The latest tech updates from the Oculus software, integrations, and docs teams are now available. Major updates include new features from the Avatar SDK and enhancements to the Unreal Engine 4 Integration and Oculus Utilities for Unity. Read on for more details.
Avatar SDK 1.26 introduces a visual overhaul of the Oculus Avatar system as announced at OC4 and launched with Oculus Go. Under-the-hood improvements boost performance, bringing you dynamic lighting on Rift, realistic mouth movements on Mobile and more to create a high quality, realistic avatar experience in VR. A few highlights include:
Dynamic Lighting on Rift —The updated look and feel uses a reference physically-based renderer on Rift. This delivers an Avatar that fits much better into the game world and in various lighting scenarios. Previous Avatars had a significant amount of pre-computed lighting which often made them stand out too much in well lit environments.
Lightweight Shader on Mobile — The new version of Avatars also adds a lightweight mobile shader, which achieves much of the full PBR with drastically reduced compute. The shader combines avatar meshes within the SDK and uses Unity's texture array functionality. The result is a mobile avatar requiring a single draw call per eye and lower GPU / CPU overhead overall from the shader.
Mouth Movement on Mobile — The mobile shader now adds subtle mouth movement to the user’s Avatar when speaking through VoIP.
More Consistent Testing — The Unity integration has been updated to make testing and development between PC and Mobile more consistent. An Android build configuration will use mobile meshes and force ASTC textures while in the Unity editor to help match the assets that will be seen by the user.
Noteworthy updates to the Unreal Engine Integration this month include:
Blueprint Support for Orientation and Positional Tracking – Unreal Blueprints are now provided to enable or disable orientation tracking and positional tracking. Orientation tracking is supported by the blueprint “Enable Orientation Tracking,” and is available on all Oculus headsets. Positional tracking is supported by the blueprint “Enable Position Tracking,” and is only available for the Oculus Rift. This feature can be useful, for example, if you wish to analyze an application's performance when tracking is disabled, and compare that to the performance characteristics when tracking is enabled.
Mirror Window FPS with Vulkan – A temporary feature has been applied so that rendering to a mirror window with the Vulkan API is not constrained by the display refresh rate of the monitor where the mirror window is shown. An improved method for handling this will be provided in the future.
Reduced Dependency on Google GMS – The Oculus Unreal integration is now less dependent on Google Mobile Services (GMS) API calls, when compiled for Gear VR.
Vibration and Global Sound Settings for Android – By default when you package an Android application, it asks for permissions to vibrate the phone and modify the global sound volume. These settings are counterproductive with VR applications, and have been removed.
Name Change for UE4 Editor Setting – The setting called “Configure the AndroidManifest for deployment to GearVR” in the Unreal Editor, under Project Settings > Android > Advanced APK Packaging, has been renamed to “Configure the AndroidManifest for deployment to Oculus Mobile.” This change was made because Oculus now supports two mobile platforms, Oculus Go and Gear VR.
Controller Input Read from Previous Frame – Fixed a bug where controller input was being read from the previous frame's data (causing a potential race condition).
There were no new features or API changes in this release. A few updates to keep in mind for the upcoming PC SDK 1.27 include:
The demo applications that are provided with the PC SDK will support Visual Studio 2017, in addition to Visual Studio version 2015. We will be removing support for Visual Studio 2010, 2012 and 2013 in the upcoming PC SDK 1.27. For more information, see Getting Started with the Demos.
LibOvr.lib will be changing to a dll. This means we'll be removing the 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2015 versions of LibOvr.lib and the source. To replace it we will ship the headers and a dll. As a result, developers will need to update their app to load this dll at runtime.
Earlier this month we launched Oculus Go. We look forward to seeing your apps and hearing about your successes on the first standalone VR headset from Oculus. Be sure to visit the Developer Center and Developer Blog for everything you need to know about development best practices, performance tricks and submission guidelines.
Oculus On the Road
We always love meeting you in person. Here are some events we'll be attending. Hope to see you there!
We will be at E3 on June 12-14 in Los Angeles, CA.
Attending Unite Berlin on June 19-21? Stay tuned for an invitation to attend office hours with Oculus.
Oculus Start gives qualifying developers access to hardware, provides direct support on a VR project, and offers savings from our partners. There's no cost to you — only tons of benefits. Apply today.
- The Oculus Team
Avatar SDK
Avatars
Mobile
Oculus Start
Rift
Unity
Unreal
Explore more
Quarterly Developer Recap: Tracked Keyboard, Hand Gestures, WebXR PWAs and more
Unlock the latest updates for developers building 3D, 2D and web-based experiences for Horizon OS, including the new tracked keyboard, microgesture-driven locomotion, and more.
GDC 2025: Insights for Creating, Monetizing and Growing on Meta Horizon Worlds
Get insights from GDC on how Meta Horizon Worlds’ unique development path enables you to build quickly, broaden your reach, earn revenue and measure success.
All, Design, GDC, Games, Marketing, Mobile, Multi-User, Optimization, Quest
The Past, Present, and Future of Developing VR and MR with Meta
Take a journey through the past, present, and future of developing VR and MR as Meta’s Director of Games Chris Pruett shares evolving ecosystem trends and audience insights.
