Striker VR, maker of high-end haptic VR gun peripherals for the out-of-home market, announced today it has raised a $4 million investment and plans to use the funds to make its first move into the consumer VR space.
It’s been a while since we heard about Studio Gamebit’s upcoming VR action-adventure game Naau: The Lost Eye, which the Turkey-based studio first teased back in September 2019. The studio now says its debut PC VR title is launching into Early Access in late February.
Google Earth VR, which is available today on PC VR, is a breathtaking way to explore our fascinating planet. But one major missing feature is the ability to do so with friends. With Google unfortunately abandoning many of its VR initiatives, it’s unlikely that we’ll see a version of Google Earth VR with multiplayer, let alone Quest support. Luckily, Realworld aims to deliver a multi-user immersive map application to Quest, PC VR, and AR devices.
Last year saw the location-based entertainment industry grind to a halt, however now it seems there may be light at the end of the tunnel for at least one VR arcade startup. HOLOGATE, the Germany-based company creating VR arcade tech, announced it’s betting big this year with the launch of its first large-format facility.
App Lab is a new, official path for developers to distribute their games and apps on Quest without being subject to Oculus’ curation process. But there’s one big catch: App Lab apps aren’t discoverable through the main Quest store, leaving it to developers to figure out how to get their apps in front of users. Luckily there’s already a few third-party resources which make it easy to browse App Lab apps.
Rec Room isn’t just one of the best free social VR apps out there. In the absence of hard sales data, it makes for an excellent watermark for how things are moving in the industry. Now, according to Rec Room’s downloads on Quest 2, the developers estimate that Facebook has potentially sold upwards of three million Quest 2 units in 2020 Q4 alone.
Tundra Tracker, the upcoming SteamVR tracker alternative to the Vive Tracker, was originally expected to hold a Kickstarter in January, but the company behind the project, Tundra Labs, says the crowdfunding campaign has been pushed back in light of delays in component sourcing.
It’s been about a week since Google announced it had stopped active development on VR creation suite Tilt Brush (2016) and made the app open source. Now that it’s in the hands of the developer community, we’ve seen Tilt Brush clones aplenty, however SideQuest app MultiBrush gives it something we always hoped it would have: multiplayer mode on Quest.
Valve co-founder Gabe Newell previously revealed Valve was working on a brain-computer interface (BCI) with OpenBCI, the minds behind open source BCI software and hardware solutions. Now Tobii, the eye-tracking firm, announced it’s also a partner on the project and that developer kits incorporating eye-tracking and “design elements” of Valve Index are expected to first ship sometime early next year.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple may be planning to release a VR headset with limited AR capabilities as soon as 2022, which is said to be a precursor to its long-rumored, full-fledged AR device. Now, a follow up report by The Information contends the company’s first VR headset will cost around $3,000 and include a bevy of items high on any VR enthusiast’s wish list.
Although Quest 2 is a standalone headset, it can also be plugged into a PC to play PC VR games through Oculus PC and Steam. The headset’s holiday success has clearly bled through into the PC VR landscape, as the latest data shows that Quest 2 is now the second most used headset on Steam, with the total number of monthly-connected headsets on the platform reaching a new all-time high of 2.6 million.
Vertigo Games, the studio behind Arizona Sunshine (2017) and upcoming VR shooter After the Fall, today announced that it has acquired SpringboardVR, creators of the eponymous location-based VR content distribution platform.
Facebook announced that the v25 software update for its Quest platform is set to include Facebook Messenger, which will be available to anyone who is logged into their Facebook account on either Quest or Quest 2.
Oculus today introduced a program called App Lab, a new effort which will allow developers to distribute their VR apps on Quest without being subject to a quality review ‘curation’ process. Though apps still need to meet Oculus’ technical guidelines, and won’t appear in the Quest store like formally approved apps, they can be independently distributed and even sold without a cumbersome sideloading process.
