Oculus Rift gets voice-controlled search in VR

One the most frequent requests from Oculus Rift users is the ability to search for apps on Oculus Home, a basic but missing tool in the Oculus virtual reality environment -- until now.

A new update, only available to some users right now, offers a search feature called Oculus Voice.

Currently, for most users, when you put on the Rift headset and open Oculus Home, you're forced to scroll through dozens of apps, page by page, a time-consuming process that doesn't encourage exploration of the Oculus store.

But a demonstration of the new Oculus Voice feature, from a user who first surfaced the feature on Reddit, shows the ability to handle a number of Oculus Home functions beyond search.

In a brief video, the user shows an Oculus Voice overlay on Oculus Home that offers the ability to speak the commands Find (search for games and apps), Launch (open games and apps you've already purchased), Recenter (readjust your VR headset view) and Cancel That (to exit your last voice command).

The new option is represented by a microphone icon on Oculus Home, which is situated next to the existing home, library and story icons.

Although it doesn't appear in either of my own two Oculus Home set-ups, a new support page on the Oculus website titled "How do I use Oculus Voice to do things in VR?" describes how the feature works. According to the site, the feature currently only works with English users and doesn't function when using Bluetooth headphones.