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Resolution Games Pulls Blaston Out Of Facebook Ad Test

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Resolution Games won’t be moving forward with a Facebook advertising test in its paid VR game Blaston.

The studio may still consider testing ads in its free fishing game Bait!

Facebook announced the VR advertising test last week with Blaston the only game named as part of the roll-out, though there was mention of “a couple other developers” participating in the coming weeks as well. Blaston faced review bombing on both the Oculus Store and Steam as players critiqued the addition of advertising to a game that didn’t have it at the time of purchase.

Resolution Games CEO Tommy Palm released the following prepared statement regarding the ad test:

Our mission at Resolution Games has always been to work to help the industry as a whole move VR forward for the good of everyone involved. Sometimes that means being the first to test some things to see what works and what doesn’t.

We appreciate all of the feedback and thoughts on the Oculus ad test for Blaston and other games that was announced last week. Some good points have been made, and we realize that Blaston isn’t the best fit for this type of advertising test. Therefore, we no longer plan to implement the test in Blaston. As an alternative, we are looking to see if it is feasible to move this small, temporary test to our free game, Bait! sometime in the future.

We love this domain as much as the most avid players. If ads in VR become inevitable as it has on other platforms, we want to ensure that while we have this chance to start over and do it right, we do just that. We welcome any and all your feedback along the way so we can have a constructive conversation around this and create the best path forward.

Oculus Quest v30 Rolling Out With Microphone Swapping And Multitasking

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Facebook is rolling out the v30 update for Oculus Quest owners bringing with it some major updates to how voice chat is handled and adding multitasking with 2D apps in Oculus Home.

Once v30 is available to everyone (the roll out typically takes a few weeks) Facebook will enable a toggle that will allow players to swap voice chat between your party and the app you’re in at the time. That’s a very big deal because it’s been an absolute nightmare to manage audio chat on Oculus headsets for years now. Facebook says the toggle will be available in the universal menu with the feature working in any app.

In addition, the new update will “let you run multiple 2D apps side-by-side in Oculus Home, including Explore, Store, Browser, Events, Oculus TV, Oculus Move, Scoreboards, and more. Once you have the v30 update, look for the Multitasking toggle in the Experimental Features section of your Settings panel, flip it to on, and then restart your headset. From there, you can drag 2D apps from your Universal Menu bar or Apps library and drop them into one of three positions so you can manage multiple tasks seamlessly,” according to Facebook.

We’ve been able to get an Android app running on Oculus Quest and we’ve seen reports that Facebook may be testing more robust support for 2D-based Android apps within VR. So we’re extremely curious to see how Facebook builds on this feature as it could be absolutely key to giving people more reasons to use VR headsets for longer periods of time.

The update also includes some new accessibility features, with a new tab in the settings menu and tools to change things like the default text size and the ability to tweak colors. The update also enables players to “Raise View” to “experience VR from a ‘standing’ vantage point even while physically seated,” according to Facebook. The experimental feature raises “your viewing height by 16 inches (0.4 meters) in supported apps.”

The v30 update also enables the Oculus Air Link wireless PC VR connection for original Quest owners.

Facebook Starts Advertising In Virtual Reality

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Facebook is beginning to test advertising in virtual reality.

The “small test of in-headset ads” is starting with Blaston from Resolution Games, and “a couple other developers that will be rolling out over the coming weeks.” Facebook says the purpose of the test is “to explore new ways for developers to generate revenue on the Oculus platform”.

ads facebook oculus quest

“Though we’re not quite ready to test them yet, we’re also exploring new ad formats that are unique to VR,” Facebook explained.

In its prepared explanation of the advertising test, Facebook said it “will get new information like whether you interacted with an ad and if so, how—for example, if you clicked on the ad for more information or if you hid the ad. Outside of that, this test doesn’t change how your Oculus data is processed or how it informs ads.” In 2019, Facebook announced it “will now use information about your Oculus activity, like which apps you use, to help provide…more relevant content, including ads”.

“We use first-party info from Facebook to target these ads, as well as some VR data. Specifically, that VR data includes whether you’ve viewed content, installed, activated, or subscribed to a Oculus app, added an app to your cart or wishlist, if you’ve initiated checkout or purchased an app on the Oculus platform, and lastly, whether you’ve viewed, hovered, saved or clicked on an ad within a third-party app,” a Facebook representative explained over email.

Facebook says that it does not use the following information to target ads:

  • “We do not use information processed and stored locally on your headset to target ads. Processing and storing information on the device means it doesn’t leave your headset or reach Facebook servers, so it can’t be used for advertising. Examples of data that are processed on device include raw images from the sensors on Quest and images of your hands (if you choose to enable hand tracking), which are both overwritten instantaneously. Examples of data that are stored locally on-device include any weight, height, or gender information that you choose to provide to Oculus Move.”
  • “We take extra precautions around the use of movement data like minimizing what we need to deliver a safe and immersive VR experience—for example, to keep you safe from bumping into real-world objects and making your avatar duck while playing a game—and we have no plans to use movement data to target ads.”
  • “Finally, we do not use the content of your conversations with people on apps like Messenger, Parties, and chats or your voice interactions to target ads. This includes any audio your microphone picks up when you use our voice commands feature, like “Hey Facebook, show me who’s online.”

This isn’t the first platform-level VR ads service – HTC launched Vive Ads for Viveport back in 2017, though given Viveport’s limited reach we don’t know which, if any, apps actually used it.

Facebook Subsidizing Hardware Cost

Ads in VR and the money paid by advertisers to put them in front of players may enable Facebook to further subsidize the up front price of Oculus VR headsets.

“This is a key part of ensuring we’re creating a self-sustaining platform that can support a variety of business models that unlock new types of content and audiences,” a prepared statement from Facebook reads. “It also helps us continue to make innovative AR/VR hardware more accessible to more people.”

Oculus Quest 2 already sells at an unmatched all-in price of $299. In the box is a standalone VR headset and controllers that deliver some of the best-selling and best-reviewed VR software without requiring external hardware like a PC or console. You do, however, need a Facebook account in good standing to use the headset.

Facebook doesn’t say how many headsets it sells but non-advertising revenue at the company soared in the last three months of 2020 with the release of Quest 2, revenue remained strong in that category in the first three months of 2021 as well, and some VR developers five years into consumer VR sales on PC VR and PSVR headsets report their strongest sales ever from Quest 2. In addition, Facebook executives claim Quest 2 is on track to be the first “mainstream” VR hardware.

Still, Apple and Sony are reportedly preparing new VR gear for release sometime after 2021 with an array of other companies like Microsoft and Snap also releasing hardware toward the longer-term play of wear-outside augmented reality glasses. This year, though, the only companies with similar products to Facebook’s are HTC and Pico and both are priced toward businesses in western countries while pursuing consumers in Asia. Facebook doesn’t operate inside China.

Taken altogether, during this time when Facebook has no direct competition in standalone VR the company is essentially working to maximize revenue which could enable it to subsidize hardware further ahead of new entrants getting into the game.

“I’m pretty inclined to take whatever gains we could get, from things like an app store, and just use that to make the price lower,” Zuckerberg said in an interview with The Information earlier this year. “I think our inclination is probably going to be to try to offer these products at as low of a cost as possible in order to be able to get them out to everyone.”

Anybody remember “Pure O2” from the Ready Player One movie? Video embedded below for reference.

So, what do you think of this news? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Note: Article updated immediately after publication with an added sentence about HTC’s ads effort.

Livestream Interview And Q&A: Cubism Developer Thomas Van Bouwel

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Cubism is one of the best puzzle games available on Quest, with excellent native VR design and an excellent showcase of hand tracking capabilities on Oculus Quest. We’re sitting down with Cubism’s developer, Thomas Van Bouwel, to talk about developing the game, plans for DLC and more.

The interview is set to take place later today, Wednesday the 16th of June at 2:00pm PST, on our YouTube channel. It will be broadcast live from our virtual studio in VR, where we also host our podcast, The VR Download.

If you manage to join us for the interview livestream, please leave your questions in the chat and we’ll try to get to as many as possible. If you miss it live, you can still check out the recorded broadcast at the same link below.

Cubism launched just under a year ago, but has consistently rolled out a series of impressive updates and new features for Quest since then. Its implementation of hand tracking is absolutely sublime and one of the best showcases of the technology on the system. You can also pair hand tracking with the recently added 120Hz support as well, which rounds Cubism out as one of the best titles to showcase most of the Quest’s cutting edge features all at once.

Last month, Van Bouwel announced that a series of DLC levels were in the works for Cubism and signs-ups were open for those who wanted to help playtest new levels. I was able to join the playtesting group and gave some of the new puzzles a try over the past six weeks. I’ll be discussing the approach taken in designing these DLC levels and the original campaign with Van Bouwel in our interview today, going over the process from start to finish and how the upcoming levels might differ to the existing campaign.

Let us know if you’re looking forward to Cubism DLC and be sure to leave your questions in the chat during the live broadcast.

BricksVR Brings Multiplayer Building To Oculus Quest, PC VR In Early Access

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BricksVR brings multiplayer VR building to Oculus Quest and Rift in Early Access, allowing you and your friends to build models and worlds together out of a variety of different shaped bricks.

The game will launch into Early Access on Steam and App Lab at the of the month, priced at $14.99. The team expects to leave Early Access and go into full release around September of this year. While support is limited to just Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest headsets for now, the development team says they anticipate adding support for additional headsets in the future.

While it may not make the direct connection for obvious reasons, most people will recognize that BricksVR is lovingly inspired by popular construction toy LEGO.  BricksVR will hopefully bring the flexibility of LEGO bricks into a limitless VR environment. Not only does this make manipulating the environment much easier — videos show that you can resize yourself to whatever scale works best for your current focus — but it also allows you to build without worry of mess and with friends from anywhere around the world, without being physically together.

bricksvr

The game’s multiplayer supports up to 5 people playing at once, with “synchronized physics, spatial voice chat, and the ability to save your work.” There are also 50 different bricks to choose from (with the aim of expanding to over 200 after Early Access) with over 16 million color choices as well.

When you’re done building, you also have the option to send your model or world public, allowing others to check out your work. There’s a lock feature as well, ensuring that public visitors won’t be able to make any changes.

BricksVR goes into Early Access on June 30. It is available already on Quest via App Lab and will be available on PC VR from June 30 via Steam. You can wishlist the game here.

‘Demeo’ Campaign DLC ‘Realm of the Rat King’ to Release June 28th

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Demeo (2021), the tabletop dungeon crawler from Resolution Games, launched back in early May with a single adventure module, which pits up to four co-op players against a mountain of ghoulies and one very powerful Elven Queen. The studio has now announced that it’s bringing its first post-launch module to the game on June 28th.

Called ‘Realm of the Rat King’, the new adventure is said to take you “deep into the sewers on your quest to find the Rat King.”

Revealed during UploadVR’s E3 showcase video (seen below), we only managed to get a brief peek at the dungeon. Here’s a bet with good odds: it’s set to feature plenty of those pesky rat nest-spawners everyone hates so much.

The game’s first module, ‘The Black Sarcophagus’, offers a fairly steep learning curve for new players, however once you figure out which cards to hunt for, and where best to spend your time in searching for gold, it becomes much easier over time since the only truly significant thing to change between runs is the level layouts themselves.

The next module will be a welcome addition, as it inevitably attracts early players of the game back to the game whilst making sure the servers are well-populated for new players too. Make sure to check out our full review of Demeo to find out why we gave it a respectable [7/10].

Realm of the Rat King is coming for free to all supported platforms, which includes Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift, and SteamVR headsets. Resolution says the game is slated to receive regular post-launch updates for free, which will feature new environments, enemies, and ability cards.

Facebook Acquires POPULATION: ONE Developer BigBox VR

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Facebook acquired another VR shooter game development studio with the purchase of BigBox VR, the creator of battle royale title POPULATION: ONE.

Facebook said it wouldn’t disclose the terms of the deal, which follows the April purchase of Downpour Interactive and its tactical multiplayer shooter Onward. Both POPULATION: ONE and Onward are among the highest revenue earners on Facebook’s standalone VR headset Oculus Quest. In February, Facebook said six Oculus Quest titles had cleared $10 million in revenue and Facebook now owns at least half of them.

Launched in late 2020, POPULATION: ONE is a first-person shooter (FPS) in which players team up in groups of three and fight across a large map to be the last team standing. The game is comparable to Epic Games’ battle royale sensation, Fortnite, both in terms of structure and business model – POPULATION: ONE is currently running a second ‘season’ of themed content including free updates and cosmetic items that are locked behind a premium battle pass.

The purchase represents Facebook’s 5th VR game development studio acquisition. The company first acquired the developer of rhythm slicing game Beat Saber, Beat Games, in late 2019. Beat Saber is likely VR’s most popular game at more than four million copies sold. Then, in February 2020, Facebook bought Sanzaru Games, the makers of PC VR’s visual powerhouse title Asgard’s Wrath.

In June 2020, Facebook also bought Ready At Dawn, the makers of the Echo VR games. Ready At Dawn’s Lone Echo II is slated for release on PC VR this summer, likely representing a swan song for the PC-powered Rift platform as Facebook zeroes in on the success it is finding with the standalone Quest. The multiplayer Echo VR, meanwhile, now runs a seasonal content structure similar to POPULATION: ONE.

Facebook says BigBox VR will operate as an independent studio.

“BigBox VR has big plans for the future of POP: ONE and for other projects, but we’re not ready to share details at this time,” a blog post prepared by Facebook states. “POP: ONE will continue to be supported on all its current platforms.

Virtual Desktop VR Streaming Gets ‘Synchronous Spacewarp’ On Quest 2

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Virtual Desktop now has a beta of its own take on Facebook’s Asynchronous Spacewarp (ASW) – and the extrapolation is actually better.

Since just after the first Oculus Quest launched in 2019, without official PC support, Guy Godin’s app Virtual Desktop has offered wireless PC VR streamed over your home WiFi network. Facebook initially rejected this – meaning users had to apply a patch from SideQuest – but eventually relented and recently launched a similar feature called Air Link.

asynchronous spacewarp
Illustration from Facebook’s ASW launch

Air Link, like the Oculus Rift headsets, has a feature called Asynchronous Spacewarp. It kicks in automatically when your graphics processing unit (GPU) isn’t meeting framerate. It forces the running app to render at half the refresh rate of the headset and extrapolates a synthetic frame after each real frame. When your GPU utilization drops low enough, it deactivates and the app returns to normal rendering.

Virtual Desktop’s new Synchronous Spacewarp (SSW) feature works somewhat similarly. But unlike ASW, SSW extrapolation runs on the headset itself, not on your PC. That means it works with any GPU and doesn’t have the PC performance impact of ASW.

Godin says he worked closely with Qualcomm, the maker of the Snapdragon XR2 chip in Quest 2, to make this possible. SSW isn’t available on Quest 1.

We tested Virtual Desktop’s SSW and found it has noticeably better extrapolation than Facebook’s ASW, as you can see in Godin’s provided video above.

Snapdragon XR2’s “motion estimation” feature powers SSW

Synchronous Spacewarp (SSW) is available on the Beta branch. You can select a branch in the Oculus phone app – scroll down on Virtual Desktop’s store page and tap the version number. Like with ASW, you can disable SSW if you don’t want it.

The stable PC streamer available from vrdesktop.net does support SSW, but doesn’t properly report it to SteamVR or the game, which could cause issues. For full support, you can get a beta version of the streamer on the Virtual Desktop Discord.

Livestream With Supernatural’s Head Of Fitness Leanne Pedante

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A little more than one year after launch, Supernatural is changing lives with its subscription-based fitness program on Oculus Quest.

If you’re looking for a “daily source of inspiration and motivation” and curious about the broader impact of VR as a technology, you might think about checking out the Official Supernatural Community on Facebook. The group has more than 13,000 members with updates streaming in at all hours from people talking about their fitness journeys in VR. They share what’s going on their lives, their progress, the music and the workouts, and generally encourage one another with support and tips.

A key part of Supernatural is its focus on coaches in virtual reality who talk members through new workouts every day. Leanne Pedante is the Head of Fitness at Supernatural and her encouraging voice has been driving “champions” to finish their Supernatural workouts strong and proud. We’re going to be joined by Pedante in our virtual studio this week for a live broadcast interview talking about exercise in VR. Has Pedante been noticed out in the physical world by Supernatural players who “met” her virtually? Does she have any advice for people to keep up with their workouts? Do you have your own questions?

Tune in on Wednesday, June 9 at 11 am Pacific time for our live discussion with Pedante from our virtual studio. We should be able to monitor live comments, so no matter if you’re a member of the Supernatural community already, or entirely new to VR and thinking about getting a headset for exercise, leave a question or comment and we might talk about it on the show.

You can subscribe to our channel and set a reminder for the interview with the video below, or check back on this page at 11 am Pacific time on June 9.