In place of GDC this year, which was postponed due to the coronavirus, Facebook is announcing some of its news via the decidedly more sterile environment of the Oculus blog, starting today and going until Thursday, March 19th. Today, the company unveiled its next major update to the Oculus Quest system experience.
The 2020 Game Developers Conference (GDC) would have started today had it not been canned like basically every major expo from here until summer. To compensate, Facebook is hosting what it calls its Game Developers Showcase, and it’s starting today.
HTC’s Vive Cosmos Elite headset is set to ship on the 18th and we’ve been testing the unit to bring you a full review. Cosmos Elite is the same base headset as Cosmos, but equipped with a faceplate that offers SteamVR Tracking instead of inside-out tracking. HTC also plans to also sell the ‘External Tracking Faceplate’ separately so that Cosmos users have the option to upgrade.
The supply chain slowdown due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) has affected a few notable VR companies, including Valve and Facebook with their respective flagship headsets. Now it seems HTC is experiencing similar issues with its upcoming SteamVR External Tracking Faceplate for its recently released PC VR headset, Vive Cosmos.
Oculus Link allows Oculus Quest to become a PC VR headset by tethering to a VR ready PC. While Oculus sells its own (quite expensive) Oculus Link cable, any appropriately high performance USB 3.0 cable will work. Here’s an option for a cable and extender which can get you even more length than the official cable at less than half the cost.
Magic Leap, the multi-billion dollar AR startup, could be exploring the possibility of a sale, a Bloomberg report maintains, citing people familiar with the matter. Other options reportedly under consideration are potential partnerships and a stake sale.
E3 2020, the major games industry conference, has been cancelled over Coronavirus concerns. The cancellation is the latest in a string of disruptions to conferences that are important touchstones for the VR industry. The organization that produces E3, the Entertainment Software Association, says it’s exploring options for an “online experience to showcase industry announcements and news in June 2020.”
The Panzer Dragoon series for Sega Saturn, enshrined as an early 3D classic back in the mid-90s, is coming to VR. Japanese studio Wildman Inc. is looking to revisit the series in a VR shooter, tentatively called Panzer Dragoon Voyage Record.
Varjo, makers of high-end enterprise focused VR headsets, is adding real-time green-screen (aka chroma key) and marker tracking features to its XR-1 headset to make mixed reality applications more seamless.
After making new Index stock available today after more than a month of the hardware being sold out, most regions saw the headset and other hardware quickly backordered by eight weeks or more.
