Motorola today unveiled their latest phone, the Moto Z2 Force Edition, and alongside it will come a 360-degree camera that the company says snaps onto any phone in the Moto Z lineup.
Launching with the Moto Z2 Force on August 10, the little Moto 360 Camera is a part of Motorola’s ‘mods’, or magnetically attached hardware add-ons which include speakers, a better camera, wireless charging shell, battery case, and projector. Mounted on a similar magnetic backing, the camera easily snaps onto Motorola’s range of Moto Z phones.
Motorola is remaining tight-lipped on the specifics, but according to the website, the 360 camera will do 4k video with positional audio—not much specs-wise for something already in pre-order for $299.
image courtesy Motorola
What we do know is the company is launching an app for on-the-go photo and video editing. The emphasis here is quick sharing, as the app will let you share straight to social media or live stream in 360. For those times when 360 doesn’t fit the moment, the camera will also allow you to take 150-degree ultra wide-angle shots.
stitching lines, photo courtesy Motorola
If the 360 images and video published on the phone’s order page are any indication, the little phone-mounted 360 cameras looks to include some pretty capable stitching in certain situations. The impromptu photo however is bound to come with an unsightly hand at the lower register, something you should be able to avoid with the help of a hand-held gimbal (like they use in the promo videos).
Tiny Trax (2017), the tiny slot car racing game, is now out for PlayStation VR. Created by Brighton-based studio FuturLab, Tiny Trax gives you the tiny HotWheels-sized cars from your childhood and lets you tear around and the room, do incredible jumps and drift around bends on a slot track otherwise impossible outside of VR.
Scaled to mimic a child’s giant toy racing track, you can play 12 track across three environments; Tropical, Fire and Ice and Outer Space. Online multiplayer allows up to four players driving six different vehicles.
“We’re delighted to announce TinyTrax – it’s a game that will appeal to players of all ages, allowing them to dive straight in and recreate the thrill of slot racing in immersive virtual environments,” said FuturLab MD James Marsden
According to a PlayStation blogpost, development of the game was built around a primary goal of using VR to improve on an existing real-world seated experience, which led developer Dave Gabriel to the idea of slot-car racing in VR. Gabriel says Tiny Trax “ticked all the right boxes,” including no need to move from the seated position (no motion sickness), building impossible tracks in locales like the beach or on alien planets, and a track that didn’t have to obey the laws of gravity.
Facebook today announced new updates coming to their 360 streaming service including live 4k streaming support to VR headsets, image stabilization and a number of features that puts VR-ready 360 video more in line with the company’s standard streaming video service. Facebook also released a list of vetted 360 cameras and software suites so prospective content creators can jump straight into the 360 deep end with full knowledge that what they’re doing conforms to the company’s 360 streaming standards.
At least for Gear VR owners, Facebook’s 360 livestreaming service is getting the star treatment, now letting you deliver 360 videos in up to 4K resolution to the Facebook 360 app for Gear VR—both live and replayed later. Bringing 360 video up to speed with the rest of the platform also means giving it some of the features first released for standard video like donate buttons for charities, scheduled live broadcasts, and some post-live video tools that can help you get the most out of the video.
It’s uncertain at this time when Facebook Spaces, the Oculus Rift app that allows 360 photo and streaming video, will see the update.
image courtesy Samsung
When it’s done with care, VR can let you step into the shoes of another person—a powerful tool that pioneering immersive journalist Nonny de la la Peña lauds as an ’empathy generator’. Now you’ll be able to donate directly from within a 360 video just like on standard video. Only pre-approved “verified pages” can inject a donate button into their 360 live and recorded stream, and it must be a US-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
With the new update, you’ll also be able to schedule 360 videos so followers can know the exact date and time you go live and also sign up for a reminder notification that pushes to their mobile device (in the case a Gear VR-capable phone) that alerts them when you’re recording.
Facebook donation button on a standard video
Post-live video is getting some attention too to make it more attractive for casual viewers. A new image stabilization function that uses an algorithm to detect when things are shaky will be applied to recorded video, making it more comfortable for VR users. 360 video destined for VR headsets is also getting two features released last year that will let users skip to important parts of the livestream, and let creators better understand where their viewers are looking with a heatmap analytics tool.
Facebook is also making it easier to post video to several of the pages you own by allowing what it calls “crossposting”.
Facebook-approved cameras and software are coming too, emblazoned with the “Live 360 Ready” logo. The company says each camera’s app or web experience will enable you to interact with your friends and followers through direct access to their native reactions and comments function. The current list of Live 360 Ready cameras and software includes:
Microsoft has undoubtedly been working on the next version of HoloLens, the company’s AR headset, but now we know a little more about what’s going into the next iteration: a Microsoft-built custom AI chip designed to carry out low-latency computer vision tasks.
Taking the stage yesterday at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference (CVPR) 2017, Microsoft’s VP of Artificial Intelligence and Research Harry Shum announced that the next version of HoloLens will contain a new Holographic Processing Unit (HPU), the custom processor tasked with handling all information coming from the headset’s on-board sensors.
Revealed in a blogpost by HoloLens’ Director of Science Marc Pollefeys, a newer version of the headset will incorporate an “AI coprocessor”—a custom chip built expressly for machine learning that implements deep neural networks (DNNs) on the device itself. Using a first-gen HoloLens hooked up to a PC containing the new AI coprocessor, Microsoft showed 3 complex hand-tracking models running contemporaneously.
image courtesy Microsoft
As reported by Bloomberg, Microsoft says this the AI-capable chip is the first of its kind designed for a mobile device, one that’s light, energy efficient, and can carry out the real-time AI processing on-board instead of sending data to the cloud. This is to ensure minimum possible latency in computer vision tasks like hand tracking, object and voice recognition.
“The AI coprocessor is designed to work in the next version of HoloLens, running continuously, off the HoloLens battery,” says Pollefeys. “This is just one example of the new capabilities we are developing for HoloLens, and is the kind of thing you can do when you have the willingness and capacity to invest for the long term, as Microsoft has done throughout its history. And this is the kind of thinking you need if you’re going to develop mixed reality devices that are themselves intelligent. Mixed reality and artificial intelligence represent the future of computing, and we’re excited to be advancing this frontier.”
There’s no official word from Microsoft on when to expect the second iteration of HoloLens, although the Verge contends its due out sometime in 2019.
Thanks to ReVive, a hack that lets SteamVR-compatible headsets play Oculus Rift exclusives, anyone with an HTC Vive can enjoy a number of unofficially supported games from the Oculus Store. Here we take a look at 5 of the games you shouldn’t miss—of course with the appended “buyer beware” warning that the Revive hack caries with it.
For non-Rift owners, losing access to a game you bought on the Oculus Store isn’t likely at this point, but it’s not something you should ignore either. Back when Oculus modified their DRM in a way that prevented Revive from functioning, thus blocking Vive users from playing Oculus games in their library, community outcry over the decision eventually led Oculus to reverse that particular stance on DRM, saying that in the future they wouldn’t use headset verification as part of the platform’s security protections. Despite the risk, we still think these Oculus exclusive games are worth playing.
People used to think that fast-paced, high-action games would be too disorienting for new virtual reality users, but in Epic Games’ Robo Recall (2017), you can teleport around at full speed as you blast away at the game’s evil (and hilarious) robot army. If being able to tear your enemies literally limb from limb and beat a robot over the head with their own dismembered arm isn’t astounding enough, the level of detail and polish put into this game will make you reassess what’s possible in VR. This is another Touch freebie you’ll have to pay for as a Vive user, but at $30, you’d be hard-pressed to find something with this level of polish at this price on Steam.
Find out why we gave Robo Recall [8.5/10] in our review.
You can probably burn through this charming, family-friendly 3D platformer in a weekend—providing you’ve got a gamepad on hand—but at exactly zero dollars, Playful’s Lucky’s Tale (2016) is an easy sell. As one of the first third-person games for Rift, Lucky’s Tale helped define the Xbone Gamepad-era of VR gaming that Oculus is leaving behind now that the controller is no longer being bundled. Whether you’re racing with Lucky through lush trees, dodging swamp pits, battling menacing bosses, or mastering mini-games, youʼll feel like you’ve truly gone inside the world of a video game thanks to the magic of VR.
With a fantasy-meets-WW2 setting, this collectible card game takes place on a 4×4 grid battlefield featuring rampaging giants, intimidating war-machines, and soaring projectiles. As a freemium game from High Voltage, there’s still plenty of opportunity to play an exciting single-player campaign if collecting (and buying) card packs in multiplayer isn’t really your thing.
There’s plenty of gun slinging fun in this Western-inspired multiplayer shooter. Darned tootin’ if you can rob a runaway train, defend from zombie hordes, or battle it out in an old saloon—of course with your trusty six-shooters by your side (and a stick of dynamite for good measure). While this is free to Touch owners upon activation, if you’re looking for a well-rounded little shooter with a cowboy flair, the $40 sticker price may fit the bill.
Esper: The Collection gives you access to Esper (2016) and Esper 2(2017)—two finely-crafted and ultimately intriguing puzzlers that give you psychic abilities to solve increasingly challenging tests. As an agent of ESPR, an organization set up to deal with the outbreak of telekinetic powers, you travel to exotic locations (not just your desk); solve puzzles, discover secrets, stop villainous plots, and fall unconscious multiple times. Interact with an array of characters, voiced by notable actors, Nick Frost, Lara Pulver, and Sean Pertwee, and Eric Meyers. Since you’re using your telekenetic powers, this isn’t a game that’ll use Vive controllers to their fullest, but it’s still a great options if you’re looking for a more passive, seated experience.
Two of the most well-received Oculus-funded games—both the campaign mode Lone Echo (2017) selling for $40 and the free multiplayer mode Echo Arena (2017)—are easy for Vive users to play thanks to the games’ native 360-degree setup. If you’re skeptical of the zero-g locomotion scheme, we suggest grabbing Echo Arena first,which doesn’t require Touch activation to nab for free. Either way, you’ll be amazed at how comfortable and immersive flying through space can really be in the first-person (i.e. not Adr1ft).
Find out why we gave Lone Echo [9/10] in our review.
Wilson’s Heart is a gritty first-person thriller from Twisted Pixel that jaunts through gads of sci-fi tropes ripped directly from the silver screen. As one of the most beautiful and visually cohesive VR games out for Touch, the game takes you through a black-and-white universe as experienced by Wilson, a hospital patient recovering from a curious surgery that has replaced his live-beating heart with a strange machine. Ripping it from your chest, you find it gives you a growing number of abilities to help you not only fight against your personal demons, but also some very real ones that have passed into the world thanks to experiments done by the brilliant, but clearly insane Dr. Harcourt
While falling into some overly campy territory, garnering it Wilson’s Heart a [7/10] in our review, the game is definitelty worth a play-through if you can find it for cheaper than its $40 sticker price.
Don’t say we didn’t tell you *not* to button-mash your gamepad before stepping into Chronos (2016), a third-person adventure by Gunfire Games. Slashing at enemies with the long-trained penchant for beat-em-ups will get you exactly nowhere in this Zelda-inspired, Dark Souls-ish-level of difficulty game where dying in the game physically ages your character. Starting out with either an axe or a sword, you leap through a multi-dimensional transport crystal to hunt down a dragon that has ruined your world. As an interesting mix of high-fantasy and a retro post-apocalyptic world, Chronos gives you plenty to gawk at, and even more to worry about as you hack and slash your way through dimensions.
Sitting at 4.5/5 stars on the Oculus Store, it’s a score we can easily get behind.
Edge of Nowhere (2016) is a third-person VR survival horror game created by Insomniac Games that strands you in the icy wasteland of Antarctica, leaving you with only a pick-axe, a shotgun, and some rocks to defend yourself against a bloodthirsty ancient species that lurk inside the snowy caverns. The lack of supplies makes for tense gameplay and forces the players to be creative and conserve resources, creating tense moments when you’re forced to decide whether you should use that last shotgun shell and blow the head off the horrible beast lurking nearby or just try the more risky route and sneak past. As a gamepad game
Find out why we gave Edge of Nowhere one of our highest ratings at [9.5/10] in our review.
Ready Player One, the upcoming film directed by Steven Spielberg based on the VR-centric novel by Ernest Cline, just saw its first teaser trailer, released at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.
As written by Cline, Ready Player One follows Wade Watts on his journey through the OASIS, a pervasive virtual reality program that nearly everyone on the planet visits using their VR headsets. As a high schooler living in ‘the stacks’—trailers grafted together into large and dangerous towers—Wade’s only respite is a rusted out old van hidden away in a junkyard where he accesses the OASIS. After the death of eccentric OASIS’ architect James Halliday, a billionaire genius who in Willy Wonka-fashion offers up the rights to the OASIS and all of his money for anyone who can win the grand Easter egg hunt he’s left behind, Wade sets out to solve the cryptic game left behind by Halliday. The catch: before his death, Halliday was obsessed with ’80s pop culture, so Wade must immerse himself in everything from books, music, TV, and film from the era to truly understand the mind of the man who built the most important VR program in the world.
Directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Cline and Zak Penn, the Ready Player One film is charging up an all-star cast, including Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Mark Rylance, Simon Pegg, and T. J. Miller.
According to a report byThe Hollywood Reporter, Spielberg said the film is “the most amazing flash-forward and flashback at the same time about a decade I was very involved in, the ’80s, and a flash-forward to a future that is awaiting all of us, whether we like it or not.”
Ready Player One is slated to hit theaters on March 30, 2018.
What’s that building in the distance? Where’s the nearest Starbucks? How do I get to there from here? These are questions you’d likely find answers to in your smartphone’s map application—but with Apple’s ARKit, one developer showed it could be even easier with a recently revealed project that demonstrates the practical application of turn-by-turn directions and basic landmark-based orientation displayed in augmented reality.
Created by London-based iOS developer Andrew Hart, the project was built using two Apple tools; ARKit and Core Location, the latter of which provides devs access to data from the phone’s onboard hardware including Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, magnetometer, barometer, and cellular hardware so it can be used to gather relevant positioning data. Integrated it into a map project, Hart was able to demonstrate landmark orientation and even turn-by-turn directions that appear with the click of a single button.
Hart says he’ll be publishing the project on GitHub soon, and that he’d like to make sure the experimental app is in “a solid place before opening it up.”
Apple ARKit was first revealed at the company’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), and works on newer iPhone and iPads that have the ability to opt into the iOS 11 beta. While Apple is working with third-parties such as IKEA, Lego, and Niantic to build apps using ARKit, the company also released the tool for general use so enterprising developers can start building AR apps today—many of them going viral on the Internet like AR inter-dimensional portals and a project that built positional tracking for a VR headset using ARKit.
There’s no telling what Apple has up its sleeves hardware-wise, whether it’s simply a new iPhone with ARKit integrated at its core, or an AR headset that some patents would suggest is currently in the works. In the meantime though, we’ll be casting wistful stares at the iOS developers of the world to see what they come up with next.
OrbusVR, the upcoming VR MMORPG for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, is going into a limited-time open alpha starting on July 28th, 2017 at 12 pm CT (your local time) and will last for approximately 60 hours.
Update (7/29/17): The OrbusVR Open Alpha weekend has begun. The development team has put together a First-time Player’s Guide here explaining how to join the Open Alpha, and what to expect:
The game is currently in an Alpha state. That means that not everything we want the game to have is fully in yet, including some key game mechanics (such as Fellowships, friends lists, and NPC vendors, just to name a few). It will definitely have bugs. It may crash. However, in spite of all that, it’s still already a very fun game to play and we think you’ll really enjoy it!
Original Article (7/22/17): As the result of a successful Kickstarter that met its funding goal of $10,000 in just 4 hours and later went on to more than triple it before the campaign’s end, OrbusVR is one of the first ‘native VR’ MMORPGs to combine traditional MMO elements like quests and dungeons in a cooperative, social VR space.
According to a blogpost announcing the open alpha, the game in its current state has more than 20 hours of content which includes 4 different combat classes, 2 five-player PvE dungeons, a PvP free-for-all arena, and 3 zones featuring monsters, quests, and more. The game also includes fishing and alchemy disciplines, pet dragons, a rideable airship and a world boss that requires a group of max level players to take down.
The pre-order price of OrbusVR is $30, which will increase to $40 after going into closed beta on August 18th. General release on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift + Touch (180/360 supported) is slated for Q4 2017—making the open alpha an easy sell if you’re interested in what the low-poly MMO has to offer.
Oculus’ massive price drop that saw the cost of Rift + Touch slashed to only $400, is still going on for the next 4-5 weeks—but if you purchase through BestBuy.com, you can get EVE: Valkyrie, normally costing $40, for free.
Note (07/21/17): Best Buy is currently out of online stock. Individual stores however post in-store availability for pick-up. Many stores are quickly running out, or have already ran out, but list when they expect stock to return.
Featuring near-constant updates from EVE Online developers CCP Games, the studio’s multiplayer arcade dogfighters has gotten a slew of new maps and gamemodes since launch in 2016, making Valkyrie a solid investment in both time and money—but if you can get it for free, why not?
This of course includes the free games you’ll already be getting when you activate Rift + Touch including:Robo Recall (2017), Luckyʼs Tale (2016), Quill (2017), Medium (2017), Dead and Buried (2017), and Toybox (2017).
Game studio HappyGiant and Tippett Studio, the production firm founded by stop-motion guru Phil Tippett, has launched HoloGrid: Monster Battle (2017) on Microsoft’s HoloLens platform. First appearing on Samsung Gear VR, the tactical strategy game combines elements of chess, board games, and collectible card games—of course with the grotesque HoloChess-style monsters spawned from the mind behind visual effects of the original Star Wars trilogy, Jurassic Park (1993), and RoboCop (1987).
HoloGrid: Monster Battle is now on now on the Windows Store for $4.99, and includes the full gamut of things only currently possible with HoloLens; spatial mapping and spatial sound, gaze tracking, gesture input, and voice control.
image courtesy Happy Giant
“HoloGrid: Monster Battle allows you to see table top games in an entirely new way, mixing digital holograms of chess battle with the real world,” said Brandon Bray, leader of Microsoft’s Windows Mixed Reality Developer Ecosystem. “It’s amazing! I’m excited to see Happy Giant pioneering the path to bring games to life in your own home.”
According to the press release, HoloGrid was inspired in part by the Star Wars HoloChess scene and created in conjunction with two-time Academy Award winner Phil Tippett. Bringing Tippett’s grotesque creatures to life in augmented reality, gameplay has been compared to card games like HearthStone, but rather set on a grid like Chess where players duel against both AI and real opponents.
The game currently supports cross-play multiplayer between iOS, Android mobile devices and Samsung Gear VR.
“Playing HoloGrid on HoloLens is the ultimate experience. It fulfills the purest vision yet of the game we set out to make, and that I was inspired to play 40 years ago when I saw Star Wars as a young kid,” said Mike Levine, HappyGiant Founder and Creative Director. “Phil Tippett called it “magic” when I showed it to him, and I think that says it best.”
