I had the Oculus quest DK2 before oculus was bought by Facebook and enjoyed playing whatever people made, but the more Facebook locked everything down the less interested I became in VR.
Now you can’t even play with a quest unless you have a Facebook account, and it seems so easy to get locked out of your account on purpose or accidentally.
Are there unlocked VR headsets that I can just have fun with instead of being locked into one company and their products?
Thanks
The current version of “meta” account is just reverted back to an Oculus account but renamed. It has the same functionality it used to when it was called an Oculus account. And specifically is missing all the functionality of a facebook account. You can optionally also have a facebook account connected to it if you want the social features, but you don’t need them.
As far as I know there are no headsets that don’t require an account, as buying games is entirely digital now. The account is how they know what games you have purchased. The only reason to not have an account is if they want to attract users that want to sideload games only and not get them from a store. There isn’t much incentive on their end to provide that experience, especially since all the other headsets they are competing with are using the “game console” model, of selling the hardware at a loss, and making it up with software sales. Trying to be the one company that has to profit off the hardware sales too makes your headset look like a bad idea to buy. Even if some people would want that, the VR market isn’t big enough yet for that to be a viable option. Too many people are just looking for the cheapest up front purchase, no matter what they have to sign to get that price.
Maybe 5-10 years from now it would be worth doing, but it’s hard to say for sure if it ever will be. Imagine trying to launch a new console now that was similarly powerful to the current consoles, but costed 50% more. The upside being that it could run the games of both (somehow legally). That console may sound like a good idea to some of us, but how many? Enough? Probably not. Even selling hardware for profit doesn’t mean profit from day 1, you need to sell enough to cover research, development, and manufacturing. Not to mention the salaries of all your employees. So, they might need to sell a million units before they are out of the hole.
Edit: there are VR headsets that are basically just monitors. You probably don’t need an account for some of those. But they also are pretty limited in usefulness.
As far as I know there are no headsets that don’t require an account
For me the important part is that the headset doesn’t require a specific account. As long as I can use it with multiple ecosystems there isn’t a singular point of failure, for example if the manufacturer stops supporting it.
Thanks for the detailed answer.
What kind of VR headsets are basically monitors?
I don’t even know about those, that was basically what I was using with the dk2, so I’d be pretty comfortable with that.
My main reticence over having an account for a headset is that you can be locked out of the account and then your headset becomes useless.
I remember that happening to a lot of quest users and since I’ve been looking it up since I opened this post, there are plenty more of those stories still going around, being locked out of their account and not being able to use their quest.
Being locked out only happened when it was a facebook account, that was the whole reason they went back to Oculus accounts. People would do dumb stuff on facebook and get banned, not knowing they would lose their games from that too. And despite the accounts being linked, they were still handled by two different departments, with poorly trained staff. You’d occasionally get someone that could restore your purchases, but the vast majority didn’t know how and passed the buck and blamed the other team.
It was just a huge unnecessary headache. It doesn’t happen anymore. You can be a huge jerk all you like on the internet and it won’t cost your games anymore, it’ll just cost what it normally costs.
As for headsets that work like monitors, it would be the ones that have HDMI or Display Port, ideally display port at this point as the res and framerate is getting up there and display port is more likely to be up to date on your hardware. They don’t have their own games and can’t be used wirelessly, but they should work for pcvr still.
This one seems to be one of the more popular options, but it also kinda sounds like it sucks. But, no account needed apparently. Not sure the value is worth the cost.
Oh, I do like that, thanks, that was a good and informative video, I’m going to see what else is in that sort of vein.
That’s also great to know about the Oculus accounts, there are still a bunch of complaints about the quest 3 being locked out or unresponsive, but I see they’re more about technical issues rather than being locked out of the account.
I remember when they used to use the Facebook accounts and I couldn’t believe it. When people said that they were locked away from the console that they bought, that was just insane to me.
Thank you very much.
If you really don’t want to be tied to any accounts, buying something like an HTC vive 2nd hand and setting it up on a linux computer using Envision is probably the most libre VR setup you can reasonably get that is both capable and affordable. Keep in mind the HTC vive is from 2016 so the screens and optics are not great but the 2nd hand cost should reflect that. The only account you will need if you want a good experience will be a Steam account since Envision borrows a driver from SteamVR to work, though once you have done that you could just log out. LVRA is a great source of info for this stuff.
Okay, cool. Thanks.
I’m going to dig into that site, there is way more to this question than I thought there was haha.
Your best options are psvr2 with pc adapter and index. You will need steam to use them so some type of account is needed no matter what option you choose.
I’m not sure how the big screen beyond works but i don’t think it needs an account either right? Aren’t there more pcvr headsets that can just plug into a PC and use steam directly?
If you use it the official way, you will need a steam account to make it work since it is a steamVR headset. It can also work with Monado, an OpenXR runtime, but support is not quite complete. LVRA is a great source of information about linux VR. To my knowledge, both Oculus VR runtime and SteamVR will require accounts to use.
Okay, got it. Appreciate it. I’ll look into that, I’m watching videos about current headsets now.
If I had to buy a headset right now then I’d be leaning towards an Index, but it’s a few years old now and price is basically unchanged (though in practice it might be seen as a relative reduction, since everything else has gone up). There’s ofc. some speculation about an Index 2, perhaps around the end of the year, but if you can’t wait a second hand Index might be a better value option than buying one new.
Oh, good to know… I can wait, I’m just trying to get back into the scene again, why is the index your preferred device?
I mean everything is still speculation regarding the Index 2, there have been a few patent applications filed but noone knows for sure.
At least for the time being, Valve seems to be one of the few large corporations which most of the time seem to have customers’ best interests at heart, while other large corporations tend to have more of a history of screwing their users over every chance they get. And while SteamVR on Linux isn’t great, there are at least some efforts being made. Pimax Crystal Light seemed like another good option on paper, but there appear to be severe quality control issues at the moment, and IIRC it requires a buggy Windows-only driver to work. Somnium VR1 looks great but the price made it a no-option for me.
I’d rather get something that’s been a bit battle tested, I like the index and the psvr2, man there are so many options it’s going to take a bit to narrow things down.
Although 350 for the psvr2 is real difficult to dismiss
PSVR2 just got marked for a temporary discount, $200 off
https://direct.playstation.com/en-us/buy-consoles/playstationvr2
Dayummmm good looking OUT!
Thanks.
Wow that is a tempting price.
I don’t think the “your Facebook account gets banned” aspect is an issue. You don’t need a facebook account anymore, but a Meta account instead – same company ofc. So if your actual issue is Meta being behind it, that changes nothing and you probably shouldn’t buy anything from them.
But I’m not sure if there’s any headset that doesn’t require some sort of account at one point, even if it’s just a Steam account.
Okay, thanks.
I’d rather use a steam account then a meta, if those are the options
Meta owns Facebook. It use to be Facebook owned Facebook. But they changed the overall company name.
You don’t need a Facebook account.
The Quest works with SteamVR (PCVR) via a few methods.
The Index is sold by valve. And while it’s a good HMD it is also end of life and not manufactured anymore. But they do have stock.
The PSVR2 might be an option for using with PCVR soon. The adapter comes out soon.
You need a Meta account for quest with steam VR no matter what now. Even Gen 1. There were changes made a while back that broke the ability to do otherwise unfortunately.
I now have a Gen 1 that’s a paperweight.
Yeah. Never buy Meta. Ever. PSVR2 is on sale and incredible, but the lifespan may be short. Index is good, but definitely showing its age.
The ideal current PC setup if money is no object is probably the Bigscreen Beyond with Index controllers.
I would add on that if you are sensitive to compression artifacts and latency which you are going to get with a standalone headset streaming games, a native PCVR headset will look better.
Honestly just get a new disposable email address and make a new account, turn on all the privacy settings and don’t engage with the meta stuff outside of launching SteamVR.
It’s not perfect but the headsets are great pieces of hardware and they’re great value for money.
Simple and effective. Thanks.
