Windlands (2016) is a first-person exploration game from Psytech Games, and as one of the first truly great titles to come to all major VR headsets, the temporary $5 price tag on Steam—down from its normal $20—is an absolute steal for what it offers.
After generating over $20k in a successful Indiegogo campaign in fall of 2014 and subsequently being Greenlit on Steam, Windlands is out of early access and available on every major headset including Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, OSVR and PSVR.
The Steam version however is only compatible with HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and OSVR, and can be played with motion controllers or gamepad. The Oculus Store version, which only offers support for Rift, is still advertising the full $20 price tag.
You can’t help but marvel at the grandiosity of the environment Windlands creates. Offering a calming, zen-like atmosphere with increasingly difficult terrain, you’ll easily lose a few hours to trying to figure out just how to get that last Easter egg before you move on to the next level.
The main means of locomotion: your trusty grappling hook that lets you soar through the ruins of a fallen civilization and discover the secrets of the ancient world. The game also works on traditional monitors (but we’re not sure why you’d ever want to).
Marble Land is a physics-based puzzle game from Devious Technologies, a Bucharest, Romania based studio. We got a chance at this year’s Gamescom to pop into the unique little puzzler, which is slated to launch in the next few months on HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream.
I remember playing a prototype version of Marble Land when it was first released in mid-2016 on wearvr, the repository for all things virtual. Standing out among the cadre of low-effort wave shooters and overblown school projects was a gem of a demo that incorporated complex, physics-based puzzles.
Strapping into an Oculus Rift with Touch controllers, the busy show floor faded to the back of my mind as I was transported to an antique, but plainly alien-look environment. With the puzzle at the center of the strange building placed around me, I began to focus at the task at hand. The objective: guide an the ethereal blue marble into the green target area by using the world’s Rube Goldberg-inspired devices. With no time limit or point structure, your only goal is to complete the level and move on to the next.
I guided the ball through everything from simple pathways to weird transport gates, some of which could only be activated by changing the direction of barriers scattered throughout the level that would allow the marble to go one way or another. I went through 5 newly-created levels (the prototype levels have been scrapped entirely), each more complex than the last. None of them were particularly tough to figure out, but I definitely perceived the gradual ramping up in difficulty level with each marble I successfully got in the goal. According to Devious Technologies, 45 levels will be available at launch, but more will come in subsequent updates.
When seated, virtual locomotion was my least favorite part of Marble Land. It’s basically a very slow first-person smooth-turning mechanic using the joy sticks for forward-back and up-down motion. While it was slow enough not to cause any nausea, I would have appreciated a quicker way to reposition myself. The game also offers room-scale support, which makes it a little easier to naturally walk around the little puzzle to get a better view.
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image courtesy Devious Technologies
image courtesy Devious Technologies
image courtesy Devious Technologies
image courtesy Devious Technologies
image courtesy Devious Technologies
Visually, Marble Land looks super interesting, combing a weird melange of futuristic and ancient in both puzzle and surrounding environment.
Inquiring about the possibility of a level editor, studio founder George Cristian Tudor told me that Oculus (for example) is very stringent on games maintaining a minimum of 90 fps, and that the addition of a level editor, which allows you carte blanche to rig up complex physics-based interactions, would only really be possible as a mod released after the initial launch.
Marble Land will be available sometime in the second half of 2017 on VR headsets and traditional monitors.
Amidst all the VR headset price cuts, PlayStation VR is finally seeing a discount, albeit not nearly as dramatic as Oculus Rift’s or HTC Vive’s.
In the US and Canada, the headset will soon be bundled with a PlayStation Camera—an integral part of the the kit that costs anywhere from $40-50 alone—essentially making the Camera free to anyone buying the $399 USD headset alone. Sony says in a blogpost announcing the PSVR/Camera bundle, that this will be “the core PS VR bundle moving forward.”
image courtesy Sony
The ‘all-in’ bundle, which comes with the PSVR headset, PS Camera, two PlayStation Move motion controllers and PlayStation VR Worlds will be seeing a similar knock in price due to the ‘free’ Camera, which cuts the price tag down by $50, bringing the bundle to $449 USD.
Bundles will appear on retailer shelves starting September 1st.
Sony has gone on record to have sold over 1.1 million PSVR headsets in the first 5 months since its October 2016 launch, something the company can chalk up to a lower overall entry price. The new, cheaper PSVR bundles come in the wake of Oculus Rift’s temporary price cut, taking what once cost $800 down to a limited time offer of $400, and HTC Vive more recently lowering their $800 system down to $600—making buying a VR headset an even trickier proposition for anyone who wants to finally take the digital plunge this holiday season.
If you’re still trying to figure out what system is right for you, head over to our deep dive reviews of each system below:
Microsoft today announced that 343 Industries, the studio tasked with overseeing the Halo franchise, will be creating Halo-themed experiences for the company’s lineup of VR headsets.
The information, revealed by HoloLens’ chief inventor and ‘Mixed Reality’ project lead Alex Kipman, comes alongside the news that Microsoft’s VR headsets and controller bundles will be launching this holiday season for $399.
“…it’s my pleasure to let you know that we are working with 343 Industries to bring future Halo experiences into mixed reality. We are not providing specifics right now, but it is going to be a lot of fun to work with them,” said Kipman.
Alex Kipman, image courtesy Microsoft
It’s uncertain at this time whether the Halo-themed VR experiences will be necessarily tied to the Windows Store, making them defacto exclusive to the Windows Mixed Reality platform. The company’s VR headsets will however have access to content published on Steam, allowing owners to download all supported VR titles, which thanks to the fairly standard button layout of the Windows VR motion controller may mean the full catalog of Vive/Rift games and experiences.
Microsoft today announced that the company will be bundling its Windows VR headsets and motion controllers, and making them available for purchase this holiday season starting at $400. Revealed by Alex Kipman, HoloLens’ chief inventor and technical lead, a “variety” of headsets and motion controllers will be available by end of year from HP, Lenovo, Dell, and Acer.
The reference design, which all of these headsets are based on, feature inside-out tracking, meaning you won’t need external sensors like with Oculus Rift or HTC Vive for room-scale interactions. With the addition of motion controllers, which are optically-tracked by the headsets’ onboard cameras, Microsoft’s PC VR platform hypothetically has the same basic ability as the two previously mentioned headsets. Despite an initial focus of on media consumption over hard core gaming thanks to the headsets’ ability to run basic apps on computers using integrated graphics, the platform’s inclusion of motion controllers, the ability to play VR content from Steam, and a new subset of special ‘Mixed Reality Ultra PCs’ has changed the headsets’ potential usecase considerably.
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Image courtesy Microsoft
HP headset, image courtesy Windows
Acer headset. image courtesy Windows
Dell headset, image courtesy The Verge
Lenovo headset, image courtesy Engadget
“When it comes to deciding which hardware is right for you, we know that our customers value choice in brand, industrial design, and features,” said Kipman. “That is why we created Windows Mixed Reality as a platform for you to enjoy experiences across multiple devices that meet your mobility and performance needs.”
Notably, the Windows VR headsets all more or less come in around 350g in weight, which is about 200g lighter than the Vive and 100g lighter than Rift. In a hands-on with Acer’s developer edition, Road to VR contributor and community designer for Rec RoomShawn Whiting said he “didn’t notice any screen door effect and text looked very legible. The downside of the Acer’s visuals are its field of view and lens quality.” As for its inside-out tracking, Whiting says the headset was “quite solid in all of my demos. I did experience the occasional tiny jitter in the headset’s tracking, but nothing major.”
We recently got a hands-on with the Windows motion controllers, which Road to VR Executive Editor Ben Lang says still presents some outstanding reliability issues when it comes to tracking. Check out the hands-on here.
Since the Vive’s permanent price slash down to $600, and the Rift’s temporary cut to $400 (including Touch), new entrants into VR will have plenty of testing and demos to do to figure out which headset is right for them. We’ll be taking a deeper dive into specs in the coming weeks to give you a good idea of what headset to buy this holiday season, so check back then. In the meantime, check out our deep dive reviews on HTC Vive, Oculus Rift andOculus Touch.
Microsoft’s proposed line-up also includes VR headsets from Asus and Chinese manufacturer 3Glasses, however the company makes no mention of the two in regards to holiday motion controller bundles.
Windows VR Headsets: Basic Specs
Two high-resolution LCDs at 1440 x 1440
2.89” diagonal display size (x2)
Front hinged display
95 degrees horizontal field of view
Display refresh rate up to 90 Hz (native)
Built-in audio out and microphone support through 3.5mm jack
Single cable with HDMI 2.0 (display) and USB 3.0 (data) for connectivity
Microsoft today announced a bevy of information regarding their upcoming Windows VR headset launch, which will see headsets from Acer, Dell, HP, and Lenovo coming this holiday season starting at $400. Revealed today by HoloLens chief inventor and project lead Alex Kipman, the Windows VR headsets have been confirmed to work with at least 67 apps—including games, experiences, and 360 video platforms.
Apps and Companies Supporting Windows VR Headsets:
This isn’t by any means a comprehensive list, as we’ve edited out some of the elusively Chinese-centric apps that don’t seem to offer multilingual support.
Windows VR headsets will also support SteamVR, as we suspect Valve and Microsoft are currently collaborating on an OpenVR driver that would allow for developers to more easily push support for games already designed for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
Microsoft’s HoloLens already has a physical input device, the HoloLens Clicker, but in a recently published patent, we may be getting a peek into what the company was initially planning before they decided to include each HoloLens with the tiny 3DoF device.
First spotted by The Vergevia Twitter user WalkingCat, the proposed wand features a trigger and what appears to be a touchpad and button just where the thumb would rest.
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image courtesy Microsoft
image courtesy Microsoft
image courtesy Microsoft
image courtesy Microsoft
The Clicker (which comes with HoloLens) already lets you essentially replace hand gestures so you can select, scroll, move, and resize 3D objects with the touch of a button, but the proposed device revealed in the patent appears to fit a different use-case, with its integrated trigger easily conjuring up thoughts of interactions like gripping items and possibly firing guns.
image courtesy Microsoft
These sorts of gaming-intensive interactions would ideally best be handled by something like Microsoft’s recently revealed motion controllers, but these critically do not support HoloLens, and are only for use with the company’s line of VR headsets.
While no supporting information was included in the official patent detailing the exact function of the touchpad and button below it, the patent specifically cites a Google Glass-compatible concept device created by industrial designer Jorge Trevino as a source of inspiration. Tentatively named Google Draw (the concept was created by Trevino, and is not a Google product), the AR stylus was imagined to work as both a pen for taking notes and a spray can.
image courtesy Jorge Trevino
Critically, the design of Microsoft’s AR input device wouldn’t be held like a stylus though, as it appears to be ergonomically similar to Vive’s Lighthouse motion controllers.
It’s unclear at this point if the company intends on producing the wand, although our hunch says it’s probably just an early concept. After all, we already got an eye-full last year during a Microsoft promo for their Mixed Reality platform. There’s still no telling what direction the next iteration of Microsoft’s HoloLens will take however, or whether the platform is making way for more dedicated AR gaming apps to fit alongside its productivity-focused Windows Universal Platform apps. Either way, we’ll be watching Microsoft intently for their next move to see if the device ever sees the light of day, or fades into obscurity.
Microsoft’s HoloLens already has a physical input device, the HoloLens Clicker, but in a recently published patent, we may be getting a peek into what the company was initially planning before they decided to include each HoloLens with the tiny 3DoF device.
First spotted by The Vergevia Twitter user WalkingCat, the proposed wand features a trigger and what appears to be a touchpad and button just where the thumb would rest.
1 of 4
image courtesy Microsoft
image courtesy Microsoft
image courtesy Microsoft
image courtesy Microsoft
The Clicker (which comes with HoloLens) already lets you essentially replace hand gestures so you can select, scroll, move, and resize 3D objects with the touch of a button, but the proposed device revealed in the patent appears to fit a different use-case, with its integrated trigger easily conjuring up thoughts of interactions like gripping items and possibly firing guns.
image courtesy Microsoft
These sorts of gaming-intensive interactions would ideally best be handled by something like Microsoft’s recently revealed motion controllers, but these critically do not support HoloLens, and are only for use with the company’s line of VR headsets.
While no supporting information was included in the official patent detailing the exact function of the touchpad and button below it, the patent specifically cites a Google Glass-compatible concept device created by industrial designer Jorge Trevino as a source of inspiration. Tentatively named Google Draw (the concept was created by Trevino, and is not a Google product), the AR stylus was imagined to work as both a pen for taking notes and a spray can.
image courtesy Jorge Trevino
Critically, the design of Microsoft’s AR input device wouldn’t be held like a stylus though, as it appears to be ergonomically similar to Vive’s Lighthouse motion controllers.
It’s unclear at this point if the company intends on producing the wand, although our hunch says it’s probably just an early concept. After all, we already got an eye-full last year during a Microsoft promo for their Mixed Reality platform. There’s still no telling what direction the next iteration of Microsoft’s HoloLens will take however, or whether the platform is making way for more dedicated AR gaming apps to fit alongside its productivity-focused Windows Universal Platform apps. Either way, we’ll be watching Microsoft intently for their next move to see if the device ever sees the light of day, or fades into obscurity.
Despite completing a successful Kickstarter back in August 2015, there still aren’t many Kat Walk VR treadmills outside of Asia, let alone the premium version specially built for out-of-home facilities like theme parks, malls, and cruise ships. The short reason: it’s just too damn heavy, and shipping it from the manufacturing plant in China isn’t easy. Acting as the sole distributor for Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg, the Netherland-based reseller Virtuo VR took to this year’s Gamescom to show off their flagship product, the Kat Walk Premium VR Treadmill and Kat PC Control Station combo, a hefty all-in-one commercial unit built with high traffic, as well as a high price (€11,900) in mind. As a note, both the smaller consumer version and the commercial version sans computer retail for significantly less.
I was greeted by Virtuo VR founder and owner Ali Cakan, an ex-military member turned tech distributor looking for the next big thing. Cakan opened two of the heavy-duty treadmills to the Gamescom-going public, along with a few motion platforms playing racing games tossed in for good measure. Clearly, the impressive-looking Kat Walk treadmills were the crowd favorite, as a long line snaked around the booth populated with German teenagers sitting on boxes and fold-out chairs awaiting their turn for what promised to be a unique experience.
Slipping a pair of webbed rubber booties over my shoes, the bottoms studded with a hard, but very slick plastic, I was instructed to lift myself up using a safety bar positioned overhead. Cakan instantly read my hesitation, and did a one-handed pull up on the bar. “It’s totally safe. See?” He then slipped on a Bluetooth-connected inertial measurement unit (IMU) to each rubber bootie that would register a step forward whenever I swung my leg. Getting into the dish-shaped walking area, I could feel the low friction surface as I wiggled my feet around as I waited to start.
Strapping in with a WWE championship-sized safety belt and two thick leg straps, I donned the Vive headset and was given my two motion controllers. An attendant dialed up a shooting game using the unit’s built-in computer with a touch screen monitor. Taking me through the menu, which was entirely in Chinese, I was plopped in a low rent version of CS:GO—a bit like the game below.
Moving wasn’t easy, certainly not as easy as walking normally. Because the footprint of the parabolic walking surface isn’t that large, you have to do a sort of baby half-step to get anywhere. Overshoot your mark, and you’ll slip out of the smooth surface of the parabola and hit the edge, something that left me feeling a bit wary after the first time I did it. The vertical stabilization bar and strap system kept me from going anywhere though, and thankfully caught me from falling flat on my ass. The bar, which stays behind you the entire time, doesn’t get in the way of natural hand movements either, so you can swing the gun around without worrying about knocking into support beams or containment rings like on Virtuix Omni or Cyberith Virtualizer.
Predictably, the stability of the unit is rock solid. After having both seen Cakan yank down on the horizontal beam and having nearly fallen on my ass were it not for the support bar, there’s no doubt in mind as to the safety of the device.
Walking away from the 10-minute experience, I felt like I just didn’t do it right, and that I would need more practice to nail down the strange half-step gait. It was also much more laborious than I though it would be, which I suppose you can chalk up somewhat to the rubber booties. The treadmill ships with dedicated shoes as well that have a small roller in the heels that are supposed to reduce friction and make walking easier—maybe not more natural, but easier. For the sake of keeping the line moving though, the small pile of different-sized shoes was left untouched as Gamescom-goers slipped in an out of the booties for the sake of brevity. I can see the addition of the shoes making it a less tiring experience.
Walking accuracy was also an issue. In real life, we don’t always line up our legs and body exactly to face the direction we want to go, and unfortunately this is all Kat Walk understands, i.e. no strafing or any other movement that isn’t directly forward or backwards. So if you want to walk around an object, you have to sort of box your way around it in a way that doesn’t really feel natural, leaving you with the clear suspicion that you’re trying your darndest to control a device to get where you want to go, and not really going there with your own two feet.
In the end, the learning curve may scare away a lot of first-timers from returning, leaving them with the impression that VR treadmills just aren’t for them, which is a shame, because Kat VR’s build quality is excellent, and I think a few more sessions would prove that all you need is a little perseverance to nail down what essentially is an entirely different type of controller.
Gamescom is one of the few truly gargantuan expos dedicated to gaming, holding within its massive Zeppelin hanger-sized halls all manner of ostentatious booth featuring all the big names in gaming. But it’s not all glitz, cosplay, and long lines at Gamescom. Back in the more demure B2B area, only accessible to trade visitors and press, was bHaptics, a Korean startup that recently joined HTC’s Vive X Accelerator Program specializing in actuator-based haptic devices, all of which ideally fit together to create a greater sense of immersion for VR games and experiences.
Everything in the TactSuit kit is wireless (Bluetooth Low Energy), which includes a vest and two ‘Tactosy’ arm bangles. There’s also a head-mounted haptic piece that wasn’t present at the show, which bHaptics explained to me was because it’s still in prototyping, and that unlike the picture shown below, which is more of a headband, it would either replace or fit over the foam gasket in either HTC Vive or Oculus Rift.
image courtesy Engadget
Initially strapping on the vest, I was told you have to cinch it tightly to your body so you get solid contact with each of the 40 actuators (20 on the front, 20 on the back), something that felt more or less comfortable at first. However getting more and more into the zombie shooter demo, which unleashed an array of different enemy types at me from 360 degrees, I started to feel the vest’s material hold in more and more heat. I would guess that longer playtimes (in excess of 20 minutes) would see some discomfort in users. The entire kit, headpiece included, contains a total of 87 actuators.
Lets get this out on the table before I go any further. Buzzing actuators, like those in smartphones and motion controllers alike, are pretty limited in the type of tactile sensation they can simulate. For example; a short, strong buzz would be good for a gunshot, and a long, weak buzz for a simple touch. The more the actuators however, the greater the ‘touch resolution’, which can create other sensations either by activating multiple actuators at once, or in a specific sequence. Think about getting shot in the stomach by a pulse rifle. The interior shot is hard and fast, and actuators on the periphery of the shot only gently buzz in a wave extending out from the shot. You can also simulate things like a slice across the chest or back in any direction, or an electric shock which sends the whole vest’s worth of actuators in a chaotic tizzy.
Anyway, zombies were lurching towards me from all sides, and feeling a claw ripping down my back for the first time, which was really just a line of actuators activating in sequence, was a surprising as it was terrifying. My brain filled in the necessary gaps, as I learned ‘buzz = bad’ in a short order. Soon the horde had me surrounded and my whole vest was buzzing wildly, with me frantically shooting to get them off of me.
As for the arm bangles, they’re a piece of the kit that do essentially one useful function: activating when you fire a gun to give you more perceived kick-back. This I found less useful for the purpose of overall immersion, and I may chalk it up to the demo, but the frantic shooting resulted in two constantly buzzing forearms. The bangles can technically also allow for more detailed haptic feedback because of their higher ‘actuator per square inch’ resolution, but I’m not sure what it would accomplish outside of having to learn what certain buzzes mean in the context of a game.
image courtesy Engadget
In the end, I learned that actuators alone do not a perfect haptic solution make, but you certainly can’t deny the novelty of strapping into a vest that lets you feel the digital realm in any capacity. I’m still not certain it’s really for me just yet though. At “less than $549” for the consumer version (coming later this year), TactSuit customers will likely fall into two camps; enthusiasts at the forefront of VR gaming, and out-of-home entertainment parks like the Korea-based Lotte World, which currently hosts VR games using the set-up. There’s always the question of support too. Like many new VR peripherals, the onus falls on individual developers to import TactSuit’s plugin into their projects, so the list of games that will work with it depends entirely on the game developer’s appraisal of whether taking the time to do so will be a profitable use of their time. It’s a vicious cycle that’s hard to break out of, but there’s no telling what customers want and how loud they’ll be about getting it.
