John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

He's acting like their VR UX is top notch when it's as bad as it gets. Just yesterday I dusted off my Meta Quest 2 to play a bit, and spent around an hour trying to pair up my left controller to the helmet after replacing the battery.

You can't do it without going through their fucking app, that asks for every permissions under the sun, including GPS positioning for some reason. After finally getting this app working and pairing it with my headset, I could finally realize the controller was just dead and their was nothing to do.

> You can't do it without going through their fucking app, that asks for every permissions under the sun, including GPS positioning for some reason.

If it uses bluetooth, which it might for the controller?, the permission for bluetooth on Android is fine location --- the same permission as for using GPS. That might be the same permission you need for wifi stuff, too? Because products and services exist to turn bluetooth and wifi mac addresses seen into a fine location.

But who knows what they do with the GPS signal after they ask for it?

You can pair the controllers in the settings you don't need an app. Their VR UX does suck that is true, and horizon worlds is such a collosal failure that I'm surprised they haven't cancelled that entirely yet. But carmack also stated the technical issues numerous times.

No you can't? By their own documentation, you have to use the app: https://www.meta.com/fr-fr/help/quest/967070027432609/

And my quick search on the internet yielded no other mean to pair controllers.

No, it doesn't use Bluetooth. Or maybe it does under the hood but the permissions they ask for are GPS and "see nearby devices". You are able to pair your device with Bluetooth disabled in the phone's quick menu.

thats so weird, i have both the quest 2 and 3 and don't remember doing that at all but yeah looks like I'm wrong