Mar 20, 2018

March Monthly Tech Release Notes

Oculus VR

The latest tech updates from our software, integrations, and tools teams are here! Major updates include an important update to the Platform SDK for Unity developers, our newest PC SDK with the release of version 1.24, and new platform level hardware reports. This week also takes Oculus on the road to GDC and VRDC — keep an eye on the blog and social for all the latest from the shows.

Platform SDK 1.24

Two notable changes are in Platform SDK 1.24.

All Unity developers who have previously used Standalone Mode should upgrade to Platform 1.24. This version improves security for developer credentials in Standalone Mode. Once you have upgraded to 1.24, add your developer credentials as described in the 'Use the SDK in Standalone Mode' section in Unity Development Getting Started.
Platform SDK 1.24 contains an updated Unreal sample that demonstrates the use of many of the Platform features. See the Sample Apps page for more information.

PC SDK 1.24

The PC SDK 1.24 comes with a larger FOV for streaming VR experiences and improved Dash documentation.

The Oculus Debug Tool now provides a feature called FOV-Tangent Multiplier. This can be used to improve the viewing experience when streaming VR to an audience. With this feature, you can increase view (FOV) as it appears on mirrored flat screens, relative to what is displayed within the headset. This makes it more comfortable to view streamed or recorded VR since the FOV that is used within the headset can appear too constricted on flat screens. The FOV-Tangent Multiplier feature has two settings: Horizontal and Vertical.
The Dash documentation for the PC SDK has been improved. Notably, the documentation now describes how to submit depth with your geometry. If you are rendering of lot of geometry near the user, it may cause uncomfortable visual disparities when a Dash panel renders on top of geometry that is closer to the user than the Dash panel. To avoid that disparity, you can submit depth with your eye buffers. This will allow Dash to draw an x-ray effect that prevents this discomfort. For this reason, and for future improvements, we recommend submitting depth data with your eye buffers. More information can be found here.

Unreal Engine 4 Integration

The Oculus Unreal Engine 4 integration for Android now takes advantage of 64-bit CPU features. You can select this option within the UE4 editor. Depending on what your application does, this may improve performance. Oculus will publish more detailed guidance on how this can affect performance in the near future.

Oculus Utilities for Unity 1.24

Oculus Utilities for Unity 1.24 now supports 64bit development. Another important update is that this release also drops support for OVRTouchpad. Please use OVRInput instead, see the OVRInput guide for information about using OVRInput.

Avatars 1.24

Avatars 1.24 fixes a compatibility issue with certain versions of the Unity Editor (Unity 2017.2 and up).

Audio Oculus Spatializer 1.24

This release sees spatializer plugin sizes reduced by half; a technique known as half floats was applied to the DAW for macOS and Windows, Unity, Wwise, Native and FMOD spatializer plugins. This reduced the code size of those plugins by half.

Developer Tools

OVRMonitor - OVRMonitor's new lost frame capture will now show a screenshot of any frames dropped during the capture session and information about the app performance at the time the frame was lost.

OVRMetrics - OVRMetrics version 1.1 adds CPU and GPU utilization monitoring.

Distribute Guide-

We've updated the App Distribution Guide to help walk you through the development lifecycle, review and release process, and post-release maintenance.

Analytics

Analytics Overview has a new look and we just launched the PC Hardware Report and Mobile Hardware Report to help you make more informed development decisions. (Learn more on the blog).

Oculus On the Road

We'll be at VRDC and GDC⁠ this week. If you can't make it, check out our livestream on Facebook⁠ from the event starting on Wednesday.
Will you be in Boston, MA in April? We will too! Come see our team at PAX East⁠.

Oculus Start

Oculus Start provides qualifying developers with access, support and savings so you can focus on what's really important - creating inspired VR applications. Apply today.

- The Oculus Team

Apps

Avatars

GDC

Mobile

Oculus Start

Platform SDK

Release notes

Unity

Unreal

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