Just in time for the spookiest time of year is a new VR fan remake of Five Nights at Freddy’s (2014) that brings some of the horror of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza to room-scale VR. Although it only gives you two nights (and an “extra special” Halloween night), there’s no better price than ‘free’ for a quick pre-Halloween thrill.
Microsoft today announced the opening of its Mixed Reality Capture Studios and a ‘Mixed Reality Academy’ in the company’s San Francisco Reactor dev space.
Starbreeze and Acer announced a new capitalization plan for StarVR, the upcoming high field of view (FOV) VR headset, that will see Acer inject $5 million into the project and take a 66 percent majority control of the joint venture.
Kevin Mack is an Oscar-winning visual effects artist and abstract artist who creates digital spaces with fluidly moving textures that are awe-inspiring in their ability to create a novel experience unique to VR. In Blortasia you float weightlessly exploring the ins and outs of a series of tunnels that have a consistent topological sculpture, but with an ever-changing shader of patterned frequencies of rainbow colors that cultivate a sort of visual neural entrainment. It aspires to recreate a psychedelically transcendent or transpersonal experience that goes beyond what your verbal mind can easily understand as there’s no content, message, story, game or objective beyond providing an experience that’s only possible in these virtual worlds. It’s this unique balance between seeing an exciting and novel visual experience that’s also simultaneously relaxing and has the power to induce powerful trance states that may have unique healing properties that are being discovered in medical applications for distraction therapy.
New content for the popular VR puzzle game I Expect You To Die (2016) arrived today on all platforms – a free level named ‘First Class’ available to all current and future players. Schell Games has also begun a week-long 20% discount for the title on all platforms.
One of the big barriers to buying flash sale bundles is the selection of games available. What if you already own one in that almost perfect bundle that has you salivating at the nearly perfect price? Oculus plans to address this with a dynamic pricing scheme that gives you a discount if you already own a game in an otherwise bundle-spoiled batch.
Pimax, the China-based VR headset manufacturer known for their ‘4K’ headset, have hit Kickstarter with their newest devices last month, the Pimax ‘8K’ and ‘5K’ VR headsets. Surpassing their initial goal of $200,000 within the first few hours, Pimax has recently blasted past the $2 million mark in funding with 10 days remaining in the crowdfunding campaign. To that, the company has also included some interesting new goodies if they hit $2.5 million.
Skyfront VR, the upcoming multiplayer arena first-person shooter from Levity Play, is coming to Steam Early Access on November 10th, including support for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Setting it apart from more ‘traditional’ VR shooters, Skyfront VR boasts a unique locomotion style that supposedly offers a fast-pace, nausea-free experience.
At Connect 4 earlier this month, Oculus announced a major overhaul of their VR hub space, Oculus Home—the virtual bedrock where players find themselves when they aren’t inside of a VR game or app. The new space promises to eventually connect players together directly, but at the initial launch coming in December, players won’t be able to visit each other in real-time.
Job Simulator (2016), Owlchemy Labs’ madcap workplace sim from the future, is pushing a free content update called ‘Infinite Overtime mode’ that lets you play endless, randomized tasks. Owlchemy is also permanently dropping the price of Job Simulator to $20.
PAYDAY 2, the multiplayer bank-heist game by Overkill Software, is soon to get full VR support as PAYDAY 2 VR, which will also allow VR and non-VR players to play together.
The sexual harassment lawsuit against UploadVR was reported to be settled via Tech Crunch on September 6th, and a week later the New York Times followed with more details about how Upload had been barely dented. The case was settled without any elaboration about what did or didn’t happen beyond a vague open letter from the founders of UploadVR. This issue has has splintered the VR community into different factions of people who are either actively blacklisting Upload or have written it off as an isolated incident that has resulted in changes and growth.
Lytro, the once consumer-facing light field camera company which has recently pivoted to create high-end production tools, has announced a light field rendering software for VR that essentially aims to free developers from the current limitations of real-time rendering. The company calls it ‘Volume Tracer’.
Popular American cable TV channel AMC has launched the AMC VR app for Gear VR and Daydream featuring 360 video content, movie trailers, and more.
