The company puts a focus on community building with a new suite of developer tools.
Last week was quite a busy one for Facebook, or should I say Meta. The social media company is doubling down on its vision of the metaverse with new tools, games, and experiences, and a reinvigorated focus on social, fitness, and work.
Though Facebook’s final vision of the metaverse may be a little ways off, the company is taking big steps to ensure that they are prepared to provide an improved developer ecosystem to promote a positive quality of life so you can continue to have awesome experiences without having to worry about the little details.
To provide that support, Facebook announced Cloud Backup, a new system that will benefit both developers and gamers. This new and much simpler system will assist you in storing your progress and settings in-game. Doesn’t matter if you’ve replaced your headset, performed a factory reset, or uninstalled and then reinstalled a game; your progress and settings will all be saved.
This should greatly improve your Oculus gaming experience by providing a more seamless in-headset experience. As for the developers, all apps are opted-in by default. You can, however, change this setting when publishing an app on the Oculus app store.
Facebook has also announced plans to improve the multiplayer experience and provide support for developers working to create multiplayer communities in VR. After all, a big part of the metaverse will be about making new friends and building relationships.
To help pave the way for its growing metaverse, Facebook plans on opening up its invite system so that you can reach out to your friends and invite them without leaving your game. This could be done through a message in VR or even a text message in the real world. They’ll also be adding an “Ask to Join” section to the Quest interface so you can find out whether or not it’s cool to hop into a friend’s game. Haven’t built out your VR friends list yet? No worries! Facebook will be developing a new system that will make it easier to discover and befriend other players.
Lastly, Facebook has an update on its VR Avatars. Earlier this year, the company began rolling out its new Avatars, starting with a handful of apps. To bring its new-and-improved avatars to even more apps, Facebook plans on introducing Avatar SDK support to Unity in December, with Unreal Engine 4 to follow.
You can check out more developer updates in Facebook’s Developer State of the Union session.
Feature Image Credit: Facebook (Meta)
