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Friday, 28 June 2019
Thursday, 27 June 2019
Survios CTO to Teach Full Semester VR Development Course in a Virtual Classroom
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Survios, the studio behind a host of VR games such as Raw Data (2017), Sprint Vector (2018) and Creed: Rise to Glory (2018), has been a stalwart pioneer of the medium since the birth of consumer VR. Now, Survios CTO and co-founder Alex Silkin is set to share his experience by teaching a full semester course on expert-level Unreal Engine VR development. Plenty of high-profile industry pros will also be available too as mentors.
What’s more, the course will be taught in VR, so you can connect remotely and learn from Silkin—virtual face to virtual face.
“We’ll meet twice a week in virtual classrooms and build amazing virtual reality content together,” Silkin explains. “I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with VR since 2012 and contribute to the development of many innovative VR systems over these years. I want to share my experience with the community to make it easier for newcomers to break into the VR industry. I am beyond excited to help students invent their solutions for the still relatively untamed landscape of VR development.”
Although the full semester course is priced at just under $2,500, there are also scholarship opportunities for exceptional students. Axon Park has partnered with VR First, an organization which maintains a network of international VR lab-enabled universities and science parks; the partnership will provide needs-based scholarships to get students either low-cost or free access to VR hardware and resources through their partner network of 850 universities.
Prior to Silkin’s course, Axon Park ran the first remote in-VR class at the MIT Media Lab to explore teaching and learning in social VR classrooms. The class focused on VR Development with Unity and was taught remotely by an instructor in LA with students split between two buildings on the MIT campus.
Here’s some of the basic course info, although check out the course website for the full details and application process.
Course Specifics
- Course Name: Unreal Engine VR Master Class
- Duration: 14 weeks (September 4 – December 11, 2019 – current dates with MIT fall semester).
- Frequency: 2 times per week in VR.
- Target Student Demographic: Expert-level Unity (or other game engine) developers who want to master Unreal Engine 4 for VR.
- Prerequisites: Game engine development experience (Unity preferred), 3D linear algebra, C++, visual studio (or similar), and Github (or similar). Must have access to VR ready PC and Oculus Rift or Rift S (hardware access scholarships available at selected destinations through partnership with VR First).
- Curriculum: The course is project-based and designed to help you build a stellar portfolio piece from scratch. Classes are designed to help you learn the core concepts, while providing ample time for project work and support from your instructor and mentors. More details can be found on the syllabus.
- Select mentors: Nick Whiting (Technical Director at Epic Games, Unreal Engine), Ray Davis (creator of Robo Recall, previously ran Unreal Engine), Jacki Morie (Previously at NASA, Disney, DARPA, Board of Advisors Axon Park), Ron Millar (Chief Creative Officer at VRChat, founding team of Blizzard), Oculus founders, and numerous other industry professionals
- Tuition: $2,495
- Scholarship opportunities: Needs-based scholarships will be provided to exceptional students to foster inclusion and diversity in the class.
- Inclusivity & Equality: Neutral avatars will be used in the admissions process and virtual classrooms to reduce unconscious and conscious student and teacher bias and equalize opportunity.
- Additional Features: Dedicated networking with VR industry’s top professionals, career coaching, Virtual Field Trips “VFTs” to explore other social VR enabled tools, like MasterpieceVR, and a virtual job fair where top companies will setup virtual booths to meet the students. Axon Park Alumni are invited to meet IRL after graduation with XR Nomads.
The post Survios CTO to Teach Full Semester VR Development Course in a Virtual Classroom appeared first on Road to VR.
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Play ‘Firewall Zero Hour’ for Free This Weekend, Double XP for Current Owners
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Got a PSVR and a PS Plus account? Then you’ll be able to play the tactical team shooter Firewall Zero Hour (2018) for free this weekend, going from June 28th to 30th.
For users that already own the game, developing studio First Contact Entertainment is also simultaneously holding a Double XP weekend, giving pretty much everyone an incentive to jump in and fill up the servers.
There’s a good reason too: ever since the game’s ‘Nightfall’ update, which brought a number of critical changes to the game including microtransactions and weekly challenges, some users have probably fallen off the wagon due to the new multiplayer implementation that requires individual users to strive after their own set of goals.
First Contact Entertainment game director Damoun Shabestari says in a PS blog post that many of the issues experienced in squad and matchmaking have been solved in the 1.26 Patch, and that the studio hopes to keep users engaged.
“It has been a process, this buildout of a reliable and robust platform — one that will set us up for future growth, improvements, and content rollouts,” Shabestari says. “We hope where we take the game from here exceeds your expectations and rewards your continued commitment.”
If you haven’t had a chance to play, Firewall Zero Hour was released in August 2018 to much fanfare; it not only drummed up strong support with PSVR owners by offering one of the first classic team-based shooters on the platform, but also took a prime spot in a PS Aim hardware bundle at the time too. It also supports PS Move, and boasts a continuously growing number of maps that 4v4 teams can duke it out in—one team defends while the other infiltrates. The game typically costs $40, so it’s definitely worth jumping in for free while you can.
The post Play ‘Firewall Zero Hour’ for Free This Weekend, Double XP for Current Owners appeared first on Road to VR.
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Aperture Hand Lab Updated For Oculus Touch Players
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Yesterday, Cloudhead Games and Valve launched Aperture Hand Lab. The free download is intended to be a showcase for the latter’s new Index Controllers, which bring finger tracking and improved pressure sensitivity into VR. The latter feature is required to actually get through this experience, which stopped Oculus Touch users right in their tracks. Thankfully, Cloudhead has provided a workaround.
The developer behind The Gallery series this week took to the Oculus Reddit to provide an update. The studio has just published a new controller binding for Touch that you’ll need to select when you jump into VR (instructions below).
With that in place, you’ll be able to make your way through the app. “Obviously this isn’t the way we intended for it to be played,” Cloudhead wrote, “but at very least you should get some laughs from the dialogue.” We’ve got to concur on that point; Hand Lab is absolutely hilarious especially for fans of Valve’s Portal universe. Still, we’d recommend waiting until you have an Index Controller in-hand to actually give this one a go.
Here’s Cloudhead on how to activate the binding:
- Launch the game
- Open the SteamVR menu and click Settings > Controller Binding (or Devices > Configure Controller on desktop)
- Select “Knux [Testing]” under “Current Application”
- Click “View” on the binding labeled “CHG Recommended”
- Click “Select this Binding”
Note: Selecting a binding for “Aperture Hand Lab” will not currently sync to the game. You will need to launch the game and select a binding for Knux [Testing] under “Current Application.”
Tagged with: Aperture Hand Lab, cloudhead games, oculus touch
The post Aperture Hand Lab Updated For Oculus Touch Players appeared first on UploadVR.
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