Oculus to begin the merge with Facebook

[BeastyBaiter]

I figured FB was abandoning the PC space pretty soon given how development of the Quest vs Rift S has gone (I have both). I expect those two devices will be the last Oculus headsets I get. The Reverb G2 is looking pretty nice and the Index is also really cool too with the hand trackers. Neither is in the budget at the moment but one of those is on my wishlist.

[dburne]

I figured FB was abandoning the PC space pretty soon given how development of the Quest vs Rift S has gone (I have both). I expect those two devices will be the last Oculus headsets I get. The Reverb G2 is looking pretty nice and the Index is also really cool too with the hand trackers. Neither is in the budget at the moment but one of those is on my wishlist.

 

Yeah I have been so tempted by the Index, I am sure I would have really liked it. Oculus has me spoiled with the great inside/out tracking on the Rift S and I have grown fond of that simplicity.

So figured I would try a Reverb G2 first. If not satisfied, I may well grab an Index.

[Thinder]

My Facebook account has been victim of their stupid crack down on political divergence long ago, but I already took my decision, this head set is the last I'll purchase linked with Facebook or Apple.

From now on, I'll make sure I do not depend on either of them for my gaming.

 

 

I'm looking at the HP REVERB G2 as a possible replacement for my actual Oculus Rift CV1 in the future, better graphics, no political/lobbying dragnet attached to it (apparently) and affordable with a few month of saving.

 

And.... Today is a good day for me, I will start using the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB GDDR5X in VR when I'm back from CEX...

 

Bye bye Zuke!

 

 

 

 

 

...................

Edited August 23, 2020 by Thinder

[Thadiun Okona]

I don't get it what is the problem with FB account requirment. Why not have account and use it only for logins? You should not be using Facebook for anything meaningful anyways

 

 

Every time you use anything that makes facebook money, such as:

 

- facebook (through ads)

- instagram (through ads)

- occulus (directly)

 

Or anything that helps facebook consolidate control over communications, such as:

 

- whatsapp

- messenger

 

You give them more resources to, among other things:

 

- condone genocides in other countries like Burma (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/...r-facebook.html)

- financially support judges like Brett Kavanaugh (https://www.theguardian.com/technol...-kavanaugh-gala)

- provide a shelter online for white supremacy

- run the largest news dissemination site in the world, entirely run by ex fox news people

- encourage their algorithms to steer more people toward anti-vaxx / extremist ideologies, which the company admits it does but won't change (https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebo...ons-11590507499)

 

This is just the tip of this cancerous corporation's dystopian iceberg

 

 

 

 

 

Guys seriously - I have to see all this political nonsense all over the news every day, I really don't want to be seeing it now here too in one of my beloved combat flight sim's forums.

 

 

It's inseparable now in the context of Oculus because a politically charged far right company that props up the world's authoritarian regimes has chosen to co opt VR for their own purposes. It looked bad enough in 2014 but we now know is even worse. A lot worse.

[dburne]

 

 

 

 

It's inseparable now in the context of Oculus because a politically charged far right company that props up the world's authoritarian regimes has chosen to co opt VR for their own purposes. It looked bad enough in 2014 but we now know is even worse. A lot worse.

 

I disagree. This political stuff is quite separable from these forums. In fact I am pretty sure it is against forum rules.

[eaglecash867]

+1 to that, Don.

 

Talking about politics is against the rules of the forum, and we've already been reminded of that by a moderator in this very thread. :doh:

[Muskoka]

Every time you use anything that makes facebook money, such as:

 

- facebook (through ads)

- instagram (through ads)

- occulus (directly)

 

Or anything that helps facebook consolidate control over communications, such as:

 

- whatsapp

- messenger

 

You give them more resources to, among other things:

 

- condone genocides in other countries like Burma (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/...r-facebook.html)

- financially support judges like Brett Kavanaugh (https://www.theguardian.com/technol...-kavanaugh-gala)

- provide a shelter online for white supremacy

- run the largest news dissemination site in the world, entirely run by ex fox news people

- encourage their algorithms to steer more people toward anti-vaxx / extremist ideologies, which the company admits it does but won't change (https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebo...ons-11590507499)

 

This is just the tip of this cancerous corporation's dystopian iceberg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's inseparable now in the context of Oculus because a politically charged far right company that props up the world's authoritarian regimes has chosen to co opt VR for their own purposes. It looked bad enough in 2014 but we now know is even worse. A lot worse.

 

Well said, and I agree with everything stated. People need to understand the motives behind this move by Facebook, and what they stand for. If political discussion isn't allowed here, then perhaps you should remove any post where Facebook is mentioned, including this whole thread.

 

Look at the anger, and backlash this move has received. It's not just a general dislike of Facebook, it's a hatred of what they stand for politically.

Edited August 24, 2020 by Muskoka

[eaglecash867]

Well said, and I agree with everything stated. People need to understand the motives behind this move by Facebook, and what they stand for. If political discussion isn't allowed here, then perhaps you should remove any post where Facebook is mentioned, including this whole thread.

 

Look at the anger, and backlash this move has received. It's not just a general dislike of Facebook, it's a hatred of what they stand for politically.

 

Not everybody cares about Facebook's politics, including me. What a lot of us care about is just their invasion of privacy and data-mining. It doesn't matter to me what they use the information for, its wrong no matter what. Its also wrong for them to require you to set up an account with them in order to continue to use a working product that you bought 4 years ago. If its been working for 4 years, and still works today...it should still work tomorrow, without any further intrusions from data miners.

 

I always found it amusing that so many people were shocked when they found out all of the privacy invasion and spying that went on through them. I mean, its not like Facebook originated as a revenge site for angry guys to get back at women they feel had "wronged" them.

 

Their politics don't matter. Invasion of privacy is simply wrong, no matter what its purpose.

[Fri13]

Just write to oculus now and tell your opinion.

 

As being one without ever having a Facebook account, I don't know what to do with it even as they seem to require some activity to have a one account there.

[dburne]

The issue here is the eventual requiring of all Oculus owners to have a Facebook Social Media account. That is fine for those that want to partake of social apps, like Venues and the upcoming Horizon. I think what they under-estimate are those Oculus users such as myself that have no desire to partake in social apps, and no desire to have a linked FB account in order to use our VR device. I would think the flight sim and racing sim community have quite a number that feel the same.

 

There has obviously been a large outcry over this decision. Maybe FB will take a step back and re-think this approach, who knows. Having and tying a FB social media account should remain optional for those that are into that sort of thing, rather than a forced requirement for all Oculus VR users.

 

In any event, it will be an interesting upcoming OC7 whenever they do have it. Oculus really needs to define the direction they are heading when it comes to their hardware.

[Bearskin]

I am another soon to be ex oculus user, me and a mate both got the Rift last year, playing DCS or driving sims, just call each other through Oculus home and we were away. That was stopped due to not having a facebook account, and now it is going to get worse.

 

 

I am happy that DCS is going along nicely with the updates and I have similar if not better FPS to pre 256 now. This means the money I was going to spend on a CPU, MOBO and Memory can now go on a G2.

[Thinder]

As I already said, that's me gone, Zuke can stick it, I won't get anywhere near Facebook or anything he owns, same for Apple.

 

We don't need companies that dictates how we have to think or what we're allowed to say, and that's Facebook and Zukenberg and if they get the monopoly they're after in gaming, it means political bias, including what we will be able to play.

 

I'll finish upgrading my PC than start saving for a better and less restricted head set.

 

And btw folks, just in case you haven't noticed, they (Facebook and Apple) are after Unreal and other developers, that's a HUGE issue for anyone into gaming.

 

We don't have the right to talk politics in this forum, fair enough but the issue is forced upon us by those two companies, not only that, but they threaten to take over game development.

 

You can fear the worst from them because as opposed to us, they don't have such restriction when it comes to forcing political views on their clients.

[Thinder]

:) .....Eagle.

 

It is not just Facebook, Alphabet or Apple, it is also our news organizations. 40% of people receive some of their political filter from CNN or MSNBC, another 40% from Fox News. People feel comfortable after they come home from work listening to opinions that already align with their own.

 

I will throw out a little tip that has been helpful to me for over two decades now, and may give different insights to Forum members. Pick five or six major news sites outside the United States (or your respective home country) and aggregate their views on matters political and scientific. For example, if engineers in the United States or Canada decided to divert water from Niagara Falls to a new hydroelectric station, there would be howling on the left about the destruction of natural beauty and environmental impact/damage while those on the right would claim the extra energy was needed to support new manufacturing bases and growing communities. You could see that within 10 seconds, political fights would break out, ... each side certain that the other was wrong.

 

Who would be right in a fictional situation such as that?

 

Not easy to tell, but you can bet that CNN would try to spin it one way and Fox the opposite. But French reporters in Nantes are far less likely to care about the issue politics surrounding the Niagara area and just focus on the positives or negatives of such a project. They would care as much about a Niagara hydro plant as we would care about one on their Rhone river. This means that if you subscribe to English versions of major new sites, say, in Osaka, in Buenos Aires, Oslo, Budapest, Dubai, Johannesburg, Toronto and Auckland, you will get a much more nuanced and better overall view of the issue because those reporting are more distanced from the problem. They are more likely to give a neutral opinion that is more objective because they do not have a personal stake in the fire and are unconcerned with influencing any particular voting block. As an example, I am not a climatologist. I do not know if Professor X at Ohio State University is generally correct or Professor Y at the University of Texas Austin. So I begin reading to see what the latest aggregate of test results done by teams from Waseda University, the Univ. of Witwater and NUS have found. I can rely more objectively on the ice core samples taken from the Ross Shelf bc I know the Japanese professor doing so could care less about Nancy Pelosi or Donald Trump. This also means when you see near universal agreement from many disparate voices spread across the globe (say on anthropocentric climate change or vaccination issues), the individual regional or national political cares are less likely to be persuasive.

 

Another major side benefit is that you learn much more about the world outside your home country or local political squabbles. You also get to learn how your country is viewed by others. In the end, it is far more educational that receiving your news from just one or two TV stations or political sites.

 

 

 

 

You give the French MSM much too much credit, in fact, they completely emulate that of the US.

 

 

Politics have infiltrated everything, and those who can does their very best to keep the lobby in their own hands, this includes medias but also social medias, gaming, entertainment, sport etc.

 

 

So if you play whatever game in the future, if it is not strongly independent from this B.S, chances are it's going to be tainted by politics.

[Steel Jaw]

facebook is a plague.

[Thinder]

facebook is a plague.

 

 

Agreed. I don't miss it more than I miss my TV...

[Muskoka]

Not everybody cares about Facebook's politics, including me. What a lot of us care about is just their invasion of privacy and data-mining. It doesn't matter to me what they use the information for, its wrong no matter what. Its also wrong for them to require you to set up an account with them in order to continue to use a working product that you bought 4 years ago. If its been working for 4 years, and still works today...it should still work tomorrow, without any further intrusions from data miners.

 

I always found it amusing that so many people were shocked when they found out all of the privacy invasion and spying that went on through them. I mean, its not like Facebook originated as a revenge site for angry guys to get back at women they feel had "wronged" them.

 

Their politics don't matter. Invasion of privacy is simply wrong, no matter what its purpose.

 

Your points are also valid, but I disagree with one thing you said. The political weaponization of social media sites "does matter", and needs to end today, especially on Facebook. Everywhere you go on the internet someone is collecting data about you, it's how it's used that matters. It's too late to worry about whether it's being done or not, we're long past being able to do anything about it. But we can sure raise our voices about how that information is used.

Edited August 25, 2020 by Muskoka

[eaglecash867]

Your points are also valid, but I disagree with one thing you said. The political weaponization of social media sites "does matter", and needs to end today, especially on Facebook. Everywhere you go on the internet someone is collecting data about you, it's how it's used that matters. It's too late to worry about whether it's being done or not, we're long past being able to do anything about it. But we can sure raise our voices about how that information is used.

 

So, in lieu of endlessly discussing the politics of it, which is completely ineffective and not allowed on these forums, we should all just continue with the general consensus of this thread and speak with our future HMD purchases. I mean, wasn't that the original point of the thread? The OP doesn't like the concept of being forced into a Social Media contract just to keep a product he paid for working, and neither do I.

[Mango]

Any word on when they're going to re-brand the Oculus Rift to Facebook Face?

[Darpa]

"Facebook Face"... I love it. That is what I will refer to it from now on!

[Thinder]

Anyway, my Oculus Rift CV1 is my first headset, I'm fairly happy with it considering I had it new for less than half the price of a new one and that I'm new to VR...

 

One sure thing I'm going to prep my system for a more performant headset, the HP REVERB G2 looks good but there might be better when I finally have the budget for it.

 

My primary requirement will be cockpit sharpness, because even the CV1 provide me with reasonable mid and long range images if one forget about the grid effect, and it has quiet a low resolution compared to other.

 

So wait and see, fingers crossed, I'll get what IO need in time...

[dburne]

Another update:

 

And they continue with the merge.

 

Oculus Connect 7 which was slated for later this year, has been announced.

 

Except now it is called -wait for it --- Facebook Connect 7. They dropped the Oculus name out of it.

To be held virtually on Sept. 16th.

 

https://uploadvr.com/facebook-connect-2020/

 

My guess: They will be focused on Quest technology with maybe an announcement of a Quest 2, and will be hitting

on their social aspect with Venues and the upcoming Horizon.

[javelina1]

the sooner I'm out of that walled garden, the better... can't wait for my G2... :-)

[Taz1004]

So what did Zuckerberg pay $2 billion for? The technology itself, two focusing lens on retina display was not new nor was it patented. Oculus had one patent related to tracking which was not vital part of the design.

[VpR81]

So what did Zuckerberg pay $2 billion for?

 

Personal data of Rift owners by forcing them to sign up to his spyware called Facebook.

[sirrah]

So glad I jumped off this "Oculus-->Facebook" train in time :cheer3nc: