Social VR apps are a big part of the industry’s future, but everyone’s got their own ideas as to what they should offer. Avatars are a big part of that discussion, as how we represent ourselves inside VR forms a big part of the connections we can make with others. We’ve seen plenty of interesting experiments in this regard, but EmbodyMe could have something special on its hands.
EmbodyMe offers a fairly standard suite of social activities, including playing games and taking pictures with friends, but its real claim to fame is its avatar creation system. When setting up your character you can upload a picture of yourself, either using a webcam or with any image on your PC, and the game will map your face onto your virtual avatar. It’s pretty easy to do and it also offers a slate of examples including Barrack Obama and Jackie Chan.
The app also detects your voice for a primitive form of lip syncing, and you can recreate facial expressions with your controller. It’s safe to say it’s a little creepy at first, but you can dress up your avatar to fit yourself pretty well. The game’s also got a pretty accurate tracking algorithm that did a good job replicating the location of my arms inside VR without need for other trackers.
Speaking to UploadVR over email, developer Issei Yoshida explained that his team had come up with the app after growing frustrated with traditional social experiences like Skype. He sees EmbodyMe filling the gap between those apps and face-to-face meetings. In fact, the team wants the app to “entirely replaceme” the former in the long-term. In the future, Yoshida sees the app growing business-oriented features to attract new customers. He wants every day actions like working and playing to be available inside the app.
EmbodyMe will be on Steam Early Access on March 25th with support for both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
At GDC this year, SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) showed a couple of new eye tracking demos at Valve’s booth. They added eye tracking to avatars in the social VR experiences of Pluto VR and Rec Room, which provided an amazing boost to the social presence within these experience.
There are so many subtle body language cues that are communicated non-verbally through the someone else’s eye contact, gaze position, or even blinking. Since it’s difficult to see your own eye movement due to saccades, it’s best to experience eye tracking in a social VR context. Without having a recording of your eyes in social VR, you have to rely upon looking at a virtual mirror as you look to the extremes of your periphery, observing your vestibulo–ocular reflex as your eyes lock gaze while you turn your head, or winking at yourself.
I had a chance to catch up with SMI’s Head of the OEM business Christian Villwock at GDC to talk about the social presence multiplier of eye tracking, the anatomy of the eye, and some of the 2x performance boosts they’re seeing with foveated rendering on NVIDIA GPUs. Continue reading "Deepening Social Presence with SMI Eye Tracking"
If there’s one thing most acolytes of VR can agree on, it’s that the medium is still very much an experiment in motion. While the technology has found its main homes in the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR (PSVR) platforms, the nuts and bolts of VR’s more social aspects are still very much a free-for-all of ideas. Experiences like Rec Room and Altspace are often regarded as the industry’s accessible, if a bit whacky, standard social spaces.
But none of this comes without months or even years of experimentation, something that software engineer Stefan Walker and technical artist Luca Prasso (both of Google) know firsthand. As part of Google’s efforts at Daydream Labs, Walker and Prasso worked on over 110 VR tech prototypes since 2014, all in the name of making a better social experience in virtual reality. The two men showed off their experimental handiwork at a panel during the 2017 Game Developers Conference (GDC) earlier this month.
For both men, the idea of an improved social VR experience hinges on three things: Avatars, “co-presence,” and mixed media, such as the the green screen trailers that companies frequently use to showcase real people in their virtual environments.
“I’m Italian. I talk with my hands,” said Prasso, referring to the need for well-made representations of our various limbs inside VR. Legs, and by extensions arms, are a unique problem, both for developers and for players. While user comfort was found more highly when their virtual avatar’s hands were distinctly separate from their torso (eliminating the need for upper limbs that could “break” and move unnaturally), user’s found it much more comfortable to see visual representations of their legs (in applicable experiences), if only as aid for not bumping into objects and feeling “grounded.”
While VR users who come from an active gaming background may have grown desensitized to online harassment or general negativity, VR itself is still a wild frontier for users who never anticipated what it meant to actually have another player enter their personal space.
To that end, Prasso and Walker developed a series of incredibly rudimentary VR experiments (with even more rudimentary titles) to test multiplayer scenarios. In “Dance Party,” two players share a small space while music plays.
“People are way less inhibited in VR, so they dance like no one is watching,” Walker said. “But it’s too easy for someone to bump into another person or go under them. Some people would sneak under a person. It feels like an invasion of personal space.”
In “Shopping Together,” Prasso and Walker presented two players with a virtual closet filled with clothing items like hats and glasses. A video Prasso and Walker captured demonstrated how easy it could be to accidentally blind the other player by incorrectly placing a hat or glasses askew on their head. While it might seem minor, a person in VR is unlikely to notice if their partner is being blinded or not.
Gestern sind wir der Einladung von Oculus gefolgt und duften die neusten Spiele für Oculus Touch und auch Gear VR in einer edlen Londoner Altbau-Galerie mit Industrie-Charme in ausführlichen Testsessions ausprobieren. Das Karaoke Multiplayer Social Spiel SingSpace, war neben Augmented Empire, einem rundenbasierten Taktik Shooter, eines von zwei vorgestellten Gear VR Spielen.
SingSpace – Mit Freunden in Virtual Reality in die Karaoke Bar
Das putzige Karaoke VR Spiel von Harmonix ist eine reine Social VR Erfahrung. Trefft euch online mit Freunden, wählt einen Avatar aus und trällert drauf los. Wer erst einmal im stillen Kämmerlein – dem Singleplayer Modus – üben möchte, der kann dies natürlich auch tun, um die Songtexte zu verinnerlichen. Der Avatar kann nach den eignen Wünschen angepasst werden (Hautfarbe, Frisur, Klamotten etc.) und erscheint dann, wenn man die virtuelle Bühne betritt auf Monitoren, die in der Bar verteilt sind.
Wenn man während seiner Gesangs-Performance mit dem Touchpad mittels Wischen (nach oben, unten, vorne und hinten) noch eine paar Tanzmoves zeigt, reagieren die kleinen Roboter-Zuschauer darauf. Auch die Atmosphäre in der virtuellen Bar verändert sich abhänging vom Gesang und der Stimme. An der Decke kann man hier immer wieder neue Animationen entdecken, ähnlich wie man es schon von anderen Audio-Visualisierungsprogrammen kennt.
Die soziale Karaoke Erfahrung greift hier für die Gesangsaufnahme auf das Mikrofon am Samsung Smartphone zu, sofern kein Headset mit Mikrofon angeschlossen ist. Andere „Mitspieler“ kann man in den Einstellungen aber auch auf stumm schalten. Oft ist es aber witziger, wenn man hört wie sich die Freunde beim Singen so anstellen oder ob sie einem nur motivierende Worte zurufen.
Ab Frühling 2017: Karaoke mit Freunden – Egal wo sie sind
Wie viele Lieder Harmonix dem Karaoke Spiel für die Gear VR verpassen wird, verriet man uns nicht. Es soll jedoch ein beachtlicher Katalog an Songs zur Verfügung stehen, wie man ihn auch in einer echten Karaoke Bar vorfinden würde.
Schließlich sollte man noch wissen, dass es keine wirklichen Scores gibt, wie es andere Sing-Spiele machen, die bewerten, ob man den Ton getroffen hat. SingSpace soll durch seine soziale Multiplayer-Komponente punkten und vor allem Spaß machen.
Harmonix Music Systems Inc scheint schon bald mehr verraten zu wollen, denn uns wurde versichert, dass es in den nächsten Wochen weitere Ankündigungen zum Gear VR Karaoke Titel Sing Space gibt. Ein Preis oder Veröffentlichungsdatum wurden uns nicht genannt. Wir konnten aber heraushören, dass der Titel noch in diesem Frühling für die Gear VR veröffentlicht werden soll.
I had a chance to catch up with founder Darshan Shankar at Oculus Connect 3 last October to talk about his founding story, and how he’s designed Bigscreen with privacy in mind through encrypted peer-to-peer networking technology that he developed. It’s a formula that seems to be working since he reports that “power users spend 20–30 hours each week in Bigscreen,” making it what Shankar calls, “one of the most widely used ‘killer apps’ in the industry.”
Those are astounding numbers for any social VR application, and the key to Bigscreen VR’s success is that they’ve been providing a more immersive and social experience of 2D content ranging from games to movies, and pretty much anything else you can do on your home computer.
The latest release of Bigscreen enables you to have up to three monitors in VR, which could provide an even better experience of working on your computer than in real life. You can stream Netflix or YouTube on a giant movie screen while playing a video game, designing an electrical circuit, browsing Reddit, or creating a 3D model in Maya. In Bigscreen, you can basically do anything that you can do on your computer screen, but in VR.
The limited resolution of today’s headsets for comfortably reading text is the biggest constraint for now, but there are plenty of other tasks that people have found are more enjoyable in VR than in real life. It’s not just the immersive nature, improved focus, and unlocking the spatial thinking potential of your brain, but in Bigscreen you can do it with friends.
Adding a social dimension to computing in a private way is one of the keys to Bigscreen’s success. You can use Bigscreen by yourself without anyone else; you can create a private room using peer-to-peer technology such that what you’re actually doing in Bigscreen isn’t even being passed through any servers on Bigscreen’s side. And if you want to have a public cafe experience and connect with hardcore VR enthusiasts from around the world, then create a public room and see who comes through. It’s a wide range of people looking to do everything from connect socially and casually to recreating the cafe experience of increased focus that can come from working in public spaces away from the private context of your home.
Taking that all into account and based upon my own direct experiences of using Bigscreen over the last couple of weeks I can say that Bigscreen VR is definitely the leading contender to becoming one of the first killer applications of VR. It’s a social utility with the potential to connect you to friends, family, romantic, and business partners, as well as complete strangers who spend a considerable amount of time living in the early days of the metaverse.
The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive each released almost a full year ago, with the Samsung Gear VR predating them by quite a bit and the younger, more fresh PlayStation VR (PSVR) headset from Sony just releasing a short few months ago in October. It’s been a whirlwind of a a year for the budding VR industry and one of the most common threads still popping up in mainstream discussions is how isolating VR can be.
Intuitively, the argument makes sense. When you’re wearing a big hunk of plastic on your face, peering into a whole other world, you’re cut off from the real world around you. Unless you’re using the passthrough camera on your Vive or Gear VR, or something similar, you can’t see what’s going on in real life and in most cases you’ll be wearing a headset or another audio solution to completely envelop yourself in a new atmosphere. It’s powerful and amazing, but it’s a solitary experience most of the time.
Social Is Where PSVR Excels
We’ve given particular notice to a handful of local multiplayer games that ask VR users to invite their friends and family around to have some fun with one person in the headset while others are outside. Highlights such as Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes continue to sell well despite their age, Playroom VR on PSVR is an excellent assortment of mini-games, and more recent releases like Mass Exodus are pushing simple concepts to new heights.
However, going beyond that and looking at each platform and ecosystem holistically, it’s clear that Sony’s PSVR is the only one that really makes sharing your VR experience simple and easy.
For starters, your TV screen automatically displays a nice, full image of whatever game or app you are playing. On the PC-based Rift and Vive, that’s not always the case. A different window may be on top, the size of the box might not be the right size, and even if it is set up correctly, most people don’t have a PC in their living room that’s easily accessible and viewable by other people. Most PS4 consoles on the other hand (which are in over 50 millions households) sit comfortably next to a nice, large TV that’s great for other people to view while you’re inside the headset.
If I want to see someone in the room, or check something, all I do is slide the face mask outward and lift. It’s not suctioned to my face with straps and twisted knobs.
Everything Just Works For Sharing
Going a step further than that, by default, PSVR outputs sound to the headset’s audio jack and the TV speakers. Getting this to operate correctly on your PC sometimes requires digging into the settings a bit and juggling default sound devices. It can work, but it’s far from simple and intuitive. With the PSVR, like most features of the headset, everything just works.
On PC-based headsets, not everyone has spare gamepads for others to use. With PSVR, most people with a PS4 probably have at least one extra controller, if not more, and many local multiplayer PSVR games, such as Playroom VR, are finding ways to let people play without a controller at all.
But looking beyond the software that’s designed for local multiplayer, since the headset is already so conducive to a social setting, even single player games are immediately more interesting on PSVR. When I played A Chair in a Room: Greenwater on HTC Vive it was terrifying, but for my wife to watch the game, she had to sit in a corner away from the roomscale arrangement, but still close enough to observe the PC monitor, which is tiny to look at if you’re not at a desk.
By comparison, when I played Resident Evil 7: Biohazard on PSVR, she was right there by my side every step of the way. Part of this is due to the differences in watching someone play a roomscale game vs. a seated game and hooking your PC up to a desk monitor vs. a living room television, but that’s the reality of most typical setups. Not everyone has the space for a dedicated VR room, or the ability to set up devices in their living room. As of now, the world of console-based VR vs. PC-based VR is also a world of living rooms vs. office spaces.
The PS Camera tracking and light bulb-like sensors on the PS Move controllers are far from ideal. There are lots of blind spots, 360 tracking isn’t really supported, and you’ll probably notice occlusion any time you turn too far to the side or obstruct the camera’s view of your hands. Don’t be mistaken: there are lots of issues with the platform, but ultimately if you want to share VR with other people in the room, it doesn’t get a whole lot better than PSVR.
What are some of your favorite games and apps to use in a social setting? Let us know in the comments below!
VR headsets continue to be interesting avenues for movie production crews to promote their films, often immersing fans and those curious in an experience that adds another layer of understanding to the work it relates to. In late December, we reported that the upcoming Power Rangers film would be receiving a VR experience tie-in but Lionsgate is taking VR promotion to the next level with a live panel in VR where participants can interact with the cast from the film.
Lionsgate is holding a virtual reality Q&A session on March 9 at 1:30 PM PT to promote the new Power Rangers movie and launch the online ticket sales. There will be a gathering with press in San Francisco at the Upload SF office, with the highlight being a cross-platform VR engagement with the cast.
Powered by social platform High Fidelity, up to 100 total HTC Vive and Oculus Rift users will be able to join the live Q&A virtually, and select attendees of the virtual session will be able to speak directly to the cast or even participate in VR games with their favorite Ranger. Users without an HTC Vive and Oculus Rift won’t be left out entirely, though, as the streamed event will be available to watch on YouTube as well. In addition, the event will also see the debut of an exclusive clip from the movie.
High Fidelity is a San Francisco startup and social VR platform that can be used by creators, educators, and more to engage within interconnected VR environments. The High Fidelity team is creating new assets and enabling new features specifically for this session. Lionsgate is also partnering with Google and YouTube Space LA to put together the event. The 100 tickets for the interactive virtual experience are likely to go quickly and those that wish to participate should register for a free High Fidelity account and fill out a survey to show that they meet the minimum requirements for the event. Those accepted will receive an email on how to join.
The Power Rangers film hits theaters on March 24th, 2017, and features Bryan Cranston as Zordon and Elizabeth Banks as Rita Repulsa. It is directed by Dean Israelite, who is known for his recent film Project Almanac.
This is sponsored content which has been produced by UploadVR and brought to you by High Fidelity. High Fidelity did not have any input into the creation of this content.
The first thought I had as this new Sansar video arrived in my inbox was how Linden Lab still seemed on track to deliver an accessible and very good looking product. As an increasing number of platforms scramble to lay their claim to the social VR space, Linden Lab steadfastly refuses to rush things, or deliver anything that looks half-baked. Yet in spite of that there haven’t been significant delays, and in the sometimes overhyped world of VR, delivering on one’s original promises can be a very exciting thing in itself.
The other thought that immediately followed was that I could practically hear the sound of collective outrage emanating from the faithful Second Life community as they heard Sansar described as something “unlike anything the world has ever seen before.” Not that it will stop most of them from being first in line to sign up for it, of course. Not only do those million or so SL users still put the platform to all sorts of creative uses, in fact, but many in the community were also chosen to join the highly skilled first batch of creators selected to put the closed version of the platform through its paces.
At the moment, however, they – along with the rest of us – will have to wait a while longer to get their hands on the platform. Sansar is set to remain in its invitation-only creator preview stage until Spring 2017, when it will go into open beta.
So while the two-minute video didn’t offer any earth-shattering new announcements, it does show plenty of stunning visuals, beautifully rendered movement, and impressive-looking UI. Apart from delivering a new slogan for Sansar (Created Reality) the voiceover generally reiterates all of the messages which its CEO Ebbe Altberg has been delivering ever since we first spoke with him for a fireside chat back in 2015 to discuss their plans for the Virtual Reality space. Over the years Linden Lab has continued to dedicate considerable expertise and resources to their budding VR platform, and it is probably fair to say we’ve been consistently impressed with the previews we’ve seen so far.
“No longer is VR limited to professional developers and engineers,” the narrator in the video promises. Users will be able to collaborate with other creators and innovators, re-create history, delighting friends, colleagues, customers and the entire world with their creations, she says.
In addition to the environments which we’re already familiar with from previous demos and screenshots, the video also showcases some action shots of the creator platform in action. The narrator tells us that it allows creators to easily generate, share and monetize content at the click of a button: “creators can upload original assets from common 3D formats, repurpose existing content, or get new assets from the ever-expanding Sansar store,” easily adding lighting, spatial sound and scripting and interacting with others through detailed avatars. We also get a glimpse of what the Sansar store looks like, with several items up for sale and prices listed in Sansar Dollars.
While it’s unlikely that trade inside this currently walled garden is booming (only a few hundred creators have been invited to the platform so far), Linden Lab is keen to build and populate a robust marketplace ahead of opening Sansar to the public. The ability to monetize is a cornerstone of the company’s strategy after all, much as it has been for Second Life – which still generates enough profit for the company to self-fund the development of Sansar.
Sansar continues to boldly claim it will transform the way we live our virtual lives from education and commerce to entertainment and live events.
“Get ready because the future of 3D creation and interactive social VR is coming,” she concludes as it’s revealed that the voice we’ve been hearing is in fact coming from an avatar sporting a t-shirt with the Sansar logo. There’s nothing unusual about her at first glance, but the lip sync is pretty impressive for those who know how hard that is to get just right. It’s something that Altberg and his team were particularly excited about when I met them in London last year – the way in which their tech can – regardless of what language you are speaking – coordinate your voice not only with your avatar’s mouth, but with the facial muscles and movement of their face so that it looks much more natural.
It remains to be seen how quickly this space will grow, but with improved headsets hitting the market in 2017 and prices already starting to drop, it looks like Sansar’s bet not to compromise on quality could pay off. While there are a lot of social VR platforms open to the public already, it is likely that consumers equipped with better quality headsets will also eventually crave better quality content, and this video confirms that Sansar certainly has the potential to deliver that.
Sansar is the next-gen virtual world platform from Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life (2003). Due to launch in Spring 2017, Sansar is a new take for the company on virtual worlds, this time built from the ground up with support for virtual reality.
There’s no denying that Linden Lab did some things right with Second Life, a $500 million GDP in 2016 is a testament to that. But they also did some things wrong, even Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg will admit.
That realization is the basis of Sansar, which represents an entirely new take on virtual worlds for the company. Unlike with Second Life, the Linden Lab is shifting away from having a single massive virtual world, choosing instead to set itself up as an enabler of creators by making Sansar a platform, rather than an all encompassing virtual landscape. More like the ‘WordPress of social virtual spaces’, the company readily compares.
That means that users will not ‘enter the world of Sansar‘ any more than they would ‘visit WordPress’ to find content online. Instead—much like accessing a website via a URL that’s built atop WordPress—users will seek out and choose to visit individual virtual worlds built atop Sansar.
Sansar is made to serve creators, Linden Lab says; it’s the creators who will build virtual worlds that serve users and customers. At least that’s the hope.
Unlike Second Life, Sansar is built from the ground up for virtual reality. That means everything from teleporting locomotion to native support for VR motion controllers. And while the most advanced creators will build complex virtual worlds that are imported from third-party tools, Sansar does offers users the ability to acquire, rearrange, and remix pre-made assets from inside Sansar itself, including while in a virtual reality headset.
Since inviting the first creators to start building inside of Sansar all the way back in 2015, the company has kept a tight grip on what virtual worlds inside of Sansar actually look like.
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A new video released by Linden Lab today (heading this article) showcases some of the first worlds made by creators who were granted access to the platform’s preview. In Spring 2017, the company plans to open the doors so that anyone will be able to download the platform and explore the worlds therein.
During my interview with Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Alterberg back in January, I got to tour some of the virtual worlds build on Sansar:
Giant Movie Theater
The first place I saw was a movie theater. A massive screen sat in a vast outdoor expanse with the night sky overhead. The seats in front of the screen were mostly covered over in windswept sand; as if there was once a huge theater that had deteriorated long ago, save for the screen, seats, and a huge flight of stairs leading down to them. The screen itself really felt massive (I’ve seen a number of other movie-theater VR experience that for some reason didn’t give a good sensation of scale). The screen was streaming a video from YouTube and the audio was playing throughout the entire space. Altberg said creators will soon be able to set virtual sound sources in Sansar so that the theater could have virtual speakers from which the sound originated.
Photogrammetry Tomb
Next was an Egyptian tomb which Altberg said was a real space that had been captured with photogrammetry. As we explored the tomb’s hieroglyphic-covered corridors together it became apparent that Sansar has 3D positional audio built it, allowing me to easily tell where Altberg was even when I wasn’t looking at him. That’s important not only because it helps your mind map the space and people around you more easily (which adds to immersion), but also because in multi-user scenarios, it’ll be much easier to tell who’s talking (which is also helped by automatic lip syncing).
Videogame Village
The next space we visited was a beautiful world that looked like a mashup between the Ocarina of Time (1998) and Jackson’s Lord of the Rings aesthetic. It was a bright and cheery village full of green foliage and earthen homes built into the sides of hills; a series of small foot bridges arched across the roofs of one home to the next. The space was very dimensional, with little paths winding up hills here and there, taking us to comfortable nooks enclosed with trees. The space had a definite stylized videogame look to it, but even though it wasn’t aiming for realistic visuals, it was probably the most charming and beautiful place I saw during my tour. In the center of town we came across a big monument of a cutlass that was sticking tip-down into the ground. Water cascaded down from the handled in ordered lines, and poured into pools at the base of the monument. Although the entirety of this virtual space was uninhabited at this stage, it called out to be the starting point of a great adventure.
Sony’s Magic Lab are set to demonstrate a new procedural animation system which it says allows VR characters found in VR to “imbue a sense of shared space with the player” with realistic eye, head and body movements.
GDC 2017 is underway, and as ever the event is brimming with intriguing talks on the subject of VR and subjects tangential to it. Magic Lab, a division within Sony dedicated to researching future advancements in the field of entertainment, has understandably been somewhat pre-occupied with the conundrums surrounding virtual reality.
At this year’s Game Developer Conference, it’s picked one of the more difficult topics that face developers of immersive entertainment (and in truth gaming at large), how do you make your in-game NPC’s react believably. Whilst this problem is not limited to VR gaming, due to the medium’s unique ability to conjure presence in players, sharing space with a virtual character means those NPCs are far more susceptible to appearing fake or uninteresting.
Magic Lab are due to demonstrate a new set of procedural systems which it says allow virtual characters to react not only to stimuli from the virtual environment, but more importantly cues from players. The demo will feature NPCs which can “react to sound/motion of the virtual environment as well as player sound/motion” and “interpret player head/hand pointing directions.” The NPCs then demonstrate virtual attentiveness by adjusting their “eyes, head, and body in a coordinated manner” whilst limited to their own specific field of view. The demo will allow the player to toggle various aspects of the demo characters on and off to gauge the effectiveness.
With social VR such a focus at the moment, with one of the world’s largest social companies firmly fixed on VR as the social platform of the future, solving ways to fool our acute human social senses are going to become extremely important. We’ll let you know how successful PlayStation Magic Lab have been as we’reat GDC all this week, and will hopefully see it in action.
At GDC this year, 
