Oculus first announced that Boggle and other Hasbro board games would be coming to Oculus’ mobile VR platform back at F8, Facebook’s developer conference. Now the day has arrived, at least for Boggle, as users on Gear VR and Oculus Go can already play the mind-boggling word game for free in Oculus Rooms, the company’s social VR app on mobile.
Microsoft appears to be seeing strong traction with HoloLens in the enterprise space, and the company continues to expand its “Mixed Reality” platform in that sector, promising businesses time and money savings. Two new applications to address this, Remote Assist & Layout—announced at Microsoft Build earlier this month—are now available in free, limited-time previews.
Ahead of SID Display Week, researchers have published details on Google and LG’s 18 Mpixel 4.3-in 1,443-ppi 120Hz OLED display made for wide field of view VR headsets, which was teased back in March.
Ever since WipEout Omega Collection (2017) added support for PSVR back in March, it became the de facto gold standard of anti-grav VR racing on the platform. Now, users looking to pop their head in to see what all the fuss is about should have their eyeballs pointed to PSN starting tomorrow, as Sony is tossing out a free WipEout Omega Collection demo replete with PSVR support.
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.
