During Oculus Connect 4 (OC4) last month the company announced it would be overhauling the Oculus Rift experience with a major update called Rift Core 2.0. Now the virtual reality (VR) headset manufacturer has gone into greater detail about what to expect, discussing an update to the Oculus desktop app.
The purpose of the redesign is to make everything easier and more accessible, so the user interface (UI) will include Oculus Updates, highlighting the latest Oculus news, improvements, and features, while the Oculus Store will feature a Wishlists option so that users can mark interesting apps and videogames, they’ll then be notified if any of the saved apps go on sale.
With Oculus Rift now permanently bundled with Oculus Touch the update will be more heavily focused towards the motion controllers. In a blog posting about Rift Core 2.0 Oculus explained: “We redesigned the core Rift experience to be truly Touch-native, offering you all the benefits of hand presence in an intuitive, easy-to-use interface. That said most, but not all, previous functionality will continue to work with gamepad and some new functionality—such as customizing your Home— requires Touch. If you want to take full advantage of all the features in Rift Core 2.0, use Touch.”
The posting also details how to prep for the update, with users having to ensure they have Windows 10 installed to enable all features. Core functionality like the new system menu Dash (not including the app overlay option) and Oculus Home will work with Windows 7 and Windows 8, but Oculus Desktop will only work with Windows 10.
Rift Core 2.0 will begin its beta roll out next month, if you want to try it out you’ll need to opt-in for beta access via the Public Test Channel. Obviously, as with any beta you many encounter bugs and glitches whilst Oculus makes improvements.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Oculus and Rift Core 2.0, reporting back with any further updates.