A prototype from Facebook Reality Labs researchers demonstrates a novel method for text input with controllerless hand-tracking. The system treats the hands and fingers as a sort of predictive keyboard which uses pinching gestures to select groups of letters.
Half-Life: Alyx (2020), Valve’s made-for-VR entry into the fabled Half-Life series, launched late last month on SteamVR-compatible headsets to near-universal praise. If you don’t own a VR headset but still want to play though, I’d caution you against playing it for the first time with the new, unofficial PC monitor mod. Get a VR headset and don’t spoil it for yourself.
Alien: Isolation (2014) was one of the first truly good games to get support for PC VR headsets. If you’re wondering why everyone is still crazy about years later, it’ll only take you $2 to find out.
Bigscreen, the social VR viewing platform, introduced paid movies late last year so you could buy a ticket to join people in watching a number of 2D and 3D films at set times, working more or less like a physical movie theater. Although you’ll still be able to do that through special, one-time events, Bigscreen is adding on-demand movie viewing to the list today, letting you watch its catalog of films whenever you want.
Dreams (2020) launched out of Early Access on PS4 earlier this year, and while PSVR users have been patiently awaiting any news of the promised VR support, Media Molecule has stayed fairly mum on the subject. Now the studio’s creative director & co-founder Mark Healey says Dreams is currently undergoing its final stages before release.
With the recent release of Half-Life: Alyx, VR has been thrust into the spotlight of the mainstream gaming audience. While players and critics alike have universally praised the game, pushing it to become one of Steam’s best rated games ever, plenty of folks not interested in VR have levied common fallacious arguments about why VR is a dead-end technology. Consider this article your official rebuttal to these tired arguments.
Oculus just dropped a surprise update to Dead and Buried II and they even saw fit to give its own subtitle: Reloaded. The free update brings new modes, maps, weapons, and characters.
Valve today announced the top 20 best selling games on Steam released in March. And coming as little surprise to anyone, Half-Life: Alyx (2020) has made it on the list.
Derail Valley, the train simulator for VR and PC, launched into Early Access last year, giving locomotive fans their very own trains to drive through a vast, open world. Now indie studio Altfuture says one of its biggest updates is coming to the game next month, which is said to fix many of the game’s bugs, overhaul many of its existing systems, and add new content and features.
Social VR app VRChat is seeing a surge of users thanks to a well timed update and people around the world looking to connect with others while being asked to stay at home.
Pixel Ripped 1995 is a retro-inspired VR game which, as you would imagine, follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, Pixel Ripped 1989 (2018). It’s an absolute nostalgia trip that revisits the series’ unique ‘game within a game’ storytelling style while honing in on what made the fourth console generation truly great: colorful platformers, side-scrolling beat ’em ups, and RPGs aplenty. While it may be a tiny bit rough around the edges, it’s ultimately a charming and well-realized adventure that truly made me feel like a kid again.
Valve released an updated SteamVR today, version 1.11, which is the culmination of the last several weeks of smaller updates to the beta branch. The company calls this a “Spring cleaning” update in that it focuses on tweaks to the new dashboard, performance improvements, and bug fixes.
Mozilla Hubs is the company’s impressive WebXR social app which allows users from almost any device (VR or not) to jump into a virtual room with the click of a link. But the company’s ambitions go much further; soon Mozilla will take a major step toward achieving its “master plan” by launching Hubs Cloud.
