HTC Vive and SteamVR Hands-on – A Stage of Constant Presence
Last week at GDC, Valve revealed not just a headset, but a stage upon which pioneering storytellers and game designers will create the first VR experiences of a defining platform.
‘Recent History of VR’ Cartoon from Cloudhead Games is Fun if Incomplete
Resident programmer at Cloudhead Games has illustrated (literally) the huge progress that’s been made in the last few years in VR hardware, culminating obviously in GDC 2015 and it’s Valve Steam VR revelations.
Inside the David Cronenberg VR Experience with the Developers Who Met Him
Body/Mind/Change is a trans-media experience that was built to accompany a recent celebration of film director David Cronenberg and his work. As part of the project Blair Renaud, developer of Technolust, got to meet the man behind Scanners and The Fly. Renaud shares his experiences and we talk with the team about how the project came to be.
Lucasarts’ Star Wars ‘Jedi Academy’ Gets Oculus Rift DK2 Support
A Lucasarts classic has been given a thoroughly modern makeover, it’s received Oculus Rift DK2 support, thanks to the work of coder xLava.
Last year, shortly after George Lucas sold LucasFilm off to Disney for $4.05 Billion, Lucasarts – the interactive entertainment division of Lucas’ empire – was closed. Lucasarts was responsible for a pile of classic gaming franchises, one of which is regarded by many as one of the best made in the Star Wars universe.
Jedi Knight was the sequel to Dark Forces, and spawned two sequels. The third, Jedi Academy, was developed by Raven Software, who upon hearing of Lucasarts’ closure, decided to release the source code.
xLava took this source code and decided to work in virtual reality support and has now released an Oculus Rift DK2 compatible version. What’s more, xLava hasn’t just grafted pre-warping and stereoscopy onto the original game, he’s altered the HUD to be more comfortable in VR and permanent first person mode.
You can the latest build over at the project’s homepage here, including installation and configuration instructions.
We’ve not had a chance to give it a spin just yet. If you do, let us know what you thin in the comments below.
NUREN is First VR Project to Receive Unreal Dev Grant
[NUREN]: The New Renaissance is the first VR project to get a slice of Epic Games’ development fund, coming to the tune of $18,000 worth of “no strings attached” funds to further the development of the virtual reality experience.
Tactical Haptics’ Will Provancher Talks Updated ‘Reactive Grip’ and We Go Hands-on
As Ben Lang says in his interview introduction, Will Provancher is one of the OG’s of virtual reality. Tactical Haptic’s ‘Reactive Grip’ controller was one of the few peripherals shown back at GDC 2013 that aimed to enhance immersion compared with standard input devices. The Road to VR team caught up with Tactical Haptics again at GDC 2015 to chart the system’s progress over the last 2 years.
OSVR’s Yuval Boger Talks HDK and SDK Updates
OSVR has announced at GDC 2015 that it plans to update it’s Hacker Developer Kit (HDK) open source headset to 1.1 bringing with it a collection of enhancements. OSVR’s Yuval Boger walks Ben Lang through the hardware and software advancements since we last met the team at CES 2015.
Sixense’s Danny Woodall on Porting ‘Jedi Training’ STEM Demo to Unreal Engine 4
Road to VR last caught up with Sixense at CES, where they demonstrated an early integration with Gear VR to add positional tracking. The ‘Jedi Training’ demo now comes to GDC, running on Unreal Engine 4. Ben Lang Speaks to Creative Director at Sixense Danny Woodall on what the engine was like to work with.
10 Things You Didn’t Know About Steam VR’s Lighthouse Tracking System
Lighthouse is Valve’s laser-based tracking system that forms the bedrock of Steam VR’s input system. Alan Yates, Hardware Engineer at Valve was a key player in the system’s design and implementation. Alan, frustrated with being asked the same questions over and over on Twitter, produced a nano-FAQ on Lighthouse. Here are the highlights.
New Steam Page Suggests HTC Vive November Release
We know that HTC and valve plan to ship Steam VR products such as the Vive VR headset by the end of the year. Are these new pages shows in Steam’s client application and website, confirmation we may have it as early as November?
Sony Present: Virtual Visuals: Key Lessons for Artists Working with VR – Live Blog @ 2pm PST
“Virtual Reality is real, it’s happening, no longer the stuff of sci-fi films. We know it’s going to take many years and the combined efforts of the whole games industry to fully explore what is possible within the realm of VR. This talk aims to cover the early steps the Art team of London studio took working on Project Morpheus. From addressing the skillset of the art team to deliver the project to what is important in the visual aesthetic of a VR experience; we will step through our learnings looking at what worked and what didn’t.”
Speaker:
- Jason Hickey – Environmental Art Supervisor, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
Ben Lang and Scott Hayden are Live Blogging this event which starts at 2pm PST. Updates should appear automatically below, no need to refresh.
Video of Valve’s ‘Aperture Science’ Portal VR Demo Leaked
Steam VR is taking GDC 2015 by storm with the HTC Vive VR Headset being demonstrated along with the dedicated, laser tracked controllers. One of the demo’s is a new, special version of Portal built for virtual reality. Here’s a video of it in action.
This video (presumably secretly filmed) shows a live demonstration the HTC Vive headset plus Steam VR controllers as the player makes his way through a short segment of the Aperture Science VR demo, opening doors and interacting with crazy looking gizmos. Just from a visual standpoint it looks impressive, and although it isn’t clear – we’re presuming this is built on the Source 2 game engine, if so it looks great.
Anyway, sit back and enjoy (for a few seconds). The team at GDC 2015 have tried the demo and will report back very soon on what they think of it. I can let you into a little secret though – it didn’t suck!
Oculus Presents: Developing VR Apps with Oculus SDK – Live Blog @ 12:45 PST
“Learn about programming VR apps using the Oculus SDK. The talk will cover the current SDK, upcoming features and some future directions we are considering.”
Speaker:
- Anuj Gosalia – Director of Development, Oculus SDK
Ben Lang and Scott Hayden are Live Blogging this event which starts at 12:45pm PST. Updates should appear automatically below, no need to refresh.
Practical Virtual Reality for Disney Themeparks – Live Blog @ 10am PST
“Thinking about creating your own VR experiences using the Oculus? Walt Disney Imagineering, being one of the original pioneers in VR in the late 1980s, has in truth never stopped playing with VR and using it. This lecture will focus on some of the basic learnings from the last 20 years, and how it applies to VR experience development today. The talk will focus on HMD and CAVE-based experiences, their design considerations, technical implementation details, and will cover some real-world examples.”
Speaker:
- Bei Yang – Creative Technical Design Lead, Walt Disney Imagineering
Ben Lang and Scott Hayden are Live Blogging this event which starts at 10am PST. Updates should appear automatically below, no need to refresh.
