Category: Oculus Quest

Posted on

Free Relaxation & Meditation App Liminal Available Now For Quest

Liminal is a new relaxation and meditation app on the official Quest store, and it’s available for free.

Liminal started its life as an App Lab release for Quest, but as of today is available for free on main Quest store. According to the description, it has “over 60 experiences to calm, invigorate or leave you in awe” including “hypnotic experiences, guided meditations, beautiful rainswept vistas or ethereal landscapes.”

Liminal VR CEO Damian Moratti and Managing Director Nick Busietta spoke to the Oculus Blog about the app, stating that it was inspired by VR itself after they tried early experiences on headsets in 2014. Since then, they’ve been conceptualizing and developing the app “in one way or another.”

The developers say Liminal was created “ground up to be native to virtual reality— there’s nothing quite like Liminal on the market at the moment … [it] offers a unique assortment of Calming, Energizing, and Awe-Inspiring experiences that are ranked and rated by our community in order of effectiveness and enjoyability.”

There’s also a full-time behavioral neuroscientist working with Liminal, as well as psychologists who have helped consult and worked with the team, to craft the experiences.

More is planned for the future as well — the developers say Liminal is a live platform and that “new and evolving content is always at the forefront of our development pipeline.” They say to expect new content and categories over time, alongside some long-awaited features and a subscription option to access premium features.

Liminal supports Quest 1 and Quest 2 and is available for free on the Oculus Store now.

Posted on

New Cities: VR Gameplay Shows Expansive Map On Quest 2

The city builder battle continues, with Cities: VR showcasing new gameplay across an expansive and complex city map on Quest 2.

This latest video from Fast Travel Games gives us some fly-over footage of a “detailed” and expansive city on a map called Northpoint. Indeed, the city does look impressively large and significantly complex.

While we’ve voiced some concerns about the visual quality on display in another recent Cities: VR video, it’s undeniable that the scale and size of the city shown in this new gameplay is impressive, especially running on Quest 2.

Both Jamie and I have been playing around with the other VR city builder, Little Cities, this week (and you can hear more of our thoughts in this week’s episode of The VR Gamescast). While Little Cities is quite satisfying to play and stunning to look at, it also feels a tad limited in terms of design potential and definitely smaller in scale when it comes to city size and management capabilities.

It’s looking increasingly likely that both these games will offer competent, but different, versions of a VR city builder game, then. Based on the footage above, Cities: VR may be the less visually-refined of the two, but definitely looks set to focus more heavily on management and complex city design.

Indeed, this is the sentiment echoed by Fast Travel Games staff on the Reddit thread for the trailer. Particularly in relation to graphics, Fast Travel Games said that optimizing for recording footage natively on Quest comes with massive challenges that have affected the gameplay footage. When you’re not recording, the game apparently “looks great inside the Quest 2 headset.”

You can hear more of our thoughts on Little Cities vs Cities VR on this week’s episode of The VR Gamescast, or read Jamie’s Little Cities preview here.

Cities: VR launches on April 28, exclusively for Quest 2 for $29.99.

Posted on

Preview: Pioneer: Endless Journey – The Armoury is Full

It seems as if roguelikes and roguelites are constantly coming thick and fast. It’s a popular genre due to the replayability offered, plus the seemingly endless customisation options on show. Pioneer: Endless Journey sells itself solidly on these two points. 

It’s a first-person shooter which drops you into a world of ferocious creatures, where your aim is simple – get as far as possible by defeating enemies and bosses. I’d love to tell you what the endgame offers you, but honestly, the bosses here can be as tough as nails.

The first thing to notice with this preview build is the lack of variety in the level design and aesthetics. There are only a few templates to play through and all of them feature a dry, sandblasted look of the wild west. The enemies fall into this niche, too. There are anthropomorphic cacti, giant spiders, and poison-fanged snakes, among others. None of the low-level enemies poses much of a problem due to the game’s already deep weapon customisation.

It’s clear that the developer is focused on combat; the range of guns, and mods available for said guns, feels pretty extensive. Everything is modular here; you start with a barebones pistol and at the end of each level you receive a selection of upgrades, from which to choose, to transform it into something completely different. Each mod fits into the traditional selection – shotguns, grenade launchers, snipers and more rapid-fire choices like assault rifles and SMGs.

These mods swap out the barrel of the gun after showing you the stats which break down into the usual damage, fire rate and critical hits. Your gun becomes a lovely little monstrosity of weapons parts rather swiftly. Aiming devices boost accuracy, handles and stocks adjust the general handling, sometimes boosting the damage. But what’s probably most interesting is the crystal you slot into the core of the gun.

Across several playthroughs I tried the ice, arcane and electricity crystals, all of which confer a damage bonus against the enemies. There’s no fast swapping of elements so once you’ve chosen you’re locked in, at least until the next chest opens and a crystal hopefully spawns. There didn’t seem to be much to these elemental traits beyond extra damage, but given that the preview area is an arid desert, you have to wonder if future worlds will lean into elements and create a power hierarchy.

The game’s structure leans heavily into randomness – at the open of the game you’re presented with a map littered with joined icons, much like Slay the Spire. Some open into a basic level ending with a chest, others are upgrade stations where you can spend gold coins, earned through fighting, on tuning your gun. Many levels seem to have more than one exit, but it’s unclear if these can be opened in the preview.

Then there are the bosses. And at the moment, they’re a little unbalanced. Usually reaching the large and open boss arena will see it populated with many low-level enemies too. You’ll be happily plugging away these diversions before the boss creature spawns in and cranks up the damage dealt. While there are plenty of great weapons, which can deal with the boss enemies, there doesn’t seem to be a handy way to replenish shields and health, meaning a few unfortunate hits can spell death.

On the whole, Pioneer: Endless Journey is shaping up to be a great entry to the roguelike genre. With a greater variety of enemies and environments, there will be plenty to keep shooter fans happy.

Posted on

Quest ‘Invite Links’ Are the Easiest Way to Invite Friends to VR, But Few Seem to Know They Exist

Last year Meta added the ability to send simple invite links to your friends which would bring you together into the same place in VR. It’s a great way to easily join up with friends in VR, but it seems very few people know the feature exists.

Back in August of 2021, Meta extended its Oculus platform capabilities to allows users to create invite links from their smartphone and then send the link to their friends—by text, email, DM, etc—that when clicked would automatically launch the correct app and send all users into the same space to play together.

And it works great. I’ve been using the feature heavily with Beat Saber to join up with friends for multiplayer sessions. It’s as easy as saying “Hey meet me in Beat Saber in 20 minutes, here’s the link.”

And though the feature requires per-app implementation from developers, many of Quest’s most popular social games are already supported, like Walkabout Mini Golf, VRChat, Rec Room, Demeo, Horizon Worlds, and more. Invite links work with Rift apps too as long as both you and your friends are using the Oculus PC version of the app (or the game supports cross-platform play between Quest and Oculus PC).

But from my experience with VR users both personally and professionally, very few seem to know that ‘invite links’ exists at all. And it’s hard to blame them… the feature is fairly hidden and Meta doesn’t do a good job of telling users what invite links do or how to use them. So here I’m going to explain how they work, and why it’s problematic that more people don’t know about them.

How to Use Invite Links on Quest

If you want to create a Quest invite link to join friends in VR, start by launching your Oculus smartphone app.

  1. In the Oculus smartphone app click the ‘Menu’ button (three lines icon)
  2. Select ‘Invite Links’
  3. Select a supported app (ie: Walkabout Mini Golf)
  4. Select the destination that you want to go within the app (ie: the specific course within Walkabout Mini Golf that you want to play)
  5. Select ‘Create Link’
  6. Use the ‘Share’ button to share the link through whatever channel you’d like
  7. Use the ‘Launch’ button to launch the app you chose on your headset and join your friends

Invite links are the perfect way to pre-plan a VR session with your friends and easily meet in the same place without fiddling with any menus or friends lists. Once you’re ready to play, press the ‘Launch’ button from the invite link and your headset will load the selected game and should automatically send you to the same location as your friends. Invite links on Quest are valid for 24 hours from their creation.

Why Don’t More People Know About Invite Links and Why Does it Matter?

Well, I think Meta is primarily to blame here. The Oculus smartphone app interface is far from perfect, and it confusingly separates the invite link functionality from your friends list.

Most users who intend to invite a friend to join them would naturally navigate to their friends list to find the friend they want to send an invite to. However, if you go to your friends list in the Oculus smartphone app (not so intuitively hidden in the ‘Menu’ section and called ‘People’), you actually can’t invite friends to a game that way.

Invite links (also hidden in the ‘Menu’ section) are a totally separate construct, and, as far as I’ve seen, they’re never tutorialized. So unless you know what an ‘invite link’ is at first glance, you might have just glossed over that button. If you want to invite friends from your Oculus friends list then you’d need to create an invite link first, then go back to your friends list and send the link as an Oculus DM. It works but it could be a much smoother and more unified process.

So why does it matter that more people don’t know about invite links? Well, beyond the obvious (it’s a hassle-free way to get together with friends in VR that everyone can benefit from), if few people know they exist then few people are using them. And if few people are using them, then VR developers won’t be particularly encouraged to spend time adding the feature to their games. After all, if hardly anyone is using invite links, why bother?

An ecosystem where all Quest apps support invite links (and by extension Destinations, Deep Linking, and Rich Presence features), would make it far more fluid to connect with friends in VR and even move from one app to another together.

– – — – –

I hope you’ll give invite links a try, and if you find them convenient, spread the word! Over time hopefully we’ll see more and more Quest apps support the feature making it easier for everyone to play in VR together.

The post Quest ‘Invite Links’ Are the Easiest Way to Invite Friends to VR, But Few Seem to Know They Exist appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

Sweet Surrender Update Adds New Classes, Weapons, Animations & More

The latest update for VR roguelite Sweet Surrender adds a bunch of new content, including weapons, classes, overhauled animations and core system improvements.

Sweet Surrender released towards the end of last year for Quest and PC VR, delivering a single player FPS roguelite with randomized dungeons and enemies. In our review, we found that its “moreish difficulty, enjoyable arcade gameplay and hypnotic visual and audio flair make for a rock-solid roguelite,” while also leaving a lot of room to grow.

Indeed, developer Salmi Games did promise extensive free updates after launch and the latest, Update 5, might be one of the biggest yet.

The update actually launched almost a month ago now, but we missed it at the time. Nonetheless, it’s worth covering, as it adds a whole lot of stuff to the game.

There’s two new classes, the Grenadier and the Lunatic. As you might have guessed, the Grenadier focuses on dealing, upgrading and unlocking explosive damage capabilities. Completing runs with the Lunatic, however, will “pose a significantly greater challenge” and is “a rebel whose ferociousness and unpredictability has led the robots to mark them as a high priority target.”

Two new weapons are also brought into the fray — the sawed-off shotgun and the tier 1 grenade launcher. Plus, weapon animations have been reworked for almost every weapon in the game, with “improved hand positioning, new firing and reload animations.” The guns will look more animated and feel more interactive than ever — you can see for yourself in the trailer embedded above.

Developer Salmi Games also noted that the update includes “cleanups and improvements of [the game’s] core systems”, which includes quality of life fixes, loading time improvements and general efficiency changes. Salmi says these changes will allow the studio to be “even more efficient” with future development and updates.

You can read more details on the update changes here and our full review of Sweet Surrender from last year here. 

Posted on

Preview: Brisk Square – Swords or Pistols?

You don’t have to look far to see where the inspiration for Brisk Square comes from. After only a few minutes of playing, the comparisons to Pistol Whip come thick and fast. This isn’t a bad thing, Pistol Whip is a brilliant videogame, but the early access state of Brisk Square makes me yearn for a fully completed release or the polished inspiration.

After a brief tutorial – where we learn how to swing a sword, fire a gun and wield otherworldly powers in the form of telekinesis and the slowing of time – there are a plethora of options to choose from. There’s a campaign, with a very loose story, but it’s only two stages in this Early Access build. A dual-wield mode that does away with the gun and hands you an extra sword and multiplayer, which is currently devoid of players, sadly.

The multiplayer option looks to be a great spin on competitive play, where you and four mates can play together, moving forwards in your own lane. Chopping and shooting, as well as outliving the other player’s rewards points, leading to a winner. Hopefully, we’ll have full coverage of this in a future update.

Brisk Square is an ‘on-rails’ action game that propels you forwards, through streets, alleyways and cityscapes. As you move forward, enemies and obstacles will appear ahead of you. To attack, you have a few options; slice them, shoot them, crush them. Really, all I wanted to do was chop them up with the sword. Not only did it feel the most satisfying, but the sword animation is just lush.

The pistol, controlled with the off-hand, feels very underwhelming. Not only does each shot feel like it has no power, and lacks accuracy, but there’s a cooldown on using it again. It’s clear this is in place to urge you into using other options, but it robs the player of any real power. Especially when the spectral powers also have cooldowns to stop you from stomping on everyone.

Thankfully, playing through the game rewards you with XP which translates to skill points and these can be spent on a very extensive skill tree. This improves the cooldowns, gives you extra bullets for the pistol and extends time slow duration. This shows the game has scope and will eventually reach a point where everything comes together in a wonderful cohesion.

However, until that point, Brisk Square leaves a lot to be desired. The music is repetitive; the graphics – aside from the gorgeous enemy models and the blood spatter – are very hit and miss, switching from great 3D models to flat, uninspired textures; on top of these issues is an empty feeling to each level. The odd enemy pops up, shoots a couple of bullets, dies, rinse and repeat. The more persistent, and annoying, threat comes from random barrels which, if not destroyed in time, seemingly kill you by bumping into them.

At this stage of development, Brisk Square is brimming with potential, but it feels like there’s a long way to go. While it does suffer from flaws, it’s clear the developer knows what they want to produce and can do exactly that, given enough time. I’m very excited about the future of Brisk Square, for now, I’ll watch the updates with anticipation.

Posted on

Quest Home Spaces Get Node-base Movement, a First Step Toward Upcoming Social Features

Last year Meta announced that it would finally be bring social features to the Quest home environments, allowing users to easily get together in the same virtual space. We aren’t there yet, but the company has taken a first step in that direction by adding node-based locomotion to all of Quest’s home spaces.

Back in October Meta announced that it “soon” planned to upgrade Quest’s home space into a social area where users can congregate together (without a third-party app) and do basic activities like watch videos and launch into other VR apps together. The company calls it ‘Horizon Home’.

Well, the actual social part of Horizon Home isn’t here yet, but the company has taken a first step toward it.

At launch, all Quest home spaces placed the user in one specific spot from which they couldn’t move.

Now, as of at least Quest v38, all home spaces have an array of nodes which users can move between by pointing their controller and using the thumbstick. Moving between nodes with controllerless hand-tracking alone doesn’t seem to work yet.

Ostensibly this will allow multiple users to navigate the same spaces. It isn’t clear how many users will be supported in a single Quest home space (though voice parties currently support up to 8 people).

Quest’s home environments appear to be using typical real-time rendering, so it isn’t clear why Meta has decided to limit users to moving between specific nodes rather than letting them move anywhere within a pre-determined safe area. Especially odd because users can navigate away from any individual node by physically moving within their playspace. Furthermore, the distance between nodes is decidedly ‘impersonal’, and further away than friends hanging out in the same area would likely want to stand.

So while movement within the Quest home spaces is a first step toward social features, it will hopefully see some refinement by the time users are actually able to join each other in the same space.

The post Quest Home Spaces Get Node-base Movement, a First Step Toward Upcoming Social Features appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

Painting VR Releases April 14 For Meta Quest, PC VR

Painting VR releases soon for Quest and PC VR, coming to the Oculus Store and Steam on April 14.

The app simulates acrylic painting on canvas in VR, letting you use a variety of brushes and colours to authentically recreate the real-life painting experience in VR. It takes a slightly more casual, playful approach to painting in VR compared to the recently-released Vermillion, which focuses predominantly on being a realistic wet-on-wet, oil paint simulator.

We first tried Painting VR almost exactly a year ago when it launched in early access for Quest via App Lab. We were very impressed with what we tried, and soon after developers Oisoi announced a 2022 release on the official Quest store was in the works.

This week, the studio announced that Painting VR will launch on April 14 for Quest and PC VR via Steam, alongside a new trailer showcasing some fun new features.

Oisoi also ran a Kickstarter campaign towards the end of last year, which finished with a successful €28,764 raised towards a €27,000 goal. The goal of the Kickstarter was to help add multiplayer  functionality to the app and port the title over to PC VR. While the latter is obviously now a reality, we’re yet to hear anything more on the former.

Oisoi did state last year that the 2022 full release would include multiplayer, but there’s nothing in the trailer to suggest that’s the case just yet. Multiplayer aside, you can spot some new functionality in the release date trailer above. There’s an amusing drill that you can attach multiple brushes to for spinning paint effects, plus you can catch a glimpse of what looks to be a paint-by-numbers canvas as well. The general warehouse area also looks to be expanded drastically, going from just a single area with one canvas last year to a whole warehouse area with multiple artworks in the latest trailer.

Will you be trying out Painting VR? Let us know in the comments.

Posted on

Meta Quest 2 Boxes Appear on Store Shelves, Brand Swap Still Incomplete

It seems the Oculus brand is finally departing physical retail. While Quest 2 boxes emblazoned with the new Meta name and logo are already on store shelves in the US, the swap from Oculus to Meta still has a ways to go.

Spotted by Upload VR’s Ian Hamilton, Meta has rolled out the freshly-rebranded Quest 2s to Walmart, one of its largest retail partners. So far, online retailers like Amazon, Target, NewEgg, and yes… also Walmart’s website still list the headset as ‘Oculus’ Quest 2.

And it doesn’t seem the company is worried any of the self-inflicted brand confusion either, as the newly dubbed Meta Quest 2 oddly sits right next to a stack of the headsets in its original Oculus packing.

Look a little closer and you can see the 256GB version of Meta Quest 2, priced at $400, is also still labeled on shelves as ‘Oculus Quest 2’.

Image courtesy Ian Hamilton

The transformation from Facebook to Meta started back when the company announced in October 2021 it was putting a new emphasis on XR by becoming a “metaverse company.”

This also led to a progressive roll-back of the Oculus brand in effort to reposition its latest VR headset closer to its primary mission. And it appears that the rebranding has a ways to go, as the soft launch maneuver has yet to address some key areas.

Image captured by Road to VR

Oculus.com is still the main digital storefront, which mentions the name Oculus a half-dozen times in tandem with Meta.

If you want to buy a Quest 2 direct from Meta, you’re buying an ‘Oculus Quest 2’ under the Oculus warranty. Need product support? That Meta Support’s job, helping you out with Oculus bug reports for Oculus devices. The Meta Quest YouTube channel also still features the old Oculus logo.

Quest users however have recently seen the iconic Oculus startup image replaced in-headset with the new Meta branding. So there’s that.

The post Meta Quest 2 Boxes Appear on Store Shelves, Brand Swap Still Incomplete appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

MultiBrush Update Adds Meta Avatars, Passthrough Mode

A new update for open source Tilt Brush alternative MultiBrush adds two key features — Meta avatar integration and passthrough support.

After Google ceased development on Tilt Brush and made it open source in January 2021, the community began to take the app over and produce its own versions with more features than the original.

MultiBrush is one of these community alternatives, offering the same functionality as the base app while also allowing more than one player to work on an artwork at the same time. MultiBrush launched over a year ago, first appearing on App Lab in 2021 before moving over to the official Quest Store in January 2022.

Up until now, other users in MultiBrush were represented by a floating headset. Thanks to a new update that rolled out this week, users can now use their Meta avatar in MultiBrush, meaning you’re able to create art with your friends, represented by their actual avatars.

Interestingly, the avatars will even scale up and down in size to match the scale of the user. As you can see in the screenshot below, the user has zoomed out of the tree artwork and is looking at two other users, who appear smaller to match the scale they’re working at.

This should massively increase immersion and presence in MultiBrush, especially when used in conjunction with the new passthrough integration to use the app in your own space via the Quest’s cameras

The other biggest community-made Tilt Brush alternative, Open Brush, is also working on implementing passthrough support and multiplayer functionality. The former is further along, with developers sharing footage of passthrough mode in February.

MultiBrush is available for $19.99 on Meta Quest. While the original Tilt Brush app by Google is also still available on Quest for $19.99, Open Brush is available on App Lab and offers all the same (and increased) functionality as Google’s original app, entirely for free.

Once Open Brush adds multiplayer and passthrough, MultiBrush may have to add more features to justify its price tag. The developers do mention that they have “exciting plans on the horizon”, so we’ll be keeping an eye on both apps over the next few months.

You can read more about the latest MultiBrush update here.