Amazon will soon begin selling VR apps on its massive digital marketplace through a new partnership with HTC.
While Steam generally functions as the Vive’s defacto app store, HTC runs its own VR app store called Viveport. The company’s partnership with Amazon will allow customers to buy Viveport apps directly on the Amazon marketplace.
Developers can opt-in to making their app available for sale through Amazon via the Viveport developer console, and customers will be able to make purchases starting in “a few weeks.”
“The new partnership supports Viveport’s mission to provide developers with the most avenues to monetize their content and reach new customers. In addition, consumers will have a new way to discover and purchase titles on Amazon. By linking their Viveport account, users will be able to purchased titles that will seamlessly be added to their Viveport library,” the company announced today.
Other details are thin at present, but this won’t be Amazon’s first rodeo for selling apps. The company began running its own Android app store in 2011 to capture revenue from Google’s Play app store and to reduce the company’s reliance on Google for its own ‘Fire’ tablets.
In this case Amazon isn’t creating its entire own VR app store, but rather acting as a distribution extension of Viveport. But the partnership with HTC affirms the company’s growing interest in VR. The move also reinforces the rift between HTC and Valve, where the two companies have competing VR app stores despite cooperating on the hardware front.
HTC is expanding its out-of-home VR entertainment reach with a new deal with gaming giant IGT that will see its Vive hardware and software power a new competitive VR initiative where players compete for real money stakes.
The recent reveal (and subsequent pricing controversy) of HTC’s Vive Pro headset underlines the company’s commitment to the corporate market and by extension the out-of-home immersive entertainment sector. The company has been front and centre when it comes to key VR arcade-style developments in the East, one of the most notable being a partnership with Bandai Namco’s VR ZONE franchise. It also launched Viveport Arcade last year, a dedicated platform designed for the distribution of arcade focused VR software for operators of such venues.
HTC’s VR content division Vive Studios is today announcing another leg to this initiative with a new partnership with IGT (International Game Technology), a large multinational vendor of slot machines and gambling entertainment hardware, on IGTs new Virtual Zone (can we get some more originality in these names people?). The initiative will take the form of booths on casino floors, equipped with HTC Vive headsets and controllers running dedicated games designed specifically for competitive play and, more specifically, for each of the players to stake real world money on the outcome of any matches in the hope of winning “cash prizes in spirited VR tournaments”, according to a press release from HTC.
“Arcade-like installations and experiences are skyrocketing across the globe as VR has proven to be a consistent traffic generator in entertainment venues,” said Joel Breton, HTC VIVE VP Global Content. “By combining IGT’s gaming expertise and the world’s best VR in HTC VIVE, we are launching a combined platform that can deploy the best complete experiences for VR tournaments or stand-alone VR arcades. This is also a huge opportunity for more consumers to be exposed to amazing VR content.”
The first venue to open a Virtual Zone is Boyd Gaming’s The Orleans Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and comprises two booths which look to be large enough for standing (rather than roomscale) VR experiences which are externally adorned with multiple spectator screens with views of each competitor’s gameplay as well as combined views of the action – quite a neat looking set up (see featured image above).
The underlying logic for the tournament platform is powered by a proprietary set of APIs which form IGT’s own SDK, which developers can use to build out experiences targeting competitive, monetised gaming for out-of-home venues. The first game to be adapted for the platform is Vive Studios’ own Arcade Saga.
Last year marked HTC’s very first Vive Developer Awards (VDAs), which saw tens of thousands of dollars go to VR app developers across a number of categories. Now, HTC has announced the nominees for this year’s VDAs who will be in competition to win $50,000 in first place prize money.
HTC has established 5 categories for this year’s VDAs including entertainment, education, arts & culture, enterprise and arcade. A total of 10 nominees came out of the initial evaluations, a review process held by a panel of HTC employees that looked at the games’ overall virtual reality experience and engagement metrics such as total downloads, total user sessions and overall time played.
Without further ado, here’s this year’s VDA nominees:
Winners will be announced at a special event on March 19th coinciding with the Game Developers Conference (GDC).
First place for each category will receive $50k, which includes a studio profile video produced by the Vive team, “priority access” to new developer hardware, and a shiny trophy. Second place gets a financial award of $20,000, and all of the above (besides the $50K of course).
Last year’s first-prize winners included Apollo 11 VR (2016), Fantastic Contraption (2016), Cloudlands: VR Minigolf (2016), and Allumette (2016).
Last year marked HTC’s very first Vive Developer Awards (VDAs), which saw tens of thousands of dollars go to VR app developers across a number of categories. Now, submissions for this year’s VDAs are open, spanning more categories than last year, including Entertainment, Education, Arts & Culture, Enterprise, and Location-based Arcade games.
First place for each category will nab a cool $50,000, which includes a studio profile video produced by the Vive team, “priority access” to new developer hardware, and a shiny trophy. Second place gets a financial award of $20,000, and all of the above (besides the $50K of course).
Last year’s first-prize winners included Apollo 11 VR (2016), Fantastic Contraption (2016), Cloudlands: VR Minigolf (2016), and Allumette (2016).
image courtesy HTC
Developers can only submit their app to one category, but can submit multiple titles with the maximum possibility of winning two prizes, meaning a single developer could technically take home $100,000.
HTC says all eligible entries will be reviewed and evaluated by a panel of Vive employees. Evaluation will be based on:
overall virtual reality experience including, but not limited to, how fun, useful and engaging the title is
engagement metrics including, but not limited to, total downloads, total user sessions and overall time played
Competing apps should either already be on Viveport, the company’s Vive-focused app store, or be submitted before the submission window closes on February 9th, 2018.
Here’s a look at the 5 newly revised categories for this year’s VDAs:
Entertainment: An app that captivates the player in an engaging world and story. Features interactivity that is satisfying and rewarding. Leaves a lasting impression. Encourages the player to revisit the title again and again.
Education: An app that offers immersive and interactive learning experiences for the classroom or outside of it. Sparks curiosity, imagination and passion for intriguing subject matter.
Arts & Culture: An app that enables, preserves, and democratizes creation in the arts. Addresses a diverse, global audience and contributes to the knowledge and enjoyment of cultural heritage.
Enterprise: An app that aims to transform businesses with digital innovation. Accelerates the way teams create, cooperate and execute. Impacts key areas such as visualization, design, collaboration, marketing/sales and simulation/training.
Arcade: An app that will delight customers new to virtual reality. Designed for location-based entertainment considering ease of learning and playtime. A great choice for venues and businesses offering virtual reality experiences.
For more information on how to enter, check out the contest rules here.
Viveport, HTC’s VR content store for Vive, just received a significant overhaul aimed at improving content discovery and consumption.
The new ‘home’ area, which is based on spaceship platform, acts as a launchpad for the store’s games and experiences. I wasn’t allowed to go any farther into the spaceship that sat tantalizingly close behind me, but the company promised they’d have more to reveal soon.
image courtesy HTC
Couched as the “biggest upgrade to the Viveport customer experience since launch,” the content store now puts more focus on making content discovery easier from directly within the headset via special VR preview pages.
HTC gave us a chance to explore the new Viveport content store at the pre-CES press event where the new Vive Pro headset was first unveiled. Browsing through a number of games and experiences, I was able to either view a 360 photo captured from a game, or in some cases even explore rendered spaces replete with interactive objects and explorable areas. Walking around a preview of the Mars Odysseyexperience, there were a few models to pick up and examine along with a small area to teleport around to get a better look at the dusty red surroundings.
image courtesy HTC
“It’s not a full fledged experience like the game,” says 2 Bears Studio developer Jason Epps. “What it does do is it allows [consumers] a chance to get in and get a sense of the games. It helps to separate [developers] from the pack and really allows people to get a good sense of your product without ever having purchased it.”
Last year, HTC’s major contemporary Oculus opened up such a feature for Gear VR developers with the eventual goal of delivering those sorts of ‘VR tasters’ to Rift too at some point in 2018, although it seems HTC has beaten them to the punch.
HTC Vive and the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) have partnered for the second time after their successful ‘Virtually Real’ exhibition last year. Members of the public are now able to experience three virtual reality (VR) pieces in the Tennant Gallery by artists Yinka Shonibare and Humphrey Ocean, and architect Farshi Moussavi. Announced back in September the ‘From Life’ exhibition is about seeing the possible future applications of VR in art. VRFocusspoke with Victoria Chang, Director of Vive Arts and Culture, about how HTC Vive plan on introducing VR to the masses in cultural, education and artistic spaces.
Through a partnership with Google Arts and Culture, Jonathan Yeo has been collaborating with Google’s engineers on their Tilt Brush software, which lets users paint in a 3D space using virtual reality technology.
HTC Vive and the RA are combining life drawing and VR to create a new form of experiential artwork. Artists Jonathan Yeo, alongside Royal Academicians Humphrey Ocean, Yinka Shonibare, and Farshid Moussavi have produced works of art designed with the Vive head-mounted display (HMD), creating a new digital platform. Yeo’s bronze cast sculpture was built using the HTC Vive, Google Tiltbrush and OTOY scans. Yeo’s piece demonstrates how artists can harness and enhance the latest digital processes to open up new creative possibilities. It also shows how both portraiture and new technology will change and infiltrate our lives in the coming years. The exhibition is spread across two galleries at the RA, with paintings, works on paper, and historic casts found alongside contemporary works in the Sackler Wing, and three VR experiences installed in the Tennant Gallery.
The RA is not only a museum space but also a school; in fact it’s been teaching for 250 years. Mostly focusing on life drawing of models or life models. The RA saw that VR was having a really big impact on the manner in which art students were learning, creating and even appreciating various forms of art from a new perspective. They invited three RA alumni students in the ‘Virtually Real’ exhibition to experiment with VR as a new fine art medium and had the final sculpture printed in 3D.
Chang says, “That exhibition, although it’s short, it is so positively impactful in a way that so many museums, professionals and artists saw the result of what virtual reality can bring into the art sector that in this entire year so many things have sprouted out in the culture sector in relation to VR.”
Another example of where HTC Vive has also introduced VR to the public, specifically art lovers, is the Tate Modern. The Modigliani exhibition has a dedicated VR that invites members of the public to try a HTC Vive HMD and transport audiences to the The Ochre Atelier, or Modigliani’s artist studio in Paris back in 1919. It’s not just about bringing VR to museums and exhibitions, but also bringing art into VR. Chang says, “These VR art pieces, museum VR content are all coming up to Viveport to be able to see what’s going on in a gallery in London or Paris.”
This means that anybody with a HTC Vive HMD and access to Viveport will be able to experience the VR pieces.
To find out what the VR pieces are inside the RA as well as what HTC Vive plan to do in other cultural sectors, watch the video below.
There are a few head-mounted displays (HMD) that exist in the market today, but one of the most well known and popular HMD’s is the HTC Vive. With HTC Vive recently dropping their price to £599 GBP and other various deals for their virtual reality (VR) platform, including the Vivepost Winter Sale, it’s clear that HTC Vive have an interest in the videogame market but are also extremely invested in the growth of VR applications in different sectors, such as art and design. VRFocus spoke with Graham Breen, Head of Vive Content in Europe, about their latest VR app TrueScale, which allows companies and consumers to design and build virtual rooms and buildings.
TrueScale is an interior design tool that can simultaneously create 2D floor plans, 3D mockups and full room-scale environments in VR. Not only can you design your house, office or apartments in minutes, you can virtually experience your designs first-hand in real scale through VR. Create, edit and explore 2D, 3D in a real scale; when creating a floor plan you watch the application generate a 3D environment as a dollhouse-type model. This allows for users to immediately understand their designs and gain a sense of scale and depth that could traditionally not be achieved through paper or graphic renders. Furthermore, HTC Vive’s roomscale technology enables users the freedom to walk around and explore a design space whilst making changes in real time.
Breen explains that TrueScale solves a lot of problems on a business level by allowing designers, architects and all those involved to address problems before the mistakes are made. Breen explains that Vive want to help create great content that not only help the VR market but help grow the VR ecosystem, and as such are working with a lot of companies over a range of sectors looking at how VR can help solve problems traditional media can not. From small things such as designing one’s house to training surgeons in VR.
Most recently Vive released their standalone VR HMD Vive Focus in China, of which Breen says is an ‘enormous’ step forward.
“The cool thing is, in China we’re seeing a lot of innovation on both sides. A lot of hardware innovation but also a lot of software innovation and probably the most important part of that, consumers are getting really really engaged. It’s become a thing, especially out of home experiences, arcades we are doing a lot of VR education work in China. It’s absolutely booming.”
Breen explains that for TrueScale the hand controllers and precision needed for designing and scaling rooms can be done in a much more professional and precise manner with the HTC Vive due to its roomscale and hand controller capabilities. It’s clear that Breen believes that one has to look at what application and circumstance an experience or tool is being used for. The highest end of VR should use the HTC Vive, whilst when one wants to bring a portable device the Vive Focus is fit for purpose.
Vive have not only been working on interior design but on other sectors such as art as well, most recently they opened a VR exhibition inside Tate Modern’s Modigliani’s exhibition in London. The VR piece called The Ochre Atelier puts the user in Modigliani’s studio in Paris 1919, where you are taken on a nine to ten minute guided seated experience that inform the user on various aspects of his life. The Vive Arts program will make VR more visible to art lovers around the world.
Breen explains that Vive’s focus has always been to be the best in class experience for VR. “If we deliver [the best in class experience] then everything else flows from it, but it’s really about creating the best in class experience and that’s still going to remain our focus heading forwards as well. Vive should really stand for the best in VR.”
TrueScale is available on Viveport and was also produced by Vive Studios for $19.99 USD. To find out more watch the video below.
Since the consumer launch of the HTC Vive in 2016, Vive has been working on trying to find ways of integrating the new technology into various forms of culture and art. The Vive Arts Program started in 2015 in partnership with the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) with Virtually Real exhibition. The project invited contemporary artists to experiment and create work in virtual reality (VR) that would eventually be 3D printed and showcased to the public. Vive also worked with British artist Mat Colliwshaw on his VR exhibition Thresholds that ran at the Somerset House, London. Vive hasn’t only participated with artists in London, but has also partnered with the National Palace Museum in Taipei to educate and provide access to the museums in remote regions.
The Modigliani exhibition runs from the 23rd November 2017, until 2nd April 2018, so for art lovers who have always wanted to try VR or for the youngsters dragged to museums by their parents – there is an opportunity to be immersed into the world of Italian artist Modigliani. The exhibition is the most comprehensive Modigliani exhibition ever held in the UK, bringing togetehr his iconic portraits, sculptures and the largest ever group of nudes to be shown in the UK. Although Modigliani died tragically young, he was a ground-breaking artist who pushed the boundaries of art at his time. Including 100 works – many of them rarely exhibited and nearly 40 of which have never been shown in the UK – the exhibition re-evaluates one of the greatest artist of the twentieth century.
Whilst perusing through the gallery and rooms, one will find VR experience The Ochre Atelier set up by Vive. Nine HTC Vive head-mounted displays (HMDs) will bring a user to Modigliani’s original studio in Paris in 1919. The nine to ten minute guided experience features various quotes, and bits of information about Modigliani’s life, his paintings and eventually painting a picture of what led to his tragic death. This is the first time Tate Modern has showcased any VR technology. The seated experience is the result of five months of mapping and rigorous historical research, the space, its interiors and objects. Tate selected VR studio Preloaded to create the experience. Each of the over 60 objects featured in The Ochre Atelier has been carefully research and authentically modelled by 3D artist and modellers, from a packet of cigarettes to the way the windows would have opened to let the light in. Two late works, Jeane Hebuterne 1919 and Self-portrait 1919 have been reconstructed at the Tate in collaboration with colleagues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art, University of Sao Paulo.
Brown says this is the first time they’ve helped create a piece of content that is integrated into an experience to enhance the life of the artist. He also says The Ochre Atelier will be available for HTC Vive users via the Viveport, in December 2017. This will be a roomscale and much longer experience that will allow users to interact with various objects in the room. Admission is £19.70 GBP (without donation £17.70), concession tickets are £17.90 (without donation £15.90). The Modigliani exhibition is open daily from 10.00-18.00 and until 22.00 on Friday and Saturday. Or if one owns an HTC Vive, one can simply wait for the experience to be available on Viveport.
To find out more about the Vive Arts Program watch the video below. VRFocus will keep you updated with all the latest installations from Vive.
On stage at Vive Developer Conference in Beijing, HTC today unveiled their upcoming standalone VR headset, Vive Focus. While HTC is only releasing the headset in China, and not in the West as previously announced, the company is using Vive Focus as the impetus for its own mobile VR platform that aims to resolve what HTC calls a “highly fragmented” mobile VR market in China, and become a common platform and storefront across disparate hardware vendors.
Vive Wave essentially does for mobile VR what Valve’s OpenVR does for desktop; it allows a large range of third-party devices onto what HTC describes as an “open” platform and serves up Viveport VR content all under one roof. It’s a pretty bold step by the company to do for China what Google is trying to do for the West with Daydream, and it seems the scale is much larger in scope given the number of partners already on board and the types of headsets capable of entry.
HTC has already signed up twelve hardware partners in China that will support Vive Wave and integrate Viveport content into their future products, including 360QIKU, Baofengmojing, Coocaa, EmdoorVR, Idealens, iQIYI, Juhaokan, Nubia, Pico, Pimax, Quanta and Thundercomm.
Image courtesy HTC
Vive Wave is said to be an open platform and toolset that will make mobile VR content development easy and also allow high-performance device optimization for third-party partners. HTC says the Vive Wave VR SDK offers an open interface enabling interoperability between numerous mobile VR headsets and accessories. These accessories could include Leap Motion, VR input gloves, 6DoF controllers and even eye-tracking solutions if manufacturers are so willing, Engadgetreports.
According to the report, China-based developers were told they can port their HTC Vive content to Vive Wave with the choice of either adopting 3DoF controller input or by supporting 6DoF input with “additional accessories.” HTC Vive’s Associate Vice President Raymond Pao said that existing Daydream and Samsung Gear VR content could even take less than a week to port to Vive Wave, a process that the company says will be easier for developers using Unity thanks to the new one-click process to publish to Viveport.
The basic list of compatible mobile headset types is fairly wide, encompassing smartphones that slot-in to a separate headset, smartphones tethered to the headset via cable with single or dual panels, or a standalone headset with single or dual panels. The company boasts support for multiple CPU architectures, although it’s admittedly optimized for Qualcomm Snapdragon. The stipulation for entry is Android 7.1 and higher.
Hardware manufacturers haven’t been so cavalier in the West with mobile VR headsets, so a ‘OpenVR for mobile’ isn’t as plainly necessary here as it is in China. While Western crowds won’t likely ever see Vive Wave, it’s certainly an interesting experiment to follow along with.
HTC could be showing off its standalone VR headset at the company’s November 14th Vive Developer Conference (VDC) in Beijing. As reported by YiVian, the conference has recently published promotional material featuring a veiled image of the company’s upcoming headset. To wit, HTC says it will have ‘some important announcements’ to make.
First teased at Google I/O 2017 developer conference, both HTC and Lenovo announced they were building standalone VR headsets featuring inside-out positional tracking for the Daydream platform—or in HTC’s case, the Viveport platform in China.
YiVian, an English-language publication that covers China’s tech industry, has recently come across a promotional flier for VDC 2017 which positions the shrouded Vive standalone in an unhatched egg – to be revealed at the conference in Beijing at the Crowne Plaza Beijing Sun Palace on November 14th.
While it’s no means a final nail in the coffin, the official promotional flier says (in English) “a new revolutionary immersive experience is here. Stay focused on the next wave of innovations in VR.”
Digging into trademark registrations, YiVian also found that HTC has recently registered the name “Vive M” in China, possibly meaning ‘Vive Mobile’—a move that would position the new standalone as somewhat of a little brother to the tethered PC VR Vive headset. Both ‘Vive Focus’ and ‘Vive Eclipse’ have been registered in the West however, making it less clear what name the headset will take and where.
image courtesy HTC
The crucial difference between current mobile headsets like Gear VR or Daydream View is the inclusion of positional tracking thanks to the headsets’ inside-out tracking capabilities. Built with help from Google, both HTC and Lenovo’s headsets are based off Qualcomm’s ‘VRDK’ reference device and built on the Snapdragon 835.
HTC and Lenovo standalone headsets are shown alongside what appears to be a standard Bluetooth 3DoF Daydream controller as well. Both companies are staying mum on any other specifics, although Google said to expect them some time in 2017.
We won’t be attending VDC, but if on the off-chance you’re in the Beijing area, you can sign up for VDC here. We’ll be following along, so check back soon.
