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.
‘Try it before you buy it’, the old adage goes. Well, an AR preview might not exactly be ‘trying it’, but Amazon’s new ‘AR View’ function aims to help you figure out if a crock-pot clashes with your marble counters, or if that chair can really fit in that corner, adding a little more depth to the online shopping experience than you’re used to.
Logitech is creating a new system called BRIDGE which aims to make it possible to bring a properly tracked keyboard into VR while showing the user’s hands for accurate typing. Though retail plans haven’t yet been announced, the company is offering a development kit to select developers.
Described as an “action-puzzle adventure game”, Overturn’s puzzle elements play a secondary role; the game weighs heavily on fast, first-person action, combining projectile weapons and frantic melee combat with fists, shields, and blades. Overturn is available now on Steam for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift; it is also in development for PSVR.
Launched on November 2nd, the crowdfunding campaign for ZephVR, a VR fan accessory that “adds realistic wind at the right moments” achieved its $30,000 goal on Kickstarter in just a few hours, with 30 days remaining in the campaign. VR hardware startup Weasel Labs aims to deliver the first ZephVR units to customers in May 2018.
After November 1st, zero-gravity multiplayer sports game Echo Arena was supposed to change from its low-low introductory price tag of exactly $0 and bump up to $20—a deal made possible by a temporary sponsorship by Intel. The standalone multiplayer spin-off from Ready at Dawn’s hit VR title Lone Echo (2017) has been available for free to all Oculus accounts since its launch in July, and in a surprise move by the studio, is now permanently free on Oculus Home with no limit in sight.
IMAX and Ubisoft today announced that a special edition of Star Trek: Bridge Crew (2017), Ubisoft’s co-op multiplayer set aboard a Federation vessel, is launching for an exclusive run in IMAX VR centers worldwide.
Khronos Group, the consortium behind the OpenXR project which aims to standardize the way applications communicate with AR and VR headsets, just added Microsoft to its ranks. Among its count of members, the OpenXR working group consisted of nearly every major player in the industry except Microsoft until now.
