Category: YouTube

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Virtual reality check: looking back at our tech predictions of years past

No one needs to dwell on 2021, so let’s scroll back and see how right – or wrong – we were about the future of tech

After five seasons of the groundbreaking TV drama Lost, the formula had started to get stale – to say nothing of the endlessly convoluted mystery at its heart. And so, for the sixth and final series, the producers added a new twist: as well as the flashbacks and flash-forwards that had come to define the show, it introduced the flash-sideways, showing the viewers an alternate reality where the no one was ever marooned on a deserted island.

Anyway, as we come to the season finale of the Long 2020, with the reintroduction of a global villain viewers thought was defeated and an increasingly convoluted B-plot involving chaos in the top tiers of the British state, I thought I would borrow that concept.

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VR Download: Facebook Cancels Mind Reading, Can Steam Deck Do VR?

We’re going to get into a big week of VR-adjacent news on our live show today as we digest the likeliest implications for visiting simulated worlds.

At noon Pacific we’ll be driving through the news that Valve announced its “open” Linux-based handheld PC, aka Steam Deck, Facebook cancelled a head-mounted brain-reading research effort, and there might be a larger-storage entry model for Oculus Quest 2 coming in the near future. It is sure to be a lively discussion as both Valve and Facebook have expressed considerable interest in more direct brain-computer interfaces than we have today, but the exact approach these companies pursue, how far away it is from actual consumers and how directly these systems will integrate with VR and AR headgear remains unclear.

And while Valve made clear that its Steam Deck handheld PC is technically capable of VR, its performance isn’t tuned for that use case. Still, some people are going to dive right in and start experimenting with VR nonetheless on Steam Deck and its existence might offer a playground for experimentation with things that Facebook’s Oculus Quest simply doesn’t allow.

We’ll be discussing all this and more on today’s show produced live in VR in our custom-built studio using hand tracking, Oculus Avatars, and standalone VR headsets. You can tune in live and we’ll be able to see YouTube comments and incorporate them into our discussion, or subscribe to our VR Download podcast on the platform of your choice and listen to it after the recording session.

Watch at the YouTube link embedded below:

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Disney World’s Decommissioned 20,000 Leagues Ride Is Brought Back To Life In VR

YouTube channel Defunctland has gone out of their way to digitally recreate the now-defunct 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea ride from Disney World as an immersive 360 degree video that can be enjoyed from inside of a VR headset.

The best and easiest way to watch this would be to open up YouTube VR in a Quest and search for 20,000 Leagues VR — watch this one from Defunctland:

Typically, when a ride at an amusement park is decommissioned, it’s typically lost forever. But now diehard supporters and talented programmers are doing their part to digitally archive experiences using VR so that fans around the world can still experience them.

The original 1954 was a live action Disney production and is an iconic sci-fi adventure film about a sea monster attacking a crew in the Pacific Ocean. It won Academy Awards for both Best Art Direction and Best Special Effects as one of the first-ever feature film to be shot in CinemaScope, which was used to shoot widescreen movies. You can watch it now via Disney+ streaming.

The ride itself was featured at Disney World from the 70s until the mid 90s before it was shut down and removed to make way for others. Notably, Disney doesn’t actually refer to its rides as “rides” but instead “attractions” officially as they are meant to represent entire experiences from the moment you set foot in the park, approach the area of the ride, wait in line, etc. — these are all parts of the “experience” and it’s difficult to recapture that even in a VR headset.

We wrote about how immersive the new Star Wars ride is at Disneyland for this very reason.

Efforts like this from Defunctland to archive attractions and help make sure they live on is amazing to see and hopefully they can continue to do this kind of work with other decommissioned rides like Delta Dreamflight or the originally incarnation of Snow White’s Scary Adventures.

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How to stream on a PS5

Stream your PS5 endeavors to Twitch or YouTube to show off your skills and kickstart your streaming empire. Here’s how to get started and set up your console.
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Oculus Quest’s YouTube App Gets Hand Tracking

Google’s YouTube app for Oculus Quest now supports controller-free hand tracking.

That means you can browse & watch YouTube’s huge collection of regular and immersive videos with just the headset, no controllers required.

This was already possible via the Oculus Browser, but the native app provides a cleaner experience with better performance.

YouTube VR Hand Tracking

YouTube VR first launched on Samsung Gear VR, which accessed an earlier version of the Oculus Store, back in early 2018. It got Oculus Go support in late 2018 and was an Oculus Quest launch app in 2019.

The app allows users to view all of YouTube’s standard 2D content, but the main focus is on immersive 360° videos- a big focus for YouTube in recent years.

Because it’s difficult to type in VR, the app provides a voice search function using Google’s best-in-class speech recognition technology, the same used in Google Home smart speakers. Users can view their own subscriptions, history, and playlists including their YouTube Music playlists.

YouTube’s continued support of the Oculus VR platform is in stark contrast to its parent company Google, which shut down its own mobile VR platform recently after ending viewer sales in late 2019. Last week it also announced it was shutting down its online library of user-made 3D assets, Poly.

YouTube VR frequently appears near the top of the Oculus Store’s Most Popular list, likely thanks to having the largest collection of immersive videos of any platform.

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LIVESTREAM: Playing And Ranking Every Zombie Game On Oculus Quest 2

For today’s livestream we’re playing a bunch of PC VR games on the Oculus Quest 2, showing off what’s possible with Virtual Desktop and SideQuest! If you’re curious about how we livestream the way we do then look no further than this handy guide for general tips and this guide specific to our Oculus Quest setup.

This week Facebook released Oculus Quest 2! You can order one right now for yourself and experience what we’ve called “the new king of VR” as long as you don’t mind the integrated Facebook account requirement.

We’re going live with a new Quest 2 gameplay livestream today specifically focused on showing off some of the spooky and intense VR zombie games on offer, which includes The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, Arizona Sunshine, Drop Dead, and Death Horizon.

Our Oculus Quest 2 gameplay livestream is planned to start at about 12:45 PM PT today and will last for around an hour or two, give or take. We’ll be hitting just our YouTube and we’ll be streaming from an Oculus Quest 2 via Chomecast and with colleagues in Discord chat to help with questions.

 

Livestream: Oculus Quest 2 Zombie Games Ranked

Check out the stream here or embedded down below:

You can see lots of our past archived streams over in our YouTube playlist or even all livestreams here on UploadVR and various other gameplay highlights. There’s lots of good stuff there so make sure and subscribe to us on YouTube to stay up-to-date on gameplay videos, video reviews, live talk shows, interviews, and more original content!

And please let us know which games or discussions you want us to livestream next! We have lots of VR games in the queue that we would love to show off more completely. Let’s get ready to go!