And when I say “addresses” I mean that they poke early fun at an inevitable reality of virtual reality.

Virtual reality pornography is coming whether folks want it or not.

This NSFW video is made by internet comedy video troupe Mega64:

What say you dear readers, will virtual reality be the end of relationships as we know them? Is the Oculus Rift a new opportunity for the pornography industry?

The post Mega64 Addresses the Question of Pornography on the Oculus Rift (NSFW) appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

Ever wondered what it would feel like hurling yourself from a levitating building miles above the ground whilst surrounded by a neon dystopian futurescape? No? Well we go hands on with an early version of Owlchemy Labs’ Aaaaaaa! Oculus Rift edition and tell you what it’s like anyway.

Year Zero

After playing just about everything the Oculus Rift has to offer in the few short months since receiving my Dev Kit, there’s one thing you get hardened to, the rough edges. This is year zero for VR, the giddy early days when developers are breathlessly experimenting with this wonderous new technology, most of the time in their free time. What this means is that us lucky Dev Kit owners have had the chance to experience something new almost every week. It also means that you need to be willing to look past the glitches, crashes and config fiddling to the promising experience lurking within.

“..it was a pleasure to fire up the pre-release version of Aaaaaaa! for the Oculus Rift to find that I was playing what felt like a finished product”

So, it was a pleasure to fire up the pre-release version of Aaaaaaa! for the Oculus Rift to find that I was playing what felt like a finished product. The menu system works,  you can see what settings are without removing your HMD, there are no sneaky menus hiding beyond your virtual peripheral vision and it’s entirely intuitive. And whilst this may sound inconsequential, after all those pre-pre-alpha experiences you realise how important it is.

Face Jumping

This spit and polish extends to game play too,  thankfully. Hitting ‘Jump’ throws you onto a level select ‘progression’ grid where tiles representing the next challenge must be unlocked to progress. You can only unlock tiles if they’re adjacent to one you’ve already unlocked and if you have enough ‘Teeth’, the in game points currency, to do so.

Launching yourself into a challenge either drops your avatar onto the top of a structure or, somewhat disconcertingly, straight into freefall. In either case the aim of the game is to make it to the ground, accruing as many points as possible and not to flatten yourself on one of the myriad obstacles in your path. The more daring your descent and your mid-air acrobatics, the more points you earn and the more tiles you tiles you can unlock on the progression grid. That in a nutshell is it.

Starting any jump is a vertiginous, gut wrenching experience as you either teeter on the edge of your launch building or drop like a stone from the off. As you push yourself off the building ledge the game shifts your point of view to give the impression your gazing down at the depths with your body behind you, as you’d expect when base jumping. It’s incredibly effective and is one of the most compelling VR experiences I’ve yet had. So convincing was it I often found myself lurching forward in an attempt to steady the angle of my virtual body. Owlchemy have nailed the VR free-fall feeling!

“The act of swooping as skilfully and efficiently as possible between your targets is exhilarating..”

As you plummet, flying as close as possible to structures earns you hugs, the longer you ‘hug’ the more points you accrue. For every structure you fly near, you earn a ‘kiss’, indicated by that structure lighting up when ‘kissed’. You guide yourself with either mouse (body rotation) and keyboard (positional) — Xbox 360 controllers are supported too, although (unusually for this style of game) I preferred Mouse and Keyboard. There are also bonuses to be had from assassinating birds with your noggin and smashing through points squares dotted throughout the levels. You even get the chance to pose to your adoring crowd, who somewhat improbably litter skywalks throughout the world.

The act of swooping as skilfully and efficiently as possible between your targets is exhilarating and where the hidden depths of this game lie.  It’s also where the replayability and addiction bite and you’ll be visiting some levels again and again to try and nail that perfect score.

Made for the Rift

Aaaaaa! is also one of a handful of Virtual Reality gaming examples I’ve found that seem made for the Rift. Not only is the experience enhanced hugely by viewing the game through the Rift, but I found myself far better able to judge depth and distances and subsequently fly more accurately accruing more points into the bargain. The production and graphic design also lends itself well to the Rift’s low resolution panel, with bright and vibrant neon-lit structures masking the dreaded screendoor effect well. Played at 1920 x 1200, it shines.

It’s not perfect though. Textures and models are intentionally simplistic, but induce levels of deja-vu when you’ve progressed well into the game and levels start to feel a little samey. Having said that the level design on most of the courses  is great and the designers do introduce new elements constantly to keep you interested so it’s a minor gripe. Also, and as with the original, I found progression a little random, with the grid only offering minimal nudges on where you should head next. Again though, this is a trifling nitpick.

All in all, Owlchemy have produced a polished, addictive and compelling VR gaming experience in Aaaaaaa! One that works as a game first and an experience second. It also offers a glimpse into the future advantages that Virtual Reality may offer players in games to come.

You can check out Owlchemy Labs at their website here and ‘AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the awesome’ (NON Oculus Rift Edition) can be bought from Steam here. Release date for the Oculus Rift edition is currently unknown, but given the levels of polish already evident here, I’d doubt that there is long to wait.

If you’d like to know more, head over to our recent interview with Alex Schwartz of Owlchemy Labs.

The post Hands On with Aaaaaa! Oculus Rift Edition [Video] appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

Last week, gaming charity drive group Omnithon raised $2,367 for the Child’s Play charity. The event was a 48-hour Oculus Rift gaming marathon that was streamed live to viewers — at the end, the team raffled the Oculus Rift to a lucky donor. I spoke with Omnithon member Kyle Owsen to learn more about the successful event.

Omnithon is a group of 14 gaming enthusiasts who come together to raise money for Child’s Play. The group says they’ve raised $7,000 in past events for the charity, not including their latest Oculus Rift event.

After raising $2,367 during the 48 hour marathon, the team raffled the Oculus Rift (signed by Palmer Luckey, Brendan Iribe, Nate Mitchell, and Michael Antonov) to user BestRbx, according to the Omnithon site.

Child’s Play is a certified 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity. In 2012, they raised more then $5 million for their cause.

Child’s Play is dedicated to improving the lives of children in hospitals around the world through the kindness and generosity of the video game community and the power of play.

Child’s Play works in two ways. With the help of hospital staff, we set up gift wish lists full of video games, toys, books, and other fun stuff for kids. By clicking on a hospital location on our map, you can view that hospital’s wish list and send a gift.

Child’s Play also receives cash donations throughout the year. With those cash donations, we purchase new consoles, peripherals, games, and more for hospitals and therapy facilities. These donations allow for children to enjoy age-appropriate entertainment, interact with their peers, friends, and family, and can provide vital distraction from an otherwise generally unpleasant experience.

You can donate at any time through the Child’s Play site.

Interview with Omnithon’s Kyle Owsen

Road to VR: How did the Omnithon Oculus Rift event go?

Owsen: The event went awesome. As with every marathon, we met a lot of really cool people on the internet, and the participants bonded a lot in part through mutual exhaustion. Our experiences with the Oculus Rift varied quite a bit. I was only able to wear it for about fifteen minutes at a time before nausea struck when we first got it, but after a few days I was able to game for about an hour or so before feeling sick.

Kevin was able to wear it for about five hours with no averse effects aside from some pretty extreme goggle marks…

My mom on the other hand looked like she was about to vomit within ten seconds of putting it on, and on the other extreme, Kevin was able to wear it for about five hours with no averse effects aside from some pretty extreme goggle marks on his face. Thankfully, we had about eight people who spent most of the weekend at the marathon, so we had plenty of people to swap in if someone felt a little lightheaded.

The game that we consistently went back to during the marathon was Minecraft. It almost feels like it was designed for the Oculus Rift, and you can get so much more immersed into that world playing it this way than with any other method. Half Life 2 was another fun one, in part because it’s one of the best games ever, and also because of how well Valve games support the Oculus Rift. TF2 was also a blast.

Those games are fantastic even without a Rift though, so what was really surprising was how fun the simple demos we came across were. Proton Pulse is a fantastic pick up and play game which I think is the best demonstration of how much fun a simple game can be when VR is added. Alone in the Rift managed to scare us half to death even though, all things considered, it’s a pretty terrible game, which makes me fear the day when something as good as Amnesia makes its way to VR.

I had high hopes for the Vireio Perception driver, and was really excited to play Slender and Mirror’s Edge on it, but it just didn’t feel right to me for any of those games. A few people at the marathon didn’t seem to be bothered by it though, so maybe it’s just me.

Road to VR: How did this event compare to previous Omnithon events?

Owsen: This was definitely one of our better events. The worst part of a gaming marathon is when you’re looking at an empty chatroom and a viewer count of zero at 3am and wondering if you should just give up. Thankfully, our fans and the fine people of Road to VR made sure that never happened. We always had someone to talk to, and that in itself made for a fun event. I feel like I spend most of the year just getting more and more angry at the internet, and then these events always turn me around and show me the best side of it. If people are given a chance to, they can come together and do something meaningful, and that’s what our viewers did last weekend.

I’m sad to see it go, but I know it’s going to a good home, and I feel like we had plenty of time to play with it.

Road to VR: Who had the idea to raffle the Oculus Rift, whose Rift was it?

Owsen: The Oculus Rift was mine. I’m friends with Palmer Luckey from our old forum days, and he mentioned a few times that the Rift would be a perfect fit for a gaming marathon, so eventually I scrounged up some cash and bought one. I’m sad to see it go, but I know it’s going to a good home, and I feel like we had plenty of time to play with it.

Road to VR: Congrats on raising $2,367 for Child’s Play! Do you have any other interesting stats to share about the money raised?

Owsen: A stat you might appreciate is that in the early hours of the marathon before people started coming in from Twitter and Facebook, a vast majority of our traffic came from Road to VR, so I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you guys for believing in us and pointing people our way.

In an age where the newest special effects and graphics tend to be greeted by shrugs, that’s what tells me that this is something special.

As far as general thoughts on the Oculus go, three things strike me. The first is that we strapped it to my friend’s mom, someone who’s played video games a handful of times in her life, and within less than a minute she was a pro at Proton Pulse. The second is that the other day, I was playing a traditional FPS with a controller, and I found myself instinctively turning my head to look around, which freaked me out. The last is that the first impulse of every person I put the Oculus on was to say “wow” when the game world came into focus. In an age where the newest special effects and graphics tend to be greeted by shrugs, that’s what tells me that this is something special.

The post Oculus Rift Raffle Raises $2,367 for Charity — Interview with Omnithon’s Kyle Owsen appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

Dynamic Digital Depth, producers of a suite of 3D Driver products to enhance PC media and games by adding stereoscopic 3D support have just announced a new beta release with support for the Oculus Rift.

TriDef Gets Rifted

Stereoscopic 3D gaming wasn’t always as easily accessible as it is today. In fact, it’s not so long ago that it was almost exclusively the preserve of dedicated enthusiasts. As someone who stumbled around the murky early days of S3D, trying to reach 3D gaming nirvana was pretty depressing stuff. Early shutter glasses, like those from eDimensional (I still have mine) were great but software support was incredibly sparse and fragile. nVidia finally started pushing their proprietary system to sell their GPUs but things were still far from ideal. This is why communities like MTBS3D formed, to shine some light on the darkness and try to make the best of things.

DDD entered the scene in 2007 with a suite of software to try to remedy the situation and since then have become a feature rich, mature and respected 3D injection driver. With a supported games list approaching 800, they have a good pedigree. And now they’ve decided to dip their toe in the Virtual Reality pond with a new beta release of their TriDef ignition drivers with Experimental support for the Oculus Rift.

This initial release, available to existing customers and those who want to try out their 14 day trial, currently supports just 8 games but each with Stereoscopic 3D, head tracking and the pre-warping required for viewing games in your Rift. Supported games list is as follows: BioShock 2, Crysis, Fallout 3, Half-Life 2, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Borderlands 2, Metro: Last Light

..initial reports are good considering the driver’s beta status. It’s also clear that games not on the official supported list are playable already.

We’ll have more on TriDef soon.

The post DDD Release Beta TriDef 3D Drivers With Experiemental Oculus Rift Support appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

Last week Oculus, in conjunction with IndieCade, announced the VR Jam, a virtual reality game design competition for Oculus Rift developers. Today marks the beginning of the competition, which will run through August 25th. All developers worldwide are welcome to join and vie for their share of $50,000 in prizes.

Our community is filled with many talented developers and we’d hate to have them miss out on the Oculus Rift VR Jam, hence this friendly reminder!

Participants are challenged to build the most innovative virtual reality games and experiences designed specifically for the Oculus Rift. Each grand prize winner receives a $10,000 cash prize, a trip to demo their game at IndieCade Festival 2013, and an invitation to visit Oculus HQ to meet the Oculus team.

Find all of the details and rules of the Oculus Rift VR Jam over at the official page. Good luck to all — we can’t wait to see what you come up with!

The post Reminder: Oculus Rift VR Jam Starts Today, $50,000 in Prizes for Developers appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

You may well have already seen Proton Pulse, the retro breakout style bat ‘n’ ball blaster from developer Justin Moravetz. Cymatic ‘Awesome’ Bruce covered an earlier version a little while back. Justin was kind enough to send us the latest release — we go hands-on.

Retro Influences

I am old enough to remember when the Arkanoid series of games from Taito were once considered ‘cutting edge’. Their enhanced twist on the classic Breakout formula (bash ball into bricks to advance) was fiendishly addictive. Introducing power-ups and hidden bonuses really elevated the experience and I was hooked. I’m also a fan of Jeff Minter‘s work, his neon-psychedelic visual style has ensured titles such as Llamatron and Tempest 2000 have become influential cult classics and heavily influenced future classics such as Geometry Wars from Bizarre Creations.

It’s interesting to mention the above games as they’re directly related to the new Oculus Rift enabled title from Justin Moravetz’s studio Pushy Pixels. A psychedelic Breakout /Arkanoid game whose hereditary lines are clear to draw, it’s already available for iOS and Android, so how well does it translate to Virtual Reality?

Pure Arcade Action

I confess to not having the first clue if this title actually has any plot to speak of, should I find that a detailed back-story exists, I’ll let you know. This doesn’t worry me of course, this is pure arcade action and therefore such things are superfluous distractions. In either case, ‘you’ are thrown into a series of levels, armed only with a transparent ‘bat’ with which you can deflect and (using power ups) directly blast different formations of blocks into digital dust. Destroy all blocks to proceed to the next level. That, in a nutshell, is Proton Pulse.

“..the reason why this title is so exciting is that it attempts to drag this ancient genre into the Virtual Reality realm”

However, the reason why this title is so exciting is that it attempts to drag this ancient genre into the Virtual Reality realm. No mean feat by the way and not only does it succeed admirably in it’s aim, it does so with a commendable level of polish. From the geometrical, neon lattices of the ‘rooms’ to the pulsing Electronica / Techno fueled soundtrack, the game envelops your brain in the action.

It does all this with beautiful simplicity too. In one of the most elegant design schemes yet seen in a Virtual Reality game, you have one single control – and they don’t involve your hands at all. Proton Pulse the Rift’s head tracking to lock the position of the ‘bat’ to your view in the game. This means instantly intuitive gameplay – there is no learning required here, at least not in order to get started. Nuances in gameplay that’ll already be familiar to Arkanoid fans (such as different areas of the bat sending the ball off in different directions) arrive later, but you can drop straight into the action with no prior knowledge and play immediately.

“This means instantly intuitive gameplay – there is no learning required here”

The direct upshot of this design decision is that, as you’re rooted to the spot with only your view altering with your head, those who find nausea a problem when playing other Rift titles may find themselves refreshingly surprised by Proton Pulse. As someone who’s yet to experience it I’m afraid I can’t comment on how effective this is however.

In terms of progression and gameplay, Proton Pulse does work well. The low latency head tracking provided by the Rift is superbly suited to controlling the bat and Justin has done well to avoid any twitchiness or over sensitivity here. It’s all suitable satisfying and in many ways quite relaxing,  despite it’s frantic moments. However, judging depth accurately enough to place the transparent bat in teh right place at the right time I found difficult at times, especially when the screen is filled with neon fireworks. I suspect however that this may improve with time and I felt myself becoming more accustomed the further I progressed.

It’s another example of how hard some developers work to bring their creations to life. There’s clearly a lot of love on the screen when playing Proton Pulse the polish on show is a direct result of that. There are some tweaks I think that might be needed to reduce confusion in returning the ball in visually noisy scenarios but it’s a minor quibble. As it stands, Proton Pule is an excellent attempt to reinvent a classic genre for Virtual Reality. If you’re even vaguely fond of Arkanoid and it’s ilk you’d do well to look this up once it becomes commercially available.

Kickstarter Incoming and “How do I Make Money From This Thing?!”

Justin tells me that he’s preparing Proton Pulse for a Kickstarter campaign, so you’ll soon have a chance to support Pushy Pixels in their aim to publish this promising title.

However, Justin (as I suspect many developers are) is currently in the dark on how to best monetise the project and claw something back from his months of hard work. If there’s anyone out there who can offer good advice on this both Justin and Road To VR would love to hear your advice. Either email me at:

paul [at] roadtovr [dot] com

…or get in touch with Justin via his website here. It’s something we’d like to cover in more depth in future as it’s a question that I’m sure weighs heavy on many developers wondering how to make a living from developing for VR gaming.

The post Proton Pulse Preview: Hands-On With the Latest Beta [video] appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

In what seems like a total reversal of the usual paradigm, a VR researcher is showing the benefits of augmenting the virtual world with the real world.

In ‘traditional’ augmented reality, we take a scene from real life and overlay it with useful digital information that in some way enhances the experience.

Oliver Kreylos, a VR researcher from UC Davis, has turned the tables by bringing the real world into the virtual world for the same purpose.

Kreylos, who last told us about the important of proper stereoscopic 3D rendering, has adapted his custom VRUI Toolkit environment to work with the Oculus Rift and Razer Hydra. A recently released video shows the powerful data exploration that can be done in virtual reality:

While I find the ability to interact and analyze complex data to be very interesting, what really strikes me is what Kreylos does at  3:28 in the video. He augments the virtual world with the real world by bringing his desk into the VR environment using the Microsoft Kinect.

Due to the Kinect’s limitations, the results are a bit jittery, but the implications are clear: he can easily reach out and touch everything on the desk.  This is significant for Kreylos as he is used to using CAVE environments where you can see your hands.  With the ‘augmented virtual reality’ he doesn’t have to guess where his hands, the mouse, or the keyboard are because they now exist in the virtual world.

Kreylos has also used this technique to bring his entire body into a VR environment. Such capabilities is one of the many exciting possibilities that could be enabled with the inclusion of a depth-camera mounted to the Oculus Rift.

The post VR Researcher Flips the Script, Augments Virtual Reality with Actual Reality [video] appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

Inition has recently hosted a successful Oculus Rift / VR Meetup in London and plans to arrange future events. Industry insider Kevin Williams gives us the scoop.

Guest post by Kevin Williams

Kevin Williams is the founding chairman of the Digital Out-of-Home Entertainment Network Association (DNA); he is also founder of the digital out-of-home entertainment (DOE) consultancy KWP Limited, and is publisher of the well-respected industry news service, The Stinger Report.

The first London Oculus Rift / VR Meetup took place in the demo studio at the London offices of Inition at the end of July – Inition is a multidisciplinary production company harnessing emerging technologies to create unique interactive experiences for live events, exhibitions, outdoor, experiential, digital and retail installations. In their work they have started to utilize VR technology in a number of experiences and are keen to support the reemerging interest in this medium. Inition previously held a VR demonstration during the Digital Shoreditch event earlier in the year – see coverage here.

In opening the inaugural VR Meetup Andy Millns, co-founder of Inition, revealed a past interest with VR in his youth and his continued interest. He also revealed a number of the Augmented Reality and VR applications that were gathered by the company and demonstrated to the attendees of the Meetup.

The Meetup, the first to be held in the UK, saw over forty gathered in the basement studio. Along with the Inition demonstrations, the Meetup was host to a number of Oculus VR development kits.

There were a number of demonstrations running on the Oculus Rift including the VR Google Street View app and Inition had on their system the Rift Coaster demo.

From the show of hands, a number of the attendees to this first event were keen in personal independent development – along with a number of parties that were looking at commercial applications of the Rift.

The event saw four Oculus Rift developer kits brought by attendees and represented one of the largest gatherings of systems since the presentation earlier in the month at Develop conference in the South of England.

The surrounding proved an excellent location for discussion on possible projects and future interests. On display were a number of issues of VR News and other media coverage of the original heyday of VR gathered by Inition’s Andy Millns, which proved a trip down memory lane – especially for this writer, who had links to the original VR news service.

Inition proved excellent hosts and supplied refreshments, and we would like to thank all involved in arranging this first Meetup.

The discussions carried on late into the evening with the lights having to be turned off on the enthusiastic crowd and transplanted to an adjacent pub. The feeling from this first Meetup is that there is a strong interest on making this a regular event, as well as expanding the occasion to include presentations and speakers.

There was also a large interest from a number of individuals that could not make this first event, and it is expected that a more detailed agenda of plans and next schedules will be discussed soon. All that said, it was a very positive and successful first Meetup and we look forward to report on the next occasion. If you’re in the area, keep your eye on the London Oculus Rift / VR Developer Meetup page for future events!

The post London Celebrates First Oculus Rift / Virtual Reality Meetup appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

We speak to ‘Teddy’, the developer behind the UDK based and Razer Hydra powered positional tracking demo ”Hydradeck’ and the new ‘Hydradeck Cover Shooter’.

VR Prospecting

In these early days of the Virtual Reality resurgence, there’s much to be discovered. Developers who break new ground (and most are) and share their work can quickly become minor celebrities on the scene. The developer who goes by the pseudonym ‘Teddy’ is one such example of this.

His UDK (Unreal Development Kit) based Hydradeck demo leveraged the positional power of the Razer Hydra to enhance the players reach into the gameworld. Using a Hydra wand strapped unceremoniously into a bum bag slung about his person, Teddy demonstrated crouching and leaning into the world — adding missing translations not available to the Oculus Developer Kits. It was a great proof of concept, although any application of this new interactive mechanic was limited.

Most recently, Teddy appeared again, this time with a much more compelling demonstration – hist Hydradeck Cover Shooter. Again, the Hydra wand was fastened to his person but this time the 2nd wand’s positional information was mapped to an in-game weapon, which moved in virtual space almost 1:1 with the player’s input. Better still, the positional data was used to add crouch, cover and lean, enabling the player to take cover behind crates and peer out from behind them to take pot shots at distant enemies. Exciting stuff.

Teddy Talks

We reached out to Teddy just after he released his Hydradeck demo in an effort to find out more about Teddy and his plans for the future:

Road To VR: Tell us a bit about yourself.

Teddy: I’m a passionate gamer and developer. I’ve been tinkering with games since the Commodore 64 and have marvelled at their progress from text adventures all the way to the cinematic blockbuster 3D adventures we have today. VR feels like the next big leap forward, so it’s awesome to be able to be here at day 0. I’m so thankful that Team Oculus have kept the whole thing open for anyone to work with, so I’m trying to do the same with my demos.

Road To VR: Would you consider yourself a VR enthusiast? What was it that hooked you on VR?

Teddy: I first heard about the Oculus on John Carmack’s Twitter feed. I could tell by how excited he was, there must be something great about it. When I thought about the recent developments in motion detection and small HD screens, it just sort of made sense that it could work this time!

Road To VR: What was it that inspired you to retrofit positional tracking? Do you suffer nausea whilst wearing the Rift?

Teddy: After having my rift for a while, I was feeling a little underwhelmed when playing conventional games that had been adapted to the Rift. I found anything that has you sitting in a chair and using a gamepad feels a bit like playing on a 3D IMAX screen because you only really look in one direction. It’s really awesome, but to me it’s not Virtual Reality.

So I made a very conscious decision to move away from traditional control schemes and look for a more natural way of interacting with the world. In doing this, I very quickly learnt how much more immersive the experience is when the environment reacts to all your body movements, and you don’t need to turn using a joystick. It starts to really feel like you’re there, which is the powerful kind of VR experience I was hoping for.

I’m very fortunate to not suffer from any simulator sickness at all, but I’d say roughly 20% of my friends seem to get some form of it when trying the Rift. It seems to be a pretty significant amount of people, so I think it’s pretty important to look for ways around it (like motion controls) until we can find a way to cure it (like galvanic vestibular stimulation).

Road To VR:  How did you approach the problem of positional tracking? What was your thought process?

Teddy: I initially tried attaching the Hydra to the Rift, but it felt really weird to steer with your head. So I came up with the idea (as a few people have) to attach it to your chest. This allows you to walk in one direction while still being able to look around. Once I figured this part out, the rest was pretty easy.

There were a few minor issues such as what to do when the player tries to step through a wall. I ended up detaching the camera from the body at this point, so you can look through collision objects but can’t walk through them. Another lesson was for any joystick walking movement, to ensure its has a very slow acceleration and moves at a mild pace otherwise it can cause a little unsteadiness.

Road To VR:  What was it like working with the Razer Hydra? Were there any challenges hooking them into UDK?

Teddy: I started with Cymatic Bruce’s instructions, which used MannyLectro’s Hydra integration. They did all the hard work for me, so it was dead simple to get it all running.

Road To VR: One of the criticisms of the Hydra is it’s tendency to drift over time. Did you find this a significant issue?

Teddy: Not nearly as much as the Oculus Rift’s drift! The main problem is UDK is still using the old v0.1 Oculus SDK, which doesn’t have the magnetometer tracking enabled yet. The Oculus team are working to get this fixed soon, hopefully.

My biggest problem with this demo was the cables. When you start to get immersed in a world, it’s really easy to forget where your desk is and get tangled up in all the cables. To combat this, I added some safety barriers that will show up when you’re about to run out of play space or get tangled in the cables.

I was very excited to see that Sixsense have announced a wireless motion tracking system that will solve this problem. Some folks have already modded their Rifts to be wireless too, so it’s time to start building a Holodeck in your house!

Road To VR:  What projects do you have lined up in the future? Do you have any plans to incorporate your Hydradeck work into a fully-fledged original project of your own?

Teddy: The HydraDeck project is finished, and I’ve released the source code for it. I’m really trying to encourage more people make demos in the physically based VR space, as these are the most fun for me.

I’ve just released my next game project, which I’ve called “Hydra Cover Shooter”. This demo uses the same control scheme, but gives you a Desert Eagle and some things to shoot. I had so much fun building this demo, the result is such an intense and intuitive experience. You don’t need any instructions, just pick up the gun and duck behind something!

I plan on making a few more demos to experiment with different control schemes in different scenarios. I’m thinking of doing something with swords might be a fun challenge. I don’t think it makes sense to build anything into a bigger project at this point, as there is still so much experimentation to be done in this space.

Road To VR: Do you plan on getting into the Bum-Bag business as a side-project? ;)

Teddy: I was considering some BumBag stock options, but it looks like Sixsense are about to put them out of business with their clip on STEM tracker for their wireless motion tracking system!

Our thanks to Teddy for taking the time to talk to us and we look forward to seeing what he comes up with in the future.

The post Developer Interview: ‘Teddy’ Talks Hydradeck Cover Shooter appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

Huge, unexpected news straight from Oculus VR Inc this morning: John Carmack is joining the company as chief technical officer, the company announced on its blog. Carmack was a key player in the Oculus Rift genesis story and is a widely known and respected video game development industry veteran. This announcement is a huge win for Oculus.

John Carmack is a man of diverse talent. In addition to being a co-founder and Technical Director of the famous id Software,  he also founded Armadillo Aerospace, a private aerospace company. Not to mention his many contributions to the video game development world which are too numerous to do justice to in one paragraph, let alone one article.

Now Carmack is joining Oculus VR Inc as CTO:

“I have fond memories of the development work that led to a lot of great things in modern gaming – the intensity of the first person experience, LAN and internet play, game mods, and so on. Duct taping a strap and hot gluing sensors onto Palmer’s early prototype Rift and writing the code to drive it ranks right up there. Now is a special time. I believe that VR will have a huge impact in the coming years, but everyone working today is a pioneer. The paradigms that everyone will take for granted in the future are being figured out today; probably by people reading this message. It’s certainly not there yet. There is a lot more work to do, and there are problems we don’t even know about that will need to be solved, but I am eager to work on them. It’s going to be awesome!” said John in the announcement post on the Oculus blog.

Oculus has already rounded up an impressive team of industry vets, the likes of which include Brendan Iribe (formerly of Gaikai and Scaleform) as CEO and Laird Malamed (formerly of Activision) as COO. With the addition of John Carmack, the Oculus team is shaping up to all-star status.

Carmack will be working from the new Oculus Dallas office that the company is opening soon, in addition to their existing offices in Irvine, CA and South Korea.

The news comes a few days after Ars Technica reported that Carmack’s Armadillo Aerospace company was winding down.

Carmack will also remain at id Software, Pete Hines, vice president of PR and marketing at Bethesda Softworks, confirmed to Polygon.

John Carmack’s Role in the Oculus Rift Genesis Story

Carmack was a key player in getting the Oculus Rift to where it is today.

Cramack had been experimenting with head mounted displays when he came across Palmer Luckey on the MTBS3D forums. Luckey, at the time, was working on a head mounted display prototype (which would eventually become the Oculus Rift) that he expected to sell in small quantity as a DIY kit to other VR enthusiasts. Carmack got in touch with Luckey and asked if he could buy one of the prototypes. Luckey says he was happy to hand over the prototype to Carmack, free of charge.

Carmack made his own modifications to the prototype (involving much duct tape) and began work integrating the device into Doom 3 as a proof of concept. He took the unit to E3 2012 and showed it running with Doom 3 to a swath of press who came away very impressed. With the attention of the press, the Oculus Rift grew into something much more significant, leading up to the famously successful Kickstarter.

At one point, Doom 3: BFG Edition with Rift support was promised to come as part of the Oculus Rift Kickstarter, but was later delayed indefinitely for reasons never officially explained. The fate of Doom 4 with Oculus Rift support is anyone’s guess at this point.

Palmer Luckey joined John Carmack and Michael Abrash on stage at QuakeCon 2012 for a panel on virtual reality, but I don’t think even Palmer ever thought Carmack might one day end up working for his company!

The post John Carmack Joins Oculus VR Inc. as Chief Technical Officer appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

Positional tracking is hard. Especially if you want to move through your virtual world as a physical space. Aaron Rasmussen has a solution and it’s an elegant one. His Atlas project promises to make your home a VR playground using your smartphone and printed markers.

“The beginning is a very delicate time.” A quote from Frank Herbert’s Dune which has been rattling round my head recently, specifically with regards to where we find ourselves, here at the dawn of the rebirth of Virtual Reality. The Oculus Rift opened Pandora’s box and out popped 1001 different challenges for developers and inventors to try and solve. The biggest among them, how to allow your body to move around a virtual space along with your mind. Positional tracking is the goal here and we’re a long way from reaching any sort of consensus on how it can be achieved.

Harnessing VR

Aaron has a solution though and it’s an elegant one at that. Everyone has a smartphone, so why not use it for something more than facebooking cat pictures and use it’s processing power and high quality camera to provide high fidelity tracking data. Using special markers that can be printed in the home onto sheets of normal paper, you can layout your own virtual playground on the floor of your living room. When your smartphone is strapped into the Atlas harness, the phone is angled towards the floor. When the Atlas software is loaded into the phone and paired with a backtop (a laptop in a fancy backpack), the markers provide positional information used to track your movements in space. You’ve just built yourself a Holodeck!

Atlas is midway through a Kickstarter campaign, so we wanted to find out more about the system. Aaron was kind enough to tell us more:

Road To VR:  Tell us about yourself and Atlas Systems

Aaron: My name’s Aaron Rasmussen, I’m a computer scientist and inventor. Like most of us, I’ve wanted a holodeck since I was a kid. Atlas is a 3d positioning system for VR that is inexpensive, can cover extremely large areas, and is fast and easy to set up.

Road To VR: Would you call yourself a VR enthusiast? What got you hooked?

“As much as Virtual Boy gets panned, I was blown away by it as a kid. There was something so stripped down about the system.”

Aaron: Yes! I’ve been looking at doing a free-roaming/real space VR system for a few years and have been researching various methods. A big problem was the lack of wide FOV HMDs with low orientation latency. As soon as I saw the prototypes of the Rift hit the press, I knew those problems were going to be solved. I tried a Rift in February at IndieCade East, and knew immediately that VR was finally here. As much as Virtual Boy gets panned, I was blown away by it as a kid. There was something so stripped down about the system. Most of the games were just vector based. The simplicity made it feel accessible, like the clockwork was exposed.

Road To VR: What was it that inspired the Atlas project? How did it some to be?

Aaron: I was toying with the idea of Atlas 7 or 8 years ago. The tech was just not there yet. Then a couple years ago, Michael Astolfi and I were working on BlindSide in New York, and he asked if I had unlimited resources what would I work on. I was surprised by how quickly the answer came to me, “The holodeck,” I said. And then I proceeded to explain my plan for it. This set the gears in motion, but I didn’t go full time on it until I tried the Rift.

Road To VR:  Chart the history / evolution of the Atlas Project for us.

Aaron: Atlas started as a structured light positioning system using laser grids and dedicated hardware. This looked really cool, but there were some occlusion problems from the projectors, and some specular reflection problems when it was on gym floors where I assume Atlas will mostly be used. I had this great conversation with David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, and found out that I was chasing latency times that were much lower than necessary. This opened up some other possibilities to solve the problem, like lower framerate cameras and lower frequency IMUs.

Road To VR: What sorts of VR experiences do you feel are best suited to Atlas?

“You can imagine going to a basketball court with some friends, setting up, and then having the most amazing game of laser-tag-with-rockets-and-helicopters ever.”

Aaron: I think squad-based multiplayer will be the best. Whether that’s FPS-style games, adventure games, or educational experiences. They need to be specifically designed for Atlas. You can imagine going to a basketball court with some friends, setting up, and then having the most amazing game of laser-tag-with-rockets-and-helicopters ever. But I could also imagine narrative experiences where you all get together to go on a fantasy adventure for an hour every week while getting in better shape. Imagine exploring crime scenes or solving ancient puzzles in real space.

Road To VR:  How have you tackled issues such as camera line of sight / occlusion etc?

Aaron: Yes, to some extent. The system is fairly tolerant of occlusion, which should only happen when another player is standing in its path. As long as it can see about 60% of its FOV, it can track. If it can’t, you’re probably standing too close anyways, and it will throw a warning.

Road To VR:  Your Kickstarter Goal is $125,000 – what will the money be used for?

Aaron: A very large portion of the money will be used for producing chest mounts/markers/shipping/etc. This is my third Kickstarter campaign, so I have a good sense of what that takes. The rest will be used to move our part time members to full time, and refine the tracking tech to where we want it, make a great SDK, and support the community of developers.

Road To VR:  Can you explain in more detail how the tracking system works:
—- How is data transmitted from the phone to the backtop (BT, WLAN, USB)?

Aaron: Right now we use wifi over an adhoc connection to the backtop. It can go through a router, but we’ve experienced some latency issues on many home routers due to QoS algorithms. We are looking to also support bluetooth, and the optimal BT latencies are within range of what we need, but not as good as wifi.

—- What sort of latency times is the system currently exhibiting?

Aaron: It depends on quite a few factors. The biggest issue is the latency between when a photon hits the CMOS sensor in the camera, and when we get that pixel data to work on. It can be 100ms in some cases. It’s surprisingly slow on an iPhone, and why I initially discounted it as a platform for Atlas. Probably 35-40 people have tried the system so far and nobody has noticed latency at all despite being asked about it. Granted, we’re walking fairly slowly, but I’m surprised it isn’t more of an issue.

—- What minimum specs are required for the IOS / Android device?

Aaron: It needs to be an iPhone 4s or better.

—- How few tiles can the system work with (how many need to be visible to the

Aaron: Technically only 1 tile needs to be visible, but for playable tracking, it needs to be at least 3 tiles. Every additional tile makes it better. That works out to about 1 tile per 5-6 feet, which is surprisingly sparse, even in a large area.

—- How sensitive is the system to low-light conditions?

Aaron: The system is an odd reversal of the usual optical tracking dilemma. With a system like the Playstation Move, you need as little ambient light as possible so you can resolve the active bulbs. On Atlas, the more ambient light the better. If it gets too dim, the shutter speed slows and all the frames come out blurry so tracking is very difficult. We have some methods of compensating for that, but low light situations are unusual on any sort of court. It works out well for us.

—- Are you you doing any tweening or prediction to enhance the tracking information to improve the experience?

Aaron: Yes! We’ve tried a number of methods, especially in trying to answer the question “What is the movement update FPS that convinces people they are actually walking around a virtual world?”

Road To VR:  Beyond Kickstarter, do you intend for Atlas to be an ‘Everything in the box’ solution (i.e. Rift, Backtop Bag, Gun Replica, Camera Harness etc.)?

Aaron: Right now we want to remain very focused on the positioning technology. I think those solutions will come out, and we’ll be able to snap on to them.

Road To VR:  Do you foresee the technology as having the potential to revive public gaming spaces such as Arcades – where people pay to use the system? Or are you more focussed on home use?

Aaron: We are focused more on Atlas working like a set of tennis rackets, a basketball, or a football. You take it somewhere with friends to play. That way everyone has access to it, can play as much or as little as they want, and it helps utilize many spaces which might otherwise be unoccupied. There is definitely potential for arcades, especially for people who want to try it out, but it’s not our focus. Home use is less likely, because your living room is just not that big. Well, mine isn’t.

Road To VR:  Pick a game you’d love to play in Virtual Reality with the Atlas system.

Aaron: I know it doesn’t sound very innovative, but the game I really want to play on Atlas is Gun Game. Whether it’s the Blops1, Blops2 or Counter-Strike version. That would give me an insane workout without having to think about, especially if you have to run back to your spawn point. I would last maybe 2 games and then be done for the day. My guess is that the game I’ll like the most is one someone else develops that I never saw coming.

Road To VR: You should consider a Rocketeer themed Backtop / harness system. Just sayin’

Aaron: I would LOVE that. Especially if the HMD looked like the helmet :-)

Our thanks to Aaron for sparing the time to answer our questions. You can find out more and become a backer of Atlas here.

The post Atlas: Turn Your Living Room Into a Holodeck With a Rift, a Printer and a Phone appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

Promising Breakout style Virtual Reality game Proton Pulse by Pushy Pixels has pushed past it’s $3000 target in under 7 days but continues aiming high.

Breaking Out

We took a look at Proton Pulse recently and came away markedly impressed with the game’s polished visuals and elegant control scheme. Shortly afterwards, they launched their Kickstarter campaign to help finalise the existing single player mode and days later they’ve soared past their initial target.

Subsequently the project page has been updated with a raft of new stretch goals with some lofty and ambitious targets. If you thought the original target was a touch low for such a promising title, Pushy Pixels have swung in the opposite direction now. However, the heady totals are actually reserved for two unusual goals. At $150k the team promise to release the project as a Creative Commons (open source) project. At $200k, they aim to form an entirely crowd-funded development team. Intriguing.

You can find out more over at the Proton Pulse Kickstarter page, but some of the new game features targeted by the team (although very deliberately NOT tied to a financial goal) are Leap Motion Hand Tracking, Champion Multiplayer and Co-op.

The post Proton Pulse Kickstarter Smashes Target in under a Week appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

The last few days have seen a the release of several new erotic experiences for the Oculus Rift. Some are on the art side of the spectrum while others are just flat-out NSFW Oculus Rift pornography. Here’s a round-up of the latest.

While we do our best to report on this news without putting any NSFW content directly on our site and explicitly point out when we’re linking to NSFW content, please consider all links in this article NSFW just to be safe!

Infinite Realities 3D Heaven 01, Life-like 3D Body Scans

3D Heaven 01 puts you face-to-face with incredibly detailed full-body 3D scans. There’s nothing terribly erotic about this Oculus Rift demo except that the model is nude.

Quite honestly, seeing the human form up close in this kind of detail is fascinating. Not only because the subtleties of our bodies are often overlooked, but also because the technology to do this kind of detailed 3D scanning is amazing. When you’re next to the models, it really does feel like you’re looking at another person.

This demo features one static model with a few different textures. I can’t wait to see these detailed models combined with motion capture — it’s almost scary to think that this is where the future of gaming is headed.

The demo was created by Lee Perry-Smith, director of Infinite Realities, a  company which specializes in 3D face and body capture whose recent clients include Sony, Valve, Crytek, and Microsoft. Perry-Smith says that the demo is an effort to become more familiar with the Unity game engine.

You can download 3D Heaven 01 for the Oculus Rift here. See the relevant blog post from the developer here.

The developer notes, “You WILL need a powerful machine to run this demo, it has NOT been optimized at all,” though my old gaming rig managed to run it on low settings.

Keep your eye out for an easter egg… it’s full of stars.

ThriXXX Games Chat House 3D

Erotic game developer ThriXXX is working on what they’re calling “real-time chat client software”… but it would be more accurate to call it a virtual reality pornography game; it’s called Chat House 3D (link to their NSFW site).

For the new title they’re teasing an Oculus Rift enabled “voyeur mode”. You can see a preview of what that’s like in a video (censored, but totally NSFW!) here.

The company is soliciting sign-ups for a forthcoming beta on their website.

3DXChat

3DXChat (completely NSFW link) is a multiplayer erotic game that recently added support for the Oculus Rift. The company says that it’s “the first 3D sex game with Oculus Rift support.”

3DXChat goes beyond other titles we’ve seen by adding support for VStroker adult accessory (we’ll let you Google that one), which interfaces with the game to supply haptic feedback where you might imagine.

You can see a trailer (mostly NSFW) showing Oculus Rift support for 3DXChat here.

The game requires a subscription to play, which costs $20/month in one month increments. Cheaper long term subscriptions are available.

One reader of our site told us that the Oculus Rift support in 3DXChat is not worth the subscription.

“They are liable to try to milk this as the first virtual world with Oculus Rift support, but it really is not that great and needs a lot of work,” he told us.

See Also:

• Exclusive: Sneak Peek and Interview — Wicked Paradise, The World’s First Erotic VR Game (video: NSFW)

• Virtual Reality Hentai Game in the Works for Oculus Rift? [NSFW Warning]

The post More Erotic Oculus Rift Games in the Works (Roundup) [NSFW] appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

What began as the EVE-VR Oculus Rift tech demo is now due to become a full title under the name EVE Valkyrie. A newly released announcement trailer says that the game will launch in 2014. EVE Valkyrie is expected to be on display at Gamescom 2013 which is being held this week in Germany.

EVE-VR began life as an Oculus Rift tech demo made by a small team of folks at developer CCP Games, the same company behind the popular spacefaring MMO, EVE Online (2003). According to many, the EVE-VR tech demo stole the show at the annual EVE Fanfest back in April. The demo put players in the cockpit of a futuristic spaceship and pitted them against one another in 6 vs 6 dogfighting combat.

The announcement trailer, which was released today, tells us that CCP Games is now taking the game into full development under the title EVE Valkyrie, and that it will launch in 2014. An official EVE Valkyrie website is now live as well.

While the company’s official communications have been avoiding explicit use of the term ‘Oculus Rift’ , instead opting for ‘virtual reality’, there’s no doubt in my mind that the game will ship with Oculus Rift support. For instance, take the description of the launch trailer:

EVE: Valkyrie (formerly EVE-VR) is a multiplayer dogfighting shooter set in the EVE universe that uses virtual reality to give players the sense of being a real pilot in an EVE Online fighter. Coming 2014.

It’s interesting to note that the description name-drops EVE Online; in May, CCP Games launched Dust 514, a free-to-play first-person-shooter that plays into the EVE Online universe (and vice versa). Maybe EVE Valkyrie will share a similar connection, though there’s a stark contrast between EVE Online’s slow, methodical gameplay and EVE Valkyrie’s fast dogfighting action.

Below you can see some gameplay from the EVE-VR prototype shown during EVE Fanfest:

It’s unclear if EVE Valkyrie will require the Oculus Rift or if it will also be playable with a monitor.

Development of EVE Valkyrie is being handled at CCP’s Newcastle studio in the UK, according to IGN.

IGN quotes CCP’s boss Hilmar Petursson as saying:

From the moment this year’s Fanfest attendees first got their hands on EVE-VR, the question has been, ‘When can I have this?’ What started as a passion project by a small, incredibly talented group of CCP developers became one of the most highly anticipated games of the year — before we even announced it. We have big plans for EVE: Valkyrie and I can’t wait to share more details later this year.

Road to VR’s own Paul James is on the ground at Gamescom 2013 and will be bringing us the details as they emerge!

The post EVE VR Prototype Becomes EVE Valkyrie, Launching in 2014 with Full Oculus Rift Support appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

An article covering Oculus’ appearance at GDC Europe 2013 claims that the company will release an Oculus Rift HD dev kit prior to the release of the consumer version in 2014.

Oculus VR Inc first showed the Oculus Rift HD prototype at E3 2013 in June. As the original Oculus Rift dev kit (DK1) was still shipping out in high demand, it was an unexpected but welcome development. It wowed much of the gaming press at E3 and came away with a slew of awards, including the Game Critic Awards ‘Best Hardware’ at E3.

But Oculus was careful to call this a prototype, rather than a forthcoming  dev kit, saying that they had “no solid plans” to release it, and only had it at the show to demonstrate the progress they were making.

Covering the Oculus Rift at last weekend’s GDC Europe 2013, Heise.de claims that the company plans to release an Oculus Rift HD dev kit (DK2) before the consumer version of the Oculus Rift ships. The article was written in German and kindly translated by Reddit user ‘jacenat’:

Eine verbesserte Entwicklerversion der Rift, die ursprünglich für die zweite Jahreshälfte vorgesehen war, hat man jedoch auf “kurz vor” der Veröffentlichung der endgültigen Verkaufsversion verschoben, da sie möglichst die gleichen Spezifikationen einhalten soll. Bis dahin müssen Entwickler mit der aktuellen 720p-Auflösung auskommen

An improved developer version of the Rift, previously scheduled for the 2nd half of the year, was pushed back to “shortly before” the release of the consumer version to make it as equal as possible to the consumer version. Until then developers have to rely on the current kit with its 720p resolution.

The article doesn’t mention precisely where this info came from, but does have other quotes from some of the Oculus executives.

The ‘previously scheduled’ bit mentioned refers presumably to an old roadmap that Oculus showed in March at GTC 2013. That roadmap indicated that the company anticipated launching a DK2 in Q3 2013. More recently, Oculus has indicated that we wouldn’t see the consumer version ‘Oculus Rift 2′ in 2013. If the article from Heise is accurate and the Oculus Rift HD dev kit (DK2) is to launch “shortly before” the consumer version, than it would likely be in 2014 as well.

So far there’s no official announcement from Oculus VR Inc about an HD dev kit (DK2) or a release date of the consumer version of the Oculus Rift.

At previous recent tradeshows, the company appeared to have only one Oculus Rift HD prototype.

Photo credit – Dominic Eskofier

At Gamescom 2013, held this week in Germany, the Oculus VR Inc booth has a larger fleet of Oculus Rift HD prototypes, perhaps indicating that they’re indeed moving forward on that trajectory.

Road to VR’s Paul James is on the ground at Gamescome 2013, we’ll see if he can’t get to the bottom of this!

The post Oculus Rift HD Dev Kit (DK2) to Be Released Before Consumer Version? appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

After a hectic first day here in Cologne at Gamescom 2013, here’s a quick roundup of what and who we’ve seen so far.

VR Goes All HD

Entering the Koelnmesse (the world’s fifth largest conference venue) as a complete novice to Gaming shows is daunting in the extreme. The scale of the structure is awe inspiring. One destination comprising 11 Halls, all filled today with gaming goodness from all around the world. Gamescom is Europe’s biggest gaming convention and it feels like it.

Luckily, finding my way around was easy thanks to a distinctly German level of efficiency in terms of signage. As a result, I managed to make my first appointment, a hands-on demo with CCP‘s EVE Valkyrie (formerly EVE-VR). CCP recently announced that they were rechristening the once tech-demo and that the game would receive a full release in 2014.

My anticipation was already high amidst rumours that this was a freshly polished version being shown for the first time at Gamescom, it skyrocketed when I reached the booth and saw 6 shiny new HD prototypes (delivered to CCP just the previous day) sitting in the demo stations behind glazed doors. EVE Valkyrie has gone HD and let me tell you it’s a sight to behold. This was the first time I’d had a chance to experience the new 1080p version of Oculus’ new toy and wearing it for the first time whilst immersed in the EVE universe was a real treat. The new polish shone in 1080p with subtlety in lighting and textures laid before me. I wanted both immediately.

I’ll be posting my detailed impressions along with an interview with EVE Valkyrie’s Senior Producer Jon Lander later this week.

On to Oculus VR Inc’s discrete booth (i.e. just one solitary sign) to meet with Founder and Rift creator, Palmer Luckey and VP of Product, Nate Mitchell, along with another demo of the HD Prototype — this time with the now standard (albeit still incredible) Unreal Engine demo plus an HD presentation in the Virtual Cinema demo.

Both Nate and Palmer were gracious and patient with my amateur fumblings to get equipment setup and were both still beaming and enthusiastic despite it now being 12 months since the Oculus Rift Kickstarter launched VR back into the public consciousness. We chatted about the last 12 months of Oculus VR Inc’s journey, the recent signing of John Carmack as CTO and Oculus ‘Share’.

Again, they were enthusiastic and gracious throughout and I’ll be posting details of the full interview soon. One thing I did ask them however was whether the HD Prototype would evolve into a ‘DK2′ and was told plainly that it wasn’t on the cards or even economically viable. We’ll have to wait for the consumer version to experience the gloriousness of HD VR in our homes I’m afraid folks.

To continue the HD VR theme (and to justify the headline), on the main show floor, Oculus had a raft of HD prototypes with a growing line of people waiting to try them. Furthermore, joining the usual games lineup was iRacing, the hugely successful online Racing Simulation which recently received Oculus Support in a beta release. With any luck I’ll be gauging the public’s reaction to the new Dev Kits tomorrow.

Enter, Cyberith

After meeting up with Road To VR’s (and /r/oculus’) Dominic Eskofier, he told me he’d spied a surprise visitor in one of the public show floors. Much to my surprise, on checking it out I found Cyberith proudly showing a brand new prototype of their VR locomotion device the Virtualiser, quite literally straight from the workshop. I got a chance to see and film it in action as Dominic gave it s spin (see sneak preview shots below). We’ll also have an interview with Cyberith’s founder Tuncay Cakmak up online soon.

There’re a few other snippets to share while I’ll get up online as soon as I have enough bandwidth. If anyone would like to talk to meet with me or if you have any tips on other VR Related attractions at Gamescom this year, please mail me at paul at roadtovr dot com or reply in the comments below.

The post Gamescom 2013 Day One Roundup: Oculus, EVE Valkyrie, and Cyberith appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

After finding out that his 58mm IPD didn’t quite jive with the Oculus Rift’s default 64mm spacing, Barry Hill decided to do something about it. He’s now working on a 3D printed Oculus Rift IPD adapter to change the Oculus Rift’s IPD, which you’ll be able to order with a custom IPD of your choice. We’ve got our hands on a prototype to see how they work.

While the average IPD (interpupillary distance, the distance between your eyes) is somewhere in the neighborhood of 64mm, there are those with an IPD significantly far away from that average. For these people, using the Rift is less comfortable and potentially more blurry, owed to a number of factors caused by the Oculus Rift’s lenses not being centered with their eyes.

After developing a DIY guide to adjusting the Oculus Rift’s IPD, Barry Hill is going one step further. He’s developing 3D printed adapters for the Oculus Rift that can be customized to any IPD between 60mm and 70mm (for those even further outside that range, Hill says that the closer you can get, the more it will improve the image for you, even if it isn’t your exact IPD).

Hill, who has a 58mm IPD, says that “it’s amazing how much better it looks now for me,” when using the adapter.

And they may be able to more than just change the IPD. For one, Hill could customize the VR-Gear IPD Adjuster to fit any prescription level between the Oculus Rift’s A, B, and C cups. For those that may have scratched one of their lenses, an adapter with no change in IPD could be used to adapt a B or C lens to the same focus level of a scratched A lens (or a C lens to the same level as a scratched B lens), thus providing an easy replacement.

The unit, which he’s calling the VR-Gear IPD Adater, will be made available for purchase — printed and sent straight to your home via Shapeways.

Hill is still finalizing the VR-Gear IPD Adapter prototype, but he expects to have it ready for sale in the near future. You can sign up to be notified of when it’s available here.

He was kind enough to send us a prototype of the VR-Gear IPD Adapter to have a look at. The design is akin to two slightly offset circles on top of one another. When attached to the Rift, they shift the lenses 5mm closer together, thus reducing the IPD.

The printing from Shapeways was good enough that I had no issue fitting the lenses into the adapters and the adapters into the Oculus Rift. Hill is continuing to tweak the design for durability and as snug a fit as he can manage.

While my IPD is right near the average (63mm) I had a friend with a 58mm IPD try the 60mm VR-Gear IPD Adapter.

My friend, who may not have been the best subject as he wears glasses and has an astigmatism, told me that his eyes felt less strain with the VR-Gear IPD Adapter and that things might have been clearer, though he wasn’t wearing his glasses during the test. Conversely, with my nearly average IPD, wearing the Oculus Rift with the VR-Gear IPD Adapter added strain to my eyes, as though they were trying harder to align the images — I imagine it’s the same feeling people get whenever they use the Rift with a significantly out of range IPD.

Hill he acknowledges that changing the Oculus Rift’s IPD can introduce distortion and convergence issues. “For me it is still more comfortable than the blur associated with the lenses in the default position,” he said. He says that he’ll outline the potential drawbacks to make sure those interested in the VR-Gear IPD Adapter are aware of them.

The issues are caused by the lenses no longer perfectly aligning with the software-distorted output displayed on the Oculus Rift’s screen. This can be fixed through software, but a lens separation option would need to be exposed by developers. Half-Life 2 already has such an option, and it is planned to be added to Minecrift, the Oculus Rift Minecraft mod.

We’re keeping a close eye on Hill’s VR-Gear IPD Adapter and will be sure to let you know when you can get one of your own!

The post Preview: VR-Gear IPD Adjuster for Oculus Rift appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

At Gamescom this year I was lucky enough to have the chance not only to play the latest build of EVE VR (now known as EVE Valkyrie), but I got to experience it on the new 1080p panel-equipped Oculus Rift HD prototype. These are my thoughts.

An Interloper At Gamescom

Not only was Gamescom 2013 in Cologne, Germany my first real taste of an international games convention, it was also my first time anywhere as a card carrying member of the gaming press. Having spent so many years devouring coverage in magazines and websites it felt distinctly surreal to be the one doing the reporting. Surreal, and faintly terrifying – I felt distinctly ill-prepared for this new role.

However, I was amazed how patient and friendly everyone was in the face of my rookie bumbling and I soon lost my nerves. As I edged my way into the CCP ‘compound’ explaining that I had an appointment, I was greeted by attractive woman offering me drinks, delicious looking food and a rather swanky custom build glass enclosure sporting EVE and Dust 541 decals. Within were 6 seats, each of which contained both an Oculus Rift HD HMD with the new 5.5″ 1080p panel (which I later found out had been frantically constructed by Oculus Staff back in California and delivered to CCP just the previous day) and spanking new Razer Kraken 7.1 headsets (presumably purloined from the Razer booth a few booths away). Above the demo stations was a large flat panel screen which displayed a spectator, e-sports style view if the current in-game action.

Enter Valkyrie

When the time was right, we were ushered into the small presentation booth adjacent to the gaming demo area. Here we were treated to a quick summary of EVE Online and Dust 541 releases and progress over the last 12 months and what we were to expect in the next 12 months. Once done, we entered the demo area, now behind that glass, just a tantalising few minutes away from getting my hands on the game I’d been desperate to try since hearing about it some 3 months earlier.

Once we’d had the 360 Gamepad button configuration explained to us, we filed to our demo stations and donned our headsets and Rift HMDs. The difference between the trusty Dev Kit DK1 back home and this new device was clearly and immediately apparent, although not necessarily for the reasons you might expect. In fact, the first thing that struck me was the clipped FOV, represented by sizeable black bars left and right. This, as you probably know by now, is a product of the new Prototype being, essentially, very similar to the DK1 in terms of construction and specifically optics. It uses the same aspheric lenses found in the Dev Kit, which were originally matched of course to the DK1′s 7″ 1280×800 panel. Clearly, with the new panel measuring 1.5″ less diagonally something had to to give, and it’s the FOV. In fairness, all units had the retractable assembly full ‘retracted’ (i.e. as far away from the lenses as possible) to make it far easier and faster to roll people the demos with minimal fuss. It was much more of an issue for me than I thought it would be and one reason why this design is clearly and exhaustively referred to as a ‘Prototype’ NOT a Development kit.

However, to stop there would to do both EVE Valkyrie and the new Prototype an enormous disservice. The 1080p panel affords some obvious improvements in detail levels. The entire experience is easier on the eye with screendoor diminished but in no way eliminated – even with the naturally dark backdrop (this is space after all) pixels were still clearly evident as was the structure of the panel. However, even more so than the DK1, your brain tunes this out even more quickly as the pixels fade into a believable world. More important (in my opinion) though is the other attributes the new panel brings. Blacks are now wonderfully inky and well resolved, colours pop vibrantly and subtle hues are now brilliantly registered. This set of secondary attributes are the reasons returning to the original Dev Kit will be so difficult for me as they unleash something more important than raw pixels, the underlying artistry that goes into making a believable gameworld.

The new panel’s fidelity is the perfect canvas for EVE Valkyrie’s new polished and tweaked visuals. Improved lighting and texturing plus assets liberally borrowed from the EVE Online library lend the game a level of production quality difficult, if not impossible, to achieve in this game’s incredibly short gestation period. From the moment you’re dropped into the cockpit in your launch tube, you believe in your new virtual space instantly. Glancing around the subtlety in lighting washes over you thanks to that new panel and everything is rendered at what I’d estimate as 60FPS throughout, that is, the illusion of the gameworld moving around you is not distracting in any way, as can happen then lower frame rates creep into a VR game.

Once the headset is on, that’s it .. I’m gone, now in the hands of CCPs designers and SysAdmins, my eyes set into the invisible head and visible body of my new avatar. Another surprise, the game’s audio is incredibly evocative. The cockpit hums and incidental effects are perfectly in keeping with the game’s visual feel. When it’s time for launch, the sound of the warning klaxon inspires genuine tension as I brace myself for the fight that awaits you. One short, blindingly fast sequence later and I’m searching the heavens for foes, trying not to be distracted by the beautiful scale of the battlefield. The cockpit HUD is functional without being distracting. The main difference in this new build is the addition of a 3D representation of your immediate surroundings which sits towards the bottom of your view. Imagine a luminous, holographic map, staple of so many Sci-Fi movies, on it enemies and their projectiles are represented in 3D space. This addresses one of the frustrations mentioned by Jon Lander, Executive Producer of the game when he talked to me, namely knowing where the hell those missiles are coming from. It’s elegant and effective and I can see it becoming an absolutely vital tool in heated and busy space battles.

Elsewhere, the gaming mechanics are as beautifully simple as they were before. Hold down the left analogue triggers to engage ‘Missile Seek’ mode, this brings up a reticle that’s locked to your head’s view. The action is thus: Trigger -> Find Target -> Wait for Lock -> Release. And this is where the gameplay satisfaction first sets in. It’s the perfect evolution of the lock-on mechanic, seen in countless games before it. The key, is the head tracking. Finding a target by looking is completely intuitive, and furthermore unlocks your other controls for things like steering the ship out of danger whilst targeting enemies at the same time. It’s pure joy to play and provides much of the ‘cool’ factor EVE Valkyrie evokes in it’s player.

What could be termed ‘regular’ gaming mechanics, the pitch, yaw and roll of your ship are all also well judged with inertia and the weight of your ship tweaked just right. You never feel as if you can blame your ship for your piloting errors, and throwing her around the arena becomes transparent after a minute or so, which is pretty much all you can ask of a space combat game.

As I search for targets, close, lock and release again and again Valkyrie feels at home very quickly. As well as visual tweaks and polish, the development team are playing the game every day, which means that in the short weeks since it’s last outing at E3, gameplay has also been refined and rebalanced. Closing speeds and other mechanics have been honed and as a result the game feels like a labour of love, which of course is ostensibly what it is.

After only a few short minutes the demo ends and I’m returned to the real world again, and I want to play more .. already. What’s more, even after I leave the confines of the CCP press / trade booth I’m thinking about playing it and that feeling remains with me for the rest of the day. That is the mark of a great game.

Jon Lander told me that they are very diligently NOT specifying what ‘platforms’ EVE Valkyrie will be available to play on. That is to say, VR or no VR or the option of either. It seems to me that Valkyrie is the perfect example of a very traditional, and some might even say unoriginal genre enlivened and invigorated by VR. Not only the lock-on mechanic but the ability to search targets freely as you would were you actually in that cockpit plus the enveloping experience that a high-FOV HMD brings to the table. Thus, I find it difficult to believe Valkyrie will exist in any other form than VR — but who knows. We’ll have to wait until next year to find out for sure, and in the mean time I’ll continue to wish I was playing EVE Valkyrie right now.

The post Gamescom 2013: Hands On With EVE Valkyrie and the Oculus Rift HD Prototype appeared first on Road To Virtual Reality.

Virtuix and Sixense will be at this weekend’s Pax Prime in Seattle to demonstrate what they’re calling the “ultimate virtual reality experience,” a platform consisting of the Virtuix Omni, Sixense STEM, and the Oculus Rift.

Today marks the start of Pax Prime 2013, one of the biggest gaming conventions, held in Seattle Washington. Virtuix and Sixense are attending and they’re going to let attendees step into their virtual reality setup, a combination of the perhaps the three most exciting VR peripherals to date.

PAX Prime attendees can find the VR setup at the Virtuix Omni booth (#6210, zone 2, level 6) from the 30th of August to September 2nd, 10am – 6pm.

This bit of teamwork also give us a hint that Virtuix might use the Sixense STEM as their thus far unannounced tracking system which will enable the Omni to detect players walking and running.

There’s no word on what demos they’ll use the system with at PAX Prime, though we might see an early build of TRAVR, a game in the works by Virtuix that’s designed to show off the Omni’s capabilities, and to help developers learn how to build support for their games. Oculus VR Inc will also be at PAX Prime 2013… maybe they’ll lend the fine folks from Virtuix and Sixense one of the Oculus Rift HD prototypes?

The Virtuix Omni is an omnidirectional treadmill that was successfully funded on Kickstrater at the end of July after raising $1.1 million. It allows players to walk, run, and jump in virtual reality. The earliest production Omnis are expected to be delivered in January.

The Sixense STEM is a forthcoming motion controller system which supersedes the Razer Hydra. STEM will have two wireless motion controllers and support up to three additional tracking points which can be used to track a players feet and hands, or be attached to peripherals. Sixense will be launching a Kickstarter campaign for STEM on September 12th.

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Guest writer Kevin Williams stopped by the Virgin Media Game Space in London for yesterday’s launch party. The space, which functions as a place to play and develop games, features a number of Oculus Rift headsets with games like Strike Suit Zero and Team Fortress 2. Williams gives us the inside scoop!

Pop-Up Arcade

During August, the provider of broadband, TV, mobile phone and home phone services in the UK, Virgin Media, opened a self-styled ‘Pop-Up Games Hub’ – called the Virgin Media Game Space (VMGS). The venue acts as a space to provide an environment for gamers and budding developers of all ages to come play, learn, and develop their digital skills. A mixture of a showroom of the latest commercial and indie game concepts, the environment also offered a learning space for the creation of content and ideas.  The space opened as a promotional platform to coincide with the Eurogamer Expo event happening the following month, and will be open until September 21st for anyone who wants to stop by.

Capturing the atmosphere of a gallery launch or a laidback rave – the VMGS offered the opportunity to experience the latest in virtual reality gaming courtesy of Oculus Rift, as well as a chance to test yet-to-be-released indie titles such as Super Pole Riders, There Shall be Lancing, and Krautscape. It was the addition of virtual reality to the mix of VMGS that caused the biggest swirl of interest, and marked its opening with the first chance for a number of invited guests to get their hands on the eagerly anticipated hardware.

Hands on Virtual Reality

I was able to get an exclusive glimpse behind the curtain of the VMGS, and also try out the games on the Oculus Rift in detail. On display at the time for the three VR platforms set out within the space were Team Fortress 2 (2007) by Valve, and Strike Suit Zero (2013) by Born Ready Games.

Both demonstrations were presented as leap of faith; because of the pop-up style of the venue there is no real instruction on usage, unless the visitor seriously hunts down a member of the venues team. The TF2 game was pretty self-explanatory to play once the user navigated the menus – this was my first time on the game with the Rift and was impressed with the presentation, though it showed its limitations as a demonstrator rather than a fully-fledged Rift title.

The big interest for me was Strike Suit Zero – the space game was an amazing experience even taking into account a number of the imperfections and limitations of the demonstration title and development kit HMD.

Two terminals were set up at the VMGS, one with a joystick and keyboard control, while another was running on a Xbox joypad. The demonstration proved a bit of a handful as first time users became stuck passing through the game’s cinematic and training pop-up menus; but once inside the space battle, the true draw of the virtual experience was clear to see. Strike Suit Zero is very compelling game that is enhanced by the use of a HMD; and we look forward to the full release.

The team behind the VMGS had worked hard on creating a compelling experience and bringing the thrill of VR’s reemergence to a playing audience. I would personally like to thank curator David Hayward of YMPT, and Virgin Medias’ Lisa Spencer for allowing me to get to grips with the venue and the games.

The Next London VR Meetup

It was interesting to note that VMGS is located in the heart of London’s technological innovation, ‘Silicon Roundabout’, literally a stone’s throw from the Inition basement demonstration studio, where the first London Oculus Rift / VR Meetup had been held – the event built on the success of the previous ‘AR vs. VR’ demonstration as part of the Digital Shoreditch festival also located in the Silicon Roundabout catchment.

This area becoming a hot bed in leading the discussion about the application of virtual reality – and the next London VR Meetup has just been announced by the organizers, taking place on September the 11th, 2013. The event will include a new presentation and demonstration component: WizDish will present their Omni directional motion, while there will be an exclusive presentation from Mocap Games, bringing the ‘world’s first VR motion game’ a concept aimed at the out-of-home (amusement and attraction) entertainment market.

With the inclusion of a presentation element, the VR Meetup has asked if I would be their first speaker at the event, and do a special presentation on the fascinating sector of Digital Out-of-Home Entertainment (DOE) and its love affair with virtual reality and immersive entertainment. Entitled “The Attraction of Immersion”, my half hour illustrated presentation will cover the story of immersive entertainment in the public-space, the emergence of VR applications in entertainment, and the modern applications of VR and immersive entertainment. Space will be limited at the event, so it is best to book early to attend what hopes to build on the success of the first VR Meetup.

For more information visit: http://www.meetup.com/London-Oculus-Rift-VR-Developer-Meetup/events/137288412/

About the Author – Kevin Williams has an extensive background in in the development and sales of the latest amusement and attraction applications.  The UK born specialist in the pay-to-play scene is well-known through his consultancy, KWP and as a prolific writer and commentator (The Stinger Report) on the emergence of the new entertainment market. Kevin is also the founder of the association and Conference (DNA Association/DNA Conference) that focuses on the digital Out-of Home interactive entertainment sector.  Kevin can be reached at – kwp [at] thestingerreport [dot] com  – http://www.thestingerreport.com  (both free to subscribe services)

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