OrbusVR, an upcoming indie VR MMO for SteamVR-compatible headsets, has seen several closed betas since it’s successful Kickstarter back in March 2017, but starting December 15th the plucky quest-driven MMORPG will head into Early Access on Steam.
Dispatch (2017), a new episodic story from VR pros Here Be Dragons, launched on Oculus Rift and Gear VR yesterday. Following a small-town emergency dispatcher named Ted (voiced by Martin Starr), you experience the story through a sort of half-imagined, half-real version of the grizzly events he’s privy to.
Created by Winnipeg-based indie studio The Campfire Union, xkcd VR lets you become a character from Randall Munroe’s popular webcomic and create your very own stick figure-based stab at the comic’s famously acerbic humor.
The turkey is in the oven, the cranberry sauce is in the can, and your VR setup is in the box ready to be shown off to the family at Thanksgiving. Since you’ll be doing a fair bit of VR evangelizing on the big day, an important question remains before you can plug your unwitting relatives into ‘the final computing platform’: what do you show off first?
Citing sources close to the deal, TechCrunch reports that VR headset maker Vrvana has been acquired by Apple for $30 million.
Back in August, developer Enhance Games announced that Rez Infinite (2016) would launch on Google Daydream “later this year.” With little forewarning, the futuristic action-shooter is now available on Google Play for Daydream-compatible smartphones.
Taeyong Kim, VP of Samsung Electronics and Head of Graphics R&D, took the stage last month at the company’s annual developer conference to talk a little bit about the future of VR for the company. While no big reveals were expected for the talk, Kim actually mentioned to the crowd that the company is actively working on a standalone VR headset with inside-out tracking and 6 DoF controllers as their ‘next mobile VR product’.
Toyota recently revealed T-HR3, the company’s third-generation humanoid robot. Designed primarily as an experiment to explore new technologies to make robots more physically capable, T-HR3 demonstrates a new “remote maneuvering system” that not only mirrors a user’s movements to the robot, but lets them see and interact with the world through the ‘eyes’ and arms of the robot using a robotic exoskeleton, an HTC Vive headset, and a pair of Vive Trackers.
Without explicitly announcing a new specific product, Samsung quietly implied that they may be developing a new standalone mobile VR HMD during a session during their developer conference last month. While there were no major VR announcements during the main keynote at SDC, in a session titled What’s on The Horizon: A Look at the Future of VR at Samsung, Tae Yong Kim, Samsung Electronics’ VP, Head of Graphics R&D, showed a graphic with a question mark in between a Gear VR mobile VR headset and a Samsung Odyssey Windows Mixed Reality HMD. Kim said that the Gear VR is “fully mobile, quickly attaches via a cell phone, and affordable” while the Odyssey offers a “premium experience coming from the positional tracking of the headset and the controllers, and the computing power of the PC.” He said, “The question is ‘How do we combine the benefits of those two technologies together for our next VR system?'”
Facebook Spaces, the company’s social VR platform available on Oculus Rift, has updated to include a new mini-game that aims to pave the way for more yet to come. Called Bait! Arctic Open, the game lets you ice fish while you shoot the breeze with your VR buddies.
In comparison to the various PC VR platforms and even mobile VR headsets like Samsung Gear VR, PlayStation VR has been at a bit of disadvantage when it comes to the depth and breadth of social VR spaces available. That’s changing soon though with Against Gravity’s Rec Room on PSVR, a landmark social VR experience that moves into open beta today.
Pixvana, a Seattle-based startup creating a cloud-based processing and delivery platform for VR video, today announced a $14 million Series A funding round led by Vulcan Capital with participation from Raine Ventures, Microsoft Ventures, Cisco Investments and Hearst Ventures, and existing investor Madrona Venture Group.
The company formerly known as AxonVR, which has raised more than $5 million in venture capital, is rebranding to HaptX, and revealing a feature prototype of a VR glove which uses micro-pneumatics for detailed haptics and force feedback to the fingers. After trying the prototype for myself, I came away impressed with the tech. The company’s next challenge is to turn the prototype into something sleeker, smaller, and far more practical.
Czech developer iNFINITE Production has released UVRF – a free, cross-platform template for hand presence in VR. The open-source demo offers a framework for use in any Unreal Engine project, as well as a ‘Playground’ scene containing an underground bunker and shooting range to showcase hand interactivity.
