London, UK-based Realities Centre has built itself up since its launch late last year as one of the leading innovation spaces for virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) technologies. Now the centre has announced a new partnership with Huckletree, a coworking space for tech businesses, to provide services relevant to immersive tech at the company’s new digital lifestyle workspace, Huckletree West.
The partnership, commencing 7th September 2017, will begin with an opening event that evening, from 6:30pm – 9:00pm, at Huckletree West, 191 Wood Ln, White City, London W12 7FP. Huckletree West and Realities Centre invites those working in media and creative industries to attend or showcase at an evening of workshops and networking, featuring the debut of the new VR studio. The evening event will also allow the two companies an opportunity to showcase their upcoming programme of activities.
Thomas Gere, CEO of Realities Centre, said in statement: “We are very excited to work with Huckletree West to focus on supporting individuals and companies who innovate using Augmented and Virtual Reality in the creative and media industry. The UK is a world class creative centre and we are fully committed to help talented people engage and harness immersive technologies.”
Gabriela Hersham, co-founder of Huckletree, said: “We’re delighted to be partnering with Realities Centre to showcase the latest innovations in VR and AR at Huckletree West. Realities Centre’s expertise will be essential in helping our members grow their businesses and expand their knowledge.”
For further info head to the Huckletree website. As ever, keep reading VRFocusfor the latest VR news from around the world.
Fantastic Contraption’s developers are part of an exclusive group of VR creators who have successfully generated in excess of $1 million.
The creative puzzler is made by Canada-based game-making couple Sarah and Colin Northway teaming with Radial Games’ Andy Moore, Kimberly Voll and Lindsay Jorgensen with sound by Gord McGladdery.
It released with the launch of the HTC Vive in early 2016 and Facebook’s Oculus Touch controllers for Rift late in the year. This summer, it launched on Sony’s PlayStation VR. The game was bundled with Vive headsets for a period when it launched but generally sells individually for $30 on Rift and Vive and $20 on PSVR. According to the team, between the bundling deal the creators made and individual sales (of which platform owners like Sony, Facebook and Valve usually take nearly a third) the title has generated more than $1 million.
I appreciate the team sharing this information exclusively with me. Though they declined to be more specific, the figure paired with the size of the team establishes the title as one of VR development’s success stories. It isn’t possible with the available information to establish just how big a success it is, but the creators are comfortable saying they’ve made enough to fund further efforts and continue exploring a new medium. Other teams in this group include Survios (which is funded by investors to the tune of $50 million) and Owlchemy Labs (acquired by Google). In the case of Fantastic Contraption, not only does the game itself push forward interaction design and mixed reality capture, its creators have bootstrapped their creativity enough to keep going into future projects as independent creators.
I met with Moore and the Northways for a conversation recently in Colin Northway’s still-under-construction virtual art gallery. Sarah Northway is working on her own VR game she’s not ready to talk about yet. Moore’s studio developed a series of VR experiments, one of which he hopes can get funded by a publisher into a full game. Colin Northway’s art gallery is still very early too, but he’s already using cutting edge tools like Valve’s Steam Audio to bring life to the space for people gathering to check out creations from a wide range of artists. The sound technology combined with the movements of our hands and heads made our conversation, even between avatars represented as the simplest of shapes floating in space, feel remarkably like the real thing.
During a transitional time for the mixed reality industry when startups like Envelop, AltspaceVR, CastAR and Vrideo close down, I talked to them for more than an hour in VR trying to break down how they succeeded with Fantastic Contraption. Here is what I came away with from our talk:
Moment Of Inspiration
Classic Flash-based Fantastic Contraption.
Many VR creators have a very clear memory of the time they became convinced the technology was ready for mass market appeal. Rift’s first development kit wasn’t compelling enough to Fantastic Contraption’s creators.
The creators hail from the Vancouver area, just a three or four hour drive across the border from Seattle-based Valve, and when they took a trip down to Valve’s offices in the summer of 2015 they got a look at an early HTC Vive with controllers that brought hands into VR. They recall early demos of Owlchemy’s Job Simulator, Google’s Tilt Brush and Valve’s early robot demo, each of which made excellent use of those hand controls.
It was a moment that changed their lives. Colin Northway sat on a couch after his demo, his mind exploding with the creative possibilities ahead.
“For me it was like ‘I’m not that into VR’ and then I was like ‘alright this is my life now’,” he said.
It didn’t take them long to decide their legacy project, a 2D puzzle game called Fantastic Contraption that relied on creative thinking to build machines, could be adapted to VR.
“Isn’t this the best medium for Contraption?” Moore recalls thinking.
Embracing New Tools
While inspired, the creators of Fantastic Contraption weren’t recipients of the very first developer kits Valve sent out secretly to a handful of developers like Owlchemy. But the creators were so inspired after their demo they started building Fantastic Contraption without any VR headset at all.
“We decided it would work and it would be amazing,” Moore recalls.
Some weeks later they held a game jam (an event where teams rapidly create games) and partnered with Valve which brought some of these early Vive kits for groups to test projects they built. They showed the demo to someone at Valve and, after the event was over, were told they could keep the headsets.
“There was some good stuff going on there,” Moore said of the event. “But we were using it as a sneaky way to show off the game to Valve.”
“We spent the jam on VR integration basically,” Colin Northway said.
Learning New Skills
During this process of development the Northways learned Unity, a game creation toolset that alongside competitor Unreal Engine has been early to support VR. In 2007, the original Fantastic Contraption was built for traditional screens with Adobe’s Flash tools. That’s about the time Flash started its decline partially because Apple’s Steve Jobs refused to allow the technology on iPhone and iPad.
So while the Northways became experts in Flash to the extent that the original Fantastic Contraption made Colin Northway enough money that he could quit his day job — “Now I just have a hobby that pays better than my jobs ever did” — that toolset wasn’t built for VR and they had to learn something new.
“I had a lot of trouble transitioning to Unity and VR, and 3D art I’d avoided for ages,” Sarah Northway said. “It’s scary trying new stuff but you really need to in this industry, because things keep changing and moving forward so fast.”
“There’s so much to learn in VR,” added Colin Northway. “If you working in VR you can’t help but be pushing boundaries all the time and learning a huge amount.”
Accepting The Possibility Of Failure
The team went into the project with a four month plan to deliver the VR game by the end of 2015, which is when HTC originally said it would start shipping headsets in volume. At the start, Sarah Northway said, they became comfortable with the idea the project could make no money and it could be a total failure. They had enough coming in from previous projects to make a four-month timeline work.
“We’ll spend four months on it, we’ll finish it, even if nothing happens of it we’ll know something about VR, we’ll be set up to do our next thing, it’ll be fun,” she said. “So we didn’t come into it thinking we’re going to put all our eggs in this basket.”
The scope of the project grew as several things happened. The Vive’s consumer launch was set in stone later than expected, for April 2016. In addition, people reacted positively to early versions of their project and they secured a bundle deal ensuring some income from the game.
“The bundle deal paid for development,” Colin Northway said.
“As soon as we had the bundle deal we knew everything was gonna be just fine,’ Sarah Northway said. “Being agile in your business plan was pretty key.”
“The story would have gone very differently if we never got the bundle deal or there weren’t so many sales at launch,” Moore said. “We took a risk the whole team was comfortable with — which was four month dev and before that four months was up we secured larger deals.”
Embracing Weird and Favoring Good Design
The extra development time allowed the team to explore a more fully realized version of the game including the ability to push VR design ideas much further. For example, Fantastic Contraption includes a helmet which sits on the ground. When you pick up and place the helmet on your head it transports you to another world with tables to save your creation or access those made by other people. It is the VR equivalent of the kind of flat screen menu to save your work that you’d access in a traditional game. Their extra runway freed them to explore these ideas.
They also developed a miniaturized version of the game that made it easy for people to play it in a seated or forward-facing position. This in turn allowed the game to more easily make the jump to additional platforms like Rift and PlayStation VR that were tuned better for those setups.
So with all these different pieces falling into place just right to expand both the scope and reach of the game, was it luck or smart decision-making that allowed Fantastic Contraption to find success?
“It is definitely both,” Colin Northway said. “A big lesson to learn from indie development is that you have this one advantage and that is that you can do super weird stuff. Big companies can’t do weird stuff because they are going to be risk averse.”
On the other hand, independent developers might be gambling their own future rather than a company’s. Moore and the Northways warned against people mortgaging their house or running up credit cards in order pursue an idea in VR. They all had previous projects that gave them the runway to start the VR version of Fantastic Contraption in a game jam. And before that they made the transition to indie developer by working on ideas on weekends and evenings. That’s why they were comfortable with the concept of failing.
For the Northways and Radial Games, however, moving into 2018 they are poised for even greater success when headsets ship in larger numbers.
“I personally kind of feel like we’re in a time where you should be doing a lot of building of your own skills, a lot of your own experimenting so that in the bright commercial future, when it comes, you’re set up to take advantage of it,” Colin Northway said.
Die Analysten von ABI Research gehen von einem starken Wachstum aus: Inhalte für Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality sowie 360-Grad Videos sollen bis zum Jahr 2022 ganze 60 Milliarden Dollar Umsatz weltweit in die Content-Anbieter-Kassen spülen. In den nächsten fünf Jahren soll die Nutzerbasis auf 256 Millionen anwachsen. Kurzfristig sollen vor allem All-in-One-Headsets die Verbreitung von VR im nächsten Jahr befeuern. Aktuell sehen die Analysten aber noch Schwierigkeiten.
ABI Research sieht starkes Wachstum bei immersiven Inhalten
Das Unternehmen mit Standorten in Amerika, Europa und Asien hat sich auf die Untersuchung technischer Entwicklungen spezialisiert und will Firmen beraten, die Zukunft etwas besser einschätzen zu können. In einem neuen Report geht ABI Research davon aus, dass der Umsatz mit immersiven Inhalten in Zukunft kräftig steigt und in fünf Jahren 60 Milliarden Dollar generiert. Die Zahl an Konsumenten steigert sich demnach auf 256 Millionen.
Dabei sieht der Manager von ABI Reserach Sam Rosen eine Verschmelzung von Inhalten im Hollywood-Stil und Video-Spielen. Als Beispiele nennt er holografische Modelle von Schauspielern, die man mit interaktivem Storytelling, Sprachsynthese und anderen Elementen verbinden könnte. Das öffne die Türen, um mit Game-Technologien immersive Inhalte einem breiten Publikum zur Verfügung zu stellen.
Vor allem durch die im nächsten Jahr erscheinenden All-in-One-VR-Headsets sieht Rosen die Möglichkeit, mehr Anwender für die virtuelle Realität zu erreichen. Im Augenblick sieht der Analyst noch Probleme. Zum Beispiel den hohen Preis, um in High-End-VR einzusteigen. Aber auch der komplexe Workflow bei der Produktion von beispielsweise 360-Grad-Videos sei derzeit problematisch. Die jetzige Situation erfordere neue Expertisen und Hardware, spreche aber nur eine kleine Geräte-Basis an. Das mache es kurzfristig schwierig, schwarze Zahlen zu schreiben. Der Analyst sieht in der Weiterentwicklung des Marktes vor allem zwei Gruppen gefordert: Kleinere Firmen mit überschaubarem Budget müssten Erfahrungen testen, auf der anderen Seite sollen große Firmen in umfangreiche Projekte sowie innovative Entwicklungen intern und extern investieren.
One of the best social virtual reality (VR) videogames on the market is Steel Crate Games’ Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. Originally released for Samsung Gear VR, the studio then brought it to Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR, adding motion controller support along the way. Steel Crate Games has continued to improve the Gear VR version releasing a new update this week for the headsets 3DoF controller.
Using the new Gear VR controller which launched a few months ago, players can rotate the bomb by swiping the touchpad and interact by pointing at bomb modules. The update also introduces shared leaderboards for both Gear VR and Oculus Rift versions, adding a competitive element to the title.
Plus seven new music tracks have been included, adding some heart-pounding intensity to bomb defusal as well as relief during the brief downtime between missions.
On top of all that, Steel Crate Games has add some further tweaks:
Improves Wire Sequence usability
Fixes audio distortion when using Bluetooth speakers/headphones
Allows game to be installed to external storage
Adds slight bounce feedback when trying to rotate the bomb too far
Improves cursor appearance
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is unique among VR experiences in the way that it introduced a local social element to its gameplay. It revolves around one player in VR who’s got a bomb to diffuse, made up of several panels, with wires, dials, timers, codes, symbols and more to figure out. There’s just one problem, how to actually do it. To do this, players in the real world have a manual explaining how each particular puzzle works, and it’s only through cooperation and teamwork that success can be achieved.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, reporting back with further updates.
Game Troopers, the publisher behind virtual reality (VR) first-person shooter (FPS), Overkill VR, has announced that the title will now support the PPGun controller by Shenzhen Simeng Technology Co., Ltd.
Helping to provide a greater level of immersion for VR players, the PPGun integrates the same buttons that a HTC Vive controller has. So that players can reload, shoot, use support items and change the weapon quickly and efficiently n the heat of combat.
The update for Overkill VR to support PPGun also includes
Mixed reality recording works with PPGun
Pressing space will change the camera tracker for recording in Mixed Reality.
Machine gun levels redesigned for PPGun version, now players are able to aim and shoot with PPGun and the machine gun will follow all their moves.
Position of the guns readapted to improve the immersion and aim through the gunsight.
New tutorial for PPGun players.
So while this could add to the overall experience there’s one small cravat, and that’s availability. The PPGun website doesn’t have a price, simply referring customers to its contact details. However PPGun did run an IndieGoGo, looking to raise $20,000 USD which was unsuccessful. Here the rifle retailed for $338 including the Vive Tracker.
As VRFocus learns more about PPGun and where to buy it, we’ll let you know.
We hope you like cats, puns, and butts, because Cat Sorter VR is full of all three. Launching on Steam for the HTC Vive on August 29th, the game seems to be a cat quality assurance simulator. The game’s trailer depicts a queue of felines with mixed-up body parts waiting for their turn under the ‘cat scanner.’ As the scanner’s operator, the player swaps out various body parts to help the feline meet some minimum standard before being sent out into the world. Hopeless cats get binned while ‘purrfect’ cats are sent further on into the bowels of the factory.
$9.99 at launch and $12.99 after that, Cat Sorter VR sports a beefy GPU requirement, asking for a card equivalent to or better than NVIDIA’s GTX 980ti.
You probably figured this one out already but, just to make it clear, the original PlayStation VR (PSVR) demo for Final Fantasy XV that was revealed at E3 2016 won’t be released.
Let me make that clear; I don’t mean Monster of the Deep: Final Fantasy XV, which was revealed at E3 2017 in June. Last year on Sony’s stage Square Enix revealed what it called Final Fantasy 15: Episode Prompto, a VR tie-in experience in which you controlled one of the game’s cast of characters and used guns to take down some of the game’s massive monsters. The reception from the E3 show floor was lukewarm, but we assumed that the experience would eventually be released for PSVR owners to try out.
Speaking at The PlayStation Experience South East Asia, though, Lead Designer of Final Fantasy 15, Wan Hazmer, confirmed that this wouldn’t be the case. “The Prompto Shooting game was actually a showcase back then,” he said. “It was just to showcase the power of the VR – but we have Monster of the Deep!”
Truth be told you’re probably not missing out on much; the demo looked somewhat primitive compared to other VR shooters, and Monster of the Deep looks like a much bigger and better game. It’s not the first Final Fantasy VR demo to never see the light of day either, as back in 2014 Sony showcased a demo of Final Fantasy XIV running inside its headset too (yes, the MMO). As we reported earlier in the week, Hazmer also revealed new details about the upcoming title, which is expected to hit PSVR next month. We’ve gone hands-on with it and it’s looking promising.
Ausnahmsweise mal kein AppleARKit oder GoogleTango, sondern eine Eigenentwicklung: Die App Vortex Ball ist ab sofort kostenlos für Android und iOS erhältlich. In dem Augmented-Reality-Showcase setzt man in der realen Welt Vortex-Portale und kann andere Spieler herausfordern, die eigene Arena zu erobern und von Roboter-Spinnen zu säubern. Fast noch interessanter als der Titel an sich ist allerdings die Technik hinter der App. Der Entwickler Sturfee behauptet, eine bessere AR-Lösung als Google und Apple entwickelt zu haben.
Vortex Ball: Eigene AR-Engine gegen Tango und ARKit
Mit Vortex Ball steht ein Augmented-Reality-Titel für Android und iOS bereit, der nicht auf Googles Tango oder ApplesARKit zurückgreift. Das Start-up Sturfee aus Santa Clara hat hingegen eine eigene Augmented-Reality-Engine entwickelt. Sie soll leistungsfähiger sein als das ARKit von Apple, das die Umgebung nicht tatsächlich erkennt. Im Gegensatz dazu könne die eigene Entwicklung Straßen, Gebäude und Kanten in Echtzeit erkennen, erklärt Matthew Lee von Sturfee. Die Spinnen in Vortex Ball könnten also klettern und sich an den realen Objekten in der Szene ausrichten. Der CEO Anil Cheriyadat erklärt dazu: „Die 3D-Geometrie der Umgebung akkurat zu erkennen ist der Schlüssel zu lokal basierten AR-Erfahrungen.“ So könne man digitale Informationen nicht nur an einem spezifischen Punkt einblenden, sondern auch digitale Objekte mit der realen Umgebung interagieren lassen.
Der CEO erläutert auch die Unterschiede zwischen ARKit und Tango und der eigenen Lösung: Googles und Apples AR-Engines erkennen demnach lediglich stückweise die Umgebung, wenn der Anwender sich bewegt. Außerdem sei die Tiefenerkennung der Konkurrenz limitiert. Cheriyadat : „Stell dir vor, du hältst dein Samrtphone hoch und siehst sofort Spinnen die Wände hochklettern, Aliens, die Gebäude in die Luft jagen, oder Charaktere, die versuchen, sich hinter Bäumen zu verstecken.“
Eine Kleinigkeit stört allerdings dann doch das Vergnügen: Die Mixed-Reality-Funktion ist derzeit auf San Francisco und San Jose beschränkt.
Indie developer NUX Studios released its first title Wands for Samsung Gear VR a year ago. Today, the developer alongside publisher Cortopia Studios have announced that the magic-based combat title will be coming to Oculus Rift in September.
Having won ‘Best VR Game of the Year’ during the 13th Global International Mobile Gaming Awards, the Oculus Rift version will expand on the original, utilising the headsets high-end capabilities to offer a greater level of immersion than before. Players will now be able to dodge spells, and with 3D audio hear where attacks are coming from.
Wands will also offer cross-platform character expansion and battles. Should you own both versions you’ll be able to play at home on Oculus Rift then continue on Gear VR wherever you are, ensuring your character can progress exactly from where you left it.
A purely player verses player (PvP) title, Wands takes place in an alternate 19th Century London, combining magic with a steampunk Victorian era design. Players take control of a sorcerer or ‘Wielder’ who must train and learn ancient spells to use against other players in combat.
The Oculus Rift version will launch at the end of September. If you’ve not bought the Gear VR version the studio’s offering a limited time discount.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Wands, reporting back with the latest updates.
Escape Rooms erfreuen sich sowohl in der Realität, auf dem Smartphone sowie in der virtuellen Realität derzeit großer Beliebtheit. So betreibt beispielsweise Team Escape mit Capcom einen Resident Evil 7 Escape Room und auch auf Steam und im Oculus Store sind diverse VR-Erfahrungen in ähnlichem Stil spielbar. Das frisch veröffentlichte Spiel TimeLock VR von Whale Rock Games erfindet das Rad des Genres dabei nicht neu, es bringt allerdings einige innovative Neuerungen mit.
Timelock VR: Escape Room, Zeitreise und Bosskämpfe
Timelock VR: Episode 1 von Whale Rock Games wurde am 9. August 2017 auf Steam für HTC Vive veröffentlicht. Die VR-Erfahrung setzt auf das bereitgestellte Room-Scale-Tracking der Vive und führt den Spieler in verschiedene Räume, aus denen er entkommen muss. Dabei sind kreative Lösungswege gefragt, denn die Rätsel in den Escape Rooms sind anspruchsvoll gestaltet. Der Spieler muss auf seinen Weg in die Freiheit sämtliche Objekte innerhalb eines Raums untersuchen und benutzen.
Ihr schlüpft in die Rolle eines Agenten, der von einem Unternehmen engagiert wurde, um Fälle von Zeitreisen zu untersuchen. Dafür könnt ihr auf diverse futuristische Werkzeuge zurückgreifen, die es euch erlauben die Zeitstränge zu manipulieren. So könnt ihr die Vergangenheit ändern, um Rätsel und Probleme in der Gegenwart zu überwinden, oder die Zeit verlangsamen. Doch ihr seid nicht alleine bei der Arbeit, denn der Quantencomputer S.T.A.S.I.S. steht euch mit Ratschlägen und Hilfe zur Seite. So öffnet ihr Türen, bewegt Objekte oder werft Gegenstände durch die Zeit, um vorwärtszukommen.
Doch das ist noch nicht alles, denn während eurer Zeitreisen stoßt ihr auf Feinde, die euch ans Leder wollen. Sogar Bosskämpfe stehen auf der Tagesordnung. Um diese zu bestehen, wählt ihr aus einem Arsenal an Waffen und den besagten Zeitreisetools. Neben den Kämpfen gilt es auch, unterschiedliche Minispiele zu bestehen.
TimeLock VR ist bis zum 16. August 2017 für 8,09 Euro auf Steam erhältlich. Danach kostet das VR-Spiel 8,99 Euro.
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