As I didn’t receive any news from anybody, I made a final release containing minor updates.
Two months ago, Jamie Costa (friend and voice actor from the US) sent me a huge list of recorded voice audios imitating Rick Deckard. It surely brings more realism to the experience and he made so many takes that I couldn’t ignore his work. Thank you very much James! 😉
You can now download the experience (1.002) from my Google Drive, right here:
Here we are. Since the DMCA takedown on Steam in January and the shutdown of my Youtube videos, I sent a couple of emails to the plaintiff and to Warner Bros. but they don’t seem to have to time to answer.
As I don’t have the time to fight back and as I have other ongoing projects in the pipe, this post will certainly be the last on the subject but I’m still not in peace with it as I still don’t understand what I have done wrong.
As promised to my followers, you’ll find an agreement of principle right below and a few emails with WB regarding my project. For privacy, I blurred the names. I can only tell you that these 2 guys have huge experience at WB. One is Vice President of Emerging Tech and the other is Head of Digital Content publishing for more than 20 years, both from Los Angeles, Burbank.
Shutting down my 3-years-fan-made VR experience from #steam & #viveport was not enough. My preview and real-time footage videos are now down too 🙁
These videos were uploaded since 2014 and were made with my own content (homemade 3D assets with licensed softwares) except for the Vangelis soundtrack, which is fine since Youtube and the Creator allow it for free usage and only video monetizing is forbidden. I never got any complaint for that usage until this day and if I had a complaint, I’d surely immediately changed it.
I tried to reach the plaintiff a couple of times since Valve gave me their lawyer contact but they are still ignoring my emails since beginning of January 2018. In the mean time, all my work is down except this website.
After investigations, it seems the plaintiff obtained the copyrights for any VR related title to the Blade Runner franchise. OK, fine. So they want to shutdown my free-fan-made VR project but what about my videos? These videos aren’t really showing VR features. BR9732 isn’t even a game, it’s a reconstitution hobby job. These videos contain camera travellings through the apartment, demoing some visual effects and proposing a few mood shots… that’s all! I’m really not sure about their rights to shut them down from Youtube 🙁
At this point, I’ll still waiting for a feedback from my contacts at Warner Bros. Home Ent. Los Angeles. I hope to get a sign from them as THEY allowed me to release BR9732 for the fans after testing it multiple times.
Valve reported me a copyright complaint and BR9732 is now removed from Steam.
The complaint doesn’t come from Warner Bros., the IP holders. That’s why it’s a bit annoying to me and I’m trying to figure out because I have a clear agreement of principle from Warner Bros L.A. Digital Department since Nov 2017.
During these 3 years, I always made a point of honor to inform everybody through my devblog and social networks about this fan project, IP holders always first.
I’m really disappointed with that kind of behavior on a free fan made project generating $0 and not taking profit to anyone and I want to insist on the fact that I would never have distributed this experience without the agreement of the IP holder.
At this moment, I’m waiting for one last clarification from WB but I still don’t have any reply from the plaintiff.
Keep in touch with the devblog or my twitter account. I’ll surely post some updates in the coming days.
Once again, I would like to thank everybody, donators, supporters, followers, fans, … I’m so glad all of you liked my work. The very positive review score and all the kind messages is the best reward ever!
I’ll also never forget that second week of Jan 2018 where I saw BR9732 first in the charts on New Popular Releases 3 days in a row right above PUBG 😐 … all these guys testing on twitch and other funny youtube videos made my friends and I laugh quite a lot 🙂
Public Release is now available on Steam or via VivePort.You can now download the experience (1.002) from my Google Drive, right here.
I hope you’ll enjoy this small VR tour. Thanks to supporters and followers for waiting so long.
If you have remarks or if you want to report bugs, you can do it in the comments below.
After inspection, I keep all the justified/realistic requests in my TODO list.
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Working with this kind of materials sounds cool but making VR experiences based movie franchises can be quite embarrassing. Copyright agreements are not an easy subject. I spent a lot of time to discuss with guys at Warner Bros. (Los Angeles). They were very friendly and encouraging.
WB contacted me in February 2017. They asked to test the experience and they did in July 2017. They liked it and they were really interested to use it as promotional content for the new movie but they finally decided to not follow me on this project unfortunately. Here is their final statement:
“… After closer inspection of the marketing department, WB passed because the market is just not developed enough warrant the creative and marketing efforts that would be needed to support this to the level that would be expected by Warner Bros. and filmmakers alike. …”
Anyway, WB allows me to release it for free and ask for donations to improve it. Thanks to them.
Main Menu is ready now. Here is a small 3 min Japanese Traditional Music to stay in the mood. This menu is the first screen appearing after the user has launched the game executable. if a Vive headset is detected, the game will switch automatically to the VR intro and calibration scene.
Stay tuned! Free Beta Release will be available very soon! And not only for VR users.
I just rendered a few shots in 4K resolution. A bit heavy to load, sorry :/
It seems that Google Chrome is messing HDR JPG quality files badly… You’ll have a better rendering under Firefox or another browser.
Some followers asked me for 360° panoramas of the scene. Unfortunately, I cannot get the Ambient Occlusion post processing effect running on these shots and the light is not exactly as accurate as the Unity build for HTC Vive.
Anyway, here are a few shots, thanks Sketchfab 😉
I just added storm ambiance sounds and rain droplets on the balcony.
DOF will not be activated in VR but it makes a quite interesting rendering.
At last I can show you some progress on the VR implementation of the scene. I’m now working on interactions with objects like glasses, bottles, gun, … Rachael still needs to be finetuned (textures, animations) but she already offers some presence in the apartment. I added a small script on the “look behavior” so she can focus on you when you stick around her. Sometimes it’s possible to see the little red glares in her eyes 😉
Thanks again to HTC, especially Alvin Graylin, for their help. The Vive headset is the perfect tool for this experience!
Thanks to Denis Tassin for his help on the piano algorithm (one sound per octave seems to be good enough indeed).
Sorry for this 720p capture. My current rig cannot handle VR smoothly when recording it in full HD in the same time.
As promised to the followers, here are several screenshots about improvements on bathroom assets. I also started the implementation of Rachael character inside the apartment. She’s now wandering through the rooms and looking at you when you get closer. I’m planning to build a more elaborated Animator Controller for her (playing piano, drinking vodka in the kitchen, …). Also the modeling/texturing has to be finetuned (too cartoonish for now).
Special thanks to my friends Cedric Delcourt for his help on asset modeling (especially the towels) and Thomas Marcotte for Rachael character.
This is update #41 and here are a few build notes:
