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Mortal Kombat Co-Creator Ed Boon To Be Featured On Oculus Panel About ‘Next Generation’ VR Games
Today VentureBeat announced a series of panels on November 11th at 10AM PT in partnership with Facebook’s Oculus. Next week’s debut panel, ‘The Next Generation of Games’ will include an analyst from NPD, product officer at Survios, and co-creator of Mortal Kombat, Ed Boon, who is VP and Creative Director at NetherRealm Studios.
Each panel is designed specifically to be viewed in VR using the Venues app from Oculus.
‘Next Generation’ VR Games
The fact that Oculus and VentureBeat are hosting a series of panels together isn’t very surprising, but the inclusion of Ed Boon on the debut panel about the next generation of games, presumably VR games in particular, is quite surprising. We had no idea Boon was interested in the VR industry, let alone that he might be working on VR projects.
When you consider Boon’s work is primarily in the fighting game realm as co-creator of Mortal Kombat and Injustice, it’s extremely intriguing to imagine what he might work on in the wheel house of VR games. Perhaps there is a novel and effective way to translate the gameplay concepts and gore of Mortal Kombat over to VR?
Interestingly the Chief Product Officer from Survios will also be on the panel. Survios released Creed: Rise to Glory, which is one of the best VR boxing games around. Perhaps they’ve joined forces in some way to develop a Mortal Kombat VR game?
The collection of panels will consist of individually livestreamed events on select Wednesdays once per month starting this November until mid February, 2021. The other panels include one on mental health for December 9th, one on virtual beings for January 27th, and one on sci-fi tech in games on February 17th.
Mortal Kombat Co-Creator Ed Boon To Be Featured On Oculus Panel About ‘Next Generation’ VR Games
Today VentureBeat announced a series of panels on November 11th at 10AM PT in partnership with Facebook’s Oculus. Next week’s debut panel, ‘The Next Generation of Games’ will include an analyst from NPD, product officer at Survios, and co-creator of Mortal Kombat, Ed Boon, who is VP and Creative Director at NetherRealm Studios.
Each panel is designed specifically to be viewed in VR using the Venues app from Oculus.
‘Next Generation’ VR Games
The fact that Oculus and VentureBeat are hosting a series of panels together isn’t very surprising, but the inclusion of Ed Boon on the debut panel about the next generation of games, presumably VR games in particular, is quite surprising. We had no idea Boon was interested in the VR industry, let alone that he might be working on VR projects.
When you consider Boon’s work is primarily in the fighting game realm as co-creator of Mortal Kombat and Injustice, it’s extremely intriguing to imagine what he might work on in the wheel house of VR games. Perhaps there is a novel and effective way to translate the gameplay concepts and gore of Mortal Kombat over to VR?
Interestingly the Chief Product Officer from Survios will also be on the panel. Survios released Creed: Rise to Glory, which is one of the best VR boxing games around. Perhaps they’ve joined forces in some way to develop a Mortal Kombat VR game?
The collection of panels will consist of individually livestreamed events on select Wednesdays once per month starting this November until mid February, 2021. The other panels include one on mental health for December 9th, one on virtual beings for January 27th, and one on sci-fi tech in games on February 17th.
Batman “Mixed Reality” Demo Shows VR Cloud Gaming Still Has a Long Way to Go
At this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) it seemed every mobile network operator on the planet was hocking the next hotness in data connectivity, the magical alphanumeric ‘5G’. It’s true 5G is slated to make way for plenty of changes in how users consume mobile content thanks to a dramatic increase in bandwidth and lowered latency, but if you’re salivating over the possibilities for what that means for VR gaming in the near future, you may want to step back a bit.
Cloud gaming isn’t a new concept, at least in the world of traditional flatscreen games. Nvidia has GeForce Now, Sony has PlayStation Now, and both Google & Microsoft have their own future cloud gaming projects in the work too. While the infrastructure around gaming-focused edge computing is still very much in its early stages, requiring companies to maintain servers as close to the end-user as humanly possible, the hypothetical benefit to gamers is obvious. Extremely low-powered computers can stream games only previously available on the best of the best rigs.
Mobile network operators like Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, Vodafone and many others are signing on to paint the world with 5G starting this year. An increasing number of users will soon have access to data faster than even at-home fiber optic cables can provide, making the migration from wired to wireless almost a forgone conclusion in the minds of many. To wit, some of these companies publicly showed off VR cloud gaming actually working for the first time—one of the most difficult problems due to the inherent need to keep VR games chugging at or below the 20ms latency threshold, which is considered the bare minimum before users notice anything.
Stepping into Ericsson’s enormous MWC booth, second only to Huawei at over 6,000 mt² (~65,000 ft²), I cautiously ambled over to an abandoned station outfitted with a Vive Pro and Vive Wireless Adapter. The booth attendant claimed the “mixed reality” Batman experience, which was built in partnership by AT&T, Ericsson, Warner Bros. and Intel, was delivering a total latency between 4 – 6 ms through their mock-up 5G network. That’s basically the bare minimum you can expect, so I was excited to pop in and see for myself.
Although the real-time rendered experience didn’t suffer any discernible latency, it was an absolute failure at demonstrating why VR users want cloud gaming in the first place. In short: it was hot garbage.
With video from Vive Pro’s passthrough cameras placed as a backdrop behind my head (that’s totally “mixed reality,” right?), essentially what I experienced was a 180-degree mess. I was treated to extremely low poly graphics that looked about on par with what can be accomplished on a mobile VR headset like Gear VR or Oculus Go. Adding insult to injury, the two-minute experience, which featured Batman stopping the Scarecrow from—no joke—using 5G for evil, was presented to me in 3DOF and not in the full positional tracking Vive Pro was capable of. I was also told there was an interactive bit using a single Vive controller, but the booth attendants removed it because “nobody understood what to do.”
After seeing it in 3DOF and without any level of interactivity, I was pretty skeptical whether it was actually real-time rendered experience or just a 180-degree stereoscopic video. I was assured it all real-time.
I imagine this was done for the singular reason of showing the setup’s lowest possible latency. It’s not an unsubstantial achievement from a technical aspect either, but low latency is as good as useless if this is the sort of toothless VR content AT&T, Intel, Ericsson and Warner Bros. thinks will fit into a real-world use case. Cutting literally every possible corner on content to get latency down to something you can proudly advertise as ostensibly solved borders on willful deception.
There was a company at MWC pushing a more realistic version of VR cloud gaming though, warts and all. Two days earlier I got a chance to visit HTC’s booth where they were showing a similar setup streaming Superhot VR (2017) to a Vive Focus Plus over a mock-up 5G network. Although the implementation was far from perfect, it at least showed real SteamVR content running in the cloud, and delivered in 6DOF like you’d expect.
HTC’s streaming latency was well above 20ms, and it seemed to be heavily relying on time warp to keep things smooth. To me, it further drives home the fact that even in controlled environments with purpose-built networks completely dedicated to the task of remotely rendering VR games, there’s still a long way to go before we get plug-and-play VR cloud gaming.
While Ericsson’s demo failed to accurately sell the core idea behind the technology, it did manage to unwittingly reveal that VR cloud gaming is going to be an extreme balancing act when it comes at some point in the future.
The post Batman “Mixed Reality” Demo Shows VR Cloud Gaming Still Has a Long Way to Go appeared first on Road to VR.
Batman and The Scarecrow Will be at MWC19 Barcelona as a Mixed Reality Experience
While there might be many tech companies getting excited about 5G technology and what it can achieve, for the average person on the street 5G is that exhilarating. Which is why companies like AT&T and Ericsson have been looking at new ways of promoting the technology and what it can do. They’ve teamed up with Intel, Warner Bros. and DC Comics to showcase 5G at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2019 in Barcelona this month using a mixed reality (MR) experience featuring Batman and Super-Villain The Scarecrow.
Visitors to the event will have an opportunity to experience a unique piece of immersive content combining both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies. Using 5G technology the demonstration will see Batman defeating one of his arch rivals The Scarecrow in an action-packed immersive experience using a digital model of their encounter.
On display at the Ericsson and Intel booths during MWC19, the demo will be completely mobile, using the Intel 5G Mobile Trial Platform in conjunction with a fully integrated 5G network powered by Ericsson Radio Base Stations.
The experience builds upon a mixed-reality experience designed by USC’s Mobile & Environmental Media Lab which conducted a proof-of-concept demonstration in December 2018 at the University of Southern California (USC) campus in Los Angeles.
“The low latency of 5G in combination with distributed cloud unlocks a world of possibilities in mixed reality, allowing for a more realistic and immersive entertainment experience,” said Kevin Zvokel, Vice President, Networks, Ericsson North America. “Working in collaboration with other innovative companies on this project, Ericsson is able to take visitors on an exciting journey with DC’s Super Heroes and Super-Villains, showcasing just what the technology means for the future of entertainment.”
“5G will change how we create and engage with entertainment, making it possible to virtually transport into new worlds of imagination and possibility,” said Barbara Roden, Vice President of Network Experiences, AT&T.
MWC19 takes place in Barcelona, Spain, from 25th – 28th February 2019. Should further details regarding the experience be released including a more public rollout, VRFocus will let you know.
AT&T, Ericsson & Intel to Showcase ‘The Power of 5G’ with Batman AR/VR Experience Soon
Mobile World Congress (MWC) is gearing up next week in Barcelona to play host to the latest and greatest in mobile technology, including the presumed Microsoft HoloLens 2. Today AT&T, Ericsson, Intel and Warner Bros. announced that they’ll be showing off a new implementation there of their combined efforts to bring 5G to location-based AR/VR venues using a new Batman experience.
Late last year the companies created a proof-of-concept demo running at the University of Southern California campus in Los Angeles, where students got a chance to experience what they call “a context-aware, mixed-reality experience” designed by USC’s Mobile & Environmental Media Lab.
Now fully kitted with a bonafide Batman experience to its name, the setup is said to let MWC-goers “see how Batman defeats DC Super-Villain The Scarecrow in an action-packed immersive experience using a digital model of their encounter.”
While not much is known at this time—including exactly which AR/VR hardware the companies are using—the experience is said to include a fully integrated 5G network powered by Ericsson Radio Base Stations and enabled by Intel Xeon Scalable processors and the Intel 5G Mobile Trial Platform, allowing expo visitors to “interact in the environment while being mobile.”
With the experience the companies hope to show off “a way forward for lightweight mixed reality devices,” a press statement says.
The collaboration between AT&T, Ericsson, Intel and Warner Bros. (with DC) is slated to demonstrate 5G’s capabilities, such as low latency, high bandwidth, fast scalability, and also how it will provide “a faster network and the flexibility for enabling an enhanced, multi-user mixed-reality experience.”
While it could be more bluster than muster at this point—we’ve seen 5G-powered setups in the past that did little more than deliver high-speed internet to backpack-mounted computers—the fact that Warner Bros. is eyeballing the out-of-home immersive entertainment sector using the technology could be a sign of greater implementations.
“At Warner Bros., we look forward to continuing to explore the power of 5G to deliver high-quality location-based entertainment experiences to our fans,” said Justin Herz, exec. vice president of Warner Bros. Entertainment’s digital product, platform and strategy division. “It is by working closely with partners who are leaders in 5G that we can develop compelling immersive user experiences that will break through to a mass audience and bring our most iconic characters, such as DC’s Batman and The Scarecrow, to life.”
The demonstration will be available in both the Ericsson booth (#2O60 in Hall 2) and Intel booth (#3E31 in Hall 3) in Fira de Barcelona, taking place February 24 – 28 in Barcelona, Spain.
We’ll have feet on the ground in Barcelona next week, so check back soon for breaking news and all things AR/VR.
The post AT&T, Ericsson & Intel to Showcase ‘The Power of 5G’ with Batman AR/VR Experience Soon appeared first on Road to VR.
‘Hitman 2’: A beginner’s guide to mastering the perfect execution
'Hitman 2' introduces new and improved story missions with a scale that can feel overwhelming if you're not prepared. Learn everything you need to know to obtain a high score while remaining unnoticed.
The post ‘Hitman 2’: A beginner’s guide to mastering the perfect execution appeared first on Digital Trends.
Everyone’s favorite Pokémon turns gumshoe in ‘Detective Pikachu’ trailer
The first Detective Pikachu trailer has arrived, and it looks like a video game movie could actually be good? Voiced by Ryan Reynolds, Pikachu is undeniably cute in what is shaping up to be a family-friendly buddy comedy.
The post Everyone’s favorite Pokémon turns gumshoe in ‘Detective Pikachu’ trailer appeared first on Digital Trends.