You're missing out, Quest 2 was one of the best purchases I've made in the last year.
I also don't think VR is good enough to be worth investing $1k+ into a VR headset like Vive. $300 seemed like a very high return on investment for what I got. Not sure about $400 since I already have one but I'd probably still do it.
I also made a fake, empty Facebook account to use the Oculus store, so I don't feel like it's a privacy invasion.
>I also made a fake, empty Facebook account to use the Oculus store, so I don't feel like it's a privacy invasion.
You're kidding yourself with that. You gave Facebook literal eyes into your home through an internet connected device. If you don't think Facebook know who you are I have some coins I'd like to sell you.
I talked to someone who used to be at Facebook's reality lab and they said they have very VERY strict controls on user data and no one just has remote access through Oculus cameras including devs but reputation is hard to shake when tied to a company like Facebook.
That developers not having access is likely. Still there certainly is different data analytics running over it to identify what works and what ads to sell where. Also there mere fact that the data exists can lead to some (ab)use sometime in future. Even if I were to trust Mark Zuckerberg (which I don't, but for arguemnt's sake) this won't give me trust in a successor.
What data are you talking about that's being released from someone who never uses Facebook besides playing Quest 2 once in a while? My location and game preferences? A video/audio of my empty room while I play a game by myself?
Oh I’m sure they do. I’m sure Facebook cares deeply about your data and they absolutely would not ever lose it or accidentally give it away.
They definitely don’t see the VR devices as a gateway to another frontier on data collection. That’s why they paid billions for Oculus and then spent billions to sell the Quest devices at a loss.
Ignore the fact that one of basic features of the Quest is to scan your room and build a play area. Just give FB a burner account and you’re set they definitely won’t be able to tie that data together it’s not like they built their entire business around doing that.
This is such a weirdly aggressive comment. I'm not saying you have to trust Facebook but there are much better ways to shake Oculus users down for money than risk getting caught watching people on the toilet through their VR cameras.
Why are you imagining petty voyeurism? I'm imagining more like "scan the room for products recently purchased at non-amazon retailers" or "identify how many worker-consumers are in the room and how engaged they are with The Product"
I bought all of those products with credit cards, usually on Amazon. I highly doubt that's useful information for FB to mine (and it would destroy their product line if it came out they were doing that).
I just made a mental list of all of the items in my office room where I use Quest and the face I own a Macbook and some high end speakers/chair/desk/monitor and an iPhone is really not that interesting to anyone.
I'm way more concerned by my mobile phone or browser where I actual engage with personal information.
Petty voyeurism will happen (we've seen enough stories about this with Amazon Alexa) but I agree that's nowhere near the main problem with this kind of technology.
You really think Zuck couldn't phone up a random SDE and ask them for a direct feed into a random users home? Sor..sorr..sorry Zuck I can't break policy, even for you the president of Hawaii.
Not to mention they can now Id you based off your retina scan. They can also profile your house and products you use in your house. Facebook is reckless with data. Just read up on the Cambridge Analytica scandal. They were even sharing facebook messenger conversations with third party data consumers.
I presume you're not aware of Facebook's research into eye tracking for VR. It goes a lot further than just identity. I believe their main interest is gauging emotional response for better targeted advertising.
If you look at the original FT article which covered the patents that caused the whole stir [1] (paywalled but I found it in the usual places) you'll see that their patents only cover using eye tracking to render media. A comment in FT's interview with Clegg discusses using eye tracking to see if an advertisement was looked at, like how JS is used to track whether an ad was viewed now. "Gauging emotional response" is really, really stretching it. Meta does enough garbage today, let's not foment conspiracy here.
The comment I responded to just happened to be the one which made me wonder how far off the dystopian future was where mega corporations are scanning people's eyes, which is why I went and searched the internet for information and found that that future is actually very close. This made me a bit worried. Therefore I mentioned that piece of information here, hoping that it might reach someone in a position to change that future.
>Facebook is reckless with data. Just read up on the Cambridge Analytica scandal. They were even sharing facebook messenger conversations with third party data consumers.
I did, and it says that they gave message access to users that authorized it to. Saying "Facebook is reckless with data" because of this makes as much sense as saying that google is "reckless" with your data because people are constantly downloading shady flashlight apps and granting them location permissions.
What is the threat model exactly? That someone will have access to Facebook's entire credit card DB to connect a random email to my real identity AND be able to hijack the cameras/microphone to spy on me? So basically a nation state or Facebook? I can't see a private hacker getting that sort of access nor bother to get me.
I use it maybe an hour or two a week now (used to be way higher) and when I'm not using it it sits in a case in a closet. I dont see any value of getting images of my office and audio of an empty room.
I'm really struggling to see how this affects my privacy. I dont even play multiplayer games where I'm ever talking.
My Quest 2 runs glorified arcade games with 20 year-old graphics. What games are you playing that you enjoy for more than 5 minutes? Beat saber and VR-Chat bore me to death.
Demeo and Echo Arena are great if you have friends that also have a Quest 2 you can play with. I'm past the age where I want want to risk the enjoyment of my limited gaming time to the random match maker gods.
Assume you mean Echo VR. Fantastic game! I agree that playing with random people can be a downer, so I've "friended" several people who are competent players and not annoying. One likes to play private matches with 10 known "adults" and it's amazing.
It's not all about graphics, it's about gameplay, cooperation, competition and good sportsmanship with some friendly ribbing. I've got more than 2K matches in and still play a couple times a week until the battery dies.
If you have the money, an index is the true experience. Quest gives me headaches and lenses have terrible godrays. You can't match eye spacing properly on quest, and it's software is junk. The UI hitches and causes nausea. Sometimes refuses to display menus or setup boundary properly and just sits there until I factory restore the headset.
Secondary FB accounts can be banned for not being the "real person" btw.
Yes you can use a Virtual desktop and connect via usb-c.
I purchased a streaming VR service and played games on Steam not available on Oculus store using my Quest 2. Greatly expanding the number of games you can play.
I bought the Quest 1 for $500, and I thought it was a good buy even then. $400 for the Quest 2 is still a steal, honestly.
And I have a PC that can handle VR games (and you can use the Quest 1 or 2 as basically a PC VR headset if you want). But it’s just so much less hassle to use the native Quest.
The main use of the Quest is still to play beatsaber tho LOL.
For me it isn't even so much about the privacy invasion or having to have a Facebook account, it's being locked into one store. PCVR doesn't have that problem.
Sure, with some hackery. I'd rather pay for something that doesn't require me to work around it like that. Why pay for this in-headset computer if I'm not using it?
> I also made a fake, empty Facebook account to use the Oculus store
If this isn't your main account, then this is a violation of the ToS and Meta/FB can (and in many cases, have) ban you and remove access to everything you bought at the drop of a hat.
If it is your main account, then you should assume that they are linking all of your VR data in the backend with whatever shadow profiles they have generated for you from other sources.
I bought a Quest 2 last winter, used it a lot for the first two weeks, and then it sat unused for nearly a month. Thanks to Amazon's lengthy return policy during Christmas I got a full refund. Like with 3D in movies, I didn't find 3D in games compelling. I really expected to like Beat Saber but the music didn't appeal to me and so many of the custom songs were just so poorly done.
I also don't think VR is good enough to be worth investing $1k+ into a VR headset like Vive. $300 seemed like a very high return on investment for what I got. Not sure about $400 since I already have one but I'd probably still do it.
I also made a fake, empty Facebook account to use the Oculus store, so I don't feel like it's a privacy invasion.