While Oculus holds their own annual developer conference (coming later this year), parent company Facebook has in years past had plenty of exciting news to share at their own F8 developer conference. With F8 just around the corner on May 1st & 2nd, we take a look at what might be revealed.
Skydance Interactive, the studio behind arcade mech shooter Archangel (2017), officially announced today that their next update, Archangel: Hellfire, will bring an off-rails multiplayer mode to the base game, which at launch was exclusively an on-rails, single player experience.
Campfire Creepers is a live-action, 360 anthology series inspired by iconic 1980s horror shows Tales from the Crypt (1989), Creepshow (1982), and the creations of Wes Craven. The first two episodes are now available for both Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR.
Pimax, the China-based VR headset manufacturer known for their recent record-breaking “8K” VR headset Kickstarter campaign, today announced that backers should expect more delays due to an ongoing lens design issue.
Andreas Hauber, a German VR enthusiast, claims to have just beat the Guinness World Record for longest VR marathon, a bar that was previously set by Australian Jack McNee last year at a grand total of 36 hours, two minutes and 16 seconds in VR painting program Tilt Brush (2016).
COMPOUND is an intriguing VR hobby project from developer Bevan “NotDead” McKechnie which drops players into a “rogue-lite, free-roaming shooter” for VR, with a totally unique and authentic pixel-art feel. We’ve had our eyes on the game since 2017, but with no official announcements from McKechnie in nearly nine months, the fate of the title was beginning to look uncertain. A recent post from the developer assures fans that the game is still in the works, with an updated demo and Early Access launch coming soon.
With the impending launch of Oculus Go, the company’s first standalone headset, Oculus has shared with developers a handy cheat sheet for bringing Gear VR applications to the Go.
As an official partner of Ready Player One, HTC has been using the film to highlight its VR wares. In addition to releasing several VR experiences inspired by the movie, the company has released a behind-the-scenes short showing how immersive virtual reality was used in the production process.
If you’re still rebounding from Steam’s Winter sale a few months ago, well, your wallet is in for some ‘Spring cleaning’ as both Steam and Viveport have put out some heavy discounts on top VR titles.
It looks like PSVR owners have a few more games to browse through on their next digital shopping spree. Now it appears at least nine games have gotten between a 25%-50% off their permanent prices.
Google recently pushed out Chrome 66, the latest update to the company’s web browser. Unbeknownst to the VR community, Google also quietly included WebVR integration for OpenVR-compatible headsets including Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows “Mixed Reality” VR headsets.
After launching the Vive Focus standalone headset in China in late January, the company announced in March that the headset would be launching in the US, EU, and other Western markets later this year, beginning with the launch of a dev kit. With the device appearing in the FCC this, the device is one step closer to its US release.
Keiichi Matsuda went from being a dystopian filmmaker to becoming the Vice President of Design at hand-tracking company Leap Motion. Matsuda is probably the most famous for his HYPER-REALITY dystopian film that imagined a commodified & gamified AR future where companies are vying for your attention regardless of your physical context. He was trying to push the current philosophical orientation to the logical extreme, not because he wanted to live into that future himself, but more from a perspective of a cautionary tale thinking about how this is actually a plausible near future if we don’t do anything different. One of the co-founders of Leap Motion reached out to Matsuda to invite him to help creating & influence the future of spatial computing since he has been creating functional and pragmatic spatial computing interfaces in his films since 2010.
Psychonauts In the Rhombus of Ruin takes place between the events of Psychonauts (2005) and the upcoming Psychonauts 2 due out later this year. Exclusively available in VR, In the Rhombus of Ruin strays from the 3D platformer genre of its flatscreen cousins and harks back to the early days of point-and-click games using a locomotion system that lets you teleport your consciousness into other living creatures.
OrbusVR, an MMORPG created from the ground-up for VR headsets, is getting a free weekend on Rift starting April 19th to April 22nd. As a part of Oculus’ two-year anniversary of Rift, this is the fourth weekend to feature a one hour-long period that automatically enters you to win some pretty big prizes.
