The Discontinued Oculus Go Will Get New Life As an Unlocked Headset

One of the worst issues about fashionable devices is you don’t all the time get to resolve what occurs to a tool you personal when the corporate discontinues it. But there’s excellent news for Oculus Go house owners, at the very least—Facebook is unlocking the bootloader for the gadget and giving customers full root entry.

The information was introduced by John Carmack, Oculus’ consulting chief know-how officer, on Twitter (through the Verge). “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,” Carmack stated, noting that he had advocated for this feature for years.

The outlook for most linked devices is often not so rosy. Generally, when a product is discontinued, an organization will pledge to help updates and safety fixes for a restricted time period. How lengthy that interval is will depend upon the corporate, however as soon as it’s over, the product is successfully “dead.” This may be true even when the gadget’s {hardware} is completely fantastic and able to working newer software program.

The Oculus Go was launched in 2018 and was the corporate’s first standalone VR headset. But in 2020, Oculus stated it was discontinuing the gadget to focus extra on the Oculus Quest. At the time, Oculus promised bug fixes and safety patches by way of 2022.

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Unlocking the Go means that anyone with a bit of gumption can continue using the device or repurpose it. Carmack noted that “a randomly shrink-wrapped headset 20 years from now will be able to update to the final software version, long after over-the-air update servers have been shut down.”

That stated, there was no official announcement from both Facebook or Oculus. Carmack stated he expected the update would come from the Oculus web site however didn’t elaborate on a timeline. He did be aware that this could be specific to Go headsets, with the hope that it’d at some point set a precedent for future unsupported headsets.

It’s unlikely that most people will go through the trouble of sideloading the unlocked OS, but it’s welcome news for modders—and a subtle hint that discontinued gadgets can find a second life if users are given the right tools.