Intel’s Brent Insko has taken over as the Chair of the OpenXR working group after Epic’s Nick Whiting passed the torch. The pair say the OpenXR effort is still going strong, and a progress update is planned for March.
Headset manufacturers are notoriously secretive about sales numbers, so finding out how well one specific VR headset is doing in the marketplace at any given time can be a bit of a guessing game. Now, Fast Travel Games, the studio behind the multi-platform bow-shooter Apex Construct (2018), maintains their VR game saw a marked increase in sales on PlayStation Store as a result of strong PSVR headset adoption in 2018.
A series of Early Access updates to Compound have brought a handful of fun new weapons to the game’s 8-bit rougelike gameplay, culminating in a “massive overhaul” which introduces new enemies and offers SteamVR Input for custom input binding between controllers.
Scape Technologies announced last week that it has raised an $8 million seed investment for a visual positioning system that it says can provide centimeter-accurate location data at city-scale. Such a system could be a key component in enabling a shared, persistent AR metaverse simultaneously accessible by all users.
While the Oculus Rift could be occasionally found on sale at $350 over the last 12 months, the actual MSRP of the headset has been steady at $400 for a little over a year. Last week the company opted to drop the MSRP to a new low of $350. Those unfortunate souls that bought a Rift in that short window where the price was still $400 may be bummed at not waiting just a bit longer for the savings. However there may still be time to get a $50 refund.
Beat Saber (2018), the block-slicing VR rhythm game, has been given top honors once again, this time by PlayStation’s own 2018 Game of the Year Awards.
PlayStation VR Demo Disc 3 is now available on the PlayStation Store, including demos for nine hit VR titles.
It looks like Magic Leap could be gearing up to jump into the world of mobile AR, as the company recently published a job listing for a senior software engineer who will be tasked with building “a cross-platform framework that enables large scale shared AR experiences between mobile devices (iOS, Android) and Magic Leap devices.”
According to a report from The Verge, an upcoming Microsoft press event is likely to offer the first glimpse of HoloLens 2.
Keeping an eye on your phone when you’re in a VR headset is an absolute chore: place it in on vibrate in your pocket, glance at the screen through the gap between your nose and facial interface when it buzzes, and prop the headset on your forehead to respond to calls and text messages. To address this excruciating first-world malady, Dell is including a new VR function in its Mobile Connect software that lets you bring your entire Android phone—and some of your iPhone—into any VR app running on SteamVR.
Bolvërk Games and PlayStack released word today that a new sequel to their VR shooting gallery Dick Wilde (2017) is slated to launch sometime in February.
Co-founded by former CERN engineers who contributed to the ATLAS project at the Large Hadron Collider, CREAL3D is a Switzerland-based startup that’s created an impressive light-field display that’s unlike anything in an AR or VR headset on the market today.
Microsoft Maquette is a VR tool from Microsoft which is all about prototyping spatial designs. First teased in October 2018, the company has now released Maquette for free on Steam.
The developers behind Bigscreen Beta, the social VR app that lets you stream and share your desktop’s screen in VR, have been pretty quiet over the past year, although that’s about to change in what studio CEO & founder Darshan Shankar calls some “massive new features” coming to the app.
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown is headed to PlayStation 4 January 18th, and while it’s true Bandai Namco isn’t letting players experience the entire campaign in VR, instead creating bespoke VR-only missions, at very least it appears to translate a bit of the flatscreen game’s charm to PSVR headsets in a new demo from Sony’s ‘PlayStation Underground’ team.
