Linden Lab’s website maintains Sansar is their platform for creating social VR experiences, and that “Sansar will democratize VR as a creative medium, making it easy for people to create, share, and sell their own social VR experiences.” It seems however the company is less bullish on VR now that hype has died down—at least as far as the company’s messaging goes.
3DSen VR (formerly known as 3DNesVR) is an emulator tool that runs Nintendo Entertainment System games in VR, letting you play the ’80s and ’90s classic titles that made the console a world-wide phenomenon.
Beat Saber developer Beat Games confirmed to Road to VR that the game will include all official features, modes, and music when it launches with Quest this Spring. Additionally, the studio says it didn’t have to make any concessions on tracking input logic to account for Quest’s inside-out tracked controllers.
PSVR users have been waiting for an app that essentially lets them watch all of their favorite content with their other VR headset-owning buddies, or something akin to how Bigscreen Beta works on headsets like Rift, Vive, and Go. Sony actually created its own social VR viewing app for PSVR users in Japan, but it’s certainly no Bigscreen.
With Nintendo’s latest ‘Labo’ kit for Switch, the company made its first real strides into VR (not counting Virtual Boy). Within only a week of its release, the cardboard VR headset maker-kit is already sold out all over the web in the US and in parts of Europe.
Microsoft researchers have created a tool that could make VR more accessible to users with impaired vision.
Cyan, the creators of genre-defining puzzle adventure games Myst (1993) and Riven (1997), are only a week away from the end of their latest campaign, a new VR puzzler called Firmament. With still over $400,000 to go, the company is now asking backers to tell friends about the project in an ostensible race to the finish.
Facebook is currently developing a voice assistant that could function similar to Amazon Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant. Notably, it’s intended to support Oculus headsets in addition to Portal, and “future products.”
With Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs (2019) fresh out the door, Resolution Games today announced Acron, a new multiplayer game that pits one VR player against a group of local mobile users.
Oculus announced that Thumper (2016), the popular rhythm-action game, is officially coming to Quest at launch.
Already own a copy of Google’s VR creation tool Tilt Brush (2016) from the Oculus Store? Then you’ll be able to hop right into the company’s intuitive painting app with Oculus Quest, the upcoming standalone VR headset.
As first reported by PocketGamer, Facebook is advertising a few new posts at its VR subsidiary Oculus, laced with the notion that a Facebook-built AR headset is definitely on the rise.
We’re still holding our breath of the next wave of consumer VR headsets yet to come, namely Rift S, Quest, and Valve Index. None of them have official release dates yet, so some intrepid developers found a way to bide their time by making the Valve and the soon-to-launch Valve Index controllers (ex-Knuckles) hum beautiful MIDI files just for the fun of it.
Philip Rosedale, CEO of High Fidelity and founder of Second Life, announced at a High Fidelity community meeting recently that the company will be scaling back their VR efforts, focusing more on improving their PC and Mac performance. The company has also shut down all first-party user spaces and associated servers except for a single orientation room, which will be used for new users only.
In an interview with Wired, the lead system architect on the next PlayStation console, Mark Cerny, confirmed that PS5 (naming still unconfirmed) will retain support for the current PSVR headset.
