There isn’t a studio that can claim to be ‘The Pixar of VR’ just yet, but many heavy hitters in traditional media and tech are taking notice of the growth potential of animated films in VR, and specifically in Baobab Studios, the VR film studio known for animated shorts INVASION! and sequel ASTEROIDS!. Baobab today announced the close of $25 Million in Series B funding, bringing total funding to date to $31 Million.
After years of previews and teasers, Ubisoft make their long anticipated VR debut on Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR. Eagle Flight has all the hallmarks of being a toe in the water for Ubisoft, but the VR world may feel the ripples for some time to come.
Joel Breton is the Vice President VR Content at HTC, and I had a chance to catch up with him at the Casual Connect conference in July to talk about the different industry verticals that they’ve identified. These include commerce, games, healthcare, education, live video/events/sports, design/engineering/tools, media, military/simulation, theme parks, and social. Some of the biggest areas of adoption with the Vive have been in engineering and design companies where they’ve been able to essentially replace million-dollar CAVE systems with the Vive. And we also talk about how each of the existing video game genres have been able to be translated into VR to varying degrees of success, and whether or not he sees any new genres unique to VR emerge yet. It’s an interesting discussion about the overall VR ecosystem, and how HTC has started to break it up into these different VR business verticals.
With a virtual reality camera, you can capture the whole world around you in a 360 degree videosphere. VR filmmaking is seeing rapid innovation, meaning that there are more 360-degree cameras on the market now than ever before, geared at everyone from intrigued consumers to high-end professionals. This overview is designed to give you solid starting points across a range of options.
Arktika.1 is the VR debut for 4A Games, the developers bind the Metro series of first person shooters. The title is built from the ground up for Oculus Touch, here’s 17 minutes of the Oculus Connect 3 demo where the title made it’s debut.
Facebook, parent company of Oculus, is beginning to flex its virtual reality arm. The company wants to use the technology revolutionize how social interactions happen across the web, and we may see the first stages of that plan earlier than expected.
360 video is coming to Steam and it looks as if Valve are aiming high in terms of the quality they’re aiming to deliver to consumer VR headsets.
Loading Human is a first-person sci-fi adventure that, much like the pulp fiction space operas of years gone past, puts you in the shoes of a charming 22nd century astronaut straight out of space academy. Instead of launching into the far reaches of the known galaxy though, you’re ordered to report to your father’s polar base to help him recover the Quintessence, a powerful energy source that can reverse his rapidly declining health.
Sony is setting high near term sales figure expectations for PlayStation VR’s rollout.
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.
LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST
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
Music: Fatality & Summer Trip
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 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.
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 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.
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.
