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.
Facebook’s annual developer conference, F8, won’t be here until May, but with registration opening today, Facebook and Oculus is teasing some exciting AR and VR news to come.
Volkswagen Group and VR studio Innoactive revealed the global, multi-brand automotive company is planning to train 10,000 employees this year alone using virtual reality.
Now available in China, and quite possibly on its way to a wider release, HTC is prominently showing its new standalone Vive Focus headset at MWC 2018 this week. The company says the Focus is positioned as the premium option among the incoming wave of standalone headsets; of course, premium features are never far from premium price.
Hatsune Miku, the impossibly saccharine anime pop vocaloid, is coming to SteamVR headsets in a new rhythm game from creators Degica Games and Crypton Future Media.
Moss, the promising puzzle platformer from indie studio Polyarc, has finally arrived on PlayStation VR. You’ll guide Quill, an undeniably adorable mouse, on the start of what could become a grand adventure.
Rec Room, the social VR app, recently updated to include the ability to create your own customized environments. To celebrate the ‘custom rooms’ addition, developers Against Gravity are putting on a contest and offering up the grand prize of a Nintendo Switch, a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) and a few other necessary fixins to get the creative types out in force.
At this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, HTC CEO Cher Wang took the stage to outline the company’s big picture approach to the future. The company is ostensibly putting increased focus on VR/AR with their newly coined ethos ‘Vive Reality’.
Though both products were announced back at CES, HTC showed off the Vive Pro and the Vive Wireless adapter used together for the first time today at MWC 2018.
This year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona is underway, and while the event’s main focus is inevitably on the newest batch of smartphones to hit the market this year, VR’s presence can definitely be felt. Visiting HTC’s booth, we got a chance to see the newer Vive Tracker in action with Valve’s 2.0 SteamVR Tracking system.
