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HBO VR events and concerts start today on VRChat
“Garden of Eden,” the first in a series of three live VR art explorations, concerts, and shows organized by HBO, kicks off today at 10 p.m. Eastern time on VRChat, a social VR platform.
Those without a VR headset can watch the “Garden of Eden” livestream on YouTube and will be able to interact in real-time and impact the experiences through their interaction, which includes solving riddles.
During today’s event, guests and participants will explore Afrofuturistic art installations created by David Alabo, Devan Shimoyama, and Adeyemi Adegbesan.
The computer-generated Afrofuturistic works of art by the artists has a lot to do with fantasy, explores African beauty, and combines Afrocentric elements with surrealism to highlight African culture and diaspora.
The second of the three series events, a live poetry performance called An American Dream and which is inspired by the words of James Baldwin and performed by Jurnee Smollett, will be held from 10 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, September 24. The third event, Music of the Cosmos, a music performance, will take place from 10 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, October 19.
A select total of 100 guests – who include artists and actors – will participate at the three events using Oculus Quest headsets. The actors from the series, and who will be performing at the three shows and concerts include Jonathan Majors, Courtney Vance, Michael Kenneth William, and Jurnee Smollett.
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Book That Inspired Facebook’s Chief VR Researcher And Coined ‘Metaverse’ To Get HBO Series
A HBO series based on Snow Crash, the 1992 science fiction novel which coined the term “metaverse”, is currently in production.
Snow Crash is a 1992 science fiction novel written by Neal Stephenson. The book has a deeply complex plot touching on archaeolinguistics, religion, simulation theory, philosophy, computer science, and memetics. It was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the most prestigious science fiction award.
The series will reportedly be directed by Joe Cornish, who recently directed The Kid Who Would Be King. The writer is apparently Michael Bacall, who also wrote 21 Jump Street and Project X.
Stephenson will be a producer of the series, alongside Cornish, Bacall, Angela Robinson, Frank Marshall, and Robert Zotnowski.
Last we heard, Stephenson works at AR startup Magic Leap. His official title is ‘Chief Futurist’. He manages a team called the Self-Contained Existence Unit (SCEU). SCEU focuses on content R&D, pushing the boundaries on what can be developed in AR, figuring out best practices, and providing examples to developers.
Despite being released before even Wolfenstein 3D and three years before the Virtual Boy, much of Snow Crash takes place in a massively multiplayer VR world called the Metaverse — a term Stephenson coined. Essentially, the metaverse is the spatial version of the internet. The term Metaverse is popular in VR today.
‘Meta’ means after or beyond, and ‘verse’ is taken from universe. Thus a ‘metaverse’ is a new universe beyond and after the real one.
When the book was written almost 30 years ago, VR headsets were rare. The few which existed cost in excess of $50,000 and had resolutions of just a few hundred pixels on each axis.
The book also popularized the term ‘avatar’ — the virtual character which represents a user in a virtual world. The descriptions of avatars in Snow Crash still apply to proto-metaverses like VRChat today.
Michael Abrash’s Inspiration
Michael Abrash is Chief Scientist at Facebook Reality Labs. That’s the division of Facebook which researches future VR & AR tech. He also reportedly co-leads Facebook’s new AR glasses team.
In 1994, Abrash was working at Microsoft. He had helped develop the core graphics architecture of Windows. After reading Snow Crash, he quit Microsoft and joined John Carmack at Id. Together they developed Quake — one of the first widely popular online multiplayer FPS games. He then worked at companies like Microsoft (again) and Intel until 2011 when he joined Valve to work on AR and VR.
After joining Valve, Abrash wrote a blog post explaining his history. The first sentence: “It all started with Snow Crash.”
The post Book That Inspired Facebook’s Chief VR Researcher And Coined ‘Metaverse’ To Get HBO Series appeared first on UploadVR.
‘Westworld’ VR Game Now Available on PC VR Headsets, Launch Trailer Here
HBO, Warner Bros., and Survios today released a new VR game set in the wild (and often terrifying) android-filled universe of Westworld.
Called Westworld Awakening, the game takes place during the events of the TV series’ season two, offering up what the studios call a narrative-driven, stealth exploration experience played from the perspective of Kate, a newly self-aware android ‘host’.
Set in the heart of in the Mesa facility’s laboratories and offices, which the studios bill as a “dangerous underworld where no one and nothing is what it seems,” players are pitted against puzzles, and a dark game of manipulating the world (and other hosts) around you by using the seemingly godlike powers of the Quality Assurance tablet.
Just like in the show, Hank, the black-hatted serial killer, is always in close pursuit, forcing you to confront Westworld’s secrets as you try to escape with your artificially intelligent hide intact.
Westworld Awakening was published by HBO and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and was developed in-house by Survios, the VR studio known for a string of successful VR titles including Raw Data (2017), Creed: Rise to Glory (2019), Sprint Vector (2018) and the upcoming titles Battlewake and The Walking Dead Onslaught.
Westworld Awakening is now available on Steam (Vive, Rift, Index), the Oculus Store (Rift), and Viveport (Vive, Rift, Index) for $30.
The post ‘Westworld’ VR Game Now Available on PC VR Headsets, Launch Trailer Here appeared first on Road to VR.
Westworld: Awakening Review – A Haunting VR Experience
Westworld Awakening was just announced suddenly for PC VR headsets. Lucky for you we’ve already played it — here is our full review!
Westworld is an HBO show that asks a lot of philosophical questions. Examples include: What is life? What makes us human? And, of course, is it right to play God? They’re classic questions when you look back through the entire history of literature, and for good reason.
Questioning what makes us, well, us, is an intrinsically human thing, it’s a question that will be raised far more as time advances, with technologies like cloning, AI, and perhaps even digital copies of our own minds slowly changing what it means to be a person.
It makes sense then that a game set in the Westworld universe would ask similar questions. The game takes place during the early events of Season 2 and you play as a Host named Kate, who is the unfortunate – and unwilling – protagonist in a series of horror experiences, where she is continuously hunted by another Host named Hank. The game opens up with a warning about mature themes and violence; this is not a warning to be ignored. The first-person viewpoint is one thing, but playing through some of the scenes in this game in VR can be genuinely harrowing.
Westworld: Awakening starts you off within one of the false worlds, but things quickly go awry. Things unfold over a series of five chapters, with the first one taking place within the lie that you’ve been programmed into. These opening moments are perhaps the most disturbing of all, outside of the violence, there is the unshakable feeling that you are disposable, a toy to be messed with or ignored. Perhaps worse is the leering old man who eyes you up and down slowly as he talks to you, he just wants to be your hero, and you’re his prize. My skin nearly crawled off of my body, and the emotions forced upon you by Westworld: Awakening continue like this throughout the experience. The whole thing only took me about three hours, but the developers told us more like four to six hours for most playthroughs — meaning there are likely secrets to find.
The second chapter opens with you waking up in the Delos facility itself. You’re incredibly confused, unsurprising given the sudden leap forward in time, at least, that’s how it appears to you. This is where the game begins in earnest. At this point, you’ll find yourself sneaking around the offices and labs, hiding from one enemy or another, as you try and solve puzzles or follow instructions.
Hiding is simple enough, crouching down behind cubicle walls with a button prompt, hiding under tables, and climbing through vents are all viable ways of evading your pursuers. Fortunately, the AI struggles to check under objects. So you can avoid detection by ducking out of sight, at least if you aren’t playing on the highest difficulty.
The puzzles in Westworld: Awakening follow a fairly simple formula too. You scan something, track wherever it leads, find a key, do the thing. Each of these is made extremely unnerving though because you have to do all of this while avoiding a serial killer, or a team of people with guns. This is especially true when you know that unlocking a door, or flipping a switch, will end up drawing attention to where you are, meaning your timing has to be perfect in order to survive. These sections feel a bit like Alien Isolation, but in VR, and with the killer mocking you as you crawl around trying to remain unseen. It’s terrifying, my cat brushed up against my leg during one of these sections, and I can safely say that it aged me at least twenty years.
There are some great puzzles involving controlling the AI of other hosts, which is all the more affecting since you are one yourself as well. That’s where things become philosophical, and it’s used in key moments to help the story, rather than to be a tricky puzzle to be solved. It’s great, and while I understand why it isn’t in more of the game, it also would have been an excellent mechanic to dive into properly.
The gameplay in Westworld: Awakening is pretty good, even if it does feel a little shallow, but the short run-time of the game means you don’t feel the repetition as much. The main attraction here is the story. Needless to say, it’s hard to say much at all due to spoilers, but the story is as well told as you’d expect and is very compelling. Each twist and turn asks you some kind of philosophical question, but it has no interest in answering those, instead only answering the plot points that the game raises. This means you’ll finish the game questioning so much about real life but knowing full well what happened in-game. It’s the ideal really.
On top of this, both the visuals and sound design are stunning. The animations for each character are brilliant, and the voice acting is second-to-none. Every character feels almost too realistic, and it means you’ll be fearing for your life more than you’d like. You can also track your hunters by listening carefully to the spatial audio, which brings that fear factor up even higher when you can almost hear them breathing down your neck.
Westworld Awakening VR Final Thoughts
The whole experience is both haunting and fascinating, and a very worthwhile one as well. Also, you’ve got to love a short game when there are so many vying for entire months of our lives. Westworld: Awakening is an excellent story wrapped in a solid VR experience that is a good reminder of just what can be done with the amazing immersion that the tech offers us. It’s a very good game, and a must-play for fans of the show. Hell, even if you don’t know the show, it’s a worthwhile thriller that shouldn’t be ignored.
Westworld: Awakening releases Aug. 20 at a price of $29.99 on Steam, Oculus Home, and Viveport. It’s also coming to the Survios arcade platform with over 400 arcade locations. For more on how we arrived at this score, read our review guidelines.
Correction: The release date for Westworld: Awakening is Aug. 20. An earlier version of this post contained incorrect information.
The post Westworld: Awakening Review – A Haunting VR Experience appeared first on UploadVR.
Westworld Awakening Brings the Hit TV Show to VR Arcades and Home Users
Survios has or is working on several big interactive IP’s based on TV shows and films. Having launched Creed: Rise to Glory in 2018 and with work ongoing with The Walking Dead Onslaught, today, the studio has announced another virtual reality (VR) tie-in based on HBO’s Westworld. Called Westworld Awakening, this has come completely out the blue and is due to arrive tomorrow.
Westworld Awakening is based on season two of the show, offering fans a narrative-driven, stealth experience. Players take on the role of Kate – a host within the Mesa facility who has suddenly attained self-awareness.
Players will be able to delve into the maze of laboratories and offices of Delos, using a Quality Assurance tablet to manipulate the world. Gameplay involves solving puzzles and interacting (as well as manipulating) other hosts, whilst at the same time being pursued by relentless serial killer Hank.
HBO is known for producing some of the most compelling shows, offer ing creative storylines and complex characters that keep our viewers coming back for more. Through VR experiences, we are bringing these fictional people and places to life for our viewers and letting them interact and engage with our shows in new, immersive ways,” said Aaron Nonis, VP of Interactive and Immersive Experiences at HBO in a statement. “‘Westworld Awakening’ is the perfect fusion of the right creators and story, the right IP, and the right platform that allows us to create the next – generation playground for our Westworld fans.
“With ‘Westworld Awakening,’ we had the privilege of going inside HBO’s popular show to create an entirely new storyline,” said Daniel Zeligman, Survios ’ Project Lead. “The end result is a VR experience unlike any other out there, that allows fans to dive deep into familiar settings and become a character on their favourite show, seeking to survive the dangers of Westworld.”
There isn’t long to wait for Westworld Awakening as the title will launch across 400 arcades as well as on Steam and Oculus Store for HTC VIve and Oculus Rift/Rift S tomorrow, 20th August. It will be available in English in the US, Mexico, Brazil, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, South Korea, and China (arcades only). For any further updates on Westworld Awakening keep reading VRFocus.
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