Oculus Quest developer Gerald McAlister has made more discoveries while digging inside the Quest system software, after discovering a potential “Guardian Couch” feature earlier this week. New code uncovered by McAlister indicates that an instant replay feature is being developed for the Quest, as well as a “passthrough portal” feature.
Instant Replay feature incoming too. Really happy to see this on its way! pic.twitter.com/t54zWuSnGB
— Gerald McAlister (@gemisisDev) July 27, 2020
In the tweet above, McAlister shows code from the Quest system indicating that an Instant Replay feature would enable to the Quest to continuously record the last 15 seconds of VR. That would allow the user to save a video replay of their most recent actions at any time. The description in the code notes that it could impact performance in some apps.
The Quest currently allows users to natively start recording video footage at any point, but this new feature would allow users to retroactively save a 15 second video clip of their actions at any point, without having to start a recording beforehand. Similar features can be found in modern consoles and PC gaming platforms.
However, there's one final thing that I didn't mention: A "Portal Area".
This is different from the past two, in that it lets you define a "Passthrough Portal" space. This seems to be an area where whatever you trace the outline of can be brought INTO your environment!
8/X pic.twitter.com/y0TkUWSZO4
— Gerald McAlister (@gemisisDev) July 28, 2020
Additionally, it looks like a “Passthrough Portal” or “Passthrough Area” might be imminent as well, allowing users to mark an area of their Guardian boundary where the view from the passthrough cameras would be displayed in VR. McAlister gives the example of a user bringing their TV into VR by outlining it and creating a passthrough portal around it, so it is becomes represented in the VR environment through the passthrough cameras.
Of course, discovering code and seeing it implemented are two very different things. Whether or not we’ll actually ever see any of these new features is completely unknown.
Previously, McAlister uncovered code pointing towards “Jedi” controllers, which may be the slightly updated Touch controllers seen in the leaked images of a new Oculus Quest.
