We reported yesterday that VR relaxation title Eden River HD was on it’s way to Steam soon and shared a teaser trailer for the title. Now Unello Design founder Aaron Lemke shares some thoughts on why he wanted to revisit his original Oculus Rift demo and what we can expect to find in the new title.
I decided to make Eden River after getting the Rift and seeing most Rift demo download sites over-saturated with horror games. I wanted to make a counter point to these games. Also it’s an experiment looking at whether or not virtual nature can have the same physical, psychological and emotional effects as physical nature.
Aaron’s also hopeful for consideration in this year’s Indicade festival of games:
I don’t know Indie Cade’s level of interest in VR at this point but Ive got my fingers crossed. They did have an option in the submission form specifically for Oculus Rift games so thats a good sign.
In terms of the feature set, well they’re not yet set in stone, but Aaron say we can expect the following:
“Story” Mode – a linear mode where you can interact with various forms of wildlife along your journey.
Endless Mode – an endless, randomly generated version of “Story” Mode, except with no animals. Endless mode is a pure relaxation experience.
Classic Mode – an HD update to the original Eden River demo.
Classic Endless – an endless HD version of the original Eden River demo.
And when can we expect to get our hands on Eden River HD? “Im shooting for a late July early August release.”
E3 2014 was the year of content not hardware for virtual reality, and Oculus lead the charge proudly demonstrating the fruits of their push to get developers to support their Oculus Rift platform.
I had some time on the last day of E3 2014 to hang out with Anton Mikhailov and Jeff Stafford, members of the Sony Project Morpheus team. They were wrapping up their final demos and wanted me to come back to try their Street Luge demo and chat.
Unello Design are probably the most chilled out VR developers in existence right now. Aaron Lemke‘s approach to game design seems to start with throwing away anything that could traditionally be considered a game. From the meditative Waking Man through to the lucid dreaming of Lunadroid, his music infused work is designed as pure escapism with perhaps a touch of enlightenment if you’re lucky.
As such, Aaron’s work neatly illustrates the opportunities for ‘gaming’ to develop new genres that aren’t about objectives, missions and shooting people in the face. Eden River was a good example of a title where just being inside was enough. All you did was float down a river, surrounded by beautiful scenery rolling your head gently from side to side to glide in that direction – and in VR, it was pure relaxation.
Now, Unello Design are working towards an expanded version of Eden River and is engaging with the VR community to find out what they’d like to see in Eden River HD – a commercial follow up, to be sold via Steam.
Popular suggestions for added features are to have a more expansive world, control over your cruising speed most tellingly a new ‘endless mode’. Could we see people falling asleep adrift on an infinite river?
You can find more on Eden River HD over at Unello Design‘s website here. No release date has been announced as yet for the title, we’ll let you know as soon as we do.
The Oculus Rift is seemingly finding it’s way into numerous fields of application beyond gaming. We reported recently that Marketing in particular seem to have seized the Rift’s wow factor and unique presentation capability in their campaigns. Well, now it seems the UK Army see potential in Oculus’ VR headset too.
UK company Plextek with funding from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) has developed a simulation to help UK Army medics learn to deal with situations they may face on the battlefield. The system involves the trainee donning the Rift and whilst immersed in the simulation, the instructor sets up and monitors the events – sort of like an enormously worthwhile Dungeon Master.
Plextek’s aim was to try and prepare soldiers for the reality of life under fire and by presenting different scenarios to the trainee, equip the soldier better.
Collette Johnson, medical business manager at Plextek Consulting, told the Daily Mail:
Our work with DSTL is enabling us to revolutionise the way medical treatment can be applied in the battlefield, while creating a multitude of opportunities for advanced health training applications across a breadth of industries,’
The innovative technology used in immersive reality solutions enables such a real-life perception that the education and response level of the trainee can be greatly heightened.
Any negative psychological effects could also be improved, by preparing the trainees better with a more accurate vision of what they could experience during military conflict.
Armed forces adopting consumer VR equipment seems to have been a theme of late. The Norwegian Army revealed recently that they’re testing a system to enhance their tank driver’s visibility in situations where all hatches are sealed. Using the Rift saves the army a pretty penny too, some $100k.
One of the defining and ingratiating aspects of Oculus VR as a company is their openness in sharing their progress and gathering knowledge from places other than their own offices. Their engagement with the community and their willingness to demonstrate new hardware and software at every possible opportunity is, I think, an enormous differentiator for them and one of the reasons they’ve been so successful at accelerating the push for great virtual reality into the consumer space.
So the Road to VR tradition of Oculus Rift reactions continue. Although this wasn’t the first outing for Oculus Rift’s DK2 hardware at a public show, there’s no arguing that E3 is much more consumer focussed than the DK2’s previous venue, GDC.
So, in the interests of gauging public perception of VR at E3 and the new hardware, Reverend Kyle stalked those who tried it out at Oculus’ opulent booth on the show floor gathering some interesting impressions.
Did you have an opportunity to try the DK” at E3 this year? What were your thought? Feel free to share them in the comments below.
3D Cinema’s return was billed as the saviour of the Multiplex. People would flock back to their local picture-house and revel in the wonders of modern entertainment technology whilst shelling out more money on admission for the privilege.
Of course, that didn’t quite happen and, although it certainly hasn’t turned out to be quite the white elephant it’s biggest detractors were predicting, no one could argue it gave way to any sort of revolution in movie making or watching.
3D Cinema and its equally beleaguered home equivalent, 3D TV, failed to capture the public’s imagination because the experience wasn’t anything that different. The technology that underpins 3D Cinema is not new, Stereoscopic movies, have been around for decades and its revival was driven primarily by movie studios and TV Manufacturers not the consumer.
…Long Live VR Cinema
Jaunt VR Camera Array, On the set of Black Mass
VR Cinema is different, and here’s why; When it’s done right, it’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced in movies before. It’s the most visceral and immediate way to bring a film makers vision to life in front of the viewer. It opens up new doors for directors and writers that could even give way to completely new genres. This is genuinely new and people are going to love it!
Black Mass is a 10 minute short movie that aims to scare you… a lot. Greg Plotkin, the director behind Paranormal Activity 5, takes the reins with Producers Matt Winston (son of pioneering effects wiz, Stan Winston), Erich Grey Litoff, David Sanger and John Ales. Partnered with Jaunt VR, a new company dedicated to 3D VR Movie making technology who recently secured $6.8M in VC funding, this is the first made-for-VR horror movie we’re aware of and its production values are impressive. Special Makeup Effects were created by Gary J, Tunnicliffe.
The film begins with your kidnapping. Then, waking to find yourself in a strange room, you’re confronted with blood soaked floors and walls. At the moment, that’s about all we know – a good thing too, as knowing too much about this project beforehand would likely diminish the surprises that undoubtedly await you.
Whilst he was in LA for E3, Road to VR Executive Editor Ben Lang took time out to get his head into an early version of Black Mass on an Oculus Rift HD Prototype. These are his thoughts on the experience.
The short snippet of Jaunt’s horror experience that I saw opened with me in the middle of some sort of storage room. Haphazardly organized materials and tools were strewn around the area. In front of me was a young girl in a white dress, maybe 10 years old. She was staring right at me; I wasn’t just an observer, I was to be a participant in this experience. “I think you’re bleeding,” she said.
As I went to look down at my body to see what she was talking about, I was interrupted by a sudden crash from somewhere outside of the scene, it gave me, and others I watched experiencing the scene, a nice little jump. She seemed startled and ran past me to the right. I followed her with my gaze as she exited the room behind me. As I turned back to where she had been standing, I was almost certain that before me would be something terrifying—a monster, a murderer—but there was nothing; it caught me off guard. Then, another loud crash with flickering lights, and another jump in my seat.
I was fully ready to be terrified, but that’s all Jaunt was willing to let me see for now.
Scott Broock, Jaunt’s VP of content, described the full experience as “10 minutes of escalating terror.” I can’t wait to see the whole thing.
The Pitfalls…
Checking the 360 camera’s view remotely.
…for any new technology are of course many and varied and shooting a full, 360 degree live action 3D movie poses some unique technical challenges. Building a set that completely surrounds the action and then finding places to hide microphones in that set are but two. The technical oomph to stitch the images captured by the cluster of cameras found in Jaunt’s latest capture device is, as you can imagine, not insignificant either.
As Scott explains: “We have a very large plate after the stitch from the source, with an extremely high resolution. We down sample to 1080p for the Rift, with a ton of pixels to spare. Meaning that we will later re-render and have a very high resolution version of the movie for the DK2.”
Creatively too, VR Cinema needs to take care not to become pigeon-holed as a one-trick wonder, the kind you might pay to see at a theme park. It needs to escape the fate of the 50s B-Movie drive-in experience too, relegated to low-budget sci-fi and horror until it’s demise. But, if companies like Jaunt VR and their pioneering technology can make the job of capturing VR movies possible and Oculus really can achieve its vision of a Billion users with Oculus Rifts, I can’t wait to see what the next generation of directors have us immersed in.
To say we’re anxious to get our hands on the final movie is, frankly, an understatement. We’ll keep you up to date on project Black Mass and let you know when a release date is announced. Meanwhile, you can find more information on Jaunt VR at their website here.
E3 is over for another year and it’s been fun! We’ve had a very marked focus on software not hardware for VR related products and that’s been reflected in our coverage.
Again, Rev. Kyle is joined by Ben Lang to talk about the day’s events. In this final special they discuss Sixense and their newest STEM prototype and were impressed with it’s low latency, Kyle gets his turn with the Virtuix Omni, reactions from the Oculus Booth, new DK2 shipping estimates and some thoughts and info on Elite: Dangerous. Kyle also had his time with Sony’s Project Morpheus and the Street Luge demo. And of course the VRLA mixer.
We’ve already brought you Ben Lang trying out Street Luge, one of the new demo’s Sony is using to demonstrate it’s Project Morpheus VR Headset for the Playstation 4. This time a close up off screen capture of the game in action.
We think this is the clearest footage there is of the game thus far and it gives you a great idea of the feeling of speed the demo conveys inside the headset.
We hope to have more detailed impressions on Sony’s demo set soon.
It’s now fairly unusual for us to attend big shows like E3 without seeing another mobile smartphone VR viewer pop up. As the processing power and 3D rendering capabilities of average smart phones has exploded these days, and that many include IMUs capable of detecting (or approximating well at least) orientation. Leveraging that cutting-edge technology to ride the current frenzy in the VR space means we have many more mobile viewer solutions than fully-fledged, dedicated VR Headsets.
CMoar is very similar to products like Durovis Dive and Vrase in that you get a case with lenses, you start up a compatible application, slot in your smart phone and away you go. CMoar does deviate in one area though, and it’s a potentially interesting one. The Cmoar comes with 3 distinct lens assemblies (or ‘bases’ as CMoar call them) for 3 different types of applications: 2D Cinema, 3D Stereoscopic Cinema and an VR / AR ‘base’.
If you want to watch a movie or game on a virtual big screen but your movie is not in 3D, use the 2D Cinema base (single, fresnel lense for both eyes). For 3D enabled applications and movies (side by side stereoscopic) pick the 3D cinema base with dual fresnels. Finally, VR / AR lenses which, they claim, yield a 95 degree FOV.
The unit is a fairly neat bit of industrial design, if somewhat bulky. Rather than having a separate carrying case, the device forms a complete shell when all pieces are assembled, meaning you can throw them in a bag when you go travelling. But (as you’ll see in the pitch video we filmed at Cmoar’s stand), the design has lead to a fairly bulky headset. Furthermore, the process for both inserting your smartphone into the device (Cmoar claim compatibility with 30 devices) and swapping out the lens bases looks a little clunky and cumbersome to me, but this is still a prototype product at this point.
Cmoar is heading to Kickstarter soon and we’ll have some impressions of the unit up on the site soon.
Well here’s something you don’t see every day. George Takei, of course famous for his role in the original Star Trek series where he played Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, punching (or rather failing to punch) a virtual shark in the face.
In episode 202 of Takei’s Take, George visits software developers Chaotic Moon Studios (2m 46s in) to take a look at their virtual reality project where the design goal was simple, to “..create an underwater experience where you can punch a shark in the face”. With that introduction, George dons a HD development kit / prototype and proceeds to completely fail to punch a shark. Looks like the company are using either a Kinect or similar a leap motion unit stuck to the front of the HMD to detect punching motions, although it didn’t look to work so well in this case.
We want to play it. If Chaotic Moon are reading, release that demo please!
Updated: Thanks to David in the comments for pointing out the glaringly obvious (Leap motion not Kinect). I blame sleep deprivation thanks to E3.
As we reported yesterday, developer nDreamsannounced via Sony’s blog that their new game The Assembly would be coming to Playstation 4 and that it was developed from the ground up for VR and that it would support Sony’s Project Morpheus.
Patrick O’Lunanaigh has has appeared on an interview with Gamespot divulging more details about both the artistic direction of the game and confirmed the title will be available for the PC and the Oculus Rift too.
We know that the titular ‘Assembly’ as some sort of mysterious organisation engaged in potentially dodgy scientific research. It seems you play two protagonists in the game. First, Madeline, a scientist dragged to The Assembly’s labs against her will as part of an initiation ceremony with a view to ‘allow’ her to join the organisation. Secondly you play as Joel, a member of the Assembly for some time who is having serious doubts about the organisation. It’s an interesting setup which gives good opportunity for a wide variety of gameplay.
Patrick goes on to say that the style of game is phsychological thriller rather than balls out horror, with moments of peril and mind games playing a part in the experience. Something that did surprise was that the game runs primarily on joypad for PS4 (as opposed to playstation move) and mouse + kayboard for PC, neither of which have been found to be ideal controller combinations for virtual reality. We shall have to wait and see how things shape up.
Release date on both platforms is set to hit once both VR Headsets have had their commercial release, which at this point is anyone’s guess. We’ll keep you up to date on progress of the game once we find out more.
In an interview with Tested.com’s Norm Chan, Nate Mitchell, VP of Product at Oculus VR, has stated that production is ramping up well for the company’s 2nd developer kit (DK2) and in fact they expect to ship 20-30,000 units in July.
The 2nd developer kit from Oculus was announced back at GDC with pre-orders shortly opening up after the announcement. At the time, demand was so high it brought Oculus’ order pages to their knees. As of now, the company estimates they’ve received circa 40,000 orders for the DK2 since it went on sale. To put that into perspective, throughout the entire run of production for Oculus’ DK1, they shipped around 60,000. That’s a great validation of Oculus’ vision and a real marker to their successful reboot of virtual reality.
Elsewhere, Nate also stated that their original pilot run which included some 100 developers has gone well, bearing fruits that are being shown at E3 this year. Nate said that their experience with their original Kickstarter funded DK1 production run has meant they’ve been able to speedily complete tooling and production for the DK2. And, as we’ve heard from Palmer Luckey, Founder of Oculus VR, elsewhere – when they’re consumer edition finally ships it will be as close to ‘cost’ as possible.
DK2 begins shipping in July and we’re on the pre-order list and will excitedly report on what it’s like as soon as we receive ours.
Although the presence of Project Morpheus, Sony’s VR Headset for the PS4, at Sony’s press conference (it’s first since announcing at GDC in March) was notably muted, Sony clearly isn’t losing momentum or enthusiasm for the device.
Along with 2 new demos at their E3 public stand, they’ve released details of 2 full games coming to the Playstation 4 that will be supporting Morpheus. The first we wrote about yesterday, The Assembly. The second is Project Cars.
For those who don’t know, Project Cars is a driving simulation game with heavy emphasis on multiplayer online racing and a breathless fascination with everything on 4 wheels. The team behind the game, Slightly Mad Studios, just released an impressive trailer of the game in action and the level of detail at times approaches photo-realism. Not just that, but the game’s physics model is clearly more complex and robust than your average console racer. It really is a sight to behold.
Image courtesy Slightly Mad Studios
But given the sheer level of detail being pushed here, can the Playstation 4 manage to power a compelleing and comfortable VR experience at high resolutions and framerates with stereoscopy? Up to now, all we’ve seen demonstrated on the VR Headset are fun but relatively simple demos that allow an easy push for high, consistent frame rates. Then there’s the appearance of EVE Valkyrie at this year’s show, clearly no slouch in the graphics department, but I’d estimate requiring nowhere near the levels of GPU oomph that Project Cars would require.
As Project Cars isn’t being demo’ed on Morpheus we can’t answer these questions, however reports from the show floor about the ‘standard’ PS4 version are positive thus far. Either way, Project Cars isn’t PS4 exclusive and is in fact coming to PC as well. What’s more, ee know that the team have been working on Oculus Rift support for some time now too, although we’ve yet to see it in action.
Whatever the case, Project Cars looks amazing and we’re looking forward to getting our heads into it on any platform.
