Report Highlights Tracking Differences Between Vive and Rift

Report Highlights Tracking Differences Between Vive and Rift

Back at the start of March, we reported on a new analytics tool called Ghostline. Developed by Aldin Dynamics, this tool was crafted to be a window into different statistics related to VR usage — how people interact, for how long, and more. Aldin Dynamics shared their program with the developers of SUPERHOT and Gallery: Call of the Starseed, but gave those interested a peek at the stats for Waltz of the Wizard.  Now they’re sharing a bit more info curated by the Ghostline tool, this time focused on the room-scale VR battle between Steam vs Oculus Home.

The report opens with a collection of interesting findings and one of the first things that jumps out is the fact that the NVIDIA GTX 1070 is the most popular graphics card for both Steam and Oculus users. As more begin to invest in VR-ready gear, statistics like this will stand out more and more. Another big thing to note is that Oculus tracking is improved almost two-fold when using 3 sensors instead of 2.

The CEO of Aldin Dynamics, Hrafn Thorisson, says that three sensors improve tracking with Rift so much so that it performs very similarly with Vive. He also cautions that “To be very clear, the report presents data from Waltz of the Wizard specifically, and tracking loss for that specific product — how content is designed can have an impact on tracking loss.” The design is crucial, of course, but this is definitely something to keep in mind. That small amount of players using 3 sensors (14.9%) will likely increase drastically if performance improvements like this are consistently recorded elsewhere.

The audiences across different countries are somewhat similar, except for SteamVR’s representation in China, and the play times aren’t very far off from each other either. An average playtime of around 28 minutes is notable as well.

When it comes to room-scale play, the difference in play space is pretty large. Steam has a sweet spot between 3-6 square meters but has few players using over 8 square meters of space. Only 6% of Oculus users go over 6 square meters and typically stick to 1-3.

These stats show only a small snapshot of the VR gaming community but, as Ghostline is used by more entities, creators will be able to shape their experiences to take advantage of player trends and build better content overall. You can read up more on Ghostline on their website and, if you’re a developer, submit for Early Access updates.

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Waltz of the Wizard: Überraschende Daten durch „Ghostline“

Aldin Dynamics, eines der erfahrensten Studios wenn es um den Umgang mit der VR- Technologie geht, hat vor Kurzem einen detaillierten Bericht über Daten veröffentlicht. Das Besondere daran: Die Daten wurden während 300.000 gespielter Runden mit „Waltz of the Wizard“, einem VR- Spiel, gesammelt und durch Aldins eigenes Tool „Ghostline“ visualisiert. Dabei kam auch Abgründiges zutage.

Bei dem Spiel selbst handelt es sich um bewegungsgesteuertes VR-Spiel, welches schnell an Popularität gewann, da es frei verfügbar war und die Vorzüge der HTC- Vive gut nutzte. Derzeit ist es auch das bestbewerteste VR- Spiel auf Steam.

Zurück zu Ghostline, denn das Spiel diente lediglich als eine gute Verkleidung für dieses Software-Tool. Seit dem Januar 2015 befindet sich diese Software bereits in Arbeit und spielte bei der Programmierung von Waltz of the Wizard eine entscheidende Rolle. Das vielseitige Ghostline-Tool ist dazu in der Lage, das Spielerverhalten der Spieler zu registrieren und zu speichern. Alles anonym und geheim versteht sich. So werden sämtliche Aktionen, die Spieler in den jeweiligen Spielen tätigen, festgehalten und können dann jederzeit wiedergegeben werden. Die Wiedergabe kann in allen möglichen Perspektiven erfolgen – sogar aus der des Spielers. Durch Vorteile wie diese, bietet die Software einen besseren und einfacheren Einblick in das Verhalten ihrer Spieler und liefert so sehr detaillierte Daten.

Nun hat die Firma einige ihrer gesammelten Daten veröffentlicht. So spielen 87 Prozent der Spieler das Spiel mit Room- Scaling, was nicht überrascht, da das Spiel im Stehen gespielt wird. Spieler die das Room- Scaling verwenden, verbringen auch 19 Prozent länger im Spiel als Spieler ohne. Ebenfalls nachvollziehbar, da das volle Potenzial nur dann ausgeschöpft werden kann, wenn maximale Bewegungsfreiheit gewährleistet wird.

Ein weiterer entscheidender Unterschied zwischen Spielern die stehen oder sitzen ist, wie häufig sie sich in der virtuellen Umgebung umsehen. Ein sehr ausschlaggebender Aspekt, der stark beim Design von Leveln und Gameplay berücksichtigt werden muss. So hat die Auswertung der gesammelten Daten ergeben, dass sitzende Spieler 18 Prozent weniger ihren Kopf bewegen, also sich umsehen, als die stehenden Spieler. Die meiste Interaktion fand am Tisch statt, wo man allerlei magischen Quatsch anstellen kann. Im Kontrast dazu steht der Flurbereich des Spiels. Durch den plötzlichen Wechsel der Atmosphäre, wurden hier die meisten physischen Reaktionen gemessen – von Flucht- bis Kampfverhalten war alles dabei.

Wie Aldin bereits gesagt hat, können „die kleinsten Details für eine gute oder schlechte Spielerfahrung sorgen“. So auch diese eher trivial wirkenden Daten, wie über 19 Millionen verschossene Armbrust Bolzen oder über 14 Millionen beschworene Feuerbälle. Weitere Daten zeigen die Abgründe der Spieler auf: So wurde z. B. 29.000 Mal der Assistent des Zauberers angeschossen und „Skully“ blieb auch nicht verschont. 17 Prozent der Spieler haben ihn im Kessel ertränkt und fünf Prozent haben ihn aus dem Fenster geschmissen.

Mit dem Ghostline-Tool kann also von vorherigen Spielen gelernt werden, um für die nächste VR- Erfahrung an den richtigen Stellschrauben anzusetzen.

Der Beitrag Waltz of the Wizard: Überraschende Daten durch „Ghostline“ zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

‘Waltz of the Wizard’ ‘Ghostline’ Analytics Reveal Some Surprising Player Behaviour

Aldin Dynamics has released a detailed breakdown of user data gathered during over 300,000 sessions of Waltz of the Wizard gameplay. Launched in May 2016, the motion-controlled VR game was developed with the insights gained from using Aldin’s own data visualisation tool Ghostline.

ghostline-logoDedicated to VR software development since early 2013, Aldin Dynamics is one of the most experienced studios in the world, launching software on Oculus developer kits and Gear VR. In May 2016, their motion control game Waltz of the Wizard launched on Steam for free, and quickly became a popular showcase for the HTC Vive, having seen over 300,000 sessions from over 100,000 players. It is currently the highest-rated VR app on Steam.

However, the wizardry is more than skin deep. The game acts as a test bed for Aldin’s real flagship software, Ghostline. This large-scale analytics and visualisation tool has been in development in since January 2015, served a vital role in prototyping Waltz of the Wizard’s level design and gameplay, and now acts as a rich data source for VR user habits within the released game. As described in this Polygon feature, Ghostline has the ability to record the actions of every user (via automatic, anonymous data collection), which can be replayed and viewed from any perspective, including from the original first person view. This ‘user ghost’ visualisation is far more efficient and less intrusive than shooting video of people playing in VR, and has many other benefits of in terms of detailed analysis of usage patterns and behaviour.

waltz of the wizard2Aldin Dynamics has now shared some of the data created within Waltz of the Wizard using their Ghostline technology. As a game designed to demonstrate room-scale VR while accommodating standing VR, some of these stats aren’t too surprising – with 87% of players using a room-scale space. Understandably, play time is higher in room-scale, with session lengths 19% longer and lifetime averages 72% longer; the game is simply more engaging when given more freedom to move around.

Ghostline's Analytical View of WotW's Playspace
Ghostline’s Analytical View of WotW’s Playspace

The detailed room-scale space breakdowns by country follow some logical patterns too, as countries with vast land mass like China, USA and Canada have the largest average play areas (China is highest at 5.9m²), and the densely-populated Japan has the smallest at 4.4m². Some of the less-specialised stats such as audience and hardware data are already available through Steam’s own tools, but Ghostline’s ability to combine every metric in such detail is unprecedented.

One of the most critical stats is that room-scale players physically look around 18% more than standing players, which has many implications for level/gameplay design – trying to cater to the standing player who is on average more reluctant to turn their head. The vast quantity of interaction/movement data available to Ghostline allows for a granular analysis of players’ physical behaviour. Within each scene from the game, it displays data relating to the amount of physical locomotion, button presses and head movement in degrees. The Wizard’s Tower scene, which contains the spell mixing table, scores the highest on interactivity, while the Hallway, which presents a sudden change of atmosphere ‘designed to induce a fight or flight response’, results in the highest level of physical movement.

waltz of the wizard4The granularity continues into the more amusing stats. Of course, nobody can resist causing damage – over 19 million crossbow bolts have been fired, and over 14 million fireballs have been cast. The wizard’s assistant has been shot over 29,000 times, and ‘Skully’ has been thrown out of the window by 5% of players, and drowned in the cauldron 17% of the time. Some stats may seem trivial, but as Aldin explains, “the smallest of details can make or break an experience. For this reason it is absolutely vital to pay careful attention to the user experience and ensure that your content is having the exact impact that you envision”. Aldin believes that analysing at the level Ghostline provides is key to making a great experience, and Waltz of the Wizards’ unmatched 99% approval rating on Steam is testament to that theory.

The post ‘Waltz of the Wizard’ ‘Ghostline’ Analytics Reveal Some Surprising Player Behaviour appeared first on Road to VR.

Ghostline: This Analytics Tool Can Tell You What Works In VR Games

Ghostline: This Analytics Tool Can Tell You What Works In VR Games

2016 was the year of VR hardware and it’s looking like 2017 is the year of software and accessories, but there are still many skeptics about the potential of the industry. Because of those, supporters and detractors clamor for whatever data is made available from sales to time spent playing on VR platforms and more. As development charges forward, developers are interested in statistics deeper embedded within their games as well, especially those that could help them create better VR experiences. Aldin Dynamics, a studio founded in 2013 that works exclusively on VR content, has a powerful analytic tool called Ghostline and they’ve started fostering partnerships with other dev studios to use the tool with their games.

Aldin Dynamics is starting things off by sharing their Ghostline program with Cloudhead Games and the SUPERHOT team, who both have created top experiences in the VR ecosystem. SUPERHOT and The Gallery – Call of the Starseed both received 9s out of 10 from our team at Upload and both are maintaining “Very Positive” ratings on Steam at the time of this writing. Even though the high reviews allude to these developers having a solid grasp on what they’re doing, the VR ecosystem is incredibly young and developers will want to take special note of what they’re doing wrong as well as right for future projects. The immersive nature of VR presents a lot of data about players that wouldn’t be considered in traditional game development, so tools like Ghostline will be crucial going forward.

Content from Ghostline Data Insights PDF For Waltz of the Wizard

To offer up an idea of what Ghostline offers, Aldine Dynamics shared the information gathered from Waltz of the Wizard which is another one of the best performing VR titles on Steam. The document has the expected information like the amount of people playing with more in-depth info like the average duration of a play session and what days of the week people play. It goes beyond that into unique VR territory with tracking of player height and how regularly they utilized room-scale, both important things to note for future games. A notable takeaway is that players using room-scale would play for longer periods than those just standing in one spot. The full PDF shows the potential of Ghostline and will hopefully inspire devs to use the tool and apply what they learn going forward.

Developers that are interested in partnering with Aldine Dynamics for Ghostline can reach out to the team via info@aldindynamics.com or sign up for their newsletter to stay informed on early access for the tool.

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Aldin Dynamics Announces Partnership Program for Analysis Tool Ghostline

Aldin Dynamics, the Icelandic virtual reality (VR) company behind Waltz of the Wizard, has announced a partnership programme for its VR experience analysis tool Ghostline. In the first phase of its programme the studio has already collaborated with Cloudhead Games and SUPERHOT. 

Ghostline was first announced back in September 2015, designed specifically for VR experience analysis and design optimization. Studio’s can use the tools to focus development efforts and offer invaluable insights into the complex relationship between user behavior, content design and VR system setups.

Ghostline_Audience

As well as the partnership programme, Aldin Dynamics has released Ghostline insights for its VR experience Waltz of the Wizard on HTC Vive. With an ‘overwhelmingly positive’ feedback score on Steam, the studio reports its seen over 300,000 sessions from over 100,000 players since its initial release in May 2016. Other stats include the average play time sits at 19 minutes, 37 percent of players were from the US representing the largest audience, China had the largest room-scale play areas while Japan had the smallest, and Waltz of the Wizard saw a 284 percent download spike between November to December 2016.

For developers interested in Ghostline Aldin invites VR industry professionals to sign up to the Ghostline Early Access newsletter for further information.

Select partners will be joining the private program in 2017, and for further updates, keep reading VRFocus.