Oculus Quest system software v12 is now rolling out, adding Voice Commands, AMD support for Link, and experimental controller-free hand tracking.
Voice Commands will let you navigate the menu, launch apps, and search. Facebook says this feature is rolling out gradually, so even if you get v12 you may not get Voice Commands immediately.
If you’re demoing your Quest to family and friends this holiday season, v12 will make the experience easier. You can now do things like launch the First Contact tutorial or recenter the headset view from the Oculus phone app.
Controller-free Hand Tracking was announced yesterday as coming this week, and it is now rolling out as part of this update. We had to reboot our Quest to see the feature listed in the menu.
Quest was released back in May, but already Facebook has added significant new features and improvements via software updates. These will likely continue into 2020 as Quest continues to have Facebook’s focus over the Rift S and Go.
Oculus Link Improvements
Oculus Link is the feature which allows Quest to act as a PC VR headset via a high quality USB 3.0 cable. It launched last month, but didn’t support AMD graphics cards– until now. Facebook lists the following card families as now supported:
- AMD 400 Series
- AMD 500 Series
- AMD 5000 Series
- AMD Vega Series
The 200 and 300 series are unsupported, but Facebook is “working directly with AMD to support as many of their cards as possible by the time the beta period ends.“
For all Link users, Windows audio will now be separated from VR audio, so you won’t hear your YouTube tabs or Spotify through the Quest anymore.
Finally, as we were expecting during beta, this update also brings “performance improvements and stability fixes” to Link. We’ve noticed Link beta sometimes requires restarting the Quest, so hopefully this resolves issues like that.
