Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation
What Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality developers are talking about
Apex Legends players can expect seasonal rewards and a Battle Pass to arrive in March according to an FAQ on the EA website. Similar to Fortnite, unlockable seasonal content includes exclusive skins, loot boxes, and more.
The post The ‘Apex Legends’ Battle Pass and seasonal rewards arrive in March appeared first on Digital Trends.
Apex Legends currently only allows players to enter battle royale matches in groups of three. That may soon change as datamined code allegedly contains references to Solo Mode and 2-Man Squads.
The post ‘Apex Legends’ players may soon be able to battle on their own or in teams of 2 appeared first on Digital Trends.
A newly discovered Apex Legends bug gives players easy wins by trapping them in the Supply Ship, where they are immune to damage while the circle closes in on their opponents. Respawn Entertainment said that a fix is on the way.
The post ‘Apex Legends’ bug traps players in the Supply Ship for an easy win appeared first on Digital Trends.
Respawn Entertainment is a very, very busy developer. Earlier this week the company launched its new free-to-play battle royale game, Apex Legends. Later this year it’s also set to release Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Now it’s confirmed that more Titanfall content is in the works, but it’s not a Titanfall VR spin-off.
Studio CEO Vince Zampella reaffirmed as much in a recent tweet. In response to recent reports that Apex Legends (itself set in the Titanfall universe) had replaced the much anticipated Titanfall 3, Zampella noted that the studio was “working on more Titanfall” for later in the year. When one fan stated that this would be the VR game Respawn is working on, the CEO simply replied: “No!”
No!
— Vince Zampella (@VinceZampella) February 5, 2019
Respawn already stated that its VR game would not be set in the Titanfall or Star Wars universes when it was announced in 2017. It seems like plans haven’t changed over the past two years.
What we do know is that Respawn’s game will be exclusive to Oculus headsets (definitely the Rift, Quest TBA). It’s a shooter that aims to give you an experience “closer to what a soldier would experience in real combat.”
The initial teaser trailer for the game (above) states that it’ll be out this year. That said, it was a no-show at Oculus Connect 5 last September. Oculus assured us that work on the game was progressing at the time. Still, with so many other projects in the works and Oculus revealing other exclusives like Asgard’s Wrath, we’re beginning to wonder if this project will really be out in 2019.
Tagged with: Oculus Studios, Respawn Entertainment, Titanfall VR
The post Respawn Reaffirms Its New Game Is Not Titanfall VR appeared first on UploadVR.
Apex Legends is a solid battle royale game, but one can’t shake the feeling that its creation was dictated by Respawn’s new owners: Electronic Arts. In the process, the studio’s soul could be lost.
The post EA is losing out on the true potential of Titanfall studio with ‘Apex Legends’ appeared first on Digital Trends.
You only need to take a look at VRFocus’ ‘Best Oculus Rift Games of 2018‘ to see some of the awesome content the PC-based headset has managed to deliver over the course of 2018. So now it’s time to look towards the future and the next 12 months. VRFocus has chosen five virtual reality (VR) videogames that you should be keeping an eye on, some due very soon while others are a bit more ambiguous in their release windows.
While not entirely a surprise, Ready at Dawn’s sci-fi sequel Lone Echo II was certainly the biggest videogame announcement during Oculus Connect 5 (OC5) a few months ago. It continues the story of Jack and Liv from where Lone Echo left off, with a teaser trailer showing Liv fixing the players robotic character Jack. Exclusive to Oculus Rift, few other details have been released regarding how Ready at Dawn plan to expand the storyline or the expansion of features. This info will probably arrive during the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in March.
Lone Echo II only has a release window of 2019 at the moment.
While most of the videogames on this list don’t offer a specific launch date, InnerspaceVR’s mind-bending puzzle experience A Fisherman’s Tale most certainly does. A single-player puzzle adventure, A Fisherman’s Tale is all about thinking outside the box, as the title plays with dimensions and scale. It’s only through interacting with the central lighthouse model as Bob the fisherman that the puzzles can be solved and Bob can turn the lighthouse on.
A Fisherman’s Tale is a multiplatform release, being published by Vertigo Games on 22nd January.
VR veterans Insomniac Games (The Unspoken, Edge of Nowhere, Feral Rites) are looking to dominate 2019 with ambitious open-world adventure Stormland. Another sci-fi epic that’s going to be competing against Lone Echo II for players attention, Stormland puts you in the role of a robot who just happens to be a gardener on a lush alien planet. That was until The Tempest shattered your android body, so you must head out across the planet to augment yourself and save your friends. The title will feature both single-player and multiplayer options, with players having complete freedom to run, climb and fly across the expansive terrain.
Stormland is another Oculus Rift exclusive which has a tentative 2019 release window.
2019 definitely seems to be the year Oculus Rift developers are pushing the technology harder than ever, aiming to offer VR fans even richer and more hands-on experiences. Wilson’s Heart studio Twisted Pixel in conjunction with Oculus Studios is working on a spy adventure called Defector. First revealed as part of Oculus Rift’s second anniversary, Defector is a high octane homage to all those great spy movies, with ridiculous stunts, plenty of guns, cars, and of course a little gambling.
Exclusive to Oculus Rift, Defector was originally due for release in 2018, but slipped into 2019 for undisclosed reasons. No specific launch date has yet been confirmed.
This is the big mystery on this list – which also makes it the most exciting. Respawn Entertainment is the studio behind Titanfall and Star Wars Battlefront. The team announced work on a VR title back in 2017 – and no it’s not based/related to either of those titles – and have been super secretive ever since. No title for the project has been revealed, not even a teasing image or two, just a 2019 date and the knowledge that Respawn Entertainment looks to be playing to its strengths with job listings describing a “AAA VR shooter game”.
Only the Oculus Studios logo has been seen next to Respawn’s, so this looks to be another Oculus Rift exclusive, due out at some point this year.
During Electronic Arts' presentation at EA Play, we got a big surprise from Respawn Entertainment's CEO Vince Zampella: There's a new Star Wars game coming and it takes us to a dark time in the Star Wars universe.
The post ‘Jedi Fallen Order’ will take gamers to the Star Wars universe in late 2019 appeared first on Digital Trends.
Whether you’ve caught the VR bug this week after watching all the Oculus Connect 4 (OC4) announcements, been interested in immersive technology for a while, or you’re currently involved in the VR, AR, MR sphere and want a new challenge, VRFocus has a bunch of roles that might just be of interest.
View the new listings below for more information:
| Location | Company | Role | Link |
| Bristol, UK | Opposable Games | Unity programmer | Click here to apply |
| Garching, Germany | Harman | Software Engineer Augmented Reality | Click here to apply |
| San Fernando Valley, CA | Respawn Entertainment | Animator | Click here to apply |
| San Fernando Valley, CA | Respawn Entertainment | Senior Animator | Click here to apply |
| San Fernando Valley, CA | Respawn Entertainment | Senior Environment Artist | Click here to apply |
| San Fernando Valley, CA | Respawn Entertainment | Senior Sound Designer | Click here to apply |
| San Fernando Valley, CA | Respawn Entertainment | Senior VFX Artist | Click here to apply |
| San Fernando Valley, CA | Respawn Entertainment | Senior Sound Designer | Click here to apply |
| San Fernando Valley, CA | Respawn Entertainment | Senior Software Engineer – Generalist | Click here to apply |
| San Fernando Valley, CA | Respawn Entertainment | Software Engineer | Click here to apply |
| San Fernando Valley, CA | Respawn Entertainment | Game Designer | Click here to apply |
| San Fernando Valley, CA | Respawn Entertainment | Senior Game Designer | Click here to apply |
| San Fernando Valley, CA | Respawn Entertainment | Associate Producer | Click here to apply |
| San Fernando Valley, CA | Respawn Entertainment | Producer | Click here to apply |
| Remote/Distributed | Bigscreen Inc. | Senior Unity3D Developer – PC | Click here to apply |
| Remote/Distributed | Bigscreen Inc. | Senior Unity3D Developer – Android | Click here to apply |
| Remote/Distributed | Bigscreen Inc. | Senior Full-Stack Javascript Programmer | Click here to apply |
| Remote/Distributed | Bigscreen Inc. | Backend Engineer | Click here to apply |
| Remote/Distributed | Bigscreen Inc. | Senior Win32/Graphics Programmer | Click here to apply |
| Remote/Distributed | Bigscreen Inc. | Senior Front-end UI Developer | Click here to apply |
| Remote/Distributed | Bigscreen Inc. | Senior Unity3D Designer | Click here to apply |
| Remote/Distributed | Bigscreen Inc. | Creative Director | Click here to apply |
| Remote/Distributed | Bigscreen Inc. | Lead Avatar Artist | Click here to apply |
| Remote/Distributed | Bigscreen Inc. | Lead Environment Artist | Click here to apply |
| Remote/Distributed | Bigscreen Inc. | Content Marketer | Click here to apply |
| Remote/Distributed | Bigscreen Inc. | Video Game Trailer Editor | Click here to apply |
As usual, you can check last week’s edition for further job listings. If you are an employer looking for someone to fill a role in a VR, AR or other related areas in the industry and want that position to be featured on next week’s VR Job Hub, please send details to either pgraham@vrfocus.com or keva@vrfocus.com.
Check back with VRFocus next Sunday at 3PM BST and every Sunday for the latest roles in the VR industry.
The opening keynote at the fourth annual Oculus Connect developer conference delivered several new product announcements from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, VP of Virtual Reality Hugo Barra, and others. This included new standalone VR hardware, a new price for the Rift, and many software and game reveals.
At $199, Oculus Go is a low-cost, all-in-one standalone headset launching in early 2018. On stage, Hugo Barra claimed that the headset was designed to deliver the “best visual clarity of any product we’ve ever built”, using a “fast-switch LCD” at 2560×1440 and an “all-new, custom optical design”. The lenses are an evolution of the ‘hybrid’ optics found in the current Rift. Sharing the same controller input set as Gear VR – a single controller and rotational-only tracking – apps will be “binary compatible”, working on both systems. Essentially, Oculus Go is an enhanced, standalone version of Gear VR.
Described as the “first, complete, standalone VR system with full inside-out tracking and hand presence”, Santa Cruz developer kits will be available next year. The company revealed various improvements to the latest prototype, including brand new 6-degrees-of-freedom controllers, similar to Touch. Unlike Oculus Go, Santa Cruz is designed as a high-end, standalone system, with full positional tracking on both headset and controllers, but will be limited by the performance of its on-board mobile PC. Check out our hands-on impressions here.
Nate Mitchell, Head of Rift, described how Oculus has been rebuilding the core software from the ground up over the past year, introducing various improvements to ‘Rift Core 2.0’. Most significantly, Oculus Dash is a total overhaul of the Rift user interface, designed specifically for motion input. It combines the existing functionality of Home and the Universal Menu, while allowing access to traditional desktop apps. Mitchell claims Dash will offer “best in class performance and visual quality,” for PC apps in VR, setting the platform “on a path to replacing real monitors entirely.”
The Rift Core 2.0 update also brings a brand new Oculus Home space, with a more realistic visual design, with “state of the art lighting” and “dynamic soft shadows”, powered by Unreal Engine 4. This is customisable with toys, furniture, artwork and achievements, and is designed to be a persistent, social space, with the potential to create shared spaces in the future.
Hugo Barra, Vice President of Virtual Reality at Oculus announced a permanent price cut of the Rift and Touch bundle to $399. The package still includes the same hardware bundle of headset, two sensors, two Touch controllers, and “six free apps” – although there are actually several more free apps available on the Store.
Following the success of Ready at Dawn’s sci-fi adventure Lone Echo (2017) and standalone multiplayer mode Echo Arena, the studio has confirmed a new multiplayer, first-person shooter experience coming in 2018 called Echo Combat. In addition, more single player content for Lone Echo is on the way, continuing the adventure of Captain Olivia and Jack.
Oculus’ Head of Content Jason Rubin’s closing announcement was that Respawn Entertainment, ex-Call of Duty developers and creators of Titanfall, are building a major new VR title for Oculus Rift. The game is due to launch in 2019, and Respawn director Peter Hirschmann offered a few details on their blog.
The post Oculus Connect 4 Day 1 Roundup: Oculus Go, Rift Price Drop, New ‘Santa Cruz’ Prototype, and More appeared first on Road to VR.