Facebook reorganizes Oculus, NetEase talks about VR game development experience | Immersive Weekly

How is NetEase's first VR game? Facebook reorganized Oculus. Magic Leap's PR director resigned. Follow Leifeng.com to review the major VR/AR events of this week.

Facebook Live 360 ​​released, live broadcast of 8 scientists' 80 days on Mars

Facebook teamed up with National Geographic to launch a 360-degree panoramic live broadcast. Source: Recode

According to foreign media reports such as Digital Trends and Recode, Facebook recently announced that it will launch a major feature related to live video - 360-degree panoramic video live broadcast, called "Facebook Live 360". With the help of this service, users can not only see the video content of Facebook Live, but also watch a 360-degree full-view scene by moving the mouse or the angle of the mobile smartphone.

According to Leiphone.com, this panoramic video is recorded using special equipment such as a spherical camera system, and users can watch and experience it on a PC or Android device.

Of course, it is too early to call Facebook Live 360 ​​VR live broadcast, but this service has already possessed the unique immersive experience brought by virtual reality to a certain extent. Facebook said it will optimize this feature in the coming months, add some live content, and design a better UI interface in a few years. Not only that, Facebook will also cooperate with National Geographic Magazine to provide 360-degree panoramic video live broadcast from the "Mars Desert Research Station" in Utah, USA. Experiencers can see from the video what the eight scientists have experienced at the research station in the past 80 days.

Facebook to reorganize Oculus by the end of the year, splitting PC and mobile VR

According to Leifeng.com, Facebook is currently planning to reorganize the Oculus department and separate the mobile and PC sides.

Brendan Iribe, former CEO of Oculus, will become the head of the newly established PC VR department. Today, Iribe's open letter was published on the Oculus official website. In the letter, Iribe mentioned:

“Looking ahead and considering my personal interests, I’ve decided to spend the next tenure leading the PC VR team, driving the Rift, our research, and the role of computer vision in VR. As we’ve grown, I’ve missed the time when the team was able to deeply iterate, day after day, on building a new product that was at the forefront of technology.”

Iribe also mentioned that Jon Thomason will be in charge of the mobile leadership, and he, Thomason, and Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer will work together to find a new leader for the Oculus team. However, it is worth mentioning that Palmer Luckey's new position has not yet been determined.

What is the development story behind NetEase's first VR game? | Decrypted

On December 14, the Vision VR/AR Summit Asia 2016 hosted by Unity was held in Beijing. At the event, NetEase brought their mobile VR game "Twilight Pioneers" developed specifically for the Google Daydream platform. Shen Wendi, a senior technical manager who participated in the production of the game, shared some game development experience on the spot.

In fact, developers have to increase the freedom of movement of players on the one hand, and fight against motion sickness at all times. Almost all game developers will face this problem when making VR games. So how do they fight against motion sickness? The most basic principle is not to actively control the camera, because "the player's eyes are the camera." They once designed a split lens in the demo to show the scene of defeating the big boss. There was no problem in the editor, but after putting on the helmet, it was a completely devastating experience. And the camera pull requires a lot of design skills, and this method is not cost-effective in VR.

Therefore, it is important to remember that the player's eyes are the camera, he said. This is a very simple question, but it may be too simple and basic and is often overlooked.

The second way to avoid motion is to choose good teleport moves.

Several points need to be noted, including: easy point selection, teleport preview, smooth transition and target detection. However, teleportation is not a panacea and is not suitable for certain scenes, such as riding, slashing, etc. This method is mainly used in scenes in the game that require traveling and dodging over a large area.

So how to ensure that players do not experience dizziness when moving continuously in VR games? Google helped them find a solution to this problem, which is to alleviate motion sickness during continuous movement by changing FOV. When you want to speed up, you can reduce the field of view; when the speed is stable, you can restore the original field of view; when changing direction, you can keep the field of view unchanged. There are other ways to prevent dizziness, such as moving at a low speed, making it the default movement method, and players can learn how to operate it. However, this method should be used with caution, because the speed must be low enough to avoid dizziness, but this is not the game speed that players like.

Magic Leap PR director leaves after controversy

After The Information broke a series of negative news about Magic Leap last week, the company has experienced a wave of widespread media questioning. This week, Andy Fouche, Magic Leap's vice president of PR, announced his resignation to join Stealth Startup led by Andy Rubin.

Andy Fouche announced the news on Twitter, and UploadVR later received an official response from Magic Leap, which stated that "Andy Fouche will no longer serve as Magic Leap's VP of PR..."

As a startup company that has received huge funding from giants such as Google and Alibaba, Magic Leap has always been very mysterious. The outside world is both full of expectations and skepticism about its AR/MR technology. Last week, The Information's article completely amplified these skepticisms, revealing that the company's products could not be as small as expected, and the experience was not as good as Microsoft's HoloLens. It was also caught up in a scandal of fake special effects production in its promotional videos.

From Smartisan VR to Sothink Technology: Luo Zixiong tells the story behind VR entrepreneurship

Luo Zixiong first came into contact with VR in early 2014, when he experienced Oculus DK1. After playing it, he felt that this must be the future, "at least the future of games," he told Leifeng.com.

At that time, he wanted to join Oculus, but thought he could wait until Smartisan China was completed, because "after all, it was a Kickstarter company founded by college students, and I think it would take five years for this company to succeed." But then Oculus was acquired, and he felt that "the probability of going there and taking up a very important position was very low."

At Smartisan, Luo Zixiong really wanted to do VR, but Smartisan's main business was mobile phones, and as a startup company, many things were still in the establishment stage, so his idea was basically on hold.

At the end of 2014, the VR project was first proposed within Hammer, but the idea was not very firm at the time, because VR was still immature and it was not clear whether to develop software or hardware, so Luo Zixiong hoped to do something about VR internally first. But at that time, they had already determined two logics:

First of all, we are very good at human-computer interaction, and then we can make products. This is the first logic. The second logic is that I have made 3D games before, so I have all the 3D things here. I have also made UI and user products, so there is no problem with this.

In short, our logic is that we understand software and user experience the best among all game companies. We understand 3D the best among all software companies and know how to make something real.