
Oculus Rift exclusivity protection leads to a VR piracy arms race - parenthephobia
http://arstechnica.co.uk/gaming/2016/05/oculus-vive-vr-exclusivity-piracy-arms-race-revive/
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joeevans1000
I am definitely holding out for HTC Vive, just on principle. It became much
easier a decision when I checked out their amazing demo. I'm pretty sure
Oculus will fall far behind in the race after an initial and short lived
period of appearing to win the VR race. Facebook isn't a VR company. No VR
product will do well with something like Facebook trying to contort and
leverage it to a completely different purpose.

~~~
fossuser
My initial experience setting up the Vive as been disappointing.

\- The software crashed several times

\- There was no audio and then randomly there was audio (without me changing
things)

\- I had to go buy two giant six foot tripods for the motion sensors

\- There are several large wires coming off the headset which plug into a box
which plugs into the PC

\- The HDMI cable is extremely short (and a longer one can cause issues).

\- The Steam GPU test said my GTX480 could run it at high quality (which
surprised me, but it ran the test fine)

\- The display never turned on (just remained black) while it was tracking
correctly on screen

\- The first few attempts it didn't even show up on screen, just kept
crashing.

I troubleshooted the thing for two days and gave up assuming I need to buy a
better PC (I'm assuming their test is busted). I think Oculus and Palmer
Luckey/Carmack have put a lot more effort into shipping a product that
actually works.

I'm more willing to hack something to work than most people and this was still
a pain/mess of wires.

~~~
shazow
Coming from Linux/Mac the last >decade, using Windows again has been
disappointing. Many of these software issues are because of Windows 10 more
than anything. My USB randomly dies, my own USB DAC randomly gets shuffled
around with the Vive DAC so the mics get swapped or don't work at all, it
crashes/bluescreens, it installs massive updates totally saturating my
internet without any way to pause them, it constantly asks me to fill out
surveys. I could go on.

Honestly I can't even blame Valve/HTC for this, I only blame them for not
launching with SteamOS support on "Day 1" as they said. Any day now...
(mumbles stuff about Valve Time.)

As for the rest, unfortunately that's the best of breed right now. Oculus is
no different. Yes, there are wires (precisely one triple wire from the
headset). Yes, you need the tracking sensors (on the bright side, Lighthouse
wires only run to the AC outlet rather than your PC). Yes, you need a high-end
videocard. When you're extending your HDMI cable, make sure to get an active
HDMI cable rather than a passive one. People have extended theirs by over 50ft
with no issues.

I'm assuming you haven't gotten your Rift yet (otherwise most of these
wouldn't be a surprise). Hope it's a better experience for you! I'd upgrade
the videocard while you wait, though. :)

~~~
dogma1138
Sounds like you are you are running out of USB resources it's your hardware
not the OS. Try disabling XHCI this happens quite often when you have allot of
USB 2.0 devices plugged in into USB 3.0 only chipset. Balancing them out
between the chipsets that provide the USB ports (most motherboards have 2-3
additional USB hosts besides the PCH) can also sometimes solve it. A better
solution is usually bundling the non-USB 3.0 devices on a dedicated hub.

~~~
shazow
I don't have that many devices: The Vive, an audio DAC, a keyboard, mouse, and
a wifi stick. The motherboard is solid (Asus Z170-A). I tried moving various
devices between different kinds of ports (2.0, 3.0, 3.1) and front vs back,
not much difference. Many of the issues happen whether the Vive is plugged in
or not.

I think it's a driver issue. Part of the problem I noticed (before I got the
Vive) is that the keyboard is also a USB hub and sometimes the machine
completely locks up if I try to use it before Windows is fully booted.

Another issue I ran into is when I installed the Vive bluetooth driver, the
Vive HMD camera stopped working (also runs over the USB hub). I've read a few
other threads where people ran into this issue. Weeeee.

~~~
dogma1138
That's enough if you have 2-3 USB 2.0 devices on a USB 3.0 only host it's
enough to screw it up. I got a few ASUS mobo's that all have the same issues.

If you have USB2.0 breakout ports use them for the legacy devices, if not use
a good USB hub.

~~~
shazow
Hrm, I'll try reshuffling a few more times. Thanks for the suggestion.

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TrevorJ
Sure didn't take Facebook long to exert it's walled-garden protectionism on
Occulus.

VR is a _format_ not a platform. This move by Occulus is really shortsighted.

~~~
nathanasmith
Pardon me but I see it as a glorified monitor/input device. I do realize there
is a qualitative difference but the point is, neither the monitor or the mouse
I currently use have any exclusive titles and I would be hard pressed to pay
$600 for the privilege. So, Vive it is, assuming they don't pull this mess.

~~~
TrevorJ
That's also a fantastic point.

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angersock

      At the time, Oculus said the update wasn't targeted at the workaround, and was instead trying "to curb piracy and protect games and apps that developers have worked so hard to make.
    

_Curbing piracy_ is not their fucking job. Their job is to provide a piece of
hardware that I, a developer, can talk to over APIs to show the user running
my code _stuff_. Their job is making hardware at a price point that covers
their staff growth and innovation while shipping as many units as possible.
Their job is making sure that users don't get sick using their hardware.

This kind of shitty heavy-handed behavior is what is slowing down AR and VR
tremendously. This nascent industry needs to return to its hobbyist roots--
there isn't even a golden goose worth killing yet. Jesus fuck.

~~~
SquareWheel
Not that I'm very happy with Oculus right now, but:

>Curbing piracy is not their fucking job.

Of course it is. Oculus Home is a storefront. They sell games and piracy cuts
into that business. It's no different than Steam using DRM.

>This kind of shitty heavy-handed behavior is what is slowing down AR and VR
tremendously.

Maybe, but VR wouldn't be here in 2016 if Oculus hadn't kicked off the whole
thing. They hired the talent, drummed up the interest, and set the best
practices. But now we have three strong competitors (Oculus, Valve and Sony)
releasing VR headsets. That's far better than the alternative.

I'm not trying to be an apologist here, but you need to keep perspective on
this.

~~~
kotarou
They really did do a spectacular job in bring VR back into the public
conciousness after the... failures of the 90's, and full kudos for that.

As a researcher (visual discomfort / simulator sickness), sometimes I just
want to replicate an issue I am seeing in one application on another headset:
controlling applications to only work on your HMD is a serious impediment to
this and makes my work way harder than it needs be!

Curbing piracy is fine, but with heavier solutions like this, everyone loses
in the end.

~~~
SquareWheel
I don't disagree! I was disappointed by the Facebook buyout, but this update
really hurt my opinion of Oculus as a company. I hope they rectify it.

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vanattab
Does anyone have experience with open source vr (OSVR)? I think it is being
developed by the gaming peripheral company Razer. It's $299 and I was
wondering how it stacked up to the other offerings.

[http://www.osvr.org/](http://www.osvr.org/)

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dreamsofdragons
I was really struggling, trying to figure out which headset to get. They just
decided for me.

~~~
qrendel
Same. Just canceled my preorder, though this was less of a factor than
Facebook's invasive privacy policy and the shipping delays that favored
retailers over day-one (even hour-one) preorder customers. Straw that finally
broke the camel's back.

I know it's somewhat naive to say in the days of Windows 10 and such, but if
they're going to make money selling hardware, _sell hardware_. I'm not paying
$600 to be some digital serf while they track my eyeball movements and sell
the data to anyone willing to pay. But even then, had they just shipped
without a 3+ month delay, they'd already have my money, rather than my enmity.

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Animats
_" The majority of these games would not even exist were we (Oculus) not
funding them."_

Bad sign. Usually, game platform vendors don't have to pay developers to use
their platform. When they do, it usually means the platform is in trouble.
Microsoft tried paying developers to develop for their phone, but it didn't
help.[1]

[1] [http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-pay-
out-100000-get-d...](http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-pay-
out-100000-get-developers-coding-windows-phone)

~~~
theresistor
Not true at all. Both MS and Sony pay developers to target their console
platforms, especially for launch titles.

~~~
dogma1138
Unless they publish them they don't pay them directly, they do give them very
favorable terms.

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kotarou
The lab I am working in has a Vive instead of a Oculus, and I am glad for it
now. The headset is better, the demos are better and I don't have to deal with
constant interoperability issues.

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Jach
Any bets on whether Carmack will stick around much longer? Will he finish and
release his Racket code before leaving? Will he go back to id, start a new
company, or take up Musk's offer to work on rockets again? I can't imagine
this sits well with him...

~~~
cm3
If John hasn't changed and Oculus is true to their intention of why and how
they brought him onboard (or how the public has been told), I sure hope John's
voice would be instrumental in resolving this debacle quickly.

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andymoe
I'm not saying it's the right thing but I'm also not shocked they have done
this. If you read (even the summary) of the OVR SDK they are super super clear
about them not wanting you to use it on Non-Oculus hardware.

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userbinator
_potentially opening VR software up to piracy as well as hardware freedom._

You can clearly see the bias in this phrasing, because it could also be
written with more emphasis on the freedom part:

"opening VR software up to hardware freedom as well as potentially piracy"

~~~
djrogers
To be fair, the potential for piracy is the _news_ part of this story, as the
previous hacks already provided hardware freedom. It's entirely legitimate for
Ars to phrase it the way they did without any bias being present.

