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Today Sony announced the next batch of games that will be free to download for all PlayStation Plus subscribers and for the first time in a long time one of them has VR support: Wipeout VR!
Starting on August 6th (PS Plus titles always refresh on the first Tuesday of every month) subscribers can download and play Wipeout Omega Collection (which includes free VR support) and Sniper Elite 4. This is one of the better months in terms of quality in a while for even non-VR gamers, but the inclusion of one of PSVR’s very best games, period, really puts it over the top. Read why in our full Wipeout VR review.
If you’ve never played Wipeout Omega Collection or aren’t a big Wipeout fan to begin with, then you’re in for a real treat. The Wipeout games are all about speed and sleek futuristic settings. You’ll zip around tracks at blistering paces, shoot rockets at your enemies, and get a ton of air-time bounding through the air, around loops, and through corners. It’s mesmerizing visually and absolutely heart-pounding.
Even if you’ve played Wipeout before, you haven’t played it like this. Wipeout VR is a special experience.
Sniper Elite 4 may not have VR support, but Sniper Elite VR is in development and takes place in the exact same universe by the exact same devleopers. We played it at E3 2019 and really enjoyed it, nominating it for Best of Show VR game while we were there. You can watch some gameplay, read impressions, and see an interview with one of the developers right here.
Are you looking forward to downloading Wipeout VR next week? We’ll probably stream it some so maybe we will see you out there.
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Last month Oculus confirmed that its regular fall event Oculus Connect would be returning for 2019 in September, saying on the website that: “we hope you’ll join us to begin a new chapter of virtual and augmented reality.” Today, registrations have now opened for Oculus Connect 6 (OC6) alongside some brief information regarding what sessions to expect.
With the launch of Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift S and a couple of months ago, expectations are high regarding lots of new content. The first teasing information doesn’t disappoint, Respawn Entertainment will be unveiling its first-person shooter (FPS) created in partnership with Oculus Studios, with attendees being able to go hands-on with the first playable demo.
Having previously created titles such as Titanfall, Call of Duty, Apex Legends and currently developing Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, details regarding Respawn Entertainment’s step into virtual reality (VR) first surfaced last summer. Nothing has been mentioned since then, so the announcement is going to be big.
Plenty of other videogames are expected but another piece of information revealed today is that John Carmack’s App Reviews (a fan favourite) will be returning, offering his own unique brand of commentary.
There are going to be a wide range of talks and Oculus has released some details on the first few via its blog:
OC6 sounds like it’s shaping up to be an exciting event, with Oculus expected to be sharing more information between now and September. The conference will be held at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center from 25th – 26th September 2019. As further details are released, VRFocus will keep you updated.
HTC’s Vive Cosmos finally remerged late last month and then swiftly disappeared again. But now it’s back again again with a new video.
This latest look at the headset focuses on comfort. Like the recently-released Oculus Rift S, Vive Cosmos adopts a halo strap similar to the one seen in Sony’s PSVR. You can see one user twisting a knob on the back to adjust the fit too. Cosmos’ screen also flips up (finally!) to allow fast access to the real world.
The video also mentions some interesting stats. Firstly, Cosmos weighs in at 651 grams. HTC says this makes it the lightest Vive headset to date. The face pad is also made of synthetic leather which should make it easier to clean after those marathon Beat Saber sessions.
It all looks pretty promising. Done right, Cosmos could occupy an interesting middle ground between the accessible Oculus Rift S and the higher-spec but more expensive Valve Index. That said, we’re still waiting to try Cosmos for ourselves. The headset now features six cameras for inside-out tracking and will run on HTC’s new Vive Reality platform. Crucially, Cosmos will be a modular headset that HTC says will have scalability. We’re still yet to learn the extent of this feature, but we do know it will be able to run on PCs and likely other devices like smartphones.
For now, we know the kit’s set to launch later this year. Details like pricing are still to come, however. Still, there’s not too many months left in 2019, so expect information sooner rather than later.
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Earlier this year Tobii and HTC Vive partnered to bring foveated rendering tech to the new HTC Vive Pro Eye. Now, Tobii is opening its platform up for others to use.
At Siggraph this week the company announced Tobii Spotlight Technology. It’s essentially the same tech already utilized in Vive Pro Eye. Tobii’s eye-tracking technology is able to decipher the specific area of a VR display the user is looking at. The headset then only fully renders the direct center of that area. Areas away from the center of your vision aren’t fully rendered. This is imperceptible to your peripheral vision.
This drastically reduces the strain on hardware processing a VR experience. As such, foveated rendering is largely considered to be one of the key components of bringing VR costs down in the future. A Tobii spokesperson told UploadVR that “Spotlight Technology is intended to support a variety of headsets, including both tethered and standalone headsets.” News on software development kits (SDKs) for Spotlight will also be coming “soon.”
Our benchmarking test measured GPU shading load reduction of 57% at an average shading rate of 16% using @nvidia #VRS and @htcvive#VIVEProEye. #FoveatedRendering #EyeTracking pic.twitter.com/LEXpSagwyt
— Tobii Group (@TobiiTechnology) July 29, 2019
Specific partners weren’t announced today. Vive Pro Eye is an enterprise-level headset, though. Hopefully this news means we’ll start to see eye-tracking in other, consumer-focused devices soon.
Tobii did provide its own benchmarking results for using dynamic foveated rendering in Epic’s ShowdownVR app with the Vive Pro Eye running on Nvidia RTX 2070. You can see those results above, though obviously take note that these are company-generated stats and not something we can verify ourselves.
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It’s time to boldly go to the final frontier in VR (again); a new Star Trek VR arcade game is in the works.
Star Trek: Discovery Away Mission is in development at Sandbox VR, Variety reports. In this 30 minute experience, up to six friends will investigate the icy surface of a moon in search of a lost ship. You’ll join Starfleet office Sylvia Tilly to solve problems and even engage in a few shootouts. Yes, that means you’ll wield the iconic Phaser in VR.
Sandbox is working closely with CBS on the project. There’s a teaser trailer below, though it doesn’t tell us much.
Speaking to the site, Sandbox Chief Product Officer Siqui Chen called the experience a “0.1 version of the holodeck” that Trek itself made famous. The experience will debut at Sandbox’s Hong Kong and San Francisco locations this fall before coming to new facilities in New York, Austin, San Diego and Chicago.
Sandbox’s VR arcade offering includes full-body motion capture in free-roaming VR locations. You strap markers to your body to bring your hands and feet into VR. We went hands-on with one of its original games last year, and the company’s since raised $68 million in funding.
Of course, this isn’t Star Trek’s first VR mission. A few years back Ubisoft brought us Star Trek: Bridge Crew, a cooperative multiplayer game that let teams pilot iconic vessels. We’re big fans of it, but it only offers a small slice of the wider Star Trek experience. Away Mission certainly seems to be appealing to the other side of the franchise. We’ll be interested to check it out later on in the year.
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Firewall Zero Hour (review) from First Contact Entertainment is almost a year old and it’s still going strong. For a multiplayer-focused VR game, that’s extremely rare. Now, Operation: Dark Web is only two weeks away with an August 13th launch.
Earlier this year Operation: Nightfall released as a ground-up relaunch of the entire game, for all intents and purposes. The entire UI was overhauled with a brand new look and flow, they added a Season Pass-style system similar to games like Fortnite, PUBG, and Dauntless that unlocks rewards gradually over time, and it delivered new maps, new contractors, and mission to complete. That was Season One. Now, Season Two is about to kick off with Operation: Dark Web.
We don’t know any additional details yet about Firewall Zero Hour’s Operation: Dark Web, but based on what Nightfall included it’s fair to assume lots of new customization options to unlock, new maps to play on, and new missions to focus on.
Firewall Zero Hour is published by Sony and is a PlayStation VR exclusive. It’s still one of the best PSVR games and we awarded it our Game of the Year for 2018. Shortly after the launch of Nightfall earlier this year though, it was slammed by a weeks-long plague of server issues. Thankfully, most of those seem to be resolved now as of the time of this writing.
Are you still playing Firewall Zero Hour? Let us know down in the comments below and if you have any big plans for Operation: Dark Web when it releases in just a couple of weeks.
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Hammerhead VR’s underrated sci-fi horror Syren wasn’t a massive success when it arrived in 2017 for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, offering a stealthy experience under the sea. A few months later Episode 2 arrived mixing up the gameplay with action elements. A PlayStation VR version arrive for North American gamers in November 2018 but it never appeared in the European PlayStation Store. Today that has been rectified, with both episodes now available in one bundle.
Syren was an original IP from the virtual reality (VR) specialist and its first proper videogame, having previously released experiences like ABE. The story takes place beneath the waves on the ocean floor, involving a scientist obsessed with eugenics who builds an underwater research facility named Darwin Station. Studying an ancient lost city, he conducts horrific experiments in an attempt to recreate the lost species of ‘Syrens’. Naturally, he succeeds and what he creates aren’t friendly, so you’re sent down to find out what’s going on.
So the first instalment is pure stealth, as you’re not some badass marines armed to the teeth. While there are moments where you might find a weapon, these are very rare, hiding and sneaking are really your only option. Make a noise or get spotted by a Syren and it’s usually instant death, which may not be to everyone’s liking. Check out VRFocus’ full review of Syren to learn more.
Then there’s Syren: Episode 2 which offers a flip in the gameplay experience. Without trying to ruin too much, in episode 2 you return to the facility because the CIA is less interested in the experiments but more the mysterious ‘Anomaly’ that sits at the heart of the ruins, and this time you’re a hardcore soldier and you have guns lots of guns. Heading back through the lab, there are plenty more Syrens to encounter. There’s no need to run and hide this time, killing them and collecting stuff means you can head to a very well-stocked armoury to upgrade your weapons.
Syren is scheduled to launch today via the EU PlayStation Store for PlayStation VR, only compatible with PlayStation Move controllers. For any further updates on Syren from Hammerhead VR, keep reading VRFocus.
Oculus Connect 6 is fast approaching, and registration for the event is now open.
Hopeful attendees can now sign up for a spot at this year’s developer conference. Note that Oculus Connect 6 isn’t a consumer show; it’s specifically designed for people making VR apps. That said, there’s some exciting stuff on the VR gaming front.
Earlier this year Oculus confirmed Respawn Entertainment’s long-anticipated VR game would debut at the show. Now Oculus has confirmed that the ‘AAA first-person combat title’ will be playable at the event.
We’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. Respawn is of course the developer behind Titanfall, Apex Legends and the upcoming Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Their Oculus exclusive was first announced back in 2017 and we’ve been asking after it ever since. Further details aren’t yet known but we’ll keep you posted.
Finally, Oculus confirmed the first batch of sessions and panels for this year’s show. Oculus for Business will be taking to the stage to talk about the logistics of running enterprise VR. A group of panelists will also discuss the secrets to success on the Oculus Store. Facebook Tech Comms Manager Lisa Brown Jaloza will also talk about ‘How AR + VR Connects Us to the World’. More sessions will be announced over the coming months.
Oculus Connect 6 runs on September 25 + 26. On top of these sessions you can expect the traditional opening keynote from top Facebook execs and the return of John Carmack’s app reviews. We’ll of course be at the show to bring you all of the latest headlines.
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One growing avenue of virtual reality (VR) entertainment is live performances. That’s not live coverage of sporting events which have been around for a little while, we’re talking about watching a musician perform live. This can come in several forms from 360-degree video to interactive virtual environments such as those being developed by RedPill VR at its Social Virtual Reality (SVR) platform or TheWaveVR. Another company in the field is VRJam, which has just announced a new crowdfunding campaign looking to raise £250,000 GBP.
Unlike a Kickstarter where you’ll hopefully get a product by backing the project, VRJam’s initiative is an investment campaign offering futurist fans and technology lovers a chance to be part of a social and digital solution. Designed in consultation with Google, the technology enables content creators to project live performances into a fully realised animated world.
If VRJam hits the funding goal the money will be used towards building interactive virtual environments for artists and fans. Supporters can invest a minimum of £200 / $250 USD and will receive a range of benefits and privileges including:
“We’re offering people a unique opportunity to join a community of people who are passionate about future technology. It’s an exciting time with the launch of 5G, as more people around the globe will be able to connect and interact in a way unimagined,” said Sam Speaight, CEO and Founder of VRJAM in a statement. Our goal for the next 5 years is to use our immersive technology for good and help change the world for the better. Remote learning is just one example of how this can be achieved.”
VRJam has ambitious goals for the next 5 years which investors can help support, like using immersive technology to address current social issues and injustices. When it comes to performers VRJam is committed to ensuring all content creators and artists are paid fairly for their work.
The app isn’t available just yet with plans to launch the platform on 31st December 2019. It’ll support a wide range of headsets including Google Daydream, Oculus Rift, Oculus Go, Samsung Gear VR and HTC Vive. For further updates on the platform, keep reading VRFocus.
Landfall developer Force Field Entertainment is back with its latest Oculus Quest exclusive, Time Stall.
Time Stall cropped up on Quest’s coming soon section today, but the trailer below confirms it’s coming August 15. Oculus Studios is publishing the game so don’t expect to see it anywhere else.
It’s a puzzle game in which humanity has abandoned Earth and taken to the stars in a luxury escape craft (crowdfunded of course). The ship’s crew is mostly comprised of robots, but you take on the role of a human that looks after the vessel’s safety.
To do this, you use a safe protocol named Time Stall. It’s pretty much what it says on the tin; it temporarily freezes time so that you can rearrange hazards and avoid disaster. Judging by trailer, you can expect to solve catastrophes in the ship’s kitchen, accidentally head to outer space and more. Think Wall-E meets… some superhero that can pause time.
It sounds a little like a sci-fi take on Just In Time Inc, a likeable puzzle game that cast you as client’s bodyguard. Time Stall looks a little more physics-based, though.
For now the game’s only confirmed for Oculus Quest. We wouldn’t be surprised to see it carry over to Oculus Rift at some point, but no confirmation on that for now. There’s no listed price, either.
Force Field is actually behind a good number of experiences on Quest now. A few weeks back it launched a port of its Anne Frank’s House VR experience and it also developed the National Geographic Explore VR experience for Quest launch.
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Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published (usually) every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. For today, we want to know what you think everyone’s first VR experience should be.
Alright, full disclosure: I totally forgot to post a Community Download this past Monday. And then I forgot again on Tuesday. I don’t really have an excuse. But we’re back finally today!
SIGGRAPH is going on this week and I considered making the topic focused on that, but instead I decided to go a bit more broad. If you’re a big fan of VR then chances are you can trace that all back to a singular moment. Maybe it was watching Star Trek as a kid and seeing the Holodeck or maybe there was a movie or anime or game that really sold you on the idea. Or maybe you just tried on a VR headset for the first time and that initial, first VR experience just totally blew you away.
Whatever the case may be, something turned you into a true believer of VR technology and if you’re anything like me, you love introducing it to people for the first time to spread the wonder. As a result, you probably have a short list of must-try first VR experiences, apps, videos, or games that you always show someone whether that be on your Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Go, Oculus Quest, or even a higher-end wired device like a Rift, Vive, Index, or PSVR.
So when that time arises: What should be someone’s first VR experience? Which games, apps, or experiences are crucial for newcomers to try?
Let us know your picks down in the comments below! Our favorite answers will be featured in this Friday’s weekly VRecap news show.
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There are a number of ways you can view your desktop PC in virtual reality (VR), with apps like Bigscreen Beta or Virtual Desktop. But what if you run Linux software? Today, global consultancy Collabora which specialises in delivering the benefits of Open Source software for commercial use has announced xrdesktop, a project enabling interaction with popular Linux desktop environments, such as GNOME and KDE, in VR.
Sponsored by Valve, the virtual desktop project integrates into existing Linux desktop environments, so that window managers are aware of VR connectivity, able to use VR runtimes to render desktop windows in 3D space. This gives users the ability to manipulate them with motion controllers like the Valve Index units shown as well as generating mouse and keyboard input.
Several interaction methods have been created to aid window manipulation, from simple grab mechanics by holding the trigger where they can also be rotated freely in 3D space to altering scale by using the analogue sticks. These techniques can be used singularly or with both controllers at the same time. If the windows get a little too muddled the option to reset is always available.
“For our initial release, we focused on integration in the most popular Linux desktops, GNOME and KDE, but xrdesktop is designed to be integrated into any desktop. This can be done with Compiz-like plugins as for KWin or patches on the compositor in the case of GNOME Shell,” said Collabora’s Lubosz Sarnecki in a blog posting. “This integration of xrdesktop into the window managers enables mirroring existing windows into XR and to synthesize desktop input through XR actions. xrdesktop can be run as a dedicated scene application, but it also features an overlay mode, where desktop windows are overlaid over any other running VR application.”
The launch today is just the start of a long list of updates in xrdesktop’s roadmap. Further improvements include OpenXR support, improved Scene app performance and UX when running as overlays, plus a 3D widget library. For further info including downloading xrdesktop head to the gitlab page here. VRFocus will keep you updated on further improvements.
Facebook’s AR/VR research division is developing a non-invasive brain scanning technology as a potential input device for its future consumer AR glasses.
While Facebook hasn’t yet announced AR glasses as a specific product, the company has confirmed it is developing them. A Business Insider report early this year quoted a source as stating that it “resembled traditional glasses”.
In today’s blog post, Facebook describes its end goal as “the ultimate form factor of a pair of stylish, augmented reality (AR) glasses.”
A major challenge in shipping consumer AR glasses however is the input method. A traditional controller, such as those used with many VR devices, would not be practical for glasses you want to wear out and about on the street. Similarly, while voice recognition is now a mature technology, people tend to not want to give potentially private commands out loud in front of strangers.
A brain computer interface (BCI) could allow users to control their glasses, and even type words and sentences, by just thinking.
“A decade from now, the ability to type directly from our brains may be accepted as a given,” states the blog post. “Not long ago, it sounded like science fiction. Now, it feels within plausible reach.”
Almost all high-quality BCI options today are invasive, meaning they place electrodes against the brain which require surgery for insertion. Elon Musk’s startup Neuralink is planning to use a robot to insert tiny “threads” into the brain, but this is obviously still impractical for a mass market product.
Facebook’s BCI program is directed by Mark Chevillet. Chevillet holds a PhD in Neuroscience and was previously a professor and program manager at Johns Hopkins University’s neuroscience department. There he worked on a project to build a communications device for people who could not speak.
Before figuring out how to read thoughts non-invasively, Chevillet needed to figure out whether it was possible in the first place. He reached out to Edward Chang, a colleague and neurosurgeon at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
To prove that the concept is possible, the UCSF researchers used invasive ECoG (electrocorticography) and were able to get up to 76% accuracy in detecting utterances the subjects were thinking of.
Previous research projects have achieved this with offline processing, but this result was achieved in real time. The system can currently only detect a limited vocabulary of words and phrases, but the researchers are working to improve that.
To achieve similar results without brain implants, new technologies and breakthroughs will be required. Facebook has partnered with Washington University and Johns Hopkins to research near-infrared light imaging.
If you’ve ever shined a red light against your finger you’ll notice that the light passes through. The researchers are using this concept to sense “shifts in oxygen levels within the brain” caused by neurons consuming oxygen when active- an indirect measure of brain activity.
This is similar to the techniques used by Mary Lou Jepsen’s startup Openwater. Jepsen worked at Facebook in 2015 as an executive for Oculus, researching advanced technologies for AR and VR. While Openwater’s goal is to replace MRI and CT scanners, Facebook is clear that it has no interest in developing medical devices.
The current prototype is described as “bulky, slow, and unreliable”, but Facebook hopes that if it can one day recognize even a handful of phrases like “home” “select” and “delete” it could, combined with other technologies like eye tracking, be a compelling input solution for its future AR glasses.
If near infrared imaging of blood oxygenation isn’t sufficient, Facebook is looking into direct imaging of blood vessels and even neurons:
“Thanks to the commercialization of optical technologies for smartphones and LiDAR, we think we can create small, convenient BCI devices that will let us measure neural signals closer to those we currently record with implanted electrodes — and maybe even decode silent speech one day.
It could take a decade, but we think we can close the gap.”
Of course, the idea of Facebook literally reading your brain may bring major privacy concerns to mind. Such data could be used for targeted advertising with unprecedented fidelity, or more nefarious purposes.
“We’ve already learned a lot,” says Chevillet. “For example, early in the program, we asked our collaborators to share some de-identified electrode recordings from epilepsy patients with us so we could validate how their software worked. While this is very common in the research community and is now required by some journals, as an added layer of protection, we no longer have electrode data delivered to us at all.”
He goes on:
“We can’t anticipate or solve all of the ethical issues associated with this technology on our own,” Chevillet says. “What we can do is recognize when the technology has advanced beyond what people know is possible, and make sure that information is delivered back to the community. Neuroethical design is one of our program’s key pillars — we want to be transparent about what we’re working on so that people can tell us their concerns about this technology.”
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BigScreen VR is a free application with the power to foster connection and social connection.
It’s fascinating to me that when the topic of VR is brought into conversation, oftentimes the first (and sometimes, only) thing that speculators want to address about the technology is that it’s fundamentally ‘isolating’.
Other times, speculators simply fail to recognize that VR hosts anything of meaningful social value.
Before I begin unpacking why I disagree on both counts, I’d like to mention that I was a gamer before I discovered VR. And while the term ‘gamer’ is loaded with competing social and antisocial connotations, in my own personal usage the term means that I’ve spent the better part of 25 years alone, silently boxed in a room, sat in front of a panel screen with a controller in my hands.
If VR is inherently isolating and lacks social value, then BigScreen VR is a discreet exception to the rule. As a quick rundown, BigScreen is an app (available for free on SteamVR, Windows MR, and across every Oculus headset) that places up to 12 users into designated ‘rooms’ resembling familiar locales like a movie theater or a penthouse apartment where they can chat, create 3D artwork, take photos, and livestream their own media content to massive virtual displays.
It may not sound like much to somebody who’s never experienced it, but there’s an intense feeling of liveliness that comes about when I sit next to, wave to, and bump fists with somebody who’s sitting across the planet in Australia while I curl up in my humble bedroom in Oregon.
BigScreen champions social VR media consumption by focusing its ongoing development on providing the best virtual television screen available. Between the app’s inclusion of dynamic lighting effects that bounce off of the walls and furniture to its notably smooth optimization for content streaming between headsets, the final product delivered by BigScreen is convincing enough to feel as though it’s a screening space that does exist.
When I first explored the app back in late 2017, I found that 8-bit and 16-bit content was easy to stream from my computer while running my Oculus Rift CV1. Likewise, lower resolution on the video feed meant increased visibility inside of the headset. I scanned through my Steam backlog for games I’d been avoiding and picked out Undertale, a highly personal, overtly emotional singleplayer roleplaying game that often questions the player’s sense of choice and consequence throughout.
Whereas I would have felt isolated in my own mind as I burned through the nine-hour campaign while staring at my computer screen—instead, BigScreen empowered the narrative-driven title to bloom into a collaborative experience from which I and three former strangers bonded over the course of a few memorable nights. We laughed, we cried, and yes, we all reeled over that one jump scare near the end. Whenever I got stuck, one of my guests would search up a walkthrough and dictate the page’s contents while I continued scrambling through the game.
I didn’t stop at Undertale.
Instead, I leveraged BigScreen as an excuse to play Chrono Trigger, Hyper Light Drifter, and emulated versions of NES classics like The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. 3 that I’d only dust off occasionally in modern times. I hosted remote LAN parties with other players of Stardew Valley, Nidhogg, and Brawlhalla. I also discovered and streamed a few heavily stylized but visually simple games including The Stanley Parable, Firewatch, and Inside.
To my surprise, each time I hosted a gaming room, it’d quickly hit capacity and then continue to retain a high visitor count. Every so often, people would join having already played the game in question, ready to hold a conversation about their own personal experiences with it. But more often than not, visitors came in to keep me company as I played simply because they didn’t feel like haphazardly scrolling through the half-finished movies and television show episodes commonly hosted in other BigScreen rooms.
Sure, donning a VR headset took me away from everything happening in my physical vicinity. That’s how VR isolates in the most literal sense.
But the intended way to enjoy any of those titles, without a VR headset strapped to my face, would have involved me slinking into the corner of my bedroom and staring at a box. No conversation, no laughter. No banter to share around. Nobody sitting on my left or right sides, lying down on their couch and watching the virtual 100-foot screen intently. Instead I’d be hunched over, quiet, listening to the fan blow on the back of my head as I stared at the very screen I’m staring at now.
At the same time, BigScreen VR allowed those simpler games to function as social catalysts, and I might not have connected so easily with others had I not made traditional gaming the focal point of my socializing efforts.
Nevertheless, when speculators associate VR with isolation, remember that ‘isolating’ technologies have existed for a very long time. Multiple forms of media that society has embraced for decades can certainly lead to isolation. Traditional, single player gaming is a potent example of isolating technology in that very sense.
But social VR apps like BigScreen do provide a clear alternative to playing video games alone. And for some, that’s the sweet spot for social connection that only VR can enable.
What are some of your favorite social VR memories? Let us know down in the comments below!
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Unity version 2019.2 releases today. Among the changes, the HDRP now supports virtual reality and a new option could make Oculus Quest apps perform better.
In 2018 Unity introduced Scriptable Render Pipelines, allowing developers to have greater control over the engine’s rendering. Two premade render pipelines are included with the engine, the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) and Lightweight Render Pipeline (LWRP).
The HDRP is focused on high visual fidelity over performance, intended for gaming PCs and high-end consoles. This would make it unsuitable for platforms like the Oculus Quest and PlayStation VR, but useful for developers pushing the bounds on graphics on the PC. This could include custom enterprise applications intended for realism, such as architecture visualization.
The update also adds a new Low Overhead Mode to the Oculus Android integration. It is described as increasing performance by doing “less driver validation”. This could allow VR developers to squeeze out extra performance on Oculus Quest, Oculus Go, and the Samsung Gear VR.
Additionally, Unity’s AR Foundation now has support for face-tracking, 2D image-tracking, 3D object-tracking, and environment probe. It also adds support for the new features introduced with ARKit 3 including motion capture, people occlusion, multiple face tracking, and collaborative sessions.
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Social desktop and video sharing VR platform BigScreen is “hopefully coming soon” to PlayStation VR. That’s according to a Tweet from the VR startup.
The release timeline stated is “perhaps late 2019 or early 2020“. BigScreen is a free social VR app which allows groups of friends, or strangers, to stream their desktop and hang out.
The app currently supports all major VR platforms. The app originally launched back in April 2016 for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, just one month after each released. It features cross platform networking, so users can hang out with their friends regardless of which VR headset they own.
In March 2018 the company made its first step to being on Facebook’s mobile VR platform. It launched an Alpha test on the Samsung Gear VR in preparation for the Oculus Go’s launch in May. Thanks to this testing, the app was ready in time to be a launch title for Go.
This year, BigScreen was also a launch title for the Oculus Quest room scale standalone headset.
A major update for the platform released earlier this month, BigScreen TV. This allows users to watch content from a range of 50 live channels, including Red Bull TV, NBC, Pluto Movies, and Bloomberg.
It’s unclear whether BigScreen on PSVR will offer the ability to stream your desktop like on other platforms. Sony may restrict this functionality such that PlayStation users would just be viewers, not streamers. Nonetheless, being able to hang out and watch movies with your PSVR-owning friends (or friends on other headsets) will be a welcomed feature in itself.
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There are a number of videogame engines designed to help facilitate virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) development. While you may not really pay attention (or care) about some of the logos at the start of titles, one that crops up quite a lot is Unity. Today, Unity Technologies has announced the launch of Unity 2019.2, with the latest iteration including a few tasty features for immersive content developers.
As with any release of this kind Unity 2019.2 features a massive selection of updates and improvements, more than 170 in fact. While many none specific VR/AR enhancements will help immersive developers, there are several designed just for them. These include VR support for Unity’s High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP). Currently limited to Windows 10 and Direct3D11 devices, developers will be able to improve the visual capabilities of their projects on high-end hardware.
When it comes to supporting AR developers Unity released a dedicated solution called AR Foundation. It’s now received a slew of improvements to support face-tracking, 2D image-tracking, 3D object-tracking, environment probes and more for ARKit and ARCore.
AR Foundation Updates:
There’s plenty to get stuck into and don’t forget Unity 2019 is free to download. As for what to expect in Unity 2019.3? Well, that’s expected to arrive later this summer in beta, with a full release scheduled for fall 2019. For those that can’t wait there’s always the alpha version. For further Unity updates, keep reading VRFocus.
Having confirmed virtual reality (VR) support for artistic adventure Concrete Genie in March, developer Pixelopus and publisher San Mateo Studio went on to reveal the PlayStation VR compatibility would be on two specific modes. Today, the teams have revealed that Concrete Genie will be arriving in October.
A PlayStation 4 exclusive, Concrete Genie puts you in the shoes of protagonist Ash on his personal journey to paint his seaside hometown of Denska back to life. Bullies steal his notebook which he doodles in, ripping out the pages and scattering them throughout the streets. Whilst looking for them Ash finds a special paintbrush which can bring his creations to life. Using Ash’s magic brush you need to explore the grim and desolate-looking town, adding colour and life to the darkest corners.
The two VR compatible modes are ‘VR Experience’ and ‘Free Paint’. Supporting only PlayStation Move, the first mode is a story campaign heading beneath Denska’s ominous lighthouse. This needs to be completed before ‘Free Paint’ can be unlocked, allowing you to get creative in four unique Denska locations.
On PlayStation Blog, Pixelopus Creative Director Dominic Robilliard that a Photo Mode will be available at launch offering a timelapse style ‘Replay’ ability which allows creators to show how they built their artistic compositions. There will also be a couple of version with pre-order incentives attached. The standard edition will retail for $29.99 USD/€29.99 EUR with the Digital Deluxe coming in at $39.99/€39.99, with lots of goodies: “You get a Digital Artbook featuring a ton of stunning development images created by Art Director Jeff Sangalli and our amazing art team, a complete soundtrack from the game composed by Sam Marshall, a Pond Design Pack to expand your design toolset, and an additional Dynamic Theme featuring the Lighthouse location from the game.”
If you pre-order either you’ll get an Avatar set as well as a special Dynamic Theme featuring a rooftop scene from Denska.
Concrete Genie will launch in North America on 8th August while the European version will arrive a day later on Friday 9th. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Concrete Genie, reporting back with any further updates.
One of Sony’s more intriguing PS4 exclusives releases soon, and it’s bringing PSVR support with it.
Concrete Genie from PixelOpus is releasing on October 9th. The main bulk of the game is played on a flat screen, but it also comes with two free PSVR modes. Check out the trailer for the game below.
Concrete Genie is a game about artistry and bullying. You play as a teenager named Ash that suffers from bullying. Ash vents his frustrations with art, which one day leads him to a lighthouse in which he discovers a magical paintbrush. In the main game, you’ll use this to paint on walls and bring your creations to life. These paintings, called Genies, will assist you in getting around town, avoiding bullies and cleaning up your polluted surroundings.
PSVR owners will get an additional campaign to play through too. You wield PlayStation Move controllers, helping a Genie named Splotch on a new quest. Once you’ve finished that mode you’ll also unlock a free paint mode to use around the game world. Think of it like Tilt Brush with an adventure mode.
We went hands-on with the game’s PSVR support earlier in the year. We found the creative freedom to be pretty liberating, but it remains to be seen exactly how much VR content will be on offer.
Concrete Genie can be pre-ordered now from the PlayStation Store. A standard version of the game costs $29.99 while the Digital Deluxe Edition packs a soundtrack, art book, design pack and a PS4 theme. Looking forward to playing the game? Let us know in the comments below!
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VR is getting its own Infinity War, but not the one you’re hoping for.
Dragonfly and Reality MagiQ are dropping the cheekily-titled Special Force VR: Infinity War next week on August 8. It doesn’t have any Iron Men or magical hammers, but it does have a bunch of buzz cut soldiers shooting their way through urban environments.
This is a multiplayer game aiming for a slice of the VR esports scene. Pretty standard stuff; run around environments with pistols and rifles, find the enemy and then shoot them before they shoot you. It offers eight-player matches combining death match, team death match and demolition game modes. Check it out in the trailer below.
And that’s about all there is to say right now. Based on the trailer, it’s hard to deny that Special Forces looks solid, but it also looks about as generic as games can get. Hopefully there’s something here to give it more of a spark than we’re seeing right now.
Special Force will release on Steam in Early Access with support for Rift, Index, Vive and Windows VR headsets. The game’s also set to be released on PSVR later this year. No word on a possible Oculus Quest version just yet.
As to whether Special Force could take on the likes of Onward and Pavlov? The jury’s still out on that. We’ll try to bring you an answer over the next week. That is if the game even makes it to market before Disney asks for a change in name.
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Nintendo released its Lobo VR Kit for portable console Switch back in April, following that up with virtual reality (VR) compatibility for Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This week the company has announced another for that list Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, releasing a 1.3.0 update in Japan.
The update doesn’t allow for full VR support throughout the videogame like Breath of the Wild, instead, it takes a leaf out of Mario Odyssey offering a curated selection. The VR mode provides four courses to play on, The Treasure at Mushroom Ruins, Walleye Tumble Temple, Briny Bowl Swimming Hole, and Mine Cart Tunnel Throwdown with the Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 04: VR Kit.
The announcement was made by way to Nintendo Japan’s YouTube channel, with a new trailer showcasing what to expect. At present, there’s been no confirmation regarding western availability. Additionally, for Japanese Switch Online subscribers, Nintendo will be offering a free trial period where they can access the entire videogame between 1st – 11th August.
Hopefully, this will be the start of many more VR updates to Nintendo’s Switch lineup, enticing more players to try the VR kit. The recently announced Nintendo Switch Lite, on the other hand, won’t support Labo in any way due to its all in one design and a smaller 5.5-inch touchscreen.
While the Labo VR Kit design is fairly basic, harking back to the look of Google Cardboard, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto recently addressed concerns the company was behind when it came to the immersive tech. During a Q&A with shareholders at Nintendo’s 79th Annual Meeting the veteran designer said: “We have actually been conducting practical research on these technologies from the very beginning.”
The Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 04: VR Kit is available as a full kit retailing for $79.99 USD / £69.99 GBP featuring six buildable parts, the VR Goggles, Toy-Con Blaster, Toy-Con Elephant, Toy-Con Camera, Toy-Con Wind Pedal and Toy-Con Bird. There’s also a cheaper kit featuring the VR Goggles and Toy-Con Blaster for £40. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Nintendo and its Labo VR kit, reporting back with all the latest VR updates and announcements.
ILMxLAB is teasing Star Wars: Vader Immortal Episode 2 with some new concept art.
The art, tweeted out yesterday, features a mysterious character called the Black Bishop. We first saw this hooded figure in Episode 1, but ILMxLAB says we’ll learn more about him in the next instalment. So far we’ve seen the first episode of the series explore the planet of Mustafar, where Vader himself was ‘born’. More importantly, though, we learned about the planet’s native species and the secrets it’s hiding that send Vader on a dangerous mission.
Learn more about the mysterious Black Bishop in #VaderImmortal: Episode II. Concept art by @ILMVFX‘s Stephen Todd. #StarWars pic.twitter.com/zNhfJ0waBz
— ILMxLAB (@ILMxLAB) July 29, 2019
Comic-Con attendees got a sneak peek at the latest from Vader Immortal earlier this month but there’s still a lot to learn. We also know that Episode 2 will introduce Force powers for players. We’re looking forward to seeing how the developer combines those with the groundwork its already laid for lightsaber combat.
We loved the first episode of Vader Immortal. “It’s very much the first part of a larger series, one that leaves you wanting more of each of its individual elements,” we said in our review. “But it’s a significant step forward for VR, bolstering a line-up of experiences that emphasize audience emotions over playable technicalities. The pay-off, it successfully argues, is richer than any immersive Star Wars experience before it. ILMxLAB once labelled this as ‘story-living’ over storytelling. A touch hyperbolic, perhaps, but I’m inclined to agree.”
Sadly we still don’t have a date for Episode 2’s release. The first is already available on Oculus Rift and Quest, and we’re hoping the second might hit before the end of the year. Perhaps we’ll get our answer at Oculus Connect 6 in September?
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This week we went out to see a UK company called Scape.
The London-based startup is doing some pretty interesting things in the AR space. They have their own software development kit, the Scape SDK which goes about things in a bit of a different way to Google’s ARCore and Apple’s ARKit.
Basically those platforms use GPS information to find where you are in the world whereas Scape accesses a massive database of visual cues. The company spent a year or so travelling to different cities around the world and essentially mapping them out again in digital form using videos. So they ave a sort of library of reference points across various cities in the world that your phone’s camera can identify and use to work out where it is.
Scape says this is a much more accurate, flexible and dependable way of creating geo-located AR content. Today the company is bringing its SDK out of beta so that developers can start getting to grips with it.
I played a pretty interesting multiplayer AR shooter game using the tech called Holoscape and it does look like it’s on to something. It was a little rough around the edges but had some really amazing features. Each player has their own drone that follows them around and you could place down turrets and shields that others could see.
What followed was essentially an AR game of laser tag played out in the middle of a London street. In one game type myself and two other players worked together to defend a beacon. You needed to strategically assign areas you’d each cover and lend assistance with power-ups at your friend’s request.
It wasn’t entirely perfect – there were a few jumps in location and there’s no occlusion support or anything like that. But it was impressive how reliable and tight Scape’s tech seems to be. The company has ambitions to grow this out as a multiplayer AR game that spans the globe, like a more action-packed version of Pokemon Go.
Obviously it doesn’t cover as much ground as Google or Apple can but the areas Scape does have are richly littered with information. Really, though, the smartphone is just a testing ground for what the company wants to work towards. Scape obviously sees its work applying to incoming AR headsets but also other areas like self-driving cars.
Today Scape is also launching a tester app called Pixscape. You can get it on both iOS and Android, It will probably be a while before we’re all using Scape-built apps but this was a promising first look.
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The next Nintendo Switch game to be getting Labo VR support is none other than Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker.
Nintendo Japan confirmed the news via the below trailer. A free update today (in Japan at least) adds a handful of levels that you can play with the Switch’s Cardboard headset. From what we can tell, these are existing levels brought into VR rather than all-new content but we might be wrong about that.
In Captain Toad you navigate worlds avoiding enemies, gathering coins and gems. The Labo VR levels seem to keep that gameplay largely intact, although it looks like there’s also an on-rails first-person shooter segment.
Now, historically speaking, Nintendo’s VR updates for existing Switch games have been pretty bad. Super Mario Odyssey was under cooked, Zelda was awkward and Super Smash Bros was pretty horrific. But Captain Toad actually makes a fair bit of sense for a headset of this type. It’s got adorable diorama-sized worlds just like Astro Bot and its puzzle-based gameplay seems perfect for VR.
Granted it’s often Labo VR’s technical limitations that hold experiences back. Switch’s 720p screen only allows for blurry 3D images and the three degrees of freedom (3DOF) tracking often feels limited. The minigames that come bundled with the hardware itself are much better reasons to own Labo VR. Even then, though, it’s only really worth it as a means of introducing VR to kids.
Recently we discovered that Nintendo’s new Switch, the Switch Lite, won’t support Labo VR. The redesigned device isn’t replacing the original, though.
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Now that we’ve launched our weekly VR news recap video series, VRecap, we’re going to get back to doing weekly game giveaways here at UploadVR! This week it’s The Wizards: Enhanced Edition and Sairento VR, btoh on PSVR.
If you watch VRecap each week on Friday then you can jump into the giveaway pool early. Plus, not every giveaway is going to be posted here on the site as well.
For those unaware, The Wizards: Enhanced Edition on PSVR (read our review) is a first-person action adventure game in which you take on the role of a powerful wizard that can shoot fireballs, summon lightning, and slay dangerous beasts. It’s a linear game about fighting monsters and solving puzzles, but packs a punch and is due for a follow-up coming very soon.
Sairento VR (PC VR version review) is another action adventure VR game, but this time it’s all about fulfilling the fantasy of becoming a cyberpunk ninja that wields katanas, guns, and the ability to flip and jump in slow-motion. You can even run on walls. It’s got one of the most active and intense movement systems of any VR game we’ve played. The PSVR version is shaping up well.
Winners will be randomly selected. We have 10 total copies to give out: 2 physical copies of each and 3 download codes for each. The publisher is going to send out the physical copies and we’ll send you download codes directly via email.
GIVEAWAY: Win A Free Copy Of Sairento VR or The Wizards!
All you have to do is enter at the form above or click this link right here. There are lots of ways to enter to increase your chances of winning.
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