Oculus has finally taken the wraps off of Rift S, its first PC VR headset release in three years. But there’s a reason the company is calling this Rift S and not Rift 2; the changes are mostly for the better, but not improvements across the board.
At a special GDC Oculus media event this week we got a chance to go hands-on with Sanzaru Games’ upcoming Norse-themed action adventure game Asgard’s Wrath, presented on Oculus’ newly unveiled ‘Rift S’ headset. It’s beautiful, difficult, and will definitely require time to master, as enemies are both difficult and also require a specific style of interaction to slay—something that may not be entirely intuitive at first.
Oculus has announced Rift S, the headset’s fabled hardware refresh that brings with it a modest spec bump and a few other changes to the original Rift that the company hopes will appeal to new entrants in PC VR gaming. With the standalone headset Oculus Quest and Rift S both selling for the same $400 price tag and coming at some point this Spring, you might want to know what sets the two apart.
ILMxLab is to finally demo its upcoming Star Wars Virtual Reality series, Vader Immortal at the annual Star Wars Celebration event in April.
HP today announced Reverb (formerly codenamed Copper), its new VR headset which aims to deliver enhanced resolution and comfort. With a more thoughtful design and pixel-packed displays, Reverb sets a new bar for Windows VR headsets.
Pimax today announced their Brainwarp software will be coming out of beta soon with the official launch of Brainwarp version 1.0.
Today at GDC, HTC announced plans to make available a lip-tracking module for the Vive Pro. The company says it doesn’t currently have plans to consumerize the device, but instead wants to make it available for research and experimentation.
Beat Games is getting ready to take their massively successful block-slashing rhythm game to new heights, as Oculus today announced that Beat Saber (2018) is coming to Oculus Quest at launch.
OpenXR is a royalty-free standard for cross-platform VR and AR development. It’s backed by many of the biggest names in the VR and AR industries and has been in development by the consortium for two years now, organized by Khronos Group. The group today announced the ratification of OpenXR 0.9, a provisional version of the specification, which is now available for feedback from developers and implementers.
Today Pimax announced it’s introducing a new business-focused ruggedized line of its “8K” series virtual reality headsets, set to release sometime this year.
Beat Games, the Czech Republic-based indie developers behind Beat Saber (2018), announced they’ve sold over one million copies of their popular block-slashing rhythm game—a figure calculated across all supported VR platforms.
According to a report by UploadVR, citing emails sent from Facebook to Oculus developers, the rumored Rift S headsets will be revealed next week at GDC.
SVVR, one the leading VR community groups in the Bay Area, is hosting its 6th annual VR Mixer event during GDC next week. The event is a gathering of the VR and AR community featuring the ‘demo dungeon’, and entire floor dedicated to showing off independent XR projects.
Yesterday Rebellion Developments, the studio behind the Sniper Elite series, announced that a Sniper Elite VR game is in development in partnership with studio Just Add Water. Details have been kept to a minimum, with a full announcement planned for later this year, but a short glimpse of the game shows that it’s likely headed to PSVR with Aim support; support for other headsets and platforms is unclear at this time.
