I’m embarrassed to say it’s not entirely clear to me. Oculus was involved. However, I think Samsung may have done most of the heavy lifting? That’s my impression, anyway. I have no idea what split goes to Facebook, etc.
The phone is designed more or less ground up for VR, and it’s a Samsung phone.
New beta version of VD
• Added a VR Graphics Quality option in the Settings panel in VR
• Desktop and VR bitrates are now separate and can be changed more precisely with a slider
• Added stage tracking option (this forces the tracking to be centered to your play space)
• Small tweaks to the Wi-Fi banner in the Computers tab
• Fixed issue with hands floating away in some games
• Fixed game compatibility with: Gunheart, The Wizards - Enhanced Edition, Magic Realm: Online, Sansar, Vox Machinae (Oculus store), Onward (Steam)
Gadgeteer is out of EA
Features
Added ‘Online Mode’ functionality, allowing players to play machines (+ puzzles) made by other users and share their own machines online
Added Puzzle Designer, which allows users to design their own puzzles for other players to solve. Find it in Maker Mode!
Added 40 new household gadgets, including the rubber duck, soap bar and bowling ball
The Home Room now includes dioramas for all modes, each with their own interactable machine
15 new pre-made machines have been added to ‘Online Mode’. You can find them by filtering to Puzzle and looking for Metanaut_VR in the top right corner
A new secret button has been added to the Home Room
Added the ability to delete gadgets by placing them back in the library panel
The library panel now opens to the last tab you were viewing, after being closed
And still another trailer more for today
I just played a few games.
Form is a puzzler with very nice visuals, and cool sequences with alien machinery that are impressive in VR, but it’s super short. Like, 1 hour total.
Rush is a wingsuit-base jumping game which in theory I should love, but it’s super arcade, the handling of flying felt more real in AAAAhh! a Disregard for Gravity. It’s like you are controlling a drone, you can go from vertical drop to pure horizontal and not drop speed. A waste.
I also started again Ultrawings, it’s my pleasure to say that all these months of VR playing had a real effect, before it was the game that caused me the most motion-sickness, and now it’s fine.
schurem
4003
You are ready for a real honest-to-god flightsim brother. Give Il2 a go.
Biplanes in VR is just a superb experience. Il2 also has the best clouds this side of MSFS2020.
More things from Viveport:
The Great C is a 30 minute short VR passive experience, adaptation of a short tale from Philip K Dick of the same name. It’s pretty nice. The plot is at this point super typical, with post-apoc human tribes and overlord AI, but I guess that when it was published in freaking 1953 it was a tour de force in originality.
War Remains, Dan Carlin presents…. is another passive experience, very short in this case, about the horrors of WWI. It misses the mark, imo, as how the narrator sounds and how he expresses he makes it sound as something that is ‘woahh dude, total badass’ in its horror, instead just plain horror.
The Scream is another short experience, about the famous painting of the same name, which actually gets to make something original and fitting for the work in question, a series of experiences for the audience to evoke the feelings the painting captures, while at the same time be also educational about it, telling the story of it and its author.
Finally, I played an unknown title, VR Regatta and I was pleasantly surprised! It’s in Steam, too. I don’t see myself playing a ton, but as a VR experience it felt incredible, handling the rudder and trimming the sail with my own hands, seeing the sail turn around as the wind blew in one direction or another, and having to go zig-zagging to advance against the wind. When I noticed that I could change the balance of the boat by changing my body position slightly and inclining my head a bit, I was like
I guess the title is not more known because, well… it’s the type of title that is destined to be niche, unless you are a person who sailed before IRL and are curious of how a VR version will be in comparison.
I’m amused with the glider in Ultrawing (you know, plane without engine, super wide wings, etc). They have put a limited use jet to boost it, and it has a mounted weapon to fire balloons at!
I tried the Morrigan and yeah, it isn’t very good. Nice art style and not a lot else. Limited to a basic ass dungeon crawler and still feel clunky in lots of areas.
In the passive experience side, I also did Manifest 99, a surreal train journey. Usually I dig weird tales in VR, but the wait it tried to tie all together made me roll my eyes.
Finally, I also did Eleven Eleven, a somewhat ambitious short story VR experience done by SiFy where you live a story through six different PoVs that intertwine in different ways. It limits itself to 11 minutes, 11 seconds of play time, as it starts when only 11:11 remains before nukes destroy a fictional planet where everything happens. Overall it makes a good job in making the audience imagine a bigger story of what it is, by referencing past things and events, you can easily imagine this could have been done a rich tapestry of scifi story. The only flaw is that end it’s very obvious, from the end of the first PoV.
Nice added details in this commented version of the MoH trailer
I made the mistake of letting my oldest son know Half Life Alyx is playable on our Quest. Now I don’t have a family room or computer to use!
The game definitely does a good job of making the world feel more real. Lots of interactive objects and good physics.
this looks pretty awesome, about to try it out. would be amazing if you could play games like this with quest hand tracking.
Matt_W
4009
This is a pretty content-filled free update:
TurinTur
4010
No one has written about Phantom: Covert Ops, right?
I played the first mission, and the graphics are good, the kayak controls are very well done, and overall the immersion factor feels high, thanks to these factors, the overall polish and the fact that what you do in real life (be seated) is what you are doing in the game world. It feels cool to paddle slowly to not be heard by a close guard, or snipe targets, or paddle like crazy running away of a incoming patrol boat.
That said, it’s more a good immersive experience than a good game, you know? As a game, it feels very limited, it’s a linear stealth game without many options. The main idea here, of making a stealth game of a situation that by nature is linear and constrained (most of the time you are in water channels that only go one way, or bigger areas where basically there are two paths) is just flawed at its core.
TurinTur
4011
https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/738520/view/2859177682400988291
Breathedge, that looks like to be ‘Subnautica in space’, it’s aiming to support VR.
The reviews on Phantom turned me off, saying the paddling is overused and quickly gets tiring.
Breathedge could be cool, I’ll be aiming to consider a purchase once it releases with decent VR. :)
My current VR game is Project Cars 3. Performance is rough but it’s great to have a proper racing game like this, with a full career mode and gradual car acquisition.
Force feedback needs work and the AI sometimes drives right through me (which is much worse in VR than it otherwise would be) but I dig it. I am sure it will get a couple patches.
Well yes, there sure is lots of paddling. Then again that’s expected in a kayak game. It’s like complaining of too much punching in a boxing game :P
Haha yeah this is true! I guess I thought the kayak was just a small part of the game. It is certainly a neat concept though.
