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.
Samsung officially launched its new S9 and S9 Plus smartphones today. Though Gear VR wasn’t mentioned during the reveal, the company has confirmed to Road to VR that both the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus will support the 2017 Gear VR, however a new model for the launch of the phones was not announced.
At SIGGRAPH 2017, NVIDIA was showing off their Isaac Robot that had been trained to play dominos within a virtual world environment of NVIDIA’s Project Holodeck. They’re using Unreal Engine to simulate interactions with people in VR to train a robot how to play dominos. They can use a unified code base of AI algorithms for deep reinforcement learning within VR, and then apply that same code base to drive a physical Baxter robot. This creates a safe context to train and debug the behavior of the robot within a virtual environment, but to also experiment with cultivating interactions with the robot that are friendly, exciting, and entertaining. This will allow humans to build trust in interacting with robots in a virtual environment so that they are more comfortable and familiar with interacting with physical robots in the real world.
Chialin Chang, HTC’s President of Smartphone and Connected Devices Business, made his immediate resignation official last week, which HTC now confirms has prompted the company to merge its smartphone and VR divisions—a move that possibly points to the HTC putting greater focus on VR in the face of the company’s waning smartphone business.
There’s no doubt about it; weilding a real controller that matches the weight and feel of a virtual object is far more immersive than having a disconnect between the two. The problem, of course, is that if a controller is made to fit too specific a role, it’s less useful for interacting with a wide range of virtual objects. A novel prototype based on an HTC Vive controller attempts to solve this problem by allowing the controller to redistribute its weight on the fly.
Ahead of Mobile World Congress (MWC) next week, Google announced it’s bringing ARCore, it’s augmented reality SDK, out of preview and to a number of flagship smartphones in its 1.0 version. Google Lens, the company’s tool to help users identify real-world objects, is also making its way from Pixel to more flagship devices soon – albeit still in preview.
Let’s face it, when augmented reality headsets and glasses become commonplace, the world is going to get weird in a lot of unexpected ways. In the meantime, we can get a little sneak peek into that weirdness yet to come with Abhishek Singh’s latest ARKit project that recreated the iconic scene from The Ring (2002).
VR-only flight simulator VTOL VR, recently received a substantial update that includes a mission editor and a pilotable fighter jet. The sim is designed specifically around the use of VR motion controls, and is available in Early Access on Steam.
ARKTIKA.1, an Oculus exclusive due to launch later this year, is shaping up to be one of VR’s best looking games to date. You’ll take it as no surprise that the title is being developed by 4A Games, the developer behind the Metro series (and its stunning next installment, Metro Exodus). One important part of making a game look great is skilled use of effects—dynamic elements like particles, smoke, muzzle flashes, explosions, and lighting. But the methods for making great looking effects for traditional games take on new challenges when it comes to VR, especially when teetering on the edge of visual fidelity and the high performance required for smooth VR rendering. In this guest article, 4A Games explores their approach to making effects in Arktika.1.
VRChat, the social app for VR and non-VR users popularly known for its recent boom in meme-driven notoriety, seems to have leveled off somewhat in terms of install numbers and concurrent user rates following its exponential upswing back in December and January.
Qualcomm today revealed a new ‘VRDK’ standalone reference headset based on their Snapdragon 845 chip. The reference design—which serves as a blueprint for Qualcomm customers who may want to build their own VR headsets based on the design—boasts an impressive set of specifications.
Charm Games, the developers behind the fantastic (albeit fairly short) otherworldly puzzle game FORM (2017), today unveiled their next upcoming VR title. Called Twilight Path, the puzzle game will take you on what Charm calls a fantasy adventure “to meet wandering spirits, enchanted sentries, and mischievous gods.”
Brass Tactics (2018) is a node-based real-time strategy game that comes with a bit of a pedigree. Created by Hidden Path Entertainment, the minds behind the Defense Grid franchise and Age of Empires II, you’ll probably enter the world of Brass Tactics like many others – dropping in after getting your fill of the free-to-play multiplayer demo Brass Tactics: Arena. What you see in Arena is basically what you get in the full version, save the game’s 20 maps, campaign mode, and 3 AI to play against.
