Facebook announced that the countdown and liftoff stream for the NASA Perseverance Rover will be broadcast in Oculus Venues, which is available for Oculus Quest and Oculus Go. The broadcast will begin at 4:00am PST on July 30, and is scheduled to end approximately 2 hours later at 6:00am. The launch time has been tentatively set right in the middle at 4:50am PT, but being a live event, that’s subject to change.
According to NASA, the Perseverance rover mission “takes the next step by not only seeking signs of habitable conditions on Mars in the ancient past, but also searching for signs of past microbial life itself.” It will take almost 7 months to reach the red planet, touching down on February 18 next year.
Oculus Venues is an app that allows you to watch an event broadcast in VR while sitting in stadium-like seating, surrounded by other Venues users who are watching in sync with you. You can talk and interact with people around you, each of which is represented by their Oculus Avatar. While there is an option to use Venues by yourself, the main purpose of the app is to provide a social setting to watch an event in VR — it’s essentially simulating being in a live audience.
Oculus Venues has been ramping up its efforts to keep virtual reality (VR) fans entertained by providing several concerts from high-profile artists like Offset and Wiz Khalifa. Tomorrow will see Scottish artist Lewis Capaldi team up with Supersphere for a unique set.
Thanks to the current lockdown measures Capaldi will be performing his set from his parent’s home, broadcast through Oculus Venues and simulcast on his Facebook page at 4 pm PST/7 pm EST (12 am BST 14th May).
Capaldi’s debut album Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent was a massive hit in the UK, containing his breakout single Someone You Loved. According to the UK’s Official Charts Company, the album and single were the biggest of 2019.
Securing Song of the Year honours and Best New Artist at the 2020 BRIT Awards he spent three weeks at No. 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 as well as being nominated for a GRAMMY Award.
The set will see the singer perform Someone You Loved alongside his latest single Before You Go, which has already done well in both US and UK charts. “Capaldi turned to Supersphere and Oculus Venues because of the technology’s unique ability to allow fans to feel close to him in a way that two-dimensional streams through YouTube and other platforms can’t offer,” notes the press statement.
Oculus Venues is free to download for Oculus Quest or Oculus Go, also playing host to sports events, comedy shows and other entertainment. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Oculus Venues, reporting back with the latest concert announcements.
The Grammy-nominated artist Wiz Khalifa is set to host a concert today, May 6th, and you can watch it live from the comfort of your own Oculus Quest or Go headset via Oculus Venues.
The concert starts this afternoon at 4:00 PM PT (local time here) where Wiz Khalifa will be livestreamed, performing tracks from his recent EP The Saga of Wiz Khalifa.
Among hits such as ‘Work Hard, Play Hard’ and ‘See You Again’, Wiz is most well-known for his debut single ‘Black and Yellow’, which nabbed him number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 list in 2010.
Make sure to click here to subscribe to the event, and you should get a notification on your phone when it’s about to start.
Oculus Venues is a free social VR viewing platform that hosts live events in a virtual stadium setting. Through Venues, Quest and Go users can watch live content such as sporting events, stand up comedy, and concerts. Rift users are still waiting to see when they’ll be able to get into the fun, although Facebook may very well be waiting for their upcoming Facebook Horizonsapp to unite the whole Oculus platform under one social VR banner.
You might be stuck at home but that isn’t stopping Oculus from putting on some live content to keep everyone entertained. Multi-platinum recording artist Offset and a few friends will be holding a live music stream via Oculus Venues today with Wiz Khalifa following suit next week.
Oculus Venues and Supersphere will be presenting Offset and Friends at 4pm PT (12am BST) featuring fellow hip-hop artists Young Thug, Rich the Kid, and SAINt JHN.
The one-night-only event is a VR-exclusive to the Oculus Venues app for Oculus Quest or Oculus Go as well as being available live on Offset’s Facebook page. Offset will also be spearheading a charitable initiative for the Atlanta Community Food Bank, personally donating 200,000 meals while viewers can also pledge their support from as little as $1 USD.
“As someone raised in metro Atlanta, this event is the perfect opportunity for me to give back to the community that has supported me throughout my childhood and my career,” Offset said in a statement. “I am looking forward to putting on an immersive, one-of-a-kind show for my fans and joining the Atlanta Community Food Bank in their fight against hunger.”
“We are extremely grateful to Offset, Young Thug, Rich the Kid, and SAINt JHN for helping us offer nourishment to struggling seniors, hardworking families, and hungry children,” said Sarah Fonder-Kristy, Chief Development Officer for the Atlanta Community Food Bank. “The need for meals has more than doubled since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, and the donations we receive from this event will be instrumental in our work to provide that relief.”
The music doesn’t stop there as Wiz Khalifa will be stepping into VR and Oculus Venues on Wednesday 6th May, starting 4pm PT (12am BST). The Grammy-nominated artist will perform some of his biggest hits as well as new tracks from his latest EP, The Saga of Wiz Khalifa.
Oculus Venues has played host to several music stars over the last year, including Post Malone and Billy Eilish. The app is free to download for either headset and also plays host to sports events, comedy shows and other entertainment. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Oculus Venues, reporting back with the latest concert announcements.
Looking something to do this weekend with your Oculus Quest or Go? LiveXLive, the live music streaming platform, is hosting a multi-day concert event via Oculus Venues starting Friday which will include artists such as J Balvin, Anitta, and Swae Lee.
Called ‘Music Lives’, the event will be free to watch and will help support MusiCares and other charitable organizations that are providing COVID-19 relief funds.
Available on Quest and Go for free, Oculus Venuesfeatures live events in a virtual stadium setting such as sporting events, stand up comedy, and concerts. And no, unfortunately Rift users (or other PC VR users for that matter) still don’t have access to Venues.
Music Lives is debuting on Oculus Venues starting April 17th at 4PM PT (local time here) and ending on the 19th, with its first event including an introduction from Nas. Performances by J Balvin, Swae Lee, Anitta, Big Gigantic, and more than 50 other artists throughout the three-day event are also on the docket.
Make sure to follow the links below to RSVP and see exactly when each starts:
The Game Awards will be broadcast live in Oculus Venues tomorrow, allowing you to watch the awards with other Venues viewers and interact and chat with them throughout the show.
The Game Awards are an annual award show hosted and founded by games journalist Geoff Keighley. Not only do the awards celebrate the past year of games through various categories (similar in concept to the Oscars, Grammys or Emmys), but the show also usually features a wealth of new announcements from developers and game studios.
This year will be the first year that the showed will be live in Oculus Venues. Venues is a social VR application that allows you to attend live events in VR, surrounded by other Oculus Venue users in stadium-style seating. You can talk and interact with those around you and basically attend the event in VR in similar ways to attending it in real life. We’ve previously given our thoughts on some Oculus Venues events, such as when a Billie Eilish concert was streamed live in Venues a few months ago.
Welcome to Live in VR! Our weekly roundup of everything that’s happening in headsets for you to enjoy with your eye holes! This week we’ve got lots of esports to check out in Venues, some Halloween-focused goodies in Bigscreen, and lots of productive talks and meetups in Altspace.
Halloween is no longer that thing you forget is happening until some little thief turns up your door demanding candy. It’s now a multi-week event, as Bigscreen proves by kicking off Halloween Week. New channels including Terror, Thrillers, The Addams Family, Disney Channel, Hell’s Kitchen, Criss Angel: Mindfreak, the Asylum, and Fear Factor join the usual line-up for you to enjoy.
Hey look, it’s us! Yup, the plan is for Bigscreen to start hosting our new weekly podcast in which we talk about VR… in VR. You can of course watch it via YouTube or check it out on Spotify on demand, but if you want to see me chattering away (who doesn’t?) inside VR then you can watch it alongside other VR users in Bigscreen. This week we’ll be interviewing a developer from Sanzaru Games and chatting about all of the latest news.
AltspaceVR
We’re now officially implementing AltspaceVR into our list of viewable events. The social VR app brings in an exhaustive amount of live events for you to check out. We’ll give you a choice selection every week.
We will be going over program structure and other basics, formatting, and the scanner class. Join the community and learn computer science. Our mission is to make learning computer science more collaborative and engaging through VR.
Come listen to spooky stories while enjoying the sights and sounds of the season. Be prepared to be scared. Join us if you dare! Mmmmmmwwwwaaahahaha!!!
Calling all educators and learners! It’s time for another Educators in VR social event. We are opening the floor for networking and socializing, and just hanging out. Come join us to connect with other teachers working on the technology of future education.
Come on down and listen to live acoustic jams performed by one of our community members, Luke! He is an acoustic musician and singer whose sound covers bands like the Beatles, Tom Petty, DMB all the way to Jack Johnson and Ed Sheeran. Come relax and enjoy the hour long set.
We have created this space for those who have difficulty sharing their thoughts and experiences. Feel bold enough to share your stories and we will do our part to give you the encouragement you need to live the life you have always dreamed. Come join our global LGBTQ weekly meetup that offers support, encouragement, and love from all corners of the world.
We have created this space for those who have difficulty sharing their thoughts and experiences. Feel bold enough to share your stories and we will do our part to give you the encouragement you need to live the life you have always dreamed. Come join our global LGBTQ weekly meetup that offers support, encouragement, and love from all corners of the world.
Come and own the stage performing whatever you want, the mic is open! You can sing, recite poetry, play an instrument, perform a reading, practice a speech, talk about your day, or whatever you feel would work well on stage to entertain your fellow users here in the virtual realm.
Welcome to A Thing In A Place with Don, Stevie, and Maggs where we talk about anything ranging from what we had for breakfast to carrots for fingers. So, come with us on our adventure to figure out why almond milk is actually a fruit. We might have a guest or something, I don’t know. MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY!
Hang out with Troy & Matt at The Late Night Barbecue. Grab a beer and a burger, meet new friends, play cool games and relax while you take in the midnight scenery.
A Haunted House built by AltspaceVR users for the community! The 2019 Haunted House theme chosen by community vote is Haunted Woods. Grab a friend and venture through our woods filled with shocking characters.
Come by for laughs, weird stories, madness and most importantly, fun! A great way to make new friends and get to know the ones you already have. No comedic experience or skill required, so come up on stage and make the biggest, funniest doofus you possibly can! We’re all gonna be on camera anyway, so why not join in the ridiculous fun?
A Haunted House built by AltspaceVR users for the community! The 2019 Haunted House theme chosen by community vote is Haunted Woods. Grab a friend and venture through our woods filled with shocking characters.
Welcome to VR Church! We welcome you to experience a spiritual community in virtual reality. Everyone is invited! It doesn’t matter if you believe in God or not.
Welcome to Live in VR! Our weekly roundup of everything that’s happening in headsets!
Lots to pick through this week. Bigscreen has yet more space porn for you rocket fans, but they’re also hosting our new VR podcast! Elsewhere, Oculus Venues returns with another live concert. Let’s dive in.
Bigscreen
Rocket Lab: 9th Electron Launch – October 16th, 5pm PT + SpaceX Falcon 9 Launch: Starlink 1 – October 17th, 9am PT
It’s a big week for space! Following last week’s NASA launch, SpaceX steps up to the plate. Elon Musk is launching the Falcon 9 rocket, shooting around 60 satellites into space. Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket, meanwhile, will launch from New Zealand. Be sure to catch both in VR.
The VR Download Podcast – October 17th, 10:30am PT
Hey look, it’s us! Yup, the plan is for Bigscreen to start hosting our new weekly podcast in which we talk about VR… in VR. You can of course watch it via YouTube or check it out on Spotify on demand, but if you want to see me chattering away (who doesn’t?) inside VR this is your best bet.
Oculus Venues
Post Malone, Runaway Tour Live – October 18th 12:00am PT (October 17th 8PM ET)
Venues’ next stab at live concerts in VR is rocking its way to you straight from the PNC Arena, Raleigh. Post Malone’s headline set will be available to watch with others in VR. Hopefully it fares a little better than the Billie Eilish attempt from earlier this year.
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Want to have your VR event listed in a future edition of Live In VR? Reach out to Jamie at jamie@uploadvr.com!
When it comes to watching events in virtual reality (VR) – especially live ones – Oculus Venues is becoming a good place to catch some of the latest musical artists. Last month saw GRAMMY-winning singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist H.E.R. perform as part of her Lights On Festival, while in August Billy Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep world tour performance from Spain was broadcast. For October, it’s the turn of Hollywood’s Bleeding rapper Post Malone.
The livestream is thanks to immersive content and technology company Supersphere and will be part of Post Malone’s North American Runaway headline tour in support of his third studio album, Hollywood’s Bleeding, which has been #1 on Billboard Top 200 for several weeks.
Broadcast on Thursday, 17th October at 8:00 PM ET (1am BST 18th Oct) viewers will be able to: “Take a seat inside the PNC Arena in Raleigh, NC to see Post Malone, live in an immersive 180* VR concert experience that will bring you inside the show, only in Oculus Venues,” states a press release.
This will be the second time Post Malone has performed for a live-VR audience. The first was last year for MelodyVR’s Autumn selection of concerts which also included Imagine Dragons, 5 Seconds of Summer and J Balvin, with the platform streaming his show at the Toyota Music Factory.
The Oculus Venues app was originally announced during Oculus Connect 4 (OC4) in 2017, arriving last year as part of the Oculus Go launch. Available for free on both Oculus Go and Oculus Quest – since being rolled out in July, no Rift support for some reason – the app is designed as one-stop for VR enthusiasts to hang out with their mates and enjoy sporting events, concerts and more. Last week NextVR and the NBA announced that US-based NBA League Pass owners would be able to watch select games from the 2019-20 season each week.
Post Malone adds to Supersphere’s ever-growing Oculus Venues lineup which include Tenacious D, Vince Staples, The Revivalists, and Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Oculus Venues, reporting back with the latest concerts and sporting events taking place on the platform.
I attended a Billie Eilish concert in VR using the Oculus Venues app on Oculus Quest. Although it was a good social VR experience with some great music to accompany it, the technology isn’t quite there to be a de factor form of live entertainment.
A few months ago, pop music megastar Billie Eilish toured Australia and, when given the opportunity, I passed on buying tickets. I was only passingly interested in her at the time and knew a few of her songs, but figured I would leave it for the next time she came out. A few weeks later, after listening to more of her music then noticing her Australian tour had sold out, I found myself deeply regretting things.
I was fully resigned to missing Billie live until her next big world tour, until Oculus announced that she would be streaming one of her upcoming concerts through their Oculus Venues app, live from Madrid. As the new owner of an Oculus Quest, I was instantly intrigued. However, I also had a healthy dose of apprehension.
I love going to see live music, and I was very skeptical about how immersive the Oculus Venues live music experience would be. Watching live music is so reliant on all of your senses that I struggled to see how a VR experience could give you the same feelings as a physical concert.
Upon viewing an Oculus Venues experience, you have two options: social or solo mode. Solo will put you in a seat by yourself, just watching alone, whereas social will place you in a virtual arena, laid out like stadium seating, where you can talk and interact with other Venues users around you.
I picked social from the get go, and felt no desire to go back and try solo mode. Sitting in the stadium-style seats, you’re presented with a 180-degree dome view in front of you showing the concert. While the seating arrangement makes it look like you’re up in the nosebleed section, the video feed in front of you doesn’t always display an image that matches that position. At times it did, with a view looking down on the stage and the mosh pit-goers in Madrid, but it would switch to a close-up feed of the stage frequently as well. Although this allowed you to see Billie up close, it also meant that the scale was completely off when up close. Instead of appearing human-sized, the gigantic screen meant that with certain close camera angles, Billie would appear literally larger than life.
The stream itself was of varying quality. The resolution was adequate, but not excellent, however it frustratingly featured heaps of mini stutters, pauses and moments where I could tell the feed was a few seconds out of sync from what everyone around me was watching. It wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t horrendous. There’s definitely work to be done from Oculus on the backend for a smoother experience, but it serves for now.
However, regardless of the camera angles or the stream inconsistencies, the best part of the experience was interacting with everyone around me. Represented by their Oculus avatars, people in the seats adjacent to you can talk, sing, wave their hands and look around. At first, it was a bit intimidating. I expected to just to be watching alone at home, or silently with others around me. I didn’t realize the high level of interaction on offer, nor how open people would be to interacting with strangers sitting around them. The interface will even let you change seats to move closer to someone, or scroll through an index of people who are currently speaking, in order to quickly match up a voice you’re hearing with an avatar. You can also mute people, if they’re being a bit too loud or annoying, and adjust the concert and social’ volumes independently.
It took a little while for me to feel comfortable, but by the halfway point I had befriended a group of people sitting in the front row. We were all cracking jokes together, humming along, and discussing what songs Billie had and hadn’t played yet. By the end of the concert, I realized that I had come to see a Billie Eilish concert but stayed for the interactions with others along the way.
In terms of the actual performance, Billie put on a great show and it was a thrill to watch. However, it’s certainly not the same as watching in real life. It’s more engaging than watching a full upload of an artist’s performance on YouTube, but less satisfying than being there in person. In some ways, it feels like more of a social experience than a live music one, similar to BigScreen or other apps that let you share experiences with others.
The big difference to other apps that let you communally watch videos in a virtual environment is that this is live. This wasn’t just me and a few random others loading up a Glastonbury or Coachella recording on YouTube and watching it in BigScreen. This was actually streamed live from the arena. It feels special – or at least, it did at first. I later discovered that the concert was likely pre-recorded a few hours earlier to align time zones and then re-broadcast on Venues.
In some ways, this dampened the novelty of the experience for me. I loved the idea that I was tuning into something at the exact same time as those in the arena physically in Madrid. On the other hand, it’s not like it’s readily available at any time, despite being recorded. Oculus Venues content is only available to watch live during the scheduled broadcast time.
I would hope that future Venues content is actually broadcast simultaneously with the physical event, but there are many other ways to increase the immersion and novelty of the experience as well. For example, I would prefer a static camera that never cuts away, but matches your position within the arena. The Billie Eilish seating arrangement made it look like we were in the nosebleeds, so I would have preferred a camera that consistently showed that viewing angle as if you were really sitting in the arena. You could even have virtual jumbotrons that showed close-up footage, just like a real concert venue.
Being able to pick between viewing areas, with matching cameras, would be another great step. A virtual mosh, where you’re looking up at the stage and can freely walk around and mingle with others, would be fantastic. Given that the Billie Eilish concert already cut to multiple angles, it’s clear that the technology is available. There’s potential to offer a more tailored and immersive experience for viewers, it just needs to be implemented.
In the days after watching the concert in Venues, I talked to many of my non-VR friends about the experience. They all immediately asked very similar questions. “Was it the same as a normal concert? Surely it’s not as loud and sweaty.” “Did it feel real?” “Will I get the same adrenaline rush?”
The questions they turned to first are telling. The experience as is, with the way you view the concert and the social elements, is fun. It’s a good way of viewing a concert, and much more fun and immersive than watching on a computer. However, the implementation of the technology means that it’s still held back and doesn’t quite live up to the potential. The problem is not technological limitation – it’s implementation.
Oculus Venues is entirely free to experience, and that feels right for the moment. You’re not getting an experience that is worthy of being a paid, ticketed event. For now, it feels more like a social experiment than a new form of concert seating.
Don’t get me wrong – I loved that I got to watch a concert of a tour I thought I had missed out on. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and it was exciting to make friends and interact with those around me. Attending the concert virtually was like nothing I’ve done before. With some improvements that increase immersion and provide more choices for viewing angles, Oculus would have a killer experience on their hands – something that I might even pay for. However, the way that the technology is implemented means that I wouldn’t call this an alternative viewing option that stands in place of physical attendance just yet.
One of my friends asked me a question that ultimately re-framed how I viewed the whole experience, despite the enjoyment I got out of it. “So would you say you’ve seen Billie Eilish live in concert then?” The question caught me off guard, but I could only conclude that no, I haven’t. However, if we see some improvements in the future, there’s a fair chance that next time I’ll say yes.
