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All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

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Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#311

Post by barkingcat »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #289
agar wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "monitor you wear on your face" trope is simply inaccurate, and essentially a misunderstanding of the state of VR today. I say this not to either criticize you or excuse the mistake by Oculus (they really needed to countersign their cert with a timestamp server), but to educate. These are non-obvious issues to people that don't follow the VR sector. Monitors work without low-level drivers because their maturity (…

You said a cert is required, but the footnote quote says drivers must be signed. Being signed doesn't expire. Could you rectify the discrepancy and explain why an expiring cert is a requirement for VR, your analysis (though clearly highly informed) seems spurious to me.

It's because Oculus screwed up.

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#312

Post by Kelbit »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #307
mattnewport wrote: post #181

Our VR surgical training startup has been working for the last few months towards a big medical conference this week where we're showing multiple training procedures for multiple customers on Oculus Rift, as well as having our own booth. The headsets all stopped working the morning of the conference. Fortunately one of our engineers figured out we could get our demo rigs working by setting the clock back a few days.…

Why are you basing medical appliance on such a walled-garden technology you aren't in control of, while there are more accessible alternatives? Oculus was already known for locking up fiascos, this really shouldn't be a surprise for you.

This is fairly common practice in the medical device field. Volumes for specialized equipment are far too low to justify the NRE on custom solutions, so many low-volume medical devices integrate COTS solutions wherever possible.

It doesn't help that vendors are generally nervous about liability in medical equipment (this fear is often unfounded, but persistent). As a result, vendors of commercial and industrial equipment generally don't want to engage medical device OEMs with engineering and customization support. If there had been that sort of support in this case, Oculus might have made a custom build without the cert check, just as a de-risking measure.

This vendor reluctance is especially present at the FDA Class III (high risk device) level - most vendors outright prohibit use of their devices in these products. It's an open secret that this still happens anyway in a wink-wink nudge-nudge fashion, just without vendor support - which is arguably worse, but it keeps the lawyers happy.

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#313

Post by pudquick »

iffycan wrote: post #270
Someone1234 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone is interested in this topic this article goes into more detail: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb9...

Is there a macOS equivalent?

Look at --timestamp in codesign here: https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Dar...

By default, this is currently enabled, as noted here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11712322/error-the-times...

You have to go out of your way when signing an app on macOS to disable timestamping in current OS versions.

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#314

Post by sleepybrett »

tallanvor wrote: post #205
gmueckl wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's where MS is at fault: drivers without timestamped signatures should be treated as faulty. This would prevent these errors in the first place.

I guess I can see reasons why some companies may want to be able to produce time-limited drivers: Maybe they want beta versions to stop working, forcing users to upgrade. For offline computers, it might be that some companies would see this as a way to enforce contract periods (customers would have to install an update to continue using the product when their contract is renewed). Of course, disabling driver signatur…

Then they can write it into the driver "Stop working on jan 1 2019"

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#315

Post by agar »

MayeulC wrote: post #306
agar wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "monitor you wear on your face" trope is simply inaccurate, and essentially a misunderstanding of the state of VR today. I say this not to either criticize you or excuse the mistake by Oculus (they really needed to countersign their cert with a timestamp server), but to educate. These are non-obvious issues to people that don't follow the VR sector. Monitors work without low-level drivers because their maturity (…

Well, I am sorry to have to disagree on this. This is no rocket science, and the software support isn't that different from any standard monitor/gamepad combo. That's for the architecture, at least. Of course, latency requirements are higher. But the differences stops here. Face it, today's VR headsets simply are monitors that you wear on your face (Head Mounted Displays). Anyone thinking otherwise is simply lying to…

Argument: A modern VR stack is much more complex, and does much more, than just displaying images on two screens.

Counterargument: The 16 things that happen other than just displaying images on the screen aren't relevant, have been done before, or has equivalent complexity to other systems.

Well OK. I just can't argue with that.

"A modern CPU SOC is no more than a souped up 6502."

That's true, if you ignore the integrated video, complex cache management, integration of networking/sound/northbridge/southbridge, secure enclaves, and significantly higher performance characteristics that result in subtle changes driving unexpected complexity. All of those things have been done elsewhere.

So if that's your perspective then we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Though I will point out the fact that all of those non-monitor components that you described also require custom drivers, which require their code to be signed, which was ultimately the item the OP took issue with. I'm frankly surprised that after acknowledging the amount of re-implementation VR requires, across numerous non-monitor disciplines, fusing the data in 11ms, for total motion-to-photon latency of 20ms or less, you still feel this is "common and straightforward."

But OK. I don't know your coding skill level, so this may be true.

And per this point:

> interpolation sounds a bit more complicated, I'll grant you that, but still pretty doable.

Valve has still not released an equivalent to Oculus's asynchronous spacewarp. If you feel it is "pretty doable" you would do a huge service to the SteamVR community if you could implement it and provide the code to Valve.

See https://developer.oculus.com/blog/asynchronous-spacewarp/ for details.

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#316

Post by 52-6F-62 »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #291
52-6F-62 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the above commenter, but Google Earth VR is like something out of a sci-fi film from 20 years ago. I was sincerely impressed and enthralled. Of course, the more street views they can capture, the better it will get. There are other education experiences like BBC Home which is one of my favourites. Another, Mission:ISS allows you to explore the ISS and control the Canadarm to dock a module. Highly recommend them.…

Never heard of BBC Home before - http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2017/vr-spacewal... . I trust the developers aren't using license fee money but instead are paying for using the BBC name ...?

IIRC BBC has long had some pretty great in-house developers as a rule. It sounds like it was more of a joint project. IE, BBC wanted to do the project and recruited a partner to help see it through quickly enough. That's how it appears to me, anyway.

But if you get a chance to try it, do! I will warn you though—the first time through is a bit intense. I was new to the platform and had to take the headset off for a few minutes mid-game. After trying it again I found my legs.

Also, it might seem counter-intuitive, but I've found alcohol helps desensitize oneself to the experience.

But when it comes to kids/education, etc. Just be careful. I've invited others to try out some of the more intense experiences and I've even had people get mad at me for it.

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#317

Post by mattnewport »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #307
mattnewport wrote: post #181

Our VR surgical training startup has been working for the last few months towards a big medical conference this week where we're showing multiple training procedures for multiple customers on Oculus Rift, as well as having our own booth. The headsets all stopped working the morning of the conference. Fortunately one of our engineers figured out we could get our demo rigs working by setting the clock back a few days.…

Why are you basing medical appliance on such a walled-garden technology you aren't in control of, while there are more accessible alternatives? Oculus was already known for locking up fiascos, this really shouldn't be a surprise for you.

Our product is a training aid for medical professionals not a medical appliance. We're not fundamentally tied to any particular VR device but Oculus has been our primary platform due to better ergonomics and an easier setup experience for a portable demo rig than the Vive.

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#318

Post by emiliobumachar »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #288
Medox wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A day off? That's all? Give that man a raise! Something to look back upon each month. He might have saved the company and even if not, probably a lot of money anyway... it's only fair to give something back.

A day off is nice, but doesn't mean that much in the scheme of things. I would like to see more companies write a Thank You letter from the CEO, signed by his managers. Something that he could use during his performance evaluations at the company, or attach to his resume for any other jobs. It's hard to get concrete evidence like that, which shows your value to the company. It would great to have documentation that c…

While the letter indeed would be nice, I'd much prefer the raise if it was me.

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#319

Post by SkyPuncher »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #307
mattnewport wrote: post #181

Our VR surgical training startup has been working for the last few months towards a big medical conference this week where we're showing multiple training procedures for multiple customers on Oculus Rift, as well as having our own booth. The headsets all stopped working the morning of the conference. Fortunately one of our engineers figured out we could get our demo rigs working by setting the clock back a few days.…

Why are you basing medical appliance on such a walled-garden technology you aren't in control of, while there are more accessible alternatives? Oculus was already known for locking up fiascos, this really shouldn't be a surprise for you.

I think you underestimate how many companies build technologies off of walled gardens - especially in Healthcare.

Re: All of Oculus’s Rift headsets have stopped working due to an expired certificate

#320

Post by wtallis »

solatic wrote: post #299
wtallis wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a use case for redis and memcached being open to the network, and a failure mode if you don't properly separate your internal network from the public Internet. There's a use case for S3 buckets that are publicly readable, if they don't contain sensitive/private information. Those features have reason to exist, even though there's potential for misuse. Secure defaults would be nice, but can't eliminate these r…

> There's no reason for drivers to have an expiration date If you can license software with a definite expiration date, why can't you license hardware with a definite expiration date? And have your license enforced by the operating system? Imagine that I'm a company with a hardware product, and instead of selling that hardware at large expense, I rent it out, and provide drivers with an expiration date to enforce the…

The driver signing system is not an effective way to implement an expiration date, if that is your goal. Driver signing enforcement can be disabled rather easily by skilled users. Licensing restrictions written into the code of the driver itself are harder to bypass. It also does not seem at all likely that Microsoft intended for the driver signing system to be usable as a time-based DRM mechanism like this.
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