Indie VR developer Mixed Realms, creators of badass VR ninja simulator, Sairento, announced this week plans for their next chapter, coming in the form of Sairento Reborn. Described as “bigger and better,” Sairento Reborn hopes to open up the title, allowing cooperative hack & slash fun for both VR and PC players.
Virtual reality (VR) has been a hot topic in the media and the tech sector for the last couple of years, but it is about to hit a new level of buzz, thanks to the internationally best-selling book Ready Player One (2011) by author Ernest Cline, and movie adaptation from award winning director, Steven Spielberg, premiering in theaters today. The Ready Player One (RPO) novel is often cited by industry experts as one of the top recommendations for VR-related book lists. The story’s primary backdrop is a world where VR is intertwined into every aspect of our daily lives, what I call a ‘VR-First future’. RPO follows the adventures of a teenager and his friends as they overcome untold challenges on their quest to win a global online scavenger competition and its gigantic prize.
Gran Turismo Sport (2017), the VR-compatible PS4 racing sim, just got an update that lets PSVR owners take a crack at all available circuits in time trial mode.
In Death is a roguelike bow-shooter from Sólfar Studio, the developers behind Everest VR (2016). Now in Early Access on Steam and Oculus Home, the procedurally generated, medieval-inspired world stretching out in front of you offers a pretty standard selection of monsters, bow-shooting baddies, and magical shops along the way to offer weapon upgrades and precious health points—a fairly familiar concept for fans of the roguelike genre. While the premise is standard, the results are actually pretty surprising.
Sony has announced a $100 price drop to their PlayStation VR headset across the board. The PSVR Doom VFR bundle now starts at $300 and the PSVR Skyrim bundle runs $350.
Ubisoft’s upcoming VR shooter Space Junkies, announced at last year’s E3, is promising some fast-paced, first-person action fueled by jet packs and an impressive assortment of guns. Getting into a multiplayer demo, I got a chance to fly high, whip around corners at some pretty impressive speeds, and get my hands on a unique array of futuristic weapons that completely stole the show.
PlayStation’s legendary anti-grav arcade racer can now proudly display the ‘PSVR-compatible’ badge thanks to a free update pushed out today to WipEout: Omega Collection for PS4.
In a torrent of news surrounding the two-year anniversary of Rift’s commercial launch, Oculus today revealed a little more about one of upcoming Oculus-funded titles previously teased by VP of Content Jason Rubin.
Island Time VR, a room-scale survival game from Flight School Studio, is launching April 3rd on PSVR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and other Steam VR-compatible headsets for $15. In preparation for your inevitable death ahead, Flight School also released a launch trailer showing the top 5 ways you can inadvertently kill yourself.
Brass Tactics (2018), the VR real-time strategy game for Rift from Hidden Path Entertainment, is getting an open access weekend starting tomorrow, March 29th. Kicking off Oculus’ two-year celebration of the Rift headset, Oculus is also throwing out the chance to win special prizes.
Two years ago today, Oculus launched the consumer version of Rift. To celebrate the occasion, the company has announced new content/updates, some pretty big sales, prizes, and even the chance to win a ‘Golden Account’ that gives you 100 of your favorite Rift games for free.
Rockstar Games, the mega studio behind Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, and plenty more, are officially bringing Oculus Rift support to its first VR title, L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files. The game, which previously launched on HTC Vive via Steam late last year, is an adaptation of L.A. Noire (2011), which has had a number of its missions reworked specifically for VR.
Oculus’ PC SDK version 1.19 now supports NVIDIA’s VRWorks Lens Matched Shading (LMS) technique, offering “a performance boost and a slight quality improvement” on supported GPUs.
Felix & Paul Studios had two experiences at Sundance this year: one featured the training of NASA astronauts in Space Explorers, and the other was a time-lapse VR story featuring characters from Wes Anderson’s new Ilse of Dogs film with a behind-the-scenes look at the production. Felix & Paul use their own custom camera technology, which means that they’re in a constant feedback loop of creating content, making innovations in cinematic VR camera technologies, which then opens up new storytelling possibilities. For their two pieces at Sundance, they created a cinematic VR camera that does time lapse for Ilse of Dogs, created a motion stabilization system to put a camera in a supersonic T-38 jet, created an underwater VR camera to shot astronauts training for space missions, and weatherized a camera rig to deal with extreme desert heat and sand storms.
