Josh Farkas is the CEO of Cubicle Ninjas, and he was tweeting his highlights from reviewing all the Milestone 1 submissions for the Oculus Mobile VR Jam, and so I invited him to come onto the Voices of VR podcast to discuss some of the highlights of what he found interesting and compelling.
I also reviewed all of the experiences in the App and Experience track, and noticed that it’s a bit hard to get a quick overview of the submissions without clicking through over 500 times. So I decided to create an Unofficial Spreadsheet of VR Jam Milestone 1 submissions that included the title, the tagline, URL, Game or App Track, Team Size, and names of all of the team members. I also included a separated sheet all of the names of the participants and all of their related projects for quick reference.
At the recording of this podcast, there were 534 total apps with 316 games and 218 apps / experiences on the submission page. Note that Erisana from Oculus said on Reddit that they received 342 games and 238 apps or experiences, but they were going to filter out some of the ones that didn’t fully qualify, and so those numbers are not final.
NOTE: This spreadsheet is unofficial may not have all of the active submissions. Some may be waiting to be approved, and there may be some that have since been disqualified. Feel free to e-mail kent@kentbye.com if you’re not on this list and would like to be.
The VR Jam will be rated by an initial panel of judges from the Oculus developer relations team on it’s potential to be of interest to the wider VR community as well as what types of innovations that they’re contributing.
Josh quickly read through all of the entries and noticed some genres and themes that emerge including gaze shooters, co-op games, relaxation experiences, speaking to virtual audiences, first-person puzzlers, first-person fliers, and adaptations of one medium into another whether painting galleries or writings. Josh also saw these two themes emerge: “This is a dream world” and “This is occurring in your mind.”
I only had time to read through all of the App and Experience submissions, and so most of our conversation focused on the highlights from this track. Links to the specific experiences that we were discussed are included below.
- Virtual Worship: Spirituality & Devotion focused Immersive Virtual World Experiences
- A number of mindfulness apps
- Photo and video viewers
- DMZ: Memory of no man’s land: A documentary expericence made to discover and understand the Korean D.M.Z through virtual reality.
- Pig Simulator: See the world from the eyes of a pig.
- First round of judging will only be looking at a video representation
- Motio Aistheta Contemporary dance and creative coding meet to bring you new ways to perceive human motion.
- Narwhal Catch Donut: Catch donuts. As a Narwhal. In VR.
- VR Education: The Science of Simulated Motion
- NeoS: The Universe: Experience the world we live in from tiniest elementary particles to the vast galaxy superclusters.
- Powers: A powers of ten style zoom in will allow the user to explore the world down to the atom.
- Presence Experiment:Help us further the understanding of presence in virtual reality
- Little Leaf: An interactive 3D storybook designed for VR
- House of Languages: New way to learn languages with VR techonlogy (3d art, audio, voice, sound, touch)
- Learn Immersive: Learn a language in VR
- Crossover: Multi-threaded immersive theater experience: 5 characters, 4 ghosts, 3 rooms to choose from. Sleep No More meets Sixth Sense in VR (My team’s submission)
- PeekaBoo: Interactive short film
- How the judges will judge multiplayer games and entries with special input devices
- A number of different music visualization
- Panotrader: Financial Trading on OculusVR SamsungGear
- AdSoft Virtual Reality Advertising System: Manage metrics backed advertising networks, campaigns, and interactive content across multiple virtual worlds.
- AdvertEYEz: The New Reality of Advertising.
- Business use cases
- CNN: A VR version of CNN news and shows.
- VirtuaReader: Watch your book flash before your eyes in #VR with VirtuaReader speed reader from @MetatronVR and @eVRydayVR!
- Comic Book Reader Revolution: Putting you at the center of the story…literally!
- Number 34 and Number 27: The Count of Monte Cristo VR: An immersive adaptation of a pivotal chapter from Alexandre Dumas’ classic adventure novel.
- He Jests at Scars That Never Felt a Wound: Act out the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet in Virtual Reality
- Share the Science: Climate Change: Visitors can learn about CO2 and its effects with this interactive VR mobile app. @OtherWorldVR #climatechange
- Starport: A VR social app with small multiplayer games. Jump on and Play
- Pulsar Arena: Pulsar Arena is a rhythm based tournament in space.
- Clouded: A Datamentary: My friend’s schizophrenic stalker is chronicling their delusions over social media. Explore their own words.
- VIRTUAL SURREALITY: Take a brand new look at optical illusions.
- TECHNOLUST: THOUGHT CRIMES: You are Big Brother’s eyes and ears. Prevent the crime before it’s committed… or pay the consequences.
- Colosse: A Story in Virtual RealityColosse: A story of colossal proportions: adventures in immersive and innovative Virtual Storytelling
- Soldiers of Heaven: Take a trip inside the mind of an army drill sargent with PTSD – An animated VR experience using the Unreal engine.
- Psious Toolsuite: Psious is the first online Virtual Reality tool for therapist that democratize Virtual Reality mental care treatments
- Developer Relations team will be the first round of judging
- Ramble VR: Wander on. Josh’s submission
- VR Travel and Real Estate apps
Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio
