Schlagwort: virtual reality

  • New in INFINITY: SWORDS of GARGANTUA, To The Top and Gloomy Eyes Vol 1

    New in INFINITY: SWORDS of GARGANTUA, To The Top and Gloomy Eyes Vol 1

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Viveport Infinity‘s catalog continues to expand! We have three new top-tier titles making their way to the unlimited VR subscription service. From towering titans to a lovey-dovey corpse, there is something for every kind of player to dive into and enjoy.

    Cleave through hordes of enormous foes as you make your battle-worn ascent up the tower of the Gargantua. Choose from over 30 unlockable weapons, hone your combat strategy, and carve your way through to the titan Gargantua itself.

    Clear 100 single-player challenges, climb up the leaderboard, or form an alliance with up to three other players. Whatever your battle plan, there’s an army of looming adversaries waiting to crush you under their heel.

    If you want to see these massive foes in action, take a look as YouTuber WhackyCast swings their way through what they describe as “like Dark Souls, but in VR”!

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfpxDrBI-Tk?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&w=730&h=411]

    To The Top

    You can climb anything when you have superhuman abilities. In To the Top, you feel each movement you make as you grapple up bridges, buildings, suspended platforms, and even otherworldly obstacle courses. With 30 unlockable customization options, you can make a personal mark on the online leaderboards as you complete 35 challenges.

    …Did we mention you can get jet hands?

    Should text alone not satisfy your curiosity, we recommend checking out Ctop flinging and swinging himself over on his YouTube channel.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbKnbpuiJ48?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&w=730&h=411]

    Gloomy Eyes Vol 1

    Love is hard enough without being a zombie in a world abandoned by the sun. But Gloomy isn’t your average zombie, and he’s not about to let the most powerful person in town quell his affections for the mortal girl Nena. Narrated by Golden Globe®-winning actor Colin Farrell, this introductory volume to a new animated VR-series reminds us that love doesn’t need a beating heart to thrive.

    To learn more about this wondrous adventure, watch this VR 180 interview with the creators at Sundance from YouTuber Kevin Kunze‘s channel.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPt_AtKO_pA?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&w=730&h=411]

    All these stellar titles are now available for you to explore in Viveport Infinity. Start your FREE TRIAL today and lose yourself in immersive new worlds!

    Website: LINK

  • Case Study: Rinnai® America Increases Lead Generation by 50% With VIVE

    Case Study: Rinnai® America Increases Lead Generation by 50% With VIVE

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    Website: LINK

  • Now in INFINITY: Survive the Post-Apocalyptic Southwest in Arizona Sunshine

    Now in INFINITY: Survive the Post-Apocalyptic Southwest in Arizona Sunshine

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Website: LINK

  • Vive Cosmos: Continuing to Update

    Vive Cosmos: Continuing to Update

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    We built VIVE Cosmos to adapt to the needs of VR customers with ease, comfort, and performance. It’s our most versatile headset yet—with inside-out tracking, unlimited content in the box, swappable faceplate mods for more options in the future, and an entirely new design. We’re proud to have developed a VR kit that is built to grow with you over time from both a hardware and software perspective. This will allow users to enjoy Cosmos for years without needing to buy a new headset.

    We’re excited to finally get to share this product with you. And most important, we want to say thanks for being a VIVE customer.

    However, we’ve been hearing from customers and reviewers about a few issues. We want to address them and will continue to work to ensure you are getting the best experience with Cosmos.

    Tracking

    Vive Cosmos uses inside-out tracking, which requires data points in your play environment to deliver the most accurate tracking, as well as consistent lighting. Set up works best in a bright room without mirrors or reflectors. Plain walls with a lack of defining features could affect tracking.

    Our engineering team continues to fine tune the performance of the headset for different kinds of play environments and we’re looking into low-light reports from some users who were getting a persistent “dark environment” message. We’ve adjusted the notification window for low-light scenarios and the update is already live.

    We’re continuing to refine the tracking and notifications in these scenarios and expect to release another software update soon.

    Content

    With awesome clarity, audio, and increased comfort, we know you’re excited to set up your new Cosmos and dive right into playing. However, you may have noticed that not all your favorite titles are compatible yet.

    While the majority of Viveport and Viveport Infinity experiences are optimized for Cosmos, we’re working closely with developers across stores to update their titles with controls for Cosmos. We’ve also already seen the community submit bindings for many titles.

    We have discovered some titles are incorrectly prevented from launching that should be compatible with Cosmos. We are testing a fix internally and expect to release this week.

    Cosmos is the only VR headset with content packaged in the box with six months of Viveport Infinity included (one year if you pre-ordered). Cosmos gives you all you can eat VR and a diverse content library from games to travel to education across many languages.

    Currently ~ 90% of Viveport’s top 100 titles are compatible with Cosmos—including Battlewake, Arizona Sunshine, and Ninja Legends—allowing you to explore all that the Viveport Infinity subscription service has to offer with your new headset, including games, education and travel content, and more.

    Controller Batteries

    Cosmos uses AA batteries in its controllers. A figure that has been previously reported is incorrect, and unfortunately, widely circulated. We’ve seen a wide range of performance and expect four to eight hours depending on light, environments, type of content, and other variables. The quality of the battery itself may also impact longevity. Our engineering team will continually work to optimize for performance. We’ve tested NiMH rechargeable batteries and found them to perform well.

    Ergonomics and Build

    Cosmos was designed specifically to give you the potential for the best VR experience. Cosmos delivers crystal-clear text and graphics at 2880 x 1700 combined pixel resolution (1440 x 1700 pixels per eye), and we want to make sure you can take advantage of that, so our adjustable interpupillary dial (IPD) ranges from approximately 60.5 to 74 mm, putting your eyes in the perfect spot.

    The adjustable head strap and halo design balance weight distribution, and soft and lightweight materials make for all-day play. The user guide illustrates the proper way to wear the headset. If you are having issues fitting your Cosmos comfortably to your head, please refer to it and contact us if you can’t get your fit quite right.

    Our built-in headphones are designed to give you crisp and clear audio, however some of you may be experiencing a lower quality audio experience. Please check that you are using a USB 3.0 port to ensure optimal audio.

    We are continuing to work to improve Cosmos and your experience and will update you with the most pertinent and timely information as it becomes available. If you are experiencing any issues, please contact us at www.vive.com/support/contactus.

    Website: LINK

  • VIVE Pro Eye Simplifies Research Applications Involving Visual Attention

    VIVE Pro Eye Simplifies Research Applications Involving Visual Attention

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    By Peter Schlueer, President and Founder of WorldViz.

    With VIVE Pro Eye scientists have easy access to research quality VR eye-tracking. WorldViz Vizard VR software makes this data available with as much low-level control exposed as possible.

    Believe it or not, our VR technology has fueled scientific research for over two decades, and about every five years a leap in technology redefines what’s possible.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADZaShd9Q1Y]

    The VIVE Pro Eye is one of these leaps, and at WorldViz it’s our goal to help researchers use and access eye-tracking data as easily as possible and yet retain the essential low-level control and data quality that’s essential for quality science. In keeping with our original mission that VR creation should be accessible to anyone without technical skills, we’re excited to announce the rich support of HTC VIVE Pro Eye within the WorldViz VR software toolkit Vizard.

    Being able to explore visual attention in virtual environments is transforming how scientific studies can be conducted. It opens up exciting new research possibilities in fields such as psychology, neuroscience, training, performance assessment, and consumer behavior.

    Andy Beall, founder and Chief Scientist at WorldViz, says: “It’s amazing how simple it is now to set up immersive eye-tracking experiments with the VIVE Pro Eye. With Vizard, you then can quickly add eye tracking to your virtual scene, and perform analysis including recording and exporting of your data.”

    Vizard’s R&D-focused analysis capabilities have empowered thousands of academic and commercial research labs for over 20 years. Vizard is a general-purpose development environment for scientific VR, allowing researchers and innovators to build precise and complex simulations that connect to the VIVE Pro Eye, CAVEs & Powerwalls, head/hand/eye trackers, and motion capture systems. We also support specialty devices, including biophysiological sensors like EEG, EKG, GSR, and more. With an embedded Python interface, development is straightforward and open, which means you don’t have to be a computer science expert to build applications. You can also tap into a huge Python user community for numerous libraries and utilities.

    VR Eye Tracking Analytics Lab
    To get your VIVE Pro Eye–based research started quickly, we’ve designed the VR Eye Tracking Analytics Lab, a simple yet powerful tool for setting up eye-tracking experiments in VR that include examples for common eye tracking tasks. The VR Eye Tracking Analytics Lab runs on Vizard, which allows native integration with thousands of Python libraries. Templates include:

    • Recording and playback of eye-tracking behavior for “after-action review,” including 3D path review
    • Extensive data analytics
    • User performance-triggered feedback loops with eye or physiological sensor data
    • Precise timing experimental control and device synchronization
    • 360 videos and 3D files from a wide array of sources as customizable stimuli
    • Recording of gaze direction data, pupil size, fixation timings, and other low-level parameters
    • Multi-user environments
    • Heat maps
    • Access to a support ticketing system for professional users
    • …and more

    Is now the time to buy a VR headset with built-in eye tracking? If you’re still on the fence about the VIVE Pro Eye, read an in-depth review of VR eye-tracking benefits by WorldViz Chief Scientist Andrew Beall, including a simple Vizard example script that demonstrates how to use run an eye-tracking experiment.

    Website: LINK

  • Clean up the planet with awesome robot arms in Trash Rage from Giant Lazer

    Clean up the planet with awesome robot arms in Trash Rage from Giant Lazer

    Reading Time: 8 minutes

    VR has the power to educate as well as entertain, but designing experiences that do both successfully is easier said than done. Luckily, the team over at Giant Lazer were more than up to the task when they created the sci-fi arcade experience Trash Rage. Tasked with cleaning up a planet ravaged with pollution and waste, you’ll use super cool robot arms to frantically sort a bevy of junk on your quest for a cleaner world and a higher score. 

    We sat down with the head of Giant Lazer to hear about what went into this addictive and enlightening experience.

    Interview by Nathan Allen Ortega, Viveport Staff

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlWQU5TxdBE?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&w=730&h=411]

    For those unfamiliar, tell us a bit about yourself and your team – your background in VR and game development and so on.

    Jakub Korczynski: I am the CEO at Giant Lazer. I have a technical, but also musical background. I worked on more than 25 VR/AR projects using various hardware setups and special features ranging from haptic gloves to A.I.

    My team consists of people with a wide range of skills. Together with have built the first educational VR game in Poland and we are the creators of Industry XR – a platform for easily deploying VR and AR in Industry 4.0. We like to get creative with VR that is why we love doing different types of projects: for education, industry or gaming.

    The first title that we decided to produce by ourselves and self-publish is Trash Rage – the environmental education VR game. The core Trash Rage team consists of nine people. Anita the cosplaying concept artist and developer, Ozi the programming wizz, Mahrcheen – 3D graphic artist and animator, Sebastian our sound designer, Matt our UX, Adam and Andrew, the photo/video crew and Ania which worked on organizing Trash Rage Game Days and marketing.

    Trash Rage is a post-apocalypse set arcade experience about the impact humans have on the environment – was making the game educational as well as fun a goal from the outset?

    Yes, it was our goal from day one. We wanted to create something that isn’t a typical educational game. Those tend to be very literal and in result not much fun. We wanted to take people somewhere, to tell a story and to make them sweat a little – the game is fast paced and can get intense.

    What were your biggest sources of inspiration when crafting the world of Trash Rage?

    Our inspirations came from many sources. I would certainly highlight Isle of Dogs – a Wes Anderson film. Others include: Love, Death And Robots: Three Robots, Elysium, Ready Player One, WALL-E, Suisei no Gargantia, Blade Runner 2049, The 100 and Gunnm: Battle Angel Alita. All these were strong visual inspirations.

    Most of these are considered post apocalyptic fiction, where the main culprit is a rogue A.I., genetically modified cats or global (nuclear) war.

    In Trash Rage we did include A.I., but the main theme is environmental destruction and trashing of the planet. The humans get a second chance after the A.I. goes haywire and destroys itself. In this post-post-apocalypse world it’s a fight for resources and a fight for survival.

    I should also mention other inspirations like The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. We also were motivated by things such as the less and zero waste communities and Extinction Rebellion.

    Were there any particular design challenges that your team encountered that you didn’t expect?

    One such challenge was overcoming the limits of human perception. It quickly occurred to us that the mechanic we had envisioned was generally too hard for people. Most of them, trying VR for the first time, didn’t have the coordination and memory required to play Trash Rage. It was just too overwhelming. We had to tune things down a bit and do a lot of testing before we achieved a good balance of the game. Some people say “it’s very easy to play”. It is! But this required many hours of trail and error to achieve. We’re proud of that characteristic – anybody can learn to play in seconds. Of course the game is hard to master. It requires a lot of concentration to stay focused till the end. We are yet to see people achieve the scores we are able to, knowing the game mechanics inside out.

    What are your thoughts on the role VR and other emerging innovative technology can play in regards to educating people – especially in regards to preserving our world?

    Stanford research has shown that VR is an excellent tool for learning. They also proved that learning about environmental issues is a great VR use case.

    I think that VR certainly has a future in education. When it comes to environmental education Virtual Reality can let people experience the consequences of our actions first-hand. This is in contrast to just reading some news or watching a video. We can learn by experience and really see our impact on the planet.

    What kind of research did you do to prepare to make this ecologically minded arcade experience?

    We first reached out to companies that work in the recycling sector. They helped us clear up common myths about recycling. We learned that unfortunately recycling isn’t the answer to all humanities waste problems. It works great in some cases like aluminium and glass. Other types of trash like plastic can’t be recycled efficiently, so only going to less waste or even zero waste is the real solution to reducing the amount of plastic in our environment.

    We even made a short video about how many single-use plastic bags one might use during one visit to the grocery. It went viral in Poland.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUV9SydDvYo?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&w=730&h=411]

    We later talked with environmental educators and also managed to get feedback from the Polish Ministry of Environment about the recycling scheme we used in the game. It turned out that the regulations and what is often implemented locally differ. That is why we are planning to upgrade the game with an editor for educators. They will be able to adjust the trash sorting rules to their local regulations. With this upgrade it will be super easy to use the app for educational purposes all around the world.

    Making something that people will want to play time and time again with lots of mechanical depth is no easy task. What was the design process like to craft this addictive and satisfying arcade experience?

    We had some previous experience with a “First Person Catcher FPC” mechanic with our production Pack Rage. It was an educational game about symbols used for logistic packaging of dangerous goods. It was our first commercial VR game for WSB University and the first educational VR game in Poland too. To make the mechanic work for Trash Rage, we had to rebuild the game from scratch, but we used Pack Rage as a prototype for testing new gameplay upgrades.

    We also managed to make some stuff a lot better. For example the Blob. The Blob is a bucket-sized piece of car oil goo that makes it harder for the player to see. In the first version this was something that blocked your sight. After tests with users it turned out that it wasn’t a good VR experience. Something sticking to your face makes you want to take your headset off. Finally it ended up being an LSD-like effect that changes the color of the world around you, so that it’s super hard to keep scoring points.

    Have there been any surprising bits of feedback from players since launching that you didn’t expect?

    A lot of very funny ones for sure. Some of this feedback is related to people trying VR for the first time. Besides that, we got a lot of love, though there were also those who didn’t like it. Because this isn’t your everyday zombie-shooter we expected some negative reactions. Fortunately the positive responses outweigh the negative ones, which keeps us motivated to keep pushing further. The best responses we got were from people that not only loved the game, but also were thrilled by our effort to educate about environmental issues using VR. That was the best feedback!

    What would you like to see from the VR ecosystem going forward in order to empower you to make even more engaging experiences?

    Easy content distribution, especially in the school setting is something that would push things forward and would allow us to reach more people with our message. Of course the development of hardware will further allow us to create better experiences for the end user.

    Trash Rage is an Early Access title – what has that journey been like, and how is player feedback helping shape the direction of the game as you update it?

    Before releasing the game, we gathered feedback on the ground during the many events we organised with Trash Rage. We gathered several hundred questionnaires and spoke with players. After the launch we have much more feedback – now worldwide. Based on this new feedback we are modifying our roadmap to better adjust to what the players are saying. What I can say, is that’s it’s very hard to make educational games. Especially if you really want to appeal to gamers and still have real educational value.

    One example I can give of responding to player feedback is that we changed the whole slow motion experience. At first it was a SUPERHOT style slow-mo effect. But because it was hard for players to get a hang of, we changed it to more traditional slow motion.

    How long have you and your team been working on this project?

    We have been working on Trash Rage for a year now with some breaks for other work.

    What do you ultimately want players to take away from their time with Trash Rage?

    We want them to have fun first of all, but also to take some time to think about our impact on the planet. It would be great if people considered how simple things that we can do everyday can really make a difference. When people open their eyes and see that they have the power to make change in their daily lives that has benefits for them and their loved ones they will also start to demand change from business and government. Trash Rage is just a small drop in the sea of educational needs, but it’s a start.

    Beyond updates to Trash Rage, what’s next for Giant Lazer?

    We are currently working on some educational projects like language learning in VR, Japanese business etiquette in 360, a geometry and geography app for school children and an educational app about forest habitats. We are also planning some new cool stuff for Trash Rage beyond just basic game updates. So stay tuned!

    Sounds exciting! Thanks for sharing this with us. 

    Trash Rage is out now on Viveport and Viveport Infinity. Start your free trial today and start warming up your robo recycling arm!

    Website: LINK

  • Vive Cosmos and Vive Wireless Adapter

    Vive Cosmos and Vive Wireless Adapter

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Website: LINK

  • VIVEPORT Turns 3! | A VIVEPORT History

    VIVEPORT Turns 3! | A VIVEPORT History

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Break out the cake and party favors, VIVEPORT turns three today! To celebrate, we’re offering a discount on 12-month Infinity memberships! Starting today through September 30th you can purchase an annual plan for only $7.99 a month. But that’s not all! We’ve also added the full version of Sariento VR to the Infinity library for a limited time.

    As we celebrate our anniversary we wanted to take a quick look back at the evolution of Viveport. Just like the VR industry, we’ve come a long way since our 2016 launch.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUkKmnbbvyQ]

    Viveport first burst into the scene in 2016 as the app store for virtual reality where VIVE owners could discover lifestyle VR experiences. From art to creativity tools, travel, music, education, design and more, Viveport was the place to explore all that VR had to offer outside of gaming. But a lot has changed since launch as our service has progressed to meet the evolving needs and realities of the VR enthusiast.

    We quickly realized that VR owners needed help navigating the burgeoning market for VR apps while developers were looking for another channel to monetize their content. To solve both of these problems we launched Viveport Subscription, the first VR subscription service, in early 2017. For one monthly price, subscribers chose five titles a month from our Subscription library. This new model for VR gave VIVE owners a chance to try titles before purchasing while offering developers an additional avenue for revenue.

    In 2018 we greatly increased our library and potential user base as we added games to the service and support for Oculus Rift owners. Not just limited to VIVE headsets or non-gaming applications, Viveport doubled the content library for customers and doubled the potential audience for developers in its second year. In addition, we made massive upgrades to the service, improving usability and stability for our users. Improving our service is always ongoing as we strive to create the best user experience for Viveport customers.

    While only in September 2019 has been our biggest year yet! We’ve made our subscription service unlimited with Viveport Infinity while continuing our mission to become a hardware-agnostic platform. Launched in April, a Viveport Infinity membership grants unrestricted access to the hundreds of apps, games, and videos in our Infinity library.

    With Infinity, VR owners have the ability to play their favorite titles and discover new ones all at an affordable price. In addition, we’ve added support for Oculus Rift S, Valve Index, and Windows Mixed Reality headsets this year, assuring affordable access for the majority of VR enthusiasts.

    Throughout the years, we’ve made it our mission to make VR more accessible to consumers while supporting the VR developer community. Thank you for being on this journey with us and making our Viveport community so awesome.

    Wondering if you should check out Viveport Infinity for yourself? Here are what some members of our community are saying about the service:

    “I am an Oculus Rift user and I feel right at home on Viveport. Viveport has a surprisingly wide selection of Oculus games and great a support team to boot.”

    – Laurence 

    “The ability to checkout a lot of games before purchasing and then being able to jump right into purchasing is great too. The service is definitely one of a kind and I am excited to see new features and titles added as time goes on.”

    – Edward Y.

    Start your Viveport Infinity free trial today to gain access to unlimited VR gaming. For a limited time, Valve Index, Samsung HMD Odyssey and Oculus Rift owners can get two free months of Viveport Infinity. Click on your headset to find out more about these offers!

    Website: LINK

  • Experience the day of your life… over and over again with Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son

    Experience the day of your life… over and over again with Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son

    Reading Time: 7 minutes

    We’ve all had those days where nothing goes right and you’d like to have a do-over. In the Viveport new release Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son, you’ll have your chance and then some. Based on the iconic philosophical comedy, the game places players in the shoes of the son of Bill Murray’s character from the film, stuck in a time loop in the small town of Punxsutawney just like his dad many years ago. We had a chat with the creative minds behind this virtual love letter to a cinematic masterpiece to find out how they closed the loop on this hilarious and brain-bending experience.

    Interview by Nathan Allen Ortega, Viveport Staff

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QfrNqO_k_4?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&w=730&h=411]

    For those unfamiliar, tell us a bit about yourself and the team at Tequila Works

    I’m Pablo Calatayud, lead game designer of Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son. I’ve been working at Tequila Works since 2016, when I joined to work as lead game designer on The Invisible Hours.

    How did the idea of Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son come to be?

    It started as a  conversation between Jake Zim at Sony Pictures Virtual Reality and Ethan Stearns at MWM Interactive, when they were looking for a Sony IP that would work well as a VR game. We thought this was an exciting opportunity to take a known IP and do something surprising with it.

    Tequila Works has a really amazing portfolio of critically acclaimed games – both traditional and VR – in a variety of genres. Tell us a bit about what inspires your team to explore new concepts in untapped genres, and what are the key elements you feel are essential to making engaging games?

    Tequila Works’ motto is “Creating with Gusto”. We always ask ourselves where is the beauty and where is the crazy and we always keep an artistic vision of our projects. We give everybody in the team the opportunity to add their own ideas, no matter if you are a senior member of the team or an intern, an artist or QA, or coder… the way we work is very dynamic, very open, and we always try to innovate. With Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son, we aimed to achieve just the right mix mix of narrative and gameplay, and we push for a natural life-like logic to the scenes. The Invisible Hours was creating a new way of telling stories with Spherical Narrative, to recreate the voyeuristic feeling in VR. I think there is something interesting and unique in all our games that makes them special.

    Groundhog Day is a modern dramedy classic – what kind of research did you and the team do to prepare to bring the darkly hilarious and philosophical time loop story to VR?

    First I re-watched the original Groundhog Day, as well as other similar time loop movies like Naked, Happy Death Day, or Edge of Tomorrow. This made me appreciate the original Groundhog Day even more. Of course I’ve watched it many times growing up, but as a child never really got to understand the deep meaning of the movie. Making this game made me appreciate the movie much more and admire its perfect execution of the existential comedy. I also watched a few interviews with Harold Ramis talking about the movie. I also read The Tao of Bill Murray by Gavin Edwards. For the gameplay our references were pretty clear. We played games like Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality. Job Simulator or Batman Arkham VR. We also did a bunch of research on different dialog system approaches.

    Were there any development challenges that you ran into that you didn’t expect?

    Like in every project we found some technical challenges and things that were much harder to implement than expected. We developed a tool to set up all the dialog branching on the game and direct the characters along the different scenes. We wanted the scenes to be choreographed to match a specific set of events but at the same time be reactive to the players actions at anytime. Creating this was probably the biggest challenge of the project.

    The original film did a pretty amazing job coming up with justifications for why Phil was unable to escape the confines of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania throughout the time loop. How difficult was it from a design standpoint to keep players boxed into their snowy cosmic prison?

    Many people already have a sense of the story from seeing the original film, and we’ve played that to our advantage. They know they can’t leave the town, so we didn’t have to make a big effort to justify it.There is a dialog with a simple, short explanation. And this way we could focus more on things that you do in Punxsutawney, instead of trying to leave it.

    Outside of the original film, what have been your biggest influences on the design and themes of Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son?

    In the game, we wanted to talk about subjects that were of course related to the original film, like becoming selfless, letting go of ego and being a better person. The structure works in a similar way, but something that differs is that in the movie the main motivation for Phil Connors, besides leaving the loop, was the love interest, Rita. In the game we focus more on the ideas of family, friendship, parenthood, and making peace with your past to be able to embrace your future. Other aspects like the humor and language are a bit updated and edgy, some elements enter more on the sci-fi and meta and you can feel the Rick and Morty influence, as James Siciliano, who worked on Rick and Morty, is one of the writers.

    Tell us a bit about your experience collaborating with Sony Pictures Virtual Reality and MWMi

    We were very lucky to work with such passionate and talented people like Ethan Stearns at MWMi and Jake Zim at SPVR. They gave us a lot of creative freedom and helped maintain the vision for the project. I loved discussing the story and design ideas with them and their feedback was really helpful.

    Were there any story moments, puzzle concepts or other cool ideas that you had that you wanted to incorporate into the game but had to leave it on the cutting room floor?

    Of course, too many to list here and too many to fit into the game itself — we had to make choices because you just can’t do it all. Some were interesting ideas in theory that weren’t that great once we started designing them. Like the learning to fix the espresso machine puzzle, originally it was going to be a puzzle about learning Italian. But once we realized all the implications that it had we changed it to learning espresso machine engineering. And some evolved into something different, better. Like the flashbacks: first they were going to be full playable scenes, each one with an interactive element to play with while talking to the main character’s father, Phil Connors Sr., one with a model train, one with a kite, etc. But we realized that we really wanted the player to focus only on the story, and any interactive element was going to work against that. So we thought about this concept of memories and the act of remembering, like putting pieces back together in Phil’s mind, and once you do it, you listen to the dialog in this mystical scenario.

    How long did Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son take to develop and how did all the production partners collaborate to get this done?

    It took 18 months to develop. Tequila Works is based in Madrid, Spain, and from there we had constant communication with our partners at MWMi and SPVR in LA during the whole process. Our partners led some important aspects of the production, like the writing, casting, voice recording and localization.

    As innovators in creating engaging and challenging interactive narrative content, what changes/improvements do you want to see in the future for VR?

    To me the biggest challenge for VR in terms of hardware is finding the balance between affordable, comfortable and visual quality. And if I had to choose one of those three pillars, I will say comfortable is the most important one. As a VR developer I spend a lot of time taking the headset on and off, there are often wires everywhere, dry eyes, the weight on my face, sweat, the table occluding the tracking, etc.Whatever makes all of that easier and makes more people discover and enjoy VR is what I want for the future of VR.

    What’s next for Tequila Works?

    For now I am really looking forward to watch people enjoy Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son. But I can tell that our future is going to be full of adventures.

    Great to hear! Thanks for taking time to speak with us.

    Take your own loopy trip to Punxsutawney with Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son – out now on Viveport.

    Once you close the loop, chat about your experiences with other Viveporters on our Community Forums!

    Website: LINK

  • Case Study: Intel Enhances Training With VR, Sees 5-Year ROI of 300%

    Case Study: Intel Enhances Training With VR, Sees 5-Year ROI of 300%

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    Learn all about how the tech juggernaut deployed a scalable, effective VR training solution with the help of VIVE Enterprise & Advantage.

    Intel Virtual Electrical Safety Recertification Course, Powered by VIVE

    A look at Intel’s Virtual Electric Recertification Course. Why virtualize this course? Electrical accidents are considered one of the deadliest workplace accidents—only 1/10 of an amp is all it takes to stop a human heart. Between 2015-2017, there were 24 electrical incidents at Intel with just as many near-misses. This translated to over one million dollars in cost, making it an ideal test case for virtual training.

    What kind of return on investment can you expect with VR? Ask Intel. With VIVE’s Enterprise’s help, the tech juggernaut launched a virtual Electrical Safety Recertification course estimated to have a 300% ROI over five years in one of the strongest business cases to date for the emerging technology.

    Website: LINK

  • Samsung HMD Odyssey Owners Receive Two Free Months Of Viveport Infinity

    Samsung HMD Odyssey Owners Receive Two Free Months Of Viveport Infinity

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Website: LINK

  • HTC VIVE ANNOUNCES PRICE AND AVAILABILITY OF VIVE COSMOS; PRE-ORDERS BEGIN THIS WEEK

    HTC VIVE ANNOUNCES PRICE AND AVAILABILITY OF VIVE COSMOS; PRE-ORDERS BEGIN THIS WEEK

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    HTC VIVE® today announced features and functionality of the new VIVE COSMOS including upcoming pricing and availability, and pre-order bonuses. Vive Cosmos is the latest premium PC-based virtual reality (VR) system created with a new level of accessibility and ease of use, designed to grow with users over time through a modular faceplate design that can change the functionality of the headset, such as the newly announced Vive Cosmos External Tracking Mod. Cosmos will launch globally on October 3 at $699 USD, with pre-orders starting September 12.

    “Since Vive began our VR journey, we’ve continued to refine and improve on what a premium VR experience can and should be,” said Daniel O’Brien, GM, Americas, HTC Vive. “Cosmos offers an unmatched experience and is also our most versatile headset yet—with inside-out tracking, options in the future for different faceplates, unlimited content in the box, and the new user interface, we see limitless possibilities for XR customers.”

     Technical Features

    Vive Cosmos was built to adapt to the needs of VR customers with ease, versatility, and performance at the forefront. The all-new Vive tracking system offers a simplified setup that makes getting into VR faster and easier than ever before, with six camera sensors for wide and accurate inside-out tracking. Cosmos features a 2880 x 1700 combined pixel resolution—an 88% increase over the original Vive—delivering crystal-clear text and graphics. All-new LCD panels reduce the distance between pixels and combined with real RGB displays minimize screen-door effect.

    A unique flip-up design allows users to jump between reality and virtual reality in seconds—all without disrupting VR journeys. Superior ergonomics and comfort allow for longer VR experiences and integrated on-ear headphones provide fully immersive sound. Cosmos also features completely redesigned controllers that maximize functionality within VR and offer extended comfort during long play sessions. Cosmos is also compatible with the Vive Wireless Adapter for those who want to enjoy moving in VR without being tethered.

    First ‘Mod’ Announced

    With a modular faceplate design, Vive Cosmos is the most versatile premium VR headset yet, designed with upcoming accessories to change the functionality of the headset and offer customers the ability for their headset to grow with them over time. The first official “mod”, announced today, is the Vive Cosmos External Tracking Mod for customers that want to continue to use their existing Lighthouse base stations for tracking scenarios, but also take advantage of the superior performance of Vive Cosmos. This first base station-compatible mod supports Vive’s ecosystem of peripherals including the Vive Tracker, delivering unprecedented input freedom for VR controls. This new mod will be available in Q1 of next year.

    Included Content

    Vive Cosmos is the VR headset that packs a powerful content punch right out of the gate with an included 12-month Viveport Infinity subscription during the pre-order period, saving you thousands of dollars[i]. Every customer who pre-orders their Cosmos by October 2 will receive a 12-month Viveport Infinity redeem code in their box. Viveport Infinity gives unlimited access to hundreds of top-rated VR apps, games, and videos like A Fisherman’s Tale, Fujii, and Ninja Legends, as well as premium videos from top brands like GoPro, Discovery Channel, and Animal Planet. In tandem with the Vive Cosmos launch, Viveport Infinity will be adding new titles such as Doctor Who: The Edge of Time by Maze Theory, Playstack, and BBC; Eleven Eleven by Syfy; Battlewake by Survios; Gloomy Eyes by Atlas V and 3dar; Swords of Gargantua by Yomuneco and gumi; and MLB Home Run Derby VR by MLB.

    Vive Reality System

    Cosmos offers an out-of-box experience that is easy to set-up and launch into virtual worlds using the new Vive Reality System. Vive Cosmos is the first headset to offer the Vive Reality System, a reimagined core software experience for Vive. The Vive Reality System is an entirely new design philosophy for VR, offering an extension of life to make VR feel less like launching apps and more like stepping between worlds. Cosmos will feature a redesigned user interface called Lens to easily navigate XR and Viveport Infinity applications, and a new, dynamic home space called Origin. The Origin space is the launchpad for VR applications and interactive experiences that will grow over time.

    Vive Cosmos will be available for pre-order online from HTC on vive.com as well as through select retailers Amazon.com, Best Buy Canada, B&H Photo, GameStop, Newegg.com, and Walmart.com. For more information, please visit: https://www.vive.com/cosmos/

    [i] Terms and conditions apply. Savings estimate based on comparison to purchasing individual titles outright. Up to 12 months upon redemption when ordered during presale. 6 months included when ordered after presale time period is over.

    Website: LINK

  • The Seas are Yours: Battlewake Now Available on Viveport and Viveport Infinity!

    The Seas are Yours: Battlewake Now Available on Viveport and Viveport Infinity!

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Website: LINK

  • VRChat Partners with HTC and Makers Fund to Close $10m Series C

    VRChat Partners with HTC and Makers Fund to Close $10m Series C

    Reading Time: 8 minutes

    This is a guest blog post written by VRChat.

    The VRChat team is excited to announce that we have closed a $10m Series C investment round. This latest financing includes new investor Makers Fund, alongside existing investors HTC, Brightstone VC and GFR Fund. We welcome Makers Fund and are proud to have them on board!

    “Our goal is to connect people and enable them to interact as if they were in the same room. Any kind of social experience you could want should exist, and if it doesn’t, somebody should be able to create it. Makers Fund has deep experience with these types of platforms and will help VRChat move towards its goal.” 

    -Graham Gaylor, CEO

    This Series C investment will allow us to expand the VRChat team and continue growing our platform and community. Partners like Makers Fund and HTC open unique opportunities to help us further our goal as a virtual universe. 

    “VRChat has cracked the code of creating engaging social experiences in VR. We are excited to continue working closely with VRChat as they help people connect with each other and the communities they love the most in VR.”

    – Rikard Steiber, President Viveport and SVP VR at HTC

    “Graham, Jesse and Ron have a bold vision to enable and empower diverse communities through limitless virtual identities and experiences. We see great potential here and are very excited to partner with the VRChat team on this journey”
    – Jay Chi, Founding Partner of Makers Fund

    What is VRChat? 

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqNr-AHuuEg?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&w=730&h=411]

    VRChat is an ever-expanding virtual universe powered by a passionate community. 

    Using Unity and our SDK, creators can build avatars or worlds and upload them to share with others. This open-ended creativity and the dynamics of sharing in an active social environment power VRChat. It has led to a never-ending fountain of entertaining, surprising and wonderful experiences. 

    Although VRChat supports all leading PC VR headsets and many VR accessories, a VR headset is not required to participate. All that’s needed is a PC that meets the minimum requirements for our platform.

    “It is a very common story for people to join VRChat without a VR headset, have a memorable adventure, and immediately seek out virtual reality hardware to upgrade their experience.” 

    – Jesse Joudrey, CTO

    Our Growing Community

    VRChat enables everyone to connect with friends and make new ones from around the globe. They hang out, play interactive games, find awe-inspiring worlds, and share their experiences with others. People often find lasting friendships and communities stemming from their time in VRChat. That time is often hours per session, multiple times per week — many people have logged thousands of hours.

    VRChat communities have grown in and outside of the application, to all corners of the internet, including streaming, communication, and fund-raising platforms. These interconnected communities support our users, from popular performers to creators and groups. 

    A VRChat IRL Meetup

    “I’ve met many of our community in VR and the real world. They often explain to me how much VRChat means to them or has changed their life in some positive way. They passionately share their feature requests and issues. Their dedication has been a constant source of inspiration for me and our entire team.” 

    – Ron Millar, CCO

    VRChat’s presence is not limited to the virtual world! Our community has grown so much that VRChat meet-ups are commonplace and people recognize our T-shirts in the real world. 

    Creation Tools

    VRChat creators have the unique opportunity to create shared virtual content with industry-standard tools like Unity, Blender, Maya, or any other 3D authoring software. After creating their world or avatar, they use the VRChat SDK to upload it into VRChat and share their creations with the world. Many VRChat users have learned how to use these tools from scratch in order to make their ideas reality.

    Powered by Unity

    VRChat is built using the popular Unity game engine. Unity is a powerful, widely-adopted industry standard. If you are already a Unity developer, then it’s easy to create VRChat content. 

    Unity also offers the Unity Asset Store, and we have worked with Unity to curate a list of assets that creators might find useful while building content for VRChat. This list contains tools, 3D assets, and supported components that many VRChatters are utilizing for building new and creative content. This makes it simple for even a new creator to piece together a world or an avatar in very little time.

    Avatars

    One of the most important aspects of VRChat is your custom avatar. You can create one yourself, or you can find one that fits you best. By finding an avatar pedestal, you can interact with it to become a robot, a zombie, an alien, an anime character, or anything you can think up!

    If you can’t find something to fit your persona, you can create an avatar yourself and upload it to VRChat for everyone to see.

    Enabling Expression

    Our state-of-the-art avatar systems enable expression in meaningful and emotional ways that our community loves. We empower artists, performers, musicians, dancers, puppeteers, comedians, coders, shader wizards, actors, filmmakers and more to create and share their art with the world. 

    Sharing and Streaming

    Enabling these experiences within a new type of dynamic social platform has made VRChat a fertile environment for top content creators on Twitch and YouTube. VRChat has over one million followers on Twitch, where community streamers stream adventures, content creation, talk shows, nightclub DJs, and more.  We also maintain one of the largest Discord communities, with nearly 90,000 users.

    The idea of a “virtual persona” is a rising global trend. Also known as “VTubers”, this is when streamers and content creators assume a virtual identity over their own. They can be far more creative in how they look, how they move, or even in how they speak. VRChat has been uniquely positioned to provide tools and an environment for this new form of media. Quite a few well-known virtual personas began on VRChat, with more appearing over time. One great example is “KimplE”, a robotic cat who streams on their Twitch channel. Here’s an example of KimplE playing a variety of games on youtube using VRChat.

    Infinite Worlds! 

    You only have to open the VRChat “Worlds” menu to find thousands of places to discover and explore. Using the VRChat SDK, our community has created a vast array of interactive worlds: social games, secluded hangout spots, quiet bars, busy nightclubs, scary escape rooms, complex puzzles and mysteries, drawing and painting rooms, performance stages, racing tracks, jetpack testing grounds, mind-blowing audio-visual experiences, photorealistic locations, mountainsides to climb, treehouses standing in the middle of a vast field of fractal environments — and a lot more that defy explanation. No matter what you’re looking for, there’s a world for you. Like what you see? You can save that world as a favorite or make it your home. 

    VRChat also contains hundreds and hundreds of avatar worlds. Here, you can find thousands of avatars to browse through and try on, often following themes reflecting popular culture. Put on a new look and check out your fresh identity in a mirror.

    Expanding on the Infinite! 

    Example Udon Node Graph

    For years we’ve dreamed of furthering our creators’ ability to build complex, interactive content for their worlds. We’ve always believed that it is one of the key components to a fully-functional VRChat Universe. 

    VRChat “Udon” is an in-development programming language designed specifically for VRChat. It utilizes a “node graph” graphical interface to permit both new and experienced users to create complex, interactive content for their VRChat worlds.

    Udon will unlock a whole new class of creativity in VRChat by allowing content creators to build far more interactive worlds, games, and experiences. We expect Udon to be a big deal! We believe it will have a massive impact on the types of content the community can enjoy in VRChat once released. Udon is currently in internal testing, and planned for release in Q4 2019.

    Virtual Workspace

    The VRChat Team in their usual Avatars

    From day one, the VRChat team has worked as a fully remote team with teammates all over the world.  We use VRChat daily for team standups, design jams, testing ideas, prototypes and builds. Occasionally, as you can see from our team picture, this leads to interesting situations like participating in a design discussion led by an alien, an art presentation held by an octopus, or a production stand-up summarized by a space marine.

    Remote work makes it easier for us to hire the best people for our team. There’s no need to relocate or commute to an office every day. As part of our interview process our team meets with candidates in VR. We’ve discovered interviewing “in person” with an avatar of their choosing can be relaxed, creative, and fun. Many times the candidates we consider are already involved in the VRChat community.  

    Our team also spends many hours in VRChat for work and fun. If you’re at community meetups, game events, or just hanging out in a virtual world chatting, it is not uncommon to run into a VRChat developer. Because we’re part of the community, we share the same passions for VRChat as they do. We use this connection to help us drive the direction of development.

    We use our Discord and other reporting channels like our Feedback boards to work closely with our community to perform beta testing, gather feedback, build bug reports, and collect feature requests. This communication is an important part of the continuing improvement of VRChat.

    VRChat also uses Twitch streaming more directly to deliver official “Developer Streams” where we talk about what we’re working on, hold interviews, and answer questions in real-time. In addition, we make posts on our blog delving into the depths of technical systems, upcoming changes, and new features or systems.

    What’s next for VRChat

    VRChat is still in the early stages of development. This latest round of investment and our partners will allow us to continue expanding the VRChat Universe. We are currently working on adding more tools to enable our community to create, play and share in ever more exciting ways. 

    Here’s a short preview of what’s on our roadmap. If you’d like to hear more about our plans, you can catch our August 2019 Dev Stream, viewable here.

    We’re Hiring! 

    With resources secured and plans in place, the VRChat team is hiring and ready to grow. We’re seeking talented and passionate people to help with the development and growth of the platform. More information on those roles can be found here on our Careers page.

    Find out more

    If you’d like to contact us, feel free to email us at hello@vrchat.com. You can also visit the official VRChat website at www.vrchat.com. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @VRChat!

    As mentioned, we’ve got an active Discord community where you can join and chat about VRChat. Click here to join!

    Thank you for reading, and we’ll see you next time.

    The VRChat Team & Investors

    Website: LINK

  • New In Viveport Infinity: Fujii, Loco Dojo and More!

    New In Viveport Infinity: Fujii, Loco Dojo and More!

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    It’s time again to introduce INFINITY’s Top Games for the month! During August, we added a new batch of games that offer alien landscapes, ridiculous challenges, lighthouses within lighthouses, and more!

    Fujii

    Explore the ethereal gardens of Fujii as you bring life back to otherworldly landscapes. Using water, music, and touch, you’ll coax plant life back into three different alien biomes. Your horticultural efforts will expand rings of light that hover over revitalized, musical gardens that sing with energy and life. You can also use seeds you’ve gathered along the way to cultivate your private garden however you please!

    Sink into the zen of intergalactic gardening, no green thumb required!

    Here’s what YouTubers Cas and Chary VR had to say about Fujii:

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqA-MBMRyAc?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&w=730&h=411]

    A Fisherman’s Tale

    The Big Storm is on its way, and nothing will survive in its wake. Taking refuge in a lighthouse seems like it would be a straightforward task, but not in A Fisherman’s Tale. Objects can be combined and transformed, and the rules of physics don’t always apply.

    You’ll gather some bizarre companions as you wrap your brain around reality-distorting puzzles. The world outside your cabin will be unpredictable, uncanny, and completely unexpected!

    Check out why YouTuber CaptainSauce can’t think of anything in VR quite like A Fisherman’s Tale!

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2lSw8ngOok?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&w=730&h=411]

    Loco Dojo

    Grand Sensei requires amusement, and you and your friends are the perfect mini-game gladiators to give it to him. Spin the dice wheel and make your way across the Table of Trials to compete in the absurd challenges of Loco Dojo!

    Discover your silliest skillsets as you and your rivals milk pigs, throw biscuits, and so much more across sixteen goofy mini-games. Can you master the madness and obtain the coveted Black Headband of victory? 

    Check out YouTuber Ctop taking on Grand Sensei’s challenges with the help of some friends!

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcbg-XTBrhM?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&w=730&h=411]

    Ninja Legends

    Hone your blocking and parrying skills and become a Ninja Legend! Dropped right into the action, you’ll have to slash, slice and attack at a break-necking pace to make your way through an onslaught of enemy ninjas.

    Armed with katanas, claws, staff, and bow & arrow, you’ll have to attack and block your opponents in 360 degrees of action to come out on top. Ninja Legends will challenge your mind and body as your heart starts racing.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9bW3yULJCg]

    Afterlife

    In the Afterlife by Signal Space Lab, you’ll follow a family as they struggle with the death of their 5-year old son. In this cinematic VR drama, you’ll view the family’s journey through the ghostly eyes of the child.

    A branching live-action narrative, the way the story unfolds all depends on your own decisions. With three episodes and over 29 unique choices, this interactive piece allows you to discover a multilayered experience about grief and how we can move forward.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL_mtZHKwMc?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&w=730&h=411]

    Disturbed on VIVEPORT Video

    The multiplatinum-selling rock band, Disturbed, makes its way to VR as new 360 concert footage arrives on Viveport Video. You’ll get a front-row seat as the heavy metal legends travel the world with all new music for their Evolution tour. Rock out to the immersive 360 video of “Inside The Fire” live in London, live footage of “Never Again” in Tel Aviv and more.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y_BFJsn7jA]

    All of these experiences are now yours to explore in Infinity. Click below to dive in!

    PLAY NOW

    Website: LINK

  • VIVEPORT Infinity Now Supports Valve Index

    VIVEPORT Infinity Now Supports Valve Index

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Website: LINK

  • Ciao! VIVE is Heading to Venice

    Ciao! VIVE is Heading to Venice

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    Canals, gondolas, vino and romance, Venice is known as a dream Italian destination but for two weeks at the end of summer, “The City of Canals” is flooded with international film stars. The Venice Film Festival takes place from August 28 – September 7 and this year, VIVE is supporting six bellisimo VR experiences at the event. Three of these immersive films will be making their world debut while four are from HTC VIVE’s own VIVE ORIGINALS content studio.

    Learn more about these immersive cinematic titles below:

    INORI

    Synopsis: “In the world filled with mystical creatures constructed by Miwa Komatsu, these creatures will guide the experiencer through a journey of self-reflection, assertion, and spiritual reincarnation. In the virtual world, the experiencer will be able draw connection to the world as well as their inner self, bringing blessings from the unreal to the reality.”

    INORI is an interactive artwork from Japanese contemporary artist Miwa Komatsu and musician, Kay Huang. The VR documentary is the newest of the five VIVE ORIGINAL pieces being shown at Venice Film Festival where it will make its world debut.

    Glimpse

     

    Synopsis: “Glimpse is an animated interactive VR experience, a highly emotive visual feast set in the imaginative mind of a heartbroken panda named Herbie who has recently broken up with his girlfriend Rice. Herbie is an illustrator and using his art we delve back through the memories of his relationship from the heartbreaking end to the beautiful beginning. A dreamlike voyage through his mind, his heart and his illustrations.”

    Glimpse stars Taron Egerton (Rocketman) who gives his voice to Herbie while Lucy Boynton (Bohemian Rhapsody) plays Rice. Written and directed by Academy Award-winning writer-director Benjamin Cleary (Stutterer, Wave) and VR creator Michael O’Connor, Glimpse will have its world-first preview at the 76th Venice Film Festival.

    Gloomy Eyes – Episode 2

    Synopsis: “When the sun got tired of the humans it decided to hide and never rise again.
    The darkness awoke the dead from their graves. A zombie kid called Gloomy and a mortal girl called Nena fall in love and immerse in a deep connection that not even the most powerful man in town can destroy.”

    Narrated by Colin Farrell, the second episode of Gloomy Eyes will premiere at Venice Film Festival, introducing viewers to the next chapter in Gloomy’s story. Already a hit on the international film festival circuit, the first episode of  Gloomy Eyes has won awards at SXSW, Annecy International Animated Film Festival, NewImages Festival, Anima – The Brussels Animation Film Festival and Sandbox Immersive Festival.

    5X1

    Also showing at the Venice Film Festival are three films from VIVE Original’s 5×1 series. 5×1 is a cinematic VR series comprised of five short films. Directors Hou Hsiao Hsien and Liao Ching-Sung served as executive producers of this project, providing guidance to five up-and-coming directors.

    Only the Mountain Remains

    Synopsis: Escaping from the midlands of southern Taiwan, a pregnant Thai migrant enlists the help of a fellow Indonesian runaway to locate the father of her child – who has disappeared in the mountains. As they wait for their contact at a deserted petrol station, their plans are abandoned when a run-in with the police forces them to flee abruptly. As night falls, a mist descends – obscuring their paths and blurring the lines of their reality.

    O

    Synopsis: A fire pot burns in the dark night. Footsteps sound in the distance and an exhausted man in a suit walks in. The man talks on the phone as he walks and he appears defeated. We do not understand the man’s language but we can almost feel his sadness. Who is he? Where is he from? The man sits down on a giant black rock to rest. What is he planning?

    The Making Of

    Synopsis: The Making Of is centered around a 3D VR 360 camera and employs a pseudo-documentary format with a ‘film within a film’ meta cinema approach to portray the onsite filming and things that happen behind the scenes. The front viewing angle is the ‘film within the film’ where the cast of the film Juo ren mi mi play their roles in the film. The rearview is the director team responsible for filming Juo ren mi mi in the film while the left and right views show Midi Z’s filming crew, where the director in Juo ren mi mi uses dangerous methods such as ‘immersive filming’ to encourage the cast to play their roles.

    If you can’t make it to Venice, don’t worry! All of these titles will be heading to VIVEPORT soon so stay tuned for further news. Arrivederci!

    Website: LINK

  • Peering beyond the veil with Afterlife from Signal Space Lab

    Peering beyond the veil with Afterlife from Signal Space Lab

    Reading Time: 7 minutes

    In the recently released Viveport Infinity title Afterlife, viewers will embark on the emotional odyssey of a family stricken by grief at the loss of their young son. Merging VR filmic techniques and branching interactive narrative design, Afterlife crafts a multilayered story that reveals its many complex facets based on viewer decisions. We spoke to the creators of this powerful emotional experience to find out how they brought this immersive experience to life.

    Interview by Nathan Allen Ortega, Viveport Staff

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL_mtZHKwMc?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&w=730&h=411]

    For those unfamiliar, tell us a bit about yourself and the team at Signal Space Lab

    Jose Aguirre, Studio Director: We started (2015) as an audio service provider for major video game studios in North America and then evolved into XR (Mid 2016). We used our experience with so many games from so many great developers and merged it with a relatively new platform (VR) on an even newer type of content (Interactive Filmmaking).

    We are a team driven by curiosity, we challenge ourselves with every single project because we enjoy creating our own rules. I guess that’s what you get when you work on someone else’s project long enough, once you get the chance to work on your own vision, you want to make it unique and take the risk of exploring a new approach to interactive narratives.

    Our team is based in Montreal, Canada, and we are currently sixteen team members.

    What were your main sources of inspiration when creating Afterlife?

    Jose: On the technical side, we wanted to offer a new way of creating story based content in live-action. Some studios are working on very interesting and cutting edge projects, a lot of them rooted in tech. We are taking a step back, still staying in 3dof but pushing on the narrative angle and proposing a new way of user interaction; one where the user interacts -with very little interruptions or visual clues other than the story itself. I wouldn’t say our tech is super complex, but the process of merging video game, interactive and film elements into one product is what makes this project very challenging and this was very seductive to us on the technical side.

    Luisa Valencia, VR Director: During research, while reading a bunch of stories about families that were experiencing loss, I found this heartbreaking story about a family of five. The father was traveling and the mother had swimming class with their middle child (3 year old) while the other two kids (6 and 1) were with their nanny. When she came back from swimming lessons, she found her other two kids stabbed in their bathtub, killed by their nanny.

    A few years later, the mother that had experienced this terrible tragedy did an interview remembering one time she was with her only surviving child, and observing how her child was coping with the death of her siblings. She then realized how different the two of them were dealing with the tragedy; recognizing the ability of kids to be able to live in the present moment, living and seeing life as it is, she then realized: “We all should be able to do that.”

    During this time, I was also dealing with the deterioration of my father’s health, which eventually led to his passing. When I read the mother’s reflection about her daughter, I realized that that’s what I needed to hear during my own process of grief – that I needed to live and see the world as that child does.

    That story inspired what was to become Afterlife. It made me want to use the amazing tools of this technology to share and convey this message to others.

    Signal Space Lab’s previous works include other interactive cinematic narratives, along with family friendly AR experiences and VR experiences based on traditional game franchises. Can you speak a bit about your studio’s philosophy on storytelling and what inspires you to utilize new technology to craft engaging stories?

    Luisa:  We are inspired by the possibility of transmitting powerful emotions to people.

    Jose: In order to do so, you need to have a team that is willing to try new things both on the technical and the narrative side. We spent a lot of time figuring out what could be the perfect marriage of technical innovation and compelling story, once we are all happy with that, we get to work.

    Were the main themes/beats of the story something that was clear pretty early on in development or did they evolve over the course of production?

    Luisa: The beats and the branching structure were planned before production. At the very beginning of development, it was clear for us the scale we wanted to go for, and based on this, the stories feeding each brand were evolving as the production progressed.

    The performances in Afterlife are pretty intense. Did directing actors in an immersive VR narrative with lots of story permutations prove difficult in comparison to more traditional 2D linear filmmaking? What was the secret to getting such stellar performances out of the cast?

    Luisa: Yes definitely, directing a 360-3D film proved way more challenging than directing in a 2D traditional format. However, for this project, I had the fortune of working alongside Alison Darcy, a fantastic theater director. We definitely complemented each other strengths on Afterlife‘s set. Thanks to her work and the dynamic she had with an incredible cast; we got wonderful performances.

    The story/experience of Afterlife has a lot of branching paths, with audiences getting new bits of info as they explore the different facets to the story until a more complete picture forms. Tell us a bit about the design process that goes into crafting a satisfying and unique narrative that adapts organically to the audience’s behavior?

    Luisa: For the design process, I took the traditional three act narrative structure of storytelling. I wrote the first pass of beats of the story, knowing that I wanted to tell the story from three character’s point of view towards a shared experience or tragic event. I started to write the backbone of the story inspired by the mom, and then I started branching from there. I went back to the beginning of the structure and wrote the second main ramifications, making sure that I was respecting the timings of the backbone. Finally, I repeated the process for the third time and added the visible interactive elements. We took meticulous care about continuity considering Afterlife‘s unprecedented scale.

    While working on the structure of the narrative, the development and technical teams were working on researching and developing both the navigation and the decision making process to accomplish user’s interactivity as organic as possible.

    Were there any development challenges that you ran into that you didn’t expect?

    Jose: When you do something new, you always encounter the reality of learning from your own mistakes, this wasn’t an exception. From writing the outline of this complex narrative, to porting it for the different VR platforms, each step of the way we ran into roadblocks that we needed to overcome. But this is precisely why we love doing what we do.

    As an immersive storyteller, what do you want to see change/improve in the world of VR in order to further empower you in crafting more engaging interactive narratives?

    Luisa: More investors paying attention (and $) into this technology as a very powerful storytelling tool. And more content creators using VR to craft stories.

    As creators, we want to see more investors paying attention and allocating funds to explore the vast potential of interactive live-action narratives as a tool to create and as a tool to tell stories.

    How long did Afterlife take to develop and how many people had their hand in things throughout?

    Jose: It took almost 18 months to make, with a team of 15 people working on the project  (30 including cast and crew).

    What feeling/emotion do you feel encapsulates Afterlife the most?

    Luisa: When Afterlife was being conceived I wanted to explore different feelings through each character but love was always present throughout the story. The feelings that came along with loss, like: guilt, remorse, and pain, were encapsulated in the story in order to provoke change in each character, and hopefully, to provoke change in the user that experiences the piece.

    Any thoughts on a potential Afterlife 2? (Af2life?)

    Luisa: We are definitely focused on creating new and better seamless interactive branching narratives. Afterlife 2, for the moment is not in our plans. This is a new medium, and I would rather have a chance to create happier stories. As a studio, we want to keep exploring and challenging concepts.

    What’s next for Signal Space Lab?

    Luisa: We want to position ourselves as a creative powerhouse, so we are always looking to try new and exciting projects. We are currently in pre-production for two new projects (own IPs), and are looking for interesting partnerships to keep pushing the boundaries of what we can do with interactive storytelling, and obviously keep growing as a studio.

    Sounds like exciting things are on the way! Thanks so much for your time.

    Afterlife is out now on Viveport and is available as part of your Viveport Infinity membership. Not a member? Start your free trial today and experience this and hundreds more immersive VR titles all for one monthly fee.

    Website: LINK

  • Case Study: Hard Rock International Leverages VIVE VR For $1.5 Billion AEC Project

    Case Study: Hard Rock International Leverages VIVE VR For $1.5 Billion AEC Project

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    Website: LINK

  • Education Has Evolved with VIVEPORT– Back to School Sale Starts Today!

    Education Has Evolved with VIVEPORT– Back to School Sale Starts Today!

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Website: LINK

  • Education Has Evolved with VIVEPORT– Back to School Sale Starts Today!

    Education Has Evolved with VIVEPORT– Back to School Sale Starts Today!

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Website: LINK

  • Getting your green thumb with the serene art experience Fujii

    Getting your green thumb with the serene art experience Fujii

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    Intro paragraph

    Interview by Nathan Allen Ortega, Viveport Staff

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5InNQr3rFgo?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&w=730&h=411]

    Tell us a bit about yourself and the team at Funktronic Labs

    Funktronic Labs is a small studio based in Pasadena, California. We focus on forming playful connections between humans and technology.

    What were some of your main influences on the design concepts and world of Fujii?

    On a fundamental level, Fujii is inspired by the idea that we’re interconnected through nature — everything flows from that. In terms of visual design, we looked at a lot of aquaculture designs when coming up with the aesthetic feel of Fujii’s world; we were interested in creating a world that felt like it was somewhere between outer space and underwater.

    Fujii is a dreamlike, artful experience that is equal parts art installation as much as it is an atmospheric puzzler. Was striking a balance between experiential interactivity and more gamified moments a goal from the outset or did it evolve over the course of development?

    We decided pretty early on to go in this direction, developing a relaxing, transportive experience that allowed users to move through the world at their own pace. We wanted to capture something of the essence of gardening — being immersed in nature, directly caring for and interacting with plants. The state of VR right now isn’t particularly conducive to spending long hours grinding away at traditional game mechanics, so we scoped our vision to accommodate this.

    Funktronic Labs has predominantly developed for VR lately, with a few titles in the more traditional games space. Share with us your thoughts on the state of VR and what you’d like to see from the technology or the community going forward.

    We’re interested in developing experiences across all kinds of hardware and platforms, but we’ve definitely been drawn towards mixed reality in recent years. While getting the hardware into people’s homes is a challenge, we believe the barrier to entry is actually much lower than traditional games. Controlling the camera comes very naturally to people, since it’s as simple as turning your heads, and the ability to fully immerse people in a world — away from their phones and computers — is a powerful thing in this age of distraction.

    What has the reception been like so far for Fujii? Have there been any particular bits of feedback that has surprised you?

    We’ve been really happy with the response! We’ve had quite a few folks tell us that it’s one of their favorite VR experiences to date, which has been wonderful to hear. While it wasn’t a total surprise, it’s also been fun seeing all of the users who have had out-of-body experiences with the game in altered states of consciousness.

    This game is adorable! Every bit of it is oozing with cuteness and charm. Were there any concepts, designs, sequences or so on that you had to cut from the final version of the game? I imagine that would be heartbreaking if so!

    There was so much! Our initial design for the game was much more involved than what we were ultimately able to build in such a short dev cycle. We wanted to go much deeper on the creature interactions, and we had a lot more narrative elements that ultimately didn’t make it into the final experience.

    How big was the dev team throughout and how long did Fujii take to make?

    We were a team of roughly 9 people (give or take, depending on the phase), and we worked on the project for about 14 months, including pre-production.

    Are there any plans for additional content to be brought to this artful experience that you’d like to tell our readers about?

    Nothing at the moment, but we just released the ability to have multiple save files, as well as enabled free locomotion.

    What do you ultimately want players to take away from their time in Fujii?

    We hope players will feel enriched, relaxed, and rejuvenated through their time in Fujii.

    What’s next for Funktronic?

    We definitely want to explore more in VR and AR, as well as more traditional “pancake” experiences. And pancakes. Lots of pancakes.

    The perfect way to celebrate a launch! Though a little bit goes a long way.

    Thanks for taking the time to chat with us, and congrats on launching another amazing Viveport experience!

    Fujii is now available on Viveport and as part of your Viveport Infinity membership. Not a member? Begin your free trial today and start poking at weird and beautiful flora and fauna!

    Come talk about your journey through the beautiful worlds of Fujii with your fellow VR adventurers over on our Community Forums!

    Website: LINK