Since the game’s release in 2016, VR gamers have been asking for VR support for No Man’s Sky, the sandbox space survival game from Hello Games. The most recent hint the developers might be considering it comes from a recently posted poll to the community of players, asking what they wanted to see in future updates to the game. Among the 10 possible options is ‘VR Support’.
No Man’s Sky was first teased in late 2013 and became one of the most anticipated titles in gaming history due to Hello Games’ ambitious claims about its scope and depth of features. By the time it released, a particular criticism was that while Hello Games had claimed it would be multiplayer, players could only see named planets from other players. They could not actually directly interact. Over the past two years, however, the game has received multiple major updates addressing the missing features from launch as well as performance and stability issues, and much of its playerbase now seems satisfied with the state of the game today. In many ways, it now feels like a completely different game and similar to the originally teased concept.
The demand for VR support for No Man’s Sky is not arbitrary. Earlier this year, we wrote about reasons why the game would be perfect for VR. VR is extremely well suited to games where the player is primarily in a cockpit, though only a portion of No Man’s Sky is set inside a spacecraft. Elite Dangerous, another sandbox space game with planetary landing, is considered by some to be one of the best VR games available, and many players have bought a VR headset to enhance their experience in it.
Of course, this is only a poll, so the community may vote to prioritize other features, or potentially not enough will vote for VR support for it to ever be added to the game, but the fact that Hello Games intentionally put it into the list means there is a decent chance of it coming eventually. It is also not known whether this would be limited to PC VR headsets, or whether it would also come to PSVR (given that the game is already on PlayStation 4). Regardless, we’ll keep you updated as soon as any further VR news from Hello Games emerges.
From the makers of FORM (2017), a well regarded indie VR puzzle game, comes Twilight Path. With an entirely new setting, Twilight Path attempts something more ambitious than its predecessor, but winds up feeling like a rushed followup.
Developer:Charm Games Available On: SteamVR (Vive, Rift), Oculus Store (Rift) Reviewed On: SteamVR (Vive Pro) Release Date: October 2nd, 2018
Gameplay
Opening with a short prologue about a spirit world that’s recently come under siege by a cursed dragon demon, Twilight Path begins ever so briefly in the human world before transporting you to the spirit world with little explanation, beginning a linear string of puzzles which can be fun but often feel arbitrary as you teleport from one puzzle node to the next.
Whereas Charm Games’ previous title, FORM, had a more abstract presentation which relied and usually succeeded with dazzling visuals, Twilight Path sets up a more structured world and introduces the player to a few characters in an effort to infuse the game’s puzzle gameplay with interesting context.
Screenshot by Road to VR
Unfortunately it fails on that front as the characters are ill developed and almost entirely without player interaction, serving more as a convenient in-game location for some voice acting work to emanate. By the end, the game tries to bring a little action into the mix and suss some emotion out of the player after a climactic scene, but fails to achieve a sense of danger or urgency, while lacking the requisite character development to make the player care about the outcome.
Failing in its overambitious attempt at world building, Twilight Path is left then with just its puzzles. While you’ll find a few new ideas, there’s plenty borrowed from FORM. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, Twilight Path didn’t feel like it brought many innovative or memorable puzzle ideas to the table, and rarely offered me any “eureka” moments that are often accompany puzzle games that make you think outside the box.
Despite being usually fun to interact with thanks to (usually) good affordance design, FX, and SFX, puzzles largely felt like one-off contraptions. Twilight Path doesn’t really teach the player underlying concepts to later be tested in a challenging setting—the essence of most any game.
Screenshot by Road to VR
Even priced at a low $15, with a little over an hour of play timeTwilight Path feels like it tries to do too much with its world in the time allotted, while not focusing enough on the player’s gameplay journey.
Charm Games says that Twilight Path serves as an introduction to its world and they plan to add more chapters to this tale in the future.
Immersion
Screenshot by Road to VR
In Twilight Path you’re described as a human who has come to the spirit realm, apparently a fairly uncommon happenstance. You’ve acquired several magical abilities (for some reason), allowing you to interact with objects at a distance, transform broken things into not broken things, and teleport from one predefined location to the next.
The purely linear nature of the game, coupled with node-based teleportation—which sometimes moves you hundreds of feet or more from where you just were in a matter of seconds—makes it hard to stay grounded in the game world as you’re often left wondering exactly where you are in relation to the rest of the environment.
While the game gives you abilities which on paper should feel empowering, they often feel more like a means of activating scripted sequences. For instance, early in the game there’s some giant boulders blocking a pathway. While you might want to use your force power to pick them up and move them off of the track, instead you can only use your force power to just click and hold on certain action nodes on the boulders which causes them to blow up after a few seconds (for some reason).
Other ‘puzzle’ elements involve using your force power to click and hold on an obvious node for a few seconds as a large broken object reforms into its unbroken shape. Again, it would have been more empowering if I got to physically manipulate the large pieces to put the object back together myself, instead of simple activating a scripted animation with a trigger hold.
Twilight Path is a decent looking game, but lacks some consistency in its environmental design. The first half of the game takes place in the large outdoor spirit realm setting which is mostly passable, but lacks character. In the latter half of the game you’ll find an immense spirit creature that’s surprisingly detailed and quite well animated for its size. From then on out you enter interior spaces which are significantly more detailed and occasionally awe inducing. Sadly, you’ll only spend a few minutes in some of the game’s most richly detailed areas.
Comfort
As the game is purely teleportation based, and doesn’t require you to move more than a step from your central position, it’s perfectly comfortable, save for a few moments where you’re riding on a slowly moving vehicle.
To use your force power at a distance, the game relies on cursors which are projected out into the world. Played with the Vive, the cursors moved with my hands in a somewhat unintuitive manner, making control a little less precise than it seems it should be. I think this may have been an effort to avoid simple laser pointing input (which is smart), but the result could have felt better.
Oculus today announced ‘Quest’, their new high-end standalone VR headset. The company is promising that some of the top Rift titles will be ported to the headset, including Robo Recall, Moss, The Climb, and Dead and Buried.
On stage today at Oculus Connect 5, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Oculus is focusing on creating a self-sustaining ecosystem so that VR developers can thrive on their platform. Part of achieving that, Zuckerberg said, is making sure that the company’s various efforts across mobile and PC VR are working toward that common goal.
Toward that end, Zuckerberg said that the new Oculus Quest headset will run some of Rift’s current top titles. On stage he mentioned Robo Recall, Moss, The Climb, Dead and Buried, ‘and more’.
He also announced that there are some 50 launch titles planned for the Oculus Quest launch which is set for Spring.
It’s surprising to hear that games like Robo Recall and The Climb will be coming to Santa Cruz, given that they are graphically intense games built on engines that usually power high-end PC titles. It’s very likely that the graphics will have to be toned down for these titles to run on Quest, given its mobile graphics processor, but it’s still great to know that the investments put into these high-end titles will be able to be enjoyed by mobile VR players too.
Oculus today announced Lone Echo 2, a sequel to the highly praised Lone Echo which was developed by Ready at Dawn and published by Oculus Studios in 2017. While the game, like the original, is expected only to launch on the Rift, the announcement comes with an immersive trailer available on the Rift, Go, and Gear VR.
Now a little more than a year after the launch of Lone Echo, Oculus today confirmed that Lone Echo 2 is finally on its way. An immersive trailer, available on the Rift, Go, and Gear VR headsets, shows that the game is likely to be a direct continuation Jack and Liv’s story, the main characters of the first game. You can download immersive trailer on those headsets, or watch the flat version below:
The Lone Echo 2 immersive trailer is seen from the perspective of Jack, and shows Liv coming to terms with a challenging situation arising apparently shortly after players last left things at the end of Lone Echo. Not much is revealed in the trailer about exactly what’s going on or how Lone Echo 2’s gameplay will or won’t evolve from the original.
Lone Echo received high marks for its immersion and narrative, and is often regarded as one of VR’s top titles to date; we gave it a 9 out of 10 in our review. The game is unique for its high production values while steering completely away from first person shooter action, instead focusing on threats and conflict introduced by the environment rather than generic baddies or humanoid aliens dispatched with hot lead or lasers.
Granted, developer Ready at Dawn has been working hard on Echo Combat, a multiplayer FPS component to Echo VR—the multiplayer spinoff that’s set in the Lone Echo universe. Given what the team has learned about mixing handheld weapons with the games’ unique zero-G locomotion may mean that armed conflict isn’t entirely out of the question for Lone Echo 2, for better or for worse.
Oculus today announced Lone Echo 2, a sequel to the highly praised Lone Echo which was developed by Ready at Dawn and published by Oculus Studios in 2017. While the game, like the original, is expected only to launch on the Rift, the announcement comes with an immersive trailer available on the Rift, Go, and Gear VR.
Now a little more than a year after the launch of Lone Echo, Oculus today confirmed that Lone Echo 2 is finally on its way. An immersive trailer, available on the Rift, Go, and Gear VR headsets, shows that the game is likely to be a direct continuation Jack and Liv’s story, the main characters of the first game. You can download immersive trailer on those headsets, or watch the flat version below:
The Lone Echo 2 immersive trailer is seen from the perspective of Jack, and shows Liv coming to terms with a challenging situation arising apparently shortly after players last left things at the end of Lone Echo. Not much is revealed in the trailer about exactly what’s going on or how Lone Echo 2’s gameplay will or won’t evolve from the original.
Lone Echo received high marks for its immersion and narrative, and is often regarded as one of VR’s top titles to date; we gave it a 9 out of 10 in our review. The game is unique for its high production values while steering completely away from first person shooter action, instead focusing on threats and conflict introduced by the environment rather than generic baddies or humanoid aliens dispatched with hot lead or lasers.
Granted, developer Ready at Dawn has been working hard on Echo Combat, a multiplayer FPS component to Echo VR—the multiplayer spinoff that’s set in the Lone Echo universe. Given what the team has learned about mixing handheld weapons with the games’ unique zero-G locomotion may mean that armed conflict isn’t entirely out of the question for Lone Echo 2, for better or for worse.
Vox Machinae, a long running indie VR project, is available right now on the Oculus Rift, SteamVR, and PC. The game received a surprise launch into Early Access today at Oculus Connect 5, bringing a new beginning to a title that’s been in the works for nearly four years.
Available now on Oculus (Rift), SteamVR (Vive, Rift, and Windows VR), and PC (non-VR mode), Vox Machinae is a multiplayer mech combat game that leans decidedly toward the ‘simulator’ end of the mech spectrum, contrasting faster-paced and more arcade-like mech games like Archangel: Hellfire (2017).
Vox Machinae delivers a weighty mech experience where you’ll feel more like you’re operating a giant machine rather than actually being the machine itself. This is achieved with a cockpit full of controls which are manipulated using your motion controllers. That includes the throttle, rotation stick, jump jet control, and even a CB radio microphone which you need to pick up to communicate with your team.
Image courtesy Space Bullet
As your mech has serious momentum, you’ll need to plan your movements carefully if you don’t want to go stumbling into walls or totally botch the landing after using your jump jets. For those who want to be a bit less lumbering, the choice of a smaller mech will increase speed and maneuverability, but of course comes means you won’t be able to take as much damage as the larger mechs.
Image courtesy Space Bullet
Alongside a handful of different mech chassis to choose from, customizable weapons include the likes of machine guns, rockets, lasers, and railguns—the latter being extra effective when paired with a special targeting monitor in the cockpit which offers a zoomed in view of your reticle.
Image courtesy Space Bullet
Vox Machinae is available today in Early Access priced at $25 and supports multiplayer matches with up to 16 players, including bot support, mid-match joining, and full crossplay between Oculus, SteamVR, and non-VR PC players. Developer Space Bullet confirmed to Road to VR that both the Oculus and Steam versions of the game can also be played in the non-VR PC mode.
Here’s a roundup of news from ‘day one’ of our GDC 2018 coverage. Vive Pro date and price, Magic Leap announcements, Nvidia’s real-time ray-tracing, and Budget Cuts resurfaces.
Vive Pro headset launches April 5th for $800, original Vive drops to $500
Image courtesy HTC
HTC have finally revealed the price and release date of the anticipated Vive Pro, opening preorders globally at Vive.com and other retailers. The headset alone is $800, with orders placed before June 3rd receiving a six month trial of the Viveport Subscription content service. At the same time, the original Vive package has dropped by $100.
The improved headset is pitched as an upgrade for current Vive owners, as it works with the original controllers and base stations. It is still not known exactly when the improved controllers and SteamVR 2.0 base stations will be available with the Vive Pro as a full package, or how much that will cost.
Nvidia have announced RTX, a “highly scalable ray-tracing technology” that can run in real-time on the company’s latest Volta GPUs. Ray tracing is a standard technique for rendering high quality CGI in the movie industry, but its extreme computational demands have prevented it from being practical for real-time rendering in games and other interactive apps. Nvidia’s Volta architecture includes a hardware “ray-tracing engine” which, combined with RTX, appears to be capable of running scenes smoothly in real-time, albeit still with noticeable noise.
Stealth game ‘Budget Cuts’ resurfaces
Image courtesy Neat Corp
Developer Neat Corp has appeared at GDC 2018 to show their progress on Budget Cuts, confirming a May 16th release date on SteamVR and Oculus Home. The first-person stealth game was one of the early ‘wow’ moments of VR motion-controller action, but this is the first time we’ve seen their work since the excellent pre-alpha demo from 2016 (which is still available on Steam). The game promises seven hours of content involving stealth, action, puzzles, and bosses.
Claiming to be “the world’s most compact and affordable VR motion simulator,” Yaw VR is a 3DoF motion system using a spherical dome design that allows for unlimited, 360-degree yaw movement and 50 degrees across the horizontal axes. The project just surpassed its $150,000 crowdfunding goal on Kickstarter.
Update (02/08/18): Yaw VR has just surpassed its ‘do-or-die’ crowdfunding goal. No stretch goals have been announced yet, but we’ll be following the campaign as it moves forward.
Original article (12/22/18): Designed and developed by Hungary-based startup Intellisense, the Yaw VR delivers 3DoF motion cues via a seat that fits neatly inside a spherical dome, whose smooth outer surface is ‘rolled’ around using small electric motors. This approach avoids the use of expensive linear actuators found in high-end motion systems, and results in a lightweight unit (33 lbs) that can fold neatly away for storage. Its $890 ‘early bird’ price and $1190 ‘standard’ price could hardly be considered impulse-buy territory for the average home VR user, but these appear to be competitive figures in an inherently expensive category of devices.
‘Affordable’ mechanical equipment tends to make compromises in certain aspects of durability and performance, but the claimed figures of the Yaw VR sound promising. Intellisense demonstrated a prototype at CES 2018 that was capable of handling a user “at least up to 150kg” (330 lbs) with performance of “120 degrees/sec with 40% of max power.” The system can support heights “up to 180-190cm,” (5’11” – 6’3”) and a larger ‘XXL’ version is planned. A more durable ‘Pro’ version is also expected to ship with the standard Yaw VR in August.
Image courtesy Intellisense
The team recently confirmed the development of steering wheel, pedal, and shifter mounts, as the system is compatible with SimTools software and therefore a huge library of existing driving, flight, and space simulators will be supported. For wired peripherals, users can set a limit on the vertical axis to avoid a tangled mess of cables.
“I don’t know yet if Yaw VR will be suitable for hard-core racing games,” wrote Zsolt Szigetlaki, founder and angel investor of Yaw VR, contributing to a recent Reddit discussion. “What I experienced is that the simulator has great dynamics, on half of the full power it could just throw me away easily. In the next couple of weeks we are working on to finalize the driving control and we will upload some car racing videos.”
There are obvious similarities to the Feel Three motion system first seen in 2014, which has yet to launch its Kickstarter campaign, but the Yaw VR has more emphasis on compact dimensions and portability. Perhaps 2018 is the year of the dome-shaped motion sim?
Earlier this year, Australian YouTuber Jack McNee said goodbye to real life and spent more than a day in virtual reality playing Tilt Brush. The record has since been confirmed by Guinness World Records.
