Serve up disgusting brain burgers and bloody drinks to your flesh-hungry patrons.
With much of the nation still under lockdown as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, this year’s Halloween has many trick or treaters and partiers confined reluctantly to their homes hunched over a bowl of miniature Snickers with a case of the holiday blues.
This also happens to be the premise for Horror Bar VR, and brand new zombie bar simulator that has you playing bartender to an endless number of terrifying undead patrons. With much of the world under quarantine, you now serve as the lone source of nourishment to a host of ghoulish zombies.
Using a combination of interesting bartending techniques, you’ll serve up a variety of truly unsettling beverages and cuisine, from bizarre “sea food” stored fresh in your horrifying aquarium and fry cut fingers to squishy brain burgers and delectable dead rats.
Similar to existing restaurant management experiences, Horror Bar VR revolves primarily around serving up orders quickly and efficiently to an increasing number of patrons using a variety of specialized cooking tools and techniques. In addition to prepping food, you’ll need to be on the look out for random events, such as undead rats attempting a jailbreak and rogue bats looking to steal ingredients.
Where Horror Bar VR truly shines, however, is in its character and environmental design. From the dead-eyed patrons to the ghoulish bar itself, Horror Bar VR is oozing with personality. This is especially true when it comes to your cooking station.
Drinks, for instance, are stored above your station in what appear to be individual IV bags. Dead rats, a delicacy in the zombie world, are stored separately on ice before being shocked back to “life” and served to hungry patrons. There’s so much to appreciate you may find it difficult to focus on your dead end job. Get it? “Dead end” job?
Horror Bar VR is available now in Early Access for $24.99 on SteamVR headsets (currently 20% off at the time of this writing) and features both a Career and Practice Mode. Developed by VR Factory, Horror Bar VR launches on the heels of Bar Simulator VR, a realistic VR bartending course.
We talk to the people behind Superhot and Pistol Whip on how Oculus’s latest headset, the Quest 2, allowed them to up their game and improve performance.
[UploadVR regularly commissions freelance writers to review products, write stories, and contribute op-ed pieces to the site. This article is a feature piece from an established journalist.]
When details of the Oculus Quest 2 were leaked, VR enthusiasts were ecstatic about one item in particular: the new headset would be more powerful. As the Qualcomm GPU behind the standalone went from the Snapdragon 835 to the Snapdragon XR2.
We now know from benchmarks that the Quest 2 GPU is more than twice as powerful than its predecessor. But what does that really mean for users? Developers have gone that extra mile to tap into that GPU power to improve the graphics of their games.
One of the first breakout titles for the original Quest was Superhot VR, a reimagining of the PC shooter for virtual reality. Many who played this version of the game found it to be more engrossing than the flat-screen version, with the motion controls in three-dimensional space enhancing the time-bending and bullet-dodging gameplay.
“We were able to add a lot of little things back in,” said Mark Schramm, Lead VR Developer at Superhot Team. “One example is the incredibly detailed concrete texture that was missing from all objects. This may not be something players would notice right away, and we joke a lot about it internally, but thanks to the higher resolution display of Quest 2 it was a super important addition for us. Other items include transparency effects, such as the ground fog that makes distant geometry blend much nicer into the scenery.”
Players on Quest 2 will now find a Superhot game that has more polish and more shininess than before. There is a texture to the objects of the world and improved lighting. The red crystalline enemies gleam in ways they did not before. And the backgrounds are closer to the original, with art fading in the fog to make everything feel suitably disembodied.
Superhot for Quest 2 seems to be proof that despite the drop in power from a PC to a standalone headset, a game could look just as good, giving users the full experience the developer intended.
“Quest 2’s chip is quite a beast and we were pleasantly surprised at how far we can push it. As we become more familiar with the hardware, I am certain we will be able to do even more cool things with it, and we’re continuing to work on it,” said Schramm.
The fore-mentioned increase in screen resolution, from Quest 1’s 1440 by 1600 per eye to Quest 2’s 1832 by 1920 per eye, was one way Superhot Team was able to utilize the hardware. Luckily, their game had support baked in.
Schramm said, “Many of our in-game materials are procedurally generated, which meant we were able to make great use of Quest 2’s higher resolution display. Our complex materials such as the crystal and concrete have used texture slots in the past. As an example, this would include textures for any grout lines in the floor tiles, reflections inside the crystal or the scan line stripes.”
“For Quest, we changed to a procedural system where many of these features are calculated via code, rather than loaded in from a texture. This meant two things: The materials use less texture memory, which can be a limited resource on mobile GPUs in general. And we can easily scale these features when eye buffer resolution increases. In practical terms, this means we do not need to author two different texture sets (one for Quest 1 and another one for Quest 2 resolutions), but also that our materials are as sharp as they possibly can be. This was super important for us, since we want to always maintain that clean, crisp Superhot look.”
On the opposite side of the gun barrel is Pistol Whip, the quick-paced counterpart to the slow gunplay of Superhot. This rhythm-based shooter that feels like an amalgam of Beat Saber’s music and the bullet action of the arcade games of yesteryear was an already colorful game, but Cloudhead made it prettier. Bringing back lighting and other graphical effects that are found on the PC version, Pistol Whip feels more surreal, more glossy, thus more like itself than before.
“The thing we were most excited about was having the chance to push the boundaries of visual elements in the game. One of our goals is to make sure the game always looks amazing on all platforms, from Quest to PCVR, so the team is always working on solutions to see the visuals getting close to the high end platform. The Quest 2 gave us the opportunity to push this further,” said Ed Lago, Senior producer at Cloudhead Games.
Once the Quest 2 was in their hands, Cloudhead knew they had to restore much of what was previously missing from the Quest version. Fortunately, Pistol Whip was always evolving, receiving a steady stream of new songs and accompanying levels, wrapped in a metaphor of films playing at a movie theater.
Lago said, “We were in the middle of the ‘Heartbreaker Trilogy’ production when we decided to update the game for Quest 2. This new content was really different from the previous updates, way more colorful, more heavy on sfx’s and new shaders we wanted to implement in the game, it was the perfect time to take advantage of Quest 2’s higher specs so the visuals would look amazing in the new headset. “
The lighting and effect improvements demonstrate how much this level of polish can bring a game to life. Some Quest games had a tendency, while still having wonderful characters, objects, and worlds, to feel flat. Lighting was not dynamic. Scenes were simple. This was what the Quest 1 GPU could, and that was with aid of Fixed Foveated Rendering (FFR), where software lowers the resolution of the picture on the edges of the screen, reducing the load on the GPU.
The Quest 2 does not suffer from a limited GPU and the resulting flat graphics. With lights, shadows, and other flashy effects now possible, games like Pistol Whip feel more present and less like simple throwbacks.
“We always wanted to have PC and Quest versions as close as possible in terms of visuals, but due to original Quest’s limitations we had to sacrifice some features such as realtime shadows and bloom. Fixed Foveated Rendering is also used on Quest to save some GPU time. So, the first thing we thought when we got a Quest 2 was ‘what if we turn everything on?’ Then we tried and the results were super impressive.
We were able to keep acceptable framerates with real-time shadows enabled and FFR disabled, which is great. With FFR disabled, we were also able to match the dithering effect (during scene transitions or when damage is received) quality in PC and Quest 2 platforms. We’re now working towards bloom and evaluating other visuals,” said Teo Dutra, Graphics Engineer at Cloudhead.
And these are not the only improvements for these titles. There are more to come. Cloudhead will continue to tweak and improve things, as they continue to add new songs to the game.
Detra said, “With each new update, we are constantly improving visuals and the performance of the game. Platform parity is a conversation we have frequently and the Quest 2 brings us incredibly close to the PC version of Pistol Whip. We are now able to use the same shaders, shadows, VFX, and resolutions as PC, and in the future we hope to work towards hitting 90fps.”
Superhot Team will also provide that significant jump in presentation to match the PC version, just as soon as Oculus brings the promised support for it: the increase in framerate from 72 frames per second to 90.
Schramm said, “Since the game has many very bright scenes, running at 90HZ reduces the perceived flicker in the peripheral vision, which is one of the main complaints, and the reason we added a screen-dimming option to the Quest version. 90fps also makes the game buttery smooth to play, not only in fast, action heavy moments, but especially in scenes where players move slowly and deliberately. It heightens the experience and makes it so much more visceral.”
And these two games are not the only ones to get new life on this new headset. We have seen the improvements in VR mainstays like Arizona Sunshine and newer titles like Onward. And we will likely see even more as developers take the time to upgrade their games, or just make new ones that can utilize the power of Quest 2.
“Oculus has put tremendous effort into making developers’ lives easier, both with technical support and tools support,” said Dutra. “It feels like we’ve crossed a threshold into the future, where mobile VR is finally encroaching on console and PCVR. The future of VR has never been brighter.”
This week Facebook announced the launch of cloud-streamed games from Facebook Gaming. These are games which are rendered in the cloud and then streamed to your computer. Cloud-based gaming has been seen by the industry at large as a way to make games more widely accessible by making them playable on less powerful hardware. Facebook is also betting that one day they’ll be able to do the same for VR.
Facebook Gaming’s new cloud streaming functionality doesn’t support VR today, but it’s clear that the company is eyeing it up as part of its roadmap.
Not only is the company’s just-launched cloud streaming service headed by Jason Rubin, a former Oculus executive, but VR cloud streaming is being talked about at the highest levels of the company.
Responding to a question during Facebook’s most recent quarterly earnings call this week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed the intersection of Facebook’s cloud gaming and VR initiatives:
“Over the longer term, I think the VR piece will obviously come into [our gaming strategy] as well. Some of the cloud gaming stuff that we’re doing will, of course, be useful for VR as well, and we’re building a big community around that on Oculus. But [our cloud gaming service]… I do think will be a very exciting growth opportunity and ability to offer a lot of innovation over the coming years,” Zuckerberg said.
Rubin joined Oculus in 2014 as was a key spokesperson for the company’s VR before his role expanded into Facebook’s broader gaming initiatives | Image courtesy Jason Rubin
Jason Rubin, the former Oculus executive turned ‘VP of Play’ at Facebook, laid out the company’s cloud-gaming vision this week, opening with a not-so-secretive jab at Google’s cloud streaming service, Stadia:
We believe in the long-term future of cloud gaming, but we aren’t going to try to wow you with the wonders of our data centers, compression algorithms, resolutions, or frames per second. Cloud game streaming for the masses still has a way to go, and it’s important to embrace both the advantages and the reality of the technology rather than try to oversell where it’ll be in the future.
Rubin also touched on the reality of game streaming latency as it stands today, knowing that competitive and VR games share exceptionally demanding latency requirements which the service isn’t ready to handle just yet.
It’s critical for us to start with latency-tolerant games so we can deliver a good experience for players across a variety of devices. For the purposes of our beta, that includes genres like sports, card, simulation, and strategy games. This is cloud gaming after all, so even with latency-tolerant games players may notice some glitches. […]
As our beta progresses and cloud technology scales, we’ll increase the variety of game genres. That expansion will start in 2021 with the addition of action and adventure games.
I can tell you this: Nobody is banking on cloud processing making standalone VR headsets viable. We have to make them viable with the chipsets that are in them. But in the long run, cloud solves a lot of problems because it most effectively puts the processing power where it’s needed. Now there’s latency issues, resolution issues, frame rate issues, tons of issues. And it’s a hell of a lot more uncomfortable when it’s a frame that’s right in front of your face than it is when you miss a frame on a TV that’s across the room. So all of these things have to be solved, but no one thinks it’s impossible. It’s a hypothetical that can be done but it’s not coming anytime soon. It is very, very complicated.
Elsewhere he added, “ultimately we’ll throw those processors in a server farm somewhere and stream to your headset. And a lot of people are going to say, ‘Oh my god, that’s a million years away.’ It’s not a million. It’s not five. It’s somewhere between.”
So while we don’t expect that the company will be rolling out VR game streaming in the immediate future, the Facebook is actively positioning itself to be offer the service further down the road.
As the only company in the consumer space with a complete tech stack for VR cloud streaming, the strategy seems sound. While other companies like Amazon, Google, NVIDIA, and Microsoft are building out their own cloud game streaming services, none of them have both a standalone VR headset and a major VR ecosystem for a complete end-to-end solution.
Yesterday, Facebook Reality Labs conducted its Q3 2020 Earnings Call, during which company co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, stated that the Oculus Quest 2 received 5x as many pre-orders as the original Oculus Quest. According to an official representative, these numbers surpassed the companies expectations.
You can find Zuckerberg’s official statement below:
“This quarter we also took major steps forward in building the next computing platform. We launched Quest 2, our most advanced virtual reality headset, right in time for the holidays. It delivers a real sense of presence — like you’re right there with another person or in another place — and we’ve worked to make it accessible to more people. It’s lighter, faster, has a sharper screen, and a new price point of just $300. Pre-orders have outpaced the original Quest pre-orders by more than 5x and have surpassed our expectations.
We’re also laying the foundation for AR glasses, which will be the holy grail of delivering a sense of presence while not taking you away from the physical world. One day you’re going be able to sit down for dinner with your parents even if they’re on the other side of the country, or look up directions without having to take out your phone and take yourself out of the moment. We’re working on the building blocks for true consumer AR glasses. And in the meantime, we’re partnering with Luxottica, the maker of Ray-Ban and Oakley, to build our first smart glasses which will launch sometime next year.”
While the launch of the Oculus Quest 2 hasn’t been without its hiccups, it appears as though the companies new account policy hasn’t scared away mainstream audiences.
Yesterday also included an announcement by ILMxLAB in which the company revealed a brand new interactive VR short called “Temple of Darkness” launching alongside Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge on November 19th.
We talked earlier this week about the impressive haptics and IMU in the PS5 DualSense controller, and now we can show you what it looks like in action.
While the PS5 DualSense controller doesn’t currently allow for position (6DOF) tracking, its rotational (3DOF) tracking is very impressive thanks, apparently, to a stellar IMU inside. We broke down why we were impressed earlier this week when we went over the controller’s features:
[…] Sony seems to have found some ultra-precise IMU because, even without any external reference point, the DualSense controller seems almost devoid of drift. That’s counter to my experience with PSVR devices in the past. Even with external tracking from the PS4 camera, I’ve noticed plenty of drift from the headset, PS Move, and PS Aim in various games.
While playing in ‘Cooling Springs’ in Astro’s Playroom the game allowed me to ‘inspect’ an object I found by rotating my controller in space, which would then rotate the object on screen. This gave me a good chance to test out the DualSense motion tracking.
No matter how violently I tried to shake and twist the controller, the on-screen object never lost its ‘forward’ direction—even without an external camera aiding in the tracking. I even sat the controller down in a random orientation for 30 minutes, and then compared the position of the object before and after, and found hardly any change. This shows that the controller’s IMU has very little internal drift and noise.
And now we can actually show you this in action:
You’ll surely notice the latency in the video, but considering this isn’t a VR application (and therefore not tuned for latency) I’m not terribly worried about that.
The really impressive thing we’re seeing here is the controller seems to remember its forward direction with absolutely no problem, even without an external point of reference. With PS4’s DualShock controller (as well as PSVR, PS Aim, and PS Move), the PS4 camera provides the external frame of reference to ensure the devices can maintain an absolute forward direction.
From an IMU alone, knowing a device’s downward direction is pretty trivial because gravity offers a strong directional force which can be detected reliably by an accelerometer. While a gyroscope can reliably tell you when an object is rotating around its axis, it’s still doesn’t have any explicit understanding of ‘forward’, which means its susceptibility to drift is equal to its margin of error.
While not as strong as gravity, there is another force that can be used to help reliably maintain a forward heading: the Earth’s magnetic field. Some modern IMUs incorporate magnetometers to do just that, and it seems like the IMU in the DualSense controller may now include a magnetometer—or perhaps a much more precise one than was available previously.
Although the PS5 DualSense controller doesn’t currently support 6DOF tracking, knowing that Sony already seems to have a great IMU locked down means that future VR input devices from the company stand to benefit, as we explained earlier this week:
Little known fact about VR tracking systems: the IMU does the bulk of the tracking work, even for 6DOF tracking. While an external frame of reference—like a camera for inside or outside tracking—is important for correcting drift over time, it provides comparatively infrequent updates (on the order of 60Hz) compared to the IMU (typically around 1,000Hz).
That means that a good IMU is essential to a highly accurate 6DOF tracking system. And from what I’ve seen with the DualSense controller, Sony has picked a darn good one.
If you buy the PS5 versions of Hitman 3 or No Man’s Sky in the coming months, you won’t have access to either game’s PSVR support found in their PS4 versions, as the company has not announced PSVR games on PS5.
On the subject of Hitman 3, a Sony spokesperson told UploadVR via email that you’ll need the PS4 version of Hitman 3 to play it in VR since the PSVR operates as a backward compatible device. The representative then went on to clarify, “We have not announced PS5 titles for PS VR.”
No New PSVR Games On PS5
This follows months of speculation around how PS5 might embrace PSVR when it launches in mid-November. We’ve always known that the new console would support the headset for backwards compatible PS4 titles. But many had hoped new PS5 games could integrate VR, taking advantage of the console’s improved horsepower while continuing to use the same HMD. You should be able to play PS5 games in your PSVR headset using Cinematic Mode still, but there won’t be any actual VR games that support PSVR on PS5 it seems.
But those hopes have quickly eroded. For starters, Sony confirmed PS4-era controllers like the DualShock 4 and the Aim controller couldn’t support PS5 games, which called into question how potential VR games on PS5 would track controllers. Then, when Hitman 3 announced full support for PSVR earlier this year, developer IO Interactive said it was “working to finalize the specifics for how PS VR owners can enjoy Hitman in VR.” At the time neither the studio nor Sony would confirm if this meant the PS5 version wouldn’t support PSVR.
Finally, earlier this week, Hello Games announced No Man’s Sky’s next-generation PS5 native version, adding that, on PlayStation, PSVR support was available “by virtue of backwards compatibility”. Until today, that was the most direct confirmation we’d have on the matter.
What This Means For Now
So, if you’re getting a PS5 in the next few weeks and are excited to try PSVR on the console, you’ll want to make sure you buy the PS4 versions of PSVR-supported games if you want to try them on the headset. If you buy the PS5 versions you won’t find the PSVR support listed.
Fortunately, both Hitman 3 and No Man’s Sky do have free upgrade plans; anyone that owns No Man’s Sky will get to upgrade to next-gen consoles for free and gets to take their save data over, too. You have to buy Hitman 3 on PS4 digitally to qualify for a free PS5 upgrade, meanwhile – you can’t upgrade from the physical edition. That doesn’t guarantee the reverse, however. In other words,
Cross-generation save features should mean you could install both versions of the game on PS5, access the PS4 version when you want VR and the PS5 version when you want to play flat-screen, and then share your progress between the two, but we haven’t tried this for ourselves. What’s not clear, however, is if IO Interactive and Hello Games might offer free downgrades to PS4 for anyone that wants to play on PSVR. According to PlayStation, that’s a developer-by-developer decision.
Don’t forget you’ll also need the official camera adaptor for PSVR to use the headset on PS5, too. You can’t use Sony’s new PS5 Camera, you have to use the PS4-era camera. Sony is sending the adaptor out for free to PSVR owners, though.
What This Means For The Future
This news comes shortly after Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan’s comments about the future of VR to The Washington Post. “PlayStation believes in VR. Sony believes in VR, and we definitely believe at some point in the future, VR will represent a meaningful component of interactive entertainment,” Ryan said. “Will it be this year? No. Will it be next year? No. But will it come at some stage? We believe that.”
These comments make it seem like we won’t be seeing a true PSVR 2 that supports PS5 games directly until 2022 at the very earliest. But there’s plenty to suggest another headset will happen; from R&D talks to research videos and job listings and more. Until then, however, it seems like PSVR owners will have to make do with old PS4 games, though there should still be new VR releases on that console in 2021, at least.
What do you make of the PSVR games on PS5 news? Let us know in the comments below!
Senior Editor David Jagneaux also contributed to this story.
Oculus Quest 2 has celebrated a pretty successful launch, with some developers saying they’ve seen a dramatic jump in both sales and engagement across their games since the standalone headset’s October 13th release. Now Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has revealed during the company’s Q3 investor’s meeting that Quest 2 pre-orders were actually five times higher than the 2019 original Quest.
Here’s the bit from the transcript, which Facebook reconfirmed with Road to VR:
“This quarter we also took major steps forward in building the next computing platform. We launched Quest 2, our most advanced virtual reality headset, right in time for the holidays. It delivers a real sense of presence — like you’re right there with another person or in another place — and we’ve worked to make it accessible to more people. It’s lighter, faster, has a sharper screen, and a new price point of just $300. Pre-orders have outpaced the original Quest pre-orders by more than 5x and have surpassed our expectations.”
Of course, we aren’t sure of what that base pre-order number really was for Quest 1, however only a few months after it was launched in late 2019 it generated such a big Christmas Day boom in software sales that the company reported nearly $5 million in Oculus Store revenue—an unprecedented number. And that was with hardware backorders projected well into 2020.
In contrast, Quest 2 is still readily available in most places, and is currently only suffering from a comparatively minor backlog of orders on retailer sites such as Amazon.com and Oculus itself, which suggests Facebook is garnering even greater hardware sales in the short term than the original Quest.
The Quest 2 Sales Bump
Since the launch of Quest 2, many games have benefitted from the increase in consumer attention. Titles citing at least a doubling in sales (and some cases octupling) include Angry Birds VR, Apex Construct, Blaston, Bone Works, Pistol Whip, Rec Room, and The Curious Tale of the Stolen Pets. There’s likely many more out there too, as other fan favorites such as Superhot VR, Five Nights at Freddy’s VR: Help Wanted, Moss, and I Expect You to Die undoubtedly gain new players.
To boot, unofficial sideloading library SideQuest has also seen a dramatic increase in new users, reporting 60,000 unique users and 4,880 fresh signups in only the third day.
Facebook Reality Labs’ Chris Pruett told Protocol a week after its October 13th launch that “[t]he device is selling quite well, faster than Quest did and maybe a little bit beyond what we expected.” At the time, it wasn’t certain just how well it was selling though, but this much is clear: Quest 2 is on its way to making another big holiday boom in content sales that will likely dwarf that of last year’s.
Image courtesy Facebook
And with greater sales volumes from new users, it’s much more likely that the standalone Quest platform will attract studios which previously passed up VR, meaning we’re going to see more and better games coming.
Whether that means a global increase in software sales across the entirety of the VR gaming ecosystem remains to be seen though. The planned follow-up to PSVR is still nowhere in sight, and despite a number of new PC VR headsets on the horizon such as the HP Reverb G2, Facebook’s retiring of its Rift platform has likely taken the wind out of many developers’ sails to build exclusively with PC VR in mind. Of course, there’s still Oculus Link, which lets Quest owners play PC VR games on both the Oculus and SteamVR platforms, however not all users will have a VR-ready computer capable of playing those games.
In effect, that leaves Facebook as pretty much the only game in town funding VR software, which it’s doing now exclusively for its Quest platform. And that’s definitely ruffled some feathers. Some new and existing users object to the recent forced Facebook login requirement which comes part and parcel with owning a Quest 2—something the ethical hacking initiative XRSI is looking to remedy fairly soon with the presumed release of a verified Quest 2 jailbreak. We’re still waiting to see it for ourselves in the wild, and you can bet we’ll report back when we do.
Shadow Creator, a Shanghai-based AR/VR headset manufacturer, has partnered with British AR startup PhotonLens to create a new consumer-focused AR headset for gaming and fitness.
Called ‘Honghu’ in China and branded as ‘Photons’ for the international market, the device sports a very Nintendo Switch-inspired compute unit housing a Snapdragon XR2 processor, Qualcomm’s latest AR/VR chipset which is quickly becoming the standard for standalone devices such as Oculus Quest 2.
Photons are said to focus on active gaming and fitness, and will be available for pre-order worldwide within the next 2-3 months via Kickstarter campaign.
Image courtesy PhotonLens
Because the rendering hardware isn’t housed with in the glasses themselves, but rather tethered to a Switch-style compute unit with display, Honghu/Photons are said to weigh only 85 grams, or similar to Nreal’s Light AR headset which made a splash back at CES 2020.
The company says in a recent blogpost that the glasses include a 50-degree field of view (FOV), three camera sensors, SLAM headset tracking, and displays boasting “2.07 million pixels per eye.” Audio is provided by two built-in speakers from Harman Kardon.
The compute unit, which houses the Snapdragon XR2, is slated to come with 8GB of RAM, 128GB of memory, Bluetooth 5 connectivity, USB type-C port, a 3,400 mAh battery, and a 1,080 × 1,200 display.
Image courtesy Shadow Creator
“With the powerful performance of the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 platform, our latest Honghu MR glasses have achieved a significant performance improvement, which can fully meet the diverse needs of consumers, operators, and industry customers,” Shadow Creator CEO Victor Sun says.
Image courtesy PhotonLens
Photons’ two controllers, which clip neatly into the compute unit, offer 6DOF tracking through what the company calls an “innovative hidden tracking light ring” which protrudes from the top of the controllers.
Photons will made available for pre-order via a Kickstarter campaign launching soon—in December of 2020 or January of 2021, the company says.
ILMxLAB revealed a new trailer for its upcoming Quest game Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge, which shows one of the titular tales called ‘Temple of Darkness’, set to release next month.
Temple of Darkness is described as an ‘interactive VR short’ that features Yoda and takes place during the High Republic era, which is hundreds of years before Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. A week ago, ILMxLAB also confirmed that Frank Oz, the original puppeteer and voice of Yoda, will be reprising his role in the game.
The game’s title may have suggested it already, but this new Temple of Darkness trailer seems to confirm that Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge won’t be one long continuous story, but several smaller interactive stories that might link into each other somehow.
Given that Temple of Darkness is set long before The Phantom Menace and we know that C-3PO and R2DR are also in the game, each tale will probably be set in a different era of the Star Wars universe. We know that it will be an episodic release, with the first part releasing next month on Quest.
Here’s a full description of Temple of Darkness, taken from the Oculus blog:
In Temple of Darkness, players will step into the shoes of Ady Sun’Zee (voiced by Ellie Araiza), a Jedi Padawan studying at a remote Jedi research facility on Batuu. The sole survivor after a mysterious relic unleashes a torrent of evil, she must work alongside Jedi Master Yoda to confront the darkness that now lurks within the temple walls—and within herself.
The game’s Oculus Store page also features some amazing new key art, which you can see below:
A bunch of VR titles are discounted on the Steam store this weekend as part of the Steam Halloween Sale, including Half-Life: Alyx, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, Star Wars: Squadrons, Phasmophobia and more.
The sale runs from October 29 until November 2nd at 10am Pacific across all of Steam, not just VR content. That being said, the VR discounts on offer suggest that this is maybe one of the most comprehensive and impressive VR sales we’ve seen in recent history. Almost every big VR release from this year is discounted, even including recent releases like Squadrons and Phasmophobia.
Here’s a list of some of the most prominent and best discounts:
– Half-Life: Alyx: 25% off, $44.99 (from $59.99)
– Star Wars: Squadrons: 25% off, $29.99 (from $39.99)
And that’s not even all of them! There’s a bunch of other VR titles not listed above that are also discounted, which you can find in the VR section of the Steam Store.
These games are all compatible only with SteamVR, which means you’ll need a PC VR headset (like an Oculus Rift S or a Valve Index) to play. Not all games are compatible with every headset though, so make sure to check the compatibility section of each game individually before buying.
Alternatively, if you don’t have a PC VR headset but you do have an Oculus Quest and a VR-ready PC, you can use Oculus Link or Virtual Desktop to play these games on your Quest. For more details, check out our guide.
ILMxLAB is bringing it’s next VR experience, Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge, exclusively to Quest on November 19th. Now the studio has given us another look at a standalone story in the game that focuses on the exploits of none other than Master Yoda himself.
Dubbed ‘Temple of Darkness’, the story in Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge is set “hundreds of years before the events of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace,” the studio says in an Oculus blog post.
In the Quest-exclusive experience, you take on the role of a droid repair technician who’s crash landed on Batuu as a result of a pirate attack. Transported by the many tales woven by the bartender Seezelslak (played by SNL’s Bobby Moynihan), you step into the role of Jedi Padawan Ady Sun’Zee (voiced by Ellie Araiza) during the High Republic era to work alongside Master Yoda. Yes, that’s actually the original series voice actor and puppeteer Frank Oz you’re hearing in the trailer.
Like all good Padawans, you must confront the darkness that lies within—both literally inside the temple and yourself.
Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge is headed to the Oculus Store for Quest on November 19th. If you haven’t checked out the official trailer, you can see that here.
In its Q3 Earnings Call yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed pre-orders for the Oculus Quest 2 were more than five times bigger than those of the original Quest.
As usual, VR was not the main focus of the earnings call, as it represents a relatively small portion of Facebook’s total earnings and business strategy. We also didn’t hear about the Quest 2’s launch performance, as the headset didn’t officially launch until Q4. However, Q3 did cover much of the pre-order period for the headset, which Facebook says performed five times better than pre-orders for the original Quest.
Here’s the full quote from Zuckerberg on Quest 2, taken from the Q3 earnings call:
This quarter we also took major steps forward in building the next computing platform. We launchedQuest 2, our most advanced virtual reality headset, right in time for the holidays. It delivers a real senseof presence — like you’re right there with another person or in another place — and we’ve worked tomake it accessible to more people.
It’s lighter, faster, has a sharper screen, and a new price point of just$300. Pre-orders have outpaced the original Quest pre-orders by more than 5x and have surpassed ourexpectations.
Later in the document, Facebook noted that the headset should have an impact on Q4 earnings. “Oculus Quest 2 orders have been strong which should benefit Other Revenue [in Q4].”
The full Q3 Earnings Call documents and recordings are available here. You can read a transcript of Mark Zuckerberg’s full remarks on his Facebook page.
Lucasfilm’s immersive entertainment studio ILMxLAB has released a new trailer for Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy's Edge, and it gives us a glimpse of the kind of adventures we can expect from Ady Sun’Zee. It shows the young Padawan exploring a myst...
Half-Life: Alyx is likely soon to see an update which would add in-game developer commentary similar to previous Valve games.
Fans of Valve games will likely recall the optional in-game developer commentary first added to Half-Life 2: Lost Coast and in later titles like Half-Life 2: Episode One, Episode 2, Portal and others. Half-Life: Alyx is very likely to get a similar mode in an upcoming update.
YouTube channel Valve News Network spotted a listing for a password-protected branch of Half-Life: Alyx called ‘Commentary Beta3’ that was last updated three days ago, compared to the most recent public version of the game which was last updated four months ago. The channel says the appearance of the branch means the update is likely to launch in the near future.
In prior games Valve’s developer commentary mode would spawn little ‘speech bubbles’ throughout the game world which players could click on to play audio recordings of the developers offering up behind-the-scenes commentary on specific parts of the game. It’s not just off-the-cuff remarks either—in Portal 2 the total duration of developer commentary was around 40 minutes of scripted insights.
Valve News Network suggests that the Half-Life: Alyx developer commentary mode is likely to work a bit differently than prior games. Rather than the ‘speech bubbles’, the channel says that previously data-mined files point to floating versions of the headset—which Alyx wears to communicate with Russell—as the vehicle for delivering the commentary. And considering that this is Valve, I’d say there’s at least a 25% chance that the studio gives the commentary audio a little ‘radio distortion’ filter to make it sound like it’s actually coming out of the headset.
For fans of Valve’s work, the developer commentary would likely be a strong pull to play through the game again to discover the insights shared along the way about how the game ended up in its final form. And if that doesn’t do it for you, maybe some of the game’s mods will.
Sony offering PSVR owners a free camera adapter to use with the PS5 pretty much tells you that the company has no plans to release a new virtual reality headset anytime soon. Now, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan has confirmed to The Washi...
In an interview with The Washington Post’s gaming vertical, Launcher, Sony Interactive Entertainment / PlayStation President and CEO Jim Ryan said in an interview published today that he does not believe VR will be a “meaningful component of interactive entertainment” for some time still. According to him,”the future of VR” won’t arrive until after next year. This potentially means no new PSVR 2 headset until at least 2022.
The Future of PlayStation VR
The interview is all about immersion and how the PS5 hits your senses more directly by using 3D audio and the DualSense controller’s impressive haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. As explained in my editorial this week, the controller is extremely impressive and bodes well for the future of VR haptics and interaction — that is, assuming it’s ever used for VR gaming in the first place.
In the aforementioned interview, Jim Ryan seems rather unconvinced on the promise of VR despite PSVR selling over 5 million headsets:
“I think we’re more than a few minutes from the future of VR,” Ryan said. “PlayStation believes in VR. Sony believes in VR, and we definitely believe at some point in the future, VR will represent a meaningful component of interactive entertainment. Will it be this year? No. Will it be next year? No. But will it come at some stage? We believe that. And we’re very pleased with all the experience that we’ve gained with PlayStation VR, and we look forwarding to seeing where that takes us in the future.”
Admittedly, his stance isn’t all that surprising. Just a month ago Ryan was quoted as saying that VR is still an “unproven space” but that he is “intrigued and really excited by it.”
They seem to be playing the long game here and will likely release a new device when it’s ready to make a significant leap forward, likely in late 2022 if I had to make a prediction.
After 7 months of beta testing, Interhaptics just released its most ambitious project to date: a mixed reality development suite for deploying haptics across platforms for both head-mounted displays and mobile devices.
Eric Vezzoli, head of the French software company, and his team built Haptic Composer and Interaction Builder, to push extended reality experiences to the next level. According to their research with both indie developers and large tech firms, the suite facilitates 90% faster development for designing and integrating haptic feedback into mixed reality projects than what’s already on the market. The timing couldn’t be better—now the technology and a consumer base exist to make Vezzoli’s dreams come true.
“3.5 billion humans have a haptics device in their pocket, and no one is really leveraging it,” commented Vezzoli in reference to a study by international business data firm, Statista. “Interhaptics is going to change that. We empower digital creators to engage on a deeper level with their customers through the sense of touch.”
Long inspired by the pivotal work of Apple as a touchstone in the assimilation of haptics experiences, he is concerned that many contemporary developers and creators are not thinking outside the box; by not doing so they miss a significant chance to connect with their users in a tangible way.
“When designers leave out haptics, they force their users to suffer fatigue,” he says. “Haptics are sometimes even more important than sound design; you mute your phone, but not always the feeling of haptic feedback.” Vezzoli believes good, intuitive haptic design can make or break a larger user retention strategy for bonding with a product and piece of hardware.
“[Don’t underestimate the importance of the] physical aspects of haptics and the unconscious sense of presence it generates,” he goes on. “Communication is visual for a small part, but there is a lot of communication [that comes] with body language and touch, especially now when we can communicate on video calls, which lack the physical contact [of meeting in-person]. [Touch] is hard-wired into human perception as a baseline of human emotion and communication.”
Pinpointing multiple areas where this is the case, Vezzoli shares where developers can make the most impact: notifications or UX/UI confirmation, immersion for emotional connection, contextual or spatial awareness, such as smart clothing or wearables, and remote presence applications.
“We believe that the XR content developers should focus on implementation of the use cases, and not on interaction mechanics,” says Zlatko Vidrih, Interhaptics’ co-founder. “Our vision is to provide the interaction and haptics design tools to ease and speed up the development and deployment processes.”
Beginning using Interhaptics’ new development suite by visiting their website and requesting a demo or signing up for their user portal.
In Update #3 today Phasmophobia received a slew of bug fixes and optimizations including changes to correct issues around voice chat, voice recognition, and VR support, as well as the new inclusion of LIV mixed reality support.
One of the coolest features in Phasmophobia is the voice recognition. While playing, you can talk out loud to the ghost to try and elicit a response in the Spirit Box or anger it to spark activity like moving objects or flickering lights. Using in-game voice chat instead of Discord adds to the immersion because it increases the chance of the ghost responding any time you speak to your teammates. The proximity chat works well and the radio on your shoulder is used for long-range communication.
That is, it works well when it works. Previously there were lots of issues with voice recognition such as the mic resetting in the options inexplicably, claiming it can hear you when it actually can’t, and the mute toggle not working.
Phasmophobia debuted on Steam on September 18th and despite only being on Steam for about 12 days it still ranked in the top 20 new releases for sales. That’s pretty impressive!
Native Oculus Quest support is also listed as a far off future development goal, so fingers crossed there.
Phasmophobia Early Access Update #3
Here is a list of all changes made to the way voice is handled, which should improve and fix most issues:
Fixed a bug where the microphone would reset in the audio options each game.
Upgraded the server code to PUN2. This should fix most timeout disconnects and all voice chat issues.
Fixed a bug where changing the voice language wouldn’t change the voice recognition language.
Fixed a bug where dead players couldn’t use voice chat.
Fixed a bug where dead players were able to use the walkie talkie.
Fixed a bug where VR Toggle mute was set to hold and not toggle.
Added a voice sensitivity slider in the audio options.
If your voice recognition is working you can no longer get a response on the Spirit Box just by talking, it will now only answer if you asked a question.
If your voice recognition stops working the Spirit Box will default to giving a random response by talking.
We haven’t tested these fixes yet, but based on issues we’ve had with voice recognition during Early Access so far this sounds like a big improvement. Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
With the live music industry in shambles, musicians are turning to immersive tech to connect with fans.
The live music industry has been hit hard by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Concerts both large and small have been canceled for several months now, leaving many musicians isolated from their fans. In these unprecedented times, VR has proven to be an effective tool for musicians looking to connect with audiences on a more intimate level. After all, there are no social distancing rules in a virtual world
Major Lazer, the global dance music trio comprised of Diplo, Walshy Fire and Ape Drums, is one such group taking advantage of immersive tech to perform live in a post-coronavirus world. Teaming up with immersive content company Supersphere, the group will be performing a one-of-a-kind live performance in a social VR environment designed to replicate the feel of the Major Lazer World Tour.
At the beginning of 2020, Major Lazer had an extensive road calendar ahead of them. A tour was planned that included 50 shows spanning 11 countries around the world.
However, the year did not go as planned. With COVID-19 decimating social gatherings around the world, people who counted on those types of gatherings were hit the hardest. Everything from work conferences, restaurants, schools, movies, and of course, the music industry, came to a complete halt. In an official press release, Ape Drums of Major Lazer said, “This pandemic made everyone rethink how they were going to pursue their career from now on.”
In an effort to connect with fans while adhering to proper social distancing orders, Major Lazer turned to Supershere, a company responsible for numerous live VR events featuring artists and public figures such as Billie Eilish, Post Malone, Paul McCartney, Wiz Khalifa, and Michelle Obama to name a few, to bring their vision of a large world tour to life in VR.
Using Supersphere’s ArcRunner – a platform designed to bridge artist performances in both the physical and virtual world – Major Lazer’s goal is to replicate every element of their planned tour in VR through Venues. This includes the massive stage layout, set design, dancers, lighting grid, special effects, and more.
This allows the trio to deliver a show that meets their extremely high expectations while providing a safe environment for their fans. “We really love what we do. We love our dancers, we love performing with each other, and we want that love to show in VR, said Grammy-winning artist Walshy Fire.
Since the global pandemic began, music fans and artists have been jonesing for a fully-built stage show. Major Lazer’s approach using Supersphere ArcRunner could end up being the norm for the music industry, and potentially open new revenue streams for artists.
Lucas Wilson from Supershere talked about this opportunity saying, “Enabling Major Lazer to bring the full stagecraft of their live show to digital worlds like Venues is one of the major strengths of the ArcRunner production platform,” adding, “we’ve seen first hand how devoted Major Lazer’s entire team is to delivering a killer show for fans, and we’re excited to provide the technology to help them do that at a price point and on a production schedule that works for them.”
SocialVR platforms like Venues are already proving to be amazing tools for musicians looking to connect and engage with fans all around the world. Just recently Sam Smith launched the first-ever Spotify AR experience, and artists such as John Legend and Carl Cox have already turned to VR platforms like WaveXR and Sensorium Galaxy to host live music events.
In the case of the Flaming Lips, they put their audience in individual bubbles during a show. But that isn’t very practical. First off, the bubbles take up a lot of room, which means you lose ticket sales. Plus you’re in a bubble. That’s fun for maybe 15 minutes?
VR technology serves as a far more practical solution, both in terms of convenience and price. The only real obstacle is buying a VR headset, but with the new Oculus Quest 2 coming in at just $299, it’s never been cheaper to join the VR ecosystem.
Major Lazer is set to perform live on Facebook’s Venues on November 28th at 6 pm PT. For more information visit here.
Major Lazer’s latest album, Music Is The Weapon, is a hip hop, reggae, electro groove-infused record bursting with energy. Bringing that contagious energy to VR will no doubt be a blast.
