What is Oculus?

Oculus is a so called APRACS which is an Automated Pattern Recognition Anti-Cheat System that uses statistical, mathematical and environmental-rules, and most importantly logic and behavioral variables to detect the use of programs giving unfair advantages in-game (also called cheats). It is the result of experimental development in including new technologies to solve an old and long-term problem; cheating. Currently it only supports Counter-Strike for the Half-Life 1 engine, but in the future it is planned to support all HL1 and HL2 games (primarily Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike Source).

Oculus started out as a demo-tool to aid the admins at SteamBans, later it became an experimental server-side anti-cheat with a lot of decisions to be made. Now, however, it has been decided that it is going to be released as a full-scale server-side anti-cheat tool. With important decisions like this in place the focus can be kept on development. Below is a list of core features that Oculus will support.

Oculus Anti-Cheat features (MetaMod release)

• Entirely heuristic approach
  Oculus does not use any kind of signatures (like player cvars etc). Oculus judges players based on human behavioral parameters. The most important feature of Oculus is the logic decision engine (LDE) which is the primary part of the cheat detection engine. The goal of the logic decision engine is to abstract from a low-level programming point of view to a level that is more on par with human decision making. Paired with mathematics and physics this creates a complete solution to detecting cheaters accurately and safely.
  
• Reliable and accurate
  Most people fear that a heuristic based anti-cheat will falsely mark legit (good) players as cheaters. This is true, to some extent. Oculus has been created with the primary goal of being safe and accurate. Detection comes in second. Oculus can make mistakes just like any other heuristic based software. However, by including the LDE Oculus has achieved an accuracy rate of 99% in separating cheaters from legit players. This does not mean that Oculus detects all cheaters; reliability comes in first, detection comes in second - thus Oculus will most likely not pick up extremely subtle cheaters (professional wallhackers for example which even humans have a hard time detecting).
  
• Detection of cheats not even known at time of development
  Because Oculus does not use signatures, it does not rely on specific detections either. An example is the View disturbance detection feature which detects not only ordinary view-disturbance hacks like spinhack, anti-aim and up&d hack, but also future cheats which might include completely new ways to do disturb the view. Oculus can do this because it doesn't look primarily at specific cheats, but instead utilizes advanced pattern recognition and the LDE to detect view-disturbance behavior. It is also able to recognize the difference between scripted view disturbance hacks and hooked (in cheats) and thus does not flag players who would look very suspicious but in reality are using available (and legal) in-game functions to spawn this behavior.
  
• Cannot be bypassed like other client/server anti-cheat software
  Instead of looking at what programs you have running on your computer, Oculus looks at HOW you play. It is created to guard a world based on physics and rules, just like the real world. A game is just an abstracted view of our world with rules like gravity and sound. When using cheats, you are breaking those rules. Oculus creates a safe and fun playing environment by ensuring everyone is following the rules like it was intended. You can bend the rules (by playing extremely well), but you cannot break them.
  
• Fully serverside - No client
  Oculus is fully server side and thus cannot be circumvented by means such as hooking and function detouring.
  
• Optimized for servers
  Oculus has been adapted completely to server environments. Making Oculus as transparent as possible is one of the primary goals. Resource usage is kept at a minimum as well as network usage. Experiences show how frustrating it can be as a player to sustain not only lag but most importantly loss/choke. When designing Oculus this is kept in mind at all times thus providing a hopefully near transparent experience for the average player.
  
• Automatic updating
  Even though Oculus is made to require a low amount of updates it is always better to be safe than sorry. When the need is there, Oculus will update itself automatically completely transparent to the players.
  

What Oculus does not do
Oculus does do a lot of things, and thus it might be hard to comprehend exactly what it does not do. This is a short list of the most common misassumptions people make about Oculus.

• Mistakenly mark random or lucky behavior as cheating. For example killing enemies through walls at spam spots or making lucky headshots through walls. A continues effort is put into eliminating every kind of scenario in which Oculus might mark a certain behavior as suspicious. A suspicious behavior is not equal to cheating, though. You need lots of (and/or the right combination) of suspicious behavior to be marked as a cheater. The way Oculus works it would be extremely hard for anyone to be marked as a cheater by doing random or lucky things.
  
  
• Completely eliminate cheaters. The primary goal of Oculus is to eliminate blatant cheaters. This was the sole reason to why it was created in the first place. Blatant cheaters like speedhackers, aggressive aimbots, anti-recoil, no-spread etc can destroy a fun game in seconds. If there is no admin around all you can do is leave the server (or try to vote the cheater, but this happen seldom). By eliminating blatant cheaters, players can be ensured a fun gaming environment while admins have more time and resources to focus on the subtle cheaters.