Star Citizen – Open Sandbox

Every so often I look around to see what is happening in the gaming world. This week STAR CITIZEN’S CHARACTER CUSTOMIZER is the subject of an article on Massively (3/23/2018) that caught my interest. They featured this video. While it is an interesting video of what is happening in the design room, we never get to see the character creator. 🙁

But, skipping through the video made me curious. I wanted to see what the game will look like… this video is the impressive one, IMO. The size of the world is amazing. But at time mark 19:00 you are finding the planet was just a small part of this virtual world that is truly a virtual universe.

It is pretty impressive. The size of the cities is surprising. What gets really amazing is the trip up to the space station (time marked link opens a browser). Then the jump to the next system and a trip down to the surface of another planet. For now, the universe in Star Citizen is limited. This is alpha.

By the 32:00 time mark they are down on the ground showing of the detail of the planet. Continue reading

VR News 2017 w30

Oculus is pushing updates. A beta update is available allowing a user to combine their Oculus and Steam games in one library. That will be handy.

VR User Case

As it is now I have problems getting Stream VR working on my Gear VR. It does not like the Gear VR’s controller. So, I’ll have to get the Beta and see if it relieves the problem. My hope is because Gear VR and the Oculus store are integrated that will carry over to Steam games in the library.

Get More information from Road to VR, Oculus 1.17 Update Will Let You Launch SteamVR Apps From Oculus Home.

VR: Nausea Killing Sales

I think we knew simulator sickness was going to be a problem. It seems to be bigger problem than I expected.

The Death of the King

The Death of the King

At the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Intel was demonstrating VR heads sets with a new chip they are making. They passed out headsets to show attendees. Along with the headsets they passed out barf bags.

See: Sticker Shock, and Maybe Nausea, Hamper Sales of VR GrearContinue reading

Gaming in 2016 – Predicting 2017?

According to SuperData Research  people spent US$91,000,000,000 on games. Billion… This is an all-time record. But, they are hyping things a bit. In 2015 Statistica shows $91.5 billion spent and $99.6 billion in 2016. I suppose it depends on where one gets their numbers and categorizes them. Game revenue is notoriously flaky as companies like to hype their increasing sales and keep decreases secret.

Still that is about a 10% increase year-to-year. Eight billion isn’t chump change, unless your spending $10 trillion on credit, like some governments…

Data From Statistica

They break the revenue down into subcategories. Handheld games are dying. Smartphone games are the hot item. They show the largest growth from 2015 to 2016 and that is expected to continue, which seems reasonable as smartphones are selling well.

In 2005 smartphones sales were just $3.8 billion. Eleven years later in 2016 sales of smart phones was $55 billion, a 1,447% increase. So, as more people get smartphones there are more possible users of smartphone games. According to Statistica a little less than half of the 2016 game revenue was from smartphone gaming. Continue reading

VR Catching On?

Interesting uses of Virtual Reality Headsets are turning up. Some examples:

Obduction – Of course games. This is a big Myst sibling puzzle game where you are magically transported to an alien world and have to figure out how to get home. The graphics are awesome. All versions of the game will have VR support. The game is out and the VR updates will be sent along.

Sketchfab: Largest Social Media Site for 3D Objects Adds VR Navigation – This is the first web site I’ve heard of that is designed for VR. The highlight isn’t the VR oriented content but the VR oriented site design.

Hospitals Try Giving Patients a Dose of VR – They are using VR to help with pain management. It’s a distraction thing.

Paraplegics regain some feeling, movement after using brain-machine interfaces – Surprising.

Gear VR – Samsung is selling their nice headset for the Note 7 for US$99. I am eligible for a new phone… tempting.

Politicians and Photo-Opts – I didn’t see this one coming. I’m hoping Wiener doesn’t find out about VR.

A New Universe with Procedural Worlds

Massively has an article about a game named No Man’s Sky. In the article is a video by TheHappieCat explaining how the game’s makers created quintillions of worlds using fractals. The thing I find surprising is the worlds are never stored in a database. Yet when you come back to a world it is re-generated, but the same exact world is generated. TheHappieCat explains how she thinks it works.

The Massively Overpowered article Eve Evolved: No Man’s Sky vs Eve Online, by Brendan Drain explores what the differences between Eve and No Man’s may mean how Eve could be impacted. Continue reading

Best looking…

Massively Overpowered has an article up titled: THE DAILY GRIND: WHICH MMO HAS THE BEST EYECANDY? Readers are contributing screen captures. Surprisingly only a couple of images surpass what we have in Second Life™, at least in my opinion.

 

I decided to put some of my images from SL up in a comment. From following people on Flickr I know there are people with far nicer images.