Oculus Rift and Gear VR Get Voice Command Support

VR headsets Oculus Rift and the Samsung Gear VR get speech recognition. Users can navigate through their applications within Oculus Home using this feature. In the future, the headsets will have even more functionalities in this area.

It is probably the first time that Facebook, through its subsidiary Oculus, is implementing such technology in its products, while the American company already acquired speech recognition specialist Wit.ai just over two years ago. While only simple navigation and searches can be performed in Oculus Home at the moment, this could be expanded to work in games in the future.

Users can issue a command by saying “hey Oculus.” The words will be picked up by the Rift’s built-in microphone and compatible Samsung phones. A list of possible commands for support also appears on the screen. Headset ‘listening’ can be canceled by saying ‘cancel that’. Also, the possibility of voice commands can also be completely disabled. For the time being, this is a beta functionality that only works in English.

What is not inconceivable is that this function will be expanded into a digital assistant for Facebook, just like Apple, Google and Amazon now offer. Facebook itself opened the Facebook AI Research Lab, or FAIR, at the end of 2013.

Facebook subsidiary Oculus also announces that it is now possible to live stream directly to Facebook with the Gear VR. It is not clear whether this feature will also come to the Rift.

Image: Venturebeat