An update to the Fantastic Contraption game on HTC Vive should make it easier for more people to produce mixed reality footage.
Fantastic Contraption merges camera and game footage within the app itself in the latest update, obviating the need for separate software like OBS to composite layers. In addition, a new foreground-only feature is included that will make it easy for people without a green screen to show virtual objects floating in their living room.
The traditional view we used to outline how to record mixed reality is still there with the click of a menu button, but overall the update should make it far easier for more people to get mixed reality up and running.
Mixed reality is on the rise as a way of spectating a VR experience or showing what a game is like. It was on display at both the HTC and Oculus booths at E3 this year as a way of showing what unique VR games Space Pirate Trainer and The Unspoken are all about. Valve offers a plug-in for Unity SteamVR developers for mixed reality, but it’s not as easy to use as Fantastic Contraption for producing the merged footage.
Right now making mixed reality content is still relatively hard, requiring a green screen and a delicate sync up between a real-life camera and its virtual counterpart. Features like the ones being added to Fantastic Contraption, however, hint at how much easier it’s going to get to share VR experiences over time. The mixed reality features arrived alongside more robust support for Twitch chat as well as a mode that shows a fully computer-generated avatar animated by head and hand movements.
Taken altogether, there are now several ways to share Fantastic Contraption with others, whether it’s streaming completely from VR using Twitch, full mixed reality using a green screen or simply a foreground-only mixed reality session without a green screen.
