Oculus adds social features in their Gear VR where users can get to connect and talk to people from all around the globe.
Gear VR added the Parties and Rooms features which comprise the communal aspects of the design. Parties is the built-in voice chat that will allow users to talk with each other in a real time. In Room's interface, users are brought into a virtual hangout space where they can roam around using their avatars.
Parties and Rooms combined will let users have an over-all social virtual experience. In using Parties, users will just have to add friends that he or she wanted to add in the "Party list." Product manager of Oculus Madhu Muthukumar stated that it is just like calling someone on the phone. The list can only handle up to four people but Oculus aims to develop the feature.
Rooms, on the other hand, lets users perceive others they are connected with through a virtual representation. Rooms offer a lot of virtual spaces where users can wander around in. Users can watch videos together, play board or car games, or just chat with each other. Teleporting to another place is also possible by navigating the users gaze and clicking the headset's touchpad, according to Engadget.
The Chat space of the Gear VR lets you see the other avatars as they talk and move around. The users can also know where the others are in the Room, whether they are at the back or on the side, because of the Spatial Audio feature.
The Watch Space allows users to watch videos from Facebook or Saved folders. Muthukumar stated that they are also looking to expand the choices of video sharing which includes Netflix or premium content if people caught on with VR's social feature, according to TechCrunch.
The Games Space includes a cards game, a word guessing game similar to Heads Up, and a Light memory game. Users can also get to play together a VR game that are built in the Coordinated App Launch API.
"We want you to feel like being in VR is sort of the same as being in real life," said Muthukumar. "You can hang out, watch videos together, play games and talk with your friends."
According the Verge, the concept is similar to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Toybox mixed reality which he demoed at Connect, although Toybox showed more sophistication on designs and features of the activities and avatars.
