Ben Lang – Page 210 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

August 29, 2016

Hands-on with the VR Ready Asus GL502VS Laptop with Nvidia GTX 1070

With the latest generation of NVIDIA GPUs, the company opted to stick what they say are desktop-equivalent cards into the next generation of gaming laptops, putting VR Ready performance into highly portable systems. How do they handle? Ritchie Djamhur takes the Asus GL502VS with GTX 1070 for a spin.

Earlier this month Nvidia announced that their next generation GTX 10-series GPUs would find their way into a wide range of gaming notebooks from top manufacturers, and further that those GPUs would no longer bear the ‘M’ (for ‘Mobile’) designation which denoted a significant decrease in performance compared to their desktop brethren. This time around, the company says that the GTX 1080, 1070, and 1060 cards found in gaming laptops are within 10% of the performance of their desktop counterparts, making all of them ‘VR Ready’.

Given the substantial challenges that facing notebooks compared to a desktop (size, heat, power, etc), that claim certainly raises a few eyebrows. And yet in our hands-on with several of the GTX 10-series equipped laptops, VR performance impressed, with smooth 90 FPS rendering from demanding VR titles like Raw Data and Pool Nation VR.

nvidia-pascal-mobile-vr-ready-virtual-reality-4 — **See Also:** Hands-on – New GTX 10-Series Equipped Notebooks Put Desktop VR Performance in a Portable Package

In the video above our friend Ritchie Djamhur from Ritchie’s Room finds the same smooth VR gameplay from the Asus GL502VS equipped with the mobile GTX 1070. Running the notebook with both the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, he found flawless VR gameplay even on titles like Trials on Tatooine.

“[Judging from the VR performance] I wouldn’t have known I was on a notebook if I wasn’t the one that set it up,” Djamhur said.

Impressively, Nvidia says this new generation of VR Ready laptops can come in form-factors as thin as 18mm and as light as 4 pounds. While the Asus GL502VS on display here will run you a hefty $1,700, the 1060-equipped Asus GL502VM can be had for $1,400.

The post Hands-on with the VR Ready Asus GL502VS Laptop with Nvidia GTX 1070 appeared first on Road to VR.

August 27, 2016

Oculus Explains Why They Didn’t Launch Touch with the Rift (Even Though They Could Have)

Founder reveals the Oculus Touch 'Half Moon' Prototype in 2015 | Photo courtesy Oculus

Oculus says they could have shipped Touch alongside the launch of the Rift back in April, but explains why they’ve been biding their time.

Despite delaying their Touch VR motion controller to the latter half of 2016, Oculus says the hardware could have gone out the door on day one.

“It was possible for us to launch the first Touch device when we showed it, and everyone said ‘this is awesome,’ we could have shipped it,” said Jason Rubin, Head of Content at Oculus, speaking with Road to VR at Gamescom 2016 earlier this month.

Valve's 'Chaperone' system displays a virtual wall inside the headset | Photo courtesy Valve — **See Also:** Oculus is Working on a ‘Chaperone’-like Boundary System for Touch

Although a strong hardware foundation was there, the company didn’t want to put the hardware out before they felt there was an equally strong software base to support it, Rubin explains.

“[If we launched Touch with the Rift] there would have been a bunch of demos and a few good titles (like Job Simulator and Fantastic Contraption) […] we wanted to give our developers enough time to really create a launch line up, a good slate of titles that would last hours as opposed to minutes of enjoyment, and we think that that takes time. So more than tweaking the hardware, we wanted to give the software some time.”

Given that decision, Oculus opted to continue tweaking the Touch design to improve both ergonomics and performance as developers continued to toil away on the software side.

“Developers are really happy with what they’ve got, and we didn’t want to release it until we were happy with the ergonomics, every button was in the right place, everything was perfect,” Rubin said.

Progression of Oculus Touch development kits | **See Also:** Latest Version of Touch has Better Tracking & Longer Range, Says Oculus

Indeed, we’d seen several iterations of Touch now, with varying button placements. Rubin also said that the very latest iteration was “pretty much the final iteration” and that it had improved tracking performance and range.

Although Oculus said they wouldn’t openly sell a Touch development kit available (as they had done with the Rift), they committed to sending out a substantial 5,000+ dev kits to select developers prior to the launch. While the company still hasn’t announced a price or release date more specific than ‘Q4 of 2016,’ we’re expecting to hear much more about the controllers at the forthcoming Oculus Connect developer conference on October.

The post Oculus Explains Why They Didn’t Launch Touch with the Rift (Even Though They Could Have) appeared first on Road to VR.

August 26, 2016

Survey: 78% of AR/VR Developers Not Planning Platform-exclusive Content

In a survey published by VRDC, AR and VR developers are largely leaning toward platform agnostic development for their next projects.

While Oculus and Valve/HTC continue to take two different approaches to stoking the development of VR games and applications—Oculus providing funding to developers in exchange for platform-exclusivity; Valve/HTC opting to let devs go it alone—the VR/AR Innovation Report survey published by VRDC suggests that the great majority of developers expect their next AR/VR development projects to be platform agnostic.

Unless there’s a considerable deal struck for exclusivity, many developers will naturally want to make their product accessible on as many platforms as possible, but some may choose to stick to a single platform for other reasons such as ease-of-development/support, or unique platform features.

See Also: Platform Politics: Inside the Oculus and ‘Revive’ Dilemma — **See Also:** Platform Politics – Inside the Oculus and ‘Revive’ Dilemma

While the figure above is interesting, it should be noted that the sample size of the survey is only 500 respondents. It also presumably doesn’t speak just to Oculus Home and Steam platforms, but also includes those like Gear VR, Google Cardboard, Google Daydream, PlayStation VR, and others.

The survey also found that when it comes to the respondents’ next AR/VR projects, most were planning to develop for the HTC Vive over others.

For more insight into the VR industry, check out VRDC’s full report which you can get for free here. For detailed analysis and data on the state of the VR industry also check out the 2016 Virtual Reality Report.

Road to VR is a proud media partner of VRDC 2016

The post Survey: 78% of AR/VR Developers Not Planning Platform-exclusive Content appeared first on Road to VR.

August 26, 2016

Oculus is Working on a ‘Chaperone’-like Boundary System for Touch

Physically moving your body around to move through the virtual world is a great way to enhance immersion, but it can be potentially dangerous if users lose a sense of their real world surroundings. To keep users safe, Valve introduced what they call the ‘Chaperone’ for the HTC Vive headset, a virtual wall which appears when needed to keep users from exiting a safe playspace. Oculus is working on their own version of such a system which will be especially important for the upcoming launch of their Touch VR controllers.

The Chaperone system allows HTC Vive users to map out a safe area in the real world which will be reflected in the virtual world to keep them from walking into walls or swinging their hands into furniture. Chaperone on the Vive has been unquestionably effective, working well enough that users can lose themselves in the virtual world without fear of running into the physical one.

The HTC Vive Setup Guide shows an open playspace for roomscale VR experiences

The idea of a virtual boundary to keep the user inside a real-world safezone isn’t radical, but it’s not something Oculus has talked much about up to this point. With the impending launch of the Touch VR controller coming by year’s end, implementation of such a system is critical.

As it turns out, Oculus has had a boundary system in the works for some time. I saw a brief glimpse of it for the first time at a conference in June where Oculus was showing off their Touch controllers.

It was after a four player match of Dead & Buried; Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus, pulled me aside and asked if I had noticed anything peculiar about this particular build of the game. After saying I hadn’t, he urged me to put the headset back on and then walk to my left. After few steps I saw a horizontal floating line appear in front of me about stomach-height. As I traced it with my eyes to the left, I could see that it encompassed me entirely, appearing like a square with rounded corners.

dead-and-buried — ‘Dead & Buried’ gets you moving. Here the company is showing the game with rubber mats to help keep users within a safe playspace | **See Also:** ‘Dead & Buried’ Action Packed Multiplayer Could be the Killer App Oculus Touch Needs

Interestingly, this boundary wasn’t actually just a line; it appeared as a piece of barbed wire, fitting with Dead & Buried’s Western aesthetic. This suggests of course that developers may have the ability to style the Oculus boundary system to suit their game. Chaperone on the HTC Vive, on the other hand, can be customized by the user, but I haven’t ever seen it styled on a developer controlled, per-application basis.

oculus-touch-vr-input-controller-with-rift — **See Also:** Oculus: Touch is “Fully Capable” of Roomscale Tracking, But Skeptical It’s “Absolutely Necessary for VR”

While we’d expect the Oculus boundary system to initially launch with the Touch VR controllers (given that it will mean the move from seated to standing VR for many users), it’s reasonable to think that the system might be useful even for seated VR experiences which use a standalone headset. I’ve seen people immersed in a seated VR experience bump their headsets on a desk (and done it myself plenty of times).

While we’re likely to hear more about Oculus’ boundary system at the company’s ‘Connect’ developer conference this October, one major unanswered question is whether or not Valve’s pending patent for Chaperone (or more specifically, “Sensory feedback systems and methods for guiding users in virtual reality environments“) might present any issue to Oculus if it were to be granted. Interestingly, Valve’s own Chaperone system actually already works with the Rift for users who have the headset connected to Steam.

The post Oculus is Working on a ‘Chaperone’-like Boundary System for Touch appeared first on Road to VR.

August 25, 2016

‘Obduction’ Oculus Rift Support Coming “in a few weeks,” Included With All Copies of the Game

Obduction, the hotly anticipated adventure puzzle game from the creators of Myst (1993), launched on PC on August 24th, but did so before the Oculus Rift version of the game was ready for release. Now the creators say it will be a little bit longer, but eventually anyone with the game will get access to the Rift version.

We reviewed a “pre-release” version of Obduction with Oculus Rift support on launch day, but the general public won’t be able to put their heads into the game’s wild world for a “few weeks” yet, confirms Chris Doyle, Director of New Experiences at developer Cyan, via Twitter.

Citing need for some additional tweaks before it goes out the door, Cyan elaborated via a Kickstarter update:

The VR (Rift) version of Obduction is coming soon. Sorry for the slight delay, but it needs a bit more optimizations and some UI polishing. The good news is that your code will also give you the full VR version. Everyone who gets the game will get the VR version. No questions asked, no hidden fees or handling charges. ;) We don’t have an exact ship date for it, yet. We’ve got an update already underway that we’ll be testing as a possible candidate for VR release. We’ll keep you updated on the VR progress.

The good news at least is that Oculus Rift support for Obduction will come with all versions of the game, so if you were too eager to wait and bought the game on launch day, you’ll be able to play it with the Oculus Rift once support is ready.

Rift support, as it turns out, almost wasn’t going to make it into the game. It was a $1.3 million stretch goal of the Kickstarter which fueled development of Obduction. In the end, the campaign raised $1.32 million, just enough to activate the stretch goal to include Rift support.

At least as far as the non-VR version of Obduction is concerned, reviews on Steam have rated the game ‘Very Positive’, with 96% of reviewers giving the game a positive recommendation.

In our review of the pre-release Oculus Rift version of Obduction, Road to VR’s Scott Hayden generally enjoyed the game, save for a few blemishes (some of which may be fixed up by the time Rift support hits the game widely). Scott surmises his experience:

On the whole, Obduction actually does live up to the hype. It was a refreshing dive back into a classic that captured the same air of wonder I felt back then, especially when tinged with the frustration of having to backtrack to previous areas to collect a browsed-over clue. This, to me, isn’t a con though. It’s a feature that begs your attention, demands your critical thinking skills, and punishes you for not trying your best.

As for HTC Vive VR support in Obduction (and the possibility of motion controls), we’re waiting to hear back about Cyan’s latest plans.

The post ‘Obduction’ Oculus Rift Support Coming “in a few weeks,” Included With All Copies of the Game appeared first on Road to VR.

August 25, 2016

‘Rick and Morty’ Co-creator & Former Epic Games Exec. Producer Form New VR Studio, Squanchtendo

With a name that could only have come from the mind of Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland, Squanchtendo is a VR game studio founded by Roiland and former Epic Games producer Tanya Watson to “[combine] edgy, mature comedy with refined, high-end gameplay mechanics and stories.”

While many of you may remember the official VR game Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality that was announced back in July, it seems as if the development of that title will remain in the hands of the venerable Owlchemy Labs while Roiland’s own Squanchtendo will focus on original IP.

The new studio is making its existence known ahead of PAX next week where they’ll reveal their first VR project.

2010_Justin_Roiland — Justin Roiland | Photo courtesy Justin Roiland (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Roiland, who voices both Rick and Morty on the show, has significant experience in the world of TV production. More recently he’s voice-acted for a number of games (including VR titles The Lab and Hover Junkers) however it appears that Squanchtendo marks Roiland’s first significant step into the world of videogame development. If you haven’t seen Rick and Morty, you can get a sense for him and his unique style of comedy writing from the bio shared on the Squanchtendo website:

Justin is afraid of his mortality and hopes the things he creates will make lots of people happy. Then maybe when modern civilization collapses into chaos, people will remember him and they’ll help him survive the bloodshed and violence. Global economic collapse is looming. It’s going to be horrible, and honestly, a swift death may be preferable than living in the hell that awaits mankind. Justin also really hates writing about himself in the third person. I hate this. That’s right. It’s me. I’ve been writing this whole thing. Hi. The cat’s out of the bag. It’s just you and me now. There was never a third person. If you want to know anything about me, just ask. Sorry this wasn’t more informative.

Balancing Roiland’s comedy prowess with some significant experience in the world of game development is co-founder Tanya Watson who spent some 10 years with Epic Games, working across Associate and Executive Producer positions on games like Unreal Tournament 3 (2007), Gears of War 2 (2008) and 3 (2011), Bulletstorm (2011), and Fortnite.

While Roiland may be new to game development, it’s clear to anyone following his Twitter feed that he’s been thinking of jumping into this space for quite some time:

I'm five months into designing/ writing/ developing (on paper) an original HTC vive game. I'm obsessed. I will get funding. I will.

— Justin Roiland (@JustinRoiland) June 10, 2016

Oh god VR. Oh god. Oh god VR. Oh god. Oh my god VR. Oh god VR. Please. Oh god please VR. Oh my god VR please. Oh god VR

— Justin Roiland (@JustinRoiland) June 10, 2016

He’s been brainstorming ideas for VR games for a while as well, and was also a backer of the original 2012 Oculus Rift Kickstarter.

Squanchtendo is currently hiring for Design, Art, Programming, Production, and Admin roles; we can only hope that squanching will not be part of the job descriptions.

The post ‘Rick and Morty’ Co-creator & Former Epic Games Exec. Producer Form New VR Studio, Squanchtendo appeared first on Road to VR.

August 23, 2016

Free Shipping on Oculus Rift Through August 31st

According to the official Oculus product page, the company is offering free shipping on Rift orders through the end of the month.

If you’re looking to pick up an Oculus Rift, you can snag a small discount if you order before the end of the month, thanks to a free shipping offer from the company.

oculus touch apple marketing — **See Also:** 3 Moves Oculus is Borrowing from Apple’s Marketing Playbook

Following shipping delays with the headset’s initial launch earlier this year, the company eventually sorted things out and beat back a 4 month order backlog, announcing in July that all pending Rifts had been shipped. Currently the Oculus Store says that headsets usually ship within 2 business days.

If you’re an Amazon Prime member, you need not fear the limited nature of this free shipping offer, as you can order the Rift directly from Amazon through Prime to get free two-day shipping (or one day for a little extra) whenever you want.

The post Free Shipping on Oculus Rift Through August 31st appeared first on Road to VR.

August 23, 2016

‘PlayStation VR Worlds’ Gets New Features to Improve Casual and Competitive Play

PlayStation VR Worlds is a collection of VR mini-games created by Sony’s talented London Studio. The studio has detailed new features designed to improve first-time VR experiences for those showing VR to their friends and family, and competitive features to keep gamers coming back for more.

Bundled with the PlayStation VR Launch Bundle (or available separately for $40), PlayStation VR Worlds players will be able to step into five different experiences: The London Heist, Ocean Desert, Scavengers Odyssey, VR Luge and Danger Ball.

Today via the Official PlayStation Blog, PlayStation VR Worlds Lead Designer Simon Hermitage detailed new features of the experiences that expands replayability and improves the game’s effectiveness as a introductory experience for players who are new to VR (and even gaming in general).

Casual

The London Heist, for instance, has a casual mode that adds laser sights to the guns and reduces difficulty by increasing with aim-assist and reducing enemy damage to the player.

“With this mode enabled, you can experience The London Heist as more of an interactive story and still get to the dramatic finale,” Hermitage writes.

desert-ocean — Photo courtesy Sony London Studio

Further on the casual end, Ocean Desert, which has the player being submersed in a diving cage, has three selectable dives which vary in length and intensity (the final one including the not-so-unexpected shark attack). Hermitage says that the longest of the three dives has a mystery story running throughout it for players to ponder.

Competitive

On the competitive side, there’s now leaderboards pretty much anywhere that it makes sense, giving players a ranking against which to measure themselves and strive to beat records of friends and nemeses alike.

The London Heist now has four shooting ranges which will test your meddle with the game’s various weaponry, and record your score separately for both laser-sighted and unassisted modes.

Dangerball also gets a scoring leaderboard in the Score Attack Mode. “Dangerball’s Score Attack is an endurance VR game where players must hit the highest scoring tiles and maintain combos to push for the high score.” There’s also Tournament and Quick play modes with special modes like “power shots, swerve balls, and ball splitting.”

VR Luge naturally gets timed leaderboards for seeing who is able to race to the bottom the fastest, and players will be able to race against the ‘ghosts’ of others. “We also have a fiendishly difficult VR Luge Tour, where players must complete all four tracks consecutively within a difficult target time before they can post their time to the exclusive Champion’s leaderboard,” Hermitage explains.

playstation-vr-worlds-1 — **See Also:** Hands On – ‘PlayStation VR Worlds’ is an Immersive Starter Pack for PSVR

To round out the total experience of PlayStation VR Worlds, Hermitage says that there’s carefully crafted trophy challenges which will “give you tricky gameplay targets to achieve, special actions to perform, and new places to visit.”

From what we’ve seen of PlayStation VR Worlds previously, the game is wrapping up to be a great package of starting experiences for PSVR. Combined with the excellent looking Playroom VR, which comes for free with every PlayStation VR, those who pick up the headset’s bundle are going to have a solid amount of out-of-the-box VR content to play before they hunger for more.

The post ‘PlayStation VR Worlds’ Gets New Features to Improve Casual and Competitive Play appeared first on Road to VR.

August 23, 2016

‘Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare’ VR Experience to be Shown on PSVR at Official Fan Event

Debuting early next month at Call of Duty XP 2016, the official fan celebration hosted by Activision, attendees will have a chance to see what’s being called an “exclusive” Call of Duty VR experience running on PlayStation VR.

The experience is said to be based on the upcoming Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, and give players an opportunity to pilot a ‘Jackal’, the personal fighter jet that players will be able to fly in the game which is due out this November.

Piloting the Jackal in 'Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare' | Photo courtesy Activision/Infinity Ward — Piloting the Jackal in ‘Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare’ | Photo courtesy Activision/Infinity Ward

Representatives from Call of Duty XP 2016 confirm that the experience is a “one-off”, suggesting that it’s focused on marketing/branding rather than something that’s destined for a widespread consumer release. It isn’t clear if the project was developed in-house or contracted out to a third-party.

Still, this is the first time we’re seeing Activision and the Call of Duty brand dip a toe into the world of VR, which can only be a positive sign for the future.

Activision, like many other major videogame publishers, has been cautious to jump into the VR space before the market has reached an inflection point. When it comes to big publishers, Ubisoft, who recently confirmed the launch dates of three VR games, is the among the most active in the VR space.

For those looking to adapt existing non-VR Call of Duty Games for modern VR headsets, the VR injection driver vorpX supports Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

The post ‘Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare’ VR Experience to be Shown on PSVR at Official Fan Event appeared first on Road to VR.

August 22, 2016March 21, 2017

‘Apex’, the Next Real-time VR Music Video from Creator of the Acclaimed ‘Surge’, Premiers Next Month

Arjan van Meerten, the indie 3D artist and musician behind the widely acclaimed Surge VR music video, has confirmed Apex as his next project.

Update (3/21/17, 11:35AM PT): In development since 2016, the followup to the acclaimed Surge is finally set to make its world premiere. Apex will debut at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival next month as part of the event’s Virtual Arcade section. A teaser for the experience states:

Step into a surrealistic and darkly beautiful vision of a fiery urban apocalypse; one populated by skeletal ghost animals, abstract shapes, maniacal smiling giants and, of course, you.

It isn’t clear when (or how) after the debut that Apex will get a release date for the rest of us, but Surge eventually found its way to the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive so we’re hoping for the same thing time around. Original article continues below.

Surge, launched freely back in early 2015—the days of the second Rift development (DK2)—was a curiously compelling piece of music set to a real-time VR rendering of abstract shapes and scenery that reacted to the music. As with the best of impressionist art, the piece evoked emotions from composition, aesthetic, and scale, without relying heavily on symbolic visuals. Surge stood as a compelling glimpse into where the future of music and virtual reality might take us.