Rift Core 2.0 – Page 2 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

November 28, 2017December 3, 2017

Rift Core 2.0 Beta Rolls Out December 6th, Bringing Updated Oculus Desktop App, Dash & More

Oculus has now confirmed the launch the ‘Rift Core 2.0’ update in public beta; it’s hitting Rift headsets December 6th. The anticipated updated will bring a major overhaul to ‘Home’—the place you see in the headset when you’re not inside of a VR game—as well as ‘Dash’, a revamped universal menu which also lets you run traditional desktop PC apps in VR.

Update (12/03/17): Oculus has confirmed in a recent tweet that it’s Core 2.0 beta is officially coming to Rift December 6th.

Follow the instructions below to download the beta branch, which should automatically update on Wednesday morning Pacific Time. You can revert tot he stable branch at any time by toggling off the option.

Original article (11/28/17): Oculus announced today on their official blog that the Rift Core 2.0 beta is coming “soon,” and with it will come an updated Oculus Desktop app which the company says offers an improved layout, now with a Wish List feature for marking games and apps that interest you. The Wish List will offer notifications when saved apps go on sale.

Those excited for the virtual desktop functionality, which promises to allow users to run traditional desktop PC apps inside the Rift at any time, even while inside VR apps, will need to update to Windows 10. Users still running Windows 7 and 8 will still be able to use Dash to browse their VR app library and for some other functionality, but won’t be able to use ‘Oculus Desktop’ virtual computing function, or run Dash as an overlay on top of VR apps, the company says. Oculus indicates this is for performance reasons.

Players will be able to download the Rift Core 2.0 beta automatically once it’s available by opting into the ‘Public Test Channel’ through the current Oculus Desktop App (Settings > Beta > Public Test Channel switch). The company also suggests updating your video drivers for optimal performance with the update.

The blog post also shared several new images showing various Home spaces:

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The Rift Core 2.0 experience is built primarily around Touch, and while Oculus says “most, but not all” previously support functionality will work with the gamepad, the company says you should use Touch if you want to “take full advantage of all the features in Rift Core 2.0,” including customizing your Home space.

Oculus Store to Include Flexible Bundle Pricing So You Get a Discount If You Already Own a Game

One of the big barriers to buying flash sale bundles is the selection of games available. What if you already own one in that almost perfect bundle that has you salivating at the nearly perfect price? Oculus plans to address this with a dynamic pricing scheme that gives you a discount if you already own a game in an otherwise bundle-spoiled batch.

Oculus revealed earlier this month at Connect, the company’s annual developer conference, that Home is getting a complete overhaul as a part of their Rift Core 2.0 beta headed to users in December. While the company is pushing less incremental updates to the current version of Home in preparation for the new social version, the beta roll-out of Rift software version 1.20 is making its way today to users via their public test channel (PTC) including news of dynamic bundling.

Announced by Oculus community manager ‘cyberreality’ via the Oculus Rift forum, the company’s flexible bundle pricing will update with an additional discount to account for the value of the app(s) you already own. According to cyberreality, your personalized bundle price will always appear in the Oculus Store automatically.

Steam started allowing flex-bundles early last year, bringing the Oculus Store more in line with Steam’s business practices including its recently released (and very Steam-like) world-wide refund policy on digital goods.

There aren’t any official multi-publisher bundles currently on the Store, so there’s no way to test it out at the time of this writing, but if you want to get the latest in updates and features from Oculus, you can take part in the PTC by simply toggling the switch in your Settings through the 2D Store interface. You can always revert to the stable branch by toggling off the PTC switch.

You can bet there will be holiday season bundles popping up sometime between now and the release of the Rift Core 2.0 beta update, so keep an eye on the Oculus blog for incoming deals, and of course your friendly neighborhood Road to VR.

The post Oculus Store to Include Flexible Bundle Pricing So You Get a Discount If You Already Own a Game appeared first on Road to VR.

October 12, 2017

Oculus Connect 4 Day 1 Roundup: Oculus Go, Rift Price Drop, New ‘Santa Cruz’ Prototype, and More

The opening keynote at the fourth annual Oculus Connect developer conference delivered several new product announcements from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, VP of Virtual Reality Hugo Barra, and others. This included new standalone VR hardware, a new price for the Rift, and many software and game reveals.

Affordable standalone headset ‘Oculus Go’ revealed:

At $199, Oculus Go is a low-cost, all-in-one standalone headset launching in early 2018. On stage, Hugo Barra claimed that the headset was designed to deliver the “best visual clarity of any product we’ve ever built”, using a “fast-switch LCD” at 2560×1440 and an “all-new, custom optical design”. The lenses are an evolution of the ‘hybrid’ optics found in the current Rift. Sharing the same controller input set as Gear VR – a single controller and rotational-only tracking – apps will be “binary compatible”, working on both systems. Essentially, Oculus Go is an enhanced, standalone version of Gear VR.

Project Santa Cruz developer kits coming in 2018, we go hands-on:

Described as the “first, complete, standalone VR system with full inside-out tracking and hand presence”, Santa Cruz developer kits will be available next year. The company revealed various improvements to the latest prototype, including brand new 6-degrees-of-freedom controllers, similar to Touch. Unlike Oculus Go, Santa Cruz is designed as a high-end, standalone system, with full positional tracking on both headset and controllers, but will be limited by the performance of its on-board mobile PC. Check out our hands-on impressions here.

‘Oculus Dash’ is a total interface overhaul, supports desktop apps:

Nate Mitchell, Head of Rift, described how Oculus has been rebuilding the core software from the ground up over the past year, introducing various improvements to ‘Rift Core 2.0’. Most significantly, Oculus Dash is a total overhaul of the Rift user interface, designed specifically for motion input. It combines the existing functionality of Home and the Universal Menu, while allowing access to traditional desktop apps. Mitchell claims Dash will offer “best in class performance and visual quality,” for PC apps in VR, setting the platform “on a path to replacing real monitors entirely.”

Oculus Home also completely rebuilt:

The Rift Core 2.0 update also brings a brand new Oculus Home space, with a more realistic visual design, with “state of the art lighting” and “dynamic soft shadows”, powered by Unreal Engine 4. This is customisable with toys, furniture, artwork and achievements, and is designed to be a persistent, social space, with the potential to create shared spaces in the future.

Rift receives permanent price cut:

Hugo Barra, Vice President of Virtual Reality at Oculus announced a permanent price cut of the Rift and Touch bundle to $399. The package still includes the same hardware bundle of headset, two sensors, two Touch controllers, and “six free apps” – although there are actually several more free apps available on the Store.

Echo Arena FPS Expansion, more Lone Echo coming:

Following the success of Ready at Dawn’s sci-fi adventure Lone Echo (2017) and standalone multiplayer mode Echo Arena, the studio has confirmed a new multiplayer, first-person shooter experience coming in 2018 called Echo Combat. In addition, more single player content for Lone Echo is on the way, continuing the adventure of Captain Olivia and Jack.

Respawn Entertainment developing Rift-exclusive VR title:

Oculus’ Head of Content Jason Rubin’s closing announcement was that Respawn Entertainment, ex-Call of Duty developers and creators of Titanfall, are building a major new VR title for Oculus Rift. The game is due to launch in 2019, and Respawn director Peter Hirschmann offered a few details on their blog.

The post Oculus Connect 4 Day 1 Roundup: Oculus Go, Rift Price Drop, New ‘Santa Cruz’ Prototype, and More appeared first on Road to VR.

October 11, 2017

Major Update Coming to Oculus Rift in December, Rift Core 2.0

Today Nate Mitchell has announced that Oculus Rift will be getting a major update in December, Rift Core 2.0, for free.

The update will add a new universal menu with brand new system interface designed around Oculus Touch, Oculus Dash. With Oculus Dash users will be able to access videogames, apps and notifications from anywhere, using a 3D overlay virtual display. So users can jump from app to app quickly and simply, they can even use the rest of their PC.

Rift Core 2.0 will also allow users to customise their Home experience, being able to personalise their VR space with toys, furniture, artwork, and more. Other features include being able to display achievements, seeing libraries as a collection of retro cartridges, and on the social side, sharing what’s been created with friends. So users will be able to visit friends spaces.

In the future Oculus also plans on adding functionality to let people hang out, play, and explore with others

For the latest Oculus Connect news, keep reading VRFocus.