It’s been about a week since Google announced it had stopped active development on VR creation suite Tilt Brush (2016) and made the app open source. Now that it’s in the hands of the developer community, we’ve seen Tilt Brush clones aplenty, however SideQuest app MultiBrush gives it something we always hoped it would have: multiplayer mode on Quest.
To get MultiBrush, you’ll need to set up SideQuest, the headset’s unofficial app store. Check out our simple guide of how (and why) to use SideQuest to download this and a mountain of other games and apps.
Rendever says they have plan to publish through Facebook’s App Lab for Quest, which would effectively allow all Quest users to download the app without needing SideQuest.
“This is a first release, some things may not work perfectly and we are still implementing some tools in the multiplayer rooms,” Rendever says. “In individual canvases, the full set of tools is available to you. Stay tuned for more!”
Google’s incredible VR painting app Tilt Brush is coming to the upcoming Oculus Quest standalone headset.
Google have enabled cross-buy for Tilt Brush, so if you own it already on the Oculus Rift store you already own it for Quest.
Tilt Brush was a launch title for the HTC Vive back in April 2016. It pioneered the idea of true spatial art with 6DoF tracked controllers in room scale VR. In early 2017 shortly after the launch of the Oculus Touch controllers Google added Rift support.
Facebook is positioning Quest as a games console. The company has repeatedly told developers that the focus of the device’s content library is gaming. Tilt Brush is one of the few confirmed titles, so far, that diversifies this library to include creation rather than just consumption.
Google says Oculus Quest “will unlock completely new opportunities” for artists. The company expects the lack of restrictive tether to lead to “art that we never could have dreamed up before.”
It will have been a huge technical challenge to bring an app like this to a mobile chipset, but Google claims the result should “look and feel pretty much the same as the Rift version, with a few small tweaks.” Most notably, the notable glow effect (bloom) of Tilt Brush brushes was too performance heavy after more than a few strokes. To solve this problem, bloom is enabled at the start but slowly fades away as the user draws more.
Strangely, Facebook’s own VR art apps aren’t coming to the standalone headset. The team behind Oculus Medium, the popular VR sculpting app, declared that it required “the power and memory of a PC”. Their VR painting app, Quill, is getting a Quest renderer to allow you to view creations, but the app itself doesn’t seem to be coming.
To paraphrase a sentiment we often share here at VRFocus, and one I certainly refer back to a lot in VR vs articles, technology does not stay still – even if you want it to. What you expect of technology today it may well not deliver today, but it could just as well deliver it tomorrow or have delivered it yesterday but you weren’t aware of it.
It probably didn’t even leave one of those ‘Sorry We Missed You’ cards either. Rude.
Technology often goes through cycles of high and low progress. One technology that’s seemingly accelerating at the moment is the development, implementation and use of A.I. – artificial intelligence. I swear, my inbox has about as much A.I related news in it as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) or anything else at the moment. So I was intregued when hunting for something to fill today’s Li360 slot when I stumbled across a project from back in February this year called Life Support.
Life Support is a 360 degree music video that combines several technologies. VR, obviously, is included. Not just because of the formatting but the visuals were in part created by Google Tiltbrush with some Unity thrown in. A.I. wrote the music, thanks to music composer and API Amper. While according to singer and video producer Taryn Southern, whose Youtube channel this is from, it also contains functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) video footage of her brain.
That’s quite the combo. Actually, Southern used A.I. to compose the entirety of her recent album, but as far as I can see this song was the only one to get the 360 treatment. For those interested you can find out more about using A.I. to compose in this interview with The Verge from last year.
Other than that you can watch things unfold below.
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have already convinced a great many people of the potential underlying these new technologies. Both VR and AR can have a significant impact on both individuals and society as a whole, fundamentally challenging what is seen as the norm today in the same way that the smartphone, television or printing press have previously done. All it takes is software developers using the hardware to strive for something new.
Despite this however, it seems that those with early access to the technology are being hemmed-in by a fear of the unknown. It’s commonly thought that entertainment will drive the way for both immersive mediums, and this is largely to do with the early adopters coming from a videogame standpoint. However, there’s much more to both AR and VR than shooting bad guys and journeying through space; with many avenues almost completely unexplored.
Below VRFocus has highlighted just a few of the areas in which immersive technologies such as AR and VR can have a genuine impact on the way we lead our daily lives, each of which are currently only being explored to a very limited degree.
Education
Education is perhaps one of the easiest avenues of opportunities for consumers to understand the positive impact of AR and VR. Being able to place children into a space that even today they’re reliant on textbooks in order to learn about could be revolutionary for the understanding of ancient civilisations, human biology or different cultures. There are a number of applications that offer this kind of experience already – Unimersiv and Curiscope’s Virtuali-Tee being just two examples – but still the adoption rate of these technologies by schools and private organisations fails to instigate any kind of recognisable demand.
Perhaps AR and VR need to stabilise their hardware offerings before such institutions – especially those reliant on government funding – will invest. Spending a significant amount of budget on technology that will be outdated within a year is not considered a wise move; at the same time however, there needs to be an end user to warrant a developer to produce such software.
Healthcare
There have been a number of VR and AR applications developed specifically to assist exercise, with the likes of VirZOOM offering an immediate solution and San Fransisco based RE:NEW collating workout applications in a handy portal. However, there’s far more to AR and VR then simply working out; the possibility to learn what types of exercise would be good for you as an individual and exactly how to perform routines you may not be familiar with is arguably a greater good.
Generic workout activities such as riding a bike and running are all well-and-good, but a more personally tailored solution would benefit far more people without the need of a gym subscription or the potential intimidation of hiring a personal trainer.
Nutrition
Arguably a culmination of what both education and healthcare could offer, an insight into what people eat that reaches further than the back of a plastic packet designed by the manufacturer would certainly be of use. It’s all too common for food to be misrepresented by advertisements and packaging, and that which is proposed as a ‘healthy’ snack could be anything but. An AR application that gets to the root of a product, building on the basics seen in applications such as Fruitness AR by analysing the ingredients and their quantities – plus any additives, preservatives, colouring agents or flavourings – would be a simple application to develop and could well offer people a more open and honest discussion about the food we find on supermarket shelves.
Videogames
In the introduction of this article I stated that AR and VR could be more ‘than shooting bad guys and journeying through space’. This is true, but also so is the importance of release. The daily lives of many people across the globe are enriched by entertainment – be it socialising, escapism or something in between – and both AR and VR have the opportunity to revolutionise the ways in which we do this.
It’s arguably here that immersive technologies have made their biggest plays so far. Applications like Facebook Spaces and vTime have made small but noticeable pushes towards socialising in a virtual space, whilst the likes of Pokemon Go and Tilt Brush have offered entertainment experiences unlike anything that’s gone before. But these are the exception and not the rule. Developers need to start striving to achieve new forms of entertainment in AR and VR now, opposed to just adapting the mechanics from videogames and movies into a new format.
Image Credit: mygaming.co.za
Sex
What role could AR or VR play in sex? Well, aside from the many adult entertainment applications already available – ranging from pornography to ‘waifu simulators’ – there’s actually room for a more collaborative interpretation.
Along the lines of education, though strictly targeted at adults of course, an AR application that would help define sensitive parts of the body and erogenous zones would take a great deal of the trial-and-error out of attempting to please your partner (or partners, if you’re so inclined) removing several layers of potential embarrassment; from that of education during youth to performance anxiety. Furthermore, this would give people the ability to share with their lover (or, again, lovers) intimate details of what they as individuals find pleasing opposed to a textbook assignation of a pleasure area. After all, everyone is different, and an AR application designed for individuality will bring far greater enjoyment than a one-size-fits-all interpretation.
Nick Ochoa curated some of the top artists producing work entirely in VR for the Magik Gallery show that happened in San Francisco, CA on May 20th. It was an ambitious effort to introduce VR creation tools for artists within a fine arts context in the Terra Gallery space. There were physical posters of scenes showed around 15-20 VR stations featuring an individual piece of art, as well as opportunities to try some of the VR art tools like TiltBrush. Most of the VR art pieces featured some dimension of scale or vastness that showcased some of the unique affordances of art within VR, and the intention was to inspire the art scene within San Francisco for how VR could be used as a medium for expression and storytelling. I had a chance to catch up with Magik Gallery founder Ochoa the day before the showing to talk about his efforts to get art within VR to be taken more seriously within the larger art world.
Magik Gallery is going to be focusing on holding VR art shows in physical spaces as there are a number of other virtual art gallery initiatives and efforts for virtual spaces.
According to a Varietyexclusive, Google may be gearing up to show off a brand new mobile VR headset at Google I/O developer conference this week, one that not only delivers VR in an all-in-one device, but could likely offer inside-out positional tracking as well.
The Variety report maintains information of the alleged all-in-one mobile VR headset—which won’t require a phone or PC to use—was gathered from “multiple sources with knowledge of the project.” Predictably, a Google spokesperson declined to comment.
The report posits that the headset is likely to debut this week in similar fashion to Google Daydream, which was introduced at last year’s Google I/O. Daydream is the company’s high-quality mobile VR platform designed to work with several flagship devices including the company’s own Pixel phone.
image courtesy Google
It’s unsure at this time exactly what a Google-made, all-in-one headset will look like, and whether it will incorporate the company’s augmented reality initiative Tango’s computer vision capabilities or not. Google’s interest in room-scale, interactive experiences is clear however, as evidenced by their early acquisition of VR studio Skillman and Hackett, known for creating Tiltbrush (2016), and more recently their acquisition of VR studio Owlchemy Labs, the minds behind Job Simulator (2016) and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality (2017).
The conference takes place today, May 17th, and goes until the 19th. The opening keynote will be livestreamed on the company’s developer channel on YouTube at 10 am PDT today.
In July, I was invited to give a talk about virtual reality at the bi-annual Illustration Conference with indie VR developer Ashley Pinnick, who studied as an artist and illustrator. On today’s Voices of VR podcast, we talk about the process of moving from 2D illustration to 3D VR art, some potential strategies for artists to get more involved in the process of virtual reality development, and the role of artists in creating digital avatars on the safe side of the Uncanny Valley.
LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST
One of the big contributions that artists can make is to create stylized VR avatars that feel comfortably outside of the Uncanny Valley. Studies have shown that people prefer some level of stylization in their avatars, and so illustrators are particularly well-suited to help people construct their digital identities in VR and AR.
I expect to see a lot more breakout art VR experiences created by trained artists in 2017, and that Sketchfab will likely play a large role in helping to discover 3D artist talent just as YouTube has helped independent video creators be discovered.
Creating art in VR is turning out to be one of the big cultural contributions of virtual reality, and I told the artists at the Illustration Conference that I’m really interested to see what type of worlds and characters they build and stories they tell.
Here’s a video of some of the major points that I made at the 2016 Illustration Conference:
Technology often goes through cycles of high and low progress. One technology that’s seemingly accelerating at the moment is the development, implementation and use of A.I. – artificial intelligence. I swear, my inbox has about as much A.I related news in it as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) or anything else at the moment. So I was intregued when hunting for something to fill today’s Li360 slot when I stumbled across a project from back in February this year called Life Support.
Despite this however, it seems that those with early access to the technology are being hemmed-in by a fear of the unknown. It’s commonly thought that entertainment will drive the way for both immersive mediums, and this is largely to do with the early adopters coming from a videogame standpoint. However, there’s much more to both AR and VR than shooting bad guys and journeying through space; with many avenues almost completely unexplored.
Education
Healthcare
Videogames
In July, I was invited to give a talk about virtual reality at the bi-annual