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John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

arstechnica.com

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Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#61

Post by rob74 »

CobaltFire wrote: post #53
gibbonsrcool wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we required lifetime warranties for everything? By lifetime I mean human lifetime, not lifetime if the device. It sounds crazy when thinking how it’d work out in practice, especially with electronics, but we need drastic action like this to respond to climate change.

This would completely close markets to new entrants. As an inventor I can't financially hope to support a device for a human lifetime and break even, much less profit. Right to repair and allowing these things to be legally opened and hacked by the end user is the right way, not burdening every manufacturer with unrealistic support laws. For an example, look at military equipment costs. 20 year support is often built…

Of course for military equipment there are also other cost drivers - more demanding specs, less units produced to spread the development cost etc. etc.

Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#62

Post by bluedino »

eatonphil wrote: post #7
jjulius wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sub-heading of your link says: > Carmack says he's transitioning to the role of "consulting CTO" at Oculus. So he can still be called CTO.

But that was also 2 years ago. I assumed by this time they'd have found a permanent CTO? Maybe not.

Ken Silverman must be busy

Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#63

Post by amackera »

dyingkneepad wrote: post #28

John Carmack working for Facebook is such a huge loss for mankind :(. It makes me sad every time I think about it.

I admire and respect John Carmack for his role in the history of computing (and his ongoing contributions), but I don't see how making 3D video games was really helping humanity more than this. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#64

Post by elric »

spicybright wrote: post #30

I'm actually pretty nervous of how few Carmack's we have. Not at all saying they don't exist, but the job market favors engineers hopping around instead of staying at one place a while to become experts in things.

> the job market favors engineers hopping around instead of staying at one place

Does it? That's a fair description of the consulting space, but I don't think it's an accurate representation of the job market as a whole. When product companies hire software engineers, they tend to aim for the long haul.

Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#65

Post by CobaltFire »

rob74 wrote: post #61
CobaltFire wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would completely close markets to new entrants. As an inventor I can't financially hope to support a device for a human lifetime and break even, much less profit. Right to repair and allowing these things to be legally opened and hacked by the end user is the right way, not burdening every manufacturer with unrealistic support laws. For an example, look at military equipment costs. 20 year support is often built…

Of course for military equipment there are also other cost drivers - more demanding specs, less units produced to spread the development cost etc. etc.

This is true, but you may find that if you had to support something (and keep it relevant) across 20 years those specs and requirements may look much the same whether they are military or civilian.

For example, the amount of bending of the case of a device has to be DRASTICALLY less to allow effectively sealing contaminants out for 20 years vice 2, as well as the seals themselves being an order of magnitude better if there is no servicing involved. For most military equipment we have all of those AND regular servicing, something that consumers would absolutely revolt against nowadays.

One other thing people fail to realize on the electronics front: many of the chips in these older systems are getting very difficult to come by. About 10 years ago I was involved in repairing F/A-18 avionics, and one specific chip in that system was extraordinarily important. It was a radiation hardened 80286 CPU, and had a single production run for the entire budgeted lifecycle of the systems it was in. Unfortunately a design flaw in the power delivery systems meant that the CPUs were being destroyed at a rate roughly 4x as fast as expected and they had to figure out what to do. This specific chip was one of the many reasons (but a key one) that we retired that airframe.

Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#66

Post by rob74 »

freediver wrote: post #9

Imagining that future is about people wearing VR devices on their head (even as minimal as a pair of glasses) is hard to grasp. "In their head" would be a different matter but that is not what the current technology is focusing on (apart from Neuralink). Edit: not propagating for any such vision the future! just noticing that wearing stuff on head would be clunky and impractical for true immersion.

A VR world controlled by Facebook sounds dystopian enough already - now imagine the same with neural implants...

Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#67

Post by horsawlarway »

CarelessExpert wrote: post #44
buildbot wrote: post #34

This is tangential, but I really wish that their would be legislation, valid retroactively, to enable old unsupported devices to still be utilized. I think this goes somewhat beyond right to repair? Take for example digital backs for medium format cameras - these things are built in low numbers, with high end FPGAs and camera sensors, with JTAG interfaces ready to go and everything - but then forgotten about a few ye…

> This is tangential, but I really wish that their would be legislation, valid retroactively, to enable old unsupported devices to still be utilized. Not at all. This is precisely on point, and directly intersects with the Right to Repair as well. It's about damn time we, as a society, put a stop to black box devices over which we have no ability to inspect, repair, or repurpose after the vendor decides to end suppor…

Could not agree more.

At the bare minimum a vendor should not be allowed to sell a device that has digital locks if the user is not also given a copy of the keys.

You can lock the device, but if I don't get a key at time of purchase, then I don't own the damn thing.

Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#68

Post by gonehome »

nicolaslem wrote: post #3

> allowing for a randomly discovered shrink wrapped headset twenty years from now to be able to update to the final software version, long after over-the-air update servers have been shut down. This resonates so much with me. Each time I setup a new device that requires an Internet connection, I think about how we can enjoy booting 30 years old retro computers and how the next generation will not be able to do the sa…

This is part of the reason I'm excited about Urbit - it's the only project I've seen that has a hope of resolving this.

Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#69

Post by Macha »

formerly_proven wrote: post #37

Does this mean you get a blob image where you can have root, or more like Carmack of old, GPLing / open sourcing the prev-gen tech? I'm asking basically: Is this free as in beer or as in freedom?

> Accessing or using the unlockable software (“Software”) is subject to the Oculus Terms of Service or, if you use your Facebook account to access Oculus Products, the Supplemental Oculus Terms of Service and Facebook Terms of Service (the “Applicable TOS”). For clarity, Oculus Products (as described in the Applicable TOS) include the Software. We provide the Software to you for your personal and noncommercial use only on your personal Oculus Products. Installing the Software voids all warranties, express or implied, applicable to Oculus Products. In no event shall Facebook, its affiliates or any of their respective directors, officers, employees or agents have responsibility or liability arising out of or relating to making the Software available to you.

https://developer.oculus.com/licenses/go-unlock-tos

Free as in beer

Re: John Carmack pushes out unlocked OS for defunct Oculus Go headset

#70

Post by kfprt »

metagame wrote: post #24
londons_explore wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As systems get more complex, cracking/emulating them gets more effort. We already see this in old stuff. DOS games run great in dosbox, because the IBM PC was pretty simple. Same with the gameboy, snes, etc. When you get to more modern things like Windows 98 games, PS3 games, xbox360 games... Most of those are much harder to emulate/crack/archive. They have more complex copy protection schemes, interact more deeply w…

I think you have a few reasoning errors in your comment: The PS3 and 360 aren't actually harder to emulate because they have more complex copy protection; they're hard to emulate because they're very novel systems (hardware-wise) and developers had to use all sorts of tricks, which is something their successors are not. Meanwhile, the PS4 is literally just a PC and already has a pretty good emulator (if early), becau…

PS4 has a PS specific graphics API.
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