An integral part of the Oculus Virtual Reality experience since its inception, the Guardian System gives you a good idea of your available leeway so that you don’t wander too far and bump into furniture, walls, or people during your VR adventure.
It’s a great feature that has undoubtedly stopped many from getting injured in VR, but what happens when someone – or even a pet – walks into your play area? As any seasoned VR user will know, it never ends well, but there was no way to avoid it – until now.
Facebook, or rather Meta, has unveiled Space Sense, the first major upgrade to the Guardian system since its inception that allows the Oculus Quest 2 to detect people, pets and other objects up to 2 meters away Enter your play area. Shown as outlines, you can see exactly where they are in the real world, but there’s a catch – it’s not checked by default.
Do not worry; At Tech Advisor, we know our way around Quest 2 and will walk you through the steps to enable Space Sense here.
How to enable Space Sense on the Oculus Quest 2
Although Meta introduced Space Sense as part of Oculus Quest 2’s v.34 software on November 1, 2021, it is still classified as an experimental feature. This means that while you can use the functionality now, it may not work as intended all the time. Still, hand tracking used to be an experimental feature, and see how well it works now!
So if you throw caution to the wind and want to report when people, dogs, or anything else enters your virtual play area, follow these steps to activate Space Sense on Quest 2:
- From Horizon Home, go to the Settings menu in your headset.
- Scroll down the menu on the left and select Experimental Features.
- Scroll through the list of experimental features until you find Space Sense.
- Choose sense of space.
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- Select Enable to access Space Sense functionality in its early access state.
That’s it! You should be made aware of the presence of friends, family members, and even pets up to 9 feet away when they enter your play area. Hopefully that will be enough to prevent you “accidentally” hitting those who come too close when you are in the heat of the moment, right?
It’s worth noting that the experimental functionality is unfortunately exclusive to the Oculus Quest 2, with the original Quest and (discontinued) Rift S owners left out in the cold with this one. Space Guardian functionality is only compatible with larger margins, not stationary tracking, even at launch, although this can change over time.
If you’re looking to get more out of your Oculus Quest 2, we cover our top Oculus Quest 2 tips and tricks separately along with our handpicked selection of the best Oculus Quest 2 accessories.
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