Oculus has expressed a desire to be more open and share its platform with other virtual and mixed reality services. For many the first name in VR, Oculus Rift already uses Windows for its platform needs. Now, the company says its developers are now embracing Windows Mixed Reality.
While this seems to be happening slowly, the first integration of Oculus Rift on Windows MR is happening. The company announced this week its Oculus Avatars are now available for developers on other platforms. This release includes dev’s on Windows Mixed Reality.
For users, this means they can create their Oculus Avatar and then see it in virtual and mixed reality content on other platforms. I
n virtual reality, the point of an avatar is arguably enhanced because it actually becomes your representation in the virtual environment. This is particularly interesting in terms of social media.
As mentioned, the decision brings the process of Oculus Rift spreading its features to other platforms. Earlier this year, Matt Conte, Head of Developer Relations Engineering at Oculus, said the company understands VR needs collaboration to grow:
“You want to reach the broadest audience. I’m not going to mince words: VR is still small. There’s not as many headsets out there as we thought there might be a couple of years ago. It’s growing, and it’s actually growing at a pretty decent pace, but every decision that you make you should be thinking about: How does this get my title into the most users’ hands as possible? Some people find it weird that we tell them to ship on all platforms. We don’t want exclusivity.
Avatar Availability
Oculus will open its avatars to the Oculus 1.28 SDK, which comes with a Unity sample. At the moment, support on other platforms seems to be limited to HTC Vive and Windows Mixed Reality.
