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Virtuix Omni VR treadmill Kickstarter goes live, fully funded almost immediately
Within hours of going live earlier today, Virtuix's Kickstarter campaign for its flagship omni-directional VR treadmill has not only reached its fundraising goal of $150,000, but as of press time has earned more than twice that, with 980 backers contributing a total of $368,987. The campaign still has 48 days of funding remaining. Money earned through the campaign will be spent on transitioning the Omni from its current prototype stage into a product that can be mass produced, with production slated to begin sometime this December. Initial units are expected to begin shipping next January, though the campaign does acknowledge that "delivery dates are at the mercy of unforeseen manufacturing issues." While a final retail price for the Omni has not been disclosed, the Kickstarter's FAQ states that it will be "significantly higher" than the donation levels that currently include the Omni device, which start at $400. Each donation tier is limited to 500 units each, so folks with deep pockets, a love of VR and an angel's share of trust might want to start contemplating.
Star Citizen devs pay tribute to Oculus co-founder Reisse
The Star Citizen team has posted a tribute to Oculus Rift co-founder Andrew Reisse, who died last Thursday after being struck by a car that was fleeing a crime scene. Here at Cloud Imperium Games, the moment we saw the Oculus Rift, there was no question that we had to support it. Here was technology that would allow the player to inhabit the game world like nothing before. Even better, it was another crowdfunding success story: like space sims, big publishers had decided VR was unprofitable, and here were gamers proving them wrong. We are extremely gratified by the support Oculus has provided our project since our launch. Like us, Andrew and his team dreamed of letting gamers experience their worlds like never before. Now the device he made possible is going to let gamers explore distant star systems with a level of realism no one ever believed possible. We hope that's a fitting tribute. The Oculus team has also posted a memorial and Reisse retrospective.
Oculus Rift team taps ex-Valver Tom Forsyth, scientist Steve Lavalle
The Oculus Rift team has enlisted the aid of two more individuals: Tom Forsyth, who made a name for himself while working at Valve as a software engineer and on Team Fortress 2; and Steve Lavalle, a robotics scientist from the University of Illinois who has collaborated with Oculus since last September. Forsyth joins Oculus to improve the company's Rift SDK (software development kit) and work on "a few top-secret VR R&D projects." Lasalle is the new full-time principal scientist at Oculus, charged with tackling issues surrounding sensor fusion, magnetic drift correction and kinematic modeling. The Oculus Rift is a Kickstarter-funded personal virtual reality headset. The first Oculus Rift developer units shipped back in March, and will be followed by retail units at an undetermined point in the future. Our own bespectacled Jordan Mallory recently wrote about using the Rift on top of some spectacles.
Half-Life 2 on the Oculus Rift looks like double the trouble, fun
Oculus Rift owner and YouTuber Vaecon recorded a 15-minute session of Half-Life 2 on Oculus Rift, and the entire experience can be summed up in a few words, spoken less than two minutes into his gameplay demo: "Whoa. This is really cool." Valve launched official support for Half-Life 2 on the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, in beta form, on Friday. Valve programmer Joe Ludwig cautioned that this beta was "a bit more raw" than Team Fortress 2's Oculus Rift prowess, noting HUD and UI issues. Vaecon sported some anti-motion-sickness bands during his Half-Life 2 session, since previous games on the system left him woozy. Whether because of the bands or the game itself, Half-Life 2 on Oculus Rift didn't appear to affect Vaecon's stomach. "This is the perfect scene to show on the Oculus because there's a lot of action, jumping and – oh, I feel like I'm swimming," he said.
EVE Evolved: Hands-on with EVE's virtual reality demo
As EVE Online's tenth anniversary Fanfest slowly got underway, the press were led into a small upstairs room with chairs lined up and ominous-looking black headsets. The headsets turned out to be expensive prototype devkits of the Oculus Rift, a recently kickstarted PC peripheral that aims to make immersive virtual reality affordable for gamers. VR headsets are traditionally heavy monstrosities costing thousands of pounds and usually have input processing lag that make them unsuitable for high-action gaming, but the Oculus Rift is a light and highly responsive device currently clocking in at a more reasonable $300. We were sat down to take part in a demo of EVR, a new virtual reality multiplayer dogfighter that uses art assets from EVE Online. It was an incredibly immersive experience for those of us unfamiliar with the Oculus Rift, and even members of the press who had used the device seemed impressed with the game. Fanfest attendees were equally excited when a trailer for EVR was shown at the EVE Keynote on Friday, and many attendees got to try the game first hand last night. But what impressed me the most was the story behind the demo's creation and the possibilities that Oculus Rift could potentially open up if support for it were brought to EVE Online. In this week's EVE Evolved, I give my hands-on impressions of EVR, delve into the story behind its creation, and speculate on how Oculus Rift support could revolutionise EVE.
Attach more things to your head with Oculus Rift sensor, camera clips
Oculus Rift dev kits have been out in the wild for just under a month and the gameplay videos and mods keep trickling in. The latest mod comes for the hardware itself, two clips to add extra motion sensors or cameras to the back or front of the headset, both 3D-printed. Hackaday's Caleb Kraft designed and printed the attachments, one for extra, heavier sensors that threads through the flexible strap on the back of the Oculus Rift, and one that snaps right onto the front of the system, mainly for cameras."While browsing an Oculus Rift thread on Reddit, I saw someone mention how nice it would be to have some actual mounts for external sensors on their Rift," Kraft writes. "The idea is that adding additional sensors or cameras will allow us to expand the capabilities of the Rift."The Oculus Rift attachment designs are available for free for other 3D printing and VR headset aficionados via Makerbot's Thingiverse.
This is what playing TF2 with an Oculus Rift and an omni-directional treadmill looks like
In order to demonstrate the functionality of its "Omni" prototype treadmill, which the company calls a "natural motion interface for virtual reality applications," technology start-up Virtuix has released the above video of the contraption being used in conjunction with an Oculus Rift and Team Fortress 2.The setup essentially works like this: The Oculus Rift handles head tracking and display duties, while a Kinect tracks how the player walks/runs on the the Omni, and then converts that input into in-game commands. The Kinect is an in-development solution, however, and Virtuix says the Omni will include its own sensor when/if it ships to consumers.The company plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign in May, with final production units costing somewhere between $400 and $600, sans shipping. A second example video, this time showing a better look at a prototype of the device while in use, has been tucked away beyond the veil.
See Faith run in Mirror's Edge on Oculus Rift
We're pretty sure this would make us vomit, but those with stronger constitutions may be interested in playing Mirror's Edge on Oculus Rift. YouTube user Cymatic Bruce uploaded nearly ten minutes of the game in action.If you have an Oculus Rift and Mirror's Edge, you can get this running by installing Viero Perception and the FOV mod.Oculus Rift dev kits began shipping late last month to Kickstarter backers and include a free Oculus version of the Unreal Development Kit, though the promised Doom 3 BFG Edition is no longer included. Oculus has not announced a launch date for retail units yet.
UnderCurrent aims to bring deep sea exploration to Oculus Rift
UnderCurrent is an Unreal-powered deep sea exploration game designed for Oculus Rift from a group of university students over in the UK. The group became fascinated with VR technology and has already put together three different levels, though the collective notes that some of the core mechanics of UnderCurrent are still undetermined.These students are also maintaining a work blog chronicling each step of the design process, covering everything from music to artwork and team bios. The developers promise more videos and updates as work continues over the coming summer.[Thanks, Rasmus]
Thirty minutes of Team Fortress 2 in virtual reality caught on camera
The team at Tested got a chance play around with Team Fortress 2 using the upcoming Oculus Rift headset, and they recorded half an hour of gameplay for us to virtually enjoy. Not "virtually" as in we'll "almost" enjoy it, but "virtually" as in "virtual reality"-based enjoyment. Just watch the video.Kickstarter backers should receive their Oculus Rift dev kits by mid-April, with pre-orders hitting a little later in the month. For those expecting a kit, check out Valve's list of handy tricks for setting up VR in TF2.
Valve offers Team Fortress 2 'VR mode' tips and tricks
In anticipation of VR mode in Team Fortress 2, Valve has put together some resources on how to activate VR mode.Before you boot up Team Fortress 2, hook up your Oculus Rift, add "-vr" to your command line options in Steam and you should be good to go. You can save shortcuts to your desktop with or without the modified command line for quick-launching in VR or vanilla modes.You can find all of the above and more on Valve's Oculus Rift user guide. The Oculus Rift will have its first dev kits shipped this month; Kickstarter backers should expect theirs around mid-April. Pre-orders are currently open on the Oculus site, though these folks are last in line to receive their goggles sometime near the end of April.
Oculus Rift could work on current and next-gen consoles
Think virtual reality is the exclusive playground of the PC gaming elite? It doesn't have to be. Oculus VR's Nate Mitchell says it's a matter of development support and interest. "Basically, the bar for a great VR experience is roughly 60 frames a second with stereoscopic 3D support in Vsync," said Mitchell in a recent interview. "The biggest challenge, actually, is working with the console platform providers, Microsoft and Sony, to make your peripheral a licensed peripheral." Oculus isn't reaching out to consoles, however -- Mitchell notes that while the current generation can reach 60fps in some cases, it often struggles to meet the demands of the Oculus Rift headset. Still, he admits there's no reason it couldn't work, and seems optimistic about the incoming console generation. "We'd definitely love to work with the console manufactures as we go down the road to get the Rift onto those platforms."
Valve experimented with VR in other games, Team Fortress 2 'obvious choice' for Oculus Rift
Valve revealed that Team Fortress 2 will be the official first game to support Oculus Rift's VR headset, something Valve programmer Joe Ludwig told Engadget was an "obvious choice" for Valve – not only because of the size of the community, but because of how rapidly Valve is updating the game, meaning the community is used to being sort of a test group for new concepts."Team Fortress was sort of the obvious choice for this," Ludwig said. "The Team Fortress community is large and healthy. There are millions of people playing TF every week, but they're also used to us shipping a lot of updates." Team Fortress 2 receives updates nearly on a weekly basis, but it's not uncommon for players to see multiple updates to the free-to-play shooter in one week.Ludwig said Valve is currently experimenting with VR in its other games, but is hardly committing to anything beyond testing at this point. "We've played a bit in Left 4 Dead; we've played a bit in Half-Life 2. We haven't taken any of those other games to the point where they're anywhere close to being ready to be shipped; we've just sort of experimented with head tracking a little bit."Valve chose to partner with Oculus as opposed to creating its own display simply because it made more sense to go that way – the two companies each had something the other wanted. "We've done a bunch of experiments with various bits of hardware, but we don't have a display that we can ship. Oculus is actually out there doing this, and so we're partnering with them because they have the hardware and we have the software and we can help each other out. And we can both learn a lot in the process.""We don't know how strongly people will react to VR," Ludwig concluded. "We don't know how popular it will be, what people wanna see. It might be that we need to learn a lot more from TF before we move on to other titles. We just don't know what's gonna happen."
Team Fortress 2 is Oculus Rift's first official game
Our pals at Engadget toured the Valve offices last week to check out virtual reality support in Team Fortress 2, something Valve programmer Joe Ludwig has been working on for quite a while now. Ludwig reveals that Team Fortress 2 will be Oculus Rift's first official game and that Valve will push a VR mode update to players "sometime within the next couple of weeks.""This is a mode that everybody who has a Rift dev kit and access to Team Fortress 2 will be able to play, just on public and in the same servers that everybody else is playing in," Ludwig told Engadget. Initially, VR mode will be available to only Windows PC players – Mac OS X and Linux platforms are a possibility down the line, after Valve gets access to SDKs for those platforms. "We don't have a Mac or Linux SDK from Oculus quite yet, but once we get those, we'll get it ported over to those other platforms."Ludwig will provide a talk on Valve's hurdles porting the free-to-play shooter over to virtual reality at GDC in San Francisco in two weeks. The Oculus Rift is an upcoming VR headset that was successfully funded through Kickstarter and ships to backers in April. Oculus Rift's 40 "pilot" dev kit prototypes will begin shipping this month and pre-orders are currently open through Oculus Rift's website.
The Daily Grind: Would you play a VR-enabled MMO?
So next month marks the release of the Oculus dev kit, and if you have no idea what I just typed, think of it as one small step for virtual reality gaming and one giant leap for virtual world fanboy dreamers. While it's too early to say whether the Rift will catch on (or even function adequately), it's not too early to salivate a little bit and have a Daily Grind discussion or two. So, how about it? Would you put on goggles or a headset and play a VR MMO? Why or why not? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Valve's two talks at GDC 2013: VR is hard, Team Fortress 2 in your head
Valve will be giving two talks at GDC 2013, one to discuss porting Team Fortress 2 to virtual reality goggles, and the other focused on hurdles in developing for virtual and augmented reality.Valve programmer Joe Ludwig will lead the TF2 talk, titled "What We Learned Porting Team Fortress 2 to Virtual Reality," and Valve research and development man Michael Abrash leads the second talk, called "Why Virtual Reality is Hard (And Where it Might be Going)." Abrash will focus on head-mounted displays. Not "displaying mounted heads" – that's at the Big-Game Developers Conference.GDC 2013 is at San Francisco's Moscone Center from March 25 - 29. Other notable talks include a postmortem on FTL: Faster than Light, a talk from Capy on paid apps, one on The Walking Dead's art, and talks on mainstream games such as XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Assassin's Creed 3, Spec Ops: The Line, Hitman: Absolution, Mass Effect 3 and more. Peruse the list here.
In China, virtual stores may go one step more virtual
I love the concept of virtual stores. You whip out your phone and order merchandise for home delivery, typically using QR codes. We first saw these pop up when Tesco launched one in the South Korea subways. They appeared in the Prague subway system, in Sweden's Jetshop and with Toys R Us' mobile interactive virtual store initiative. Virtual stores have been spotted in Australia, Singapore, Germany, Canada and the UK. The system usually works through large posters of fake store shelves, all labeled with phone-readable codes. When you see items you desire, just point, shoot and order. Customers receive an automated message that confirms the purchase and work with vendors to iron down delivery details. Now, China is joining the virtual storefront revolution. According to Springwise, Unlimited Yihaodian plans to add ecommerce to public spaces, with a virtual virtual store experience. (Yes, you read that right.) The store will actually project over the real world, adding another layer of virtual into the virtual shopping experience. Retailers will be able to cut down on physical plant costs by skipping bricks and mortar and creating a straight path from warehouses to the consumer. It sounds like this may still be proof-of-concept project (if any Chinese readers can figure anything further out, please let us know!) but we look forward to seeing it pan out. Right now, here in Denver, it's 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Heading to a public square to play shopping games with my phone doesn't sound nearly as appealing as competitive shopping in a warm, enclosed subway. In the TUAW newsroom, we're having a debate whether this new option is more weird than cool or more cool than weird. What do you think? Drop a note in the comments and share your opinion.
Engadget goes hands-on with Oculus Rift
Former Joystiq heartthrob Ben Gilbert, now officially known as Bengadget, got some hands-on time with the Oculus Rift VR set at this year's CES. While Oculus isn't letting out the latest prototype for use, Ben took an old one through a new demo of the Unreal Engine 3-based Epic Citadel.
Proportional VR experiment shrinks man down to rat size, lets us play games with rodents
Sure, you can always play catch with the dog, but what kind of game can you play with a caged rodent? Well, "find the poster," apparently. A team of researchers from Universities in Spain, Germany, Austria, England and the US have put together a virtual reality system designed to let humans interact with rats at the rodent's scale, challenging human participants to find and lead the rodent to a unmarked goal. According to a paper published in PLoS One participants were "beamed" into the rat's environment by linking a head-mounted display and joystick to a rat-sized telepresence robot. Human players were then treated to a proportionally accurate representation of the game arena. The rat was there too, tracked with an overhead camera and represented by a human avatar. Participants were tasked with coaxing their opponent in front one of three posters in attempt to sleuth out which one represents the "winning" position. When both players are in front of the correct mystery poster, a bell sounds and the game ends. The game was primarily created to test a scaled immersive virtual reality teleoperator system, but researchers are optimistic the technology could be used to observe animal behavior from a new perspective. Check out the setup in action after the break, or read on through to the source link below for a detailed description of how mankind and some of nature's smaller creatures can get along in a virtual space.
Oculus Rift developer kits go up for regular pre-order, catch VR procrastinators
Anyone who's been wanting to make a game for the Oculus Rift headset, but hemmed and hawed during the Kickstarter run, now has a second chance. Oculus has kicked off its own pre-order campaign that offers the VR developer kit at the same $300 that it cost for the more proactive among us, or $345 for those beyond US borders. As an added incentive, the first 1,000 who pull the trigger still get a copy of Doom 3: BFG Edition to show what the Oculus Rift can do. Twiddling your thumbs will have cost at least a month -- these new kits won't ship until January -- but the pre-order still means a head start over competing developers that haven't yet seen the virtual light.
