Rebellion rolls out large content update for Battlezone

PlayStation VR launch title Battlezone will today receive a large content patch courtesy of developers Rebellion. The update will introduce new playable content as well as new cosmetic items.

The videogame is getting two new difficulty settings on either end of the spectrum. New players or those struggling with the game can enable Beginner level, while hardcore experts can go for Extreme level. Both of these will be free, and for those who take on Extreme level, beating it will net the player a new Trophy and a new tank loadout. There are three new tank loadouts to collect in all, which will require players to beat Extreme level three times to get them all.

Battlezone

As usual for a Battlezone update, new levels, maps and events will be made available for free. The development team have said the new levels will be ‘swimming in lava’ so expect those new levels to form part of end game content. There’s also two new missions called ‘King of the Hill’ and ‘Conquest’, though Rebellion have not yet offered details of what they will consist of.

A new enemy and a new weapon are also being added: the Jet – a fast, powerful, but fragile new foe, and the Railgun, which requires charging before firing a single powerful blast. Cosmetic items such as new bobble-heads to decorate your tank with as well as new skins to give your tank a unique look, are also included.

Battlezone Classic Mode_2

In addition, Rebellion has announced that players will have the opportunity to ‘Play with the Devs’ in special sessions, which can be found in the Events tab on the PlayStation 4 menu.

The last Battlezone update came in December 2016, featuring Classic Mode, harking back to the original design. Last month saw Rebellion confirm an Oculus Rift version was in the works, although the studio hasn’t revealed a release date yet.

VRFocus will bring you further updates on Battlezone and other PlayStation VR games when they come in.

Sony Music Showcases Multiplayer VR Experience Using Vive, Not PSVR

Sony Music Showcases Multiplayer VR Experience Using Vive, Not PSVR

You’d think if a division of Sony was making a VR experience they’d be using the company’s own headset, PlayStation VR (PSVR). It’s surprising to learn, then, Sony Music Entertainment is working with a rival headset, the HTC Vive.

The Japanese division of Sony Music is at the 2017 South By South West (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas right now showing off an experience named Gold Rush VR that uses not one but four Vives attached to backpack PCs, allowing four people to roam around a room scale area without tripping on each other’s wires. You can see it in the video below:

Basically, players step onto a wooden makeshift tram in the real world, which comes to life in the virtual one, transporting them to different zones to explore from within the confines of the vehicle.

This piece is being showcased as party of Sony’s Wow Factory, a set of projects from the company’s innovation labs that, according to an official listing, are “developed with a spirit of open-minded and unbridled experimentation.” That probably explains why the company is using Vive instead of PSVR; the latter headset can’t pull off the same level of position-tracking seen in the SteamVR platform that Vive uses.

But the Vive display isn’t the only VR installation from Sony at the show. There’s also an intriguing mobile VR experience called Parallel Eyes in which players can see each other’s perspectives and use that to their advantage to play a game of tag in real life. It doesn’t exactly sound like the safest use of VR, but we’d be lying if we said we didn’t want to give it a go.

Finally, PSVR itself  is also on display at the show with popular launch game Rez Infinite and the incredible synesthesia suit that it’s been shown with multiple times over the past year.

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VRTV: Nina Tries To Escape Death In I Expect You To Die

VRFocus correspondent Nina takes on the role of a secret agent in this room escape game as she attempts to solve puzzles and avoid the many way you can be killed in order to review I Expect You To Die.

The game was produced by Schell Games and is currently available of Oculus Rift with Touch and PlayStation VR. The gameplay involves the player being given various missions to undertake in order to defeat the villainous Dr. Zor, all of which feature of variety of sneaky traps to solve in order to avoid the large numbers of different ways to die, many of which are quite silly.

Watch Nina take on the challenge and report her findings in the video below.

Watch out for more VRTV videos from VRFocus.

Alchemy of Souls, Book 3 of The Hundred Halls, is now available

I am happy to announce that the long awaited Book 3 of The Hundred Halls, Alchemy of Souls is now available on Amazon!  Continue reading the adventures of Aurie and Pi today.

Alchemy of Souls

In the Hundred Halls, students experiment with all manners of magic: catoptromancy, lexology, verumancy, rune spells, demonology, shape changing, and a thousand other arcane techniques.  Every magic is encouraged.  Every magic, except one—soul magic.

As Aurie’s third year begins, students are found without their souls, ripped from their bodies, leaving them empty husks.  Someone, or something, is stealing them for a nefarious purpose.  With that kind of power being collected, not even the professors are safe.  If Aurie and her sister cannot stop the soul thief before the end of the year, the Hundred Halls will never be the same.

Get your copy here, or start reading for free on Kindle unlimited.

UNLTD debuts trailer for VR TV series Trinity at SXSW

Almost a year ago virtual reality (VR) content company UNLTD announced the start of production for a live-action interactive film project called Trinity. Today at the SXSW Film Festival, its released the first teaser trailer for the series.

Trinity is an immersive science-fiction movie experience set in a grim future where mankind is now extinct. Left behind are androids fighting a final war for freedom against an all powerful singularity, their God. As the short trailer (seen below) showcases, UNLTD has mixed in live-action with CGI to tell its dystopian story.

TrinityTeamDay4 copy

The series is in production with the pilot due to be released to select partners by fall of 2017. It’ll eventually consist of five fifteen-minute episodes, which will be platform-agnostic to allow compatibility with all VR headsets for viewing.

“To produce Trinity, UNLTD developed a proprietary camera in order to capture and create a truly interactive entertainment experience,” says John Hamilton, UNLTD CEO and Trinity producer/writer. “Using volumetric, 360 and live-action technologies, we are able to allow viewers to move around within an episode of Trinity in a way that hasn’t been seen before in virtual reality.”

Hamilton also participated in a panel discussion put on by Planet Quebec at SXSW, discussing the unique challenges of filming for VR, from the creative and technical to high-end visual effects and utilizing interactive engines.

“Working on a project like Trinity is a unique directing experience from my previous projects due to the nuances involved in shooting for virtual reality,” says Patrick Boivin, Director of Trinity. “The trailer showcases the intimate and involved feeling created when entertainment meets virtual reality.”

Production of Trinity will be directed by Patrick Boivin (Dragon Baby, Little Ant-Man) alongside UNLTD executive team, Sébastien Gros and Robert Boulos.

For further updates on the Trinity series and UNLTD, keep reading VRFocus.

Cheltenham Races to get VR highlights

British broadcaster ITV, which owns the broadcast rights to the Cheltenham Racing Festival, has teamed up with virtual reality (VR) production company VR City and media company Goodstuff to offer a series of VR highlights of the festival to viewers.

The Cheltenham Festival lasts from 14th until 17th March, and this year’s event will be the first since ITV picked up the broadcast rights in January 2017. ITV says that it is aiming to offer viewers ‘the best seat in the house’ by offering VR footage of the festival.

Content will be captured by 360-degree cameras over the course of each day, showing the races and events as well as going backstage for unique behind-the-scenes knowledge of how the festival operates. This footage will then be edited together into daily highlight packages available for VR users to download and posted at 7pm each day on ITV’s Facebook and YouTube pages.

cheltenham Racing

Ed Ross, Head of Marketing and Media at ITV said: “ITV are really excited about the opportunity of giving viewers a unique perspective onto one of the greatest sporting events in the UK. When it comes to thrills, anticipation and atmosphere, nothing comes close to the Cheltenham Festival, so we wanted to give viewers who couldn’t be there the opportunity to be there with us, right at the heart of the action.”

While Laura Moorcraft, Business Director at Goodstuff added: “As a leader in entertainment, we feel ITV are particularly well-positioned to utilise VR as a way of giving viewers an entirely new perspective of the content at their disposal, and Cheltenham Festival leapt out as the perfect opportunity to utilise the technology. The sport is renowned for its thrill and excitement, so it’s great that we can bring this to people through their mobile phones.”

Cheltenham joins a range of sporting events that are utilising VR and 360-degree technology to engage fans, including the Ski Cross World Cup and Ice Hockey.

VRFocus will continue to bring you the latest on VR in sport and broadcasting.