Oculus will allow sideloading and rooting to avoid e-waste

https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/1441496418368294914

by cunidev • 5 years ago

142 57 5 years ago

twitter.com

Longhanks• 5 years ago

To further avoid e-waste, I will avoid Oculus (or anything else Facebook).

throwaway1777• 5 years ago

Oculus hardware is quite good for the price, and since you can root it and sideload the Facebook point is moot now.

canada_dry• 5 years ago

Call me crazy, but another shoe's gotta drop i.e. Oculus will practically brick the device if it's rooted - disallowing some new must-have features due to "security concerns".

mrgordon• 5 years ago

You can root it and sideload on their end of life devices. Not exactly what most people are trying to buy new.

dang• 5 years ago

Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN. Maybe you don't owe Facebook better but you owe this community better if you're posting to it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

interestica• 5 years ago

Specifically for the Oculus Go.

tombert3• 5 years ago

It wouldn't surprise me if this leads to future versions of the Oculus being open-sourced. IIRC, Carmack was the one who really pushed for the Doom and Quake engines to be opened up.

gfodor2• 5 years ago

I very much doubt this will happen except if Carmack stays on and pushes hard for it. He's already got one foot out the door, and I suspect he's spent a lot of political capital on this one, which is for a headset that they've already determined was a dead-end form factor so at relatively low cost vs if they were to do this for Quest 1 in a year or two.

loeg• 5 years ago

(Which is the old-old generation hardware -- the Quest and Quest 2 succeed it.)

MonadIsPronad• 5 years ago

How do we get this made into law, this unlocking of EOL hardware...

caslon• 5 years ago

Duplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28647316

But also, seriously, they already allow sideloading on literally every device they've ever put out. They don't stop you from using adb. Rooting is cool and new to the platform, and so are alternate operating systems! But sideloading onto them isn't new.

cma• 5 years ago

The existing sideloading, other than on PC desktop, was only for developers (no cost, but you had to sign a non-disclosure agreement and more). Other than the lack of cost it was more similar to Apple's limited developer sideloading than it was to sideloading on Android for mobile. This is actual consumer sideloading and root on the device.

numpad02• 5 years ago

Not before activating the device and allowing sideload with a non-frozen account.

dougmwne• 5 years ago

This is for the Go. It's a great initiative to unlock the device at EOL. I would prefer it to be unlocked by law at purchase, but understand that often the cost has been heavily subsidized by the lock-in and mandating an unlock by law would result in higher prices. For instance, there is a business version of the Quest that is not tied to a FB account, but is twice the price.

teawrecks• 5 years ago

Would gladly pay it. Which is why I have an index.

willvarfar• 5 years ago

This has parallels with how iD always open sourced their previous generation game engines.

John Carmack was behind that too (https://youtu.be/iYk4Y5a6qmI interview about it).

It’s really good to see an engineer and leader who thinks of the greater good and what follows.

InitialLastName• 5 years ago

It’s really good to see an engineer and leader who thinks of the greater good and what follows.

There's something incongruous about "thinks of the greater good" and "designs tools that are unquestionably being used to further his employer's mass surveillance mission" being applied to the same person.

sneak• 5 years ago

Carmack is smart enough to know that the greater good involves not working for an ad surveillance company.

waleedamer• 5 years ago

Does anyone even use the Go? I'm a full time VR developer and I haven't heard of the Go in over a year. Still great to see this kind of move coming from Facebook though.

Here's hoping for the same initiative for the Quest 2

ngokevin• 5 years ago

It's a win-win play for them. Gain a small piece of developer goodwill by opening up an obsolete headset they don't care about anyways, like open sourcing a dead project. We will hope they will do the same for the Quest, but they'll only ever do it for obsolete models.

GekkePrutser5• 5 years ago

Yeah the Go is simply no better than a $5 google cardboard setup. Nice for a once off trick.

At work we use some of these with some stupid training app that is more about showing off than actual training. It's designed to pretend we're a hip and modern company while the user clicks through a few popups on a 360 degree photo slideshow.

As someone who's trying to push real VR this really hurts my efforts. When I try to introduce something like Arthur Digital for real interactive VR meetings people are like "oh yeah I saw that VR thing during training, it was cool but useless". They think they've seen all VR can offer. And it's making people sick with imperfect tracking (try leaning forward to look at something...)

3DOF / Cardboard style VR should die. It's holding back the industry now.

thih9• 5 years ago

Good news; but it’s hard to trust Facebook at this point.

- They already demonstrated user hostile approach with the mandatory FB accounts.

- People might use sideloading/rooting to reduce tracking and ads; long term I believe FB will want to fight that.

Karunamon• 5 years ago

I don't think people out of the HN/tech bubble find FB accounts to be particularly hostile, and the number of people who will go through the rooting/sideloading process necessary for either of those two things is statistically nonexistent.

zapt02• 5 years ago

It will probably only be available for EOL devices.

GekkePrutser5• 5 years ago

That's ok though, it makes keeping my old Quest 1 a lot more interesting than flogging it on ebay for a hundred bucks. It's still a pretty capable device with a beautiful oled screen that's looking to be abandoned soon (now that games like resident evil are coming out that are quest 2 only).

ParanoidShroom• 5 years ago

Isn't this the same with Android phones and google accounts? Or iphones and icloud accounts? Like android had custom roms without google, i guess this open the path to roms without fb?

I think no can disagree that this is at least a step in the right direction

GekkePrutser5• 5 years ago

On an Android phone you don't have to sign in with a Google account.

I do this on my OnePlus, I install apps through F-Droid and Aurora store to try to preserve some shred of privacy while not being too feature limited. In particular google push messages still work. I also kick unwanted system apps off with ADB. It's a compromise compared to a really clean ROM but it's possible.

It's not possible to use a Quest without an account.

tobr• 5 years ago

This is an aside but not really since we’re discussing a representative of a disgraceful social media platform who’s posting on a different disgraceful social media platform: I can’t even look at a Twitter user’s profile now without being logged in to an account? What a disgrace.

Robotbeat• 5 years ago

Use In Cognito mode (or equivalent).

LegitShady• 5 years ago

twitter is inadvertently doing you a huge favour. Twitter is telling you to stop paying attention to twitter, which is really for the best.

ronsor• 5 years ago

I concur. This change cut my Twitter usage from ~5-10 minutes per day to roughly 0 minutes per day.

cosmojg2• 5 years ago

It's not mentioned in the linked tweet, but does anyone here know whether they have plans to do something similar with the Rift/CV1?

detaro• 5 years ago

What would that mean for those? They don't run apps themselves?

leoc• 5 years ago

The PC Rifts have long been at least open enough to allow SteamVR to support them, and AFAIK that's still the case.

cosmojg2• 5 years ago

e.g. custom firmware

kgwxd• 5 years ago

My 5 year old really wants a VR set. Oculus is not an option. Are there other VR headsets that are either standalone or PC driven that would be good for that age group?

MikusR• 5 years ago

Firehawke• 5 years ago

I wouldn't recommend VR for anyone under 12-13 or so. Eyes are still developing at that age and there's a possible chance of screwing up focus with extended VR use.

xxpor• 5 years ago

Has this actually been proven or is it like the old wives tale that sitting too close to the tv will do the same thing?

judge2020• 5 years ago

i feel like more research is necessary into potential links between VR use and any optical complications before we can assume this to be true.

tacLog• 5 years ago

I have never heard of this before do you have any sources or data points? From a quick google it seems to be a warning that Sony is at least putting on their VR offering.

This source says otherwise: "ophthalmologists agree there is no reason to be concerned that VR headsets will damage eye development, health or function." https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/are-virtual-r...

It seems like there is just a lack of data regarding the impact of VR usage on eye development and as a result people are being rightful cautious.

shock-value• 5 years ago

Pretty questionable whether you should be letting a five year old use any VR headset. Oculus Quest specifies only ages 13+ and the science is definitely not settled as to how VR use would affect motor coordination development. If nothing else, the ergonomics really are not going to work for a child that young using any headset released to date (and I don't imagine any company sticking their neck out to release a targeted pre-teen headset anytime soon).

LeifCarrotson• 5 years ago

If you've got an old phone and $10, a 5 year old could have some fun looking around with Google Cardboard. The product was unfortunately victim to another Google product sunset in March of this year [1] but still works, and it would give you an opportunity to see if they actually like it and check how vulnerable they are to motion sickness. The lag and accuracy are pretty poor (depending on the phone's processor and accellerometer/gyro) but there's no sense spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on a 5-year-old's whims.

Unless, of course, they're actually your whims and you're using "my 5 year old wants it" as a perfectly valid excuse...

My 5-year-old has fun playing Mario on my 20-year-old Game Boy Color, but has no idea that VR or VR gaming is even a thing. Maybe I'll get him a Game Boy Advance SP or a Gamecube in a couple years...there was a Penny Arcade or XKCD or similar webcomic a few years back about someone who had artificially restricted themselves to games and systems released 5 years before the present so they could savor the improvements in game design without dealing with the availability issues. It was presented in jest but is actually a reasonable system, and saves a lot of money in the process!

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/googles-vr-dreams-ar...

ad404b8a372f2b9• 5 years ago

The Vive is PC driven and can be made wireless with accessories. There are social games on steam that work on it and are mostly populated by kids. The headset is fairly heavy though and also somewhat large, and the minimum eye-distance setting is pretty high so I don't know if it'd fit a 5yo.

bsza• 5 years ago

Nintendo Labo VR is for 7 and up. That's about as low as it gets.

awinter-py• 5 years ago

hmm the top reply is 'what about the quest' and JC is like

I hope this is a precedent for when headsets go unsupported in the future, but damn, getting all the necessary permissions for this involved SO much more effort that you would expect.

'old hardware supports OSS, new hardware doesn't' feels like a medium win for the repair movement but still not the world I want to live in

we should pass laws so hardware vendors can't be the sole OS vendor on their platform

bombcar• 5 years ago

I hope this is a precedent for when headsets go unsupported in the future, but damn, getting all the necessary permissions for this involved SO much more effort that you would expect.

This is one of those things that if you start with it as a goal, it is relatively easy, but if you want to ADD it later, can be insanely difficult - or impossible.

a-dub• 5 years ago

nice!

PaulHoule• 5 years ago

"I hope this is a precedent for when headsets go unsupported in the future, but damn, getting all the necessary permissions for this involved SO much more effort that you would expect."

GekkePrutser5• 5 years ago

In fact this is exactly what I expected at FaceBook.

What I didn't expect is that he managed to pull this off at all. Wow! And well done.

georgewsinger• 5 years ago

Having root access to your VR device is cool, but having full, open source access to your VR device is even cooler :]

Oculus will allow sideloading and rooting to avoid e-waste

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