Wrench – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

May 18, 2021

Nvidia’s First DLSS Compatible VR Games Include No Man’s Sky

NVIDIA’s DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) technology allows PC gamers who are running GeForce RTX GPU’s to improve the graphics performance of their rigs using AI. Since launch, over 50 videogames have steadily added support but for a technology that would obviously benefit from it, virtual reality (VR) hasn’t been included; until now that is. Today, NVIDIA has confirmed three VR titles are now DLSS compatible.

The most prominent of those videogames is most certainly Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky. Whether you’re playing in VR or non-VR modes NVIDIA DLSS “doubles your VR performance at the Ultra graphics preset” the company claims. Plus, if you happen to be on an Oculus Quest 2, with DLSS on it’ll maintain 90 FPS with a GeForce RTX 3080. Standard desktop gaming should see a performance boost of up to 70% at 4K.

Also on the compatible list is Into the Radius, a survival shooter which launched last year. Set in a post-apocalyptic zone inside Russia with a misty, grim-looking environment, DLSS will add an improvement to the anti-aliasing, so shimmering and stair-stepping on objects and foliage should be reduced for a more immersive experience. Lastly, car mechanic sim Wrench has gotten the AI-powered treatment. Players could see a performance boost of up to 80% on top of the ability to enable ray-traced effects in both VR and desktop modes. Making those engines look super detailed and visually gorgeous.

Hopefully, this is just the start for NVIDIA DLSS support for VR videogames, with more to come in the following months. There are certainly a number of high-end, performance-hungry VR titles VRFocus can think of which would benefit from these sort of improvements.

As for the other non-VR games on the list AMID EVIL, Aron’s Adventure, Everspace 2, Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition, Redout: Space Assault, and Scavengers can now use the feature.

You do, of course, still need the right GPU’s to enable NVIDIA DLSS in the first place. They include the RTX 3060, RTX 3060 Ti; RTX 3070, RTX 3080, and the all-powerful RTX 3090. Getting one, on the other hand, is another matter, with stock continually sold out at most retailers.

Should further VR videogames add DLSS support, VRFocus will let you know.

March 31, 2021May 21, 2021

‘No Man’s Sky’, ‘Into the Radius’ & ‘Wrench’ Among First VR Games to Support DLSS

NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Supersampling (DLSS) is a technology native to RTX cards which, through the power of onboard AI, can intelligently increase the resolution of rendered frames in games. DLSS has been available for VR for a few months now, and we’re just starting to see more games support the performance-boosting tech. NVIDIA says the first VR games on the list are Into the Radius (2020), No Man’s Sky (2016) and Wrench (2018).

Update (May 21st, 2021): NVIDIA has announced that two more VR games have been added to this list since it first announced Into the Radius was the first VR game to include DLSS. In addition to Into the Radius, both No Man’s Sky and Wrench now include DLSS. Wrench is also said to feature ray-tracing. Here’s what NIVIDA says about all three:

No Man’s Sky: When playing No Man’s Sky in VR mode, DLSS doubles your VR performance at the Ultra graphics preset and maintains 90 FPS on an Oculus Quest 2 with a GeForce RTX 3080.

Wrench: Ray-tracing and DLSS comes to VR in today’s update. DLSS boosts performance by up to 80% for this mechanic sim, making it possible to enable ray-traced effects for both its desktop and virtual reality modes

Into The Radius: With NVIDIA DLSS in the Virtual Reality survival shooter, players will discover a noticeable improvement to anti-aliasing, which greatly reduces shimmering and stair-stepping on objects and foliage, further enhancing image quality and immersion.

Original Article (March 31st, 2021): DLSS is a feature available on RTX 20/30-series GPUs, but must be included by individual developers. Now about six months after the release of the DLSS 2.1 update, which included support for VR headsets, developers CM Games took a step as one of the first to include support for the technology.

Granted, Into The Radius isn’t the absolute first VR game (or rather, VR-supported game) to adopt DLSS. Only two months after DLSS 2.1 released with VR support, battle simulator War Thunder (2013) announced it had enabled DLSS as well, however users found mixed results when playing the game in VR.

What does DLSS do exactly? Road to VR’s Ben Lang describes it best in his initial reporting on DLSS for VR:

The goal is to achieve the same resolution and level of detail as a natively rendered frame of the same resolution, and to do the whole thing more efficiently. Doing so means more graphical processing power is available for other things like better lighting, textures, or simply increasing the framerate overall.

For instance, a game with support for DLSS may render its native frame at 1,920 × 1,080 and then use DLSS to up-res the frame to 3,840 × 2,160. In many cases this is faster and preserves a nearly identical level of detail compared to natively rendering the frame at 3,840 × 2,160 in the first place.

If you’re looking for something more visual, War Thunder released a side-by-side comparison of how the game looks with DLSS toggled on and off. This is of course a flatscreen comparison, but the basic concept is the same.

Do you know of any other VR games which have included DLSS? Let us know in the comments below!

The post ‘No Man’s Sky’, ‘Into the Radius’ & ‘Wrench’ Among First VR Games to Support DLSS appeared first on Road to VR.

October 16, 2018

Wrench Gives You A Different Kind Of Car Simulator

Few genres seem to fit VR better than racing simulation, letting you jump into the driver’s seat of just about any car without spending millions of dollars. But Missing Digit’s Wrench wants to offer a different kind of car simulator.

Wrench is all about getting under the hood of fast and furious machines. It’s a complement to the types of Gran Turismo and Project Cars players that want to take things further, not just to swap out parts on the fly but get into the real nitty-gritty of vehicle maintenance and tweaking. If you’ve followed the app’s progress over the past year, you’ll know it features stunningly detailed models of everything from engines to the tiny nuts and bolts that piece them together. Motion controller support, meanwhile, allows for realistic handling of those objects and installing them into cars.

It sounds like an incredibly comprehensive tool, but is there really an audience for that?

“Wrench is definitely something that would appeal to many sim racers,” developer Alec Moody explained to me over email. “There are a few games in the car repair genre that have been quite successful but it’s an under developed genre. Gamers are used to seeing high production value racing games but they haven’t seen a similar level of effort in the repair space.”

Moody explained that he’d had a positive reception to the experience in the wider automobile industry, but was still looking to gain traction with gamers ahead of launch. “I think Wrench looking polished and being something other than a racing game is part of why I have had such a positive reaction in the car world,” he said. “I’m also taking a very different approach than existing car repair games. Mostly that difference can be summed up with quality over quantity.”

But how do you gamify something that many people would class as complicated beyond their capability? Well, Wrench makes a career out of your work that you have to sustain. You’ll need to please first-timer customers to turn them into regular visitors, for example.

“Wrench‘s game flow revolves around servicing complete cars, not building cars from a pile of parts,” Moody said. “The videos I have been pushing show building from a pile of parts because that is an easier narrative to drill down into a 1-2 minute format- From a gameplay perspective its substantially different. The approach I am taking is that the total assembly is quite complicated and we don’t expect new players to jump into the most difficult tasks straight away. New players can nibble around the edges of the assembly and then slowly move deeper into the car as they feel more confident. That progression might look something like this: Oil changes, brake pad changes, larger suspension work, replacing engine accessories/timing belt, and then finally moving into rebuilding engines.

There’s also a methodical pace to the gameplay that lets players learn as they go. Take the video above, which features a 47-minute task reduced down into a minute of footage.

“I also think there is an appeal among a broader audience of gamers,” Moddy continued. “Wrench offers people who don’t have experience working on cars a low risk way to get started and build their confidence. I think for a lot of people, cars are this mysterious complicated machine and trying to do their own repairs seems like an impossible task.”

Above all, though, Wrench looks like it could be the latest in a series of games that are breaking new ground in the concept of ‘edutainment’, pairing genuinely engaging mechanics with learning. “Wrench can be a legitimate learning tool and my hope is that players can build the confidence they need do the real thing, or at the very least it will give people a glimpse into what happens when they drop their car off at the mechanic,” Moody concluded. “I’m also working with trade schools to get Wrench into classrooms and eventually get some aspects of the game accredited.”

Wrench will support Oculus Rift and HTC Vive at launch with experimental support for Windows VR headsets. Standard display support will also be included. Pricing hasn’t yet been announced.

Tagged with: Wrench

The post Wrench Gives You A Different Kind Of Car Simulator appeared first on UploadVR.

September 15, 2018

VR Car Mechanic Simulator Wrench Is Coming To Steam Early Access This Fall

If you have been looking for a virtual reality (VR) title that wil allow you to practice your race car mechanic skills then you are in luck, as developer Missing Digit have you covered. There highly detailed simulation title was first mentioned on VRFocus back in October of last year, where the title was among September’s NVIDIA Edge Program winners. Now, the team are preparing to release the title into Steam Early Access soon.

Wrench

In Wrench, players step into the shoes of a mechanic who needs to keep their Motorsports prep shop running by completing a range of different jobs for their customers. What makes the title stand out from others is its focus on highly detailed models and numerous parts. This means that building an engine for a car is a long task that will return you to refer to the manual the first few times until you become more accustom to the process. Each part of the cars and components have been models meaning you really can take the whole thing apart and put it back together again.

Now the team at Missing Digit have revealed that the title will be entering Steam Early Access this fall with no specific launch date confirmed just yet. The team expect to stay in Early Access for around six to eight months with the initial release be used to help tune the user experience and expand on available content. The final release will include more content such as more sub systems of the car being serviceable along with a bigger library of aftermarket content being made available as well. The team hope to support the title further after it releases out of Early Access as well.

Wrench

Beyond the freedom to take apart and buy a whole car, other features of the title include; building relationships with persistent customers; the need to check logbooks and maintain customer cars around their race schedules; recommending and installing modifications based on the customer’s driving traits; build and modify your own persistent shop cars and growing your shop’s reputation to hire mechanics to help you take on more customers.

Wrench will be releasing into Steam Early Access with support Oculus Rift and HTC Vive at launch in the coming weeks. VRFocus will be sure to keep you up to date on all the latest and until a release date is announced, you can check out the latest trailer for the title below.

September 14, 2018December 20, 2018

[Update]: Wrench: Ab sofort auf Steam für Rift und Vive erhältlich

[Update]:

Wrench ist ab sofort für 16,79 Euro im Early Access auf Steam für Oculus Rift und HTC Vive erhältlich.

[Update vom 9. November 2018]:

Im Oculus Store ist die kostenlose Demo Wrench: Engine Buliding Demo erschienen. Der Early-Access-Release des Vollpreistitels soll in naher Zukunft folgen.

[Originalartikel vom 14. September 2018]:

Entwicklerstudio Missing Digit veröffentlicht seinen Indie-Titel Wrench im Herbst 2018 für Oculus Rift und HTC Vive im Early Access auf Steam. Die VR-Werkstatt-Simulation erlaubt euch, an virtuellen Rennautos herumzuschrauben und euren eigenen Autoladen zu betreiben.

Wrench – VR-Werkstatt-Simulation für Oculus Rift und HTC Vive

Wer auf Autos und VR steht, der sollte sich Wrench einmal genauer ansehen, denn der Indie-VR-Titel erlaubt euch als Mechaniker in eurer eigenen virtuellen Werkstatt an Rennautos herumzuschrauben. Dabei gilt es, sämtliche Dinge zu beachten, die ein erfolgreiches Geschäft ausmachen: professionelles Handwerk bei der Autoreparatur und -modifikation, Kundenbindung und Mitarbeiterorganisation.

Die VR-Simulation setzt auf möglichst realistisches Gameplay beim Auseinanderbauen und Zusammensetzen der Rennwagen. Dabei sorgt der Entwickler für eine detaillierte Darstellung der einzelnen 3D-Modelle, welche er aus seiner eigenen Erfahrung als Autoenthusiast sammeln konnte. Dank der Motion Controller soll präzises Arbeiten und Manipulieren der Autoteile möglich sein.

Wrench-Oculus-Rift-HTC-Vive-Steam

Neben den Arbeiten mit den entsprechenden Werkzeugen müssen die Spieler/innen zudem für einen erfolgreichen Laden sorgen. So müsst ihr mit Kunden interagieren und eine gute Beziehung zu diesen aufbauen, damit sie euch erneut besuchen. Das wirkt sich wiederum auf euren Ruf aus, was neue reparaturbedürftige Autos verschafft.

Wrench-Oculus-Rift-HTC-Vive-Steam

Auch die Beratung über mögliche Modifikationen an den Rennautos gehört zu eurem Aufgabenfeld. Wenn euer Business floriert, könnt ihr zusätzliche Mitarbeiter/innen einstellen und diese delegieren. Zudem ist es möglich, die eigene Werkstatt auszubauen und mit neuen Features aufzuschmücken.

Wrench soll sowohl aus Nicht-VR- wie auch VR-Version erscheinen. Ab Herbst 2018 soll der Indie-Titel für PC, Oculus Rift und HTC Vive auf Steam im Early Access erhältlich sein.

(Quellen: Road to VR | Video: Alec Moody YouTube)

Der Beitrag [Update]: Wrench: Ab sofort auf Steam für Rift und Vive erhältlich zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

October 25, 2017

Mechanics Themed VR Title Wrench Amongst September’s NVIDIA Edge Program Winners

Having been working with partners on both the hardware and software side of virtual reality (VR) NVIDIA is among the most aware of what needs to be done in order to push VR forward. It was NVIDIA last week that stated that GPU’s will need to be forty times more powerful than they are at present in order to generate photo realistic VR. It continues to work on the Holodeck platform they are developing, whilst NVIDIA Inventions, the Research and Development arm of the firm is currently looking into various ways of improving VR displays – as well as those for augmented reality (AR).

One of NVIDIA’s close partners is Epic Games (with whom they are developing an ‘Enterprise-grade’ platform for VR) and their Unreal Engine development software. Back in June the pair announced the Program’, a scheme designed to reward developers, VR and non-VR alike, who showing outstanding degrees of creativity. Providing them with the latest powerful NVIDIA hardware to continue to encourage their growth. With three winners being announced every month up until Summer 2018.

“It’s no secret that the Unreal Engine development community is capable of creating some of the most awe-inspiring real-time content with UE4.” Said Epic’s Chance Ivey at the time. “Time and time again, the team here at Epic Games is amazed by the talent displayed in projects we come across.”

September’s winners have now been announced via the Unreal Engine blog, with one in particular VR related. The project in question is called Wrench. Created by Alex Moody of indie studio Digital Mistake, Wrench is a videogame where you become a mechanic, putting together cars, preparing and modifying them to take part in various motorsports events. As you can see in the protoype trailer below it is highly technical, putting the vehicles together practically from scratch with only a floor full of parts and the relevant starting piece. It’s almost like it could exist as the videogame behind your favourite racing title.

Moody, as well as other winners Michael Banks, Tim Polyak, and Elizabeth Smith for architectural visualisation Armstrong Townhouse, and Sławek Krężel’s Dynamic Grass System which reacts realistically to an array of elements, will each be receiving a GTX 1080 Ti or GTX 1080. VRFocus will be following the further developments with Wrench, so be sure to follow VRFocus for more.