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Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

816 points by detaro 5y ago

schleck8 5y ago
The dev is 17 apparently
LegitShady 5y ago
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_becoming_bad_for_vr_industry/d3g6e6j/ 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/ 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 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 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
    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.
    - pm90 5y ago
      So why are they having such difficulty with hardware?
      - simfree 5y ago
        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.
        LegitShady 5y ago
        Not to mention Ben Krasnow's comment about the hardware culture at Valve probably meant a lot of talented hardware people wouldn't be interested working somewhere where their accomplishments are seen as worthless. Not having good talent and good culture are not good for developing good hardware.
vermilingua 5y ago
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 5y ago
  I have both -- the Oculus Quest 2 is better on both fronts, it's lighter and the screen is better.
- coolspot 5y ago
  I don’t think you can comfortably use Q1 as monitor replacement. IMO, resolution is not enough for comfortable reading.
- d3nj4l 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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.
pkpioneer 5y ago
How to Upgrade Your PC to Windows 11: https://pkpioneer.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-to-upgrade-your-pc-to-windows-11.html https://pkpioneer.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-to-upgrade-your-p...
onkoe 5y ago
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!
- lapetitejort 5y ago
  Do you know by chance what breaks? For example, would immersed [0] still work, or tethered Steam VR? [0]: https://immersed.com/ https://immersed.com/
  - onkoe 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        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 5y ago
fartcannon 5y ago
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.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
- dylan604 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    There's GrapheneOS
    - whyrusleeping 5y ago
      > 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 5y ago
system2 5y ago
Why not HTC Vive though? Better development, better privacy, more game support.
- Ph0X 5y ago
  > 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?
  - filoleg 5y ago
    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.
  - sleepybrett 5y ago
    I'm not sure why people are talking about the vive, the valve index is the current 'contender' as I see it.
    - Ph0X 5y ago
      For all intents and purposes, Index and Vive are equivalent when it comes to the game support, so while at a hardware level Index is better (though Vive is about to announce new stuff too, and the Vive Pro is quite competitive with Index), it's besides the point here.
- dylan604 5y ago
  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.
908087 5y ago
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.
hellbannedguy 5y ago
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.
rhacker 5y ago
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.
- baby 5y ago
  I think you'll want to talk to Apple first.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  Why bother specifying hardware? No, thank you, I have no desire to have a cloud account for my purely offline software either.
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    If it requires a cloud account it isn't purely offline software. How else do they authenticate you?
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      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 5y ago
  This has to apply to "smart tvs" too. Those things are out of control.
- ipsum2 5y ago
  How do you define a peripheral? An Oculus Quest is basically a repackaged smart phone.
dTal 5y ago
So, what can you do with a (de-Facebooked) one of these then?
- psd1 5y ago
  Half-Life 3
- pm90 5y ago
  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 https://www.facebook.com/ads/settings
- wincy 5y ago
  Watch an astonishing amount of extremely high quality VR pornography.
- rpastuszak 5y ago
  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.
azinman2 5y ago
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…)
- fomine3 5y ago
  For me, Facebook itself is far more problem than basic telemetry (for dev purpose) for privacy.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  >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.
Ronson 5y ago
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 (£80!!) 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.
oriel 5y ago
Is there an equivalent jailbreak for the other Oculus devices? I have a CV1 I would love to rehabilitate.
canada_dry 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      I don't know, I really enjoyed my jailbroken Wii back in the day, so there's definitely precedent for this.
polyomino 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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/ https://www.wired.com/2007/02/romanian-presid/
  - mmastrac 5y ago
    "This will be a massive licensing stream in the future"
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      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.
      - achow 5y ago
quickthrower2 5y ago
Cease! Desist!
- arpa 5y ago
  Fork! Streisand!
sharmin123 5y ago
Facebook Safety Tips: Take Steps Now and Avoid Hacking: https://www.hackerslist.co/facebook-safety-tips-take-steps-now-and-avoid-hacking/ https://www.hackerslist.co/facebook-safety-tips-take-steps-n...
tdrdt 5y ago
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 5y ago
  > This app is more like an interface for some settings than a hack. It's also a statement.
  - tdrdt 5y ago
    Yes absolutely!
rapnie 5y ago
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.
cardanome 5y ago
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.
- dabber21 5y ago
  There are rumours that Valve will enter the game
  - roguas 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      No. This: https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/29/22699914/valve-deckard-standalone-vr-headset-prototype-development https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/29/22699914/valve-deckard-st...
      - jmac01 5y ago
        But that'll be like $899 if we lucky. Occulus Quest is like $300
        idiotsecant 5y ago
        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.
        jeroenhd 5y ago
        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.
tristor 5y ago
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).
- unclefishbits 5y ago
  HTC Vive Pro, therefore, is a wonderful solution. It's spendy because its properly priced without marketing gimmicks like Uber, Amazon, or FB do to subsidize the price to take over the world. It's the most fun "entertainment" experience of my life.
  - stavros 5y ago
    Is that wired? The Quest has spoiled me, unfortunately, and any VR headset I buy will have to be wire-optional at least. I don't mind it needing a PC, but I don't want to have a wire to tangle up in.
    - iFreilicht 5y ago
      There is an additional add-on that maked it wireless, but by default it's wired.
- lacksconfidence 5y ago
  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.

816 points by detaro 5y ago

The dev is 17 apparently

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_becoming_bad_for_vr_industry/d3g6e6j/ 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/ 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 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 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
  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.
  - pm90 5y ago
    So why are they having such difficulty with hardware?
    - simfree 5y ago
      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.
      - LegitShady 5y ago
        Not to mention Ben Krasnow's comment about the hardware culture at Valve probably meant a lot of talented hardware people wouldn't be interested working somewhere where their accomplishments are seen as worthless. Not having good talent and good culture are not good for developing good hardware.

vermilingua 5y ago

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 5y ago
I have both -- the Oculus Quest 2 is better on both fronts, it's lighter and the screen is better.
coolspot 5y ago
I don’t think you can comfortably use Q1 as monitor replacement. IMO, resolution is not enough for comfortable reading.
d3nj4l 5y ago
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 5y ago
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.

pkpioneer 5y ago

How to Upgrade Your PC to Windows 11: https://pkpioneer.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-to-upgrade-your-pc-to-windows-11.html https://pkpioneer.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-to-upgrade-your-p...

onkoe 5y ago

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!

lapetitejort 5y ago
Do you know by chance what breaks? For example, would immersed [0] still work, or tethered Steam VR? [0]: https://immersed.com/ https://immersed.com/
- onkoe 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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 5y ago

fartcannon 5y ago

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.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
dylan604 5y ago
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 5y ago
  There's GrapheneOS
  - whyrusleeping 5y ago
    > 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 5y ago

system2 5y ago

Why not HTC Vive though? Better development, better privacy, more game support.

Ph0X 5y ago
> 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?
- filoleg 5y ago
  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.
- sleepybrett 5y ago
  I'm not sure why people are talking about the vive, the valve index is the current 'contender' as I see it.
  - Ph0X 5y ago
    For all intents and purposes, Index and Vive are equivalent when it comes to the game support, so while at a hardware level Index is better (though Vive is about to announce new stuff too, and the Vive Pro is quite competitive with Index), it's besides the point here.
dylan604 5y ago
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.

908087 5y ago

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.

hellbannedguy 5y ago

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.

rhacker 5y ago

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.

baby 5y ago
I think you'll want to talk to Apple first.
HWR_14 5y ago
Why bother specifying hardware? No, thank you, I have no desire to have a cloud account for my purely offline software either.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  If it requires a cloud account it isn't purely offline software. How else do they authenticate you?
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    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 5y ago
This has to apply to "smart tvs" too. Those things are out of control.
ipsum2 5y ago
How do you define a peripheral? An Oculus Quest is basically a repackaged smart phone.

dTal 5y ago

So, what can you do with a (de-Facebooked) one of these then?

psd1 5y ago
Half-Life 3
pm90 5y ago
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 https://www.facebook.com/ads/settings
wincy 5y ago
Watch an astonishing amount of extremely high quality VR pornography.
rpastuszak 5y ago
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.

azinman2 5y ago

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…)

fomine3 5y ago
For me, Facebook itself is far more problem than basic telemetry (for dev purpose) for privacy.
charcircuit 5y ago
>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.

Ronson 5y ago

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 (£80!!) 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.

oriel 5y ago

Is there an equivalent jailbreak for the other Oculus devices? I have a CV1 I would love to rehabilitate.

canada_dry 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    I don't know, I really enjoyed my jailbroken Wii back in the day, so there's definitely precedent for this.

polyomino 5y ago

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 5y ago
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/ https://www.wired.com/2007/02/romanian-presid/
- mmastrac 5y ago
  "This will be a massive licensing stream in the future"
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    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.
    - achow 5y ago

quickthrower2 5y ago

Cease! Desist!

arpa 5y ago
Fork! Streisand!

sharmin123 5y ago

Facebook Safety Tips: Take Steps Now and Avoid Hacking: https://www.hackerslist.co/facebook-safety-tips-take-steps-now-and-avoid-hacking/ https://www.hackerslist.co/facebook-safety-tips-take-steps-n...

tdrdt 5y ago

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 5y ago
> This app is more like an interface for some settings than a hack. It's also a statement.
- tdrdt 5y ago
  Yes absolutely!

rapnie 5y ago

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.

cardanome 5y ago

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.

dabber21 5y ago
There are rumours that Valve will enter the game
- roguas 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    No. This: https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/29/22699914/valve-deckard-standalone-vr-headset-prototype-development https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/29/22699914/valve-deckard-st...
    - jmac01 5y ago
      But that'll be like $899 if we lucky. Occulus Quest is like $300
      - idiotsecant 5y ago
        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.
      - jeroenhd 5y ago
        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.

tristor 5y ago

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).

unclefishbits 5y ago
HTC Vive Pro, therefore, is a wonderful solution. It's spendy because its properly priced without marketing gimmicks like Uber, Amazon, or FB do to subsidize the price to take over the world. It's the most fun "entertainment" experience of my life.
- stavros 5y ago
  Is that wired? The Quest has spoiled me, unfortunately, and any VR headset I buy will have to be wire-optional at least. I don't mind it needing a PC, but I don't want to have a wire to tangle up in.
  - iFreilicht 5y ago
    There is an additional add-on that maked it wireless, but by default it's wired.
lacksconfidence 5y ago
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.