15 votes

John Carmack: An unlocked OS for Oculus Go will be provided

Posted by moocow1452
Tags: facebook, oculus.go, virtual reality, announcements, author.john carmack, source.twitter
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1441496416463904768
@John Carmack:
Something I have been pushing on for years is going to come to pass soon: We are going to make available an unlocked OS build for the Oculus Go headset that can be side loaded to get full root access.

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Title
John Carmack on Twitter: "Something I have been pushing on for years is going to come to pass soon: We are going to make available an unlocked OS build for the Oculus Go headset that can be side loaded to get full root access. / Twitter"
Authors
John Carmack
Word count
37 words

5 comments

  1. [2]
    moocow1452
    Link
    Of note to someone researching VR like our own @Omnicrola is that Carmack promised an unlocked bootloader as well, so if you wanted to load something custom on there, or start romming and rolling,...

    Of note to someone researching VR like our own @Omnicrola is that Carmack promised an unlocked bootloader as well, so if you wanted to load something custom on there, or start romming and rolling, that's now something that can be done.

    5 votes
    1. Omnicrola
      Link Parent
      This is a pretty good step, but as comments in other sites have pointed out, it's only partially useful. It does prevent the hardware from becoming a brick now that they're not being made anymore...

      This is a pretty good step, but as comments in other sites have pointed out, it's only partially useful. It does prevent the hardware from becoming a brick now that they're not being made anymore and official support has dropped. Which is appreciated. We actually have about 75 GOs that Oculus donated to UM, about a year before they announced they where discontinued.

      OTOH it would be infinitely more useful to have an unlocked OS for the current headsets, so that they could be modified to run outside FB's ecosystem. We started looking for alternatives to Oculus as soon as they announced the mandatory FB account login, as it would violate UM policy and FIRPA (similar to HIPAA, but for students) data privacy protections to require students to sign up or use social media to access course content. And FB refuses to sign any agreement that UM has offered that would safeguard student data, because why would they? They're big enough that they don't need to care.

      6 votes
  2. [3]
    moocow1452
    Link
    Out now. https://developer.oculus.com/blog/unlocking-oculus-go/

    Out now.

    https://developer.oculus.com/blog/unlocking-oculus-go/

    4 votes
    1. [2]
      bob_sacamano
      Link Parent
      Would this also allow for using an Oculus without a Facebook account?

      Would this also allow for using an Oculus without a Facebook account?

      2 votes
      1. moocow1452
        Link Parent
        With an Oculus Go, you can still sign in with just an Oculus account if you have one, but as far as a Facebook less device, that's up to the hackers to try and figure out what needs to be pulled...

        With an Oculus Go, you can still sign in with just an Oculus account if you have one, but as far as a Facebook less device, that's up to the hackers to try and figure out what needs to be pulled out of the image to disable login.

        1 vote