One of VR’s earliest games just lost one of its best features.
Dylan Fitterer’s Audioshield, which launched alongside the HTC Vive in April 2016, has lost the ability to stream music from YouTube. Fitterer said as much in an update blog, though didn’t mention why this feature had been removed, simply stating: “Streaming from youtube is no longer available. Sorry about that, but I’m working on alternatives.”
As for those alternatives, a lot of people in the comments really seem to think Spotify streaming would be a good replacement.
Audioshield added YouTube streaming post-launch, switching it around with Soundcloud streaming. The feature synchronized the game’s mechanics, in which a player uses two different colored shields to block incoming orbs that arrive to the given beat, with a video’s audio. It essentially opened up the game to a massive variety of music beyond the handful of tracks already included. It was only last month that Fitterer added an update that improved that synchronization feature.
It’s removal, then, is a big blow to what you can do with Audioshield, though it’s still a great game in its own right. Hopefully Fitterer can come up with a solution within the next few days, especially seeing as the strikingly similar Beat Saber seems to be the talk of the town at the moment.
