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.
Microcenter is known for knocking down prices ahead of its competitors, even if it’s just by a little to draw in the crowds. Today, Microcenter stores are selling Oculus Rift + Touch for $50 under the suggested price, putting the whole system at $350.
Google has partnered with CyArk, the non-profit studio behind VR app MasterWorks: Journey Through History (2018), to expand CyArk’s mission to 3D laser-scan the world’s historical sites and provide open access to the data. Called the Open Heritage Project, Google and CyArk aim to preserve the historical sites digitally for future generations in case disaster strikes
Both the Rift and the Vive first launched to consumers around this time two years ago, but their debut, and the games that launched alongside them, were the culmination of years of prior game design experimentation in a new medium that brought both new opportunities and challenges. Cloudhead Games, developers of Vive launch title The Gallery: Call of the Starseed, were among those leading the charge. On this occasion, the two year anniversary of modern VR headsets becoming available to consumers, the studio’s Lead Programmer, Paul White, and Narrative Designer, Antony Stevens, look back at the studio’s journey in VR development and where it has led them today.
The developers behind Modbox (2016), the VR physics sandbox for SteamVR-compatible headsets, have been experimenting with augmented reality recently, something they say is a perfect fit for the Modbox software.
HTC has announced a new set of tools allowing developers to build applications which take advantage of the Vive Pro’s stereo front-facing cameras, effectively turning the device into an AR headset dev kit. The new tools allow the cameras to capture depth, spatial mapping data, hand input, and seamlessly shift between VR and AR worlds.
