It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost two years since the SteamVR Knuckles controllers were first revealed using a demo of our game, Call of the Starseed (2016), at Steam Devs Days 2016. Now, at the reveal of Knuckles EV2 this summer, we’ve got a whole bunch more to talk about.
Announced back at Facebook’s F8 developer conference earlier this year, Oculus TV is the company’s latest first-party app that pulls a number of flatscreen video options together under one roof. The app is now available for free on Oculus Go.
Oculus Go, the company’s $200 standalone 3DOF headset released last month, is finally available through Oculus retail partners in Europe and Canada. Online availability is fairly wide-spread, while some brick-and-mortar locations now have the headset in stock on store shelves.
Bethesda’s debut VR title Skyrim VR (2017) recently received its third patch since the hotly awaited game launched on PSVR back in November. According to a studio forum post, the free patch not only fixes a few quality-of-life issues such as realistic bow-shooting and control scheme changes on PS Move, but also improves visual fidelity on both PS4 and PS4 Pro.
Alongside the reveal of the revamped Knuckles controllers that Valve shared last week, third party developers have confirmed they’ve begun receiving the new EV2 version of the controller. Valve says that “soon, hundreds of developers will get their hands on developer kits and begin experimenting,” and the company is inviting more developers to join the Knuckles dev kit program. Along with the clearly matured design shown off in Knuckles EV2, the quantity of controllers being shipped out to developers suggests that Valve has begun manufacturing small batches, possibly in preparation for a broader rollout.
Virtual Virtual Reality is a VR gem which launched first on mobile VR headsets and recently came to the Rift. As a game which demonstrated an intricate understanding of VR interaction design and freeform narrative, Virtual Virtual Reality turned out to be one of mobile VR’s most immersive titles to date. Now Tender Claws, the studio behind the game, is teasing a new project in the works.
ICAROS is a Munich-based VR health startup that produces a unique motion platform which simulates flying in the prone position, something the makers say can provide a real workout. The company recently announced it’s completed a funding round in the “mid-seven figures” from Austrian private venture company Segnalita.
HTC is donating over 110 HTC Vive systems to California and Nevada libraries through its new Vive Libraries Program, an effort to seed local communities with premium VR.
Back at E3 2016, Microsoft’s Head of Xbox Phil Spencer announced on stage that the Xbox One X (then ‘Project Scorpio’) would become the industry’s next VR-compatible console, positioning the platform to compete with Sony’s PSVR with what Spencer called “high fidelity VR.” Now, it appears, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer for gaming Mike Nichols has put a final nail in the Xbox One VR coffin in a recent GamesIndustry.biz interview, saying the company doesn’t have “any plans specific to Xbox One consoles.”
One of the things that inspires me to do the Voices of VR podcast is being able to talk with hundreds of people listening for the underlying patterns of experiential design. VR & AR are reflections of the human experience, and so any experiential design framework for immersive technologies should also describe aspects of our conscious experiences. I’ve found that Eastern Philosophies, Chinese Philosophies, Natural Philosophy, and Hermetic Philosophies have useful ways of describing qualitative aspects of the human experience through concrete metaphors that can be adapted into holistic experiential design frameworks.
Steam’s annual summer sale is back, and heavy discounts are here on hundreds of VR games including a number of top titles that will have you spending those hot days in the cold depths of space, post-apocalyptic warzones, and practically anywhere you can imagine that isn’t your backyard.
Accompanying the news that Valve has made a critical redesign of its ‘Knuckles’ motion controller, the company also recently released a new input system in beta that not only aims to create lifelike hands, but make them accessible to all SteamVR app developers.
Since announcing the ‘Knuckles’ controller prototype all the way back in 2016, Valve has been relatively quiet about its progress outside of a select group of developers who have been experimenting with early development kits. That changed this week as Valve offered up a major information dump, showcasing the latest Knuckles dev kit with a significant design overhaul, alongside a new tech demo designed to demonstrate what the controllers are capable of.
