Just because VR is more immersive doesn’t mean its only use is to get your adrenaline pumping. Aaron Lemke is one of only a few developers getting serious about relaxing and meditative virtual reality experiences. Eden River’s peaceful gameplay and hummable music provide a beautiful respite from not just the stressful real-world, but also from the usual conflict-driven gaming tropes. Lemke today is announcing that Eden River HD, an update to the original Eden River demo, will launch on August 8th. Road to VR has an exclusive early preview of this tranquil title.
As a fan of the Wipeout series, I absolutely had to try Tammeka Games’ Radial-G, a low-grav arcade racer with Oculus Rift virtual reality support. While I’ve long enjoyed the frenetic action-packed racing of Wipeout, could a similar title work in VR—with a cylindrical track no less—without also being a vomit simulator? I was delighted to find out that Radial-G is not only fun in virtual reality, but it somehow dodges simulator sickness with the same ease that its ships hover above the track.
Oculus VR today has made an official announcement about the shipping status of the first batch of Rift DK2s. The shipment, which the company previously said would be leaving distribution facilities on the 14th of July, has been held to provide Oculus with more time to polish and test the latest version of the Oculus SDK.
It is the week of July 14th, as the first shipments of the much anticipated Oculus Rift DK2 are expected to head to developers, and the VR community has one thing on their mind: when are they going to get an email, or a statement, or something to indicate where their DK2 is? Jesse and I have decided to be patient, and instead talk about a few other subjects to keep our minds off of it.
While there are a number of peopleandprojects currently working on what the future of VR on the web might look like, the question remains: how do we use the internet—as we know it today—in VR? One of SteamVR’s best features has nothing to do with gaming—its built-in web browser is the best way to view the 2D web in VR.
This friday, the 18th of July, Road to VR will be hosting a live roundtable discussion about VR, in VR. The entire team will be assembling across half the globe inside the Riftmax virtual reality software to talk VR. Anyone is welcome to be a member of the live audience.
Today Wales Interactive launches Infinity Runner, which is exactly what it sounds like—an infinite running game like many found on mobile platforms. The team appears to have successfully ported the genre from mobile to PC, but does it work as a virtual reality game for the Oculus Rift?
We’ve been waiting for a playable slice of White Lotus Interactive’s Oculus Rift enabled title ‘Xing: The Land Beyond’ since the team teased it might be on its way shortly after this year’s E3 expo.
The game, which successfully completed its Kickstarter campaign last year, is a first person, puzzle / adventure title, very much influenced by the classic Myst series on PC. The 3 person team have wowed visitors at recent expos, and stands as one of the most promising title in development for Oculus’ VR Headset. The newly released demo seems to be a version of demos shown at those shows.
Our idea is to take players on a beautiful, fantastical and spiritual journey through the afterlife. It is non-combative and there are no time-restraints. We want players to feel intrigued by the story and puzzles presented, but also relaxed in the lush environments we create using the Unreal Engine 4.
Flying in virtual reality, a commonly held wish by enthusiasts since the dawn of the technology. The prospect of swooping over virtual landscapes, your mind convinced your body has taken flight is an extremely enticing one. Now that virtual reality technology is becoming a more and more accessible with the advent of the Oculus Rift, attention turns on how best to achieve this experience. There’s one thing you’ll certainly need for that realistic touch, convincing virtual terrain.
Australian company Aerometrex are working on just that. They are digital aerial mapping specialists who have focussed on providing realistic captures of towns and cities across the real world in order for them to to be realised in the virtual world.
The company flies dedicated UAVs carrying sophisticated cameras across the desired location capturing extremely high resolution and geospatially mapped photos of the area. Combined with 3D depth sensing technologies (collectively known as aero3Dpro), this allows the company to produce astonishingly accurate and lifelike 3D models based on the captured data.
The captured imagery is adjusted, corrected and assembled by sophisticated software to produce a 3D map you can take a very convincing flight over.
The company recently released a video demonstrating one of their 3D models being presented through the Oculus Rift (video top), and it’s an intriguing idea for presenting and communicating 3D space on such a large scale to people efficiently and effectively. OF course, all I want to do is zoom about pretending to be Superman – something that the video captures quite nicely.
As Aerometrex are focussed on corporate cliental however, it’s currently unclear if they’re ever likely to release tastes of the experiences on offer to the general public. The are apparently working on integrating Myo support, the gesture capturing hardware which senses muscle movement and translates it into input data, which would certainly allow naturalistic flight controls.
VRelia, a Spanish company recently formed with the aim of providing users with high resolution VR Headsets, has announced a partnership with ImmersiON, a startup formed from the key players behind TD Vision, a company with a history in 3D technologies and video codecs.
We first covered VRelia back in February, at which time they were planning to offer not one but three different VR headsets to compete directly with Oculus VR’s Rift. Since then, it looks like the company has returned to the drawing board and has now paired down it’s offering count to 2. The VREye Go, a headset smartphone harness much like that which we’ve seen from vRase, Durovis and countless others. The VREye Pro offers what’s claimed to be 2 x 5.9″ Full HD (1080p) display panels which the company claims delivers an effective resolution of 2190 x 1920, a slightly confusing figure given that 2 x 1080 (vertical resolution of a full HD panel) = 2160.
The VRelia VREye ‘Go’ mobile phone VR Headset
The products sold by ImmersiON share the same base specs as above and adds what looks to be dual front facing cameras in order to facilitate augmented reality experiences. It’s also key to point out that the images of all these HMDs are at this stage merely renders, and that should you choose to opt for pre-ordering one of the ImmersiON devices, you’re also opting in to beta test early versions of the new VR headsets as it seems there’s no final hardware as yet not to mention a complete absence of pricing. Furthermore, there’s no clear indication when those placing their orders might receive actual hardware.
TDVision seems to have had their hand in many technologies over the years, including the production of their own VR Headset, the TD Visor. It’s their software platform called AlterSpace which is highlighted in a recent press release announcing the partnership though and this seems to take the form of an online collaboration, chat and social VR hub where people can hang out in VR, share online content and socialise. Beyond that, it’s not too clear how the software plays a part in pushing the VREye headsets, or even if / when it will be made available – the Alterspace website seems completely unfinished and the only documentation I could find on TDVision’s website seemed to describe concepts and planned features only.
Competition is great, on that we can all agree. But right now it’s simply unclear precisely what this announcement means for the VR Industry. With hardware that’s yet to enter the beta stage and an unclear roadmap for ImmersiON’s value added software packages, we’ll just have to wait and see.
Altspace (formerly Qualia3D) is announcing that they’ve raised $2.5 million in venture capital to develop a shared virtual reality browsing environment. Investors include Google Ventures, Formation 8, Dolby Family Ventures, and more. Altspace is developing a shared VR environment with a heavy focus on browser-based interactivity.
Virtual Reality is still and emerging (perhaps re-emerging) technology and gaming platform. As such, new surprises and interesting uses of the technology are never far away right now. ‘Aliens, Trolls and Dragons’ is an Action Adventure game with native Oculus Rift support that offers VR enthusiasts an over-the-shoulder 3rd person view on the the gameworld.
Lucky’s Tale blew some minds at E3, not necessarily because it looked particularly world shattering in terms of either gameplay or visuals, but because it was a slap in the face for anyone who believed virtual reality gaming was restricted to a first person view. A console style platformer, with an inventive on-rails and freestyle camera mapped to your head movements was a pleasant surprise indeed. ‘Aliens, Trolls and Dragons’ offers up a 3rd person view, with a Gears of War style offset view, mapped to head tracking.
In a new 12 minute gameplay video demonstrating the game’s native Oculus Rift support with the player glancing around the gameworld as their on screen protagonist slashes enemies with swords and surveys the environment. It’s a great looking game and certainly one of the better independently developed Oculus Rift titles out there.
The game itself is developed by Polish code house Kubold and will transport the player to a future where space travel has allowed mankind to reach far into the universe. You play a security officer from a crash-landed vessel, on a planet that bears an eerie resemblance to medieval earth. Your task, to find and free your crew mates by kicking the humanoid alien’s butts.
Guest writer Kevin Williams lifts the lid on a game which missed the glare of the media spotlight at E3 2014—Digital Combat Simulator.
During E3 2014, there was a crowded assortment of demonstrators on the Oculus VR booth. One of the exclusives that was only shown to a select group was from Eagle Dynamics, famous for the release of their ultra-realistic flight simulator brand Digital Combat Simulator (DCS), the free-to-play digital battlefield game, focusing on a military aircraft simulation.
The company partnered with Oculus VR to present the latest version of their hyper-realistic simulator platform on the DK2; an early prototype demonstration allowed viewers to be placed in a selection of realistic recreations of extreme fight planes—their cockpits lovingly recreated and able to be experienced through the VR Headset.
This early glimpse at the new software build showed the promise of what ultra-realistic flight simulation in a VR head-mount offers. Though the demonstration did not have any ground-targets, or air combat, the flight model still put the DK2 through its paces.
The sim was demonstrated by a consultant on the Oculus booth from the Imperial War Museum (Duxford, England) US military division. Limited information is available at this time into the planned release of the simulation title or how the relationship with Oculus VR will work (at this time the game was not a Oculus VR exclusive but being used as a proof of concept for the new development kit), more information on the release schedule and the final support of this title by Eagle Dynamics and Oculus VR planned to be revealed for later in the year. The first of the full flight simulation that will populate VR development, alongside race vehicles and the plethora of space flight projects in the works”
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Kevin got to try out the flight simulator for himself and summarised his feeling thus:
– The ability to use the DK2 tracking to look round the detailed cockpit was amazing
– They so far sadly had no ground targets, but it was possible to see the flight model offered a new level of immersion
– Unlike the space simulators seen (Elite: Dangerous, EVE: Valkyrie) at E3, this was a major step forward in what VR HMD immersion can offer
As one of the first fully-fledged flight simulators to get the Oculus treatment, and given cockpit based experiences lend themselves extremely well to Oculus’ vision of the seated VR model, we’ve got high hopes for DCS in VR. We’ll of course keep our ears to the ground and update you on any news as we find it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Kevin Williams has an extensive background in the development and sales of the latest amusement and attraction applications and technologies. The UK born specialist in the pay-to-play scene; is well-known through his consultancy KWP; and as a prolific writer and presenter (along with his own news service The Stinger Report), covering the
emergence of the new entertainment market. Kevin has co-authored a book covering the sector called ‘The Out-of-Home Interactive Entertainment Frontier’ (published by Gower). And is the founding chairman of DNA Association, focuses on the digital Out-of Home interactive entertainment sector.
Earlier this week, Oculus VR announced Oculus Connect, a VR developer conference to be hosted at the end of September in Los Angeles, California. Registration was slated to open this morning at midnight, but Oculus says they need more time before registration will be ready.
