Reviews – Page 3

Unveiling the Spacetop AR Laptop: AWE 2023 First Impressions

augmented reality, AWE, featured, Guest Post, Hardware, opinion, Review, Reviews / Rejus Almole / July 13, 2023

This year’s AWE 2023 was a remarkable testament to the accelerating pace of innovation in the field of augmented reality, hosting an unprecedented 6,000 guests and 300 exhibitors.

Amidst the sea of booths, one exhibit captured sustained attention—the Spacetop laptop by Sightful. Throughout the day, from early morning until the closing hours, its stand was constantly buzzing with activity.

Face-To-Face With The Spacetop

Spacetop’s uniqueness stems from its design—it shuns the traditional physical screen and employs a pair of AR glasses as the display medium. The glasses are not proprietary but are a product of Sightful’s collaboration with XREAL (formerly Nreal), who provided an existing AR solution tailored specifically for Spacetop.

Spacetop AR laptop — *Source: Sightful – Spacetop press kit*

Field of View

With its sleek and futuristic design, the laptop certainly looks promising at a glance. However, a set of issues quickly surfaced during my hands-on experience. The most significant one is the limited field of view that’s insufficient to accommodate the entire screen.

The glasses’ restricted field of view necessitates constant head tilting which undermines the entire purpose of having large virtual monitors and results in what is known as “windowing”—a term used in spatial computing when virtual objects fail to fully overlay and appear cut off.

Attempted solutions like moving the virtual monitor further away were not effective due to the glasses’ 1080p (1920×1080) resolution. Push the screen too far back and the text becomes difficult to read. Therefore, users are forced to deal with near-placed screens that, while clear and readable, outsize Spacetop’s field of view.

Input Solutions and Design

The laptop also lacks hand tracking, a disappointing omission considering the advancements in the field. Users are left with a trackpad, navigating a vast spatial spectrum with a traditional cursor, a process that can feel slow and inadequate. Monica Chin from The Verge has reported instances of losing the cursor among the screens, then struggling to locate it – a problem no doubt amplified by the limited FOV.

Low-precision tasks such as moving tabs or resizing that could be done in fractions of a second with either touchscreen or hand tracking, here took exponentially longer. It made the whole experience of using Spacetop feel frustrating.

There are also other less obvious quibbles. For example, no screen means the webcam must be positioned down on the keyboard. This suboptimal positioning creates an unflattering, spycam-like angle.

Although users can lower their virtual screen to align with the webcam, mitigating gaze-switching between the screen and camera, ultimately the very design of the Spacetop laptop necessitates certain compromises.

Sightful in It for the Long Haul

I asked a Sightful representative about the low field of view and was informed that the company is aware of these display limitations. They assured me that they are prepared to iterate in tandem with the industry.

It seems Sightful is conscious not to portray Spacetop as a purely AR device. More than anything else, Spacetop is a screen-less laptop with a proprietary operating system, Spacetop OS (based on Android), and a unique set of AR-specific features.

In the future, the team may design the laptop to work with any glasses they deem suitable for their purpose. This is their first product and instead of playing catch-up, Sightful is eager to start early and keep perfecting the experience as better, newer glasses come into the market.

However, as things stand today, it’s hard to avoid the obvious question: Why would one choose to splash $2,000 on a Spacetop when one could simply spend $379 on the XREAL glasses (or $488 bundled with the XREAL Beam) and use them to stream from any device? The Spacetop team attempts to answer this by emphasizing their AR-first design and focus.

For instance, executing a three-finger swipe on the touchpad moves screens spatially between closer and further planes. There is also a Reality Mode button that turns the AR off allowing for full pass-through, and a range of shortcuts that enable you to snap screens in place, re-center them, and more. While these improvements and enhancements are handy, they don’t quite seem to justify the substantial premium.

Mat at AWE using Spacetop — *Author believers that Spacetop’s form factor makes it socially acceptable.*

Potential Is There

Initially, I had planned to log into my Twitter account from within the Spacetop, take a screenshot with its webcam, and do a live tweet, heralding the dawn of a new era in spatial laptop computing.

However, the realization that the Spacetop still has some distance to cover before it can be deemed fully user-friendly made it challenging to compose a strictly positive and genuine tweet (time constraints and burdensome trackpad navigation played a role as well).

The potential is undoubtedly there. Large field-of-view, high-resolution AR displays, along with some ultralight tracking solutions, were already being showcased at this year’s AWE and might be integrated into the next generation of glasses.

During my brief encounter with the Spacetop, I could easily envision it becoming a preferred work tool for many, not just for those working from home, but also in cafes or co-working spaces. Moreover, there’s an inherent benefit of privacy. For stock traders, artists, or anyone who values personal workspace, the ability to work on non-public screens adds a lot of appeal.

Its form factor is among the most socially acceptable options available – there’s something about having AR glasses paired with a clearly visible laptop or tablet that makes the entire setup immediately understandable to onlookers. It doesn’t seem to invite confusion or ridicule; if anything, it might invite desirability.

Spacetop screens — *The author thinks that promotional materials feel misleading; Source: Spacetop press kit*

For now, however, Spacetop’s primary promise of being a superior alternative to traditional laptops falls short. Its promotional materials, which depict users encircled by screen panels, feel misleading.

The current iteration is hampered by a lack of hand-tracking, a limited field of view, and clunky user interface solutions. Moreover, the price point does not seem to correspond with the value provided. However, with improvements and upgrades coming, it’s worth keeping an eye on Sightful.

Guest Post

About the Guest Author(s)

Mat Pawluczuk

Mat Pawluczuk is an XR / VR writer and content creator.

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A Guided Demo of Nanome Came With a Free Chemistry Lesson From Founders

Education & Training, featured, Healthcare/Medicine, Review, Reviews, Science, VR app, VR Apps, VR medicine, VR platform / Paul Patrick / May 25, 2023

Before my life as a technology journalist, I worked in a university’s biomedical engineering research lab. Every now and then, in my current career, I encounter something that I wish had been around 10 years ago. Nanome, an app for spatially visualizing molecules in MR and VR, is exactly such an experience.

Meet Nanome

Nanome is a visualization and collaboration platform available on all major VR headsets. It’s partially funded by Meta, but founders got in with Oculus co-founder Michael Antonov long before Facebook bought the company (and subsequently changed the name of both companies to “Meta”).

“Because we were part of Oculus for Business as an ISV [Independent Software Vendor], our relationship has deepened and we have co-authored multiple case studies together, including for Nimbus and Novartis,” Nanome co-founder and CEO Steve McCloskey told ARPost.

Nanome VR app Set of plugins

Nanome was a launch title on the Quest Pro, but it is also available on Viveport and Steam. The platform runs in VR on most headsets, but also makes full use of the full-color passthrough on the Quest Pro. The company is looking at the emerging AR glasses hardware market, but still needs controllers for the time being.

“Current hand tracking technology does not meet the needs that 6DoF controllers can provide, which consumer AR glasses don’t,” said McCloskey. “Additionally, the limited FOV makes it challenging to get a closer view of molecules in the context of a protein binding pocket which is essential for many of our users.”

If you don’t know what a “protein binding pocket” is, don’t feel like Nanome is too advanced for you. Just like chemistry in general, you can start wherever you are and go from there. You can also watch educational videos on chemistry’s big ideas directly within Nanome.

“Every user has unique needs and workflows, and we aim to provide a tool that can adapt to those needs, rather than forcing users to adapt their workflows to our tool,” said McCloskey. “This is why we continually work to improve and expand our features, to provide an ever-more intuitive, collaborative, and integrative experience for our users.”

Subscription Options

Nanome comes in a free version for personal use, as well as academic, research, and enterprise subscription tiers. Virtually all of the platform’s major functionalities work in the free version, though the academic subscription allows meeting in private rooms and saving workspaces. The benefits of the remaining tiers come largely from hosting and server options.

Insights From the In-App Demo

I met with McCloskey and fellow co-founder Sam Hessenauer within a free trial of the platform’s academic version. Creating an account is fast and easy, and automatically uses your Meta avatar, though you can join with a number of default avatars if you’re using a borrowed or communal headset.

Start Building Molecules – Even Impossible Ones

The virtual space is initially empty, inviting users to start building their own molecules from scratch, using common building blocks already in the app, or bringing in completed structures. The app supports a number of commonly used visualization tools, so work started on conventional software can be brought directly into VR.

Nanome VR app - periodic table

Molecules have specific shapes – something about the constituent atoms attracting and repelling each other – I’m pretty sure that my university chemistry textbook has a whole section on figuring out bond angles based on valence electrons. The point is, the app does that for you. And, when you create a molecule that couldn’t possibly exist, the app lets you know.

So, if you want to play comic book super genius and create fantastic chemical structures, you can! And the app will let you know which parts of the molecule break the laws of physics, and which laws they break. You can also view the models in several color-coded visualization methods.

“Because we’re on the VR app store and the basic version of the software can replace Intro-to-Chem ball and stick models, we’re very popular among universities and libraries as the go-to chemistry app in XR,” said McCloskey. “You never run out of chemistry kit parts in XR!”

Building new chemical structures in the app is huge. While you certainly can use Nanome to practice and learn chemistry within its established boundaries, there are people using the platform to design new chemicals, like groundbreaking prescription medications. In fact, early feedback from Novartis went into the first widely available iteration of the platform.

“For other major biopharma companies, we meet scientists and IT folks at various industry conferences,” said McCloskey. “We have landed some deals from scientists who bought a Quest for the holidays and wanted to use Nanome at their workplace.”

Everyone Gather Around the Giant Protein

Visualizing chemicals isn’t only important when designing new ones. One giant model that McCloskey, Hessenauer, and I viewed within the space was a large protein. At that massive scale, something that was just an idea before suddenly seemed tangible and understandable – a solid thing with its own charitable topography waiting to be explored.

Jon Nanome VR app demo

Prion proteins in the brain can fold incorrectly, leading to neurological disorders like dementia. I remember my middle school science teacher trying to communicate that by scribbling on the chalkboard, but how exactly a protein could be foldable never really made sense to me. Seeing that giant protein in VR, that fifteen-year-old lesson came back and clicked instantly.

McCloskey and Hessenauer were able to point out caves in the giant protein where part of another chemical – like a medication designed by one of the companies using the app – could fit into the protein and bind to it. I usually do demos like this to learn about XR, but this time I felt like I got a lesson in chemistry with XR in the margins – which is how it’s supposed to feel.

“As a design tool, we aim for Nanome to be as intuitive as possible. This is where XR and the user interface come into play,” said McCloskey. “We want our users to focus more on their scientific explorations and less on learning how to use the tool.”

Nanome VR app

Suppose I want to go back and watch our demo again. I can. But, not just a flat recording. Nanome allows spatial recordings that viewers can walk through later. If someone pointed at a point on the model and I missed it live, I can go back and watch it in VR standing right in their shoes as I relive the moment from their viewing angle.

At Least Take a Look

If you ever even think about chemistry, there’s literally no reason not to check out the free version of the app. If you’re a student, learning institution, or researcher, the platform can grow with you. The sheer number of things that Nanome can do are honestly overwhelming at first, but helpful explainer videos and easy-to-pick-up controls make it second nature in minutes.

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A Week of VR Meditation With Mindway

featured, Mental Health, Review, Reviews, virtual reality, VR Apps, well-being / Paul Patrick / May 20, 2023

Mindfulness can exist in the virtual world. Mindway is a VR app that promotes mindfulness – both in virtual worlds of unearthly peace and through lessons that you can carry with you when you put the headset down. I gave the app a test run by incorporating it into my own stressful work week.

A Modular Subscription-Based App

A good first place to start an app review is talking about the specs, like the size of the app and how much it costs. That’s not really how Mindway works.

First, the app is free to download from the Quest App Lab, though a number of elements of the app require a monthly or annual subscription – or you can buy the whole package once and for all for $50.

Further, the initial app download is small but individual modules within the app come as independent downloads. That might make things complicated if you’re trying to decide whether you have space for the experience, but it also means that you can really effectively pick and choose which modules you want to keep on your device.

The app doesn’t currently have a comfort rating. That might be because the individual experiences are so different. Each module explains the position in which it works best. Some encourage you to be seated, while others that deal more with mindful movement require you to be standing. Still, none of the modules that I tried made me too uncomfortable.

The app is compatible with the whole Quest product line from the original Quest to the Quest Pro, but I used my Quest 2. Controllers are required to navigate menus and carry out simple interactions in some of the practices, but there aren’t any complex controls. The thumbsticks can be used for snap turns, but there’s no movement and head-tracking is sufficient.

Mindway’s Major Components

When you first enter Mindway, you find yourself in a calm virtual environment reminiscent of a Quest Home. In front of you are three main menu items: ASMR, Mindfulness, and Sleep.

Sleep, Mindfulness, ASMR - Mindway VR app

If you turn to your right, there’s also a room where you can join public or private sessions. This is used for scheduled group events, but you can also go in alone to sit by a calming VR campfire or use an invite code to share the space with friends.

If you aren’t familiar with mindfulness, it’s an approach to mind-body wellness that promotes active awareness of your physical state and thought-life in the present moment instead of dwelling on the past or being anxious about the future. A text explanation will never really do justice, so consider checking out the introductory journey in the app.

ASMR

I’ve become something of an ASMR aficionado over the years, and let me just say that I’m hoping for more from this selection in the future. The selection currently consists of soft-spoken stories and a marble-maze mini-game that plays with some audio effects. (Take out your Conquest VR if you’ve got one.)

ASMR - Mindway

While Sleep and Mindfulness sessions usually last between eight and 15 minutes, some of the ASMR sections go on until you exit the session, making them ideal if you want to use them as the base of longer meditations.

The marble game is fun and the soft-spoken stories are great, but I didn’t get big ASMR vibes. There’s a whole category of ASMR that uses visual cues but I haven’t really experimented with it because I usually listen to ASMR when I’m trying to sleep, so seeing more visually-based ASMR in this mindfulness VR app has a lot of potential.

Sleep

Speaking of sleep, you might have gotten curious at the idea of sleep modules in a VR app. I know I did. If you’re imagining drifting off with your headset on, that’s not what’s happening here.

These experiences might help make you a little drowsy, but what they’re really doing is stocking a mental toolbox with mindfulness tools that you can take with you to bed. This is actually one of my favorite recurring elements of Mindway as an app overall, so we’ll return to a larger discussion of this later.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the heart and soul of Mindway. As such, this is the most populated section with (in my opinion) the best content. This content is split into “Journeys”, “Practice”, and “Build Your Own”.

Mindfulness - Mindway

Practices are shorter sessions that you can do independently of one another, while each journey is a series of sessions on a related topic that build on one another. The Build Your Own section allows you to create a practice session by selecting a topic, a world, and a soundtrack. Whether part of a journey or an individual practice, sessions are between eight and 15 minutes.

Build Your Own - Mindway

On the other hand, if you are familiar with mindfulness as a practice, I hope that you won’t be too skeptical of a VR-based mindfulness application. Mindway uses VR very cleverly to facilitate common mindfulness exercises. You can even select the “Science” button in the home environment to learn about how Mindway develops their sessions.

During body scans, a sparkling mist gradually rises up around you. When focusing your attention on a fire, the fire begins to die down if you get distracted by the environment for too long. During breathing exercises, particles seem to flow into you when it’s time to inhale and flow out when it’s time to exhale. Reach high up to grab an apple from a tree during a stretch.

A Week of Mindfulness

I used Mindway for about a week during the course of writing this article. There were stretches where I used it every day, there were days that I didn’t use it at all, and there were days that I kept going back in for multiple sessions.

I discovered mindfulness in college and it was a big part of my life for a good couple of years but at some point, I really got away from it. The first thing that I noticed in Mindway was how deeply I’m still able to breathe. I can breathe pretty heavily in my headset when I’m boxing in VR, but that’s different from long, slow, deliberate breath – something I didn’t realize I missed.

I liked some sessions more than others, but there was nothing that I encountered in Mindway that I didn’t enjoy. My favorite content is the “Boost Your Energy” Journey. The three-part journey has practices for starting the day with focus without being overwhelmed, for regaining your energy as you go through your day, and for winding down when it’s time to relax.

Boost Your Energy Journey - Mindway

While I like knowing that I can pop on the headset for a reasonably short session whenever I want throughout my day, the narrations do often remind you that you can take things like breathing exercises and meditation models with you wherever you go. While the visualizations are nice and might be helpful for people newer to mindfulness, Mindway is very educational.

An Unanticipated Promotion

The child in my life doesn’t really understand what I do for a living, but she knows that sometimes we get to play with neat tech, like an AR narrative puzzle. Sometimes, I set up my headset for her to enjoy some supervised offline play. (I lock apps, so I know that she’s playing Bait!, not Peaky Blinders.)

The other day, she saw the new Mindway thumbnail in my apps library and asked about it. I told her that she could check it out if she wanted to, but I warned her that it wasn’t exactly a “game.”

It turns out that she loved it. She was able to navigate the simple menus by herself and tried out a number of experiences. Hearing the audio of the guided meditations through the Quest 2’s native off-ear speakers, I was able to watch – admittedly a little stunned – as the energetic eight-year-old sat through around a half-hour of various mindfulness exercises.

I’m not a doctor, and I’m never going to advocate that any VR headset become “an electronic babysitter”, but it seems to me a curious kid could do a lot worse things in VR than mindful breathing.

Peaceful Periods in VR

Hitting the mat in the third round, assassinating communist informants in the back of a bar, betraying your crewmates in space – VR experiences can be pretty intense. While those experiences can be a lot of fun, it’s nice to know that Mindway provides a corner of the immersive world where you can have a little peace and quiet before getting back to your day.

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“Metaversed”: A Book Review and Author Interview

books, featured, interview, metaverse, Review, Reviews / Paul Patrick / May 3, 2023

Metaversed: See Beyond the Hype is the new book by Samantha G. Wolfe and Luis Bravo Martins introducing the metaverse stripped of its over-inflated, pie-in-the-sky expectation cloud built up by marketers. The book presents a practical and balanced approach to using the metaverse as it exists today and preparing for how it might exist tomorrow.

ARPost received a copy of Metaversed and had the opportunity to interview the authors on how it came together and what they hope it will achieve.

Preparing for the Metaverse

Metaversed begins with an important and common question in the industry: how do we prepare for the metaverse when we can’t agree on what it is?

“Taking the internet and bringing another dimension to it and setting it free in the phygital world […] it’s almost impossible to fully understand the extent of this shift.”

– Chapter One: Predictions

Early on, the authors present a working definition of the metaverse. This isn’t for the authors to throw their definition into the war of words already taking place around the metaverse, but rather so that everyone reading Metaversed has a common starting point.

“To the authors, the metaverse is the next stage of the internet and results from the evolution of a wide variety of emerging exponential technologies maturing simultaneously, converging and enabling a new interconnected relationship between physical and digital.”

– Chapter One: Predictions

Metaversed isn’t just about technology, but how technology impacts us as a society and as individuals – and about the societal trends that are helping to usher in the metaverse. These include movements towards remote work and education, decentralization, social media, and the creator economy.

“The challenges we’re about to face will need a multidisciplinary effort. Business professionals from all areas, teachers, lawyers, scientists, historians, and sociologists, everyone can contribute with their experience and knowledge so we can start preparing for this tremendous shift.”

– Chapter One: Predictions

A Book Written for Anybody

Metaversed is written for a reader in any profession to encompass the entire metaverse. Chapter two presents all of the technologies playing into the development of the metaverse. That includes immersive technologies like the spatial web, XR hardware, and digital twins. It also includes Web3 and blockchain, cloud computing, and AI and ML.

“I feel like we went through a hype cycle of ‘the metaverse’ as a term and now we’re kind of past that. People are looking beyond that and asking, ‘What is this, really?’” said Wolfe. “I’m hoping that as people get past all of that hype they can ask ‘What does this mean to me, and what does this mean to my business?’”

Metaversed See Beyond the Hype book Readers of ARPost might be principally interested in immersive technologies. Understanding the role that these technologies will play in larger shifts in the coming years requires an understanding of other technologies even though they may feel removed.

“The main topic is to bring in people that are not in on all of the metaverse discussion,” said Martins. “We need to have those people. We need to have a version of the metaverse that isn’t just created by technologists like us.”

The book also discusses governments and standards organizations furthering the metaverse through protecting users and ensuring interoperability respectively. A lot of the value of the metaverse will be created by users – much as with the current web, but more equitable.

“A true creator economy has been set in motion where communities are not only spawning creators but overall helping them to remain independent and relevant.[…] With several new platforms available in the gaming industry and in the so-called Web3 businesses, new avenues for distributing digital products and content are being envisioned and built.”

– Chapter Four: New Rules

Life and Work in the Metaverse

The largest single chapter in the book, “Metaversed Markets” is an exhaustive exploration of how different industries are using the extant iteration of the metaverse and how they may adapt to its development. While the bulk of Metaversed discussed opportunities in the metaverse and how to realize them, four chapters are dedicated exclusively to challenges in the metaverse.

“When living in a hybrid reality of digital and physical objects, spaces, and people that we seemingly use and own, will it all be real? The memories of our time immersed in those worlds won’t tell us otherwise. […] We can pick up our lessons learned of the risks involved and plan ahead for a better, positive metaverse. But, to do that, we need to first identify key challenges.”

– Chapter Nine: Understanding Reality

These challenges have some to do with technologies that haven’t yet been realized or optimized, but mainly pertain to the human experience of adapting to and living in the metaverse.

“The whole purpose is exactly that – to try to shed light on not just the potential of the metaverse […] but more than that to try to pass on the challenges of the metaverse,” said Martins. “Presenting the challenges is not negative – it’s facing those challenges […] At the end of the day, what we want is to contribute to a more ethical metaverse.”

Metaversed expresses hope that governments and organizations like the XR Safety Initiative will help to mitigate some risks. It also recognizes that a lot of responsibility will be put on users themselves.

“Even if it’s uncomfortable, we need to discuss how emerging tech can be monitored and regulated. We don’t have to cross our fingers and hope that big tech companies figure it out themselves (again).”

– Chapter Ten: Privacy and Safety in the Metaverse

“Unanswered Questions”

“Because we’re faced with so many unanswered questions and unsolved technical challenges, there should be no shame in saying ‘I don’t know,’ or ‘We don’t know’ when asked about the future […] for better or worse, we’re in this together.”

– Chapter Twelve: The New Humanity

The thing that struck me the most about Metaversed was its honesty. The authors are confident in their predictions but never present those predictions as already being facts. Overall, it feels like a conversation rather than a keynote or a sales pitch.

“At the end of the day, tech runs so quickly and changes so completely unexpectedly […] it’s sort of an exercise,” said Martins. “Hopefully what we can offer is more of the logic of thought.”

How “Metaversed” Came to Be

Wolfe and Martins have a long history, despite having yet to meet in person. The two began talking after Martins read “Marketing New Realities,” which Wolfe co-wrote with Cathy Hackl in 2017. Then, Martins was a guest speaker at Wolfe’s courses at New York University’s Steinhardt School. Martins was invited to write a book and knew who to talk to for a coauthor.

“It started with this opportunity that came about from the publisher. Around that time there was this huge push regarding the metaverse and I was thinking about doing something on the flipside, focusing entirely on the challenges,” said Martins. “I decided that that approach wouldn’t be the best possible way to explain to people who don’t know much or aren’t as involved.”

Wolfe’s coming on board provided the balance that Martins was looking for. It also expanded the vast network of experts that contributed their insights to Metaversed.

“He wanted to write this book about what can go wrong but I tend to be quite positive,” said Wolfe. “I also tend to look at how all of this applies to businesses.”

Despite being based in different countries and working on the book largely asynchronously, the two decided to write Metaversed with one voice, rather than passing chapters back and forth. While the book doesn’t feel divided (at least, not to people who don’t know the authors very closely) both of them have chapters that they feel they put more into.

“In the end, I think we were all very involved in doing the writing and – of course – the research,” said Martins. “There were chapters which were being run by one of us or by the other one, and some – particularly the chapters in the beginning – were very consensual.”

A Digestible Book, if Not in One Sitting

Metaversed: See Beyond the Hype is currently available on Amazon. The book, weighing in at over 300 pages, may or may not be a lot to read from cover to cover depending on where you are on your metaverse journey. However, the book was also designed to be incredibly navigable, making it easy to read or reread as you see fit.

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Is “Peaky Blinders: The King’s Ransom” Too Much?

featured, Review, Reviews, VR games / Mike M. / April 21, 2023

Peaky Blinders: The King’s Ransom is a new VR game from Maze Theory inspired by the popular period crime drama. I’m reporting from a virtually reconstructed Garrison pub, so confess – Jon and ARPost are listening.

This review covers major game elements (avoiding juicy spoilers), how VR is implemented, and some ethical considerations. After all, if you’re familiar with Peaky Blinders, you know that some of the content can be pretty challenging – particularly in VR. I almost didn’t want to play it, and ARPost almost didn’t want to cover it.

Welcome to The Peaky Blinders

Peaky Blinders: The King’s Ransom takes place during season five. If you aren’t to that point there’s at least one spoiler. Fortunately, the events of the game don’t have a lot to do with the events of the show, so if you aren’t a fan of the show you can still enjoy the game – just not as much.

A lot of the game felt like fan service. I happen to be a fan of the Peaky Blinders TV show, so I appreciated it. From “Red Right Hand” playing as I walked down Garrison Lane to the bottomless pack of cigarettes in your inventory, some more stylized elements of the game might only feel right if you’re familiar with the show.

In the game, you play a war vet working with the Peaky Blinders in hopes that they will clear your criminal record. Your aunt, an NPC in the game, is a family friend of the Shelbys and a good word from Arthur got you in. Tommy tests your loyalty by asking you to shoot a hooded man in the Garrison about 10 minutes into the game, so things move pretty fast.

Peaky Blinders VR

You’re tasked with finding one of the Peaky Blinders who went missing on the trail of Winston Churchhill’s stolen dispatch box. This sends you to Limehouse, a majority Chinese neighborhood in East London.

There, you find yourself in a serial killer’s crime scene. I was hoping that this would turn into an investigation like the “Blood on the Ice” quest in Skyrim, but you find out pretty quickly that the serial killer happens to be the rival gang leader with the dispatch box.

Gameplay

Peaky Blinders: The King’s Ransom is rated “comfortable” with options to play sitting or roomscale. Analog sticks enable snap turns, though you can also do this by turning your head or your whole body in roomscale.

They also control movement, including crouching, walking, or teleporting. I played most of the game walking, but sometimes you need to teleport to jump. Using teleport to move from cover to cover during a firefight can also be handy. Some items in the environment appear lighter when you can interact with them, for example, crates that you can move out of your way.

Jon was here - Peaky Blinders VR game

I did get a little sick playing the game but if you read my reviews you know that I’m particularly susceptible to VR motion sickness, so I blame my physiology and play style before I blame the developers in most cases.

One of the cooler elements of the game was that your character doesn’t speak. NPCs just accept this as a quirk. You don’t have to hear someone else’s voice coming out of your head, but it also avoids dialogue options – you respond with your actions.

Items and Interactions

A guide to the controls looked intimidating but the controls are very intuitive. Your inventory is arranged around your field of view. Reach over your shoulder and grab to get your journal, reach down and grab to get your gun, reach left and grab to get a cigarette, and reach right and grab to get your lighter.

Your lighter is handy for lighting endless cigarettes, but you also use it to do things like light lamps that help you navigate some of the darker scenes in the game. You also defuse bombs, rebuild radios, open a safe, and uncork bottles of gin.

Drinking and smoking don’t impact gameplay. I think it might’ve been cool if smoking slowed down time or drinking made you less susceptible to injury, but they’re just props. You can also find vials of “Tokyo” (that’s “cocaine” in Peaky Blinders lingo) but they’re just collectible easter eggs.

One of the most common item interactions is reloading your 1911 semi-automatic pistol (sorry Peaky Blinders, no Webleys). This involves loading a clip into the bottom of the gun.

There’s no believable way to hold the gun with two hands because of the controllers and because Peaky Blinders are too cool for stable shooting stances, but you can pass the gun from hand to hand to shoot around cover. You can’t carry extra clips, so you have to look for ammunition boxes in the levels. Count rounds if you want, but I just reloaded whenever I could.

One forced story interaction involves your gun being empty no matter how many rounds you should logically have left in the clip when you enter the interaction, so keeping count just kind of frustrated me. Or, maybe the gun jammed because you have a 1911 instead of a Webley.

Navigating Environments

The environments were the biggest draw for me buying this game. I’m a fan of Peaky Blinders largely because of the settings. Being able to explore faithful reconstructions of some of the iconic locations of the show really scratched an itch for me and the game’s original locations feel authentic and well-developed too. Major playable locations include:

Garrison Lane including The Garrison and a garage;
Watery Lane including The Shelby Betting Shop and Polly Shelby’s apartment;
Charlie Strong’s Boatyard;
Limehouse, including a boatyard, a neighborhood, and a rival gang’s operation.

The game never tells you about lighter items being movable, so my first major navigation snag was wandering around an alleyway until I realized I could move a crate blocking my way. One level in Limehouse is also needlessly tricky. I think it was trying to incorporate some puzzle elements, but it didn’t really land for me.

Later in the game, you fight your way out of a burning building while carrying the dispatch box. This level brought all of the game’s control mechanics into play beautifully. You have to teleport to jump over holes in the floor, balance as you walk over beams, and put down the dispatch box to reload.

Finding collectible easter eggs in the game often involves finding tools in the environment to smash open crates. Some of the levels have dysfunctioning radios. Finding the parts, plugging them in, and tuning the radio unlocks radio programs that give you additional context about the level.

After beating the game, the levels remain explorable. I found at least one area that either wasn’t available during story play or I didn’t find the first time around. Either way, there’s a lot to explore.

I Killed a Man in VR Because Tommy Shelby Told Me To

I had reservations about this game. Until now, the most violent thing I’d ever done in VR was knock someone out in Thrill of the Fight. There were situations in this game that made me uncomfortable but it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.

For one thing, the character animation didn’t blow me away (I was playing on Quest 2, not PC). Sets and items look great but people in the game leave a little to be desired. Further, the violence isn’t terribly graphic. A cartoony blood burst lets you know you hit someone but it isn’t gory. And, all of the violence that you perpetrate is done at a distance, which I think helps.

Most of the times that I did feel uncomfortable, it wasn’t because of graphical believability or a feeling of embodiment. It was because the writing of the game successfully made me ask myself questions about what I was doing and why.

Shelby Peaky Blinders VR game

In one sequence, your character is tied to a chair so you can look around and see your bound hands, which is a little unnerving (you can’t see your body, which is unnerving for a different reason). I don’t know if it was a predictable point in the game or my deep trust in the Peaky Blinders, but I wasn’t afraid at this point – I knew someone would come just in time.

I still think that we should be careful about how and why violence is used in virtual reality entertainment. As far as this game goes, I think that restraint on the part of the developers helped to balance violence as a plot device without going over the top.

Final Thoughts

I was pleased to see that Peaky Blinders: The King’s Ransom only costs $30, but that also meant that I wasn’t too let down that it’s only about three-and-a-half hours of gameplay. The game has already been updated since it was released, so fans can hope for more to come.

Is “Peaky Blinders: The King’s Ransom” Too Much? Read More »

CrimeTrip Introduces AR True Crime Cases for Your Perusal

AR games, featured, Review, Reviews / Rejus Almole / April 19, 2023

True crime has become a national pastime. From documentaries and dramatized biopics to endless podcasts and YouTube channels, folks can’t get enough of diving into real-life murders and missing person cases – some solved, some apparently never to be solved. And now, you can explore a new file of cases in augmented reality with CrimeTrip.

Taking a CrimeTrip

CrimeTrip is a true crime AR game for iOS and Android from developer studio Prologue. The experience, viewed and navigated entirely through a mobile phone, puts you in the middle of painstakingly reproduced crime scenes from six unsolved crimes from the seventies and eighties including heists, mob hits, and more. Three are available now, with three coming soon.

The app download is free, but, after playing through a free “prologue” and tutorial, you have the option to buy an individual story for $3.99, or bundles of stories going up to the complete game for $12.99. According to the app, this allows the platform to be supported entirely ad-free.

CrimeTrip AR game - pricing

Hands-On the Game

If you have enough open space, you can navigate within the game by walking to some degree. However, the game worlds are big enough that no matter how big and clean your living room is you’ll have to use the on-screen controls eventually. (My biggest issue with the game was accidentally holding my phone in a way that covered the camera and lost my tracking.)

CrimeTrip is split between crime scenes and a pretty expansive police department office. The office includes resources that you will need to dive into the case, including the cork board where you put it all together.

“[CrimeTrip] revisits the podcast genre, following non-linear routes, constantly shifting between the present and the past,” Prologue founder and creative director Jonathan Rouxel said in a Medium post. “Designers elevate the status of the audience who is no longer perceived as a community of passive listeners but as active participants.”

On-screen controls don’t do all the work. Sometimes the best way to view a scene or the only way to find an item is by physically getting on your hands and knees. A good portion of the game might be “played” on the various online communities as you compare notes with other true crime enthusiasts.

While scenes and clues are accurately created with great detail, the characters and events in the stories appear as luminous point clouds – so there’s no unsettling blood and gore to deal with. The cheeky, fourth-wall-breaking game narration should be amusing to true crime enthusiasts and not too stressful for people new to the genre.

A Careful Handling of a Touchy Subject

True crime is a sensitive subject – and people can be very sensitive to it. Stories can be emotionally challenging to hear and research, and living people are sometimes affected by true crime commentators jumping on a story still in development. CrimeTrip avoids both of these problems in two important ways.

First, the graphical style and the narration style of the game keep things from being too heavy. We saw a similar approach with USA Today’s Accused experience last year. Second, the cases in this experience are old enough that all of the suspects have passed away so players can enjoy the puzzling stories without stressing the impact on survivors too much.

Paolo Violi's Murder - CrimeTrip AR game

The fact that the cases are so old and so cold helps add allure to the game as well. There are no bad guys left to catch so it’s okay that even AR-enabled sleuths aren’t able to conclusively agree on whodunit. In ongoing cases, it would be great if the culprit could be caught and taken off the streets. But these forty and fifty-year-old tales can remain unfinished puzzles forever.

Check it Out if You Dare

So, is CrimeTrip worth your money? Check it out. The free app includes free previews to all available episodes – and that’s not just gameplay videos, you get to play the game. Still not sure? You can buy the cases one at a time. So, if you’re even remotely interested in true crime, it can’t hurt to check out.

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VR Takes Center Stage at Dubai’s DEAL 2023 Expo: Highlights and Takeaways

AR/VR events, Events, featured, Guest Post, Location Based VR, Review, Reviews, trending, virtual reality, VR experiences / Paul Patrick / March 31, 2023

So, in the past few weeks we have seen big tech, including Meta and Microsoft, announce massive layoffs, mostly to their XR division and at the same time, pivoting towards artificial intelligence and generative content.

Despite the news, this year’s DEAL expo was as busy as ever. Teeming with an array of VR devices, games, contraptions, and a myriad of other VR-related gizmos that filled the halls, it, quite frankly, surpassed expectations.

It’s clear that there’s an appetite for virtual reality and that the VR industry as a whole has no intention of slowing down. Here’s a short rundown of the most interesting things that caught my eye.

Meta4 Interactive

Meta4 Interactive were on the floor showcasing their arena player vs. player battler based on the well-known Transformers IP. I had the chance to battle it out with the CBDO of Meta4, Sylvain Croteau, as well as other members of the team.

They were all great at the game, which might seem obvious since it’s their product after all, but you would be surprised how often management is actually disconnected from their games or brands. It was nice to see that in this case the team is not only up to speed with their products, but also plays Transformers: VR Battle Arena for fun.

The hardware consisted of blue HTC Vive Pros connected to the gaming PCs above. This kept the headsets tethered without me actually feeling the tether as the cables were suspended from above. Also, the game is stationary, as you teleport from platform to platform (not unlike Tower Tag). I dodged bullets and turned in all directions without any issues.

Transformers VR: Battle Arena was originally developed in 2019 but I only had a chance to try it out recently. On their website, Meta4 claims their games run at a 90hz refresh rate, but it felt like less. Perhaps more like 60fps or 45fps with reprojection to 90hz?

The HTC Vive Pros were tethered, so there was no latency but the game did have a peculiar dense, dreamlike aspect to it, which often stems from lower refresh rates. I would gladly play a slightly stripped-down version of the game if it meant running it at 120hz native.

PvP arenas are very engaging thanks to their competitive aspect but it also means they work best for groups of friends, gamers, and people who want to compete and see who’s the best. All in all, I had fun and can’t wait to see what Meta4 has in store next.

VEX Solutions

VEX Solutions showcased two turnkey solutions side by side. The first one, “VEX Adventure,” offered a more comprehensive LBE-type experience with a motorized floor, wind and heat, onboarding, and full cooperative plot-driven gameplay. The other one, “VEX Arena,” is a lighter, less premium version, aimed at higher throughput.

VEX Arena and VEX Adventure — *VEX Arena (front) and VEX Adventure (back)*

Both setups used haptic vests but otherwise, the hardware differed significantly. VR Arena used a Vive Focus 3, while the more premium VR Adventure opted for some kind of hybrid setup. It looked like Pico Neo 3, combined with SteamVR tracking, hand tracking, and Pico 3 controllers that were mounted into the guns. A true patchwork of all the different technologies.

VEX Adventure — *Pico Neo 3 together with Vive trackers, hand tracking, and Pico 3 controllers*

The VEX representative declined to discuss hardware aspects, which I can understand. When it works, it works. However, having a multitude of varying components increases the number of potential failure points, which is not desirable. To that end, their other less premium offering, VR Arena, seemed a bit more manageable, but again I didn’t have the chance to ask about any specifics.

WARPOINT

For those looking to get into VR arenas on the cheap, WARPOINT had their own super basic solution. All it requires is 10 Meta Quest 2 headsets and a tablet. This must be the most affordable turnkey solution I saw at DEAL 2023. You could even forgo buying brand-new headsets and instead opt for second-hand ones to lower the costs even further.

All the Meta Quests operate in standalone mode using software developed by WARPOINT themselves. All the modes and maps are designed for PvP combat and marketed as a form of e-sport.

WARPOINT VR — *WARPOINT booth in action*

Moviemex3D

Moving on, I encountered Moviemex3D. It’s a company that specializes in VR movies and VR simulators, but they also offer an arena experience called VR Labyrinth. It’s a popup box that features redirected walking, gaming elements, and even some motorized rumble effects.

If you ever tried TraVRsal or Tea For God, you will know what the deal is. Even if the pop-up box looks small, the VR game area is much larger thanks to redirected walking, elevators, and so on. Expect traps, action, and shooting. Overall it’s a fun single-player experience.

From a hardware perspective, Moviemex3D used a Pico Neo 3 headset streaming from a PCVR computer. It’s not a bad solution but again, just like with the Transformers VR, I felt like the game wasn’t running at high enough refresh rates, making the entire experience feel heavy and dreamlike.

FuninVR

FuninVR had this pretty, eye-catching centerpiece.

It’s a massive UFO-shaped VR simulator. Not exactly a VR arena, but I had to try it out. The team was running a variety of experiences. People before me tried some kind of moon landing. In my case, it was a fantasy-themed rollercoaster.

Unfortunately, the VR simulator was out of sync with the roller coaster animation. Sometimes the track would turn left but the UFO didn’t – forcing me to either turn my head 90 degrees or face the walls. This left many participants nauseous.

There were also other questionable elements, like sudden impacts that made the roller coaster stop in place — basically, it’s like the developers deliberately broke every established rule on what not to do. I have strong VR legs, but still felt queasy.

Each participant had buttons on each side of the seat, which we used to shoot enemies, dragons, and other baddies. Aiming was done with head-tracking and it was a fun interactive element that I enjoyed, even if the shooting was only done for theatrical purposes — we were all running separate instances of the roller-coaster animation and there was no way to stop the simulator from progressing further.

Perhaps it would be better if I had tried the moon landing demo because, unfortunately, the roller-coaster had too many sync and motion issues to be enjoyable.

Hero Zone VR

One last turnkey VR solution worth mentioning is Hero Zone VR. It’s another fully standalone arena experience, this time running on a Vive Focus 3. This allowed the developers to take advantage of the headset’s larger resolution and higher-clocked XR2+ chipset.

There was a queue of people waiting to try out Hero Zone VR, so I didn’t get the chance to try it myself, but it looked like there was a selection of both cooperative and PvP games. I spoke briefly to one of the team members and he seemed to be quite proud of what they managed to achieve by going full standalone.

No Beat Saber?

There were also a lot of usual suspects: VR cabinets, VR kiosks, and VR arcades. Notably, Beat Saber was nowhere to be found. I wonder if it became too expensive to license or perhaps it has lost a bit of its novelty value. Instead, Synth Riders came in to fill the void, along with other fast-paced games like Zombieland VR.

Synth Riders Kiosk — *Synth Riders. By all accounts a great rhythm game.*

One arcade cabinet I really enjoyed was VR Shotgun by VR 360 Action. You step into a minigun cart and it’s basically laser shooting reinvented. Spooks and baddies come from left and right and you just have to blast away.

The minigun prop felt heavy and it had some nice haptic feedback to it. I was also happy with the decision to use the HP Reverb G2 headset, which still presents a very high bar when it comes to clarity and resolution. The game was running buttery smooth. Of course, the gameplay was pretty unsophisticated and there was no locomotion (it would be nice to have some kind of on-rails movement to break the mold), but VR Shotgun did make me wish all the arena and LBE software would have this level of visual comfort and fluidity.

Summary and Takeaways

So, what are my main takeaways from this year’s DEAL?

» Even if the early days are behind us, we’re still in the days of rapid innovation and prototyping. This makes it hard for VR arcades and arenas to keep up. I saw almost every kind of headset this year, from the oldest Oculus Rift CV1s, through Vive Pro, Windows Mixed Reality, Quest 2, Pico 4, and Vive Focus 3, running standalone, streaming, and wired.

» Meta presence in the amusement and entertainment sector could be stronger. Despite spending egregious amounts, most of the money went towards metaverse and mixed reality — both of which do not gel very well with the arcade environment. The Quest Pro was nowhere to be seen but maybe because it’s such a fresh headset.

» Virtual reality is becoming more and more normalized. At least 30-40% of the booths were virtual reality oriented. With everyone around wearing and trying headsets, people have stopped feeling insecure about how they look with a headset on and instead enjoy their experiences, treating VR like any other tech.

Have fun and keep on rocking in the virtual world!

About the Guest Author(s)

Mat Pawluczuk

Mat Pawluczuk is an XR / VR writer and content creator.

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“The Bear Who Touched the Northern Lights” Is a Charming AR Story Puzzle

AR Apps, AR games, augmented reality, children, featured, Reviews / Rejus Almole / February 23, 2023

When a polar bear sees the northern lights for the first time, he wants to reach out and touch them. How will he get there and who will he meet along the way? That’s up to you with this charming interactive AR story puzzle.

The Bear Who Touched the Northern Lights

“The Bear Who Touched the Northern Lights” is a sort of choose-your-own-adventure AR story for children where the “chapters” are physical puzzle pieces. The artwork and story are by Julie Puech and Karl Kim.

The ways in which these pieces fit together (or don’t) helps the AR story keep a logical narrative. However, pieces can be added and removed or swapped out resulting in multiple different possible tellings of the tale.

Of course, the adorable puzzle doesn’t tell the whole story. The puzzle pieces come to life with the help of a free AR mobile app for Apple and Android devices. The mobile app recognizes the pieces and animates their artwork, as well as queueing an audio narration by Kasey Miracle.

As a weary old XR veteran with a cold little heart, I sometimes find it helpful to recruit fresh eyes for product reviews – like when my younger brother provided his insights for my Nreal Air review. This time I recruited the help of my fiancée’s eight-year-old daughter.

What’s in the Box?

The puzzle comes with 15 AR story cards and an instructional booklet. The instructional booklet has information about the product, links to the app, and some advice for doing the puzzle for the first time – but don’t panic if you lose it. The puzzle information and a QR code to the app are both on the outside of the box and the first puzzle piece triggers an AR guide to using the app.

AR app - The Bear Who Touched the Northern Lights - AR Story Puzzle

The free app, powered by Unity, opens with a quick warning about being aware of your surroundings while using AR and encourages you to supervise children when using the app. From there, the app only has a play button and a settings button. Settings include background dimming to make the animations stand out better, or an option to turn the animations off.

Do be aware that the app is 394 MB and does require a fairly modern device to run. Like any AR app, it requires the use of your camera while the app is running.

Following Directions

Some pieces have special icons on them. Cards with a blue “+” are optional chapters that don’t have to be included in the AR story. Cards with green and orange arrows can be swapped out for one another, changing how the story unfolds.

The play guide recommends that you remove the optional chapters and two of the interchangeable chapters the first time that the puzzle is constructed. This is presumably an introductory version of the puzzle to avoid throwing too much at first-time players.

As with any puzzle, it’s important to find a flat surface large enough for the puzzle when completed. The play guide recommends a space of two feet by three-and-a-half feet. The AR story puzzle is long and narrow in nature, particularly with all of the possible pieces in play, but has some curves in the overall shape so it isn’t just a straight line.

AR app - The Bear Who Touched The Northern Lights

The AR instructions at the beginning of the puzzle remind you that you also need to have space to sit comfortably with the puzzle in front of you for about 20 minutes (give or take). After all, the play guide also recommends additional activities like asking the child to try to construct the story from the puzzle before watching the narration.

Putting the Pieces Together

The first time putting the puzzle together, we followed the play guide’s advice to remove extra pieces and one set of interchangeable chapters. The shapes of the pieces are similar enough to make it a little challenging for young hands to assemble without it being frustrating. They’re also different enough that the story can’t be constructed in an order that wouldn’t make sense.

It only took a few minutes to assemble the puzzle for the first time, and then we fired up the app. The AR instructions are short, cute, and very informative, telling us everything we needed to know without being boring. It takes the app a second or so to recognize the cards, so moving from one chapter to the next is neither seamlessly fast nor frustratingly slow.

The Bear Who Touched the Northern Lights - AR Story Puzzle

The animations are cute and colorful, and the effects are simply but beautifully done. The default background dimming on the app is 35%, and it certainly worked. Turning it up can make the background disappear completely, which makes for optimum viewing quality, but also makes it harder to find the pieces in the camera. Pick what setting you like best.

At one point in the story, the bear starts receiving items for his journey. The Child got to choose which items he used when, but only one item was ever needed in the story, and selecting the wrong item isn’t penalized – you just pick again. We were split on this. It’s nice that we couldn’t pick wrong, but picking at all felt kind of unnecessary. (This made more sense later on.)

We reached the end of the AR story. Sort of. Immediately upon finishing the puzzle and the story the first time, The Child asked to do the puzzle again with the extra chapters.

Putting the Pieces Together Again

We added in the two optional AR story pieces and swapped out both of the interchangeable pieces and put the puzzle together again. Suddenly, the choices made a much bigger difference and a lot more sense.

The interchangeable pieces provide the bear with a different item and see him use it in a different way. The additional chapters introduce new characters, which the bear befriends by using the different items. This gave The Child a new appreciation for the AR story, but it gave me a new appreciation for the AR app.

Doing the puzzle the first time, one would be forgiven for assuming that the chapters are stand-alone pieces that don’t affect one another. Doing the puzzle again makes it clear that the app is telling a new story each time based on the pieces, their placement, and your choices throughout the story.

AR Story Puzzle - The Bear Who Touched the Northern Lights

We’ve only done the puzzle those two times so far. I haven’t done the math to figure out how many different versions of the story are possible with different choices, pieces, and arrangements, but I know that there are a lot of versions of the story that we have yet to hear.

And that’s a good thing. As soon as we finished doing the puzzle the second time, The Child immediately asked if there were any more AR story puzzles like this one.

Where to Find the AR Story Puzzle

So far, The Bear Who Touched the Northern Lights is the only product by Red+Blue Stories (but we’re hopeful for more). The company is based in Canada but also ships to the US. Prices start at around US$34, but you can pay more for different shipping options. As of this writing, the AR story puzzle is not available on other online retailers like Amazon.

The AR instructions say that a child can use the product by themselves after the first go-around. That may be true, but if you’re letting your child construct this AR story puzzle without you, you’re missing out.

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Playin Pickleball on Quest 2 – Review From a Pickleball Newcomer

featured, Review, Reviews, sports, VR games / Rejus Almole / February 16, 2023

Pickleball is the new court sensation that’s sweeping the nation, and it didn’t take long for someone to bring it into VR. How does someone who’s a VR veteran, but green on the pickleball court take to the game? We’ll find out in this review of Playin Pickleball.

“Pickleball,” You Say?

If you know what pickleball is, just skip ahead a little bit. If you need a little explainer, here’s a very little explainer:

Pickleball is kind of like tennis, but played with a ping-pong paddle and a whiffle ball. It can be played in singles or doubles format. That’s it from a thousand-foot view, but there are a lot of more specific rules going over how the ball can be played, from where, and how it has to be served, as well as the points system.

As becomes apparent over the course of this review, I have never played pickleball in real life. And, after having played a few (and won even fewer) games in VR, I still don’t really understand a lot of the rules. But, that doesn’t mean that it’s not fun.

Getting Started With Playin Pickleball

The basic mechanics of how pickleball works in a VR game are explained in an automated tutorial as soon as you start up Playin Pickleball for the first time. Let me just say here, that you owe it to yourself to make it through the tutorial.

You can’t skip this opening tutorial, and you can’t fail out of it either. One of the challenges is landing three serves within a designated area of the court and if you want to leave the tutorial you’ll do it if it takes you a thousand tries. And it might have taken me a thousand tries.

This initial tutorial tells you how to do things like spawn a ball and move around the court, but it doesn’t do anything to tell you how the game of pickleball actually works. This is a blessing for people who already know the rules of the game from playing in real life, because they don’t have to sit through an avatar explaining the rules to them.

If you aren’t familiar with the rules, you can choose to move straight from the initial tutorial into a short explainer on the court, the points system, and some of the other more intricate rules. However, this second tutorial is optional so you can skip it if you already know the rules.

Whether you’re about to play your first match or your one-millionth match, you can also access training exercises from the main menu that help you practice skills like serving and just hitting the ball. The training exercises pit you against the merciless pitching machine from the first tutorial, but you can also practice by playing against AIs on three difficulty settings.

Gameplay

So, how is Playin Pickleball’s gameplay?

Physics

I know that I said that the tutorial was torturous. But, I’ve been around VR long enough to know that that’s because I haven’t been around paddle sports at all. The physics of Playin Pickleball are out of this world.

I imagined that the paddle would essentially be a pong paddle that the ball either hit or it didn’t. This is far from the case. The ball behaves differently based on where it strikes the paddle. This includes wild ricochets if the ball hits the edges of the paddle.

While this can make the game more challenging at first, it also makes it a very realistic experience. I later learned that the flat sides of the paddle are actually textured so that advanced players (more advanced than me) can deliberately put a spin on the ball by glancing it just right off of the paddle’s surface.

Display and Avatars

Playing the Playin Pickleball on Quest 2 (review) via App Lab, the game automatically uses your Quest avatar. If you want to change your outfit into something a little more sporty, a menu option in the game takes you to the Quest avatar editor without closing the game.

spectate - Playin Pickleball

The environment, including the three different courts, provides a good visual home for the Quest avatars. The graphics are cartoony enough for a cohesive aesthetic, but realistic enough to make gameplay easy and enjoyable.

Movement and Mechanics

Playin Pickleball allows for three movement modes.

Manually running lets you move via the joysticks. It provides the most precise and smooth movement around the court, but also means another control to keep track of that may be too challenging for new players.

Automatic running moves your avatar smoothly into the path of the ball. This setting feels natural but some people who experience motion sickness in VR may find it too disorienting. (For the record, I often feel motion sickness after extended VR sessions, but this is still my favorite setting and I didn’t have any problems using it over multiple consecutive matches in a session.)

Automatic teleport places your avatar in the best place to hit the ball based on its trajectory. This option feels less natural than the running options but may be more comfortable for players subject to motion sickness in VR.

city - Playin Pickleball

In any movement mode, players can press the left joystick to immediately move to “the kitchen” – a smaller field-of-play on either side of the net where short-range volleys take place.

A final note on gameplay: Even with teleport modes, you have to move your arms – including serving from below the waist and returning above your head. In my review of The Thrill of the Fight, I mentioned that you can get away with a pretty small play area. That is not the case with Playin Pickleball. You don’t need a full-sized court to play in, but you’ve got to give yourself room.

Finding Games Anytime

In addition to the training modes, Playin Pickleball has singles and doubles matches available at any time. These include free play modes so you and a pal can knock a ball back and forth without worrying about the score or even whose serve it is.

wating for others to join - Playin Pickleball

Friends can invite you to join their games, or you can team up with a friend to form a party. If you have enough friends online at the same time, you can play in closed games with each other.

If you don’t have enough friends online at once, you can look for open matches with random online players. In the event that there aren’t enough players online at a given time (which does happen in the game, as Playin Pickleball is still fairly new), live players are paired with AI bots.

An Amazing Gaming Community

The best way that I know of to find games, and to get into Playin Pickleball in general, is through their Discord server. As soon as I joined the Discord server, other players sent welcoming messages. One even scheduled a time for some free play during which he helped me understand the rules and mechanics better than any of the tutorials did.

A special page in the Discord server allows players to fill in information about themselves, including their levels of pickleball experience and what regions they live in. This automatically assigns players to different channels where players can learn about upcoming Playin Pickleball tournaments and see or schedule pick-up games.

The first online doubles game that I played included my new friend from Discord as well as two other players that I had never played with but that seem to be regulars at that particular time of day. Despite having only put an hour or so into Playin Pickleball since surviving the tutorials, I was able to play competitively with others. And the other players are great sports!

stadium - Playin Pickleball

It helps that many of the basics of the game are automated. For example, despite my time in the app, I still don’t really understand how the serve rotation works. But, a message appears above my off hand, letting me know that it’s my turn to spawn a ball and start a round. That means that my new (and patient) pickleball friends don’t have to tell me it’s my turn when I can’t keep track.

Get to Playin!

You can learn more about Playin Pickleball through the website, which includes video explainers, links to their Discord channel and other social media, and more. If you want to get straight into it, you can purchase the game from the Meta Quest App Lab for $19.99.

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The Thrill of the Fight Quest 2 Review

featured, Quest 2, Review, Reviews, sports, VR games / Paul Patrick / January 5, 2023

The Thrill of the Fight is a VR boxing simulator that is exhausting in all the right ways. Warm up in the gym, enter the ring, or box ghosts and zombies to get your heart rate up – and let the lead out on the canvas.

Experience The Thrill of the Fight

The Thrill of the Fight by Sealost Interactive is a multi-tiered $10 VR boxing game available on PCVR and as a Quest app. I played it for this review in the app format on my Quest 2.

The game material says that you need a 6.5 ft by 5 ft play area. This is optimum, certainly – particularly if you really want to work on your footwork and experience a sense of immersion unhindered by the grid of your play area. However, the app still runs if your play area is smaller than this. I typically play in a play area more to the tune of five or six square feet without issue.

The Thrill of the Fight requires two controllers, which is kind of a shame. No buttons are required either for gameplay or to navigate menus, as we’ll see – it just doesn’t support hand tracking. The controllers don’t get in the way or break immersion or anything like that, it would just be nice to not need to worry about them – or wear the controller batteries down.

Speaking of immersion, The Thrill of the Fight supports haptic accessories. I wish that I could tell you that I had access to some to try with this review, but alas.

Now that the housekeeping (and my only real piece of criticism) is out of the way, let’s get into the ring to experience the thrill of the fight.

Welcome to Hazegood’s Gym

When entering The Thrill of the Fight, the first thing that you do is stand on a scale and look into a camera. This is a clever way of setting your height. If you want to use this game to demo VR to your friends (or even let the kids have a go at the virtual heavy bag) this is a super handy set-up. Even if you’re the only one that ever uses your headset, it only takes a few seconds.

The Thrill of the Fight gym and boxing ring

From there, you find the main menu. Navigate the main menu by holding either one of your gloved hands over the button for the activity that you want to enter. From this menu, you can reset height without leaving and re-entering the app, which is handy. This is just under the general settings menu.

The giant “Fight” button is tempting, but let’s explore some of the other game modes first. There are a lot of options for warm-ups and practices before you step into the ring. I always like to warm up with a circuit of these to mentally and physically prepare me for the thrill of the fight.

Four Practice Modes

“Speed Bag” is your classic gym “peanut bag.” Practice your rhythm while an on-screen tracker shows your current rate and best rate in five-second and thirty-second hits-per-minute streaks.

“Dummy” is a human-shaped target with lit-up strike zones. The on-screen tracker shows the force of your hits, the damage it would deal in a match, the kind of strike that landed, and whether it hit a high-damage area. You can also see your best-ever hit to develop your signature move.

“Heavy Bag” is, well, a heavy bag. It works pretty much the same as the dummy. It’s easier to see targets on the heavy bag, but harder to visualize them as they would be on an opponent in the ring.

“Focus Ball” is… I don’t know what a focus ball is. It’s been a few twenty-four hours since I stepped my bare foot in a physical dojo, but I’ve never seen one of these before and I don’t know how they work. When you hit the ball it comes back at you. The on-screen tracker logs hits and “dodges” but I don’t know how to register a “dodge.”

“Extras” are seasonal opponents that develop specific skills in the ring. A pumpkin-headed opponent only takes damage from body shots. A ghost opponent tests your reflexes with superhuman speed. A zombie that doesn’t get tired takes your endurance to the task. I’m not in the shape I once was, but I have yet to complete one of these challenges.

Except for the extras, all of these take place in a virtual gym. If I could change one thing about this game (other than hand tracking) the gym would be its own location with each practice mode being spatially navigable instead of needing to exit each to access the next through the main menu.

Fight Modes

Now, for the thrill of the fight. Practice up on a sort of generic AI opponent as much as you want. From there, move on to a series of more colorful, storied, and challenging opponents. Start on Easy or Medium difficulty with each opponent. Beating an opponent unlocks that same opponent on more advanced difficulty levels, but it also unlocks the next opponent.

The Easy difficulty outright tells you that you have a clear advantage. The Medium difficulty is supposed to be the most realistic fight experience. After that, you might start finding yourself on the back foot more and more as your opponents become increasingly overpowered.

Gloves on in the Ring

The basic format is your classic three-round refereed match. When you hear the bell, go toe-to-toe with your opponent. Your opponent can realistically block your punches – and you can block theirs. Hits from either boxer are accompanied by a nice “thunk” sound. Your opponent also recoils from a hit. A body hit often sees them double up so you can go in for the headshot.

The Thrill of the Fight - boxing match

As you hit your opponent, they visibly bruise. I swear I’ve even seen some blood fly off of my right cross, but I don’t have the screenshots to prove it. You can tell by the look on your opponent’s face when they’re getting tired. Ease back for a breather or go in hot and try for the early KO.

When you sustain a body hit, that side of your view lights up to let you know. When you sustain a solid headshot, you see a flash and your view goes gray for a moment, accompanied by audio distortion (that’s when the thrill of the fight kicks in). Make some space and block some hits, and this goes away after a moment. Otherwise, you could find yourself on the mat yourself.

The Thrill of the Fight VR game

When someone hits the mat, the referee starts counting. Usually, they get back up and the bell rings again. But, the ref might get to ten, and then the match is over. If no one is laid out cold by the time the third round ends, it goes to technicality and unseen judges start counting points.

You can also quit a match between rounds by grabbing the towel instead of the mouthguard as the ring clock ticks down. I’ve never felt the need to quit a proper ring match between rounds, but I’ve literally sat down on the floor to catch my breath as that minute runs down.

Hungry for More?

The Thrill of the Fight came out a few years ago now. Sealost Interactive has been promising a sequel for a while. They promise that a follow-up is in development but we don’t have any release dates.

I’ve already pointed out some of the things that I would like to see from “The Thrill of the Fight 2”. While we’re making a wishlist, a multi-player version or even social leaderboards would be nice. That said, I’ve been playing this game for over a month now and I don’t see myself growing tired of it any time soon.

Hit the Showers

The Thrill of the Fight is intense and insanely good fun. It’s also definitely the most cardio that I’ve gotten since that week I tried to get into running in the summer of ‘20. When I look really hard for things about the game that I don’t like, I really just find things that I would like slightly more. All said, this game is definitely worth the $10.

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Among Us VR Review on Quest 2

featured, Review, Reviews, VR games / Mike M. / December 27, 2022

Among Us has been a hit game for a while now. Among Us VR is a more recent phenomenon. Get your tasklist ready, memorize the map, warm up your button-smacking hand, and trust no one as we pilot the Skeld II through a trial run.

A Brief History of Among US VR

Game studio Innersloth released the original Among Us in 2018 as a free app game with some optional paid customization features. The immensely social game sees a team of travelers piloting a ship (the Skeld II) through space only to find that some among them are “Impostors” who sabotage the ship and kill crewmates.

impostor - Among US VR game

Playing as an Impostor, players try to blend in with the crewmates while destroying the ship’s functions and/or murdering enough of the real team to take over. Playing as a crewmate, players need to keep the ship flying and stay alive long enough to determine which of them are Impostors.

Among Us VR is no simple port (though unofficial attempts in the form of amateur mods on social VR platforms have existed for some time). To make the game immersive, Innersloth partnered with XR game studio Schell Games, known for titles like Until You Fall, and the I Expect You to Die series.

Announced at Meta Connect and launching the following month, Among Us VR is currently available for $10 on SteamVR and the Quest Store. Doing this review, I played on my Quest 2 (review).

Among Us VR is meant for players 13 and up. Violence is cartoony but graphic and inescapable. The title is also necessarily social so the effort at protecting young players is nice, even though it doesn’t work at all ever. The gameplay is complex when executed correctly by mature players – and equally complex when operated in ways a mature player doesn’t expect.

Navigating Menus, the Tutorial, and Online Gameplay

When first booting up Among Us VR, players are prompted to enter a birth date. You can lock this in on your headset, or you can choose to require a birth-date entry on each boot. That means that to play the game you have to be at least old enough to know how to lie about your birthday. The title is intended for players 13 and up. It is played by children 6 and up.

The main menu is simple. Your standard settings options are there, as are your customization options. Change the color of your crewmate and trick it out with little hats. Some hats are free, and some hat packs are available for purchase. (Yes, I do have the tiny crewmate hat only available to people who pre-ordered the game.)

VR game - Among US VR

The two largest buttons that dominate the main menu are to play online and learn how to play. The learn-how-to-play option is an offline tutorial that takes you through several aspects of gameplay without other users running around murdering you.

Learning the Ropes

Because the tutorial is representative of so many aspects of gameplay and to respect the privacy of online players, all of the screenshots in this review were taken in the offline tutorial or provided by Schell Games.

The tutorial takes you through life as a crewmate, solving tasks, pushing buttons, reporting bodies, and getting murdered. Then, you experience the afterlife (dead crewmates can’t vote, communicate with the living, or report bodies, but they can still complete tasks). You also get to play as the Impostor, climbing through vents, sabotaging the ship, and killing crewmates.

among us VR review

Unfortunately, the tutorial is limited to two rooms on a fairly large map. It also doesn’t include all of the tasks that you’ll need to complete when playing a full game. However, it’s still a nice introduction.

The controls are smooth. All of the tasks could theoretically be hand-tracked, but movement is controlled with the controllers, so they’re a must-have. There’s also a button to bring up the ship map and do some other basic commands. The controller layout isn’t overly complex or challenging, and all major controls are spelled out in the tutorial and are changeable in settings.

crewmates Among US VR

Movement is smooth, and your view goes into a sort of tunnel vision while you’re moving to prevent motion sickness. If you’ve read my reviews before, you know I can get motion sickness pretty bad pretty quick, but I find Among Us VR to be pretty comfortable. Also, because everything is controller-based, you can play sitting down.

Taking It Online

There are two main options for playing Among Us VR online, one for smaller and shorter games, and one for longer and more populated matches. A shorter game might only have five players including one Impostor, while the longer games have more crewmates and more Impostors. Other than that, the gameplay is the same.

There’s no formal breakdown of how a game plays out in terms of round length or anything like that. But, there is a sort of structure. Here’s how it plays out, as I understand it:

The Impostors can murder one crewmate and sabotage one ship component per round. A round culminates in an “emergency meeting” called when a body is discovered. All of the players converge on the cafeteria to try to decide who the Impostors are, followed by a round of voting, during which the players vote out one player – who may or may not be the Impostor.

Emergency meeting - Among US VR game

There are a few gameplay elements that make things a little trickier. For example, Impostors can still fix sabotages and report bodies. This helps them make it look like they’re really part of the team. Further, fixing sabotages usually requires standing still and facing a wall for a few seconds – a prime opportunity to get murdered by an Impostor.

Now, About My Crewmates…

The first time that I played Among Us VR, I was definitely the oldest person on deck by probably twenty years. I’m no autumn rooster, but I was definitely surrounded by spring chicks.

When this eventually became apparent, I became an immediate subject of suspicion. I felt a bit like Robin Williams in Hook when the Lost Boys rally against the only adult on their island in Neverland. I managed to survive the game, but only to see the Impostor take the ship. I wonder if this dynamic didn’t make things more interesting.

One crewmate shouted so loudly and so consistently that he knew who the Impostor was during the first round of voting that the rest of us all thought he was casting suspicion off of himself. We voted him off immediately only to find at the end of the game that he had been telling the truth.

who is the impostor - Among Us VR game

I’ve been writing about VR since this particular Impostor was eating dirt in daycare. But Among Us doesn’t care. That’s part of the beauty of the game. I chose not to trust my crewmate. Sure he was young, and sure he got a crewmate to change color in the lobby because “nobody likes purple” but – when push came to shove – I underestimated him and it cost us the ship.

If you would rather play Among Us VR with adults, I have a sneaking suspicion that younger players favor shorter matches. I’m sure that the time of day that you play makes a big difference too. But, we’ve already seen how well I understand children.

Fun for (Almost) Any Age

All things considered, Among Us VR is great fun at a great price. So what, there are grade schoolers online? The game is VR, but it’s also a game with simple mechanics built on a social framework. Maybe in an update developers should acknowledge the “age problem” and have separate lobbies for different ages. In the meantime, grow up and play your little video game.

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