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Blue Marble for Oculus Rift

browns
Honored Guest
Hi guys!

We've just uploaded a new demo called Blue Marble.

What does it do?
Blue Marble takes you on a journey into space while listening to your favourite music. We've put a few royalty free tracks in the demo, but you can also listen to your own music. Just put your favourite songs in the "YourMusicHere"-folder in the Blue Marble directory and select one of them in the in-game menu. Hit launch, sit back, relax and enjoy.
Note: Songs must be in the .ogg file format. Unfortunately, due to licensing issues, we cannot support mp3. We've included Audacity in the download, with which you can easily convert your mp3's to the .ogg format. To convert your song, open the mp3 in Audacity > Export > Select .ogg extension > Save.

Why is it?
We love being game developers, but we want to be astronauts! 😉
Apart from that, we've noticed that some people who do not yet have their "VR-legs" can feel uneasy when they try the Rift, because a lot of demos feature quite a bit of motion. Blue Marble is designed to be a very relaxing experience which can be enjoyed by anyone, even those unfamiliar to virtual reality or prone to motion sickness.

Read me
Use the highest possible resolution at a 16:9 aspect ratio and connect your Rift through DVI.

1. Even though the Rift's resolution is only 1280x800, image quality is greatly improved when selecting a much higher resolution on startup. It seems that the Rift accepts high input resolutions, resulting in a much smoother looking image when compared to running the build in the Rift's native 1280x800 resolution.

2. It seems you should run the demo in a 16:9 aspect ratio -or- at an aspect ratio matching your primary monitor. When the aspect ratio isn't 16:9, the view inside the Rift will be distorted. This is weird, since the aspect ratio of the Rift's screen is 16:10. We think this is a bug with the Unity Rift integration. Since we only have 16:9 monitors, we cannot test this thoroughly. It might be that you should choose an aspect ratio fitting to your primary monitor when you mirror your Rift.

3. When connecting the Rift through HDMI, black levels are greatly affected when running any other resolution than the native 1280x800. When we connect the Rift through DVI, we don't have this problem.
Note: We don't know if our observations are consistent across different setups. If you experience different results or any other weird stuff, please let us know so we can get to the bottom of all this!

Any recommended songs?
You should try Space Oddity by Col. Chris Hadfield - the boss of space. We also really enjoy the demo with Mad World by Gary Jules and Protectors of the Earth by Two Steps From Hell. They are awesome. (Don't forget to convert them to the .ogg format.)

Do you know any other cool songs to go along with it? Do share!

Thanks for checking it out, we hope you enjoy it and we would love to know what you think. Cheers!
Vincent and Laurens, Jaywalkers Interactive
85 REPLIES 85

whoisonline
Explorer
"AdamsImmersive" wrote:
Anyone else see a scrambled not-quite-black skybox? Instead of just stars, I see weird "curcuit-like" patterns of black and dark gray printed inside a giant cube. Maybe my Rift is set too bright and I'm seeing compression artifacts?

Anyway--love the asteroids!


I was getting that too when I set the resolution to low .. when its at high, I dont get that.

AdamsImmersive
Honored Guest
I get it no matter what Graphics Quality is set to; at Low or Medium it's worse, and at High and Very High the effect is more of a dancing moire, but still a visible cube. (I even see a bit of the world map printed faintly on the walls.) Titans of Space, for comparison, has pure black sky.
Morgan Mac OS XUnity

vannagirl
Consultant
This was greatcfun and full of potential, really was oddly scary leaving the airlock and the sense you were in space.

Oculus seems to manage to trick you so well that you are there, thank you for the fun
Look, man. I only need to know one thing: where they are. 

bcrdncola
Honored Guest
Very well done. Just wish it went on for longer. 🙂

Huckleberry
Honored Guest
"bcrdncola" wrote:
Very well done. Just wish it went on for longer. 🙂


Goes on for as long as your song is 🙂

nnhood
Honored Guest
I really really like this, I put in some Pink Floyd and Imagine Dragons. I would like a nebula, or to actually fly through those Northern Lights I see glowing on the far side of the earth. Would love to see Saturn or as others have said a space station.

Would be a wild trip to start way out and gradually make your way all the way down to earth until you splash down in the ocean.

If you pick the first song in the list does it fade to the next song automatically?
I didn't try that.

Great Job, I think this should be on the main Oculus page really.
Looking forward to a sequel / new version.

Thanks so much!
Matt

scottpw25
Honored Guest
I'm hoping someone can answer this question for me because I appear to be a moron. I'm trying to get Blue Marble to work on both my Macbook Pro w/retina and my Windows 7 PC. With the mac version, it is not 3d in the OR..just a dual picture.. With both the PC and OSX, I do not get head tracking.

I can't seem to figure it out. All other demos work great..

silentdriver
Honored Guest
what a wonderful demo! probably the best to start with when demoing the rift!

anyway...my personal music-recommendations for the demo:

M83 - Outro
Johann Strauss II - The Blue Danube (hihi. probably the development team will implement that iconic 2001 space station from the movie in their demo)
probably anything from the Contact Soundtrack (i know...kind of a cliche)

AND (did anybody mention this before?):

the "pale blue dot" speech of Carl Sagan himself (i know - very, very nerdy)

I really love that demo! so beautiful & relaxing!

Anonymous
Not applicable
Due to pick up my rift tommorow, I have downloaded the files but they have no extention? With out sounding totally stupid (it may become clearer tommorow once Im set up) how do you start the GwXd / Nojg files? drop them into a player?

I will be using this as my 1st demo tool.
Looks really great just from reading and watching the videos.

silentdriver
Honored Guest
"bud01" wrote:
Due to pick up my rift tommorow, I have downloaded the files but they have no extention? With out sounding totally stupid (it may become clearer tommorow once Im set up) how do you start the GwXd / Nojg files? drop them into a player?

I will be using this as my 1st demo tool.
Looks really great just from reading and watching the videos.


The only thing you got to do is to start the bluemarble.exe file within the GwXd folder. Voila. That's it!