Tech

VR goes social as you may soon find your friends on the platform

Published

8 years ago

March 10, 2016

VR goes social as you may soon find your friends on the platform

Virtual reality lets you immerse yourself in video games, 360-degree videos and soon Amazon original content. But what it doesn’t do at the moment is let you meet up with your friends for a shared experience. At least not well. But Oculus, owned by Facebook, is trying to change that with its latest release.

The clever folks behind the Oculus Rift and the Samsung Gear VR will now allow you to get a notification when friends touting similar headsets appear online. The feature will go live on Thursday, March 10, just in time for the first publicly-available Oculus Rift headsets to begin arriving at the homes of purchasers.

Until then, only users of Samsung’s Gear VR will be able to benefit from the VR buddy list. With a list of your friends, and accompanying notifications, players are able to take part in multiplayer virtual reality games like Herobound, an adventure title, or Social Trivia— in case real trivia isn’t available or appealing to you.

But one of the most compelling applications for the multiplayer capabilities is in the new Oculus Social. Users are able meet up in designated rooms and watch Twitch streams or Vimeo videos from within the Gear VR.

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