The Facebook Developer Conference (F8) hasn’t disappointed today when it comes to virtual reality (VR). The big news has centered around Oculus Go, the new standalone headset that’s available today. Of course there are a load of apps and videogames coming to the device, with Oculus Rooms, Avatars and Venues all seeing new updates for the platform.
First up Oculus Rooms. The app, which first launched for Samsung Gear VR back in 2016, is a social area for mobile VR offering a place for friends to interact as well as enjoy social activities like playing tabletop games, watching TV and movies, sharing photos, and listening to music. The update for Oculus Go gives users a redesigned and customisable environment, better avatars, tabletop game Boggle through a collaboration with Hasbro due later this month (Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit are also on the cards), plus the ability to watch full-length movies from the Oculus Store.
As for Oculus Avatars users now have even greater control over the design, with custom skin shading, hair color, and clothing, when used in first party apps like Oculus Rooms or Venues. To make customisation as easy as possible Oculus will be releasing an all-new Avatar Editor, built natively for Mobile and coming soon to Oculus Rift via Oculus Home.
First announced during Oculus Connect 4 (OC4), Oculus Venues is about social VR content, whether that’s live events like concerts, sports, or comedy nights. To ensure a rich variety of content Oculus has teamed up with several partners including NextVR which will see ICC soccer matches, gigs from School Night at the Bardot, and standup events like Gotham Comedy Club all being shown.
“Oculus Venues is a bold move to provide profound social VR engagement and we are honoured to deliver such an important part of this new product release from Oculus,” said David Cole, NextVR co-founder and CEO in a statement. “NextVR has built a passionate fan base around leading VR content experiences. Venues will satisfy our fans who want to enjoy this type of content on a massively social scale.”
Oculus Venues is launching on 30th May for both Oculus Go and Gear VR. For further updates from F8 this week keep reading VRFocus.
via Mint VR