VR: Oculus Quest | MR: NReal Light (My look into CES 2019 VR/AR/MR section)

Note: All of this products are from CES 2019 ( https://www.ces.tech/About-CES.aspx ) and has not been out in the market as of this posting.

Oculus Quest (Prefered VR)

The Oculus Quest is a new product from Oculus, presented during the CES 2019. The Oculus Quest is an all-in-one gaming system built for Virtual Reality (VR) games. It eliminates the need to be tethered to a PC just to play VR games. Before the Oculus Quest is able to track your movements without the external cameras, you will need to use the Oculus mobile app to set it up.

However, the Oculus Quest lacks the power of the current PC-powered headsets like the original Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. The next thing of worry is the battery life of the Oculus Quest, currently there is not any information about how long the Oculus Quest can last. The final worry about the Oculus Quest is about the balance of the head set, as it might be even heavier than Oculus Rift as all the components are stored there.

Overall I pick Oculus Quest as my prefered device for VR in CES as it will be the first consumer grade portable VR system that does not require to tether to any other devices or use a smart phone as its screen.

NReal Light (Prefered MR)

From right to left: Toast, Light, Oreo

The Nreal Light is a lightweight mixed reality (MR) glasses that allow for inside-out tracking. You can add a controller(Oreo) that has a pressure and touch sensitive touchpad and has 3 degrees of freedom (DoF) tracking. The glasses(Light) is tethered to a Nreal proprietary external Android-powered computing pack (Toast). The hardware platform of the toast is Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, and its software development kit (SDK) is available on Unity and Unreal. The Light has 6 DoF tracking, plane detection, object recognition and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). It has a FOV of 53 degrees and it is better than the average for MR.

I picked the Nreal Light as the prefered MR device as it looks like a normal sunglasses in a glance and it is light-weight which makes it really portable. (A total weight of 170g + 85g + 23g = 278g)

 

List of interesting devices

NORDICTRACK VR BIKE

Cybershoes

Digilens Crystal

World of Warcraft: Legion

Website/ Youtube Link

Website Link: https://worldofwarcraft.com

Trailer Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYNCCu0y-Is

Gameplay Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joJJt3ERCws

Short Description

World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG)  created by Blizzard in 2004. Since the start of WoW, there are 6 expansions that expands the world to a higher level. Players start by choosing a class and a race, races picked will affect the faction which you will join. The available factions are Alliance and Horde. With the current expansion, players that are level 100 set out to the area of Broken Isle to level and help defeat the Burning Legion.

Elemental Tetrad

                Experience

                The experience in the World of Warcraft varies, there are the levelling experience, Player versus Environment (PVE) experiences, Player versus Player (PVP) experiences and Role Playing (RP) experiences. For levelling experience, the player levels his/ her character to the maximum level, 110, by doing quest, clearing dungeons and killing monsters. The player is also able to learn the lore of the game through questing. In PVE experiences in the end game, players team up with each other to clear raids and higher difficulty dungeons. A raid is a larger and flexible dungeon which requires 10 – 30 players to cooperate to kill the raid bosses, with the most difficult mode, Mythic, requires 20 players to take on. In PVP experiences, players are able to attack other players from the different factions in PVP worlds. Players are also able to queue for arena, a 2v2 – 5v5 PVP arena, and battlegrounds, a larger scale 30 vs 30 battle arena. Different battlegrounds have different objectives to do, from Capture the flag to escorting the payload to the end. In RP servers, players create a character that will join to create their own story with other players.

                Aesthetics

                WoW is set in the world of Azeroth, a world full of magic and magical creatures. In every expansion, the world is set to a different kind of Aesthetics, from demons to pandas. In the recent expansion, the new area, Broken Isle, has different areas. In Azsuna, the area is filled with Nagas, creatures that live in water, who are attacking the area with one small area that are filled with demons. In Val’sharah, it is a druidic like area which is being corrupted by the demonic energies of the burning legion. In Highmountain, the area is full of mountains and different tribes of creatures. In Stormheim, it is design with the feeling of valor, where you quest to prove your worth to one of the Titan Keeper, Odyn. There is also enemies that are from Helya’s army, who are attacking Odyn’s army.

                Story

                WoW have a long history of lore, with each expansion increasing the amount of lores. With the current lore, Guldan, an orc warlock, was pushed into a portal to Azeroth of the main timeline after the defeat of Archimonde in the alternate timeline. He then open a way for the burning legion to attack Azeroth.

                Mechanics

                As a MMORPG, your characters will learn different skill at different level. You cast spells by pressing on a button assigned to it, and you move your character by using the buttons q, w, e, a, s, d. Unlike the newer MMORPG, in WoW, when you cast a spell, the spell will automatically hit on the target you have selected, in newer MMORPG, you have to aim your spells. In raids, there are different raid mechanics that players have to learn to defeat the boss, like not standing on the fire that the boss created.

One of the different UI addons you can use to customize your World of Warcraft Experience

Lenses

                Lens of Challenge / Cooperation

                As a player who mainly plays the end game PVE, the lens of challenge is on defeating the boss before a certain timing, doing the mechanics correctly and dealing enough damage to the boss, and when the boss dies, it drop loots for the players to gear up and to do more damage. There are different modes to challenge the players. There are Looking for Raid (LFR), Normal, Heroic and Mythic mode. In LFR, you queue to join random players to defeat the easier version of the boss, in normal the skills that the boss casts is more painful and boss have higher health. In Heroic, some bosses will introduce new mechanics for the players to dodge/manage. In Mythic, It is a set number of 20 players, and the boss will have new mechanics, most of the time it will punish the raid if it is not done correctly. I have combine Cooperation with Challenge as they are something similar in WoW, to make the fight easier,  the players who are grouped up together have to cooperate with each other, using any form of voice communication, like Discord, to call out certain mechanics. There are tanks, which takes the hard hitting damage from the boss, the healers, who heal the entire raid, and there is the damage dealers, who are the one dealing the most damage to kill the boss.

                Lens of Skill

                While raiding, the skills that a player required is basically knowledge, reaction and perseverance. In every boss fight, every raider is needed to know what skill will the boss cast, which can be read through the dungeon journal tab or reading it up online. In reaction, players are needed to react to certain boss skill, reducing the damage taken by avoiding the skills. In perseverance, in progression raiding, raid where you fight the boss for the first time, if your group is still learning the boss, you need to be prepare to die many times before being able to kill the boss.

One of the boss from the latest expansion in Emerald Nightmare

                Lens of Chance

                Every race have their own form of chance, on different skill, talents and passives. This makes the game more interesting as without chance, people would probably use the method of min max-ing and find the best damage class, best healer class and best tank class to defeat the boss.

                Lens of Fairness

                In WoW, there are many small patches which will nerf overpowered class that happen to get a really good buff during bigger patches, this makes the game more fair as people can play the class they like instead of playing the more over powered classes.

                Lens of Goals

In WoW, there are 2 major goals, in PVP, players are aiming to be the best PVP team/player, in arena they plan to be the group with the highest match making rating (MMR). In PVE, the groups of players are aiming to clear the raid before everyone else to be the world/realm first to defeat the last boss in the highest difficulty. Goals are achievable if you put in time and effort into the game.

The legendary artifact of Protection Warrior