Titans of Space 2 is a guided tour of the solar system and stars, and the most recent update for the software arriving today on Oculus and Steam should make the experience more comfortable for a larger group of people.
The update also formally adds Oculus Touch controls, bringing parity with the Vive version of the experience. You can use the hand controllers to bring planets and moons up close, as a laser pointer or to push buttons. Titans of Space 2 is available for around $8 on Steam and Oculus.
“Despite the positive reactions Titans of Space has received since the initial version was released over three years ago, there has been one nagging problem throughout,” developer Drash wrote in an update about the improvements. “It uses artificial locomotion to sweep players along from planet to planet, accelerating them at a blistering pace along curved paths while rotating their frame of reference, performing lateral moves, and so on. Even though I made an effort to be gentle with the player, it ‘breaks all the rules’.”
Titans of Space 2 whisks the player from planet to planet to let headset wearers explore the scale of our solar system’s largest bodies just by glancing at them. It’s super easy to compare their size as intuitively as you would a beach ball and a baseball, which is what VR allows when you see the Sun and Earth floating right next to each other at scale. The experience was originally built for the earliest Rift development kits and helped inspire a lot of VR first timers to take the technology seriously for more than just games. The original movement system to go from planet to planet could be intense for some, and Drash used testing service FishbowlVR to discover some of the insights he needed to make to improve the experience. With this latest update, the developer has essentially declared motion sickness in Titans of Space 2 a solved problem.
“All the playtesters are so well-spoken and helpful, and their videos show the player himself + a view of what they are seeing side by side,” Drash told UploadVR. “It’s just an amazing service that pays for itself immediately.”
In the below video showing the features together, note the way the ship’s exterior shell seems to close momentarily in a kind of “blink” mechanic, as well as a progress bar so people know how much time is left in the trip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoXNCLen_wI
