Facebook acquired another popular virtual reality game developer and announced on Friday that BigBox VR, creator of the battle royale VR game Population: One, will join Oculus Studios.
“POP: ONE just entered the virtual reality scene nine months ago and has been rated as one of the best performing games on the Oculus platform. It can gather up to 24 people at a time to connect, play and compete in the virtual world,” Facebook Reality Mike Verdu, vice president of content at Labs, wrote in a blog post. “Although social media brings players to POP: ONE, the weird humor, constant updates, and pure environmental fun keep them coming back again and again; we even see players arranging a time to meet in the game for synchronization. Society experience”.
Population: Verdu said in a blog post in February that “just a few months later,” the Oculus store had a success of more than $10 million and revenues of over $10 million. According to Verdu, the game is available on the Oculus store and Steam, and “will continue to be compatible with all current platforms.”
BigBox VR stated on its website that the game will continue to be updated regularly, but it is not clear what major changes may occur after the acquisition. “BigBox VR has ambitious plans for the future of POP: ONE and other projects, but we are not yet ready to share the details,” Verdu said vaguely. BigBox VR joined many other VR studios that Facebook disbanded in the past two years. The company acquired the developer of Onward Downpour Interactive in April, Lone Echo Ready from Dawn creators in June last year, Sanzaru Games, the maker of Asgard’s Wrath, in February 2020, and Beat Saber Beat in November 2019 Games developer.
Virtual reality (VR). Most VR games are based on player immersion, usually through a head-mounted display unit or headset and one or more controllers. The headset generally provides two stereoscopic displays in front of the user’s eyes to simulate a 3D space.
The video game industry first tried virtual reality in the 1980s, the most famous being Mattel’s Power Glove and Nintendo’s Virtual Boy. With the launch of Oculus Rift, the first consumer-oriented VR product in 2013, VR games followed closely, including existing games tailored for VR hardware and new games designed directly for VR. Although VR hardware and games have grown slowly in the rest of the 2010s, the VR game “Half-Life: Alyx” developed by Valve is considered an ideal application for VR games.
As commonly defined, almost all virtual reality games require the use of virtual reality headsets, which provide stereoscopic displays, simulate 3D reality, and create immersion for players. Most headsets include some position tracking means to provide head tracking (that is, knowing which direction the player’s head is looking in), through the built-in sensor of the device or an external sensor or camera placed in the corner of the game area. Some headsets also provide eye-tracking. In order to provide immersive audio, a surround sound speaker system is used, or the headset can be equipped with speakers or earphones, a player used to provide 3D audio effects.