One of VR’s most ambitious and longest-gestating projects is heading toward a beta launch on May 4, and its creator is looking for supporters on Steam and Patreon.
NeosVR is a project from Tomáš “Frooxius” Mariančík and Solirax co-founder Karel Hulec that’s been in development for several years. It is a collection of tools to let people intuitively create dynamic virtual worlds while immersed in VR. An early 2015 version of Neos was entered into the Oculus Mobile VR Jam and recognized with a bronze award — but that was just a “concept demo” in comparison to this much larger project.
Here’s how Neos is described on Patreon: “An innovative metaverse engine designed to accelerate the development of social VR applications. It is built on top of a novel scripting engine that integrates engine logic, synchronization and asynchronous job and asset processing into a seamless whole.”
In other words, Neos is a lot of things. A Reddit page describes the project’s aim as providing “engine-like flexibility while making multiplayer and cloud features the standard.” So Neos is kind of like a cross between VRChat, Tilt Brush and Unity.
Supporters on Patreon get access to the software earlier while the early access launch on May 4 through Steam will widen the release. The software promises an extensive list of importing tools to bring assets into the world engine, including support for “40+ 3D model formats.”
The trailer below offers a somewhat overwhelming look at the software’s scope. Mariančík wrote in an email that most of what you see in that trailer is included in the beta, with a few exceptions including “the plant timelapse” which is slated to come later.
