Yesterday a tweet from Tim Swan made the rounds when it pointed out the FAQ section of the developer’s portal for Oculus App Lab implies developers cannot sell keys to their App Lab projects outside of the official App Lab page itself. Fortunately, it seems like that language is not intentional.
The first image above shows the regular store policy that has existed for years, stating, “You may distribute the keys however you like: sell them, give them away or print them out and distribute them offline.” The second image is from the App Lab FAQ page specifically, and it says, “you cannot collect payment for your app via any mechanism other than those explicitly approved by Oculus.” The language difference is pretty dramatic and it seems like the specific App Lab terms are different than existing Oculus store policy.
Swan reached out to us via email to ask if we had plans to cover this, so we reached out to Facebook for comment. This is what a Facebook spokesperson said:
“Our language about Oculus Keys is unclear and we are working to update. Developers can request Oculus Keys for App Lab and may sell them or distribute for free. Collecting payment by selling keys is an approved mechanism. In the meantime, more information about how to request keys can be found here.”
We don’t know the timeframe for the update to the policy phrasing, but it does sound like selling keys outside of the App Lab page itself is permitted. This means you should still be allowed to sell keys on a different third-party site, sell keys directly to consumers, run crowdfunding campaigns that deliver keys after a project has launched, accept pre-orders outside the App Lab page, and so on. It appears that selling keys was meant to be an implied “approved mechanism” but that clarification was lost in the updated policy terms.
We’ll keep an eye on the policy to see if the page is updated, but until then it at least sounds like selling keys is, in fact, still allowed.
Let us know if you have any questions in the comments below!
It’s a time of plenty and a time of fear. And something else, a horror yet to manifest, lurks under the surface. This is Hinge from Arcadia VR, a psychological horror game that starts with a party.
During the intro, a noted philanthropist celebrates the completion of his new skyscraper and you’re invited. But the art deco facade masks something far more sinister and otherworldly about the building’s owner. Once night falls, the question becomes whether you can make it out alive with your sanity intact.
With Hinge, Arcadia VR blends history and the occult with a daring goal in sight: redefining what makes a game terrifying.
“There hasn’t been an AAA VR horror game since 2017 [and] there are so many unexplored possibilities for horror games in virtual reality,” Arcadia’s Oleg Smirnov said. “We tried to develop gameplay mechanics that are only viable in VR.”
Smirnov is likely referring to Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, the PSVR-exclusive horror game from Capcom. It’s available on PC and Xbox One as well, but the VR support is only on PSVR. Achieving that same level of success for Arcadia means doubling down on Hinge’s atmosphere to approach the concept of terror in a different, more immersive way. Smirnov feels they’re well-suited to the task.
“Hinge is our first PC VR game, but as a game dev studio, we’ve been existing for longer,” Smirnov said. “Three years ago, our team was working on the opening of the largest VR LBE venue [a kind of VR theme park experience] in Europe called Another World.”
Arcadia has three LBE venues in Russia, and another two were set to open in London and Paris respectively, when the COVID-19 pandemic derailed their plans. It wasn’t all bad, though.
“We’ve been planning to develop games for Steam VR for a long time,” Smirnov said. “But the pandemic just accelerated us working on that.”
The first step in creating their ideal VR horror atmosphere was getting Hinge’s setting right. Smirnov said the team started from the basic desire to scare players, but it had to be something they could “spice up” with Lovecraftian horror elements. What they ended up with was an eclectic cocktail of 1920s America and creeping dread.
“We decided that the player should be placed in the Great Depression, because that era is fraught with something depressing and desperate,” Smirnov said. “It didn’t seem difficult for us to fit these things together. The player can find similarities between 2020 and the 20s of the last century [and] these three components work great together because [much of] the work of H.P. Lovecraft falls precisely in the Roaring Twenties.”
Smirnov and the team didn’t settle for a surface-level trip into history, though.
The early 20th century was the height of rational thinking and belief in science, but there was a strain of darkness and superstition flowing alongside reason and logic. Smirnov said that’s what the team tapped into for Hinge, and Lovecraft is just the tip of the occult iceberg.
“Our game designer wrote over 100 documents and around 20 books specially for Hinge’s in-game environment. The information for these books was taken from real occultist’s books by Aleister Crowley and Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre.”
Though probably better known now as the subject of Ozzy Osbourne’s song “Mr. Crowley,” Aleister Crowley attracted a fair deal of notoriety throughout the first half of the 20th century. He claimed he contacted multiple spirits from other worlds and was even expelled from Italy in 1923 after a follower died during what was called a “sacrilegious ritual.”
Beyond influencing cults and writing arcane tomes, what Crowley and d’Alveydre did is show people there was much about the world they had yet to understand — and not all of it was benign. That sense of uncertainty and the fear it inspires permeates every corner of Hinge.
“We want players to feel like absolutely anything could be around the next corner, to feel like anything in the environment he should be afraid of,” Smirnov said. “We think we succeeded in making the atmosphere where the player feels like even the skyscraper is trying to kill them.”
While Hinge features multiple different monster types, some of which Smirnov said have never been seen before in horror games, don’t expect a bunch of ghouls jumping in your face as the main scare tactic. Smirnov was keen to avoid spoilers, but he did say the team is keen to avoid what they called the overused jump scare mechanic.
“We did a lot of research overall on the scariest things usually found in the horror genre, and we made our own combination of scares that works perfectly. First [on our list] is scares related to surrounding sound effects,” Smirnov said.
Since Hinge is a psychological horror game at its core, expect plenty of mind skullduggery as well. Smirnov said the second scare type they focused on revolves around “scares that play with your attention — when you look at some familiar subject, but at some moment it turns out to be a ghost.”
Beyond things going bump in the dark and dreadful night, the entire story messes with players’ perceptions of reality.
“The rules of the game are obscured for players,” Smirnov said. “You will not be able to fully understand what is happening in the game. You’ll have to put all pieces of the story together from scraps that you’ll find in the game and make conclusions by yourself.”
You’ll be able to draw those conclusions and experience Hinge for yourself once it launches on November 27 for SteamVR headsets and on the Oculus Rift PC store. Let us know what you think of Hinge so far down in the comments below!
It’s a time of plenty and a time of fear. And something else, a horror yet to manifest, lurks under the surface. This is Hinge from Arcadia VR, a psychological horror game that starts with a party.
During the intro, a noted philanthropist celebrates the completion of his new skyscraper and you’re invited. But the art deco facade masks something far more sinister and otherworldly about the building’s owner. Once night falls, the question becomes whether you can make it out alive with your sanity intact.
With Hinge, Arcadia VR blends history and the occult with a daring goal in sight: redefining what makes a game terrifying.
“There hasn’t been an AAA VR horror game since 2017 [and] there are so many unexplored possibilities for horror games in virtual reality,” Arcadia’s Oleg Smirnov said. “We tried to develop gameplay mechanics that are only viable in VR.”
Smirnov is likely referring to Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, the PSVR-exclusive horror game from Capcom. It’s available on PC and Xbox One as well, but the VR support is only on PSVR. Achieving that same level of success for Arcadia means doubling down on Hinge’s atmosphere to approach the concept of terror in a different, more immersive way. Smirnov feels they’re well-suited to the task.
“Hinge is our first PC VR game, but as a game dev studio, we’ve been existing for longer,” Smirnov said. “Three years ago, our team was working on the opening of the largest VR LBE venue [a kind of VR theme park experience] in Europe called Another World.”
Arcadia has three LBE venues in Russia, and another two were set to open in London and Paris respectively, when the COVID-19 pandemic derailed their plans. It wasn’t all bad, though.
“We’ve been planning to develop games for Steam VR for a long time,” Smirnov said. “But the pandemic just accelerated us working on that.”
The first step in creating their ideal VR horror atmosphere was getting Hinge’s setting right. Smirnov said the team started from the basic desire to scare players, but it had to be something they could “spice up” with Lovecraftian horror elements. What they ended up with was an eclectic cocktail of 1920s America and creeping dread.
“We decided that the player should be placed in the Great Depression, because that era is fraught with something depressing and desperate,” Smirnov said. “It didn’t seem difficult for us to fit these things together. The player can find similarities between 2020 and the 20s of the last century [and] these three components work great together because [much of] the work of H.P. Lovecraft falls precisely in the Roaring Twenties.”
Smirnov and the team didn’t settle for a surface-level trip into history, though.
The early 20th century was the height of rational thinking and belief in science, but there was a strain of darkness and superstition flowing alongside reason and logic. Smirnov said that’s what the team tapped into for Hinge, and Lovecraft is just the tip of the occult iceberg.
“Our game designer wrote over 100 documents and around 20 books specially for Hinge’s in-game environment. The information for these books was taken from real occultist’s books by Aleister Crowley and Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre.”
Though probably better known now as the subject of Ozzy Osbourne’s song “Mr. Crowley,” Aleister Crowley attracted a fair deal of notoriety throughout the first half of the 20th century. He claimed he contacted multiple spirits from other worlds and was even expelled from Italy in 1923 after a follower died during what was called a “sacrilegious ritual.”
Beyond influencing cults and writing arcane tomes, what Crowley and d’Alveydre did is show people there was much about the world they had yet to understand — and not all of it was benign. That sense of uncertainty and the fear it inspires permeates every corner of Hinge.
“We want players to feel like absolutely anything could be around the next corner, to feel like anything in the environment he should be afraid of,” Smirnov said. “We think we succeeded in making the atmosphere where the player feels like even the skyscraper is trying to kill them.”
While Hinge features multiple different monster types, some of which Smirnov said have never been seen before in horror games, don’t expect a bunch of ghouls jumping in your face as the main scare tactic. Smirnov was keen to avoid spoilers, but he did say the team is keen to avoid what they called the overused jump scare mechanic.
“We did a lot of research overall on the scariest things usually found in the horror genre, and we made our own combination of scares that works perfectly. First [on our list] is scares related to surrounding sound effects,” Smirnov said.
Since Hinge is a psychological horror game at its core, expect plenty of mind skullduggery as well. Smirnov said the second scare type they focused on revolves around “scares that play with your attention — when you look at some familiar subject, but at some moment it turns out to be a ghost.”
Beyond things going bump in the dark and dreadful night, the entire story messes with players’ perceptions of reality.
“The rules of the game are obscured for players,” Smirnov said. “You will not be able to fully understand what is happening in the game. You’ll have to put all pieces of the story together from scraps that you’ll find in the game and make conclusions by yourself.”
You’ll be able to draw those conclusions and experience Hinge for yourself once it launches on November 27 for SteamVR headsets and on the Oculus Rift PC store. Let us know what you think of Hinge so far down in the comments below!
Oculus Store apps must use Facebook’s payments system for any and all transactions. Bigscreen CEO Darshan Shankar points out how this makes it impossible for some developers to succeed.
That’s because the fee for that mandatory in-app payment system is 30%. For that, users get the convenience of using their existing saved payment methods, and the peace of mind that no card details need to be shared.
Bigscreen loses >100% for every dollar of revenue, while Fandango can make money in VR.
Sucks that I've poured 6 years into building software for the Oculus Platform.@ID_AA_Carmack gets to bring Fandango into VR, but Facebook won't help devs that have been here from day 0
But how do companies sell products or services with a lower than 30% margin? Bigscreen offers 3D movie rentals. Shankar claims movie studios take 60-80%, so that leaves between a 10% profit and 10% loss for Bigscreen- not a sustainable business.
Facebook presumably makes special deals with big companies like Fandango and Netflix, exempting them from the rules it holds most developers to. These companies can be profitable in VR, while small companies simply can’t compete. Worse yet, Facebook offers its own movie rental service.
Taking a 30% cut of a 10GB game can be argued to be a fair exchange for hosting, serving, and promoting it. But these justifications fall apart when applied to in-app-purchases.
Shankar spoke about this a few weeks ago on Twitter, and on our from-VR podcast The VR Download. We’ve clipped out the segment here:
He called attention to the fact that not only does this make digital services unprofitable, but physical retail too. What if a furniture company made a VR app letting you see their offerings in true scale? To actually let you buy, they’d need to fork over 30% to Facebook each time.
Apple has been facing similar criticism on requiring the use of its payments system. Companies like Epic Games, Spotify, and Netflix want to let customers make purchases & subscriptions directly to avoid the same 30% “tax”.
Like Apple, Shankar says Facebook isn’t budging on its position. Developers can distribute apps over SideQuest with any payments system, but that requires a PC and forgoes automatic updates- for now. WebXR apps also have this freedom naturally, but entering details in VR isn’t a great experience. The open standard Payment Request API (which Facebook is contributing to) seeks to solve this kind of problem on the web, so in the future we might see convenient open payments via Oculus Browser.
Oculus Store apps must use Facebook’s payments system for any and all transactions. Bigscreen CEO Darshan Shankar points out how this makes it impossible for some developers to succeed.
That’s because the fee for that mandatory in-app payment system is 30%. For that, users get the convenience of using their existing saved payment methods, and the peace of mind that no card details need to be shared.
Bigscreen loses >100% for every dollar of revenue, while Fandango can make money in VR.
Sucks that I've poured 6 years into building software for the Oculus Platform.@ID_AA_Carmack gets to bring Fandango into VR, but Facebook won't help devs that have been here from day 0
But how do companies sell products or services with a lower than 30% margin? Bigscreen offers 3D movie rentals. Shankar claims movie studios take 60-80%, so that leaves between a 10% profit and 10% loss for Bigscreen- not a sustainable business.
Facebook presumably makes special deals with big companies like Fandango and Netflix, exempting them from the rules it holds most developers to. These companies can be profitable in VR, while small companies simply can’t compete. Worse yet, Facebook offers its own movie rental service.
Taking a 30% cut of a 10GB game can be argued to be a fair exchange for hosting, serving, and promoting it. But these justifications fall apart when applied to in-app-purchases.
Shankar spoke about this a few weeks ago on Twitter, and on our from-VR podcast The VR Download. We’ve clipped out the segment here:
He called attention to the fact that not only does this make digital services unprofitable, but physical retail too. What if a furniture company made a VR app letting you see their offerings in true scale? To actually let you buy, they’d need to fork over 30% to Facebook each time.
Apple has been facing similar criticism on requiring the use of its payments system. Companies like Epic Games, Spotify, and Netflix want to let customers make purchases & subscriptions directly to avoid the same 30% “tax”.
Like Apple, Shankar says Facebook isn’t budging on its position. Developers can distribute apps over SideQuest with any payments system, but that requires a PC and forgoes automatic updates- for now. WebXR apps also have this freedom naturally, but entering details in VR isn’t a great experience. The open standard Payment Request API (which Facebook is contributing to) seeks to solve this kind of problem on the web, so in the future we might see convenient open payments via Oculus Browser.
Oculus Link will get support for Quest 2’s 90Hz refresh rate mode, and Facebook’s engineers are “tackling compression” soon after launch.
Link is the PC VR mode of Quest headsets, which works via a USB cable. It was added six months after Quest launched. Link required USB 3.0, but earlier this year got support for USB 2.0 connections too.
Link is exiting Beta this year. It will get support for Quest 2’s 90Hz display, making it Facebook’s first 90Hz PC offering since the original Rift- and first ever for standalone.
Compression, Bitrate, and Snapdragon XR2
“Real” PC headsets send raw frames over DisplayPort. Link works by compressing the video stream using your GPU’s video encoder to make it small enough to send over USB. The Quest headset decodes the video stream with the Snapdragon chip’s video decoder.
Video compression sacrifices quality for dramatically decreasing required bandwidth. Compressed videos can have visual artifacts caused by shortcuts the encoder had to take to keep the frame small enough. Generally, how noticeable these artifacts are depends on the video bitrate- the higher it is, the less noticeable they become.
The current Oculus Link’s compression is fairly hard to notice, but it is there if you look for it- and in darker scenes it’s more apparent.
But until Quest 2, Link’s bitrate was limited to what the Snapdragon 835’s decoder can handle in real time- around 150 Mbps.
Quest 2’s Snapdragon XR2 has a more capable video decoder- though by how much is not public knowledge. Facebook tells us it’ll take advantage of the XR2’s increased capabilities to “tackle” compression and handle it “more elegantly”. These improvements won’t be available at launch, though, they’re slated for a near future software update.
With Oculus Rift S being retired in Spring and Facebook vowing no more PC-only headsets, Link will- and should- be compared to “real” PC headsets. With 90Hz and higher bitrates, can Link really deliver the same experience? We’ll let you know as soon as we get access to these features.
The Oculus Quest Store and Oculus Rift Store now accept VR app submissions made with OpenXR instead of the proprietary Oculus SDKs.
Most VR games are made in Unity or Unreal Engine. Unity has no announced timeline for using OpenXR, currently focused on its own cross platform in-engine VR framework & tools. Unreal Engine added support for OpenXR in December.
What Is OpenXR?
OpenXR is an open standard for VR/AR. It was developed by Khronos, the same non-profit industry consortium managing OpenGL. The working group includes the major VR companies such as Facebook, Sony, Valve, Microsoft, HTC, NVIDIA, and AMD.
To clear up any confusion: OpenXR is not the same as OpenVR. That was Valve’s API for SteamVR. OpenVR works on all PC VR headsets, but it doesn’t support Android headsets like Quest and (due to Facebook’s policies) cannot be used in Oculus Store apps. In June, Valve announced that new SteamVR features would be “on the OpenXR side”.
The Problem OpenXR Solves
An API (Application Programming Interface) allows software to interact with other software or hardware. VR developers use APIs like Facebook’s Oculus and Valve’s OpenVR to build apps. The API is often part of an SDK (software development kit), and informally these terms are often used interchangeably.
The problem with the Oculus API is apps developed with it only work on Oculus hardware, with the caveat that hacks could make that software run on other systems. In addition, for developers using a custom engine, there are actually two separate APIs between Quest and Rift.
This means that if a developer wants to support all VR headsets, they need to use multiple APIs. This can be time consuming and increase complexity.
Engines like Unity and Unreal make this easier, and both are trying to separately unify VR APIs under their own new engine subsystems, but the problem still exists.
Will These Games Work On Other Headsets?
Microsoft was the first to add support for OpenXR to its Windows MR platform back in July of 2019. SteamVR has ‘preview’ support too.
This raises the obvious question: will OpenXR Oculus Rift Store games run on Valve Index, HTC Vive, or Windows MR headsets without the need for the ReVive hack?
Theoretically yes, but we’ll have to test this once such a game actually releases to confirm.
Developers submitting to the Oculus Store still need to use the Oculus Platform SDK to integrate the entitlement check (a very basic form of DRM, similar to Steam DRM). The Platform SDK is essentially the SDK for the social features, such as leaderboards, achievements and bringing Parties into the same session.
This check isn’t required for apps distributed through unofficial channels such as SideQuest, and can actually be added post-build, so shouldn’t prevent other headsets. It only tries to check whether the app was purchased, not which headset is running it.
Known Issues
Facebook notes the following known issues with the current OpenXR support, which it says will be fixed in future releases:
Grip pose is misaligned.
Action spaces continue to track even when isActive == false, which is conformant but misaligned with other runtimes. This will cause issues if relying on tracking state vs. isActive for rendering hands.
Parent interaction profile bindings are missing for non-natively supported profiles (everything besides the Simple, Touch, and XBox controller profiles)
Oculus PC software v19 adds the ability to choose between 3 render options for your Oculus Link resolutions. Alternatively you can have it automatically set based on your graphics card.
Oculus Link is the feature which lets Oculus Quest act as a PC VR headset via a USB cable. This gives Quest owners who own a gaming PC access to the Oculus Rift library and SteamVR.
Games running on Quest itself don’t have graphics options. Like a console, developers find the balance of detail to maintain solid framerate. But PC components vary in performance, so allowing different render resolutions makes sense for Oculus Link, where your PC renders the graphics.
You can find the new option in the Devices tab of the Oculus PC app. Click on ‘Quest and Touch‘ and scroll down to ‘Graphics Preference‘:
The resolutions of these options aren’t shown in the Oculus software- but we tested each option in a Unity app, logging the eye texture resolution it resulted in:
Prioritize Quality: 2784×3056 per eye
Balanced: 2448×2688 per eye
Prioritize Performance: 1568×1728 per eye
Automatic: ‘Performance’ for GTX 970, ‘Balanced’ for RTX 2070
Changing requires restarting the Oculus software, so unfortunately you can’t switch mid-game. It’s unclear if it has any effects other than resolution.
Valve’s competing SteamVR platform allows precise selection of resolution, with the ability to save per-game values. A third party tool Oculus Tool Tray brings this functionality to the Rift platform.
If you want to keep it simple, this system gives you a solution to slow performance in certain games; select ‘Prioritize Performance’ mode.
It doesn’t matter if you’re using USB 2.0 or 3.0, it seems to work in either mode.
The Oculus SDK offers a feature to dynamically set resolution to maintain framerate, based on current GPU utilization. Some Oculus Store games use this feature. We tested in Unity and found this dynamic system takes priority when enabled, ignoring the Link resolution setting – keep that in mind if you don’t notice a different in some games.
Oculus Software v19 is currently available on the Public Test Channel. To opt in, navigate to the Beta tab of the Oculus PC app’s Settings. You’ll see it start to download in the Library tab.
Will you be setting Prioritize Performance to maintain a solid framerate? Or will you lock yours to Prioritize Quality to get the sharpest visuals? Let us know in the comments below!
In early 2021, Facebook plans to let Oculus Quest developers distribute apps to select users without having to go through the store approval process:
“In early 2021 we’ll offer a new way to distribute your work in the Quest ecosystem, allowing you to share your apps to anyone with a Quest, without having to be accepted into the Oculus Store and without sideloading. While we expect many developers will want to share their apps as broadly as possible, we also see this new channel as a way to test early-stage applications and distribute to specific users.
Oculus Quest is essentially a virtual reality console. Apps are rendered by the device itself, served from a tightly curated digital store. Developers are required to submit a pitch application early in the development cycle, which must be approved in order to upload a Quest build to the store system.
The store curation policy has come under criticism from some indie developers, who feel Facebook is stifling innovation and exercising too much control over standalone VR — there is currently still no serious competitor to Quest in the western consumer market.
Users can use a PC to manually “sideload” apps, but this is a fairly complex process for those who aren’t experienced with command line interfaces. It also requires telling Facebook you’re a developer and agreeing to a developer Terms of Service.
Five days after Quest started shipping, software developer Shane Harris launched SideQuest, a tool for PCs which greatly simplifies this sideloading process. SideQuest soon evolved into what’s effectively an alternate store- though you still need to use a PC to install and update apps.
So how exactly will Facebook’s new distribution channel work? Facebook isn’t sharing many details yet, but suggests this as a replacement for shipping apps on Oculus Go. The Go store will stop accepting new apps on December 18 as hardware sales for the older system come to an end.
“The Oculus Platform policies will apply to all apps we distribute, and developers will still need to meet the obligations of our Oculus Content Policy,” a prepared statement from Facebook explains. “However, apps distributed through this new channel won’t be held to the same technical standards as official Oculus Store apps.”
This could mean a similar system to the current Unlisted Release Channels for Rift and Go. That system allows up to 100 users invited to access the build using the email address associated with their Oculus account.
We’ll provide updates on the new Quest distribution channel as soon as we have them.
The sale is pitched as a “special thank you” to the Oculus community, coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift S release on May 21, 2019. The sale won’t be exclusive to the Quest either — the Rift store will also be receiving a sale to commemorate a year since the release of the Rift S.
As far as the sale, I’ve listed the Quest deals below while some of the Rift discounts look fairly substantial, with The American Dream for around $6, Sprint Vector for around $9, Raw Data for $10, and Thumper for $10, among many others.
