Quest Viva 6.0 is the “next version” of Quest 5, and it’s now in beta.
What’s new compared to Quest 5? The main change is a big modernisation of the architecture, to run under the latest .NET version using WASM. This means:
Windows, macOS and Linux apps
Previously Quest 5 was only available to download for Windows. The new app is cross-platform, meaning for the first time there are versions for Mac and Linux.
Fully featured, offline web editor
Previously, the web version of the editor lacked certain features - like walkthroughs, the attributes editor, code view, and overriding built-in library functions. No longer - the editor is now the same in both the web and downloadable versions, with full feature parity.
It runs offline, so you don’t need to log in. Games are saved directly to your device. On Chrome and Edge you can open a local folder directly.
No more servers
I reached a milestone earlier today when I finally shut down two VPSes. One had been powering the old Quest WebEditor (which still needed a Windows server), and another was running the newer Quest Viva WebPlayer on Linux. They’re not needed any more, because now the code for both editing and playing Quest games runs entirely within the browser - no need for a back-end server for these any more, as the web apps are now simply static files.
That saves me quite a lot of money each year, but it’s also less to go wrong. Over the years both of those servers occasionally went down or got overloaded, which meant that sometimes the online Quest editor and player became slow or stopped working. Now that’s much less likely to happen.
Host games on any website
I don’t need to run servers, and neither do you to host a Quest game online. You can simply download Quest Viva’s WasmPlayer and publish your game on itch.io, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, anywhere you like.
What’s not changed
Pretty much everything else - still free, still open source. It’s still fundamentally Quest 5 under the hood, the editor and player UI is largely unchanged, and the core library has had very few changes so far. It’s just about bringing Quest to all platforms, making it more reliable, reducing how much it costs me to run, and making hosting, archiving and preserving Quest games much easier.
Give it a go in your browser: play.questviva.com
Downloads: questviva.com/download/
For more info: questviva.com