Well I would ask you to reconsider reconsidering. It’s a very neat technical fear, arguably even an important one… but you would be giving money to Meta. So unless you really have to, because you work in the domain, maybe try to recycle a 2nd hand headset for a cheaper price and tinker with it as much as you want? Maybe even contribute to the rooting process by finding ways to remove the Meta account requirement altogether?

TL:DR: nobody needs a XR headset but if you do and you want to get a Meta one, get it 2nd hand.

Rational economical actor hypothesis? Nope we’re just back 4 centuries at least https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

Rift isn’t standalone so “just” using OpenHMD should work, cf https://lvra.gitlab.io/docs/hardware/#xr-devices for more comparability checks.

Because of physics.

Pfff, physics, pesky detail! Clearly you are not a true visionary like Musk! /s

puts on evil hat CloudFlare should DRM their protection then DMCA Perplexity and other US based “AI” companies to oblivion. Side effect, might break the Internet.