**A New Form of Theater: Immersion Theater**

The latest innovation in theater experiences is immersion theater, where the audience becomes an integral part of the performance. I recently had the opportunity to witness this unique form of storytelling firsthand, and I must say that it's a game-changer. The production company behind this innovative experience has clearly put a lot of thought into creating an immersive environment that engages the audience on multiple levels.

The story takes place in a single room, where the audience is seated among the actors and is part of the performance from start to finish. I was impressed by the acting, which was indeed incredible. The actors delivered nuanced performances that added depth and complexity to the narrative. What's more, the story had some truly shocking twists and turns that left me on the edge of my seat. As I sat in that room with them, I felt tension building as they navigated through a monologue or breakdown. It was like we were all experiencing this together.

What struck me most about this experience was its novelty. I only learned about immersion theater from you last year and had seen it in action at a production called The Speakeasy here in San Francisco. While the core concept is similar, there's something unique about being immersed in a performance that feels like a new form of storytelling altogether.

While I applaud the efforts of this production company, I couldn't help but feel that the experience was augmented by my prior knowledge of immersive theater. Having seen it in action before made me more critical, and I found myself wondering how much of an improvement this game truly is compared to its live-action counterpart. The VR technology used in the game does provide some impressive features, such as the ability to pause time or jump between characters. However, there are still technological limitations that prevent it from fully replicating the experience of watching a live performance.

One of the most interesting aspects of this game is the way it plays with the concept of FOMO (fear of missing out). The developers have cleverly designed the narrative to encourage players to explore different story paths, which can sometimes lead to feeling like they're missing out on something. This tension between wanting to see everything and not wanting to disrupt the flow of the game is a key part of its appeal.

The game's recommendation for first-time players is to stick with one character or play it without using the "God powers" that allow them to rewind time, pause, or fast-forward through the story. This approach allows players to experience the game in an honest and immersive way, without feeling like they're missing out on anything.

The developers have also made a conscious decision not to provide every player with equal information at all times. Instead, players are encouraged to explore naturally and feel like they're discovering the story for themselves. This creates a sense of satisfaction and wonder when the full story is revealed, as it's clear that there's more depth and complexity beneath the surface.

As someone who has experienced immersive theater firsthand, I was intrigued by the possibility of playing this game with friends over Skype or Discord. By syncing up and playing together at the same time, players could potentially experience the story in a new way, taking diverging paths and comparing notes afterwards. This social aspect is an interesting angle that hasn't been fully explored yet.

For now, I would recommend checking out **The Invincible Hours** on all major VR platforms. With its innovative storytelling approach, impressive sound design, and immersive atmosphere, it's definitely worth experiencing for fans of VR gaming and theater alike.

In conclusion, immersion theater is a game-changer that offers a unique and engaging experience for players. While there may be some technological limitations to overcome, the creativity and innovation on display make this a must-play for anyone looking to try something new.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody its norm from Testim and its Jeremy from Testim welcome to projections our weekly show about virtual reality and augmented reality in early days of all this nascent technology early days still yeah and one of the technologies that's definitely still it's early days happy it's a broad idea I think haptics are super important I mean that's like the next frontier as far as I'm concerned beyond the standard you know getting VR optics right and any science fiction story about VR you know ready player one they have some type of full-body haptic suit and I think a lot of inventors and technologists are looking into those science fiction stories and imagine how they can adapt those to the real world so we've seen haptics gloves what the things that make you feel your fingertips all sorts of things but a full-body suit seems like it's gotta be coming it's the step beyond the controllers like we have haptics in the controllers and even that as Nintendo showed with the you know the old Nintendo 64 a little Rumble goes a long way so they're trying to expand that now throughout the body and one of the companies making a haptic suit at least for the top half of your body is hardlight VR they launched a successful Kickstarter earlier this year and they've been making the rounds in a lot of VR conferences showing off their pre-production prototypes now they stopped by our office to show off actual production units that we never used before they'll be shipping to their backers and to some businesses and consumers in your future and we chatted with their founder about half its technology so check that out all right Morgan thanks so much for coming and give us a demo of hardlight VR you guys work in haptics how did something get started so we actually spun out of the University of Rochester's robotics lab we started as a group of undergraduate researchers and I watched my brother actually try to use a Kinect and fail miserably I came back to the lab and said hey why don't we make a pair of gloves that's gonna let you feel virtual objects that was around the time the dk1 launched and we tried an original ADK one with Kinect and and haptic gloves and kind of spun out of control to where we are today so where are you guys today because I see is it a Kickstarter Jeremy and the vex wearing what I believe is one of your Russian prototypes yes have settled on a vest and arms yes so we are in the middle of production the factories in Shenzhen and production is underway the suits will be shipping November 17th is our kind of finalized ship date it was originally October but Chinese Golden Week and some custom stuff that we didn't anticipate got in the way so we finalized our ship date collections underway and yeah we have a suit with 16 feedback zones brain in the back fully actual between all the different points that strengths and entities effects whatever you need to kind of very create variables and they have to experience it so the type of haptic guys are this exotic experience again surface designing it's a vibration base right can you walk me through that how you guys chose type of motors you're using and what type of sensations you can feel with 16 different of these motors yeah so this is this model is really the trial-by-fire it was let's get it out let's see if people really want haptics and then let's see if they want it more or less complex and the vote has been clearly more complex the way we kind of got to where we are right now is we started with just the slew of motors we went on basically Amazon and like some UK haptic stories and bought every kind of motor and every kind of actuator we can get our hands on and just began to experiment what gave you the greatest breadth of experiences what gave you the highest fidelity with certain kind of effects were they better on and off were they better with kind of the ramping effects and which ones played better into our plan of dev tools and so we had an idea of what we wanted to see and what we wanted to offer and then we searched and kind of worked for custom actuators that would facilitate that hmm the motor we ended up going with were the ones that could do the light warm sensations that were really important to us but could also give you the kind of impacts that we'd kind of get people excited for the more loss the hardcore run-and-gun experiences yeah because high picks is a lot more than just getting shot it's also the handshake it's the haptic hug it's you know a pat on the shoulder of your friend it's also like the spidey sense look out behind you alert so all of these are so varied in what humans think they should be that it was important to us to find a motor that was important to do all that and so this motor is variable I imagine you're not the strongest and feel like a strong vibration to give you a sensation of being shot or or it can be just a light buzz right so developer tools something you mentioned you now that you have your motors locked down what can the developers do with it what type of patterns can they enable what type of you know if you think about controllers you know even the off those controllers are pretty complex in terms of what they can deliver yeah so our dev kit our actual SDK is locked down right now it's only share with our explicit partners and if anyone's interested in getting their hands on it they can just write to us and we're happy to get it out there and start experimenting with it or get them experimenting with it the suit allows for implementation in a number of different ways you can do things like haptic animations we're like oh I want to have this run across your body you can draw on a person and save that right you can also create emanations these kind of pre-programmed networking effects that will run from pad to pad like a swirl running across your body and then you find you finally have the pure programmatic like you know impact like physics based programmatic stuff you can do in the actual game engine and it's all injured based it's all cross compatible between different haptic products if you want it to be that's one of the things we're really excited about giving dad's full control and full creative control over both the intensity where the effects are happening and just kind of the speed at which they take place you know if the developers making a shooter for example they know when you're gonna be holding a weapon they know when you're getting it but a lot of that also has to do with what the player is doing has to respond to the player movements like if you're holding your hand up so how are you feeding back in the system what the player is doing is if space on the controller is just the icao based on the existing three point controller system or is there more data be fed back from the engines so we actually do have IMU kind of gyroscopic tracking in the chest and arms and so you have controllers any of the head and so you get full arm tracking it for a lot of the existing games that have high K in them it actually helps supplement those so you don't get the awkward elbow flapping and that's a developer actually cannot get to that exactly we have dev tools accessible to all to developers allowing them to take advantage of that use it however they want to we're not gonna lock them down saying oh here's our model use it because these people know their games better than we ever will so we want to just make their lives as easy as possible for a lot of the arcades and a lot of the warehouse experiences that are making their own content we also offer that they can just basically mount their pieces on the on the upper body so that creates a much easier experience for players going into them and easier shoot up shoot down and so it's it's really really useful to just be able to provide tracking because know I've done the demos myself where you see your arms and it's just a completely different experience yeah and the best experience with hardlight obviously is if the developers can be committed you're working with how many developers now we have 27 game studios that are announced so far we have more they're on the way a lot of them are literally just waiting on suits our biggest barrier to content at the moment has been the sheer number of suits we have available now you're also thinking about ways that players and consumers who buy the suit can get benefits to it if a developer hasn't specifically coded that programming like you know things like trigger write if you're playing you can is there a mode you imagine where I tell the suit I'm playing a shooter so if I press that trigger gives me a sensation of firing a gun no we haven't worked we don't have them I would specifically like that but we have an audio-based mode that'll take kind of like a sub pack or some of the other audio based haptic devices out there that will run the suit based off a bandpass you know when the big explosion goes off you'll feel it right and those experiences are actually great try listening to the jaws theme in any scuba diving game and it's absolutely terrifying it becomes a full-body experience exactly but it's our focus was on the the actual integrated content alright so what's next what's next for a hard life I mean once you guys have ship of these I know you guys have a wireless system you guys are planning on releasing so you're not tethered to power or data but like are you thinking about future motor systems and different types of haptics yes we are we're trying not to put the cart before the horse we're trying to you know fulfill our promises before we get to you know kind of up on our own Mount Olympus and because we have made it promised a lot of people that we're gonna deliver them a product and part of them know part of the reason we come out here is to show you hey look it exists right part of our campaign on a case they don't take our word for it come see it come try it but we do have plans we've actually now that the kind of parts our way everything's finalized we've actually been able to start getting our teeth back into the R&D and we're looking at hot and cold like kind of the linear actuators things that are actually gonna you throw a punch it's actually iMovie backwards we have a really really talented are in D team or really really chances are in engineering team and I'm super excited to just kind of let them off leash again because this this came out of a student project that spun out and then the engineering was really gathered and we produced this and time out of out of a University of Iowa was so short to produce this that I'm super excited to what see what we're gonna get for the next models awesome and so are we thank you so much for coming and sharing with us about having me awesome okay alright Jeremy so there I think there are two things to talk about here one the the base promise of this experience and then the software and the support cuz anyone gotta have questions about you do with it right so right you know it's it it's a vest I like the way they have their arm pieces or they're attached to it it's easy to put on you just zip bring up a vest tie to the side didn't feel too hot wearing it they said that some of their customers want to know how to remove the arms so they're thinking about making the arms entirely module absolutely and on that vessel on these sleeves are 16 Rumble motors yes right there these big plastic plates and inside of each of these plates is a single motor that's akin to like a gamepad Rumble motor right and so you know Morgan talked about how they had tried and looked at different types of motors and for you know this version they chose something that was gonna be cost-effective for theirs because there are linear actuators to rumble motors we kind of want the spectrum there's no one type of motor that's gonna be the best for every type of experience right when I mix and match and so you know he came from academic background talk about doing the research so it's it's not different motors on different parts of the body I think they're their technology is once have a motor on 16 different parts of the body and in their implementation what we played this shooter you know it was enjoyable we played Sorento which you can download it's you know it's really available but the sorento team is they they're most proud of the implementation of these haptics and and i gotta say you do you do feel it especially when you're firing the weapons the and every weapon feels a little bit different you're firing an Uzi and it's this constant thing and the more the the single shotguns are a little bit more of a you know single kick in general I would say it's not enough of a sensation to to really make to sell the effect to me in fact when you're playing a more energetic game like Sorento where you're really involved in it I feel like the action of the game almost takes more of my attention away from the haptics the haptics are kind of like this underlying the background right like I actually wanted to kind of fade away I don't want the happiest to be distracting I think immediately for the purposes of you know a demo like everyone wants to feel a punch hit the gut like that's not gonna be enjoyable if you're playing you know super hot for how many hours I beg to differ you want the field of play I absolutely I want to have that kick and there they talked a little bit about in your interview a little bit the future of haptics maybe they will amp that up with kickers big solenoids yeah no but I want that okay maybe not in the multiplayer scenario right you know they made a really interesting point we were chatting with them about how some of their people some of their backers said how can I disable the haptic city game because potentially it is a disadvantage because when you're getting recoil from a gun you actually are at a disadvantage because it's gonna be moving your arm was your opponent may not have that right right it's the same as someone playing a 2-d game and turning down their graphics to get a better frame rate yeah fewer distractions blocking shapes but absolutely great but in single-player I want to be more immerse and I think we don't have enough experience with haptics and know how much of real-world haptics is it relative Rumble does it need to just make the game more immersive and I feel like at least initially low-level Rumble even if it's part at a place in your body that you don't expect it is gonna create increase levels or immersion see that's that's where I think I might differ with you again is that I whereas I felt it in my arms I was so excited by the game in its fast-paced I'm jumping around I'm firing in the air I'm running towards and I have these bad guys in my face yeah so much of that is already viscerally going on that the rumbles I was feeling in my chest you didn't eat it where's almost background noise huh and it didn't it didn't affect the immersion much more than I was already getting from the VR experience to begin with on it and you can use it as a cue a GameCube exactly so that's where I think maybe with a different game maybe more of a puzzle game or even like if we take for example Echo Arena there's a thing in Echo Arena where some bit where you can grab your opponent's quietly come up from behind ninja grab there there Magon right right letting yourself off them well if I could get a better sense that they just grabbed me yeah that might be very helpful and that's a very calm quiet game so maybe that would lend itself more to a haptic experience and speaking of like the actual placement of these motor is like the game that the vest looks very tactical these plates lots of place and plates in the ABS you know they're plates in the pecs and then plates in the back and so I asked them why you know how do they achieve this design is it for the aesthetics so it looks like some type of tactical vest yeah I just because it has that military look or is there some anatomical like designed to this and they said that in there a research coming from the academic background your muscles on your abs are the ones that have the most sensitivity no the most they they correlated how many muscles like the muscles to the motors right your muscles and your abs they put more motors there but in practice having six motors there and having two orders there probably isn't giving you that much more benefit right uh yeah I would I would think that a stronger motor right fewer stronger motors might be interesting maybe more distribution put more in areas that you normally don't expect to have to have sensation right so when there is sensation you notice it more right it's also tricky to get those motors as close to your body as possible I mean I really want I strap that thing on pretty tight there were still loose areas I think that's gonna be something that is like just the fabric that haptics makers use is going to have to involve some ingenuity maybe something really stretchy that really grips you like a workout suit or something like that now we also mention that the they're working with developers right so we're going to talk about like 26 or 28 developers and currently have signed up and some that unannounced but that is the chicken egg problem you know when you're making a third-party accessory and you're trying to get people on board and there is no like open standard for haptics what are developing you know if you buy this if you're gonna invest over five hundred dollars on this vest I don't necessarily want that just the audio subwoofer Rumble on this I want catered experiences yeah and I don't see a ton of developers jumping on this at least in this scale yeah you're talking about it from a development standpoint like you know how do you get people to develop for maybe a single SDK that is right Rumble yeah that's an interesting question and I wonder if we'll even see that until the main headset manufacturers implement some sort of haptic you know development standard themselves but it makes a total lot of sense for location-based VR right if you set up a tower Kade whether it stays remove sees and you're making your custom experiences and you're using rips revised you can program something and give those people paying however much for the for the arcades huh right a better experience by getting and those people will will benefit it's true and then you're talking about giving people an experience that they can't get at home nice it's not just from the the actual software itself but most people aren't going to have haptic suits and they're gonna be curious about and that and maybe they'll be more receptive to those sensations and you can be more dramatic about those things schools don't want they're only gonna play for you know 15 20 minutes 15 minutes half an hour right they're gonna want as much a much immersion as much sensation overload from this experience they're paying for another benefit of the suit that is isn't related to haptics is the the tracking that you get built-in oh right they hadn't unlocked that yet but this having this first version there are IM use in the arms that is interesting because that will allow you to do much better arm tracking know where your elbows are in particular yes and so this is something that definitely is it's a benefit wouldn't you think about going forward anyone making a haptic suit or things you're gonna wear on why not the trackers on there and right now it's I am you so you get improve you know I K right but there are opportunities to put you know mount in steam pucks or other systems to get you better tracking and give developers not only a chance to give you haptic feedback but take data from your body and they can be it can be another controller essentially so like if I have that feedback you know if there's a solenoid in my arm and I'm playing the example he sends like a boxing game you know I'm not pressing in controller I'm using my hands and so maybe I'm still holding controller and I'm holding my hand up I want the game to know that I've held my hand up and then feel a punch right here that would be my arm interesting to see a game developed for this suit you know ground up where maybe you are deflecting things and you run out of shields and each Rumble is a shield and you have to get just that in the right spot that would be fascinating totally I think this is a curious first implementation yeah it suits and I think that you know it's gonna be what they've told us the the location-based a b2b potential of this is high I don't think it's necessarily something that you and I are gonna necessarily do all some more time with it the Kickstarter was successful one hundred and fifty thousand dollars but only 350 or so backers I think that sound like a b2b kind of kind of product personally as a consumer I want haptics I just want more I want more kick I want you to hurt me we want Jen to so good luck too hard light VR I wish them the best cuz they clearly have a lot of thoughts about how to move this product line forward so I'd love to see what they come up with next so earlier this year at GDC we played a new game that came out since then called Killing Floor incursion zombie game you're running around in catacombs and you're fighting off zombies with a friend and you should play with a friend because it's a lot less scary that way well since then at OC 4 they've been developing this new horde mode and we got a chance to play that yeah awesome it's it's a free expansion for killing floor if you already own it it's gonna show up in your account and it's basically a you know your standard horde mode we are in one environment and you just fight a wave after wave of increasingly difficult zombies and and baddies that come after you and anyone who's a fan of the original killing floor on your desktop PC ya know that the developers paid a lot of attention to the gun mechanics and also the dismemberment model these are creatures that you can shoot their heads off shoot their limbs off grab their arms and beep them with them you could use a melee weapon to cut off their bodies it's pretty gruesome I know you're gonna want to watch some footage so we actually chatted the developers about this new mode I'll show you what we played hey I just had a chance to play Killing Floor incursion here it's the new update called holdout I'm talking about John Gibson hi John how you doing I'm doing great so tell me about holdout this is a free update for killing for incursion donors is that right that's right so we launched Killing Floor incursion in August with a full story based single-player campaign but a lot of the feedback that we got from the players is we want something with high action high replayability so we listened to what they said and we created hold out so hold out is a horde mode you can play with 1 to 2 people that and tell me about it is it it's you're basically in one environment and then what happens so you're fighting in an environment and it starts out fairly easy and you've got some basic weapons and then it just ramps up more more difficult enemies more difficult weapons but one of the cool things that we added for holdout that's not in the regular campaign is these power-ups so the power-ups give you that short power fantasy like you saw you picked up the berserk powerup you could just run around and just punch people and they would fly off into the sky or the vampire powerup you could steal their live so even though it's it's getting very very difficult you've got the power-ups to sort of to even the odds and as far as the enemies go are they the same enemies from incursion or have you are you introducing anything new the enemies are the same but we're using them in different ways for example some of the big guys that you were fighting as you got to the more difficult levels those are the bosses in incursion so in most cases you're only fighting well an incursion in every case you're only fighting one of them at a time in in holdout you could be fighting for over those boss characters at one time so it gets really really intense if I choose not to pick up the the powerup if I choose to wait and use it you know deliberately maybe when a boss shows up Wilmont more spawn or is picking that up sort of setting that cooldown timer for the next one to pop up all right there's no cooldown timer but saving them for the big guys is a really great tactic you know on the surface it's it's a very quick game type to get into but if you really want to last a really long time and get the high score you start using tactics like you saw the nuke powerup which you grab and it kills everything on the screen that's a really great one to save until you get four of those bosses just in your face trying to chew you up grab that powerup they're all dead and you can have three of those power-ups in the world at one time so you can stack them you can just wait and then when it gets really really heavy grab all three of them okay and you mentioned lasting a really long time Norman I lasted about ten minutes I'm pretty proud of that what is what is a really long time I mean a ten minutes is doing really well in coop I think the longest I've seen somebody lasts is fifteen minutes I mean solo I've seen somebody last 20 minutes but I'm sure that we would released this we're gonna get some some amazing players that are gonna last 30 minutes but but there will be a global leader board so we'll get to see who's the best in the world how do you keep that difficulty ramping up constantly you said that the levels could potentially go on forever right so we really don't do anything cheap like adding more adding more health to the monsters or anything like that but we have AI capabilities that ramp up so when the monsters first come out they're moving kind of slow they're doing some some kind of mild tax as it ramps up they will they will be sprinting out to you they'll be jumping in the air flying towards you more and more of the bigger more powerful monsters will attack the boss the guys that have bosses in the normal mode and they'll start doing even more dramatic and powerful attacks cool and this seems like it definitely favors teamwork you have to work together not just for reviving but for maybe working back to back what strategies have you guys found already work pretty well in the game just internally so stay close to each other the tendency is when the Horde shows up is is to run away and there all of these one guy run away you know I'm scared they run away but but back to back you know fields of fire and don't grab the powerup as soon as it appears you know share share ammo and health some of the tendency is you know players they're playing my Health's down 10% they'll grab the ammo or the health pick up meanwhile their buddies at 5% health so communicate talk to each other do you need this ammo do you need this health communicate on how are you gonna use the power-ups you know hey there's a big guy let's wait or the big guys about to kill me please grab the powerup throwing each other weapons and that's that's one of the great things that you can't really do in a non VR game you know I mean you can drop a gun on the ground but in VR you can just literally your buddy needs help throw them in a K throw him a shotgun that's super cool it's a great update and we look forward to playing some more all right thank you and we're really excited this is a free update that everyone that already has the game is gonna get so I'm very excited well thanks a lot John thank you alright so I gotta tell you I do like the power-ups that they've added to this it's fun because that's what really sets us apart from the game I think there's also one additional weapon but that the power-ups are where it's at it you basically spawn randomly throughout the world so you're fighting off these waves with your buddy and then you might see a powerup appear and one of you goes to get it and you both receive that power yep yeah the way they can you know slow down time for example I loved that co-op aspect where you know we were playing on a rooftop and it was back-to-back necessarily because I think that wasn't the best way it was basically I was watching you from across the rooftop shooting people are they're coming yeah and then grabbing power-ups you were splitting up mostly but it was chaotic and it was it was intense I don't know I prefer the back to back my character situations I won I want somebody to have my back because it's whatever's going on behind me revived me areas part I did need a few more revives than norm did but the the power-ups are definitely fun the the interesting part is I feel like we were so new to this game that there were clear ways we could have played it better one is by preserving those power-ups so like you just don't grab them right away cuz you can get I think up to three spawns in the world and then you choose when to use them particularly the nuke one which you know wipes out everything in the world you want to wait for those serious baddies to show up before you use those and I really love the the progression of weapons that spawn yeah throughout as you play I love the two-handed weapons this is one of those games like you play you know a five-game like onward and you built a PVC mount for with the stock for your controllers I want to play killing floor incursion with some type of gun mount because I was told those touch controllers up like this and I wanted to have a gun stock because you're looking down the sides if felt felt good it felt satisfy yeah I totally agree that the problem is all the weapons look and feel a little bit different so like do you grab your different stocks for the one that you need or do you just make one that's kind of like my favorite gun I like the carbine because your melee model set so if I'm holding you know my two controllers and I run an ammo I actually can knock them with the with the stock yeah and I have something there then it feels like uh huh I'm actually doing it they'll be fun to build I wouldn't be surprised if there's things on Thingiverse to 3d print to augment and hold on here are together are absolutely um I I don't like the melee weapons so much personally in games like that because the I feel like it back to haptics I don't feel like the it's the right feedback like as soon as I grab a sword and it's it's weightless I lost the immersion is lost and when I hit somebody and there's no feedback but the guns I've come to you know appreciate just a little bit of Rumble as all I need to make me feel like I'm actually firing well it's it's y-you know on the vibe the vive ones even they're a little bigger yeah maybe a little heavier I it feels like you're holding you a light saber handle it does have the better grip for that exactly but that's killing floor incursions holdout mode and it'll be out in early November both for the oculus platform and for the BI platform we talk a lot about games that haven't come out yet previews for games on our show but there also a lot of games are already out yet we've been playing and we want to take the time to recommend two of them that Jeremy you and I have been playing independently so what if you frame recently well there's a game that a lot of us backed on Kickstarter back when VR was brand-new and that that's the gallery right so that came out the part one came out I don't even know maybe last year yes I came out on the vibe platform one of the first games that had they introduced the teleportation mechanic for room-scale amazing when you would teleport it wasn't the whole rectangle your whole play space would be mapped out to where you want to move it that's right sense like okay that fire pit over there yeah that's my room scale right that's interesting because valve kind of adopted that for their lab yeah so anyway that the sequel to that has just come out whereas the first one was more of an adventure game the second one is definitely more of like a puzzle room like an escape room and it's not just one room it's like several spaces but I almost like we got to play this back at GDC and I took the headset off and the first thing I said to the guys was did you guys get a lot more money because like they we've really figured out graphics and and VR interface I think that this is a good example of a slower paced game with a lot of really interesting applications for VR interfaces so you're basically in this sci-fi fantasy world and Euler's and all of the all of the the the environment and the puzzles they involve using VR and interesting ways in there's also this telekinesis you know element to it where you're moving objects it's dicksterity a lot of it's like yeah not just your brain but like how finally can you move the the key to fit in the hole hang around yeah the wire it's like those carnival games where you have to avoid touching the metal to the other side right there's a lot of things like that and the the the presence is strong the environments are well you know well drawn and it's it's pretty solid personally I actually got stuck so it is a game where you know you're not going to run through there's an element of like you patients and required which maybe isn't my strong suit I actually I went to a YouTube video to say like what do I do next turned out like you have to do things in a certain order so it has that old-school adventure game you can go places and not be able to proceed until you go back and get the object that you need what I like about some of those puzzles at the design is that when you compare to a game like no I expect you to die you know or or games are a big button it's like puzzle rooms right games like interactions for some of those games are because of your big buttons big levers right here it's very fine control very near-field get up and around a puzzle look around it and and make your precise movements take advantage of stereoscopic 3d right and also milem is submillimeter precision tracking and make that part of the challenge both the mental figure out what goes where but also the dexterity requirement right and putting you in an environment where things feel real like everything feels technologically possible in VR it's just interesting and it's they did and they did a really nice job very cool but you have to play the first one to play this one oh no I don't think you really do I mean it's because you might have a better context for what's going on but there's no it's a puzzle room if you enjoy solving puzzles and especially like VR intricate like puzzles that require your body to move yeah absolutely pick it up it's on I think it's on both platforms I think it's in oculus home as well as steam is yes team yeah yeah what I've been playing is a game and we also got a pre before this year called the invisible hours now if you remember from one of our early episodes of projections I was super excited about this game because it was an exercise in immersive theater storytelling a narrative based game where the interaction is very very minimal you're basically playing as a ghost watching this 45-minute long story unfold now you're like you ask yourself well you're paying $40 or $30 for a 40 minute experience but that's not it you could you the idea is that you watch seven characters solve a murder mystery it's like almost like the movie clue but every perspective is different I think production wise I'm really intrigued by this title I haven't spent any time with it since our first demo at Silicon Valley VR yeah we saw it there but I'm super intrigued by the production of this because I think it's unlike anything else that we've seen they took real actors and they recorded them you know basically the performance cop performance capture in spaces that resembled what was being should you know rendered in VR is that right yeah so the environment is a mansion on an island so it's not that massive right it's like this really detailed two-story mansion that belongs to Nikola Tesla and what and there are rooms and scenes and and then people are acting out this this narrative but if you watch some of the YouTube videos like the actor who plays Thomas Edison in there like they are actually hiding behind boxes looking around the corner putting their hands on walls yeah as they're wearing these tracking suits to get the full performance and then all of that is then of course facially animated and animated for the characters and the question I think you had when we saw the preview was does this game need to be in VR like couldn't you play this on a flat screen and and with as a passive camera use WASD and a mouse and technically yes okay I think VR brings a lot to AI mean I think it's the same as asking whether you could play a game top-down or first-person on a 2d flat screen right you could play it RTS style or you could play the first person I'm playing the first person gives you a little more emergent while playing a VR gives you the extra level of immersion there are scenes I really want to spoil the story but if you're in a room with a character and you're following them they don't notice you cuz you're a go course but they're being honest and there the acting is incredible and there were some shocking twists and turns I feel tension being in that room with them as they're going through this monologue or as they're going through this breakdown well something it's actually this is a new form of theater I mean we I only first heard of immersion theater from you last year earlier this year yeah and we've seen a performance here in San Francisco called the speakeasy speakeasy which is very similar where you go into a performance there's three different rooms and you can follow this story wherever you want and there's no way to follow the entire performance with one place one point one we have we're viewing because you by necessity have to leave the room and miss something yeah so that that goes that's the same for this I wonder is your appreciation for this game is it augmented because you've seen this in live-action I would think that's actually that would make me more critical in this game because the real world immersive theater experience is far superior because it's many more actors than just a seven right there's some technological limitations and the game does give you some tricks like like I don't again don't want to spoil the story but mechanically you have the ability to pause time you can jump in teleport between characters you can you know rewind time fast-forward time can you fast-forward having never watched it or do you have to watch it in real time one you don't have to watch it in real time one okay and fast-forward and I think a lot of people are playing this it's on psvr it's on on HTC vive and oculus but a lot of people are jumping between the characters as you go through a chapter it's like I'm not gonna start chapter two until I've played everyone's seen everyone's perspective for chapter one my recommendation is the first time you play stick with one character or play it without freezing time without using your God powers without going back from the menu and seeing what everyone's seen get the honest one character experience or explore naturally and feel like embrace missing out on the store that's hard isn't it it is because then you feel feel FOMO I'm literally sitting on watching two characters have this intense argument and the audio is so good I'm here down the hall some something happening interesting happening yeah and all do I check that out or do I stay here well the game lets you pause time and that's your rewind time don't do that choose an option choose your adventure choose the story and it's okay that you're not gonna see everything because when you do go back and when you review it and it's about maybe four hours that takes to go through everything there are so many nice twists and turns that you're gonna feel very satisfied when you get the full story so that's more satisfying if you don't watch and you choose every adventure as you're reading yes yeah yeah that's it's interesting because we used to read these books when I was a kid the chooser in adventure yes and you do if you find a bad ending you do want to rewind time go back choose the other way there's no bad ending there's only what your first experience was versus your full understanding or better understanding of the full story and and credit to the writers credit to the the performance actors and quit the sound design I think they did a really employed really cool thing here with designing a space and making use of positional audio this was a Spanish team yes right yes tequila works and they did a sa did a PC game that was another similar time loop style game with the rewatch rewatch it a story of us so they're really interested in this type of story narrative experience we have to rewatch the pick out and get the full full breadth event I think if there's an interesting experience to be had here socially I mean it's not a multiplayer experience like that would be interesting I wish that you could have multiple people in this game as ghosts maybe like you could see them go into different rooms and maybe you could talk to each other but you could still approximate that experience if you just sync up and play together at the same time that's what I would recommend you phone maybe you're on skype you call up your friend you hit play at the same time and you both experience that story together and then maybe you go to it and take diverging paths and compare notes yes and I would say because it is a four chapters game and there's loading between the chapters make sure you sync up beforehand and oh yeah and make a commitment not to pause and not say it's or not to rewind to make sure it's all six that's called the invincible hours it's out now on all the major VR platforms but those are two recommendations for this week we'll be back next week with more demos more game reviews and more interviews until then we'll see you next timehey everybody its norm from Testim and its Jeremy from Testim welcome to projections our weekly show about virtual reality and augmented reality in early days of all this nascent technology early days still yeah and one of the technologies that's definitely still it's early days happy it's a broad idea I think haptics are super important I mean that's like the next frontier as far as I'm concerned beyond the standard you know getting VR optics right and any science fiction story about VR you know ready player one they have some type of full-body haptic suit and I think a lot of inventors and technologists are looking into those science fiction stories and imagine how they can adapt those to the real world so we've seen haptics gloves what the things that make you feel your fingertips all sorts of things but a full-body suit seems like it's gotta be coming it's the step beyond the controllers like we have haptics in the controllers and even that as Nintendo showed with the you know the old Nintendo 64 a little Rumble goes a long way so they're trying to expand that now throughout the body and one of the companies making a haptic suit at least for the top half of your body is hardlight VR they launched a successful Kickstarter earlier this year and they've been making the rounds in a lot of VR conferences showing off their pre-production prototypes now they stopped by our office to show off actual production units that we never used before they'll be shipping to their backers and to some businesses and consumers in your future and we chatted with their founder about half its technology so check that out all right Morgan thanks so much for coming and give us a demo of hardlight VR you guys work in haptics how did something get started so we actually spun out of the University of Rochester's robotics lab we started as a group of undergraduate researchers and I watched my brother actually try to use a Kinect and fail miserably I came back to the lab and said hey why don't we make a pair of gloves that's gonna let you feel virtual objects that was around the time the dk1 launched and we tried an original ADK one with Kinect and and haptic gloves and kind of spun out of control to where we are today so where are you guys today because I see is it a Kickstarter Jeremy and the vex wearing what I believe is one of your Russian prototypes yes have settled on a vest and arms yes so we are in the middle of production the factories in Shenzhen and production is underway the suits will be shipping November 17th is our kind of finalized ship date it was originally October but Chinese Golden Week and some custom stuff that we didn't anticipate got in the way so we finalized our ship date collections underway and yeah we have a suit with 16 feedback zones brain in the back fully actual between all the different points that strengths and entities effects whatever you need to kind of very create variables and they have to experience it so the type of haptic guys are this exotic experience again surface designing it's a vibration base right can you walk me through that how you guys chose type of motors you're using and what type of sensations you can feel with 16 different of these motors yeah so this is this model is really the trial-by-fire it was let's get it out let's see if people really want haptics and then let's see if they want it more or less complex and the vote has been clearly more complex the way we kind of got to where we are right now is we started with just the slew of motors we went on basically Amazon and like some UK haptic stories and bought every kind of motor and every kind of actuator we can get our hands on and just began to experiment what gave you the greatest breadth of experiences what gave you the highest fidelity with certain kind of effects were they better on and off were they better with kind of the ramping effects and which ones played better into our plan of dev tools and so we had an idea of what we wanted to see and what we wanted to offer and then we searched and kind of worked for custom actuators that would facilitate that hmm the motor we ended up going with were the ones that could do the light warm sensations that were really important to us but could also give you the kind of impacts that we'd kind of get people excited for the more loss the hardcore run-and-gun experiences yeah because high picks is a lot more than just getting shot it's also the handshake it's the haptic hug it's you know a pat on the shoulder of your friend it's also like the spidey sense look out behind you alert so all of these are so varied in what humans think they should be that it was important to us to find a motor that was important to do all that and so this motor is variable I imagine you're not the strongest and feel like a strong vibration to give you a sensation of being shot or or it can be just a light buzz right so developer tools something you mentioned you now that you have your motors locked down what can the developers do with it what type of patterns can they enable what type of you know if you think about controllers you know even the off those controllers are pretty complex in terms of what they can deliver yeah so our dev kit our actual SDK is locked down right now it's only share with our explicit partners and if anyone's interested in getting their hands on it they can just write to us and we're happy to get it out there and start experimenting with it or get them experimenting with it the suit allows for implementation in a number of different ways you can do things like haptic animations we're like oh I want to have this run across your body you can draw on a person and save that right you can also create emanations these kind of pre-programmed networking effects that will run from pad to pad like a swirl running across your body and then you find you finally have the pure programmatic like you know impact like physics based programmatic stuff you can do in the actual game engine and it's all injured based it's all cross compatible between different haptic products if you want it to be that's one of the things we're really excited about giving dad's full control and full creative control over both the intensity where the effects are happening and just kind of the speed at which they take place you know if the developers making a shooter for example they know when you're gonna be holding a weapon they know when you're getting it but a lot of that also has to do with what the player is doing has to respond to the player movements like if you're holding your hand up so how are you feeding back in the system what the player is doing is if space on the controller is just the icao based on the existing three point controller system or is there more data be fed back from the engines so we actually do have IMU kind of gyroscopic tracking in the chest and arms and so you have controllers any of the head and so you get full arm tracking it for a lot of the existing games that have high K in them it actually helps supplement those so you don't get the awkward elbow flapping and that's a developer actually cannot get to that exactly we have dev tools accessible to all to developers allowing them to take advantage of that use it however they want to we're not gonna lock them down saying oh here's our model use it because these people know their games better than we ever will so we want to just make their lives as easy as possible for a lot of the arcades and a lot of the warehouse experiences that are making their own content we also offer that they can just basically mount their pieces on the on the upper body so that creates a much easier experience for players going into them and easier shoot up shoot down and so it's it's really really useful to just be able to provide tracking because know I've done the demos myself where you see your arms and it's just a completely different experience yeah and the best experience with hardlight obviously is if the developers can be committed you're working with how many developers now we have 27 game studios that are announced so far we have more they're on the way a lot of them are literally just waiting on suits our biggest barrier to content at the moment has been the sheer number of suits we have available now you're also thinking about ways that players and consumers who buy the suit can get benefits to it if a developer hasn't specifically coded that programming like you know things like trigger write if you're playing you can is there a mode you imagine where I tell the suit I'm playing a shooter so if I press that trigger gives me a sensation of firing a gun no we haven't worked we don't have them I would specifically like that but we have an audio-based mode that'll take kind of like a sub pack or some of the other audio based haptic devices out there that will run the suit based off a bandpass you know when the big explosion goes off you'll feel it right and those experiences are actually great try listening to the jaws theme in any scuba diving game and it's absolutely terrifying it becomes a full-body experience exactly but it's our focus was on the the actual integrated content alright so what's next what's next for a hard life I mean once you guys have ship of these I know you guys have a wireless system you guys are planning on releasing so you're not tethered to power or data but like are you thinking about future motor systems and different types of haptics yes we are we're trying not to put the cart before the horse we're trying to you know fulfill our promises before we get to you know kind of up on our own Mount Olympus and because we have made it promised a lot of people that we're gonna deliver them a product and part of them know part of the reason we come out here is to show you hey look it exists right part of our campaign on a case they don't take our word for it come see it come try it but we do have plans we've actually now that the kind of parts our way everything's finalized we've actually been able to start getting our teeth back into the R&D and we're looking at hot and cold like kind of the linear actuators things that are actually gonna you throw a punch it's actually iMovie backwards we have a really really talented are in D team or really really chances are in engineering team and I'm super excited to just kind of let them off leash again because this this came out of a student project that spun out and then the engineering was really gathered and we produced this and time out of out of a University of Iowa was so short to produce this that I'm super excited to what see what we're gonna get for the next models awesome and so are we thank you so much for coming and sharing with us about having me awesome okay alright Jeremy so there I think there are two things to talk about here one the the base promise of this experience and then the software and the support cuz anyone gotta have questions about you do with it right so right you know it's it it's a vest I like the way they have their arm pieces or they're attached to it it's easy to put on you just zip bring up a vest tie to the side didn't feel too hot wearing it they said that some of their customers want to know how to remove the arms so they're thinking about making the arms entirely module absolutely and on that vessel on these sleeves are 16 Rumble motors yes right there these big plastic plates and inside of each of these plates is a single motor that's akin to like a gamepad Rumble motor right and so you know Morgan talked about how they had tried and looked at different types of motors and for you know this version they chose something that was gonna be cost-effective for theirs because there are linear actuators to rumble motors we kind of want the spectrum there's no one type of motor that's gonna be the best for every type of experience right when I mix and match and so you know he came from academic background talk about doing the research so it's it's not different motors on different parts of the body I think they're their technology is once have a motor on 16 different parts of the body and in their implementation what we played this shooter you know it was enjoyable we played Sorento which you can download it's you know it's really available but the sorento team is they they're most proud of the implementation of these haptics and and i gotta say you do you do feel it especially when you're firing the weapons the and every weapon feels a little bit different you're firing an Uzi and it's this constant thing and the more the the single shotguns are a little bit more of a you know single kick in general I would say it's not enough of a sensation to to really make to sell the effect to me in fact when you're playing a more energetic game like Sorento where you're really involved in it I feel like the action of the game almost takes more of my attention away from the haptics the haptics are kind of like this underlying the background right like I actually wanted to kind of fade away I don't want the happiest to be distracting I think immediately for the purposes of you know a demo like everyone wants to feel a punch hit the gut like that's not gonna be enjoyable if you're playing you know super hot for how many hours I beg to differ you want the field of play I absolutely I want to have that kick and there they talked a little bit about in your interview a little bit the future of haptics maybe they will amp that up with kickers big solenoids yeah no but I want that okay maybe not in the multiplayer scenario right you know they made a really interesting point we were chatting with them about how some of their people some of their backers said how can I disable the haptic city game because potentially it is a disadvantage because when you're getting recoil from a gun you actually are at a disadvantage because it's gonna be moving your arm was your opponent may not have that right right it's the same as someone playing a 2-d game and turning down their graphics to get a better frame rate yeah fewer distractions blocking shapes but absolutely great but in single-player I want to be more immerse and I think we don't have enough experience with haptics and know how much of real-world haptics is it relative Rumble does it need to just make the game more immersive and I feel like at least initially low-level Rumble even if it's part at a place in your body that you don't expect it is gonna create increase levels or immersion see that's that's where I think I might differ with you again is that I whereas I felt it in my arms I was so excited by the game in its fast-paced I'm jumping around I'm firing in the air I'm running towards and I have these bad guys in my face yeah so much of that is already viscerally going on that the rumbles I was feeling in my chest you didn't eat it where's almost background noise huh and it didn't it didn't affect the immersion much more than I was already getting from the VR experience to begin with on it and you can use it as a cue a GameCube exactly so that's where I think maybe with a different game maybe more of a puzzle game or even like if we take for example Echo Arena there's a thing in Echo Arena where some bit where you can grab your opponent's quietly come up from behind ninja grab there there Magon right right letting yourself off them well if I could get a better sense that they just grabbed me yeah that might be very helpful and that's a very calm quiet game so maybe that would lend itself more to a haptic experience and speaking of like the actual placement of these motor is like the game that the vest looks very tactical these plates lots of place and plates in the ABS you know they're plates in the pecs and then plates in the back and so I asked them why you know how do they achieve this design is it for the aesthetics so it looks like some type of tactical vest yeah I just because it has that military look or is there some anatomical like designed to this and they said that in there a research coming from the academic background your muscles on your abs are the ones that have the most sensitivity no the most they they correlated how many muscles like the muscles to the motors right your muscles and your abs they put more motors there but in practice having six motors there and having two orders there probably isn't giving you that much more benefit right uh yeah I would I would think that a stronger motor right fewer stronger motors might be interesting maybe more distribution put more in areas that you normally don't expect to have to have sensation right so when there is sensation you notice it more right it's also tricky to get those motors as close to your body as possible I mean I really want I strap that thing on pretty tight there were still loose areas I think that's gonna be something that is like just the fabric that haptics makers use is going to have to involve some ingenuity maybe something really stretchy that really grips you like a workout suit or something like that now we also mention that the they're working with developers right so we're going to talk about like 26 or 28 developers and currently have signed up and some that unannounced but that is the chicken egg problem you know when you're making a third-party accessory and you're trying to get people on board and there is no like open standard for haptics what are developing you know if you buy this if you're gonna invest over five hundred dollars on this vest I don't necessarily want that just the audio subwoofer Rumble on this I want catered experiences yeah and I don't see a ton of developers jumping on this at least in this scale yeah you're talking about it from a development standpoint like you know how do you get people to develop for maybe a single SDK that is right Rumble yeah that's an interesting question and I wonder if we'll even see that until the main headset manufacturers implement some sort of haptic you know development standard themselves but it makes a total lot of sense for location-based VR right if you set up a tower Kade whether it stays remove sees and you're making your custom experiences and you're using rips revised you can program something and give those people paying however much for the for the arcades huh right a better experience by getting and those people will will benefit it's true and then you're talking about giving people an experience that they can't get at home nice it's not just from the the actual software itself but most people aren't going to have haptic suits and they're gonna be curious about and that and maybe they'll be more receptive to those sensations and you can be more dramatic about those things schools don't want they're only gonna play for you know 15 20 minutes 15 minutes half an hour right they're gonna want as much a much immersion as much sensation overload from this experience they're paying for another benefit of the suit that is isn't related to haptics is the the tracking that you get built-in oh right they hadn't unlocked that yet but this having this first version there are IM use in the arms that is interesting because that will allow you to do much better arm tracking know where your elbows are in particular yes and so this is something that definitely is it's a benefit wouldn't you think about going forward anyone making a haptic suit or things you're gonna wear on why not the trackers on there and right now it's I am you so you get improve you know I K right but there are opportunities to put you know mount in steam pucks or other systems to get you better tracking and give developers not only a chance to give you haptic feedback but take data from your body and they can be it can be another controller essentially so like if I have that feedback you know if there's a solenoid in my arm and I'm playing the example he sends like a boxing game you know I'm not pressing in controller I'm using my hands and so maybe I'm still holding controller and I'm holding my hand up I want the game to know that I've held my hand up and then feel a punch right here that would be my arm interesting to see a game developed for this suit you know ground up where maybe you are deflecting things and you run out of shields and each Rumble is a shield and you have to get just that in the right spot that would be fascinating totally I think this is a curious first implementation yeah it suits and I think that you know it's gonna be what they've told us the the location-based a b2b potential of this is high I don't think it's necessarily something that you and I are gonna necessarily do all some more time with it the Kickstarter was successful one hundred and fifty thousand dollars but only 350 or so backers I think that sound like a b2b kind of kind of product personally as a consumer I want haptics I just want more I want more kick I want you to hurt me we want Jen to so good luck too hard light VR I wish them the best cuz they clearly have a lot of thoughts about how to move this product line forward so I'd love to see what they come up with next so earlier this year at GDC we played a new game that came out since then called Killing Floor incursion zombie game you're running around in catacombs and you're fighting off zombies with a friend and you should play with a friend because it's a lot less scary that way well since then at OC 4 they've been developing this new horde mode and we got a chance to play that yeah awesome it's it's a free expansion for killing floor if you already own it it's gonna show up in your account and it's basically a you know your standard horde mode we are in one environment and you just fight a wave after wave of increasingly difficult zombies and and baddies that come after you and anyone who's a fan of the original killing floor on your desktop PC ya know that the developers paid a lot of attention to the gun mechanics and also the dismemberment model these are creatures that you can shoot their heads off shoot their limbs off grab their arms and beep them with them you could use a melee weapon to cut off their bodies it's pretty gruesome I know you're gonna want to watch some footage so we actually chatted the developers about this new mode I'll show you what we played hey I just had a chance to play Killing Floor incursion here it's the new update called holdout I'm talking about John Gibson hi John how you doing I'm doing great so tell me about holdout this is a free update for killing for incursion donors is that right that's right so we launched Killing Floor incursion in August with a full story based single-player campaign but a lot of the feedback that we got from the players is we want something with high action high replayability so we listened to what they said and we created hold out so hold out is a horde mode you can play with 1 to 2 people that and tell me about it is it it's you're basically in one environment and then what happens so you're fighting in an environment and it starts out fairly easy and you've got some basic weapons and then it just ramps up more more difficult enemies more difficult weapons but one of the cool things that we added for holdout that's not in the regular campaign is these power-ups so the power-ups give you that short power fantasy like you saw you picked up the berserk powerup you could just run around and just punch people and they would fly off into the sky or the vampire powerup you could steal their live so even though it's it's getting very very difficult you've got the power-ups to sort of to even the odds and as far as the enemies go are they the same enemies from incursion or have you are you introducing anything new the enemies are the same but we're using them in different ways for example some of the big guys that you were fighting as you got to the more difficult levels those are the bosses in incursion so in most cases you're only fighting well an incursion in every case you're only fighting one of them at a time in in holdout you could be fighting for over those boss characters at one time so it gets really really intense if I choose not to pick up the the powerup if I choose to wait and use it you know deliberately maybe when a boss shows up Wilmont more spawn or is picking that up sort of setting that cooldown timer for the next one to pop up all right there's no cooldown timer but saving them for the big guys is a really great tactic you know on the surface it's it's a very quick game type to get into but if you really want to last a really long time and get the high score you start using tactics like you saw the nuke powerup which you grab and it kills everything on the screen that's a really great one to save until you get four of those bosses just in your face trying to chew you up grab that powerup they're all dead and you can have three of those power-ups in the world at one time so you can stack them you can just wait and then when it gets really really heavy grab all three of them okay and you mentioned lasting a really long time Norman I lasted about ten minutes I'm pretty proud of that what is what is a really long time I mean a ten minutes is doing really well in coop I think the longest I've seen somebody lasts is fifteen minutes I mean solo I've seen somebody last 20 minutes but I'm sure that we would released this we're gonna get some some amazing players that are gonna last 30 minutes but but there will be a global leader board so we'll get to see who's the best in the world how do you keep that difficulty ramping up constantly you said that the levels could potentially go on forever right so we really don't do anything cheap like adding more adding more health to the monsters or anything like that but we have AI capabilities that ramp up so when the monsters first come out they're moving kind of slow they're doing some some kind of mild tax as it ramps up they will they will be sprinting out to you they'll be jumping in the air flying towards you more and more of the bigger more powerful monsters will attack the boss the guys that have bosses in the normal mode and they'll start doing even more dramatic and powerful attacks cool and this seems like it definitely favors teamwork you have to work together not just for reviving but for maybe working back to back what strategies have you guys found already work pretty well in the game just internally so stay close to each other the tendency is when the Horde shows up is is to run away and there all of these one guy run away you know I'm scared they run away but but back to back you know fields of fire and don't grab the powerup as soon as it appears you know share share ammo and health some of the tendency is you know players they're playing my Health's down 10% they'll grab the ammo or the health pick up meanwhile their buddies at 5% health so communicate talk to each other do you need this ammo do you need this health communicate on how are you gonna use the power-ups you know hey there's a big guy let's wait or the big guys about to kill me please grab the powerup throwing each other weapons and that's that's one of the great things that you can't really do in a non VR game you know I mean you can drop a gun on the ground but in VR you can just literally your buddy needs help throw them in a K throw him a shotgun that's super cool it's a great update and we look forward to playing some more all right thank you and we're really excited this is a free update that everyone that already has the game is gonna get so I'm very excited well thanks a lot John thank you alright so I gotta tell you I do like the power-ups that they've added to this it's fun because that's what really sets us apart from the game I think there's also one additional weapon but that the power-ups are where it's at it you basically spawn randomly throughout the world so you're fighting off these waves with your buddy and then you might see a powerup appear and one of you goes to get it and you both receive that power yep yeah the way they can you know slow down time for example I loved that co-op aspect where you know we were playing on a rooftop and it was back-to-back necessarily because I think that wasn't the best way it was basically I was watching you from across the rooftop shooting people are they're coming yeah and then grabbing power-ups you were splitting up mostly but it was chaotic and it was it was intense I don't know I prefer the back to back my character situations I won I want somebody to have my back because it's whatever's going on behind me revived me areas part I did need a few more revives than norm did but the the power-ups are definitely fun the the interesting part is I feel like we were so new to this game that there were clear ways we could have played it better one is by preserving those power-ups so like you just don't grab them right away cuz you can get I think up to three spawns in the world and then you choose when to use them particularly the nuke one which you know wipes out everything in the world you want to wait for those serious baddies to show up before you use those and I really love the the progression of weapons that spawn yeah throughout as you play I love the two-handed weapons this is one of those games like you play you know a five-game like onward and you built a PVC mount for with the stock for your controllers I want to play killing floor incursion with some type of gun mount because I was told those touch controllers up like this and I wanted to have a gun stock because you're looking down the sides if felt felt good it felt satisfy yeah I totally agree that the problem is all the weapons look and feel a little bit different so like do you grab your different stocks for the one that you need or do you just make one that's kind of like my favorite gun I like the carbine because your melee model set so if I'm holding you know my two controllers and I run an ammo I actually can knock them with the with the stock yeah and I have something there then it feels like uh huh I'm actually doing it they'll be fun to build I wouldn't be surprised if there's things on Thingiverse to 3d print to augment and hold on here are together are absolutely um I I don't like the melee weapons so much personally in games like that because the I feel like it back to haptics I don't feel like the it's the right feedback like as soon as I grab a sword and it's it's weightless I lost the immersion is lost and when I hit somebody and there's no feedback but the guns I've come to you know appreciate just a little bit of Rumble as all I need to make me feel like I'm actually firing well it's it's y-you know on the vibe the vive ones even they're a little bigger yeah maybe a little heavier I it feels like you're holding you a light saber handle it does have the better grip for that exactly but that's killing floor incursions holdout mode and it'll be out in early November both for the oculus platform and for the BI platform we talk a lot about games that haven't come out yet previews for games on our show but there also a lot of games are already out yet we've been playing and we want to take the time to recommend two of them that Jeremy you and I have been playing independently so what if you frame recently well there's a game that a lot of us backed on Kickstarter back when VR was brand-new and that that's the gallery right so that came out the part one came out I don't even know maybe last year yes I came out on the vibe platform one of the first games that had they introduced the teleportation mechanic for room-scale amazing when you would teleport it wasn't the whole rectangle your whole play space would be mapped out to where you want to move it that's right sense like okay that fire pit over there yeah that's my room scale right that's interesting because valve kind of adopted that for their lab yeah so anyway that the sequel to that has just come out whereas the first one was more of an adventure game the second one is definitely more of like a puzzle room like an escape room and it's not just one room it's like several spaces but I almost like we got to play this back at GDC and I took the headset off and the first thing I said to the guys was did you guys get a lot more money because like they we've really figured out graphics and and VR interface I think that this is a good example of a slower paced game with a lot of really interesting applications for VR interfaces so you're basically in this sci-fi fantasy world and Euler's and all of the all of the the the environment and the puzzles they involve using VR and interesting ways in there's also this telekinesis you know element to it where you're moving objects it's dicksterity a lot of it's like yeah not just your brain but like how finally can you move the the key to fit in the hole hang around yeah the wire it's like those carnival games where you have to avoid touching the metal to the other side right there's a lot of things like that and the the the presence is strong the environments are well you know well drawn and it's it's pretty solid personally I actually got stuck so it is a game where you know you're not going to run through there's an element of like you patients and required which maybe isn't my strong suit I actually I went to a YouTube video to say like what do I do next turned out like you have to do things in a certain order so it has that old-school adventure game you can go places and not be able to proceed until you go back and get the object that you need what I like about some of those puzzles at the design is that when you compare to a game like no I expect you to die you know or or games are a big button it's like puzzle rooms right games like interactions for some of those games are because of your big buttons big levers right here it's very fine control very near-field get up and around a puzzle look around it and and make your precise movements take advantage of stereoscopic 3d right and also milem is submillimeter precision tracking and make that part of the challenge both the mental figure out what goes where but also the dexterity requirement right and putting you in an environment where things feel real like everything feels technologically possible in VR it's just interesting and it's they did and they did a really nice job very cool but you have to play the first one to play this one oh no I don't think you really do I mean it's because you might have a better context for what's going on but there's no it's a puzzle room if you enjoy solving puzzles and especially like VR intricate like puzzles that require your body to move yeah absolutely pick it up it's on I think it's on both platforms I think it's in oculus home as well as steam is yes team yeah yeah what I've been playing is a game and we also got a pre before this year called the invisible hours now if you remember from one of our early episodes of projections I was super excited about this game because it was an exercise in immersive theater storytelling a narrative based game where the interaction is very very minimal you're basically playing as a ghost watching this 45-minute long story unfold now you're like you ask yourself well you're paying $40 or $30 for a 40 minute experience but that's not it you could you the idea is that you watch seven characters solve a murder mystery it's like almost like the movie clue but every perspective is different I think production wise I'm really intrigued by this title I haven't spent any time with it since our first demo at Silicon Valley VR yeah we saw it there but I'm super intrigued by the production of this because I think it's unlike anything else that we've seen they took real actors and they recorded them you know basically the performance cop performance capture in spaces that resembled what was being should you know rendered in VR is that right yeah so the environment is a mansion on an island so it's not that massive right it's like this really detailed two-story mansion that belongs to Nikola Tesla and what and there are rooms and scenes and and then people are acting out this this narrative but if you watch some of the YouTube videos like the actor who plays Thomas Edison in there like they are actually hiding behind boxes looking around the corner putting their hands on walls yeah as they're wearing these tracking suits to get the full performance and then all of that is then of course facially animated and animated for the characters and the question I think you had when we saw the preview was does this game need to be in VR like couldn't you play this on a flat screen and and with as a passive camera use WASD and a mouse and technically yes okay I think VR brings a lot to AI mean I think it's the same as asking whether you could play a game top-down or first-person on a 2d flat screen right you could play it RTS style or you could play the first person I'm playing the first person gives you a little more emergent while playing a VR gives you the extra level of immersion there are scenes I really want to spoil the story but if you're in a room with a character and you're following them they don't notice you cuz you're a go course but they're being honest and there the acting is incredible and there were some shocking twists and turns I feel tension being in that room with them as they're going through this monologue or as they're going through this breakdown well something it's actually this is a new form of theater I mean we I only first heard of immersion theater from you last year earlier this year yeah and we've seen a performance here in San Francisco called the speakeasy speakeasy which is very similar where you go into a performance there's three different rooms and you can follow this story wherever you want and there's no way to follow the entire performance with one place one point one we have we're viewing because you by necessity have to leave the room and miss something yeah so that that goes that's the same for this I wonder is your appreciation for this game is it augmented because you've seen this in live-action I would think that's actually that would make me more critical in this game because the real world immersive theater experience is far superior because it's many more actors than just a seven right there's some technological limitations and the game does give you some tricks like like I don't again don't want to spoil the story but mechanically you have the ability to pause time you can jump in teleport between characters you can you know rewind time fast-forward time can you fast-forward having never watched it or do you have to watch it in real time one you don't have to watch it in real time one okay and fast-forward and I think a lot of people are playing this it's on psvr it's on on HTC vive and oculus but a lot of people are jumping between the characters as you go through a chapter it's like I'm not gonna start chapter two until I've played everyone's seen everyone's perspective for chapter one my recommendation is the first time you play stick with one character or play it without freezing time without using your God powers without going back from the menu and seeing what everyone's seen get the honest one character experience or explore naturally and feel like embrace missing out on the store that's hard isn't it it is because then you feel feel FOMO I'm literally sitting on watching two characters have this intense argument and the audio is so good I'm here down the hall some something happening interesting happening yeah and all do I check that out or do I stay here well the game lets you pause time and that's your rewind time don't do that choose an option choose your adventure choose the story and it's okay that you're not gonna see everything because when you do go back and when you review it and it's about maybe four hours that takes to go through everything there are so many nice twists and turns that you're gonna feel very satisfied when you get the full story so that's more satisfying if you don't watch and you choose every adventure as you're reading yes yeah yeah that's it's interesting because we used to read these books when I was a kid the chooser in adventure yes and you do if you find a bad ending you do want to rewind time go back choose the other way there's no bad ending there's only what your first experience was versus your full understanding or better understanding of the full story and and credit to the writers credit to the the performance actors and quit the sound design I think they did a really employed really cool thing here with designing a space and making use of positional audio this was a Spanish team yes right yes tequila works and they did a sa did a PC game that was another similar time loop style game with the rewatch rewatch it a story of us so they're really interested in this type of story narrative experience we have to rewatch the pick out and get the full full breadth event I think if there's an interesting experience to be had here socially I mean it's not a multiplayer experience like that would be interesting I wish that you could have multiple people in this game as ghosts maybe like you could see them go into different rooms and maybe you could talk to each other but you could still approximate that experience if you just sync up and play together at the same time that's what I would recommend you phone maybe you're on skype you call up your friend you hit play at the same time and you both experience that story together and then maybe you go to it and take diverging paths and compare notes yes and I would say because it is a four chapters game and there's loading between the chapters make sure you sync up beforehand and oh yeah and make a commitment not to pause and not say it's or not to rewind to make sure it's all six that's called the invincible hours it's out now on all the major VR platforms but those are two recommendations for this week we'll be back next week with more demos more game reviews and more interviews until then we'll see you next time\n"