Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation
What Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality developers are talking about
A leaked job description may have confirmed that a sequel to Shinji Mikami's return to psychological horror, The Evil Within, is in development for the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One.
The post ‘The Evil Within 2’ rumored to be in development following leaked job posting appeared first on Digital Trends.
We spoke to the developers of Gwent and The Elder Scrolls: Legends to find out about the role public beta tests play in preparing balance-heavy multiplayer games for primetime.
The post Good, beta, best: How beta tests help shape games like ‘Gwent’ and ‘The Elder Scrolls: Legends’ appeared first on Digital Trends.
AMD had a press conference at GDC to demonstrate their engagement with the gaming community and had some major VR related announcements. AMD has long supported VR through their own Liquid VR technology and have been evangelizing VR for quite some time. So these announcements at their Capsaicin and Cream event made complete sense. GDC is a developer-focused conference so its worth remembering that many of these announcements will not have a direct impact on consumers, but rather an indirect effect as a result of decisions made by developers.
The first major announcement from AMD was that they have worked with Valve to support asynchronous reprojection, which is Valve’s own feature that exists to improve the VR experience and eliminate judder. This feature is akin to Oculus’ asynchronous time warp but for Valve’s Vive platform. The hardware manufacturer will support this feature through a driver update and Valve will support it through an update to SteamVR which is the company’s component of the Steam gaming platform. Valve actually launched this feature back in November along with NVIDIA, but now AMD is bringing support for this feature to their GPUs in March, which is a welcome addition for anyone running an AMD GPU with a Vive.
AMD also added support for a forward rendering path with Unreal Engine 4, which is one of the most popular engines in the world and is commonly used by some of the top game developers in the world. This forward rendering path feature is yet another VR-related feature that improves overall image quality in VR since HMDs are not the same as computer monitors and behave differently. As a result, lots of applications support forward rendering to deliver faster and better looking VR applications. Not all developers necessarily find forward rendering to be their cup of tea, but having support for the option is important for AMD to be relevant in VR.
Last, but not least, AMD announced their biggest partnership of the year and possibly in the company’s history with game developer and publisher Bethesda. This partnership will very likely stretch outwards into areas like VR, which is why it’s such a big deal. After all, Bethesda is releasing Fallout 4 in VR and it sounds like it will very likely ship with Vulkan which is a very good low level API that can squeeze the most performance out of virtually any CPU and GPU combination. However, AMD’s partnership with Bethesda is clearly designed to help them get better support for their GPU and CPU features in games and to accelerate performance in VR and other applications.
AMD did not announce anything regarding their new GPU code named Vega other than the fact that it will commercially be called Vega. Many people have been anticipating AMD’s newest GPUs using the new Vega architecture, but in the meantime, NVIDIA has announced their own GTX 1080 Ti which appears to once again raised the bar for AMD to compete with them
Disclosure: Anshel’s firm, Moor Insights & Strategy, like all research and analyst firms, provides or has provided research, analysis, advising, and/or consulting to many high-tech companies in the industry, including AMD, NVIDIA and others. He does not hold any equity positions with any of the companies cited.
Tagged with: amd, Asynchronous Reprojection, Bethesda, valve
Bethesda's latest trailer for its upcoming first-person shooter Prey focuses on the game's "mimic" mechanic, which allows players to assume the form of everyday objects like coffee cups, snack foods, and bananas.
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We first tried Fallout 4 in VR all the way back at E3 2016, and we really liked it, even if it had the same problems we usually see in full-scale first-person games. Bethesda’s solution to those issues appears to be the best anyone can come up with right now; give people options.
Speaking to Glixel, Bethesda’s Todd Howard addressed the issue of locomotion in its open-world RPG. This is an issue for many games, as stick-based movement can be nauseating for some VR users, while the teleportation alternative featured in so many experiences can be unimmersive. Teleporting across the wasteland one jump at a time doesn’t sound like the best way to travel about.
Howard recognized those concerns, noting that locomotion was “definitely the hard part of bringing the 2015 game into VR. “Given the size of the world and the amount that you’re moving in Fallout 4 that part is tricky because you’re doing it a lot,” he said. “Right now we’re doing the teleport warp thing and that’s fine, but we’re experimenting with a few others.”
Even if Bethesda doesn’t find the perfect solution, teleporting won’t be the only means of movement in the game; the developer plans to offer a range of movement styles to make sure the preferences of all of its players are covered. “Our plan is to ship with as many as we can, because it’s different for everybody,” he said.
It’s a move we’ve seen lots of developers employing as a response to their communities of late. Vertigo Games brought stick-based movement to Arizona Sunshine [Review: 8/10] after a teleport-only launch last year, and Hammerhead VR is implementing stick-based movement into last week’s horror release, Syren [Review: 7.5/10], too.
We could potentially see more than just these two options, though. “There are a lot of indie developers and students that are working on prototypes and thinking about how to move in VR and so we’re looking at a lot of those,” Howard concluded. We’ll certainly be interested to see what the studio comes up with.
Elsewhere, the developer confirmed what he has previously only said he hoped would happen; Bethesda is going to get all of Fallout 4 into VR. For VR users frustrated with the lack of big, AAA games available for VR right now, that’s certainly an exciting announcement. Just when the game will launch remains to be seen, and we only know it’s coming to the HTC Vive right now, but it’s also expected to show up on Project Scorpio, Microsoft’s upgraded Xbox One, which could mean it has a big showing at E3 2017 in June.
Tagged with: Bethesda, fallout 4, Fallout 4 VR
The wasteland can be an unfriendly place, assuming you don't know what you're doing! Here are 14 tips that will help your vault thrive in' Fallout Shelter.'
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Jump scares, superpowers, and aliens that mimic everyday objects – ‘Prey’ is scarier than it seems.
The post Arkane Studios’ reboot of ‘Prey’ turns everyday objects into interstellar horrors appeared first on Digital Trends.
Concept art of Fallout 4 with a certificate of authenticity signed by a senior concept artist at Bethesda, is now officially available from the Cook and Becker art dealer, but don't expect it to be cheap.
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ZeniMax Media’s legal battle with Oculus isn’t over just yet, but that’s not stopping the company from making moves in the VR space.
Escalation Studios, the developer behind the VR port of Please, Don’t Touch Anything! [Review: 8/10] and the Oculus-published Herobound: Gladiators, has been picked up by the publishing company, which owns game publisher Bethesda Softworks. Escalation has worked on plenty of games outside of the VR industry, though a press release notes the studio “will continue to contribute its talents across PC, console, mobile, and VR titles going forward.” No other mention of VR is made within the release, however.
The two studios already share a close relationship; Escalation developed the SnapMap game editor for Bethesda-published Doom when it released last year. The company also created an NBA viewing app for Gear VR as its first step into the industry.
It certainly seems like we could see more VR games under the Bethesda label, then. Currently Bethesda itself is porting its popular RPG, Fallout 4, to the HTC Vive, which is easily one of the biggest and most anticipated projects on the horizon. Hopefully we can expect something of a similar scope from this new deal.
Until late January, Escalation had only worked on VR games that appeared exclusively on Oculus platforms. On January 21st, however, it issued an update to the non-VR version of Don’t Touch Anything, dubbed Please, Don’t Touch Anything 3D, that added support for the Vive. ZeniMax itself is currently awaiting a verdict from the jury in its court room battle with Oculus after it claimed the company had built the Oculus Rift off of its own resources, supplied by former id developer John Carmack, now Oculus’ CTO.
We’ve been waiting on the verdict all week; hopefully we’ll get one today. Whatever the outcome, it seems ZeniMax is committed to growing its VR presence no matter what.
Tagged with: Bethesda, Escalation Studios, oculus, zenimax media
Bethesda has unveiled the next chapter of The Elder Scrolls Online. The expansionwill take players back to Vvardenfell, the ashen island setting of the beloved 2002 game The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
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