vTime, the social VR platform, today announced the closure of a $7.6 million (£5.4 million) Series A funding round led by Deepbridge Capital with included investment from Liverpool, UK-based institutional loan and equity provider MSIF.
The Dubai Mall, one of the world’s largest shopping complexes, is now home to VR Park, an indoor theme park spanning two floors and over 75,000 square feet of space, offering a wide variety of VR experiences, including several physical rides. At the opening of the park we went hands-on with the main attractions, many of which utilise the high-resolution, high-FOV StarVR headset.
Google this week introduced a new “High Quality” option for their Jump Assembler, an automated 3D 360 video stitching service for creators shooting with Jump cameras. The new approach brings more accurate stitching with enhanced depth maps resulting in sharper 3D output.
Realities is a VR photogrammetry showcase featuring detailed photogramatic scans from a handful of interesting locations around the world. In collaboration with Canadian television channel TV5’s documentary series Terre d’Exploration, the first of three new scenes from the Canadian wilderness is available today, with the others set to unlock later this month, coinciding with episodes from the show.
Bethesda’s recent flatscreen-to-VR ports, Skyrim VR and Fallout 4 VR, face a few common challenges in terms of immersion. Neither are perfect, but at this point in time, both games represent something VR users haven’t had yet: vast and rich open-world adventures that offer a high degree of customization and replayability—so called real AAA VR games. Here I’m going to attempt to break down Bethesda’s flagship VR games into some more identifiable parts so we can see who comes out on top: food for thought for the PC VR gamer who is on the fence between the pair.
This week at NAB Show in Las Vegas, the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG), the international committee behind the titular image compression standard, unveiled JPEG XS, a new format that is touted as a lower energy compression solution that provides higher quality images at low latency over broadband networks such as 5G.
Bandai Namco has teased One Piece fans for some time now with images and trailers of the PSVR exclusive experience One Piece: Grand Cruise. The company has now given a firm release date in North America and Europe: May 22nd.
Infinadeck is an active omni-directional VR treadmill that lets you walk in any direction. Compared to others, which generally rely on low friction surfaces to emulate the act of walking, Infinadeck’s design actually has a tread that moves beneath you, leading to a much more natural gait. Having stepped on the latest Infinadeck prototype, the VR treadmill is making strides toward a truly compelling solution for artificial locomotion in VR.
Studios Frame Interactive and Robot Invader today announced Dead Secret (2015), the Gear VR title that later landed on PC VR headsets, is finally making its way to PSVR.
Last month Killing Floor: Incursion (2017), the co-op zombie shooter from Tripwire Interactive, made its transition from Oculus exclusive to multi-platform title when it launched via Steam with support for HTC Vive and Rift. Now, the zombie-splattering sci-fi horror game is headed to PSVR too.
Trebuchet, the Montreal-based studio behind Prison Boss VR (2017), just launched a Kickstarter campaign for a new game that places you on the back of a trusty steed and puts a lance in your free hand. The multiplayer VR jousting game, appropriately dubbed Jousting Time, is targeting SteamVR-compatible headsets including Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows VR headsets.
Blind is an upcoming psychological thriller that puts you in a world of darkness. Given a special cane, you use echolocation to find your way through the game’s mysterious narrative.
Interested in jumping into the VR racing scene? This weekend you can snag discounts up to 80% on some of the best VR sim racing games out there.
The future of VR storytelling will be immersive and interactive. Yelena Rachitsky is an executive producer of experiences at Oculus, and she’s been inspired by how interactive narratives have allowed her to feel like a participant who is more engaged, more present, and more alive. The fundamental challenge of interactive narratives is how to balance the giving and receiving of making choices and taking action vs. receiving a narrative and being emotionally engaged and having an embodied experience of immersion and presence. Balancing the active and passive dimensions is the underlying tension of the yang and yin of any experience.
Ready Player One was released on March 29th, and the current VR experience that comes the closest to realizing the vision of the OASIS depicted in the movie is the social VR experience of VRChat. By 2045, I predict that we’ll have a decentralized open metaverse that’s built on WebXR, and that it’ll be the open web that realizes the educational potential of OASIS that’s depicted within the novel version of Ready Player One. But I think we’ll continue to have open and closed systems just as we do today, and it’s likely that there will a closed, walled garden metaverse of interconnected worlds that is more akin to the vision of the OASIS that’s built by Gregarious Simulation Systems. But if you want to experience the OASIS today, then VRChat is the experience to check out.
