The Museum of Other Realities (MOR) first launched into Early Access on PC VR headsets in June 2019, bringing with it a curated selection of multi-sensory art pieces from some of the medium’s most talented illustrators, animators, and engineers. Now, the group of artists behind the space has officially released MOR out of Early Access with its 1.0 update.
Hungary-based indie studio XREAL Games today announced its Early Access VR shooter, A-Tech Cybernetic VR, is headed to PSVR sometime next month.
Sketchfab is a great resource for developers looking for a place to share and download 3D models—all of which can be viewed in VR headsets. Now, the company has launched a new program that makes it easier for museums and like-minded organizations to display and freely share 3D scans of their objects of cultural heritage.
While Microsoft has been full steam ahead on the augmented reality side of Windows Mixed Reality via HoloLens, the company has had very little to say in the last year about the VR side of its platform. While it may look like Microsoft has largely given up on the effort, the company tells us that it remains committed.
Just a few months after the acquisition of Beat Saber studio Beat Games, Facebook today announced the acquisition of Sanzaru Games, the studio behind the Oculus-exclusive Asgard’s Wrath and a handful of other VR titles. Sanzaru will join Facebook’s VR game division, Oculus Studios, but continue to be run as an “independently operated studio.”
Qualcomm today revealed new reference designs for VR and AR headsets powered by its new Snapdragon XR2 chip. Complete with hand-tracking, magnetic controller tracking, eye-tracking, and more, the Qualcomm reference designs are a glimpse of what’s to come in AR and VR over the next year or two.
While VR is still young, it crossed an important milestone at the start of 2020: more than 100 VR games have exceeded $1 million in revenue.
The Room: A Dark Matter is an upcoming VR puzzler from Fireproof Games, the same minds behind The Room (2014), its beloved predecessor for PC and mobile, and VR shooter-adventure Omega Agent (2016). With the fresh VR entry in franchise, Fireproof has shown a new level of mastery with the medium with this engaging, wondrous world of puzzles and arcane magic—something that truly sets a new bar for the VR puzzle genre.
Last week HTC announced the full Vive Cosmos lineup which saw the introduction of three new variants which each use faceplates with different capabilities. Cosmos Elite, the high-end variant which uses SteamVR Tracking, opens for pre-orders as of today, with a release date of March 18th.
Hand-tracking on Quest rolled out as an experimental feature in late 2019, but Oculus is letting it gestate before it will accept third-party apps with hand-tracking. In the meantime, the company has published fresh developer documentation which establishes best practices for working within the limitations of Quest hand-tracking.
Until You Fall launched in Early Access on Steam and Oculus back in August 2019; the game impressed us with its excellent VR melee combat system. Despite consistently high reviews, the game hasn’t attracted a critical mass of players, pushing developer Schell Games to shift development focus toward support for new headsets. With most PC VR headsets already covered, the studio is likely considering Quest and PSVR.
Boneworks (2019), the VR shooter-adventure from Stress Level Zero, is now live on the Oculus Store for Rift, although arguably more fascinating is the studio’s intention to bring its physics-based system built for Boneworks to the modest Oculus Quest, which it recently reaffirmed, as well as PC VR headsets too.
VR streamers and those capturing VR gameplay footage with Oculus PC headsets know about OculusMirror.exe which lets you customize the VR view displayed on the monitor, including showing things like Oculus Dash and Oculus Home which don’t normally appear in the external window. While OculusMirror.exe is a powerful little tool, its command-line interface made it a hassle to use. The latest update to the Oculus desktop software finally adds a simple graphical interface, making the tool much easier to use.
