Sony Expects Early PSVR Sales to Reach “Many Hundreds of Thousands”
Sony is setting high near term sales figure expectations for PlayStation VR’s rollout.
Impressions on Valve’s New VR Controller Prototype from Cloudhead’s Denny Unger
Valve premiered a prototype of a new type of VR input controller at Steam Dev Days in order to get some preliminary feedback from developers. They’ve created a capacitive-touch controller that is attached to your hand so that you can open and close your hands to mimic the feeling of grabbing a tangible object. They used a modified scene from The Gallery, Episode 1 demo to show off this new controller, and I had a chance to Cloudhead Games President & Creative Director Denny Unger about it at the VR on the Lot conference. We talked about the Valve’s new input controller prototype, the growing ecosystem of lighthouse-tracked peripherals, his thoughts on the future of non-linear narrative, and an update about The Gallery, which recently won best narrative VR experience at the Proto Awards and has surpassed $1 million in sales.
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More photos of the new Vive controllers! #SteamDevDays #Vive #VR pic.twitter.com/o99QHPZvvD
— Shawn Whiting (@shawncwhiting) October 12, 2016
Nice hands-on demo video of the capacitive touch features the new SteamVR controllers by Valve's Jeremy Selan. https://t.co/6Wd2Jc6unk
— Kent Bye VoicesOfVR (@kentbye) October 13, 2016
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Music: Fatality & Summer Trip
Oculus Touch Will Support 360 and Room-scale Tracking With Extra Cameras
Long a point of contention, Oculus last week announced a welcome new stance: the Rift will be officially supporting 360 degree tracking and room-scale as part of the forthcoming Touch launch.
‘Until Dawn: Rush of Blood’ Review
Until Dawn: Rush of Blood is a horror rail shooter launch title for PlayStation VR. It begins with a creepy carny warning you about the horrors that lie ahead. Once you ignore his warnings and accept the challenge of going on the ride, the cart you’re sitting on begins to move. As you’re maneuvered through the haunted house shooting ducks and targets with your two BB gun pistols something begins to change. With the flip of a switch the simple carnival ride turns into a fight for your life, putting you on a course through a maze of crazed clowns, demons and possessed hotel guests.
Animated VR Tale ‘Allumette’ Launches Today, Aims For Your Heart Strings
Penrose Studios’ Allumette launches on Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR today. This real-time animated VR tale is beautifully crafted and aims for your heart strings, but does it hit its mark?
‘RollerForce’ Review
RollerForce attempts to blend gunplay with a rollercoaster. Following on from the atmospheric iOmoon, Headtrip Games’ latest wants to take you on a very different ride on the HTC Vive, with support “coming soon” for Oculus Rift with Touch.
VR Visual Novel ‘Angels and Demigods’ Hits Kickstarter
The first chapter of Angels and Demigods, 7 Keys Studios’ lightly gamified, anime-style “VR visual novel,” is out, and four more chapters are waiting on funding from a Kickstarter launched September 28. Available for Vive via Steam, Cardboard via Android and iOS, and desktop via Mac OS and Windows, chapter one aims to expand to Samsung Gear soon.
First Look at Valve’s New VR Controller Prototype
Today at the Steam Dev Days conference in Seattle, Valve is showing off brand new prototypes of its Steam VR controllers.
Valve Teases New VR Prototypes at Steam Dev Days
Steam Dev Days, Valve’s annual developer conference, just started and from the tweets we’ve seen (no press allowed!) VR is getting the star treatment this year already.
3D Modeling for the Masses with Oculus Medium
Oculus Medium may be the first professional 3D modeling creation tool for the Oculus Touch controllers. It was created with the goal to democratize the process of creating 3D art and prototyping 3D-printed objects. The Medium developers didn’t set out to build a high-end industrial art tool, but early beta testers have been starting to integrate Medium within their professional 3D graphics pipelines.
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There have been a TON of improvements and UI developments to Medium over the last year, and it’s in the process of final improvements before being released with the Oculus Touch Controllers on December 6th. I had a chance to talk with Oculus Medium lead Brian Sharp about some of the design intentions behind Medium as well as some of the surprising ways that it’s already being used by professional artist like Goro Fujita. We talk about the evolution of the 3DUI, and how they wanted to stick to physical metaphors that anyone could understand rather than abstract concepts that only graphics professionals can grok. Medium is a great example of a VR program that demonstrates the power of immersive computing and how it can be much more intuitive and easy learn than previous 2D methods.
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Music: Fatality & Summer Trip
Valve is Investing in Wireless VR via Video Streaming Company Nitero
Valve’s annual Steam Dev Days event is underway and news about how the company is investing in VR’s future is seeping out. One interesting development is that they’re reportedly investing in 60Ghz wireless video streaming specialists Nitero, with a view to bringing wireless VR to their virtual reality offerings.
NVIDIA’s Stunning ‘Discovery’ Demo is a Look at the Future of Industrial Design
At GTC Europe in Amsterdam last month, NVIDIA’s ‘VR Village’ was host to a number of cutting-edge virtual reality demos, many of which we’ve had our hands on before. But there was something new being shown behind closed doors.
Valve: 300 Companies Already Planning to Use SteamVR Tracking Tech
Valve have revealed that their room-scale tracking technology SteamVR has now been licensed to over 300 companies, many of which plan to release products integrating the tech in 2017.
Robo Recall Design Insights from Developers Epic Games
Epic Games has had a long history of releasing new demo content at big gaming and developer conferences to showcase the latest Oculus hardware, and this year was no different. Oculus Studios provided funding to further develop the Bullet Train demo from last year into a fully-fledged FPS game called Robo Recall. This demo had one of the most polished and mature game mechanics expanding upon the Bullet Train bullet capture-and-throw mechanic into new weapons and upclose hand-to-hand combat with stylized arcade AI robots gone rouge.
I had a chance to talk with Epic Games VR lead Nick Whiting and artist Jerome Platteaux about their design process, deeper intentions, and overall art style and direction of the game. They debuted a new locomotion technique that was designed to help subtly guide players to facing the true north of the front-facing cameras, and Nick admitted that there are some design constraints to creating a game with the Oculus’ recommended front-facing camera arrangement. Jerome also said that there are new gameplay options that open up with a potential third tracking camera, but they didn’t give any more specifics as to whether Robo Recall intends on supporting the optional room-scale type of gameplay.
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