Category: Viveport Developer Awards

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Award-Winning Viveport Titles 40% Off For a Limited Time

The winners of the 2017 Viveport Developer Awards were announced in January. Now it seems that the videogames and applications that received awards might be reaching a larger audience with the announcement that Viveport Developer Awards winners being 40% off for a short time.

HTC say the Viveport Developer Awards were created to; “Showcase, celebrate, and reward developers for their VR creations.”

Viveport logo

HTC say the discount should last until 3rd March 2017 and here are the eligible apps:

  • Apollo 11 VR, by Immersive VR Education Ltd.
  • Fantastic Contraption, by Northway Games
  • Cloudlands: VR Minigolf, by Futuretown
  • Allumette, by Penrose Studios
  • A Chair in a Room: Greenwater, by Wolf & Wood Interactive Ltd.

VRFocus will keep you updated with further information on the HTC Vive and Viveport

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Viveport Developer Award Winners Have Been Announced

August 2016 saw HTC Vive launch submissions for the first Viveport Developer Awards, highlighting some of the best virtual reality (VR) experiences available on the platform. Today the company has announced the winners, spaced across four categories.

The VR titles were listed under Explore, Create, Connect and Experience, with 1st place awarded $50,000 USD plus a HTC Vive, 2nd place got $30,000 and a Vive, 3rd place was $15,000 with a Vive, while each of the two runners up got Vive’s. A separate Community Choice Award netted the winner $10,000.

Viveport Dev Awards_mosaic_image_

Time for the actual winners:

Explore

  • 1st place: Apollo 11 VR, by Immersive VR Education Ltd.
  • 2nd place: Realities, by Realities.io
  • 3rd place: The Body VR, by The Body VR
  • Runners-up: A Chair in a Room: Greenwater (Wolf & Wood Interactive) Mars Odyssey (Steel Wool Studios)

Create

  • 1st place: Fantastic Contraption, by Northway Games
  • 2nd place: Soundstage, by Hard Light Labs
  • 3rd place: Paintlab, by LAB4242
  • Runners-up: Kodon (TenkLabs), Arcade Artist (Groove Jones)

Connect

  • 1st place: Cloudlands: VR Minigolf, by Futuretown
  • 2nd place: AltspaceVR, by AltSpaceVR
  • 3rd place: Engage, by Immersive VR Education Ltd.
  • Runners-up: World of Diving (Vertigo Games), SurrealVR (SurrealVR)

Experience

Community Choice Award

  • A Chair in a Room: Greenwater, by Wolf & Wood Interactive Ltd.

For all the latest HTC Vive news, keep reading VRFocus.

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Viveport Developer Awards Add Community Choice Award

Over the last couple of months VRFocus has reported on the upcoming Viveport Developer Awards (VDAs), with 20 experiences being nominated. Today the Viveport team announced the members of an eight person jury who will be voting alongside allowing the VR community to have an opportunity to vote for their favourite nominee with the VDA Community Choice Award.

The jury, along with the Viveport Community vote, will determine the ultimate winner that best represents the four key pillars of the Viveport platform: Explore, Experience, Create and Connect. The nominees will be inline to win part of $500,000 USD in cash and prizes that will be revealed in January 2017.

The judges for the VDAs are:

Brent Bushnell, CEO of Two Bit Circus
Marcie Jastrow, SVP Immersive Media and Head of Technicolor Experience Center, ‎Technicolor
Geoff Keighley, Journalist and Executive Producer of the Video Game Awards
Nathaniël de Jong (Nathie), VR Content Creator on YouTube
Rajeev Pureen, Business Development – Commercial VR, Intel Corp
Justin Roiland, Writer/Animator and Co-Creator of Rick and Morty
Taryn Southern, internet personality and founder of Tribe of Good
Reggie Watts, Comedian/Musician CBS’ The Late Late Show with James Corden and Netflix’s SPATIAL

“There aren’t enough ways to thank developers for their early investment in VR and sharing their experiences with us at Viveport,” said Rikard Steiber, President of Viveport and SVP Virtual Reality, HTC. “We want the VDAs to encourage creators to continue innovating and driving the VR industry forward,  and through the Community Choice Award give our consumers a voice in recognizing their favourite VR apps.”

For the VDA Community Choice Award you can visit the Viveport Community Forum (http://community.viveport.com/) to check out the all the nominees and help one of them win a bonus $10,000 in recognition of their work. Public voting will be available on the forum today through 18th December, 2016.

For all the latest Viveport news, keep reading VRFocus.

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Viveport Developer Awards Expand Nominees Further

HTC is getting into the final days of its Viveport Developer Awards (VDA) 2016, with 12 experiences having been announced. But the company hasn’t stopped there, with a further four titles now being revealed.

The four new nominations are: Kodon by TenkLabs, The Night Cafe: A VR Tribute to Van Gogh by Borrowed Light Studios, Realities by realities.io, World of Diving by Vertigo Games.

The Night Cafe

Kodon is a 3D sculpting program that launched back in June on Steam Early Access. It allows users to freely shape objects in 1:1 roomscale. Players are able to make physical objects in virtual reality (VR), using the physical properties of the room in which their HTC Vive is located. This allows the user to use real-world desks and tools for stability and precision in the 3D sculpting process.

The Night Cafe: A VR Tribute to Van Gogh allows viewers to walk around the 1888 painting by the famous post-impressionist artist. And for those that know a small amount of art history they may well spot some of his other works.

Realities is an app that allows users to travel the world. It creates photorealistic environments by using a process called photogammetry along with Granite SDK, an advanced texture streaming middleware by developer Graphine.

World of Diving is an online multiplayer game that encourages players to explore the murky, mysterious depths of the oceans, featuring rusty shipwrecks, WW2 submarines, reefs and a myriad of sea life to discover.

The other nominees for the Viveport Developers Awards are:

Allumette by Penrose Studios

Cloudlands: VR Minigolf by Futuretown

Mars Odyssey by Steel Wool Studios

Arcade Artist by Groove Jones

Altspace VR by Altspace VR

Pearl by Google Spotlight Stories

Soundstage by Hard Light Labs

The Body VR by The Body VR

Fantastic Contraption by Northway Games

Apollo 11 VR from Immersive VR Education Ltd

SurrealVR by SurrealVR

Firebird: La Peri by InnerspaceVR.

For further details on the VDA, keep reading VRFocus.

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All ‘VR players need to work together’ for the Industry to Succeed States HTC

Even with virtual reality’s (VR) enormous growth and future potential it’s still a polarising technology, with some highly invested in its success while others still don’t quite understand it. In the early days of VR’s re-emergence companies closely worked together to ensure it became viable, but with the launches of the major headsets this year that’s all begun to split. But HTC doesn’t think this should be the case, saying recently that everyone still needs to work together to ensure the industry’s future.

Talking to GamesIndustry.biz, Rikard Steiber, president of Viveport and SVP of VR at HTC said: “We are in the early days, and all of the VR players need to work together to make sure virtual reality happens. Rather than competing, we should make it easier for developers to create great content and monetise it. We need to help consumers navigate this field that might be initially confusing. But I do think, people with mobile phones are going to upgrade to some sort of virtual reality experience, I think it’s natural if you have a games console that you’ll upgrade to a more immersive experience, if you have a high-end PC then you’ll want to do this.”

HTC Vive mixed image

HTC has been heavily pushing VR worldwide – especially in China – through initiatives such as Viveport and its accompanying Viveport Developer Awards. There’s also the Viveport M mobile platform, Viveport Arcade and the Vive X Accelerator Program to name just a few.

And Steiber sees Viveport as a multiplatform VR store saying: “Our vision for Viveport is for it to be the leading agnostic virtual reality store. We are not just for Vive, we are for all platforms and devices. We launched in China where some of the US companies struggle having a presence. In China we cover all types of content and we have just launched our mobile VR offering, so we also have Android VR and Daydream applications in there. We also launched our Arcade programme [where people can go to a real-world destination to play VR]. We want to help developers get into China, and safely monetise their content across PC VR, home VR, mobile VR and public location-based VR.”

Rivals such as Oculus and Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) are providing their own support for developers, whether it’s financial or technical. But generally this means exclusive deals secured for their own platforms, ensuring they get a return on their investment by attracting more customers to purchase their headsets.

Some developers such as CCP Games are trying to bridge the gap. EVE: Valkyrie for example is one of the few titles (possibly the only one) that supports cross-platform play over all three of the main headsets.

Whilst it would benefit the VR industry and gamers alike if HTC, Oculus, SIE and others worked together for the betterment of VR, the likely hood it’ll happen is probably slim.

VRFocus will continue its VR coverage, reporting on all the latest news from around the world.

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Fantastic Contraption, Apollo 11 and More Nominated for Viveport Developer Awards

HTC began the nominations for the Viveport Developer Awards back in October, announcing titles in batches of four. The first eight revealed were Allumette, by Penrose Studios; Cloudlands: VR Minigolf, by Futuretown; Mars Odyssey, by Steel Wool Game and Arcade Artist, by Groove Jones, Altspace VR, by Altspace VR; Pearl, by Google Spotlight Stories; Soundstage, by Hard Light Labs and The Body VR, by The Body VR. Now HTC has announced the next four to be included in the awards.

These are Fantastic Contraption by Northway Games, Apollo 11 VR from Immersive VR Education Ltd, SurrealVR by SurrealVR and Firebird: La Peri by InnerspaceVR.

Fantastic Contraption screenshot

Fantastic Contraption is a surreal puzzle title in which players have to build machines to complete tasks. Using three building materials, a cylindrical motor, a wooden beam, and a balloon beam, these objects enable players to concoct a myriad of weird and wonderful designs to finish the level. When the HTC Vive launched the videogame was part of a free software bundle before being swapped out during the summer.

Apollo 11 VR is a documentary experience based around the moon landing events of 1969. Players get to relive the events of 1969, taking control and flying the command module, landing the lunar lander, exploring the Moon’s surface and deploying the lunar experiments all before returning to earth in a fiery re-entry.

SurrealVR is a virtual social world where players create lifelike avatars, meet new friends, talk, interact, and go on adventures together. When it launched in April this year the title only supported HTC Vive, since then Oculus Rift support has also been added.

Launched in August for HTC Vive was Firebird: La Peri by InnerspaceVR. Based on classical music and ballet by French classical composer Paul Dukas, La Peri, this 15-minute experience features actor John Rhys-Davies as narrator, who has starred in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and Peter Jackson’s The Lord of The Rings. Utilising the Vive’s hand controllers, players are able to interact directly with the characters and creatures which populate the world.

As and when HTC reveals more nominees for the Viveport Developer Awards, VRFocus will bring you the latest details.

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Fantastic Contraption, Apollo 11 and More Nominated for Viveport Developer Awards

HTC began the nominations for the Viveport Developer Awards back in October, announcing titles in batches of four. The first eight revealed were Allumette, by Penrose Studios; Cloudlands: VR Minigolf, by Futuretown; Mars Odyssey, by Steel Wool Game and Arcade Artist, by Groove Jones, Altspace VR, by Altspace VR; Pearl, by Google Spotlight Stories; Soundstage, by Hard Light Labs and The Body VR, by The Body VR. Now HTC has announced the next four to be included in the awards.

These are Fantastic Contraption by Northway Games, Apollo 11 VR from Immersive VR Education Ltd, SurrealVR by SurrealVR and Firebird: La Peri by InnerspaceVR.

Fantastic Contraption screenshot

Fantastic Contraption is a surreal puzzle title in which players have to build machines to complete tasks. Using three building materials, a cylindrical motor, a wooden beam, and a balloon beam, these objects enable players to concoct a myriad of weird and wonderful designs to finish the level. When the HTC Vive launched the videogame was part of a free software bundle before being swapped out during the summer.

Apollo 11 VR is a documentary experience based around the moon landing events of 1969. Players get to relive the events of 1969, taking control and flying the command module, landing the lunar lander, exploring the Moon’s surface and deploying the lunar experiments all before returning to earth in a fiery re-entry.

SurrealVR is a virtual social world where players create lifelike avatars, meet new friends, talk, interact, and go on adventures together. When it launched in April this year the title only supported HTC Vive, since then Oculus Rift support has also been added.

Launched in August for HTC Vive was Firebird: La Peri by InnerspaceVR. Based on classical music and ballet by French classical composer Paul Dukas, La Peri, this 15-minute experience features actor John Rhys-Davies as narrator, who has starred in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and Peter Jackson’s The Lord of The Rings. Utilising the Vive’s hand controllers, players are able to interact directly with the characters and creatures which populate the world.

As and when HTC reveals more nominees for the Viveport Developer Awards, VRFocus will bring you the latest details.

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Second Viveport Developer Awards Nominations Announced and Some Frightening Deals

It’s almost time for Halloween and the virtual reality (VR) industry has been getting into the spirit of the occasion with events and spooky deals. Oculus has discounted several scary titles and HTC’s Viveport is doing the same. HTC has also announced the second wave of nominations for the Viveport Developer Awards.

Currently experiences on offer through Viveport are:

A Chair in a Room: Greenwater by Wolf & Wood Interactive – 25% off – £14.24 (£18.99)

Daylight’s End VR Edition by Groove Jones – 80% off

Emily Wants to Play by SKH Apps – 80% off – £0.70 (£3.48)

The Night The Carsons Disappeared by NostalgicBear VR – 50% off – £0.70 (£1.39)

AChairInARoom3

As for the Viveport Developer Awards this second round of nominations featured:

Allumette, by Penrose Studios; Cloudlands: VR Minigolf, by Futuretown; Mars Odyssey, by Steel Wool Game and Arcade Artist, by Groove Jones. These join the first selection: Altspace VR, by Altspace VR; Pearl, by Google Spotlight Stories Soundstage, by Hard Light Labs and The Body VR, by The Body VR.

This week HTC has made several announcements, earlier today the company revealed a partnership with InterContinental Hotels Group to allow guests to demo the HTC Vive in their rooms or in special areas. And there was the unveiling of Vivepaper, which creates a range of interactions for print content, allowing users to activate of 360-degree photos and videos, 3D models, 2D content, and audio thanks to the headsets front-facing camera.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of HTC Vive and Viveport, reporting back with any further announcements.