Oculus shows off how you’ll hang with friends in VR
Back at F8 earlier this year, we saw a demo of a couple of people interacting with each other via virtual reality — sort of like VR Skype. Now, at the Oculus Connect event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg shows off a much better version of the software. It’s called Oculus Parties Instead of just a color outline of your face, you can design animated cartoon-like avatars, complete with facial expressions. You can even create draw-in-the-air swords and lightsabers, and then play around with them in VR. To do this, you
One of the big announcements here though, is Oculus Avatars, which is a way for you to design your very own virtual reality you. Avatars will form the foundation of your identity in VR. From there, you can travel from destination to destination with your friends, even if they’re thousands of miles away. In a demo given at Oculus Connect keynote, Zuckerberg hung out with his virtual buds at a variety of locations around the globe. They could manipulate objects around them, like enlarging videos and playing virtual chess. And yes, even take selfies with virtual selfie sticks.
As part of Oculus’ new social push, the company is announcing Oculus Parties, a chat app to let you hang with friends, plus Oculus Rooms, which lets you create virtual hangout spaces.
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Oculus’ next headset is a cross between the Rift and Gear VR
Virtual reality is kind of stuck between two markets right now: an extremely mobile but lower quality, phone-powered experience, and an very high end, expensive, wired PC experience. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg says neither is really good enough for the future of the platform. Virtual reality needs to be high quality, wireless and mobile. Today at Oculus Connect 3, Zuckerberg announced that it’s coming. The project doesn’t have a name yet, the company now has a prototype wireless virtual reality headset designed to bridge the gap between the high end Oculus Rift and the portable Gear VR.
Zuckerberg showed off a very brief teaser video of the prototype device, but warned that the project was still in it’s early stages. Still the headset looks familiar — aping the comfortable frame of the full Oculus Rift, but lacking it’s collection of wires. Instead it, it has a (presumably lightweight) computer system mounted into the back of the headset’s rigging. Within seconds, the teaser was over. Oculus doesn’t even have a name for the project yet, but it’s success could create a new, third category for virtual reality — a cheap, portable, accessible and high quality experience. Sounds good to us.
Oculus is building a VR web browser, codenamed ‘Carmel’
Today at Oculus Connect, co-founder Nate Mitchell announced that the company is working on a fully VR web browser. It’s dubbed “Carmel,” emphasis on the “mel,” and is “fully optimized for VR.” This follows the likes of Google making aspects of Chrome on mobile, for instance, browsable in virtual reality. On top of that, Oculus is working toward more web-based VR stuff in general with tech called React. React is the framework for making web experiences more VR ready, all without the need to download huge program files. One of the demos on stage, for instance, was a car configurator from Renault.
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Watch the Oculus Connect 3 keynote at 1PM ET
Oculus’ developer conference is going down in San Jose, California this week and today the keynote address will reveal the big news. You can stream all of the announcements as they happen at Oculus Connect 3 on Twitch or if you happen to own a compatible headset, you can watch with NextVR. On top of a load of software news, we’re expecting to get more details on those Touch controllers, including final pricing and an official release date. The event starts at 1:00 PM ET/10:00 AM PT and we’ve embedded the stream down below for your viewing pleasure.
Watch live video from Oculus on http://www.twitch.tv
Source: Oculus (Twitch)
Xbox exclusive ‘ReCore’ gets a 30-minute demo
When ReCore was first announced, it looked fresh and exciting. An agile explorer flanked by cute, adorable robots in a sprawling desert. Oh, and Mega Man legend Keiji Inafune was attached to the project. The concept was intriguing, at the very least. But then the game came out, and its $40 price-tag made sense; in short, it just wasn’t very good. To help with ReCore’s less-than-stellar reception, Microsoft has announced a 30-minute trial version for Xbox One and Windows 10. There’s no fee, or expectation to buy, but if you do pick up the full game your progress will carry over.
To tempt new players, the ReCore team has pushed out a “significant update” to the game. Load times have been reduced, and both the music and visuals have been tweaked. On a technical level, you should also see “improvements” to the waypoint system, as well as better checkpoints, respawns and collisions. These changes, while welcome, will do little to save the game’s underlying faults. But maybe, just maybe, they can help people to look past those rough patches, and appreciate ReCore’s redeeming qualities — namely decent exploration and fun puzzle solving.
Source: Xbox Wire
Game Fnatic: See what it takes to be a ‘League of Legends’ pro
It’s on. The Engadget video series Game Fnatic follows four amateur and semi-pro League of Legends players as they attempt to win a spot on Fnatic, one of the world’s most successful and famous teams. The first five episodes are live right now, right here. Even if you’re unfamiliar with League of Legends, the debut episodes break down the basics and introduce the four competitors, each of whom brings a unique skill — and personality — to the series.
Game Fnatic is a behind-the-scenes look at Fnatic’s League of Legends philosophy and what its star players look for in a teammate. The competitors not only have to learn how to train like a pro, which includes physical activity and hours upon hours of game time, but they have to prove they can play well with Fnatic’s superstar lineup, which features Martin “Rekkles” Larsson, Fabian “Febiven” Diepstraten and Bora “YellOwStaR” Kim, all of whom have competed at the League of Legends World Championships. The 2016 Worlds tournament is live through October 29th, so now is a great time to get a closer look at what it takes to be a professional League of Legends player.
Game Fnatic is a 10-part series, so once you’re done devouring the first five episodes, keep an eye out for the second half in the coming weeks. You know where to find us.
‘Gravity Rush 2’ won’t get a holiday release after all
A bunch of PS4 exclusives were supposed to drop this year, but almost all of them had been delayed. The latest casualty? Gravity Rush 2. The sequel to one of the key launch titles for the PS Vita was supposed to come out on December 2nd, a few days before the long-awaited release of The Last Guardian. Unfortunately, it’s been pushed back to January 20, 2017. The game’s director, Keiichiro Toyama, has explained on the PlayStation blog that while production has been going smoothly, the “landscape for that release date has changed dramatically.”
He didn’t exactly elaborate on what he meant, but it sounds like his team decided that GR2 would have a better chance early next year instead of following all the titles released this fall and joining everything else coming out this holiday season. Toyama, who also worked on the Silent Hill series, said that they put a lot of effort into its online features, and they want to see as many people as possible playing online at the same time.
The good news is that the team will make up for the delay by giving people free access to the premium DLC they were planning to sell. But those hoping that they’ll be rewarded with a Vita version for their two-month wait will probably be sorely disappointed. Toyama didn’t mention anything about Sony’s forgotten handheld, and the game will likely continue being a PS4 exclusive.
Source: PlayStation blog
Cult classic ‘Voodoo Vince’ returns to Xbox next year
Voodoo Vince is coming back. The quirky platformer set in New Orleans and starring a voodoo doll who inflicts pain on himself to hurt enemies (because voodoo) started life on the first Xbox. But because it was an Xbox exclusive not many people played it despite how vocal its fans were. That was in 2003 when Microsoft was publishing just about anything in an effort to build a software library, regardless of how small the new console’s install base was.
As it turns out, the game wouldn’t work as a backwards compatible title on Xbox 360 due to “some convoluted custom code.” So for the past few months, Kauzlaric has been tinkering away at Voodoo Vince: Remastered. As you might expect, when the game comes out in “early 2017” for Windows 10 and Xbox One, it’ll run in 1080p at 60 FPS, support widescreen TVs and have overhauled graphics. But altering much else would be sacrilege, it sounds like.
While the Xbox team’s publishing strategy has changed pretty dramatically since then (Gears of War! Forza! Halo!), lead developer, and current creative director of first party publishing at Microsoft, Clayton Kauzlaric hasn’t forgotten about his team’s first 3D platformer. Over on Xbox Wire, he recounts the development period and the 13 years that’ve passed since the game hit retail.
“The gameplay is mostly untouched though, that was important to me,” Kauzlaric writes. “Vince moves, animates and controls exactly like he did in 2003. You can just see a lot more detail in his world when he moves through our twisted version of New Orleans ad the Bayou.”
And the project already has a high profile fan: Xbox chief Phil Spencer. For years he’s said that it’s his favorite game because of who he was playing it with when it first came out.
“I have two daughters, they’re 19 and 16 now, but there’s a game called Voodoo Vince that was the first game I finished with my youngest daughter on my lap and my oldest daughter next to me,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2015. “We were all kind of solving the puzzles together. For me, games are about the memories as much as the accomplishments. So I’ll always remember finishing [it] with my daughters.”
So, Blinx: The Timesweeper fans, there’s still hope that your favorite game starring a time-controlling feline could get another life.
So great, I’m already playing, special memories. Announcing Voodoo Vince: Remastered, Coming Early 2017 https://t.co/wxrxO06XXG
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) October 5, 2016
Source: Xbox Wire
‘Skyrim,’ ‘Fallout 4’ to offer user mods and PS4 Pro support
Bethesda and Sony have kissed and made up. Who benefits from that corporate make-out session? You, because mod support is en route for Fallout 4 and Skyrim Special Edition, according to a post on Bethesda.net. Skyrim mods will show up first, but there isn’t a timetable for when that will actually happen.
“We are excited to finally get modding to our PlayStation fans who have supported us for so long,” the post reads. “Modding has been an important part of our games for over 10 years, and we hope to do even more in the coming year for all our players, regardless of platform.”
However despite that ambiguity, when the remaster launches on October 28th it will run at native 4K resolution on the PlayStation 4 Pro — just a bit ahead of the console’s November 10th release date. If you’re planning to roam the irradiated Commonwealth in Fallout 4 with all the benefits PS4 Pro offers, you’re going to have to wait a bit. Bethesda teases that 4K rendering along with better lighting and graphics are planned for Fallout 4, but that those won’t arrive until work is finished on Skyrim.
If you were hoping for dragon-replacing, flying My Little Ponies, it sounds like your luck’s run out: Any mods can only use pre-existing assets from the games. Meaning, you can only make stuff with what’s already available in the base game. It effectively neuters a vast majority of either game’s more hilarious user creations like wrestler Macho Man Randy Savage replacing Fallout 4’s towering Deathclaw enemies, among others.
Source: Bethesda
‘Pokémon Go’ will add catch bonuses to make the grind worthwhile
As Niantic Labs keeps tweaking things to hold onto its Pokémon Go player base, it has revealed another new feature coming to the augmented reality game. Currently, player activities like catching Pokémon can level them up towards earning medals that toss off points, but not much else. Soon, there will be a catch bonus for earned medals that level up based on the type of Pokémon caught.
It seems like a way to make low-level grinding (perhaps with that $35 Pokémon Go Plus dongle) pay off visibly and as the post title puts it, increase the odds of catching rare Pokémon. The only problem? At least judging by the responses, players are really looking for ways to improve other parts of the game, like tracking monsters, or battling and training in gyms. Niantic previously said it would “rebalance” training battles, but that is apparently also still in the works.
Source: Pokémon Go
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