Facebook today announced its fourth VR studio acquisition. This time it’s Downpour Interactive, the studio behind the popular VR shooter Onward which has been continuously developed since its Early Access launch on PC back in 2016. More recently the game launched on Oculus Quest where it has become one of the headset’s most popular titles.
The latest beta update to SteamVR has brought improvements to the way users can use their PC desktop inside of VR through the SteamVR dashboard. Now you can choose to display specific applications instead of your entire desktop, and you can dock window views to your controllers which will persist inside your VR application.
Reportedly according to an internal Q&A, all Facebook employees are eligible for a refund from the company if they purchase a Quest 2 headset. The effort comes as the Facebook continues to justify deep investments in AR and VR with the belief that they are the next major computing platform.
You can now register for HTC’s upcoming VIVECON event. The free, online event will be held May 11th & 12th, and the company is promising to reveal “game-changing VR headsets,” (yes that’s plural headsets), alongside presentations from “industry experts, strategic partners, and special guests.”
Commodore 64, the iconic 8-bit computer from the early ’80s, was one of the first home computers for many people back in the day. Its ability to run basic games, office productivity software, and development tools made it one of the highest-selling single home PCs of all time. And now you can experience all of its retro charm through the lens of an Oculus Quest.
Tundra Tracker, the SteamVR-based tracker in development by Tundra Labs, exploded past its Kickstarter goal in less than 24 hours, securing the company well beyond the $250,000 it initially hoped for back at its late-March launch. The company has now made it well past the $1 million mark with one month remaining in the campaign.
HTC announced it’s partnering with Bandai Namco Pictures, the animation studio and production company, to ostensibly bring a number of its properties to Viveport, HTC’s VR app store and subscription service.
HTC has made the pro-consumer move of partnering with popular DIY repair website iFixit to offer replacement parts, repair guides, and more for out-of-warranty headsets. The move contrasts with one of the company’s major competitors, Oculus, which has opted to quickly discontinue older headsets with little recourse for out-of-warranty DIY repairs.
Campfire, a San Mateo, California based startup, emerged from stealth today announcing that it has raised $8 million in venture capital to launch an integrated hardware and software platform aimed at making remote product design and collaboration easy. The platform includes an MR headset (capable of both AR and VR), a tracking device, an accessory which turns smartphones into motion controllers, and software to connect it all together between remote users.
Joy Way, the developers of VR parkour-shooter STRIDE, released a free demo today on Steam for its upcoming rhythm game, AGAINST. It’s a strong start; it does an interesting job of mashing up familiar VR rhythm mechanics, tosses in some super hero-style jumps, and soaks it all in spurts of blood.
Oculus App Lab, Facebook’s unmoderated app outlet, has largely stolen the thunder from the unofficial Quest app store SideQuest over the past few months. This is largely due to the ease of use that App Lab offers over SideQuest, the latter of which required you to install a PC-based program to install apps. Now SideQuest has launched a mobile app which lets you SideLoad apps on Quest without needing a PC. And you can do it wirelessly too.
Facebook is rolling out its latest avatars, Oculus Avatars 2.0, which it hopes will finally unify virtual identify across Oculus applications and Facebook products. In addition to becoming the default avatars for Facebook Horizon and being optionally integrated into Oculus games, Facebook also teased that the new avatars will eventually find their way to the Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram, and more.
Ancient Dungeon is a rogue-lite dungeon crawler that found success on Kickstarter last year. It’s aiming for launch sometime “soon,” developer Eric Thullen says, arriving on both SteamVR headsets and Oculus Quest in early access.
Wraith: The Oblivion – Afterlife is a single-player horror-adventure set in the storied ‘World of Darkness’ universe. You don’t need to be a Masquerade fan though to step into the game’s sprawling mansion, dodge howling ghosts, and unravel a pretty interesting story centered around a cabal of Hollywood types who are suitably creepy from the get-go. It can be a little rough around the edges at times, but it basically delivers on its promise of frights, intrigue and plenty of Alien: Isolation-style hiding.
Alien: Isolation (2014) is still an awesome horror experience, even if the Xenomorph-filled game of ‘cat and mouse’ is showing its age when played on modern SteamVR-compatible headsets. Still, you can’t argue with free.
