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Friday, 1 May 2020

Oculus Sales Boosted, Beat Saber Auto Maps & Win Megalith! – VRecap

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Welcome back to a busy VRecap! Missed the VR headlines over the past 7 days? You’ve come to the right place…

This week we’re talking Facebook updates, ad the company held another earnings call. Mark Zuckerberg himself delivered some encouraging news about sales of the Oculus Quest, which has been routinely out of stock for the past few months. Stock is becoming more widely available though, so keep an eye out.

Elsewhere we dive into a next Beat Saber extension that adds an AI track maker to the game. It uses YouTube songs to convert music into maps, so you can finally try some of your favorites inside VR’s biggest game. It doesn’t work especially well with absolutely every song, though, so choose carefully.

Finally we have some smaller game updates. There’s news on both Echo VR on Quest and Lone Echo II on Rift. Also Cloudhead Games popped up to provide an update on Pistol Whip VR.

Over in releases, Cortopia’s Down The Rabbit Hole finally hits PSVR and Rift and Quest owners can try their hand at VR pottery. For this week’s community comments, we’re looking at ???.

Finally there’s our competition. This week you have a chance to win the SteamVR version of hero shooter, Megalith! Enter in our Gleam competition embeded on this page.

GIVEAWAY: Win A Free Copy Of Megalith on SteamVR!

We’ve had plenty of other big stories this week, so here are some that didn’t make it into the VRecap:

Right, that’s us sorted for another 7 days. See you next week!

The post Oculus Sales Boosted, Beat Saber Auto Maps & Win Megalith! – VRecap appeared first on UploadVR.

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The Latest: Greece: No Deaths in 24 Hours, Ease Restrictions

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Reggie Watts to Kick Off Live Show Series in ‘AltspaceVR’ Starting Saturday

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Comedian, lyrical wizard and beatboxer extraordinaire Reggie Watts is set to return to AltspaceVR on Saturday, May 2nd, for an inaugural live show in his newly unveiled multi-week series called ‘Reinterpreted Reality’.

Watts is returning to the social VR platform tomorrow, thereby kicking off a series of free live shows that will span the next eight weeks.

Shows will take place every Saturday, starting May 2nd and ending on June 20th, starting at 5:00 PM PT (local time here).

Watts is no stranger to the AltspaceVR platform; he’s been showing up for virtual comedy spots since 2016, presenting his musical comedy stylings via his own avatar. Unlike other live concerts in VR, which are more like communal gatherings of livestreamed video, Watts is again showing up in-headset where he’ll be simulcast to an unlimited number of users. The artist’s avatar is replicated across technically infinite numbers of stages, so everyone showing up for Watts can watch it as if they were in the same virtual room together.

AltspaceVR is free, and supports a wide range of devices, including SteamVR-compatible headsets via Steam, Oculus Rift via the Oculus Store, Oculus Quest, and Oculus Go. It also supports 2D mode via desktop, letting most anyone join in for chats, live shows, and community events.

You can RSVP for each event by clinking the links below:

The post Reggie Watts to Kick Off Live Show Series in ‘AltspaceVR’ Starting Saturday appeared first on Road to VR.

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David Hayter On Metal Gear Solid VR – ‘I Think It Would Work Very Well’

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Think a Metal Gear Solid VR game could work? David Hayter, the iconic voice of Solid Snake reckons so.

Hayter said as much in an interview with Upload last week. Discussing his new role in VR stealth game, Phantom: Covert Ops, he talked about how the genre is well suited to the platform. “It gives you such paranoia about what’s going on behind you and what angle [enemies] can see you from, and you’re really right in it,” Hayter said.

“The silenced pistol is so effective at hugely long ranges and, just like you say, in Metal Gear you have to line up that laser just right, but you can hit guys way across the wind,” he later added. “It’s really cool.”

But does Hayter think Metal Gear itself could work in VR? “I was also in a game called Republique and that was produced by Ryan Paton who produced Metal Gear 3 and so I got that for the Oculus and it really works,” he explained. “It’s different from Metal Gear but a similar sort of stealth mechanic and it’s really immersive and very effective. I’d love to see Metal Gear on Oculus.”

There have been a lot of interesting takes on the stealth genre in VR over the past few years; some more influenced by Metal Gear than others. 2019’s Espire 1: VR Operative, for example, was a solid attempt at adapting many of the series’ core mechanics to VR. But Hayter agrees that a Metal Gear VR game could add a uniquely cinematic feel.

“You have real face-to-face meetings with these characters and you’re right in it,” he said. “I mean that was the thing about the first Metal Gear was that it was the first truly cinematic game experience and now of course we’re into multiple levels beyond at this point. But I think it would work very well.”

Sadly we’re not likely to get a Metal Gear Solid VR game anytime soon; the series has been silent since 2018’s Metal Gear Survive and creator Hideo Kojima (who has a few interesting ideas about VR himself) split from publisher Konami all the way back in 2015. But, if Konami ever did decide to revitalize the series, we’d definitely love to see it reimagined in VR. Especially all those hour-long cutscenes.

Do you think Metal Gear Solid VR could work? Let us know in the comments below!

The post David Hayter On Metal Gear Solid VR – ‘I Think It Would Work Very Well’ appeared first on UploadVR.

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Ryanair to Cut Up to 3,000 Jobs, May Day Looks Different

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Espire 1 Adds New Weapons, Challenges, Improved Load Times In Upcoming Update

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Enjoyable VR sneaker Espire 1: VR Operative is soon to get its next big update with plenty to talk about.

Next week on May 5, PC VR and Oculus Quest players will be able to download the Assimilation Update. Headlining the patch is the addition of 14 new challenges, which include some new weapons to sample, too. Challenges include new combat and traversal-based trials as well as four new Intel ops, where you’ll have to gather documents and data before reaching an extraction point. One of these challenges, Copperhead Output, will be the game’s biggest to date.

But many of you will no doubt be interested to hear what performance improvements Update 1.6 brings to Espire 1. First up, developer Digital Lode says load times have been dramatically reduced, going from 28 seconds in some cases to an average of just 4. The team has also done a pass on various other aspects of the game, like handling weapons, lighting and just general campaign tweaks, so expect to see improvements there.

Elsewhere 1.6 introduces a new onboarding sequence for the first mission to help you get to grips with the game. Plus Digital Lode has added in the ability to remove auto-vaulting when climbing walls among other tweaks.

It’s great to see Epsire 1 getting long-term post-launch support. We were really impressed with the game when we played it for review, but others have encountered a range of technical bugs that brought the experience down for them. Hopefully with these continued updates, the game gets up to snuff for everyone.

That said, while the update for the game will be going live on PC VR and Oculus Quest headsets next week, Digital Lode says it will hit PSVR at a later date. The console edition of the game is thought to be the most technically challenged so we’ll definitely want to see how update 1.6 shapes up there.

Will you be checking out this Espire 1 update? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Espire 1 Adds New Weapons, Challenges, Improved Load Times In Upcoming Update appeared first on UploadVR.

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Valve Ends SteamVR Support For macOS

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Valve just ended SteamVR’s support for macOS. ‘Legacy builds’ will continue to be available.

SteamVR is Valve’s PC-based virtual reality platform, supporting Windows and Linux. Mac owners can continue to use the latest versions of SteamVR by installing Windows as a secondary OS.

Facebook’s competing Oculus Rift platform hasn’t supported Macs since early development kits, which preceded the Rift. In 2016, founder Palmer Luckey claimed this was due to Apple’s lack of priority on GPU power.

Apple Went All-In

Support for macOS was announced by Apple itself during its annual developer conference in 2017. Craig Federighi, who reports directly to Tim Cook, revealed the support with excitement- VR would be a showcase of Apple’s new commitment to high performance graphics.

At the time, Apple released updates to Metal, its equivalent of Vulkan/DX12, to make it suitable for high performance low latency VR rendering, including via external GPUs on MacBooks.

The company even worked with Unity and Unreal Engine to make this available to all developers.

Later in the conference, employees from ILM gave a live on-stage mixed reality demo of VR on macOS- a Star Wars scene powered by Unreal Engine.

In September 2018, Apple added support for HTC’s Vive Pro, including giving developers access to the onboard stereo cameras, presumably for AR development.

What Happened?

Less than two years later, Valve is announcing ending support for macOS. Apple doesn’t seem to have made a statement on this yet, but we’ve reached out to employees who worked on Metal’s VR support.

According to Valve’s Hardware Survey, just under 4% of Steam users are using macOS, with over 95% using Microsoft’s Windows. Given that just over 1% own a VR headset at all, it’s easy to see just how niche VR on macOS likely was.

Valve states it will now “focus on Windows and Linux”. Despite being even less popular than macOS, Linux is preferred by developers, and required for certain advanced enterprise and government use cases.

Apple is reportedly working on a standalone mixed reality headset slated for 2022. The company may decide to support this in MacOS in a similar way to Facebook’s Oculus Link. Alternatively, it may have decided that the tethered market just isn’t big enough to focus on.

We’ll keep a close eye on Apple this year for any further news about its support for virtual reality.

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