As I walked down Hollywood Blvd earlier this week I saw two VRcades within a block of each other. At 2 pm on a weekday, they each had customers in them, punching at the air. LBVR, including these humble VRcades, is hotter than hot this week and players are breaking into a sweat, with cash and glory as their prize.
Virtuix, creators of the Virtuix Omni treadmill, launches Omniverse eSports. Virtuix’s Omniverse is a cloud-based competitive gaming platform containing global leaderboards, player rankings, and an online social player hub launching in over 500 locations worldwide The first competition will be held October 27th in Virtuix’s very own Omni Arena, a first-person shooter designed for the Omni treadmill. With a prize pool of $15,000 and a collection of 18 top VR games all optimized for the Omni system, players in 45 countries can now compete in monthly eSports contests using the Virtuix Omni VR treadmill.
http://www.virtuix.com/omniverse-esports/
Nomadic makes Arizona Sunshine a tactile experience in Orlando. With a mix of physical props, set design, and environmental effects Nomadic blurs the line between the virtual and the real. Opening this fall in Orlando, Nomadic’s new location-based VR installation allows users to reach out and touch the zombie-filled world of Arizona Sunshine. The first of many tactile location-based VR experiences, Nomadic’s installations are built for easy re-configuration to efficiently accommodate new experiences.
Hugely Successful International Beat Saber VRcade Tournament leads to formation of VR eSports League, which scores immediate support from HP and HTC Virtual Athletics League started its first global season last weekend co-hosted by arcade management platform SpringboardVR and mixed reality streaming software LIV. A previous tournament hosted by Virtual Athletics League for the VR title Beat Saber involved over 2500 people in a record-breaking 168 locations, and now the league is expanding to more arcade titles like Space Pirate Trainer, Arizona Sunshine and Island 359 for Halloween, and QuiVR. Team-based eSports ready titles will appear at select VR arcades in the hopes of creating city-based professional teams in the future.
Mario Kart VR has made its way to America. Bandai Namco’s newest VR arcade opened Monday in Washington D.C. complete with Mario Kart VR, Argyle Shift, and Ski Rodeo. Mario Kart VR released in Japan last year it’s Western release highly anticipated. Fans of Mario and VR will have to act fast, as the arcade will only feature the experience for 6 months.
https://www.roadtovr.com/mario-kart-vr-comes-us-today-bandai-namcos-newest-vr-arcade/
Ping Meets Pong as Caesars Entertainment partners with HTC Vive to launch new location-based VR experience PING! Today (Friday), visitors to the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino can experience a wireless free-roam VR version of the arcade classic Pong. Developed by Modal Systems, PING! pits two players wearing Vive Focus standalone VR headsets against one another in an immersive game of Pong. Each player is a Pong paddle and must move physically left to right to volley a ball past their opponent on the opposite side of the room. PING! is the first in a list of Modal experiences making their way to Las Vegas. The thing I love about this is that Modal Founder Nolan Bushnell also created Ararti, for which PONG was the arguably the best game. Ping! Must have come from PONG. Just saying.
https://www.caesars.com/rio-las-vegas/things-to-do/the-wall-gaming-lounge#.W7YxvWhKhhE
SPACES opens new Terminator VR installation in Tokyo. Terminator Salvation: Fight for the Future opens October 25th at SEGA’s Joypolis Shibuya Crossing location. The four-person VR experience includes 4D effects, 3D facial scanning, and a highlight video reel created for users after their experience. SPACES partnership with SEGA Joypolis adds to a growing list of partners including Cinemark, Songcheng, Skydance, and more.
Bonus: SpringboardVR released a white paper last week indicating their top 9 suggestions for running a successful VR Arcade. https://loom.ly/_GTl1pU
Here's a link to the VRARA LBVR working group's white paper.
Both reports are free.
“The Great C,” VR’s first Philip K. Dick adaptation available October 9th for Rift and Vive. Developed by Secret Location, The Great C is a 37-minute long cinematic VR storytelling experience based on Philip K. Dick’s science fiction short story. I saw the first half several months ago before it was completed and premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Dick’s supernatural thriller is set in the post-apocalypse, where a young couple is torn apart when one is chosen to be the community’s sacrifice. The gritty, graphic novel feel of this 3D production is a vanguard of new, volumetric, narrative VR storytelling seen from companies like Penrose and Baobab. Launches October 9th. https://secretlocation.com/
The Unreal Garden, a mixed reality art installation, opens to the public in San Francisco on October 8th. Onedome features the collective works of both digital and installation artists in a collection of physical, audible, projection mapping, and augmented reality pieces. The Unreal Garden is an immersive interactive experience blending multiple layers of reality. Participants can move through the installation as individuals or groups and see the art coming alive around them. Individual art pieces will react to guest’s actions and immerse them in a living world. I saw an earlier, demo version of this at AWE in June and thought it was impressive. One of the most exciting things in XR is seeing where artists take the medium. https://onedome.global/
Owlchemy Labs demonstrates Mobile Spectator, an app for seeing into a VR experience using smartphones. Built with ARCore, the Mobile Spectator app can sync with a VR user’s headset and project the smartphone as an additional camera in the VR user’s 3D space. The phone’s position in physical space is tracked using ARCore and that data is sent over WiFi to the VR scene creating a digital camera in VR. Moving the smartphone around the VR user in reality acts as an in-game camera, as seen through the smartphone’s display. In addition, the Mobile Spectator can interact with the VR user in-game. While built with ARCore, the Owlchemy team believes the same functionality can be made using ARKit.
https://owlchemylabs.com/owlchemy-mobile-spectator-ar-spectator-camera/
HaptX releases advanced haptical gloves for enterprise use. Debuting October 3rd at the Future of Storytelling Summit in New York City and the GeekWire Summit in Seattle, the HaptX Gloves Development Kit represents the next leap forward in realistic haptics technology. With 130 actuators located across each hand, the gloves provide accurate and near instantaneous touch feedback between a user and the virtual world. The HaptX Gloves are the company’s first commercial product.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2018/10/03/haptx-gloves-dev-kit-now-available/#5a5eb1b712d9
TOMORROW. Saturday, October 6. 11am PST. Wear Your Best Avatar. The third High Fidelity Load Test in as many months seeks to continue the upwards trajectory set by the previous month’s record 360 avatar. Now the company is targeting 500 users. These events are packed with colorful, personally designed bespoke avatars, so the company has decided to celebrate this phenomenon, most appropriately in Halloween month by conducting its own “¿Quién tiene el mejor avatar?” contest. HF will award $50,000 HFC (High Fidelity Coin, valued at $500) to the coolest creations. And you never know who you might see there.
This story, which we hope will be a weekly feature, was compiled, written and edited with Michael Eichenseer.
