Can you believe it will be almost a year since the Oculus Quest and Rift S was released? How time has flown by when you’re having fun in the Quest. The past year has been a great start for the Quest and VR adoption in general.
I truly thought the Oculus Quest would be a game changer for VR, making it more mainstream, yet it has surpassed by own initial thoughts on how well it has done over the last year. Oculus seems to think so too and to celebrate this achievement they will be releasing a number of new features and events around this time.
Official rollout of hand tracking on Quest
Currently hand tracking on the Quest has been a hidden experimental feature. In the next update (17) rolling out this week, hand tracking will be moved out of Experimental and it will be a general feature. New third-party titles will now bring hand tracking to their games via new updates that will release on May 28th.
The Elixir demo, last seen during the Oculus hands-on demos of hand tracking a few months back, will be on offer once the update rolls out to everyone. In this free demo you’ll be able to cast spells, mix potions and poke a dragon with your hands and fingers.
Next, The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets will receive an update that will allow you to interact with the adorable little creatures in the game with your own hands.
Finally, the Waltz of the Wizard hand tracking update will allow you to wield magical powers with your bare hands, snap fingers to make objects ahead of you explode and pour giant potions over your hands to enlarge your fingers.
With hand tracking now being a general feature, we will start to see more updates to existing games as well as new games come onto the Oculus Store to take advantage of this feature.
New Beat Saber beat maps
Popular beat rhythm game, Beat Saber, will be releasing new free beat maps for its fans. Now selling over 2 million copies across all VR systems, its free maps will be welcome update to the game.
As well as new maps, there will be updates to existing tracks to bring 360° and 90° modes to them too. Check out our full store on it here.
Post to Facebook Groups with your Oculus username
To help bolster its social presence and encourage the ability to make new friends and build communities in VR, Oculus/Facebook has started to test the ability for people to share their Oculus username to posts in Facebook Groups. Now people can add new and familiar Facebook friends rather than asking them for their Oculus username. If you’re looking for a Facebook Group to connect with other Oculus Quest fans, please do check out our Oculus Quest group on Facebook.
Remote Work Support on Oculus Store
As more people work from home over the past few months, our way in which we collaborate with each other has evolved. More and more are using video conferencing apps, however virtual meeting spaces helps you feel more connected with your colleagues.
To help with this Facebook is introducing more collaboration and productivity apps to the Oculus Store later this year. Applications such as Immersed and Spatial will let people experiment with VR productivity solutions on their own.
New Guardian Features on Quest
The Quest Guardian system has seen a number of updates over the year it has been released, from its visuals to audio and sensitivity, it has improved over time to make it more customisable and accessible.
In the new update (17), Oculus will be improving the Guardian further with new features. Playspace Scan is one of the new features in which it can help detect and exclude objects in your Playspace during setup.
New colour customisation features to the Guardian will offer three new options – blue, purple and yellow. This sounds like it will not be part of update 17, but more likely in the next update.
A Year of Quest Sale
A celebration of a year or great games and experiences wouldn’t be complete without a sale. On May 21st Oculus will kick off their anniversary sale – “A Year of Quest”. The Rift Store will also get a similar sale, so anyone with Oculus Link setup, now might be a good time to enhance your Oculus library – my wallet is not ready!
