This is the problem with devices that rely on cloud servers to operate. They can cut you off as they see fit. They also leave the cutting of to an algorithm and don't care about the few edge cases where they ban the wrong people. Because that improves their bottom line.
Tying hardware to 'the cloud' is one thing. But tying it to social media accounts is far worse.
You shouldn't be getting banned from VR gaming due (including offline single-player games) due to a completely unrelated drunken political rant on social media.
> You shouldn't be getting banned from VR gaming due (including offline single-player games) due to a completely unrelated drunken political rant on social media.
Have you stopped to consider that might very well be the goal? It’s like an abusive relationship.
Act out, make our jobs hard & that stupid camera you call your parents on is toast!
Act out & your VR headset is toast!
Act out & I won’t let you talk to your family and friends on WhatsApp!
Yeah; I was contemplating getting a Quest 2 a while ago, since it hits a sweet spot of being a standalone headset, while also being able to be connected to the PC for greater fidelity (which will be important when my living arrangements change and I can get a tower PC)...but seeing reports like this was a showstopper. I'll wait until I have the tower and just buy an Index.
From what I understand there's a not insignificant (but also potentially low enough to not matter to many) amount of extra latency when using it to display content rendered on an external PC.
There are streaming solutions that work well enough via the Internet.
The trick is that they basically render a skybox/sky-dome. If you turn (rotate) your head, that is computed locally, you just get shown a different part of the picture that's already on your device (if you turn too fast, you may get a black cut-off edge until the viewport is updated from the remote machine.
If you move (translate), it needs to re-render for paralax etc. and that's when you notice it and potentially get VR-sick. So games where you have to move your head a lot are probably not a good match, but e.g. Fallout works great.
If you augment your skybox with distance information, you can fake some of the parallax locally. Might be convincing enough for the split second needed?
I don't have an Oculus but have heard good things about it for VR. But I can't get one because my Facebook account was similarly shut down without explanation last year. Despite its age (15 years) I barely used it, let alone for anything "controversial", but did regularly log into it. I repeatedly tried to verify my identity by submitting an image of my driver's license, without any response.
I don't want to create a fake new Facebook account. I want my own back.
I share similar situasion with you, only they did respond after few weeks with we're too busy to verify your request, please submit again later. Nice facebook.
Have a similar problem but with my Facebook ad account. Didn't use it for sometime and when I went back to have a look at it, Facebook had disabled it and disabled my associated domain. I reached out to them to enable my account and they quoted the 180 day limit for appealing and said it would be better if I don't appeal further. The associated domain was disabled for not following community standards. Again I reached out to FB via the sharing debugger contact form and have received no response. The only thing I can see online is people crying about similar apathy and reaching out to a certain Karlin John who apparently is solving these issues. (I haven't reached out to this person, so could be a scam.)
What I have learnt is in a world run by monopolies/oligopolies there is little room for mistakes and even if you don't commit a mistake your livelihood can be at the mercy of corporations.
It’s specifically low cost infinite scaling SaaS where the product is sold for so little or nothing that any amount of customer service wipes out the entire business plan.
It is quite possible and a frequent point of speculation that the oculus hardware is sold at a loss. If they’re near the standard, they’ll take something like a 30% cut of app revenues. That $5-10 per title pays for everything, including some of the hardware and development and marketing, etc.
How much do you think a single support case costs? It could easily be the lifetime profit of a single average user.
You can still create a regular oculus account and it will continue to work until they fully transition to Facebook accounts, which I believe isn’t for several more years. It’s likely a new generation of the quest will have been released by then.
I know HN much desires to pile on the FB hate, but look. I read this subreddit daily and most people who have posted about a banned account have been able to get Oculus support to reinstate them after a few calls. These posts do not really come up that often for the number of people buying these things. There are other VR headset options if you don't like FB as a company and want a more open platform.
The issue is people bought it under the assumption they wouldn't need an account, then they forced an account. It's hard to see it as anything but criminal behavior
even if needing an account were acceptable, shutting down the account or preventing a device owner from using their device at all should be considered a warranty issue.
This is a half-truth. The Oculus 2 clearly states that it requires a FB account. It's printed in big words right on the box. Previous headsets will not require an account for awhile still. Though it is crappy they will eventually be required to have an account, the tech will be fairly obsolete by then anyway. Most modern consumer tech products do not exist separate from the company and are not "Buy it for life." There are other products from other companies for enthusiasts.
> Most modern consumer tech products do not exist separate from the company and are not "Buy it for life."
Oh? What products would those be? Glancing around, I've got mice, trackballs, keyboards, laptops, desktops, assorted Android phones and tablets, routers, switches, bluetooth speakers and headphones, some lights, a Nintendo Switch, and a Chromecast. Of those, only the Chromecast would be affected if the manufacturer disappeared tomorrow. The desktop is from 2011, and the laptops span ~5-10 years old, not one running the original OS (and many with hardware upgrades). The phones did require bootloader unlocking (kudos to Motorola for making this painless) and aftermarket ROMs to stay up to date, but even without that they'd work without needing any company help. Likewise I'll concede that some routers/switches are a pain (I was grumpy at the hoops I had to jump through to switch my Edgerouter to OpenWRT) but it's fine and again even the default options didn't require an online account or any service from the manufacturer. I don't think this is a foregone conclusion at all.
The real issue is thinking that is ok. Ownership has been degraded and devalued. There needs to be a new term that defines this new type of relationship between customers and corporations. And it should be illegal to call it ownership anymore on the basis of false advertising.
I think the term would be "as a service." And I am actually ok with that. There are lots of things I buy that are like that. You don't always need something physical and lasting to show for a purchase. I understand the Oculus business model and went in understanding it. I'm putting in an up-front cost and then future payments for content and I don't own the headset or the content in any kind of traditional sense. The closest analogue in this case is a digital vacation. I will have experiences and memories to show for it and a souvenir once the headset no longer has any functional value.
I am totally ok with it being regulated what could be called ownership. I think the crappiest thing about FB is that a whole lot of early adopters thought they were becoming owners and only later realized that they were renters. Legal action seems possible over this. I went in with clear expectations so I do not have the same complaint. I also recognize this is still an early product category and that I take certain consumer risks to experience the future today.
There would still be things to establish with regards to this new type of relationship.
Who is responsible for repairs? How about recycling? How about insurance? How about upgrades?
If as a customer I am no longer an owner of the device, I believe some of these should no longer be my responsability.
> Most modern consumer tech products do not exist separate from the company and are not "Buy it for life."
Adding a FB account dependency renders the device useless after the fact, for some owners. This seems like a violation of First Sale doctrine, and hopefully gets smacked down in court rather than accepted as a dystopian new reality.
Let's cool it with the hyperbole. Facebook is doing nothing but abiding by the terms that the buyer agreed to. You (and everyone else) can "punish" them by simply not buying their junk.
I purchased an Oculus Quest 2 yesterday actually from Best Buy. As an original Vive owner I'm astounded at how far VR has gotten for the price. Getting past the forced FB integration, the Quest is one of the best VR experiences I've had. The inside out tracking is nothing short of magical and using Virtual Desktop to stream PCVR wirelessly works so much better than I was anticipating.
I'm not a FB hater, and I think the social integrations could actually be very useful in the future - especially in a post covid world.
I’m also a fellow Vive Pro owner. What amazes me the most beyond the price is the convenience of a Quest. I just turn it on and play vs 1. Turning on the PC 2. Turning on my HTC base stations 3. Setting up wire control ie on the ceiling 4. Turning on the VR set
Sadly, the forced Facebook login sucks for a lot of people. I also don’t see any consumer benefit from it. A complaint I’m seeing is that everyone has to manually re-friend their Facebook friends for Oculus.
Please don't characterise this as "facebook hating". There is that. But this is not that. This is people more than happy to open a Facebook account, getting banned after doing literally nothing with that account, and have no recourse at all.
If you believe OP of being honest about that. Personally I don't, any time there are posts online complaining about being banned there's always some real underlying reason.
Either way it shouldn't matter. If someone is being an ass or cheating online, maybe that's grounds for multiplayer banning, like with valve, but not for a complete shutoff. Watching youtube videos or playing beat saber by yourself doesn't let your toxicity spread to others. Same with potential payment fraud even, just don't let them buy online anymore.
It should also be up to the developers of apps. Some may not care (ex: beat saber), or someone just want an ability to ban from their app specifically for bad behavior in their app, or have cool off periods instead of perma bans or whatever else.
Yeah I don't disagree with you. I just find it hard to have an honest/open discussion when the starting point is a claim without proof that "I didn't do anything", because in my past experience, every time proof has surfaced in cases like these, they definitely did do something and it completely changes the perspective.
Your sample size is guaranteed to be too small to matter. You can say, "I am cynical about individual reports, and naive about Facebook, so I automatically believe the latter over the former" just as some will do the reverse. But there's no point pretending individual experience matters here.
As someone else in the OP’s position (locked out of the Facebook account linked to my Quest), it is supremely frustrating to see your comment dismissing this situation out of hand.
Let me clarify. I also think it's stupid and fraudulent that you should be banned from using your Oculus because your Facebook account is locked. I just find it hard to believe that Facebook accounts get locked for no reason whatsoever.
Why? I think it is very plausible that a large part of this is automated. Combine that with a real name policy and false positives sound not that unlikely.
One potentially error-prone part of moderating any site with community content is handling users evading bans by creating new accounts. If you don't have any mechanism to prevent that, you have a much larger amount of offensive or troll posts, and react slower because you don't have the history of the user because you treat each account as a different person. But any mechanism trying to detect if a new user is potentially a sock puppet of a troublemaker is acting on rather few bits of information. So false positives are not that unlikely.
I'm sure there are reasons. It's just that Facebook's reasons might not sound reasonable to everyone else, and it could be as simple as a login from an IP associated with fraudulent behaviour caused by someone else at the same ISP. Carrier-grade NAT is funny that way.
Amazing how Facebook is killing the most capable VR hardware on the market. After reading things like this, who would want to gamble on an Oculus headset?
I think Facebook's are objectively more onerous here. Creating another account violates their ToS. You can't buy physical copies of games for their headset. You can't play any of the games you purchased, even in an offline mode, if your account is deleted. You must tie your account to your real identity. It just all seems excessive
The one-account-only rule is horible treatment of users. What's wrong with having multiple online persona's? Using them avoids the conflicting roles of being a career professional, a parent and also politically active.
With multiple account the FB could still mine your data and show personalized ads. Still they insist on single account backed with real ID. This shows some deeply ingrained totalitarian ambitions. Luckily I still have my Oculus account so I can still enjoy Quest 1 without FB BS.
Most consumers don't care. Mom buying a Quest for her son won't care. Neither will majority of younger players. This is a case of small but loud group of people standing up against it.
Most don't but this endlessly being brought up in every comment section outside of supportive communities and then even there sometimes must hurt to some extent.
That's a whole lot of people doing anti-marketing screaming "don't buy!" for years to come.
Maybe it will not be enough to offset their gains and change course or see it as a mistake.
But enough for it to matter still? Probably.
Hell they might even spend time and money trying to salvage reputation even if they got gains hurting it in the same way that microsoft tries to paint itself as an ally of open source.
VR is a investment for the future for Facebook. It's likely that they are operating with losses at the moment, price point where they are offering Quest 2 is much lower than most other VR headsets. I am sure that the criticism is not helping at this moment, but it's unlikely that it will affect their bottom line in 5 or 10 years time.
I've mentioned here before I got rid of my Facebook account for my mental health. Silly reason or not, it's done, and I have no desire to go back.
I also really like my Oculus. It's helped me escape a bit, and gotten me moving around more. It's a fantastic little device. I'm not looking forward to the day it becomes a paper weight.
The only positive in all of this is I've started upgrading my PC to get it to the point where it can play VR games, and deciding which VR rig I want to go with. It won't be as great as the Oculus, even if the tech is better, since I love the untethered nature of the Oculus, but a cable-tether is worlds better than a Facebook-tether, at least to me.
I have the original (wired) Vive and I upgraded it with a wireless adapter not a month ago. It was trivial to do, the software worked on the first try and it was overall a very nice experience. It also improved the gameplay dramatically.
yeah, facebook is the only thing preventing me from buying an occulus. I have a VR ready pc, but there is no alternative to the quest / quest 2 in that price range.
the vive / valve’s headset all cost in the 1k and adding 349 to that is not appealing to get a heavier setup.
You probably have a Quest 1. The Quest 2 shipped in October, and apparently requires a Facebook account instead of an Oculus account. In the future, all remaining Oculus accounts will be forced to move to Facebook.
There was a small window where early Quest 2 purchases before October or whatever are able to keep their oculus accounts. My friend has one without needing a facebook.
As others mentioned, new customers now can only use Facebook.
I'm in the same boat you are, but:
> If you choose to continue using your Oculus account, you’ll be covered by our updated Oculus Terms of Service and Oculus Privacy Policy, which we previewed last month. After January 1, 2023, we will end support for Oculus accounts
That boat will finally arrive at Facebook in two years. Two years is a long time for a bit of tech, but for me, the bigger deal is any money I've sunk into the Oculus ecosystem will go up in smoke then.
That was the primary reason I started gaming mostly on Steam via Rift, and am looking to replace the headset completely now.
(Helping this decision were things like downloading custom songs in Beat Saber is just easier on the desktop.)
Is the Valve Index ever going to come out with a wireless solution? I feel like wireless is a VR game-changer but I am not 100% sure about upgrading my Vive Pro to a Vive Cosmos and adding the wireless adapter and card, due to expense, and also, wanting to try something different
It really feels like Facebook is making a mistake here. Most people who are into VR are relatively tech savvy and probably not that keen on being forced to tether to Facebook as a company. I don't think you'll be alone in your decision to look at other VR solutions.
It's a shame because I wanted to get into VR at the beginning of lockdown and everything I've read about Oculus seemed positive except the facebook account.
One of the most frustrating things about mega corps like Facebook is that it’s really easy for them to make dumb decisions and just keep going. They’re too large for anything but the biggest mistakes to bring market pressure to bear.
The literal worst case here for FB is that a few people don’t buy a Quest II, which isn’t even core to their business success.
Well, it ostensibly hurts the entire Oculus line, not just the Quest 2.
And, while it's not core to their current business success, it was intended as a strategic decision, to have a path into VR social networks, I suspect. But I can easily see short term business decisions and priorities dominating that consideration, yes. Businesses are not know known for their long term planning skills.
Recently tried to delete multiple old accounts on FB and they have this thing where they lock your account and won't allow you to do anything until you verify yourself through identification.
I've decided to just leave them "open" forever instead of giving them my info.
> I also really like my Oculus. It's helped me escape a bit, and gotten me moving around more.
I'm thinking about getting an Oculus for the same reason. What software would you recommend? Are there any good titles with just scenery (e.g. beach, mountain, etc.)? Are the YouTube VR channels any good? (I sure hope they don't get interrupted by 3d advertisements).
Google Earth VR is my recommendation to people just trying out VR for the first time. It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect, but somehow seeing where you grew up, or went to college, or whatever is just a great first experience for a lot of people.
Beyond that, there's an entire category of "Travel the World" apps out there. I'm a big fan of the Ocean ones, but look around in the category to see what sparks interest.
YouTube is also a great source of videos. I'm a fan of the "360 Walking Tours" of various cities. Even the ones of the city I live in are great, though I gravitate to the big bright cities like Tokyo and Hong Kong. And of course, there are plenty of more fast paced videos, like 360 videos from the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels that are pretty fun. Some performers are also have concerts (or even do live concerts) in 360 if that's your thing.
Beyond that, don't rule out the games. Aircar VR technically has goals, but it doesn't enforce them, and it's great fun to fly around a Blade Runner inspired world. Beyond that, some of the story games are really good. Ghost Giant is a fairly easy puzzle game, and while the story was a little saccharin for my tastes, it was really well done and fun.
Beyond that, a lot of my friends seem to love the Theater apps like BigScreen. This has never really worked for me, perhaps because I don't have lots of great memories of theaters for whatever reasons, but for those missing that side of life, it seems to be a good option. I got more out of the social side of that, but only when using it with friends, when entering the public rooms, it's too hit-or-miss if you get a griefer or not for my tastes.
And of course, I think there's a law that every VR owner tries out Beat Saber. I really like it, but beyond that, it's a great app to show off to friends, since it's trivial to get started in.
Of course, don't take my word for any of these, I recommend you dig into reviews and see what floats your boat.
- In games like BigScreen, I suppose you can't play your own .mp4/.mkv files? Or can you?
- To be honest, I mostly want to use Oculus to find a little bit of tranquility on top of a mountain or on a beach. Would it be worth it? Do you know of a more open product which can perhaps deliver the same experience, and also allows programming/hacking?
Never bothered me. I got used to the reduced field of view and such pretty quickly.
> - In games like BigScreen, I suppose you can't play your own .mp4/.mkv files? Or can you?
Yep, you absolutely can. I've pointed it at an SMB share I have for such things, but you can also load it up with videos on the deviec. It's a little annoying to deal with DTS, but once you put the random .so it needs to decode it on the device, the hard work is done.
> tranquility on top of a mountain or on a beach. Would it be worth it?
Personally, I think so. It's mostly what I used mine for. It might not literally be a beach or whatever, but I really like the more tranquil apps like the VR painting ones or whatever that let me zone out and ignore the world for a bit. Also, I forgot to mention Derail Valley. I have many hours in that game, which for me is mostly about enjoying the train rides as I move cargo around.
As for more open: I'm looking into the HP Reverb, but I'm not yet that familiar with the desktop side of things. Given some of the quality of apps available, I'm guessing the programming side is pretty easy. Getting 3rd party stuff on the Quest is a bit like an iOS device. You need a developer account, then you can sideload packages (or use "SideQuest" to act as a third party store). No clue what FB plans for that side of things, of course.
I strongly recommend the Index - it is much more pleasant to use, much more technically impressive, and doesn't require you to deal with artificially introduced bullshit like this!
Disagree, to me that's like saying PS5 has to match an iPhone 12. No, I'd say it's the other way around. Quest has a mobile GPU so it can't deliver the top VR experiences. That it's easier to use, no wires the same way an iPhone is easier than a PS5 might be true but I can't play PS5 AAA games on an iPhone and I can't play VR AAA games on a Quest
I got one to try to replace my Rift because of this FB account fiasco but sold it 2 days later as it was so disappointing. Horrible black levels, those horrible hovering headphones, also bad for porn since the controllers are not easy put on one handed.
Now hoping the HP Reverb G2 is the thing although HP has a horrible rep for being abusive to customers as well as waiting to see.
Audio-science time! (for a given amount of science in a field full of homeopathy): the headphones NOT touching the ears is important to preserve the feeling of sound coming from around your head (the outer ear shape is not compressed) instead of from withing your head.
Likely barred due to binding arbitration clauses. The upside of such is that Facebook has to pay the arbitration filing fees, so you can get a full refund for the device out of it (it's cheaper than paying for arbitration).
I don’t think click through tos are legal. It’s just convention to pretend they are real. The real world equivalent is a 15 page sign in a store that says “by entering this store you consent to our staff living on your couch”
From what I've heard, one big reason for the arbitration clauses is just so that the CEO won't get dragged off to small claims court all the time.
(Otherwise, you just need to convince a sympathetic judge that the CEO or some other senior official is important to the case, and they'd need to show up or risk contempt of court.
Not very likely for any individual case, but the chances add up with bigger numbers of claims.)
This can be as devastating class action law suit. If enough people start exercising their right to arbitration it can get VERY costly for Facebook.
I can’t find the story now, but there was a case in I think California of a company suing to get out of an arbitration clause, wanting instead to move to a class action lawsuit. Thousands of arbitrations became time consuming and costly. So I think there is still big potential for a coordinated effort to make this difficult for Facebook, even if a class action suite were off the table.
Is there anything unlawful about offering to cover legal fees for everyone wanting to pursue good-faith legal recourse (including arbitration) against a particular company?
For example, suppose I'm a mega-billionaire who simply finds Facebook's conduct abhorrent. So I offer to pay for the Binding Arbitration fees of every Facebook user who has a plausible claim against Facebook.
And would the legality of that change if I was majority stakeholder in one of Facebook's competitors?
The summary is DoorDash agreements with its dashers demanded arbitration, which costs both parties an amount, but thousands of dashers invoked the clause which cost DoorDash millions in fees.
DoorDash then tried to get out of it and opt-out or arbitration, but they couldn't.
There are companies out there willing to help with this. Mass arbitration, when actually -done- can quickly wind up more expensive for the company than a class action.
Uber and Lyft had their mass arbitrations handled by a specific law firm that deals with consumer as well as employee issues, perhaps they are worth reaching out to.
What I've found that works for this is getting a permalink (either through the option menu or via the comment timestamp). The direct comment link will show (some amount of) children, though if it goes too deep you'll have to repeat the process..
Hm, weird. I checked with FF private mode and on mobile (where I’m not logged in) and in both cases I could load more comments without nagging. Maybe uBlock Origin blocks the nag screen.
I like pre-recording hypotheses when these things happen. In this case, my top hypothesis is that the user picked a name that is common for online game communities (maybe something like xxHardcoreGamerGod420xx and extending to including slurs perhaps) which falls afoul of Facebook's Real Name Policy, causing them to shut off the account.
Interesting consequence of Facebook using a device account and is a social network identity.
> I like pre-recording hypotheses when these things happen
I wish this was compulsory before posting. So people actual have to think first. With the important bonus they will improve their critical thought and confidence.
It's the same old problem with getting only one side of the story. Omit a key detail or twist the facts in a slight arguable way and it can totally change things.
Having said that, I don't know that the above hypotheses are enough to matter. There's a difference between "de-platforming" people and destroying their property. Perhaps if the redditer is omitting the fact that there's a solution but they just don't like it (e.g. using their "real" account instead of this fake one that got suspended or something).
How hard would be to "simulate" a facebook account on your own? So that any crap like this get forwarded to your own personal "cloud" and be done with all the shenanigans.
Preemptive nitpicking "this is piracy" - no it isn't, it falls under "right to repair". Fight me!
With Ethereum 2.0 coming out, I wonder if one of the new XR2 devices coming out over the next few years might be able to support that. Because cryptocurrency payments is one of the things that can make platforms public and non-proprietary.
OK then sell it to somebody else. "Bricked" in my opinion means the device can never be made to function again. If you can reset it, it is not bricked.
You can resell the device (at a loss), but you will never recover the money spent on games and apps in the Oculus Store. In my case, hundreds of dollars spent in the years since the launch of the Rift CV1.
Demand that money back too. You paid for it, they deny you access to it. They should be obligated to pay your money back. Sue them in small claims court, raise a stink, and never do business with them again.
I see this a suggestion a lot and I can only assume the person making it hasn't been screwed by a company (sorry if you have, not trying to attack you). Unfortunately, the reality is that raising a stink won't do anything more than annoy the 1800 operators (if they don't have a button on their screen to give you what they want, it is impossible for them to do it for you, no matter how persuasive you are).
Suing in small claims court is a) a massive ordeal (even without the lawyers) and b) a permanent, public record that you can legally be discriminated against for
In my experience your only real recourse is a chargeback (which, to be fair, will almost always work), but that only is an option for a few months after your purchase.
It's supposed to be less complicated than bringing in lawyers but you still need to file everything, show up in a suit, and be prepared to argue your case. It isn't like you can just fill out a brief online form and get a refund. It's an all-day affair. Also most courts are only open during working hours, so you'll have to take time off, but there are exceptions to this.
I agree that chargebacks should be the first port of call here. My experience with that route has been great.
But small claims isn't as difficult as you make out, at least in the UK. In some areas there are specialist law firms who do all the work for you and will to take the case no win/no fee (but often they will take a share of any award as well as full court-awarded costs in return). Their entire business model is to make the process as pain-free as possible for you.
This works because some companies have a policy of ignoring and/or fobbing you off continually but will immediately settle when you issue proceedings against them because the cost to them of any outcome which involves going to court (win or lose) is higher than the cost of settling (eg Ryanair is pretty notorious for this).
I don't like Facebook but I don't think I would have a problem with creating a Facebook account for the device only (with an email address only for this device).
But what seems to be the main issue here is that it must be an active Facebook account.
I don't think any judge could call that a fair policy.
Usually, they instaban new users for suspicious activity if it is a brand new email and you dont put any information, and ask you for mobile number or ID Card. Don't try to do that.
I've spent a lot of time in the past being a moderator on a larger game system's forums - one that has a ban system. I've seen enough "I wasn't cheating and I got banned!" posts to be really doubtful of people claiming they got banned "for no reason at all"
That said, you should be able to do whatever you want OUTSIDE of your game or game environment, which is the main issue for me.
They simply deny services to new customers. You buy the headset, you can't use it until you register and sign in with FaceBook.
If you have an existing Oculus account, however, it is still valid for use until January 2023.
I've filed an FTC complaint, because we built an AR/VR research lab and invested heavily in Oculus, and it's not going to be usable in two years because our organizational policies prohibit registering Facebook accounts on behalf of the organization. If this had been a requirement prior to our buy-in to Oculus, we would have chosen a different platform.
Jailbreaks are in the works to bypass the Facebook requirement but aren't yet public. This will likely lead to permanent account bans, since like with Wii, the ability to sideload largely is used to run apps customers did not purchase from their store.
From that discussion, it seems Facebook is deeply contradicting itself. On the one hand, it requires people to have a Facebook account to use the Oculus Quest 2, on the other hand, it considers inactive Facebook accounts to be fake and bans them.
So everybody who buys a Quest has to create a Facebook account, which subsequently gets banned for inactivity. To be able to use a Quest, you actually need to be active on Facebook.
Basically only buy a Quest if you really like Facebook.
I'm not active at all on Facebook itself - checking now, my last post was >18 months ago, and and other interactions (likes, comments, etc) even longer. But I leverage Messenger for a few contacts that prefer it, and that Messenger use seems to be sufficient to ward off the inactivity trigger.
I'm surprised they don't just treat the Oculus usage similarly, and count that usage as "activity" in the context of considering an account active/inactive.
Old accounts seems to be immune to this, and will not get banned even if you push the boundaries of spamming. Creating a new account, however, has become almost impossible.
Oh, that's good to know! My account is well seasoned from years past, even if it slowed to a trickle a few years ago before eventually going into full zombie mode ~18 months ago.
Which seems shitty since I bet a lot of people just create a new account for their Oculus just to keep it separate. Does Facebook have a one account per person policy?
Honestly we need laws in many countries that say: if a provider bans your account, you need to be able to download all your data for 30 days and you need a 100% refund of all purchases. Period.
I make all my expensive electronic items with my AMEX. AMEX has been treating me well over the past 15 years. If a company shutdown my access to it product, I would request a charge back through AMEX. Usually, AMEX accepts my request with in the same day, no question asked.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 261 ms ] threadYou shouldn't be getting banned from VR gaming due (including offline single-player games) due to a completely unrelated drunken political rant on social media.
Have you stopped to consider that might very well be the goal? It’s like an abusive relationship.
Act out, make our jobs hard & that stupid camera you call your parents on is toast!
Act out & your VR headset is toast!
Act out & I won’t let you talk to your family and friends on WhatsApp!
The trick is that they basically render a skybox/sky-dome. If you turn (rotate) your head, that is computed locally, you just get shown a different part of the picture that's already on your device (if you turn too fast, you may get a black cut-off edge until the viewport is updated from the remote machine.
If you move (translate), it needs to re-render for paralax etc. and that's when you notice it and potentially get VR-sick. So games where you have to move your head a lot are probably not a good match, but e.g. Fallout works great.
I don't want to create a fake new Facebook account. I want my own back.
What I have learnt is in a world run by monopolies/oligopolies there is little room for mistakes and even if you don't commit a mistake your livelihood can be at the mercy of corporations.
How much do you think a single support case costs? It could easily be the lifetime profit of a single average user.
Oh? What products would those be? Glancing around, I've got mice, trackballs, keyboards, laptops, desktops, assorted Android phones and tablets, routers, switches, bluetooth speakers and headphones, some lights, a Nintendo Switch, and a Chromecast. Of those, only the Chromecast would be affected if the manufacturer disappeared tomorrow. The desktop is from 2011, and the laptops span ~5-10 years old, not one running the original OS (and many with hardware upgrades). The phones did require bootloader unlocking (kudos to Motorola for making this painless) and aftermarket ROMs to stay up to date, but even without that they'd work without needing any company help. Likewise I'll concede that some routers/switches are a pain (I was grumpy at the hoops I had to jump through to switch my Edgerouter to OpenWRT) but it's fine and again even the default options didn't require an online account or any service from the manufacturer. I don't think this is a foregone conclusion at all.
I am totally ok with it being regulated what could be called ownership. I think the crappiest thing about FB is that a whole lot of early adopters thought they were becoming owners and only later realized that they were renters. Legal action seems possible over this. I went in with clear expectations so I do not have the same complaint. I also recognize this is still an early product category and that I take certain consumer risks to experience the future today.
Adding a FB account dependency renders the device useless after the fact, for some owners. This seems like a violation of First Sale doctrine, and hopefully gets smacked down in court rather than accepted as a dystopian new reality.
I'm not a FB hater, and I think the social integrations could actually be very useful in the future - especially in a post covid world.
There is no "getting past the forced FB integration", which is what makes it a paperweight to the author.
Sadly, the forced Facebook login sucks for a lot of people. I also don’t see any consumer benefit from it. A complaint I’m seeing is that everyone has to manually re-friend their Facebook friends for Oculus.
If it wasn't the case that the "social integrations" are required for you to use a product, post-fact from when you bought it.
Changing the rules of the game for people who spent money in a product is slimy at best, complaining about it doesn't make one a "FB hater".
It should also be up to the developers of apps. Some may not care (ex: beat saber), or someone just want an ability to ban from their app specifically for bad behavior in their app, or have cool off periods instead of perma bans or whatever else.
One potentially error-prone part of moderating any site with community content is handling users evading bans by creating new accounts. If you don't have any mechanism to prevent that, you have a much larger amount of offensive or troll posts, and react slower because you don't have the history of the user because you treat each account as a different person. But any mechanism trying to detect if a new user is potentially a sock puppet of a troublemaker is acting on rather few bits of information. So false positives are not that unlikely.
(A ban from multiplayer modes or just voice chat would be more appropriate, perhaps?)
In fact they might be "firing the customers" who might not be monetizable anyhow.
People buy sony and microsoft game consoles every day with the same sort of onerous shenanigans.
My natural inclinations trend toward AR too.
To be perfectly fair, it being excessive may be warranted somehow.
VR is super immersive. And trends toward a disconnect with reality.
Now both are the point of it all, and I am not saying that's bad.
I am saying it can be. Maybe a high degree of personally identifiable use is warranted somehow. Just thinking out loud.
What I do know is I don't need any of it and am happy for things to play out some.
With multiple account the FB could still mine your data and show personalized ads. Still they insist on single account backed with real ID. This shows some deeply ingrained totalitarian ambitions. Luckily I still have my Oculus account so I can still enjoy Quest 1 without FB BS.
I also really like my Oculus. It's helped me escape a bit, and gotten me moving around more. It's a fantastic little device. I'm not looking forward to the day it becomes a paper weight.
The only positive in all of this is I've started upgrading my PC to get it to the point where it can play VR games, and deciding which VR rig I want to go with. It won't be as great as the Oculus, even if the tech is better, since I love the untethered nature of the Oculus, but a cable-tether is worlds better than a Facebook-tether, at least to me.
the vive / valve’s headset all cost in the 1k and adding 349 to that is not appealing to get a heavier setup.
I was able to sign up for oculus, not Facebook.
I got emails about a change in account stuff & I was able to keep my oculus account and not sign up for Facebook.
Can new customers only sign in through Facebook???? Seems like a very bad idea...
I'm in the same boat you are, but:
> If you choose to continue using your Oculus account, you’ll be covered by our updated Oculus Terms of Service and Oculus Privacy Policy, which we previewed last month. After January 1, 2023, we will end support for Oculus accounts
That boat will finally arrive at Facebook in two years. Two years is a long time for a bit of tech, but for me, the bigger deal is any money I've sunk into the Oculus ecosystem will go up in smoke then.
That was the primary reason I started gaming mostly on Steam via Rift, and am looking to replace the headset completely now.
(Helping this decision were things like downloading custom songs in Beat Saber is just easier on the desktop.)
It's a shame because I wanted to get into VR at the beginning of lockdown and everything I've read about Oculus seemed positive except the facebook account.
The literal worst case here for FB is that a few people don’t buy a Quest II, which isn’t even core to their business success.
And, while it's not core to their current business success, it was intended as a strategic decision, to have a path into VR social networks, I suspect. But I can easily see short term business decisions and priorities dominating that consideration, yes. Businesses are not know known for their long term planning skills.
I've decided to just leave them "open" forever instead of giving them my info.
I'm thinking about getting an Oculus for the same reason. What software would you recommend? Are there any good titles with just scenery (e.g. beach, mountain, etc.)? Are the YouTube VR channels any good? (I sure hope they don't get interrupted by 3d advertisements).
Beyond that, there's an entire category of "Travel the World" apps out there. I'm a big fan of the Ocean ones, but look around in the category to see what sparks interest.
YouTube is also a great source of videos. I'm a fan of the "360 Walking Tours" of various cities. Even the ones of the city I live in are great, though I gravitate to the big bright cities like Tokyo and Hong Kong. And of course, there are plenty of more fast paced videos, like 360 videos from the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels that are pretty fun. Some performers are also have concerts (or even do live concerts) in 360 if that's your thing.
Beyond that, don't rule out the games. Aircar VR technically has goals, but it doesn't enforce them, and it's great fun to fly around a Blade Runner inspired world. Beyond that, some of the story games are really good. Ghost Giant is a fairly easy puzzle game, and while the story was a little saccharin for my tastes, it was really well done and fun.
Beyond that, a lot of my friends seem to love the Theater apps like BigScreen. This has never really worked for me, perhaps because I don't have lots of great memories of theaters for whatever reasons, but for those missing that side of life, it seems to be a good option. I got more out of the social side of that, but only when using it with friends, when entering the public rooms, it's too hit-or-miss if you get a griefer or not for my tastes.
And of course, I think there's a law that every VR owner tries out Beat Saber. I really like it, but beyond that, it's a great app to show off to friends, since it's trivial to get started in.
Of course, don't take my word for any of these, I recommend you dig into reviews and see what floats your boat.
Some questions that popped into my mind:
- Does the reduced viewing angle bother you?
- In games like BigScreen, I suppose you can't play your own .mp4/.mkv files? Or can you?
- To be honest, I mostly want to use Oculus to find a little bit of tranquility on top of a mountain or on a beach. Would it be worth it? Do you know of a more open product which can perhaps deliver the same experience, and also allows programming/hacking?
Never bothered me. I got used to the reduced field of view and such pretty quickly.
> - In games like BigScreen, I suppose you can't play your own .mp4/.mkv files? Or can you?
Yep, you absolutely can. I've pointed it at an SMB share I have for such things, but you can also load it up with videos on the deviec. It's a little annoying to deal with DTS, but once you put the random .so it needs to decode it on the device, the hard work is done.
> tranquility on top of a mountain or on a beach. Would it be worth it?
Personally, I think so. It's mostly what I used mine for. It might not literally be a beach or whatever, but I really like the more tranquil apps like the VR painting ones or whatever that let me zone out and ignore the world for a bit. Also, I forgot to mention Derail Valley. I have many hours in that game, which for me is mostly about enjoying the train rides as I move cargo around.
As for more open: I'm looking into the HP Reverb, but I'm not yet that familiar with the desktop side of things. Given some of the quality of apps available, I'm guessing the programming side is pretty easy. Getting 3rd party stuff on the Quest is a bit like an iOS device. You need a developer account, then you can sideload packages (or use "SideQuest" to act as a third party store). No clue what FB plans for that side of things, of course.
> Any recommendation that can truly replace Quest has to offer the same experience
> Disagree, to me that's like saying PS5 has to match an iPhone 12
You can't replace your iPhone with a PS5. Similar to how the Quest experience can't be replaced by the Index, and vice versa.
I got one to try to replace my Rift because of this FB account fiasco but sold it 2 days later as it was so disappointing. Horrible black levels, those horrible hovering headphones, also bad for porn since the controllers are not easy put on one handed.
Now hoping the HP Reverb G2 is the thing although HP has a horrible rep for being abusive to customers as well as waiting to see.
You can dislike them, but you are very much in the minority on that.
I don't care if my HP account gets deleted.
https://discord.com/invite/th2YPtwt
From what I've heard, one big reason for the arbitration clauses is just so that the CEO won't get dragged off to small claims court all the time.
(Otherwise, you just need to convince a sympathetic judge that the CEO or some other senior official is important to the case, and they'd need to show up or risk contempt of court.
Not very likely for any individual case, but the chances add up with bigger numbers of claims.)
I can’t find the story now, but there was a case in I think California of a company suing to get out of an arbitration clause, wanting instead to move to a class action lawsuit. Thousands of arbitrations became time consuming and costly. So I think there is still big potential for a coordinated effort to make this difficult for Facebook, even if a class action suite were off the table.
Something like 62000 drivers at last count invoked the arbitration clause, which got mighty costly.
Can't say I feel sorry for them.
Is there anything unlawful about offering to cover legal fees for everyone wanting to pursue good-faith legal recourse (including arbitration) against a particular company?
For example, suppose I'm a mega-billionaire who simply finds Facebook's conduct abhorrent. So I offer to pay for the Binding Arbitration fees of every Facebook user who has a plausible claim against Facebook.
And would the legality of that change if I was majority stakeholder in one of Facebook's competitors?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty_and_maintenance#Unit...
https://www.thewrap.com/silicon-valley-billionaire-peter-thi...
(IANAL)
The summary is DoorDash agreements with its dashers demanded arbitration, which costs both parties an amount, but thousands of dashers invoked the clause which cost DoorDash millions in fees.
DoorDash then tried to get out of it and opt-out or arbitration, but they couldn't.
A full refund and a switch from a Rift-S to something like a G2 seems like an amazing deal to me.
Uber and Lyft had their mass arbitrations handled by a specific law firm that deals with consumer as well as employee issues, perhaps they are worth reaching out to.
Interesting consequence of Facebook using a device account and is a social network identity.
I wish this was compulsory before posting. So people actual have to think first. With the important bonus they will improve their critical thought and confidence.
Having said that, I don't know that the above hypotheses are enough to matter. There's a difference between "de-platforming" people and destroying their property. Perhaps if the redditer is omitting the fact that there's a solution but they just don't like it (e.g. using their "real" account instead of this fake one that got suspended or something).
Preemptive nitpicking "this is piracy" - no it isn't, it falls under "right to repair". Fight me!
It is the same as bricked.
You'll also lose a lot of online progress and any purchases
Suing in small claims court is a) a massive ordeal (even without the lawyers) and b) a permanent, public record that you can legally be discriminated against for
In my experience your only real recourse is a chargeback (which, to be fair, will almost always work), but that only is an option for a few months after your purchase.
Are you sure you're talking about the same thing?
Also, the discrimination thing is a result that I've not (personally) heard anyone mention before.
I'm not sure how to respond to your second point about discrimiation, it becomes public record and "suing someone" isn't a protected class. Here's something I found after a brief google: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/17917/can-companies-...
I guess it's just a difference in terminology. :)
But small claims isn't as difficult as you make out, at least in the UK. In some areas there are specialist law firms who do all the work for you and will to take the case no win/no fee (but often they will take a share of any award as well as full court-awarded costs in return). Their entire business model is to make the process as pain-free as possible for you.
This works because some companies have a policy of ignoring and/or fobbing you off continually but will immediately settle when you issue proceedings against them because the cost to them of any outcome which involves going to court (win or lose) is higher than the cost of settling (eg Ryanair is pretty notorious for this).
But what seems to be the main issue here is that it must be an active Facebook account.
I don't think any judge could call that a fair policy.
That, and the fact their whole product lineup is effectively spyware.
That said, you should be able to do whatever you want OUTSIDE of your game or game environment, which is the main issue for me.
How exactly does Facebook lock these headsets down? And how would one go about “jailbreaking” one?
If you have an existing Oculus account, however, it is still valid for use until January 2023.
I've filed an FTC complaint, because we built an AR/VR research lab and invested heavily in Oculus, and it's not going to be usable in two years because our organizational policies prohibit registering Facebook accounts on behalf of the organization. If this had been a requirement prior to our buy-in to Oculus, we would have chosen a different platform.
Jailbreaks are in the works to bypass the Facebook requirement but aren't yet public. This will likely lead to permanent account bans, since like with Wii, the ability to sideload largely is used to run apps customers did not purchase from their store.
So everybody who buys a Quest has to create a Facebook account, which subsequently gets banned for inactivity. To be able to use a Quest, you actually need to be active on Facebook.
Basically only buy a Quest if you really like Facebook.
I'm surprised they don't just treat the Oculus usage similarly, and count that usage as "activity" in the context of considering an account active/inactive.
Honestly we need laws in many countries that say: if a provider bans your account, you need to be able to download all your data for 30 days and you need a 100% refund of all purchases. Period.
So that leaves me a bit insecure on buying it, and ending up getting banned and have an expensive paperweight.