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How do?

Recently been considering the Oculus Quest 2 system, as my Lass’s daughters are proper daft for VR Gaming. They’re pretty young, so mostly play exercise and educational type games.

I could instead get the PS4 VR kit, but add in the two wand things, and OQ2 is far cheaper.

Can anyone offer me their brains on OQ2? Does it share the display on a TV? What sort of games are available?

The good news:

Does it share the display on a TV?

Yes (pretty much all headsets do now, but you might have to get extra cables/adaptors that don't come with).

What sort of games are available?

Virtually everything, unless there are any PS4 VR exclusives that I'm not aware of.
Also, getting a PC headset as opposed to PS4 opens up the wide, wide world of mods as well as games that aren't on PS4 at all.
I'm sure you've already spotted it's a much cheaper option than its PC contemporaries.

The bad news...
There's another kind of price, going for the Quest rather than another headset. For starters, part of the reason you have access to everything is because Oculus have a sizeable number of games that they want to lock inside their own store, whereas the other main competitor (Steam) doesn't do any of those shenanigans. In buying the Quest you're supporting the company and that exclusivity as a result.
There's also the account concerns, where your Quest has to be tied to a Facebook account to operate. Aside from that being a ridiculously shady requirement in the first place - it's also impractical should that account get hit with any suspensions, bans or so on. My advice there would be to set up a dummy Facebook account, tied to a dummy email address that does nothing else, and set the Quest up with that.

I think there are some PS4 VR games that aren't on Occulus but not 100% sure of the list but I doubt it is more than a handful of titles.

Without rehashing what Super Ready already stated most of the reviews I saw said that while the headband that comes with it is serviceable for short play periods you most likely want to get the $50 deluxe headband as it is very noticeable in comfort/fit.

 Ahtman wrote:
Without rehashing what Super Ready already stated most of the reviews I saw said that while the headband that comes with it is serviceable for short play periods you most likely want to get the $50 deluxe headband as it is very noticeable in comfort/fit.

Ooh, that's a very good point. Besides the question burning in my mind of whether the Quest is worth the cheaper price if you immediately have to buy accessories just to make it comfortable... it should be noted that there are a couple of different strap models and the top-end one actually includes a battery pack and carry case, so arguably is actually a worthy addition.
However, there is unfortunately an issue even with that right now.


...I should probably point out, the fact that I:
- already have a Vive Cosmos
- have had serious misgivings about the Oculus/FB account model ever since they announced the company purchase
...adds up to me having a quite conscious bias against the Quest. Perhaps unfairly, as I haven't actually tried it.

If you're reading this thinking "man what a jerk, the Quest is fine, get back in your hole" - do please provide a counterpoint! Only fair to give Doc both sides of the coin.

I've been looking at the Quest 2 as it's by far the best value for money at this point. It has its downsides, but if you want to overcome those downsides you're paying a lot more.

There are lots of reviews out there, my only suggestion is don't get caught up in the hype train and try and look at some reviews that point out the negatives as many reviewers seem to have been too caught up in the hype of the release and forget to report that it's not perfect (even if it might be really good value).

The Facebook thing really puts me off. I do have a FB account already, but I don't really want to link the Quest to it, and my FB account does have some false information so if it gets banned then I probably won't be able to recover it.

Recently FB have been cracking down on accounts they think have been created with false information, and some people have reported soon after setting up their Quest 2 their account got banned.

 Super Ready wrote:
My advice there would be to set up a dummy Facebook account, tied to a dummy email address that does nothing else, and set the Quest up with that.

People have been having problems with that. If the account does get banned (and FB have been auto banning a lot of freshly made accounts, likely for political related issues) then you need to provide a real ID that matches the details you put into FB. One of my gripes is that even if it's possible to get an account unbanned, I don't really want to be sending a scan of my driver's license or passport to FB to get it unbanned.

If your account does get banned, you can just create a new one and reset the Quest to link it to the new one, BUT, you will lose any games you paid for on the banned account. So if you bought a few hundred dollars of games that'd be very sucky. Also if FB are getting into the habit of auto-banning accounts, I imagine they'll start banning any accounts made from the same IP as one that has already been banned.

But if the whole FB thing doesn't bother you, the Quest looks like a great deal for the price. You can run it either standalone with games bought from Oculus, or set it up as a PC VR headset either wirelessly using a wireless router or with the link cable, which then lets you play games bought off Steam, etc.

It's mostly gotten positive reviews, and the few negatives you can hopefully ignore given the low price.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ahtman wrote:
I think there are some PS4 VR games that aren't on Occulus but not 100% sure of the list but I doubt it is more than a handful of titles.

Without rehashing what Super Ready already stated most of the reviews I saw said that while the headband that comes with it is serviceable for short play periods you most likely want to get the $50 deluxe headband as it is very noticeable in comfort/fit.

The headband gets mixed reviews. Some people saying you have to absolutely upgrade to the deluxe one, but lots of folk seem perfectly happy with the headband that comes with it, I've read a few people even prefer it especially if you use the headset with headphones as the deluxe one is chunkier so headphones don't sit as nicely.

Seems to be shape-of-head dependent.

Certainly food for thought. Didn’t realise it needs a FB account. Doesn’t bother me, a I’ve an account already.

But, given it’ll mainly be used by kids? That’s a chat to have with their Mum first, no?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Certainly food for thought. Didn’t realise it needs a FB account. Doesn’t bother me, a I’ve an account already.
But, given it’ll mainly be used by kids? That’s a chat to have with their Mum first, no?

Absolutely, especially as Facebook itself is supposed to be 13-years-old plus, per their terms. (Yeah, right...)

I understand Skink's misgivings about creating a new account for it, but I still suggest going that route because it reduces the risk of problems so much. I wouldn't advise giving the kids the login to that account...!!
At this point in time, I don't believe there's a way to actually access Facebook proper via the Quest itself - but there's every chance that could change in the future.

All food for thought.

Well pleased I raised a topic, as I had no idea a FB account was a prerequisite of use.

As for its impact on my account? No fear at all, given my often alluded to but never truly revealed for good reason career path.

Even so, need to discuss it with Trev first.

My main concern with FB was just that it seems FB have gotten ban heavy lately. It's apparently only been a "small" problem, but none the less it's not hard to find people online who have had the issue, either having a long existing account banned soon after connecting it to the Quest, or having a newly created account banned.

It seems the bans were auto-bans rather than someone manually going in and doing it, and there's been a bit of backlash over it, so hopefully FB modify their ban algorithms to stop it happening.

If you are concerned about the FB side of things, just make a "dummy" FB account as Super Ready said, with a hotmail or gmail address and use that. Just be sure to dress it up a little bit so FB doesn't flag the account and you'll be good.

After that, your new FB account will just sit there, doing mostly nothing while you use Quest.

 Breotan wrote:
If you are concerned about the FB side of things, just make a "dummy" FB account as Super Ready said, with a hotmail or gmail address and use that. Just be sure to dress it up a little bit so FB doesn't flag the account and you'll be good.

After that, your new FB account will just sit there, doing mostly nothing while you use Quest.

As long as you don’t buy anything on your Quest that’s fine.