"I think people should continue to make sure their Facebook accounts are in good standing before they buy the headset. They can work through those problems before they do it." ~ Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, Vice President of Augmented and Virtual Reality at Facebook
Source: https://twitter.com/thebigdev433/status/1316926387664584704 (linked to from OP)
This seems similar in some way to Google deleting the Cloud Print service that my printer I paid $300 for uses. Google has this listed on their site "Note: After December 31, 2020, Google Cloud Print will no longer be supported."
Seems like a dangerous thing to buy hardware from these companies now. And the only sane thing is to buy open hardware when it exists.
Oh boy, you'd be pissed to learn that IFTTT crippled their free tier, especially of you bought many IoT devices with the "Works with IFTTT" label on it.
One thing to always keep in mind when you buy a device is to never buy it because of a specific service, but for its standalone capabilities.
Hopefully someone else gets some good, fully untethered hardware out there soon.
It blows my mind tech people maintain FB accounts
While I've had some amazing PC VR experiences (I've been using and working with VR since the DK1). For me, Mobile VR with the capabilities of the Quest is the future.
Mostly, that's because I don't (currently) have a gaming PC or laptop.
At OC1 they handed out copies of Ready Player One, and it was pretty clear that they saw a future where they could control and monetize VR one way or another. Though the irony seems to have been lost on them that there is an evil corp called IOI in Ready Player One trying to seize control.
In any case, it was only a matter of time before this happened.
The thing that turned me off Oculus development actually happened around the same time as the release of the Quest, where they started to aggressively gate-keep what could come through the store, more so than even Apple/Google with their respective stores.
You essentially had to pitch them a concept before they would give you approval to start building (this is still the case for Quest 2 I believe). Now, I grant you that it's better to stop developers from wasting time and money if they're never going to be approved, but I also object to being told whether I can install something on my device or customer devices (there are workarounds, but they are just that).
It's increasingly obvious that buying hardware from a cloud company is a terrible idea. Google also has a tendency to brick IoT hardware. I think it may only be safe to buy hardware from pure hardware companies, but most of those would also love to become cloud companies.
Personally for me the issue is that after reading their TOS for Facebook, I can't make an account because their TOS is basically saying "I appreciate and support the concept of surveillance, giving up all my rights to privacy, and am perfectly okay with having everything I sad, do, share, post, like, and every intimate detail of my life being property of Facebook that can be sold off to anyone willing to buy my personal details."
This sounds naive IMO. It's not that they are getting it wrong. They are simply throwing their weight into changing it into direction that favors them.
That said, I find my Quest and my Quest 2 to be such standout products that the FB account requirement seems like a minor nuisance. BTW, I used to work in the field of VR for SAIC, Andes Studios, and Disney. I think the Quest product line and available entertainment is absolutely first rate - love it.
I did use my FB account to upload many of my videos - easy way to get them on my Quest to watch in a fake 3D theater. And yes, I did have second thoughts about sharing all that.
