Valve’s Joe Ludwig on the uncertain future of virtual reality and partnering with Oculus

Valve's Joe Ludwig on the uncertain future of virtual reality and partnering with Oculus

It’s a beautiful late winter day in Bellevue, Wash. Instead of enjoying the outdoors, I’m sitting in a rectangular white room with three programmers, surrounded by three walls covered in augmented reality markers. Not that I’m complaining: Valve Software’s Joe Ludwig, the programmer in the room who most resembles a member of Anthrax, is walking me through his company’s latest work in the world of virtual reality. It’s the first anyone outside of Valve will see of the company’s VR efforts thus far.

As it turns out, the software company is working with Oculus VR to port the tremendously popular free-to-play first-person shooter, Team Fortress 2, to the upcoming Rift development kit. The free update, dubbed “VR Mode,” is the latest benchmark in Valve’s ongoing hardware initiative. “We think that both augmented and virtual reality are going to be a huge deal over the next several years,” Ludwig tells us.

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Valve’s Team Fortress 2 is Oculus Rift’s first game, free ‘VR Mode’ update coming soon

Valve's Team Fortress 2 is Oculus Rift's first game, free 'VR Mode' update coming soon

We’ve known for some time now that Valve was working on virtual reality support for its perpetually updated free-to-play shooter, Team Fortress 2. The company’s even giving a duo of talks at the upcoming Game Developer’s Conference on the difficulties of game development for virtual reality. What we didn’t know, however, is that said support is also headed to consumers as “VR Mode,” and it’ll get pushed to PC Team Fortress 2 players “sometime within the next couple of weeks.” But how will you play it? Simple: Team Fortress 2 is the Oculus Rift‘s first official game.

Valve programmer Joe Ludwig revealed as much during a recent visit Engadget paid to the Bellevue, Wash.-based game company. “This is a mode that everybody who has a Rift dev kit and access to Team Fortress 2 will be able to play, just on public and in the same servers that everybody else is playing in,” Ludwig said. Of course, “everybody” doesn’t include Mac or Linux TF2 players just yet. “We don’t have a Mac or Linux SDK from Oculus quite yet, but once we get those, we’ll get it ported over to those other platforms,” he explained. Oculus tells us those SDKs are coming. “The Oculus SDK will only support Windows at launch, but we plan to add support for OS X and Linux as quickly as possible. It’s just a matter of time,” Oculus VP of product Nate Mitchell says.

We’ll have more from our visit to Valve in the coming hours, so keep an eye out!

[Image credit: Michael Clinard]

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USC starts a web hub for DIY, open source virtual reality projects

USC starts a web hub for DIY, open source virtual reality projects

For the sheer variety of virtual reality headsets available, there’s been few resources available for those who want to craft their own devices. USC wants to save us the effort of searching around. Its MxR Lab has just launched a showcase of creations and modifications that DIY enthusiasts can build, including open source code for both the devices and integrating full-body motion control through Kinect for Windows or OpenNI. The most ambitious is Socket HMD, a complete 1,280 x 800 headset that involves a 3D-printed shell and custom-assembled electronics. If your own ambitions don’t stretch that far, you can still build the VR2GO viewer, which uses iPhones and iPod touch players as the eyepieces, as well as mods for the Oculus Rift developer kit that add stereo cameras or increase the field of view. Yes, you’ll need a 3D printer and a knack for programming to get most of these projects going, but you won’t have to wait for someone to make them for you — a big help when many ready-made VR displays are either in development or priced out of reach for the average person.

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Via: Road to VR

Source: USC

Oculus, Cliff Bleszinski and more talk VR at SXSW, watch live here at 7PM ET

Virtual Reality is one of this year’s big would-be comeback stories, led largely by the runaway success of the Oculus Rift Kickstarter and Valve’s recent rumblings on the matter. Not surprisingly, that talk is set to continue at South by Southwest Interactive this week, where Oculus Rift vice president of product Nate Mitchell will be moderating a panel discussing virtual reality as the “holy grail of gaming.” The panelists? Oculus VR’s Palmer Luckey, as well as former Epic Games design director Cliff Bleszinski and Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts. We’d say this is one worth watching, and you’ll be able to do just that today at 7PM Eastern (4PM Pacific) courtesy of the livestream after the break. We’re also live at SXSW ourselves, and will of course bring you any news that may come out of the event if you happen to miss it.

Update: Please excuse us, as we were misinformed of the panelists participating (this piece originally stated that John Carmack and Gabe Newell would both be involved). We’ve updated the post above to reflect the actual lineup.

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Source: Ustream

Project Holodeck gets a virtual hands-on ahead of launch (video)

Project Holodeck gets a virtual handson ahead of launch video

The team behind Project Holodeck has a daunting task ahead: it has to combine a virtual reality headset, two PlayStation Move controllers and a Razer Hydra into a unified VR input system that somehow feels natural. From what we’ve seen in Road To VR‘s hands-on with the system, the group might just pull that off. There’s no mistaking the sheer amount of equipment strapped to your head — not to mention the Lenovo laptop on your back — but the effort does create an immersive virtualization of the player’s body where walking, arm movements and body lean all work more or less as you’d expect. Although significant stretches of development lie ahead, including fully fleshed-out games and the eventual use of an Oculus Rift, there’s already teases of potential commercialization and a second generation that would include lighter, sleeker components. Those curious enough to watch two grown men stage a living room swordfight (and provide insightful answers afterwards) can watch the battle after the break, and head to the source for more details.

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Source: Road To VR

Stay seated: Valve’s Team Fortress 2 ported to virtual reality

Safetyproof your living room Valve's Team Fortress 2 getting ported to VR goggles

If Valve Software’s Team Fortress 2 is anything, it’s versatile. The company’s demonstrating that versatility once more in porting the game to virtual reality goggles, which could result in some serious psychological trauma. Kidding aside, a Game Developers Conference blurb today revealed the internal project — part of Valve’s ongoing wearable computing efforts — which says the talk, “will describe lessons learned from Valve’s porting experience.” In another talk, Valve hardware man Michael Abrash is diving into the possibilities he sees in the future of VR, as viewed through his own company’s experience.

It isn’t clear whether Valve is using the much-loved Oculus Rift technology (seen above); the notes of the second talk only detail a general exploration of VR’s weaknesses and strengths as they pertain to current technology. One thing is clear: both talks aim to educate game developers on what some Valve employees see as a burgeoning new frontier in game development. We welcome this bizarrely sci-fi future with open arms.

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Source: GDC (1), GDC (2)

Proportional VR experiment shrinks man down to rat size, lets us play games with rodents

Proportional VR experiment shrinks man down to rat size, lets us play games with rodents

Sure, you can always play catch with the dog, but what kind of game can you play with a caged rodent? Well, “find the poster,” apparently. A team of researchers from Universities in Spain, Germany, Austria, England and the US have put together a virtual reality system designed to let humans interact with rats at the rodent’s scale, challenging human participants to find and lead the rodent to a unmarked goal. According to a paper published in PLoS One participants were “beamed” into the rat’s environment by linking a head-mounted display and joystick to a rat-sized telepresence robot. Human players were then treated to a proportionally accurate representation of the game arena. The rat was there too, tracked with an overhead camera and represented by a human avatar.

Participants were tasked with coaxing their opponent in front one of three posters in attempt to sleuth out which one represents the “winning” position. When both players are in front of the correct mystery poster, a bell sounds and the game ends. The game was primarily created to test a scaled immersive virtual reality teleoperator system, but researchers are optimistic the technology could be used to observe animal behavior from a new perspective. Check out the setup in action after the break, or read on through to the source link below for a detailed description of how mankind and some of nature’s smaller creatures can get along in a virtual space.

Continue reading Proportional VR experiment shrinks man down to rat size, lets us play games with rodents

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Proportional VR experiment shrinks man down to rat size, lets us play games with rodents originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Nov 2012 14:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oculus Rift developer kits go up for regular pre-order, catch VR procrastinators

Oculus Rift VR headset render

Anyone who’s been wanting to make a game for the Oculus Rift headset, but hemmed and hawed during the Kickstarter run, now has a second chance. Oculus has kicked off its own pre-order campaign that offers the VR developer kit at the same $300 that it cost for the more proactive among us, or $345 for those beyond US borders. As an added incentive, the first 1,000 who pull the trigger still get a copy of Doom 3: BFG Edition to show what the Oculus Rift can do. Twiddling your thumbs will have cost at least a month — these new kits won’t ship until January — but the pre-order still means a head start over competing developers that haven’t yet seen the virtual light.

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Oculus Rift developer kits go up for regular pre-order, catch VR procrastinators originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Sep 2012 16:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oculus Rift’s latest VR headset prototype gets a showing at Gamescom 2012 (hands-on)

Oculus Rift's latest prototype gets a showing at Gamescom 2012 handson

“This is the latest prototype,” the Oculus guys tell us. That’s great, now strap us in. The team decided to make a sudden stop in Germany ahead of appearances back in the US over the next few weeks — and we’re glad, because it meant we got to call in on them and grab some time with the Oculus Rift. If you didn’t know, the Rift is a Kickstarter-funded VR gaming headset (stay with us) that’s caught the attention of several games developers — most notably John Carmack. He liked it so much, in fact, that he developed a special Rift-ready version of Doom 3 for the headset and Doom 4 will also be heading to the VR peripheral too. We got to play with the earlier game and while there’s a video after the break, we reckon you’ll really need to try this in person to fully grasp how the Oculus Rift plays. Check out our impressions after the break.

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Oculus Rift’s latest VR headset prototype gets a showing at Gamescom 2012 (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 10:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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John Carmack-endorsed Oculus Rift VR project hits Kickstarter, developer kits start at $300 (update: $250k goal met)

John Carmack's Oculus Rift VR project hits kickstarter, developer kits start at $300

We heard late last month that the John Carmack-endorsed Oculus Rift VR headset would be hitting Kickstarter any day now, and it turns out today is that day. The project has just launched on the crowd-funding site with a goal of $250,000. To reach that, the team (led by company founder Palmer Lucky) is offering a variety pledge options, starting with posters and t-shirts for $15 and $25 (or $10 for a simple thanks), and of course the headset itself that is initially only being offered as a developer kit. It will set you back $300, which also includes a copy of Doom 3 BFG, and is expected to start shipping in December (signed kits and a complete bundle are available as well). Those that act fast can also snag one of 100 unassembled prototype kits, which run $275 and ship a month earlier in November. Despite that developer-only status, though, the project is already off to an impressive start — it’s raised over $50,000 as of this writing. You can find the usual video overview of the project after the break.

Update: The 100 prototype kits are now sold out, and the project itself has already sailed past the $100,000 $150,000 mark. John Carmack also clarified on Twitter that he’s not “backing” the project in any official capacity, only endorsing it as a “wonderful advancement in VR tech.”

Update 2: And the project has now easily met its goal on the first day. Those interested are still able to make a pledge any time over the next 30 days.

Continue reading John Carmack-endorsed Oculus Rift VR project hits Kickstarter, developer kits start at $300 (update: $250k goal met)

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John Carmack-endorsed Oculus Rift VR project hits Kickstarter, developer kits start at $300 (update: $250k goal met) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Aug 2012 11:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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