So, the new forum layout, clunky mess or complete and utter cluster-funck?

Clunky mess just about sums it up real fine, lol. 

There's too much unused space, images and videos are way too small now. Feels like Reddit - and I never like Reddit's format much. Also feels like a design made for phones. But I rarely use my phone in here, but a large PC monitor. 

If I was not a great fan of the previous forum design, now I am :-) 

The new forum is very slow - takes much longer to update. Feels like a significant downgrade. 

So far, I'm not a big fan of it.

I usually open "all recent posts", but that option is gone - or I'm just too stupid to find it - and I was able to read the new post without opening the thread.

Recent forum activity only shows you the thread opening.

Same for notifications:  they do not lead to the post you're notified about, but to the first post of the thread.

All bookmarks are gone.

All screenshots are gone.

And I must stop using smileys..... they are much too big😂

Edit: seems only the smileys in posts before the upgrade are enormous

I'll reserve final judgement for a week or so.

Just some initial thoughts... the change/reduction in forum sections could be good or bad. Off-Topic for everything non-game/app related isn't going to please the members just promoting non-Quest stuff... to Quest users. But at the same time, without a specific Quest General section, Off-Topic will probably just become the Talk VR section of old, with no place for the truly off-topic posts.

Links within old posts to related posts no longer work (at least the ones I tried), I'm guessing because of the change in sections. I wonder if those links are in the process of being updated. Would need to be automated, otherwise it's never going to happen.

If the new forum has better tools to prevent those malicious/spam posts, that would be a big plus, so will see in a couple weeks. Signatures seem to have gone so that was one route the little rascals used to take. Sigs could be useful though... so ups and downs. 

Just a big thank you to Kevin, our Community Manager, for reaching out and restoring some lost threads. 

It would of course be great not to lose any of our threads, which we have spent countless of hours making, and maybe I can remember a few more later.

When accessing my profile, using the previous forum format I could see a list of my replies, and a list of the threads I've created. Would be great to have that restored. 2c.

The hoops you have to go through to get a new forum favourites link with an oculus favicon

I tried scrolling through my posts looking for threads from the general board I've started, but with over 9000 posts and there no longer being a reply or thread choice on the profile, that "show more" was going to take too long.

So I searched. All mention of my Oculus Monitor application (stand alone app for testing Rift and Quest hardware and recording motion capture information for Blender) have been removed.

My AutoOculusTouch app (the recommended way to play DoomVFR according to Reddit) now only has 4 mentions on the entire forum, and it's release thread is gone.

My dark mode thread is still in existence, but moved to Off Topic. 

My Oculus Injector fix for X-Plane thread is gone. It's not any use anymore, just another one I remember. That was when X-Plane started crashing for everyone. Laminar refused to fix it, saying it was Meta's fault. Meta refused to fix it, saying it was Laminar's fault. So I fixed it instead, since both sides wouldn't listen to what the issue was when I reported how they could fix it. :)

Oh, but I did find my very first post on this forum, my Ogre3D test application from 2013 before I even owned a Rift. :) https://communityforums.atmeta.com/discussions/dev-pcvr/ogre3d-integration/27721

Just to prove I've been here longer than the forum says on my profile. :)

Also even for threads that still exist, if they were in Talk-VR (the general board) then google searches won't link to their new location in Off Topic.

Also strange, but this forum seems to work much better on my phone than on my office PC using Chrome and Win10. I get a lot of pauses using Win10, and everything takes much longer to do. Even if I leave a web page open in here, open a page to a different website in another tab, and then go back to the still open forum page, everything stops for some seconds - like some updating is going on. Very weird.  

Then again, using my phone right now, I get a more simple interface, no buttons to insert images etc.

Using my PC, I can upload images, but I can no longer embed YouTube videos. The latter is an immense downgrade if it does not get fixed soon. 

EDIT: Just tested - opening this thread took about 6 seconds on my phone, and about 12 second on my PC. Normally my PC is much faster than my phone - using a quad-core Intel cpu for my office pc. Trying to edit a post, trying to show my profile - I also get like a 12 seconds delay before all is loaded and ready. Something is totally wrong here. 2c. 

The entire forum is now  extremely time consuming and annoying.
Even if you set the post sorting from newest to oldest.... I did, but I hate reading posts in that manner..... if you want to leave a comment, you must do the  "show more" thing to get to the end of the page.
I really liked the old forum much more.

Plus they decided to kill off the signature at the bottom of our posts.

I kind of like showing info on my gear and my VR rig.

I had the thread showing as sort by newest. After making the reply to Rune my post wasn't there. Refreshing the page didn't show it. The Show More button at the top didn't show it. I had to change sorting to sort by oldest, then back to sort by newest to make it appear.