Black Friday is nearly upon us, and now that consumer VR headsets have had a little over a year to mature, the deals are ripe for the picking. The first big verified Black Friday deal comes to Target in the US, which is advertising $100 off all PSVR headsets and $100 off the 1TB PS4, bringing the console to only $200.
Packing a 7-megapixel front-facing depth camera, Apple’s iPhone X can do some pretty impressive things with its facial recognition capabilities. While unlocking your phone and embodying an AR poop emoji are fun features though, the developers at Kite & Lightning just published a video of an interesting experiment that aims to use the iPhone X as a “cheap and fast” facial motion capture camera for VR game development.
Jamie Hyneman of MythBuster’s fame may be retired from the show, but he’s still tinkering in the lab, this time with a new project in mind that aims to address one of the most pernicious problems to date, VR locomotion. With a few prototypes in hand, Hyneman has launched an IndieGogo campaign to fund a more consumer-ready version of his ‘shoes with tiny treadmills’.
The Samsung Odyssey, the company’s first PC VR headset, is available starting today in several countries, sold via Samsung and Microsoft stores. The $500 VR headset and controllers, part of the ‘Windows Mixed Reality’ platform, is described as the “most immersive,” and leads on specs (and top price) compared to the other Windows VR headsets.
Sony is quietly releasing the new hardware refresh of PlayStation VR they announced last month in a newly revealed Skyrim VR bundle which delivers everything you need to jump into Tamriel with sword and fire spell in hand (except the PS4 and TV, that is).
Now that Sony’s hardware refresh of PlayStation VR is nearly here with Christmas around the bend, the company has published an updated version of it 3-part guide on how to set up PSVR including instructions for both models, CUH-ZVR1 and CUH-ZVR2. While the updated model is slated to arrive via a Skyrim VR + PSVR bundle, the video is clearly making way for the anticipated fun dealing with wires, adaptors, so on and so forth.
Google today released a new spatial audio software development kit called ‘Resonance Audio’, a cross-platform tool based on technology from their existing VR Audio SDK. Resonance Audio aims to make VR and AR development easier across mobile and desktop platforms.
Samsung might already gearing up for its next iteration of Gear 360, the company’s 360 camera introduced back in 2016 and then refreshed in 2017 with a new hand-held design. This time around though it appears Samsung is entertaining a different design route, molding the camera into a lovable cartoon character replete with a cute emoji face.
The undeniably stylish SUPERHYPERCUBE (2016)—which feels a bit like Tetris reimagined for virtual reality—initially launched as a PlayStation VR exclusive. Now, just over a year later, the game is coming to Steam for the HTC Vive this week. As with most SteamVR games, the title should technically support the Oculus Rift too, but, apparently related to developer KOKOROMI’s 2016 boycott of Oculus, the studio isn’t guaranteeing the game will work with headsets other than the Vive.
Oculus is now giving free demos of MARVEL Powers United VR, the upcoming super hero adventure for Rift, across its many partner retail locations. If you’ve had a chance to try out Rift in a store lately, you might just be able to secure a demo for Powers United at the same location.
It was announced earlier this week that Survios’ latest game, Sprint Vector, is coming to PlayStation VR in Q1 2018. I was initially worried that PSVR’s limited tracking would hamper the game’s totally awesome ‘Fluid Locomotion’ system, but after watching one of the studio’s talented devs show off his skills, it looks like the system can work great on PSVR too.
Two common types of head-mounts for VR headsets dominate the market today: the side & top strap approach, and the halo approach (which rests mostly on the forehead). Despite their abundance, there’s still a long way to go toward improving comfort, ease-of-use, and social acceptability as VR grows. Designers from industrial design firm Nonobject prototyped a range of new designs which could be viable as VR technology becomes smaller and lighter.
Pimax, the China-based company promising a few flavors of its high field of view (FOV) headset, has successfully completed its Kickstarter with $4,236,618, a good 21 times more than the initial $200,000 funding goal set at its launch back in mid-September. Now, Pimax’s road ahead will be defined by how they deliver on the plethora of ‘next gen’ add-ons promised to go along with 3 versions of their SteamVR-compatible headset.
Microsoft announced at their at Future Decoded conference in London that HoloLens, the company’s augmented reality headset, will be expanding its international availability to include all of the European Union in December. HoloLens is currently only officially available in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
