PAX West will require proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test for entry
When it was announced earlier this year, PAX West did not require attendees to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Inside COVID-19, Felix & Paul’s Space Explorers Nominated For Emmy Awards
Two VR experiences available on Oculus Quest have been nominated for Emmy Awards.
The experiences — Inside COVID19 and Felix & Paul Studios’ Space Explorers: The ISS Experience — are nominated in Outstanding Interactive Program 2021 category, up against two other non-VR titles. Last year, The Messy Truth VR won an Emmy for Outstanding Original Interactive Program, while The Line won for Outstanding Innovation in Interactive Programming.
Here’s a description of Inside COVID19:
Follow Dr. Josiah Child, an emergency department director and physician, as he readies his staff in five different hospitals to respond to the impending pandemic. In the midst of his preparations he is infected with the novel coronavirus.
Inside COVID19 is available to watch on Oculus TV for the original Quest and Quest 2. You can head to this link and press Watch in Device, which will open the experience as soon as you put on your headset.
Likewise, here’s a description of Felix & Paul Studios’ Space Explorers: The ISS Experience:
The largest production ever filmed in space, Space Explorers: The ISS Experience is an epic four-part immersive series that invites you to join eight astronauts on life-changing missions aboard the International Space Station. Shot over two years with exclusive access to the crew, The ISS Experience offers an intimate take on the joy, wonder, and dangers of life in orbit.
Only two episodes of the planned four are currently available, with episode three scheduled for a Fall 2021 release and episode 4 for Winter 2021. Space Explorers is free to download on the Quest store, but access to each episode will cost $2.99. That being said, episode 2 can be streamed for free in Oculus Venues between 12am PT July 20 and 11:59pm PT on July 23. The app is also available on Oculus Rift.
The winners of the 2021 Emmy Awards will be announced on September 19.
4 Surprising Ways COVID-19 Has Forced the World to Innovate
Digital transformation is a conversation that is and was taking place before COVID-19. Businesses wanted to know how to become more competitive, reactive, and efficient, and how services for users can be improved. McKinsey’s global survey of 889 executives reported that COVID-19 certainly accelerated digital transformation by several years in some sectors. Many of these changes are expected to remain in place long-term.
Here, we take a look at the top COVID-19 tech trends and how they will remain part of our lives in the future, post-pandemic.
Are remote working and virtual reality training the future?
Remote working was clearly one of the biggest COVID-19 tech trends. The number of people remote working took a quantum leap as we were forced to stay in our homes and continue working as normal where possible.
Hybrid office and remote working models are likely to continue following the pandemic. The pandemic has disrupted cultural and technological barriers that prevented working from home in the past, creating a social shift in workplace expectations. McKinsey predicts that over 20 per cent of the global workforce could be working remotely three to five days a week. This would have a significant impact on local economies, transportation, and general spending.
Virtual training took precedence in the education and corporate world, with the widespread adoption of online activity fuelling this. While some may be concerned about effectively emulating an in-person learning experience when training remotely, virtual reality training can deliver exactly that. Virtual reality training helps to create a live, synchronous virtual environment and has been used in healthcare and medicine, engineering and auto manufacturers, and many more industries.
A report from PwC in 2020 forecasted that around 23.5 million jobs across the world will be using augmented and virtual reality by 2030 for training, meetings, and customer service. Virtual reality is cost-effective, practical, and a safe place to learn new skills.
Contactless payments
The COVID-19 pandemic changed how we pay for things. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that we avoid cash and use contactless. Contactless payment has been a popular option for many years and has now become the preferred way to pay for the majority. So much so that research has reported that 54 per cent of shoppers would change to a retailer that provided contactless payment.
From start to finish, this technology has gone more mainstream, with mobile and contactless payments becoming the norm. It is predicted that this will become the standard method to pay, with faster, convenient, and secure checkouts that will dictate consumer behaviours.
Virtual reality tourism
The concept of virtual reality tourism would’ve likely been a futuristic one. Nobody would have ever predicted we would be staying in our own countries all year with airline companies struggling to stay afloat. That’s leaving plenty of us frustrated with a holiday itch to scratch. More and more of us are turning to virtual reality to relieve this demand for travel.
Virtual reality travel experiences are possible through headsets that give users realistic access to places like Antarctica and the pyramids in Egypt. Currently, virtual reality is used to help travellers decide where they want to go. It allows customers to take 360-degree tours of resorts, directly book their flights, and choose seats on planes, and specific hotel rooms at home.
The world needs sustainable tourism, and this is becoming a viable option to cut down emissions. This can also help preserve historic sites that are being damaged through mass tourism. Although virtual reality tourism isn’t intended to replace the experience of real-world travelling, it can help keep interest alive in locations abroad.
3D printing and laser scanning
Logistics and supply chains have been disrupted during COVID-19, resulting in shortages of goods. 3D printing has been adopted rapidly in many instances during the COVID-19 pandemic, with factories manufacturing on-demand resources for essential services like personal protective equipment and ventilators for healthcare.
The market study firm CONTEXT commented: “The demands made of printers in all price ranges increased as they were used to create pandemic-related items ranging from PPE to nasopharyngeal swabs.
“While this could not fully compensate for lost demand from closed markets (such as consumer products, education, and the dental and automotive industries), it clearly demonstrated the flexibility of the technology, showing how it can be leveraged to help overcome supply-chain disruptions and could, in future, be so used across many industries.”
The flexibility of 3D printing shows the value this can hold across industries. It allowed organisations to act quicker than other manufacturing technologies in the production process, removing the need to rely on complex supply chains that were disrupted. It would be a wise investment for the future.
COVID-19 has innovated tech in many different ways. It has changed everything from the way we do mundane things like pay for goods to how essential services are facilitated through specialist 3D printing equipment.
The video games that helped us through the pandemic this past year
From Animal Crossing: New Horizons to Blaseball, these are the games that helped us adapt to stay-at-home life.
Virtro Advances Healthcare Care Home Training With AI & Virtual Humans
The current Covid-19 pandemic has put extreme amounts of pressure on healthcare workers whilst highlighting the need for more advanced training techniques. Recently, training simulation Virtro announced work on a project designed specifically for workers in long term care homes.
Those living in these care homes tend to be more susceptible and are at greater risk if they catch Covid-19. So Virtro is developing this soft skills application which addresses both PPE training and ways to talk with residents in a suitable manner.
Virtro is using AI technology to create an advanced conversation engine so that staff can have unscripted conversations with Virtual Humans. This enables them to develop their conversational experience in a more natural way, rather than systems require multiple-choice answers.
“COVID-19 has impacted the world in an unprecedented way, and the interactions that healthcare workers are having with patients are drastically different, and we want to create applications that can contribute to positive health outcomes for people around the world,” said President of Virtro, Lee Brighton in a statement.
“Our goal is to emulate the emotions and feelings that healthcare workers may have when engaging with patients or colleagues; this is why we emphasize the importance of having free-flowing conversations in our applications,” Brighton continues. “With the assistance of AI, we can truly make innovative purpose-based learning programs that provide higher learning engagement and retention.”
Currently going through testing, Virtro aims to roll the new application out early this year, supporting both virtual reality (VR) headsets as well via web browsers for PC and Mac. For further updates on VR in healthcare, keep reading VRFocus.
Awesome Games Done Quick 2021 will push through in January, but goes online-only
Organizers of Awesome Games Done Quick 2021 have decided that the speedrunning showcase will be an online-only event in January due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
New HoloLens 2 App Helps UK Doctors Train To Identify COVID-19
A new HoloLens 2 application uses volumetric capture of a COVID-19 patient to help UK doctors and nurses safely identify symptoms.
HoloPatient: COVID-19 is a free extension of GIGXR’s HoloPatient platform, produced in partnership with the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and the new Resilient XR consortium. The app presents users with a ‘standardized patient’ showing COVID-19 symptoms. The patient was captured using Dimension’s London-based Mixed Reality Capture studio, with features a rig with over 100 cameras that record humans ten stitch their actions back together as a 3D asset. The company says it shot the footage under safe conditions.
“Shoots are looking a little different at Dimension today, in the name of the health and safety of both the crew and the general public,” said Adam Smith, Head of Production at Dimension. “In line with advice from the APA and the Government, protocols include adherence to the 2m social distancing rule, strict use of PPE and regular temperature checks by a medic on set. To limit the number of people present, we have remote directing capabilities, streaming a live feed of the action from a wide selection of camera viewpoints. It’s not traditional but it’s efficient and hasn’t impacted quality in our experience.”
The app, meanwhile, takes users through four stages of COVID-19 illness, providing a safe means for doctors and nurses to recognize symptoms seen in a typical case.
Resilient is a group consisting of UK-based immersive technology companies such as Dimension, tech hub Digital Catapult and VISR VR. Also included are developer agencies like Fracture Reality and Make Real. It’s also supported by the University of Leeds’ Centre for Immersive Technologies and University College London. Along with this HoloLens app, the group has also been using volumetric capture to deliver online training videos in which viewers can zoom in and inspect processes in greater detail.
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Take Out Your Pandemic Anger In Corona Kombat For PC VR
It’s a challenging time around the world with the ongoing global pandemic. However, if you’re feeling a bit frustrated, a new PC VR game might let you take out some of your anger in an usual way.
Corona Kombat is a new PC VR game available now on Steam, in which you’ll travel through blood vessels while shooting at the virus. While the concept might seem a bit silly, the game was actually developed by a health tech startup, Reducept, with the help of a European grant both for the game development and accompanying clinical research.
While it might be fun to take your pandemic anger out in-game by shooting at the virus, Reducept is hoping that Corona Kombat might be able help people who are struggling with negative mental health effects stemming from the pandemic, with the game pitched as being “supported by the validated effectiveness of CBT [cognitive behavioral therapy], hypnotherapy and mindfulness.”
The basic idea is to release any negative emotions toward something by performing some kind of representative physical action, even if it seems silly. In this case, by traveling through the blood stream and shooting at strands of COVID-19, Reducept is aiming to help people release some of the anger or frustration they might be feeling toward the pandemic in an amusing game.
Whether the game actually helps in that regard is a whole other matter, and will probably depend on the person playing. There’s two modes in question, a relaxing ‘resistance’ mode and a more challenging ‘willpower’ mode.
The game is available now on Steam, and looks like it only supports Oculus Rift headset at the moment, with just keyboard and mouse support for controls. If you try the game out, let us know what you think in the comments below.
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How The Oculus Quest Turned Me Into A VR Believer During A Global Pandemic
After months of searching for a regularly-priced Oculus Quest, I was finally able to purchase one recently. The Oculus Quest tutorial wowed me, Beat Saber convinced me of VR gaming’s unrivaled fun, and then Half-Life: Alyx made me a true believer.
[UploadVR regularly commissions freelance writers to review products, write stories, and contribute op-ed pieces to the site. This article is an op-ed from a new VR user that just recently got a headset.]
Even as a newly converted user, I absolutely recommend buying a VR headset even if you’re not a gamer. Over the past several months, my wife and I have been sheltering in place, having our groceries and meals delivered, and growing increasingly bored at home due to the COVID-19 coronavirus global pandemic . The Quest offers us a chance to escape our one-bedroom apartment, while simultaneously bringing us closer together. She likes to demolish every single one of my Beat Saber scores and I like to routinely ask, “Did you see that?” when playing Half-Life: Alyx. She never does, but I tell her about it after anyway.
We’re both gamers with a handful of consoles, so we’re not new to video games, but we were not prepared for how VR felt. No amount of YouTube reviews could really put into words how real VR gaming feels, and how fun it can be. Super Mario 64 was the first game I ever played, and putting on the Quest headset is the closest I’ve ever come to that moment of pure wonder again from 20 years ago. After many consoles and games played, it was the first time something felt genuinely new and unique, with ostensibly infinite possibilities.
VR Gaming Has a High Barrier of Entry
While I do recommend having a VR headset, many barriers may turn people away. For one, VR headsets are expensive, and many of the high-end VR headsets require constant connection to an expensive gaming PC. It’s also tough to find one right now because, now that we’re all inside, everyone wants one. Having a headset also requires a decent-size room to fully appreciate it, which means many will have to rearrange their living spaces just to play VR games.
With the world seemingly at a standstill in many regards, it’s a great time to hop into VR gaming, so long as you have money, space, and are lucky enough to find one available for purchase. If the stars align for you, as they did for me, you’ll know that VR is not just a video game console but a window into many worlds.
Why I Finally Decided to Buy a VR Headset
I had wanted a VR headset ever since the first Oculus Rift hit the market, but I was in college and didn’t have the money for the headset or the computer to run it. I considered buying a headset again when the PlayStation VR launched. Both my wife and I demoed the PSVR at a Best Buy, but my wife felt sick after trying Batman: Arkham VR. It was also too expensive, and there wasn’t yet a game I was dying to play.
Our perceptions of VR changed during the winter last year after we played Beat Saber at an arcade. The arcade had a VR area with four HTC Vive headsets and charged ~$7 per person to use. Afterward, my wife and I couldn’t stop talking about the experience. We had no idea that VR had gotten that good so fast, and we talked about buying one, but the prices were still too much. We didn’t know about the Oculus Quest yet.
After my wife saw YouTuber Naysy flawlessly execute Doja Cat’s Say So on Beat Saber, she asked me to look into VR headsets again. At the same time, I couldn’t escape media coverage of the new VR-only Half-Life entry. That’s when I learned that the Quest could connect to the PC to play high-end VR games. I was sold. But even after we reluctantly agreed to spend the money, finding the headset proved to be a nightmare. At one point, we briefly considered buying from a reseller and paying $200 above the standard $400 price tag. We waited, instead, impatiently, and got one at its standard retail price.
Gaming On The Oculus Quest
Once our Quest finally arrived I must have spent 30 minutes just messing around in the tutorial area. There were rockets, a ping pong ball and paddle, a blimp, and a retro console that could be loaded with other experiences via cartridges. Just using the grasp button to pick something up was unbelievable. I can’t think of a better way to introduce VR to a newbie, so kudos to Oculus for pulling off the best, most fun tutorial I’ve ever played — game devs, please take note.
The first game I purchased was, of course, Beat Saber. The “killer app.” VR’s neon-glowing, Tron-inspired savior. I think I’m probably the worst Beat Saber player ever to wield the sabers, but damn is it fun. When you get in a rhythm and start slicing cubes, you feel unstoppable. The very rhythm of the universe flows through you in a way that Guitar Hero could never accomplish. I know I probably look like a giant dork wildly swinging my arms, but I like it, and it pushes me to stay active at a time when going outside is precarious.
My wife, on the other hand, is a prodigy. The Quest has a screen sharing feature that streams the gameplay to a nearby Chromecast, so I’ve seen her play. Excuse me, I’ve seen her slay. The sabers are surgical and unyielding in her hands, and she maintains her poise. She dances softly to the music while halving cubes at speeds at which my limbs simply cannot compute. When it comes to Superhot VR, however, that’s where I shine.
I’m sure everything has been said about those two games, but there’s a reason they’re so beloved. Not only do they perform well on the wireless Quest, but they both also have addicting gameplay loops with simple mechanics that become increasingly complex. Dodging one bullet in Superhot VR is easy, but dodging five bullets while another two enemies approach with knives is a whole other ball game. I’m convinced that Superhot VR is actually a workout game, to which I say, “well done, you made me do 100 squats and had me asking for more.” I could go on about both games, but words alone cannot do them justice — you must try for yourself.
I’ve only owned the Quest for a few weeks so far, and I’ve already bought four games. My wishlist so far is about a dozen games and growing every day. With so many good games on the Oculus store, I’m glad we splurged on the 128GB version. It’s incredible how many games are available on a headset that runs on a souped-up smartphone processor.
Oculus Quest Demos and Experiences
I’m also glad that there are several demos of popular games out of the box, allowing users to try before they buy. The demos are also perfect for showing a newcomer the ropes, which is hard to do when someone is wearing a headset. Unlike traditional gaming, you can’t just point at a screen and shout “there!”
I tried a demo for Space Pirate Trainer and liked its arcade shoot-em-up mechanics so much that I bought it. I wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t have a chance to play it. Game trailers, as good as they may be, still don’t come close to experiencing the gameplay first-hand for a VR app.
Though the Quest is primarily a video game console, it also does non-gaming experiences just as well. The Oculus store offers plenty, such as National Geographic’s Explore VR, which lets users snap photos of famous locations from around the world. When not playing, I find the Quest’s lobby to be calming, and there are different background options available for download. My current pick is a space station with beautiful views of stars far away.
The Quest’s Oculus TV app has a ton of VR video content, and it’s also possible to download YouTube, Netflix, and other video apps. I spent a few hours watching Netflix on the Quest from a simulated living room located on top of a mountain resort. The non-game experiences are not the main draw, but they’re fun, especially when you can’t go outside. I stood on the shore of a German lake last week without having to board a flight.
Notes On VR Safety
When it comes to keeping players safe, the Quest has a few great and non-intrusive features. The Guardian System is a feature that passively alerts players when they’re near the boundary. The room-scale guardian can be set manually via the controller, and it remembers the boundary perfectly every time. There’s also the option to set up a stationary Guardian when playing in tight spaces. Getting close to the boundaries triggers a grid wall with lines that transition from blue to red as users get closer.
Passthrough is another safety feature that activates in two different ways. Completely leaving the area triggers Passthrough, and so does double-tapping on either side of the headset. Passthrough lets users view their real-world surroundings, albeit with a black and white filter, so they don’t need to remove their headset to see the real world.
Oculus Quest Upgrades
I’ve made a few upgrades to the Quest to corrects some of the system’s flaws, but it hasn’t set me back too much. I purchased a silicone cover from VR Cover that sits on top of the padding to prevent sweat and bacteria from accumulating on the foam. The silicone cover, apart from making it easier to wipe away sweat and dirt, also helps the headset stay put thanks to the inherent grippiness of the material.
I also got some controller grips that are more similar to the Valve Index controllers for better handling. The straps fasten to the back of your hand, making it easier to grip the controllers. And the grips also come with wrist straps as an added layer of protection.
And to fix the just okay battery life, I’m planning on attaching a power bank to the headset later. There are other accessories and upgrades out there, such as prescription lenses that attach to the Quest lenses, so you can pimp your Quest as much as you want.
Troubleshooting Oculus Link
I did have trouble setting up the Oculus Link software, which lets you play PC VR games on your Quest via USB cable, but I managed to fix it finally. It used to be that users had to buy Oculus’ USB-C 3.0 Link cable, which costs $80, or a third-party equivalent. The included USB-C 2.0 charging cable, though similar in appearance, did not work for the Oculus Link because of its data transfer limitations. But Oculus somehow fixed the issue, allowing users to connect their headset with the included charging cable. That didn’t work for me.
I think my computer wasn’t outputting enough power to the Quest, so it kept disconnecting. I read a few threads on Reddit, and I bought a 10-foot USB-C 3.0 cable, in case that was the issue, and a powered USB hub. That seemed to fix the issue, and I’ve been able to play Half-Life: Alyx for hours at a time.
It hasn’t been perfect, though, as my computer has been crashing at random moments. At this point, I don’t believe it’s a headset issue, so it must be a software issue. I have a decent gaming PC, which gives me the chance to experience some of the best games not available on the Quest, but Oculus Link has a ways to go. I’m giving the software the benefit of the doubt because it’s only been out for a year or so, but I do hope it improves soon.
A Quest You Won’t Regret
I can’t speak to the quality of other VR headsets, but I can say that the Quest is an amazing introduction to the medium and invites a larger audience to participate. Sure, the content running natively on Quest doesn’t look as great as content on other headsets tethered to a PC, but it runs games like Beat Saber, Superhot VR, and Pistol Whip with little to no hiccups.
Overall, the Quest condenses the VR gaming experience into a device that is not too heavy, not too expensive, and not too needy in terms of space, while delivering top-notch gameplay on the go. And at a time when we’re all supposed to stay inside, having the Quest has been therapeutic. A VR headset will never compare to the outside world, but I am able to, at least for a few hours, travel to different worlds and go beyond these four walls.
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COVID-19 Almost Delayed Half-Life: Alyx From Shipping On March 23
Half-Life: Alyx, Valve’s flagship VR title, came out a time when much of the world was shutting down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike many other games, though, Alyx’s ship date wasn’t impacted. However, a new interview reveals that the Alyx development team only got everything done just in time before they transitioned to working from home.
In an interview recorded back in April, as part of the Game Maker’s Notebook podcast, Robin Walker from the Half-Life: Alyx team at Valve talked about how COVID-19 almost had a ‘scary’ effect on Alyx’s March 23rd ship date. Although the game did end up coming out as scheduled, Walker notes that this was mainly because the team coincidentally shifted from content production to final tweaks and touches a week before stay-at-home orders started to come into effect.
Here’s the full quote:
“We [at Valve] have always tried to be flexible with how people want to work… and working from home, or at work, is an obvious extension of that. And today, so much of what we do is in the cloud and all that sort of jazz, so it’s not a huge deal.
Obviously there’s parts of the project… you know, on the Alyx team, the week we started working from home we realized if we had had to start working from home one week, maybe two weeks, earlier it would have had a really scary effect on our ship date.
Because we just happened to coincide our content lockdown (when we said “alright we’re done making anything, now let’s just fix what we have and ship”), if I remember right, just about a week or two before stay at home orders came.
Actually I guess the stay at home orders actually came a little later. It was a week or two before [that] at Valve people started to say ‘you know, I’m not comfortable coming to work.’ There were a fair few people who started doing that before the actual stay at home orders came about.”
It seems like fans got very lucky that Half-Life: Alyx was scheduled for release on March 23 and not a couple of weeks later.
If you want to hear more about how Valve adapted to working from home and insights into the development of Half-Life: Alyx, you can check out the full interview between Robin Walker and Ted Price, the CEO and Founder of Insomniac Games, on the the Game Maker’s Notebook podcast.
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