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I was considering buying the Quest 3 this morning, this outage is timely. The fact that I can't use my perfectly working headset to play an offline game because
by fmsf 3y ago
I was considering buying the Quest 3 this morning, this outage is timely. The fact that I can't use my perfectly working headset to play an offline game because facebook is down, makes me wonder if I should go for a different provider. Any recommendations? Excluding apple vision pro since it is too expensive.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ZealousFerret 3y agoQuest is the best option right now
- makestuff 3y agoIs there any reason to get the quest pro over the quest 3? Or should I wait for a quest pro refresh?
- practice9 3y agoUnless it's a recent change, it works perfectly fine offline (wifi turned off). As for alternatives, there is Pico, but Quest 3 may be superior in games selection. Or go wired which is of course less portable
- dartos 3y agoI think you need to be online for the first setup of the headset, otherwise it won’t work at all.
- IggleSniggle 3y agoYes. You login first, and then it completes device setup. At least, that's how it works for the Rift.
- fmsf 3y agoIn my case I was doing iRacing with a cable, it requires the Oculus app to run for the link to work. Which in turn needs the login to be active.
- extraduder_ire 3y agoThis is different from it being offline, it's like the device is kicked off the associated account. A "something went wrong" window pops up with a "generate device code" button, with instructions on how to remove and re-pair the headset. There is no way to even access wifi settings or anything else to disconnect the device from the internet. If it's still a problem much later in the day, I'll try turning off my router to see what that does.
- practice9 3y agoInteresting. I had a problem a few months ago with DNS not resolving Meta servers on my Starlink internet connection, but I was able to use the UI and the apps nonetheless, just couldn't open the store or update firmware. Seems like they really did change something in the latest firmwares.
- bloaf 3y agoI think the current buzz in the VR space is the "Bigscreen Beyond" which eschews all of the nice-to-haves in order to make the headset as light as possible, and the result is surprisingly compelling.
- TulliusCicero 3y agoIt looks compelling for high-end PC gaming VR enthusiasts, but if GP is more of a mainstream consumer it probably won't make sense for them. At least from what I've read, there's a bunch of downsides for regular consumers: very expensive ($1000) -- SUPER expensive if you bundle in controllers and tracking points (~$1600), needs external tracking, wired instead of wireless, no built-in audio, can effectively only be used by one person (because each one is built custom to your face), and of course it's not a standalone headset, it has to be hooked up to a gaming PC.
- xp84 3y agoGreat news: Thanks to Apple, $1600 is now a budget super-economy VR headset! Courage.
- basilgohar 3y agoAs a principle I think it is a good idea to avoid any technically unneccessary coupling of hardware or software to something else that is not strictly user-servicing, else the priorities are inverted in favor of the vendor's priorities and not your own.
- CobrastanJorji 3y agoI'm pretty sure the priorities are almost always inverted these days, unnecessary coupling or not.
- bdangubic 3y agoI have been in the industry for the last 25 years and have done more “technically unnecessary” things than there are grains of sand on Earth :)
- waynesonfire 3y agowhy are you smiling about that?
- lewsid 3y agoI'm typing this from Immersed in the Quest 3, no issues.
- TulliusCicero 3y agoThe Quest 3 is kind of the obvious mainstream consumer choice for a VR headset. Standalone wireless headset, reasonably powerful chipset, can optionally stream from a PC either wired or wireless, good optics/resolution, decent controllers/tracking, large game library, large suite of features (including hand tracking and color passthrough), all for a reasonable price. Not sure any other headset really competes on all those things at once.
- citrusybread 3y agocan we really call it standalone if you need it to phone home to Meta? and doesn't it require an account one of their services too? they did a fantastic job with hardware. I just wish they didn't couple the software so tightly.
- bonton89 3y agoI know they raised the price recently but it seemed pretty obvious to me they were selling these at a loss to try and get people locked in by the software.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- docmars 3y agoIt makes me wonder how the world would be if monitor manufacturers did the same thing, it would be unacceptable. I view VR headsets and their peripherals as no different than a mouse, keyboard, and display. Companies requiring all this nonsense to use your device, put in that light, is ludacris.
- hyuuu 3y agocomparing it with a monitor is rather unfair, you have to bundle the computing along with it, not to mention the applications to make it an actually fair comparison. At that point, is it still ludacris?
- DonHopkins 3y agoLucky you didn't already have a Quest 3, and you were in CyberSpace when Facebook crashed, because then you would be trapped in CyberSpace and die. That's how it works, you know.
- idle_zealot 3y agoI can confirm that I was unable to use my Quest 3 this morning. I left it connected to the internet, it tried to phone home I guess, and then locked itself into a "please connect this headset to your Meta account" state. I am so sick of companies "selling" computers that they continue to control. In what universe does Meta have the right to remotely lock my headset and prevent me from using it to run the software I installed on it? If I were to sell my current desktop computer, or phone, or whatever, on any marketplace, and leave a remote login account on it that I then used to continue to operate the computer as though it were mine remotely, installing software, playing games, and occasionally peeking at what the current owner was doing, that would be obviously criminal. How is this any different? Because I signed away my rights when I "agreed" to their Terms and Conditions box (which I was compelled to do to use the hardware I purchased)? Something is so fundamentally broken in the current ownership/property landscape. We somehow ended up in a world where people don't own the most critical tools in their lives, companies have managed to recreate feudal fiefdoms within the bounds of the market.
- rixthefox 3y agoUbisoft Director of Subscriptions really opened the floodgates of bad behavior when they came out saying "Gamers need to get comfortable with not owning their games". I think these companies need to be reminded they do not own our PCs either. I'm really starting to like that mantra of "If buying isn't owning then piracy isn't stealing".
- ljm 3y agoThe full context of that quote, which everyone conveniently omits, is ”for subscriptions to take off”. As in, gaming subscription services like Xbox’s GamePass won’t succeed if gamers prefer to buy games over paying a monthly sub.
- bonton89 3y agoI can understand your frustration but were you not aware of the software lock in when you bought it? I'm not defending the ownership erosion, but I avoided these things specifically because of who was selling it and how it was locked to them.
- d00nut 3y agoSteam Index is great if you don't care about cords / needing a PC. Easy to do VRchat, IRacing, or even blade & sorcery game sessions for 3-4+ hours without any eye strain, headaches, motion sickness, or discomfort from the headset. It also fits over / around glasses Biggest reason not to IMO is of the rumors around an "index2".
- CoastalCoder 3y agoSeconded, I think. I've been very happy with my Valve Index, but I don't know how it compares to newer headsets on the market. More broadly, I find that Valve represents my interests far more than Facebook/Meta does. So I'd much rather send my money to Valve.
- munk-a 3y agoI'll third this - Valve is really unobtrusive about the steam related features of the index. It does have some requirements with steam for setup but if you want to run a local binary and mess around with dev tools it's extremely easy to do. It's also extremely well sealed and designed - I tend to sweat a lot and a few times I've been beat sabering for quite a while without any long term damage to the headset.
- cesarb 3y ago> Biggest reason not to IMO is of the rumors around an "index2". Another big reason not to buy a Steam Index is "not available in your country". The only VR headsets I've seen in stores here are the Quest 2/3 and the PSVR2; and the Steam store page for the Valve Index (and the Steam Deck) says "not available in your country".
- darrenf 3y agoI used my Quest 3 for a couple of gaming breaks during the outage with no issues.
- darrenf 3y agoI am wondering why I had no issues, since Meta themselves are saying yep, Quests booted people out. I was definitely online (albeit not playing multiplayer). Odd. https://www.uploadvr.com/meta-explains-why-quest-headsets-stopped-working-vows-more-resilient/ https://www.uploadvr.com/meta-explains-why-quest-headsets-st...
- YeBanKo 3y agoI could not play a steam game on a PC in offline mode when my internet was down. This issue is not exclusive to fb.
- samtheprogram 3y agoHave never had this problem. There must have been something specific to your scenario, like the game wasn't downloaded, or it's a specific title?
- IggleSniggle 3y agoThat's not a Steam thing though, but rather the specific software. Steam explicitly has an exit path for the user if Valve disappeared overnight that allows their downloaded games to continue working offline. The difference being that we are discussing platforms, not the things that run on those platforms.
- YeBanKo 3y agoSteam Offline wants you to go online and perform a bunch of steps, including launching games and then enabling offline mode. Every game launch is is probably a download of at least few hundred megabytes of data. And then every game requires its own networks where your account linked to steam acc, etc. and Rockstar games iirc it you must be online when you launch the game. So the fact that Steam client has offline mode is irrelevant and misleading.
- IggleSniggle 3y agoThat has not been my experience. Any online game is going to be its own thing, dependent on the choices of the game company. Inherently, Steam does not require all the steps you're describing. Sidenote, but my experience with the Rockstar launcher has been absolutely atrocious, to the point that I just avoid rockstar at this point even though I'd otherwise be interested because I've been burned so many times. That's a Rockstar issue, not a Steam issue.
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
- callalex 3y agoWhatever you do, get one of the all-in-ones that doesn’t require setting up tracking beacons. They are universally a pain and will cause you to never bother playing.
- m3kw9 3y agoYou can’t have everything. If you want a VR headset you described, there may not be any good ecosystem of software yet and you’d have to wait. This means you are gonna use your headset even less, think about how often fb goes down, it goes down for 2-3 hours once a year and it also has to coincide with the time you are using it? It doesn’t make sense to be this risk adverse
- squidsoup 3y agoThe Sony PSVR2 is getting PC support by end of year apparently.
- zer0zzz 3y agoThis is pretty cool. I might get one if I’m convinced it’s better than my quest3s display link.
- ahupp 3y agoThere may be a bug or change since I left, but I built the app library and authorization logic, and it was explicitly designed to work offline. Of course, using it day-to-day and initial setup are different and I'd imagine if Apple is down it's hard to setup an AVP as well.
- EMCymatics 3y agoOffline gaming should never have been destroyed. Wonder what data they collect from gamers.
- Jemm 3y agoI was able to use my Quest 3 throughout the outage for offline games.
- xp84 3y agoimho this is a stance you certainly have every right to take, but good luck. If you want to be part of the world of things like VR, smartphones, etc. then refusing (on principle) to participate in things like "accounts" and "cloud" is going to cost you far more time than the number of hours a massive company like Meta may have downtime. Likewise, yes, at some undetermined future date a lot of this hardware will become a complete doorstop due to their supporting servers being taken offline, however again, if you are doing this advanced gadget thing, it'll be long after you would have decided to upgrade to new hardware anyway because it can't do any of the latest stuff. (and yes, there are ways if you're devoted enough, to roll your own everything and run Linux on a Framework laptop, and use some kind of custom ROM on your phone without Google anything, 3d print yourself a VR headset, etc. But all of this will cost you several orders of magnitude more time than Meta outages ever would.