Everything you want to know from Oculus Connect developer conference

Though Oculus is synonymous for all the best stuff in VR technology, but after Google’s Daydream view VR headset, Oculus had to roll up its sleeves to reposition itself in the market with its annual Oculus Connect developer conference.

Oculus and Facebook have already put $250 million into funding games and building experiences for virtual reality. At the conference which kick-started yesterday, companies announced that they will double the investment going forward.

The Facebook VR subsidiary company also talked about its upcoming motion controllers, the Oculus Touch, and also revealed new technologies to lower the price for VR and impressive social tools.

We will start with its teaser for standalone VR headset:

With no wires and no connection to a PC, Oculus showed off a prototype of a standalone version of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Without tripping over a wire, the prototype uses a computer vision to map out your environment so that it can always calculate where you are in space.

Oculus Touch Controllers:

Uncovered during the Oculus 3 Connect conference, Oculus Touch is a motion controller system designed for the Oculus Rift VR headset. It includes a pair of handheld devices, each containing buttons, triggers, and joysticks, one trigger is for shooting or firing while the other is for grabbing. Oculus Touch also has a system for sensing finger gestures made while holding the controllers.

The Oculus Touch system will be launched in December at $200 price.

Oculus Touch-enabled games:

Games like Robo Recall, Lone Echo, Landfall, Kingspray, and Quill were also announced along with the Oculus Touch Controllers.

Oculus VR Web Browser:

Oculus announced a VR Web browser called 'Carmel' and the company’s vision of the “VR Web.” The Carmel developer preview will become available soon and will run on any Oculus device. It allows users to browse the web inside their VR headset, and instantly play WebVR experiences. Carmel and ReactVR will let developers easily build these experiences that don’t require a traditional download.

Asynchronous space warp:

Oculus announced Asynchronous Spacewarp, a supercharged version of the Asynchronous Timewarp feature that helps the Oculus Rift maintain a smooth experience when in-game frame rates stutter. Asynchronous Timewarp gives Oculus the ability to create “synthetic frames” based on your head’s movement and position. With spacewarp, a game can render 45 frames per second on a GPU, and then the algorithm can deliver another 45 frames per second almost with no extra burden on the video card or CPU.

Oculus-ready laptops and Earphones:

Partnering with Asus, Alienware, Lenovo, and Aorus, Company also plans to offer Oculus-ready laptops that guarantee smooth performance with the Oculus Rift VR headset. The company is yet to provide more details on this front.

The Rift already has built-in headphones, but the company revealed that it is selling $49 earbuds for an audio experience that blocks out the sound for improved immersion. Oculus earphones create isolated sound for a realistic audio experience.

Oculus VR Avatars:

Facebook Messenger #videocall to Oculous Rift VR avatar is pretty sweet (starts around 5:08): https://t.co/Ig10Af0Hvh

— Sean Rintel (@seanrintel) October 7, 2016

Revealing some of the social features that Oculus is working on, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off live virtual reality chat using the Oculus Rift. Zuckerberg demonstrated the Oculus Touch controller's emotion options, which make avatars showing facial expressions, letting you look surprised, happy or confused in VR.

Avatars enable you to build a 3D representation of yourself that others can see in Rooms that can hold up to eight people at once. The demo showed several features, including changing backgrounds to live locations.

The products will be launched in December, so you can expect more information from us in the coming days.