Virtual Virtual Reality, a VR gem which first launched on Daydream in 2017 and later on Oculus Go and Rift earlier this year, appears to be on its way to the HTC Vive via Steam.
Though there doesn’t appear to have been an official announcement yet from developer Tender Claws, a Virtual Virtual Reality page on Steam has been spotted sporting HTC Vive support and a release date of September 2018.
Virtual Virtual Reality began its life as a Daydream exclusive in 2017 and was launched on Oculus Go earlier this year; it’s a unique narrative adventure and easily one of the most immersive games available on mobile VR headsets. The game eventually found its way to the PC VR space when it launched for the Oculus Rift in June, where it’s enjoyed strong reviews from users.
The trailer page offers a hint of what you can expect from Virtual Virtual Reality, but it’s really something that you’ll need to explore on your own:
If you’ve only played Beat Saber’s default levels, you’re missing out! A community of enthusiasts have created lots of unofficial levels which are easy to install, many featuring recognizable tunes that make the game even more fun. We’ve got a list of 11 great community-made custom songs for Beat Saber that are definitely worth a try.
First thing’s first: if you haven’t installed any custom songs for Beat Saber yet, click over to this simple guide to install the mods you need to download and play custom songs.
Second: this list is focused on Expert-level play; if you’re still playing Beat Saber at Hard or lower difficulty, consider continuing to practice with the default levels, as custom songs skew toward even higher difficulty, and not all custom songs include difficulties easier than Expert and Hard (some have Expert+!).
So, once you’ve got the mods installed, you’ll find a ‘Beatsaver’ button insider of Beat Saber on the main menu. Clicking on it will show you all of the custom songs available for download. There’s many to choose from, but the quality of each beat map can be hit or miss. So here’s some fun and challenging songs to get started (don’t miss the ‘Search’ button at the top of the list inside the game to find these easily):
Believer – Imagine Dragons (Beat map by Rustic)
Uptown Funk – Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars (Beat map by BennyDaBeast)
Hyper Drive – Jaroslav Beck, Generdyn (Beat map author unknown)
New Dawn – PrototypeRaptor (Beat map by Rustic)
Popcorn Funk – Monstaz. (Beat map by Rustic)
Can’t’ Stop The Feeling! – Justin Timberlake (Beat map by BennyDaBeast)
Uso No Hibana (V2 fixed) – 96Neko (Beat map by WinEpic)
Never Sleep Alone – Kaskade (Beat map author unknown)
Burn – Ellie Goulding (Beat map by BennyDaBeast)
X Gon’ Give It To Ya – DMX (Beat map by attackpanda11)
Harder Better Faster Stronger – Daft Punk (Beat map by RunRockGame)
It seems that the best Beat Saber levels find a way to make your movements reflect the feeling of each song, and that’s certainly exhibited in many of the above. Thanks to all the community members who have put these quality beat maps together for the rest of us.
Know a great custom song for Beat Saber that’s not on this list? Let us know in the comments below!
Electronauts sits at an interesting intersection somewhere between game, experience, and tool. Your experience with Electronauts then may vary depending upon what you hope to achieve with it. If you’re anything like me—someone who can fall deep into music, but isn’t musically trained—you’ll find a totally unique and approachable platform for expressing your inner groove.
Developer: Survios Available On: Oculus Store (Rift), SteamVR (Vive, Rift), PlayStation VR Reviewed On: HTC Vive Release Date: August 7th, 2018
Experience
Electronauts can be thought of as a virtual reality DJ tool, but it’s smartly design to be accessible by people who don’t know the first thing about DJing. Each song in the game (40+ at launch, covering a range of EDM sub-genres) is effectively a custom-built music kit which comes complete with backing tracks, freestyle instruments, ‘sound grenades’ (for one-off percussion), and vocal segments (for some songs).
The basic experience involves queueing different backing tracks—which are logically named, for example: Intro, Build, Drop, Break, Deep, Outro—layering in vocals and loops, and jamming on the freestyle instruments. It sounds simple, but there’s an impressive amount of depth to the tools you’re given. But more on that later. For now, here’s a short overview of the tools, which will be helpful context for the rest of this review:
Now, if Electronauts just threw all of this at me, I’d surely make a fool of myself, as I went into this knowing almost nothing about DJing. Thankfully, the game does a lot behind the scenes to make whatever you do sound decent. This is thanks largely to what Survios calls the ‘Music Reality Engine’: an underlying system that keeps all aspects of music in the game on rhythm and in tune. In addition to keeping all of the backing tracks and stems on beat, freestyle instruments shift your notes to keep them in sync (also called quantization).
With the Music Reality Engine, and a concise tutorial built into the game, it didn’t take long before I began to understand what I could do with the tools in front of me and started stringing together satisfying sequences that had me grooving to the beat. After getting a feel for the basics and being able to competently direct the flow of a song, I started to appreciate the additional depth waiting beneath the surface.
While the freestyle instruments (which usually come in the form of orbs) are fun to jam out with, you can also hold a button to record each time you hit the instrument, effectively capturing a small sample which will play repeatedly. When it comes to vocals, you can jump around between verses and even individual lines, offering a lot of flexibility to how the vocals will play out in your song. In the backing tracks you can mute individual instruments to create a different flavor, or mute the entire track at once to highlight a specific part of the vocals or an instrument solo. Each tool (instruments, vocals, etc), can be muted or unmuted at any time with a shortcut button, while the sound grenades (which you throw to trigger a noise) act as percussive exclamations.
Once you grasp the capabilities of all the tools, you’ll have yet greater control over the sound and feel of each song, and it becomes incredibly satisfying to flawlessly plan and execute a perfect transition to a new part of the song, or to play a fitting freestyle solo. Even finding a way to bring a song to a natural conclusion can be a fun challenge that fosters a feeling of musical resolution.
For musicians out there, Electronauts offers still deeper features, like the ability to turn off quantization for instruments, build song arrangements in advance (instead of queuing backing tracks on the fly), change the stems that accompany each backing track in a custom arrangement, and create interface layouts for quickly toggling between groups of tools (rather than switching one tool at a time).
Electronauts feels highly accessible, but also like it could be used for real performances. This is reinforced not only by the deeper tools mentioned above, but by a strong set of in-game virtual camera controls that allow you to adjust what other people see.
The typical first person view, as displayed on your desktop, is smoothed by default, so onlookers see something more digestible than the quick movements of your head. Additionally, the game offers a virtual selfie stick, an in-game camera and monitor which you can freely place anywhere, with the resulting view showing up on your desktop. There’s also an orbiting camera, which circles your Daft Punk-esque avatar as you rock out. To top it all off, there’s some visualizer controls, allowing you to adjust the color and speed of the background visualization.
Of course, you can pipe the output from your desktop monitor to a streaming service or even a projector if you wanted to play in front of a live audience. All of the camera and visualizer controls can be adjusted on the fly as you are DJing, making it possible to put on a compelling show all by yourself.
Image courtesy Survios
If you aren’t the type who wants to perform in front of a crowd, but you do happen to know a jam buddy with a VR headset, Electronauts supports multiplayer (on Rift and Vive only) for two players. This puts both of your avatars in the same space with access to the same tools, letting you DJ any track cooperatively. Electronauts offers cross-play between the Oculus platform and SteamVR.
Immersion
Image courtesy Survios
Electronauts offers a surprisingly accessible utility for achieving the feeling of DJing in virtual reality, but it goes beyond being just a tool by wrapping everything up in a thematic package that feels equal parts Tron and Daft Punk.
The opening of Electronauts reveals you to be on a futuristic ship (powered by sick beats, no doubt) blasting through space. When you launch into a new song, your ship lifts off and ‘travels’ to the song. Transitioning between songs is seamless both audibly and visually, as your ship jumps to hyperspace before arriving at your new song destination.
This ‘spaceship’ metaphor is but a setting—there’s no lore or objectives in Electronauts—but it does tie the experience together into a cohesive whole that never reminds you that you’re inside of a VR headset.
That extends to the tools interface too, which has a surprisingly functional design which keeps things from being overcrowded while at the same time keeping everything within easy reach. There are interface lessons to be learned from Electronauts that extend far beyond musical VR games, but that’s something to explore another day.
Of course it’s worth noting that your enjoyment of Electronauts, and how much you tap into the beat, will depend deeply on your preference in music. The game is wholly built around EDM, covering a broad range of sub-genres.
Comfort
Image courtesy Survios
Electronauts has you standing in one place, so there’s no need for any artificial locomotion, largely ensures things will remain perfectly comfortable. While you’ll occasionally see some full screen movement (like the visualizer background that’s constantly coming toward you), I never once felt dizzy or uneasy in the game, even after continuous sessions of an hour or more.
The tools in Electronauts work well and are easy to understand. They’re all triggered in simple and intuitive ways without any unnecessary or uncomfortable gestures or hand positions. Importantly, the interface mostly keeps you looking forward rather than down, which greatly helps prevent headset-induced neck fatigue (due to the front-heavy nature of VR headsets).
Oculus has confirmed that a number of VR eSports tournament finals are officially headed to Oculus Connect 5, the company’s annual developer conference.
Competing for a total cash prize pool of $120,000, tournament hopefuls will descend upon San Jose’s McEnery Convention Center on September 26th – 27th.
Live coverage of the tournament finals will begin at 11:30 am PT (local time here) both days of OC5 on VR League’s Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube channels.
The best bit: could get a shot at the prize money too. For more information on how to compete in each game’s ‘Last Chance Qualifier’, head over to the Oculus blogpost for relevant sign-up links.
Seeking Dawn (2018), the sci-fi VR shooter adventure from Multiverse Entertainment, didn’t exactly hit the intended mark when it released last month on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, but now the developers have released a road map to improving the game and eventually releasing it on PSVR.
The team is focusing on ‘critical’ bugs first, with a fix coming in August that’s also intending to improve the multiplayer experience, and addresses performance issues—something the devs say are mentioned across most negative reviews.
In September, a free DLC update is said to arrive that will bring a ‘Master Mode’ difficulty, which will contain a weapons update system and increased difficulty, along with balance changes and more customization options. Also for the September update are player skins, a new playable area, and a redesigned level.
“The dev team hopes to add more replay value to Seeking Dawn by having these changes affect both single and multiplayer modes,” Multiverse says in a press statement.
Image captured by Road to VR
At the last stop of the current road map is the PSVR version, which is slated to arrive in late December. Other updates include an Emoji system.
“After the release of Seeking Dawn, feedback and reviews have been mixed. Players who enjoy this game are thrilled by this breathtaking VR world. But there are also players who really want to love this game, but have had to deal with bugs and other tech issues,” the team said in the statement. “The dev team has acknowledged much of this through social media and has responded by showing their passion and dedication to make this game better. Now a more detailed development roadmap sets the next few milestones for 2018, with improved optimization, updated game mechanics and more content to expand the VR world of Seeking Dawn.”
Check out our full review here, which garnered the game a middling [6.5/10] points. Our major complaints centered around the inclusion of dull chores, such as resource collection and a toothless crafting system, decidedly making Seeking Dawn a launch day downer. We’re hoping some of these things will be fixed too as a result of the studio’s many updates between now and the end of the year.
Killing Floor: Incursion (2017),Tripwire Interactive’s co-op zombie shooting adventure, has added a new badge to its Steam page, indicating the game now supports Windows “Mixed Reality” VR headsets. In addition, the game also got a content update that includes a new Holdout Mode map called ‘The Crucible’.
The new Holdout Mode map, ‘The Crucible’, introduces to the player a few key locations that you have to hold against increasingly deadly hordes of enemies in what the studio calls “a frenetic, arcade-like action experience.”
Killing Floor: Incursion is a story-driven adventure that you can play either alone or with a friend in co-op mode. Weapons include pistols, shotguns, axes, katanas, and also the dismembered limb of the fallen.
Killing Floor: Incursion is available through the Oculus Store (Rift) Steam (Vive, Rift, Windows VR), and PSN (PSVR), and is on sale currently for between 30%-67% off depending on your platform and headset of choice.
Survios’ next VR title, Electronauts now set to launch on August 7th. The game will be available on SteamVR (Vive and Rift) and Oculus Home (Rift) priced at $20, and on PlayStation VR priced at $18.
Electronauts is the latest title to come from Survios, the studio behind Raw Data and Sprint Vector. Electronauts isn’t a game as much as it is a music making tool designed to let you express your musical creativity even if you don’t know anything about making music. With the game’s ‘Music Reality Engine’, a lot of the complexity of mixing awesome beats is handled for you, letting novices jump in easily.
At the same time, the game feels like it offers a lot of depth, letting players toggle individual instruments within backing tracks, record repeating melodies and FX changes, and jam out on futuristic instruments with or without beat quantization (which keeps everything on tempo)—oh and don’t forget the sound grenades. Here’s a look at what it’s like to make your own jam:
On PC, Electronauts supports multiplayer with up to two players for a cooperative jam session; crossplay is supported too, meaning Oculus Home and SteamVR players can play together. PSVR will not include a multiplayer mode, Survios has confirmed.
Image courtesy Survios
To make the underlying musical kits which players will get to mix, Survios worked with a range of electronic musicians, and they’ve shared the game’s launch setlist:
The Chainsmokers – Roses (ft. ROZES)
ODESZA – Say My Name (ft. Zyra)
Steve Aoki & Boehm – Back 2 You (ft. WALK THE MOON)
Tiesto & John Christian – I Like It Loud (ft. Marshall Masters & The Ultimate MC)
ZHU & Tame Impala – My Life
ZHU & NERO – Dreams
ZHU – Intoxicate
12th Planet – Let Me Help You (ft. Taylr Renee)
Netsky – Nobody
Dada Life – B Side Boogie, Higher Than The Sun, We Want Your Soul
Keys N Krates – Dum Dee Dum [Dim Mak Records]
Krewella & Yellow Claw – New World (ft. Vava)
Krewella – Alibi
Amp Live & Del The Funky Homosapien – Get Some of Dis
DJ Shadow – Bergshrund (ft. Nils Frahm)
3LAU – Touch (ft. Carly Paige)
Machinedrum – Angel Speak (ft. Melo-X), Do It 4 U (ft. Dawn Richard)
People Under The Stairs – Feels Good
Tipper – Lattice
TOKiMONSTA – Don’t Call Me (ft. Yuna), I Wish I Could (ft. Selah Sue)
Moss, the acclaimed VR adventure platformer, has been updated on SteamVR with official support for Windows VR headsets and a slew of new control options to make the game easier to play with Vive controllers.
Formerly exclusive to PlayStation VR, Moss launched on SteamVR and Oculus in early June. At the game’s PC launch, the title only officially supported the Vive and Rift, despite Windows VR headsets technically being compatible with SteamVR. Now the game’s 1.0.3 update has brought official Windows VR support, meaning those with Windows VR headsets can play the game through SteamVR as long as they have the Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR package installed.
Moss’ 1.0.3 update also brings a handful of new control options to make the game easier to play with the Vive controller. Since the game was originally designed with the thumbsticks of the PlayStation gamepad in mind, the control scheme translates well enough to the Rift and Windows VR controllers thanks to their thumbsticks. The Vive controllers instead use a large trackpad, which necessitated something of a hybrid control scheme which dedicates portions of the trackpad to different actions. A number of user reviews found that the layout made it difficult to control the game. The 1.0.3 update brings several new Vive controller options to Moss:
The first layout option allows you to change the way movement controls. You can select between Touch-to-Move and Press-to-Move. The former is the layout we shipped Moss with. The latter requires you to press and hold as you move Quill through the environment. We’ve found this helps mitigate a handful of the ghost input issues players have been reporting.
Image courtesy Polyarc
The second layout option allows you to change the way your Jump and Attack actions are mapped. You can select between the Default layout of Attack/Jump on either side of the touch-pad or Dedicated Jump. The Dedicated Jump layout assigns Attack to the right-hand top menu button and utilizes the full touch-pad surface for Jump.
Image courtesy Polyarc
Developer Polyarc says the new control options are designed to alleviate issues players have had playing the game with the Vive controllers. The studio continues to welcome feedback on the game’s control scheme, and it sounds like they’ll continue to consider changes going forward.
Though a release date still hasn’t been announced, lightsaber VR rhythm game Beat Saber was confirmed earlier this year to be coming to PSVR. Now PlayStation Underground, Sony’s official video series, is showing the game in action on the system, including a full playthrough of the PlayStation VR exclusive song, ‘Kumquat’.
In the video above, the PlayStation Underground folks play a few songs of Beat Saber on PSVR, offering a good look at how the game plays on PlayStation VR. So far the studio has announced that the PSVR version will have at least one platform exclusive song, ‘Kumquat’, which is played in full in the video. (Though I doubt it will stay exclusive for long, once custom song makers get their hands on its beat layout).
Beat Saber has been quite the hit on PC VR headsets where it quickly hit the 100K milestone despite still being in Early Access. PSVR owners have naturally been eyeing the game, and got good news back in June when the studio behind the title, Beat Games, announced that it’s headed to PlayStation VR.
Last month at E3 we got our first hands-on time with Beat Saber on PSVR and found a promising adaptation generally works well, but isn’t immune from issues caused by the headset’s limited tracking area:
At the game’s first showing on PSVR, here at E3 2018, Beat Saber made a promising impression. While the Move controllers don’t feel quite as responsive as the controllers on the major PC VR headsets, but tracking on PSVR was solid enough that I could handle the game’s tracks on the highest level of difficulty without much frustration. The only major issues came when my controllers exited the camera’s narrow field of view, which happened at one point in a song when I had to duck under one of the obstacles and hit notes while ducking, which ended up leaving my hands outside of the tracking cone, and unable to hit the notes.
[…]
Beyond the tracking limitations, the Move controllers physically feel quite nice for Beat Saber, considering that the shape of the handle is very hilt-like and easy to hold without accidentally squeezing the trigger during play. The haptics in the Move controller is also well suited to the game, offering a strong and satisfying vibration when hitting each note.
In the PlayStation Underground video above, it can be seen that the user is playing from a seated position (which causes trouble with the ducking obstacles). While it seems the vast majority of players on PC play the game standing, PSVR players more often tend to play VR while seated, so the game might need to include seated and standing modes to prevent such issues.
Though there’s no release date for Beat Saber on PSVR yet confirmed, we expect to see it launch by the end of 2018.
Skydance Interactive, the studio behind Archangel (2017) and the recent multiplayer expansion Hellfire, today released a video on just how they made their building-sized mechs.
Concept artist Bryant “Momo” Koshu designed mechs for the game, and says it took him at least six months to figure out the exact design of the single player game’s cockpit using standard tools such as Adobe Photoshop. Later including Mediumin his creative process, Oculus’ VR sculpting and modeling program, Koshu says he reduced the time down to a little over a week to create the updated cockpit design.
“We went through the process in a matter of weeks,” says Skydance Interactive Producer Mark Domowicz. “Part of that is Momo. He’s a ninja with the software. Part of that is just the toolset; you can just jump in and put something together, kit-bash something together.”
“This is more than just sculpting,” says Koshu. “This can actually be used for the whole video game pipeline.”
Skydance tells us Koshu first uses Medium when prototyping, and then adds final touches using ZBrush, Autodesk 3ds Max, Unreal Engine 4 and other tools.
Originally launched in 2016 with Touch, Medium recently got an overhaul via its 2.0 update, which brings a new file management system and a “major UI facelift,” designed to help artists work better and faster. If you’re interested in creating with Medium, check out these updated tutorials from Oculus.
