“Kicking Raptors In The Face Is A Lot Of Fun”: Island 359’s Developer On Guns, Dinosaurs And More

Roving VRFocus reported Nina speaks to Steve Bowler of CloudGate Studios about upcoming videogame Island 359. The title has been out in Steam Early Access for HTC Vive since August 2016 as the developers look at new innovations they can introduce. The basic concept is that there is an island inhabited by dinosaurs that the player can explore and, of course, shoot the dinosaurs.

CloudGate have been experimenting with the newly-released Vive Tracker to implement a full-body tracking system referred to as ‘Your Virtual Self’. This allows a player using the Vive Trackers to attach trackers to their body and then a full-body model within the VR environment that can follow the players movement.

Ideally the system will use three trackers. One placed on a belt around the waist, and one for each shoe. CloudGate are working on a simple device for attaching the trackers to almost any form of footwear. This system will enable players to run down and kick any dinosaurs they come across using their actual foot movements.

Island 359 currently has three levels, one of which is only available in the arcade mode. Five dinosaur models are currently in the title, but the developers are working on implementing more dinosaurs and more levels. A firm release date has yet to be set, but CloudGate are aiming for Q2 of 2017.

You can watch the full interview below.

VRFocus will bring you more updates on Island 359 as they come in.

HTC Vive Celebrates its First Anniversary, VR Studios Give Their Reactions

Another week and another anniversary, this time its HTC Vive’s. To celebrate its first birthday the company has rolled out several promotions, giving away Arcade Saga for free, dropping the price of the headset, and launching the Viveport Subscription Service. But what has this first year meant for developers and where do they see the next 12 months heading? VRFocus caught up with some studio’s to get their reactions.

HTC Vive was the first headset to allow users to physically walk around in a virtual world, which was a big draw for many studios including Waltz of the Wizard developer Aldin Dynamics. Hrafn Thorri Thorisson, Aldin’s CEO said : “At the time Vive debuted, no platform was able to deliver full freedom of movement and hand tracking. Those capabilities are vital in letting you move and act as in reality, paving the way towards mainstream adoption by making the user experience more powerful and intuitive. It were the system capabilities that we at Aldin had been waiting for since we got into VR in 2013.

“HTC and Valve have been a powerful force in pushing this industry forward and they play a large role in making us more excited than ever about where things are headed. Virtual reality is a medium that will be constantly evolving for decades to come and their approach to fostering collaboration and an open platform is driving the industry forward at a faster rate than otherwise possible. We fully expect motion controllers and roomscale to remain the most powerful form of VR, and we’re starting to see the rest of the industry align with that philosophy.”

While VRUnicorns Julie Heyde also spoke highly of HTC Vive’s roomscale capabilities: “Us VRUnicorns love how the Vive and roomscale set-up in general added so much more to VR than other devices. We are game jammers and want to push games to the fullest, interact with everything in our games and give our players the best VR experience possible without too many hardware constraints. Because in VR you want to be able to do whatever you want. And that freedom will grow as the future generations of VR become better on every front: more high fidelity tracking, more feedback, more interactivity, better graphics. And we think that this can be best supported through smart, ambitious choices, not compromise.”

Steve Bowler, President, CloudGate Studio, creators of Island 359 and avid Vive Tracker enthusiasts had this to say: “We at CloudGate obviously were blown away with the incredible potential of the Vive when we first put our hands on the developer kits; enough to quit our jobs and form our own company so we could pursue room scale VR full time. As we enter Year 2 of consumer VR, we’re incredibly excited that we get to work with an incredible partner like HTC. The Trackers are going to open up new horizons we didn’t even know were possible and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for VR! Happy Birthday, Vive!”

“Like many new content platforms, it starts with experimentation such as passion projects and short experiences. Once there is consumer adoption we begin to see growth and monetization. We’re already seeing an ancillary VR marketplace which includes accessories for shooter type games, wireless adapters for cordless play, skins for HMD’s etc. It’s exactly this kind of commitment that drives the innovation and brings VR mainstream,” Russell Naftal, Co-Managing Partner at VRWERX replied. “Regarding the HTC Vive team, they have been extremely active lately, from investments in third party developers to subscription gaming, and more recently, distribution with the launch of Viveport. One thing for sure, HTC Vive absolutely believes in the future of VR.”

HTC_VIVE_VR_Birthday_VIVE_DAY_eheader-LOGOCarsten Boserup, Community Manager at Racket: Nx developer One Hamsa sees the platform as the perfect way to enjoy sports, and wireless high-end VR is the next step. “My eyes have been widely open to the fact that VR Sport is here and it is growing fast. People who don’t have much spare time and who have to chose between going to the gym or play games, are now burning calories and getting their heart beating, in their own living room while playing VR sports games,” effused Boserup. “You can already enjoy VR Sport games in full 360 on the HTC Vive. Though, when the wireless HTC Vive arrives, it’ll change sports and how we exercise today, dramatically… in a good way!”

The consumer VR space is incredibly exciting right now,” said Simon Windsor, Joint MD, (Co-founder) Hammerhead VR. “As an immersive content studio producing consumer titles we’re feeling good about early market growth and have high expectations for the coming year. We’re looking forward to the release of more diverse, premium quality titles from indies and established studios alike, which we see further fuelling consumer interest and adoption. In particular the fast growing VR arcade market, which Vive is a huge proponent of, will unleash some very cool, ultra-quality experiences to excite consumers.

These early days of consumer VR have lead to a lot of experimentation within the community, but with some companies eager to get on board this has also meant quite a few similar titles. But this will expand and the quality will further improve expects Denny Unger, CEO and Creative Director, Cloudhead Games.

“At launch there was a push to establish best practices which gave everyone a base level to develop towards. Since then we’ve seen further experimentation, far too many wave shooters, late attempts at longer format AAA-like experiences, and Hollywood desperately trying to wrap its head around what it all means for their industry,” said Unger. “I think that the next wave of development will continue to be content focused but with a push towards polished games, tools/training, as well as Hollywood taking a much deeper dive. In Asia at least, the industry will likely attempt to balance out a slow growth home market with location based multiplayer experiences, while in North America we will be purely content fixated.

“Beyond the next year the market is going to slowly become a very competitive place and we may start seeing some homogony in terms of platform. Hardware will improve and prices will shift. That will signal a tipping point for the industry and that’s when things get really interesting.”

Do you agree with the devs? Or do you see HTC Vive and VR going in a different direction? What do you hope will happen in the next 12 months? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Developers Showcase Incredible Full Body Tracking With Vive

Developers Showcase Incredible Full Body Tracking With Vive

We have yet to see a solution for full body tracking that is affordable, easy to use, and can work in a wide range of VR experiences. That’s not keeping developers from forging ahead anyway though.

The prize for developers creating virtual worlds and implementing full body tracking is a more immersive experience overall. You’d have an experience in which your shadow on the ground, reflection in the mirror and arms and legs when you look down all accurately represent the movements of their real-world counterparts. Other companies specializing in motion capture, like IKinema, might also be able to put together products and services that are more accessible to a larger group of creators.

One method of tracking full body movement is by wearing a suit that takes a lot of time to put on and calibrate. A pair of videos released in the last few days, however, show how Valve Software’s promising tracking technology is usable for the same purpose.

We covered the first test by Steve Bowler at CloudGate Studio, developer of Island 359 [Early Access Review: 8/10], and now Bowler released a second experiment showing just how good the movement capture works with the HTC Vive when you have six points of data to collect. The first test didn’t track the hips, but now Bowler is putting a Vive controller in a tool belt at his waist in addition to the ones on his feet and his hands. When combined with the head’s position via the headset itself, these six points provide an incredibly realistic real-time body capture system.

Here’s Bowler:

We’re pushing to get an incredibly robust fullbody awareness commercial system out to our Island 359 players. It should scale with how many tracked points we see when they boot up the game, so that if players only have the HMD and Controllers, they should still be able to look down and see a torso, arms, and hands. If they own two trackers, they’ll have legs, and if they own three trackers, they’ll see even more robust body tracking. This way people don’t have to invest in trackers at any set level if they don’t want to, but places with a bit more capital like VR Arcades could offer the fully tracked experience easily, without a ton of complication. We’re also in the process of devising a “templating” system to make sure that the user doesn’t have to do any technical work to make the full body magic happen. Once we have the trackers, they should just be able to attach them to their shoes/belt, do a quick template check, and be playing with full body awareness.

Bowler is far from the only one attempting this. IKinema is also developing a solution for “low-cost, full body mocap from HTC Vive hardware.” The latest video from IKinema, embedded at the top of this post, uses six tracking points as well.

There is still a lot of work to be done before we’ll start seeing these types of solutions in a lot of VR games. HTC has just started distributing Vive Trackers to developers, which would provide a slightly more ergonomic solution for this sort of tracking than buying extra controllers. We’re also still waiting for revelations from hundreds of partners which are working with Valve’s SteamVR Tracking technology on what would likely include even more ergonomic solutions built for this specific purpose.

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