There’s really not much to talk about on Gear VR this week; we spotted just one app that raised an eyebrow and even then it’s a fairly basic-looking shooter. Oh well, maybe next week?
We also have a top list of the absolute best Gear VR games to tide you over.
Conflict0: Shattered, from Black River Studios
Price: Free
A fairly straightforward but polished-looking shooter for your Gear VR, which takes us back to the days of when everything on the platform was a shooter. This just the first chapter of a story, so expect to see more installments (potentially at a price) later down the line.
Oculus has now confirmed the launch the ‘Rift Core 2.0’ update in public beta; it’s hitting Rift headsets December 6th. The anticipated updated will bring a major overhaul to ‘Home’—the place you see in the headset when you’re not inside of a VR game—as well as ‘Dash’, a revamped universal menu which also lets you run traditional desktop PC apps in VR.
Update (12/03/17): Oculus has confirmed in a recent tweet that it’s Core 2.0 beta is officially coming to Rift December 6th.
Follow the instructions below to download the beta branch, which should automatically update on Wednesday morning Pacific Time. You can revert tot he stable branch at any time by toggling off the option.
Original article (11/28/17):Oculus announced today on their official blog that the Rift Core 2.0 beta is coming “soon,” and with it will come an updated Oculus Desktop app which the company says offers an improved layout, now with a Wish List feature for marking games and apps that interest you. The Wish List will offer notifications when saved apps go on sale.
Those excited for the virtual desktop functionality, which promises to allow users to run traditional desktop PC apps inside the Rift at any time, even while inside VR apps, will need to update to Windows 10. Users still running Windows 7 and 8 will still be able to use Dash to browse their VR app library and for some other functionality, but won’t be able to use ‘Oculus Desktop’ virtual computing function, or run Dash as an overlay on top of VR apps, the company says. Oculus indicates this is for performance reasons.
Image courtesy Oculus
Players will be able to download the Rift Core 2.0 beta automatically once it’s available by opting into the ‘Public Test Channel’ through the current Oculus Desktop App (Settings > Beta > Public Test Channel switch). The company also suggests updating your video drivers for optimal performance with the update.
The blog post also shared several new images showing various Home spaces:
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Image courtesy Oculus
Image courtesy Oculus
Image courtesy Oculus
Image courtesy Oculus
Image courtesy Oculus
The Rift Core 2.0 experience is built primarily around Touch, and while Oculus says “most, but not all” previously support functionality will work with the gamepad, the company says you should use Touch if you want to “take full advantage of all the features in Rift Core 2.0,” including customizing your Home space.
Lots to get through this week! If you’ve got a Windows VR headset, you can finally get into SteamVR through the launch of the public beta. Elsewhere, there’s plenty of big releases on both the Rift and Vive, so there’s no need to be jealous of PSVR owners tucking into Skyrim VR today (okay, you can be a bit jealous).
From Other Suns, from Gunfire Games
Price: $29.99 (Rift)
The developers of Chronos return with an ambitious sci-fi adventure. Up to three players can team up to try and make their way back to Earth by jumping from system-to-system. Each time you jump you’ll risk encountering aggressive pirates and may have to board other ships to save people or blow them up Star Trek: Bridge Crew-style. It’s a lot of fun, but has its fair share of issues too.
CCP Games virtual eSport makes the move from PlayStation VR (PSVR) to Rift and Vive. Set in a distant future, you compete in physical tournaments, trying to hit other players with throwable orbs while also making sure not to get hit yourself. It’s a great physical VR game and cross-play support hopefully means finding a match will be easy too.
Pixar’s latest movie gets a unique social VR app with cross-play between Rift and Gear VR. Step into the world of the movie, meet some of its new characters, create your own avatar and then take part in minigames and activities. Best of all it’s free. Can’t argue with that, right? We loved it when we tried it earlier this week.
Payday 2 Beta, from Overkill
Price: $19.99 (Vive, free for previous owners)
For Payday 2 owners new and old, you can now access the beta branch of the game to play the online bank heist simulator in VR. It’s early, but this version supports cross-play with the traditional version and allows for realistic aiming with the Vive controllers and more. Full support is coming in 2018. We’ll have impressions next week.
Killing Floor: Incursion, from Tripwire Interactive
Price: $39.99 (Vive)
Previously released on Rift, Killing Floor comes to Vive with a new survival mode. Take two guns in hand and fend off waves of demonic monsters. Co-op play is include as-is a full narrative campaign. Not for the faint of heart to say the least.
There’s only one Gear VR app that looks worth your while this week, unless you want us to talk about yet another 360 degree photo app. But hey, we do at least have on edutainment app that you can trick your children into playing.
Discovery VR is here to trick you into learning about bees with this quirky VR game. Prove your worth to the hive as an urban worker bee but making the never-ending commute to collect pollen in a bustling city environment. So, yeah, it’s an endless runner, but one that wants to teach you about the miracle of nature.
Der Oculus Rift Store bietet einige exklusive Inhalte, die der Rift einen Vorteil im Wettbewerb mit den anderen Herstellern verschaffen sollen. Doch diese Exklusivität störte schon immer die VR-Community und so entstand schnell das Revive-Projekt. Mit diesem lassen sich Oculus-Rift-Spiele mit der HTC Vive spielbar machte. Nun erscheint in zwei Tagen der SteamVR-Support für die Windows-Mixed-Reality-Brillen und die gute Nachricht ist, dass ihr auch die Window Mixed Reality Headsets mit Revive verwenden könnt.
Oculus Rift Games mit Windows MR-Brille spielen
Wenn der SteamVR Support für die Windows-Mixed-Reality-Brillen am 15. November freigeschaltet wird, könnt ihr Revive einfach über das SteamVR-Fenster, welches mit einem Druck auf den linken Stick der Windows Mixed Reality Controller geöffnet wird, starten. Es empfiehlt sich, die Option „Trigger as Grip“ in den Revive-Settings einzustellen. Sie ermöglicht ein natürliches Greifen.
Onward is one of VR’s most popular and ambitious games to date and it was all made originally by a single man that dropped out of college to pursue his dream of becoming a game developer. It’s an inspiring story and the quality of the game reflects his attention to detail and ambition. It originally released in Early Access a little over a year ago on Steam for HTC Vive and then eventually added Touch support once Oculus’ controllers hit the market. Now, the game is becoming officially available for download on the Oculus Home store.
In Onward, players get to take on the role of a modern military soldier. You can engage in objective-based 5v5 multiplayer, as well as play cooperatively and alone against smart AI opponents. What makes Onward unique is that from the very beginning it featured full, smooth artificial locomotion that let players freely move throughout the environments. On top of that the game sports an incredible amount of realism and detail, such as the need to manually reload each weapon, unpin and throw grenades, use a shoulder-mounted radio to communicate with team members, and more.
“I grew up playing tactical military shooters and loved the strategy, teamwork, and skill needed to win,” says Onward Developer and Downpour Interactive Founder Dante Buckley in an Oculus blog post. “The high risk/high reward goals in games like Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Counter-Strike, SOCOM, and Insurgency make these experiences a lot more meaningful and unique—you can see a lot of their influences in Onward.”
At the start of this year Valve even invited Buckley to work out of their offices in an accelerator program which he gladly participated in. Since Onward’s release it’s caused a shake up in the VR market as developers have taken note of gamers’ interest in more fully-featured, robust experiences with full smooth locomotion. For example. Arizona Sunshine added it after launch and Skyrim VR will include it from day one. We’ve also seen direct competition spring up in the form of other shooters like Pavlov on Steam and an upcoming project on PSVR.
According to Oculus Onward will be available for purchase on the Oculus Store as of the time of this writing right here. Buckley also told us that it will in fact have cross-platform multiplayer with Steam users as well. For some tips on playing the game check out our Onward Field Guide and let us know down in the comments below what you think!
One of the big barriers to buying flash sale bundles is the selection of games available. What if you already own one in that almost perfect bundle that has you salivating at the nearly perfect price? Oculus plans to address this with a dynamic pricing scheme that gives you a discount if you already own a game in an otherwise bundle-spoiled batch.
Oculus revealed earlier this month at Connect, the company’s annual developer conference, that Home is getting a complete overhaul as a part of their Rift Core 2.0 beta headed to users in December. While the company is pushing less incremental updates to the current version of Home in preparation for the new social version, the beta roll-out of Rift software version 1.20 is making its way today to users via their public test channel (PTC) including news of dynamic bundling.
Announced by Oculus community manager ‘cyberreality’ via the Oculus Rift forum, the company’s flexible bundle pricing will update with an additional discount to account for the value of the app(s) you already own. According to cyberreality, your personalized bundle price will always appear in the Oculus Store automatically.
There aren’t any official multi-publisher bundles currently on the Store, so there’s no way to test it out at the time of this writing, but if you want to get the latest in updates and features from Oculus, you can take part in the PTC by simply toggling the switch in your Settings through the 2D Store interface. You can always revert to the stable branch by toggling off the PTC switch.
You can bet there will be holiday season bundles popping up sometime between now and the release of the Rift Core 2.0 beta update, so keep an eye on the Oculus blog for incoming deals, and of course your friendly neighborhood Road to VR.
Today at Oculus Connect, Oculus’ Head of Rift, Nate Mitchell, announced the ‘Core 2.0’ update coming to Rift on PC which brings Oculus Dash, a total overhaul to the store and library experience on Rift, which also allows you to use desktop PC apps inside of VR on virtual monitors.
Oculus Home and the Universal Menu were originally designed for gamepad controllers; once Touch came onto the scene, the motion controllers were simply made into laser pointers as a stop gap to getting the interface to work.
Now Oculus has announced the ‘Core 2.0’ update, coming to the Rift in beta this December. The update will bring a total overhaul to Oculus Home and the Universal Menu, one that’s designed specially for motion input. Specifically, the Core 2.0 update will condense the existing functionality of Oculus Home and the Universal Menu into a new interface that’s accessible anywhere called Oculus Dash.
Oculus Dash can be called up anywhere, just like the former Universal Menu. From the Dash you can access the Oculus Store, your game library, friends list, and critically, you can launch traditional PC desktop apps—like Chrome, Spotify, and Netflix—right inside of VR. PC apps are represented in their own floating windows, which Oculus says are treated deep at the operating system level as true virtual monitors. You’ll even be able to ‘pin’ PC apps from the dash so that they stay floating in view while you’re in a VR game.
On stage, Oculus’ Head of Rift, Nate Mitchell said that the company had thought a lot about how to optimize PC app windows for VR. He claims Dash will offer “best in class performance and visual quality,” for PC apps in VR, setting the platform “on a path to replacing real monitors entirely.”
Because the new Oculus Dash combines Oculus Home and the Universal Menu functionality, Mitchell says that Oculus Home has been freed up to become more personal, social, and customizable. We’ll have more on the company’s new plans for Home soon.
Oculus Home is getting a full overhaul in the new Rift Core 2.0 update coming this December, which promises to add a level of user customization that will let you create a unique, persistent space that you can invite friends to.
Since the beta version of Home was unveiled alongside the consumer Oculus Rift, the space has been a static launchpad for games and experiences. Now the company says it’s “leveling” the current version of Home to make way for a new customizable Home that promises to reflect your own personality and sense of style. The new Home space includes toys, furniture, artwork, and a place to put your achievements on display.
Home is also being changed into a social area that remains persistent, meaning you can share your space with a friend and visit their own. The company says they’ll be opening “new possibilities for community and co-presence, letting you hang out, play, and explore with others.”
The beta for Rift Core 2.0 update will come free to users in December.
Best prepare your wallet; there’s plenty of choice for your Oculus Rift this week, from spell casting and gun-slinging to rabbit-blasting and exploration.
The popular mobile VR title has been remastered for the Oculus Rift and is looking fine. Head into various ancient arenas and cast spells to take down your opponents. With customizable attack options, teleportation locomotion and more, this looks like a worthy contender to The Unspoken’s throne.
Recommendation: A solid game you should definitely check out.
Hangry Bunnies from Mars, from Studio229
Price: $5.99 (Rift)
Here’s a new wave shooter that looks like it’s had a lot of time and effort poured into it. Hangry Bunnies has you blasting away vicious critters both big and small with crazy weaponry. It’s got an arcade influence that will have you chasing for high scores and playing again and again.
Recommendation: Shooter fans should snap this up.
Voltron: VR Chronicles, from Digital Domain
Price: $14.99 (Rift)
Based on the ongoing Netflix cartoon, Voltron: VR Chronicles is essentially an episode of the show played out in VR. You take on the role of one of the mech-commanding paladins and journey across the galaxy in a polished, if brief adventure. Splendid visuals and authenticity help make up for one big oversight.
Recommendation: Fans of the cartoon will love it.
Cirque du Soleil, from Felix and Paul Studios
Price: Free (Rift)
The famed immersive filmmaking studio this week debuts its Cirque du Soleil content on PC-based headsets. Get a first-class ticket to some of the most spectacular acrobatics on the planet, all performed as if you were really there.
Recommendation: A great free download.
DWVR, from Mad Triangles
Price: $14.99 (Rift, currently discounted)
For those looking for a little shooter action this week, DWVR promises a Doom-esque adventure with big guns and demonic enemies. Finally moving out of early access, the game’s aim is to make you feel like a true badass, destroying enemies with enormous swords and more.
Recommendation: FPS fans should scoop it up.
Cloudborn, from Logtown Studios AB
Price: $14.99 (Rift, currently discounted)
An early access release of an intriguing-looking VR adventure in which you navigate ancient ruins by climbing along their beautiful remains. It looks like a cross between Windlands and The Climb, and that’s no bad thing.
