Tag Archives: Virtual Reality

Train2Game News Hands on with VR at VRTGO

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Samsung and CCP Games will be giving all VRTGO attendees the opportunity to get hands-on with the best that VR has to offer.

VRTGO, the annual conference and expo that explores the future of virtual reality (VR) for both entertainment and business applications, today reveals that Samsung will have full retail units of its impending Gear VR headset available for all attendees to try as the event kicks off on Thursday 12th November at the Newcastle Gateshead BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead.

Samsung’s Gear VR headset is released in November, and VRTGO is the ideal opportunity to be one of the first in the country to try out the brand new VR technology that Samsung will be releasing to the wider public.

Jason Lovell, wearable’s senior product manager at Samsung Electronics UK (SEUK) commented, “The VRTGO event is very timely as we will shortly be releasing our first consumer Samsung Gear VR headset, so attendees will get a chance to try out the device for themselves and ask any development questions they may have.” He continued, “Enabling people to use the Gear VR headset in a free and open environment means that VRTGO attendees will be able to not only experience the product, but also engage with the development team behind it and understand many of the nuances that make it a stand out device.”

Samsung will also be joined by CCP Games, who will be showcasing EVE:Valkyrie and inviting attendees to experience a playable version of the hit 2015 trailer.

“At this years VRTGO we’re inviting players to join the Valkyrie and fight alongside the legendary Rán Kavik in our ‘Convoy’ single player mission on Oculus Rift Crescent Bay.” outlined Andrew Robinson, artist and narrative designer, CCP Games. “Built from the ground-up for virtual reality, it’s now possible to experience the visceral combat of EVE:Valkyrie in a completely new way, and VRTGO is the perfect place to showcase this.”

VRTGO will be hosted by respected technology journalist Will Freeman. The conference gives all attendees the opportunity to experience the newest developments in the world of VR, complete with keynotes and panel discussions.

A full agenda of the day’s events can be found at: http://vrtgo.co.uk/agenda/

Tickets for the event can be purchased from: http://vrtgo.co.uk/buy-tickets/

Train2Game News Merge VR Headset

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Walk with dinosaurs or fly into space all from the comfort of your own living room with the new Merge VR headset available to pre-order now, only at GAME.

Priced at only £49.99, the new portable headset is a great, affordable way for families to step inside a whole new world and experience the virtual reality phenomenon.

Compatible with both iOS and Android phones, the Merge VR headset allows customers to enjoy the extensive immersive content already on Google Play and in Apple’s App Store. Play games, explore an unknown world, or watch a concert in your own home just by downloading an app.

On 30th October, GAME customers can be among the first to take home the new Merge VR headset by pre-ordering online or in-store. From mid-October, customers will be able to get their hands on this innovative technology with demonstrations taking place in all GAME stores across the UK.

Charlotte Knight, UK Retail MD at GAME, comments: “Virtual Reality is the topic on everyone’s lips at the moment. With gamers eager to see what’s coming next, we’re incredibly excited to give our customers exclusive access to this new technology.

“At GAME we’re passionate about making the latest technology accessible for everyone. The Merge VR headset does exactly that, offering the Virtual Reality experience to gamers and families. For those thinking about Christmas gifting, the Merge VR headset is the perfect present for under £50.”

To make the new headset even more affordable, gamers can Trade-in their old software and hardware in exchange for cash or credit. Customers will also earn 2% back in Reward points on every purchase, which can go towards even more great games, tech and accessories from GAME.

To find out more about the Merge VR headset, head into your local GAME store or visit www.game.co.uk/MergeVR .

Train2Game News Adventure Time Magic Man’s Head Games music

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Award-winning composer Erik Desiderio is thrilled to share his uplifting soundtrack for Cartoon Network and Turbo Button’s virtual reality take on the Adventure Time universe with a music video reveal that features game footage alongside several musicians who perform the main theme live by combining banjo, harmonica, melodica, accordion and even whistling:

Adventure Time: Magic Man’s Head Games Main Theme Music Video

Adventure Time: Magic Man’s Head Games is developed by Turbo Button and follows Cartoon Network’s Finn and Jake on new adventures in full virtual reality for the first time. Drawing inspiration from classic platformers like  Banjo-Kazooie, players control Finn, while Jake sits in his backpack. Finn can attack enemies with his sword, or use Jake to smack creatures with his his inflated hand. Voice actors from the recent Emmy Award-winning show provide the voices in the game, which is available now.

“I was a huge fan of the show before being contacted about this project,” notes composer Erik Desiderio. “I especially enjoyed the first episode with Magic Man, who acts as the primary antagonist for this game. The playful nature of the  Adventure Time universe afforded me the opportunity to work with some of my frequent collaborators and incorporate lots of fun instruments. Somehow, though, despite their various talents, everyone insisted that they be able to whistle on the soundtrack. I had no choice but to comply and join in myself!”

Desiderio-known best for his work in film and on the SMS Racing and This Means War! videogames-was given the freedom to take the Adventure Time franchise into new waters with this soundtrack by including live performances to bring the already quirky and upbeat world of  Adventure Time to life. The featured whistler has sung on other projects and created sound effects with his mouth for the mobile game Stick to It, while the woodwind player recorded flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor sax, bari sax and also whistled on the soundtrack. The trumpet player performed trumpet and coronet. Finally, Desiderio himself played banjo, fretless electric bass, harmonica, triangle, melodica, accordion, shaker and can also be heard whistling throughout the score.

Learn more about Adventure Time: Magic Man’s Head Games:

Adventure Time: Magic Man’s Head Games on Fortune

Train2Game News 5K resolution virtual reality headset

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Starbreeze AB, an independent creator, publisher and distributor of high quality entertainment products, today announced a collaboration with Tobii, the leader in eye-tracking, to integrate Tobii’s eye tracking technology into Starbreeze unique 210-degree field of view, 5K resolution virtual reality-headset StarVR.

Eye tracking is set to further revolutionize virtual reality application where the user’s eye movements and reactions can trigger different reactions and paths in the experience. Most importantly, the implementation of foveated rendering (Gaze Prioritized Graphics), or computational graphics, can occur when the device knows the specific area the user is currently looking. With foveated rendering, StarVR will not need to sacrifice any of its graphics quality or resolution in order to accommodate the large FOV found in VR HMDs, ensuring a consistent, top-quality experience for users.

“We’re still in early development of our StarVR HMD and are therefore looking for best in class solutions to the components that we believe make the best VR experiences there is” said Emmanuel Marquez, CTO of Starbreeze AB. He continued” Eye tracking technology in a VR HMD will let us customize the experiences and enable even further immersion.

“Starbreeze is known for creating killer, high-quality consumer experiences, which is what attracted us to this collaboration,” said Oscar Werner, president of Tobii Tech. “The ambition is to deliver the most immersive and realistic experiences with the highest graphical standards and eye tracking components for an unparalleled VR HMD.”

Examples of Eye Tracking Enhancements to Virtual Reality:

    Gaze-prioritized graphics (also known as foveated rendering) – VR graphics can be improved and optimized by, for instance, rendering graphics with higher resolution in the region where the user is looking.

     VR comfort – Comfort in the VR experience can be improved by more precise graphics rendering based on data about the position and direction of the eyes.

    Gaming  immersion – Harnessing natural eye movement, environments and characters can be made more realistic and interactive in games through:

        -Natural targeting – To pick up or throw an object, instead of pointing towards the object through head movement, users only need to look at the object to interact with it. This interaction is natural, intuitive and seamless because it so closely mimics real life.

        -Eye contact – This fundamental non-verbal communication is critical to our interaction with others. Bringing the same principle to character interaction in a film or game makes users even more deeply immersed. Characters can come to life, interact or ignore you based on eye contact.

        -Immersive graphics and sound – Scary or surprising reactions can be created by knowing what users are paying attention to. Sounds, for instance and characters may appear from where users are not currently looking.

Train2Game News VR Mobile Store

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A new online store specifically for mobile VR titles has been announced at the Tokyo Game Show.

Nvia Group, the technological group, will present throughout this whole week its bet on the thriving virtual reality market for mobile phones: a virtual reality headset for mobile phones and its most exclusive feature: an app store, developed exclusively by the company with a series of games developed externally and in-house for mobile phones or smartphones which use Android technology.

Store MVR (www.storemvr.com ) will introduce more content and games during the upcoming months, from joint developers who want to take advantage of this distribution channel as well as in-house games developed by the studio’s development group which are being tested at the moment.

The store also introduces a section for developers to upload their games and other virtual reality contents on their own to be distributed in more than one hundred countries thanks to the localization of the store in 14 languages.

The website where the characteristics of the headset can be found is www.vxmask.com , and also includes in the price 2 free contents from the Store MVR.

The Store MVR is available in 14 different languages with Technical Support for the users in all these languages.

Victor Lamas, CEO of NVIA Group says “After two years working on this project, we’re very pleased to officially announce its launch, and what better place to do so than in Japan, the most predisposed market to adopt new technologies in the world”

Train2Game News VRTGO Laboratories

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Virtual reality (VR) is set to become a mainstream technology next year as Oculus and Sony release their consumer VR headsets in Q1 2016. The North East is well placed to cash in on its strength in this exciting immersive technology.

At the heart of VR innovation is a rapidly expanding cluster of tech companies in the North East, working on everything from virtual showrooms for world renowned car makers to awe inspiring documentary content, immersive games and sub-sea training.

VRTGO Laboratories in Gateshead, is a dedicated virtual reality business cluster, created to bring together a growing number of researchers, entrepreneurs and businesses working in the sector. Backed by Gateshead Council, the VRTGO Laboratories cluster has set itself the goal of ensuring that Gateshead remains at the centre of the VR revolution. Working with leading games and serious VR technologists as well as buyers the centre aims to be a central focal point for VR.

This cluster was born as a result of Britain’s first VR conference and expo, VRTGO, held locally and delivered by specialist digital consultancy Secret Sauce, in September 2014. This international VR event is set to return on 12th November.  (www.vrtgo.co.uk )
VRTGO conference director, Carri Cunliffe, said: “There is no better place to locate if you are a VR company. The region is home to innovators working in both entertainment and serious applications for big brands. VRTGO Laboratories and the VRTGO conference will attract leading buyers to the region and encourage university research. We are also hosting a free VR demo day on 10th September for anyone who is interested in seeing how VR solutions can improve their business – sign up today https://vrtgodemoday.eventbrite.co.uk.”

Global leaders Oculus and digital studios like Atomhawk Design, CCP, ZeroLight, Vector76 and HammerheadVR all delivered presentations at the VRTGO conference and it rapidly became clear that companies in Gateshead and the North East were playing an increasing role in exploring the exciting opportunities of VR.

Cutting edge technology and visualisation firm ZeroLight is among them. Jason Collins from ZeroLight said: “There is a key role for VR to play in creating commercial consumer experiences as well as in fields such as training and design. We’re looking forward to sharing some of our learning about design and building compelling VR experiences with other companies and being part of this growing community.”

Other important sectors in the North East such as the automotive and offshore industries show great potential for commercial VR uses, as well as huge consumer potential, and Gateshead Council is confident that the cluster will lead to extra highly skilled jobs in the region.

The future of everything from video games to sub-sea exploration could be set to change during 2015 as virtual reality technology takes hold. VR is moving ahead at a lightning pace.

Gateshead Council’s technology sector specialist, Marissa Brindley said: “The potential of VR technology is phenomenal. VRTGO Laboratories is ensuring that the North East is in the right place at the right time to take advantage of the revolution that looks set to take place.

“The facilities, expertise and support that are available here are second to none in the sector; businesses are already really feeling the benefit of being a part of VRTGO Laboratories. It’s impossible to predict the future but it’s clear to see just how exciting and important the developments we’re seeing in Gateshead could be.”

Train2Game News Big Data VR Challenge winner

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The winner of the Big Data VR challenge has been announced after they aided thousands in Bristol using virtual reality technology.

Epic Games, in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust, a biomedical research charity based in London, has concluded the Big Data VR Challenge, awarding $20,000 to LumaPie.

This international team created a VR visualization of study results of environmental and genetic factors that have shaped the development the lives of more than 14,000 residents of the city of Bristol. The Big Data VR Challenge brought together five teams over four months, resulting in an amazing combination of science and 3D design in virtual space, powered by Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4.

“We thank all of the developers and researchers who dedicated their time and expertise to this competition,” said Epic Games Founder and CEO Tim Sweeney. “This combination of hard science with the type of 3D development normally seen in the video game world will hopefully inspire new ways for visualization of data to evolve as VR becomes a part of our everyday life”

The Big Data VR Challenge brought together a large group of international developers and researchers for an incredible competition, using Unreal Engine 4 to unlock new ways to manipulate and interrogate the huge data sets that are now generated by many scientific studies. The goal was to give researchers the unique ability to manage, manipulate and effectively present huge amounts of data in real time, a problem that has been confounding the science community for years. While the Big Data VR Challenge has concluded, this effort marks the beginning of scientific advances that will continue with collaborations between Unreal Engine developers and leading-edge researchers.

“All the teams created solutions that address the hurdles of analyzing large data sets in new and ingenious ways,” said Mike Gamble, European Territory Manager, Epic Games. “LumaPie in particular have built a brilliant VR application that solves the challenge. They kicked it into the goal.”

LumaPie is made up of the creative studio Masters of Pie and 3D software development consultancy Lumacode. For ALSPAC Children of the 90s data, the team successfully created a fully functional, scalable VR visualization for the world-leading study, exploiting the advantages of both Unreal Engine 4 and VR to create an immersive environment built from the data itself. Within their end-to-end solution, users have full control with the VR space, intuitively interacting with and manipulating the data to aid research, whether working alone or with several others via multi-user support.

“LumaPie has delivered an interactive simulation with tangible outputs that can be applied and adapted to other studies as well. The results of this challenge are what we were hoping for and so much more,” said Iain Dodgeon, Creative Partnerships Manager at Wellcome Trust.

Additional research initiatives addressed by the four-month competition include the Casebooks Project, which examined 80,000 medical records taken four centuries ago, and genome browsers, by way of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. The other teams and projects included:

·         HammerheadVR on genome browsers — Hammerhead’s project compared fruit fly and human DNA, overlaying genomes in VR to show how the same genes across the two species can be mapped to discover which genetic markers potentially cause cancer

·         Skip the Intro on the Casebooks Project — Skip the Intro created a calming and colourful solution for the Casebooks Project, guiding the user through interactive tunnels of light that illuminate connections and patterns.

·         Pi and Power on genome browsers — Pi and Power presented an intuitive way to interrogate genomics data through the use of head tracking, using motion to produce colourful patterns that correspond to variations of genetic parameters.

·         Opaque Multimedia on ALSPAC Children of the 90s — Opaque Multimedia built a shared, collaborative environment utilising virtual librarians (or “data buddies”) to analyze data from the Children of the 90s genetics study.

Train2Game News VRTGO 2015 Conference

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This November will see the return of the popular future gazing VR conference and expo -VRTGO in Gateshead. 

Following last year’s sell-out event the organisers will be introducing new features and encouraging more buyers to attend the break-out sessions to meet technologists and developers.

ZeroLight, headline sponsor of VRTGO 2014 believes attending the event this year is valuable for any company exploring the potential of virtual reality, “VRTGO helps those inside and outside of the technology industry to explore the opportunities that virtual reality brings.  As well as being a showcase of VR applications, it provides real value to anyone thinking of using VR in their business”, said Jason Collins Marketing Director.

The conference and expo will feature companies such as nDreams, CCP, Coatsink, Crossrail, Microsoft, Atomhawk, Hammerhead Interactive and the list goes on….

Patrick O’Luanaigh, CEO of nDreams said, “We spoke at the inaugural event last year, and were hugely impressed by the professionalism, speaker quality and general feeling of excitement. This year’s event should be bigger and better, and we’re looking forward to sharing the lessons that we have learnt releasing titles on the Gear VR and developing launch games for the Morpheus, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.”

Carri Cunliffe, Secret Sauce MD and VRTGO producer said, “It was a great event to work on last year; so many exciting new questions about how VR will impact not just the entertainment industries but how we live and work. We will see more diversity of attendees as buyers look to see how VR can improve their business.  We are thrilled to be working on this exciting event again this year.”

To register today and take advantage of the early bird price https://vrtgo2015.eventbrite.co.uk

Train2Game News CRYENGINE supports VR

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Developers can now tap into the game-changing power of CRYENGINE to create virtual reality experiences following the latest update to Crytek’s all-in-one software solution.

The release of CRYENGINE 3.8.1 adds Oculus Rift support to the engine, granting both full licensees and Engine-as-a-Service subscribers equal access to the new VR toolset. The addition of VR development capabilities to CRYENGINE is complimented by initial support for AMD’s LiquidVR™ technology, which is dedicated to making VR as comfortable and realistic as possible. Future updates will bring support for additional VR platforms into the engine.

Crytek’s Frank Vitz, Creative Director CRYENGINE, said: “Since showcasing our own work with VR, we’ve seen an overwhelming response from developers who want to use CRYENGINE for their virtual reality projects as well. Our experience in stereoscopic 3D, combined with the engine’s rendering power and ability to deliver high resolution images at a high frame rate, means CRYENGINE offers a degree of visual fidelity that many people feel is foundational to a compelling VR experience. We can’t wait to see what other CRYENGINE users create now that they have VR capabilities at their fingertips.”  

Today’s update also adds OpenGL support to CRYENGINE, allowing developers to more seamlessly port their PC projects to Linux.

Finally, today’s update also empowers full engine licensees to put CRYENGINE to work when developing games for Android TV systems. With Android devices designed for the living room set to become increasingly popular, CRYENGINE ensures users are equipped to bring their vision to life for a whole new audience.

CRYENGINE is available royalty free for as little as 9.90 USD/EUR per month. For more information visit www.cryengine.com.

Train2Game News Rift available next year

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Since the earliest days of the Oculus Kickstarter, the Rift has been shaped by gamers, backers, developers, and enthusiasts around the world. Today, Oculus are incredibly excited to announce that the Rift will be shipping to consumers in Q1 2016, with pre-orders later this year.

The Rift delivers on the dream of consumer VR with compelling content, a full ecosystem, and a fully-integrated hardware/software tech stack designed specifically for virtual reality. It’s a system designed by a team of extremely passionate gamers, developers, and engineers to reimagine what gaming can be.

The Oculus Rift builds on the presence, immersion, and comfort of the Crescent Bay prototype with an improved tracking system that supports both seated and standing experiences, as well as a highly refined industrial design, and updated ergonomics for a more natural fit.

In the weeks ahead, further details around hardware, software, input, and many of the other unannounced made-for-VR games and experiences coming to the Rift. Next week, more of the technical specifications will be released on the Oculus blog.

Virtual reality is going to transform gaming, film, entertainment, communication, and much more. If you’re interested in building a next-generation VR game or application, everything you need to start developing for the Rift is available at the Oculus Developer Center.

E3 is just around the corner — this is only the beginning.