Category: HTC Vive

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HTC Vive Oculus Rift

The Next Wave of Hyper-Reality (Revenge of 6DoF)

Introduction

The recent release of Curtis Hickman’s book “Hyper-Reality” has inspired us to take a retrospective look at the state of roomscale 6DoF VR. This reflection is further reinforced by Apple’s announcement on September 12th of the upcoming iPhone 15 Pro (2024), which promises to bring spatial video into the consumer mainstream.

What is 6DoF?

The term 6DoF stands for “Six Degrees of Freedom,” which refers to the freedom of movement in a three-dimensional space. Specifically, it allows for movement along the X, Y, and Z axes, as well as rotation around these axes. This results in six types of movement: forward/backward, up/down, left/right, pitch, yaw, and roll.

The Advent of Roomscale

Roomscale VR takes 6DoF a step further by allowing the user to physically walk around a space that is mapped to a virtual environment. This freedom of movement adds an additional layer of immersion but comes with its own set of challenges:

  • Space Constraints: While roomscale VR aims to be immersive, the physical dimensions of the room can limit the virtual experience.
  • Obstacle Detection: Developers have to consider how to warn or prevent users from bumping into real-world obstacles while immersed in the VR experience.

The Evolution from Lighthouses to Inside-Out Tracking

Lighthouses: The Early Days

In the early stages of roomscale 6DoF VR, external sensors, commonly referred to as “lighthouses,” were used to track the user’s movement. These sensors were placed around the room to triangulate the user’s position, providing a high degree of tracking accuracy.

Setting up lighthouses

The Shift to Inside-Out Tracking

Recent advancements have seen a move toward inside-out tracking, where cameras and sensors are built directly into the VR headset. This eliminates the need for external sensors, making the setup more straightforward and portable.

The Pros and Cons

  • Lighthouses:
    • Pros: High precision, can account for environmental cues.
    • Cons: Complicated setup, less portable. And the cables, oh the cables. Calibration. Buzzy sensors.
  • Inside-Out Tracking:
    • Pros: Easier setup, portability.
    • Cons: May lack the ability to account for environmental cues that lighthouses can detect. May lack precision that industrial applications require, especially in larger and multi-user contexts.

Although inside-out tracking has made roomscale 6DoF VR more accessible, there remains a level of precision and environmental awareness in lighthouse systems that inside-out tracking has yet to achieve.

The Inspirational Impact of “Hyper-Reality”

The VOID and Beyond

Curtis Hickman, a co-founder of The VOID, pushed the boundaries of what could be considered real in a virtual environment. He focused on creating experiences where not just everyday phenomena but even the impossible felt real.

The VOID

The Release of “Hyper-Reality”

Curtis Hickman took his years of expertise and compiled them into “Hyper-Reality,” a book that delves into the theory and practical aspects of hyper-real experiences. The book covers:

  • Teleportation Techniques: Hickman discusses how to move someone in a virtual space in a way that they perceive as actual physical movement.
  • Sensory Engagement: The book also touches upon how to make fictional worlds feel tangible through multi-sensory engagement.

The Fall and Rise of The VOID

The VOID had a promising start but fell on hard times, eventually closing in March 2020 after defaulting on loans and losing Disney’s partnership. Despite this, Hickman’s principles remain relevant and are likely to influence the next wave of hyper-reality experiences.

This release has inspired us to look back at roomscale 6DoF VR to see how far it has come and where it could potentially go, especially with the integration of hyper-real elements.

Apple’s Forthcoming Spatial Video Technology

Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro, set for release with a powerful A17 Pro CPU, will allow users to capture 3D spatial videos. These videos can be experienced through Apple’s Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, slated for release in early 2024.

iPhone 15

Of course this was already being done by Intel Studios and MetaStage but the cost of production and completion was in the tens of thousands of dollars per finished minute.

  • Simplifying Spatial Video Capture: The iPhone 15 Pro aims to democratize the capture of spatial videos by making it as easy as point-and-shoot.
  • Enhanced Experience: The Vision Pro headset will enable users to relive moments captured as spatial videos in a fully immersive environment.

A Clever Use of Space: The Case Study of “Unseen Diplomacy”

“Unseen Diplomacy” stands out for its ingenious use of space in roomscale 6DoF VR. This criminally under-covered game employs a technique known as redirected walking, (or a form of it) which subtly manipulates the virtual environment to make the physical space feel larger than it actually is. Similar application exists in the oppositely massively successful Job Simulator that adjusted the environment based on the user’s play space.

Unseen Diplomacy

Future Implications and Directions

The principles discussed in “Hyper-Reality” and the upcoming spatial video technology from Apple suggest exciting future directions for roomscale 6DoF VR.

 

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HTC Vive Oculus Rift

Hatsune Miku VR Review

Hatsune Miku fans with a VIVE or an Oculus rejoiced this March, as Hatsune Miku VR was released on Steam. In this action/rhythm game, players use the controllers to hit musical notes that fly towards them to the rhythm of Miku’s lyrics. It’s a fun game, but fans of Miku will definitely appreciate it more than anyone going in blind.

Let’s dial it back a moment and touch on the basics. Hatsune Miku is a software voicebank created by Crypton Future Media a little over ten years ago. Without diving too deep in to the rich history of what is now known as Vocaloid, the company has released hundreds of these voicebanks, each personified with an anime character. Hatsune Miku was one of the original Vocaloids, and has garnered fame and popularity world-wide with her largest fan-base in Asia. Japan especially has always held a love for the Japanese Vocaloid, with her likeness and songs appearing in a plethora of advertisements all over the country.

What makes Vocaloid so interesting is that anyone can create Vocaloid songs and release full albums. There are literally thousands of Vocaloid albums out there, ranging over every genre imaginable at the hands of very talented independent producers all over the world. I could talk about Vocaloid for hours, so let’s get back to the game.

Hatsune Miku VR screenshot

Hatsune Miku’s first North American foray into VR was on the PSVR in 2016. Titled Hatsune Miku: VR Future Live, it wasn’t very well-received, even among fans. It was basically a concert simulator. Seeing Hatsune Miku perform live is a very interesting experience; (holograms of Vocaloids, a room full of passionate fans wielding glow-sticks, incredibly talented musicians playing the songs live, one of the greatest concerts I’ve ever been to). Be that as it may, perhaps having an awkward pricing model and not including any sort of actual gameplay may have been a bad decision in hindsight.

Luckily, fans finally have a Miku game worth playing. Hatsune Miku VR doesn’t quite play like the PS3 and PS4 titles, but at least there’s substance there, albeit a small amount. Hatsune Miku games usually have around 40 songs to play, with Future Tone clocking in astoundingly around the 250 number. Additional songs are released as DLC packages, which is promised with Hatsune Miku VR. At the moment though, upon release only eight songs are available with only two difficulty levels instead of the usual four. The eight songs chosen are fantastic, and most have been staples in the Vocaloid library for years.

Hastune Miku VR has four icons behind the stage, which music notes emerge from. In the center is Miku herself, dancing to the beat and singing complex lyrical rhythms. The notes will come out towards the player not to the rhythm to the song, but to the rhythm of the lyrics as previously mentioned. The object of the game is to get the highest possible score in each round, which is done by building combos from not missing any notes. It’s not necessarily more difficult than the other Miku titles, but for sure it’s different. I worked up a bit of a sweat playing on a harder difficulty. Even though you only need to hit 4 different areas, the notes come at you fast and furiously making this a moderately physical VR title.

If you’re a Vocaloid fan with a VIVE or an Oculus, you probably have already purchased this game and most likely have played each song several times. It’s an addiction, one that we don’t want a cure for.

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HTC Vive Oculus Rift

Review: The Solus Project – HTC Vive Version

The Solus Project – RoomScale VR Review

The Solus Project is a beautifully designed science fiction story from the same publisher that released the Aztec adventure title The Ball almost a decade ago. In fact it is marketed as “The Spiritual Successor” to The Ball. The premise is a Robinson Crusoe like affair wherein your ship crashlands on a remote, lushly verdant planet, with little hope of rescue and frigid nightly temperatures against which you must protect yourself.

The lush imagery of The Solus Project
The lush imagery of The Solus Project

I am a sucker for survival simulators – something about the mechanic of exploration, discovery, mixing and matching items and producing new tools with which to power up, forms the almost ideal combination for long-play satisfaction. And The Solus Project, as a game, does this well. So certainly I was excited – to put it lightly – to try this out on my HTC Vive: a rich graphical, near-AAA looking title on a remote planet where I could experience – first hand – the challenge of staying alive against all odds.

Loco Motion

The first thing that is clearly VR-based is the movement in the roomscale port: rather than use WASD to float around, here you use the now-established VR method of pointing at the ground and clicking your D-Pad to define a destination circle to which you then teleport. There is also the option to glide along the ground, and fortunately it doesn’t accelerate or decelerate or bounce; it merely gets you moving at a constant speed so as to allay motion sickness.

The 360 view from within the HMD is nice, with not lag or jutter and the detailed sound design helps to enliven the sense of immersion. The sound designer – Jonas Kjellberg – also happens to be the composer, whose lively orchestral MIDI score lends a mysterious and hypnotic undertone and, appropriately enough is peppered with sound effects and textures that roil in its currents. When things get foreboding, huge fat modular synth leads combine with mechanical cacophony to induce dread and urgency.

This is where most good things end for VR enthusiasts, unfortunately.

The inventory and combining/crafting system is a fidgety mess. There is an attempt at a UI but it is inconsistent and unintuitive. I could never quite master the dropping, versus selecting, let along combining actions. I would so much rather reach behind my shoulder to open my backpack, point and select what I want, pick it up and drop it onto a target, than this obtuse, after-the-fact system. You also toggle so that one of your hands turns into a tricorder that offers bio and environmental feedback. I found this extra step cumbersome and would prefer to see this as an augmented reality overlay in an in-world HUD.

Check out your handy tricorder where your hands should be
Check out your handy tricorder where your hands should be

Interacting with things in the environment is equally tedious. I was supposed to find things, sometimes in a certain order, and never quite got the hang of it. Right off the bat, I am supposed to get hints from pieces of paper strewn along the path I am travelling. Graphically, they were a little too backgroundy, but also, it took me some backtracking to figure out how to actually pick them up and look at them.

Now, I do appreciate that the text is handled within the world, rather than as an interface component, it just was not the most helpful system, especially given that these strewn pages contain important information about how to do things in this brave new world.

I found that the combination of time challenges (having to find shelter, heat or food before nightfall), having to manage the fidgety inventory system wherein the illogical crafting system works against you and the complexity of the craftables in relationship to your chances for survival prevent this, in its current stage of development, from providing a viable, long-term VR experience.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Desolate Planets

The company did provide an ad-hoc user guide for HTC, but much of it has already become obsolete with no new updates as of this writing. Furthermore, as user maxsmoke points out on that very guide, “the game appears to be setup for the Oculus Rift.” All told, I felt I could anything available to be done in VR, sitting down. There is nothing that takes advantage of the 6 pound IR-sensing thing strapped to my head, let alone the two lighthouses filling up the corners of my meatverse room.

HTC / Oculus views for The Solus Project
HTC / Oculus views for The Solus Project

There is talk of a sequel to The Solus Project, and I hope that the dev teams at Hourences and Grip Games work from the ground up to bring a refined VR experience. As it is now, TSP may be a great game for standard PCs, but the posthumous Roomscale port leaves a lot to be desired.

The Solus Project is a magical release for PC lovers of survival games, let alone in space, but those looking for a richly detailed, transportive roomscale VR experience should look elsewhere.

Title: The Solus Project
Release Date: June 7th, 2016
Developer: Hourences, Grip Games
Genre: Adventure, Simulation