The Glade 4.0

There is one, yes. I've only seen it referenced in specific game demos people have done, so I don't think Oculus has done a big PR push about it. But it seems to be theme-able to the game, even. So in the wild west shooter Dead and Buried, the chaperone system appears in-game as a ghostly barbed wire fence.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Nice, so hopefully will maintain even more immersion. Good deal.

So, my Google Pixel included a code to claim a Google Daydream VR headset.

I finally just got it yesterday.

Haven't done much with it except play around with the demo.

What do you guys recommend for 'best of' apps to play around with to see it's capabilities?

https://madeby.google.com/vr/

I haven't really been keeping up to date on the phone-as-VR scene.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

If anyone's interested, vive is 100 bucks off now on the official site as well as amazon.com for Cyber monday.

I know the Rift was running a $100 store credit thing over the weekend, too, not sure if it's still on.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Just popping in to say that I set up my Touch last weekend, and have been fiddling with various stuff for it since, a little bit at a time as I can fit it into my schedule. I'll write something more in-depth after I've had time to spend with all my Touch-y titles (there's a fair amount of free stuff thanks to Oculus' first-party work, plus I dropped money on Superhot VR, I Expect You To Die, and Fantastic Contraption to add to The Climb which I already had).

Spoiler alert: The controllers track perfectly and are ergonomically fabulous and feature-laden.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Very cool, glad they finally got those out. So they implemented some kind of chaperone system to prevent people from cracking their heads open, right?

The "tracking your hands even when they're above the buttons" tech is slick. I'm just glad it seems like it's pretty easy to code for both the Vive wands and the touch controllers, which means more software period. Always a good thing.

Yeah, they call their version of Chaperone the Guardian system. You can set it to be either an outline on the floor or a wiremesh-y wall that appears when you approach it.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Alright, time for a little more meaty writing on the topic.

So once I re-arranged the room to give me a roughly 10x12 area in my office (I should be able to get that to about 12x12 once I do a bit more cleaning and organization around the edge of the room if I give up the long-term plans to put shelves on that wall), I unpacked the Touch box.

Inside the box are the two touch controllers, 2x AA batteries (one per controller), an Oculus sensor camera identical to the one that comes with the headset, and a weird hunk of plastic that allegedly can attach to the head of an X-Box One Rock Band guitar, providing a cradle for a Touch controller for use with Rock Band VR.

I started by putting the batteries in the controllers. They've got magnetic closures that allow a plate to slide off the grip area, and the seams blend perfectly with the normal construction of the controller, so you wouldn't even know it's there. Very slick. One battery in each, and I'm assuming they communicate wirelessly with either the headset or the sensor cameras.

So I set up the second camera. I've got a 30" Monitor, with my computer tower along the back edge of my desk beside it. I rotated the tower so the cables feed out the top-outside corner of the case, through the cable management area. The Oculus Rift's headset cable, then, is placed central to my open space along one edge (since my L desk now defines two edges of that space). The camera cables are probably 3m, which means that I can put one along the inside edge of the monitor, and one sits directly in front of the computer tower, near the other end of the desk. Oddly enough, the Oculus sensor setup program discourages you from pointing them in a converging orientation, preferring them to be more parallel, which ended up cutting off one corner of my expected playspace because of the camera's FOV, but with a little manipulation, I was able to get it to recognize the system's "optimal" front-facing playspace, which is, I think, 5'x7'. (There is support for two "experimental" 360 degree configurations, a two-camera one that purportedly supports a 5x5 space, and a 3-camera one that supports 8x8. I opted not to try the 2-camera 360, as the quirks of my setup would probably require a USB cable extension I don't have, and I've got my order in for the third camera, now.)

Once I got the sensors placed, the setup program detected that I was setting up touches, and had me hold a button for about five seconds at this time (I think, it might have been earlier) to sync the controller communication. Next, it had me confirm my height in the software, then hold one controller at eye level and point it towards my monitor. After a little experimentation, I realized that "monitor" was really shorthand for the center of my playspace edge. This wasn't difficult to figure out, as it's showing you in real-time, an overhead view of where it thinks the sensors are relative to the monitor based on where you're pointing. Once you set the "forward" reference that way, it has you hold a trigger on one or both Touch controllers and walk around the perimeter of your playspace. The controllers vibrate if the cameras can track them, so when they stop vibrating, you backtrack a little bit until they start again. Like I said, I discovered that one corner was cut off a bit, but it turned out not to be a big deal. It shows your controllers' path around the room as you go, and once you close a loop, it fits a square to the boundary you've created and tells you the dimensions, along with ticks that show the "optimal" space that they recommend developers target. Despite the corner cut-off, I was able to fit an optimal space to my room fairly easily.

Next, it has you step to the center of that space, face forward, and then put on the Rift headset so it can calibrate itself vertically based on your stated height.

All in all, the initial setup took me about half an hour. Now that I know where my cameras need to go, I can re-calibrate the whole thing in five minutes if I have to move a camera or something.

I will say that I did end up having to buy a USB 3.0 controller card (though I knew this a while back) because the sensors are very picky about compatibility. They're especially picky about latency, is the prevalent speculation. Previously, I could get by with mere warnings, but it didn't want to register a second camera on what it deemed an incompatible port. It's okay with one sub-par port, but not multiples. So pay attention to the compatibility checker. The card it recommended to me was $25 on Amazon with Prime delivery. I borrowed my step-brother's, in the meantime, which it was okay with.

On to the software!

So right out of the gate, once you complete setup and have the headset on, they launch you into the "First Contact" app. It's a standing experience where a little robot gives you disks that you can pick up and insert into a 3-d printer that prints virtual stuff for you to play with, as a way to introduce you to hand poses and the buttons in a very natural and slick way.

First up is a set of holographic butterflies, that you can entice to land on your hand by pointing your index finger to create a perch. I should take a note here to say that the index and "palm" triggers (it's actually facing away from your palm, but whatever), as well as all of the face buttons and stick that your thumb can reach, are capacitative. So the capacitance information, along with the state of the trigger press, informs the software on how to model your hands. Gestures like pointing, thumbs up, fists, the "finger gun", and an open hand, then, are naturally mimiced very smoothly and intuitively.

Moving on, there are also disks that create a lightgun pistol, one of the spinning party clackers, little rockets you light by pulling a tab on a string, and then they fly around bumping into things, and a weird little glowy thing that introduces a control mechanic that I think a few games will eventually pick up, where you point to create a maybe 2-foot glowing beam that has some momentum (so think of a semi-stiff spring that you're holding) and can grab onto objects with a button press, and then whip them around. I Expect You To Die does something a little similar, already, but less physics-y.

It's worth noting that when the gun comes up (and targets start floating across the room at various positions), it took me 3 shots to hit my first target, and that was mostly just me getting a feel for the grip angle. The tracking is dead-on and it's just so natural. Once it registered to me that there were simple iron sights and I could, you know, just look down the barrel to use them... it was easy to be pretty darned accurate, even with my off-hand.

Once you run through all the disks, the room gets deconstructed in a little cutscene, and then it dumps you out into your familiar (if you've been using Rift previously) Oculus Home living room.

So I'm going to leave my final impressions of setup and function, and then make another post or three breaking out individual games.

The setup was very simple, and the experience was painless as all get out. I feel like Oculus is really going for, and largely nailing, the Apple user experience where your first interactions with the product are taken seriously, guided simply but clearly, and great care is taken in presentation. I'm slightly miffed that the Touch-included camera doesn't have the 5m cable that the standalone camera (for 3-camera setups) does, it would have given me some more options with desk configuration, I think, and potentially allowed me to not lose that one corner. I could also do with an official camera-stand. I think I've got a good location for the third camera on a dresser next to my desk, but this is something that I think the lighthouses have a leg up on (wall-mounting). Tracking is perfect and low latency. It's easy to re-center stuff if you get turned around, and the guardian system is unobtrusive and configurable. Depending on your environment and sensor placement, you might have a few blind spots on the floor near your desk with a front-facing setup, but I think that's probably common across platforms.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Okay, so I've settled on doing mini-reviews of the games in the order I tried them.

My step-brother Evan loaded up VR Sports Challenge, one of the free launch bundled games, and seemed to be having a good time with the hockey, basketball, and football experiences. I don't remember exactly how hockey worked -- I know he spent a fair amount of time playing goalie, but I don't remember if it gave him opportunities to make shots on goal, too. The basketball allows you to pass to teammates until you get to an open shooter, and then take a shot on the basket. Football starts you as a quarterback, and then zips you over to the receiver to catch the pass you just threw, to be instantly tackled upon a reception. So pretty simplistic, but it seemed to pretty naturally read movements and the UI seemed mostly okay-ish in that Evan picked it up pretty quickly.

Next up, I threw on The Climb to try it out with the Touch controllers and compare the experience to the X-Box controller + headlook that I'd used before. It's an entirely better game. Using the Touch controllers to reach and grab handholds was infinitely more natural than the old control scheme of look towards a handhold and press either the left or right trigger, which is serviceable, but feels inherently gamey rather than like a natural simulation of a climbing experience. My one gripe is that the gesture-based re-chalk-your-hands input is annoying (you hold a button and shake your hand) and gimmicky. I'd much rather have had the game prompt me to reach down to my waist and pump the trigger a few times as a more natural emulation of the actual action. Perhaps in an update. The game performs even better now that I upgraded from my SLI'd GTX 660 Ti setup to a single GTX 980 Ti back in the spring or so. I can run the Rift oversampled (resolution settings on the Rift, since it's a standard display for the platform, involve giving you the option to over- or undersample the rendered image and then let the GPU scale it) at the 90 FPS, and the result was a responsive and lovely scenery-gawking experience if you take the time to pause and admire it. The game presents the world in a high enough fidelity to stand up to you clinging a foot or less away from the cliff face textures, and so on.

The next day, I also fired up Superhot VR to see what the fuss was about. The fuss is warranted. Superhot pits you at the center of a Matrix-esque bullet-timey FPS experience that is presented so that time only moves when and how fast you move. So now that it's in VR, you get to experience a sequence of scenes in which you're always outnumbered by people intent on killing you with a variety of weapons (knives, shotguns, pistols, SMGs, fists, etc.), but in order to even the odds you have the superhuman ability to freeze, take stock of your surroundings, and come up with the perfect way to dodge, grab weapons and throwable objects from around you, and dispatch them all by moving in this sort of slow, deliberate tai chi-esque kind of thing. Graphically, it's done in a very minimalist style, with the enemies rendered as red polygonal 3-d silhouettes, your hands similarly rendered in black, and everything being very simple with a low polycount. Most of the environment is sketched out very simply in large, blocky white structures. Everything except the environment (and things you're holding) is extremely fragile, so objects and enemies alike shatter whenever they strike something else. Amusingly enough, this is all justified as being a simulation of some sort within the game -- between missions, you're in a sort of cyberpunky trashy apartment with computer equipment including a big bulky head-tracking VR helmet you pull down over your head to start the level. So meta.

Anyways, having read about this game on and off whenever the game press would rave about it after demoing it at a show, I was pretty perpetually unimpressed. It's not much to look at, and the descriptions I've read made the game sound pretty simple. And it is, when you get down to it. But it's still challenging, because, like I said, the faster you move, the faster time moves. So it becomes a puzzle you repeat until you figure out how to efficiently deal with the bad guys who are surrounding and charging you. Every shot you take runs time at full speed for half a second or so, so especially with the SMGs can be pretty dangerous to use if you're not paying attention. It ended up being much harder than I initially expected, and pretty good, though I can't imagine, now that I've played in in VR, how on earth it would work without VR -- it released earlier this year on Steam as a non-VR title. My only gripe is that the in-apartment UI is kind of awful -- I assume there's got to be a way to replay previous missions, but damned if I can figure out how (and if there isn't, that's a different strike against), and the checkpoint system it uses exclusively is a major throwback. When I had Evan try the game out, he ended up playing much longer than I did, and now I'm not sure I'll ever get a chance to play those missions...

(Which brings up a point that's worth making -- Oculus, get your **** together and let me set up a guest profile that can access my local games library so when I try to evangelize your cool **** they're not earning my achievements, can have a different height and IPD pre-configured -- fortunately Evan and I are about the same height and IPD -- and have their own set of saved games, campaign progress, and multiplayer handles as the games get more robust.)

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

One gripe I have with VR titles to date is that they seem to fall into 4 categories: small single-player sandboxy physics "games" like First Contact, Job Simulator, and Toybox; not-really-game "experiences" that are little more than 360 degree photos or rendered film scenes; match-made multiplayer-only titles; and more substantial games that are basically a game from ten years ago with the ability to freelook in 3d pasted on. My issue with the first category is that they rarely have much depth and staying power to justify their often-overpriced cost; with the second that I'm basically done with them in less time than it took to download them; with the fourth that it seems a waste of development time to make an outdated game with a limited audience that does nothing creative or exciting with the new medium; and with the fourth that I'm at a point in my multiplayer gaming where I most want to play with my friends, not random strangers. And, well, my friends don't have the new stuff yet, and may not for another generation or two of the tech.

Which is where the next one falls short, for me. Dead and Buried is a wild-west shootout that lets you dual wield revolvers in 2v2 matches over the internet. And, well, as nice as the game looks, that just doesn't hold my interest. The gunplay is good, and it's got a target range practice mode with moving and pop-up targets, so I can (and have) at least get some time in with that. It's perfectly adequate, the guns shoot like you'd want them to, you flip the cylinder open and then flick it back shut to reload. While I can fire almost as accurately with my left hand as my right, trying to shoot with both at the same time is a recipe for tanking my accuracy, even if it's fun as hell. So that's a no-no in practice where you get points for streaks of hits, though it's probably more useful in the shootouts. Nice to have as a free title, maybe I'll work up the impetus to go get humiliated online against strangers sometime.

Next up, I fired up I Expect You to Die, which is probably my favorite Touch game on the Rift so far. It's a seated experience that uses Touch -- something that I appreciate that Oculus recognizes a market for since early-adopting Vive fans probably represent a pretty privileged subset of the gamer population in having housing that can accommodate a modest-to-large gaming room that doesn't have to house permanent furniture etc., as I keep arguing with Vive fanboys online. This is an experience that European apartment dwellers can enjoy, too, and it's not belittled at all for it.

In I Expect You to Die, you play as the latest recruit to a spy agency. The whole thing has this great tongue-in-cheek, not-quite-campy retro-60's tone to it, and it's definitely designed to riff off of early bond, Austin Powers, and maybe even No One Lives Forever. Your training film (from an actual film projector, though it's not reel-to-reel, sadly) explains that agents find themselves routinely in very tricky situations and need to think fast and be clever and creative and, well, most aren't up for the task. They'll try to train you as well as they can, but frankly, they do expect you to die. The game is essentially a real-time puzzle adventure game that pits you against a series of missions after training you to use the game's interface, essentially.

The first mission, for instance, has you stealing an evil villain's car from an airplane mid-flight. The car is outfitted with all the best tropey spy-flick tech, including a retinal scan-cum-laser-defense system (hint -- dodge your head) upon turning the ignition, backed up by a cartoony bomb you have to diffuse, and so on. It's simply fantastic, and the writing is hilarious. You can repeat missions to go above and beyond to unlock achievements, and so on, and there's just all kinds of great care put into making this game fun.

Ripcoil suffers the same problem as Dead and Buried, in that aside from a practice mode that's the equivalent of playing tennis against a wall, you have to venture online to play an opponent on the internet. This is a game I would LOVE to play against my friends, though. Its got an aesthetic that's ripped straight out of 80's science fiction urban artwork and Tron, with lots of glowy bits and playing human Pong with a cyber-Aerobie. Okay, let's back up. You're facing your opponent across a large arena, maybe sixty feet across and thirty wide. You float in the air on a hovering platform that you can control by leaning left and right to drift one way or the other. There are glowing energy field things along the left and right edges that will reflect the glowing ring you throw at each other like a frisbee. Your goal is to get the ring get past your opponent to hit the wall behind them to score. When the ring comes at you, you can catch it... or you can charge up hand(s) by clenching your fist(s) and then punching the disk back at your opponent, speeding it up each time it gets punched.

The throwing and catching is super natural. If you've played any frisbee at all, you'll master it in no time flat without even thinking of the controls. Controlling your position left and right is a little trickier -- it's an analog input, but you're playing by feel with no real reference points except the speed you're moving. The real challenge, though, comes from getting the timing on your punching dialed in, and then reacting to that zooming disk when it starts getting fast.

It ends up being super-fun, and worth playing strangers on the internet. I hope they put a little more effort into matchmaking by rating or something, eventually. Halfway into my first match, I realized that the microphone in the Rift is active and you're in a voice chat channel with your opponent. This turned into a surprisingly pleasant experience, with the other guy (who'd been playing a bit longer than me) offering me tips and a lot of good, friendly banter and chatting about close missed points and so on. Not enough to make me want to add the guy to a friends list or something, but I was genuinely playing against a human on the other end and we were having fun together, rather than simply playing against a silent avatar that probably behaved like a person was controlling it.

Finally, the last game I've played thus far is The Unspoken. Again, this is another game that offers up the bulk of its value in online multiplayer. And that I'm absolutely pants at. But it's fun, and I want it to develop more (and word is, it's going to receive multiple free updates in 2017 to add features and flesh out other stuff).

The high concept of the game (which might be a bit grandiose to say, but whatever) is that there are mages among us, and they can access an astral plane-like shadow version of the city (explicitly Chicago, I think) around them to duel in the streets. The tutorial, which features fairly decent writing that makes me hunger for a single-player story campaign of some sort, walks you through the different gesture-based spells you can cast, from simple fireballs you summon by holding your dominant hand's trigger and then throw or a basic shield you can summon with your off-hand to reflect simpler spells, to spells that require gathering energy from the environment and then using specific gestures or multi-stage spells to cast more powerful shields and attacks.

You can take cover in your environment by hopping around to different pedestals from which to fight. The tutorial and practice modes pit you against some pretty easy-to-defeat AI.. I'd settle for a few different difficulties while I wait for additional story-modes. The game's menu system is set up as a bunch of rather nice diagetic interface bits in your apartment. Among the announced to-be-delivered content updates will be additional spells, classes of caster, and duel locations.

So yeah. Thus far, my top five games for the VR are, in no particular order, The Climb, The Unspoken, Ripcoil, Superhot VR, and I Expect You to Die.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Oh, it also bears mentioning that I Expect You to Die has the best opening credits sequence I've seen for a video game in years. And probably more awesome than most movies in the last decade, too. Pardon the occasionally disorienting freelooking; a) this isn't my video, and b) it's pretty clear that we're still figuring out best practices or tech solutions to recording or livestreaming VR experiences.



Ooh. And the launch trailer, to see some snippets of gameplay.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Oculus has just announced at GDC that the Rift and the Touch are each getting a $100 price drop. So you can get both for $598. That's huge. Ball's in your court, HTC -- can you afford to match it? You can't say Facebook isn't committing to its vision of bringing VR to the masses.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yup, that's great news across the board. Lower price, more adoption, bigger market, more development. Go man go!

The official reaction from HTC:



Welp.

I'm reading that as "Hi, we're HTC. You may not be aware, but our phone division is in the latter stages of a long decline, and so we've bet the farm on this new VR thing and can't afford to loss lead. Oh, also, Valve gets all the money on software sales, not us, so loss leading doesn't even work for us, unlike Facebook. Um, our product stands on its own, and you get what you pay for, right?"

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Though, now that I think about it, I might have to look closer at the Viveport news -- the entire point of that might be to try to wrest some of the content dollars away from Valve.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yeah, HTC is in unfortunate circumstances, but I wouldn't think there's any way they're going to compete at a 200$ premium. I had missed the Viveport news, apparently they're going to be offering a netflix-style subscription service for VR content? That's pretty intriguing. No pricing data yet, but that would also be a grab at some of those Valve content dollars.

Title pegs this title as a PS4 game but it's also available on Oculus and GearVR. Looks fun, think I'm gonna pick it up.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/darkne ... 33956.html

Ooh. Yes, I've got Darknet. I got it in my initial "buy a bunch of stuff to try" grab, and I need to go back and get more playtime on it. I worked through a couple levels and it showed promise.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades