Meta is phasing out Oculus accounts this month

Greetings, AR enthusiasts.

Meta is deleting Oculus accounts, and rumors emerge that it wasn’t Google that objected to bringing Android XR to Meta headsets.

In VR gaming news, the co-founders of the dev team behind the popular VR game Beat Saber leave the company after 5 years at the helm

In today’s Phantom Thread, we will look at:

• Meta is deleting Oculus accounts, but you still have time

• Meta won’t be playing ball with Google on VR

• Popular VR game dev Beat Games loses their co-founders

• Play VR Games without launching into from the Epic Games Store

• 3 New AR Tools

WEEKLY THREADS

META
Meta is deleting Oculus accounts, but you still have time

The weave: Meta is going to start deleting all Oculus accounts on 29th March after the Oculus account service was merged with Meta’s own.

The strands:

• You can still migrate your account before the 29th of March and keep your apps, in-app purchases, store credit and more.

• You will lose your friends list and any content created with your Oculus account as well.

• If you had created an account for your Quest headset in 2020 or after, then you won’t need to do anything since you are already on Meta’s services.

The fabric: This is a great time to migrate your account if you have a Quest headset lying around unused so that you won’t lose access to content that you have paid for or created. Remember that the email is going out to even people who have migrated their account, but if you know you have migrated your account, you don’t need to do anything.

META
Meta won’t be playing ball with Google on VR

The weave:  New reports suggest that it was Meta that rejected a partnership with Google to bring Android XR to their Quest headsets.

The strands:

• Meta and Google were in discussions last year to transition Quest headsets to Android XR, which is Google’s Android OS for VR.

• Even though Meta runs an open-source version of Android called VROS, it doesn’t have access to all features because it isn’t running Android XR.

• Meta has made this decision because they feel that they did not want to abandon their existing OS and end up not owning their own platform which could be the next big thing in the industry.

The fabric: This decision means Meta Quest headsets won’t have access to regular Android apps like Apple's Vision Pro does. While Meta’s reasoning of platform ownership does make sense, staying away from AndroidXR means you won’t have a lot of choice with the apps you can use with a Quest headset.

^{BEAT GAMES}
Popular VR game dev Beat Games loses their co-founders

The weave: The co-founders of Beat Games, the team behind popular VR rhythm game Beat Saber, have stepped down after five years.

The strands:

• Ján Ilavský and Vladimír Hrinčár announced their departure from the company through social media.

• Ján Ilavský wanted to go back to creating gaming experiences, while Vladimír Hrinčár did not mention a reason why he stepped down.

• The third co-founder Jaroslav Beck, had already stepped down last year.

• The change in leadership comes at a time when Beat Saber is the game to play on VR

The fabric: Beat Saber has been highly successful and it is the thing that most people think about when they hear virtual reality. The game is still going strong, selling well on all storefronts, with new music packs releasing often in partnership with major record labels.

^{AR TUTORIAL}
Play VR Games without launching into from the Epic Games Store

The weave: Some VR games on Steam both have standard and VR modes but Epic launches them in VR mode by default. There isn’t a straightforward way to launch them in normal mode unless if you jump through a few hoops.

Here’s our step-by-step guide:

1. Go to your Library.

2. Right click on the game that you want to launch in standard mode and then select Manage.

3. Enable Launch Options.

4. In the arguments box, type in -vrmode none

5. Launch your game

WEEKLY AR TOOL ROUNDUP

Featured AR tools:

• Typos - A Vision Pro app that lets you use your iPhone as a keyboard to type inside your Vision Pro.

• Gesture VR - A practice tool for creatives with figure drawing as an emphasis complete with high quality models and hand tracking.

• Nanome -  A chemistry tutorial experience in VR that helps you visualize molecules in VR and XR.

FLASH FRAMES

EA Sports’ F1 24 is coming to VR alongside other platforms on May 31st

Beat Saber is finally getting the long awaited Daft Punk music pack. The electronic music group is getting their music onto the VR rhythm game on March 7th.

Doublepoint’s WowMouse for controlling XR devices with your watch is now coming to the Google Pixel Watch 2. Earlier it was only on Samsung watches.

The next XR chip from industry leader Qualcomm is set to launch in the first quarter of this year.

THAT’S ALL FOR THE WEEK