Category: mad box

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Mad Box VR Capable Console Supposedly Arriving in 3.5 Years

A couple of days ago the CEO of Project CARS developer Slightly Mad Studios, suddenly announced on Twitter that the company was in the process of designing its own console called the Mad Box. Spouting some figures as well as proclaiming the powerful console would be VR capable, today has seen Ian Bell return to the social platform with further info as well as a couple of images.

Mad Box orange

So first up the images. Well as you can probably tell these are all computer renderings to give you an impression of what the Mad Box will supposedly look like. Even though it’s being touted as a console, the Mad Box looks more like a high-powered desktop PC, with liquid cooling.

Giving a few more details Bell notes that: “The Mad Box has a one press deployable carry handle, between the ‘m’s… It weighs very little and will talk to other Mad Boxes without cables…” going on to add: “Controller work is in progress. We have a great partner and will show it when it’s ready.”

If you’re somewhat sceptical about Slightly Mad Studios’ ‘Mad Box’ then join the queue. Not only is VRFocus taking all this sudden info with a heavy pinch of salt, but so are Twitter users themselves. When grilled that the concept sounded no better than a shady Kickstarter, Bell responded: “I’m not asking you for any money. A shady Kickstarter would start with that premise… You’re way off.” Going on to say: “We’ll ship a product and you can choose to buy it, or not. Any other issues I think are yours…”

While somewhat unorthodox Bell has certainly succeeded in grabbing both industry and gamers attention, whether they believe all the tweets or not. And just because its CES 2019 next week don’t expect to see anything at the event regarding Mad Box, as Bell claims the console is approximately 3.5 years away from release. That’s a long time for this industry, with new consoles from both Microsoft and Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) likely to have arrived by then.

VRFocus still isn’t 100 percent convinced about the Mad Box, going into the hardware market is a very risky business. As always, if more concrete information appears, VRFocus will let you know.

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Slightly Mad Studios: ‘Mad Box console to deliver 90 fps to VR headsets’

Slightly Mad Studios, the creators of the Project CARS franchise, announced earlier this week that they’re developing a VR-compatible gaming console called ‘Mad Box’. In a follow-up tweet, company CEO Ian Bell dubbed the project “the most powerful console ever built,” saying that Mad Box would deliver 60 fps VR rendering—decidedly a much lower number than VR enthusiasts are used to today. Now, Bell says the company has decided to up the frame rate to 90 fps.

“We’re going 90 per eye, 180 FPS internally,” Bell says in a tweet. “My CTO just called. We’re upping the specs already. It might cost a little bit more…”

By “180 FPS internally,” Bell is referring to the workload the hardware will need to perform in order to deliver the requisite 90 fps to the dual displays in standard PC VR headsets such as Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. While the phrasing is unorthodox and initially caused a fair bit of confusion when the console was first announced earlier this week, 90 fps is certainly a step in the right direction in terms of delivering the minimum of what VR users should expect to have a comfortable, immersive experience.

Bell says the console is tentatively slated to launch in about “3.5 years,” and that while it’s still too early for pricing, it’s aiming to be “competitive with upcoming console prices.”

To boot, Bell teased a few concept images today of Mad Box, which features a prominent ‘M’ shape in its design.

Image courtesy Slightly Mad Studios

Responding to more requests for information via Twitter, Bell fired off a slew of tweets today, saying the team isn’t considering a horizontal orientation, and that the support wings will include some sort of tech necessary to the console’s function—exactly what that is, we’re not sure.

“The Mad Box has a one press deployable carry handle, between the ‘m’s… It weighs very little and will talk to other Mad Boxes without cables,” Bell explains.

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Admittedly, Bell thinks the design is still a bit “too garish” for living rooms as it is now. After all, not everyone wants an RBG-tastic case sitting next to their TVs. The studio’s logo is also proudly emblazoned on the side.

An additional concept image shows what appears to be RGB-lit water cooling system, although Bell says the front panel panel has been blurred as to not give away the system’s prospective internals.

Image courtesy Slightly Mad Studios

Responding to a question concerning size, Bell says Mad Box will be “actually much smaller than it looks in those images.”

As far as concept images go, Mad Box is clearly aiming to make a statement; it’s certainly a far cry from the black living room-friendly boxes of today’s current console generation, tending to look more like a custom PC case. And just how the studio plans on setting Mad Box apart from a standard gaming PC, well, that remains to be seen as well.

In addition, Slightly Mad Studios maintains they’ll be offering “a cross platform engine that allows an ‘almost’ one click press to deploy to all major consoles,” with planned support for Xbox, PlayStation, Mad Box, and PC.

Mad Box will be the game studio’s first foray into hardware. Slightly Mad Studios is best known for their VR-compatible games Project CARS (2015) and Project CARS 2 (2017), not to mention a number of other conventional racing sims including Need for Speed: Shift (2009) and Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends (2011).

The post Slightly Mad Studios: ‘Mad Box console to deliver 90 fps to VR headsets’ appeared first on Road to VR.

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‘Project CARS’ Studio Announces Gaming Console Supporting “most major VR headsets”

Slightly Mad Studios, the minds behind the Project CARS franchise, announced that they’re getting into the hardware game with a brand new gaming console. Information is still thin on the ground surrounding the newly christened ‘Mad Box’, although company CEO Ian Bell has confirmed it will support VR headsets and 4K monitor output.

Mad Box is still in its early phases, with Bell telling Variety that the Xbox/PlayStation-style console should ship “around three years time.”

“It will support most major VR headsets and those upcoming and the specs will be equivalent to a ‘very fast PC 2 years from now’,” Bell told Variety. “We’re in early talks with manufacturers of components so we can’t say much more right now other than we have the designs specced out in detail.”

There’s no pricing on the table yet, although Bell contends it should be “competitive with upcoming console prices.”

While crowdfunding isn’t off the table entirely, Bell maintains the studio has lined up “multiple investors already offering the required funding […] to see the product to completion, but it’s still early days and we’re looking at the best offers right now.”

So far, that’s all we can say for sure.

Confusion Around Frames Per Second

Billing it as “the most powerful console ever built,” Bell tweeted out late last night that Mad Box will support VR headsets with 60 fps rendering, 4K monitor rendering, and will arrive with a free game engine so developers can create for Mad Box, presumably the company’s own Madness Engine.

After some prodding by the VR community, Bell attempted to clear up some confusion surrounding the fact that 60 fps VR rendering really doesn’t cut it when talking about the “most powerful console.” After all, PSVR game developers already have a hard 60 fps base requirement to publish on the PlayStation Store; that’s effectively doubled in the console to 120 fps for smoother viewing in-headset. That said, some PSVR apps do actually display at a native 90 fps and even fewer at a native 120 fps when played using PS4 Pro.

What resulted was slightly more confusing, as Bell later tweeted that 60 fps is somehow a feature for a console with three years left to go before productization, based on the reasoning that it’s 60 fps “per eye.”

Variety attempted to clarify the “per eye” statement with Bell via email, receiving word that Mad Box will actually support 120 fps for VR headsets. Great news, right? The confusion however persists as Bell responds to Twitter user ‘Galiforniano’ by saying that “60 plus 60 is always 120 … No matter who says it.”

We’ve reached out to Slightly Mad Studios to clarify that statement, and will update when we hear back.

In the meantime, this is most likely the source of the “60 plus 60” figure: the industry at large measures frames per second globally when in reference to VR output, and not according to what the rendering pipeline needs to do to in order to make that happen. This is because VR headset users will only perceive 60 fps even if the hardware must effectively render twice the frames split across two displays to serve up a stereoscopic view—resulting in the possibly unorthodox 120 fps clarification from Bell.

Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows VR headsets feature panels clocked at 90Hz, something that VR-capable PCs of today can sometimes struggle to fill during more graphically demanding scenes. An overwhelming majority of PC VR developers build apps designed to either match or exceed that refresh rate in order to appear smooth and comfortable to the user; a game rendering at 60 fps (globally) is the bare minimum for a comfortable experience, although some users notice screen flicker at this rate.

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This is provided of course the console in question doesn’t use some form of reprojection such as Valve’s Motion Smoothing or Oculus’ Asynchronous Spacewarp. Both techniques cut the framerate down to 45 fps when the system can’t match the headset’s native refresh rate, and bump it back to 90 fps with the addition of synthetically generated frames to keep things moving smoothly. A similar technique, or even a simple doubling of the frames could alleviate this, although it’s difficult to call that the result of “the most powerful console.”

If Slightly Mad can somehow bring a VR-ready gaming console to market pushing greater frame rates than 60 fps (synthetically or otherwise), replete with a strong list of top VR titles and a reasonable price tag in comparison to an equally specced gaming PC, it may be an attractive option for console gamers looking to explore the world of PC VR headsets—they feature higher resolutions and better room-scale tracking capabilities than the current gen PSVR to say the least.

We’re hoping to learn more in the coming months about the game studio’s first dive into the console hardware market. However you slice it though, it’s certain to be slightly mad.

The post ‘Project CARS’ Studio Announces Gaming Console Supporting “most major VR headsets” appeared first on Road to VR.