Nick Marten's GDC Report

Post date: Mar 17, 2017 4:56:53 PM

Tuesday

Striker VR haptic feedback gun what that means for possibilities

After setting up the booth at GDC, while walking around saw guys at the Striker VR booth. There they were testing out there rig for there set up this year at GDC. They were testing their stand alone VR suite and headset, that came with a gun you carry. This gun, when you shoot, had haptic feedback, that actually kicked back into your shoulder.

After talking to the guys at the booth, and reading their pamphlet found out that it was a rig developed for a multi person “arcade” experience, almost like laser tag. Talking a little more, I found out that most of the VR industry is being created for a more standalone, arcade experiences, and that this is where most of the money is going in the VR industry.

Taking this idea into thought I have a better idea on how to approach the industry in terms to VR, and how to monetize my time and skill set to not only promote myself as a technical artist, but better way to approach VR and where I am going with it in the future.

Wednesday

Epic Talk, Tim Sweeney talking about real time applications for UE4 in growing industry

Listened to the epic talk, from the Epic booth where they were also broadcasting it live. Tim Sweeney introduced several people who are successfully leading the industry with UE4 with different uses. The one most worth while to me are the guys talking about the use of UE4 to market vehicles in real time.

A team using UE4 was able to make a car, that they were able to Mocap, and capture cube maps in real time and were able to apply onto a 3d model, and instantly replace the vehicle capturing all this information. Using all of this information they were able to make a super convincing representation of what this car would look like in the environment, that is comparable to a pre rendered scene. They were able to see what the car looked like, through the camera instantly. This creates many advantages for the entertainment industry. Such as directing a movie with CG elements. Instead of guessing what the final scene will look like, it is represented in real time instantly in front of the director’s/creator's eyes.

Using the information given, this gives me a lot of ideas in applying a very customizable marketing platform, that gives a well rendered scene, instead of getting a unlit, floating piece of geometry that almost looks like an afterthought asset in scene, that is obvious that it doesn’t belong.  

This also gives me hope that real time rendering is on the verge to take over the prerendered market, giving you fast results at hopefully half the cost, giving us game folk more jobs. Making think about how I can approach different types of media.

Thursday

HTC vive and new add on features, flexibility with free haptic feedback backpack

HTC vive came out with a bunch of add ons for their unit. They have a strap, much like the oculus, that goes around the back of your head and has the headphones built in. This creates a much more comfortable gaming experience. The Vive also created sensors that can attach onto pretty much anything, that can ultimately replace a controller. This means making video games for the vive has become much more flexible, and opens up the use of the vive for games exponentially.

This really has me mulling over which VR platform is better the Oculus, or the Vive. The Vive has now taken strides forward making it much more comfortable, and functional, which were the only complaints I had with it, considering it has way better motion tracking compared to the Oculus.

What this means for me, is that I need to consider the applications I can now use the Vive for, especially considering this market is now leaning towards coin-op arcade experiences. Because now I can make even more unique experiences with the Vive, and it's attachable sensors. Also they had a standalone backpack that you now get with it, which had haptic feedback. Which opens up even more doors for its use, hard not to admire this.

Friday

More VR Games

Friday I just played a lot of VR games. Ones with tilting cockpits, ones that are first person shooters (robo recall), turn based ones ( Dragon front, which i guess has been out for awhile) , and Survios’s sprint vector game which is a different take on locomotion in vr, where you move your arms up and down basically to move forward.

This opened my eyes to the different kind of games that can be made with VR, and what general direction this form of entertainment is going. This also made me aware that the VR games aren’t really pushing past most of the gimmicks, as far as I would like the industry to be, and makes me wonder when a decent VR experience is going to be created, one that isn’t a quick Arcade experience.

What this means for me, is I want to explore where VR can go, and makes me want to push this form of entertainment past where it is right now. One that embraces the contextual decision making possible in VR, but one that also uses the full immersion that is also achievable.