Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg took the stage today at Oculus Connect 4, the company’s VR developer conference, to tell the crowd that the high-end standalone Project Santa Cruz VR headset will be heading to devs next year and it will be coming with 6 degrees of freedom (6DoF) controllers.
Update (10/11/17): In the confusion of the avalanche of updates from Oculus, it was incorrectly reported that Santa Cruz was a wireless PC VR headset when in reality it is a completely standalone, high-end mobile VR headset.
Project Santa Cruz is a high-end standalone headset with inside-out tracking, something that’s differentiates itself from the newly revealed Oculus Go mobile headset because it uses the a high-end, head-mounted mobile PC to drive the headset’s graphical abilities and comes with 6DoF controllers similar to Touch in function.
Oculus says in a blogpost announcing the headset dev kit and 6DoF controllers that “[g]etting the infrared LEDs on our new Santa Cruz controllers to work with the sensors used for inside-out tracking on the headset was a significant computer vision, design, and engineering problem. This is a milestone we’re proud of. By using four ultra-wide sensors, we achieved a large controller tracking volume, allowing for natural and unrestricted movement.”
Ever since building Rift, our dream has been to bring the magic of a PC VR experience to an untethered form factor. That’s why we were so excited to share our early work with Santa Cruz at Oculus Connect last year. Although that first prototype had a full-blown mobile computer strapped to the back of your head, the feeling of freedom you got when first experiencing fully untethered positionally-tracked VR remains unparalleled.
Today, we showed the next phase of Santa Cruz development, delivering hand presence with two positionally tracked controllers. This is an important, industry-first milestone that brings the magic and incredible design expertise of Touch into a completely standalone experience.
The Santa Cruz headset includes 4 camera sensors to allow for a wide field of view, allowing for both inside-out positional tracking and the controller tracking that allows for a seemingly full range of motion. The controllers integrate infrared LEDs to accomplish 6 degrees of freedom.
Zuckerberg told the crowd that “Santa Cruz headsets [will be] in your hands and the hands of developers in the next year.”
The company say they’ll be sharing more updates on Project Santa Cruz soon.
HTC may have more than one new headset in sight than we initially thought when it registered the name ‘Vive Focus’ in the EU and US. It came to light via the Dutch publication Lets Go Digital that HTC has also applied for a trademark for the name ‘Vive Eclipse’ in New Zealand.
It was first theorized that the name Vive Focus was intended for the upcoming standalone Vive headset confirmed at Google I/O 2017 developer conference. Neither HTC nor Lenovo headset was named at the time, only showing concept art and a silhouette.
The New Zealand Intellectual Property Office published a summary of the trademark application, showing a filing and submission initiated by HTC on October 6th.
It says specifically under the explanation of goods and services provided by the Vive Eclipse that it’s a “head mounted display for computer simulated reality” and that it specifies “motion tracking sensors” and “handheld computer simulated reality controllers.”
Specification of goods and/or services:
9: Head mounted display for computer simulated reality; computer hardware; computer simulated reality software; computer simulated reality game software; handheld controllers for use in computer simulated reality environment; optical devices, namely, eye pieces for head mounted displays; carrying cases and holders for use with head mounted displays; smartphones; portable computers; wearable electronic devices in connection with a head mounted display for use in computer simulated reality environment; motion tracking sensors; handheld computer simulated reality controllers; computer peripherals for mobile devices for remotely accessing and transmitting data; apparatus for the recording, transmission or reproduction of sound, images, or data; electronic and optical communications instruments and components.
28: Apparatus for games; amusement machines, automatic and coin-operated; game pads and controllers for use in computer simulated reality; counters [discs] for games; video games; controllers for game consoles; toys; portable games with liquid crystal displays; arcade video game machine
It’s unclear at this time what either Vive Focus or Vive Eclipse really are, but we’ll be following the patent filings closely for more information.
The team behind Bigscreen, the app that lets you view and share your desktop in social VR, today announced they’ve raised $11 million in Series A financing. The funding round, which comes only a year after their initial $3 million seed round, was led by True Ventures with participation from Andreessen Horowitz.
The company details the news in a blogpost, say that as part of the financing round, Bigscreen Inc. will also bring on True Ventures Partner Toni Schneider as a board member.
Since the announcement of the seed round in February, which was led by Andreessen Horowitz and included participation by True Ventures, Presence Capital, Ludlow Ventures, David Bettner, and SV Angel, the mostly remote team says they’ve used thus far “very little of [the] $3 million seed financing,” and have several years of runway ahead of them.
image courtesy Bigscreen
According to CEO Darshan Shankar, the app’s overall usership has grown to “more than a quarter million users,” saying that thanks to several major product updates, their core metrics grew over 300% in only a few month’s time. Shankar says that Bigscreen’s power users spend 20–30+ hours every week in the app (not specified if solo viewing or social), and many users have spent more than 1,000 hours overall.
Bigscreen features both online multiuser spaces for impromptu movie watching and gameplaying for up to 4 users, and also functions as a virtual desktop, projecting your display out so you can do anything you’d normally would on you monitor.
The apps has recently gone through several major updates including a much-needed improvement to the simultaneous streaming quality, pushing output to 1080p resolution at 30 fps. The app currently supports Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, OSVR, and as a part of SteamVR integration, will also likely support Windows “Mixed Reality” VR headsets.
“We now need to grow the team in order to improve the product and expand the Bigscreen platform to more VR/AR devices,” Shankar says.
The team behind Bigscreen, the app that lets you view and share your desktop in social VR, today announced they’ve raised $11 million in Series A financing. The funding round, which comes only a year after their initial $3 million seed round, was led by True Ventures with participation from Andreessen Horowitz.
The company details the news in a blogpost, say that as part of the financing round, Bigscreen Inc. will also bring on True Ventures Partner Toni Schneider as a board member.
Since the announcement of the seed round in February, which was led by Andreessen Horowitz and included participation by True Ventures, Presence Capital, Ludlow Ventures, David Bettner, and SV Angel, the mostly remote team says they’ve used thus far “very little of [the] $3 million seed financing,” and have several years of runway ahead of them.
image courtesy Bigscreen
According to CEO Darshan Shankar, the app’s overall usership has grown to “more than a quarter million users,” saying that thanks to several major product updates, their core metrics grew over 300% in only a few month’s time. Shankar says that Bigscreen’s power users spend 20–30+ hours every week in the app (not specified if solo viewing or social), and many users have spent more than 1,000 hours overall.
Bigscreen features both online multiuser spaces for impromptu movie watching and gameplaying for up to 4 users, and also functions as a virtual desktop, projecting your display out so you can do anything you’d normally would on you monitor.
The apps has recently gone through several major updates including a much-needed improvement to the simultaneous streaming quality, pushing output to 1080p resolution at 30 fps. The app currently supports Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, OSVR, and as a part of SteamVR integration, will also likely support Windows “Mixed Reality” VR headsets.
“We now need to grow the team in order to improve the product and expand the Bigscreen platform to more VR/AR devices,” Shankar says.
Arktika.1 is a first-person VR shooter that makes more than a few smart choices in its design, something that may have you thinking twice before dismissing its admittedly limited node-based teleportation style lock, stock, and barrel (holographic sight and flashlight too). It’s not to say Arktika.1 isn’t without its clear flaws, but the end result is decidedly a net positive that gives you exactly what you came for in the first place: a ridiculously good looking game that goes pew pew pew.
Developer: 4A Games Publisher: Oculus Studios Available On:Oculus Reviewed On:Oculus Rift Release Date: October 10, 2017
Gameplay
In an effort to combat climate change, humans have accidentally flung the world into a new ice age, the results of which are much worse than just having to knock a few icicles off your dual-wielded pistols. As an elite mercenary, your job is to protect Arktika.1, a settlement in a frozen wasteland outside of what used to be Vostok, Russia. Machine gun-wielding bandits are a big concern, but at least they’re human. Mysterious beasts called ‘Yagas’—named after the Russian folktale monster-witch ‘Baba Yaga’—roam the multi-level facility looking to feed on anything with a pulse. And these overpowered freaks of nature are genuinely gruesome creatures that like popping out of the shadows and rushing at you hissing and screaming—just the thing to get your heart racing.
Arktika.1’s levels are giant and while you’re gifted with the power of teleportation to traverse them, you’re only allowed to teleport to nodes that the game chooses, creating something that I’m tempted to describe as a ‘mobile wave shooter’ experience. You’ll enter a room, see two bad guys, kill them, which triggers 4 more bad guys to come rushing in. Once you clear the area, you’re then offered a new forward node to teleport to, which effectively functions as a signal that you’ve eliminated all possible bad guys and can move to the next room. I say I’m tempted to call it a ‘mobile wave shooter’ because of the, well, waves of bad guys that you swim straight through, but levels aren’t always big rooms with well-timed waves of enemies rushing in. Oftentimes you’re traversing through tight corridors and elevators, and you just don’t know what’s waiting for you on the other side, be it a trap, puzzle, or one of those terrible Yagas ready to tear your head off.
Image courtesy 4A Games
While you don’t have the freedom to move forward without first eliminating everyone, and you are only given predetermined angles and shooting spots, that doesn’t mean you won’t be physically ducking and hiding around corners to land a decisive headshot, or getting your heart rate up in excitement though. It just tends to structure gameplay in a way that feels a little more ‘paint by numbers’ than genuine exploratory combat would. Outside of that, there are clearly timed waves of baddies in larger rooms, sending a fresh wave your way once you’ve killed the remaining guy in the last wave, which adds to the experience’s overall artifice.
There aren’t a lot of VR shooters out there featuring customizable guns, and Arktika.1 does it right, giving you a mix of clip-on and embedded accessories that both cater to your individual shooting style and also effectively work like physical difficulty sliders; you can stay with your basic iron sights for the most authentic shooting experience, or customize all the way up to an x-ray sight so you can see bad guys through walls, letting you anticipate attacks and even see them in the dark. It’s up to you if you want to deck out any of the ten or so pistols available, and which pistol or upgrade fits your shooting style. That said, I wish the upgrades were a little harder to achieve, as half-way through the game I felt like I had everything I needed.
Image courtesy 4A Games
The shooting experience itself is really well done, and it’s nice to see that the creators didn’t compromise it with awkward-to-hold rifles, instead offering a wide enough selection of pistols and sight types to make you feel like what you had in your hand was enough.
There are two basic reloading styles, and having a mixed set-up (one semi-auto and one revolver) can kind of screw with you at first, but reloading quickly becomes a fast reflex. Holsters are conveniently placed above each shoulder, so you can easily stick them away for button pressing and puzzle-solving.
Bandits are your main foe in Arktika.1, which boil down to three classes: basic infantry, heavy, and sniper. More variety here would have been gladly welcome, because after killing the same identical three guys (with the same voices) umpteen times gets a little tiresome, but the same could be said about established shooter franchises like Halo too. The three classes (plus the odd drone) add enough of a mix to keep you on your toes though, as the heavy really only dies on headshots and the sniper always seems to materialize over your head and land a laser-scoped rifle round to your head. There are a surprising lack of level boss encounters—not a requirement, but an interesting choice nonetheless.
Image courtesy 4A Games
Some of you have been skimming this article for gameplay length, so here it is in bold: it took me five hours to complete, but the usual caveats apply; you’ll probably spend more time if you’re one who likes hunting hidden easter eggs and completing ‘Objectives’ (optional challenges) on each level. Rolling out with the most game-cheapening gun accessories, I only died twice (albeit on the default Easy difficulty), both of which were because of laser traps that I didn’t shut off in time.
Puzzles, although at an impressively wide variety, are an absolute breeze, and are really only momentary tasks on the road to more shooting. This isn’t really about that, so it’s an easy charge to forgive.
Immersion
Eventually clicking into the frantic task of managing your corners, and making sure you can anticipate the move of every bad guy as he pops out behind pillars, you start to sense a flow in the game. Getting used to the game’s various tasks and locomotion system is really only one part of immersion though, as the world itself has to entice you into forgetting you’re really in your living room wearing pajamas.
Image courtesy 4A Games
Arktika.1 excels visually with its overwhelmingly atmospheric levels, elevating it among the best looking VR titles to date. There’s a thick varnish of neglect and ice on everything, and it’s hard not to feel the biting cold come through. I have some minor gripes with the incorrectly scaled scaled hands of the player, some chairs, and a harmonica the size of a chalk eraser, but these are few and far between.
If you’re looking for a deep story with character arcs that give you a reason to fight, you’ll be a little disappointed in Arktika.1. You’ll only ever get to know one person in the whole game, Viktoria, and while her story does develop, I can’t say I really felt attached. I never had that moment where I said to myself ‘this is a real person worth my attention.’
The opening sequence, a part of the first 25 minutes of gameplay, seemed like a promising start with Viktoria, but she quickly becomes an immobile task master holed up in her command center; the virtual voice in your ear telling you where to go, what to do, why to care, etc. Positioning Viktoria as a chattering task master feels like a cheap solution to the complex problem of telling an in-world story, which in the end makes it feel like a thin guise to get you into that next mission. For many, that’ll be just fine (pew pew pew, amiright?), but a rich story that compels you to care about what you’re doing and drives you forward is a big plus for immersion, though Arktika.1 felt more like dangling the carrot of more money in front of my face.
Image courtesy 4A Games
I’m supposed to be a mercenary, sure, but it would have been nice if maybe a grandmotherly figure popped her head in and made me a hot cup of tea, or if I got to see a group of settlers going about their lives to signal some semblance of humanity worth saving. Viktoria doesn’t even get mad at you when you throw things at her face, and she never asks you questions that may require a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ nod. She talks at you until the game is done, but you never actually speak back or interact with her.
All in all, these sorts of narrative misgivings filter into the back of your mind when you actually hit the action, which on its own is cohesive and varied enough to hit all the right beats.
Comfort
Image courtesy 4A Games
Even though the Oculus store page says the game supports 360 setups, the game is entirely a front-facing experience. Teleportation nodes place you right where the action is going to be, which again makes it feel a little too ‘paint by numbers’, but makes it ultimately super comfortable. And no, this game probably couldn’t work as-is with smooth forward locomotion, as many levels require you to teleport over large gaps.
Playing this one all the way through, I really would have appreciated a seated mode that placed me at the right standing height so I could finally give my dogs a rest, but this is more of a 30 minute-per-mission type of game, meaning you’ll probably digest this one in bite-sized pieces.
Arktika.1 is a first-person VR shooter that makes more than a few smart choices in its design, something that may have you thinking twice before dismissing its admittedly limited node-based teleportation style lock, stock, and barrel (holographic sight and flashlight too). It’s not to say Arktika.1 isn’t without its clear flaws, but the end result is decidedly a net positive that gives you exactly what you came for in the first place: a ridiculously good looking game that goes pew pew pew.
Developer: 4A Games Publisher: Oculus Studios Available On:Oculus Reviewed On:Oculus Rift Release Date: October 10, 2017
Gameplay
In an effort to combat climate change, humans have accidentally flung the world into a new ice age, the results of which are much worse than just having to knock a few icicles off your dual-wielded pistols. As an elite mercenary, your job is to protect Arktika.1, a settlement in a frozen wasteland outside of what used to be Vostok, Russia. Machine gun-wielding bandits are a big concern, but at least they’re human. Mysterious beasts called ‘Yagas’—named after the Russian folktale monster-witch ‘Baba Yaga’—roam the multi-level facility looking to feed on anything with a pulse. And these overpowered freaks of nature are genuinely gruesome creatures that like popping out of the shadows and rushing at you hissing and screaming—just the thing to get your heart racing.
Arktika.1’s levels are giant and while you’re gifted with the power of teleportation to traverse them, you’re only allowed to teleport to nodes that the game chooses, creating something that I’m tempted to describe as a ‘mobile wave shooter’ experience. You’ll enter a room, see two bad guys, kill them, which triggers 4 more bad guys to come rushing in. Once you clear the area, you’re then offered a new forward node to teleport to, which effectively functions as a signal that you’ve eliminated all possible bad guys and can move to the next room. I say I’m tempted to call it a ‘mobile wave shooter’ because of the, well, waves of bad guys that you swim straight through, but levels aren’t always big rooms with well-timed waves of enemies rushing in. Oftentimes you’re traversing through tight corridors and elevators, and you just don’t know what’s waiting for you on the other side, be it a trap, puzzle, or one of those terrible Yagas ready to tear your head off.
Image courtesy 4A Games
While you don’t have the freedom to move forward without first eliminating everyone, and you are only given predetermined angles and shooting spots, that doesn’t mean you won’t be physically ducking and hiding around corners to land a decisive headshot, or getting your heart rate up in excitement though. It just tends to structure gameplay in a way that feels a little more ‘paint by numbers’ than genuine exploratory combat would. Outside of that, there are clearly timed waves of baddies in larger rooms, sending a fresh wave your way once you’ve killed the remaining guy in the last wave, which adds to the experience’s overall artifice.
There aren’t a lot of VR shooters out there featuring customizable guns, and Arktika.1 does it right, giving you a mix of clip-on and embedded accessories that both cater to your individual shooting style and also effectively work like physical difficulty sliders; you can stay with your basic iron sights for the most authentic shooting experience, or customize all the way up to an x-ray sight so you can see bad guys through walls, letting you anticipate attacks and even see them in the dark. It’s up to you if you want to deck out any of the ten or so pistols available, and which pistol or upgrade fits your shooting style. That said, I wish the upgrades were a little harder to achieve, as half-way through the game I felt like I had everything I needed.
Image courtesy 4A Games
The shooting experience itself is really well done, and it’s nice to see that the creators didn’t compromise it with awkward-to-hold rifles, instead offering a wide enough selection of pistols and sight types to make you feel like what you had in your hand was enough.
There are two basic reloading styles, and having a mixed set-up (one semi-auto and one revolver) can kind of screw with you at first, but reloading quickly becomes a fast reflex. Holsters are conveniently placed above each shoulder, so you can easily stick them away for button pressing and puzzle-solving.
Bandits are your main foe in Arktika.1, which boil down to three classes: basic infantry, heavy, and sniper. More variety here would have been gladly welcome, because after killing the same identical three guys (with the same voices) umpteen times gets a little tiresome, but the same could be said about established shooter franchises like Halo too. The three classes (plus the odd drone) add enough of a mix to keep you on your toes though, as the heavy really only dies on headshots and the sniper always seems to materialize over your head and land a laser-scoped rifle round to your head. There are a surprising lack of level boss encounters—not a requirement, but an interesting choice nonetheless.
Image courtesy 4A Games
Some of you have been skimming this article for gameplay length, so here it is in bold: it took me five hours to complete, but the usual caveats apply; you’ll probably spend more time if you’re one who likes hunting hidden easter eggs and completing ‘Objectives’ (optional challenges) on each level. Rolling out with the most game-cheapening gun accessories, I only died twice (albeit on the default Easy difficulty), both of which were because of laser traps that I didn’t shut off in time.
Puzzles, although at an impressively wide variety, are an absolute breeze, and are really only momentary tasks on the road to more shooting. This isn’t really about that, so it’s an easy charge to forgive.
Immersion
Eventually clicking into the frantic task of managing your corners, and making sure you can anticipate the move of every bad guy as he pops out behind pillars, you start to sense a flow in the game. Getting used to the game’s various tasks and locomotion system is really only one part of immersion though, as the world itself has to entice you into forgetting you’re really in your living room wearing pajamas.
Image courtesy 4A Games
Arktika.1 excels visually with its overwhelmingly atmospheric levels, elevating it among the best looking VR titles to date. There’s a thick varnish of neglect and ice on everything, and it’s hard not to feel the biting cold come through. I have some minor gripes with the incorrectly scaled scaled hands of the player, some chairs, and a harmonica the size of a chalk eraser, but these are few and far between.
If you’re looking for a deep story with character arcs that give you a reason to fight, you’ll be a little disappointed in Arktika.1. You’ll only ever get to know one person in the whole game, Viktoria, and while her story does develop, I can’t say I really felt attached. I never had that moment where I said to myself ‘this is a real person worth my attention.’
The opening sequence, a part of the first 25 minutes of gameplay, seemed like a promising start with Viktoria, but she quickly becomes an immobile task master holed up in her command center; the virtual voice in your ear telling you where to go, what to do, why to care, etc. Positioning Viktoria as a chattering task master feels like a cheap solution to the complex problem of telling an in-world story, which in the end makes it feel like a thin guise to get you into that next mission. For many, that’ll be just fine (pew pew pew, amiright?), but a rich story that compels you to care about what you’re doing and drives you forward is a big plus for immersion, though Arktika.1 felt more like dangling the carrot of more money in front of my face.
Image courtesy 4A Games
I’m supposed to be a mercenary, sure, but it would have been nice if maybe a grandmotherly figure popped her head in and made me a hot cup of tea, or if I got to see a group of settlers going about their lives to signal some semblance of humanity worth saving. Viktoria doesn’t even get mad at you when you throw things at her face, and she never asks you questions that may require a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ nod. She talks at you until the game is done, but you never actually speak back or interact with her.
All in all, these sorts of narrative misgivings filter into the back of your mind when you actually hit the action, which on its own is cohesive and varied enough to hit all the right beats.
Comfort
Image courtesy 4A Games
Even though the Oculus store page says the game supports 360 setups, the game is entirely a front-facing experience. Teleportation nodes place you right where the action is going to be, which again makes it feel a little too ‘paint by numbers’, but makes it ultimately super comfortable. And no, this game probably couldn’t work as-is with smooth forward locomotion, as many levels require you to teleport over large gaps.
Playing this one all the way through, I really would have appreciated a seated mode that placed me at the right standing height so I could finally give my dogs a rest, but this is more of a 30 minute-per-mission type of game, meaning you’ll probably digest this one in bite-sized pieces.
Scorn – Part 1 of 2:Dasein, the crowdfunded first-person horror game, just passed the €175,000 mark with only a few remaining hours in its Kickstarter campaign, meaning the developers will be including “an immersive VR level for the ultimate experience of the world and atmosphere of Scorn.”
While we were personally hoping for more than just a VR level in what’s shaping up to be a nightmarish, Alien-inspired first-person horror adventure – with the way things are looking from the trailer, we may not need one (for the sake of dry underwear everywhere).
Currently in the works by Serbian studio Ebb Software, the full game aims to throw you into a hellish world, wandering isolated and lost as you explore different interconnected, nonlinear.
According to Ebb, “throughout the game, you will open up new areas, acquire different skill sets, weapons, and various items, while trying to comprehend the sights presented to you. We want to create a broad gameplay experience that is more than a simple blend of all the game mechanics. You will constantly be required to re-think and adapt your actions.”
Originally asking €150,000, the project reached its initial funding goal late last month. Digital copies of the game, along with a host of goodies, are set to ship sometime in October. The first funding tier, including the game, is still available for €17, but it isn’t certain if the VR level will be delivered alongside the game, or added at a later date.
Since this is a PC title, it’s safe to assume the VR level will be intended for SteamVR headsets, including Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows “Mixed Reality” VR headsets. Any way you slice it, we’re just hoping we can get our hands on one of those ridiculous bone guns.
Now that iOS 11 has officially rolled out and anyone with a recent Apple device has access to augmented reality applications, the massive install base means developers can start appealing to all sorts of people, including those miniature ones that make a fuss about putting on their shoes and jackets, and even the fully-grown variety who also happen to enjoy cartoons too. In a new AR prototype that places characters from Cartoon Network’s The Amazing World of Gumball into your living room, we see a brief look into what could be our cartoon-filled AR future.
Created by Jonathan Forder, a London-based developer at immersive media studio Discover Studios, he told Made With ARKit that he came up with the idea to create the prototype to demonstrate how AR could “expand the world of existing cartoons,” bringing them from the TV screen to the living room.
“One of my favourite cartoon styles is The Amazing World of Gumball. I love the mixture of animated character blended into real world scenes and this pretty much lends itself to AR perfectly. Although this is a simple prototype it shows how we can bring characters to life. As a kid I would have loved to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Thundercats running around my front room!”
Built using ARKit and Unity, Forder says his first task was finding the right source material:
“The first thing that made this prototype work was finding the right material. Luckily enough with a quick google search I found some dedicated fans that had made some blue screen cutout clips of the characters. With these videos I could then bring them into Unity and create a Chroma Key shader to remove the blue from the clips. Then it was just a matter of placing them in the scene and setting Unity to render the shadows and allow for placement in AR.”
While the prototype isn’t interactive, and probably won’t see the light of day because of copyright infringement concerns, the possibility of having your favorite cartoon characters popping their heads into your home for simple tasks, like reminding you to brush your teeth, or to give you a special birthday message, can be a powerful way of connecting kids (and adults) to the cartoon’s universe. And as kids get closer and closer to their smartphones, (and presumably AR headsets when the technology becomes more diffuse) there’s an inevitability on the rise of deeper interactions with virtual characters.
LA-based DJ and producer TOKiMONSTA and social VR music platform TheWaveVRhave partnered to create an interactive psychedelic version of TOKi’s new album that drops today, Lune Rouge.
The multi-user social platform will host the VR version of TOKi’s Lune Rouge, called the Lune Rouge Experience, starting Sunday, October 8th at 6:00PM PT (your local time here). Supported devices include HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, but is limited to US-based residents only.
The 50-minute multiplayer experience for TOKiMONSTA’s new album allows users to socialize, dance, paint with light, pop virtual champagne bottles, remix music and more. After the party, it will run on loop for users to experience after as well.
Programmed art direction from Strangeloop, the experience is hosted on a vibrantly rendered planet inspired by the Lune Rogue album artwork. Check out TOKiMONSTA’s SoundCloud (aka Jennifer Lee) to get an idea of what’s in store musically speaking.
The Lune Rouge Experience TheWave’s fifth show of this type, a concert series “aimed at pushing the boundaries of live music in VR,” say the developers behind the platform. Previous shows included Ninja Tune artist Ash Koosha’s AKTUAL, as well as Strangeloop’s N-FOLD, which was released in association with BRAINFEEDER.
“We wanted to do something special to support TOKi’s release, and create an entire world around the record,” said TheWaveVR’s CEO and Co-Founder Adam Arrigo. “Our goal as a company is to help artists create new experiences that let their fans get closer to their artistic vision. The Lune Rouge Experience lets fans literally step inside the album and experience her music in a new, interactive dimension.”
Hailstone Games, a Toronto-based VR studio, just launched their new goalie simulator, Goalie VR, a game that lets a single player defend a hockey goal in VR while up to five players using mobile devices try to score.
It’s a shame there aren’t more asymmetric VR party games out there, the prime example being Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (2015). When you have a group of friends over and you want to show off your VR headset, it’s usually only possible one at a time, so GoalieVR could be an easy decision for Vive and Rift owners looking for a good reason for a VR-centric, pre-game hype-up whenever the good old [regional hockey team] are playing against the [historically opposing hockey team geographically close to regional hockey team].
You can even create your own plays by positioning your friends with mobile devices anywhere in the rink’s offensive zone.
Select from Amateur, Semi-Pro or Pro difficulty levels, set lefty or righty controls, customize plays by setting up shooters around the offensive zone, play timed and goal-driven matches, earn achievements, even study replays and heat-maps to discover your strong and weak points.
For HTC Vive Tracker owners, Hailstone says Tracker support “amplifies the physicality and reality of the experience,” giving extra tracking points so your defensive game is more accurately reflected by your real-world movements.
The game is available today on Steam for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift in North America and Europe, for $9.99 USD. Until October 12th, the game will be 15% off.
