UploadVR may have spent a little too much time last night visiting with random avatars in the new Oculus Social app, but when we woke up this morning we found ourselves just wanting more. In particular, we’re hankering for something more than Twitch streams and Vimeo videos to watch with the denizens of the Internet. Thankfully, Oculus Chief Technology Officer John Carmack plans to give it to us.
Carmack replied to a few of our tweets revealing the Oculus Social Alpha app that was launched yesterday “in a very raw state” will be joined by a social trivia game experience pretty soon.
@hmltn @oculus it was my pet project — barely managed at all and kicked out to the public in a very raw state…
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) October 29, 2015
@hmltn @oculus We have a group trivia game to launch fairly soon, then there are some VrScript based experiences when I get back to that. — John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) October 29, 2015
In addition to the trivia game, Carmack promised some “VrScript based experiences.” Built on Scheme, VrScript is a new scripting language for Android VR that Carmack helped to develop to enable rapid iteration on virtual reality development. In addition to that, the VrScript is built to allow for easy iteration on networked social experience, like Oculus Social.
A trivia game suggests possibly a bigger roadmap for Oculus’ social implementation. In Oculus Social right now the social functionality is limited to VOIP, head based non verbal communication, and group video viewing. All in all it adds up to a very effective experience, but the interactions between avatars is limited. A trivia game would have to add some more back and forth functionality like the ability to submit answers, for example.
Palmer Luckey has already told us that the Social SDK goes “beyond a puppet and gameplay avatar and voice chat,” saying, “it is all the other things you need to be able to do.” It looks like we will see some of those things demonstrated over the next few weeks with Carmack’s trivia and VrScript apps.
We will follow this closely and update further as any additional details emerge.
Update: Looks like we will be able to see video choices in Oculus Social as a group in the future.
@WBMason@Imagineer2018@hmltn We are working on letting everyone see the choices, but it will probably stay with a prime controller.
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) October 29, 2015
Update 2: Trivia and other apps will show up as new rooms within Oculus Social, which will act as a launcher for social experiences.
@WBMason@Imagineer2018@hmltn They will show up as new rooms, Social just launches the other apps — John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) October 29, 2015
Update 3: Looks like there is a chance that “Carmack Lectures” might make it into Oculus Social too.
@WBMason @Imagineer2018 @hmltn I was just talking with the team about how we need a round-table room so I can go give VR lectures.
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) October 29, 2015
