Oculus has now confirmed the launch the ‘Rift Core 2.0’ update in public beta; it’s hitting Rift headsets December 6th. The anticipated updated will bring a major overhaul to ‘Home’—the place you see in the headset when you’re not inside of a VR game—as well as ‘Dash’, a revamped universal menu which also lets you run traditional desktop PC apps in VR.
Update (12/03/17): Oculus has confirmed in a recent tweet that it’s Core 2.0 beta is officially coming to Rift December 6th.
Follow the instructions below to download the beta branch, which should automatically update on Wednesday morning Pacific Time. You can revert tot he stable branch at any time by toggling off the option.
Original article (11/28/17): Oculus announced today on their official blog that the Rift Core 2.0 beta is coming “soon,” and with it will come an updated Oculus Desktop app which the company says offers an improved layout, now with a Wish List feature for marking games and apps that interest you. The Wish List will offer notifications when saved apps go on sale.
Those excited for the virtual desktop functionality, which promises to allow users to run traditional desktop PC apps inside the Rift at any time, even while inside VR apps, will need to update to Windows 10. Users still running Windows 7 and 8 will still be able to use Dash to browse their VR app library and for some other functionality, but won’t be able to use ‘Oculus Desktop’ virtual computing function, or run Dash as an overlay on top of VR apps, the company says. Oculus indicates this is for performance reasons.
Players will be able to download the Rift Core 2.0 beta automatically once it’s available by opting into the ‘Public Test Channel’ through the current Oculus Desktop App (Settings > Beta > Public Test Channel switch). The company also suggests updating your video drivers for optimal performance with the update.
The blog post also shared several new images showing various Home spaces:
The Rift Core 2.0 experience is built primarily around Touch, and while Oculus says “most, but not all” previously support functionality will work with the gamepad, the company says you should use Touch if you want to “take full advantage of all the features in Rift Core 2.0,” including customizing your Home space.