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SteamVR Update Adds Mallorca, A New Photogrammetry Environment

The latest SteamVR update adds a new photogrammetry environment for users, captured in the village of Fornalutx in Mallorca.

Mallorca is an island located in the western Mediterranean sea, off the coast of Spain and part of the Balearic Islands. It’s home to an ancient village called Fornalutx and, as described in this post, Valve has processed a bunch of photogrammetric data to create a SteamVR home environment featuring a path running through the village.

steamvr home mallorca

The data was originally captured in October 2019, but it seems Valve employees only just got around to processing and converting it now. The scene is made up of over 640 photos, which were taken handheld with a Canon EOS 5D Mk IV using an EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM lens.

To process the photos into a photogrammetry scene and clean up the results, Valve used Reality Capture, Agisoft Metashape, Agisoft PhotoScan, Modo, Substance Painter and Photoshop.

steamvr home mallorca

You can subscribe to the Mallorca envionrment here on Steam. Valve encourages anyone with questions on capturing and processing a scene to post them in the comments section of the Workshop listing.

The update also brings a bunch of bug fixes for SteamVR, OpenXR and Windows Mixed Reality support. You can read the full list here.

In last month’s SteamVR hardware survey, Quest 2 reached 47.92% of VR headset usage on the platform, creeping its way toward 50%. The Valve Index, meanwhile, climbed slightly up to 15.35% while the Oculus Rift S continued to fall, now at just 11.07%.  You can read more about last month’s SteamVR hardware results here.

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Step Into Tribeca’s Cinema360 Festival From Your own Home

Tribeca - Lutaw

It’s quite often the case that only a few immersive films ever make it away from the film festivals, securing funding for a wider public release. Those that have tend to receive substantial backing such as Spheres or Traveling While Black. The current pandemic has shifted expectations regarding what these types of events can achieve when forced to move to a digital format, one of the best examples being today’s release of Tribeca Immersive’s Cinema360 programme thanks to Oculus.

Tribeca - HomeAs previously reported, the pair have partnered up in a way which allows everyone at home to enjoy a selection of short films from around the world, from 360-degree videos to animation. It’s a chance to showcase some of the wonderful talent emerging across the globe, creatives experimenting with immersive technology to tell imaginative stories or tackle serious subjects in new ways.

While it is a bit of a shame the content is limited to Oculus TV and therefore purely Oculus Quest and Oculus Go headsets (which means no Oculus Rift support), for those that do have access to either then the selection of free content is worth exploring, split across four sections; Dreams to  Remember, Seventeen Plus, Kinfolk and Pure Imagination.

There are a total of 15 films across the categories and while there is certainly some stand out gems, they’re all worth a look; especially considering they’re only available until 25th April. Those which caught VRFocus’ eye include Rain Fruits from South Korea, a story about Tharu who comes to Korea from Myanmar in search of work as an engineer and the hardships he faces as an alien worker.

Tribeca - Attack on DaddyOr then there’s 360 video Home from Taiwan, a touching family film where the viewer is the grandmother, who can no longer move, react, or hear clearly. It’s a day in the life, where all the family get together, enjoying one another’s company. For those who like animation Lutaw from the USA/Philippines is a high-quality production, following two siblings who look for a better way to commute to the other island where their school is.

For a mixture for styles including 360-video, CGI and a play on scale, then there’s Attack on Daddy, another South Korean film where a dad looks for his daughter inside her dollhouse. And because these are all easily accessible through Oculus TV, if you’re using Oculus Quest then you’ve also got full hand tracking control to play with.

Most importantly Tribeca’s mini VR film festival is a great showcase for the future of film festivals online and through VR headsets. The ability to reach a mass audience rather than the elite few is what content like this needs, so hopefully this will continue and become more widespread into the future.

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Rift Platform Update Now Lets Users Import Custom Home Spaces

Rift users looking for a change of scenery from the stock cabin model in Oculus Home are in for a surprise, as the company has just pushed an update that now brings user-created spaces to the platform.

Last summer Oculus opened beta support for custom objects, letting users import .glb object files into the Oculus Home import directory. Users can also create virtual items in Medium, the company’s 3D creation app, and share them to Home directly.

The recent update however now includes a few ready-made Home templates including a cafe and theater setting, along with themed decor and furniture to match.

Image courtesy Oculus

Oculus says in a blogpost that users can create anything from a cluster of small rooms to large open outdoor environments; user-created Homes can’t exceed 1,000 meters total size in any dimension however, the company details in their user-created Homes guide.

SEE ALSO
Oculus Brings More Lifelike Sound Propagation to Audio SDK 1.34

Like custom objects, Homes must be in a .glb file format, but come in under 15mb in size with textures not exceeding 2,048 × 2,048 in resolution.

Users with greater skill in 3D object creation should have an easier time creating spaces from scratch, although online resources such as Sketchfab provide a wealth of user-created objects and virtual spaces suited for the task.

It’s not entirely a plug-and-play experience, although Oculus’ custom Home guide should set you on the right path to realizing the Home you’ve always dreamt of.

The post Rift Platform Update Now Lets Users Import Custom Home Spaces appeared first on Road to VR.

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Oculus Fixes a Few Serious Annoyances With Its Latest Update to Rift Core 2.0 Beta

Already in the wild for over a month now, Rift Core 2.0 Beta has seen its first substantial update since launch. The January update addresses performance and general ease-of-use of Home and Dash, but more importantly provides solutions to some rather niggling issues.

Considered a major overhaul to the platform’s underlying user experience, Rift Core 2.0 was only available through the Public Test Channel since launch last month. Now, Oculus says Rift users on the default branch will have automatic access to Core 2.0 beta without having to opt into the more incremental Public Test Channel updates. While classic Oculus Home is still the default for non-test-branchers, you can now toggle Rift Core 2.0 beta on an off in the Settings menu.

image courtesy Oculus

Oculus says a number of rendering, stability, and performance fixes have come to Home and Dash as a result of the update. Dash is the platform’s in-app menu system which also allows you to use desktop PC applications and switch apps while still interacting in VR apps. There’s also some updates to how Dash works when you’re running apps purchased through Steam or other app marketplaces—no doubt polishing Valve’s recent update to SteamVR that allows Rift users to use Dash in Steam-bought games.

Now, all of this is well and good, but what about the annoying bits?

One niggling issue that the update addresses is the ability to “lock” changes in your Home, so you can inhabit the space without accidentally moving that perfectly placed object. The Lock option can now be found in the Settings panel in the Home menu.

Image courtesy Oculus

Speaking of niggling issues, this is the granddaddy of them all. Ever since the launch of Rift in March 2016, users have been pleading for an official way to easily install and manage their Oculus apps outside the confines of the default C: drive location. With the January update, Oculus is now letting you install VR apps across more than one hard drive or Windows folder, meaning you’ll finally be able to shunt your apps to that extra SSD. Pure joy.

Smaller, less-niggling niggles: when you add games and experiences to you Wishlist, you’ll get notified when they go on sale, making it easier to wait on that game that may need a few months after launch to finally shape up, both content and price-wise. You’ll also be able to see playtime hours and achievements for any game in your Library.

If you’re got a great idea, or found a bug worth squashing, Oculus suggests joining UserVoice forum for all feature requests.

The post Oculus Fixes a Few Serious Annoyances With Its Latest Update to Rift Core 2.0 Beta appeared first on Road to VR.

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Why Is Presence Important For Virtual Reality?

Presence is the magic of virtual reality (VR), the feeling that you’re actually in the virtual world. Presence will cause the user to suspend disbelief and believe they are in the virtual environment, reacting to stimuli as if they were in the real world. It’s the holy grail, the purpose of VR.

Constant improvement in the ability to create presence – through tech and content – will push the industry forward. To make someone genuinely believe they are experiencing another world is a powerful thing and with it comes great responsibility. As content creators, we have a duty of care to our users.

Right now it’s tough to create true presence, because for this to occur all your senses need to be convinced that you are in a new reality – this is a huge technical challenge. Currently, VR can satisfy our vision and hearing, and there are some significant developments in regards to touch, but there is still much work to do in regards to smell and taste.

Achieving a lifelike user experience in VR is now possible because of tremendous advancements in computer processing power, graphics, video and display technologies. But the tech needs to stay out of the way; it needs to be entirely inconsequential to the experience; otherwise, the spell is broken. Shattering the illusion can also be caused by hitting walls/ceilings with controllers, loss of tracking, tripping or hearing sounds unrelated to the experience, e.g., someone talking in the real world.

Content Is King

While the tech is no doubt necessary, no user is going to suspend disbelief if the experience is awful! While resolution, latency, etc. are improving, our role as content producers in creating presence is to design with an incredible attention to detail resulting in high-definition visual fidelity that creates a truly believable world.

Context

Context is also critical. The more you can relate to the VR experience and believe it (does it react in the way you expect it to?) the more you will be immersed. Ironically, you need some reality in VR. If you put someone into an abstract world, it’s going to be harder to achieve presence.

Interactivity

Adding interactivity to the experience can dial up the immersion, but it needs to give the user some form of feedback  – audio, visual or haptic – so that they feel like they are interacting with the environment. Home: A VR Spacewalk, the experience we created with the BBC, is a good example of going beyond the HMD to heighten immersion. Adding humans for interactivity doesn’t work because then you encounter the whole ‘uncanny valley’ problem.

Getting The Setup Right

The set up is also essential. You can’t expect someone to put on a headset and be immediately immersed; you have to play to the limitations of the hardware. It’s pointless trying to recreate something in VR if the hardware isn’t capable of delivering a believable experience. You are better off with a more limited set of interactions because you can do them successfully, rather than trying to do something beyond the current technology, such as realistic walking.

That’s not to say the current technology won’t improve. Hardware advances are being made all the time, with better and faster GPUs and CPUs allowing us to create and run increasingly complicated and graphics-intensive experiences. We will be able to develop not only more realistic-looking experiences but ones that we simply wouldn’t have been able to create while working on slower, less capable hardware. Furthermore, as HMDs get smaller, faster and lighter, there will be a marked difference in the ability to create presence. Untethered HMDs will significantly improve the VR experience, as will an improved field of view and higher screen resolutions.

However, until we can accurately recreate the world, create characters that behave as humans do and convince all our sense we are in an environment, we are going to struggle to achieve true presence. Until then, can strive to get as close as we can within the current constraints.