Hardlight VR is a new haptic suit from Nullspace VR that launched its Kickstarter last week. It’s already set to pass its original goal and the team have announced the project’s first stretch goal.
Hardlight VR is an upper-body vest containing 16 haptic pads that deliver impact feedback to your chest, back, arms and shoulders. The pads can be triggered by any software integrated with NullSpace VR’s APIs with relative rotational information for your body provided by integrated IMUs.
The company (as we mentioned in our last piece) have persuaded a number of VR developers, including recent Indie favourite Sairento VR, to add Hardlight Suit support. Joining that are 14 other games, including the likes of futuristic racer Redout and room-scale archery favourite Holopoint. The latest announcement for the project is the first stretch
Early bird Hardlight VR units are already gone, but interested backers can still get their hands on a suit from $499. Note that Hardlight VR is currently tethered, with a USB cable attaching the suite to the PC providing both power and the input / output feed. The team claim that a wireless add-on is on the roadmap, should they reach the stretch goal.
However, if you can live with those, the team certainly have a large enough selection of software for you to sample on delivery. And, with the campaign’s goal met in under a week, it’ll be interesting to see how much more interest the project garners and how much more can be raised in the
Check out our roundup of the coolest crowdfunding projects and product announcements that hit the web this week. You can't buy this stuff yet, but it sure is fun to gawk!
NullSpace VR are poised to launch a new haptic vest focused toward immersive, virtual reality gaming, via Kickstarter soon. The Hardlight suit integrates 16 haptic pads that allow you to feel directional impact linked to actions inside the VR experience.
We’re all for amping up immersion on Road to VR, via whatever means necessary frankly. But our experiences in the world of wearable haptics as a mean to do so has not been exactly stellar so far. Nevertheless, the appeal of having directional, accurate force feedback which allows your chosen VR experience to punish you for your failures, or indeed merely give you a prod into action, is clear.
NullSpace VR, are poised to unleash their solution to this gap in the VR haptics market and they’re calling it the Hardlight Suit. This upper-body vest contains 16 haptic pads for delivering feedback to your chest, back, arms and shoulders. These pads can be triggered by any software integrated with NullSpace VR’s APIs and indeed, the company (who’ve made substantial progress since we first covered them) have persuaded a number of VR developers, including recent Indie favourite Sairento VR, to add Hardlight Suit support.
The team recently took their latest prototype to the World’s Fair ‘Nano’ event to show off their progress, filming attendee reaction for posterity.
The key concern for us is still the accuracy at which the suit can detect your orientation in relation to the virtual world. The Hardlight Suit contains inertial sensors, which detect rotational movement, but these sorts of sensors are not absolute and therefore can suffer from drift and positional inaccuracies. That said, since we first covered the suit, we now have room-scale capable positional tracking for both headsets and motion controllers, which adds more data to guess the user’s body orientation, but there are still gaps in that data which will need to be filled in order to be truly immersive.
The vest has been cannily designed, with a simple, open design and adjustable straps which should allow the system to be worn by people of varying shapes and sizes.
The team are adding the finishing touched to their Kickstarter campaign as I write this and we’ll pass on more details on that once they go live. In the mean time, if you’ve gone hands on with the Hardlight Suit in the past, why not share your experiences in the comments section below.
The sleek-looking VRGE VR headset dock Kickstarter looks set to come down to a photo-finish. Heading into its final 24 hours, the crowdfunding campaign is within $2,000 of its $30,000 goal.
We’ve had our eye on the VRGE Kickstarter since it launched back in January. The smartly designed dock has universal support for the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, and their controllers, as well as the option to sit flat on a desk or mount to a wall. Thanks to cable channels underneath, the dock can be set up to charge the controllers too.
While the $59 Early Bird option is long gone, the $79 Standard and $99 Limited Edition offerings are all purported to ship in April, which—if they can pull it off—would be an impressively quick turnaround compared to many Kickstarter projects we’ve seen. Thankfully the creators of the project are well passed the mockup stage, having displayed prototypes of the dock in multiple wood finishes.
With an ‘all-or-nothing’ funding model for the campaign, the project won’t move ahead with any of the pledged funds unless it hits the $30,000 goal. Presently with $27,948 raised, the project is tantalizingly close in its final day.
Disclosure: The VRGE Kickstarter campaign is running banner advertisements on Road to VR.
The team behind the crowdfunding campaign to create a video game based on Apocalypse Now has announced that the project will drop Kickstarter, and instead collect pledges via an independent website.
The impressively svelte VRGE VR headset dock has passed the 50% mark of its $30,000 Kickstarter campaign goal. With support for the Vive, Rift, and PlayStation VR (and their respective controllers), the dock appears to be a smart accessory for VR early adopters, but it won’t be a sure thing until the campaign is fully funded.
The VRGE VR headset dock is a smartly designed bit of kit, with multiple finish options and universal support for the three major VR headsets presently on the market. It includes adapters to not only hold the respective VR controllers as well, but will also charge them while docked (except in the case of the Touch controllers, which use AA batteries). Wire-routing channels on the bottom of the dock aim to keep everything neat and tidy.
In addition to extra storage space inside the base for cables and gamepads, the $80 dock is designed to work sitting down or mounted to a wall.
The creators behind the project have already shown prototype models and promise product delivery as early as April, which would be a very fast turnaround compared to many Kickstarter products which have little more than a rendering to show at the outset.
Still, the VRGE dock isn’t a sure thing just yet. The company sought $30,000 to kickstart the production of the accessory, and recently passed the 50% mark. With their campaign hinging on the ‘All or nothing’ funding model, it looks like it’ll be a race to the finish in the last week of the Kickstarter.
Star Citizen‘s Senior Graphics Programmer Ben Parry has dropped a disappointing bombshell regarding the status of the crowdfunded title’s long awaited VR support, indicating that players may be waiting some time for it to emerge.
Star Citizen was the first title I ever wrote about on Road to VR, way back in the mists of 2012. The reason? The title was one of the first big titles to not only promise VR support, but to make it a specific feature of its crowdfunding campaign, a $12M stretch goal to be exact.
Star Citizen of course passed that $12M goal with ease, such was the desire for the sort of no holds barred, detailed PC-centric space combat simulation amongst the gaming community. The current funding total for Star Citizen now stands at a staggering $142,569,464 from over 1.7 million donors – surely the most successful crowdfunding campaign of all time.
Of course, the problems with setting specific goals for a project, especially if that project happens to be the development of a game is that, even with the best of intentions, those goals can prove tricky to meet with delivery dates becoming ever more fluid as time passes. Star Citizen is a case in point. Its original scope in 2012 was that of a relatively simple cockpit-based space combat sim, but this has since morphed into something of a monster, with the likes of first person exploration joining mountains of feature creep added as more and more money poured into the project.
We reported towards the beginning of last year that CIP’s founder Chris Roberts’ had affirmed that VR support was still being worked on and that he “would be expecting it to get up to speed with the most recent [VR] stuff sometime early next year,” meaning Q1 2016.
So what is up with that VR support then? Well, Cloud Imperium Games‘ (makers of Star Citizen) Senior Graphics Programmer Ben Parry, responding to a question on just that subject a few days ago and stirred up a small hornets nest in doing so. Asked “With the new [Amazon] Lumberyard Engine and its easier to use integration functions, will we be seeing more talk of possibly moving back toward VR support for this game?”, Parry responded “Sorry to say, do not hold your breath for this. Ignoring the render tech for VR itself (which given the work we’ve done, would definitely be a read-and-rewrite job, not a merge-this-file job), making a game properly VR compliant takes a lot of work at the design and testing level regardless of the engine used. We’d probably need to get the framerate up a bit higher too, come to think of it.”
The statement caused a few eyebrows to rise, with some forum posters taking the comments to mean VR support may have been cancelled altogether. Parry however was quick to clarify saying “Sorry for any misunderstanding, my point was that some of the key obstacles to VR support aren’t about whether the engine has the technical capability for it. That kind of thinking leads to, well, this guy explains it better than I do. I’d prefer we don’t accidentally and permanently ruin anyone’s ability to enjoy VR.”
So virtual reality support is still on the cards, but we may be waiting some time for it. Another poster asked if VR support would make it into Star Citizen after the game took its finished form, to which Parry responded “I wouldn’t say finished. It’s a balance. It certainly adds an extra % time tax to every feature that involves drawing things or player interaction, for specialised testing and the inevitable bug fixing.” He took to Reddit to further clarify his original statement, re-affirming that VR support was not off the table.
It’s understandable VR implementation takes a very distant back seat to the actual completion of a game of course, that much is obvious. What’s more, it’s clear Parry has taken onboard the by now dominant view that VR support isn’t something you duct tape to the back of a project, it needs care and attention. This at least is an attitude that should be applauded.
The third-party head-mount for the HTC Vive from SynergyWiz quickly reached its crowdfunding goal on Kickstarter, and is now approaching 6x the required amount. The rEvolve is designed to improve comfort and adds a visor-flip function.
We recently reported that the promising rEvolve head-mount for the HTC Vive had quickly reached its $5000 goal on Kickstarter. With a week of the campaign still remaining, that figure is almost at $30000 of crowdfunding. There is understandable interest in this type of product, as the standard Vive strap system is one of the weaker features of the headset compared to its competition.
HTC felt the need to design their own ‘Deluxe Audio Strap’ (coming soon) that improves comfort as well as providing built-in headphones – more closely matching the Oculus Rift head-mount design. SynergyWiz decided to take the halo-style approach that shares more similarities with Sony’s PlayStation VR head-mount solution, which moves the weight to the top of the forehead and off the cheeks.
The hinge that allows the wearer to flip up the front visor without having to remove the headset entirely seems very convenient, although there are some concerns about increased light bleed around the edges as seen with the PSVR. However, one could argue that light bleed simply means the visor isn’t squeezing your face, and therefore an acceptable trade-off. In any case, we’re glad to see the Vive will soon have more than one alternative head-mount option to choose from.
The first time I played the Genesis port of Peter Molyneux’s Populous, one of the very first-ever God games, I really fell in love with the genre. The Black & White games followed after that and even though I severely lack the strategic insight to excel at real-time strategy epics like Total War, I appreciate the intimate management of city building games all the same.
It’s a big reason why the metropolitan creation of Sim City and army management of Heroes of Might & Magic dominated so many of my weekends as a kid. There’s something magical about lording over an area, telling tiny people what to do, and watching your plans come to wondrous fruition.
At the core of a game of Kingdoms and Castles is that desire to build a castle and expand across regions, but there’s also a medieval flair that helps set it apart and resemble the likes of the Stronghold series. You can see in the trailer below that in addition to building cities and castles, you’ll have to contend with ravaging Viking factions — similar to the Barbarians found in the early phases of Civilization games.
Kingdoms and Castles is being created by Lion Shield, an indie group made up of Peter Angstadt and Michael Peddicord. When it first launched its funding campaign on Fig, asking for just $15,000, VR wasn’t in the minds of the developers at all yet — that wasn’t added until the $55,000 stretch goal. They’re currently designing the game with optional VR support enabled with the Vive and its motion controllers in mind.
“We both love all the great city builders both old and new (like SimCity, Caeser III, and Banished) and wanted to add our own take to running a little world, specifically where building a castle would be important and meaningful,” said Angstadt in an email interview. “It’s a holistic kingdom experience – you grow your town over many hours, but also build castles to defend it. The bond you build with your town and the threats you must protect your people from are what make the best part – building castles – really meaningful.”
Part of the appeal of playing a game like this will be the ability to lean in and inspect areas, pick up and interact with things using your hands, and to look up at the sky or down the landscape at other areas. Since the camera isn’t locked into a fixed top-down angle, it will be much more immersive and flexible to move around the environment in VR.
“VR support for this project is a bit of an experiment,” explained Angstadt. “City-building hasn’t been done yet in VR, and we’re excited to see what can be achieved and how the gameplay can be improved with a VR option. From our preliminary development with VR in Kingdoms and Castles, the sense of immersion is unmatched compared to any city sim game we’ve ever played before. We want our players to feel connected to the world they are building and the people that they govern. Bringing the top down builder to VR seems like a natural and yet very exciting next step. Standing in the Kingdoms and Castles world with birds flying around, clouds overhead, and people at your feet – it’s fantastic.”
For those unfamiliar, Fig works a lot like IndieGoGo and Kickstarter, except you’re not just pledging funding, you’re also acting as real investors in the project itself, complete with potential returns on that investment. The platform is also specifically focused on funding only games, which makes it unique.
“We chose Fig because they are focused purely on funding games and offer a lot of direct support in making the campaign successful,” said Angstadt. “Since we’re a two-person team it’s great to have allies in helping the game get made.”
One of the other aspects you might notice immediately is the striking low-poly art style. The design is growing in popularity as of late, especially among indie studios, but it’s not something we’ve seen in city builders much. Typically these sorts of games seem to adopt a modern art style with actual buildings or a more traditional fantasy aesthetic due to the inclusion of castles and melee-wielding soldiers.
That’s not the case with Kingdoms and Castles. “The low-poly look is definitely making a renaissance,” said Angstadt. “I think it just takes time to percolate through all the different genres, especially those that are more difficult to make (like simulation games).”
Kingdoms and Castles is currently expected to release later this year with both VR and non-VR support. You can keep up with development by following the game on Steam Greenlight, Twitter and visiting the official website.
Ilium VR are working on a new VR-centric gun peripheral which plans to use Valve’s SteamVR ‘Lighthouse’ tracking to bring realistic weapon control to virtual reality games.
Shooting things in games is cool. Shooting things in VR can be infinitely cooler. Add in a dedicated controller that gives you the physical feel of a weapon and add tracking and peripheral functionality to it and you have something that has the potential to take shooting things to the next level.
Ilium certainly think so as they already begun a crowdfunding campaign to kick off their plans to build a virtual reality-centric gun peripheral to be powered by Valve’s Lighthouse tracking system. Athena is the peripheral’s name and it will come in the form of a futuristic looking assault rifle.
For clarity, outside of the design renders seen in the above promotional video, the rifle peripheral being demonstrated is not Athena but Ilium VR’s earlier VR gun dev kit “The Persuader”, modeled on the M1A1 Thompson ‘Tommy Gun’ and using a rudimentary mount for a standard SteamVR controller in order to leverage its tracking.
The Athena is an altogether more ambitious beast and promises recoil action, the ability to reload via a magazine pull-out / pull-in action, whilst also integrating standard joystick and button inputs. What makes the device interesting however is the team’s plans to integrate Valve’s ‘open’ SteamVR ‘Lighthouse’ tracking functionality into the device. Basically, the final peripheral would be clustered with sensors to enable the gun to detect the sweeps from SteamVR’s laser base stations, and as with the packed-in SteamVR controllers, beaming that data wirelessly for a compatible game to map to in game actions.
We reported recently that Valve’s long awaited plans to open up the Lighthouse platform to form a tracking standard of sorts for developers and manufacturers had finally begun in earnest. Valve announced just prior to the company’s Steam Dev Days event that it’s already licensed Lighthouse tracking to some 300 companies, royalty free since it’s original announcement back in august. According to Valve, the company are gearing up to show off “new VR peripherals” which will be made available for “demonstration and design collaboration with attendees,” at some point in the future.
The Athena is one of the first gaming specific product we’ve seen to take advantage of Valve’s new initiative and it’s a brave move. Traditionally, peripherals for gaming have rarely fared well. Gaming systems (including the SteamVR powered HTC Vive of course) ship with standard controllers allowing developers to target them and hone their software knowing that everyone who buys their game or application will own those devices. 3rd party peripherals on the other hand require the manufacturer to acquire interest and support from those same developers to add in legacy support for the proprietary device. The Catch 22 situation of course is that, developers don’t want to commit resources to build around a device few customers own and customers won’t buy hardware without software support.
Illium are of course aware of this and have tried to mitigate the issue by entered into a partnership with Invrse Studios (The Nest) and Vertigo Games (Arizona Sunshine) who will both include updates to add native support for Athena to their games. A good start indeed.
Athena is currently being offered via an Indiegogo campaign with a lofty $100,000 funding target. Backers can notionally get their hands on a single gun along with The Nest and Arizona Sunshine for $300. The device itself has a timeline for delivery of December 2017. The campaign seems troubled currently however, with just over $4000 of that goal currently met. It’s not clear how key the funding is to progress of the product.
It’s an interesting project and one we hope to see more of in the future, especially if the Ilium team manage to square the peripheral support issue mentioned above. However it does join Stryker, another VR-centric peripheral featuring impressive recoil, in the same space. We’ll watch with interest to see how much traction both projects gain in the future.
