The Thursday keynote for Oculus Connect 2016 offered new insight into the Touch, what kind of games we can expect to play VR, and even some new headphones.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off a a three-person chat in VR that sent them to Mars, under the sea and even into Mark’s home to check on the dog. By supporting the VR ecosystem it helped jumpstart, Oculus hopes to create a thriving world of endless, virtual possibilities in gaming and beyond.
Reach Out And Touch A Release Date
The Oculus Touch controller finally received a launch date of December 6 and will be priced at $199. Pre-orders for the Touch open on October 10 separately or bundled with games, VR Sports Challenge and The Unspoken. Both titles will support room-scale virtual reality experiences.
Oculus Does The Timewarp
New “Asynchronous Timewarp” and “Asynchronous Spacewarp” features aim to reduce judder and keep Rift frame rate at 90 frames per second, which Oculus feels is the minimum needed for good VR. As a result of Timewarp features, new minimum PC specs have been announced, allowing Rift to work on PCs as affordable as $499.
Bring On The Video Games
Three new Touch compatible titles were announced alongside the December release date, all clearly designed to make the most of the new controller interface. The first title is Arktika.1 from 4A Games, a sci-fi adventure in which players fight off bandits in “Old Russia” during a post-apocalyptic ice age.
Lone Echo from Ready At Dawn solves the problem of accidentally walking into a wall with your Oculus headset on by turning off the gravity. Lone Echo casts the player as Jack, an artificially intelligent robot who helps astronauts run and maintain a space station that orbits Saturn. Rather than walk, the player must use their hands to climb and pull their way around the station.
Robo Recall is the first full-VR game from Epic Games, pitting players against rogue robots. The free title, which launches in 2017, features a series of increasingly challenging missions with leaderboard support via the Oculus SDK, as well as a sandbox mode for players to hone their robot destruction skills.
Oculus also announced that there will be at least 35 new VR game titles upon launch of the Touch. The company further revealed a collaboration with Walt Disney Studios to create VR experiences with some of Disney’s “most beloved characters” to be released later this year.
VR Chat Takes You Anywhere
Strapping on a VR headset and headphones is designed to isolate a user for full immersion, but that doesn’t mean you have to be lonely. During the keynote, Zuckerberg showed off a number of impressive features for VR chat in Oculus Rift—all connected to Facebook, of course. Zuckerberg demonstrated a three-person chat complete with real-time avatars, locations like under the sea or the surface of Mars and how everything ties together. For example, all three chat participants were able to use the Touch controller to play games or even draw interactive objects on the fly. Zuckerberg was able to take a call from Facebook messenger and even snap a “modern family selfie” within the platform, which he promptly posted to Facebook. The new VR chat system will support up to eight people at a time.
Listening in VR
Oculus’ newly announced earphones will have drivers optimized for VR. The company claims they’ll sound as good as $900 earphones and will available later this year for $49. To help fuel competition, the CAD and audio guidelines for the headset connector will be made available for anyone to make audio accessories for the Rift.
Building And Supporting The VR Ecosystem
Speaking of competition, VR will not be able to survive without a self-sustaining ecosystem. In its recent predictions about the future VR market, SuperData said: “Critical during this initial adoption phase will be the ability to establish a rich ecosystem of content providers that in turn will bear the fruit of VR and deliver on its promise.”
Oculus wants the world to be aware of its financial commitment to the VR ecosystem, committing $10 million to diversity programs and $250 million to VR game development.
To assist budding developers, Oculus will cover royalty fees for all Unreal Engine titles shipping on the Oculus Store, up to the first $5 million of gross revenue per game.
