Category: VR Arcade

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Zero Latency Is The US’s First Warehouse-Scale VR Arcade

Zero Latency Is The US’s First Warehouse-Scale VR Arcade

As often stated, you have to experience VR to truly believe. Arcade settings are perfect places to introduce someone to the immersive virtual experience while having a bit of fun with friends and companies are certainly taking note. HTC valued the VR arcade market at $100 million, revealing more than 120 titles signed up at the start of this month and we reported on them opening Viveland in Taiwan only a day before that. The VR arcade scene in China is booming these days.

We’ve even seen some of this scale popping up in the U.S., such as The Void, which recently debuted a Ghostbusters experience. But now, we’ve got a new development as Zero Latency expands from Melbourne, Australia to Orlando, Florida and brings the US their very first warehouse-scale free roam virtual reality facility.

Zero Latency equips you with a gun, headset, and backpack in a warehouse where you and other players’ movements are tracked by cameras all over the area. That tracking is utilized to reflect your moves and actions in various scenarios, including being overrun by zombies.

The Orlando facility, announced in a press release that the facility won’t be as large as the one in Australia (2k square feet vs roughly 4k), but the program will scale with no issues. Beyond that, they’re bringing over the same gear including Razer’s OSVR HDK 2.0 VR headset, the Alienware powered backpack PC, and players will be tracked by Zero Latency’s proprietary technology.

Zero Latency’s facility in Australia opened to a wave of excitement in the form of six-week wait lists for the experience and will be opening in Spain to go along with the existing establishment in Japan. The warehouse-scale experience will be sharing space with a Main Event facility in Pointe Orlando near the Orange County Convention Center, and it’ll be the first Main Event in Florida.

“Warehouse-scale, free-roam, virtual reality gaming simply cannot be created at home,” stated Main Event Entertainment president and CEO Charlie Keegan in a prepared statement.  “Zero Latency provides an undeniably compelling reason for gamers, families, parties, and friends to come out for a mind-blowingly fun and immersive group experience.  Zero Latency is a perfect match for the state of-the-art attractions featured at Main Event Entertainment at Pointe Orlando.”

For more information, visit the Zero Latency official website.

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Valve Move to Kickstart the VR Cybercafé with New SteamVR Licensing Model

Valve has announced a new ‘Site Licensing’ model which allows businesses interested in providing VR experiences to customers as an out of home experience. It seems the company have their sights on SteamVR powering a renaissance in VR-enabled Cybercafés.

Lets face it, VR is still expensive pretty much any way you slice it. And whilst the affordability of immersive technology is improving rapidly, other barriers to enjoying premium VR experiences at home – such as having the space to enjoy room-scale – are still very much an issue.

The next best thing to having your own VR setup? Well, Valve seems to think that you might instead want to pop down the road to your local Cybercafé to get your VR on instead. To that end, the company have just introduced a new initiative which is geared towards making it much easier to give commercial operations the ability to entertain punters in VR on site via Steam and SteamVR.

SEE ALSO
HTC Vive Review: A Mesmerising VR Experience, if You Have the Space

The Site Licensing Program for Steam allows any operation which intends to offer Steam based experiences, including of course HTC Vive VR titles, to visitors. Those operations could be anything from a museum to an arcade, pop-up store, cybercafé or as Valve puts it “any other place you can think of.” The new license allows the proprietor of said operation to obtain (at a cost) commercial subscription subscriptions to content offered via Steam and also access a growing list of free-to-play titles which Valve are making available via their Free Site Subscriptions list – which already includes a number of VR titles such as Valve’s The Lab and Portal Stories: VR.

This all of course ties in very nicely with HTC’s recent investment in public VR entertainment spaces and their announcement of a similar initiative, also aimed at providing VR experiences at what they call “offline experience centers” via their own content portal platform Viveport. The move was announced at the joint Developer Forum of Alibaba Cloud’s annual Computing Conference in October and follows HTC’s push towards opening 100s of VR café in China next year.

SEE ALSO
HTC to Roll Out Hundreds of Official 'Vive VR Cafes' in China Next Year

It’s an interesting move from both parties, one that should further help allow those not yet able to afford the investment in space or money to own a VR system of their own to get to grips with immersive technology. As we’ve written many times before, VR has to be experienced to be fully understood, and should the idea of out of home VR businesses take off, that barrier of entry for VR experiences might just come down a notch or two.

The post Valve Move to Kickstart the VR Cybercafé with New SteamVR Licensing Model appeared first on Road to VR.

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Valve Move to Kickstart the VR Cybercafé with New SteamVR Licensing Model

Valve has announced a new ‘Site Licensing’ model which allows businesses interested in providing VR experiences to customers as an out of home experience. It seems the company have their sights on SteamVR powering a renaissance in VR-enabled Cybercafés.

Lets face it, VR is still expensive pretty much any way you slice it. And whilst the affordability of immersive technology is improving rapidly, other barriers to enjoying premium VR experiences at home – such as having the space to enjoy room-scale – are still very much an issue.

The next best thing to having your own VR setup? Well, Valve seems to think that you might instead want to pop down the road to your local Cybercafé to get your VR on instead. To that end, the company have just introduced a new initiative which is geared towards making it much easier to give commercial operations the ability to entertain punters in VR on site via Steam and SteamVR.

SEE ALSO
HTC Vive Review: A Mesmerising VR Experience, if You Have the Space

The Site Licensing Program for Steam allows any operation which intends to offer Steam based experiences, including of course HTC Vive VR titles, to visitors. Those operations could be anything from a museum to an arcade, pop-up store, cybercafé or as Valve puts it “any other place you can think of.” The new license allows the proprietor of said operation to obtain (at a cost) commercial subscription subscriptions to content offered via Steam and also access a growing list of free-to-play titles which Valve are making available via their Free Site Subscriptions list – which already includes a number of VR titles such as Valve’s The Lab and Portal Stories: VR.

This all of course ties in very nicely with HTC’s recent investment in public VR entertainment spaces and their announcement of a similar initiative, also aimed at providing VR experiences at what they call “offline experience centers” via their own content portal platform Viveport. The move was announced at the joint Developer Forum of Alibaba Cloud’s annual Computing Conference in October and follows HTC’s push towards opening 100s of VR café in China next year.

SEE ALSO
HTC to Roll Out Hundreds of Official 'Vive VR Cafes' in China Next Year

It’s an interesting move from both parties, one that should further help allow those not yet able to afford the investment in space or money to own a VR system of their own to get to grips with immersive technology. As we’ve written many times before, VR has to be experienced to be fully understood, and should the idea of out of home VR businesses take off, that barrier of entry for VR experiences might just come down a notch or two.

The post Valve Move to Kickstart the VR Cybercafé with New SteamVR Licensing Model appeared first on Road to VR.

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HTC to Roll Out Hundreds of Official ‘Vive VR Cafes’ in China Next Year

HTC opened their third officially branded ‘Vive VR Cafe’ last week, this time in Shenzhen, China, the country’s Silicon Valley of hardware. In an interview with Haptical, HTC China’s President of Vive Alvin Wang Graylin confirms the company will be rolling out hundreds of these Shenzhen-style Vive cafes in 2016 and 2017 in China.

The kicker? Graylin maintains that once the Vive VR cafe model is fully tested in China, the company is planning to expand them internationally with a possibility of franchising opportunities.

image courtesy of Alvin Wang Graylin image courtesy of Alvin Wang Graylin image courtesy of Alvin Wang Graylin

This isn’t the only way HTC plans on getting their headsets and software into Chinese VR cafes however, even if the market is slowly opening up to a number of new headset manufacturers (and they’re cheaper too).

Last December, HTC announced a partnership with Shunwang, China’s leading software provider within the country’s many gaming cafes, but Graylin says the new Vive VR Cafe in Shenzhen is in fact the result of outside investment.

“Shunwang cafes are more [like] Internet cafes converting to VR” he says, “this one is more like an arcade and social space.”

SEE ALSO
HTC Partnership Aims to Bring Vive to "hundreds of millions" of Internet Café Users

HTC currently operates two other Vive VR cafe locations, one in Taipei and the other in Beijing, but Graylin tells Haptical that there are currently 3000+ non-branded VR arcades in China, and according to him, they’ll be using HTC’s user-friendly Viveport Arcade management platform “to connect them and bring value to users, store owners, and developers.” (currently China-only)

Growing Expectations

China’s potential VR market is on the verge of an exponential explosion, and with an expected growth up to $8.5 billion in the next four years—as reported by Bloomberg—it’s clear that everyone wants a piece. For now, it seems, even Western developers can get a toe hold into the Chinese VR market.

Road to VR Executive Editor Ben Lang spoke with Shunwang’s Sky Liu, the person leading the company’s VR strategy. Liu explained that Shunwang is offering wide-ranging support to help Western game studios bring their VR games to China, including a fund willing to support studios with investments ranging from $150,000 to $1.5 million—all in the effort to grow the potential library of games in their VR internet cafes. Check out our full article for more information on how to get started.

The post HTC to Roll Out Hundreds of Official ‘Vive VR Cafes’ in China Next Year appeared first on Road to VR.

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Erstes VR Center in der Schweiz

Die Beta-Phase des ersten Freewalk Fullbody VR Center in der Schweiz ist beendet und nun öffnet die Einrichtung am 01.11.2016 die Türen für alle Besucher. Das VR Center in Zürich nutzt das Optitrack Motion Capture System für das Tracking und arbeitet mit Sensic und XMG zusammen, um eine überzeugende Erfahrung zu liefern.

Erstes VR Center in der Schweiz ab 01.11.2016 geöffnet

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Aktuell nutzt die Einrichtung das teure Optitrack Motion Capture System und somit ist das Tracking des Körpers und das Tracking diverser Objekte möglich. Gespielt wird auf einer 150 Quadratmeter großen Fläche und es können mehrere Spieler in einer Erfahrung sein. Als Spielkonzept setzt das VR Center auf einen Escape Room. Aktuell gibt es nur eine betretbare Welt, welche sich Explorer nennt und eine tolle Landschaft mit Ruinen zeigt. Später soll aber noch eine Horror-Welt und ein Shooter integriert werden. Damit ihr nicht ständig über die Kabel fallt, setzt das Center auf den XMG Walker. Dieser Rucksack PC ermöglicht kabelloses Virtual Reality, denn die gesamte Rechenpower kommt aus eurem Rucksack.

Für die Erfahrung müssen die Besucher CHF 45.- pro Person auf den Tisch legen. Dafür erhalten die Nutzer eine Spielzeit von ca. 20 Minuten. Das Team hinter dem VR Center bietet aber nicht nur den Besuch des eigenen VR Centers an, sondern verkauft auch Lösungen an Unternehmen, die ein ähnliches System aufbauen wollen. Mit dem Optitrack Motion Capture System können gemeinsam Flächen mit einer Größe bis zu 1000 Quadratmeter bespielt werden. Wenn ihr einen Termin im VR Center buchen wollt, dann könnt ihr dies hier tun.

Der Beitrag Erstes VR Center in der Schweiz zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

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Wide-Area Tracking for VR Arcades with OptiTrack

Brian-NillesOptiTrack premiered a new demo at GDC that shows the extent of their tracking technology precision. They put passive tracking markers on a basketball and football that allowed people to go toss a ball back and forth to each other in VR.

LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST

I had a chance to catch up with OptiTrack’s Chief Strategy Officer Brian Nilles at SIGGRAPH who talked about how OptiTrack is being used as the primary tracking solution within the different VR Arcade solutions including The VOID, VRCade, and Holovis.

See also: OptiTrack's Precise 'Void' Style Tracking Lets You Play Real Basketball in VR
See Also: OptiTrack’s Precise ‘Void’ Style Tracking Lets You Play Real Basketball in VR

He also talked about OptiTrack being used for motion and facial capture for AAA studios, and for indoor GPS systems for robots and drones. There are a number of yet-to-be announced VR Arcade solutions out there that are pushing the limits of OptiTrack’s technology, and Brian gives us an idea of what’s possible by saying that he’s seen solutions that use as many as 75 HMDs within a space up to 165ft x 120ft.

Here’s a video of their Basketball demo that premiered at GDC:

Support Voices of VR

Music: Fatality & Summer Trip

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