PolygonVR – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

June 8, 2020

The Virtual Arena: Defining the Next Phase of Immersive LBE (Part 1.)

Covering the immersive location-based entertainment (LBE) scene for VRFocus as part of his latest Virtual Arena column, industry specialist Kevin Williams returns with the first of a two-part series of observations made while many of the LBE VR venues remain in lockdown. He examines how the commercial entertainment VR scene is still at work, charting new developments in the rental of VR tech, the licensing of VR arcade content for consumer deployment, and new partnerships.

While the whole of the business sector has been on enforced lockdown globally for over nine weeks, developments both to adapt to the situation, as well as prepare for the new normal have been underway, as this considerable business adapts and evolves for life #AfterLockdown.

LBE Venue — One of the many furloughed LBE facilities during May. Image credit: KWP

While some cynics attempted to paint the demise of the enterprise entertainment industry in the face of the global pandemic, the reality has been far more positive. While the industry has been bowed (as all) by the enforced voluntary closure of their operations, the interest to re-open and revigorate what has been one of the few burgeoning aspects of this latest phase of VR adoption, has not diminished.

There has even been an interest to attempt to capture in a bottle, those aspects of the location-based entertainment VR scene and recreate them for consumer adaptation – hoping that the success of LBE VR content can be made to work for the encumbered consumer userbase. One such example of this was revealed from studio Golf Scope; the AR and VR entertainment developers, in partnership with Topgolf Entertainment Group, which is widely known for its technology-driven golf entertainment venues. Together the operation launched Pro Putt by Topgolf on Oculus Quest – offering simple VR golfing action, that including a branded recreation of the popular putting action – encapsulating the venue action in one of a series of digital games. While many of the facilities may still be temporarily closed, VR allows the brand to continue.

Pro Putt by Top Golf experience — The virtual recreation of the Topgolf experience. Image credit: Topgolf Entertainment

Another such example of capturing the Out-of-Home entertainment has seen the launch from start-up Adventure Lab, a group of VR developers, who created what they have described as the “World’s first VR live hosted escape room”. The platform currently supports Oculus Quest hardware, allowing players to register online to take part in a connected 40-minute VR escape game, with a live “game master”, acting as host to help players. The first title Dr. Crumb’s School for Disobedient Pets is in early beta, charging $100 for up to four players. The commercial VR escape gaming scene has been incredibly popular before lockdown, and this move hopes to capitalize on the interest from isolated players, bring remote users together, and even supplying captured scenes to share on social media.

The VR Arcade Scene

Another developer hoping to build off of commercial VR popularity, repackaging for consumer consumption, was German-based VR Nerds – the company famous for Tower Tag, a highly competitive PvP capture-the-flag VR experience, played by over 1,000,000 players in arcades worldwide, reportedly available to some 1,300 VR arcades since its launch in 2018. Licensed by Springboard VR, along with porting to the Hologate arena and seeing success in the Japanese VR scene with CA Sega Joypolis installing several units. In May VR Nerds announced that the title would now be accessible for consumers, available on Steam and Viveport for all the leading consumer VR headsets. The ability to relieve the exciting multi-player shooter as it was released in arcades was supported with the developer providing 3D-printable STL files to recreate the gun controller from the game.

Tower Tag - VR Nerds — Example of the weapon in the ‘Tower Tag’, and the new 3D printed controller for the Quest. Image credit: VR Nerds

The need to feed the interest in VR to an audience that is in lockdown has been a consideration for VR arcade operators with hardware sitting unused. One remedy attempted was seen from The Park Playground. One of the first European VR arcade operations, with their sites temporarily shuttered the company decided to launch a new service. The Beta service, called ‘VR in Home’, is only currently available in the Belgium city of Antwerp – interested players use the operations web page to request loans of an Oculus Quest with appropriate game content, for a minimum four-day rental. What has been nicknamed “the Uber VR arcade!” – the use of hardware as a rental business is not an entirely new idea during the pandemic. In Spain, the Canary Virtual business started a similar service in March including a PC as well as standalone platforms for rental – and all specially cleaned and populated for this service. However, the use of the Oculus Quest in commercial applications has come with its own issues.

The Park Playground VR arena in full swing at the Antwerp location before lockdown. Image credit: The Park Playground

But there have been developments in thinking during this changeable time for the Oculus Quest – one of these has been the re-emergence of ‘Oculus for Business’. Finally unveiled with its commercial machine and supported pricing with a yearly subscription, at the same time saw the removal of any of the “Colocation” firmware facility. A facility that had been teased to so many commercial developers only to be removed some 12-months later. It is expected that many developers will continue with their standalone free-roaming release plans, but now deserting official support, (see out previous coverage if this scene).

Another operator of VR venues, as well as a developer of hardware for this sector, has restructured its operation. European based Neurogaming has been known for the RevolVR tethered enclosure VR experience, as well for its PolygonVR free-roaming multiplayer platform, operated in several venues. During May the company announced the signing of a lucrative licensing deal that will see Estonian start-up NeverBored; who will develop a brand-new version of the four-player PvP Western shooter (RevolVR) for the location-based entertainment sector. At the same time, the new developer has started work on a special consumer version of the videogame that will be launched on the Oculus Quest later in the year, bringing the LBE action to consumer players. Additionally, NeverBored will now take on the role of European distributor for the Neurogaming range of LBE hardware including its free-roaming platform. Operations will be restructured to be ready for the reopening of these businesses internationally.

Players competing in the Wild West blaster ‘RevolVR’. Image credit: KWP

This is the end of the first part to this exclusive coverage of the developing immersive commercial entertainment industry. The second part, looking at the new trends moving into reopening and the future of the scene, follows shortly.

May 31, 2018

Polygon VR Say They Are The Ultimate VR Experience – And They Might Just Be Right

Virtual reality (VR) is expensive. 2018 has seen a lot of price cuts for the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive (and Vive Pro), PlayStation VR, as well as the release of various Windows Mixed Reality headsets and standalone headsets, VR is still too steep of a price for consumers to buy en masse. Sometimes the easiest way to enjoy VR is to simply get out of the house and try some location-based VRs. Nina Salomons, the video content creator at VRFocus, discusses her favourite digital out-of-home entertainment (DOE) VR experience and explains why it stood out for her.

I have tried several out-of-home experiences that usually use Optitrack’s sensors. From The Void, Arizona Sunshine, Kenzan Studio, Anvio VR, Hologate VR , StarTracker as well as trying out Derren Brown’s the Ghost Train at Thorpe Park and a few dozen VR experiences in Dubai’s ‘PVRK’. I believe I’ve tried quite a few different variations of VR out-of-home experiences.

DOE experiences, as the name suggests occur in a space where players put on a VR headset and are usually given a VR backpack, some accessories that are tracked and an experience where they can play with friends. Out-of-home VR experiences excel in creating social VR experiences where more than one player is able to enjoy an experience. Although this is quite tricky to track multiple players in a space, it is possible. For some strange reason, almost all of the out-of-home VR experiences have been first-person shooters (FPS). The company usually gives you a fake gun that is then tracked in the virtual space and has special triggers or buttons that allow you to reload, change weapon and give players haptic feedback or recoil to make it more realistic.

Having tried all of these out-of-home VR experiences as well as console games for a few years, I can honestly say it’s getting more difficult to get excited about experiences unless they’re truly innovative, realistic or engaging. It wasn’t until somebody asked me what the best VR experience was I’d ever tried I had to sit down and think. It took me some time to answer the question, but I concluded that it was something I experienced in New York created by Neurogaming on their Polgyon VR platform. The incredible potential of the Polygon platform was showcased in this interview with Alex Morozov, Chief Marketing Officer of Neurogaming, but perhaps didn’t quite bring across how impressive it was.

Polygon_VR11

Travelling to America a lot to cover VR at events like GDC, GTC and E3 where Silicon Valley and ex-Hollywood storytellers come to showcase their products, you would expect me to have chosen an American-based company from there for my best experience. Surprisingly it’s a Russian company that’s known for its videogame World of Tanks VR that left me speechless and excited about the future.

Unlike some out-of-home entertainment experiences, Polygon VR required a player to put on full body tracking accessories and equipment. Similar to how actors would be captured for CGI characters in films or how Ninja Theory created Hellblade:Senua’s Sacrifice. Players are asked to put on accessories that have little grey balls attached to then wrap your arm, legs, hands and feet. This creates for a truly immersive experience where like Vive trackers, you can use parts of your body to interact with your immersive space (like kicking dinosaurs in Island 359).

The experience required me to put on full body tracking accessories, a gun, and a VR headset tethered to a backpack. The experience I tried on Polygon VR was a FPS where myself and Kevin Joyce were soldiers on a mission to take down enemies. Neurogaming could also change the whole virtual world without physically moving us, or asking us to change outfits. We were suddenly inside a close quarter map of orange corridors, elevators and various guns. the experience allowed Kevin and Myself to use the full space of the warehouse and we spent over an hour roaming around the virtual worlds created for us by Neurogaming.

The importance of dying

Having tried Anvio VR’s full-body tracking and shooting zombies is the closest thing I’ve tried to Polygon VR. Both required guns, were FPS experiences, are Russian and allow for several players to be tracked in a large warehouse space. Where Polygon VR differentiated from all the other FPS out-of-home experiences, is that it allowed you to die. A blue ghost figure would appear in the virtual world to reflect where you are in the real world – helping players understand both the virtual and real world spacing without taking a headset off to avoid physically walking into the player once they died.

Not only was friendly fire on, there were various ways of dying. Falling or jumping off moving elevators, slipping from a ledge or getting shot. Unlike the other videogames, what I did mattered, and I could die in-game. It now mattered finding that health pack, it mattered listening to the footsteps of other players to avoid or find them, it matters finding cover, it matters if you die midway through a battle. Suddenly it’s like all my senses are heightened because I can now die.

This simple act of death – it drives you to care about your actions and not simply hold a gun at zombies or just stand there not caring as they overwhelm you in-game.

Sharing is caring, best enjoyed with no latency

Everybody who has been in VR for a while understands the importance of social VR. You want to be able to share experiences with friends and be there with them. What I try and drive home in the video below, and what I try and showcase in gameplay is how incredible that feeling is when you interact with somebody in VR that you’ve never met in real life. Like a meeting between two different tribes – we try and find something in common and end playing childhood games of clapping our hands as a form of easy communication (even though we have microphones and can speak to each other).

You can also see how freaked out I am by Ivan walking through me, and although no gameplay footage of him walking in and out of walls is available you can clearly see the physical and immediate reaction I had to his physical actions (all of which he was doing in Russia). What really got me was that there seemed to be barely any latency. Like a baby throwing things to see a cause and effect, I found myself touching, kicking and moving at different speeds to test the ‘rules’ of this digital world. Very soon I was comfortably walking in it as if I was walking in real life.

It felt like everything was real. Everything was behaving, reacting exactly as it did in the real world, besides a few tracking issues – I believe Ivan was real. I believed he was there in real-time and even if he wasn’t in Russia – the fact that all three of us were comfortably moving in this digital world with no hiccups even when dying felt great.

Polygon_VR6

The possibilities of the Polygon VR platform are endless and become even more interesting when you think about various platforms around the world connecting to each other and allowing for more than ten players to be in a virtual world together. I pitch some ideas and possibilities of what this could mean for the future of entertainment, eSports and VR.

Check out the video below to see some gameplay of us trying the Polygon VR platform and more. Stay tuned to VRFocus to hear more about the platform and immersive technology.

March 12, 2018

Neurogaming Targets Out-of-Home Entertaiment With Two VR Platforms

Neurogaming showcased two products to the press last month, both of which aim to revolutionise out-of-home entertainment services. Their first product is a platform called Cinema VR, a cloud-based solution for virtual reality (VR) arcades. The second product is called Polygon VR. An arena space where five full body players are able to interact with one another in a free roaming space, which can be recorded and broadcast to television, tablets or phones. VRFocus spoke with Alex Morozov, Chief Marketing Officer of Neurogaming about their future ventures.

Cinema_VR_RevolVR — Players compete with one another in RevolVR at a location based tournament.

Cinema VR launched December 2016, it’s a turnkey solution for location owners allowing them for quick and easy access to essentially create a four-player VR set-up. It can be used for various different use cases such as for demonstrating industrial applications such as demoing or selling real estate or immersive gaming experiences. Anything that requires up to four users experiencing or interacting with a space can be enabled with Cinema VR. A Cloud-based solution, Morozov explains that the platform services a completely cycle from the selection of an area, content management, location management, guidelines for assembly, a catalogue of available locations, personal training, help with marketing and a pipeline of content.

With an integrated CRM system that is capable of third-party ear pieces, Cinema VR is supposed to help upscale and cross sale as Neurogaming will offer in-app purchases if the location hits a critical mass of users. The CRM is also able to recognise returning users, so if a child interacted with a character in an experience already and returns – the character will recognise her and potentially introduce new objects to interact with. The CRM will allow companies or individuals to register user preferences and offer ways to stimulate customers to return. Really what it is, is an easy set-up for users who are looking for an easy solution that can simply be controlled with a tablet to introduce VR for up to four players in a VR space. Cinema VR is set up on a subscription model at the moment, but next year between Q1 and Q2 it may be coming to consoles and and home users.

Cinema VR is already located in over 40 countries and will come with its own content that Neurogaming create in-house. They’ve already created several VR experiences that span several genres, including well-received shooter RevolVR. An eight minute game, Neurogaming tested the experience last November where they offered over $20,000 as a prize and saw how RevolVR engaged with audiences. Their next VR videogame World of Tanks, is already in Beta testing in Moscow and will be released to the Cinema VR platform come May. Morozov says that they have around 150 leads at various stages for creating more content that will be available to Cinema VR platform users. For now they have 50 locations in Spain with two locations opening in Vancouver, Canada and potentially over 18 Cinema VR locations opening in the United Arab Emirates. Morozov explains that location based VR is a great entry point, a space ripe for entrepreneurs as there is a renaissance taking place in the arcade market.

Neurogaming’s second product will excite anybody working in immersive entertainment, television, eSports and general videogaming. Polygon VR is an ambitious plan to amalgamate those audiences and connects up to five users in full body tracking systems and VR headsets. Polygon VR then uses a server to connect various physical arenas together and has integrated a built-in broadcast and television system that will allow for live-broadcasting to television, laptops, tablets and mobiles.

Morozov compares it to films The Running Man and The Hunger Games film trilogy, where players can be in dramatic action with zero trauma or risk but with all the spectacle and drama. All the action will be happening in real-time, across real locations with real people all filmed and edited by live action directors and producers to create a show. He also mentions a second screen ability that would enable viewers to have a direct impact on the action taking place. For example if an escape room scenario was taking place, viewers could give a hint to help them. If it was a shooter videogame, viewers could offer team support and try to debuff an enemy team. At the moment they’re hoping to bring AAA franchises on-board to help and bring something which Morozov believes can revolutionise the entertainment industry.

Polygon_VR13 Polygon_VR8

At the moment Polygon VR h ave two locations in Moscow, one in New York and one in Amsterdam. Polygon VR will also be available at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) where they will be able to demonstrate the smaller more mobile version of Polygon VR. Essentially, Polygon VR would be able to create a media show that can also double as a location based entertainment system. Neurogaming are hoping to bring it to Asia as well after showcasing at the Tokyo Games Show in Japan last year and are in talks with several partners in China too.

Morozov says that Polygon VR is hardware agnostic, and as soon as a new piece of hardware is available, they will be the first ones to purchase them and prepare them for both Cinema VR and Polygon VR. At the end of the day, he says that format, concept and content are king in this new age of immersive technology.

To find out more watch the video below.

January 23, 2018

World Of Tanks VR To Roll Out As Location-Based VR Experience, Care of Wargaming’s New Firm Neurogaming

For some videogame developers you get a whole raft of titles. Some are hits, some are misses and some are diamonds in a rather hefty skip full of rough. Then there are the developers who develop the occasional title all of which are critically acclaimed but they never seem to make much in the way of money. Artisan developers. Then there are those videogame developers who may as well be wearing a lab coat and long black rubber gloves, playing with electricity harvested from lightning bolts by a dirty great antenna sticking out of the top of their offices. These developers don’t just make videogames, like Doctor Frankenstein before them they bring life to a videogame monster, one that keeps going and going and cannot be stopped.

World of Tanks is one such monster. Since it rolled onto the scene over seven years ago in August 2010, the massively multiplayer online (MMO) – and free to play – videogame has made Wargaming a publishing juggernaut. A global hit played diligently the world over, over 200 million players now enjoy Wargaming’s titles which can be found across all the major gaming platforms and has spawned several spin-offs. Including naval stragegy title World of Warships.

Now, however, there’s going to be a new way to get yourself immersed into the epic tank battles of World War II – Wargaming are officially bringing World of Tanks to virtual reality (VR) – and location-based VR at that.

They are doing so. along with partners VRTech, through the founding of global location-based VR company Neurogaming. A Cyprus based firm, which already has a development studio in Russia and plans to open offices in Amsterdam and New York later this year. Neurogaming is currently at work on scalable, location-based VR solution CinemaVR which has already seen success throughout 2017. This is in addition to PolygonVR, a high-end, location-based entertainment solution which includes VR platform and is targeted to both competitive long-play multiplayer and eSports. Something VRFocus got to try out at last year’s Gamescom event. Neurogaming will be launching its own ‘Platform-as-a-Service’ to VR locations this year.

“With location-based VR, we make the experience more affordable and accessible. Moreover, unlike any other developer, our biggest aim is to change the experience from one-time involvement to a long-term engaging story with co-op and competitive elements.” Explains World of Tanks‘ creator Slava Makarov, who is also a Strategic Advisor for Neurogaming. “Working with the World of Tanks IP and creating an experience for its 180 million community is a massive and exciting opportunity for us.”

This will not be Wargaming’s first look into VR however, VRFocus has reported on numerous times the studio’s ‘Special Projects Unit’ has utilised immersive technology. Including a 360 degree experience onboard the HMS Belfast, celebrating the tank, taking a trip inside the HMS Cavalier and using Google Tango and Hololens to bring tanks from the videogame into reality. We will of course bring you further updates on how World of Tanks VR develops and more information about the developments at Neurogaming and Wargaming as we get them.

August 31, 2017

Don’t Think VR Has A Future? Wait Until You Try Wargaming.net’s Free Roaming VR

Wargaming.net is renown around the world for its online tank-based multiplayer World of Tanks (WoT). The company also dabbles in plenty of future tech like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to ensure it stays up with current trends, such as its VR spectating experiment during the WoT 2016 Grand Finals or the Tank 100 app. Then earlier this month the company announced a partnership with Russian VR specialist VRTech, to bring its location-based entertainment to Europe. The first unveiling of which took place at Gamescom 2017 and VRFocus was there to try it out.

If you’ve read VRFocus‘ previous coverage you’ll know that VRTech’s system comes in two flavours, Cinema VR and Polygon VR. The former is the simpler of the two which VRTech franchises out. This involves a setup rig that’s 5 metres by 5 metres, consisting of four HTC Vive’s suspended from the top of the metal framework. This allows all cabling to be off the floor giving players a reasonable movement range much like you’d have in a home setup. The system also allows up to four players in one session.

Wargaming-VRTech

For the Cinema VR demonstration one videogame was playable, a first-person shooter (FPS) called RevolVR. This was essentially a wild west shootout scenario, very similar in fact to Dead and Buried. After activating the character select wheel – which chooses automatically – each player finds themselves dotted around a small level, with a limited amount of cover to hide behind. It’s then a case of killing your opponents as quickly as possible, either with body shots or a few well placed headshots with the pistols provided – no other guns were available.

This sort of title is ideal for a setup like this, limiting movement to ducking behind cover and popping up to take a shot. While it won’t amaze gamers who are well attuned to VR, it will certainly impress those who’ve never even tried VR – and that’s the point – as the locations will be in shopping centres or amusement arcades for example. And for this purpose Cinema VR does an admiral job.

Switching to Polygon VR however is another ball game entirely. This is wireless, complete free roaming gameplay, much like The VOID or Zero Latency. This has an area of 10 metres by 10 metres, using an MSI backpack, StrikerVR gun, and a customised Oculus Rift headset. Again, this is designed for four players but now there’s plenty of kit to wear as the system tracks your entire body. So attached to your feet, legs, waist, elbows, hands and head are markers – similar to mo-cap setups – enabling operators to track every movement of your body for full immersion.

This is definitely not the sort of attraction you’ll find in a shopping mall, it’s way to big, complicated and time consuming to setup, this is one for theme parks. Just getting everything hooked up and ready took at least 20 minutes, with the videogame taking about 15-20 minutes to complete. Here’s the thing, put four friends into Polygon VR and they’re going to have a brilliant time, or they should do. When VRFocus tried the experience it was with two strangers who only spoke pigeon English which made it hard to build up a team dynamic with a solid plan on achieving success, but it was easy to tell how that would work with some buddies.

The actual videogame on demonstration was called Paragon, a military shooter where you had to ascend a tower, taking out machine gunners and snipers, punching in codes to activate sections to eventually free a UFO before getting picked up in a helicopter.

VRTech - CinemaVR

In parts it was amazing, just like VR in general has to be seen to be understood, this type of VR takes the technology to a whole different level and you’d want every immersive experience to be like this. However it wasn’t all plain sailing, at times things glitched out and became almost unplayable.

When things ran smoothly the ability to just wander around a platform, picking off enemies, then moving to another position, seeing a team mate and having to remember to physically walk around them was as equally weird as it was brilliant. Home consumer VR is immersive that’s for sure but this dials that up to eleven – laser quest just won’t cut it anymore.

Now this may have been due to Gamescom and the fact that any sort of wireless communication is horribly unstable, there were times when things just didn’t work. Trying to punch a four digit code in became a test of perseverance and luck, hit the wrong number and trying to delete it would erase the previous numbers, building that feeling of wanting to hit the keypad before realising it wasn’t physically there.

Then at times the tracking went so suddenly one of the other team members would have their feet above their heads, arms contorted into some unfathomable position like a freaky Picasso painting. The most annoying however was when the gun lost tracking, it was visually there but not in the same place as the actual gun, or it would glitch about so trying to shoot a sniper nestled into a tower became almost an impossibility.

So there were some issues granted. After finishing the demo though all that fell away to leave a feeling of excitement. Like any new tech finding its feet there are going to be hurdles to cross, and VR has overcome many with plenty more still to go. One thing’s for sure, location-based, free-roaming needs to be a part of VR’s future and Wargaming.net and VRTech are on the right path, now where are the tanks!

August 18, 2017

Wargaming to Showcase VRTech’s Polygon VR and Cinema VR at Gamescom 2017

Earlier this month VRFocus reported on World of Tanks developer Wargaming.net announcing a partnership with Russian virtual reality (VR) specialist VRTech, to bring the latter’s location-based immersive experiences to Europe. Well that’s happening sooner rather than later with Wargaming.net’s stand at Gamescom 2017 to showcase Polygon VR and Cinema VR.

Polygon VR and Cinema VR are essentially two sides of the same coin. The first provides the experiences and tech required to play in VR, with VRTech creating its own in-house first-person shooter (FPS), a ‘School of Magic’ team exercise and a puzzle solving adventure, all of which are multiplayer based.

VRTech - CinemaVR

While Cinema VR is the location solution that VRTech franchises out to various locations across Russia. With enough play area for up to four people.

Alongside VRTech, Wargaming.net will also have plenty of tank related stuff going on, taking up 1400 m² of show floor with new iterations of World of Tanks on PC and consoles, World of Warships, and a public world premiere of Creative Assembly’s Total War: ARENA.

Talking about Gamecom 2017, Victor Kislyi, CEO of Wargaming said: “For Wargaming and each of our employees, who are gamers by heart, the shows and meetings at our two gamescom booths are the highlight of each year. We are so proud to finally unveil all our latest achievements, future games and put on a great show to our true fans plus thousands of new players. We’ll have chance to chat, get their feedback and deliver truly legendary and fun experience during five amazing days in Cologne. This is also our chance to meet most of our current and potential future partners in person to strengthen our business relationships and to be even more successful together in the future.”

VRFocus will continue its coverage of Wargaming.net, reporting back with the company’s latest VR projects.