HTC today announced consumer availability of Vive Tracker, the tracking module that uses Valve’s Lighthouse tracking standard. The company also announced North American pre-order availability of a number of Vive Tracker accessory bundles that are slated to make their way to consumers in mid-December.
Coco VR, Pixar’s first-ever VR experience, has a pretty specific goal in mind; getting you to see the film in theaters when it opens next week. That’s at least the mindset I had before putting on my Rift, a result of a malaise that comes from playing nearly every ‘brand engagement’ tie-in ever produced for VR (they’re free after all). Popping into the experience and putting me face-to-face with the main character Miguel, it became clear that Coco VR was going to be different.
There is a growing backlash against technology being catalyzed by some of the architects of the persuasive habit-forming techniques. The Guardian does a survey of user experience designers and engineers who are taking drastic actions to curtail their personal technology addiction behaviors, and asking some deeper questions about the ethical responsibility of major companies in Silicon Valley to be socially-responsible guardians of the attention economy. Tristan Harris is one of these former persuasive designers who has formed a non-profit called Time Well Spent focused on gathering quantified data for how happy people are using different mobile apps, and Harris shared some data on Sam Harris’ podcast that people are happy with 1/3 of the time they’ve spent on the most popular apps, but that they’re unhappy with or regret how they’re spending 2/3 of their time.
Early adopters of “Windows Mixed Reality” VR headsets can now access a wealth of new content thanks to an official integration with Steam, now available as a public preview, allowing the headsets to play SteamVR content from the platform.
The scariest time of the year has come and gone, and although we were expecting the first two episodes of The Exorcist: Legion VR in time for Halloween, fans of the film franchise and The Exorcist TV series probably won’t mind one bit. Created by Fun Train and Wolf & Wood, the episodic VR horror-adventure is set to release its first two installments November 22nd.
Indie studio Mardonpol, makers of Quiz Night Tonight! (2017), is dialing in on CS:GO territory with its recently released trailer which shows all of the trappings of the popular PC shooter, replete with Italy-inspired map, AWPs, and bomb planting galore. The game is slated for a 2018 with its release targeting cross-play for PSVR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
From Other Suns has been one of the more anticipated Oculus titles since its announcement earlier this year. Today the co-op space survival game launched on the Oculus store priced at $40, and a new launch trailer shows you what to expect.
Killing Floor: Incursion (2017), Tripwire Interactive’s latest entry into the zombie-splattering co-op shooter genre, was supposed to arrive on SteamVR-compatible headsets last week. It’s available on Steam starting today for $40.
A ‘Racket Sports Set’ designed to be compatible with HTC Vive’s Tracker, the modular positionally-tracked puck that you can use to track practically anything in VR, has just made an appearance on the Vive accessories site. The Tracker has only been available for anyone claiming to be a developer since early this year, but the new accessory listing could be an indication of its upcoming commercial launch.
Thanks to augmented reality, the world is about to get weird. Real weird. Thankfully we’re not the only ones who think so, because Nexus Studios, the minds behind the inside-out VR tracking solution using ARKit, today launched HotStepper, an iOS wayfinding app that follows an infectiously strange little man that beckons you to follow him on the way to your destination.
On stage at Vive Developer Conference in Beijing, HTC today unveiled their upcoming standalone VR headset, Vive Focus. While HTC isn’t releasing a Daydream version of the headset in the West as previously announced, the company is using Vive Focus as the impetus for its own mobile VR platform that aims to resolve what HTC calls a “highly fragmented” mobile VR market in China, and become a common platform and storefront across disparate hardware vendors.
Stranded in space with just an AI voice and your broken ship for company, you must scavenge for materials to survive, searching random debris floating nearby using motion-based, zero-gravity locomotion. Needing some polish but highly playable in its current state, Star Shelter is available now on SteamVR Early Access with support for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
HTC revealed their new standalone Vive Focus headset today, poised to launch into the Asian market. Earlier this year the device was teased to be heading to Western markets as part of Google’s Daydream platform in 2017, but now HTC confirms they’ve canceled those plans.
Today during the Vive Developers Conference in Beijing, HTC revealed the Vive Focus, a standalone VR headset with inside-out positional tracking. The headset is positioned for the Chinese market.
The announcement that Steam will support the forthcoming Windows VR headsets was big news which means that owners will eventually have a strong library of VR content to draw from while Microsoft builds up its own library of VR games and apps on the Windows store. Some of VR’s best games however are exclusive to Oculus’ content library, though savvy Vive owners know that the unofficial ‘Revive’ workaround opens the door to playing Oculus games on the Vive, and the same could be true for the Windows VR headsets.
