Google today announced that standalone VR headsets are coming to Daydream, the first of which will be made by HTC and Lenovo. Supporting these new devices is an inside-out positional tracking system that the company is calling ‘WorldSense’, which “dramatically” improves tracking over previous Daydream devices.
WorldSense is a positional tracking system from Google that’s ‘inside-out’; that means it doesn’t need any external sensors or beacons to track the movement of your head through 3D space. The new fully self-contained ‘standalone’ VR headsets for the Daydream platform will use the new tech to allow for positional tracking which Google says “dramatically” improves the experience compared to prior Daydream devices (and we agree, good positional tracking is a huge benefit to immersion and comfort in VR).
Those prior Daydream devices, which relied on typical smartphones, can only track the rotation of your head. Positional tracking allows the system to detect the movement of your head through space, like forward, backward, up and down motions. Rotational and positional tracking together are also often called ‘6 Degrees of Freedom’ or ‘6DOF’.
Positional tracking has long been a feature of high-end PC headsets like the Rift and Vive, but bringing the tech to mobile VR headsets in a practical way has been remained challenging.
The leading VR companies have been focusing on computer-vision as a means to achieve inside-out positional tracking. Such systems rely primarily on cameras on the device to see the real world, and then use algorithms to infer movement of the head from the moving image of the world. Data from other sensors like accelerometers and gyroscopes are also fused into the equation to make tracking more precise.
Google is calling their approach WorldSense, and although we haven’t seen it in action just yet, a short explanatory animation suggests that it not only allows for inside-out positional tracking, but also maps the environment around the user. You can see in the animation that the objects on the table are detected as individual pieces of geometry, and their volume is updated in real-time as the perspective moves.
With a name like WorldSense, Google seems to be implying that the tracking system will be able to work at a huge scale, without pre-scanning or calibration. We expect to get a lot more detail on the tech this week at I/O 2017 so stay tuned.
Google I/O has begun, the company’s annual developer conference, and amidst expectations of a new all-in-one VR headset, the company announced that Samsung’s Galaxy S8/S8 plus and LG’s next flagship phone will be officially receiving Google Daydream support.
Taking the stage at I/O, Clay Bavor, the head of Google’s VR team, announced that Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus phones will finally be receiving Daydream support via a software update this summer. This is the first mention of a specific Samsung device supporting the Daydream VR platform.
LG’s next flagship phone, a yet unrevealed model, will also be supporting Daydream at launch later this year.
When first announced at last year’s Google I/O, Daydream-compatible phones were supposed to come from several manufacturers including Samsung, HTC, LG, Mi, Huawei, ZTE, Asus, and Alcatel.
Because of the lack of onboard electronics, Daydream-compatible phones require highly-tuned inertial measurement units (IMUs) which determine head-tracking latency, not to mention the graphical guts to make the cut. Google Cardboard, the company’s wide-reaching VR initiative that supports a multitude of mid-to-low end devices, delivers a basic but serviceable mobile VR experience. Daydream however, with it’s hand controller and beefier specs, that necessarily push frame rates to 60 fps, delivers what most consider a high-quality VR experience on par with Samsung’s Gear VR mobile headset.
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Letztes Jahr stellte Google auf seiner Entwicklerkonferenz die Weiterentwicklung der Cardboard vor: Daydream verbessert wesentlich die VR-Erfahrung gegenüber den klassischen Pappbrillen und schließt zur Samsung Gear VR auf. So richtig durchsetzen konnte sich das System bisher nicht, was vor allem an der noch sehr begrenzten Auswahl an Smartphones liegen dürfte, welche die Daydream Plattform unterstützen. Zudem fehlte bisher vor allem der Top-Player Samsung, der zwar im Daydream-Team sitzt, aber nach wie vor auf seine erfolgreiche Gear VR und damit der Zusammenarbeit mit der Facebook-Tochter Oculus setzte.
Samsung Galaxy S8 wird Googles Daydream unterstützen
Das ändert sich jetzt, wie Google auf der Entwicklerkonferenz bekannt gab: Durch ein Software-Update wird das Samsung Galaxy S8 auch Daydream unterstützen, womit Anwender zukünftig die Wahl haben: Samsungs Gear VR oder Google Daydream? Oculus Store oder Daydrram Store. Oder sogar beide? Auf jeden Fall haben Benutzer des Galaxy S8 jetzt die Sicherheit, offiziell beide Systeme benutzen zu können. Vielleicht spielt aber auch die Klage von ZeniMax gegen Samsung eine Rolle. Der Spielentwickler wirft Samsung vor, weiterhin die Gear VR zu verkaufen obwohl inzwischen bekannt sei, dass Oculus Code von ZeniMax verwendet. Einen Termin für das Software-Update nannte Google auf der Konferenz nicht, es kann also durchaus sein, dass die Entscheidung sehr kurzfristig fiel.
On stage at the company’s Google I/O 2017 developer conference today, the company announced that it is building standalone Daydream VR headsets. The first partners work with the company to bring such headsets to market is HTC and Lenovo.
Google announced Daydream, their high-end Android VR platform at I/O last year, and then launched the Daydream View headset, which is powered by a snap-in smartphone, in late 2016. Now the company has announced that it is building standalone VR headsets for Daydream which build everything into the headset.
In a surprise announcement, Google says one of the first companies it is working with to develop a standalone Daydream headset is HTC, which makes the high-end Vive VR headset for PC. Lenovo was also announced as a partner working a standalone Daydream VR headset. On stage an outline teaser of two different looking VR headsets was teased. These devices will launch later in 2017, Google said.
The standalone Daydream VR headsets will include inside-out positional tracking (a big upgrade over the rotational-only tracking of the smartphone-required Daydream View headset) using a computer-vision based technology that the company is calling ‘World-sense’. The tracking tech won’t require any external beacons or sensors to enable positional tracking.
Clay Bavor, Google’s VP of VR, said on stage that the benefit of a standalone headset is that everything is built right in, and the device can be built and optimized for VR rather than being stuck with the constraints of a smartphone.
Bavor says that Google worked with Qualcomm to create a reference version of the standalone Daydream VR headset. This will form a foundation from which partners like HTC, Lenovo, and others can build their own standalone headsets for Daydream.
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According to a Varietyexclusive, Google may be gearing up to show off a brand new mobile VR headset at Google I/O developer conference this week, one that not only delivers VR in an all-in-one device, but could likely offer inside-out positional tracking as well.
The Variety report maintains information of the alleged all-in-one mobile VR headset—which won’t require a phone or PC to use—was gathered from “multiple sources with knowledge of the project.” Predictably, a Google spokesperson declined to comment.
The report posits that the headset is likely to debut this week in similar fashion to Google Daydream, which was introduced at last year’s Google I/O. Daydream is the company’s high-quality mobile VR platform designed to work with several flagship devices including the company’s own Pixel phone.
image courtesy Google
It’s unsure at this time exactly what a Google-made, all-in-one headset will look like, and whether it will incorporate the company’s augmented reality initiative Tango’s computer vision capabilities or not. Google’s interest in room-scale, interactive experiences is clear however, as evidenced by their early acquisition of VR studio Skillman and Hackett, known for creating Tiltbrush (2016), and more recently their acquisition of VR studio Owlchemy Labs, the minds behind Job Simulator (2016) and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality (2017).
The conference takes place today, May 17th, and goes until the 19th. The opening keynote will be livestreamed on the company’s developer channel on YouTube at 10 am PDT today.
Nicht viele Virtual Reality Spiele sind direkt ein Erfolg, doch die Owlchemy Labs haben bewiesen, dass man auch bereits heute gutes Geld mit lustigen VR Spielen generieren kann. Wie Google mitteilt, hat das Unternehmen sich die Owlchemy Labs nun geschnappt und sichert sich damit das Studio hinter preisgekrönten Spielen wie Job Simulator und Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality.
Google kauft Owlchemy Labs
Trotz der Übernahme werden die Entwickler aber weiter an ihren aktuellen Projekten arbeiten und diese Spiele auch für unterschiedliche Plattformen veröffentlichen. Interessant an dem Kauf von Google ist, dass die Spiele von Owlchemy Labs nur mit trackbaren Controllern funktionieren, welche Google derzeit nicht anbietet. Relja Markovic, leitender VR und AR Ingenieur bei Google, sagt, dass Daydream bereits ein tolle Produkt sei, doch es kämen noch viele weitere Produkte nach Daydream.
Die Owlchemy Labs sind auch nicht das erste Entwicklerstudio, welches von Google übernommen wird. Das Unternehmen hatte sich ebenfalls die Entwickler hinter Tilt Brush gekauft und die Anwendung anschließend direkt als Produkt von Google vermarktet.
In der nächsten Woche findet wieder die Entwicklerkonferenz I/O von Google statt und vermutlich wird Google auf dieser Konferenz wieder ein paar Einblicke in die Virtual Reality Pläne des Unternehmens geben. Wir dürfen gespannt sein.
Samsung launched its Gear VR mobile headset way back in 2015 and during that time the head-mounted display (HMD) has seen sales success, but business information provider IHS Markit forecasts these sales are going to slow while main rival Google Daydream are set in increase.
According to the company Google Daydream are expected to jump from 120,000 in 2016 to 2.23 million in 2017, and this will see increased support from third-party developers and smartphone manufacturers. The Samsung Gear VR on the other hand is expected to see sales dip by 9.6 percent, dropping from 4.56 million to 4.12 million. Even with a reduction Gear VR will still be the market leader for mobile VR.
Over the course of 2016, Samsung aggressively used the Gear VR headset as a powerful marketing tool to promote sales of its Galaxy S7 smartphone, implementing pre-order bundling strategies across many sales territories. The company has taken that methodology and gone for a more targeted approach during 2017, retaining the offer for the launch of the Galaxy S8 in USA and Australia, but dropping it in a number of European territories.
“The arrival of competing platforms is playing out against a backdrop where Samsung has dialed down its previously aggressive pre-order bundling centered on its flagship smartphones and the Gear VR,” said IHS Markit’s Harding-Rolls.
Samsung also noted the competition from Google Cardboard by recently launching its own 3DoF controller back in April, which can be bought separately or in a bundle.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of the VR industry, reporting back with the latest growth estimations.
Guild Software’s sprawling space-based MMORPG Vendetta Online has been available for quite some time, with the title originally integrating with the Oculus Rift DK1 and then the DK2. Then in late 2016 the studio added support for Samsung Gear VR before bringing the videogame to Google Daydream just over a month ago. VRFocus managed to catch up with Guild Software’s CEO and founder, John Bergman to discuss the title.
As a MMORPG, Vendetta Online gives you the ability to create your own character and roam the stars however you choose, whether that’s as hero fighting the good fight or a criminal looking to loot the next unsuspecting space traveller.
A completely multiplayer experience, Vendetta Online features entire cross-platform support whether that’s in VR or on mobile or PC. While some versions work on a subscription model the Gear VR version for example costs £2.29 GBP with optional purchases to accelerate or unlock certain benefits.
In a wide ranging conversation Bergman goes into detail about Vendetta Online’s VR implementation and the studio’s plans for the future (the interview was conducted prior to the Daydream launch), as well as VR in general.
Checkout the full video chat VRFocushad with the CEO below, and for further updates on the videogame, stay tuned.
During the opening presentation at today’s Unity Vision Summit, Nathan Martz, Developer Platforms Product Manager at Google, took to the stage to talk about new tools that the company is releasing to help developers create high-performance apps for Daydream, Google’s high-end Android VR platform.
Having launched the first Daydream headset and phone in late 2016, Martz said the next step is to grow and scale the platform.
“This year we’re focused on scaling [Daydream and Tango] through the larger Android ecosystem. We know that as cool as these devices are—and as hard as they, frankly, are to make—ultimately people are going to buy them for the experiences that they enable,” he said.
Scaling means getting developers to build VR experience that are not only fun, but highlight optimized, and Google wants to make that as easy as possible. Unity 5.6 got native Daydream support back in March, allowing developers to build for the Android VR platform without downloading any custom builds or technical previews of the game engine.
But it doesn’t stop there; Google is continuing to invest in the Daydream development platform to help developers make great VR content, Martz said. The company is doing that with new tools that aim to make the lives of Daydream developers easier in several ways, from performance and profiling to templates of best practices for VR interaction. On stage (see the video heading this article) Martz talked about those new tools which are due to release soon to developers:
Daydream Render
VR already presents a high performance bar due to the need to achieve steady high framerates while rendering high resolutions in stereo. In order to achieve VR on mobile devices, applications need to be carefully optimized to deliver the required performance. For many developers, that’s meant relying on less computationally intensive ‘baked’ lighting and shadows that are ultimately displayed as static textures rather than real-time lighting.
Google says their new Daydream Renderer is a suite of highly optimized tools designed to tackle the challenging of enabling high-quality lighting to Daydream apps. With the tools, the company says that developers can achieve dynamic lighting and shadowing in stereo at 60 FPS on today’s flagship phones, bringing mobile VR another step closer to the sort of modern graphics expected on game consoles and PCs.
Instant Preview
Photo courtesy Unity Technologies
With traditional mobile development, Martz says, developers need to write code on their computer and then spend a few minutes compiling it and transferring it to their Android device in order to do an on-device test. But if a few minutes stands between the time a change is made and the time the change can be tested, that’s less time available for iterating on those changes to get them just right.
Instant Preview will make the process of running on-device tests take “seconds not minutes,” Martz said. Allowing developers to rapidly iterate, leading to a better end-product. Instant Preview is achieved through changes to both the software on the computer and the hardware in phones, Martz says, and the latency is low enough that these instant changes can be seen and tested through a Daydream headset.
GAPID & PerfHUD
Getting down the nitty gritty of the hardware: a great VR app doesn’t just look great, it also needs to be able to operate within the performance and thermal confines of a smartphone (no easy feat). If the phone gets too hot, it will have to throttle down performance to keep from overheating, which can cause a drop in VR performance if not complete termination of the VR app to allow the phone to cool. With varying devices and environmental conditions, tuning mobile VR games to operate effectively for long durations can be especially challenging.
PerfHUD is designed to let developers see the hardware device’s vitals in and out of VR, says Martz, allowing devs to identify which areas of their games and apps are pushing the phone’s hardware too hard.
GAPID serves a similar function by allowing developers to do “deep GPU profiling and static analysis” right from their PC, providing insight into how the hardware and software is interacting to drive performance, and once again allowing developers to keep an eye out for problem areas that could be bringing performance down.
Daydream Elements
Photo courtesy Unity Technologies
Even now with several major consumer headsets on the market for more than a year, from one VR app to the next there’s still huge variations in interaction design. VR users would definitely benefit from some consistency, much like how PC and smartphone apps use common methods of interaction.
To share what the company has learned about best practices for VR interaction design, Google plans to release Daydream Elements, which Martz described as a “modular, open-source application that contains focused examples of best practices.” Daydream Elements will offer up templates of commonly needed VR interactions—like manipulating and activating objects and selecting items on menus—and Google is encouraging developers to take these templates and drop them directly into their own apps as needed.
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Martz says that the Daydream Renderer, Instant Preview, and Daydream Elements will launch this month, while PerfHUD and GAPID will come this summer.
Especially now with the launch of the Gear VR Controller, developing for Daydream is not so different from developing for Gear VR (also supported by Unity), as both run on Android. Google didn’t explicitly mention it, but it’s possible that some of these tools could be useful for Gear VR development as well. We’ve reached out to the company for clarification.
CCP Games ist auf allen Plattformen unterwegs und mit Gunjack 2: End of Shift bringen die EVE-Entwickler einen Weltraum-Shooter auf das Google Daydream System. Wir haben uns das Spiel mit dem Moto Z angeschaut und verraten euch, ob sich der Kauf lohnt.
Gunjack 2: End of Shift
Im Spiel fliegt ihr kein eigenes Raumschiff, sondern seid Teil einer Crew und bedient eine Bordkanone. Eure Aufgabe ist es, die feindlichen Raumschiffe unschädlich zu machen und das eigene Schiff zu schützen. Hierbei setzt das Spiel zum Zielen nicht auf den Blick des Spielers, sondern der Daydream Controller wird zum Anvisieren verwendet. Dies funktioniert sehr gut und gefällt uns deutlich besser als das Zielen per Blick. Damit die Kämpfe jedoch nicht nur aus Anvisieren und Schießen bestehen, verfügt euer Raumschiff über Spezialwaffen, die ihr vor einem Gefecht festlegen könnt. Diese Spezialwaffen schaltet ihr im Laufe des Spiels frei, indem ihr durch gute Leistungen Ränge aufsteigt. Die Spezialwaffen stehen jedoch nicht immer zur Verfügung, sondern werden durch Abschüsse aufgeladen. Wenn die Spezialwaffen bereitstehen, kann der richtige Einsatz und das perfekte Timing über Sieg und Niederlage entscheiden.
Auch bei der Verteidigung des Schiffes ist eure volle Aufmerksamkeit gefragt, denn wenn ihr die Schilde im richtigen Moment hochfahrt, gibt es einen kleines Zeitfenster, in dem die Geschosse der Angreifer zurückgeschleudert werden.
Bei der Grafik kann man dem Spiel anmerken, dass es auf einem Smartphone läuft und nicht auf einem leistungsstarken PC. Dennoch leistet CCP Games ganze Arbeit und so manches VR Spiel für die Konsole oder den PC sieht auch nicht besser aus. Im ersten Moment hat uns die Darstellung an Spiele wie Metal Gear Solid 2 (bzw. etwas besser) erinnert. Generell läuft das Spiel auch absolut flüssig und nur sehr selten ist bei unserem Test die Framerate etwas eingebrochen.
Doch auch wenn Gunjack 2: End of Shift „nur“ wie ein hochwertiges VR Spiel für das Smartphone aussieht, so haben die Entwickler dennoch viel Wert darauf gelegt, dass den Spielern nicht zu schnell langweilig wird. Neben einer Kampagne mit Zwischensequenzen warten tägliche und wöchentliche Herausforderungen auf euch, die in verschiedenen Schwierigkeitsgraden angeboten werden. Zudem sorgen die vielen freischaltbaren Waffensysteme dafür, dass man neugierig bleibt, welche Überraschungen noch auf einen warten.
Gunjack 2: End of Shift ist definitiv ein Spiel, welches man auf dem Schirm haben sollte, falls man ein gutes Spiel für das Daydream System von Google sucht. Aktuell gibt es das Spiel auch exklusiv für die Daydream Plattform und es ist nicht klar, ob auch eine Portierung auf andere Systeme folgen wird. Hier findet ihr das Spiel im Google Store. Zum Spielen ist ein Daydream fähiges Smartphone und eine Daydream View Brille nötig.
Those prior Daydream devices, which relied on typical smartphones, can only track the rotation of your head. Positional tracking allows the system to detect the movement of your head through space, like forward, backward, up and down motions. Rotational and positional tracking together are also often called ‘6 Degrees of Freedom’ or ‘6DOF’.
