At GDC 2018 this year, Oculus released word during their ‘Inside Oculus 2018’ developer talk that Home, the customizable user space for Rift, is gaining the ability to host multiple players as well as user-generated content.
The new Home space arrived with the Rift Core 2.0 beta update released back in December, although the update lacked the ability to host more than one person in one of the artfully decorated spaces at one time. A future update, we learned, will include the ability to join others in Home via Parties, and launch apps in sync with friends so you can jump into games together – basically everything we wanted from the original Rooms function that was originally intended to come both Rift and Gear VR, but only made its way on the latter.
image captured by Road to VR
Home also lacked customization beyond the ability to kitbash preset items (pasting things together), but the addition of user-generated content will allow for especially talented users to completely customize their Home space. Director of Engineering Ross O’Dwyer demonstrated by sculpting a bust of himself, importing the bust and resizing it and copying it on the fly while in Home. Imported objects will be based on the GLB file format, supporting physically-based rendering. There will be an in-VR tool for creating content and importing into Home. We aren’t certain on the specifics yet, but we’ll be keeping our eyes out for official announcements.
The multiuser/content creation update is said to arrive sometime in summer 2018.
‘Parties’ is a long awaited feature on the PC version of the Oculus platform that lets players form small groups to be able to talk to one another across VR apps. The feature is now rolling out to the Oculus Public Test Channel on PC, an opt-in test version of the software ahead of the full public rollout.
It was just earlier this week that Oculus’ Nate filled us in on the fate of Rooms and ‘Parties’ on the Rift. At the time Mitchell said that Parties—voice chat between VR apps—would be coming soon, while Rooms may or may not make its way to the Rift.
Today Oculus has announced that the Parties feature is rolling out into the Oculus Public Test channel, which the company uses as a testing ground to work out bugs ahead of a broader public update. If you want to test the feature, you can opt into the Public Test Channel by going to the Settings section of the Oculus app, then Beta, then flipping the switch for the Public Test Channel.
Parties for now supports up to four players at a time. Once you’ve downloaded the update, Oculus describes the following:
In Oculus Home or Universal Menu, you can select a friend and choose “Invite to Party.” Friends in your party can chat with you across Rift apps, or wherever you go in VR. Each party can support a total of four people at a time and each person must have the PublicTest build installed to use Parties on Rift. Access to Parties will be rolling out gradually over the next twenty-four hours, so if you don’t see it right away, be patient.
VR is in many ways awesome, but still in many ways lacking. Ease-of-use, especially when it comes to playing in VR with friends, is presently a huge pain point for the experience. Oculus’ solution to that pain point—announced more than seven months ago—launched on Gear VR where it was welcomed with open arms. Bizarrely, the same features remain painfully absent from Rift, Oculus’ high-end VR platform, especially in the face of major improvements to multiplayer VR gaming on SteamVR. Nate Mitchell, Head of Rift at Oculus, offers an update on the fate of Rooms and Parties on the Rift.
Rooms & Parties
Announced at the end of 2016, Oculus Rooms and Parties are a new app and a new feature designed to fix perhaps the most frustrating problem with multiplayer Rift gaming: finding your Oculus friends in VR. Once you actually get into the same game and match together, multiplayer on Rift is usually pretty great, but getting to that point is a frustrating challenge because once you don the headset you lose easy access to most of your usual digital communication tools like messaging and VOIP apps.
The Rooms app was designed as a universal pre-game lobby for Oculus where friends could find each other, discuss what they wanted to do in VR, and launch into that experience together. Importantly, it also gives players something to do while they wait for friends to arrive, instead of just sitting around with a headset and peeking out the corner to check their phone for messages from said friends.
Parties, meanwhile, are a feature of the underlying Oculus dashboard: global VOIP chat allowing friends to talk to each other no matter where they are in VR. That makes it way easier to sync up and play because you don’t have to take off your headset (or uncomfortably peek out) to use out-of-headset means of communication like messaging and VOIP apps, only to transition to in-headset VOIP once you get into the same place together. It also means players can play single-player games in VR but keep the conversation going.
Back at the time of the 2016 announcement, both Rooms and Parties launched on Gear VR and have been updated continuously. At the time, Oculus said that both would come to Rift in 2017, and naturally users were excited after putting up with a multiplayer experience that’s not up to par with what what they’d expect from a typical gaming platform.
Missing in Action on Rift
Now seven months into 2017, Rooms and Parties still haven’t come to Rift. Their absence is increasingly painful in the face of the launch of SteamVR Home Beta, a multiplayer pre-game lobby built into SteamVR which—combined with existing Steam voice call and chat features—provides essentially all the functions of Rooms and Parties. It isn’t perfect, but at least it’s there.
In ‘Rooms’ on Gear VR you can watch video until your friends arrive. | Image courtesy Oculus
For a platform that’s in many ways surprisingly mature for its age, Oculus Home for Rift is seriously lacking in multiplayer ease of use, and players are noticing. We’ve heard calls from the Rift community, both indirect and direct, asking us to reach out to Oculus for an update on when there will be improvements to the experience.
From the Horse’s Mouth
Fortunately, we had an opportunity last week to sit down with the perhaps the single best person to speak on the topic: Nate Mitchell, Head of Rift at Oculus, who filled us in on the fate of Rooms and Parties on Rift, first offering a quick recap of where Rooms is on Gear VR.
“We’ve got Rooms on Gear VR, we’re really happy with it. The Rooms team is moving super fast. They’re shipping releases—pretty major updates—more or less every month, adding new features we’re excited about; we’re seeing usage continue to tick up. So overall we’re really excited with where Rooms is at on the mobile side.”
Nate Mitchell has been with Oculus since the beginning. | Image courtesy Oculus
Then he addressed criticism he’s heard online from people saying that Rooms should be a quick and easy port over to Rift on PC.
“[…] a couple of folks were like ‘Why would they [spend time expanding it on mobile] instead of bringing it over to PC?’. Well, realistically, with a limited team, they’re able to move much much faster on a bunch of features and get more value out to folks on the mobile side by focusing only on one platform rather than trying to bring everything over to PC simultaneously,” Mitchell said. “And that’s especially true just because Rooms is actually built in Unity, it’s using Android, and so there’s always gonna be features that they’re doing that are specific to Android (codecs and things, especially for video or audio) that don’t just come over whole cloth, ‘wham-bam’ to PC.”
Parties, Coming Soon to a Rift Near You
For people who want to ‘hang out’ in VR, certainly one function of Rooms, Mitchell says that Facebook Spaces fills that need and that it’s being actively worked updated and expanded. But Rift users have been looking to Rooms not as a place to hang out (there’s already many of those to choose from), but as a way to fix the high-friction experience of syncing up with Rift friends to play VR together. To that, Mitchell confirms that Parties—global group voice calls that span across apps—is on the way to fix one aspect of that friction.
“So people are asking, ‘So when is Rooms coming to PC?’. We have something coming to PC pretty soon which is Parties. So we are gonna have persistent VOIP calls coming to PC independent of Rooms, launching pretty soon. So you’re gonna be able to open up the Universal Menu, and you’re gonna be able to say ‘Hey I wanna chat with Nate’; I’ll get a notification, it’ll say ‘Hey do you wanna join a party with Ben?’; I’ll say ‘Absolutely, love Ben, can’t wait to chat with him again’; and then bam, we’ll have persistent voice across multiple titles.”
At the Oculus Connect 3 (OC3) event in October, the company had plenty to talk about with most of it focused on the launch of Oculus Touch. But mobile head-mounted display (HMD) Gear VR didn’t get forgotten, being included in a joint announcement with Oculus Rift regarding new social features Rooms and Parties. Oculus have now revealed both options are now available.
With Oculus Parties up to four people can get together and start a voice call wherever they are, whatever they are doing in virtual reality (VR). Accessed directly through Oculus Home starting a party is easy. Users select the party tab, choose who they want to join the party, and start chatting away.
While Oculus Rooms provides a place for Parties to hangout, watch TV, listen to music and play mini-games with up to eight people. Another feature of Rooms is that users can gather round the app launcher and jump into another social app together. As long as developers integrate the feature into their API users can then enjoy more title together. These currently include: Dragon Front, Casino VR Poker, Ascension VR, Wands and Fusion Wars.
Many VR naysayers have always used social interaction as a reason why VR won’t be successful or popular, but many companies are focused on proving VR can be just as social as communicating with your smartphone. Other apps that specialise in this area include AltspaceVR and vTime, with the former showcasing live events and the latter allowing users to upload their own 360-degree photos to use as backdrops for virtual environments.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Oculus social plans, reporting back with any further updates.
Remember that friends list you made back when you got your Samsung Gear VR or Oculus Rift? Yeah. It’s been pretty useless. Today Oculus announced that they’ll soon be turning on social with the help of two new social app functions.
Lauren Vegter, Oculus platform product manager, took the stage today at Oculus Connect to introduce Parties—allowing you to chat with friends on your friend’s list, and Rooms—a social VR hangout for up to 8 people.
While Parties allows you to message and connect up to 8 people for a voice chat, the real feature is Rooms which allows those 8 friends to watch video together (provided by Facebook), listen to music, and and play social mini-games.
playing mini-games in Oculus Rooms
From there, you can gather around an app launcher in Oculus Rooms so everyone can get into the same game or experience at the same time. Oculus is offering developers the coordinated app launch API so they can integrate it into their multiplayer games and experiences.
Vegter reports that both Parties and Rooms will be coming to Gear VR in a few weeks, and to Oculus Rift in early 2017. It’s unsure at this time what will become of Oculus Social beta.
The news has been coming think and fast at today’s Oculus Connect 3 conference keynote, with the company unveiling lots of new little innovations to make virtual reality (VR) more immersive and social. The social aspect has always been a go to topic for detractors but today the company has detailed its plans, with Oculus Rooms and Avatars.
Oculus Avatars are all about personal identity in the VR world. With the new feature users will be able to customise their identities with more than a billion permutations, from unique textures and clothing, to accessories and more, creating a style that’s entirely your own. The feature will be available for the head-mounted display (HMD) at the launch of Oculus Touch in December, and for Samsung Gear VR in early 2017.
Along with Avatars users will also see two more social features coming soon, Oculus Parties and Oculus Rooms. In Parties up to eight people can get together and start a voice call wherever they are, whatever they are doing in VR, accessed right through Oculus Home or in the menu.
But just talking to people in VR isn’t as good as interacting with them in VR, so Oculus created Rooms. When users start a Party they can then head into a virtual room to hangout, watch TV, listen to music and play mini-games with up to eight people. Another feature of Rooms is that users can gather round the app launcher and jump into another social app together. As long as developers integrate the feature into their API users can then enjoy more title together. These currently include: Dragon Front, Casino VR Poker, Ascension VR, Wands, Fusion Wars and many more.
Parties will be available for Samsung Gear VR in a few weeks, while Oculus Rift users will need to wait until 2017. For all the latest Oculus news, keep reading VRFocus.
