Category: windows vr

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Sword Art Online-Style Open World VR MMO Nostos Due To Release In Q4 2019

Today, at ChinaJoy 2019, HTC revealed Nostos is releasing in Q4 of 2019 and is confirmed for Viveport. The VR MMO is also coming to Steam.

Now to be clear, it’s coming to Steam as well with support for all major PC VR headsets including Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows MR devices, and the Valve Index and as far as we can tell there is not going to be an exclusivity period with Viveport, but that could change by the time it comes out. Either way, it is coming to Steam too — the page has been live for months, it just doesn’t have a date there at the moment.

We got the news about Nostos coming to Viveport in Q4 of 2019 by way of a press release directly from HTC, which does imply a partnership of some kind. The press release states:

“Nostos, an open-world role-playing game (RPG) from the Chinese tech giant, NetEase, is going to launch on VIVEPORT in Q4 2019. It will have a massive world that allows multiple players to explore, fight, and build in an abundance of biomes, from open grasslands to mysterious coral seas.”

Nostos did have an Open Alpha period a few months ago, but other than that NetEase has been relatively tight-lopped about the upcoming open-world VR MMORPG. Additionally, NetEase continues to describe it as an “open-world online RPG” rather than an MMORPG, but from what we can tell all of the typical RPG features are included — albeit they may be on a smaller scale.

As of now OrbusVR is still the only real VR MMO on the market, other than perhaps social VR titles such as Rec Room, VRChat, and High Fidelity. But those are more focused on social hubs than delivering mass-scale gaming experiences. Zenith is a new one we’ve learned about recently, which will feature Beat Saber style slashing combat. No Man’s Sky VR, which is coming on August 14th, could arguably qualify as an MMO as well.

Let us know if you plan on jumping into Nostos when it releases later this year!

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No Man’s Sky VR Release Date Confirmed For This August

No Man’s Sky: Beyond, which includes complete VR support for the entire game, finally has a confirmed release date for this August 14th.

That’s less than two weeks away in case you didn’t realize. In less than two weeks you can plop on a VR headset and take off for space to explore the stars, visit far-away galaxies, or explore entire planets from top to bottom. And we can tell that a lot of you are excited as well.

Sky’s The Limit

Earlier this year Hello Games announced No Man’s Sky: Beyond, a new overhaul of the game that would include revamped online features and VR support. A third and final component of the release is still under wraps for now. We should know a bit more about No Man’s Sky VR before the date, hopefully, to further whet appetites.

The No Man’s Sky VR release date news is exciting, but not too surprising. Just yesterday we learned about the game getting rated by the ESRB and Sean Murray made comments about the massive scope of the game not far before that.

Since No Man’s Sky is a procedurally generated game world that means that it’s functionally limitless. The game holds billions of planets in its digital universe, all ready to be mapped and explored. Players can even terraform planets and build structures. Or you can focus on the game’s core objective, gradually making your way to the center of the universe. Either that or just, y’know, do whatever you want. Hello Games has even gone the extra mile and implemented hand controllers like PlayStation Move. The Beyond update will be free to all existing owners.

No Man’s Sky VR is coming to PSVR and PC VR headsets on August 14th. Let us know if you plan on playing down in the comments below! Once it launches, we plan on founding Planet Upload somewhere with a nice green sky.

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No Man’s Sky: Beyond Gets ESRB Rating, Summer Release Imminent

No Man’s Sky: Beyond, which includes the No Man’s Sky VR update, is now rated by the ESRB which implies an imminent release date.

Not long ago No Man’s Sky: Beyond was rated by the Australian ratings board and now the ESRB, spotted by Wario64 on Twitter, the North American game ratings board, has weighed in as well. Unsurprisingly, just like every other version of the game, it’s rated T for Teen.

We still don’t have a specific release date for No Man’s Sky VR announced, but they did say it would be coming this summer. The original game released three years ago on August 9th, but next week seems a bit too soon without an announcement yet. Hopefully it won’t be much longer, though — we loved the brief time we spent hands-on with it on PSVR and HTC Vive Pro.

Sean Murray from Hello Games has spoken very highly of his game’s VR support, stating that he and the rest of the team have wanted to include VR from the very beginning. Unlike Skyrim VR, Fallout 4 VR, Borderland 2 VR, and other non-VR games that get ported, No Man’s Sky VR is actually just an update to the entire base game. No new purchases required if you own it already and the multiplayer functionality works between both VR and non-VR players. That will immediately make it one of the most widely owned VR games once the Beyond update (all of which is also free) finally launches.

No Man’s Sky VR will support PSVR and PC VR headsets. In our discussion topic last week we asked what you intend to do first when finally playing No Man’s Sky VR with its release quickly approaching. Let us know here as well down in the comments below!

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Sean Murray: No Man’s Sky VR Is ‘The Perfect Kind Of Sci-Fi Dream’

No Man’s Sky VR is fast approaching this summer on PSVR and PC VR headsets. In anticipation of the big Beyond update, Sean Murray, co-founder of Hello Games, spoke to the Develop: Brighton team about the release.

We still don’t have an exact release date yet for the Beyond update, which revamps the game’s online functionality and adds full VR support, but it has been rated in Australia which hints that a date announcement could be imminent.

“The thing we’re working on at the moment is bringing the game to virtual reality, it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” says Murray. “It’s very uniquely sci-fi, I think — the idea of you’ve already got this game that’s procedurally generated with a whole universe you can explore and then the idea that you’re going to put on a headset and walk around in virtual reality…if eight year old me could see that I was working on that I think that he’d just have a heart attack. It’s nuts. It’s the perfect kind of sci-fi dream.”

I got a chance to try out the upcoming VR support for No Man’s Sky on both an HTC Vive Pro and PSVR headset and am impatiently waiting for it to release. The sheer magnitude of the game world, multitude of possibilities, and scale of it all is breathtaking. Describing it as a “perfect kind of sci-fi dream” doesn’t feel very hyperbolic if you’re familiar with the game’s design. Playing it in VR is pretty special.

Earlier this week we asked what you plan on doing first in No Man’s Sky VR once it comes to VR and there have been a wide range of enticing responses.

“It’s also been hugely challenging for us to take this big, broad game and make it so that people can explore it with a headset and virtual controllers and things like that,” says Murray. “But I’m excited for it to come out and it’s been very creatively driven. It’s something that we have wanted to work on for a long time and it’s almost been like our dessert. Like our pudding. We’ve worked on a lot of other features and it’s been like, ‘When we’re done with all of that, then we can have time to have our nice little treat at the end.'”

Last week Murray was quoted as saying that over one million people that currently own No Man’s Sky also own a VR headset, echoing a previous comment from GDC earlier this year. I can imagine that once the VR support goes live that number will only increase even further.

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Community Download: What Will You Do First In No Man’s Sky VR?

Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. Today we’re talking about No Man’s Sky VR.

We’re smack dab in the middle of summer which means that the big Beyond update for No Man’s Sky should be dropping very soon. The Beyond update is of course the big overhaul that will include a revamp of its online offerings as well as full VR support for the native game on both PSVR and PC VR headsets.

Yes, that means you do not need to buy a separate VR version of the game (looking at you Skyrim VR, Fallout 4 VR, Borderlands 2 VR, etc) and you will be able to play online with non-VR players across the same universe and same save files. In fact, according to Sean Murray, over one million existing No Man’s Sky players have VR headsets ready to go.

We’ve gone hands-on with the VR update on both a Vive Pro and PSVR (you can read about those impressions here) as well as briefly on a Valve Index. Needless to say we’re extremely excited to play this game in VR and we’ve thought it fit the format perfectly ever since its original launch back in 2016.

With such an anticipated new release fast approaching (although we still don’t have a date other than Summer 2019) we need to know: What do you plan on doing first in No Man’s Sky VR once it launches? Are you eager to fly around exploring the stars or do you want to complete the journey to the center of the universe? Are you excited to meet up with friends in VR or do you just want to build bases across planet surfaces?

Let us know what you’re most excited to do down in the comments below!

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The Shining-Inspired VR Horror Game Rise Of Insanity Comes To PSVR

Rise of Insanity is a first-person psychological horror game that originally released on PC last year in 2018 with SteamVR support that’s now out on PSVR.

It originally appeared in Early Access a year prior, but has been in a fully released state for quite some time. Today, Sony announced and released the horror game on PS4 with optional PSVR support. That’s right — it’s out already.

Rise of Insanity gets right to the point in its title. In its store description the developers at Red Limb Studios cite The Shining, The Exorcist, and Silent Hill as heavy influences, ensuring that this will appeal to fans of suspense and mystery.

The plot is explained as follows:

Set in America in the 1970s, the story centers around Dr. Stephen Dowell, a renowned psychologist faced with a difficult patient who shows distinct yet contradictory symptoms of different mental disorders. The life of the doctor himself is also shrouded in mystery – you must step into his shoes to find out the truth. 

What terrible fate has befallen your wife and child? Is your new patient, on whom you are testing your experimental treatment methods, somewhat responsible for what happened? Who is to blame? Don’t lose your nerve and overcome your fear.

rise of insanity creepy clown thing

Rise of Insanity is a Dualshock 4 only PSVR game, which means no PS Move support at all, which is similar to its PC release where only gamepad or mouse and keyboard support are listed. It’s only about two hours long and involves a heavy amount of walking and exploration — but only costs $12.99 on PS4 or $9.99 on PC.

Let us know what you think down in the comments below!

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Sparc Was Revived By CCP Games Today With Big New Update

Seemingly out of nowhere CCP Games dropped a major update to Sparc with new game modes and spectating options.

Sparc is one of those VR games that just felt special when you played it. The smoothness of the visuals, excellent animations, fantastic Tron-inspired mechanics and stylings, and everything else just coalesced into a supremely polished package. But unfortunately it suffered from a lack of features and a tiny VR playerbase when it first launched. Despite it all, dedicated fans have kept it on life support even after CCP Games reigned in their focus on VR development nearly two years ago.

Today, that might start to change again. Out of nowhere Sparc’s Championship Update is bringing a slew of new features to a presumed dead game, including:

  • New Online Modes: Quick Play, Custom Games, and Ranked matches,
  • Ranked Matches are wave-based to keep games flowing using a player’s recent records to pit them against a worthy opponent and is split into 5 tiers. Players remain unranked until completing 10 Ranked games,
  • Ranked Leaderboard,
  • New Spectating Tools with different camera locations or even allowing free-fly view around the arena. Players can now see how many spectators they have and voice communication for spectators has been disabled.

To this day Sparc is still one of my go-to VR games when I have friends over that aren’t accustomed to the medium. Putting someone in my Rift and then playing against them on a PSVR is a great way to show the potential of VR gaming in a way that’s easy to understand and get into.

There’s no word at this time, but a Quest version would be superb. It would fit the wireless standalone format superbly well.

Let us know what you think of this sudden revival down in the comments below! You can buy Sparc on Oculus Home for Rift, on Steam for all PC VR headsets, or on PSN for PSVR. There is full cross-play between all devices.

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Beat Saber CEO Steps Down To Focus Exclusively On The Game’s Music

Today Beat Games announced that its CEO, Jaroslav Beck, is stepping down from the role and is being replaced by the game’s original co-creator, Vladmir Hrincar, as the new CEO in charge of Beat Saber.

Beck is not leaving the company, however, but will instead use this opportunity to refocus on creating music for the game and pursuing “future opportunities” as his core passion. The news comes as a bit of a surprise, but it makes sense. Beck was the creator of the original game’s soundtrack and is a key force behind what helped make Beat Saber the viral sensation that it became. Having CEO responsibilities very likely cut into his music creation time significantly.

Originally, Beat Saber was crafted by Hrincar and his partner at Hyperbolic Magnetism, Jan Ilavsky. You can read more about the game’s humble origins here in our interview with Beck.

Beat Saber recently existed Early Access on PC, just got a big new Imagine Dragons music pack, previously received a Monstercat music pack, K/DA Popstars from League of Legends, and more. They’re even working on 360 degree levels. We also just recently got a tease of its next upcoming song which looks like it could be its hardest yet.

A big part of what makes Beat Saber popular though is its modability and customization — you can read about adding songs to the game here.

Let us know what you think of the news and if you think the game’s in good hands as it heads into the future down in the comments below!

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Hands-On: Espire.1 Runs Impressively Well On Oculus Quest

Espire.1 was our E3 2019 Best of Show VR Game award for good reason: it’s incredibly fun and surprisingly ambitious. I’ve played the games on multiple past occasions, including earlier this year at GDC 2019 and my demo at E3 2019 last month was an expanded version of that.

If you’ve ever played a stealth game like Metal Gear Solid or Splinter Cell before then you’ll get the basic concept behind Espire.1, but this time it’s delivered through the immersive means of virtual reality.

In the clip above you can get a good look at the core gameplay in Espire.1 for the most part. You’ll sneak around, avoid enemy detection, climb across metal surfaces, and generally try your best to be stealthy. You can hit a button on the side of your head (you play as a robot) to detect enemies and even use cameras on your wrists to peak around corners.

If you’re anything like me though, then eventually that all goes wrong and you’ve got to finish the level guns blazing. Luckily, the guns blaze very well. I only got to see a light submachine gun, basic pistol, and a handful of others but everything looked and sounded great.

Now my E3 2019 demo was actually an extra special treat because I got to not only play two levels on Rift S, but then immediately played one of those levels again on the Oculus Quest for a direct comparison. Other than the extremely obvious graphical differences it held up surprisingly well.

Most obviously the character models were far lower quality. Enemy models seemed lower resolution, but the animation quality was still intact. The result was that they seemed to stick out from the environment a bit more than I was expecting from the quality downgrade. Obviously this will probably change upon release because that demo was an older build.

There were some other noticeable trade-offs visually as well. Guns seemed to be missing some animations when shooting and overall you could just tell textures were lower resolution. Since this was all expected it wasn’t that off-putting and if the Quest version had been the only version I’d played I don’t think it would have bothered me much. The graphical disparity is similar to the differences between Robo Recall on Rift vs Robo Recall on Quest.

Gameplay was, as far as I could tell, identical between the two versions of the game. Tracking was never an issue on the Quest when compared to the Rift S. I could reach up to the side of my head to search for enemies just fine, aiming down the sights of a gun worked great, and reaching up to climb surfaces worked as intended as well. Considering the hardware differences, feature parity from a gameplay perspective is quite impressive.

Espire.1 is slated to release for all major VR platforms (including Quest, PSVR, and SteamVR) later this summer in August. Let us know what you think of this one down in the comments below! For more details make sure and check out the official website as well.

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Sentenced Is A Medieval VR Execution Game About Guilt

Sentenced is one of those games that hooks you the moment you hear its premise. You play as an executioner in medieval times, carrying out bloody beheadings at the whim of authoritarian Lords. But rather than simple shock factor or melee combat, Sentenced is focused on exploring a very specific theme: guilt.

Take a look at the first trailer below, which sets the tone for this narrative-driven title. Made by indie developer Samuel Gordon, Sentenced places you in the fictional European city of Ulrichshafen. In your role you’ll face several scenarios that will test your loyalty to authority and weigh in on your personal conscience.

“I’m a descendant of German-Jewish WW2 refugees,” Gordon explained in a prepared statement. “Listening to my Grandfather’s stories growing up drove me to try and understand how a social system can create conditions that enable atrocities such as those committed by the Nazis to take place. I believe that understanding the behaviour of individuals within hierarchical power structures is essential to ensure that such tragedies do not repeat themselves.”

The aim, then, is to bestow a heavy sense of guilt on player actions. Sentenced aims to do this with the help of VR, having you look victims in the eye seconds before you physically swing your sword. As for how much choice they have in the matter, Gordon says to expect something similar to the likes of Papers Please.

“In regards to player agency, the game is set up in a similar manner to ‘Papers Please’, where the assumption is you’ve been hired to do a job, and if you don’t do it you’ll be fired,” Gordon told UploadVR. “However, there are plenty of opportunities and different ways for the player to refuse to co-operate, and consequences for those actions.”

Overall it sounds hugely promising. Sentenced is due for release on PC VR headsets sometime next year. You can wishlist it now on Steam. We’ll be following it closely.

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