471–480 of 591 posts
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.
So in other words... please invest billions of dollars developing a headset of similar quality so I don't have to log in with Facebook?
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.
> Even worse, if someone "near" you in an official Facebook VR space blocks or reports a user, even if you're just minding your own business, your behavior (including motions and speech) may be tracked by these same silent, invisible Facebook moderators. That data can be stored on Facebook's servers indefinitely without you being notified. Yikes
China's social credit system will need to keep pace or be horribly left behind.
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$300 is what I paid for my Windows Mixed Reality headset, which is also inside out tracking. Works phenomenally well with Half Life Alyx. But I do agree that it seems like a killer value - I'll probably preorder one!
yeah but WMR requires a PC. Quest is an all in one device that you just turn on and put on your head.
I get it Facebook, you want me to buy one for each of my kids. That's not going to happen, so all you're doing is annoying me. :/
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…
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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?
Google and HTC both independently failed to match Oculus. I don’t think an open source implementation at this stage would work at all.
Or do you believe standalone VR headsets are doomed to being closed forever?
It does suprise me that Google effectively gave up investment in VR and effectively handed the entire industry to Facebook. Though Microsoft's efforts with Windows Mixed Reality headsets haven't made a splash at all (except maybe the HP Reverb G2).
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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…
> At this point it's clear that Facebook have "won" VR. Eh, it doesn't look clear at all to me. It looks like its main advantage is slightly higher resolution than Valve Index and wirelessness. On the other hand from what I read Quest 2 only now will finally get 90Hz - this is what even old Vive provided. And Index goes beyond that - up to 120 and 144Hz. Also I wonder how Quest's screen quality compares to Index, bes…
All that really means is you have enough disposable income that it's actually a decision worth even considering. For most people it's aimed at that's not the case.
This isn't Gmail for free vs some paid service for $5/mo, this is more than three times the cost for something that already costs multiple hundreds of dollars.
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If you're going to ignore 2X the price, why not compare to Pimax 8K?
Maybe I should! I didn't know about the Pimax 8K. Will all of these have access to the same software titles, or are they built on closed or incompatible software ecosystems?
e: TIL, WMR as platform do have support for SteamVR headsets https://store.steampowered.com/app/719950/Windows_Mixed_Real...
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…
I've thought a little on this as well, from time to time. Hardware-wise, I don't see how the Quest 1/Lenovo Mirage Solo/Vive Focus were anything much more than Qualcomm's reference design headset (https://developer.qualcomm.com/hardware/snapdragon-835-vr-de...). Different strap designs, minor variations on display modules, removing ancillary stuff like the cellular radio and GPS, but otherwise the same CPU, same GPU, largely the same cameras.
With the Quest 2 running the Snapdragon XR2, a lot of the basic features of 6-DOF VR, with controllers/passthrough/voice control/etc, could be running straight on chip. (https://www.thundercomm.com/app_en/product/1584417287281447)
Qualcomm provides an SDK for VR on their hardware that touts all the things Facebook has always claimed were their own big innovations, like asynchronous time warp and lens corrections (https://developer.qualcomm.com/software/snapdragon-vr-sdk)
I can't find the link right now, but Qualcomm/Thundercomm are also providing a base Android image specifically for use in VR. Which is probably why you can build and install regular ol' Android APKs on all of these headsets and they map the controller to mouse actions.
My point is, I am starting to doubt Facebook has all that much "special sauce". I think it's mostly just marketing. I think Qualcomm has done the hard work here and is happy to let other companies take the credit because Qualcomm is about chip licenses, not consumer electronics. Other than tuning parameters for camera positions, there should be no reason why the OS image for any one of these headsets to run on any other one.
I think it's doable. I think you could probably root the firmware and get an open source OS running on any one of these headsets. And it'd also breath new life into systems whose creators basically got bored with not making a billion dollars overnight.
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What about Valve Index?
It costs 3 times as much and is tethered. Price aside, tethered is a different market. I like powering VR with a gaming PC, but a standalone headset with inside-out tracking like the Quest is where the mass market / oasis will be.