SuperData Research has been one of the more prolific companies looking at the virtual reality (VR) industry and its potential growth. In conjunction with Silicon Valley Virtual Reality (SVVR), the two have now released a new infographic showcasing who the audiences are and what they’re buying.
The infographic leads with figures dealing with revenue, with hardware sales currently driving revenue of $1.5 billion USD in 2016 and videogames currently top software sales. By 2020 though, software sales are expected to eclipse hardware, with global revenue hitting almost $40 billion.
Currently VR awareness among Americans over 18 stands at 32 percent, with VR users in the 18-34 age bracket for both men and women leading the way at 37 percent and 26 percent respectively.
I had the chance to give the keynote at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference where I provide some historical context for virtual reality tracing the evolution of communications mediums in order to contextualize my elemental theory of presence. It traces the history of the science and philosophy, and shows how VR is providing a direct experience of how much of our reality is subjectively constructed with our entire bodies. Hopefully this talk will help contextualize where we’ve been and where we’re going with VR, as well as a holistic framework to doing experiential design.
I had the chance to give the keynote at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference where I provide some historical context for virtual reality tracing the evolution of communications mediums in order to contextualize my elemental theory of presence. It traces the history of the science and philosophy, and shows how VR is providing a direct experience of how much of our reality is subjectively constructed with our entire bodies. Hopefully this talk will help contextualize where we’ve been and where we’re going with VR, as well as a holistic framework to doing experiential design.
Founded in 1993, Immersion Corp. designs and licenses haptic technology that’s come to be used in gamepads you’re well familiar with. Now the company is developing a new haptic programming system which aims to help game developers make better haptics effects for their games, faster.
The latest generation of VR controllers use more advanced haptics than the basic rumble that you find in today’s gamepads. But if you’ve played much VR, you’ve probably found that the capabilities of these haptics have gone largely underutilized by a wide swath of today’s VR games.
Immersion Corp. says this is because programming haptic effects is hard, and today it generally involves code-level input of values like amplitude, frequency, and time signatures in order to trigger the haptics inside of a controller. Now the company says they’ve made a better way, thanks to the TouchSense Force plugin (and API) which makes the creation of haptic effects into a much more intuitive visual process.
Rather than coding specific timing, amplitude, and frequency values, TouchSense Force (launching initially for UE4) creates a ‘clip’-based timeline interface which will be instantly familiar to anyone who has edited audio or video files. The timeline allows developers to pull an animation into the system, very easily design haptic effects that are finely tuned to the animation, and play those effects back with the animation on the fly for testing and tweaking.
So instead of a reloading gun animation just causing a simple rumble for a second or two, a developer using TouchSense Force could create a complex series of haptic effect clips that closely match every part of the animation for added realism.
Immersion Corp was demonstrating TouchSense Force at SVVR 2017 this week where they were showing an animation of a robotic glove enclosing the hand of a VR user (definitely not inspired by Iron Man’s suit-up scenes), which had a lot of intricate detail and moving parts.
In something like 10 minutes, according to the company, they were able to use the TouchSense Force plugin to design a series of varied effects which carefully synced to the activity on the glove; something which traditionally could have taken hours of careful tweaking. Trying the result for myself using a Rift headset and Touch controller, it was indeed very impressive, far beyond the level of haptic detail I’ve seen from any VR game to date.
Actually creating these effects with the plugin is completely essentially code-free. I have a basic understanding of audio editing and waveforms, and I very quickly understood the process of creating each effect; I’m confident I would be able to create my own using the plugin, which is pretty cool considering that I have no game development experience. That level of intuitivity means that creating such effects is easier and faster, and gives a huge level of control to developers. There’s hope that this will open the door to developers bringing much more attention to detail in their use of haptics for VR games.
And there’s a few other cool functions that Immersion Corp. is building into this tool. For one, if the animation ends up getting changed, the haptic effects can change with it automatically. This works by associating specific haptic clips to specific moments in the animation using UE4’s Notifies animation system. Because the animation and the haptic clips are linked, changing the animation will also change the playback timing of the haptic clips, which means developers can tweak the haptics and the animation independently without needing to repeat their work if they decide to make a tweak after the fact.
The plugin also offers cross-platform support, so that developers can author their haptic effects once, and have those effects play back as closely as possible on other controllers (which could even have different haptic technologies in them) without re-authoring for that controller’s own haptic API.
TouchSense Force is now available to select developers in early access as a UE4 plugin (you can sign up for access here). The pricing model is presently unannounced. The company says they also plan to make available a Unity plugin in Q3, and will release an API to allow integration of the same feature set into custom game engines. Presently the system supports Oculus Touch, Nintendo Switch, and unspecified “TouchSense Force-compatible hardware,” though we imagine the company is working to get Vive controllers integrated ASAP.
At SVVR 2017 this week in Silicon Valley, Chinese VR developer organization VRCore brought a range of content to the show representing some of the VR work happening in the West. Among that content was Audio Beats by developer Famiku, a SteamVR game for Vive and Rift with surprising polish and compelling gameplay.
We’ve seen a number of rhythm games pop up in the VR space which rely largely on existing tropes from the genre in a new VR setting. I was impressed with Audio Beats in the way that it plays effectively to VR’s strengths and fosters gameplay mechanics that are unique and only possible in VR.
Photo courtesy Famiku
The foundation of the game is a virtual futuristic drum instrument which has four floating panels which you can strike with your virtual futuristic drumsticks. The instrument is as simple as a real drum—hit a thing with another thing… make noise—making it instantly playable at a basic level, and yet the game’s smart mechanics make it clear that there’s abundant overhead for challenge and mastery (see some gameplay in the video heading this article). As you might suspect, given the fursustic instrument, the music for now mostly falls into the electronica genre, underlined with deep beats.
Much of the gameplay mechanics are about striking the right drum at the right time as a pulse of light travels down a note path to one of the drums; pretty basic stuff as far as the rhythm game genre is concerned. Of course, a real drum pushes back against your stick when you hit it, but a virtual drum cannot. Audio Beats doesn’t apologize for this, but instead embraces it with mechanics that only make sense in VR.
Among the various beat mechanics are occasional arrows which will come down the note path. To hit these correctly, you need to swing your drumstick through the drum in the indicated direction. For instance, if there’s an up arrow, I need to hit the correct drum with an upswing (coming from underneath) to land the note correctly. That means that I’m now not only thinking about timing and which drum to hit, but also the direction of my swing. The result is an effective mechanic that turns a limitation of VR into a strength of gameplay.
In addition to the basic beat and arrow beat mechanics, there’s also sustain notes, another well trodden concept in the rhythm game world, where instead of just striking the note once you need to hold it down for the duration in order to hit it correctly. But again Audio Beats goes smartly one step further in a way that takes advantage of VR. In the game, the sustain notes will shift in location as they proceed down the note path, meaning you have to not only hit and hold the correct starting location, but you need to move your hand around to stay in line with the stream as it moves from place to place, which can sometimes be from one drum to the next, or all the way across a gap between the furthest spaced drums.
VRCore founder Pinshan “Rebecca” Liu plays ‘Audio Beats’ at SVVR 2017
And of course all of these mechanics will be thrown at you simultaneously. Keeping your eye on the moving sustain note with one hand, while the other hand is busy jumping back and forth between drums during a complex string of notes is extremely satisfying. So too is nailing the arrow notes and combo notes as they are intertwined with the rest of it.
The gameplay really involves your body and your ability to multitask your limbs; real drummers will definitely have an upperhand to start, but while the outside-of-the-box mechanics might be outwardly based on drums, the gameplay could not be achieved with a real drum set or drum peripheral (like you might find with Rock Band). This unique-to-VR design is what makes VR games great, and why I came away very impressed with Audio Beats.
The game launched in early 2017 for $10 and although it isn’t specifically listed as an Early Access title, it appears the developers plan to grow it over time, with the Audio Beats Steam page noting, “This version contains the core gameplay for players to experience. The official version will have more songs and game functions will be updated regularly.” The game recently added Rift and Touch support (on top of its Vive support) and leaderboards to keep players competing for high scores.
Presently, it appears there’s only six tracks available (each with three difficulty levels, though I promise you won’t be able to start at Expert), and as above, the plan is for the developer to add more over time, which I very much hope they do.
If you’ve been following VR for a while then you’ll likely recognise Silicon Valley Virtual Reality (SVVR) as one of the original events designed to evangelise and promote the technology, starting out as a small meetup for enthusiasts and steadily growing into a massive conference that gathers industry figureheads under one roof. This year’s SVVR Expo is right around the corner, running from March 29th – 31st at the San Jose Convention Center, and you can get a discounted ticket right here.
This year’s show is sponsored by the likes of Oculus, HTC’s Viveport, and Unity. Keynote speakers include Nonny de la Peña, known to many as the godmother of VR for her early work in VR journalism, produced before anyone had even heard of the phrase Oculus Rift. Attendees will also hear from Tony Parisi, currently busy heading up VR and AR at Unity,Kent Bye, host of long-time VR interview series Voices of VR, and Rikard Steiber, SVP of VR at HTC.
The conference itself features a huge amount of speakers, including Philip Rosedale from High Fidelity. Topics are going to include everything from improving VR education to updates on the OSVR platform and more. There’s also an expo floor where you’ll be able to go hands on with the latest offerings from the likes of AltspaceVR, Cubicle Ninjas, High Fidelity, and even Oculus itself.
We’ve teamed up with SVVR to offer full conference passes for $450, which is $200 off the usual price, or an Expo pass for $99, which is $50 off too. Just enter the code UPLOAD@SVVR2017 at the checkout and, hey presto, you’ll be inside the conference at a fraction of the price.
This week’s Silicon Valley VR Expo 2017 is set to bring together the core of the VR industry from Silicon Valley and beyond. As VR’s biggest industry event, this year’s event represents the most diverse group of companies from around the world ever to attend the conference.
Well known as one of the largest and most senior VR communities, SVVR has been a focal point of the growing virtual reality industry in Silicon Valley with a schedule of regular local events. Now in its fourth year, the organization’s annual Silicon Valley VR Expo is an industry-focused event for all verticals in VR, bringing together top names in VR research, engineering, development, entertainment, and enterprise services to discuss the latest trends, exhibit innovations, and showcase the future of VR.
This year the event will have dedicated tracks covering medical VR, VR development & content creation, VR for education, WebVR, location-based VR & Vsports, and feature regional pavilions from Japan, Korea, China, and Europe.
Interested in attending or exhibiting at SVVR 2017? As a Road to VR reader you can save $200 on general admission, $50 on expo-only admission, and 20% on standard exhibitor packages using code RTOVR@SVVR2017.
I had the chance to give the keynote at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference where I provide some historical context for virtual reality tracing the evolution of communications mediums in order to contextualize my elemental theory of presence. It traces the history of the science and philosophy, and shows how VR is providing a direct experience of how much of our reality is subjectively constructed with our entire bodies. Hopefully this talk will help contextualize where we’ve been and where we’re going with VR, as well as a holistic framework to doing experiential design.
