Oculus Rift S

- You need an Oculus account but it doesn't have to be linked to your Facebook account, in fact you don't need a Facebook account at all. The exception is Oculus Rooms, a VR social app.

- Obviously there are proprietary drivers. And only Windows 10. I think you can use it in Windows 7 but it is not recommended.

- You don't need the launcher. You can even run bare executables if you wish. The Oculus software still runs in the background though. Also, the Oculus launcher supports "unknown sources", that includes Steam games.

- Oculus have their own store, but you can buy your games elsewhere if you prefer. They have a few good exclusives though.

- Steam games have different levels of support. Some games available on Steam can make use of the Oculus API. These work just as well as native games (because they are) but you may need a command line flag. Games using the SteamVR API also work well, but there may be a few minor issues, like the sound not switching to the headset automatically and a small performance hit. Games that don't officially support the Rift usually work, with maybe a few controller issues.

I jumped on the KS as soon as it was announced. I had followed Luckey for a while on MTSB3D forums as he modded headsets in his garage (so to speak).

At the time, there were maybe a handful of people still playing around with "PCVR" using old-school junk off ebay or whatever. I dabbled with it, as I had on occasion ever since I started playing with homebrew VR tech in 1992. As the years went on, the majority of the commercial companies in VR of the era died off, closed shop, or morphed into something else (curiously, the two main magnetic tracking companies - Polhemus and Ascension - both stayed strong).

This meant that a lot of the old pro-level and pro-sumer hardware of the era started to get thrown onto ebay, as VR labs at universities and such closed up, or the hardware was discovered in dusty closets wherever. I managed to pick up quite a few pieces of nice 1990s kit from the era that way, for pennies on the dollar.

But prior to that I had been "hacking" old VictorMaxx and Forte VFX-1 HMDs - just playing around more than anything; at one point I had my PowerGlove interfaced to my Amiga 1200 and building small worlds in AMOS 3D. Then moved to my 486 and later Pentium boxes...then things died down, the web became the thing, and VR...well...faded. I'd pull my stuff out every now and again to play with it.

A few others out there were doing the same. I managed to grab a complete collection of PCVR magazine before it completely disappeared. Of those others, as I explored, Luckey stood out. This was a guy I could see had that old school PCVR hacker outlook, and he was driven like nobody else I had found. He mentioned that he'd be doing a KS, and I decided that yes, I would support his effort. Whatever the outcome (it was my first KS support). I dropped the money on a DK1 kit and sat back.

A big part of what also convinced me was that it was going to be Linux compatible; so much of the early consumer VR was definitely not platform agnostic, but that wasn't as big of a deal back then - most people played around with REND386 or similar "homebrew" stuff, under MS-DOS or whatnot...

But I was stoked that VR was quite possibly going to become "the thing" and it was going to have Linux as a main platform.

Of course, that all went down the tubes with the FB acquisition.

So - now I have a DK1 and the FB branded CV1 just sitting; Honestly, I only unpacked the DK1 to verify it, and never actually plugged it in; it's still in the plastic, brand new. Life's ups-and-downs got in the way, and now I'm just not that interested in the whole VR thing. I guess that's partially because it's going "mainstream" to an extent, but also because it seems like another VR winter is coming. I'd have thought that having open-world style VR games and FPS games would have been enough for people, but apparently most people don't want to spend that kind of cash. I can't really blame 'em, either.

But I also feel ripped off - once again, Linux has been made a backwater for yet more entertainment, and we're going to have to claw our way back like everything else. There have been some open source efforts (why nobody every mentions the OSVR system from Razer and others, I dunno). Maybe new innovation will come out of those efforts.

Even so, it very much feels similar (not the same) as those earlier PC-based VR days. Lots of hype, lots of hardware, various software, etc - but not as much "uptake" as was expected.

This isn't how tech goes mainstream. Facebook is trying to eat its cake before its ready. There's a lot of influencers in tech who, while bullish on VR's future, basically write off current VR. In its current state, isn't worth it for them, and they're the ones who can afford to have real VR setups and are passionate about tech in general. They're not going to recommend it to their followers either, since they themselves aren't impressed. Current content is limited by the capabilities of the VR hardware, not the other way around.