Ransacked Oculus Houses

Yesterday I put on my three week old child Oculus Quest 2 and decided to register with Oculus Home, a personal 3D space that every Oculus user can personalize with furniture and an unlimited number of personal polygonal accessories. But when I walked in, something was wrong. Or rather, everything was missing: my Home had been laid bare!

At first I blamed myself. Surely I had done something awesome on my PC that caused virtual burglars to leak with my default furniture set. Or more likely, my avatar suffered from persecution for being a witch. “So much for a new start in a new city,” I lamented.

In my confusion, I turned to Reddit and it turns out that various other Oculus Home users, on multiple headsets, have also got hit by smooth criminals.

“I went to Oculus Home today and my whole home environment was empty EVERYTHING IS GONE,” one poster said, and “… not only that, but any room I visit, be it this one. that I own or someone else’s, they are also empty. good.”

“Same with my Rift S. Quite bored because I had made several really chill rooms with comfortable interior design,” said another.

“That’s why you should have home insurance,” suggested a third. (As Mr. Rogers told us, always seek help.)

One user called Oculus Support, who said they were aware and investigated the issue. It can be assumed that all knock-off litter from Pier 1 Imports will be restored in due course. In my research I noticed this also happened two and a half years ago. No more cybercrimes! It didn’t take too long to resolve this particular case, but one has to wonder what Oculus has done in this cloud of theirs if user-selected backgrounds can so easily disappear.

Oculus Home was introduced in late 2017 as part of Rift Core 2.0. At the time, CNET wrote, “Oculus believes the ability to customize VR to suit your tastes will make you feel even more at home.”

“We give you a space that is yours,” said Nate Mitchell, co-founder of Oculus, blithely ignoring the large-scale furniture heists to come.

It might just be me, but as a new Quest 2 user in 2021, Oculus Home smells of decay about it that makes me wonder if it will stick around for long. Since this is a PCVR app and Quest is its own platform, it no longer loads by default when you start using the headset. I find the interface clunky, and I’m not very drawn to the ability to “visit” other users’ homes, even when they’re not stripped of all the distinguishing features.

Home also still uses rather ugly and user-personalized avatars which can even be inherited from Oculus. Just Launched a “new and expressive” avatar system. (The new avatars are pretty indistinguishable from the generic style popular since the Xbox 360 Avatar Update, so it’s probably a step in the right direction, if not a visually exciting one.) In short, I’m not. not very inclined to spend time. personalize my Oculus Home because it feels belittled and gives me PlayStation Home Vibration (RIP).

Regardless, without my furniture there wasn’t much left to do at home other than going mad and locking Home’s selfie camera deep in my avatar’s skull.

Oh oh, the tooth warning.

You know we are entering risky territory now …

It looks nice!

Some real Fear and hatred energy here. Work it!

Well, that’s about it for now. I’m going to go lie down on the hard marble floor, I guess.

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