Facebook wants to get better at helping its Oculus Rift developers.
The virtual reality division of the social-networking behemoth announced today that it has collaborated with its development community to find out what resources it needs to provide to empower creativity in the people making VR experiences. In a blog post, Oculus explained that it has upgraded its online portal for game makers in a number of key ways. This comes as a direct result of polling various studios and independent developers on what they want.
“We recently conducted a global developer survey. The purpose of the survey was to better understand how we can improve your VR experience as a developer,” reads the Oculus blog. “We received a lot of valuable and actionable feedback. The main themes of which included [calls to] improve the developer site, to improve documentation, and to provide more communication and support.”
Oculus is putting those changes into effect immediately. First, it is improving the navigation on its developer page. The company is laying out a number of important categories right at the top of developers.oculus.com. For example, the first three taps are “design,” “develop,” and “distribute.” Those are likely among the first three things that developers wonder about when they decide to make VR software. Oculus has also added a better search feature, improved document-navigation options, and an ever-present quick menu on the left side of each page.
But the developer site isn’t only getting a usability upgrade. Oculus is improving the content itself.
“We have made concerted efforts to refresh our documentation in many areas including the Platform SDK documentation to ensure easier navigation, discovery, accuracy and better content to help you through the development process,” reads the blog post.
Oculus is also promising better communication on top of everything else. That involves conveying more of what is happening at Oculus through blog posts and a newsletter. The Facebook VR subsidiary is also planning to provide more detailed changelogs for its SDK.
Finally, the company notes that it has also brought on a bigger staff to work with developers in a one-on-one capacity. These are people who are moderating the developer forum and running a new FAQ page, but it’s also staff for a new contact service where you can get direct answers to specific concerns.