I’m sorry, but it’s not. Same as the alternative to a meat-based diet isn’t “have you tried starving?”. Only other inside-out tracking headsets are made by Apple and Pico (Bytedance). Both companies that are as bad as Meta. You can debate whether humanity needs VR/AR, but that’s a different topic. VR in it’s current state is driven by Meta.

I fully agree with you that Meta should not have the quasi monopoly that they have. But what’s the alternative?

As one of those gamers, the answer imho is quite simple: Ignoring the awful data practices of Meta, the Quest 2/3 as a product is great. Over the years, my Q2 kept improving, with constant updates, new features and general performance improvements. I just got a Q3, and the technological jump is enormous. Add to that the absolute lack of (affordable) alternatives, and you have an easy choice: recognize that Meta has done more for the VR space than anyone else, or don’t do VR.

Glad you found a better solution. At home, I scan every letter I get, getting me to 99% paperless. Imagine my shock, when I doscovered that Gnome’s “Simple Scan” took sharper scans at one tenth the filesize than “HP Smart Print”… on my HP printer. No login bullshit, no “oh, we analyze your scan for content to suggest a file name”, no nothing. Just the possibility to click a button, and get a great looking pdf at a ver decent file size.