By Ela Darling, co-founder of Gamelodge

The process of building an indie video game, especially for Virtual Reality, can be an arduous years-long endeavor. Becoming a professional game developer takes years of specialized study, building connections, and mastering emerging technology, with the reward of working in an exciting creative field. Like any industry, it takes focus and dedication to become a pro. But this barrier of entry can be a limitation on new, diverse game concepts.

For an aspiring game developer without a background in tech, the path to creating a game can be long and daunting, especially for VR. Between navigating the esoteric nuances of a game engine and learning complex coding languages, it can take months to even approach the starting point of development. Identifying bugs and merging branches with a co-developer makes the process even longer. But a new application called Gamelodge seeks to accelerate that process.

It can take months to even approach the starting point of development
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For an aspiring game developer without a background in tech, the path to creating a game can be long and daunting, especially for VR
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Gamelodge, is a new platform that serves as both a depot for games made by other users and a stepping stone for aspiring game developers. It is a cooperative game engine that offers users an all in one opportunity to design, script, and share game ideas socially in VR and on desktop. It aims to resolve common pain points in game development, such as the tedious write, compile, distribute, test process, by eliminating the need to compile code and allowing users to build and test together in real-time. The application is available on Kickstarter through August 22, 2020.

Existing applications that have attempted to offer a sandbox game building environment have a variety of limitations that Gamelodge overcomes. Roblox has become popular with young gamers, but falls short on graphical fidelity and VR controls. Other options that thrive in VR suffer from limited scripting accessibility, poor control systems, and often don’t offer desktop support. These shortcomings are core competencies in Gamelodge.

Gamelodge, is a new platform that serves as both a depot for games made by other users and a stepping stone for aspiring game developers
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From start to finish, a user with no experience with complex game engines or knowledge of code can build a game in a weekend. Objects, particles, and textures can be easily uploaded to the shared database, or users can drag and drop objects from the existing library of models to start building a scene. Users can make games without writing a line of code with the in-app scripting library. New scripts can be swiftly written in Miniscript and immediately applied without compiling a new build or exiting the program. The whole process can be done collaboratively with other users in-game.

Only 20 percent of game released games make a profit
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From start to finish, a user with no experience with complex game engines or knowledge of code can build a game in a weekend
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Even experienced developers can find value from a tool that allows for such swift creation. One study showed that just 20% of released games make a profit, which means a lot of time, money, and energy is lost on games that don’t resonate with their audience. For a creator who is debating the direction to take their next project, the ability to build and test game concepts in an easy and accessible environment can be a form of early market research. An early draft of a game idea, built quickly and shared within the community, may help identify which aspects resonate with players and which parts miss the mark.

In the ever-growing yet slowly diversifying community of game developers, new tools that help democratize the industry are more important than ever. Broadening access to both creating and testing games could reduce developer resource waste and expand the voices and concepts showcased in the game world. Ultimately, a space that allows anyone to play and create games with friends collaboratively across platforms could break down some of the barriers in game development and empower a new community of creators.

In the ever-growing yet slowly diversifying community of game developers, new tools that help democratize the industry are more important than ever
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To become a chef, you must attend culinary school, but you don’t need a culinary degree to cook a good meal. With tools that increase accessibility to game development, you don’t need an engineering degree to build a good game.

About the author, Ela Darling, co-founder of Gamelodge

Ela has a diverse background in Virtual Reality spanning over six years. Cofounder of GonzoVR, a live VR broadcasting platform, and Gamelodge, a comprehensive sandbox game builder. She has spoken about various aspects of VR at conferences all over the world including a TEDx talk in 2016, and is considered a pioneer in certain verticals in the industry.

The post Expert View: Eroding the Barrier to Entry in Game Development appeared first on Tech Trends.

From animal anatomy to digital twinning and mining simulations, this Canadian company is bringing game development know-how to immersive experiences

After meeting Charles Lavigne and Kevin Oke at the BCTECH Summit last month, we were enticed to visit their headquarters in the beautiful island of Victoria and try out their latest VR demos. But it wasn’t just the prospect of the beautiful seaplane ride from Vancouver that hooked us, but the fact that the Oke and Lavigne, after working for over a decade in the videogame industry with companies such as Microsoft, EA, and Ubisoft founded LlamaZOO to apply that experience to producing what sounded like an incredibly eclectic range of VR applications.

MineLife VR, for example, manages to synthesize large, complex, and vast spatial data into a life-sized, interactive, virtual reality experience. The platform fuses complex geospatial and mine planning data into an interactive, 1:1 scale virtual reality replica of the planned, current, and future states of a mine site.

MineLife VR manages to synthesize large, complex, and vast spatial data into a life-sized, interactive, virtual reality experience
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“It enables mining companies’ engineers, executives, and external stakeholders to immerse themselves in a mine plan, and interact with it through all the years of its life cycle from any angle, whether thousands of feet up in the air, or down on the ground, virtually walking through the mine site,” explains Lavigne.

This mining VR tools is fantastically flexible and enables you to fly and move around an accurately mapped countryside while adding and removing layers of info like roads, waterways, mining trucks, current installations and geographic data, letting you see the actual size and position of underground mineral deposits to enable the planning of surface infrastructure as well as below ground extraction techniques.

This mining VR tools is fantastically flexible and enables you to fly and move around an accurately mapped countryside while adding and removing layers of info like roads and waterways
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“By making this information easier and more efficient to access, transporting the data into high resolution 3D, and unifying it all into a seamless experience, it can be used in a variety of applications across community relations, resource management, mine planning and reclamation, and business development,” adds Oke.

By making this information easier and more efficient to access, transporting the data into high resolution 3D, and unifying it all into a seamless experience, it can be used in a variety of applications
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The sheer scale of it felt extremely impressive, as was their management of the VR sickness factor as I flew around into the air to drop down a mine hundreds of feet below. This was done by a nifty trick where as you flew around, your peripheral field of view moved in and blacked out a little, much like blinkers on a horse. It worked surprisingly well.

Key to this functionality is the concept of 3D “digital twinning” which turns companies’ existing data into a highly visual, remotely accessible, and real-time visualization. Digital twins are ideal for overseeing and optimizing machine, equipment, personnel, and site-wide operations. With Clarity 3D LlamaZoo can provide a wide range of their mining clients with centralized real-time tracking of equipment and vehicle positioning, health, and productivity, as well as planned vs. actual dig progress.

Key to this functionality is the concept of 3D digital twinning
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“They can avoid unplanned maintenance by remotely monitoring machine and equipment health and data and gain centralized data oversight by integrating any number of datasets into one centralized interface,” says Oke. The platform enables users to visualize the digital twin’s real-time and historic data, drill-down for detailed information on any part, machine, or process, and provide immersive cost-saving training.”

But as a pet owner the most fascinating experience they showed off was EasyAnatomy, an award-winning 3D canine anatomy study & reference app with Apple ARKit Augmented Reality functionality. It was built in partnership with leading universities and anatomists using MRI and CT data as source files, it features incredibly accurate and complete 3D canine anatomy linked to over 750 adaptive quiz questions. It has so far been adopted by veterinary students, professors, and professionals in over 120 countries.

“While textbooks present anatomical structures in 2D images, the VR app enables users to visualize the anatomy in lifelike 3D. EasyAnatomy enables endlessly repeatable dissection practice unlike cadaver dissection, which is complicated by ethical challenges, significant costs to universities, and limits students’ opportunities for study,” explains Lavigne.

As a pet owner the most fascinating experience they showed off was EasyAnatomy, a 3D canine anatomy study & reference app
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The veterinary app has been so successful, in fact, that the company is now working on a human anatomy version, as more medical schools are embracing immersive training in recognition of its greater effectiveness, specially in fields such as surgery and healthcare training.

This article was originally published on VRScout

Ever Wonder What The Inside Of A Dog Looks Like? There’s An AR App For That via @alicebonasio https://t.co/j5BmOwIrr8 pic.twitter.com/xgIMFxIkHL

— VRScout (@VRScout) June 20, 2018

For companies looking to leverage Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR Tech Trends offers a comprehensive range of Virtual Reality Consultancy Services.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post VR Minecraft – But Not As You Know It appeared first on Tech Trends.