The Oculus Quest 2 was announced at Facebook Connect today, and I was able to get early access to it last week to try it out. I wanted to invite Road to VR co-founder Ben Lang to share his impressions, and to unpack some of my experiences as well. Lang sees the initial improvements as an Oculus Quest S, but that over time as more experiences are upgraded from 72Hz to 90Hz and the increased textures take advantage of that additional headroom. We also talk about the lack of competition in the standalone VR headset space, which means that Facebook can push forward their vision of using VR to aggregate more data on our us through our VR activities.
A Facebook account will be required to use the Oculus Quest 2, which means that it’ll be under Facebook’s Data Policy as well as an Oculus Supplemental Data Policy that won’t be released to the public until October 11th. Facebook has not made any representatives available for an interview about any of these privacy policy changes yet during Facebook Connect, and I’m still waiting to hear whether any representatives will be available for interview before or after the new changes are launched on October 11th.
I asked Facebook, "Will you be sharing the Oculus Supplemental Data Policy for Facebook users [who merge their Oculus accounts or buy new hardware] before October 11th?
Answer: "No – that document will become available on October 11th."
I expect some privacy changes on Oct 11.
— Kent Bye VoicesOfVR (@kentbye) September 14, 2020
Anyone within the VR community has to negotiate their relationship with Facebook as we move forward. I have a lot of open and unanswered questions about the future of privacy in VR in Facebook’s hands, and so it makes it difficult for me to unconditionally to recommend Oculus hardware. I’m really excited about the potential of VR, and I expect that the Oculus Quest 2 will indeed help VR go to the next level with the price point of $299. The Oculus Quest 2 is by far the best standalone experience out there, and I’m really happy with the ergonomic improvements. But I also have many open questions about the future of VR that’s driven by a business model of surveillance capitalism.
Be sure to check out Ben Lang’s full review of Oculus Quest 2 here.
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