Category: realities.io

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Scenic Jigsaw Game Puzzling Places is Coming to PlayStation VR

Puzzling Places

Puzzling Places by Realities.io might have been available as a sideloaded Oculus Quest app for a year now but it has been gaining traction of late. After being one of the launch titles for Oculus’ App Lab, today the developer has revealed Puzzling Places is on course for a PlayStation VR launch at the end of the year.

Puzzling Places

Best described as a meditative virtual reality (VR) 3D puzzler, the studio takes photogrammetry scans of beautiful places around the globe and turns them into hyper-realistic miniatures for you to reassemble. In a recent PlayStation Blog post, Daniel Sproll, cofounder of Realities.io revealed that: “Puzzling Places was a result of a total accident – An error in our pipeline caused the pieces of one of our Photogrammetry models to be jumbled up which sparked a brilliant idea to, you guessed it, puzzle the pieces back together!”

Gameplay works exactly as you’d expect a puzzle to work, you’re presented with a jumbled up selection of pieces to put back together, with some handy 2D photographs taken from various angles to help you visualise the final 3D model. As you do so this miniature world is brought to life thanks to an immersive soundscape, hearing the bustle of a town or squawking seagulls at a beach.

The current Oculus Quest version in App Lab contains six puzzles each with a set number of pieces like Market Square in Gliwice (seen below) which has 200 pieces. Realities.io plans on expanding the gameplay possibilities whilst developing the PlayStation VR version, enabling each puzzle to have multiple difficulties depending on how quick or long you want to play. Puzzling Places will also get more puzzles to solve upon release.

Puzzling Places

Long term fans of Puzzling Places will know that Realities.io has been funding the project through Patreon, with backers able to access a total of 38 jigsaw puzzles which have come from 3D scans made by creators from around the world. Some of these may well come to the PlayStation VR version or the studio could have new ones planned, we’ll have to wait and see.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of Puzzling Places, reporting back with further updates.

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App Lab Title Puzzling Places’ Update Adds More Free Puzzles

Puzzling Places

There are plenty of puzzle videogames for virtual reality (VR) headsets yet few offer the classic jigsaw experience. realities.io’s Puzzling Places is one such title to offer this style of gameplay, just with 3D models of real places. Today, the studio has announced the latest update for its beta app, refining the experience whilst adding several new puzzles for free.

Puzzling Places

Puzzling Places has been available via SideQuest for almost a year now, providing a free prototype of one 3D jigsaw – the Tatev Monastery in Armenia. Players who wanted to access more could then join realities.io’s Patreon where a total of 38 jigsaw puzzles are available. When App Lab arrived earlier this month Puzzling Places was one of the first titles to make the list.

With the roll-out of Puzzling Places – Beta v4.1 today, players will now have access to a total of six jigsaw puzzles. The free ones are:

  • Ice Cream Stairs – (20 pieces)
  • Boat Josefa – (100 pieces)
  • Devil’s Slide Bunker – (100 pieces)
  • Tsuruga Castle – (100 pieces)
  • Market Square in Gliwic – (200 pieces)
  • Tatev Monastery – (200 pieces)

Alongside the new content, realities.io has included some new features. Players now have access to Groups, so they can organize pieces into stacks to reduce clutter. Each puzzle has a new finale to celebrate its completion plus there’s remastered audio and new SFX: “We’ve revamped the app’s entire audio library with new sound effects, immersive soundscapes, and regional audio locations. Each puzzle is its own little world,” the studio notes.

Puzzling Places

Additionally, the new Settings Menu will allow players to customize the app, choosing to puzzle with reference photos, change locomotion settings, as well as other minor adjustments. 

realities.io will be launching further improvements as it moves towards an official Oculus Quest launch this summer, with additional platform support planned for the future. As further updates are announced VRFocus will let you know.

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Sidequest Prototype Puzzling Places Turns 3D Model Into 98-Piece Puzzle

A new SideQuest prototype from Realities.io turns 3D models captured with photogrammetry into puzzles you can put together in VR.

Puzzling Places is a “very early” prototype concept for an Oculus Quest puzzle game that sees the player putting together 3D models made from captures of real places. The prototype was put together over the last several weeks in social isolation by the folks at Realities.io, a company which made the technology used for The Key and other VR projects. It only features one puzzle at the time of this writing because the creators wanted to release it quickly to get feedback on the concept. The included puzzle is described as fairly difficult with 98 pieces of the Tatev Monastery in Armenia, so if you’re looking for a VR alternative to real life puzzling this looks like an intriguing concept.

“We’ve had the idea of Puzzling Places floating around our heads for a while. One day, due to a Unity import error, the pieces of a scanned environment were scrambled around the scene. Someone made a joke that fixing this by hand would like making a 3D jigsaw puzzle, and so the idea was born,” Realitis.io photogrammetry expert Azad Balabanian wrote in a prepared statement. “When the Coronavirus Crisis travel restrictions forced us to postpone some of our planned scanning projects, the lockdown forcing us to work from home, and physical jigsaw puzzles selling out everywhere, we decided to make the best out of the situation.”

Check out the trailer below:

The game also includes audio recorded on location and the ability to “force pull” puzzle pieces toward you with the promise of more features to come.

You can download the Puzzling Places prototype free for Oculus Quest now from SideQuest. If you’re unfamiliar with sideloading content onto the Oculus Quest standalone we put together a guide that walks you through all the steps involved.

The post Sidequest Prototype Puzzling Places Turns 3D Model Into 98-Piece Puzzle appeared first on UploadVR.

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‘Puzzling Places’ to Bring Photogrammetry-based 3D Puzzles to PSVR This Year

Realities.io, the team behind the photogrammetry-based VR experience Realities (2016), announced that its 3D jigsaw game Puzzling Places will arrive on PSVR sometime later this year.

Update (March 17th, 2021): Puzzling Places is coming to PSVR in Winter 2021, Realties.io say in a PlayStation blopost. Just like the version available on Quest, the 3D jigsaw puzzle app will feature multiple difficulty variants for each puzzle, and also post-launch content after it arrives on PSVR later this year.

Update (February 17th, 2021): Puzzling Places is now live on App Lab. The publicly-accessible version obtained from SideQuest and App Lab now includes six freebie puzzles.

Patreon supporters are granted greater access to over 30 puzzles, which the studio hopes to release once Puzzling Places launches officially. (Patreon link)

The studio also released a new trailer, which we’ve included above and below the article.

Original Article (April 28th, 2020): The studio is currently seeking funding to eventually bring a full-feature version to the Oculus Store, however in the meantime the studio has made the prototype game available for free on SideQuest, the unofficial sideloading app store for Oculus Quest.

The project is still in pre-production, however with today’s prototype the studio is releasing one environment to get what they hope will be some early validation of the concept and feedback from the community to guide further development.

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Image courtesy Realities.io
Image courtesy Realities.io
Image courtesy Realities.io
Image courtesy Realities.io
Image courtesy Realities.io
Image courtesy Realities.io

The Realities team says Puzzling Places was made with “some of [their] most beautiful Photogrammetry scans,” with the first centered on the historic Tatev Monastery, a ninth-century Armenian Apostolic monastery located in southeastern Armenia. This, the studio tells us, includes immersive ambisonic spatial audio recorded on-site, and includes whole scans of both the interior and exterior of the monastery.

“The goal was to create a relaxing and meditative experience, giving you a very simple task: putting pieces together,” Realities.io tells Road to VR. “The game design, sound design, and environment design were all built around reinforcing that concept.”

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And where did the idea come from? Realities.io tells us it was actually a mistake that led them to create the unique puzzler.

“We’ve had the idea of Puzzling Places floating around our heads for a while. One day, due to a Unity import error, the pieces of a scanned environment were scrambled around the scene. Someone made a joke that fixing this by hand would like making a 3D jigsaw puzzle, and so the idea was born!” the studio says.

Founded in 2016, Realities.io is spent its early days in the Boost VC accelerator in San Mateo, California. Now based in Berlin, Germany, the studio has a number of VR films and experiences to its name, including Tribeca 2019’s Best Immersive Media award winner The Key, and Home After War, winner of the Best Use of Immersive Arts at SXSW 2019.

Find out how to install SideQuest to play Puzzling Places and many more indie gems that are currently flying under the radar.

The post ‘Puzzling Places’ to Bring Photogrammetry-based 3D Puzzles to PSVR This Year appeared first on Road to VR.

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Into the Depths: A VR tour of Germany’s Last Industrial Coal Mine

Virtual reality (VR) and 360-degree tours of tourist locations, including museums and art galleries are becoming increasingly popular as a means to attract attention to these attractions, and allow people who might be otherwise unable to visit to view the exhibits. Another attraction look to use this technology is a little more unusual – a historic mining operation in Germany.

This experience is made possible through the Realities app, who has introduced new DLC which allows users to explore the depths of the last industrial coal mine in Germany by capturing the location using photogrammetry and volumetric VR.

The Realities software is available for free on Steam, compatible with HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality. The app has been available since 2016, offering virtual trips to interesting locations such as Death Valley, or the Cologne Cathedral.

The new Realities DLC, titled Glückauf! Centres around the Prosper Haniel, the last active coal mine in Germany. The mine is located on the Ruhr area in Germany, and is set to close all operations by the end of 2018.

The Glückauf! DLC aims to immortalises the complex network of tunnels, located 1200 feet underground, which has been captured in high detail using volumetric VR for a detailed and realistic recreation.

Capturing the data needed for the recreation was quite a difficult task for the Realities.io team, as conditions were hostile, and much of the equipment was actively dangerous in the mine environment.

“Glückauf! was definitely one of our most challenging production so far,” states Realities.io in an official release. “Starting with the fact that none of our equipment is usually allowed in the mine due to risk of triggering mining gas explosions – usually you even have to change your undies to pure cotton ones that don’t make sparks.”

For further news of new and upcoming VR content, keep checking back with VRFocus.

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ResearchVR Episode 34 – VR Locomotion with Daniel Sproll of Realities.io

ResearchVR Episode 34 – VR Locomotion with Daniel Sproll of Realities.io

This week on ResearchVR we dig deep into VR locomotion from theoretical, practical and technical perspectives.

Daniel Sproll, co-founder at Realities.io, started his virtual reality adventure “before it was cool” – over five years ago. Starting in psychology research using VR at Eyespace Lab, Sproll participated in projects such as Colosse and the Audi VR Showroom Experience. He joins us on this week’s podcast.

Episode Preview

We have all battled with locomotion in virtual reality. At the moment the ideal – continuous locomotion – is simply not available, unless you have warehouse tracking or an omnidirectional treadmill. So the question is: how do I move in my virtual experience?

Every time you teleport I had a feeling like you start from scratch with your mental mapping.

Currently, teleportation is considered an almost-silver bullet. Most of the experiences on the market simply black out the screen and make you appear somewhere else. This has a rather dire consequence which is the user losing their spatial orientation. This means crucial seconds of confusion.

Learn more in Episode 34 – VR locomotion with Daniel Sproll from Realities.io. You can also subscribe to this podcast via your favorite app through the subscription button below.

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