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1.17 Rift Release Notes

VirtuaJulian
Adventurer
Calling all Rift owners - 1.17 starts rolling out today! New updates include Parties chat system, release notes for recent app updates, and more! As always, your feedback is appreciated, let us know what you think.

FEATURES:
  • Oculus Library:
    • You can now see detailed release notes for recent app updates, including the Oculus system software, from the Updates screen in Library.
    • You can now quickly launch all apps that support Rift from within the Oculus software, even if you acquired those apps from outside the Oculus Store.
  • Parties for Rift: In Oculus Home or Universal Menu, select a friend and choose Invite to Party. Friends in your party can chat with you across Rift apps, or wherever you go in VR. Each party can support a total of 4 people at a time.
  • Mixed Reality Capture: Further improvements to the calibration tool.
BUG FIXES:
  • Fixed an issue where reconnecting the Rift headset wouldn't fully restore functionality after being disconnected.
  • Fixed an issue with lens slider settings not being respected in some situations.
  • Fixed an issue with the floor shifting while you're in VR.
  • Miscellaneous performance improvements, stability enhancement, and bug fixes.
44 REPLIES 44

benz145
Honored Guest
I'm also still on 1.16.

Stumpy2101
Protege

benz145 said:

I'm also still on 1.16.


Yep... also still waiting. Opted not to go beta and wait it out until the update comes my way as well. I am trying out some of that nowadays rare commodity: Patience they call it 😉

Anonymous
Not applicable
Still waiting here too, I am usually one of the last.

MeichAndrez
Honored Guest
I just enabled the beta settings in options and it starts downloading immediately.

ExodusOTH
Explorer
I've been on the Beta for a few days now, downloading and installing went great. I'm LOVING the ability to run third party applications right from my HMD, it saves me a lot of time of removing and putting my headset back on.

 A possible feature that would be super appealing to the eyes, is if we had the ability to change the icon/image shown in the Oculus Menu for our third party apps. Perhaps you can already do this outside of Oculus? I am unsure.

I have not used the Mixed Reality portion as of now, so I have no comments on that.

Now onto Parties. Lots of tweaking needed, but it is necessary. I'm glad the party system is finally getting implemented, but currently I find myself joining and leaving parties on the fly as it is conflicting with some things, and lacking some features I feel should be in the party system, and I hope to see in the future. Those thoughts are as follows.

+THE CONVENIENCE. I love being able to just go to the sub menu while in game and join/leave a party. It's so nice to have one less thing I need to remove the Oculus for.
+The potential. If party rooms that were seen in Gear VR are coming to Oculus. YES PLEASE. While it might not be as fun a lobby as the game Rec Room or Echo Arena's lobby is, it would give an area where as a player you can lounge around and not feel restricted as you do in the normal menu. Teleporting and movement are huge, especially when you have ADHD as myself. Waiting on your friend to join is boring, and a lobby area where you can screw around and play mini games or things of that nature prior to joining a game would make a world of difference.
-Joining games as party, where is it? I mentioned "prior to joining a game", and that's under the potential tab. I think something that would be absolutely awesome, is that if you got a group or party together and were waiting in a party room, and the party host joins a game (assuming the secondary player has the same game) It would take all players and start that game. Then, this gives the game developers the responsibility of adding features where the party can join a lobby together. I.E. Echo Arena does not have any features for parties and so playing with friends is extremely difficult.
-The voice quality is spotty. Lots of cutting in and out, choppiness. The ease of access to the party system makes me want to use that form of voice chat, however the quality and choppiness forces me to revert back to either steam chat or Discord, which is simply inconvenient and involves more removing and putting back on the headset.


+/- THIS ONE IS HUGE. Let's look at some past party systems for different consoles. PS3, no party system, so the only way you could talk to friends was through being in the same lobby. Everyone hated that there was no party system, and IMHO this caused many players to switch to XBOX. On XBOX 360, there was the party system everybody loved, however every time I would join a lobby I would see just about every single player with the little "party" Icon next to there Gamertag. The sense of community was lost. This is the model I have seen in both the PS4 and XBOne as well. Now talking about community, Oculus has one of the best ones I've ever seen. Everyone who has an Oculus understands the community is small, and I think this has an impact on that nobody wants to see Oculus die off, so it's a much nicer environment. It's very seldom that I will have a negative experience with another player. However would these experiences disappear if the party system is modeled the same as it has been in other consoles these past years? My favorite thing about Echo Arena is joining a lobby, and how everyone is talking at the right volume, with positional awareness. What would be the perfect fix, and perfect balance between community and private parties? In an effort to shed some light on what I think the perfect world would be, I'll share what my current experience was, regardless of the choppy voice, I loved and hated what I experienced. Me and my friend Dave were in a party, after realizing we had to independently join Echo Arena, and then independently find a lobby. We repeated this process until we were lucky enough to join the same lobby. I believe this is on the Game Developer's end, not Oculus' (In the sense of not being able to join a lobby together). Once we did however, I was hearing everybody in the lobby talking as I know and love(including Dave in the lobby), as well as hearing Dave through my party chat. I loved and hated this, because I got to experience that sense and feeling of community with everyone else, while not losing my communication "cross-game"(even though we were in the same game, we were also talking through party chat). I loved the ability to talk to somebody not in my game, but also not being restricted from talking to those that were in my game. Should I feel the need, I still have the ability to go through the game and mute players in the lobby, so I as a user have full control over the situation. I get the features of being in a party, and the community of talking in the lobby. No other console currently has that feature without having to go through the menus and choosing "game chat" or "party chat". This gave me both. I love that. The ONLY two problems I had, were 1-the choppiness in party chat (There was absolutely NO choppiness through the Lobby's voice chat) and 2-I was hearing two Daves. This is easily solved by me either muting Dave in game (but then you are left with the choppy voice chat), or leaving the party (which then meant I had to go through the Oculus menu's to leave the party, only to return and join them again when my match was over and was no longer in the same lobby. It may be on the Game Developers side to add a feature that mutes (in Lobby Chat) the players that are currently in your party, or vice versa, however I believe this would be the perfect medium. Still have community, and still get to chat with your party.



There's my ramble, I'm done. To sum it up, I love the Party system, glad it's a thing. But believe that it still needs a lot of tweaking. Can't wait to see where it goes, and personally I think hearing both the party chat, and game chat, is a feature that should still be available, at least as an option, because no other console currently has that and IMHO I loved it. If you're still reading... Hot damn, you're a trooper.

Thanks,
Stephen K.

throughtheiris2
Explorer
So, no way to restore deleted apps if reinstalling an app down the line?

Anonymous
Not applicable
Finally got 1.17 this evening, definitely like the third party apps support! 
Nice job on this Oculus!

Stumpy2101
Protege

dburne said:

Finally got 1.17 this evening, definitely like the third party apps support! 
Nice job on this Oculus!


Same here and agreed!

cheery
Explorer
What's the state of the 1.17 SDK? When is it coming?

dadadave
Honored Guest
Support for apps that were purchased elsewhere is a great idea, but it fails to start those apps for me (they show up fine in the Oculus Home library). Selecting and starting them will attempt to load for a moment, then kick me back to Oculus Home. I have tried this both with House of the Dying Sun and Race the Sun, both purchased on Steam. I've tried both while having Steam running in the background (but not in Steam VR mode ) and without it running.

Am I missing something? Anyone have the same issue?