Oculus Go stuff ... or what happens when digital only goes away?

[desiv]

I know most people who are into VR have moved on...

I have my Quest 2 which is much better than my older Oculus Go...

 

But I still use it from time to time, for instance to watch classic Doctor Who in PlutoTV before I go to sleep.  The resolution is obviously worse than the Quest, but the Go is lighter and easier to use lying down.  And for old shows, works great...

 

What happened a few weeks ago has some Go users talking a lot more recently.

Many apps/games just stopped working recently.  Sometimes just crashing after launching.  Other times having some weird message, most frequently about a failed entitlement check.

For games we bought (or were free....).

 

What it looks like happened is that at some point in time, Meta turned off the infrastructure the re-validates the ownership of the games/apps.

I'm sure the entitlement has a bit of a buffer (certificates?), as they generally run fine without networking.  But apparently they do have to check in from time to time to re-validate the apps/games.  And if they can't after enough time, those apps stop working...  Doesn't matter that you paid for them.  

As we all know, when you buy a game nowadays, you aren't buying the game.  You are buying a license to use it.  And that license isn't guaranteed to last forever...

 

Yeah, some of them have newer versions for newer headsets...  But most don't...  It's a really small percentage...

 

Now, luckily, someone has a wonderful utility to remove the entitlement checks from the apps/games.

 

So, if you are not afraid of sideloading, you can backup, patch, and reinstall most of your games and get them working again.

Which is great.  

It's funny because in the last couple of weeks, I've used my Go more than I had in the previous 6 months. 

 

Another thing to consider is whether or not you can get the apps.  Luckily, the infrastructure to download the apps thru the headset is still working.

So I am downloading and backing up as many of them as I can.

Because if they aren't backed up somewhere, they are just lost...  Digital ghosts of apps... 

 

Now, we are talking some early VR, just 3DOF, apps.  I don't think too many people (even those of us who paid for them) are too hurt by their loss...

But from a tech history perspective, it's kind of sad that some of these will just be lost.

 

I'm kind of thinking that in the future, someone will write a GearVR/Oculus Go emulator for some newer VR headset and these games can be played again.

But if they are digitally locked and can't be unlocked, or if they are just lost and can't be found...  That's it...

 

Just the future of digital playing itself out...

[desiv]

Just as a follow up, several of us are doing what we can (mostly the guys at GearVR Codex) to preserve these games/apps when possible.
Many of them are archived here:

https://vault.gearvr.net/

 

I have used that site and my own work (which I have mostly shared with them) to archive most of the games/apps I bought/own for my Go.

I even backed them up on a thumb drive that I keep in the case for my Go.

 

There are some that just won't work because the need backends that are now gone, like a golf game I had called Golf5 WIPP 2020.  It was a game that always required an internet connection, so when that company's backend went away, that game stopped working...  OK, that makes sense, except.

I also owned Golf5 WIPP 2019, and that one stopped working a bit after the 2020 version came out.  It updated itself and left you with a screen that said you needed to upgrade to keep playing.
Luckily, someone had a copy of a version of the 2019 game from before it's update and once patched, that version still works.  
 

And there are some that are just gone, can't be downloaded anymore.  Biumbis, Romans from Mars 360, Dark Days...  I can't download them to even try to patch them, and so far no one else has come forward with backups...  (And backups were not common.  You had to put your Go in DEV mode and use a side loading app to back them up, so most people never would have done that...)

 

And then there is the question of content.  I bought The Limit, which was a short 20 minute Robert Rodriguez VR "film."  That works fine still when patched.
But one of the things you should be able to do is to download a "High Quality 2D" version of the mini-move to watch in the headset.  But it's an optional download, along with some other mini clips, like the trailer and making of clips.  Well, I was able to download the trailer, making of, etc. mini clips, but the 2D High Quality version, I can get 84% of the download done, and it fails.  And no one else appears to have backed it up.  So that's gone.
Again, it's just a mini movie, so not a huge deal...  But from a historical perspective, it is pretty interesting.  It is an early attempt at this technology from a big name director with big name stars.  Just too bad that version of it may be lost...

 

It makes me wonder, in another 10 or 15 (or more) years, are we going to have people posting about having found a lost Go game on a developer's backup disks kind of like we do now with some Atari protos?     That would be kual.  

[jhd]

16 hours ago, desiv said:

Again, it's just a mini movie, so not a huge deal...  But from a historical perspective, it is pretty interesting.  It is an early attempt at this technology from a big name director with big name stars.  Just too bad that version of it may be lost...

 

I wonder if the studio that originally produced it would have retained a copy?

 

Lots of things are preserved but not are publicly available (for a variety of reasons).  

[desiv]

4 hours ago, jhd said:

 

I wonder if the studio that originally produced it would have retained a copy?

 

Lots of things are preserved but not are publicly available (for a variety of reasons).  

I found one...

Apparently they also made a SteamVR version that is still available.

I don't have a PC powerful enough to actually use SteamVR, but I was able to use my Quest 2 headset and my old PC to run the Windows/SteamVR version just enough to be able to click Download.  🙂

(My poor old Lenovo M82 i5 with 12G RAM and its GT 1030 video card were struggling, but just managed it!! )
So that one is recovered and I sent to to the guys who are archiving it.

 

I can see why guys like Jason Scott get so into archiving things.  It does feel like it should happen.  But in this digital and keyed world, I get the feeling it will be more and more tricky.