There is more to v38 than I thought!
Next to minor updates, the devs released something called Air Link Framerate Insurance, which
can make your Air Link experience more smooth, but you have to enable it, so I’ll
show you how and more Quest news today!
Leave me a like as that helps tremendously and now let’s go beyond
reality.
Version 38 doesn’t have a lot of big updates, so I’ll go through the small ones quickly.
But before we do that, something you have to know first.
Major bugs are causing issues, reportedly ranging from just being logged out to accounts
appearing to be reset and losing access to their games and apps.
Meta has been fixing this ever since last week.
The latest status is that most account issues have been resolved, but there are
remaining issues, and they are working on resolving this.
The last message was on March 16th.
So it might be worth waiting until they’ve fixed it
before letting your Quest update.
And if you have these issues, you can keep track of the fixing via Twitter @MetaQuestHelp.
I’ve been using v38 for about a week now, and I haven’t had an issue with it, so it’s
up to you.
The first update is for multiplayer.
If you meet others in VR now, you can view recently met ones in the People Tab in the
Menu in VR or the Oculus Mobile App.
This makes it easier to find the nice people you played with again.
And if you hook up for a party now, games that support enhanced multiplayer
features will be highlighted.
So easier to find friends and easier to find
games to play together 😉
The settings page has been given some thought to making things easier to find.
You can even use a search for them now instead of having to click
through everything.
As an interaction design graduate, I love these
small design improvements.
That said, they moved around some settings too.
Like the couch and desk in VR, options are now
moved from Experimental to Guardian Settings.
Tracked keyboard and Bluetooth settings are currently in the Device settings.
You may also notice that you need to recreate your guardian as they improve the tracking
system.
Something..
very.. needed.
For some reason, I lose tracking all the time when I
wake up my device.
It’s annoying so I hope they fix that.
They also added tooltips when you hover over an option in the Quick Action Menu with hand
tracking.
Nice :D
Not so nice, the Oculus startup logo has changed to the Meta logo permanently.
[Show Milkyway] I’m sad.
But those were the small changes, and while small for now, these updates seem to be in
anticipation of a big one, and that’s the upgrade to Horizon Home, which will replace
the current Home Menu.
There’s no release date for it yet, but it’s cool
as it will bring new multiplayer and social features, like inviting players to your home
that you can fully customize.
A more significant update is for those using Air Link that sometimes get degradation like
streaming artifacts or when you’re on a congested
wireless network, like your whole family using the Wi-Fi simultaneously.
If that happens, you may get frame drops and lag.
Meta is working on mitigating these things, and they recently released
an experimental feature called AFI, short for Air Link Framerate Insurance.
It will apply similar techniques as Asynchronous SpaceWarp 1.0 but on-demand and on Quest.
Basically, it fills in frame drops by calculating what might come next using previous
frames.
This should smooth over some of the visual artifacts caused by network interference.
If your wireless connection is good enough, you should never see AFI, but if it occurs,
AFI will make it better.
So unless you want to kick all your family members out of your
house cus VR is more important, it doesn’t hurt to have AFI on always.
By default, it is disabled.
So let me show you how to turn it on:
First, make sure your PC and Quest software are on v38 or above.
This doesn’t work on Quest 1, so you need a Quest 2.
Then on your PC, start the Oculus Debug Tool by going to your
Oculus install folder.
It’s usually in this folder.
Then go to Support > Oculus Diagnostics > then double click OculusDebugTool.
Then at Mobile ASW, click the drop-down menu and select Enabled
– Framerate Insurance.
Auto means using the default setting, and by default, it’s
disabled.
So make sure it’s set like this.
Then, the next time you use your Quest 2 with USB Link or Air
Link, you’ll be AFI’ed.
Let me know if it works well for you!
Oh, and just so you know, currently, there is a
bug that doesn’t allow you to use 120Hz with AFI.
This is a bug that Meta is resolving in a future release.
Now, last news update.
If you’re a parent, this may be interesting.
Remember, Quest is intended for 13 years and up.
So Meta is rolling out VR parental supervision tools
over the coming months.
It’ll include features like an unlock pattern to lock specific
apps directly from VR.
In May, Meta will automatically block teens from downloading
age-inappropriate apps by default.
Teens can then request permission to override these blocks, and parents can
approve or deny each request.
Other tools include a parent dashboard where parents
can link a teenager’s account and purchase notifications, which are alerts that
show you when your kid may have bought something in VR.
More tools are coming, but I’ll update you as they roll out.
VR and especially social VR can be hard to moderate,
so even though I don’t have kids myself, I can imagine needing this if you have
a young kid playing around in VR.
If you’re a parent, let me know if these features is something you welcome or not?
That was it for today.
V38 has been rolling out ever since March 7th.
So you may have it by now, but if you don’t, Quest
updates roll out gradually as always.
So don’t worry, you’ll get it eventually.
Thanks for watching and despite all the s*** that’s happening
in the world.
I really do hope you can find some distraction in VR or anything
else this weekend, and I hope you have a great one.
A special thanks go to all our current Champions, especially
these in Shining Armor.
As always, VR on!