Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation
What Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality developers are talking about
Assassin's Creed Origins takes us to Ancient Egypt, but the even bigger news is how much Ubisoft has changed the combat and mechanics. Here's everything we know about Assassin's Creed Origins.
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Developer and publisher Ubisoft has revealed that Far Cry 5 and The Crew 2, along with a new Assassin's Creed game, are in the works. They're all expected to arrive within the next year.
The post Ubisoft says new Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, The Crew games coming in the next year appeared first on Digital Trends.
After seven years at Ubisoft Montreal, Alex Hutchinson, creative director of Far Cry 4 and Assassin's Creed, has left the company to develop indie games at his own venture, Typhoon Studios.
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Hand holding in games and check-list maps have become far too common place in gaming, but a new generation of games is helping pioneer a new way to do things. Give the player the freedom to explore and the experience is much improved.
The post Ignorance really is bliss: Video games are better when they tell us less appeared first on Digital Trends.
Xbox Live Gold subscribers are gearing up for a busy month in April, as Microsoft will give away free copies of Ryse: Son of Rome, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, and more through the end of the month.
The post Games galore: ‘Ryse’ and more major titles go free in April via Xbox Live Gold appeared first on Digital Trends.
Update: Matt Stenquist, the designer of the icons uncovered yesterday, has taken to Twitter to explain that his work was a collaboration between Ubisoft and his university, and not an official project. No Assassin’s Creed VR yet, then.
Everyone who is spreading the Ubisoft Assasin;s Creed work it is not official, it is a collaboration project between my university and Ubi.
— Matt Stenquist (@MattStenquist) February 7, 2017
Original story: Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series roots its fiction deep in virtual reality within the game world, but could we soon see a new entry in the franchise for today’s real-life headsets?
Judging by a recent post on design website Dribbble, the company could at least be working on something tied to the series internally. UI and UX designer Matt Stenquist recently posted images of logos and icons for what he described as “an internal Assassins Creed escape room game.” Stenquist says he “Led the UI/UX” for the project, apparently for Ubisoft Paris. Going by the descriptions for the images, the project was developed for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift using Unreal Engine 4. It’s also a multiplayer experience.
We’ve included the images below (click to enlarge). The first shows the game’s logo, though it doesn’t feature any kind of subtitle. Another shows icons used, some of which Stenquist noted were dated as they weren’t “optimised for VR”. The final set of icons is a series of heads players use to communicate with others.
We’ve reached out to both Ubisoft and Stenquist to ask about the experience, but neither has responded at the time of publication. We’ll let you know if we hear any more details.
Even if the game is real, it might never see the light of day. An “internal” project could mean that Ubisoft is simply trialing such an experience and has not given it the greenlight. You might remember, though, that the publisher showed off a prototype of Eagle Flight at E3 2015 before it was confirmed as a full game later in the year, so its possible it could grow into a product too.
Even if it does come to fruition, it sounds like this game would be quite different to the full, third-person, open world games that we see in the main series. Escape room games are popular in the VR industry, and usually involve locking players in a room and tasking them with solving puzzles in order to escape. Still, Assassin’s Creed is no stranger to spin-offs, and the series’ penchant for time-swapping stories presents some interesting opportunities for the genre.
We have already seen one cinematic Assassin’s Creed VR experience, tying into the recent movie, but fans would surely welcome a full-blown VR game.
Tagged with: assassin's creed, escape room, ubisoft, VR
20th Century Fox is bringing the Assassin’s Creed experience full circle. With the new Michael Fassbender film debuting Dec. 21, Practical Magic has created an original story for Oculus Rift users that borrows from many of the elements that made the franchise a global hit.
The post Dizzying ‘Assassin’s Creed’ VR experience drops you into the Spanish Inquisition appeared first on Digital Trends.
A new, extended clip from the upcoming Assassin's Creed movie that's based on the hit game franchise debuted during this year's edition of The Game Awards, ahead of the film's December 21 release in theaters.
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In March at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), AMD revealed plans for a virtual reality (VR) experience based on the upcoming movie Assassin Creed. To promote the film which launches later this month, Assassins Creed The VR Experience has now been made available for the Oculus Rift head-mounted display (HMD).
Partnering with Alienware, Ubisoft, 20th Century Fox, New Regency, Ubisoft Motion Pictures, and VR development studio Practical Magic, Assassins Creed The VR Experience was developed and rendered using AMD’s Radeon technology, designed to fuel the creation of real-time photorealistic VR content. The experience was shot on-location during the movie’s filming both in Malta and at Practical Magic’s studio in Burbank.
“The ‘Assassin’s Creed’ Movie VR Experience is a thrilling piece of virtual reality that will excite aficionados of the game, fans of the movie and newcomers alike. We are delighted to team up with Fox and are excited to demonstrate how world-class VR can be produced and experienced on AMD technology,” said Roy Taylor, AMD Corporate Vice President, Content, Alliances, and VR.
The Assassins Creed The VR Experience premieres at The Game Awards 2016 today, with the movie being released later this month in 21st December.
“We are thrilled at the opportunity to team up with AMD and Alienware to launch an immersive and dynamic VR Experience for our Assassin’s Creed movie,” said Zachary Eller, Senior Vice President, Marketing Partnerships, 20th Century Fox. “The live VR Experience allows fans to experience the world of an Assassin in the setting of the highly anticipated film.”
Not only will the VR experience be available for free through the Oculus Video app on both Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR, but it’ll also be viewable as a 360-degree video on Facebook.
Checkout the trailer below, and for all the latest VR news from around the world, keep reading VRFocus.
In mid-October we learned about an upcoming VR experience was in development to accompany the theatrical release of the Assassin’s Creed feature film starring Michael Fassbender (X-Men: Days of Future Past, Inglourious Basterds). As it turns out, the project is a large-scale collaboration between AMD, Alienware, Practical Magic, 20th Century Fox, New Regency, and Ubisoft. Here’s how they made it happen.
The 360-degree experience was filmed by Practical Magic in cooperation with 20th Century Fox and New Regency. The theatrical activation will feature kiosks with Oculus Rift headsets powered by Alienware Aurora PCs using AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics cards.
The five-minute experience promotes the upcoming Ubisoft Films and 20th Century Fox movie starring Michael Fassbender, which opens Dec. 21. Matthew Lewis, CEO and founder of Practical Magic, told UploadVR from the outset the goal was raising the visual quality bar for VR videos.
Michael Fassbender as Aguilar de Nerha in the Assassin’s Creed film.
“The film Justin Kurzel and Adam Arkapaw shot is beautiful, and we wanted to make sure the VR experience kept up,” Lewis said. “This meant we were going to be building a lot of new production and post-production technology, which is what ended up happening at Practical Magic.”
While the Spanish Inquisition scene in the big budget film was shot on location in Malta, the VR experience was shot in Los Angeles. Lewis said his team went out with drones and scanning equipment to painstakingly scan the set, props, and other elements from the film production in Malta and London.
“Over the course of a few days, we scanned the world of the movie, and took it back with us to Los Angeles,” Lewis said. “We were then able to recreate the set both physically in the art department, and in the computer at extremely high resolution.”
A cast of 50 to 60 people assembled in Los Angeles to bring the Spanish Inquisition to life. Because of the 360-degree nature of the experience, Lewis said a lot of the background talent ended up featured very prominently in the sequence.
The Animus from the original Assassin’s Creed video game.
“There’s action happening all around you,” Lewis said. “If you watch it more than once, you definitely see things you missed the first time that add to the experience. Right at the very beginning, you get a full true 360 view of the Animus — every last inch of it — so you can study it in great detail and see things you might have missed in the movie. It’s a gorgeous set full of props and eye candy, and it’s the same exact set you see in the film.”
Practical Magic produced the show in segments over the course of 2016 in London, Malta, and Practical Magic’s VR studio in Burbank, and it took a laundry list of new technology to pull it off.
“We weren’t happy with any 360 camera rig at all, so almost all of the action was captured using motion control rigs, including some of our own invention,” Lewis said. “We used mostly RED Dragon cameras and shot multiple passes of everything, with a baseline resolution of 6K. The hallway fight scene is actually 26 passes of 6K images composited together covering different angles of the scene. When you see it at full resolution, it feels cinematic — it’s rich, sharp and detailed. The dynamic range is there — it doesn’t feel muddy or overly-compressed. That was hugely important to us. We also really need to call out Litegear, our lighting supplier, who provided literally hundreds of individually controllable LED light fixtures that allowed us to perfectly manage the world light during motion control. We couldn’t have done it without them.”
Post-production was done in-house at Practical Magic, using Nuke and CaraVR for compositing, Maya for 3D and Vray for rendering, and After Effects for a few key tasks, along with some custom software, plugins, and tools of their own. Lewis said his studio has a pretty solid on-premises render farm that is built specifically to deal with VR, so every frame seen on screen was generated there specifically.
Michael Fassbender fighting as Aguilar de Nerha in the Assassin’s Creed film.
“Editing itself was only a fraction of the post-production work,” Lewis said. “The visual effects component was very complex, and took months of work. The post-production pipeline for VR industry-wide is very immature and the software is alpha quality at best. We were also pushing our hardware to the absolute limit — imagine trying to work with 26 video streams of 6K footage at the same time in the same shot. We needed the best hardware you can get your hands on, and that’s what it took to get the job done. Otherwise, we’d still be sitting here watching progress bars.”
Fassbender plays Aguilar de Nerha in the film, an original character that’s part of a new story that ties into the universe of Ubisoft’s bestselling video game franchise. While filming last year at Pinewood Studios, Practical Magic shot Fassbender for this exclusive VR experience.
“We shot him on stage in London and he was a great sport,” Lewis said.
While Fassbender is the central character in the big screen adventure, the VR experience allows users to step into the boots of an original character.
A screenshot from the Assassin’s Creed VR Experience trailer embedded above.
“The viewer is not playing Aguilar — that’s a job best left to Michael Fassbender’s talents,” Lewis said. “I don’t want to give too much away, but yes the viewer is an Assassin.”
Gamers will also recognize Easter Eggs in the VR piece, according to Lewis. These occur mostly in the first scene, which was shot in the Animus set from the movie. There are other elements inspired by the video game franchise, as well.
“We move the camera a lot, which means there are a number of major parkour-type moves the viewer will experience,” Lewis said. “There are plenty of classic, tried-and-true Assassin’s Creed moves. There’s one part that always makes people scream a bit, which is exciting to watch.”
Lewis said the team knew the games and immediately everyone went to,“We have to do the Leap of Faith in VR!” So naturally, Lewis jokes, “I don’t want to give it away by saying we did a Leap of Faith in VR, but I mean, we did a Leap of Faith in VR, obviously.”
Lewis said the last few years of experience working on complex cinematic projects like Capture for The CW have been invaluable.
“We like to move VR cameras while we’re shooting, which is traditionally considered very difficult — so moving VR cameras has kind of become our thing at Practical Magic,” Lewis said. “A couple of years ago we built a cinematic VR camera rig for Google that Justin Lin used to produce Help!, which won the Gold Lion for VR at Cannes this year. We’ve continued to build all manner of cinematic VR rigs since. If we didn’t have engineering and rapid prototyping in-house to build our own VR gear, and a lot of really experienced technical people, we couldn’t have pulled any of this off.”
Gamers will get a first look at the Assassin’s Creed VR Experience today for free through the Oculus Video app on both Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR, as well as a 360-degree video on Facebook. Additionally, moviegoers will see a national theatrical roll-out of the experience at AMC theaters in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and New York City between Dec. 2 and Jan. 1.
Tagged with: 20th century fox, alienware, amd, assassin's creed, new regency, practical magic, ubisoft