Author: @onwevr

Ben Vance on VR and developing for the HTC/Valve Vive

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One of our first OnWEVR grant recipients, Ben Vance, wrote a guest post for the WEVR blog about developing for the HTC Vive.

I’ve worked on and off in VR since the late 90’s. But when I first experienced the Valve prototype in early 2014, I knew VR was finally, actually here. I could feel the difference that incredibly high fidelity hardware makes- Robust and low latency tracking. It’s hard to describe what it feels like. But I knew it would not make me sick. It was comfortable in a way I had never felt in a digital world.

So I was thrilled to learn that Valve and HTC were making the best VR I’ve ever experienced official with the Vive. Along with helping engineer and design TheBlu: Encounter, I immediately began work on redesigning my VR prototype, Irrational Exuberance, as a standing, room-scale VR experience. It is an irresistibly powerful technology and I have no doubt it will have enormous impacts on human-computer interaction and design. And I’m eager to get started on it with Irrational Exuberance!

Irrational Exuberance is a surreal exploration through deep space. It has always lived somewhere between game and experience and it turns out VR is the perfect medium to explore this kind of design. It begins with you stranded on an asteroid in the beautiful, vast but lonely reaches of space. It is non-violent yet visceral, abstract yet immersive. Using mystery, surprise, and delight, it toys with the player’s expectations and understanding of it’s universe.

This is the project I’ve always wanted to build. Playful, authentic, and pushing boundaries. I am so happy to have WEVR’s support through their OnWEVR grant program and be a part of their forward-facing dedication. It’s really wonderful to see VR treated as the unique medium it is and a company truly committed to understanding it’s incredible potential.

Looking forward to sharing more on the cutting edge of VR in the coming months and my experience working with WEVR! Stay tuned for some surreal updates. :)

You can keep up to date on Ben Vance and Irrational Exuberance by following him on Twitter, and checking in on Buffalo Vision’s webpage.

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“Hard World for Little Things” Gets the Greenlight

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In our effort to promote diversity in Virtual Reality storytellers, WEVR and Seed&Spark have given the green light for the production of filmmaker Janice Bravo’s “Hard World for Little Things”, which tells the story of a man who gets assaulted by two plainclothes cops, addresses a major sociopolitical and cultural preoccupation about police brutality that has swept the country over the past year.

We are incredibly stoked to be working with Janicza and looking forward to getting production started.

For the full press release, check it out on IndieWire!

 

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ThebluVR: Encounter screenshots for Valve’s SteamVR and HTC’s Vive

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Ben Vance, indie game designer known for his work on Skulls of the Shogun, has taken the deep dive into VR and has been working with Steam VR for several months. We reached out to him and collaborated to make this experience happen. Ben used Vive’s accurate input controllers to enable nuanced interactions with plankton and fish in the water, intimately connecting the player with the underwater scene. Another key component was designing the virtual space relative to the 15×15 foot bounds of the tracking space, inviting full body exploration and inspection.

“Highly compelling VR experiences take a lot of careful work to pull off. We worked diligently to give the player a sense of place and a strong connection to it. I am very proud of what we’ve achieved” says Vance. It’s been really fun hanging out with Ben in our Venice studio.

WEVR brought on another partner, independent director Jake Rowell (Call of Duty and Superman Returns), to really push the quality bar and create a visually stunning immersive experience. “With room scale we could take advantage of the entire visual/interactive space, making the whale’s scale and magnitude come through. The stage area played a big part in unlocking this puzzle. A shipwreck seemed like a natural fit and allowed us to create a plateau for the player, and for the whale to maneuver around, with surrounding deep cliffs beckoning you to peer down. Each member of the team dedicated themselves to the vision of the project and I’m extremely proud of what we were able to accomplish in this emerging medium”, says Rowell.

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“Our core creative goal with theBlu: Encounter is giving the audience a true personal close encounter experience with an 80 foot blue whale while moving around a 15×15 foot space on dry land. The degree of presence achievable on Valve/HTC’s Vive makes this possible”, Neville said, Executive Producer and WEVR Cofounder/CEO.

These screenshots fall way short of conveying the degree of immersiveness of the actual demo experience which was shown on an invite-only basis for the first time this week at MWC in Barcelona, and now at GDC in San Francisco.

Creating for Valve’s SteamVR and HTC’s Vive headset is a life changing creative and technical event for us. We are going to be making a lot more content for the HTC Vive/SteamVR platform, as well as helping other developers and producers do the same.

And finally, a loving shout out to all the team who poured their heart and soul into this project:

Jake Rowell – Director / Art Director
Andy Jones – Animation Director
Ben Vance – Design Engineer
Eyal Erez – Visual Engineer
Scott Stephan – Game Designer
Nghia Lam – Senior Artist
Abril Martinez – Technical Artist
Daniel Fiske – Animator
Kevin Brough – Audio Composer
Scott Reeser – Engineering Support
Ben Miller – Production/Design Support
Neville Spiteri – Executive Producer

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WEVR launches $1M Virtual Reality Grant Program

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Today at SXSW, WEVR (formerly known as WemoLab), is formally announcing its new initiative called OnWEVR, a $1 Million grant program aimed squarely at the VR storyteller to help get their VR projects launched and to market.

With OnWEVR, a virtual reality producer could net a $5,000 to $50,000 grant to produce content.

We’re launching this program with the hopes of enriching the VR creative community and our colleagues in it. In addition to the grant, WEVR provides producers with our VR media player and distribution technology platform.

As our co-founder and CEO, Neville Spiteri, states, “Funding for VR producers will provide a fast lane for VR projects to get to market. We will all learn from collaborating with these creative producers.”

We wanted to make the OnWEVR program as simple as possible for producers: your project must be a VR experience a few minutes in length and use WEVR’s VR media player software. All that’s required for consideration is a short written pitch, a video (either on YouTube or in a DropBox folder) explaining your VR story, and a URL for any other supporting files (videos, graphics, presentations), if applicable.

The OnWEVR program is for anyone in the VR community, from the enthusiast experimenting with making their own VR content to the seasoned veteran. WEVR has already partnered with Seed&Spark to establish a similar grant program for the independant filmmaker community.

 

Our main hope is that OnWEVR will help producers who come up with exciting VR experiences to launch themselves in this new space using the grant funding,” says co-founder, Anthony Batt. “There really aren’t many funding opportunities for VR storytellers, so we wanted to create something very lightweight that helps producers, helps us, and helps the VR community.

Now, we’re super stoked to introduce two of our first producing partners joining the OnWEVR program. Ben Vance of Buffalo Vision, indie game developer and VR expert, is creating an original room scale interactive VR experience for the Valve/HTC Vive called IRRATIONAL EXUBERANCE; a surreal odyssey through deep space. Roger Avary, film director and the Academy Award™ winning screenwriter of Pulp Fiction and Beowulf is directing a 360 cinematic series. We’ve greenlit Ben and Roger’s projects and can’t wait to watch, help, learn, and share as production unfolds.

What are you waiting for? Impress us! Go to the OnWEVR page and submit your idea for a chance to get funded!

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WEVR partners with Valve to create TheBluVR: Encounter For Vive

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A few hours ago we sat at the front row at the HTC Keynote at MWC in Barcelona, where HTC and Valve announced a partnership to bring the Vive, a new stunning Room Scale VR headset powered by Steam VR, to market this year.

Fortunately, our team has been developing VR for over a year, and we were approached to collaborate with Valve to bring our original VR project theBlu to the Vive platform. Our team leaped at the opportunity to be a launch partner with Valve and HTC.

“Nothing to date delivers true Presence like Valve’s room-scale Vive VR headset” says Neville Spiteri, Cofounder/CEO of WEVR (formerly known as WemoLab).

We set out to create a defining room-scale immersive experience. So we had to start from scratch. TheBlu: Encounter, is specifically designed for Valve|HTC’s Vive system. We want you to feel what it’s like to come face-to-face with an 80-foot blue whale, whose eye is the size of your entire face. An extreme experience of scale and unexpected empathy that can only happen in room-scale VR.

WEVR signed on independent director Jake Rowell, formerly of Call of Duty and the Superman Returns movie, and Avatar’s Academy Award™ winning animation director Andy Jones, to create the experience, collaborating with WEVR’s team of VR experts. “I was immediately taken by the power of the VR medium and couldn’t wait to jump in. It has been a tremendous experience working with the WEVR team and the Vive system”, says Rowell. It was no small feat balancing all the visual, audio and interactive systems on a tight schedule – the geometry detail of the whale, the ocean visuals with dynamic lighting and shadows – consistently running at 90fps stereo.

The result is a breathtaking example of the power of Presence afforded by the Vive. Chet Faliszek from Valve shared: “We are excited to have WEVR as a dev partner for SteamVR/HTC Vive. They have created a special experience in TheBlu: Encounter that showcases their grasp of room scale and the medium.” And Daniel O’Brien, HTC VR Head said: “TheBlu: Encounter is a top notch room scale VR experience that demonstrates the richness, fidelity and experiential possibilities of Steam VR + the HTC Vive. WEVR’s Academy Award™ winning team have delivered a truly awe-inspiring experience, and we are very excited about our collaboration going forward”.

The WEVR team is ecstatic to partner with more creatives and continue to develop more experiences for the Vive.

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