At OC3 we announced a variety of new social features and APIs for the Oculus platform to make it easier and more compelling for people to connect in VR. Today, we’re excited to share that Oculus Rooms and Parties are now live on Gear VR and will come to Rift in early 2017!

Here’s more detail about how you can start using these new social features in your own apps today.

Oculus Rooms and the Group App Launcher—Playing with Friends

Oculus Rooms let friends gather in the same virtual space to hang out, watch videos, play mini-games, and launch apps together with the Group App Launcher.

The app launcher is one of the primary features of the Oculus Rooms experience, making it simple for people to discover and install your social app and then jump straight into multiplayer action together. As a developer, you can integrate with our simple Coordinated App Launch API and benefit from improved social interactions and shared experiences with your app.

Oculus Parties—Connecting with Friends

Parties allow people to connect up to four people on a group voice call, regardless of what they’re doing in VR. They can invite their friends to join a Party even if they aren’t in VR. Once friends join the call, they’ll be able to swap stories or easily coordinate a virtual meetup. Whether the Party decides to hang out in Rooms or explore separate apps solo, Parties ensure that people can always communicate with friends in VR.

Livestreaming—Coming Soon to Gear VR

Sharing VR with friends is an amazing experience that Oculus is committed to bringing to the world. We’ll begin rolling out the Facebook Livestreaming beta for developers, which lets you test livestreaming in your own apps before the upcoming consumer launch. You don't have to write any code to enable livestreaming from your app—just opt in to the feature by selecting the “Sharing” checkbox from your Oculus Dashboard.

Rift marked the beginning of consumer VR, and Touch ushered in the age of true hand presence. Today, we take our first major steps into the world of authentic social presence in VR. We’re thrilled that people across the globe can now share your amazing content with anyone, anywhere.

— The Oculus Team