Cloudhead Games announced three new levels and two new modifiers are coming to Pistol Whip in a free update dubbed the ‘Heartbreaker Trilogy’, and they may be here in the next few days.
Pistol Whip has consistently received free updates adding new content to the game, with 5 new levels added since launch. This new Heartbreaker Trilogy update will add three levels that involve less “face-melting music for the fighters” and more chilled out action “for the lovers.”
In the tweet below, Cloudhead pointed towards a hint about the pack’s release date, highlighting lyrics from one song that include the words “before September”.
That makes it kind of obvious, right? We should have the pack this time next week.
This update was first announced at our UploadVR Summer Showcase earlier in the year, with a tentative August release date. Now with just a few days left in the month, we still don’t have an exact date, but Cloudhead teased that the update is “almost here” and will arrive before September. We got a sneak peek at one of the three levels, called Ember, featuring enemies doing some funky dance moves — a nice change from the serious tone of the existing levels.
Three new scenes, two new modifiers, one massive free update. The Heartbreaker Trilogy is almost here.
The video also reveals the titles of the other two tracks, called Letting Go and Another Day. The update will add two new modifiers to the game as well, but we’ve got no further details on those for the moment.
Pistol Whip launched on PSVR last month, but it looks like PlayStation players will have to wait a bit longer for the Heartbreaker Trilogy to drop — Cloudhead indicated that the update will drop “shortly after” on PSVR, with some “PSVR specific considerations.”
As announced at our showcase, this isn’t the end of the road for Pistol Whip content this year either — in Q4, Cloudhead will launch “The Concierge” update. This will be the biggest content addition for the game since launch and will be split over two updates. They will introduce new weapon types, new enemy types and a “cinematic action campaign” for all the new content.
The Heartbreaker Trilogy update will be available for Pistol Whip on PC VR and Oculus Quest sometime this week.
Oculus Quest 2 seems to be on the way, with a Bloomberg report, developer site references, leaked photos, leaked marketing images and a noticed controller driver file.
Reliable sources tell us this headset is real, entering full production this week.
The current Oculus Quest forged a new category for virtual reality. It’s the first consumer VR headset (outside the China-focused Vive Focus Plus) offering a directly interactive room-scale experience without the need for a gaming computer or PlayStation. It’s also the only such headset that works wirelessly out of the box (HTC sells a $300 Vive wireless adapter).
There’s still no direct competitor, at least not one with highly sought-after games like Beat Saber and Vader Immortal that’s also priced to tempt gamers. Will Facebook really launch a successor in 2020 or early 2021? The evidence suggests it might, but to be clear, the company hasn’t made any official announcements yet.
March: Developer Site Lists New Device
The first indication of a new Oculus headset emerged back in March. Facebook’s public Developer Documentation website started displaying a new device called ‘Del Mar’, with a ‘First Access’ program for developers.
Further, the SDK documentation listed a new controller type, ‘Oculus Jedi Controller For Oculus Del Mar’. Since this find was in the mobile SDK, this was the first indication of the headset being standalone.
April: Jedi Controller Driver File
In April, developer Gerald McAlister found a driver file for the ‘Jedi’ controller within the firmware for the consumer Quest.
• a new IMU (accelerometer & gyroscope) with less noise
• a haptics thread, suggesting potentially improved haptics
• some kind of analog finger position sensor codenamed ‘Rainier’
May: Bloomberg Report
In early May, Bloomberg reported Facebook working on a new Oculus Quest, with the following potential improvements:
• “at least 90Hz” refresh rate
• 10% to 15% smaller than the current Quest
• around 20% lighter
• “the removal of the fabric from the sides and replacing it with more plastic”
• “changing the materials used in the straps to be more elastic than the rubber and velcro currently used”
• “a redesigned controller that is more comfortable and fixes a problem with the existing controller”
July: Leaked Images
Last week, on Wednesday, Twitter tech leaker WalkingCat shared what appears to be a marketing render for the headset.
In late May, WalkingCat tweeted an image of the HP Reverb G2 the week before the official reveal. The account has a history of accurately leaking technology.
Reliable sources refer to the headset as “Oculus Quest 2”, though it is unclear if that’s the final name of the device.
Additionally, when asked by a Twitter user, the leaker behind the apparent marketing images replied ‘I believe its dubbed “Quest 2″‘.
Doesn’t this look like Oculus Go?
Go was an immersive media viewer, mostly marketed for watching passive immersive content as well as regular media on virtual screens. A Facebook manager once referred to it as “our media line” and it featured no on-board cameras.
Quest uses its four cameras to track wide motions in games. The leaked headset also has four cameras, but the top two look like they are positioned to see even wider movements. The Touch controllers appear to be improved, as the driver file suggested.
Does It Have IPD Adjustment?
Reliable sources tell us the headset has adjustable lenses with 3 distinct positions: 1-2-3.
The indicator is visible, set to the 2 position, in WalkingCat’s leak showing the lenses. Those with a narrow IPD would likely use setting 1, average 2, and wider IPDs would use setting 3.
What’s the resolution? Field of view?
There are no fresh recent reports of the device’s resolution or field of view. However, Bloomberg’s report from May indicated a refresh rate of 90 Hz.
Given the Oculus Rift S LCD panel is 80Hz, and Oculus Quest’s OLED panels are 72Hz, this could suggest a new panel. The Rift S panel was first introduced in the 2018 Oculus Go, and Quest’s in the 2018 HTC Vive Pro, so given the passage of time we could be in store for a resolution increase again.
Will It Use A Newer Snapdragon Chip?
For the refresh rate to be increased from 72 Hz to 90 Hz as Bloomberg reported, a more powerful processor would be required.
The Snapdragon 8-series is Qualcomm’s flagship mobile chip series, offering the highest performance. Snapdragon 835, used in the current Quest, launched back in 2017.
The following chipsets, then, are potential candidates for Oculus Quest 2:
2018’s Snapdragon 845 (used in the $700 Pico Neo 2 enterprise headset)
XR2 is a variant of the 865 specifically designed for XR headsets. At a Qualcomm event in Feburary, a Faceboook representative said the company is ‘super excited’ about the chip, but given the only announced product using it is $1500, it may be too early to appear in an Oculus product just yet.
The extra power of any of these chips may be used to increase the refresh rate and/or resolution.
What About Oculus Rift 2?
There are no reports of a new PC-only Oculus headset (Rift) on the horizon.
At Oculus Connect 5 in late 2018, while announcing Quest, Mark Zuckerberg declared that it would be foward-compatible, which he explained meant all content for it “will run on the future devices”.
Will This Make My Quest Obsolete?
Quest is Facebook’s biggest success in VR so far. The new headset is clearly not a fundamentally new product, but appears to be refinement of the Quest experience. It still has four cameras and dual Touch controllers.
While Facebook may choose to stop selling Quest, there’s no indication new games will be released for only Quest 2.
“Quest is there and it’s going to be there for years and we’re not going to make you regret it.”
It seems unlikely Facebook would abandon the Quest userbase it built up any time soon, and it wouldn’t make sense for developers to not ship their apps to a user base that’s driven some of the best sales for them on any VR platform so far. Given that there don’t appear to be radical changes to the controllers, developers should be able to target both headsets without specific changes.
We’ll keep this post updated as we learn more about the new Oculus Quest and let us know in the comments if you have any more specific questions we can work to answer.
In a new video on the Tested YouTube channel, Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame has created a custom gun grip for his Oculus Touch controller to use while playing Cloudhead Games’ Pistol Whip.
Pistol Whip was one of our favorite VR releases of 2019. The rhythm-shooter kept us coming back for more, and has received a bunch of free updates with new songs since release. As it turns out, Adam Savage is also a big fan of Pistol Whip and was inspired to create a custom gun grip for his Oculus Touch controller, in order to add a bit more realism to his play sessions.
Most VR enthusiasts will have seen some form of 3D printed objects that can be made or bought to use with VR headsets or controllers. There are loads of 3D printed gun grips similar to the one made by Adam, but also many other objects that allow you to do things like wall-mount your headset, make modifications to the headset’s fit or strap, or even play a more realistic game of table tennis.
However, most of the designs you’ll find online are just 3D printed plastic — in his Pistol Whip grip build, Savage went a bit further and added aluminum to the top of a printed plastic gun grip. It was then finished off with an amazing acid-etched custom design with his name on the sides. The whole build took Savage a couple of hours and the end result is stunning. Not only does it look fantastic, but it also adds significant weight to the controller as well. This brings it more in line with the weight of a real pistol, adding an extra layer of immersion and realism to the game.
“That was officially a lot of fun,” said Savage after completing the building and trying the grip out. “[But] a lot more work, since it’s heavy.” This isn’t the first time Savage has created a custom grip for VR controllers — a few months ago, he made custom hilts to use while playing Beat Saber.
Have you made or bought any custom grips for your VR controllers? Let us know in the comments below.
Code found by a VR developer in Oculus Quest’s firmware reveals new Touch-like VR controllers which may feature improvements to tracking, haptics, and finger sensing.
Last month, the official Oculus Developer website leaked the codename for a ‘Del Mar’ standalone headset with a developer early access program. A reference to ‘Oculus Jedi Controller For Oculus Del Mar’ was also discovered in the Oculus Mobile SDK.
This week, Gerald McAlister of RGB Schemes found a driver for the Jedi controller within the latest firmware for the consumer Quest. We don’t know whether this driver was included accidentally or its inclusion implies the current Quest could one day support the controller.
UploadVR analyzed the driver and compared it to the current Touch driver to zero in on some specific changes. Keep in mind, however, changes could be made between now and this becoming a product- or Facebook could cancel the project altogether.
Familiar Input
The driver file reveals a controller with a thumbstick, index trigger, grip trigger, A/X button, B/Y button, and a system/menu button- the same layout as the current Oculus Touch controllers, which continued the same layout as the original Rift’s Touch.
A function for infrared LED calibration exists, suggesting this controller is optically tracked in the same way as the current Touch– cameras on the headset follow the movement of the LED constellation, and this is fused with the accelerometer readings to achieve sub-mm precision.
Facebook’s VR controllers are tracked via infrared LEDs under the plastic
On Quest, the headset cameras sample at 60 Hz. Half of the frames are high exposure shots for a clear view of your room used for headset tracking, and the other half are low exposure shots that zero in on controller position with minimal blur. Thus Touch flashes the LEDs at 30 Hz, or 30 times per second.
The ‘Jedi’ driver references a 60Hz IR LED mode. This could reduce the time it takes for the headset to re-acquire a controller that went out of view. It might also hint at cameras that sample more frequently on ‘Del Mar’, which might enable lower latency for controller-free hand tracking.
The driver also reveals the series model number of the controller’s inertial measurement unit (IMU)- the chip within all VR controllers which contains the accelerometer.
Teardowns and the FCC filings for the current Touch showed it uses TDK’s ICM-20601 IMU from late 2015.
The IMU in the current Touch controllers for Rift S and Quest
Jedi’s driver lists it as using a new ICM-426-series TDK chip, described as a “premium performance” IMU with “the lowest noise figure in the industry” when it was announced at CES 2019.
Touch (v2)IMU
‘Jedi’Listed IMU
Noise (µg/rt-Hz) (lower is better)
390
70
Resolution
16-bits
18-bits
Tolerance (lower is better)
2%
0.5%
Variation from Temp (%/ºC) (lower is better)
1.6 ×10-2
5 ×10-3
Energy Usage
3 mA
0.65 mA
Gyro Noise (mdps/rt-Hz) (lower is better)
13
5.3
Gyro Resolution
16-bits
19-bits
The specifications suggest an accelerometer and gyroscope with a 6x and 2x reduction in noise, respectively, as well as improvements to resolution. Noise here means the fluctuation in output. This improved IMU should give the tracking algorithm more data with less noise, and that could enable more precise controller tracking.
When not in view of any camera, the accelerometer is used to estimate the controller’s motion. This works when the controller is moving quickly or predictably, but only for a few seconds at most currently. A better accelerometer could increase this time, or just make the estimation more accurate.
Potential Haptics Improvements
The original Oculus Touch (and HTC Vive wands) used a linear actuator for precise haptics. This same technology is present in the Nintendo Switch as “HD Rumble”, as well as in the Valve Index controllers.
The current Touch controllers use a standard motor of the type found in a gamepad, drawing criticism from developers utilizing linear haptics in their experiences.
The ‘Jedi’ driver mentions a new haptics thread running on the controller, which now interfaces with a specific haptic driver. This might suggest improvements to haptics, but there’s not enough information here to say anything more definitive.
Analog Finger Sensing
The original and current Touch controllers use capacitive sensors to detect when your fingers are touching buttons, the thumbstick, or the index trigger.
The Jedi driver includes a reference to an analog capacitive touch sensor that appears to carry the codename ‘Rainier’. Oculus has a long history of naming prototypes after California beaches– and Rainier is in Washington State, where Facebook’s VR/AR research division is located.
So What Is Del Mar?
The information that Quest’s firmware provides about Jedi narrows down the possibilities for what the ‘Del Mar’ headset is.
One popular theory took the ‘Jedi’ codename seriously, postulating optional Lightsaber controllers for a superior Beat Saber & Vader Immortal experience. Others suggested ‘Jedi’ could be a product based on the finger tracking wristband being developed by CTRL Labs, a startup acquired by Facebook in September. The full traditional input spotted in this driver might rule out both of these theories.
One of Facebook’s prototype headsets from R&D, Half-Dome 2
Today’s new information- Jedi being a controller with the similar input to the existing Touch but featuring an improved IMU- may point to Del Mar and Jedi being a successor or higher end alternative to Quest. As well as providing a step up in the market for standalone headsets, it looks like Facebook could also be taking the opportunity to make improvements to input, while avoiding a total overhaul that could break backwards compatibility. Of course, if Facebook did improve the Touch controllers with these Jedi units launched alongside a new Quest, we’d hope for backwards compatibility with the current Quest as well.
Featured image at the top of this post features Oculus Touch prototypes shown in an Oculus Connect 4 presentation in 2017.
A project developed by mechanical engineers Florian Auté and Alexis Roseillier resulted in a 3D printed paddle, grip and holder for an Oculus Touch controller.
The grip replicates the feel of a real racket for use in the VR table tennis game Eleven.
Eleven was already available on PC VR but just launched on the Oculus Quest last week. The game offers realistic physics and environments that simulate the classic game of ping pong. The extreme light weight of a ping pong ball also makes the sport a good candidate to replicate in VR, as the haptic feedback provided is much less than, say, hitting a baseball or tennis ball.
One area that differs the most, though, is replicating the grip of a real table tennis paddle in VR. An Oculus Touch controller, or any other VR current controller, does not have the same grip, feel, orientation or weight as a real table tennis paddle. So modifications to the controller would be needed to make that happen.
To counter this problem, in January Florian Auté began prototyping a way to integrate an Oculus Touch controller with a standard table tennis paddle grip. Auté worked on the initial prototypes with his girlfriend as they focused on connecting an Oculus Touch controller to an existing paddle grip.
Auté then enrolled the help of friends Alexis Roseillier and his wife for their 3D printing knowledge and skills, and they began work on a 3D printed grip. Roseillier and Auté both studied at the same engineering school in France but they live in different countries, the Netherlands and Germany. Auté is a fan of Eleven but Roseillier was not interested in table tennis at the beginning of the project, according to Auté, but now that Roseillier tried their add-on he’s thinking of getting an Oculus Quest.
The final result is a 3D printed racket/paddle holder that securely holds an Oculus Touch controller, while also positioning the center of gravity to more closely match a real table tennis paddle.
According to the creators the total weight is around 167 grams and keeps the controller’s buttons accessible while locked into the 3D printed mount. The tracking remains stable while in the grip, according to Auté, and it can also be used with the table tennis shakehand grip, where your index finger is placed on the back of the paddle.
The user will need to adjust the orientation of the paddle in-game — Eleven allows that kind of customization — so that it matches the offset position of the controller when placed in the grip. We contacted the developers of Eleven and they said they are planning to add a custom preset in the game that will easily adjust the orientation of the simulated paddle to work with the grip without the need for manual alignment.
They posted the 3D model for the grip and it is available free on Thinigverse, an online library where users can upload the files for 3D models they’ve created. This allows others to download the files and print the models with a 3D printer themselves. You can download the grip on the Thingiverse listing now with instructions included on the page. It works with the second generation of Oculus Touch controllers which ship with both the Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift S headsets. An earlier 3D print was made by different creators for the original Oculus Rift Touch controllers.
Here’s a video of the new accessory recorded by the creators and originally posted to Reddit showing how it works:
The print requires a two M4 screws you should be able to get at a hardware store — one with a 10 mm thread length to lock the controller in place — and another with 35 mm thread length for the hinge.
A contact with a 3D printer is sending UploadVR Managing Editor Ian Hamilton two of the prints — one for a right Oculus Touch controller (same as the listing on Thingiverse) and another with a mirrored print for the left Oculus Touch controller. He’s left-handed but his family members are right-handed, so with two of the prints he and his family can use two Quests or a Quest and a Rift S to play table tennis together in their living room. Eleven’s developers say the game should minimize latency when on a shared Wi-Fi network, with a possible delay of only 2-3 milliseconds. In other words, once the prints arrive it should make for an extremely realistic game of table tennis without any physical table or ball.
Are you going to be 3D printing the grip to up your table tennis game in VR? Let us know in the comments below.
All images provided by Florian Auté from Thingiverse and Reddit and posted here with permission. Video rehosted on YouTube with permission from Auté, and the original can be found on Reddit. Managing Editor Ian Hamilton contributed to this post.
The controller tracking of the Oculus Quest and Rift S needed to be patched to work properly near Christmas trees and other holiday lights.
Oculus Touch controllers are built with a constellation of infrared LEDs under the plastic of the tracking ring. These lights are tracked by the cameras on the headset in order to determine the position of the controller.
Holiday lights like those on Christmas trees can look a lot like these LEDs to the cameras. This means the algorithm has more sources of light in each frame to analyze, and sometimes it can’t tell the difference between the controller LEDs and the irrelevant LEDs at all. This could make the controller tracking work poorly, showing the wrong position for the controller.
The solution works because the headset tracking algorithm already remembers static landmarks seen by the cameras in the room — that’s how it works without external sensors. By keeping a track of these landmarks the system can reject blobs of light which stay in the same position and don’t move.
This process on its own, however, is not enough to eliminate all the issues. So Facebook also trained a neural network to detect and filter out blobs of lights that are too small or too large to be a controller LED given its last position.
This isn’t the first time Facebook improved the controller tracking on Quest and Rift S. Both headsets use the Oculus Insight tracking system and launched on the same day. At launch, the controllers wouldn’t track when brought too close to the headset and tracking could break when one was placed in front of the other. This made games like shooters difficult to play until a patch was released one month after launch which fixed these issues.
Ever since the Oculus Touch controllers were first made available in December 2016 Oculus has ensured they can aid creativity thanks to homegrown apps like Medium. A piece of sculpting software which has built a reputation as an important professional design tool, today Adobe has announced the acquisition of Medium.
Known for its suite of design apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, Dimension, Substance and many more, Adobe is one of the world leaders when it comes to software tools for creative professionals. The addition of Oculus Medium into that family certainly demonstrates its importance as a VR tool to enhance productivity across a range of use cases.
“Medium has been a beacon of creativity in the VR space, pushing creative and technical boundaries of 3D modelling,” says Sebastien Deguy, VP, 3D and Immersive at Adobe in a blog post. “The creative tool enables users to sculpt, model and paint in an immersive environment – to easily create characters, objects, environments, expressive works of art and more. The integration of Medium’s tools and technology will greatly contribute to our 3D and immersive strategy.”
While it certainly marks a turning point in Oculus Medium’s life cycle this will cast doubt over its future as a freely accessible VR app – even though it’s sold on the Oculus Store for £22.99 GBP, Medium is free with every Oculus Touch, which comes supplied with every new Oculus Rift S. The Oculus Blog does mention: “To our passionate Medium users, nothing is changing for you today. Stay tuned for more features, improvements, and other developments coming from Adobe in 2020 as Medium continues to evolve.”
“During my time at Allegorithmic (acquired by Adobe in January 2019), we’ve always looked up to Medium and seen shaping as something we’d love to tackle. The redoubled investment of Adobe in the 3D and AR space finally allowed us to join forces and bring our complementary talents together. The Substance and Medium teams are ready to work together on the next generation of 3D tools,” Deguy adds.
So there will be changes to Medium in 2020, let’s just hope they help to widen adoption. As further updates are made available, VRFocus will let you know.
Valve’s upcoming VR game Half-Life: Alyx works with all tracked PC VR game controllers, but some optional interactions are only possible with the company’s own Index Controllers.
The intriguing detail comes to us in a lengthy answer from Bronwen Grimes, Technical Artist at Valve, in response to a question we sent the company about the highly anticipated game. The artist also told us core interactions in the game, like “picking up, holding, dropping, throwing, and manipulating” objects “end up being better on Index Controllers because we were developing them in concert with the game.”
Half-Life Alyx is available for pre-order now on Steam for around $60 and slated for release in March 2020, but it’ll be free to owners of the Valve Index VR headset. Valve debuted the high-end Index VR headset earlier this year in tandem with the Index Controller — a new type of tracked VR controller which straps to each hand around the knuckles and palm.
In 2016, HTC shipped the Vive with wand-like tracked controllers powered by Valve’s technology while Facebook shipped Oculus Touch. The following year, Microsoft supplied PC manufacturing partners with another type of controller which combined features of both for VR headsets running on its Windows Mixed Reality platform. While these earlier controllers require the player to hold them, the Valve Index Controllers track the movements of all five fingers and allow more realistic grasping and release sensations.
Earlier this year Pistol Whip developer Cloudhead Games worked with Valve to release the Aperture Hand Lab free introductory software which showcased some of the interactions these controllers were uniquely capable of providing — like playing a game of rock, paper, scissors. Owners of the original Vive controllers can replace them with Index Controllers for $279. A new VR buyer needs a VR Ready PC plus $1,000 to purchase the Valve Index VR headset, tracking base stations and controllers.
Valve’s SteamVR software interfaces with all the tracked PC controllers mentioned and many VR games work with all of them, including Half-Life: Alyx. But people with the Index Controllers may have different experiences with the game as compared with the rest.
Gravity Gloves
Crushing Cans In Your Hands And More
Here is the full answer provided by Valve’s Bronwen Grimes to our question seeking to understand the differences players might notice playing Half-Life: Alyx with the Index Controllers versus others:
“We’ve really tried to make the best use of Index Controllers for those who have them, while also ensuring that those who don’t still have a great experience with Half-Life: Alyx. There’s a small set of things that Index Controllers can do that other controllers can’t do at all, and they’re fun but not required – like being able to crush a can that you’re holding in your hand. But there’s a larger set of things that work on any tracked controllers, yet end up being better on Index Controllers because we were developing them in concert with the game. The most obvious example is the core interaction players have with objects in Half-Life: Alyx – picking up, holding, dropping, throwing, and manipulating. Players perform these basic actions many times throughout the game, and over our years of playtesting, we’ve found that combining the player’s trigger usage with their tracked finger locations was the most successful method of supporting their intentions. So while you can perform most actions with just a trigger or a button, we just think it feels more natural with the way the Index Controllers operate. Finally, the ability for the player to relax their hands without dropping their controller turned out to be a significant factor in our Half-Life: Alyx playtests. As our Index Controller prototypes started replacing our older controllers in playtests, we started seeing players able to play for longer and longer stretches of time, because they weren’t required to hold onto a real-world object the entire time. This wasn’t really something we saw as a problem in our early days of VR development, but now that VR games are becoming longer and more fully featured, we think it’s becoming more important.”
While Oculus’ inside-out tracking solution for Quest and Rift S has in many ways been a success, there’s always room for improvement and additional tweaks. The company has now rolled out several updates to enhance the overall controller tracking experience on both devices, as well as improving Oculus Quest’s Guardian system.
First of all, the new Oculus Touch controllers for Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift S have had their tracking algorithms fine-tuned to update their accuracy, such as when hands are close to the headset or angled away from it. So players should see smoother tracking and fewer errors when using either device, great for throwing a few punches in Creed: Rise to Glory, reloading weapons in Gun Club VR or simply picking stuff up in Job Simulator.
And just for Oculus Quest, the Guardian system which keeps players safe in VR – hopefully no walking into walls – is being made even more accurate and flexible. The updated system is now better at automatically recognising multiple play areas in different rooms, so Oculus Quest can quickly and easily swap between locations. Or for those with one massive room with multiple areas to enjoy VR, there’s now support for several Guardian setups in the same room. Meaning there’s no fighting between siblings who may want their own little slice of VR heaven.
In addition to all of that, the Guardian settings page now includes options to adjust the floor height and alter playspace boundaries without having to start from scratch.
Back on Oculus Rift S, there’s a new setting on Dash so you can turn on the stereo-correct passthrough feature, Passthrough+, for as long as you want. Addressing the issue some users have had with intermittent displays, Oculus says on its blog: “We’ve been working hard to address them with each software release since launch, and we’re close to resolving the occasional screen flashes that have been reported. Look for an update later this week, and thanks in advance for your patience.”
Plus, from today Oculus Home’s Gateways feature will let you link directly to your favourite videogames, experiences, and friend’s homes. As Oculus releases further updates, VRFocus will let you know.
Oculus Quest owners should see their headsets update within the next few days to a software version with new controller tracking algorithms.
Last month, Facebook rolled out an update on its testing channel that dramatically improves controller tracking on the PC-powered Rift S headset. This week that update left its testing phase and started releasing more broadly while the tracking improvements also come to Quest.
The software update for Facebook’s standalone VR console also brings with it changes to the Guardian system. Facebook says the new software better recognizes “multiple playspaces in different rooms” and “multiple Guardian setups in the same room.” The update to Facebook’s system for defining safe play areas for VR should also add the ability to make on-the-fly adjustments for fine tuning the space.
Oculus Quest should update on its own when turned on and connected to WiFi. It may take a few days for the update to arrive.
Oculus Venues
Social co-watching service Oculus Venues is coming to Oculus Quest with NextVR broadcasting Liverpool Football Club vs Sporting Clube de Portugal at Yankee Stadium and a rock opera performance from Tenacious D. The service was previously available on Oculus Go and Gear VR. Venues joins a series of services and apps Facebook tested over the years (alongside Spaces and Rooms) which connect people in VR to share moments together. These services, though, haven’t seen widespread adoption, support or appeal. Venues, for example, isn’t yet available on Oculus Rift.
In late September Facebook will be hosting its Oculus Connect 6 developer event where it is likely the company will announce major updates to its software and hardware roadmap for VR and AR.
