Oculus and other VR systems

[PeteinSQ]

My oldest son has asked for some sort of VR system for his birthday with a preference for the Oculus.

I haven't got a clue as which one to buy, what the pros or cons are on each of them etc.

We have a PS5 so PSVR seemed like the obvious answer but he says not?

Games for the Oculus seem a bit pricey but then games for everything seem expensive now....

Fingers crossed you all know loads on this topic :-)

[wrong_turn]

He sounds fairly clued up, I wouldn't go for a console-based VR setup.

I've got a Vive and not done much research since. I wouldn't recommend it as although it was the best in it's day, it takes a bit of technical know-how and a few expensive upgrades to make it good now.

I think you might need to look into the Oculus Quest 2, but be aware that it's owned by Facebook so your privacy goes out the window.

[Tony33]

If you are looking for a standalone VR headset then the Quest 2 seems the best option.

If you are looking to connect one to a PC the PC needs to have a fairly top end spec in terms of graphics card and CPU and the answer will depend on its specs

[NMNeil]

I was looking to buy an Oculus, but when I found out that unless you have a Farcebook account, it won't work, and even if you bow down to Zuckerberg, the games will be full of ads.
I decided against it.
https://www.oculus.com/blog/facebook-accounts-on-o...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2021/...

[PeteinSQ]

NMNeil said:

I was looking to buy an Oculus, but when I found out that unless you have a Farcebook account, it won't work, and even if you bow down to Zuckerberg, the games will be full of ads.
I decided against it.
https://www.oculus.com/blog/facebook-accounts-on-o...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2021/...

Oh that's a bit rubbish.

He has a gaming laptop but I'm not sure it would be up to running a Vr system.

[Dog Star]

NMNeil said:

I was looking to buy an Oculus, but when I found out that unless you have a Farcebook account, it won't work, and even if you bow down to Zuckerberg, the games will be full of ads.
I decided against it.
https://www.oculus.com/blog/facebook-accounts-on-o...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2021/...

Games are full of ads? I've a Quest 2 and I don't recall ads.
I couldn't care less if it's owned by FB - my only real concern is that if I get banned from FB then I'll lose my paid for games.

[deckster]

NMNeil said:

I was looking to buy an Oculus, but when I found out that unless you have a Farcebook account, it won't work, and even if you bow down to Zuckerberg, the games will be full of ads.
I decided against it.
https://www.oculus.com/blog/facebook-accounts-on-o...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2021/...

Largely hysterical nonsense - a tiny grain of truth whipped up into a storm by a small minority of commentators.

For those who just want to play in VR, the Quest 2 is the obvious choice. It's well made, well specced, the game choice is excellent, and as you can also connect if to your PC to play e.g. SteamVR games, the ecosystem is easily the biggest on the planet. A truly excellent piece of hardware and I wouldn't even consider anything else at the moment.

[PeteinSQ]

deckster said:

Largely hysterical nonsense - a tiny grain of truth whipped up into a storm by a small minority of commentators.

For those who just want to play in VR, the Quest 2 is the obvious choice. It's well made, well specced, the game choice is excellent, and as you can also connect if to your PC to play e.g. SteamVR games, the ecosystem is easily the biggest on the planet. A truly excellent piece of hardware and I wouldn't even consider anything else at the moment.

OK you've sold it to me. Mine and my kids' gaming habits will have cost me a fortune in 2021:

- PS5
- Nintendo Switch OLED
- Oculus Quest 2

and my wife hates them being on screens....

[Lucas Ayde]

deckster said:

Largely hysterical nonsense - a tiny grain of truth whipped up into a storm by a small minority of commentators.

For those who just want to play in VR, the Quest 2 is the obvious choice. It's well made, well specced, the game choice is excellent, and as you can also connect if to your PC to play e.g. SteamVR games, the ecosystem is easily the biggest on the planet. A truly excellent piece of hardware and I wouldn't even consider anything else at the moment.

Not hysterical nonsense - it's a fact that if for whatever reason you lose access to your FB account the headset becomes a lump of plastic. ie. If FB ban or suspend you, you can't use the headset. A lot of people who tried to use their Quest 2s during the recent Facebook outage found big issues too.

I say this as a Quest 2 owner who bought the thing on day one. It's a great piece of hardware at a super-affordable price .. because FB are subsidising it massively. In return, they are scraping even more data about you and they have total control over what you can do with it, even to the extent of whether or not you can continue play games you have bought and paid for.

They're also pushing their woke sensibilities into making sure games on it are 'poltically correct' as witnessed by RE4 which although seemingly minor, is going to be the thin end of the wedge.

On balance, I decided it was worth going for it as an affordable entry to stand alone gaming and PCVR but I most certainly will be looking to move on to something else for my next headset a year or two down the line.

[deckster]

Lucas Ayde said:

They're also pushing their woke sensibilities into making sure games on it are 'poltically correct'

I fear we have quite different definitions of "hysterical nonsense".

[Scotter]

Lucas Ayde said:

deckster said:

Largely hysterical nonsense - a tiny grain of truth whipped up into a storm by a small minority of commentators.

For those who just want to play in VR, the Quest 2 is the obvious choice. It's well made, well specced, the game choice is excellent, and as you can also connect if to your PC to play e.g. SteamVR games, the ecosystem is easily the biggest on the planet. A truly excellent piece of hardware and I wouldn't even consider anything else at the moment.

Not hysterical nonsense - it's a fact that if for whatever reason you lose access to your FB account the headset becomes a lump of plastic. ie. If FB ban or suspend you, you can't use the headset. A lot of people who tried to use their Quest 2s during the recent Facebook outage found big issues too.

I say this as a Quest 2 owner who bought the thing on day one. It's a great piece of hardware at a super-affordable price .. because FB are subsidising it massively. In return, they are scraping even more data about you and they have total control over what you can do with it, even to the extent of whether or not you can continue play games you have bought and paid for.

They're also pushing their woke sensibilities into making sure games on it are 'poltically correct' as witnessed by RE4 which although seemingly minor, is going to be the thin end of the wedge.

On balance, I decided it was worth going for it as an affordable entry to stand alone gaming and PCVR but I most certainly will be looking to move on to something else for my next headset a year or two down the line.

Interesting and I’m not here to argue but I have an oculus quest one and had a Facebook account when I bought it two years ago but then deleted my account and am still able to use the quest.
The only thing I use if for these days is with the vzfit app and an exercise bike which takes away the boredom of cycling.

[Lucas Ayde]

deckster said:

I fear we have quite different definitions of "hysterical nonsense".

You don't address the points of being dependant on FB for being able to pay stuff you've bought and paid for. Say the wrong thing and fall foul of them for whatever reason (and it's increasingly easy to do so) and your Quest 2 and games library becomes a paperweight. That's not 'hysterical nonsense'.

The fact that they've already started tinkering around with innocuous lines of dialogue in RE4 to meet someone's woke definition of what is acceptable isn't a good sign for the development of games on the platform either.

Because they're essentially giving the thing away for half price it's eaten up a huge share of the VR market and if this dominance continues over the longer term, it's bad news for the development of VR hardware and software in general.

By all means take advantage of the massive FB subsidy but be aware of what you're getting into. As I said, I'll be looking to move off their platform for my next purchase and hopefully someone will crack the OS so you can at least use it as a standalone headset for PC with no FB ties.

For now I'm enjoying it for the tech (it is probably the best all around hardware out there) but I'm buying VR titles on SteamVR wherever possible and the majority of the Oculus games I have bought are 'one playtrhough and done' type titles.

[Lucas Ayde]

PeteinSQ said:

Oh that's a bit rubbish.

He has a gaming laptop but I'm not sure it would be up to running a Vr system.

I originally ran it on a Radeon 3700x with GTX 1060 (6gb version) and it worked surprisingly well for PCVR.

I've now got a 5900x and RTX3070 and yes of course it's better, but the lower spec was still a good experience.

(I use Virtual Desktop with wireless streaming).

[deckster]

Lucas Ayde said:

You don't address the points of being dependant on FB for being able to pay stuff you've bought and paid for. Say the wrong thing and fall foul of them for whatever reason (and it's increasingly easy to do so) and your Quest 2 and games library becomes a paperweight. That's not 'hysterical nonsense'.
[...]
For now I'm enjoying it for the tech (it is probably the best all around hardware out there) but I'm buying VR titles on SteamVR wherever possible and the majority of the Oculus games I have bought are 'one playtrhough and done' type titles.

Getting too far off-topic here - but your first statement can be just as easily said about Valve/Steam as it can about Facebook. Having your games (music / book / ...) library dependent on a third party is far from ideal I agree, but it's also very much the way it is at the moment.

It is, by the way, trivially easy to not get banned by Facebook. Literally billions of people manage it every year. You don't have to like Facebook, but to claim that there is a significant risk of you losing access to your media, or that they are in some way uniquely evil, simply isn't true.

[Lucas Ayde]

deckster said:

Getting too far off-topic here - but your first statement can be just as easily said about Valve/Steam as it can about Facebook. Having your games (music / book / ...) library dependent on a third party is far from ideal I agree, but it's also very much the way it is at the moment.

It is, by the way, trivially easy to not get banned by Facebook. Literally billions of people manage it every year. You don't have to like Facebook, but to claim that there is a significant risk of you losing access to your media, or that they are in some way uniquely evil, simply isn't true.

Other services with DRM on their games/entertainment content aren't paired with a censorship-happy social media network that's obsessed with collecting data on their users and controlling what they can say and do.

[deckster]

Lucas Ayde said:

deckster said:

Getting too far off-topic here - but your first statement can be just as easily said about Valve/Steam as it can about Facebook. Having your games (music / book / ...) library dependent on a third party is far from ideal I agree, but it's also very much the way it is at the moment.

It is, by the way, trivially easy to not get banned by Facebook. Literally billions of people manage it every year. You don't have to like Facebook, but to claim that there is a significant risk of you losing access to your media, or that they are in some way uniquely evil, simply isn't true.

Other services with DRM on their games/entertainment content aren't paired with a censorship-happy social media network that's obsessed with collecting data on their users and controlling what they can say and do.

Like I said earlier: we aren't going to agree on this. I think you are fundamentally wrong but we are way off topic and I will bow out now.

[PeteinSQ]

Lucas Ayde said:

Other services with DRM on their games/entertainment content aren't paired with a censorship-happy social media network that's obsessed with collecting data on their users and controlling what they can say and do.

The data collection isn't great, but the odds on any of my family getting banned are pretty slim. I can't remember the last time any of us actually posted anything on Facebook. My FB account is currently deactivated by me because I just don't use it. My wife says she'll let our son use hers for the Oculus so that's ok.

As to the comments around PC gone mad - I think in an abstract way that is quite concerning but the fact is me and my family are probably the sort of leftists you wouldn't like so actually a lot of this is fine with me.

I say it's concerning in an abstract way because what's stopping in a sort of future universe different to this one it being the other way round and you've got some sort of gaming Leni Riefenstahl pushing out hatred of some out group or other in their games?

[Lucas Ayde]

PeteinSQ said:

The data collection isn't great, but the odds on any of my family getting banned are pretty slim. I can't remember the last time any of us actually posted anything on Facebook. My FB account is currently deactivated by me because I just don't use it. My wife says she'll let our son use hers for the Oculus so that's ok.

As to the comments around PC gone mad - I think in an abstract way that is quite concerning but the fact is me and my family are probably the sort of leftists you wouldn't like so actually a lot of this is fine with me.

I say it's concerning in an abstract way because what's stopping in a sort of future universe different to this one it being the other way round and you've got some sort of gaming Leni Riefenstahl pushing out hatred of some out group or other in their games?

Don't buy the game. And if it's genuine incitement to hate (as opposed to a clique of people whining on Twitter that they are 'offended'), the law covers it.

The Quest 2 is amazingly capable for the price and even I decided that it worth buying one. I stopped using my Facebook account regularly about a decade ago as it became less and less useful and more and more about ads being pushed into my feed, so getting suspended for something I posted on FB is unlikely - I just don't ever post anything. However, FB also own Instagram and Whatsapp and Silicon Valley is increasingly all about banning people across all platforms for percieved thought crime on any of them. Wouldn't be at all surprised if FB start taking an interest in Whatsapp messages (a service I DO use an awful lot) and dropping FB-wide bans, down the line.

There are plans to put ads in games - they tested it out a while back on a closed group of testers and it was a disaster as they just had pop-ups when you looked at certain things. Really intrusive and those people in the test hated it. No doubt they will keep pushing until they find something that won't turn people off so much.

But for now, for the price, it's an amazing deal. It will be even better when it is eventually hacked - it is already superb as a wireless headset for PCVR so even if hacked headsets can't play the existing Oculus library they will still be great PC headsets.

[PeteinSQ]

Lucas Ayde said:

I originally ran it on a Radeon 3700x with GTX 1060 (6gb version) and it worked surprisingly well for PCVR.

I've now got a 5900x and RTX3070 and yes of course it's better, but the lower spec was still a good experience.

(I use Virtual Desktop with wireless streaming).

Just dug out the specs of his laptop:

16GB DDR4 Ram

GeForce RTX 2060

i7-8750H.

Good enough??

(works for Minecraft....)

[Lucas Ayde]

PeteinSQ said:

Just dug out the specs of his laptop:

16GB DDR4 Ram

GeForce RTX 2060

i7-8750H.

Good enough??

(works for Minecraft....)

Easily good enough for a decent VR experience on PCVR games (even the laptop versions of the chips).

The stand-alone Quest 2 games are often good enough in their own right too, though the PC version is almost always better.