Oculus has introduced new party features which allow groups of players to launch into the same app together and to move from one app to another. Players can now also create Public Parties to discover players beyond their friends list.

Last year, Oculus introduced new social tools to make it easier for developers to create ‘places’ within their applications to make it easier for players to find their friends within a specific app. Expanding on that work, this week the company introduced improvements to the Oculus Party system.

Accessed from the headset’s dashboard, the existing Party system allows up to four players to join a group voice chat even if they’re in different apps. Now with the new Travel Together feature, Party members can launch into supported apps together and get seamlessly placed into the same lobby or match.

Image courtesy Oculus

Of course this only works for multiplayer apps and only among those apps which have explicitly added support for the Travel Together feature.

Travel Together is launching with a handful of apps out of the gate: Echo VR, Racket: Nx, Synth Riders, Eleven Table Tennis, Elven Assassin, Epic Roller Coasters, Arizona Sunshine, Cloudlands 2, Spaceteam VR, Ironlights, Multiverse, and Pro Putt by Topgolf.

It isn’t clear at this time if the Travel Together feature is limited to Quest or if it is rolling out to Rift as well. We’ve reached out to Oculus for confirmation.

Oculus had previously supported this functionality on its Gear VR and Go headsets through Oculus Rooms, a social app which allowed for ‘Coordinated App Launch’ which would allow players to join other apps together. Travel Together seems to be the successor of Coordinated App Launch, which Oculus killed when it shut down Oculus Rooms in late 2019.

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Image courtesy Oculus

Oculus has also added an option to make a Public Party. Players from across the Oculus network will be able to browse and join public parties to meet, chat, and launch apps together.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Nice! But I think you need a Facebook account to do this… :(

    • asdf

      wow welp fuck that noise

  • 3872Orcs

    This should have been an universal feature across all headsets, but that probably would never happen. I do hope steam gets something similar. I’ve usually resorted to discord or or skype in some cases to stay connected to a group between games or in steam home itself, it’s not optimal.

    • Ad

      Discord integration at the steam level would be nice. Does it voice chat like that now? Steam is the closest thing we would get to something universal, or a discord in headset overlay the way fpsVR or revive run inside SteamVR as an add on.

  • Rudl Za Vedno

    RIP Oculus, we loved you. Facebook just FO.

  • Ad

    It’s hilarious that this isn’t on Rift, and RIP all those people who swore that Oculus didn’t need a Facebook account.

    I hope Valve fixes SteamVR Home and makes it a more chill less forced version of this that people can use to cut out a little friction in VR, maybe let non VR people join in so you can go to a Remote Play Together game or something. Or discord integration.

  • Glenn Ennreich

    Pretty sure Facebook’s response to RoadtoVR’s inquiry will be “What’s a Rift?”

    • CURTROCK

      ouch! lol…gotta admit, that was a good one! :)

  • Discord needs to make a universal VR game launcher that combines all your libraries