Oculus Social
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| Oculus Social | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| Type | Social VR |
| Developer | Oculus VR |
| Supported Devices | Samsung Gear VR |
| Release Date | October 28, 2015 (alpha) |
Oculus Social (released as Oculus Social Alpha) was a social VR app made by Oculus for the Samsung Gear VR mobile headset. It allowed users to choose avatars, share virtual environments and interact with each other in VR.[1] Groups of up to five people could sit together in a virtual home theater and watch Twitch streams or Vimeo videos while talking over voice chat.[2]
The Alpha version of the app was released on October 28, 2015 for the Samsung Gear VR.[3] It allowed up to 5 users to watch Vimeo videos or Twitch stream together within the Oculus Cinema.[1][3] Within the home theatre setting, each user is represented by a head-tracked avatar. Users can watch the videos on the big screen or turn to their companions for some insightful comments.[3]
UploadVR described the launch as the first time owners of consumer VR headsets running publicly available software could meet each other in a virtual space over the internet.[2] The app was a personal project of Oculus chief technology officer John Carmack.[4] Oculus later moved its social features on Gear VR to Oculus Rooms and Oculus Parties, which launched in December 2016.[5]
History
Announcement
At Oculus Connect 2 in September 2015, Oculus said that Gear VR owners would be able to "watch with friends in avatar form". The same announcement named Twitch as a partner for live streaming video on Gear VR and listed Vimeo among the platform's content partners. Oculus also said it would add friend lists and achievements to the platform.[6]
Alpha release
Oculus released the app as a public alpha in the Oculus Store for Gear VR on October 28, 2015.[3] Road to VR reported that the first release appeared to be region-locked to North America.[1] By November 1, 2015, Oculus had made the app available worldwide.[7]
Carmack described the app on Twitter as "my pet project" that was "barely managed at all and kicked out to the public in a very raw state", as reported by UploadVR. He also said a group trivia game would launch "fairly soon", followed by experiences built with Vrscript, his scripting environment for networked VR. According to UploadVR, trivia and other apps were to appear as new rooms, with Oculus Social acting as a launcher for social experiences.[4] UploadVR had earlier reported that Oculus planned to let up to five people watch films bought on Gear VR together, naming Total Recall and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes as examples.[2]
March 2016 update
On March 9, 2016, Oculus announced a set of social features for Gear VR. Users could create a profile and find others by real name or Oculus username, and could create rooms with friends in Oculus Social to watch Twitch or Vimeo streams together.[8] Road to VR noted that this was the first time users could create private rooms; before the update they could only host and join open rooms.[9]
The same announcement introduced Social Trivia, a quiz game for a player and up to four friends, and Herobound: Gladiators, a cooperative game with voice chat.[8] Road to VR reported that Social Trivia would launch in the Concepts section of the Oculus Store and that Herobound: Gladiators, developed by Escalation Studios, supported four players.[9] Oculus also added a Facebook Videos tab to Oculus Video, which let users link a Facebook account to personalize their 360-degree video feed.[8] PCWorld noted that the features depended on a user having several friends who also owned a Gear VR.[10]
Replacement by Rooms and Parties
When Oculus announced Oculus Rooms and Oculus Parties in October 2016, Road to VR wrote that it was unclear what would happen to the Oculus Social beta.[11] After Rooms and Parties arrived on Gear VR in December 2016, UploadVR wrote that Oculus Social had "largely stagnated since release" and that the overlap in features suggested Rooms had become the main social space on the Oculus platform.[5]
Features
Road to VR's hands-on with the alpha described six preset avatars in the form of floating heads. The avatars blinked and locked their gaze onto other users to simulate eye contact, although the headset had no eye tracking. Users could mute themselves, a visual signal showed who was speaking, and separate volume controls adjusted chat and the video stream. Viewers sat in theatre-style seats. At the time of the hands-on there were six rooms, three showing Twitch channels and three showing Vimeo short films, and each room held a maximum of five people.[12] UploadVR noted that avatars could be easily changed and that the avatars' head movements matched the real movements of their users.[2]
Engadget found that users could not interact with Twitch streams from inside the app.[3] Videos had to be picked from a list, and users could not search Twitch or Vimeo for other content.[13] Carmack said Oculus was working on letting everyone in a room see the video choices, but that control would "probably stay with a prime controller".[4]
| Feature | Alpha (October 2015) | After March 2016 update |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum users per room | Five[2] | Five (Social Trivia: a player and up to four friends)[8] |
| Room types | Open rooms only[9] | Open and private rooms[9] |
| Video sources | Twitch and Vimeo[2] | Twitch and Vimeo[8] |
| Friends and profiles | None | Profiles searchable by real name or Oculus username[8] |
Reception
In its hands-on, Road to VR's Scott Hayden wrote that "the avatars are emotive enough to feel like there's actually a person behind the headset".[12] Engadget's Richard Lawler found the disembodied avatars "slightly disconcerting" but said the video on the screen "looked just about as good as Twitch can". Both Engadget and UploadVR reported problems using wireless headphones with the app.[3][2]
Writing a month after launch, UploadVR's Ian Hamilton said that head movement and voice worked "in an entirely believable way" and compared talking with people abroad to having invited them into his home. He also wrote that "conversations are pretty limited, because there are only so many things you can talk about while watching videos", and that the app had been pushed out quickly before its full feature set was ready.[13]
Oculus Rooms
Oculus Rooms was announced at the Oculus Connect developer conference in October 2016 as a social hangout space with video watching, music and mini-games, and an app launcher that let a group enter the same game at the same time. Road to VR reported at the announcement that Rooms would hold up to eight people and would reach the Oculus Rift in early 2017.[11] Oculus launched Rooms on Gear VR on December 15, 2016. Inside a room, users could watch videos together, play matching and guessing games, and launch multiplayer apps such as Dragon Front and Drop Dead. Users could link Facebook and Oculus accounts to find friends.[14]
TechCrunch described the space as a "futuristic living room" with spatial audio, avatar mouth movement, a shared screen for Facebook videos and a set of in-house games. Oculus product manager Madhu Muthukumar told TechCrunch that Rooms "gives us a physical place where we can all go, and you can have interactions like you're inviting your friends to your apartment".[15]
Road to VR noted in July 2017 that, seven months into the year, Rooms and Parties had still not come to the Rift. Nate Mitchell, head of Rift at Oculus, told the site that the Rooms team could move faster by focusing on one platform, and that "Rooms is actually built in Unity, it's using Android", so some features would not carry over directly to PC.[16] Rooms later became available on the Oculus Go, where UploadVR called it the headset's flagship app.[17]
In September 2019, Facebook announced that Oculus Rooms and Facebook Spaces would shut down on October 25, 2019, as it focused on its new social VR world, Facebook Horizon.[18] UploadVR reported that the Rooms team had moved on to work on Horizon, which did not list support for the Oculus Go, and pointed Go owners to third-party alternatives including VTime, Bigscreen and AltspaceVR.[17]
Oculus Parties
Oculus Parties launched on Gear VR together with Rooms on December 15, 2016. A party was a voice call for a user and up to three friends that stayed active anywhere on the platform, and it was started from a Party tab in Oculus Home.[14] TechCrunch reported that Parties used the audio VoIP technology of Facebook Messenger.[15]
In July 2017, Nate Mitchell said that persistent voice calls would come to PC independently of Rooms and would be reachable from the Rift's Universal Menu.[16] Oculus rolled out Parties for the Rift in August 2017, first through the Public Test channel. Rift parties also held up to four people, and invitations could be sent from Oculus Home or the Universal Menu.[19]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Paul James (2015-10-29). "Oculus Social Alpha is Now Available for Gear VR". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-social-alpha-is-now-available-for-gear-vr/. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Ian Hamilton (2015-10-28). "Oculus Social Alpha launches on Gear VR". UploadVR. https://uploadvr.com/social-alpha-launches-oculus-gear-vr/. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Richard Lawler (2015-10-28). "Oculus Social Alpha delivers group watching to virtual reality". Engadget. https://www.engadget.com/2015-10-28-oculus-social-alpha-delivers-group-watching-to-virtual-reality.html. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "Oculus planning a trivia game and more for social VR". UploadVR. 2015-10-29. https://www.uploadvr.com/oculus-planning-a-trivia-game-and-more-for-social-vr/. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Joe Durbin (2016-12-18). "Social VR Takes Major Step as Oculus Rooms and Parties Arrive on Gear VR". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/social-vr-takes-major-step-oculus-rooms-parties-arrive-gear-vr/. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ "Oculus Connect 2: Consumer Gear VR, Minecraft, and more!". Meta Quest Blog. Meta. 2015-09-24. https://www.meta.com/blog/oculus-connect-2-consumer-gear-vr-minecraft-and-more/. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ Paul James (2015-11-01). "Oculus Social Alpha Now Available Worldwide". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-social-alpha-now-available-worldwide/. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Ben Lang (2016-03-09). "Oculus Bringing New Multiplayer Games and Social Features to Gear VR". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/new-samsung-gear-vr-social-features-oculus-social-trivia-herobound-gladiators-multiplayer-facebook-360-video/. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ Ian Paul (2016-03-10). "Oculus Social lets Gear VR pals play together online". PCWorld. https://www.pcworld.com/article/420021/oculus-social-lets-gear-vr-pals-play-together-online.html. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Scott Hayden (2016-10-06). "Oculus Wants You to Talk With 'Parties' and Play in 'Rooms'". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-make-home-social-parties-rooms/. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Scott Hayden (2015-10-29). "Video Hands-On with 'Oculus Social'". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/video-hands-on-with-oculus-social-enabling-shared-experiences-on-gear-vr/. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Ian Hamilton (2015-11-24). "Social is the Gear VR killer feature and it's not really here yet". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/social-gear-vr-killer-app-not-really-yet/. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 "Join Friends in VR with Oculus Rooms and Parties". Meta Quest Blog. Meta. 2016-12-15. https://www.meta.com/blog/join-friends-in-vr-with-oculus-rooms-and-parties/. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 Josh Constine (2016-12-16). "Oculus launches social VR hangout "Rooms" and phone calls". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/16/facebook-social-vr-rooms/. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 Ben Lang (2017-07-24). "Oculus' Nate Mitchell on the Fate of 'Rooms' & 'Parties' on Rift". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-nate-mitchell-on-the-fate-of-rooms-and-parties-on-rift/. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 David Heaney (2019-12-18). "How To Virtually Hang Out With Friends On Oculus Go Post-Rooms". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/oculus-go-rooms-alternatives/. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ Kris Holt (2019-09-25). "Social VR world 'Facebook Horizon' comes to Oculus in 2020". Engadget. https://www.engadget.com/2019-09-25-oculus-social-vr-world-facebook-horizon.html. Retrieved 2026-09-27.
- ↑ Ian Hamilton (2017-08-04). "Oculus Rolls Out Parties For Rift So You Can Finally Connect With Friends (Update)". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/oculus-rolls-out-friends-parties/. Retrieved 2026-09-27.