I didn't see it in this page, but previous announcements put the battery life at 1-2 hours (unverified).
I know it's fun to hate on Meta, but this honestly looks like it resolves most of the gripes I had with the Quest 2, aside from the whole Facebook integration piece... It looks like a solid piece of hardware.
You still have to deal with a complicated web of accounts and apps, converting your "Oculus" account to a "Horizon" account to unlink your Facebook from your Meta or whatever (who knows!).
I have a Quest (1 and 2 actually, though the 1 is in storage) and I basically never use it anymore because I just can *not* be bothered to try and log in through its various apps again and install software updates in broken UIs with no progress indication etc.
The only thing I use it for anymore is if somebody's over and wants to try VR, I let them to the tutorial demo and maybe play some Superhot (which hasn't broken for lack of updates ... yet!). Unfortunately streaming that to the TV via Chromecast from the app doesn't work anymore for Zuck knows what reason.
Consumer tech is so hostile and frustrating, I really just can not deal with it anymore. Sorry for the rant.
> I have a Quest (1 and 2 actually, though the 1 is in storage) and I basically never use it anymore because I just can not be bothered to try and log in through its various apps again
Your knowledge and experience does not reflect current reality. Multiple logins haven't been required since the launch of the Quest 2. I didn't have a Quest 1, so I can't comment there.
> You still have to deal with a complicated web of accounts and apps
This is false. Only one account is needed. Sometimes individual apps will require a login, but that's exceedingly rare, or allows you to login with other devices, to the app, outside of the Quest ecosystem. This is not a fault of Meta, it's just the reality of third party credentials. I don't recall the last app I had to
If you buy a headset now, you would make a Meta account that would be used for everything. That's it.
If you had a Facebook account and are ok with continuing with the Facebook account, you're done.
If you had a Facebook account and you want to convert it to a Meta account, you can choose to do this, then you're done.
All three situations above use a single account for all apps, besides those that are meant to be accessible cross platform.
"It's all very simple if you're an industry expert following $company's every move!"
There is no way to use all features of a Quest without logging in _at least_ twice (once on a phone, once on the device itself, because some features are inexplicably only accessible through the app). If you've had it for a while, you've also had to deal with (potentially non-exhaustive list):
- an Oculus account (comes (came?) in linked/unlinked flavours)
- a Facebook account
- a Meta account (is that the same as the above? who knows!)
- a Horizon account (what even is Horizon?)
From the perspective of somebody who just bought the damn thing to use it, as far as I can tell none of these were avoidable if you followed the default flows. There's probably more now. That's ignoring steps on the phone, and linking steps between devices through URLs needing to be opened on a computer and all of that faff.
I'm sure there's a secret code phrase I could've garnered from some Reddit with 10k users that, if I had said it to Support, would have let me skip one of these steps - but who does that?
Maybe that is what they were trying to avoid but in practice they made it much worse. Oculus had accounts before they were bought by FB, it was pretty much like a Steam account for better or for worse. Then by the Quest 2 you had to use your Facebook account, which meant you had to verify your facebook account on your phone (maybe there was a work around, I didn't find it) and it asked for your phone number and then FB is texting you saying some robot with a woman's name just friended you, and you have this duummy account that is always posting what you are doing on the quest etc. etc.
Yeah I am sure there is a way to turn off all that junk and opt out of installing the app or giving them your phone number but its full of anti-patterns to make you do it. What a hassle.
You can't give them credit for solving a problem they created. If Nvidia made me log in to Facebook to use my graphics card, I wouldn't cheer when they gave me the option to make an Nvidia account instead.
I don't know if you realize the hilarity of this, but GeForce Experience (the only way to get auto-updates for Nvidia drivers) requires an Nvidia account, with options to login via Google, Facebook, et al
Kind of infuriating. But not as much as remembering to go and update my drivers... :\
This isn't some unique Meta or VR. These are growing pains of new tech. This is what happens with all new tech. We'll see dozens of companies grow, die, and be acquired, and dozens of products change hands and disappear. This is the MO for all new tech that all of us are intimately familiar with.
In this particular case, with this particular product and company, the churn has happened, and we should see some stability now.
If you want complete stability, you're in the wrong line of work, and definitely on the wrong website. But there's no reason to be irrational about it.
It was pretty simple for me to convert my Facebook account to a Meta only account. The first time I put on my headset after that change it asked if I wanted to unlink my facebook account and create a new account. I had to pick a new username and password, and re-enter my pairing code. But that was it. I was actually surprised it asked me.
I did this and they recently did something with the accounts (forcing you to get a metaverse account I think?) that turned into a massive headache. In the end I was only able to get it working again by creating a new account (or subaccount?) and redoing all of the Quest Link stuff. Even now it complains that my account isn't set up properly if I use the built-in store, although for now it is working. The whole thing is hugely confusing and the only point seemed to be to try to shove Metaverse down my throat.
I do have to say that Quest Link over WiFi works amazingly well and lets you break out of the walled garden to get to the more interesting corners of VR. It also lets you run stuff that would be way too heavy for the mobile-phone level processor on the Quest. Only downside is the WiFi eats a lot of battery power, so one of those headbands with an extra battery is almost required, but since they improve the weight distribution of the headset it's not a terrible buy.
It requires an account owned by Facebook. I don't do that company the courtesy of using their pretentious, bullshit, fake rebranding, out of disrespect.
A Meta account is a facebook account by another name. It's hard to trust any sort of _required_ account system that originates from their ecosystem these days.
Do you trust that Facebook has neither the capability nor the incentive to develop the capability to track you and combine all that data into a profile? I do not.
Facebook has shadow profiles for people who don’t use the service.
I would say it's a delicate balance, with heavy batteries being the most annoying for heavy users (the target audience, from what I can tell), who will have pocket battery packs, or low moment-of-inertia placements, anyways.
I personally don't want any unnecessary weight on my face since I sometimes use my headsets for 8 hours at a time, for coding. For comparison, something like the nreal air [1] is only 79g!
I stream my desktop, with a few virtual screens, using ImmersedVR [1], but other options are available, like VirtualDesktop [2] (over local/remote network), which can be used with something like ShadowPC for full cloud. Others I know code completely in the native browser with the multi-screen interface you see in Meta commercials. Native is still a work in progress, but you can sideload android apps to put them into their own windows.
For desktop streaming, you can use your desktop keyboard/mouse, or a bluetooth keyboard/mouse connected to the headset. For native apps, you use a bluetooth keyboard/mouse connected to the headset. The headset sees/tracks the (supported) keyboard with the passthrough cameras and shows a passthrough window/overlay, where it is.
I have no doubt that virtual displays are the future, but probably not until form factors are like the nreal air [3], which I think is still too limited for resolution. Next gen, I'll probably switch over. People will probably be happy enough once PPD triples.
I have and enjoy the Quest2. I'm not seeing much that would make me want a Quest Pro for an extra $1100. The pro looks more comfortable, the color passthrough is cool, and I respect the new lens and resolution upgrade, but again, $1100? Not worth it to me.
The price tag does feel too rich (but then again it's not aimed at retail). Thing is, the leap from Quest 2 to Quest Pro feels comparable to the leap between consecutive console generations (e.g. PS4-PS5) - it's iterative improvement, but not ground breaking. In the case of consoles, you don't expect the price tag to change that much, though, so it makes the Quest's big price hike a bit hard to swallow.
The other thing is, I suspect the Quest 2 price point was heavily subsidised, so maybe we're just seeing the real cost of a VR headset when it's advertised to what's perceived as a less price sensitive audience (i.e. businesses).
For me it'll depend on the magnitude of the improvement, especially in resolution. If it's a serious improvement, I could see it as viable for productive work and not just games, in which case it might be worth the money.
It's not. The meta site is low on specs, but they mentioned in the video that it's got 37% more pixels (and a bit higher density in the middle)
This means that for every 3 pixels on the quest 2 you now have 4. Not exactly a huge increase IMO. What's needed to reach the equivalent of a 24" 1080p monitor at say 2-3 feet away, still needs like a 2-4x increase in pixel per degree.
Completely different price points though. The Quest 2 was priced for the general public, this is a specialty device for hobbyists and it looks like they are targeting corporations. Hobbyists already have had more advanced options available at this price point, so I'm not totally sure I understand the market for this.
It’s not in Meta’s best interest to obsolete the Quest 2. VR is already a tough sell, and like other “consoles”, significant revenue comes from selling apps.
If they tell the regular users (who spend $50 per game) that they can’t purchase new games without a new headset, I bet most would ditch the technology.
The original Quest was released May 2019, and the Quest 2 was released Oct. 2020. Maybe a lot of the early adopters felt burned, but the Quest1's short life obviously didn't put much of a damper in the Quest 2's sales.
Are there many apps or games that only work on the Quest 2? I have the original Quest and I still use it several times a week. It's basically the Beat Saber machine an this point, but it's still pretty fun.
I don't think these are very comparable to the Quest Pro.
It appears neither of those have face tracking, and the Pimax doesn't have eye tracking. Besides that, both of those are PCVR (not standalone) and the Aero doesn't even come with controllers despite costing nearly $2000.
> I didn't see it in this page, but previous announcements put the battery life at 1-2 hours (unverified).
I still find it weird they haven't shown any mention of incorporating the Bobo VR solution to battery life problems, where there's a secondary battery pack on a magnetic mount and you can swap it out without taking the headset off.
Your account just doesn’t say Facebook erm Meta on it. You are still subject to all the bad things they do with automated bans, shifting TOS, social bla, etc.
This is a question of trustworthiness; Meta/Facebook (if you are paying attention) has none. Better to act as if they will misuse your personal information or otherwise do something unsavory because they have done so many times in the past.
I know it's fun to hate on Meta, but this honestly looks like it resolves most of the gripes I had with the Quest 2, aside from the whole Facebook integration piece... It looks like a solid piece of hardware.