Facebook has spent even more time than it usually takes talking about their good success with the VR in their own quarterly earnings call. The company reportedly took time to note the developer success as well as their very own wins peddling with their latest Quest 2 VR set.
Facebook Oculus Quest
One of the said VR platform's existing quirks is said to be a general lack of certain third-party support for certain apps aside from just gaming. According to the story by TechCrunch, the headset is said to be a powerful piece of hardware with the few VR ports available for certain mobile apps. The platform even makes certain streaming apps coming from Netflix and Hulu possible with scant updates due to the headset's relatively small number of users out there.
Facebook, one of the big app maker itself, has also seen to be playing quite a fairly delicate balancing act when it comes to bringing some of the mothership's own utility to the headset even without having to alienate certain consumers who could be less interested in what is clearly known as a Facebook-branded piece of hardware. After having mandated the Facebook-login some time last fall, it seemed like most of the bets should be off just there.
Oculus announcement for Quest and Quest 2 users
Today, the company had officially announced on the Oculus website that both the Quest and the Quest 2 users will be able to gain access to Messenger chats from inside the app itself. This would enable users to easily fire off a fast message or even use the headset's simple voice-to-text feature.
For those that are upset regarding Facebook's heavily increasing software presence on the said VR platform. This will most likely be yet another reason to avoid the Quest 2. However, for those that are eager to make their own VR gameplay a much more social experience in order to avoid the total isolation that would come from strapping a headset on while simply ignoring the phone, it will also be much more welcome.
Introducing the App Lab
Alongside the Facebook Messenger update, the company itself has also shared that with the brand new update, they will also be rolling out a certain feature called the App Lab. This would essentially be a TestFlight-like feature that would allow different Quest users to easily download content that is not curated outside of the Oculus Store.
This is said to be a feature that is meant to address the development complaints stating that Facebook has boxed the fledgling game designers from bringing their own content to the Quest. Users will now be able to search for a specific game title name in the App Lab or even click a certain link that goes directly to the said game title. The new feature is also completed directly with SideQuest, a certain startup that has known to be building a hub for more different experimental Quest content.
Related Article: Multi-User Accounts and App Sharing Coming Soon on Oculus Quest 2: How to Set-up
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Urian Buenconsejo
