SculptrVR Arrives On Oculus Quest With Multiplayer Voxel Playground

Voxel-based art and multiplayer playground software SculptrVR is available now on Oculus Quest.

The creativity software first launched on Steam in 2016 and its primary developer, Nathan Rowe, repeatedly refined and rebuilt the application over the last three years. Now available for $9.99 on Quest it includes a collection of tools for singleplayer or multiplayer shaping of voxel worlds, along with cross-play support with players in other Oculus-based headsets. One of the application’s key features allows the player to resize themselves for an incredible playground experience which toys with your sense of scale. For creatives, the feature also allows for some detail work in the sculpting app.

There’s climbing, hang gliding and even rockets you can fire to drill little — or large — holes in the surrounding landscape. While there are other art apps available on Quest like Tilt Brush and Gravity Sketch — SculptrVR is a different sort of experience. Facebook’s own VR art apps, Quill and Medium, aren’t available on the headset either. SculptrVR is no means a replacement for the lack of No Man’s Sky and Minecraft on Quest, but its exploratory and creative gameplay could certainly fill the gap for some.

I talked with Rowe this week in Quest and asked him some questions about the path his software took to the standalone VR headset from Facebook. The 12-minute tour was recorded entirely on Quest in SculptrVR.

SculptrVR is listed as having cross-buy with Rift, so if you own the application already from Oculus for Rift it should already be playable inside Quest.

The post SculptrVR Arrives On Oculus Quest With Multiplayer Voxel Playground appeared first on UploadVR.

Fugl VR Review: Soaring Through Infinite Worlds

Fugl is a sandbox game where you create the story, playing as a shape-shifting bird. Read our full-review to find out what we thought.

Imagine dipping into an alternate world to find that everything is made of voxels and that you no longer have hands. Playing Fugl in VR (currently exclusive to the Oculus Home store on PC) is a bit like that. It only takes about five minutes inside of Fugl’s world for dissociation to kick in and for the resulting wanderlust to peel you from reality. And on that note, “wanderlust” is certainly the word that I’d use to describe it.

The entire premise here is that you pilot a shapeshifting bird through infinitely generated rolling terrain. But instead of playing with the environment, you really only get to zoom through it in an entirely hands-off sort of way. All while you unlock different bird forms that resemble the other animals you find wandering aimlessly about the wilderness. That may all sound rather droll at face value, but I personally loved the modesty of it all and I could see myself returning to Fugl for unguided meditation and mindfulness practice.

When you enter the main menu, you can pick from a list of metamorphs you’ve unlocked and 10 different themed environments to explore, and then all you need to do is hit the Start button and off you go. Everything after that is up to you, and you can spend as much or as little time in any one environment as you please.

This is where I want to say that Fugl reminds me of Nature Treks VR in more than a few ways, including layout of course, but also in atmosphere. From the moment I embarked on my flight, ambient noises from other birds and animals echoed out across the crags and canyons as the musical score began to swell. In its best moments, everything hit my lizard brain just right and I felt like Fugl’s composition of sensory elements ascended its overall homogeneity in a way that was difficult to forget or escape.

I now want to address the mixture of circumstances that end up making Fugl “work” as well as it does for mindful relaxation in VR. Fugl wasn’t originally a VR game and it’s not even really a “game” at all. It was never designed with VR interactions in mind, nor was it retrofitted to compensate for the existence of actual hands in a VR environment. It is quite literally as if the developer dropped the original game into VorpX with custom controller bindings for the Oculus Touch controllers. And while that may sound like a complete insult, it isn’t.

Fugl runs at your own pace and there are no consequences for, say, missing a lunge and crashing your bird into the side of a tree. You can fly indefinitely as the planetscape populates in front of you, and you will always find new nooks and crannies to dive into. Furthermore, you might choose to chase down, meet, and unlock each of the several animal species. But that’s certainly a personal goal rather than a conventional one. There’s no formal reward for doing anything in Fugl other than achieving intrinsic satisfaction from experiencing new details.

And Fugl works because everything you’ll ever do inside of it is no more complicated in practice than what you could achieve with a NES controller. While I’d argue that the controls aren’t necessarily intuitive and do require some practice to get the hang of ⁠— resulting in many cases where I’d divebomb and crash where I meant to lunge ⁠— again, Fugl imposes no consequences for crashing or losing momentum.

Final Say: Worth Seeing

Fugl in VR is a shameless port of its original flat release in 2017. It never goes further than being a random terrain generator with tight flying controls and some voxelized animal skins to view and unlock. However, that’s precisely why it works. It seeks, singularly, to fulfill the role of a living piece of artwork. If you load up Fugl and simply begin flying in one direction without expectations, you’re more likely to let your mind off the hook so that it can soak up the available bounty of atmospheric, abstract beauty. Simple and carefree, Fugl clicks when you’re soaring high above the valleys below and the only words your brain can drum up (at all) are “Well, this is nice.”

Fugl is available in VR on the Oculus Home PC platform for Rift at $14.99. Read our Game Review Guidelines for more information on how we arrived at this score.

VoxEl: VR-Rätselabenteuer für PSVR und PC-Brillen angekündigt

Das japanische Entwicklerstudio DeNA kündigte das neue VR-Rätselabenteuer VoxEl für PlayStation VR (PSVR), Oculus Rift und HTC Vive an. Der VR-Titel soll ein ausgereiftes Kampfsystem mit Rätseleinlagen kombinieren und das Gameplay innerhalb eines narrativen Adventures verpacken.

VoxEl – VR-Rätselabenteuer für PlayStation VR (PSVR), Oculus Rift und HTC Vive

In VoxEl helfen die Spieler/innen der Protagonistin Ell dabei, einen tristen Planeten von seinen Unterdrückern zu befreien. Durch seltsame lila Artefakte und Antennen blockieren bösartige Schurken die Farben und Melodien der verlorenen Welt. Deshalb greift ihr der Heldin unter die Arme und versucht mit Rätsellösefähigkeiten, Kampfgeschick und Ehrgeiz die Fesseln der Unterdrückung zu sprengen und der Welt neuen Glanz zu verleihen.

In zahlreichen Leveln stoßt ihr dabei auf verschiedene Rätsel, die ihr mit den vier Elementen Feuer, Wind, Wasser und Erde auf unterschiedliche Art und Weise lösen müsst. So gilt es beispielsweise eine Windmühle mit einem Luftzug zu befeuern, um einen neuen Weg zu eröffnen. Außerdem könnt ihr zur Fortbewegung durch die Lüfte levitieren. Neben den Puzzles stellt ihr euch fiesen Feinden und Bossgegnern, welchen ihr ebenfalls mit euren magischen Fähigkeiten den Garaus macht.

VoxEl-Oculus-Rift-HTC-Vive-PlayStation-VR-PSVR

Die Entwickler/innen von DeNA arbeiten gemeinsam mit Nintendo an der Entwicklung von Lizenztiteln für mobile Plattformen. Mit den Spielen Super Mario Run (2016) und Fire Emblem Heroes (2017) konnten sich bereits erfolgreiche Games auf den Markt bringen.

Ein offizielles Veröffentlichungsdatum wurde für VoxEl bisher noch nicht bekannt gegeben. Der VR-Titel soll jedoch in Japan sowie in Europa für PlayStation VR (PSVR), Oculus Rift und HTC Vive erscheinen.

(Quellen: Road to VR | Video: Hiromichi Takahashi YouTube)

Der Beitrag VoxEl: VR-Rätselabenteuer für PSVR und PC-Brillen angekündigt zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

‘Super Mario Run’ Co-Developer Announces VR Puzzle-Adventure ‘VoxEl’

DeNA, the Japan-based mobile game developer known for their work on several Nintendo properties including Super Mario Run (2016) and Fire Emblem Heroes (2017), announced a new VR adventure game targeting PSVR, HTC Vive, and Oculus Rift. Dubbed VoxEl, the game is said to include puzzle-solving as well as combat.

The trailer (linked below) shows off a first-person experience where you help a woman named Ell solve puzzles using a magic wand and a number of glowing purple stones, one of which is chained to her leg.

According to a report by IGN Japan (Japanese), the objective of each level is to destroy an antenna blocking the world’s colors and sounds. Besides the ability to levitate the game’s mysteriously glowing purple rocks, the player’s wand also has other powers, including ‘wind’, ‘earth’, and ‘fire’, all of which play into specific puzzles such as a windmill puzzle that requires a puff of air to rotate. Protecting Ell and moving her through the game, even as you go against big level bosses, is the key.



VoxEl is being co-developed by DeNA (pronounced ‘DNA’), which recently partnered with Nintendo to brings is IP to the mobile platform, and Amata K.K., a multimedia firm behind Last Labyrintha VR escape room slated for release in Spring 2019.

VoxEl doesn’t have an official release date yet, although IGN Japan reports that English localization is currently in the works to go along with the title’s original Japanese version.

The post ‘Super Mario Run’ Co-Developer Announces VR Puzzle-Adventure ‘VoxEl’ appeared first on Road to VR.

Voxelus Inc Is Offering Equity For The Voxel Cryptocurrency

Volexus Inc Is Offering Equity For The Voxel Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency, a specific branch of digital currency, has grown at a significant pace in recent years. Bitcoin is the most notable cryptocurrency out in the wild, but different companies and entities use varying forms of digital assets in different ways. Voxelus, a virtual creative platform, is exchanging equity stake in the company for a percentage of the app’s voxel cryptocurrency already in the market.

“We believe firmly in the future of our VR token, the Voxel, but we wanted to give those who share our vision another way to participate in the success of the company,” says Voxelus Inc CEO Martin Repetto, in a prepared statement. “We have decided to provide this one-time option for Voxels holders to convert their coins into equity in the company. This should increase the scarcity of the outstanding Voxels as demand rises in the marketplace. It also allows anyone to take advantage of the opportunity to own equity in a promising VR platform at an attractive valuation.”

In Voxelus, users can sell the virtual assets that have been created and shared in the program’s simplified and welcoming interface for the voxel currency. That currency can then be withdrawn and exchanged on different markets for various types of digital currency or changed into their local currency, and this move by Voxelus Inc is just another option for the users. This particular option, though, will help to reinvest in the already growing platform.

“We will use these funds to build upon our early leadership in the VR content sector,” says Repetto. “We have a number of new technical initiatives that will further enhance our already stellar user interface, as well as branded content deals, teed up to be announced in the coming weeks and months..”

The exchange is scheduled to go live in the first quarter of 2017 at a set rate of 1.058% of Voxelus Inc for every 1 million voxels.

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Carve A SculptrVR Pumpkin And Win A $100 Steam Wallet Card

Carve A SculptrVR Pumpkin And Win A $100 Steam Wallet Card

Fall has arrived and pumpkin patches are in full swing as families and groups of friends search for the perfect orange veggie canvas to express their creativity upon. The 19th century Jack-o’-lantern tradition is, now, getting a modernized upgrade: SculptrVR is joining in the festivities and offering a free program to carve virtual pumpkins.

Pumpkin SculptrVR is now available on Steam and allows players to enlarge or shrink down to carve at a massive scale or chisel fine details into a virtual pumpkin. The gameplay is voxel based and can be manipulated block by block or destroyed entirely. The setting in your workspace can also be influenced, adding lighting and fog elements to set the scene.

On top of this free offering, the developers are holding a contest to attract more users. Take to the application and create your best work plus scenery and, if chosen as the victor, you win a little extra loot: The five favorites overall will be given a $100 Steam wallet card. If you’re willing to split your winning prize up, the application allows for up to 16 players at a time to work on a single project with voice chat enabled. You may not need the help, though. Pumpkin SculptrVR’s main tool, the delete sphere, makes the process fairly easy as you remove chunks of voxels with a wave of your wand. So carve out whatever face or design that comes to mind and place a voxel candle inside your creation for the final touch.

Pumpkin SculptrVR is available for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. A few submissions are already being shared on the company’s twitter, from fairly simple to a bit more detailed, but you still have time to get to work. Let your creativity overflow and flex your VR sculpting skills. The contest runs from now until Oct 31, 2016 11:59 pm PDT.