Out-of-home VR destination Sandbox VR today announced an additional $37 million funding round that the company is using to support its continued expansion. In addition to its dozen worldwide locations, Sandbox VR says it’s working to nearly doubling that.
Meta (formerly Facebook) is not only building its next generation of AR and VR headsets, but it’s looking to jumpstart a sort of immersive internet the company believes will one day be the future of human interaction—that’s the ‘metaverse’ everyone’s talking about. And to sell that idea to the masses, the company has allegedly discussed rolling out physical stores.
The NBA officially kicked off its 2021-22 regular season in mid-October after having last year’s derailed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting this week, Meta (formerly Facebook) is welcoming Quest users back to Horizon Venues for some more courtside action.
French startup Lynx launched a Kickstarter campaign for Lynx R-1 in October, a standalone MR headset which is capable of both VR and passthrough AR. Starting at €530 (or $500 if you’re not subject to European sales tax), the MR headset attracted a strong response from backers as it passed its initial funding goal in under 15 hours, going on to garner over $800,000 throughout the month-long campaign.
HP this week announced its ‘xRServices’ program which equips customers of its industrial printers with a HoloLens 2 headset, allowing the company to provide immersive remote support for repairs, training, and more.
Resolution Games, a leading developer of XR content, today revealed a new AR division of the company that will focus more directly on the creation of AR content.
Today at AWE 2021, Qualcomm announced Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform, a head-worn AR software suite the company is using to kickstart a broader move towards smartphone-tethered AR glasses.
Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, first launched on PC VR headsets last year, is coming to Quest 2 next week. Cross-buy is confirmed, meaning players that bought the game on Oculus PC will own the Quest 2 version as well.
At a special launch event today, Niantic announced it’s opening up the Lightship AR Development Kit (ARDK) platform, a software development kit with the kinds of tools the company uses to make Pokémon Go’s ‘world-scale’ gameplay possible. And to attract third-party developers to the platform, it’s also announced $20 million fund which it hopes will kickstart AR development.
Tales from Soda Island, an animated VR series built in Quill, just released its latest free chapter which takes users on another wild and beautiful voyage through a world of pure imagination.
M Theory and Oddboy announced that their time-traveling VR adventure title Wanderer is officially launching on PSVR and PC VR headsets on January 27th, 2022.
Meta (formerly Facebook) is offering up $700,000 in cash prizes this month in an XR hackathon aimed at developers and creators from all over the world. The objective: choose between Spark AR and Presence Platform and build something cool and useful.
Blade & Sorcery: Nomad almost feels like a work of digital wizardry, as it brings a standalone version of the hit physics-based combat sandbox exclusively to Quest 2 for the first time. Although it doesn’t feel as visually visceral as its bigger brother for PC VR headsets, which is notably still in Early Access, it serves up mostly the same physics-based carnage that will very likely bust some TVs in the process.
We’re just one week past the Connect 2021 event where Meta (formerly Facebook) laid out its grand vision for both XR and the metaverse, including rebranding its entire company around the concept. The event was heavy on vision with a lot of the near-term news being more disparate. I sat down with host Kent Bye on the Voices of VR Podcast to unpack what it all means for the future.
