That said, some big studio things on the Quest store are just straight up bad, everything is overpriced, and it forces indie developers to utilize sideloading for their apps, which always feels sketchy and never feels encouraged; App Lab changes that.

Now, in a blog comment posted on Hacker News, Carmack has given us a bit of a peak behind the curtain of the Facebook Oculus acquisition.

The startup’s intellectual property and ongoing research may factor into whatever wearables Facebook builds in the future — including a smartwatch, smart glasses, or future Oculus headsets.

The newest update for the Oculus Quest 2 added a whole host of new features that the community has been asking for a long time.One of the newest features added to the headset is the ability to pair a Bluetooth mouse for easier navigation.

"But I think that it’s possible that over the next five to 10 years — maybe closer to 10 than five, but somewhere in that range — I think we could get to about half of the company working remotely permanently”.Facebook also recently brought its Messenger platform to the Oculus Quest and Quest 2 , the company’s virtual reality headsets.

has rolled out its Messenger platform to its Oculus platform, the latest step in the future of communications in virtual reality .In October, the company required that users sign up with Facebook if they are using a headset for the first time.

Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, Vice President of Augmented and Virtual Reality at Facebook hinted in a recent Instagram AMA that unlisted app distribution for the Oculus Quest 2 is coming soon.

During Facebook’s Q4 2020 earnings call today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Quest 2 is “on track to be the first mainstream virtual reality headset,” noting that the device drove a 156% increase in the company’s non-advertising revenue.

In it he calls for the company to begin creating products and services that better balance the need for data and the expectation of user privacy.All first-time sign ins to Oculus devices now require users to create or link a Facebook account.

While I’m sure many Oculus users also have Facebook accounts, that doesn’t mean that they want their VR activities or information merged with it.“In the future, the use of the new Oculus glasses requires the user to also have a Facebook account.

A new game for the unofficial Appstore for Oculus Quest headsets, SideQuest, is maybe the most polished title on the store.They have a history developing games for mobile platforms and now they are taking that experience and developing an arcade shooter for VR.Unlike many titles on the SideQuest Appstore, this is a full game.

Any VR app developer who has a game or experience in the Oculus Quest store will automatically be opted into Facebook’s App Sharing feature beginning February 13, 2021 .

Facebook have announced that multi-user accounts and app sharing between accounts will be available on Oculus Quest headsets starting in February.This will allow secondary accounts on the device the ability to access apps and purchases made on the primary account.

Unlucky for us, former Oculus CTO John Carmack has confirmed it "isn't going away."."[Facebook] login isn't going away.Given the climate, I don't expect people to believe it, but [Facebook] is extremely serious about privacy.".

The Quest 2, working over Oculus Link, does suffer a small quality and latency penalty because it’s moving that data in compressed form over USB.

That’s because of the recent requirement that Quest 2 and other Oculus headsets be connected to a valid Facebook account and the company doesn’t allow Facebook accounts to be made by children under 13 years old.

According to their announcement, they are opening an inquest to investigate “the linkage between Oculus virtual reality products and the social network and Facebook platform.”.

Following the announcement in September that Facebook will discontinue the Rift product line in 2021, it appears the company is gearing up for a final sendoff by offering its latest PC VR headset, Oculus Rift S, for just $300.

The Godot Engine is a not-for-profit free and open source game engine which aims at empowering all users in their 2D and 3D game development projects.It is with great excitement that we share the news that Facebook Reality Labs has provided a grant to support the Godot Engine project.

Germany’s Federal Cartel Office, the competent authority when it comes to regulating national competition, today announced that it’s opened an inquest to examine “the linkage between Oculus virtual reality products and the social network and Facebook platform.”.

Linking virtual reality products and the group’s social network in this way could constitute a prohibited abuse of dominance by Facebook," the agency's president Andreas Mundt said in a statement.In 2019, the Bundeskartellamt imposed restrictions on Facebook's methods of tying user data together.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission and more than 40 states accused Facebook on Wednesday of buying up its rivals to illegally squash competition, and they called for the deals to be unwound, escalating regulators’ battle against the biggest tech companies in a way that could remake the social media industry.

Following a lengthy investigation in cooperation with a coalition of attorneys general of 46 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam, the complaint alleges that Facebook has engaged in a systematic strategy—including its 2012 acquisition of up-and-coming rival Instagram, its 2014 acquisition of the mobile messaging app WhatsApp, and the imposition of anticompetitive conditions on software developers—to eliminate threats to its monopoly.

Wednesday's legal action makes Facebook the second global tech company to be taken to court by US and state government officials this year over antitrust concerns.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law during a hearing on "Online Platforms and Market Power", in the Rayburn House office Building on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C., July 29, 2020.A group of U.S. states led by New York is investigating for possible antitrust violations and plans to file a lawsuit against the social media giant next week, four sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

Martha Bennett, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, explained that regulators are concerned that Facebook's global reach could create risk issues for the financial markets if Diem were broadly adopted.

"I believe the pandemic initially hindered VR, with companies like Facebook struggling to ship the first Oculus Quest in the first six months of the year while demand for headsets was skyrocketing," said Anshel Sag, a senior analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy.

Allowing users to install and run Android apps on the headset—if just in a ‘flat’ mode on a virtual screen controlled by a laser pointer—could drastically boost the value of the headset by bringing all manner of video players, web browsers, productivity tools, utilities, and even flat games to the device.

That’s changed, and Oculus Quest 2 owners have no choice but to sign up for a FaceBook account.Yet, FaceBook seems to think being forced to sign up for something you still don’t want is going to rub consumers the right way.

Because, as the researchers point out, you cannot share VR motion data anonymously.Any claim in the terms and conditions that say VR motion data is anonymized now means nothing because the research has demonstrated that VR motion data by itself can be used to identify individuals with high levels of confidence.