ESL, the world’s largest esports organizer, and Oculus announced that season three of the VR League will kickoff on March 24th. A prize pool, which is touted as the league’s largest yet, tallies a total of $250,000.
Viveport Infinity, HTC’s unlimited Netflix-style game delivery service for Vive & Rift, is set to launch on April 2nd. To celebrate, the company is giving a one-month free access code to anyone who fills out a quick user survey.
At this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) it seemed every mobile network operator on the planet was hocking the next hotness in data connectivity, the magical alphanumeric ‘5G’. It’s true 5G is slated to make way for plenty of changes in how users consume mobile content thanks to a dramatic increase in bandwidth and lowered latency, but if you’re salivating over the possibilities for what that means for VR gaming in the near future, you may want to step back a bit.
The latest data from Valve’s Steam Survey shows the Rift and Windows VR headsets continuing growth streaks in their share of monthly-connected headsets on Steam, snatching share mostly from the Vive and Vive Pro.
Indie VR studio Stress Level Zero has been quietly working on their new title, Boneworks since going into stealth development after showing off an intriguing tech demo last year which featured rich, physics-based interactions. Today the studio is revealing Boneworks as a full game, due for launch in 2019.
Kingdom Hearts: VR Experience was supposed to launch on PSVR sometime around the holiday season last year, and while it may have missed its mark, the franchise’s first official VR experience is now available for free in North America, Europe and Japan.
Magic Leap is giving away serious cash to developers this year through their Independent Creator Program, which has earmarked an “eight-figure” number destined to fund app developers working in gaming, entertainment, collaboration, productivity, and more. Now, the company has released a list of its first round of recipients which was whittled down from over 6,500 applicants.
Announced just last week, Vive Focus Plus is HTC’s next iteration of their standalone VR headset that adds a pretty big missing puzzle piece, namely a replacement for its predecessor’s single 3DOF controller (rotation only) for the new 6DOF controllers. But that’s not exactly all there is to Vive Focus Plus.
Oculus has always taken a curated approach to VR content, being the first and last word on what VR content can and can’t be offered through their platform. But now the company plans to further tighten its grip on Quest content by imposing a higher quality bar, the company says, to ensure that the headset offers customers rich experiences while raising the likelihood of developers success (for those allowed in).
LetinAR, a Korea-based startup developing optical solutions for AR headsets and smartglasses, showed off a new implementation of their ‘pin mirror’ optical tech at Mobile World Congress (MWC) this week, bringing a sharp image quality, a large range of focal depth, and a field of view (FOV) that rivals many of the bigger players who instead use waveguide-based optics.
To significant anticipation, Microsoft revealed HoloLens 2 earlier this week at MWC 2019. By all accounts it looks like a beautiful and functional piece of technology and a big step forward for Microsoft’s AR initiative. All of which makes it unfortunate that the company didn’t strive to be clearer when illustrating one of the three key areas in which the headset is said to be improved over its predecessor.
If you’ve been honing your skills in a VR combat simulator but have been waiting to test your skills against swarms of the undead, your wait may soon be over with Undead Citadel, a zombie-filled action adventure title coming to SteamVR, Vive, Oculus and PSVR headsets at an unannounced time this year from developer Dark Curry.
HTC announced a new product out of left field here at Mobile World Congress (MWC) this week, the 5G Hub mobile hotspot that includes a media streaming device, a digital assistant, and Internet access point for up to 20 concurrent devices. HTC’s growing focus on virtual reality has also led it to include what the company says will be one of the first devices to deliver on the promise of cloud-based app rendering for VR headsets.
Yesterday at Mobile World Congress, Microsoft unveiled HoloLens 2, the company’s next iteration of its enterprise-focused standalone AR headset. Microsoft is coming strong out of the gate with its fleet of partners as well as a number of in-house developed apps that they say will make it easier for companies to connect, collaborate, and do things like learn on-the-job skills and troubleshoot work-related tasks. That’s all well and good, but is the HoloLens 2 hardware truly a ‘2.0’ step forward? That’s the question that ran through my mind for my half-hour session strapped into the AR headset. The short answer: yes.
