HaptX, which makes-enterprise focused haptic VR gloves, has announced the closure of a $23 million investment. The company says it will use the cash to accelerate the rollout of its next-gen products.
Horizon Worlds, Meta’s social VR platform for Quest users, has featured its own ‘Personal Space’ zone for a while now, however now the company is rolling out a more social version to more users that will let you better flesh out your home area for others to visit.
Nofio, a Wi-Fi 6E wireless adapter for Valve Index, blasted past its funding goal of $315,530 AUS (~$215,000 USD) in a single day when it hit Kickstarter earlier this month. Late last week project organizers announced all available units were sold out, however now the startup has reopened sales after securing additional units just days before the campaign’s end.
Nofio still has six days left its Kickstarter campaign, which was thought to be effectively over last week when the company announced it had sold out of its last units. Now the company says it’s reopening pre-orders, although it’s not sure how many the project has left to offer in its third batch. That last remaining batch is slated to arrive to backers sometime in July 2023, which may very well allow the team enough time to tack on as many latecomers as possible before the campaign officially closes next week.
Additionally, the company has opened up a developer page on Steam to better communicate updates regarding SteamVR integration. The studio says it will allow them to provide software updates, configuration and diagnostic utilities, and tighter integration with SteamVR. The original article follows below:
Nofio seems to have hit a homerun with the Index-owning community as it has now officially sold out of pre-orders via its Kickstarter campaign, garnering nearly $570,000 USD ($845,000 AUD) from more than 1,300 backers.
Although its early conclusion means there are effectively no stretch goals in sight, the creators say in an update they plan some “very exciting announcements to make over the next couple of weeks.”
The creators say to follow along via Twitter for future updates and behind the scenes info coming soon.
Nofio has managed to nearly double its Kickstarter funding goal of $215,000 USD in the first 24 hours. At the time of this writing the project has attracted around $370,000 USD from nearly 900 backers.
The Brisbane, Australia-based startup hopes to ship its first production run starting in April 2023, which includes a batch of 2,000 units. The response from the community has been so swift though that all first batch units (and their early bird pricing) are gone, with second batch units priced at around $390 USD. Those also have an April 2023 launch date appended, although we’re likely to know more in the coming days.
The team hasn’t issued an update yet, so there’s no telling what stretch goals they have in mind either, as Nofio so far looks to match pace with many of the popular VR hardware Kickstarters such as Lynx and Kat VR’s latest KAT WALK VR treadmill. Check out the Nofio Kickstarter here for more info.
Original Article (July 11th, 2022): The company claims it achieves the “lowest latency wireless video on the market,” which it says works in up to a 5m × 5m (15ft × 15ft) play area.
Taking to Reddit, Nofio additionally claims its device will be able to do “less than 5ms” of latency, which the company says it was able to achieve in larger test area of 5m × 10m (15ft × 30ft).
Nofio says the base transmitter connects via the existing OCuLink connector, and that its on-device proprietary compression helps it achieve such a low latency.
The creators promise a 2+ hours battery life with the supplied battery pack, which is about in line with standalone headsets such as Meta Quest 2 and Pico Neo Link 3. The device is able to support other USB-C battery packs however, so you could either choose a larger capacity battery or simply keep multiple batteries at the ready for longer playsessions.
For now, the device only supports SteamVR on Windows, however the creators are hoping to bring Linux support as well at some point.
And why Wi-Fi, and not a solution such as WiGig as with HTC Vive Wireless Adapter?
“We have a 60GHz wigig solution, and there are serious issues with line-of-sight and wireless range,” Nofio says. “We believe the Wifi solution gives a much better experience.”
Preorders are set to launch through Kickstarter sometime in August, with an estimated delivery window of Q1 2023. Pricing is slated to be between $399 and $499, Nofio says, which will likely position it as an enthusiast-level piece of kit.
Granted, if you already own the full $1,000 Valve Index package, which includes headset, Index controllers, and tracking base stations, you might already consider yourself a VR enthusiast.
We’re still hoping to learn more about Nofio when the company launches its Kickstarter. In the meantime, you can sign up for updates on the Nofio website.
Check out Nofio in action below:
Resident Evil Village is one of the best looking games on PS5 to date, and its forthcoming VR version will be one of the best looking games in VR to date. During a hands-on with RE8 on PSVR 2 I found myself entranced by the game’s world which offers up unprecedented levels of detail among VR titles.
Pico is gearing up to launch its next VR headset, which may very well be the previously spotted Pico 4 series of standalone headsets. The company says to stay tuned to an official announcement coming on Thursday, September 22nd.
The long-awaited VR mod for Half-Life 2 (2004) is available for free in beta starting today, bringing to the iconic Valve title a near-native level of VR immersion we’ve been waiting for.
Into the Radius is a hardcore single-player survival shooter that you’ve likely already heard about from its time on PC VR headsets via Steam. In case you haven’t, the game serves up a unique mix of heart-racing encounters with deadly entities, a load of environmental traps, and its fair share of plodding tedium—all while paying homage to the suitably Soviet book Roadside Picnic (1972) and later film adaptation Stalker (1979). Although we were hoping for finer visual polish and a cleaner touch to object interaction, it seems the indie studio has done a serviceable job slimming down the 20+ hour game onto the humble Quest 2, cementing it as one of the platform’s leading survival shooters.
While Oculus doesn’t offer much publicly in the way of understanding how well individual games & apps are performing across its Quest 2 storefront, it’s possible to glean some insight by looking at apps relative to each other. Here’s a snapshot of the 20 best rated Oculus Quest games and apps as of September 2022.
One of the big questions on my mind ever since the announcement of Horizon Call of the Mountain for PSVR 2 is whether it would be a short ‘experience’ designed as a simple demo for the headset, or a full blown game. After going hands-on with the title I’m happy to report that it not only aims to deliver a full campaign, but it’s also brimming with insightful VR design.
Sony’s long awaited PSVR 2 isn’t here just yet but after an extensive hands-on with the headset it’s clear it’ll be worth the wait.
Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear franchise and founder of Kojima Productions, definitely isn’t presenting a VR game at this year’s Tokyo Game Show (TGS) like a recent tweet suggests, although it’s clear the studio is taking more interest in the medium.
Rich interactions between the user and the virtual world are a key aspect of what makes VR so compelling, but creating and tuning such interactions is a challenging and time consuming task for developers. Toolsets like UltimateXR can speed up the iteration process for VR interactions, bringing more interactivity and immersion to games and experiences.
As rumored over the past few months, Meta’s upcoming high-end VR headset Project Cambria seems to be named Quest Pro. And an apparent unboxing video has leaked too, which gives us a good look at the company’s next VR headset and controllers.
Varjo, maker of high-end enterprise XR headsets, this week announced it has raised a $40 million Series D investment to continue building its Varjo Reality Cloud software and deliver a “true-to-life industrial metaverse.”
