Oculus Quest 2 • Hacker News Board

Re: Oculus Quest 2

#431

Post by atoav » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:03 AM UTC

polyomino wrote: post #284

dylan604 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to get down to a nit picky level like that then, sure. And to be fair, maybe it should be explicitly stated. However, Facebook sells access to the data it collects. It may not be access to the raw data that a phrase like 'selling the data' makes it sound. However, it is making money from the knowledge it has about people (can't even say its users anymore). Either way, the ad buyer (end user) gets access t…

No, advertisers do not "get access" to that data. They get the ability to target ads against people who match some characteristics. Facebook's business is literally built on advertisers inability to access that data. If they had access, advertisers would advertise elsewhere and Facebook wouldn't get a cut.

Which is in itself a huge problem in democratic societies as demonstrated e.g. by Cambridge analytica. I think the potential harm that this business model produces and the power it gives the companies who deploy them, is something our formerly nice working systems didn't really price in when the seperation of powers was invented.

So while protection of privacy is always also the right of one individual, I think it is crucial to realize that this kind of power over "the masses" isn't something any free society could afford in the long term on a systemic level. If we look at a democracy with it's separation of powers, it's institutions etc as a delicately balanced electronic circuit — which has the ability to self correct — players like Facebook are like the introduction of new feedback paths that work better for people who don't mind to sell their soul when abusing them. Of course such new connections will have an effect on the whole system, but the crucial point is, that nobody really considered what this effect might be and whether what we have and like in democracy can actually survive this.

You cannot have free elections if the people voting in it are put into their own matrix-esque simulation of reality. How could we ever find agreeable consent if our realities have no common overlap by design?

I think a lot of people in tech sphere don't really want to see this as they are profiting from this. It makes us powerful wizards who see more and understand more than others.

Re: Oculus Quest 2

#432

Post by tomc1985 » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:08 AM UTC

cwhiz wrote: post #426

rektide wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how shortsighted & wrong one smarmy glib post can be. Valve is kicking ass, leading massive technical charged doing great & fantastic work with none of the typical Service-as-a-Software-Substitute slimeware that everyone else keeps falling to. Great novel hardware with very high bandwidth & compelling input, best if not only useful end user drivers out there as we see with projects like Monado XR that ar…

Valve is hilariously stagnant. The Steam windows app went ignored for nearly a decade until Epic came in and started eating their lunch. The mobile app looks like a contracted out app from 2009. Seriously, go download the mobile app. Half the products or ideas they’ve come up with abandoned, never release, or are mediocre. They lack any clear vision, strategy or direction as a company. They seem like they would just…

That's a really bitter way of saying that Steam's been chugging along doing fine for some time now. Epic's store was never really a competitor until Sweeney starting getting itinerant over his royalties red herring, paying developers for exclusive launches, and giving away at least a game a week for something like a year now. It's still missing a ton of features compared to Steam (though one could argue how many of those features should stay missing), and it is slow as molasses.

Steam's only other potential competitor was GOG, and it seems those two have had a fairly friendly relationship over the years. Remember that Valve gives away Steam keys to developers and resellers at very little cost, and that there are thriving third-party markets because of that.

You could argue that they have been stagnant in terms of game development, but everyone knows that isn't exactly true since Alyx was released. I don't really know what state VR was in before its release but from this outsider's perspective it seems to have raised the bar considerably.

Save for GOG, the DRM war is effectively lost, and so I'd rather be living under Gaben's benevolent dictatorship than some of the other more corporate-minded masters.

Re: Oculus Quest 2

#433

Post by tomc1985 » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:14 AM UTC

na85 wrote: post #423

rektide wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how shortsighted & wrong one smarmy glib post can be. Valve is kicking ass, leading massive technical charged doing great & fantastic work with none of the typical Service-as-a-Software-Substitute slimeware that everyone else keeps falling to. Great novel hardware with very high bandwidth & compelling input, best if not only useful end user drivers out there as we see with projects like Monado XR that ar…

That's an interesting take. I don't follow the VR market at all, but from my perspective Valve has been resting on their laurels for years. I've read that gaben just sits in his office playing DOTA 2 all day. Until I read your comment I would never have considered describing Valve as "kicking ass". From where I sit they've basically done nothing innovative since Half Life 2.

I'd hardly consider the Index and Half-Life Alyx to be "nothing innovative"

Re: Oculus Quest 2

#434

Post by seanmcdirmid » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:17 AM UTC

theptip wrote: post #365

Judgmentality wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a TON to love about this headset. And the price point is simply amazing. Like what? Genuinely asking - I've not tried it. I read that review though and while it certainly came across as negative he brought up a LOT of huge negatives (enough that I would never consider it) - but I'm still happy to hear what you like about it!

Better cpu and more pixels per eye would be the improvements that stood out to me. (Lack of display-per-eye might net out to neutral or even negative on the display though, especially if your IPD is not in one of the sweet spots).

Also the display moved from OLED to LCD, which is going make darker scenes a bit harder. Wonder if they will move the UI to a lighter scheme to compensate?

Re: Oculus Quest 2

#435

Post by someperson » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:19 AM UTC

amansidhant wrote: post #427

someperson wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point it's clear that Facebook have "won" VR. At least for the current generation that's mostly focused on gaming. The original Oculus Quest is already really good, and was constantly sold out for almost its entire lifetime, and now Facebook are selling a near-4K resolution headset with a top-of-the-line Snapdragon XR2 for $299. I have been considering starting an open firmware project for the Oculus Quest 2…

Interested! I’m really passionate about VR/AR and would love to work on something in the space. Currently an undergrad. How can I contact you?

I already have a decent amount of experience with Linux internals, but my next project is far less ambitious in scope: simply reverse-engineering the Android-based firmware on a Huawei router and creating a drop-in replacement.

There is a lot of foundational hacking to be done around the Oculus standalone headsets. I don't believe the headsets have yet been cracked to unlock the bootloader to launch unsigned firmware.

It's probably worth moving discussion over to a forum and Wiki dedicated to such reverse engineering efforts (such as XDA developers) [1]

I do think that now is the time for such a project, and that crowdfunding has changed the economics to make this possible in a way that it never has been before.

[1] https://forum.xda-developers.com/mobile-vr/oculus-quest

Re: Oculus Quest 2

#436

Post by ipsum2 » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:22 AM UTC

devwastaken wrote: post #350

ipsum2 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried the Quest? I've owned many different VR headsets in the past, the Quest is pretty fantastic. "can't do VR titles" is such an exaggeration it doesn't make sense.

I develop avatars for the Quest in VRChat. The Quest is using very underwhelming hardware compared to PC, as it can only handle very strict standards, such as 10,000 Polygons to a character. While PC can handle significantly more. As a quest user in vrchat you're significantly limited on your experience because your hardare cannot handle anything more than the bare minimum of avatars. We don't consider it a real VR e…

Agreed - VRChat is very limited in Quest. But that might be the fault of the app, not the platform. Rec Room works pretty well, basically the same experience on Quest and desktop.

Re: Oculus Quest 2

#437

Post by ghostpepper » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:39 AM UTC

someperson wrote: post #419

cwhiz wrote: post #404

Please, anyone, desperately anyone, literally anyone, please, for the love of god, make a competing headset that doesn’t have this deep Facebook integration bullshit. I do not want to see this become the Oasis.

At this point it's clear that Facebook have "won" VR. At least for the current generation that's mostly focused on gaming. The original Oculus Quest is already really good, and was constantly sold out for almost its entire lifetime, and now Facebook are selling a near-4K resolution headset with a top-of-the-line Snapdragon XR2 for $299. I have been considering starting an open firmware project for the Oculus Quest 2…

Why do you think the bulk of the Oculus innovation is deep in the stack? Is there much custom hardware in the Quest 2 or is it similar to a phone in a different form factor?

How much of the accuracy of the sensor fusion algorithm comes from the inherent accuracy/calibration of the underlying sensors?

Has anyone tried bringing up a stock android distribution on the Quest 2?

Re: Oculus Quest 2

#438

Post by arsome » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:41 AM UTC

msie wrote: post #414

tomc1985 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Valve Index?

Don’t bet on Valve. They don’t have a killer business instinct. They take their sweet time to get anything done. Plus their Steam machine “console” idea was crap, anyone could see that from day one.

My understanding is Steam machines weren't so much meant to be a console competitor or even a gaming PC competitor, they were meant to be a Windows competitor. So that Valve could basically just say "we'll start releasing exclusives for this" if Microsoft pushed the Windows Store hard and tried to kick Valve out of their dominant market position. Steam machines bought them a bit of leverage when they needed it.

Re: Oculus Quest 2

#439

Post by phaus » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:45 AM UTC

na85 wrote: post #423

rektide wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how shortsighted & wrong one smarmy glib post can be. Valve is kicking ass, leading massive technical charged doing great & fantastic work with none of the typical Service-as-a-Software-Substitute slimeware that everyone else keeps falling to. Great novel hardware with very high bandwidth & compelling input, best if not only useful end user drivers out there as we see with projects like Monado XR that ar…

That's an interesting take. I don't follow the VR market at all, but from my perspective Valve has been resting on their laurels for years. I've read that gaben just sits in his office playing DOTA 2 all day. Until I read your comment I would never have considered describing Valve as "kicking ass". From where I sit they've basically done nothing innovative since Half Life 2.

>Valve has been resting on their laurels for years.

They aren't just a game development company anymore. Their primary product is Steam. If Half-Life Alyx was playable on any PC or console it would have been one of the best selling games of the year. Its only a niche product because, instead of resting on their laurels, they are trying to drive the industry forward.

Not only did they make the Index, which is by far the best VR Headset yet, they also supposedly helped HP develop the Reverb G2 that's coming out soon.

GabeN likes playing Dota but the idea that he sits around all day playing videogames when he's been building, improving, and expanding a billion dollar gaming empire is ridiculous.

There's also the massive progress towards making Linux a viable gaming platform. Really the only thing keeping me on Windows on my gaming system is the fact that most competitive multiplayer games' anti-cheat software can't run on Linux yet. If I played mostly single player games or casual multiplayer I could play almost everything I want to on Linux.

IMO they are plenty innovative. I wish they released more games, but aside from gaming they are doing a lot of great things for the gaming community.

Re: Oculus Quest 2

#440

Post by knodi123 » Thu, Sep 17, 2020, 4:54 AM UTC

Jonanin wrote: post #348

theptip wrote: post #340

Getting torn to shreds in the Ars Technica review: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/09/review-we-do-not-reco... Even excluding the hard requirement on a Facebook account it seems there were a lot of compromises made to get the price down.

There is something odd about this Ars review. It’s not the normal high quality review I expect from them. There is a lot of subjectivity and plain wrong things stated (like less IR sensors in the controller). The only legit criticisms I picked up are the IPD adjustment and the FB requirement.

They clarified the IR thing was something they were told, but which they later tested and found not to be the case. /shrug