Space Pirate Arena is coming to Oculus Quest and that means it is time to find a bigger play space.
Dirk Van Welden of I-Illusions shared a few details about the release of the upcoming arena-scale sequel to the defining wave shooter of consumer VR’s first generation. Space Pirate Arena, of course, is the follow-on to 2016’s Space Pirate Trainer and it takes the game fully multiplayer with intense competitive matches that require some of the largest VR play areas we’ve ever seen.
The sequel was first revealed in 2019 and has been teased a few times since then, but it’s been held back by the size of the play spaces allowed by the Oculus Quest system. Earlier this summer Facebook confirmed to UploadVR it expanded the maximum play area on Quest up to a staggering 15 meters in either direction. Space Pirate Arena requires a safe space of at least 10 meters in either direction, and Van Welden noted the game now includes a single-player mode if you don’t have a friend with another Quest.
Put another way, all systems are pretty much go for the launch of arena-scale Oculus Quest gameplay.
“In a lot of ways, this feels similar to releasing Space Pirate Trainer back in 2016. Back then we didn’t know if people would go out and buy a VR headset. There are a lot of Quests out there now, but we’re asking those people to find a safe 10x10m spot to play Arena,” Van Welden wrote on Twitter. “Similar to SPT, once you have played Arena the way it should be, you’ll be introduced to a whole new kind of experience, and it’ll just sell itself. To make sure Arena is played the right way, it won’t boot unless you found a 10 x 10m space. That’s actually the only threshold, since we’ve added a single player mode to give you a taste of the gameplay. (If you don’t have friends with a Quest) In the process of creating Arena, we had to come up with a whole bunch of original solutions for problems that arise with 1-to-1 movement based gameplay. Let’s hope these set the bar for future similar experiences!”
Here’s the teaser for the experience the developers released back in 2019:
Be sure to check back with us as we’ll bring you the details on Space Pirate Arena as soon as we have them.
Today, artificial intelligence hardly has a unified definition or application. AI is listed as a capability across many technology products, but this is mostly a marketing tactic to capitalize on a feature perceived as a must-have. However, the biggest contributions of AI to our society have yet to be realized. Looking at least one decade into the future, I believe we will see significant advancements in three areas by 2030 as a result of AI – personal assistance devices, genomics, and space exploration.
(Illustration by Maria Korolov based on image via Pixabay.)
Interfacing with machines
I believe the field of human computer interaction will go through massive changes in the next ten years. Right now, personal assistance devices and software have some traction, but they are still very immature. Alexa, Google Assist, and other similar technologies are still very rudimentary and leave the burden of making them understand the human side. They are mostly translating natural language to search queries without fully considering the subject, context, and the person they are interacting with. A majority of questions are interpreted incorrectly, or receive an “I don’t know about that” type of answer.
What I predict for 2030 is that conversing with these agents will feel much more natural, and they will have appear to have a personality and relate in a specific way with each of the humans they interact with. They will predict human needs better, and understand the state of mind of the person they are interacting with.
In addition, I believe direct neural interfaces will start becoming more practical, giving people the capability to interact with “intelligent” machines through thought. Ten years is too soon for it to mature, so I think this technology will be in early maturity in that time frame.
Considering all of that, the biggest risks I see are privacy, security and ethics. The robots built with AI will have a compliance layer that auditors and forensic experts will be able to query in case of a mishap or for tracking non-ethical violations. This means abstract concepts like ethics and philosophy will be modeled for operation in a wide variety of contexts to suit cultural biases, implying geo- and culture-centric AI-based products.
Having intimate knowledge about the personality of their users, the AI agents can be abused by the programmers and companies behind them to move forward commercial agendas in a very subtle way.
Genomics
Advancements in the area of genetic editing, with technologies like CRISPR (Clusters of Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), are ramping up in practicality and accessibility.
One of the advancements that was overshadowed by COVID coverage, and didn’t get as much media attention as it deserved in 2020, was the in vivo usage of gene editing technology. In vivo means that the gene edit was done inside the body, in contrast to in vitro, which literally means “in glass” – that is, in a test tube or outside the body.
By 2030, there will be so many more possibilities with gene editing. After genetic sequencing technology became economically viable, and advancements in CRISPR, AI is poised to be the biggest catalyst in boosting the practical applicability of genomics. The question will be who can access such technology, and what are the ethics and consequences of that for the human race as a whole.
Space exploration
Another big news story that got overshadowed by COVID this year was the granting of a contract to Nokia by NASA to build a cellular network on the moon. This is just a start and I believe many commercially available technologies and software will start being used outside of Earth by leveraging AI.
Due to latency in communication, AI is essential in performing critical missions in space. This theme has been portrayed in science fiction for a long time, but I believe 2030 is the decade where it stops being fiction and becomes a reality.
By 2030, we will be on the verge of establishing a permanent extraterrestrial colony for the first time in human history. This brings a lot of opportunity and with it many concerns as space exploration will start being a commercial activity rather than a tightly controlled state endeavor. Imagine hackers attacking a colony on the Moon or Mars and putting a lot of lives in danger! Imagine countries having warfare in space, or border disputes on Mars! There is already a series of negotiations on how countries will split these new territories.
In conclusion, everyone – individuals, employees and organizations – will all be challenged to accept new use cases for AI come 2030, including systems that interact with humans. In all cases, security and ethics in software and its development play a critical role in success and trust. Continuing to uphold principles like “do no harm” that apply to many jobs today will require new forms of testing and threat modeling activities, possibly in real-time, when layered with AI.
Much of this is being discussed in standards groups today, but won’t be adopted more generally for a few years. A decade – equivalent to a couple of iterations in the compliance standards world – is a reasonable timeline for some of this to move beyond early stage adoption.
The most recent update for No Man’s Sky will include “stability improvements” for PC and better resolution and framerate for PSVR on PS5.
According to the post on the game’s official Steam Discussion forums from Hello Games, this update is currently dubbed ‘Experimental Branch 19/01’ — of course designating the current date. This update comes hot on the heels of the next-generation update for the new consoles, which even included improvements for PC as well. Since this is an “experimental” update, on PC you need to opt in. Luckily, it’s already available right now.
Here are the full patch notes:
No Man’s Sky Experimental Branch 19/01
Stability improvements on PC.
Resolution and performance for PSVR have been significantly improved when running on a PS5.
Fixed a rendering-related crash on PS5.
Xbox Series S in high quality mode now has the improved Ultra settings introduced in the Next Generation Update.
Loading times on PS5 have been improved.
PS5 install size has been optimized.
To do that, go into your Steam library, right click on No Man’s Sky, select Properties, click on the Betas tab, and type in: “3xperimental” and click on “Check Code”. If you did this correctly, it should say you’ve unlocked the experimental branch. Click on the drop down menu and select that build. From there, a patch should start downloading automatically. This new update is reportedly over 3GBs in size.
And just as a word of warning: this is experimental for a reason. There may be new bugs and you may find issues the developers are still fixing. If you opt-out after playing Experimental, you should resume from a prior save to avoid long-term issues with your game.
Admittedly, I’m not sure how this interfaces with the PS4 and PS5 versions of the game. Presumably, once the next update launches on those consoles it will included these changes. I’m also unsure when this update will come to other PC launches like the Xbox Game Pass app, GOG, and so on.
If you get a chance to try this out in VR, let us know how it works down in the comments below!
Meet Reachy, the humanoid robot that’s controlled via VR with motion controllers to offer telepresence to users from around the globe.
Reachy is a robot in development by Pollen Robotics that can be controlled by a remote user wearing a VR headset and holding motion-tracked controllers. This means that the user’s head movements are mapped to the robot and the user’s hand movements are also 1:1 matched by the robot. We’ve already seen hints of this technology popping up across various industries, including for space flight and surgeries, so it’s great to see it slowly seeping out into more areas.
Going beyond the real-time movement mapping, you could theoretically “teach” a robot how to perform tasks using this method as well. In the video above we see the robot using fine motor skills to place blocks in a bucket based on shape, input time on a microwave, and more.
This type of technology is important because, once the tracking gets really, really good, it functionally allows people to “teleport” their “presence” (ie telepresence) across the world and potentially even into space at some point. In terms of potential, that would allow a top surgeon in the USA to perform an operation on an injured soldier on the front line, or to a robot stationed in a hospital in another country. That’s likely very far away from becoming a reality, but this is one step closer to that.
Uses extend far beyond just medical as well, as there are already experiments to get humanoid-style robots into space craft to help simulate effects on the human body, perform simple tasks, and help alleviate deep space isolation effects.
End Space is one of the best single-player focused arcade-style space combat VR games out there. Originally released way back on the Gear VR Orange Bridge Studios have continued to support and expand the game to every single major VR platform and now the Quest 2 is getting some specific love and attention.
You can watch a short gameplay clip of End Space on Quest 2 with the new update installed right here:
End Space has been available on Quest obviously, but now that the Quest 2 is out the opportunity is there to make that version the definitive way of playing the game. After today’s update, I think they’ve accomplished that. I previously called it a great alternative to Star Wars: Squadrons and now that’s even more true for Quest 2 owners.
With Update 1.0.6.1 the Quest 2 is now able to really set this game apart. You’ll now get the newly supported 90Hz mode for a smoother experience, Facebook’s new Phase Sync feature is enabled for reduced latency, and the overall Level of Detail for the Quest 2 version is bumped up to the “same levels” as on Rift. According to Orange Bridge Studios Director, Justin Wasilenko, “This is as close to the graphics from the Rift version as we could manage inside this amazing standalone headset.”
This latest update includes a host of other changes as well. Now, the default controls for your ship use the thumbsticks for ship movement. Bluetooth gamepads now control more similarly to the Touch controller thumbsticks for a more seamless experience.
What I love about End Space is that it controls well, looks great, and delivers an exciting single-player space combat adventure. There is plenty of content here for the price of entry and it really, really looks amazing on Quest 2 now especially. Hopefully we get some news about what this team is working on next very soon.
Felix & Paul Studios is behind one the largest productions of any type ever filmed in space. And, while the VR version of episode one of Space Explorers: The ISS Experience was recently released, they currently have multiple VR cameras in space capturing content both in and outside of the International Space Station, including the arrival of the first commercial SpaceX crew.
Regardless of your plans for space travel in the near future, this first of four episodes is your opportunity to spend virtual time in microgravity, amid 16 daily sunrises and sunsets, with astronauts Anne McClain, David Saint-Jacques, Christina Koch and Nick Hague. “It’s about humanity’s present and future among the stars” explains Felix & Paul Studios Co-Founder, Félix Lajeunesse. “We’re transporting audiences to space. We’re giving audiences the opportunity to feel like they’re living with the astronauts… with the capacity to watch planet earth from space and get a unique perspective of our world.” That perspective, Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacque shares, spans environmental to geo-political issues. “It makes you fall in love with our planet, and makes you want to go beyond our difference and focus on all that we have in common with our fellow humans.”
For me, this first step into Space Explorers: The ISS Experience is both awe-inspiring and an essential reminder for the immersive storytelling industry that there is still a large void on store platforms for experiences that allow us to visit real places and people. This purely real footage made me feel even more connected with our earth, even while I was inside a virtual visit in a space station over 400 kilometers from my living room. Co-Founders Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël discussed their studio’s journey into space with me, along with insights that can inspire other live action cinematic immersive experiences.
Create a VR Master to Reach the Largest Audiences
While Space Explorers: The ISS Experience is filmed in VR, audiences will be able to witness the episode stories on Oculus Quests, Oculus Rifts as well as on mobile via select 5G network providers, big screens, dome screens, planetariums and even a largescale travelling exhibition. The content may vary between some of these platforms, based on what is best for their intended audiences. But they all leverage the same source capture, leading to the original footage being best described as the virtual reality master. And this virtual reality master is high resolution, as the in-space capture resulted in specs equivalent to “about 8K per eye and 30 frames per second” explains Lajeunesse.
Raphaël highlights the benefit of being able to direct for all forms of this content in post-production since the content was captured in VR. This was especially important since there was nobody from the studio that was able to direct alongside the astronauts in space. The astronauts became the whole film crew in space, and creative collaborators, all between their ongoing expedition duties. Saint-Jacque was the first astronaut to take the VR camera out of its box when it arrived in space. “In terms of the setup” he explained “we were provided with very detailed instructions for camera location and hardware [and] software setup. A support team on the ground was able to see a preview of the scene before filming started, and could advise on arrangement and lighting.”
Customize the Best Possible Camera
The largest production ever filmed in space was captured using a customized camera that has helped to make Felix & Paul Studios the only media studio implementation partner of the International Space Station. To get this VR camera to space in time for the production to capture the intended moments in space history, it was not as simple as sending one of the studio’s renowned cameras up. This first episode was captured using a modified Z CAM V1 Pro, developed in collaboration with the Z CAM team and Nanoracks. Object weight and size are just some of the constraints of camera space travel, so the team modifications addressed everything from thermal management to its sizing to get its space certification. Its modification also allowed for an even higher resolution capture, and the studio’s entire production process and software that is used on their in-house cameras was able to be integrated into this modified camera.
This is no longer the only VR camera that Felix & Paul Studios has in space, with production of this series planned to continue through to January 2021. And, from a higher-level standpoint, the next journey for their VR cameras may be deep space exploration. Raphaël said they “are also looking at the moon, and mars.”
Emotional Engagement with Real Experiences
This series is designed to take millions of people to a place that “so few human beings have been able to experience” explains Raphaël.
Lajeunesse notes that “we are trained to experience reality through our senses…but you know if it’s not true. In cinematic virtual reality, with real human beings inside a real environment… maybe you’re not able to start walking around and reaching things. But your mind knows that this is a reality. It creates a different type of emotional engagement.”
This is not to say that that real-looking experiences cannot create emotional engagement. But it may be a different emotional experience when you know for sure that every single detail happened in reality in the moment you are standing in. Visitors truly witness history in that way.
There was a lot of support to create 360 content a few years ago, but the focus has largely shifted to social and interactive experiences and games. “The real world has a place in virtual reality” states Raphaël.
Use Interactivity with Real Footage Wisely
When immersive stories are not entirely real captures, interactivity can help visitors feel physically present in the story. But Raphaël explains, in the case documenting the journey of Space Explorers: The ISS Experience, interactivity was not integrated since it is “all about you experiencing something that is real.” The content captured were real moments that happened, and nothing that a virtual visitor could do would change the course of the true narrative. There are no breaks or “lyrical moments” as he described the studio integrated into the award-winning documentary Travelling While Black, which allowed for some “subtle gaze-triggered events.” What they are experimenting with right now is how they can achieve “six degrees of freedom remotely,” to allow for virtual visitors to move around their space as the events unfold above the earth.
Episodes 2, 3 and 4 of Space Explorers: The ISS Experience are expected to release Spring 2021, Summer 2021 and Fall 2021 respectively. They follow the chronological evolution of the real-life space expeditions, with a specific theme explored in each episode.
Laura Mingail is an award-winning marketer, strategist and thought-leader in the entertainment space. She founded Archetypes & Effects to provide organizations in storytelling industries with impactful strategy, marketing and business development support. She is also a contributing author and media commentator focused on innovative forms of storytelling and technologies.
Star Wars: Squadrons is finally here and it absolutely delivers. From the incredible set piece moments, excellent new characters, and fantastic VR space combat, this is an adrenaline-fueled blast in the galaxy far, far away that you won’t want to miss. Here’s our Star Wars: Squadrons VR review with all the details!
I don’t typically play space combat games, space sims, flight sims, or any of that sort of stuff. Furthermore, I’ve never played a game with a flight stick for more than just an hour or two to test things out. All of that changed with Star Wars: Squadrons.
From the very first moment I booted it up I played the entire game with a VR headset and flight stick, specifically the Thrustmaster T.16000M HOTAS, and it was so good — so authentic even — I don’t really want to play it any other way. I’ve tried keyboard and mouse and gamepad too, both get the job done and it really feels great with a gamepad for my tastes, but I surprisingly prefer the flight stick or full HOTAS instead. For a game that’s designed for VR and non-VR across PC and consoles with cross-play on everything, this is perhaps the best compliment I can give: it feels madefor VR. And from what we’ve heard, it basically was from the very start.
Star Wars: Squadrons Story Mode
In Star Wars: Squadrons the story shows both perspectives and bounces back and forth between the Galactic Empire and New Republic. The Prologue is split into two parts, introducing both sides, immediately after Alderaan is destroyed during the events of A New Hope. Then it fast-forwards a few years and the rest of the game takes place after Return of the Jedi in the aftermath of the Battle of Endor.
Right at the start of the game you get to customize each of your pilots down to their face, voice, and name. I wasn’t expecting this considering you don’t really see them much, but these are the same avatars you’ll use in multiplayer so getting ownership of your identity across the game for both the Republic and Empire is a great touch.
The entirety of Squadrons takes place from a first-person perspective whether you’re talking to crewmates in the hangar or flying your starfighter during a mission; it’s a big reason why the VR support feels so natural. The only times the camera is not inside of your face are during the cutscenes that take place before and after missions.
For these moments, when the camera is sweeping across your squadron or zooming in on characters while they fly, you see a rectangular letterbox floating in front of you, sort of like the Cinematic Mode on PSVR. It’s absolutely immersion breaking, no doubts about that, and a bit of a bummer, but cutscenes like this are expected in non-VR games so this is a price to pay in order to get VR support out of a AAA project like this. Sacrifices needed to be made and I’d rather have a VR hanger and briefing room than 30 second cutscenes in VR.
The other sticking point about Squadrons’ VR support is that there is zero motion controller functionality here. You have no hand presence in the cockpit at all — it’s just a head tracking only game. Some die hard VR purists will likely be upset about this, but honestly, give me a great flight stick over inaccurate motion controllers that lack realistic resistance and tension any day. You’re sitting still when you play a game like this so all you need is head tracking. It works great, looks great, and most importantly, feels great.
Even if Squadrons was just its Story Mode and practice/training map and that’s it, this would feel like a complete game. My playthrough came in around the 10 hour mark, but it could probably go higher if you played on a high difficulty setting or replayed missions to get more medals. There are four difficulty modes to pick from so there is some replayability, but I imagine most people will spend the majority of their time in multiplayer..
Surprisingly, the cast of new characters is memorable and full of personality for both the Republic and Empire. Between missions there are opportunities to chat with all of them to learn more about their backstories and motivations that helps add a lot of context to how they act. One of the Republic pilots used to race previously and your squad mates poke fun at her for being a show off. Eventually, she teaches you how to drift in an X-Wing and it’s an exhilarating moment reminiscent of scenes with Poe from the new trilogy.
Most of the missions can be boiled down to taking out squadrons of enemy fighters, defending larger ships, eliminating big ships, and escaping or escorting. I’d be lying if I didn’t say this gets repetitive, but the way EA Motive mixes things up, shuffles these pieces around, and introduces one-off set pieces here and there keeps you on your toes. By the time you reach this midpoint of the story in Mission 6 things get pretty interesting with bombing runs in a Y-Wing and a big, bombastic finale that rivals the spectacle of the films themselves. Chase sequences were also some of the best moments and it made me wish for more time trials or flight trials to put my pilot skills to the test.
Star Wars: Squadrons Gameplay And Ships
In a lot of ways this feels like a dream game for Star Wars fans. We’ve gotten dozens of games focused on the Jedi vs Sith with lightsabers and force powers and there have even been a heavy share of ground combat games that require you to know your way around a blaster. But not since the 90s and early 2000s have we gotten a game that was really focused on space combat in the Star Wars universe. Until now.
The industry has made huge strides with technology in recent years and visually it’s hard to find any faults at all with Star Wars: Squadrons. The overall presentation quality is on par with DICE’s Star Wars Battlefront II. Each map has a similar layout — they’re all in space after all — but the planet backdrops are gorgeous to behold and various bits of debris add enough variety here and there.
In VR there have been some performance concerns. For me personally VR mode only worked if the game was windowed, but after a patch it works from Borderless mode as well. I notice some very occasional stuttering on Ultra with an RTX 2060 Super, i5-9600K, and 32GB RAM but it’s not enough to really impact the experience. I’ve heard of others having far more issues with crashes and freeze ups in VR but haven’t experienced that personally.
The hangar is the unexpected highlight of the package due to how immersive it is to chat with crew members and just watch people working in the background. You really get a sense for what the inside of a hangar might truly feel like, almost like waiting in line at a big Disneyland Star Wars ride. And Squadrons features an excellent score that swells in combat appropriately and punctuates every moment with just the right emphasis. And yes, it’s all functional in VR — including the hangar and briefing room, complete with NPC conversations.
Squadrons is a special kind of wish fulfillment in that regard. Every cockpit is painstakingly recreated here with insane attention to detail so that instruments and indicators are all in different places depending on which ship you’re flying. From the wide, open canopy of the X-Wing and A-Wing to the closed tunnel vision of the TIE Fighter, each ship feels and plays dramatically different.
As far as I can tell equipment loadout options are the same or on par across factions, for balance, but the choices you make will change based on the ship. Since the X-Wing has shields maybe you sacrifice a bit of its hull capacity for better acceleration or speed? Perhaps you want to beef up the TIE’s maneuverability even more to go all-in on a zippy ship that’s hard to hit? You can get really creative there.
Star Wars: Squadrons VR Review – Comfort
Since Star Wars: Squadrons is an always first-person VR space combat game, it’s impossible to eliminate all artificial motion. By nature you’re flying a ship in space, banking, turning, and rotating during combat. For some people it’s going to be uncomfortable no matter what, but some ships may be better than others. For example, the TIE Fighter has a very enclosed cockpit so the field of view outside of the cockpit is more limited than the more open X-Wing and A-Wing. Playing with a flight stick also helps to ground you and aid immersion which can combat sickness.
When you’re out of the cockpit you can turn on snap turning instead of smooth turning if you’d like for hangar exploration, or you can just turn your head around instead. Compared to other space combat games I’ve played, it seems quite smooth and comfortable but I don’t typically get sick so it’s hard to say. As long as performance is good, framerate is consistent, and you’re not seeing any major issues it should be okay for most people. No one on staff has been affected by playing. it.
The first three missions of the story after the prologue have you flying X-Wings and A-Wings, so switching back to a TIE Fighter in the next mission after that is a huge shock to the system. Not only do these fast and nimble fighters not have any shields, but they’re far more agile as well. Drifting in a TIE Fighter feels like you’re doing a donut in a street racer and watching the stars swim by as you flip around is extremely exciting.
Even though Squadrons isn’t a space combat simulator game, it’s more of an arcade-style experience, there is still a lot of depth here. For starters, you’ve got to manage your system’s power flow. For Republic, that means engine, lasers, and shields. By flicking the switch on the top of my joystick I can reroute power on the fly to whatever I’m doing at that moment. On top of that, you can designate shields for the front, back, or balanced during combat, boost, drift, and more.
At first it’s a lot to take in; there is a steep learning curve when using a stick essentially for the first time and being in VR, you can’t exactly see the buttons easily, but you eventually get the hang of things. I tried playing with a gamepad a little bit and the learning curve is far less steep. It feels really, really good with a controller in your hands and you don’t lose out on any functionality playing that way. I also tried out keyboard and mouse, but for me, that felt like a huge step backwards in terms of immersion.
After I got a feel for where each button was it all started to feel like second nature. Keyboard and mouse, as well as gamepad, have the same sort of muscle memory that kicks in after a while to a lesser extent, but after trying all three formats the HOTAS is absolutely my favorite way to play, followed by gamepad.
Star Wars: Squadrons Multiplayer
There are two main multiplayer modes: Dogfight and Fleet Battles. You can do a solo Fleet Battle with everyone else filled by AI allies and enemies, or invite friends in for a co-op affair against the AI as well. As far as I’ve seen there is no way to do a solo Dogfight match against AI or to have a co-op Practice flight, but you can spawn squadrons during Practice to sharpen your dogfighting skills.
You don’t even unlock Fleet Battles until your online rank is at least 5, so Dogfight is all you can do at first. There is a ton of map variety ranging from destroyed docking yards, massive relay stations with trenches and debris, or even huge asteroid fields that resemble obstacle courses. Not crashing becomes just as difficult as avoiding enemy fire. There’s even a giant, empty map that’s just a void of space. Keeping up with speedy TIE Fighters there is extremely difficult.
In Fleet Battles though, that’s where Squadrons really comes alive. In this game mode there are two armies with massive flagships anchoring their spot in space. First, the fighters battle it out in a game of tug of war to try and earn enough “morale” to wage an assault. From there, whoever wins the tug of war, takes the fight to the enemy’s two medium-sized capital ships. Once those are down you can attack the opponent’s massive flagship to win the match — but it’s not that simple.
At any time during a Fleet Battle the enemy can win back the morale tug of war and flip to the offensive, forcing you to go on the defensive. Once you’re attacking a flagship, like a Star Destroyer, you can take out its subsystems such as the shields, its power supplies, its turrets, and so on to slowly chip away until it’s destroyed in an epic ball of fire.
There is an in-game tutorial that takes you through all of this against AI, as well as the aforementioned AI enemies only mode you can play solo or with friends.
The biggest problem facing Star Wars: Squadrons though is a question of longevity. Once you finish the campaign all you can do is Dogfighting (Team Deathmatch) and Fleet Battle, that’s it. There are no plans for DLC, no plans for new maps, new ships, or anything like that. The developers have been very clear that Squadrons is sold as-is and will not be a live service game. It’s a great game already, but it could offer so much more had EA been willing to fund an ongoing support cycle. Instead, it’ll never grow beyond what it is right now. Hopefully there is enough interest to generate plans for a sequel that does get ongoing support.
Squadrons also contains a seasonal ranking structure, similar to most AAA online games, complete with ranks, rewards, daily missions, and so on. There are plenty of carrots to keep you moving along and coming back to earn juicy cosmetics since EA has stated there will be no microtransactions at all this time.
Star Wars: Squadrons Review Final Impressions
While I would say that Star Wars: Squadrons has exceeded my already lofty expectations overall, it’s not without its faults. It still manages to out-perform every other VR space combat game I’ve tried across the board for my tastes and offers a ton of nuance in its gameplay and immense entertainment with its full campaign. If you got a chance to try the brief, but magical, X-Wing VR Mission in the first DICE Battlefront game on PS4 with PSVR and wished it could have been made into a full game, then this is exactly that and so much more. Multiplayer is thrilling and extremely fun, but is lacking in options and variety a bit. There were some tiny performance issues and a lack of VR motion controller support, but all that is forgivable.
Minor gripes aside, for fans of Star Wars, fans of arcade-style space combat, and fans of just flat-out immersive VR, it doesn’t get a whole lot better than Star Wars: Squadrons.
For more on how we arrive at our scores, check out our review guidelines. This review was originally published on October 1st as a review-in-progress and has since been updated and finalized throughout.
Star Wars: Squadrons is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One for $39.99. VR support is included with PSVR on PS4 and any PC VR headset on PC through Origin, Steam, and the Epic Store. This review was conducted primarily via Link cable on PC with an Origin copy of the game using an Oculus Quest and Quest 2 via Link cable and Virtual Desktop. It was also tested on a Rift S.
Agos: A Game of Space is a new VR space sim from Ubisoft that’s about exploring the far reaches of the stars in search of a new home for humanity. Agos is set to release for all major PC VR headsets on October 28th of this year.
During the Ubisoft Forward digital press conference today Ubisoft debuted the announcement trailer for Agos, embedded below.
Agos looks like a relatively unique game in that it seems mostly focused on space-exploration rather than space combat. In fact, there wasn’t any combat to speak of in the trailer as far as I could tell.
According to en email from an Ubisoft representative, players “become” the AI that’s operating the last ship leaving Earth to find a new, hospitable planet for the human race. You’ll guide a small group of survivors across eight different star systems to find a new home.
In the trailer we can also see physics-based hand interactions for things like building and modifying your ship, attaching new parts, and altering its probes and tools. “Along the way, players will scavenge resources, unlock new technologies and face the perils of space to maintain life on board their ship during this extraordinary voyage to save humankind,” according to the email we received.
To stay up to date with information on Agos, check out the official website. We don’t know much else about the game at this time, but it looks like one to watch. Agos: A Game of Space is confirmed for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Valve Index and is slated to release on October 28th, 2020.
“Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time,” the company’s official acquisition confirmation statement says, “and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.” If you follow Apple, you’ve seen these words multiple times before — pretty much any time it buys a company that doesn’t have an existing customer base to reassure. That now happens once or twice a month, often remaining under the radar until someone stumbles across it or gets tipped off to an ambiguous “headed in a new direction” final post on a company’s website.
A demonstration of Spaces’ latest tech shows a cartoony teacher offering whiteboard presentations with accompanying lip and body synchronization — a gentle evolution of existing VR avatar technology. You could easily imagine the 3D model replaced with one of Apple’s current Memoji avatars, enabling an iPad- or iPhone-toting teacher to offer a presentation to a virtual class over Zoom. That’s basically the VR video conferencing solution Spaces was offering prior to the acquisition, minus the Apple elements, and the platform-agnostic company promised compatibility with practically every major VR headset and video sharing app around.
I’m not going to tell you Apple’s VR and AR acquisitions have become too numerous to count, but the picture they paint is anything but narrowly focused. Every little company Apple buys feels like another tile in a massive mosaic, contributing its own color and texture to a picture that’s bigger than many people realize. If it seemed Apple was just making AR glasses two years ago, the company now appears to be developing both AR and VR hardware — including key components such as displays. Similarly, if you thought Apple’s AR ambitions were mostly about hardware, nope, it’s filing software patents and buying a lot of softwarecompanies. And services companies.
This won’t surprise anyone who knows that Apple’s core strength is its ability to integrate hardware, software, and services. But it does mean the company’s interest in mixed reality goes far beyond dropping a pair of glasses in the marketplace and seeing how they perform on their own. Apple is building the initial suite of AR/VR applications that will enable the hardware to succeed in its first or second generation, perhaps before there’s a robust “Reality App Store” with third-party apps. Like the classic iPhone apps Mail, Messages, and Safari, Spaces could be the key to Apple’s “Keynote VR” — or its development team may help with collaborative multi-person experiences in rooms, building on lessons learned from the Terminator offering.
Compare Apple’s approach to what we’ve seen with a couple of consumer VR and AR companies, Oculus and Nreal. Both announced hardware and largely let third-party developers loose to create cool games or useful apps that use their technology. Yet both companies (and other XR hardware makers) have realized that they, too, need to develop compelling apps to move their platforms forward. Some of the biggest current and upcoming Oculus titles have been either backed or developed by Facebook. Nreal is similarly collaborating with mobile operators to create game-changing AR apps. Neither waited until software and services were mature to launch hardware, decisions that (thankfully) gave early adopters tastes of our mixed reality future.
It’s been a comparatively long walk toward Apple’s product, with small public steps forward, odd leaks, contradictory reports, and the occasional bad decision. On their own, many of these moves don’t add obvious value to the Apple we know today. But collectively, they’re either going to come together for a massive iPhone-caliber launch or show up as an ever-growing collection of small developments, like the Apple Watch. The reported 2022 release might be getting closer every day, but if these acquisitions keep piling up, expectations for what’s about to arrive should be sky-high ahead of the reveal. Given Apple’s history with the iPhone and the Apple Watch, I don’t question whether the finished offering will have a huge impact, but rather how quickly the world will change as a result.
Star Wars: Squadrons is only about two months away at this point from its October 2nd release date and today EA revealed a ton of new details regarding the intricate ship and pilot customization options.
We already knew there would be the opportunity to customize everything from the exterior design of your ship, interior items like bobbleheads, as well as components under the hood that affect your weapons and flight handling. From a distance it certainly seemed like there was quite a lot if depth. Now, it’s more clear than ever that this is certainly the type of game to encourage tweaking and tinkering.
Ship Component Customization
According to the blog post, you’ll unlock components that affect your ship’s performance by spending Requisition points — a currency that’s earned in-game only. EA has stated multiple times that there will not be any microtransactions. These components can offer either passive changes, such as bolstering defenses with a stronger hull, or active changes, such as swapping weapons.
Depending on the type of ship you’re flying there are up to seven component slots (2-3 passive and 4 active per ship) to fill:
Primary Weapons (active)
Auxiliary (x2, active)
Countermeasures (active)
Hull (passive)
Shields (not all ships have shields, passive)
Engine (passive)
As expected the primary weapons are your basic way of engaging enemies, think blasters, ion cannons, and other weapons you’ll be firing constantly during battles. Your two auxiliary slots on the other hand go to secondary abilities, such as tractor beams, repair devices, bombs, and more. You’re not allowed duplicates though, so you couldn’t for example have two repair units for your auxiliary slots.
Those three slots are all about active engagement usually, but your countermeasures are used for disengaging from combat most of the time, such as seeker warheads to take out missiles that are trailing you or sensor hammers to prevent lock-ons. Passive components are self-explanatory, they affect your stats and how features on the ship act, but don’t change what you can actively do. For example, switching to a shield that is more resilient to blasters but less useful against missiles.
It’s also important to keep in mind that all of this is in addition to power management during battles and the way that each cockpit has a completely different look, feel, and perspective in Star Wars: Squadrons.
“Between power management, overcharging, shield balancing or emergency power conversion, boosting, drifting, throttle management, primary weapons, auxiliary abilities, and countermeasures, the combat piloting experience has significant depth,” says James Clement, Lead Gameplay Designer, in the blog post. “You can learn the ropes quickly, yet you can look forward to discovering new techniques and tactics for months to come. On top of that, there’s a wealth of customizable components to choose from. There’s a healthy selection to start with and more to unlock through gameplay as you progress.”
Cosmetic Customization
In addition to being able to tweak what is under the hood of the various starfighters in Star Wars: Squadrons, you can also change the way your ships and pilots look using Glory points, which are also earned in-game only. Pilot appearances and cosmetics are used in both single-player and multiplayer.
For pilots specifically, options are quite exhaustive considering it’s a first-person only space combat game:
Various heads to pick from
Outfit designs and colors
Torso apparel
Legwear
Helmets
Gloves
Voice styles
I’d imagine you’ll only see your pilot in menus and cutscenes, so this level of depth is really encouraging to see. You’ll get to choose from multiple different types of heads, outfit colors and designs, torso apparel, voice styles, and more.
Types of ship cosmetic customization options include:
Dashboard figures
Hanging flair
Cockpit hologram
Hull paint job design
Decals
Enemies in Star Wars: Squadrons will be able to see the inside of your cockpit, if you enjoy showing off, when they watch back the killcam footage after their defeat. However, if you prefer authenticity, there will actually be an option to turn off all the custom designs and make everything look authentic to the films. That’s a nice touch for the hardcore fans.
“The holo-display, normally used to provide critical phase and objective information throughout the Fleet Battles doubles as a customizable image projector,” says Clements in the blog post. “There are also hanging flairs like a miniature Millennium Falcon and dashboard-mounted objects like a severed protocol droid head or an Ewok bobblehead. Then of course there are the ship exterior paint jobs and pilot avatar customizations, all made through the culmination of months of concept art, modeling, and collaboration with the team at Lucasfilm.”
And the cherry on top at the end of the latest Star Wars: Squadrons blog post is that you’ll be able to save preferred loadouts, like ship subclasses, for ease of access and saving.
