Last year marked HTC’s very first Vive Developer Awards (VDAs), which saw tens of thousands of dollars go to VR app developers across a number of categories. Now, HTC has announced the nominees for this year’s VDAs who will be in competition to win $50,000 in first place prize money.
Oculus has been hosting free access weekends for some time now, including Onward (2017), SPARC (2017), and From Other Suns (2017). Now, Oculus is tossing out free access to Insomniac Games‘ magic dueler The Unspoken (2016) this weekend for Rift players on Oculus Home.
It’s been more than a year and a half since I first stepped into Budget Cuts, an instantly promising VR title from indie developer Neat Corporation with a novel and efficient locomotion system that blends perfectly with the game’s throwing-knife stealth action gameplay. Though the studio has been largely silent since then, they’ve assured me that the game is being actively developed (“like, a lot”) and headed toward an early 2018 launch.
Filling something of a gap in Sony’s PSVR content lineup, Bravo Team is a cooperative title which aims to bring military shooter style first-person action to the platform. Will you revel in cooperative combat, or is this one bullet worth dodging?
Ahead of tomorrow’s launch on PSVR, there’s a new trailer for cooperative VR shooter Bravo Team, which preps players for the game’s strategic, cover-based gameplay and careful marksmanship.
This year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) is nearly upon us, and now that talks for the week-long event are published on the GDC website, it appears Google will be taking the stage to introduce a number of new products and tools for game devs. While it’s not explicitly stated whether the talk will be primarily focused on AR/VR, Google’s product manager for AR/VR developer tools Nathan Martz will be speaking, making us think there might be something interesting around the corner.
Yahoo! Japan just updated their iOS-based Map application to include a new experimental AR mode which superimposes a blue pathway onto the physical world for you to follow to your final destination. The AR function, which is only intended for walking routes currently, is available starting today on Japan-based Apple devices running iOS 11.
Virtualitics, a big data visualization and analytics company, announced the successful close of a $7 million Series B round of equity funding led by investment group Centricus, and participated by existing investor the Venture Reality Fund (‘The VR Fund’) and other private investors. Virtualitics is developing a platform, called Virtualitics Immersive Platform, that melds AI and big data in virtual and augmented reality environments.
Owlchemy Labs, creators of Job Simulator (2016) and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality (2017) tonight announced their latest VR title, Vacation Simulator.
Rose Colored by INVAR Studios & Adam Cosco won the award for best live-acton VR experience at the Advanced Imaging Society’s Lumiere Awards on February 12th. I previously interviewed Cosco at VRLA last year, and I had a chance to talk with INVAR’s co-founder & chief creative officer Vincent Edwards & creative director Austin Conroy on their thoughts on the future of storytelling in VR at Kaleidoscope VR’s FIRST LOOK VR Market.
It was only a few weeks ago that we saw our first SteamVR 2.0 base station in the wild, shown off at this year’s CES working with Vive Pro, HTC’s upcoming high-resolution VR headset. Now, it appears some developers are already receiving the 2.0 base stations from Valve.
Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film Ready Player One—based on Ernest Cline’s eponymous New York Times Bestseller—is getting plenty of buzz at South by Southwest (SXSW) this year ahead of the film’s March 29th release. According to Warner Bros., SXSW attendees will get a chance to “immerse themselves in vivid glimpses into hero Wade Watt’s world, experience the OASIS using VIVE VR, enjoy live artist performances, and more.”
Rec Room (2016), the social VR app from Against Gravity, now has a brand new Quest (a four player co-operative mission) alongside a number of other improvements thanks to a new update.
Cyan, the studio behind Myst (1993) and Obduction (2017), announced they’re working on a new steampunk adventure game called Firmament.
According to Valve’s February Steam hardware and software survey, the Oculus Rift is now the most used VR headset on the Steam platform, taking the market share of VR headsets on Steam with a near 2% lead over its competitor HTC Vive. This is the first time Rift has surpassed Vive in Valve’s monthly survey.
