At GDC 2019 later this month, Valve’s Principal Experimental Psychologist, Mike Ambinder will present the latest research pertaining to brain-computer interfaces—using signals from the brain as computer input. Ambinder says that BCI is still “speculative technology,” but could play an important role in the way players interact with the games of the future.
Tactical Haptics has been working on a unique haptic controller design since its founding in 2013. While we’ve seen a number of prototypes over the years, the company is getting ready to show what it calls a “production-ready” version of its Reactive Grip VR controller, set to debut later this month at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, California.
Borderlands 2 VR (2018) launched on PSVR late last year with support for DualShock 4 and PS Move, and while it also seemed to be a perfect fit for the platform’s dedicated gun controller, PS Aim, users just had to make do. Now developers Gearbox Software and 2K Games have announced they’ve officially added PS Aim support including a few other shooting specific improvements that should keep you happily blasting bandits and looting vaults with greater ease regardless of your chosen controller.
Valve today confirmed that the company laid off 13 full-time employees and an unspecified number of contractors. The layoffs are believed to have largely impacted the company’s VR hardware group.
Vertigo Games, the studio behind Arizona Sunshine (2016) and Skyworld (2017), have teamed up with Vive Studios to create a new VR card-battler dubbed Skyworld: Kingdom Brawl.
It seems one of two things is happening at the moment: either Oculus Rift has been selling like hotcakes and going out of stock simultaneously all over the Internet, or the company is tuning down production for some unknown reason. Considering there’s been no big price drops lately to bring on unseasonable demand, it could be that Facebook is flushing out stock to make way for what’s next.
Megalith (2018), the first-person PSVR battle arena from Disruptive Games, now boasts a free demo that gives you a good chance to try out all of the game’s Titans before plonking down the cash for the full game.
Nintendo is bringing VR to Switch in the form of its latest ‘Labo’ kit which aims to “combine the innovative physical and digital gameplay of Nintendo Labo with basic VR technology to create a simple and shareable virtual reality experience for kids and families.”
Developers creating VR apps for Oculus Quest will probably have a harder time getting through the review process than they did previously with Rift or Go. Small consolation for devs who don’t make the all important Oculus Store cut: end users will still be able to sideload unsupported apps from outside of the Oculus Store.
It’s been nearly two years since Google launched its first Glass Enterprise Edition, something the company called “a new chapter” for the device. Originally introduced in its Explorer Edition in 2013 targeting early adopters and developers, it now appears the second gen Enterprise Edition Glass could be well on its way to the final stages of production.
Owlchemy Labs today announced their next VR parody game Vacation Simulator is set to release for PC VR headsets next month. The PSVR version is slated to launch a little later at some point this summer.
Beat Games, the indie studio behind block-slashing rhythm game Beat Saber (2018), announced that the long-awaited first music pack is headed to both PC and PSVR platforms on March 14th.
Facebook has been pretty hands-off when it comes to providing VR solutions for enterprise, although that may be changing with the entrance of bonafide enterprise versions for both Oculus Quest and Oculus Go.
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.
