Zack “Nibre” Fannon, the creator behind VR mods for Alien: Isolation and Halo Master Chief Collection (MCC), has been hired by 343 Industries, the studio in charge of the Halo franchise.
Larcenauts, the new VR hero shooter from Impulse Gear, launched two weeks on Quest, Rift, and Steam. However, the studio says it ran into a last minute issue which meant the SteamVR version was only compatible with Oculus headsets out of the gate, leading to confusion among buyers who attempted to play the game with non-Oculus headsets. Now an update posted over the weekend has seemed to resolved the issue, bringing equal support to HTC Vive and Valve Index as well.
Demeo (2021), the tabletop dungeon crawler from Resolution Games, launched back in early May with a single adventure module, which pits up to four co-op players against a mountain of ghoulies and one very powerful Elven Queen. The studio has launched its first post-launch module today, which essentially more than doubles the game in size.
VRChat, the popular social VR platform, announced its secured a Series D funding round of $80 million, which brings to the startup more than five times its overall lifetime investment.
NVIDIA’s CloudXR technology is designed to provide real-time XR cloud streaming, which aims to remove the need for local high-end PC rendering hardware. At Mobile World Congress 2021 today, the company announced that its CloudXR 3.0 release will include bidirectional audio support—a fundamental piece of the equation when it comes to collaboration and social interaction.
TRIPP, the Los Angeles-based startup behind the eponymous VR meditation app, has secured a Series A investment amounting to $11 million.
In preparation for its June 27th ship date, HTC released a full teardown of its latest enterprise-focused standalone, Vive Focus 3.
This week Adobe revealed its new Substance 3D software suite which is designed to give creative professionals a comprehensive set of tools for modeling, texturing, and lighting 3D objects and scenes. Built on the foundation of the VR sculpting tool Oculus Medium (which Adobe acquired back in 2019), the Substance 3D Modeler tool aims to make VR modeling an integral part of the suite’s 3D workflow.
LIV develops software for mixed reality video capture, and over the years it’s become the de facto method for streamers showing themselves immersed in VR from a third-person perspective. For best results though, using LIV invariably means you’ll need some extra equipment, which isn’t ideal for everyone. Now LIV has released its newly unveiled mobile iOS app which lets you record your Quest experience without the need of a green screen, webcam, or PC—only an iPhone or iPad.
JUMP, the destination-based entertainment company, exited stealth late last year and teased a unique attraction that would combine real-world wing suits, wind effects, body harnesses and VR headsets for a fully immersive skydiving experience. The company is now taking pre-orders for tickets to its debut locations, which for now are in Utah and New Jersey.
VR Education Holdings, the company behind the social VR platform ENGAGE, announced it’s raised €9 million (~$10.7 million) which will help it expand beyond the realm of immersive education & training and into a new product called ENGAGE Oasis. It’s billing the upcoming social VR platform as an enterprise offering comparable to a “fully featured corporate metaverse.”
Varjo today announced its new Varjo Reality Cloud platform, a device-agnostic VR meeting platform which can scan and share physical spaces in real-time using the depth sensors on its latest XR-3 headsets. The company doesn’t have a specific release date for the tech just yet, but is presenting a glimpse of what it plans to deliver in the future. Road to VR got an early look at the new tech.
After launching on Quest back in September of 2020 and “coming soon” to Steam ever since, the well rated VR mini golf game Walkabout Mini Golf finally has a July 15th release date on Steam, supporting all PC VR headsets and cross-play with the Quest and Oculus PC versions. The game was recently updated with its seventh course which will be included in all versions of the game.
Developer Joy Way today launched a surprise multiplayer alpha for its STRIDE VR parkour action game. The new mode, called ‘STRIDE.net’ is available free to current owners of the game and offers up an ‘infection mode’ which works like a high stakes game of tag.
Though Oculus has added plenty of new features to Quest since its launch, in the latest update its removing one: the ‘Go Live’ feature was the only direct method for livestreaming the headset’s view to the web (via Facebook), but it’s gone as of the v30 update. Users can still cast from Quest to a smartphone or PC for local spectating.
