A recent video posted by Lee Vermeulen, the developer behind Modbox, shows how useful Valve’s skeletal input can be for developers.
For those unfamiliar, Modbox is a sandbox creation game that initially launched in early access back with the HTC Vive in April 2016. Players can create games in VR and share them with others. Vermeulen is working on a big rewrite of the game with new visual scripting features but in the meantime he’s testing Valve’s recent skeletal input features. He also used a ZED Mini with the HTC Vive to show a side-by-side of what finger movements look like in the real world compared with how they are shown in VR. The match-up isn’t perfect but it still looks pretty impressive.
Vermeulen plans to implement Valve’s skeletal input with Modbox when the feature is finished by Valve. It is useful to him because “hand animations are hard to get right — especially with the large variety of VR input devices and differences in detail.” Modbox will show just the controller model when building an environment and using the controller as a tool to shape the world around you, but when you’re in play mode and enjoying what you made then the hand graphics will be shown.
“Oculus Touch can tell when your hand is on a button, Vive controllers can only tell when a button is pressed, the new Knuckles can tell if each finger is on the grip. The SteamVR skeletal input completely handles this for us,” Vermeulen wrote. “Its also a hard thing to network online. I don’t want to have to send a status update of each finger position for everyone in-game to everyone else. The skeletal input system will eventually handle this for us.”
Update: The final quotation from Vermeulen was slightly updated after publication for added clarity.
Last year’s The Invisible Hours was one of the rare examples of a story-driven experience that really thrived inside VR. It made smart use of a time travelling mechanic and character interactions to weave a captivating narrative we won’t soon forget. We named it one of 2017’s most underrated VR experiences. Good news, then; one of the game’s writers is now working with Valve.
Rob Yescombe, a games writer that also worked on PSVR’s Farpoint, confirmed yesterday that he had been working for the SteamVR creator since last year. He’ll be moving into the company’s offices in a few week’s time in a Writer role.
I’ve been quietly working for Valve since The Invisible Hours. I’m moving into the office proper in a few weeks.
It is truly joyful to collaborate with such remarkable people. Every day is a revelation.
Yescombe didn’t say exactly what he was working on right now, but we’ve got our fingers crossed it’s for a VR project. We know that Valve is working on three full VR games and, given this end to Yescombe’s silence and the company’s recent reveal of its latest Knuckles controllers, we might finally be close to hearing about what they are. Perhaps another positive sign is that Yescombe also retweeted a message from another Valve staffer that’s on the hunt for VR developers in the Seattle area.
Last year, Valve lost one of its key writers, Chet Faliszek, who had become known as an important evangelist of the VR industry. It’s great to see Valve stocking up in the development department again, and we can’t wait to see what comes of it.
Today, the official release branch of SteamVR got a new update that brings over a handful of features from the beta branch and introduces a slew of other smaller fixes. Most notably, today’s update includes an auto resolution feature and the ability to assign per-application settings.
The auto-resolution feature might sound familiar and that’s because it was first introduced in the beta branch last month but is now available more widely. According to the update, this feature will optimize the SteamVR experience visually and let users get the best experience possible by custom-tuning app resolution so that it performs most optimally based on GPU and the selected VR headset. More details here.
And the other major feature for today’s update lets users customize their experiences for each individual application, such as resolution adjustment. For example, this means that each time you load up an app, like a game, you can have your version of SteamVR pick the same resolution each time depending on the headset and PC you’re using. This is useful because you might want to change your resolution depending on how demanding the game or app is. More details on that here.
As usual, the update also includes a litany of bug fixes, SteamVR controls and crash fixes, and a handful of other features. You can find the full list here. Let us know what you think of this update down in the comments below!
We haven’t heard anything about Valve’s new VR games in over a year now, but it still sounds like they’re coming.
PCGamer reports that, during a presentation on the company’s new digital card game, Artifact (which doesn’t support VR), Valve president Gabe Newell confirmed the studio was working on multiple new titles. “Artifact is the first of several games that are going to be coming from us,” Newell said. “So that’s sort of good news. Hooray! Valve’s going to start shipping games again.”
If you’ve been following the VR industry for the past year that shouldn’t really come as news; Newell revealed that Valve was making three VR titles for VR headsets in early 2017, though we still don’t know anything about them. We’re expecting them to be compatible with all PC-based devices, though, and not just the official SteamVR devices like the HTC Vive and LG’s unreleased kit.
While Newell didn’t specifically reference the new VR games, he did make a comparison to Nintendo’s control over both hardware and software that has made Valve “jealous” in the past.
“We’ve always been a little bit jealous of companies like Nintendo,” Newell said. “When Miyamoto is sitting down and thinking about the next version of Zelda or Mario, he’s thinking what is the controller going to look like, what sort of graphics and other capabilities. He can introduce new capabilities like motion input because he controls both of those things. And he can make the hardware look as good as possible because he’s designing the software at the same time that’s really going to take advantage of it. So that is something we’ve been jealous of, and that’s something that you’ll see us taking advantage of subsequently.”
That control over both aspects makes us think of Valve’s upcoming SteamVR Knuckles controllers, which allow VR users to realistically grab objects. Could we see the company’s new VR titles take specific advantage of this feature?
Earlier this year we heard that Valve is making three of its own VR games. Since then we’ve heard absolutely nothing about what they are or when they might release. Don’t worry; they’re still very much on the way.
Dan O’Brien, General Manager for HTC Vive in the US, told Glixel as much in a recent interview. “I manage the relationship with Valve,” he said. “I meet with Valve weekly to talk about everything from what’s happening on new content launching to new product launches to new features and new functions. They are very committed; they are still committed to delivering on that promise.”
O’Brien would not, however, give any hints as to what the games were. Valve has already promised that they’ll be ‘full’ experiences, though.
HTC, of course, works closely with Valve as the first to partner with the company on its SteamVR platform, leading to the creation of the Vive itself. It makes sense, then, that O’Brien would be kept up to date with Valve’s projects.
Exactly what Valve’s games are is one of the biggest questions in VR right now. Before it was known for VR, the company created some of the most popular games on the planet including Half-Life, Left4Dead and Portal. A sequel to any of those in VR would be very welcome (not to mention possibly the biggest release in VR to date), but we’d also like to see the company try its hand at some new universes and characters. We had our own guess at what they’d be earlier this year.
At Vive’s launch, Valve released a free collection of showcase VR experiences called The Lab.
Perhaps 2018 will bring at least one of these games? Fingers crossed.
Microsoft is planning to make a preview of its SteamVR integration available on Nov. 15.
The preview should make hundreds of VR apps available on Steam playable on headsets from Acer, Lenovo, HP, Dell and Samsung. So far, Microsoft has only offered access to developers through closed access to a Steam app.
We recently reviewed the Acer VR headset and found it lacking in the content department, so this feature could have a huge effect on sales as manufacturers just started shipping headsets to early adopters. Microsoft is launching the feature as a “preview”, which suggests it won’t be finalized and we’ve not heard an official launch date for the finished functionality.
We previously heard from Valve’s how this integration will work:
Microsoft is providing an OpenVR driver that allows SteamVR to automatically identify Windows MR hardware. From a consumer’s experience, this should allow SteamVR titles to ‘just work’ on these devices. On the dev side it is also possible for developers to tune their application for specific aspects of the headsets and/or for the Windows MR controllers.
Valve Software’s Joe Ludwig dumped a cache of information about the upcoming 2.0 base stations the company is preparing for release. While the update from Valve is directed toward manufacturers building on top of its tracking technology, the information offers some tantalizing details about the new hardware.
“Valve is creating a custom wall/ceiling mounting solution” for the 2.0 base stations, Ludwig wrote. Mounting the stations to your walls is perhaps the biggest drawback with the precision tracking technology — especially when compared to Microsoft’s “inside-out” solution which requires no outside hardware. Unlike Oculus Sensors, Valve’s stations don’t need to be plugged into a computer to track headsets, controllers and accessories. If Valve is working on a simpler solution to mounting the stations it could solve a major hurdle to adoption.
Valve is aiming to gauge the scale of manufacturing for the base stations throughout 2018. It is asking partners to provide details about how many are needed and in which month, with the expectation that companies will repackage the base stations alongside other hardware for resale. Valve is selling them in bulk to partners for $60 each plus shipping and handling. This may not be a good indicator of the final price for home buyers, but it is notably in line with the pricing Oculus established for each of its Oculus Sensors. This is also less than half the price of the 1.0 stations HTC currently sells for Vive.
Also, Ludwig wrote these base stations are expected to work in a two base station configuration at launch but in “early 2018, we’ll expand that functionality to 4 base stations that should cover a single room play space of roughly 10 x 10 meters.”
This is a huge detail. Ludwig added that “we’re evaluating adding functionality beyond 4 base stations as part of our product roadmap but do not have a current timeline we can share.” While that means VR warehouse installations like the VOID might not be able to get rid of their expensive OptiTrack-based tracking technology just yet, this could be a boost to smaller arcades that could track a large number of headsets within medium-sized spaces with only four base stations. Or, of course, it could cover one or two headsets in very large spaces.
Valve Software, the technology partner that made the HTC Vive possible, is offering “new core components” to VR hardware manufacturers, including custom lenses “designed to support the next generation of room-scale virtual reality.”
Earlier this year Valve started freely licensing its innovative SteamVR Tracking technology. This tech has been critical to the HTC Vive’s functionality as it lets people explore entire rooms while completely immersed in a virtual world. We saw the technology employed in a prototype from LG earlier this year and HTC is building on it to bring a whole host of accessories into VR. Meanwhile, Valve is preparing to unleash a second generation of the technology which could make it far less expensive while enabling entire warehouses to be tracked.
Now Valve appears to be aiming to court additional manufacturers for VR headsets with a widened selection of components including new custom lenses. Its press release, included below, describes support for both LCD and OLED display manufacturers. While Vive and Facebook’s Oculus Rift both use OLED panels, low-persistence LCDs are used in some of the lower cost Microsoft headsets debuting at the end of 2017. Valve seems to be offering manufacturers another option besides Microsoft in adopting these LCDs with “custom hardware and software manufacturing solutions.”
Valve also “developed custom lenses that work with both LCD and OLED display technologies and is making these lenses available to purchase for use in SteamVR compatible HMDs.” Combined with Valve’s software, the lenses are designed “to be paired with several off-the-shelf VR displays to enable the highest quality VR visual experiences. These optical solutions currently support a field of view between 85 and 120 degrees (depending on the display). The lenses, which are designed to support the next generation of room-scale virtual reality, optimize the user’s perceived tracking experience and image sharpness while reducing stray light.”
For those unfamiliar, Microsoft and Valve are employing different approaches to tracking technologies for VR headsets. Microsoft’s “inside-out” solution is more convenient because no external hardware is needed, but it won’t fully track hand movements when they are out of the view of sensors embedded on the headset itself. Valve’s “outside-in” technology typically requires mounting a pair of boxes to your walls, but enables headsets to be tracked through the entire area alongside other objects. This works even if holding your controllers behind your back. So while Valve’s approach requires a little more setup, it’s possible that with extended use across many virtual worlds, Valve tracking might provide a more immersive and reliable solution. To be clear, this is conjecture still as we need to stress test Microsoft’s controllers to see how often the out-of-view tracking limitation comes up.
Press release from Valve below:
Valve Offers More Core Virtual Reality Technologies to Device Manufacturers
October 9, 2017 — Valve, creator of Steam and SteamVR, a leading platform for games and virtual reality (VR) applications, today announced the availability of new core components needed by VR hardware manufacturers to deliver best in class VR systems.
Complementing the existing free license for sub-millimeter room-scale tracking and input technology, today’s news marks the addition of other critical pieces for developing state-of-the-art VR hardware: an advanced optical system, manufacturing and calibration tools, and the supporting software stack to unify the hardware into an optimal user experience.
“World class VR requires highly precise tracking, matched optics and display technologies, and a software stack that weaves together the interactions between these components,” said Jeremy Selan of Valve. “For the first time, we’re making all of these technologies available to anyone who wants to build a best in class VR system for the millions of Steam customers accessing over 2,000 SteamVR compatible titles.”
About the Display and Optics Technology
Valve has spent years working closely with display manufacturers to adapt their technologies to the unique challenges of VR. Recent advancements in Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) technology combined with VR specific calibration now make it a viable technology choice for high end VR systems. LCD manufacturers have demonstrated fast-switching liquid crystals, low persistence backlights, and high PPI displays that, when calibrated and paired with the right software, are well matched to the highest quality VR experiences. Of course, organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display technology was critical to the first generation of VR (being first to demonstrate fast transition times and low-persistence illumination), and it remains an excellent option for new head mounted displays (HMDs). While both display technologies have inherent artifacts unique to head-mounted usage, Valve provides custom hardware and software manufacturing solutions as part of the SteamVR technology suite to enable high quality visual VR experiences.
In addition, Valve has developed custom lenses that work with both LCD and OLED display technologies and is making these lenses available to purchase for use in SteamVR compatible HMDs. These lenses and Valve’s unique calibration and correction software are designed specifically to be paired with several off-the-shelf VR displays to enable the highest quality VR visual experiences. These optical solutions currently support a field of view between 85 and 120 degrees (depending on the display). The lenses, which are designed to support the next generation of room-scale virtual reality, optimize the user’s perceived tracking experience and image sharpness while reducing stray light. Valve is including the custom lens calibration and correction software within the SteamVR technology suite.
Finally, Valve continues to offer full room-scale, sub-millimeter tracking technology by providing a reference design for the “Watchman” tracking module and by offering Valve manufactured base stations with SteamVR Tracking 2.0 technology for sale to licensees.
For more information about VR technology licensing, please see valve
User interfaces in virtual reality start with your hands. We know that now with the Oculus Touch and the HTC Vive, but even when VR was simply a screen strapped to your head many felt that hands were the future. We began to develop The Gallery on the first Oculus devkit with the Razer Hydra (a Sixense technology) to deliver surrogate hand tracking and body presence back in 2013. And when Valve invited Cloudhead and the first wave of developers to see what would eventually be known as the Vive, Valve showed a commitment to that same vision. Now Valve has invited us and a new wave of developers to begin working with their latest prototype—the SteamVR Knuckles, a wearable VR controller that tracks not just your hand, but each finger too.
Back in 2014, we didn’t realize exactly how accurate SteamVR tracking was—the whole notion of roomscale VR was almost incomprehensible. Up until that point, there was still some motion latency in VR, so you never felt completely attached to the actions in your hands. But once the SteamVR Lighthouses started tracking objects in a 3D space, it was a deep and immediate connection of, “Holy crap, that’s actually my hand in VR.”
Our goal then was to deliver an experience where the player doesn’t have to think about the controller, and has only natural, gestural interactions. We wanted to demonstrate why this kind of input—your hands themselves—was meaningful. When we received our first Vive devkit (wired at the time) we were taping them to our hands in order to feel more immersed, and we even spoke to Valve about crude ways they could strap the controller on.
Those early Vive prototypes already showed an incredible level of fidelity, capable of measuring the tiniest fraction of a movement. It’s like the Moore’s Law of motion control; each incremental improvement in tracking brings with it new possibilities. So as soon as you have that kind of fidelity with your hands in VR, you need your fingers to be more purely represented. And that’s what the Oculus Touch started to do by bringing capacitive, gestural input to the controller.
Where Touch differs from what the Knuckles offer, however, is that you’re still pushing a binary button in the end; Touch feels more grounded in traditional gamepad design. Specifically, you always feel like you’re holding something with buttons—and that works perfectly for gun games and sword games. But the Knuckles take that further by removing the abstractions of first-gen VR inputs. Even though it looks like a more complicated device, it’s actually a much simpler one.
With the Knuckles, you’re not holding a controller; it simply straps to your hand and rests in your palm. If you relax your hand into a natural flex, the controller stays put and keeps tracking your fingers. If you reach out to grab an object in VR, your hand wraps around the base of the controller, giving a tangible feeling of grabbing something. That physicality is something you don’t get from data gloves, or vision based inputs without any device, and that feeling can then be fine-tuned with haptic feedback. Plus, you’re not passing around a sweaty data glove between your friends.
When reaching out to an object with the Knuckles, I’m not thinking about the controller I’m holding in my hand, because I’m not holding one. I’m not thinking about how to use my fingers either, because they’re not assigned to a button press. I’m not even thinking about my hand, and that’s where the magic comes in—I’m just thinking about grabbing the object, as I would in real life. That entire grasping motion is represented in VR, whether I pinch with two fingers, scoop with my hand, or close my fist around it. The Knuckles track your fingers by the distance they are from the base of the controller (your palm), and represent that movement in VR. It’s second nature.
As developers, when we receive prototype hardware like the SteamVR Knuckles, it makes us want to push the capabilities. In the past, that’s meant radically rethinking our stack of interactions and locomotion systems—virtually redesigning the game. We’ve written about what these kinds of changes have meant for The Gallery in the past, but the long story short is that new controllers like the Knuckles aren’t just affecting the complexity of interactions. We now have new possibilities for game mechanics and design that haven’t and couldn’t have been done before. It’s to be seen how these controllers will impact Heart of the Emberstone in September, but they’ll be a core focus in designing Episode 3.
Think of an interface-heavy app like Tilt Brush. Dials can be intuitive, but using your fingers is organic. There’s a possibility for gestural movements to call functions and navigate dense data; there could be an entire language built out of using your hands to manipulate paint brushes and pencils and sizes and colors. Once you take the mental load of an interface off the player—once they stop thinking about the controller—you can leverage that partition into experiential design and organic controls.
The kind of technology that the SteamVR Knuckles offer is not just impactful to the future of input in gaming, but also the future of output. I can go to a social VR space and point to something, or offer a peace sign, or tell somebody to hang loose without having to think about it. The controller doesn’t guess your gesture, or snap to a new position, it represents your fingers based on the distance it calculates. The more natural and intuitive the interface, the less we think about hardware. And the less we fixate on hardware, the more present we can be in VR.
Prior to the Knuckles, hardware developers were looking for something that would be more broadly accepted by the general public. Something that resembled a Wiimote, like the Vive wands, or something that when put together resembled a gamepad, like the Touch controllers, meant that VR input was familiar. Strapping an alien device to your hand in first-gen VR would have been too much too fast. But I think it took the evolution of those two controllers to get VR to the point where the public could be comfortable with the idea of a controller strapped to your hand.
There are so many moments in life in which using your hands is a vital part of the experience. There are implications for education and communication—with audiences who don’t generally understand videogame controllers—because the SteamVR Knuckles open the door to that broader audience. These are pick-up-and-play controllers where you don’t have to think about the input, you just reach out and interact in virtual space.
User interface in virtual reality starts with your hands. And once users are empowered in that way, and don’t have to be told how to use the technology, the next generation of virtual reality is here.
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This is a guest post not produced by the UploadVR staff. It’s a contribution submitted by Denny Unger, the Co-Founder, CEO, and Creative Director of Cloudhead Games. No compensation was exchanged for the creation of this content.
Less than a week ago new models of Valve’s prototype Knuckles controller surfaced in SteamVR Home. The device is an attempt to innovate in the VR space with controllers that allow you to grab and release in VR without being concerned with dropping a controller.
The key to the Knuckles controller is being able to freely manipulate items in a virtual experience without worrying about dropping a handheld controller while doing so. VR controllers, in their current forms, have straps simply because some people may accidentally have the natural inclination to release them when mimicking certain types of actions like swinging a sword or throwing an object. We’ve seen what the Knuckles controllers will look like and this demo shows off how they work.
There are sensors on the Knuckles grip that will activate individual fingers and the video starts off showing how, using your index finger and thumb, you can pick up something like a coffee mug in a natural way and then toss it across the room. We also get to see how we can hold an object in place in our hands using different fingers or use our open hands to spin a globe without having to press a button to interact with it.
This type of intuitive control is going to open up lots of doors for VR creators as long as Valve finds a way to get it into homes at a decent price. If you have a prototype and/or want to check out the demo and the source for the interaction, Zulubo has made it all available via GitHub.
