'Oculus Home' Social Features Now Rolling Out to Public Test Channel
Oculus has announced that some additional new features in the current Rift SI version 1.28 are starting to roll out to the Public Test channel, including new movement options and multiplayer functionality in Oculus Home.
Earlier this week, the release of Rift SI version 1.28 introduced a number of much-anticipated features to Oculus’ Public Test channel, like the updated Oculus Avatars, improved language support, and personalized app recommendations through the Oculus desktop app.
Now, as part of the 1.28 update, new added social features will allow up to eight people to hang out together in Oculus Home at the same time, and users can even broadcast their Windows Desktop screen using Dash to co-watch with friends. In addition, for those who don’t like teleporting as a way to move around in their virtual living space, new movement options like ‘Walk Mode’ and ‘Smooth Turning’ are now available.
Below are the newly added change notes for Rift SI version 1.28:
Rift Core 2.0 Beta:
- We’re starting to roll out social features for Home. You can now invite people to your Home. Up to eight people can hang out in the same Home at a given time, and if you set your Home privacy to friends-only, your friends will be able to come over to your home whenever they’d like. For the initial release, your Home will be locked while you have guests. That means activities, like editing your Home or playing with interactive objects, are not supported in the current release. That said, we’ll add more functionality to multiplayer over the coming months!
- We’ve added experimental support for broadcasting your Oculus Desktop in multiplayer using the new Dash panel embedding feature. There are some technical limitations, which you can read about in the Rift Core 2.0 beta user guide.
- New movement options are now available in Home. Check out your settings menu for a new “Movement” section where you can set up various options for moving around, including Walk Mode, Smooth Turning, and Snap Turning. While some of the new movement options like Walk Mode and Smooth Turning allow for direct control, they may not be comfortable for everyone.
Oculus says that it is working on a host of other new social features as part of Rift Core 2.0, and is encouraging all users that have opted into the Public Test channel to head over to the Rift Core 2.0 UserVoice Group to share their feedback and ideas to help continue to make the Rift platform better.