Category: kickstarter

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Play Current and Future Console Titles in VR with MVR Ascend

This year has seen the consumer market inundated with various virtual reality (VR) devices with which to immerse the public in virtual worlds. From the cheaper entry level options of Google Cardboard or Gear VR to the high-end HTC Vive or PlayStation VR for example, there is just about an option and price level for everyone. Today though MVR Global has launched a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign for another variant, the MVR Ascend.

MVR Ascend is a mobile head-mounted display (HMD) with several features that could make it unique to the VR market. It uses smartphones just like Gear VR or Merge VR, but the headset system can stream videogames from consoles such as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, enabling gamers to play their favourite AAA titles in VR. There are systems such as vorpX that do this for PC so MVR Ascend has a few other tricks up its sleeve.

MVR Ascend

The MVR Ascend features a custom built sensor that’s positioned on the straps at the back of a players head. This is then cabled to a controller that’s designed to look like the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One controller. It’s this sensor that converts head movements into the usual stick directions for looking around, but this can be disabled with the controllers trigger for traditional aiming down sights if players prefer.

Other features on the device include built-in headphones, a flip-up function so that users don’t have to entirely take the headset off, and interchangeable 2D and 3D lens adaptors depending on user preference.

MVR Global’s looking to raise £150,000 GBP by 17th November 2016, and the campaign currently sits at £3,562 after only a few hours. Backing tiers start from £20 but to secure a headset customers will need to spend £79 or more. There are loads of different tiers available with some super early bird tiers offering the biggest discounts. For example the MVR P1 package includes the H1 HMD and P1 controller for streaming PlayStation 4 and PC titles, at a super early bird rate of £129. Once this has sold out there’s a further early bird price of £159, then the standard price of £179.

Head to MVR Ascend’s Kickstarter page for further info, and VRFocus will report back with any more updates.

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VR Visual Novel ‘Angels and Demigods’ Hits Kickstarter

The first chapter of Angels and Demigods, 7 Keys Studios’ lightly gamified, anime-style “VR visual novel,” is out, and four more chapters are waiting on funding from a Kickstarter launched September 28. Available for Vive via Steam, Cardboard via Android and iOS, and desktop via Mac OS and Windows, chapter one aims to expand to Samsung Gear soon.

For all subsequent chapters, meanwhile, 7 Keys Studios aims to support all possible platforms, including PlayStation VR and Google’s Daydream, assuming the studio meets its funding goal of $31,111. With 30 days before closing, the project has plenty of time to attract donations, but it’ll need to start reeling them in if it’s to reach the goal. And with eight months to go before next May, the public has a while to wait before it sees any more Angels and Demigods.

Angels and Demigods Kickstarter

Funds will support the development of a very-far-future-based tale of human-engineered ubermensch (Angels) awoken by a quasi-religious order-cum-governmental body (The Chapel) ostensibly to defend this particular society’s homeworld—Saturn’s terraformed moon Enceladus—from mortal threats, like those that might come from the solar system’s other moon and planet-based societies.

The player-character experiences the story from the perspective of a newly awakened and nameless Angel tasked by the Chapel with locating and repatriating Ashley, an Angel whose awakening occurred either in error or as a result of something, perhaps a telepathic communication from another Angel, left unrevealed at the first chapter’s end. Angels are powerful, so the Chapel’s grimacing representatives can’t have one flying around willy-nilly, even for the meager three days that Angels can survive after hatching.

7 Keys Studios’ project bears a passing resemblance to Sequenced, in that both are among the VR graphic novel variety and whose outcomes the user determines through interaction. Sequenced, however, boasts a different style of animation and storytelling that mostly treats the viewer as an invisible observer; Angels and Demigods uniquely places viewers in a first-person view, which is particularly interesting given the graphic novel visual foundation.

Readers beware, your player-character can, and, I’ll wager, will, die a few times before he successfully concludes the chapter. Pick the wrong lines of dialogue—choosing between dialogue options by looking at and clicking them is the player-character’s exclusive means of interacting with his environment—and you’ll meet with one end or another. This is frustrating primarily because the game does not allow its user to skip dialogue (though the player can easily Save and Load games). Thus, dying forces the user to re-listen a meaty supply of lines before their player-character can die (or finally succeed!) again, which brings me to a secondary frustrator, namely the stilted voice-acting, about which I won’t complain anymore because I (a) actually enjoyed the experience and (b) appreciate that 7 Keys Studios built this thing on a budget.

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If a user is going to be frustrated by anything else (aside from Ashley’s all-purpose swimwear and every-big-eyed-anime-girl character model, or the fact that scenes remain entirely static through long stretches of dialogue, which, again, budget), it’ll likely be the superficially illogical sequence of conversation options one must select to not-die. I say “superficially” because I actually appreciated, to some degree, that I couldn’t take one tack (e.g., outright honesty or mendacity, loyalty to the Chapel or interest in Ashley) and hope to survive. Although I’ve yet to die in real life, I felt the narrative’s apparently illogical relation to action and consequence, especially as pertains to human interactions, mirrored my lived experience of the same, i.e., often when I say or do something to or for or in relation to someone else and expect a particular outcome, I discover that I’m really awkward and lack basic interpersonal skills. Jokes aside, I’m saying Yay to making contradictory statements, and generally being all over the place in terms of tone and message, in order to survive.

Give Angels and Demigods a shot and if you like it, consider pledging to the Kickstarter campaign to unravel more of the story.

The post VR Visual Novel ‘Angels and Demigods’ Hits Kickstarter appeared first on Road to VR.

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ScratchyCAD Launching Kickstarter Campaign for 3D Design Software

The makers behind ScratchyCAD, a piece of software that allows users to create programmed 3D objects in a block-based programming language have announced today the planned launch of a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project.

ScratchyCAD brings together computer programming and computer-aided design (CAD) in a simple interface with drag and drop style blocks. It will allow users design and modify 3D models for 3D printing whilst generating animations, videogames, and interactive 3D websites that are viewable on virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMDs).

scratchycad

Made for beginners and advanced user alike, ScratchyCAD allows you to access complex programming functions to define objects such as shapes, arrays, materials, lights, and simulations. “ScratchyCAD is a great tool for learning complex concepts like algorithmic and parametric design in a simple to use, beginner friendly interface, while maintaining enough complexity for advanced users to create 3D printable objects, VR worlds, simulations, and animations,” said Juan Carlos Orozco lead developer and author.

The Kickstart crowd-funding campaign is due to launch on 1st, October 2016 with a set of courses focused on beginners and entry level learners as part of it. These courses will focus on highlighting ScratchyCAD’s various applications, including parametric modelling for 3D printing, video game design, interactive website development and VR.

The campaign funding goal will be set at $25,000 USD, with ScratchyCAD planning to use the money to refine the user experience, diversify current features, and create didactic workshops for all learning levels to advance their designing and programming skills. To get a PRO license including all the features backers can support the campaign for $10.

Prior to the ScratchyCAD Kickstarter launch anyone interested can head to the official website for further information. VRFocus will bring you further updates on ScratchyCAD as the funding campaign gets underway.