If you have an Oculus Rift and you like to share your headset with new people, you’re going to love the new features added to Oculus Home. Oculus started deploying update 1.18 to the software, which includes a new Demo Mode that should make it much easier to show off the system.
Demo Mode allows you to filter the content you can see in your library, which allows you to make a curated list of games and experiences suitable for showing newcomers. Oculus said you could also make a self-guided tour with this tool. You can even restrict your library to a single title, which should come in handy for developers who attend trade shows to show off their wares.
Demo Mode isn’t the only change Oculus made with Update 1.18. The latest version of the software includes improvements for mixed reality recording, too. In early July, Oculus added support for mixed reality recording with Oculus Rift and Touch controllers. Oculus was more than a year behind Valve for mixed reality recording, but it didn’t take long for the company to leap past the competition with expanded capability. Version 1.18 of the Oculus mixed reality calibration tool now supports stereoscopic cameras for recording, which should allow for better integration between the virtual world and the filmed player.
Owlchemy Labs experimented with stereoscopic cameras for mixed reality in Job Simulator late last year. The stereo camera enabled Owlchemy to play around with dynamic lighting that illuminated the player along with the game. Owlchemy’s implementation was specific to Job Simulator, and we haven’t heard much from the company since Google acquired it earlier this year. With Oculus enabling stereoscopic camera support at the platform level, perhaps another enterprising development studio will have a similar solution soon.
Oculus is actively rolling out Update 1.18 this week. If you don’t already have the new version, you should have it soon. Oculus usually staggers its update rollouts over the course of a few days.
