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.
vGIS, a new geographic information system (GIS) visualisation platform from the Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri) partner Meemim, is being used to view underground infrastructure while wearing Microsoft Hololens. Piloted by Toms River Municipal Utilities Authority in New Jersey, the technology is a practical application of augmented reality, allowing the user to ‘see’ utility lines under the street in real-time.
Lenovo Mirage Camera, the company’s 4K 180-degree stereoscopic VR camera, is now available in pre-order for $300, and is slated to launch May 4th.
TPCAST, the Beijing-based makers of 60GHz wireless VR transmitters, launched their previously announced Business Edition (BE) Wireless VR Adapter in North America today. The setup is said to include support for up to four simultaneous users occupying a single space.
Because VR is so demanding, hardware makers have issue ‘Recommended’ or ‘VR Ready’ guidelines to help customers understand what kind of hardware they need for a good VR experience. For the most part, the VR industry’s biggest players have agreed on the key parts of that recommended hardware. With the introduction of the Vive Pro, HTC is now suggesting the more powerful GTX 1070 as its ‘Recommended Spec’ for the Vive Pro, differing from the GTX 1060 suggested for use with other major headsets.
Infinadeck is an active omnidirectional VR treadmill which has been in development since at least 2014. A new video shows the treadmill now using Vive Trackers for enhanced tracking, which appears to have increased the responsiveness of the device. The Infinadeck is set to launch this week.
HTC showed off eight Ready Player One-inspired experiences at the film’s debut event at SXSW. Now, the company has released three of these experiences on Viveport in a single download called Ready Player One: OASIS Beta.
Over the last year, Oculus’ public hardware ambitions have mostly centered around their upcoming standalone headsets (Oculus Go and Santa Cruz), with little to say about what’s next for the company’s PC VR headset, the Rift. Addressing a small but growing anxiety among their Rift user base—that Oculus is shifting focus away from PC VR in its efforts to push mobile VR—the company affirmed at GDC that its commitment to the PC VR ecosystem hasn’t changed, and the company believes PC will lead the VR industry for the next decade.
At GDC this year, I had a chance to step into Beat Saber, an upcoming rhythm game from Czech Republic-based indie studio Hyperbolic Magnetism that tasks you with slicing flying cubes with lightsabers to electronic dance music. If that sounds cool to you, then you’re in luck. It is cool – but more than that, it’s also ridiculously well executed.
Because VR can take over our entire reality, it can be great for entertainment. But when it comes to AR, the hope is that the tech will be a transient and beneficial addition to reality, rather than taking over your world completely. But figuring out how that works means first understanding how we can interact with AR information at a basic level, like being able to do the same kinds of simple, information-driven tasks that you do hundreds of times per day with your smartphone. Leap Motion, a maker of hand-tracking software and hardware, has been experimenting with exactly that, and is teasing some very interesting results.
Based on Klaus Teuber’s popular board game Settlers of Catan (1995), the VR version of Catan is available now on Oculus Rift and Gear VR, and will be a launch title for Oculus Go. The game features cross-play multiplayer, and is said to be coming to more VR platforms in the future.
Kat VR, a China-based company known for their crowdfunded Kat Walk VR treadmill, are hitting Kickstarter again soon with a new design that promises to accommodate smaller spaces.
