from Hacker News

The Oculus Quest 2

by fasicle on 9/14/20, 9:14 AM with 61 comments

• by Someone1234 on 9/14/20, 1:43 PM

  Own a Quest (1), use it nearly daily, and like my Quest.

  I won't even be looking at the Quest 2 because they now require a Facebook account to use it, and I have absolutely no interesting in that (from a privacy or integrations standpoint).

  I just want to game in peace. When I purchased my original Quest they were making guarantees that Facebook integrations were going to be optional, only to backtrack two years later.

• by gfodor on 9/14/20, 3:10 PM

  This generation of VR from Facebook (along with the launch of Facebook Horizon) is their first major move towards consolidating control over the next (perhaps final) communication medium, and burning in Facebook's assumptions to it. For example, they believe you ought to always be represented by your legal name, with a physical representation similar to the one you have in real life when communicating remotely through immersive computing. This can be seen being manifested by the slow steady changes to policies and terms. With this generation, Facebook will require a Facebook account, and thus a full chain back to a legal identity for you to communicate with others on their VR platform.

  Over time they've slowly ratcheted up policies and behavior that are increasingly at odds with the desires of the early adopter enthusiast community. However, these have been done slowly so as to not kill the necessary participation in their ecosystem needed to bootstrap their wider VR platform plays.

  These developments are deeply troubling and those worried about a future where human interaction is largely surveiled and behavior largely manipulated ought to be mindful before buying into Facebook's ecosystem.

  I spoke extensively about the dangers here and now that it is coming to fruition it's even more important to understand the implications so consumers can choose wisely.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5w8xbeCc2Q

• by jimmySixDOF on 9/14/20, 12:37 PM

  They have removed the video teaser already but there is some more detail here :

  Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 leaks in full via official promo videos A full launch of the headset is rumored for later this week

  https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2020/9/14/21435891/ocu...

• by tantalor on 9/14/20, 2:04 PM

  Mods: this is removed, "Content Unavailable"

• by pcdoodle on 9/14/20, 12:21 PM

  I miss being excited about VR tech. I used to run a CRT/Shutter glasses setup back in the day for racing games. Now that big tech has moved in, my interest in trying it again, has waned.

• by grumple on 9/14/20, 1:04 PM

  Tying this to my non-existent facebook account means I won't even think about buying it. A headset that doesn't constantly feed my data to big tech would be fantastic.

  Quest 1 is still going strong though (until our 2 year facebook-less amnesty runs up). Great piece of hardware. The biggest problem I see is that there's not been much adoption in terms of creating software from major software companies. I don't think the hardware is a limitation for the current gen. We could do so much more with vr than what we are doing right now.

• by Robotbeat on 9/14/20, 3:03 PM

  The higher resolution would be really nice for reading and therefore for non-game applications.

  If someone ever makes a retina-level (60 pixels per degree) display that's wireless like the Quest but as cheap as a nice monitor and comfortable to wear, then people may just use it in place of a multi-monitor setup. Particularly as the ecosystem evolves and it becomes easier to use mouse and keyboard in VR. (I think Quest just recently added support for tracking of a Bluetooth keyboard so you can see it in VR while you're typing on it.) $300-400 is roughly that price point, which is about where the current Quest is.

  But even with the upped resolution of the Quest2 (which might bring the pixel density to 20 pixels per degree), we're still about a factor of 10 away from the retina-like clarity that you'd want for reading and doing work in VR. (The highest end VR headsets are about a factor of 5 away from that, in terms of numbers of pixels.)

  By the way, it's interesting that we're pushing the limits of display bandwidths. Even with lossless compression, it's tough to shoot that many pixels smoothly even to a wired VR headset. We might need wireless headsets like the Quest if only to do some of the heavy-lifting, low-latency processing.

• by martythemaniak on 9/14/20, 1:06 PM

  A lot of people are going to be spending a lot of time indoors this winter, I think this will sell like hotcakes.

• by jlundberg on 9/14/20, 3:49 PM

  I really like the friendly feel and the way she talked in this this leaked Oculus Quest 2 promo video.

  Well made and not at all that pushy like many commercials can be. Informative and to-the-point.