Late night talk show host Conan O’Brien visits YouTube Space New York to check out their mixed reality VR lab. Although he can’t avoid the low hanging fruit of VR porn jokes (NSFW), he does seem to have a good time.
One thing I find interesting is that he didn’t mention the headset or the controllers once. Granted, a bunch of the material was cut out, but he seemed mostly focused on the virtual world, not the hardware rendering it. And that’s what VR is really all about: making the hardware invisible so that you can forget that you’re wearing a headset and holding controllers. Either way, the audience loved it.
Most high-end virtual reality headsets today use what’s called outside-in positional tracking. This means that they require some sort of outside camera, sensor or other location sensing aid in order to determine their location in 3D space. This system makes the headset dependent on static hardware, however, and so top engineers at Oculus, HTC and Google are all racing to crack the inside-out code first.
Amidst this clash of titans is Stereo Labs, a little-engine-that’s-trying to enable inside-out tracking on mobile VR headsets using simple, depth sensing peripherals. Today, Stereo Labs is announcing a new developer kit for a product called “Linq.” It’s goal is to bring entertaining mixed reality experiences into your living room.
According to Stereo Labs, “Through high definition stereo cameras, the headset blends the virtual and real worlds together in an immersive and photorealistic way. Linq understands the world around it and perceives people and objects in space up to 20m away.”
In a launch day release, the company further explained how its system works:
The magic comes from Linq’s front-mounted sensor, a special version of Stereolabs’ ZED stereo camera that replicates the way human vision works and perceives the world. Linq’s built-in camera scans the environment in real-time and provides 6DoF inside-out world-scale positional tracking without the need for any external sensor. Users can walk, jump, crouch and even dodge projectiles, with every movement captured in the MR experience itself. They don’t need to map out the entire playing field first in order to play.
This take on AR is what Oculus’ chief scientist, Michael Abrash called “Augmented Virtual Reality.” Rather than using transparent images and complex computerized lenses to change the world around you, Linq simply beams the real world inside a VR headset where the physical realm can be manipulated on the onboard digital screens.
This could be a major breakthrough for the immersive tech industry but that depends on how well Linq actually works. UploadVR had the chance to try an prototype of the Linq at our offices in San Francisco and we found the hardware to an impressive proof-of-concept.
The inside-out positional tracking on the Linq prototype worked better than their previous Gear VR + ZED camera combination. The tracking was accomplished using 2 RGB cameras, unlike most inside-out SLAM systems using infrared band. The dual camera depth mapping works by stereoscopic vision, similar to how Human depth perception works.
You could walk around a AR space, place virtual windows and videos in the room around you, have everything stay put without much drift. However, we did notice more motion-to-photon latency than any of the consumer headsets, but we were told that that’s to be expected for using combining 3rd party components to create a proof-of-concept device.
Linq’s system for hand tracking is also unique. It does not use infrared finger tracking a-la Leap motion but instead opts for a more blunt limb-tracking technique that simply clocks the relative positions between physical and digital objects in order to determine interactions.
Addressing the latency issue is Stereo Labs main goal as they move from the prototype and begin to release dev kits. To sign up for one of your own check out the Linq website.
Disclaimer: Stereo Labs rents an office at the Upload Collective – a co-working office in San Francisco. This story was run solely because of its merits and relevance to the wider VR community. No money was exchanged between either company for this article.
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Yesterday, Google shook up the virtual reality scene by both announcing and releasing a brand new immersive experience: Google Earth VR. The response from enthusiasts was instantaneous and joyful. Earth VR is powerful, beautiful and provides the freedom of exploration that so many desire within VR.
However, soon after the news broke it quickly became clear that only a select few VR enthusiasts would have the pleasure of soaring around the world in this exciting new title: those that owned an HTC Vive.
For the time being, Earth VR is effectively exclusive to the Vive. If a non-Vive user attempts to open the experience they will receive a message prompt stating “Earth VR only supports Vive at this time.”
This message appears even for the very developers that have managed to obtain a pair of Oculus Touch controllers, which don’t fully release until next month. For many VR fans, this was a shock since it meant that Google had expressly “hard-locked” it’s content for a specific platform.
UploadVR reached out to Google to ask why this strategy was implemented. Google responded by writing that, “”We want to make sure that every platform we release Earth VR for provides a great experience and that takes time. Stay tuned!”
This follows with what Earth VR’s product manager, Mike Podwal, explained in an initial interview before the app’s release:
UploadVR: Earth VR is Google’s second major VR application, with the first being Tiltbrush. Both of those are exclusive to the HTC Vive. Is there any particular reason why this is the case?
Podwal: From the beginning we have had a great relationship with Valve. I believe it was mid-to-late 2014 when we got our hands on Vive dev kits and started building our first prototype demos….but we are seriously thinking through the next steps of cross-platform experiences.
Google’s apparent strategy with Earth VR‘s exclusivity mirrors the general thought line we’ve seen from other developers. Rift and Vive, while capable of similar things, are still fundamentally different platforms that use completely unique tracking methods. This necessitates that most developers of larger, roomscale experiences need to pick a primary platform at launch and then work to crack the codes of the other prevailing headsets.
We will bring you more updates on Earth VR as they become available.
RIGS Mechanized Combat League, one of the major launch titles for PlayStation VR, is a combat sports game where you take control of a mech in an open arena with a collection of different modes including the American football-like Endzone and RIGS’ version of the classic deathmatch, Team Takedown.
There are many solid experiences to be had within PS VR’s launch collection, but RIGS is essential because it serves as an example of well-executed competitive multiplayer. Guerrilla Cambridge, the game’s developers, thankfully isn’t sitting on its hands a month after the game’s release. As revealed by a post on the official PlayStation blog, the game is receiving a handful of new content in its upcoming December update.
The December update will be the first of their free content packs coming to the game in the coming months. In addition to the standard mech, they’re adding the APX Rig. It’ll be a fast and more agile unit, but also have less armor. You’ll also be able to customize your rigs pilot with new items and victory celebrations purchased with in-game currency.
The first European arena, Zurich, will be introduced and shaped to better allow the specific classes to utilize their strengths. Lastly, weekly trials will be added to the experience. Through them you’ll earn in-game credits, fame, and customization options but there’s no further information on them beyond that.
The blog post alludes to even more details before the Winter update goes live, but it’s likely to just be specifics on customization items and the weekly trials. A major component for continued interest in multiplayer games like RIGS is constant updates and fixes and it looks like they’re off to a decent start.
Maybe, in the future, it will develop into a major competitive eSport which is something VR gaming could use. We’ll be sure to update with new information as we get closer to the new content’s release.
If you want something different to all the shooting titles available for HTC Vive a good place to start is quirky puzzle videogame Fantastic Contraption. Developed in partnership between Northway Games and Radial Games, it originally came supplied with free with every purchase of the headset until August when its was swapped out. This week the developers have announced a big update for the title, called ‘Kaiju’, which should give players an indication of what to expect.
There are several major features added to Fantastic Contraption, the first being a new scaling option to allow new ways to play. This allows users to scale from 50% of regular room scale size all the way down to 10% room scale which makes everything look like a miniature set of contraption pieces. When using scaling the controller flowers shrink down to smaller precision buds so that players can easily see what they’re doing.
Northway states on its update listing: “If your VR hardware is configured for a small space, the Room Setup menu will appear automatically the first time you play. You can force Fantastic Contraption into Kaiju Scale and reconfigure your space via the companion menu on your monitor.”
Then there’s the Companion Eye-Cam. Now players can take their eyes out attach them to a contraption then switch on the companion-camera to follow the eyes around. This essentially means viewers watching on a monitor get an even better perspective.
Rating contraptions has got easier with a new way to keep track of them. Now users smooch their favourite contraptions both local and online. Smooching them now adds hearts, causing the to rise up the ranks on the “Online Contraptions for this Level” shelves.
Check out the full changelog below for all the improvements the developers have made, and keep reading VRFocus for all the latest VR news.
Full ‘Kaiju’ changelog:
Kaiju Scale: full support for playing in smaller spaces including seated. (Re)configure world size and orientation via the companion menu on your monitor (settings > standing scale > configure standing). Config will automatically run once if SteamVR is set to “Standing Only”.
Japanese language support. Change language via the companion menu on your monitor. Other languages coming eventually and/or create your own using Steam Workshop.
Rate and fave saved contraptions by giving them a smooch
Throw level from maquette to frog to delete autosave and revert
New avatars and improved avatar model physics
Change avatar by using the touchpad while grabbing maquette
New avatar hats and improved existing hat models
Twitch chat voting on avatars and hats with “!avatar wolf” or “!hat 5”, defaults to 60 second rounds. Twitch mods can disable, trigger rounds, or force a change immediately.
Avatar shadows
Command-line arguments to run in demo mode, eg “-demo”. Contact us for full list
Rearranged things in dark world
Combined level and contraption save tables into one
New look for Neko
Highlight Neko’s parts when you’re close enough to grab them
Improve Neko animation performance
New look and animation for victory spheres
Improve stereo shader rendering
Tweaks to tutorial messages
Hourglass loading indicator
Fade out effects
Selection highlighting on camera bug and some other things
Sound tweaks
Tweak and tune all haptic responses
Added arrows to tutorial umbilicals
Minor tweaks to several levels (must delete autosaves to see)
Hide online contraptions made with newer incompatible game versions
Fix helmet obstructing first person companion view
Fix error on loading corrupt save files
Fix Twitch panel error and bloat
Fix SteamVR init crash
Fix physics issues caused by variable framerate
Fix respawn delay after taking items from Neko
Fix hitting start/stop while loading
Fix several levels so they’ll break less
Fix snaps disappearing or being where they shouldn’t
AMD released a new driver for its Radeon graphics cards that is optimized for Sid Meier’s 'Civilization VI' on PC and fixes an issue with 'Titanfall 2.' Another fix focuses on a bug that caused H.264 content playback issues in web browsers.