With the PlayStation VR launch just around the corner—October 13th to be exact—major retailers like Amazon, Best Buy and GameStop have started to stock a few accessories that are sure to keep you charged-up at moment’s notice and travel-ready for those VR evangelist missions to the people who still haven’t tried out virtual reality.
While pre-orders for PSVR have been out of stock for months now in the US, with GameStop executives reportedly revealing that PSVR pre-orders were the “quickest sellout in GameStop’s history,” and the retailer running out of allocation “literally in five minutes,” there’s bound to be a pretty large consumer base for aftermarket accessories.
Amazon and GameStop so far seem to have all officially licensed accessories currently, which for now are exactly two display stands with built-in controller charging cradles, and two robust-looking carrying cases.
Attention: Pre-order release dates for PSVR accessories are different across each retailer. Amazon is so far releasing all accessories pre-orders in late October, while other retailers may release earlier.
PowerA Charge and Display Stand
The ‘PowerA’ Charge and Display Stand gives you a convenient place to stow all the important bits while keeping them ready for use. The stand features a charging cradle for two Move controllers and a single Dualshock4 controller. With this set-up you’ll still need to find a place for your audio headset however, which seems less than elegant at MSRP $49.99.
‘Collective Minds’ Charge and Display Stand packs in a little bit more for a modestly lower price at $34.99. The stand includes charging space for two Move controllers, two Dualshock4 controllers, an additional USB port for rechargeable gaming audio headsets (and a nifty place to hang them)—all of which feature an individual charge LED.
RDS Industries PlayStation VR Headset and Accessories Deluxe Carrying Case
Lugging around an awkwardly-shaped VR headset is no fun, so it pays to have a reliable solution on hand if you’re planning on trekking around to friends and family with your new purchase and want to keep it safe along the way.
To this end, ‘RDS Industries’ created a hard-shell carrying case with a few separate compartments. The main compartment holds the PlayStation VR Headset and HDMI/USB cables, while the second holds both the breakout box and AC adapter with cable. It’s unclear from the production description whether the interior is injection molded plastic, or high-density foam, but at $59.99 we’re certainly hoping for foam.
‘PowerA’ offers a much more streamlined case for the PSVR which seems to omit almost everything from the full PSVR Core bundle besides the headset itself. The production description does mention an internal mesh pouch for additional storage, but the overall size of the case suggests that it won’t be for much beyond cables and possibly a game or two. MSRP: $39.99
Considering there are precious few accessories out for HTC Vive (besides replacement parts and the odd Hyperkin skin) and hardly any to be found Oculus Rift, this is a meaningful first step by a headset manufacturer to get useful accessories into the hands of gamers. While we’re still holding out for that perfect travel case that lets you bundle the entire kit and kaboodle, PS4 included, these are sure to do the trick until then.
Vertebrae, a virtual reality advertising platform that promises to bring ad supported monetization to VR publishers, today announced a $10 million series A fundraising.
Vertebrae’s platform, now out of stealth, is currently in private beta for use by content publishers such as entertainment studios, gaming companies, creative agencies, and brands that want to insert ads into their VR creations. The company didn’t specify who participated in the investment round.
Vertebrae aims to deliver VR ads to both interactive rendered spaces and 360 video, including custom VR mini-games, branded image backgrounds, and content sponsorship.
Vertebrae worked recently with Lionsgate to create a VR ad experience for the September 16th premier of the film Blair Witch (2016), according to Vertebrae the experience was designed to build intrigue and promote awareness that then drives people to theaters to watch the full-length film. The 90 second immersive ad was served as a pre-roll ad to the VR game Sisters, a VR horror title.
Feral Rites is a third-person VR adventure-brawler from Insomniac Games released for the Oculus Rift. Set on a mystical island, you play as a beefed-out warrior trying to avenge your father’s death by kicking, punching and slashing everyone in your way.
Feral Rites Details:
Official Site
Developer:Insomniac Games Publisher: Oculus Studios Available On: Oculus Home (Rift) Reviewed On:Oculus Rift Release Date: September 13th, 2016
Gameplay
At the beginning of the game, you’re introduced to Bokor, a powerful shaman from your tribe who leads you on your way to avenge your father’s death, an act perpetrated by the evil Sombro. Blinded with rage and taunted by Sombro along the way, you tear through each sector of the island, killing everyone with your newly acquired beast powers, which lets you turn into a slow and hulking man-jaguar—the tank of the game—or an actual jaguar that is faster at (but has no combat abilities) moving and auto-smashing the world’s inexplicable surplus of terracotta vases.
slashing an enemy in beast form
Much like Insomniac’s Spyro the Dragon or Ratchet and Clank series, Feral Rites is jam-packed with collectibles of all sorts spread out through the game’s maze-like map. Raw material for armor upgrades, gold, journals, and talismans used to increase the number of moves you can do, are to be found in every nook and cranny of the complex map set out before you.
With multiple temples in a single level, it’s easy to get lost, which is probably why the developers included a ‘spirit sense’ mechanic that lets you find the most direct route to your objective by tracing a temporary line to wherever it is you need to go. While this is arguably better than quest markers or mini-maps, which can spoil the fun of real exploration, I (predictably) ended up abusing it. Since there’s no penalty for using the mechanic to your heart’s content, it personally became a part of the game’s natural flow, where I would enter an area with a fork, pound the ‘spirit sense’ button, and go on my merry way. In terms of real exploration, your mileage may very depending on how much you use (or abuse) the ability.
So maybe exploration isn’t your thing anyway and you just want to smash some shit up? Feral Rites has you covered.
Combat is high-energy, visceral and extremely gratifying in Feral Rites, featuring a large enough array of moves to make fighting any of the world’s dozen-or-so bad guys an interesting and challenging affair. You can’t just tank through fights and button mash your way to success, because your beast form can only take so many hits before you’re turned back into a human; your human form, while agile, deals less damage to your foes—making the game’s combat system a real study in balance. You can change the game’s difficulty level at any time though, even in the middle of a fight, which increases bad guy skill and HP, and decreases the chances of getting a power up in one of the aforementioned vases that litter the game world.
My two favorite moves were throwing bad guys off high cliffs and throwing bad guys into piranha-infested streams (I really liked throwing guys)—two moves that are worth a relatively meager hazard bonus on your constantly building combo meter, but really effective at eliminating high numbers of baddies.
Puzzles are on the easy side, but hey, this is an adventure-brawler and not an adventure puzzler like Obduction.
Immersion
Like Insomniac’s Edge of Nowhere (2016), your third-person point of view makes you essentially a floating security camera that automatically switches positions as you control your character below. This sort of fixed-point teleportation isn’t really jarring because you can anticipate the camera switch pretty reliably, an event triggered by your character crossing a blue line in any given area of the map.
‘spirit sense’ activated, heading for a new area
So what does VR add to a decidedly traditional game like Feral Rites? A few things actually, the most important being the grandiosity of seeing it all in virtual reality.
The game’s Aztec-inspired scenery is vast and megalithic, something only a VR headset can correctly translate to the viewer. If you can resist using the ‘spirit sense’ ability and really take your time, you’ll be able to appreciate some of the most well-made environments currently available to VR headsets. Perched over a seemingly infinite drop, you can really get the sense of vertigo, even if you’re an invisible set of eyeballs in the sky.
To help you appreciate and take in the scenery, the developers added a unique rune-searching system so that every once in a while you can stop in your tracks and search for a rune symbol hidden somewhere in the scenery. When you find it, you’re given a little reward of coins for your effort, and you also get a chance to better scope out your surroundings.
Your shaman guide, Bokor
One of my least favorite things about Feral Ritesis that the storyline relies heavily on narrator-driven cut scenes; that and the helpful, if not incessant, image of your mysterious shaman buddy Bokor constantly appearing out of nowhere to tell you what to do. These are both (un)necessary evils to push the narrative forward, but dammit if it just doesn’t feel so gamey when you play it in a VR headset. Maybe it’s trying to hearken back to an earlier age, but the storyline was just too simplistic and just too obvious for me to really be engaged. Then again, it may be that I’ve grown out of these sorts of games, but I desperately want a game that feels more clever than me. I had to slog through it to get to combat, which proved to be much more engaging.
Something that often takes a backseat to the story is the soundtrack, an intensely cool mix of chill hiphop vibes when exploring (something like Samurai Champloo), and a much more arcade-like drum and bass track when in fights.
Comfort
Third-person games with a fixed POV like Feral Rites are always supremely comfortable simply because they don’t have any stomach-churning artificial locomotion to contend with.
It’s no surprise Oculus is pushing games like this on their platform, which up until Oculus Touch launches later this year, makes playing a game in a Rift necessarily a seated experience. That said, using the gamepad and sitting down is a familiar way to game, and scenery is usually splayed out in a comfortable, forward-facing way so you don’t have to swivel too much.
I can’t always play VR games for long, but this time I had a full day to beat it from beginning to end. Topping out at 10 hours for me personally,I can attest that Feral Rites is just as comfortable as you would expect it to be.
Conclusion
Feral Rites proves to be a fairly fun, well-balanced brawler that offers around 10 hours of gameplay if you follow the story alone. Collectibles are everywhere, giving you extra incentive to explore the entire island, which is a massive and beautiful place worth more than a cursory glance. The storyline is predictable and dialogue feels wooden however, and relies heavily on cut scenes and helpful narrators to push things forward, making it much less interesting than we would have hoped.
Scores
Gameplay: 6
Immersion: 8
Comfort: 9
Overall: 6.5
We partnered with AVA Direct to create the Exemplar 2 Ultimate, our high-end VR hardware reference point against which we perform our tests and reviews. Exemplar 2 is designed to push virtual reality experiences above and beyond what’s possible with systems built to lesser recommended VR specifications.
Gnomes & Goblins is a real-time interactive experience currently in development by VR production company Wevr and created by film director Jon Favreau, an industry professional known for his work on films such as the Iron Man franchise, Chef (2014) and The Jungle Book (2016). Releasing yesterday on Steam for the HTC Vive, I curiously popped my head into the fantasy realm and was immediately entranced by the solidity of the world set in front of me.
Spoiler Alert: This preview will likely ruin some of the magic of playing through the 5-minute experience for the first time. It’s highly suggested if you own a Vive, that you download it here and play it once through before reading.
Entering the main menu, you’re confronted with a lone sign post. There are no instructions, no helpful voices to tell you where to go or what to do, only a lit candle sitting atop a tree stump and a number of unlit candles appended to the various directions. It’s simple, clever things like this that spark something deeper inside you, that drive you to look, touch and experiment with the world of Gnomes & Goblins.
Lighting the ‘Goblin’ signpost with my candle (‘Gnomes’ was unavailable in this build), I was instantly transported to an enchanted forest filled with tiny rope bridges and homes carved into the trunks of living trees, all cast in an autumnal hue like some sort of beautiful dream. Fireflies buzzed as I playfully opened window sills to peak into the little village’s various homes, and even stuck my giant head down into a hollowed out tree trunk to find an archetypal medieval pub with beer flagons and wooden barrels.
Since locomotion is 1:1, meaning you have to actually walk around to move in the space, the experience is only so large, but the density of the village diorama and interactive items like acorns and apricots that you can pick from the trees had me exploring and playing around for a while before a certain rustling near my feet piqued my interest.
Wide-eyed little goblins peaked out of doors, ran on the tiny suspension bridges, and scurried around my feet. A curious little goblin inched closer to me as I beckoned him with an acorn in hand to lure him in. Snatching it from my grasp, he ran away behind the hollow stump, lurking back at me distrustfully and following me with his big, orb-like eyes.
Deciding that I could be trusted not to smash up their village (they are less likely to approach if you make sudden movements), another goblin wandered out of a tunnel at the base of one of the tree homes, toting a brass bell—giant for him, but normal-sized for me—and placed it at my feet.
No words were exchanged between us, me and the goblin as he plopped down at the base of the tree, expectantly waiting for me to pick up the bell.
Grasping it, I started swinging it slowly like an old timey town crier as each ring of the bell awakened the a swath of different-colored fireflies around me. The more it rang, the more fireflies obscured my vision until the whole world was glowing in an ethereal light. My vision returned, I looked up to see that I was now the size of a goblin, standing in the center of the village.
With the bell still in hand, I rang it again to find that I could tour the village from the inside to see goblins drinking, sleeping, and staring at me with their large, expectant eyes.
And that, sadly, was the end. It’s a world I desperately didn’t want to leave, although according to director Jon Favreau “[e]ven in this limited preview experience, I wanted it to be very rich. Where you felt like every time you went back into it you felt like you could find more.”
According to Wevr and production partner Reality One, there is much more in store for the goblin’s fantasy world.
“As we look ahead to building out the full scope of the experience, we are engaging Doug Church, a veteran game designer and interactive story pioneer, to flesh out the game systems and design the interactions and activities – increase player agency and the range of possibilities you will be able to experience in this expanded world. We are already down the path of designing the expanded Gnomes & Goblins universe.”
No release date has been established yet for Gnomes & Goblins, but we’ll be following it closely.
vTime, the social VR platform from Starship Group, today released an update to their avatar creation tool that now gives users access to thousands of avatar customization options, promising to “let you reflect more of yourself inside vTime.” The new feature is available across all of the app’s supported headsets including Google Cardboard, Oculus Rift and Gear VR.
With the so called ‘New vYou’ tool, users can control a wide range of characteristics such as body type, skin tone, hair, eyebrows, eye shape, eye color, nose, lips, ears, cheeks, jaw, face length, facial hair, and even age—providing users with a much more detailed way of recreating themselves in virtual reality. Something the devs intentionally didn’t include however was a clear gender distinction, meaning you can mix and match whatever clothes or body style you like to get the desired effect.
vTime Managing Director Clemens Wangerin says the new gender-neutral avatar system “sees vTime become truly diverse and inclusive, allowing us to see the faces and uniqueness of each of our users – something that has been missing from the wider social VR community, until now.”
To test the system, I tried to rebuild my face without looking into a mirror or picture of myself. The results, although not perfect, are pretty good for only about 5 minutes of playing around with the tool’s sliders and color swatches.
But as anyone who spends an exaggerated amount of time in character builders knows, a nondescript white guy is probably the easiest avatar to make, so I set off to max out the sliders and create something with a little more flair. In all earnestness, I was hoping for a result that the McElroy brothers over at Polygon’s YouTube show Monster Factorywould be proud of, but the result was decidedly much more human than monster.
Disheartened somewhat by the fact that in my quest to build a monster, I actually ended up making a funky web developer, I then drifted on to the second favorite pass time of avatar creators: Celebrities.
With the basic swath of pre-set avatars at my disposal, I was able to create Samuel L. Jackson’s character from Django Unchained (2012) and a hipster version of Mahatma Gandhi, both of which were made in about 10 minutes.
Overall, vTime’s new avatar system proves to be pretty robust, offering a wide enough variety of clothing options, skin tones, and facial feature sliders to create any basic human form, be it young or old.
vTime says that the social VR app, along with the new character builder, is coming soon to iOS, Google Daydream devices, PlayStation VR and HTC Vive. The studio maintains that new features, events, tools and further customization options will coming out next year.
Casino VR Poker, the online free-to-play casino hosting live Texas hold’em, has today launched on Oculus Home, now allowing users to play in a cross-platform space with either Gear VR or Oculus Rift. The Steam version with Rift support is ‘coming soon’.
The first time we saw Casino VR was back in late 2015 on the Oculus Rift DK2, months before the release of the consumer Oculus Rift. While the UI has since changed for the better, stability has improved, and in-app purchases have been added so you can top up on chips when/if you’ve run dry, the game is essentially the same. After all, it’s just Texas hold’em, right?
It turns out these things, including the app’s now steady number of concurrent users, make for a different experience than what we saw before. More than 20 people were on when I popped into the app at around 11 AM and 4PM ET during the weekday.
Full Disclosure: I was gifted 100,000 chips ($19.99 in-app purchase price) by Casino VR on top of the free 5,000 starting chips so I could get a feel for every table in the app during my hands-on with the game. These chips hold no monetary value after purchase, and I also promptly lost them all – but more on that in a minute.
There’s a certain thrill in calling a bluff in real live poker. Not only is there money on the line (even if it’s not real money), but you have to face down your opponent, read his/her reactions and try to hide your own in the process. And even though VR systems aren’t nearly articulated enough to provide substantial poker tells yet, or the visible change in a player’s physical behavior that some people try to interpret to get the upper hand, you can still notice the furtive glances people give when double checking cards in Casino VR, and try to infer something from how people react as the game’s five community cards come out on the table.
While the Rift version of the platform uses inverse kinematics (IK) to imbue you and the other Rift players with a body that can slump forward and lean from side to side, this feature only works when sitting down, and only when in the Rift. Considering there isn’t any locomotion to speak of (select a table and you’re teleported automatically), this isn’t that big of an issue. But because it’s a cross-platform space, Gear VR players appear exactly the same as Rift players (they have a body just like you), except their bodies remain perfectly stationary—making body language less reliable of a poker tell as soon as you figure out the suave salaryman sitting across from you is stiff as a board because he’s using a Gear VR.
Either way, the feeling of winning or losing that big pot and experiencing the barb of defeat or the rush of winning is an undeniably heady feeling; even more so when people can see and hear you.
After doing well in a few hands in some low buy-in tables, I headed to the high roller table in the middle of the room, a table with a minimum 60,000 chip buy-in. Taking my entire stack, somewhere around 120,000, I quickly found out I was clearly playing with people well above my skill level. I only spent about 10 minutes on the high roller table sitting across the top two players—each with around 6 million chips to their names—and was cleaned out quicker than a Las Vegas tourist.
To unpack some of my experiences in Casino VR, I spoke with co-CEO Hamza Siddiqui to learn more about what the social VR game will have in store for players, including input methods and future supported headsets.
Casino VR is now officially cross-platform with Rift and Gear VR – any plans for a Vive version? If not, any specific reason why you aren’t supporting Vive at this time?
Yes, [we have plans] but we would be only comfortable with launching a Vive version when we have good hand presence (relative to the rest of the body). This is quite an interesting challenge but unfortunately a time consuming one.
You mentioned that your studio has a Touch dev kit. Are you currently working on Touch support?
Yes, [as] part of our Touch/Vive support pipeline. We have gotten to love the Touch controllers specifically because of the ability to pinch. Imagine stacking chips precisely! We have been having a lot of fun with the Daydream controllers as well, they are surprisingly more versatile than people think.
Casino VR seems to have a steady number of concurrent users, more than some well established ‘social VR’ spaces. Why is that?
People really like to play poker in VR! VR badly needs active and engaging form of content driving social experiences. We see that our community is all about friendly competitiveness. You make new friends in VR and next thing you know you have a competition going on over who is better at poker.
People want to know: Since chips don’t have any real monetary value, are we going to be able to buy things in-game using the chips?
We believe the most important aspect in Social VR is personal identity. Personal identity is not just how you look but how you are perceived, your social, competitive and community status. We can’t wait to share later what that entails!
If you’re still scratching your head as to why Casino VR doesn’t allow for real-money gambling, you’re not likely to see it through Oculus Home or Steam, as both platforms disallow real-money gambling, pornography, and excessively violent or sexual content.
Intel recently announced the planned acquisition of Movidius Technologies, a company specializing in on-device vision processing units (VPUs) and algorithms involved in a number of areas such as deep learning, depth processing, navigation/mapping, and natural interactions.
Movidius will be providing Intel with their low-power, high-performance system on a chip (SoC) platforms, including their dedicated Myriad 2 VPU we saw earlier this year—the big brother to Myriad 1, otherwise known as the vision processing chip at the heart of Google Project Tango first generation of AR tablets.
According to an Intel blogpost announcing the acquisition, the company “will look to deploy the technology across our efforts in augmented, virtual and merged reality (AR/VR/MR), drones, robotics, digital security cameras and beyond.”
Intel says Movidius’ technology “optimizes, enhances and brings RealSense capabilities to fruition,” the company’s depth-sensing camera array that incorporates a 1080p HD camera, an infrared camera, and an infrared laser projector.
At CES 2016 Intel highlighted the Daqri “smart helmet”, an augmented reality hardhat developed by Daqri that uses Intel’s RealSense 3D camera. The CES demo included an augmented view of a mock industrial setting which used a thermal imaging AR overlay to pinpoint heat-venting pipes.
In an interview with Movidius’s Marketing Communications Director Jack Dashwood at MWC 2016 earlier this year, he told us that the company was then engaged with multiple VR and AR headset manufacturers (exactly which ones he couldn’t say), and that we could expect something tangible in late 2016 or early 2017 using their VPU.
It’s unsure how the acquisition will effect these deals, or if Movidius will be providing their VPU exclusively for Intel-related projects, but one thing is for sure—Intel wants into the AR and VR game and now has the dedicated hardware to make it a reality.
