New Dev Tools and Platform Updates from Oculus Connect

Whether you’re developing for Rift, Gear VR, or Oculus Go, new out-of-the-box solutions and tools are coming to help you develop your app and reach more people, faster!

Today at OC4, we announced some new tools and updates to help developers build for Rift, Gear VR, and Oculus Go. These out-of-the-box solutions will let developers reach more people, faster than ever before.

Today, we introduced a redesign coming in early 2018, letting people customize their Avatars’ skin, hair, and more. At the core of our Social Starter sample is the Avatar SDK, a full system you can carry across the Oculus Platform to add interactive and expressive experiences to your apps and games. We’re also opening the Avatar system to let you contribute custom, unlockable clothing and accessories that match the theme of your app.

Later next year, Avatars will include lip-synced mouth movement (driven by our lip sync technology, available free) and eye gaze to respond to people and objects in their environments, giving you an added layer of expression.

You asked—and we listened. Not only will the new Oculus Avatars be available on PC and mobile in 2018, we’re also bringing them cross-platform, so you can build once and deploy your social app on other VR platforms, including SteamVR and Daydream.

We believe in the magic that comes from sharing VR with others and care deeply about protecting the future of social VR. It can cost a lot of money to build and maintain social experiences, and we’re going to help. Early next year, we’ll introduce platform-level safety tools, beginning with reporting and blocking—free to developers using our Rooms API.

VR has the most demanding standards for development—so, if we can help take the pressure off, we’ll do it.

After more than four years in development with friends across the industry, Multiview is ready for primetime! Also known as Single Pass Stereo Rendering, the OpenGL ES extension reduces the CPU cost of draw calls by up to 40%, helping you hit frame rate and giving you more freedom to create richer, more complex scenes. Camouflaj just announced the upcoming Gear VR release of their award-winning console title Republique. This jump to mobile was made possible, in part, through Multiview.

Finding where you’re missing performance targets can be like finding a needle in a haystack. Lost Frame Capture, available now in the Oculus Debug Tool, shows you exactly where your Rift app is not meeting frame rate requirements, so you can identify and fix issues before you submit your application to the store. Additional performance evaluation tools, including the Performance HUD, OVR Metrics Tool and companion app for Gear VR, and VRC Validator for Rift, are coming soon.

The Oculus Store is the first destination people go to find experiences they’ll love. But, it’s not the only place to be discovered.

Explore is a personalized feed of recommended apps and experiences available to people in Home on Gear VR. Today, we’re opening the Explore API to Gear VR developers so they can surface specific stories about their app. Now, developers can easily announce new game features, deep link to specific experiences inside their app, and invite their fans to experience real-time events like tournaments and concerts. Interested developers can contact exploreapi@oculus.com to join beta. Explore is coming to Rift in 2018.

New features and hooks at the platform layer will make it easier for people to share their experiences with friends—and potentially introduce your app to new fans.

Our Mixed Reality Capture tools make it possible to combine real-world footage with in-game capture. We’ve recently added dynamic lighting support and depth cameras to help you illustrate that feeling of immersion and share it in video, livestreams, gameplay trailers, or wherever you want to reach new fans. Mixed Reality Capture is available now in Unity and Unreal.

We’re always listening to feedback from developers. Keep them coming! We're committed to making it even easier to bring your visions to life and your apps to the platform. This is just the first look of much more to come.

— The Oculus Team