Oculus party rooms let you hang out with your friends' avatars
Virtual reality may soon be less of a lonely experience for Oculus hardware owners, as the company outlined how people can see each other and play together inside of virtual reality.
Oculus announced a new party system during its Oculus Connect developers conference in San Jose, California, Thursday. The party system will allow friends to enter a chat system when they're inside Oculus Gear VR and Rift headsets.
But it's more than just a way to make voice calls. There's a platform-wide social experience joining the mix as well, called Oculus Rooms, which will allow people to chat and hang out in the same "room" in VR. These rooms will have mini games, and people can play music and watch videos, and join social games right from Rooms.
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To make your VR persona feel more like you, Oculus also announced Oculus Avatars, which are customizable heads and hands that will persist across the platform. You'll be able to create version of yourself, then customize its clothing and colors.
The Avatar system will be powered by Oculus Touch, the Rift's upcoming hand controllers, and will be available the same day Touch ships, Dec. 6.
Party chat and Oculus Rooms will come to Gear VR later this year, and to the Oculus Rift at the start of 2017.
Topics Oculus Virtual Reality
Chelsea Stark was the Games Editor for Mashable, where she covered everything from AAA titles, mainstream consoles, indie gems, mobile games and gaming culture. She handled news, feature stories and reviews. Before that, Chelsea was Mashable's Multimedia Producer, where she helped develop visual storytelling aids, whether they were photos of video. She came to New York in 2010 to pursue her master's degree in journalism at NYU's Studio 20 program, which focused on innovation as journalism is changed by new technology. Before coming to New York, Chelsea lived in Austin, where she did online journalism and social media for the local CBS affiliate. She loves good beer, classic Nintendo games, and all things geeky, and spends her time attempting to find anything close to good Tex-Mex in Brooklyn.
