Category: VR Headset

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Myst Studio To Publish VR Puzzler The Last Clockwinder, New Trailer

Developer Pontoco debuted a new trailer for its upcoming VR puzzle game The Last Clockwinder, alongside announcements of new funding and publishing partnerships.

The trailer, embedded above, isn’t too dissimilar to the one we saw back in December. It shows off the basic premise of the game – create an automated chain of robots to solve puzzles, fueled by gestures and actions that you perform in VR that the robots can then mimic perfectly to create a supply chain.

Pontoco also noted that the concept for The Last Clockwinder didn’t start out as one designed for VR. “We didn’t set out to make a VR game, initially. But we stumbled on this mechanic, and the more we played with it, the more we realised we had to make this game,” said the studio, in a prepared statement. “We wanted to make an automation game, but where you were the machines.”

The studio also announced two new partnerships this week, one of which is with Cyan Ventures. The core Cyan team is best known for its seminal adventure game, Myst, as well as upcoming VR title, Firmament. But the Ventures arm is a publishing team that’s also working on other VR titles like Area Man Lives. The other partnership is with Robot Teddy, a consulting and funding team that worked on Superhot VR and is also helping bring Among Us VR to headsets soon.

The Last Clockwinder is still set for release later this year in the summer for both Quest 2 and PC VR.

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In Death: Unchained Season 5 Brings New Siege Of Heaven Content

A new update coming to In Death: Unchained will begin the game’s fifth season and includes a bunch of new content to the game’s Siege of Heaven game mode.

Back in December 2020, In Death: Unchained launched Siege of Heaven, a wave-based mode that sees you defending against enemies in shorter, more-focused rounds of gameplay.

This is very different to In Death’s main game mode, where you explore levels and fight off enemies in a roguelike format, dying and repeating over and over again to get further than last time.

The new updates to Siege of Heaven add two more maps to the wave-based mode, based off the Desolation world added to the main campaign in October 2021. Not only will these new maps be set in the Desolation environments, but they will feature the same enemies from that area as well.

One of the two new maps features the first 360 degree level, requiring you to defend from waves of enemies spawning from all angles.

In death unchained

As you can see from the trailer and screenshots, these new environments look absolutely fantastic and feature some stunning lighting and effects. This is thanks to the new real-time lighting system and volumetric fog effects that were implemented last October alongside Desolation.

Plus, players will now be able to select their starting special arrow for all Siege of Heaven runs, plus work to unlock 15 new achievements added to the mode.

In death unchained

In Death first released for PC VR but was ported and updated for Quest in 2020, released as In Death: Unchained. Since then, the Quest release has received several exclusive updates, surpassing the PC VR version and offering much more new content. We enjoyed the game at the time of release and gave it a ‘Great’ in our review, but it’s fair to say that since then, a great deal more has been added to Unchained.

The Siege of Heaven: Desolation update is available from today, launching alongside the game’s fifth season on Quest.

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Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife Price Drops To $19.99 On All Platforms

Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife is now at a new lower price, available for just $19.99 almost a year after launch.

Fast Travel Games announced the pricelast this week, indicating that the drop is indeed permanent and not just a sale price. The game launched in April 2021 on Quest and Rift for $29.99, with SteamVR and PSVR following in May and October respectively.

The game also supports cross-buy on Meta/Oculus platforms, so the Rift version will also grant you access to the Quest version and vice versa.

On release, we enjoyed the game and found it delivered on a strong survival horror premise and adopted a slower pace of gameplay:

Hooking us in with an intriguing story, Afterlife’s a strong VR debut for the World of Darkness universe. Offering a faithful adaptation that Wraith: The Oblivion fans will enjoy and a solid introduction to newcomers, it doesn’t rely on cheap jump scares, creating a disturbing atmosphere which plays to VR’s strengths well. Sadly, Afterlife’s slower paced gameplay won’t suit everyone but for survival horror fans, we’d recommend taking a look.

Since launch, the game also added support for bHaptics suit support, so if you want that full level of frightening immersion and you own some bHaptics devices, this should be a great option alongside other games like Phasmophobia. Elsewhere, Fast Travel is planning to launch its latest VR game, Cities: VR, in just a few weeks’ time.

Wraith: The Afterlife – Oblivion is available now for $19.99 on Meta Quest and Oculus Rift with cross-buy.  You can read our full review here.

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Free Relaxation & Meditation App Liminal Available Now For Quest

Liminal is a new relaxation and meditation app on the official Quest store, and it’s available for free.

Liminal started its life as an App Lab release for Quest, but as of today is available for free on main Quest store. According to the description, it has “over 60 experiences to calm, invigorate or leave you in awe” including “hypnotic experiences, guided meditations, beautiful rainswept vistas or ethereal landscapes.”

Liminal VR CEO Damian Moratti and Managing Director Nick Busietta spoke to the Oculus Blog about the app, stating that it was inspired by VR itself after they tried early experiences on headsets in 2014. Since then, they’ve been conceptualizing and developing the app “in one way or another.”

The developers say Liminal was created “ground up to be native to virtual reality— there’s nothing quite like Liminal on the market at the moment … [it] offers a unique assortment of Calming, Energizing, and Awe-Inspiring experiences that are ranked and rated by our community in order of effectiveness and enjoyability.”

There’s also a full-time behavioral neuroscientist working with Liminal, as well as psychologists who have helped consult and worked with the team, to craft the experiences.

More is planned for the future as well — the developers say Liminal is a live platform and that “new and evolving content is always at the forefront of our development pipeline.” They say to expect new content and categories over time, alongside some long-awaited features and a subscription option to access premium features.

Liminal supports Quest 1 and Quest 2 and is available for free on the Oculus Store now.

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New Cities: VR Gameplay Shows Expansive Map On Quest 2

The city builder battle continues, with Cities: VR showcasing new gameplay across an expansive and complex city map on Quest 2.

This latest video from Fast Travel Games gives us some fly-over footage of a “detailed” and expansive city on a map called Northpoint. Indeed, the city does look impressively large and significantly complex.

While we’ve voiced some concerns about the visual quality on display in another recent Cities: VR video, it’s undeniable that the scale and size of the city shown in this new gameplay is impressive, especially running on Quest 2.

Both Jamie and I have been playing around with the other VR city builder, Little Cities, this week (and you can hear more of our thoughts in this week’s episode of The VR Gamescast). While Little Cities is quite satisfying to play and stunning to look at, it also feels a tad limited in terms of design potential and definitely smaller in scale when it comes to city size and management capabilities.

It’s looking increasingly likely that both these games will offer competent, but different, versions of a VR city builder game, then. Based on the footage above, Cities: VR may be the less visually-refined of the two, but definitely looks set to focus more heavily on management and complex city design.

Indeed, this is the sentiment echoed by Fast Travel Games staff on the Reddit thread for the trailer. Particularly in relation to graphics, Fast Travel Games said that optimizing for recording footage natively on Quest comes with massive challenges that have affected the gameplay footage. When you’re not recording, the game apparently “looks great inside the Quest 2 headset.”

You can hear more of our thoughts on Little Cities vs Cities VR on this week’s episode of The VR Gamescast, or read Jamie’s Little Cities preview here.

Cities: VR launches on April 28, exclusively for Quest 2 for $29.99.

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Sweet Surrender Update Adds New Classes, Weapons, Animations & More

The latest update for VR roguelite Sweet Surrender adds a bunch of new content, including weapons, classes, overhauled animations and core system improvements.

Sweet Surrender released towards the end of last year for Quest and PC VR, delivering a single player FPS roguelite with randomized dungeons and enemies. In our review, we found that its “moreish difficulty, enjoyable arcade gameplay and hypnotic visual and audio flair make for a rock-solid roguelite,” while also leaving a lot of room to grow.

Indeed, developer Salmi Games did promise extensive free updates after launch and the latest, Update 5, might be one of the biggest yet.

The update actually launched almost a month ago now, but we missed it at the time. Nonetheless, it’s worth covering, as it adds a whole lot of stuff to the game.

There’s two new classes, the Grenadier and the Lunatic. As you might have guessed, the Grenadier focuses on dealing, upgrading and unlocking explosive damage capabilities. Completing runs with the Lunatic, however, will “pose a significantly greater challenge” and is “a rebel whose ferociousness and unpredictability has led the robots to mark them as a high priority target.”

Two new weapons are also brought into the fray — the sawed-off shotgun and the tier 1 grenade launcher. Plus, weapon animations have been reworked for almost every weapon in the game, with “improved hand positioning, new firing and reload animations.” The guns will look more animated and feel more interactive than ever — you can see for yourself in the trailer embedded above.

Developer Salmi Games also noted that the update includes “cleanups and improvements of [the game’s] core systems”, which includes quality of life fixes, loading time improvements and general efficiency changes. Salmi says these changes will allow the studio to be “even more efficient” with future development and updates.

You can read more details on the update changes here and our full review of Sweet Surrender from last year here. 

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Painting VR Releases April 14 For Meta Quest, PC VR

Painting VR releases soon for Quest and PC VR, coming to the Oculus Store and Steam on April 14.

The app simulates acrylic painting on canvas in VR, letting you use a variety of brushes and colours to authentically recreate the real-life painting experience in VR. It takes a slightly more casual, playful approach to painting in VR compared to the recently-released Vermillion, which focuses predominantly on being a realistic wet-on-wet, oil paint simulator.

We first tried Painting VR almost exactly a year ago when it launched in early access for Quest via App Lab. We were very impressed with what we tried, and soon after developers Oisoi announced a 2022 release on the official Quest store was in the works.

This week, the studio announced that Painting VR will launch on April 14 for Quest and PC VR via Steam, alongside a new trailer showcasing some fun new features.

Oisoi also ran a Kickstarter campaign towards the end of last year, which finished with a successful €28,764 raised towards a €27,000 goal. The goal of the Kickstarter was to help add multiplayer  functionality to the app and port the title over to PC VR. While the latter is obviously now a reality, we’re yet to hear anything more on the former.

Oisoi did state last year that the 2022 full release would include multiplayer, but there’s nothing in the trailer to suggest that’s the case just yet. Multiplayer aside, you can spot some new functionality in the release date trailer above. There’s an amusing drill that you can attach multiple brushes to for spinning paint effects, plus you can catch a glimpse of what looks to be a paint-by-numbers canvas as well. The general warehouse area also looks to be expanded drastically, going from just a single area with one canvas last year to a whole warehouse area with multiple artworks in the latest trailer.

Will you be trying out Painting VR? Let us know in the comments.

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Epic Games Offers 3D Scanning On Smartphones Via App In Limited Beta

Epic Games unveiled its new 3D scanning app for smartphones called RealityScan.

The app uses smartphone cameras and photos to create high-fidelity 3D photogrammetric models of real-world objects for use on digital platforms. You can take a closer look at how it works in Epic’s new promotional video, embedded below.

In the video, the user takes a number of photos of an object — in this instance, the armchair — which then allows the app to create a 3D model that can be used in digital experiences and scaled and positioned as required.

Epic says that the app “walks users through the scanning experience with interactive feedback, AR guidance, and data quality-checks” and can then create a model “almost instantly.” The resulting models can be uploaded to Sketchfab (which Epic acquired mid-last year) and used across many platforms, including VR and AR.

The app was developed by Epic in collaboration with CapturingReality (acquired by Epic last year) and Quixel. It is now in limited beta on iOS — the first 10,000 users will be granted access on a first-come, first-served basis with wider access rolling out later in Spring.

This isn’t the first app to offer a form of 3D scanning on smartphone devices, but it is perhaps the most high-profile crack at the concept yet. 3D object capture will likely play a big role in VR and AR’s future. Headsets like the LiDAR-equipped Varjo XR-3 allows users to scan their environment and present it to others in real-time while  games like Puzzling Places showcase the creative potential of photogrammetric data as well, offering puzzles composed of real-world objects and places, scanned into the game as 3D models.

You can join the limited beta for RealityScan on iOS now, while spots last, via TestFlight. Android support will arrive later this year. You can read more about RealityScan here.

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Orthomed & Osso Bringing VR Surgery Training To Animal Health Market

Orthomed, a company that offers veterinary instrumentation and training, is partnering with Osso VR to bring the startup’s VR surgical training platform to the animal health market.

Osso VR’s platform has seen early traction in some medical fields so far, and this new partnership aims to extend the approach and services to veterinarian training. Orthomed says the technology will give veterinarians “access to VR training to gain muscle memory for increasing performance, knowledge and confidence in various procedures” and allow them to practice procedures in VR to increase positive outcomes for surgery in real life.

The first module will focus cruciate ligament repair surgery for dogs — a common procedure that addresses tears in dogs’ knee muscles and allows them to regain mobility.

UploadVR spoke with Osso VR founder and CEO, Dr. Justin Barad, last week about the company’s path so far and the $66 million raised in a recent round of funding. Osso VR currently employs 160 full-time employees, but expects that number to be around 300 by the end of the year and potentially 600-800 in two years’ time.

“Our mission is to improve outcomes, increase the adoption of higher value technologies and techniques and democratize access to surgical education for everyone everywhere,” said Dr. Barad. “And so my vision for Osso VR, however long that may take, five to 10 years, is that every single procedure that you could possibly do is simulated in this universal simulation platform called Osso. And that it is also a central repository for all proficiency data in healthcare.”

You can check out the full interview with Dr. Barad here and learn more about the Osso VR and Orthomed veterinarian training platform over on the Orthomed site.

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MultiBrush Update Adds Meta Avatars, Passthrough Mode

A new update for open source Tilt Brush alternative MultiBrush adds two key features — Meta avatar integration and passthrough support.

After Google ceased development on Tilt Brush and made it open source in January 2021, the community began to take the app over and produce its own versions with more features than the original.

MultiBrush is one of these community alternatives, offering the same functionality as the base app while also allowing more than one player to work on an artwork at the same time. MultiBrush launched over a year ago, first appearing on App Lab in 2021 before moving over to the official Quest Store in January 2022.

Up until now, other users in MultiBrush were represented by a floating headset. Thanks to a new update that rolled out this week, users can now use their Meta avatar in MultiBrush, meaning you’re able to create art with your friends, represented by their actual avatars.

Interestingly, the avatars will even scale up and down in size to match the scale of the user. As you can see in the screenshot below, the user has zoomed out of the tree artwork and is looking at two other users, who appear smaller to match the scale they’re working at.

This should massively increase immersion and presence in MultiBrush, especially when used in conjunction with the new passthrough integration to use the app in your own space via the Quest’s cameras

The other biggest community-made Tilt Brush alternative, Open Brush, is also working on implementing passthrough support and multiplayer functionality. The former is further along, with developers sharing footage of passthrough mode in February.

MultiBrush is available for $19.99 on Meta Quest. While the original Tilt Brush app by Google is also still available on Quest for $19.99, Open Brush is available on App Lab and offers all the same (and increased) functionality as Google’s original app, entirely for free.

Once Open Brush adds multiplayer and passthrough, MultiBrush may have to add more features to justify its price tag. The developers do mention that they have “exciting plans on the horizon”, so we’ll be keeping an eye on both apps over the next few months.

You can read more about the latest MultiBrush update here.