HTC Donates Over 100 Vive Headsets to California & Nevada Libraries
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.
Microsoft Affirms No Plans for VR on Xbox Consoles
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.”
Experiential Design Insights from Chinese Philosophy & Natural Philosophy
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 Summer Sale Offers Big Discounts on Top VR Titles
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.
Valve Announces ‘Skeletal Input’ to Give SteamVR Apps More Lifelike Hands Moving Forward
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.
Valve Reveals Latest Knuckles Dev Kit & New ‘Moondust’ Tech Demo
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.
Apple Details Latest VR Optimizations Coming to macOS Mojave (10.14)
Earlier this month at Apple’s annual WWDC conference, the company introduced their latest operating system, macOS Mojave (10.14). Due to roll out as a public beta later this month, and launching widely this Fall as a free update, Mojave brings further VR-specific optimizations to Apple’s Metal graphics API, which the company detailed in a session at WWDC.
‘Echo Arena’ Becomes ‘Echo VR’ to Make Way for ‘Echo Combat’, and Maybe More One Day
With the Echo Combat beta opening today, and the full experience launching later this year, Oculus and Ready at Dawn are doing some reorganization to set the stage for the ongoing expansion of the Echo universe. Today, Echo Arena becomes Echo VR, which will encompass both Echo Arena and Echo Combat.
Magic Leap One Controller Appears in FCC Filing, Release on Track for 2018
Magic Leap One, the long-awaited AR headset from the secretive titular Florida startup, appears to be on its way to its supposed 2018 release date, as the headset’s motion controller, dubbed Control, has just hit the FCC for testing.
Rift & Vive Summer Sales Offer Big Savings on Hundreds of VR Titles
While we’re still waiting on the Steam Summer Sale to materialize, this year’s big Rift and Vive annual summer sales are already here, and hundreds of VR titles are on deep discount on the Oculus Store and Viveport until the beginning of next month.
Hands-on: Vive Wireless Adapter Shows Strong Performance Ahead of Summer Launch
After revealing the Vive Wireless Adapter earlier this year, the company confirmed this week at E3 2018 that the device is on track to launch by late Summer, and offered up some details on the device’s battery and operation. I went hands-on with a near-final version and came away impressed.
Leap Motion Reveals First Extended Demo Shot Through North Star Headset
Back in April Leap Motion first revealed North Star, a prototype AR headset that’s designed to replicate the features of a future high-end AR headset, as a platform for experimentation. Today the company revealed the first extended look of a demo shot through the headset, offering a glimpse of its capabilities.
‘Arizona Sunshine’ Dead Man DLC for PSVR Pushed Back to July
Arizona Sunshine (2016), the room-scale zombie shooter adventure, already got its first campaign DLC on Oculus Rift, Vive & Windows “Mixed Reality” VR headsets on May 24th, dubbed ‘Dead Man’ DLC. The single mission campaign, which was previously targeting a June release on PSVR, is now pushed back to July.
‘Oculus Home’ Update Adds Virtual Screens, Custom Object Importing
Oculus Home, the hub space that users see when putting on their Oculus Rift, has been updated with virtual screens for embedded Dash content and the ability to import custom objects.
Beyeonics Raises $11.5M to Further Develop AR/VR Surgical Visualization Platform
Elbit Systems, an Israel-based defense company, recently announced that its medical technologies subsidiary Beyeonics Surgical successfully concluded its first funding round of $11.5 million, which the company says will be used to expand product development and accelerate commercialization of its surgeon-centric AR/VR technologies.
