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Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

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Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#381

Post by Accujack »

maximus-decimus wrote: post #367
Epskampie wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The team at facebook will be able to show bigger sales, making the next version more likely. You will count as a "oculus quest user" in steam stats etc. Developers will be more likely to support this headset. Etc etc etc. The market is still so small that network effect like these can be huge. Facebook is selling at a loss in an attempt to destroy the competition and build another monopoly. They don't care if they do…

Luckily, there are laws against monopolies. I don't see what you mean by Facebook currently having a monopoly, because Facebook is not the only social network. Given the fact one of their main competitors is Valve, I don't think you have to worry about them destroying their competition financially either. Facebook isn't even really competing with them, FB is going for the low end market.

Facebook is a de facto monopoly. The US government seems to agree, and is pursuing an anti-trust investigation against them at the moment.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/04/tech/facebook-ftc-antitrust-d...

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#382

Post by Ph0X »

sleepybrett wrote: post #314
Ph0X wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I'm not sure why people are talking about the vive, the valve index is the current 'contender' as I see it.

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.

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#383

Post by dlss »

saurik wrote: post #262
charcircuit wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't play on my phone and my computer did cost $3k if you include my vr equipment. I don't eat at burger king. I've played solitaire at 120 fps, but not with ray tracing. I also don't shop at walmart.

And yet all of these things are still quite successful so apparently your data point is noise.

Do we agree it's a bad sign when a model treats lived human experience as noise?

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#384

Post by akelly »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #295
krajzeg wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a heads-up from another Quest 2 user - if you're gentle, you can push the lenses in between the 3 predefined settings, and they will stay there. This helped me a lot, since my IPD is somewhere in between the middle and the wide setting. Only 3 options is definitely a weird choice on Oculus' part (especially since the device apparently includes a potentiometer, so it actually acknowledges in-between settings!), b…

That's not a viable option for me as my IPD is not between settings but at the outer extreme of the widest setting (Quest 2 only goes as far as 68 mm while Quest 1 went to 72 mm which is close to my IPD). It's still usable for games without any headaches, but I wouldn't use it for reading text or long gaming sessions.

Thank you for posting this! I've been holding off on buying a Quest for a long time because of my 72.5mm IPD.

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#385

Post by LegitShady »

fomine3 wrote: post #237
LegitShady wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the average person's personal computing device is barely stronger than that phone graphics card it's pretty good. That's ok if you aren't strapping two screens on your face and trying to get the to run as high a refresh rate as you can go. As someone who bought into the new VR revival right away and followed the development of the initial headsets as closely as someone outside the companies developing them cou…

"garbage" vs nothing, "garbage" wins.

not true - I'd rather skip a meal than eat garbage.

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#386

Post by smolder »

reilly3000 wrote: post #115
rhacker wrote: post #15

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 wi…

I hate to break it to you, but Logitech now runs always-on ‘Cloud Settings’ sync and telemetry software called Logi Options. It comes with a way to use a mouse across devices seamlessly (Flow) which requires low-level networking permissions and a daemon on all participating devices. It’s not required that you have an account or even use the software, but of course they actively push all of the above and require it to…

Yes, Razer's software makes login mandatory, which is why I recommend against buying them at every opportunity, and will never buy anything else from them. It's not acceptable to me to gatekeep local features with spyware.

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#387

Post by smolder »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #287
reilly3000 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly the hardware-for-gamers paradigm has done a lot for making better mice, keyboards, chairs, and headsets that stand up to all-day abuse. I'll cede that the RGB thing is wildly out of control (WHO NEEDS RBG RAM STICKS?!?) but overall I think it gives developers far better of-the-shelf choices than one would have 10 years ago.

> better mice, keyboards, chairs, and headsets Mice and keyboards that don't operate without online-registration-required accounts? Chairs and keyboards that look cool for streamers but are utterly unergonomic? And headsets with cat ears on them... No thanks.

Only Razer is pulling the mandatory online signup thing. My keyboard (a "durgod" mechanical) and mouse (Zowie brand) are geared towards gamers, high quality, and need 0 software config - there's a lone DPI adjustment button on the underside of the mouse. "Gaming" monitors and graphics cards are also quite nice.

When it comes to RGB crap and gamer audio gear or gamer chairs, yeah, it's all pure-gimmick rubbish.

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#388

Post by smolder »

reilly3000 wrote: post #239
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pro gamers At this point, that's a keyword that indicates not to buy a product.

Honestly the hardware-for-gamers paradigm has done a lot for making better mice, keyboards, chairs, and headsets that stand up to all-day abuse. I'll cede that the RGB thing is wildly out of control (WHO NEEDS RBG RAM STICKS?!?) but overall I think it gives developers far better of-the-shelf choices than one would have 10 years ago.

I'd take a regular office chair and non gamer headset over the gamer branded ones, but Zowie mice are nice, and so are ubiquitous mechanical keyboards.

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#389

Post by qwerty456127 »

Cpoll wrote: post #366
qwerty456127 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never heard about Steve Ballmer saying this but I always believed this was (or became at some point) the plan. 100% of SOHO users pirated MS DOS, Windows and Office in Eastern Europe before broadband Internet became widely available. Then legal pressure on small business started so they began buying licenses as Windows and Office have already became the standard. What I never understood though is why did Microsoft (o…

> What I never understood though is why did Microsoft (or anybody else) invest in all this activation bullshit anyway. I relate this to the adage "locks are to keep honest people honest." Similarly, bypassing a valid license has to be just hard enough that people have time to think about what they're doing. To push the metaphor a bit further, someone is more likely to try the credit card trick to shim a door open (ty…

> someone is more likely to try the credit card trick to shim a door open (type in a fake or shared serial key) than acquire lockpicking tools (download a crack).

In theory this sounds reasonable but in reality - no, it's no difference. Serial, keygen, crack - it's all just a minor, negligible variation of the ritual people do when they want an app but are not going to pay for it (because from the perspective of an eastern user all the big apps genuinely look exorbitantly overpriced).

Re: Oculess – Removes account requirements and telemetry from Oculus Quest devices

#390

Post by cortesoft »

LegitShady wrote: post #372
cortesoft wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very different statement than saying the tech is bad.

standalone VR is pretty bad. On top of that, oculus is bad.

You say stand-alone VR is bad, but I (and a bunch of other commentators) say the Quest 2 is actually impressive… but your only replies are that the company is bad.

No one is arguing whether the company is bad, that is not relevant to whether standalone VR is bad. How is it bad when everyone is saying the experience is actually really good? You can’t just say the company is bad, that is irrelevant to the point.

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