Though often overlooked under the shadow of its more popular multiplayer sibling Echo Arena, Lone Echo was still a solid virtual reality (VR) sci-fi adventure, popular enough to spawn not only two multiplayer spin-offs, but also an upcoming sequel. Developer Ready at Dawn spoke about some of what players can expect from Echo Combat and Lone Echo II at Oculus Connect 5.
Ready at Dawn CEO Ru Weerasuriya spoke with Nina of VRFocusat Oculus Connect 5, talking about the genesis of Echo Combat and Lone Echo II and giving some hints as to what is coming next in that universe.
Weerasuriya began by explaining how Lone Echo first came about as the result of a partnership between Ready at Dawn and Oculus, a collaboration which has now been going on for four years: “We started off with the idea of changing how VR games work, not only narratively, but mechanically. That’s what really spawned Lone Echo and Echo Arena.”
“We’re showing Echo Combat here with a new mode,” Weerasuriya continued, “but our big reveal for OC5 is the next chapter of the Lone Echo story with Lone Echo II.”
Echo Combat was showcased at Oculus Connect 5 with a new map and a new mode, “The first map is payload, which is two teams vying to win. One to defend a position and one to attack the position as it moves from point to point. The new mode we’re putting in is Capture Point. Capture point is about holding a certain spot in the map for the longest time possible. Again, its two teams playing against each other.”
“It’s a way to show a different face of Echo Combat. It shows there’s more to Echo Combat than just shooting. The whole point of a social game is about finding a team, finding friends and playing with each other.”
The full interview is available to view below. For future coverage of new and upcoming VR titles, keep checking back with VRFocus.
Well that’s another Oculus Connect done and with the surprise announcement that there’s not going to be a PlayStation Experience in 2018 and with EGX and Tokyo Game Show also done and dusted we are officially out of major tier level events with the exception of Paris Games Week but I know some people are on the fence as to its importance.
Oh, there are still actual events going on between now and December. There’s GTC Europe starting today for instance. VR Days and XRDC before the end of the month as well. VRX 2018 hits in December and there’s a few other ones here and there around the globe. But for the big hitters that is apparently, that’s, err… that. Next stop CES 2019, I guess?
As usual there was lots to talk about during the event, especially the announcements relating to the former-Santa Cruz, the Oculus Quest. I guess I won’t be able to make jokes relating to The Thrills’ song any more. On the plus side, jokes about The Real Adventures of Oculus Quest are now very much in.
For this year’s post Oculus Connect VR vs. I thought I’d focus on one particular part of Oculus Connect 5 (OC5). At least initially. Maybe I’ll go back and re-watch some more at a later date to see how I feel about things. I definitely need to re-watch Michael Abrash’s section because I missed a rather big chunk of it – and as regular readers will know I’m an unabashed Abrash fan. (I found out on day two Peter is not, and he is now officially dead to me.) Instead, I thought I’d go through the 2018 edition of Oculus Chief Technical Officer John Carmack‘s “Unscripted” keynote and point out some things I took away from the whole thing. Because despite issues getting to watch it – which we’ll get into – there were some things that leapt out during the session. Some important, some not so important.
This’ll actually end up being a two-parter, since 90 minutes of John Carmack is a lot to digest. For this week let’s start with some general items as well as the first 45 minutes of the 90.
What Is It With Facebook And Not Being Able To Stream Video Properly?
Before we begin let’s start with something that plagued both keynotes for those of us stuck watching on Facebook: the lag and coverage drops. This really is inexcusable for what is a Facebook run event. Video is so problematic for Facebook yet is also a key pillar of their business direction. If you’re going to insist on making us use Facebook (and having to immediately turn on Quiet Mode to get rid of the silly emoji clutter) can it at least be stable? At some points in the stream you could tell the audio and visuals were slightly out of sync and frankly Facebook, compared to other events that deal with far bigger numbers you guys really should have this down pat by now, but I’ve yet to see a livestream without issues.
The Carmack stream died for me again, judging by the subtitles apparently at the point his teeth started chattering. pic.twitter.com/ArVmYgxzAO
Long-Term Goals Are Fine, But If You Suck You Suck
One of the things people tend to not like about me is I am pretty honest about things when they fail. Today’s mistake is tomorrow’s disaster. It’s like you presenting the murderer in Cluedo with the gift of a new candlestick and being surprised they kill again. Ill-conceived ideas shouldn’t be given a pass just ‘because’, especially if the evidence says otherwise. Hard honesty is not ‘being negative’.
Whilst we all know that Carmack is the counterpoint to Day One it was very interesting for him to directly address that fact.
“It’s not that [long-term planning] isn’t important.” He insisted, stifling a chuckle. “A lot of people find a lot of great motivation from it, and some things do need long-term commitment – I am really happy that Facebook does have this long-term commitment to research and development of new technology. But, in some ways a ‘long-term vision’ can be a carpet you sweep your current shortcomings under.”
Oculus Go Might Not Entirely Please Him, But How Well It Has Done Pleases Everyone
“I was probably the most optimistic inside Oculus about how well Go would do, but it turned out that it exceeded even my expectations.”
One thing I do agree with VR naysayers about is a lack of clarity as to sales figures of VR head-mounted displays (HMDs). We didn’t get any figures here either, but with the ‘hard honesty’ full on displayed (Carmack did acknowledge having issues with certain aspects of Go’s software) both Oculus and Carmack bigged up how well the HMD had done. To the point where they acknowledged the response had actually surprised them. That bodes particularly well.
Known Unknowns
Oculus don’t know why Go is as retentive as Rift. They don’t know how many people can’t deal with 3DOF tracking – “but we know they exist”. They don’t know what exactly is going to be the ‘magic’ element that brings people to the Oculus Quest. There were admissions of Oculus not knowing all manner of things on Day One as well. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure whether I’m concerned or unconcerned about that.
The Gear VR Doesn’t Get The Same Love As 2017…
Last year Carmack, on several occasions held Samsung up the way things should be done. This year they didn’t fare as well, despite being “by far the most successful VR headset” according to Carmack. Carmack this time noted how the Gear VR despite giving a pleasing performance doesn’t persist as an interest point to buyers.
“Poisonous user experiences” for lapsed Gear VR users also “kinda kills the experience”.
Okay, It’s Good For Something
It turns out Carmack isn’t too enamoured of the Go’s strap and that Oculus didn’t get what they were aiming for. But there is another option, apparently.
“You can actually take a Gear VR strap and with a little bit of scissor work on it get it to fit inside a Go and have the conventional one backstrap.” The facial interface for the Go wasn’t to Carmack’s satisfaction either so he took a pair of scissors to that too.
“Have we suddenly gone into an episode of Blue Peter?” I asked the VRFocus team, wondering how a Fairy liquid bottle and sticky back plastic was going to factor into things.
USB Support IS Coming
A solution, albeit a limited one, is coming to Go. Licencing is an issue as is power AND drive formats, but that’s something I’ve seen people asking for a while and was last addressed by Carmack way back in March .It’s clearly problematic for the team at Oculus but good to see they’re going to make it happen somehow despite all that.
Oculus Straight Up Admitted To Taking Design Ideas From Google
When I managed to wrangle Facebook’s video into showing me OC5 again I came back into something that made me do a massive double-take.
“We did come around to basically doing what Daydream does with recentering. I think they made the right call in retrospect. Where the recenter operation, by default, recenters not just your controller but also your view unless the application explicitly opts out. We had long debates about this, but I think that is the right call in the end.” Said Carmack before plunging straight on. “And there’s a couple of little other things that we’ve cribbed from Daydream. I added the little thumbprint on the controller that they do- every time I take a hint from them I try and do it a little bit better.”
“I managed to get the video working again to find Carmack admitting they’ve been nicking design ideas from Google?”
“Pretty much.” Responded Kevin J.
Often it’s left unsaid that company A is inspired by, or just plain clones choice B from rival C. It’s unsaid because, well, designs are rather by default copyrighted. So, for Carmack to out-and-out admit they’d taken cues from the Google Daydream was surprising. I mean, can you imagine if Oculus were sued for copyright infringement? …Again?* If I were Google I’d probably begin looking at forthcoming UI updates and other things a lot closer after that.
Even Carmack Thinks VR Lifestyle Shots Are Utter Nonsense
“You know, I chuckle whenever our promotional stuff where we have people-atheletic people- swinging around wildly and ducking and bending with VR where that’s not going to be the reality of the way people are going to be using this product most of the time.” Carmack said with a smile. “Making company specific decisions around your development, around that, might not be wisest thing.”
They’re not the only ones. You’ve all seen this Vive picture, right? I wonder if Carmack has.
People Spending More Time Watching Movies On Their PS4 Shocked Him
There was a lot of discussion about Quest’s intention of being 80% games vs 20% media in its usage, as opposed to Rift which is currently the reverse. Carmack, quite rightly in my opinion, disagrees that media will be so low. He then pointed out that there was a recent study which showed that media use trumped videogames “even on games consoles”.
I mean… Hasn’t that always been the case since last generation and DVD player support? How on Earth has he only just heard this?
Who Stole Carmack’s Clock?
Unfortunately, Carmack ran out of time and had to stop very abruptly indeed. It made me wonder what happened to his countdown clock he had last year in front of the stage that gave him a constant indication of how long he had so he could prioritise and wrap things up.
It felt like a mistake to (apparently) not have that this year. If there was a clock going on his tablet the evidence suggests that went by the wayside quickly.
Oculus stop short of using the ol' vaudeville hook technique as time sadly runs out on John Carmack.
We’ll leave it there for part one, I’ll come back to the second 45 minutes in the next column or one after that. For now though, have a good rest of the week.
Back in late 2016 Oculus announced a new technology that was designed to help reduce the system hardware requirements for virtual reality (VR) experiences while maintain content quality across a wider array of hardware. The technology was titled Asynchronous Spacewarp (ASW) and uses frame-rate smoothing techniques to almost halve the computer processing unit (CPU) and graphic processing unit (GPU) time required to produce nearly the same output from the same content. Now a new version of ASW is on the way and with it the increased performance that technology provides will be expanded on further.
Look out for ASW 2.0 soon coming to an @Oculus Rift near you where we combine PTW with ASW. For more info we'll post our Rift PC SDK talk at #OC5 soon.
The news came from the recent Oculus Connect 5 event which features numerous announcements including the new Oculus Quest standalone head-mounted display (HMD). The newly announced ASW 2.0 however is equally as exciting thanks to the improvements it will bring to the experiences users will be able to enjoy.
One of the first big improvements for the technology is that it will be combined with Oculus’ Positional Timewarp (PTW) system to see the HMD motion correction to be handled by PTW rather than ASW. This combination of the two technologies will also see a number of benefits on both sides including leveraging PTW’s timing-free corrections and offering better activation and deactivation of ASW.
Thanks to both PTW and ASW working together, the new 2.0 version will be able to provide noticeable improvements to experiences that will result in less artefacting and stress on the hardware. The technology is also going to be better able to handle depth within titles and will enable more immersive results when users look around a scene and focus on objects at different distances. Again, the results will be more notable by users as they move around while developers will find it easier then before to manage and handle the technologies and the required processing power of their applications.
You can see the section from the Oculus Connect 5 PC SDK keynote that talks about ASW 2.0 in the below video at around the 31 minute mark.
VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest on this new version of the technology in the future, along with other updates to the Oculus Rift PC SDK so stay tuned for more.
Every weekendVRFocusbrings you a number of sports and eSports related virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) stories as part of This Week In VR Sport. This week, the Mount Royal University Cougars women’s soccer team is using VR to help with recruitment and training, Racket Fury: Table Tennis VR is coming to PlayStation VR, and Oculus talk about the blood, sweat, and tears of eSports at Oculus Connect 5.
Mount Royal University Using VR Try-Outs For Their Women’s Soccer Team
Those looking to earn a spot on the Mount Royal University Cougars women’s soccer team may soon find that their try-out goes beyond the pitch and into VR.
As reported by globalnews, the University is looking to explore how they are use VR technology to help them recruit players and train athletes already on the team. This came around following Cougars head coach Tino Fusco notices the importance of review match footage. After reaching out to Mount Royal University associate professor Anthony Chaston, a way to incorporate VR into his coaching was developed.
By taking 360-degree video of Cougars players during practice matches the plan is to use the footage to immerse players and recruits into a real soccer scenario and see how they perform. The system could also be used by the coaches to provide them with a unique perspective to review plays and improve their teams performance.
“If I can get a recruit in my office and sit her down and put the headset on her and actually be on the field and be able to see 360 degrees, now I’m able to challenge the athlete and say, ‘Do you understand the game?’” Fusco said.
The solution could see the recruitment process for the team become more in-depth while all allow Fusco a means to challenge the teams knowledge and performances in an immersive way. As the technology continues to get rolled out to the team, VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest.
Racket Fury: Table Table VR Coming To PlayStation VR Next Month
Earlier this week it was revealed that developer 10Ants are bringing their VR table tennis title to PlayStation VR next month. Racket Fury: Table Tennis VR was originally released for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive back in 2017 and then the Oculus Go and Samsung Gear VR earlier this year. Now, the title will be coming to the PlayStation VR headset giving even more players a chance to enjoy some sci-fi inspired table tennis.
“We can assure that the game is exceptionally challenging, engaging and fun! Thanks to the advanced physics, developed in cooperation with professional TT players, every match you’re about to play is going to be a really immersive experience” said Sebastian Boczek, CEO of 10Ants Hill in a statement.
Racket Fury: Table Tennis VR gives players the chance to experience a realistic and immersive table tennis experience that will see them traveling to a range of sci-fi locations. With advanced physics and challenging AI opponents to face, the title is able to recreate the real-world feeling while also putting a few twists on things. There is even a workshop where players can develop their unique robot-character to create the ultimate table tennis player.
Oculus Talk eSports At Oculus Connect 5
At the recent Oculus Connect 5 event, Christopher K. McKelvy, Head of eSports at Oculus to the stage to deliver a short keynote on the companies current and future VR eSports plans. Titled “Blood, Sweat, and Tears: A Tale of VR Esports” the talk explores what makes VR so appealing within this rapidly growing and expanding market sector. Oculus have a vision to grow the VR eSports ecosystem and feel that it will play a key part in the future of gaming as a whole.
As mentioned in the talk, the market is on track to have an audience size of over 500 million with $1.5 billion (USD) expected in revenue. Titles such as Onward, Sprint Vector and The Unspoken are some of the titles that are mentioned during the talk as being some of the most played and most successful on the Oculus store.
Oculus are of course heavy invested in the VR eSports scene being involved in the VR League, which held it’s season 2 finals at the Oculus Connect 5 Event. One part of the keynote that is a nice touch as well is that McKelvy spends a moment talking about the players and some of their stories, even sharing his own. The full talk, which last around 17 minutes, can be watched below and goes over Oculus’ strategy to revolutionize eSports and keep creating more excitement.
That is all for This Week In VR Sport. For more on immersive sport news keep reading VRFocus and remember to check back next week for another This Week In VR Sport.
One of the highlights for many regarding Oculus Connect 5 and the previous series of events is Oculus’ CTO John Carmack’s unscripted talk. This has been more tightly reined in over the last couple of years, with organisers usually giving him around one hour and 30 minutes, and still he’s always cut short mid sentence. This year was no different, with Carmack touching on a range of subjects including Oculus Go, detailing both the company’s surprise and its future plans.
To begin with Carmack revealed that the launch of Oculus Go has ‘exceeded expectations’ without going into actual sales numbers. The demographic is unsurprising however, tending to be older users, mainly male, with an unexpected success in Japan which he put down two a couple of different reasons.
The standalone headset featured in the first days’ keynote address, with Oculus announcing two new features for the device, Chromatic Aberration Correction to clear up the visual edges, and Casting. Initially, this will allow users to duplicate what they’re seeing in virtual reality (VR) to a mobile device – handy for assisting new users – with plans to then offer casting to TV’s.
Carmack then expanded on the former by saying that Oculus has planned on introducing a ‘Low-power mode’ which would switch off Chromatic Aberration Correction, turn the display brightness down, and drop the refresh rate from 72Hz to 60Hz. This should add around 15 minutes extra when watching videos.
Other interesting features include a Night Mode which he didn’t really explain and Micro USB support. It’ll be limited to FAT32 support but will add that much needed expandability the headset needs. He also touched on other possibilities that he wanted to work on, such as using a mobile phone as a controller for when you loose the Oculus Go’s and re-centering apps like that found on Google Daydream.
Carmack also noted some of the things he wasn’t happy about concerning Oculus Go, such as the split back strap which was originally designed for different hairstyles, and the proximity sensor which can be activated by the strap on occasion. As the OCulus Go continues to go from strength to strength VRFocus will keep you updated.
As the potential for virtual reality (VR) use in healthcare has become apparent, a number of companies have been formed with the aim of exploring this developing technology. One of these is VRHealth, a company which provides specialised VR technology solutions and data analysis for healthcare. VRHealth have announced that it is working with Oculus to develop new health and wellness solutions using Oculus VR technology.
VRHealth will be using both Oculus Go and Oculus Rift to provide VR technology solutions for various areas in healthcare, including pain management for cancer patients during chemotherapy or alleviating patient anxiety before and after surgery.
The aim of VRHealth is to provide non-invasive medical tools, which use technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing algorithms to provide valuable data analytics. VRHealth has provided its tools to various medical facilities and hospitals, and has reported positive results from places such as Stanford Sports Medicine, Spaulding Rehabilitation Network, Hoag Hospital Network, and Mass General Hospital’s Sports Medicine Center.
“Virtual reality has the power to ease the pain of chemotherapy treatment, create a seamless environment for physical therapy exercises, and train children with ADHD to focus their attention,” VRHealth CEO Eran Orr says. “It used to be that when people thought of virtual reality – entertainment and games were the first application that came to mind but we see that applying the effects of VR to the healthcare industry has the potential to improve many lives and aid doctors in providing personalized and comfortable experiences for their patients.”
Data collected from patients is updated in real-time, allowing medical professionals to quickly adapt a patient’s treatment plan. The company believes this technology has great potential benefits for both patients and medical professionals.
For future coverage on immersive technology in healthcare, keep checking back with VRFocus.
This week saw Oculus announce a raft of new improvements for its Oculus Home platform. Designed to further advance the user experience while in virtual reality (VR) the new Core 2.0 updates saw performance enhancements, achievements and Oculus Dash redesigned for better ergonomics. But that’s not all, as Oculus has even more incentives planned for Oculus Rift users.
Using a new feature called Custom Developer Items, studios will be able to create unique items for players to collect by completing achievements. This option is now available for the following videogames: Arizona Sunshine, Brass Tactics, Echo VR, Lone Echo, Job Simulator, Moss, OrbusVR, and SUPERHOT VR, so long as you’re signed up to the Public Test Channel, other wise you’ll have to wait until next month.
But Oculus wants to take this a step further. In a session titled ‘The Future of Home for Rift: Developer & Roadmap Updates’ Nancy Xiao, Product Manger, Oculus Home, revealed that developers will soon be able to grant rewards for more than just achievements, looking along the lines of pre-order bonuses, or specific purchase incentives like when buying DLC for example. Or when studios host an event or tournament they’ll be able to give out participation mementos.
This will likely lead to limited edition items that may become highly sort after, although that then begs the question, will friends be able to swap or trade items with each other in the future, much in the same way PC players sell and trade weapons skins or other ancillary items?
With these features alongside being able to bring friends into your home and new expressive avatars, Oculus is greatly expanding the use functionality of its platform. From a simple store with community features to an actual digital hub for users to customise and share.
As Oculus Home continues to be improved and expanded upon, VRFocus will keep you updated.
Oculus hat vor wenigen Tagen die Oculus Quest angekündigt, doch viele Informationen sind erst nach der Präsentation durchgesickert. In diesem Artikel geben wir euch alle Fakten an die Hand, damit ihr selbst entscheiden könnt, ob sich das Warten auf die Quest auch lohnt.
Oculus Quest – Grafik und Rechenleistung
Eine der wichtigsten Fragen ist sicherlich: Wie gut sehen Spiele mit der Oculus Quest aus? Zwar kann man heute noch kein finales Fazit ziehen, aber erste Eindrücke geben uns bereits einen Hinweis auf die Leistung der VR-Brille.
Die Oculus Quest besitzt ein OLED-Panel mit einem PenTile Sub-Pixel Layout. Dementsprechend sind die Farben knackig und die Schwarzwerte ansehnlich. Dafür kann es aber beim Abspielen von Szenen mit hohem Kontrast zum Ghosting kommen. Ähnlich also wie bei der Oculus Rift, jedoch ist der Screendoor-Effekt geringer ausgeprägt und erinnert eher an die Vive Pro. Laut Road to VR sei es nicht unwahrscheinlich, dass Oculus auf dieselben Displays wie HTC setze.
Die Framerate der PC-Brillen schafft die mobile Lösung jedoch nicht und setzt auf eine feste Rate von 72 Hz (Oculus Go kommt auf 60 Hz). Die Linsen wiederum sind identisch zu den Linsen der Oculus Go, was der Brille zu einem großen Sweetspot verhilft, jedoch auch zu God Rays bei hohem Kontrast führt. Glücklicherweise besitzt die Quest im Unterschied zur Go einen Regler zum Einstellen des Pupillenabstandes, wodurch der Bildeindruck für viele Menschen deutlich besser sein sollte.
Doch großartige Hardware bringt nur wenig, wenn sie nicht anständig befeuert werden kann. Oculus setzt bei der Oculus Quest auf einen Qualcomm-835-Prozessor, welchen wir auch in neuen Smartphones finden können. Danke Optimierungen und Verzicht auf die typischen Smartphone-Funktionen bleibt jedoch mehr Power für die Darstellung von VR-Inhalten übrig. Dennoch sind die Inhalte für die Oculus Quest nicht mit Inhalten für eine PC-Brille vergleichbar. Ben von Road to VR schreibt hierzu auf Reddit:
“Erwartet “eine gute Grafik auf Mobile-Niveau”. Alles, was bei der Connect gezeigt wird, verwendet sehr einfache Texturen und Beleuchtungsmodelle, sodass sie in der Lage ist, ein gutes Anti-Aliasing zu erzielen, aber man kann immer noch sehen, dass die Pixel auf dem Bildschirm nicht so genutzt werden, wie es mit PC-Headsets möglich ist. Wie wir bei der Go gesehen haben, wird es wahrscheinlich ein breites Spektrum an Inhaltsqualität geben. Einige Sachen auf der Go sehen schlecht aus und andere Sachen sehen überraschend gut aus. Es kommt darauf an, wie gut die Entwickler/innen darin sind, ihre Titel zu optimieren und innerhalb der, durch die Hardware gesetzten Grenzen zu arbeiten.” (Quelle: Reddit)
Generell scheint Oculus die Zielgruppe der Gamer im Blick zu haben. Allerdings scheint man eher den Nintendo-Weg gehen zu wollen. Einfache Grafiken sollen durch einen schnellen, simplen Zugang und spannende Konzepte ausgeglichen werden. John Carmack zog selbst auf der Connect 5 einen Vergleich zur Switch und sagte:
“Realistisch gesehen werden wir mit der Nintendo Switch als Gerät konkurrieren” (YouTube) und ganz abwegig scheint diese Idee nicht. Immerhin ist die Oculus Quest theoretisch eine geschlossene VR-Konsole, die alles mitbringt, was ihr zum Zocken benötigt. Zudem steht schon ein Nintendo-Like-Spiel mit Tennis Scramble in den Startlöchern:
Oculus Quest – Tracking, Arena-Scale und Controller
Auf der Connect hat Oculus verschiedene Arena-Scale-Spiele gezeigt. Darunter Dead and Buried Arena, welches auf die neue Inside-out-Tracking-Technologie Oculus Insight setzt. Mittels vier verbauter Weitwinkelkameras in den Gehäuseecken der Brille wird die gesamte Umgebung sowie die Position der Controller erfasst und mit Computer-Vison-Algorithmen in Echtzeit verarbeitet.
Dabei wird die Position des Trägers mittels Kopf- und Handtracking ohne externe Sensoren ermittelt, was freie Bewegungen im Raum ermöglicht. Das Guardian-System verhindert währenddessen wie gewohnt die Kollision mit Objekten in eurer Umgebung, auch in mehreren Räumen dank Multi-Room-System. Das Tracking kann innerhalb mehrerer geschlossener, gut ausgeleuchteter Räume oder einer großen Arena eingesetzt werden. Insgesamt ist die Abdeckung einer Reichweite von bis zu 3,7 Quadratkilometern möglich.
So auch in der vorgeführten Demo-Version des Arena-Shooters. Innerhalb der MR-Erfahrung treten bis zu sechs Spieler/innen gleichzeitig in einer 450 Quadratmeter großen Fläche im Lastertag-Stil gegeneinander an. Dank dem Tracking-System können sich die Kontrahent/innen frei in der Arena bewegen und hinter echten Deckungen vor virtuellen Geschossen Schutz suchen. Das Arena Scale wird zum Start zunächst allerdings nicht für Konsumenten nutzbar sein. Derzeit befindet sich das System noch in einer experimentellen Phase. (Quelle: Road to VR)
Die 6DoF-Controller der neuen Quest-Brille ähneln stark den Touch-Controllern der Oculus Rift. So teilen sich beide Varianten dieselben Buttons und Thumbsticks. Eine Veränderung findet man lediglich im Design, da der Tracking-Ring umgekehrt wurde, um den Kamerasensoren das Auffinden zu erleichtern. (Upload VR)
Image courtesy: Upload VR
Gabor Szauer erläuterte in der Keynote “Porting Your App to Oculus Quest” die Limitationen der neuen Controller. Demnach decken die verbauten Kameras der Brille zwar den vorderen Sichtbereich ab, sobald man seine Arme jedoch zu weit nach hinten streckt, kommt es zu Tracking-Verlusten. Das hat einen maßgeblichen Einfluss auf diverse Gameplay-Elemente, die derzeit in verschiedenen Titeln zum Einsatz kommen. Entsprechend ist es nicht möglich mit den Controllern hinter den Kopf zu greifen, ohne das Tracking zu verlieren.
Die Entwickler/innen können diesem Problem jedoch mit einem geschickten Algorithmus entgegentreten, um die ein bis zwei sekündigen Situationen zu überbrücken. Dadurch kann beispielsweise das Greifen hinter dem Rücken gefaked werden, wie es andere Inside-Out-Systeme, wie die Windows-VR-Brillen bereits vormachen. Ein weiteres Tracking-Problem kann beim Übereinaderhalten der Controller auftreten, wenn das Sichtfeld zwischen Kamera und Eingabegerät blockiert wird. (Quelle: Upload VR)
Oculus Quest – Preis und Verfügbarkeit
Als Zwischenstück zwischen Go und Rift soll die neue Quest die besten Eigenschaften beider Brillen kombinieren und damit einen unkomplizierten Einstieg in die Virtual Reality überall in der Welt ermöglichen.
Die Oculus Quest soll mit 64 GB Speicher ab Frühjahr 2019 für 399 US-Dollar erscheinen. Wie viel die neue Brille hierzulande kosten wird, ist derzeit noch nicht bekannt.
Speaking on stage at Oculus Connect this morning, Oculus CTO John Carmack gave his signature unscripted talk, somehow going into depth despite covering a wide range of topics from Go to Quest to Rift, and plenty more. Part of his talk offered some insights into the relative power in the Quest headset and the expectations that developers and users should consider.
Oculus Quest is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chip which isn’t uncommon to find in modern smartphones. Because it doesn’t have to be crammed into the tight confines of a phone, however, the processor can be run more aggressively without overheating. In fact, Quest has a fan inside to further dissipate heat and keep the headset at peak performance.
Photo by Road to VR
But how does a Snapdragon chip with active cooling translate to actual processing power and what kinds of games and graphics can developers expect to achieve? Oculus CTO John Carmack offers some insights..
“In terms of raw processing power […] Quest is in the neighborhood of the power of a previous gen Xbox 360 or PS3 […],” Carmack said at Oculus Connect. “But the important thing to keep in mind is that most games in that generation rendered a 1,280 × 720 view at 30 FPS and most of them didn’t have very good anti-aliasing. While in VR, we’re hoping you can render at 1,280 × 1,280—twice for stereo—at 72 FPS, which is eight and a half times more pixels than you would have on an old [Xbox] 360 game. Plus you want to be at 4x MSAA and Trilinear Filtering which are some percentages additional on top of that.”
So even though Quest has roughly the processing power of an Xbox 360, the greater demands for rendering VR content at higher resolution and framerate mean we shouldn’t expect to see ‘Xbox 360’ graphics from Quest any time soon, says Carmack.
“So it is not possible to take a game that was done at a high quality level, like a AAA title for [the Xbox 360] generation, and expect it to look like that in VR—it’s so many more pixels to wind up rendering.”
But, Quest isn’t without at least some advantages, which developers should hope to exploit to optimize their titles.
“On the upside [Quest has] far more texture memory and far more main memory in general than [anyone] had on those platforms, so some of the development can be easier, and in many cases you can trade really rich textures for complex shaders and multi-pass rendering in different ways,” Carmack said.
But whether or not Quest can deliver graphics which come close to what’s seen on PC today doesn’t impact the “core magic”, as he puts it, that Quest can deliver.
“I do stand by the statement that I made that the core magic of any Rift experience can be brought to [Quest],” he said. “But you can’t ignore the level of processing power differences. A big high-end PC can use up to 500 watts of power, and something like [Quest] is burning 5-something—there’s almost a factor of 100 difference in the total power.”
Image courtesy Oculus
Given Quest’s positioning between the low-end Go and the high-end tethered Rift, Carmack believes that Quest will be look at by customers as a portable gaming device, and that means direct competition with Nintendo’s popular Switch console.
“Essentially, realistically we are going to wind up competing with the Nintendo Switch as a device where I don’t think there’s gonna be that many people who say ‘I’m not gonna buy a PS4, I’m gonna buy a Quest instead,’ I think we’re gonna have people that—like I’m a gamer, I’ve got my brand of choice for the main console, maybe I’ve got a PC to play games on—I’m gonna pick up a Quest as a mobile device, very much like the Switch is [perceived by consumers] right now.”
If that’s true, it means Quest will need to deliver very compelling content and tremendous value to customers in order to be relevant to a large number of users, especially considering that Switch sells for $100 less than Quest, and could be even cheaper by the time Quest launches in Spring 2019.
One of the first titles announced for Oculus Quest is the oddball Project Tennis Scramble; a tennis ‘simulation’ that really wants you to know to it’s heard of the Mario Tennis series. And this is no bad thing; next to the aggression of Dead & Buried Arena, the puzzling of SUPERHOT and the rather dry horror of Face Your Fears 2, Project Tennis Scramble is the only light-hearted experience yet seen on Oculus Quest.
The experience begins with a short tutorial wherein the player grabs a racket and is taught to hit the ball. Simple enough; but in doing so you are also taught about the limits of the play space. Project Tennis Scramble was in fact the only experience at Oculus Connect 5 which offered two different sized play spaces; one for each player. Once the tutorial has ended the player is transported into a brightly coloured arena that sits somewhere between a Super Mario videogame and #Selfie Tennis, and then the man himself pays us a visit.
A giant ball with arms floats from the ceiling and suddenly upon the screen appears Jason Rubin, VP of Content at Oculus. He delivers a message welcoming the players to Oculus Quest and to Project Tennis Scramble itself, with thanks to Armature for their work, and wishes the player fun. It’s a rather peculiar introduction, but a welcome one given Rubin’s last-minute absence from Oculus Connect 5.
Matches in Project Tennis Scramble are directly comparable to Wii Sports’ tennis; the direction and speed of the player’s contact with the ball has less importance than simply making said contact. The players build a rally and as they do two special effect devices appear within the scene and hitting either of them will induce a variety of changes, such as turning the ball into a beach ball or shuttlecock.
The match set-up at Oculus Connect 5 was a simple first-to-five points arrangement, but that certainly helps with the flow-through of players on a busy show floor. How Oculus and Armature plan on expanding the formula into a fuller experience – or even if they will attempt to create a product from this tech demo – remains to be seen. It wouldn’t be unlike Oculus to offer Project Tennis Scramble as a free download with Oculus Quest in a similar fashion to Farlands with the Oculus Rift.
That would of course be the best-case scenario for Project Tennis Scramble, as while it is fun for a few minutes it’s an undeniably shallow experience. Much like Wii Sports, Project Scramble Tennis is an easy sell to many people, but now that we’ve had been through that Wii phase would it be enough to sell the $399 (USD) Oculus Quest on? It’ll make a good stepping stone for friends and family of the early adopters, but Project Scramble Tennis in itself is unlikely to be the title that convinces anyone to part with their cash.
The experience begins with a short tutorial wherein the player grabs a racket and is taught to hit the ball. Simple enough; but in doing so you are also taught about the limits of the play space. Project Tennis Scramble was in fact the only experience at Oculus Connect 5 which offered two different sized play spaces; one for each player. Once the tutorial has ended the player is transported into a brightly coloured arena that sits somewhere between a Super Mario videogame and #Selfie Tennis, and then the man himself pays us a visit.
The match set-up at Oculus Connect 5 was a simple first-to-five points arrangement, but that certainly helps with the flow-through of players on a busy show floor. How Oculus and Armature plan on expanding the formula into a fuller experience – or even if they will attempt to create a product from this tech demo – remains to be seen. It wouldn’t be unlike Oculus to offer Project Tennis Scramble as a free download with Oculus Quest in a similar fashion to Farlands with the Oculus Rift.