I had a fun time checking out the Boston Festival of Indie Games (BostonFIG) on Saturday.
In addition to a tour of the games, I enjoyed checking out some talks.
Leonie Manshanden did a extremely nice job of giving an overview of realities and strategies of marketing in If You Build It, They Will Come, and then Monty Sharma and his MassDigi Students participated in a panel where they shared insights and perspectives about their experience in the MassDigi summer program Game Devs: The Next Generation. The students were gave positively glowing reactions to their experiences, and they made it clear that Monty was responsible for giving them the ultimate in constructivist learning experiences (without them even having to know the theory and terminology behind what he was doing :) Well done!
Finally, the most valuable parts of the day was attending a session where Chance Ivey and Jess Hider of Epic games presented Why Unreal Engine? — they provided an overview of their game engine’s features and strengths. Unreal is the alternative authoring option to Unity that we are using for our 3D/VR development, and we are deliberating about where or not to bite the bullet and either shift to Unreal or work with both platforms in parallel. They definitely provided food for thought, but the jury remains out for now…
Note: This post was updated the day after the Oculus Rift was released.
As mentioned in the last post, 2016 is billed as the year that Virtual Reality (VR) will finally take off, and it just might do it. As predicted, the fun kicked-off with the buzz out of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week.
Facebook backed Oculus created a frenzy by accepting pre-orders of the Consumer Edition of the Oculus Rift on Wednesday, January 6th. It turns out that it costs $599, and the first shipments will be March 28. Oculus says that it will also be available in “limited locations at select retailers” starting in April. This means that will still see it under the Coming Soon category on our Cosma 3D site. Note that this edition will not include the much touted “Oculus Touch Controllers.” That will not be available until later this year, but to soften the blow, they are bundling the games EVE: Valkyrie and Lucky’s Tale.
HTC Vive has also just released their next developer version called the Vive Pre. It is creating quite the buzz in tech-land. Here’s a nice, “relatively” accurate update on the state of VR products today. My tiny quibble with it is that I think they played the HTC Vive down a bit too much at the end.
Oculus Rift Versus HTC Vive: The VR Headset Battle (Bloomberg Business)
It is exciting to hear about all that is happening, but on the other hand it is frustrating that there’s so much hype, closed door demos for developers and the press as well as other types of activities that do not involve products and content that are readily available to typical consumers right now. We are focused on overcoming that frustration by focusing on what is already available and possible in the here and now.
That being said, it is also valuable to know what’s going to be coming just over the horizon, so Cosma 3DsComing Soon and Platforms pages have just been completely updated. This is where you can find information about what you can look forward to seeing in the “relatively” near future (roughly in the order you can expect to see them). Enjoy!
Of course, we’ll be trying to get our hands on as many of these as we can as fast as possible, and then bring them to you through our events. Please stay tuned…
2015 was a busy year for Digital Den, and 2016 is shaping up to be even more exciting!
Before explaining what’s coming, here’s a bit of news.
Cosma 3D Gallery
We’ve just finished a new demo — it is a 3D virtual gallery that is an interface to interesting, interactive and 3D web content. Here is a video walk-through of the application. Notice that all of the posters and objects are links.
The application runs on Windows 7/8, and you can download it from Google Drive. It was developed in Unity3D, so it requires a computer with a fairly good CPU and graphics card. If you want to try it for yourself, click the link below, then click “Download.”
It is a self-extracting Zip file (.exe). You may receive warnings that you are downloading a “suspicious” file. Do not worry, it is still “home baked,” but there are no viruses. Once you download the file and unzip it, you will see a folder called “Cosma 3D” that has a “Cosma-3D-15.exe” file and a corresponding data folder. Click on the “Cosma-3D-15.exe” file to run it. Again, you may need to allow your virus software to run it or click “more info.” and “okay” in Windows Defender. After you are running the application, you will see instructions. There is also more information about this application and the history of the project on the Cosma 3D Gallery page.
Coming soon…
Now that we’ve gotten a few Unity 3D applications under our belt, the next step is to polish, elaborate and expand how the applications are created and shared. For example, we are experimenting with publishing the above Cosma 3D Gallery to a WebGL version that will playable directly in standard browsers. We are also working on a “VR” version that can be seen using Google Cardboard, Samsung GearVR and Oculus Rift. Watch for more announcements soon, but now, speaking of the Oculus Rift…
It is finally here!
2016 is being billed as the year that Virtual Reality (VR) will finally take off, and this just might be the case. There are definitely a lot of caveats and plenty of skepticism is warranted, but no matter what, there really are a lot of significant developments in the area that are about to come to the general public’s notice in the first half of 2016, and the fun will kick-off any minute as the buzz out of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) hits the press this weekend. Here’s an article that covers some of what you will hear. CES 2016 will be virtual reality showcase (Edward C. Baig, USA TODAY)
Shortly after that, the Facebook owned Oculus will finally start taking orders for their consumer version of the Oculus Rift. Then a raft full of other significant VR products will roll out into the consumer market every few weeks the rest of the year. Each of the platforms will be introduced and explained on the Cosma 3D blog as they are released. Digital Den will be trying to get our hands on as many of the products as possible to review, use for development and share with the public through events. Stay tuned as we report about our progress here…
For now, thank you for your interest and again, Happy New Year! -Mary
Digital Den 
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