AlunaGeorge will perform a first-of-its-kind concert that will be recreated live in the virtual world of videogame Minecraft.
The actual concert is being held in Hamar, Norway as part of an annual tech festival, the Gathering, but the band will also simultaneously appear in pixelated form in the hit videogame.
A team of volunteers will control avatars modelled after the performers, matching their every movement in the game.
In a trailer for the event, a horde of boxy characters run towards the show while AlunaGeorge’s new single ‘I’m in Control’ plays in the background.
Ahead of the concert, users have created billboards and flyers inside Minecraft advertising the performance. Due to server constraints space will be limited, with enough room for a few thousand fans.
“I’m sure they’ll be able to accommodate around 2,000 to 3,000 people, so this will have the same sort of feel as seeing a show in small concert venue,” said Erik Heisholt, a Gathering organizer and founder of the tech company Heisholt Inc.
The concert is scheduled to begin at 8pm this evening (March 23). Watch below.
Minecraft: Story Modeis getting three more episodes this year, Telltale Games announced today. That means Episode 5, which launches March 29, won’t be the last chapter of the series, but will instead bridge it with the rest of the story to come.
Those who want to play Episodes 6, 7 and 8 will need to have purchased at least the first episode ofMinecraft: Story Mode, which debuted back in October.
The fifth installment, titledOrder Up!, sends the player protagonist Jesse and his or her friends to an abandoned temple, where they are ambushed and find themselves in an entirely new world. The ruler is told the group of heroes, the New Order of the Stone, are up to no good, setting up the conflict and showdown of this story.
Minecraft: Story Modestars voice actors Patton Oswalt and Catherine Taber as Jesse (depending on the player’s gender choice); Paul Reubens of Pee-wee Herman fame as bad guy Ivor; and Sean Astin ofThe Goonies(OK, OK, also The Lord of the Rings trilogy) as Reginald. Melissa Hutchison, who voices Clementine in Telltale’s acclaimed The Walking Dead adaptation, features in Episode 5 as a new character.
For more, see Polygon’s review of the first episode, “The Order of the Stone.” The game is available on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Mac, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation Vita, and Android and iOS.
Who doesn’t like playing games? If your high school and college educations had been all playtime instead of studying, you probably would’ve liked it all a lot more. Well, even though you’re all grown up now, the child in you is going to rejoice that you can learn electronics and engineering using the fun of Minecraft,now for 18% off. Make learning awesome again with this hands-on, interactive way to master these essential computing skills.
Level by level, the game play here will walk you through the rungs of building a computer from scratch. You’ll get to tinker with buzzers, motion sensors, LED lights, switches and more and connecting these hardware pieces will bring you steps closer to the Raspberry Pi. From there you’ll build a totally self-contained computer that runs on a Raspberry Pi project board. All the hardware challenges can be played as Minecraft game levels, making it super fun to build at every stage. For extra levels and more sharing opportunities, simply connect to WiFi.
Knowing how to build systems like this can really amp up your career potential. Use this excuse to play games for hours on end because you can pretty much call it work or school, ramping up your engineering and electronics prowess. Playing Minecraft has never been so productive and now it’sall 18% off. Check out the link below for more details on how you can level up to a Raspberry Pi master.
If there’s one word that accurately describes the experience of slipping into a virtual realityMinecraftworld, it’s “VAST.”
Minecrafthas always been a huge game. Its randomly generated worlds stretch on forever, serving up new mysteries, new treasures and new dangers as you range further and further into the blocky landscape.
Incredibly, virtual reality makes all of that feel somehowbigger.
By now you know thatMinecraft: Pocket Edition is coming to the Gear VR headset. It’s eventually coming to Oculus Rift as well, though Microsoft isn’t quite ready to get into those details.
The mobile version is more than up to the task of immersing you in Minecraftlike you haven’t been before. Even if you’ve messed with the “Minecrift” mod, which makes the PC game work with Oculus dev kits, this is a step forward.
There are two ways to playMinecraft in a Gear VR. If you’re looking for something less intense, there’s always the option of playing the game on a virtual big screen TV in aMinecraftified living room.
IMAGE: MICROSOFT
It’s cool, but you can also give the Gear VR touchpad a tap to teleport yourself into that virtual TV, for more of a “full” virtual experience.
Here’s what you need to know: it works. This isMinecraft with console-style controls — you need a Bluetooth gamepad to play it — except the headset makes it feel like you’re inside the world.
The big difference with the controls is the camera, which moves from the right analog stick to your head. Sitting in a swivel chair helps if you want to completely rely on head tracking for turning inside the virtual space.
That’s not to say the right stick is useless. Moving it to the left or right turns you in that direction, but it’s not a smooth movement like you’d find in other first-person perspective games. It’s a stuttering turn, as if the frame rate dropped significantly.
“It’s almost like a palette cleanser for your eyes,”Minecraft development manager Mike Weilbacher toldMashable.
“It’s almost like a palette cleanser for your eyes.”
“We have some psychology behind it now. We … understand that, depending on how big the gap is, [that helps determine] how much more comfortable it can be. People have different gap sizes.”
The final game’s options menu will include a slider that allows you to adjust the gap size. If motion sickness isn’t a problem for you in VR, you’ll be able to turn off the gaps completely. In that situation, the right stick turns your perspective to the left or right smoothly, as it would in a standard first-person perspective game.
Other than that, the VR version ofMinecraft: Pocket Edition carries forward all the features that the game currently boasts, and all the ongoing updates that fans have come to expect.
“It’s stillMinecraft,” Weilbacher said. “You can still use Redstone, you can still make contraptions, you can still go online. It’s still the base game. We’ve just tweaked some of the edges to make it feel more comfortable.”
IMAGE: MICROSOFT
The game even allows for cross-platform play, just like the standard mobile edition. You can be running around in a Gear VR while your friend is playing the Windows 10 version on a computer. Once the Rift edition comes out, cross-platform with that will be possible as well.
But what about the Xbox One version of the game? Microsoft recently gave developers the go-ahead to add cross-network play support into their games, allowing Xbox players to link up with PC (and perhaps even PlayStation) users as well.
Will cross-network play allowMinecraft fans on Xbox One to connect with their VR-equipped friends?
“Potentially,” Weilbacher said. “We’re just not talking about it right now.”
Minecraft: Pocket Edition is coming to Gear VR sometime this spring. The build we sampled at the 2016 Game Developer’s Conference felt great, but there’s more work to be done.
“We’re doing some optimization to get the performance better and make it more comfortable,” Weilbacher said. “We really want it to be a polished experience.”
Microsoft is opening up the world of ‘Minecraft’ to Gear VR
Next step for the game: Samsung’s virtual reality headset.
The Oculus Riftisn’t the only virtual reality platform gettinga piece ofMinecraft’spie. Today, at a GDC 2016 event, Microsoft and Oculus are set to announce that the open-world phenomenon is also coming to theGear VR, a spokesperson for the companies confirmed to Engadget. For many people, Samsung’s headset is afar more accessible optionthan the consumer Rift, so this is good news for anyone who wants to playMinecraftin VRwithout breaking the bank.
This new version is expected to be similar to the one from an Oculus Rift, which we played recently and found quite impressive. As of yet, there’s not any information on how muchMinecraftfor Gear VR will cost or when you can download it, but we’ll let you know as soon as we have those details. At least now you’re aware it’s official,not just a thought.
If it was tough to pull the kids away from their screens while playingMinecraft, it’s going to get even tougher when they’re completely lost in the game while wearing a VR headset.
The first major virtual headset manufacturer to pull off a truly immersiveMinecraftworld is Samsung. Announced in San Francisco during the annual Game Developers Conference, theMinecraft virtual reality experience is coming to the Gear VR this spring.
Microsoftbought the game franchise two years ago along with Mojang, the studio that developed it, for $2.5 billion. Since then the company, which also has its own augmented reality headset called HoloLens, has pushed the game onto as many platforms as it can.
Minecraft in virtual reality is seemingly the last frontier in terms of platform play to bringing the block-building universe as close to real life as possible. It’s like playing Legos but in a video game that players can actually lose themselves in, and that’s an entirely plausible reality.
Three years ago, Microsoft announced thatMinecraftplayers have spent countless hours playing the game on the Xbox 360. That’s just on the Xbox and that’s just on a 2D screen. It will be interesting to observe its impact in a virtual reality environment on multiple virtual reality and augmented reality systems.
Samsung got first dibs, and first movers always tend to get a nice, big lead, but some reviewers havedeemed the Samsung port of the game rather “mehhh.” It could be that in order to push that game out quickly, Microsoft simply slapped a 2D version ofMinecraftonto the Gear VR’s eyepieces. Reports of a wonky in-game camera, unfriendly inventory and health menu UIs as well as small text were some of the complaints.
After the Gear VR, however,Minecraftwill be coming to Facebook’s Oculus Rift headset, which has considerably more computing power behind it than Samsung’s smartphone-connected VR solution.
Of course, the Oculus Rift is without a doubt incredibly expensive compared to the Gear VR and that’s just for the headset. The added cost of a PC that’s powerful enough to run the device is another expense to consider. Nonetheless,Minecrafton the Oculus Rift is expected to offer a much more immersive experience.
Microsoft, too, probably has even bigger plans tobring a bigger versionMinecraftto its HoloLens headset. Since HoloLens offers an augmented reality experience, the device will meld our real world withMinecraft’s block-building world. Of that, reporters havedescribed early builds of the game on the HoloLens as “so damn cool.”
