AntVR, the Beijing-based VR headset company, recently blew past the $50,000 Kickstarter funding mark for its MIX AR headset, which means the campaign is fully funded. Now well on their way to $150,000 (currently at ~$138,000), the company says their first stretch goal will be a light-blocking visor that will allow for the headset to play in ‘virtual reality mode’.
Training autonomous drones to fly around complex indoor environments inevitably means crashes, not to mention a constant cycle of repair and replacement. To remedy this, MIT engineers created a VR training system that allows drones to “see” virtual imagery while flying around a physically empty test facility.
OSSIC, the headphone company known for its massively successful 3D headphone crowdfunding campaigns, is shutting down due to lack of capital. The company says in an update announcing its closure that the OSSIC X 3D headphones required “significantly more capital to ramp to full mass production,” which effectively leaves tens of thousands of pre-orders unfulfilled.
Humble Bundle just started their big Spring Sale, which is now offering between 10-75% off on over 20 top VR titles.
Vertigo Games is hosting a free access weekend starting now for their VR RTS Skyworld, which will be available through both Steam (Rift, Vive, Windows VR) and the Oculus Store (Rift).
It appears the age of paid downloadable content in VR is rapidly approaching us. Oculus developers will now be able to add discrete DLC to their games on Oculus Go and Samsung Gear VR. Oculus Rift support isn’t far behind.
Boss Key Productions, the North Carolina-based developer behind the unfortunately ill-received first-person shooters LawBreakers (2017) and Radical Heights (2018), is out of business. While both games failed to spark commercial interest, leading to the closure of Boss Key, the studio head and former Gears of War lead designer Cliff Bleszinski took to Twitter in a cathartic post-mortem where he showed off a few VR games the studio had considered before its demise.
After launching the VR ‘VR Challenge League’ last year, Oculus and ESL are partnering once again for what they’re calling “Season 2” of their VR eSports initiative. Rebranded as ‘VR League’, the new season is offering $220,000 in prizes for competitors and an expanded game roster which will include the highly anticipated Echo Combat when it launches later this year.
Moscow-based indie developer Odd Meter isn’t a household name in VR development yet, but with their latest game Sacralith: The Archer’s Tale (2018), that may change somewhat. It’s a surprisingly clever bow shooting game draped in impressively polished visuals – making clear strides into ‘AAA’ territory.
iFLY, a leading provider of indoor skydiving facilities, today launched their iFLY VR initiative which combines the company’s indoor skydiving experience with immersive visuals powered by a Gear VR headset. I got to try to experience for myself at the company’s SF Bay location.
Today is the five-year anniversary for Silicon Valley Virtual Reality meetup, and founder Karl Krantz is announcing a couple of new initiatives as SVVR reorganizes itself as a public-benefit corporation. They’re going to be formally announcing their MULTIVERSE initiative that is going to be bringing Reality Portals to VR events, which will allow people virtually attend VR events put on by SVVR and others through social VR experiences like High Fidelity. They’ve created a screen that can be placed at VR events that provides a low-latency window into a VR world (and vice versa), allowing for serendipitous interactions between co-located events and the virtual attendees.
SUPERHOT (2016), the massively successful slow-mo shooter for PC and console, already has a built-for-VR version for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PSVR—SUPERHOT VR (2017)—but now that the team has licensed the IP to Japanese developers GameTomo, you may be curious if the next installment of red dude-shattering fun is getting another VR counterpart as well. According to the developers, it isn’t likely to arrive at launch, although there’s still hope.
