Category: Unity Technologies

Posted on

HTC Partners with Unity for One-Click Vive Focus Publishing on Viveport

HTC has delivered a comprehensive Vive Focus proposition for developers, and the contribution to on-boarding new content continues with a newly announced partnership with Unity Technologies. The Unity engine will incorporate a one-click solution for publishing on Viveport, targeted at Vive Focus content but also including PC-based head-mounted displays (HMDs).

HTC Vive Focus headset

The Vive Focus was announced late last night and represents HTC’s first step into the standalone HMD market. The Vive Focus does not require tethering to a PC, nor external cameras or the mounting a smartphone handset within the unit. Instead, the Vive Focus contains all hardware required for a virtual reality (VR) experience within the HMD itself.

Designed to be a lightweight, easily portable VR HMD, the Vive Focus features an AMOLED display and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. The HMD also features inside-out tracking with six degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) head-tracking and a 3DoF controller.

The partnership with Unity Technologies will allow software developers creating content that takes advantage of the Vive Focus platform an easier path to distribution. Unity will integrate Viveport into its content platform and also integrate Vive’s in-app payment and VR advertisement functions into its development system, with an initial focus on the China market.

Additionally, Unity will provide an ‘intuitive’ way for developers to utilise the newly announced Vive Wave VR SDK. Vive Wave is an open platform designed to unify the various mobile HMDs currently available as soon to launch in China, which at present includes support from the likes of Pimax, Pico, Coocaa, 360QIKU, Thundercomm, Idealens and Nubia.

Vive Wave - Logo

No release date nor price point has yet been announced for the Vive Focus HMD in China, however it is currently believed that the device will be shipping to developers in the very near future.

Furthermore no details on its western counterpart, believed to be known as the Vive Eclipse, have yet been revealed. Google has confirmed that the HMD will no longer support the Google Daydream platform, however exactly what distribution platform the HMD will use is not yet known. VRFocus has contacted HTC for further information on the western launch of a Vive standalone HMD and will continue to keep you updated with all the latest information.

Posted on

Unity and Tata Elxsi Join Forces To Create Centre of Excellence

Unity Technologies is the creator of one of the world’s most popular videogame engines, which has powered popular virtual reality (VR) titles such as Job Simulator and Radial-G. The company is now teaming up with Tata Elxsi to launch a Centre of Excellence in India.

Tata Elxsi is an Indian company that focuses on technology and engineering design. The partnership with Unity Technologies will allow for further opportunities for Unity developers in India and the Asia Pacific region, where there is a large pool of talent in the software development area. Tata Elxsi is aiming to create new and innovative products as well as improve workflows and contribute to the economic growth and development of the wider Asian Pacifc region.

Quentin Staes-Polet, Director South Asia Pacific, Unity Technologies said: “Augmented and virtual reality technologies are fast transforming how businesses innovate, collaborate and communicate. The CoE in partnership with Tata, is testament to the success of Unity’s platform and its developer ecosystem, not just for games, animation and film, but across industries which are using AR/VR in innovative ways. In an era where VR/AR applications are changing countless industries – from education, to manufacturing, architecture and art – Unity is enabling the developers of tomorrow achieve greater success today. We’re delighted to partner with Tata Elxsi’s team, an established global leader in design and innovation.”

Anil Sondur, Executive Vice President of Tata Elxsi said: “Augmented and virtual reality technologies are the next generation of computing. Tata Elxsi foresees usage of these advanced platforms across various industries and verticals. Tata Elxsi is already in a leadership position in the use of these technologies for several industries and has used Unity as a development platform. This global partnership will enable Tata Elxsi to support new applications for customers across industries worldwide.”

VRFocus will continue to report on new developments in the VR industry worldwide.

Posted on

Unity 2017.2 Featuring Optimised Support for ARCore and ARKit launching This Month

Whether studio’s develop virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) titles there’s a good chance they’ll probably use Unity, as it’s currently the market leader for videogame development engines. Due to launch this month is Unity 2017.2, with the new version featuring optimised support for ARCore, ARKit, Vuforia and Windows Mixed Reality.

Unity has supported ARCore and ARKit from day one, and with ARKit projects now being publicly released thanks to the launch of iOS 11 ensuring developers are continually supported is of major importance to ongoing projects.

ARKit

Additionally, Unity has announced a partnership with Autodesk giving the engine source code access to the Autodesk FBX SDK, helping deliver a streamlined process for asset sharing and in-game iteration to improve the capabilities of artists working in Unity, Autodesk 3ds Max and Autodesk Maya.

“Unity developers turn to Autodesk for the deepest 3D modeling and animation toolsets available,” said André Gauthier, Studio Lead at Unity. “Together we are improving FBX interoperability to increase productivity and give creators a better workflow in their asset pipelines so they can unleash their creativity.”

“Autodesk is very interested in making media and entertainment artists’ work as seamless as possible, and the workflow between 3D art tools and engines is a big part of that effort. 3ds Max and Maya users often utilise Unity technology, so we want to provide the best possible connection between these tools,” adds Marc Stevens, vice president of Entertainment, Autodesk.

While Unity is readying for the release of Unity 2017.2 in October the company’s also preparing for the following version, Unity 2017.3, having recently announced the launch of the beta build. Download the build here if you want to try it out.

For the latest VR/AR updates from Unity, keep reading VRFocus.

Posted on

Unity Announces Support For iOS 11 and ARKit

Last month Unity Technologies announced that it was working closely with Google to integrate its newly released augmented reality (AR) toolkit, ARCore, into the Unity engine. Now it has been announced that Unity will also support Google’s rivals Apple, with support for ARKit and iOS 11.

Unity have been working to include that the new features from ARKit and iOS 11 would be supported by Unity. The Unity engine is one of the most popular in the world, providing the driving force behind the majority of mobile virtual reality (VR) applications currently available.

With the release of iOS 11, the AR tools available in ARKit are now available to millions of iPad and iPhone users, and many developers are keen to take advantage of the opportunities this provides.

unity_logo

“At Unity, we believe the world is a better place with more creators in it, and the launch of iOS 11 and ARKit means even more people will have the ability to create and enjoy engaging, accessible AR experiences,” said Ralph Hauwert, Director of Development for Platforms at Unity. “Supporting the latest and greatest tech ensures we can give our creators the confidence and tools to build and scale, while easily publishing across nearly any platform.”

Several Unity-based apps have already been enhanced with ARKit, including the phenomenally popular Pokemon Go by Niantic, Walking Dead: Our World by Next Games, IKEA Place and Warhammer 40,000: Freeblade.

VRFocus will continue to report on new and innovative applications using ARKit.

Posted on

Made with Unity Showcase at Unite Austin 2017 to feature Blocks, Pixel Ripped 1989 and More

Unity Technologies Unite Austin 2017 event will be taking place in October. The software company will be hosting its usual Made with Unity showcase and because Unity is one of the most popular videogame engines for virtual reality (VR) development several VR titles have made the cut. 

Made with Unity is an area of the conference dedicated exclusively to projects created by the Unity community, where attendees can take a break from the various talks taking place to play some videogames.

Pixel_Ripped_1989_MWU_Showcase_Austin_image1-8

There’s going to be plenty of VR titles on show with Unity choosing: Blocks by Google, Cadillac Virtual Showroom by All Things Media, I Expect You to Die by Schell Games, Pixel Ripped 1989 by Pixel Ripped, To the Top by Electric Hat Games and Voltron VR Chronicles by Digital Domain and DreamWorks.

In addition to those titles VR specialist Fast Travel Games will be showcasing a currently unannounced project for visitors.

Unite Austin 2017 runs from 3rd – 5th October in Austin, Texas. Full conference tickets are on sale now for $500 USD, with student/educator tickets on sale at $175.

For further Unity updates, keep reading VRFocus.

Posted on

Unite Austin Reveals What’s In Store

Unity is one of the most popular engines in use for creating virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) experiences. Unity Technologies will be celebrating the achievements of Unity creators at Unite Austin, where several AR-related events are lined up for attendees.

The event is due to take place at the Austin Convention Centre in Austin, Texas on 3rd-5th October, 2017. The main headliner will be filmmaker Neill Blomkamp, who is best known as the director of sci-fi film District 9.

The launch of Unity 2017.2 will also occur at the event, which will add support for Google ARCore toolset, along with extended support for ARKit, Vuforia and Microsoft Mixed Reality. The 2D Tilemap will also be added, giving creators a new way to create 2D worlds using Unity.

unity_logo

There are more than 70 sessions planned, with features speakers and presentations from Nvidia, Samsung, Sony, Google, Microsoft, Vuforia and more. VR and AR focussed events on the schedule include:

  • Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality’ Postmortem: VR Lessons Learned – Owlchemy Labs
  • ARCore: Augmented Reality at Android Scale – Google
  • Facebook + Unity: Optimized for Growth – Facebook
  • Creating Content the VR Way
  • Easiest Way To Distribute VR from Unity
  • So you think you can Augment Reality?
  • Combining Unity and Tango/ARKit
  • Next Gen VR Avatar control in Unity
  • ARCore: Augmented Reality at Android Scale
  • Monetise your AR titles

Further information ad the full schedule of events is available at the official Unite Austin website.

VRFocus will bring you further information on Unite Austin and other VR/AR related events as it becomes available.

Posted on

Unity Working with Google on ARCore Integration

It seems with Gamescom 2017 taking place last week the big tech companies have planned a slew of big announcements for this week and it’s only Tuesday. Microsoft had its Windows Mixed Reality news and today Google gone on the augmented reality (VR) offensive against Apple, unveiling the first developer preview for the ARCore software development kit (SDK). Just releasing ARCore on its own might not have been enough, so Google has enlisted the support of one of the biggest videogame engines in the world Unity.

As Unity has become one of the most popular engines for AR and virtual reality (VR) development – the company regularly states that 2/3rd’s of all immersive experiences are made with it’s software – it was only natural that support would be part of the SDK.

ARCore

“We’re excited to work closely with Google to expand our Augmented Reality offering to our developer community and look forward to further exploration in this emerging landscape,” said Scott Flynn, Director of AR/VR Development at Unity Technologies. “We believe the accessibility of Augmented Reality presents a unique opportunity to reach a massive global audience through innovative applications and new possibilities for content delivery.”

ARCore leverages native integration with Unity 2017.2 Beta 9 and higher, enabling Unity developers to build AR experiences for Android devices, as well as add AR to existing Android apps.

“We’ve been working closely with Unity on Virtual and Augmented Reality for some time now. We share a vision in making this technology accessible to everyone, and a big part of that is giving developers the tools and platforms on which to build great immersive experiences,” said Clay Bavor, VP of Augmented and Virtual Reality, Google in a statement. “With ARCore, we’re taking the next step towards that goal, and we’re excited to be working together again to bring these new capabilities to developers large and small.”

Expect plenty more updates in the months to come for ARCore, so stay with VRFocus for the latest news.

Posted on

Unity to Launch Center of Excellence in Partnership with Veative Labs

Unity Technologies has announced a partnership today with Veative Labs, a creator of 3D, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) learning content, to build a Center of Excellence (CoE) at Veative’s India office in Noida.

The CoE will employ over 300 full-time skilled resources as it builds the largest content library outside of gaming in offices in India. Its focus will be on providing immersive technology solutions for academics (school and university education), skill development, vocational training, and enterprise applications for industries such as defense, tourism, retail, construction and engineering. 

Veative Labs

Quentin Staes-Polet, Director South Asia/ANZ, Unity Technologies, said in a statement: “Unity is the leading platform for developing a broad range of applications from gaming to the quickly evolving worlds of virtual and mixed reality production. Veative shares our vision for rapid innovation, and we are excited to partner with them to accelerate creation and continue bridging the gap between a blooming industry and qualified developers.”

Aiming to create an umbrella framework for 3D/AR/VR development, the centre will bring a learning experience to Unity developers around the globe with high quality 3D, VR, AR and MR content and teaching tools. The CoE will give a platform to rising developers to connect, collaborate and interact with each other and given a specialised skills training program.

Vipin Goyal, Director Strategy & Operations Veative Labs, said, “We are delighted to be a preferred partner with Unity Technologies and launch a Center of Excellence. The industry has a lot of needs and tremendous opportunity to benefit from high-end immersive experience using 3D/AR/VR/MR technologies. This is just the beginning of a much bigger journey for us. Veative’s mission is to make a difference in this space and become a leader in providing effective 3D/AR/VR/MR interactive content and solutions to make immersive experience affordable to masses and an integral part of our day to day life.”

VRFocus will continue its coverage of Unity, reporting back with the latest announcements.

Posted on

Unity Head of VR: ‘we believe this is going to be huge’

Depending on who you talk to from the virtual reality (VR) industry they’ll either be wildly supportive of the technology and its future or at least optimistic that it’ll see mainstream success, and as such more profitability for studios involved. In a recent interview Tony Parisi, Unity’s Head of VR, remains positive whilst acknowledging there’s still some hurdles ahead.

Talking to PCGamesN, Parisi see’s getting into VR development as a passion rather than an easy way to make money: “If I could recommend anybody to make a game in VR I’d do it on the basis of getting into this field. Not on an economic argument. We believe in the long haul, we don’t know how long it’s going to take, we believe in the long-term success of this technology. But, in the meantime, I can’t make an economic recommendation. It’s down to individual developers and it’s got to be around the passion and desire to get into it.

unity_logo

In terms of those already in the field and trying to make a profit: “I have to figure out how I answer that,” Parisi says. “You should be able to make a VR game if that’s what you want to do. Going with the evolution of the industry, any one of us could say ‘Jump in – there’s a gold mine here’, but we’re still in the place where we’re climbing up that mountain.”

Some developers have already seen success with studio’s such as Survios with its first-person shooter (FPS) Raw Data or Owlchemy Labs with Job Simulator.

But Parisi remains cautiously optimistic, and that building an industry from scratch takes time and effort by all of those involved. “We have an expectation as an industry that it should all happen at once, but in reality, these things take time. The hard work goes into the iteration side – Unity is coming on board now and it’s nearly fully optimised – and developers are learning all the techniques, finding out what works and what doesn’t. Each platform is going to have its own set of challenges and its own set of opportunities.

“In the long-term, we believe this is going to be huge. We don’t know what’s going to happen between now and when we get there.”

As the VR industry continues to go and develop, VRFocus will continue keeping you up to date on the latest news.

Posted on

Unity’s XR Toolkit Aims to Improve VR Development Later this Year

The Unite Europe 2017 conference is well underway in Amsterdam, Netherlands, with plenty of sessions focused on virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) development. VRFocus is at the event bringing you all the latest news and interviews, and caught up with Unity’s XR Evangelist Sarah Stumbo who revealed the company’s upcoming XR Foundation Toolkit should be ready later this year.

Earlier this year Unity unveiled the XR Foundation Toolkit (XRFT) during the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2017, a piece of software designed as ‘a framework for XR developers that allows anyone – not just programmers – but artists, and directors, random people who want to get into immersive design.’

XR Foundation Toolkit (Includes)

The premise behind it is to speed up development of immersive content enabling more people to dive into the industry. And while no release date has been confirmed just yet, it’s not too far away.

“XR Toolkit is something that we’re working on right now. It won’t be ready, I believe, until this Fall, but we’re really excited about it, said Stumbo to VRFocus. The toolkit will dramatically aim to improve the experience of developing for VR especially when it comes to the input. So there’s so many VR platforms now Oculus, Vive, Microsoft has their VR headset right now and what we really aim to do is to make all of those inputs, all of the controls for them cross platform so that you can build one experience for VR and deploy it to all of the headsets and the toolkit will be a really great toolkit for developers to get started quickly.”

Unity has been a major player in the VR field, with a significant amount of developers using its softare to create the latest videogames. This has been aided by the release of EditorVR – which saw an alpha release in December 2016 – allowing creators to build their experiences directly in VR.

The first day of Unite Europe 2017 has also seen Ubisoft reveal several prototypes for Microsoft HoloLens and the confirmation that Lenovo’s MR headset will be available prior to Christmas. For any further updates from the conference, keep reading VRFocus.