VR Gaming News

Friday, February 15, 2019

25 Oculus Rift Tips And Tricks For New Owners In 2019 (From Early Adopters)

As early adopters, we wanted to share our tips and lessons we've learned after using the Rift for 2 years. These are handy tips for VR newcomers, but a VR veteran might be able to pick up a tip or two too! ► Check out our VR equipment → https://www.amazon.com/shop/caschary ► Subscribe to join our VR adventures! → https://goo.gl/bSJ6L8 We will go through this video in order. First, we’ll start with the tips that are handy to check before playing, like how to get the tracking right. Then we’ll give you tips for during playtime and we’ll end the video with our tips on how to store your headset safely. Also, whenever we mention a handy thing in this video, I’ll also link it in the description. And for those who might prefer it, we also added subtitles in this video. LINKS Tip #2: - VRcovers for your headset → https://goo.gl/U3ZSRD Tip #4: - Oculus' article on tracking → https://www.oculus.com/blog/oculus-roomscale-tips-for-setting-up-a-killer-vr-room/ - Neewer 2-pack Light Stands → http://amzn.to/2nUwakv Tip #7: - Sensor Bounds app → https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/1682666568488584/ Tip #8: - Oculus’ article on balancing bandwidth on USB → https://www.oculus.com/blog/oculus-roomscale-balancing-bandwidth-on-usb/ Tip #9: - Inateck Superspeed 4 Ports PCI-E to USB 3.0 card ($23.99) → http://amzn.to/2tbHrR5 Tip #11: - This UGREEN HDMI extension cable 6 Feet → https://amzn.to/2GFwIDO - Cable Matters USB to USB Extension Cable 6 Feet → https://amzn.to/2I9y3F9 Tip #15: - Proximat → https://amzn.to/2Eb5bbV Tip #19: - Oculus Tray Tool download links → https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/5okoju/oculus_tray_tool/ Tip #20: - SteamVR in Oculus tutorial → https://youtu.be/aOlCa7hr62k Tip #25: - VRGE headset stand → https://amzn.to/2GKNamj SUPPORT US ► VRcovers for your headset → https://goo.gl/U3ZSRD ► Get Oculus Rift + Touch → http://amzn.to/2toFUlO ► Or become our Patron (includes exclusive rewards) → https://www.patreon.com/casandchary OUR SPECS - Our microphone (ModMic Wireless) → https://amzn.to/2MQF0tC - Our VR equipment → https://www.amazon.com/shop/caschary - More info here → https://casandchary.com/vr-equipment/ SOCIAL MEDIA 💬 Join our Discord → https://discord.gg/YH52W2k 💬 Twitter → https://twitter.com/CasandChary 💬 Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/casandchary/ 💬 Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/casandchary/ A special thanks to these Patreon Champs for their amazing support: - artArmin - Baxorn - VR Ambassador - Andy - Albert - Wintceas - Myshella - James VR on! - Cas and Chary VR DISCLAIMER - Links in this description may contain affiliate links. You don't have to use them but if you do, a small referral fee will go to this channel supporting the content. #VR #OCULUSRIFT #TIPSANDTRICKS

Walmart Brings Tricked Out ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ VR Experience to Select Stores

Walmart is continuing its onward journey to think outside of the big-box with the help of VR, this time bringing 50-foot tractor-trailers to their megalithic parking lots across the US to let shoppers go head-first into a VR experience for DreamWorks Animation’s upcoming film, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.

Walmart says in a press release that the experience begins in an on-boarding room where the film’s mischievous twins Ruffnut and Tuffnut greet guests. Participants then don HP Windows VR headsets outfitted with Leap Motion sensors, and sit in specialized Positron Voyager motion chairs powered by the HP VR backpack.

In the VR activation, users get a chance to experience a five-minute journey through the film’s dragon utopia called ‘The Hidden World’, of course accompanied by series regulars Astrid, Hiccup, Toothless, and Hookfang. The experience serves ages eight and up.

Parents and waiting participants can follow along with the VR content their kids and friends are experiencing inside by viewing on HP Chromebooks, and play on HP’s Omen Gaming Laptops located outside the venue while they wait.

The VR experience was developed by DreamWorks and Spatial&, Walmart’s second portfolio company to launch from their incubator Store N°8. The experience is made up of “high-resolution images and 360-degree VR videos,” the company says.

Tour Locations & Dates

Burbank, California (1301 N Victory Place) – February 15-16
Pico Rivera, California (8500 Washington Boulevard) – February 17-19
Anaheim, California (440 Euclid Street) – February 22-23
San Bernardino, California (4001 Hallmark Parkway) – February 24-26
Las Vegas, Nevada (5200 S Fort Apache Road) – March 1-2
North Las Vegas, Nevada (6464 N Decatur Boulevard) – March 3-5
Glendale, Arizona (5010 N 95th Avenue) – March 8-9
Gilbert, Arizona (2501 S Market Street) – March 10-12
San Antonio, Texas (8923 W Military Drive) – March 15-16
New Braunfels, Texas (1209 S Interstate 35) – March 17-19
Grand Prairie, Texas (2225 I-20) – March 22-23
Allen, Texas (730 W Exchange Parkway) – March 24-26
Sugar Land, Texas (345 Highway 6) – March 29-30
Katy, Texas (1313 N Fry Road) – March 31-April 2
Rogers, Arkansas (4208 S Pleasant Crossing Boulevard) – April 5-6
Bentonville, Arkansas (406 S Walton Boulevard) – April 7-9

The post Walmart Brings Tricked Out ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ VR Experience to Select Stores appeared first on Road to VR.

Ream more: https://www.roadtovr.com/walmart-brings-tricked-train-dragon-vr-experience-select-stores/

‘Doctor Who’ Virtual Reality Experience to Land on VR Headsets Soon

Image courtesy BBC, Passion Animation Studios

The BBC today announced that Doctor Who is getting a VR interactive experience, slated to release on VR headsets sometime this year.

Dubbed Doctor Who: The Runaway, fans will get a chance to step into the TARDIS and join the Thirteenth Doctor (played by Jodie Whittaker) in virtual reality.

According to a press release, the experience is said to last 12 minutes, and will be available on “selected VR headsets in the coming months.” Just which headsets the experience will launch on is still unclear.

The animated VR experience was created by the BBC and Passion Animation Studios, with Whittaker reprising her role as ‘The Doctor’.

Portal-style Puzzler ‘ChromaGun VR’ to Launch on PSVR Next Week

Initially slated for release last year, Nuremberg, Germany-based indie studio Pixel Maniacs have announced that the first-person puzzle shooter ChromaGun VR is headed to PSVR next week.

The original ChromaGun targeted a variety of platforms including PC, mobile, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, launching on PC via Steam back in 2016 after about a year in the now defunct Steam Greenlight program. It’s latest version, rejiggered for virtual reality, is set to release February 19th exclusively on PSVR.

In ChromaGun VR you use a paint-shooting gun to color walls and floating spherical Worker Droids, leaving you with the task of guiding your orb-shaped pals to door-opening triggers, switches or electrified tiles so you can progress forward. With only one solution to each puzzle, and plenty of opportunity to mess up, users typically find themselves resetting puzzles to discover just the right mix or color-coded instructions.

Steve Crouse, creative director at Pixel Manics says in a PS blogpost that while some rooms in the original game were resized to improve performance on PSVR, the overall gameplay mechanics are unchanged.

Rift Platform Update Now Lets Users Import Custom Home Spaces

Thursday, February 14, 2019

‘Budget Cuts’ is Gets 4 New Levels with Launch of Arcade Mode

Neat Corporation announced their stealth robot-killing game Budget Cuts (2018) is getting a special update today that is putting four new ‘arcade’ levels into the base game.

Update (February 14th, 2019): Budget Cuts today received the previously teased ‘Arcade Mode’, which brings four new levels to the game. The special mode comes free to all owners of the game, and puts a clear focus on replayability, replete with local leaderboards and collectibles in each level. In the today’s update, story mode’s ‘Extra’ difficulty level is now also “a bit more difficult,” the studio says in a Steam news post.

Original Article (November 9th, 2018): In a Steam news post, developer Linnéa Harrison says the studio has been thinking about how to make Budget Cuts easier to pick up and play, something the 5+ hours story doesn’t easily provide.

The arcade version is said to come with four “entirely new levels and missions,” Harrison says. The best bit—owners of Budget Cuts will receive the new arcade levels for free.

There’s no word on when the Arcade version is coming (see update), and Neat Corp is staying tight-lipped on the specifics.

If haven’t had a chance to play (or want to waste some time while you wait), check out our in-depth review of Budget Cuts to see what makes it tick and why we gave it an impressive [9.2/10].

The post ‘Budget Cuts’ is Gets 4 New Levels with Launch of Arcade Mode appeared first on Road to VR.

Ream more: https://www.roadtovr.com/budget-cuts-getting-levels-launch-new-arcade-version/

Report: Leaked Email Reveals Facebook XR Strategy, ‘Our goal is not only to win, but to accelerate its arrival’

An internal email reportedly sent by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to senior executives offers a glimpse into the strategic thinking behind the company’s feet-first leap into XR following the 2014 acquisition of Oculus.

Facebook turned heads across the tech industry and beyond when it acquired Oculus for some $2 billion in 2014. What on Earth is a social networking company doing buying a VR hardware startup, and for that much money?

TechCrunch reports that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent a four page internal email to key executives at the company which outlined the strategic thought process guiding the company’s early dive into AR and VR.

The email was acquired by author Blake Harris who gained access to it and thousands of other documents through research for his upcoming book The History of the Future, which explores the formative years of the modern VR industry. TechCrunch says it has not independently verified the authenticity of the email; Road to VR has reached out to Facebook for comment.

Dated June 22nd, 2015, more than a year after the company’s Oculus acquisition, the purported email reveals that Zuckerberg commitment to XR was driven by a desire to beat tech behemoths Google and Apple to XR, which he calls in the email (and has also called publicly) “the next major computing platform,” as a means of enhancing the company’s strategic positioning:

The strategic goal is the clearest. We are vulnerable on mobile to Google and Apple because they make major mobile platforms. We would like a stronger strategic position in the next wave of computing. We can achieve this only by building both a major platform as well as key apps.

I will discuss the main elements of the platform and key apps further below, but for now keep in mind that we need to succeed in building both a major platform and key apps to improve our strategic position on the next platform. If we only build key apps but not the platform, we will remain in our current position [of being beholden to platform holders]. If we only build the platform but not the key apps, we may be in a worse position. We need to build both.

From a timing perspective, we are better off the sooner the next platform becomes ubiquitous and the shorter the time we exist in a primarily mobile world dominated by Google and Apple. The shorter this time, the less out community is vulnerable to the actions of others. Therefore, our goal is not only to win in VR / AR, but also to accelerate its arrival. This is part of my rationale for acquiring companies and increasing investment in them sooner rather than waiting until later to derisk them further. By accelerating this space, we are derisking our vulnerability on mobile.

As a company whose users access apps and services in a large part through mobile phones running iOS or Android, the reason for Zuckerberg’s desire to get out from under the thumb of Apple and Google was recently tested put in the spotlight when Apple blocked Facebook from running its internal iOS apps when it was revealed that Facebook was using Apple’s platform in ways the company forbids.

Owning both the platform and the key apps means deep control over an ecosystem, and Zuckerberg wants that power in Facebook’s hands rather than its competitors. With mobile already a mature ecosystem, he’s placed his bets on XR as the “next major computing platform” by 2025, and nearest opportunity for Facebook to seize strategic control.

The unverified email continues with a more detailed breakdown of how Zuckerberg expects to facilitate both “winning” the space, and accelerating its arrival.

The key apps are what you’d expect: social communication and media consumption, especially immersive video. Gaming is critical but is more hits driven and ephemeral, so owning the key games seems less important than simply making sure they exist on our platform. I expect everyone will use social communication and media consumption tools, and that we’ll build a large business if we are successful in these spaces. We will need a large investment and dedicated strategy to build the best services in these spaces. For now though, I’ll just assert that building social services is our core competence, so I’ll save elaborating further on that for another day.

The platform vision is around key services that many apps use: identity, content and avatar makerplace, app distribution store, ads, payments and other social functionality. These services share the common properties of network effects, scarcity and therefore monetization potential. The more developers who use our content marketplace or app store or payments system, the better they become and the more effectively we can make money.

[…]

Our overall vision for the space is that we will be completely ubiquitous in killer apps, have very strong coverage in platform services (like Google has with Android) and will be strong enough in hardware and systems to at a minimum support our platform services goals, and at best be a business itself.

Further into the email, Zuckerberg says that he was “supportive of acquiring Unity,” one of the leading game engines for both non-VR and VR gaming content. He goes on to “outline the advantages of owning unity,” which includes giving Facebook the capability to “build world-class VR / AR experiences required to deliver on this overall mission,” and allow the company to “make our key services the defaults [in Unity] that developers use. […] Just like developers who deeply rely on Google’s Play Services are more likely to use the next Play Service API that comes out, developers who use more of our systems to build their VR / AR experiences will also be likely to use additional services as we build them as well.”

In making his case for acquiring Unity, Zuckerberg also explores what could happen if Facebook doesn’t:

On the flip side, if someone else buys Unity or the leader in any core technology component of this new ecosystem, we risk being taken out of the market completely if that acquirer is hostile and devices not to support us. Again, this likely wouldn’t be a sudden proclamation that Unity no longer supports Oculus, but Google or someone else would just never prioritize improving our integrations.

To some degree, this downside is such a vulnerability that it is likely worth the cost just to mitigate this risk, even if this deal didn’t come with all of the upsides for which we originally contemplated it.

[…]

Given the overall opportunity of strengthening our position in the next major wave of computing, I think it’s a clear call to do everything we can to increase our chances. A few billion dollars is expensive, but we can afford it. We’ve built our business so we can build even greater things for the world, and this is one of the greatest things I can imagine us building for the future… [the email concludes].

In the intervening four years, Facebook not only didn’t acquire the company, but Unity has raised more than $500 million in new investments, according to CrunchBase, making any shot at an acquisition far more expensive for Facebook today than when Zuckerberg was reportedly laying out the case for buying the company in 2015.

The post Report: Leaked Email Reveals Facebook XR Strategy, ‘Our goal is not only to win, but to accelerate its arrival’ appeared first on Road to VR.

Ream more: https://www.roadtovr.com/report-zuckerberg-email-facebooks-xr-strategy-goal-unity/