About
Have you ever wished that you had your own private theater to run however you want? Where your friends, families, and acquaintances can all join without anyone ever having to leave their own homes? How about going up on stage and trying your luck as a singer or a stand up comic without having to worry about stage fright? What about being a guest on a talk show or game show - or even hosting and running your own show? All of this is possible in Riftmax!
The Oculus Rift has shown us that quality virtual reality is possible and is closer than ever. Riftmax has been built from the ground up especially for virtual reality and to make the most of the latest in consumer motion control technology to provide an immersive experience like never before possible.
Download the Latest Riftmax Beta! Windows or Mac
Riftmax is a multiplayer virtual theater experience built with Unity that can be enjoyed alone or with others and customized to host a variety of events and social gatherings. Riftmax allows for watching videos (2D, 3D, as well as 4D enhanced effects), YouTube and live streams, to hosting karaoke parties, and even your own TV shows complete with virtually controlled cameras you can stream to your own channel. Riftmax also has a Lobby, with a piano bar, arcade, nightclub and rooftop garden (complete with hot tub!). In virtual reality, the possibilities are truly limitless.
Compared to objective/story based games, Riftmax Theater as a social experience provides potentially unlimited re-playability, as the variety of uses and multiplayer aspect can lead to unique experiences every time.
We are passionate about the potential of social experiences in Virtual Reality and how motion control can play a huge role in fully expressing ourselves and creating compelling social experiences. To that end, we fully intend to support the most popular upcoming motion control solutions including PrioVR, STEM, ControlVR, and Omni. Riftmax is also playable on standard monitors with the Razer Hydra, keyboard/mouse, or an Xbox 360 controller.
Riftmax won the award for Best Social Experience at the 2014 Proto Awards.
We are not here to pitch an unachievable project together with an unreasonable Kickstarter goal, or to use Kickstarter as a get rich quick scheme. We will continue developing Riftmax and keep it free to play regardless of the result of our campaign, but as a small, self funded group, the reality is funds will allow us to take Riftmax much further than possible on our own.
We have added achievable, realistic stretch goals that give concrete examples of what we will be able to achieve with funding.
Since starting Riftmax in June 2013, the goal has always been to provide an amazing social experience that is fun, fair, and free to play. Riftmax is constantly being updated with new features, environments and experiences.
To make an experience we feel is fair to our users, we take a community approach rather than one that is solely based on profit - We commit to our users to never sell or mine their personal data, nor do any advertising that is obtrusive in nature, such as being targeted to them based on their personal data. You should support this project if you share those values and want there to be a quality social virtual reality experience that is available for everyone to enjoy.
Riftmax represents some of the most groundbreaking ideas of what is possible in Virtual Reality. Funding and community support is vital to helping us realize the true potential of the Riftmax experience.
Here are a few shows that have been held in Riftmax Theater. We are planning on many more for the future, including a game show, concert, stand-up comedy & open mic nights!
- Riftmax Karaoke Night hosted by DZ & Troach
- Riftmax Comedy Night
- Virtually Incorrect w/ Gunter S. Thompson
Your support will help us take Riftmax Theater to the next level. We will be able to add additional features and continue upgrading existing ones. In addition we will be able to improve the visual quality of our models, and enhance core stability and performance. We will also be able to purchase additional assets to offer a larger selection of custom models and effects for customizing your environment, including the purchase of licenses to gain access to additional tools that will enhance the Riftmax experience.
Our stretch goals show some concrete examples of what funding will allow us to provide, and we will add additional stretch goals depending on user input and funding levels.
We have many amazing ideas in store, and the community has come up with some great suggestions too. While we don’t want to give away all the surprises, the priority items are the following, along with some concrete examples included in our stretch goals:
- Providing users with the means to put on a variety of different shows/performances including the ability to monetize them.
- Giving users further options for customizing and creating their environment and avatar's appearance, including a stage/set designer companion app.
- New theater types, viewing environments and virtual spaces to interact in, for example a ‘Haunted Theater’ perfect for watching horror movies in.
- Expanding on and supporting/hosting a variety of live events, such as virtual film festivals, open mic nights, etc, as well as conferences/meetups.
- Continue to refine performance to achieve best possible framerates and
ensure a comfortable VR experience, as well as to increase the number of
concurrent users possible in a given server while maintaining a
comfortable framerate for all.
- Adding a HUD system that will add additional information such as Player Profiles of users.
- Incorporate support for the PrioVR, ControlVR, STEM system, Omni and any other popular motion control solutions / HMDs.
- Various Artwork : Mike Richardson
- Kickstarter header graphics: http://artbybeeje.net
- Various Music: Stephen Lu
- Various Music: TecknoAxe (Mathew Huffaker) "Jamming it Out on the Pavement", "Beat Timed Grime sans Words"
- Menu Music: An Epic Day to Die by Super_Sigil Featuring greg_baumont,Karstenholymoly,smilingcynic,AnalogByNature
- Website Design: David Whelan
- Avatars: Autodesk Character Generator
- Blair "Anticleric" Renaud
- Wormslayer
- Reverend Kyle
- AJ of VR-Logic
- Road to VR Team
- Ivan Blaustein of VRCade
- Species
- EvolvedAnt
- Matt Stompz of StompzVR
- Flake
- TRoach
- Edgar McBee
- Gunter S. Thompson
- Holotape
- Ruuubick
- D "eVRyday VR"
- Dave & Sandra of VRReviewer
- Daniel MacAulay
- Jason Schmidt
- Kogsworth
- Coznefx
- Chip
- Cymatic Bruce
- The Oculus VR developer community
- Various Assets: Unity Asset Store
Risks and challenges
There is very little risk that a playable, satisfying build of Riftmax Theater won’t be released. We have proven our commitment to this project with the public demo builds released to date, and we will put the funds raised here to good use, by continuing to add and improve features and content, as well as fine tuning the program itself.
As with online services like YouTube, media players and many other applications and devices, there is the potential for users to breach others' copyrights in their use of the application. Our official position, and as stated in the Terms of Service that all users must accept each time they use the application, is that all users respect copyright and don't display any material they do not have the right to do so. Should any rights holders notify us of any breach of their copyright we will take all reasonable steps to comply with the law.
We have been careful to set realistic rewards and stretch goals that we can deliver and promise to bring the passion to this project that will make Riftmax the truly unique and amazing virtual reality experience it is capable of being.
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Funding period
- (30 days)