I am curious why Oculus Home on is so lacking in social features. It has a friends list, but there seems to be absolutely no point to it as you can't interact in any meaningful way (or at all really). You can edit avatars, but again, no use for them that I can see. The Oculus Rooms app is only available for the Gear VR (which seems to get more attention than the Rift from Oculus). You can't even move around the Oculus Home environment, which surprised me. It is just a very lackluster launcher, which is a shame, as there is a lot that could be done with it.
there hasn't been an official reason given. my personal belief is that they (Facebook) are giving Oculus an opportunity to build their ecosystem without making it "all about facebook" and there is a strategy behind it all - no direct social framework inside Home has enabled platforms like sportsbar/altspace/et al to actually have a niche at the moment.
given it's such an obvious assumption that facebook would want to make social media the main focus, not doing so prevents the wave of "well, of course facebook locked us into rift for facebook VR" publicity they'd get. plus if it's just about social media, there'd be a lack of drive to get cool games in there. since I hate social media I'm happy with the way it is right now.
I would like to see some new rooms in home where you can go do stuff instead of having a movie app, and a social app, and a desktop app, but if they did that then who would bother developing in that space? we'd never see anything except Facebooks version of socialisation and that might not be the best one.
This way they get a bunch of people building and designing social interaction for them and it can evolve over time. at that point Facebook can integrate what people are using into a single solution designed to fill the niches/needs of the people who actually use the environment.
ultimately it comes down to what they're trying to give birth to the "Next Thing". that doesn't come from a single company/person/vision - it comes from lots and lots of people inputting their ideas and the best/most used ones will survive over time.
I guess the TLDR answer is that this is a long-haul project not something that's going to appear overnight - Oculus came out at the beginning (year before last I think) and said they expected it [VR] to take 5 years to take off, 10 years if there wasn't significant investment (ie paying developers to make content) in content up front.
Though you are more than slightly incoherent, I agree with you Madam, a plum is a terrible thing to do to a nostril.
Tbh Oculus just having their online infrastructure sorted out on day one is VERY impressive. They've had to build everything from scratch in a short amount of time whereas the likes of Steam has been in constant development for YEARS.
Oculus Home is still in Beta at the moment but I reckon we'll see the RC1 version appearing with more features during the next year or so.
I do believe that Facebook is inching their way in to Social dominance with the Rift. I remember last year when several complaints and polls arose on this forum, asking for more social features in Oculus Home. However, official statements from Oculus have been very quiet about any of that.
Now here we are starting 2nd Quarter 2017, and Facebook has their VR Social App in Beta... and when you log in to the Oculus website and forum, there is a new option to use Facebook. That wasn't there until very recently (the last week or so).
The social takeover is happening! Personally, I approve, and hope to see this impact the Oculus Home experience somehow.
social features is ok and all, but 1st things 1st, please can we have better store sorting of the products as well as separate install locations for games.
Its hurting oculus..... i have no issue fighting the store front however a mate of mine has bought at least 2 items off steam instead of home because he didnt like the store front. He is only 1 person but he exists, so there must be others.
Fiat Coupe, gone. 350Z gone. Dirty nappies, no sleep & practical transport incoming. Thank goodness for VR 🙂
