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.
Oculus will be releasing a new Privacy Policy and Terms of Service tomorrow that will go into effect on May 20th, just five days before the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy law enforcement deadline of May 25th. I had a chance to review the new privacy policy and terms of service as well as talk with the lead privacy policy architect Jenny Hall and a privacy cross-functional team member Max Cohen, who leads product for the Oculus platform.
TheWaveVR, the studio behind the eponymous music-centric social VR platform, today announced the closure of a $6 million Series A funding round led by RRE Ventures. TheWaveVR also opened their new Los Angeles office today, where they plan to collaborate with artists and musicians on what they say will be “a number of high profile VR concerts this year.”
Playful Corp, the studio behind the Rift launch title Lucky’s Tale (2016), teased recently that they’ll be debuting an “all new look” at their upcoming PlayStation VR platformer Star Child at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
After digging into nearly 20 titles, we’ve pulled together the top five VR sports games for the Oculus Rift that will scratch that itch for anyone looking for VR gameplay that’s both active and competitive.
Serenity, the firefly-class spaceship from cult TV show Firefly (2002) and film Serenity (2005), is now full explorable in VR.
Talking to non-player characters (NPCs) in Skyrim VR may be easy—requiring a quick selection from the dialogue menu—but it isn’t exactly an immersive way of interacting with the world though. With a new speech recognition mod, called Dragonborn Speaks Naturally, all of that changes.
Disney and Lenovo teamed up last year to produce Star Wars: Jedi Challenges, a sampler of Star Wars games that worked with Lenovo’s smartphone-driven Mirage AR headset and wireless lightsaber. While the app supports both Android and iOS smartphones, now users on recent iPads and iPhones don’t need the headset at all to play one of the most iconic in the lot: Holochess. And it’s free.
In Death, the roguelike bow-shooter from Sólfar Studios, the developers behind Everest VR (2016), just received a much-awaited update that’s aiming to add a little more depth to the polished, and extremely difficult medieval-themed single player game. Starting today, In Death will include dungeons, dubbed ‘The Pits of Damnation’, and an asynchronous multiplayer challenge mode called ‘The Ladder’.
AntVR, the Beijing-based company known for their 2014 VR headset Kickstarter, is launching a new crowdfunding campaign soon focusing on a hybrid AR headset called simply Mix. The makers are promising a bevy of bells and whistles, including the ability to integrate with the SteamVR platform so users can play VR games too, and all at only $500.
Ready Player One: Oasis beta (2018), the free mini-game sampler with experiences inspired by Steven Spielberg’s latest film Ready Player One (2018), is finally on Steam, which includes support for HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows “Mixed Reality” VR headsets.
