The Ghost Howls’s VR Week Peek (2019.10.14): Asgard’s Wrath redefines VR gaming, Apple glasses may launch in Q2 2020 and much more!
It’s a crazy period for me: I’m going to depart soon for China to showcase our game at the WCVRI in Nanchang and so I’m crazy busy finalizing the demo for the exhibition and at the same time arranging the talks that I’m having there and at the View Conference soon after.
So I’m sorry if in these days I’m not very active on social media and I’m not publishing many posts on my blog… I can’t really find the time. Next Sunday probably I won’t publish a Week Peek either because that day I will be at the exhibition… I hope you will understand. And I also hope you will support me… we of NTW really need the support of all the VR community!
That said, let me tell you the most interesting news of the week!
Top news of the week
Asgard’s Wrath raises the bar of VR gaming
October, 9th 2019. Remember this date, because it is one of the defining moments of VR gaming: the day of the launch of Asgard’s Wrath.
This game made by Sanzaru Games together with Oculus Studio is one of the best and longest games ever released for virtual reality. It is maybe the first virtual reality game that really feels AAA. It has got awesome reviews everywhere, it is currently the highest rated VR game on Metacritic, and Upload’s journalist David Jagneaux, a professional that reviews lots of VR games every week, has defined it “the best VR game I have played to date”. It is clear that we are looking at a game that raises the quality bar of VR gaming, thanks to the talent of people at Sanzaru Games and the high budget offered by Oculus.
But why is the game so cool? Well, because it feels complete:
- It has a very nice setting: all is built around Norse mythology (Loki, Thor, etc…). In the game, you are a god that, following the will of Loki, enters the body of some mortal heroes that have to perform a quest. When the quest is over, the virtue they embody appears as a stone, and Loki will collect these stones for a secret project of his. Norse mythology is cool, and embodying a god in that setting is a fantastic possibility;
- It has astonishing graphics. If the install dimension of Asgard’s Wrath is above 100GB is because of the high-quality textures of the game. Because of this, the game sometimes halts to load new parts of the environments while you play (it is advised to install it on an SSD), but what you obtain is worth the issue. The environments are beautiful, and people love to spend their time there;
- It is long, offering more than 30 hours of gameplay. The game is filled with many side quests, side stories and a lot of stuff that will absorb you completely for a lot of time. VR games usually last 3–4 hours, so here people are paying for 10x the duration of a standard game;
- It is a lot of fun, with a game all focused on combat with different kind of enemies. Your helpers in the game (the “followers”) also add intereting dynamics to the fights you will have;
- It feels complex. The game is far from being linear. After you have gained new skills and the help of new followers, you may return to parts of the game were you have been previously, to unlock side quest that you can unlock only now thanks to the new skills. This increases the play time of the game.
And the price is $40, which seems fair given all the content provided. Asgard’s Wrath has been the main topic of all the VR magazines and the VR communities and I think that it is all deserved. VR needs high-quality content like this to succeed, so thank you Sanzaru and Oculus for what you have done!
More info (Asgard’s Wrath review on Road To VR)
More info (Asgard’s Wrath review on Upload VR)
More info (Asgard’s Wrath tips by Upload VR)
More info (Asgard’s Wrath original multiplayer mode)
More info (How Asgard’s Wrath work with Revive)
More info (Behind the scenes of Asgard’s Wrath)
Other relevant news
Apple AR glasses may come in early 2020
It can’t pass a week without us having a new rumor about the upcoming Apple AR glasses.
This week is again the turn of Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, that after having said that Apple glasses may come between Q4 2019 and Q2 2020, now says that he is very confident that the glasses will launch in Q2 2020. To be ready for the launch, the production should start at the end of this year.
Mr.Kuo is so confident in its prediction that he can even claim who is the producer of the chassis of the glass, that is not Apple itself, but Chinese company Changying Precision. This choice of a 3rd party provider has made some people wonder if the glasses will actually come out with the Apple branding, or they will just be an official compatible device. Personally, I think that if Apple commits in making AR glasses, these glasses will come out with its own branding, otherwise, there is little sense in all these investments being made.
Kuo confirms that the glasses will be light and connected to the iPhone. Since the glasses will have onboard electronics to provide wireless connectivity, it is also possible that these will connect wirelessly to the iPhone.
Regarding the price, Kuo just says that they will be cheaper than competitors like HoloLens.
In the meanwhile, Apple investments on AR continue also on the smartphone platform: a new rumor talks about rear time-of-flight depth sensors coming to the next iPad Pro, and that would be great for spatial applications…
More info (Mr.Kuo’s report)
More info (Roundup on the rumors on Apple AR glasses)
More info (Opinion on the glasses coming out with another branding)
More info (Next iPad Pro may have rear depth cameras)
HTC is working to solve the issues of the Vive Cosmos
Last week I told you about the problematic launch of the Vive Cosmos. This week HTC has started addressing all the issues that have been criticized by the community.
In particular, the Taiwanese company has released various patches to improve the tracking in dark areas and has claimed that the controllers’ batteries duration is not 2 hours, but between 4 and 8 hours. Since many games are not Cosmos-compatible yet, HTC is working with developers to make sure that the most popular games will be playable by all Cosmos purchasers. It is also working in improving the tracking both of the headset and the controllers, that seems inferior to Oculus’s Insight system at the moment.
The Cosmos seems to have a similar story to the Rift S, which had bazillion problems at launch. Probably, as it has happened with the Rift S, the headset will need some time to improve on the software side and solve many of the issues notified by the communities.
My impression is that the Cosmos will show its true value in 2020: in these months, HTC will solve all its issues, and at the same time will release all the accessories that are the true added value of this headset, whose strong point is versatility. And at the same time, HTC will probably give us more details on the phone connectivity…
More info (HTC talks about Cosmos problems)
More info (Comment on the news by Road To VR)
More info (TESTED’s honest review on the Cosmos)
Next PlayStation is the PS5
This week all the gaming communities have had a very big surprise. Finally, we know the name of the new upcoming PlayStation: after years of brainstorming, Sony has finally come up with the original name of “PlayStation 5”. I wonder how they managed to come up with this name, I’m really surprised by the creativity of Sony’s executives. Wow.
The PS5 will have some nice features. Sony has detailed that the new Dualshock controllers will be able to finally provide more realistic haptic feedback, and not only standard rumbling. And the triggers (L2/R2) will have adaptive tension, so developers will be able to provide more realistic force feedback to the players. Not bad at all.
We have no news on PSVR 2, but we are sure that this will come later on, not together with the launch of PS5. A new interesting patent by Sony shows a possible intriguing design of the headset, that may feature a mix of inside-out and outside-in tracking. What I found intriguing about the patent is that the controllers themselves have onboard cameras and this may open up the system for all new kinds of interactions. But it is just a patent, so it may not be actually implemented in production.
The PS5 will launch in “Holiday 2020”, which means nothing, considering that there are many holidays in 2020. But at least it is a hint that it won’t launch in a period without holidays. It’s something.
While we wait for this mysterious console, Sony is celebrating the birthday of the PSVR, that yesterday October, 13th had its 3rd birthday! To celebrate this great moment, the Japanese company has launched a very big discount on lots of interesting games and has announced some other cool titles! Happy birthday PSVR!
More info (PlayStation 5)
More info (PSVR 2 patent)
More info (PSVR Birthday)
News worth a mention
Pokemon Go is still earning lots of money
If you, like me, thought that Pokemon Go was not a popular game anymore, you have to think again. According to market analysts of SuperData, in August 2019 the game has reached its greatest gross earnings in a single month since its big launch in 2016: $176 million. This new peak was due to various reasons, mainly various events organized by Niantic.
This shows us how Pokemon Go, even if not a mass phenomenon anymore, is still a very popular game, and it makes a huge amount of money from its players. Kudos to Niantic for this long term success.
Oculus bans sideloaded content that infringes copyright
Oculus has clarified its position regarding sideloaded content. In the company’s intentions, sideloading is allowed only to let developers test their VR applications or to make developers distribute some test applications among their acquaintances. All the other uses do not respect the original vision by Oculus.
Oculus has decided to especially fight the sideloaded content that infringes copyright, like the custom songs for Beat Saber on Quest: users caught developing and distributing this kind of application risk the ban of their account and their device. As a result of this, the BeatOn service has shut down.
While it may seem another sign of Facebook’s walled garden, actually this time I understand the position of Oculus, which for sure doesn’t want to be sued by music major companies.
Toyota uses VR to train domestic robots
Toyota has just showcased a very interesting project where virtual reality is used to train domestic robots. The robots have been programmed so that they can learn a task from humans and humans can teach them by using virtual reality. The user wears a VR headset and sees the world as it is seen by the robot, and can highlight in these visuals the various objects the robot has to interact with, saying what it has to do.
It is also overly interesting that these robots have a collective brain: what every one of this robot learns gets transmitted to all the other robots of the same network. This way, Toyota can create robots that are smart enough to assist people at home. Or it can create the next Terminator: it all depends on what the robots get taught to do…
TilePop is the latest weird invention for VR haptics
TilePop is a research project that is half-way between a genius invention and a total WTF. It is a tiled floor that is made by inflatable balloons. The floor can be programmed so that every one of its tiles can be inflated so that it becomes a parallelepiped of a different height. This means that you can transform your surroundings into whatever shape you want: you can create a bench, you can emulate a tree, everything. This is fantastic to increase immersion in location-based VR settings.
Anyway, it appears a bit weird to me…
The Culture Show is the new show by Upload VR
The Culture Show is a new kind of video shot by Upload, that talks about art and storytelling VR experiences. It looks very interesting.
In the first episode, shot this week, the topic is the most interesting experiences showcased at the Raindance Festival.
VR Intelligence has interviewed thought leaders about VR
VR Intelligence, the company behind the important VRX event, has just published a long article where it interviews many XR thought leaders about AR and VR. In it, you can find some interesting insights.
As a media partner of VRX, I remember you that if you want to attend the event, you may exploit a very special -100$ discount code by just entering 5049TGH100 when you buy the ticket!
Virtual Reality has many applications in psychology
I have found on Reddit a post where a guy details many applications of VR in psychology to cure various mental diseases (anxiety, PTSD, etc…) but also physical ones (e.g. migraine). It is very detailed, so it is worth a read.
VR has its first fitness tracking app
The “Virtual Reality Institute of health and exercise” has just released the first app built specifically to count the calories that you burn in VR. It is a smartphone app where you specify the VR game you are playing, and then you enter when you start and when you finish playing, and the app will count the calories burnt by you while you are playing. The app contains various presets of the calories that you burn while playing the most popular VR games because the “Virtual Reality Institute of health and exercise” has computed the calories required to play most VR games.
Fun fact: according to these computations, in VR you can burn more calories than the ones you burn while having sex. Well, I think that sometimes burning calories is not the most important thing…
More info (VR exercise training app)
More info (How many calories you burn for every VR game)
More info (VR burning more calories than sex)
ARCore is the 8th most downloaded app on Google Play
ARCore, or better “Google Play Services for AR” as it is called now, is the 8th most downloaded app on Google Play. Since every person that wants to use an AR app on Android has to download ARCore, this means that many people are actually giving a try to AR apps on Android and this is great news. The sad news is that no AR app is in the charts of the most used apps.
We are close to knowing the launch date of Boneworks
Boneworks is one of the most awaited VR games of the year: due to its astonishingly realistic physical interactionsand the Half-Life vibes, this game has managed to create a lot of hype. And according to a comment of its creators on Reddit, we are very close to discovering its release date. I am so excited!
Some news on VR content
Some flash news on VR/AR content:
- Screensavers VR aims at immersing us into the most popular screensavers of the 90s!
- Cloudhead Games has released the gameplay video of the first level of Pistol Whip;
- Battlescar is a very frenetic and intriguing storytelling VR experience that is having good success in VR festivals;
- Burger King creates an AR campaign aimed at stealing customers from McDonald’s;
- Smartgym app exploits ARCore 3 to track your body and tell you if your body pose is correct while you exercise;
- Microsoft Flight Simulator devs will make their best to make this awesome game to support VR. We all hope that this will happen!
More info (Screensavers VR)
More info (Pistol Whip)
More info (Battlescar)
More info (Burger King)
More info (Smartgym)
More info (Microsoft Flight Simulator)
Some XR fun
How to start a beautiful day
Wait… what???
When there is a typhoon but your love for VR is bigger than your fears
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(Header image by Sanzaru Games)
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