Category: Social

Posted on

Couch Live Is A Free Shared Virtual Living Room For VR And Non-VR Users

Couch Live is a brand new, free, app that lets you meet up with friends, hang out, and watch movies in a virtual living room.

What sets Couch Live apart from something like Bigscreen though is that avatars are created from selfies, so it’s your actual face, and it supports non-VR users too. That means VR users, mobile phone users, and desktop PC users all share the same space and hang out together.

You can quickly set up an account on the website and customize the shade of your hands and upload a selfie to generate an avatar. It doesn’t look amazing, but it’s at least a decent solution to avoid the cartoon-like avatars every other platform uses.

There are two rooms to pick from: the living room shown in the video above and a black void room. From there you can choose to stream content from a PC and generate a shareable link for someone to join from whichever device they prefer.

“You can invite friends to your room with a link, and they can create their avatar with a selfie,” says Couch Live creator, Devon Bradley. “Its a great way to spend time with friends that are far away. I built it to spend more time with my family members that are scattered across the US. It was important to me that they could feel like their in the room with me even if I’m in VR and they’re joining from an iPhone.”

Check out the official website to try Couch Live and stay up to date by following the app on Twitter.

The post Couch Live Is A Free Shared Virtual Living Room For VR And Non-VR Users appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

Bigscreen Cinema Kicks Off Horror-Themed Movie Week In VR

Horror week is kicking off in Bigscreen starting today at 5:00 PM PT featuring The Ring and other terrifying movies like Cloverfield and World War Z. The lobby has a new look too, shown in the image above.

From February 7th (today) until next Friday, February 14th Bigscreen will be showing World War Z (3D), The Ring, Cloverfield, and 10 Cloverfield Lane as the featured films in Bigscreen Cinema. This means you can purchase movie tickets starting at $3.99 to meet up at a virtual movie theater that goes to great lengths to simulate the movie-going experience from the comfort of your VR headset at home.

Here are more details on Bigscreen Cinema specifically and you can see the rest of this month’s movie lineup in the image below:

bigscreen movie line up through february

According to Darshan Shankar from Bigscreen, they’re working on a bunch of new features that are coming soon:

  • Friend system to make it easier to invite people into your rooms,
  • Renting, buying, and watching 3D movies in your own private room rather than just pre-scheduled group cinema screenings so you can watch anytime with friends like a real home theater,
  • Licensing more (newer) movies, sports, anime, and other content,
  • Networking improvements to enhance audio, video, streaming, and performance,
  • Drive-In Movie Theater environment, but that likely won’t be out until near the end of 2020.

For more on Bigscreen and/or Bigscreen Cinema check out the official website and don’t forget you can watch our live in-VR news talk show podcast, The VR Download, from inside Bigscreen every week as well.

The post Bigscreen Cinema Kicks Off Horror-Themed Movie Week In VR appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

Oculus Quest Social Strategy Unclear Three Weeks Before Launch

oculus quest

The Oculus Quest is less than three weeks away with its May 21 release date fast approaching. The $399 standalone VR headset allows users to freely move around their environments with complete 6DoF head tracking and positionally tracked controllers. At launch it will feature top-rated VR games such as Beat Saber and Superhot as well as new releases like Dance Central, Journey of the Gods, and more.

Facebook is marketing the Quest as a gaming-first platform, similar to the Oculus Rift, but fans of non-gaming media apps like Netflix, multi-user social hangout spaces like Oculus Rooms, or live event social apps like Oculus Venues, are left wondering about the status of those experiences.

In an interview with UploadVR last month, Chris Pruett, the Direct of Content Ecosystem at Oculus, explained the current non-game offerings included on the device as a review unit:

UploadVR: What about non-game apps? Rooms, Netflix, Venues, etc?
Chris Pruett: “You will see a browser, you will see some media apps, you’ll see a few of them in Oculus TV in the device that you get today, but not the complete lineup. We are continuing to experiment with other first party applications, so for now no Rooms and no Venues, but that’s something that we will continue to figure out how we want to do on Quest.”

UploadVR: What about Facebook Spaces?
CP: “That falls into the same group, we have a large group of people that build things like Spaces and Venues and that group continues to be building things but we aren’t ready to talk about yet.”

UploadVR: Will there be word on those things before launch?
CP: “I don’t know the answer to that.”

Based on that language it certainly seems like apps such as Rooms, Venues, Netflix, and even Spaces are being considered for Quest eventually, and may be included in the near future, but none of them are listed on the day one launch lineup published by Oculus this week. Even John Carmack is reluctant to talk about media apps.

Currently the Quest lacks any sort of default social hub. There is no customizable space like Home on Rift or Rooms on Go and you have no way of using your avatar to hang out with friends in VR other than audio chat in a party or playing games like Racket Fury and Creed together. That feels like a major missed opportunity. Granted, we are still basing impressions off of pre-release hardware, but the embargo on official reviews has lifted so I’m hesitant to pull punches if they consider it complete enough to review.

Obviously by the time Quest comes out there will be more options, such as Rec Room, Bigscreen, and VRChat, but the lack of a native social experience feels like a notable omission, as is the reluctance to talk about it.

Let us know what you think down in the comments below!

Tagged with: , , , ,

The post Oculus Quest Social Strategy Unclear Three Weeks Before Launch appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

VRChat Confirms Spring Launch Plans For Oculus Quest

vr-chat-quest

A number of VR studios planning Oculus Quest titles confirmed development for the standalone VR console today. Among them — VRChat announced plans to come to Oculus Quest in Spring 2019.

VRChat is a social networking service that started in VR but extended to flat screens for periods of explosive growth. We’ve reached out to VRChat representatives to understand the nature of the Oculus Quest integration. Some of the worlds people can visit in the title can be pretty resource-intensive, even for a VR-ready PC, so we will be curious to see how the company is able to extend its community to Quest.

Rec Room also announced plans for a Quest version and we’ve confirmed cross-play support is planned for that game. Last week, we played Beat Saber on Oculus Quest and enjoyed it considerably. Along with other high-selling VR games like Job Simulator and I Expect You To Die, Facebook appears to have arranged quite the lineup of titles for Oculus Quest in 2019.

Oculus Quest launches this spring for around $400 and 64 GB of storage. It features two hand controllers, is completely wireless and doesn’t need a PC or phone to operate. Another version with 128 GB of storage will sell for $500. Facebook is taking a more curated approach to allowing content onto Quest than we’ve seen with its PC-based Rift. The company, however, promised more than 50 titles for the launch of the headset with more planned throughout the year.

Stay tuned as we gather more updates about VRChat and Oculus Quest in 2019.

Tagged with: ,

The post VRChat Confirms Spring Launch Plans For Oculus Quest appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

Facebook Livestreaming From Gear VR Arrives In Latest Oculus Update

Facebook Livestreaming From Gear VR Arrives In Latest Oculus Update

Virtual reality can create an amazing personal experience but the difficulty has always been sharing that experience with other people. Unsurprisingly, social giant and Oculus owner Facebook is leading the charge for new social VR sharing options including direct livestreaming to Facebook from a Samsung Gear VR.

According to a blog post published today on the official Oculus website:

We want to make it easy to share memorable virtual moments with your friends and family on Facebook. Today, we’re beginning to roll out Facebook Livestreaming—direct from Gear VR.

Whether you want to share the suspense of Face Your Fears or show off your sorcery skills in Wands, you can take your friends along for the ride. Just select the ‘Livestream to Facebook’ button from the Universal Menu when you’re in VR, and you’ll instantly start livestreaming to your friends on Facebook.

As the above video demonstrates, Livestream to Facebook for Gear VR will push out an up-to-the-minute first-person view of your VR experience. It will also capture your voice and add that to the stream as well. It’s important to note, however, that currently this feature is only available to those “with a Gear outside the US,” although it will be “coming soon to everyone with the latest version of Android on their Samsung phone in the coming weeks.”

This represents the most significant marriage of services yet between Oculus and Facebook. The two companies, whiled linked financially, have never crossed over too aggressively in practical ways. Facebook has big plans to make VR a social play and Oculus is their front line for all thing immersive. It will be interesting to watch as more shared Facebook features and integrations like this pop up on Oculus platforms as the years go by.

In addition to the livestreaming, today Oculus is also announcing a new version of Rooms (1.2) that includes spherical shared 360 video domes. These domes can be placed among you and your virtual cohorts so that “friends in other areas of the Room can get a glimpse of the fun.”

Oculus Events arrives today as well and is making easier to find and interact with your friends inside your Gear VR. With Oculus Events you can “find public events and interact with others in Gear VR. You’ll find highlighted events showcased in Oculus Home, and you can check out a full roster of Oculus Events in the dedicated Events tab.”

Finally, Oculus Voice will be made available for English speaking customers only today on both Rift and Gear VR. Oculus Voice allows “voice searches from Oculus Home to intuitively navigate games, apps, and experiences.”

Oculus is working to expand voice and make even more commands possible, like inviting friends to join you in an experience.

Tagged with: , , ,

Posted on

Valve Turns Destinations Into Social VR Platform With Trading And Quests

Valve Turns Destinations Into Social VR Platform With Trading And Quests

Valve Software just released a big update to its Destinations software that could make it a fun place to hang out with friends in virtual reality.

Destinations is evolving steadily and might be blossoming into a social VR platform that could rival those in the works from Facebook, High Fidelity, Linden Lab, Altspace and others. First launched as a set of tools for creating locations others could visit in VR, Valve added multiplayer to Destinations in July last year amid a steady stream of updates. This latest improvement adds quests for hidden items, rewarding you and fellow travelers with items to customize the way you look. You can even trade with other visitors.

From a blog post about the update:

Travel to various Destinations to find hidden item caches using the new Cache Finder tool. Locate one, and you (along with anyone questing with you) will earn a wearable item or avatar head to customize the way you look. Fancy a different hat than the one you found? Trade with other Destinations players on Steam or head over to the Steam Market. A new set of geocaching quests will appear each week, so get out there and find some caches!

In other words, first Destinations gave you places to visit in virtual reality and the tools to make your own places. Then they added multiplayer so you could visit these places with other people. Now they are giving you things to do in these places, and it isn’t just customizing how you look. The update also includes a variety of props and tools you can use, including a sketching tool and a drone you control by remote.