VR veterans Aldin, the indie studio behind Waltz of the Wizard and other early and innovative VR titles, has announced the closure of a $1 million Seed investment. The money will be used to support the studio’s next project which aims to create “believable virtual realities” by fusing VR and AI to push the boundary of interactive storytelling.
The Walker (2018) is a VR action-shooter from Haymaker that puts a six-shooter in one hand and magic talismans in the other—all to fend off zombies of increasingly horrific sizes in the streets of old Shanghai. The Walker is now available on PSVR in the US; EU players will have to wait until July 6th for the game to hit PSN.
With Marvel Powers United VR headed to Rift next moth, the hype train for the official Marvel superhero co-op game from Sanzaru Games and Oculus Studios is just about left the station. The next set of villains on this list: the sentient (and evil) robot Ultron and the dastardly symbiote Venom.
For VR users, the following question inevitably arises in some shape or form: why isn’t ‘x-studio’ making my favorite ‘y’ game in VR? While the answer usually ends up being a lack of sufficient profit motive on the part of established studios, sometimes indie devs step up to deliver what people are clamoring for. Case in point: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) in VR—at least tantalizing pieces of it, including epic (and super nostalgic) boss battles.
Plexus Immersive Corp, a San Francisco-based startup, announced a pair of VR gloves that integrate haptic feedback and interface with multiple tracking standards, including SteamVR, Oculus Rift, and Windows “Mixed Reality” VR. Dubbed Plexus, a pair of dev kit gloves will cost $250, and a waitlist in now available through the company’s website.
A report from Tom’s Hardware states that NVIDIA’s next-generation GeForce GPUs, tentatively being referred to as the GTX 11-series, will include a new connector with enough bandwidth to support future VR headsets much higher resolutions and greater refresh rates.
HTC is reportedly laying off 1,500 employees in its Taiwan manufacturing division, something Bloomberg’s Taipei bureau chief Samson Ellis reports to be around 22% of HTC employees.
German ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst is participating in a study aboard the International Space Station (ISS) that’s designed to give Earth-bound researchers a better understanding of how sight, sound, and gravity impacts hand-eye coordination. Using a modified Oculus Rift, Gerst isn’t strapping in for fun and games though (even if Echo VR or Space Junkies would take on a whole new level of immersion).
Using state-of-the-art photogrammetry technology with millimeter accuracy, Simon Che de Boer of Reality Virtual and Experius VR have digitally scanned Nerfertari’s tomb, letting owners of Vive, Rift, and Windows VR headsets step inside the fabled burial site and learn about the over 3,000 year-old Egyptian queen’s life, religion, and culture.
The monthly Steam hardware survey is out again, and while June hasn’t revealed any major upsets in the balances of usership between HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, the survey shows that Windows “Mixed Reality” VR headsets are making slow, but steady headway on the platform.
Last October Oculus announced its ‘Oculus Rift for Business‘ bundle, offering for the first time a package which included a warranty and license officially sanctioned for commercial use. This week the company dropped the price of the package and announced availability in four new regions, but China still isn’t on the list.
Space Junkies, Ubisoft’s upcoming VR arena shooter fro Rift and Vive, is now in closed beta, which goes until July 2nd. I called Space Junkies VR’s spiritual successor to Unreal Tournament in our preview, but you can check out some of the real action here in a complete match played by yours truly.
Unreal Tournament (1999) was one of the staple arena shooters of my youth. It’s simple; find the best gun you can, stock up on as much health and armor as possible, always keep moving until you die, respawn, rinse and repeat. In this respect, Ubisoft’s latest foray into VR has replicated much of this, which paradoxically leaves me undecided if I really like Space Junkies or not from what I’ve seen from the closed beta.
Pimax today announced they’ve headed into the mass production phase of the Pimax “8K” VR headset.
Niantic, the developer behind Pokémon Go and the upcoming Harry Potter AR game, announced they’ll be opening up access to their latest work in AR, dubbed the ‘Niantic Real World Platform’, to third-party developers soon. To boot, the company also introduced a few key AR technologies that will have you salivating over the possibilities of actually chasing down pocket monsters on your commute to that next Pokéstop.
