These features and enhancements will become available starting the week of July 20, 2021.
Invite to Game
We’ve created multiplayer APIs for developers to use with their apps. For any app that opts into this feature, you’ll be able to invite friends or people you’ve recently played with to your game sessions directly from the Quest Universal menu.
You will be notified when your friend takes action based on your invite.
When you’re invited to join someone through this method, you’ll receive a notification with info about who sent the invite and what app you’re being invited to.
You can now view and manage the group of people you’re playing together with right from the Universal menu without leaving the app or experience you’re currently in.
Invite Link
We want to make it easier to get your friends into VR with you. One way we’re doing this is by allowing you to create an invitation link which will take anyone who uses it to the same location in VR.
The link is created and shared using the Oculus Mobile App. You can then use that invite link to text or post to your friends and communities.
Air Link
Improved the dynamic bitrate to reduce the occurrence of stalls and high latency, while also improving visual quality.
Added the ability to access the Oculus menu (press Oculus button) during a connection timeout (3 dots screen).
Identified and fixed a bug that caused Air Link to crash.
Fixed an issue where some AMD drivers could crash when running Link/Air Link.
Messenger
You can now send Reactions to messages in VR similar to how you would on mobile.
You can now see the status of the messages that you send (Send receipts), as well as how much of the conversation other participants have read (Read receipts.)
USB-C Audio
You can now use USB-C headphones with your Quest 2. For the list of supported USB-C headphones and adapters, see our support article here.
If both 3.5mm and USB-C headphones are plugged in, then the audio will play on the 3.5mm headphones.
If your 3.5mm or USB-C headphones have mics, they will be disabled as headphone mics are not supported on either the 3.5mm or USB-C ports.
Universal Menu
We’ve made the Library, Settings, Notifications, and other menus larger for improved ease of use.
Security Settings
We’ve created a dedicated security settings page in headset where you can set/reset your unlock pattern and access other security settings.
Save your passwords on Oculus Browser
You can safely save and autofill your passwords on Browser. Now you’ll only have to type your password once before letting Browser auto-fill your password. And you can seal it behind your unlock pattern for added security.
Fixes
This update includes a security fix to prevent third-party apps running in the background of people’s Quest devices from accessing their motion data, including controller and headset movement. Apps that run in the foreground-- meaning apps you actively play and engage with when using your headset -- are not affected by this fix and may collect real-time information about the current position of your headset and controllers to translate your movements into the virtual world; for more, see our support article privacy support article.
Fixed an issue with wireless that caused degraded WiFi performance.
Help others find great discussions and answers by adding kudos and marking solutions to your questions.
I am really looking forward to this update. As noted over on the Quest forum, this should come with the experimental feature that allows developers to build software to the Mixed Reality API:
this should come with the experimental feature that allows developers to build software to the Mixed Reality API
The question is how long after users get the update will developers get an SDK or docs? Currently the mobile SDK is still v29 and the Rift SDK is v23 from last year. (Not that I expect the Rift-S to get any form of passthrough api)
As expected, no access to the cameras is provided (for privacy reasons) directly to developers, so we can't do things like fiducial marker tracking for fixed world tracking spaces. But it does allow you to render over the top of a live view.
I was wondering if Facebook had changed their stance on the privacy issues around camera access. Anyway, I would assume that this will allow them to do things like Infinite Office's passthrough windows to see your keyboard or desktop?
i7 5820K @ 4.25GHz | RTX 3080 Ti FTW3 | Gigabyte GA-X99-UD4 | Corsair DDR4 3000 32GB | Corsair HX 750W SSDs: Intel 660p M.2 2TB, 3x Samsung Evo 1TB | Startech PCIe 4x USB 3.0 | Startech PCIe 2x USB C 3.1 gen2
I hadn't considered the privacy issue, but admittedly, my enthusiasm was initially focused on the interacting and overlapping of the virtual world with the real world. But yeah, I hadn't consider all the privacy issues this would raise. I wonder how other competitors will handle this situation as we march forward in to the Mixed Reality future.
To be honest, I'm not looking forward to a Mixed reality future, except in the professional arena where having data in eyesight would benefit.
I have enough apps and games in my backlog to keep me busy indefinitely, but I fear all VR may suffer if MR becomes the next fad. I'm not sure VR would survive the fracture of buyers that switch their habits to buying MR gear and games. I truly believe 3D's decline was greatly influenced by people like me that seen VR as the next step in immersive gaming. I'd hate to see VR loose out to MR
Maybe I lack the imagination to envision it, but I can't think of anything I'd like to play with my room in the background. I've seen my room. Now if it were to generate virtual worlds based on my room setup, I'm in.
Gigabyte AB350 Ryzen 2700x, 32gb ddr 4 3200, 2080ti. HP Reverb G2, Index controllers, Quest 1 and 2x Quest 2. 65" 3DTV HD3D DLP projector.
One of the conspiracy theories around Facebook has been that they can see everything your headset sees (so they could target ads based on posters on your wall, Mark can watch you playing VR porn, etc). But none of the camera view is sent. If any developer can access it, they could sneak in a capture that gets uploaded. Maybe malware authors would start making fake games (not released on the oculus store) for blackmail purposes. Of course they could have a phone style permission approval thing ("This app is requesting camera access"), but it's still risky.
For how other people do it:
Windows MR : same as Oculus, no dev access. Oh, and their passthrough "flashlight" is garbage compared to the Oculus full image one.
HTC : do whatever you want. Devs can access the front cameras on the Vive.
Zed Mini : (adds colour and depth passthrough for AR on a VR headset) full access with depth mapped room reconstruction and live stereo image capture (you can use it as a webcam).
Leap Motion : if you don't disable analytics in the settings, it can upload low res images of what it sees to the creators (I believe it's a 32x32 short range grey scale).
I'm not sure about the Index, but it probably follows the Vive.
Maybe I lack the imagination to envision it, but I can't think of anything I'd like to play with my room in the background. I've seen my room. Now if it were to generate virtual worlds based on my room setup, I'm in.
Imagine playing a game like beat saber. The ground area doesn't really matter that much, except to stay centred. You have a dog or cat (or child) that likes to move around you when you are in VR. With this passthrough system, you could have just the floor region fade to passthrough near you, leaving everything above as the game. So now you can see if your cat/dog/child runs up to you before you step on them.
Or playing a flight simulator where you can see your hands on your keyboard and hotas, but still in the game. This would be especially good for people who build their own cockpits, have the lower half be passthrough (to see where all their custom physical controls are) but top half is the canopy view of the VR world.
It's not going to be Magic Leap / Zed Mini style AR worlds (cameras are low res and grey), more of a safety / productivity feature.
