It seems Quest owners are about to get a healthy dose of new features in the v34 update, something Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says will bring the previously leaked ‘Space Sense’ Guardian system, push notifications in VR from Android phones, and mixed reality app publishing to both the Quest Store and App Lab.
Update (November 2nd, 2021): Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a teaser of v34 on Facebook, giving cursory mention of the headline features coming to Quest starting today.
“Quest v34 update landing soon with Space Sense, a new guardian that lets you see people, pets and objects entering your VR space,” Zuckerberg says. “If you use Android, you’ll now be able to get phone notifications in VR. And if you’re building mixed reality apps, you’ll soon be able to ship them in the Quest Store or App Lab.”
The company provided a bit more detail in an Oculus blogpost, saying that v34 is rolling out starting today. The article below details the previous Space Sense leak.
Original Article (September 13th, 2021): Guardian, the playspace boundary for Quest, may be getting a facelift and a name change to go along with an upcoming feature, which could arrive in Quest’s upcoming v33 software update.
Called Space Sense, the feature was first discovered by German programmer ‘Basti564’. Mining through hidden v32 files, Basti found a video buried within that shows off Space Sense’s features.
Under the video was also menu text explaining what Space Sense does:
See Your Real-World Surroundings in VR
Enable Space Sense to see outlines of people and things in your Room-scale boundary. Staying aware of what’s around you while in VR helps keep you and others safe.
You can see outlines up to 9 feet away as long as it’s still within your boundary, and directly in front of your headset. You can turn this feature off anytime in Settings.
The implementation isn’t foolproof; someone can always walk up behind you outside of the sensors’ field of view. Considering the number of videos of people getting blasted by Touch controller punches, it’s undoubtedly good news for people with pets, kids, and people unfamiliar with how VR works though.
Space Sense isn’t live yet, however it’s slated to be one of the biggest additions to Quest’s roomscale detection system as of late. Guardian has mostly remained the same since launch of the Quest platform in 2019, save a feature added last year which detects static objects within a playspace such as tables or chairs left in the way during the setup process.