Want new The Walking Dead: Onslaught gameplay and screenshots? We’ve got you covered.
Developer Survios just published a new deep dive into its upcoming VR zombie killer, revealing new details about its story and features. You can see it below. As you may already know, Onslaught is set in the world of the TV show – not the comics like The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners – and takes place between Season 8 and 9. At this time, Rick Grimes and his band of survivors are establishing a new home named Alexandria.
New The Walking Dead: Onslaught Gameplay
As part of the game, then, you’ll be tasked with building this new safe zone. Rick and Darryl Dixon (played by Norman Reedus himself) will be at odds with how to establish Alexandria, which forms much of the game’s story. Often playing as Darryl, you’ll be sent on scavenging missions to help you build the town, watching it grow into a place you and your friends can call home.
You’ll be able to choose how Alexandria grows, too. Will you focus on upgrading your Armory, or other areas? If you do go with your arsenal, you’ll be able to craft better upgrades for guns and produce new melee power-ups like a slo-mo option.
Today’s news also comes with some new screenshots you can see above, including another look at fan-favorite character, Michonne. Onslaught is due out on PSVR and PC VR headsets on September 29.
What did you think of the new The Walking Dead: Onslaught gameplay? Will you be picking the game up later this month? Let us know in the comments below!
Despite the recent PSVR port announcement, it seems a Minecraft Quest version isn’t going to be announced anytime soon.
The news comes from a verified Minecraft developer, who goes by CornerHard and works predominantly on Realms, Minecraft’s service for easily creating your own custom server through a paid subscription.
Minecraft Quest Still Far Off
While CornerHard doesn’t work directly on the VR versions of the game, a Reddit user replied to a comment of his asking whether the recent PSVR announcement might a Quest version of Minecraft is imminent. Here’s what he had to say:
No news on Quest support. We’d need to rework how VR locomotion works so you could move your player by physically walking, which is different than how it works currently.
CornerHard is of course referring to the roomscale nature of the Quest, which operates in full 6DoF. This is a bit of an odd response, however, as the existing version of Minecraft on Oculus Rift does indeed let you walk around your environment. Quest and Rift are essentially identical tracking-wise, so we don’t really see why Quest movement would need to be significantly different from the Rift version. Not only that, but Facebook’s John Carmack revealed he already had a Quest version of the game up and running earlier this year.
While it’s a disappointing response, it is perhaps to be expected. With the PSVR version only just announced, we wouldn’t expect to see Quest support for a little while yet. Recent announcements in relation to OpenXR made a Quest version of Minecraft seem more likely, but we wouldn’t start holding our breath just yet.
Would you like to see Minecraft on the Oculus Quest? Let us know in the comments below.
The upcoming Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond will let you skip its “intense sequences”, developer Respawn has confirmed.
Game Director Peter Hirschmann confirmed as much in a deep-dive into last month’s new trailer with IGN. At one point, the trailer shows the player jumping out of a B-17 bomber in a dramatic sequence.
“Doing this in VR is especially insane, you feel like you’re really falling,” Hirschmann notes. “We do give players the option to skip intense sequences and the ability to revisit them once they’re feeling up to it.”
This seems like a wise choice. Though blockbuster action moments such as this are one of the reasons we’re really looking forward to Above and Beyond, they definitely look like they could be too much for more sensitive or first-time VR users. Having the option to revisit them easily also means no one’s really losing out on anything.
The deep-drive also reveals a new character making his debut in the game and talks about the process of bringing D-Day to life in VR. We recently spoke to Hirschmann ourselves about the game. You can read our full interview here, in which he talks about the game’s cinematic qualities and its length.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond is due out this holiday season on the Oculus Rift. You can also play it on Oculus Quest via the Link option, but there’s no dedicated port of the game to talk about yet. Will you be picking the experience up? Let us know in the comments below!
Surprise! Minecraft PSVR support was just confirmed, and it’s coming very soon.
Developer Mojang confirmed as much on the PlayStation Blog today. It will arrive as a free update for all owners of the base game and include all of the Minecraft content you already know and love, just now in VR. The PSVR version of the game supports the DualShock 4 controller – there’s no mention of PlayStation Move support.
Minecraft PSVR Support Confirmed
A final date for the support isn’t confirmed, but it’s been developed in conjunction with SkyBox Labs. It’s a bit of a surprising move given that Minecraft is owned and published by Xbox-maker, Microsoft.
Minecraft first got official VR support on the Gear VR and Oculus Rift a few years back, with full motion control support for the latter. Many fans have also been hoping that the game will eventually come to Oculus Quest too, but the relative silence around the VR version – and the recent news that support for the Gear VR edition was winding down – had us concerned it might never happen. But Minecraft PSVR support has certainly rekindled those hopes. The recent addition of OpenXR support also fuels that speculation.
The news comes as Sony kicks off a week of spotlighting PSVR. The company says to expect new announcements and updates on existing titles every day through to Friday at 7am PT. Plus a PlayStation Store sale focusing on the headset’s best games will go live this Wednesday, September 9. We don’t have the full list yet but games like Borderlands 2 VR, Farpoint and Astro Bot Rescue Mission are confirmed to be taking part.
That’ll help us hold out for another week of no PS5 announcements, probably. Maybe. We’re getting a little impatient here too, don’t worry.
Will you be jumping into the Minecraft PSVR support? Let us know in the comments below!
Our VR fitness prayers have been answered; a Holopoint Oculus Quest version is coming soon.
The game was recently listed in the ‘Coming Soon’ section on the Oculus Quest store. Developer Alzan Studios hasn’t shared an exact release date, but games that reach the Coming Soon section are usually just a few weeks out from release. Check out the trailer for the PC VR sequel, Holopoint Chronicle, below.
Holopoint Oculus Quest Confirmed
Holopoint first came to PC VR headsets years back and offers one of the most physically demanding experiences you’ll find in VR. You wield a bow and arrow and must shoot holographic targets in a dojo. But, once you hit a target, it will fire back at you before disappearing. You’ll need to lean out of the way, and there’s only limited room for error. Plus, any targets left to linger too long will also fire at you.
This makes for an incredibly intense experience that has you spinning on the spot and ducking out of the way over and over again. To this day it remains one of the most exhausting VR games and we’ve long wanted to see it on Quest, where the lack of wires should give players the confidence to do all those spins.
Indeed, the description for the game notes that it was “designed so that only a few determined archers will reach the last wave.”
We reviewed Holopoint’s surprise sequel on PC early last year. “Holopoint Chronicle is a fitting follow-up to a VR fitness gem with some welcome additions,” we said. “This remains one of VR’s most engaging active games even if it requires a strong stomach (in more ways than one).”
Will you be picking up Holopoint Oculus Quest? Let us know in the comments below!
Family game night? We’ve got you covered with our list of the best family VR games.
We wanted to make this a varied list to give you a lot of choice. As such, when we say a family VR game, we don’t necessarily mean just multiplayer titles and, while we’ve kept violent games off of the list, some of the games do have action elements and mechanics you might deem unsuitable for the youngest audiences. We’ll point those out where applicable.
Dreams is a glorious VR playroom, a sort of do-it-yourself creation platform where, after a bit of onboarding, you can make your own content and share it with others. You’ll be amazed at the scale of the creations possible in Dreams. It’s easy to lose hours with others hopping from one bright idea to the next.
We’ve put Dreams higher in the list for two reasons. Firstly, it takes a bit of dedication to get to grips with, which will make the creative aspect too mature for some younger audiences. Plus, this is an online hub of user-made content, which comes with the usual caveats. If you want to show younger audiences, it might be an idea to curate a list of levels beforehand.
9. Puppet Fever
Type: Local multiplayer Platforms: Quest, PC VR
This ingenious family VR game needs just one headset to be enjoyed by anyone in the room. The VR player uses a huge range of 2D props to put on their own puppet show. They find themselves behind a stage, while on a connected screen you can view their show from the front. Different game modes can give you the freedom to make up your own stories, or you can generate word cards for a virtual game of charades. A brilliant little idea, and free to play on Quest (with in-app purchases, mind you).
8. Racoon Lagoon
Type: Single or online multiplayer Platforms: Quest, Rift
A cutesy little island lifestyle game – perhaps the closest VR has yet gotten to its own Animal Crossing. You explore a tropical destination, meeting a friendly cast of critters that you can carry out tasks for. Earn more hearts, make more friends and unlock new areas. The game has multiplayer and cross-play between Rift and Quest so, if you have another headset handy, you can adventure together.
7. A Fisherman’s Tale
Type: Single-player Platforms: PSVR, Quest, PC VR
VR gaming doesn’t get much more wholesome than A Fisherman’s Tale, a puzzle game that’s equal parts charming and brain-bending. You take on the role of the titular fisherman, awakening one day to find themselves living in his own model replica of his lighthouse. But, get this, that same model sits in the middle of the room, and you can take the roof off to interact with a tiny version of yourself, or open the window to see a larger version too. It’s incredibly clever but still very approachable, and a VR must-play.
6. Fuji
Type: Single-player Platforms: PSVR, Quest, PC VR
There’s a lot of great VR meditation apps out there but, for our money, you won’t find many virtual destinations more tranquil or more soothing than Fuji’s vibrant fields of alien vegetation. In this relaxing trip, you reawaken wildlife and can also grow your own virtual garden. It’s the perfect choice for those looking for a less demanding VR experience.
5. Spaceteam VR
Type: Local and online multiplayer Platforms: Quest, PC VR
If you’re looking for a bit of a team-building exercise with the family, then you can consider Spaceteam VR a one-stop-shop. In this adaptation of a mobile classic, you work together with friends to fix a spaceship, shouting out ridiculous orders to each other while making sure to listen out for your own.
4. Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale
Type: Online multiplayer Platforms: Quest, Rift
VR tries its hand at Overcooked with Michellin Star results. Cook-Out has you cooking for a fairytale cast in a full campaign for up to four players (with cross-play!). You’ll need to work with each other to slice up ingredients, clean dishes and cook up tasty treats before customers get too inpatient.
3. Curious Tale Of The Stolen Pets
Type: Single-player Platforms: PSVR, Quest, PC VR
Curious Tale makes for a whistful story of summers spent away and sibling rivalries. It’s an adorable puzzler ideal for casting to a screen and collaborating on, and the stop-motion art style is something to really behold inside a headset. Curious Tale is a perfect first destination for getting to grips with VR, too.
2. Vacation Simulator/Job Simulator
Type: Single-Player Platforms: PSVR, Quest, PC VR
Job Simulator and Vacation Simulator remain hallmarks for the VR industry because they prioritize unique interactions only possible inside VR alongside user comfort first and foremost. They’re chock full of engaging activities that really take advantage of the platform. For many people, this should be your first stop when picking up a VR headset.
1. Astro Bot/Playroom VR
Type: Single-player (Astrobot) Local multiplayer (Playroom VR) Platforms: PSVR
Astro Bot was born out of the Playroom VR, which is available for free, so we thought it only fair we bundled the two together. The latter includes some of the best local multiplayer in VR, with other players joining in on a TV screen to play family-friendly games of cat and mouse and more. Astro Bot, meanwhile, is a genuinely Mario-level platform bursting with fresh ideas that will constantly delight. It remains our top ranking for the best PSVR games and now we crown it one of the best family VR games too.
Last week we had the chance to speak with Peter Hirschmann, Game Director at Respawn Entertainment on Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond.
We already published part of that interview in which Hirschmann discussed the upcoming VR shooter’s multiplayer game modes. Now you can read the majority of the complete interview transcribed down below. Some sections have been left out to improve clarity and flow and some passages have been lightly edited for consistency without altering any meanings.
UploadVR: Let’s get started by talking about the new trailer. I thought it was great! As a piece of entertainment in and of itself it was very well done and very cinematic with lots of action. Last year we spoke about Medal of Honor as a concept was inspired by Saving Private Ryan and Spielberg as the origin of the franchise. The trailer felt like a return to those roots. Is that true for the rest of the game too?
Peter Hirschmann: The game as well? Well, you say it’s cinematic. When someone refers to something that’s cinematic, I think they’re typically referring to something that had an emotional impact through the combination of the cinematography, the lighting, the performances, the music, you know, it’s just such a key part of it all. And most importantly, whatever was happening from a story perspective around the characters, all those come together to create a cinematic moment. But a spectacle by itself is just gratuitous and pointless.
But if there’s stakes involved, especially involving characters that you’ve gotten to know, that’s when you have those cinematic moments. So with Medal of Honor, we’re trying to create those emotional moments and with VR, as you know, your head is the camera, so there’s no cutting, there’s no edits. Everything you experience, you experience literally in first person. You could say we’re putting the first-person back in first-person shooters. You don’t spend any time in cutaways, looking at other characters or looking at yourself in third person or seeing scenes that you’re not privy to. The entire experience, the entire game, is something that you experience in real-time, in first-person, from your perspective.
And the story, the immersion and stereoscopic nature of wearing an HMD just does not come through in trailers, you’re literally removing a dimension from the experience.
UploadVR: Kind of shifting gears a little bit, I know last year we talked about the length and the format of the game. I think you said it was shooting for around 10 -12 hours and there were 50 mission segments, that’s how you described it. Is that similar to how the game is structured now?
Peter Hirschmann: 54.
UploadVR: Oh! 54, okay.
Peter Hirschmann: Yeah. I think we’ve netted out it’s about 10 hours. If you play it with a consistent pace, it can certainly stretch much longer if you go after every collectible and go into every nook and cranny. But some levels are very linear, like the U-Boat. It’s just a giant metal tube. So, you know, you start at one end and fight to the back, but most of the segments are multiple paths, sometimes three or four different ways to play through it.
There are lots of different ways to play, just even one piece of geography. So if you’re not speed-running, but if you’re playing at a natural pace and experiencing the story, it’s netted out to about 10.
And when you add, well, we haven’t talked about these much, but we have what we call combat exercises. The final name might be a little different, the shipping version, but they’re sort of just shooting Nazis because it’s fun.
I gotta be careful here, I don’t want to say gauntlet-style levels, but they’re sort of challenges. We just put you into a small map and just waves come at you while we let you kind of play with different weapons.
UploadVR: Oh, great. That kind of stuff is quite popular. I feel like it’s even more popular in VR, because I feel like with a lot of VR games, especially shooters, it’s difficult to take the time to appreciate how a weapon handles when you’re in the middle of a mission. So I think people love those sorts of shooting gallery / wave arenas where they can just kind of adlib a little bit more.
Peter Hirschmann: That’s exactly it. It came out of honestly our gray box test level that we literally have as just a giant gray box that we would use to test weapons.
And then we just added some Nazis walking around that would react. And it was like, s***, this is pretty fun. And like, can we gamify this? And then, the idea of it even becoming not just a mini game, but giving the player the opportunity to play with the weapons before they’re in the mission. Thematically, it’s like you’re visiting the quartermaster and they say, ‘Here you go. Take all the time you want!’ And the gamified leap is, you know, you’re using your imagination that instead of shooting targets we give you actual fully-animated characters to shoot at as the gamey conceit.
UploadVR: Yeah, you can tell modes like this are quite popular. For Boneworks, back whenever that first came out, one of the first things people were asking for was that kind of content because when they were doing YouTube videos and stuff during development they had that sort of gray box test level that they would show off all the weapons and physics. And everyone was like, ‘Wait! Hold on! Where’s this level, I just beat the game. I never got to go there!’
Switching gears again, can you divulge any details about the opening mission? Yeah. I don’t remember if we talked about this last time.
Peter Hirschmann: Yeah. Well, the opening, the prologue, we have a prologue, so the prologue, you know, and this is getting back to. Again, pulling some elements from those original Medal of Honor games forward into this game, one of the key narrative pieces of that original Medal of Honor was the character you’re playing being nominated for the Medal of Honor before the game starts. That’s what gets you the attention of the group that recruits you.
The Medal of Honor is a sacred award. The Medal of Honor is not something that you should be earning points to unlock. It’s in the language of the Medal of Honor itself. You never talk about people winning, people are awarded it.
So we thought let’s bring that idea forward to this game. In earlier MoH games it always happened off-screen but we thought we could give you just a little taste of your character. The prologue starts at North Africa and originally it was just gonna be an of-screen sort of thing that the player goes in and does a daring rescue mission to to save some allied troops.
But that implies an existing high-level of skill and we don’t know want the player to have to do that at the very beginning of the game. So we have this conceit that you’re wounded, you’re hurt in the execution of that mission, which is true to the nature of the award. If you ever meet a living Medal of Honor recipient you’re meeting someone who should have died.
UploadVR: So essentially you play as Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan, but if he had lived at the end.
Peter Hirschmann: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re waking up. I never actually made that connection, but yeah, that’s a good one to make. The medic gets you in time. And, the thing is, it’s a game about shooting Nazis. We wanted you to be able to shoot a Nazi literally in the first 15 seconds of the game.
So as you awake and look around it’s North Africa, there’s Desert Corps running around, Palm trees, and as you’re coming to the NPC allies are quickly give you context of everything.
By now you know you did something heroic. Then out in the distance you see a Nazi running at you and we give you the chance to pull your pistol out and shoot that first Nazi right then within the first 10-15 seconds of the game.
UploadVR: Going back to something you mentioned earlier about ‘Putting the first-person back in first-person shooters,’ my question about that is now that we’re almost five years into consumer-grade VR we’ve obviously had a lot of first-person shooters in VR. What are some of the ways that you feel Medal of Honor differentiates itself?
We’ve all played Onward, Pavlov, DOOM, Farpoint, Firewall, and all those kinds of games. So where does Medal of Honor sit on that spectrum and how is it different?
Peter Hirschmann: Well, every game you just named is great. We’ve played and loved and learned from them all to be sure.
We want to make it as accessible as possible. Accessibility for us is a term that has a lot of important meanings that applies to different elements of the game. Of course, you start with the controls. I mean we are on this cutting edge state-of-the-art platform and it’s one of Miyamoto’s tenants going all the way back to the early days of console: It all starts with the controller. Back then, it was a D-pad and two buttons and now, you know, it’s motion controls. I mean, it’s crazy, but that core still applies. It all starts with the controls.
We spent two years just iterating on the weapons stuff. We wanted to build something that felt immersive but didn’t overwhelm the player.
UploadVR: If I remember correctly, the reloading is not like a one-to-one simulation, like in something such as Onward. It was kind of a halfway point.
Peter Hirschmann: Yeah, that’s a great way to put it. For most weapons it’s a three-step process. Eject the clip, grab a new one, slam it in and charge the weapon. And then every weapon is a little bit different. Like, maybe the bolt is on a different side, where you load it’s a little different, and so on. It’s something that becomes a slightly skill-based activity, but you build a muscle memory for it.
UploadVR: Can you tell me anything about multiplayer?
Peter Hirschmann: You know, we have conventional modes that just by the nature of being in VR and being the nature of our systems, it’s a different experience. It’s just the locomotion and being able to lean and peek and hide and say cover.
That adds a depth beyond just straight death match and TDM [team deathmatch] that’s cool. Our take on sabotage is something that you can only do in VR because of how you interact with the environment and how you interact with the mode playing off of bomb placement for bomb diffusal fantasy.
You know, there are things you can do in VR. And again, we abstract it down to the most accessible mechanics. But with VR where you’re interacting with the world and every surface is available to you. There’s things you can do that are really cool, that would be hard to do on a flat screen.
That would be hard to do with just a conventional controller. And those are the kinds of things that we really leaned into and went deep on because it’s like, wow, this again, death match, team death match, domination, whoop — gave one away!
When you put them in a VR environment you still put them in our maps. So due to the weapon handling and nature of the platform, they’re going to feel different. But at least the rule sets are the rule sets and conventional and easy to get.
UploadVR: Cool! I’m really excited to hopefully learn more about the multiplayer soon.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond still doesn’t have a release date, but the latest trailer from Gamescom indicates it’s still coming this year exclusively to the PC VR Rift platform. Stay up to date with all the latest Medal of Honor VR news in our coverage hub for the game right here.
What do you think of how it sounds? Let us know down in the comments below!
Since its announcement earlier this year, Joy Way’s Stride has kept our attention with its Mirror’s Edge-inspired VR gameplay. We wanted to know more about the game, so we spoke to the developer for this Stride interview.
Joy Way CEO Anton Ulishchenko and STRIDE Game Designer Dmitry Khabarov shared a little time with us to talk about the project’s history and its future. Read on to find out all about the game!
Upload: Where did the idea for Stride first come from?
Dmitry Khabarov: I have been a fan of parkour for a long time. I love games like Mirrors Edge, Titanfall, Dying Light and I’ve have been watching STORROR every Monday for several years now (and recently almost every day). I am also a fan of VR, which is why I work in this industry. At some point, my love of VR and parkour united. This happened when I was playing BONEWORKS. I passed the game a long time ago and came back just to run in the sandbox, in which there are many different hills and obstacles that ask you to run over them. But although the movement system there is well made for its own purposes, it is completely unsuitable for parkour. I wondered if there were games that make you feel like a real parkour pro. I tried to find something similar, but it turned out that apart from BONEWORKS and perhaps one arcade mode in Rec Room, nothing has so far come close.
Around the same time, I noticed a post on the Reddit where the user was wondering if it would be possible to make a VR parkour game in the style of the game Mirror’s Edge? At that moment, I realized that I was not the only one, and that most likely there are many people who are waiting for this in VR. Then I looked at all the games I could find which are at least a little close in mechanics to making full-fledged parkour in VR. I realized that almost all the necessary elements had already been implemented in VR games separately, but no one had ever assembled them into one whole before. I wrote down all my thoughts and ideas in a small document, and when the moment came for our team to choose a concept for the next game, I suggested doing something that no one else had done: make real parkour in VR. This is how the development of STRIDE began.
Upload: How much has the project changed since you first revealed it? Are all the features like melee combat still there?
Anton Ulishchenko: After we assembled the prototype, we released a video on cubes in Reddit and received a lot of attention from the community and fans of Mirror’s Edge. We attempted to develop a campaign history style game, but after a vertical cut of the video game and working on the script, it became clear how long the path would be to release and how many resources would be needed to make a complete story.
So, we decided to focus on the main thing, which is the cool movement mechanics. If you master it, it causes flow states, and we wanted to check this by developing an arcade mode and quickly substituting turret bots there. In parallel with this, the second part of the team is working on other bots (stealth, gunfights, movement, close combat). We used the Xsens costume for some animations.
A smarter type of bot with movement will be in the next arena mode, which the second part of the team has been working on from the very beginning of the project. Eventually, we intend to use these bots in story mode. The parkour system has changed a lot and will be polished even more in the future. It has become much easier to use. Flow has improved and there are fewer bugs and problems.
Upload: I felt the jumping in the game could be very hit or miss – are you looking into other inputs for the jump, or fine-tuning what’s there now?
Anton Ulishchenko: At the moment, the jump works in such a way that the player needs to release the button when his hands are moving up and he wants to make a jump. This mechanic takes some getting used to, but it feels great when the player gets used to it.
We want as many players as possible to play the game, not only hardcore gamers. From early testing, we learned that there is a small percentage of people to whom this jump mechanic seems very hard. We’ll stick with the same mechanics for now and see what kind of feedback we get from more players in early access, but in the future we may offer more control choices, including the option to choose a more simplified way of jumping.
Upload: How will the story mode differ from Endless? Will levels still be procedurally generated or be set?
Anton Ulishchenko: The story is more complicated. Since the production of levels and the detail of the graphics are higher, it requires more resources, such as environment artists and various layers of optimization. Of course, the end result certainly looks cooler. We have several ideas for generation, including an open world that we will try in arena mode. Let’s see what kind of feedback we get from that. Afterwards, it will become clearer what to do with the levels where there is a story.
Upload: This definitely feels like a game best suited for Quest; where are you with a potential port to the headset?
Anton Ulishchenko: We really want to get on Quest so we hope that the game will be able to collect a large player base so that Oculus will accept us on the Quest platform. We are also considering an alternative – Sidequest (laughs).
There will be no problems with arcade modes in terms of optimization and graphics. With the story mode, everything is much more complicated in terms of optimization. We think it is easier to make multiplayer, so we are considering this option as an alternative for Quest.
As for multiplayer, warming up players in arcade and arena mode is a suitable option. Players practice in those modes, and when the required number of players are online, the deathmatch will begin.
OhShape and Synth Riders have teamed up once again to release a second collaboration map, available in both games now.
The new track, called ‘Carry On’, is composed by F.O.O.L, and is fully mapped for both games to suit their separate styles. You can view a trailer below.
The first collaboration between OhShape and Synth Riders launched back in June, with the free track Delight by Jamie Berry. This second collaboration actually aligns with another event, the VR Fitness Summit. The summit is a series of tournaments run by the Virtual Athletics League (VAL) across loads of active VR games.
A joint OhShape and Synth Riders tournament will be held as part of the VR Fitness Summit, where participants will compete in both games across one tournament. The winner will need to have the highest scores in both games — not only will that require a fair bit of skill, but it’ll probably be quite the workout as well. You’ll definitely have your work cut out for you if you choose to enter.
The joint tournament runs this weekend and you can find more details on the OhShape and Synth Riders social accounts. If you’re interested in taking part in a different game, you can look at the selection over on the VR Fitness Summit site.
‘Carry On’ is available in both Synth Riders and OhShape now across all supported platforms. Be sure to also check out the recent Cyberpunk Essentials pack for Synth Rider, half of which is available to download for free.
A recent potential leak suggests that HP Reverb G2 eye-tracking – and even facing tracking – may arrive in the form of a new model.
Aggiornamenti Lumia is the source behind the supposed leak for what it calls the HP Reverb Omnicept Edition. The image we use below comes from that report. At first glance, it may look like the usual HP Reverb G2, but you can spot one major difference from the off.
On the bottom of the device, between the two front-facing cameras, is what looks like a small tab. The original report notes that this tab includes a face camera, which could well track the movements of the lower half of your head. Feasibly, it could then take that data and relay it onto, say, a virtual avatar of yourself. Aggiornamenti Lumia also reports the headset has eye-tracking, though it’s hard to verify this in the images without having a look inside the headset.
The report also spots a difference in the type of strap on the side of the device and Road to VR also spotted what could be an electrode embedded in the face lining. Companies like Emteq use similar tech to scan muscle impulses as a means of facial replication in VR, accessing a deeper range of realistic emotions than what’s currently possible. Recently, Facebook Reality Labs shared new research for its own photorealistic face tracking that no longer requires a camera, but it’s still very far off.
If this is all true, it’s possible that the Omnicept Edition will be a more expensive version of the Reverb G2 aimed more towards enterprise customers. The original device, set to ship this fall, offers 4K VR and improved design and audio for $599. HP did recently tease it would have more exciting announcements on the VR end, and this could well have been one.
Would you be interested in an HP Reverb G2 eye-tracking headset with a face camera? Let us know in the comments below!
