The weekly vendor in Destiny 2: Forsaken always brings Exotic weapons and armor, some of the toughest loot to find in the game . Here's everything you need to know to track down Xur: Where he is, when he shows up, and what he's stocking.
The post ‘Destiny 2’: Where to find Xur for the weekend of Sept. 28 appeared first on Digital Trends.
The rumors are true: there is no PlayStation Experience happening in 2018. Last year’s PlayStation Experience was down in Anaheim, CA in December and that was the first place that we were able to play games like WipEout VR and Firewall Zero Hour right after they were announced.
Sony made the announcement today on a recording of the 308th episode of PlayStation Blogcast. During the episode Shawn Layden, chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, made the announcement.
“Now that we have Spider-Man out the door, we’re looking down in 2019 to games like ‘Dreams’ and ‘Days Gone’ but we wouldn’t have enough to bring people altogether in some location in North America to have that event,” Layden said.”We don’t want to set expectations really high and then not deliver on it.”
Basically it sounds like they don’t think they have enough confirmed games for 2019 that they can show off to warrant hosting an event.
Frankly, that doesn’t seem like it can be the real reason. He cites Dreams and Days Gone, but between other titles like The Last of Us II, Ghosts of Tsushima, Resident Evil 2 Remake, Death Stranding, and countless indie titles as well as PSVR titles there should be enough to show off. In fact, they could easily also show games that have just came out and/or are releasing at the end of this year.
I’m not in a position to verifiably say the reason for not having a PlayStation Experience, but the reason must be deeper than they don’t think they’ve got enough games to show since this is both a PSVR and PS4 non-VR event.
What do you think? Is it a budget concern? Let us know down in the comments below!
Tagged with: PlayStation Experience, PSVR, PSX
The post Sony Will Not Host A PlayStation Experience For 2018 appeared first on UploadVR.
In the last month there has been a lot of discussion within the virtual reality (VR) industry around ways to combat the effects of motion sickness for users. Sony put through a patent recently that looks to see technology come to their headset to help reduce the impact of motion sickness. Fraunhofer also has a new headset in development that leverages new lens technology to help users overcome sickness and headaches. Now, researchers at the University of Waterloo have revealed that they have made progress towards predicting who is likely to feel sick from using VR technology.
In a recent study, the researchers at the University of Waterloo found that they could predict whether an individual will experience cybersickness (motion sickness caused by using VR) by measuring how long they sway in response to a moving visual feild. The researchers believe that this knowledge will help them to develop counteractions to cybersickness which could allow suffers to enjoy VR experiences even more.
The effects of cybersickness usually involve nausea and discomfort that can last for a few hours after experiencing a VR title. As the use of VR technology becomes more popular and used in more areas such as gaming, training and clinical rehabilitation, ensuring more people can comfortably use the technology is key to it’s growth.
“Despite decreased costs and significant benefits offered by VR, a large number of users are unable to use the technology for more than a brief period because it can make them feel sick,” Explains Séamas Weech, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Kinesiology and lead author of the paper. “Our results show that this is partly due to differences in how individuals use vision to control their balance. By refining our predictive model, we will be able to rapidly assess an individual’s tolerance for virtual reality and tailor their experience accordingly.”
The researchers collected several sensorimotor measures, such as balance control and self-motion sensitive, from 30 healthy participants aged 18-30 in order to carry out the test. The team exposed the participants to VR with the aim of predicting the severity of motion sickness within each one. Using a regression model, they significantly predicted how much cybersickness each participant experienced after being exposed to a zero-gravity simulation within VR.
“Knowing who might suffer from cybersickness, and why, allows us to develop targeted interventions to help reduce, or even prevent, the onset of symptoms,” said Michael Barnett-Cowan, neuroscience professor in the Department of Kinesiology and senior author of the paper. “Considering this technology is in a growth phase with industries such as gaming, design, medicine and automotive starting to use it, understanding who is negatively impacted and how to help them is crucial.”
As more work is carried out to understand the cause, effect and treatment of motion sickness within VR, VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest.
Films like Pacific Rim prove that even when gigantic fighting robots don’t receive the best reviews, there’s still a market for hulking war machines scrapping it out. When it comes to virtual reality (VR), strapping yourself into a giant mechanised robot to fight others seems like a match made in heaven, and titles like Code51: Mecha Arena and Archangel: Hellfire have both brought their own unique take on the genre. The latest to try its hand is Space Bullet Dynamics Corporation’s Vox Machinae for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift (previewed), which could be the best one yet.
Currently in Early Access, Vox Machinae is a pure multiplayer combat title, where players face off against one another in three different modes, Deathmatch, Salvage and Stockpile. There are five maps to play on with five different robots and ten selectable weapons. While there’s no single-player as such, offline there’s a training mode to learn the basics and AI bots fill in the gaps if you don’t go online or when online matches are a little bit light on players. This works well enough although the AI isn’t the most tactical, tending to barrage straight in rather than staying back or flanking like human players tend to do.
Sitting inside the any of the five mechs looks awesome, there’s a beautiful level of gritty detail to the cabs – as if you’re inside an actual JCB or Caterpillar – with all manner of buttons and switches to look at. It may seem like over kill to begin with but each lever and screen has its purpose, some of which are more useful than others.
Designed to support both motion controllers and gamepad layouts, the latter is certainly a little easier and more instinctual to use, but far less immersive. Using Oculus Touch there’s a lever on the right hand side for turning with another on the left for forward and reverse momentum. These need to be constantly gripped to use and in the heat of battle the urge to use the controller sticks does happen, where you’ll suddenly realise nothing is happening.
The mechs also have aerial combat abilities allowing for greater strategic manoeuvres around the battlefield. Certainly helpful when trying to get around the rocky levels, this does mean you can put yourself in harms reach when flying too high, letting the whole battlefield see where you are.
As mentioned the mechs come in five varieties, nothing too unusual, from the heavily armoured which is very slow, to the lighter machines which are speedy but easily destroyed. All of them are fully weapon customisable, starting with standard loadouts which can then be switched if you die, constantly evolving your strategy throughout the fight.
Vox Machinae is by no means an easy videogame to get into, in fact the battles can be quite brutal as the mechanics aren’t geared towards a more arcade style of gameplay like that found in Code51: Mecha Arena for example. You could make use of its non-VR mode and play on a screen but that just takes away from the immersive spectacle of the whole thing. That being said, having the flat screen feature does open up the experience to more players, which should minimise the need for bots.
If you’ve been after a more hard core style mech experience for VR then Vox Machinae already seems to be ticking most of the boxes. It’s comfortable to play, with a reasonable selection of customisation options at this stage. The levels don’t quite live up to the impressive cockpit designs, but with the ability to have up to 16 players on one map there’s plenty of opportunities for some carnage. VRFocus will certainly be keeping an eye on Vox Machinae’s progress.
Over the past couple of years, film festivals have become more accepting of immersive and interactive storytelling mediums, such as virtual reality (VR) and 360-degree film. Further demonstrating just how far immersive cinema has come, the prestigious New York Film Festival will premiere its first VR Cinema experience by showing interactive VR thriller Fire Escape.
Fire Escape draws inspiration from the work of Hitchcock to create a VR experience where the audience is perched atop a fire escape, making choices about which neighbour to spy on, until unexpected revelations come to light.
The cinematic VR experience was created to add and interactive element to the usually passive act of watching a movie. Players watch over a Brooklyn apartment complex from a fire escape, idly texting a friend and watching or listening in on conversations until it transpires that a murder has taken place. From there, the player’s choices become increasingly vital as they become entangled in what could be a dangerous web of crime as suspicion.
Thirty New York Festival attendees will be able to don a Lenovo Mirage VR headset in order to engage with the experience using the Mirage controller. A Q&A session and group discussion with the creators of the experience will be available after the screening.
Fire Escape is the creation of iNK Stories, a creative studio that recently won the Tribeca Film Festival Storyscape Award for Best Immersive and is best known for its work on 1979 Revolution: Black Friday and HERO.
The New York Film Festival is set to run from 28th September to 14th October. A press preview of Fire Escape will be held on 5th October, followed by showings 11th-13th October. Further information and tickets can be found on the New York Film Festival website.
For future coverage of new and upcoming VR projects, keep checking back with VRFocus.
Believe it or not, free-to-play games have evolved into engaging, enjoyable experiences. Here are a few of our favorites that you can play right now, including Warframe and the perennially-popular League of Legends.
The post The best free-to-play games of 2018 appeared first on Digital Trends.
The Nintendo Switch's lineup started off small, but games have steadily released as the console continues through its second year. Here are the best Nintendo Switch games available now, from Super Mario Odyssey to Fortnite.
The post The best Nintendo Switch games (September 2018) appeared first on Digital Trends.