First Update VRiday of the year! We'll talk about: VR growth of the past year (it's exciting), a new project by Valve that is very NerveGear-like, and so much more XR news! Thanks to Antlion Audio for sponsoring today's video. ► Get 15% off your ModMic right here → https://thld.co/antlionaudio_casandchary Since it's the first episode of 2021, I wanted to do a VR year in review, for which I’ve collected statistics from our industry, and they’re actually really exciting. We may be very close to going mainstream! I'll also talk about the latest VR news and highlights of the last few weeks including Valve's new project will remind you of the SAO NerveGear, we are getting Ready Player One like experiences and new VR headsets. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINKS Some of the links below may be affiliate links. From those, we earn a small referral fee from qualifying purchases that help support the channel. However, it doesn't cost you more. ► Upgrade your audio now! Go to https://antlionaudio.com/casandchary and use the promo code CASANDCHARY at checkout to get 15% off. ► Oculus Multi-user Accounts & App sharing: https://developer.oculus.com/blog/multi-user-accounts-and-app-sharing-coming-soon/ ► SideSketch on SideQuest: https://sidequestvr.com/app/2852/sidesketch ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro O.O 02:16 VR Growth Statistics! Year In Review 2020 04:44 VR In The Following Years? When Mainstream? 05:51 Valve's "NerveGear" Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) 07:23 HaptX New Crazy Gloves 07:51 Apple's Standalone VR Headset 08:17 Canon's MR Headset: MREAL S1 08:40 UNAI Social VR Headset 09:30 Oculus' Expectations VS Reality 10:05 Oculus Multi-user Accounts & App sharing 10:54 Tilt Brush Now Open-Source 11:30 Quick VR Game News 12:58 Two Exciting Upcoming Games 13:53 Question Of The Day & Outro Start ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUPPORT THE CONTENT (and become our VR Champion) ► Become our Patron → http://bit.ly/PatreonCasandChary ► Become a Sponsor on YouTube → http://bit.ly/JoinCasandChary ► Buy our VR Merch → http://bit.ly/casandchary-merch VR DISCOUNT CODES & AFFILIATE LINKS ► ► https://casandchary.com/discount-codes-affiliate-links/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OUR GEAR Our VR Equipment & Tips → https://www.amazon.com/shop/caschary (affiliate link) Our PC Specs → https://casandchary.com/vr-equipment/ MUSIC Music we use is from Epidemic Sounds → http://bit.ly/CCEpidemicSound ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GET LATEST UPDATES Twitter → https://twitter.com/CasandChary Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/casandchary/ Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/casandchary/ Join our Discord → https://discord.gg/YH52W2k ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A SPECIAL THANKS to these Patreon Champs 🛡️ for their support: 😘 BaxornVR, Wintceas, Studioform VR, Barr'd4Life, Andy, Albert, Ben P., Steve Dunlap, Thomas M. Rice, Andy Fidel, VR Balance, Nathan S., Adriaan K. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DISCLAIMER This video was sponsored by Antlion Audio. Per our guidelines, no review direction was received. Our opinions are our own. Links in this description may contain affiliate links. We may earn a small referral fee from qualifying purchases that helps supports the channel. However, it doesn't cost you more. #vrnews #vr #casandchary VR on! - Cas and Chary VR
Google’s VR art creation app Tilt Brush isn’t free, but the company made it open source a few days ago after announcing it has stopped active development, so it was only a matter of time before independent developers got under the hood to publish their own Tilt Brush-derived apps. Now you can play around with the first batch on PC VR and Oculus Quest.
Open Brush – PC VR
Developer Icosa Gallery has published its own fork of the Tilt Brush software, dubbed Open Brush. Although there’s a few missing features for now, notably the ability to use the eraser, Open Brush is already enabling some of the hidden brushes that Google never released before shelving the project.
You can download the experimental build of Open Brush over at Itch.io for free, and get painting through SteamVR-compatible headsets right now.
Icosa Gallery says there’s also a Quest version in the works, however it’s not ready just yet.
SideSketch – Quest
If you own an Oculus Quest or Quest 2, you can also test out the latest third-party clone from developer Shane Harris, called SideSketch.
Image courtesy Shane Harris
For now it appears to be a direct clone without any added features, albeit free of charge. Like Open Brush on PC, SideSketch is missing the eraser function.
To get SideSketch, you’ll need to set up SideQuest on your Quest headset, the unofficial app store for all things Quest. Check out our simple guide of how (and why) to use SideQuest to get up and running with SideSketch and a plethora of free and paid apps.
Tilt Brush for WebXR
The amazing thing about WebXR is that all you need is a URL, a compatible web browser and a PC VR or Quest headset to start playing and connecting in virtual spaces.
WebXR applications are notably smaller than apps that require a direct download and installation, and it seems a WebXR Tilt Brush derivative from developer Douglas Adams of msub2, called Silk Brush, is still brewing as a result.
At the moment, Adams says its still only capable of basic drawing, as he’s still working on integrating the wand’s complete set of functions—not a simple task since it needs to be light enough to run in-browser.
Seeing Tilt Brush as a potential WebXR application is really exciting though. Not only will users be able to pop in and create things quickly, but the hypothetical addition of multiplayer could make it a great place to quickly connect with others for everything from product ideation to collaborative art. Adams hasn’t mentioned that bit yet, although it was buried in the code as a ‘to-do’ by Google before they stopped active development.
Know of any apps making use of Tilt Brush code? Let us know in the comments below!
Ultraleap, the company behind the Leap Motion hand-tracking controller, has released a Developer Preview of its hand-tracking engine Gemini. By many accounts, Ultraleap’s latest software overhaul dramatically increases the ability of the company’s camera modules to do more precise and stable two-handed interactions.
Gemini is now available in Developer Preview for Windows 10, and is designed to work with all existent Leap Motion controllers as well as Ultraleap’s more recent Stereo IR 170 camera module.
In comparison to Orion (V4), which was released in June 2018, its Gemini (V5) engine is said to offer better smoothness, pose fidelity, and robustness. It also improves hand initialization, and brings “significantly better performance with two-hand interactions,” Ultraleap says.
As seen in the gif below, the solidity of Gemini (V5) is pretty astounding. Not only are both hands more accurately tracked, but occlusion appears to be much less of an issue too, as fingers interlock and move in front of each other with comparative ease.
Ultraleap is set to integrate Gemini into a number of XR headsets, including Varjo VR-3 and XR-3 headsets, and the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 5G reference design, which makes use of Ultraleap hardware.
Antony Vitillo of XR publication Skarred Ghostwent hands-on with Gemini using his first-generation Leap Motion tracker. To him, the software overhaul represents “the best hands-tracking system I’ve seen until now on all headsets for what concerns the interactions between two hands.”
“What really surprised me is the stability of two hands interactions. For the first time, I’ve been able to make the fingers of my two hands cross and interweave [together], and the tracking kept working reliably.”
Granted, Vitillo’s five year-old Leap Motion does present somewhat of a roadblock due to its comparatively small field of view, however Ultraleap says with its updated IR 170 camera module that “hands will almost certainly be tracked before they come into your sight.”
In practice, Ultraleap hopes its new software will let developers create hand-tracking-focused applications in preparation for the next wave of AR and VR headsets to make more prominent use of the technology. Facebook’s Oculus Quest standalone notably includes hand-tracking for use within its system UI and a handful of applications, however it hasn’t become a standard input method yet.
Adding to a growing number of data points showing why Facebook has shifted its attention away from Oculus PC is the difference in momentum between the two platforms as revealed by game review counts over time. This month, the number of reviews across all Quest games has exceeded the number of reviews across all Oculus PC games.
The number of times a game has been reviewed generally correlates with how many units that game has sold. Thus, looking at the count of all reviews in a given game marketplace over time can give us some indication of the trend of unit sales in that marketplace.
Worth noting: when it comes to Quest, users are required to install the Oculus smartphone app, which has a variety of mechanisms to pull users back into the app—like scoreboard and challenge prompts—where they can also write a review for games in their library. On the other hand, the Oculus PC app doesn’t have much of that functionality, nor is it always in your pocket.
So, all things equal, we’d expect from the outset that a larger proportion of Quest users would write reviews compared to Oculus PC users. Exactly how many more, however, is hard to figure. So while it’s interesting to see that this month the total number of Quest game reviews surpassed the total number of Oculus PC game reviews, as we can see below, it isn’t the count that’s particularly interesting, but the trend.
The first Quest launched in May of 2019, which was when the Quest store first went online. It took a little less than two years (from May 2019 to January 2021) for Quest game reviews to surpass the number of Oculus PC game reviews.
Another way to look at this is to look at the average number of reviews per day. Here we can see that not only the count, but more importantly the trend is moving healthily upward on Quest, whereas the Oculus PC store has largely flatlined in comparison.
Another interesting point to note is that the number of Quest game reviews is spread across a much smaller number of games. The Quest store has just 253 games, while the Oculus PC store has some 1,800. This is no doubt due to Facebook’s decision to “curate” the Quest store.
Despite the large quantity of games on the Oculus PC store, only 339 (19%) have reached the seemingly low bar of 100 or more reviews. The median number of reviews for each game on the store is 240.
Quest games are much more consistently surpassing 100 reviews, with 201 (79%) crossing the threshold. The median number of reviews for each game on the Quest store is 621.
Value—as revealed through user reviews—is another interesting point of comparison between the two stores. Below we can see that the rating distribution leans significantly higher on the Quest store vs. Oculus PC.
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And a final note worth pointing out: while this data suggests that the Oculus PC store is stagnating, we can’t necessarily extend this conclusion to the overall PC VR category, where Steam is one of PC VR’s largest marketplaces (and is not represented in this data). On that front, Valve shared some positive figures about VR usage on Steam in 2020, and other data suggests the platforms continues to grow.
Fast Travel Games, the studio behind Apex Construct (2018) and Budget Cuts 2 (2019), are bringing their ‘World of Darkness’ horror game Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife to all major VR platforms this spring. Now the studio has served up a fresh gameplay video featuring the mysterious ‘Shadow’ who guides you.
Update (January 28th, 2021): Fast Travel Games released a new video (linked above and below the article) that shoes off the game’s mysterious ‘Shadow’ character. Here’s how the studio describes it.
“As a Wraith in Afterlife, you will have a companion of sorts by your side called ‘the Shadow’. The Shadow is a manifestation of your dark subconscious – call it the devil on the shoulder, or the little voice in the back of your head telling you to do the things you really shouldn’t. So, while he functions as a guide through the game… should you really trust him?”
Now the studio says it is targeting spring 2021, which may still fit within its ‘Early 2021’ launch window.
Update (December 17th, 2020): Fast Travel Games published some new gameplay footage today, showing off the level of polish coming to Quest 2 and further detailing some of the game’s mechanics.
Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife is set launch sometime in early 2021 on all the major VR headsets, which includes SteamVR, the Oculus Store for Quest and Rift (supporting cross-buy), and PlayStation VR.
We’ve time-linked the video below where Quest 2 footage is highlighted. Developer Andreas Juliusson also speaks a bit about what to expect, including special powers, the game’s World of Darkness setting, and the mystery of why and how you’ve become a ghostly apparition.
Original Article (June 9th, 2020): Fans of the World of Darkness universe and its many tabletop role-playing games are no doubt familiar with Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse.
Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife is said to follow in the footsteps of its 1994-era tabletop RPG namesake by placing you in the modern Barclay Mansion and putting you in the ghostly shoes of a Wraith who unravels the mysteries “that await beyond the Shroud.”
Erik Odeldahl, Creative Director at Fast Travel Games, says that horror games such as Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Alien: Isolation have influenced the studio to create a similar “narrative-driven, exploration-focused” horror title in the World of Darkness universe.
The game, which doesn’t have a release date yet, is slated to arrive on “all major VR platforms,” Fast Travel says.
A gameplay reveal and details are said to arrive during Gamescom Now, which starts August 27th. Hopefully we’ll be getting a release date then too.
Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap, is starting on a new path after his departure as CEO of the well-funded augmented reality company last year. Abovitz just unveiled his next project, a startup called Sun and Thunder, which aims to build what he calls “synthetic beings.”
Founded late last year, Abovitz says the company’s first project will feature a character named Jako Vega, also known as ‘Yellow Dove’, which will be the center of a number of short film experiments set to release sometime in 2021.
On the face of it, Sun and Thunder feels patently Abovitzian in its near-science fiction ambitions to create digital life. Much like Magic Leap’s AI-driven virtual companion Mica, which was billed as an “educator, agitator, companion, artist and guide,” Abovitz imbues Yellow Dove with a degree of sentience that’s fairly questionable—at least for now.
Image courtesy Sun and Thunder
The startup says on its website that Yellow Dove is “a member of the Sun and Thunder team, a co-creator, and traveler through a number of interconnected Sun and Thunder storyworlds. He is a musician and the first artist on Sun and Thunder Records.”
Abovitz tells Venture Beatin an exclusive interview that the upcoming short film will act as an introduction to the Yellow Dove character.
“He goes outside and teaches us about the world, and we’re building out the underlying technology that makes these things happen. It’s a small enough container that we are developing. And he ultimately will be writing all of his lyrics and adventures.”
Continuing, Abovitz says the startup isn’t trying to “take on like the largest tech companies in the world,” Ã la Magic Leap. “It’s not the best metaphor, but this is like a craft beer. Or something Studio Ghibli would do.”
Abovitz tells Venture Beat that Sun and Thunder is being funded out of pocket for now, although he’s currently in talks with potential investors. Abovitz still sits on Magic Leap’s board of directors, however Sun and Thunder is a separate venture that isn’t tied to a specific platform.
HaptX, the company building high-end haptic VR gloves for enterprises, launched its latest model, DK2, which is now available for purchase. The new version is said to have improved haptics, force-feedback, size, comfort, and manufacturability.
Previously, HaptX was only able to loan evaluation units of its gloves to interested parties, because the company was “severely limited in the number of units we could manufacture,” says CEO Jake Rubin. With the newly announced DK2 model, the company says it has streamlined the design which has enabled it to manufacture enough of the gloves to sell them outright.
“[Our manufacturing capacity was limited] due to a combination of the high complexity of our system, the number of novel components and production processes involved, and our limited manufacturing experience as a startup. Our manufacturing challenges were one of the primary catalysts behind our comprehensive partnership with Advanced Input Systems,” says Rubin “[…] we have been able to radically streamline manufacturing of the system. This has enabled us to finally satisfy the demand we’ve generated with our DK1 and earlier prototype systems by allowing customers to purchase DK2 outright and begin deploying HaptX technology at scale within their organizations.”
Part of that streamlining process also means slimming the system down. The Air Controller unit, which powers the pneumatic-based haptics in the gloves, once weighed 180 pounds. While the gloves are far from compact, with HaptX DK2 the company has reduced the system’s overall size enough to be able to mount the Air Controller on the user’s back. “We do expect that many, if not most, of our customers will use the system in room-scale [backpack] mode given the enhanced immersion and mobility,” Rubin says.
Image courtesy HaptX
Unfortunately the backpack unit doesn’t include the computer hardware necessary for the VR headset itself, so users will still need to be tethered to a PC or use a wireless solution.
Beyond the smaller Air Controller and improved manufacturing, Rubin says the DK2 has a handful of other improvements.
The force-feedback system can now apply up to 40 pounds of resistance per hand, and also has better stiffness and lower latency. The finger-tracking hardware in the gloves has also been massively shrunk down from two external boxes to a small board which is built directly into the gloves. Further, Rubin says, the gloves have improved fit and ergonomics, and are easier to put on and take off.
With these improvements, HaptX is now selling their gloves directly to enterprise customers. Though an official price hasn’t been announced, we understand the cost to be in the tens of thousands of dollars per unit.
That huge price tag puts the HaptX DK2 gloves in the high-end of the already expensive enterprise-focused VR sector, among the likes of Varjo’s enterprise headsets. While the company surely expects to further slim its gloves down in both size and price, if there’s buyers out there today we’d expect to find them in massive industries like military, medical, automotive, et al.
During Facebook’s Q4 2020 earnings call today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Quest 2 is “on track to be the first mainstream virtual reality headset,” noting that the device drove a 156% increase in the company’s non-advertising revenue.
In past earning calls, Zuckerberg has generally downplayed the company’s XR business as a forward-looking investment that isn’t expected to pay off for years. His tune has shifted notably in the company’s latest earnings call, where he told investors that Facebook’s XR business was “one of the areas that I’m most excited about our progress heading into 2021.”
Although Facebook hasn’t confirmed how many Quest 2 units have been sold so far, Zuckerberg was upbeat about the headset’s sales performance, saying he believed it is “on track to be the first mainstream virtual reality headset.”
It isn’t entirely clear what he means by “mainstream,” though we have one good guess. At Oculus Connect 5 in 2018, the company’s annual XR developer conference, Zuckerberg explained that he believed that 10 million VR users was an important milestone for the company to reach in order to make a sustainable ecosystem for VR developers.
Image courtesy Oculus
The big question is what is it gonna take for it to be profitable for all developers to build these large efforts for VR? To get to that level, we think that we need about 10 million people on a given platform. That’s the threshold where the number of people using and buying VR content makes it sustainable and profitable for all kinds of developers. And once we get across this threshold, we think that the content and the ecosystem are just going to explode. Importantly, this threshold isn’t 10 million people across all different types of VR. Because if you build a game for Rift, it doesn’t necessarily work on Go or PlayStation VR. So we need 10 million people on [one] platform.
So while Quest and Quest 2 likely haven’t sold 10 million units yet, Zuckerberg’s confidence that Quest 2 could become the “first mainstream virtual reality headset” suggests the 10 million unit threshold may appear within grasp.
“In previous quarters I’ve talked about our long-term future goals when it comes to virtual reality,” Zuckerberg told investors, “but I think that this quarter’s results show that this future is here.” He further shared that “more than 60 Oculus developers are generating revenue in the millions, and that’s more than twice as many as a few months ago.”
Zuckerberg also said that Quest 2 was “one of the hot holiday gifts this year,” and was a major driver behind the company’s $885 million Q4 non-advertising revenue. Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg, said on the call that this was a year-over-year increase of 156%, and specifically noted that it was “due to strong Quest 2 holiday sales.”
Image courtesy Facebook
Some back-of-the-envelope math can give us a ballpark estimate for Quest 2 unit sales in Q4. The company earned $855 million in non-advertising revenue, which includes both Oculus products and Portal products. With Sandberg pointing to Quest 2 as a major driver for the growth without mentioning Portal, we can probably safely figure at least 50% of the revenue was from Oculus headsets.
From there we might figure that 75% of the headsets being sold are Quest 2, with the soon-to-be-discontinued Rift S making up the other 25%. Similarly, we’d figure that 75% of Quest 2 units sold are the 64GB model, while 25% are the 64GB model.
Plugging in those assumptions yields 1,000,000 Quest 2 units, though that would need to be dialed back by some portion to account for first-party accessory sales.
Looking to the future, Zuckerberg confirmed that Quest 2’s successor is already in development.
“We’re continuing to work on new [VR] hardware as well. The new hardware will fit the same platform, so the content that works on Quest 2 should be forward-compatible [with the new hardware], so that we’re going to build one larger install base around the virtual reality headsets that we have.”
While this won’t be a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention, it does stand in stark contrast to Sony—whose PSVR has long held the lead in VR headset unit sales—but has refrained from indicating any plans to build a next-gen headset.
Facebook has also made no secret about its plans to build an AR headset; the company shared a look at an early prototype last year. On the call, Zuckerberg affirmed the plans to start first with smartglasses, before launching full-blown AR glasses further in the future. He also called out Apple as a likely competitor in the AR landscape.
“[…] longer term, as we move toward building the next computing platform, I think we would expect to see [Apple] as more of a competitor [in AR] as well.”
Canon previously announced its next AR/VR headset MREAL S1 back in October. Now, the Japan-based company has shown off the enterprise-focused device in a new video.
Update (January 27th, 2021): Canon Japan released the first promo video for their upcoming AR/VR headset, which uses a passthrough camera for room-scale augmented reality interactions. The headset is set to release in late February 2021.
Since Canon seems to be pitching the device only within Japan, YouTuber ‘Tyriel Wood’ did the courtesy of running the video through Google Translate so we can get a handle on the particulars.
In the video, we learn the headset weighs an impressive 137g, and claims to be the smallest, thinnest and lightest of Canon’s offerings. With the headstrap attached, it can be flipped in the upward position and adjusted for fit. A mechanical IPD adjuster is also built into the headset’s lenses. As previously seen, the MREAL S1 can also be used like a pair of hand-held binoculars, replete with light-blocking guard around the sides.
Original Article (October 7th, 2020): Unlike the MREAL Display MD-20, which was unveiled earlier this year, you might describe MREAL S1 as technically a VR headset with passthrough AR, which is achieved by the inclusion of stereoscopic camera sensors on the front of the device and VR displays, providing a ‘mixed reality’ view to the user. The headset also includes two additional optical sensors for positional tracking.
Image courtesy Canon Japan
Canon Japan hasn’t released specs, prices or availability yet, however the company says on its Japan-facing site “the smallest and lightest video see-through MR device in the history of MREAL.”
MREAL S1 requires a PC tether to function (ie. not a standalone headset), however the company says its been created to work with mobile workstations, and is both cheaper and more portable than its predecessors, the MD-20 and 2016-era MD-10. Of course, some degree of that portability is owed by the headset’s notable lack of any sort of light-blocking blinders, although that’s been a design choice the company has made with all of their MREAL headsets to date.
Image courtesy Canon Japan
As you’d imagine with any enterprise-focused AR headset, the head-mount version of MREAL S1 is designed for work with industrial applications, which might require two hands such as CAD software. The handheld style however was created for easier use at exhibitions.
Both MD-20 and MD-10 include this level of convertibility, however MREAL S1 is substantially smaller in size, slimming down to about the size of a smartphone. Its handheld configuration is also much less ungainly, as Canon has done away with the giant handles seen in previous models.
Like its previous AR headsets, MREAL S1 is likely to be a Japan-only device for companies there looking to partner with the Canon.
Love them or hate them for it, Bethesda’s games offer up a great opportunity for modders to get under the hood of impressively large-scale virtual worlds and summarily fix whatever messes the studio left behind. The same goes for Skyrim VR (2018), which for all its charms, is still obviously in need of tweaks to make it more like the VR-native game it should have been when it was first released on PC VR headsets in 2018. Now there’s a mod for that.
Created by NexusMods contributor ‘FlyingParticle’, the nifty mod fixes many of the non-VR design conventions that were essentially ported from the flatscreen version of Skyrim, namely the overreliance on text-based inventory menus and point-and-click object interaction system—both total immersion killers in their own right.
Called HIGGS VR (hand interaction and gravity gloves), the mod adds in some seriously useful abilities which were inspired by Half-Life: Alyx (2020). With it installed, both hands and objects have collision enabled so you can actually hold items.
Borrowing the gravity gloves mechanic from HLA, the mod also lets you highlight and select items from a distance and force-grab them to you. Combined with another mod, called VRIK Player Avatar, you can also add in dynamic handposes for more realistic object interaction.
Looting is a more natural experience too, as you can stash items by placing them in an over-the-shoulder inventory on your back. You can also move bodies, and strip them of armor by pulling on it, which are really nice touches for the sake of immersion.
HIGGS VR only works with PC VR versions of Skyrim VR. You can download it atNexus Mods, which hosts a mind-boggling number of mods for many games, including many of the fan favorite mods for Skyrim VR.
Check out the HIGGS VR mod in action below, courtesy of YouTube channel ‘Ben Play’s VR’:
This is the ultimate list of the best Oculus Quest 2 games available now. I'm doing it differently this time, instead of naming my top 20, I will suggest my favorite per genre to make the list more diverse. Timestamps are below! ► Our VR equipment kit & tips here → https://www.amazon.com/shop/caschary (affiliate link) ► Subscribe here → https://goo.gl/bSJ6L8 It’s a new year, and we’re still in lockdown… but the upside is, more time to play VR games. This is why I wanted to make a list of the best games on the Oculus Quest store. These are VR games you can play on both Oculus Quest 1 and Oculus Quest 2. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LINKS ► Get an Oculus Quest 2 (US) → http://bit.ly/quest2-casvr ► Get an Oculus Quest 2 (NL - Coolblue) → https://cb.prf.hn/l/784dkp8 ► Get on Amazon → https://amzn.to/2RSxaDi May contain affiliate links that earn us a small referral fee from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Da Intro Starts 00:50 Action 01:52 Adventure 02:37 Battle Royale - Team-Based 03:11 Creative – Art 03:50 Dungeon Crawler 04:17 Experiences - Interactive Story 05:11 FPS 05:41 Hand Tracking 06:17 Movies - Theater 06:56 Multiplayer – Social VR 07:40 Music – Rhythm 08:14 Oculus Link (PC VR) 09:08 Party Game - Family 09:41 Platformer 10:23 Puzzle 11:10 Relax - Meditation 11:51 RPG - MMORPG 12:43 Stealth 13:26 Survival 14:04 Visual Novel - Anime, Manga 15:15 Question Of The Day & Outro Start ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUPPORT THE CONTENT (and become our VR Champion) ► Become our Patron → http://bit.ly/PatreonCasandChary ► Become a Sponsor on YouTube → http://bit.ly/JoinCasandChary ► Buy our VR Merch → http://bit.ly/casandchary-merch VR DISCOUNT CODES & AFFILIATE LINKS ► ► https://casandchary.com/discount-codes-affiliate-links/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OUR GEAR Our VR Equipment & Tips → https://www.amazon.com/shop/caschary (affiliate link) Our PC Specs → https://casandchary.com/vr-equipment/ MUSIC Music we use is from Epidemic Sounds → http://bit.ly/CCEpidemicSound ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GET LATEST UPDATES Twitter → https://twitter.com/CasandChary Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/casandchary/ Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/casandchary/ Join our Discord → https://discord.gg/YH52W2k ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A SPECIAL THANKS to these Patreon Champs 🛡️ for their support: 😘 BaxornVR, Wintceas, Studioform VR, Barr'd4Life, Andy, Albert, Ben P., Steve Dunlap, Thomas M. Rice, Andy Fidel, VR Balance, Nathan S., Adriaan K. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DISCLAIMER This video was not sponsored. Links in this description may contain affiliate links. We may earn a small referral fee from qualifying purchases that helps supports the channel. However, it doesn't cost you more. #oculusquest #oculusquest2 #casandchary VR on! - Cas and Chary VR
Schell Games today announced that its breakout VR spy adventure game, I Expect You to Die (2016), is getting a sequel sometime this year.
The studio unveiled the game, called I Expect You to Die 2: The Spy and The Liar, without mention of specific target platforms for the espionage-themed escape game.
For now, the only store listing is on Steam, ostensibly for PC VR headsets. Considering its massive success on all VR platforms, we expect to see it on PSVR, Oculus Quest, and Oculus Rift as well. Notably, the original game generated millions in revenue on the Quest platform alone—strong incentive to get it in the hands of users with Facebook’s latest standalone headset, Quest 2.
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Image courtesy Schell Games
Image courtesy Schell Games
Image courtesy Schell Games
Image courtesy Schell Games
Image courtesy Schell Games
Here’s how Schell Games describes the upcoming sequel:
I Expect You To Die 2 is the thrilling encore to the award-winning virtual reality franchise, I Expect You To Die. In this sequel, prepare for new missions, more villains, and more ways to… well, you know – die. The Agency is thrilled to see you’ve returned… and in one piece! Let’s keep it that way, shall we?
The immersive spy-flavored puzzle game is also said to include new locations, a new story featuring diabolical missions directed by archenemy Zoraxis, and a chance to use your “telekinetic powers and cunning” to complete missions.
Schell Games has been ardent about pushing out free DLC to the original game over the years, and we expect the same level of dedication to what could be a big win for the studio.
Google announced it has stopped active development on Tilt Brush (2016), the company’s VR paint app. All is not lost though. As the team pivots to creating immersive AR experiences, Tilt Brush has officially gone open source, allowing anyone to modify or even clone the app in its entirety.
Fast forward a few months, and now Google is not only shutting down its 3D object platform Poly, which was announced in December, but it’s also stopping all active development on Tilt Brush. In retrospect, Tilt Brush co-creator Patrick Hackett departing Google earlier this month may have been writing on the wall that the VR paint app was on the chopping block.
In a bid to let Tilt Brush live on, the team has released an open source github repo of the app’s code, allowing others to use, distribute, and modify it for use in other projects. The team says in its build guide that while Tilt Brush is a Google trademark, developers are even free to clone it completely as long as they choose a different name.
Now that developers are free to browse, at least one previously planned feature on the to-do list has raised a few eyebrows in the community, namely the missing addition of multiplayer mode.
The team says in a Google blogpost that Tilt Brush will “always remain available in digital stores for users with supported VR headsets,” however the move to open source the app will allow “everyone to learn how we built the project, and [encourage] them to take it in directions that are near and dear to them.”
Originally created by indie studio Skillman & Hackett, it wasn’t long before the studio and its impressive 3D art app were snapped up by Google; a 2015 acquisition proceeded the app’s launch on HTC Vive a year later.
Although it eventually went on to launch on all major VR headsets, development noticeably slowed over the past two years, starting back in 2018 when Google was still enthusiastically pushing its Android-based Daydream VR platform.
Tilt Brush’s most recent feature update came in March 2020, which brought to the app a new Camera Path Panel, Sketchfab, and a beta version of Google Drive backup. The app has only had a few bugfixes since then despite releasing concurrently on PSVR.
While Oculus doesn’t offer much publicly in the way of understanding how well individual apps are performing across its VR storefronts, it’s possible to glean some insight by looking at apps relative to each other. Here’s a snapshot of the top 20 Oculus Quest games and apps as of January 2021.
Why We Publish This Data
While the SteamVR library already has a comprehensive tracking database thanks to SteamDB, Steam 250, and more, no similar database exists to track applications on Oculus storefronts. We publish this data to give users, developers, and analysts insight into the Oculus app landscape.
Some quick qualifications before we get to the data:
Paid and free apps are separated
Only apps with more than 100 reviews are represented
Rounded ratings may appear to show ‘ties’ in ratings for some applications, but the ranked order remains correct
Best Rated Paid Oculus Quest Apps
The rating of each application is an aggregate of user reviews and a useful way to understand the general reception of each title by customers.
The first Quest launched in May of 2019, which was when the Quest store first went online. It took a little less than two years (from May 2019 to January 2021) for Quest game reviews to surpass the number of Oculus PC game reviews.
Another interesting point to note is that the number of Quest game reviews is spread across a much smaller number of games. The Quest store has just 253 games, while the Oculus PC store has some 1,800. This is no doubt due to Facebook’s decision to “curate” the Quest store.
Why We Publish This Data
