Bizarre Barber truly lives up to its name – the game sees you see play as a barber who cuts aliens’ hair in the middle of a seemingly abandoned subway platform. The game was developed by Synesthetic Echo, supported by Oculus and the NYU Game Center Incubator, and is available for PC VR now.
As you can see from the embedded gameplay and trailer, the game takes place in a surreal and saturated world, with gameplay set to the beat of some funky yet fittingly unusual music beats. You’ll be chopping the locks of some bizarre-looking creatures as they float past you — there’s no barber’s chairs here. “Players will make perfect cuts, dodge dangerous obstacles, catch speed boosts and power-ups, and even earn money to unlock new tools and new worlds,” according to Synesthetic Echo.
The developers stated that Bizarre Barber was a “labour of love” and inspired by their experience immigrating to New York, 5 years ago. “Subways! Hairstyles! Beautiful people! New music, food and smells everywhere! But also: pollution, never-ending hustle, capitalism at its worst (is there even the best?), daily struggle to define oneself in the place with millions of souls. We reflected on all our experience in the game, by making it loud, joyful, weird, surreal, sometimes challenging and even scary!”
The added context frames the quirky game in a whole new charming light. Bizarre Barber features 7 unique worlds and 13 levels, which the developers say should take you around 60-80 minutes to complete. Each level is only 2-3 minutes long, but can be replayed and mastered before moving onto the next.
The title is a grant winner from the 2018 Oculus Launchpad program and is now available on Steam, the Oculus Store and Viveport. According to Synesthetic Echo, a PSVR release in the future is likely and they’re also considering an Oculus Quest release, pending Oculus’ approval.
The company announced that Oculus will be backing out of GDC over similar concerns.
As fears of a Coronavirus pandemic continue to dominate the news cycle, Facebook today confirmed that the company will not be holding its somewhat-annual F8 developers conference this year over concerns of a potential outbreak.
Originally scheduled to take place May 4th through the 6th at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California, Facebook states in an official blog update that it will be canceling the in-person element of the conference in order to remain inclusive to the many international developers who make their way to the event each year.
“This was a tough call to make — F8 is an incredibly important event for Facebook and it’s one of our favorite ways to celebrate all of you from around the world — but we need to prioritize the health and safety of our developer partners, employees and everyone who helps put F8 on,” states the company in the official release. “We explored other ways to keep the in-person part of F8, but it’s important to us to host an inclusive event and it didn’t feel right to have F8 without our international developers in attendance.”
In lieu of an in-person conference, Facebook states that it will be providing many of the same programs and services it normally would during F8 through a combination of locally-hosted events, videos and livestreams, educational workshops, charitable donations, and other F8-inspired experiences.
“Every year, we donate a portion of F8 ticket sales to an organization working to diversify the tech industry,” adds Facebook. “This year, we’re doubling that donation amount to $500,000 and will prioritize organizations serving local San Jose residents.”
Facebook’s decision to cancel F8 comes on the heels of news that Oculus would be backing out of this year’s Game Developers Conference over similar concerns. The company will instead make a series of digital announcements remotely. Sony, Microsoft, EA, and several other major names are reportedly skipping this year’s conference as well.
Besides live events, the coronavirus has had a significant impact on the production of numerous VR headsets as well, including the Oculus Quest and Valve Index.
“With Half-Life: Alyx coming March 23rd, we are working hard to meet demand for the Valve Index and want to reassure everyone that Index systems will be available for purchase prior to the game’s launch,” stated Valve in the official release. “However, the global Coronavirus health crisis has impacted our production schedules so we will have far fewer units for sale during the coming months compared to the volumes we originally planned. Our entire team is working hard right now to maximize availability. To receive a notification as soon as the Valve Index is back in stock, please visit Steam and click “Notify Me.””
This week it was reported that cases of the coronavirus have been confirmed on every continent excluding Antarctica, with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention reporting 72,314 coronavirus cases in mainland China alone as of February 11th. With Japan having already closed all its schools for the next month over concerns of an outbreak, COVID-19 is proving to be a major global concern.
For more information on how to keep yourself protected, check out these tips from the World Health Organization.
Facebook cancelled the physical portion of its F8 developer conference which was slated for May due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus, COVID-19.
Unity and Epic, the companies behind the two biggest videogame development toolsets, also cancelled their appearances at the Game Developers Conference in March. Earlier Facebook, Sony and a growing list of developers cancelled plans to attend.
We’ve made the tough decision to cancel our on-the-ground activity at GDC 2020, due to current conditions with COVID-19. The health and safety of our employees, partners and friends is our top priority. More info to come on what we’ll be sharing online. https://t.co/xkujzb4v5c
Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was completely cancelled due to COVID-19 concerns and plans for future events and travel are changing on a daily basis as a growing list of public events are affected by health concerns.
Here at Epic we were excited about participating in GDC 2020. Regrettably, uncertainty around health concerns has made it unviable to send our employees, and so we have made the difficult decision to withdraw attendance.
Stay tuned for Epic news and more through other channels.
Production of both the Valve Index and Oculus Quest VR headsets were also affected by the coronavirus and questions are being raised about a growing list of products and events planned throughout 2020.
Facebook in particular is expected at some point to accept submissions to its store for its experimental hand tracking while also planning to launch the Horizon social networking service. Those are both software-based advances which could conceivably move forward in the coming weeks and months.
“In light of the growing concerns around COVID-19, we’ve made the difficult decision to cancel the in-person component of F8 this year, in order to prioritize the health and safety of our developer partners, employees and everyone who helps put F8 on. We plan to replace the in-person F8 event with locally hosted events, videos and live-streamed content,” a statement from Facebook explains.
The global effects of the coronavirus continue to cascade in unexpected ways and cause plans to change on an almost daily basis. We’ll keep you updated with future developments.
A new Instagram AR filter transforms data into a symphony of notes.
HUSH, a company designing innovative ways to connect digital technology with physical spaces, has created an AR filter for Instagram that leverages a collection of data composed of experiences and nostalgia from its own employees to deliver a really cool interactive experience that employs both sound and physical motion.
HUSH/LISTEN reimagines the idea of vinyl records, a classic form of analog sound storage in which a finely-tipped stylus moving through a set of physical grooves to emit audio. Instead of a physical stylus and record, however, HUSH/LISTEN has you dragging your finger across your smartphone screen to unlock a symphony of soothing chimes that can be played forward or backward.
Because this AR filter uses sound, I highly recommend using your headphones for the most immersive experience possible. You can use the speakers of your smartphone, though it will be a significantly less impactful experience.
To release the notes you will need to open the AR filter on Instagram Stories and line up your camera with this image of a digital data “record”. When the experience begins, move your finger in a circular motion over the record to unlock the concert along with AR animations that transform the filter into a visual experience as well.
As a data-driven experience, HUSH wanted its Instagram experience to have meaning. The company turned to its own employees and explored their geographical and musical history to compose a “record” that could be built using Spark AR.
In an interview with Trust Collective, HUSH Partner David Schwarz said, “The idea to connect the places we’ve called home with the music that defined those times was a simple methodology to bring back old feelings, and to piece together the places and sounds that formed who we are,” adding, “Since both of those things – places and sounds – are discrete and quantifiable information, we knew they would be a great input into the design process that would provide data points to into something special.”
The company wants to inspire humanity by building experiences that merge the physical world with cutting-edge technology. For example, HUSH previously worked with Instagram to create a “Light Forest”, a custom-built space designed to transport visitors into a three-dimensional audio-visual experience that also became a photogenic environment. According to HUSH, it was an “infinite loop.”
HUSH also worked on transforming environments for Google, Capital One, Chobani, and other companies. According to the HUSH website, the Instagram filter is inspired by actual vinyl records to provide a “unique audiovisual experience, one which HUSH intends to evolve and expand beyond the data of its internal team.”
To check out the HUSH/LISTEN experience, use this link to open the Instagram AR filter and then aim it towards the record graphic found here.
Your fingers are fitted with tiny hands in the new SideQuest app HandSpace.
The hands can also become floppy, long, small, big, wrong, or kaleidoscopic. The new controller-free hand tracking app from Daniel Beauchamp, aka viral sensation @pushmatrix on Twitter, offers perhaps the most mind-bending use yet of Facebook’s experimental Oculus Quest hand tracking.
We’ve covered a number of Beauchamp’s experiments as the VR/AR development lead at Shopify rapidly prototypes new ideas on the standalone Quest. Each new concept draws massive attention on Twitter, where he first published videos showing the ideas. There was finger walking — an interesting gesture concept that would enable simulated movement by “walking” your fingers from one hand across your other hand’s palm. And there was the detachable hand you could throw across the room and it would “walk” to a destination like the Addams Family’s Thing. In recent days we’ve seen a yo-yo, fingerboarding and more.
HandSpace is the first piece of Quest hand-tracking software you can actually download from Beauchamp. Like most controller-free hand tracking software on SideQuest it is just a small experiment to play around with. You’ll simply clap your hands to switch between different hand styles, including affixing all 10 digits with tiny versions of your matching hand pose.
