The Omni and the Virtualizer

Many are already proclaiming 2014 the year of VR for gaming technology with Oculus Rift leading the charge on this. Other products are now being developed which fit around the popular headset; two of which are the Omni and the Virtualizer. Both of these in fact address the same problem, that of moving in virtual reality and are, for all intents and purposes, omni-directional treadmills.

The Omni (seen above) is already available for pre-order and is a product of successful crowdfunding via Kickstarter. The Virtualizer on the other hand is demonstrated in the video below, in a demo which places the player in Skyrim with the help of both the aforementioned Rift but also two Wiimotes for interaction.

The potential of both of these devices, despite of course the practical issues associated with their size, is significant so it will be interesting to see how both of these are received.

New console for retrogaming

If you want to avoid emulators and you're looking for a physical console which can play your old NES, SNES and MegaDrive cartridges, all under one box, there is a device soon to be launched which does just that. Called Super Retro Trio, the device is created by Retro-Bit and appears to be available from preordering.

More info about the console here.

Games with Google Glass

If you want to get a taster of what basic games with Google Glass could potentially be like you could check out the video below. 

Google has created these 5 mini games for inspiration to developers and while these are (clearly) very simple they do showcase the potential that is there quite well. It'd be more interesting to see more elaborate efforts at some point of course; hopefully this will come with time.

16 GB OUYA option

The Android-based console now comes on a 16 GB option rather than the standard 8 GB one (I was pleased to see this today, having ran out of storage space on the one I was using yesterday, my only gripe really with what I think is a great piece of hardware).

You can see this here on the official site.

QuadStick controller on Kickstarter

QuadStick is a controller which is now on Kickstarter (and from the looks of it it has met its goal already). What is very different for this controller is that it is intended towards quadriplegics, as can be seen in the video below with somebody playing the last Call of Duty game on a PS3 with the device.

More information on the device and this very worthwhile project here.

Broken Sword 5

As this was made available only a couple of days ago for the iOS platform (it has been available already for Windows, Mac, Linux and PS Vita) I thought it would warrant a mention; the crowd-funded Broken Sword 5 is the new installment of the very popular adventure series created by Revolution Software. Whilst the series is know for its characters and story as well, its main characteristic, which is very evident in the new installment too, are the very high quality 2D hand-drawn graphics (this can be seen in the pic below).

More information about the game here.

FPS Creator Reloaded and the Oculus Rift

FPS Creator Reloaded, a new game engine I have blogged about recently, has now added Oculus Rift support. This is a welcome move and while FPS Creator Reloaded is not the first game engine that does this it is still great to see more support for the emerging VR headset by tools such as this one.

More info on this here.

Carmack's move from id Software to Oculus Rift

More details on why John Carmack left id Software for Oculus Rift recently; after many years with the company he founded, working on iconic games such as Doom and Quake. This comes from an interview he gave to USA Today recently and it clarifies/sheds light on this a bit more.

You can read about this in detail here.

PATTERNS 2014 conference TPC

I am a member of the Technical Program Committee for the PATTERNS 2014. This is to take place at Venice, Italy (May 25 - 29, 2014). The full name of the event is the Sixth International Conference on Pervasive Patterns and Applications.

More information about the conference here.

Unity used for club visuals

I have often blogged about gaming technology and, in specific, game engines used in situations other than game development. Another great (and very innovative) example of this is the use of Unity in the Tokyo club Fuze to generate visuals to music.

You can read more about this here.

Epic Games and the future

If you thought Epic Games was quiet of late then this short interview at Edge magazine should clear quite a lot up. Mike Gamble (Epic Games’ EU territory manager) covers a lot of bases in this, from UE4 all the way to Epic and virtual reality.

Well worth a read for people who are interested in both the company themselves but also their Unreal engine technology.

Static Games and Project Blueprint Challenge Honorable Mention

Static Games, a games dev start-up consisting of BU students from the Games Technology course, has gotten another honorable mention from Microsoft's Imagine Cup competition (see here for the previous one mentioned in a recent blog post), this time in the Project Blueprint Challenge Category.

More details about this here.

BU Research Chronicle

Bournemouth University has recently published the third edition of the BU Research Chronicle magazine, which highlights key research work undertaken at the University in a variety of disciplines. A doctorate student I am supervising, Karsten Pedersen, is featured on page 25.

You can access the BU Research Chronicle magazine in full here.

International Program Committee for CGVCVIP 2014

I have been invited to be on the CGVCVIP 2014 conference program committee. The full name of this is Computer Graphics, Visualization, Computer Vision and Image Processing conference and it is to take place in July 2014 at Lisbon, Portugal.

More information about the conference here.

New Oculus Rift prototype at CES 2014

Is it a coincidence that my last blog post from 2013 was on the Oculus Rift and the first one of 2014 is also on the same popular VR device? There's a new prototype of this called Crystal Cove which was recently presented at the CES 2014 taking place in the States at the moment.

This new prototype's features are best showcased in the video above.

NASA uses Oculus Rift and Kinect

For what is quite possibly the last blog post of 2013; the following video comes from NASA who demonstrate the use of a combination of the Oculus Rift and Kinect in order to control a robotic  arm.

 

The video is very short but the potential of this is great, it also shows how (relatively inexpensive) gaming technology is already used for prototypes for very serious, non-gaming applications.

Tower of Ascension, an Unreal engine powered mobile game

Tower of Ascension is another great showcase of what UDK can achieve on mobile devices. Running on iOS, the free to play action-RPG should cater for the type of market the now aborted Infinity Blade Dungeons would have done.

More information about the game can be found here.

Valve's answer to Oculus Rift?

There are rumours that Valve is gearing up its own answer to Oculus Rift, the popular VR headset which is already out in beta -or as it is called development kit- form (I have blogged about this particular device before). These are fuelled by the company adding sessions titled "What VR Could, Should, and Almost Certainly Will be within Two Years" and "Virtual Reality and Steam" for its upcoming January 2014 Steam Developer Days conference. More information about the conference here.

It remains to be seen what will happen with Valve (it could well be they end up collaborating with Oculus Rift); however one way or the other VR in gaming is to be a very interesting topic to follow in 2014 as there will very likely be many upcoming developments relating to more than just one company.

New Sony Playstation Move?

News have been making the rounds about a new patent filed by Sony which sees an extension of the concept their Playstation Move controller was based on. Picture below, a touchpad can be seen on the device (which is not on the current version).

With PS4 now out it is very conceivable that Sony will be giving the controller an update too.

MOGA Ace Power, an iPhone/iPod game controller

Pictured below, MOGA Ace Power is a controller which wraps around your iPhone and/or iPod device, affording you with controls similar to that of a joypad. This tackles one of the biggest criticisms of iOS games though it does appear to be quite sizeable.

What is also important about the MOGA Ace Power controller is that it is part of the Apple MFI (which stands for Made for iPhone/iPod) program and thus officially sanctioned. 

More information about the device here.