**Oculus Connect and VR Games: A Comprehensive Overview**

I also love that they have this mechanic but they've built in this kind of narrative in replicating action scenes and so as you progress your levels you know playing through one sequence one story almost yeah I dug that too um the new game um that you had played the unspoken before I hadn't had a chance to play that before and I was looking forward to it um that's if I had a second favorite game of the show definitely that one and I'm super psyched it's going to be free they announc this a bundle it's a bundle in title with the with the touch fantastic game I mean you're all of the magic that you're casting is augmented in front of you and you have your Shield all these different movements create different spells and they're going to have multiple um classes that you can play they they have two at the show and they've alluded to having more and they all have different effects and different spells that you can cast I think it's going to be a blast I can't wait to hop in that and I think that's a good pack and title really graphically impressive very fun just to like cast spells that actually have this huge effect in the world and uh comfortable multiplayer yeah we see a lot of firstperson games in VR Shooters where they rely on you know Gunplay but this is superpowers in the form of magic and that's so satisfying when you can cast a fireball cast a shield see the animation and create a pose and even use gestures to cast things into the world you know when you sorry I have to go back to Lone EO but when you mentioned superpowers it's it's you can fly in it too like you have these thrusters on your on your wrists and so when you activate them whichever way your wrists are going you start to go off in that direction super fun uh another fun game that's actually a sitting game with touch is no I expect you to die yeah that was an awesome DK2 demo when that came out that was like the best experience I'd had yeah and the final version of this game will have I think four puzzles uh they're basically think of it as a um as one of those room puzzles um but in VR yeah you mean like a escape room puzles escape room exactly where you're trying to figure out in the area around you in your environment whether you're trapped in a car whether you're on an elevator or something how to get progress The Narrative and unlock the next part of the puzzle right how many rooms did they say they four um and every one of them could take a slow person like me an hour to solve and I I was totally stuck in this thing I played it for like 15 minutes um but then when they explained to me what I was missing I was like Ah that's really really cool I wish I'd figured that out on my own it's one of those games where you don't want to give hints to people playing it because even if it takes 45 minutes an hour to solve one part of a puzzle the longer it takes for you to solve actually the more satisfying it is when you eventually do solv it yeah it's also has the same kind of quality the job simulator has where the world is full of interactive things and they're all humongous it's like building Lego with Duplo because everything's just gigantic that's that's what it's easiest to interact with it's a lot of fun uh what else what do you want to mention in terms of games those are my big highlights I think from the show uh well I mean Robo recall is certainly going to be fun to play and awesome that it's going to be free I mean that's really unexpected um unfortunately it's not a packin it's not going to be ready at launch but hopefully not too distant after the launch I mean they said next year early next year um and then VR Sports challenge is going to be a pack in they've totally revamped that into be touch so that that's and when you see that game you're like that's a natural fit for touch and you wonder why there's game pad in there at all and I guess they decided the same thing yeah so that's going to have basketball football hockey with brawling and even baseball home run to many games for every game and uh yeah that's going to be I think they're hoping to be the Wii Sports of of touch and there's a lot of variety in there be interesting to see which of those Sports becomes like wi tennis the one that everybody plays yeah as you can tell we have a lot to talk about about from Oculus connect and VR in general please subscribe to this Channel and our podcast where Jeremy and I will be discussing more about VR and our takeaways from Oculus connect but until next time Jeremy and I will see you later

**Oculus Connect and VR: A New Era for Virtual Reality**

The latest installment of Oculus Connect, a premier event for virtual reality (VR) enthusiasts, has left the gaming community buzzing with excitement. The show featured an impressive array of innovative VR games that showcased the vast potential of this rapidly evolving technology.

One of the standout features of Oculus Connect was the presence of several highly anticipated games that promised to revolutionize the way we experience VR. Among them was a new game from an unannounced developer, which impressed attendees with its seamless gameplay and immersive narrative. The game's developers revealed that it would be released as a bundle, complete with a title that highlighted its unique features.

Another notable game at Oculus Connect was "Magic", a highly anticipated project that promised to deliver an unparalleled magical experience in VR. According to the game's creators, players would be able to cast spells, fly using thrusters on their wrists, and interact with a vast array of magical creatures. The game's developers also announced that it would feature four puzzles that players would need to solve in order to progress through the narrative.

In addition to these games, Oculus Connect featured an impressive lineup of VR experiences that showcased the potential of this technology. One such experience was "Lone EO", a game that promised to deliver a unique and immersive experience for players. The game's developers revealed that it would feature four puzzles that players would need to solve in order to progress through the narrative.

**VR Games: A New Era of Immersive Entertainment**

The VR gaming industry has come a long way since its inception, with significant advancements in technology and innovations in gameplay mechanics. One of the most exciting developments in this space is the emergence of new game genres and experiences that are specifically designed for VR.

One of these emerging trends is the concept of "sitting games", which allow players to experience immersive narratives from the comfort of their own homes. Games like "Magic" and "Lone EO" showcase the potential of this format, with engaging storylines and challenging puzzles that require players to think creatively and interact with their surroundings.

Another trend that's gaining traction in the VR gaming industry is the development of more accessible and user-friendly experiences. This includes games that are designed specifically for casual players, as well as those that offer a range of gameplay options to suit different player preferences.

**VR Gaming: A Future of Endless Possibilities**

As VR technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see even more innovative and exciting games in the future. With advancements in hardware and software, developers are pushing the boundaries of what's possible in this medium, creating immersive experiences that transport players to new worlds and environments.

The emergence of VR gaming has also opened up new opportunities for creators and content producers. With the ability to create interactive narratives and experiences, artists and writers can now bring their stories to life in ways that were previously impossible.

As we look to the future of VR gaming, one thing is clear: the potential for innovation and creativity is vast and unexplored. With Oculus Connect serving as a catalyst for this growth, we can expect to see even more exciting developments in the world of VR gaming in the years to come.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody it's Norm from tested it's Jeremy from tested and we have been spending this week at Oculus connect three three uh the keynote was just this morning last week for you guys but we want to go over some of the announcements and some of our thoughts before we jump into a conversation with someone Oculus and talk about some games where to be in I know there was so much announced um not in terms of Hardware though so the hardware stuff we did get a release date finally for Oculus touch yeah not as soon as we hoped I know pre-orders October 10th iay yeah so now basically you can pre-order if you bought a rift you'll get a notification to pre-order but it's going to come out December 6th yes so that's a little bit of a wait um but uh they did announce some some other Hardware that you can buy for the same date there some earbuds which are interesting that they're now even opening that up to third parties yeah they released the cad designs for the headset and also the the port where the removable headphones current headphones can be removed why do you think they made their own earbuds uh hard to say right because they've been pretty proud of the one movement to get everything off the earbuds are going to have to take out and insert um they will sound better they're going to have a better frequency range I think um just because one they're going to block out the rest of the sound and two they just have closer access to your eard drums and earbuds just sound pretty good although some people aren't going to want to block out the entire world maybe some people do it'll be interesting to see how those'll sell they'll be 49 bucks and they're saying that they sound great like they're claiming $900 earphone equivalency right and I've always been happy with the rift's current audio solution which is lets it the headphones sound good but also they let me listen be aware of the outside you can flip them up if you need more flip them up exactly um so I don't know I I want to test that and see whether I'll be switching back and forth or whether it's going to be worth that $50 purchase I I wonder if somebody will just use their new open- source um CAD stuff to create a headphone jack right and just be like guys yeah almost like a dongle for like the iPhone has except for 3.5 mm um so the other Hardware that can will go on sale when Touch goes on sale is the camera uh touch will come with the second camera so when you have in the rift you'll have two cameras set up their ideal setup is two cameras in front of you they did say on stage that you can do two cameras opposite for but for True room scale they're saying three cameras they went three yeah isn't that interesting cuz I did talk to some devs yesterday who had a three camera setup and they were saying that they everyone still has to design for two cameras so games won't require three on the box but apparently some people are going to want that extra added layer of fidelity especially if you're playing a game that requires you to spin around face the other direction and maybe if you're a person that like me you're playing certain games that where you could stay planted you tend to spin around anyway um so I can see people doing that doesn't the SK SDK even support four cameras it supports yeah plenty of cameras and they have some setups here with their mixed reality camera system just tons of those cameras uh the interesting thing for me is this camera like where are you going to put in your room many people's the the back wall is pretty far away do you have to put that as ideally you know in a on a tripod on a SE stand behind you people want a permanent solution right and long C to that's the thing like with the with the other guys with the HTC there's lious just plugg into the wall just all they need is power but these they actually need a USB Jack and need to plug in your computer and if they're the same cameras that are currently bundled with the rift and what's going to come with the touch then I don't think that cable is going to be any longer so you'll need some kind of extender um to get it all the way out there and again takes another USB port that's $80 also comes out December six uh no other new hardware announcements but they did show a prototype so this is exciting yeah did they we saw a short video of a prot see the Prototype U so they're developing some sort of you know Wireless uh headset that is a mixed between the rift and the gear VR so you got Wireless motion tracking um with something that looks akin to a rift with the cable cut off F right and what you can see in the video is there's a lot of Hardware packed in the back of it computational power the way it's going to be like the gear is that it's going to run everything Al I don't think this is a wireless video solution to beam video I think they're doing local processing again it's just speculation it is inside out motion tracking right made a big point of that and that would be a huge leap yeah so inside out meaning that they're using just cameras or sensors on the headset itself to scan the outside world kind of like what Google does with their Project Tango or Tango smartphones traditionally that's been really tough to do on a smartphone gear VR type solution because that drains a lot of power quickly and it's very hot so to do that real time and get the kind of experience you would expect out of the full PC Hardware uh is a technical challenge yeah a year ago carac himself said that he wished that this was further ahead by that point in time um and I believe he's been one of the people working on this project so it would be fun to see what he says now that the keynote over yeah it's just good to know they're actually working on it and I'm sure there going be a lot they're going to talk about that so software uh I think this Oculus connect was really about the new software they've been making uh both for their platform and for the games on the platform side Mark Zuckerberg came out and showed some experiments they've been working on in Social VR using Facebook yeah U so there was um a lot of Avatar stuff that is very different than the avatars that they've unveiled that we'll talk about in a few minutes the actual official avatars very colorful very cartoony and you know everyone's customizing their own but they're getting together in spaces and they're it's pretty cool like they they're transporting groups of people having conversations to different environments and then they're drawing things in midair and then grabbing them and using them like swords with each other um that one clever thing was Zuck got a phone call from his wife and he took the call in VR and everyone could see like the face what are they it's not FaceTime obviously it's messenger yeah Facebook messenger and so everyone could engage with with her and see her in this virtual space and then they took a selfie in VR of Priscilla and Zuck and using a selfie stick in all virtual reality it was just really cool to see them experimenting with what could be done in a virtual space and what you're talking about is there have a virtual camera represented that's being rendered and processed out and sent over the Internet so that someone on their phone using Facebook Messenger can look into the virtual environment right and you and the person in VR doesn't have to leave it right right like exactly he's trying to keep it keep let you stay in there as long as you want and of course there's a one button post to Facebook yeah of course and the environments you mentioned earlier they were sharing included 360 video included live streams I didn't see any 3D environments though did you no there I mean there were 3D objects in like that space but not through the environment and the uh the the avatars themselves had gestures and had expressions and we don't know how those expressions were activated were they shortcuts uh it didn't seem like they were being reactions based on what people are actually doing with their eyes and faces well that would be awesome but that would require a new level of face tracking that isn't in the current generation they've got to be using current gen tech for this stuff it it looked to me like you could control your expression with an analog stick or something like that like way up for super Happ you way down for scar things like that Facebook's they're calling this Explorations and experiments in Social VR but what's actually going to be a product and they announce avatars for the Oculus refi revamped uh matchmaking system social system um the ability to create rooms and get parties in a room together to chat like a billion permutations of the avatars you could choose from it's a character creator right exactly RPG it's interesting though because they're they're sticking with that lowii flat shaded not textured look to the avatars which I think is a smooth move that's that's the right way to go because you don't get to The Uncanny Valley level at that point it's just supposed to represent another person and they're using as many Expressions as we actually can create with you know out of thee boox VR right now and that feature avatars rooms parties it's not going to be out till I think early next year it's going to come out on Gear 1 I believe the rift yeah it's cool that it's built into the SDK level now though so this is an this is an avatar that any developer can use within their own and that's great and the idea is you'll be able to recognize your friends even at a distance right right and that I know people doing rev research the the idea of Avatar creation is tough uh you have only so many points you're tracking you know you you want to make sure everyone has the same system same camera system and then you need to make sure they can be designed the Silhouettes can be designed so they're recognizable near and far with the resolutions that we have um so I know you have a lot of questions I have a lot of questions and hopefully we're going to speak to someone who has some ANS ERS for us with oculus so jump to an interview and then we'll come back and talk about some games all right guys so here we are with Nate Mitchell vpf product at Oculus for our biannual check-in yeah that's about right that's right so big keynote this morning as announced a lot I want to start right off with this prototype that you guys showed off Santa Cruz it's called Santa Cruz yeah sticking with these location names uh tell us about the development of this prototype what the goals are I know it's not a product but what were the targets here and what were we able to achieve so Santa Cruz is a feature prototype you know we've had a lot of feature prototypes in the past that we've shown um Crystal Cove Crescent Bay and for us um Santa Cruz is all about demonstrating Inside Out tracking and um for those of you that don't know I'm sure you know Norm outside in is the way that we use that we achieve tracking on Rift so we have a sensor on your desk it tracks the rift headset it provides a really robust highquality tracking experience Inside Out is a technology that we're really excited about that enables all sorts of new things um for one Mark talked about uh well inside out just to explain it just a little bit more we have basically sensors on the headset that track outward the the scene around you and then let you move through the space with positional tracking just as if you had sensors like around the room now when you say sensors do you mean cameras do you mean things that track fiducial markers they look like lenses on there so it look like four cameras to make so we're not talking too much about the exact sensors but these sensors are basically just tracking the space around you you saw the Santa Cruz prototype no QR codes or fiducial markers around the room this is using basically natural features and one of the things that's been difficult about mobile VR and getting some type of room inside out tracking is the power consumption the heat it's a lot of processing power people do it with stereo cameras how are you avoiding those problems um we're not going into too many of the details here at the show um so really we want people focus on the experience that they can have in the device and you know Mark talked a lot about how we're invest we really see Standalone as a pretty compelling category and that we're going to continue to invest in and as we move forward we'll definitely have more to share on what a product might look like right so it's really just exploration of a feature um not something that's necessar going to replace the rift that's right yeah and just for a little context there I think you know Rift is this incredibly uh compelling High Fidelity high-end VR experience that's sort of our high-end on the Lower Side you've got um gear VR super affordable awesome you know this the 400 apps on the gear VR store today which is just incredible um and for $99 it's the best way to start out in VR but there's this a sweet spot in the middle of a product that's very accessible um that's portable that's lower cost than necessarily the all up you know high-end uh Rift package and we're really excited about over time um exploring that category more now do experiments in Inside Out tracking negate then the idea of doing a wireless video transmission as a possibility for mobile VR um not at all I would just say that when we think about Standalone as a category we like to um we want to give people the sense that you can have an all-in-one experience and and that is like the demo you're seeing here there's no PC streaming or anything like that this is all compute on the headset that doesn't preclude the idea of something like that in the future that's just not what we're showing today and as you're testing that is that both indoors and Outdoors is that the vision for Standalone so Standalone we want it to work um you know we talk about tracking quality a lot and we want it to be reliable and robust the reality is we're never going to hit 100% um sort of uh tracking coverage probably with sort of an inside out solution uh but we do think we can make it really really good so almost anywhere that you feel like you have the urge to pull out the Standalone device that we can make it work in that environment but it does depend on the environment less so about sort of inside outside and more about you know what's around you and what can we actually track and when you talk about headset that does all the computation in the headset has a lot of processing power and one of the Technologies you guys announced is space warp yes I assume that's going to go in there what can you tell me more about space warp and how that's maybe different than time War for developers to use so I'm actually not the expert on Space war and I'm do not even going to try to do a poor job of explaining it but basically asynchronous Time Warp was a technology um that we released on Rift uh and gear VR actually that basically um allows us to use synthetic frames basically interpolating between frames to fill in jutter um and when basically the apps performance might drop we can actually fill in the frames and keep it a great experience and because of that technology on gear and on Rift you know we have one of the absolute best sort of VR experiences out there if you stack us up against any other you know you describe it as insurance on stage right in case of drop frames but it seems to me that space warp what was showed there is that you can double 45 to 90 so it's a Target then lower so what I was just talking about was all time warp you're absolutely right space warp basically allows the app to run at 45 frames a second we inject these synthetic frames similar um although they're produced differently and we then basically get you back up to 90 so yes what we've done with space warp is that now with space warp we are dropping well no we are introducing a new minimum specification that lets you play all the content on the rift store on these new mspec machines and the new mspec machines start at $4.99 now would that apply even going forward like what space warp applied for 90 FPS game to introduce more frames if you have panels that then higher refresh rates so um it I believe it can be used that way but for right now um it's more about creating a deeper sort of sense of insurance if you're if you're basically if you're hitting if you're on like a 970 if you're on a reec machine today then asynchronous space warp is just going to give an even better experience but it also again sort of enables this new uh spec this lower spec to get into VR and have a great experience in the first does work alongside time War both things at once okay so it's not just one or the other as far as I know yes very hopefully the engineers on the team are not watching this video like oh that wasn't right so some of the things you did announce uh also for Hardware wise uh you guys have an accessory now for the rift you replace the headphones earphones and what was the reasoning behind that cuz the position that you guys have had is the headon great so we have so many audio files on the team and they were really I mean we designed Rift originally to have these removable connectors so that we could have all sorts of um different audio accessories that people you know could bring um themselves or also just to unhook the earphones and bring your own you know fullon uh headphone solution so we wanted a solution uh that gave you an even more immersive experience and really a big part of that is um great noise cancelling and then also sort of that rich audio soundscape so we have um some incredible audio Engineers on the team who architected these who built them from the ground up for Rift um tuned for VR they are awesome Brendan is one of the biggest fans as you could probably tell during the kyote um but yeah we're really really excited about the quality and we're hoping to see other people actually build um their own Rift audio accessories we just released sort of the cad for those audio connectors and the facial interfaces um to see what you know other people do but no plans for a headphone jack I mean that's for someone to make no head yes potentially all right um and another accessory that you guys have coming out along with that is the camera is I guess another it's an accessory now a third sensor yeah third sensor so can you tell me the difference between two sensor front facing the three sensor setup that you guys showed on stage which just two in the front one in the back and maybe difference between putting two cameras in the opposite side of the room yeah so I think there's a couple configurations that you can use with touch the default one that we recommend for everyone that has you know we think is by far the deepest Market penetration the biggest audience two front-facing cameras now two front-facing cameras gives you a pretty wide tracking volume and you want that extra sensor for touch because you can imagine kind of moving around in this space um now you know if you want a 360 experience we have this sort of advanced experimental mode where you can put um One sensor here and One sensor sort of over here behind you and you can get a pretty good 360 experience again you can move around a little bit um so what we wanted to do is basically introduce the option to have a third sensor now you can bring a third sensor and you can kind of position these almost as you see fit although there's sort of an optimal uh distance between them all and angle to to minimize occlusion and then you can really have a pretty rich room scale experience and move around roam around the scene and have a great time and the software supports even more than that right now so if you want to plug four in would that work that is correct so you can actually plug four in um what we found in our testing is that you know two for 360 is good uh three really gives you a pretty darn good tracking volume um four is sort of like at least based on our data is a bit of Overkill but absolutely if the more sensors you add on the better the tracking quality gets and those take USB ports little bit computational power is the sensor that you guys are selling the same length USB cable as what comes with the rift and the touch oh man I don't want to eat my words on this one but I believe we are going to include a USB extension cable as part of the package and if not that's something people can buy and they can extend the idea is that you want to have it behind you in your optimal configuration absolutely all right now something that in your project is Oculus home and you guys last time I chatted with you asked you know when are we going to tweak home add more stuff and now you guys announcing avatars parties rooms how does that all work is that going to be built into home or a separate application so for the most part these are separate applications but they're all sort of tied together right home we see as your just like jumping off point for any VR experience that you're going to have on the platform so you drop into home you know you might see that I'm online you can invite me to a party you can be like Nate you know what do you want to play then maybe we actually jump into Oculus rooms which is this new social experience um where we can actually meet up together in VR so like let's say we meet up in rooms we actually have a table inside rooms called we call the coordinated app launch table pretty Hightech name but basically you drop in there we can see what apps um you and I both own and we can be like wow we're like both big dragon front players why don't we actually go play that we can click Dragon front we can instantly launch off into that experience and all of this happens pretty seamlessly um so homes evolution is still ongoing you know the Avatar editors in there you can access home or rooms from there you can access your friends and your parties list um and we have a big vision for the evolution of home over time but you know one one step at a time that's exactly right and the explorations experiments that Mark showed on stage in terms of Facebook those are separate than the avatars those are separate yeah very much so but like he's talking about being to create items gestures are these ideas that you want to bring into home and avatars in room we sh make a lot of sense absolutely we share a a big uh big part of our vision is shared across across the teams so where we take home and where they take that experience I think you'll see a lot of parallels now when you talk about room and avatars launching a sub applications these are still Silo executables programs but you also announce web VR completely feels like a little more open thing what's the potential there how do developers interact with that and what are those web VR experiences going be like compared to Dedicated PC experiences so um basically we the VR web is something that's really exciting to us which is basically this concept of exactly like you're talking about all these sort of web destinations that are spatial right that you can actually step in inside and be there in VR and having them all connected together just like the worldwide web today um so developers have started developing VR experiences for the web using web VR and that's an evolving industry standard um where that basically interfaces uh VR systems to browsers now what we're doing is we're releasing a brand new framework called react VR that makes it incredibly simple to build these experiences to begin with we're also going to be developing a VR BR we're also developing a VR browser which we've Coden named Carmel is that a Content browser or a web browser it is a web browser and basically you'll be able to um you know jump from destination to destination and drop into this sort of endless set of VR experiences all instantly and there's no no barriers for publishing anyone who can develop with it can publish it um one final question looking forward a phrase that Michael airbr used is augmented virtual reality how's that different than just augmented reality and how does it fit into the vision of VR um so I think when we look at our vision for um AR and VR you know we have approached it very much from a from a VR track right we have sort of gone after VR we've tried to perfect VR deliver the absolute best VR products and there's a lot of while there's a lot of shared technology they are very different sort of products today right if you compare for example like a hollow lens to to a rift very different sort of tech Stacks um over time we think that these things are going to get closer and closer together and one of the things that we're excited about is uh bringing more and more sort of people and real things into the virtual space in a way that we don't think that many people are thinking about today you need a camera for that you need a lot of different sensor technology for that and this is all stuff that we're thinking about in a big way I mean you know abrash sort of was talking about so this five-year outlook on the VR industry and and you know what that future might hold um we have a lot planned and it's going to be you know as you know very very exciting over the next few years to see all that come to life in products uh that we ship you guys all right well thanks for the updates can't wait over the next 5 years hope we have more of these check-ins until until then we'll see you next time thanks nor great to see you all right jry so we just came back from a chat with Nate and if you guys didn't figure it out uh big surprise in between filming that intro and now I got to try the Santa Cruz prototype very exclusive oh my goodness no one else was allowed in the room obviously no cameras but not even somebody watching yeah so let me describe exactly what happened what they have at the convention center here is a room meeting room set up to look like a bedroom had a carpet on the ground it was about maybe uh 6 ft by 15 ft um and it was set dress so you had table you had uh pictures on the wall you had shelves it looked like in wallpaper it looked like someone's bedroom no bed uh and not no big pieces of furniture so mostly the carpet and when I walked in they handed me from the table the Standalone prototype what Mark Zuckerberg showed on stage what we talked about earlier which is this their experiment into Inside Out tracking right what's the code name uh Santa Cruz okay yeah so just like they had the Cresent Bay prototype so not a real product yet but really their exploration of what it means to have tetherless VR that's not video transfer so so many questions I mean how was the tracking first of all did you notice any kind of latency or lag or blurriness when you moved your head around the tracking I thought was fantastic like Rift level fantastic based on the demo yes so to describe the demo if you've seen the dream deck which is that a series of vignettes Oculus release when the rift first came out one of the vignettes was this kind of tiny Model Town there was a fire truck it's a building on fire it looked like you were looking at a God view this demo was that town blown up so you were in the town but it was very you know a flat shaded low poly environment so that told me immediately the computer hardware they had strapped the back of this headset oh there's like a little computer on the back of your head now because they don't need those IR uh they don't LEDs anymore triangle on the back there's a computer sticks out a little bit there's a fan there an active fan a lipo battery stuck over with a velcro that told me that computer wasn't you know a GTX 970 they weren't rendering things that were PC level more mobile level Graphics okay so like gear VR level Graphics but with tracking exactly and connect to that computer was an HDMI cable and a USB cable which then went to what looked like a very standard riff now the front was the only part where we can tell was wasn't a riff cuz it didn't have IR trackers it was still matte black but you can tell in the four corners of the headset flush to the shampers of the headset lenses tiny lenses it's a couple millimeters across so they have to be cameras I think they're cameras and they're looking out the world so the first thing I did obviously was try to block the cameras and I put my hands up here and I moved around and it was still track positionally because as they told me afterward it's very difficult to block all four cameras positional tracking with the system works with even three of the cameras blocked and one camera seeing the world you're not talking about just rotational you're actually moving through the space and it was tracking that yes with with some of them blocked with some of them blocked I assume some of them blocked because my hands are up here okay now you made a point about them not letting anyone else in the room like you could watch the demo while I took the demo right we think that's because this is still a prototype and any Movement by other people in the room like if you were in the room with me and you were trying to get up in my face that would break the tracking it's just so early in development there's probably this is just held together as tightly as they can at the moment I'm sure that they don't want anybody else walking in the room because they maybe they scanned the room for all we know like like this is an environment that the cameras know and recognize and if anything new comes in there there goes your tracking which is exactly how something like Project Tango works so you can improve this computer vision system there's a lot of high contrast objects here no fiducial markers in the room but like white walls with black frames on around things things that Compu would make it easy for computer vision to analyze uh the lighting was very even very bright not a ton of cast shadows and while there were about five people in the room with me giving me the demo putting the headset on my head when I took the headset off only two of those people remained so I think people left the room they didn't want to get in the way of the tracking right so that tells me that it's still a work in progress oh yeah obvious the other thing I noticed I tried to move my head around very quickly forward and back very quickly I did notice what I think are the effects of their new space warp asynchronous space warp well that makes sense because they're going to be running it as low as possible so they're probably going at that 45 htz and then upping it with space warp to 90 exactly that makes sense and people who've used the Riff and even gear VR know that time War there's some telltale signs of Time Warp when you move your head around really quickly or not graphically intensive game you see the world kind of skew just a little bit um and I noticed objects in the world had that kind of a little bit of wobbliness at the in the peripheral right but it doesn't drop frames or do anything nasty that gives you motion sickness so at least you keep the Comfort level it was still a full Rift experience in terms of the the screen that was used from the lenses it looked just like wearing the rift so that's Santa Cruz and as you heard from me chatting with Nate it's just one of the ways they exploring Inside Out tracking don't know if it's going to work Outdoors what they had was a very controlled environment not just environment but even the people in the environment well that's exciting I wonder how soon that can possibly be a product like maybe a year from now yeah I don't know you know they had a 5-year road map and it's going to be hopefully pop up some in some form over in the next five years now the other thing we want to talk about were the games they did announce a bunch of touch exclusive games funded by this $250 million seed money with oculus Studios um and stuff that were pretty high quality so we have videos out that you guys should watch about uh what I think were the maybe the best games here so far uh lone Echo lone Echo man that's we're diving right to the best one I mean that was my personal favorite of the entire show and honestly I I'd never heard of it before we came in here and we tried the single player the first day that was really fun it has a very interesting movement mechanic where you're grabbing the world in a zerog environment and thrusting yourself through and then floating until you grab something else very little no motion sickness for me which is really surprising giving that I get motion sick pretty easily um so it's just a matter of getting that uh I think it's a matter of first of all they don't let you um rotate your body ever so that's important to reduce motion sickness but also just the instantaneous stopping when you come to a halt there's no deceleration it's all and it's all human controlled so if and when I accelerate it's all my movement too so I'm always connected to that movement and then it continues at a constant rate um they've they've really nailed it and I'm super excited about the multiplayer that we tried today Ender Game multiplayer 5v5 in an arena that you can grab and throw yourself around use thrusters boost stop whenever you want to grab a disc and throw it into a goal uh it was incredibly fun and there was a great social aspect to it too using the microphone hearing your teammates knowing who who's talking to throw the disc to them pass them Bank it off a wall I've never had a social experience like this I mean Zuckerberg must be nuts about this alone because this was the best social experience I've ever had in virtual reality I got in there and my Captain my Captain Dave came over and uh he introduced himself and taught me how to use the the interface and taught me how to get out of this you know the starter uh whatever it was that I was in and then taught me how to move through the space and um then you started engaging with the other guy and I was practicing and it was just like I was talking to these guys and then we had to collaborate and we had to like here I'm going to pass you the disc and then he would grab it and then um you can thrust yourself off other people like there's a maximum velocity you can travel at if you just throw yourself off of something but if you throw yourself off something that's moving I.E another person you can actually go faster and then you can multiply that wow and we were trying like we were doing that together the best fun I mean and we're flying all over in zero g in every single Direction and when I got out of that I just felt so ated I was buzzed I can't wait to play this game and I think the social aspect here it wasn't just like voices in your head like overcomes you saw a robot representation of a person yeah they had ik so when your captain flew up to you and flew around you recognize that's the person I'm talking to it's also a very good point that they don't let you rotate yourself so you can never flip yourself upside down in the world when you grab onto an object it's just translational movement over those three axes but you don't get any rotation or tilt yep we were one of the guys in our team he couldn't figure out how to turn around like how do I do that and our captain said turn around actually have to physically turn around that's it so there's going to be some getting stuck in your in your cords but man it's worth it yeah so lone Echo uh I think my other favorite game from the show super hot I think the implementation of super hot in VR was just so delightful it was right as you expected it to be we discussed on the podcast how they might figure that out because in super hot as you move in the old Gamepad version any movement causes time to transpire and you're always kind of moving in VR and we wondered if rotating would cost anything and it doesn't so you can look anywhere you want you can aim anywhere you want it's only actually moving through the space moving your hands translation movement that accelerates time otherwise time is almost at a standstill yeah U and it's it's a fun puzzle game I also love that they have this mechanic but they've built in this kind of narrative in replicating action scenes and so as you progress your levels you know playing through one sequence one story almost yeah I dug that too um the new game um that you had played the unspoken before I hadn't had a chance to play that before and I was looking forward to it um that's if I had a second favorite game of the show definitely that one and I'm super psyched it's going to be free they announc this a bundle it's a bundle in title with the with the touch fantastic game I mean you're all of the magic that you're casting is augmented in front of you and you have your Shield all these different movements create different spells and they're going to have multiple um classes that you can play they they have two at the show and they've alluded to having more and they all have different effects and different spells that you can cast I think it's going to be a blast I can't wait to hop in that and I think that's a good pack and title really graphically impressive very fun just to like cast spells that actually have this huge effect in the world and uh comfortable multiplayer yeah we see a lot of firstperson games in VR Shooters where they rely on you know Gunplay but this is superpowers in the form of magic and that's so satisfying when you can cast a fireball cast a shield see the animation and create a pose and even use gestures to cast things into the world you know when you sorry I have to go back to Lone EO but when you mentioned superpowers it's it's you can fly in it too like you have these thrusters on your on your wrists and so when you activate them whichever way your wrists are going you start to go off in that direction super fun uh another fun game that's actually a sitting game with touch is no I expect you to die yeah that was an awesome DK2 demo when that came out that was like the best experience I'd had yeah and the final version of this game will have I think four puzzles uh they're basically think of it as a um as one of those room puzzles um but in VR yeah you mean like a escape room puzles escape room exactly where you're trying to figure out in the area around you in your environment whether you're trapped in a car whether you're on an elevator or something how to get progress The Narrative and unlock the next part of the puzzle right how many rooms did they say they four um and every one of them could take a slow person like me an hour to solve and I I was totally stuck in this thing I played it for like 15 minutes um but then when they explained to me what I was missing I was like Ah that's really really cool I wish I'd figured that out on my own it's one of those games where you don't want to give hints to people playing it because even if it takes 45 minutes an hour to solve one part of a puzzle the longer it takes for you to solve actually the more satisfying it is when you eventually do solv it yeah it's also has the same kind of quality the job simulator has where the world is full of interactive things and they're all humongous it's like building Lego with Duplo because everything's just gigantic that's that's what it's easiest to interact with it's a lot of fun uh what else what do you want to mention in terms of games those are my big highlights I think from the show uh well I mean Robo recall is certainly going to be fun to play and awesome that it's going to be free I mean that's really unexpected um unfortunately it's not a packin it's not going to be ready at launch but hopefully not too distant after the launch I mean they said next year early next year um and then VR Sports challenge is going to be a pack in they've totally revamped that into be touch so that that's and when you see that game you're like that's a natural fit for touch and you wonder why there's game pad in there at all and I guess they decided the same thing yeah so that's going to have basketball football hockey with brawling and even baseball home run to many games for every game and uh yeah that's that's going to be I think they're hoping to be the Wii Sports of of touch and there's a lot of variety in there be interesting to see which of those Sports becomes like wi tennis the one that everybody plays yeah as you can tell we have a lot to talk about about from Oculus connect and VR in general please subscribe to this Channel and our podcast where Jeremy and I will be discussing more about VR and our takeaways from Oculus connect but until next time Jeremy and I will see you later\n"