Oculus Quest -- The Unboxening! Inside the Packaging, Hardware Design... and the Advertising & Cartesian Evil Deceiver Fine Print

It's sleek, it's beautiful, it's black matte everywhere because it's from the future -- my Oculus Quest rig recently arrived! If there's one standalone VR HMD that stands any chance to attract mass growth, it's this one.

But does the unboxing experience rival the pleasure and aesthetic joy of, say, unboxing a new iPhone? Let's take a look:

So far, so great: Gorgeous layout, every component in its place, very consciously compartmentalized like an iPhone. (Does anyone ever throw out their iPhone box? I'm guessing not.)

Then again, there's always the fine print: 

Yep, the teeny tiny booklet that comes in the box states right up front that they reserve the right to use your personal usage data for targeted advertising. 

Then I dug a bit deeper, looking for my favorite Terms of Service clause in all of virtual reality:

There it is, there it is! The Cartesian Evil Deceiver ToS Warning. Or like my boy René put it almost 400 fricking years ago:

The evil demon presents a complete illusion of an external world, including other minds, to Descartes' senses, where there is no such external world in existence. The evil genius also presents to Descartes' senses a complete illusion of his own body, including all bodily sensations.

So there's that. Then again, there's this:

Swear to fricking god, no matter how early I sign up for a new online service, I can never get my preferred avatar name.

And we have to end it there. The app-based set-up process was stymied by the instruction, "Look into your headset for a 5-digit code". But I couldn't see any code in my headset, only a Power Off menu. In case others have that problem, the helpful Oculus media rep who sent me my unit advised this:

Can you try selecting “cancel” on the power off menu? If your controllers are paired, you can use them to click cancel – and if your controllers haven’t been paired yet, you can select “cancel” by looking at the cancel button and tapping on a volume button to select. 

So I'll do that next when I have the time. Part of the problem seems to be that the set-up is through an app on your smartphone and its Bluetooth connectivity. (I have to connect the controllers to my headset by connecting my headset to my phone?) But to be fair, I'm not sure this problem is only happening with this one specific unity.

Meanwhile, any readers get their own Quest? Share your thoughts below!

The evil demon presents a complete illusion of an external world, including other minds, to Descartes' senses, where there is no such external world in existence. The evil genius also presents to Descartes' senses a complete illusion of his own body, including all bodily sensations.

Comments

[OrangeFrontier]

I got the Quest. I'm addicted. Love Love Love the PokerStars VR.

[Kenny]

I'm having the same issue about the 5-digit code not being there, and your instance is the only occurrence of mentioning the issue on Google. Did you ever solve this problem?