HTC announced a new multi-million dollar VR initiative aiming to support content, creators and institutions that embrace VR not only as an artistic medium itself, but as a way to better immerse users in all forms of art. The company aptly calls the program VIVE Arts.
With the release of iOS 11, hundreds of millions of Apple devices gained the ability to perform basic augmented reality functions, albeit viewed through the screens of iPhones and iPads. While capable of providing some pretty useful and interesting apps, the next logical step for this early development of an AR app ecosystem invariably points to the future ahead: an Apple AR headset. According to a report by Bloomberg, that future might not be so distant.
Using a single camera and a 3D-printed dodecahedron decorated with binary square markers, the so-called ‘DodecaPen’ achieves submillimeter-accurate 6DoF tracking of a passive stylus. Lead by National Taiwan University PhD student Po-Chen Wu during his internship at Oculus Research, the work presents a low-cost tracking and input solution with many potential applications in virtual and augmented reality.
TPCast, the eponymous company producing a wireless VR transmitter, is now offering its HTC Vive-specific device for pre-order in US and Canada.
Major retailers are now publishing their much awaited Black Friday deals, and by far one of the largest sales to cover VR stuff thus far comes from Best Buy. Sizable discounts come to Oculus Rift, VR-ready computers, Gear VR, and much more.
Take-two Interactive, parent company of Rockstar Games, revealed in their earnings call that L.A Noire: The VR Case Files is actually set to release in December and not on November 14th as previously mentioned.
DAQRI, the Los Angeles-based AR headset company, is now shipping its Daqri Smart Glasses to professionals.
Sony’s London Studio is behind PlayStation VR Worlds (2016), a collection of VR vignettes for PSVR—including the lauded ‘London Heist’—which was included in some of the headset’s launch bundles. With the success of VR Worlds, Sony’s London Studio is doubling down; now in development of Blood & Truth, the spiritual successor to ‘London Heist’, the studio says VR is its top priority.
There are those who said the era of the demo disc had come to an end. Alas, Sony is set to release a second VR demo disc to give players a fresh taste of some of the top and upcoming PlayStation VR content. While the PlayStation VR Demo Disc 2 will come included with the new GT Sport and Skyrim PSVR bundles, it’ll also be available to download for free starting today.
Megaton Rainfall (2017) for SteamVR headsets isn’t here yet, and according to Pentadimensional Games, it won’t be until sometime in 2018.
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).
