Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation
What Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality developers are talking about
Minecraft Earth is a new mobile augmented reality game from Microsoft that has Pokémon Go dead in its sites. The cute monster collect-them-all started the genre, but Minecraft Earth hopes to redefine it.
The post 10 years ago, Minecraft defined a game genre. Now it’s about to do it again. appeared first on Digital Trends.
Microsoft has launched an augmented reality version of the bestselling game, which follows Pokémon Go on to the streets
Since its beta launch in 2009, the blocky, world-building adventure game Minecraft has been released on more than 20 different platforms, from PC to consoles to mobile phones, selling 176m copies. Now it’s heading somewhere new: the real world.
News of a Minecraft AR (augmented reality) app leaked a few weeks ago, but now Microsoft has officially announced Minecraft Earth. It is being developed at the company’s Redmond campus, using an array of its mobile, GPS and tracking technologies.
Related: Meet the blockheads: a rare glimpse inside Minecraft's HQ
Continue reading...Microsoft has launched an augmented reality version of the bestselling game, which follows Pokémon Go on to the streets
Since its beta launch in 2009, the blocky, world-building adventure game Minecraft has been released on more than 20 different platforms, from PC to consoles to mobile phones, selling 176m copies. Now it’s heading somewhere new: the real world.
News of a Minecraft AR (augmented reality) app leaked a few weeks ago, but now Microsoft has officially announced Minecraft Earth. It is being developed at the company’s Redmond campus, using an array of its mobile, GPS and tracking technologies.
Continue reading...Minecraft has been one continual success story since its launch in 2009, with Microsoft buying the IP and developer Mojang in 2014. Recent years have seen the sandbox videogame come to virtual reality (VR) headsets like Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR. Now it looks like Minecraft is making the leap to augmented reality (AR), with Microsoft releasing a teasing video during its Build conference this week.
The video features Minecraft creative director Saxs Persson sat on a bench. He gets up and as he leaves picks up the wrong phone. The woman sat next to him realises his mistake and gets up to let him know, looking down at the phone to see an AR version of Minecraft running. On the screen is a pig wallowing in the mud, with icons at the bottom for a players sword, bow, food, blocks and other items.
As the video comes to an end it states to tune into Minecraft.net on 17th May, when further information will be released – it also happens to be the videogames’ 10th anniversary.
There’s not much else to go on in terms of gameplay, whether players will be wandering the streets building weird and wonderful structures together or possibly going on quests to fight cubed shaped monsters. Obviously, there will be instant comparisons to Pokemon Go, probably the most popular and well-known AR title.
Minecraft fans will also want to know about cross-platform support, and whether the AR version will allow interaction with players on PC, console or in VR, rather than being a standalone experience.
When it comes to AR Microsoft has been more concerned with its enterprise-focused HoloLens headset. HoloLens 2 was revealed earlier this year during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) event. More recently a HoloLens 2 Development Edition was revealed including a 3-month trial version of Unity Pro for studios.
Check out the teaser trailer below, and when further details are released VRFocus will let you know.
At the Vision Keynote during the first day of Microsoft Build 2019, we saw a short trailer of what looks to be Minecraft AR, an upcoming experience coming to mobile devices. Watch the video here and join us for the full reveal on May 17.
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Everything must come to an end. Streamer Philza has been battling it out in Minecraft's Hardcore mode, where players have only one life and the game is locked on the hard difficulty, for five years.
The post Streamer’s five-year hardcore Minecraft run is ended by a baby zombie appeared first on Digital Trends.
Minecraft developer Mojang appears to have quietly removed most mentions of original creator Markus "Notch" Persson from the game. Persson has not been involved with development for several years.
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For the most part, Gear VR and Oculus Go share almost the exact same content library, but there’s one glaring omission on Go’s side: Minecraft. Mojang’s smash hit game hasn’t shown up on Oculus’ standalone headset since the hardware launched earlier this year, and we’ve long wondered if it would ever arrive.
Well, Mojang says you need to let them know.
A verified Minecraft developer going by the name of CornerHard on Reddit has been encouraging VR fans to tell Mojang it wants the game on Go via a feedback channel on the official website. “I can’t talk about details at this time, but upvoting that feedback link is the best way to tell the people calling the shots that you are interested in Minecraft on Oculus Go,” the developer said.
This adds fuel to a fire initially started by John Carmack, who earlier this month said that there was ‘some progress’ on getting one of two of the most request Go apps onto the platform. The other app was YouTube which launched this month, meaning it’s likely the remaining one is Minecraft.
Right now the feedback channel only has 106 upvotes, so Oculus Go users will need to gather in force if they really want this to become a reality. Given Gear and Go are, in Oculus’ words, ‘binary compatible’, it shouldn’t be too much effort to get the game working on Go in theory. Go does support Bluetooth gamepads, which is all you can use to play the mobile VR version, but we’d love to see the game get full motion controller support too.
Tagged with: Minecraft
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Yesterday, YouTube VR was released for Oculus Go. In his tweet about the release, Oculus CTO John Carmack stated that it was one of the two apps people always ask him about, and that there “is also some progress on the other one” – the other one almost certainly being Minecraft.
No upcoming Oculus Go game is anywhere near as anticipated as Minecraft. Minecraft is the highest selling 3D game ever, with over 150 million copies sold. It is available on almost all gaming platforms, with cross platform multiplayer between most of them.
The game is anticipated for Go not just due to its significance outside VR, but because it has been available on the Samsung Gear VR headset for over 2 years now. Gear VR runs the same Oculus mobile store as Go, so in theory porting should be easy. In fact, some YouTubers have even managed to sideload the game into the Go headset, though reportedly only singleplayer works.
Minecraft’s absence was noted at Go’s launch back in May. No statement was given at the time (by either Oculus or Microsoft) about the reason for the absence, a release date, or even if it was coming at all.
Oculus CTO John Carmack was heavily involved in porting Minecraft to Gear VR back in 2016. Carmack worked directly with Mojang to provide both code and guidance. Facebook’s lawyers warned him that his work would become Microsoft’s property, but Carmack didn’t care – getting Minecraft on Gear VR had become his “quest”. In fact, Carmack went as far as to say that he “would have cried” if the deal hadn’t worked out.
Shortly before Minecraft’s release on Gear VR, Carmack called it “the best thing to come out on Oculus”, even going as far as to say all of Oculus, not just Gear VR.
Carmack first hinted that the game could be coming to Go in June, when he stated that it was “a high priority for sure”, but added the disclaimer that few Go owners would have a gamepad paired. This is relevant because the Go’s included controller does not have enough inputs for Minecraft.
The following month, Carmack hinted that progress was being made, and noted that he cared a lot about getting it:
When asked to list his favorite Go apps in September, Carmack ended his response with “When we get Minecraft running on Go it will be back in the list.”
This brings us back to yesterday’s tweet, where Carmack suggested “some progress” has been made.
The Minecraft team have had a very busy year. While the Nintendo Switch version of the game was intended to ship last year, delays meant that it didn’t ship until June of this year. Additionally, the team have had to make fundamental changes to the graphics engine in preparation for the ‘Super Duper graphics pack’, a DLC which will add modern graphical features to the game. This too was intended to be relased in 2017, but has been pushed back all the way to 2019.
The delays of these projects mean that a lower priority task such porting to Go may have been heavily deprioritised. With the Nintendo Switch version of the game shipped however and the graphics DLC hopefully shipping soon, Minecraft for Go may be next on the agenda, and this may be what Carmack was referring to in his latest Tweet.
We’ll keep you updated on any further news about Minecraft coming to Oculus Go.
Tagged with: john carmack, Minecraft, Oculus Go
The post When Will Oculus Go Finally Get Minecraft? It’s Still Unclear appeared first on UploadVR.
What’s great about VR is that you can get the full building experience in Minecraft. The drawback is that you don’t have visual access to the real world without lifting or removing the headset. Microsoft has a fix for Windows.
The post Reality shines into your ‘Minecraft’ escape via Windows Mixed Reality Flashlight appeared first on Digital Trends.