App Lab is a new, official path for developers to distribute their games and apps on Quest without being subject to Oculus’ curation process. But there’s one big catch: App Lab apps aren’t discoverable through the main Quest store, leaving it to developers to figure out how to get their apps in front of users. Luckily there’s already a few third-party resources which make it easy to browse App Lab apps.
Rec Room isn’t just one of the best free social VR apps out there. In the absence of hard sales data, it makes for an excellent watermark for how things are moving in the industry. Now, according to Rec Room’s downloads on Quest 2, the developers estimate that Facebook has potentially sold upwards of three million Quest 2 units in 2020 Q4 alone.
Tundra Tracker, the upcoming SteamVR tracker alternative to the Vive Tracker, was originally expected to hold a Kickstarter in January, but the company behind the project, Tundra Labs, says the crowdfunding campaign has been pushed back in light of delays in component sourcing.
It’s been about a week since Google announced it had stopped active development on VR creation suite Tilt Brush (2016) and made the app open source. Now that it’s in the hands of the developer community, we’ve seen Tilt Brush clones aplenty, however SideQuest app MultiBrush gives it something we always hoped it would have: multiplayer mode on Quest.
Valve co-founder Gabe Newell previously revealed Valve was working on a brain-computer interface (BCI) with OpenBCI, the minds behind open source BCI software and hardware solutions. Now Tobii, the eye-tracking firm, announced it’s also a partner on the project and that developer kits incorporating eye-tracking and “design elements” of Valve Index are expected to first ship sometime early next year.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple may be planning to release a VR headset with limited AR capabilities as soon as 2022, which is said to be a precursor to its long-rumored, full-fledged AR device. Now, a follow up report by The Information contends the company’s first VR headset will cost around $3,000 and include a bevy of items high on any VR enthusiast’s wish list.
Although Quest 2 is a standalone headset, it can also be plugged into a PC to play PC VR games through Oculus PC and Steam. The headset’s holiday success has clearly bled through into the PC VR landscape, as the latest data shows that Quest 2 is now the second most used headset on Steam, with the total number of monthly-connected headsets on the platform reaching a new all-time high of 2.6 million.
Vertigo Games, the studio behind Arizona Sunshine (2017) and upcoming VR shooter After the Fall, today announced that it has acquired SpringboardVR, creators of the eponymous location-based VR content distribution platform.
Facebook announced that the v25 software update for its Quest platform is set to include Facebook Messenger, which will be available to anyone who is logged into their Facebook account on either Quest or Quest 2.
Oculus today introduced a program called App Lab, a new effort which will allow developers to distribute their VR apps on Quest without being subject to a quality review ‘curation’ process. Though apps still need to meet Oculus’ technical guidelines, and won’t appear in the Quest store like formally approved apps, they can be independently distributed and even sold without a cumbersome sideloading process.
Beat Saber has officially reached 4 million units sold, Oculus today announced, along with 40 million songs of paid DLC, pushing the app’s estimated revenue to $180 million.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, this year’s Super Bowl is set to be very different. If you have a VR headset though, you can still host that Super Bowl Sunday party with your buddies while staying safe at home. Here’s how you can watch the Super Bowl in VR for free with with your friends using the Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift, and all SteamVR-compatible headsets.
Completing your weekly chores can be an absolute drag, but doing repetitive tasks like vacuuming the house might not always be so boring when VR and AR come into the mix.
Google’s VR art creation app Tilt Brush isn’t free, but the company made it open source a few days ago after announcing it has stopped active development, so it was only a matter of time before independent developers got under the hood to publish their own Tilt Brush-derived apps. Now you can play around with the first batch on PC VR and Oculus Quest.
