Oculus has been keen to showcase the latest virtual reality (VR) content coming to Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR over the course of 2017. VRTV’s Nina Salomon has a video rundown featuring some of the biggest titles due to be launched.
Some of these titles you may already know about, while others might have slipped through the net. Rest assured none of them should be over looked.
Brass Tactics – VR Real-time strategy with clockwork/steampunk feel
SingSpace from Harmonix Music – ‘draw’ your music into the air, watch it react and dance in time to the beat. VR twist on classic music visualisations
Lone Echo, Ready At Dawn’s upcoming space-based VR game, employs a physics-based movement system where the player pushes and pulls themselves around a zero-gravity environment. A video presented at GDC highlights their procedural animation system that allows for convincing grip postures on arbitrarily shaped surfaces.
One of several exclusive games anticipated to launch on Oculus Rift and Touch hardware this year, Lone Echo is a first-person action game in a science fiction setting comprised of a story-driven single player mode and a team-based ‘esport’ multiplayer mode. Ready At Dawn’s technical prowess showcased in The Order: 1886 (2015) continues here, with the studio once again adapting to a new platform, developing an impressive physics-based movement system that plays to the strengths of VR motion controllers.
Jake Copenhaver, lead gameplay programmer at Ready At Dawn, recently gave a presentation at GDC about Lone Echo’s animation and locomotion system, entirely focused on the first person perspective. A teaser video (heading this article) was provided, which shows the inspiration (real footage of astronauts on board the ISS), the early prototype of the movement system, and the current implementation.
Zero-gravity movement is ideal for VR’s current motion tracking solutions, as astronauts mainly propel themselves around using their arms rather than their legs, grabbing handles or surfaces to pull or push. Lone Echo achieves this form of locomotion by positioning the head 1:1 relative to the hand as soon as it grabs something. This connection allows the player to pull towards or push away from objects in any direction, intuitively navigating the environment with physics-based interactions.
Copenhaver went into detail about the issues that needed to be solved, as the system had to work just as well on floating physics objects (of wildly different masses) as it did on fixed geometry. The next step was to develop a procedural animation system for the hands that would convincingly sell the movement and collision physics, as the player is free to grab ‘any and every surface’ in the environment. Only the ‘gun grip’ in the footage is pre-authored; every other animation is responding to objects and surfaces procedurally.
In addition to the complex finger joint optimisation, there was the challenge of estimated inverse kinematics to animate the untracked joints, such as the elbows and shoulders, as well as the rest of the untracked body. A separate procedural animation is at play for the spine and legs, which move based on player velocity, combining with a propagating motion from player head and arm movement, as well as an additives layer for some animator control.
Die Jungs und Mädels bei Ready at Dawn, dem 2003 gegründeten kalifornischen Studio, haben einen neuen Pfeil im Köcher. Lone Echo heißt das exklusiv für die Oculus Rift mit Oculus Touch entwickelte Weltraum-Abenteuer, in dem ihr einer klassisch linearen Story folgt und gleichzeitig viel über das eigene Selbst preisgebt. Außerdem erfahrt ihr ebenso viel über euch selbst. In einem Interview während der Oculus Game Days Europe mit dem Gründer des Studios konnten wir einige Einblicke in die Entwicklung des immersiven Weltraum-Adventures gewinnen. Außerdem konnten wir über den psychologischen Einfluss sprechen, mit dem das Spiel an den Start geht.
Lone Echo hat das Potenzial für einen VR-Hit
Bereits Ende letzten Jahres wurde die erste Demo des Spiels auf der hauseigenen Oculus-Messe Connect 3 gezeigt, die den anwesenden Journalisten das Wasser im Mund zusammenlaufen ließ. Der Titel lässt euch in die stählerne „Haut“ der künstlichen Intelligenz Jack schlüpfen und legt großen Fokus auf Interaktion, Dialoge, Erkundung und Storytelling.
Dass mit dem Virtual-Reality-Spiel, das sich explizit von den ermüdenden VR-Erfahrungen der letzten Jahre absetzen möchte, und darüber hinaus auch mit einer sozialen Komponente einhergeht, beweist unser tiefschürfendes Interview mit Ru Weerasuriya. Der Mitbegründer des Studios, zusammengesetzt aus ehemaligen Mitarbeitern von Naughty Dog und Blizzard, zeigt sich vor allem interessiert an den Reaktionen der Spieler, die mit den Geschehnissen und Charakteren des Spiels konfrontiert werden:
„Jede Person, die ich in Lone Echo einführen durfte, hat auf den Spielverlauf anders reagiert. Auch wenn die Situation immer die selbe ist, reagiert jeder Mensch unterschiedlich.“
In Gefahrensituationen, in denen es darum ging, die einzige menschliche Bezugsperson zu retten, reichten die Reaktionen seinen Angaben nach von kaltem Desinteresse bis hin zu panischen Rettungsversuchen, bei denen nicht nur die Gefahr abgewendet wurde, sondern die gerettete Admiralin des Schiffs bis in die sichere Raumstation eskortiert wurde. Trotz des grundsätzlich linearen Aufbaus soll es im finalen Spiel also jede Menge Möglichkeiten der persönlichen Entfaltung geben.
Weerasuriya bezeichnet die Entwicklung von Lone Echo als „soziales Experiment“. Vor allem die Interaktion der eigenen nicht-menschlichen Figur mit den menschlichen Bezugs-NPCs auf der Raumstation führe immer wieder zu interessanten Szenen. Auch hier zeige jeder Spieler, der die Virtual-Reality-Brille aufsetzt und sich der Demo widmet, eine ganz individuelle Reaktion. Der CEO des Studios resümiert:
„It’s very much telling of who we are and our boundaries as well.“
Unsere Erfahrung mit 30 Minuten Lone Echo
Das einzige Spiel, das während der Oculus Game Days Europe 2017 mit einem Roomscale Setup – also drei Oculus Constellation Trackern – vorgeführt wurde, war Lone Echo. Alle anderen Spiele, wurden mit nur zwei Trackern gezeigt. Uns interessierte das Spiel vor allem aus einem Grund. Die freie Hand-Fortbewegung, ähnlich wie sie vom Indie-VR-Spiel Lucid Trips erfunden wurde.
In Lone Echo bewegt man sich nicht durch Teleportation durch die Virtual Reality Welt, man stößt und hangelt sich viel mehr durch die detailreichen virtuellen Welten. Dank Schwerelosigkeit driftet man so lange durch den Raum, bis man sein Ziel erreicht. Wer seinen Kurs korrigieren will, kann seine Booster an den Handgelenken nutzen um gezielt durchs All oder die Raumstationen zu navigieren. Dies funktionierte erstaunlich gut und verursachte keinerlei Unbehagen. Wie selbstverständlich dreht man sich um seinen Körper (jetzt verstehen wir auch das Roomscale Setup mit drei Oculus Sensoren), stößt sich von Objekten und Wänden ab, um an der anderen Seite des Raumes zu landen. Hier kommt wahres Astronauten-Feeling auf.
Ein Grund dafür dürfte auch sein, dass man als Spieler den Körper des Avatars unter sich sieht, der realistisch mit einem durchs All treibt. Extrem positiv sind uns ebenfalls die Hände vom eigenen Avatar Jack aufgefallen. Diese greifen und umfassen Gegenstände und Oberflächen in der virtuellen Welt so realistisch, wie wir es noch in keinem anderen VR-Spiel beobachten konnten.
Nachdem wir das Tutorial zur Steuerung hinter uns gebracht hatten, ging es los ins erste Kapitel der Geschichte. Wir helfen also der Protagonistin Liv Rhodes bei ihren Weltraumspaziergängen. Unsere Roboterhände verfügen dabei über ein kleines Arsenal an Werkzeugen. So müssen wir verschiedene Schweißarbeiten ausführen, Sicherungen austauschen und Sender positionieren. Hierbei durchs All zu driften macht enorm viel Spaß. Überall um einen herum schweben kleine Objekte, mit denen man interagieren kann. Auch sehen wir andere KIs in unserer Umgebung. Dies macht die Welt noch lebendiger, wenn man auf der Suche nach dem nächsten Missionsziel ist.
Abschließend können wir sagen, dass wir deutlich überrascht waren von der unproblematischen Fortbewegungsmethode in Lone Echo. Diese fühlte sich intuitiv und richtig an. Keine Anzeichen von Übelkeit. Neben der grafischen Finesse, der lebendigen Welt und der Geschichte, können wir es nicht abwarten, bis wir die gesamte Geschichte von Jack und Captain Olivia Rhodes erleben. Den Multiplayermodus namens Echo Arena, der Teil der Vollversion von Lone Echo sein wird, konnten wir leider nicht ausprobieren. Die Macher von Lone Echo versprechen uns aber, dass Action sowie Sport Fans hier auf ihr Kosten kommen.
In Bezug auf den Release sind noch keine Einzelheiten bekannt. Ru Weerasuriya bestätigte jedoch erneut, dass das Weltraum-Abenteuer noch in 2017 das Licht der Welt erblicken wird. Auf Nachfrage, mit wie vielen Stunden Spielspaß man bei Lone Echo rechnen darf, antwortete Weerasuriya nur, dass jeder Spieler in VR anders spielt. Ein „durchrushen“ durch die Story sei oft nicht machbar. Zudem bietet der mitgelieferte Multiplayer E-Sports Modus Echo Arena enorm viel Wiederspielwert. Wir hoffen auf ein vollwertiges Singleplayer-Spiel, das uns mit Tiefgang und außergewöhnlichen Interaktionen aus den realen Socken haut und der virtuellen Realität einen neuen Aufschwung verschafft. Der erste Eindruck sorgt jedenfalls für diese Hoffnung.
I’ve never had as pleasantly a distracted interview as when I spoke to Ru Weerasuriya last week. As I spoke with the Ready At Dawn founder at an Oculus event in London, he kept pausing to glance over at someone playing the studio’s debut VR game, Lone Echo, either of his own choosing or when a fellow developer would excitedly beckon his attention.
Weerasuriya’s expression would suddenly shift to one of sheer curiosity and fascination, and he’d turn to me and explain why it was so interesting that the player was doing something in a certain way with a smile on his face as if he were observing a rare miracle of nature. But all there really was was someone wearing an Oculus Rift. What’s all the big fuss about?
“Every single person that I’ve ever seen play this demo or I’ve ever seen play the game gets to the same situation but reacts so differently,” Weerasuriya says, excitedly waving his hands around from inside his coat pockets.
The demo is the same one that was shown at Oculus Connect 3 late last year and the situation the developer is referring to comes right at the end. The player, cast as one of several A.I.-controlled robots comes to the aid of the captain of a space station, stuck on a piece of external machinery. Before you can cut her free, a seemingly freak accident sends debris hurtling your way and you have to rush to save her.
“I will tell you that I’ve never seen two people act exactly the same way,” Weerasuriya explains. “There’s always subtle differences about the speed of which they try to cut her loose and the amount of time they spend looking at what is happening rather than worrying about their friend.”
As soon as I saw the destruction coming our way when I was playing, I moved towards the captain, thinking I could perhaps shield her with my body. Fortunately, she begins to climb away without my help. “That’s a rare thing,” the developer says. “A lot of people have a tendency to cut her loose but know that she’s capable of getting away. Some cut her loose and their first instinct is to try and grab her hand and pull her away.
“I’ve seen everything happen and it’s amazing what it says about human nature: you all react in a different way.”
Lone Echo isn’t going to change based on how players behave; this is still (from what we’ve seen) a linear adventure similar to Ready At Dawn’s past games, but observing the differences in player behavior has been an unexpected joy for Weerasuriya and his team. It’s made development something of a “social experiment”, in his words.
“When you play with a controller the motions that your character is going through are usually driven by animation that is already done,” he says. “You choose a path: you might run, you might walk, but it’s really not you. When you put someone in VR, it is you–”
He stops mid-sentence as a colleague frantically taps him on the shoulder. The current player has reached a door that they need to cut through the bottom of. Instead of using the game’s locomotion system to pull herself down to the bottom, though, she crouches in real life.
“That’s interesting because that is rare. That is so rare,” Weerasuriya says as he turns back to me with a giddy smile. “Most people won’t crouch because they know automatically they can move their body down.”
Ready at Dawn thinks that some of differences in player reactions are down to age and adaptability to VR itself. But there’s also a deeper, emotional side to it that the developer reckons makes the experience more personal to each player. “Your emotions are involved so deeply inside that world that it changes the way you perceive the world, the way your brain perceives the world, the way you feel about what you’re doing,” Weerasuriya explains. “It’s a medium that’s starting to understand itself, and we’re going to have a lot of successes but I’m sure we’re going to make a lot of mistakes too in the future.”
There’s certainly a physical side to VR that makes almost any experience interesting to watch, but what we haven’t seen much from Lone Echo yet is the narrative side of those emotions. It’s only teased in the demo, but the station’s captain has almost a motherly quality to her, best seen when her robotic children rush to her aid.
“It’s actually kind of an interesting thing especially because we twist the characters on you, you’re not human, the NPC is the more human of the two of you,” Weerasuriya says, later adding: “I want to see how people react to her. You’re going to spend hours with her, I’m curious to see what people are going to do. Will some people distance themselves? People start the game and never want to get close to her. When she gets close, I’ve seen people pull away.
“It’s very much telling of who we are and our boundaries as well.”
Weerasuriya is touching upon something hugely interesting here. Strictly speaking, Lone Echo is just as cinematically atmospheric and graphically driven as the studio’s PS4 exclusive, The Order: 1886, but the player agency and immersion that VR provides might just help this Rift exclusive succeed where its last game didn’t.
Capitalizing on all of that requires a proper understanding of what VR really is. “I think it is a big mistake to think of it as an extension of something else or a subset of something,” Weerasuriya explains. “This is us exploring new ways of expressing ourselves. Whether it’s from the books, movies, theater, whatever, nobody looks at those as being subsets of anything else. This is about experience. This is about immersion.”
Much of the game’s development has been about trial and error too, and that may ultimately mean Lone Echo is a stepping stone to something bigger for Ready At Dawn, and it’s got a lot of crazy ideas – if not necessarily plans — about the future. Not to mention the intense and entirely separate multiplayer mode they’ve built.
“What if you build a true real-time AI that could respond to certain things a certain way not because you’ve written the lines exactly as it’s supposed to be, but because she’s responding to the way you acted,” Weerasuriya ponders, “That’s really kind of scary and interesting.
As for release? “The game is getting closer to alpha I would say right now,” the developer comment. While he wouldn’t reveal an exact date, he did suggest an announcement would be made in a few weeks, reconfirming it will be out in 2017.
Lone Echo might be on of VR’s most lavish games yet, but after speaking with Ready At Dawn it’s not the graphics or the atmosphere that interest me the most, it’s what each individual player is going to take from the experience. I can’t wait to see what they discover, but for Ready At Dawn, the sun might be coming up on something new.
Jason Rubin, Head of Content at Oculus, has recently teased ‘months of high-profile VR content’ for the hardware. In a recent tweet, he points towards the upcoming release of Rock Band VR, an exclusive title for Rift and Touch, as the starting point.
Launching March 23rd, Rock Band VR is a big deal for Harmonix and Oculus, having announced the title as exclusive to the Rift back in 2015. Some may feel that the plastic instrument craze peaked before 2010, but Oculus believe that VR has the potential to reinvigorate the rhythm game genre, giving players a genuine sensation of being a rock star, playing to a crowd. Oculus’ confidence in their investment is probably best illustrated by the Rock Band VR connector that is included with every Touch controller package.
In a recent tweet, Jason Rubin points to the Oculus blog announcement of the Rock Band VR preorders going live, teasing that it represents the start of “months of high profile rollouts” for the Rift. Rubin’s optimism is likely to be fuelled by the progress of some of the big-hitters we already know to feature on the 2017 roadmap…
Arktica.1
This sci-fi first-person shooter is developed by 4A Games, the Ukrainian team behind the acclaimed Metro FPS series, renowned for its stunning, atmospheric presentation. Arktica.1 continues the studio’s production quality with extreme attention to detail and customisation options on its wide array of futuristic weapons, and is expected to feature a lengthy campaign. Further details are available in our full preview.
Lone Echo
American studio Ready At Dawn make a huge departure from their last title, The Order 1886, with this zero-gravity action game where you assume the role of an advanced artificial intelligence robot transported to an advanced mining facility within the rings of Saturn. It uses the Touch controllers to great effect, allowing smooth movement through space as you pull and push on objects and interact with equipment in interesting ways. While not much is known about the single-player story, the multiplayer sports mode is very promising, as we detail here.
Wilson’s Heart
In Wilson’s Heart you assume the role of hospital patient Robert Wilson, voice acted by RoboCop’s (1987)Peter Weller, who wakes up to discover that his heart has been replaced with ‘a mysterious device’. With its unique black-and-white style, the character driven story looks to be ripped straight from an episode of The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) or Night of the Living Dead (1968).
Wilson’s Heart is an intriguing psychological VR thriller which has you exploring your haunted surroundings, utilising Oculus Touch motion controls to interact with your environment, and it’s the implementation of those ‘virtual hands on’ elements (some of which you may can to catch in the above trailer) which we think may set the game apart.
Robo Recall
As a result of the hugely positive reaction to early Oculus Touch slo-mo combat demo Bullet Train, Epic Games were able to expand the concept into a full game, at the request of Oculus, who will provide Robo Recall for free to all Touch owners. The game features a comedic style, promoting the action-packed virtual smashing of robots in countless ways, using virtually anything you can grab with your Touch controllers. The use of Epic’s new forward render means this is one of the most spectacular games we’ve seen in VR. See our preview for more info.
