Category: Against Gravity

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Rec Room Reaches Over One Million VR Headsets

Rec Room Reaches Over One Million VR Headsets

Rec Room is ringing in the new year by celebrating its successes in the old one.

In a post on its official site, developer Against Gravity revealed its app had been installed on over one million VR headsets by the end of 2018. Rec Room is a social VR platform available on Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows VR and PlayStation VR. It’s free-to-play and completely cross-play, meaning that you can meet up with friends inside other headsets. This figure doesn’t seem to count the same headset with multiple accounts. If that’s the case, this is an impressive feat and deserves a pat on the back. The developer didn’t reveal individual stats for which headsets had seen how many installs.

Elsewhere, Against Gravity talked a lot about the popularity of player-created rooms, of which there are now over 400,000. Though Rec Room comes with a bunch of developer-made activities, players are free to make their own adventures in these rooms too. And the best rooms saw over 300,000 visits. Players now spend over 40% of time in these user-created environments. You can see some of people’s creations in the video above.

“It’s inspiring to see how people are using Rec Room to learn how to game dev, design, program, organize a community, create a new talk show or podcast, create art galleries and inventions together, and all the other crazy things you’ve done,” Against Gravity wrote in its post.

Look out for plenty more announcements from Rec Room in the year to come. There’s a rumor the game is coming to Oculus’ new Quest headset too.

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The post Rec Room Reaches Over One Million VR Headsets appeared first on UploadVR.

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‘Rec Room’ is Getting a New Castlevania-inspired Co-op Quest Next Week

Rec Room, the social VR platform available for a multitude of devices, is getting another one of its famous co-op Quests starting November 15th, this time letting you team up with a crew of like-minded vampire hunters on a monster-smashing adventure.

The Castlevania-inspired Quest, dubbed ‘Crescendo of the Blood Moon’, takes you to a dreary castle where you battle it out weapons like shovels and old-timey blunderbuss guns against skeleton mobs and werewolves.

An interesting new locomotion scheme is making its debut as well, a whip-teleportation that lets you climb the castle where you’ll no doubt encounter more terrible ghoulies. While the creepy new Quest was probably intended for release sometime around Halloween, replay value on Rec Room’s Quests are pretty high, so it’s better late than never.

 

The new ‘Crescendo of the Blood Moon’ Quest isn’t the first of the platform’s co-op adventures; Rec Room plays host to: Quest for the Golden Trophy, The Rise of Jumbotron, The Curse of the Crimson Cauldron, and Isle of Lost Skulls—all of them with their own unique themes and weapons to battle the many fearless NPCs just itching to send you packing back to the lobby.

Like its Quests, Rec Room’s in-game battle royale multiplayer Rec Royale is basically a full game unto itself, letting you go head-to-head against 15 other players in a large summer camp environment, replete with the iconic drop from a flying party gondola and plenty of weapons and ammo to loot.

Against Gravity’s Rec Room is a free social VR app that’s available on PSVR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows VR headsets, and traditional monitors, providing cross-play between all supported VR and console/PC platforms. Check out how to download it here.

The post ‘Rec Room’ is Getting a New Castlevania-inspired Co-op Quest Next Week appeared first on Road to VR.

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Rec Room Hits New Milestones As Title Continues To Grow

The popular virtual reality (VR) social gathering title Rec Room has announced that it has passed another milestone. The title, which allows users to come together within virtual spaces and hangout or play games together, is seeing a steady grow in users following numerous updates. The news came from the titles official Twitter account which revealed that the number of player rooms created and the number of visits has reach new heights.

According to the Tweet, 200,000 player created rooms are now within Rec Room and these have been visited more than 50 million times. These are some very impressive numbers for the title which, at the time of writing has an ‘overwhelmingly positive’ review status on Steam from over 3,000 users. Thanks to allowing users to create their own rooms and build their own stories, Rec Room offers a safe and fun place for anyone to be creative within VR.

Back in May of this year it was also announced that the title would be getting it’s own battle royale game mode called ‘Rec Royale‘ which was later updated to support squads. One of the main positive elements of the title is also that players don’t need a VR headset in order to play, and it is fully cross-platform supported with the PlayStation 4 too. No matter what platform you’re friends are on you can all come together to have some fun in virtual space.

Rec Room screenshot 1

As part of the celebration of hitting these new milestones the Rec Room YouTube channel has been uploading a series of videos to help users learn new ways of creating rooms. This covers the basis of building a room, understanding the settings and a number of more advanced functions which are being covered in future videos. Users can also find community spotlight videos here which share some of the best rooms created with the world.

Rec Room is available now on Steam Early Access and is free to play on HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality headsets. You can see the most recent trailer for Rec Room below and for all the latest on the title in the further, keep reading VRFocus.

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Get Ready to Rumble! As Rec Royale Encourages Some Cross-Platform Mayhem

Having given virtual reality (VR) players a taste of battle royale goodness over one short weekend in May, Rec Room  developer Against Gravity has now officially launched Rec Royale for PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows Mixed Reality headsets.

Rec Royale - Screenshot

With the ‘Battle Royale’ scene becoming increasingly popular thanks to videogames like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Epic Games’ Fortnite, Against Gravity’s little slice of carnage is free to everyone with the right VR headset.

Gameplay is simple enough. Rec Royale pits 16 players against each other in the wilds of a national park. With the landscape hiding summer camps, mountains, forests, outposts, ravines, and lakes, there’s plenty opportunities for ambushing and taking out other players. Plus there’s tons of loot for scavenging.

There’s no teaming up in Rec Royale, it’s every player for themselves at the moment with Against Gravity’s Community Designer Shawn Whiting saying: “We really wanted to get in a squads mode for launch but we weren’t able to make it. We want to support squads ASAP and we know players are eager to play in teams with their friends. Teaming up is not allowed at the moment since we don’t have squads. There is an exception for player created rooms where players are allowed to set their own social rules.”

Rec Royale - Poster - Frontier Pass

As for what’s new since the public alpha test last month, Against Gravity has added new streaming and recording cameras for Twitch streamers, YouTubers, and other content creators, a Frontier season pass that allows players to level up and unlock rewards within Rec Royale, lots of level design work and map changes based on player feedback, the ability to walk and sprint over almost any terrain type, including off cliffs, easier holstering and drawing of weapons, and the option to toggle locomotion between head based direction or controller based direction in settings.

Just like Rec Room, Rec Royale is completely free to download, found via the doors in the Rec Center or by looking at your watch. For any further updates from the team, keep reading VRFocus.

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‘Rec Room’ Battle Royale Shooter ‘Rec Royale’ Now Live on All Supported Platforms

Rec Room, the free multiplatform social VR app, just got its long-awaited battle royale shooting game, Rec Royale. Now live on all supported platforms, you’ll be able to engage in some PUBG-style shootouts as you hang glide down to the map below in search of weapons, ammo and health potions.

Update (06/08/18): ‘Rec Room’ is now live on all platforms, including PSVR, HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. We had a chance to go hands-on during the open beta late last month, and while we were hoping for squad gameplay at launch, it appears we’ll have to wait just a little longer. Against Gravity says teaming up outside of custom rooms will lead to bans.

Other changes at launch include the ability to walk and sprint over almost any terrain type, including off cliffs, and the ability to toggle locomotion between head-based direction or controller-based direction.

The original article follows below:

Original article (06/08/18): Rec Royale will pit 16 players against each other in a national park setting, including “summer camps, mountains, forests, outposts, ravines, lakes, and tons of loot for scavenging,” Against Grav Community Designer Shawn Whiting says in a PS blog post.

Against Grav also created new backpack system for quick swapping and storing multiple weapons and power-ups—a must for a VR-only title such as Rec Room.

Rec Royale will be on offer beforehand via a public alpha test for players with a registered Rec Room account, available from May 25th – May 27th on all supported platforms.

Image courtesy Against Gravity

Rec Room already plays host to a variety of mini-games, including various co-op quests, disc golf, dodge ball, 3D charades, and an engaging paintball game that pits you against other community players in massive outdoor area sprawling with places to take cover. By the sounds of it Rec Royale will be much larger than the current paintball area.

In-keeping with the family friendly, cartoony vibe, we assume Rec Room has gone for a decidedly more Fortnite (2018) approach to Rec Royale, which will likely put various paintball guns in your hand as opposed to lifelike weapons.

Check out Rec Room on the following platforms:

The post ‘Rec Room’ Battle Royale Shooter ‘Rec Royale’ Now Live on All Supported Platforms appeared first on Road to VR.

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Rec Room Is Getting Their Own Battle Royale Game, Called ‘Rec Royale’

We’re only a few weeks away from this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles and one phrase we’re expecting to hear a lot of is ‘battle royale’. Made popular by the grittiness of the Bluehole published PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and cartoon combat extremes of Epic Games’ Fortnite. Both of these titles have, over the last couple of years, taken videogaming by storm (or blue, if you play PUBG I guess).

Rec Royale - ScreenshotWith there being so much revenue generated by the pair, particularly Fortnite which continues to ride high following its recent tie-in with The Avengers: Infinity War and concurrent records on Twitch it’s inevitable that everyone begins trying to get a piece of the battle royale pie. Though as we found out last week with the death of Boss Key Productions it is not a guarantee for profit or survival..

As you may have guessed the latest title to announce a battle royale mode is a virtual reality (VR) one. A new experience is coming your way courtesy of Against Gravity, the developers of popular social VR experience Rec Room. For those unfamiliar, Rec Room is described as a ‘VR social club’ which allows users to get together in the same VR space and engage in various social mini-games, such as paintball, disc golf or charades, as well as more adventurous quests.  The title, which has been in development since 2016, is currently in Beta/Early Access across PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows Mixed reality.

Rec Royale adds exactly what you would expect to Rec Room, players parachuting in to a large wooded area full of rocky outcrops, dense forest, mountains, buildings large and small, loot and lots of weapons to off your rivals with including sniper rifles and pump shotguns – albeit ones that will apparenty fire paintballs.

Rec Royale - Screenshot

Against Gravity’s Community Designer Shawn Whiting confirmed in a piece on the PlayStation Blog that the update will be both free and cross-platform, meaning the users on PC version will be able to wage war against their console cousins. A public Alpha test has been set for this coming Friday, May 25th 2018 until Sunday May 27th for all those with a registered Rec Room account. After which the team will be taking feedback from the community via Reddit and Discord before taking the next step.

VRFocus will bring you more developments on this as they are announced.

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The VR Job Hub: Studio Roqovan, Wolf & Wood, Against Gravity and Many More

The variety of roles available in the field of immersive technologies mean that every week when we come to discussing them in The VR Job Hub there’s always something – be in in virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) or mixed reality (MR) – that takes us by surprise. So, what new beginnings await this week? 

Check out the list below to see if there’s something that sparks your interest.

Location Company Role Link
London, UK University of the Arts London Course Leader – MA Virtual Reality (VR) Click here to apply
Gjøvik, Norway Norwegian University of Science and Technology  Associate Professor in Computer Science Click here to apply
London, UK TechNET Digital Virtual, Mixed and Augmented Reality – Software Engineer (Unity/Unreal) Click here to apply
London, UK Storm VR Unity VR Programmer Click here to apply
Nationwide, UK VR Cribs Freelance VR Photographer Click here to apply
Gateshead, UK Wolf & Wood Mid/Senior Unity Developer Click here to apply
Seattle, WA Against Gravity Game Engineer Click here to apply
Seattle, WA Against Gravity Level Designer Click here to apply
Seattle, WA Against Gravity Software Game Engineer Click here to apply
Los Angeles, CA Studio Roqovan Senior Programmer – Generalist Click here to apply
Los Angeles, CA Studio Roqovan Lead Game Designer Click here to apply

If nothing in the list above took your fancy, you can always check out The VR Job Hub from seven days ago. Also don’t forget that if you’re an employer looking for someone to fill an immersive technology related role – regardless of the industry – and you want that position to be featured on next week’s VR Job Hub, then please send details to myself via keva@vrfocus.com  and also pgraham@vrfocus.com.

Check back with VRFocus next Sunday at the same time, 3PM (GMT) for another selection of the latest roles in the immersive technology industry.

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Rec Room Gets Clubhouses You Can Have Friends Visit

Rec Room Gets Clubhouses You Can Have Friends Visit

Seattle-based Against Gravity released an enormous update to Rec Room that adds clubhouses you can customize and have friends visit even when you’re not online.

The update represents a huge step for the cross-platform app available for Rift, Vive, PlayStation VR and Windows-based VR headsets (through Steam). Now, visitors to Rec Room can express themselves more and drive additional creativity. Creators can also connect their rooms together using doors, so each room can become part of an interconnected system.

Rec Room is the latest VR app to get a huge update this week. Yesterday Bigscreen issued its most significant update since launch and the day before Mindshow added sharing. Each of these apps is free-to-use and represents some of the most exciting work being done with VR software design. It might be easy to miss because of the cartoonish art styles employed by these startups, but each startup is developing an innovative and fun social application that works incredibly well despite the limitations of current VR headsets. VR is currently held back by high costs, relatively low resolutions, limited body tracking and a player base split across so many headsets and disconnected virtual worlds that it can be lonely to explore a virtual world all on your own. These startups are erasing that loneliness and innovating rapidly to make their software both increasingly fun and useful.

Here are some details from Against Gravity providing some background for this update and how the new clubhouse features work:

  • We’ve had a lot of players asking for the ability to save all of the awesome things they’ve been making in Rec Room. Up until this point there was no way to save a really interesting item you had created, a favorite room, or custom activity. Besides parking your headset in that room and never logging out. Which we did see quite a few people resort to.
  • With this update we’re taking a big step towards a world where more and more of the interesting things you’re doing and discovering in Rec Room are created by players. We wanted to start with enabling players to create great social spaces where they can feel at home with their friends and communities. In future updates we’ll be adding support for a much wider set of use cases. This means more features to better support rich player designed games, a greater variety of player hosted events, and improving the ease of use of our creative tool set.
  • Saved Rooms Alpha – You can now choose to save and recall any custom room you create! This includes placement of objects, Maker Pen creations, whiteboard drawings, photos, etc.
  • Here’s how to do it: Open your watch and tap “Custom Rooms”, then “Create”, then make sure you’re creating the room in Sandbox mode. Once you’re in the room, make some changes then open your watch again, tap “This Room”, then “Save”. You’ll be prompted to type a name and description for your room. Now whenever you return to this room, it will load the saved version!
  • You can also restore the saved version at any time by tapping “Restore” in “This Room”
  • Saved rooms have a unique ^roomname. We use the ‘^’ symbol to mean “room”. So if you see us say something like “come to ^partytime” that means you should come to a room called “partytime”. Every saved room must have a unique ^roomname (it’s kind of like a URL).
  • If you know the ^roomname and you want to go to the room, do this: Open your watch and tap “Custom Rooms”, then “Search”. Type the name and hit Search. You should see the room appear… tap the little button to go to it!
  • Saved rooms are public by default (anyone who knows the ^roomname can join, and your room will appear in the Custom Room Browser if someone is in it), but you can set your room to be private if you want. This makes it possible to create a clubhouse, for example, that is only accessible by you and our friends, which has been a popular request at our Q&As. Expect us to add additional features soon for more/easier control over access, and maybe the ability to boot directly to your clubhouse (bypassing the Dorm).
  • Note that you (the creator) don’t have to be present for people to visit your saved room (if you made it public)…
  • This is a very new system that will take a while to settle in, so expect bugs and weirdness!
  • Please be aware that we will continue to update Rec Room at our usual breakneck pace, and some updates might break saved rooms. We obviously don’t want that to happen, and we’ll try to avoid it as much as possible, but we have to be clear that it almost certainly will happen from time to time.
  • We also reserve the right to delete inactive rooms (e.g., no-one has visited for > one month) and release the ^roomname. It’s way too early in Rec Room history to guarantee permanent persistence, so you need to be actively maintaining your room for it to keep working! This is not (yet) a “build once and forget” system.

Against Gravity is looking for feedback on the new features.

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Become More Social in VR as Rec Room Beta Hits PlayStation VR

Today Against Gravity opens the doors to Rec Room for PlayStation VR owners, allowing even more players to interact in the cross-platform experience which supports Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows Mixed Reality.

Released in beta form for free, Rec Room is described by the developer as a ‘VR social club’, allowing users from across the globe to get together in one location and engage in various lighthearted mini-games, such as paintball, disc golf or charades, as well as epic quests and adventures, and new toys in the sandbox machine.

Rec Room Laser Tag GIF

Rec Room beta is available in North America, South America, and the EU region:

  • Australia
  • Austria
  • Bahrain
  • Belgium
  • Bulgaria
  • Croatia
  • Cyprus
  • Czech Rep
  • Denmark
  • Finland
  • France
  • Germany
  • Greece
  • Hungary
  • Iceland
  • India
  • Ireland
  • Israel
  • Italy
  • Kuwait
  • Lebanon
  • Luxembourg
  • Malta
  • Netherlands
  • New Zealand
  • Norway
  • Oman
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Qatar
  • Romania
  • Russia
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Slovakia
  • Slovenia
  • South Africa
  • Spain
  • Sweden
  • Switzerland
  • Turkey
  • UAE
  • UK
  • Ukraine

Against Gravity has confirmed that PlayStation VR players won’t need PlayStation Plus to enjoy Rec Room, although if they do pay for the service they get a burst rifle skin in paintball.

Recently the team has added a bunch of new updates including a video screen to the RC Car so that you can now drive in drone mode, making laser tag a full time game, a new group Quest titled The Curse of the Crimson Cauldron, a revamped tutorial, teaching the handshake (add friend), fist bump (party up), and Stop (mute/ignore/report) gestures, the Code of Conduct is highlighted more prominently and the keyboard now has shortcuts for common email addresses.

As for the future, Against Gravity has previously confirmed that a pirate-themed quest will be going live sometime in early 2018.

The studio will be running an AMA on r/PSVR from 10am – 1pm PST (6pm – 9pm GMT) today, for anyone who has a question regarding the videogame. For any further updates on Rec Room, keep reading VRFocus.