Outside of the initial setup process, you don’t really need a smartphone to run Oculus Go—after all, it’s a standalone headset for a reason. And while Oculus today rolled out screen casting on Go, you may rethink that decision to leave your phone in your pocket when you show off your shiny new headset at Thanksgiving next month.
The Pimax “8K” headset was the result of VR’s most successful Kickstarter campaign, beating out all others, including Oculus, with a whopping $4.23 million raised when the campaign concluded in November 2017. It’s been a bit of a bumpy road over the past year, with some shipping setbacks and several changes made to the final product lineup, but Pimax has now announced that pre-orders are starting today for the “8K”, “5K” Plus, and “5K” Business Edition (BE) headsets.
After two years in stealth, Spatial today announced an $8 million seed investment to build out its AR/VR collaboration platform.
Hipfire Games, a Helsinki-based studio made up of ex-Supercell and Rovio developers, announced late last year that their space-based delivery game Failspace was in the making for HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows VR headsets. Now the studio is accepting registration for the game’s closed alpha, which is due to start on December 3rd.
The standout feature for Samsung’s new Odyssey+ headset is its so-called “anti-SDE” display, but beyond that it appears that the headset has actually seen minor adjustments in a handful of areas. With the first Odyssey headset having poor ergonomics, we’re hoping that these adjustments will make the headset more comfortable for a wider range of users.
Secret Location, the studio behind Blasters of the Universe (2016) and Sleepy Hollow: VR Experience (2015), announced last month that they’re heading back into VR territory with a new first-person, time-bending puzzle game. Dubbed Transpose, the game is said to take place in a dreamlike universe where players record multiple overlapping versions of themselves that need to cooperate to solve increasingly intricate puzzles.
Earlier this month, HTC quietly opened their first Vive flagship store in Shenzhen, China.
Back in August we uncovered what appeared to be an updated version of Samsung’s Odyssey Windows VR headset. Now a listing on Samsung’s official website confirms the Odyssey+ and its price, suggesting that a launch is soon at hand.
Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe is leaving Facebook. Citing “a source close to the matter,” a report from TechCrunch indicates his departure is related to the cancellation of a Rift 2 headset, though Facebook has denied that element of the report.
Oculus announced it’s shutting down movie rentals and purchases through its Oculus Rift video app, effective today.
CCP Games, the Icelandic studio known for their long-running MMO Eve: Online (2003), shuttered their VR production studios in a surprise move last year, selling off their Newcastle-based branch behind their multiplayer space dogfighter EVE: Valkyrie (2016), and completely shutting down their Atlanta studio behind sports game Sparc (2017). Now, CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson speaks out in an interview with Destructoid about the studio’s reconsolidation back to traditional desktop gaming, and his thoughts about the VR landscape. In short, he thought VR would be bigger by now, and more capable of supporting a healthy multiplayer userbase.
Fraunhofer, Europe’s largest application-oriented R&D organization, recently unveiled a new VR headset prototype at the Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Munich this past week that aims to reduce the size and weight of VR headsets by using high-resolution microdisplays.
Viveport’s annual Halloween sale is here, offering deals on popular horror titles from now until November 4th.
Today at the the World Conference on VR Industry in China, HTC announced plans to bring hand & finger tracking to Vive Pro via the headset’s front-facing cameras.
HTC today announced a 6DOF controller tracking add-on for Vive Focus. The add-on, which includes a pair of new controllers, is being released as a development kit.
