So far, developer interest in the Oculus Rift has been focused on games, technical demos and “experiences” like college tours, music concerts and 360-degree movies.
Meet Oculix, a Hacked-Together Netflix for Oculus Rift
A cool result from an internal “Hack Day,” but Netflix isn’t making any promises yet.
Netflix
Now the Facebook-owned virtual reality headset has its first media app — sort of. At a summer “Hack Day,” a team of six Netflix employees created Oculix, a means of browsing and watching Netflix in VR. The hack lets users look around in the Rift to browse and a Leap Motion gesture sensor to scroll down the list of things to watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmbnjFYSpao
In a company blog post, Netflix pointedly said that this is not an official product or a guarantee that they will make a VR app in the future.
“We should note that, while we think these hacks are very cool and fun, they may never become part of the Netflix product, internal infrastructure, or otherwise be used beyond Hack Day,” Netflix wrote. “We are surfacing them here publicly to share the spirit of the Netflix Hack Day.”
Other hacks created and demoed during the Hack Day included programming so-called smart lightbulbs made by Philips to change their color in response to what a user was watching, and a Google Chrome extension that turned Netflix into a “mini screen,” to make it easier to binge-watch “Orange Is the New Black” when you should be working.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfA01wBms4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqYvuM39MGw
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
