Earlier this year Leap Motion had been teasing some very compelling AR interface prototypes, demonstrated on an unknown headset. The company revealed that the headset is a prototype dev kit, designed in-house, offering a combined 100 degree field of view, low latency, and high resolution. Leap Motion has begun open-sourcing the design of the device, which they’re calling Project North Star.
If the news that Tetris is coming to PSVR hasn’t flipped any wigs, the makers of Space Pirate Trainer (2017), the super successful arcade shooter, have just tossed out a not-so-subtle hint that PSVR owners will soon be able to dive head-first into the galactic robot shooter.
It looks like the alleged Sony E3 leak, which showed Resident Evil 2 (1998), Spider-Man, and BioShock Resurgence coming to PSVR, hasn’t gotten its moment of vindication yet, as Sony today announced that a new Tetris game is coming to the PS4 console with PSVR support.
Universal and The Virtual Reality Company (VRC) today announced Jurassic World VR Expedition, an out-of-home VR rescue adventure that puts you in the dense, dino-filled jungles familiar to the film franchise, is debuting on June 14th at more than 100 Dave & Buster’s entertainment centers.
InstaVR, a VR authoring, publishing, and analysis company, announced it has successfully closed a Series B financing round, which the company says will help further its mission in providing enterprise customers the tools to create their own VR apps. The company received $5 million, bringing its total funding to date to $7.2 million. Series B participants include YJ Capital, ITOCHU Technology Ventures, Mizuho Capital Partners, GREE Ventures, COLOPL NEXT, and The Venture Reality Fund.
The Chinese variant of the Oculus Go, sold by Xiaomi as the ‘Mi VR Standalone’, appears to be seeing strong launch demand, with the headset quickly selling out, in some cases within just minutes.
Magic Leap—which first announced its headset, the Magic Leap One, back in December—could finally offer a glimpse of what the device can actually do during a developer livestream hosted by the company today.
Last month’s launch of Oculus Go, the $200 standalone VR headset, has stolen much of the virtual limelight as of late, but owners of recent Samsung flagship phones can still get in on many of the new apps and updates coming to the Oculus mobile store. Now, Samsung has temporarily reduced the price of the latest Gear VR headset + controller combo to as low as $90 on Amazon.
Adobe recently unveiled a new project that aims to take the company further into the realm of augmented reality. Called Project Aero, the newly announced AR authoring tool and multi-platform system that will soon deliver a way for developers to build simple AR scenes and experiences for Apple’s ARKit.
Innoactive, the enterprise-focused VR/AR software company, announced it’s completed a successful funding round of €4.4 million (~$5.15 million USD). The lead investor is Unternehmertum Venture Capital Partners (UVC Partners), and is joined by Capnamic Ventures.
Apple has shown that it’s getting serious about the VR on Mac with platform-spanning VR announcements crossing both hardware and software at last year’s WWDC event. With SteamVR and the Vive now up and running on MacOS, eyes turn to Oculus, but the company isn’t ready to commit.
At Worldwide Developer Conference today, Apple announced a new avatar system, dubbed ‘Memoji’, the company’s next step into the world of iPhone X animated emojis mapped to a user’s facial movements. Move over Samsung AR Emoji, because Apple looks to have gotten the cutesy Pixar-vibe down pat.
At Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) today, the company confirmed that ARKit 2.0 is coming with a list of new features, including mutiuser support, and a bevy of updates that look to refine AR interactions on iOS devices.
NextVR, the company specializing in live VR sports and entertainment broadcasting, has already begun its public debut of the new high-resolution video format teased back at CES earlier this year, which comes via free, on-demand game highlights of the 2018 NBA Finals featuring the Golden State Warriors vs. the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The team behind the SUPERHOT franchise is looking for a producer for “a shiny new VR project,” according to a recent job posting on the company’s website.
