Category: dreams

Posted on

The 10 Best Family VR Games To Enjoy With Kids

Family game night? We’ve got you covered with our list of the best family VR games.

We wanted to make this a varied list to give you a lot of choice. As such, when we say a family VR game, we don’t necessarily mean just multiplayer titles and, while we’ve kept violent games off of the list, some of the games do have action elements and mechanics you might deem unsuitable for the youngest audiences. We’ll point those out where applicable.

Best Family VR Games

10. Dreams

Type: Single-player
Platforms: PSVR

Dreams is a glorious VR playroom, a sort of do-it-yourself creation platform where, after a bit of onboarding, you can make your own content and share it with others. You’ll be amazed at the scale of the creations possible in Dreams. It’s easy to lose hours with others hopping from one bright idea to the next.

We’ve put Dreams higher in the list for two reasons. Firstly, it takes a bit of dedication to get to grips with, which will make the creative aspect too mature for some younger audiences. Plus, this is an online hub of user-made content, which comes with the usual caveats. If you want to show younger audiences, it might be an idea to curate a list of levels beforehand.

9. Puppet Fever

Type: Local multiplayer
Platforms: Quest, PC VR

This ingenious family VR game needs just one headset to be enjoyed by anyone in the room. The VR player uses a huge range of 2D props to put on their own puppet show. They find themselves behind a stage, while on a connected screen you can view their show from the front. Different game modes can give you the freedom to make up your own stories, or you can generate word cards for a virtual game of charades. A brilliant little idea, and free to play on Quest (with in-app purchases, mind you).

8. Racoon Lagoon

Type: Single or online multiplayer
Platforms: Quest, Rift

A cutesy little island lifestyle game – perhaps the closest VR has yet gotten to its own Animal Crossing. You explore a tropical destination, meeting a friendly cast of critters that you can carry out tasks for. Earn more hearts, make more friends and unlock new areas. The game has multiplayer and cross-play between Rift and Quest so, if you have another headset handy, you can adventure together.

7. A Fisherman’s Tale

Type: Single-player
Platforms: PSVR, Quest, PC VR

VR gaming doesn’t get much more wholesome than A Fisherman’s Tale, a puzzle game that’s equal parts charming and brain-bending. You take on the role of the titular fisherman, awakening one day to find themselves living in his own model replica of his lighthouse. But, get this, that same model sits in the middle of the room, and you can take the roof off to interact with a tiny version of yourself, or open the window to see a larger version too. It’s incredibly clever but still very approachable, and a VR must-play.

6. Fuji

Type: Single-player
Platforms: PSVR, Quest, PC VR

There’s a lot of great VR meditation apps out there but, for our money, you won’t find many virtual destinations more tranquil or more soothing than Fuji’s vibrant fields of alien vegetation. In this relaxing trip, you reawaken wildlife and can also grow your own virtual garden. It’s the perfect choice for those looking for a less demanding VR experience.

5. Spaceteam VR

Type: Local and online multiplayer
Platforms: Quest, PC VR

If you’re looking for a bit of a team-building exercise with the family, then you can consider Spaceteam VR a one-stop-shop. In this adaptation of a mobile classic, you work together with friends to fix a spaceship, shouting out ridiculous orders to each other while making sure to listen out for your own.

4. Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale

Type: Online multiplayer
Platforms: Quest, Rift

VR tries its hand at Overcooked with Michellin Star results. Cook-Out has you cooking for a fairytale cast in a full campaign for up to four players (with cross-play!). You’ll need to work with each other to slice up ingredients, clean dishes and cook up tasty treats before customers get too inpatient.

3. Curious Tale Of The Stolen Pets

Type: Single-player
Platforms: PSVR, Quest, PC VR

Curious Tale makes for a whistful story of summers spent away and sibling rivalries. It’s an adorable puzzler ideal for casting to a screen and collaborating on, and the stop-motion art style is something to really behold inside a headset. Curious Tale is a perfect first destination for getting to grips with VR, too.

2. Vacation Simulator/Job Simulator

Type: Single-Player
Platforms: PSVR, Quest, PC VR

Job Simulator and Vacation Simulator remain hallmarks for the VR industry because they prioritize unique interactions only possible inside VR alongside user comfort first and foremost. They’re chock full of engaging activities that really take advantage of the platform. For many people, this should be your first stop when picking up a VR headset.

1. Astro Bot/Playroom VR

Type: Single-player (Astrobot) Local multiplayer (Playroom VR)
Platforms: PSVR

Astro Bot was born out of the Playroom VR, which is available for free, so we thought it only fair we bundled the two together. The latter includes some of the best local multiplayer in VR, with other players joining in on a TV screen to play family-friendly games of cat and mouse and more. Astro Bot, meanwhile, is a genuinely Mario-level platform bursting with fresh ideas that will constantly delight. It remains our top ranking for the best PSVR games and now we crown it one of the best family VR games too.

Posted on

Someone’s Remaking Dinseyland Rides In Dreams And They’re Incredible

Two weeks on and people are already making incredible things with Dreams’ PSVR support, like these authentic recreations of Space Mountain and Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye.

Dreams creator TheArmyofDos just released these amazing experience, based on the popular rides at Disneyland in California. But it’s not just a simple VR rollercoaster; its creators have gone above and beyond to authentically replicate the entire experience around each ride, complete with all the props in the queue and even a Disneyland map. Check out the Indiana Jones version in the video below.

Given the level of detail going into the pre-ride experience, it’s amazing that you even get to step onto the actual attraction. Sure enough, though, the full thing is there to race through. Forbidden Eye isn’t a rollercoaster so much as a themed tour, so no sudden drops of corkscrews to worry about for the light of stomach, but plenty of amazing things to see and play with.

And here’s a look at Space Mountain. Obviously, this one’s a bit closer to your traditional VR coaster.

The creator behind the experience isn’t stopping there, though. In fact, it’s taking votes on what ride to recreate next, including Pirates of the Caribbean, Splash Mountain and the Matterhorn. Lots of people are voting for the Haunted Mansion, though there’s already a recreation of Tower of Terror. It seems like a great way to experience the magic kingdom from home.

We’ve seen loads of great creations with Dreams VR so far. We think the game’s VR support is an unmissable playground of madness, though we wish the tutorials and creation tools were a little more VR-native. Read more in our review right here!

The post Someone’s Remaking Dinseyland Rides In Dreams And They’re Incredible appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

Dreams PSVR Review: A Messy, Unmissable VR Playground In Need Of An Overhaul

Media Molecule’s Dreams is finally ready for VR prime time. Does the ambitious creation platform hold up? Find out in our Dreams PSVR review!

What’s nice about reviewing Dreams five months on from launch is how much it’s been demystified. There’s little need to critique the game’s audacious creation tools and sharing systems with the caveat they might never take off; this pudding already has enough proof. Seriously, just go and check out some of the highly-rendered puddings.

It’s still tough, though, to wrap your head around the enormity of Dreams. How do you stamp a score on what’s essentially a YouTube-style platform of interactive experiences? It’s a trickier task still when you factor in VR.

Let’s try not to complicate it too much, then; if you have any interest in VR’s weirder, more experimental side (which, given very nature of the platform, there’s a good chance you do), you absolutely cannot miss Dreams, even with some significant reservations for the creation mode.

Dreams Don’t Come For Free

Dreams brings a welcome bit of DIY to the VR scene. It allows anyone to get out there and make the game they’ve always wanted to see, pending their patience with the modest learning curve and their readiness to accept adapting their vision to the game’s fuzzy-paint aesthetic (which is customizable but never fully escapable). The tangible bit of all this is the tools themselves. On a flatscreen, Dreams’ intelligent UI, existing templates and logical progression got me up and running with some pretty basic game concepts in just a few sessions. You get pretty much the same suite of tools and tutorials in VR which, in practice, actually might be the most disappointing aspect of the Dreams VR experience.

Let me explain; VR creation apps are some of the best, most wholly unique experiences you can find in headsets. The intuition of 3D painting in apps like Tilt Brush has led to the creation of entirely new works of art and simple apps like Google’s Blocks can also get you up and running in this field in no time.

In terms of pure functionality, Dreams offers everything those apps do and much, much more. This toolset has the power to make entire games with deep mechanics. Again, Media Molecule has more than proved this platform is capable of that.

But, rather than go back and overhaul the Dreams learning and building experience for native VR support — as you might have expected it would — the developer settled on an awkward halfway house. When you first boot up Dreams, some of the game’s most basic on-ramping instructions will only be shown on a virtual screen, with your controllers (either two Move controllers or the DualShock 4) represented as a floating creature known as an Imp. In normal VR, navigating using the Imp is simple, but trying to negotiate 3D space on a flat screen in these tutorials is beyond clunky. Then, when you head into the Workshop, where the bulk of the game’s tutorials rest, you’ll be greeted with this message.

Dreams PSVR Review Warning

Oh.

There are some additional videos to guide you through VR specific elements but, largely speaking, Dreams’ tutorials are not designed with the platform in mind, and that’s a real shame. Yes, they’re fantastic for flat-screen creation, but VR support would have been best served starting from scratch with native guidance that properly communicates how much VR enhances the Dreams experience. Yes, you can still do everything you can do in the flat screen version and people already familiar with the tools will easily adapt, but this should be better at introducing new players to the weird and wonderful world of VR.

Dreams PSVR Review – Indie vs Inspiration

Dreams has a strange sort of allure to it in that, many people want to see their favorite games and films paid tribute to within it but the real ‘magic’ behind it is originality. VR puts an interesting spin on all that; if you’ve ever wanted to see what PT or Star Wars or Resident Evil or practically anything else might be like in VR, you’ll more than likely find it here. Heck, we could see a Halo VR tribute on PSVR in the future, which is a mind-blowing proposition. Media Molecule might scoff at the idea, but it’s built a dream (sorry) platform for VR in that sense. How ‘branded’ content evolves against original ideas with the inclusion of VR will be fascinating to watch.

Problems also persist with the game’s control schemes. I had hoped that a switch to VR would make creation with the PlayStation Move controllers a much more palatable affair given the additional context of 3D space. And that is the case to some extent, but the Move controls are also plagued by the confusing button layout, which Media Molecule doesn’t virtually replicate when you’re making finger-tying shortcuts. Moving the camera around, too, is incredibly sensitive and begging for analog sticks to properly master. As such, the DualShock 4 surprisingly remains the best way to create in Dreams, but even then brushes up against the limited positional tracking.

But creation is only one part of the Dreams VR experience.

A Moulded Metaverse

I’ve already revisited one of the all-time scariest games, P.T., piloted an X-Wing, and admired that stunning Unreal Engine 5 demo inside my headset with Dreams. More importantly, I’ve discovered some brilliantly-fleshed out original concepts too that have amazed, delighted and surprised. On the flip side, it’s had me nauseous, confused and often bewildered.

It’s a messy little thing, but that’s sort of the point.

Dreams Resident Evil

Navigating Dreams’ hub of user-generated content in VR isn’t so much a rollercoaster as an exhilarating and oddly amusing dash through a minefield. There’s strong curation from Media Molecule itself, but the real magic requires a risky dive into its ever-expanding pool of creations. You’ll find a dizzying array of fantastic ideas varying in quality of execution, endless memes, hastily-abandoned prototypes and tacked-on VR support. Even Media Molecule’s own VR showcase, Inside The Box, wrestles with control schemes and ideas with only some success, and many of the existing non-VR creations that have enabled support are strangely scaled, breaking every rule in the book of VR design. If you thought Five Nights At Freddy’s VR was disturbing, wait until you’ve played a broken fan tribute with muffled screams recorded through a PlayStation camera.

Dreams PSVR Review – Comfort

Dreams offers a wealth of comfort options that are all enabled by default and, more importantly, will let you filter out experiences not necessarily optimized for VR. The game will boot you to Cinema Mode when framerate suffers and Media Molecule offers plenty of comfort tips. That said, it’ll still be hard to spend entire sessions in the game without coming across intense content, but there are ratings in place to help guide you.

There’s plenty of comfort options to shield you from the worst offenders, of course, but it can only do so much. Every time you click on a new game, you’re rolling the dice, but the reward is often worth the risk. In one play session I found Hard Reset, a moody, atmospheric 6DOF exploration game that, even if it wasn’t built for VR exclusively, seemed to possess a powerful understanding of immersion. Bionic Revolution, meanwhile, promises a simple VR shooter that frankly plays better than some SteamVR shovelware.

Dreams Hard Reset

This all sort of speaks for itself – it’s a better ‘review’ of the game than myself or anyone else could write up. You might have to shovel through a lot of misses to find the hits but, when you do, Dreams absolutely sings. And the chances are you’ll have a lot of fun wading through the former category anyway. On a platform that’s still in need of a lot of content to sustain it, Dreams offers a hugely compelling hub of VR intrigue that you’ll want to return to time and again. Even if its creative elements aren’t as strong as newcomers might hope, this limitless playground is more than enough reason to dive in.

Building For The Future

It’s true, though, that the game does have certain technical constraints in VR, especially from what I’ve played on a standard PS4. While there’s no extra limits on the size of your creations, dynamic rendering can reduce them to a blur, for example, and the game will boot you to PSVR’s Cinema Mode if it runs into framerate hitches. Still, it’s no secret that Dreams released at the tail end of a generation with a long roadmap ahead of it and, as exciting as it is in its current form, I can’t help but wonder what the future holds on other systems, where VR support is likely to shine even brighter. Media Molecule is interested in a PC version and, of course, PS5 looms too.

Until then, we have an immensely promising foundation. A strong community is already cropping up around Dreams’ PSVR support; one that’s free to experiment and tinker in ways that big-budget games might not be able. VR is often described as a wild west of game development, and in many ways Dreams is the epicenter of all of that.

Dreams PSVR Review Final Impressions

Dreams’ creative mode might not integrate with PSVR as naturally as hoped, but its cemented position as a hub of invention makes it an easy recommendation. Paired with the platform’s inherent comfort issues, its sprawling, untamed ecosystem can prove to be a minefield to navigate, but for every unwelcome rollercoaster ride (literally and figuratively), there’s another wish waiting to be fulfilled or something genuinely original to discover. The only way to truly judge Dreams is by the strength of its creations and those already speak for themselves; if you want to embrace VR’s experimental side, you shouldn’t miss it.

4 STARS

dreams psvr review points

 

Dreams is available now on PS4 for $39.99. The VR support comes as a free update. For more on how we arrived at this score, check out our review guidelines. What do you make of our Dreams PSVR review? Let us know in the comments below!

UploadVR Review Scale Large

The post Dreams PSVR Review: A Messy, Unmissable VR Playground In Need Of An Overhaul appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

Someone Remade Disneyland’s Classic Indiana Jones Ride in VR with ‘Dreams’

Dreams (2020), the VR-compatible game-maker tool suite, has unleashed a ton of creativity since it launched on PS4 earlier this year. You may be (very wisely) planning on skipping the trip to Disneyland this summer, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take a head-first dive into the classic Indiana Jones ride with the help of Dreams PSVR mode.

Created by TheArmyofDos, the VR project presents an uncanny recreation of the real thing, which you’ll find at Disneyland in Anaheim, California and a nearly identical version in the park’s Chiba, Japan location.

It even appears to have authentic sound effects. Check out the whole experience in the video below:

In case you’ve never been Disneyland in Anaheim between 1995 and now, take a look below to see just how close TheArmyofDos manages to get the VR version of the ride.

 

Dreams for PSVR keeps on impressing. You can play a hacked together version of Beat Saber, experience a bootleg Friday Nights at Freddy’s, and explore a ton of original art, experiences, and prototype games.

One of the best ways to keep an eye on Dreams content is by heading to the Media Molecule subsite and filtering for ‘VR only’, ‘VR compatible’ and ‘Recommended’ to see some of the top VR content the community has to offer.

What’s your favorite VR-compatible experience on Dreams? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Someone Remade Disneyland’s Classic Indiana Jones Ride in VR with ‘Dreams’ appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

Somebody Already Made ‘Beat Saber’ Inside of ‘Dreams’

Well that didn’t take long. Dreams, the game-within-a-game-maker, has had its newly updated VR feature for hardly more than 24 hours, but someone has already made a fully functional Beat Saber clone.

Dreams launched earlier this year as the latest creation from developer Media Molecule, whose prior Little Big Planet games thrived thanks to a community of creators that built new levels and completely new content with the in-game tools.

Dreams takes that idea of community-made content and makes it essentially the heart of the game. In fact, the actual ‘campaign’ that you can play out of the box is entirely made with the in-game tools.

This week the game was updated to include PSVR support, which means that existing and new creations can be played in VR. The game also allows creators to make ‘VR Only’ content which requires a headset to play and there’s even a comfort rating system for VR experiences.

Of course, creators making experiences in Dreams are going to start with what’s familiar. And what is more familiar than Beat Saber, one of the most popular VR games to date?

Hardly less than 24 hours after the debut of the PSVR update, creator MonocledRobot has made a functional ‘Beat Saber’ experience which is played with PSVR and the PS Move controllers. It features music, cuttable blocks synced to the beat, and even a working scoring and multiplier system.

What’s especially interesting about Dreams is that almost anything made in the game can be expanded by other players or used as building blocks for other creations. Creator MonocledRobot made his ‘Beat Saber’ experience with community expansion in mind, including the creation of new songs and maps. A 10 minute tutorial by the creator on YouTube overviews how the experience was constructed and how others can add their own songs and beat maps.

Of course, this isn’t a proper replacement for the real Beat Saber. Not only does it not look or feel quite the same, it also lacks many features of the real game. But more than an imperfect facsimile of a full game, it goes to show the breadth of what can be achieved in Dreams. In the creator portal you can already find players building everything from VR FPS and horror games to driving and puzzle games.

With enough time, we wouldn’t be surprised to find some seriously worthwhile VR content inside of Dreams.

The post Somebody Already Made ‘Beat Saber’ Inside of ‘Dreams’ appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

Dreams’ PlayStation VR Support now Live, Goes on Sale

Dreams VR

Media Molecule’s creative videogame Dreams was long sought after by PlayStation 4 owners until February with PlayStation VR fans having to wait a little while longer. That wait is finally over with the launch of v2.16 today, adding virtual reality (VR) support as well as other improvements.

Dreams

If you already own Dreams then VR support is a free update so you start playing immersive content or creating your own using either PlayStation Move or DualShock 4 controllers. While there might not be a lot of user-generated VR-compatible content, Media Molecule has created its own selection to get you started.

‘Inside the Box’ is a showcase for what VR in Dreams can be, a selection of examples and inspirations with games, kits and more.

  • Box Maze – Use the power of grabbing to help the cube bots find their way through the maze
  • Box Blaster – Put your sharp-shooting and speed-running skills to the test in this futuristic blaster.
  • Box Escape – Jump, dive and resize your way outside the box.
  • All Aboard VR – An introduction to VR in Dreams, highlighting the different settings and controls used to play in VR.

Media Molecule wants to make it as easy as possible for players to start building, creating a bunch of how-to guides:

  • 10 Top Tips: Creating VR Dreams – 10 great best-practices tips to think about when designing VR experiences in Dreams.
  • How To… Use the Head/Camera Tracker – Learn how to use the new Head/Camera Tracker, a brand new gadget which, in combination with the Look Cursor Sensor, allows you to track a player’s head movements to get even more out of your logic.
  • How To… Use the Hand/Imp Tracker – Learn how to use the new Hand/Imp Tracker, which lets you keep track of the location of your player’s imp, what it’s pointing at and what it grabs. You can even replace the imp with something else!
  • How To… Create 3D Audio in VR – Learn how to use 3D sound within VR, to make your games feel even more immersive, when playing with headphones plugged into the VR headset.
Dreams VR

As mentioned there are quite a few additions in the v2.16 update to play with, here are the rest:

  • Head/Camera Tracker – A gadget that makes it easy to track, and attach objects to, the game camera.
  • Hand/Imp Tracker – A gadget that makes it easy to track, and attach objects to, the imp.
  • Look Cursor Sensor – A sensor gadget that detects where a player is looking, with associated tweaks on supporting gadgets.
  • Dreamiverse Screen Size – Control how large Dreamiverse screens appear when in VR.
  • Allow Low Frame Rate in VR – Control what happens when frame rate drops below our performance standards.
  • VR Filtering Options – Specify whether you want to see VR content in the Dreamiverse.
  • Flip Menu Buttons – If using the left-handed setting and swapping often between motion controllers and wireless controller, turning this on keeps the ordering of buttons in the create menus consistent.
  • Comfort Mode – For VR users. When enabled, camera motion is reduced or removed.
  • VR Experience Ratings – Allows players to rate the level of VR experience for which they feel creations are suitable. This rating will appear on a creation’s thumbnail in search.
    • 1 – For those new to VR
    • 2 – For those with some experience of VR
    • 3 – For those experienced in VR
  • VR Compatibility Labels – Allows creators to specify the suitability of creations for VR.
    • Non-VR: Only enterable in non-VR; not visible to VR players with default filters.
    • Not Sure: Enterable in non-VR or VR, but will issue a warning for VR players upon entry; not visible to VR players with default filters.
    • VR Compatible: Enterable in VR or non-VR.
    • VR Only: Only enterable in VR; not visible to non-VR players with default filters.
  • Imp Beam – Allows player to interact with objects from a distance in VR.
  • Reel – Once you’ve grabbed onto something with your imp beam, you can use Reel to easily move it toward or away from you.
  • Camera Change – VR only: Right stick moves the camera up and down, rather than rotating it. Useful for VR players to preserve the horizon line for orientation.

To mark the launch Dreams is available for a limited time discount, knocking 25% off the regular price. So until 5th August, the title is available via PlayStation Store for £26.24 GBP ($29.99 USD). As Media Molecule continues to expand Dreams and add further content and features, VRFocus will let you know.

Posted on

Dreams PSVR Support Launches As Game Goes On Sale

Today’s the day; Dreams PSVR support finally just arrived as the game goes on sale on the PlayStation Store. Perfect timing!

Dreams PSVR support arrives as a free update for the existing game. It provides access to the full game inside of Sony’s headset; you can make content inside VR but also jump online and experience levels and other creations too. The game supports both the standard DualShock 4 and PlayStation Move motion controllers.

Technically, all existing content in Dreams can be seen inside PSVR. But, yesterday, Media Molecule clarified to us that all content published before the update’s launch will be marked as ‘Non-VR’. To enable VR support, developers will have to check a ‘Not Sure’ label, which means that they haven’t tried it in VR but others can try it with a headset if they opt into that sort of content.

To mark a creation as officially VR compatible, creators have to try the content inside the headset for themselves first. They can then select label it to be played on both TV and PSVR, or exclusively inside PSVR. The game’s original campaign, Art Dreams, won’t be playable inside PSVR, though.

Don’t expect to see an explosion of VR-compatible content right from the off, then. But Media Molecule has built its own VR content for you to check out, as Creative Director Mark Healey outlined to us earlier this week.

Meanwhile, the game’s had 25% slashed off of its price on the PlayStation Store, taking it to $29.99. That’s a great price for a game that offers essentially endless hours of content to sample.

We’ll look to stream Dreams PSVR support today and have more coverage to come, so stay tuned!

The post Dreams PSVR Support Launches As Game Goes On Sale appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

Watch ‘Dreams’ Upcoming VR Mode in Action Before It Releases Tomorrow

The big PSVR update to Media Molecule’s creation game Dreams (2020) is coming tomorrow, July 22nd. If you’re counting the seconds though, you can catch an insider look right now as Media Molecule is going hands-on with the ‘Inside the Box’ starting experience and a number of the game’s new VR creation features.

In the video, we’re given a timely look at the VR version of the game. The update is coming part and parcel with a new labeling system which lets you easily filter through content, and label your content as both VR-only or VR-compatible. Notably, most user-built content is said to be playable in VR, although we want to see it to believe it first.

The team at Media Molecule went on to show off the creation tools whilst creating a VR experience, using its new gadgets such as the character tool that lets you snap things in front of you FOV, which is particularly useful for creating your own UI or HUDs.

Another gadget allows creators to sculpt bespoke items and then, for example, bind it to the position of the controller, which can let you create a weapon that is matched up properly with the position of either supported controllers, be it PS Move controller or Dual Shock 4.

The stream is still ongoing at the time of this writing, so we’re watching along with you and updating this piece as we go. Otherwise, the full presentation will be available below in full when it’s finished.

The post Watch ‘Dreams’ Upcoming VR Mode in Action Before It Releases Tomorrow appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

Existing Dreams Content Will Be Marked ‘Non-VR’ But Can Be Changed, Media Molecule Clarifies

Following our interview with Media Molecule yesterday, the developer clarified to UploadVR that Dreams creations published before July 22nd’s free PSVR update will automatically disable VR support, but authors can change that.

Yesterday we posted an article based on a discussion with Dreams Creative Director, Mark Healey. During our talk, Healey stated that all of Dreams’ existing VR content could be played with the PSVR headset, and that the game had comfort options in-place to optimize the experience, while creators could also choose to make their content unavailable in VR, VR exclusive, or support both play styles.

However, Media Molecule today clarified to us that, while any content in Dreams can be played in PSVR, content published before this week’s patch will have VR switched off by default. This label is known as ‘Non-VR’. To enable VR, authors have two choices.

The first is to go back into their creations and switch from ‘Non-VR’ to another label, ‘Not Sure’. This label does not require authors to test their content inside PSVR before letting others play it. However, VR players must first head into their own filter options to opt into seeing ‘Not Sure’ content. On top of that, Dreams itself will issue a warning upon entry that the content may not be properly optimized for PSVR.

There are two other labels, ‘VR Compatible’, which means content can officially be played both on a TV and inside PSVR, and ‘VR Only’, which means it’s only viewable the headset. To be able to select these two options, the author must have first accessed their creation inside PSVR themselves. Only then will they have access to these tags and be able to publish VR content that won’t carry any optimization warnings, nor will it need users to tinker with their filters.

Any content published after tomorrow’s update will automatically be published under ‘Not Sure’ unless the author selects ‘Non-VR’ or can test it for official VR release.

Much of what Healey told us still stands, then, it’s just that authors will have to jump through some extra hoops to enable PSVR support, should they so desire. And it makes sense; letting any player dive into untested VR content without awareness could trigger a lot of nausea and headaches, both for players and for Media Molecule.

Don’t expect Dreams to have an explosion of VR compatible content as soon as the update hits tomorrow, then, but hopefully authors will start enabling support soon after, either via the ‘Not Sure’ label or by testing PSVR support for themselves. We’ll have more Dreams PSVR content as the update starts rolling out tomorrow.

The post Existing Dreams Content Will Be Marked ‘Non-VR’ But Can Be Changed, Media Molecule Clarifies appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

Dreams PSVR: 11 Things We Learned Directly From Media Molecule

Dream PSVR support finally becomes a reality this week with a free update to the PS4 title on July 22nd. But there’s still a lot we don’t know about the promising integration.

Creative Director Mark Healey helped clue us in a little.

We spoke to Healey last week to learn as much about the ins and outs of Dreams PSVR integration. We’ve been following the hugely ambitious creation platform since its early days, even diving into the beta to find out what makes the flatscreen version tick.

Based on our talk with Healey, though, we’re more curious than ever to start tinkering this Wednesday. Here’s 11 things we learned from our chat.

You Can Play ALL Of Dreams’ Existing Content With It

Now this is really surprising. When Dreams VR support launches on Wednesday, every game and experience made for the platform so far can be played or viewed inside the headset. “It’s really important that it is the full thing, it’s not just ‘Oh, we’ve added VR and it just means you can look at sculptures in VR’, it’s the full shebang,” Healey says.

That means if you’ve been building a game and thinking it would look great in VR, you can take a look the second the update downloads. There’s no starting from scratch with a VR box checked or comfort/performance settings to pass; it’ll just work.

As exciting as that sounds, Healey also acknowledges how hectic it could get. “Whether that actually ends up being good or not is going to be a bit random because people didn’t necessarily make that to be VR,” he said, later pointing to a recent play session where he’d jumped into a first-person shooter only to discover the scale was entirely off.

“It’s just hilarious because I was walking down the road with this hand and this gun that was the size of a house,” he says. “It was ridiculous but it was kind of cool that I’d found that, you know?”

But Authors Can Turn VR Off Or Make It Exclusive

That said, if you’re creating something with a specific vision in mind, there’s a good chance VR doesn’t fit into that. For that eventuality, Healey says Media Molecule will give players the option to turn off VR support. On the flip side, you can make your content VR-exclusive, too.

“And then we’ve given authors of any content the ability to say ‘Actually this is VR only, or this is not for VR or this actually works in both VR and non-VR,'” he reasons. “But it’s fun that the default is everything just works.”

There Are Smart (And Optional) Comfort Settings

Of course, with all this unwieldy potential, it would be a little irresponsible not to provide some comfort tweaks. Those are all there and turned on by default, but the team has also come up with some smart solutions for existing content.

“Let’s say someone’s made a simple thing where you’ve got a character walking around the landscape,” Healey explains. “The default setup for that in Dreams is that the camera will follow the character and you can rotate around. If you have the comfort settings on, that changes. That same piece of content, you can still play it but now the camera’s fixed — obviously you can look around — the character walks a certain distance and then the camera will just teleport, essentially.”

Even with these options, we’d wager a large amount of existing content will be strange to experience in VR, but these are smart inclusions all the same.

There Are No Extra Limits To How Much You Can Build

Another surprising fact; Creator Mode with Dreams PSVR support won’t impose any additional limits. You’ll be able to create the exact same content as you could on PS4 without the worry of hitting any early memory limits. One reason for this? Some players will want to use VR to make non-VR games.

“I think it’s very valid to use VR to make a non-VR experience, actually,” Healey says. “Because of the extra intuitiveness, you get from sculpting and the 3D space.”

But There are Contingencies For When Things Get Too Much

Inevitably, though, some of the content that you can play in Dreams just won’t run well in PSVR. For those moments, Media Molecule has an intriguing (and, again, optional) solution: boot you out to PSVR’s Cinema Mode.

“We automatically kick you out into the sort of virtual cinema mode that’s on the PlayStation,” Healey says, “But you can, in the menus, opt out of that if you like. So you can be ‘I don’t care, just give it to me, even if it’s a low framerate’.”

The platform can also dynamically change the resolution to help cope with demand but, again, we’d imagine some of Dreams’ most ambitious existing games will have your PS4 shuddering.

There’s New Gadgets For Putting Things On Your Head And Hands

 

dreams ps4 psvr bear screenshotWhat’s the first thing you ever did in VR? I bet for a good chunk of you, it’s put a hat on your head. Maybe you were in Cole Phelps’ office in LA Noire, or grabbed a hard hat in Half-Life: Alyx. There’s just something satisfying about it, an affirmation that the technology works. Healey explains that there’s a new Head Tracker gadget specifically for that.

“So if you want to put some big horns on there or an elephant trunk or whatever, that becomes really easy,” Healey says. “And that also benefits the non-VR side of things too, because that just means in non-VR it sticks to the player camera.”

There’s a similar tool for your hands, too, making it easy to customize a pair of virtual hands for first-person experiences, or stick items like weapons into them.

Media Molecule Made Some New Content Too

This week’s update won’t just drop its new tools without warning, though. Media Molecule will also help ease you into VR with ‘Inside The Box’, a virtual gallery of exhibits and games to tease the potential of VR support. “It’s basically a big kind of brutalist architecture gallery space that you can go into,” Healey says. “We’ve got a bunch of sort of interactive sculptures and exhibits if you like, and there’s actually three games we’ve made in there too. There’s like a puzzle game and a shooty game and a platformer game. And each of those games also comes with a Modular Kit so you can easily make extra levels for that type of game.

You Could Make Makeshift Local Multiplayer Games

Dreams PSVR support won’t include Sony’s social screen integration, which gives people outside of VR a separate view on the TV to control a different character with. Healey says that feature could come if there was demand for it, but you could also just hand over a controller to someone else while you’re in VR to play as another character. Co-op Astro Bot, anyone?

Name Your Lightsabers ‘Energy Prodders’

Having been available since February (and in Early Access long before then), Dreams is no stranger to the battle against letting people make what they want and companies wanting to protect their own IP. Healey and co have always strived to encourage and promote original content on the platform, though Healey does liken making themed content to learning guitar covers to help get better. Obviously there’s things everyone wants to do in VR like, wield a lightsaber or swing from a building as Spider-Man. You’ll still be able to do that here, you’ll just need to be careful with how you frame it all.

“Whether the VR thing is going to introduce more of that or not, I don’t know,” Healey says. “But as you say, a lightsaber is probably one of the things that everyone is going to want to make I imagine. They’re just going to have to call it something else, like a light stick or something, or an energy prodder.”

It Might Get Aim Controller Support, If There’s Demand For It

PlayStation VR Gold Headset Aim PSVR

Dreams might not be a first-person shooter itself, but you can bey people are going to start making great VR shooters right off the bat. But what about support for Sony’s rifle-shaped Aim controller, then? The device, best seen in Farpoint and Firewall: Zero Hour, can do wonders for VR immersion and would make for another brilliant tool to the Dreams arsenal.

“I mean something that’s come up a few times is people asking about Aim support, the specific peripheral that was made,” Healey says. “If there was big demand for that I don’t see any reason why we couldn’t add that.”

You heard him – get asking if you want to see Aim in Dreams PSVR (apologies in advance to Media Molecule for any spam).

It’s Going To Open Some Floodgates (Again)

If you’ve been following our coverage of Dreams here at Upload, you’ll know we think it’s potentially a very significant release. User-created VR content is one of the most promising areas of this new industry, currently led by amazing art apps like Tilt Brush and Quill. Dreams represents a chance to raise that bar, offering a robust, accessible toolset on a platform much more welcoming to most consumers and then giving them the chance to go a step further and turn their content into games.

I ask Healey if the team has considered what a milestone for VR that could be. He says he hadn’t quite thought about it that much, but agrees the potential is there.

“It’s like sort of crowd-sourcing what VR experiences can be, in my mind,” he says. “Putting it in the hands of the PlayStation community, giving them the opportunity just to express whatever crazy ideas come into their mind without the baggage or having to please a publisher or worry about whether it’s going to make money or bla bla bla.

“I think it could be really liberating and potentially be really exciting. It could open up almost some new sort of genres or ways of thinking about what VR can be.”

Dreams PSVR support lands on July 22nd as a free update for existing owners.

The post Dreams PSVR: 11 Things We Learned Directly From Media Molecule appeared first on UploadVR.