Meta Evicts PC VR Customers From Their Personalized Oculus Houses

Meta’s PC VR customers are getting evicted from the Oculus Houses some spent years constructing.

Meta appears to have ended help for Oculus House on its Oculus App for PC VR headsets, with a brand new replace eradicating entry to the customization options and reducing off customers from their current house environments.

Oculus House was the default house surroundings on PC for Oculus Rift, Rift S and Quest headset when utilizing Hyperlink. It allowed customers to create their very own digital house surroundings, with a spread of highly-customizable choices for adornment, furnishings and inside design. It additionally allowed customers to gather objects granted by different PC VR apps or video games, which may then be displayed inside Oculus House.

Stories from customers on Reddit point out that over the previous few months, Meta regularly diminished entry to Oculus House in its Oculus Desktop App for PC. Some customers reported last month that the button to entry Oculus House disappeared with updates, whereas others noted that reinstalling the software program reinstated entry – a minimum of quickly.

Nonetheless, one other current replace to the desktop app led to a new set of reports from customers indicating that they will now not entry Oculus House in any respect, with no workarounds to reinstate the function.

Reddit person u/noobdude752 reached out to Meta support to verify the state of Oculus House and stated they obtained a response from a help agent stating that Meta “stopped supporting the older Oculus House expertise inside the Rift software program” and that it “hope[s] to deliver a few of [Oculus Home’s features] into the longer term.”

UploadVR reached out to Meta for clarification and extra particulars on the state of Oculus House on PC, and requested concerning the state of previously-announced extra customization options for Horizon House on Quest.

Whereas Oculus House was as soon as only a static surroundings, an overhaul added help for customized environments and swathes of customization choices in late 2017. Options and help for Meta’s PC VR software program have regularly been wound down over time, in gentle of a shift in focus to the corporate’s line of standalone Quest headsets. Oculus House appears to be the most recent service to be sunsetted, following within the footsteps of Oculus Rooms and Fb Areas.

Quest headsets have by no means supported the identical stage of house surroundings customization as seen with Oculus House on PC. The newest iteration of house environments on Quest, titled Horizon House, marks Meta’s most up-to-date try and tie collectively one cohesive providing on Quest within the wake of its patchwork of deserted options and companies on the Rift platform for PC. Horizon House on Quest at present gives restricted help for digital social gatherings and permits person to modify between units of predetermined house environments.

Horizon House doesn’t help wherever close to the extent of fine-tuned surroundings personalization and customization seen in Oculus House. In October 2021, Meta (then Fb) stated the the power to construct and customise would arrive “sooner or later.” Some customization for Horizon House is included within the newest replace for Quest, which helps you to set the skybox exterior the predetermined house environments.