Various video game genres benefit from the degree of movement allowed within VR and, arguably, none benefit more directly than puzzle games. Classic hidden object games, a small branch off from puzzles, were typically static and asked players to dissect scenes as they gather different items.
Hidden object games are much more involved when coupled with VR headsets, unlocking those static experiences. Hidden Fortune by Archiact is one such experience that takes a couple steps forward and then leaps backward.
In Hidden Fortune, you play the role of a wizard as he assists a few characters with gathering their lost items. The opening tutorial that takes place in a hub/airship has you figure out the game’s main mechanic by shooting your magic orbs at gems that are scattered around the room. To shoot the orb, you tap the touchpad of the Gear VR — the vast majority of the game’s functionality is handled this way. You’ll use this not only just to collect items, but to teleport around different areas and initiate conversation with non-playable characters as you encounter them.
The teleport mechanic could have benefited by just having you select it with your gaze and hitting the touchpad, but you move by shooting the orb into a movable space instead. It’s a curious design choice and only a minor grievance.
Thankfully, you’ll be moving around a pretty spiffy looking cave. The graphics for the game are sharp and, despite the scarce sunlight, the cave you explore is pretty vibrant. The different sections of the cave are lovely and they have a peaceful ambiance to them accented by the small stream running throughout. All of the objects are well modeled as well, but not so distinctly designed that they seem out of place as you search for them. The game has a high degree of comfort with no high-speed movements to speak of and a consistent framerate.
There are object hunts and music puzzles but the foundation of the game is in the hidden object style of gameplay. An early example includes a task where you look for items to include in a recipe. Once you complete it you’re given a chest filled with gold, which is how you level up, and sometimes a diary entry. As you teleport around, you’ll note that there are some spots that are limited to a certain minimum level. To traverse the cavern, you’ll have to replay the same encounters to gain enough gold and level up.
This cheapens each encounter and extends the playtime of the game in an artificial way. It also doesn’t help that the interactions that lead to the actual task take what feels like a few too many pages of dialogue and this is made more glaringly apparent when you have to redo them with no way to skip the conversation and start.
Immediately the voice acting for this game is absolutely grating on the ears. The characters you encounter have personalities that run from overly eccentric to comically dull, but the diary entries you find in treasure chests are also fully voiced. For some reason, those reading the entries seem to have been given instruction to act out in the most ridiculous voices they can muster but you’ll be glad to know you can skip over them at the cost of missing story elements. The characters you encounter will ramble on as you work thru menus, though, so there’s no avoiding them. Worse yet, the NPCs will repeat the same victory dialogue each time you complete the tasks that you’ll have to repeat in order to progress.
Final Score:4/10 – Disappointing
With Hidden Fortune, the hidden object tasks are the expected casual fare without a lot of variety to them. Unfortunately, the puzzles are also held captive behind uninteresting characters, nail-on-chalkboard voice acting, and unnecessary design choices that pad the playtime. If you decide to give it a go, playing with the volume down could enhance your experience ten-fold.
You can purchase Hidden Fortune on the Oculus store for Gear VR at the price of $3.99. Read our Game Review Guidelines for more information on how we arrived at this score.
Charles Singletary is a Contributing Writer at UploadVR. He likes to spend his time searching for the diamonds in the rough for various VR platforms. Follow him on Twitter for more.
If you’re in the LA area or you’re willing to make the trip, VRLA will be taking place next week on April 14th and 15th. Attendees will have access to over 130 VR and AR experiences on the expo floor and get a glimpse into the future of storytelling, entertainment, social interaction, and more. Those interested can register for a pass to the show. There’s a Saturday Pass for $40 ($30 for students) and a Pro Pass for access for both days. On Saturday attendees will be able to experience the expo floor and any panels or programs for that day, but the pass for both days includes a great deal of incentives and opportunities for professionals. The showroom will have a limited amount of badges on the floor at one time and shorter lines but, more importantly, there will be developer and business centered panels and events.
There are quite a few programs scheduled and here are a few of note:
Friday
10:35 am – 10:55 am | Expanding the VR Ecosystem hosted by Rikard Steiber of HTC
VR came into living rooms less than a year ago and has already captured the public imagination in a way that’s reminiscent of other rapidly mass adopted technology such as HDTVs, smartphones and tablets. Yet VR’s potential is greater than a single device category or computing platform. The immersion of VR and its application in areas ranging from games and entertainment to education and enterprise positions it as the next mass adopted medium. The question is, when will we get there? This session looks at how Vive is accelerating the adoption of VR with both consumer and enterprise facing initiatives, and giving developers more ways to fund and monetize premium VR content.
1:00 pm – 3:30 pm | Creating Experiences for the Hololens with Unity hosted by Kat Harris and Adam Tuliper of Microsoft
This workshop is an introduction to the HoloLens. The HoloLens is a new, mixed reality device from Microsoft. This workshop explores what the HoloLens is, what makes the HoloLens unique, and how to work with its three pillars of input – Gaze, Gesture, and Voice. One of the most fascinating features is spatial mapping, one of the ways the HoloLens understands space around you. This workshop will also take you through ways to work with the spatial information to integrate with the real world. Next we’ll explore the complete workflow on how to develop applications for the HoloLens with Unity, as this allows us to integrate easily into the Windows Holographic API. You can sign into your Streampoint account here and skip to step two of registration to access the workshops.
Saturday
10:00 am – 12:30 pm | Girls Make VR hosted by Sarah Stumbo and Mark Schoennagel of Unity
Girls aged 13-18 will be introduced to the Unity game engine with hands-on learning, including the workflows and features used by top game studios. Join us to create a 3D, VR-ready experience from start to finish while touching upon new tools Unity offers. Application open for a select period of time.
11:35 am – 12:00 pm | Justin Roiland Keynote
Justin Roiland, the “Rick & Morty” creator and newly-minted founder of the VR studio Squanchtendo aims to dive into the surreally funny possibilities of the medium in his keynote, remarking “What does the future of VR hold? Will there be more wizard games? Are grandmas real? What IS a wizard really? Are there wizard grandmas? How does this factor into VR? I did all this (simple) math and then made a power point presentation that I **think** maaaayyybe has these questions (and more) all figured out. Please come to my incredible keynote address on the state of VR! You juuuust might learn something, maybe, I don’t know. I can’t make any promises on that because you may already know everything.”
Founded in 1999, the ODG (Osterhout Design Group) has thrived as a tech incubator specializing in high-performance electronics in a small form factor. Today they build mobile wearable tech and products for virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. ODG previously brought their augmented R-7 smart glasses to market featuring 64gb of storage, Bluetooth functionality, and even an HD camera all running on a custom operating system built on Android Kit-Kat.
Now, they’ve announced a “hazardous location” version of the R-7 that will bring some added productivity and efficiency to more dangerous work environments.
The R-7HL is a powerful piece of tech that brings wearable mobility and power to those involved in mining, chemical production, oil production and exploration, energy, and utilities. The smart glasses include all of the functionality of the original R-7, a device in which 50% of its market consisted of workers in harsh environments. The certification for the R-7HL, called HAZLOC, tests criteria surrounding dust, shock, vibration, splash, temperature, and pressure extremes.
“As with the smartphone, the demand is there for robust and rugged devices that can aid productivity, but the benefit with smart glasses is that your hands are free and your head is up, bringing even greater efficiencies and safety protection,” said Mike Jude, Ph.D., Research Manager for Frost & Sullivan in an excerpt from ODG’s press release for the announcement. “We have had the opportunity to review the ODG R-7 and were very impressed with its capabilities. The new R-7HL offers the R-7’s capabilities in a new hardened package perfect for extreme environments. ODG’s heritage in the space, and existing customer relationships, positions them well for continued success in bringing real value to the enterprise.”
Starting today, the R-7HL costs $3,500 and can be preordered now by submitting a form to ODG detailing your use for the product. It will begin shipping by the end of the 2nd quarter of 2017.
Whether by haptic claws or well-designed VR controllers like the Oculus Touch, there’s a mission to bring an intricate level of control to VR involving natural interaction with our hands. Since kids, we’ve emulated different devices with our hands like making a gun for cops and robber with index finger and thumb extended from a fist. The CaptoGlove, a wearable piece of tech fully funded on Kickstarter, is taking that idea and bringing gesture-based gaming and computing to life.
The glove itself includes multiple sensors and connects to other hardware wirelessly via Bluetooth 4.0. With it, players are able able to swing, aim, and fire weapons, pilot vehicles, and more with intuitive gestures. The glove also has capacitive ends for the index and thumb so you can manipulate touch screens without having to remove it. With all of these things, it also is said to offer up to 10 hours of continuous play time. There are already quite a few meant to show off the glove in action, most of them involving first-person shooters. There are a few other intriguing demos as well, like using the glove in a handle-bar fashion to steer a speeder bike in Star Wars Battlefront or swiping through menus on your cell phone by just doing a swipe gesture with the glove-equipped hand.
As designed, the CaptoGlove is going to work with old and future games out of the box and include multiple preset control options while remaining fully customizable. It will also work with every VR headset on the market, which is where the device will likely be most impactful. The Vive and Rift have solid controllers, but the CaptoGlove would be a welcome wearable that boosts the immersion of the growing number of virtual experiences.
The CaptoGlove still has more than two weeks left for its funding campaign at the time of this writing, but it has already reached its $50,000 goal. The glove is expected to retail for $250 but promised for $160 via Kickstarter via an early bird special.
Game development is difficult, and VR game development is often harder. In the past, we’ve reported on different entities coming to grips with the difficulties of VR development from Star Citizen’s concerns with frame rate to the developer of Nebulous warning that the non-VR version of a VR game can damage both final products. The global head of VR for creative crew Framestore even took figureheads to task for expecting teams working on interactive VR content related to films to finish up in the same amount of time allotted for non-VR content. It looks like the realities of VR’s complexity may have claimed another victim as developer Farm 51 removed VR entirely from their upcoming game Get Even.
Get Even is a tense action/thriller FPS where you awaken in an abandoned asylum as protagonist Cole Black with a strange device fused to his head. The device reads and replays human memory so you’ll be exploring the depths of Cole’s mind while trying to solve the mystery of your predicament and attempting to save a young girl that currently has a bomb strapped to her chest. The premise seems interesting as a standard gaming experience and sounds like it would definitely benefit from the immersion afforded in VR. In 2014, the game was announced to have VR functionality even featuring Rift support in a making of video, but as you can see on their Steam page, there’s not one mention of VR as it charges forward to a Spring release.
We reached out to Bandai Namco for comment on the development and this was their response:
“VR is not planned for now but it’s always interesting to use new technology. We haven’t focused on that at the moment as our priority was to offer the best experience with our current tools. We could make a special version for VR later on but this is not the plan right now.”
Considering the way the game was discussed early on, VR was obviously a goal but it’s reasonable to believe they realized they were hurting the content by splitting up work on a VR and non-VR version and decided to shelve that for the time being. If the game has a successful launch, maybe Farm 51 will make the VR version a reality?
April Fools’ Day is a holiday that you either love or absolutely hate, likely dependent on what side of the joke you end up on. Some just enjoy the hijinks altogether and there’s no doubting that millions will be on the lookout for the next well written or produced prank.
Some goofs catch us unaware and leave us with a feeling of disappointment but one of the best augmented reality April Fool’s jokes became a pop culture phenomenon, possibly inspiring one the biggest AR experiences we’ve received to date. Today we’re rounding up the best VR/AR influenced April Fools’ pranks of 2017 (article will be updated as more pranks are revealed).
Ms. Pac-Man Google Maps Edition
Google has a pretty stout pedigree when it comes to April Fools’ Day. They’ve done the Google Plastic, Snoopavision 360-degree video, and others. Now, if you open up your Google Maps application on your phone or even on the website, you can play an augmented version of Ms. Pac-Man. You’ll weave through your local streets in this version as you munch on dots and avoid the ghosts (until you grab a power pellet of course).
Google’s Haptic Helpers
Continuing with the Google theme here, we also wrote about a revolutionary new breakthrough in haptics technology: Haptic Helpers. Instead of having to imagine what things in VR smell or taste like, these Helpers will do everything they can do make sure your experience is as immersive as possible.
A Journey Around My Room: Luxury Travel For Cheap via VR
Via press release, luxury travel company Brown + Hudson unveiled their new program that allows you to experience the psychological and physical benefits of travel without leaving your home. “The idea was inspired by a client who would commission us to design the most incredible trips, pay and then cancel at the last minute, to the disappointment of their family. So we decided to bring the destination to them,” says Philippe Brown, founder of Brown + Hudson in the release. The program works by sending you a box filled with an Oculus Rift pre-loaded with your booked destination, a week of menus, and a Moroccan chef to fix your meals. It’s only a tidy £150,000.
Cosmic Trip on Nintendo’s Virtual Boy
Funktronic Labs shocked the world with their announcement today that their premier VR RTS title, Cosmic Trip, would officially be releasing for Nintendo’s ill-fated Virtual Boy headset. It’s the first game to hit the platform in over 20 years and marks a big move for the industry to take several steps back just to look forward.
Taito’s VIP VR Reality
Game developer Taito revealed on their website a new level of virtual gaming for their game Takeshi’s Challenge. Players can experience the taste of blood via wine, experience smell via the built-in mask, and have battle scars put on by a team of Hollywood makeup artists.
BoneVR
Finally there’s something that is meant as a joke, but in actuality we’ve seen happening around social media for over a year now and that’s putting animals in VR. Today, we learned all about BoneVR, which is billed as “VR for canines” and is set to launch this month, in April of 2017.
UploadVR Games Editor David Jagneaux contributed to this story.
It’s a new week and you have quite an impressive collection of new Vive games to choose from including gorgeous narrative experiences and intense shooters. First up we have Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter, a VR port of the HD remaster of the original game. With the single player campaign and both competitive and cooperative multiplayer in tow, there’s a lot of meat on the bones of this one. Check out our previous report breaking down the game. Another highlight this week involves the classic conflict between Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes. Moriarty: Endgame VR takes the battle of the minds to a post-apocalyptic world and allows you to watch the story unfold in a living virtual comic book. Of the narrative slant, we also have Project LUX. While it has some of the most impressive animations and art you’ll see in the VR ecosystem, it may be hard to justify the higher price point.
We also have a top list of the absolute best HTC Vive games — which is updated every few months with the latest and greatest options.
New HTC Vive Releases on Steam
Mouse Playhouse, from Tinkertainment
Price: Free To Play
In Mouse Playhouse you must manipulate objects and solve spatial puzzles as you guide your mouse comrade to the cheese. Throw objects, play basketball, and throw darts as you avoid the Meowbots and grab the cheese.
Recommendation: Free and fun. Give this one a shot.
EXA: The Infinite Instrument, from Aesthetic Interactive, Zach Kinstner
Price: $14.99
EXA welcomes you to a new dimension of music creation with a versatile virtual instrument. The tool can take any form and produce any sound which you can playback in loops.
Recommendation: If you’re interested in making music, this is a must have program.
Bitcoin VR, from Indiesquare, Mandelduck
Price: Free To Play
This application gives you a virtual space in which you can view bitcoin transactions in real time as they fall from the sky and shoot them with a bow and arrow.
Recommendation: Very niche experience. You’ll definitely know if you want it or not.
Moriarty: Endgame VR, from Transmedia Entertainment
Price: $7.99 (Currently Discounted)
Moriarty: End Game is a living virtual comic book where players are allowed to enter and experience the panels/scenes of the stories. The story takes you into a post-apocalyptic world where Moriarty takes on Sherlock Holmes in their final conflict.
Recommendation: Very intriguing style of storytelling. If you’re looking for a newer way to experience a narrative, grab it.
Downward Spiral: Prologue, from 3rd Eye Studios Oy LTD
Price: $8.99 (Currently Discounted)
Influenced by 70s sci-fi, Downward Spiral drops you into a zero-G journey. You can either work through the story solo or with a friend or engage in a deathmatch mode for up to 8 players. The game includes modes with or without room-scale and locomotion that promotes comfort.
Recommendation: Very short experience that includes PvP to add a bit more value. You may disappointed with the length, but this could be an investment in a really interesting series. Check out our impressions here.
Enigma Sphere: Enhanced Edition, from Yomuneco Inc.
Price: $14.39 (Currently Discounted)
This enhanced edition of Enigma Sphere includes new game modes and experiences as you become a superagent in this interesting world. You’ll solve puzzles, find hidden spheres, and destroy android life forms in the story mode. Then, you can play challenge, sphere attack, and other modes for a more casual experience.
Recommendation: There’s a lot of fun and value to be found in this dense package. Grab it.
Project LUX, from Spicy Tails
Price: $22.49 (Currently Discounted)
In Project LUX there is mystery afoot. The crime is murder and you’ll watch the narrative unfold as characters seek out the killer of Lux. This animated story takes place across five episodes where you relive the memories of Lux as they’re pulled from her cyberbrain.
Recommendation: This is an absolutely gorgeous story-driven program, but it’s hard to warrant the price for a largely hands-off experience.
Alchemist Defender VR, from TreeView Studios
Price: $13.49 (Currently Discounted)
Alchemist Defender is a tower defense title where you fend off humanoid rat assailants with ranged attacks and a hammer for melee. There are different turret types you can deploy and relocate as you figure out the best strategy for your defense.
Recommendation: Pretty good looking new tower defender, but won’t immediately displace other similar games you may already have. Choose wisely.
Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter, from Croteam VR
Price: $39.99
The First Encounter is a full VR port of the 2009 HD remaster of the original Serious Sam game and comes with not only teleportation style movement but full locomotion for those that can handle it. Here you get the full single-player campaign, cooperative multiplayer, and competitive multiplayer in Serious Engine 2017. It was in Early Access before, but now this is the full release.
Recommendation: Absolutely must have for FPS fans. If you can handle full locomotion in VR, there’s even more value to be found. Here are our thoughts.
#Archery, from VRUnicorns
Price: $8.49 (Currently Discounted)
This game takes the art of archery and applies it to an entire swath of jobs, resulting in a wacky casual experience. With your bow and arrow, you’ll be taking on mini-games that end with you baking pizzas, eating hot dogs, whacking moles, and more.
Recommendation: Grab this one. It’s a lot of fun.
Planet Defender, from Fevolution Innovation Inc.
Price: $6.99
Planet Defender is a wave shooter where you have 150 seconds to take down as many creatures as possible in pursuit of a high score.
Recommendation: There are similar experiences with more to them at a similar price elsewhere. Pass on this.
Virtual Sports, from Free Range Games
Price: $16.99 (Currently Discounted)
From Vive Studios, Virtual Sports is aiming to be a definitive tennis and ping pong experience for the virtual platform. With realistic physics, you’ll be hitting balls across the net in 8 different environments against bots or other players.
Recommendation: Tennis is solid as is Ping Pong, but the latter could use a few more options for controls. Keep an eye on it but hold off.
Happy Penguin VR, from Bellcat VR
Price: $3.59 (Currently Discounted)
Happy Penguin is a VR spin on the Angry Birds play style with you whacking the flightless birds across a landscape to collect tokens. There are different types of penguins, different tools to hit them with, and different props to equip.
Recommendation: Not a bad casual grab.
Dick Wilde, from Bolverk Games
Price: $16.99 (Currently Discounted)
In Dicke Wilde you play the role of the titular character equipped with outrageous weapons and his outrageous beard as you take on a plethora of swamp creatures. You’ll use an electric bow, nail gun, grenade launcher, sawblade rifle, and more as you chase high scores in this humorous wave shooter in the backwoods.
Recommendation: A humorous, stylish spin on a genre where there’s no shortage of games. If you want a fresh new wave shooter, this one is a must.
Moonatees, from Fungi In The Basement
Price: $4.99
Moonatees is “the most realistic VR space manatee simulator” via the developers. In this game, you’re be handling everyday mundane tasks that deal with physics and geometry all while taking on an incoming asteroid.
Recommendation: Worth the purchase, but the team will also be making the game free in the near future. Your call. Whether you wait or not, add it to your library.
INFINITI VR, from The Pulse
Price: Free
INFINITI VR is a visually appealing experience that takes you to New Zealand through various scenes. The scenes include a few interactive elements you can start including skipping stones on water or playing with a mountain goat.
Recommendation: For a car ad, there’s not much interaction with the car itself. Nevertheless, it’s free and includes some pretty impressive visuals.
Gem Hunter, from FoxLeap
Price: $7.99
Gem Hunter is an action platformer where you fly a hovercraft as you collect diamonds for the Fox King. You’ll also mine gems, fight off creatures, and customize your ship while working toward the highest score.
Recommendation: Very fun experience. The early access portion is only 4 stages, but the full game will have 12. Best to grab it now because the price will go up.
GUNNVR, from Artificient Games Inc.
Price:$2.99
From the gunner’s chair of a new turret on an Earth Defense Force ship, you’re tasked with defending the planet. There’s a mysterious field of asteroids that has appeared so you must shoot them down and solve the mystery of their appearance.
Recommendation: Keep an eye on it throughout Early Access, but it doesn’t seem to be very interesting thus far.
Twisted Arrow, from Phaser Lock Interactive
Price: $14.99 (Currently Discounted)
Twisted Arrow is an adrenaline packed archery shooter where you must fight through a city overrun with monsters of different types. From military enemies to monstrous ones, you’ll use a collection of different arrows and your shield to survive.
Ze VR takes the classic breakout style of gameplay and applies to it a virtual space. Shoot your balls and then deflect them with a shield or pulse to continue taking your targets out.
Recommendation: Pass on this one.
Cerevrum, from Cerevrum Inc.
Price: $6.99
Cerevrum is wave shooter that takes place in the world of Enuma. That sounds like your typical fair, but the developers have put together a game that intends to educate you by forcing you to harness your memory, attentiveness, or spatial intelligence to win.
Recommendation: Hard to recommend this one for Vive, but wait for a price drop if you like educational puzzle games.
Narcosis, from Honor Code, Inc.
Price: $19.99
Stranded on the Pacific Ocean’s seafloor, Narcosis introduces you to horrors at the deepest depths. This survival horror makes you manage your stress so you don’t burn through your oxygen while fighting off hostile fauna and flora.
Recommendation: Only a few hours to complete, but it offers up solid scares and a good story. Here’s our full review.
COG (Center of Gravity), from Zero Mass Energy, Inc
Price: $4.01 (Currently Discounted)
Paying homage to the classic game Asteroids, COG challenges you to shoot down space rocks as quickly and efficiently as you can with a ball you deflect around your space as you race to the high score.
Recommendation: There are similar experiences to find with a bit more to it. Pass.
Darwin’s bots: Episode 1, from Duplicator Studio
Price: $6.79 (Currently Discounted)
In the world of Darwin’s bots, robots are run of the mill. You’re a member of a newly formed special agency that’s put together after the first crime by a robot is committed. This shooter/adventure game’s first episode involves your training and first mission.
Recommendation: A slightly buggy start with a lot of potential. Grab this.
Uplands Motel: VR Thriller, from Gurashop
Price: $6.79 (Currently Discounted)
Uplands Motel is a thriller where you’re trapped at a motel after your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Essentially you’ll be living out your own action thriller as you figure out the puzzles, survive, and fight your way out of this dire situation.
Recommendation: A neat concept with poor execution. Pass on this one.
Mekside VR, from Quantaze Interactive
Price: $14.99
This Minecraft influenced VR game takes a steampunk theme and drops you into a space you can shape. In Mekside, you’ll build with the cubic voxel but there are also pistons and motors you can use to interconnect different structures you put together. Aerodynamics and hydrodynamics are included as well so you can take to the skies and seas.
Recommendation: This has the potential to be the Minecraft style builder some have waited for. The style of play could definitely benefit from the freedom of VR. Check it.
New HTC Vive Releases on Viveport
Chinese Cook VR, from Guangdong South Sea Eagle
Price: $4.90
Chinese Cook employs you to create different cuisine in antique traditional Chinese inns. This game serves as an educational peek into Chinese culture and food via food.
Recommendation: This is a neat addition to your collection and does include an English language option.
MakeVR, from Sixense Entertainment, Inc.
Price: $19.99
MakeVR is another creative platform where users can bring their ideas to life. Experienced or not, this program makes it easier to get started quickly and do real-time scaling of your creations.
Recommendation: If you’re already comfortable with a creation platform, be wary. There’s still no telling when the developer’s own position tracked controllers will be available for this program.
From exo-claws for your forearms to vests for your entire upper body, haptic feedback devices run the gauntlet when it comes to different ways to further immerse players in virtual worlds. H2L (Happy Hacking Life), a Tokyo-based company that specializes in VR/AR related to gaming and tourism, has engineered a haptic device of their own and it is surprisingly low-profile. The UnlimitedHand is a small device that straps to your forearm and not only gives feedback but measures the movement of muscles for input as well.
H2L raised funding recently by allocating shares to Energy & Environment Investment and the Sony Innovation Fund. Via these transactions, they acquired what comes out to just under $1.8 million. H2L has spent R&D on PosessedHand, a tool that allows researchers to control human hands with different stimuli, but their UnlimitedHand technology will be receiving the majority of the benefits from these funds. In a prepared statement, the company said it will make “full use of the received funding to push development and business expansion in the VR/AR field, with the aim of setting world standards for gesture input/output interfaces”.
The Japanese startup already has a couple solid forces behind them and, if they garner even more interest from companies, their UnlimitedHand solution could steer the haptic conversation that continues to gain steam when it comes to VR.
There are many experiments by creators utilizing the VR platform as they try to find unique content that’s either fully interactive or more of a hands-off narrative experience. Gary The Gull is an attempt that floats in between the two styles as a short film with reactive AI. Gary’s interactive elements were made possible by the Limitless VR Creative Environment and, courtesy of a partnership between Limitless Ltd and High Fidelity, everyone will now be able to us their toolset to create their own interactive VR characters. High Fidelity provides an open source platform for creative VR which is the same platform that powered a recent event where fans interacted with the cast of the Power Rangers. It’ll be interesting to see what users come up with and we chatted with the Limitless CEO and Founder Tom Sanocki about the potential of this collaboration.
Sanocki and the Limitless team believe you don’t have to be an AI expert to create interactive characters in VR. In pursuit of that for their platform, they try to formulate questions from the perspective of the creator: How would he or she want to build an interactive character experience? What would he or she want to automate, and what shouldn’t be automated? How can the technology be used to help them tell a story? They don’t stop there, though, continuing to listen to their actual customers to ease the use of things that are found to be tedious. “This means we always have something that is usable, simple, and shippable,” he says.”Our path to improving it always focuses on the needs of the storyteller, not the engineer,” he says.
The Limitless team also put together an interactive High Fidelity character that serves as a tutorial and an example of what can be done with the tools. When approached, the Sphinx kneels down to talk to you and then asks you three riddles you must answer correctly before passing. The text file that controls the character is available to users so they can see how he works and even modify him with new riddles or switch him to a new experience such as a quiz show.
Limitless VR will offer two types of interactive characters to work with: Standard and Premium. Standard characters respond to voice, gaze, gestures, and other input with the only bonus to Premium being that they have better voice recognition but, there will be future premium updates while standard characters will stay the same. Limitless Ltd will share more details on Premium characters in the near future.
“We’d love to see someone build an interactive butler, a spy adventure featuring an interactive James Bond,or an interactive history recreation,” says Sanocki. “All of those would be really cool. But once we look past the obvious, somebody is going to create something unexpected and compelling, something that will only work in VR. That’s what we’re the most excited about.”
He wants people to create freely with the platform but thinks the voice-driven interaction specifically is “a great way to communicate in VR and a perfect way to expand the ecosystem”.
Video games have flirted with voice interaction over the years, from commanding your squad mates on SOCOM: US Navy Seals for PS2 to Xbox One’s voice integration with the Kinect. The immersion of VR provides an intriguing opportunity to make voice interaction stick and this partnership could be the start of such a movement. Having easily customizable interactive AI that can interact with each other would be a logical next step and it is something Sanocki says they have ideas for, but we’ll have to wait for any developments of that kind.
Check out their website for more information on Limitless VR Creative Environment.
