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.
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.
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.