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Watch YouTube In VR With Friends On Quest With ‘Couch’ App

From vrscout

No VR-ready PC required.

Despite the numerous streaming apps available on the Oculus (Meta) Quest, you’d think watching your favorite video content side-by-side with friends in VR would be a relatively straightforward process. Unfortunately, most Quest-based streaming apps—including Netflix and Prime Video VR—feature little to no social functionality.

This includes YouTube VR. Thankfully, one indie developer has created a workaround that allows you to watch any YouTube video side-by-side with both friends and strangers in VR on the Quest, no PC required.



Available now on Quest via the App Lab, Couch is a simple, but effective social VR app that immerses you in a virtual theater where you can access any YouTube video you’d like in VR, all for the low, low cost of $0.00. Players are represented as basic egg-shaped avatars and can interact with one another via built-in voice chat. You can hop into a public lobby and browse videos alongside strangers or meet up with friends in one of 1,000 private rooms.

The video browser itself is about as barebones as it gets. You can browse for specific videos via the search bar and, well, that’s about it. Still, this is a great way for Quest users without a dedicated PC to watch videos with others in VR. In the future, I’d love to see additional features, such as the ability to create and share playlists, schedule virtual meet-ups, and watch 360-degree videos.

Image Credit: Mr. Cheerio

Couch is available now 100% free of charge on Quest headsets via the App Lab. For more information visit here.

For those with access to a VR-ready PC, I recommend checking out Bigscreen. This free app allows you to mirror your PC directly to your headset and host large-scale viewing parties in VR. There’s even a virtual cinema where you can purchase tickets for access to both new and classic film screenings.

Feature Image Credit:Mr. Cheerio

David Attenborough’s First Life Documentary Available In Oculus TV Now

From uploadvr

Another David Attenborough documentary, First Life, is coming to Oculus TV, focusing on the origin of life on Earth.

It was only a few days ago that we found out that David Attenborough’s 3D documentary Kingdom of Plants was making its way to Oculus TV, and yet another documentary is now available too. First Life was first broadcast in 2010 and has now been reimagined for VR over a decade later, co-produced by Meta and Alchemy Immersive with Zoo VFX and 1.618 Digital.

The documentary runs for just over 11 minutes and will explore the very beginnings of life on our planet, featuring a variety of creatures such as the Opabinai, the Anomalocaris and the Hallucigenia. Here’s a snippet from Alchemy Immersive on what to expect:

Join David Attenborough on an epic journey 350 billion years into the past to experience the origin of life on Earth. Utilising world-leading paleontological research and breakthroughs in CGI technologies, experience for the first time the story of how life evolved from single-celled organisms into the ferocious predators that stalked the seafloor.

Alchemy Immersive also brought the aforementioned Kingdom of Plants documentary to life in VR, but that was a little different to First Life — whereas the former was filmed in 3D, the latter was not.

Nonetheless, First Life will present on Oculus TV in stereoscopic 8K 60fps video, available now on Quest headsets. Headphones are recommend as well, as the experience uses spatial audio.

You can start the experience by visiting this link on desktop or mobile, which allows you to queue the experience in VR or bookmark it for later.

David Attenborough’s Kingdom Of Plants Comes To Quest Via Oculus TV

From uploadvr

A flora-focused series from nature documentary legend David Attenborough is making its way to VR, available now via Oculus TV.

Kingdom of Plants 3D is a three-part series, written and presented by Attenborough, that first premiered on TV back in 2012, broadcast on 3D channels.

It was one of a couple of Attenborough series in the early 2010s that were shot and presented in 3D format. Kingdom of Plants is the only one to since be converted to work in VR and made available to Quest users.

The VR adaption was produced by Alchemy Immersive — who also worked on last year’s release of the Micro Monsters series by Attenborough on Oculus TV — in collaboration with Meta, ZOO VFX and 1.618 Digital.

Kingdom of Plants will be available at 8K 60fps on Quest 2 and 5K 60fps on the original Quest.

“This immersive series gives you a chance to discover how the life of plants is far from static; it’s full of rich and curious stories of rivalries, dramas, allies and enemies,” said Alchemy Immersive director Iona McEwan to Variety. “By immersing you in the plant world at their scale, in their time, and in incredible 8K quality, you experience our world in an entirely new way.”

Speaking about the original film, Attenborough said that “you can go to Africa and watch elephants and you’ll see more or less what you see on TV but you can’t go anywhere in the world and see plants like you can in this series.”

Quest users can access the content right now through Oculus TV or by heading to alchemyimmersive.com/kingdomofplants.

Oculus Quest is Now Meta Quest as New Branding Hits Official Website

From roadtovr

It’s the beginning of the end for Oculus Quest and the start of the beginning for Meta Quest, as Meta (formerly Facebook) moves to erase the Oculus brand in order to bring its XR division more in line with its fresh brand identity.

Following its big rebranding from Facebook to Meta, the company is beginning the process of dissolving the longstanding Oculus brand. The official Oculus.com website can now be seen sporting new branding at the top with the words Meta Quest and the company’s new logo.

Most of the site’s remaining copy still says “Oculus Quest” where relevant, but it’s clear that this won’t last long.

Meta has confirmed that Meta Quest will the be product’s new name going forward and that updated product packaging will soon bear the mark starting in early 2022. That will coincide with a steady transition of documentation, marketing, apps, and services that were once ‘Oculus’ becoming known as Meta, including the Oculus smartphone app which will become the Meta Quest app.

Ostensibly the Oculus.com domain will be retired at some point to, and is likely to be hosted under Meta.com or a similar subdomain.

Facebook announced its new name last month during the Connect 2021 conference where it shared its vision for the metaverse and made clear that this would be its primary focus moving forward.

The name change is more than just getting rid of the Oculus brand. Meta is using the opportunity to align its XR and metaverse initiatives more clearly under a single brand (previously they were spread between Facebook, Oculus, and Spark), while leaving the Facebook name to describe its social media app. That means the company’s growing XR and metaverse division, Facebook Reality Labs, will also be known as Meta Reality Labs going forward.

For Facebook Meta and its Oculus customers, it’s a notable end of an era and the beginning of something new.

Meta Quest Branding Takes Over Oculus Website

From uploadvr

Quest 2’s transition from Oculus to Meta is nearly complete.

Back at its Connect conference last month, Meta (which announced its new name to replace the Facebook branding at the event) confirmed it would be phasing out parts of the Oculus brand to instead focus on its new name. At the time the company said the transition would be gradual, and we saw the first ‘Meta Quest’ advertising a week later. Now the logo is fixed to the top of the Oculus.com website too.

The Oculus website as it appeared on November 17…
Meta Quest 2 website
…and how it now appears.

The Meta Quest logo has replaced the old ‘Oculus From Facebook’ logo on the top left of the page. The company’s new symbol is sitting next to it. There are still elements of the Oculus Quest 2 branding left for now – hover your mouse over the ‘Products’ tab and you can still click to purchase an Oculus Quest 2. We’re also yet to see Quest 2 packaging that fully replaces the Oculus logo, though we’d imagine there’s a fair amount of logistical issues in doing that. And, for those wondering, MetaQuest.com currently doesn’t take you to that same page (or any page, for that matter).

It’s interesting to see the logo sitting at the top of Oculus.com given that Meta’s next VR headset, codenamed Cambria, has been confirmed not to be a part of the Quest line. We’re not expecting to see the headset launch for some time, however, so there’s plenty of time to see how Meta’s VR branding will evolve from these first steps. Elements of the Oculus name, like the Oculus Studios label, are expected to stick around for the time being.

What do you make of Quest’s transition over to Meta? Let us know in the comments below.

Curatours Brings Free Virtual Exhibitions To Oculus Quest And PC, Starting With… Plastics

From uploadvr

Virtual exhibition platform, Curatours, is now available on Oculus Quest via App Lab and PC, and it’s launched its first destination, too.

The platform, which was revealed in late 2020 and created by Spaceteam VR developer, Cooperative Innovations, today introduced the Museum of Plastic 2121. As the name suggests, the exhibition envisions a future 100 years from now in which humanity has resolved the climate issues it faces today. The only single-use plastic left in the world is used within the museum. Check out a teaser trailer below.

Curatours – Museum Of Plastic 2121 Trailer

The museum’s aim is to create a positive outlook for the future whilst informing visitors about what needs to change and how they can play a part. It was created in a collaboration with South African activist group, Greenpop, and Baz-Art, an artist collective that helped create murals and 3D paintings for the exhibit. Around the site you’ll find information points to read more and other media drops. You can explore the exhibit with friends, and new wings of the museum are expected to open every Thursday of November 2021.

You can download Curatours for free on App Lab and SteamVR. The platform also offers live tour guides and other elements. Expect to see other museums and exhibits open in the future.

Meta: Facebook Facial Recognition Shut Down But May Return On-Device

From uploadvr

Meta announced it will shut down the facial recognition system used across its Facebook social media network. However, the company will likely still employ on-device facial recognition in future hardware.

In a post on the Facebook blog, VP of Artificial Intelligence Jerome Pesenti outlines that the system would not only be turned off in the coming weeks, but all associated data would also be deleted. This will “result in the deletion of more than a billion people’s individual facial recognition templates. ”

The system is currently used on Facebook to identify and recognize the faces of Facebook users who appear in photos on the social media network, uploaded by themselves or others. This had various uses, including suggested/automatic tagging of people in photos and an automatic alt-text generator, which used AI to form a description for the visually-impaired and identify if their Facebook friends appeared in a photo.

The decision to remove and delete the system is part of “a company-wide move away from this kind of broad identification, and toward narrower forms of personal authentication.” Pesenti says that while there are helpful applications for facial recognition systems, they also “need to be weighed against growing concerns about the use of this technology as a whole.”

While the broad system used across the Facebook platform is being shut down, Meta’s director’s still believe that there will remain “a narrow set of use cases” where facial recognition technology will be appropriate. One of these could be identity verification using an on-device facial recognition system, or potentially for driving some form of Meta’s in-development photorealisitc ‘Codec Avatars’.

Talking about on-device recognition, Pesenti had this to say:

This method of on-device facial recognition, requiring no communication of face data with an external server, is most commonly deployed today in the systems used to unlock smartphones. 

We believe this has the potential to enable positive use cases in the future that maintain privacy, control and transparency, and it’s an approach we’ll continue to explore as we consider how our future computing platforms and devices can best serve people’s needs.

Meta also recently announced that it will no longer require Oculus Quest headsets to be linked to a Facebook account from 2022, and existing headset owners will soon be able to unlink their Facebook account from their Quest.

This slew of recent policy changes likely points to Meta eventually releasing a VR headset that can be unlocked with on-device facial verification and no requirement to connect or link your Facebook profile.

Meta VP of VR/AR and incoming 2022 CTO Andrew Bosworth tweeted (embedded above) that the decision to move away from broad facial recognition on Facebook is “very important” and encouraged continued discussion about the implications of emerging technologies.

You can read the full post by Jerome Pesenti here.

Project Cambria 3D Model Formed From Texture Leak

From uploadvr

Last week we reported on another Project Cambria leak that revealed a set of textures for Meta’s new headset. Now those textures have been stitched together to give us a closer look at the device.

Twitter user Bastian, who was behind the original leak of the textures, posted new images of all the assets molded into 3D models. There’s one for the headset itself, plus the new controllers and the controller dock that we first saw in another leak.

Of course, when we first saw these leaks we were waiting on the reveal of Cambria — which we’d been referring to as Oculus Quest Pro — at the Connect developer conference. In the end, we didn’t get a full reveal of the device (Cambria itself is only a codename), but the little footage we did see of it is consistent with the 3D models here.

Namely, we can see a black headset with an integrated headband, a pair of controllers that no longer have the tracking rings of the original Touch designs, and a circular pad to charge them on. Bastain made a video flythrough of the models, too.

We also know that Cambria will not be a part of the Quest line of products, though it does look to be a standalone headset. The device uses multi-element pancake lenses for a more compact form factor, high-resolution color passthrough and eye and face tracking capabilities.

We’ll hopefully see more from Project Cambria soon, though the headset doesn’t have a firm release window just yet.

Oculus Quest 2 Grows To 35% Of SteamVR Headset Usage

From uploadvr

The Oculus Quest 2 now accounts for over 35% of VR headset usage on Steam.

That figure was revealed with this month’s update to the Steam Hardware Survey. Quest 2 claimed an additional 1.84% of overall headset usage over last month, growing to 35.02% of the total share.

Meta’s standalone headset was one of the few devices to gain ground in October; both the HTC Vive Pro and Pro 2 also made small gains, as did the Windows Mixed Reality devices. But the Valve Index receded slightly back to 17.30%, while every other Oculus headset continued to decline.

As it stands, Meta (which was rebranded from Facebook last week) devices now account for 61.15% of the total VR headset usage on Steam. Valve follows with its 17.30% and HTC takes up 13.68% between the original Vive, Pro units, and Cosmos headsets. As always, we should point out that the Hardware Survey is entirely optional and not necessarily accurate but, given that no VR companies are sharing headset sales, it’s the best we’ve got.

Last month saw the announcement of the Varjo Aero SteamVR headset, though it won’t be arriving at doorsteps until December. Even then, its $2,000 price tag means it’s unlikely to claim much of the SteamVR market share. There’s also an improved version of the HP Reverb G2 with better tracking on the way, though it’s unclear exactly when that will be shipping.

With no new Oculus hardware due in 2021 and the recently-announced Project Cambria looking like a much more expensive prospect, we’re unlikely to see Quest 2’s throne be challenged anytime soon.

Zuckerberg: Meta Will Continue To Subsidize Headset Cost

From uploadvr

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave insight into the company’s current and future hardware business model at Connect 2021, indicating that the plan is to continue to sell devices at cost or with subsidies to help build a larger ecosystem with as many users as possible.

The Quest 2 starts at just $299 despite having a higher resolution, more features, and less weight than its predecessor.  That entry level price, however, may just be the start for Meta’s long-term ambitions.

Back in March, Zuckerberg confirmed that the company’s business model for headsets was focused on offering a low price above everything else.

Last week at Connect 2021, Zuckerberg gave further details about Meta’s commitment to this model, now and going forward. You can read a transcription below or watch from the 43:15 mark on the video embedded above.

Most of all, I’ve come to believe that the lack of choice and high fees are stifling innovation, stopping people from building new things and holding back the entire internet economy. We’ve tried to take a different approach. We want to serve as many people as possible, which means working to make our services cost less. not more.

Our mobile apps are free. Our ads’ business model is an auction, which guarantees every business the most competitive price possible. We offer our creator and commerce tools either at cost or with modest fees to enable as much creation and commerce as possible.

And it’s worked. Billions of people love our products. We have hundreds of millions of businesses on our platform, and we have a rapidly growing ecosystem and a thriving business.

That’s the approach that we want to take to help build the metaverse too. We plan to continue to either subsidize our devices or sell them at cost to make them available to more people. We’ll continue supporting sideloading and linking to PCs, so consumers and developers have choice rather than forcing them to use the Quest Store to find apps or reach customers. And we’ll aim to offer developer and creator services with low fees in as many cases as possible. So we can maximize the overall creator economy, while recognizing that to keep investing in this future we’ll need to keep some fees higher for some period to make sure that we don’t lose too much money on this program overall.

After all, while a growing number of developers are already profitable, we expect to invest many billions of dollars for years to come before the metaverse reaches scale. Our hope though is that if we all work at it then within the next decade, the metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce and support jobs for millions of creators.

You can read more about what Meta executives had to say about the metaverse last week, or check out our round-up of everything announced at Connect 2021.