Beat Games today announced that Beat Saber (2018) just dropped a ten-song DLC music pack featuring the music of Grammy Award-winning rock band Imagine Dragons. The studio is also showing off a new ‘360’ level mode at E3 this week, which promises to change up the game by throwing blocks at you from different directions.
With the curious case of Microsoft initially announcing VR support for Xbox One X and then later pulling the plug before launch, it wasn’t clear if the company would use its next console as its opportunity to finally jump into VR. Today at E3 2019, Microsoft revealed its next-gen Xbox ‘Project Scarlett’ but had nothing to say about VR on the console. Meanwhile, Sony has already confirmed support for PSVR on PS5, and hinted at plans for a next-gen headset.
While we offered our initial hands-on impressions with the Valve’s new Index headset last month, we’ve now had many more hours inside the headset, and an opportunity to put it side by side with others. Here’s a deeper look at Index ahead of a full review still to come.
Valve’s monthly Steam Survey has long offered useful insight into the share of VR headsets in use on Steam. But the figures provided are relative to the non-static Steam population, which obfuscates the actual adoption trend of VR headsets on the platform. To demystify the data, Road to VR has developed a proprietary model which derives actual headset counts by correcting for Steam’s changing population. The latest data shows that monthly-connected VR headsets on Steam have surpassed 1 million for the first time.
Primitive represents one of the most interesting use-cases I’ve seen for VR so far—it creates 3D visualizations of source code that can be collaboratively explored and analyzed in VR. It’s creators believe that bringing a spatial understanding to otherwise flat code enhances the development process of complex code created by distributed development teams.
Apple is taking advantage of a recent iOS feature called AR Quick Look to allow potential customers to see the company’s new Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR at scale in augmented reality right from Apple.com on an iPhone. The ease of use, rendering, and tracking quality make it surprisingly compelling.
Though Oculus touts the Rift S as its “most advanced, PC-powered gaming headset,” the headset is notably trailing other Oculus headsets (including the original Rift) in customer ratings on Amazon. Meanwhile, Quest has taken the lead as the most favorably rated Oculus headset, ranking as high (or higher) than major game consoles.
At the company’s annual WWDC developer conference today, Apple revealed ARKit 3, its latest set of developer tools for creating AR applications on iOS. ARKit 3 now offers real-time body tracking of people in the scene as well as occlusion, allowing AR objects to be convincingly placed in front of and behind those people. Apple also introduced Reality Composer and RealityKit to make it easier for developers to build augmented reality apps.
HTC’s VR app storefront, Viveport, is looking forward to welcoming a host of new VR users with the entrance of Valve Index and Oculus Rift S. To that tune, the company is giving away two free months of Viveport Infinity, its Netflix-style unlimited subscription service, to anyone with a Rift, Rift S, or Index.
Samsung hasn’t really said much about VR since the release of Samsung Odyssey+, the hardware refresh to its Windows Mixed Reality headset that came to market in October 2018. However at Augmented World Expo (AWE), the company offered a few brief statements to underline their continued commitment to the space. In short: Samsung has more AR/VR products coming down the pipeline.
Trover Saves the Universe, the latest VR title from Squanch Games and the mind of Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland, launched today on PS4 with support for both PSVR and non-VR. The game will launch for PC VR headsets via Steam next week.
Leap Motion, the pioneer in optical hand-tracking, has been acquired by Ultrahaptics, the enterprise-focused immersive haptics company.
Nintendo today announced that the latest update to Super Smash Bros Ultimate has added a special mode which allows the game to be played with the Switch VR Labo Goggles.
GOG is giving away Obduction (2016), the latest VR puzzler from Cyan, the studio behind iconic ’90s adventure puzzlers Myst (1993) and Riven (1997).
The studio behind the infectiously cool action game SUPERHOT VR (2016) say the Oculus Quest launch last week has brought them another big helping of success.
