Tag: vr

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An Interview with Just Add Water on Sniper Elite VR

We interviewed Stewart Gilray from Just Add Water on developing Sniper Elite VR in partnership with Rebellion. Read on to learn more about this exciting new title and the challenges of VR development.

Tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do at Just Add Water?

My name is Stewart Gilray and I’m the CEO of JAW. I started the company back in 2006, but have been in the industry professionally since 1988, and have worked on over 70 releases in that time.

What are some of the challenges you faced developing Sniper Elite VR?

There are a lot of challenges in bringing a title like Sniper Elite into VR. Players are used to these large, free-flowing levels that look incredible. Making it look that good and keep up a reasonable frame rate is a challenge. If the frame rate drops in VR it’s more noticeable than on PC or consoles, and usually ends up with you feeling sick, so it’s important. Coming up with an AI to match player’s expectations has been a big task. Due to the change in the game and level structure, we couldn’t just take what had been done before, so matching behaviours, reactions and the various elements of making the enemy soldiers believable has been a biggie.

We also support a LOT of control systems for the various VR headsets. Making the game feel the same regardless of you using an AIM controller, VIVE wands, Oculus Touch or any of the others we support, plus left-handed support… yeah that’s a lot of configurations.

What are some of the things you are most proud of in Sniper Elite VR?

There is nothing quite like the feeling of watching people play this. Watching them wince if they get shot, watching them get grossed out with the bullet cam, watching them duck if a shot gets close to them and you can tell by the groans when someone has seen the Testicle shot bullet cam.

The level of the visuals is also something we are proud of. Sniper Elite VR looks REALLY good. We’ve had a lot of feedback, including certain game engine developers who were surprised at how close to the last Sniper Elite we had got.

What features are you excited for players to try?

While the Testicle shots are always fun, when players start to nail really long-range kills with a sniper rifle, we’re looking forward to hearing their stories. It’ll be interesting to see the reactions to the new story and how it is presented. It really is trying to do something different with that.

How did you translate the iconic Sniper Elite kill-cam for VR?

If we had just put in the kill-cam as it was in the previous Sniper Elite games, we would have been responsible for a lot of vomit appearing on carpets around the world. It was too jarring and too fast for a like-for-like VR representation. But the feature had to stay, it’s one of Sniper Elite’s many stand out moments. The, er, guts of the mechanic are still there, you will get to see various body parts and organs getting ripped apart by high velocity bullets. After trying out many different ways of doing it, what we have changed is the journey of the bullet itself to speed up the action and make it less nauseating.

How did it feel seeing the positive reactions at E3 about Sniper Elite VR?

We always knew we were creating something special, but to hear the reception from E3 really did elevate the team and give us that extra confidence in what we were doing. Then finding out we had received numerous “Best of E3” nominations and Gold Awards certainly put smiles on our faces, and an extra bounce in our strides! Getting such amazing confirmation of what we were doing was great and has given us the momentum to carry on evolving the game and giving fans of the series and new players alike the ultimate Sniper VR experience.

If you had to describe Sniper Elite VR in one sentence, what would it be?

“A brutally visceral depiction of being a Sniper during WWII. It’s Sniper Elite, in your face, literally”

You can keep on top of any Sniper Elite news by following us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and signing up to the newsletter.

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Sniper Elite VR unveiled at E3 2019

In March we announced we were developing a Sniper Elite game for VR devices in partnership with Just Add Water during our Sniper Elite Development Update.

With E3 2019 finally here we’re delighted to give Sniper Elite fans a sneak peek at what we’ve been up to.

Introducing: Sniper Elite VR, coming soon to PlayStation VR, Oculus, and Steam VR – a new front for VR and the Sniper Elite series!

Fight for the Italian Resistance in a daring mission to rid World War 2 Sicily of the Nazi U-boat menace, in a dedicated VR stealth-action experience from the developer behind the BAFTA-nominated Sniper Elite 4.

Experience a brand-new Sniper Elite game featuring an authentic first-person view, an explosive campaign and immersive motion controls!

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Four New Sniper Elite Projects in Development

Today, we announced some exciting news for Sniper Elite fans – four new Sniper Elite projects, including a much-demanded follow-up to the BAFTA-nominated Sniper Elite 4, are currently in development!

If you haven’t watched it yet, check out the ‘Sniper Elite Development Update’ video, in which Rebellion CEO and Co-Founder Jason Kingsley OBE confirmed the following Sniper Elite projects;

•    Sniper Elite V2 Remastered, bringing 1945 Berlin to current platforms, with stunning new visuals and a host of new features

•    Sniper Elite 3 Ultimate Edition on Switch introduces Karl’s breath-taking North African adventure to a Nintendo platform for the first time ever.

•    A new, standalone Sniper Elite game for VR devices, currently in development in partnership with Oddworld studio Just Add Water.

•    The next major title in the Sniper Elite series, following in the footsteps of the widely acclaimed Sniper Elite 4, is now in development.

Look for a full reveal of the new Sniper Elite game for VR devices later this year, while more details on the next major title in the Sniper Elite series will be unveiled in 2020. We know that’s a little while off – but we wanted to let you, the fans, know that we’ve heard your pleas and are hard at work on something that will entertain and delight you.

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Arca’s Path VR coming soon!

Dream Reality Interactive and Rebellion are pleased to present Arca’s Path VR.

Trapped in the enchanting simulated world of Arca, it is up to you to find a path through the labyrinth and break free.

Coming soon to Oculus Rift, Oculus GO, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR and Samsung Gear.

Watch the reveal trailer to see more!

Sign up for the Rebellion Newsletter or follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to get updates on this latest VR development.

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Introducing: Battlezone for VR devices

Last week was a momentous one for Rebellion – after all, it’s not every week you reveal your first ever game for virtual reality devices! At the E3 Entertainment expo in Los Angeles, the biggest trade show in the games industry, we were right at the forefront of the excitement with our world debut of Battlezone, the Atari classic rebooted for next-gen VR.  

Not only did we announce Battlezone for Project Morpheus and PC, but we also showed the game to expo-goers on the show floor and behind closed doors – more on that later in the week! For now, in case you missed it, last week our CEO Jason Kingsley put down his thoughts on Battlezone for the PlayStation Blog. Here’s what he wrote:

Well, what can I say? Rebellion may have been formed in 1992, but this will easily go down as one of the most exciting weeks in our history. After all it’s not every day that you have your new (and top secret) project debut at E3, let alone seeing it running on something as exciting as Project Morpheus.

But, before I get into all that, let’s start with a little history quiz!

I know, that’s probably not what you were expecting — it’s E3 after all, I should be asking you to coo at our very first screenshots, right?

Well, yes and no!

For a lot of you, Project Morpheus and virtual reality gaming marks a new and exciting shift in gaming tech. E3 is a celebration of incredible artistry and creativity so it’s only natural that VR plays an important part at this year’s show.

But E3 is also mainly about the future of games, and sometimes we just need to take stock and look at gaming’s past. The industry may not be as old as film, theatre, and other arts, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t respect our cultural heritage!

The truth is, VR is not really new, it’s just been continually evolving — breaking in waves and troughs, until 2015 where it finally sits on the cusp of launching into the mainstream.

But anyway, back to that history quiz!

So when was the first virtual reality game?

Early 2000s? Nope. The ’90s? Guess again. Well it has to be the ’80s then? Well, yes but only just — it was 1980, in fact. 35 years ago.

Like hundreds of thousands of gamers in 1980, my brother Chris (Kingsley, Rebellion co-founder and CTO to this day) and I went to our local arcade to be transported to another world — a virtual one.

That world was a video game made by Atari called Battlezone.

Its famous green and black vectors and tactical tank combat weren’t what made it so special though — it was the arcade housing itself. Players looked into the game world from the perspective of a tank commander by using a periscope viewfinder built into the unit. Combined with the game’s pseudo 3D graphics, Battlezone is now considered by many as the first ever virtual reality game.

It was both rudimentary and revolutionary. The isolation from the world around you, the perception of depth and “being” in that world — even a simple one — was like nothing else at the time. And without Battlezone and that sense of wonder and unlimited possibility, Chris and I might never have started making our own games, or formed Rebellion.

Skip forward to 2013 and Atari announced that it would sell off much of its household IP at auction, and Chris and I were there. When it finished, Battlezone was ours. We couldn’t believe it! Here was our chance to work on one of our most beloved games of all time, and play our part in a new era of VR gaming. 

Earlier this year we tasked a team at our Oxford studio to reboot one of gaming’s seminal titles for a new generation of virtual reality games. VR of course, is an exciting challenge — you have to throw so many traditional game design rules out the window and start afresh. In this respect PlayStation gave us some fantastic support — providing us with plenty of Morpheus development kits and chatting with our coders and designers on a regular basis to help us develop on this new platform.

If we can capture the same revolutionary thrill of the original Battlezone for a whole new generation of gamers, then we’ll have done gaming history proud. It really is impossible to truly describe a VR gaming experience with words — or even video — so I encourage you to go “heads on” with Morpheus at upcoming events, and jump into Battlezone’s Cobra cockpit and test drive the galaxy’s most powerful vehicle for yourself!

We’ll have plenty on Battlezone in the coming weeks and months here on the Rebellion blog, but in the meantime you can find out more on the brand new Battlezone website.