Oculus Rift owners can now resize objects in their virtual homes, including custom imported models.
Oculus Home is the default environment when you put a Rift or Rift S on your head, and where you’re returned to when you exit a VR game. It was once a static environment, but received a total overhaul in late 2017.
This overhaul made it customizable, with hundreds of included objects and support for importing custom models. It also added multiplayer support, so friends can visit your home and hang out.
Until now, however, creators had difficulty getting the scale right for the models they were importing. Different 3D creation programs use different units of scale, and if it wasn’t correct the modeler would have to reopen the program, export it, then return to VR and re-import it. This update removes that hassle by simply letting the models be resized within VR.
Earlier this year Home added support for custom environments and these can even be made public and named. This was followed up with the addition of portals between Homes. This seemed to suggest that Home could become the basis for Facebook’s metaverse, but the company announced a new project which would fit this role, Facebook Horizon– which will support both Rifts and the Oculus Quest.
What the future of Oculus Home looks like is unclear, and it seems likely it could one day be replaced by Horizon, but for now, these quality of life improvements will be appreciated by those who use it.
