PC gamers and VR enthusiasts looking forward to Valve’s next major hardware launch may have to make some adjustments to their budgets. According to prominent Valve insider and content creato…
Fuck man. I really want to get into VR gaming, but that’s a ridiculous barrier to entry. The Quest 3 is reasonable, but I’m afraid I’ll buy it, love it, and want more.
Yeah. They have you attached a camera to your head that actively maps everything around you in color 3d and sends it to Facebook servers. Anytime I used it I’d take pretty much everything else out of the room. I think if I use it again I may use a deceased relative’s account to really fuck with their data.
I mean, I definitely get the paranoia, but people have wiresharked it left and right, and every day… it doesn’t. They do harvest what you do on the metaverse, but that is basically gone now anyway, and was always optional. They collect data from any first party products, but like the headset itself, no. It doesn’t send anything. And that isn’t something you can hide. Like the signal literally has to be sent, and it would be detectable.
They definitely have over the years kept mentioning things they would like to do, like using eye tracking to confirm to advertisers that ads were actually watched and shit, but that never actually came about. The only eye tracking they made so far was on the headset they didn’t target at consumers. I’m sure they still have future plans to achieve some of their horrible goals, but as of yet, hasn’t happened.
If it helps, the meta account is just a renamed oculus account, uses all the underlying systems from back then. I didn’t have to make one, my oculus account worked.
People have wiresharked it, only data that goes back to them is in their first party games, the headset doesn’t send anything. Always subject to change of course. They have mentioned plenty of plans over the years, but so far nothing implemented, most concrete plan was using the eye tracking to confirm to advertisers that an ad was watched, but the only headset they have done with eye tracking wasn’t targeted at consumers. So hasn’t come to fruition.
Yeah, out of the box, though color passthrough is already confirmed as an accessory. They just figured no sense making everyone pay for it if it can be done through the accessory slot. Some people don’t need color passthrough. And some people will want to buy a higher end one than what would have been included if they did include color passthrough. This way, everyone can be satisfied. And even a color passthrough module that uses 2 cameras and does stereo reconstruction uses 1/4 of the lanes and less than 10% of the bandwidth. So you could still daisychain other accessories too.
Honestly, as someone who bought and still have the Quest 1, don’t give them a cent. Approximately a year after I bought it they launched the Oculus 2, and new apps stopped supporting it, a couple of years later and it was mostly dead with no new games being released, couple of years later and they officially dropped support, making my most expensive paperweight yet. Now I can’t download the games that I bought on that platform, and will have to pay Meta more money for a new headset to keep having access to them.
I will buy a Frame and rebuy my games on Steam, because I have good confidence that it won’t become a paperweight, and that if it ever becomes old enough to actually be obsolete I can buy any other VR headset that supports my OS and keep playing my games.
The Quest 3 hardware is awesome. It’s all the rest that sucks. But using it as a box that launches Virtual Desktop, it’s been completely fine… still getting a Steam Frame as soon as the lottery picks me to be allowed to pay them money.
Virtual desktop is just 20 bucks, the only knowledge you need is how to make sure your home router doesn’t suck, or if you don’t want to know that, buying a bespoke single device USB router specifically made to stream a VR headset, like a puppis S1. Basically the big version of Steam Frames dongle.
And having a computer worth streaming to the headset. Depending on what you want to play, the hardware requirements vary quite a bit. Most stuff made for VR is relatively accessible. But if you want the really good games, those currently mostly come from good VR mods for good games. And they will generally have a higher hardware requirement, as they weren’t optimized to run well in VR.
If you just want a VR headset to stream flat screen content to, like a 4k steam deck that you don’t have to either hold your hands up to your face, or look down at your hands… then even a super entry level computer is plenty for most games. Anything you can already run on your computer will play and look nearly identical streamed to the headset with Virtual Desktop. VR headset hardware is extremely optimally designed around low latency. So it’s one of the lowest latency options for streaming flat games. I generally am reclining in a real comfy recliner when just playing flat games or watching TV, and putting the screen at a nice comfortable viewing angle and height for that. Not to mention putting the monitor 20 feet away and making it huge, so it’s comfy for my eyes. No staring at a screen 2 feet from my face anymore. Even though the screen is actually one inch from my eyes, lol. Doesn’t feel like it to them, and that is the part that is important.
And, if you don’t have a computer, Quest 3 still has decent stand alone games. The operating system is mostly only annoying in that they constantly change stuff without making it better, just different, and stuff breaks alot, cuz they fired most of their humans and the few humans left are mandated to generate everything with AI. Same goes for firmware. Frequent broken features that can last for months. It sucks, but still hasn’t gotten to a point where it can literally be called unusable… but it sure can figuratively and hyperbolically be called that. As many people will demonstrate.
You don’t really need Virtual Desktop. The Steam Link app has made leaps and bounds in functionality and quality over the years. If you have a good home network (I’m taking a router with WiFi 6) and a PC wired to Ethernet, you can stream to the headset just fine.
Fuck man. I really want to get into VR gaming, but that’s a ridiculous barrier to entry. The Quest 3 is reasonable, but I’m afraid I’ll buy it, love it, and want more.
The Quest would be fine if it weren’t for Meta. I have a Quest 2, but I stopped using it over privacy concerns.
It worked great wired to my PC for PCVR. The wireless was pretty spotty.
Now that I think about it, would I have to make a Facebook account to use it? Cause that’s a hard fuckin no from me.
Nope just a meta account. If that’s better or worse idk.
Seens like the same thing to me since whatever meta calls themselves its meta as a corporation that creeps me out.
Yeah. They have you attached a camera to your head that actively maps everything around you in color 3d and sends it to Facebook servers. Anytime I used it I’d take pretty much everything else out of the room. I think if I use it again I may use a deceased relative’s account to really fuck with their data.
I wish it were possible to just flash something else on it like you can on smartphones, and get rid of all the meta stuff on it.
I mean, I definitely get the paranoia, but people have wiresharked it left and right, and every day… it doesn’t. They do harvest what you do on the metaverse, but that is basically gone now anyway, and was always optional. They collect data from any first party products, but like the headset itself, no. It doesn’t send anything. And that isn’t something you can hide. Like the signal literally has to be sent, and it would be detectable.
They definitely have over the years kept mentioning things they would like to do, like using eye tracking to confirm to advertisers that ads were actually watched and shit, but that never actually came about. The only eye tracking they made so far was on the headset they didn’t target at consumers. I’m sure they still have future plans to achieve some of their horrible goals, but as of yet, hasn’t happened.
If it helps, the meta account is just a renamed oculus account, uses all the underlying systems from back then. I didn’t have to make one, my oculus account worked.
What bothers me is that all the data goes back to meta.
People have wiresharked it, only data that goes back to them is in their first party games, the headset doesn’t send anything. Always subject to change of course. They have mentioned plenty of plans over the years, but so far nothing implemented, most concrete plan was using the eye tracking to confirm to advertisers that an ad was watched, but the only headset they have done with eye tracking wasn’t targeted at consumers. So hasn’t come to fruition.
I got a Quest 3 and it completely satiated my VR needs. And in some respects it has advantages over the Frame, such as color passthrough
Yeah, out of the box, though color passthrough is already confirmed as an accessory. They just figured no sense making everyone pay for it if it can be done through the accessory slot. Some people don’t need color passthrough. And some people will want to buy a higher end one than what would have been included if they did include color passthrough. This way, everyone can be satisfied. And even a color passthrough module that uses 2 cameras and does stereo reconstruction uses 1/4 of the lanes and less than 10% of the bandwidth. So you could still daisychain other accessories too.
Honestly, as someone who bought and still have the Quest 1, don’t give them a cent. Approximately a year after I bought it they launched the Oculus 2, and new apps stopped supporting it, a couple of years later and it was mostly dead with no new games being released, couple of years later and they officially dropped support, making my most expensive paperweight yet. Now I can’t download the games that I bought on that platform, and will have to pay Meta more money for a new headset to keep having access to them.
I will buy a Frame and rebuy my games on Steam, because I have good confidence that it won’t become a paperweight, and that if it ever becomes old enough to actually be obsolete I can buy any other VR headset that supports my OS and keep playing my games.
The Quest 3 hardware is awesome. It’s all the rest that sucks. But using it as a box that launches Virtual Desktop, it’s been completely fine… still getting a Steam Frame as soon as the lottery picks me to be allowed to pay them money.
Again, never owned any VR headset, is that something that would require a bunch of knowhow to do?
Virtual desktop is just 20 bucks, the only knowledge you need is how to make sure your home router doesn’t suck, or if you don’t want to know that, buying a bespoke single device USB router specifically made to stream a VR headset, like a puppis S1. Basically the big version of Steam Frames dongle.
And having a computer worth streaming to the headset. Depending on what you want to play, the hardware requirements vary quite a bit. Most stuff made for VR is relatively accessible. But if you want the really good games, those currently mostly come from good VR mods for good games. And they will generally have a higher hardware requirement, as they weren’t optimized to run well in VR.
If you just want a VR headset to stream flat screen content to, like a 4k steam deck that you don’t have to either hold your hands up to your face, or look down at your hands… then even a super entry level computer is plenty for most games. Anything you can already run on your computer will play and look nearly identical streamed to the headset with Virtual Desktop. VR headset hardware is extremely optimally designed around low latency. So it’s one of the lowest latency options for streaming flat games. I generally am reclining in a real comfy recliner when just playing flat games or watching TV, and putting the screen at a nice comfortable viewing angle and height for that. Not to mention putting the monitor 20 feet away and making it huge, so it’s comfy for my eyes. No staring at a screen 2 feet from my face anymore. Even though the screen is actually one inch from my eyes, lol. Doesn’t feel like it to them, and that is the part that is important.
And, if you don’t have a computer, Quest 3 still has decent stand alone games. The operating system is mostly only annoying in that they constantly change stuff without making it better, just different, and stuff breaks alot, cuz they fired most of their humans and the few humans left are mandated to generate everything with AI. Same goes for firmware. Frequent broken features that can last for months. It sucks, but still hasn’t gotten to a point where it can literally be called unusable… but it sure can figuratively and hyperbolically be called that. As many people will demonstrate.
You don’t really need Virtual Desktop. The Steam Link app has made leaps and bounds in functionality and quality over the years. If you have a good home network (I’m taking a router with WiFi 6) and a PC wired to Ethernet, you can stream to the headset just fine.