8 ms·
Unlocked OS Build for the Oculus Go
- als0 5y agoFacebook aside, this would set a great example for other manufacturers in this space.
- Arrath 5y agoGlad to see Carmack fighting the good fight.
- croes 5y agoHe is more of a fig leaf to deflect from FB misconduct.
- easton 5y agoIs the Go EOL? I’m curious if they’ll do the same thing for the Quest 1 or if we’ll have to wait a few years.
- wbobeirne 5y agoHasn't been sold for over a year and runs completely different software than the Quest. I imagine the Quest will be backwards-compatible for the foreseeable future, so I wouldn't expect them to give it this treatment any time soon, if ever.
- caslon 5y agoActually, it doesn't run that different of software from the Quest. The Quest is fully backwards-compatible with the Go, and Carmack has complained on multiple occasions about how they took out compatibility intentionally for the Quest 2. The Quest is still getting a surprisingly good amount of support for now, and can run pretty much every 'blockbuster' game on the platform reasonably if not well. I wouldn't be surprised if they stopped supporting it in three years (or, more realistically, no game supports it in three years), but the Quest and Quest 2 can both stream software from your PC to the headset, if they do.
- darknavi 5y agoThis is great. I think Carmack calls out a huge issue with lots of hardware these days: Once software servers are shut down and a company moves on, lots of hardware is essentially bricked. I really wish this was more common.
- VRay 5y agoYeah, I hope something similar happens for the Quest, but I'm not going to hold my breath.. Zuck spent all that money buying Oculus because he wants his own iPhone platform that he can rule with an iron fist
- caslon 5y agoIf nothing else, they already don't stop you from flashing earlier versions of the Quest firmware, and some of them were actively exploitable. If there's any demand for something of that nature, I'm sure someone will figure it out.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pwdisswordfish0 5y agoYesterday: https://spectrum.ieee.org/we-need-software-updates-forever https://spectrum.ieee.org/we-need-software-updates-forever https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28625453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28625453
- grishka 5y agoOnce you've bought a device, it should not be technically possible for the manufacturer or seller to control your continued use of it in any way whatsoever. If it needs servers, the addresses and the public keys for those should be configurable by the end user. That simple. This should be a law.
- c7DJTLrn 5y agoSounds good but as far as I'm concerned, Oculus is still hot with the radioactivity of Facebook. I have no interest in giving them direct access to a device I put on my head. As soon as they announced the account merging I sold my Rift CV1. Just bought an Index since it's superior hardware for PCVR anyway and Valve cares about user freedom (their Linux gaming work being one example).
- snuser 5y agoYeah, the fact it has a camera taking video of your living space outside the headset makes it even creeper.. same goes for their built in web-browser. I've discouraged many people from buying one and the world is better for it facebook is the business equivalent of toxic waste, the only notable thing about them is that they help make some people rich
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- amoshi 5y agoHow is it superior? Quest 2 is the only wireless headset (arguably the biggest QoL feature unless you like pulley systems on your ceiling), and spec wise it roughly matches the Index (you win some, you lose some). I despise Facebook but I got the Quest 2 cause of wirelessness, as for the account you can create a dummy Oculus Developer account (workaround will work till January 2023).
- bfdm 5y agoThere will be others. I'll wait.
- c7DJTLrn 5y agoWireless just doesn't matter much to me, even without a wire pulley system. Just letting it hang has always been fine and I suspect a lot of Index users would agree with me. The tradeoffs to go wireless aren't worth it at all either. The workaround you mentioned might as well not exist if it's going to stop existing a little more than a year from now. It wouldn't make sense to buy a new device now if one wants to avoid Facebook sign in.
- bryan_w 5y agoAmazing, although I wish there was more direct Linux support for the platform.
- caslon 5y agoIf you have anything other than an Nvidia GPU, ALVR works pretty well on Linux now. It's not direct support, no, but it works pretty well.
- smoldesu 5y agoThis is huge, and I hope something similar happens with the Oculus Quest 1 before I'm locked out of my headset for not having a Facebook account.
- awesomeusername 5y agoCan we please have a class action somehow? I have oculus gear I would not have purchased had they not promised to tie into a Facebook account that now sits on my shelf unusable (by me) Edit - even though I could sell the rift, what about the -$1000 I spent on software I can no longer access
- caslon 5y agoThe Rift is still usable without a Facebook account, without any particular "tricks." There's even a pretty well-documented "trick" to use the Quest 2 without one, but it would be silly to post it in a place with so many Facebook employees that could be baited to "fix" it.
- grogenaut 5y agoClass actions start because someone sues a company and the lawyer realizes there are many folks with the same issue, and starts a class action. So if you want a class action, contact a lawyer and sue Facebook. A lawyer can't just sue someone in a class action, they have to have a client who has damages.
- tombert 5y agoI really hope that this sets a precedent in the industry. I hate that sideloading is still somewhat of a "taboo" thing for hardware that you own.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago> I hate that sideloading is still somewhat of a "taboo" thing for hardware that you own. Taboo? In what situation?
- tombert 5y agoWell, it typically voids your warranty entirely for one, and the terms of service usually use scary language telling you to never modify anything.
- R0b0t1 5y agoIt can't void the warranty in the US or EU.
- capableweb 5y agoNot exactly "Taboo" but some banking apps will refuse to load on Android if they detect your phone as rooted. Maybe there are apps doing similar stuff on iPhone as well, wouldn't surprise me.
- realusername 5y agoYes there's definitely a PR push which pretend that custom roms & rooted devices are insecure whereas security is an orthogonal concept to that in reality, there's a lot of custom roms which are more secure than the base rom.
- judge2020 5y agoYou own the hardware, but you didn't pay to not log in with Facebook. And they surely want to enforce you not being able to pirate games, at least in standalone mode. If you don't want any of that, you can pay the 2x price premium[0]. 0: https://i.judge.sh/crisp/Flutter/chrome_4DP6M2oZzB.png https://i.judge.sh/crisp/Flutter/chrome_4DP6M2oZzB.png (from https://business.oculus.com/products/ https://business.oculus.com/products/ )
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- f0e4c2f7 5y agoWow that's amazing. I wonder if one day there will be something like this available for the quest 2. John Carmack, delivering as usual.
- arnaudsm 5y agoReminder : there's still a $10k bounty for rooting the Quest. Thousands of enthusiasts are waiting for it, opening this platform could create an huge homebrew scene, and free us from Facebook. If you're into Android reverse engineering, please give it a shot.
- amelius 5y agoContext: > The day after Oculus started shipping the Quest 2 VR headset, Robert Long, a developer at Mozilla who's not a fan of Facebook's policies, put up a $5,000 bounty for a proven jailbreak for the headset. Palmer Luckey, the ousted founder of Oculus, matched that offer, bringing the prize to $10,000 for a verified root access jailbreak. https://www.tweaktown.com/news/76208/the-bounty-for-quest-2-jailbreak-is-still-up-grabs/index.html https://www.tweaktown.com/news/76208/the-bounty-for-quest-2-...
- caslon 5y agoI mean, you can already create homebrew apps. Like, it's pretty much like any Android device. Just use adb to add any .apk you'd like.
- terramex 5y agoThis is not what rooting means, you can install .apk on every Android phone but not every can be rooted. At the moment Quest 2 cannot be used without FB account, root access would allow installing modified firmware without that requirement as well as creating 3rd party application stores browsable on device itself.
- caslon 5y agoI know what rooting means, and I'd kindly ask that you read a comment before replying to it. I was stating that you can already make homebrew apps, and you can already use third-party, on-device app stores. I didn't say it was already rootable. Further, you can also use a Quest 2 without a Facebook account. I do, myself. It's pretty well-documented.
- Tepix 5y agoIs there some low level hardware documentation available given that the software is not open source?
- numpad0 5y agoWhy and why now? Someone posted a clip of Steam Deck running SteamVR[1] - Could this be the reason, that Facebook is compelled that they need mobile SteamVR to run on Facebook hardware, as a leverage or an insurance? 1: https://twitter.com/yunayuna64/status/1441288908659048453 https://twitter.com/yunayuna64/status/1441288908659048453
- m12k 5y agoIt's pointless for Facebook to have their hardware used if it's not tied to their accounts and ecosystem. More likely, the Oculus Go is obsoleted enough by the Quest 2, that they decided they didn't care.
- jimmySixDOF 5y agoThat seems a little speculative to me. It could just as easily be the recent promotion of Boz from FBRL to CTO.
- jacobmischka 5y agoOh neat, I didn't realize he was no longer a full-time Oculus employee: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1441496855133790210 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1441496855133790210
- Stevvo 5y agoThe GO is still my favorite headset to this day, and I have used many of the others both professionally and for entertainment. It's very simple, which is great for introducing people to VR for the first time; just put the headset on and they are ready to go. It's very light and comfortable; I have no problem wearing the GO for hours, watching a full movie. PC VR is so uncomfortable that I've never made it all the way through a game like Half Life: Alyx. Increases in image quality are great and necessary, but ultimately VR will take over the world when it's as comfortable and easy to use as a pair of spectacles. To date, the Go is the headset that has come the closest to that dream.
- rektide 5y agoi've called the current mode of phone use ecocicdal a number of times. right to repair should mandatorily kick in on e a device stops supporting itself. facebook doing one better is amazing, great. this is a great moral turning point, one the world has seen very very very few of. good fucking job. excellent.
- rektide 5y agothere's no other moral choices for devices & it's wonderful to see a big company take a moral & obvious stance on this. this should be covered by right to repair laws, but companies should always try to be doing better for the world than what the law requires. we need some reasonable, well perspectived vanguards willing to right the crimes of self-serving-ness that plague modenity & IT. favebook gets that. good job, congratulstions, thank you for doing right. now, everyone else, stop being shitheads. unlock your bootloaders, you fucks.
- georgewsinger 5y agoHaving root access to your VR device is cool, but having full, open source access to your VR device is even cooler :] www.simulavr.com