Why GDC 2019 Could Be VR’s Most Important In Three Years

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February was slow, wasn’t it? For such a short month it sure does drag on. But it’s only lasted so long because we’ve been really, really looking forward to March. Or, more specifically, we’ve been looking forward to the 2019 Game Developers Conference.

That’s for a lot of reasons.

This GDC could well be VR’s most significant, at least since 2016. That year Oculus, Valve, Sony and HTC put the finishing touches on their launch campaigns. VR was on the cusp of going consumer and everyone was excited. The 2017 and 2018 iterations, while eventful, didn’t hold such importance.

But now in 2019 VR feels like it’s yet again on the cusp of something new. Perhaps not a second generation, but an intriguing mid-way point that will see the same suspects head off on exciting new tangents.

Oculus Quest and Rift S

Last year Oculus used GDC to lift the curtain on the Go headset. We got an in-depth hands-on and a first glimpse at games ahead of launch at F8 the following May.

We’re expecting a similar sort of roll out for the highly anticipated Oculus Quest. We already know we’ll see new demos for the six degrees of freedom (6DOF) standalone headset at the show. This could be Quest’s big coming out party, a chance to show everyone what this device is really capable of.

But Quest isn’t all we might see from Oculus at GDC. This month we found code that seemed to corroborate the existence of Oculus Rift S. Rift S is rumored to be a refreshed take on the Rift with inside-out tracking and an updated display. It could even be out this year. We’ve got our fingers crossed that Oculus has more news in store for us at GDC, even with Quest on the way.

HTC Vive Cosmos

HTC also has something in the works on the consumer VR side. At CES 2019, the company announced Vive Cosmos. It’s a PC VR headset with inside-out tracking. That’s about all the company will confirm on-record.

But not-so-sly hints and teases promise much more than that. HTC suggested Cosmos can also be powered by phones for portability. Not only that but the device will be modular, likely allowing users to swap out components for a VR experience that best suits them.

Cosmos is due to release later this year and GDC marks the perfect time to tell us more. This week, Vive announced a Developer Day for the first day of the show. There it will lay out its road map for 2019. Expect Cosmos to play a big part in that.

Valve’s Own SteamVR Headset

Oculus and HTC might not be great at keeping secrets, but no one plays its cards closer to its chest than Valve. After launching the Vive with HTC in 2016, we’ve heard that the SteamVR creator could be branching out with its very own headset. Supposed pictures of the device circulated the internet last year. GDC could be the time to reveal all.

Sources tell us the headset would feature a 135 degree field of view. It could come bundled with the company’s long-anticipated Knuckles controllers and, whisper it, a Half Life-based VR game.

At this point we’ve learned never to ‘expect’ something from Valve. If GDC were the coming out party for this headset it could easily be the biggest story of the show.

—

Exciting times ahead, then. We will be at GDC in full force and we will have all the latest from the show.

Tagged with: GDC, htc, oculus, Oculus Quest, oculus rift s, SteamVR, valve, Vive Cosmos

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Avaloki Episode 1 Review – A Humble Beginning For Something Quiet Different

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Avaloki could be something special. Its Buddhist-inspired tale of two siblings on the search for their exiled father promises wonder and connection. Does it deliver?

The jury’s still out.

The first episode in this interactive series offers just a taste of things to come. You embody an ancient spirit and explore the lives of two children requesting your help. You can see the seeds of a strong bond and otherworldly narrative being sewn, but they don’t get a chance to grow in this installment.

There are some interesting ideas at play here. The brother and sister pair stare up in hope that you’ll guide them, which spurs you to do so. Interactivity’s at play too, letting you select stories you show them by tossing illuminated orbs at stones. But it’s strange to embody a role you yourself don’t truly understand. To be someone without knowing their intentions and to act as if you do is a jarring experience. These kids seem to be dependent on you, but what exactly can you do for them? It’s an idea that pulls the narrative along with intrigue but also a sense of displacement.

Avaloki’s highlights, though, are its incredible flashback paintings, realized in Google Tilt Brush. They prod and hint about the children’s father in cryptic ways, but I was too busy studying the artistry on display. Strokes flow with precision and the depth gives them the appearance of an ancient image come to life. They’re truly a sight to behold, so much so I wish the entire experience would integrate them more like Dear Angelica. By comparison, the rest of the world looks somewhat bleak and blurry.

Director Priyam Parikh says that many meaningful relationships in our lives begin by sharing intimate stories. That might be true of Avaloki, but we’ll have to wait for the second episode to find out. For now, I was left intrigued by these foundations and eager to see what’s next. That’s not a bad start.

Final Say: Worth Watching

Avaloki is available now for free on Oculus Rift via Oculus Home.

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Stress Level Zero’s New Game ‘Boneworks’ Revealed, Striving for “Hyper-realistic” Physics-based Interactions

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Indie VR studio Stress Level Zero has been quietly working on their new title, Boneworks since going into stealth development after showing off an intriguing tech demo last year which featured rich, physics-based interactions. Today the studio is revealing Boneworks as a full game, due for launch in 2019.

Stress Level Zero is a veteran VR developer, having released Hover Junkers as a Vive launch title back in 2016, and following up with Duck Season in 2017. Boneworks, however, is something of a reboot for the studio. Yes, it surely incorporates what the development team has learned in the intervening years, but from a tech standpoint the studio started with a fresh slate and set out to redefine the fidelity of VR interactions by rooting their game in physical simulation.

Boneworks is described as an “Experimental Physics VR Adventure” with a healthy dose of combat. Featuring a full avatar, Stress Level Zero has sought to give players a rich sense of immersion and embodiment by driving everything with physics, from guns to objects to enemies. The studio says to expect the following:

• Advanced Physics: Designed entirely for consistent universal rules, the advanced physics mechanics encourage players to confidently and creatively interact with the virtual world however you want.
• Combat: Approach combat in any number of ways you can think off following the physical rules of the game’s universe. Melee weapons, firearms, physics traps, environments, can all be used to aid you in fights with enemy entities.
• Weapons, lots of weapons: Boneworks provides players with a plethora of physics based weaponry; guns, swords, axes, clubs, spears, hammers, experimental energy weapons, nonsensical mystery tools, and anomalous physics weapons.
• Interaction: Hyper realistic VR object and environment interaction.
• Story: Play through the game’s mysterious narrative and explore the deep inner workings of the Monogon Industries’ artificial intelligence operating system; Myth OS.
• Character Bodies: Accurate full IK body systems built from the ground up provide a realistic looking body presence and allow for a maximum level of immersion with physical interaction in the game space.

Where in most VR games you might reach out to a table in front of you and watch as your hand clips through the surface, Boneworks treats your entire avatar as a physical object which properly collides with everything else in the game. This includes simulations of object mass, meaning that heavy stuff will be difficult (if not impossible) to move, while smaller, lighter objects will be easy to move and throw.

Building out the game world in this way means that the virtual world and the objects in it behave consistently. The game’s developers say this enhances immersion because players won’t run into situations where they can’t do things they expect to be able to do, like reaching out to grab an object only to find it isn’t ‘allowed’ to be grabbed, or trying to hit one object with another only to find that the objects don’t interact with each other.

What that means, Stress Level Zero hopes, is that Boneworks will offer a rich sandbox for players to feel immersed within. Players will need to use what they understand about how the game world behaves works to succeed. But the studio doesn’t want to script puzzles so deeply that there’s only one solution; in fact they hope that Boneworks will offer the freedom that players could find novel and unexpected ways to solve the game’s puzzles by relying on the consistent physics-based rules.

Boneworks is due out in 2019 and is said to feature puzzle solving, combat, and a story to tie it all together. The studio is currently targeting the launch for Rift, Vive, Windows VR, and Knuckles.

The post Stress Level Zero’s New Game ‘Boneworks’ Revealed, Striving for “Hyper-realistic” Physics-based Interactions appeared first on Road to VR.

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‘Kingdom Hearts’ PSVR Experience Finally Comes to North America & Europe

Magic Leap Announces First Round of Independent Creator Program Grant Recipients

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Magic Leap is giving away serious cash to developers this year through their Independent Creator Program, which has earmarked an “eight-figure” number destined to fund app developers working in gaming, entertainment, collaboration, productivity, and more. Now, the company has released a list of its first round of recipients which was whittled down from over 6,500 applicants.

Magic Leap says in their blogpost the list below isn’t comprehensive, as some grant recipients are still in stealth mode and will announce themselves and their projects at a later date.

Without further ado, here’s a few of the first round of grant recipients:

Education	Gaming	Productivity
ANIMA RES	Funktronic Labs	BadVR, Inc
Giant Army	Metanaut	Future Sight AR
Kubold	Monocle Society	Taqtile, Inc
Medicalholodeck	ONTOP	VERSES Labs
Nexus Studios	Overlay
PRELOADED	Resolution Games
Xennial Digital
Entertainment	Retail & Commerce	Creator Tools
Aesthetic Interactive	Obsess	Alientrap
Felix & Paul Studios	roOomy	MINSAR
Within
Collaboration	Architecture & Construction	Data Visualization
Immersiv	VIMAEC	Immersion Analytics
Spatial
Workplace Training	Documentary	Health & Wellness
Edge Lab	Atlas V	Magic Lines

– – — – –

Many of the studios above are well-established in both the consumer VR space and the growing AR industry as well, so you may recognize more than a few names on the list.

Gaming

Funkatronic Labs produced the popular VR real-time strategy game Cosmic Trip (2017) as well as the undeniably cute (and difficult) VR game Starbear: Taxi (2018).

Resolution Games is most recently known for developing both Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs (2019) for VR headsets and the Magic Leap One title Angry Birds FPS: First Person Slingshot (2018).

Metanaut, the studio behind the very Rube Goldbergian VR puzzle game Gadgeteer (2019), have just announced their bringing the game to Magic Leap One.

SEE ALSO

Microsoft Significantly Misrepresented HoloLens 2's Field of View at Reveal

Entertainment

The prolific VR film studio Felix & Paul also got in. It should be an interesting change for the company, as so far they’ve mostly focused on creating stereoscopic 360 films, among which were the recent Sundance 2019 entrants Traveling While Black and Marshal from Detroit, as well as the 2017 Daytime Emmy Award-winning 360 documentary The People’s House: Inside the White House with Barack and Michelle Obama to name a few.

Within, the studio behind the eponymous multi-platform VR experience hub, plays host to a number of high-profile pieces from partners such as Apple, The New York Times, NBC, Vice Media, the United Nations, musical acts like U2, Annapurna Pictures, and more. They’ve also done work in kid-focused AR smartphone app Wonderscope, although we suspect the company has only gotten their feet wet now that they’re officially building AR content for Magic Leap One.

Enterprise

Enterprise-focused creators Spatial, the company which was prominently featured in Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 reveal, is also making a cross-platform version for Magic Leap One, Road to VR learned this week at Mobile World Congress 2019.

While this only highlights a few grantees, it’s clear Magic Leap is tapping high-quality content and tool creators to fill out its burgeoning ‘Magic Leap World’ app store, which at this point is fairly sparse. What’s also fairly apparent is the company’s continued focus on gaming and entertainment still portends a consumer-focused Magic Leap AR headset yet to come.

To boot, the company also announced they’re awarding nearly 200 additional applicants with Magic Leap One headsets, which at $2,300 bucks a pop will make a welcome gift to studios that couldn’t otherwise justify the cost.

The post Magic Leap Announces First Round of Independent Creator Program Grant Recipients appeared first on Road to VR.

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Resolution Games, Felix & Paul, More Win Magic Leap Indie Creator Grant

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Last week, we reported that Magic Leap had seen over 6,500 applications to its Independent Creator Program. Today, the company revealed a handful of the winners.

The Independent Creator Program provides funding and resources to smaller studios looking to work with Magic Leap One. Teams with less than 20 members were able to apply for grants between $20,000 – $500,000 to work on specific projects. They’d also be given free headsets and access to mentorship and other resources.

Winners span various industries and include names that will be familiar to VR fans. Angry Birds VR developer Resolution Games was one of a handful of gaming companies to win, for example. Experiential studios like Felix & Paul and Within were also successful.

While it’s true that studios like these are on the smaller side, they’ve also raised significant investment before or are already well-established in the immersive reality industry. Resolution Games, for example, raised around $13.3 million in funding over the past four years. Felix & Paul, meanwhile, regularly works with the likes of Oculus among other partners.

We reached out to Magic Leap asking why it had chosen some of these studios over lesser-known applicants. The company didn’t immediately respond for comment.

There were many lesser-known winners, too. Medicalholodeck uses 3D scans of the body for education and surgeon training, for example. Future Sight AR, meanwhile, is looking to bring AR solutions to construction sites. Cosmic Trip and Starbear Taxi developer Funktronic Labs also joined the list.

Magic Leap lists 31 companies in total. Magic Leap says these are only some of the winners picked from the applications. Others remain in stealth mode.

Tagged with: Felix and Paul Studios, Magic Leap, Magic Leap One, resolution games

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Varjo VR-1 Gave Me A Tantalizing Glimpse Of Human-Eye VR

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When Michael Abrash told a 2015 F8 audience VR needed a 16K display for “retinal resolution”, I knew it would be decades before headsets became as clear as day. Just four years on, Finland-based Varjo gave me a tiny window into that future with the VR-1. And I loved what I saw.

We already wrote about Varjo last week, but when I heard it was at MWC I couldn’t resist seeking it out. It’s an expensive enterprise-level headset that claims to reach “human eye resolution”. I’d say that description is a little on the generous side, but it is close enough to trick an untrained eye at least.

Context

In our preview last week we wrote about the VR-1’s two displays. A “Context Screen” takes up the sides of the optics, described to me by Varjo CEO Niko Eiden as “a bit better” than the Vive Pro’s screen. The “Focus Screen” is the main attraction, though. It’s the circular center of the optics, operating at a much higher resolution. The size of the screen was comparable to holding a tennis ball at arm’s length away from you.

The three scenes captured via photogrammetry stunned me the most.

Focus

One captured what looked like a Japanese graveyard; rustic, symmetrical ancient stones sitting among lush, green vegetation. The coarse surface of the stones was strikingly apparent, to the point I could see the bumps and depressions. The grass beneath my feet was vibrant and sharp, enough to trigger the splendor of a summer’s day. I focused in particular on one clump of grass toward my right foot. Some areas — apparent capture errors — appeared blurred and stretched. By comparison, the areas captured correctly looked like real life.

I was just as mesmerized by the capture of an artist studio in the last demo. The detail was staggering. I focused on flecks of paint which wouldn’t catch my eye in a normal headset. From one angle I could read the spines of CD cases on a shelf maybe a half meter away from me.

The VR-1 always wows at first sight, offering a precious few moments in which images look clear as day before the eyes refocus. I could only spot an incredibly fine and faint set of lines on the Focus Display by focusing for it. They don’t distract at all. Moving my head to place an object along the line between Focus and Context screens shows how far consumer VR has to go. I was constantly aware of the Context Screen as I used the kit. It was a strange sort of tunnel vision within tunnel vision effect. Tiling the Focus Screen’s resolution across the entire display would add cost to the system.

As far as VR-1’s fit and weight, the headset didn’t seem as ergonomically pleasing as, say, the Rift or PSVR. It is heavier with good reason and the material against my face felt stiff and rigid. I felt as if it might irritate after prolonged use, though the VR-1 isn’t necessarily designed for that.

Future

I was also interested to hear Eiden’s thoughts on wider input. Varjo’s demo didn’t have any form of physical controller. Eiden told me that the company sees current solutions like the Touch controllers as very game-centric. Varjo is interested in making something with professional use in mind. If that means potential VR-1 controllers make the same strides over consumer headsets as the device itself does, we’ll be very interested to see that work.

Varjo will be shipping out to its first customers later this year. Starting just south of $6,000, it is a tall order for even the prosumer market.

Tagged with: Varjo, VR-1

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