Category: vive

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GDC 2017: SMI Is Working With Valve To Bring Eye-Tracking To OpenVR

GDC 2017: SMI Is Working With Valve To Bring Eye-Tracking To OpenVR

Eye-tracking is arguably one of the most important pieces of VR’s future, and SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) and Valve are working together to bring the tech closer to reality.

As reported by Tom’s Hardware, SMI partnered with Valve to integrate its eye-tracking tech into OpenVR SDK and API, which will allow other companies to implement support into their VR software. Not only that, but the pair have also successfully integrated SMI’s tech into select HTC Vive units.

Those units have been shipped out to research partners who are currently busy toiling away at getting the most out of VR eye-tracking. In fact, this tech is apparently behind the mixed reality face-scanning tech that Google demonstrated last week, bringing a user’s full face into these videos. It’s not clear if Valve or HTC currently has any plans to offer any sort add-on device for consumers to bring eye-tracking to Vive, nor if a future iteration of the device includes it, though the latter is a safe bet, no matter how far off it is.

On the surface, eye-tracking might only appear to be useful as another means of input for VR experiences, but its importance actually runs far deeper than that. Firstly, the tech is vital for foveated rendering, a term that refers to a VR experience only fully rendering its graphics directly in the center of where a user’s eyes are looking. This hugely efficient process means apps won’t have to render a full screen at all times, and could feasibly lower the barrier to entry for VR hardware.

That’s something that eye-tracking headset FOVE is looking into, as announced this week, and will no doubt become an important feature of many devices in the future.

Furthermore, eye-tracking will one day be essential to recreating virtual avatars of ourselves for social VR experiences. If our virtual bodies are to become truly indistinguishable from our real ones, then incredibly accurate eye-tracking will be required, the kind not seen by any current device.

We’re hoping to go eyes-on with this solution at GDC this week, so stay tuned.

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GDC 2017: Vive ‘Working’ to Join Oculus on a Committee for Open VR Standards

GDC 2017: Vive ‘Working’ to Join Oculus on a Committee for Open VR Standards

Earlier this morning the Khronos Group announced a name and details for its open virtual and augmented reality standard committee. Christened now as the Open XR Working Group, the organization will be comprised of representatives from the worlds leading AR/VR companies. Today’s announcement indicated that most of the major VR imprints have been granted membership into the group including: Oculus, Valve, Unity, Epic, Samsung, and Google. One name, however was missing from that list.

HTC’s VR subsidiary, Vive, was not included as an included member of the Open XR Working Group. The Vive headset gets its content through Steam and its own Viveport distribution platforms. Vive has been considered a more open headset than its chief competitor, the Oculus Rift, due to the accessibility of those platforms and its willingness to make its in-house content compatible with the Rift.

Last week at DICE, Oculus VP of content Jason Rubin challenged this perceived openness indirectly during a panel interview where he stated that “a truly open platform can not come from just one company” and that the correct way to create standards in VR is as a multi-corporation consortium. Rubin and Oculus are putting their money where their mouth is by joining Open XR and it seems they will soon be joined by Vive as well.

According to an HTC spokesperson, Vive is actively working to join the working group as well:

“We share the same vision as Khronos with keeping VR an open platform, and are currently working with Khronos to formally join their initiative and membership.”

The goal of Open XR is to create “an open and royalty-free standard for VR and AR applications and devices” that makes it easier for the myriad of devices and content platforms available now to work together seamlessly. The question of openness has hovered around Vive and Oculus throughout the lead up to and past the launches of their respective headsets.

Now, thanks to this new working group the two will finally have the chance to work together to solve this problem once and for all pending Vive’s admission to the committee.

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GDC 2017: Vive Users Can Soon Pay $6.99 for a VR Content Subscription

GDC 2017: Vive Users Can Soon Pay $6.99 for a VR Content Subscription

At GDC 2017, UploadVR had the chance to speak with HTC’s president of Viveport and SVP of virtual reality, Rikard Steiber. During the interview, Steiber revealed the price point for Viveport’s upcoming subscription service for VR content. According to Steiber, the plan will cost $6.99 USD a month and will be available to current Vive owners and new customers “in the next few weeks.”

Steiber also reconfirmed that HTC will be offering a free, month-long trial of the Viveport subscription to all current Vive owners and new users when the service launches.

According to Steiber, with this subscription plan “users will be able to select 5 experiences a month from our pool of Viveport content” and these can be “kept month to month” or swapped out for new selections.

This content pool will be sourced from the content created by Vive Studios and any Viveport developer that chooses to opt in. The entirety of Viveport will not be available automatically to subscribers, although Steiber does expect that “many” studios will chose to be included.

In a previous story, we reported that developers will be getting a 60 percent cut of the subscription revenue, while HTC reportedly takes the remaining 40 percent. Meanwhile at MWC Alvin Graylin, China Regional President of Vive, further clarified the financial allocations for developers in the subscription plan.

According to Graylin, studios will get a piece of the revenue if their app is chosen by users. He explained that if developers create content that is “super sticky” and their app is selected by subscribers in a given then they’ll get a share of the revenue, making it in developer’s best interests to create content that people will keep coming back to.

“That’s something that I think that we want to encourage,” Graylin said, referencing apps that encourage users to keep coming back like Google’s Tilt Brush and Google Earth.

According to its official website, “Viveport is the app store for virtual reality where customers can explore, create, connect, and experience the content they love and need.”

Tangentially, Viveport is described by Steiber as as a place for the promotion and distribution of VR content that falls outside the category of a game. Experiences built for dducation, medicine, real-estate, enterprise and commerce would all be examples of Viveport-appropriate experiences.

Steiber has been pushing a vision of Viveport as a vital showcase for the less flashy VR experiences for some time now. This subscription model may be his best way yet to direct the masses towards the content they may otherwise miss.

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I Kicked A Dinosaur in The Face Using Vive’s Full Body Tracking

I Kicked A Dinosaur in The Face Using Vive’s Full Body Tracking

The scale for awesome things you can do in VR keeps increasing. First, I could see a dinosaur as if it were really there as it walked towards me, perhaps sniffing right in front of me as he pondered a potential meal. Then I could punch dinosaurs with position-tracked controls, realistically defending myself should they choose to attack. Now? I can kick dinosaurs. In the face. And it’s awesome.

A month ago we saw developer Cloudgate Studio experiment with full-body tracking on the HTC Vive, using two controllers for hands and another two strapped to your feet. The result was a surprisingly accurate approximation of your full body inside VR. At the time the developer noted that it would implement the Vive’s new Tracker peripheral, switching out the controllers on the feet, as soon as it possible. Well, now it’s done that and it looks something like this.

A build of Cloudgate’s Island 359 was on display at this year’s Mobile World Congress using these two makeshift add-ons, which hooked under the laces in my shoes. A belt with another tracker tied around it went around my waist, something the developers said it would implement in last month’s video for a touch more accuracy.

As the game booted up I was instructed to stand with my feet in some green outlines, with a mirror in front of me. Once I was alligned I saw the floating hands and feet transform into a full avatar in seconds, with no other calibration needed. The first time I did this I ended up with strange, elongated gorilla arms (I don’t think I was holding my hands in the right place), but the second time it worked much better. I could look down and see my body, and my arms would follow my hands — for the most part — in a realistic fashion.

There were the expected occasional glitches, with arms getting out of sync, but Cloudgate has only had the Trackers for a few weeks and with a consumer roll out of Vive Trackers not happening until later this year it’s got plenty of time to iron it out even more.

Actually playing Island 359 with this tracking was a lot of fun. In last month’s video we saw the developer kick items over. Here, I was lashing out at dinosaurs with my feet and sending them flying. Smaller dinosaurs would run up to me, and I’d stomp down on them, killing them instantly (yes, there was a guilty pleasure to it). For larger dinosaurs I’d sweep my leg into them. The tracking might have been a little glitchy, but it didn’t fail me.

As I continued to play I got a little more confident with what the tracking could do. I was attacked from behind and instead of turning around to deal with the problem I simply kicked my leg backwards, then turned to find an enemy crumbled on the floor. It made the game’s action more versatile and liberating than it already was.

The key to this small breakthrough is giving players options. At $99.99, not every Vive owner is going to buy a tracker, let alone three or more of them. But Cloudgate’s work isn’t essential to the Island 359 experience, it’s additive. It’s already playable with just your two regular Vive controllers, this just makes it that bit more immersive.

But sharing this work and letting other developers implement it into their own games could create a scalable VR experience that doesn’t fragment the user-base because it does’t leave anyone out.

We’re still some months from finding out just how big of an impact this use of Vive’s Trackers will be, but I’m willing to bet a lot of enthusiasts will be ordering at least three units when it finally starts to roll out.

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Community Download: Who Will Have The Best VR Games at GDC 2017?

Community Download: Who Will Have The Best VR Games at GDC 2017?

Welcome to the community download. This is a place for people from all different walks of life to come together as one and disagree on the room-scale capabilities of different VR headsets. In all seriousness though, this is a post meant to inspire thoughtful, informed discussion about virtual and augmented reality. Today we stand on the cusp on one of our industry’s most significant times of year. Next week, the Game Developers Conference (GDC) will be getting underway in San Francisco and this year’s show should be a big one for VR.

Last year, going into the event, the only headsets we had commercially available to us were powered by smartphones. This year, the gaming PC your friends all said you’d “never use” is now happily humming away, powering your eighth straight hour of Space Pirate Trainer without a bathroom break.

Last year’s GDC was all about teasing an amazing new era of gaming. This year, it’s all about delivering on that promise. We’ve already ran through what we expect to happen at GDC, so now our question for all of you this week is this: out of all the VR studios, manufacturers and conglomerates attending GDC this year, which do you think will be bringing the most exciting VR games?

Before you answer let’s consider your options.

HTC/Valve/Vive: The double threat of VR companies, HTC and Valve worked together to release the Vive VR headset. Thanks to an early emphasis on room-scale VR and hand tracked controllers, the Vive has become the best selling PC-powered VR system on the market today, according to third party estimates.

Since last year Vive has started Vive Studios, an organization with the sole purpose of finding, supporting, and developing the best VR games it can. On top of that, Valve itself has recently teased that they it will be releasing not one, not two, but three new VR games in the near future. What better time than GDC to shine a light on these mystery projects?

Sony: Sony is a GDC veteran. These guys were likely running keynotes at the Moscone Center back when VR meant the virtual boy. Sony knows how to make great content and how to communicate it to the world. Its PSVR headset is projected to be quite a hot seller already, but there hasn’t been a huge amount of high profile games lately other than Resident Evil 7, or rumors that there will be more on the horizon.

GDC is Sony’s chance to prove its commitment to PSVR and remind us all who the video game legend in the room really is. Fingers crossed its got some tricks up its sleeves.

Oculus: GDC has been around since before Oculus was even so much as a glimmer in Palmer Luckey’s dad’s eye. However, Palmer Luckey has a new dad now named Mark Zuckerberg. And Daddy Zuck has very deep pockets.

Oculus has already made a name for itself as “the platform with the AAA content” but that content has come at a price. At OC3 Zuckerberg announced that Facebook has already spent $250 million facilitating high quality VR content. He also revealed that his company would spend at least that all over again on even more content for the future. Now’s the time for Oculus to show us what that big war chest can do.

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What do you think? Which of these companies, or any other company, is going to be keeping you glued to livestreams next week? Let us know in the comments below.

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Report: Vive Users Are 95 Percent Male And Spend 5 Hours Per Week in VR

Report: Vive Users Are 95 Percent Male And Spend 5 Hours Per Week in VR

HTC has been conducting surveys about VR in China and now the results are in.

The following data was sourced from “2,5000+ participants including 62 percent Vive users and 32 percent non-Vive users,” according to the company. Keep in mind, therefore, that many of the findings will be Vive specific.

There are over a dozen reported findings here but let’s focus on the most interesting first. The report can be accessed here. The first thing that should catch most people’s eye are the findings concerning VR’s gender disparity. According to this study, 95 percent of Vive users and 87 percent of non-Vive VR users were male.

“Both Vive and non-Vive user groups show male users to be the dominant number, with potential for female VR users remaining largely untapped,” the report states.

A second notable result from this survey has to do with how many hours VR users are spending inside their headsets. According to the survey, Vive users on the consumer level are spending around 5 hours in VR per week and those on the enterprise level are spending around 12.

Consumers are apparently gobbling up content very quickly as well. According to the survey, 60 percent of Vive users download between eight and twenty four VR experiences every month.

What do you think of these figures? Do they surprise you? Let us know in the comments below!

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Viveport Abo: Gratis Monat für alle Abonnenten geplant

HTC hat mit dem Viveport eine eigene Plattform für Virtual Reality Spiele und Anwendungen geschaffen. Mit der Plattform wolle man zwar nicht in direkte Konkurrenz zu Steam treten, doch eventuell ist es nur eine Frage der Zeit, bis der Viveport auch größere Exklusiv-Titel bekommt. Mit dem Viveport Abo möchte sich HTC von den bekannten Geschäftsmodellen der Konkurrenz abgrenzen und Spielern gegen eine Gebühr einen freien Zugriff auf bestimmte Anwendungen gewähren.

Gratis Monat für alle Abonnenten geplant

Laut HTC hätten bereits über 14.000 VR Spieler ihr Interesse an einem Abo bekundet und in den kommenden Wochen soll das neue Feature endlich starten. Damit ihr nicht die Katze im Sack kauft, erhält jeder Nutzer zunächst einen Monat gratis. Somit habt ihr einen Monat zeit, alle VR Erfahrungen auszuprobieren, für die ihr bisher kein Geld übrig hattet. Leider werden aber nicht alle Viveport Anwendungen Teil des Abos sein. Zumindest nicht unbegrenzt. Manche Anwendungen können zwar heruntergeladen werden, anschließend könnt ihr jedoch keine weiteren Anwendungen aus dieser Sektion installieren. Wenn ihr keine Lust mehr auf die Anwendung habt, dann könnt ihr sie gegen einen anderen Download austauschen. Es kann aber auch passieren, dass manche Anwendung gar nicht angeboten werden. Wie das Line-Up konkret aussehen wird, können wir euch aktuell noch nicht sagen.

Die Entwickler sollen bei dem Programm mit 60% am Gewinn beteiligt werden. Aktuell ist aber nicht öffentlich bekannt wie diese 60% unter den einzelnen Entwicklern aufgeteilt werden sollen. Außerdem ist noch nicht bekannt, welchen Preis HTC für eine monatliche Mitgliedschaft aufrufen wird. Vermutlich werden wir auf der GDC nächste Woche mehr über die Pläne von HTC mit dem Viveport erfahren.

(Quelle: Upload VR)

Der Beitrag Viveport Abo: Gratis Monat für alle Abonnenten geplant zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

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Hands-On: Symphony of the Machine is a VR Puzzle Game About Changing the Weather

Hands-On: Symphony of the Machine is a VR Puzzle Game About Changing the Weather

The great thing about VR games is that they can take the most seemingly trivial action and turn it into an immersive gameplay mechanic. Games like Bounce create an entire multi-hour adventure out of trying to get a ball into a hole. Audioshield asks you to punch colored orbs. And now Symphony of the Machine, an upcoming VR puzzle game by Stirfire Studios, wants you to bounce light off of mirrors to trigger a weather changing device. That’s it, but it can be pretty magical.

Symphony of the Machine was first created during the Global Game Jam last year with restrictions such as no violence, one-handed play, and the game’s story being communicated through its gameplay only.

I played a preview build of the game that lasted around 15 minutes, but the potential for a more complex experience was apparent. Things started in a seemingly desolate desert environment. I looked around and all I saw were brown mountains. There was a metal stand with a magical orb nearby. After placing the orb in the stand, things lit up. That’s how I learned my first game mechanic.

From there, the game taught me to point and click to utilize Blink teleportation as my movement system, with an arc emanating from my controller guiding my trajectory. I proceeded up a path between the mountains, making my way towards a massive tower in the distance.

Upon reaching the tower, I entered an elevator and waited as it slowly rose to the top, granting an incredible view of the game’s world. I could see for what felt like miles around me, but found myself a bit disappointed at the lack of environmental variation — it was just all brown desert.

In the tower there was what appeared to be a hovering robot of some kind that supplied me with objects I was meant to interact with, such as floating mirrors. I placed the mirror on top of the bright light beam blasting from the center of the tower and realized I could angle its trajectory towards various colored nodes around me. Each node resulted in a different change in the weather, such as making it sunny, cloudy, rainy, or windy.

Eventually I got the ability to plant seeds in floating pots that would sprout into flowers, but only if I followed their instructions for making them grow. Some needed water, then wind, and then rain. Others wanted a different order. Soon, I was able to split the beam into two beams and use multiple mirrors to bounce the light at more than one node at a time. It never got too complex to figure out, but the mechanics were slowly ramping up as I tinkered with the results.

From what I saw, Symphony of the Machine is beautiful to behold and intriguing to experience. The way the entire world around me shifts its weather patterns was mesmerizing and I found myself combining the nodes not only to solve puzzles, but also to marvel at the changing climate. Perhaps in the future, this same process can be used to add some color and variation to not only the plants floating around me, but the desolate world in which I inhabit as well.

Symphony of the Machine is currently slated to arrive on HTC Vive and PlayStation VR (PSVR) in Q1 of 2017, so essentially within the next month or so. Pricing and other details aren’t available at this time, but you can find more information about the game on the official website.

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