Category: roblox

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Solve the Clues and Win in the Roblox: Ready Player One Adventure

As if you didn’t know already, Ready Player One is due for release at the end of the month and companies have been falling over each other to get in on its promotion. The latest comes from user-generated, online entertainment platform Roblox, with a movie competition tie-in. 

Ready Player One Hero

Due to go live later today, the Roblox: Ready Player One Adventure is a parallel adventure to the movie for Roblox players to enjoy, taking participants across the virtual universe within the platform. Just like the film, this endeavour is powered by clues, with Roblox providing a series of clues that will guide participants on a search for hidden keys that unlock hidden gates. As players unlock these gates, leaders will be tracked on a Ready Player One leaderboard within Roblox. The final winner, who manages to find all the keys and unlocks the final gate, will win the coveted “Dominus,” a highly-prized, rare virtual item on the Roblox platform.

“Bringing elements of this movie to life in our virtual universe has been exciting,” said David Baszucki, founder and CEO of Roblox in a a statement. “I am a huge fan of Ready Player One and Ernest Cline’s book paints the most accurate and vivid portrayal of the metaverse we’ve built here at Roblox. I’m excited to explore these parallels during my on-stage interview with him today at SXSW.”

Baszucki will interview Ernest Cline during a special Ready Player One session at the SXSW Interactive show starting at 12:30pm CDT today, Monday, 12th March, 2018. Highlights from that interview will also be aired as part of an exclusive, Roblox-hosted Silicon Valley screening of the movie on 27th March, 2018 at the Dolby Cinema at 1275 Market in downtown San Francisco, California.

The first clue goes live at approximately 10:00 am PDT today (6pm GMT), and is open to anyone who has a Roblox account. When live, specific details can be found at www.roblox.com/readyplayerone.

Last week saw HTC Vive announce several Ready Player One tie-ins, with eight experiences due for release in March ahead of the film premiere. All of which will all be made available on Viveport and Steam for free. For any further Ready Player One announcements, keep reading VRFocus.

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ROBLOX Director of Engineering: “We’re one of the most popular MMO VR gaming platforms.”

ROBLOX was one of the first platforms to embrace the concept of user-created virtual reality (VR). The introduction of VR to ROBLOX in 2016 came as something of a surprise to many, but the response from its users was largely positive. The ROBLOX user base tends to skew younger, which of course if where the next generation of creators and innovators will come from.

Claus Moberg, Senior Director of Engineer at ROBLOX has led the push for VR in ROBLOX, and has spoken to VRFocus about the pitfalls, challenges and rewards of introducing VR into ROBLOX, and what that might mean for the future of the title.

VRFocus: ROBLOX’s VR compatibility launched back in 2016. How has it progressed since its debut?

Claus Moberg [CM]: We have recently shipped a new control and camera scheme, called “Comfort Cam”, that dramatically reduces simulation sickness in the majority of our VR-compatible content. Player count is roughly steady, averaging about 10,000 plays per week.

VRFocus: At launch there was an issue with appropriate content – much of what players were creating for VR was not suitable due to simulation sickness issues – how have you combated this?

CM: We developed Comfort Cam to address this very issue.

VRFocus: Do you offer different tools for VR content creation opposed to standard monitor-based experiences?

CM: Roblox Studio is capable of launching play tests in a VR HMD, and, in the near future, we will launch a UI editor with emulation modes for VR.

VRFocus: Originally ROBLOX was only compatible with Oculus Rift, have you added additional HMD compatibility?

CM: We are compatible with Rift and HTC Vive HMDs.

VRFocus: Are there plans for a PlayStation 4/PlayStation VR port?

CM: No comment.

VRFocus: What kind of adoption rate are you seeing for ROBLOX players in VR?

CM: We see an average of 10K play sessions per week. This makes us one of the most popular MMO VR gaming platforms, though it constitutes a very small percentage of Roblox’s user base.

ROBLOX art

VRFocus: How integral has VR compatibility become for ROBLOX’s future plans?

CM: It is important because it helps us future-proof our developer-facing APIs and camera/control scripts to be more adaptable to any future game content consumption platform that may come down the pike.

VRFocus: What lies ahead for ROBLOX’s VR compatibility in 2018?

CM: We will continue to push new features and optimizations for our VR users and creators.

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Roblox Introduces VR Comfort Cam

Collaborative, creative virtual reality (VR) videogame platform Roblox has turned its attention to solving one of the perennial problems with VR experiences – simulation sickness. With the new ‘Comfort Cam’ feature, the developers are hoping to make Roblox a more enjoyable experience for its players.

Roblox is designed as an entry-level creative space that lets young people design and create their own VR videogame experiences without needing to learn how to code or use complex design and modelling tools. The developers have used an almost aggressively cross-platform strategy to put these simple development tools in as many hands as possible.

As part of its ongoing effort to improve the VR experience, Roblox is introducing the ‘comfort cam’, which switches the camera to a stationary fixed position, as opposed to the usual default of following the player’s avatar. This change eliminates the movement bobbing that can cause nausea in some players. Once the player stops moving, the camera will shift to a new position, closer to the player avatar.

Also being introduced is a VR Toggle which allows players to switch in and out of VR Mode when an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive device is connected to a PC. A new VR Radial menu is being integrated to give VR users easier access to options such as the friends list and notifications menu.

The new features will be made available for free to VR Roblox users soon.

VRFocus will bring you further news on Roblox as it becomes available.