August 2022

August 31, 2022 ,

An update rolling out to iPhones changes the name of the Oculus mobile app to Meta Quest.

The update represents one of the last pieces of the former Oculus brand to take the new Meta name. The process started almost immediately after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the branding change last October, but it has taken almost a year to complete. Over that time we’ve seen the headset itself go from Oculus Quest 2 to Meta Quest 2, a new logo slapped on both the front of the device and at startup, and the account required to log into the device changing to Meta accounts.

The change comes ahead of the October release of a high-end VR headset we expect to be called Meta Quest Pro. We’re expecting details soon on Meta’s upcoming Connect event which is likely to detail next steps in software and hardware from the company, though technical consultant John Carmack already confirmed he’ll be hosting his unscripted talk inside VR this year.

As of this writing the original Oculus branding from Facebook Technologies is still listed on the Google Play store for Android devices.



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August 28, 2022 ,

One of Facebook’s leading technical guides in virtual reality, John Carmack, confirmed he’s still spending one day per week consulting for Meta.

Originally known for his early work on 3D games like the original Doom and Quake, Carmack helped build some of the earliest excitement for the Oculus system before he officially joined the startup and helped guide it as “CTO”. He’s been a huge proponent of mobile VR since the beginning and a driving force behind the work optimizing the Android operating system and smartphone-class processors or VR. In recent years, as Facebook and now Meta’s Quest pulled together great games around a compelling standalone feature set, his interest moved to developing true artificial general intelligence.

The update comes as Carmack took $20 million in investment for a company he calls Keen Technologies that’s focused around his AI effort. The update also comes ahead of details surrounding Meta’s next Connect event which typically includes a well-watched talk from Carmack chock full of insights into behind-the-scenes VR platform strategy. At last year’s event, for example, he pointed to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s effort to “build the metaverse” as a route that could see them “spend years and thousands of people possibly and wind up with things that didn’t contribute all that much to the ways that people are actually using the devices and hardware today.”

While we wait to see if Carmack will be part of Meta’s latest Connect update, he wrote on Twitter recently “I am continuing as a consultant with Meta on VR matters, devoting about 20% of my time there” and clarified in a different thread about focusing and discipline that “I have been officially ‘one day a week’ at Meta for a couple years now, but I still wound up checking in on groups and email every day, which was often a distraction when I should be concentrating on AI. Now I put my Meta laptop in the garage at the end of my VR day.”



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August 24, 2022 ,

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2 will bring new features, weapons and locations — here are all the details and some accompanying gameplay.

We recently sat in on a hands-off preview event for Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2, where developers Skydance Interactive gave us a look at some brand new gameplay and detailed some new features coming in Retribution. You can check out snippets of gameplay in the video above, provided by Skydance Interactive, which runs through footage of everything we mention below.

Retribution will feature new locations, one of which is Sonny’s Pawn Shop. Operated by the “fast-talking wheeler and dealer” Sonny, here you’ll be able to update your mission tasks and trade for supplies using a sliding door under the counter. Trading with Sonny will open up options for crafting and collecting survival gear. In fact, Skydance told us that crafting is “greatly expanded” in Retribution, and now includes “more recipes, materials and even a new set of crafting tables.”

That’s probably a good thing, because you’re going to need all the gear you can scavenge if you want to survive on the streets at night. That’s right, Chapter 2 will allow the tourist to travel around the city at night, which comes with increased risk and more walkers.

While operating at night, you’ll be able to use some new tools to guide your way, including a flashlight and flares. However, walkers are sensitive to light — use your flashlight too much and you’ll draw lots of attention. That being said, you might want to use flares to do just that — throw one in the opposite direction and you might be able to draw some walkers away.

Chapter 2 will also feature a brand new area of New Orleans — the famous French Quarter. Tower guards will be roaming the streets, so you’ll have to be vigilant, but you might find some new items lying around. One of these is the new laser sight, which can be attached to almost any firearm for better headshots and accuracy.

There’s also some new weapons, such as the submachine gun and, of course, the chainsaw. The Retribution announcement trailer gave us a short peek at the chainsaw in action, and after seeing more, it definitely looks like it’ll be a lot of fun.

To get it started, you’ll have to rip the motor cord and hold on with both hands while wielding. The controllers will rumble in sync with the motor, and haptic feedback will make it feel like you’re getting stuck when you slice through a walker, giving some extra realism.

The footage closes out with a short but terrifying glimpse at The Axeman, the villain teased in previous instalments and, presumably, one of Chapter 2’s main antagonists.

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners: Chapter 2 – Retribution is set for release later this year on PC VR, Quest 2 and the original PSVR headset, with a PSVR 2 release to follow in 2023.

What do you think of this new Chapter 2 footage? Let us know in the comments below



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August 23, 2022 ,

Meta headsets no longer require a Facebook account starting today.

The update “will roll out globally on a gradual basis, so if you don’t have the option to create a Meta account and Meta Horizon profile right away, you’ll get the update soon”, an Oculus blog post explains.

The new Meta accounts can be used to set up new headsets or on existing headsets instead of Facebook. You’ll still be able to link your Facebook account to your Meta account to message and call Facebook friends from inside VR, but this is no longer required. If your Facebook is currently linked to your Quest, you can unlink it when you set up your Meta account.

Your Meta account itself is just for signing in, it isn’t a social media profile. But you still need to set up a ‘Meta Horizon’ VR social profile, formerly known as your Oculus profile. As with current Oculus profiles (or other platforms like Xbox Live and PlayStation Network) you have a username, profile name, profile photo, and avatar.

Your Meta Horizon profile is visible to others in VR apps and when searching for you in the Oculus app or Quest social menu, but you can customize who exactly can see your activity status, showing whether you’re online and the app you’re currently using.

These changes come less than two years after the company imposed the requirement of a Facebook account in good standing for its headsets, starting with the release of Quest 2 in October 2020. Tying the use of a hardware device to the standing of a social media profile was a widely unpopular decision, and even left some users with a paperweight.

At Connect 2021 in October, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced: “frankly as we’ve heard your feedback more broadly, we’re working on making it so you can login into Quest with an account other than your personal Facebook account”. Ten months later, Meta is delivering on that promise.



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August 23, 2022 ,

With its latest round of fundraising cross-platform avatar company Ready Player Me will build new tools for “helping developers generate revenue with avatars”.

The company announced this week it gained the support of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) — the same early investor that helped jumpstart Oculus — with its latest $56 million Series B funding round which includes participation from Roblox co-founder David Baszucki and Twitch co-founder Justin Kan, among others.

Ready Player Me will “build avatar content creation tools to enable developers, brands and individual artists to create and sell avatar customization assets that work across thousands of virtual worlds,” wrote Ready Player Me Co-Founder and CEO Timmu Tõke in an emailed answer to UploadVR. “We’re working on the tooling for that now, expect to hear more in the coming months.”

Ready Player Me employs around 5o people and expects to double in size this year as its cross-platform avatar system evolves, according to the company. Along with partnerships with fashion brands like Adidas and New Balance, the company says its avatar system is supported across more than 3,000 apps including VRChat and Spatial.

We checked in with the company’s platform early last year as we took its selfie-based creator system for a test drive. You can check that out in the video below.

The company’s early work was with avatar systems for enterprise customers but “over the years, Ready Player Me aggregated a proprietary database of 20,000+ face scans captured with the company’s own hardware-based 3D scanners” and “these scans enabled Ready Player Me to build a deep-learning solution that can accurately predict and render realistic faces from a single 2D photo,” according to Ready Player Me.

“Because all of the developers are using our avatar standard, it’s easy for us to make the avatars and avatar assets travel across all of the RPM-compatible worlds,” Tõke told us over email. “We offer developers SDK’s for Unreal, Unity and web and serve avatars in many technical specifications — different animation rigs, file formats, avatar quality levels, etc.”

The company also aims to “improve avatar diversity with body types, granular clothing customization, more accurate face shape prediction, stylization and more” with its most recent funding.

We’ll be curious to see how the company develops its platform over the coming year as new headsets are expected from companies like Meta, Sony, and Apple likely to accompany new advances in avatars. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, for example, has already teased upgraded visuals coming to its avatars system as both Rec Room and Meta have started exploring paid avatar add-ons.

“We’re not aiming to be the only avatar in the metaverse,” Tõke wrote. “The goal is to help any avatars to travel across virtual worlds.”



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August 22, 2022 ,

Is high-dynamic range (HDR) the key to next generation VR displays? Hands-on time with Meta’s latest demo and an interview with the head of display systems research suggests it’ll be pretty key. Read on for details.

At the recent SIGGRAPH conference in Vancouver David Heaney and I went eyes-in with Starburst, Meta’s ultra-high dynamic range VR display concept. Meta first showed the technology to Tested earlier this year as the company’s researchers outlined their goal of passing what they call the “Visual Turing Test“. For those catching up, the test refers to the idea of one day making a VR headset so advanced that people wearing it can’t tell “whether what they’re looking at is real or virtual.” Passing the test means advancing VR headset technologies along several fronts including resolution, field of view, dynamic range, and variable focus, and with Starburst showing what an ultra-bright VR headset could feel like, Meta executives are getting data that can inform them about where to target the specifications of upcoming consumer or professional-grade VR headsets.

We know Sony’s upcoming PSVR 2 headset uses an HDR display and there’s been research at companies like Valve investigating displays that were so bright you’d feel the heat of a sunny day on your cheeks — so bright in fact that one researcher called their testing equipment a “fire hazard” back in 2015. There’s actually a lot of range in exactly what “high-dynamic range” might mean. For example, the brightness of light we encounter outside coming directly from our great fusion reactor in the sky measures in the billions or millions of “nits” depending whether you’re burning out your eyeballs staring at the sun or seeing its light reflected off of everything else. Meanwhile, VR’s market-leading headset Quest 2 supplies just about 100 nits of brightness. Further, while many modern TVs feature so-called HDR displays, they typically only push out luminance measured with nits in the low thousands.

Eyes-In With Starburst

Starburst, meanwhile, tops out at 20,000 nits. With that level of brightness, Meta researchers can match the luminance of almost any indoor lighting.

The research prototypes use off-the-shelf parts and are so heavy the headsets need to be suspended from above. You hold it to your face with hand-grips and its lenses catch the light in distracting ways. Still, looking through it provides a tantalizing tease of the future.

Meta showed two pieces of content on the headsets at SIGGRAPH. The first was the same content Meta showed Tested earlier this year — spheres floating in the open air of a studio with a bright simulated light off to the side casting across the scene. The second was a never-before-shown-in-public scene generated with a game engine on what could be an alien planet with lighting strikes, clouds, and the faint glimmer of stars in the sky.

The second scene indicates Meta is starting to explore what sort of content might be ideal for upcoming HDR displays and in our interview with Douglas Lanman, the head of display systems research at Meta, he told us that the next SIGGRAPH conference in Asia may reveal Meta’s first user studies of this technology. In our demo, the floating sphere was easily the more compelling of the two scenes shown.

You can get a rough approximation of what it’s like in the video provided by Meta above, but that video is missing the critical element of a human reaction to what you see through-the-lens. Looking at this in VR means I could place my head in just the right spot to eclipse the simulated lightbulb in the corner of the room. A halo formed framing the floating object, and then simply moving my head to either side ended the eclipse with a view straight into the light bulb. This caused my eyes to instinctively react in the same way they might when leaving a dark room and walking into one that’s very brightly lit. Essentially, I formed a sharp memory of that moment because Starburst caused me to squint from brightness for the first time in VR.

“It’s easy to predict the future when you’ve already seen it,” Lanman told us. “Can they feel that they really are present in a true physical scene? And I think if we can do that, then we’ve built the canvas we want and now we can tell any story.”

While Starburst is a wildly non-consumer friendly device, Lanman suggested that Meta openly sharing its design is meant to move forward a broader conversation in the VR community about the value of hyper-bright displays to our sense of presence inside a headset.

We’re still digesting the demos we saw at SIGGRAPH, including the first public look at hyper-realistic Codec avatars, so check back with UploadVR in the coming days as we get those articles out. Also be sure to tune into our show on UploadVR’s YouTube channel Tuesday at 10 am Pacific as we answer questions live and walk through our experiences from SIGGRAPH.



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August 21, 2022 ,

Mark Zuckerberg is teasing significant graphics updates for Meta Avatars and Horizon Worlds.

Meta Avatars are used in the company’s Horizon suite of social VR apps, and available to Quest developers via an SDK. Horizon Worlds works similarly to Rec Room, allowing users to create their own social experiences inside VR by using controllers to place & manipulate shapes and using a visual scripting system to add dynamic functionality. Because these platforms support user created worlds and run on mobile chips, the graphical fidelity achievable is limited. VRChat worlds are premade in Unity on desktop, with most lighting “baked in” by a powerful PC – and the most impressive worlds aren’t accessible to Quest users at all.

A Horizon Worlds screenshot shared by the Meta CEO on Tuesday announcing the platform launching in France & Spain didn’t go down well on Twitter and other social media platforms. The crude graphic fidelity of both the avatar and the world shown led to widespread ridicule.

Zuckerberg responded to this ridicule on Friday with a new image teasing graphical updates “coming soon”:

Major updates to Horizon and avatar graphics coming soon. I’ll share more at Connect. Also, I know the photo I posted earlier this week was pretty basic — it was taken very quickly to celebrate a launch. The graphics in Horizon are capable of much more — even on headsets — and Horizon is improving very quickly.

The “even on headsets” qualifier seems to refer to Meta’s intention to launch Horizon on the web and mobile platforms later this year. Barrett Meeker, who leads Horizon’s visual fidelity improvement project, tweeted to confirm the graphics shown depict what’s planned for Quest 2. What makes even a graphically simplistic avatar feel like another person in VR is how the system translates the person’s head and hand tracking data into real-time animation, and the still images Zuckerberg shared don’t convey that.

Meta Avatars before & after the upcoming graphics update

Graphical improvements to Horizon Worlds will come as a welcome update for its user base, but increasing the graphical realism of VR avatars can have significant tradeoffs. Visually detailed features without detailed tracked motion can make an avatar feel like a lifeless mannequin. Meta plans to introduce eye tracking and face tracking in Quest Pro this year, but Quest 2 lacks these sensors.

Zuckerberg said Meta will share more at Connect, the company’s annual AR/VR conference. The date hasn’t been announced yet, but it’s also where we’ll likely hear more about the launch of Quest Pro and Horizon’s web & mobile versions.



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August 20, 2022 ,

God sandbox title Deisim is moving to a full store release on Quest after being available for more than a year on App Lab.

Deisim gives you the power of a god, ruling down on your subjects from above and granting them new materials and titles of land to progress their civilization. As their cities scale up, you’ll watch and help your subjects progress from the stone age up to the industrial revolution.

The game has been around for quite a while now, initially launching for PC VR in 2018. It then came to Quest first via sideloading and SideQuest in the pre-App Lab days. When Meta launched its App Lab service for Quest in early 2021, Deisim was one of the first 14 apps available on the platform, alongside other notable titles like Puzzling Places and Smash Drums.

More than a year on, Deisim is joining the ranks of its fellow early App Lab graduates and moving to a full Quest Store release on September 1. The game will be available to purchase on App Lab until August 22, after which it will become unavailable for a brief period until the full launch in September.

Existing owners on App Lab will automatically receive a copy of Deisim on the Quest store on release, as well as the PC VR version on the Oculus Store for PC VR as well. Likewise, cross-buy support means Oculus Store PC VR owners will receive a copy of the Quest version on release and vice versa.

Despite the move to the official Quest Store, Deisim’s price will remain the same as it has been on App Lab, available for $14.99. Developer Tommy Maloteaux says that several content updates for Deisim are also on the way, with an update featuring pirates set to release later this year in November.

Deisim is available now for Quest, PC VR and Pico platforms.



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August 19, 2022 ,

Mothergunship: Forge’s first major content update has arrived on Quest 2 and SteamVR, adding new weapon parts, a beta co-op campaign and more.

Released in June, Mothergunship: Forge brought us an original VR spin-off to the 2018 flatscreen title Mothergunship. Offering a new roguelike first-person VR shooter, the goal is to fend off large hordes of enemies and get creative with large scale weapons customization. Now, Terrible Posture Games has brought us the free Cozy Update, which includes new enemies, around 20 new gunparts and a new ‘Heart Level’ which includes new enemies and a brand new boss.

If that’s not enough, Terrible Posture added three new gameplay modes as well. For those looking to explore all the different customization options, there’s the brand new, highly-requested Sandbox Mode. Secondly, there’s also Endless Mode, which challenges you to hold out for as long as possible against waves of enemies. Finally, the new co-op mode will let you and one other player run through the entire campaign together, though it’s only available in beta for now.

There’s tons of smaller additions as well: weapon favoriting, new ways to explore your run history, lots of bug fixes, quality of life improvements, and design adjustments. You can find more details here.

We had positive impressions in our Mothergunship: Forge review, praising its translation from a flatscreen game into VR. We considered it a “tried and true VR shooter” and had high praise for its customization options. “Bringing that original hook from the flatscreen game to VR completely revolutionizes how the mechanic works,” we wrote in our review. “You’ll find yourself coming back for runs time and again.”

The Cozy update is available to download right now, available on Meta Quest 2 and PC VR via Steam.

Will you be returning to Mothergunship: Forge? Got a favorite weapon combination you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments below.



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August 18, 2022 ,

The Blue Temple marks the latest update for Puzzling Places on Quest and PSVR headsets, introducing a brand new free puzzle based around Thailand’s eye-catching Buddhist temple.

puzzling places blue temple

We’ve seen no end to the iconic locations in Puzzling Places since it launched officially last September, and developer realities.io just launched its next destination. This latest puzzle is Thailand’s Chiang Rai Blue Temple, also known as ‘Wat Rong Suea Ten’ or ‘Temple of the Dancing Tiger’. The puzzle includes nine characters, diorama scenes, atmospheric soundscapes and hidden easter eggs.

We’ve seen a wide range of fresh puzzles added to Puzzling Places between paid variety packs, historical landmarks in Behind High Walls, and we even had a Mars Desert Research Station. This latest addition, though, is a rare case of free new content in Puzzling Places, which switched to a monthly and premium paid DLC structure back in March. Even though it is free, this new puzzle has the same features as Puzzling Places’ premium content.

We offered high praise for the game in our Puzzling Places review for Meta Quest, calling it a resounding success. Explaining how it cemented itself as “one of the best and most unique puzzle games on the platform,” we believe the game is “perfect to use as a calming, meditative experience and leaves you with satisfying and beautiful end results.”

You can download the Blue Temple update right now, available on the Meta Quest platform and PSVR. 



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August 17, 2022 ,

Logitech Chorus brings near off-ear speakers to Quest 2 for $100.

Quest 2’s built in strap-pipe audio keeps the headset portable and relatively affordable, but the audio quality and loudness leaves a lot to be desired. Logitech has offered earphones and headphones for Quest 2 since the headset’s launch almost two years ago, each having a short cable for practicality. But the G333 earphones have to be awkwardly wired from the audio port to the left ear with the cords getting in the way, and the G Pro headphones are a hassle to pull over your head on top of the Quest. Both completely cut you off from the real world.

Chorus is instead near off-ear speakers, a concept first brought to VR by Valve’s Index. It attaches directly to the Quest 2’s strap arms, with each side connected by a cable that threads through the headset’s top strap to become almost invisible. It connects via USB-C, but has its own USB-C port so you can still charge the headset – but this doesn’t support Link.

Rotating the speakers back 90 degrees automatically mutes them, letting you quickly talk to other people in the room without changing the volume or taking the headset off.

 

Chorus uses “custom tuned” 47.4mm x 20.3mm balanced mode radiators (BMRs) which Logitech claims provide “a huge sound stage” of “clear, natural sound”. The company is sending us a unit which we plan to review to test this claim.



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August 17, 2022 ,

In this week’s episode of Backseat VR Developer, Alex and Skeeva play Dragon Fist: VR Kung Fu joined by developer Ben Olding.

Tune in every Wednesday at 10 am Pacific on the UploadVR YouTube channel for a new episode of Backseat VR Developer as UploadVR Correspondents Alex & Skeeva play VR games joined by the people who make them!

You can catch up on earlier episodes embedded below as well as the most recent episode from Alex & Skeeva’s Between Realities podcast.



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August 13, 2022 ,

An update for bullet time shooter Dead Second brings two new levels, manual reloading and much more.

Dead Second launched late last year in early access for Quest via App Lab, offering a mixture of arcade cover shooter and bullet time slow-mo gameplay. However, a new update available now brings a bunch of new content and requested features.

There’s two new levels, Broadcast and Chemical Conflict, bringing the game’s total to eight. There’s also a new firing range, where you can practice you shooting, earn some extra money and compete on leaderboards by completing challenges.

There’s now also an option to use manual reloading, letting you grab ammo from over your shoulder and insert it into your weapon. If one weapon isn’t enough for you, how about two? Dual wielding is now an option across all levels. Gun skins have been added to the shop as well, and you can now purchase a second gun of the same type.

All weapon models have been updated to support the new ammo magazines, along with increased overall detail and improved textures. Muzzle flashes have also been updated and improved to look more realistic as well.

If that wasn’t enough, there’s also now 23 achievements, daily rewards and new leaderboard combinations for you to work through. To round this update out, there’s a number of other improvements to audio, ragdolls and existing levels. Plus, if you have bHaptics hardware,  you’ll be happy to hear that Dead Second added support for that too.

With all this new stuff coming to the game, Spunge Games is putting up the game’s price to $19.99 within the week. However, the existing $11.99 price is still available until then — if you’re interested, you can check out Dead Second on App Lab now.



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August 12, 2022 ,

A Breaking Bad VR experience was once in development for PSVR, confirmed Vince Gilligan in a recent interview.

Back in 2017, Variety reported that a Breaking Bad experience was in development for PSVR. However, the game was never officially announced and we heard nothing more about it, until now.

Speaking on the Inside The Gilliverse podcast, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul writer and creator Vince Gilligan confirmed that there was indeed once an attempt to create a Breaking Bad VR experience for the PlayStation VR headset.

The comment was prompted by a question from a viewer asking if there would ever be a video game adaptation of Breaking Bad, perhaps akin to Grand Theft Auto.

Gilligan says the PSVR experience was one of “three or four” attempts at various video game tie-ins, the only of which that made it to market was mobile game Breaking Bad: Criminal Elements.

Here are Gilligan’s full comments, taken from the 51-minute mark here, with emphasis added for the PSVR-specific comments:

“I’m not much of a video game player but how can you not know Grand Theft Auto? I remember saying to the two gentleman who said yes originally to Breaking Bad, I said ‘Who owns Grand Theft Auto? Can’t you have like a module? Can there be like a Breaking Bad [version]? It still makes sense to me. That never came to fruition.

“There have been quite a few attempts at video games. Some of them kinda sort of made it to market. We tried to do a VR experience with the Sony PlayStation VR headset. We did a mobile game that lasted for a little while.

“[Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul Producer and Assistant] Jenn Carroll put a lot of energy, a lot of effort and a lot of talent into writing three of four different stories for three or four different video games, including the VR thing.

There was a lot of people hours poured into that. And you know, making a video game is damn hard. What little I heard about it through this process, it literally takes years. Years and millions of dollars. Especially when you’re trying to break new ground with VR and whatnot.[It] never quite came to fruition. It’s a shame.”

The Breaking Bad VR experience may never have made it to market, but a version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is currently in development for Quest 2.

Do you wish we’d got this Breaking Bad VR experience for PSVR? Let us know in the comments below.



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August 09, 2022 ,

A new co-op survival shooter, Drop Dead: The Cabin, is coming to Quest 2 later this year.

Indie development studio Soul Assembly announced Drop Dead: The Cabin last week. It’s a new installment in the Drop Dead series, following on from the original and the Dual Strike release that overhauled the game and added support for co-op play.

The Cabin will be an all new release that sees you play as backpackers who get lost in the woods, finding solitude in an abandoned cabin. However, not everything is as it seems — you’ll soon be defending the cabin from a plethora of undead zombies.

Here’s what to expect, according to Soul Assembly:

In order to survive the night and make your escape, you’ll have to not only fight off the legion of the dead but also strive to maintain power, lighting and communications systems in and around the cabin. Fail to keep the power generator repaired and topped up with fuel, the lights will turn off, making the zombies deadlier and harder to see. Teamwork is essential, and an effective fireteam will know when to stay together, when to split up, and when to have one person perch on the cabin roof offering support fire for their partner.

Soul Assembly describes the combat as “fast, frenetic and dynamic” with “a physics-based interaction model and advanced haptics.” In terms of weapons, you’ll be able to use a range of guns with some melee options, such as a baseball bat. You can view some gameplay in the trailer above, which gives a sense of the direction for this new Drop Dead entry.

Soul Assembly are planning on running a beta soon, and players are able to register interest by joining the Discord server here.



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August 08, 2022 ,

VR content sideloading platform, SideQuest, will no longer be accepting games that imitate multiplayer hit, Gorilla Tag.

The platform announced as much on Twitter today. “We appreciate the time and effort you have put into making a game similar to gorilla tag, it’s very popular,” the message reads. “At a certain point it becomes too much and there is no point in adding any more games that want to be like gorilla tag.”

SideQuest Turns Away Gorilla Tag Clones

Gorilla Tag has indeed proved incredibly popular since launching in early access over a year ago, with John Carmack last year noting that more people play it than some full-blown AAA multiplayer VR games. Just search the game’s name on SideQuest and you’ll be treated to an amble supply of clones, from ‘Lemur Swingers’ to ‘OwlChase’. In fact, a Gorilla Tag fan game actually appears in the search before the genuine article.

Still, it’s a notable move for a platform that prides itself on providing developers with a path to Quest headsets without passing Meta’s strict store curation.

VR is no stranger to copycat games of course – there have been countless Beat Saber imitators over the years too. In fact, you could even argue that Beat Saber itself was at least partially inspired by older games like Audioshield.

What do you make of SideQuest turning away Gorilla Tag clones? Let us know in the comments below!



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August 08, 2022 ,

Schell Games is preparing for a series of Among Us VR beta tests throughout this month, with sign-ups available now.

The game’s Twitter account put out a tweet announcing the beta and encouraging those with a VR headset and an internet connection to sign-up.

The beta tests are set to run throughout the month. The current sign-up link asks for key details, like your email, and asks you to join the Among Us VR Discord server. It also states that Among Us VR will “appear on multiple VR platforms” and asks which headsets you have access to. The full list of immersive technologies to choose from in the beta test form includes some silly entries, like Sensorama and Virtuality alongside more expected entries, like the original PlayStation VR headset.

Among Us VR is only confirmed for release on Quest 2 and PC VR this holiday season, with PSVR 2 support planned for when that headset is released.

After signing up, a select amount of users will be invited to participate in the beta sessions. The beta won’t grant players unlimited early access to the game — specific sessions will take place at allocated times, giving players limited access over a set duration.

Back in June, we got a new look at some gameplay in the Upload VR Showcase, revealing how staples from the flatscreen version will translate over to VR. We saw footage of a match playing out with voice actors and players completing tasks around the ship, such as scanning into areas and aligning parts.

Among Us VR launches this holiday season for Quest 2 and PC VR. You can sign up for the beta tests here.



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August 07, 2022 ,

Cyan Development Director Hannah Gamiel detailed the studio’s hand tracking update for Myst on Quest.

The new update makes the entirety of Myst playable with just open air hand tracking on Quest headsets. Cyan decided on a few gestures for supporting movement around the island with both teleport and smooth locomotion via hand tracking. You just point where you want to go.

The update also adds in-game screenshots to take notes, and while there’s no gesture to take those screenshots with hand tracking “we do hope to bring that to Myst soon,” Gamiel said.

“We dialed in most, if not all of the gestures to be very comfortable to use for extended periods of time,” Gamiel told UploadVR. “And I’m talking about like at least an hour or two of playtime, because people like get lost in Myst.”

Gamiel joined our virtual studio to talk about the update and you can check it out in the 10-minute video embedded below. We discussed the challenges of hand tracking on current VR hardware, the forthcoming Myst DLC course coming to Walkabout Mini Golf, Myst’s legacy across generations and what’s next for Cyan.

“We are hoping to do a director’s commentary update where we bring in some of the original developers on Myst,” Gamiel said. “You can experience that as you play Myst as well. And additionally, something that’s been highly requested for a long time from people with this new version of Myst has been ‘where’s node mode. I want to play Myst as if it was like the classic edition where I point and click to exactly the node I want to go to.’ We’re hoping to include that as well in a future update, so this is by no means the end of updates for Myst.”



via Mint VR
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August 06, 2022 ,

The VR Awards announced the finalists for the upcoming 2022 ceremony, which includes titles like Resident Evil 4, Moss: Book II and Zenith: The Lost City nominated for VR Game of the Year.

The nominations opened in April, with release eligibility set between July 2021 and August 2022 for all categories. This year will mark the first in-person show since the start of the pandemic, with a return to London for the ceremony on November 3.

Last year, Demeo took home the coveted VR Game of the Year award, alongside the HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition taking home VR Hardware of the Year.

The nominations for this year’s VR Game of the Year are:

  • Vail VR
  • The Tale of Onogoro
  • Cities: VR
  • Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge – Last Call
  • Resident Evil 4
  • Wanderer
  • Finger Gun
  • Garden of the Sea
  • Moss: Book II
  • Zenith: The Last City
  • Lone Echo II
  • I Expect You To Die 2: The Spy And The Liar
  • After The Fall

Likewise, the nominations for VR Hardware of the Year:

  • Maestro DK3
  • Emerge Wave-1
  • Pico Neo 3 Link
  • Varjo Aero
  • Vive Flow
  • XTAL 3 Mixed Reality

Those are just two categories out of twelve total. It’s nice to see Lost Recipes nominated in the VR Experience of the Year category, an acknowledgement of how it occupies a space between game and educational experience. It’s also great to see Anotherway, the studio behind Unplugged, nominated in the Rising VR Company of the Year category.

You can view the full list of nominations here — be sure to keep an eye out for the results in November.



via Mint VR
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August 05, 2022 ,

Another surprise launch is here just before for the weekend — Car Mechanic Simulator VR is now available for Quest 2.

Car Mechanic Simulator VR released last year for PC VR on Steam with mixed reviews as of this writing. Now the title has made its way over to Quest 2 with early reviews there faring poorly as well due in part to complaints about the game’s low resolution. We installed the title on a Quest 2 and, indeed, the resolution is very low.

In a reply to a review on the Quest store the developer wrote “We realize that resolution is too low after relase ;( We will fix it!”

Here’s a snippet taken from the store description outlining the developer’s intention:

Become a true master of the craft in this virtual reality simulation game. As a professional mechanic your skills will be tested as you strive to meet your clients’ expectations. Immerse yourself in realistic gameplay as you prove your skills with the many available tools and car parts. Diagnose, repair, paint, and renovate highly detailed cars in your very own auto shop.

There’s 10 cars to play to modify and repair with over 10 tools, alongside “hundreds” of parts and options. Car Mechanic Simulator is available now for Quest 2 for $19.99.



via Mint VR
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August 05, 2022 ,

Another DLC release is coming to Real VR Fishing — this time, it’s set in Japan.

Announced this week, the first installment of the Japan DLC will release for the Quest platform on August 18. The developers told UploadVR the paid content will include 10 new fishing spots for players to explore along with 58 new fish species to reel in.

Japan DLC Real VR Fishing

The Japan DLC follows on from the US West DLC, which released late last year. That was the first piece of paid content added to game, following on from a series of free content updates rolled out since 2019. The US West DLC featured some iconic American locales — the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Lake Tahoe — with 76 new species spread across the locations. This week, developers also released some new locations in the US West DLC as well. Players who own that paid content can check out Snake River and Smith River fishing spots now.

The studio behind the impressive simulation title is Devs United Games (formerly known as MIRAGESOFT) and though the game is available on the Oculus Rift store, there’s no DLC listed there yet. Last year, we asked the developer whether PC VR players could expect the DLC releases to come to other platforms in the future. The response was that they “hope to release” the DLC content on PC VR one day, but had no concrete plans set in place. There’s also a Steam listing for Real VR Fishing from Devs United Games where PC players can wishlist it.

Real VR Fishing’s Japan DLC: Part 1 release is set for August 18 — keep an eye out for more details in the weeks to come.



via Mint VR
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August 04, 2022 ,

The Steam Hardware Survey shows a near quadrupling of VR users in July – but this data is almost certainly erroneous.

Companies like Meta, Valve, & HTC don’t reveal hardware sales figures. The Steam Hardware Survey is the most reliable indicator of PC VR’s adoption – or at least was until recently. The survey is offered to a random sample of Steam’s userbase each month. If you choose to accept, it uploads your PC specifications and peripherals. Before March 2020 the survey relied on headsets being connected via USB at the time of sampling, but Valve changed it to scan your SteamVR logs from the past month.

Since the survey method was changed, the percentage of Steam users with VR has stayed roughly stable around 2%. May 2022’s data showed a large unexplained jump to 3.24%, but June’s data returned back to the normal expected range – 1.87% – which seemed to indicate May was just a one-off anomaly. But the data for July shows an even more dramatic increase – to 6.67%.

We can confidently say there wasn’t actually a near quadrupling of VR users on Steam in July. There hasn’t been a new mainstream headset release, nor a price cut for Quest 2 – quite the opposite in fact. A real increase would also be accompanied with a dramatic change in per-headset share, since older headsets no longer sold wouldn’t increase at the same rate.

 

 

We reached out to Valve for an explanation, but as with May’s data we didn’t receive a reply. We’ll keep an eye out for August’s data next month to see what happens next.



via Mint VR
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August 04, 2022 ,

We sat down with the developers of Requisition VR to find out more about the upcoming VR zombie game.

Set to release in early access this September, Requisition isn’t your average zombie game. Developer Arcadia is putting a heavy emphasis on the game’s DIY crafting system, allowing you to make weapons out of household items. Chairs can become four-pronged swords, for example, and baseball bats can be charged with electricity.

In the interview below, General Producer Oliver Smirnoff gives us an update on how the game’s progressing, its inspirations and what other platforms we might see the game on in the future.

UploadVR: What were some of the other VR games that helped inspire Requisition?

Oliver Smirnoff: We were definitely inspired by games like Walking Dead: Saint & Sinners and Resident Evil 4 which was exclusively released for Oculus Quest. But we obviously took inspiration not from VR zombies games only. Phasmophobia, The Forest and Into The Radius had such a great impact on our game as well. 

At one point we even took some of the ideas from the Home Alone movie which led to creating a mode for the game. 

UVR: Why was it important to add PvP to the game now instead of focusing on co-op at launch?

OS: I wouldn’t say that we shifted focus from co-op, we are still putting a lot of work to it. We had in mind the Home Alone mode which implies players to craft weapons and traps, and fight with each other. We did a bunch of internal tests and realized that this is the funniest mode we’ve ever seen in multiplayer games. That’s why we decided to add PvP mode. We’ve already had all the mechanics done and could continue work on a Horde Mode and a Story Mode. 

UVR: You recently had a demo on Steam Next Fest. How, as a VR developer, is this helpful to you and what sort of data does it give you ahead of launch?

OS: During Steam Next Fest we got a lot of data that we’re processing right now. 

First of all more than 4,000 people played our demo and it’s more than during our beta tests. 

Secondly we got a lot of feedback on how we can improve the game and on how to simplify some mechanics. We consider the Steam Next Fest a successful experience as we have significantly increased wishlists. 

Requisition VR

UVR: How is development looking at this stage? Are you still hoping to release in September?

OS: We are still running beta tests at this stage of the development and working on the game’s polishing, melee and zombie behavior improvements, and optimization. We are running the 5th wave of the beta right now, and I would say that we are moving according to the plan to release Requisition VR in September. 

UVR: You’re handling the release of Requisition quite differently to Hinge. What did you learn from that experience and take to your new game?

OS: We learned not to rush the release and collect feedback from the players long before the actual release. We want to release the game in September in the most polished and optimized state and we are also ready for any revisions needed after Early Access based on the feedback. And we keep in mind that Requisition could change a lot after the EA release. 

UVR: Do you have plans for future releases on Quest and PSVR 1/2?

OS: Our biggest goal is to release the game on Quest. Probably you will hear an announcement about it in the next couple of months. 

We are also planning to release Requisition on PSVR 2 in 2023. We are among others really excited about PSVR 2 and think it’s gonna be a great device that will beat the PSVR 1 and become a hit. 



via Mint VR
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