Meta is steadily rolling out the v38 update for its Oculus Quest 2 and older Quest VR headsets, implementing several social enhancements on the devices that should make playing the best VR games with your friends much easier. This firmware also contains changes that indicate we’re slowly but surely getting closer to the launch of ‘Horizon Home’, the company’s replacement for Quest Home.
After updating your Quest headset to v38, any apps within your App Library that have multiplayer capabilities will be automatically highlighted if you’re in a party of two or more users. Additionally, anyone you’ve recently played online with can now be found within the ‘Recently Met’ menu accessed by pressing the Oculus home button when in an app, or by visiting the ‘People’ tab.
You can now place mixed reality sofas (that’s couches if you’re on the other side of the Atlantic) and desks in your Quest home environment. While this is undoubtedly part of Meta’s wider plans to dominate the metaverse, it should also save you from bumping into their furniture while in the home menu and contributing to growing VR-related insurance claims. Tracked keyboards are now available too, if you fancy working with your headset on.
Changes to the Quest’s settings menu include a new search bar, meaning you hopefully won’t have to trawl through sub-menus to find any particular option any more. Meanwhile, tooltips will now appear when you hover over an option in the ‘Quick Action Menu’, which Meta hopes will act as a helpful guide.
As previously reported, Meta has also now replaced some Oculus logos present in the Quest’s UI with the company’s own. You can read the patch notes for yourself here, just click the link.