Oculus Rift is starting this new year by working on two new updates, the Public Homes and the Facebook Live streaming. The features have already been made available on the Rift Public Test Channel and shall be launched for the wider base later in the month.
As far as the Public Homes Beta is concerned, it is a feature that shall allow users to share their homes with a broader community simply by changing their privacy settings to Public. Doing this will allow an individual to enter the public space where they can enter the homes of people who are not technically their ‘friends’ yet, and check their unique homes, besides showing off their own talent for interior designing. While Oculus Rift will recommend a few homes to its users, those opening up their homes to the public will also be able to join a list of recommended homes.
This feature is essentially bringing the concept of an “Open House” to virtual reality. And it can be tweaked to suit an individual’s tastes simply by providing them with a roster of Homes packed with custom items and unique layouts from which they can choose to visit those that appeal most to their tastes. Besides being an opportunity to communicate on a broader level, this feature shall also provide Rift users with a wider variety of designs to take their ideas from.
Due to the fact that this feature is public, it comes with its own set of associated risks. To avoid these, Oculus Rift shall also provide its users with adequate safety measures, including full control over the guest list, where users can choose to accept or decline a request to see their home, the ability to disable the “Public” option at any time, report abusive behavior, and mute visitors from inside the Rift headset itself.
Coming to Facebook Livestreaming, users can now choose to share exactly what they are seeing at any given point of time with their own social circle by selecting the “Livestream to Facebook” button from the Dash Menu when in VR. While developers may choose whether or not they want their app to be available for live stream on Facebook, it is nevertheless a feature being supported by hundreds of apps, including Echo VR, VR Sports Challenge, and Dead & Buried.
