Oculus Rift Control Center Gets Voice Interface in VR

What most of the Oculus Rift users were requesting was the ability to look for apps on Oculus Home which was a very basic tool but was missing in Oculus virtual reality environment. However, now users have the chance to use it now with help of a search feature called Oculus Voice. Even though it is only available to a limited number of users as it is a new update, it will help users work better and enjoy better results. At this time, most of the users are forced to scroll through dozens of apps, page by page, which is a time consuming process and often become cumbersome and does not encourage users to explore the Oculus store completely when they put on the Rift headset and open Oculus Home. In a new video that was uploaded by a user who first used the new Oculus Voice feature shows the ability to handle a number of Oculus Home functions beyond search. 

The short video shows an Oculus Voice overlay on Oculus Home that offers the ability to speak the commands like Find for searching for games and apps, Launch for opening games and apps that the users have already purchased and Recenter that helps to readjust the VR headset view and Cancel that to exit the last voice command. This new option is represented by a microphone icon on Oculus Home, which is situated next to the existing home, library and story icons. Even though this does not appear on the existing Oculus Home set-ups, a new support page on the Oculus website titled "How do I use Oculus Voice to do things in VR?" explains in detail how the feature works. According to the information given on the website, the feature currently only works with English users and does not function when users use Bluetooth headphones. 

This is no doubt a great accomplishment by Oculus that it has added a Voice Search feature to Oculus Home on both desktop and Gear VR as it will make going through the VR content library much easier than the old method of digging through menus and thumbnails and wasting time when users are looking for something in a hurry. Even though this feature has not been available to all users, it is still something to look forward to and soon all the oculus users will be able to see its wider distribution. 

Control VR is led by a team of industry veterans who are passionate about changing the way people experience the world forever. By tackling projects of similar scope they have designed and manufactured consumer hardware; built well-adopted software development kits for multiple industries and are excited to build a product that can so radically change the way people play their favorite video games and communicate with each other.  It is all about changing the way people experience the world forever and providing developers the tools to create the game-changing apps of tomorrow. With incredibly accurate inertial sensors, ultra-low latency, and an ergonomic and intuitive design Control VR offers a truly immersive experience that allows users to control and explore world like never before. 

The VR industry is still trying to come up with ways to use user-interfaces in VR most effectively. Oculus Home on Rift and Gear VR is a beginning but there are still usability trouble that comes with the need to support a user base that could be controlling the interface with some combination of their head and a static input device like a touchpad, gamepad, or Oculus Remote or with motion controllers like Touch, none of which have a method for quick keyboard input. We use keyboards to search for everything on the computer and finding specific items in the library or store means that users must look in the right direction.  with help of new Voice Search feature that is still in beta and now available in Oculus Home on Rift and Gear VR, it has become easier to get to exactly the app or group of apps the users want, whether in the store or in their own library. 

On both headsets, the users can click the Voice Search button to search for apps by category like racing, action or social to find the library page for specific apps or to launch specific apps outright. In addition to this, both the headsets can be used to perform a ‘Recenter’ action to get the headset re-aligned in case you move. The Rift version can be conveniently activated with the command “Hey Oculus”, in addition to clicking the button. At this point though, it seems the voice activated command is only responsive when the user is at Oculus Home, though hopefully it will be expanded into the Oculus menu that can be called up while apps are running too, and into apps themselves. It is being hoped that users will be able to use expanded capabilities to send invites and do other friends list functions.

When it was tested, the voice search on both the headsets worked really nicely and accurately and while it can understand a reasonable breadth of variable inputs for the same search such as finding social apps or showing social games, it is not going to work like as AI assistant like Siri or Alexa. However, users are hoping that there will be something like this as this is really convenient and makes using Oculus really easy and simple. Audio is also one of the strengths of Oculus Rift Control Center and it is making its way to the top of all the technology that has been launched till now with help of voice interface in VR. When using this technology, the users just have to use the headphones and connect to the main home page and they will be able to enjoy a totally new experience without moving from their place or using the keyboard as voice interface will take care of everything for them and give them a great way to enjoy.

Author Bio:

Ashley Sewell is writer of this article. She works for a Cheap Dissertation Writing Service company and often writes articles on social issues as well as on education and tech.