I bought a quest 2 a few years ago. I searched for hours and hours to try and get it to work with no FB account. Best I found was that you can sideload APKs to it… with a Facebook account.
Eventually broke down and temporarily made a Facebook account to at least try it. Was pretty unimpressed with the content which was meager in comparison to PCVR. Ended up returning it and deleting Facebook account.
In my opinion the experience is not worth making a Facebook account for even if the headset was free.
If you want to get into VR on the cheap get a windows mixed reality headset off eBay. Most of them aren’t as good of a headset as the quest 2. But it will probably be comparable if you’re streaming most of your content from PC anyway. And you’ll avoid Facebook’s shit.
Be forewarned though windows mixed reality headsets don’t yet work on windows LTSC or Linux :(. (Though maybe windows 11 LTSC later this year?) So you’ll have to use the garbage version of windows to use it.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/21/24010787/microsoft-windows-mixed-reality-deprecated
WMR will be discontinued in the future. On quest you can use pass through from your pc and technically you don’t need facebook account only meta account that can be disconnected from facebook.
It seems like the open source drivers for windows mixed reality devices are maturing. So maybe we won’t have to rely on Microsoft by the time they drop support.
I have a WMR device and I regret it.
So many games simply do not support it, I’d have been better off with a Valve index that seems to work with most PC titles.
I have HP reverb G2. It has seemed to work fine with everything I’ve thrown at it. Though I’m not sure about the cheaper devices. I probably wouldn’t recommend spending that much on a WMR headset at this point.
But, WMR devices can be found for $75-$150 dollars on eBay. I don’t recommend them if you’re serious about VR. But if you just want a cheap entry point, they work.