Preview

The world’s toughest race starts Saturday, and it’s delightfully hard to call this year

culture, cycling, Features, Preview, tour de france / Mike M. / June 28, 2024

Is it Saturday yet? —

Setting the stage for what could be a wild ride across France.

Eric Berger – Jun 28, 2024 11: 00 am UTC

Enlarge / The peloton passing through a sunflowers field during the stage eight of the 110th Tour de France in 2023.

David Ramos/Getty Images

Most readers probably did not anticipate seeing a Tour de France preview on Ars Technica, but here we are. Cycling is a huge passion of mine and several other staffers, and this year, a ton of intrigue surrounds the race, which has a fantastic route. So we’re here to spread Tour fever.

The three-week race starts Saturday, paradoxically in the Italian region of Tuscany. Usually, there is a dominant rider, or at most two, and a clear sense of who is likely to win the demanding race. But this year, due to rider schedules, a terrible crash in early April, and new contenders, there is more uncertainty than usual. A solid case could be made for at least four riders to win this year’s Tour de France.

For people who aren’t fans of pro road cycling—which has to be at least 99 percent of the United States—there’s a great series on Netflix called Unchained to help get you up to speed. The second season, just released, covers last year’s Tour de France and introduces you to most of the protagonists in the forthcoming edition. If this article sparks your interest, I recommend checking it out.

Anyway, for those who are cycling curious, I want to set the stage for this year’s race by saying a little bit about the four main contenders, from most likely to least likely to win, and provide some of the backstory to what could very well be a dramatic race this year.

Tadej Pogačar

Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia and UAE Team Emirates won the Giro d'Italia in May. — Enlarge / Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia and UAE Team Emirates won the Giro d’Italia in May.

Tim de Waele/Getty Images

Slovenia
25 years old
UAE Team Emirates
Odds: -190

Pogačar burst onto the scene in 2019 at the very young age of 20 by finishing third in the Vuelta a España, one of the three grand tours of cycling. He then went on to win the 2020 and 2021 Tours de France, first by surprising fellow countryman Primož Roglič (more on him below) in 2020 and then utterly dominating in 2021. Given his youth, it seemed he would be the premiere grand tour competitor for the next decade.

But then another slightly older rider, a teammate of Roglič’s named Jonas Vingegaard, emerged in 2022 and won the next two races. Last year, in fact, Vingegaard cracked Pogačar by 7 minutes and 29 seconds in the Tour, a huge winning margin, especially for two riders of relatively close talent. This established Vingegaard as the alpha male of grand tour cyclists, having proven himself a better climber and time trialist than Pogačar, especially in the highest and hardest stages.

So this year, Pogačar decided to change up his strategy. Instead of focusing on the Tour de France, Pogačar participated in the first grand tour of the season, the Giro d’Italia, which occurred in May. He likely did so for a couple of reasons. First of all, he almost certainly received a generous appearance fee from the Italian organizers. And secondly, riding the Giro would give him a ready excuse for not beating Vingegaard in France.

Why is this? Because there are just five weeks between the end of the Giro and the start of the Tour. So if a rider peaks for the Giro and exerts himself in winning the race, it is generally thought that he can’t arrive at the Tour in winning form. He will be a few percent off, not having ideal preparation.

Predictably, Pogačar smashed the lesser competition at the Giro and won the race by 9 minutes and 56 seconds. Because he was so far ahead, he was able to take the final week of the race a bit easier. The general thinking in the cycling community is that Pogačar is arriving at the Tour in excellent but not peak form. But given everything else that has happened so far this season, the bettors believe that will be enough for him to win. Maybe.

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Hands-on: ‘Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice’ Could Be a Better VR ‘Hitman’ Game Than ‘Hitman 3’

fast travel games, News, Preview, Vampire The Masquerade - Justice, vampire vr, Vampire: The Masquerade, VR Game / Ryan Harris / August 31, 2023

Fast Travel Games gave us a hands-on with Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice on Quest 2, the studio’s upcoming single-player adventure RPG set in the ‘World of Darkness’ universe. The vertical slice offered up an intriguing look into the game’s stealth combat mechanics, all of which feel pretty Hitman-esque, albeit with a sufficiently paranormal bend—not to mention a lot more VR-native design than Hitman 3’s VR mode.

In Vampire: The—ok, for brevity’s sake let’s just call it VMJ—players embark on an adventure to figure out who killed their sire and reclaim a stolen relic in the dark underbelly of Venice, Italy.

Arriving in Venice via gondola, I learn that my name is Justice—which admittedly isn’t the best name for a blood-sucking vampire who kills indiscriminately, but I digress. My vampire dad, Banu Haqim, was murdered and it’s my job to get through what I’m told will be a “gritty main narrative” and a number of side missions as I track down the culprits and unravel the game’s story.

The demo offered up two partial levels: a slice of the tutorial level where I learn to move around, teleport from place to place, and suck blood by putting my literal mouth on a bad dude’s neck, and a more substantial mission that drops me right into what is probably the middle of the game, giving me access to a variety of combat tools and paranormal powers.

The tutorial level was fairly quick, teaching me how to teleport across canals and precarious window ledges. I found myself starting out in apartments, looting drawers and cupboards to find notes and other found items, and zapping around using my vampiric agility to scale buildings and execute a limited swath of attacks on some fairly brainless AI.

In the demo’s next level, I got a brief taste of the three vampiric disciplines, which are supposed to be purchasable in-game via earned XP, letting so you customize your playstyle. These include:

Cloak of Shadows: Sneak up on enemies, blend into the environment, and turn almost invisible.
Cauldron of Blood: A powerful but noisy attack. Boil the blood of victims until their messy end. Very likely lethal.
Shadow Trap: Place a portal to the underworld on the ground, then close it on victims, dragging them into Oblivion.

To switch between disciplines, I simply press X on my left controller, then hover over the respective icon mid-air. Each of them makes a certain amount of sense, as they offer up chances for quiet melee or escape, loud and distracting mid-range attacks, and comparatively quieter distance attacks that you need to time correctly to set off properly.

While not a shooter as such, there’s also a hand-worn crossbow which come with two types of bolts: Corrosive and Oblivious Sleep. Each bolt has to be apparated into thin air, and loaded, so you can’t just fire away willy nilly.

And the shooting experience doesn’t cheapen things either. Corrosive bolts make noise and corrode metal chains, but don’t harm enemies, while Oblivious Sleep bolts put mortals to sleep for a bit, giving you enough time to scurry away and nab those extra points for completing your objective without killing anyone.

That said, you can accidentally kill baddies, but only if you screw up selecting your paranormal powers, or by drinking a person dry, both of which can screw up your end mission rating.

It’s still uncertain how large the game’s discrete maps are based on those two levels alone, but I’ll say at least the game’s fantasy version of Venice does a pretty spectacular job of replicating the storied island’s labyrinthine pathways and claustrophobic buildings. It certainly feels big. It also thematically purges the city of the throngs of ever-present tourists, making it feel much more like the Venice you’d imagine a vampire coven would call home, and not a German family looking for gelato nearby St. Mark’s Square.

It’s also still early days for VMJ in terms of polish. Graphics are good and the set pieces feel very much like finished products, although I feel like the demo was pushing the compute envelope for Quest 2 somewhat, making it difficult to even record a session without crashing. Avatar hand movements still feel like they need some sort of smoothing to correct for player jitteriness, and some of the object interaction still feels a little flighty as well. Fast Travel is a trusted name in VR development though, so it’s likely these issues will be solved, or reduced significantly before launch.

In the end, it will be really interesting to see how the whole package comes together. Will it be a big and sprawling game with multiple solutions to mission objectives like its Hitman-style gameplay might suggest? Will it provide the goth-kid within me enough of a vampiric thrill while not being too schlocky, like a lot of the Masquerade stuff can be at times? We’ll find out soon enough, as Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice is slated to launch on Quest 2, Quest 3, Quest Pro and PSVR 2 on November 2nd, priced at $30.

In the meantime, check out the gameplay video below to see some of the action I described above:

Hands-on: ‘Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice’ Could Be a Better VR ‘Hitman’ Game Than ‘Hitman 3’ Read More »

Hands-on: ‘The 7th Guest’ Delivers Disney’s Haunted Mansion Vibes & Tons of Visual Flair

News, Preview, the 7th guest, the seventh guest, vertigo games, VR Game / Mike M. / August 24, 2023

When the original The 7th Guest launched on CD-ROM in 1993, it was apparently a pretty big deal. The amount of pre-rendered 3D graphics spliced with live action video clips made it a standout title among all PC games at the time, making it and Myst basically the hottest PC games ever. Now, Vertigo Games is rebooting the interactive horror puzzler in VR alongside a fresh injection of volumetric video which was undoubtedly a highlight in our hands-on.

The 7th Guest is coming in October to all major VR headsets, however we got a chance to go hands-on with a demo specifically for Quest 2 via a Steam build. Having never played the original ’90s game, I don’t have a basis of comparison, although what I did see was pretty indicative that Vertigo Games has done a ton to make this a visually appealing and modern game through and through.

Here’s the setup. Six guests have been welcomed to a foreboding mansion. There’s something sinister at play, as a wealthy recluse and toymaker, Henry Stauf, hides in the shadows. The ultimate question: Who is the 7th Guest? You’ll have to battle increasingly difficult puzzles and keep clear of whatever bumps in the night to solve the mystery.

Here’s the announcement trailer in case you missed it.

In the 25-minute demo, I got a sense of the scale and refinement of the game, although I still have some questions about puzzle difficulty. Don’t worry, I won’t talk about specific solutions here, just general impressions.

Starting outside, I find myself paddling on a canoe to a boathouse where I’m immediately confronted with my first tutorial-level puzzle. My newfound ‘Spirit Lantern’ doesn’t just let me shine light, but also acts as a magical tool to fix the broken planks blocking my way up to the main house. Later, I spawn the Spirit Lantern to materialize hidden objects or repair them, which comes part and parcel with a ‘Spirit Board’, which lets me see a map of the mansion, get hints and solutions, and check out my general progression. These two feel like the main tools I’ll be leaning on throughout the game.

Spirit Lantern revealing creepy scrawling on the wall | Image courtesy Vertigo Games

Sparing you some of the minor tutorial puzzles to actually get into the mansion (I made heavy use of the Spirit Lantern), I toss open the gate and walk up into the foyer, play a record on the Gramophone, and receive my first set of ghostly memories.

In general, volumetric video can be hit or miss depending on how it’s woven into a game. Here, it seems like Vertigo Games really hit a homerun, as each little character vignette feels like a visual extension of the haunted mansion, replete with ghostly mist and echo-y voice overs.

The acting is admittedly a little pulpy, but I’d consider the ghostly vignettes the right kind of cheesy considering the game’s ’90s indie lineage. It’s supposed to be fun, dare I say, Disney-esque, so it feels right on brand with something you might experience in a haunted mansion theme park ride. I don’t expect any real frights here either—I certainly didn’t have any outside of the atmospheric creepiness of the mansion itself, that is.

Again, I’m not going into puzzle solutions, but the early puzzles I did encounter were interesting, although not particularly difficult. A trio of magic hats create portals to one another, allowing you to put your hand into one, and solve a closed puzzle from afar. Unlock a series of boxes, and you’re led to the next vignette of a magician who met an untimely fate.

Whatever the case, I hope the mechanics I’m learning in the early game will be compounded into more difficult stuff later. It’s still too early to tell if the puzzles are one-off things, which would be more like a smorgasbord approach (which is fine) than requiring the player to create specific skills and use them at opportune moments.

I came away mostly intrigued by The 7th Guest in my short time going hands-on with the demo, although there’s clearly one thing that I can say I don’t like about it out of the gate. Voiceovers during puzzles that are designed to be constantly ‘helpful’ typically overstay their welcome, and I was hoping whoever the hell was talking while figuring out puzzles would eventually stop. These can be turned off in the settings, although they are on by default. Hopefully in the full game this will be offered as a starting option so players don’t feel like they’re being unnecessarily held by the hand from the get-go.

As for comfort, the gamut of standard options is available: teleportation, free movement, and a mix of both, which is the default movement style. The game can be played standing or sitting, and with support for left or right dominant hands.

Whatever the case, Vertigo Games is one of those VR pioneers that has more experience both in and outside the genre than most, and it seems they’re hitting all of the quality bars you’d expect from a VR remake of such a beloved ’90s game. Maybe I’ll play the original while I wait to play the full game, which is slated to launch October 19th this year.

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Hands-on: HTC’s New Standalone Vive Tracker Effortlessly Brings More of Your Body Into VR

GDC 2023, hardware preview, HTC, htc standalone tracker, htc tracker, htc vive tracker, htc vive tracker inside out, News, Preview, VR Tracking / Ryan Harris / March 26, 2023

With three versions of SteamVR trackers under its belt, HTC has been a leading enabler of full-body tracking in VR. Now the company’s latest tracker could make it even easier to bring your body into VR.

HTC’s new standalone Vive tracker (still unnamed) has a straightforward goal: work like the company’s existing trackers, but easier and on more platforms.

The ‘easier’ part comes thanks to inside-out tracking—using on-board cameras to allow the device to track its own position, rather than external beacons like those used by the company’s prior trackers.

To that end, things seem really promising so far. I got to demo the new Vive tracker at GDC 2023 this week and was impressed with how well everything went.

With two of the new Vive trackers strapped to my feet, I donned a Vive XR Elite headset and jumped into a soccer game. When I looked down at my feet, I saw a pair of virtual soccer shoes. And when I moved my feet in real-life, the soccer shoes moved at the same time. It took less than two seconds for my mind to say ‘hey those are my feet!’, and that’s a testament to both the accuracy and latency being very solid with the new tracker.

That’s not a big deal for older trackers that use SteamVR Tracking, which has long been considered the gold standard for VR tracking. But to replicate a similar level of performance in a completely self-contained device that’s small and robust enough to be worn on your feet… that’s a big deal for those who crave the added immersion that comes with bringing more of your body into VR.

Throughout the course of my demo, my feet were always where I expected to see them. I saw no strange spasms or freezing in place, no desync of coordinate planes between the tracker and the headset, and no drifting of the angle of my feet. That allowed me to easily forget that I was wearing anything special on my feet and simply focus on tracking to kick soccer balls into a goal.

While the tracker worked well throughout, the demo had an odd caveat—I had feet but no legs! That makes it kind of weird to try to juggle a soccer ball when you expect to be able to use your shin as a backboard but watch as the ball rolls right over your virtual foot.

Ostensibly this is the very thing that trackers like this should be able to fix; by attaching two more trackers to my knees, I should be able to have a nearly complete representation of my leg movements in VR, making experiences like ‘soccer in VR’ possible when they simply wouldn’t work otherwise.

I’m not sure if the demo app simply wasn’t designed to handle additional tracking points on the knees, or if the trackers are currently limited to just two, but HTC has confirmed the final inside-out Vive tracker will support up to five trackers in addition to the tracked headset and controllers.

Trackers can, of course, be used to track more than just your body, though apps that support these kinds of tracked accessories are rare | Photo by Road to VR

So the inside-out factor is the ‘easier’ part, but what about the other goal of the tracker—to be available on more platforms than just SteamVR Tracking?

Well, the demo I was playing was actually running purely on the standalone Vive XR Elite. To connect the trackers, a small USB-C dongle needs to be connected to the headset to facilitate the proprietary wireless connection between the dongle and the trackers. HTC says the same dongle can plug into a PC and the trackers will work just fine through SteamVR.

The company also says it’s committed to making the trackers OpenXR compatible, which means (in theory) any headset could support them if they wanted.

– – — – –

I only got to use it in one configuration (on my feet) and in one environment (a large office space). So there’s still the question of how robust they will be. For now though, I’m suitably impressed.

If these trackers really work as well as they seem from their first impression, it could open the door to a new wave of people experiencing the added immersion of full-body tracking in VR… but there’s still the lingering question of price, which historically never seems to be quite right consumer VR market when it comes to HTC. Until then, our fingers shall remain crossed.

Hands-on: HTC’s New Standalone Vive Tracker Effortlessly Brings More of Your Body Into VR Read More »

Preview: ‘The Light Brigade’ is a Promising Roguelike Packing Realistic WW2 Guns & Plenty of Magic

funktronic labs, light brigade, News, Preview, psvr 2, psvr 2 game, quest roguelike, roguelike, steamvr roguelike, the light brigade, the light brigade vr, VR Game, vr roguelike / Ryan Harris / February 10, 2023

Slated to arrive on all major VR headsets later this month, The Light Brigade is well positioned to make a name among the top VR roguelikes, as it follows most visibly in the footsteps of bowshooter In Death (2018) in all the right ways. In our hands-on, we got to see just how Light Brigade is setting itself apart though with a strong focus on an array of realistic WWII-era weapons and magical upgrades galore.

Coming February 22nd, The Light Brigade is the latest VR title from Funktronic Labs, the team behind Fujii (2019) and Cosmic Trip (2017). With a few hours of Quest 2 gameplay under my belt, I can say that The Light Brigade is certainly something to watch out for when it lands on PSVR 2, PSVR, Quest 2, and SteamVR headsets in the next two weeks.

Although The Light Brigade isn’t related to the award-winning roguelike bowshooter—In Death was developed by Sólfar Studios and Superbright—there are more than a few comparisons here to make. The Light Brigade similarly features a high degree of visual polish, well-realized enemy classes, and a fun array of weapons that make you really second guess stepping out from behind cover.

It’s also culty as all hell, as you battle it out as an acolyte warrior of light on a quest to pry the world from the grasps of the (totally not Nazi-inspired) Obsidian Forces.

What the hell does that all mean? I can’t say just yet, but it all ends up feeling like a cool mix of World War-inspired trench warfare mixed in with a heaping dose of medieval-style religious quackery and magic.

The Light Brigade tosses a smorgasbord of realistic weapons your way, all of which require a deft hand at manually reloading in the middle of a firefight. You’ll get your hands on rifles and pistols, all of which are upgradeable. Besides the Mauser C96 (aka ‘Broomhandle Mauser’), most everything is what you’d consider WWII standard stuff, including Gewehr 43, Sturmgewehr 44, Colt 1911, M3 submachine gun (aka ‘grease gun’), and Nambu Pistol Model 14. Guns have a virtual weight to them too, so you won’t be waggling around a 10-pound rifle or running too fast either when you’re supporting the gun with your non-dominant hand.

Each gun has three upgradeable power levels, which also let you tack on things like red dot scopes and powerful trinkets that allow you to charge and execute special shots. There are also so mini potato masher-style grenades, health kits, and interesting tools like deployable decoys which draw enemy fire away from you.

You’ll have to grind it out to level up each gun, which usually means sticking with the corresponding class long enough to generate points to sink into upgrades. The game’s actual difficulty seems to scale relative to your weapon’s current upgrade level, giving you more and different baddies to encounter as you head back in after your inevitable death—although that’s a bit of speculation on my side. There are two user-selectable difficulty levels though should things get too tough, ‘Arcade’ and ‘Realistic’.

Levels start out fairly small in size, although all of them encourage exploration thanks to the important items that can be found around every corner, such as the game’s tarot card upgrades that you’ll find in glittering chests. These buffs stay in effect for your entire run, and are automatically applied when you choose one of the three presented to you from each chest.

My typical level run goes more or less like this: kill every enemy in the level, comb the entire level again for lootable chests and other goodies, and then summarily step into a trap, like the sort of couter-weighted log traps Arnold Schwarzenegger tangoed with in the original Predator (1987), or even a simple bear trap.

Once I’ve dusted off my stupidity, it’s time to head to the level gate, which requires you to bring your hands together in prayer to activate—a really cool and immersive touch. There are level bosses, although I only ever made it to the first, which I won’t spoil for your here.

Meanwhile, I’ll be playing a lot more of The Light Brigade’s and reserving my thoughts on game mechanics and immersion for the full review later this month. Still, it’s safe to say I really enjoyed the entire vibe.

One thing to note is that Funktronic Labs included a good number of comfort modes, including smooth turn, variable snap-turn, smooth locomotion, and teleportation. Currently, the game’s inventory system includes a hip-mounted holster, which can be difficult to access whilst seated, making standing gameplay recommended at the time of this writing. We’ll have more info in our deep dive review when the game launches on February 22nd.

In the meantime, you can wishlist the game on Steam (PC VR), pre-order on PSVR 2 and PSVR, and pre-order on Quest 2—priced at $25. Also, in case you missed out on the announce trailer, take a gander below:

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