Oculus Sends 5 VR Experiences to Sundance 2018

4
image courtesy Oculus

The Sundance Film Festival just kicked off in Park City, Utah, and Oculus announced in a blogpost they’re debuting five experiences at the New Frontier section of Sundance—all of which they helped bring to life.

Dell Partners With Meta to Sell Meta 2 AR Dev Kit in February

3
Photo by Road to VR

Dell and AR headset manufacturer Meta announced a new partnership, allowing Dell to be the first third-party seller of the Meta 2 Augmented Reality Development Kit. Dell says that through the partnership, they’ll also be able to provide both the Meta 2 Dev Kit and the tools necessary to create immersive experiences to businesses involved in sectors such as healthcare, manufacturing and construction.

Investors Poured a Record $2 Billion into VR/AR in 2017, But Early Stage Funding Slowed

12
Image courtesy Greenlight Insights

In 2017, venture funding of VR/AR companies reached at least $1.9B, ending slightly above 2016. The total number of companies raising venture capital during 2017 outpaced 2016, but the average deal size declined sharply by 35%, according to Greenlight Insights’ annual year-end analysis of individual venture capital deals dating back to 2011.

‘Oculus Start’ Program Aims to Help Indies Jump into VR Development

11
Image courtesy Oculus

Providing “access, support, and savings” to qualifying indie developers, the new Oculus Start program hopes to encourage and enable the development of great apps from those just getting started in VR. The program, which was introduced in a brief post on the Oculus developer blog, has begun to accept applications via this form.

Play ‘From Other Suns’ Co-op Sci-fi Adventure Game for Free This Weekend

17
image courtesy Gunfire Games

Gunfire Games’ most recent release, the space adventure game From Other Suns (2017), is playable for free this weekend. The game is exclusive to the Oculus platform and designed “from the ground up” for the Touch controllers, coming from the studio behind Chronos (2016) and Dead & Buried (2017).

Oculus Fixes a Few Serious Annoyances With Its Latest Update to Rift Core 2.0 Beta

10
Photo courtesy Oculus

Already in the wild for over a month now, Rift Core 2.0 Beta has seen its first substantial update since launch. The January update addresses performance and general ease-of-use of Home and Dash, but more importantly provides solutions to some rather niggling issues.

‘VRChat’ Reaches 2 Million Installs, Doubling in the Last Ten Days

55
Image courtesy @CompatibleVRC

VRChat, the social chatroom for VR and non-VR users, is doing booming business. According to SteamSpy, the app has seen a mind-boggling 1 million fresh installs in only the last 10 days, putting it currently at 2 million installs in total.

WePlayVR is a Modular VR Attraction in-a-box Made for Family Venues

7
Image courtesy AI Solve

AI Solve is creating a modular VR attraction that’s designed as a low-cost pathway for family entertainment centers to bring VR experiences to their customers. With everything in the box, including a VR headset, backpack PC, bespoke experiences, and software that ties it all together, WePlayVR’s modular design affords interesting flexibility that can allow the platform to grow to fit the needs of the venue. I got to step inside one of the WePlayVR pods to experience it for myself.

Oculus Story Studio Alumni Form New Studio to Push Boundaries of VR Storytelling & Affordability

2

Oculus Story Studio, the company’s internal production studio tasked with creating ridiculously polished cinematic experiences, first announced they’d be winding down production last summer. Now officially defunct, studio alumni are heading off on their own to form a new firm dubbed Fable Studio, which is furthering development on Story Studio’s last remaining project, Wolves in the Walls. Fable is also introducing a new pricing model for its upcoming character-driven VR experiences.

Update: Official ‘Jumanji’ VR Experience Appears on Steam

12

Jumanji: The VR Adventure is an official VR experience created by Sony Pictures Virtual Reality and MWM Immersive (formerly Reality One). Initially shown at VRX Networks kiosks across the US and UK in tandem with the release of the 2017 franchise reboot film starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, the app actually went live on Steam yesterday for a few hours before being pulled.

WEARVR Launches $10,000 Competition to Bring New Life to Dev Kit-era Apps

4
image courtesy WEARVR

As Oculus has pushed out iterative runtimes to support its consumer hardware, many of the beloved early VR experiments have fallen to the wayside, languishing without support and lost in the annals of defunct software. To remedy this, WEARVR, an independent virtual reality app store, announced a new competition challenging seasoned VR devs to update their original Oculus Rift DK1 and DK2 demos, games and experiences, and bring them back to support the latest VR hardware.

Inside ‘Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire’, the Latest VR Attraction from The VOID

9
Image courtesy The VOID

I have always been a huge star wars fan. Watching Luke skywalker and Han Solo fight off the Empire in the original trilogy would work me into a frenzy. I would aim my plastic yellow gun at the TV and make blaster noises anytime there were Stormtroopers on the screen and run around my living room ducking behind pillows and sofa cushions. If someone would have told that little kid that he would one day be able to step into the shoes of a rebel soldier and help the Rebellion steal Empire secrets, he probably wouldn’t have been able to sleep for around 4-6 days. I recently had the opportunity to do just that.

‘Primordian’ is a Sci-fi Melee Brawler With Serious Style, Early Access Coming This Week

4

Boasting a smashing, shooting, alien skull-splitting adventure, Stonepunk Studios aims to transport you billions of years into the past to the very first planet near the center of the universe in their upcoming single-player adventure brawler Primordian.

‘Snatch’ VR Experience Comes to PSVR, Featuring Rupert Grint of ‘Harry Potter’ Fame

4
image courtesy Crackle

To kick off the production of season two of Crackle’s TV series Snatch, Sony has released a “VR heist game experience” on PSVR featuring Rupert Grint, known for his role an Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films, and a number of other cast members from the show.

Hands-on: Lenovo Mirage Solo – Strong Fundamentals, Questionable Pricing

27
Photo by Road to VR

At CES 2018 last week, Lenovo revealed the Mirage Solo, the company’s standalone Daydream headset. The new device has everything on-board, including inside-out positional tracking, which means it doesn’t rely on a smartphone or external computer to drive the VR experience. There’s many benefits of standalone headsets compared to smartphone shell headsets, but the Mirage Solo’s price point seems to position it in an awkward in-between segment.

39,929FansLike
13,574FollowersFollow
66,541FollowersFollow
27,800SubscribersSubscribe

Latest Headlines

Features & Reviews