Oculus Connect, the flagship VR conference for Oculus from Facebook, took place on October 11-12 in San Jose. Engineers, designers, and creatives from around the world came together to push virtual reality forward, with Unity right alongside them.
Among major announcements at the event were several exciting reveals of how Unity continues to drive VR forward on Oculus platforms.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced a new goal of achieving one billion VR users, and several key announcements were made that will help them achieve that goal. Oculus Go is an all-in-one, 3DOF standalone headset with an orientation-tracked controller. As a binary-compatible Gear VR build target, Unity is thrilled that you can publish games straight from Unity on the Oculus Go out of the box. This super lightweight headset was designed for ease-of-use, comfort and accessibility. It also features built-in spatial audio to ensure users enjoy the complete experience, making the Oculus Go the easiest way to jump into VR.
The prototype Santa Cruz is an untethered 6DOF headset, allowing users to experience the freedom of positionally tracked VR without cables. The Santa Cruz controllers, built by the same team behind the Touch controllers, introduce four ultra-wide sensors to achieve a large controller tracking volume. This enables natural and unrestricted movement, making the immersion in the VR experience all that more believable.
For more info on both the Oculus Go and the Santa Cruz prototype, check out the blog here.
Multiview (also known as stereo instancing or single-pass instanced rendering) is an exciting advancement that optimizes performance for stereo images, freeing up overhead on mobile, and increasing draw call performance up to 40% on the API side. After years in development with companies across the industry – including Unity – this is now ready for primetime. Multiview gives you more room for creative and complex content in your experiences.
Rift Core 2.0 introduced Rift’s biggest software update yet. One key system is Dash, a new user interface that’s instantly accessible anywhere in VR. It also enables full desktop access, for a traditional computer monitor with nearly unlimited VR screenspace. That means you can launch and use Unity without leaving VR!
Did you miss it? Watch the keynote here!
John Cheng, the general manager of Unity Analytics, presented his initial findings in this session. Among the key takeaways are:
Learn more about Unity’s exciting new features in the Oculus Core 2 beta, launching in December 2017.
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