Oculus Teases Upcoming Rift Title ‘Defector’, Debuting Next Week at PAX East

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image courtesy Oculus

In a torrent of news surrounding the two-year anniversary of Rift’s commercial launch, Oculus today revealed a little more about one of upcoming Oculus-funded titles previously teased by VP of Content Jason Rubin.

‘Island Time VR’ to Launch on All Major Platforms April 3rd, ‘5 Ways to Die’ Launch Trailer Here

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Island Time VR, a room-scale survival game from Flight School Studio, is launching April 3rd on PSVR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and other Steam VR-compatible headsets for $15. In preparation for your inevitable death ahead, Flight School also released a launch trailer showing the top 5 ways you can inadvertently kill yourself.

Play RTS ‘Brass Tactics’ for Free on Rift This Weekend, Play for a Chance to Win Prizes

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Image courtesy Hidden Path

Brass Tactics (2018), the VR real-time strategy game for Rift from Hidden Path Entertainment, is getting an open access weekend starting tomorrow, March 29th. Kicking off Oculus’ two-year celebration of the Rift headset, Oculus is also throwing out the chance to win special prizes.

2 Year Anniversary of Rift: Prizes, Sales, New Content and More

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Photo by Road to VR

Two years ago today, Oculus launched the consumer version of Rift. To celebrate the occasion, the company has announced new content/updates, some pretty big sales, prizes, and even the chance to win a ‘Golden Account’ that gives you 100 of your favorite Rift games for free.

‘L.A. Noire: The VR Case Files’ is Officially Coming to Rift March 29th

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Image courtesy Rockstar Games

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 Adds NVIDIA Lens Matched Shading to Boost Performance

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Image courtesy Oculus

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.

Exploring Space & Experiential Modulation of Time in VR with Felix & Paul Studios

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Image courtesy Felix & Paul Studios

felix-lajeunesse2Felix & 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.

New Jersey Utility Uses Augmented Reality to Visualise Underground Infrastructure

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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 VR180 Camera Now Available for Pre-order, Launches May 4th

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image courtesy Lenovo

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 Launches Business Edition Wireless VR Adapter, Up to 4 Simultaneous Vives

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Photo by Road to VR

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.

Vive Pro ‘Recommended Spec’ Seeks GTX 1070, Drops 1060 to ‘Minimum Spec’

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Image courtesy HTC

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 VR Treadmill Shows Improvements With Vive Trackers, Launches This Week

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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.

Hands-on: Massless Wants to Bring High-precision Stylus Input to VR

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Photo by Road to VR

Massless is developing a stylus designed specifically for high-precision VR input. We got to check out a prototype version of the device this week at GDC 2018.

HTC Releases 3 ‘Ready Player One’ VR Experiences in ‘OASIS Beta’, Now Free on Viveport

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image courtesy Warner Bros.

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.

Oculus Affirms Commitment to Rift, Believes PC Will Lead the VR Industry for the Next Decade

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Photo by Road to VR

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.

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