Wednesday, 1 May 2019
Oculus Rift S Comes Bundled With VR Art Apps Quill And Medium
Now that the curtain is pulled back on the Oculus Rift S fully, we’re starting to get more details about the upcoming PC VR headset. We know that the Oculus Rift S is available for pre-order already (but they’re selling out pretty fast) and we know it releases on May 21, along with the Oculus Quest. But until today we didn’t know what the headset would come bundled with. Now we do.
According to a Facebook spokesperson we talked to at the F8 developer conference today, the Oculus Rift S will come bundled with copies of VR painting app, Quill, and 3D sculpting app, Medium. Both programs are created by Oculus. Quill in particular was used to create Dear Angelica, a beautifully rendered VR short available on Rift and Go that tells an emotional story from the point of view of a young girl. It’s also been used in the development of Wolves in the Walls.
Notably, no games will come bundled with the Oculus Rift S. Back when the original Rift launched it included access to games like Lucky’s Tale, EVE Valkyrie, and launched free apps like Farlands. When Touch came out they included games like VR Sports Challenge, The Unspoken, and Robo Recall. There was even a dedicated Marvel Powers United VR bundle for Rift + Touch.
Releasing the Rift S without any games seems odd. However, it’s worth noting that three years later there are a lot of free games and demos on Oculus Home and Steam so you have plenty of things at your fingertips to download and play when you get a new headset, regardless of what’s bundled.
On the flip side, the Oculus Quest will include five pre-installed game demos out of the box. Let us know what you think of all this news down in the comments below!
Tagged with: medium, oculus rift s, quill
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‘Blasters of the Universe’ is Getting a Free Access Weekend on Rift Soon
Secret Location’s well-received bullet hell shooter, Blasters of the Universe (2017), is getting a free weekend on Rift in the next few days.
Rift owners will be able to play Blasters of the Universe for free starting on May 3rd at 10:00 AM PT (local time) and going until May 6th at 11:59 PM PT (local time).
Dubbing itself a ‘VR bullet hell’, Blasters of the Universe lets you build your own gun from thousands of combinations, and then tosses you head-first into a literal avalanche of bullets that you have to dodge artfully and block as you madly fire back at the world’s multiple enemy types. Enemies range from fast-moving ground enemies, to flying enemies, to deadly tanks.
Blasters of the Universe boasts a four-level Campaign, each with their own boss battle. New enemies, new weapon parts and shields all come to you as your progress. There’s also an Endless Mode if you simply want to go for the high score on the leaderboard.
The game comes highly rated too, ranking among users as ‘Very Positive’ on Steam and garnering a touch more than [4/5] stars on the Oculus Store. Yes, it’s essentially a wave shooter at its core, but one of the most polished examples out there with some real personality.
The post ‘Blasters of the Universe’ is Getting a Free Access Weekend on Rift Soon appeared first on Road to VR.
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Valve Index Pre-Orders Now Available: $499 Headset, $999 Bundle
Starting today you can pre-order a Valve Index VR headset. Headsets will reportedly start shipping on June 28th.
The headset was formally unveiled yesterday with all of its specs detailed and the embargo lifted on our hands-on demo visit to Valve’s headquarters from last week. You can read more about the technical details here and read about our impressions of the headset and its new controllers (formerly known as Knuckles) in this piece here.
Getting a pre-order lined up today should be easy assuming servers cooperate with you on Valve and Steam’s end, but how much you’re willing to pay for a ticket to the next wave of hardware is another story.
If you don’t have an HTC Vive right now then you’ll need to buy the full Valve Index bundle which includes the headset, two Index controllers, and two second-generation base stations for tracking, all for $999. It’s not cheap.
But if you already have an HTC Vive with Vive wands then you don’t technically need the new controllers and the Index will work just fine with the original first-generation base stations. In that case, you can buy just the headset for a beefy upgrade in visual fidelity and performance inside VR for just $499.
Then if you have an HTC Vive or at least a pair of base stations lying around you could buy the Valve Index headset and two new Index controllers in a separate smaller bundle for just $749, saving yourself $250.
No matter which price arrangement you go with, Index is a premium high-end consumer device. This isn’t marketed as an entry-level affordable option. If you have a gaming PC and want to get a more affordable headset you can either wait on the HP Reverb for a $599 full kit or pre-order an Oculus Rift S full kit for $399.
Pre-order your Valve Index via Steam starting today. Let us know if you plan on getting an Index in the comments down below!
Tagged with: Knuckles, valve index
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Oculus Quest Enterprise Edition Is $999, Needs $180/Year Subscription After First Year
At F8 2019 this week Facebook announced an enterprise edition of the Oculus Quest 6DoF standalone headset. It’s priced at $999 and has 128GB of storage, like the $499 consumer model. It will launch this fall.
The first year of software services is free, but after that companies must pay $180 per year for access.
The edition will include mass device management from a web interface. Administrators will be able to deploy device profiles en-masse, install or update apps remotely, or even wipe devices.
It also includes two years of enterprise-grade priority support via phone, live chat or email. Priority shipping is also offered for required hardware replacements.
Enterprise editions will also have “exclusive features”, which possibly refers to features like controller-free kiosk mode.
An Oculus Go enterprise edition is also on the way, with similar software services for a price of $599. While Facebook will sell Rift S in volume to enterprise, it doesn’t have the same software and services offering. The company seems to be betting that the enterprise market wants standalone VR, not PC based.
The new enterprise offerings replace the old business offerings. Under the old offerings, Oculus Go 64GB was available for $299, but the only differences to the consumer model was the support, licence and included accessories.
Facebook already has companies like DHL, Johnson&Johnson, Farmers Insurance and ExxonMobile on board. It looks like the company is directly taking on the $799 Vive Focus Plus in the enterprise space. It’s as yet unclear which offering the enterprise market will end up preferring.
Tagged with: enterprise, Oculus Quest
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Boneworks Gameplay ‘The Same’ With Oculus Touch Controllers As Valve Index Controllers
Boneworks is a great demonstration of the Valve Index Controllers, but it also has full support for the Oculus Touch controllers used on Rift and Rift S.
On Twitter today Stress Level Zero developer Brandon Laatsch showed off a first person view of Boneworks with Touch:
Boneworks is a detailed sandbox physics shooter developed by Stress Level Zero. SLZ previously developed multiplayer vehicular shooter Hover Junkers [7/10] and nostalgia filled arcade adventure Duck Season [8/10].
Boneworks takes VR object interaction and physics to the next level- every object is simulated with their physics engine. We went hands on with Boneworks at GDC and wrote that it feels like the first next generation VR game.
While the Index Controllers track each finger individually and allow the user to let go, the Touch controllers use a secondary analog trigger to track the middle finger and grip. To grab an object, users hold in that trigger. For Boneworks this seems to allow for the same interactions as Index controllers. Laatsch claims “gameplay is the same regardless of hardware.”
Last month in response to fan queries on reddit, Laatsch detailed the extent of the game’s support for the Touch controllers compared to the Valve Index Controllers:
I develop Boneworks every day using the Touch controllers since the majority of users will be using Touch or controllers with similar analog grip input. Others at our studio use Knuckles and other controllers.
Boneworks will have feature parity regardless of controller choice. Obviously, finger tracking is visually nice and a controller that you can release when throwing is immersive, but it doesn’t effect the gameplay.
While it seems that the Index will offer the best possible Boneworks experience, Laatsch’s comments seem to indicate that if you can’t stomach the price, the $399 Rift S should work well too- assuming the inside-out tracking holds up.
Tagged with: Boneworks, oculus rift, oculus rift s, oculus touch
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