During Sony’s inaugural ‘State of Play’ livestream, the company today announced a number of PSVR games with official street dates, many of which we’ve been salivating over for the past year.
As a part of Sony’s inaugural ‘State of Play’ webseries, the company today announced that the upcoming action shooter for PSVR Blood & Truth finally has a release date.
Sony today announced a number of games coming to PS4 and PSVR, among which was Marvel’s Iron Man VR.
With a history of developing some of the greatest games ever made—Half-Life, Portal, Counter Strike, Team Fortress, to name a few—the VR space has high hopes for the three VR games that the company has confirmed it’s developing. But some have taken recent layoffs as a sign that Valve’s interest in VR is waning. Valve head Gabe Newell recently took his to inbox to answer some questions, including affirming that the company is still working on its VR titles.
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, who left the company back in 2017, says that the lack of hardware-adjustable IPD (distance between lenses) on the Rift S means he won’t be able to comfortably use the headset, and says that it will be a great headset but only for about 70% of the population which are comfortably covered by the headset’s IPD range.
OptiTrack at GDC last week showed off a demonstration of their enterprise/commercial tracking technology which is capable of accurately tracking hundreds of objects simultaneously in real-time. For those building out of home applications with VR, OptiTrack now has available a set of add-ons and a suite of tools for tracking of Rift and Vive headsets, bodies, and props, including a SteamVR plugin.
We weren’t certain the PSVR title Golem would ever see the light of day after its lengthy delay. It wasn’t until the studio assured us late last year that yes, the game was still in production well after its prospective March 16th, 2018 launch date had come and gone. Now it appears PAX East-goers will get a fresh whack at the game, which was unveiled way back in 2015.
Nintendo’s upcoming Labo VR Kit for Switch includes a trove of creative VR content along with six ‘build it yourself’ cardboard accessories which are paired with VR experiences that work together with them. One of the accessories might look like a goofy ‘elephant’, but a closer look reveals a genius makeshift 6DOF controller made from some cardboard, stickers, and the Switch’s Joy-Con controllers.
Valve’s resident experimental psychologist Dr. Mike Ambinder took the stage at GDC 2019 today for his talk on the state of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and how they’ll inform the future of game design. In his talk, Ambinder put forth a near future where VR/AR headsets are kitted with non-invasive electroencephalogram (EEG) devices that could one day provide data to game designers so they can create a new generation of smarter, more reactive games. The long-term view is definitely trending towards neuronal implants, Ambinder says, but we’re not there yet.
None among us can deny Nintendo’s penchant for creativity. The limited VR specs of the Switch don’t exactly inspire, but the company’s creative array of accessories and content in the Labo VR Kit just might. Nintendo has shown off a unique set of games based on the DIY cardboard peripherals (there’s a freaking bird attachment), along with 64 mini-experiences which can be deconstructed and experimented with in the ‘Garage VR’ scriptable programming tool.
Asgard’s Wrath is an upcoming combat RPG from Sanzaru Games, the studio that created Rift exclusives Marvel Powers United VR (2018) and Ripcoil (2016). It’s slated to launch on Rift and the newly unveiled Rift S in 2019, although to whet our appetites in the meantime the studio released some fresh footage at their public GDC 2019 debut this week, showing off what to expect from the game’s combat and puzzle-laden quests.
While to some Oculus’ announcement of the Rift S represents the newest and best version of a good VR headset, to others it’s a far cry from what they hoped Oculus would be able to deliver three years after the first Rift. Facebook’s top priority with Rift S is clear: jumpstart a sustainable ecosystem for developers, even if that means drawing ire from its base of loyal enthusiasts.
Oculus announced its next iteration of Rift this week at GDC, Rift S. While there’s a few key differences about the upcoming hardware specs-wise, it seems the company has also taken a page out of Go’s playbook by including an open-ear integrated audio solution in the headstrap of Rift S. To that end, Oculus says they might bring out a bespoke audio accessory in the future.
Coatsink, the studio known for VR games Augmented Empire (2018) and the Esper series, unveiled a new puzzle game at GDC 2019 this week that’s slated to be a day-one launch title for Oculus Quest. We got a chance to go hands-on with the room-scale puzzler, and it’s poised to be another clever and well-realized entry from the studio.
Epic Games today announced at GDC that the company is set to turbo-charge their long-running developer grant initiative with ‘MegaGrants’ and the largest pool of funds yet, $100,000,000.
