‘EVE: Valkyrie’ Gets New ‘Ultra’ Graphics Option Thanks to Nvidia VRWorks

As part of this week’s EVE: Valkyrie update, which includes AI improvements, balance tweaks, and stability fixes, the game has also received some visual optimisations courtesy of Nvidia VRWorks. Suitable for higher-spec Nvidia cards (GTX 1070 and above), the new ‘Ultra Settings’ option enables ‘God rays’, improved cockpit lighting and projectile effects.  

The latest ‘2017_R3’ patch for EVE: Valkyrie rolled out yesterday, detailed on the game’s official site. According to an Nvidia press release, it is Valkyrie’s support for VRWorks’ Lens Matched Shading rendering technique (only possible on the Pascal architecture) that maintains the level of performance required to render these higher quality visuals.

CCP Games have incorporated Nvidia Volumetric Lighting to achieve the ‘God rays’ effect, along with a new anti-aliasing technique developed by Nvidia called ‘Multi-Sample G-Buffer Anti-Aliasing’, which reduces visible aliasing of geometry edges and specular highlights. ‘Ultra Settings’ also improves the fidelity of reflections and shaders, adds dynamic lights to projectiles, and upgrades the lighting and shadowing “in every area and level”.

Many more PC VR games could see Nvidia-specific visual enhancements, as VRWorks is now supported in both Unreal Engine 4.16 and Unity 2017.1.

The post ‘EVE: Valkyrie’ Gets New ‘Ultra’ Graphics Option Thanks to Nvidia VRWorks appeared first on Road to VR.

Unreal Engine Gets Early Access MacOS High Sierra Support

Epic Games have announced the release of Early Access support for the upcoming version of the MacOS, High Sierra, to allow developers to develop for virtual reality (VR) using the Mac platform.

Mac OS 10.13, code-named High Sierra, was announced as being capable of supporting VR at this year’s WWDC, the Apple Development Conference in California. After the announcement, Epic Games took to the stage alongside renowned special effects experts Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) to demonstrate the new functionality, displaying how Unreal Engine in VR mode worked on the new version of the OS on a brand new iMac Pro.

Unreal Engine_macOS_support

Epic Games subsequently released the Early Access support for Unreal Engine for development of VR on Mac platforms via the Unreal Engine GitHub repository. The version available on GitHub is a early access release, so full functionality may not yet have been made available. Epic Games have confirmed that full support for VR development on Mac platforms is part of upcoming releases of Unreal Engine, alongside general Metal 2 support and various general Mac optimisation tweaks.

 

The updated version of Unreal Engine, version 4.18 binary tools, will feature the updated functionality and is expected to be released for developer previews in September 2017, with a full release in early October 2017.

Apple have been embracing VR and augmented reality (AR) much more of late. With Apple’s general habit of thoroughly testing the waters when it comes to new technology, Apple were somewhat behind with regards to AR and VR technology. It was recently announced that Steam VR would soon get Mac support and along with the upcoming new iPhone’s updated AR support, it seems that Apple are trying to catch up.

VRFocus will continue to bring you news on Apple’s new AR and VR technology.

Neue Engine Brigitte von Ubisoft ermöglicht Echtzeit-VR-Entwicklung

Ubisoft hatte auf der E3 zwei VR-Titel im Gepäck: Space Junkies und das ungewöhnliche Transference. Fast noch interessanter als die beiden Titel sind die Zukunftsaussichten bei Ubisoft, denn die Entwickler von Space Junkies  setzen auf eine neue eigens entwickelte VR-Engine mit dem hübschen Namen Brigitte. Sie ermöglicht es, Objekte und Physik direkt in der virtuellen Realität in Echtzeit zu verändern.

Brigitte: VR-Entwicklungen in Echtzeit in VR anpassen

Der Name Brigitte geht dabei nicht auf die bekannte deutsche Frauenzeitschrift zurück, sondern dürfte eine Hommage an die Schauspielerin Brigitte Bardot sein: Schließlich sitzen die Entwickler in Frankreich, genauer gesagt, in der hübschen Universitätsstadt Montepellier. Das dort ansässige Studio entwickelte mit Brigitte eine Preproduction-VR-Engine, erklärt Adrian Lacey von Ubisoft, der das Spiel Space Junkies entwickelt.

Mit der neuen Engine soll es möglich sein, Limitierungen und neue Möglichkeiten von VR bereits während der Entwicklung zu berücksichtigen. Während einer Demo von Space Junkies zeigte Lacey beispielsweise, wie man während das Spiel pausiert und mit den Touch Controllern der Oculus Rift Objekte manipulieren kann. Auch ist die Anpassung der Bewegungs-Physik möglich, sodass man in Echtzeit Level anpassen kann. Für Lacey bedeutet dies einen riesigen Schritt nach vorne bei der Entwicklung des Gameplays: Es verändere, wie die Entwickler über das Spiele-Design denken. „Man muss wirklich die Präsenz in dieser Welt fühlen, ansonsten wird es seltsam“, sagt der Entwickler.

(Quelle: Blog Ubisoft)

Der Beitrag Neue Engine Brigitte von Ubisoft ermöglicht Echtzeit-VR-Entwicklung zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

PlayStation Aim Compatible Special Forces VR Promises Cross-Platform Multiplayer

VR Visio games have announced their latest virtual reality (VR) videogame, Special Forces VR. Powered by Unreal Engine, the videogame will be releasing on all the big head-mounted display (HMD) devices; PlayStation VR, HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.

Special Forces VR will support a variety of different VR peripherals, including the PlayStation Aim controller, but also special devices such as haptic suits, guns and “locomotion simulators.” VR Visio says this makes the title perfect for esports, though the benefit of VR in esports remains to be seen.

The game plays out essentially like Counter Strike, with players choosing either military or terrorist factions and playing against one another in a variety of game modes – but with the game built from the ground up for VR.

Players will be able to enjoy cross-platform play and wide, open immersive worlds to shoot enemies in – in VR, weapons and tools like riot shields really take on a new dimension when compared to when featured in traditional shooters, with motion controls allowing you to angle and move the shield in different directions, while blind-firing your weapon.

If you’re interested in signing up for beta tests, you can do so on VR Visio’s website here. Beta tests will go live in September 2017.

For more on Special Forces VR, be sure to take a look at the trailer below – everything looks incredibly promising, and by September we’ll know how good it plays. For more on Special Forces VR and everything else PlayStation VR stay on VRFocus.

Steam VR Will Soon Support Mac

Apple’s holding its annual WWDC 2017 conference today and most of it has been geared around devices like the Apple Watch and Mac. The company has been fairly tight lipped about any virtual reality (VR) plans, but today has revealed some insight by announcing its teamed up with Valve to bring Steam VR to Mac.

Making the announcement was Apple’s Craig Federighi who revealed very few details about what to expect of when to expect it. What he did say though was that Unity and Unreal Engine two of the biggest middleware applications used for VR would be bringing the VR editors to Mac.

Apple - iMac HTC Vive

So this will mean headsets like the HTC Vive will soon support Apple’s latest Mac’s – depending on spec – opening up the technology to even more users, making mainstream adoption that little bit easier.

There’s still been no news on whether Apple is developing its own, merely patent details, so that possibility is even greater now for this years conference.

For any further updates on Apples VR plans, keep reading VRFocus.

Epic Games Distributes Grants To VR Devs Including Robo Recall Mod Team

Epic Games Distributes Grants To VR Devs Including Robo Recall Mod Team

During a week where Unity gained a $400 million influx of investment capital, it’s chief rival Epic Games is working to spend $5 million of its own money to facilitate game development for the Unreal Engine.

Like Unity, Unreal is a game creation platform that provides both aspiring creators and large, established teams with the tools they need to make digital films, games, assets etc. without having to build everything from the ground up.

Earlier this year, Epic announced that it would be dolling out $5 million total in grants to up and coming Unreal devs. This week, the company is revealing its latest round of recipients which features six VR teams. In total 16 grants are being awarded this time around for a total of $275,000 in payouts.

The VR teams being awarded are:

Albino Lullaby from Ape Law – A horror adventure game that doesn’t rely on jump scares or gore, Albino Lullaby Episode 1 saw the launch of the series, and Episode 2 is coming this year from developer Ape Law. The interactive environment twists and contorts around in real time as players navigate the game’s twisted narrative.

Raiders of Erda from Cooperative Innovations – Raiders of Erda provides players with an intense VR RPG experience. Announced  earlier this year, the game features a complex combat system and an alpha is expected in 2017.

The Soulkeeper VR by Helm Systems – The Soulkeeper VR is an episodic dark fantasy role-playing game coming soon to Steam Early Access. As one of the only graphically powerful RPGs for VR players, it’s packed with adventure and utilizes the full play space through both free roaming and teleportation.

Tree by New Reality Co – From New Reality Co, the creators of the social awareness VR experience Giant, comes Tree, an emotionally touching VR experience that uses sight, sound, touch and even smell to explore the lifecycle of a rainforest tree from a seedling to full-grown state to unfortunate human consumption. Premiering at Sundance and showing at the Tribeca Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival, the experience has earned critical acclaim for its impactful push for environmental change.

realityvirtual.co – Based in New Zealand, realityvirtual.co are R&D pioneers in new media, including drone UAV cinematography and virtual reality. They have been pushing the bleeding edge of photogrammetry and volumetric capture for VR in UE4. Their MANA VR project is currently touring the world. Check out the realityvirtual.co website and Facebook for more.

MGSStudios – MGSStudios has been leading the charge in the creation of Robo Recall mods. Their contributions have led to several of the most actively used mods, such as the popular locomotion modthat changes how the game is played and other popular community mods.

Epic describes the Unreal Dev Grants as a “$5 million initiative that awards developers with no-strings-attached funding for their valuable contributions to the Unreal Engine community.”

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Epic Games’ Latest Unreal Dev Grants Include 7 VR Studios

Epic Games’ Unreal Dev Grants began back in 2016 as a $5 million USD initiative awarding developers with funding for contributions to the Unreal Engine community. In this latest round, 17 projects have received a total of $275,000, seven of which are virtual reality (VR) related.

The projects cover a range of genres – mostly videogames – with film and community support also included. Ape Law’s psychological horror title Albino Lullaby is the first on the list. The first episode arrived for HTC Vive last year, with Oculus Rift support added afterwards. Episode two is scheduled to release later this year.

The Soulkeeper VR

 

Cooperative Innovations’ Raiders of Erda is a VR role-playing game (RPG) experience that was announced earlier this year. The videogame features a complex combat system and an alpha is expected in 2017.

The Soulkeeper VR by Helm Systems is an episodic dark fantasy RPG that’s due to arrive on Steam Early Access. It will offer a variety of combat styles and mechanics, including melee, spell casting, combat with staff and ranged.

From New Reality Co comes Tree, a VR experience shown at VRLA, the Tribeca Film Festival, and Cannes that uses sight, sound, touch and smell to explore the lifecycle of a rainforest tree from a seedling to full-grown state to unfortunate human consumption.

A studio to be directly award is New Zealand-based realityvirtual.co. The company specialises in new media, including drone UAV cinematography and VR, with its most recent project MANA VR currently touring several events.

Lastly there’s MGS Studios, a developer behind the creation of several Robo Recall mods, such as a locomotion mod that changes how the game is played and a Star Wars mod.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of the Unreal Dev Grants, reporting back with the latest VR recipients.

Epic Games Advances VR Integration for Unreal Engine Releasing v4.16

Last month Epic Games rolled out the first preview for the next iteration of its Unreal Engine software, version 4.16. Since then smaller previews have been released, giving developers a chance to experiment with some of the new features. Today, those new additions are fully implemented with Unreal Engine 4.16 now available.

As VRFocus has previously reported, virtual reality (VR) has played a big part in the latest version’s development, with the VR Mode seeing several extensive additions to make creating a VR videogame in VR even easier. It’s been overhauled to provide a more intuitive workflow and editing experience with a new asymmetrical controller setup putting an improved Radial Menu on one hand and an interaction laser with improved precision on the other. The controllers are now Asynchronous on both HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.

Unreal Engine RadialMenu_002

Then there’s the Sequencer cinematics editor which now supports VR. This will allow developers to create a new sequence, move objects around, which automatically creates sequence keys for the transformations. Thus users will be able to  make sequences and play them back, whilst never leaving VR. Additionally, existing Level Sequences can be opened and played from the Sequencer UI or the Radial Menu.

VR developers will now have smart snapping available, which uses the bounds of an object to align to other actors in the scene for easy placement. Physics Actors in VR Mode can now be simulated. Users run a physical simulation to get a realistic scattering or simply knock Actors around with the motion controllers.

There are several early access additions to Unreal Engine 4.16 as well. The new Unreal Audio Engine and Steam Audio SDK will be available, with the former introducing new features such as a submix graph, submix effects, source effects, real-time synthesis, and better audio plugin support. While the latter will bring next-gen physics-based audio experiences to compliment Unreal Audio Engine.

On top of all that, an early access preview of social screens for PlayStation VR, provides support for Social Screen separate mode, where the the Monitor and HMD display different things at 30fps output.

There’s a massive amount of info to go through for Unreal Engine 4.16, so head to the forums for an in depth look. As always VRFocus will bring you the latest Unreal Engine announcements as they happen.

Steam Audio Adds Unreal Engine Support

In February Valve rolled out the Steam Audio software development kit (SDK) as a free beta to all developers. Featuring a range of audio options, the SDK came with Unity support straight away with Unreal Engine due to be included in a future update. That support has now gone live.

In a posting on Steam, Valve states: “We are excited to announce the first beta release of Steam Audio for Unreal Engine 4. Our plugin now ships with UE4 by default, so you can get started by upgrading to 4.16 Preview 2. This release brings our physically-based sound propagation and HRTF rendering to the UE4 engine, enabling developers to immediately begin creating immersive audio experiences for games and VR. The plugin is free of charge and is not locked to a particular platform or VR device.”

Unreal engine 4 Steam Audio

As per the initial release of Steam Audio, the Unreal Engine 4 version provides three major pieces of functionality: HRTF filtering with per-source settings, direct-sound occlusion, and physically-based sound propagation.

Valve expects the latter function to be one of the most popular: “This portion of Steam Audio is what many users are going to be most excited about,” notes the blog. “We’ve introduced a variety of new actors and components that handle tagging acoustically meaningful geometry, specifying acoustic materials, and creating acoustic probes for baking sound propagation data.”

As with any beta release this first launch is experimental and shouldn’t be used for existing projects. To explore existing issues and report new ones head over the GitHub issues page for Steam Audio to find out more.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of Steam Audio SDK, reporting back with the latest changes and improvements to the software.

The Future Group Utilises Epic Games’ Unreal Engine to Create Mixed Reality TV and Gaming

Norwegian company, The Future Group, a developer of interactive mixed reality (IMR), has announced a licensing agreement with Epic Games to use its Unreal Engine 4 middleware for film-quality 3D rendered scenes on TV broadcasts.

The Future Group has built unique enhancements specific to broadcast TV on top of Unreal Engine, providing the ability to merge people and objects in real-time into virtual worlds.

The Future Group - Interactive Mixed Reality

Having recently emerged for stealth, The Future Group’s new product is Frontier, a 3D visual effects platform being used by FremantleMedia in their upcoming IMR game show for worldwide primetime TV, Lost in Time. Using Frontier powered by Unreal Engine, TV production companies can create live photorealistic effects and virtual sets that are integrated with anything or anyone from the real world to create IMR-enhanced shows, mobile games and more.

“The Future Group is delivering one of the most advanced uses of Unreal Engine in broadcast to date with Lost in Time,” said Kim Libreri, CTO, Epic Games in a statement. “The visual quality is absolutely stunning and we look forward to seeing the Frontier platform open new doors in interactive episodic entertainment.”

“Working with Unreal Engine allows us to use the performance standard-bearer in game engines as the foundation of Frontier,” said Jens Petter Høili, co-founder and Chairman of The Future Group. “Epic has been nothing but supportive of The Future Group in our efforts, and we are very excited to have found that Unreal is capable of amazing real-time Hollywood effects, even in an HD broadcast environment and workflow. We are using Unreal to create blockbuster IMR effects, and enabling it through our broadcast platform Frontier.”

The company was co-founded by Bård Anders Kasin, a Technical Director at Warner Brothers, who was on the team responsible for the visual effects in the The Matrix Trilogy and acclaimed Nordic entrepreneur Jens Petter Høili. With Future Group-developed enhancements, Frontier provides highly-realistic scenery through state-of-the-art features such as particle systems, dynamic textures, live reflections, shadows and collision detection, all at a quality level for broadcast HD resolutions and beyond.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of The Future Group and Epic Games, reporting back with further updates.