reality speaking community job simulator out on playstation vr october 13th 2016 hello humans the time is now . job simulator is currently available on the playstation vr grab your move controllers and get ready to fling toss grab eat pull twist and otherwise engage in the endless acts of job . you can now purchase job simulator from the playstation store here https store.playstation.com en us games job simulator cid up0503 cusa05818 00 jobsimulator0001 this is an amazing day for us . bringing job simulator to playstation vr is something we ve been excited about since we first heard mysterious rumors and elusive tales about the hardware . in these beginning stages of consumer vr it s crucial to be able to share these transformative experiences and playstation vr is definitely one of the premier venues for doing so we re so excited for all of you to get into the game and engage in the joyous chaos job simulator affords check out our unique method of calibrating to the floor on ps vr in our previous post cataloging the new tech here http owlchemylabs.com calibrating floors on playstation vr are you ready to step into the future prepare to job . owls announcing the job simulator playstation vr launch trailer october 6th 2016 hello humans we re coming up fast on the playstation vr launch we ve released a new trailer for the occasion see it below and the reviews are already starting to roll in digital spy gave us a 5 5 stars and the verge called us one of the best early experiences for psvr see those features below digital spy 19 playstation vr games that will make you need ps4 virtual reality in your life the verge playstation vr nine launch games for sony s new vr platform we also wrote an article talking about some of the work we did for the playstation vr version of job simulator as well as some of our hopes and goals for vr in general . you can check that out here playstation blog prepare to job with job simulator out october 13 on ps vr it s been a lot of hard work and a fantastic ride working to make this happen . we can t wait to launch and bring all the stapler throwing slushie flinging half eaten chaos to playstation vr on october 13th see you all next week owls owlchemyvr mixed reality tech october 3rd 2016 mixed reality is super important to vr showing virtual reality to others is an incredibly important part of vr in the long run . normally we see a view from the player s perspective but that can be jarring to watch especially since we turn our heads so quickly mixed reality is one of the best solutions to showing what it really feels like to be in vr being in vr is great but watching it first person isn t optimal how is it done today this new frontier of mixed reality is in its infancy but generally it s accomplished in video editing software by slapping video footage on top of engine footage or by sandwiching video footage of the person playing in between two separate renders of the engine content foreground and background . this is a big pain and has some significant drawbacks including poor performance reliance on external software which is cumbersome and fragile seams between foreground and background footage inability to cast consistent shadows across the separate renders and falls short for many intricate use cases one major one being that the entire human being is at a perfectly flat depth more on that later . mixed reality is currently done by compositing video footage in external software . click for larger img first glimpse at owlchemy s solution we knew there had to be a better solution . introducing owlchemy s new method of doing mixed reality depth based realtime in app mixed reality compositing . using a special stereo depth camera everything is done in engine using a custom shader and custom plugin to be able to green screen the user and depth sort them directly into the engine itself correct full body depth sorting hiding under desks without an hmd all in unity madness what are the advantages per pixel depth we can actually sort the player properly in complex environments rather than having a flat representation you can see the hand reaching forward over a filing cabinet while the rest of the body sorts behind . knowing the depth we can avoid so many sorting and occlusion problems no extra software to stream no need for obs for real time compositing and no need to spend days in after effects doing compositing in post that means that streaming setups can be simplified avoid more apps in the content pipeline and make the entire process of producing mixed reality content much easier no compositing complications seams between layers and shadow issues using the sandwiching method you lose the ability to cast a shadow between the foreground and background cameras . with the rendering happening in engine shadows act as they should and there are no seams . static or tracked dolly camera mode we can dolly the camera with a tracked controller to allow for shots with motion all on one machine no need to use multiple machines to composite mixed reality footage doesn t actually require wearing the hmd without needing cues from tracked controllers or tracked hmds you can still stand in a scene in vr . this also means you can have multiple users standing in mixed reality without hardware . lighting now that the user is in engine we can utilize dynamic lighting to achieve more believable results lighting real time shaky cam excuse the green screen quality . it s a 100 greenscreen setup how does it work using a stereo depth camera in this case a zed stereo camera we record both video and depth data of the user on a green screen at 1080p at 30fps . the stereo depth camera is essential since infrared based cameras kinect etc can and will interfere with many vr tracking solutions . we then pump the stereo data in real time into unity using a custom plugin and a custom shader to cutout and depth sort the user directly in the engine renderer which yields this amazing result . not only is there no external application required to set this up but you do not even need to be wearing a hmd for this to work . multiple people in mixed reality brainy developing this pipeline was a large technical challenge as we encountered many potentially show stopping problems such as wrangling the process of getting 1080p video with depth data into unity at 30fps without impacting performance such that the user in vr can still hit 90fps in their hmd . additionally calibrating the camera video was a deeply complicated issue as was syncing the depth feed and the engine renderer such that they align properly for the final result . after significant research and engineering we were able to solve these problems and the result is definitely worth the deep dive . job simulator presents a huge problem for mixed reality because the close quarter environments surround the player in all directions and players can interact with the entire world . essentially job simulator is the worst case scenario for mixed reality as we can t get away with simple foreground background sorting where the player is essentially static and all the action happens in front of them a la space pirate trainer . if a solution can work for job simulator it can likely be a universal solution for all content . who will benefit from this we are super excited about all the possibilities this unlocks for mixed reality . streamers and content creators will have a much simpler more performant pipeline to get mixed reality content into the wild . they ll also be able to address their audience in a vr environment without having an hmd blocking their face . complex vr scenes can be correctly sorted with real world objects brought into view of the camera . conference goers will have a much easier time understanding whats going on under the hmd . the possibilities this unlocks are hard to predict and likely we haven t yet seen some of the other valuable use cases with this method great how do i get it we ll need more time to flesh out our tech but rest assured we have plans in the works to be able to eventually share some of our tech outside the walls of owlchemy labs . stay tuned to the owlchemy twitter page for updates on our games tech and general vr shenanigans . older posts mailing list stay up to date on owlchemy labs and be notified when our next game comes out we promise not to spam . contact would you like to talk directly to the developers you don t need to scour the interwebs for our contact info . drop us a line right here and say hello support owlchemylabs.com twitter tweets by owlchemylabs facebook blog games about owlchemy labs virtual reality speaking community & copy 2016 owlchemy labs