Facebook just announced a major addition to the line-up for its Oculus Quest VR headset: Google is bringing its Tilt Brush virtual reality (VR) drawing app to the standalone headset, which is widely expected to become commercially available in the coming weeks.
“When we learned that Oculus was building a cord-free standalone headset, we knew we had to bring Tilt Brush to Quest,” said Google product manager Elisabeth Morant in an interview published by Facebook Wednesday. “This new form factor will unlock completely new opportunities for our artists to create.”
Tilt Brush has been one of the most popular VR apps on a number of headsets ever since it was first released on the HTC Vive back in 2016. Initially developed by a startup, Tilt Brush was acquired by Google in 2015. The app made its way to Facebook’s Oculus Rift in 2017.
The Quest will be the first mobile standalone headset to run Tilt Brush, and porting it to the less powerful device came with some challenges, according to Morant. “Most of our work porting Tilt Brush to Quest focused on performance improvements.”
However, the final result won’t be all that different from Tilt Brush on PC-based headsets, she said: “Tilt Brush on Quest should look and feel pretty much the same as the Rift version, with a few small tweaks.”
In addition to Tilt Brush, Facebook has been able to secure a number of other popular VR apps for the Quest. These include Beat Saber, Superhot, Dead and Buried II, Dance Central and more.