If you’re in Japan right now, you could be the first to play the new, officially licensed Street Fighter VR arcade experience, which pits you against some of the universe’s most iconic warriors.
Capcom released a trailer this week for the single-player arcade game, called Street Fighter VR Shadaloo Enhancement Plan (ストリートファイターVR シャドルー強化計画). It isn’t just a brand engagement vehicle that’s flavored like Street Fighter; hands-on reports suggest it’s actually a pretty solid basis for what might be an honest-to-goodness VR game one day if Capcom really wanted to put the effort in.
According to a hands-on by GAME Watch (Japanese language), Street Fighter VR recruits you as a junior soldier of the evil secret society ‘Shadaloo’, led by M Bison. Matched up against the warriors of Street Fighter V, you battle up the ranks to become the strongest.
The game, which plays on HTC Vive Pro 2, is said to first offer a basic training mode stage which was ostensibly ported directly from Street Fighter V. Although the number of attacks you can do are limited to punches and fist-focused moves like Hadouken and Shoryuken, the rules of the VR game are the same as the original, GAME Watch reports.
Opponents include Ryu, Zangief and M Bison (known as ‘Vega’ in Japan), although another opponent was seen in Capcom’s official art, including what appears to be the shadowy silhouette of Blanka at the end of the trailer. So maybe more yet to come? As it is, if you don’t win a single match, there are actually eight different endings depending on what you play—sounds like a fair amount of replayability.
“To be honest, before playing it, I thought it was just a VR game with a Street Fighter motif,” Hiroyuki Endo of GAME Watch writes, “but when I actually touched it, there were fighting game elements everywhere, and I was surprised that I was able to enjoy a full-fledged Street Fighter in a VR game from a first-person perspective.”
Street Fighter VR kicked off on February 17th at the Plaza Capcom Store in Hiroshima, Japan, priced at ¥1,200 (~$9 USD) per gameplay session. It’s also set to expand on April 17th to Miraino Aeon Mall in Toyokawa, Japan.
There’s really no indication whether we’ll see a release outside of Japan, although we’ve seen similar projects make it across thanks to sustained popular demand, such as the once Japan-only Mario Kart VR racer—so it doesn’t seem too farfetched if Street Fighter fans are vocal enough.
Note: We’ve corrected the name ‘Shadroo’ to ‘Shadaloo’. Thanks go to our reader ‘IIDX’!
Don’t blink, because PSVR 2’s eye-tracking may get you more than you bargained for in the headset’s upcoming on-rails horror shooter The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR, which aims to toss some extra scares your way when you least suspect it.
PSVR 2 is releasing on February 22nd, and in its 100+ game content lineup is a unique horror game from the makers of Until Dawn: Rush of Blood which tosses you back into another rollercoaster thrill ride that arms you with plenty of guns to fend off what bumps in the night.
Besides bringing high-quality VR to PS5, Sony’s next-gen headset also packs in eye-tracking, which is many games are using for easier UI selection and foveated rendering—useful, but not terribly exciting stuff.
Some developers though, including Supermassive Games, are integrating the feature into their core gameplay loop, which in Switchback’s case allows enemies to move around specifically when your eyes are closed.
In a new gameplay video, Supermassive shows off the feature as it plays out beyond the big ‘DON’T BLINK’ doors, revealing a room full of grotesque mannequins which only move when you blink—and they’re entirely focused on attacking you if they can.
Alejandro Arque Gallardo, Game Director at Supermassive, says there’s also set to be another mannequin type that works with eye-tracking, but cryptically will work in “a completely different way.”
We’ve linked to the timestamp (above) where Arque Gallardo discusses Switchback’s eye-tracking mechanic. The full video also delves into haptics, adaptive triggers, spatial audio, and the multiple areas you can encounter in the game.
The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR is launching on March 16th, priced at $40. You can pre-order the game here. In the meantime, make sure to check out our growing list of all confirmed games coming to PSVR 2.
Ioanna is a writer at SHIFT. She likes the transition from old to modern, and she’s all about shifting perspectives. Ioanna is a writer at SHIFT. She likes the transition from old to modern, and she’s all about shifting perspectives.
Although the UK has set out ambitious clean energy targets, it risks lagging behind the US and the EU in attracting the required investments, two of the country’s energy trade organisations have warned.
Ahead of the Chancellor’s Spring Budget next month, Energy UK and Renewable UK have published two separate reports, calling on the government to implement measures and rule changes that will enable the UK to attract vital private investment in renewables.
“The renewable energy sector is facing a perfect storm this year.
According to Energy UK’s report, investment in low-carbon electricity generation “has deteriorated significantly” in the past months, owing to soaring inflation, increasing interest rates, supply chain difficulties, policy uncertainty, and “poorly designed” windfall taxes that presently “favor oil and gas extraction.”
The trade organisation estimates that an additional investment of £500 billion would be needed between now and 2050 to meet the UK’s Net Zero goals. But without government action, it expects a £62 billion investment loss by 2030. This would translate to a shortfall of 54GW of potential wind and solar capacity — enough electricity to power every home in the UK.
“The UK is in increasing danger of undermining its own ambitions and failing to deliver on its commitments, “Emma Pinchbeck, Energy UK’s CEO, said. “In many ways, the UK has led the way in the transition to clean energy — witness our world-leading offshore wind industry — but we risk squandering this position and driving the investment that we need elsewhere.”
The fierce global competition for investment, skills, and supply chains was also cited by Renewable UK’s Executive Director of Policy Ana Musat, who highlighted that “the US and the EU are in a race to offer incentives to clean energy investors.”
Both trade organizations are calling for measures such as implementation of more attractive regulations, faster project planning, more sustainable renewable electricity prices, and new fiscal measures policies like reforming the windfall tax and respective tax reliefs.
“We are at a pivotal point right now with other countries actively trying to attract the same companies and investors and it would be unforgivably complacent to think that we don’t need to do the same,” Pinchbeck noted. “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity and if we don’t seize it now, we will miss out not just on cheaper, cleaner energy but on the huge boost to our economy such investment will bring in terms of growth, jobs and other benefits.”
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This article was originally published on .cult by Chameera Dulanga. .cult is a Berlin-based community platform for developers. We write about all things career-related, make original documentaries, and share heaps of other untold developer stories from around the world.
Software development is teamwork and having a good team structure is vital for its success. But, even a tiny misalignment could adversely affect our teams’ output. That’s why we should be extra careful when putting a team together.
In this article, I’ll discuss some important factors you need to consider when building a software engineering team for your company.
Why is team structure important?
When you build a software engineering team, look at various things that affect the productivity and effectiveness of the team.
In modern agile teams, we hardly measure effectiveness by the lines of code produced. Instead, we give more prominence to quality and continuous improvements. And the team should be capable of producing the “desired outcome.”
So we need to address the following questions:
Do we have the right skillset in place?
Technical skills
Experience
Soft skills
2. Do we have the right environment for them to collaborate?
Clear roles and responsibilities
Communication tools are in place
3. Does the team know their goals?
Clear communication top down so that the team knows the expectation
Precise requirements that reduce rework
4. Is the team empowered to produce better quality outcomes?
Processes in place
Leadership providing the proper guidance
Correct pay
A culture that appreciates and celebrates wins
5. Can the team produce a better outcome than each individual?
Team synergy
Continuous improvement
Self-managing and self-healing teams
We also need to take the budget into account. You should always have an upper limit to find the right balance for an optimum team structure.
But the question is, “How should we decide the perfect team structure?”
Deciding the best team structure
As you can see, there are many factors we need to consider when assembling a team. And some of them you’ll only identify after the team starts performing.
However, finding individuals with a proven track record, especially for the leadership level, is going to help you reduce the risks.
Let’s concentrate on the key factors we have control over when choosing the individuals for a team;
The number of team members
2. Experience level of the engineers
3. Cost of running the team (remuneration and other expenses)
1. Number of team members
We usually decide the number of individuals in a team based on the project estimates and delivery milestones. One thing you shouldn’t do is run the project with less developers than required, even if they’re very talented. You’ll run the risk of sacrificing quality and cause more problems in the long run.
However, things get complicated when you need to decide the structure of the team. Since not all individuals play the same role, we have to start thinking about the team’s composition by identifying different roles.
Who is leading the team and managing the project?
Do we need to break into sub-teams? (which might mean more leaders…)
Who is taking ownership of the architecture?
What are the other roles required, e.g., Quality Assurance, UI/UX, Project Management, Business Analyst?
2. Experience level
The experience level of the engineers directly affects the quality and productivity. But that doesn’t mean we need a team full of highly experienced people. Remember, we talked about team synergy.
We have to think about the different experience levels available in the team. Since people work together, they can learn from each other and produce the desired outcome.
Why experience levels affect quality and productivity
Quality cannot be built over a day or two. It comes with experience.
For example, suppose you’re starting a new Java project and looking for a developer. If you use developers who are new to the technology, they’ll need time to learn — meaning the project will be slower.
Also, they won’t have the necessary experience on best practices, resulting in higher rework effort. So in this case go with a developer who’s skilled with Java. Easy!
However, if you need more than one developer to work on a project you can re-consider different experience levels. You can have the experienced developer(s) guide the team towards the goal without your productivity suffering. It also means, from a hiring perspective, you can consider a wider pool of developers who can join your team.
Having a team full of experienced people becomes challenging
First of all, it affects your budget, more experienced developers are obviously going to demand higher pay!
On top of that, they’ll expect better opportunities like playing leadership roles, and that’s not always going to be available. All this experience can create a bottleneck if the teams’ goals and ambitions aren’t aligned.
Having a balance between junior and senior members is going to be better and also increases developer retention because expectations and growth can be better managed.
3. Cost of running the team
Software engineering teams are significantly different from teams in other professions. They can work from remote locations, have flexible working hours, and sharpen their knowledge with continuous learning.
So, if we can utilize these factors, we can look at optimizing the costs involved.
Experience comes with a cost
As we discussed earlier, finding experienced individuals on a particular technology or domain comes with a cost. And since it’s not a binary decision to have all experienced or none, we can balance the experience levels also considering the cost structure.
Multiple workplaces
This is also another dimension to think about when managing the costs of software development teams.
However, having multiple workplaces can either increase or reduce the cost of your project.
If you have more than one workplace, you’ll have to pay bills, maintenance for each workplace, and without a doubt, it will increase the utility costs.
But, on the bright side, we can look for locations to attract more talent or have tax benefits. Besides, if you can arrange a workplace in a country where the living expenses are low, you can effectively reduce the costs.
Remote workers and outsourcing
So, if you look at the other options available, you can outsource your work either to a remote worker or a company where the costs are low.
However, there are few other challenges you should address when making your distributed team effective.
Increase the overlap
If your team is working in different time zones, it’s good to have reasonable overlap whenever possible. This could be achieved by either shifting working hours or having designated time for collaboration.
2. Balancing expertise and dividing the work
Also, it’s necessary to balance the experience of individuals and partition the work, reducing the dependencies across time zones.
3. Streamlined processors
A proper set of processors is needed when working with remote teams or outsourcing (e.g., agile processors such as Scrum, Kanban). It will help to align all the team members towards the end goal.
As you can see, there are various ways of reducing the costs by maximizing the outcome.
Summary
This article has discussed several factors you need to consider when deciding the team structure for effective software engineering teams.
Some of these decisions you’ll need to make upfront, so you won’t know what needs to be adjusted until the team gets rolling. After some time, it’ll be easier to identify where changes need to be made, whether it’s costs or collaboration.
The 2023 Digital Fashion Week New York was a three-day event that was a hub for phygital fashion experiences. Merging the physical and digital fashion worlds, the Web3 event provided audiences with immersive phygital fashion experiences, as well as informative discussions, and networking opportunities, and acted as a digital venue for independent designers around the world to showcase their designs.
In a press release shared with ARPost, the Digital Fashion Week NY team expected to see a variety of attendees, including industry specialists, tech CEOs, fashion industry executives, investors, designers, and artists, among other guests.
Phygital Fashion Took the Center Stage
The three-day event kicked off on Thursday, February 9, with a Networking and Speaker Summit, which featured global panel discussions on the role of AI in transforming design protocols. On Friday, February 10, the event hosted the opening of the Metaverse Fashion Experience where attendees could explore virtual worlds through digital avatars. These digital avatars donned custom special drops from digital fashion week design winners.
Aside from the opening of the Metaverse Exhibition, there were also global panel discussions. Some of the members of the panel and speakers during the panel discussions included ZERO10’s Chief Product Officer Maxim Raykhrud, Exclusible’s Chief Commercial Officer Olivier Moingeon, and Sensorium’s Deputy CEO Sasha Tityanko.
During the last day of the Digital Fashion Week NY, Saturday, February 11, attendees could experience an array of immersive digital experiences, which combined physical and digital assets. These phygital fashion experiences included holograms, virtual showrooms, and animation screenings from some of the world’s leading artists and fashion designers who work within the Web3 space.
ZERO10 at the 2023 Digital Fashion Week NY
The AR fashion platform ZERO10 also showcased activations, alongside LODE. Through these phygital fashion experiences, attendees were able to learn more about how modern technology could play a role in transforming digital fashion and how this, in turn, could give them a new channel for self-expression.
Aside from activations, ZERO10 also showcased a recreation of five designs from independent phygital fashion designers, in particular, pieces from Private Policy’s Fall/Winter ‘23 collection, transforming them into augmented reality.
Private Policy, a New York-based inclusive fashion brand, debuted its F/W ‘23 collection, entitled “We Are All Animals” and is a celebration of the interconnectedness of all the earth’s living beings. Pieces from the collection featured graphic designs of endangered and critically endangered species, such as the Amur Leopard and the Yangtze Finless Porpoise.
The collection combines utilitarian features, such as harnesses and tactile pockets, with sustainable materials. For instance, components like slanted checker pieces are made using reclaimed or unwanted denim garments, while statement outerwear designs are crafted using recycled poly faux fur.
Aside from promoting sustainability through the collection’s materials, Private Policy’s newest collection also distills the beauty and vigor of nature, combining it with elements that give it an urban edge.
Of the five designs, two had physical representations that were showcased at the show in New York City on February 11. These physical representations will also be made available for viewing in London on February 18. The Digital Fashion Week London runs from Friday, February 17 to Saturday, February 18.
As for the other three designs, they will remain digital and will be made available for NYFW 2023 guests to try on. Furthermore, Private Policy’s collaboration with ZERO10 will enable fans to virtually try on pieces from the collection via the ZERO10 app.
Through ZERO10’s integration, attendees and fashion enthusiasts have a new way of interacting and learning more about immersive phygital fashion through augmented reality.
Aside from ZERO10 and LODE, some of the other artists, designers, and brands that were present during the Digital Fashion Week NY included Anastasia Sladkova, Clo B, DOPE GLOBAL, Maya ES, MOS Brand, Schieva x Tokyo White, Tony Murray, and Zoha Khan. S
Indie VR studio Mighty Coconut announced its smash success VR mini-golfing game Walkabout Mini Golf is making its way to PSVR 2.
Arguably one of VR’s most favorite social gaming experiences, Walkabout Mini Golf is said to arrive on PSVR 2 “soon”, which is set to include cross-play with all supported versions of the game; this includes versions available through Steam, Meta Quest Store, Viveport, and Pico’s European-facing digital store.
Ranking consistently as one of the most highly-rated games on the Quest Store, Walkabout Mini Golf supports both single-player and up to four-player multiplayer, offering up a wide selection of mini-golfing courses.
We don’t know precisely when the hit mini-golfing game is coming to PSVR 2, although Mighty Coconut says it’s set to bring all of the main content at launch, including eight easy and eight hard mode courses, and paid access to all DLC courses and bundles.
We’ll be keeping our eyes out for a more precise launch date in the coming weeks, as Sony’s next-gen VR headset is launching on February 22nd. PlayStation VR 2’s so-called “launch window” content extends into March, so we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed that we’ll see it on PSVR 2 sooner rather than later.
Ioanna is a writer at SHIFT. She likes the transition from old to modern, and she’s all about shifting perspectives. Ioanna is a writer at SHIFT. She likes the transition from old to modern, and she’s all about shifting perspectives.
According to EU data, numerous vital tech sectors in the bloc have been suffering from supply shortages in semiconductor chips, mainly as a result of the European dependency on imports from a limited number of companies and countries. To address this issue, the union aims to boost its domestic industry by implementing new legislation.
On Wednesday, the European Parliament adopted its position on two proposed draft bills: the Chips Act and the Chips Joint Undertaking.
On the Chips Act, MEPs endorsed the text put forward by the Industry Committee and expressed their support of its three main measures:
Reinforcing technological capacity and innovation and attracting talent.
Encouraging investment and increasing production capacity.
Implementing a crisis response mechanism, enabling the Commission to monitor semiconductor supply, assess risks, and anticipate shortages.
Commenting on the Chips Act, rapporteur Dan Nica said that it should establish Europe as a “key player” in the global semiconductor market. “Not only does the budget need to be commensurate with the challenges and funded through fresh money, but the EU should lead in research and innovation, have a business-friendly environment, a fast permitting process and invest in a skilled workforce for the semiconductor sector,” he added.
On a separate vote, MEPs also backed the Chips Joint Undertaking proposal, which implements the measures put forward under the Chips for Europe initiative, and complements the Digital Europe and Horizon Europe programmes. Its aim is to increase investment in research, development, and innovation infrastructure in order to bolster large-scale capacity building.
“Microchips are integral to the EU’s digital and green transitions as well as our geopolitical agenda,” rapporteur on the Chips Joint Undertaking Eva Maydell said. “We are calling for fresh funding that reflects the strategic importance of Europe’s chips sector. Europe’s partners and competitors are also investing heavily in their semiconductor facilities, skills, and innovation.”
The European Parliament is now ready to begin talks with the Council on both bills. If negotiations are successful, the Chips Act could be a game changer for Europe. Earmarked at €43 billion and aiming to account for 20% of the world’s supply by 2030, the act could help the EU reinforce its competitiveness and sovereignty in the sector.
More than six years after its VR debut, Sony is ready to bring next-gen VR to PS5 with PSVR 2. Does PlayStation VR 2 make a substantial improvement over its predecessor? And how does it stack up to other VR headsets on the market? Read on to find out.
With PSVR 2, Sony is not just improving on the prior headset, it’s also raising some bars for consumer headsets overall as the first device in its class to bring eye-tracking, HDR, and new haptic capabilities to the market. Let’s start out with a look at PSVR 2’s specs and how they compare to the original PSVR:
PSVR 2 vs. PSVR Specs
PSVR 2
PSVR
Resolution
2,000 x 2,040 (4.1MP) per-eye, OLED, HDR
960 x 1,080 (1.0MP) per-eye, RGB OLED
Refresh Rate
90Hz, 120Hz
90Hz, 120Hz
Lenses
Fresnel
Single element non-Fresnel
Field-of-view (claimed)
110° (diagonal presumed)
100° (diagonal presumed)
Optical Adjustments
IPD, eye-relief
Eye-relief
Connectors
USB-C (no breakout box)
USB, HDMI (breakout box)
Cable Length
4.5m
4.4m
Tracking
Inside-out (no external beacons)
Outside-in (external camera)
On-board cameras
4x IR (external), 2x IR (internal)
None
Pass-through View
Yes
No
Input
PSVR 2 Sense controllers (rechargable), DualShock 5 (rechargable) eye-tracking
One of the most important parts of a VR headset is how things look when you peer through the lenses, so that’s where we’re going to start.
Clarity
Photo by Road to VR
How good things look inside of a VR headset depends on much more than just resolution, so we like to boil things down to the point of talking about ‘clarity’, ie: how clear does the virtual world look inside the headset.
PSVR 2 gets a big jump in clarity over its predecessor thanks first and foremost to a big leap in resolution (from 1.0MP per-eye to 4.1MP per-eye). From a resolution standpoint, that puts PSVR 2 on par with other headsets on the market like Quest 2.
While the image through PSVR 2’s lenses certainly looks much better than the original PSVR, it’s hampered a bit by two notable issues: sweet spot and motion blur.
PSVR 2’s Fresnel lenses actually have fairly good edge-to-edge clarity, but only if you can get your eyes in the headset’s rather small eye-box (AKA sweet spot). Unfortunately not everyone will be able to get their eyes into the ideal position because the sweet spot seems to be designed at a distance that makes it so you’d have to cram the headset uncomfortably against your face in order to keep the lenses in the perfect spot. Thanks to an eye-relief adjustment it’s easy to move the lenses far enough away that they aren’t crushing your nose, but for every little bit that you do you give up some sharpness on the edges and some field-of-view.
The small eye-box also means that if you don’t dial the headsets ergonomic adjustments in just right you’ll see things like chromatic aberration and more blur around the edges than you would otherwise.
Thankfully Sony has included a guided calibration step (which makes use of the headset’s eye-tracking) and helps users find that ideal spot by guiding them toward the correct IPD and lens alignment. This definitely helps reduce the issue of having a small sweet spot, and I find myself running calibration every few times that I pick up the headset just to be sure things haven’t jostled out of place. Luckily Sony has made it easy to run the calibration step at any point—even in the middle of a game.
I also mentioned motion blur as something that’s holding back the clarity on PSVR 2. I still don’t know exactly why I’m seeing a fair bit of motion blur on PSVR 2—whether its persistence blur, ghosting, reprojection, or something else—but it somwhat reduces the sharpness of the image whenever your head is in motion (which in VR is most of the time). It’s a shame because you can see just how sharp everything is when you head is still, and then as soon as you go to look at something else, the world around you becomes a bit more blurry.
And unfortunately PSVR 2’s Fresnel lenses aren’t an exception to the rule: its still easy to spot god rays and some glare in high contrast scenes.
Displays & HDR
Photo by Road to VR
Sweet spot issues aside, PSVR 2 is packing a pair of impressive OLED displays that make colors feel more rich and saturated while allowing dark parts of the scene to get truly dark instead of just dark grey.
This makes a big difference when it comes to content like Horizon Call of the Mountain which aims to immerse players in a world full of lush scenery.
While it’s great to have OLED black levels on a modern headset, PSVR 2’s displays do suffer from more mura than seen on its contemporaries, which manifests as a bit of speckling on the screen that’s more visible when seen against certain colors.
But that’s the price you pay for those deep blacks and purported ‘HDR’ capabilities, though I’ve yet to hear Sony confirm key parts of that capability, like peak brightness.
In my experience with the headset I can’t say I’ve felt like its showing significantly more peak brightness than other headsets, but it feels like the HDR is paying off more in the mid and lower tones.
Field-of-view
Photo by Road to VR
Similar to the small sweet spot, PSVR 2’s field-of-view is technically quite large—at times feeling like it meets even Valve’s Index—but that’s only if you can push the lenses exceptionally (and for me, uncomfortably) close to your eyes; so close that the lenses are putting a lot of pressure on your nose. Between where it’s actually comfortable for me to have the lenses sit and where I would get the maximum field-of-view, it feels like I’m leaving a non-trivial amount of FoV on the table. That said, even the comfortable position leaves me with a fairly sizable field-of-view that exceeds something like Quest 2.
IPD & Eye-tracking
Photo by Road to VR
PSVR 2 is the first consumer VR headset to ship with eye-tracking. While this has the potential to be very useful across a range of applications, I’ve yet to see any game that’s putting it to seriously good use. So far the closest any game has come is Horizon Call of the Mountain which uses eye-tracking to improve the accuracy of the game’s subtle auto-aim.
For its part, Sony is making use of the eye-tracking to help users set their correct IPD (which is very useful, especially considering the headset’s small sweet spot), and even adjust the tilt of the headset on the user’s head.
While I appreciate that smart touch, I wish the calibration step would actually provide a number to accompany the IPD setting; that way you could simply remember your number and dial it in every time. Instead, the guided calibration just shows a visual indicator of how close your eyes are to the center of the lenses. It works well, but without a number to go by you need to dial things in visually every time.
Indie VR studio REZZIL today announced it’s bringing REZZIL PLAYER, the VR sports training game, to PSVR 2 soon.
Initially launched on Quest in 2021 and later brought to SteamVR headsets in 2022, Rezzil Player offers up a growing collection of sports training games that aim to improve performance and reaction times across sports like football, soccer, and basketball. The immersive training game now boasts over 160 levels and 40 items of sports kit for avatars.
The studio announced Rezzil Player is officially coming to PSVR 2 during its launch window, which PlayStation says extends into March.
The studio says the PSVR 2 version is slated to use the next-gen headset’s advanced features, including haptic feedback to feel the impact of a ball on their head, and eye-tracking for foveated rendering.
“We are thrilled to announce the release of REZZIL PLAYER on PlayStation VR 2,” said Gareth Thatcher, Director at Rezzil. “Combining our virtual and physical sports training games with the power of PlayStation 5 is something we are proud of and excited to bring to a new audience.”
Rezzil Player is set to launch on PSVR 2 for $10 “within the official launch window,” the studio says, which PlayStation has defined as starting at the headset’s launch on February 22nd leading into March.
We’ll keep our eyes peeled for a more precise launch date and PlayStation Store links in the coming weeks.
Firewall Ultra, the team shooter exclusive to PSVR 2, doesn’t have a release date yet, however developers First Contact Entertainment confirmed with Road to VR it’s indeed releasing sometime this year. In the meantime, the studio has revealed a new character to its lineup of Contractors.
Firewall Ultra is the upcoming sequel to the well-recieved squad-based shooter Firewall Zero Hour, which launched on the original PSVR in 2018. While we were hoping to hear news of the sequel’s actual release date, it appears we’ll have to wait a little longer, as the studio announced it’s confirmed for 2023 release.
We didn’t know when it was going to launch when it was initially announced back in September. At the time we speculated it may even be a launch day title, but now given the indefinite ‘2023’ launch window, it seems we’ll be left waiting.
PSVR 2 is set to launch on February 22nd, and to keep the hype for what could become the platform’s most prominent team shooter, the studio also revealed a new character to the lineup. Here’s what First Contact says about the new character, Havoc:
Havoc joins the fray in Firewall Ultra as a brand-new Contractor. With a background as a decorated former elite military operative, he is well-trained, well-conditioned, and well-equipped to get the job done—despite his cocky attitude. He was kicked out of the program after a big disagreement with a superior and is now looking to make a name for himself in the world of private contracting.
In Firewall Ultra, his Conditioned skill increases his resistance to bullet damage and deploys a mine once he’s eliminated from battle.
In the meantime, you can wishlist the PSVR 2 exclusive game here.
The Light Brigade is a roguelike shooter that I would mostly describe as a spiritual successor to In Death: Unchained, the critically acclaimed bowshooter from Sólfar Studios and Superbright. While at times a little less visually polished than In Death, the game’s variety of upgrades and array of WWII-era weaponry gives it a definite Wolfenstein bend that fans of the shooter genre will instantly be able to click into.
Reviewed On: Quest 2 (native), Quest 2 via PC Link
Gameplay
There’s a definite story in The Light Brigade, although past the opening scene I really couldn’t remember what was actually at stake up until I completed my first full run. The game doesn’t chock too much story your way (or over tutorialize either), leaving you to just fight the bad guys while you save the culty good guys. Really, all you need to know is the demon-eyed, Nazi-adjacent baddies aren’t friendly, and the hellish fantasy-scape composed of discrete and sequentially connected levels must be cleared out and scoured methodically for loot.
It’s just pure action-adventure fun, as the meat of the game presents plenty of interesting upgrade paths which not only prolong your current run, but importantly give you enough reason to come back for more upon your inevitable death.
The Light Brigade feels forgiving enough to really keep you grinding for that next gun mod or class upgrade too, which gives you access to cooler-looking and more powerful versions of each weapon. Meanwhile, the game is busy serving up a good difficulty ramp that means your next run may not be necessarily easier despite progressively wider access to guns, magic, and upgrades.
That’s all well and good, but what about the guns? Thankfully, The Light Brigade really gets its WWII weaponry right, providing physics-based rifles and pistols which each come with their own immersive reloading mechanics. Loading and shooting the M3 submachine gun requires you to grab its stick-style magazine and chunk back the charging handle to chamber the first round, while shooting a K98 rifle is totally different, making you jam down stripper clips to feed the bolt-action rifle.
Practically speaking, sticking to a single class isn’t a terrible strategy as you get your grips with the game, as you’re probably looking to maximize your rank and unlock permanent upgrades since they don’t sync across classes.
In practice though, you’ll probably do a fair amount of class hopping once you progressively unlock the next available class, taking you from the starter Rifleman class with its semi-automatic Gewehr 43 rifle all the way through the other iconic WWII weapon-wielding classes the game has to offer, including the Sturmgewehr 44 submachine gun, the M3 submachine gun (aka ‘Grease Gun’), the powerful K98 battle rifle, and even a class that has dualie Colt 1911s for some John Wick-style madness.
As for enemies, the world’s baddies come in a pretty standard range, starting with your standard goons, which include shooters and archers. You’ll eventually come across shielded goons, tanks, and versions that fly, snipe, and lob bombs too. There always seems to be a new type added to the mix after each attempt though, so there may be more I don’t know about.
By this point, I’ve already made it through one full run, although that was after many (many) failed attempts spanning over about eight hours of gameplay—another thing that makes The Light Brigade a little more generous than In Death, which is probably there to keep it a little more of a fast-paced experience.
Levels are fairly linear, although there’s plenty of cover to hide behind as you make your forward march. That also means finding the remaining enemies can sometimes be tough, but thankfully prayer actually works in this universe, helping you to locate remaining loot and baddies. Enemies are revealed by showing you small red dots while chests are yellow.
And once you’ve finally cleared out the level’s baddies—you get a big ‘LEVEL CLEAR’ popup—then it’s time to scour for loot, oftentimes hidden in breakable vases and chests.
Here, you can find gold to buy consumables, weapon upgrades like scopes and magical trinkets, souls which increase your rank level, and the occasional key, which can open locked chests.
Mostly though, you’re looking for souls, the whispy white things that you’ll earn after killing enemies or finding soul containers. There’s also cards that give each run a unique set of possible upgrades. Choose one of three presented to you, and you might just significantly increase the damage you can deal, injecting a bit of luck into each run’s loot haul.
It’s not all WWII guns and demon Nazis though. The world is also magic-based, giving you upgradeable magic wands that can do things like provide shields, shoot fireballs, etc.
All of this effectively combines to offer a good selection of gameplay styles, letting you attack the world as you want.
Still, I have my gripes with The Light Brigade, the worst offender being its inventory holters attached to your belt. In practice, this makes reloading quickly and consistently an absolute pain. Instead of having a fixed area where you can reliably train muscle memory, shifting your body around physically or virtually with any of the artificial locomotion schemes has a funny way of shifting the belt holster around your waist in weird an unpredictable ways.
I get it: you should be covering and assessing your ammo situation at all times so you don’t run dry during critical moments, but having to crane your neck down every few seconds to make sure your hand is actually hovering over the right area is decidedly a dull spot on an otherwise shining example of great VR gaming.
I’m still working on getting the last remaining achievements and consistently beating the first boss as I attempt my successive runs. Considering the array of gun upgrades and magical weapons to explore, it’s safe to say I’m nowhere personally finished with this well-crafted roguelike. I won’t talk too much about bosses, although they are hard, and offer up unique bossy ways of dealing out damage—pretty much what’d you expect from a fantasy shooter, i.e., they can shield, do magic, and surprise you throughout the encounter, so they aren’t just glorified bullet sponges.
Immersion
I get it: The Light Brigade is all about bringing light back to a dark and corrupted world, but it is very dark. At times, I felt it offered less visual contrast than Quest 2’s LCD displays can rightly handle, making some levels appear more muddy and generally more difficult to resolve visually.
Road to VR has a PSVR 2 in hand, although I don’t personally. I have had a chance to preview the headset though, and its OLED displays with HDR will undoubtedly be more capable of serving up better visual contrast. Still, if you’re playing on Quest 2 natively, or any number of PC VR headset running the Steam version, you may find later bits of the game very difficult to resolve visually.
Image courtesy Funktronic Labs
Were it not for the beady red eyes that shine in the darkness, enemies would be maybe too difficult to make out in the ever-present fog of war. Still, it’s a fairly muddy palette any way you slice it; level design and variety as you move forward are always interesting at least.
The star of the show though is inevitably the game’s weapons, which provide subtle articulations that really make it feel more of a realistic experience. For example, you can cycle a magazine’s worth of cartridges just because you mechanically can. You don’t need to, but the fact that The Light Brigade’s guns functionally work like real guns means the player should be able to if they want to. See my magazine empty as I eject unfired bullets:
Another immersive touch is the gun’s physical weight, which affects how you hold and steady it. A pistol requires a steadier hand because it’s lighter and easier to swing around, while a rifle is more forgiving with movement since the game registers as it being substantially heavier in the player’s hand. Suitably, some guns let you steady with your non-dominant hand, providing discrete attach points to do so.
I was hoping for some amount of melee, although there’s none present to speak of, meaning if your gun runs dry, you better find cover and reload, or pull out your trusty sidearm.
A note one positional audio: enemies provide good spatial audio cues for their relative locations—something important once levels start getting more claustrophobic, like in the sewers.
Comfort
The Light Brigade has a good swath of standard comfort options which, include optional smooth or snap-turn, and smooth locomotion or teleport.
Playing seated is possible, and the game comes with a seated mode, although it’s not advisable since your belt holster may be awkwardly positioned at any time, making standing play the least encumbering way to interface.
The Light Brigade’ Comfort Settings – February 15th, 2023
Turning
Artificial turning
Snap-turn
Quick-turn
Smooth-turn
Movement
Artificial movement
Teleport-move
Dash-move
Smooth-move
Blinders
Head-based
Controller-based
Swappable movement hand
Posture
Standing mode
Seated mode
Artificial crouch
Real crouch
Accessibility
Subtitles
Languages
English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, German, French, Russian, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional) , Korean, Japanese
The Dutch tech startup ecosystem has been steadily flourishing over the past five years, establishing itself as one of Europe’s most vibrant hubs. Yet, there are still hurdles the Netherlands needs to overcome in order to reach its full potential and successfully compete on a global scale.
That’s according to the annual State of Dutch Tech report by TechLeap, a non-profit organisation which helps quantify and accelerate the ecosystem in the Netherlands.
Here are seven key takeaways from the report you need to know about:
The Netherlands houses the EU’s most successful ecosystem
In 2022, the Amsterdam-Delta region was the leading ecosystem in the EU, overtaking Paris and Berlin. Globally, it ranks on the fourteenth place, behind cities in the US, Asia, and the UK.
However, the combined valuations of Dutch startups stagnated, with
the tech sector in the country dropping from the fourth to the sixth position globally at €0.4T in aggregate public market cap. The Netherlands is still the leader in the EU thanks to tech giants ASML, Prosus, and Adyen.
Fintech and healthcare were the dominant startup sectors in the country, with the first producing the greatest number of scaleups as well. The Netherlands also welcomed one new unicorn in 2022, bringing its total to 1.4 unicorns per million inhabitants. This places it above France (0.7) and Germany (0.5), but below Sweden (2.4) and the UK (1.7).
The tech sector is also growing outside the Amsterdam-Delta
Although the North Holland region remains the largest startup centre in the country, generating 38% of startups jobs, other local hubs are also growing thanks to regional specialisations and mutual cooperation.
For instance, North Brabant showed a 27% year-on-year growth in deeptech jobs, Utrecht increased its numbers of startups by 900, and Gelderland has become a leader in foodtech.
Job creation increases, but attracting talent remains a challenge
In 2022, startup-generated jobs reached 135K, rising from 109K in 2020 and 130K in 2021. Attracting tech talent, however, presents to be challenging for many startups.
Specifically, the percentage of hard-to-fill tech jobs has increased to 59%. On average, these types of vacancies stay open for more than 60 days.
This phenomenon occurred in other ecosystems as well, including Sweden, Germany, France, and the US.
Dutch startups struggle scaling up mainly due to lack of funding
The startup to scaleup ratio in the Netherlands (22%) is lower compared to other European hubs, such as Germany (37%), the UK (30%), and France (26%). That’s mainly because of insufficient capital.
In 2022, total VC funding in the Netherlands was €2.6 billion with the average funding being €0.26 million per startup. This was significantly lower than other major EU startup ecosystems. For reference, Sweden’s average was €0.9 million per startup.
Despite the Netherlands’ prowess in scientific and academic research, deeptech is amongst the underinvested sectors with €0.7 billion in funding in 2022 and a 23% startup to scaleup ratio.
On the brightside, investments on impact startups are on the rise with over €1 billion raised in 2022. And investments in all sectors overperformed pre-pandemic levels.
The gender gap
The gender gap is still a problematic issue within the industry. Just 10% of Dutch tech startups are run by women, and funding for female entrepreneurs is similarly insufficient. Only 0.7% of venture capital investments have been raised — since 2019 — by businesses with female founding teams, lagging behind the UK (2%), Germany (1.5%), and France (1.2%).
The potential for further growth
According to the report, the Dutch tech ecosystem has a massive potential of growth. In particular, it could add 250K jobs and €400 billion in value by 2030. This could be done by supporting the growth and impact of university spin-offs, bridging the talent and diversity gap, and cultivating a more resilient and internationally-embedded VC market.
