Designer and Creative technologist Dong Yoon Park has painstakingly recreated a Star Wars battle scene inside VR with Google’s Tilt Brush. Watch this beautiful digital art come to life in this walkthrough and speeded up realtime recording.
Powered by the PS4, PSVR might not be the most powerful VR platform out there, but the newly released Joshua Bell VR Experience shows that execution—not oomph—is a major part of what makes VR great. The VR video experience uses inventive techniques to give you an immersive front row seat to a world-class violinist, featuring positional tracking and impressively sharp visuals.
Michael Antonov, Chief Software Architect at Oculus, is due to speak at Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference on April 18th about React VR, a framework that builds on Facebook’s React JavaScript library. This web-based framework allows easier creation of VR content that can run on VR headsets from the browser.
SYREN (2017) is a single-player, survival-horror game that will have you sneaking around corners, hiding under virtual desks, and flailing helplessly as you’re mauled to death by the world’s ghastly “Syrens,” a terrifying amalgamation of human/robot/awfulness. Despite some pretty distracting bugs in the game, it’s safe to say that people with high blood pressure or heart conditions need not apply.
Developer: Hammerhead VR
Available On: Oculus Touch, HTC Vive (Steam and Oculus Home)
Reviewed on: HTC Vive and Oculus Rift
Release Date: February 15th, 2017
Update 02/16/17: Hammerhead VR originally provided us with a Steam code for review purposes. After publishing the review, the studio informed us that the Steam code was actually for an older version of the game, and that many of the bugs we encountered had already been fixed. Furnished with a new Oculus Store code, we were able to verify that many of the bugs, at least for the Rift version (originally detailed in the ‘Immersion’ section of the review) including difficulty with Touch’s control scheme, virtual hand position, and shooting guns, were indeed fixed. The issue of ‘wall-hacking’ was also addressed to a large degree, as physically moving through walls will entirely black out your vision. Some architecture, like support beams and furniture can however still be used in this manner for cover.
Because we believe this was an honest mistake on the part of the studio, we’ve altered the ‘Immersion’ score to reflect the changes, which in turn has pushed the overall score up by a half-point. You’ll find the original article below with an asterix (*) appended to the few sections where bugs had either been completely fixed, or addressed in some way by the studio.
Much like Alien: Isolation (2014), Syren is an absolutely terrifying game of hide and seek, but this time instead of the claustrophobic world of a spaceship and an acid-spitting Xenomorph, you’re in an underwater research facility placed above an ancient lost city once populated by a species of kind-of-sexy, kind-of-horrific mermaids—at least they were supposed to be, as the creatures you meet are genetically engineered copies called Syrens.
Created by a scientist obsessed with eugenics, your job is to escape the now damaged facility that’s become overwhelmed with the free-roaming Syren, going across a number of levels filled with deceased colleagues and all manner of interactive items that can bring you ever closer to the 5-level facility’s next pressurized door.
Each level is essentially a puzzle with a few different solutions, from nabbing a keycard off a desk and sneaking past a lonely Syren, to all-out shoot-em-up chaos with multiple baddies as you learn the mystery of the madman who created the facility.
The game has a very specific idea of how it wants you to proceed, something I found to be slightly frustrating early on. After getting killed multiple times by the same Syren and getting tossed back to the beginning of the level, I found out that when they lunge at your throat, you can’t simply whack the beast to death with an ax that you collected earlier like you naturally would if someone was coming at you and you had a melee weapon in hand. Rather, the game wants you to physically throw the ax, thereby losing it in the thing’s face so the game can leave you without a weapon for the next trial. The only way you can figure this out is either by having the original thought to toss the ax, or by failing your way to the solution like I did.
Although there’s a steep learning curve to how you interact with the Syren (mostly by staying far away from them, running and hiding for your life), eventually the game becomes a little more intuitive as you learn the rules that the AI Syren abide by. For example, if a Syren gets close enough to you, it initiates an uninterruptible attack that you have to stomach—a wailing monster screaming in your face and biting your neck—so you learn to avoid these pants-shitting moments as best you can, otherwise you’ll be sent back to the beginning of the level.
You can get away from Syrens by hiding stealthily, teleporting quickly to find cover, or by distracting them by throwing items far away from you to take them off your track. Since the monsters react to noise (and strangely enough not your voice via the headset’s microphone), they will scream over to where the object landed, only to find no one there, giving you some time to dodge around them. There are however multiple Syrens per level, so this is where it gets tricky.
Several times I found myself hiding under a desk, or behind a dead body for cover, all the while hearing the banshee screams and heavy breathing of the genetically engineered monsters coming my way. And if it weren’t enough of a fright, no matter where they find you, cowering in a corner or halfway outside of a locker, they always grab you by the face and scream a horrifying noise into your ears.
The Syrens make a lot of noise, which should be a good thing on principle so you can avoid them efficiently, but the noise wasn’t at all muffled by objects like walls or barriers like in real life. If you find yourself sandwiched in a side room with two Syrens slinking around and breathing all scary-like, you won’t have a good idea of realistically where they are. Instead, a Syren will sound like they’re right on top of you even though you have a concrete wall between you.
Whether you’re using Oculus Touch or the Vive’s Lighthouse controllers, hands simply aren’t centered 1:1, making them seem a full three inches away from where your hands naturally rest on the controllers. While it’s not game-breaking, it certainly hampers immersion. In the end, this isn’t something dramatic to fix, but how such a critical immersive error got through on launch, I’m just not sure.*
On the note of controllers, Oculus Touch support could be a lot better. The game requires you to push down and click on the joystick to teleport, which proves to be just about as awkward as can be. Teleporting is much more intuitive on the Vive, requiring you to simply rest your thumb on the touchpad and engage a quick click, but Rift users beware.*
Firing guns in the game unfortunately never felt natural on either Touch or Vive controller, as your index-trigger is used to pick up and hold items and a regular button press is used to activate or fire it. This made it feel more like changing the channel on a remote control than firing a gun.*
And this is the part of the article where I make my biggest confession. I am a dirty, no good, wall-hacking cheater.*
Because the game is room-scale, it means you can teleport close to walls and actually walk through them. Some games like Budget Cuts or Onward (2016) don’t allow you to do this, either by making it impossible to see or leaving your body behind to be ravaged by enemies, but not so with Syren. When a screaming water-banshee is running you down, and you can walk straight through a wall and escape—the natural choice is to flee anyway the game will let you. While I know I’m a weak and shameful person for using this cheat to get away, it really shouldn’t even be an option in the first place.
There, I feel better now.
While you’ll never be truly comfortable with genetically modified mermaid-beasts skulking around, nuts and bolts-wise Syren is a supremely comfortable experience because it lets you explore the world using teleportation and 45 degree snap-turning—two common locomotion schemes that most everyone shouldn’t have a problem in the nausea department.
Even though at times I honestly wish I could sit down and mash a joystick forward on a gamepad instead of frantically selecting a place to teleport—because it’s not only faster, but easier—the standing room-scale aspect of the game lends to overall comfort and immersion. And somehow it’s always scarier that way, as you’re on your hands and knees hiding behind something and hoping the monster doesn’t see you.
We partnered with AVA Direct to create the Exemplar 2 Ultimate, our high-end VR hardware reference point against which we perform our tests and reviews. Exemplar 2 is designed to push virtual reality experiences above and beyond what’s possible with systems built to lesser recommended VR specifications.
Oculus’ most recent platform update, 1.11 was designed to improve tracking performance for experimental room-scale tracking setups with two or more Sensors. For some users however, the update seems to have made things worse. Oculus has now acknowledged the lingering issues and promises that the next two updates will aim to address the problem.
Lytro have announced another hefty wedge of funding, with a $60 million series D round led by Blue Pool. What’s more, they’ve formed a content partnership Within, and the first 360 degree 3D light field content is now set to arrive in Q2 of this year.
The sleek-looking VRGE VR headset dock Kickstarter looks set to come down to a photo-finish. Heading into its final 24 hours, the crowdfunding campaign is within $2,000 of its $30,000 goal.
Fantasynth (2017) is an upcoming VR music experience for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive that takes you on a surreal ride through an abstract world of sharp geometric shapes and eye-catching neon lights. Pulsing to the futuristic beat of track Chez Nous from French electronic musician N’to, Fantasynth is a work of pure imagination, one that is just begging to be longer, weirder and more intense.
The first IMAX VR Experience Centre has officially opened in LA. The company has unsurprisingly modeled the destination much like a movie theater, one that offers up immersive experiences on the latest VR hardware through a pay-to-play model. With plans to open more locations this year, Road to VR stepped inside the first IMAX VR Experience Centre to find out what you can expect.
CCP Games are updating the sci-fi dogfighting EVE: Valkyrie today with a brand new game mode, a league system, and a number of fixes and improvements. The ‘Wormhole’ mode creates new combat scenarios, as travelling into an anomaly changes the rules, visuals and other gameplay modifiers.
Facebook’s 2017 F8 developer conference has seven scheduled sessions dedicated to VR. The company’s annual two-day event is dedicated to exploring the future of Facebook’s family of apps and services (including Oculus), and how businesses and developers can leverage them.
Within premiered their first real-time rendered, interactive experience at Sundance New Frontier this year with Life of Us, which is the story of life on the planet as told through embodying a series of characters who are evolving into humans. The experience is somewhere between a film and game, and ends up feeling much like a theme park ride. There’s an on-rails narrative story being told, but there’s also opportunities to throw objects, swim or fly around, control a fire-breathing dragon, and interact with another person who has joined you on the experience. You learn about which new character you’re embodying by watching the other person embody that creature with you, and the modulation of your voice also changes with each new character deepening your sense of embodiment and presence.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has once again affirmed his belief in the significance of augmented reality technology. Interviewed during a recent trip to Europe, he spoke broadly about how AR could benefit everyone’s lives in the future, highlighting the way it allows users to remain ‘present’ in the real world. Underscored by years of relevant hiring and R&D, Cook’s words appear to further set the stage for the company’s rumored foray into the AR space.
Robinson: The Journey’s recent Steam release got off to a rocky start with a fatal bug which prevented players from even starting the game. Today, a 140MB patch from Crytek appears to have fixed the problem.
