/pwrgb1/buyer_beware_s...
| dylan604 wrote:
| Thanks. I don't typically read reddit, so I had not seen
| this. Starting to contemplate getting a new inkjet for the
| home office. I now have something else to keep in mind during
| the researching. This plus all of the ink jet forensic
| marking, I'm leaning towards the extra cost for color laser
| instead, and definitely not an HP.
| 14 wrote:
| I have the brother 3750 I believe the model is and is
| great. The starter inks lasted me a long time and I finally
| bought all new full sized ink I expect they will last
| years. It was a bit costly to buy all the ink but I know it
| will last for years and I know if I don't use it for a few
| months it will still print perfectly when I decide to.
| Definitely recommend a brother printer.
| filoleg wrote:
| Brother printers are something else. After getting tired
| of having to do major troubleshooting for my printer at
| least a few times a year and deal with minor annoyances
| from time to time, I decided to leave my old printer to
| my parents (as I was doing a cross-country move at the
| time, so the less I brought with me the easier it would
| be). As soon as I settled in, I got a Brother MFCL2740DW
| printer. That was almost 5 years ago.
|
| Let me tell you, the longer I have it, the longer it
| keeps blowing my mind. I've only set it up once, and then
| forgot about it forever. Since then, I added bajillion
| different devices, built a new desktop, switched routers
| multiple times and completely redid my wireless
| networking, etc. On every new device (including
| smartphones), without having to install any additional
| software or screwing around with settings, I can reliably
| expect to just click "print", and my printer will show up
| in the list of available printing devices, and it will
| just work. Toner cartridges last forever and are priced
| very reasonably. I can simply take the printer, put it
| wherever I want, and it will just work with any device
| from which one can print without any extra actions.
|
| Normally, a lot of devices start like that at first, and
| then problems start arising, and things start becoming
| unreliable due to compatibility issues with newer devices
| and such, new firmware updates are needed, maybe certain
| workarounds in settings, etc. But nope, not a single
| hitch with this one, as it is coming close to 5 years of
| regular use in many different configurations.
|
| And no, I am not getting paid to advertise for Brother
| printers. I just simply love when a tool is super
| powerful like that, but also "just works" extremely
| reliably without any thought needed, very seamlessly and
| in the background.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I currently have a B&W brother laser, and it has done
| everything I have asked it to do. However, I've recently
| started using specialty paper that this particular model
| has problems pulling from the paper tray, and using the
| single sheet manual feeder is guarnteed to pull it
| through at an angle. I do not judge the printer on this
| paper.
|
| I've used color lasers in the past, but it was a higher
| end and was very pleased with its results.
|
| I like how we've hijacked an oculus thread on printers!!
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Color lasers also have yellow tracking dots. You're only
| safe with a B&W laser or a 20+ year old color printer.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Has anyone looked into the source of the dots as in is it
| part of the software driver stack or the hardware on the
| printer. Has anyone come up with software/firmware that
| bypasses this? I have only read that it is a thing to be
| aware of, but not done any searching for more in-depth
| details.
| tpxl wrote:
| Afaik you can bypass the dots by printing your own dots
| where they are missing, but I'm not aware of any software
| that will do this for you.
| dylan604 wrote:
| https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/app-masks-
| hid...
|
| This is something that I came across last night. Sadly,
| it had nothing to do with what I was looking for, but was
| the closest.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Peripheral might be complicated.
|
| But I would like to see such a legislation for anything that is
| Turing-complete and sufficiently performant (e.g. can run Doom
| at 800x600 32bpp 60FPS).
| [deleted]
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Why bother specifying hardware? No, thank you, I have no desire
| to have a cloud account for my purely offline software either.
| charcircuit wrote:
| If it requires a cloud account it isn't purely offline
| software. How else do they authenticate you?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| It's purely offline software that reaches out to the cloud
| solely to spy on me and/or make me log in. There are no
| online features I need or want from it.
|
| What authentication do I need or want on a local device
| that is software specific?
| kfarr wrote:
| This has to apply to "smart tvs" too. Those things are out of
| control.
| canada_dry wrote:
| Won't Oculus simply add some oculess detection code to their next
| developer release so that any future apps and updates to existing
| apps stop working all together if detected?
| malermeister wrote:
| And then inevitably somebody will find a way around that. It's
| a cat-and-mouse game as old as the concept of digital licensing
| - see the piracy space, where all sorts of uncrackable
| protections keep getting cracked
| iamtheworstdev wrote:
| but it's a cat and mouse game to effectively disable your
| hardware because you can't use any of the software you want
| to use with it?
|
| i feel like simply not playing is the real way to win this
| game. otherwise facebook still profits
| malermeister wrote:
| I don't know, I really enjoyed my jailbroken Wii back in
| the day, so there's definitely precedent for this.
| cardanome wrote:
| Facebook should have never been allowed to buy them. It is really
| annoying because there is basically no alternative to it if you
| want a stand alone VR headset.
| snvzz wrote:
| They do not have a "stand alone VR headset".
|
| It's tied to the FB cloud. Not standalone AT ALL.
| dabber21 wrote:
| There are rumours that Valve will enter the game
| roguas wrote:
| They already did. A lot of companies entered the game, but
| none of them can sell headsets with such heavy losses as
| facebook. None of them have successful all-in-one headset
| which after sometime facebook has learned is the headset type
| that sells (not everybody has money for 2k pc).
| archontes wrote:
| No. This:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/29/22699914/valve-deckard-
| st...
| jmac01 wrote:
| But that'll be like $899 if we lucky. Occulus Quest is
| like $300
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Facebook also sells the Oculus Quest 2 for business. You
| need to activate it with a workplace.com account, but the
| headset no longer requires a personal Facebook account to
| work.
|
| Incidentally, the business version is also twice as
| expensive and comes with a yearly $180 support
| subscription. The price of privacy, I suppose.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| There's a reason for that. I'm not sure I want to own
| hardware that facebook is willing to take a $300 +
| haircut on to get it into my hands.
| yummypaint wrote:
| They make possibly the best overall VR system on the market
| currently, and it has been the best on the market for almost
| 2 years now. I've used the quest also, and there is no
| substitute for the processing power of an actual computer,
| not to mention ease of future upgrades via the pc.
| gremIin wrote:
| History will not look kindly at our stupidity for allowing the
| creators of Pervy Stalker App to buy up the only good VR tech.
| Ronson wrote:
| I don't want to spend forever on this. Does anyone know where I
| can go?
|
| I got an OQuest2 gathering dust. It's a pain in the ass. Trying
| to use the (PS80!!) wire is devastating. I can't remember but
| every time you plug it in, it asks if you want to give access.
| Then you enter this `oculus` lobby but you want steam, so now you
| enable link, but before that, you need to set a guardian. So its
| OK OK OK ALLOW OK... each time taking it off to look at your PC
| screen just to see `steam vr` can't find my headset, so i put it
| on and off again and it doesn't work but eventually it does, then
| it says I can't find my controllers, just the headset, and I
| reset the headset and restart my PC, then back to OK OK OK ALLOW
| OK.
|
| Then the game I bought it shit so I ALT-F4 in rage and I go back
| the `oculus` home screen in oculus, but `steam` is still running
| and tells me VR is fine so I launch a game and it runs on my
| desktop and my headset runs Steam home.......
|
| Like, this is fucking total and utter garbage at the very highest
| levels of praise.
|
| Assume it is a brick, landfill. I repeat my request, someone is
| saying "GrapheneOS`. What is that? Does it mean I own my headset
| in a good way?
|
| I'd genuinely appreciate all answers as I didn't need a $500
| doorstop. They are 0.34 cents in Malmart.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Stuff like this is great fun, but if we just don't buy things
| from known bad actors in the first place, we can save ourselves
| the trouble of playing whack-a-mole.
| [deleted]
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Agree in general but if the hardware is subsidized and you're
| able to excise the bad actor's trash from the device, you come
| out ahead and the company loses a bit.
| ziml77 wrote:
| But it would be much better to support a company that isn't
| horrible over costing the evil company an amount of money
| they won't even notice.
| diskzero wrote:
| I agree with you and I would really like to buy VR hardware
| from a good actor, but they are few and far between. This is
| great for now for rescuing hardware that might be going
| straight to the landfill or for those who finally understand
| the implication of buying the hardware in the first place.
| dylan604 wrote:
| This is similar to iOS or Android. You can stand on your
| soapbox and preach to the choir, but at the end of the day
| there is only so many choices.
|
| I like this solution because you still get to use the hardware
| and use the apps, but it denies the overlords of the thing they
| want the most.
| kova12 wrote:
| There's GrapheneOS
| whyrusleeping wrote:
| > GrapheneOS is compatible with several Google Pixel
| smartphones.
|
| That doesn't bode well for things working all that well. As
| someone who ran linux on chromebook for two years, then on
| a macbook for three, i'm a bit burnt out on this sort of
| thing.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's like a rite of passage or something to hack and then
| install your own thing fighting harder than a salmon
| swimming up stream. There's a lot to be learned in the
| doing to be sure. It's the full of piss&vinegar stage of
| life. Eventually, you get tired of the time required to
| fight it, and just need something to work. Does that mean
| the man won? Maybe. However, I look at it like I won on
| finally becoming mature enough to realize that there are
| things much more important in life than banging my head
| on that particular brick wall. Just my $0.02 of grandpa
| ranting. Get off my lawn!
| ekianjo wrote:
| > need something to work
|
| things can work and respect your freedom at the same
| time. its not like either or.
| dTal wrote:
| It is always nice when the idealistic choice lines up
| with the exciting, or pragmatic choice. Sadly, in the
| world of hardware at least, this is seldom the case.
| reasonabl_human wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. Recently hit the stage of needing
| things to 'just work' to free up time in other
| directions, whereas I used to constantly load new roms
| from xda onto a rooted pixel, or tinker with getting
| coreboot to run on an old thinkpad with arch..
|
| Now it's iOS / macOS / iCloud and a headless Ubuntu box.
| Never been more productive and never had more free time.
| Choose your battles.
| dTal wrote:
| I'm not sure that enjoyment of the latest tech toys _is_
| more important than the fight for freedom, to be honest.
| dylan604 wrote:
| If that's the fight you are fighting, then by all means
| keep up the fight. Being able to do basic computer
| activities privately is a definite need. Hacking what's
| essentially a gaming device from FB is just not that
| critical to me.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| Every other VR device doesn't require logging on to the
| greatest destroyer of social cohesion the world has ever
| seen so I'm not sure what "the chore" here is. Just buy
| literally any other VR headset that isn't prefixed with
| the word Oculus.
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| ...which is doomed to death whenever Google stops with the
| security updates for the very specific hardware it runs on.
| In fairness, IIRC, this is actually the fault of Qualcomm
| providing, and eventually ceasing to provide, Google with
| hardware security updates of some sort.
|
| The point is that these fun projects to circumvent baked-in
| awfulness are practically destined to stop working properly
| due to the nature of the hardware itself. It's always
| better, if possible, to support the non-awful varietal. In
| this case, I guess that's "almost any other VR headset,
| lacking a login requirement". Does Steam count?
| ekianjo wrote:
| So on phone the only real alternative is SailFishOS ?
| opan wrote:
| Check out postmarketOS, Mobian, and NixOS Mobile. They
| support some OnePlus phones and a few others in addition
| to the PinePhone and Librem 5. pmOS has the most devices
| supported (although amount of stuff working varies per
| device).
|
| Sailfish uses a proprietary UI, so I hesitate to
| recommend it. There's an alternative that replaces their
| UI, can't recall the name right now.
| khimaros wrote:
| Nemo
| ekianjo wrote:
| all the things you mentioned are hardly production ready
| though. PostmarketOS compatibility has issues on tons of
| devices, and Mobian can't run much applications anyway.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Indeed, eventually a fully open mature mobile distro will
| replace Sailfish OS, but at the moment its the only
| reasonably open mobile OS fit for daily use.
| mhio wrote:
| Are graphene releases/support completed tied to google
| releases/support? I had assumed they were able to update
| their version of android for a phone beyond what google
| does.
|
| edit - found it https://grapheneos.org/faq#legacy-devices
|
| > It cannot do that once device support code like
| firmware, kernel and vendor code is no longer actively
| maintained. Even if the community was prepared to take
| over maintenance of the open source code and to replace
| the rest, firmware would present a major issue, and the
| community has never been active or interested enough in
| device support to consider attempting this
| gremloni wrote:
| How is this a resonable option? There are two mature
| ecosystems and really nothing can compare right now.
| kova12 wrote:
| And how do you think we will be getting third mature
| ecosystem if we never try anything? Complaining is easy
| gremloni wrote:
| Yeah the whole chicken and the egg thing. I don't know
| but I don't want to have a hamstrung ecosystem right
| _now_
| dylan604 wrote:
| Someone with deep pockets to counter the PR machine that
| is Apple. That's the only way. Of course, this means
| having an actual working product for that PR to promote.
| It also means having a way of installing it without some
| scary voiding warranty notice.
| gremloni wrote:
| I don't think apple should go anywhere. There should just
| be more than 2 options
| marticode wrote:
| This is not quite similar because there are VR headsets from
| several manufacturers that don't come with a mandatory social
| network login attached. (in fact FB is the only one that
| does)
|
| Even with Android vs iOS, they aren't quite the same because
| Android clearly gives you more control and freedom as a
| consumer. If you care about any of this at least don't buy
| the worse offender.
| slim wrote:
| What if bad actor took your family and friends as hostages and
| made them beg you to join them.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| This would be great if there was any hope to see a better actor
| coming in. Currently buying a Quest 2 equivalent from a "good"
| actor is just thought exercise.
|
| Looking at Vive, they don't seem ready to enter the regular
| consumer market anytime soon. Google and Samsung threw the
| towel long ago. I'm not sure Microsoft could be a better actor
| than Facebook if they wanted to (remember it all came down on
| us way after the devices were sold).
|
| Then chances are Facebook would also kill any incoming
| competitor in the egg.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > I'm not sure Microsoft could be a better actor than
| Facebook if they wanted to (remember it all came down on us
| way after the devices were sold).
|
| Huh?
| zucker42 wrote:
| There is a good guy in the space already it's Valve. The
| Index was good, and there are rumors that they are developing
| their own standalone VR headset (search "Deckard") which
| would theoretically compete directly with Quest 2.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I agree with Valve's position as an alternative...but the
| Index is priced 10k+ so targeted a completely different
| public, and Deckard is only rumored as far as I know. We
| have no idea if/when/how it will be released, or if they'll
| be able to reach a competitive price.
|
| I wish them to succeed, but wouldn't count on it until we
| have actual release info.
|
| It actually reminds me that Sony is rumored to release a
| Playstation VR2, which might be an interesting, though not
| standalone, as the PSVR 1 was decently good.
|
| Also, I only realized while checking Valve's headset that
| HTC had a consumer grade headset gone public yesterday,
| though it doesn't have controllers and its future is a bit
| murky at this point.
| loulouxiv wrote:
| The rumors say that it will launch with Half-Life 3 pre-
| installed
| RealityVoid wrote:
| The index is ~1k, I don't know where you got the 10k
| figure from.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| sorry, was looking at the jpy price, and didn't remove
| enough 0.
| yissp wrote:
| Maybe 1k for the index and 2k for a reasonably high-end
| desktop, so 3k or 10x the price of a quest. Obviously
| that's not really a fair comparison for various reasons,
| though.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| For the comparison part, I don't the index as overpriced
| or comparable to the Quest, it was more about the market
| position.
|
| I don't know if Valve will be able to get down in price.
| For instance their Steam Deck which is in the 400+$ range
| for a handheld, when Nintendo went with lower specs but
| also lower price. Valve doesn't seem that interested in
| that strategy.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Cease! Desist!
| arpa wrote:
| Fork! Streisand!
| schleck8 wrote:
| The dev is 17 apparently
| pkpioneer wrote:
| How to Upgrade Your PC to Windows 11:
|
| https://pkpioneer.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-to-upgrade-your-p...
| polyomino wrote:
| This reminds me of the time that Steve Ballmer did an Q&A with
| Microsoft interns saying basically that he's happy everyone in
| China pirates Windows because then Microsoft sets the standard.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Reminds me of the time when the president of Romania told Bill
| Gates to his face that the Romanian IT industry has grown to
| where it is today thanks to everyone pirating Windows.[1]
|
| I'm still wondering what went through Bill's head hearing that.
|
| [1]https://www.wired.com/2007/02/romanian-presid/
| ddalex wrote:
| Imagine where Romania would be if windows licencing cops
| would do their jobs and everyone would be forced off to Linux
| ghego1 wrote:
| Most likely, he already knew
| mmastrac wrote:
| "This will be a massive licensing stream in the future"
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Do you really think "old" Microsoft thought that far into
| the future for this back then?
|
| This was before the days of software becoming walled-garden
| lock-in subscription-ware; when quarterly revenue relied
| solely on the number of licenses sold and pirated licenses
| were seen as lost revenue.
|
| I assumed they just though that if everyone had only legit
| copies, then Microsoft's revenues would quintuple overnight
| effectively turning Bill Gates into the world's richest
| man. Oh wait, he already was the world's richest man at
| that time. Nevermind.
|
| Then again, people mostly pirated it because they couldn't
| afford it, so a strong piracy-free DRM solution would have
| probably pushed everyone to Linux right off the bat (nobody
| in Eastern Europe could afford Macs at the time), causing
| Microsoft's market share to fall off a cliff and not be the
| 400 pound gorilla it is today.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Pirated Windows also ensures competitors are semi-
| permanently extinguished. 2007 is only third year for
| Ubuntu, and GNU/Linux is still the only more-than-semi-
| viable alternative for PC/AT other than Windows almost 15
| years later.
| achow wrote:
| Those days Linux was not a viable options for consumers.
|
| Microsoft was not in this alone (piracy in eastern part
| of the world), even companies like Adobe was in same
| situation and Adobe perhaps was more affected as they
| were smaller and less diversified.
|
| But for them piracy in China, India, Romania et al. was
| not a problem, as they knew it increases user base and
| they can monetize that in corporates. The same people who
| pirate at home and school will pay for the license when
| they are in office (bigger ones).
|
| Piracy was a training and demand generation channel.
| ashwagary wrote:
| Quite funny that many of the child-pirates work in
| Redmond and Bellevue now.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > even companies like Adobe was in same situation and
| Adobe perhaps was more affected as they were smaller and
| less diversified.
|
| Adobe didn't care about piracy for a _long_ time. Up
| until CS4 a simple keygen was sufficient, up until CS6
| you 'd need to null-route a couple Adobe hosts in your
| /etc/hosts.
|
| The result was that lots of young students grew up with
| Adobe tooling - Photoshop, Premiere, Dreamweaver, Flash -
| and virtually set the standard for the media industry
| once they entered the work force.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Do you really think "old" Microsoft thought that far
| into the future for this back then?_
|
| I always assumed so, and same for Adobe. For many years,
| their software was trivial to pirate. My understanding
| is, they let individuals pirate Windows/Photoshop to
| ensure widespread popularity, especially among people who
| wouldn't be able to pay for that software anyway - and
| applied pressure to any _business_ using their software.
|
| There's only so much money they could get from the cohort
| of teens and their parents trying to play games or trim
| their photos, but every year, a part of that population
| graduated to becoming employees and business owners,
| preferring to use the software they already know, and
| having money to finally pay for it.
| xnyan wrote:
| > For many years, their software was trivial to pirate
|
| Many years, including this year (or at least, that's what
| a "friend" who's running Photoshop 2021 tells me).
| laumars wrote:
| > Do you really think "old" Microsoft thought that far
| into the future for this back then?
|
| Yes.
|
| - they killed Netscape in the 90s because they realised
| owning the web browser market meant locking people into
| Windows
|
| - they ran the Xbox division for years at a loss knowing
| it would eventually pay out
|
| - they bailed out Apple financially knowing that a long
| term competitor to Windows meant a reduced likelihood of
| monopoly violations
|
| - they had a long term strategy attacking Linux (even
| going so far as to call it "communism") before eventually
| caving and public ally supporting FOSS
|
| - the whole long term "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish"
| strategy is synonymous with old Microsoft. Eg Lotus
| Office comparability to sell MS Office licenses, then
| dropping support when MS Office became dominant.
|
| - Windows 2000 and Me were never intended as long term
| strategies but instead as a gateway into merging the NT
| and 9x line of operating systems.
|
| I could go on with examples from their dealings with IBM,
| Apple, Dr DOS, MSN and so on and so forth but I have two
| screaming kids I need to deal with. However you should
| get the idea
| the-dude wrote:
| _Communism_ isn 't that bad. I remember _Cancer_.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Honestly? In some way, maybe they've actually had a
| point. Beyond all the good things that FOSS gave us, what
| it also did was to commoditize software, forcing software
| companies to make money in extremely abusive ways -
| through advertising, surveillance, and forcing everything
| into being a service.
| the-dude wrote:
| For all the valid reasons why software is offered as a
| service ( SaaS ), there is one who stands out : it is a
| workaround the GPL.
| laumars wrote:
| You cannot blame that in Open source though, nor even
| Linux specifically. It was companies like Google, Yahoo!
| and Geocities that really set the expectation for free
| software with the average user and they were companies
| built around advertising and walled gardens. Outside of
| tech circles, almost nobody ran open source. But most
| people had or knew someone who had free email, et al.
|
| Commercial companies did this to themselves as they raced
| to the bottom with aggressive pricing and a need to
| dominate at a global scale.
| [deleted]
| r00fus wrote:
| "World domination, one step at a time"
| [deleted]
| beezischillin wrote:
| I don't really think he was worried, they sell endless
| amounts of licenses to the government.
|
| In Hungary Ballmer got eggs thrown at him by an OSS activist
| for that exact reason in 08.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I feel like a national government would be the last org to
| need to worry about licensing software, given lawsuits
| won't do much and nobody's going to start a war over it.
| wesleywt wrote:
| Governments do business with foreign companies and
| governments.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Never heard about Steve Ballmer saying this but I always
| believed this was (or became at some point) the plan. 100% of
| SOHO users pirated MS DOS, Windows and Office in Eastern Europe
| before broadband Internet became widely available. Then legal
| pressure on small business started so they began buying
| licenses as Windows and Office have already became the
| standard.
|
| What I never understood though is why did Microsoft (or anybody
| else) invest in all this activation bullshit anyway. The only
| things working always were reasonably affordable pricing of
| legal copies, legal enforcement risk coming from the local
| police and the value of commercial support. All the software
| mechanisms of licensing enforcement have always been cracked
| and stopped no one. If I were to release commercial software I
| would only put a simple (no actual anti-crack protection at
| all) offline serial check to stop the most stupid and
| unmotivated people, everyone else will get a crack (which will
| inevitably emerge if the app actually is of any value) anyway.
| [deleted]
| onkoe wrote:
| This kinda breaks online and also kneecaps some offline apps.
| Still, if your Quest is just your portal to Virtual Desktop,
| you'll find this very useful as it removes the worst parts of the
| Quest as a wireless PCVR headset. Good luck!
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| According to the instructions it also prevents you from using
| Virtual Desktop.
|
| _What Doesn 't Work?
|
| Most apps downloaded through the Oculus Store because of
| entitlement errors (including Virtual Desktop :/ )_
| sleepybrett wrote:
| uh virtual desktop is available on steam:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/382110/Virtual_Desktop/
| snailmailman wrote:
| That app is different from the Quest version of Virtual
| Desktop. The steam version runs on a PC and lets you use
| your desktop while in VR (on a headset connected to the
| PC). The quest version runs _on the quest_ (with a paired
| "streamer" app on the PC) and lets you wirelessly connect
| to your PC. While connected to your PC through the quest
| app you can not only view your desktop, but also can play
| _any pc vr game_.
|
| The quest app is one of the popular ways to wirelessly
| connect to a PC and play PCVR experiences. Other ways
| include Oculus's offical Airlink, and a free open source
| app called ALVR. Personally, I find Virtual Desktop the
| best experience out of those, but I think many people
| prefer Airlink.
|
| if you purchase the steam version instead of the oculus
| store version, you would need to find another method to
| connect your Quest to a PC.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Do you know by chance what breaks? For example, would immersed
| [0] still work, or tethered Steam VR?
|
| [0]: https://immersed.com/
| onkoe wrote:
| Sadly, I'm just a secondary source as someone who uses Linux
| full-time (and thus can't use Virtual Desktop). I'll ask my
| friend who did this and get back to you if he has any
| information.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| It doesn't work on Linux? :( That sucks.
|
| Edit: Wait... Immersed is available for Linux. For someone
| who doesn't know what all the requirements are for a VR
| desktop environment, can anyone list them? Assume I'm
| thinking about buying the Oculus 2 and want to use it with
| Linux + Immersed.
| onkoe wrote:
| SteamVR works fine on Linux, but the only
| wired/lighthouse headset that works well is the Index.
| Most wired headsets, especially consumer ones, don't
| bother, so you'll have a hard time with really anything
| but the Index. As for Quest on Linux, the closest you'll
| get is with ALVR, which only has experimental builds for
| Linux. Sadly, it has 2-3x the latency of VD and poor
| NVIDIA support. I follow their development very closely,
| though, and it's certainly getting better.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Thanks!
| spurgu wrote:
| I don't know either, but from the description it doesn't
| sound too good:
|
| > What doesn't work?
|
| > Most apps downloaded through the Oculus Store because of
| entitlement errors (including Virtual Desktop :/)
|
| I would _assume_ Immersed uses this.
|
| Disclaimer: Considering getting a Quest 2 just for Immersed.
| jachee wrote:
| I'm holding out for their non-Oculus support, which is
| coming Soon(tm) according to their FAQ.
| schaefer wrote:
| Unfortunately, that's not what the immersed faq says...
| it says support for new "XR platforms" coming soon. Those
| platforms could very well be unreleased future oculus
| headsets...
| callesgg wrote:
| They might be referring to the xr-3 headset.
| https://varjo.com/products/xr-3/
| spurgu wrote:
| Wow, that's an expensive headset...
| d3nj4l wrote:
| Immersed is free on the oculus store, so I don't think
| there should be a problem with installing it from
| SideQuest.
| spurgu wrote:
| Thanks for the tip, I'll make sure to try it!
| go_elmo wrote:
| Get it & try eleven. You wont be dissapointed, I promise :)
| LegitShady wrote:
| Just a reminder Oculus is a company founded on taking tech from
| other companies and getting away with it. Don't give them money,
| don't buy their devices. Getting acquired by facebook and turning
| the VR sets into spyware and facebook funnels just makes them
| worse.
|
| If you want to be ethical get an HMD from someone other than
| Oculus/Facebook. I wouldn't give them a dime.
|
| Sources:
|
| alan yates (posting as vk2zay on reddit) said the CV1
| architecture was identical to the valve room headset architecture
| with its own tracking implementation and its own fresnel lens
| system.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4klu94/oculus_becomin...
|
| >While that is generally true in this case every core feature of
| both the Rift and Vive HMDs are directly derived from Valve's
| research program. Oculus has their own CV-based tracking
| implementation and frensel lens design but the CV1 is otherwise a
| direct copy of the architecture of the 1080p Steam Sight
| prototype Valve lent Oculus when we installed a copy of the
| "Valve Room" at their headquarters. I would call Oculus the first
| SteamVR licensee, but history will likely record a somewhat
| different term for it...
|
| ---
|
| Ben Krasnow (former valve employee who now has the youtube
| channel "Applied Science"
| https://www.youtube.com/c/AppliedScience/ which you should check
| out if you haven't yet) posted here on hackernews back in 2017
| during the oculus lawsuit.
|
| > It fits a pattern. I was a hardware engineer at Valve during
| the early VR days, working mostly on Lighthouse and the internal
| dev headset. There were a few employees who insisted that the
| Valve VR group give away both hardware and software to Oculus
| with the hope that they would work together with Valve on VR. The
| tech was literally given away -- no contract, no license. After
| the facebook acquisition, these folks presumably received large
| financial incentives to join facebook, which they did. It was the
| most questionable thing I've seen in my whole career, and was
| partially caused by Valve's flat management structure and general
| lack of oversight. I left shortly after.
|
| and then further down that thread
|
| > Overall, I think Valve is a good place to work, and I learned a
| lot from all of the incredibly smart people there. The main
| reason that I left was the difficulty in merging hardware
| development with the company's exceptionally successful business
| model. The hardware team was pressured to give away lots of IP
| that could have been licensed, with the explanation that hardware
| is just so worthless anyway compared to online software sales,
| there was no other choice. It's possible that this was a good
| faith gamble, however it still doesn't preclude the use of
| business contracts that would have protected our investment. It
| also isn't so great for morale to hear everyday that your years
| of work are going to be given away to another company, and then
| watch that company get acquired for $2B. This is especially the
| case since many employees strongly voiced concerns about just
| such a scenario.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13414190
|
| Oculus was built on stolen tech taken by employees working at
| valve who convinced valve to give the tech away in the spirit of
| cooperation, and then jumped ship to facebook right away for the
| $$$.
|
| Every time people post things praising John Carmack all I can
| think about is that he was doing the same thing from his former
| employer to oculus as well. No matter what he did back in the day
| to make video game engines amazing, his involvement in oculus is
| a stain on his reputation. Even if you think he was innocent in a
| vacuum, along with the rest of the shenanigans with oculus and
| valve tech I don't think it was so innocent. He took the source
| code he wrote for another company, sent it to himself, then he
| was involved in the "clean room" reimplementation? I don't
| believe it no matter what the courts ruled could be proven.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > with the explanation that hardware is just so worthless
| anyway compared to online software sales, there was no other
| choice.
|
| This is especially strange since Apple makes tons of money off
| online software sales tied to their hardware. I believe several
| other companies (like all the console manufacturers in the game
| space that Valve is in) do to.
|
| It's fundamentally a very bad call.
| LegitShady wrote:
| valve is very differently structured and has had a very tough
| time pivoting to hardware. We can see this obviously with
| steam machines where they just didn't want to get involved.
| Then the steam controller, steam link, and now steam deck...
|
| they're getting there but they're not exactly there yet. I
| think oculus taking their research tech and turning it into a
| $2b acquisition and a threat to steam because of its closed
| garden was a big wake up call.
|
| We'll see how they do in the future I guess.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Right, they had reasons for their bad call. But it
| definitely was a bad one.
| pm90 wrote:
| So why are they having such difficulty with hardware?
| simfree wrote:
| It takes consistent organizational effort spanning years
| to build hardware, maintain vendor relationships,
| merchandize the product (advertise, sell, ship,
| liquidate), inventory management, and continuously
| develop new hardware to bring to market.
|
| Valve has traditionally focused on their Steam platform,
| which has a much tighter feedback loop and none of the
| aforementioned effort that comes with physical products.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Hardware is, from a business perspective, completely
| different from software.
|
| Iteration cycles are way longer and more expensive. Find
| a bug in a piece of software / firmware? Push out an
| update and the bug is gone. For hardware bugs you have to
| pray you can fix it in firmware somehow, or you have to
| call back hardware from the customer and send them
| replacements in the worst case, or deal with the fallout
| of class action lawsuits or regulatory punishments (e.g.
| if you mess up something that causes inappropriate RF
| emissions).
|
| Additionally, developing for hardware is way harder than
| developing software. In software, you have clean,
| somewhat-well designed APIs to get you up and running,
| and there's bazillions of StackOverflow posts and open
| source code you can have a look at if you have problems.
| In hardware, you have to deal with half-assed
| documentation, reference designs that do not work / are
| buggy / cause unwanted RF emissions / produce signals
| that are outside of standards, tight NDAs / stuff that
| isn't even available under NDA but is vital in debugging
| issues, BSPs (board support packages) with outright
| _fossilized_ and Frankenstein 'd bootloaders and Linux
| kernels, not to mention binary blob stuff such as early
| stage bootloaders, WiFi/BT/GPU firmware and other
| completely intransparent and barely-working crap.
|
| And once you do have a working prototype in your hand,
| you have to deal with more bullshit: certifications
| (UL/TUV electrical safety, FCC RF emissions, CE, and
| whatever specific local markets require) primarily (and
| the findings of the certifications may well send you back
| to the drawing board, which means _more_ expenses),
| ridiculous minimum-order quantities, supply chain
| establishment and upkeep (=preventing counterfeit
| components in your chain) in general, manufacturing QA,
| logistics of getting the hardware to consumers, returns
| /warranty claim/repair/spare parts logistics, keeping
| track of components getting EOL'd or outright being
| unavailable due to some component availability crunch,
| keeping track of recalls of components before your
| product ends up setting someone's house on fire (=the
| usual trouble with Lithium batteries and shoddy power
| supplies), dealing with insurance to cover your butt in
| case your product _does_ end up setting someone 's house
| on fire or electrocuting someone...
|
| Hardware is ugly and it's _rare_ to have hardware,
| firmware and software be matched in quality (which is
| also why so many hardware Kickstarter /Gofundme projects
| fail or under/late deliver). The only vendor where that
| is closest to reality is Apple, and they command a hefty
| premium for that.
| fastball wrote:
| It's not stealing if it's given to you.
| pm90 wrote:
| Not legally, sure. But it sure is quite shady.
| LegitShady wrote:
| In the court of law, probably, although it will depend on how
| much was discussed in advance with those employees of valve.
|
| But ethically, oculus is bankrupt.
| fastball wrote:
| Still not following how it is ethically wrong to accept
| technology freely given by others.
| LegitShady wrote:
| The employees who advocated 'freely giving' the
| technology away jumped off to the other company basically
| right away. It was sabotage by unethical employees.
|
| If that's unclear to you, you're probably going to have
| problems on the ethics exam.
| lovecg wrote:
| Who signed off on the decision to give the tech away?
| Anyone can advocate for anything, at the end of the day
| someone is in charge and the questionable business move
| is on them.
| fastball wrote:
| If the picture is as you paint it, seems like Valve would
| want to pursue legal action, as Google did when Anthony
| Levandowski jumped ship to Uber with Waymo secrets.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Valves flat structure creates a very different
| organizational response than Google. And these aren't
| "jumping with secrets" which is a different situation.
| ahupp wrote:
| > Oculus has their own CV-based tracking implementation and
| frensel lens design but the CV1 is otherwise a direct copy
|
| Tracking and lenses are what make headset. I'm struggling to
| think of what non-trivial decisions are even left if you
| exclude those. Panel choice and illumination strategy I guess?
| system2 wrote:
| Why not HTC Vive though? Better development, better privacy, more
| game support.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Don't take away the satisfaction this dev received from
| accomplishing a big FUCK YOU to the Zuck by releasing this. I'm
| sure it'll be a cat&mouse type of situation where Oculus will
| release an update that renders this useless, then these devs
| will update their end, and on it goes.
| sneak wrote:
| https://youtu.be/l3kjsbmZ-g0
| ddalex wrote:
| Zuck laughs all the way to the bank, the primary objectives
| of expanding the platform footprint and getting the consumer
| to pay for it are already achieved
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| fb isn't making much, if any, money on the hardware
| sgregnt wrote:
| In my opinion a world is a much better place with people like
| Zuck.
| Bobylonian wrote:
| *rest of the world :D
|
| it appears, that nowadays people do take Zuck(and jokes
| that fly over them) too serious, just like it was with Bill
| Gates... heh
| ganzuul wrote:
| Our parents over-sharing PII that can be used for
| coersion on a mass scale is what isn't being taken
| seriously enough. Zuck is a cancer.
| jreese wrote:
| Zuck doesn't think about this at all.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| He seems like the kind of person who's whole selfworth is
| money. So--I bet his "team" is working on a patch right
| now.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| No, but an ecosystem of tools, and/or a hacker movement
| that he does think about would _absolutely_ include
| something like this.
| Kiro wrote:
| He loves that movement.
| Ph0X wrote:
| > more game support
|
| Is that true? From my understanding, Oculus has exclusive
| games, as well as supporting all open games, so Oculus
| basically supports all Vive games + a bunch of exclusives Vive
| doesn't. What games do Vive support that Oculus doesn't?
| sleepybrett wrote:
| I'm not sure why people are talking about the vive, the valve
| index is the current 'contender' as I see it.
| filoleg wrote:
| Yeah, I am not sure either. Unless there is some Vive Store
| (similar to Oculus Store), that doesn't seem right.
|
| I know for a fact that on my Quest 2 I can play any games
| from Oculus Store (both for Quest and Rift), as well as any
| SteamVR games (played halfway through Half-Life:Alyx with
| Quest2). Wasn't aware of any Vive-exclusive SteamVR games
| though.
| 41209 wrote:
| I just saw the announcement for the new HTC Vive standalone.
| I'm going to wait until someone figures out a way to run games
| on the thing, and then I might consider dropping $600 on that
| setup.
|
| It's not a great idea to buy products which require you to hack
| them.
| lostgame wrote:
| I just use Unity and create my own experiences - I don't find
| the SDK limiting in any way as it is. There's nothing I'd
| like to create that I can't, beyond maybe a custom home room?
| 41209 wrote:
| I'll wait until someone else creates a sort of marketplace,
| or at least clear methods to install games.
|
| A 500$ Quest 2 without Facebook spying sounds great.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Unless your an, ahem, hacker. What site is this? Then these
| kinds of things make you drool at the possibilities.
| system2 wrote:
| He might be talking about Focus 3 maybe?
| schaefer wrote:
| Chances are they're talking about the vive flow, which
| released today. General consensus is it lacks mini-oled and
| the resolution it would need to be "next gen'. Among other
| bizarre shortcomings
| practice9 wrote:
| Vive figured out that during chip shortage their best bet
| is to copy Oculus Go.
|
| But it is too bulky and expensive to appeal to the very
| casual VR users. And the only two use-cases are watching
| YouTube or using subscription meditation / fitness apps.
|
| They can try to sell it to enterprise clients or
| hospitals though
| Tajnymag wrote:
| Vive is far more expensive. That alone is a huge reason why
| Quest and Quest 2 are so popular.
| cyborgx7 wrote:
| Because their cheapest offer is double the price without
| including controllers?
| okwubodu wrote:
| The Quest is standalone giving it the lowest barrier to entry
| even without the current PC market being terrible.
| LegitShady wrote:
| standalone VR is pretty garbage running off a phone graphics
| card. The quest is only interesting where you connect to
| PCVR, and then its not standalone.
| soylentnewsorg wrote:
| You know what else is "garbage?" - games. Because no one
| plays games on their phone, since a $3k gaming tower in
| their home is much better. I also never eat at Burger King
| - because their food is not as good as a 5 star restaurant.
| In fact, games without top of the notch 600W GPU graphics
| are not played by anyone. If you play solitaire, it needs
| to run at 120FPS and use raytracing.
|
| This is also why Walmart went out of business, because
| their stuff, while cheap, is of lower quality. Why would I
| want a $10 "leather outer" belt when I can get full grain
| hyde from Sacks. Their grocery business failed too once
| Whole Foods showed up.
| theknocker wrote:
| Omg I never thought of it like that before! Shitty things
| exist, therefore shitty things are actually good!
| charcircuit wrote:
| I don't play on my phone and my computer did cost $3k if
| you include my vr equipment. I don't eat at burger king.
| I've played solitaire at 120 fps, but not with ray
| tracing. I also don't shop at walmart.
| soylentnewsorg wrote:
| I do understand that people who are afraid of social
| contact order everything online and never leave their
| computer. I highly recommend going to a doctor - they
| have pills for extreme cases of social anxiety now which
| will after many years of therapy allow you to function as
| part of society. There's nothing to be afraid of little
| one. You can be normal, with a lot of time and a lot of
| help from qualified medical professionals.
| saurik wrote:
| And yet all of these things are still quite successful so
| apparently your data point is noise.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| When the average person's personal computing device is
| barely stronger than that phone graphics card it's pretty
| good.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Have you used the Quest 2? I've owned the original rift dev
| kit, a vive, a vive pro, and a quest 2.... the stand alone
| quest 2 experience is actually pretty amazing. I was
| skeptical, too, but it is quite impressive.
| lostgame wrote:
| Current owner and I agree. It's an incredibly quality
| experience compared to, E.G., the Vive, even!
| LegitShady wrote:
| It was released 4 years after the vive - I'm not sure
| what point you're trying to make.
| Kiro wrote:
| We're all asking you the same thing.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I won't spend money with oculus, as they're a company
| based on stolen technology who tried to consolize the VR
| market with exclusives they purchased.
|
| Paying them money is cutting your own throat.
| gear54rus wrote:
| I pretty much agree but what do you mean stolen tech?
| LegitShady wrote:
| See my comment here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28871907
|
| Oculus is company built on lies and scams.
| numpad0 wrote:
| 1st-gen Rift was co-developed with Valve, and there's a
| sentimental narrative among gamers that Oculus backhanded
| Valve by fleeing to FB and becoming a platformer.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Not exactly. See my comment here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28871907
|
| It's not that valve co-developed the rift, its that CV1
| was exactly the steam sight headset with the CV tracking
| system and new fresnel lenses.
|
| Valve employees convinced whoever made decisions over
| there to just give the tech over to oculus without a
| license or contract, and then those employees jumped ship
| to facebook/oculus in one of the most egregious unethical
| backstabs in recent tech memory.
|
| Carmack couldn't convince his employer to give away the
| work he did, so he just took it with him and somehow was
| involved in a 'clean room' reimplementation of work he
| did for someone else. It's part of a pattern of unethical
| behaviour for the big names in oculus.
|
| I wouldn't give them a penny.
| narism wrote:
| They are probably talking about ZeniMax v. Oculus.
| ZeniMax owned the company where John Carmack worked.
| While the original Oculus Rift was being prototyped and
| later crowdfunded, Carmack was interested in VR and
| worked on the code/headset to get Doom 3 running on it.
| He later left to become the Oculus CTO.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeniMax_v._Oculus
| LegitShady wrote:
| also see this comment:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28871907
|
| Carmack's actions in light of the pattern of Oculus
| acquiring tech from valve in shady ways can't be seen as
| anything other than just another guy betraying his former
| employer for oculus.
|
| A giant stain on his reputation for anyone who can see
| just how oculus was built.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| I read that thread and it has insider reports about how
| Valve chose to give its tech away to Oculus. How is that
| Oculus' fault?
|
| Also don't see the issue with Carmack. Code you write
| ethically belongs to you, no matter what the law or your
| employment contract says
| LegitShady wrote:
| "valve" is a company made of people. Some people in valve
| pushed for valve to give away the tech to oculus, and
| then those same people left valve for oculus. That's not
| innocent. It's unethical.
|
| Code you write under contract to an employer doesn't
| belong to you. Someone paid you for that.
| [deleted]
| LegitShady wrote:
| > When the average person's personal computing device is
| barely stronger than that phone graphics card it's pretty
| good.
|
| That's ok if you aren't strapping two screens on your face
| and trying to get the to run as high a refresh rate as you
| can go.
|
| As someone who bought into the new VR revival right away
| and followed the development of the initial headsets as
| closely as someone outside the companies developing them
| could, and has owned and currently owns multiple headsets,
| I can tell you my experience with VR is performance is very
| key, and that standalone VR is pretty garbage.
| lquist wrote:
| What setup do you recommend currently?
| fomine3 wrote:
| "garbage" vs nothing, "garbage" wins.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Standalone is great, especially for fitness application.
| I can't imagine ever using a wired setup, but I get your
| use cases might be different.
| goatlover wrote:
| The standalone is pretty damn impressive for your average
| user at that price, though. And that's what matters for
| capturing the market.
| esyir wrote:
| Speaking as a guy with a full fledged gaming PC and a
| quest/quest2, the quest was the device that really sold
| VR for me.
|
| PCVR is nice, but has it's limitations. Location is a big
| one. my desktop is located in an area with no space.
| Being able to go to a different room with my quest and
| just play drastically reduces the friction of the
| reality-VR transition.
|
| You of course get different annoyances like
| fidelity/battery, but the freedom of truly wireless VR is
| a massive bonus.
| goatlover wrote:
| Agreed, I put it in my backpack and bike or walk to small
| gym nobody is currently using and have the maximum space
| without worrying about running into anything.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| You should not be down voted. I can personally attest to
| what you are saying and I am a big fan of VR. Quest 2 games
| suck. Plain and simple. If you're used to high fidelity
| graphically immersive deep story games, then you will never
| find satisfaction on Quest 2 native games. Connect to a PC
| for that.
| Kiro wrote:
| They should definitely be downvoted because such a
| blanket statement is simply incorrect. I love my Quest
| and think the games are really awesome.
|
| Saying it not stand-alone because you _need_ to connect
| it to a PC is just absurd.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| This is the old PC master race thing again. Well duh, of
| course the Quest 2 is garbage compared to your $3k VR
| setup, but a $300 flat entry point to the VR space - no
| additional purchase or PC required - is undeniably a good
| thing for everyone.
| LegitShady wrote:
| honestly not if it gives facebook control of the VR
| market.
| thebigman433 wrote:
| The Vive is all but irrelevant. It's specs are wildly outdated.
| It also doesnt have more game support, since Quest can play
| everything thats native to it _and_ all the PCVR titles the
| Vive can.
| mhh__ wrote:
| The vive may be outdated but it's still some of the best fun
| you can have on a PC.
|
| I will upgrade eventually now that I can afford it but except
| for high res applications the vive still holds it own. The
| tracking is excellent to this day.
| thebigman433 wrote:
| No doubt its still tons of fun. My comment was just
| relating to buying one now
| amelius wrote:
| What do you think of the HTC Vive Flow?
| lostgame wrote:
| Setting up all those stupid sensor boxes is a massive chore
| that takes away the immense joy of throwing it in a
| backpack and bringing it to the cottage for a round of Beat
| Sabre.
|
| Honestly, I _hated_ setting up, packing up and re-setting
| up my Vive. As a VR dev, I had to do it so often that the
| benefits of the sensor-free, wire-free, and; of course,
| most importantly computer-free operation of the Quest -
| combined with its ability to mimic 90% of the experiences
| I'd had on the Vive without the need for that extra PC -
| far _far_ outweigh anything the Vive has to offer.
|
| And if I want what the Vive has to offer, I can just plug
| in to my PC.
|
| This is speaking from years of experience as a VR dev and
| user. This external sensorless experience means
| _everything_.
|
| Say what you will about the need to register with a
| Facebook account. I need to register with PSN to get a lot
| of serious leverage out of a PlayStation console. That's
| been consoles for decades. It's obvious people just pick on
| this because of its attachment to Facebook. I'm just glad
| it's opening up the experience of VR to more people in a
| massively low cost and practical way that did not exist
| before.
| charcircuit wrote:
| 1. Lighthouses are not a "sensor box". The only sensor in
| them is an IMU. Their primary purpose is to sweep (an
| approximation of) planes of light in your play area.
|
| 2. They are not a pain to setup. You just plug them in
| and then put them somewhere where they can see you. It's
| no more of a pain than charging your phone.
|
| >This external sensorless experience means everything.
|
| The headset and controllers have do tracking just by
| using sensors internal to them. Again, lighthouse do not
| do the tracking.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| > and then put them somewhere they can see you
|
| Easier said than done. I personally have some clamps I 3D
| printed, but there isn't always a convenient place to
| clamp to.
| lostgame wrote:
| >> It's no more of a pain than charging your phone.
|
| Come the hell on. Don't make me laugh. There aren't 3
| cables to my phone that need to be specifically placed in
| certain areas in order to work, plus the cable to the
| phone itself.
|
| Plus, my phone works if I don't have those 3 extra cables
| plugged in and meticulously placed around the room.
|
| I get that you want to defend the unit, but honestly
| making fairly ridiculous claims such as it's as easy to
| set up as charging your phone won't really help convince
| anyone.
|
| The Quest 2 - as long as you've established your guardian
| boundary - is the most seamless and flawless VR
| experience I've had the joy of having.
|
| As a dev continually dragging the Vive from work to home
| to my gf's place was insanely annoying to re-set-up every
| time. Now I throw the Quest in my backpack and roll - for
| fun.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Why pack up? I just leave them on the walls. The biggest
| pain point I've heard with respect to Lighthouse is you
| can't put blankets on yourself while maintaining
| tracking.
| practice9 wrote:
| If the poster needs to travel or do some testing with
| users in different locations he will need to pack all
| that stuff up every time.
| lostgame wrote:
| She, but exactly the point. I even mentioned in my post
| packing it up to go travel somewhere else, not sure how
| that was missed.
| Claude_Shannon wrote:
| While I understand your point, I feel like you can't say
| that PSN account is equivalent to FB. I can create "fake"
| PSN account, but FB is tied to my real data.
| lostgame wrote:
| I have four fake FB accounts I've had for years. Not sure
| how this is an issue?
| Claude_Shannon wrote:
| I've heard many stories how Facebook is able to detect
| "fake" accounts and ban them. I'd be afraid to spend what
| is around a monthly wage in a good job where I live on a
| device that FB could ban :|
| katbyte wrote:
| From what I understand Facebook making it harder to
| create fake accounts and enforce real names is a more
| recent trend and old accounts fly under the radar (for
| now)
| superkuh wrote:
| > It's specs are wildly outdated.
|
| The original v1 release vive specs still exceed the quest and
| quest 2 in all ways related to hardware except maybe comfort
| and peripherals. Framerate, resolution, diopter adjustment,
| external tracking, the ability to actually use a real PC and
| video card without extra latency. The vive wins. And later
| vives and valve headsets like the index win more.
| vividllama wrote:
| Framerate and resolution definitely not.
|
| Quest 2: 1832x1920 per eye, up to 120 fps Vive: 1080x1200
| per eye, up to 90 fps.
|
| And as a owner of both, the screen door effect is extremely
| noticeable on vive, but just about eliminated on quest 2.
|
| External tracking is a tradeoff, it is more accurate but
| requires more setup and the cable gets in the way
| frequently.
|
| Personally with a wifi 6 router and 120fps, latency in
| wireless mode is good enough that I rarely if ever use my
| vive these days.
| thebigman433 wrote:
| The Quest 2 framerate goes up to 120, it has significantly
| higher resolution. The original vive doesnt have diopter
| adjustment. If you meant IPD, then it has an extra 2mm over
| the Quest 2, not particularly important. The Quest 2 also
| has FAR superior lenses. The original Vive lenses are the
| second worst (WMR being the worst) lenses to ever ship in a
| major consumer HMD. The Quest 2 also only has a minor
| (unnoticeable) latency jump when wired to a PC, and can
| function as a wireless headset. There is a reason the Quest
| 2 is by far the most popular headset _on PC_
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