Hi folks! My name is Chris Pruett, and I am the Director of Ecosystem for Content here at Oculus. I joined Oculus in 2014 and have spent the last four and a half years helping developers build better VR apps and games. Before that I ran a game studio, worked on Android at Google, and even further back, shipped a bunch of games for consoles. I'm a big fan of horror games.
I'm happy to answer your questions about VR engineering, game design, or market success. Please only post a question once, we'll see it!
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Questions
I'm an indie developer making a game for a small, queer audience. The game had a successful Kickstarter, and being a Virgo sun sign (perfectionist) I'm confident the finished product will be blindingly polished.
That being said, it's a weird, artsy game. It's not going to be a mainstream success, but it could be really important for a medium-sized group of people.
How are you going to build safeguards in the Quest acceptance process to ensure that developers like me aren't shut out? How can we be assured there's diversity in the approval committee?
I make Modulia Studio
https://www.modulia-studio.com/
Quest is significantly faster than Oculus Go from both a CPU and GPU perspective. Part of this is just the raw performance of the chipset itself, but a lot of it has to do with the effort we've put into the design of the headset and the core rendering architecture. Tracking isn't in contention with and doesn't affect the performance of your application.
Question for Unreal.
How to access the Oculus avatar hand in c++ to parent/attach a collider to a finger joint.
Unreal Engine :User Rooms and Matchmaking
Server :Open level listen --->create session( session setting:num plublic connection =4 ;should Advertise = true)---->create session with "Name"
Client: Join Friend Session "Name". From documentation about Unreal Rooms and Matchmaking with Unreal Sessions this is called User Rooms.
Question : Is Matchmaking more optimized than User Rooms .
I was wondering if there are going to be significant changes to the development process when the Quest arrives? Currently the process is somewhat ambiguous and it's hard to get direct feedback. I know this is a growing pains thing, but I was just wondering if the process will be largely the same, or is there an overhaul coming along with the new hardware?
Thanks for your time!
Back in Oct 17, 2017, Jason Rubin said "More than 8 VR Titles Have Made $1M+ in the Oculus store alone"
https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-multiple-vr-titles-made-1m-oculus-store-alone/
I was hoping you can share updated data on how many titles have passed $1M by now and also what's the most revenue a title on the Oculus Store can generate - $5m? $10m?
This kind of data is really helpful for devs for budget planning and also for others to know the health of the VR ecosystem.
Thanks for being awesome! The Dead Secret series rocks!
https://www.facebook.com/AdventuresOfWaiXingRen/
https://www.facebook.com/PrestonJongProductions/
When submitting a concept to us, I think it's worthwhile to consider that your title may have access to a much wider audience than you initially intended. How can you talk to that audience without watering-down the content for your core enthusiasts? This is a hard game design problem, but it's worth considering folks who will just skim across the surface of your title as well as the folks that want to go deep down the rabbit hole. If you can service both audiences you have a good shot at success! Explaining how you address these audiences is a good thing to include in your concept document.
When it comes to feedback, we generally do not give feedback (beyond technical VRC failures) for applications or concepts that we reject. However, you can continue to work on the concept and submit it again in the future. Or you could move forward with production, ship on Rift, and use your success there as an argument for Quest. But when you do submit a concept document, please make it as real and as complete as possible.
In a more specific and personal question, I'm having issues with a screen overlay effect I had working on the Go. I'm porting the app to the Rift, and the overlay doesn't seem to be working now. No errors, but the effect isn't happening.I'm wondering if the Rift handles screen overlays and textures differently than the Go.T he goal is to add a vignette mask during movement to reduce periphery, thereby reducing vection. Also if there would be a different/better way to achieve this on the Rift that would be awesome, I'm relatively green to VR dev. Thanks for your time!
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I just want to vent: the most annoying thing about working with oculus is the fact that the oculus store software automatically launches when it "thinks" you are "using the headset".
If you leave the headset in a position where the proximity sensor is triggered, often by the facial interface or head strap itself, and a fly lands on your desk, the oculus store opens immediately. This is really annoying when you are using your computer for something else, like gaming (a lot of oculus users happen to be gamers right). It really sucks to be in an intense moment of a game, and you accidentally tap your desk, oculus launches, restarts the graphics drivers, and causes a 5 second period where you can't use your computer
Why on earth can't we turn off that behaviour?
Like, when i use the Go i think "this is the platform for 360 movies/narratives. For presence, not embodiment." Or when i use the Rift, i think "i'm so tired of short wave based shooters, but everyone seems to make them. this platform needs long form story games from AAA devs... but since I can't do that, I'll just ... go hard on weird experiments with embodiment". ... or maybe yall wish there were more cross platform titles? or more education? or something else. just curious.
One thing we've found that works really well for a wide audience, nearly independent of genre, is good hand interactions. I used to think that the core magic of being in VR was visiting a virtual space, but now I've come to believe the magic is in the interaction with that space. Whatever you're working on, depth in near-field hand interactions seems to be a consistently successful approach.
I have a question on the Quest and the supporting ecosystem. I read on some online new sources today that Oculus will have a more strict policy about games that will be published on the Oculus Quest store. I also read that Oculus values testing with friends and the direct social circle of the developer (side loading). Will the "Approved for keys only" status be also kept intact for Oculus Quest apps? Are enterprise only apps still supported on the Quest?
Thank you for your answer
It's also worth noting that, like all of our headsets, Quest is designed for ages 13 and up.
1. Do you have any timeline on getting your cloud saves updated to something more developer friendly?
2. On a more abstract topic what do you think will finally get us past locomotion issues in VR:
a). Headset design
b). Experience design
c). Brain surgery
d). Other
Thanks for asking about cloud saves. The API we have available today is pretty straightforward, but I am sure there are some ways we could improve it. If you have specific feedback I can make sure the team hears about it. If you are specific enough they might even implement your recommendations.
With respect to locomotion, I think it's all about experience design these days. Titles that deal with constant velocity motion, with vignetting on the sides to cut peripheral vision pixel flow and avoid smooth turns seem to do well with a wide variety of players. One analogy that you might find helpful is to think of this like ice hockey: gliding across a surface within a fixed viewport (e.g. the helmet).
Second is about Oculus Studios, it seems the strategy is to work with more well established game studios providing resources for the development of bigger/better VR Games. How do you guys select the studios to receive this funding?
It is possible or do make sense for Indie Studios to look for support from Oculus Studios?
Thanks!
Chris, I'm a hobbyist Unity developer hotly anticipating the Quest as my first real VR jeadset. I've done a bit with Daydream, but after experiencing 6dof tracking and Touch controllers, I can't go back. I do my work from my MacBook Pro. Is there any way I could get started with 6dof controller development now? Doesn't seem like Rift would work for me. Could you give us any insight on how Quest development workflows will go? Will quest be able to display the editor preview in realtime, or will we have to build each time to see changes? I'm seeing a lot of people freaking out over Oculus' recent announcement about a more cultivated store front for Quest. Could you tell us what this does and doesn't mean as far as game content, as opposed to purely game quality?
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That's a lot of questions! I will do my best!
I also work on a MacBook Pro as my main development machine. Unfortunately we do not have a good way to preview 6DoF in the headset with a Mac. For core gameplay iteration, particularly for things like hand interactions, I often switch over to my PC and use the Rift to test ideas and change them quickly. That said, it's also pretty easy to make a build and deploy it to the device. You can increase the speed at which you turn code changes around by splitting your data out into an asset bundle and only rebuilding the executable as described here: https://developer.oculus.com/blog/tech-note-expansion-files-with-unity/
With respect to our recent announcement about store curation, our goal is to ensure that folks who ship on our store have a real shot at success. We are trying to learn about titles in development as early as possible so that we can support those that look promising, and so that we can save developers who we don't think will find an audience a lot of development time and money. I think this will drive customer trust and lead to better returns for the devs shipping on our platform.